Discussion > We are wasting our time; all of it.
“Why? It is not about me. Just read it. And tell me what global climate changes would it take to change your mind.” Raff
Because too many people are prepared to make decisions based on things they don’t understand. They just wave a link or a name about. That kind of justification is superficial and isn’t strong enough to withstand the extraordinary pressures that acting on CO2 would engender. Know your own stuff!
Since I haven’t made my mind up about AGW it would be more about settling it, than changing it. Climate scientists seem unable to act like co-ordinated and regulated professionals so there’s little they can say to improve the situation. The climate has to demonstrate a clear path, not just for me but for the overwhelming majority of people who have stopped worrying about the issue or are refusing to significantly act upon it. That includes greens who refuse to accept nuclear as a solution.
You know this, which is why you hang out here, posting links we will not read, rather than engaging with ordinary people who just don’t want to hear from you at all. You’re not a missionary for your cause, you’re just a gobby spectator.
TinyCO2
…what "verifiable evidence" of global climate changes would it take to change your mind?Oh, I don’t know… perhaps temperatures rising so fast that such cannot be denied, rather than the “adjustment” of historical records to show – ta-da! – a rise! Or vast swathes of land which have a completely different climate from what they have had for so long that it had been considered the norm, such as Virginia with a growing tropical rain forest, or Australia a vast, green and pleasant land, or southern Europe becoming a desert. Or rising sea-levels actually swamping the island nations we have been told are soon to be swamped (such as the Maldives, by 2010). Petty little things like that, I suppose. Get this, though – it ain’t happening! There is no evidence! What is happening now is what has happened many, many times throughout the history of the planet – temperatures rise, temperatures fall, and climates change, all for reasons which we have so little understanding of. While humans might have some effect upon the overall event, the probability of this effect being identifiable or detectable is suspect – there is certainly NO evidence whatsoever that any major changes are being caused by human activity.
Radical Rodent
OK here is a post to cause major disruption hehe:
Changes in temperature over short timescales (if they are not dramatic) are meaningless and indicate nothing. Changes in CO2 levels are equally meaningless.
The reason that they are meaningless is that the planet does not respond to changes over short timescales. The changes that everybody gets so worked up about are the equivalent of 'white noise'. Scientists do not know why temperature goes up and down over short timescales but it does.
Although I agree with those people who say that our biggest threat right now comes from a return to ice age; the temperature tomorrow or the next day or next month or even next year, will not be a reliable guide.
If you try and find two scientific papers that agree on the climate record of the planet over a couple of billion years; you will be unsuccessful ^.^. However most papers have some things in common;
The maximum average temperature is between 22 deg C and 25 deg C.
The minimum average temperature (without being in a glacial situation) is 12 deg C.
To worry about global warming right now is the height of stupidity. However the average global temperature is currently estimated to be 12 deg C, ups!
About 550M years ago CO2 levels hit 7000ppm and during a period of 200M years from the peak CO2 levels fell and temperature remained constant apart from a (relatively) short glacial interlude. There was absolutely no correlation between temp and CO2 levels apart from the brief cold spell when CO2 followed temp down.
Big climate changes do not normally happen over short timescales.
Dung
With Paris looming over us all, has any work been done on climategate 3.0 "All.7z" ?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/3/13/climategate-30.html is the last I can see of fit then it died a death....
Steve Richards
I think the general view was that all the goodies had already been released.
TinyCO2
But even if there were nothing of any interest whatever in CG 3, you'd have thought that would have been announced.
splitpin
I can't remember if it was Anthony, Jeff Id or Mosher or Tom Nelson (don't think it was Tom) but I seem recall a rather testy comment to the effect the rest was just personal stuff and non climate, after someone said there was a conspiracy to hide the rest. Even the guy who released them wrote that the good stuff had already been released but didn't have the time to trawl for anything he'd missed.
TinyCO2
Yes but it would have been good to have had confirmation of that. Or perhaps not ... ?
splitpin
So Martin, your "significant observation that stands up to criticism and supports [Salby's] hypothesis" turns out to be an image that isn't what you thought it was and a correlation that you don't understand but which needs "much deeper analysis" before you can be sure it is not irrelevant (translation: it is irrelevant). In other words you have found nothing that supports Salby. But I bet that doesn't your ardour.
TinyCO2, "Know your own stuff". Does that apply to Martin too?
Radical:
"perhaps temperatures rising so fast that such cannot be denied".Well that is pretty flexible. Climate sceptics can always deny what is happening, that is why they are called d******s.
"Or vast swathes of land which have a completely different climate"Ah, so the "lets wait until it is far too late to do anything about it" approach. Are you perhaps up there with 96%Rhoda or 98%Dung in the IQ stakes? Too clever to have any commonsense. What company!
Raff
" "Know your own stuff". Does that apply to Martin too?" Raff
Nope. You see, that's the bitch. Martin only needs people to question your truth, not believe his. Inertia's a bugger. Your bar is so much higher.
I assume you hang out here for peverse pleasure. You must know you're not convincing people. But what an odd thing to do? Surely if you thought that the end of the World was coming, teasing the people who say 'it's (probably) not going to happen' is an exercise in time wasting? Vital time, according to you. That so many supposedly informed people are prepared to faff about and excercise their egos is one strand of proof, we're not actually at risk.
TinyCO2
"Martin only needs people to question your truth, not believe his. "
What nonsense. Martin is not "questioning my truth". He cites a graph he has neither studied nor understood and a correlation that he thinks could be irrelevant as things that support Salby's hypothesis. And these are presumably the best evidence he can find! My bar for believing Salby is indeed a lot higher than Martin's (or yours perhaps, you didn't say), which seems to be non-existent.
I don't expect to convince anyone here. If people can believe that Salby's stories have merit against all sensible opinion or that triethylead was a sad loss or that a 98the percentile IQ is nessarily superior (witness 98% bigot Dung) or that skepticism isn't hanging on the same PR-whore's teat that nurtured lies about tobacco, TEL, and all the rest, then you are beyond logic. But you can be entertaining.
Raff
I went to see Salby at the HoC. I was not convinced at the time and as I chatted to Tallbloke and Ferdinand Engelbeen after the talk I noted that they were not convinced either.
As far as TEL is concerned, still no evidence that removing it made a difference? It had all the hallmarks of a scare. Excpet that safety was not at the time a prime mover, it was that lead in petrol made catalytic converters unworkable as a way to remove CO and NOx from exhaust gas. Neurotoxin? In what dose? No, it is actual lead in the exhaust (where TEL should all have been burned) that is polluting, and that lead does not emain in the atmosphere for long, it mostly leaches into the earth. Where it didn't seem to be doing much harm. Unless you ate the blackberries beside the road with their layer of white dust and tendency to be sweeter.
The acid rain? That was a scare too. And the ozone hole too, probably. Some theorists say prompted by Dupont so they could replace freon which was runnnig out of patent protection.
Scare after scare, swallowed whole by the folks. Some with a basis, some not, but all involving forecasts of doom that were never going to happen. CAGW is just one more in the line. I serve the right to expect a higher standard of proof.
rhoda
Raff, I have no view on Salby, since I'm no longer interested in the competing science issues. I am waiting for the climate to do its thing. There is no disconnect with that and haging out here, laughing at loonies like Dr Lew. I note that you don't care to explain what you're doing here, when you think the World is at stake, Perhaps like us you recogise your side is populated with inept clowns and whether you believe in CAGW or not, the outcome will be the same.
TinyCO2
"Oh look," I thought. "A discussion with lots of comments. Must be interesting then."
Indeed, the opening post seemed promising. But a few comments later I read: "...skeptics wrote the book on repressing inconvenient facts, starting with tetra-ethyl lead, through tobacco to climate."
And then I realised what was happening. A tiresome bun fight.
James Evans
"perhaps temperatures rising so fast that such cannot be denied".Erm... no, it is not. Either the temperature is rising, or it is not. To convince me that it is alarming, the rise has to be measurable within a decade – i.e. in excess of the acceptable error margins of field thermometers. The IPCC – even the estimable [sic] Phil Jones – says that temperatures have not risen significantly for over 15 years… or will you deny that? The accepted rise, even by those you label “deniers”, is a little under 1°C in about 150 years, yet you appear to believe that it is set to rise by an unprecedented 2°C or MORE by 2100 (i.e. within the next 85 years!). Open your eyes, young Raff – it ain’t happening!Well that is pretty flexible.
Have you ever heard the maxim: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? There are many, in almost all walks of life, who have tales of non-existent problems being “fixed”, much to the detriment of those concerned (except the “fixer” of course – let’s face, the job depends upon the creation of non-existent problems). The only thing you have said so far that everyone else will agree with is that you will never convince anyone on here with your bigotry, though we are all well-convinced of it.
Rhoda: the MTBE that has replaced TEL is a particularly noxious product, too. However, it does not damage the catalytic converter, so it must be good.
Radical Rodent
Raff
Forget the speculative science everybody throws around and listen to the planet you seem so anxious to save.
The IPCC, NASA et al all agree that the average temperature of the planet right now is about 12 deg C.
Pretty much everyone apart from you seems to be aware that the planet has been experiencing ice age for between 1 million and 2 million years.
We live in what is called the Holocene Interglacial warm (relatively) period.
In a situation that could only have been caused by a politician; humans have decided to establish their civilisation in a climate that is guaranteed not to last.
There have been 7 interglacials in the last 750,000 years and this is one of the coolest (not the warmest) and you can check all this out on your beloved IPCC reports.
The interglacials are all short lived; lasting up to 20,000 years and at the end of the last 7 the planet has returned to a glacial state. In fact 12 deg C is the lowest average temp recorded whilst NOT in a glacial period.
Am I right in thinking that you are in favour of preventing the planet from getting warmer?
Dung
rhoda - Well it would be a bit surprising if one person, even with Salby's depth of understanding of the atmosphere and its dynamics and his capability with stats and maths were to completely re-do climate science in just a few years with one research assistant.
But climate science is clearly in a parlous state, quite apart from the issue of conduct and attitude of its practitioners. Its confidence in and its reliance on unvalidated GCMs alone is enough to disqualify it from being regarded as genuine science. Along with its inability to explain changes in the recent past ('recent' being the last forty years, the last 400 years, or the last 4000, as you choose).
So I think it's great to have someone who comes up with apparently plausible explanations which are different from existing climate science. And who highlights some of the things we have seen in the last few years, such as climate science's willingness to treat data obtained from proxy measurements as having the same temporal resolution as instrumental data.
Martin A
Raff - sorry, I'm still not convinced on the satellite data. Plenty of CO₂ hotspots shown by SCIAMACHY which are far from population/industry centres at all months of the year.
And... Gavin Cawley correctly pointed out that correlations of random variables are independent of their mean values. He then went on
It isn't the variability (the general up and down wiggliness) in net emissions that gives rise to the long term trend, it is the mean value of the net emissions, and the value of the correlation does not depend in any way on the mean value. Therefore the correlation with net global emission tells you very little about the cause of the long term trend.
But human CO₂ emission is far from constant (on a long enough timescale). So talking about its mean value (its average value over an infinite timescale) is not convincing at all. If atmospheric CO₂ concentration fluctuations on a timescale of a few years can be explained by global temperature fluctuations, why cannot CO₂ fluctuations on timescales of decades or centuries also be explained by global temperature fluctuations? It would be a very strange thing for physical mechanisms to have some sort of highpass filter effect, where they respond to rapid fluctuations in global temperature but they do not respond to slow fluctuations.
Climate science clearly has not got the time variation of atmospheric CO₂ sorted out. It simplistically believes that half is quickly absorbed and half remains essentially forever.* Systems consisting of storage boxes with resistive interconnections just don't behave like that, so an apparently plausible alternative explanation should be welcomed and looked into in depth rather than instantly dismissed in a knee-jerk fashion or simply ignored.
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* There is a simple enough explanation for the 50:50 but it is not what Climate Science imagines.
Martin A
Radical, it is pretty clear that temperatures are rising. By my reconing from this graph, it is about .7C in the last 40 years and it has become obvious this year https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/update-update/ - which I guess is why there are so many cranks recently pushing the meme that temp data is unreliable (Homewood, Mearns, GWPF etc), the better to deny it.
You'll find a way of denying it, I'm sure, either by questioning the indices or some other ruse. I doubt you'll ever accept that temps are rising, but if you are forced to (because it becomes socially unacceptable not to, maybe) you'll be claiming like 98% Dung that it is good to have a few degrees rise under our belts so that we're good and ready for the new glaciation some time in the next 10,000 years.
Rhoda, you see the world through an oddly distorting lense. TEL not toxic direcctly? Why was it referred to as the "loony gas"? No proof that its phase out has had a benefical effect? You can follow the links in Wiki as well as I can but consider that 10 ug/dL is considered a blood level of concern and that average levels were 16 before the phase out in the US. Questioning that is just dumb for such a clevel person. Saftefy as prime mover? It was EPA rules to clean up the air that triggered it; it was the TEL manufacturers who tried hard to prevent that regulation and their propaganda is still effective in you all these years later. You, like may here, are prime fodder for such self-interested industry PR. Yet it wouldn't surprise me if you wouldn't have CFL bulbs in your house because of the mercury content (I'm not keen on them either).
Martin, do you accept that the image you linked is essential worthless because of its short timespan. It would be nice to get that cleared up because that is the evidence you pointed to in support of Salby. As for fluctuations in CO2 and Salby's correlation, CO2 concentrations a going up in an almost straight line. The correlation Salby found seems to be hidden in the nonlinearity of that rise - of the order of a few ppm. That is a tiny effect compared to the 100ppm rise in atmospheric CO2 in 60 years.
Raff
Who is denying temperatures have risen? Are they rising at the moment? Well, the IPCC, NASA, the UKMO and even Phil Jones say, “No, they haven’t – not for at least 18 years.” Are you saying that they are wrong? Do you deny their reliability?
Interesting to see you pick 40 years; what happened about 40 years ago? Oh, yes: that was the end of “The Ice Age is Nigh” scare, when temperatures stopped their 30-year slide, and turned up. Why not take it over 50 years? Oh. 0.65°C over 50 years is not so impressive. So, let’s try 60 years… oh. 0.6°C. Never mind; let’s go for 400 years. Hmmm… 0.85°C. How about 1,000 years? Oops! Now the temperature slope is distinctly downwards! 2,000? Nope, still downwards. 4,000? Well, guess what…
I do hope that the temperatures resume their gentle rise, with all the benefits that it has brought, so far, and yet more to offer. The alternative is not something to wish for; I suspect that we may well find out which way it will go within the next 5 years.
Will you ever accept that CO2 has nothing to do with causing temperature rise, or that humans have very little impact upon the CO2 levels in the atmosphere? Are you aware that, while the burning of “fossil” fuels has risen exponentially since WWII, the CO2 rise has been pretty steady at about 2ppm/year? So detached are you from reality, I have little doubt that you will deny all this, too. And you call many of us “deniers”!
Radical Rodent
Please give the source of that quote: “No, they haven’t – not for at least 18 years.”
I've never seen it before. If youcannot because you made it up, please look up what you actually think is the source and try to understand it (hint: significance tests).
Raff
*sigh*
It was a paraphrase, Raff. To be more accurate, all those organisations accept that there has been no statistically significant rise in global temperatures since 1998.
(Note to self: do not argue with an idiot; they will always beat you with experience.)
Radical Rodent
(hint: significance tests).
Significance tests are only meaningful if you have a validated statistical model. If your models are just your guess, your tests are no better.
splitpin
Raff, you still haven't explained why someone who thinks the end of the World is coming would waste their time here.
Seriously Raff, I would like to know why people who say they're worried, act anything but. Most of the warmist blogs are purely about whining over sceptics (or warmists who waver from the one true message). They don't discuss how to reduce CO2. They don't swap tips for energy efficiency. They don't talk about their personal struggles and successes. They don't discuss how to make the science better or even more persuasive. Climate change seems to be an offshoot for your real obsession... us. Well it's very flattering but it's more mystifying than anything.
So before you respond to anybody else's comment, answer this question - if you think CO2 is anything more than a minor issue, why would you waste your time here?
TinyCO2
Do not be so disingenuous Mr BYJ! You support my discussion threads more than anyone else ^.^
In the good old days (ie I was 19 at the time) I applied to join MENSA; I did an unsupervised test and a supervised test. In the first test I was on the 99th percentile and on the second I was on the 98th percentile. I still have the letter somewhere.
I am not a moron but I am far less well qualified educationally than you are.
Where did the blue rinse come from?? BYJ does not pay attention since I am a paid up party member of UKIP.
There seems to be a question as to whether I should be allowed to start a discussion that does not meet with the approval of BYJ? Well I have been posting on BH for a lot longer than BYJ has so why dont we just get on and discuss the issues (or not as you prefer).