[Zipperfish]

Thanos Thanos:

Boy, do I know that feeling.

[BartSimpson]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

(Edited for space)

I read your post in its entirety and I suppose we are at odds with our analysis of both the data and the actual events of the past twenty years.

With regards to the data I'm not the first person to object to the myriad ways the data sets have been manipulated to show warming and to predict warming. As Fiddledog once pointed out in a very detailed post, the majority of errors on the predictive models err on the side of warming, not cooling.

Randomly sampling 100 weather or climate models for error will show a clear majority of those models breaking on the side of greater warming, not less warming than the actual trend.



And then there's the lawsuits that have taken place asking for government climatologists to produce their raw, unadjusted data that they used to come up with their predictions and as I write this not one of those lawsuits in the UK or the USA has been satisfied with a disclosure of raw data as required by law.

This is germaine to the discussion because being able to reproduce the data that NASA publicizes is part of the process of validating the science. Where we stand right now I can't tell you what the actual recorded temperature was at any NASA or NOAA weather station over the past twenty years. All I can tell you is what the 'adjusted' data is.

Thus I end up with serious doubts given that there's a clear and obvious bias inherent in the predictive models and that the raw temperature data of the past twenty years are as closely guarded a secret as Obama's grades at Harvard or Occidental.

One can only be left to wonder why the data is so zealously guarded if these folks are all so honest with what they say the data is supposed to mean.

[Thanos]

Kind of a funny one here. Not directly related to the AGW debate, but kind of similar to what happens when those who know nothing about science pretend that they do. Jenny McCarthy, infamous anti-vaccination activist and probably the only celebrity (except for Mel Gibson ( ) and probably every rapper out there) to have her own death count that she's provably responsible for, made the mistake of going on Twitter and asking "what's the most important personality trait you find in a mate? #JennyAsks". Well, Twitter responded and it wasn't pretty. Goddamn hilarious and delightfully mean spirited, but not pretty at all.

Lesson #1: don't fuck with real scientists. The numbers don't lie, Penny.
Lesson #2 thru #10: see Lesson #1.

Ought to be right up Zippy's alley who, if he isn't too tired and/or high right now, I suspect is really here just using all of us as chew toys for his own amusement.

[Gunnair]

Thanos Thanos:

Kind of a funny one here. Not directly related to the AGW debate, but kind of similar to what happens when those who know nothing about science pretend that they do. Jenny McCarthy, infamous anti-vaccination activist and probably the only celebrity (except for Mel Gibson ( ) and probably every rapper out there) to have her own death count that she's provably responsible for, made the mistake of going on Twitter and asking "what's the most important personality trait you find in a mate? #JennyAsks". Well, Twitter responded and it wasn't pretty. Goddamn hilarious and delightfully mean spirited, but not pretty at all.

Lesson #1: don't fuck with real scientists. The numbers don't lie, Penny.
Lesson #2 thru #10: see Lesson #1.

Ought to be right up Zippy's alley who, if he isn't too tired and/or high right now, I suspect is really here just using all of us as chew toys for his own amusement.

I wonder what the numbers are of Americans who are not convinced that enough scientific evidence exists of AGW but believe Noah filled an Ark with two of every animal?

Edit - about 35% are not convinced in AGW while 45% or so believe the Earth is a few thousand years old.

Wonder if there is any overlap?

[Thanos]

Overlap? Probably.



This stuff never gets boring.

[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

(Edited for space)

I read your post in its entirety and I suppose we are at odds with our analysis of both the data and the actual events of the past twenty years.

With regards to the data I'm not the first person to object to the myriad ways the data sets have been manipulated to show warming and to predict warming. As Fiddledog once pointed out in a very detailed post, the majority of errors on the predictive models err on the side of warming, not cooling.

Randomly sampling 100 weather or climate models for error will show a clear majority of those models breaking on the side of greater warming, not less warming than the actual trend.

I suppose all we are discussing is the semantics.

I recall that discussion. It was indeed interesting, but predicting chaotic systems will always have it's inaccuracies. The thing that stands out for me in every single one of those models - and the graph you show - they all have one underlying trend; upwards.

The only thing really left to discuss is how far and how fast.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

And then there's the lawsuits that have taken place asking for government climatologists to produce their raw, unadjusted data that they used to come up with their predictions and as I write this not one of those lawsuits in the UK or the USA has been satisfied with a disclosure of raw data as required by law.

Yes, I get amused by those. Regardless of how it turns out, tree ring data is but one data point used to show climate trends. All the others still agree on the upward trend.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

This is germaine to the discussion because being able to reproduce the data that NASA publicizes is part of the process of validating the science. Where we stand right now I can't tell you what the actual recorded temperature was at any NASA or NOAA weather station over the past twenty years. All I can tell you is what the 'adjusted' data is.

Thus I end up with serious doubts given that there's a clear and obvious bias inherent in the predictive models and that the raw temperature data of the past twenty years are as closely guarded a secret as Obama's grades at Harvard or Occidental.

I understand why they don't release the 'unadjusted' readings. For example, there used to be one method for measuring temperature, and because of urban growth they either had to move the measuring station or have had to change instruments.

That leaves a problem. Possibly 100 years of data is lost because of a change, so the choice is to compensate for the difference in measurements by adjusting the old data, or the new.

I see it every day - we have two official monitoring stations here. One was placed on the 'outskirts' 110 years ago, and the city grew up around it. the other has been in use 40 or so years, and the two can often diverge 10 - 20 degrees because of the heat island effect. Doing an unadjusted analysis of the older reading will simply be mapping the heat island effect, not anything to do with climate.

Adjusting the older readings by compensating for the recorded difference between the two stations would give a more accurate analysis by removing the heat island effect. (the raw data for both stations is available)

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

One can only be left to wonder why the data is so zealously guarded if these folks are all so honest with what they say the data is supposed to mean.

Giving the unadjusted data would give statistical anomalies that not everyone would recognize. This could be used to further someone's political agenda, and do a disservice to the science. We see how political this subject has become already, imagine how bad it will get once spin doctors start playing with inaccurate readings?

[BartSimpson]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I understand why they don't release the 'unadjusted' readings.

That's nice. Except in most of the civilized world these days we all have laws requiring government to yield unclassified data upon request or else provide a valid reason anchored in a national defense matter as to why the data must remain classified.

What national defense imperative is being served by keeping the raw temperature data classified so it can be analyzed by people outside of NASA and the Met Office?

And, thank you for acknowledging this little factoid because absent the alleged scientists providing their raw data and the methodologies by which they 'adjusted' it their results cannot be reproduced by any other scientists - a process that you yourself note is required to validate a theory.

Therefore the AGW theory is not even a validated scientific theory given that no one can validate the raw data and the adjustment methodologies.

Look at it this way:

If I said to you that if you invested $1,000,000 with me that I could give you an above-average yield of returns wouldn't you be the least bit interested in validating my claims before you invested $1,000,000 with me?

Yet here you are asking the world to invest possibly $100 trillion to mitigate a problem that you can even verify yourself.

[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I understand why they don't release the 'unadjusted' readings.

Therefore the AGW theory is not even a validated scientific theory given that no one can validate the raw data and the adjustment methodologies.

I can't comment on why they choose to not release the data, but just because some of the data is not public does not mean the raw data is not peer reviewed. It just means we don't have access to it. We do have access to the adjusted data, and we can work with that.

There are many peer reviewed studies out there that I do not have access to data on, and if I did it's unlikely that I'd understand it. But I'm comfortable with that because I know that the basic philosophy behind science has been the unbiased betterment of society, because it's the right thing to do.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Look at it this way:

If I said to you that if you invested $1,000,000 with me that I could give you an above-average yield of returns wouldn't you be the least bit interested in validating my claims before you invested $1,000,000 with me?

Yet here you are asking the world to invest possibly $100 trillion to mitigate a problem that you can even verify yourself.

Look at it another way; others are asking the world to risk the future of our entire species for some short term profit. I do trust in the science, and if peer reviewed studies say we are heading for a catastrophe of our own making, I will give them the trillion dollar benefit of the doubt. When balanced with extinction, it's cheap at twice the price. And a reduction in pollution is also the right thing to do.

[Thanos]

I wouldn't. It's barely been confirmed that any changes are even happening at all right now, much less confirmed to happen in the near future. Assuming catastrophic change is imminent is just damn foolish. The hardcore enviros, who have successfully purged any remaining moderates from their ranks as much as the TeaBirchers have done with the Republican Party, went for apocalyptic terror as part of their propaganda plan. That's why they're meeting with so much damn resistance right now. Don't go with the "aaaaaaahhhhhhhggggghhhhh, the world is dying!" bullshit routine and they'd conceivably be miles farther ahead with whatever it was they were attempting to persuade the governments and populations into agreeing with.

[andyt]

Yep. If the alarmists are to be believed it would require incredibly drastic action right now to prevent the apocalypse. I believe the CO2 threshold where this would happen has already been passed, so we'd have to cut emissions by drastic levels. When I say we that seems to mean the West, because developing nations seem to get a pass.

We should reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce CO2 emissions for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with AGW. That would require a measured response, a slower shift that doesn't destroy our economies.

That's not going to happen, because mostly people are still just interested in making a quick buck. So we get mostly business as usual (actually more than usual, as emissions are still increasing) punctuated with fruitless attempts like stopping Keystone to appease the doomsayers.

[fifeboy]

Gunnair Gunnair:

I wonder what the numbers are of Americans who are not convinced that enough scientific evidence exists of AGW but believe Noah filled an Ark with two of every animal?

Didn't you get the memo? That's two of every "kind." They tend to not be very strong on genetics either.

[andyt]

Hey, it's not two of every animal. The animals that can live in the ocean would not need to go on the ark. Although I'm not sure about the salt regulation. Where did all this water come from that caused the oceans to rise that much? There can't be enough frozen water on land to cause such a drastic rise? Since it was rainwater, ie non salty, it would vastly reduce the saline content of the ocean, so I take it back. Saltwater species would also need special holding tanks for them on the ark. Funny how that was never mentioned.

[Guy_Fawkes]

andyt andyt:

Hey, it's not two of every animal. The animals that can live in the ocean would not need to go on the ark. Although I'm not sure about the salt regulation. Where did all this water come from that caused the oceans to rise that much? There can't be enough frozen water on land to cause such a drastic rise? Since it was rainwater, ie non salty, it would vastly reduce the saline content of the ocean, so I take it back. Saltwater species would also need special holding tanks for them on the ark. Funny how that was never mentioned.

One word - Magic.

[fifeboy]

andyt andyt:

Hey, it's not two of every animal. The animals that can live in the ocean would not need to go on the ark. Although I'm not sure about the salt regulation. Where did all this water come from that caused the oceans to rise that much? There can't be enough frozen water on land to cause such a drastic rise? Since it was rainwater, ie non salty, it would vastly reduce the saline content of the ocean, so I take it back. Saltwater species would also need special holding tanks for them on the ark. Funny how that was never mentioned.

I've got it, the Ark was Vancouver. At least two of every kind and then the Vancouver Aquarium. Now, how to get it to float?

[andyt]

Lot's of pot and positive thinking.

We probably do have at least two of every kind here. Among the humans, anyway.