Still, the title is really misleading, even though it may be true in a very, very narrow sense. Tbh. I think someone just went overboard there.
The problem of course is that we just don't know. We have our models, but they are all built on assumptions that can change any day. Some say that long term predictions are much more reliable than short term ones (aka. the weather forecast), yet still we are constantly surprised by climate events. The article itself is quite nice, so why fear mongering title (and I'm not even speaking about the HN title, that one is just completely misleading).
Yes, the title certainly is misleading based on that final paragraphs. However considering we have numerous alarming data points across the globe in 2012 related to climate (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-te...) perhaps that context means events like this are viewed in a more pessimistic fashion.
The sentiment you express: that we don't know for sure, our models are not fool-proof etc is a very particular, unscientific line of reasoning pumped out to convince the layman that there is no real scientific consensus, which is simply false. There is scientific consensus, climate scientists never state that the test for scientific theories is 100% certainty, nor do they claim their models are completely accurate (every model is wrong to a degree, by definition!)
The climate scientists and meteorologists in my family have moved on from debating with people now, seeing it as about as valuable as arguing about gravity with someone.
What's the global warming equivalent of "the 9/11 attack allowed a group of right-wing ideologues to rapidly advance an agenda they'd been pushing and planning for years under the (very thin) guise of responding to 9/11"?
Maybe something like "the current global climate change caused by humankind is a convenient backdrop for a variety of eco-warriers to advance non-scientific and innumerate 'solutions' which are more about making people feel bad about themselves than about tackling the actual problems"?
In both cases the loudness of the wackos on both sides has drowned out the moderates and turned it into a political/religous debate.
> "the current global climate change caused by humankind is a convenient backdrop for a variety of eco-warriers to advance non-scientific and innumerate 'solutions' which are more about making people feel bad about themselves than about tackling the actual problems"?
What about those extreme and useless people precludes us from finding real solutions to a scientifically proven problem?
Forget the hippies. They'll never get anything real done. But if you find a way to produce cheap power, everything will benefit. Better sustainability is a win-win.
I'm not sure why we need a scapegoat to prevent us from doing good things for the world and possibly making a boatload of money doing so (not that that's the goal, but I imagine it's the primary concern for people with such criticisms). It's completely counter-intuitive to me why people would fight this.
"since 9/11 was a real terrorist attack, we MUST respond by invading this list of countries and enacting this list of restrictions on freedom"
is analogous to
"since global warming is really driven by carbon emissions, we MUST respond by subsidizing these industries, enacting these stealth taxes, and forcing consumers to engage in these behaviors"
On both sides, we've got the wacko conspiracy theorists. But we also have those who recognize the problem is real and want to push stupid solutions. That's another part of "drowning out the moderates".
Really, you linked to Mad Bill McKibbens Rolling Stone rant? The one that insists the laws of physics are changing? That guy is an embarassment as much as some of the nuttier 'there is no global warming' zealots are. Unhinged alarmism and 'big oil under the bed' is only good for preaching to the choir.
Two points:
- consensus isn't proof, it's just a bunch of people agreeing with each other. Scientifically, it means nothing. The list of disproven theories that once had wide consensus is deep and rich in examples. It's OK to talk about a consensus, it's not OK to use this as a line of argument that something is true.
- the IPCC models are woeful at predictions, the IPCC themselves have stated as much. It's not unscientific to express doubt about the models - it's unscientific to do the opposite.
The global warming movement isn't a conspiracy, but there are many interesting social phenomena that can be observed amongst it's ardent supporters.
Well yes, I thought the article captured a lot of interesting numbers. Much more useful if you skip the ad hominems (I don't care what you think of the author) and focus on critiquing the substance. What's wrong with the data? Happy to hear.
Scientific consensus - no one asserted that it represents proof. You are wrong to say that scientifically it means nothing. I think you mean to say what Wikipedia says: "Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the scientific method."
However from a societal point of view it is important, which is clearly highlighted by the attempts of the energy industry to promote the idea that there isn't a scientific consensus when there is one.
Obviously I take issue with the bits where you go on to talk about disproven theories and unreliability of models. You're veering off into that industry messaging which aims to convince a reader that the science we have is not solid enough to decide whether to act on emissions, which is completely false.
It's a recipe I hereby label the "global warming denialist's unscientific method":
1. Construct your own notion of how science works.
2. Dismiss climate science based on 1.
3. Convince yourself (and others) you hold a scientific position.
No, there is not. Of you have been sleeping for a few years, then. Many scientists have come out in the recent past to stand against the "global warming" theory.
It is nothing like gravity where we can clearly experiment and it's predictable. Climate change is no way certain nor predictable, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either a fool or an ignorant. Climate models are based on so much data (standard variation is HUGE) that you cannot even draw a line without being laughed at by a statistician.
I was coming up with a list of cites, but at this point it'd just fall on deaf ears. If you're genuinely uncommitted, just look at what's published by everything from climate journals to general interest journals, like Nature and Science. Sure, the consensus might be wrong, but it's incredibly obvious that there is one: experts are very largely of the opinion that anthropogenic carbon emissions are a major driver of climate change.
Of course, I have family whose post-doc research is in this, so I might just be part of the conspiracy!
Edited to add: well, just to get you started, check out NPG's specialist climate journal: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html . No article is trying to prove anything beyond their own limited theses, but it's very clear where experts are coming from.
"Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008."
This is coming from the GWPF itself : "It is good news that the authors recognise that there has been no global temperature increase since 1998. Even after the standstill appears time and again in peer-reviewed scientific studies, many commentators still deny its reality. We live in the warmest decade since thermometer records began about 150 years ago, but it hasn’t gotten any warmer for at least a decade."
So, temperature increase? Hum ? Global Warming ? Hum ?CO2 levels are exploding but no significant temperature increase from 1998 - 2008.
You are wrong. My dictionary defines consensus as "general agreement" and this is clearly the case when it comes to climate science.
No one in the climate science arena disagrees that the changes in CO2 levels are 1) created by burning fossil fuels 2) driving the observed warming effect and 3) that the observed warming trends are outside the levels of natural variability.
The IPCC Third Assessment Report [1] outlines this in much detail. This report has been signed-off on by dozens of international science academies, including the Science Council of Japan, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Other institutions endorsing the IPCC report include NASA's Goddard Institute, NOAA, the American Meteorological Society, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, the American Geophysical Union, and the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.
If this doesn't constitute "consensus" then I would like to hear what you WOULD consider sufficient. There are MANY debates in climate science, but they are generally about the HOW's not the IF's or WHY's.
CO2 is not the single driver. If it were, how do you explain we do not see significant temperature increase over the past few years while there is more and more CO2 in the atmosphere. You cant have it both ways.
And I repeat again, there is no consensus. Consensus in science is not like a democratic vote. The consensus in science is obtained when there is NO ONE debating anything anymore. Just like noone is casting doubt on Einstein s relativity theory in physics. Do we have that level of scientific certitude regarding climate? Hell no.
"June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe." (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-te...)
You clearly have an opinion on this topic, but everything you've asserted in this thread is simply wrong. Debate on these issues is always fine (even with a scientific consensus, it does not mean 'no further debate') but you do the opposing camp a disservice when you promote falsehoods.
The temperature has been rising for ~150 years or more.
Of course the most recent half of the trend is higher than the average. It's meant to sound scary when it's just a plain fact that a rising trend will have most of the later part of the trend higher than the entire average.
A probability of the last part of a series being higher than the average would only be interesting if the series was random. The temperature series isn't random - it has a trend upwards. So the probability business is just nonsense. It's just a ridiculous way of saying the temperature series has trended up for a long time. (Long in human lifetime measurements, but not geological lifetime)
Hence : in the last 327 months of my life, I'm taller than my lifetime average. Because it would be very unlikely that the opposite would be the case.
Temperatures have not been rising for 150 years or more. You need to check your facts.
Direct instrumental measurements only go back ~150 years, but another direct mechanism exists: borehole measurements [1]. This gives us a very good measurement of temperature over ~500 years. These show that at no time have temperature averages been as high as they are now.
We can go back even further, to the tune of 1000 years, through proxy data obtained via things like tree rings, coral growth, stalagmite layers, etc. This covers the so-called "Medieval Warm Period" and these data show the last century to be warmer than any other in the data set.
Not enough? Antarctic ice core analysis provides a record of the glacial-interglacial cycle over 100s of thousands of years. These data show that current average temperatures are higher than they've been over the last 100,000+ years. This is documented in Figure 2.22 of the IPCC Third Assessment Report [2].
The cranks who claim Einstein is wrong have no means to prove he is.
However, when a scientist argues against the lack of long term data to discuss global warming, and the inconsistencies of the theory, he is met with disapproval, insults, and shunning. There is a lack of scientific discussions because there is a huge political agenda behind it, and it is not a surprise to see most of 'climate scientists' funded by governments who approve of that theory and want to have this on their agenda.
Kind of hard to keep a straight face as a scientist when your funding depends on the theory itself. Of course youd be fighting to make sure it remains the 'mainstream' theory.
- disclaimer: student of environmental physics here -
Uhm, no. We can still do climate science without the problems, and there will be funds (maybe not as much, but that's ok). Climate is still something we want and need to understand, even if there is no problem at the moment (just imagine another ice age.. )
All the researchers here (Heidelberg) would be happy - euphoric! - to be able to disprove the theory. Just image, you'd be able to tell everyone it's gonna be ok.. but it's most probably not. And there are so many students and grad students working on the data - if there was a problem, can you really imagine that not a single student would be idealistic enough to speak up? (I totally would, but then I might be in already.)
You can download raw data if you want, and look at them yourself. Most projects actually have a data base, and if not just ask. If there is a problem in the way the data has been taken and evaluated, notice the authors. But a lot of people have looked over it already.As I said, everyone would be unbelievably happy if the problem didn't exist.
Look here for some oceanic data, for example:
http://woce.nodc.noaa.gov/wdiu/
Wouldn't that apply equally to almost all scientific research being conducted? Just about everybody has some result they're hoping for. This sounds more like bias on your part ("They could be exaggerating, and I'd like them to be, so I'll make the leap from mere possibility to certainty") than a fact-based analysis of the climate scientists' research.
"There is scientific consensus"... No, there is not.
Sorry, but there is[1].
You are welcome to debate whether those scientist are right, and welcome to debate if other, non-climate specialists are better qualified to offer their opinion, but trying to argue against there being a consensus is misguided.
It's funny but I see a parallel between your line of reasoning about global warming and the reasoning of those who believe in creation, and deny evolution.
There are scientists who advocate creation, not evolution and there is no easy way to "prove evolution" as an absolute fact.
People have their reasons for ignoring proofs of evolution and others have their reasons for ignoring proofs of global warming.
What degree of evolution? That things change? That this change is observable? Or that man evolved from apes. If the latter, a) why are there still apes, b) where is the missing link?
There is a whole list of "human missing links" on Wikipedia[1]. The best preserved are the Australopithecus afarensis set of skeletons[2].
It is thought that A. afarensis was more closely related to the genus Homo (which includes the modern human species Homo sapiens), whether as a direct ancestor or a close relative of an unknown ancestor, than any other known primate from the same time.
There is tons (literally) of evidence that evolution is real, from a wide range of independent, disparate sources.
Here's one: the fact that volcanic islands, which have land that has been historically only accessible to birds, have a number of bird species that have filled ecological niches normally filled by rodents.
Here's another: you can see in the fossil record progressive changes. Sure, there are missing links, but try coming up with an explanation that fits the islands fact (above) as well as this one. In addition, have it explain, in a way that permits further predictions, 10 other otherwise independent sources of evidence.
Only in an exceptionally mild way, and no worse than you should reasonably expect from posting absurdly uninformed critiques of basic science to a technology oriented online community. Besides, I meant it more for humour than offense, as I find it hard to resist such a good feed line.
Major scientific institutions don't get funding for saying "Things seem to be going ok right now", they get funding for saying "Things are screwed up, here's why, and we think we can fix it". I say this as someone who works at a major scientific institution.
We have an Institute for Creation Research [1]. There is plenty of funding for anti-climate change research. It's just not producing anything. That should give a hint as to where reality lies amidst interests.
I doubt that funding is even a tiny fraction of the research money from governments. And in addition it is money that might taint your reputation for future research funding rounds.
This is true in many areas of research. If you want funding there are certain opinions and buzzwords you should include when applying for funding.
Why yes, they do. Look at the LHC or major astronomic observatories - it's not like they fix a big existential problem for most people for the time being. Where do you work?
There is seemingly a scientific consensus among scientists in fields relevant to climatology.
If we ignore all of those however, then I would agree that there isn't a scientific consensus in the general populous on climate change, especially among people who haven't bothered to look into the actual science of it particularly.
Also, more data does not equal worse statistics, at least on average anyway.
...or the fact that's it's increasingly looking as if cosmic rays cause cloud formation thereby controlling climate change. The climate is a chaotic system and by it's very definition you can't predict or model said system.
No real scientist would ever write what you just did. Is this like Einstein's cosmological constant, expansion of the universe, or any number of other supposed knowns that have been proven wrong.
This is a perfect example of the pseudo-scientific sentiment that has been cultivated in the non-scientific community.
Assert confidently that real science knows that it is impossible to model anything accurately, and that climate change concerns are guesses that will magically be proven wrong at a later date. Also, pretend that science is about 100% certainty (which it is not) and then judge climate change theories based on that figure.
Yet in the face of this reality people like yourself have no qualms dismissing the science based on their own notions of science and are entirely able to convince themselves that they hold a scientific position.
I think the process is as follows:
1. Construct your own notion of how science works.
2. Dismiss climate science based on 1.
3. Convince yourself you hold a scientific position.
...or the fact that's it's increasingly looking as if cosmic rays cause cloud formation thereby controlling climate change.
No it isn't.
A recent study showed that cosmic rays can, in some circumstances trigger liquid drop formation. However, it did not show that this happened often enough for clouds to be formed, let alone often enough for it to have any effect on the climate.
I toned down the original article title to 'unusual weather event: 97% of Greenland ice sheet surface melts in 4 days' but one of the HN editors rewrote it.
