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The image of GA in the media: Commuting by plane causes media hype

Michael_J wrote:

So what happens to published research that points to natual causes? Filtered out.

Not at all! Natural causes are taken into account and their effect is shown to be totally dwarfed by human CO2 emissions.

As @jmuelmen wrote: "The study @Michael_J linked to will be cited in the next report. It won’t be given much weight because of its flaws. "

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Ah so the earth’s climate system is 100% understood?
What happened to “no arctic sea ice in the summer by 2013” and other predictions that never happened?

Saying the study “is flawed” is an easy postulate to make.

And btw there are several studies indicating a lower ECS as summarized in Figure 7 on page S25 of this study:
http://iieta.org/sites/default/files/Journals/IJHT/35.Sp01_03.pdf

Last Edited by Michael_J at 02 Apr 12:26
EKRK, Denmark

Michael_J wrote:

Ah so the earth’s climate system is 100% understood?
What happened to “no arctic sea ice in the summer by 2013” and other predictions that never happened?

Yes, climate is fairly understood, as well as the prediction paradox you are refering to

The fact that you can’t forecast weather in next 10 days does not mean you can’t forecast climate in 30 years
Surprisingly, the latter is far easier if you believe in Physics and Thermodynamics
In the other hand, the former is much easier if you believe in Chaos Theories

To make thing complicated, none of them negates each other as the inconsistency paradox is well understood…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_inconsistency

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

I wish the debate wold move from if it is happening (you have to be blind not to notice) or whether humans are to “blame” (we are at least a significant contributor) to what to do about it.

There are three fundamental directions – and I am exaggerating only slightly:

  • The “hair shirt faction” wants us all to stop procreating and live in tents made from recycled paper.
  • The “hedonists” want to throw technology at it so we can carry on consuming and travelling as before, or more
  • The “profiteers” buy stock in dike construction companies and make sure their homes and land are at least 200ft above current sea levels.

The reality will be a combination of all three things, the only question is how much of each…

Biggin Hill

Funding is very important for academics, especially for poor postdocs. For my peer group who went on to phd’s. The theoretical physics and astronomy ones found it by far more difficult to post doc positions compared to those doing condensed matter physics.

It was well known that in the climate science sort of sphere it was far easier to get funding by either claiming alarming consequences and thus the need for research.

The system is extremely complex and I’m not convinced we can have confidence in models pushing forwards 30 years with the present available data as we have only been taking detailed measurements for a short period.

The NASA study seeming to indicate that antactic is accumulating ice rather than melting it as a net effect is an interesting more recent finding.

Off_Field wrote:

The NASA study seeming to indicate that antactic is accumulating ice rather than melting it as a net effect is an interesting more recent finding.

Quite possibly. It is a common misunderstanding of the term “Global Warming” that it means that temperatures will always increase everywhere. That is not necessarily the case – the meaning is that the global average temperature increases. E.g. if the Gulf stream stops (which is possible, though AFAIU not likely), temperatures in Scandinavia will certainly drop.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 02 Apr 22:50
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

The fact that you can’t forecast weather in next 10 days does not mean you can’t forecast climate in 30 years

Perhaps not, but that’s not mean climate forecasting is any bit less “hampered” by dynamic instabilities and random events than weather forecasting. The only major difference is timescale.

If you take the time scale into account, you will find that random events such as big meteorites and volcanoes are major factors for climate change. You may also say that human being overpopulating the globe is a random event of the same scale as a big volcanic eruption, but so what? It’s just the way nature works. There is no status quo, only a constant stream of change. Statistically a big volcanic eruption that will cause unprecedented disaster due to climate effects is a much more likely event within the next 100 years than “global warming” is. “We can predict the climate better than the weather” are you serious?

The whole thing is a bit like complaining over the fact that putting lots of people in a closed room with too little ventilation will cause the air to be foul, warm and moist.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

LeSving wrote:

Statistically a big volcanic eruption that will cause unprecedented disaster due to climate effects is a much more likely event within the next 100 years than “global warming” is. “We can predict the climate better than the weather” are you serious?

Yes.

Thought experiment. Take a pan of water and put it on a gas stove, set to burn at a certain rate.

“Weather” is trying to predict where each eddy and bubble will form in the next 10 seconds.

“Climate” is predicting that the water will be X degrees warmer in 100 seconds.

The former is incredibly difficult, the latter is much easier. “Human induced climate change” is putting a lid on the pan. We know that by putting the lid on the pan will result in the water being Y degrees warmer in 100 seconds, where Y > X. We can make a very good estimate of the difference between Y and X in this case. The random volcanic event is a random person coming along at time 50 seconds, and turning the control of the gas stove (perhaps slightly up or slightly down). Regardless, the lid is still on the pot and we can still predict quite accurately that the lid on the pot will make a certain amount of difference, even though the temperature at 100 seconds might not be the original predicted temperature. It’s not that the random control turning event at 50 seconds made the “human induced pan lid” go away, and so the pan lid still has a forecastable result on the ending temperature.

We are already dwarving the long term effects of volcanos.

Andreas IOM

They predict a supervolcano eruption (as has occured historically) will have a near immediate 10 degree reduction in global average.

I think the pan analogy misleads more than a little in the simplicity of making average temperature predictions and calculations. Whilst yes, relatively simple calculations can be done. Other unrecognised balancing forces or events are not necessarily taken into account or easily measured. Ideally we need very detailed measurements for a significant period to give comfort to the predictions.

Saying that large scale measurements and causes can be drawn in some cases. The new large hole in the ozone layer appearing over china then being linked to their using banned CFC’s for cheap insulation…

Factoring in a supervolcano is a bit pointless, as that poses an immediate existential threat to civilisation so it seems a bit pointless to say “well, we shouldn’t really worry about human induced warming because of the chance of a supervolcano”. If the supervolcano happens, most of us will no longer care (a 10 degree global average reduction will kill billions and pretty much solve the problem, permanently), but if it doesn’t happen – which is the most likely outcome – we’re still sleepwalking into a self-inflicted crisis that we can see coming and prevent if we have the will.

Last Edited by alioth at 04 Apr 14:48
Andreas IOM
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