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Paper that claimed the Sun caused global warming gets retracted:
A paper published last June was catnip for those who are desperate to explain climate change with anything but human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It was also apparently wrong enough to be retracted this week by the journal that published it, even though its authors objected.
The paper's headline conclusion was that it described a newly discovered cycle in the motion of the Sun, one that put us 300 years into what would be a thousand-year warming period for the Earth. Nevermind that we've been directly measuring the incoming radiation from the Sun and there has been no increase to explain the observed global warming—or that there is no evidence of a 2,000 year temperature cycle in the paleoclimate record.
Those obvious issues didn't stop some people from taking this study as proof that past warming was natural, and only mild and unavoidable warming lies in our future.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 08 2020, @12:42AM (7 children)
Well, if I'm to believe science and scientists (forgive me if you've read this before) then the little spot on this earth where I was born was covered over with a mile of ice only 20,000 years ago.
Obviously, global warming has been going on for a lot longer than any of us has been around.
How about a deal? I won't pretend that our pollution has nothing to do with global warming and/or climate change. In return, you don't pretend that the alarmists have it all figured out. Can we live with that?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday March 08 2020, @03:25AM
Deal. The alarmists are not the scientists though, because the scientists don't claim to have everything figured out. Just some predictions. Not to mention current events keep supporting the predictions, as if, the predictions are becoming our future.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:15PM (4 children)
One of the best graphs about climate change came from XKCD [xkcd.com]. In this case, he starts at 20000 BC and goes to present day.
Even if you don't stop to read everything in between, be sure to scroll to the very end of the graph at the bottom. You can scroll quickly (it's a large graph), but pay attention to the rate at how fast the Earth warms as you scroll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:46PM
I think one of the problems (besides the lack of desire to apply critical thinking if it challenges what the idiots on TV and radio tell you what you should believe) is that people like him do not understand derivatives, or even more simply put, just simple rates of change. That graphic is an excellent example. The slope almost anywhere on that curve is rather small until the very end.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 08 2020, @08:25PM (2 children)
I like that graph. The first time I saw it, I scrolled up and down and up again, because it does kinda help put things into chronological order.
Thing is, I believe that bottom little bit is exaggerated. Old Al Gore and his hockey stick chart? This doesn't look as bad, but it seems to fall into that category or alarmism.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:30AM (1 child)
I don't trust very many people or companies because they exaggerate and are alarmist, but I do trust Randall Munroe (creator of XKCD). He's a deep thinker and very insightful. I encourage you to check out the rest of his website. Now, I'll be honest, I haven't double checked his sources, but Randall is obsessively thorough. His sources are listed at the top of the comic on the right, if you decide to explore more deeply.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:28PM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 30 2020, @08:48AM
As a meteorologist, I'll also accept your deal.
Our climate models are extrapolating conditions that we've never directly observed. A lot of the Earth's systems are governed by processes that are somewhat nonlinear. And these systems are coupled together such that changes in the Earth's atmosphere or hydrosphere can have significant effects on other things like the biosphere. If we nudge the state of those systems too far, they may accelerate away from the previous conditions toward a new equilibrium. We don't really know where these tipping points are, but there is evidence from paleontology that such tipping points exist. Despite our best efforts at simulating these systems, extrapolating them is going to be subject to significant errors.
The US invests billions of dollars in military expenditures each year, with the goal that we don't have to use our military might. Our military spends a lot of time on war games, considering lots of scenarios and what we can do to protect the country if those scenarios were to happen. We spend a very significant amount of money on what amounts to largely a preventative measure. I wish we had taken more of that same attitude with respect to pandemic preparedness, having much larger stockpiles of supplies and better plans for surge capacity in our medical system. Maybe such pandemics have a return period of 100 years, but maybe we should spend more on preparedness for when it occurs. And I'll admit the uncertainty in climate projections, while still acknowledging that some scenarios could have severe outcomes. I propose that maybe we should take the same approach to preparedness, that we hope those scenarios are wrong, but we still take reasonable steps to prevent them in case they're not wrong.
Instead of bureaucratic solutions like carbon taxes, I'd prefer technological solutions. DARPA has a significant budget for defense research. We also fund lots of contractors to develop new technology for the military. I'd like to see similar programs with ample funding and strong oversight, to develop technologies that allow us to maintain our standard of living in a way that pollutes a whole lot less. Maybe it'll turn out that we didn't need those investments, and I sure hope that the climate models are dead wrong, but I see this as another form of risk preparedness.