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.
1) Climate change exists or doesn’t
2) If it exists, and depending on degree, it will or will not harm human society on a scale from 0 to extinction
3) If it exists, human activity, particularly carbon emissions, contributes to it or doesn’t contribute to it on a scale from 0 to 100 percent.
I’m cynical (not skeptical, CYNICAL) about left AND right AND media AND business AND finance AND our current legal system AND government, and most of what I have left is just my own common sense which I admit can be wrong but it’s more or less all I’ve got. This limit means I have to rely considerably on my own observations and on napkin math and analysis . Oh yea, and science. Common sense and observation tells me science can be wrong too, but it’s better at prediction than anything else we currently have, such as religion or loan sharks, on physical matters so I do pay attention.
Common sense, experience and cynicism tells me there is one other element to consider and that’s motive. Who gains and what do they gain by the binary choices above as well as the issues of degree?
My conclusion is that we are almost certainly in a heap of trouble, really bad trouble, no matter what we do or don’t do at this point, but then being a dogmatic fanatic, I can’t be sure. I also think -regardless of how bad it is – we should be doing as much as we can to address the issues above as if our lives depended on it because, just in case they do, that would make, well, common sense. I know…, suggesting we might do something about it implies a positivism that may appear contradictory to the cynic in me, but fear not. I only believe in it because without positivists willing to work against all odds in spite of crippling doubt, cynics like me cease to exist by definition; like night without day and so on.
@elaine
Just re-post your links. 😉
Squeeky Fromm
Girl reporter
rainparade – “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, I severly doubt that anything that I could write will change your mind since one, like global warming, fracking has become politicized and two, since I work in the gas turbine industry, you really don’t want to hear from me anyway.
Jill,
I have a friend who is an electrical engineer who has been trying to develop some wind turbine technology. I actually helped him on some prototype designs. Anyway, he used to tell me that there are people who believe in the second law of thermodynamics and then there are people who don’t. I’m finding that when I debate with people who aren’t in engineering, that there are people who understand what base load power is and people that don’t. Wind and solar don’t produce base load power. If you are still talking about nuclear power from Jane Fonda’s talking points then you really need to do more real research. Thorium reactors are an amazing technology and I wish we had put the money we blew on Solyndra into it instead. If you take the time to google LFTR and read up on it, you should come to the conclusion that part of your message of people coming together (Anti-nuke weapons, capitalists, Greenies, scientists etc.) would become a reality. There is even a company in the Northeast trying to develop a Th reactor powered car.
Factor in the Yellowstone Supervolcano. How short is the fuse? Is there a cover up? What you don’t know, won’t hurt you.
Glen – Arizona was no directly affected by the last eruption of the Yellowstone Super Volcano, so I am hoping we will not be again. However, it will be at least a nuclear year.
I love how people take sides and then proceed to declare that the ‘other’ is just some conspiracy for the money.
Yes, scientists need grants to fund their research, and as human beings, some will try to stir something up to make a name for themselves. Society should expose those people, but only after proving the results of their research are false.
The companies that would take an economic hit from a dramatic change in the consumption of fossil fuels also has a lot of money in this, and significantly more money than a few college researchers will ever hope too see. There is a profit to be made, and the companies that control the oil, gas, and coal markets are more than willing to say anything as long as it keeps their stock price up. We should also expose those people as willingly destroying the planet if we can find evidence that their actions cause harm.
People act as if this is about 2 sides where one has been debunked. People ignore data, and just get back to the fight for their team, regardless of any fact. They made their mind up, and they are going to win the game.
Michael Mann is a fraud. He turned spotty data into a crisis, and because of his bad behavior, no one trusts any climate scientists. The public is ignorant of science, so they will latch on to anything they hear, as long as it’s trendy. Once the shine has gone, they latch on to some other trendy crisis. Rinse repeat. That it is 2014 and no discussion can exist without people bringing up Mann is just evidence that one Mann was shown to have been shady, the collective minds of people just turned off.
The deniers, at least the ones that dismiss all the other science, make zero sense. They didn’t believe Michael Mann, but rather than writing him off as a crack, they label the entire scientific community as in on the scam. They find a few emails and use those to ‘prove’ there is nothing wrong with the planet, and we should all just carry on. Because, you know, science has been wrong so many times before, it’s just smarter to go with your gut feeling, or the opinions of other people you trust. Hell, we have members of Congress trying to say that because CO2 is natural, there isn’t anything to worry about. Worse yet, some of our ‘leaders’ dismiss anything regarding any damage to the climate as impossible because their version of ‘god’ will not let it happen. Science and reason have been replaced with suspicion and madness.
The US went through this kind of madness before when science said lead in gasoline was poisoning the American population. People picked the side they liked and worked against each other because their side wasn’t going to be the one that lost. It did not matter if science was settled over lead being toxic. It did not matter that the bulk of the ‘science’ that claimed lead in gasoline wasn’t a problem was produced by scientists working for the companies that were putting the lead into the gasoline. What mattered was winning, facts be damned.
The end result of that fight was based on peer reviewed science. The data was spread around the world and tested, and when the science proved right, lead was removed from gasoline. The same attacks then are going on now, but rather than dismiss Mann and fund science to check if there is any truth to it, people whine about Mann and accuse the vast majority of climate scientists as some conspiracy to make money or hurt the oil companies, or some other equally stupid reason to not find out the truth.
I trust science as a process. It is the duty of citizens to educate themselves and be skeptical until the data can be examined, and a consensus reached. How you free it of politics, I have no idea, but the goal should be the truth, not for whichever side we choose to win.
And for the people that take the word of oil companies over scientists, then have the nerve to dismiss scientists because they are only in it for money….what the hell do you think the oil companies are after? Energy companies have fought the regulations that made it possible to see the sky in L.A. (on a good day). They resisted removing lead from gasoline, even though they knew it was poisoning people. They said better fuel efficiency standards were impossible and would kill the auto industry. They want our trust, but have spent decades lying to people about everything from how mountain top removal has no environmental impact, or how fracking is completely safe. They ignored solar when the US was the leader in developing new technology. They intentionally limit the amount of oil they refine to keep the already subsidized (by the American people) prices of gasoline high. They still fight over those pesky regulations that deny them permission to dump toxic industrial wastes into our fresh water supply. Why does anyone trust the people that are perfectly fine to poison you?
Rather than arguing which side is right, why not tell them to f*ck off? Why can’t we see that the way we are doing things now is not sustainable? Why not find ways that allows us to power our planet without destroying it? Why can’t we find a mix of renewable and nonrenewable power to keep us going until something better is developed, ironically enough, by science and energy companies?
Fact and reason should be the metric for truth, not your opinion of Michael Mann.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/warmed-over/
Warmed Over
Excerpt:
Throughout his speech, moreover, Inhofe made constant reference to a work of fiction: Michael Crichton’s new novel, State of Fear. Calling Crichton a “scientist” — actually, he’s an M.D. — Inhofe credited the author with telling “the real story about global warming” to the public. In fact, Crichton’s new book misrepresents climate science nearly as badly as Inhofe does. Inhofe further suggested that Crichton’s depictions of environmentalists — as fear-mongers who hype the possibility of disasters to bring in donations — show “art imitating life.” Actually, Crichton’s notion of a global eco-terrorist conspiracy, aided and abetted by leading environmental organizations, seems more than a tad conspiratorial.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XyKYR2D3KrE
Testing. My two comments on this thread haven’t posted.
Dredd, or they have suicidal ideologies?
How to publish in Climate Science Journals
Step 1: Create a model that either predicts catastrophe and/or blames humans for temperature changes.
Step 2: Leave enough free parameters in your model so that it can fit any data set rather well. Leave enough assumed constants to “refine” your result.
Step 3: Fit your model to existing data, tweaking constants until you get the desired result.
Step 4: Extrapolate. Shout “the sky is falling”. Compute meaningless probabilities, i.e., the ones derived from assuming “my model says that the model is correct”, as opposed to meaningful probabilities observed through experimentation.
Note, under no circumstances should you do the following:
Step 5: Validate your predictions against independent data not included in the derivation of your model. For example, compare predictions to observed reality. John Christy tried this once and it didn’t end well.. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/us/skeptic-of-climate-change-john-christy-finds-himself-a-target-of-suspicion.html?_r=0
…
99.999%. Come on, only 3 digits of precision?
This also shows that there is a 99.99% certainty that deniers are not human.
rainparade
Climate denial, as practiced by the Koch Bros- funded industry and Big Oil, is a crime against humanity.
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Is burning people at the stake back in vogue? How about the Iron Maiden?
/s
@rainparade
You said: “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 a lot.”
Hmmm. That seems oddly familiar. Oh, I know! It’s like when we try to have a discussion about religion/morality and somebody brings up Jimmy Swaggart and Benny Hinn.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Gary, if you can not envision the POWER of billions upon billions of dollars owned by less than 1% of humanity to affect the rest of the 99%, then there is nothing I can say, just shake my head in disbelief.
“Citizens may only bring citizen suits in federal court if they have “standing to sue”. To establish standing, the courts have required proof of three elements. First, the plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in fact”—an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) “actual or imminent, not ‘conjectural’ or ‘hypothetical’”. Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of—the injury has to be “fairly … trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not … th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Third, it must be “likely”, as opposed to merely “speculative”, that the injury will be “redressed by a favorable decision.”[ wiki Not easy for an individual to get standing, Gary.
All right. What if we forget about carbon for a moment, and just talk about agreed environmental impact. Coal is bad for many other reasons besides the carbon issue. Nuclear power is a ticking time bomb as well. As was pointed out, there are new (and not so new) nuclear alternatives that are much safer. Status quo is protected by the government.
I push back against the libertarian label as being against these issues. As far as I see, government–corporatism is just as relevant in the EPA and NRC as the Treasury. What’s additional bureaucracy have to offer when you bring the same people in to protect the public interest who were already pretty much against the public interest?
I agree with DBQ and Karen S. Plus, what difference does it make if China and India, and 3rd world countries continue to pump out CO2 like crazy???
Then, there are the PRACTICAL difficulties. The U.S. can’t even provide universal health care without resorting to cronyism, money-grubbing, and blatant foolishness, and what they did (Obamacare) still doesn’t do what it supposedly was going to do.
Sooo, why should a carbon-tax end up being any different??? If it came to pass, the rich (like Goldman Sachs) would get richer, and the rest of us would end up paying more for utilities and further reducing “demand” in the economy.
As a country, and as a commenting community, we can’t even agree about something as ridiculously obviously harmful as illegal immigration to this country, which reduces jobs for Americans and black Americans in particular. The Democratic establishment wants the votes to stay in power, and the Republican establishment wants the cheap labor so their clients can make even more money, that they couldn’t spend in 10 lifetimes.
As far as the math in the study above, I admit to being somewhat skeptical. You don’t have any assurance that the data is correct, or that the assumptions cover all the possible variables. Quite often data is “massaged”, like the BLS unemployment numbers, and does anybody really believe the current rate of 6.2%. Plus, I encountered this kind of thing before in pseudo-Birther, Lord Monckton of Brenchley who proclaimed:
OBAMA ELIGIBILITY ODDS: 1 IN 62.5 QUINTILLION
While “nefarious” folks like the Koch Brothers have an incentive to put out false numbers, so do “nefarious” folks like Goldman Sachs and Al Gore. Because there is currently no broad-based call to guillotine lobbyists, bankers, and the rest of the courtier/rentier class, the best thing we can probably hope for is to do simple, common sense things.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
rainparade isn’t your first paragraph describing evolution
Swath & Annie:
Corporations cannot take away your liberties as thoroughly or legally as governments. Silliness incarnate.
Further, corps, companies or people who pollute to the detriment of another person or even group, can be sued for that damage and forced to stop by injunction.
Corps would not have the personhood they do now, under a libertarian system, no corporate veil, and no favors or status from the government.
Please educate yourself as to macro domestic law under libertarianism before making such sweeping statements and conclusions.