Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in Peer-reviewed literature

[zinfamous]

Long-term climate isn't really a developed science nor will it ever be since its on the 10,000's of years timescale.

Best throw out geology and biology and physics then. If 10k year time scales are inadequate for real "developed science" (you must be a scientist, right?), then we might as well forget about these 100k, million, billion year time scales we use all over science.

Good to know, honestly: that shit was getting too damn hard to read.

 

[zinfamous]

If you think CO2 is pollutant, try growing a plant without it. I'll take global warming EVERY TIME over global cooling. Looking back through the geologic fossil record, all explosions of life forms occurred during warming periods, extinctions occurred during cooling periods.

O2 was the most catastrophic pollutant this planet has ever seen. Killed off roughly 90% of the lifeforms then alive.

perspective: it is good to have, even for non-scientists when they aren't really sure what they are reading.

 

[xBiffx]

Best throw out geology and biology and physics then. If 10k year time scales are inadequate for real "developed science" (you must be a scientist, right?), then we might as well forget about these 100k, million, billion year time scales we use all over science.

Good thing those are all based on tangible principles huh? (Minus the theoretical varieties, that is).

 

[Paratus]

Good thing those are all based on tangible principles huh? (Minus the theoretical varieties, that is).

Ever hear of heat-mass transfer? It says we are warming.

 

[nextJin]

Wait a minute. You say the earth has been hotter and colder in the past? We've had ice ages and ages where CO2 was higher? How do you know this?

Were you there? Or are you just making shit up?

Unless general scientific theory on earths past is wrong then yea I was making shit up.

 

[OverVolt]

Best throw out geology and biology and physics then. If 10k year time scales are inadequate for real "developed science" (you must be a scientist, right?), then we might as well forget about these 100k, million, billion year time scales we use all over science.

Good to know, honestly: that shit was getting too damn hard to read.

There are some things science just isn't very good at predicting. Long-term climate and earthquakes are two of them.

They can't predict earthquakes in advance but it doesn't stop them from trying.

 

[zinfamous]

Good thing those are all based on tangible principles huh? (Minus the theoretical varieties, that is).

explain the differences, please.

 

[Paratus]

Unless general scientific theory on earths past is wrong then yea I was making shit up.

Like I posted above, you do realize that climate scientists developed those theories of Earths past climate and that's part of the reason why they believe we are a large cause of warming today.

 

[piasabird]

So what? Whenever I see claims like this, I just assume it is all lies or a kind of vague statement. Sure man can have an effect on the environment. If you cut all the trees down on a mountain all the good soil that supports life may erode and make the whole eco system go to hell when the mountain can no longer absorb water or provide a habitat for animals.

So if Man can affect the environment in a negative way, the opposite must be true also. When I was in South Korea they had their version of Arbor day and they took all the school children in-mass and went out and planted trees by the thousands. So you can do good or bad when it comes to the Environment.

 

[OverVolt]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of climate science. Short term predictions are vastly more difficult than long term ones.

Think about it in baseball terms. If someone is a career .300 hitter you can be reasonably confident he will hit somewhere around .300 for the season. You can't be nearly as confident he won't go 0-4 tonight.

Or for a weather analogy, knowing the average yearly rainfall for a city tells you little about how much it will rain next week.

So if you are trying to predict climate over the next 100 years or 10 years and say, ice ages occur every 100,000 years your confidence level is...?

:awe:

Or another way to look at it, we've had 5 major ice age events out of 4.5 billion years, with that sample size predict the next one. Have fun. Science has limits you know.

Why is there so much theory, debate, and controversy? Think about it. Its because there aren't any facts to back up either side with any level of confidence. This isn't flipping a penny.

 

[fskimospy]

So if you are trying to predict climate over the next 100 years or 10 years and the earth is 4.5 billion years old the confidence level in reality is...?

:awe:

/facepalm

It is not a question of whether or not you are accounting for the entire time period, it is the effect of small sample sizes.

I do enjoy it when someone says something tremendously stupid on here and acts like they just had a clever point though, so thanks!

 

[OverVolt]

/facepalm

It is not a question of whether or not you are accounting for the entire time period, it is the effect of small sample sizes.

I do enjoy it when someone says something tremendously stupid on here and acts like they just had a clever point though, so thanks!

Mhmm okay. They can't predict the climate. We've never burned up stored carbon like we are know. NOBODY knows the effects of that. I'm willing to admit its not a good idea and we should sustainably use our resources but saying they predict XYZ sea rise or XYZ change in weather patterns 10-50 years out based on measurements of CO2 is a bit shaky don't you think?

 

[fskimospy]

Why is there so much theory, debate, and controversy? Think about it. Its because there aren't any facts to back up either side with any level of confidence. This isn't flipping a penny.

There is in fact very little remaining debate on whether or not humans are driving climate change. There are a great number of facts supporting AGW, and very few disputing it. That you think there is a controversy speaks to the effects of confirmation bias and partisan politics, not to the data behind AGW.

 

[Paratus]

There is in fact very little remaining debate on whether or not humans are driving climate change. There are a great number of facts supporting AGW, and very few disputing it. That you think there is a controversy speaks to the effects of confirmation bias and partisan politics, not to the data behind AGW.

The only real areas of scientific uncertainty is basically how the Earth will heat up, (more land an air temperature increases or more sea temperature increases and timing). Not that it is heating up and we are mostly responsible.

The other part is what if anything should our response be.

Most "skeptics" never want to discuss that part. :hmm:

 

[fskimospy]

Mhmm okay. They can't predict the climate. We've never burned up stored carbon like we are know. NOBODY knows the effects of that. I'm willing to admit its not a good idea and we should sustainably use our resources but saying they predict XYZ sea rise or XYZ change in weather patterns 10-50 years out based on measurements of CO2 is a bit shaky don't you think?

The levels of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere have in fact varied quite widely over time. When controlling for other factors such as solar activity we can create a pretty decent model of what to expect out of increased CO2 in the atmosphere in terms of temperatures.

 

[OverVolt]

Just because I don't agree with the conclusions/predictions doesn't mean I think humans don't have an effect on the climate.

You are hung up on that, but its pointless. The real question is what we do about it, what are the implications for the future, on what time frame will this play out (100 years or 10,000?) etc.

Just saying humans alter the climate whoopdee doo.

I agree with significantly cutting fossil fuel use but realistically it won't happen.

What science has done is found a problem but can't offer a solution, and it can't give any accurate predictions. If they were 100% certain we would all be dead from global warming in 50 years we'd be acting differently. In the 1970's they were convinced we were headed into an ice age remember? I'd love to see a 50-100 year climate prediction.

 

[Jaskalas]

If you would read the article, the study searched for all articles containing the key terms climate change in their abstract. Since they were analyzing scientific positions on the causes for climate change, articles that did not discuss the causes of climate change had no relevence to this study. Im not sure why you can't comprehend this.

Why can't you comprehend that only 65 papers agree that man is the dominant factor. That's 1.6% of papers that had a position.

 

[zinfamous]

So what? Whenever I see claims like this, I just assume it is all lies or a kind of vague statement.

Oh......

:hmm:

 

[glenn1]

The only real areas of scientific uncertainty is basically how the Earth will heat up, (more land an air temperature increases or more sea temperature increases and timing). Not that it is heating up and we are mostly responsible.

The other part is what if anything should our response be.

Most "skeptics" never want to discuss that part. :hmm:

Actually its more like the other way around. The "skeptics" have so thoroughly won the political argument that the only discussion left is whether manmade global warming is scientific consensus or not.

 

[BlueWolf47]

The most troublesome part of climate science is we have no idea how dramatic the heating will continue and what will happen to the ecosystems that aren't able to rapidly adapt to new climate conditions. The risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risks of being wrong and taking a action.

 

[OverVolt]

http://thingsbreak.files.wordpress....ing-160-years-of-temperature-observations.pdf

Improved constraints on 21st-century warming derived
using 160 years of temperature observations

(From conclusion) Our observationally-constrained estimates of 21st warming under the RCPs are also relatively tightly constrained and substantially lower than the warming simulated directly by CanESM2 [Arora et al., 2011], with an overall projected range for global mean warming of the decade 2091–2100
relative to preindustrial of 1.2–4.3°C across the three RCPs

How they did it (if you care)

(From methods)In this study we use new historical simulations and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) [Moss et al.,2010] scenario simulations from CanESM2 firstly to derive scaling factors on the greenhouse gas and aerosol forcing responses which give the best fit to observations over the historical period, and then to derive observationally-constrained projections of 21st-century temperature change.

I personally don't place much stake in simulated models like this. Basically if you look at the actual articles we are using 150 years to try and predict the next 100. The guy who reviews these articles for his website is slamming all sorts of bias into them because from that article they derived this chart:

http://skepticalscience.com/jones-2013-attribution.html

The study is Gillet12 or G12 on the crackpot website.

Its also classic "Take current slope and extrapolate!" garbage. There is the start of the industrial revolution in the data set.

 

[OverVolt]

Lol :awe:

The average of the models does overestimate the observed surface warming over the past decade. This is why the sum of human and natural contributions from Jones et al. 2013 exceeds 100% in Figure 1 – because the modeled warming slightly exceeds the observed warming.

In

http://skepticalscience.com/jones-2013-attribution.html

(The same page)

I'm not trying to be tedious or even argue I'm just having some lulz at this point. I don't even care that much about global warming.

When they got to the part where inaccuracy was partially blamed on el nino more lulz were had.

The one article blew it by like 125% lol. Wtf kind of experiment has 25%+ error.

 

[BlueWolf47]

Skeptics might have a stronger argument if they had more consensus around an alternate theory for global warming. Instead they just attack the studies done by climatologists and contribute no new intellectual ideas to climate science.

 

[xBiffx]

Ever hear of heat-mass transfer? It says we are warming.

I'd love for you to explain that one. Can't wait.

 

[xBiffx]

explain the differences, please.

You don't understand what it means to be able to experience (feel) the principles that a science is based on? Being able to prove a hypothesis by experiencing/observing it rather than guessing?