Spectator N0 2682 - Exchanges By Doc
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Trumpageddon Is Comming......
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Let's save all the climate data! PMSL! do we really share the planet with these people?
Let's save all the climate data! PMSL! do we really share the planet with these people?
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Just one more try then I’m definitely out!
“Because the 96% was already there. “
But it wasn’t always (and isn’t always) constant in absolute quantity. It varies enormously – far more enormously (in absolute terms) than the 4% ever will.
“Because there also exist carbon sinks in nature, that manage to counterbalance a lot of the natural carbon output.”
So the sinks can counterbalance the natural carbon (which varies enormously in absolute terms) but they cannot counter the man-made variety (which varies comparatively little in absolute terms). Is the man-made stuff labelled and rejected by the sinks?
“And because small changes in an otherwise unstable system are potentially huge when accumulated over a long- or even medium-term period.
The small changes attributable to man are but nothing compared to the large changes attributable to nature. But, once again, the large changes can be accommodated (because they’ve always been there) but the small changes cannot (because they haven’t).
Time to put the dinner on !!!
“Because the 96% was already there. “
But it wasn’t always (and isn’t always) constant in absolute quantity. It varies enormously – far more enormously (in absolute terms) than the 4% ever will.
“Because there also exist carbon sinks in nature, that manage to counterbalance a lot of the natural carbon output.”
So the sinks can counterbalance the natural carbon (which varies enormously in absolute terms) but they cannot counter the man-made variety (which varies comparatively little in absolute terms). Is the man-made stuff labelled and rejected by the sinks?
“And because small changes in an otherwise unstable system are potentially huge when accumulated over a long- or even medium-term period.
The small changes attributable to man are but nothing compared to the large changes attributable to nature. But, once again, the large changes can be accommodated (because they’ve always been there) but the small changes cannot (because they haven’t).
Time to put the dinner on !!!
Another thing about this "4%" figure that is getting thrown about as "tiny". Again, it's just bizarre to bring up, as it doesn't take much at all to see that 4% changes can make a big difference. All you need to do is to discard the obsession with effects as being somehow linear, for example. The difference between 100 and 96 is, obviously, 4 units, and maybe you can make an argument that it doesn't really register (although actually percentile effects tend to matter, so it's still a little bogus). But if it's an exponential effect, or even just a basic quadratic one, then the difference between 96 and 100 starts to matter loads: 96^2 = 9216, 100^2 = 10000, the linear increase of 4 units turning into a quadratic one of almost 800 units (or, if you like, a 4% increase in the input turned into an 8% increase in the output, and clearly that's even more significant).
Granted, the above is only numerology without any specific model in mind, but the point is that it seriously shouldn't be a difficult stretch to realise that the impact of human activities, no matter how small they may appear initially, can matter a lot more than this due to non-linear effects.
As a final point, one I've made before, the other thing you have to bear in mind is that the difference between, say, (96-98) and (100-98) is only four units, but in one case you lose stuff over time and in the other case you gain stuff over time, and the qualitative difference between these two cases is huge. Look at the fine margins in elections as another example. Clinton needed something like 100,000 voters to swing her way, out of a total of 130 million total votes or so. That's a 0.1%-level effect, and it was the difference between who won and who lost.
Don't go about deluding yourself that 4% can't be important. You should know better.
Granted, the above is only numerology without any specific model in mind, but the point is that it seriously shouldn't be a difficult stretch to realise that the impact of human activities, no matter how small they may appear initially, can matter a lot more than this due to non-linear effects.
As a final point, one I've made before, the other thing you have to bear in mind is that the difference between, say, (96-98) and (100-98) is only four units, but in one case you lose stuff over time and in the other case you gain stuff over time, and the qualitative difference between these two cases is huge. Look at the fine margins in elections as another example. Clinton needed something like 100,000 voters to swing her way, out of a total of 130 million total votes or so. That's a 0.1%-level effect, and it was the difference between who won and who lost.
Don't go about deluding yourself that 4% can't be important. You should know better.
NJ, to answer your points:
the 96% is in fact an average, as nature's output varies each year (depending, for instance, on volcanic activity that is not constant), but in general if it swings one way one year then it may reduce the next. As a result the large changes in natural emissions smooth out over time, leaving a background that can be regarded as roughly constant. By contrast, C02 output due to human activity is increasing year on year, and certainly hasn't stabilised to fluctuate around some background average.
To the second point, that's just a straw man and you know it. Of course the sinks don't care where the carbon came from per se, but if they are obliged to suck C02 out at an essentially constant rate, then there's no adjustment possible for the excess. Certainly it's not an intelligent feedback machine: plants take the C02 they need to live, not the C02 they think would be most helpful to stabilise excess levels. Again, see the 96-98 v 100-98 thing in the post above.
Ditto your final point: large(-ish) changes in natural levels tend to smooth out over short scales, therefore they don't contribute in any meaningful sense. Small(-ish) changes in human activity do matter, because they have been simply cumulative for the last 100-odd years.
Recommended reading for all of you: Brownian motion, stochastic differential equations, signal-background analysis, and actual science sites for a change, rather than unsourced claims about Polar Bear populations without bothering to read into the context.
the 96% is in fact an average, as nature's output varies each year (depending, for instance, on volcanic activity that is not constant), but in general if it swings one way one year then it may reduce the next. As a result the large changes in natural emissions smooth out over time, leaving a background that can be regarded as roughly constant. By contrast, C02 output due to human activity is increasing year on year, and certainly hasn't stabilised to fluctuate around some background average.
To the second point, that's just a straw man and you know it. Of course the sinks don't care where the carbon came from per se, but if they are obliged to suck C02 out at an essentially constant rate, then there's no adjustment possible for the excess. Certainly it's not an intelligent feedback machine: plants take the C02 they need to live, not the C02 they think would be most helpful to stabilise excess levels. Again, see the 96-98 v 100-98 thing in the post above.
Ditto your final point: large(-ish) changes in natural levels tend to smooth out over short scales, therefore they don't contribute in any meaningful sense. Small(-ish) changes in human activity do matter, because they have been simply cumulative for the last 100-odd years.
Recommended reading for all of you: Brownian motion, stochastic differential equations, signal-background analysis, and actual science sites for a change, rather than unsourced claims about Polar Bear populations without bothering to read into the context.
Thanks for the insight, jim.
Of course the long term average (i.e. that over many thousands of years or longer) is unknown. We only know with any confidence what has happened over the past couple of hundred years. There have probably been wide variations away from the long term average in that short time (rather like it would not be surprising to toss a coin 100 times and get 60:40 results, but toss it a million times and you will probably come very close to 50:50). So to say that man-made CO2 is rapidly dragging the levels away from the long-term average is a little unsound.
Anyway, I think we’ve done this many times in the past. My take on this is quite straightforward – nobody knows with any degree of certainty what, if any, effect man made emissions are having upon the global atmosphere and climate because it is impossible to separate the effects created by man from the natural variations. One thing that is certain is that the climate has varied in the past far more, and possibly just as quickly as it is alleged to be doing now. Reactions to the recent changes are, in my view, hysterical but more importantly the “measures” being taken to combat those changes are futile and humans (and the polar bears!) will have to learn to cope with them.
Now I really am out!
Of course the long term average (i.e. that over many thousands of years or longer) is unknown. We only know with any confidence what has happened over the past couple of hundred years. There have probably been wide variations away from the long term average in that short time (rather like it would not be surprising to toss a coin 100 times and get 60:40 results, but toss it a million times and you will probably come very close to 50:50). So to say that man-made CO2 is rapidly dragging the levels away from the long-term average is a little unsound.
Anyway, I think we’ve done this many times in the past. My take on this is quite straightforward – nobody knows with any degree of certainty what, if any, effect man made emissions are having upon the global atmosphere and climate because it is impossible to separate the effects created by man from the natural variations. One thing that is certain is that the climate has varied in the past far more, and possibly just as quickly as it is alleged to be doing now. Reactions to the recent changes are, in my view, hysterical but more importantly the “measures” being taken to combat those changes are futile and humans (and the polar bears!) will have to learn to cope with them.
Now I really am out!
I have no idea what you are even trying to say, TTT.
What *I* am saying is that non-linear effects allow "4" to have a much more significant effect than you are giving it credit for, and it doesn't take any effort at all to construct situations in which this may arise -- because, really, you are meant to compare 96 to (96+4). Oh, and you have to allow for the subtraction due to carbon sinks.
Simple truth is that you need to do far more research and stop relying on "logic" when you don't understand how to parse the information you're given. Go and do some research, instead of blithely and arrogantly dismissing the subject.
* * * *
I actually came back to this thread to discuss another misconception, however. Namely, this idea that we only have any confidence for the last two hundred years of data. Perhaps this one is more in dispute, because it depends somewhat on your definition of "confidence", but in the most general scientific sense (that would be universally accepted in any other field), we actually have a pretty good idea of the general temperature trends for most of the last 20,000 years or so. See, for example, Marcott et al, 2013 ( 10.1126/science.1228026 ), which provides a temperature reconstruction for about 11,300 years, and a few other papers around the same time almost double that range.
There are caveats to these reconstructions, but as I said they are generally accepted as reliable by usual scientific standards, so the question you should first ask yourself is something like: "how can I reject this sort of research out of hand if I have no problem with the same techniques applied elsewhere, eg in particle physics?"
Perhaps a more pertinent criticism would be that the data is, inevitably, smoothed out over approximately 100-year scales. Nevertheless, there are several (essentially independent) different records of temperature data collection based on, eg, Antarctic ice core analysis, and they are all broadly consistent with each other even over different sampling rates, so the statistical results are to my eyes fairly robust. The basic point, anyway, is that the overall temperature change in the period is, at its greatest, about 1 degree Celsius in 500 years or so, and even that was at the end of the last great Ice Age so it's hardly surprising.
By comparison, the global average temperature change in the last 100 years is also about 1 degree Celsius, ie about five times faster than any natural warming rate we've seen in the last 20,000 years.
The evidence is there. You're just ignoring it for the sake of convenience.
What *I* am saying is that non-linear effects allow "4" to have a much more significant effect than you are giving it credit for, and it doesn't take any effort at all to construct situations in which this may arise -- because, really, you are meant to compare 96 to (96+4). Oh, and you have to allow for the subtraction due to carbon sinks.
Simple truth is that you need to do far more research and stop relying on "logic" when you don't understand how to parse the information you're given. Go and do some research, instead of blithely and arrogantly dismissing the subject.
* * * *
I actually came back to this thread to discuss another misconception, however. Namely, this idea that we only have any confidence for the last two hundred years of data. Perhaps this one is more in dispute, because it depends somewhat on your definition of "confidence", but in the most general scientific sense (that would be universally accepted in any other field), we actually have a pretty good idea of the general temperature trends for most of the last 20,000 years or so. See, for example, Marcott et al, 2013 ( 10.1126/science.1228026 ), which provides a temperature reconstruction for about 11,300 years, and a few other papers around the same time almost double that range.
There are caveats to these reconstructions, but as I said they are generally accepted as reliable by usual scientific standards, so the question you should first ask yourself is something like: "how can I reject this sort of research out of hand if I have no problem with the same techniques applied elsewhere, eg in particle physics?"
Perhaps a more pertinent criticism would be that the data is, inevitably, smoothed out over approximately 100-year scales. Nevertheless, there are several (essentially independent) different records of temperature data collection based on, eg, Antarctic ice core analysis, and they are all broadly consistent with each other even over different sampling rates, so the statistical results are to my eyes fairly robust. The basic point, anyway, is that the overall temperature change in the period is, at its greatest, about 1 degree Celsius in 500 years or so, and even that was at the end of the last great Ice Age so it's hardly surprising.
By comparison, the global average temperature change in the last 100 years is also about 1 degree Celsius, ie about five times faster than any natural warming rate we've seen in the last 20,000 years.
The evidence is there. You're just ignoring it for the sake of convenience.
Oh, and most of *that* one degree increase is from the last 50 years, or even less. Again, the simple fact is that the current rate of global temperature change is unprecedented in recent history.
Beyond the last 20,000 years, we're a bit stuck, but it would I think be a safe conclusion that the general trends survive throughout most of Earth history (after, say, the first billion years or so when it was still forming), with the exception of particularly catastrophic events such as the KT-extinction, when the temperature may have changed several degrees in a few decades or less. But then that's a warning rather than an aspiration.
I don't particularly want to get into what the future holds -- models vary and can often disagree quite sharply, and the science of prediction is notoriously tricky anyway -- but continuing to deny human activity has any part to play in how the world has changed in recent years, and will continue to do so, is dangerous and irresponsible.
Beyond the last 20,000 years, we're a bit stuck, but it would I think be a safe conclusion that the general trends survive throughout most of Earth history (after, say, the first billion years or so when it was still forming), with the exception of particularly catastrophic events such as the KT-extinction, when the temperature may have changed several degrees in a few decades or less. But then that's a warning rather than an aspiration.
I don't particularly want to get into what the future holds -- models vary and can often disagree quite sharply, and the science of prediction is notoriously tricky anyway -- but continuing to deny human activity has any part to play in how the world has changed in recent years, and will continue to do so, is dangerous and irresponsible.
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