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Alteredstory · 09-20-2013, 04:26 PM

I'm here because there was a discussion of ice melt, and something I wrote was cited, and then attacked.

Many, many predictions have been made, some about atmospheric warming, some about oceanic warming, some about ice melt, some about ecosystem responses, and some about ocean acidification, among other things. Each of those predictions was made under a series of carefully defined parameters. If you want to understand any given trend, I suggest you read the papers. I should also mention that none of the predictions claimed year-to-year accuracy. Each of the lines in the graphs YOU have linked came with their own margin of error, which was NOT included in your graph.

Atmospheric warming has not, for the last couple years, gone as fast as some predictions thought. For others, it has been well within the margin of error.

Oceanic warming has been going as expected for some predictions, faster for some, and slower for others.

Arctic warming has, as expected, been happening far faster than the rest of the planet, which is why we're seeing so much ice melt, and so much melting of the permafrost.

Ocean acidification is proceeding about as expected, except that there are pockets where it is much HIGHER than expected - it's not even.

Sea level rise is about as expected, although I'm not sure anybody predicted the amount of gravitational release from lost mass on Greenland.

Upper atmosphere:
How will changes in carbon dioxide and methane modify the mean structure of the mesosphere and thermosphere? - Roble - 2012 - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library

Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere

In the past, when CO2 levels have gotten this high (last time was 15 million years ago), temperatures were around 10 degrees higher, and sea levels were about 100 feet higher. Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

It should be noted that while the sun goes through cycles, and is not as hot as it has been in our lifetimes, it IS hotter than it was 15 million years ago.

As to temperature and sun, while the sun DOES have a large effect on the climate, it stopped tracking closely with global temperatures a couple decades ago.

If the sun's variations were the primary forcer here, the atmosphere would warm and cool uniformly throughout - think of it like wearing a jacket. If you just put on a extra jacket, you get warmer. If you put on a jacket AND light a nice big fire, you'll get warmer, but the heat from the fire will warm the OUTSIDE of your jacket as much or more than the inside, hence the importance of what's happening in the upper atmosphere.

Effects of more heat:

-Hotter means more evaporation of water. More evaporation means there's more water in the atmosphere. That means that rainfall events are bigger, because when it rains, there's more water to fall. That works the same way for snow, by the way.

Hotter due to climate change means hotter night time temperatures - it's the jacket analogy again - we're warming because we're better insulated, so we don't lose the heat we get during the day. This means evaporation continues during the night, AND it means that when the sun rises again, and starts heating things again, it's starting with higher, so it get get hotter faster. This means more and faster evaporation.

Hotter, beyond a certain point, means that life stops working the same. Plants, when exposed to high temperatures and/or low water, stop photosynthesizing, and focus on survival. They also can't do things like pollinate as easily, which effects grain production, since we eat the seeds.

There are more connections to weather, but it's not my area of expertise, and I don't have time to hunt down information on that.

The wildfires in Russia were due to the drought and the heatwave, and while they did burn crops, crop production was suffering already, and areas that weren't burned had significantly reduced yields. Again - it's a matter of basic biology. If plants have less water, they don't grow. You should have learned that in elementary school, but if you want a lesson on basic botany, I can do that in a different post.

Yes, there have been advances in drought-resistant crops, but we're not there yet, and there are limits - we haven't gotten anywhere close to crops that magically don't need water.

Or any other form of life that doesn't need water, for that matter.

Scientists work on the cutting edge of their fields - that's where the interesting discoveries are made. The predictions they make are not made to advise policy makers, they're to say "this is the best we can do with THESE data and THESE methodologies, and this is where we think we need to focus in order to do more work. Can all you other people focused on this topic please check our work, point out flaws if you find them, and help us get to the next step in our understanding." That is the purpose of every peer-reviewed publication, and every research paper. That is why every research paper includes a section talking about what they can do better, and where more research is needed.

THAT is the research that gets published and talked about because the stuff that we already know really well isn't very interesting to people whose goal in life is discovering NEW stuff.

The fact that you expect it to somehow be spot-on and conclusive goes to show that not only did you miss the point of research, you also didn't actually read any of the papers associated with the publications.

No reason you SHOULD have, if that's not your area of expertise, but it means that you have a flawed understanding of what you're looking at, and certain people make a habit of capitalizing on that.

I already addressed your "graph that reaches for the stars" comment earlier, but I will once again reiterate - without the conditions on which that graph was based you don't actually know what it's predicting, which is why it's good to hear what the researchers who generated it have to say, rather than going to tertiary sources.

Your last link is interesting because, again, you seem to be confused about the nature of science.

Global climate change is GLOBAL. That means that it is affecting every single part of the planet, and so it is affecting every single organism on the planet, in one way or another. The question is HOW, so we take what we know about our areas of expertise and start looking into what might happen if we change things. There will be evolutionary changes, and chemical changes, and thermodynamic changes, and ecological changes, and many OTHER changes, and people are looking into them.

Then you get companies like WIRED magazine, or [insert news site here] whose job it is to get you to look at their story, see their ads, and make them some money.

So they go for what they think will attract attention. Here's an unrelated example - I live in the Boston area, and there's a forested area called the Middlesex Fells near here. A few years back, a graduate student did a survey of plant life there, and published the results. More recently, another scientist did a follow-up with the help of numerous volunteers, and published THEIR results, which were more thorough, and had some disagreements with the first survey.

A Boston newspaper did an article about it, the author of which tried to portray the whole thing as a conflict or controversy, based on the assumption that this was some sort of argument, rather than two successive studies building on each other. Why? Because controversy is more fun - it attracts attention.

That is why news sources are BAD sources for scientific knowledge - their primary goal is entertainment and ad revenue, NOT accuracy, so they inflate the significance of findings on a REGULAR BASIS.

In other words, your last link is based on personal incredulity - in this case, disbelief that a global phenomenon will affect everything on the globe - coupled with sensationalism DRIVING that incredulity, misinterpretation of the actual research, and a desire to foster incredulity in others.

This is, of course, leaving out the fact that some "news" sources blatantly mis-represent research in order to support a pre-determined position.

09-20-2013, 04:26 PM	#1054 (permalink)
Alteredstory EcoModding Lurker Join Date: Sep 2013 Location: Boston Posts: 44 Thanks: 0 Thanked 5 Times in 3 Posts	I'm here because there was a discussion of ice melt, and something I wrote was cited, and then attacked. Many, many predictions have been made, some about atmospheric warming, some about oceanic warming, some about ice melt, some about ecosystem responses, and some about ocean acidification, among other things. Each of those predictions was made under a series of carefully defined parameters. If you want to understand any given trend, I suggest you read the papers. I should also mention that none of the predictions claimed year-to-year accuracy. Each of the lines in the graphs YOU have linked came with their own margin of error, which was NOT included in your graph. Atmospheric warming has not, for the last couple years, gone as fast as some predictions thought. For others, it has been well within the margin of error. Oceanic warming has been going as expected for some predictions, faster for some, and slower for others. Arctic warming has, as expected, been happening far faster than the rest of the planet, which is why we're seeing so much ice melt, and so much melting of the permafrost. Ocean acidification is proceeding about as expected, except that there are pockets where it is much HIGHER than expected - it's not even. Sea level rise is about as expected, although I'm not sure anybody predicted the amount of gravitational release from lost mass on Greenland. Upper atmosphere: How will changes in carbon dioxide and methane modify the mean structure of the mesosphere and thermosphere? - Roble - 2012 - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere In the past, when CO2 levels have gotten this high (last time was 15 million years ago), temperatures were around 10 degrees higher, and sea levels were about 100 feet higher. Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report It should be noted that while the sun goes through cycles, and is not as hot as it has been in our lifetimes, it IS hotter than it was 15 million years ago. As to temperature and sun, while the sun DOES have a large effect on the climate, it stopped tracking closely with global temperatures a couple decades ago. If the sun's variations were the primary forcer here, the atmosphere would warm and cool uniformly throughout - think of it like wearing a jacket. If you just put on a extra jacket, you get warmer. If you put on a jacket AND light a nice big fire, you'll get warmer, but the heat from the fire will warm the OUTSIDE of your jacket as much or more than the inside, hence the importance of what's happening in the upper atmosphere. Effects of more heat: -Hotter means more evaporation of water. More evaporation means there's more water in the atmosphere. That means that rainfall events are bigger, because when it rains, there's more water to fall. That works the same way for snow, by the way. Hotter due to climate change means hotter night time temperatures - it's the jacket analogy again - we're warming because we're better insulated, so we don't lose the heat we get during the day. This means evaporation continues during the night, AND it means that when the sun rises again, and starts heating things again, it's starting with higher, so it get get hotter faster. This means more and faster evaporation. Hotter, beyond a certain point, means that life stops working the same. Plants, when exposed to high temperatures and/or low water, stop photosynthesizing, and focus on survival. They also can't do things like pollinate as easily, which effects grain production, since we eat the seeds. There are more connections to weather, but it's not my area of expertise, and I don't have time to hunt down information on that. The wildfires in Russia were due to the drought and the heatwave, and while they did burn crops, crop production was suffering already, and areas that weren't burned had significantly reduced yields. Again - it's a matter of basic biology. If plants have less water, they don't grow. You should have learned that in elementary school, but if you want a lesson on basic botany, I can do that in a different post. Yes, there have been advances in drought-resistant crops, but we're not there yet, and there are limits - we haven't gotten anywhere close to crops that magically don't need water. Or any other form of life that doesn't need water, for that matter. Scientists work on the cutting edge of their fields - that's where the interesting discoveries are made. The predictions they make are not made to advise policy makers, they're to say "this is the best we can do with THESE data and THESE methodologies, and this is where we think we need to focus in order to do more work. Can all you other people focused on this topic please check our work, point out flaws if you find them, and help us get to the next step in our understanding." That is the purpose of every peer-reviewed publication, and every research paper. That is why every research paper includes a section talking about what they can do better, and where more research is needed. THAT is the research that gets published and talked about because the stuff that we already know really well isn't very interesting to people whose goal in life is discovering NEW stuff. The fact that you expect it to somehow be spot-on and conclusive goes to show that not only did you miss the point of research, you also didn't actually read any of the papers associated with the publications. No reason you SHOULD have, if that's not your area of expertise, but it means that you have a flawed understanding of what you're looking at, and certain people make a habit of capitalizing on that. I already addressed your "graph that reaches for the stars" comment earlier, but I will once again reiterate - without the conditions on which that graph was based you don't actually know what it's predicting, which is why it's good to hear what the researchers who generated it have to say, rather than going to tertiary sources. Your last link is interesting because, again, you seem to be confused about the nature of science. Global climate change is GLOBAL. That means that it is affecting every single part of the planet, and so it is affecting every single organism on the planet, in one way or another. The question is HOW, so we take what we know about our areas of expertise and start looking into what might happen if we change things. There will be evolutionary changes, and chemical changes, and thermodynamic changes, and ecological changes, and many OTHER changes, and people are looking into them. Then you get companies like WIRED magazine, or [insert news site here] whose job it is to get you to look at their story, see their ads, and make them some money. So they go for what they think will attract attention. Here's an unrelated example - I live in the Boston area, and there's a forested area called the Middlesex Fells near here. A few years back, a graduate student did a survey of plant life there, and published the results. More recently, another scientist did a follow-up with the help of numerous volunteers, and published THEIR results, which were more thorough, and had some disagreements with the first survey. A Boston newspaper did an article about it, the author of which tried to portray the whole thing as a conflict or controversy, based on the assumption that this was some sort of argument, rather than two successive studies building on each other. Why? Because controversy is more fun - it attracts attention. That is why news sources are BAD sources for scientific knowledge - their primary goal is entertainment and ad revenue, NOT accuracy, so they inflate the significance of findings on a REGULAR BASIS. In other words, your last link is based on personal incredulity - in this case, disbelief that a global phenomenon will affect everything on the globe - coupled with sensationalism DRIVING that incredulity, misinterpretation of the actual research, and a desire to foster incredulity in others. This is, of course, leaving out the fact that some "news" sources blatantly mis-represent research in order to support a pre-determined position.