From a quick search, it appears that "global warming" and "climate change" refer to different things. Global warming is the rise in surface temperatures that we observe, whereas climate change is the effect of that warming on the climate. Even though one might have displaced the other in public discourse (and this might only be for political reasons, either because "global warming" was too easy to misinterpret, or because "climate change" is less scary), it seems that scientists have actually always used both, and they still do. Link with handy Google Books charts. Other link.
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The Environment
- Thread starter FlareBlitz
- Start date
From a quick search, it appears that "global warming" and "climate change" refer to different things. Global warming is the rise in surface temperatures that we observe, whereas climate change is the effect of that warming on the climate. Even though one might have displaced the other in public discourse (and this might only be for political reasons, either because "global warming" was too easy to misinterpret, or because "climate change" is less scary), it seems that scientists have actually always used both, and they still do. Link with handy Google Books charts. Other link.
Morm said:
the post above your last one said:
Am I wrong in assuming that? Is it stupid to think that having too little CO2 is a problem that is easily solvable?
Further, the only time too little CO2 would ever be a problem is if humans aren't the ones warming the climate, so if we aren't the ones warming the climate with our CO2 emissions, then reducing the emissions that already aren't affecting the environment will still have no noticeable impact on the planet.
I'm not saying it's negligible to do anything, I'm saying that if doing anything truly was negligible, it wouldn't matter that we tried (The hit the bear and run scenario of that analogy earlier).
As per your scenario, it could be beneficial, but reducing those emissions isn't so inherently devastating to the point that we can't undo it by ramping up our emissions.
I'm surprised at what seems to be the general feeling regarding climate change in this thread, which seems to be "we're not really sure if climate change exists". I strongly urge anyone who feels that way to read this.
Anyway, a large problem facing conservation efforts is not even 1st world politics, but 3rd world politics as well. While we're faced with dumbasses over here, 3rd countries are faced with the reality that curtailing fossil fuel usage would result in massive costs to businesses there, and poverty/famine would more than likely be widespread. I'm not sure what the best solution to this would be? The only real idea I can think of is 1st world countries throwing money at the problem and subsidizing 3rd world economies until they switch to sustainable forms of energy, but that would cost a LOT of money (hence, a lot of taxes) and there are issues with distribution/efficacy (i.e. corrupt governments would just pocket the money).
Anyway, a large problem facing conservation efforts is not even 1st world politics, but 3rd world politics as well. While we're faced with dumbasses over here, 3rd countries are faced with the reality that curtailing fossil fuel usage would result in massive costs to businesses there, and poverty/famine would more than likely be widespread. I'm not sure what the best solution to this would be? The only real idea I can think of is 1st world countries throwing money at the problem and subsidizing 3rd world economies until they switch to sustainable forms of energy, but that would cost a LOT of money (hence, a lot of taxes) and there are issues with distribution/efficacy (i.e. corrupt governments would just pocket the money).
It's better to err on the side of caution, though. If there is any chance at all that humans are harming the environment with our CO2 emissions, shouldn't we try to curb them? Especially since the impacts of not doing so are pretty much irreversible. There's really no reason not to cut down on CO2 emissions and the use of fossil fuels, especially if we can come up with cleaner energy sources.
And Flare Blitz's link pretty much sums it up-- even though you say you know a lot of scientists who don't think that humans are impacting the climate, the bulk of them actually do say that humans are contributing significantly to global warming. And the evidence is definitely there.
But the point is, even if there were an actual big debate, there is absolutely no reason not to err on the side of caution and try to reduce our impact on climate change as much as possible.
I believe that climate change exists, I think to deny it outright is foolish.
What I don't believe is that it's going to be a calamity, certainly not to the extent the alarmists do. With climate change on the political hotplate at the moment, it is very much in every scientist and science institution who are working on green technology and green science to keep the hype going.
As an example, before global warming the big environmental crisis was obesity. Nutrition experts were predicting a health crisis, with the obesity predicted to lead to large increases in heart problems, cancer and diabetes, among other things.
However, recent research suggests that while indeed the obesity levels are higher than ever, all of the flow-on effects expected to cause the health crisis are not. As I recall, some of them have even fallen. In addition, I have seen various reports saying that the England and the UK, Australia, America, Switzerland, and the Pacific Islands have the highest rates of obesity in the world. All of the reports came from the country of the number one spot.
Upon closer analysis, some of the reports were specifically excluding various countries or using strange or spurious definitions or sample sizes to be able to engineer the "Our country is the fattest!!" result, ostensibly to scare everyone into eating better and excercising more.
This is merely evidence that political sensitivity and popularity are very much factors in what "science" concludes. I would take ANY reports of extreme conclusion in an area of science that is politically sensitive with much salt. As far as climate change goes, when we can't even get anatomical science right, how the fuck are we supposed to get something as huge and complicated and sensitive and difficult to model as the entire planet?
What I don't believe is that it's going to be a calamity, certainly not to the extent the alarmists do. With climate change on the political hotplate at the moment, it is very much in every scientist and science institution who are working on green technology and green science to keep the hype going.
As an example, before global warming the big environmental crisis was obesity. Nutrition experts were predicting a health crisis, with the obesity predicted to lead to large increases in heart problems, cancer and diabetes, among other things.
However, recent research suggests that while indeed the obesity levels are higher than ever, all of the flow-on effects expected to cause the health crisis are not. As I recall, some of them have even fallen. In addition, I have seen various reports saying that the England and the UK, Australia, America, Switzerland, and the Pacific Islands have the highest rates of obesity in the world. All of the reports came from the country of the number one spot.
Upon closer analysis, some of the reports were specifically excluding various countries or using strange or spurious definitions or sample sizes to be able to engineer the "Our country is the fattest!!" result, ostensibly to scare everyone into eating better and excercising more.
This is merely evidence that political sensitivity and popularity are very much factors in what "science" concludes. I would take ANY reports of extreme conclusion in an area of science that is politically sensitive with much salt. As far as climate change goes, when we can't even get anatomical science right, how the fuck are we supposed to get something as huge and complicated and sensitive and difficult to model as the entire planet?
Show me that it's harmful.
Is that so? So short minded, are we?
Unless we are in a cooling trend, then I'd suggest you wouldn't want Canada under mile thick ice. Some of you might, though.
I know one. one. He pointed out that the predicted trends from the aggregate were pretty much bogus, meaning that the models are shit and so is the data. Make you move blindly, is what you're saying, with some predisposed idea that it WILL help or couldn't hurt.
Please define caution with no reliable data, models and experts who have fucked up consistently thus far.
I dug up that link for a reason, you know. Let me quote from it:
"Climate models have to be tested to find out if they work. We can’t wait for 30 years to see if a model is any good or not; models are tested against the past, against what we know happened. If a model can correctly predict trends from a starting point somewhere in the past, we could expect it to predict with reasonable certainty what might happen in the future. So all models are first tested in a process called Hindcasting. The models used to predict future global warming can accurately map past climate changes. If they get the past right, there is no reason to think their predictions would be wrong. Testing models against the existing instrumental record suggested CO2 must cause global warming, because the models could not simulate what had already happened unless the extra CO2 was added to the model. Nothing else could account for the rise in temperatures over the last century."
tldr We can make a reasonable assumption that the models are reliable because, given certain inputs, they predict past trends accurately with a high confidence value.
predicting things that have already happened with a high confidence value is pretty unremarkable. In fact, predicting what has already happened without perfection is rather pathetic.
You raise a great point about models needing to be tested. However, once they have been tested, there is little that can be done with them. Model utterly fail without data they do not have and data that hasn't happened yet clearly falls in that category. So, I suppose models will never be great which means the "how could lowering emissions hurt" is as much bullshit as me saying "do nothing". This is basically what I've been saying the whole time here in this thread while being a bit of a devils advocate to see what people come up with, since EVERYONE wants to lower emissions (without good reason other than "how can it hurt" which is a strawman).
Once again, hindsight will have humanity face palming in like 2000 years.
You raise a great point about models needing to be tested. However, once they have been tested, there is little that can be done with them. Model utterly fail without data they do not have and data that hasn't happened yet clearly falls in that category. So, I suppose models will never be great which means the "how could lowering emissions hurt" is as much bullshit as me saying "do nothing". This is basically what I've been saying the whole time here in this thread while being a bit of a devils advocate to see what people come up with, since EVERYONE wants to lower emissions (without good reason other than "how can it hurt" which is a strawman).
Once again, hindsight will have humanity face palming in like 2000 years.
What point are you trying to make here? the potential harm is really rather evident..
As far as I am aware, there is not significant evidence that we are in a cooling trend, at least not one as severe as the warming trend caused by people. To willfully allow the planet to be warmed by our actions because we dont know we arent just going to cool at that same rate is dumb. I think maybe you are trying to argue that the evidence in support of global warming is poor, and are making an analogy of an even more unjustified defence, but the problem is we dont accept your argument that the evidence is poor. Demonstrating the futility of defending global warming without evidence is pointless when we all think there is sufficient evidence.
Unfortunately my belief in global warming is all second hand. I cant pull out the facts and figures, because I dont know them. It could be global warming is an incredibly elaborate con, but, I have no evidence to support that either, so in accordance with Occam, I am backing global warming.
Caution is to follow the most reliable data and models available.
Have a nice day.
I'm not entirely certain you understand how statistical modeling works, so bear with me while I try to explain it as briefly as possible.
Essentially, you want to give your model certain inputs, and you want it to output certain predictions that you can meaningfully translate into general trends. What this means is that, in order for a model to perfectly re-create what happened in the past, it would essentially need to have every single relevant factor as an input, which is impossible for obvious reasons. This is why beta values exist- we can typically identify a number of factors which, put together, account for a large percentage of the phenomenon we are trying to predict.
To put this in the context of the current discussion, let's use a simplified example. Let us use...solar variation, atmospheric content, vulcanism, oceanic content, and orbital variations as our variables. The goal, then, is to make a model which takes all these variables into account with the exact weighting, so that it can predict future trends properly based on these inputs. If we create such a model, and feed it all the relevant data from 1980, and it predicts climate trends from 1980 to now with 99% accuracy, then we can be reasonably confident that it can also predict trends 30 years from now if we give it data from the current year with 99% accuracy. Not only that, but we know that all the variables listed above contribute to the majority of climate change (hence the 99% accuracy), and we can also control for variables if necessary. If you do not believe that atmospheric content is very relevant, we can drop that variable and see how far the accuracy drops.
This is how models are created and tested. Our current culture of anti-intellectualism is why there is so much disdain for any field which employs the use of statistics- the uncertainty inherent to such fields causes a backlash against the perceived intellectual elitism of scientists when those scientists supposedly use models "that are complete bullshit", a claim predicated on the idea of (false) equivalency between rigorous mathematical analysis and random political demagoguery.
Simply put, we can be relatively certain that the global climate is going to change in fairly predictable ways in the long term. Analyzing the impacts of that change are obviously much harder, but they're harder because of uncertain scale, not because of uncertain outcome. That is, we do not know whether climate change will result in mild flooding and slight changes in farmland topography or major infrastructure collapses due to massive flooding and desertification or anything in between.
Just as an aside, spawned by your mention of the inputs for climate modelling.
The best model we have for modelling solar activity is physically impossible (it's referred to as 'force-free'; essentially it assumes that all motion in the sun is along the magnetic field lines so that the forces created by cross-product with B are all 0. This never happens. In fact, my friend's honours project basically lobbed him with maybe three other people in the world who are actually trying to model the non-force-free case, and it's pretty much incomputable.
The NASA model for predicting solar flares is actually WORSE than just guessing the mean. The best model we have using a Bayesian/Monte Carlo method and still can't accurately predict a solar flare until after it happens.
So as I said before, my confidence in the detail accuracy of any conventional environment modelling processes looking at the entire globe is VERY reserved.
The best model we have for modelling solar activity is physically impossible (it's referred to as 'force-free'; essentially it assumes that all motion in the sun is along the magnetic field lines so that the forces created by cross-product with B are all 0. This never happens. In fact, my friend's honours project basically lobbed him with maybe three other people in the world who are actually trying to model the non-force-free case, and it's pretty much incomputable.
The NASA model for predicting solar flares is actually WORSE than just guessing the mean. The best model we have using a Bayesian/Monte Carlo method and still can't accurately predict a solar flare until after it happens.
So as I said before, my confidence in the detail accuracy of any conventional environment modelling processes looking at the entire globe is VERY reserved.
Well let's not get carried away here. No matter how much CO2 we dump in the atmosphere, all effects will completely subside within a few hundred years. They might not be reversible in the time window we care about, though.
I agree that alarmist reports are to take with a grain of salt, but most scientists don't write such reports. As for your argument from incredulity, it's oddly reminiscent of, and just as fallacious as creationist arguments about evolution. Unless you are a climate scientist, you are in no position to judge the difficulty of modeling a planet's climate. For one, climate is easier to model than weather.
Oh, quit it about your cooling trend. No models predict a cooling trend, and the null hypothesis is that there is no trend. You're making a case out of a fringe hypothesis.
So, yes, sure, by curbing emissions we might fail to incidentally compensate for a trend that nobody is predicting. Hey, newsflash: if we can make a bad cooling trend okay, then we can make a neutral trend bad, and a bad warming trend terrible. When hedging our bets, we don't consider the fringe case where what we're doing might help, we consider the likely case where what we're doing might hurt.
If you want to argue that we should do nothing, then show that the expected impact of doing something is bad enough that the expected benefits of slowing down our emissions do not quite compensate. This "cooling trend" argument is as bad as arguing that we should keep playing slots because maybe we'll win the next game.
Oh my god do you even know how this works? Do you have any idea how models are devised and how they are tested? I'll make it super simple for you: you have 100 years of data. You take the first 50 years, and you put the remaining 50 aside. You devise the best possible model with the first 50 years, one that is as accurate as possible for that time span. Then, once you have done this, you try to predict the 50 years you left aside, hidden from view while you were modeling, so that you could test. And if you're doing great at predicting these 50 years, which, I remind you, you did not have while modeling, it makes sense to think you'll do great for the 50 years after that, doesn't it?
I mean, it's simple, really: you imagine you're in 1950, you elaborate your models, and you see how well you'd have done in the "future", which is the data you had to leave out while pretending to be in 1950. Did you really never realize you could do that? :(
@FlareBlitz: just one small thing: when modeling anything, it's fairly important to leave out a slice of data completely in such a way that no modeling at all is conditioned on it. That's because technically, if you build a model to predict 1980 to now from 1900-1980, optimize it until you get 99% accuracy, you are unwittingly conditioning your model on the whole dataset (you are overfitting). Thus it is better to focus on predicting 1980-2000, so that you can check, at the very end of the process, how well the best model fares on, say, 2000-2010. That way, you'll get a much less biased account of your model's performance. I don't know if researchers in climate science do it, because it is tempting not to, but they should.
Brain if you dislike my criticism of 10 year models, please, show me yours so that I can criticize it and you can play on the same playing field as those you are apparently defending.
Actually this was the whole point I was making, more elegantly than you made it. You have a dataset, you do your best, but you fail to predict the future. Why? Because you can't predict the future. Poor analogy, Brain. At the very least I'd suggest a 1000 year climate dataset per region would be more beneficial but that might be too long of a time period for people on this forum to think is reasonable. Note that I said per region- ozone depletion, CO2 accumulation and locale average temperatures depends heavily on area. For example, I sincerely doubt that CO2 is a big deal in the area in and around a rainforest but where there is no active natural CO2 removal, like in the currently ozone depleted arctic, it might matter slightly more as gradients or averages have a far more dramatic effect... strangely, the negative effects there have a far less devastating impact from ozone depletion because life has a less dense concentration. Since we are talking short term (unless we aren't? correct me if I'm wrong) I thought I'd bring that up.
Everyone losing their shit in the last 4 posts: I am not saying that we are for sure in a cooling trend, it's called playing devil's advocate. You do not know we are in a warming trend. I am saying that your affirmative right feeling in calming it down with the CO2 output benefiting humanity isn't correct because it can't be, at least with our current information. So stop saying it's the right course, stop saying it can't fucking hurt and start saying it's our best guess for what could be right.
Jesus.
Actually this was the whole point I was making, more elegantly than you made it. You have a dataset, you do your best, but you fail to predict the future. Why? Because you can't predict the future. Poor analogy, Brain. At the very least I'd suggest a 1000 year climate dataset per region would be more beneficial but that might be too long of a time period for people on this forum to think is reasonable. Note that I said per region- ozone depletion, CO2 accumulation and locale average temperatures depends heavily on area. For example, I sincerely doubt that CO2 is a big deal in the area in and around a rainforest but where there is no active natural CO2 removal, like in the currently ozone depleted arctic, it might matter slightly more as gradients or averages have a far more dramatic effect... strangely, the negative effects there have a far less devastating impact from ozone depletion because life has a less dense concentration. Since we are talking short term (unless we aren't? correct me if I'm wrong) I thought I'd bring that up.
Everyone losing their shit in the last 4 posts: I am not saying that we are for sure in a cooling trend, it's called playing devil's advocate. You do not know we are in a warming trend. I am saying that your affirmative right feeling in calming it down with the CO2 output benefiting humanity isn't correct because it can't be, at least with our current information. So stop saying it's the right course, stop saying it can't fucking hurt and start saying it's our best guess for what could be right.
Jesus.
The whole cooling trend thing, "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" right? So why even entertain the whole cooling notion? I'm not an expert but there is incredibly little evidence saying we're going into a cooling trend, while there's much more saying we're warming. Reducing CO2 emissions might not be the right course but we can be 99.99% sure it's not the wrong one.
Pardon:
note the last part in particular
It seems data is all over the fucking map, I just posted the charts suggesting that there is cooling but there are ones saying it's warming too. I'm saying there is not enough evidence and shit can be manipulated on purpose or with some unknown bias to make any outcome look probable. There isn't enough to make a definitive call one way or the other so in light of that, it's silly not to consider the alternatives.
note the last part in particular
It seems data is all over the fucking map, I just posted the charts suggesting that there is cooling but there are ones saying it's warming too. I'm saying there is not enough evidence and shit can be manipulated on purpose or with some unknown bias to make any outcome look probable. There isn't enough to make a definitive call one way or the other so in light of that, it's silly not to consider the alternatives.
I don't know the specific details of climate modelling, but I have experience in other kinds of modelling systems in science. Indeed, most modelling is very similar in terms of overall structure and method (for instance, a friend of mine did his Honours project in modelling the effect of optical filters on radio telescope date. His PhD project is now modelling tectonics and predicting deposits of ore and oil in geophysics. Most of the skills and techniques are the same).
Scientists, especially those within universities whose funding depends on public and political interest, often write reports that, while not alarmist in the extreme sense (e.g. WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE), support the idea that their field is heading into a crisis. (In fact, the pressure to publish has apparently led to the statistic that 80% of scientific publications are wrong and disproved within two years. A friend of mine found a paper on it, and when he links it to me I'll repost it here.
In any case, my skepticism is not with their methodology, and only mildly with the data (as Morm has pointed out, it's very noisy because there are so many variables and geographic variances; but I don't think that makes the models unusable). I am skeptical only of the conclusions they draw from their results, and even then only as to extent.
Yeah, again, I think we are all aware of the potential for error, but the likelihood that we are warming the planet seems high, and the potential risks of that seem significant.
Have a nice day.
if you are going to look at graphs it would be remiss to forget about the infamous hockey stick! it came out about 10 years ago and at first there was heavy criticism of its methodology but once those issues got fixed, the result stayed approximately the same. I think the consensus now is that the idea conveyed by the hockey stick is legitimate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
I'll try to get into the debate after Wednesday because I love this topic but I have tons of hw/a midterm before then...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
I'll try to get into the debate after Wednesday because I love this topic but I have tons of hw/a midterm before then...
Hockey stick is legitimate.
And yes, a 1000 year trend showing relatively stable climate and then having it veer sharply upwards right after the industrial revolution seems to be a Big Deal.
And yes, a 1000 year trend showing relatively stable climate and then having it veer sharply upwards right after the industrial revolution seems to be a Big Deal.