> > > Clouds, especially high clouds have some effect. They reflect visible > bands back to space and they also absorb and reemit IR. Low clouds tend to > increase heat load because they reflect in the day, but they insulate day > and night. It's not magic, it's just calculation. >
Of course, I am not suggesting it's anything else. My question is about complex interactions between these several phenomena. Does a change in the composition of the atmosphere affect cloud formation? In what ways? Does temperature? > > > And the vegetation? Don't these things have a role in infraread > blocking and sun light refraction/absorption? > > > Vegetation may be less reflective than say snow or bare ground. > So, the same as above. I think my question is legitimate given that current models appear to have made incorrect predictions for the last decade. > > > And many other things we might not be thinking about... My point is: > who's to say that there isn't some negative feedback loop that keeps the > temperature stable? > > > Sure there is. As the Earth gets hotter it's energy loss rate goes up as > T^4, so that's what establishes a new equilibrium. The Earth's temperature > won't run away like Venus's did. > > It's not such a silly hypothesis if you think in terms of > self-sampling. The Earth must be stable enough to maintain the conditions > for uninterrupted biological evolution for almost 4 billion years. > > > It's gone through hotter periods with higher CO2 levels - but not while > homo sapiens roamed the Earth. And the rapidity of the rise is faster than > anything that can be resolved the paleoclimate record. > Fair enough. > > It's not that the long term temperature rise is so hard to predict, at > least within a certain range. What's hard to predict is the effects. > There's a lot of focus on sea level rise because that's relatively easy. > But there will also be big changes in weather patterns and where which > crops will grow. And changes that might be dealt with fairly easily by a > rational world government will, in the real world, result in migration, > famine, and war. > Possibly, but the same is probably true of lowering the energy budget. I understand that fossil fuel production is subsidised, and I think this should stop immediately. Then, alternative energy sources have to be be economically viable, because "economically viable" just means that they lead to a sustainable allocation of resources. > > > > > > >> >> >> >> >> >>> >>> >>>> But if you'd like to actually formulate the alternative hypothesis I >>>> might do the analysis. >>>> >>> >>> Ok. My alternative hypothesis is that there is no trend of global >>> temperature increase in the period from 1998 to 2010 (as per Liz's chart's >>> timeframe), when compared to temperature fluctuations in the 20th century >>> (as defined by the metric in the chart). >>> >>> >>> OK. Here's one way to do it. The ten warmest years in the century from >>> 1910 to 2010 all occurred in the interval 1998 to 2010, the last 13yrs of >>> the century. Under the null hypothesis, where the hottest year falls is >>> uniform random, so the hottest year had probability 13/100 of falling in >>> that interval. The next hottest year then had probability 12/99 of falling >>> in the remaining 12yr of that interval, given the hottest had already >>> fallen it. The third hottest year had probability 11/98 of falling in that >>> interval, given the first two had fallen in it, and so on. So the >>> probability of the 10 hottest years falling in that 13yr period is >>> >>> P = (13*12*...5*4)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 1.65e-11 >>> >>> To this we must add the probability of the more extreme events, e.g. the >>> probability that the ten hottest years were in the last 12 >>> >>> P = (12*11*...*5*4*3)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 3.81e-12 >>> >>> and that they were in the last 11 >>> >>> P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 6.35e-13 >>> >>> and that they were in the last 10 >>> >>> P = (11*10*...*5*4*3*2)/(100*99*...*92*91) = 5.77e-14 >>> >>> Summing we get P = 2.10e-11 >>> >>> A p-value good enough for CERN. But this isn't a very good analysis for >>> two reasons. First, it's not directly measuring trend, it's the same >>> probability you'd get for any 10 of the observed temperatures falling on >>> any defined 13 years. So you have infer that it means a trend from the >>> fact that these are the hottest years and they occur in the 13 at the end. >>> Second, it implicitly assumes that yearly temperatures are independent, >>> which they aren't. If temperatures always occurred in blocks of ten for >>> example the observed p-value would be more like 0.1. But this shows why >>> you need to consider well defined, realistic alternatives. Your >>> alternative was "no trend", but no trend can mean a lot of things, >>> including random independent yearly temperatures. >>> >>> A better analysis is to select two different years at random and count >>> how many instances there are in which the later year is hotter. Under the >>> null hypothesis only half should count. This directly counts trends. And >>> this is independent of whether successive years are correlated. There are >>> 10000 possible pairs in a century which is large enough we can just sample >>> it. I got the NOAA data from 1880 thru 2013, so I used a little more than a >>> century. >>> >>> For example taking a sample of 100 pairs gives 86 in which the later >>> year was warmer (I counted ties as 0.5). The null hypothesis says this is >>> like getting 86 heads in 100 tosses, which obeys a binomial distribution. >>> The probability of getting 86 or more heads in a 100 tosses is 4.14e-14. >>> >> >> Brent, I tip my hat to you. >> I was preparing to write some objections after reading your first >> analysis, but your pair sampling analysis already addresses them. You >> convinced me that there is, in fact, a global temperature increase trend in >> the last century. >> >> >> So are you also convinced that increased CO2 is causing it? >> > > I am still worried about the reliability of the temperature values > themselves. I would be less worried if the raw data was made public. > > > It is public. But what good does that do. > Well it does good, at least for people like me. So people who claim that they are kept secret are lying? I am honestly asking. Is there some place where I can download that data? > You notice a discontinous drop at a handfull of weather stations in > Paraguay. There's no official record but you're told that they planted > grass under the monitoring stations (which was supposed to be there before > but wasn't). Nobody worried about it at the time because they weren't > trying to see 0.1 degC changes. What are you going to do? > > > Normally I trust scientists. In this case, the thing got so mixed up > with politics that it makes me uneasy. > > > It got mixed up in politics the same way smoking and lung cancer got mixed > up in politics. The business interests who saw that they might be > regulated because of CO2 emission hired lawyers and PR firms > I have no doubt this is happening, as I told you before. > (the *same* firms hired by the tobacco industry) to spread obfuscation and > doubt - that you repeat. > I ask questions. You replied to some of them quite convincingly. Repeating propaganda talking points from all sorts of interest groups is almost unavoidable at this point. The world is awash in self-serving bullshit, and most of what comes out in mainstream media is there to serve someone, somehow. All I can do is ask questions. The reaction against tobacco has gone too far, by the way. It is good to warn people against smoking, but forcing the producers of a legal product to display gruesome images on their packages is just insane (and not backed by any scientific studies). In fact, the very likely nocebo effect is being ignored, while recent convincing evidence that certain psychedelics like ibogaine and ayahuasca might be more effective than traditional strategies to treat tobacco and other addictions is ignored and remains illegal. There are plenty of reasons not to trust regulators. > And of course they contribute to the campaigns of politicians who then > invite their "experts" like McKintyre to testify before Congress and give > them an excuse not to act "because the science isn't in yet". > > Mainly because I observe politicians to be caught lying too often about > very big things. > > > Forget the politicians; read the peer reviewed science. > I have participated in peer reviewed science in a modest capacity, both as an author and as a reviewer. I think it is the best process we have to approximate truth, but it can fail miserably in the short term, and is vastly overrated by those who have never been in the kitchen. I believe you know this better than me. Telmo. > > Brent > > I know, you are going to say that this is absurd because the Koch Bros > have much deeper pockets. Maybe so. You are probably right, but if I am > being too paranoid, perhaps you can at least understand why I would think > like that, given recent history. > > Assuming the temperature values are correct, I would say that it seems > very plausible that increased CO2 is causing the warming. > > Telmo. > > >> >> Brent >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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