4 ms·

Show me the detailed climate data for the past 20 million years. Oh, you can't. Why? Because there is no data. It's all modeled. To be clear I'm not denying a

by fwungy 4y ago

Show me the detailed climate data for the past 20 million years. Oh, you can't. Why? Because there is no data. It's all modeled. To be clear I'm not denying anthropogenic climate change, I'm questioning the strategies employed . A hundred years of data amongst millions is insignificant. We don't know what proportion is anthropogenic and which is the larger climate trend that is beyond our control. Regardless, the logical optimization is nuclear and mitigation, not a suicidal unilateral rush into zero GHG. Under that approach if the multiple technogical breakthroughs never come we are in worse shape than if we had not done anything.

DennisP 4y ago
Actually there's substantial geological evidence for CO2-driven climate change. Several chapters of James Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren provide a good introduction to it. I agree with you on nuclear, and if you read Hansen's book you'll see that he does as well.
- fwungy 4y ago
  Yes. Hansen is quite convincing on his nuclear stance, which is sadly ignored. Net zero energy exclusively from renewable resources is a dangerous and delusional pathway. As for the climate backcasting, it's all theory. There's no way to even get a confidence interval on the estimates because there is no way to witness the actual events that they extrapolate from.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Several independent lines of geologic evidence all point to a similar climate sensitivity (see Hansen). Some fairly basic physics does the same, and physicists back to 1896 predicted our current reality pretty well. The recent book The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence Krauss covers that in detail.
- fwungy 4y ago
  It's not surprising that modelers using the same data and modeling theories come up with similar results. My point is that we have no actual way to confirm how correct these models are because we can't check them.
  - acdha 4y ago
    The part you’re missing is that it’s not “the same data” but multiple data sources showing the same trend. Ice cores, stalagmites, lake sediment, tree rings, sea shells and corals, microfossils, etc. are all measuring different things - when those show consistent results it’s increasingly unlikely that this is coincidental. Wikipedia has a good overview of the major categories which is well worth reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology Those cover many separate fields so it’s also unlikely that this is because they all happen to be making the same mistakes. Revealing such a flaw would be a career-making move for an academic.
    - fwungy 4y ago
      If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part. Richard Feynman Feynman wrote a lot about the problems of science and scientific group think. Scientists are people. They have egos, careers, and families to feed like everyone else. They actually tend to resist outside results from their field consensus because they have papers and grants and reputations built on prior findings, as well as a healthy resistance to the newest hot theory that breaks everything because it is simply incorrect and they don't want top go through the trouble of really examining it. Without the ability to check the techniques of paleoclimatology we have a have a science with extremely wide confidence bands on its estimates. I think Hansen is absolutely right about Thorium nuclear as the carbon free energy pathway of choice. It certainly doesn't hurt anything to make that happen then is worse than catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. However, the choices made under alarmist predictions from theoretical models must be avoided.
      - acdha 4y ago
        I would strongly suggest learning what is common in the field - whoever is originating the talking points you’re repeating is doing you a real disservice. One of the first questions to learn about is why you incorrectly believe there’s no way to validate techniques, and especially whether it might be the case that there are so many different lines of evidence is because scientists looked for independent sources of data so they could do exactly that.
acdha 4y ago
> Show me the detailed climate data for the past 20 million years. > Oh, you can't. Why? Because there is no data. It's all modeled. This isn't true: > Paleoclimatology data are derived from natural sources such as tree rings, ice cores, corals, stalagmites, and ocean and lake sediments. These proxy climate data extend the weather and climate information archive by hundreds to millions of years. The data include geophysical or biological measurement time series and some reconstructed climate variables such as temperature and precipitation. Scientists use paleoclimatology data and information to understand natural climate variability and future climate change. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology This also isn't the only question to ask: we know that the earth has been warmer in the past but there's also the question of timeframe — a gradual change over a long period of time gives ecosystems time to adjust gracefully whereas a sudden change will cause significant disruption and mass die-offs. The historical data shows that the change we're seeing is on the latter side, and while natural factors can affect the temperature scientists have measured a lot of them over decades and consistently found that the primary factor is anthropogenic. Here's a good chart showing that while other things like volcanic activity or solar variation can have big effects they don't consistently push the trend in one direction: https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/3/#fig-3-3 https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/3/#fig-3-3

by fwungy 4y ago

DennisP 4y ago

Actually there's substantial geological evidence for CO2-driven climate change. Several chapters of James Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren provide a good introduction to it. I agree with you on nuclear, and if you read Hansen's book you'll see that he does as well.

fwungy 4y ago
Yes. Hansen is quite convincing on his nuclear stance, which is sadly ignored. Net zero energy exclusively from renewable resources is a dangerous and delusional pathway. As for the climate backcasting, it's all theory. There's no way to even get a confidence interval on the estimates because there is no way to witness the actual events that they extrapolate from.
- DennisP 4y ago
  Several independent lines of geologic evidence all point to a similar climate sensitivity (see Hansen). Some fairly basic physics does the same, and physicists back to 1896 predicted our current reality pretty well. The recent book The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence Krauss covers that in detail.
fwungy 4y ago
It's not surprising that modelers using the same data and modeling theories come up with similar results. My point is that we have no actual way to confirm how correct these models are because we can't check them.
- acdha 4y ago
  The part you’re missing is that it’s not “the same data” but multiple data sources showing the same trend. Ice cores, stalagmites, lake sediment, tree rings, sea shells and corals, microfossils, etc. are all measuring different things - when those show consistent results it’s increasingly unlikely that this is coincidental. Wikipedia has a good overview of the major categories which is well worth reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology Those cover many separate fields so it’s also unlikely that this is because they all happen to be making the same mistakes. Revealing such a flaw would be a career-making move for an academic.
  - fwungy 4y ago
    If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part. Richard Feynman Feynman wrote a lot about the problems of science and scientific group think. Scientists are people. They have egos, careers, and families to feed like everyone else. They actually tend to resist outside results from their field consensus because they have papers and grants and reputations built on prior findings, as well as a healthy resistance to the newest hot theory that breaks everything because it is simply incorrect and they don't want top go through the trouble of really examining it. Without the ability to check the techniques of paleoclimatology we have a have a science with extremely wide confidence bands on its estimates. I think Hansen is absolutely right about Thorium nuclear as the carbon free energy pathway of choice. It certainly doesn't hurt anything to make that happen then is worse than catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. However, the choices made under alarmist predictions from theoretical models must be avoided.
    - acdha 4y ago
      I would strongly suggest learning what is common in the field - whoever is originating the talking points you’re repeating is doing you a real disservice. One of the first questions to learn about is why you incorrectly believe there’s no way to validate techniques, and especially whether it might be the case that there are so many different lines of evidence is because scientists looked for independent sources of data so they could do exactly that.

acdha 4y ago

> Show me the detailed climate data for the past 20 million years. > Oh, you can't. Why? Because there is no data. It's all modeled. This isn't true: > Paleoclimatology data are derived from natural sources such as tree rings, ice cores, corals, stalagmites, and ocean and lake sediments. These proxy climate data extend the weather and climate information archive by hundreds to millions of years. The data include geophysical or biological measurement time series and some reconstructed climate variables such as temperature and precipitation. Scientists use paleoclimatology data and information to understand natural climate variability and future climate change. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology This also isn't the only question to ask: we know that the earth has been warmer in the past but there's also the question of timeframe — a gradual change over a long period of time gives ecosystems time to adjust gracefully whereas a sudden change will cause significant disruption and mass die-offs. The historical data shows that the change we're seeing is on the latter side, and while natural factors can affect the temperature scientists have measured a lot of them over decades and consistently found that the primary factor is anthropogenic. Here's a good chart showing that while other things like volcanic activity or solar variation can have big effects they don't consistently push the trend in one direction: https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/3/#fig-3-3 https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/3/#fig-3-3