Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Arctic sea ice has been about thinning four times faster than previously forecast and is now at least 40 years ahead of some previous worst-case estimates for its summertime demise, according to new research by a French-American team of scientists published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Climate Change Panel's 2007 Predictions on Arctic Ice Too Optimistic? | Alaska Dispatch
The 10 year flat line. Which brings us back to you claiming it is within a couple standard deviations and still "acceptable" and my point being that linear evaluation may not be an appropriate tool to establish this and the fact that the methods used to evaluate these trends (the raw records, the adjustments to the records, and the applications applied) create problems for the "its within a statistical variation of acceptance" regardless.
Look into the issues with the records themselves such as the station data, the satellite data, etc... Look at each agency, look at their full records for the stations (raw and value added). Are they missing a lot of stations and what is the condition and trends of each single station used? Is there a warming bias for the station itself? What methods are used by the agency to report the data? For instance, look at GISS station data and the weighting of stations they use. Also ask yourself how they are adjusting the data? They use Hansen for their adjustments, yet Hansen refuses to release his methodology and specific station selection and weighting mechanisms. Notice that GISS is often always the highest in the warming trends. Think about Hansen's earlier projections (Hansen 1988) and how far they diverged from observed trends. Read into the GISS records and how they have had a continued warming "adjustment" to their records over the years.
Now, think about all of this and then that of looking at a statistical divergence and accounting for its deviations from trend. There are major problems, and it is not simply with the analysis we are doing, but it goes all the way back to the collection and application of the observed data. The old saying is "Garbage in, Garbage out" and if the data has been adjusted so much (always to a warming bias) and we are still arguing over the "significance" of a comparison within the short term trends, well... it becomes pointless, though some would say... convenient.
Point is, there will get to a point where we will see how far things go and adjusting to argue over discrepancies will not be possible as the divergence will be too large to simply account for. Until then, well... its a waiting game.
Arctic sea ice has been about thinning four times faster than previously forecast and is now at least 40 years ahead of some previous worst-case estimates for its summertime demise, according to new research by a French-American team of scientists published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Climate Change Panel's 2007 Predictions on Arctic Ice Too Optimistic? | Alaska Dispatch
Considering that the research you are quoting isn't empirical in the support of its conclusions, I would say that the arctic ice disappearing is disputable (their claim is by the end of the century and the entire point of their paper is how their models can't seem to model anything correctly).
As for climate change, nobody is claiming climate doesn't change.
Worrying about global warming is not as important as planning a response to it actually happening. IMHO the Atmosphere has changed enough that the warming will happen even if we stopped emitting CO2 completely. We can't change what has been done but we can think about what to do.
First we figure out who will be most adversely affected and then decide if they are worth saving. Keeping the Netherlands from flooding is far likelier than seawalls around the Maldives Islands. Protecting Shanghai will happen before Bangladesh. After all them that has, keeps.
Climate change isn't one of my big issues, so I don't follow it much. But apparently the divide on Climate Change in the U.S. is getting deeper and--of course--based on party lines.
The 10 year flat line. Which brings us back to you claiming it is within a couple standard deviations and still "acceptable" and my point being that linear evaluation may not be an appropriate tool to establish this and the fact that the methods used to evaluate these trends (the raw records, the adjustments to the records, and the applications applied) create problems for the "its within a statistical variation of acceptance" regardless.
I don't see any evidence of a flat line, for example in the graph I posted in a previous post:
I don't think there is anything unusual besides a straight line trend or any good reason to use anything other than a linear trend. If you start using something other than a linear trend, you tend to start fit patterns that don't exist and eventually you are playing with numbers with no basis in reality.
Quote:
Look into the issues with the records themselves such as the station data, the satellite data, etc... Look at each agency, look at their full records for the stations (raw and value added). Are they missing a lot of stations and what is the condition and trends of each single station used? Is there a warming bias for the station itself? What methods are used by the agency to report the data?
Have you looked the full records and any biases created by each station yourself?! Obviously, I haven't but there have been numerous studies done on them: one by NOAA, a few by various people on the internet and as you probably have heard, by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature which released its data recently. They all found the urban heat island and poor station quality had a negligible effect on the global temperature data.
From the website:
"Stations ranked as "poor" in a survey by Anthony Watts and his team of the most important temperature recording stations in the U.s. showed the same patterns of global warming as stations ranked "OK". Absolute temperatures of poor stations may be higher and less accurate, but the overall global warming trend is the same, and the Berkeley Earth analysis concludes that there is not any undue bias from including poor stations in the survey."
Similarly, they found no difference in warming trends between rural and urban sites.
Also (from their first paper, page 26); they said they found no evidence of warming in the last decade.
Though it is sometimes argued that global warming has abated since the 1998 El Nino event...we find no evidence of this in the GHCN land data. Applying our analysis over the interval 1998 to 2010, we find the land temperature trend to be 2.84 ± 0.73 C / century, consistent with prior decades.
Quote:
Point is, there will get to a point where we will see how far things go and adjusting to argue over discrepancies will not be possible as the divergence will be too large to simply account for. Until then, well... its a waiting game.
Yes, I agree with there that waiting will makes things be more clear. But how much more discrepancy will you consider too much to account for?
Anyway, it will definitely be very interesting to watch to see how things continue. And if it does, we shall to start to see more weather records be broken, which as weather junkie, I would find neat to be around to see.
Climate change isn't one of my big issues, so I don't follow it much. But apparently the divide on Climate Change in the U.S. is getting deeper and--of course--based on party lines
I thought is was called global warming? now it's climate change? but I thought the climate is always changing? I'm confused now? what is it?
I don't think there is anything unusual besides a straight line trend or any good reason to use anything other than a linear trend. If you start using something other than a linear trend, you tend to start fit patterns that don't exist and eventually you are playing with numbers with no basis in reality.
Have you looked the full records and any biases created by each station yourself?! Obviously, I haven't but there have been numerous studies done on them: one by NOAA, a few by various people on the internet and as you probably have heard, by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature which released its data recently. They all found the urban heat island and poor station quality had a negligible effect on the global temperature data.
From the website:
"Stations ranked as "poor" in a survey by Anthony Watts and his team of the most important temperature recording stations in the U.s. showed the same patterns of global warming as stations ranked "OK". Absolute temperatures of poor stations may be higher and less accurate, but the overall global warming trend is the same, and the Berkeley Earth analysis concludes that there is not any undue bias from including poor stations in the survey."
Similarly, they found no difference in warming trends between rural and urban sites.
Also (from their first paper, page 26); they said they found no evidence of warming in the last decade.
Though it is sometimes argued that global warming has abated since the 1998 El Nino event...we find no evidence of this in the GHCN land data. Applying our analysis over the interval 1998 to 2010, we find the land temperature trend to be 2.84 ± 0.73 C / century, consistent with prior decades.
Yes, I agree with there that waiting will makes things be more clear. But how much more discrepancy will you consider too much to account for?
Anyway, it will definitely be very interesting to watch to see how things continue. And if it does, we shall to start to see more weather records be broken, which as weather junkie, I would find neat to be around to see.
Nei,
I would be skeptical of making any conclusions concerning the BEST paper. For one, it was media promoted and released while it has yet to pass peer review. Also, Watts has several comments concerning it on his site pertaining to their extremely poor behavior and blind siding him concerning the release.
Preliminary analysis of the paper is showing they made some errors in their methodology (they smoothed the time series which is a big "no no" in statistical analysis among one of the problems).
Climate change isn't one of my big issues, so I don't follow it much. But apparently the divide on Climate Change in the U.S. is getting deeper and--of course--based on party lines.
3. It is unclear that CO2 has anything to do with "global warming"
4. It is unclear that man has anything to do with "global warming"
5. If #4 was true, it is not clear that man could do anything about it
6. The "remedies" for "global warming" may have disasterous and irreversible effects on the environment.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.