What Will Work

Would anyone case to make a small wager on how long it will take those who support drastic changes to our economy to slow or end climate change to recalibrate their models and prescriptions to fit the data?

Just as a reminder I do believe in action. However, I believe in looking for technological remedies. Unless you can figure out how to persuade the Chinese Communist Party to change their ways, that’s what will work.

19 comments… add one
  • Ben Wolf Link

    Judith Curry doesn’t even begin to be a reliable source. The planet is heating rapidly, we’re doing it, don’t worry because we won’t do a damned thing to stop it.

  • Andy Link

    The op-ed, along with some additional comments, are available on Curry’s website.

    I haven’t followed the climate debate much since the latest IPCC report came out last year, but AFAIK the discrepancy between model prediction and observational data is well known but has yet to be adequately explained.

  • TastyBits Link

    I cannot get to the link.

    The wheels fell off in the summer of 2010, and I stated that the summer of 2014 would be the last huzzah. There will be the true believers who will hold out, but as I predicted, AWG is being defended by politicians, actors, and monetary interests.

  • If there’s been a pause in the warming over the last 15 years, that kind of negates the idea that the earth _IS_ rapidly warming.

  • Guarneri Link

    I believe one could say it’s already happening.
    The revelation of selective use and weighting of data scandal in now some five years old IIRC.

    “Global Warming” was rebranded as “climate change.”

    Some scientists, being a bit more clever, have posited ocean heatsink holes. Ought to be interesting as the ocean warms and that warm coke can releases its co2 into the atmosphere.

    Yet others, without a hint of irony, note higher order variables dominating co2 effects.

    The boy has cried wolf too loudly and often. New York and Miami remain above sea level and the polar bears and ice caps are still around post the predicted calamity date. And the scientist grant seekers,the disgruntled anti capitalist’s and the tax seeking government type’s motivations have been laid bare.

    Now that that’s off my chest. As Dave requested a couple weeks ago, assume, arguendo, there is some small and long term co2 effect. Can anyone doubt that only a technologically based solution will fly? Don’t hold your breath. It probably won’t involve tax revenue and living in communes while living on love and tilling the acre out back.
    Further, it will probably involve “greedy corporations” profiteering on the back of Mother Earth and…….necessitate finding a new boogie man. Be careful what you wish for all you dastardly folks with sports teams named after Indians, or defenseless animals……

  • Drew, here’s something for you on deep ocean temperatures.

    http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/nasa-study-finds-earth-s-ocean-abyss-has-not-warmed/

  • TastyBits Link

    @Drew

    Recall your thermodynamics. The volume of the oceans are enormous heatsinks, and because of the depths, the temperatures vary greatly. They are ginormous heatsinks, and they change like battleships, slowly. The latest trick is to hide the missing heat in the oceans. It would be like trying to heat up your house with a candle.

    I predict that man has affected the climate, and it will continue to change. Man has caused a pause in the warming, and this pause will last several thousand years. It will culminate in an Age of Ice for many thousands of years, and then the warming will resume.

  • jan Link

    ..IOW, Tasty, aren’t you describing cyclical climate patterns?

    The revelation of selective use and weighting of data scandal in now some five years old IIRC.

    A concise summary of the hyped reporting of global warming.

  • steve Link

    1) There is no data scandal.

    2) If you are serious about the issue you dont read actors, politicians or political pundits. The right, Drew is a good example here, read pundits. They read carefully selected articles from almost scientists.

    3) No one really predicted catastrophe by now.

    4) The climate science/physics/chemistry community seems pretty comfortable with their current explanations. Sure, if you read the WSJ you can find articles by anthropologists, the guys who collect clay pots, claiming that there are 50 explanations and lots of other stuff he really doesn’t understand. Go read the scientists or talk with them.

    5) If a better understanding of what is going on is reached, the science will change. Policy is the difficult part as no one wants their ox gored.

    Steve

  • Guarneri Link

    Tasty

    I’ll bet my entire net worth that your prediction for a thousand years from now is wrong.

  • TastyBits Link

    @jan

    Yes, but the Earth’s global warming is on an Ice Age cycle. We will be long gone before the predicted effects occur. We are somewhere between July and August. Eventually, Winter will be here, but you cannot convince these idiots anything.

    There will be a few last gasps from the holdouts, but the science is settled. (Science is never settled, but the nonsense is being flushed out.) There are a few true scientists, and they will quietly study the climate. They will be of no use to the true believers because they will be pursuing science not politics.

    There is no point in arguing with them any more. Time is against them, and they know it.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Drew

    If I win, do your heirs pay out? If so, in what currency?

  • Guarneri Link

    Tasty

    Bit coin….

  • Guarneri Link

    Skip the verbiage ( except for the explanation of the data variance) and just focus on the data.

    http://www.naturalnews.com/045695_global_warming_fabricated_data_scientific_fraud.html#

    Maybe NASA isn’t part of the scientific community.

    As for the forests, I have to think about that.

  • Andy Link

    Steve,

    #2 – Not just a right-wing thing. See al Gore (among others), as well as anti-vaxxers and the anti-GMO crowd.

    #3 – No one predicted catastrophe by now, but over the last decade many have said we are at or near a tipping point where, absent significant reductions in CO2 emissions, that catastrophe would be unavoidable. See, for example, just about anything written by James Hansen during the mid-2000’s. In 2006 he wrote that we have, at most, a decade to avert a future catastrophe.

    #4 – Current explanations for what? Climate scientists are still not in agreement over how sensitive climate is to the level of CO2, nor what changes would occur with a given level of warming (see the IPCC). That’s the question Curry’s oped (and research) addresses and one of several reasons why she’s considered a heretic by the vanguard of the climate concerned community of scientists and advocates.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Drew

    I would not even bother at this point arguing at this point. It is simple thermodynamics. The amount of heat needed to produce the predicted results is enormous. The oceans affect the climate not the other way. You heat or cool the oceans to affect the climate, and this takes a lot of heat.

    Nothing really matters after this. A few of them have come up with ridiculously small numbers, but these are the same people claiming their dead horse is winning the race.

    Just ask them, “When is doomsday this week?”

  • TB, insist the heirs pay out in Shrute Bucks or Stanley Nickels.

  • steve Link

    Andy- I agree that many on the left also read pundits and celebs. However, many also take the time to bother to read original science sites. You virtually never find anyone on the right who does that. On #3, the claim by those on the right is that there were real predictions that Florida would be covered by water by now. That is a far cry from worries about a tipping point. On #4 I would note that even with Curry there is at least acknowledgment that the problem is real. That is not even accepted by most of the right. Climate scientists are debating the degree of sensitivity and the effects of the ocean as a heat sink.

    Steve

  • TastyBits Link

    It could be that the missing heat is racist, and it is hiding because it hates having a black man as president.

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