Climate change / global warming

[vash3g]

I have no idea where this thread is at because i didnt read anything but the title. All I have to say about climate change is this:

Welcome to Upstate NY. 9F.

[speedchase]

I have no idea where this thread is at because i didnt read anything but the title. All I have to say about climate change is this:

Welcome to Upstate NY. 9F.

The implication would seem to be that half an inch of snow in Upstate New York in January is such an incredible deviation from the standard in the direction of being colder that it completely disproves the assertion that the global climate could be changing. Obviously, your argument could use some work.

[shapenaji]

I am INCREDIBLY skeptical of anyone who tries to pretend that a graph that doesn't have labeled axis's is data.
Never mind the fact that the graphs they show aren't labeled with a source.

[p2501]

I have no idea where this thread is at because i didnt read anything but the title. All I have to say about climate change is this:

Welcome to Upstate NY. 9F.

The implication would seem to be that half an inch of snow in Upstate New York in January is such an incredible deviation from the standard in the direction of being colder that it completely disproves the assertion that the global climate could be changing. Obviously, your argument could use some work.

He said climate change, not global warming. So it actually supports the claim that climate is chaning - but I can see how a picture of snow triggered your response in a thread about global warming.

[Bill Spight]

I have no idea where this thread is at because i didnt read anything but the title. All I have to say about climate change is this:

Welcome to Upstate NY. 9F.

The implication would seem to be that half an inch of snow in Upstate New York in January is such an incredible deviation from the standard in the direction of being colder that it completely disproves the assertion that the global climate could be changing. Obviously, your argument could use some work.

Hmmm. When I lived in New England more than 40 years ago, snow in January was a given. How times (and climate) change!

[Magicwand]

It is amazing how so many ppl actually think not using fossel fuel will help man kind.
having average temperature of 1 degree higher will not cause any catastrophy.
IMO it will only benefit man kind by raising temperature.

Hahaha, yeah this is really wrong. Sorry. Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

Snow was falling in June, tons of crops got destroyed. How much did the temperature deviate from average?

"climate abnormalities caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F)"

1° WORLDWIDE average can really screw stuff up.

then 1 degree highter temperature will boost farming !!!!
more food for the hungry and problem of world hunger solved!

my point is that man can not fight with nature and expect to win.
i also believe that temperature change is a trend of a natural cycle.
there is no proof that it is caused by mankind.

then why politicans using global warming to gain votes and ppl fall for that crazy idea?

[p2501]

It is amazing how so many ppl actually think not using fossel fuel will help man kind.
having average temperature of 1 degree higher will not cause any catastrophy.
IMO it will only benefit man kind by raising temperature.

Hahaha, yeah this is really wrong. Sorry. Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

Snow was falling in June, tons of crops got destroyed. How much did the temperature deviate from average?

"climate abnormalities caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F)"

1° WORLDWIDE average can really screw stuff up.

then 1 degree highter temperature will boost farming !!!!
more food for the hungry and problem of world hunger solved!

my point is that man can not fight with nature and expect to win.
i also believe that temperature change is a trend of a natural cycle.
there is no proof that it is caused by mankind.

then why politicans using global warming to gain votes and ppl fall for that crazy idea?

I wouldn't be so sure if a general higher temperature and thus affected climate would be so nice for farmers like you think.
And farming efficiency is not going to solve world hunger. We could already feed every mouth twice if we all wanted to.

[Mike Novack]

We could already feed every mouth twice if we all wanted to.

Not in the long run. We are in effect "eating oil". The energy inputs are not always obvious. For example, where is the energy coming from for synthetic fixing of N? Yes of course we can do it the old fashioned way, rotate the human edible grain crop with a couple years of Nitrogen fixing legume. But that means no grain from that bit of land perhaps 2 years out of 3 (or 2 out of four, depends on the rotation).

When people tell you what fabulously high yields are possible keep in mind that's with one heck of a lot of fertilizer added.

[p2501]

We could already feed every mouth twice if we all wanted to.

Not in the long run. We are in effect "eating oil". The energy inputs are not always obvious. For example, where is the energy coming from for synthetic fixing of N? Yes of course we can do it the old fashioned way, rotate the human edible grain crop with a couple years of Nitrogen fixing legume. But that means no grain from that bit of land perhaps 2 years out of 3 (or 2 out of four, depends on the rotation).

When people tell you what fabulously high yields are possible keep in mind that's with one heck of a lot of fertilizer added.

I was speaking of the enourmous amount of crop/grain etc. we produce so we can eat more meat.

[Zombie]

Fertilizer in a nice poisoned monocrop field that is slowly desertifying and killing the local bee population <3
Industrial farming accelerates it, but conventional agriculture achieves the same results in the end. Then we will have nothing to eat but the short-term fiat money profits that inflation ate away ^___^

[TheBigH]

then 1 degree highter temperature will boost farming !!!!
more food for the hungry and problem of world hunger solved!

How do you know it'll have that effect? The opposite seems more likely to me- with deserts expanding due to increased temperatures, rising sea levels inundating low-lying agricultural land, and more frequent and extreme weather events ruining it.

my point is that man can not fight with nature and expect to win.
i also believe that temperature change is a trend of a natural cycle.
there is no proof that it is caused by mankind.

Oh, yes there is. There's plenty of evidence that climate change is caused by humans. You should acquaint yourself with the scientific literature on the subject- there's tons and tons of it and the scientific consensus is nearly unanimous. Here's a good one to get you started, which shows how it is the science deniers that are wrong and dishonest, not the scientists.

then why politicans using global warming to gain votes and ppl fall for that crazy idea?

Again, wrong. Politicians are purchased by beholden to the various lobby groups and business interests that provide their bribes campaign contributions, and big polluters looking to protect their business model are better able to purchase politicians than scientists are. That's why we see the pollies, particularly from the right, pretend that scientists are evil conniving liars out to wreck the economy for some inexplicable reason.

[igoneko]

I hesitated to even enter into this conversation, but I feel that I can contribute something at this point. Attached is a paper I wrote as a undergraduate. It is mostly my spouting off my opinions about the economics of climate change to my professor, but it contains some of the references to the real science I used to support my stance. Mind you, I wrote it 5 years ago. There is (in my older eyes anyway) a LOT of naivety. I was still a starry eyed undergraduate firmly in the protective embrace of academia. The real world is much more messy. More importantly, it offers directed references to peer-reviewed papers and IPCC-4. Obviously, it is dated since IPCC-5 isn't due for another year... Well what can you do? I do recommend that anyone who wishes to gain education on the matter start with reading (chronologically) the IPCC reports in total. Wade through them and you will be well on your way to a place where you can ask rational questions and know where to start looking for rational answers. I know that, personally, I gained a enormous amount of knowledge from reading them. Not all of it was scientific either. There is a certain value of how politics influences science in them as well. Anywhoo, without further comment...

[ez4u]

There is certainly a lot of pro and con material out there. However, I am puzzled by the idea that everything is relative.

If you are in the U.S. did you start with BAMS State of the Climate Report, published annually since 1991 (BAMS = Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society)? If not, why not?

If you are in Europe did you start with Annual Bulletin on the Climate in WMO Region VI - Europe and Middle East, published annually since 1995 (WMO = World Meteorological Organization)? If not, why not?

If you are concerned about the effects on agriculture and you are in the U.S., have you read The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity, produced by the U. S. Department of Agriculture under the U. S. Global Change Research Program? If not, why not?

A lot of this stuff really is rocket science, but finding information really isn't!

[burrkitty]

I did not. I started at IPCC and the Kyoto Protocol. That is the assignment that was given to me. I have read those resources and used them since then, but at the time I was fulfilling the obligations of a student to her teacher to do the assignment that I was given.

(BTW that igoneko is my post , somehow I have ended up with two accounts. something I am trying to sort out with the admins right now. )

You are correct that real information is readily available. The other side of that coin is that it can be beeping hard to wade through it all. Even as a student of the science, I approach it with a scientific dictionary and Google in hand (so to speak) to aid me in truly understanding the material. Add to that the 3-deep clause and nearly all laymen (and many frustrated students without a doubt) will give it up as impossible. It takes time.

EDIT: Sorry, I just realized I referenced 3-deep and that I cannot reasonably expect anyone else to understand that. It is something I was taught as a undergrad, like the sin of confirmation bias. (which really is beaten into you with vigor)

The 3-deep clause is a... concept? rule? teaching aid?... Basically, it works like this. One should not reference your unique work with a paper that you cannot "prove" 3-deep. So for any scientific paper that you wish to use in your own work you must "prove" it.

1. You read the paper.
2. You read all the references of that paper
3. You read all the references of the references of that paper.

That is how you prove a paper 3-deep.

As I was taught, the 3-deep clause is intended to minimize suspect material. This is because of how peer-reviewed science works.

[aokun]

The 3-deep clause is a... concept? rule? teaching aid?... Basically, it works like this. One should not reference your unique work with a paper that you cannot "prove" 3-deep. So for any scientific paper that you wish to use in your own work you must "prove" it.

1. You read the paper.
2. You read all the references of that paper
3. You read all the references of the references of that paper.

That is how you prove a paper 3-deep.

As I was taught, the 3-deep clause is intended to minimize suspect material. This is because of how peer-reviewed science works.

This is new to me, and kind of interesting. I do not guess anyone really does it, not twice. One or two papers with extensive note lists and the combinatorial explosion of spadework would be awful. In some papers, you see lines like "Efforts to account for the discrepancy by direct calculation have had questionable success. (Fitzhugh[1941]; Davies, Davies, Davies and Thomas[1948]; Martindale[1949]; Oh, Fralins and Dixit[1951]; [14 other references] ; Hedley[2012])" What a nightmare. All to prove that, well, the thing we didn't do might be of some value, but then again, who's to tell? I mean, yes, a bit of duplication will be there and someone with a serious knowledge of the field would have already read many of the papers, but it's still a lot of meaningless labor. I would also question the value of it beyond as a training exercise for someone initially becoming acquainted with the field. Surely many papers present direct observations, which are not dependent for validity on much that is in prior papers, only on the integrity and method of the author. Selected reading in depth, maybe, to ensure you understand the key points that you are taking from the paper, but all of it? On top of that, the time you spend doing things matters and delaying submitting for publication while you earnestly plow through every paper Davies, Davies, Davies or Thomas thought relevent during the Truman Administration, when no one will know whether you actually did or not, seems unlikely in the extreme.

Also, there is some gamesmanship available in the standard if applied, in fields where there is competition for attention. If yours is one of five groups attempting to recreate or expand upon a result, you could be careful to cite as small a number of references as possible, each of which itself has a minimal number of references. This would give you some significant edge in later being cited.

All a bit in jest. More seriously, I cannot see what 3-deep reading has to do with any of it. Studying a subject 3-deep is neither taught to, nor imposed on, nor practical for, nor needed by the layman, the journalist or the policymaker. Yes, they should dive into things and examine premises and assumptions, but what to dive into and how deep is a practical matter. A person wanting to form their own conclusion about some complicated and controversial topic may have to devote their life to it or give up. A layman wanting to form a conclusion about how much CO2 is in the atmosphere, on the other hand, does not have to go "3-deep" into the Moana Loa readings; they can grab the graph off google and it's right. Indeed, the point of much of the best summaries out there, especially IPCC, is to provide something you can read where someone else did all that 3-deep stuff in a public process so readers can get precise and up-to-date information and be informed without switching careers.