The scientists who advised the UN concerning sea levels backed off their predictions today, calling the data flawed. Credibility = null. youbetcha

(02-22-2010 11:24 AM)ctt8410 Wrote:  

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Given the dramatic ups and downs of global temperatures, compared to the steady rise in CO2 concentration based on the data from Hawaii, that conclusion is summarily dismissed. You also didn't mention any discussion of solar radiance.

There are periods of stagnation, but not any dramatic downs in the last 150 years.

Nonsense. There are plenty of ups and downs in the past couple of decades.



Look at the down cycle in 1984-86, and the rapid return to the "zero" point after the 1998 El Nino.

Quote:You severely underestimate the free market that is scientific research. If there is groundbreaking research that can be done easily and swiftly (as you imply about disproving global warming) then someone will do it and if there is groundbreaking research to be published then there's a journal who will publish it. There is no monopoly on publishing peer-reviewed science.

"Monopoly"? No, I suppose not. But it's completely hypocritical that anyone would say this. There were EXPLICIT efforts to discredit skeptics, and that included attacks directed at the literature that would publish such articles. We have recorded at least one incident of a journal editor being discredited. At least one incident I read about where an author was called "immoral" by a high profile scientist for publishing his work, w/o any criticism of the actual science.

And that doesn't even count the way funding is rigged in these instances.

Quote:

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  You're using "instinct" to make this call, every bit as much as us laymen on this board.

No I'm following the trends. The published data give every indication that temperature tracks with CO2. There's no reason to suspect a sudden decrease in CO2, therefore it's reasonable to expect an increase in global temperature.

Then you don't understand what a "chaotic" system means.

Quote:

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Plus, keep in mind there are a number of experts who have disagreed with the AGW theory for quite some time. So it's not as if we're trying to turn lead into gold against all sound advice.

Do you have any specific examples? It seems as if you're violating the principle laid out in your Feynman quote by not giving any examples for fear that they could be easily rebuked.

Cheap shot since I've posted this information here before. But we can go w/ the usual names like Lindzen.

Here's a longer list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sci...al_warming

And even John Christy doesn't accept the hype.

(02-22-2010 12:21 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(02-22-2010 11:01 AM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(02-22-2010 10:30 AM)NIU007 Wrote:  I would also echo the comments of some of the other posters here, who have noted that surveys of experts is not a successful test of a hypothesis, particularly in a field of science that provides us with opportunities for direct observation. I'm guessing that most string theorists would tell us that strings exist, but I don't know if most physicists would be willing to bet their life savings on it at this point.

I don't think that's really an apt analogy. We are not currently capable of performing any tests to determine if strings exist. Despite that, string theorists work on string theory because they think that strings exist. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't be working on string theory. Climatologists don't work on climate because they think that climate exists. I think we're pretty sure it does.

Insert the phrase "climate change" and the analogy to string theory does hold:

"Climatologists work on climate change because they think it exists."

They don't work on climate change. They work on climate.
[/quote]

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this point.

(02-22-2010 11:24 AM)ctt8410 Wrote:  

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Given the dramatic ups and downs of global temperatures, compared to the steady rise in CO2 concentration based on the data from Hawaii, that conclusion is summarily dismissed. You also didn't mention any discussion of solar radiance.

There are periods of stagnation, but not any dramatic downs in the last 150 years. Not that this alone proves anything, but I think it's inaccurate to portray the temperature as a series of dramatic up sand downs. I briefly mentioned the Friis-Christensen paper above (Science (1991), 254, 5032, 698-700), which is the basis for most solar irradiance arguments. That study successfully correlated solar cycle length to North American temperature rise from 1860-1985.



In 1999, Knud Lassen (the only other co-author of the original paper) published "Solar forcing of the Northern Hemisphere land air temperature: new data" (Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 62, Issue 13, p. 1207-1213.) in which he concluded "About 10 years ago, FCL91 found that a good fit existed between the solar cycle length curve and the cycle mean temperatures. Today we conclude that addition of data for the 1990s has changed that picture."



Since then, there have been a number of papers that bring to light the mistakes made in the original study including one by Peter Laut in 2003 (Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 65, Issue 7, May 2003, Pages 801-812) in particular the mishandling of the most recent data in the plot in which the data points are not included in the filtered averaging that the authors performed.

To bring things full circle, as part of an interview last year Friis-Christensen (the first author on the original study) was quoted as saying "that any correlation between sunspots and global warming that (he) may have identified in the 1991 study has since broken down. There is a clear 'divergence' between the sunspots and global temperatures after 1986, which shows that the present warming period cannot be explained by solar activity alone."

There were 2 studies in 2009 on the effects of solar irradiation. The first (A D Erlykin et al 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4) concluded that the maximum impact that could be attributed since 1956 was 14%. The second (Benestad, R. Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14) found that 7 +/- 1% of warming in the 20th century was attributable to solar effects.

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Too much jargon.

C'mon now. We were discussing the bias from data collection points. I simply cited a study that on average these sites underestimated the high temperatures giving cooler readings than expected and overestimated the low temperatures giving warmer readings than expected. There wasn't any jargon.

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  And these clowns were rigging the literature so that dissenting views were NOT being published.

'

You severely underestimate the free market that is scientific research. If there is groundbreaking research that can be done easily and swiftly (as you imply about disproving global warming) then someone will do it and if there is groundbreaking research to be published then there's a journal who will publish it. There is no monopoly on publishing peer-reviewed science.

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  You're using "instinct" to make this call, every bit as much as us laymen on this board.

No I'm following the trends. The published data give every indication that temperature tracks with CO2. There's no reason to suspect a sudden decrease in CO2, therefore it's reasonable to expect an increase in global temperature.

(02-20-2010 03:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Plus, keep in mind there are a number of experts who have disagreed with the AGW theory for quite some time. So it's not as if we're trying to turn lead into gold against all sound advice.

Do you have any specific examples? It seems as if you're violating the principle laid out in your Feynman quote by not giving any examples for fear that they could be easily rebuked.

A little perspective:

Top graph = Last 1 million years
Next down = Last 150,000 years
Next = Last 16,000 years
Bottom = 150 years




So....maybe the earth is warming...but I seriously doubt it's anthropogenic based on the above data. In the scheme of things, 150 years is simply not a large enough data set to reliably be able to predict anything about the behavior of a climate system that is billions of years in the making. The two most telling graphs from above to me is the 1 million year set, showing that like all things, the earth is simply trying to find equilibrium....and the other is the 16,000 year set, where you see a dramatic increase to today's temps at the 12,000 year mark, where the planet came out of it's last ice age.