On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
I'm an out and proud skeptic when it comes to global warming alarmism. This horrifies some of my more liberal friends who are convinced that each of these 882 (frequently contradictory) items on the hilarious Warm List are caused by global warming.
But check out this Associated Press story that admits no science was used for an entire story about how the recent heat wave, while not actually due to global warming, could have been caused by global warming:
If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks.
Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho.
These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it's far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.
And it goes on and on and on to describe all the things that could happen from global warming. As someone on Twitter put it: "Shorter AP: No evidence that global warming is the cause of recent heat wave. That said, global warming is the cause."
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Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Dan Hanson:
Weather is chaotic and subject to rapid change. Climate is not. You don't need to be able to predict weather to predict climate.
· 1 minute ago
I'm not saying you need to get to the city or town level of granularity. But if you can say, for example, the Eastern Seaboard of the US is going to be clouded over for a week, you can thereby use that data to forecast the effect it has on the global temperature.
For example, take a look at this report. The author is clearly using weather as part of unpacking climate:
There you have it. "Weather-related" warming shows up in global temperature reports.
Sep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Dan Hanson:
"You need to understand the weather to predict the climate".
This is just not true.
The movement of a particle in a gas is random. It is impossible to predict where it will be at any given time. But given enough particles, I can make a pretty good prediction of what the temperature or pressure of the gas will be.
Weather is chaotic and subject to rapid change. Climate is not. You don't need to be able to predict weather to predict climate.
I can't agree with these ideas. First, the distinction between weather and climate is artificial. It's not as if there's a fixed climate around which weather fluctuates. It is a continuum of time dependence. There's evidence that weather statistics are fractal and there is no natural time scale. Furthermore, even the Warmists argue that climate can be nonlinear and chaotic; they worry there may be a tipping point in their more alarmist scenarios.
I disagree with your analogy with kinetic theory of gases. Kinetic theory deals with an assembly of identical particles with simple interactions. Climate is not like that. Surprisingly, a closely related distinction was explained by Hayek.
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
On to another sub-topic... how do AGW enthusiasts explain the Medieval Warm Period, including the fact that warming was found around the same time in Antarctica?
Guess there must have been lots of people in Antarctica burning fossil fuels, hmmm?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, human activity has little or nothing to do with warming today, just as it didn't in the past in Antarctica.
Sep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Regarding the weather/climate canard, this defense of climate models explicitly relies on the analogy with weather. The author is Professor Alan Thorpe, Director-General of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. He says "Weather forecasting is the best place to start because the forecasts are more familiar and the methodology is very similar in many important ways to climate prediction." He goes on to explain how weather forecasting accuracy bolsters the case for climate models. Torpe and Dick Lindzen debate the issue of climate models here.
I, for one, am a bit tired of the climate and weather are totally different argument. It doesn't answer the questions about climate models and their poor record. It's just a cheap-shot way to shut up critics.
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Thank you, Doctor. I knew there was a good way to debunk that particular cliche, but hadn't stumbled across those websites yet.
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
@ConservativeWanderer
For the umpteenth time: I don't believe we're all going to wake up tomorrow in a fiery inferno surrounded by the carcasses of dead polar bears. That said, there is indeed a difference between what happens on a global scale, "the climate" and the cloud cover in Boise, ID, "the weather." We can have all sorts of angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussions about how clear cut the distinction is and where it happens. As for summing local weather to arrive at a global climate I suppose to estimate the average height of your lawn a week from now you'd want a down to the hundredth of a millimeter accurate prediction for every blade of grass, right?
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Not down to the hundredth of a millimeter, but there's no global warming model that predicted that the warming would slow in the 2000s, either, was there?
If your model predicts that the grass is going to grow three feet in a month, I'd hardly consider it reliable if I went out and found that the grass only grew an inch.
Nov '11
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Some sanity from the estimable Judith Curry.
Sep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
FloppyDisk90:
For the umpteenth time: I don't believe we're all going to wake up tomorrow in a fiery inferno surrounded by the carcasses of dead polar bears. That said, there is indeed a difference between what happens on a global scale, "the climate" and the cloud cover in Boise, ID, "the weather." We can have all sorts of angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussions about how clear cut the distinction is and where it happens. As for summing local weather to arrive at a global climate I suppose to estimate the average height of your lawn a week from now you'd want a down to the hundredth of a millimeter accurate prediction for every blade of grass, right? · 13 minutes ago
Kindly take a moment to read my comments and links on climate & weather before making homespun analogies. Merely taking some enormous average does not guarantee precision. It's not angels dancing on the head of a pin; it's the nub of the argument.
Edit: Furthermore, the very link you posted at Real Climate showed a model prediction that was falsified by our old and sometimes inconvenient friend, reality. Tough tacos.
Edited on July 4, 2012 at 4:14amSep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
FloppyDisk90:
what happens on a global scale, "the climate" and the cloud cover in Boise, ID, "the weather."
By the way, your dichotomy is incorrect. One speaks of both the climate and weather of Boise. The distinction is not of geographic scale; it is in the scale of time.
Sep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
This is a tangential to this thread, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway. In continental climates, like most of the US, one degree of latitude corresponds to about one degree Celsius in mean temperature. You can look at a map to see what a few degrees C means. For example, Chicago and St. Louis are over 3 degrees apart in latitude. Both of these towns arguably have nasty climates, but how much scarier is St. Louis?
Sep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
You can always count of Prof. Curry for a measured response. Note that her opinions were not included in the AP article, presumably because they didn't fit the narrative. This also caught my eye:
Without models, they ain't got nothin'.
Apr '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Thank goodness that's settled.
After being nuked by the USSR (Big Scare c. 1960),and starved by lack of food (Big Scare c. 1970), and radiated due to lack of ozone (Big Scare c. 1980), and infected with the deadly AIDS (c. 1990), and sent back to the Stone Age (Y2K), I need another Big Scare just to keep feeling normal.
This is just a thumbnail, there have been so many more lesser Big Scares - I'm surprised people haven't wised up yet. Do you think it might have to do with the repressed fear of death that makes these "end of life as we know it" movements so popular?
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
drlorentz
FloppyDisk90: ...
But what else do we have? Clearly man is releasing billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
...seems to be clear that the partial derivative of temperature WRT quantity CO2 in a closed system is positive.
CO2 by itself is not much of a problem. The real greenhouse gas is water. The climate models (simplifying here) show that added CO2 causes there to be more water vapor. This is the 'positive feedback' you may have heard about. Absent that, there's little cause for concern. I agree CO2 has some warming effect, but it may be quite small and manageable. The question always returns to the skill of the models. The derivative is positive, but we don't know what it is. In this case, size does matter.
Two words....Volcanic...Eruption
How much greenhouse gases does an eruption throw into the atmosphere? Don't know but I'd make a small wager its quite a bit. How many eruption/ventings are going on right now? a pretty fair number I'd say.
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Highlama: Thank goodness that's settled.
After being nuked by the USSR (Big Scare c. 1960),and starved by lack of food (Big Scare c. 1970), and radiated due to lack of ozone (Big Scare c. 1980), and infected with the deadly AIDS (c. 1990), and sent back to the Stone Age (Y2K), I need another Big Scare just to keep feeling normal.
This is just a thumbnail, there have been so many more lesser Big Scares - I'm surprised people haven't wised up yet. Do you think it might have to do with the repressed fear of death that makes these "end of life as we know it" movements so popular? · 1 hour ago
States of Fear: Science or Politics? - Michael Crichton
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
"By the way, your dichotomy is incorrect. One speaks of both the climate and weather of Boise. The distinction is not of geographic scale; it is in the scale of time."
I stand corrected. Thank you for clarifying that there is indeed a difference between climate and weather. Please inform ConservativeWanderer.
As for my "homespun" grass analogy, the point is you don't need a model of each blade of grass to arrive at a "reasonably accurate" prediction of the average height of your lawn a week into the future. Hence, it is possible given a sufficiently accurate macro model of the climate, to predict global temperatures without resorting to summing N micro models, which was wanderer's contention. You and I don't have an argument: I agree that the current crop of models leave much to be desired. That just tells me we should try harder and refine them. Wanderer and other folks in this thread want to abandon the effort all together.
Jun '12
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Finally, only in your wishful thinking does the post at RealClimate invalidate the climate models. Scenario B, current levels of forcing, is right on the money except for the last year or two where it's off by a few tenths of a degree. Note that the scale of the entire graph is only approx 2 degrees C so all this talk about accuracy and precision is based on the models' failure to predict global temperatures down to the last tenth of a degree.
Edited on July 5, 2012 at 5:05amSep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
FloppyDisk90: Finally, only in your wishful thinking does the post at RealClimate invalidate the climate models. Scenario B, current levels of forcing, is right on the money except for the last year or two where it's off by a few tenths of a degree. Note that the scale of the entire graph is only approx 2 degrees C so all this talk about accuracy and precision is based on the models' failure to predict global temperatures down to the last tenth of a degree. · 5 hours ago
Edited 3 hours ago
No need to get snippy. Instead, compare this figure from GISS with the one on RealClimate.
The two figures use the same normalization. Feel free to verify that.
In 2011, Scenario C, the temperature anomaly at the beginning of this decade is 0.6C. Scenario B shows 1.0 C. Reality came in at 0.55C. I think you'll agree that Scenario C is closer. The discrepancy of 0.5C is about equal to the entire anomaly, i.e. 100% error - a pretty poor showing.
A few tenths of a degree is what it's all about... if you think of 5 as "a few."
Sep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
FloppyDisk90: "By the way, your dichotomy is incorrect. One speaks of both the climate and weather of Boise. The distinction is not of geographic scale; it is in the scale of time."
I stand corrected. Thank you for clarifying that there is indeed a difference between climate and weather. Please inform ConservativeWanderer.
You willfully misinterpreted my statement. I think you understand that the words weather and climate are used the way I described. That does not mean that I agree the distinction is a sharp or particularly useful one. People speak of climate and weather this way. That's what I said and that's what I meant.
Sep '10
Re: On The Lies The Media Tell, Global Warming Edition
Here's my lame attempt to overlay the two graphs:
It would be so much easier if I had the numerical data, but we must work with what we have.
By the way, I never said or implied that this invalidates anything, to use your term, FloppyDisk90. It's just not looking so good for the models right now. If the divergence continues for another decade or so, the modelers should have to face some tough questions. The other references I gave in an earlier post list other areas of disagreement that are more significant, most notably in the temperature distribution as a function of latitude and height.
Please note that Scenario C assumes no further CO2 added, which would have been almost impossible to achieve. If the models can't distinguish between business as usual (Scenario B) and no more CO2 (Scenario C), then what good are they?
Do I have too much time on my hands or what?