Discussing Global Warming, Conservatives Focus on Less Than Two Percent Of The Earth
Personally, I'm mostly neutral on the issue of global warming, though I do think this article raises a valid point, which is that if we're going to make accurate, scientific statements about global warming, we ought to look at the entire globe, as the name of the theory implies. It's not called continent warming, or national warming, or eastern United States warming. It's called global warming, meaning that according to the theory, the average temperature of the entire globe, as a whole, has been slowly getting warmer each year.
Now the important thing to remember about an average is that it's the mid-point between two extremes, meaning you can still have temperatures that are lower than the average, and others that are higher than the average. In other words, the average global temperature is a mathematical calculation based on collecting, combining, and averaging out temperature data from all across the entire planet - it is not a prediction for what the temperature will actually be like in any given area. Even if one particular geographical location is extremely cold, if there are other geographical locations which are incredibly hot, those hotter areas can tip the global average towards the warmer end of the spectrum.
Accurate, scientific methods require that we take into account larger holistic patterns, and not just look at things from an exclusively reductionist level.
Now the important thing to remember about an average is that it's the mid-point between two extremes, meaning you can still have temperatures that are lower than the average, and others that are higher than the average. In other words, the average global temperature is a mathematical calculation based on collecting, combining, and averaging out temperature data from all across the entire planet - it is not a prediction for what the temperature will actually be like in any given area. Even if one particular geographical location is extremely cold, if there are other geographical locations which are incredibly hot, those hotter areas can tip the global average towards the warmer end of the spectrum.
Accurate, scientific methods require that we take into account larger holistic patterns, and not just look at things from an exclusively reductionist level.
The Earth has existed some 4,000,000,000 years and in that time has been through innumerable and even unimaginable changes and conditions. The conditions of the Earth WILL change over time and in some of those conditions it will be difficult to sustain our species life at all. Our efforts need to be directed at learning how to maintain our lives in any condition rather than to imagine that our puny little efforts can control the climate of as complex a system as this Earth.
"People's capacity to deny the science amazes me"
If you are talking to me, thank you.
To be specific, I do not deny "The Science' (capitalized in this context), I deny that there is such an animal as 'The Science'. Science is an approach to thinking and action based on observation for obtaining knowledge of how things are and for making hypotheses and theories and then for making predictions. Anthropomorphic climate change is not part of this, it is a political movement for spreading authoritarian socialism by taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving to rich people in poor countries as well documented by its proponents such as in the UN Agenda 21. A large class of scientists, economists, consultants, movie actresses, businesses, lawyers have latched onto the avalanche of government money and are concocting fantasies. Swarms of wind farms despoil scenery and slice birds while producing negligible power and causing an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. Public servants fly to talk fests in luxury venues at air-conned resorts and are individually chauffeured in diesel SUVs. Solar power stations cause bankruptcies and the materials used in manufacture add to poisonous air pollution- while producing negligible power.
Meanwhile, carbon dioxide, an important nutrient, is blamed for producing a non-existent disaster.
The present CO2 level is close to its lowest in 4.5 billion years.
CO2 has varied over the history of the earth and has been shown not to, indeed it cannot, cause global increases in temperature. If in the unlikely event these schemes to reduce CO2 are successful, all plant life on earth will die, animal life will cease within weeks. (Now at ~390 ppm, threshold ~200 ppm). But relax, there is not much chance of that, the schemes work only to extract money from governments to give to looters. More CO2 has no downside, tho' it would increase food production, not what the greens want. The greens want to reduce human population so they have these schemes to divert food to fuel. Fact, at the margin, for the poorest, there is starvation, some tens of thousands of extra deaths pa. Repeat- green policies cause poor people to die.
The climate facts are:
Global temperatures have been falling, or steady, depending on your sources, since about 1998. CO2 continues to increase, so the link does not exist.
Atmospheric temperatures were in decline from 1958 to 1976. Ground-based temperatures are now lower than in the 1930s, 1890s and 1,000 years ago. It is cooler now than in 80% of the 10,000 years since the last ice age.
Polar ice coverage is increasing. Five years ago Al Gore claimed that the polar ice caps would be completely melted by 2013.
The climate alarmism industry is desperate to explain where the missing heat has gone. One fantasy is that it has maliciously gone to the deep ocean where it cannot be detected.
Natural disasters such as cyclones hurricanes floods and droughts are declining in extent.
Sea levels are increasing but very slowly. To get to the alarmist figure of an increase of 100 meters, would take 30,000 years at the current rate.
What then drives global temperatures? Yes maybe wobbles in the earth's axis and orbit- Milankovich cycles, the models with the closest correlation use solar sun spot activity, this does have some sense as radiation affects cloud formation. The IPCC and the other alarmist positions have scores of expensive models with no scientific foundation, they do not even qualify as graph fitting being so manifestly wrong.
My recommendation- Reconsider who is an expert, it is certainly not the IPCC and the alarmists.
What to do about it- There is no 'it', there is no problem. But, cut the source of the real harm- government money in amounts of tens of billions is wasted to support an industry of leechers.
Conclusion- Climate change alarmism is a classic text book example of the dangers of government spending and (false) altruism.
Given the sample size (3100 = 100 yrs. X 31 Days) the data should be from a Normal distribution. If this is true, the data have certain properties that make testing statements about whether or not a measurement is or is not different from the mean. Given that the data collected constitutes a normal population there is a 33% chance the new data will be above the mean and a similar chance it will be below. There are tests that can be done to determine if the observed January datum is significantly different from the given distribution. Without knowledge of the standard Deviation you cannot make that test. Without knowing if the data comprise a normal distribution, you don’t know which test ti use to get the most accurate result.
There are other data issues the major one in the article is the simple state that the temperature was above the 20th century average. For January, for the year? I assume it is for the month of January. Is this for both the northern and southern hemispheres? It should be for the equivalent month in northern and southern hemispheres. All of this is left out of the article and the discussion. It should be clearly stated.
I don’t really mean to go on like this, but the paucity of information included to let one make a good conclusion about what is going on is staggering and should be noted.
I am much less clear on the solution. More than half of it is caused by human activities, but a lot of it would have happened anyway. That makes me think reducing emissions is just a drop in the bucket. I would like to see some projections about what would be the effect of going back to 1990 levels of carbon emissions. My guess is it would only delay the problem by a decade. That's useless unless we think we're close to having some geo-engineering approach working in ten years.
It's discouraging to think the process would still be happening even if we went back to a pre-industrial existence.
My guess is efforts to control emissions won't work and geo-engineering will be the only answer.
The other causes are just the natural cycle of the earth. For example, the earth precesses like a spinning top such that the north pole points in a different direction after thousands of years. Right now we have more continents in the norther hemisphere, and the northern hemisphere points away from the sun (winter) when the earth is closer to the sun. The southern hemisphere would have more extreme seasons b/c it points toward the sun when the earth is closer to the sun. It doesn't have extreme seasons, except for Antarctica, b/c there's not much land mass there compared to the north. As precession occurs, this will change and the climate will change. There are other equilibria that result in periodic glaciation and declaciation. We're currently living in a low-glacial period of an ice age. Ice ages come and go much slower than glacia maxima/minima.
I'm actually not an expert in this, but I'm technically minded from working in electronics. The experts say this deglaciation we're in right now is going much faster than usual, and a good part of that is human activities. People's capacity to deny the science amazes me. What to do about it, though, is less clear. I think they should keep taxing carbon until we find a betters solution. The tax's intended benefit is to discourage carbon emissions and encourage alternatives, but maybe the real benefit will be encouraging people to come up with a geo-engineering solution so we can emit as much carbon as we like w/o cost.
Those who have read the bible may recall the plagues, disasters, pestilences, floods, hail storms and locusts.
But note, no mention of freezing temperatures and deep snow.
Recently, in the Sinai desert, four hikers lost their way and froze to death in deep snow at temperatures well below the freezing point. Pictures show camels knee-deep in snowdrifts.
More evidence that temperatures are not higher than they were.
At least not in the Middle-East, nor North America, nor Europe.
Where then?
Source Feb 25, 2014
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/25/wh...
There are many sources of global temperatures. Here are two-
http://www.climate4you.com/
http://www.c3headlines.com/modern-temper...
For a good discussion on other points you raised see-
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordp...
I’m not going to advocate throwing money to make people “aware” or advocate to change policies to make people “pay” for the damage, instead, I would be interested in actually solving the problem.
We could burn fossil fuels and correct the levels at the same time; the technology exists.
It has been in use by US military (where it was developed) for 15 years and available commercially for 10 years.
Operators of heavy equipment (mining, railroads, trucking) choose to ignore these proven results and bury their heads in the sand. Companies do not reward mid-level managers willing to try new technology, instead punishing any failure of mid-level while giving anyreward for success to upper management instead. (This is from my personal experience, not from a wide study.)