Posted on 08/12/2005 8:20:24 AM PDT by cogitator
For years, skeptics of global warming have used satellite and weather balloon data to argue that climate models were wrong and that global warming isn't really happening.
Now, according to three new studies published in the journal Science, it turns out those conclusions based on satellite and weather balloon data were based on faulty analyses.
The atmosphere is indeed warming, not cooling as the data previously showed.
...
Argument evaporates
According to Santer, the only group to previously analyze satellite data on the troposphere -- the lowest layer in Earth's atmosphere -- was a research team headed by Roy Spencer from University of Alabama in 1992.
"This was used by some critics to say 'We don't believe in climate models, they're wrong,'" Santer told LiveScience. "Other people used the disconnect between what the satellites told and what surface thermometers told us to argue that the surface data were wrong and that earth wasn't really warming because satellites were much more accurate."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I had three books written during that time about the coming ice age. They all had a lot of scientific facts and charts and graph. Very impressive and evidently very wrong.
"Sherwood explains these discrepancies by pointing out that the older radiosonde instruments used in the 1970's were not as well shielded from sunlight as more recent models. What this means as that older radiosondes showed warmer temperature readings during the day because they were warmed by sunlight"
--- If so, there should have been a step change in the graph of each temperature point at the moment that the new device replaced the old in each radiosonde balloon. If the graph of temperatures for a location shows this step change, it should pretty conclusively prove that the equipment is a cause. Since there are 'many' such locations around the globe, it should be pretty obvious on any data analysis since the same thing would happen immediately after the new device is installed at every location.
Common engineering practice is to run both a new & old measurement device in parallel whenever possible to make sure that the reading is repeatable & is reading the same thing. I would like to believe that climate scientists & meterologists us this scientific practice. If so, any difference in readings should have been noted immediately & at every station as the new device is used.
If the difference between the new & old devices was so small it it couldn't be detected at the time, but only later through trend analysis, it would seem that (if both devices were working correctly), any change in trend would NOT be due to the device but an actual change in conditions.
However, that is not what I read in the articles. A theory is proposed (that the difference in the readings is due to faulty equipment) but then the articles go on to a detailed explaination of how an adjusting (fudge factor?) was incorrectly applied 30 years ago and now that it is correctly applied, everything trends together.
Regardless of the merits of climate change or not (personally I'm agnostic on it), if you can't prove your case with direct numbers & statistics and you have to rely on "adjustments" and "correlations", then you really can't prove your case.
EXACTLY! Please see post 38.
ping list
But the hottest summers on record in Indiana and I would image Wisconsin were in the mid 30's; 34,35,36. Records in Indianapolis only go back to 1887 so we have just over a century of data to work with here.
True.
It was much warmer in the early medieval warm period.
The Saber tooth tigers ate them?
Perhaps this is better explained in the papers which have been published in Science.
He's been interviewed numerous times, and has no trouble finding a media voice. I'm certain we'll hear from him soon; Christy already has a press release out about their new data analysis.
Fact is, we can't reliably predict a week of weather, and the envirohysterics are claiming their predictions extending years are sacrosanct and infallible.
The second key question is: What the hell can we do about it if it's really a threat to life on the planet? The Kyoto treaty is ineffective political eyewash designed with only one thing in mind: destruction of the U.S. economy and distribution of our wealth around the globe under auspices of that "noble" institution, the U.N. It's socialist "humanitarianism" based on Marxist political theory. A lot of those people just don't think humanity should survive.
I've always been a true Darwinist, unlike the liberals who pretend they can "freeze" evolution and species extinction with the silly Endangered Species Act (while truly being only cynically interested in obstructing capitalist activity). If the planet heats or cools too much we'll either fail as a species and go extinct -- an interesting experiment in biological self-awareness -- or a few hardy souls will survive to carry on, just as our ancestors did in the Pleistocene Ice Age. Either way, there's not a damned thing we can do about it. And I'd rather die free and capitalist than servile and socialist.
read later
It is possible to measure the 13C/12C ratio going back at least 10,000 years. Also, in paleoclimate studies, the 13C/12C ratio is used in sedimentary carbonates to estimate temperature.
How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities? is a good quick article to read on this.
Yes, the '30s and '40s were warmer and the '60s and '70s were colder.
Predicting climate is not the same thing as predicting weather.
That global warming is occuring is beyond dispute. And for me, the evidence that it is largely human-caused, and that for the most part, the effects thus far have been negative, is more highly convincing the skeptic's take on the matter. What is an issue of dispute is how do we deal with it; policies like Kyoto may look good on paper, but we have seen the disastrous effects of large-scale economic interventionism and social planning, and are still feeling them today, and the drastic remedies some propose may cause more problems than they solve.
"When the climatologists can explain why we had ice ages and why they ended, then I'll buy into whatever they say about human causation for warming."
We had ice ages because it got colder. They ended because it got warmer. Next question?
The warming trend started near the end of the last glacial epoch and essentially ended when the continental ice sheets had receded. The Holocene climate has been quite stable, with very little temperature variation. What is of concern now is an apparent rapid warming trend that is at least in part caused by human activities. As the data gets better, something these studies contribute to, the ability to quantify the human contribution will improve.
The second key question is: What the hell can we do about it if it's really a threat to life on the planet?
Disregarding the hot-button Kyoto Protocol, which isn't a good answer to your question above, let me dissect your question.
Global warming isn't a threat to "life" on the planet; life in some form will survive. However, global warming will stress a number of systems that are important to the survival of both the human and natural realms. A very notable effect could be a significant reduction in the flow of fresh water derived from mountain glaciers. We need it to drink and irrigate, animals and rivers need it to maintain their natural existence, etc. This is a significant and expected "downstream" change due to global warming, and we shouldn't ignore the fact that the CIA Global 2015 report indicated a high likelihood of wars over water in coming decades.
So global warming, along with other types of climate and environmental change, will significantly alter life on this planet.
How much is too much? I'm particularly worried about the fate of coral reefs, Darwinist or not. I'm also kinda worried about honeybees, though the problem with them is not really climate-caused, but could be affected by climate.
When you ask what can (or should) be done about it, the first thing I say is to get better answers to pertinent questions, such as how much warming is too much for ecosystems to handle. That means more research, and dedicated research, and less nay-saying that the research isn't important because global warming isn't happening. It is.
The next step is to identify free market-based ways to make addressing climate change and GHG emissions something that people recognize they need to do. Coercion won't work, but incentives probably will. The key is identifying what incentives will be effective and implement-able.
True, it's much more difficult. Modelling weather accurately (mesoscale) is one key ingredient in the climate models and they don't do that well at all (something like 100 square mile resolution last I saw).
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