Is Global Warming Unstoppable?

This is why I think you are an anti-intellectual. You don't read! You think you debunk articles, but when I look back through these pages I see you just paste things that are irrelevant. Like the dendrochronology paper you posted, that was in attempt to disprove the MWP, and the author said "my series is very flattened out due to whatever reason and should not be used to make comparisons to modern times." I mean you don't even *read* the things you post.

If you had actually *read* the article, you would see that he was comparing the forecast from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center to what we observed occurring in the Autumn. The predictions are about a future change in climate. Weather is what is happening now, over a short period of time (for instance, all of the record snowfalls that occurred last week). Climate is how the atmosphere behaves over long periods of time.

Part of the hypothesis of global warming predicts long term changes in climate. The predictions made by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center were made in accordance to how they thought the long term climate would change based on their computer models. They predicted a very warm Autumn, and they were wrong. (Not only were they wrong, but if we let wrong be a spectrum, they were VERY VERY wrong.)

There's no two ways to look at it. Their climate models suck. And yet we are supposed to believe their accuracy to predict changes 100 years in the future? What a lame joke!

Just in case this isn't making sense:

1. NOAA's climate center used their climate model to predict changes in climate three months out.
2. The climate model was horribly wrong.

Anthony is talking about climate - not weather. I think it is you that doesn't know the difference between weather and climate. You continue to (weakly) attack the source, but not the content. Which is interesting because you have consistently been the least reliable source to get any information.

 

Thanks for reiterating the point that is so often overblooked by those stressing the difference between 'weather' and 'climate'. That is - weather is much simpler to predict than climate. The complexities of global climate prediction dwarf simple weather prediction. So, the question posed by the mere retired TV weatherman becomes even more important rather than irrelevant.

I wonder at the lack of comprehension displayed by those who seem unable to grasp this point.

At what point does weather become climate? Some would say the time span of a single month could suffice. I'd be interested to hear from our warmist experts here.

 

Why do you feel this (continual) compelling need to answer questions that are directly asked of someone else?

 

I have never suggested that predicting the weather is easy. In point of fact, I have always asserted that any weather prediction more than ~1 day out is only marginally better than a coin toss.

That said, just because weather is hard to predict (that being a local/day to day series of events) pattern that, when they come together over time, are somewhat different. When weather forecasters say for example, "there is a better than even chance that the Ohio valley will be colder than "normal" from Dec-Mar" that is based on experience, data in the field, especially ocean data, and using modeling techniques, make learned predictions. Are they always right, no. Are they better than flipping a coin? Maybe.

As for the difference between climate and weather. I don't pretend to know what the proper accepted definition is, but clearly weather involves a specific time and place component. For example, it may be raining (or predicted to rain) in Seattle, but only 30 miles away in Everett it may snow. The difference is the "weather". The reasons for it may be climate. For example, Everett is subjected to a convergence zone created by the Olympic Mountains, while Seattle generally isn't, hence a different climate.

Climates effect whether, and climate change will effect weather. Any isolated event (snow/rain/drought/flood/heat wave etc) is only a weather phenomenon. What time frame it takes to be able to suggest that abnormal weather is a result of "climate change" is not one that has a clear answer.

For example, any given event, such as the mentioned "1/2 the US under snow" (sic) is clearly a weather issue. Ten winters of abnormal snow in the US may be a climate change issue, may not be.


PS. You still have given me an example of how you are repeatedly misquoted. (Unless you and NvP have melded into one creature)

 

And yet the climate change predicted by the NOAA was incredibly wrong

 

The other way around. They are completely different type of models done by different experts. Short term modeling of regional weather is ver difficult because of the many unexpected variables.

Long term global modeling deals with predicting forcings and large scale effects like global temperature and sea level.

Different questions, different tools and different experts. Only in the denialist blogosphere is one used to make arguments about the other.

Here is an actual scientist's opinion on the issue.

Science and politics of global climate change: Climate models vs weather models

"Predicting the weather is hard because you have to get the exact details of a weather system right. If your prediction of a storm track is 100 km off, then a giant snowstorm predicted to bury a city might fall harmlessly offshore. If your temperature is 3 deg C off, then what you predicted as rain turns into snow. If your initial conditions are off, then precipitation predicted to fall during rush hour falls at midnight. All of these things mean that you've blown the forecast, and people will mumble about how weather forecasters don't know what they're doing.

For the climate, these things generally don't matter. What matters is that, in the long run, one gets the statistics of the weather right. If one storm in a climate model is 100 km too far East, that won't matter if the long-term statistics of the storm track is right. This is quite a different problem than predicting the EXACT evolution of a single atmospheric disturbance. "

The use of a blog post is appropriate because we are not discussing facts but opinion for which there will not be a peer reviewed reference. The best I can do is cite a published climatologists that does this for a living.

 

Here is an actual peer-reviewed article with a hypothesis explaining the climate shift which occurred in the 1970s. It does not explore the impact of CO2, rather four climate oscillations interacting to produce the observed climate shift which brought warmer temperatures.

http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/tsonis-grl_newtheoryforclimateshifts.pdf

The nice thing is that it is in pdf format, and can be downloaded without payment. To me, this makes much more sense than the CO2 hypothesis.

The authors make note of the vast complexity of climate and indeed use climate models to reach their conclusions. They are modest enough to remain scientifically objective and have no political axes to grind or ideologiy to support.

Enjoy.

 

From the very last sentence of the paper "However, comparison of the 2035 event in the 21st century simulation and the 1910s event in the observations with this event, suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely that the climate shifted after the 1970s event to a different state of a warmer climate, which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend".

This effect would exacerbate an "anthropogenic warming trend". If anything this argues that we should be even more cautious with our impacts on the system.

 

(To keep the discussion going we will pretend to ignore the fact you were completely wrong by using the climate vs weather argument on the post that Ufourya and I were talking about.)

Nice change of subject. Let's get back to the question, if CLIMATE models can not predict 3 months remotely accurately how can they be trusted to predict 100 years? If they fail at three months, by the time they have reached 1,200 months they will be just plain ridiculous.

 

Again from here:

Science and politics of global climate change: Climate models vs weather models

"Climate models vs weather models

You can find a lot of discussion on the net with arguments like:

If we cannot predict the weather next week, how can we predict the climate over the next century?

While this sounds like a reasonable argument, there are in fact good reasons to accept 100-year climate forecasts even though we cannot predict the weather more than a few days out.

"Predicting the weather is hard because you have to get the exact details of a weather system right. If your prediction of a storm track is 100 km off, then a giant snowstorm predicted to bury a city might fall harmlessly offshore. If your temperature is 3 deg C off, then what you predicted as rain turns into snow. If your initial conditions are off, then precipitation predicted to fall during rush hour falls at midnight. All of these things mean that you've blown the forecast, and people will mumble about how weather forecasters don't know what they're doing.

For the climate, these things generally don't matter. What matters is that, in the long run, one gets the statistics of the weather right. If one storm in a climate model is 100 km too far East, that won't matter if the long-term statistics of the storm track is right. This is quite a different problem than predicting the EXACT evolution of a single atmospheric disturbance. "

 

I assume you are replying to me. The quote you copy and pasted does not address the question at all. In fact it makes it more likely that 100 year predictions by climate models are wrong. Garbage in, garbage out.

(And OMG it's just a stupid blog!)

 

Just to note again, your article discussed two things: 1. the failure to predict the weather means that we should not discount climate models, and 2. that the failure of climate models to predict climate does not mean that we should discount climate models.

Let's go through them in order.

1. Unrelated. None of us said that the failure of weather prediction means that we should discount climate models. The article discussed by Ufourya and myself noted that the failure of climate models to predict three months of climate change means that we should not trust them to predict 1,200 months ahead. It's not like the NOAA's climate models were just "a little off." They were grossly wrong. They predicted the exact opposite of what happened. They predicted much warmer temperatures, and we had the opposite.

Summary: There is a huge difference between failing to predict snow tomorrow due to weather forecast models, and failing to predict three months of much colder temperatures using climate models.

2.

That is about the lamest and most uncompelling explanation I have ever read. He basically said "Short term climate forecasts are problematic, but despite the fact that long term climate forecasts are built upon all of the short term climate forecasts data, long term climate forecasts are accurate. Trust us!"

Again, from your article:

So, let's look at what he says. He says climate models are way more complex than weather models (which are already so sensitive to the quality of input information), that climate models utilize uncertain future predictions, and he admitted short term climate forecasts are junk. And we are supposed to combine all that together and believe that long term climate model predictions are of high quality? There is no way to know. All we can observe is that the short term predictions of climate models fail miserably.

Yeah right!

 

Before we get to far removed from the last accusation(s)

Let me be clear on what I think and what I think I know.

I am not a "warmist" as someone suggested. In fact I have almost always railed against the "label" global warming. (Yes, I do use it as it seems to be the norm). I much prefer "global climate change". Global warming implies, and imparts the notion that it is going to get warmer everywhere and may reinforce the notion that it will get warmer sort of uniformly, even benignly so. Where as climate change is a much better describer of what is happening and what is going to happen.

That said, this is what I KNOW, beyond any reasonable doubt. It is without reasonable question that CO2 and other gasses contribute to greenhouse effect, the degree to which may be debated. It is also a FACT, beyond any rational argument, that human caused emissions of CO2 ( and other greenhouse gases) has increased thousand(s) fold since ~1800 AD. (I noted the real numbers a few hundred page back so I won't reinvent the wheel).

What I also know, is empirically and anecdotally, things have changed, and continue to change in my life time. I also KNOW that the vast majority of climate scientist believe that humans are causing significant climate changes. I also KNOW that a few (as a percentage!) disagree, as do others.

What I also KNOW, is if we know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and if we know that we are putting out way more than historical (say 10,000 year) averages from all sources, and we THINK that is may have climate consequences, then it is only logical, to reduce the amount we are putting out.

Everything else is whistling past the grave yard. All of you, on both sides can link charts and graphs and stats till the cows come home, and it isn't going to change what I know. It isn't going to change the FACT that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it isn't going to chance the fact that humans put out tons and tons every year. And it isn't going to change the simple logic that if we are concerned, we should reduce our output.

It is really as simple as that. Any other argument is either selfish, illogical or both

 

I'm glad I got to quote this before you could edit it, Al Gore.



(Since I'm sure you won't understand, going from 280 to 330 or whatever is an increase of around 20%, which is very far from increasing thousands-fold.)

 

Just because you may be unable to read a simple declarative sentence, doesn't mean you need to continually insult those of us who can!

What I said was "It is also a FACT, beyond any rational argument, that human caused emissions of CO2 ( and other greenhouse gases) has increased thousand(s) fold since ~1800 AD. (I noted the real numbers a few hundred page back so I won't reinvent the wheel)." I made no mention of the PERCENTAGE OF CO2 at all!!!!. (I believe that a 20% increase in the PERCENTAGE of CO2 in the atmosphere IS significant even if you don't!)

Now having said that, I will reinvent the wheel: Between the year 1800 and the year 2000 grew from almost net/net none in the year 1800 to ~8,000 MILLION tons in the year 2000. It is estimated that CO2 emissions have grown ~3% annually since the year 2000, adding another ~30% to that already astronomical number.Eco-Economy Indicators - Carbon Emissions | EPI

So, once again I say, humans put out many THOUSANDS of times as much CO2 as they did in the year 1800.

Now NvP, do you dispute that FACT?

 

Haha Did you invent the internet after you wrote that sentence?

 

No worries mate!

 

NvP,

Is it possible you can go one post without being insulting? It seems that when one points something out to you that you can't refute with your charts and graphs culled from blogs you have to revert to insult. Typical!

Now, what sentence were you referring to? Oh, once again,I forget you don't understand metaphor. In the previous post, (many pages ago!) I used the same data I just re-posted so you didn't have to do any real work to understand it!

 

When have you ever posted something that is the subject of controversy that can't be refuted?

 

If one superimposes a thousand pound weight on a pound of feathers, does that 'exacerbate' the volume of the feathers?