Climate Change & Global Warming

[KOYAANISQATSI]

From a climate modeller...

 

Climate scientists have been accused of many things, of which two are insufficient consideration or communication of uncertainty, and insufficient transparency. People will disagree on the extent to which we deserve these accusations. But there will always be room for improvement in both, and this blog is my small contribution to the conversation.

 

All models are wrong

 

http://allmodelsarewrong.com/a-model-of-models/#comments

[abraxas]

See? Seems te me sometimes (make that mostly) that Koy is one o the only ones te regularly question his reality an challenge the status quo. The crazy hunkahunkaburnin luuuurv can be relied upon te direct us te such reminders that the weather is the ultimate example o Chaos Theory in action. The first large-scale computers were built te "predict" the bloody weather an, all these years later, they STILL can't get it right. What does that tell ye? A bio-habitat as large as the Earth will have cycles o behavior, though not predictable patterns. These will not be years long, or - likely - even decades, but would (again likely - see? I'm as precise as Dr Phil an his chums!) last centuries. Ye've only got te look at the evidence o shiftin Poles (no, not our Eastern European cousins. I mean the bases o power fer the Polar Bear/Penguin Evil Alliance! Why's there no bears in Antarctica? Coz they're all sat playin Call o Duty in their underground lair, plottin world domination!!) te see that the Earth's whole essential make-up shifts over millennia, affectin the weather on a truly massive scale in that process.

 

Probably guff, I know. But no less - te my teeny-tiny-totty li'l mind at least - than any o the unprovable bullhooey Dr Phil an his hockey stick came up with!

 

I mean, they're tryin te blame cows fee greenhouse gases fer fecks sake!! I bet the beer-swillin kebab-munchin party-goin population o this country rack up a fair ould amounta gases themselz after a weekend on the lash (that's ALL week fer Shetland! ) SAVE THE PLANET - BAN KEBABS!! An ould fowk as well! I mean, most nursing homes I've been in...? Phooo-WEE man! Pass the Febreze! So, SAVE THE PLANET - BAN COWS, KEBABS AN OULD FOWK!!! It's as sensible a course as any other..

[derick]

weather is unpredictable, climate is not

 

not this take the do way wrong

smoke less dope

 

Models are fun. A bit like 'Physics is Fun'. who says?!

 

alas Paleoclimate just relies on evidence.

 

IPCC as a 'political' organization relies on consensus. and hence is likely to be much too 'conservative'. which is properly alarming aboot waarming.

[Carlos]

From a climate modeller...

All models are wrong

All models in all science are "wrong" to some degree or other, but the essential matter is, are they useful?

[Spinner72]

In the case of the graphs posted above, no, because they only represent figures over a very small amount of time.

 

To be relevant or useful one needs to study the change in climate over millions of years, not thousands, then the model can be a useful indicator.

 

Of course this substantially lessens the importance of humans in general, and, it seems, some people just like or need to feel important..

[Carlos]

If a model is useful or not also depends on the question you are trying to answer.

"It gets colder in winter" is one model, a balloon with variable CO2 levels is another kind of model, a 10000 variable numerical model running on a super computer is different kind of model and statistical analysis of a million years of available climate data is another approach.

They all have their uses.

[ArabiaTerra]

As te the graphs, I hope the data fer them didn't come from Dr Phil & his merry mob, as he rather infamously failed to have any corroborative data te support most if not all o it!

Have you heard of the Berkeley Study?

 

A Climate Skeptic, Professor Richard Muller, decided that the global temperature records produced by HadelyCRU (Phil Jones) and NASA GISS might be a bit dodgy so he put together his own team to do a re-analysis of the data. Instead of using data from approximately 7000 stations as in the CRU and NASA GISS reconstructions, he used data from 37,000 stations. The results are below:

 

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/56197000/gif/_56197115_climate_change_624gr.gif

 

As you can see he got, near as dammit, the same result. (Actually, his results show slightly more warming than the CRU's)

 

So Phil Jones was right after all.

 

 

All models are wrong{rest of the quote: ...but some are useful. }

 

http://allmodelsarewrong.com/a-model-of-models/#comments

 

Quote mining again, Koy? Bad boy!I've told you about this before.

 

See? Seems te me sometimes (make that mostly) that Koy is one o the only ones te regularly question his reality an challenge the status quo.

Well you certainly don't.

 

You've swallowed the denier bunk whole. Do yourself a favour and stick you fingers down your throat, bring it back up and give it a good chew.

 

You'll find that 99% of it just melts away, and the 1% that's left doesn't actually contradict the mainstream science.

 

Seriously though, do you normally accept the outpourings of corporate PR departments and right wing think tanks without question? Because that's what you're doing here.

 

If you really want to be sceptical then you have to look at both sides of the argument equally critically. You're obviously familiar with the deniers side of the story, so give the scientists a chance.

 

The best place to start is here. The skeptical science site lists all the denier arguments alongside links to pages putting the scientists side of the story. Take a couple of days and work your way through them if you dare. Challenge yourself. You never know, you might learn something.

 

In the case of the graphs posted above, no, because they only represent figures over a very small amount of time.

 

To be relevant or useful one needs to study the change in climate over millions of years, not thousands, then the model can be a useful indicator.

 

Of course this substantially lessens the importance of humans in general, and, it seems, some people just like or need to feel important..

 

Would you care to post a reference to back up this assertion, Spinner? Something peer-reviewed perhaps?

 

Edit: Gratuitous insult removed.

[scoots]

I don't know if you're just having a bad day, Arabia Terra, but in my experience, insulting and belittling your peers - who may disagree with you - merely encourages more abuse and intransigence, rather than highlighting the validity of any or all of your points.

 

I have said it before, in the thread on Israel & Middle East, thàt if people listèned and respected each other, instead of trading insults and prolonging disputes, it would encourage and promote healthy debate and discussion a lot better.

 

You make very good points, but the forebrain has a tendency to switch off in many folk, when attacked or insulted, often leading to "limbic posturing" and verbal chest-beating.

 

You didn't hear MLK calling his opponents ignorant inbred hillbilly racist ba***rds, now, did you? Deep breaths and rise above it, please?

 

Sermon over.

 

Seconds out... DING! DING!

[Spinner72]

In the case of the graphs posted above, no, because they only represent figures over a very small amount of time.

 

To be relevant or useful one needs to study the change in climate over millions of years, not thousands, then the model can be a useful indicator.

 

Of course this substantially lessens the importance of humans in general, and, it seems, some people just like or need to feel important..

 

Would you care to post a reference to back up this assertion, Spinner? Something peer-reviewed perhaps?

 

No need to post endless links and references (lets face it, online you can prove/disprove anything if you go down that route) in this case all the reference needed is the history of the earth itself.

 

What happens during such a tiny amount of time as 200 years (graph above) means nothing in a lifetime of 4.5 Billion years.

 

Thats just common sense, nothing scientific required.

 

For the record, I realise I worded the last line of the quote above badly. If anyone took offense, none was intended. It is a simple fact that whilst human activity unquestionably has an effect on climate change, again it is so small in the grand scheme of things that to believe "we" can actually make a difference is silly.

 

Humans are simply not that important.

 

Now, of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be as "green" as we can be either, since again it is just common sense to look after our own environment as best we can.

[exciseman]

^^^^^^^^

Spot on spinner.

George Box put it well when he said "all models are wrong but some models are useful".

Thus useful models, such as climate change models, of necessity come out with a range of predictions to assist decision makers. The big problem here is that groups or individuals, such as a well known poster on Climate Change, will cherry-pick the predictions that suit their argument best.

[ArabiaTerra]

What happens during such a tiny amount of time as 200 years (graph above) means nothing in a lifetime of 4.5 Billion years.

 

Thats just common sense, nothing scientific required.

 

For the record, I realise I worded the last line of the quote above badly. If anyone took offense, none was intended. It is a simple fact that whilst human activity unquestionably has an effect on climate change, again it is so small in the grand scheme of things that to believe "we" can actually make a difference is silly.

 

Humans are simply not that important.

No, no ,no ,no, you are absolutely dead wrong on this one, Spinner. And the reason is not the magnitude of the changes (there have been larger in the past), but the speed of the changes.

 

The only comparable period in the whole geological record when the climate changed as fast as it is changing now is the K-T boundary event which wiped out the dinosaurs along with 75% of all species. And that was caused by an asteroid strike*.

 

Right now climate models, using a business as usual scenario, are projecting a 6 degree C rise in temperatures by the end of the century (and it wouldn't stop at 6). The last time there was a change that big was the end of the last ice age where the change was 6-8 degrees.

 

Now think about the changes that rise caused. A mile thick ice cap which covered most of the Northern hemisphere down the the latitude of London completely disappeared (apart from Greenland). Sea levels rose by 100 metres.

 

The thing is, life was able to adapt to that massive change because it took 5000 years. Whole forests could migrate northward simply by virtue of old trees dying and new ones taking their place. Ecosystems and the organisms living in them could move around across the Earths surface in response to the changes, because they had time to do so. Humans living through this wouldn't even have known it was happening as the changes were far too gradual to be noticed during a human lifetime.

 

Compare this to now. We are making the same amount of change in 150 years. That's less than the lifespan of a single tree! And to add to that, most wild ecosystems today are hemmed in by human cities and farmland. They have nowhere to go even if they did have time.

 

The only organisms that breed fast enough to adapt to what we're doing are bacteria.

 

Human activity is now the dominant factor governing the stability of the Earths biosphere. It's past time we started to live up to that responsibility.

 

 

 

*Or possibly multiple asteroids.

[ArabiaTerra]

Some stuff on climate models.

 

When designing computerised climate models, scientists don't just bang a model together and then start using it to make predictions. First they have to validate the model to see if it actually accurately models the climate.

 

This is done using a technique called Hindcasting. The way this works is that they set up the model to predict for a time period where they already know what happened, ie: the past, and run the model to see if it's output matches what actually happened.

 

For instance, it's common to set models up with the starting conditions as they were in 1900 and run it to see if it can "predict" the 20th century. Now this involves three variables which, when doing future projections, we can't know. These variables are: Solar output, Volcanic Eruptions and CO2 output.

 

When hindcasting the 20th C, we know what happened with these three variables so scientists can simply plug the numbers into the models. The model is then run and it's output compared to what actually happened. If it doesn't match, then there is something wrong with your model. Scientists will then adjust the model until it can accurately predict the 20th C. Only then is it ready to be used for future projections.

 

But what about those three variables which we can't know?

 

Well, with Solar output, this varies on an 11 year cycle, so the scientists will average out the solar cycles over a known period and use this average in the future projection.*

 

With volcanoes, these are inherently unpredictable. But going back through historical records Scientists found that eruptions big enough to affect climate (VEI6** or Krakatoa size) happen on average once every 10 years. So, scientists put a VEI6 eruption into the model every 10 years.

 

CO2 output is the trickiest one because it is under human control and therefore subject to completely random changes due to human policy changes and higher or lower economic activity. To tackle this, scientists come up with a number of different CO2 scenarios and present the model results for each scenario.

 

This allows them to model different responses to Global Warming. For instance, one scenario which you will always hear about is "Business as Usual". This is a projection based on us doing nothing about CO2 output and it's the one which generally gives the worst results. Another scenario might be if the Kyoto Protocol were fully implemented (Which isn't going to happen as Kyoto couldn't foresee the non-ratification of the US, the massive rise in China's emissions and Canada dropping out).

 

Another use is to specify a maximum temperature rise (say 2 degrees C, as agreed at Copenhagen) and work out the emissions scenario which would give us this result. This gives us an idea of what needs to be done, regarding CO2 emissions, to avoid a dangerous rise in temperatures.

 

But the models are wrong/don't work/are useless/haven't predicted what has actually happened!!11!

This is a common refrain you'll find on denier websites and denier articles in the print media such as the Torygraph or The Daily Fail. And, as always, it's based on lies, distortion and misrepresentation of what the scientists actually said. For instance, a common complaint is that: "James Hanson, in the mid eighties, predicted a six metre sea level rise by 2100. The IPCC now predicts only 1-2 metres."

 

Now, it's true that Hanson did project a six meter sea level rise, but this was based on an exponential rise in CO2, which didn't happen. If you look at his prediction made using a linear CO2 rise which is close to what actually happened, his projection, so far, pretty much matches what has actually happened temperature wise, and predicts a 2m sea level rise, which matches current IPCC forecasts.

 

Another, more recent, one is that the IPCC projection from 1990 based on a business as usual scenario didn't happen. This, again, is not due to a flawed model, it's because the business as usual scenario didn't happen. In 1991, a year after the report was published, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Soviet Bloc emissions collapsed with it. But the 1990 report contained twelve different scenarios, and when you look at the scenario which most closely matches what actually happened with CO2, it's projections are pretty much spot on. You can read more on this example here.

 

So, my takehome message here is: If someone tells you that climate models are useless, they are lying to you.

 

 

*But solar output has been low over recent years, what happens if it drops to Maunder Minimum levels like during the Little Ice Age?

 

Well, scientists have thought of this, and run their models using Maunder Minimum levels of solar output.The results are here. As you can see, it would make very little difference.

 

 

**VEI6 is Volcano Explosive Index 6. It's a logarithmic scale, so a 6 is ten times bigger than a 5 which is 10x bigger than a 4, etc. The recent Icelandic eruption which disrupted air travel across Europe was a 4.

[Spinner72]

What happens during such a tiny amount of time as 200 years (graph above) means nothing in a lifetime of 4.5 Billion years.

 

Thats just common sense, nothing scientific required.

 

For the record, I realise I worded the last line of the quote above badly. If anyone took offense, none was intended. It is a simple fact that whilst human activity unquestionably has an effect on climate change, again it is so small in the grand scheme of things that to believe "we" can actually make a difference is silly.

 

Humans are simply not that important.

No, no ,no ,no, you are absolutely dead wrong on this one, Spinner. And the reason is not the magnitude of the changes (there have been larger in the past), but the speed of the changes.

 

The only comparable period in the whole geological record when the climate changed as fast as it is changing now is the K-T boundary event which wiped out the dinosaurs along with 75% of all species. And that was caused by an asteroid strike*.

 

You see, to me, this strenthens my point of view that we (the human race) should stop being so self-important in thinking that we have some kind of exclusive deal whereby we can keep the earth inhabitable for ourselves despite evolutions (for we and our emissions are part of evolution) obvious other intentions.

 

Whether life as we know it dissapears in 150 years or 5000 years won't mean a thing another 4.5 Billion years down the line.

 

However, right now, "man made climate change" is one of the biggest industries on the planet. Economies would collapse if someone decided it didnt really matter anymore so by all means, carry on.

 

As for us individuals, sure, live as clean and sensible as you can, but do so for the right reasons. Not because some scary guys reading selective bits of text from big books tell you everything will turn to hellfire if you don't. Sound familiar?

[KOYAANISQATSI]

All models are wrong{rest of the quote: ...but some are useful. }

 

http://allmodelsarewrong.com/a-model-of-models/#comments

 

Quote mining again, Koy? Bad boy!I've told you about this before.

 

I wasn't quoting Boxxy..."All models are wrong" is the title of the blog, the link provided. The 'sub-heading' is "...but some are useful. A grown-up discussion about how to quantify uncertainties in modelling climate change and its impacts, past and future."

 

This was available to see, as soon as one clicks it and if one goes on to bother to read it; one may note that there is a whole section, where this very point is covered, titled...

 

ALL BLOG NAMES ARE WRONG

I posted it because it was relevant to the way the subject was turning and for a quick probe into the honesty levels of those who work the models for their bread and butter.

 

For what it's worth, I'm pretty much with Carlos...("All models in all science are "wrong" to some degree or other, but the essential matter is, are they useful?") and our climate modeler, Tamsin...("we shouldn’t attempt to hide or spin the fact that models are not reality. My research is in quantifying uncerts.")

 

cept with me; there is little value in wasting time and money over much of it when it comes to climate science, while the room is still absolutely hoaching with the Elephants that don't come with their own section in the Guardian.

(You know where I'm going with this right?)

The little things not dealt with like...

The Sun not being a ball of burning gas but an electrically interacting object, in an electrically interacting Galaxy, in an electrically interacting Universe...(whatever the hell that is)

The Earth is expanding.

Since the idea that comets brought us all the water has been...erm, blown out of the water; just where the hell is it coming from and should we expect more?

And the minor details like it not being an asteroid or a multiple asteroid strike that sent the Dinosaurs packing...multiple strike fo sure, but not like that.

 

At the moment, sadly however; this is all neither here nor there to the larger scientific world, that is too busy trying to make their farts sound loudest and best, seemingly unaware of the thunderstorm, beyond the scale of any possible imagination, that has always raged from without and within.

 

Still, there's no need to worry about any of that and I didn't come to slug it out over who is misrepresenting who about what, or why.

 

Just in to drop a link.

 

Afore I go though... here's some choice, quote minecrafting from said link...

in case you missed it.

 

Title is serious error.Buys into “everything is uncertain†meme.And argument that politicians don’t hear about uncertainties is BS.

 

Do you really think the climate debate is about scientists claiming models are reality?

 

title is important, and using the first half of that famous quote would, I think, be big, big, mistake.

 

A classic here...

 

Last comment.... not all models are wrong.

 

Lying “to avoid being misunderstood†never ends well @PeterGleick

 

One for the road...

 

“When the foundation itself rocks, whatever you have built upon it collapsesâ€

Marsilio Ficino

[Gibber]

You see, to me, this strenthens my point of view that we (the human race) should stop being so self-important in thinking that we have some kind of exclusive deal whereby we can keep the earth inhabitable for ourselves despite evolutions (for we and our emissions are part of evolution) obvious other intentions.

 

Evolution doesn't have an intent. Its not self important to think that humans can choose to not destroy the environment.

 

As for us individuals, sure, live as clean and sensible as you can, but do so for the right reasons. Not because some scary guys reading selective bits of text from big books tell you everything will turn to hellfire if you don't. Sound familiar?

 

Yes sounds like religion, that's how you sound when you call evolution an evil god.