95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/

by Tycho • 12 years ago

111 153 12 years ago

cjensen• 12 years ago

Thou shalt not make a graph without error bars.

In that respect, the error here belongs entirely to whoever made that graph in the first place. They plotted all those models together to try to convince the reader that all models point to doom. But in doing so without error bars, they implied a level of confidence for specific years that was entirely absent from the models.

spindritf• 12 years ago

In principle, ok, but you wouldn't be able to see anything if that graph also included error bars for 100 climate models.

coherentpony2• 12 years ago

You can't really see anything with 100 climate models without error bars. While your statement may be correct, the point is entirely moot.

swombat• 12 years ago

The "article" relies entirely on this faulty graph, and then draws spurious conclusions... The graph by itself may be forgivable, but surrounded by this pattern of faulty thinking it is just one more piece of nonsense.

retrogradeorbit2• 12 years ago

How do you measure the uncertainty in predictive models? From my physics I remember that measurements have uncertainty. And then you propagate the uncertainty into derived values with differential equations. But how do you ascertain the uncertainty in a computer model? Did the original graphs actually have error bars?

jkrems• 12 years ago

Yes, see the debunk links in here. Those models normally all have ranges. Since he's in expert, it's a reasonable assumption that he either intentionally choose a graph without errors or he intentionally removed the error bars. Don't know which one would be worse.

khawkins• 12 years ago

It would be redundant to include error bars. Each path should be representing a random draw from the space of possible futures.

jbooth2• 12 years ago

I don't know enough about meteorology to comment on the article, but this quote bugged me:

"And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats."

No, there's the exact same amount of reason. This isn't a morality play, who's "fault" it is doesn't matter. If there were a meteor heading towards us on a collision course, would we reason against sending Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to stop it because it wasn't caused by us?

TelmoMenezes2• 12 years ago

No, there's the exact same amount of reason. This isn't a morality play, who's "fault" it is doensn't matter.

Of course it matters -- in terms of the amount of impact human activity has on the climate. The less impact it has, the less beneficial you can expect energy policies to be to the environment. Since these policies have a non-trivial cost in terms of human suffering (less energy for heating, growing food, etc.), it is crucial to estimate their effectiveness.

jbooth2• 12 years ago

It doesn't matter in a moral sense. If someone proves that CO2 emissions don't cause global warming, then yeah, it makes it less effective to focus on CO2 emissions. But we still want to stop warming from happening, so we'd increase our efforts on whatever they pinpoint as the alternative cause.

The linked article I was rebutting wasn't making that utilitarian case, they were making a moral case about not being obligated to avert warming at all, which I think is thoroughly bullshit, because I live here.

nraynaud• 12 years ago

that's a bit strange to me, there is a lot of economic activity for to be gathered from re-newing things and insulating houses in rich countries. It's just rich kids churning around disposable income in products made by poor people (basic trickle down), it's not really relevant if it's for new gas-guzzler cars parts and AC units or insulation panels and busses they spend it on.

eagsalazar23• 12 years ago

Thank you. What we are seeing here is nothing more than a rationalization and opportunistic bolstering of his preexisting belief system.

In the end global warming might be better than we're expecting but it is the political and social inferences, like in the quote you included, that belie his true intent.

gruseom4• 12 years ago

nothing more than a rationalization and opportunistic bolstering of his preexisting belief system

Whose behavior does that not describe?

nazgulnarsil• 12 years ago

If we're only the cause of 50% of the warming that implies curbing our behavior only has half the impact that it would if we caused 100% of the warming. Granted, geoengineering projects that impact total warming are different.

Jtsummers3• 12 years ago

Throwing out a percentage like that is meaningless. I contributed to 50% of the trash in my household last month. If that's 300 lbs, then curbing it is significant. If it's 3 lbs, then it isn't. If he can't provide more concrete figures for his argument then the argument has no meaning.

auctiontheory2• 12 years ago

If we're only the cause of 50% of the warming that implies curbing our behavior only has half the impact that it would if we caused 100% of the warming.

No, it does not imply that, not unless we know of a linear relationship between "warming" and "impact." From what I understand, the relationship is far from linear, i.e. our changes can have disproportionate impact.

jlrbuellv• 12 years ago

I think you're missing the point. Climate change policy is an optimization problem: how much money do we spend (either active on counter-measures or passively by capping energy usage) to reduce temperature change by some amount. If we can only affect it half as much as we thought we could, would we still spend the same amount? Maybe, but it's not exactly a no-brainer.

smoyer• 12 years ago

" If we can only affect it half as much"

You've made a great point - if we've really reached a tipping point at some of the more extreme global warming alarmists, you wouldn't spend any money at all. So they've inadvertently caused logical people to decide we shouldn't do anything.

The other end of the spectrum would try to convince you that global warming isn't real (global warming and cooling has happened for eons - without man's help) and that it's therefore not worth doing anything.

As an ecologist, I drive my wife and kids nuts with my need to recycle ... and take it a step beyond. I've repaired all sorts of "throw-away" household gadgets (most recently my wife's straightening iron) and try to give away working items we no longer need (freecycle). So I still believe we should each do what we can to minimize our impact on the planet, whether or not global warming is real.

wmf• 12 years ago

If we can only affect it half as much as we thought we could, would we still spend the same amount?

Maybe you'd have to spend twice as much to have the desired effect.

nieksand• 12 years ago

If the impact of global warming is significantly smaller than predicted and the human-induced contribution to that reduced warming is also much smaller than claimed, then expensive "green" policies indeed need to be reevaluated. Your fault reasoning has nothing to do with it.

Think of it from a programming perspective. You've suddenly discovered that your program runtime wasn't near as slow as you thought. Plus you've shown that most of the runtime is driven by systems external to your code. It makes sense to reconsider how much effort to invest in for code optimization.

polemic2• 12 years ago

Except that the entire "humans are responsible for say n%" is the latest diversionary tactic by climate deniers to sucker rational people onto opposing policy that mitigates climate change.

The argument is akin to saying "your program slowdown is - and I'm making up a number out of thin air - 50% caused by systems outside of your control so you should definitely spend 50% less time optimizing the things you can optimize".

The logical flaws are blatant: the % is an invention, and the truth or otherwise of the premise has no bearing on the action you can and should take.

MaysonL4• 12 years ago

Suppose that it's significantly greater than predicted? Are you willing to bet your future happiness, and the health and wealth of the rest of humanity, that it isn't?

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

prosperity-destroying energy policies

Ever notice how climate change skeptics implicitly claim perfect economic foresight? They may not buy that the Earth is warming or what the cause is, but they're absolutely certain that trying to weatherproof our civilization is going to result in collective bankruptcy. Oh yes.

Bahamut• 12 years ago

I knew a brilliant math professor who was a skeptic based on his statistical analysis, but did not have any interest in trying to influence policy there.

gwern• 12 years ago

but they're absolutely certain that trying to weatherproof our civilization is going to result in collective bankruptcy. Oh yes.

? This is hardly a deep economic forecast. If you force people to engage in expenditures they were otherwise never going to make, it's a pretty safe bet they're not going to be better off. After all, if they were better off for it, why weren't they already going to do it? We can maybe imagine a few scenarios to do with personal health and things like that where paternalism works, but nothing to do with global warming looks like that. Working against global warming is going to be expensive, there's no question about that; the question is whether working against global warming is less expensive than not.

auctiontheory2• 12 years ago

would we reason against sending Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to stop it

Yes, because Tom Cruise could stop it better.

api• 12 years ago

The climate change thing is almost a red herring vis a vis fossil fuels.

The supply of fossil fuels is absolutely limited. We don't know where these limits are exactly. But what we do know is that if we have no alternatives, our entire civilization will collapse when we run out of them. Billions of people will die. Centuries of learning will be forgotten. A new dark age will result.

Now that is "prosperity-destroying."

This is reason #1 to do everything we can to move beyond fossil fuels. Climate change may be reason #2, or maybe reason #3 after geopolitical concerns. But even if there is no manmade climate change at all, we must do everything we can to develop alternatives to fossil fuels now while we still have the time and energy to do so. The danger of collapse due to fossil fuel depletion is so great that I'm not even sure if climate change ranks.

So why are we still even arguing about this?

coherentpony2• 12 years ago

95% of the climate models could also be wrong. Prior information could be wrong. Almost no atmosphere models resolve cloud cover properly.

Making sweeping statements like this is not encouraged in the scientific community. Now, that's not say we can't learn something from this graph. But to learn more, detail is needed in how the graph was generated. There's more to this than meets the eye.

I'm willing to be wrong, but I'd like to see all the facts first.

mariano54• 12 years ago

This is very interesting.. I'd like to hear more from experts in the field. I was never fully convinced that global warming was that bad. But then again I have always taken it for granted that we caused it, and that it has great effects on humans and animals.

huxley2• 12 years ago

Here you go:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/13

eagsalazar23• 12 years ago

This is where the guy loses me: "then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats" and "increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good"

As if he gives a crap about poor people. People freeze not because of energy policies but because we have poor social welfare and exploitive foreign policy that itself is motivated by self serving right wingers who are exactly the people denying global warming. Pretending to care about the poor to make this point is frankly disgusting.

baddox2• 12 years ago

You lost me. Where does the author make the claims that you appear to be disputing?

siriam• 12 years ago

Does your ctrl+f not work? Both of those quotes were in the sixth paragraph.

huxley2• 12 years ago

Here are the two paragraphs in question:

"And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats.

I am growing weary of the variety of emotional, misleading, and policy-useless statements like “most warming since the 1950s is human caused” or '97% of climate scientists agree humans are contributing to warming', neither of which leads to the conclusion we need to substantially increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good."

MaysonL4• 12 years ago

How about cheap and prosperity-inducing energy policies? Like weatherproofing, energy efficiency appliance standards, energy efficiency building codes, fuel efficiency auto standards, etc., etc.?

nerfhammer3• 12 years ago

More on the author of this post:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)#Views

Another interpretation of this post:

http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1xuccb/95_of_climat...

(also see ovis's link in a reply below)

Regarding very similar claims:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/curry-mcintyre-resist-ipcc-...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc-model-gw-projections-do...

sabbatic13• 12 years ago

Excellent links.

Jtsummers3• 12 years ago

"It is a little known fact that the extra carbon dioxide (and methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas) emitted by joggers accounts for close to 10% of the current Global Warming problem." [1]

Ban gym class! Ban exercise!

[1] http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2005/06/time-for-ac...

jessaustin2• 12 years ago

Was there supposed to be a link there?

ovis• 12 years ago

Another take on the graph, shown here: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-decei...

It's been speculated on RealClimate that Roy Spencer is continuing to use the highest emission scenario for these comparisons, which is not made clear on his site.

guelo2• 12 years ago

"Earth and its ecosystems – created by God's intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence – are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting" - Roy Spencer

vixen992• 12 years ago

And what do you deduce from your quote as related to the argument about climate models set out by Roy Spencer? Does it destroy his case or are the models a resounding success?

gruseom4• 12 years ago

Considering how strongly your sources disagree with the OP, I find it surprising that the opposing graphs are not all that far off from each other.

The graph from the last article you linked to: http://skepticalscience.com//pics/ProjvsObs.png

The graph from the OP: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-mode...

In both cases the actuals are at the low end of the predicted range. They disagree as to how low, obviously, but not as much as I expected.

nerfhammer3• 12 years ago

see http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-decei... (courtesy ovis below)

sixothree• 12 years ago

How does this post have 60 points?

simonw• 12 years ago

Background reading: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)

nl• 12 years ago

Let's just link to the debunking and move on.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1...

https://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Oceans-Warmed-up-Sharpl...

https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm

danellis• 12 years ago

"International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP)"

Clever.

glenra5• 12 years ago

Why do you consider any of those links to constitute "debunking" of the original linked post? Most of the points therein seem entirely compatible with the current claim

Most notably, the link on "climate models" says "Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean." and goes on to discuss hindcasting. But the argument here is about forecasting - how well the models did after predictions based on them were first published. How successfully do they turn out to reproduce temperatures since 2000? Not nearly as well as since 1900. Bringing up 1900 in this context seems like a red herring.

Further note: There's a difference between disagreeing and debunking. It can be assumed that skepticalscience will disagree with this sort of sentiment, but that doesn't make them correct to do so.

chockablock• 12 years ago

Numerically illiterate horsepuckey.

For example: If 100% of climate models predicted a rise of 10-14C (mean 12C), and we observed a rise of 11C, this doesn't mean that the models are 'wrong', and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean that "the observations must be wrong."

It does mean that there's some potentially interesting correlation in the models' errors, I guess.

[Or, as cjensen said: 'Thou shalt not make a graph without error bars']

llamataboot• 12 years ago

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-mi...

j1z0• 12 years ago

To anybody reading this article, While Dr. Spencer does have real credentials, he is a know denier. I'm not saying that makes him necessarily wrong, but he is extremely biased in his views, and often publish research to back up those biased views. So I think he's comments should be taken with a grain of salt.

lotyrin• 12 years ago

Indeed, had to look at the author after the poor emotionally charged writing made his biases immediately clear.

corresation2• 12 years ago

Most people, once they've established a position, become incredibly "biased" in their views. Skeptical Science, which I mention because it is referenced some dozen times in here, is the sort of site that proselytizes to the converted. It has driven a stake in the ground demarcating its position, and everything has to be relative to that stake.

gruseom4• 12 years ago

The tell is the angry sarcasm, which releases chemicals of pleasure in the brains of the already-convinced, but turns off anyone else.

freshhawk3• 12 years ago

True in the broadest sense I suppose. I'm personally fine with driving a stake into the ground at "the consensus opinion of scientific experts".

That's a different type of bias than driving the stake into a specific conclusion because the other stake moves. Frequently.

To be fair, I think this only because it agrees with my pro-reason bias.

grantlmiller• 12 years ago

I'm a natural skeptic, so when everyone believes something I think that is the most important time to question it. I found Economist Bjorn Lomborg's take on climate change to be very impactful... http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioritie...

The basic idea is: that given our limited resources how can we do the most good? The answer is that focusing that effort on climate change is frivolous even by the most optimistic predictions. Now that doesn't mean we should ignore it entirely. I'm generally of the mindset that problems aren't solved by "steady progress" rather by radical innovation that changes the game. To that point... it can be seen as a waste of time to enforce rules today that really won't make a difference tomorrow. Instead today's effort should be spent to enable the rapid innovation that when applied will actually make a significant difference tomorrow.

danieltillett3• 12 years ago

The problem with doing net present value calculations on climate change is the possibility of "infinite" cost events.

Sure it might make more sense from a NPV perspective to spend a given number of dollars on say improving the water treatment in poor countries rather than stopping GHG emissions, but only if we know the maximum cost of climate change. The problem becomes how do you do a NPV calculation on the possibility of a positive feedback warming event that causes the Earth to become uninhabitable. This is effectively an infinite cost event. Even if such a risk is small, no NPV calculation has any value.

jessaustin2• 12 years ago

...the possibility of "infinite" cost events.

Never having taken place, thinking about such events would seem to challenge to both frequentist and Bayesian schools of thought.

yummyfajitas5• 12 years ago

I assume for this reason you also have become religious to avoid a small probability of burning in hell for an infinite amount of time? (See pascals wager.)

Zancarius• 12 years ago

The basic idea is: that given our limited resources how can we do the most good? The answer is that focusing that effort on climate change is frivolous even by the most optimistic predictions.

This is actually a fantastic point. Given the real, quantifiable health effects pollution has on humans (and other species), it seems more beneficial as a whole to deal with more immediate issues. Rather than quibbling over something that might, maybe, possibly reduce global temperatures by a few tenths of a degree. Maybe.

Great video, by the way. Thank you for sharing! Bjorn's basic premise could apply to so many things beyond simply world problems, which is what makes his talk fantastic.

Judging by the emotional investment some people have had in this thread, it'd be shameful if your post is missed. But, reasonable, balanced, rational measures seldom get people quite as excited as those that evoke emotion.

alayne• 12 years ago

Well he sure sounds like a crackpot.

donpdonp• 12 years ago

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence

spikels• 12 years ago

The global warming issue is complex. If you are a skeptic about CO2 increases due to humans, warming since 1880 or the basic science of greenhouse gasses you are simply uninformed. However if you are not modestly skeptical of mult-decade forecasts of temperature, rainfall or cyclones you are simply naive. These are incredibly complex systems that are only partial understood.

danieltillett3• 12 years ago

I don't know why the uncertainties of climate modelling is valid reason for inaction. When one of the possible outcomes of dumping trillions of tons of GHG into the atmosphere is global disaster, then the poorer our models the more we should be worried.

markmassie• 12 years ago

Exactly. There are two major questions: either the models are right or they are wrong, and either we successfully curb emissions on a very large scale (action) or we do not (inaction). This gives us four outcomes:

1. Models are Right + Action = huge spending on energy but we save the planet

2. Models are wrong + Action = huge spending on energy that otherwise would be spent on defense, etc. but we are left with a renewable energy infrastructure.

3. Models are wrong + inaction = little money spent on new power sources, left with fossil fuel-based infrastructure. When fossil fuels run out in 100-200 years, have to build renewable infrastructure to replace it.

4. Models are right + inaction = little money spent on new power sources, left with fossil fuel-based infrastructure. When fossil fuels run out in 100-200 years, have to build renewable infrastructure to replace it. Also, dramatic weather changes, widespread famine, etc.

Does inaction make sense even if the models are wrong?

xrange• 12 years ago

It is nice to see such innocence in this day and age. Regardless of whether or not we can manage to do anything about the problem, the fear people have is the vast amounts of power and wealth we are transferring to select groups of people based on political considerations, rather than market forces. Maybe we can select the perfect "leaders" to do this job justly. Prudence would dictate that you should imagine your political opposites coming into this position. So the worst case scenario is that we enrich a small minority, who are likely to stir up untold strife and suffering in wielding their unearned power. And we still don't solve the problems.

guelo2• 12 years ago

For a blink I thought I had read "posterity-destroying" and I nodded.

gamerdonkey• 12 years ago

The problem with this article is how the author frames the entire debate around this one measure of climate change, as though this is the only possible observation of climate change.

The issue of human contribution to climate change is much more complicated than that. This is an interesting contribution to the discussion, but it shouldn't be the only piece of information we go from.

scythe• 12 years ago

So, in general, the failure of a specific prediction from x theory does not in general invalidate the theory, in this case because all of the failed models depend on other assumptions than anthropogenic global warming. This is not because of any limitation of AGW but because climate forecasting is hard and any attempt to predict the goddamn future is going to require a lot of assumptions about a lot of things that can't be predicted (chaps theory). That's okay, because AGW is not based on climate models in the first place, but on a first-principles understanding of radiative forcing and a very well-established "fossil record" of old temperatures. Repeat after me: AGW is not a climate model.

Simply put, there is no precedent in the entire history of the planet Earth for overall heating as pronounced and rapid as the past 100 years of AGW. There are really only two possibilities: either humans are responsible for basically all of the heating, or there is a giant demon who is trying to stir-fry the human race.

So if you think that the recent warming is not anthropogenic... find Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis, fast.

cgriswald• 12 years ago

No love for Ernie Hudson?

code_duck• 12 years ago

The problem is that the same things which are thought to cause global warming also cause significant pollution, the harm of which is not in question. Most people do not question whether smog and mercury in the air are problems, and the sourcing and processing of fossil fuels creates significant harmful pollution, too.

vacri• 12 years ago

Whether humans are the cause of 100% of the observed warming or not, the conclusion is that global warming isn’t as bad as was predicted. That should have major policy implications…assuming policy is still informed by facts more than emotions and political aspirations.

Because there's been such a powerful political reaction in favour of all the scientists talking about warming? To the casual observer, it really looks more like Business As Usual.

retrogradeorbit2• 12 years ago

I'll just leave this here without comment for the open minded:

http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/two_natural_compone...

dredmorbius4• 12 years ago

Might be more persuasive if Huntsville hadn't been relocated to Alaska. Climate change is enough of a challenge to civilization without adding violent tectonic drift.

pridkett• 12 years ago

Just apply a simple rule of thumb to this situation - if someone has a doctorate and insists in being referred to by "Dr." then they're probably not confident in what they're doing. Nearly every place that Roy Spencer is mentioned he is referred to as Dr. Roy Spencer.

The one exception to this is "humorous" situations. For example, when writing trite complaint letters or on a frequent flier memberships.

al2o3cr• 12 years ago

Roy Spencer's ancestor, Easter Island 1720: "The graphs that show the number of sizable trees on the island going to zero in just a few years are OBVIOUSLY bullshit!"

singingfish• 12 years ago

Roy Spencer is a delusional f*c$wit.

I don't say that lightly. I tried having long conversations with climate fake sceptics, and they are totally refractory to reality and its measurement.

programmarchy• 12 years ago

Very convincing ad homs.

vixen992• 12 years ago

To be taken seriously in future discussions you're best advised to change your user name.

jellicle• 12 years ago

I wish that climate-deniers and flat earthers were flagged off the front page of HN as fast as any discussion of sexism in the tech community is.

theraccoundude• 12 years ago

And I wish religious zealots would be banned in the comments section as well.

patrickg_zill• 12 years ago

I admit to being amused, in that he is implicitly buying into the assumption that there is a mathematical model (which can then be run through a computer) that can describe "how climate works" on Earth.

As if there is some huge Excel spreadsheet in a supercomputer and the jerks just keep on putting in wrong numbers to scare us.

There isn't, and there won't be for (my estimate) at least another century - we don't even understand the Gulf Stream well enough to accurately model and then predict its behavior, much less everything else, including atmospheric dust.

beloch• 12 years ago

Climate change models are based on data. Old data, but real data. The concept wouldn't have even occurred to us had real, physical phenomena not suggested it. The deviation of recent data from predictive models does not indicate that nothing is going on an everything is tickety-boo. It merely indicates we don't fully understand what's going on and our models still don't have much predictive power.

So, if we don't fully understand what's going on, what do we do? Nothing? That's idiotic. It's utter paralysis. Would you invest in a tech company that refuses to do anything unless it fully understands the outcome? Sadly, human existence is lived in a perpetual state of trial and error. What we can do is weigh the consequences our actions could have based on our current, best understanding of the situation and then make the best choice we can.

Climate change might not fit our models, but our limited understanding of what's going on indicates there could be dire consequences if we do nothing. Action always has a cost, however. If indeed efforts against climate change have caused poor people to starve (evidence please!), how do we weigh this against massive famines that may occur in the future because of climate change?

Dr. Spencer is jumping to conclusions far more spurious and unsupported than any of the climate scientists he derides. We would do well do ignore him. As such, I am flagging this article. If this is an abuse of the flag feature, please let me know and I will unflag it.

ramblerman• 12 years ago

You can flag what you want, but I'm unconvinced by your arguments. You concede that he makes a point and we have no predicitive power when it comes to the climate.

After that you don't really win me back.

shadowmint• 12 years ago

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

    Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. 
    If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on
    the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag
    something, please don't also comment that you did.

waps2• 12 years ago

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that we have no idea what effect the policies have. They could be good, BUT they can also have bad results. I mean bad beyond just the economic implications. Since the climate system has been working a certain way for ~10000 years, I'd say the default position should be that nothing is going to change.

What's missing from your reply is an answer to the data he's showing. A long time criticism of the IPCC is that, well, they're wrong. In the sense that if you compare their numbers with reality, their predictions turn out to be a pile of crap. In a truly absolute sense of the word. The IPCC's 95% certainty bands it gave for 5 years out have been violated EVERY single time (5 times) they made a prediction (for the 6th prediction, the jury is still out until the end of next year. However, it's not looking good).

If they really were 95% sure, that means they had a once in 16 MILLION years streak of bad luck (1/0.05^5 * 5 years) (and unless that 6th prediction works out, and global temperature rises by at least 1.2 degrees in about a year and a half, that will be a once in 320 million years streak of bad luck). That is significantly less believable, in my humble opinion, than the theory that they're just pulling numbers out of their ass (not necessarily intentionally), no matter how unflattering that claim may be to the many smart people working that field.

So in short : yes, I think doing nothing is the correct answer. You can't hope to do a better job doing something versus not doing something in this case, so the best course of action (least cost/maximum benefit) can only be to not do anything. So yes, nothing.

Either that, or switch to climate engineering (ie. change the question : no longer about how to restore "natural" climate, whatever that is. The question becomes : how do we fully bend the climate to our will. That and related questions, like what do we actually want the climate to be (I doubt the answer will be as simple as people think)).

So I don't agree with your flagging this, no. Yes, the article's author is probably not the right person to believe this claim from. But he's right (well, the first few paragraphs). And science is all about what is right, not who.

x00542• 12 years ago

Climate engineering scares the shit out of me. I think this article is right, we do not fully understand global warming. We know something is happening, we do NOT know exactly what OR why. But we have the fucking hubris to assume that we can make it better (through climate engineering)!? Without even fully understanding the problem.

That said, we can still work on improving the world and cutting down CO2 emissions AND pollution. Global warming or not, no one can argue with the fact that air quality in large cities in US, India, and China is atrocious. Global warming may or may not kill us, but pollution is killing people, now, today. And that pollution is 100% man made, no argument about that.

I personally think we should work on innovation of power production, not conservation of said power. Better battery technology and better solar photovoltaic technology is the future, in my personal opinion.

UPDATE: updated for clarity.

Steko• 12 years ago

Speaking of piles of crap:

"The IPCC's 95% certainty bands it gave for 5 years out have been violated EVERY single time"

Alternatively, you could tell the truth that they've been accurate:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc-overestimate-global-war...

MaysonL4• 12 years ago

Of course he's looking at one small set of data: temperature measurements. Consider the wide range of physical and biological changes occurring. Drunken forests. Polar ice melt. Bird migration changes (earlier spring and later fall, as well as some novel over-wintering). Changes in animal and plant ranges (including massive pest increases in some areas). Dying coral reefs. Increased extreme weather events (ask the insurance industry about their take on that). Screw the models. The data is pretty clear.

x00542• 12 years ago

Well, for one the rules directly state: "If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did." Further, the rules also state that one should flag things which are "spam or offtopic." The list of flag worthy offenses isn't extensive, and I am sure there are other reasons, but something tells me that flagging something simply because you disagree with it is NOT ok.

DanBC3• 12 years ago

We shouldn't upvote crap links. Unfortunately many people will upvote crap. The only way to keep garbage off the front page is for some people to flag it.

Tycho• 12 years ago

Well I'm willing to bet that this graph will reappear all over the internet. People in this thread spent a lot of time debating the evidence and logic surrounding it, and posting links to rebuttals. Since you've flagged this topic and it's disappeared from the front pages, it just makes it more likely that this graph will spread round the internet unchallenged.

marze• 12 years ago

Expected CO2 increases would modify the Earth's albedo by 0.4%. Clouds modify it by > 25%.

We can't predict clouds more than five days in advance, under our well-studied present climate conditions.

It is difficult to see why climate modelers are confident they can predict average cloud cover in the future when different climate conditions are in effect.

adam-f• 12 years ago

IANAS but it never made sense to me that global warming would be linear with amount of CO_2, at some point, I figured 95% of the available IR would be absorbed by the atmosphere and doubling the CO_2 would only get us to, like, 97.5%. Then again, we are experiencing some crazy weather patterns recently.

Other effects of CO_2, like ocean acidification can be seen through both direct chemical measurement and by the observed environmental effects on coral reefs.

bnolsen• 12 years ago

Quick! someone get the wierdos at /. to post this article! As noted in the past, sciebtists can barely predict hurricane tracks. Global climate stuff? Yeah right.

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

I would be much more open to taking climate change skeptics seriously if they didn't consistently descend into full on tinfoil-hat-speak.

"starve more poor people to death for the greater good"

Thank you for playing. No amount of "I'm a Ph.D., I'm a former NASA scientist" is going to help take you seriously after that.

dredmorbius4• 12 years ago

SourceWatch profile on Roy C. Spencer:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Roy_Spencer

"One of the few AGW deniers with real credentials", Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama at Huntsville (also home to AGW denier John Christy) and is the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite.

Spencer is on the nine-member board of the antiregulation, Scaife- and Bradley-funded Marshall Institute, though he appears not to disclose this affiliation on his website.

95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

Related Stories