I want to sue the republican party for willful denial of scientific evidence about climate change.

[Mad Mike]

Mike is just fine. Thanks for asking. He just got tired of certain people here.  

 

In fact I've been a busy boy. I've trademarked "The Mad Centrist" and put up a new version of the site with a long article on this very subject. 

 

Climate change and the fuel of denial - The Mad Centrist

 

And I'd like to note that for all of the grief I was given for my suggestion to sue the people most impacted are doing it. Our children.

http://www.sciencealert.com/judge-rules-that-kids-can-sue-the-us-government-for-inaction-on-climate-change

And one last reminder for those with their heads firmly planted in darkness...

 

April 2016 Was 12th Consecutive Warmest Month on Record, NOAA Says

Edited July 4, 2016 by Mad Mike

[Mad Mike]

Oh and about that solar thing... THIS is what correlation looks like.

 

[PeterMP]

The difference between the temperature trend seen in the climate models and the global temperature data sets is almost entirely the result of measuring /reporting different things (air temperature levels vs. air and ocean water surface temperatures), how the global temperature data sets are created (taking different points and trying to blend them to make a global temperature series, and holes in the global temperature data (e.g. lack of data points in the Arctic).

 

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/reconciling-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity/

 

Arctic sea ice hits a new low (with a spiral graphic similar to the one created for global temperatures before).

 

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/07/12/Arctic-sea-ice-falls-to-record-low-in-June/2381468341397/

 

In March 10% of the US electricity was supplied by non-hydro alternative energy sources.  A new record.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/are-the-winds-changing-for-renewable-energy/490250/

 

 

http://gizmodo.com/dubai-is-building-the-worlds-largest-concentrated-solar-1780781150

 

Dubai is building the largest concentrated solar energy plant in the world.

[twa]

hey remember this study peter?

http://retractionwatch.com/2016/07/08/authors-retract-study-that-found-pollution-near-fracking-sites/

[twa]

 

 

In March 10% of the US electricity was supplied by non-hydro alternative energy sources.  A new record.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/are-the-winds-changing-for-renewable-energy/490250/

 

 

 

Texas hit 45% of energy need with wind power   ....of course that number overlooks a lot.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/ercot-wind-energy-provided-record-45-of-electricity-on-dec-20/412241/

 

 

how much of that 10% was Ivanpah's gas burners responsible for?

Edited July 14, 2016 by twa

[PeterMP]

hey remember this study peter?

http://retractionwatch.com/2016/07/08/authors-retract-study-that-found-pollution-near-fracking-sites/

 

Good thing there are multiple studies that show increased air pollution as a result of fracking.

 

Even industry funded ones:

http://billingsgazette.com/business/scientists-report-results-of-fracking-air-pollution-study/article_3b5e66b3-a6a8-5d91-a066-a54d25976621.html

[twa]

doing something increases air pollution?...well I never. 

 

speaking increases air pollution

[PeterMP]

doing something increases air pollution?...well I never. 

 

speaking increases air pollution

 

CO2 is pollution?

[twa]

CO2 is pollution?

 

according to the  folks at your link.....for now

[PeterMP]

according to the  folks at your link.....for now

 

My link:

 

http://billingsgazette.com/business/scientists-report-results-of-fracking-air-pollution-study/article_3b5e66b3-a6a8-5d91-a066-a54d25976621.html

 

"A three-year study released Tuesday measured methane — a greenhouse gas — and ozone-causing compounds that were released from new natural gas wells in western Colorado."

 

http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1513/pats.9.2.81b

 

"Oxidative injury due to inhalation of high ambient levels of ozone causes dose-dependent cytogenetic damage in peripheral blood lymphocytes. Given that chronic exposure to ozone causes lung inflammatory and physiologic changes similar to those seen with COPD, this finding suggests oxidative injury as a possible mechanistic link between COPD and cancer."

[PeterMP]

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/audubon-backs-i-732-its-better-than-nothing/

 

"You’d think a major environmental group endorsing a measure to combat climate change would be no big deal.

But over at Audubon headquarters in Seward Park, they are girding themselves for the blowback.

 

Audubon Washington, the state chapter of the century-old National Audubon Society, is set this week to back Initiative 732, a grass-roots effort to levy a statewide tax on fossil fuels.

 

It means Audubon is breaking away from a huge group of environmental, labor and progressive groups in the Puget Sound region — a group that Audubon awkwardly still belongs to."

 

"The politics around Initiative 732, on the November ballot, has been a liberal pig pile. Long story summarized: The measure was modeled by some climate-change activists after British Columbia’s carbon tax. The simple idea is that if we tax what’s bad for the environment, eventually we’ll get less of it (think tobacco taxes).

 

But the plan was undercut a year ago by a progressive group called the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy, which disliked how I-732 didn’t raise money for job-training programs, communities of color or green-energy efforts. Instead it rebates all the money in tax cuts."

 

 

"The founder of I-732, UW economics Ph.D. Yoram Bauman, then dumped a train load of fossil fuel on what had been only a simmering fire:

“I am increasingly convinced that the path to climate action is through the Republican Party,” he said. He cited two aspects of the political left: “An unyielding desire to tie everything to bigger government, and a willingness to use race and class as political weapons in order to pursue that desire.”

 

Kaboom! Most every liberal group around — from the unions to enviros to social-justice organizations — denounced Bauman and voted not to support I-732."

 

I've said before, I think there is a better chance of getting actual conservationist political leader out of from the conservative movement than from the current Democratic party

[No Excuses]

Climate models are accurately predicting ocean and global warming

 

 

The study was just published in the journal Ocean Sciences; a draft of it is available here. In this study, we did a few new things. First, we presented a new estimate of ocean heating throughout its full depth (most studies only consider the top portion of the ocean). Second, we used a new technique to learn about ocean temperature changes in areas where there are very few measurements. Finally, we used a large group of computer models to predict warming rates, and we found excellent agreement between the predictions and the measurements.

 

According to the measurements, the Earth has gained 0.46 Watts per square meter between 1970 and 2005. Since, 1992 the rate is higher (0.75 Watts per square meter) and therefore shows an acceleration of the warming. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of 5,400,000,000,000 (or 5,400 billion) 60-watt light bulbs running continuously day and night. In my view, these numbers are the most accurate measurements of the rate at which the Earth is warming.

 

What about the next question – how did the models do? Amazingly well. From 1970 through 2005, the models on average showed a warming of 0.41 Watts per square meter and from 1992-2005 the models gave 0.77 Watts per meter squared. This means that since 1992, the models have been within 3 % of the measurements. In my mind, this agreement is the strongest vindication of the models ever found, and in fact, in our study we suggest that matches between climate models and ocean warming should be a major test of the models.

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/jul/27/climate-models-are-accurately-predicting-ocean-and-global-warming

Edited July 27, 2016 by No Excuses

[twa]

I'm glad to see advances in modeling....they certainly needed them.

 

 

meanwhile....

 

 

http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2016/07/19/sit_down_science_we_need_to_talk_109691.html

 

Sit Down, Science. We Need to TalkBy Simon Gandevia

Editor's Note: This article was provided by The Conversation. The original is here.

Spectacular failures to replicate key scientific findings have been documented of late, particularly in biology, psychology and medicine.

 

A report on the issue, published in Nature this May, found that about 90% of some 1,576 researchers surveyed now believe there is a reproducibility crisis in science.

While this rightly tarnishes the public belief in science, it also has serious consequences for governments and philanthropic agencies that fund research, as well as the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. It means they could be wasting billions of dollars on research each year.

One contributing factor is easily identified. It is the high rate of so-called false discoveries in the literature. They are false-positive findings and lead to the erroneous perception that a definitive scientific discovery has been made.

This high rate occurs because the studies that are published often have low statistical power to identify a genuine discovery when it is there, and the effects being sought are often small.

Further, dubious scientific practices boost the chance of finding a statistically significant result, usually at a probability of less than one in 20. In fact, our probability threshold for acceptance of a discovery should be more stringent, just as it is for discoveries of new particles in physics.

The English mathematician and the father of computing Charles Babbage noted the problem in his 1830 book Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. He formally split these practices into “hoaxing, forging, trimming and cooking”.

'Trimming and Cooking' the Data Today

In the current jargon, trimming and cooking include failing to report all the data, all the experimental conditions, all the statistics and reworking the probabilities until they appear significant.

The frequency of many of these indefensible practices is above 50%, as reported by scientists themselves when they are given some incentive for telling the truth.

The English philosopher Francis Bacon wrote almost 400 years ago that we are influenced more by affirmation than negatives and added:

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

Deep-seated cognitive biases, consciously and unconsciously, drive scientific corner-cutting in the name of discovery.

This includes fiddling the primary hypothesis being tested after knowing the actual results or fiddling the statistical tests, the data or both until a statistically significant result is found. Such practices are common.

Even large randomised controlled clinical trials published in the leading medical journals are affected (see compare-trials.org) – despite research plans being specified and registered before the trial starts.

Researchers rarely stick exactly to the plans (about 15% do). Instead, they commonly remove registered planned outcomes (which are presumably negative) and add unregistered ones (which are presumably positive).

more@link of course

[skinsmarydu]

It's pretty hard to "replicate key scientific findings" when time keeps moving because...science.

[No Excuses]

Shocker. An article that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Without going too OT, I'll take a stab at it anyways.

I can't speak for other fields, but there are some systemic issues related to the pressures on publishing, not even for PI's but for a lot of postdocs and PhD students in Biological sciences.

That of course is not as major of an issue as you'd like to think. Nefarious fudging of data is still not that frequent when taking into account the volume of published work.

And some research is bound to fail replication. It's the nature of the work and that's why there are checks in place that weed out work that doesn't get replicated. There's a reason science has been the greatest tool for human advancement in all of history. It weeds out the bull****ters and charlatans, and even points them out for all to see.

[No Excuses]

It's pretty hard to "replicate key scientific findings" when time keeps moving because...science.

Any kind of seminal scientific work is bound to be replicated and tested. And if it's bull****, it's weeded out very quickly.

There was a story of a Japanese researcher not long ago who had supposedly made a key stem cell advancement by discovering a novel method of generating pluripotent stem cells.

And it didn't take long to figure out that the work was mostly junk even though it had been published in the top rated journal for this kind of work.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruko_Obokata

That's really how science works. You aren't going to see something become accepted literature unless multiple groups have tested and verified it, and enough people in the field have confidence in the reprodocubility of the work through demonstrated replication.

A lot of climate science falls in this arena now. There's decades of data and modeling that have been replicated, assessed and critiqued by thousands of researchers in all scientifically advanced countries. If this really is a conspiracy, you're talking about a global mass scale conspiracy by scientists in an entire field spanning all across North America, Europe and Asia. You have to be quite the nutjob to think something so nefarious is taking place at such a massive scale. We're talking about being nuttier than 9-11 truthers.

Edited July 29, 2016 by No Excuses

[twa]

 There's a reason science has been the greatest tool for human advancement in all of history. It weeds out the bull****ters and charlatans, and even points them out for all to see.

 

Like Al Gore and some of his ilk.

[PeterMP]

 

I'm glad to see advances in modeling....they certainly needed them.

 

While the models have advanced, the big change isn't the models.  The big change is in what people are comparing the models to.

 

People are doing a better job of comparing the models to what we are actually measuring- or taking the model outputs and converting it into something we are measuring.

 

The initial comparisons to what the models are generating were very naive (e.g. comparing global air temperatures generated from models to actual land air and sea surface water temperatures because that's what we actually measure.  That's a flawed comparison because the sea surface water was clearly warming more slowly than the air over it so it artificially made the models look bad).

 

It is like the people that were doing the comparisons were trying to make the models look bad.

 

Even the older models are performing quite well when there is an effort to put their results into the context of something that is actually being measured in the real world or to put the real world results into something the models are generating.

Edited July 29, 2016 by PeterMP

[FanboyOf91]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Quote

For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes.

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.

These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.

 

[Larry]

Quote

Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.

 

"How about, instead of making it rain for 40 days and 40 nights, you make it rain for three days, and wait for the sewers to back up?" 

- Bill Cosby's routine "Noah". 

[TheGoodBits]

 

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, skinsfan_1215 said:

sea ice graphic

Antarctica sea ice is way down this year.  It has been at or near record highs previous years, but that all seems to have melted in one year to generate a record low.

The combination of that record low and near record lows for Arctic sea ice (where the general trend has been downward for several years) is resulted in a large decrease in global sea ice.

To my knowledge, it isn't clear why Antarctica sea ice is so far done.  It wasn't even clear while over several years it seemed to be increasing.  Realistically, we have less data about the climate and area around Antarctica as it has been as geopolitically important (going back to the cold war Arctic sea has been important because subs used to use it to hide under and in terms of shipping, it has been important even longer).

I think this graph shows pretty well what has happened in Antarctica.  This is the Oct. Antarctica Sea ice extent.  The trend line has a slightly positive slope (the longer term trend has been a small increase in sea ice), but the 2016 data point is easily the lowest one on the graph.

Edited November 19, 2016 by PeterMP

[Hersh]

This is a worrisome to me as the open hostility toward non-white, non-male people that this next administration will put on display. Just thinking about the ******* ignorance by Trump and his appointees when it comes to environmental issues pisses me off to no end. 

[btfoom]

Maybe you should watch these things we who are in the Science community call "Facts" and "Data", not modeling that has nothing to do with the data unless it gets correlated (which it does not):

First, the fraud that keeps going on in the 'data' from NOAA:  http://realclimatescience.com/2016/11/noaa-september-temperature-fraud/

and of course the one that can't be explained by the 'warmers':

http://realclimatescience.com/2016/03/noaa-radiosonde-data-shows-no-warming-for-58-years/

and don't forget these (I bet no-one here has read this):

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/faulty-thermometers-exaggerated-western-us-mountain-warming

And of course, the leading scientist at NASA who explains all the issues:

https://www.cfact.org/2016/01/26/measuring-global-temperatures-satellites-or-thermometers/

January 26, 2016 by Dr. Roy Spencer, 236 Comments

The University of Alabama in Huntsville

The official global temperature numbers are in, and NOAA and NASA have decided that 2015 was the warmest year on record. Based mostly upon surfacethermometers, the official pronouncement ignores the other two primary ways of measuring global air temperatures, satellites and radiosondes (weather balloons).

The fact that those ignored temperature datasets suggest little or no warming for about 18 years now, it is worth outlining the primary differences between these three measurement systems.

Three Ways to Measure Global Temperatures

The primary ways to monitor global average air temperatures are surface based thermometers (since the late 1800s), radiosondes (weather balloons, since about the 1950s), and satellites measuring microwave emissions (since 1979). Other technologies, such as GPS satellite based methods have limited record length and have not yet gained wide acceptance for accuracy.

While the thermometers measure near-surface temperature, the satellites and radiosondes measure the average temperature of a deep layer of the lower atmosphere. Based upon our understanding of how the atmosphere works, the deep layer temperatures are supposed to warm (and cool) somewhat more strongly than the surface temperatures. In other words, variations in global average temperature are expected to be magnified with height, say through the lowest 10 km of atmosphere. We indeed see this during warm El Nino years (like 2015) and cool La Nina years.

The satellite record is the shortest, and since most warming has occurred since the 1970s anyway we often talk about temperature trends since 1979 so that we can compare all three datasets over a common period.

Temperatures of the deep ocean, which I will not address in detail, have warmed by amounts so small — hundredths of a degree — that it is debatable whether they are accurate enough to be of much use. Sea surface temperatures, also indicating modest warming in recent decades, involve an entirely new set of problems, with rather sparse sampling by a mixture of bucket temperatures from many years ago, to newer ship engine intake temperatures, buoys, and since the early 1980s infrared satellite measurements.

How Much Warming?

Since 1979, it is generally accepted that the satellites and radiosondes measure 50% less of a warming trend than the surface thermometer data do, rather than 30-50% greater warming trend that theory predicts for warming aloft versus at the surface.

 

Yes, science above all.  Sorry that such noted folks like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sting, and Robert Redford tell one story while real scientists tell a different story.  Guess who is right (and for most of you reading, you need to be told, so it isn't the people who pretend to be other people for a living).

 

 

Edited November 20, 2016 by btfoom

[Elessar78]

In addition to young earth creationists, if you don't believe climate change is real please stop using the internet.

again, you may not benefit from science while denying it.