Climate change

[PassedOut]

As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks

 

Experts have long known that northern lands were a storehouse of frozen carbon, locked up in the form of leaves, roots and other organic matter trapped in icy soil — a mix that, when thawed, can produce methane and carbon dioxide, gases that trap heat and warm the planet. But they have been stunned in recent years to realize just how much organic debris is there.

 

A recent estimate suggests that the perennially frozen ground known as permafrost, which underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere.

 

Temperatures are warming across much of that region, primarily, scientists believe, because of the rapid human release of greenhouse gases. Permafrost is warming, too. Some has already thawed, and other signs are emerging that the frozen carbon may be becoming unstable.

Check out the doctored photos that the scientists are using to rip off the government for more grant money.

:P

[Winstonm]

So, once the claims are refuted, all that is left is the fear-mongering, threats, innuendo and bullying tactics

 

This again is a narrative. Where is the data? (btw, I am placing climate models into the data category to separate from simple narrative explanations.)

 

Let's put it this way for simplicity.

 

It is known that CO2 is rising from manmade causes.(data)

It is known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. (data)

It is known that greenhouse gasses have the affect of warming the planet.(data)

 

The conclusion of science is that it is highly likely that this increase in CO2 will continue to cause a rise in global temperatures and thus a change in our climate.

 

My view is that the the skeptical side should be able to demonstrate (with data, including models) why the present amount of CO2 being produced will not affect warming and how natural mechanisms will prevent climate change. Claims that the climatologists are politically motivated are not sufficient explanations.

[Winstonm]

The Economist has an article about independent coroboration of warming data.

 

With this reputation, the Berkeley Earth team found it unusually easy to attract sponsors, including a donation of $150,000 from the Koch Foundation.

 

Yet Berkeley Earth’s results, as described in four papers currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C: a mere 2% less than NOAA’s estimate. That is despite its use of a novel methodology—designed, at least in part, to address the concerns of what Dr Muller terms “legitimate sceptics

[Al_U_Card]

This again is a narrative. Where is the data? (btw, I am placing climate models into the data category to separate from simple narrative explanations.)

 

Let's put it this way for simplicity.

 

It is known that CO2 is rising from manmade causes.(data)

It is known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. (data)

It is known that greenhouse gasses have the affect of warming the planet.(data)

 

The conclusion of science is that it is highly likely that this increase in CO2 will continue to cause a rise in global temperatures and thus a change in our climate.

 

My view is that the the skeptical side should be able to demonstrate (with data, including models) why the present amount of CO2 being produced will not affect warming and how natural mechanisms will prevent climate change. Claims that the climatologists are politically motivated are not sufficient explanations.

 

Science is especially about postulation, theorizing and prediction. Once replication has been achieved, there only remains the predictive ability of a theory to demonstrate its effectiveness in describing the issue under study.

 

If one of their models could predict catastrophic warming (their specialty) AND show and explain (by theory and observational measurement) why increases, pauses and decreases occur in global temperatures DESPITE an ever-increasing concentration of the dread CO2 in the atmosphere (Not to mention all of the other foibles of said models.) THEN that would merit paying attention to their ranting.

 

Thus far, their models do none of the above EXCEPT the catastrophic results part. I would be very interested in seeing such a development founded on CO2 being the climate driver that they make it out to be. So would they...

[Winstonm]

Scientists learning to separate anthropomorphic footprint from noise.

 

“Scientists with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory directly addressed the issue of data cherry picking in a recent paper, suggesting that it takes at least 17 years worth of temperature records to separate human-caused global warming from the “noise” of purely natural climate fluctuations.”

[hrothgar]

As an amusing aside, I gave a class on statistical methods at Lawrence Livermore a couple years back...

[cloa513]

As an amusing aside, I gave a class on statistical methods at Lawrence Livermore a couple years back...

Which statistical methods and to whom?

[hrothgar]

Which statistical methods and to whom?

 

MathWorks periodically does big trainings for our big customers.

I wrote (and sometimes teach) the statistics master class

(Good to keep my hands dirty and fun to talk to the customers)

 

Started out with some basic stuff about data management (joins, tall to wide conversions)

Moved on to distribution fitting, random number generation, and hypothesis testing

Long section on nonparametric modeling in low and high dimensions.

Moved onto bootstraps and finished up with particle filters.

[hrothgar]

Claims that the climatologists are politically motivated are not sufficient explanations.

 

Al_U_Card spent years pushing conspiracy theories about 911...

Why are in any way surprised that he's moved on to global warming.

 

We should count our blessings that he isn't also obsessing about fluoridation or the freemasons

[Cascade]

Scientists learning to separate anthropomorphic footprint from noise.

 

 

“Scientists with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory directly addressed the issue of data cherry picking in a recent paper, suggesting that it takes at least 17 years worth of temperature records to separate human-caused global warming from the “noise” of purely natural climate fluctuations.”

 

It seems amazingly unbelievable to me that in a climate system that is known to have fluctuations with periods of decades, centuries, millenia and even much much larger that someone would seriously claim that 17 years data is enough but 10 years is not enough.

[Winstonm]

It seems amazingly unbelievable to me that in a climate system that is known to have fluctuations with periods of decades, centuries, millenia and even much much larger that someone would seriously claim that 17 years data is enough but 10 years is not enough.

 

You are leaving out the critical qualifier "at least"...17 years.

Besides, the article is a response to the "cherry picking" of skeptics who argue that there has not been warming in the last 10-12 years. The article has more details that are interesting unless the goal is to doubt, irrespective of any new information.

 

But, assuming you are genuinely interested, I'll make it easier. From the linked article:

 

Many scientific studies have identified a human “fingerprint” in observations of surface and lower tropospheric temperature changes. These detection and attribution studies look at long, multi-decade observational temperature records. Shorter periods generally have small signal to noise ratios, making it difficult to identify an anthropogenic signal with high statistical confidence, Santer said.

 

“In fingerprinting, we analyze longer, multi-decadal temperature records, and we beat down the large year-to-year temperature variability caused by purely natural phenomena (like El Niños and La Niñas). This makes it easier to identify a slowly-emerging signal arising from gradual, human-caused changes in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases,” Santer said.

 

The research shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

[Cascade]

You are leaving out the critical qualifier "at least"...17 years.

Besides, the article is a response to the "cherry picking" of skeptics who argue that there has not been warming in the last 10-12 years. The article has more details that are interesting unless the goal is to doubt, irrespective of any new information.

 

But, assuming you are genuinely interested, I'll make it easier. From the linked article:

 

I understand "at least". Nevertheless they are saying that in some cases 17 years is enough.

 

This type of cherry picking is not the exclusive domain of sceptics. IPCC reports have included graphs with exaggerated multiple trendlines based on 'cherry picked' start times to sub-series of their data. These techniques are bogus, misleading and discredited but look good if you want to make a point.

 

 

I don't know where the truth lies however these sorts of graphs and findings do little to impress me of the credibility of the arguments.

[onoway]

I have no background at all in any statistical stuff beyond observing over the years that it appears to be possible to "prove" anything you care to if you choose the "right" statistical expert. However, it seems irrefutable that the ice caps on places such as Mount Kilimanjaro are a fraction of what they were a century ago, according to photos of then and now; nobody seems to be arguing that the south polar ice is also disappearing. There's no question that animals, fish and birds are being reported in areas and seasons hitherto unknown to happen. So something's going on.

 

Willie Smits pointed out that the peat fires which sometimes have raged out of control for months in Borneo put prodigious amounts of Co2 into the atmosphere until they are finally extinguished. Borneo isn't the only place to have wildfires, peat or otherwise.

 

Living growing biomass has a markedly different effect than the dead stuff and not all growing stuff is the same either; trees generally will have a very different effect than grasses. Someone once said the trees are the lungs of the planet and we are being as casual about destroying forests as a two pack a day chain smoker.

 

These are things which could be relatively easilly and cheaply attended to, and also are already proven to affect the climate at least regionally. Both statistically and observationally :))

 

It seems to me that we could start out there; planting a mix of trees abundantly; selectively cutting instead of clear cutting and then burning the residue. Even just not burning the residue would help! if something must be done because of fears of bug habitat, then bulldoze a trench, push them in and doze some dirt over them! They will sequester carbon AND water, and provide habitat for new plant growth. It's called hugelculture in gardening terms.

 

Learning how to recreate natural systems, do something about fuel & fuel efficient cooking stoves for the poor in 3rd world countries ( deforesting the land in any case, but making charcoal is horrifically polluting as it's normally done, and not just C02.) Crack down on the cement industry which is responsible for a huge amount of pollution.

 

It's too much to hope that anyone would ever consider the amount of pollution being caused daily by war, what with planes and tanks and bombs and so forth, but maybe we could at least tag a rider on the money that we keep handing over to car companies that no more will be forthcoming until fuel efficiencies double. (Without artificially jacking up the sticker prices.) If they can't do it, then the money will have to go to found new car companies who will do better. Whatever happens to those bright young men who win these challenges and get 200 miles per gallon? Admittedly most of them look like they are driving a luge rather than a car but still...

 

Just doing that would do a whole lot more to resolve the issues we may be causing than howling vague generalities; tossing money at random industries with "green" somewhere prominently in their prospectus, and banning incandescent light bulbs. imo.

[Al_U_Card]

Over the last hundred years we have seen [CO2] climb beyond the Hansen-McGibben "safe level" of 350 ppm, with claims of all kinds linking this increase with increased flooding, storms etc. (The first doubling of concentration is supposed to give 1.2 deg. C of warming, of which we have seen some amount that is confounded with natural variablity.) Just how serious is this increase on the amount and severity of extreme weather events, and flooding in particular?

 

a really inconvenient truth.

 

 

Only one of four large regions of the United States showed a significant relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and the size of floods over the last 100 years. This was in the southwestern region, where floods have become smaller as CO2 has increased.

 

This does not mean that no strong relationship between flooding and greenhouse gases will emerge in the future.

 

An increase in flood magnitudes remains one of the most anticipated impacts of climate change, and land and water resource managers are asking questions about how to estimate future flood risks and develop effective flood mitigation strategies for the future.

 

A new report published by U.S. Geological Survey scientists in the Hydrologic Sciences Journal looks at this potential linkage using historical records of floods throughout the nation. Scientists studied flood conditions at 200 locations across the United States looking back 127 years through 2008.

 

"Currently we do not see a clear pattern that enables us to understand how climate change will alter flood conditions in the future, but the USGS will continue to collect new data over time and conduct new analyses as conditions change," said USGS scientist and lead author Robert Hirsch. "Changes in snow packs, frozen ground, soil moisture and storm tracks are all mechanisms that could be altered by greenhouse gas concentrations and possibly change flood behavior. As we continue research, we will consider these and other factors in our analyses."

 

The decrease of floods in the southwestern region is consistent with other research findings that this region has been getting drier and experienced less precipitation as a likely result of climate change.

 

Climate change.....we'll have to stop that then....but which way????

[luke warm]

Climate change.....we'll have to stop that then....but which way????

personally i don't care which way, as long as it costs me plenty of money

[Winstonm]

Al_U_Card, on 2011-December-20, 16:52, said:

 

An increase in flood magnitudes remains one of the most anticipated impacts of climate change, and land and water resource managers are asking questions about how to estimate future flood risks and develop effective flood mitigation strategies for the future.

 

Brown skinned foreigners must be statistically insignificant...

 

 

Six months after the worst floods in the history of Pakistan, aid agencies say millions are still in dire need of assistance, and there are new warnings about malnutrition in the worst-hit province, Sindh. But money donated to the prime minister's relief fund has still not been spent. The BBC's Orla Guerin reports.

[Cascade]

You are leaving out the critical qualifier "at least"...17 years.

Besides, the article is a response to the "cherry picking" of skeptics who argue that there has not been warming in the last 10-12 years. The article has more details that are interesting unless the goal is to doubt, irrespective of any new information.

 

But, assuming you are genuinely interested, I'll make it easier. From the linked article:

 

 

Brown skinned foreigners must be statistically insignificant...

 

Six months after the worst floods in the history of Pakistan, aid agencies say millions are still in dire need of assistance, and there are new warnings about malnutrition in the worst-hit province, Sindh. But money donated to the prime minister's relief fund has still not been spent. The BBC's Orla Guerin reports.

 

A couple of days ago you argued that 10 years data was not enough.

 

Now you argue from one data point.

 

My problem is that one side offers data, while the skeptic side offers narrative explanations.

 

And you bring in a narrative argument by playing a race card.

[Winstonm]

You're confusing snark for argument. ;)

[Winstonm]

You're confusing snark for argument. ;)

 

The decrease of floods in the southwestern region is consistent with other research findings that this region has been getting drier and experienced less precipitation as a likely result of climate change.

 

And Pakistanis can tell you where all that water fell.

[Al_U_Card]

And Pakistanis can tell you where all that water fell.

 

 

And the analysis made by NOAA of that and other phenomena (the Russian heat-wave)attributed it to the blocking high set up by the Arctic Oscillation, part of regular weather patterns that have had the same cyclical effect since measurements and records exist.

 

CO2 and Global Warming attribution was specifically rejected by that scientific body.

[Daniel1960]

The 17 years was not a minimum timeframe, but rather a conclusion that any shorter time period resulted in a warming that is not statistically significant from zero. In other words, no warming over the short term. There has been warming over the long term at a rate of ~0.6C / century in both the GISS and CRU data sets. The larger increase during the 1990s has been offset by the flatness of the 2000s. All in all, temperatures are unlikely to warm by any more than 0.5C for the rest of this century. This does not mean that nothing should be done about rising CO2 levels, but that the time in which we have to implement such an approach is longer than some scientists and politicians have suggested.

[Al_U_Card]

Were it some dry and dusty academic hair-splitting, no problem.

 

The contention is that we are in a crisis that requires action of the most drastic and expensive kind (as proposed by the UN's IPCC and the green advocacy groups and related green-industries that stand to benefit the most). If CO2 is not the "culprit" then what can we possibly do to change the weather? So, pull out all the stops to identify it as such and resist and remove any deterrence or debate about the factual proof and observational confirmation of the relationship, as proposed.

 

Without that proposition, they have nothing to offer but their cries of: "The sky is falling!" based upon model-generated projections that depend upon the putative (and as yet unconfirmed) greenhouse effect of CO2, needingly tripled by increasing water vapor in a warmer world.

 

The models are unvalidated (they projected global temps that are in excess of their "no increase in emissions" scenario) and the temperature record is suspect but clear enough to see that we are still warming globally after a series of global temperature fluctuations over the last several millenia. Just seeing the "adjustments" conveniently made by Hansen and the GISS gang is enough to question the methodology and refute the "Hottest year evuh!" meme.

 

http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_pg.gif

[Al_U_Card]

Oh no! Not only has the Canadian government repudiated Kyoto, they have had the gall to interview and accept evidence from learned scholars that refutes the warmist meme and demonstrates the folly of the IPCC "science".

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMQk-q8SpBU&feature=related

[Al_U_Card]

From the peer-reviewed literature:

 

These observations reveal a continuum of month-long pH variability with standard deviations from 0.004 to 0.277 and ranges spanning 0.024 to 1.430 pH units. The nature of the observed variability was also highly site-dependent, with characteristic diel, semi-diurnal, and stochastic patterns of varying amplitudes. These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100.

 

All in all, just another brick out of their wall...

[onoway]

All in all, after listening to the news just now, and looking out the window today, bring on climate change. It's been +5C or so here for the last few days, last year it was about -30C + windy for most of the winter.

 

Some people believe the Mayans predicted the end of time for us in Dec of this year, maybe that's why governments etc. are determined to take us to hell in a handbasket with pollution, spectacular overconsumption which necessitates ripping the guts out of the world without regard for anything but the bottom line, and chest thumping between nations all over the place. Bring it all on. The faster we put ourselves out of the picture the happier and more peaceful the rest of the universe will be.

 

I once heard a comment that this earth might be a science experiment such as we might do on fruit flies (not sure if that related to the Mayan calendar or not..the date for the experiment to run out maybe?). In any case if it did happen to be so, I imagine some creature is disappointed in the results. And I am gonna stop listening to the news.