Climate Change: The Burden of Proof

[136or142]

Yeah, let's just stop trusting climate scientists when it comes to climate change.

They are scientists -not priests.  Their opinions and publications are not sacrosanct.  Their findings should be doubted and questioned, not accepted as if they are the literal Word.  

Doubted and questioned is one thing, having their research intentionally lied about is quite another.  I think the vast majority of scientists welcome questions about their research from both scientists and non scientists and I think the vast majority of scientists would also say that one doesn't have to be a scientist to find discrepancies, inconsistencies or even mathematical errors in a scientific paper, especially one that's been rewritten without the scientific jargon!

However, we all know that that has nothing to do with global warming denialism.

[136or142]

This will never happen, Torie.  For some time now, the scientists have been working hard to make the data fit the model.. not the other way around.  They adjust the temperature data every few years, and each time the warming trend gets steeper than it was prior to the adjustments.  Before you accuse me of buhying into "vast conspiracy theories"... it is a small number of people at a single organization that control the surface temperature data.  So when Jfern trots out his 'BUT MULLER AT BERKELY CONFIRMED IT".. I say simply.. yeah.. using the same adjusted data that every other agency uses to compile global temp.

First of all, I believe that is wrong.  I think there are several stations around the world (obviously in several different countries) that record and report on surface temperature data.

However, this article from the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer, summarizes why the data backing up the global warming theory is so robust:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-climate-skeptics-are-wrong/

"It is not because of the sheer number of scientists. After all, science is not conducted by poll. As Albert Einstein said in response to a 1931 book skeptical of relativity theory entitled 100 Authors against Einstein, “Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.” The answer is that there is a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry—pollen, tree rings, ice cores, corals, glacial and polar ice-cap melt, sea-level rise, ecological shifts, carbon dioxide increases, the unprecedented rate of temperature increase—that all converge to a singular conclusion. AGW doubters point to the occasional anomaly in a particular data set, as if one incongruity gainsays all the other lines of evidence. But that is not how consilience science works. For AGW skeptics to overturn the consensus, they would need to find flaws with all the lines of supportive evidence and show a consistent convergence of evidence toward a different theory that explains the data. "

[136or142]

This will never happen, Torie.  For some time now, the scientists have been working hard to make the data fit the model.. not the other way around.  They adjust the temperature data every few years, and each time the warming trend gets steeper than it was prior to the adjustments.  Before you accuse me of buhying into "vast conspiracy theories"... it is a small number of people at a single organization that control the surface temperature data.  So when Jfern trots out his 'BUT MULLER AT BERKELY CONFIRMED IT".. I say simply.. yeah.. using the same adjusted data that every other agency uses to compile global temp.

First of all, I believe that is wrong.  I think there are several stations around the world (obviously in several different countries) that record and report on surface temperature data.

There may be just one agency in charge of reporting the data,  but there seem to be multiple ways of determining if surface temperature has warmed that don't rely on that data:

The surface temperature trends are also confirmed from multiple, independent sources:

Surface temperature analysis by NASA GISS finds strong agreement with two independent analyses by CRU's Global Temperature Record and NCDC.

Weather balloon measurements have found from 1975 through 2005, the global mean, near-surface air temperature warmed by approximately 0.23°C/decade.

Satellite measurements of lower atmosphere temperatures show temperature rises between 0.16°C and 0.24°C/decade since 1982.

Ice core reconstructions found the 20th century to be the warmest of the past five centuries, confirming the results of earlier proxy reconstructions.

Sea surface temperatures, borehole reconstructions and ocean temperatures all show long-term warming trends.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-intermediate.htm

There is also more than one recording station:

The temperature increase is not an artifact of declining numbers of stations
While it is true that the number of stations in GHCN has decreased since the early 1990s, that has no real effect on the results of spatially weighted global temperature reconstructions. How do we know this?

Comparisons of trends for stations that dropped out versus stations that persisted post-1990 show no difference in the two populations prior to the dropouts (see, e.g., here and here and here).
The spatial weighting processes (e.g., gridding) used in these analyses makes them robust to the loss of stations. In fact, Nick Stokes has shown that it's possible to derive a global temperature reconstruction using just 61 stations worldwide (in this case, all the stations from GISTEMP that are classified as rural, have at least 90 years of data, and have data in 2010).
Other data sets that don't suffer from GHCN's decline in station numbers show the same temperature increase (see below).
One prominent claim (by Joe D'Aleo and Anthony Watts) was that the loss of "cool" stations (at high altitudes, high latitudes, and rural areas) created a warming bias in the temperature trends. But Ron Broberg conclusively disproved this, by comparing trends after removing the categories of stations in question. D'Aleo and Watts are simply wrong.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm

[136or142]

Please dont link to that trash website, and I wont link to the equivalent "iceagenow.com"

The owners of skeptical science fancy themselves as nazi enthusiasts and have even played dress up.

Here is a picture of cartoonist and web programmer masquerading as climate scientist John Cook, one of the main "scientists" on Skeptical Science, dressed as a Nazi.  This photo was undr his own personal files and posted on their members' forum.  When skeptical science"s private forum hacked and its contents posted online and Anthony Watts reported about it, they were promptly taken down.



You have some real wholesome people providing your catastrophic manmade glbal warming evidence for you, adam t.

I don't know anything about that.  All I see is that one of the websites that reports that also said that 'skeptical science' removes any comments that don't agree with them' and a quick read of the comments section on 'skeptical science' shows that to be a lie.

[136or142]

I'd suggest sticking to published work.  And then to papers focused on climate science itself, and not the alleged future impacts of it, since those almost always rely on worst case scenarios that are meant to scare you into action.

I've looked for journal articles on global warming but, not surprisingly many of them only make the abstracts available for free.

However, none of the points mentioned on the skeptical science site had anything to do with future impacts but commented on other ways that scientists verify surface temperature independently and also something else.

I've also listened to many scientists on global warming and contrary to what you claim, pretty much all of them, like all good scientists, speak of the data they have, speak of potential impacts in terms of most likely scenarios and frequently refute 'scary worst case scenarios.' 

For instance, the film The Day After Tomorrow said that an ice age would occur in Europe due to the slowing of the ocean currents in the Gulf Stream.  While you'll find 10 year old articles on the internet mentioning that as a possibility, I"ve heard a couple scientists who both know that global warming is real on different programs recently say "there is simply no evidence that the gulf stream is presently slowing down or will in the future."

I've also heard many other examples of scientists who are both real in their scientific conservatism and real in knowing that global warming is real comment on  'worst case scenarios' that may have created some fear in the public due to popular sensationalist websites and refute them.

I don't know what scientists you listen to, but I've never heard a fear mongering scientist, unless you consider the reality of global warming itself to be fear mongering.

[136or142]

So, anyway.  These are independent sources backing up the claims from Skeptical Science, which seems far more important to me than what some guy who may be a loon may wear for fun.


1.Surface temperature analysis by NASA GISS finds strong agreement with two independent analyses by CRU's Global Temperature Record and NCDC.

https://judithcurry.com/2012/07/29/a-new-release-from-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/

2.Weather balloon measurements have found from 1975 through 2005, the global mean, near-surface air temperature warmed by approximately 0.23°C/decade.

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/angell/angell.html

Well, there is actually no need to go any further, because all of the claims on skepticalscience.com provide links to the original journal articles.

So, it seems at best you have one guy who may be a loon because he may have dressed up as a Nazi once and may have lied about his resume, none of which I can find independent verification on outside of denier websites.

You're just another denier know-nothing who plays the man and not the ball because you can't actually argue the science.  Or, in this case, maybe makes up lies about the man.

[136or142]

You are doing exactly what Michael Shermer said.  You are cherry picking data sets.  
1.This is a minor point, but it illustrates your technique perfectly.  You showed the picture of one the one individual, John Cook, and said that it reflected all of the people at that website.  I suppose it could, but since I don't know the context of that picture, if this picture of John Cook is even real and not photo shopped, there are a number of other rational explanations that could simply mean, if the picture is real, that while John Cook is a loon, that everybody else at that site, is a genuine diligent scientist.

Skeptical science still has John Cook's bio describing him as a scientist and I can find no mention of this story anywhere else except on global warming denialist websites.

2.On to the science, I'm not really sure why I even bother responding to a person who brings up this '1998' lie.  Do you seriously think there is a single person here who does not know that 1998 was an extremely warm La Nina year and that if you choose 1997 or 1999 as the baseline there is considerable warming between then and 2015.  There has been no 'global warming pause.'  Selective picking of non representative evidence = lie.

3.Your University of Alabama-Huntsville graph is a cherry picked lie as well.  That is just one data set,  of the global lower troposphere, but there are sets that complete the data (the middle troposphere and the tropical troposphere are the other two.)

Taken together they do show that 'the troposphere has not warmed quite as fast as the models predicted.'

This is the information from the real scientists.  I note, that unlike your claims that 'the scientists present the most extreme scenario' that was is presented here is the possibilities of doubt and alternative hypothesis to explain the data.  This is a scientific site, but it is public, and that is consistent with the genuine global warming scientists that I hear in the media.

http://www.remss.com/research/climate

"Atmospheric Temperature

See the Upper Air Temperature Measurement page for details about how the atmospheric temperature datasets are produced.  Here we present applications of this dataset to climate change analysis.

TROPOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE

There are three tropospheric temperature datasets available from RSS, TLT (Temperature Lower Troposphere), TMT (Temperature Middle Troposphere), and TTT (Temperature Tropical Troposphere, after Fu and Johansen). Using these datasets, we can investigate whether there have been significant changes in the tropospheric temperature over the last 35 years, and whether or not the spatial patterns of these changes agree with those predicted by climate models.

Over the past decade, we have been collaborating with Ben Santer at LLNL (along with numerous other investigators) to compare our tropospheric results with the predictions of climate models.  Our results can be summarized as follows:

Over the past 35 years, the troposphere has warmed significantly.  The global average temperature has risen at an average rate of about 0.13 degrees Kelvin per decade (0.23 degrees F per decade).
Climate models cannot explain this warming if human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are not included as input to the model simulation.
The spatial pattern of warming is consistent with human-induced warming.  See Santer et al 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012 for more about the detection and attribution of human induced changes in atmospheric temperature using MSU/AMSU data.
 

But....

The troposphere has not warmed quite as fast as most climate models predict.
 

To illustrate this last problem, we show several plots below.  Each of these plots has a time series of TLT temperature anomalies using a reference period of 1979-2008.  In each plot, the blue band is the 5% to 95% envelope for the RSS V3.3 MSU/AMSU Temperature uncertainty ensemble.  (For a detailed explanation of the uncertainty ensemble, see Mears et al. 2011.)  The yellow band shows the 5% to 95% envelope for the results of 33 CMIP-5 model simulations (19 different models, many with multiple realizations) that are intended to simulate Earth's Climate over the 20th Century.  For the time period before 2005, the models were forced with historical values of greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols, and solar output.  After 2005, estimated projections of these forcings were used. If the models, as a whole, were doing an acceptable job of simulating the past, then the observations would mostly lie within the yellow band.  For the first two plots (Fig. 1 and Fig 2), showing global averages and tropical averages, this is not the case.  Only for the far northern latitudes, as shown in Fig. 3, are the observations mostly within the range of model predictions.

Why does this discrepancy exist?  One possible explanation is an error in the fundamental physics used by the climate models.  In addition to this possibility, there are at least three other plausible explanations for the warming rate differences.  There are errors in the forcings used as input to the model simulations (these include forcings due to anthropogenic gases and aerosols, volcanic aerosols, solar input, and changes in ozone), errors in the satellite observations (partially addressed by the use of the uncertainty ensemble), and sequences of internal climate variability in the simulations that are difference from what occurred in the real world.  We call to these four explanations “model physics errors”, “model input errors”, “observational errors”, and “different variability sequences”. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there is hard scientific evidence that all four of these factors contribute to the discrepancy, and that most of it can be explained without resorting to model physics errors.  For a detailed discussion of all these reasons, see the post on the Skeptical Science blog by Ben Santer and Carl Mears."

I know this site bans some people that use abusive language, I suggest that people who deliberately lie like Snowguy716 does should be banned as well.  This isn't a matter of a disagreement of opinion, this is a matter of intellectual integrity.

[136or142]

One last thing:

Calling for my banning over this issue just proves my point that this one particular issue is really no longer about science or level headed analysis.. but dogmatic "belief" and "faith"...

SNAP OUT OF IT

I did not call for your banning over bringing this issue up, I called for your banning over deliberate misuse of data over this issue, i.e lying.

You wouldn't know the first thing about 'level headed analysis' and you are the dogmatic one, not me and not the scientists.

You're the one that is saying (or seems to be saying) 'it can't be AGW.'  THAT'S DOGMA

[136or142]

1.It never takes long to weed out a scientific lightweight.  You're throwing all kinds of stuff in there that I never brought up!  And then you call for my banning after copy/pasting a bunch of irrelevant garbage filled with VERY BIG TECHNICAL WORDS AND STUFF to try and muster up an authoritative tone.

It was a direct rebuttal from an actual scientific web site of your post.  That you 'think' it's 'irrelevant' garbage' is not due to anything I posted but obviously due to the fact that you don't like what it said.


2"Do you know what the troposphere is?  Do you know that the cherry picked and well adjusted datasets that all global warming alarmists use only measure temperature 2 meters above the ground?  That, unlike the satellite data, they only measure that one spot?"

This is the other reason that I posted that link. It directly contradicts your claim that the scientists are 'global warming alarmists.'  As I said before the information presented their was fact based, expressed areas of possible doubt and suggested alternative hypothesis to explain things.  

The only way you can continue to lie that the scientists who know the reality of AGW is alarmist is because you have a DOGMATIC belief over that.

You opened a whole new can of worms with your big gotcha.  First of all, they separate the data into various altitudes (Temperature Lower Troposphere/TLT and Temperature mid-Troposphere/TMT) because obviously temperature changes as you climb higher and higher.  This is why mountain tops have snow when the valley gets rain!  Wow!  Sciency!

3. My point was to show that the warming trend measured by satellites is much lower than the warming trend measured by surface weather stations, which have been subject to many adjustments... nearly all of which push the warming trend higher.

That is actually mentioned in that 'irrelevant garbage' article.  Odd how the 'alarmists' aren't trying to cover that up.  They also mention the possibility that the entire accepted physics behind AGW could be wrong (which is what I meant when I said 'they express doubt) but they say there are at least four other rational explanations of why the datasets haven't matched up.  I'm also not sure how that article can be 'irrelevant garbage' when it directly addresses the issues you're raising.  You may want to think it's 'garbage' but, again, that's only because it doesn't agree with your DOGMATIC beliefs.

4.But that's not where the most warming is occurring!  Warming has been only modest in the tropical mid-troposphere.
Wrong: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-climate-scientists-elusive-tropospheric-hot.html

Warming is warming and just because you don't think the areas that seem to be warming the most are important doesn't mean they aren't.  If the warming mainly remains confined to the upper troposphere it may mean that AGW won't have a severe impact as the worst case scenarios being put forth right now. However, the significant thing about the warming in the upper troposphere is that it provides another piece of evidence that warming is occurring and that, in conjunction with all the other evidence, that it is mainly due to AGW. There is nothing that I read in that article that said that if AGW is occurring that the temperature rise has to occur throughout the entire troposphere evenly, so unless you have a sound scientific reason for saying that it should, you have no scientific reason to not include all the different datasets. So, again you are falsely cherry picking data (i.e, lying.)

5.That's why all you hear about when the media runs their tripe is polar bears and eskimos or isolated extreme weather events.  They're cherry picking.

The mainstream media tends to sensationalize everything, not just AGW issues.  For instance, they also fear monger about the costs of addressing AGW due to dishonest press releases they receive from fossil fuel companies.  The scientific community shouldn't be held responsible for a press that is trying to maximize profits and frequently attempts to do so using ethically dubious practices.


6. In fact, NOAA often has to quietly release a paper months after most extreme weather events to point out that, no, climate change was not, in fact, responsible for the event.  

A dishonest conspiracy laced charge.  NOAA doesn't put out final papers because it takes several months to even begin to determine the specific cause (or causes) of any single event.  Your insinuation that they wait several months so as to let the popular press fearmonger first is not only a lie but is also false from every scientist I've heard as during the event they all say something like "we can't determine the cause of this event yet."  Also, for this year anyway, most of them simply say "La Nina" and most don't even mention that La Nina this year is likely at least slightly more extreme than in the past due to AGW.

Finally on this, the latest research I've read suggests that the consensus scientific view is that roughly half of all extreme weather events are mostly due to AGW.

7.Global emissions absolutely exploded during the 2000s.

I can't find any data on total GHG emissions, but for CO2, according to this graph: CO2 emssions increased from around 25 billion metric tons at the start of the decade to around 32 billion tons now.  Is that exploded?  I don't know.  Some might say that a term like 'exploded' is 'alarmist.'


8.Sea level rise has not accelerated despite this alleged massive increase in ocean heat since 2000.

Sea levels are rising due to the melting of the glaciers and the increase in heat in the oceans: Graph here: https://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm

I know you said you don't like that site, but until you show me from a non global warming denialist website that the information you presented on that scientist is correct and that it somehow negates everything on that site, I don't see any reason to not continue using it.

The sea level has not risen as quickly as should have been expected by the rise in GHGs, but it's only a person with a DOGMATIC belief who would say that that can only be because the entire theory is wrong.  Here is one actual scientific alternative explanation: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-water-land-gravity-sea-level-20160215-story.html

"Thirsty continents are slowing down expected sea level rise, scientists say"

If you wish to continue this discussion with me, I'd prefer it if you link to and cut and paste from credible scientific websites (if there are any genuine AGW skeptical websites) as you have no credibility to me.  A good way to judge is that if they use '1998' as a baseline year, it's a AGW denialist junk site.

[136or142]

"'ll try not to be vitriolic because it's not going to aid any debate or arguments we have.  But the first sentence is absolutely wrong.  It takes far more energy input to warm air that is 30C to 31C than it does from -31C to -30C.  So no... warming is not warming."

I don't have time to address everything you wrote right now but I do want to reply to this briefly.

My background is in economics (I'm not an economist) so I'm thoroughly familiar with the concept of diminishing returns.  Were the numbers you presented in your example a fair representation of the science you would have a point, but those are dishonest numbers.  The data says that THE MOST warming has occurred in the upper troposphere.  I haven't looked up the exact numbers, and they're not presented in terms of the actual temperature anyway, but a more honest presentation using your example would be to compare air warming from 30C to 31C to air warming from -31C to -20C.

Also, if the climate models are still wrong, all that shows is that they're still don't take all the very complicated variables into account, it doesn't negate the reality of AGW.

[136or142]

It's simply not true that the data says the warming has been strongest in the upper troposphere.  It has been strongest at the surface and then in the northern latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

But, if the warming is strongest at the surface, then the warming has raised (using the example you gave, and not the actual warming) the temperature from 30C to 31C.

Am I missing something or are you trolling me?

I don't know.  Maybe you're being consistent and I just don't understand it, but it seems like you're frequently contradicting yourself.