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Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
joeygoze - I see you've been reading the denial site notrickszone, as those appear to be the first 10 links from one of Gosselin's posts.
However, the actual content in those papers really doesn't match Gosselin's rhetoric, does not contradict the general view of AGW. As but one exemplar: the second link, Stephen Po-Chedley and Qiang Fu 2012, is a discussion of errors detected in the satellite temperature record. If those errors are real, and are properly accounted for, the satellite data is in far better agreement with surface temperatures - and provides additional support for anthropogenic warming. In fact, if they are correct about the errors in the satellite record, arguments from the 'skeptic' producers of some of that data (Spencer and Christy) is considerably weakened. Clearly that paper wasn't actually read or understood when compiling the list...
Many (most?) of Gosselin's links are from PopTech's list - a cherry-picked list of papers (and op-eds) that he (mis)interprets as possibly (in PopTech's opinion) contradicting AGW, despite in several cases objections from the authors of said works. They do include some works that directly disagree with AGW - including several from Scafetta (curve-fitting), from W. Soon (over the top misrepresentation), etc. And many of those have been refuted/debunked.
Link-bombing (as in Gossilen's post) only works if you don't actually read the links, or don't consider that even with a few cherry-picked articles, the vast majority of the work in the field finds those views to be unsupported outliers. If you feel that there are significant objections, I suggest you discuss them directly, rather than posting bare links.
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tmac57 at 10:24 AM on 12 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
Beautifully written gpwayne.I pulled 5 quotes from the article that should go down in climate science history. Thank you
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Trevor_S at 09:18 AM on 12 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
#5 Jason B
A good analogy would be an overweight person eating a chocolate eclair and then cursing themself, saying "Oh, no, I couldn't resist the temptation, now I've eaten it and it's too late to go on a diet". Sure, having eaten that eclair they will now have to work harder to achieve their weight goals, or else they will forever be further from that goal than they would have been had they not eaten that eclair with all else being equal, but that doesn't mean there's no benefit in working on their weight problem from that point forward.
A better analogy might perhaps be you chopped your arm off in a moment of hallucianitory insanity. You ignored that you knew it would make things worse for you but none the less, Murdoch etal told you it was "the shizzle". Sure, superb surgeons can rattach it and you will get some function back (Geoengineering) and if you are rich (Annex 1 nations) you might get back better use then someone who can't afford the best sugeons (developing world), none the less it isn't going to return to "how it was", there is too much forcing for that to occur.
I still see people expecting Government to do the heavy lifting for them, blaming Government for their own emmissions. It's long past time to blame others and we have to start blaming the people who look out at us from the mirror. We are the emitters, we are the obese, the smokers (insert whatever analogy works for you). It's nonsenseical on the one hand to keep emitting, while imploring Government to stop us, that's like asking your mother to tie your shoes for you because you're to lazy.
We do need Government to act to stop the free rider problem BUT we can start. We can act, we can cut back, we can apply peer pressure. We can not turn the A/C on, we can not drive, we can stop flying etc etc. Demand side reduction is the only thing that might mitigate the damage we've done, while still proceeding with supply side change.
If Government acted tomorrow with supply side changes, it would take decades to roll out the necessary infrastructure to ensure substantive emissions reduction and this article brings home the urgency of acting now.
So, what are the options ? Keep emitting while we wait for someone esle to do something on our behalf ?
Professor Kevin Anderson (Tyndal Climate Centre) explains it nicely here in this lecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInrvSjW90U
I am not holding myself up as a role model, just pointing out it can be done. Four years ago I gave up my job, we moved to a milder climate, in a "cheap" (housing) rural area. We are off the grid for power and water, stoped consuming gee gaws from China (cutting their emissions for them), stoped flying etc. I live off a small stipend from invesments, not welfare.
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Ken in Oz at 08:52 AM on 12 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
"Deus ex Machina" is the crucial plot element in the climate science denier's version of the climate story; just when it looks like they might have to eat their words some new element will emerge that fixes it all and they can say "told you so". It may be God loving us so much we will be let off from having to live with the real world consequences of our actions, even though we've known about the big one since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Or it may be bioengineered trees that suck CO2 out of the air and sequester it so well we can burn as much coal and gas and oil as we like. Or all the smart and worthy people will colonise Mars, where global warming really is "good" and there are no natural ecosystems for greenies to obsess over; those that have to stay behind can serve a useful role in paying for their migration to a better world.
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joeygoze9259 at 08:45 AM on 12 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
Dare I jump into the shark tank here, one premise I find alarming is that there appears to be agreement that there is no body of primary research that discusses natural variability, solar influences, temperature reconstructions that do not jibe with man induced global warming hypothesis and other topics. I am not making any ad hominem attacks, not insulting anyone, just listing primary research from per reviewed journals. I list 10 papers here but there are hundreds of primary research works that present interesting evidence to consider.
(-snip-)
Moderator Response:[DB] Links lacking context snipped per the Comments Policy.
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Paul D at 06:48 AM on 12 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
Contrarians aren't intrested in getting a scientific or factual result.
They are interested in the argument, winning or neutralising it.
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seeohtoo at 23:50 PM on 11 October 2013A rough guide to the components of Earth's Climate System
at #27, clarification on #26: there needs to be a biosphere arrow pointing at the ocean.
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One Planet Only Forever at 23:39 PM on 11 October 2013A rough guide to the components of Earth's Climate System
John, I agree that overlaid charts are a very good presentation of Global Surface Temperature and ENSO, but I still strongly recommend a reference be provided to the NOAA History of the Ocean Nino Index and that the explanation of the derivation of the chart presnetation from taht data be provided.
The current link on the article points to a site that mainly provides "speculative" information regarding the ENSO (forecasts). I did not find a link to a clear explanation for the chart values of Ocean Surface Temperatures. The NOAA link in my earlier comment (#2), explains the way the numbers in the table are determined. Also, there are links from the NOAA page to other relevant infromation for the benefit of people "... who wish to learn more." (the end of the opening statement of your article). Tom Curtis has provided a different chart in (Comment #9) but a link to the explanation of how it was derived would be required if it was used.
Anyone who does wish to learn more will probably come across the NOAA data and a critical thinker would question why the values on the chart currently linked to do not reflect the more thoroughly presented and explained data in the NOAA table. I was curious about the difference and went on a quick search for the answer from the IRI page and did not find what I was looking for. The links led to presenations about the "speculation related to future ENSO. There is no explanation of how the values on the ENSO chart are determined. This can easily lead to the an unjustified claim that the presentation is somehow "fudged". It is important to make things difficult for the deniers and skeptics among us who will try to focus on what they see as inconsistencies between data (any apparant inconsistency is all they need to substantiate a claim). The worst of that group will deliberately try to claim that inconsequential inconsistencies are proof that the data has errors in it and is just being deliberately manipulated. And the gullible of that group will need no more justification of the claim than the "appearance" of the claimed inconsistency.
So I strongly recommend pointing to the NOAA ENSO data rather than the IRI page about "speculation regarding ENSO" that shows an unexplained chart, even if charts are a preferred presnetation.
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Tony O at 22:59 PM on 11 October 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #39
I guess that makes me a denier, Type 5. Our civilization is in it's end game, doomed. Perhaps something better will rise from the ashes, but the transition is going to be horrendous.
But I might be wrong, perhaps it is not too late. And even if I am not, then I would still prefer not to race to our doom. We spend milllions on a single old person keeping them alive for a few more years or maybe only a few more months. What price then, on all of humanity for a few more decades?
Yes this does become self fulfilling at some stage. Carry on as we are and we will not only see the fall of civilization, but the extinction of man as well.
What we need to do to mitigate what is ahead is in many ways the same as what we need to do to cope with what is ahead. The more we mitigate and prepare the more that can be saved.
We can act. Or we can go extinct.
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Alexandre at 22:27 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
Brendon at 19:35 PM on 11 October, 2013
Anything But Carbon (ABC) became a cliché among contrarians.
As an attorney, I would never want to b in their position: "I have no idea who it was, but in spite of all the evidence, I just want to say that my client didn't do it!".
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Johnny Vector at 22:25 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
It's not always necessary to have a physical explanation for a correlation to find meaningful explanatory power. The correlation between the tides and lunar position was known long before the physical mechanism, for example. Likewise, there is a (counterfactual) situation in which "natural variation" with no additional explanation could be a meaningful argument. If one could show that there have been century-long variations in the distant past that are equal in magnitude and frequency content to what we have seen over the last century, but that these variations were washed out in the reconstructions done so far, then one could argue, even in the absence of a physical theory, that what we're seeing now could be due to the same effect (whatever it is).
Of course there is no evidence of any such variations, so that is a purely hypothetical situation. And even then, what it would mean is the answer is "we don't know", not "aha, see, it's just natural!".
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Alexandre at 22:23 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
Akin to the magical natural cycle is the magical negative feedback argument, which I heard recently: "if the last decade didn't warm as much as before, there must be a negative feedback lurking somewhere".
Unfortunately for everyone, there's no evidence of neither, and plenty of evidence of the ever-worsened greenhouse effect.
BTW, the magical negative feedback seems to be the holy grail of the last contrarian real scientists, like Spencer or Lindzen. Good luck for them. I just wish they wouldn't be so loud before they found it.
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Brendon at 19:35 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
Joanne Nova attributes the warming to "Something other than CO2", but she's just not sure what.
Then when I explained that she had not presented any science to rebut the attribution studies, nor had she provided any evidence to show something else was to blame, I was placed into permanent moderation.
http://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/novamod.png
This seems to be a pattern on Nova's forum.
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chriskoz at 19:29 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
This post portrays deniers as some kind of "irrational people" and tries to compare their rationale to religious superstition. Comparison may sound accurate but it is not fully adequate IMO. The reason is: the religious institutions around the world do accept AGW. Take an example of Vatican. Pope John Paul II said as early as in 1990, that global climate change is real, caused by humans, and that we should take action to slow and stop it. Pope Benedict XVI confirmed it. Lately, the populist Pope Francis has strengthen and clarified it, by saying: "All nations must focus on a rapid transition to renewable energy sources and other strategies to reduce CO2 emissions". I cannot comment about other religious leaders because I don't follow them, but I certainly see no correlation between anyone's religious beliefs and their climate denial. So, comparing denialism to some kind of religion does not do justice to geniunely religious poeple who understand the science and their supernatural world of God starts were science ends, which is perfectly reasonable to me. In such context, I would rather call the deniers "irrational heretics", esp. when Pope Francis' techings are in stark contrast with thier claims.
There is another term/explanation, which you did not mention & to which Ben Ka@1 hinted, which better characterises/explain climate denialism - special interest group bias, namely fossil fuel industry lobbists, or so called "conservative" think tanks. The bias is so large that it skews the rationale as much as we've seen. Some heavily vested lobbists and so called "public relation specialists" are the top figures behind those "natural variability" theories. They don't believe in those theories - they are just "selling the flies of doubt" as Germans would say. Such people can only be described as professional liars. The crowd that follows and repeats the lies as "alternative theories" on WUWT or such blogs, are poeple who for some reasons are unable or too lazy to verify the "skeptic claims". As I said, they are "heretics" following the heresy inseminated by special interest groups. God does not need to be involved here.
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rugbyguy59 at 17:10 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
One aspect of natural variation deniers tend to ignore/deny is natural variations of CO2 are vitally important to past climate change. In many respects AGW is nothing more than a variation on an explanation by natural variation. Naturally, more CO2 warms the planet. The fact the CO2 is rising due to us is really the only anthropogenic aspect of the CO2 explanation.
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Matt Fitzpatrick at 16:44 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
This post isn't criticizing attribution of global warming to specific natural phenomena. It's criticizing attribution to "natural variability" or "natural cycles" or whatever, because these claims are so vague as to be untestable therefore unscientific. The number of natural variables we would have to test to disprove this "hypothesis" are virtually limitless: clouds, volcanoes, planets, stars, pirates, and on and on.
Your claim, for instance, that part of 1975-2000's warming can be attributed to ENSO is specific and testable. This post takes no issue with a well-stated hypothesis like that.
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Klapper at 15:39 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
(-snip-).
Moderator Response:[DB] No new participation on other threads until you finish your interaction on this one here.
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rader5 at 15:26 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
So when it comes to the philosophy of all this. The burden of proof indeed lies with the claimant. If the pro-AGW side says recent warming is caused by C02, they have to show a robust model which justifies their claim. If the anti-AGW maks *ANY* claim, they have to provide justification of that claim. The nutral position is 'we don't know', not 'natural variablity'.
Moreover, we expect justification to be sufficiently robust. When someone asks, "What explains the formation of the solar system?" It is not enough to say, "physics". Similarly, it is not enough to say "nautral variability". Either side will take the sum of the evidence provided (along with their own biases) and come to a conclusion if the evidence justifies the claim. Most will say it doesn't. But as has been pointed out in this article, the anti-AGW side provides very little evidence to show that the current warming is due to 'natural variability'. On the other side, the pro-AGW have gone out of their way to show it most certainly *is not* natural variability. Could it be the sun? No. Could it be volcanos? No. Could it be the oceans? No. Could it be the clouds? No. etc. etc. etc. Could it be any combonation of those? (First: how would you know? Need a model!) No. The other side has no model which justifies their belief. This type of raw belief can be described as many things (e.g. a base axiom or faith) but it's not clear any of these are ever applied to the types of claims we are dealing with. -
ajki at 15:14 PM on 11 October 2013Ocean In Critical State from Cumulative Impacts
Link to "Fisheries: Hope or Despair?" should be changed to:
http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Pitcher-Cheung.pdf
Moderator Response:[JH] Link fixed. Thank you for bringing this glitch to our attention.
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Ben Ka at 15:08 PM on 11 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
Excellent article. I "face-off" against the deniers online all the time. To back up my claims, I'll post links to peer reviewed studies, to this website, and others like it. I am always respectful, and though I do admit to being a tad condescending at times, I never resort to name calling or ad hominem. The deniers on the other hand, almost every one of them, do use ad hominems, are insulting when proved wrong, and when they finally do cite their sources of information, said sources are almost always denier blogs which are supported by energy industry, or conservative think tanks, sometimes both. Of course on occasion they might post a study by a legitimate scientist that denies global warming, but I take thse with a grain of salt, knowing that the vast majority of studies prove GW/CC is happening, and caused by human actions. Last night I even had a denier use your website to support their argument. He linked to your websites trend calculator in an attempt to explain the current plateau, which caused a good laugh on my end. He even attempted to use Schmidt/Ridgwell's study to refute ocean acidification, when a simple reading of the abstract states that CO2 is causing the acidification. LOL, sometimes I wonder why I even bother debating them, but on the plus side, I am learning more on the subject simply by doing the research to debunk their claims.
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Tom Curtis at 11:26 AM on 11 October 2013Ocean In Critical State from Cumulative Impacts
The links for Bijima et al, and Ateberhwan et al lead to the wrong papers. I have not checked the other links.
Moderator Response:[JH] Links fixed. Thank you for bringing these glitches to our attention.
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JasonB at 11:09 AM on 11 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
TonyW,
I disagree, however, with some other commenters, that it is never too late to take action.
I didn't say it will never be too late to take action, and I don't think anyone else did either. What I warned against was saying "it's too late now".
Presumably, positive climate feedbacks could potentially become forcings in their own right. At that point, nothing we could do would have the slightest difference longer term.
That's precisely what I addressed when I said "It is possible that a tipping point will be reached at some point along that line but there's no point basing our actions on the idea that it's "2 C or bust". The overweight analogy would be like saying "Oh, well, I've eaten that eclair, I'll might now die of a heart attack in 30 years because of that, so I may as well not bother trying any more"."
It is hypothetically possible that at some point we will pass a point of no return. It's highly likely that we won't know that point when it happens, it will only be apparent with a great deal of analysis and hindsight. If we pass that point and nothing we do from then on will make a difference, there's no point in assuming that we will. We assume that we won't pass such a point, and if we don't, we gain. If we are wrong and we do pass such a point, then at least our efforts will have delayed it.
And there really is nothing we can do now that will make the slightest difference in the longer term, for a suitable definition of "longer". That doesn't mean that our efforts aren't worthwhile.
We'd only have adaptation left as a strategy, if adaptation were at all possible at that point.
Adaptation doesn't get easier if we allow the climate to get worse. It isn't better to say, for example, "Oh, well, we passed the 2 C threshold, let's give up on trying to mitigate and just adapt", because adapting to 2.5 C is easier than adapting to 3 C, and so on. The costs of climate change are a monotonically increasing function of the degree of climate change; it may be discontinuous at certain (unknown) points, where it suddenly jumps up a lot higher due to passing a tipping point, but it will always be more expensive and more difficult to adapt to if we allow it to get higher regardless of how high we have allowed it to get.
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Riduna at 10:50 AM on 11 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
James Hansen has frequently warned us, with his usual prescience, that a rise in 2°C above the pre-industrial is likely to be achieved by mid century and constitutes dangerous global warming producing an increased incidence of climate extremes. Hence his admonition on the need to keep average global surface temperature below +2°C.
More recently (2012) he has shown that the Gaussian distribution of heat is shifting to the right and as explained by Dana Nuccitelli, the consequences for climate, humanity and other animals are not beneficial.
Why do we continue to ignore the findings of science the advice scientists or find it surprising when oft repeated?
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Alpinist at 10:19 AM on 11 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
I can’t help but be reminded of a post over at Tamino’s Site that concluded with:
I’ll continue to do what I can, come hell or high water. Expect both.
(http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/hell-and-high-water/) -
scaddenp at 09:24 AM on 11 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
Terranova - well the obvious action is reduce GHG emissions. The tricky bit is what methods do governments have to do this that are politically acceptable to their electorate. CO2 and black carbon are by far the most important emissions and furthermore they are more sustitutable for than say CH4. If you want to pursue this discussion however, perhaps it would be best to look for a more appropriate. I cant speak for Rob, but to me, the simple, direct and effective solution is ban on building more coal-fired power stations (unless they have full CO2 removal). Let the market work out the best alternative. Coal industry (except for steel) gets a 30 year sunset, better than asbestos got. Of course the right-winger would scream stuff about "freedom" and so many countries would have look at carbon tax or trading schemes instead which are a whole lot more complicated.
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TonyW at 08:45 AM on 11 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
It's more bad news. However, all projections are, in the end, estimates of the future, not hard predictions. That's why it isn't too late to take action to mitigate global warming. I disagree, however, with some other commenters, that it is never too late to take action. Presumably, positive climate feedbacks could potentially become forcings in their own right. At that point, nothing we could do would have the slightest difference longer term. We'd only have adaptation left as a strategy, if adaptation were at all possible at that point. -
Terranova at 08:13 AM on 11 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
Rob Nicholls @ 6
I am interested in what "actions" should be taken and what effect they will have. I assume you mean limiting GHG emissions (and I am glad you didn't focus on CO2 solely.)
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Rob Nicholls at 06:50 AM on 11 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
Jason B, I couldn't agree more. We don't know exactly what the effects of 2 or 2.5 or 3 or 3.5 degrees C rise in temperature will be, but it seems very likely to me that the more we can slow down or limit the rise in temperature and ocean acidification, the more time we will give ecosystems, species and human societies to adapt. We urgently need to act now to prevent massive damage (and we should have acted decades ago), and every year of inaction probably condemns future generations to worse suffering, but I can't imagine a situation in the next 50-100 years in which action on global warming would be "too late" in the sense that it wouldn't do any good. Even if there is a several degree rise in temperature, accompanied by large increases in chronic hunger among humans and widespread extinction of many species, efforts to limit GHG emissions may still buy time to allow for adaptation to new climates and prevent a lot of further suffering and save many species from extinction.
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JasonB at 15:52 PM on 10 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
malamuddy @ 3,
the frustration of knowing that we should have acted sooner and may be too late now
Although I appreciate the sentiment, we should be careful not to say it's "too late now", because that feeds into another denialist meme (the final step along the path from "It's not happening" through "It's not us" then "It won't be bad" and "It's cheaper to adapt").
A good analogy would be an overweight person eating a chocolate eclair and then cursing themself, saying "Oh, no, I couldn't resist the temptation, now I've eaten it and it's too late to go on a diet". Sure, having eaten that eclair they will now have to work harder to achieve their weight goals, or else they will forever be further from that goal than they would have been had they not eaten that eclair with all else being equal, but that doesn't mean there's no benefit in working on their weight problem from that point forward.
Likewise, we may reach a point where it becomes impossible for us to limit warming to 2 C, say, but that's not an argument for inaction — it's still better to limit warming to 2.5 C than 3.0 C, or to 3.0 C than 3.5 C, and so on. It is possible that a tipping point will be reached at some point along that line but there's no point basing our actions on the idea that it's "2 C or bust". The overweight analogy would be like saying "Oh, well, I've eaten that eclair, I'll might now die of a heart attack in 30 years because of that, so I may as well not bother trying any more".
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John Mason at 15:17 PM on 10 October 2013A rough guide to the components of Earth's Climate System
#26 - three hydrosphere arrows. The top one is pointing at some ocean :)
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chriskoz at 12:34 PM on 10 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
I don't have access to the full text my comment on the results is just a best guess. So, looking at this article & the author's website, I deduce the average anual temperature data for RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios were calculated from a model run and the "cut-off" dates were shown when the model runs above historical variability until 2005.
I think this presentation is somewhat incomplete because the clear cut-off cannot be determined reliably as a single model predictive power is small in short timescale.
I would rather prefer to see an ensemble (such as CMIP5) run and the range (of say 1-sigma uncertainty) be shown as the possible cut-off date. Such presentation would give me better perspective, in adittion of being a better response to usual deniasts' trolls.However, (Anual Temp) is the only one aspect of climate change. Other aspects, like increased droughts & floods (that are predicted to affect my SYD neighbourhood) are not shown but they are more serious and delta Temp, IMO. For example, the news of a record hifgh 39 C for Sydney today, brought by tonyabalone@2 is not my biggest problem. The bigger problem is that SYD (in fact the entire East Coast of AUS) is experiencing serious drought (I don'r remember any rain for last 2-3 months) which makes the conditions for all species (including all my garden) so difficult. One day of 39 C wouldn't be that bad (it would go as weather variability) but the underlying drought is the reason most of NSW has been declared as "extreme" or even "catastrophic" fire danger by RFS.
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malamuddy at 12:21 PM on 10 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
This, more than any study I have read about, brings home to me the precariousness of our global situation, the frustration of knowing that we should have acted sooner and may be too late now, and a burning resentment towards those who know what we face but, to further their own greed, continue to lie and obfuscate in order to convince our politicians not to act.
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tonyabalone at 11:58 AM on 10 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
While a one day weather event is not climate it is however worth noting that Sydney today is expecting a maximum temperature of 39 C. This will be the hottest day experienced in October and very very warm weather for mid Spring! What does the summer hold for us?
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JasonB at 11:03 AM on 10 October 2013Global warming – a world of extremes and biological hotspots
More significantly than the proximity of those dates is what they apparently represent — the year from which we will never again have a year "as good" as our worst year ever to date. In other words, recent extremes would be seen as a reprieve. By that point the world is already a pretty different place.
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Leto at 08:32 AM on 10 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
jdixon,
I agree with the general thrust of what you have said, and agree that there are subtleties in defining the notion of truth, as well as variations in whether a line of reasoning fails at the level of fact or inference, but all that is still somewhat tangential to my original concern.
As far as I am concerned, any contrarian post that works towards a conclusion that "AGW is not a problem" is going to fail somewhere along your line stretching from objective, checkable facts to inferences. I doubt I'll use the thumb system anyway, but if I did, I doubt that any contrarian posts would earn a positive thumb if I followed the current advice. (A contrarian might post neutrally, without supporting any position, but that is not what I am talking about; I am talking about posts that actually support a contrarian position) If their facts are wrong, I would thumb it down as obviously untrue; if the facts are correct, but cherry-picked and deliberately misleading, then I would thumb it down as leading to an untrue inferences. If their individual facts are true and they leave it to the reader to draw the false inference (a favoured tactic of some of the more sophisticated contrarians), I would also thumb it down. (If their facts are true and their reasoning is correct and they have not simply blown a minor problem out of proportion and this actually disproves AGW, then I guess 97% of scientists are wrong and we can all move on to to other pursuits.)
When proponents of AGW post, on the other hand, I can see that there might be dissociation between correctness and support for the AGW position. Someone can get to the right answer by a faulty route, but can't get to a wrong answer by a correct route.
For a contrarian, the same issue arises, but the situation is inverted.
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seeohtoo at 07:43 AM on 10 October 2013A rough guide to the components of Earth's Climate System
Note that in the "components of the Earth Climate System" figure, there should also be an arrow pointing at the ocean.
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Jim Hunt at 04:51 AM on 10 October 2013Latest myth from the Mail on Sunday on Arctic ice
The Telegraph are playing hard to get when it comes to further "corrections". They've literally turned the World on its head in their more recent Arctic sea ice coverage! Here we berate their "Head of News" for that and other "inaccuracies" and "misrepresentations":
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2013/10/russias-northern-shores/
There's even a video revealing a yacht happily sailing through David Rose's "unbroken ice sheet":
Moderator Response:[DB] Reduced Video Player width to 450.
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jdixon1980 at 01:30 AM on 10 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
Leto @5 I do think there is a difference between statements that one should consider "inaccurate" and statements that do not support one's position. If someone cites cherry-picked data, for instance, and leaves it to the reader to draw conclusions, their statement may arguably be misleading, but it is not false. Under the current SkS system, I would probably give the comment a thumbs down, and the moderators would have to try to guess why. Under the Helsingin Sanomat system I wouldn't say "I disagree," but I would say "Poorly argumented."
Sphaerica @15 I would add that scientific theories deal not only in "facts" (i.e., observations), but also inferences drawn from those facts. Most of the time climate contrarians don't dispute actual facts, as that wouldn't get them very far as a principal approach, but inferences, like the inference that humans activity is the primary cause of the current warming trend. To you and me this inference may "feel" like a fact because we understand it to be the only reasonable inference. But I'm not sure that I would say that the cherry-picker was stating a falsehood even if he added the conclusion that "humans are not causing the warming" or "we don't know what is causing the warming." I would still just say his argumentation was poor. On the other hand, I might say he was stating a falsehood if he said something like "CO2 does not absorb longwave radiation," even though CO2 absorbing longwave radiation is technically an inference as well, although an exceedingly simple one based on the observation that every time we have shot longwave radiation at CO2, less longwave radiation comes out on the other side => "Duh."
So I guess it depends where you draw the line - on some level, we even infer that what our senses are telling us is true, because we could be hallucinating... But I think almost everyone would draw the line between fact and inference somewhere between what we sense directly, and complicated, probabilistic logical conclusions drawn from what we sense.
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chrisd3 at 00:39 AM on 10 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
I tend to agree with Yves #10. In my experience, a "flag as abusive" button is more useful in moderation than thumbs up/down.
No matter what criteria are expressed, these tend to end up meaning "I agree with this" or "I disagree with this," which is not particularly useful information to a moderator--lots of thumbs down simply means that the membership doesn't agree with the comment, not that the moderator needs to do something about it.
Lots of flags, on the other hand, means that the membership finds the comment to be uncivil, and therfore worthy of a glance from the moderator.
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John Mason at 20:20 PM on 9 October 2013A rough guide to the components of Earth's Climate System
re - #21, I am talking of all plantlife in bulk, not about regional factors.
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John Mason at 20:19 PM on 9 October 2013A rough guide to the components of Earth's Climate System
Eric - I think the sun deserves a blog-post all on its own. Watch this space!
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chriskoz at 18:31 PM on 9 October 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #41A
I came upon this comment, well written thus worth sharing, about natural gas prices in Australia:
Industry's coal seam gas campaign is a con
In a nutshell: gas was subsidised in Aus until now. Just like Saudis are subsidising petrol for their domestic market.
When producers built LPG to be able to export gas, the politicians are telling us all sorts of nonsense about "looming gas crisis", etc. But they don't tell us when the export opens up without limits, the subsidies must collapse due to market mechanisms at work. Very simple and positive result from the point of view of anyone who cares about the environment - subsidies must go.
But certainly things are not that simple for gas lobbist. Read their scare campain here if you're interested. If you know a little bit how market economy works you'd be laughing at it.
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John Cook at 14:49 PM on 9 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
Thanks all, some good comments (which I thumbed up :-)
Re the suggestion of hiding the final scores, on the plus side, this system would be just as useful whether the final scores are hidden or not. On the negative side, my sense is that would inhibit people actually using the ratings - feedback is a big part of the motivation for using it. So I'm inclined to keep the scores visible.
Someone suggested providing the option of cancelling a vote and a way to seamlessly integrate this into the system wasn't immediately apparent to me. But WheelsOC's suggestion (now thumbed up by me) of reclicking a thumb to cancel an existing rating is actually quite elegant. Will discuss this with Sphaerica.
DSL, I accept the comments that only providing up/down options is simplistic and we had discussed a more nuanced rating system (e.g., two dimensions of ratings). My concern is making it too complicated and have opted for the simplistic system to begin with. For now, I'm in the data collection stage - when enough data is collected (which will depend on the level of adoption by users), I'll see what the data is telling me.
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DSL at 13:54 PM on 9 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
I agree with Don9000, but I also recognize that it might be an interesting experiment to see how much new user traffic is generated and how much of that traffic is there solely to push thumbs. Even with that research goal, I don't think it's worth it unless it's more sophisticated than thumbs up/down. This is a site that's prided itself on complex, measured responses. The thumbs thing sticks out like a . . .
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WheelsOC at 13:11 PM on 9 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
Oh, and one more thing.The Ars system allows a user to re-click their vote to cancel it once it's been cast. If you accidentally thumbed a post down, you can click again to remove that vote. This isn't the most common feature of internet discussion voting systems, but it's extremely useful in my experience and I wish more places would implement it.
I just upvoted my own post. I could thumb it down, or thumb it back up, but I couldn't cancel the vote.
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WheelsOC at 13:08 PM on 9 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
Ars Technica introduced a similar thumbs up/down system about a year ago, except that part of the impact is that comments downvoted by a large enough margin are collapsed from view and have to be manually unhidden to read. Once that happens, they also can't be quoted directly.
Their front-page articles about this system can be found here:
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/10/introducing-comment-voting-on-news-articles-and-features/
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/10/comment-voting-working-getting-expanded/
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/10/comment-voting-now-shows-the-vote-split/
They also have a phpBB forum for site feedback where some discussions about the voting system have gone on in individual threads. Seartching that forum for things liek "voting" or "rating" or "thumbs" might turn up some insightful discussions (or whiny flame-fests).
It might be a good idea to contact the site's administrators and ask about their voting system, how well it seems to be working after a year in action, etc. etc.
One of the weaknesses of a user voting system is that votes (up AND down) taper off as the pages of comments stack up. Even egregious trolling, if not reported to moderators, tends to go unchecked by 4 or so pages into the average thread. Fortunately, SKS threads rarely drag on long enough for that to be an issue. There are comment threads on Ars Technica's climate science articles that have run over a dozen pages.
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davidnewell at 11:52 AM on 9 October 2013IPCC model global warming projections have done much better than you think
Whatever knowledge we think we have accumulated in regard to inter-related chaotic systems is likely only "educated" guesswork. We project outcomes, and when they are wrong, we look backards to see what we missed, and introduce that into our next "educated guestimate". It. too, will almost certainly be "off the mark" as reality unfolds.
We all know what is happenning. The planet is warming and the biosphere is dying.
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Don9000 at 09:12 AM on 9 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
John,
Having worked hard to get my brain to ignore this kind of scoring system on other sites, since I view it as being intellectually shallow, I don't want to see it implemented here at SKS.
The problem with simplistic pass-fail scoring methods like this one is that they inevitably, at some level, reduce even nuanced comments to simplistic yeas and nays. Showing my bias, I find the highly visible green and red symbols on this page particularly annoying. Their color makes them more immediately visible to my brain than the comments themselves. There is nothing subtle about them, whereas the points raised in the comments often are very subtle.
Here's what I'd suggest you do if you really want to gather data: make the vote total invisible to any of us on this end. If people want to click on a thumb, let them. But don't tell us about it, and make the thumbs less obvious.
Personally, I don't need a count of thumbs to help me interpret comments. I know the ones I agree with and why, and I know the ones I disagree with and why. I'd prefer it if you let us do our own assessments without providing this kind of thing.
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scaddenp at 05:50 AM on 9 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
silence - see John's comment at #12. It doesnt change the order of comments at all.
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silence at 05:11 AM on 9 October 2013SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
There's one big problem I see: there isn't a good way to respond to another comment anymore. It used to be that responses would be posted below, which made for a useful thread of discussion. Now that the orders are determined by votes, there isn't any way for somebody other than the moderators to post a response to a comment in a way that looks like a conversation.
If you're going to keep the ratings system, it would be really helpful to add some sort of thread tracking, so that it is possible to hold a conversation.
Moderator Response:[Sph] The votes don't affect to presentation sequence.
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