7 ms·

Oceans warming faster than anticipated, study finds

86 points by blondie9x 8y ago

credit_guy 8y ago
So here's an honest question from an honest climate skeptic: how come every time we update our understanding of climate, invariably it turns out the climate change is worse than we thought before? I understand that science is never perfect, so with each discovery we re-evaluate our estimations about climate change, but it should be roughly 50-50. I understand a bit of bias in reporting, so I would expect to see 60-40 or 70-30, but how come it's close to 99-01? I will not pretend that I don't have my own explanations (such as big conflict of interest of climate scientists, who would see their career advance if their findings confirm the doom and gloom consensus), but would someone care to change my mind? (preferably without ad-hominem attacks).
- munk-a 8y ago
  A lot of recent updates showing more severe consequences for not addressing global warming are due to prior models making optimistic assumptions that we keep needing to strip away, and there is a lot of guess work here... Macro-climate science isn't the sort of thing you can experiment on and the historical data isn't very easy to discern and doesn't include a lot of the modern day factors.
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  Here is one example of what your looking for https://e360.yale.edu/features/air-pollutions-upside-a-brake-on-global-warming https://e360.yale.edu/features/air-pollutions-upside-a-brake...
  - credit_guy 8y ago
    Fair enough. This one I never saw, but I remember seeing one other article saying we now think there are more trees than we estimated before. But for every article like this there are easily 100 saying that whatever new thing we discovered points to a faster pace of global warming. Is my impression wrong?
- DougWebb 8y ago
  I would guess that scientists are conservative in their predictions, so that they don't over-estimate effects. As new information comes in and predictions become more accurate, it's more likely to lean towards worse outcomes because the earlier predictions were already biased the other way.
  - credit_guy 8y ago
    Look, that's a possible explanation. But are you sure you are not rationalizing? They would need to quite a bit conservative so that pretty much any new update would be towards faster warming. Here's the 2007 IPCC estimate: "For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios". [1] Now, it did appear that estimate was slightly conservative. The actual warming for the first decade according to NASA [2] was about 0.27°C. [1]https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm... [2]https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
    - MikeHolman 8y ago
      From what you say, they underestimated by 35%. That seems like quite a conservative underestimate.
      - credit_guy 8y ago
        Well, my first link follows with this quote: "Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections." But guess what. My second link, the NASA one, shows the global increase of temperature between 2001 and 2011 to be 0.03°C. The IPCC estimate was not that conservative, was it? Should I say it was aggressive by a factor of 6? Nope, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying (and what IPCC is saying) is that generally their predictions appear to be in line with the outcome, and not to be very conservative.
- mamcx 8y ago
  > but it should be roughly 50-50 Nope. That is law that don't exist. In fact, do you remember "not bad thing come alone?". Things always can go wrong faster, and when things go wrong, them multiply and accelerate. Think, for example, what happend if you lost your job. Then you get behind old debts. Then you get a lot of stress in family,. Then you think "lets drink a little / smoke pot" then you continue doing that.... When certains things go wrong, them multiply, amplify and create side-effects. Or in other words, is like a computer crash. When the process get corrupted and you continue along without stop and diagnose properly...
- davewasthere 8y ago
  For one thing, take the tabloid headlines with a grain of salt. This article should actually read something like "Interesting new way to measure warming oceans could be even more accurate". But in reality, they still model/interpolate the results between the many thousands of measuring points, which is still just part of the picture. Which hasn't really changed that much, just a gradual refining. Which is sort of how science works. By the way, as a skeptic, you have access to the raw data yourself and can come up with a hypothesis that the oceans aren't warming and prove it yourself. http://www.argodatamgt.org/Access-to-data http://www.argodatamgt.org/Access-to-data I don't think climate change is worse than we thought. It's more that it's becoming acceptable to report it in those terms and gradually that's how the populace as a whole are coming to view it. The key thing appears to be political will. You get the full spectrum of politicians. Some have been pushing for environmental policies since the 60's and 70's when it was very fringe (and scientists were already giving us plenty of warning - with claims of CO2 causing radical climate effects if unchecked... as it mostly has been). Then you've got the muppets who are still in denial and don't appear to give a shit about what sort of planet is left to the next generation(s).
  - credit_guy 8y ago
    Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think it's very likely you are right. Also thanks for the link to the data. I tried in the past to get access to actual raw data so I can play with it, and draw my own conclusions, but all I got was always many levels above the raw data. Your point about politicians in denial is 100% on. And as a skeptical guy it bothers me that people perceive me as being somehow in the same boat as them. It is my perception that those guys are not really trying to find truth, or what's best for humankind, or anything beyond what will get them elected in the next cycle. However, that being said, I'm still skeptical. To give you an example, how many times did you not read in the media that Greenland is melting. Well, here's the real time data about the Greenland ice sheet mass [1]. Have you ever heard that the mass accumulation for the 2017-18 year was way above the 30-year mean? Edit: Also, thanks the Hacker News community. This is the first time I express my views on climate change without using a throwaway account, and I fully expected my karma to take a huge hit. So far it didn't, it stayed about flat. I expected to be destroyed in the comments. Nope, all comments have been respectful. Well done Hacker News. [1] https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/ https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-shee...
- danharaj 8y ago
  > but it should be roughly 50-50. Why do you think that?
- colordrops 8y ago
  I saw an interview with climate scientists and they discussed this issue. They said that the numbers they report to government agencies and other authoritative organizations are typically the more conservative end of margins in their studies due to political pressure.
- empath75 8y ago
  > who would see their career advance if their findings confirm the doom and gloom consensus There's a lot more money to be made by saying there's no global warming.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    How can an unscrupulous scientist sign up? Nobody has offered me any money...
    - empath75 8y ago
      Go work for a think tank funded by the Koch’s
    - awinder 8y ago
      Go into business for yourself with enough vitriol to gain the attention of the bannons, malkins, and coulters of the world? Join a company like shell, which has been doing “the climate science” for decades? Idk, we live in a great time for unscrupulous people, I’m sure you could find the opportunities if you tried.
    - yongjik 8y ago
      First you have to be famous, because any village idiot can say "LOL climate science is bunk". Like C-level executives, it's hard to get into the game. But I guess it's pretty lucrative once you get in.
- stouset 8y ago
  First, in what way are you skeptical? That the planet is warming? That humans have anything to do with it? That it’s a result of greenhouse gas emissions? That its effects will be catastrophic? Others have addressed your direct question in more detail: the predictions keep getting worse because a) the original predictions were conservative (“there’s no way it can get that bad”, “there’s no way we won’t begin to react”, etc.), b) we’re getting more data from recent years as the planet does begin to warm and seeing that it’s happening faster than many models predicted so new models have to incorporate this new worrying information, and c) there’s often biases in reporting on top of these other things.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  Consider the ever-accelerating pace of industrialization in previously third-world countries. China currently has twice the carbon emissions of the US, and very little of that existed when climate change estimations started in the 60s.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  If you want to avoid ad-hominem attacks, maybe you shouldn't present an unsubstantiated speculation about the motivations of climate scientists as your only hypothesis for 'explaining' what turns out to be (as others have pointed out) a faulty intuition? Here's another motivation-based argument to think about: the organized, often irrational and sometimes threatening campaign of denial might have induced a tendency to discuss only the most bulletproof predictions, resulting in lowball estimates that will most likely rise as more evidence is uncovered.
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    > If you want to avoid ad-hominem attacks, maybe you shouldn't present an unsubstantiated speculation about the motivations of climate scientists as your only hypothesis for 'explaining' what turns out to be (as others have pointed out) a faulty intuition? Why would that warrant an ad hominem attack?
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      It doesn't warrant an ad hominem attack, it's pointing out an inconsistency - the claim about climate scientists' motives is as ad-hominem as many examples to be found in dictionaries. To his credit, credit_guy has been willing to consider alternative explanations than the one he started with.
- tasty_freeze 8y ago
  The international climate reports (IPCC) are the result of a lot of scientific work followed by heavy politicking. When early reports from the scientists were alarming, the reports were watered down instead of stating the 50% case. Some of the politics came from the committee being afraid of overstating things, but perhaps a larger amount came from the US contingent basically saying they wouldn't endorse the report unless it got watered down. What is why, as time went on, more data was collected, and the science got more confident, the results get revised upwards. The first google hit after searching on "IPCC political pressure" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/15/ipcc-un-climate-reports-diluted-protect-fossil-fuel-interests https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/m... Though that report is from 2014, it has been going for 20 years.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Could be that climate exhibits a lot of positive-feedback effects, more-so than most of the early models predicted. If you start by modeling climate as a linear relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature and then it turns out that it's that plus human CO2 production is accelerating as the developing world develops plus release of trapped CO2 in the permafrost plus decreased albedo as the glaciers melt plus the albedo effect from increased vegetation plus reduction of the moderating effect of ocean currents as they're disrupted by incoming meltwater, then you're going to continually find that your models were too conservative. I don't buy a lot of the climate hysteria either, but for entirely different (and more depressing) reasons. I think that the reality is significantly worse than the scientists are portraying, but this doesn't matter much because we're still talking 2-4C over a century, and a century is a very long time in human progress. A century ago the world population was less than 2B, barely anyone had cars, North America and Europe were the only developed regions, coal was the predominant energy source, and hot cities like Las Vegas, Houston, and Phoenix were extremely undesirable places to live because of the lack of air conditioning. The media portrays the eventual flooding of NYC due to sea-level rise as an apocalyptic tragedy, but the fact is that several other cities (Galveston TX, New Orleans LA, Sacramento CA) have lost their pre-eminent economic position as a result of floods, and many others (Salem MA, Baltimore MD, Detroit MI and the rest of the rust belt) have from economic changes. Society adapts; people migrate and move from dying cities to new up-and-comers on more solid ground. A century is 3-4 generations, plenty of time for this migration to happen in terms of younger generations picking where they want to put down roots. I think we're far more likely to go out in a blaze of war from the social strain that come from this large-scale migration. Humans don't do well with relative changes in social status or power levels. They tend to want to find somebody else to blame and fight. I'd give better-than-even odds that the climate is actually cooler at the end of this century than now, but only because we've triggered nuclear war and are in the midst of a nuclear winter.
- hsavit1 8y ago
  You've been rejecting climate change evidence for years - your mind is clearly already made up. Nobody on this comment board is going to be able to convince you of how to reasonably react to overwhelming evidence. "Convincing" will happen when you can accept reality for what it is, instead of rejecting it for your own sadistic individualistic pleasure.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Feynman describes a likely reason: “We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher. “Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that....”
anothergoogler 8y ago
The lede is buried at the end of the article: > Much of the data on ocean temperatures currently relies on the Argo array — robotic devices that float at different depths, surfacing roughly every 10 days to transmit readings to satellites. There are about 3,800 such pieces of equipment in waters around the globe that provide the publicly available information... > By comparison, Resplandy and Keeling calculated heat based on the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide rising off the ocean. Filling round glass flasks with air from research stations in the Canadian Arctic, Tasmania and La Jolla, San Diego, researchers analyzed the samples to determine the aggregate temperature of the ocean. On what grounds is three samples of a novel measurement preferable to a few thousand direct temperature measurements? I mean in terms of reliability, not ability to generate clicks.
- nikdaheratik 8y ago
  1. There's more than 3 samples. And they picked the locations for taking these samples very carefully. 2. They're measuring different things, obviously. One is measuring the mixture of gasses, the other is pure temperature. The gas measurement is good for getting a picture of the entire system because it allows us to use basic chemistry, which is well understood, to gain a picture of the overall temperature change by looking at how much gas has escaped the ocean. The ocean temperature data, while very useful, can still be subject to both sampling errors and problems with the analysis as far as how to interpret it in aggregate. Especially since you have to put overall weather patterns, like El Nino / La Nina, etc. into your analysis. There's always going to be uncertainty into how you should do analysis of the data over so many disparate points.
squirrelicus 8y ago
So, okay. We have a problem. Climate change likely with an significant anthropogenic component. I hear a lot about magic solutions like electric cars whose batteries are incredibly polluting to produce, solar farms that are super expensive and require crazy amounts of acres per watt, wind farms that kill birds and have toxic materials inside to operate. The problem, almost certainly, is mostly fossil fuels and to a lesser extent the meat/dairy industry. Let's say, hypothetically, I accept all of this. Let's say the USA and Europe do everything, everything that climate advocates suggest. It won't matter. The vast majority of carbon emissions and almost all of the carbon emission growth over the last 50 years has come from the developing world. Thats right. CO2 emissions haven't grown in the West for 50 years. They've shrunk in fact. [1] Seriously. Are we really talking about crushing the energy production of the poorest, most disadvantaged places in the world? My point isn't that we shouldn't do anything. My point is the problem is way, way, way bigger and more complicated than is commonly phrased. We have to stop the developing world from accelerating out of poverty, and fast--if the climate projections are indeed correct. This, my friends, is what we call a tragedy. The next time I hear something about the West harming the planet disproportionally, I'm going to collapse into a neutron star. The only solution I see with any chance of working is if we start a global project to flood the world with nuclear reactors. Everywhere. Nothing else will deliver the gigawatts in time to stop the developing world from burning the planet alive. Assuming, of course, the climate models are correct. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- flukus 8y ago
  > This, my friends, is what we call a tragedy. The next time I hear something about the West harming the planet disproportionally, I'm going to collapse into a neutron star. The west is harming the planet disproportionately. We've been doing it a lot longer, so most of the existing and baked in future warming was produced by the west. Apart from that we still produce a lot more CO2 per capita. The united states alone produces 15% of emissions today. The rest of the world is just trying to catch up to where we are. The buck doesn't stop there though, a huge chunk of the developing worlds emissions are producing stuff for the west. They aren't responsible for that, we are for buying it. It seems like you expect the poorest developing countries to lead the way. Has the west become so incapable of actually leading?
tx21 8y ago
Without taking a position either way, my understanding of the skepticism is not that warming is not occuring, but rather the degree to which things that humanity can control influence that warming (0% to 100%).
- Retric 8y ago
  It's not just a any single coherent opposition to global warming. You get everything, including I am sure a non trivial group of people think the climate is cooling due to man made effects to people who think man made warming exists, but it's not going to have a meaningful impact. It's not a question of evidence at this point, it's a question of the limitless realms of ignorance.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > my understanding of the skepticism is not that warming is not occuring That's a fairly recent goalpost move as "warming is not occurring" has become an untenable position.
  - jimjimjim 8y ago
    yep. First it was: it's not happening. Then: but how much? Now: but can we affect it? Soon it'll be: are we sure it's a bad thing? Then it'll be: it's bad but it's that other guy's fault.
    - flukus 8y ago
      And then it's back to "it's not happening". Contrarianism is a mouse wheel, not a ladder.
    - kefabean 8y ago
      This is exactly my experience talking to contrarians on the subject. Their viewpoint shifts subtly over time whilst continuing to oppose the consensus.
    - tx21 8y ago
      I don't think that's right, though it may be your view. Temperatures have in general been warming since the Maunder Minimum 400 years ago. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg/800px-Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Ca... Clarification edit: Meaning I think there is a better argument in the polemic (I'm not suggesting the answer)
throwaway010718 8y ago
Somewhat off topic comment, but in 2003, Bill Bryson's book "History of Everything" states that anthropogenic CO2 output is 7billion metric tons per year where natural CO2 output is 200 billion metric tons a year (mostly volcanoes IIRC)[0]. It left me with the impression, that an additional 3% a year is small and we have time before this becomes a crisis. For the record, Scientific American calls Bill Bryson "A Champion of Science". Then when climate change appeared to accelerate, I assumed that it must because we are removing our carbon sinks and that deforestation is likely the more dominant cause than our +3% additional emissions. Earlier this week, I revisited the above figure and according to Scientific American: "the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide." [1] At 3% I can see how a climate change skeptic might feel this issue is alarmist. But if it is 12,000% I don't see how anyone could honestly be skeptical that global warming isn't being caused by humans. It is mind boggling that two authoritative sources could differ by 3000X. Any clarifying comments are appreciated. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=_CWlKRYLbIwC&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=bill+bryson+200+billion+tons&source=bl&ots=3kPeY28foc&sig=EDlYNvIm6eAbvtZKEQxBMhokN4c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjuuNzwmbLeAhVpS98KHbm9D-sQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=bill%20bryson%20200%20billion%20tons&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=_CWlKRYLbIwC&pg=PA268&lpg=... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...
- phs318u 8y ago
  Didn’t read the links but the numbers in your comment differ by 3x (7 billion vs 24 billion). Unless I’m misreading something?
  - verelo 8y ago
    One is million vs billion.
    - 8y ago

86 points by blondie9x 8y ago

So here's an honest question from an honest climate skeptic: how come every time we update our understanding of climate, invariably it turns out the climate change is worse than we thought before? I understand that science is never perfect, so with each discovery we re-evaluate our estimations about climate change, but it should be roughly 50-50. I understand a bit of bias in reporting, so I would expect to see 60-40 or 70-30, but how come it's close to 99-01? I will not pretend that I don't have my own explanations (such as big conflict of interest of climate scientists, who would see their career advance if their findings confirm the doom and gloom consensus), but would someone care to change my mind? (preferably without ad-hominem attacks).

munk-a 8y ago
A lot of recent updates showing more severe consequences for not addressing global warming are due to prior models making optimistic assumptions that we keep needing to strip away, and there is a lot of guess work here... Macro-climate science isn't the sort of thing you can experiment on and the historical data isn't very easy to discern and doesn't include a lot of the modern day factors.
petermcneeley 8y ago
Here is one example of what your looking for https://e360.yale.edu/features/air-pollutions-upside-a-brake-on-global-warming https://e360.yale.edu/features/air-pollutions-upside-a-brake...
- credit_guy 8y ago
  Fair enough. This one I never saw, but I remember seeing one other article saying we now think there are more trees than we estimated before. But for every article like this there are easily 100 saying that whatever new thing we discovered points to a faster pace of global warming. Is my impression wrong?
DougWebb 8y ago
I would guess that scientists are conservative in their predictions, so that they don't over-estimate effects. As new information comes in and predictions become more accurate, it's more likely to lean towards worse outcomes because the earlier predictions were already biased the other way.
- credit_guy 8y ago
  Look, that's a possible explanation. But are you sure you are not rationalizing? They would need to quite a bit conservative so that pretty much any new update would be towards faster warming. Here's the 2007 IPCC estimate: "For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios". [1] Now, it did appear that estimate was slightly conservative. The actual warming for the first decade according to NASA [2] was about 0.27°C. [1]https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm... [2]https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
  - MikeHolman 8y ago
    From what you say, they underestimated by 35%. That seems like quite a conservative underestimate.
    - credit_guy 8y ago
      Well, my first link follows with this quote: "Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections." But guess what. My second link, the NASA one, shows the global increase of temperature between 2001 and 2011 to be 0.03°C. The IPCC estimate was not that conservative, was it? Should I say it was aggressive by a factor of 6? Nope, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying (and what IPCC is saying) is that generally their predictions appear to be in line with the outcome, and not to be very conservative.
mamcx 8y ago
> but it should be roughly 50-50 Nope. That is law that don't exist. In fact, do you remember "not bad thing come alone?". Things always can go wrong faster, and when things go wrong, them multiply and accelerate. Think, for example, what happend if you lost your job. Then you get behind old debts. Then you get a lot of stress in family,. Then you think "lets drink a little / smoke pot" then you continue doing that.... When certains things go wrong, them multiply, amplify and create side-effects. Or in other words, is like a computer crash. When the process get corrupted and you continue along without stop and diagnose properly...
davewasthere 8y ago
For one thing, take the tabloid headlines with a grain of salt. This article should actually read something like "Interesting new way to measure warming oceans could be even more accurate". But in reality, they still model/interpolate the results between the many thousands of measuring points, which is still just part of the picture. Which hasn't really changed that much, just a gradual refining. Which is sort of how science works. By the way, as a skeptic, you have access to the raw data yourself and can come up with a hypothesis that the oceans aren't warming and prove it yourself. http://www.argodatamgt.org/Access-to-data http://www.argodatamgt.org/Access-to-data I don't think climate change is worse than we thought. It's more that it's becoming acceptable to report it in those terms and gradually that's how the populace as a whole are coming to view it. The key thing appears to be political will. You get the full spectrum of politicians. Some have been pushing for environmental policies since the 60's and 70's when it was very fringe (and scientists were already giving us plenty of warning - with claims of CO2 causing radical climate effects if unchecked... as it mostly has been). Then you've got the muppets who are still in denial and don't appear to give a shit about what sort of planet is left to the next generation(s).
- credit_guy 8y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think it's very likely you are right. Also thanks for the link to the data. I tried in the past to get access to actual raw data so I can play with it, and draw my own conclusions, but all I got was always many levels above the raw data. Your point about politicians in denial is 100% on. And as a skeptical guy it bothers me that people perceive me as being somehow in the same boat as them. It is my perception that those guys are not really trying to find truth, or what's best for humankind, or anything beyond what will get them elected in the next cycle. However, that being said, I'm still skeptical. To give you an example, how many times did you not read in the media that Greenland is melting. Well, here's the real time data about the Greenland ice sheet mass [1]. Have you ever heard that the mass accumulation for the 2017-18 year was way above the 30-year mean? Edit: Also, thanks the Hacker News community. This is the first time I express my views on climate change without using a throwaway account, and I fully expected my karma to take a huge hit. So far it didn't, it stayed about flat. I expected to be destroyed in the comments. Nope, all comments have been respectful. Well done Hacker News. [1] https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/ https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-shee...
danharaj 8y ago
> but it should be roughly 50-50. Why do you think that?
colordrops 8y ago
I saw an interview with climate scientists and they discussed this issue. They said that the numbers they report to government agencies and other authoritative organizations are typically the more conservative end of margins in their studies due to political pressure.
empath75 8y ago
> who would see their career advance if their findings confirm the doom and gloom consensus There's a lot more money to be made by saying there's no global warming.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  How can an unscrupulous scientist sign up? Nobody has offered me any money...
  - empath75 8y ago
    Go work for a think tank funded by the Koch’s
  - awinder 8y ago
    Go into business for yourself with enough vitriol to gain the attention of the bannons, malkins, and coulters of the world? Join a company like shell, which has been doing “the climate science” for decades? Idk, we live in a great time for unscrupulous people, I’m sure you could find the opportunities if you tried.
  - yongjik 8y ago
    First you have to be famous, because any village idiot can say "LOL climate science is bunk". Like C-level executives, it's hard to get into the game. But I guess it's pretty lucrative once you get in.
stouset 8y ago
First, in what way are you skeptical? That the planet is warming? That humans have anything to do with it? That it’s a result of greenhouse gas emissions? That its effects will be catastrophic? Others have addressed your direct question in more detail: the predictions keep getting worse because a) the original predictions were conservative (“there’s no way it can get that bad”, “there’s no way we won’t begin to react”, etc.), b) we’re getting more data from recent years as the planet does begin to warm and seeing that it’s happening faster than many models predicted so new models have to incorporate this new worrying information, and c) there’s often biases in reporting on top of these other things.
crooked-v 8y ago
Consider the ever-accelerating pace of industrialization in previously third-world countries. China currently has twice the carbon emissions of the US, and very little of that existed when climate change estimations started in the 60s.
mannykannot 8y ago
If you want to avoid ad-hominem attacks, maybe you shouldn't present an unsubstantiated speculation about the motivations of climate scientists as your only hypothesis for 'explaining' what turns out to be (as others have pointed out) a faulty intuition? Here's another motivation-based argument to think about: the organized, often irrational and sometimes threatening campaign of denial might have induced a tendency to discuss only the most bulletproof predictions, resulting in lowball estimates that will most likely rise as more evidence is uncovered.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  > If you want to avoid ad-hominem attacks, maybe you shouldn't present an unsubstantiated speculation about the motivations of climate scientists as your only hypothesis for 'explaining' what turns out to be (as others have pointed out) a faulty intuition? Why would that warrant an ad hominem attack?
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    It doesn't warrant an ad hominem attack, it's pointing out an inconsistency - the claim about climate scientists' motives is as ad-hominem as many examples to be found in dictionaries. To his credit, credit_guy has been willing to consider alternative explanations than the one he started with.
tasty_freeze 8y ago
The international climate reports (IPCC) are the result of a lot of scientific work followed by heavy politicking. When early reports from the scientists were alarming, the reports were watered down instead of stating the 50% case. Some of the politics came from the committee being afraid of overstating things, but perhaps a larger amount came from the US contingent basically saying they wouldn't endorse the report unless it got watered down. What is why, as time went on, more data was collected, and the science got more confident, the results get revised upwards. The first google hit after searching on "IPCC political pressure" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/15/ipcc-un-climate-reports-diluted-protect-fossil-fuel-interests https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/m... Though that report is from 2014, it has been going for 20 years.
nostrademons 8y ago
Could be that climate exhibits a lot of positive-feedback effects, more-so than most of the early models predicted. If you start by modeling climate as a linear relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature and then it turns out that it's that plus human CO2 production is accelerating as the developing world develops plus release of trapped CO2 in the permafrost plus decreased albedo as the glaciers melt plus the albedo effect from increased vegetation plus reduction of the moderating effect of ocean currents as they're disrupted by incoming meltwater, then you're going to continually find that your models were too conservative. I don't buy a lot of the climate hysteria either, but for entirely different (and more depressing) reasons. I think that the reality is significantly worse than the scientists are portraying, but this doesn't matter much because we're still talking 2-4C over a century, and a century is a very long time in human progress. A century ago the world population was less than 2B, barely anyone had cars, North America and Europe were the only developed regions, coal was the predominant energy source, and hot cities like Las Vegas, Houston, and Phoenix were extremely undesirable places to live because of the lack of air conditioning. The media portrays the eventual flooding of NYC due to sea-level rise as an apocalyptic tragedy, but the fact is that several other cities (Galveston TX, New Orleans LA, Sacramento CA) have lost their pre-eminent economic position as a result of floods, and many others (Salem MA, Baltimore MD, Detroit MI and the rest of the rust belt) have from economic changes. Society adapts; people migrate and move from dying cities to new up-and-comers on more solid ground. A century is 3-4 generations, plenty of time for this migration to happen in terms of younger generations picking where they want to put down roots. I think we're far more likely to go out in a blaze of war from the social strain that come from this large-scale migration. Humans don't do well with relative changes in social status or power levels. They tend to want to find somebody else to blame and fight. I'd give better-than-even odds that the climate is actually cooler at the end of this century than now, but only because we've triggered nuclear war and are in the midst of a nuclear winter.
hsavit1 8y ago
You've been rejecting climate change evidence for years - your mind is clearly already made up. Nobody on this comment board is going to be able to convince you of how to reasonably react to overwhelming evidence. "Convincing" will happen when you can accept reality for what it is, instead of rejecting it for your own sadistic individualistic pleasure.
mikeash 8y ago
Feynman describes a likely reason: “We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher. “Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that....”

anothergoogler 8y ago

The lede is buried at the end of the article: > Much of the data on ocean temperatures currently relies on the Argo array — robotic devices that float at different depths, surfacing roughly every 10 days to transmit readings to satellites. There are about 3,800 such pieces of equipment in waters around the globe that provide the publicly available information... > By comparison, Resplandy and Keeling calculated heat based on the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide rising off the ocean. Filling round glass flasks with air from research stations in the Canadian Arctic, Tasmania and La Jolla, San Diego, researchers analyzed the samples to determine the aggregate temperature of the ocean. On what grounds is three samples of a novel measurement preferable to a few thousand direct temperature measurements? I mean in terms of reliability, not ability to generate clicks.

nikdaheratik 8y ago
1. There's more than 3 samples. And they picked the locations for taking these samples very carefully. 2. They're measuring different things, obviously. One is measuring the mixture of gasses, the other is pure temperature. The gas measurement is good for getting a picture of the entire system because it allows us to use basic chemistry, which is well understood, to gain a picture of the overall temperature change by looking at how much gas has escaped the ocean. The ocean temperature data, while very useful, can still be subject to both sampling errors and problems with the analysis as far as how to interpret it in aggregate. Especially since you have to put overall weather patterns, like El Nino / La Nina, etc. into your analysis. There's always going to be uncertainty into how you should do analysis of the data over so many disparate points.

squirrelicus 8y ago

So, okay. We have a problem. Climate change likely with an significant anthropogenic component. I hear a lot about magic solutions like electric cars whose batteries are incredibly polluting to produce, solar farms that are super expensive and require crazy amounts of acres per watt, wind farms that kill birds and have toxic materials inside to operate. The problem, almost certainly, is mostly fossil fuels and to a lesser extent the meat/dairy industry. Let's say, hypothetically, I accept all of this. Let's say the USA and Europe do everything, everything that climate advocates suggest. It won't matter. The vast majority of carbon emissions and almost all of the carbon emission growth over the last 50 years has come from the developing world. Thats right. CO2 emissions haven't grown in the West for 50 years. They've shrunk in fact. [1] Seriously. Are we really talking about crushing the energy production of the poorest, most disadvantaged places in the world? My point isn't that we shouldn't do anything. My point is the problem is way, way, way bigger and more complicated than is commonly phrased. We have to stop the developing world from accelerating out of poverty, and fast--if the climate projections are indeed correct. This, my friends, is what we call a tragedy. The next time I hear something about the West harming the planet disproportionally, I'm going to collapse into a neutron star. The only solution I see with any chance of working is if we start a global project to flood the world with nuclear reactors. Everywhere. Nothing else will deliver the gigawatts in time to stop the developing world from burning the planet alive. Assuming, of course, the climate models are correct. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...

flukus 8y ago
> This, my friends, is what we call a tragedy. The next time I hear something about the West harming the planet disproportionally, I'm going to collapse into a neutron star. The west is harming the planet disproportionately. We've been doing it a lot longer, so most of the existing and baked in future warming was produced by the west. Apart from that we still produce a lot more CO2 per capita. The united states alone produces 15% of emissions today. The rest of the world is just trying to catch up to where we are. The buck doesn't stop there though, a huge chunk of the developing worlds emissions are producing stuff for the west. They aren't responsible for that, we are for buying it. It seems like you expect the poorest developing countries to lead the way. Has the west become so incapable of actually leading?

tx21 8y ago

Without taking a position either way, my understanding of the skepticism is not that warming is not occuring, but rather the degree to which things that humanity can control influence that warming (0% to 100%).

Retric 8y ago
It's not just a any single coherent opposition to global warming. You get everything, including I am sure a non trivial group of people think the climate is cooling due to man made effects to people who think man made warming exists, but it's not going to have a meaningful impact. It's not a question of evidence at this point, it's a question of the limitless realms of ignorance.
ceejayoz 8y ago
> my understanding of the skepticism is not that warming is not occuring That's a fairly recent goalpost move as "warming is not occurring" has become an untenable position.
- jimjimjim 8y ago
  yep. First it was: it's not happening. Then: but how much? Now: but can we affect it? Soon it'll be: are we sure it's a bad thing? Then it'll be: it's bad but it's that other guy's fault.
  - flukus 8y ago
    And then it's back to "it's not happening". Contrarianism is a mouse wheel, not a ladder.
  - kefabean 8y ago
    This is exactly my experience talking to contrarians on the subject. Their viewpoint shifts subtly over time whilst continuing to oppose the consensus.
  - tx21 8y ago
    I don't think that's right, though it may be your view. Temperatures have in general been warming since the Maunder Minimum 400 years ago. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg/800px-Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Ca... Clarification edit: Meaning I think there is a better argument in the polemic (I'm not suggesting the answer)

throwaway010718 8y ago

Somewhat off topic comment, but in 2003, Bill Bryson's book "History of Everything" states that anthropogenic CO2 output is 7billion metric tons per year where natural CO2 output is 200 billion metric tons a year (mostly volcanoes IIRC)[0]. It left me with the impression, that an additional 3% a year is small and we have time before this becomes a crisis. For the record, Scientific American calls Bill Bryson "A Champion of Science". Then when climate change appeared to accelerate, I assumed that it must because we are removing our carbon sinks and that deforestation is likely the more dominant cause than our +3% additional emissions. Earlier this week, I revisited the above figure and according to Scientific American: "the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide." [1] At 3% I can see how a climate change skeptic might feel this issue is alarmist. But if it is 12,000% I don't see how anyone could honestly be skeptical that global warming isn't being caused by humans. It is mind boggling that two authoritative sources could differ by 3000X. Any clarifying comments are appreciated. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=_CWlKRYLbIwC&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=bill+bryson+200+billion+tons&source=bl&ots=3kPeY28foc&sig=EDlYNvIm6eAbvtZKEQxBMhokN4c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjuuNzwmbLeAhVpS98KHbm9D-sQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=bill%20bryson%20200%20billion%20tons&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=_CWlKRYLbIwC&pg=PA268&lpg=... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...

phs318u 8y ago
Didn’t read the links but the numbers in your comment differ by 3x (7 billion vs 24 billion). Unless I’m misreading something?
- verelo 8y ago
  One is million vs billion.
  - 8y ago