Your article refers to the minimum extent during the season, so I imagine this article was referring to something else. A quick search reveals that 2017 set a record for the lowest maximum extent, for example.
Records when referring to an entire year rarely refer to a record extreme. For example, when they say that 2016 was the hottest year on record, they don't mean that the hottest day of the year was hotter than the hottest day of any other year. They mean that the average was hotter than the average for other years. I expect sea ice extent would be similar.
The amount of see ice is a regularly fluctuating value, so the notion of "record low sea ice" can have more than one meaning. You seem to interpret it only as "lowest minimum extent", as per the article you cited.
However, the WaPo cites NOAA's 2017 Arctic Report Card, which says this:
> "The lowest winter maximum ice extent in the satellite record (1979-2017) occurred on 7 March 2017. The extent was 14.42 million km2, 8% below the 1981-2010 average. This was the third straight year of a record low winter maximum."
The is a different meaning of "record low sea ice", but it's just as valid.
So I'm asking you, would it address your concern if the WaPo article said something like, "record low winter maximum" instead?
I disagree that it's just as valid. No one would actually have even looked that "record low sea ice" might mean that it had a low at it's maximum had I not pointed it out.
Having a low at the maximum doesn't lead to conversations about less ice = less sun reflected = more warming, since it's basically total darkness during the maximum.
Absolutely it would address my concerns if they actually wrote it correctly.
>This was the third straight year of a record low winter maximum.
Is also false since 2016 had more sea ice than 2015.
Nor would anyone have thought that "record low sea ice" meant a record minimum if you hadn't brought it up. I'm sure most of us would have just assumed it meant a record low according to whatever standard measure is used, just like it does for global temperatures or anything else.
I can understand the desire for more specificity. I can't understand assuming, based on nothing, that it must refer to something which makes the statement incorrect, rather than something else which makes the statement correct
It's not total darkness during the maximum. The 2017 maximum occurred on March 7th, which is just two weeks away from the equinox. At that time, most of the arctic receives direct sunlight and all of it receives at least some sunlight.
>Nor would anyone have thought that "record low sea ice" meant a record minimum if you hadn't brought it up
You honestly believe that "record low sea ice" doesn't refer to the lowest amount of the year? There's no point in continuing to discuss it with you then.
Alert receives 5 hours of daylight on March 7th. It receives 18-20 hours at the minimum. One makes it worth talking about, the other doesn't. Alert receives 0 hours of daylight as late as February 27th, so depending on the year, I'm not wrong.
> "You honestly believe that "record low sea ice" doesn't refer to the lowest amount of the year?"
That's right, and this shouldn't surprise you. As an example, when the news talks about about "record-low snowpack" in a temperate mountain region, do you think they're talking about the "lowest minimum extent", measured at the end of summer when it's normal for snowpack to be low or zero? No, that would be stupid. They're usually talking about the "lowest maximum extent", or the lowest at some point early in the year, because that tells us how much water will be available from snowmelt, how much reservoirs will refill, potential for flooding/drought, etc.
I think you're insisting on your own particular interpretation for the sake of argument, but it's certainly no more statistically useful or grammatically proper than the other ones.
I honestly believe that. The article clearly meant it that way. Why are you so insistent on interpreting it in a way which is clearly not what was stated?
When someone makes an ambiguous statement which could be either true or false depending on how you interpret it, the right thing to do is to use the interpretation which makes it true. If I say "the heaviest cat ever recorded was nearly 50lbs," you don't come along and say "that's not true, lions and tigers weigh hundreds of pounds." You realize that I'm talking about domestic cats and go from there.
They stated that there was a record low sea ice extent without saying exactly what was being measured. One measurement was a record, the other wasn't. Thus, clearly, they were talking about the one that set a record.
Can't reply to you, so here it is. This is more akin to you saying the heaviest cat is 50 pounds, but I mention a 100 pound domestic cat, and you saying it was specific to a calico cat.
It was only a correction because they were talking about it before the winter season was over, they knew by the end of March 2016 that the correction should be made. We shouldn't be even talking about it in December 2017. They can easily say lowest 3 years on record but they choose not to. WHY?
> The Arctic is warming faster than any other place on Earth...
I was reading like two days ago the Antarctic was warming faster than any other place on earth and shedding icebergs like crazy. Some sort of runaway effect from warm South Pacific water eating them away from underneath. Sea level to rise like 70ft.
> The missing station was just the result of rapid, man-made climate change, with a runaway effect on the Arctic.
I'm not a climate change denier, but isn't it disingenuous to label this as man-made. There isn't enough science around how the climate functions in general to make the assumption that in this specific area, the changes are a result of humans rather than natural cycles we have yet to identify because of the very little data we have.
"The temperature in Barrow had been warming so fast this year, the data was automatically flagged as unreal and removed from the climate database. It was done by algorithms that were put in place to ensure that only the best data gets included in NOAA’s reports."
These are algorithms that have not been triggered before. I understand that seasonal and "natural" fluctuations are taken care of. In theory that leaves man made. There is rather a lot of science around that indicates us lot as buggering up not just the climate itself but the oceans and even near space (junk). I'll grant you that this article sounds a little breathless but then the issue is a little bit important.
I'll never forget the sight of an Aussie near sobbing on camera as he described coral bleaching over huge parts of the Great Barrier Reef ("Blue Planet II" - BBC). Sun Fish are seen off Cornwall, Polar bears are running out of ice to hunt across, 1 in xhundred year weather events are being seen much more regularly than their name suggests.
We can ignore the science but as civilians we can only attribute so much to el Nino, seasonal variability and such like. Read a few papers yourself or read a few summaries from sources that you trust but don't summarise a shed load of research as:
"There isn't enough science around how the climate functions"
There isn't enough good science. If you look at the historic record (a million years or so) you'll see glaciations and interglacial periods. One thing we should expect is a new round of glaciation if nothing changes. But it's not time for that yet. A simple google for "interglacial high water mark" yielded this:
Which indicates that sea levels have historically been several feet higher than they are today during the interglacials. There is no data on the exact temperature profile over short (100 year) historic time scales.
We have evidence of data tampering - i.e. a climate model that showed the "hockey stick" regardless of what the input data was. It's a highly politicized thing.
And lastly, if I accept climate change as a result of human activity I say we still don't have decent models. We need to accurately account for the effect of contrails. There is significant evidence that this matters. There is correlation between temperature rises and the increase in air traffic. It may not be "carbon" but "water vapor" that is the cause.
I find these things interesting, but the headlines and stories are all very alarmist. Look at this fine article we're talking about. The data isn't all that interesting, it's just that it tripped a plausibility check someone implemented, and we don't know what the stated requirements for the check were.
... and yet you quote some rather good science wrt glaciation periods etc (I doubt you did it yourself)
The thing is that we live at the moment as we are with the world as it is. For example if the sea level rose say 1m (4 feet), what would that do to say FL which is rather low lying? The weather will continue to get wilder and wilder. I happen to live on the side of a hill in Yeovil, Somerset, UK (I'm alright, probably). Somerset has a low lying region called the Levels and recently they flooded badly - that will happen more often.
We have a lot of data and a lot of papers and a lot of models that predict a nasty end. Your "hockey stick" example is bollocks - the paper was sound but the interpretation by some was not.
The ridiculous thing is that although no one with a scientific bent has mentioned it, have you noticed just how odd the weather has been over the last decade? Records for hot and cold and wet etc are being broken "since records began" quite often.
"And lastly, if I accept climate change as a result of human activity I say we still don't have decent models."
I think it's fair to say climate models are modelling a very complex, near chaotic, system. One of the difficulties with this subject is understanding and verifying these models is simply impossible for the lay person. I don't think it's fair to accuse someone of a lack of research. It's possible to study this very in depth and still lack the ability to assess if the models are correct.
>I think it's fair to say climate models are modelling a very complex, near chaotic, system.
That's exactly the point. I don't think we should be pumping carbon (or any other adulterants) in to our environment. But remaining skeptical of the claims of climatologists who can't reliably predict the weather 5 days into the future while claiming the ability to definitively predict the weather 5 years (and longer) into the future does not make you a "climate change denier". I have very little doubt that the destruction we are wreaking on the environment (of which carbon pollution is a tiny part) will end poorly for us. Its fine to speculate on how exactly this blowback will manifest itself but hubris to claim to know with certainty.
You get a UV for diving in and being reasonable. I'll put money on you being one of my compatriots and probably know rather more than me on this subject.
There were claims of evidence tampering; later research using different methods of measuring global temperature showed ... a hockey stick. That's the nice thing about science: there are often multiple ways of confirming many results.
Other models showing the hockey stick does not negate the fact (??) that someone else made a rigged model to show a hockey stick. The point of bringing up the bad model isn't to refute climate change, it's to show that people will go to great lengths to "prove" climate change regardless of the data. It's a statement about politics invading science. Something we need to be acutely aware of when trying to address problems at a global level.
note: the ?? above is to indicate my own uncertainty about the rigged model. I didn't see it myself. It's unfortunate that "truth" is so elusive.
Given that the hockey stick turns out to be observed in other datasets, in fact all datasets, and no misconduct was found after an investigation, you're really not going to convince anyone that there was a "rigged model" unless they already thought that.
> We have evidence of data tampering - i.e. a climate model that showed the "hockey stick" regardless of what the input data was. It's a highly politicized thing.
This is not true
> And lastly, if I accept climate change as a result of human activity I say we still don't have decent models.
It's a pretty firm scientific consensus that mankind is having an outsized impact on the changing climate. It would be disingenuous to report otherwise.
Sure, we could be exacerbating natural cycles, but according to the large volumes of data we do have it's pretty clear that humans are a major contributing factor.
From what I've read it's much closer to 100% than it is to 50% in terms of what percentage of the current warming since 1950 can be attributed to humans.
Serious question for those who think we know all the science (I believe in warming). Are there any models of climate change which have been predictive for the past 100 years and which existed at least 5 or more years ago?
Most of them to varying degrees. They don't just start a model and hope it can predict the future, they test them by starting at a passed date and seeing if the can predict the present.
I'm not supporting the GP's viewpoint, but I think their point is that we don't have enough information to attribute warming specifically in the Arctic to human causes. I don't know very much about the subject, but given that the Arctic is a fairly large region, I'd be inclined to guess that this viewpoint is still wrong.
"but I think their point is that we don't have enough information to attribute warming specifically in the Arctic to human causes"
How many papers have you read? There are quite a few that refute your standpoint. When I say quite a few I am really taking the piss: every single scientist, and by that term I mean people who spend their lives studying things, who are responsibly qualified and who use the scientific method which involves observation, analysis and reasonable conclusion.
I'll grant you that there are many sources of bollocks that might distract you but if you stick to decent, authoritative sources you will discover that not only are things as bad as you think they are, they are actually worse.
Personally, I'm a bit of an optimist and I think we can pull back from the brink (whatever that is) but the world is gong to be a bit odd in say 100 years time for humans.
> We don't have enough data to guess next month's weather let alone the possible effects in 10+ years.
Weather is very different from climate. As an example, for many regions of the world you can accurately predict the average rain fall per year, but it is nearly impossible to predict whether it will be raining at noon in 7 weeks from now.
Maybe a better analogy for this audience: Predicting statistics does not require predicting particle orbits. Insurance pricing does not require being able to predict the health of each individual person.
> It takes a special kind of hubris for someone to think they understand climate change with the minute dataset we have.
And an even greater hubris to ignore the pretty vast dataset we do have and go diametrically against the conclusions it suggests.
It's also pretty funny how that greater hubris is exhibited mainly in a particular country, and a specific party in that country which has a lot of ties/donations from oil companies. Especially when other branches of the government are preparing for the results of man made climate change. Makes you think, doesn't it.
In a certain state in said country, the majority of people are very much not a part of said party, recycle by law, and claim to live with minimal carbon footprint.
They also prefer to buy gas-guzzling SUVs, use millions of gallons of water to maintain lawns in the desert, redirect water to their large population centers to do so, and line up to buy the new iThing each year (tossing out the perfectly good old one in the trash).
> They also prefer to buy gas-guzzling SUVs, use millions of gallons of water to maintain lawns in the desert, redirect water to their large population centers to do so, and line up to buy the new iThing each year (tossing out the perfectly good old one in the trash).
All whilst maintaining the third lowest CO2 emissions per capita. Incredible!
I’m seriously trying to figure out what state you are talking about. Definitely not California (cities aren’t very near the desert, even Los Angeles is in a semi humid basin), Arizona doesn’t have lawns mostly, Utah SLC wouldn’t really qualify as desert either. So then I thought you might mean Saudi Arabia?
Sure, but that isn’t many of them. A drive through the desert finds it is mostly unpopulated. Definitely “desert” doesn’t define most of California’s population, it isn’t related to the Bay Area, Sacramento, etc....
The list is incomplete; it seems to include only cities in the named deserts, not cities in desert climate; much of the San Joaquin Valley, especially the southern part, is desert—but not in a specifically named desert—that is irrigated for agriculture.
That still doesn’t make sense, those people primarily vote Republican and are agricultural. GP was hinting about vast liberal desert cities...so they must mean some other state.
I’ve taken highway 395 all the way from LA to Susanville (afterwards took an even more obscure highway to crater lake). Very nice drive if you can afford the detour. The only big desert city I went through was Reno.
It's an inherently political issue, one that has pretty clear cut lines. I'll give you a dollar if you can guess which side of the line has more funding from oil companies and other vested interests.
Can you imagine why that particular line might be the one espousing climate change denial and skepticism, uniquely in the developed world, whilst simultaneously preparing for it?
Should you not be skeptical of where your skepticism comes from?
It takes a special kind of hubris to assume that all science is absolute in it's correctness and non-politicized. Come on now, it's important to be skeptical of both angles.
The manufacturer (IPCC) says that based on their best information and models if you do not get your oil changed in your car every 10k miles it will lead to increased engine wear which can lead to other problems. Every reputable mechanic (climate scientists)agrees that 10k is a reasonable estimate and that people who drive over that limit will lead to even worse results on average.
Now lets say you've got a smart uncle Jim. He's a damned good electrician and he's been driving his car over 10k without changing his oil for years and he says his car is still running great. He brings it into the shop and the mechanic says his mileage is down and there's some wear on the engine that they can see. Since your uncle Jim can't see the wear that these mechanics see he accuses them of trying to rip him off and drives the vehicle even farther past the 10k miles just to prove them wrong.
This is the climate change debate in a car analogy. There's tons of variables that can affect how long a car lasts and no good mechanic can tell on what day a car will break, but over a long enough timeline they can say for sure that it will result in degraded performance.
This is incorrect. Researchers have sophisticated models backed by large amounts of data which they use to develop predictions. While there is uncertainty in specifics regarding weather patterns, this does not mean that we don't have sufficiently peaked predictions regarding climate to inform policy, especially when we look at predictions of ensembles of models, e.g. https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/....
Consensus enough that geoengineering countermeasure "proposals" (they've already started these programs decades ago) explicitly counter the mechanisms that only humans could have started.
In the last decade or even century, yes. But we have very little idea what the actual norm is in terms of fluctuations over the course of a few decades in the context of millennia because we don't have data at that granularity for the vast majority of history.
No, we have data that goes back millions even 100's of millions of years. The granularity of much of that is rather coarse.
The data for 1000s of years is quite fine grained. There are trees that are over 1000 years old and ice cores that give near monthly data going back a very long time. There are also a lot of other clues as to climate from other sources.
The UK's Met. office was established in 1854 and I'm sure that several others are just as old. That's simply when weather prediction became interesting. There is loads of data (temperature, wind speed etc) from before then, from ships and land based sources.
We even have data from ancient civilisations and this can sometimes be corroborated and hence other things be reasonably inferred. More modern, we know that people were ice skating on the river Thames in the 18th century - that's quite a big river and it does not freeze these days - that was a mini ice age.
Anyway, we have a lot of data and it goes back a long, long, way (with a few gaps)
We have less data going back millennia, but it's their. Now, if your talking 100,000+ year cycles then fine, but you need to demonstrate what makes today different from yesterday on such a scale.
Consider creationist's can request an intermediary fossil from A and C, but if you find B between them they now say their is two missing links A to B and B to C. Repeat as needed.
What specific data do you think is missing, for what time period, to defend what hypothesis, that makes what testable prediction?
We have oceans of data around a lot of things that supposedly scientific-minded people prefer to ignore.
There's also the fact that agenda-based science (not saying that's what this is) can easily produce an ocean of data, e.g., showing that tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer.
EDIT: To the downvoters, I shouldn't have used "Big Tobacco". I would prefer not to name other areas of research to try and keep this non-political. I am only pointing out that data and its interpretation are two very different things, and the incentives matter.
Big Tobacco never actually had data preventing the link from cancer to tobacco. They simply did not publish their studies and required more data to prove the link, because it 'required more research'. Basically, the same issue people bring up with climate science, while never defining what 'enough data' is other than simply more than we have.
> There's also the fact that agenda-based science (not saying that's what this is) can easily produce an ocean of data, e.g., showing that tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer.
reply
Ah yes, Big Climateology chasing the big bucks by fabricating CO2 measurements.
I think the better plan is to negate everything before the 'but' since what follows is almost inevitably something that proves they're exactly what they've just claimed they aren't.
The statement "if humans didn't cause the warming, than obviously changing what humans do can't possibly stop it" is often behind the question. And on the flip side, scientists advocating that humans change their behavior wish to show that the suggested actions will make an actual difference.
Because that determines whether humans are to blame or not, which is a core component to virtue signaling. Not saying I see it in this conversation, but I have growing concerns about environmentalism-as-morality.
Is there hard data showing sea ice melt causes ocean levels to rise? Because water will displace the same mass whether it is frozen or not. The best explanation I've heard is the loss of reflection from the sea ice will cause the water to warm, and warm water is less dense. But most sea ice is underwater, so am not sure just how much reflection is lost, and how much that affects the sea water warming.
"Because water will displace the same mass whether it is frozen or not."
Why do bergs float and have a bit sticking up out of the water?
Why do ice cubes in my G&T insist on floating?
Sea ice melt is a bit of a worry if you are a polar bear that hunts on pack ice but for sea rise the real snag is land based glaciers melting into the sea. Greenland may be off your radar but it is a bit of a worry - lot of ice turning into water there, along with other places.
Sea ice melt is a huge worry because it changes the albedo of the polar ocean. That means more heating from the sun, which means a warmer Arctic and a warmer planet. It's one of the positive reinforcement mechanisms that's a huge worry to the climate community.
Greenland melting is also huge, and sea ice melting will make it go faster.
But how much does it actually change the albedo? Are there hard numbers and analysis? Most of the sea ice is below the surface, so a lot of sea ice melt does not necessarily translate to a large change in albedo.
Because they're less dense than the liquid water that surrounds them! If they were exactly the same density they wouldn't float. But since they're less dense, they stick out an amount proportional to their lowered density.
It is not Alaska (the title was changed) that is warming "too" fast. The models and the algorithms are the ones to blame. And in this case WP for the sensationalism. Don't you agree? Please someone explain so in place of the downvotes.
Lowest sea ice ever recorded is verifiably untrue. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/09/arctic-sea-ice-at-...
It was the 8th lowest in the 38 year record.
However, the WaPo cites NOAA's 2017 Arctic Report Card, which says this:
> "The lowest winter maximum ice extent in the satellite record (1979-2017) occurred on 7 March 2017. The extent was 14.42 million km2, 8% below the 1981-2010 average. This was the third straight year of a record low winter maximum."
The is a different meaning of "record low sea ice", but it's just as valid.
So I'm asking you, would it address your concern if the WaPo article said something like, "record low winter maximum" instead?
Having a low at the maximum doesn't lead to conversations about less ice = less sun reflected = more warming, since it's basically total darkness during the maximum.
Absolutely it would address my concerns if they actually wrote it correctly.
>This was the third straight year of a record low winter maximum.
Is also false since 2016 had more sea ice than 2015.
I can understand the desire for more specificity. I can't understand assuming, based on nothing, that it must refer to something which makes the statement incorrect, rather than something else which makes the statement correct
It's not total darkness during the maximum. The 2017 maximum occurred on March 7th, which is just two weeks away from the equinox. At that time, most of the arctic receives direct sunlight and all of it receives at least some sunlight.
You honestly believe that "record low sea ice" doesn't refer to the lowest amount of the year? There's no point in continuing to discuss it with you then.
Alert receives 5 hours of daylight on March 7th. It receives 18-20 hours at the minimum. One makes it worth talking about, the other doesn't. Alert receives 0 hours of daylight as late as February 27th, so depending on the year, I'm not wrong.
That's right, and this shouldn't surprise you. As an example, when the news talks about about "record-low snowpack" in a temperate mountain region, do you think they're talking about the "lowest minimum extent", measured at the end of summer when it's normal for snowpack to be low or zero? No, that would be stupid. They're usually talking about the "lowest maximum extent", or the lowest at some point early in the year, because that tells us how much water will be available from snowmelt, how much reservoirs will refill, potential for flooding/drought, etc.
I think you're insisting on your own particular interpretation for the sake of argument, but it's certainly no more statistically useful or grammatically proper than the other ones.
When someone makes an ambiguous statement which could be either true or false depending on how you interpret it, the right thing to do is to use the interpretation which makes it true. If I say "the heaviest cat ever recorded was nearly 50lbs," you don't come along and say "that's not true, lions and tigers weigh hundreds of pounds." You realize that I'm talking about domestic cats and go from there.
They stated that there was a record low sea ice extent without saying exactly what was being measured. One measurement was a record, the other wasn't. Thus, clearly, they were talking about the one that set a record.
2016 was said to be the record low maximum last but a correction put it above 2015 for just 3.000 km^2. And the extent was 14.52 MILLION km^2
So, perhaps, as NSIDC writes, Arctic sea ice maximum at record low for third straight year
By the way, the fracking diference between 2015 and 2016 low maximum was less than 0.02%.
I ythink, you're trying to find anything to deny the data, even the most absurd minute word, why?
Are you seriously a sea ice height/depth soz - level fan?
I was reading like two days ago the Antarctic was warming faster than any other place on earth and shedding icebergs like crazy. Some sort of runaway effect from warm South Pacific water eating them away from underneath. Sea level to rise like 70ft.
Get your story straight people...
I'm not a climate change denier, but isn't it disingenuous to label this as man-made. There isn't enough science around how the climate functions in general to make the assumption that in this specific area, the changes are a result of humans rather than natural cycles we have yet to identify because of the very little data we have.
"The temperature in Barrow had been warming so fast this year, the data was automatically flagged as unreal and removed from the climate database. It was done by algorithms that were put in place to ensure that only the best data gets included in NOAA’s reports."
These are algorithms that have not been triggered before. I understand that seasonal and "natural" fluctuations are taken care of. In theory that leaves man made. There is rather a lot of science around that indicates us lot as buggering up not just the climate itself but the oceans and even near space (junk). I'll grant you that this article sounds a little breathless but then the issue is a little bit important.
I'll never forget the sight of an Aussie near sobbing on camera as he described coral bleaching over huge parts of the Great Barrier Reef ("Blue Planet II" - BBC). Sun Fish are seen off Cornwall, Polar bears are running out of ice to hunt across, 1 in xhundred year weather events are being seen much more regularly than their name suggests.
We can ignore the science but as civilians we can only attribute so much to el Nino, seasonal variability and such like. Read a few papers yourself or read a few summaries from sources that you trust but don't summarise a shed load of research as:
"There isn't enough science around how the climate functions"
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climate-change/changing-ice...
Which indicates that sea levels have historically been several feet higher than they are today during the interglacials. There is no data on the exact temperature profile over short (100 year) historic time scales.
We have evidence of data tampering - i.e. a climate model that showed the "hockey stick" regardless of what the input data was. It's a highly politicized thing.
And lastly, if I accept climate change as a result of human activity I say we still don't have decent models. We need to accurately account for the effect of contrails. There is significant evidence that this matters. There is correlation between temperature rises and the increase in air traffic. It may not be "carbon" but "water vapor" that is the cause.
I find these things interesting, but the headlines and stories are all very alarmist. Look at this fine article we're talking about. The data isn't all that interesting, it's just that it tripped a plausibility check someone implemented, and we don't know what the stated requirements for the check were.
... and yet you quote some rather good science wrt glaciation periods etc (I doubt you did it yourself)
The thing is that we live at the moment as we are with the world as it is. For example if the sea level rose say 1m (4 feet), what would that do to say FL which is rather low lying? The weather will continue to get wilder and wilder. I happen to live on the side of a hill in Yeovil, Somerset, UK (I'm alright, probably). Somerset has a low lying region called the Levels and recently they flooded badly - that will happen more often.
We have a lot of data and a lot of papers and a lot of models that predict a nasty end. Your "hockey stick" example is bollocks - the paper was sound but the interpretation by some was not.
The ridiculous thing is that although no one with a scientific bent has mentioned it, have you noticed just how odd the weather has been over the last decade? Records for hot and cold and wet etc are being broken "since records began" quite often.
"And lastly, if I accept climate change as a result of human activity I say we still don't have decent models."
Have you done any research on this whatsoever?
I think it's fair to say climate models are modelling a very complex, near chaotic, system. One of the difficulties with this subject is understanding and verifying these models is simply impossible for the lay person. I don't think it's fair to accuse someone of a lack of research. It's possible to study this very in depth and still lack the ability to assess if the models are correct.
That's exactly the point. I don't think we should be pumping carbon (or any other adulterants) in to our environment. But remaining skeptical of the claims of climatologists who can't reliably predict the weather 5 days into the future while claiming the ability to definitively predict the weather 5 years (and longer) into the future does not make you a "climate change denier". I have very little doubt that the destruction we are wreaking on the environment (of which carbon pollution is a tiny part) will end poorly for us. Its fine to speculate on how exactly this blowback will manifest itself but hubris to claim to know with certainty.
>> Have you done any research on this whatsoever?
You seem to prefer attacking people rather than concepts.
Have you? The models are all terrible. They can't even output matching observed data!
"They can't even output matching observed data!" - example please?
Citation needed
For example, see the post-2010 studies mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph#2010_onward... ... hockey sticks galore.
note: the ?? above is to indicate my own uncertainty about the rigged model. I didn't see it myself. It's unfortunate that "truth" is so elusive.
Given that the hockey stick turns out to be observed in other datasets, in fact all datasets, and no misconduct was found after an investigation, you're really not going to convince anyone that there was a "rigged model" unless they already thought that.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/403256/global-warming-bom...
I hope you will provide links to back the claim that it was rigged, isn't?
This is not true
> And lastly, if I accept climate change as a result of human activity I say we still don't have decent models.
This is also not true
Sure, we could be exacerbating natural cycles, but according to the large volumes of data we do have it's pretty clear that humans are a major contributing factor.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
How many papers have you read? There are quite a few that refute your standpoint. When I say quite a few I am really taking the piss: every single scientist, and by that term I mean people who spend their lives studying things, who are responsibly qualified and who use the scientific method which involves observation, analysis and reasonable conclusion.
I'll grant you that there are many sources of bollocks that might distract you but if you stick to decent, authoritative sources you will discover that not only are things as bad as you think they are, they are actually worse.
Personally, I'm a bit of an optimist and I think we can pull back from the brink (whatever that is) but the world is gong to be a bit odd in say 100 years time for humans.
Science isn't consensus. And besides, we have nothing firm at all.
We don't have enough data to guess next month's weather let alone the possible effects in 10+ years.
Weather is very different from climate. As an example, for many regions of the world you can accurately predict the average rain fall per year, but it is nearly impossible to predict whether it will be raining at noon in 7 weeks from now.
Maybe a better analogy for this audience: Predicting statistics does not require predicting particle orbits. Insurance pricing does not require being able to predict the health of each individual person.
For this audience, try load averages. Your 1m load average will be significantly more volatile and unpredictable than your 15m load average.
And an even greater hubris to ignore the pretty vast dataset we do have and go diametrically against the conclusions it suggests.
It's also pretty funny how that greater hubris is exhibited mainly in a particular country, and a specific party in that country which has a lot of ties/donations from oil companies. Especially when other branches of the government are preparing for the results of man made climate change. Makes you think, doesn't it.
They also prefer to buy gas-guzzling SUVs, use millions of gallons of water to maintain lawns in the desert, redirect water to their large population centers to do so, and line up to buy the new iThing each year (tossing out the perfectly good old one in the trash).
All whilst maintaining the third lowest CO2 emissions per capita. Incredible!
The coastal cities aren't, but the southern central valley cities (Bakersfield, notably) are in the desert.
You can find a list of California’s largest desert cities at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deserts_of_California, and it’s pretty marginal. Note Bakersfield isn’t even on that list.
The list is incomplete; it seems to include only cities in the named deserts, not cities in desert climate; much of the San Joaquin Valley, especially the southern part, is desert—but not in a specifically named desert—that is irrigated for agriculture.
Plenty of people agree that there is not enough data to draw conclusions about such a complex issue. Way to make this political for no reason.
Can you imagine why that particular line might be the one espousing climate change denial and skepticism, uniquely in the developed world, whilst simultaneously preparing for it?
Should you not be skeptical of where your skepticism comes from?
What people, climate scientists?
It takes a very special kind of hubris to be critical of the science when you apparently get confused between climate and weather.
The manufacturer (IPCC) says that based on their best information and models if you do not get your oil changed in your car every 10k miles it will lead to increased engine wear which can lead to other problems. Every reputable mechanic (climate scientists)agrees that 10k is a reasonable estimate and that people who drive over that limit will lead to even worse results on average.
Now lets say you've got a smart uncle Jim. He's a damned good electrician and he's been driving his car over 10k without changing his oil for years and he says his car is still running great. He brings it into the shop and the mechanic says his mileage is down and there's some wear on the engine that they can see. Since your uncle Jim can't see the wear that these mechanics see he accuses them of trying to rip him off and drives the vehicle even farther past the 10k miles just to prove them wrong.
This is the climate change debate in a car analogy. There's tons of variables that can affect how long a car lasts and no good mechanic can tell on what day a car will break, but over a long enough timeline they can say for sure that it will result in degraded performance.
The data for 1000s of years is quite fine grained. There are trees that are over 1000 years old and ice cores that give near monthly data going back a very long time. There are also a lot of other clues as to climate from other sources.
The UK's Met. office was established in 1854 and I'm sure that several others are just as old. That's simply when weather prediction became interesting. There is loads of data (temperature, wind speed etc) from before then, from ships and land based sources.
We even have data from ancient civilisations and this can sometimes be corroborated and hence other things be reasonably inferred. More modern, we know that people were ice skating on the river Thames in the 18th century - that's quite a big river and it does not freeze these days - that was a mini ice age.
Anyway, we have a lot of data and it goes back a long, long, way (with a few gaps)
Consider creationist's can request an intermediary fossil from A and C, but if you find B between them they now say their is two missing links A to B and B to C. Repeat as needed.
What specific data do you think is missing, for what time period, to defend what hypothesis, that makes what testable prediction?
There's also the fact that agenda-based science (not saying that's what this is) can easily produce an ocean of data, e.g., showing that tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer.
EDIT: To the downvoters, I shouldn't have used "Big Tobacco". I would prefer not to name other areas of research to try and keep this non-political. I am only pointing out that data and its interpretation are two very different things, and the incentives matter.
Ah yes, Big Climateology chasing the big bucks by fabricating CO2 measurements.
I was always told to ignore everything before the 'but'.
Because, you know, proof and ethics and all that.
Why do bergs float and have a bit sticking up out of the water?
Why do ice cubes in my G&T insist on floating?
Sea ice melt is a bit of a worry if you are a polar bear that hunts on pack ice but for sea rise the real snag is land based glaciers melting into the sea. Greenland may be off your radar but it is a bit of a worry - lot of ice turning into water there, along with other places.
Greenland melting is also huge, and sea ice melting will make it go faster.
Because they're less dense than the liquid water that surrounds them! If they were exactly the same density they wouldn't float. But since they're less dense, they stick out an amount proportional to their lowered density.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15893859
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15083989
The Earth isn't warming, that we know.
The models that used to predict the warming can't even output data that matches the observed data.
In 20 years, when the Earth has cooled, all the people who failed to use science will look like fools.
[citation needed]