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As waterlesscloud notes, I'm talking about the popular use. I'll turn around your IPCC argument: anyone with a clue would realize there was a distinct chance a

by hga 12y ago

As waterlesscloud notes, I'm talking about the popular use. I'll turn around your IPCC argument: anyone with a clue would realize there was a distinct chance another change in the party line like the cooling to warming flip would be required by the short term temperature record, so the IPCC merely future proofed their gravy train. My calling was science. Finances prevented me from fulfilling that potential, which is why you'll find me here in Hacker News. Saying "just wrong" is no more convincing than my bald assertion of what I thought was generally accepted, so for example use a search like this one: https://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+stopped https://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+stopped to find deniers like the BBC, Wikipedia, NATURE (http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525 http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-mi...), National Geographic, and The Economist in the first two pages of my results....

phaemon 12y ago
Regarding your search, most of those links are explanations of why you're wrong. The problem is that scientists are saying something like, "Given the measurements we've made of the extra energy the earth is absorbing, we'd expect surface air temperatures to be rising even more rapidly than they are. The energy can't just disappear. Where is that extra energy going to?" What deniers hear is, "Computer models tell us the earth should be heating up and it isn't! The energy must be missing! The earth is cooling!" But, fair enough I should have said more than "just wrong". So allow me to explain why it's wrong and, since you don't like temperature data, we can do it talking about waves on a beach. Imagine you're measuring the height that waves come up a beach. You notice that if you look at, say, the last 30 measurements, you can see a clear upward trend: the tide is coming in. Now you'd like to determine whether or not the tide is turning. So you look at the last 16 measurements (it helps to start from that big wave 16 measurements back), and there you go - no significant increase in the height up the beach. Does that tell you whether the tide has turned or not? Well of course it doesn't. Otherwise you could continually find moments where the "tide was turning" simply by taking a short enough period of measurement. And you'd continually be wrong. What's the correct way of doing this? It's pretty simple. You check the longer term trend (tide is coming in) and then take the last 16 measurements and see if that trend is significantly different to your previous trend. This way adding data strengthens your findings, whereas with the previous way removing data strengthens your findings. So, basically, you're doing it wrong. Do it the correct way and then tell me what you find. As for: > the IPCC merely future proofed their gravy train. Well, there's no falsifying the Golden Rule: "it's all part of the conspiracy"
yongjik 12y ago
Well, let's try with literally the first Google hit for "global temperature graph": http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ The first graph shows that temperature for 1998 (I think) is very high (~0.6C), and indeed temperatures in this century centers around this value. Has global warming stopped since 1998? But wait, one quickly discovers that the temperature for 1998 was the highest among all years up to 1998. Not only that, it is ~0.2C higher than 1997, which was also higher than all previous years. In fact, 1998 is >0.4C higher than the coolest year in the 1990s. It doesn't take a lot of statistical expertise to conclude that 1998 was in fact an anomalously hot year, if one were to look at data only up to that year. In this century, we hover around this 1998 temperature, and even routinely exceed them. What was an outlier became the normal. Soon the same temperature will be considered a cool year. (Of course, the graph doesn't say that, but thousands of very bright people who spent their lifetime studying these graph say that. I have no reason to doubt them, when the best argument thrown against them is "if you compare the hottest year of the last century with today's average, they are the same!")

by hga 12y ago

phaemon 12y ago

Regarding your search, most of those links are explanations of why you're wrong. The problem is that scientists are saying something like, "Given the measurements we've made of the extra energy the earth is absorbing, we'd expect surface air temperatures to be rising even more rapidly than they are. The energy can't just disappear. Where is that extra energy going to?" What deniers hear is, "Computer models tell us the earth should be heating up and it isn't! The energy must be missing! The earth is cooling!" But, fair enough I should have said more than "just wrong". So allow me to explain why it's wrong and, since you don't like temperature data, we can do it talking about waves on a beach. Imagine you're measuring the height that waves come up a beach. You notice that if you look at, say, the last 30 measurements, you can see a clear upward trend: the tide is coming in. Now you'd like to determine whether or not the tide is turning. So you look at the last 16 measurements (it helps to start from that big wave 16 measurements back), and there you go - no significant increase in the height up the beach. Does that tell you whether the tide has turned or not? Well of course it doesn't. Otherwise you could continually find moments where the "tide was turning" simply by taking a short enough period of measurement. And you'd continually be wrong. What's the correct way of doing this? It's pretty simple. You check the longer term trend (tide is coming in) and then take the last 16 measurements and see if that trend is significantly different to your previous trend. This way adding data strengthens your findings, whereas with the previous way removing data strengthens your findings. So, basically, you're doing it wrong. Do it the correct way and then tell me what you find. As for: > the IPCC merely future proofed their gravy train. Well, there's no falsifying the Golden Rule: "it's all part of the conspiracy"

yongjik 12y ago

Well, let's try with literally the first Google hit for "global temperature graph": http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ The first graph shows that temperature for 1998 (I think) is very high (~0.6C), and indeed temperatures in this century centers around this value. Has global warming stopped since 1998? But wait, one quickly discovers that the temperature for 1998 was the highest among all years up to 1998. Not only that, it is ~0.2C higher than 1997, which was also higher than all previous years. In fact, 1998 is >0.4C higher than the coolest year in the 1990s. It doesn't take a lot of statistical expertise to conclude that 1998 was in fact an anomalously hot year, if one were to look at data only up to that year. In this century, we hover around this 1998 temperature, and even routinely exceed them. What was an outlier became the normal. Soon the same temperature will be considered a cool year. (Of course, the graph doesn't say that, but thousands of very bright people who spent their lifetime studying these graph say that. I have no reason to doubt them, when the best argument thrown against them is "if you compare the hottest year of the last century with today's average, they are the same!")