So it's business as usual
Give or take the odd hurricane, record-breaking heatwave and droughts. ... the climate's just as it's always been.
Scientists monitoring water flow in streams at test sites across the USA have found, unexpectedly, that the global warming seen in the late 20th century had basically no effect on most of the ecosystems they studied. The world in general is thought to have warmed up by approximately half a degree C from 1980 to the year 2000, …
Precisely. Climate is never constant and has a lot of inputs to account for. Given our completely imperfect understanding of that, it's remarkable that we can even tell what we know about climate.
No matter which side of the AGW debate you wish to support, both sides would be very smart to acknowledge how little is really known. Science has a keen way of demonstrating how little is known (thank a deity, if you must), but methinks this subject will require a lot more research than we even have going now. It would help too if this subject were not so highly policitized, i.e. about money.
That'll be the drought we had here in the south of England yesterday then... We had an inch of rain with (apparently) more to come this week. Weather is chaotic, trends will change over time and venting 100's of tonnes of methane per day from a (no longer) capped well won't help either. Get over it.
But, on a serious note, if temperatures increase, then the atmosphere will hold more moisture. Moisture and what happens to as it is blown about, drives weather. More moisture = more weather and, BTW, more chaotic behaviour. Having said that, what is sucked up, must come down again somewhere, so overall there will be more precipitation. One wonders whether anyone is watching historical rainfall data?
It's the Hand of God that causes such devastating hurricanes, drought, heat-waves and or any other ecological disasters. And they shall repent for their lack of faith (which God finds disturbing)
So go ahead all Ye Americans, burn your oil, burn your trees, burn your books for thou shalt never suffer from this heretic sudo-science suggesting global warming, yet heed my wrath should you fail to bring order and factual creationism to the world
Meanwhile in the real world....
If I'm reading this correctly most of the habitats studied the trees throttle their water usage depending on available *supply*.
Which is pretty clever (of them) and cuts down some of the more extreme predictions.
This *might* have been expected as trees are *living* creatures who influence their environment as it influences them (albeit at a relatively slow rate).
Note that *less* effect on the habitats does not mean *no* effect and 6 of 17 is still over 1/3 of all environments sampled.
My usual thumbs up for improving the knowledge and the hope this will configured into climate models ASAP.
You have picked up my error from the abstract to the paper. The *whole* paper is available without payment.
It states air temperature has increased at 17 of the 19 sites with 20-60 year records but streamflow trends only changed at 7.
So it *should* have been 7 of the 17 sites. IE 41% of the sties changed.
Which is rather more than none.
My apologies for mis-reporting.
One would hope, but it would be a false hope. If you followed the fallout from the mail fiasco, one of the things revealed is that you either have models which use equations that describe the physical processes but don't work, or models that seem to work but whose mathematics don't correspond to known physical processes. The latter is okay if and only if you have a well understood system
Habitats have always changed. If you have evidence of that NOT being the case, you'll nail yourself a Nobel as the first to have ever done such. Even cave systems are subject to fluctuating outside influences from moisture to organisms new to the neighbourhood.
Denialists start with the false premise that everything works in a straightforward, linear fashion, so that anything that deviates from the general direction of the predicted trend, even if the existence of such variation is itself predictable, is taken as "proof" that the science is wrong. Drill, baby, drill; I'll be dead before the planet is uninhabitable, and I don't give a goat's bzadeh about your grandkids.
Global weirding (long term climate) leads to wider variations in (short term) weather. Here in New England, we had a record-breaking snowfall last year, followed by unprecedented floods and even tornadoes (not normal here). Then we had a warm, dry winter and this spring is turning into a big brush fire season. Unlike out west, we have year-round rainfall so underbrush normally decomposes rather than burns, but it burns in drought.
We are treated like cattle at the airport based on the one-in-100-million chance that our shoes or underpants are bombs. Yet a mere 95-out-of-100 chance that global warming is real is not enough to convince the same nitwits who support the fascist surveillance society that doesn't even let us take our deodorant on the plane. Utter hypocrisy.
BOTH SIDES work in this way. The argument is so political now that people doing REAL science are few and far between.
I am on neither side of the argument. I have seen evidence produced by both sides, but I am unable to trust the majority due to the political interference I see. What we need is for politicians, corporations and biased organisations to but out. We need real, unbiased research, utilising all available data (no cherry-picking, a technique used by BOTH sides) and analysing it in an open, honest way (open to scrutiny by all). That is science, and that is NOT what we have seen so far.
Well, I can dream. I think I will see a herd of swine migrating south first...
"BOTH SIDES work in this way."
Argument by false equivalence. Within the scientific community there is effectively only one "side". The "controversy" is largely fabricated. The "REAL scientists" (or "scientists" as we call them in English) are almost all in agreement on the basic conclusion that mankind is having a noticeable and potentially dangerous (to mankind) effect on the global climate.
Politicians cannot "but out"(sic) of this since it is an issue with very profound consequences for economics and policy making. I vote for politicians in the hope that they'll make informed decisions and take sensible actions. If they "butt out" of important issues then there's no point them being elected.
(p.s. RANDOM upper case doesn't magically MAKE something TRUE FACTS by the way ... even on the INTERNET)
a) It is not random upper case, it was upper case used to emphasise certain words.
b) Politicians butting out was in reference to them commissioning research in such a way that one result is preferred, and will likely result in more research (and therefore money) for those involved if their preferred result is validated.
I agree, in science there is only one side: all scientists work towards finding the truth. However, in an issue such as this, there are 2 sides, as well as a large swathe in between the extreme views. Some supposed scientists and organisations do take a side and this distorts their results. I have seen evidence of both "sides" cherry-picking data to support their preferred results. If this is happenning, how can they be trusted? This applies equally to those denying or confirming man-made climate change.
I am not denying that man-made climate change is going on. I think it is obvious that man affects this planet in an enormous way, but this is not proof. What I would like is to be able to trust the people and organisations doing the research. What I would like is to be sure that those doing the research are scientists.
Its always been a simple case of replicable results. Not within bad models whose base code isn't available for replications and verification. Want to use a model? Provide the models base and notes the author wrote. I have reams of mine and anyone else happily scribbling procedures or mapping out their injection vectors has theirs too.
If you don't read Roger Pielke Sr, you should. Between his site and masterresource.org, you'll see where the science and the business of the entire thing came from and where its going.
@Dr. Mouse
From this review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
"Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. "
As I said, there is effectively no controversy.
I was just pointing out that your call to authority is based on publication counts and is therefore potentially affected by all sorts of bias. (Funding, peer review, confirmation, editoral... the list is endless) Sure, expertise can be measured by publication count, but only if you assume that there's no bias. There's so much politics involved around climate change, I'm not sure that's true in this case.
In fact, Dr Mouse's post was about sources of bias and your post about the PNAS review does nothing to answer those points. It may even be evidence of the bias he's talking about.
Was the review peer reviewed itself or is it just "grey" literature?
@James Smith 3
Since you chose not to answer my straightforward question I can only assume that you cannot suggest a better metric for objectively measuring "expertise" and have no evidence that the 97-98% figure in that paper is inaccurate.
There is no controversy within the expert community. There is an overwhelming consensus. You choose not to accept that consensus because ... something vague and waffly about politics and bias for which you can give no material examples or specific explanation.
"You choose not to accept that consensus because ... something vague and waffly about politics and bias for which you can give no material examples or specific explanation."
From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/yamal_scandal/:
"From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend... In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990. All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century. The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked."
OK, the Register is not a peer reviewed journal, but this is the sort of thing which puts doubts in people's heads (especially as this research was published in a peer reviewed journal, and many other researchers used it's results as a basis, which also made it through peer review). I have read about similar cherry picking in other research from both "sides" of the debate, and there have been other scandals too.
So, as an open-minded person, I have doubts as to the integrity of climate "scientists".
I'm not denying the consensus. Just your evidence for it.
So I can't suggest a better metric. Doesn't mean the one used in the paper is any good. It doesn't mean their conclusions are sound either.
Imagine two researchers tossing coins. Each time they perform the experiment they write a paper. One researcher always gets "heads", the other always "tails". If there was an editoral bias towards publishing "heads" papers (it sells more journals for instance) then the first researcher would appear to have greater expertise due to having more papers published. Do you see how the bias has obviously affected the link between getting published and expertise?
For the conclusion of the paper to be valid it must prove that the result is not affected by any potential bias. It's an obvious source of error that must be accounted for.
Do you think we can solve the problem of wave-particle duality by looking at how many papers were written about each? Quantity does not equal quality.
Pure whatiffery.
I am an academic. I am perfectly aware of how editorial bias might occur (not in the way you seem to think, by the way) and I am perfectly aware of how opinions can become ingrained within a discipline and risk bias in the judgement of peer reviewers. I am asking you to give some specific examples of this supposed failure within this specific discipline. I did not ask you to wave your hands about some more and claim that it might just have possibly happened maybe perhaps if you squint a bit and tap your ruby slippers together.
The scientific method has flaws because it is applied by fallible human beings. It is still by far the best method mankind has yet discovered to investigate the nature of the universe. The scientific method currently very strongly supports AGW. You refuse to accept that. That is simply not a rational or humble response, no matter how many feeble doubt-bombs you scatter around.
Creationists start with the false premise that ...
Biologists start with the false premise that ...
They both work just as well.
Or they do if your idea of a coherent argument is a variation on the school yard "I know you are but what am I?"
Surprisingly I found something I agree with in your post (the bit about not giving a rats ass about your grandkids). Not a denialist BTW, I just require more in the way of evidence than panicky conjecture based on a prolonged stare out the window..
Anon because I don't want to be hassled by a religious nutter thanks, and if you are not one of those you've only yourself to blame for being taken as one for using "weirding" on a site like this.
I may be missing some Britishism over hear in the colonies. While "global warming" is the most widely used phrase, it is often "refuted" by those who note incidences of extreme cold and snow. What extra heat in the atmosphere tends to do is add to the strength of storms, but it also moves some atmospheric flows, making the weather weirder -- more variation from average -- than usual. Hence global weirding.
Or do Brits see that as some kind of Shakespearian-era reference to the occult or something?
There isn't any such 95% in existence. If you have such provide it please. Many would dearly love to see it and those who lost hundreds of millions in the Chicago Carbon Exchange would no doubt pay as much to have their golden goose proven as fact. Now how could you or anyone else for that matter turn down $100,000,000 pay day AND recognition for saving the world in the process? Hmmmm?
Tell me what make/model the next 14 vehicles you will see on the road will be.
Then do a little research and tell me what the most popular vehicles in your area are.
Can you see where the first is actually more difficult than the second?
It's the same way with weather and climate.
It's generally the same with any specific prediction compared to a general statistical model.
Oh, and "you're crazy". Happy?
Ah but when they project drought for the spring and you're contemplating using a raft to get about your yard, they certainly CAN be called to task for it. You don't have to lift your head from the pillow to toss up a "Rain today? It will or it won't!" with the same metric for accuracy as you have provided.
@poeg
Drought means that the reserves of water plus the expected rate of water collection are lower than the usual rate of water consumption. It can be pissing down with rain but if the reservoirs are empty it's still a drought. You can call people to task for this simple state of affairs if you like but you'll look a bit daft.
Options in face of (unverifiable) predictions of climate catastrophe:
1. Use existing technology to cope - strengthen buildings, relocate communities away from coastline, etc.
2. Allow politicians to increase taxes on everything+dog, allow politicians to spend swathes of public money on windmills manufactured by wife's best friend.
Only an idiot would go for option 2. Oh......... wait..............