NIPCC report on global warming...

[billvon 3,119]

>How do you know this?

Because it will be a change that affects a large portion of the globe. As with any significant change there are winners and losers.

>Who is we?

Mankind.

>Just double checking here, are you saying Al Gore types are rational?

Most people here are unable to talk rationally about anything that has to do with Al Gore, Obama or Reid, so I will skip this.

>Unbelievably specious analogy.

I think it's quite apt. Enjoy ourselves now, and risk problems in the future? Or quit (even if it's hard work) now and decrease our odds of problems later?

>So, even if all of the USA said "Yes, we must do something now!", what impact
>would that really have on this problem?

Within 50 years we could reduce our emissions by 70%; by 2100 we could be back at a 1900 level of emissions.

>+1, as long as pilots stop getting blinded by the solar farms, and we figure some
>way for the eagles to stop flying into the turbines.

And as long as those "safe" reactors in Fukushima stop leaking radioactive waste into the ocean, yes.

[billvon 3,119]

>You mean one side that has data and observations and another side having hope
>and models and predictions that are being hammered by the observations?

No. One side has data, observations and models and the other side is paid by oil and cigarette companies to promote their products and avoid regulations that would reduce their profits.

>One side being consistently shown to be wrong. But still putting the word out
>there that no, they're right.

Yep. Cigarette smoking is good for you because it relaxes you. Ignore the surgeon general; he's in the pocket of Big Medicine. CO2 is an amazingly effective aerial fertilizer. Ignore the scientists; they are all Al Gore alarmists who want to get rich.

>One side keeps putting out horribly wrong predictions.

==============
ScienceDaily

Odds that global warming is due to natural factors: Slim to none
Date: April 11, 2014

Summary:
An analysis of temperature data since 1500 all but rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is just a natural fluctuation in the earth’s climate, according to a new study.

An analysis of temperature data since 1500 all but rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is just a natural fluctuation in the earth's climate, according to a new study by McGill University physics professor Shaun Lovejoy.

The study, published online April 6 in the journal Climate Dynamics, represents a new approach to the question of whether global warming in the industrial era has been caused largely by man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Rather than using complex computer models to estimate the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, Lovejoy examines historical data to assess the competing hypothesis: that warming over the past century is due to natural long-term variations in temperature.

"This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers," Lovejoy says. "Their two most convincing arguments - that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong - are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it."

Lovejoy's study applies statistical methodology to determine the probability that global warming since 1880 is due to natural variability. His conclusion: the natural-warming hypothesis may be ruled out "with confidence levels great than 99%, and most likely greater than 99.9%."

To assess the natural variability before much human interference, the new study uses "multi-proxy climate reconstructions" developed by scientists in recent years to estimate historical temperatures, as well as fluctuation-analysis techniques from nonlinear geophysics. The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales.
. . .
While his new study makes no use of the huge computer models commonly used by scientists to estimate the magnitude of future climate change, Lovejoy's findings effectively complement those of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he says. His study predicts, with 95% confidence, that a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere would cause the climate to warm by between 2.5 and 4.2 degrees Celsius. That range is more precise than - but in line with -- the IPCC's prediction that temperatures would rise by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius if CO2 concentrations double.

"We've had a fluctuation in average temperature that's just huge since 1880 - on the order of about 0.9 degrees Celsius," Lovejoy says. "This study shows that the odds of that being caused by natural fluctuations are less than one in a hundred and are likely to be less than one in a thousand.
==============

[brenthutch 444]

What kind of denier is James Lovelock?

from a MSNBC article.

" We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said. “The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium."

And

"he said. ‘I made a mistake’ As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.”"

[rushmc 23]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/lovejoys-99-confidence-vs-measurement-uncertainty/

Quote

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

It is time to be angry at the gruesome failure of peer review that allows publication of papers, such as the recent effusion of Professor Lovejoy of McGill University, which, in the gushing, widely-circulated press release that seems to accompany every mephitically ectoplasmic emanation from the Forces of Darkness these days, billed it thus:


“Statistical analysis rules out natural-warming hypothesis with more than 99 percent certainty.”

One thing anyone who studies any kind of physics knows is that claiming results to three standard deviations, or 99% confidence, requires – at minimum – that the data underlying the claim are exceptionally precise and trustworthy and, in particular, that the measurement error is minuscule.

In other words Bill, a simple MSA would have shown his data to be questionable at best
Making the confidence claim he makes is almost laughable if not downright dishonest

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[lawrocket 3]

The Lovejoy article was, I thought, pretty fascinating. It hooked me in when he wrote, "An unfortunate side effect of this reliance on models is that it allows GCM skeptics to bring into question the anthropogenic causation of the warming. If only for these reasons, it is desirable to complement model based approaches with empirically based methodologies."

He actually hit on a crucial divide between the alarmists and the deniers - empirical evidence didn't support the former.

It is an interesting article.

My wife is hotter than your wife.