Falsifiable Hypothesis: Revisiting Hansen's 1981 'Global Warming' Paper

[localoid]

Originally Posted by citizenzen

... It's a little mind-boggling that we still find ourselves mired in the "it's real," "no it isn't," debate.

I agree... By now, most humans should have gotten over the shock and we should be well on our way towards solving or lessing the problem.

But avoiding the problem is what things that are boggle tend to do. After all, the literal meaning of the word "boggle" is (1) to hesitate as if in fear or doubt (2) to shy away or be overcome with fright or astonishment (3) to act ineptly or inefficiently; bungle.

Even Mitt Romney admits man-made global warming is real (see video below), but still... as you point out... we get bogged-down in debate and seem unwilling to do make any effort towards solving the problem. It's absurd...

[AP_piano295]

More of a weather event but still, very interesting:

http://www.weather.com/outlook/weath...eek_2012-03-11

1500 Climate high records set in March.

[Huntn]

Originally Posted by HarryPot

What most people really debate is not wether global warming is happening or not, but wether it is a product of human activity or not.

Here is the important point- People want to know if the Earth is warming and if we have something to do with it. This requires research. On the other side of the coin are those motivated by profits (GOPers) who refuse to consider such nonsense because it means if we can do something about it, it's going to eat into the golden calf of profits. Therefore, it's better to erase the possibility from consideration. If you are GOP it does not matter if people are sick or the environment is trashed as long as I get my maximized profits.

[dukebound85]

Originally Posted by eric/

I'm glad you took the time to do it, because it discredits the graph even more. Take a look at the "projections" are they showing cubic growth or exponential growth?

Wrong

It is cubic

Correct answer: exponential growth. So if the graph isn't showing exponential growth. And cubic growth instead, why do the projections show exponential growth?

They aren't

Answer: because its misleading the viewer.

Hardly

[citizenzen]

Originally Posted by dukebound85

Hardly

Well, it certainly is misleading eric/.

[mcrain]

Originally Posted by citizenzen

Well, it certainly is misleading eric/.

I believe there is a relation between faith and resistence to science. When you spend 52+ days every year listening to someone preach that the unknowable is true, and the unproven is fact, and telling you that anyone who claims otherwise is wrong, how can you trust science.

The belief in the unproven puts irrational doubt into what has been proven. I believe in God (which has not been proven), therefore, your proof regarding greenhouse gasses may not be true.

[mcrain]

Scientific models are failing to accurately predict the impact of global warming on plants, says a new report.

Researchers found in long-term studies that some are flowering up to eight times faster than models anticipate.

The authors say that poor study design and a lack of investment in experiments partly account for the difference.

They suggest that spring flowering and leafing will continue to advance at the rate of 5 to 6 days per year for every degree celsius of warming.

For more than 20 years, scientists have been carrying out experiments to mimic the impacts of rising temperatures on the first leafing and flowering of plant species around the world.

Researchers had assumed that plants would respond in essentially the same way to experimental warming with lamps and open top chambers as they would to changes in temperatures in the real world.

Very little has been done to test the assumption until this study lead by Dr Elizabeth Wolkovich, who is now at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

With her colleagues she studied the timing of the flowering and leafing of plants in observational studies and warming experiments spanning four continents and 1,634 plant species.

According to Dr Wolkovich, the results were a surprise.

"What we found is that the experiments don't line up with the long term data, and in fact they greatly underestimate how much plants change their leafing and flowering with warming," she said.

"So for models based on experimental data, then we would expect that plants are leafing four times faster and flowering eight times faster in the long term historical record than what we're using in some of the models."

Observational data have been gathered by scientific bodies for many years. In the UK, the systematic recording of flowering times dates back to 1875, when the Royal Meteorological Society established a national network of observers.

Since then, data has also been recorded by full-time biologists and part-time enthusiasts, and in recent years there have been mass-participation projects such as BBC Springwatch.

This new research suggests that these observations of flowering and leafing carried out in many different parts of the world over the past thirty years are remarkably similar according to Dr Wolkovich.

"In terms of long term observations, the records are very coherent and very consistent and they suggest for every degree celsius of warming we get we are going to get a five- to six-day change in how plants leaf and flower."

......

The bottom line is that the impacts might be bigger than we have believed until now. That's going to provoke a lot of work to probably revise modelling results for estimations of what's going to happen in the future for food production especially."

Dr Wolkovich agrees that if the models are so significantly underestimating the real world observations, there could be also be impacts on water the world over.

"If a whole plant community starts growing a week earlier than we expect according to these experiments, it's going to take up a lot more water over the growing season and if you add to that many years of the model projections, you are going to see big changes in the water supply." BBC

1 degree? Come on, we don't need to worry about 1 degree right? I can barely notice the difference between 72 and 73, so what's the big deal?

[citizenzen]

Originally Posted by mcrain

1 degree? Come on, we don't need to worry about 1 degree right? I can barely notice the difference between 72 and 73, so what's the big deal?

Really? You can't tell the difference?

Last night both my wife and I commented on how cold the house felt, and sure enough the thermostat read 68º ... one degree below its normal 69º. And on the occasions it's been boosted up to 70º by my wife, it feels too warm to me.

One degree one way or the other isn't so hard to detect.

[mcrain]

Originally Posted by citizenzen

Really? You can't tell the difference?

Last night both my wife and I commented on how cold the house felt, and sure enough the thermostat read 68º ... one degree below its normal 69º. And on the occasions it's been boosted up to 70º by my wife, it feels too warm to me.

One degree one way or the other isn't so hard to detect.

Apparently your sarcasm detector is on the fritz again. Mine might be as well...

[citizenzen]

Originally Posted by mcrain

Apparently your sarcasm detector is on the fritz again. Mine might be as well...

I always use a winkie to indicate sarcasm.

I blame you misuse of emoticons.

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

For a long time, people have been concerned about the possibility of stored methane contributing to climate change. Seems that we are getting better at quantifying it.

"If this relationship holds true for other regions where sedimentary basins are at present capped by permafrost, glaciers and ice sheets, such as northern West Siberia, rich in natural gas and partially underlain by thin permafrost predicted to degrade substantially by 2100, a very strong increase in methane carbon cycling will result, with potential implications for climate warming feedbacks."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18120093