Saving the Planet

Awesome quotation from Alexander. If a doctor tells you to lower your intake of cholesterol, you listen. Even though the science is "not settled" for heart disease.

The science is never settled. Ergo, unplug your computer b/c you can't possibly believe semiconductors are doing what they are doing and you can't possibly believe the liquid crystals in your monitor are emitting visible light. Give up on life b/c you can't possibly believe the Earth will not fall into the sun tomorrow, since the science of gravity is not settled. And so on.

Inhofe fundamentally and absolutely misunderstands the process of science. And I don't blame him. It's poorly communicated in our schools and poorly communicated by scientists.

 

B-bob can kill you in ways Calleigh Duquesne never heard of.

Don't **** with The B-Bob.


/////mmmmm Calleigh Duquesne

 

Another mountain of words. I find this article interesting because it's mostly been statisticians that have been sourced with cooling claims.

I'm looking for a picture of the earth in a bikini to give the slow folks the impression that the earth really is hot.

AP IMPACT: Statisticians reject global cooling

WASHINGTON — Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller "Freakonomics." Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.

Identifying a downward trend is a case of "people coming at the data with preconceived notions," said Peterson, author of the book "Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis."

One prominent skeptic said that to find the cooling trend, the 30 years of satellite temperatures must be used. The satellite data tends to be cooler than the ground data. And key is making sure 1998 is part of the trend, he added.

It's what happens within the past 10 years or so, not the overall average, that counts, contends Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology professor and global warming skeptic.

"I don't argue with youthat the 10-year average for the past 10 years is higher than the previous 10 years," said Easterbrook, who has self-published some of his research. "We started the cooling trend after 1998. You're going to get a different line depending on which year you choose.

"Should not the actual temperature be higher now than it was in 1998?" Easterbrook asked. "We can play the numbers games."

That's the problem, some of the statisticians said.

Grego produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics' satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a "mild downward trend," he said. But doing that is "deceptive."

The trend disappears if the analysis starts in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999, he said.

Apart from the conflicting data analyses is the eyebrow-raising new book title from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance."

A line in the book says: "Then there's this little-discussed fact about global warming: While the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased."

That led to a sharp rebuke from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which said the book mischaracterizes climate science with "distorted statistics."

Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, said he does not believe there is a cooling trend. He said the line was just an attempt to note the irony of a cool couple of years at a time of intense discussion of global warming. Levitt said he did not do any statistical analysis of temperatures, but "eyeballed" the numbers and noticed 2005 was hotter than the last couple of years. Levitt said the "cooling" reference in the book title refers more to ideas about trying to cool the Earth artificially.

Statisticians say that in sizing up climate change, it's important to look at moving averages of about 10 years. They compare the average of 1999-2008 to the average of 2000-2009. In all data sets, 10-year moving averages have been higher in the last five years than in any previous years.

"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford.

Ben Santer, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Lab, called it "a concerted strategy to obfuscate and generate confusion in the minds of the public and policymakers" ahead of international climate talks in December in Copenhagen.

President Barack Obama weighed in on the topic Friday at MIT. He said some opponents "make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change — claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary."

Earlier this year, climate scientists in two peer-reviewed publications statistically analyzed recent years' temperatures against claims of cooling and found them not valid.

Not all skeptical scientists make the flat-out cooling argument.

"It pretty much depends on when you start," wrote John Christy, the Alabama atmospheric scientist who collects the satellite data that skeptics use. He said in an e-mail that looking back 31 years, temperatures have gone up nearly three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit (four-tenths of a degree Celsius). The last dozen years have been flat, and temperatures over the last eight years have declined a bit, he wrote.

Oceans, which take longer to heat up and longer to cool, greatly influence short-term weather, causing temperatures to rise and fall temporarily on top ofthe overall steady warming trend, scientists say. The biggest example of that is El Nino.

El Nino, a temporary warming of part of the Pacific Ocean, usually spikes global temperatures, scientists say. The two recent warm years, both 1998 and 2005, were El Nino years. The flip side of El Nino is La Nina, which lowers temperatures. A La Nina bloomed last year and temperatures slipped a bit, but 2008 was still the ninth hottest in 130 years of NOAA records.

Of the 10 hottest years recorded by NOAA, eight have occurred since 2000, and after this year it will be nine because this year is on track to be the sixth-warmest on record.

The current El Nino is forecast to get stronger, probably pushing global temperatures even higher next year, scientists say. NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt predicts 2010 may break a record, so a cooling trend "will be never talked about again."

 

So, let me get this straight. Not only are a strong majority of climate scientists politically motivated idiots or frauds, but now a majority of statisticians too?

Okay, so take the data out of the scientists hands, out of the warmer-denialists hands, and let some of the most boring and apolitical people on the planet look at it: good idea, AP.

Interesting. So there's not even a drop in the last ten years. Got it. And what do you know, someone is citing random variability. I know that's a mouthful, but it sounds kind of familiar, even from this here thread!

Ouch. Data versus "preconceived notions." Scientific analysis versus "you cannot refute any of my points."

I think this is pretty increasingly obvious to anyone who cares to think about it. Either you go with data and people who make a living looking at data and science, or you whip up your mojo and think to yourself:
Self, you are so smart, you and a science fiction author have figured out that most scientists, most statisticians, and data itself all have a significant liberal bias! Then, you have a double bacon cheeseburger, as per my earlier analogies.

 

The Science behind global warming is pretty sound in that it's hard to dispute that man made CO2 emissions are contributing to global warming.

The theories that if man made CO2 emissions were at cause, there would be certain patterns in the way the earth warms...and these have been proven out.

We are warming the planet, that is a fact.

Now, however; science can not tell us what we need to do to reverse that at this time. Is it reversible? Will cutting C02 to 1990 levels make a difference? Well, we had global warming at 1990 levels going off the hook - so what will cutting back to that do?

They say time is short. But without complete cutting off the spigot of human progress, what policy will be effective? Random policy isn't the answer here.

That's why I advocate advanced planning for a warmer earth. What bothers me isn't the debate on global warming, it's that no one is asking, "Ok, so how will we cope with a warmer earth with rising sea levels?"

 

The "correct" climatic conditions are irrelevant. I don't know why you would be too focused on that.

We have to deal with the reality of what's happening. And that reality is that the earth is warming. And that it will be very difficult to stop.

So I say, we better figure out how to live on a warmer earth and all the things that come with that - good and bad, rather than cry about or debate where things should be.

If time is critical, then there's not a whole lot of time to invest in technologies to cope with a warming planet.

 

B-Bob, I'm so glad you've returned to D&D. We may not agree on the subject of manned space flight (you're wrong! have you seen the new Star Trek flick?? Get the fur out of you eyes!!), but I always enjoy reading your stuff. Well, except on manned space flight. (am I repeating myself? A flaw I am wrestling with. I blame Sam and KC, tha buggers! )

 

what on earth are you talking about?

You make no sense whatsoever.

 

I can accept a compliment semi-graciously, even from you, a fellow I ardently disagree with. Can you name the source of the quote? It is a quote, one that means a lot to me.

 

I think it's a Robert Heinlein quote from one of his books.

 

Nope, although I was a fan of the late Mr. Heinlein, and started reading him in the '50's.

 

I agree to an extent. There are definitely things we can do that do not even involve cutting carbon emissions so much. I've mentioned some of the models for high atmospheric particle release, or what have you. These are cheap and all signs point to them being very effective.

The debate then actually would get to part of MojoMan's question: what is the right climate? Because humans may well be able to set it, more or less. (Or die in a tragic case of hubris after trying to monkey with it.)

 

it's not a question of what is the right climate because climate will change on earth. That's the only guarantee. The earth is evolving - but does so very slowly and leaves us time to adjust.

That's what we have to do, is adjust. If we know sea levels are going to rise over time, then how do we make yearly adjustments to that? Is it new zoning laws? Where will beach front property be in 50 years?

If we really wanted to limit the impact of global warming, we'd have to limit population growth - which isn't likely to happen.

 

So you admit there is danger...