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Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

Father de Souza

King Charles has reportedly turned down the temperature on the pool in Buckingham Palace to conserve energy. For recreation, His Majesty’s hosts might show him Dubai’s golf courses, where — contrary to the links in the King’s beloved Scotland — it is possible to play golf at night. Not only is every square inch of grass the product of massive energy-intensive irrigation, but the Emiratis have thoughtfully illuminated the massive courses with stadium-quality lighting. Twenty-four-hour golf might lessen the pressure on booking tee times this week.

The global farce of holding a climate conference in a desert petro-state, chaired by the head of Abu Dhabi’s national oil company, requires a level of shamelessness previously thought the province of FIFA or the International Olympic Committee. But the UN is not entirely shameless: there are enough guilty consciences here that etiquette requires everyone not to notice that the emperor — the King, Emir Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Pope — has no climate clothes.

Yes, Pope Francis planned to pop in for two days of energetic climate evangelism, but a respiratory illness meant cancelling his trip. It’s a shame, as no doubt the massed hordes of officialdom would have found a pontifical jeremiad on air conditioning amusing. No other place on the planet has done more to reduce temperatures than the United Arab Emirates. The Emiratis have air conditioned the desert. It’s climate change of a sort.

There was a minor flap in the self-congratulations when the BBC lifted the robes of the oil sheikhs to reveal a secret plan to use the gathering of the moneyed classes to do some oil and gas deals. Come for the empty climate promises; stay for the actual oil and gas contracts.

 
Father de Souza




My guess is no other country wanted to pay to have the Eco-parasites on their property.... kind of like the difficulty in finding countries who are willing to host yet another outrageously expensive Olympics.

And Dubai is really easy to fly to, ironically, from many places around the globe ;)
 
My guess is no other country wanted to pay to have the Eco-parasites on their property.... kind of like the difficulty in finding countries who are willing to host yet another outrageously expensive Olympics.

And Dubai is really easy to fly to, ironically, from many places around the globe ;)
since so many use private a/c, airline access is really not necessary, in fact, it might even be a draw back since all the riff raff can join in as well. Cheapens the joint
 
....15 years ago, when Parliament passed the Climate Change Act amid terrifying predictions of catastrophic heatwaves. ...

I was one of the “Infamous Five” who voted against that Act. Not because I doubted the science – I studied physics at Cambridge and know the basic science of global warming is rock solid. An exceptional cold-weather event no more disproves global warming than fires in Greece prove it is getting worse. Incidentally, Nasa satellites show that the area burnt annually by forest fires has declined by 25 per cent since they started collecting data.

But I had read the Impact Assessment – the cost-benefit analysis – which governments must produce for any Bill. Officials said I was the only MP to ask for a copy. It showed that the potential cost was twice the maximum benefit. Unless you disputed the accuracy of the Impact Assessment (which no one did), no rational person could vote for the Act. But, then and since, our political class has put reason aside, preferring to use this issue for virtue signalling. Why bother about costs which in 2008 were far in the future?

Now, those costs are imminent, as people face replacing oil and gas boilers with more expensive heat pumps, and diesel and petrol cars with more expensive electric cars. This prompted Rishi Sunak, very sensibly, to promise a more pragmatic and proportional route to net zero.

Of course, if it were true that any delay would risk the extinction of humanity – as implied by the very name Extinction Rebellion, and claims by our leaders that climate change is “an existential threat”– no cost would be too great to avoid such a fate.

So, I asked ministers if they know of any peer-reviewed study accepted by the IPCC (the UN body established to assess the science of global warming) that forecasts the extinction of humanity if the world takes no action to phase out fossil fuels. The answer was clear: there are none.

Nor is there a serious threat of humankind being reduced to poverty, hunger and wretchedness if we don’t reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
The central conclusion of Lord Stern’s official review of the economics of climate change was that if the world does nothing – not if we do not do enough, but if we do nothing – it would be equivalent to making us all 5 per cent poorer than we would otherwise be, now and forever. But a 5 per cent loss does not remotely amount to impoverishment of the human race, just setting us back by two or three years’ growth.

More recently, Prof Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for assessing the costs and benefits of action on climate change, concluded that the optimum target for the world to aim for is not 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, but nearer to 3C, which means there may be scope to delay our net zero target beyond 2050.

If a Nobel Prize is not enough and you want the imprimatur of the IPCC, these are the opening words of its chapter on the impact of climate change on the economy: “For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers. Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socio-economic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.”


Fly-shyte from pepper decades from now.
 
(From 2022 CPC Leadership Discussion thread.)
In what other world does one discuss old research over new. The very thought process is indicative of something

Maybe. Climate scientists don't have many tools available. They can do reconstructions to attempt to understand past temperatures, and the weak points there are the inability to do it globally at a fine level of granularity (ie. there are no measurements going back millennia from tens of thousands of recording stations) and the understanding that if one well-understood period of warming or cooling can be alleged to be "localized", then reconstruction data from a particular region are also only evidence of "localized" changes. Thus they have a continuing interest in doing more reconstructions using different kinds of proxy data from as many regions as possible. As long as their statistical acumen is correct (some have in the past been dinged for not understanding the math well enough) and no inconvenient data are ignored (everything must be accounted for), the emerging picture becomes more reliable. It's actually the past which needs examination in more detail (ie. an intensive look at each quarter-century period to see whether there was in fact a lot more volatility on a fine time scale).

The other tool is modelling, which is still at the GIGO stage right now and will probably remain that way for several lifetimes, if not forever. Computer simulations require mathematical models (ie. equations), data, and computing power. Computing power is not within orders of magnitude of what is needed. Data are still only gathered relatively sporadically - the comparative quantity increase over past records obscures that what is properly needed is repeated measurements in "cells" divided on a much finer scale than is practically possible. The mathematical models are absurdly crude relative to the actual complexity of the systems of equations which govern all things climate. So the predictions continue to have large ranges of error, but the large ranges of error are almost the only thing which allows the predictions to overlap what eventually is measured. And there is (or at least was for a long time) a tendency of models to consistently overshoot predicted temperature increases, which at best means the modellers are having a hard time calibrating their models, and at worst suggests bias.
 
(From 2022 CPC Leadership Discussion thread.)


Maybe. Climate scientists don't have many tools available. They can do reconstructions to attempt to understand past temperatures, and the weak points there are the inability to do it globally at a fine level of granularity (ie. there are no measurements going back millennia from tens of thousands of recording stations) and the understanding that if one well-understood period of warming or cooling can be alleged to be "localized", then reconstruction data from a particular region are also only evidence of "localized" changes. Thus they have a continuing interest in doing more reconstructions using different kinds of proxy data from as many regions as possible. As long as their statistical acumen is correct (some have in the past been dinged for not understanding the math well enough) and no inconvenient data are ignored (everything must be accounted for), the emerging picture becomes more reliable. It's actually the past which needs examination in more detail (ie. an intensive look at each quarter-century period to see whether there was in fact a lot more volatility on a fine time scale).

The other tool is modelling, which is still at the GIGO stage right now and will probably remain that way for several lifetimes, if not forever. Computer simulations require mathematical models (ie. equations), data, and computing power. Computing power is not within orders of magnitude of what is needed. Data are still only gathered relatively sporadically - the comparative quantity increase over past records obscures that what is properly needed is repeated measurements in "cells" divided on a much finer scale than is practically possible. The mathematical models are absurdly crude relative to the actual complexity of the systems of equations which govern all things climate. So the predictions continue to have large ranges of error, but the large ranges of error are almost the only thing which allows the predictions to overlap what eventually is measured. And there is (or at least was for a long time) a tendency of models to consistently overshoot predicted temperature increases, which at best means the modellers are having a hard time calibrating their models, and at worst suggests bias.

Near as dammit...

 
Near as dammit...
Yeah, but I call bullshit on one very important point mentioned almost only in passing: "positive feedbacks". The alarmist scenarios (models) depend on positive feedbacks to really ramp up predicted future temperatures. Maybe they have something more sophisticated now, but any model that just uses a fixed number greater than 1 is GIGO (any assumption expressed as a number rather than at least some kind of approximate numerical computational solution of a theory based on differential equations is not worth taking seriously).

The observed temperature change claimed since roughly before the pre-industrial era is essentially the amount predicted for increased CO2 alone. Theory proposes 1.5 to 4.5 degrees (Celsius) per doubling of CO2 concentration (a lot of uncertainty there). The concentration change since the pre-industrial threshold is roughly 1.5 times greater (can be observed from paleoclimatological measurements). The observed global anomaly (itself an estimate bordering on a guess) is a little under 1.2 degrees. Thus, we're halfway to a doubling and still under the low threshold of the estimate for a doubling. No strong evidence for a positive feedback mechanism yet.

The foundational problem for alarmists is that there aren't many positive feedback mechanisms in the physical universe; negative feedback (damping) effects tend to be the norm. The claim that any positive feedback mechanism exists requires exceptionally strong evidence and experimental demonstration.
 
The foundational problem for alarmists is that there aren't many positive feedback mechanisms in the physical universe; negative feedback (damping) effects tend to be the norm. The claim that any positive feedback mechanism exists requires exceptionally strong evidence and experimental demonstration.
More trees than ever!
 
And here emerges an article, referring to a study which identifies a significant problem with model predictions not being subsequently observed. (Study is PDF here.)

From the study's "Conclusions" section: "Here, we have demonstrated a major discrepancy between observation-based and climate model-based historical trends in near-surface atmospheric water vapor in arid and semi-arid regions."

And: "A discrepancy between modelled and observed humidity trends is also present in more humid regions, albeit to a lesser extent, and only during the most arid times of the year."

So: "This represents a major gap in our understanding and in climate model fidelity that must be understood and fixed as soon as possible in order to provide reliable hydroclimate projections for arid/semi-arid regions in the coming decades."

Anyone reading an article about climate change in popular media should first identify whether the premises of the article are based on models or observations. If the former, be highly skeptical.
 
And here emerges an article, referring to a study which identifies a significant problem with model predictions not being subsequently observed. (Study is PDF here.)

From the study's "Conclusions" section: "Here, we have demonstrated a major discrepancy between observation-based and climate model-based historical trends in near-surface atmospheric water vapor in arid and semi-arid regions."

And: "A discrepancy between modelled and observed humidity trends is also present in more humid regions, albeit to a lesser extent, and only during the most arid times of the year."

So: "This represents a major gap in our understanding and in climate model fidelity that must be understood and fixed as soon as possible in order to provide reliable hydroclimate projections for arid/semi-arid regions in the coming decades."

Anyone reading an article about climate change in popular media should first identify whether the premises of the article are based on models or observations. If the former, be highly skeptical.
Even observations have limitations.

Having spend 5 years travelling around the country inspecting weather stations, I can confidently say that many sites are not properly installed, and that leads to incorrect readings from sensors.

In Bagotville the official weather station compound was located too close to tarmac and a building, meaning that it reported temperatures that were higher than the actual temperature. If was made particularly evident when a new system was installed in a properly sited location(grass field, no nearby obstacles/heat sinks), and overnight low temperatures were consistently reporting a degree or more lower than the official site. When ECCC installed a new automated climate station they put it beside our properly sited weather sensors.

In the CAF, and more broadly Canada in general, we have inspectors that verify sites are doing things correctly, and issues are reported. Many countries don't have as a robust of a system of inspections, meaning that many observation sites are giving less than ideal data.
 
Even observations have limitations.

Having spend 5 years travelling around the country inspecting weather stations, I can confidently say that many sites are not properly installed, and that leads to incorrect readings from sensors.

In Bagotville the official weather station compound was located too close to tarmac and a building, meaning that it reported temperatures that were higher than the actual temperature. If was made particularly evident when a new system was installed in a properly sited location(grass field, no nearby obstacles/heat sinks), and overnight low temperatures were consistently reporting a degree or more lower than the official site. When ECCC installed a new automated climate station they put it beside our properly sited weather sensors.

In the CAF, and more broadly Canada in general, we have inspectors that verify sites are doing things correctly, and issues are reported. Many countries don't have as a robust of a system of inspections, meaning that many observation sites are giving less than ideal data.

I saw something awhile ago about climate data inaccuracies being connected to problems with weather stations being influenced by urban effects etc. It sounds like this is the follow up saying 'no change'.


MEDIA ADVISORY: 96% of U.S. Climate Data Are Corrupted​

Nationwide study follows up widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009, and the heat-bias distortion problem is even worse now

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (July 27, 2022) – A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.

The report, published by The Heartland Institute, was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States. The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 at this link), and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.

“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”

 
I saw something awhile ago about climate data inaccuracies being connected to problems with weather stations being influenced by urban effects etc. It sounds like this is the follow up saying 'no change'.


MEDIA ADVISORY: 96% of U.S. Climate Data Are Corrupted​

Nationwide study follows up widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009, and the heat-bias distortion problem is even worse now

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (July 27, 2022) – A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.

The report, published by The Heartland Institute, was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States. The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 at this link), and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.

“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”

I'm not working for the Heartland Institute, I work for the CAF and I have seen similar things at the sites I have inspected.

Most major climate sites are at airports. It made a lot of sense back in the day, as the people observing there were most qualified, and they worked 24/7. The problem is, aviation weather and climate records have different criteria. Aviation weather is about whether or not the data will cause a crash, climate records are about collecting the most accurate data possible.

In my example with Bagotville, the siting of the sensors made the data inaccurate for climatology, but it was still good enough for flying. As a result of that, no change was made to the station instruments because climatology was a low priority. The exact same thing happens at airports around the world every year. Airport administrators care about flight safety, not climate records, while at the same time governments that pretend to care about climatology refuse to spend the required money to get climatologically accurate data...

Edit: If the picture of that temperature sensor in the article is real, that is the most terrible sensor location I have ever seen.:(
 
I'm not working for the Heartland Institute, I work for the CAF and I have seen similar things at the sites I have inspected.

Most major climate sites are at airports. It made a lot of sense back in the day, as the people observing there were most qualified, and they worked 24/7. The problem is, aviation weather and climate records have different criteria. Aviation weather is about whether or not the data will cause a crash, climate records are about collecting the most accurate data possible.

In my example with Bagotville, the siting of the sensors made the data inaccurate for climatology, but it was still good enough for flying. As a result of that, no change was made to the station instruments because climatology was a low priority. The exact same thing happens at airports around the world every year. Airport administrators care about flight safety, not climate records, while at the same time governments that pretend to care about climatology refuse to spend the required money to get climatologically accurate data...


But who said the whole Climate Change movement was about something as tawdry as 'accurate data' ;)
 
I saw something awhile ago about climate data inaccuracies being connected to problems with weather stations being influenced by urban effects etc. It sounds like this is the follow up saying 'no change'.
It's a known problem sub-set. One particular variation is stations that were initially well-sited, but for which urban sprawl has changed the sites - tarmac and buildings where once it was grassy field.
 
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