NeoNotes — More on climate change
❝❝Ah, "anthropogenic global warming/cooling/drastic weather." In a word, unproven. No, the science isn't settled. The models haven't predicted anything without being "adjusted." Funny thing, the "adjustments" from two years ago don't work for last year, ten years ago, and probably won't work for this year. Considering the adjusted datasets and the methodology aren't published and in fact are concealed, there's no way to independently verify the results. Except of course the most basic and important, the models don't work.NeoNotes are the selected comments that I made on other boards, in email, or in response to articles where I could not respond directly.
From there, we're left with the political motivations. Although the justification differs, the goals are the same as some progressive politics and socialism. Unaccountable technocrats and self-appointed "experts" running everyone's lives "for the common good."
Coincidence? I think not.
Citing "the" study?
Oh my oh my!
I'm pagan! Weather is one of those things I really pay attention to. I follow "climate change" very closely. There's no "the" study or one book. It's one the topics I regularly link to as headlines. And I've written a fair bit about it over the years.
Let's talk just one entry. Admittedly, it's a headline roundup, but here are some of the headlines. July 4, 2017 : Coldest July Temperature Ever Recorded In The Northern Hemisphere. Study Finds Temperature Adjustments Account For ‘Nearly All Of The Warming’ In Climate Data. New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model.
Just so you know, I link to at least sixty-five headlines on various topics per week. Each of those headlines means reading or skimming between eight and fifty news articles each. Assuming an average of twenty articles, that means about 1300 articles per week. That's in addition to the special interest blogs (like this one) that I read and respond to daily. Here's a list of my usual sources, I probably hit 90% of the center column daily, and all the others at least two or three times a week. I also subscribe to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. That's in addition to any books I am reading. I read very fast and I read quite a bit.
I wrote a pretty decent FAQ onitclimate change. And then of course, there's my infamous four questions.
Is it unusual?
Is it entirely or mostly human caused?
Is it evil or bad?
Can human action reverse or slow it?
This is not some smart-ass making trouble, this is someone who has studied "climate change" in depth and has worked to explain it so almost anyone can understand it. I've argued and debated this in person and online for more than twenty years.
Talk to me when someone produces an unadjusted model that can predict more than one year at a time.
You mean like this? I mentioned this study in that headline roundup. Or you could use some of these. Incidentally, the measurement for validity in a study is not how many other studies mention it. It means (as I say in my Common sense global warming FAQ) that: “Proven science means that the theory must not only account for past and present observations, but can predict future conditions.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the entire "climate change" movement is based on predicting future atmospheric temperatures. If the models can't do that, then the entire movement is based on alarmism. If the measurements and models can't be independently verified by it's critics just like any other science, then the claims are fraud.
When I was a kid, some of the very same people who pushed global warming in the 80s and 90s were pushing global cooling.
The last fifteen years or so, it's been very hip to blame extreme weather on "climate change." Hot or cold, it doesn't matter, it's all climate change and it's all humanity's fault. Some also blame earthquakes on climate change.
"Earth's climate system is warming."
No, it's not. Take away the adjustments, the weather stations that have been moved or now are in heavily built up areas, and there is no significant change. Satellites tell the tale. At least until those too, get adjusted.
There's a difference between analyzing and adjusting.
As has been pointed out in many studies, you can't eliminate the urban heat effect unless you identify the sources of warming AND cooling that aren't manmade. There just isn't enough data to do that. So the climate change alarmists take the easy way out and say that ANY change is because of humanity. It's lazy and it isn't science.
For example, London used to have the Frost Fairs. But the Thames stopped freezing over well before peak industrial times identified by global warming theories, so something else was obviously at work.
One thing that many global warming alarmists deliberately overlook is the icecaps on Mars. These have a rough correlation with the peak global disruptions identified on Earth. So either carbon dioxide on Earth is influencing climate on Mars, or something else that affects both is responsible.
I'm not going to trade studies with you. As I already said, there are reasons to think that the datasets have been adjusted. Also here. And here. Don't forget this. Or this.
And then there's the climate models. Even the IPCC admits that the models are more effective predicting some "climate variables" (temperature) than others (precipitation), even though these variables affect each other. It takes some digging, but the IPCC admits that "sometimes" the models must be corrected to fit the observations. Which means that the models aren't accurate.
There's also the not-so-small matter of active suppression of dissenting scientific papers. So yeah, when someone starts waving "studies" under my nose, I check it with common sense. Starting with "who benefits from climate alarmism?"
It does when there's a political agenda so extreme as to crush dissenting viewpoints. More importantly, why is it necessary to outlaw climate dissent?
Oh, and you still haven't answered the bit about the time span. When discussing global warming, don't you think at least one ice age should be included?
You're also still skipping my four questions. As I wrote, “Unless each and every one of these questions is answered 'yes,' there is no moral need to confront global warming.”
Meanwhile, the models still don't work.
No, it's indicative of the politics. Because this is a very high stakes game, with vast amounts of cash and power on the table. You cannot remove politics from this equation, because it was designed to put government-designated experts in charge.
That's why they use phrases like "The science is settled." Science is never settled, we just use what works until we figure out something better. That's why certain celebrities and politicos calling to punish "denialists" with jail or massive fines. That's why the "solutions" are almost all paid by US taxpayers while excusing other nations (such as China) from almost any obligation.
The studies are thinly veiled justifications for the politics.
So what we get is things about "the hottest decade EVER" when the temperature record goes back maybe 250 years. We see studies that combine things like tree ring data, temperature observations, and speculation without distinguishing which is which. We see numbers adjusted to fit the theory instead of the observation, and then adjusted to fit the observation. We see the details of the models declared proprietary. We see the original datasets lost or corrupted beyond recovery. But most importantly, we're told that The Expert Knows Best and we must not question. We get the same studies waved under our noses without any asking if those studies have been verified.
Most importantly, we are distracted from the things we know can deal with excess CO2, like planting more trees.
No, that's not right. The link between CO2 and the temperature range of change depends on a hypothetical cascade effect that has never been observed in nature.
No, your selected numbers match selected observations. Before we go into things like if the model or the numbers were adjusted (and I'm pretty sure that both were), let's accept for argument's sake that the instruments used to measure temperature were not the same in 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, and 2020. Let's further accept for argument's sake that the places surveyed aren't the same in those years either. That doesn't only introduce a variable, that introduces at least two classes of variables, neither of which is adequately addressed by this chart.
BTW, notice the sharp uptick at the end beyond the point where things can actually, you know, be measured? Statistically, that usually means the model is off.
Pardon, but how much greenhouse gases influence climate is the core of the dispute. There's also the small matter of if humans emit significantly more CO2, but that is secondary. Humans don't understand climate enough to tell you what influences what. We don't even understand climate enough to tell what is "normal." Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Anyone who uses less than a ten million year baseline is ignorant or deliberately deceptive.
Why we're at it, I'd like to see proven solutions rather than demands for money and control.
Stars above and Earth below, are you really so ignorant as to think that science and scientists are not subject to politics? Even more so when most of the money comes from government, along with directives of what to find. Perhaps the best known example is the four food groups, later modified into a food pyramid, later modified into a different food pyramid, later modified again. I've lost track of what the current version is.
I know, let's talk ethanol. Now here is a substance that is harder to produce than gasoline, much more unstable and chemically reactive, harder to store, harder to transport, and hasn't yet been produced on a large scale except by using food crops. Increased ethanol production means worldwide food shortages, as happened under President Bust (the younger). Yet it has been sold as an environmentally sound solution. One wonders how sound it would be if the Iowa caucuses weren't so necessary to the Presidential election show.
What about the Tuskegee Study which was kept from the public? Too far in the past? Well then, what about the Obama administration green power push, despite the fact that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow?
It may have happened too recently for you to notice, but we've moved beyond Galileo. We found theories and equations that worked better. That is the nature of science.
You keep bringing up peer review, but sometimes it just defends "conventional wisdom." Especially when you include money and power. I've seen dissent from "climate change" actively suppressed. That doesn't even include the non-scientists, who are all too ready to for a Holy Crusade against "heresy."
Fudge factors aside, there are sound reasons to suspect the models, even to the point of which model will be used. None of this is happening in the open.
When both the model and the datasets are adjusted, you've moved from science to fiction.
When it's politically popular, that tends to be what is published.
That particular question was not addressed. You can't factor out the enormous political and financial incentives, Especially since there is evidence that dissenting papers were suppressed and that some are pushing for criminal punishments for "climate deniers." "Climate change" is a political crusade masquerading as science.
None of the climate studies you've cited consider the ice ages. None of them consider a time span of more than a few centuries. Yet all purport to tell the "normal" global temperature. This is a little like taking a thermometer reading on the third Tuesday at the corner of 7th and Main between 15:07:21 and 15:07:22 and proclaiming that specific number is THE temperature norm for all of North America in 2017. Climatologists may study the Earth's past climate, but climate change alarmists studiously ignore it.
There's also the small matter the IPCC saying that the CO2 concentrations have only been significant since about 1940 or so, but the warming trend starting well before that. Oops. That nasty carbon dioxide must travel through time as well as interplanetary space.
Science requires a control. You have to allow for no human influence as well as human influence. That is, IF you can establish that there has been a significant change. Without that, you can't show that the alleged change is unusual or human caused.
Evil for which humans? The ending of the Little Ice Age almost certainly meant that France could grow marvelous wine grapes. Longer summers mean an extended growing season. It also means less water locked in glaciers and permafrost and more in the water cycle. That's assuming it is happening in the first place.
You haven't shown that it is human caused. No one has. You haven't even established that it's not part of a natural cycle. If it's not human caused, chances are humans can't stop it or reverse it. Chances are humans should not.
Did I mention that I love my four questions? I haven't found anyone yet who can answer them. As I've said, unless ALL four questions can be answered "yes," there is no moral reason for the climate change arguments.
The studies you cite are all seriously flawed. Starting with an absurdly short baseline, assuming that ANY change was caused by humans, and utilizing only "approved' techniques. Oh, and the statistics stink.
I didn't say proofs, I said not proven. Learn the difference, it just might be handy some day.
And I've seen statistical analysis that show that the entire argument is because of the analysis and not because of the data. Starting with the infamous hockey stick.
What you have to ask is how often is the model adjusted to fit the theory. And it turns out the answer is quite often, provided that someone is benefiting politically or financially.
Here's a hint, if you want to know how accurate a scientific paper is, look at the criticisms before you look at the paper.
Hey, you're allowed to Proclaim Selected Data As Unquestionable Dogma all you want, until you want to control other people's behavior with it. That's when it ceases to be science and becomes a matter of law, morality and culture. That requires a language change.
You didn't address the hockey stick bit.
Four centuries is still only a drop in the bucket. It doesn't even cover the last major ice age. Nor does it show that human activity is responsible. Or that the "change" is A Bad Thing.
Actually it does indicate what I said. Look at the conclusions, not the abstract.
Except the aerosol effect is highly speculative and probably extremely dependent on chemical composition. But I'm sure you'll trot something else out soon.
"You can't account for global heat unless you look at all the relevant variables…" Including solar activity, which we know is far more influential by several orders of magnitude. But hey, that doesn't make humans guilty so it's not included in the narrative.
Understanding Earth's history is very important to understanding Earth's climate. But I've seen no evidence that climate alarmists are interested.❞❞
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