Well, you could be implying that because I’ve been primed by my environment to believe in AGW, I will therefore believe in AGW? Or is it that because I only see irrational people disbelieving AGW, I think all disbeliefs in AGW are irrational?
I say, you are lucky to be in the environment where the truth is leaving anyway. But that was a pure coincidence and you managed to neutralized any conformation bias from this.
Haven’t you?
No, I don’t buy the AGW story. I don’t find it particularly probable, since we have no temperature rise in recent years, predicted by it. But we have records in CO2 concentration.
And even if it was true, it wouldn’t be a very important matter.
We need to think about what AGW actually “predicts”.
In detail, it depends on how big climate sensitivity is, and also what time period we are looking at.
Remember that if small enough, the AGW impact will clearly be trivial compared to natural climate variations and weather. Also, even if the overall impact is big, the delta impact between two very close dates (AGW impact at 2012 minus AGW impact at 2011) is always going to be trivial compared to natural variations.
Qualitatively, over short enough time periods, the AGW signal will always be masked by the natural climate /weather noise; whereas over longer time periods, the signal will be evident as a statistically significant trend imposed on top of the noise.
Questions:
Do you disagree with this qualitative prediction, or do you really think that AGW predicts that every year should be hotter than the previous one (so each year is a record high)? Do you think it even predicts that every day should be hotter than the previous one (so each day is a record high)? Clearly if your mental model of AGW is “AGW predicts year on year increasing temperatures; we don’t observe that, therefore AGW is falsified” then this is a rational deduction, but from false premises.
Would you like to make a bet on the average global temperature in the decade 2010-2019 versus average global temperature in the decade 2000-2009? If you really believe there is no global warming trend, you should be happy to take an even money bet on this decade being cooler than the last one. Fancy the bet? (Hint, you would have lost a similar bet made in any previous decade since the 70s).
If your answer to question 2 is “Ahh, I think I’d bet on warming after all, but I don’t think it is anthropogenic” then you’re acknowledging that the argument about year to year temperatures (less than decade averages) is basically irrelevant. So why raise it? If this were a political forum, and you were trying to score points in a debate, I’d understand it.… But this is Less Wrong.
If your answer to question 2 is “Climate scientists/meteorologists might end up reporting that each recent decade is hotter than the previous one, but I won’t believe them because I think they’re lying” then again you’re acknowledging that an argument over year to tear temperatures is irrelevant (fictional/made-up evidence is irrelevant to choosing between hypotheses). So again, why raise it except for point-scoring?
Clearly if your mental model of AGW is “AGW predicts year on year increasing temperatures; we don’t observe that, therefore AGW is falsified” then this is a rational deduction, but from false premises.
It could be explained, that every year isn’t hotter than the previous one. But how can you explain that 2011 was not hotter than a year a decade or more ago?
What are those natural factors which shadow a BIG change in the CO2 level over decade or so?
Could you explain the down-vote please? (My apologies if it wasn’t you).
At the risk of another downvote, it seems your mental model of AGW is rather “AGW predicts that for each year y, the temperature T(y) in year y must exceed the temperature T(y-10) in year y-10; since we have observed a counter-example, AGW is falsified”.
Is that correct? If so, could you cite a paper or presentation by climate scientists (or summary by IPCC etc) which makes such a prediction?
Here’s a hypothesis to think about: Suppose the AGW trend (imposed on the climate noise) is +0.02 degrees per year, whereas the year to year fluctuation of temperature from natural causes (solar cycle, La Nina/El Niño, others) has a standard deviation of order 0.5 degrees. Then there will be a large number of individual years y which are cooler than year y-10. Do you agree or disagree?
In response to your own question, each of La Nina and a weak solar cyle would be easily big enough to overshadow a decade of AGW (sensitivity of 3 degrees to CO2 doubling implies about 0.2 degrees warming per decade at present).
Don’t worry for downvotes. I downvote everything I disagree. How else would you know it? I am also frequently downvoted, and I find some pride in that.
But go back to the topic! You say it’s possible that despite of the fact that T(y)CO2(y-20) - the function still grows? Uhm … I am not that certain. It is at least bumpy.
sensitivity of 3 degrees to CO2 doubling
This I find particularly fishy. Half the amount of CO2 10 times! Then it will be less than 1ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. Do you expect 30 degrees cooling?
I doubt it.
But do half it 40 times. Some molecules of CO2 are still with us. Do you expect 120 degrees cooler outside?
But do half it 40 times. Some molecules of CO2 are still with us. Do you expect 120 degrees cooler outside?
Let’s say an object is tethered to a wall by a coil of metal. A displacement of 1 cm gives a 1 N restoring force and a displacement of 2 cm gives a 2 N restoring force. It’s foolish to think the coil would give a 100000 N restoring force at 1 km; it would just break! So we can’t treat the coil as a spring in the small displacement regime?
Suppose someone said that world population is increasing by one billion per decade. And then you said, that’s impossible, because the population would have been negative in 1900… All that “argument” shows is that the trend in question couldn’t be true across all time; it doesn’t refute the contention that that is what’s happening now. In the same way, what you just said only shows that doubling the CO2 can’t lead to 3 degrees increase for all possible concentrations of CO2. It has no bearing on whether this is true for the range of concentrations that matter to us.
Half the amount of CO2 10 times! Then it will be less than 1ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. Do you expect 30 degrees cooling?
But in fact that is the expected result. ”… the planet’s effective temperature … is about −18 °C, about 33°C below the actual surface temperature of about 14 °C. The mechanism that produces this difference between the actual surface temperature and the effective temperature is due to the atmosphere and is known as the greenhouse effect.” CO2 is directly responsible for only about a third of this, water vapor does most of the job, but the water vapor is the dependent variable.
Reality is complicated because water vapor causes cooling (as clouds) as well as warming, and there is room to argue about how these effects vary, but the arguments you present aren’t enough.
I appreciate the difficulty involved in estimating a parameter like the climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide from limited observational (i.e., non-experimental) data.
What I object to is the reductio ad absurdum of taking a model to a regime far from where it is meant to be applied, saying that it does weird things there, and using that as a reason not to trust it in the regime where it is meant to be used.
a model to a regime far from where it is meant to be applied
Where it is meant to be applied? For Venus, where there is 600,000 times more CO2 than here, it is regularly applied by climatologists. This is 19 or so “doublings”.
Why shouldn’t we half it 20 times and expect the same law to be valid?
Or at least—in which interval it is valid and why? Where one can see the hard science behind. Not only quoted that’s so—but actually. Where are the Arrhenius claim’s falsifications? Supporting experiments?
I say, you are lucky to be in the environment where the truth is leaving anyway. But that was a pure coincidence and you managed to neutralized any conformation bias from this.
Irrelevant. AGW is not some niche belief where evidence is hard to come by. It is a subject of massive scientific scrutiny. So I do what we should all do in these cases: accept the scientific consensus, while widening the uncertainties. Confirmation bias may have made this easier for me, but it was the right thing to do. When you can slap me down for being biased, is when I use weak excuses not to go straight to the scientific consensus. I try not to, but I’m sure I’ve got blind spots.
No, I don’t buy the AGW story. I don’t find it particularly probable, since we have no temperature rise in recent years, predicted by it.
Do the terms “hottest decade on record” ring any bells? (See for instance http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/, but feel free to use any large scale temperature record) These scientists have been predicting rises since the 60s, and have essentially been correct.
And even if it was true, it wouldn’t be a very important matter.
By the scale of the existential risks I normally deal with, I agree. On a normal human scale, and in terms of the costs it imposes, somewhat important.
Do the terms “hottest decade on record” ring any bells?
For this I should have the data somewhere on the net. With everything relevant presented and open for the public scrutiny, And not “lost”, “copyrighted” and such.
A methodology clearly stated. Since when do we measure here and not there anymore and why and so on.
“The hottest decade on the record” means what? Hotter than 1900-1909 when there were no stations on the South pole yet, before Amundsen? How this is accounted for?
Since the satellites? Which? Isn’t that too short interval?
I think the debates for and against the AGW are so called mind killer.
Unless you are a climate scientist or have strong evidence suggesting that the whole field of climate science is incorrect, the points you make are, to be blunt, nearly completely irrelevant. Equally, the points I can make in return are also irrelevant. I have no idea how climate scientists estimate temperatures in 1900-1909, but I know they’re not idiots: this is precisely the sort of factors they consider.
I think the debates for and against the AGW are so called mind killer.
I agree. Only two arguments are available against AGW: 1) Showing that the large majority of climate scientists do not actually support AGW, in fact, and 2) Showing that the whole field of climatology is incorrect in a strongly visible way that also allows us to see the direction of their biases. Arguing against AGW for any other reasons is irrational (not that I think these arguments are correct; just that they are the only arguments non-specialists can bring to bear on the issue).
I have no idea how climate scientists estimate temperatures in 1900-1909, but I know they’re not idiots: this is precisely the sort of factors they consider.
I had to see their D-statistics or whatever about this. I don’t.
When somebody is claiming, that the decade from 2000 to 2009 is globally hotter than the decade from 1900 to 1909 - I would really love to know, HOW this comparison was made. Which numbers were taken into account and how?
Anybody knows? That “they are no idiots” does not suffice.
“They are not idiots” and “they are experts” does suffice.
I would really love to know, HOW this comparison was made
Well then look up the information for yourself (it’ll probably be an interesting process). But why in particular are you interested in this? Are you for instance, interested in the details as to how the absorption spectrum of CO2 is calculated, the details of the machines and the computer programs used? Why not—errors could creep in from that front just as much as from your example.
You seem to be saying “in this field, of which I know little, this thing seems superficially to be a problem. Instead of learning about it in detail, I will assume that there is an actual problem and that the specialists are either not aware of the problem or are dishonest about it. I will then challenge other non-specialists to bring me all the data I haven’t bothered to look up for myself.” This is precisely why I was talking about motivated skepticism.
This is a good point, and something that should be talked about more. Too many people who think they’re clever find a sort of obvious challenge to a claim they don’t like, and don’t investigate further because of motivated skepticism. Also, then they look stupid if they have to admit their objection was ignorant and lazy later.
Note: Obviously just because an objection is addressed doesn’t mean I think it’s addressed sufficiently well. Religious people always have responses to objections to religion, many of which utterly fail to even properly address the objection. But I still think there’s a huge problem, especially in in-person debates, with people who never investigate their own objections.
No conformation bias here, I am sure.
?Explain?
Is there a conformation bias present?
It is better that you explain it, I guess.
Well, you could be implying that because I’ve been primed by my environment to believe in AGW, I will therefore believe in AGW? Or is it that because I only see irrational people disbelieving AGW, I think all disbeliefs in AGW are irrational?
I say, you are lucky to be in the environment where the truth is leaving anyway. But that was a pure coincidence and you managed to neutralized any conformation bias from this.
Haven’t you?
No, I don’t buy the AGW story. I don’t find it particularly probable, since we have no temperature rise in recent years, predicted by it. But we have records in CO2 concentration.
And even if it was true, it wouldn’t be a very important matter.
We need to think about what AGW actually “predicts”.
In detail, it depends on how big climate sensitivity is, and also what time period we are looking at.
Remember that if small enough, the AGW impact will clearly be trivial compared to natural climate variations and weather. Also, even if the overall impact is big, the delta impact between two very close dates (AGW impact at 2012 minus AGW impact at 2011) is always going to be trivial compared to natural variations.
Qualitatively, over short enough time periods, the AGW signal will always be masked by the natural climate /weather noise; whereas over longer time periods, the signal will be evident as a statistically significant trend imposed on top of the noise.
Questions:
Do you disagree with this qualitative prediction, or do you really think that AGW predicts that every year should be hotter than the previous one (so each year is a record high)? Do you think it even predicts that every day should be hotter than the previous one (so each day is a record high)? Clearly if your mental model of AGW is “AGW predicts year on year increasing temperatures; we don’t observe that, therefore AGW is falsified” then this is a rational deduction, but from false premises.
Would you like to make a bet on the average global temperature in the decade 2010-2019 versus average global temperature in the decade 2000-2009? If you really believe there is no global warming trend, you should be happy to take an even money bet on this decade being cooler than the last one. Fancy the bet? (Hint, you would have lost a similar bet made in any previous decade since the 70s).
If your answer to question 2 is “Ahh, I think I’d bet on warming after all, but I don’t think it is anthropogenic” then you’re acknowledging that the argument about year to year temperatures (less than decade averages) is basically irrelevant. So why raise it? If this were a political forum, and you were trying to score points in a debate, I’d understand it.… But this is Less Wrong.
If your answer to question 2 is “Climate scientists/meteorologists might end up reporting that each recent decade is hotter than the previous one, but I won’t believe them because I think they’re lying” then again you’re acknowledging that an argument over year to tear temperatures is irrelevant (fictional/made-up evidence is irrelevant to choosing between hypotheses). So again, why raise it except for point-scoring?
It could be explained, that every year isn’t hotter than the previous one. But how can you explain that 2011 was not hotter than a year a decade or more ago?
What are those natural factors which shadow a BIG change in the CO2 level over decade or so?
Could you explain the down-vote please? (My apologies if it wasn’t you).
At the risk of another downvote, it seems your mental model of AGW is rather “AGW predicts that for each year y, the temperature T(y) in year y must exceed the temperature T(y-10) in year y-10; since we have observed a counter-example, AGW is falsified”.
Is that correct? If so, could you cite a paper or presentation by climate scientists (or summary by IPCC etc) which makes such a prediction?
Here’s a hypothesis to think about: Suppose the AGW trend (imposed on the climate noise) is +0.02 degrees per year, whereas the year to year fluctuation of temperature from natural causes (solar cycle, La Nina/El Niño, others) has a standard deviation of order 0.5 degrees. Then there will be a large number of individual years y which are cooler than year y-10. Do you agree or disagree?
In response to your own question, each of La Nina and a weak solar cyle would be easily big enough to overshadow a decade of AGW (sensitivity of 3 degrees to CO2 doubling implies about 0.2 degrees warming per decade at present).
[I downvote all those who sustain pointless conversations, irrespective of individual quality of their comments.]
Don’t worry for downvotes. I downvote everything I disagree. How else would you know it? I am also frequently downvoted, and I find some pride in that.
But go back to the topic! You say it’s possible that despite of the fact that T(y)CO2(y-20) - the function still grows? Uhm … I am not that certain. It is at least bumpy.
This I find particularly fishy. Half the amount of CO2 10 times! Then it will be less than 1ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. Do you expect 30 degrees cooling?
I doubt it.
But do half it 40 times. Some molecules of CO2 are still with us. Do you expect 120 degrees cooler outside?
Don’t do that.
Let’s say an object is tethered to a wall by a coil of metal. A displacement of 1 cm gives a 1 N restoring force and a displacement of 2 cm gives a 2 N restoring force. It’s foolish to think the coil would give a 100000 N restoring force at 1 km; it would just break! So we can’t treat the coil as a spring in the small displacement regime?
The elasticity of metals are all well known. You can get the data all over the internet.
Where can I get the same data about this “sensitivity of doubling” for various gasses and atmospheres? Also regarding to planet’s star?
Suppose someone said that world population is increasing by one billion per decade. And then you said, that’s impossible, because the population would have been negative in 1900… All that “argument” shows is that the trend in question couldn’t be true across all time; it doesn’t refute the contention that that is what’s happening now. In the same way, what you just said only shows that doubling the CO2 can’t lead to 3 degrees increase for all possible concentrations of CO2. It has no bearing on whether this is true for the range of concentrations that matter to us.
But in fact that is the expected result. ”… the planet’s effective temperature … is about −18 °C, about 33°C below the actual surface temperature of about 14 °C. The mechanism that produces this difference between the actual surface temperature and the effective temperature is due to the atmosphere and is known as the greenhouse effect.” CO2 is directly responsible for only about a third of this, water vapor does most of the job, but the water vapor is the dependent variable.
Reality is complicated because water vapor causes cooling (as clouds) as well as warming, and there is room to argue about how these effects vary, but the arguments you present aren’t enough.
I appreciate the difficulty involved in estimating a parameter like the climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide from limited observational (i.e., non-experimental) data.
What I object to is the reductio ad absurdum of taking a model to a regime far from where it is meant to be applied, saying that it does weird things there, and using that as a reason not to trust it in the regime where it is meant to be used.
Where it is meant to be applied? For Venus, where there is 600,000 times more CO2 than here, it is regularly applied by climatologists. This is 19 or so “doublings”.
Why shouldn’t we half it 20 times and expect the same law to be valid?
Or at least—in which interval it is valid and why? Where one can see the hard science behind. Not only quoted that’s so—but actually. Where are the Arrhenius claim’s falsifications? Supporting experiments?
Irrelevant. AGW is not some niche belief where evidence is hard to come by. It is a subject of massive scientific scrutiny. So I do what we should all do in these cases: accept the scientific consensus, while widening the uncertainties. Confirmation bias may have made this easier for me, but it was the right thing to do. When you can slap me down for being biased, is when I use weak excuses not to go straight to the scientific consensus. I try not to, but I’m sure I’ve got blind spots.
Do the terms “hottest decade on record” ring any bells? (See for instance http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/, but feel free to use any large scale temperature record) These scientists have been predicting rises since the 60s, and have essentially been correct.
By the scale of the existential risks I normally deal with, I agree. On a normal human scale, and in terms of the costs it imposes, somewhat important.
For this I should have the data somewhere on the net. With everything relevant presented and open for the public scrutiny, And not “lost”, “copyrighted” and such.
A methodology clearly stated. Since when do we measure here and not there anymore and why and so on.
“The hottest decade on the record” means what? Hotter than 1900-1909 when there were no stations on the South pole yet, before Amundsen? How this is accounted for?
Since the satellites? Which? Isn’t that too short interval?
I think the debates for and against the AGW are so called mind killer.
Unless you are a climate scientist or have strong evidence suggesting that the whole field of climate science is incorrect, the points you make are, to be blunt, nearly completely irrelevant. Equally, the points I can make in return are also irrelevant. I have no idea how climate scientists estimate temperatures in 1900-1909, but I know they’re not idiots: this is precisely the sort of factors they consider.
I agree. Only two arguments are available against AGW: 1) Showing that the large majority of climate scientists do not actually support AGW, in fact, and 2) Showing that the whole field of climatology is incorrect in a strongly visible way that also allows us to see the direction of their biases. Arguing against AGW for any other reasons is irrational (not that I think these arguments are correct; just that they are the only arguments non-specialists can bring to bear on the issue).
I had to see their D-statistics or whatever about this. I don’t.
When somebody is claiming, that the decade from 2000 to 2009 is globally hotter than the decade from 1900 to 1909 - I would really love to know, HOW this comparison was made. Which numbers were taken into account and how?
Anybody knows? That “they are no idiots” does not suffice.
“They are not idiots” and “they are experts” does suffice.
Well then look up the information for yourself (it’ll probably be an interesting process). But why in particular are you interested in this? Are you for instance, interested in the details as to how the absorption spectrum of CO2 is calculated, the details of the machines and the computer programs used? Why not—errors could creep in from that front just as much as from your example.
You seem to be saying “in this field, of which I know little, this thing seems superficially to be a problem. Instead of learning about it in detail, I will assume that there is an actual problem and that the specialists are either not aware of the problem or are dishonest about it. I will then challenge other non-specialists to bring me all the data I haven’t bothered to look up for myself.” This is precisely why I was talking about motivated skepticism.
This is a good point, and something that should be talked about more. Too many people who think they’re clever find a sort of obvious challenge to a claim they don’t like, and don’t investigate further because of motivated skepticism. Also, then they look stupid if they have to admit their objection was ignorant and lazy later.
Note: Obviously just because an objection is addressed doesn’t mean I think it’s addressed sufficiently well. Religious people always have responses to objections to religion, many of which utterly fail to even properly address the objection. But I still think there’s a huge problem, especially in in-person debates, with people who never investigate their own objections.
No. I am interested of how and from which numbers they calculate the “average global temperature”.