New study finds 99.999 percent certainty humans are causing global warming

you'd think that if human actions was the cause of the global warming that will cause catastophe on the earth that those scientists in the know along with the politicians would be the first to act in an attempt to cut their own carbon footprint.
so why is it that these scientists (who know danged well that the internet could be used to share information and gather in virtual conferences) are still flying hither and thither to conferences? not to mention the obama family and their many, very many, trips all over the place?
if sacrifice is necessary will I would suggest that those with the biggest carbon footprint be the first to sacrifice!

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Don't flatter yourself. Your post warranted debunking. The reason they filter out other sources of CO2 in the Mauna Lao data is because they are trying to count man made CO2. It would be dishonest to count all local sources of CO2 in that case wouldn't it? If they didn't filter local sources they would be able to state that mans contribution was much higher. You're twisting honest practices of science and making it out to be sinister, knowing full well that most on this site will gobble it up because herp derp Al Gore.

Did you even read what I posted????

Maybe you should read it again since you must not have understood what it said.

Here, I'll repost it for you:

The selection process is designed to filter out any influence of nearby emissions, or removals, of CO2 such as caused by the vegetation on the island of Hawaii, and likewise emissions from the volcanic crater of Mauna Loa. We require low variability within each hour and between successive hourly averages, as well as a degree of persistence of the likely valid "background" hours between successive days.

It is NOT to remove "man-made CO2"... I very clearly showed you, from the source itself, that they admittedly remove sources of PLANT VEGETATION AND VOLCANIC EMISSIONS.

Filtering local sources has NOTHING to do with separating man's contribution of CO2 from what is measured. Nothing at all. They are removing NATURAL sources of CO2 that statistically don't fit their modeling. Even providing you with a direct quote from NOAA, you still assert that what I'm stating is wrong. That is blind faith and being a follower...

Trying to make me sound dishonest for presenting you with facts from a source that is widely used and accepted by climate scientists is a nice strawman, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny and only makes you look silly.

Science is sinister... you can choose to ignore ClimateGate and purposely falsified data... you can choose to ignore that thousands of animals die every day in the name of science... yes, science has a sinister side, which is what I'm trying to show you... it's right in your face and you choose to ignore it.

And that is just one source. Most do the same thing. I don't care if you believe me or not, but my field of work provides me with far more insight into climate modeling and global circulation models than you would ever care for.

And I can say based on your post, that you really have no idea what you are talking about Kali.

What a double-standard... where you're perfectly fine with most climate models using the Mauna Lao data because those models support your idea of man-made global warming, but then intentionally ignore their own admissions of the data being manipulated because it chips away at the reliability of the same models.

There are plenty of other scientists that have argued these same points, but I'm sure you won't spend your time looking for those papers or discussions.

~Namaste

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

I think you're the one that needs to reread. They are removing natural sources of CO2 to measure man-made emissions. I didn't say anything close to they remove man-made CO2, how can they measure it if they remove it? Absurd.

I fear for your field of work when your reading comprehension is so sorely lacking, you're gullible enough to believe something like climate gate was an actual thing to be concerned about and you can't comprehend the honest practice of homogenization. I can't tell if this is an issue of dishonesty or intellectual deficiency.

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

It's not a bold stance to take, a kindergarten student can figure it out. By our orbital precession, axial tilt and eccentricity we should be in a mildly cooling phase, the sun has been relatively the same, and no other source of CO2 in this warming period has been larger than humans... take us out of the equation and you get cooling.

Wow, you are absolutely speaking out of your "other" mouth on this one...

First of all, humans are BY FAR, not the largest source of CO2 in this warming period. I suggest you brush up on your carbon cycle reading.

Humans emit roughly 29 billion tons of CO2 per year.
Oceans emit roughly 330 billions tons of CO2 per year.
Plants emit roughly 200 billion tons of CO2 per year.
Plants perspire roughly 200 billion tons of CO2 per year.

Please show me where "no other source of CO2 in this warming period has been larger than humans" because I just showed you 3 that are.

While you're at it, please educate me....

What are all of the sources and sinks of CO2? Please identify them for me.

How do we accurately measure the rate of absorption for those sinks?

How do we accurately measure the rate of emissions across all plant, ocean, microbial and human sources?

How do we accurately measure the length of sequestration of CO2 in those sources?

How is convection accurately measured and used in the climate models?

What is the impact of clouds on both CO2 and heat in climate models?

How much of the contribution to warming is from the sun?

These are very honest questions that relate directly, 100%, to how climate works.

If you provide garbage in to the models, you get garbage out. If the above is not included in the models, they are GARBAGE, nothing more than learning instruments to figure out why they are wrong, not why they are right.

Since you seem to be able to explain how precession, tilt and eccentricity have an impact on the climate, the above questions should be easy for you to answer? You seem to speak with so much confidence, one can only assume that you know the answers to these questions because of such strong support for the paper in the OP.

However, if you don't know the answers (which I will bet money you don't), you might want to start looking into why nobody else has them either.

Here is some reading if you are interested...

Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?” by Peter Stott, Gareth Jones, and John Mitchell, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, United Kingdom, Journal of Climate December 2003

In case you don't want to read it, it says:

It is found that current climate models underestimate the observed climate response to solar forcing over the twentieth century as a whole, indicating that the climate system has a greater sensitivity to solar forcing than do models.

Here is another - "Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900-2000 global surface warming. Geophysical Research Letters (doi: 1029/2005GL025539)" - sorry I can't link directly to the paper, it's in a written publication... but it states:

...the models might be inadequate: (a) in their parameterizations of climate feedbacks and atmosphere-ocean coupling; (b) in their neglect of indirect response by the stratosphere and of possible additional climate effects linked to solar magnetic field, UV radiation, solar flares and cosmic ray intensity modulations; (c) there might be other possible natural amplification mechanisms deriving from internal modes of climate variability which are not included in the models.

Understand that correlation is not causation. Just because things line up on a graph or dots connect, does not mean that because A looks like B, A must be the cause of B, or they must be linked or causal of one another.

Like I said prior, go read the raw materials instead of taking someone's word for it. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, but I certainly will defend myself from anyone lobbing attacks at me by saying I'm twisting facts. What do I have to gain? What's my agenda since you have me so figured out?

I don't need to twist the facts, there are enough armchair scientists like yourself that do plenty of that for me.

~Namaste

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

I think you're the one that needs to reread. They are removing natural sources of CO2 to measure man-made emissions. I didn't say anything close to they remove man-made CO2, how can they measure it if they remove it? Absurd.

I fear for your field of work when your reading comprehension is so sorely lacking, you're gullible enough to believe something like climate gate was an actual thing to be concerned about and you can't comprehend the honest practice of homogenization. I can't tell if this is an issue of dishonesty or intellectual deficiency.

Uh, here is what YOU said:

The reason they filter out other sources of CO2 in the Mauna Lao data is because they are trying to count man made CO2.

I can't even begin to express how wrong you are. Again, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

They are measuring the mole fraction of CO2 in dry air.

It has nothing to do at all with measuring or isolating the man-made sources. It is to measure the total CO2 in the air at any given point in time. This includes ALL sources of CO2 in the air, man-made or natural.

When they give a measure of CO2, the result is not based on removing everything else until you are left with man-made emissions. No wonder you think I'm twisting facts, you don't understand them to begin with. They are removing natural sources from the data, not man-made ones.

Absurd is right, you are way off-base.

Why would you remove natural sources, if you are trying to provide a measurement that is inclusive of ALL sources of CO2? That is what a mole fraction is designed to measure.

Go ahead and defend ClimateGate... good luck with that one.

[off-topic] You should be grateful for my field of work and what I do, because if I didn't comprehend or read well, it's likely your life could be at risk. You have no idea what I do, who I work for, or what I know, and rather than respect that, you seek to diminish and discredit it with your kindergarten strawman arguments.

Go read a paper or two, pull some data into Excel and map it yourself, or don't, I don't care either way. Definitely work on your own reading skills before you critique mine.

~Namaste

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Why would you remove natural sources, if you are trying to provide a measurement that is inclusive of ALL sources of CO2? That is what a mole fraction is designed to measure.

It clearly says why in the link, so you are wrong to.

The daily means are based on hours during which CO2 was likely representative of “background” conditions, defined as times when the measurement is representative of air at mid-altitudes over the Pacific Ocean. That air has had several days time or more to mix, smoothing out most of the CO2 variability encountered elsewhere, making the measurements representative of CO2 over hundreds of km or more.

They are just leaving out the measurement from the local emission/absorbtion to get a clear measurement of the background over the pacific.

originally posted by: Mianeye
a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Why would you remove natural sources, if you are trying to provide a measurement that is inclusive of ALL sources of CO2? That is what a mole fraction is designed to measure.

It clearly says why in the link, so you are wrong to.

The daily means are based on hours during which CO2 was likely representative of “background” conditions, defined as times when the measurement is representative of air at mid-altitudes over the Pacific Ocean. That air has had several days time or more to mix, smoothing out most of the CO2 variability encountered elsewhere, making the measurements representative of CO2 over hundreds of km or more.

They are just leaving out the measurement from the local emission/absorbtion to get a clear measurement of the background over the pacific.

Leaving out the measurement... isn't that kind of key there?

I am not wrong, you just showed that I'm right.

They didn't say that they are leaving out local emission / absorption for a "clear" measurement.

A "clear" measurement should take everything into account.

You assume that what they are "leaving out" is local emission and absorption.... please explain to me how a mole fraction measurement would be able to assess that?

You know, since the CO2 is mixed, it would be great if you or someone else could show me how the mole fraction separates local CO2 from any other type of CO2?

Here's an example... let's say there is a volcanic vent 100 miles away from the measuring station. It's venting out tons of CO2 per day. The measuring station shows "spikes" due to varying wind and ocean currents. Each spike is removed. The "background", smoothed trend, continues to slowly climb. Nobody knows why. Yet that "left out measurement" is both the cause of the steady rise at the measuring station, and the cause of not being able to identify why it's happening.

This happens all the time. There are case studies that clearly show how statistical averages can lead to horrible misinterpretations of data.

Please explain to me with a bit more clarity how I'm wrong.

~Namaste

a reply to: tothetenthpower

No one denies climate change.

No one denies that human activity has an impact on weather.

NO ONE can prove that the overall force and main cause behind climate change is human activity. Not even this report which plays along the same old tired lines of intellectual dishonesty.

Climate change is absolutely true. No one denies it. Not even "climate deniers"

Climate deniers dont deny that human activity has SOME impact on weather.

What the main driving force is, and if human activity is the cause is yet to be proven.

Saying 99.9 is more intellectual dishonesty. Either it is because of X or it is not.

There are absolutes when asking for more concerted efforts due to a problem you have absolutely found the cause to.


EDIT TO ADD:
I also have a problem with their method. Using a moving 10 year window is absurd. How about you use a hundred year window or even better a thousand year window...you know considering that there has been millions of years of weather and natural climate change. This is the same old crap regurgitated into a new toilet. BS.

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Do you even read the link that you provide, it's all explained in there.

CLICK ME

In 1957 Dave Keeling, who was the first to make accurate measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, chose the site high up on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano because he wanted to measure CO2 in air masses that would be representative of much of the Northern Hemisphere, and, hopefully, the globe. That goal has not changed. We still want to eliminate the influence of CO2 absorbed or emitted locally by plants and soils, or emitted locally by human activities. Dave Keeling also introduced the principle of a rigorous calibration strategy that we still employ today.

The observatory is surrounded by many miles of bare lava, without any vegetation or soil. This provides an opportunity to measure “background” air, also called “baseline” air, which we define as having a CO2 mole fraction representative of an upwind fetch of hundreds of km. Nearby emission or removal of CO2 typically produces sharp fluctuations, in space and time, in mole fraction. These fluctuations get smoothed out with time and distance through turbulent mixing and wind shear. A distinguishing characteristic of background air is that CO2 changes only very gradually because the air has been mixed for days, without any significant additions or removals of CO2. Another common word for emissions is “sources”, and for removals, “sinks”. Figure 2 shows an example of the data selection procedures we use to eliminate air that has likely been influenced significantly by nearby sources/sinks.

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

I remember a statistics class in college. Just thinking about it now gives me a nose bleed.

But the thing I remember most was a saying that the prof put on the board.

"Torture numbers long enough and they'll give you any answer you want".

Maybe so.

However; it's the .001% against the idea of AGW that are correct. We are not the cause, natural environmental occurrences are.

Unless of course the AGW proponents think that humans are the cause of increasing temperatures on every planet in the solar system and that introduction of a useless carbon tax will magically eliminate atmospheric carbon. Livestock produce a worse pollutant in the form of methane as well as vast methane deposits held in the deep ocean.

Problem solved, AGW des not exist.

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Humans emit roughly 29 billion tons of CO2 per year. Oceans emit roughly 330 billions tons of CO2 per year. Plants emit roughly 200 billion tons of CO2 per year. Plants perspire roughly 200 billion tons of CO2 per year.

I guess I'll have to go with dishonest. You are talking about the natural carbon cycle. The oceans absorb more (they absorb some of our emissions as well) than they emit, as do plants/land. I should have said the largest source of increased atmospheric CO2. But, the 'conversation' we are having is about why some local sources of CO2 are left out of the data coming out of Mauna Loa. You say it's because they're manipulating, I say it's because they're trying to get an accurate picture of the atmosphere, not the atmosphere at Mauna Loa. If they didn't factor out local sources people would and in fact did bitch about the fact that an observatory was located near volcanoes.

Edit in bold.

a reply to: Cynic

All the other planets are not warming that is a myth.

a reply to: Mianeye

I'm sorry, but I can't explain to you why smoothing the data is bad and why you are misunderstanding what's written.

You don't eliminate data that is part of your source data. You have to factor it in, whether that is by averaging it or a Fourier transform or a Guassian filter. If you want an accurate measurement of the mixed CO2, you don't exclude the influence of local sources. If you are measuring correctly, those factors come out by themselves as error ranges, there isn't a need to remove them from the data set. There is a need to quantify them separately and compare against the rest of the set.

Some of you don't understand statistics, and that's perfectly fine. But for those of us who do, you should take it for what it's worth because I care more about truth and numbers and accuracy of data than I do about how it is interpreted

Maybe an expert statistician can better explain why you are wrong and I am right.

Here is what he has to say about smoothing a time series of data:

Now I’m going to tell you the great truth of time series analysis. Ready? Unless the data is measured with error, you never, ever, for no reason, under no threat, SMOOTH the series! And if for some bizarre reason you do smooth it, you absolutely on pain of death do NOT use the smoothed series as input for other analyses! If the data is measured with error, you might attempt to model it (which means smooth it) in an attempt to estimate the measurement error, but even in these rare cases you have to have an outside (the learned word is “exogenous”) estimate of that error, that is, one not based on your current data.

If, in a moment of insanity, you do smooth time series data and you do use it as input to other analyses, you dramatically increase the probability of fooling yourself! This is because smoothing induces spurious signals—signals that look real to other analytical methods. No matter what you will be too certain of your final results!

Here is his BIO in case it matters, and where he currently is employed.

2004-present Adjunct Professor of Statistical Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

How smoothing skews temperatures

Even Judith Curry, a once regarded hero and former advocate for AGW shows why smoothing is a problem:

It can be noted that the peaks and troughs in the running mean are absolutely wrong. When the raw data has a peak the running mean produces a trough. This is clearly undesirable.

The data is “smoother” than it was but its sense is perverted. This highlights the difference between simply “smoothing” data and applying appropriately chosen low-pass filter. The two are not the same but the terms are often thought to be synonymous.

Some other filters, such as the gaussian, are much more well behaved, however a gaussian response is never zero, so there is always some leakage of what we would like to remove. That is often acceptable but sometimes not ideal.

Maybe that will help. When you are done...

CLICK ME TO FIND OUT MORE ON WHY THIS IS ALL IMPORTANT

If you are so inclined. If not, I still fail to see how you've proven me wrong when I'm just trying to give you more resources to work with. Take it, leave it, it matters not to me, it's really for the benefit of others.

~Namaste

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Humans emit roughly 29 billion tons of CO2 per year. Oceans emit roughly 330 billions tons of CO2 per year. Plants emit roughly 200 billion tons of CO2 per year. Plants perspire roughly 200 billion tons of CO2 per year.

I guess I'll have to go with dishonest. You are talking about the natural carbon cycle. The oceans absorb more (they absorb some of our emissions as well) than they emit, as do plants/land. But, the 'conversation' we are having is about why some local sources of CO2 are left out of the data coming out of Mauna Loa. You say it's because they're manipulating, I say it's because they're trying to get an accurate picture of the atmosphere, not the atmosphere at Mauna Loa. If they didn't factor out local sources people would and in fact did bitch about the fact that an observatory was located near volcanoes.

Nice strawman yet again, to avoid any of the questions I posed to you, which are all relevant to the "conversation", and awesome dodge of the incorrect statement you made about there not being a source larger than humans. But that's a dead horse, and I'm not going to beat the flies off of it too.

Calling me dishonest is just a way to make yourself feel vindicated and validated, and is really quite trite and immature.

I have in no way shown dishonesty. If you want to say that, look back on your previous statement (the one above). THAT was dishonest. If you think what I'm presenting is dishonest, take it up with the folks who are doing the dishonesty, not the person pointing it out. I'm just presenting an alternative point of view from yours, with supporting evidence, and you can't stand that there are holes in the AGW THEORY (because that's what it still is).

And if they wanted to get an accurate picture of the atmosphere, they would include the data that they excluding and create an error range from it, not completely drop it.

Please read what I posted prior on statistics and smoothing of time series. It should help to better explain than I can.

~Namaste

originally posted by: SonOfTheLawOfOne
...in the AGW THEORY (because that's what it still is).

You are being generous. If they are fudging data it is merely, at best, a hypothesis.

originally posted by: beezzer
a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

I remember a statistics class in college. Just thinking about it now gives me a nose bleed.

But the thing I remember most was a saying that the prof put on the board.

"Torture numbers long enough and they'll give you any answer you want".

I love that quote. I might add that to my sig.

Maybe if I would have just said that 9 posts ago, I wouldn't feel like I'm the one that's being tortured in addition to the numbers.

~Namaste

a reply to: tothetenthpower

I've enjoyed this thread and everyone's contributions. Our eyes and ears are connected to our brain for a reason and I try my best to never dismiss someone else's opinion out of hand.

In an effort to go back and put the thread in perspective, I gave the link another look and also watched the embedded vid another viewing.

What dawned on me was that they (seem) to be ignoring a factor that is far from a new idea. Accumulation of heat in the oceans is addressed and they, of course, talk about the CO2 that is accumulating in the upper atmosphere (somewhere, as mentioned in another post). What they appear to be ignoring are the thousands of square miles of concrete and asphalt that have been laid down across the globe...

That's a problem for two reasons.

First, as the other post mentions, the upper atmosphere is much farther away than these man made surfaces and I've heard it is pretty friggin' cold up there as opposed to a vacant mall parking lot on a summer day.

Second, it has been mentioned years ago that monitor stations weren't being moved as urban spread brought all that concrete and asphalt closer and closer to those stations. The case could be made that it is appropriate to leave them in place for an honest assessment of AGCC. It's a tad dishonest, though, to not add the disclaimer that a certain percentage of temperature measurements don't have a tinker's d@mn to do with CO2!

If anyone knows of some action that has been taken to remedy my second point, I am always open to new info.

This topic...again?

The only thing you can count on in the universe is change. Everything is changing all the time. Sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, but always changing. This include the "climate". Do we contribute to that? Probably as do cows, birds, etc. We also contribute to slowing the Earth's rotation down. The ONLY question is how much we contribute to these things. My understanding is that our contribution is minimal. So...I'm sick of hearing about this topic and won't be getting into arguments with "environmentalists" and tree-huggers.

But I will say this. Mr. Al Gore and others WANT you to believe this and have dumped millions, maybe billions in making you believe it. Why? Same reasons as always...money and control. The simple fact that politicians and money-brokers want us to believe this, is enough reason not to. That is where I am and where I will stay until there is REAL proof...if that is even possible.

Climate change? Dirt change, air change, moon to Earth distance change, change of underwear, change of weather, changing your hair style, dinosaurs changed into fossils, apes changed into humans and a fart can help change the climate. Get over it. You're being lied to (through exaggeration) by the typical liars. Don't know them? Look to your left.

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

I edited before you made this post. My arguments aren't straw man, just observations. I can stand the holes in AGW theory just fine if they're accurate. There's arguments for and against homogenizing data but you are asserting that when climate scientists do it that it's from a desire to promote AGW Theory, that it's dishonest when it isn't. It's widely acceptable and practiced throughout all of science so why is it only climate science that is dishonest in your opinion?