Top MIT Scientist Mocks New UN Climate Report

Welcome to the New Religion my friends!

Step right in!

To your right are various pamphlets and visual aids which will help you assimilate to the new global manner of thinking.

To your left, you'll find eco-friendly products, all sold readily by WholePaycheck Markets! Just buy it right up!

Don't forget your autographed copy of "An Inconvenient Truth", as the eco companies former Vice President Al Gore was on at the time of writing this are sitting on a few too many warehouses full of them!

Also, don't forget, for those of you with loved ones that have a touch too much flatulence, here are your "Carbon Footprint Indulgences", straight from The Vatican itself!!!


Remember folks, WE did this, so YOU'LL have to pay!



- SN

PS - Now, on a serious note...do I believe we are experiencing a climate change? Absolutely. Do I believe we have enough emperical evidence and data to place blame and emphasis? No, I do not. Do I believe that we as human beings should be smart enough to realize we *are* blatantly screwing this planet (and hence, ourselves) with the way we are poisoning it? Fukushima, anyone? Absolutely. Do I think making it the new taxation of the masses rather than forcing big corporations to do their share? No. Call a spade a spade, do the right thing. Don't make a charade out of this. Unfortunately, it is no joke.

reply to post by InTheFlesh1980


Thanks for the link.

I to find the international report a little unusual. However, I would like to reiterate that when in terms of the global scale, shifts and trends are, dare I say, should not be boiled down to time frames of 10 years or less.

Global climate shifts, whether up or down, support or refute, technically require decades if not centuries to realize.

The reliability of conclusions drawn from such a short span of time will lead to inaccuracies.

It would be like trying to make a line graph with two data points, just because the second data point is slightly higher than the first does not necessarily indicate a trend. On the other hand, it could just be the beginning of the climb.

I have always been a (reluctant) supporter of AGW, on the basis that every scientific society bar one (whose name escapes me) supports this.

But this latest declaration by the IPCC has me baffled.

Can they really be so certain that "more than half" of global warming is due to mankind?

It's the certainty that baffles me, because climate change is so incredibly complex, with all sorts of variables.

Why does the global temp occasionally dip, for instance?

From (approximately) 1940 to 1975 - 35 years - the global temp dipped. No one knows why.

There's no doubt that the global temp has been gradually rising over the last 100 years or so.

But what accounts for this protracted dip (and the current plateau), and how can scientists be certain that today's high CO2 levels are not an 800 year lag from the Mediaeval Warm Period?

I'll re-post some of the data I presented in a related ATS thread this week that I believe is relevant to the discussion here.

If you do a Google search on "Vostock ice core data", you would find this discussion happened right here at ATS in 2009.

Quick Link to AGW Discussion on ATS with Vostock Data (Thread: Carbon levels dramatically changed 7,000 years ago. Sudden human knowledge?)

Also, digging a little deeper, that page uses the actual Vostock ice core data (as well as 8 additional data sources), which shows the last 12,000 years in detail (i.e. real data, not conjecture based upon emotion).

I've created an annotated graph per my understanding, in order to explain the data displayed. Time is the X-Axis, going from approx 450,000 years ag to present (YPB = Years Before Present Day).

Note the cyclic nature of cooling and warming occurring throughout Earths history, even before the modern industrial age when "we" supposedly are now responsible for the current warming trend. Looking deeper still, and expanding the little red box on the far right in the graph representing the last 12,000 years or so, you see the below according to the data.

Temperature Graph of Last 12,000 years

Note: It was warmer for longer approx 11,000 years ago, and humans were here, but not as numerous nor burning fossil fuels at the same level as today, yet the temps coming out of the last ice-age were still higher.

Key snippets from the article related to this discussion are, IMO:

During the Holocene itself, there is general scientific agreement that temperatures on the average have been quite stable compared to fluctuations during the preceding glacial period. The above average curve supports this belief.

Because of the limitations of data sampling, each curve in the main plot was smoothed (see methods below) and consequently, this figure can not resolve temperature fluctuations faster than approximately 300 years. Further, while 2004 appears warmer than any other time in the long-term average, and hence might be a sign of global warming, it should also be noted that the 2004 measurement is from a single year (actually the fourth highest on record, see Image:Short Instrumental Temperature Record.png for comparison). It is impossible to know whether similarly large short-term temperature fluctuations may have occurred at other times, but are unresolved by the available resolution. The next 150 years will determine whether the long-term average centered on the present appears anomalous with respect to this plot.

While any conclusions to be drawn from the long-term average must be considered crude and potentially controversial, one can comment on a number of well established inferences from the individual curves contributing to the average. First, at many locations, there exist large temperature fluctuations on multi-centennial scales.

Boiled down, this translates to "we don't know yet, more data collection over the next 150 years is needed". IMO, if the AGW doomers would change their message to "let's try to save the human race" or "we might be headed for human extinction" as opposed to "save the planet" it would be more relevant to most people. Think about it, the Earth has been through more than what we little short-lived species could ever do, and nature will wipe us out long before we can destroy the planet.

But, that's my opinion, based upon empirical data and not emotion or fear of "doom".

AFAIK, the IPCC has been caught withholding data that contradicts their political position on numerous occasions, modifying their result sets always using "worst-case" values in their climate models (if you believe the butterfly effect, then their models can never be close to correct over long time spans). Also, they do not educate the populous that we are currently living in an aberration of climate for the planet. The "normal" climate state for Earth is much colder, closer to ice-age conditions. This is based upon real ice-core data from numerous samplings in varied locations.

References:
Actual Vostock Data Set
Citation:
Petit, J.R., et al., 2001,
Vostok Ice Core Data for 420,000 Years, IGBP PAGES/World Data Center
for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #2001-076.
NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.)

The graphs and data above depict the natural temperature variations occurring in this latest warming period that we are currently experiencing. Note that it began at the end of the last ice-age, and was actually warmer at various times in the past before the industrial age began. The AGW proponents cannot explain this so they avoid it, I ask ............. why?
What do they have to gain by this action? Could it be $$$ related to Carbon Credits and related "green" product sales to the "scared" masses?

Please also note that every single thermal peak in the past was actually higher than today's temperatures, again, prior to mankind's alleged impact.

reply to post by InTheFlesh1980


So the daily caller is a conservative newspaper.
We must consider the source.

I'd like to see this picked up by some real news outlets and talked about.

And I'm also wondering about this breitbart story.

www.breitbart.com... rming

What do you guys think about this?

The U.N.'s IPCC's first key claim is that "a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would cause warming between 3°C and 6°C." The study's authors, though, conclude that the "IPCC ignores mounting evidence that climate sensitivity to CO2 is much lower than its models assume." The NIPCC study discovered that warming actually "ceased around the end of the twentieth century and was followed (since 1997) by 16 years of stable temperature."

The IPCC also claims in its reports that "CO2 caused an atmospheric warming of at least 0.3°C over the past 15 years." The lead authors of the report, though, found that the IPCC used incomplete climate models in their research. In fact, the NIPCC's authors found that "no excess warming has been demonstrated."

The IPCC also asserts that a "thermal hot spot should exist in the upper troposphere in tropical regions" even though "observations from both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite MSU sensors show the opposite." Furthermore, the IPCC also asserts that "both polar regions should have warmed faster than the rest of Earth during the late twentieth century" when, in fact, "the large polar East Antarctic Ice Sheet has been cooling since at least the 1950s."

What's science got to do with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?
Any evidence that disagrees with their pre-determined outcomes is suppressed or thrown out.

Phage
reply to post by tauristercus

 

And yet the CO2 concentration in the Martian atmosphere is approximately x28 by volume GREATER than that in the Earth's atmosphere and strangely enough ... NOT even the slightest hint of any kind of global warming taking place on Mars that is detectable.

Why would Mars get warmer if the concentration of CO2 in its atmosphere doesn't change? It's done all the warming it's going to and that ain't much because the surface of Mars has about as much "air" as Earth does at an altitude of 100,000 feet.

edit on 9/30/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Oh right..that makes sense. Remind me, how much 'air' has that world sized oven Venus got again?

reply to post by MysterX

The surface pressure on Venus is 92 times that of Earth. The equivalent of 2,000 feet underwater.
That much atmosphere can retain a whole hell of a lot of heat.

Phage
reply to post by MysterX

 

The surface pressure on Venus is 92 times that of Earth. The equivalent of 2,000 feet underwater.

Was comparing to Mars, the other CO2 covered world that was being discussed, not to Earth but not to worry.
Besides, go high enough into the Venusian atmosphere, about 50km give or take...the pressure is almost exactly that of Earth.

reply to post by MysterX

Oh. Ok.
In that case the density of the atmosphere of Venus is about 9,000 times that of Mars. Is that what you were asking?

Besides, go high enough into the Venusian atmosphere, about 50km give or take...the pressure is almost exactly that of Earth.

Cool. And the temperature at that altitude on Venus is about 60ºC

Here's my theory, unless you've lived up north then your opinion on if the climate is changing or not is mostly unfactual, and pointless. All your gauging it on is a bunch of skewed data. Go live in alaska for a winter or even a summer and see. Like how can a climatologist who's living in Arazona have any actaully understanding of what 7 month long winters are like? They can't at all. Their winters are the same temp as our summers, only they get more sun. I've been there

Government's funding framework breeds scientific conformity

Here is a list of beliefs in the biomedical and climate sciences that must not be questioned if you're applying for a government grant:

That global warming is caused by humans

That AIDS is caused by a virus

That radiation, cigarette smoke and other toxins are dangerous in proportion to their strength, no matter how small the dose

That heart disease is caused by saturated fats

That cancer is caused by mutations

This is part of a list offered by a University of Washington professor of surgery, Donald W. Miller, who is a heart surgeon at the VA Medical Center in Seattle. Miller believes that all the above ideas may be false, and ought to be tested. [...]

But much of science runs on government money. Some people find the stink of bias only in private money, and see government as free of it, but they are mistaken. Government likes certain beliefs. To get its money, you have to get the approval of the scientists it selects, and you are less likely to get it if they think your idea wrong.

What that means, Miller says, is that,

"If you say low doses of radiation aren't bad for you, or that global warming is due to variations in the sun, you can't get funded."

[...]

In 2005, in the scientific journal Cellular and Molecular Biology, Pollack made an argument similar to Miller's. American science, he wrote, has become "a culture of believers" whose rule is, "just keep it safe and get your funding."

For science, the result has not been good. [...]
"A half-century ago, breakthroughs were fairly common events in science," Pollack said in an interview. But who today are the equivalents of Linus Pauling in molecular biology, Jonas Salk in vaccines, Richard Feynman in physics, or James Watson and Francis Crick in the study of DNA? Said Pollack, "Where are the heroes of the past 30 years?"

In his paper, Pollack wrote, "Einstein's challenge of orthodoxy would probably fail in today's grant system." Today's committees of scientists demand that an individual predict what he will accomplish at the end of year one, year two, etc., all of which amounts, Pollack says, to "an implicit admission that no breakthroughs are to be anticipated."
Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, argued famously that science progresses in revolutionary bursts, in which the "dominant paradigm" is overturned. But what if the supporters of the dominant paradigm are the people vetting your application?

Leading U.S. scientists called on Congress Thursday to make sure the next president does not do what they say the George W. Bush Administration has done: censor, suppress and falsify important environmental and health research. [...]

Among the more than 15,000 government scientists signing onto the statement are Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and Anthony Robbins, professor of medicine at Tufts University and former director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

"Although surely the worst, the Bush Administration is not the first, nor will it be the last administration to mistreat and misuse science and scientists," Robbins said.



"The White House itself has been directly involved in the suppression and falsification of science," Robbins stressed.

But interference from the White House is just part of the problem, said Francesca Grifo, a former government researcher and now a director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Industry lobbyists are all over government agencies, trying to influence research that will impact their corporations, she said.

"These special interest groups are being given access at the highest level."

"Government scientists have had their findings subjected to censorship and misrepresentation," said Kurt Gottfried, professor of physics at Cornell University and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The public and Congress have often been deprived of accurate and candid scientific information."

"The pursuit of science in an open society has had a long and fruitful tradition in America," Gottfried said. "Unfortunately, this tradition has been violated in recent years by the government itself."

www.ipsnews.net...

reply to post by Krakatoa


That's an excellent chart you made there.
Very fascinating.
Kinda puts a damper on the agw doom porn doesn't it?

grey580
reply to post by Krakatoa

 

That's an excellent chart you made there.
Very fascinating.
Kinda puts a damper on the agw doom porn doesn't it?

I only present the data, unfiltered, and without any political or monetary bias.....as true SCIENCE should be. I cannot take full credit for the data or graph, they were collected and produced by the Vostock Ice Core Team. I only "drew lines between the dots" to show the AGW crowd what has been hidden from them by those they trust/believe. I do think that the neo-climate-change movement (i.e. AGW proponents) are either willingly or unwittingly involved in a true conspiracy of global proportions.

All we as individuals can do is present the real story, and hope it changes or enlightens even one person. If it does, then over time, perhaps it can make a positive effect in exposing this for what it has become.

The report has been released and, since Lindzen was so amused with the statements about models it would be appropriate to see what exactly is said. From Lindzen:

“Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean,” Lindzen added. “However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans.”

dailycaller.com...
He says that the panel says the ocean is the cause for the diversion of temperatures over the past decade and a half from the models. Lindzen is wrong. Lindzen didn't seem to be aware (or ignored) of the fact that there are a great number of factors involved. He also seems to be unaware of (or ignore) that the models are works in progress and that they are improving.

Climate models have continued to be developed and improved since the AR4, and many models have been extended into Earth System models by including the representation of biogeochemical cycles important to climate change.

The ability of climate models to simulate surface temperature has improved in many, though not all, important aspects relative to the generation of models assessed in the AR4.

There is very high confidence that models reproduce the general features of the global-scale annual-mean surface temperature increase over the historical period, including the more rapid warming in the second half of the 20th century, and the cooling immediately following large volcanic eruptions.

The simulation of large-scale patterns of precipitation has improved somewhat since the AR4,although models continue to perform less well for precipitation than for surface temperature.

The simulation of clouds in climate models remains challenging.

Models are able to capture the general characteristics of storm tracks and extratropical cyclones, and there is some evidence of improvement since the AR4.

There are a total of 18 detailed points on the performance of the models yet Lindzen ridicules the entire report based on a single point. That point being the question of heat uptake by the ocean. Here is what the report says about that:

Many models are able to reproduce the observed changes in upper ocean heat content from 1960 to present, with the multi-model mean time series falling within the range of the available observational estimates for most of the period. The ability of models to simulate ocean heat uptake, including variations imposed by large volcanic eruptions, adds confidence to their use in assessing the global energy budget and simulating the thermal component of sea-level rise. [9.4.2, Figure 9.17]

The ocean heat models work well, contrary to what Lindzen claims.

It seems that for a highly credentialed scientist, Lindzen might have been better off waiting for the report to be released rather than making claims about something he didn't know about. It seems that all he has really done is, like all of the AGW deniers, point at the past decade and say "see, the models were wrong!" Well, sort of, but not really. And the models have improved. That is actually the point of this part of the report.

www.climatechange2013.org...

The entire report is available here:
www.ipcc.ch...

Phage
The report has been released and, since Lindzen was so amused with the statements about models it would be appropriate to see what exactly is said. From Lindzen:

“Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean,” Lindzen added. “However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans.”

dailycaller.com...
He says that the panel says the ocean is the cause for the diversion of temperatures over the past decade and a half from the models. Lindzen is wrong. Lindzen didn't seem to be aware (or ignored) of the fact that there are a great number of factors involved. He also seems to be unaware of (or ignore) that the models are works in progress and that they are improving.

Climate models have continued to be developed and improved since the AR4, and many models have been extended into Earth System models by including the representation of biogeochemical cycles important to climate change.

The ability of climate models to simulate surface temperature has improved in many, though not all, important aspects relative to the generation of models assessed in the AR4.

There is very high confidence that models reproduce the general features of the global-scale annual-mean surface temperature increase over the historical period, including the more rapid warming in the second half of the 20th century, and the cooling immediately following large volcanic eruptions.

The simulation of large-scale patterns of precipitation has improved somewhat since the AR4,although models continue to perform less well for precipitation than for surface temperature.

The simulation of clouds in climate models remains challenging.

Models are able to capture the general characteristics of storm tracks and extratropical cyclones, and there is some evidence of improvement since the AR4.

There are a total of 18 detailed points on the performance of the models yet Lindzen ridicules the entire report based on a single point. That point being the question of heat uptake by the ocean. Here is what the report says about that:

Many models are able to reproduce the observed changes in upper ocean heat content from 1960 to present, with the multi-model mean time series falling within the range of the available observational estimates for most of the period. The ability of models to simulate ocean heat uptake, including variations imposed by large volcanic eruptions, adds confidence to their use in assessing the global energy budget and simulating the thermal component of sea-level rise. [9.4.2, Figure 9.17]

The ocean heat models work well, contrary to what Lindzen claims.

It seems that for a highly credentialed scientist, Lindzen might have been better off waiting for the report to be released rather than making claims about something he didn't know about. It seems that all he has really done is, like all of the AGW deniers, point at the past decade and say "see, the models were wrong!" Well, sort of, but not really. And the models have improved. That is actually the point of this part of the report.

www.climatechange2013.org...

The entire report is available here:
www.ipcc.ch...

edit on 9/30/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

We shouldn't forget that Models are exactly that, a Model!
They are an attempt to guess at something. They are the perfect device for producing the desired result.
By feeding in their CHOSEN data, and with constant TWEAKING, they get their desired result.
While I do see the usefulness of PREDICTION via models, we shouldn't forget how easily they can lead us away from real world observations. I look outside every day, have done so for nearly 60 years, and I see completely normal weather, however, when I stay indoors and watch the TV I'm told we need to save the planet!

I bet if we could find an untouched race hidden somewhere on this earth and we asked them what they thought about GW they'd give us a puzzled look, then give them a couple of months sitting in front of the TV and we'd see them begging to pay carbon taxes.

Its a scam.

reply to post by VoidHawk

By feeding in their CHOSEN data, and with constant TWEAKING, they get their desired result.

Sort of, and the desired result is to get the model to match observations. Have you ever done computer modeling of anything? You can make a flight simulator for a plane that can do just about anything but if it doesn't match what a plane can actually do it's a game, not a simulator.

I look outside every day, have done so for nearly 60 years, and I see completely normal weather, however, when I stay indoors and watch the TV I'm told we need to save the planet!

Weather is not climate. The climate is changing, whether or not you are aware of it.


But the point is that Lindzen's criticism of the report was premature and off base.

Why do so many people fail to realize that the earth experiences natural climate fluctuations? Over time, these fluctuations will be quite large, causing ice ages, mini ice ages, etc...This was going on long before humans came onto the scene, and long before humans were emitting gas into the atmosphere to any significant degree, and I do not buy that "global warming" is being caused by people. The scientific evidence suggests otherwise. And it has already been shown how certain scientists have skewed data, and sometimes simply outright lied, because they are working for people who have an agenda, or they have an agenda themselves.

Phage
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

Have you ever done computer modeling of anything?

No but I program in several languages so I fully understand just how tweakable a model is.

Phage
You can make a flight simulator for a plane that can do just about anything but if it doesn't match what a plane can actually do it's a game, not a simulator.

That was my point

Phage
Weather is not climate. The climate is changing, whether or not you are aware of it.

The weather always changes, and so it should, the earth would stagnate if it didn't. But the reason I made that comment was because a long way back in another thread I was told most of us would be gone by now due to being swallowed up by rising sea levels. We're all still here though.