Global warming/climate change discussion

[Bootstrap]

A lot of this stuff basically is based on the belief that scientists are in a conspiracy to fool you. I happen to believe that political factions and lobbyists are often in a conspiracy to fool us and that scientists are generally more objective. I don't think that we know this science better than the climate scientists do.

It's pretty easy to accurately predict the future, when you can just change history...

Are you saying the three graphs I provided do that? I can't easily track the things in the post you point to, which seems to be based on other blog posts. If you think that the temperature record in the three graphs I provided is wrong, could you explain how you believe they are wrong, and what makes you believe that?

I have not seen any scientists actually questioning that TOB adjustments are responsible for the demonstrated warming trend. There is a lot of discussion about whether the adjustments are accurate, but I have yet to see any discussions where the TOB defenders don't fall back to ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority. If you can point me to something of substance, I'd gladly review.

Sure. This looks like a good place to start.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-re ... toring.php

I can we can all agree that it's hard to take warming trends seriously, when they almost complete rely on changing historical data, not current measurements.

I think you are assuming the conclusion here. I don't think the scientists at NOAA agree with your claim.

Here's a simple question. Why do they continue to adjust 1930-70s temperature data? No new information has come out, but they continue to make adjustments. I think the simplest answer, is that they are bending history to make their predictions at least credible.

I think the real answer is that we need to do apples-to-apples comparisons, and the way we measure temperature has changed. We can measure the old way and the new way and compare. Also, the sensors have often moved, cities have grown around them, and a given sensor may well be measuring something different now than before.

This makes very little difference in global climate temperature measurements. It makes a big difference in US climate temperature measurements. My three graphs were based on global climate temperature measurements, I don't think the adjustments are the basis for the warming in those graphs.

Here's one starting point in a guest post on Judith Curry's blog.

Measuring temperatures in the U.S. no easy task. While we have mostly volunteer-run weather station data from across the country going back to the late 1800s, these weather stations were never set up to consistently monitor long-term changes to the climate.

Stations have moved to different locations over the past 150 years, most more than once. They have changed instruments from mercury thermometers to electronic sensors, and have changed the time they take temperature measurements from afternoon to morning. Cities have grown up around stations, and some weather stations are not ideally located.

All of these issues introduce errors into the temperature record. To detect and deal with these errors, NOAA uses a process called homogenization which compares each station to its neighbors, flags stations that show localized changes in longer-term temperatures not found in nearby stations, and removes these local breakpoints. While the impact of these adjustments on temperature records is relatively small globally, in the U.S. it has a much larger effect due to the frequent changes that have occurred at our volunteer-run Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) stations (specifically time of observation changes and instrument changes). Fixes to errors in temperature data have effectively doubled the amount of U.S. warming over the past century compared to the raw temperature records.

[Bootstrap]

Part of being a Christian is a required amount of skepticism, distrust, and lack of faith in worldly wisdom and institutions.

The elite globalists are literally salivating over this opportunity to further centralize "the arc of history" under the power of private. If that doesn't give you the willies, then we might not have enough of our worldview in common to actually have a meaningful discussion.

I think part of being a Christian is also skepticism, distrust, and lack of faith in conspiracy theories found on the Internet, political talking points on the left or right, arguments manufactured by lobbyists, etc.

The data matters. And the data may be the best basis for a meaningful discussion about what the data show.

[Bootstrap]

But really, can we please focus on the three graphs? If there is something wrong with them, what is it? Let's stop throwing one-liners and talking points at them and ask the fundamental questions. Nett has claimed that the temperature measurements in these graphs are wrong. Are they? How can I know that?

I posted a decent starting point to understand why the adjustments are problematic. It's not hard to understand.

If it directly addresses the measurements in the three graphs I posted, I don't see how. I just posted two links explaining my current understanding. I don't think your link directly addresses these graphs.

That being said, if you have an undying faith in central institutions, nothing I can say or post will ever change your mind.

Oh, I could imply nasty things about you too, but that would be neither fair nor true nor Christian. Why not focus on the data instead? Seems more likely to be illuminating and more likely to be Christian.

[nett]

But really, can we please focus on the three graphs? If there is something wrong with them, what is it? Let's stop throwing one-liners and talking points at them and ask the fundamental questions. Nett has claimed that the temperature measurements in these graphs are wrong. Are they? How can I know that?

I posted a decent starting point to understand why the adjustments are problematic. It's not hard to understand.

If it directly addresses the measurements in the three graphs I posted, I don't see how. I just posted two links explaining my current understanding. I don't think your link directly addresses these graphs.

That being said, if you have an undying faith in central institutions, nothing I can say or post will ever change your mind.

Oh, I could imply nasty things about you too, but that would be neither fair nor true nor Christian. Why not focus on the data instead? Seems more likely to be illuminating and more likely to be Christian.

Your continued appeal to "the data" makes me ask. Which data? It's interesting you posted something from Judith Curry. She has accused the IPCC of direct corruption, so should we really use their "data" as some kind of ultimate truth?

I happen to see a lot of value in Judith's works, but I think she's riding the fence. She's trying to question the entire movement, but she also has to regularly recite the religious creed required to maintain your person-hood in the field, "I believe in the holy unquestionable truth of man-made CO2 warming".

Urban heat islands are a very real thing, and they're ecological disasters, but I never see anyone proposing that we stop jamming people into the welfare mini-countries known as cities. Why do we only talk about global solutions, instead of local solutions?

[Josh]

It baffles me that -4° F temperatures on Texas can be blamed on “global warming”; meanwhile, their electrical generation has “gone green” over the last 10 years by shifting to wind power and natural gas instead of older, coal fired plants or nuclear power plants.

The end result is people unable to access reliable heating when it’s below zero outside. A larger question is why so many people are completely dependent on electrical power to heat their homes.

If we want to look at the data, we find out it does get very cold in Dallas every few decades, including as recently as 1989. This is not “climate change” or an unforeseen event, although it hasn’t been this cold since 1899. In 1899, I suspect people didn’t rely on mass produced electrical power to keep the plumbing in apartment buildings from bursting.

This is a failure of scaled up mass society, and “climate change” is not the culprit. Societal change is.

[Bootstrap]

If it directly addresses the measurements in the three graphs I posted, I don't see how. I just posted two links explaining my current understanding. I don't think your link directly addresses these graphs.

Your continued appeal to "the data" makes me ask. Which data?

The data in the three graphs. The three graphs that, so far, nobody has been discussing. To me, at least, it has felt like "no, let's not discuss those three graphs, let's discuss these other things instead". Or perhaps the data behind the alternative graph you provided, I asked if you could point to an article describing what it is based on, you haven't responded to that yet.

To me, the easiest data to understand really is the data that compares past predictions to what has happened since then. And it is also the most relevant.

For what it's worth, I think I agree more with Kerry Emmanuel than John Christy in the discussion in the OP, and these three graphs show why. If there is a problem in the data behind them, I would like to know what it is. Specifically.

Suppose we aren't all experts on the many areas of science involved in the IPCC reports. We can still look back to past predictions, see how much warming they predicted, and compare that to measured results. We can use the simplest measurements possible.

Here's one article that does just that.

Let's look at just the IPCC reports that are at least 20 years old. Here they are:







Note that each image shows multiple models and the consensus prediction. To me, at least, it looks like the predictions of global climate warming track pretty well with measured data in the time since then.

Am I missing something?

[Robert]

Why stop at 1970? Why do they always stop at certain times? Because when you go back further, you start to see patterns in cooling and warming. Milankovitch cycles.

[Bootstrap]

I'll be happy to see more activity in this thread. Just a quick reminder, since it's been a while—

This is the best conversation on global warming/climate change that I've come across.

Discuss.

Rules for this thread:
Do not post until you have completely listened to the discussion linked to above and/or completely read the transcripted excerpts linked to above.

I have. At least twice. But perhaps it is time to reread it.

Do not question or denigrate the qualifications, character, or motives of any individual or group.

I do think that would be really helpful. If you remove that from the conversation, it's a very different conversation. And a better one.

[Bootstrap]

Why stop at 1970? Why do they always stop at certain times? Because when you go back further, you start to see patterns in cooling and warming. Milankovitch cycles.

These graphs measure the accuracy of IPCC predictions based on measurements from the time after each report. In these graphs, what really matters is the period AFTER each of the IPCC reports. They made no predictions about the time before 1970 because the reports were written after 1970. That means you can't measure the accuracy of their predictions for earlier times.

[Robert]