Science depends on good data. When the CRU files were leaked I went through one of the scientists log files who was responsible for compiling one of the climate datasets, and the comments were disturbing.
OH %$^ THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'mhitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found.
I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can't get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections - to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more.
Now, this is a clear indication that the standard deviation limits are not being applied. Which is extremely bad news. So I had a drains-up on anomauto.for.. and.. yup, my awfulprogramming strikes again. Because I copied the anomdtb.f90 process, I failed to notice an extra section where the limit was applied to the whole station - I was only applying it to the normals period (1961-90)!
Probably the worst story is temperature, particularly for MCDW. Over 1000 new stations! Highly unlikely. I am tempted to blame the different lat/lon scale, but for now it will have to rest.
If I fix that, I get:...14 stations LESS than the previous exercise. That'll do, surely? It's not going to be easy to find 14 missing stations, is it? Since the anomalies aren't exactly the same. Should I be worried about 14 lost series? Less than 2%. Actually, I noticed something interesting.. look at the anomalies. The anomdtb ones aren't *rounded* to 1dp, they're *truncated*! So, er - wrong!
The problem is that the synthetics are incorporated at 2.5-degrees, NO IDEA why, so saying they affect particular 0.5-degree cells is harder than it should be. So we'll just gloss over that entirely;0)
So, under/cru/cruts/version_3_0/fixing_tmp_and_pre/custom_anom_comparisons, we have a 'manual' directory and an 'automatic' directory, each with twelve 1990 anomaly files. And how do they compare? NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!!
This shows me the quality of data climate science works with can be poor. There needs to be rigorous peer reviewed climate data collection standards (which won't improve the historical data.. like for example, which stations had concrete jungles grow around them, how were they calibrated (including traceability) etc) The raw data must be publically released (then it can't be fiddled with later)
"I am no where near schooled or well-enough read to profess any kind of substanitive opinion on the reality (or not) of global warming."
This is precisely the problem with most of the posters here. And can we keep the bible quotes and the "beliefs" out of the discussion? There is no room for arguments about simple experiments that can "prove" or disprove climate change.
The overwhelming scientific evidence shows that the earth's mean temperature is increasing in lockstep with the increase in atmospheric CO2, and has done so historically for many hundreds of thousands of years.
Saying the earth has been hotter in the past is a canard; at one time it was so hot thatliquid water could not collect on its surface. Does that sound comfortable to you?
Saying that nature is so vast that man can't possibly have an effect on it is also ludicrous. Modern technology allows one person in an industrialized nation to conume more energy in one day (largely by burning non-renewable fossil fuels) than many humans consumed in a year during most of human history (mostly by burning renewable wood). And the population, historically rarely over 100 million or so before the industrial revolution is now over 7 billion and growing. And they all want iPads and washing machines and clothes driers and dishwashers and hot water heaters and cars. Admittedly, all 7 billion + don't have those things yet, and are unlikely to, but numbers of people having these things are big enough to drive massive environmental changes.
Yes, it will be expensive to convert to renewable energy, but the rest of the world is doing it, and we can either do the engineering that will make it possible (energy efficiency, solar, wind, tidal, wave, ocean thermal, etc.) or some engineers in India or China or Africa will do it and they'll be the next billionaires while we in the West will sit in the mud and curse the darkness.
It is easy to pull up ice cores and paint all kinds of hypotheses to support a particular position. It is another thing to say with any degree of certainty what caused the particular evidence being evaluated. Unfortunately this is as much their religion as it is science. They are driven by beliefs that are just as deeply engrained as any religious beliefs.
On another note, I feel that it is ironic that the very people that believe the earth to be billions of years old also believe that suddenly in the span of several decades that something as insignificant as mankind can completely upset the balance of something that is supposed to have existed for so long in a relatively steady state. Do you not believe that there are massive balancing forces in nature that counteract the relatively minute changes that are perpetrated on the earth by man?
I believe the forces of nature are much larger than man. As an example, the emerald ash borer is a very tiny harmless looking bug that is in the process of turning literally Billions (yes billions with a B) of ash trees in the midwest into rotting piles of what used to be living carbon repositories. There is currently not much hope that we are going to be able to stop the little critters from sending ash trees into extinction. Are we going to blame man for that? What will the effect of billions of tons of rotting (or burning) ash trees have on the environment? Are we going to call that man made?
I believe that if there is any anomaly in the current climate, the earth will respond in a way that corrects it without the intervention of man.
tekochip wrote, "The CO2 cycle requires life to move the CO2 around and humans are contributing much more CO2 than the rest of life on Earth can consume." My question is based on what evidence that humans are contributing more CO2 than the rest of life can cosume? Atmospheric CO2 is only 0.039445% of the total composition. So, how much is too much? The so-called models DO NOT accurately predicate anything. A lot of misinformation has and is being presented as fact.
I bought my son a weather book that shows the earth's temperature over geological time scales and it paints a very interesting picture. There are periods in the past where the earth was much warmer than it is now, and there was no technology, no humans, and definitely no man made carbon emissions. And of course there were times when the earth was much colder.
What are the long cycles of this planet? We just do not know. Sputnik went up just 55 years ago. We do not have enough data over a long enough period of time to determine if the few thousands of a percent of CO2 that man is contributing to the atmosphere is really having an effect.
1000s of scientists today, with advanced degrees in atmospheric science, claim the global warming alarmists are wrong. See the list of 31,000+ scientists with advanced degrees who said basically the same thing (over 3000 with degrees in atmospheric science and over 5000 in Physics and Aerospace science, and 9000 with PhDs). Unfortunately, some of the scientists on this list have been verbally attacked so much that many of them would like to have not signed the petition. This list has also been attacked by claiming these were mostly made up names and titles. But even Wikipedia claims they are real scientists due to the test that was done:
"Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases ..."
The enemies of this petition have even gone through the trouble to send physical letters in the mail as if they were real scientists, so they could get a few names on the list that were not real scientists (so they can discredit all the real signatures). See http://www.petitionproject.org/ or http://www.oism.org/pproject/
What does the evidence say? Even those who are Christians (Bible Christians, not denominational Christians) know what the Bible says in 1 Thess 5:21. It says, "Test all things, hold fast what is good."A Christian must follow the evidence because they have committed themselves to a love of (sacrifice for) the truth (see www.MiraculousBible.org or www.WhyBaptism.org). Right now the evidence for concern over Global Warming is primarily based on assumptions that have been disproved by other scientific facts (ice core data conflicts with erosion rates, etc.).
Yes, water is opaque to IR, but Earth's water cycle is capable of moving water in and out of the atmosphere. The CO2 cycle requires life to move the CO2 around and humans are contributing much more CO2 than the rest of life on Earth can consume.
Good information, Etmax. Too often the argument regarding climate change has to do with emotion rather than science. Unfortunately, many believe science is just another point of view rather than something that can be proved and repeated.
The problem with your 'experiment' is that a bottle is not an accurate model of the earth's atmosphere. You are comparing apples and oranges. It is not as simple as you are making it out to be. The bottle with gas heats because there is more room for the gas molecules to move around, which they do. The heating is caused by the excitation of the gas. Water is a very unique entity and there reallly is not much room for the molecules to move around. You also have to look at the thermal retention properties of gaseous CO2 versus liquid water (again apples and oranges).
And presenting a single case in which higher atmospheric CO2 caused certain plants to have issues, does not make a cause in the general sense. Remove all CO2 from the atmosphere and see the effects is has on plant life.
In order for a theory to be proven, it MUST be able to pass the "scientific method" which has been used for centuries. It MUST because the scientific method does not allow biased opinion (either scientific or political). Global warming cannot be proven because there is no way to "pass" step 4: Repeatability in a controlled way that can be measured accurately and PROVEN. This is why true scientists do not accept the politically charged debate. Pretty much the same as the debate about Darwinism. Where is the proof of step #4? Where is the "missing link"? Even Darwin doubted his own theory after it was published.
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