Global Warming isn't Screwing with the Weather

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The Wall Street Journal Online recently published an article about the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project , a study of past and present extreme weather events to try to identify effects of global warming, performed by an international collection of agencies, including NOAA. The preliminary results are in:

Of course, this is only an initial review of the data, so more final conclusions are yet to come, but the initial report looks like a substantial blow to current global warming arguments. One of the central dooms-day elements of global warming scenarios is the drastic increase in extreme weather, with floods, droughts, hurricanes, and the like becoming more frequent and more severe. If that turns out to be bust, not only will the researchers have to re-think their theories (the more severe weather should be a direct result of warming), but the socio-political punch of these scenarios will be drastically reduced.

 

Reading through the article, and the comments that follow it, the one thing that comes out most clearly to me is that it is a conservative vs liberal issue. The whole article is a load of nonsense. She makes one vague reference to a half-worked study (you admit yourself that the study hasn't finished), with most of her points been wiff-woffly. The comments that follow it are just as bad - the extreme partisan comments do not help the issue at all. Even the page you linked to, in the ERLS site, is just a collection of figures, rather than any discussion on, or conclusion about, the research.

What can be gained from the WSJ article? **** all.
What can be gained from the review itself? Who knows - let's wait until they release an actual report before making conclusions.

 

Rotku, I'm not sure if this changes your opinion or not, but in a study like this, the data will all be collected rather quickly, and data processing then takes most of the time. A 'preliminary results document' is common, and the conclusions drawn in it are rarely (though not never) reversed in the final results. Think if the recent Kepler results that hit the news. They're talking about over a thousand 'possible' planets that still need to be confirmed, and another 50 or so that have been confirmed, yet this is big news in the science community, even though it's only preliminary.

 

Maybe. I'm just put off by the overly political tone that the author takes, and the way she actually references so little of the study.

 

The paper is apparently here.

Edit:
If you read the conclusion, you see that they say nothing of initial findings, or preliminary results, but talk only about what they achieved with the data they have accumulated so far and about increasing the number of data sources and removing uncertainties. Where did the reporter got her quote from anyway? An unofficial phone call probably; it sounds too much like quote mining to me.

To me it seems that most of their work is data gathering and if you read the conclusion, they will not be finished for a while. New data sources will need to be digitized and included into the existing sets.

 

Rotku,
overly political tone? In the WSJ's Op-Ed pages?

 

That's unusual. Maybe they're having trouble finding the historical sources they were looking for. If that's the case, then a final report may well have different conclusions than what the author quoted in the article (which I agree was probably an interview with a researcher). Though, the report you linked to does mention:

This suggests they've already gathered and analysed some data, and are in the process of expanding the study (which may mean simultaneous gathering and analysing if this is how they're doing it).

 

Yes, they have already released two datasets and have made them public (you can download them and fiddle around if you like ).

 

Another global warming debate? *sigh*

IMHO there is no way that we can delve deep within the earth, extract fossil fuels on the scale that we have been doing, then burning those fuels with mad abandon, and then turn around and say that it's not going to have an effect on the atmosphere and ecosystem. That's simply not logical to me.

That said, is the solution to stop using fossil fuels? Not bloody likely. That's never going to happen. The solution is to come up with ways to burn them more cleanly and to use other techniques to minimize the negative impacts on the environment. Drastic measures that totally ignore the fact that climate change is survivable and that life can adapt do not garner my respect. Nor do the imbeciles who claim that climate change is caused SOLELY by human activity.

 

"Global warming isn't happening because we don't have any of that extreme weather!"

"That extreme weather isn't proof of global warming!"

There's a point where you just don't listen to certain people anymore.

Well, at least politicizing global warming seems to be mostly a problem for the US. What's a problem for the rest of the world is US's irresponsible use of fossil fuels.

 

Taza, let's be fair here -- I'll wholeheartedly agree that the US could do a much better job of managing its fossil fuel consumption.

But do you honestly think that the rest of the world has no responsibility here? That they all have wise, close to nature policies which, if the Evil US were only to follow, All Would Be Well? Give me a break. All industrialized nations are doing a really crappy job of dealing with fossil fuel pollution. Singling the US out is utterly ridiculous.

 

And therein lies the problem. While it is possible to use different type of filters to minimize a lot of the stuff that you get when you burn fossil fuels - most notably sulfur, but there are other nastier stuff like carcinogens and the like - there are certain things you cannot get rid of. The two absolutely necessary side products when burning any type of organic hydrocarbon are water and carbon dioxide, the latter of which is consider a major culprit in the global warming debate (although water vapor also contributes).

Carbon dioxide is one of two major side products, and no amount of "clean coal" or the like is going to eliminate CO2 as a bi-product. It simply cannot be done. When you oxidize a hydrocarbon (read: burn it), you get CO2. You can try to get rid of the sulfur and other impurities, and you're still left with coal, oil, natural gas, etc. Get rid of the carbon and you cease to have coal, oil, natural gas, etc.

 

I see this argument a lot, but I don't know that it's any more logical than the reverse, that it necessarily will make any sizable impact. Remember, the annual human contribution to atmospheric CO2 is only a small fraction of the natural contribution (something like 4%). If the natural sinks can adjust that much (not at all unreasonable, given the natural variability in the natural output across the history of the Earth), then there's not going to be a significant impact. If they can't, then the CO2 will build up and have an impact.

If it's the same extreme weather as we had 150 years ago, then it really isn't. Remember, weather has always exhibited extremes. Any statistically significant data set of random events will. The question is, are they getting worse. The preliminary answer is, 'no'.

Since I'm a nit-picker, H2O is actually a much larger contributor, even in global warming theory. According to global warming theory, H2O is actually the mechanism by which CO2 plays such a large role. Double whammy, it seems.

Moreover, though, this is why the idea of CO2 sequesting came into being: pumping the CO2 produced into the same chasms that held to oil and natural gas in the first place. The problem is that it doesn't work well. It's increadibly expensive and you can't put all the CO2 back in that you got out, or the rock formations will fracture and spill out everything.

 

LKD,
industry funded political lobbying against climate research and global warning denying is pretty much a strictly a US (or somewhat anglo-saxon) phenomenon. From abroad that looks peculiar if not outlandish (clearly the latter when I think of crusty nuts like Sen. Jim Inhofe).

Worse, we've had global warming deniers from the US starting lobbying here (only last year actually - i.e. it is a very recent and new development), importing the discredited kooks who make a living denying it in the US, including that insufferable buffoon Lord Monckton. The US do have a significant impact, and lamentably they don't keep their little extravaganzas and follies at home.

Spoiler

This vid below is just one rebuttal of the silliness a Lord Monckton spouts. If one wants to save the time, this is a random Monckton quote: “I’m practicing to run for President. I understand that all I need is a nice, freshly minted, Hawaiian birth certificate.” Get the idea? He has clearly a firm grasp on his 'Know Your Customer 101'.

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Just as with creationism anti-climate change studies, if they exist, and if they are not outright made up, are of the hole poking not trailblazing kind. Now hole poking doesn't discredit scientific theory since theory is not scientific law. Oh dang!

 

This is where you're wrong. Hole-poking does indeed discredit the scientific theory, but it also provides room for growth. Look at evolution. Since it's inception, scientists have poked more holes in it than swiss cheese, but other scientists have always stepped in to re-write the theory to accomodate those holes and make sense of them. The theory of evolution didn't die, but if the scientists hadn't been able to patch it up, it would have. Like Lorentz Ether Theory did when it got holes punched in it.

 

True, but there's no way to significantly reduce the amount of H2O in the atmosphere - that would be really bad to all life on earth, as we'd have to get rid of the oceans to do it.

 

True, hole poking is useful, that's the idea about peer review in general. And in global warming science the very same thing has happened as with evolution theory - where the critics indeed have found holes, scientists have been able to fill them with something better.

With geniuses like Monckton in mind I was being overly charitable. What I wanted to say is that the utter majority of climate sceptics on the anti-warming speaker circuit engage in cherry picking and outright distortion. I.e. they do propaganda, not science. Much like the Creationists by the way. Despite the differences in subjects, the methodology is strikingly similar.

That author of the WSJ article likewise found some unnamed interviewee to say something that the report itself didn't include. Morgoth is correct to point out that it doesn't address any initial findings, or preliminary results. Curious? Not!

 

That all depends on the purpose of the paper. If it was something like a Final Experiment Review, then no, it's not curious that no results were mentioned, because that's not the purpose of the paper. However, interviewing one of the researchers about the project because the paper caught your attention, and getting a few preliminary results from that, is perfectly reasonable.