It seems to me that it’s pretty hard to read this post at Watts Up With That? and not come away with the impression that the climate change models need some work.
Just to recap my views on the subject, I think the idea that humans affect the climate is obvious, I don’t know what proportion of climate change is effected by human activity, I think that climate change (whether anthropogenic or not) is a serious matter, and I think that it deserves serious attention. None of the plans put forward to date do that. When somebody presents a draconian plan that they say addresses .1% of the problem, it makes me wonder what’s next?
The steps that I think we should take first here all involve our ending our subsidies for carbon production. For example, why do subsidize urban sprawl?
One of the things we’ve learned in the last week is that some of the measures put in place by us and our European cousins have not been nearly as effective as we might have hoped. Good news! If VW re-flashes the memories on all of those 11 million control modules, it should reduce emissions measurably without any other actions taking place. Now to the hard part: obtaining compliance.
I read this article on the RCP site this morning. It certainly begs some questions as to the reliability of the “Warmists” claims, while giving reasons why Skeptic’s data should at least be on the table of any public/private forum considering climate change. Even the Pope’s most recent dictum was derived from one-sided data, deliberately and completely excluding any participation from the skeptic’s research and perspective which, IMO, discredits the document now so revered by the left.
Having said this, I think the environment should be protected from human abuses and preserved with future generations well being in mind. However hard-nosed politics, distorted data, aided and abetted by selective government grants to those compatible with a certain POV are not a healthy way to do it.
Note that in the comments section someone asked where he got his graph. He doesn’t know. Plenty of other graphs show much better agreement, but of course we don’t need to stop with temperature, we can also look at secondary effects. There, with things like sea level rise, we see fairly strong agreement with the models. So, while the models aren’t perfect, we don’t understand everything yet, they are our best attempt to understand what is going on. That is always true of science. Newton’s grasp of physics was less accurate that that of Einstein’s and it is still unclear to me if Einstein ever really accepted quantum theory. However, we have still used the understanding of the world as modeled in Newton’s physics and that of Einstein quite successfully. What is most important, I believe, is that these models of the world, or the climate, converge towards a better understanding of how things work. In climate science, as the models continue to be refined, they keep pointing in the same direction.
jan-There is essentially no data from the Skeptics. They largely don’t do original research, just try to poke holes in existing studies. They pretty much do what the tobacco skeptics did in the 50s-80s.
Steve
There is essentially no data from the Skeptics.
I disagree. Too tired tonight to go into detail.
@jan
Trying to prove a negative is pointless. At one time, the only way to disagree with the AGW fantasy was through the underlying data, but because the data is the basis for the models that they use to prove the theory, models that do not work cannot be a basis for the theory.
In the summer of 2010, it became apparent that the models were failing miserably. @Icepick could explain it better, but to keep the models working according to the theory, the margin of error was getting too large. (There are a lot of technical terms that the believers will throw at me in order to protect their faith.)
The real world numbers do not work, and each time they adjust one to fix a certain time period, it breaks another time period. In order to make both work, they increase the margin of error. If you ever see a poll with a high margin of error, you know somebody was fishing for a result.
Here is a fun fact: Few if any of the climate scientists understand any of the physics. The “greenhouse effect” does not exist. This was studied and invalidated about 100 years ago. Many non-AGW people will include this as a bullet point, but they do not understand any of the physics either.
There is a physical phenomenon that does do what the climate scientists think is happening in a greenhouse. It has been a while since I ran across it, and I was looking into something else. I do not recall the process exactly, but it had to do with the atoms in the molecules or the electrons in the atoms. As they get higher in the atmosphere, it causes an interaction with electromagnetic waves (I think the infrared portion).
This is actual science that the AGW crowd may be able to use, but few of them understand it. Instead, they rely upon their faith in a few exalted high priests who are able to read the entrails of dead trees and small animals.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. You may not hear it, but they do. It is time, and they do not have much left. As they become more and more desperate, they will become more and more dangerous. There is nothing worse than taking away the religion from the true believers.
I’ve posted about this. Not only do the particles interact with infrared, they’re highly affected by variations in solar activity. The mechanism is not well understood. It’s really very interesting.
“Here is a fun fact: Few if any of the climate scientists understand any of the physics.”
Many in the AGW crowd are physicists. At link, about 1/3 of the listed scientists have some kind of degree in physics. Granted, they are from crappy institutions like MIT, CalTech, Harvard, Berkley, etc.
Steve
Oops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_scientists
@Dave Schuler
It probably involves the Earth’s magnetic field which is far more important than many people imagine.
@steve
Remember the sound I told you about a few years ago? It is only getting louder, and soon, only the most obstinate will refuse to acknowledge it. Each year, some new aspect of the AGW theory begins to collapse, and every time, the response I get is a list of names and degrees or institutions.
Here is an interesting question: Who will throw in the towel first – the AGW crowd or the Keynesian economists? Reality refuses to bend to their beautiful models, but they continue to insist their models are correct. Therefore, reality is wrong.
” Each year, some new aspect of the AGW theory begins to collapse”
Actually, not true. I can’t think of one aspect that has collapsed. While I don’t follow climate change that closely anymore, I have become fairly closely attached to the world of physics, often hearing much more than I want to hear. I can see how you might believe this stuff if you are not looking at the original papers and data.
Steve