Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

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johneeG
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by johneeG »

Bade wrote:That is global ocean, you can see the land and ocean temperature anomaly separately or combined.

The "trick" you keep referring to is not a sleight of hand, it has been verified by many independently and papers published. Check skpetical science if you want the details....will post when I get time...it has to do with tree-ring data sensitivity to increase in temperature...
Global ocean? You mean this is the average of several different ocean temperatures?
Bade
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Bade »

Read up on all the stuff in there...there are regional data too you can find elsewhere....

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Tree-ri ... roblem.htm
One erroneous characterization is that scientists have been hiding the divergence problem. In fact, tree-ring divergence has been openly discussed in the peer-reviewed literarure since 1995. A perusal of the many peer reviewed papers (conveniently summarised in D’Arrigo 2008) reveal the following:

The divergence problem is a physical phenomenon - tree growth has slowed or declined in the last few decades, mostly in high northern latitudes.
The divergence problem is unprecedented, unique to the last few decades, indicating its cause may be anthropogenic.
The cause is likely to be a combination of local and global factors such as warming-induced drought and global dimming.
Tree-ring proxy reconstructions are reliable before 1960, tracking closely with the instrumental record and other independent proxies.
This is a blog but it references well published works...
Bade
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Bade »

It also has a tailored set of questions for skeptics listed and answered.....

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy
johneeG
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by johneeG »

I have seen that site before and my impression was that the explanations are contrived and require blind faith. Just some propaganda site.
Bade
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Bade »

Ha Ha...coming from you :-) just stick to the papers published in literature....the whole world will look contrived otherwise....if "you" do not have capacity to do things yourself from basics on. It is a conundrum of modern life, just get used to it....the peer review is the most important element and reproducible or not, are there independent proxies etc...

When I go to my dentist and the lady gives me her assessment, I do not question it, not that I understand deeply what is wrong with my teeth either. I do have to take her advice at face value, and at time even pay her. Same with any doctor visit. But we are willing to rely on this expert advice. What gives here I wonder. We discuss economics threadbare with the claim that it is not science ;-) as a cover or cop-out. It is ok, still to draft policies affecting billions of life with this no-science arguments. But we have a problem with measurable effects.

As I said, public policy based on climate data and science is up to the managers. Humans are not special that we need to make sure we survive as a species. The world will do good without us and in better measure.
johneeG
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by johneeG »

Didn't we already talk about the peer-review once? Why are you going over it all over again?
johneeG wrote:

Phil Jones keeps peer-review process humming … by using “intuition”


During the course of his 2010 testimony to the U.K. parliament’s Science and Technology Committee, UEA’s renowned Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones, responded to a question regarding the peer-review process by indicating that he had never been asked to provide data and code for any of his contributions to the peer-reviewed literature when such papers were under review.

One might reasonably infer from this that when Jones is a reviewer of a paper, he doesn’t ask to see data or code either. I recently came across a Climategate E-mail [2486.txt] from Jones which would confirm that this is a reasonable inference.
Link
Link to Post

johneeG wrote:

Ok, there was a climate-gate which revealed all the naughty things they do. Then, there was a committee and as committees do, they declared that nothing wrong happened. But, heres, the relevant part to your point:
wiki wrote:The committee chairman Phil Willis said that the "standard practice" in climate science generally of not routinely releasing all raw data and computer codes "needs to change and it needs to change quickly".
Wiki Link

You see the raw data and the code are not released. You have to believe it on faith.
Link to post

Those peers don't see raw data or code.
Last edited by johneeG on 09 Dec 2015 23:11, edited 1 time in total.
SaiK
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by SaiK »

Bade, my confusion was the 70% absorbed == 70% radiated. Then, what did the Earth consume? maybe I didn't describe my confusion earlier. It was not the addition. 30% is already reflected by atmosphere.

My assumption is some x% it must eat off! may be it is way too small to show.
panduranghari
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by panduranghari »

Bade wrote:Data since 1880 onwards...who say there is no ocean data.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global
I am writing this from a uneducated perspective, so please do give me some leeway. If you are a professional in the weather science, I am willing to learn and be corrected.

Thank you. I read with interest the information on this page. They claim they have data going back to 1600.

Image

By their own admission, the data from 1600 to 1961 is sparse. The data from 1962 to 2005 is based on limited global telecommunication data. The data from 1962 to 1997 is not very detailed. The data from 1997 to 2005 is more accurate. The data from 2008 to present is real time.

Then I read about the Climate Model Intercomparison Project models- from CMIP 1 to CMIP 3. CMIP 3 is on what they base the current observations.

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brooks/p ... BAMS08.pdf

These are the observations on these models-

1. The studies by Taylor et al. (2001) and Boer and Lambert (2001) characterized model performance from correlation, root-mean-square (RMS) error, and variance

2. The 3 models CMIP-1 (Meeh l et a l. 20 0 0), the first project of its kind organized in the mid-1990s; the follow-up project CMIP-2 (Covey et al. 2003, Meehl et al. 2005); and CMIP-3 (PCMDI 2007) (aka, IPCC-AR4), representing today’s state of the art in climate modeling. The CMIP-3 data were taken from the “climate of the twentieth century” (20C3M) (hereafter simply “present-day”) and the “preindustrial control” (PICNTRL) (hereafter simply “preindustrial”) experiments. These simulations were driven by a rather realistic set of external forcings, which included the known or estimated history of a range of natural and anthropogenic sources,
such as variations in solar output, volcanic activity, trace gases, and sulfate aerosols. The exact formulation of these forcings varied from model to model, with potential implications for model performance. In contrast, the CMIP-1 and CMIP-2 model output was derived from long control runs, in which the forcings were held constant in time. These forcings were only approximately representative for present climate.

3. The CMIP-3 present-day climatologies were formed using the same base period as for the observations, and the preindustrial climatologies were taken from the last 20 simulation years of the corresponding control run.(They are using the same incomplete data which they claim goes as far back as 1600)

4.The outcome of validating the preindustrial experiment against current climate is shown in the bottom row of Fig. 1. As expected, the I2 values are now larger than for the present-day simulations, indicating poorer performance. However, the mean difference between the two CMIP-3 simulations, which was due only to different forcings, is much smaller than that between CMIP-3 and the previous two model generations. The latter difference was due to different models and forcings combined. We conclude that the superior performance of the CMIP-3 models is mostly related to drastic model improvements, and that the forcings used to drive these models play a more subtle role.(Now this is funny. They are using the flawed and incomplete observations and then super imposing them on the limitations of the CMIP 1 AND CMIP 2 and then coming out with claims that the models are giving better results. I understand science has to evolve from models, but this is disingenuous. )

5. The use of multimodel ensembles is common practice in weather and short-term climate forecasting, and it is starting to become important for long-term climate change predictions. For example, many climate change estimates of the recently released global warming report of the IPCC are based on the multimodel simulations from the CMIP-3 ensemble. The report dealt with the problem of inconsistent predictions, resulting from the use of different models, by simply taking the average of all models as the best estimate for future climate change. Our results indicate that multimodel ensembles are a legitimate and effective means to improve the outcome of climate simulations. As yet, it is not exactly clear why the multimodel mean is better than any individual models.(Garbage in, garbage out)

6. First, we note the caveat that we were only concerned with the time-mean state of climate. Higher moments of climate, such as temporal variability, are probably equally as important for model performance, but we were unable to investigate these. Another critical point is the calculation of the performance index. For example, it is unclear how important climate variability is compared to the mean climate, exactly which is the optimum selection of climate variables, and how accurate the used validation data are. Another complicating issue is that error information contained in the selected climate variables is partly redundant. Clearly, more work is required to answer the above questions, and it is hoped that the present study will stimulate further research in the design of more robust metrics. For example, a future improved version of the index should consider possible redundancies and assign appropriate weights to errors from different climate variables. However, we do not think that our specific choices in this study affect our overall conclusion that there has been a measurable and impressive improvement in climate model performance over the past decade. (This is such a critical paragraph from the perspective of accepting the IPCC report. First there is incomplete data, then there are models which are evolving who juxtapose results based on limited data and to make the matters worse they discount certain possibly critical ( :?: ) variables because they do not know how to measure them. Any scientific mind would wonder what are they trying to achieve here. I agree humans are affecting the climate in an irreversible way but to attribute things to direct human action without proof is taking it a bit too far. ALL IMO onlee )
panduranghari
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by panduranghari »

johneeG wrote:
Bade wrote:That is global ocean, you can see the land and ocean temperature anomaly separately or combined.

The "trick" you keep referring to is not a sleight of hand, it has been verified by many independently and papers published. Check skpetical science if you want the details....will post when I get time...it has to do with tree-ring data sensitivity to increase in temperature...
Global ocean? You mean this is the average of several different ocean temperatures?

No. Its a bit more subtle than that. From 1800 to 1962 they have very very few measurements of some areas of ocean which fall within 2 degree latitude and 2 degree longitude relative to each other. From 1962 onwards they started measuring it 1 degree latitude and 1 degree longitude relative to each other. On top of that, 1962 to 1997 data is based on global telecommunications data ( not even satellite). From 1997 to 2005 it was measured more accurately and records were kept meticulously. From 2008, the data is real time.

You can't make this shi up.
Bade
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Bade »

30 yrs from 1970s...
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oisst
SaiK
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by SaiK »

But wording on the summit’s overall aims – whether to keep warming below 2 °C or perhaps 1.5 °C – and when the world will aim to be carbon neutral could be sticking points, especially since some scientists believe 1.6 °C of warming is already locked in, that 2 °C may be inevitable, and that the current pledges will bring us to 2.7 °C.

Despite this, a group of 43 countries will sign a declaration urging the UN to adopt a 1.5 °C target and the V20 – the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change – are expected to vote as a bloc, urging stronger aims.

The talks follow a weekend in which people all over the world took to the streets, calling for strong action on climate change. According to campaigning group Avaaz, 785,000 people joined marches in 175 countries.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... ut-can-it-
deliver/
Bade
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Bade »

This stream goes all way back to 1850....
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/clima ... ta-hadsst3
Image
SaiK
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by SaiK »

^clearly shows the fault is automobile and transportation infra/fossil fuel burn in the time span of the highs.

the new vehicles can be near zero CO2 emission
johneeG
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by johneeG »

Fake Data—How the Hockey Stick Graph Was Contrived

Image
The hockey stick was produced using tree ring data for temperature proxy up to recent times and then grafting on thermometer measurements. The tree ring data was flat for a thousand years in spite of known climate variations. The obvious reason is that temperature does not determine width of tree rings. Growth rate of plants is almost never temperature limited. Usually, it is either light limited or moisture limited. The famous decline after 1960 was probably due to increased overcast limiting light availability for photosynthesis. Physicist may not know this, but ignorance is no excuse for corruption of science.

The unspeakable fraud of it is that the purpose was to detect a 0.6°C global average temperature increase, as if they were using a laboratory instrument. With tree ring width? Four thousand thermometers have been shown to be inadequate for the purpose. See Temperature Fraud.
Fakes in science needed a representation of global warming which could sway the masses, and they found it in a hockey stick graph which the IPCC used as its primary showpiece. It's called the hockey stick graph because it is a straight line which bends up on the end. It's supposed to represent global temperature over the past thousand years with a sharp increase in the twentieth century due to human activity.

It has to be called outright fraud due to an absence of a bump and trough for known heating a thousand years ago and cooling a few hundred years ago. To show a straight line for a thousand years means it is not representing anything real.

Image
Medieval Warm Period

When critics saw the hockey stick graph, they knew something was wrong. So Steve McIntyre, a mathematician, attempted to reproduce the graph from the original data. His first problem was that the authors would not make the data available. In years gone by, all data would be included in a scientific publication; but nowdays, too much paper would be required, so scientific publications are little more than sales pitches with about as much objectivity as a soap advertisement.

In the spirit of godliness, all scientific journals require that data be made available to other scientists; but this is nothing but an image booster which is ignored in practice. So critics of the hockey stick graph were denied access to the data.

Therefore, what Steve McIntyre did was go through the statistical analysis and show that it incorrectly showed a significance where there was none. The original authors then published more such work attempting to bolster and justify their methodology. Eventually, they published in a journal which required them to make their data available. McIntyre took the data and showed that when all of it was properly evaluated, there was no hockey stick bend on the end representing the twentieth century and human activity.

The counter-argument of the original authors is that they just took whatever data seemed appropriate, which is not cherry picking the data. But the absurdity of it is that getting a straight line for the past thousand years shows that they did not have a scientific measurement to start with.

The original authors used tree ring measurements as a "proxy" indication of temperature. Usually, tree ring width indicates other things which influence growth besides temperature, but in this case the trees were located in the Urals of northern Russia, where temperature is assumed to be the limiting factor of growth. The fact that the line was straight for a thousand years shows that the tree rings being measured were not a suitable indicator of anything.

I would go farther and state that temperature changes in the far north are not a valid indication of global temperatures. This point was demonstrated over the past year in the northern USA, where all records were broken for cold temperatures in 2009, while global temperatures were said to be increasing.

The obvious reason why northern temperatures can be colder while global temperatures get warmer is because northern temperatures are determined by ocean currents which are highly variable in moving through the Arctic. The ocean currents which flow through the Arctic only influence a small area, not the whole globe.

This means that measurements of tree rings from the far north would not be an appropriate indicator of global temperatures. But regardless, the published measurements showed nothing, and the obvious reason is because the growth of the ancient trees being studied does not correlate with temperature, global or northern. Such factors as overcast and sunshine would probably be more relevant than temperature, but none of the causative factors were properly studied.

An earlier hockey stick graph was created for carbon dioxide by using ice cores. Ice cores are worthless for CO2 because of instability and no reliable method of extracting the gases in their original ratio. But criticism of the procedure was not allowed. (Fake Ice Core Data)

Notice this monumental fraud. If a flat graph going back a few centuries means nothing caused climate change but human activity, the same would also have to be true for the past four billion years of geological and biological history. Otherwise, whatever caused change in the past could be what is causing it now. All long term graphs show up and down peaks which never end. They never show anything flat. So the hockey stick graphs are contradicting long-term trends in attempting to propagandize the public.

The purpose of hockey stick graphs is to make the statement that nothing in nature changes these factors, only human influences do. That purpose is fraudulent. Earlier heat and CO2 had to get into the atmosphere through natural conditions.

The counter-argument of alarmists is that the medieval warm period and little ice age only occurred in the northern hemisphere, while the global average temperature was stable. Why would temperatures of the northern hemisphere be constantly changing, while the global average is stable? Temperatures in the southern hemisphere would have to be doing the opposite to create a stable average. Both hemispheres constantly changing doesn't point to a stable average.

Frauds have succeeded in convincing most of the public that there is a stable and unchanging set of conditions which has never varied in biological history, and humans are changing it to the detriment of all life. Hockey stick graphs have that fraudulent purpose.

You think I make this stuff up? This is what modern science has become.

First Stage: statistical fraud in the hockey stick graph — Bishop Hill
Second Stage: data corruption in the hockey stick graph — Joanne Nova
Explanation of hockey stick graphs — The Air Vent
Documenting the Medieval Warm Period at CO2 Science Org

Later, climategate emails, hacked or leaked by an insider, verified these points to a T. The tree ring data would not show the upturn in temperature after 1960. In fact, they showed a decline. So the contrivers said, "hide the decline" by replacing it with grafted on thermometer measurements. The tree ring data would not show warming, because tree ring data never is a measure of warming.

explained by Patrick Courrielche
Link
johneeG
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by johneeG »

The rise and fall of the Hockey Stick

The rise of the so called Hockey Stick graph is pivotal to the story of the rise of the alarm about man made global warming.

The fall of the Hockey Stick graph is pivotal to the rise of scepticism about man made global warming.

Here is the story of the rise and fall of the Hockey Stick.

The Background


A central and critical plank of the alarmist global warming case is that the current phase of warming that started in the late 19th century is unprecedented.

Why is this claim so important?

Because if a similar or greater warming phase has occurred in the very recent past, before human CO2 emissions had caused CO2 levels to rise, then clearly any such recent warming must have been natural and was not caused by CO2. And if any recent similar warming phase was natural then clearly the current phase of warming could also be a natural phenomena.

If the current phase of warming could be natural then those arguing that it was primarily caused by human CO2 emissions would have to prove their hypothesis. And this is something they cannot do.

The only “proof” that CO2 is currently forcing up global temperatures is the claim that the current warming is somehow unusual, unique and unnatural. That’s the total argument for CO2 forcing. Something unprecedented is happening to the climate and CO2 is the only candidate for what is causing this unique phenomena.

Its certainly true that the well understood physics of CO2 in the atmosphere demonstrates (see “CO2 the basic facts“)that CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas and will have a warming impact. No one disputes that. The issue is what is the scale of impact that this CO2 warming is having on the overall climate system. Is the effect of the CO2 so big that it can drive the temperature of the whole planet up in a way that is big enough to actually alter the climate?

This is a much harder question to answer because no one has a model of the total climate system that actually works and which verifiably produces even remotely accurate forecasts about climate trends.

So without a working model of the total climate system the only way to “prove” that CO2 is driving climate change is to prove that something truly unique is happening to the climate, that there is unprecedented warming occurring, and and then propose man made CO2 change as the only candidate as the cause of this ‘unprecedented’ warming.

The “problem” of the Medieval Warm Period

Until the 1990s there were many, many references in scientific and historical literature to a period labelled the Medieval Warm Period(MWP) lasting from about AD 800–1300. It was followed by a much cooler period termed the Little Ice Age. Based on both temperature reconstructions using proxy measures and voluminous historical references it was accepted that the Medieval Warm Period had been a period when global temperatures were a bit hotter than today’s temperatures. Until about the mid-1990s the Medieval Warm Period was for climate researchers an undisputed fact. The existence of the Medieval Warm Period was accepted without question and noted in the first progress report of the IPCC from 1990. On page 202 of that 1990 IPCC report there was the graphic 7c (see below), in which the Medieval Warm Period was portrayed as clearly warmer than the present.

By the time of the second IPCC report in 1995 where for the first time CO2 forcing began to be proposed more prominently as a cause of serious alarm, the Medieval Warm Period was sidelined in the text and narrative. An important way that this was done in the report was to alter the diagram of recent climate history by simply shortening the time period it covered so that it now started after the Medieval Warm Period. All that was shown was the long slow recovery from the Little Ice Age to today’s temperatures, i.e. a long period of increasing temperatures. But clearly this was only a short term solution. The way that the Medieval Warm Period dominated the recent climate graph challenged the basic argument for CO2 forcing which was that the late 20th century climate was some how unique. As Jay Overpeck, an IPCC participant said in his email to Professor Deming, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”.

In order to prove CO2 forcing the Medieval Warm Period had to be eliminated.

The Rise of the Hockey Stick

Between the 1995 second IPCC report and the 2001 third IPCC report there was a complete revision in the way that recent climate history was portrayed. The supporters of the theory that CO2 changes were driving temperatures up had succeeded in their goal of eliminating the Medieval Warm Period. This rewriting of climate history and the elimination of the Medieval Warm Period was achieved through the famous Hockey Stick graph.

To understand the scale of the revision that had taken place compare the two graphs below. The one on the left is diagram 7c from page 202 of the 1990 IPCC report in which the Medieval Warm Period was portrayed as clearly warmer than the present. On the right is the Hockey Stick graph from the 2001 IPCC report in which the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age have all but disappeared and the recent climate history is dominated by a rapid temperature rise in the last 20th century.

Link to Image of Hockey stick chartThe first blow against the accepted understanding of climate history came in 1995 when the English climatologist Keith Briffa (based at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia) published in the journal Nature a study with sensational results. According to his studies of tree rings in the Siberian Polar-Ural, there had never been a Medieval Warm Period and the 20th century suddenly appeared as the warmest of the last 1000 years. The most recent part of this study is known as the Yamal study, because of the name of the region it was done in, and it has recently been discredited – see here.

Briffa’s work boldly proposed that the 20th Century had experienced the warmest climate of the millennium and this claim was now the central battlefield for the scientific argument about CO2 forcing. This of course ignored the Climatic Optimum (see Happy Holocene) between 5000 and 9000 years ago when temperatures were significantly higher than today but most people (and certainly the media and politicians) actually think that 5000 years is a long time ago so there was no need to undermine the Climatic Optimum in order to win wide public support for the CO2 forcing hypothesis. Hottest in the last 1000 years would do.

Briffa’s work had an impact and laid the ground work but the real knock out blow that finally succeeded in eliminating the Medieval Warm Period was a paper published in 1998 in Nature by Mann, Bradley and Hughes entitled, “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries” (you can download it here). This was the original peer reviewed hockey stick article.

Michael Mann of the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, who was the primary author of the paper, had in one scientific coup overturned the whole of climate history. Using tree rings as a basis for assessing past temperature changes back to the year 1,000 AD, supplemented by other proxies from more recent centuries, Mann completely redrew climate history, turning the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age into non-events. In the new Hockey Stick diagram the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age have disappeared, to be replaced by a largely benign and slightly cooling linear trend in climate until 1900 AD after which the Mann’s new graph showed the temperature shooting up in the 20th century in an apparently anomalous and accelerating fashion.

In every other science when such a drastic revision of previously accepted knowledge is promulgated, there is considerable debate and initial scepticism, the new theory facing a gauntlet of criticism and intense review. Only if a new idea survives that process does it become broadly accepted by the scientific peer group and the public at large.

This never happened with Mann’s `Hockey Stick’. The coup was total, bloodless, and swift as Mann’s paper was greeted with a chorus of uncritical approval from the increasingly politically committed supporters of the CO2 greenhouse theory. Within the space of only 12 months, the new theory had become entrenched as a new orthodoxy. The ultimate consummation of the new theory came with the release of the draft of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC in 2000. Based solely on this new paper from a relatively unknown and young scientist the IPCC could now boldly state:

“It is likely that the rate and duration of the warming of the 20th century is larger than any other time during the last 1,000 years. The 1990s are likely to have been the warmest decade of the millennium in the Northern Hemisphere, and 1998 is likely to have been the warmest year.”

Overturning its own previous view in the 1995 report, the IPCC presented the `Hockey Stick’ as the new orthodoxy with hardly an apology or explanation for the abrupt U-turn since its 1995 report. The IPCC could show almost no supporting scientific justification because other than Mann’s Hockey Stick paper, and Briffa’s Siberian tree ring study there was little in the way of research confirming their new line.

The Hockey Stick graph, the new orthodoxy, was blown up to a wall sized display and used as a back drop for the public launch of the 2001 IPCC report.

Within months of the IPCC draft release, the long-awaited draft U.S. `National Assessment’ Overview document featured the `Hockey Stick’ as the first of many climatic graphs and charts in its report, affirming the crucial importance placed in it by the authors and by the active pro CO2 warming campaign at large. This was now not an esoteric theory about the distant past but rather the core foundation upon which the offensive on global warming was being mounted.

Soon the Hockey Stick was everywhere and with it went the new simple and catchy campaigning slogans “its hotter now than the last 1000 years!“, “1998 was the hottest year for a 1000 years!”

Not long after the 2001 IPCC report the Government of Canada sent the hockey stick to schools across the country, and its famous conclusion about the 1990s being the warmest decade of the millennium was the opening line of a pamphlet sent to every household in Canada to promote the Kyoto Protocol.

Al Gore’s Oscar winning and hugely popular film “An Inconvenient Truth” was virtually built around the Hockey Stick (although Gore couldn’t resist tweaking it to make it look even more compelling by changing the way the graph data was displayed along the axis so that the temperature trend line it showed looked even steeper and starker).

In the UK the Government announced that the DVD of the “An Inconvenient Truth” would be sent to every school in the country as a teaching aid.

The Hockey Stick seemed to be carrying all before it. Dr Mann was promoted, given a central position in the IPCC and became a star of the media.

And then it all went horribly wrong.

The Fall of the Hockey Stick


In the years immediately after the 2001 IPCC report it seemed as if the sudden adoption of the Hockey Stick model of the earth’s recent climate past had created a new orthodoxy which could not be challenged. Even when some scientists quietly worried that the new theory about the past climate had been adopted way too quickly or were unhappy about the way that satellite temperature readings didn’t seem to fit the Hockey Stick model or they noticed that new individual proxy studies still seemed to keep showing that the Medieval Warm Period was hotter than today, they mostly stayed silent. They didn’t want to be branded as ‘deniers‘ after all.

Then an unlikely hero emerged in the shape of Stephen McIntyre a retired mineralogist fromToronto. McIntyre is not a scientist or an economist but he does know a lot about statistics, maths and data analysis and he is a curious guy. He didn’t start off as a climate sceptic but was just someone interested in the nuts and bolts of these new and apparently exciting ideas about climate change, and he was curious about how the Hockey Stick graph was made and wanted to see if the raw data looked like hockey sticks too. In the Spring of 2003, Stephen McIntyre requested the raw data set used in the Hockey Stick paper from Mann. After some delay Mann arranged provision of a file which he said was the one used in the original 1998 Hockey Stick paper and McIntyre began to look at how Mann had processed all the data from the numerous different proxy studies cited as his source material and how they had been combined to produce the average that was the basis of the famous Hockey Stick shape.

About this time Steve McIntyre linked up with Ross McKitrick a Canadian economist specialising in environmental economics and policy analysis. Together McIntyre and McKitrick began to dig down into the data that Mann had used in his paper and the statistical techniques used to create the single blended average used to make the Hockey Stick. They immediately began to find problems.

Some of these problems just seemed the sort of errors that are caused by sloppy data handling concerning location labels, use of obsolete editions, unexplained truncations of available series, etc. Although such errors should have been spotted in the peer review process and they would adversely affect the quality of Mann’s conclusions they had a relatively small effect on the final results.

But McIntyre and McKitrick found one major error, an error so big that it invalidated the entire conclusion of the whole paper. A whopper of an error.

As we have seen what Mann had done was blend together lots of different proxy studies of the past climate going back a 1000 years and then produced an average of all these studies and a single graph showing the trend. Clearly the validity of the techniques used to blend together and average the different data from the various different studies was absolutely critical as to the validity of the final conclusions reached and the resulting Hockey Stick graph. This sort of blending of data sets is a very common statistical exercise and there are very well established techniques for undertaking such an exercise, these techniques use values that are called ‘principal components’ (if you want to know a lot more about the technical details then download McKitrick’s paper from here). What McIntyre and McKitrick discovered was that Mann had used very unusual principal component values and the effect of the choice of value used had drastically skewed the outcome of the blending and averaging exercise. Effectively what Mann’s odd statistical techniques did was to select data that had any sort of Hockey Stick shape and hugely increase its weight in the averaging process. Using Mann’s technique it meant that any data was almost certain to produce a spurious Hockey Stick shape.

Here is an example of the sort of things Mann was doing to the raw date.
Link to Image
Above are two separate temperature reconstructions running from 1400AD, both use tree rings, one is from California and one is from Arizona. Both were were part of the data used by Mann and included in the Hockey Stick average. The top one shows a temperature up tick at the end in the 20th century like the final Hockey Stick, the other shows a relatively flat temperature for the 20th century. Mann’s statistical trick gives the top series, the one with the desired Hockey Stick shape a weighting in the data that is 390 times that of the bottom series just because it has a Hockey Stick bend at the end. This means that whatever data is fed into Mann’s statistical manipulations is almost bound to produce a Hockey Stick shape whether it is actually in the data or not.

McIntyre and McKitrick then took their critical analysis a step further. When you apply a statistical manipulation to a set of data it is important to make sure that what you doing is not actually distorting the data so much that you are really just creating something new, spurious and false in the numbers. One way to do this is to take the statistical manipulation in question and apply it to several examples of random numbers (sometimes this is called a Red Noise test). To simplify, you use random numbers as input data, then apply the statistical technique you are testing to the random numbers then if the techniques are sound you should get a set of random numbers coming out the other end of the calculations. There should be no false shape imparted to the random noise by the statistical techniques themselves, if what you get out is random numbers then this would prove that the techniques you were testing were not adding anything artificial to the numbers. This is what McIntyre and McKitrick did using the techniques that Mann had used in the Hockey Stick paper. And the results were staggering.

What they found was that 99% of the time you could process random data using Mann’s techniques and it would generate a Hockey Stick shape. This meant that Mann’s claim that the Hockey Stick graph represented an accurate reconstruction of the past climate was in tatters.

Here are some examples. Below are eight graphs. Seven were made by processing random numbers using Mann’s techniques. The eighth is the actual Hockey Stick chart from Mann’s paper. See if you can spot which is which.

McIntyre and McKitrick submitted a letter to Nature about the serious flaws they had uncovered in the methodology used in the Hockey Stick paper. After a long (8-month) reviewing process Nature notified them that they would not publish it. They concluded it could not be explained in the 500-word limit they were prepared to give McIntyre and McKitrick, and one of the referees said he found the material was quite technical and unlikely to be of interest to the general readers!

Image
Instead of publishing anything from McIntyre and McKitrick explaining the serious errors that they had found Nature allowed Mann to make a coy correction in an on-line Supplement (but not in the printed text itself) where he revealed the nonstandard method he had used, and added the unsupported claim that it did not affect the results.

Eventually in 2003, McIntyre and McKitrick published an article entitled “Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series” in the journal Energy and Environment raising concerns about what they had found in Manns Hockey Stick paper. By this point following further work analysing Mann’s paper McIntyre and McKitrick showed that the data mining procedure did not just pull out a random group of proxies, instead it pulled out a single eccentric group of bristlecone pine chronologies published by Graybill and Idso in 1993 called the Sheep Mountain series.The original authors of the bristlecone study have always stressed that these trees are not proper climate proxies, their study was not trying to do a climate reconstruction and that they were surprised that Mann included it in the Hockey Stick data set. McIntyre and McKitrick had discovered that just removing this odd series from Mann’s proxy set and then applying Mann’s own eccentric statistical averaging caused the Hockey Stick shape to disappear. This revolutionary new model of the recent climate past was that fragile and it revealed the Hockey Stick graph as just a carefully worked artificial creation.

In the graph below the dotted line is the original Hockey Stick chart as published by Mann and as adopted and promoted by the IPCC. The solid line shows the past temperature reconstruction if the data used by Mann is averaged using the correct statistical analysis techniques rather than Mann’s unconventional ones. As can be seen the familiar Medieval Warm Period re-emerges and the 1990s cease to be the hottest of the millennium, that title is now claimed by the early 1400s.


Image
In doing this research McIntyre and McKitrick had legitimately accessed Mann’s public college web site server in order to get a lot of the source material, and whilst doing this they found the data that provoked them to look at the bristlecone series in a folder entitled “Censored”. It seems that Mann had done this very experiment himself and discovered that the climate graph loses its hockey stick shape when the bristlecone series are removed. In so doing he discovered that the hockey stick was not an accurate chart of the recent global climate pattern, it is an artificial creation that hinges on a flawed group of US proxies that are not even valid climate indicators. But Mann did not disclose this fatal weakness of his results, and it only came to light because of McIntyre and McKitrick’’s laborious efforts.

You can download McKitrick’ss own account of the whole Hockey Stick saga here and this web page compiled by McIntyre and McKitrick has a list of links and documents relating to the Hockey Stick controversy.

Following the publication of McIntyre and McKitrick’s critique of Mann’s work there was an immediate counter attack by some climatologists who had worked closely with Mann in the past. The attack on McIntyre and McKitrick’s critique of Mann’s work really boiled down to saying that of course the Hockey Stick disappeared if you stopped using Mann’s techniques and that you should carry on using Mann’s techniques and then you could get the Hockey Stick back!

Eventually a US senate committee of inquiry was set up under the chairmanship of Edward Wegman a highly respected Professor of mathematics and statistics and in 2006 his report was published. You can download it here.

The report examined the background to Mann’s Hockey Stick paper, the paper itself, the critique of it by McIntyre and McKitrick and took evidence from all the key players. Interestingly Wegman’s committee commissioned some original research into how the small world of climatology actually worked. The study of the social networking of the paleoclimatology world showed how closed it was and how often a small group of scientists both co-wrote and peer reviewed each others papers. For work that depended so much on making statistical claims about trends it was noted that it was surprising that no statisticians ever seemed to be involved in either the research work itself or its peer review.

The key finding in the WEgman Report was that “Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the MBH98/99 [the technical name of Mann’s original Hockey Stick paper]”

The other conclusions of the Wegman Report are also very interesting; It listed the following conclusions:

Conclusion 1. The politicization of academic scholarly work leads to confusing public debates. Scholarly papers published in peer reviewed journals are considered the archival record of research. There is usually no requirement to archive supplemental material such as code and data. Consequently, the supplementary material for academic work is often poorly documented and archived and is not sufficiently robust to withstand intense public debate. In the present example there was too much reliance on peer review, which seemed not to be sufficiently independent.

Conclusion 2. Sharing of research materials, data, and results is haphazard and often grudgingly done. We were especially struck by Dr. Mann’s insistence that the code he developed was his intellectual property and that he could legally hold it personally without disclosing it to peers. When code and data are not shared and methodology is not fully disclosed, peers do not have the ability to replicate the work and thus independent verification is impossible.

Conclusion 3.
As statisticians, we were struck by the isolation of communities such as the paleoclimate community that rely heavily on statistical methods, yet do not seem to be interacting with the mainstream statistical community. The public policy implications of this debate are financially staggering and yet apparently no independent statistical expertise was sought or used.

Conclusion 4. While the paleoclimate reconstruction has gathered much publicity because it reinforces a policy agenda, it does not provide insight and understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate change except to the extent that tree ring, ice cores and such give physical evidence such as the prevalence of green-house gases. What is needed is deeper understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate change.

Generally the response of the IPCC, the supporters of the CO2 hypothesis and the broader coalition of climate campaigners to all this was a cross between a sneer and a yawn, and the Hockey Stick continued to be used widely as a campaigning and propaganda tool.

It is still being used today.

In 2008 the BBC paid for a large truck to tour central London displaying a giant version of Mann’s Hockey Stick as part of the promotion of its very pro CO2 warming mini series called “Climate Wars”.
Link
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by sudarshan »

SaiK wrote:Bade, my confusion was the 70% absorbed == 70% radiated. Then, what did the Earth consume? maybe I didn't describe my confusion earlier. It was not the addition. 30% is already reflected by atmosphere.

My assumption is some x% it must eat off! may be it is way too small to show.
This is a common misconception. The earth doesn't have to "consume" anything, if the system is in steady state, inflow will exactly equal outflow.

It's like a lake, temperature is the water level (the forcing function, or pressure), while heat flow is like the water flow rate. Water flows in and out, and there's also evaporation. At steady state, inflow will equal outflow in all forms, i.e., the sum total of water flowing out, soil absorption, evaporative loss, animals drinking from the lake, etc. will exactly equal inflow. The lake maintains whatever level it is currently at. If there is an imbalance, the level will rise or fall, until the inflow again equals the outflow.

Likewise, for the earth, heat influx will exactly equal heat outflow at steady state. If you add CO2 to the atmosphere, that's like throttling the outflow, so the temperature will rise until the system is again able to get rid of all the incoming heat. That's exactly the issue here - how much will the temperature rise? And is the effect of industrial activity solely to throttle the outflow (by adding CO2), or does it also reduce the inflow (due to increased water vapor, which reflects and scatters incoming heat)? Because if the inflow is reduced, that will counter the effect of the throttled outflow at least to some extent.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by panduranghari »

JohneeG wrote: Michael Mann of the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, who was the primary author of the paper, had in one scientific coup overturned the whole of climate history. Using tree rings as a basis for assessing past temperature changes back to the year 1,000 AD, supplemented by other proxies from more recent centuries, Mann completely redrew climate history, turning the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age into non-events. In the new Hockey Stick diagram the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age have disappeared, to be replaced by a largely benign and slightly cooling linear trend in climate until 1900 AD after which the Mann’s new graph showed the temperature shooting up in the 20th century in an apparently anomalous and accelerating fashion.

In every other science when such a drastic revision of previously accepted knowledge is promulgated, there is considerable debate and initial scepticism, the new theory facing a gauntlet of criticism and intense review. Only if a new idea survives that process does it become broadly accepted by the scientific peer group and the public at large.

This never happened with Mann’s `Hockey Stick’. The coup was total, bloodless, and swift as Mann’s paper was greeted with a chorus of uncritical approval from the increasingly politically committed supporters of the CO2 greenhouse theory. Within the space of only 12 months, the new theory had become entrenched as a new orthodoxy. The ultimate consummation of the new theory came with the release of the draft of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC in 2000. Based solely on this new paper from a relatively unknown and young scientist the IPCC could now boldly state:

“It is likely that the rate and duration of the warming of the 20th century is larger than any other time during the last 1,000 years. The 1990s are likely to have been the warmest decade of the millennium in the Northern Hemisphere, and 1998 is likely to have been the warmest year.”

Overturning its own previous view in the 1995 report, the IPCC presented the `Hockey Stick’ as the new orthodoxy with hardly an apology or explanation for the abrupt U-turn since its 1995 report. The IPCC could show almost no supporting scientific justification because other than Mann’s Hockey Stick paper, and Briffa’s Siberian tree ring study there was little in the way of research confirming their new line.

The Hockey Stick graph, the new orthodoxy, was blown up to a wall sized display and used as a back drop for the public launch of the 2001 IPCC report.

Within months of the IPCC draft release, the long-awaited draft U.S. `National Assessment’ Overview document featured the `Hockey Stick’ as the first of many climatic graphs and charts in its report, affirming the crucial importance placed in it by the authors and by the active pro CO2 warming campaign at large. This was now not an esoteric theory about the distant past but rather the core foundation upon which the offensive on global warming was being mounted.

Soon the Hockey Stick was everywhere and with it went the new simple and catchy campaigning slogans “its hotter now than the last 1000 years!“, “1998 was the hottest year for a 1000 years!”
I wanted to post this specific bit because the pro GW crowd congregates around this 'hockey stick'.

It is interesting because what changed in 2000 CE? What significant geo-political changes happened around this time? 2 things stand out- China's admission to WTO in 2001 and Euro launch in 1999. Of course there was the dot com crash in 2000. 2 year before that in 1998 was the repeal of the Glass-Stegal act which removed the firewall between the retail banking and casino banking. Also Gore decided to not run for presidency in 2000 and Hitlery became a senator. Didn't chinese embassy in belgrade suffer american bombing in 1999?
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Amber G. »

It was interesting to see my guru Freeman D. described as "greatest living scientist" 8)
mohanty wrote:
SwamyG wrote:So people still think humans are not messing up the environment? Wow !!!
Here is more wow...
Here is some more wow, one of the greatest living scientist Freeman Dyson saying climate change propaganda is absurd,
http://bigthink.com/devils-advocate/fre ... are-absurd
<snip>
It was amusing to see the invoking of Freeman Dyson as "one of the greatest living scientist" in this way. This is being done not only in brf but many other places by others too. This is amusing to me , as long time readers may realize, because some of the same people ridiculed physics/science in other places. BTW he does not support (to put it mildly) any of the nonsense which SwamyG was making fun of, even if that nonsense is peddled by "pretty famous guy like Glenn beck".

(Disclaimer: I have known Freeman Dyson more than 40 years, and as one of my gurus, I obviously respect him lot and consider him an outstanding scientist )

First a few random tidbits - (fairly well known but some may not know it here). FD is a pukka democrat - an open Obama supporter, so it is funny that his quotes are being used by current Republican presidential hopefuls

It was also amusing to see that NONE of these Republicans hopefuls, (and "pretty famous guys" like Glen Beck) quotes FD's current take on Iran Nuclear Deal (which he supports in very strong terms), or his theories of cosmology which does NOT talk about earth being created in 7 days.

As most of those who have worked with (or know about him) know, FD is very well-known "contrarian"..
(His wife, at least sometimes ago, believed in GW a lot , wanted to buy Prius, and he did not think it will save the earth :) One should be careful in understanding what he says..and not to use his words in 30 seconds sound-bytes.

He is quite dismissive of Al Gore, and Al Gore's movie (Inconvenient Truth), and even of James Hansen (head of the NASA Goddard Institute - who I think was an adviser to Gore' film)... Legend has it that when the Dyson couple saw the Gore's movie, Mrs Dyson cried seeing all the ice melting .. and confronted her husband "Everything you told me is wrong!" to that her husband replied "polar bears will be fine" :)


Anyway just to give some perspective -- TIFWIW (read more yourself - there is plenty good material out there).
- He has no doubt that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas." (As people have reported quite widely that he is critical os some existing simulation models ..and as contains too much error to reliably predict future trends:
(See for this link or many of his writings: http://edge.org/conversation/heretical- ... nd-society
- He makes quite a bit of distinction between pollution (which is "clearly" man made, its effects much precisely predicted and can be controlled by easier methods) CO2.

Anyway there is plenty of good material out there to discus and read while avoiding CT's and pseudoscience..
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Amber G. »

Bade- Thanks. Excellent material in those links.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by NRao »

Nice article. With a very nice infographic.

China’s Coastal Cities, Underwater

No need for India to develop or build nuclear deterrent.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by NRao »

NRao
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by NRao »

Amber G.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Amber G. »

Amber G.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Amber G. »

Climate change: Propaganda Vs Reality ...(Deniers vs non-deniers)
Image
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by panduranghari »

NRao wrote:Sense seems to be prevailing.

COP21: Climate deal 'final draft' reached in Paris
[*]Many developing and smaller countries are disappointed that the agreement does not name a specific number – a goal of at least $100 billion a year in contributions from rich countries is mentioned only in the preamble, which is not legally binding.
[*]This is the first time the term “loss and damage” has been included in an international agreement, meeting a demand from smaller, island countries for acknowledgement of their suffering from the effects of climate change. Although the language stops short of mentioning liability – opposed by more heavily polluted industrialized nations – it is still considered a significant step toward recognition of the damage that results from rising global temperatures.
[*]This legally requires countries to come back every five years with new reduction targets for emissions that will be evaluated. Bringing the number down to five-year limits constitutes a tightening of the accord, as some countries, India in particular, had demanded 10-year cycles.

Sense prevailing? If you are an Indian, I do not see how this would be considered as sense prevailing. We sign this modern version of non proliferation treaty to our own detriment.

The industrialised countries can still not pay for the technology we need to convert to a more carbon neutral economy.
Though penalties have not been imposed now, it could happen in 5 years.
By keeping a 5 year time limit on the review of the target, can India be forced to pay penalties for not being able to achieve the carbon goals?

Hopefully, there will be a very coherent article on the USI blog explaining these issues.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by sudarshan »

A climate model is simply energy and mass balance. Energy balance determines temperatures. Mass balance determines phenomena such as wind, ocean currents, etc. The presence of fluid media on a planet, like an atmosphere or oceans, greatly complicates climate models. This is because the mass balance phenomena have to be considered. In addition, the heat balance is also affected by convective and advective processes.

When a planet doesn't have an atmosphere, the situation becomes far easier. Such is the case with Mercury, Mars, or the Moon. Without this atmosphere, the planet simply becomes a rock, which heats up and cools down due to radiative transport.

You can use publicly available data for such planets to build some pretty sophisticated climate models. For Mercury, we know the orbit around the sun, which determines the perihelion and apohelion. We know the amount of heat radiated by the sun. We know that the orbital period of Mercury around the sun is around 88 days. Also, Mercury is tidally locked with the sun in such a way, that it makes three rotations around its own axis for every two revolutions around the sun. So an observer on Mercury will see one cycle of sunrise and sunset, commonly termed a DAY, every two (Mercury) years, or every 176 days. The tilt of Mercury's axis WRT the ecliptic is also minimal.

Knowing all this, and making some assumptions on the properties of Mercury rock, etc., you can simply simulate the entire climate of Mercury at various latitudes and longitudes, even on an Excel spreadsheet. The results are below.

Image

There will be two "longitudes," which could point exactly at the sun at perihelion. I picked one of these, arbitrarily, as zero degrees longitude.

These results are very instructive for climate on earth, even though the earth has an atmosphere, and I'll explain why in a later post.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by sudarshan »

Looking at temperature measurements of Mercury, the max. recorded temperature (by probes sent to the planet) was around 700K, while the minimum, on the night side of the planet, was around 100K. These match pretty well with the model. The temperature at the poles is fairly constant, at around 180K, and I was also able to verify this, though this isn't shown in the plot above. Climate modeling is actually fun!
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Amber G. »

panduranghari wrote:
Sense prevailing? If you are an Indian, I do not see how this would be considered as sense prevailing. We sign this modern version of non proliferation treaty to our own detriment.
...

Hopefully, there will be a very coherent article on the USI blog explaining these issues.
India is actually welcoming the final draft <link> Hope you find some coherent articles you are looking for.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Amber G. »

Of course one should look at the full text of the document, to be exact, but FWIW here are key points.

- Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, (recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change).

- Reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter.

- "Acknowledges" the importance of averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change.

-Asks all countries to update their national targets for reducing emissions by 2020 and every 5 years thereafter" ( Modi initially was proposing 10 years)

-A new collective quantified goal of at least $100 billion a year in climate-related financing by 2020.

-Capacity-Building Initiative for Transparency to help developing countries meet a new requirement that they regularly provide a national inventory report of human-caused emissions, by source, and track their progress in meeting their national goals.

- An overall assessment of how things are going — starting in 2023, every five years.

- All commit to the “highest possible ambition"
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

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Sense prevailing? If you are an Indian, I do not see how this would be considered as sense prevailing. We sign this modern version of non proliferation treaty to our own detriment.
This topic of climate control is OLD. I left the field in 1986, after seven years in transportation + environments. Publsihed papers, etc.

If left to continue, India would face something similar to a nuclear attack - for sure. Check out China. What progress?

"If you are an Indian", better believe that growth with a keen eye on the environment is in your financial interests. Any progress a country like India makes on the financial front will be paid heavily on health care, etc. Nations like the US have paid in the trillions - yes trillions - just to do what Modi is asking India to do today - clean her rivers. It took the US some 50+ years to clean her rivers. Try that. Cleaning the Ganges will very, very easily cost a few Rafale squadrons.

Much better to tone down and pay up front.

I know people like to get hold of data and interpret it and that is fine. But one cannot mess with climatic data - one cannot introduce, even by mistake, a bias. Countries like China are very aware that some of their prime cities will vanish, if they did not act now. And, that is not worth the financial growth. I suppose even Modi is coming around to that realization. Dunno. No matter what, smart.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Amber G. »

Meanwhile in US..where Republicans have majority... breaking news..
House backs bill to exclude climate change from trade deals

And Mc McConnel's statement just after Obama's speech (which has just finished) came out with rubbishing the deal and saying it will will be thrown in trash as soon as Obama's term is over.. /sigh/
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by NRao »

Amber G. wrote:Meanwhile in US..where Republicans have majority... breaking news..
House backs bill to exclude climate change from trade deals

And Mc McConnel's statement just after Obama's speech (which has just finished) came out with rubbishing the deal and saying it will will be thrown in trash as soon as Obama's term is over.. /sigh/
Nothing new, it happened in the 80-90s too. They ALL had to jump on the ride. At a HUGE cost.

But then the US has trillions to burn. So, it seems.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by sudarshan »

Cleaning rivers is not something anybody (at least, anybody that I know of) is objecting to. Yes, some greenhouse gases can also cause river pollution due to acid rain, notably SO2, maybe even CO2. But this whole idea that there is some kind of ideal temperature for the planet, and also an ideal climate which should not be allowed to change, is silly. Climate is going to change, and human efforts to prevent that change are also an artifice which can be termed as "pollution" in a way.

I'm conflicted about this attempt to cool down the planet, though. If the sun really is entering a Maunder minimum, and we end up compounding the problem by cooling the planet even further, then the current developed regions will be devastated by permafrost, while India will have it easy. So I don't know, maybe we should all carry on trying to cool the planet anyways....

On a serious note:

For planets which have no atmosphere, these are the calculated maximum temperatures on parts of the planet which are directly exposed to solar radiation:

Mercury: 697 K, or 424 C
Venus: 460 K, or 187 C (Note: this is in the hypothetical case that Venus had no atmosphere)
Moon: 385 K, or 112 C
Mars: 304 K, or 31 C

The maximum temperature measured by probes on the moon was around 106 C, and on Mercury around 427 C. So this agrees well with the numbers above. These numbers are instructive for two reasons.

1. The earth is the same distance from the sun as the moon. This means that if the earth had no atmosphere, the earth would also heat up to about 110 C. So the effect of the atmosphere on the earth is to cool it down drastically, bringing the temperature to more like what is on the surface of Mars when it is directly exposed to the sun.

2. If Venus had no atmosphere, it would not reach a temperature above 200 C, ever. However, the surface temperature measured on Venus is more like 475 C, which is hotter than even Mercury! This is of course due to the dense absorbing atmosphere on Venus, and this means that an atmosphere can heat up a planet to more than the extent expected, if there was pure radiative heat transport. So more CO2 on earth can be expected to have a warming effect, certainly. The question is - how much, and is man-made CO2 really going to be that significant. To answer this, we will have to get into the nitty-gritty of gas radiation, which I will do next.
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

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Cleaning rivers is not something anybody (at least, anybody that I know of) is objecting to. Yes, some greenhouse gases can also cause river pollution due to acid rain, notably SO2, maybe even CO2.
Somebody did object to cleaning rivers (or keeping them clean) (all for making money), which is why they are polluted!!!!!!!
But this whole idea that there is some kind of ideal temperature for the planet, and also an ideal climate which should not be allowed to change, is silly.
Yes, we do not know what that "ideal temperature" is - I can grant you that. But what I cannot grant you is that humans are not impacting the balance of that "ideal temperature".

Man, in the entire universe, is the most stupid entity. Everything in the universe follows and performs its duties ........ except man.
Climate is going to change, and human efforts to prevent that change are also an artifice which can be termed as "pollution" in a way
The argument - since I left school in the late 70s - has never been never been about "climate is going to change" - that is a given. The issue has always been about does man's decisions have an impact on it and how do we compute it. And, there are complex elements to this equation: asthma, allergies, obesity (yes), birth related issues, fisheries, yada, yada, yada .................. Not even talked about forests and oceans, which are impacted - how much is up for debate I guess, but only until islands vanish.

Better to gain control now and figure out if that did help. But it will take a cool 50 years before we see the impact of this agreement. That is IF no one cheats. That is not going to happen.
Vayutuvan
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Vayutuvan »

NRao garu: What does "legally binding" mean in this scenario? What happens if some entity (or a nation) doesn't abide by the rules?

AmberG ji: The deniers are those who are most at risk of having to cut down on their conspicuous consumption. No wonder they are denying in spite of the scietific data pointing otherwise.

Put those two things together and what we have a DoA of a treaty. Let us hope I am proved wrong and they would start spending those promised $100 billion every year even earlier than 2020 to get the world off of fossil fuel. I am not in favor of nuclear either but as a stop gap to get off of the fossil fuels and as a measure to smooth the transition to clean and renewable energy - solar, wind, geothermal to start with and more esoteric stuff like fusion as time goes by.
Vayutuvan
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by Vayutuvan »

Bade wrote: Humans are not special that we need to make sure we survive as a species. The world will do good without us and in better measure.
Bade: That is arguable especially so if we can become responsible stewards of the ecosystem we are a part and parcel of. At this point only homo sapiens have the knowledge - bare minimum it may be - required understanding cause-effect and are equipped - however minutely - to engineer a better future. None of the other species can do it. If humans disappear the chances of another species developing into tool using animals are remote. Obviously all this is academic until one finds a cure for the disease known as mortality.
SaiK
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by SaiK »

Amber G. wrote:Climate change: Propaganda Vs Reality ...(Deniers vs non-deniers)
More than the NO, It is the 'Don't Know' highest in USA! That is freaking me out.
sudarshan
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

Post by sudarshan »

Why should the "Don't Know" freak you out? Do you think everybody who says "Agree" or "Disagree" really knows what is going on? If they did, are there two things going on, that some people agree and some disagree? Truth is, nobody knows what is going on, and the "Don't Know"s are the ones being honest about that.

This kind of hyperbole about "man is the stupidest creature, every other species follows its duties" is - well, hyperbole. Every creature is out for its own selfish gain, man just has the greatest capability to impact the environment. Men, animals, plants, all are identical at the level of the spirit, or soul. Their karma-phala grants them different bodies with different capabilities, that is all.

I'm all for reducing pollution, it does negatively impact our lives, and I'm greatly concerned about the air quality in Indian metros. Food and water are both impacted by it, and the cancer stats are scary. But why do it under the aegis of this "climate change" rhetoric, which seeks to penalize developing nations more than developed nations? Modi has already committed to "clean Ganga," even without these international agreements which mean nothing. Can't India forge her own path on reducing pollution?

I don't believe it took the USA 50 years to clean up her rivers. The wake-up moment for the USA was when the Cuyahoga river in Ohio caught fire in 1969. Did it take till 2009 to clean up that river? The environmental movement took off in the 70's and 80's in the US, and the task of cleaning up rivers took a decade or two at most. I'm not arguing that it is complete and there's nothing more to do, but visible changes, and reduction of pollution by 90% to 95%, don't take that long. When did the UK start cleaning up the Thames? 1980's I believe. Reducing effluents into the Ganga will be a great start, and visible changes will occur within 5 or 10 years, providing motivation and renewed energy. There's ways to go beyond just cleaning the Ganga, but realistic goals will help.
Vayutuvan
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Re: Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

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River Thames was cleaned up from water being so toxic that one would fear to dip their little finger into it to potable water and trout in a 20 years or so.
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