Trump administration plans to challenge climate science - Page 4

tristanrobin · July 6th, 2017, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Twisted Sister

More than a few people glorify the so called PHD elitist status. When I was young my Dad had a friend who had a Doctor of Education Degree and got published, he insisted that we all call him Doctor even when he came over for Sunday dinner. High falutin' PHD's need to be knocked down more than a peg or two.

There are arrogant people of every educational status (just look around DTT). My husband has a Ph.D - and he'd laugh hysterically if you called him 'Doctor.'
(Though we do use his title when making reservations because we get better service than two long-haired tattooed hippies would ordinarily

)

RNG · July 6th, 2017, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tristanrobin

There are arrogant people of every educational status (just look around DTT). My husband has a Ph.D - and he'd laugh hysterically if you called him 'Doctor.'
(Though we do use his title when making reservations because we get better service than two long-haired tattooed hippies would ordinarily

)

I've only ever used mine when I lived in England, which at least then was still very much a class society. And for the same reason.

Twisted Sister · July 6th, 2017, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tristanrobin

There are arrogant people of every educational status (just look around DTT). My husband has a Ph.D - and he'd laugh hysterically if you called him 'Doctor.'
(Though we do use his title when making reservations because we get better service than two long-haired tattooed hippies would ordinarily

)

Never criticize a Medical Doctor's hand drawn water color painting. I said your painting is fuzzy and can't tell what it represents. His abstract painting of a frog, tree and pond was undecipherable but after he told me what it was, I could see the frog, tree and pond and we remained friends, then he had me critique his new paintings and his artistry improved. Thanks to Dr. Bob, the nickname the hospital gave me.

baloney_detector · July 7th, 2017, 05:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by League of Justice

The following is an analysis of a similarly misleading chart from Christy's congressional testimony, of which shares some of the very same issues as the chart that has been provided above.:

Quote:

Republicans' favorite climate chart has some serious problems

Dana Nuccitelli
Friday 19 February 2016 09.28 EST

As usual, cherry picking and misrepresentations are used to oppose climate policies

There’s a chart that’s become the favorite, go-to among those who distort climate science in order to justify opposition to climate policies. It’s shown up in many conservative media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Australian. It’s been presented by congressional Republicans’ favorite climate witness, John Christy, in recent hearings called by Ted Cruz and Lamar Smith.

The chart, which tries to compare estimates of the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere to model simulations, is full of problems. Its purpose is clear – to make it appear that climate models are unreliable, and thus cast doubt on all of climate science and the tremendous risks posed by human-caused global warming. In other words, its purpose is to undermine climate policy efforts to reduce those risks by slowing global warming.

But as with all charts of such singular, unscientific purposes, it’s simply another example of cherry picked data being presented in a multiply misleading way, as the annotated version below illustrates (for an animated version, click here).

...

1) The data are misleadingly misaligned

To start, the observational and simulated model data are aligned at a single point at the start of the graph, in 1979. That choice serves to visually exaggerate any difference between the models and data. When doing this sort of comparison properly, climate scientists will average the data over a period called the “baseline,” usually between 10 and 30 years, so that any abnormally hot or cold single years in the data or model runs don’t throw off the alignment.

In fact, there was recently a paper published by Hawkins & Sutton showing that the choice of baseline can significantly impact how accurate the models appear in this sort of comparison, and thus it’s important to carefully choose an appropriate baseline period and perhaps test the comparison with multiple different periods. Christy didn’t even use a baseline period to begin with! NASA Goddard director Gavin Schmidt did the comparison using a baseline period of 1979–1988, and as you can see, the result looks quite different.

...

2) The uncertainty is ignored!

Normally, climate contrarians love to harp on uncertainties. In fact, the whole argument against implementing climate policies to slow global warming hinges upon the backwards logic that we don’t know enough to take action.

However, in Christy’s chart, no uncertainty ranges are shown whatsoever. The difference this makes is clear in Schmidt’s version above, which shows the spread of individual climate model simulation runs (in grey), although doesn’t show the significant uncertainty in the observational data. When both are taken into account, the observations are consistent with the range of model projections.

3) Observational data disagreements are hidden

Christy’s graph also averages together multiple different observational data sets, which aren’t in terribly close agreement. Gavin Schmidt shows some of these in his version of the chart. Christy’s version also somehow glosses over the fact that atmospheric temperature estimates from satellites and weather balloons diverge in recent years.

4) The chart isn’t peer-reviewed or easily reproducible

Another problem is that Christy doesn’t say which observational data sets he’s averaging together, but there are more than three groups that use satellite data to estimate the temperature of the atmosphere (Schmidt shows four of them in his chart). So he could be omitting some of the data that shows larger warming trends.

We don’t know because this is “blog science.” The analysis hasn’t been vetted by other experts, or published in a scientific journal after being subjected to peer-review. We don’t even know if Christy is accurately representing the climate models, because they don’t produce a simple “bulk atmosphere temperature” output. As such, Christy’s chart should be taken with a grain of salt.

5) We don’t live on Mount Everest

The average elevation of the “bulk atmosphere” shown in Christy’s graph is 25,000 feet, which is just below the peak of Mount Everest, and not far below the elevation at which commercial aircraft generally fly. The temperature at such high elevations isn’t very relevant to humans.

We live on the Earth’s surface, so we care about the global surface temperature. And because we live at the surface, we have an easier time measuring the temperature here, so we know average global surface temperatures with more certainty than the atmospheric temperatures that Christy focuses on.

6) The rest of the global warming data show climate models are accurate

Atmospheric temperatures are just one of the many climate changes simulated by climate models. For example, climate models have done an excellent job predicting how much temperatures at the Earth’s surface would warm (e.g. see Mann et al. 2015).

...

Continued here:

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...rious-problems

Clara007 · July 7th, 2017, 05:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Twisted Sister

More than a few people glorify the so called PHD elitist status. When I was young my Dad had a friend who had a Doctor of Education Degree and got published, he insisted that we all call him Doctor even when he came over for Sunday dinner. High falutin' PHD's need to be knocked down more than a peg or two.

NO! People who strive and obtain a PhD are a special breed. The amount of intelligence, ambition, time and money spent to get a PhD are almost insurmountable. These folks are held to the highest scrutiny by their peers and authorities. The list of their achievements (publishing, research, leadership, communication skills) speaks for itself.
Our daughter-in-law has a PhD and we have seen first-hand how difficult it is to reach that status. We should applaud those who go after the highest education the world of academia has to offer....and achieve it.

Nwolfe35 · July 7th, 2017, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by League of Justice

You do realize that this chart CONFIRMS Climate change don't you?

webguy4 · July 7th, 2017, 06:31 AM

It will be good if we can have the open public debate on climate we never had before the liberals declared the issue "settled", solely for reasons of politics.

Nwolfe35 · July 7th, 2017, 06:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by webguy4

It will be good if we can have the open public debate on climate we never had before the liberals declared the issue "settled", solely for reasons of politics.

Should we have a "public" debate on the theory of Gravity?

What is the point of a "public" debate when 90%+ of the public do not have the education or knowledge to adequately debate the topic?

The issue is "settled" not because of politics but because of science....the only possible result of a "public debate" would be to muddy the science with a bunch of NON scientists offering their opinions on a topic that they have no clue about.

webguy4 · July 7th, 2017, 06:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nwolfe35

Should we have a "public" debate on the theory of Gravity?

What is the point of a "public" debate when 90%+ of the public do not have the education or knowledge to adequately debate the topic?

The issue is "settled" not because of politics but because of science....the only possible result of a "public debate" would be to muddy the science with a bunch of NON scientists offering their opinions on a topic that they have no clue about.

Is algore, who flunked out of college, a scientist? The people I hear who call the issue settled are usually politicians.

The public needs to hear the debate if there are public policy decisions to be made, or you just wanna throw representative government out the window entirely? Should we all just bow down and give homage to our betters while we throw away our freedom?

webguy4 · July 7th, 2017, 06:44 AM

Maybe we can consider gravity settled, since predictions based on our theories seem to be working.

Is climate science ever going to make a prediction that works?

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July 7th, 2017, 06:31 AM	#37
webguy4 Mayor of Realville Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Michigan Posts: 15,617	It will be good if we can have the open public debate on climate we never had before the liberals declared the issue "settled", solely for reasons of politics.

July 7th, 2017, 06:44 AM	#40
webguy4 Mayor of Realville Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Michigan Posts: 15,617	Maybe we can consider gravity settled, since predictions based on our theories seem to be working. Is climate science ever going to make a prediction that works?