There is a new report on global climate change this week that addresses many of the claims being raised against the theory by critics. Despite the overwhelming agreement of the scientific community, people continue to cite anecdotal observations of cool temperatures to refute predictions. The new report crunches the climate numbers and concludes that there is less than 1 chance in 100,000 that global average temperature over the past 60 years would have been as high without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
The research published in Climate Risk Management by Philip Kokica, Steven Crimpc, and Mark Howdend is reportedly the first to quantify the probability of historical changes in global temperatures. They directly address the arguments promulgated by climate change critics:
December 2013 was the 346th consecutive month where global land and ocean average surface temperature exceeded the 20th century monthly average, with February 1985 the last time mean temperature fell below this value. Even given these and other extraordinary statistics, public acceptance of human induced climate change and confidence in the supporting science has declined since 2007. The degree of uncertainty as to whether observed climate changes are due to human activity or are part of natural systems fluctuations remains a major stumbling block to effective adaptation action and risk management. Previous approaches to attribute change include qualitative expert-assessment approaches such as used in IPCC reports and use of ‘fingerprinting’ methods based on global climate models. Here we develop an alternative approach which provides a rigorous probabilistic statistical assessment of the link between observed climate changes and human activities in a way that can inform formal climate risk assessment. We construct and validate a time series model of anomalous global temperatures to June 2010, using rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as other causal factors including solar radiation, volcanic forcing and the El Niño Southern Oscillation. When the effect of GHGs is removed, bootstrap simulation of the model reveals that there is less than a one in one hundred thousand chance of observing an unbroken sequence of 304 months (our analysis extends to June 2010) with mean surface temperature exceeding the 20th century average. We also show that one would expect a far greater number of short periods of falling global temperatures (as observed since 1998) if climate change was not occurring. This approach to assessing probabilities of human influence on global temperature could be transferred to other climate variables and extremes allowing enhanced formal risk assessment of climate change.
They note that July 2014 was the 353rd consecutive month in which global land and ocean average surface temperature exceeded the 20th-century monthly average. Notably, anyone born after February 1985 has not lived a single month where the global temperature was below the long-term average for that month. Their analysis put the probability of getting the same run of “warmer-than-average months without the human influence was less than 1 chance in 100,000.”
We identified periods of declining temperature by using a moving 10-year window (1950 to 1959, 1951 to 1960, 1952 to 1961, etc.) through the entire 60-year record. We identified 11 such short time periods where global temperatures declined.
Our analysis showed that in the absence of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, there would have been more than twice as many periods of short-term cooling than are found in the observed data.
It is an interesting paper that I recommend to you. I am obviously already sold on the concept of climate change and strongly disagree with those fighting efforts to control the pollution linked to the change. However, we can have a civil discourse on the subject and I believe that this is a credible report worthy of inclusion in that ongoing debate.
Dust Bunny – great post. Especially about the carb-heavy food pyramid, which was based on a study where the researcher had no idea he was conducting his study during Lent. He was not observing typically eating behaviors from the populations he studied. Whoops.
I, too, live in CA. The land where they dumped millions of gallons of fresh water into the ocean to oxygenate the habitat of a bait fish, the smelt. And then they passed a bill to put meters on our wells to charge us for using our groundwater, which has historically been a right of land owners. So now homeowners have to spend $20,000 to $60,000 to drill a well, maintain it and test it at their own expense, but we will soon have to pay the Department of Water and Power to use our own resource, that we developed. Typical Liberal program.
So Liberal politicians wasted our surface water. We failed to save water during the good years. And now they want to charge us for the ground water. Which will not actually save water. It’s just another tax/fee in the Liberal tax and spend philosophy that I oppose.
Annie: Very nice. Clipped and saved
Anyone who dismisses climate change as something we can get used to fails to take into account the increasing rate of change will prevent many species from adapting quickly enough to survive, including humans.
That sort of simplistic believe system allowed asbestos workers to continue working for Johns-Mansville years after it was discovered tat asbestos exposure can kill you. Or in the words of Alfred E, Neuman, “What. Me worry?”
Rainparade, it’s my Mata Hari look.
SWM – there is great profit in the climate change community. You think Michael Mann works for free?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/29/libertarian-ideology-natural-enemy-science “All of these problems stem from a clash between ideology and evidence. The ruthlessly individualist philosophy fetishised by the modern disciplines of Ayn Rand conveniently ignores the fact that humans do not exist in a vacuum, and that individual actions often have consequences for all. The mantra that profit is a panacea for everything and that personal rights trump collective good is frequently misguided and potentially disastrous. “
Annie: Are you doing something different with your hair?
Groty: Like carbon, carbon dioxide is essential to life.
Ever hear of too much of a good thing? Water is essential, too. But if you drink too much of it, you’ll die. (It’s happened)
But we better have an honest debate
How would you propose we have an honest debate in a society where the world’s media is in control of four or five corporate entities, which in turn, have ties to wealthy corporations and individuals who create networks for the dissemination of misinformation. I’m not saying any of that money is being spent here, just that the system for public debate contains a lot of irrelevant static.
I, myself, have been involved in discussions about climate change with well-meaning people who began barking about Al Gore and how it’s proven that he’s hijacked the field of climate research for personal gain. Al Gore is irrelevant and that sort of thing happens alot.
An honest debate would also involve providing a genuine educational system that taught scientific understanding in our schools. Thomas Jefferson understood that ignorant citizens are incapable of having an honest debate
prayerwarrier:
Over 75% of Earth’s oxygen is generated by marine algae and phytoplankton. And yet we continue to pollute the entire ocean. All the money and glory goes towards Climate Change, while we ignore the less glamorous clear and present dangers of contamination of our waters and food chain.
We have forgotten that climate has changed since Earth first gathered its gaseous envelope. Go look at any beach. You can see where the water line used to be far higher, when the Earth was warmer. They used to hold festivals on the frozen Thames when the Earth was cooler. Polar bears evolved when brown bears were cut off geographically in a cooling climate. At one time dinosaurs lived in what is now the polar regions, when it was much warmer and life teemed.
It doesn’t matter if the Earth is warming, or cooling. If it is not now, it soon will be. We will adapt or perish. I personally would like to maintain a gas profile that is optimal for mammalian life, and an environment as free from toxins as possible.
No single life form, humans included, can “freeze” the climate at today’s averages. Pardon the pun. And why should we? Why should climate suddenly stop changing, after millennia of shifting? Why is today’s climate “best?” Why wasn’t it best when mega fauna roamed the world during both Ice Ages and Warming Periods? Was it best when it was so cold that polar bears evolved? Or was it best when it was so warm that a great variety of life thrived at the poles? Which species gets to choose what climate is best? Species evolved to adapt to pressure, change, and time. Take away that change, and what new species will never develop?
I hate to take the wind out of people’s sails, but all of humankind could leave the Earth in a space ship tomorrow, and climate would continue to change. Because it always has. One could argue that the rate of change might vary, but there are some serious ethical and methodology problems in the data analysis. I just can’t come to any conclusion, one way or another, until and unless they fix those problems. I am neither a “denier” nor a “believer”.
Centinel:
I agree with you that the climate computer models are dead. They have never been right. Ever. With that kind of failure rate, industry science would have started over. But not so in academia, which has a completely different set of standards, apparently. Now those same models are used to ascertain with certainty the cause of our climate. Of course, they were completely wrong about the polar caps gaining more ice than the entire state of Alaska last year alone.
I was so appalled at the malfeasance, lost original data, moved testing stations, etc that I was unable to form any conclusion whatsoever on such a shaky foundation. I have no idea if climate change is anthropogenic. In industry, if someone lost his original data, moved testing stations, served as the editor and chose to publish his own work in a publication, ignored FOIAs, etc. Well, we all would have taken him out for a drink. And then he would have put on his big boy pants and gone back to the lab to start over.
Excellent observations on libertarians and climate science.
on 1, September 4, 2014 at 8:08 amjustagurlinseattle
Ohhhh, I can’t wait what the people on the RIGHT have to say about this….
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We quickly found out.
Nick, I just need to observe the changes in my yard to know things are terribly wrong. I rarely even watch T.V. so I’m not getting my crisis information from our “newz” people.
As to costs and freedoms. The govt. is using your tax dollars to support inefficient, dangerous forms of energy such as nuclear which are not doing the job. This industry would not survive were it not for govt. subsidies. Take that money, put people to work and get into clean energy. That’s win-win.
I have a right to clean water, air and soil–as do all people. When there was a recent spill in ohio from fracking it killed all the fish in the river and the town was evacuated. The corporation, Halliburton, refused to give first responders or the people in the hospital information about what they had just been exposed, claiming that information was proprietary. I’d say those people lost control over their lives, they lost their freedom at a very fundamental level due to this corporation’s actions. I’m not O.K. with that and I don’t understand the idea that corporations may take away our rights to life, health and safety.
Many libertarians fail to recognize that corporations can take away liberties in the same way that governments do. We should reject both. If we are for self determination, that means any entity which stands in the way of our legal freedoms needs to be fraught with equal measure.
Jill – if it were not for nuclear power, southern California would be powerless.
I see no downside to protecting the environment either. That is…until some bureaucrats defy all science and logic and declare CO2 a pollutant.
Jim22:
Consensus is building among geologists that fracking is a primary causal factor in the increasing occurrences of earthquakes. Have you stopped following developments in geologic science or are simply skeptical because it violates your extraction and energy development at any cost beliefs?
rainparade – consensus is never a good way to decide science. In fact, consensus is anti-scientific thinking.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/
Arguing this topic is a futile exercise since people either have their minds made up already that global warming exists and we are all going to die, or are convinced that it is one giant crock of poop predicated by the government to control our lives. Both have their fingers in their ears going la la la la I can’t hear you. Other are on the fence and willing to accept that there could be a chance that pollution (note I do not limit it to CO2 which is a natural occurring gas and which plants need in order to grow and produce oxygen, which WE need to live) can be affecting the environment. Others, very few, are able to look at the evidence and determine that there is nothing final proved one way or the other. Arguing with trolls and those who have cement for brains is a complete waste of time.
I’m like Ray….
Having lived through the years when pollution was so bad in the LA Basin and the Santa Clara area where you couldn’t even see the tops of the telephone poles and were surprised when there was a rare clear day and you could actually see the mountains, I’m amazed and greatly pleased at the quality of the air since those days.
Having also been told in the 1970’s that we are all going to die from an imminent ice age to see that we are NOW going to all die because it is getting too warm, when the temperatures are not showing either catastrophe, I have a tendency to look at all the dire warnings as a bunch of Chicken Littles running around with their feathers on fire.
Having lived through the last worst drought in history and we are all going to die from lack of water in California and it would be decades decades do you hear me!!!!! to have the reservoirs fill back up, only to have in one winter the water levels back to normal and people forgot all about the drought and went back to business as usual and even went on to block any attempts to build more storage for future droughts. I think that yes, we should conserve water, but I’m not too amazingly concerned because 1. either the scare mongers are wrong about the drought and it will be as before. or 2. the drought is going to continue and people will need to move ala the Dust Bowl times and 3. There is nothing I can do about it. Ditto for so called Global Warming/Climate Change/Global Cooling or whatever the latest name that is being pushed.
Don’t even get me started on the wrong science from the food police that has actually been detrimental to people’s health. Stupid carb heavy food pyramid for example
Personally, I refuse to be swayed by the alarmist who have been proven wrong almost every time.
Argue away.
First of all, it has become increasingly common for alarmists to conflate carbon with carbon dioxide and to refer to carbon dioxide as “pollution”. Both ploys are dishonest. Carbon, denoted “C”, is the fourth most common element in the universe. Carbon dioxide, denoted “CO2”, is a naturally occurring TRACE gas. Like carbon, carbon dioxide is essential to life.
Put it in perspective. A century ago the atmosphere was composed of a little less than 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. But let’s use 300ppm to illustrate the point. Stated differently, in this apparently utopian pure atmosphere, there were 3 molecules of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 molecules of atmosphere. Over the course of the century carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to 400 ppm. Now there are 4 molecules per 10,000. So the hysteria is about 1 additional molecule of carbon dioxide per 10,000. Or stated differently yet again, the portion of the atmosphere that is NOT carbon dioxide has declined from 99.97% all the way down to 99.96%. In other words, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from almost zero to slightly more than almost zero. Doubling zero is still zero. Sorry, but I just can’t convince myself that increasing a trace gas in the atmosphere that is essential to life from almost zero to slightly more than almost zero will lead to environmental, ecological, or economic catastrophe.
Assuming mankind is responsible for diluting the non carbon dioxide portion of the atmosphere from 99.97% to 99.96% (and I’m not even sure that is true, the whole theory rests on the idea that the “natural” sources and sinks of carbon dioxide – as if mankind isn’t part of nature – are in a state of equilibrium), what did we get in return? The cheap, portable fuel source that is largely responsible for the highest standard of living in humankind’s history. A society that is the best educated and the most tolerant. A society with the wealth to care for the truly helpless who are unable to care for themselves. A society in which most of the poorest Americans among us – but not all – are sheltered and well fed. Worrying more about an obesity epidemic among it’s poor rather than about starvation, famine, and malnourishment is quite a high class problem for a society to have.
I don’t know the answer. As inconceivable as it seems to me, maybe doubling the current carbon dioxide component of the atmosphere from 0.0004 to 0.0008 really will lead to catastrophe. But we better have an honest debate so we can be absolutely certain before we fiddle with a system that has improved the lives of the worlds’ people exponentially in the past century.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/jan/06/why-libertarians-must-deny-climage-change “So here we have a simple and coherent explanation of why libertarianism is so often associated with climate change denial, and the playing down or dismissal of other environmental issues. It would be impossible for the owner of a power station, steel plant, quarry, farm or any large enterprise to obtain consent for all the trespasses he commits against other people’s property – including their bodies.
This is the point at which libertarianism smacks into the wall of gritty reality and crumples like a Coke can. Any honest and thorough application of this philosophy would run counter to its aim: which is to allow the owners of capital to expand their interests without taxation, regulation or recognition of the rights of other people.
Libertarianism becomes self-defeating as soon as it recognises the existence of environmental issues. So they must be denied.”
Climate denial, as practiced by the Koch Bros- funded industry and Big Oil, is a crime against humanity.
There was a cartoon in the New Yorker a while back that showed a businessman in a tattered suit sitting on the ground with two children beside him, their faces besmirched. Around them the world was smoldering in ruins. The caption read, “Yes, we may have destroyed the planet, but for one glorious moment we created a lot of value for shareholders.”
rainparade – the demise of scientific understanding is coming from the products of the public school system, not private schools. The new Common Core is an effort by the left to control the information that students learn. The new AP US History is so left-driven that schools are talking of dropping it as an offering.