6 ms·

Climate change: A cooling consensus

37 points by shawndumas 13y ago

vannevar 13y ago
The title is inaccurate. From the first paragraph of the article: There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. The consensus is that the planet continues to warm, not cool.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- shawndumas 13y ago
  the title is very accurate; the consensus on how much it was supposed to heat up is eroding (the use of the word 'cooling' is a play on words). FTA "In the end, the so-called scientific consensus on global warming doesn’t look like much like consensus when scientists are struggling to explain the intricacies of the earth’s climate system, or uttering the word “uncertainty” with striking regularity." and "The moralising stridency of so many arguments for cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and global emissions treaties was founded on the idea that there is a consensus about how much warming there would be if carbon emissions continue on trend. The rather heated debates we have had about the likely economic and social damage of carbon emissions have been based on that idea that there is something like a scientific consensus about the range of warming we can expect. If that consensus is now falling apart, as it seems it may be, that is, for good or ill, a very big deal."
  - batbomb 13y ago
    If you are a scientist, especially one who deals with statistics, and you don't utter the word "uncertainty" on a daily basis then you don't deserve to be a scientist. Using that as a criticism, especially given the word has very technical meanings in terms of distributions and fits, is silly.
    - shawndumas 13y ago
      the argument that that word is aimed at is not a scientific argument but a political argument. FTA : "This isn't a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus."
  - vannevar 13y ago
    the title is very accurate No, it's not. As the article notes up front, there is no serious doubt that the climate is warming. So not only is the climate not cooling, neither is the consensus. Estimates of the long-term rate of warming have always varied, but the consensus remains that the rate is significant and even the lower estimates will result in environmental changes that will impact millions of people.
    - baak 13y ago
      It's a pun... cooler heads prevailing doesn't mean peoples' heads are actually cooling down. The title was a play on words about the upset about global warming dying down.
    - shawndumas 13y ago
      but the consensus on how much it is heating up is 'cooling'.
  - hristov 13y ago
    Nope it is inaccurate. There never was a consensus about exactly how much the earth would warm up in the future. Scientists always had different models showing different projections. The consensus was that (1) the earth is warming (2) if not stopped this will have catastrophic effects on the human race soon. Both of those things are still true and there is still the same consensus about them.
    - shawndumas 13y ago
      wow, guys, the argument that the article is aimed at is not a scientific argument but a political argument. FTA : "This isn't a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus."
- sur 13y ago
  The title sounds like it's saying that the consensus is cooling, not that there's a consensus that the planet is cooling.
  - shawndumas 13y ago
    exactly; it's a play on words
  - vannevar 13y ago
    It's wrong either way.
    - 300bps 13y ago
      No, it's not wrong. You are reading it at its simplest level. Further, you have 3 replies saying the exact same thing. The quantity of saying something by the same person does not increase its quality. As of right now, you have 30% of the comments in this submission. It really seems like you have a strange bias here to argue over something so trivial.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    - shawndumas 13y ago
      vannevar, could you take a moment to explain why you are so intent on understanding this article as an attack on science instead of what it really is (namely, an attack on politics)?
      - vannevar 13y ago
        Because the article's premise is based on the author's skewed interpretation of the science. Ironically, if you look at the article they site for the claim that warming has slowed[1], you'll see that the rate of warming is still within the margin of error for the estimates. If anything, it should reinforce our confidence in the models that the actual curve matches so well with the prediction. And that's just surface temperature, ignoring ocean temperature and the simple fact that during this supposed 'hiatus' there has been a massive net ice melt[2]. 1. http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446... 2. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/nature10847.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/nature1...
wikiburner 13y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796539 and some previous articles: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/science/earth/what-to-make-of-a-climate-change-plateau.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/science/earth/what-to-make...
LordHumungous 13y ago
For a system as complex as Earth's climate, it should come as no surprise that computer models are inaccurate. I think scientists do themselves a disservice when they point to these models as the best evidence for global warming. The really important datapoints are temperature and ice core measurements, as well as the melting of the ice caps, all of which show that the earth is warming at an alarming rate.
- soperj 13y ago
  So far this year, there has been more sea ice worldwide than average. (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily....) Mostly on account of there being more than average in the Antarctic, and a little less than average in the arctic. Antarctic has been setting records(maximums, not minimums) in the last few years in terms of sea ice extent.
  - asynchronous13 13y ago
    Um, did you look at the graph you linked to? They grey line is the mean for 1979-2008. The last two years, the blue line is distinctly below the mean. I don't know much about sea ice, but this graph isn't supporting your claims.
    - soperj 13y ago
      My "claim" was so far this year. It's not a claim, it's data. The red line down the bottom is the sea ice anomaly, and as you can see it's been above average for most of the year.
  - asynchronous13 13y ago
    Ok, i did a bit of googling to try and understand this. It turns out that the extent of sea ice in Antarctica has been expanding! though calling it record setting is misleading. The fresh water from the massive melt-off of land ice creates an insulation layer when it meets the sea water that prevents the sea ice from melting. One article [1] called it a "small but statistically significant sea-ice expansion". Another data point says there is more sea ice in antarctica today than 30 years ago. Put those two points together, and "small but statistically significant" becomes "RECORD SETTING!" [1] http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-expands-antarctic-sea-ice-1.12709 http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-expands-antarctic-...
lotharbot 13y ago
Key quote: "This isn't a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus."
- rpgmaker 13y ago
  That's not the key quote: that's the quote that reassures you. I've never taken global warming as gospel. I often read people making fun of the right for dismissing it but I never did, because even if they were against global warming because of their anti-intellectuality they might still be right in the end. The evidence of global warming, at least in the apocalyptic way that's been portrayed by some, has always seemed shaky to me.
vijayboyapati 13y ago
The main problem with "climate science" is epistemological. It does not hold up to the foundational standards of the natural science which rely on falsification. With a system as complex as the earth's environment, falsification is essentially impossible. You cannot rewind the clock back 50 years, change a variable and play out what the temperature would be now. In a way, this makes climate science similar to economics. Yet climate "scientists" continue to act as if their work is as repeatable and falsifiable as a highschool lab experiment.
- _delirium 13y ago
  If you take a very narrow view of falsification, then evolution is unfalsifiable too, and therefore not science (this is actually a common argument made by anti-evolution people).
  - jeltz 13y ago
    That is untrue since evolution has indeed been studied in falsifiable experiments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution On the other hand studying how exactly the current specieses evolved is more like history.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      There are certainly specific experiments that have been carried out w.r.t. mechanisms (also true with climate science, fwiw). It's more the overall "big" conclusions that are a bit difficult to replicate in a laboratory, e.g. "the earth is warming as a result of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions" and "humans descended from other animals through a process of evolution driven by natural selection".
      - jeltz 13y ago
        Any examples of such experiments for climate science? Other than actually predicting climate change and then waiting 30 years I have trouble imagining falsifiable experiments. For evolution you can isolate a couple of populations with short generations in the lab and study them.
asynchronous13 13y ago
> Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century Clever. "the warmest year of the twentieth century" is completely true. But it seems a little misleading, since there's been a few years even warmer in the 21st century. Whenever I see the year 1998 mentioned in a discussion about climate, I am immediately suspicious. The temperature recorded in 1998 was a serious outlier. Let's pretend the datapoint from 1998 did not exist. Then we could accurately say, "The last decade has been hotter than any previous year on record!". But with 1998, you could accurately say, "Most of the last decade has been cooler than it was in 1998!" It's always nice to look directly at the data. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif It's true, if you take the past 10 years only, the trend is pretty flat. But if you look at a 10 year running average we're in the middle of an upslope. We can even make it look like we're in a cooling period if we pick 1998 as the first year! Fun with data.
- cantastoria 13y ago
  Depends on the record you're looking at. If you look at the temperature records from ice cores you can see that the entire 21st century has so far been within the historical range at this point in the cycle. http://www.wmich.edu/corekids/images/icecoredatahistorical02.gif http://www.wmich.edu/corekids/images/icecoredatahistorical02... However the 21st century has been an outlier in that temperatures have suddenly (for some reason :) failed to correlate with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
- glenra 13y ago
  > It's always nice to look directly at the data. It is, but you should keep in mind there isn't just one "the data" and in this case, what data source you pick affects what answer you get. The people you're arguing with might be looking at something other than GISS. For instance, here's the WoodForTrees index: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti the WoodForTrees Index is an average of four popular temperature series. This index was created specifically in order to reduce the need for arguing about which series to use. I believe the current formula is: WTI = mean(GISTEMP-0.35, HADCRUT3VGL-0.26, RSS-0.10, UAH) Playing around with the data sources, it seems like 1998 was an all-time high within the period of the satellite record - not surpassed by "a few years even warmer in the 21st century" - according to three out of four of those. Specifically, UAH, HADCRU3, and RSS. It was surpassed according to GISS or HADCRU4. So not only is it not inaccurate to say "Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century", it also would not be inaccurate to say "Since 1998, the warmest year for which we have satellite records."
warfangle 13y ago
But have the icecaps slowed in melting? Their contribution to ocean currents has a wide effect on surface temperature.
Tloewald 13y ago
I've never seen such a concentration of nutball comments on an Economist article. Hardly one sane comment in the lot. A bit alarming to see such an article from The Economist.

37 points by shawndumas 13y ago

The title is inaccurate. From the first paragraph of the article: There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. The consensus is that the planet continues to warm, not cool.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
shawndumas 13y ago
the title is very accurate; the consensus on how much it was supposed to heat up is eroding (the use of the word 'cooling' is a play on words). FTA "In the end, the so-called scientific consensus on global warming doesn’t look like much like consensus when scientists are struggling to explain the intricacies of the earth’s climate system, or uttering the word “uncertainty” with striking regularity." and "The moralising stridency of so many arguments for cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and global emissions treaties was founded on the idea that there is a consensus about how much warming there would be if carbon emissions continue on trend. The rather heated debates we have had about the likely economic and social damage of carbon emissions have been based on that idea that there is something like a scientific consensus about the range of warming we can expect. If that consensus is now falling apart, as it seems it may be, that is, for good or ill, a very big deal."
- batbomb 13y ago
  If you are a scientist, especially one who deals with statistics, and you don't utter the word "uncertainty" on a daily basis then you don't deserve to be a scientist. Using that as a criticism, especially given the word has very technical meanings in terms of distributions and fits, is silly.
  - shawndumas 13y ago
    the argument that that word is aimed at is not a scientific argument but a political argument. FTA : "This isn't a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus."
- vannevar 13y ago
  the title is very accurate No, it's not. As the article notes up front, there is no serious doubt that the climate is warming. So not only is the climate not cooling, neither is the consensus. Estimates of the long-term rate of warming have always varied, but the consensus remains that the rate is significant and even the lower estimates will result in environmental changes that will impact millions of people.
  - baak 13y ago
    It's a pun... cooler heads prevailing doesn't mean peoples' heads are actually cooling down. The title was a play on words about the upset about global warming dying down.
  - shawndumas 13y ago
    but the consensus on how much it is heating up is 'cooling'.
- hristov 13y ago
  Nope it is inaccurate. There never was a consensus about exactly how much the earth would warm up in the future. Scientists always had different models showing different projections. The consensus was that (1) the earth is warming (2) if not stopped this will have catastrophic effects on the human race soon. Both of those things are still true and there is still the same consensus about them.
  - shawndumas 13y ago
    wow, guys, the argument that the article is aimed at is not a scientific argument but a political argument. FTA : "This isn't a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus."
sur 13y ago
The title sounds like it's saying that the consensus is cooling, not that there's a consensus that the planet is cooling.
- shawndumas 13y ago
  exactly; it's a play on words
- vannevar 13y ago
  It's wrong either way.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    No, it's not wrong. You are reading it at its simplest level. Further, you have 3 replies saying the exact same thing. The quantity of saying something by the same person does not increase its quality. As of right now, you have 30% of the comments in this submission. It really seems like you have a strange bias here to argue over something so trivial.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - shawndumas 13y ago
    vannevar, could you take a moment to explain why you are so intent on understanding this article as an attack on science instead of what it really is (namely, an attack on politics)?
    - vannevar 13y ago
      Because the article's premise is based on the author's skewed interpretation of the science. Ironically, if you look at the article they site for the claim that warming has slowed[1], you'll see that the rate of warming is still within the margin of error for the estimates. If anything, it should reinforce our confidence in the models that the actual curve matches so well with the prediction. And that's just surface temperature, ignoring ocean temperature and the simple fact that during this supposed 'hiatus' there has been a massive net ice melt[2]. 1. http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446... 2. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/nature10847.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/nature1...

wikiburner 13y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796539 and some previous articles: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/science/earth/what-to-make-of-a-climate-change-plateau.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/science/earth/what-to-make...

LordHumungous 13y ago

For a system as complex as Earth's climate, it should come as no surprise that computer models are inaccurate. I think scientists do themselves a disservice when they point to these models as the best evidence for global warming. The really important datapoints are temperature and ice core measurements, as well as the melting of the ice caps, all of which show that the earth is warming at an alarming rate.

soperj 13y ago
So far this year, there has been more sea ice worldwide than average. (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily....) Mostly on account of there being more than average in the Antarctic, and a little less than average in the arctic. Antarctic has been setting records(maximums, not minimums) in the last few years in terms of sea ice extent.
- asynchronous13 13y ago
  Um, did you look at the graph you linked to? They grey line is the mean for 1979-2008. The last two years, the blue line is distinctly below the mean. I don't know much about sea ice, but this graph isn't supporting your claims.
  - soperj 13y ago
    My "claim" was so far this year. It's not a claim, it's data. The red line down the bottom is the sea ice anomaly, and as you can see it's been above average for most of the year.
- asynchronous13 13y ago
  Ok, i did a bit of googling to try and understand this. It turns out that the extent of sea ice in Antarctica has been expanding! though calling it record setting is misleading. The fresh water from the massive melt-off of land ice creates an insulation layer when it meets the sea water that prevents the sea ice from melting. One article [1] called it a "small but statistically significant sea-ice expansion". Another data point says there is more sea ice in antarctica today than 30 years ago. Put those two points together, and "small but statistically significant" becomes "RECORD SETTING!" [1] http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-expands-antarctic-sea-ice-1.12709 http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-expands-antarctic-...

lotharbot 13y ago

Key quote: "This isn't a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus."

rpgmaker 13y ago
That's not the key quote: that's the quote that reassures you. I've never taken global warming as gospel. I often read people making fun of the right for dismissing it but I never did, because even if they were against global warming because of their anti-intellectuality they might still be right in the end. The evidence of global warming, at least in the apocalyptic way that's been portrayed by some, has always seemed shaky to me.

vijayboyapati 13y ago

The main problem with "climate science" is epistemological. It does not hold up to the foundational standards of the natural science which rely on falsification. With a system as complex as the earth's environment, falsification is essentially impossible. You cannot rewind the clock back 50 years, change a variable and play out what the temperature would be now. In a way, this makes climate science similar to economics. Yet climate "scientists" continue to act as if their work is as repeatable and falsifiable as a highschool lab experiment.

_delirium 13y ago
If you take a very narrow view of falsification, then evolution is unfalsifiable too, and therefore not science (this is actually a common argument made by anti-evolution people).
- jeltz 13y ago
  That is untrue since evolution has indeed been studied in falsifiable experiments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution On the other hand studying how exactly the current specieses evolved is more like history.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    There are certainly specific experiments that have been carried out w.r.t. mechanisms (also true with climate science, fwiw). It's more the overall "big" conclusions that are a bit difficult to replicate in a laboratory, e.g. "the earth is warming as a result of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions" and "humans descended from other animals through a process of evolution driven by natural selection".
    - jeltz 13y ago
      Any examples of such experiments for climate science? Other than actually predicting climate change and then waiting 30 years I have trouble imagining falsifiable experiments. For evolution you can isolate a couple of populations with short generations in the lab and study them.

asynchronous13 13y ago

> Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century Clever. "the warmest year of the twentieth century" is completely true. But it seems a little misleading, since there's been a few years even warmer in the 21st century. Whenever I see the year 1998 mentioned in a discussion about climate, I am immediately suspicious. The temperature recorded in 1998 was a serious outlier. Let's pretend the datapoint from 1998 did not exist. Then we could accurately say, "The last decade has been hotter than any previous year on record!". But with 1998, you could accurately say, "Most of the last decade has been cooler than it was in 1998!" It's always nice to look directly at the data. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif It's true, if you take the past 10 years only, the trend is pretty flat. But if you look at a 10 year running average we're in the middle of an upslope. We can even make it look like we're in a cooling period if we pick 1998 as the first year! Fun with data.

cantastoria 13y ago
Depends on the record you're looking at. If you look at the temperature records from ice cores you can see that the entire 21st century has so far been within the historical range at this point in the cycle. http://www.wmich.edu/corekids/images/icecoredatahistorical02.gif http://www.wmich.edu/corekids/images/icecoredatahistorical02... However the 21st century has been an outlier in that temperatures have suddenly (for some reason :) failed to correlate with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
glenra 13y ago
> It's always nice to look directly at the data. It is, but you should keep in mind there isn't just one "the data" and in this case, what data source you pick affects what answer you get. The people you're arguing with might be looking at something other than GISS. For instance, here's the WoodForTrees index: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti the WoodForTrees Index is an average of four popular temperature series. This index was created specifically in order to reduce the need for arguing about which series to use. I believe the current formula is: WTI = mean(GISTEMP-0.35, HADCRUT3VGL-0.26, RSS-0.10, UAH) Playing around with the data sources, it seems like 1998 was an all-time high within the period of the satellite record - not surpassed by "a few years even warmer in the 21st century" - according to three out of four of those. Specifically, UAH, HADCRU3, and RSS. It was surpassed according to GISS or HADCRU4. So not only is it not inaccurate to say "Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century", it also would not be inaccurate to say "Since 1998, the warmest year for which we have satellite records."

warfangle 13y ago

But have the icecaps slowed in melting? Their contribution to ocean currents has a wide effect on surface temperature.

Tloewald 13y ago

I've never seen such a concentration of nutball comments on an Economist article. Hardly one sane comment in the lot. A bit alarming to see such an article from The Economist.