[Daniel1960]

 Winstonm, on 2013-May-13, 15:29, said:

Once again you have failed to explain what you understand "settled science" to mean. Science does not deal with guarantees. The science reports: there is a 90% chance that most of the global warming seen in the past century was caused by human actions.

Here is an article about a CNN poll concerning AGW.

.


At what point does the science become settled - 100%? There are still some people who refuse to believe that the U.S. actually landed on the moon. Does that make the moon landing a non-settled issue?

Have you asked yourself what type evidence you require?

Most of us scientists would answer yes to both questions. However, that does not mean that we all support the AGW theory. I am surprised that only 90% think it has warmed, as most seem to agree, whether or not they agree with the AGW theory. The second question is a little more vague in that it only mentions significant. Significant could imply anything from 25% to 100%. I happen to think it is significant, but unlikely to be above 50%. These questions do not imply support for the claims that the world will warm catastrophically.

The consensus plea fails on two accounts; first science does not operate by consensus, but truth, and second, a general agreement to one part does not equate to agreement of the whole. This is false logic, similar to the false analogy, "Most extremists follow Islam. Therefore, Islam is a religion that propagates extremism."

[Winstonm]

 Daniel1960, on 2013-May-13, 17:53, said:

Most of us scientists would answer yes to both questions. However, that does not mean that we all support the AGW theory. I am surprised that only 90% think it has warmed, as most seem to agree, whether or not they agree with the AGW theory. The second question is a little more vague in that it only mentions significant. Significant could imply anything from 25% to 100%. I happen to think it is significant, but unlikely to be above 50%. These questions do not imply support for the claims that the world will warm catastrophically.

The consensus plea fails on two accounts; first science does not operate by consensus, but truth, and second, a general agreement to one part does not equate to agreement of the whole. This is false logic, similar to the false analogy, "Most extremists follow Islam. Therefore, Islam is a religion that propagates extremism."

It is not meant to support an argument for "catastrophic" warming. But, using a colloquialism, you would concur that it is "scientifically settled" that global warming has occurred and part of the cause is human action of increased CO2 production?

Hasn't the range of rise always been rather wide - if memory serves somewhere between 2 and 9C? (edit: Average global temperatures are expected to increase by 2°F to 11.5°F by 2100) If we are changing our climate by warming our planet, then it makes sense to stop the action contributing to that warming. That is not an alarmist position.

[Daniel1960]

 Winstonm, on 2013-May-13, 19:13, said:

It is not meant to support an argument for "catastrophic" warming. But, using a colloquialism, you would concur that it is "scientifically settled" that global warming has occurred and part of the cause is human action of increased CO2 production?

Hasn't the range of rise always been rather wide - if memory serves somewhere between 2 and 9C? If we are changing our climate by warming our planet, then it makes sense to stop the action contributing to that warming. That is not an alarmist position.

Yes, the globe has warmed, and yes, part is most likely caused by increases in CO2.

No exactly sure what you mean by the range, but the most common term is climate sensitivity, indicating the temperature increase associated with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The value is unlikely to be a constant (my opinion, but supported by others). However, the range of values from the literature is 0.5 - 5C (~1 - 9F). A few have speculated that the values are outside this range, but that seems unlikely based on past temperatures. Others like to place the midpoint as the most likely value, but that is not the case, as different calculations use different assumptions, which may not be accurate.

Stopping the CO2 production is easier said than done. The actual warming caused by CO2 would dictate the urgency of such actions.

[mike777]

I still predict that the next ten years will bring solar energy into a major source of cheap, reliable energy.

Yes there are many problems to overcome.

my local paper touts that an inventor has solved the problem via a solar energy trap that is 99% efficient and use sand to trap and control the energy. Cheap super cheap energy.


At this point no one has even peer reviewed or built a working model of his theory.
One guy..PHD guy said this is a no brainer win.....

http://www.newsobser...lar-energy.html

[Daniel1960]

Winstonm,
I see you have added a temperature range since I responded. You have not said who "expects" them to rise in that range, although I find the upper end highly unlikely. Let us compare the recent period of rising temperatures to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Since 1880, global temperatures have risen at an average rate of 0.6C / century. At that rate, global temperatures would rise another 0.5C by 2100. However, atmospheric CO2 concentrations are now rising at a higher rate than at the beginning of that time frame. Since 1880, CO2 has risen 37%. At the current rate of rise (1.9 ppm/yr), atmospheric concentrations would rise another 37% in the year 2088. Assuming that the entire rise is due to increasing CO2 levels, then the planet would rise another 0.8C by 2088 (0.9 if extrapolated out to 2100). Of course, CO2 concentrations could increase at a higher rate - the rate from the mid 60s to mid 80s was only 1.3 ppm/yr, but most scientists envision some sort of mitigation between now and then. These values assume that all the observed warming is directly due to rising CO2 levels. Other factors or lower CO2 influence would change these values. Many of the predcited values are model-drive, not observation-driven, hence they arrive at much higher values. This has been pointed out in the recent IPCC AR5 graph, whereby models are predicting much higher temperatures than observed recently.

As Yogi Berra once said, "predictions are hard, especially about the future."

[hrothgar]

 mike777, on 2013-May-13, 22:47, said:

I still predict that the next ten years will bring solar energy into a major source of cheap, reliable energy.

Yes there are many problems to overcome.

my local paper touts that an inventor has solved the problem via a solar energy trap that is 99% efficient and use sand to trap and control the energy. Cheap super cheap energy.


At this point no one has even peer reviewed or built a working model of his theory.
One guy..PHD guy said this is a no brainer win.....

http://www.newsobser...lar-energy.html

Five years ago the same guy came out with the following:

http://www.mcclatchy...ml#.UZIrJ4K_ZYo

I'm guessing if I went back another five years, I'd find some other ground breaking grandiose solution...

[Al_U_Card]

 Daniel1960, on 2013-May-14, 05:30, said:

Since 1880, global temperatures have risen at an average rate of 0.6C / century. At that rate, global temperatures would rise another 0.5C by 2100. However, atmospheric CO2 concentrations are now rising at a higher rate than at the beginning of that time frame. Since 1880, CO2 has risen 37%. At the current rate of rise (1.9 ppm/yr), atmospheric concentrations would rise another 37% in the year 2088. Assuming that the entire rise is due to increasing CO2 levels, then the planet would rise another 0.8C by 2088 (0.9 if extrapolated out to 2100). Of course, CO2 concentrations could increase at a higher rate - the rate from the mid 60s to mid 80s was only 1.3 ppm/yr, but most scientists envision some sort of mitigation between now and then. These values assume that all the observed warming is directly due to rising CO2 levels.

Recall that the "greenhouse" effect of [CO2] is not linear but logarithmic. Thus the temperature increase with increasing concentration of the trace gas occurs mainly for the first 200 ppm. Despite this, the models all use positive and multiple synergy between CO2 and water vapor to get the higher values (especially the fat tails of their climate sensitivity (ECS) graphs) that are often quoted.

[Daniel1960]

 hrothgar, on 2013-May-14, 06:19, said:

Five years ago the same guy came out with the following:

http://www.mcclatchy...ml#.UZIrJ4K_ZYo

I'm guessing if I went back another five years, I'd find some other ground breaking grandiose solution...

Another take on the story:

http://www.earthtech...r-or-vaporware/

[Winstonm]

 Daniel1960, on 2013-May-14, 05:30, said:

Winstonm,
I see you have added a temperature range since I responded. You have not said who "expects" them to rise in that range, although I find the upper end highly unlikely. Let us compare the recent period of rising temperatures to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Since 1880, global temperatures have risen at an average rate of 0.6C / century. At that rate, global temperatures would rise another 0.5C by 2100. However, atmospheric CO2 concentrations are now rising at a higher rate than at the beginning of that time frame. Since 1880, CO2 has risen 37%. At the current rate of rise (1.9 ppm/yr), atmospheric concentrations would rise another 37% in the year 2088. Assuming that the entire rise is due to increasing CO2 levels, then the planet would rise another 0.8C by 2088 (0.9 if extrapolated out to 2100). Of course, CO2 concentrations could increase at a higher rate - the rate from the mid 60s to mid 80s was only 1.3 ppm/yr, but most scientists envision some sort of mitigation between now and then. These values assume that all the observed warming is directly due to rising CO2 levels. Other factors or lower CO2 influence would change these values. Many of the predcited values are model-drive, not observation-driven, hence they arrive at much higher values. This has been pointed out in the recent IPCC AR5 graph, whereby models are predicting much higher temperatures than observed recently.

As Yogi Berra once said, "predictions are hard, especially about the future."

The expected temperature values comes from the EPA. No doubt human knowledge is not exact, but that does not mean we should disregard modeling as the best method of predicting future effects of CO2 on climate.

[Al_U_Card]

An interesting appraisal:

[T]he really important question is to know how much warmer it will be and how fast this is likely to happen as this determines a realistic and sensible cause of action. In spite of all research and modelling experimentation we are actually less sure what will happen than what might appear from all reassuring reports that dominates the media. – Lennart Bengtsson

bona fides

[Daniel1960]

 Al_U_Card, on 2013-May-14, 07:14, said:

Recall that the "greenhouse" effect of [CO2] is not linear but logarithmic. Thus the temperature increase with increasing concentration of the trace gas occurs mainly for the first 200 ppm. Despite this, the models all use positive and multiple synergy between CO2 and water vapor to get the higher values (especially the fat tails of their climate sensitivity (ECS) graphs) that are often quoted.

Al, my estimation was logarithmic - a 37% increase from current levels should induce a similar result as the 37% increase from the previous level. The remaining question is how much of the recent temperature rise is due to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Hence, the two different modes of temperature calculations.

[Al_U_Card]

Indeed. This is why the "effect" of water vapor (in the model results) is so critical for their "projections". They can't get alarming results from just [CO2], heaven forbid that water vapor (clouds) could have a negative forcing...

[Al_U_Card]

Speaking of modeled projections...



See what I mean?

A "projected" increase at the rate of 0.211 deg. C/ decade versus the "actual" rate of either 0.004 or -0.001 deg. C/ decade.

Maybe that is worse than they thought???

(Cherry-pick courtesy of Jim Hansen's ex employer, GISS.)

[Al_U_Card]

Did I say Klowns? I must have meant Krooks...

All in a "good" cause, I suppose...

John Cook, with the help of volunteers from Skeptical Science, recently published a paper seeking to quantify the consensus on global warming. There is much to be said about it, but the most interesting part may be the fact the authors use what is, to put it charitably, novel definitions for words:

Each abstract was categorized by two independent, anonymized raters.

What would you consider “independent”? Would you consider raters independent if they participate in the same, small forum? How about if they are moderators for the same site? How about if they’ve published papers together in the last six months? Those are all true of “independent” raters in this project.

But how about this? What if the raters talked to each other about their ratings? Surely we can’t say people who work together to produce results are independent of each other. Nobody would call that independent. Just look at what Glenn Tamblyn said in the leaked SKS forums:

So I think now the Cone of Silence should descend while the ratings are done. Cheer each other on as far as the count is concerned, but don’t discuss ratings at all. If a reviewer finds an abstract to hard to classify, skip it and those ones can be dealt with at a later stage.

That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that people would make topics in the SKS forum like:

Does this mean what it seems to mean?
second opinion??
how to rate: Cool Dudes: The Denial Of Climate Change…

That’s right. The “independent” raters talked to each other about how to rate the papers. This must be some new form of independence I’ve never heard of. I’m not the only one thrown off by this. Sarah Green, one of the most active raters, observed the non-independence:

But, this is clearly not an independent poll, nor really a statistical exercise. We are just assisting in the effort to apply defined criteria to the abstracts with the goal of classifying them as objectively as possible.
Disagreements arise because neither the criteria nor the abstracts can be 100% precise. We have already gone down the path of trying to reach a consensus through the discussions of particular cases. From the start we would never be able to claim that ratings were done by independent, unbiased, or random people anyhow.

One must wonder at the fact an author of the paper calls the work independent despite having said just a year earlier, “we would never be able to claim” it is independent. Perhaps there is some new definition for “never” I’m unaware of.

Surely things can’t be any worse, right? I mean, you can’t get much more non-independent than talking to each other about what answers to give. About the only way you could be less independent is if you actually compared answers then changed the ones that disagreed so that they would match. And nobody would do that, right? I mean, John Cook would never suggest:

Once all the papers have been rated twice, I will add a new section to TCP: “Disagreements”. This page will show all the instances where someone has rated a paper differently to you…
What I suggest happens here is we all look through all the instances where we disagree with another rating, see what ratings/comments they have. If we agree with their ratings (perhaps it was an early rating back before some of our clarifying discussion or just a mistake), then we upgrade our rating to make it consistent with the other rating and it disappears from the list.

Oh… Um… At least the raters were anonymized? It’s not like John Cook published graphs showing the progress made by various raters, with their names listed or anything. Oh wait. He did.

But hey, at least the names were mostly user handles. It’s not like everyone knows who those people are or anything. I mean, most of those people wouldn’t be the nine authors of the paper or anything… right?

[onoway]

Top Predators Have Sway Over Climate

Feb. 19, 2013 — University of British Columbia researchers have found that when the animals at the top of the food chain are removed, freshwater ecosystems emit a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.


"Predators are disappearing from our ecosystems at alarming rates because of hunting and fishing pressure and because of human induced changes to their habitats," says Trisha Atwood, a PhD candidate in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC.

For their study, published February 19 in the journal Nature Geoscience, Atwood and her colleagues wanted to measure the role predators play in regulating carbon emissions to better understand the consequences of losing these animals.

Predators are bigger animals at the top of the food chain and their diets are composed of all the smaller animals and plants in the ecosystem, either directly or indirectly. As a result, the number of predators in an ecosystem regulates the numbers of all the plants and animals lower in the food chain. It's these smaller animals and plants that play a big role in sequestering or emitting carbon.

When Atwood and her colleagues removed all the predators from three controlled freshwater ecosystems, 93 per cent more carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere.

"People play a big role in predator decline and our study shows that this has significant, global implications for climate change and greenhouse gases," says Atwood.

"We knew that predators shaped ecosystems by affecting the abundance of other plants and animals but now we know that their impact extends all the way down to the biogeochemical level."

[Winstonm]

In published peer-reviewed scientific papers, AGW support has increased while refection has all but disappeared.

Quote

John Cook1,2,3, Dana Nuccitelli2,4, Sarah A Green5, Mark Richardson6, Bärbel Winkler2, Rob Painting2, Robert Way7, Peter Jacobs8 and Andrew Skuce2,9
Show affiliations
John Cook et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
© 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd
Received 18 January 2013, accepted for publication 22 April 2013
Published 15 May 2013

Abstract

We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

[Daniel1960]

 Winstonm, on 2013-May-16, 12:03, said:

In published peer-reviewed scientific papers, AGW support has increased while refection has all but disappeared.

and how people who reject the notion would actually publish a paper on the subject? Once again, science does not operate on a consensus basis, but actual facts and data. This paper is meaningless when comes to the global warming debate.

[Winstonm]

 Daniel1960, on 2013-May-16, 12:27, said:

and how people who reject the notion would actually publish a paper on the subject? Once again, science does not operate on a consensus basis, but actual facts and data. This paper is meaningless when comes to the global warming debate.

Unless one believes there is some conspiracy to withhold information, it would seem that if opponents had anything useful to add that it would show up in these peer-reviewed articles. Obviously, some have showed up else there would be no decline.

[Daniel1960]

 Winstonm, on 2013-May-16, 12:56, said:

Unless one believes there is some conspiracy to withhold information, it would seem that if opponents had anything useful to add that it would show up in these peer-reviewed articles. Obviously, some have showed up else there would no decline.

There are a significant number of articles describing the temperature effects associated with solar radiation, volcanic activity, ENSO changes, orbital variations, etc. But since these do not specifically address AGW, they were excluded from the study. By the way, I was one of the people rating these papers. Interestingly only one of the papers I read directly endorsed AGW. Most were responses to warming, without attribution of the cause, but global warming appeared in the abstract.

I would surmise that very few scientists actually reject AGW - very hard to disprove at this time. That lack of articles explicitly rejecting the theory in no way constitutes general acceptance. How many scientific articles explicity reject life on other planets?

[Al_U_Card]

Based on how this "piece of work" was organized and conducted (as per my post above) it is hard to imagine a more scam-like approach to research. It beggars belief that anyone would lend credence to such a demonstration of agendized activity.

Perhaps they need (your) financial support so that at least they can come up with something more credible (or at least less easy to dismantle and ridicule).