Global Warning/Climate Change

Things that are not part of politics happening presently and how we approach or address it as Anabaptists.
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JimFoxvog
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by JimFoxvog »

God created the laws of physics. He keeps things running according to his plan, these laws of physics. Although God can and does work miracles, I believe he usually allows things to follow his laws. These laws of physics can be discovered and understood, at least in part. God has given man the ability to create (in a sense) and destroy (in a sense) things. Our creating and destroying follow the law of conservation of mass/energy but it allows us to change things. God could prevent a nuclear war with the following nuclear winter, but I do not think we have that assurance.
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GaryK
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by GaryK »

Bootstrap wrote:
GaryK wrote:You must have misunderstood my question. Why is the present climate cycle being associated with human activity but previous much more catastrophic one weren't/aren't? All you've done is repeat what you've been saying all along. Were the previous one human caused?
GaryK wrote:Did I really mention anything about human caused catastrophes in my question? Did you see the part about climate cycle?
Here's where I'm getting lost. As I understand the science, we hit a critical mass where we are impacting the environment much more than we had been in the past because of the extent to which we are changing the atmosphere. That's what I tried to show earlier.

You are calling this "the present climate cycle". That presumes that this is just part of a normal cycle. But that's not what mainstream scientists are telling us, they are saying most of this is man-made.

Earlier cycles were not strongly influenced by humans because we weren't changing the atmosphere anywhere near as much before the industrial era.
So if more severe climate cycles in the past weren't man-made why are you not open to the idea that our present climate cycle may not be man-made as well? Why is it not possible that God is simply doing today what he has done numerous times in the past?

God has shown in the past what he is able to do to the climate without any help from humans. I think He's well capable of doing the same today but apparently you don't think so.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Bootstrap »

Three things.

1. These graphs are nowhere near on the same scale. Rapid change is more catastrophic than very slow change. if the bottom graph were 8 inches wide, the top graph would be 0.00096 inches wide if it were on the same scale, and you would not expect that much change in such a narrow space of time.
2. Other graphs done by scientists look very different for this time period. Other graphs show a much stronger correlation between C02 and temperature. There's some discussion of this here: Can we make better graphs of global temperature history?
3. We didn't have thermometers a million years ago, we are using various methods to try to guess. Scotese is a respected scientist, but there's nothing like consensus on what the right numbers are, and it's not at all easy to know. I haven't seen any evidence that we really know these numbers for sure.

Here's the equivalent IPCC4 chart, which does show a correlation.

Image
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Bootstrap
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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GaryK wrote:So if more severe climate cycles in the past weren't man-made why are you not open to the idea that our present climate cycle may not be man-made as well? Why is it not possible that God is simply doing today what he has done numerous times in the past?
Well, decades ago, I was very open minded about this. But the people who were saying that were also saying we were entering a cooling cycle that never happened, and the people who said the earth was warming turned out to be right, their predictions forecasted what happened, and they were able to explain the scientific mechanisms that would cause this warming.

I think that mirrors what happened in the scientific community. Three decades ago, the evidence behind global warming was not as strong as it is today. Over time, the predictions that turned out to be right were the ones made by those who say we are causing global warming.

And when I look at the arguments made against man-made global warming, I haven't found them very convincing. If I had, I would have changed my mind. I have taken time to understand and evaluate most of these arguments, I'm not hearing a lot of new ones.

May I turn the question around? You seem very closed to the idea that scientists might understand global warming. Why?
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GaryK
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by GaryK »

Bootstrap wrote:
GaryK wrote:So if more severe climate cycles in the past weren't man-made why are you not open to the idea that our present climate cycle may not be man-made as well? Why is it not possible that God is simply doing today what he has done numerous times in the past?
Well, decades ago, I was very open minded about this. But the people who were saying that were also saying we were entering a cooling cycle that never happened, and the people who said the earth was warming turned out to be right, their predictions forecasted what happened, and they were able to explain the scientific mechanisms that would cause this warming.

I think that mirrors what happened in the scientific community. Three decades ago, the evidence behind global warming was not as strong as it is today. Over time, the predictions that turned out to be right were the ones made by those who say we are causing global warming.

And when I look at the arguments made against man-made global warming, I haven't found them very convincing. If I had, I would have changed my mind.

May I turn the question around? You seem very closed to the idea that scientists might understand global warming. Why?
For the same reason I am closed to the idea that scientists might understand human origins. God has done a good job of controlling the climate however he see's fit for at least 6000 years without any input from humans. I really haven't seen any good reasons to believe He needs humans to tell Him how to do it now.
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Wayne in Maine
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Wayne in Maine »

Bootstrap wrote:
1. Carbon dioxide and global temperature rise are highly correlated, and
2. There are good scientific reasons to expect carbon dioxide to affect global temperature
These are very, very simplistic statements. The effect of CO2 on atmospheric and surface heat retention is still not so precisely known as you suggest, nor are other feedback mechanisms which have prevented "runaway global warming" that many "mainstream" models actually predicted at one time (for example: Earth’s climate may not warm as quickly as expected, suggest new cloud studies..
3. Past predictions about future global temperature have been reasonably accurate, confirming our understanding of these mechanisms.
The recent sigh of relief over the world having more time to reduce C02 New climate change calculations could buy the Earth some time — if they’re right is an actual admission that the models have been overly hot: “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations.”.

Here are the models vs the measurements:

Image

John Cook spins this by stating "Global surface temperature measurements fall within the range of IPCC projections." Here's the graph he publishes to support this claim:

Image

One might claim that the measurements are within the range, but thee fact that they are pretty consistently in the low, even extreme low range of most of the models should invite the analysts who have created these models to make some revisions to their formulas.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Bootstrap »

Wayne in Maine wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:
1. Carbon dioxide and global temperature rise are highly correlated, and
2. There are good scientific reasons to expect carbon dioxide to affect global temperature
These are very, very simplistic statements. The effect of CO2 on atmospheric and surface heat retention is still not so precisely known as you suggest, nor are other feedback mechanisms which have prevented "runaway global warming" that many "mainstream" models actually predicted at one time (for example: Earth’s climate may not warm as quickly as expected, suggest new cloud studies..
You are making some very, very simplistic statements too, and I think that happens quite naturally whenever we try to provide simple summaries of more complicated things. We have each provided fuller explanations of the same things too.

Let me pick just one thing from your post to respond to for now:
Here are the models vs the measurements:

Image
But those aren't measuring the same thing at all, and it's a bit strange to see them on the same graph. John Christy is estimating temperature in the mid-troposphere, and that might well be different from earth and sea temperature, that doesn't mean we don't know how to measure temperature on earth and sea. Global warming down here is what we are most concerned about.

And Christy is presenting his own estimates as though they are the gold standard, despite the fact that other groups who work with the same data compute significantly different temperatures from this data. Satellites don't measure temperature. Scientists are still trying to work out reliable ways to measure temperature using satellite data, with complicated models that require parameters that they don't agree on. Until the people doing satellite temperature research can agree on the right way to measure temperature, I don't think we can accept that as the gold standard.

Thermometers on earth are a whole lot easier to understand.
Bootstrap wrote:If you go back and look at earlier reports, the IPCC predictions are the most accurate predictions of future temperature and sea level that I've been able to find. You like to quote Judith Curry, but she predicted that global warming would stop in 1995 and usher in a time of global cooling. Oops, let's make that 1995. Oops, let's make that 2002. Oops, let's make that 2007. Oops, let's make that 2010 ...

John Christy has argued that this does not correlate with his measurements - but these are measurements of mid-tropospheric temperature, and he doesn't actually measure temperature. Here's the graph Christy presented at the "Data or Dogma" hearing in Congress. John Cook has added his own comments, which I agree with:

Image
When I posted this the first time, I omitted a quote from two colleagues of Christy's who work with the same dataset by mistake. I've edited it this part to add the quote and make it more coherent.
Bootstrap wrote:Two climate scientists who work with the same datasets responded to this, and their testimony is posted on skeptical science.com. Here's what they said about this graph.
Climate policy should be formulated on the basis of both the best-available scientific information and the best-possible analysis and interpretation. Sadly, neither was on display at the Senate hearing on “Data or Dogma?” There was no attempt to provide an accurate assessment of uncertainties in satellite data, or to give a complete and balanced analysis of the reasons for short-term differences between modeled and observed warming rates. Political theater trumped true “open inquiry”.
In short, “all models are too sensitive to CO2” is not the only valid explanation for the model-data differences in Exhibit A (2, 11, 13, 18,22-24, 26, 30, 32-38). Dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies show that the other three explanations presented here (“model input errors”, “observational errors”, and “different variability sequences”) are the primary reasons for most or all of the warming rate differences in Exhibit A.[j]

But what if climate models really were a factor of three or more too sensitive to human-caused GHG increases, as claimed by the majority side of the subcommittee? The telltale signatures of such a serious climate sensitivity error would be evident in many different comparisons with observations, and not just over the last 18 years. We’d expect to see the imprint of this large error in comparisons with observed surface temperature changes over the 20th century (37-42), and in comparisons with the observed cooling after large volcanic eruptions (30, 43, 44). We don’t. There are many cases where observed changes are actually larger than the model expectations (41, 42), not smaller.

In assessing climate change and its causes, examining one individual 18-year period is poor statistical practice, and of limited usefulness. Analysts would not look at the record of stock trading on a particular day to gain reliable insights into long-term structural changes in the Dow Jones index. Looking at behavior over decades – or at the statistics of trading on all individual days – provides far greater diagnostic power. In the same way, climate scientists study changes over decades or longer (39-42, 45), or examine all possible trends of a particular length (23, 38, 46-48). Both strategies reduce the impact of large, year-to-year natural climate variability[k] on trend estimates. The message from this body of work? Don’t cherry-pick; look at all the evidence, not just the carefully selected evidence that supports a particular point of view.


Converting this MSU data to temperature requires a complicated model with unverified parameters. It's not the solid ground you imply when you say that satellites "just measure" temperature. Satellites have microwave sensing units (MSUs) that measure voltage on detectors that detect microwave signals emitted by oxygen molecules, and the microwave signals vary depending on temperature changes. To get temperature from these signals requires a complex model that adjusts on various factors, and there's significant disagreement among scientists on how to do that most accurately.

And ... why this emphasis on the mid-troposphere? Shouldn't we be more concerned about what happens down here, where we know how to accurately measure temperature and sea level?
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Bootstrap
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Bootstrap »

GaryK wrote:For the same reason I am closed to the idea that scientists might understand human origins. God has done a good job of controlling the climate however he see's fit for at least 6000 years without any input from humans. I really haven't seen any good reasons to believe He needs humans to tell Him how to do it now.
I don't think the issue is that God needs humans to do anything at all. That doesn't mean that there's nothing at all that humans should do.

Consider Genesis 2:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Why would God need Adam to work the garden of Eden and keep it? Certainly God was capable of doing that on his own! Still, I suspect there would have been consequences if Adam had not done these things. And certainly God could have prevented Adam and Eve from the forbidden fruit, but he did not.

The actions of human beings do have consequences. The Bible is clear about that. It's not because God is dependent on us.
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GaryK
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by GaryK »

Bootstrap wrote:
GaryK wrote:For the same reason I am closed to the idea that scientists might understand human origins. God has done a good job of controlling the climate however he see's fit for at least 6000 years without any input from humans. I really haven't seen any good reasons to believe He needs humans to tell Him how to do it now.
I don't think the issue is that God needs humans to do anything at all. That doesn't mean that there's nothing at all that humans should do.

Consider Genesis 2:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Why would God need Adam to work the garden of Eden and keep it? Certainly God was capable of doing that on his own! Still, I suspect there would have been consequences if Adam had not done these things. And certainly God could have prevented Adam and Eve from the forbidden fruit, but he did not.

The actions of human beings do have consequences. The Bible is clear about that. It's not because God is dependent on us.
Boot, with respect, I think you know what I'm getting at. In my mind it basically boils down to this. To be so firmly convinced that the warming is caused by humans with no possibility of it being another instance where God is changing the climate, as he has many times in the past, is limiting God and putting human reasoning ahead of Him. In one of your earlier posts you stated that "God alone controls the weather". You can't really believe that and then in essence say that humans are controlling the weather without it being a contradiction.

Earlier you also stated "I don't think science is about proving or disproving God". I hope you are not saying that a lot of scientists are not trying disprove God.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Bootstrap »

GaryK wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:Consider Genesis 2:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Why would God need Adam to work the garden of Eden and keep it? Certainly God was capable of doing that on his own! Still, I suspect there would have been consequences if Adam had not done these things. And certainly God could have prevented Adam and Eve from the forbidden fruit, but he did not.

The actions of human beings do have consequences. The Bible is clear about that. It's not because God is dependent on us.
Boot, with respect, I think you know what I'm getting at. In my mind it basically boils down to this. To be so firmly convinced that the warming is caused by humans with no possibility of it being another instance where God is changing the climate, as he has many times in the past, is limiting God and putting human reasoning ahead of Him. In one of your earlier posts you stated that "God alone controls the weather". You can't really believe that and then in essence say that humans are controlling the weather without it being a contradiction.

Earlier you also stated "I don't think science is about proving or disproving God". I hope you are not saying that a lot of scientists are not trying disprove God.
Hmmm. Maybe I'm being dense, but I really don't understand that critique. I think there is a significant risk that scientist are warning about. If it were a weather report, I would bring my jacket with me. If it's consequences of our pollution, I would pollute less. God could choose to stave off the rain, and he is certainly in control of the weather, but I don't think that God is telling me to leave the jacket at home. In either case, human knowledge is limited and the prediction might be wrong. In either case, God could choose to intervene even if we take risks that we know about. But I still think it's more prudent to act responsibly.

Doesn't mean we have to see it the same way, but I don't understand what's wrong with that, I don't think it has anything to do with having less faith in God. My understanding of faith says that a Christian can go ahead and put on a jacket if there's a credible risk of rain. I'm not trying to poke holes in what you say - I'm having a hard time understanding it, but that's OK - but I am trying to explain the way I see it. I'm not sure if you understand what I'm saying either, though ... are we just talking past each other?

Is any scientist making a serious argument that global warming disproves God? I haven't heard that one.
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