Kicking the Climate Change Cat Further Down the Road... 43

[ewh]

What is the reputation of the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, a organization of 50 "top" scientists) in the engineering community? I really don't know how reliable they are, but a study (Climate Change Reconsidered II) produced by them and published by the Heartland Institute (an organization which espouses other ideas I disagree with) claims to be "double peer reviewed" and presents a seemingly well-founded arguement that AGW is a political red herring.
I am not a climate scientist, but thought that this was a good example of one side of the differing dogmas surrounding the issue. Just how is a layman supposed to make sense of these opposing arguments?

http://climatechangereconsidered.org/

or the summary

http://heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-II/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV

 

[rb1957]

more from NIPCC (my emphasis) ...
"Reference Cuna, E., Zawisza, E., Caballero, M., Ruiz-Fernandez, A.C., Lozano-Garcia, S. and Alcocer, J. 2014. Environmental impacts of Little Ice Age cooling in central Mexico recorded in the sediments of a tropical alpine lake. Journal of Paleolimnology 51: 1-14.
Cuna et al. (2014) write the "late Holocene paleoclimate is characterized by a warm interval known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), ~AD 1000-1300, which was followed by a highly variable, but generally cold period known as the Little Ice Age (LIA), ~AD 1350-1850," citing Crowley and Lowery (2000) and Mann et al. (2009). And they say "many authors have related cooling during the LIA with solar forcing, specifically with the lower solar irradiance during the Sporer (1450-1540) and Maunder (1645-1715) solar minima," citing Bond et al. (2001) and Lozano-Garcia et al. (2007), while noting that "during the Maunder Minimum, solar activity and UV irradiance reached particularly low levels," citing Lean et al. (1995) and Lean and Rind (1999).
As their contribution to the subject, Cuna et al. developed "new information about the nature of the LIA in central Mexico based on a decadal-resolution sediment sequence from high-altitude tropical Lake La Luna, in the Nevado de Toluca volcano," which they did via analyses of "magnetic susceptibility, charcoal particles, palynomorphs [organic-walled microfossils], diatoms, cladoceran [small crustacean] remains and multivariate statistics."

In discussing their findings the six scientists say the coldest period of the LIA occurred "between 1660 and 1760, an interval that broadly corresponds with the Maunder Minimum in solar activity," which they say "is also consistent with the timing of the coldest northern hemisphere temperatures during the last millennium," citing Jones and Mann (2004) and Matthews and Briffa (2005). As for the more recent past, they say "biological assemblages that showed rapid changes during the LIA have remained relatively stable during the last few decades." They also report that these modern assemblages "resemble those in the lake ~500 years ago, during the MCA." And they say that "no clear evidence of modern, human-induced environmental change was recorded."

In light of Cuna et al.'s several findings regarding the climate of central Mexico, there is ever more reason to accept the fact that there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about Earth's current level of warmth.


Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[beej67]

Wait a minute. That graph says sea ice extents were relatively flat until 1950. What happened to the 1890 hockey stick? Wasn't AGW supposed to hit big in 1890, not 1950?

What happened in 1950?

Oh yeah. Now I remember.

A whole lot of urbanization, that's what.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[rb1957]

"1890" ? we've been at this for a while !! ... i think you meant 1998 ...

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[ornerynorsk]

HAARP, anyone?

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[rb1957]

i wonder why "they" predict that population growth will slow ? notice how static growth was in the 1910s and 1940s ... hummmm

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[GrandpaDave]

Hum... Lots of back-and-forth here. I have not seen any real solutions. How about the following:

How about eliminating planes, trains, automobiles and ships at sea.
Reducing the surface human and animal population will also reduce CO2... so lets go
back to the 19th century. This can be achieved by 2 EMP detonations...
One over the Eastern US and the second over the Western US. In a couple of years,
the population here in the USA will drop from 330 million to about 30 million.



An extinction event would solve the problem for the entire world and not just require
the USA to solve the world's problem...

 

[rconnor]

rb1957, look at the graph of the 16 temperature reconstructions, then re-read the NIPCC article, then look back at the graph. I’m hoping you’ll realize how stupid that concluding line is, that wasn’t from the paper but was NIPCC’s “take” on the paper. It's mindboggling nonsense but that’s NIPCC/CO2 Science for ya.

More humans = more ice cubes consumed = less arctic sea ice. I think you’re on to something beej67! (“Urbanization” is just as unsupported as the ice cube hypothesis…in fact, “urbanization” has been studied numerous times and concluded to not be able to explain the recent warming, so it actually has a worse track record than the ice cube hypothesis)

 

[rb1957]

In discussing their findings the six scientists say the coldest period of the LIA occurred "between 1660 and 1760, an interval that broadly corresponds with the Maunder Minimum in solar activity," which they say "is also consistent with the timing of the coldest northern hemisphere temperatures during the last millennium," citing Jones and Mann (2004) and Matthews and Briffa (2005). As for the more recent past, they say "biological assemblages that showed rapid changes during the LIA have remained relatively stable during the last few decades." They also report that these modern assemblages "resemble those in the lake ~500 years ago, during the MCA." And they say that "no clear evidence of modern, human-induced environmental change was recorded."

rconnor, so you're saying that NIPCC are lying when they say and they say that and follow with quotes. pls post the referenced article to back up your claim (that it's "wasn’t from the paper but was NIPCC’s “take” on the paper"). i will see what i can get myself.

i agree that NIPCC has an agenda ... just like Everyone else in this debate. I'm sure they are picking articles that resonnate with their agenda, which might be no more than to be a sounding board for less clamatious reports than the mainstream publishes. face it, if the report says "doom and gloom" and "it all our fault" then it'll get picked up by everyone who wants that message boardcast; if it doesn't they'll mostly ignore it.

i will wrap up with a slightly ad hominine charge ... you are like most of your kind, you can't accept that there can be evidence out there that doesn't support your position; anything that doesn't support your position is "clearly nonsense".


Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[rconnor]

Maybe you should have read the abstract before posting. This isn’t going to go well for you or NIPCC.

Did you read the abstract? Do you know the context behind the quote “no clear evidence of modern, human-induced environmental change was recorded” ? Well, NIPCC didn’t actually link to the paper (surprise, surprise) but I found it myself.

Here’s the full sentence: “No clear evidence of modern, human-induced environmental change was recorded, indicating that Lake La Luna is an ideal site in Mexico to monitor future impacts of global change.” It’s talking about the suitability of the site for their sediment analysis because it had not been affected by “human-induced environmental change” (I’m guessing pollution). It’s absolutely not saying that there’s no evidence of human-induced climate change being observed in their analysis.

It says that “modern conditions, established around AD 1910, resemble those during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (ca. AD 1200)”. This agrees with the 16 different temperature reconstructions that show that 1910 had a similar temperature then the Medieval Warming Period…but then temperatures continue to go up…rapidly.

“There is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about Earth’s current level of warmth” is a garbage statement by NIPCC that was not concluded by the paper, nor supported by the paper.

The NIPCC purposefully took the quotes out of context, failed to link to the actual paper or abstract so reader’s couldn’t confirm and then drew a bull @#$% conclusion not supported by the paper. This is so typical of places like NIPCC, it’s so nefarious and so underhanded.

You’ve been swindled rb1957, like GrandpaDave was swindled. The NIPCC’s deceitful tactics tricked you. Rb1957, it’s not just cherry-picking the papers that support their side and ignoring all the others that don’t, they are lying about what the paper concludes. How many times do I have to demonstrate that these places are BS factories before you start to question the trash that comes out of them?

 

[GrandpaDave]

rconner... Why don't you be the first to contribute to saving the planet. Stop breathing CO2 into the air.
You are part of the problem. Oh, I don't follow IPCC and NIPPC so I have not been swindled. It was a bad
assumption on your part. Relax before you have a stroke...

 

[rb1957]

ok rconnor, i'll give you that one. i assumed that the quote wasn't taken out of context ... mea culpa.

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[rconnor]

Rb1957,

The fault does not lie with you. The fault lies with the NIPCC. This is what I’ve been trying to say from the beginning of this thread.

This is what places like NIPCC do, they deceive people into agreeing with a position that confirms their previously held opinion on the subject through misrepresentation, cherry-picking, overstretching conclusions and, at times, flat out making up the science. They tell people what they want to hear and know that most don’t have the time to double check the garbage they spew out. What’s worse is they didn’t even link the paper anywhere, purposefully making it more difficult to investigate for yourself. It’s awful and, given the consequences of the subject, it’s dangerous.

Let this be a stark example of why you should not go to NIPCC or GWPF or CATO for climate science information. This brings us full-circle back to the original point of this thread. If you want factual, unbiased, well-researched, well-documented information, go to trusted scientific institutions like NASA, NOAA, Nature, Science, or the 197 National Academies of Science. If you don’t like what they have to say on the matter, maybe it’s time to revisit your previously held opinion on the subject.

 

[TenPenny]

Like anything, every time you add a step in between, there is a chance for the meaning to get distorted. I dislike papers that are summaries of existing research and papers for that very reason.

 

[cranky108]

So if the problem is population, fix the problem, not tax a totaly different problem.

Maybe not finding the solution to STD's is an answer. Keep doing reasurch, but never find any answers. Sotr of like what they are doing with other problems.

The problem is they are fighting smoking, when they should be encuraging it. Or encuraging bad drivers, and drinking.

Automotive safety should be put as a low priorty, along with health care.

Good thing I don't believe in this theory. I could get very tiried of thinking of dumb ways to die.

 

[controlnovice]

Post all the graphs you want, but it all comes down to a religious belief:

There are two competing groups of sources. These two groups of sources represent the divide in the global warming debate. The groups are such:

Group 1
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
- American Chemical Society
- American Geophysical Union
- American Medical Association
- American Meteorological Society
- American Physical Society
- The Geological Society of America
- US National Academy of Sciences
- Royal Society
- List of 197 Other National Science Academies
- NASA
- NOAA
- Nature
- Science
- etc

Group 2
- A weatherman’s blog
- Koch-founded, right-wing think tank
- etc

So, cranky108, I turn the question back to you. Which group do you believe contains the more credible sources?

Kind of reminds me when those who were religious (Group 1) said the Earth was flat and outnumbered a few (Group 2) who said the data didn't indicate so...under the possibility of being hanged/burned at the stake, or otherwise silenced by the documents that were 'peer-reviewed'.

And of course the Religious like to use Pascal's Wager to show why one should believe in God, just like AELLC:

If you are correct in saying humans don't cause climate change, and you choose to ignore it...don't do anything...50% chance we will be all starving and dying from thirst.

If I am correct and say we need to do something, and things are done, either the global warming is not reversed by our changes, OR things get much better - the global warming slows down or reverses.

At least my theory gives us more of a fighting chance.

Can't prove God exists....or doesn't exist, so might as well believe. Same with man-made climate change....which use to be called Global Warming until the data proved otherwise.

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[cranky108]

As I answered, why would I trust the American Medical Association, to know anything about global warming? Is this just a "me to" reaction, or are they perhaps finding something else when we say ahhhhh.

Only a few of them produce graphs and charts, so I suspect the others are not really doing any of there own data collection.

Good greaf do your own work.

 

[beej67]

Here's the other thing that happened in 1950:

Link

..couldn't have possibly warmed the planet at all..

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[rconnor]

but it all comes down to a religious belief

What are you basing that on?

Almost all scientists, through largely independent research and representing various fields, nations and scientific institutions, all coming to the same conclusion that supports the core concepts of the anthropogenic CO2 climate change theory does not make it a religion, it makes it a solid scientific theory.

Random, incompatible, cherry-picked or blatantly false arguments (see above) from ideologically driven institutions who receive funding from sources that have a financial or political incentive to promote one side of the debate, regardless of the truth, and represent the vast minority does not make contrarians the paragons of truth and reason, it makes them seem like Young Earther’s or Anti-vaxxers.

Before we hear Greg’s ubiquitous “cargo cult” comment, let me be clear: it matters not which group has the more numerous or the more respected or the more unbiased or the more diverse representation, it matters which group produces the more scientifically accurate arguments.

The anthropogenic CO2 theory is a well-developed, well-supported scientific narrative that has continually shown to have great predictive power and is in strong agreement with empirical observations. The core argument against the theory, that models have failed to track observed temperature trends, has been demonstrated to be 1) inconclusive and insignificant, 2) fundamentally and demonstrably false, 3) a non-sequitur and 4) so false that it actually validates the antithesis of its original assertion.

I have just demonstrated a clear example of one such “skeptic” institution, NIPCC, cherry-picking a paper, pulling the quotes out of context, not providing a link to the original paper and drawing a false conclusion not supported by the paper. You’ll find many other examples in this and past threads from places like GWPF, CATO, CO2 Science, Heartland, WUWT, etc. Furthermore, many “skeptic” arguments are incompatible with each other (i.e. “it’s changed before” and “climate sensitivity is low”) and none of them have been shown to be unexplainable by or inconsistent with the CO2 theory. Beyond not having a valid “knock-down” argument against the theory, “skeptics” also fail to offer any valid counter-theory. Those that they’ve tried (“it’s the sun”, “orbital cycles”) are directly disproven by empirical observations.

It’s not that those scientists that support the CO2 theory are more numerous, more reputable, more diverse and more unbiased, it’s that their theory is continually shown to be accurate.

It’s not that those people that don’t support the CO2 theory are less numerous, less reputable, less diverse and more biased, it’s that their arguments are continually shown to be unsupported, sophism, misrepresentations, cherry-picked, overstretching conclusions or flat out lies. They not only do not have a valid counter-theory but they don’t have a valid argument against the CO2 theory.

Beyond all of this, if one side did actually have a “religious” belief in their opinion, it would be the “skeptics” zealous belief that the free-market is the solution to all of life’s problems. The correlation between climate change “skepticism” and belief in the free-market economics is massive (r= 0.87) and not surprising. As I have continued to say, most “skeptics” rejection of climate change science stems not from an issue with the science but an issue with the possible outcomes of agreeing with climate change science. This is continually demonstrated in threads such as these where one side (“believers”) uses those pretty graphs you spoke of controlnovice and peer-reviewed literature to support their points, while the other side (“skeptics”) uses unsupported statements (like your comment, controlnovice).

Beej67, these guesses just get more and more outlandish (a part of me wants to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you were joking). To give you some perspective on the amount of heat energy accumulating on Earth, global OHC has been increasing at an average rate of 25x10^13 J/s since 1998 (yup, during the infamous “Pause”). The a-bomb releases 6.3x10^13 J. Try again.

 

[TenPenny]

Almost all scientists, through largely independent research and representing various fields, nations and scientific institutions, all coming to the same conclusion that supports the core concepts of the anthropogenic CO2 climate change theory does not make it a religion, it makes it a solid scientific theory.

Largely independent research? You've got to be kidding. It seems that about half of the 'research' is people using the same data and conclusions to come to their own conclusions.

How many independent sources of historical climate data are there? How many independent sources of current data are there? Not nearly as many as there are reports being generated.

Don't try to pretend it's 'independent research'.

 

[rconnor]

How many independent sources of historical climate data are there?

The graph above shows 16. No doubt some are built off others. No doubt there are others not included.

How many independent sources of current data are there?

Here are the major ones:
HadCRU
GISTEMP
NOAA
JMA
Berkeley Earth
UAH
RSS

All different, independent data sets. In fact, BEST (Berkeley) was specifically designed to remove “biases” presumed to be in the other data sets. Although, after compiling the data it found no such biases ever existed.

Not nearly as many as there are reports being generated

Wow. You’ve got to be kidding. Your saying that science can’t build off of past work? So my guess is that each time you use a trig function you reproduce the entire table? Before you use the gravitational constant you re-derive it through laboratory experiments? Basically, each time you use an equation you must, first, redo all of science?

To argue that because there is only 7 major temperature data sets, there should only be 7 published papers is absurd. Every new paper, to varying extents, builds off past work but leads to a new insight. I can’t believe I have to explain this to an engineer.

Even though it lead to an invalid argument, it’s nice that you've plucked one word, from one line as, seemingly, your only issue with my post.