Climate always changes, the question then is, is it extraordinary change because of CO2. I don't think merely counting record events is a good way to determine that 40 years is also not a very long time span..
Also it seems likely that more measurements are being taken (at more locations). And cities are expanding, changing local weather.
Lobbyists are not trying to bring expert information to elected officials. They are trying to influence public policy to the benefit of the people or organizations paying them.
There’s no necessary contradiction between those two things. More importantly lobbyists are indispensable because Congressfolk have tiny, tiny staff budgets so it’s not like they have their own internal researchers or even their own legal team. People forming the United States have unpaid interns because they can’t afford better.
Congress has tiny staff budgets partly because one of the parties outsources all of its policy analysis and legislation writing to lobbyists, all of its public outreach/education to corrupt “think tanks” and corporate-owned media outlets, and intentionally eviscerated their own budget because in the past their own independent expert analysis often contradicted industry preferences, which was inconvenient for the corporations calling the shots.
Or you can find many other sources from the past 25 years discussing this.
The Congress should be robustly funding the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, committee staff, individual members’ staff, etc. But one party does not want the Congress to build up long-term institutional expertise or do careful independent analysis.
Then they should be paid whatever is necessary to make lobbyists unnecessary. I suspect though that that would change nothing, because these "expert" lobbyists you support don't really want lawmakers to have full knowledge of whatever is important to them; their goal is to feed lawmakers the information they need to entice them to support the lobbyists agenda.
The EFF has lobbyists. Point: lobbying isn’t a “bad” thing. It’s only “bad” if you disagree with them. How else are lawmakers going to get detailed information about issues that interests care about? Some random constituent claiming to be an astrophysicist? Is it conceivable that ever member of Congress has a staff with experts in literally every possible subject that could come up for legislation? Nothing is stopping the “other” side from lobbying too. Lobbyists from both sides of issues are a critical part of the lawmaking process. We elect people to be able to balance those competing interests and ostensibly make the right decision. If you aren’t happy with that decision, there are elections every two years. No question there is corruption, but Congress itself isn’t corrupt. I am not a fan of Ocasio-Cortez, but she took out a prominent Democrat because, in the eyes of the constituents, that representative wasn’t doing the job in a way with which they agree. Congressmen win elections because a majority of their district wanted them to win. It’s a fact that a significant percentage of people complaining rarely vote, let alone actually volunteer for a campaign. We get the government we deserve, not necessarily the one we want.
> I don't know about sea level rise prediction accuracy
We have no way of knowing because no predictions were made for periods of time prior to now, so we have nothing to compare with the data.
The dire predictions of rapid rise in the future are based on the future predictions of climate models being correct, but the models are already known to over-predict future warming.
What's noteworthy is that the IPCC forecast for sea level rise is not accepted anymore by many, for some reason. The IPCC used to be gold standard, now it's not alarmist enough. From the report:
> Subsequent to the 2013 IPCC AR5, there has been a focus on the possible worst-case scenario for global sea level rise. Estimates of the maximum possible global sea level rise by the end of the 21st century range from 1.6 to 3 meters [5-10 feet], and even higher. These extreme values of possible sea level rise are regarded as extremely unlikely or so unlikely that we cannot even assign a probability. Nevertheless, these extreme, barely possible values of sea level rise are now becoming anchored as outcomes that are driving local adaptation plans
> Climate scientists criticize her uncertainty-focused spiel for containing elementary mistakes and inflammatory assertions unsupported by evidence. Curry is a regular at Anthony Watts' denier blog, as well as Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit, another denier site. She has further embarrassed herself (and her university) by using refuted denier talking points and defending the Wegman Report, eventually admitting she hadn't even read it in the first place.[1] Curry has agreed with Trump's description of climate change as a "hoax", writing in 2016 that the UN's definition of manmade climate change "qualifies as a hoax".
I'm not sure if you're aware, but "denier" is a loaded term that is used to equate the questioning of climate science with Holocaust denial. It has no place in a civilized discussion.
As for Climate Audit, the Wegman Report, and Judith Curry: Maybe try reading one of them sometime. I think you'll find that they are nothing like their detractors try to portray them to be.
I never understood why "climate skeptics" don't see past this glaringly obvious fact: almost every time there is some "rebuttal" against climate change, the source comes back to a conservative think tank or oil company. Hello??? It's so frustrating.
Saying something is biased might be a fallacy in a debate, but not in statistics. In a complex topic, where the data is fuzzy and misrepresentation is easy to do and harder to detect, you must consider biases in your sources.
An alien can look at this "debate" and make a rational decision without even knowing what the debate is about. The world's scientists study X and overwhelmingly agree: X is going to wreak havoc on the world within a few decades. In response, the humans who make extraordinary amounts of money off of X (and won't be alive in a few decades), pay large sums of money to a few people who say: X isn't that bad.
So an alien examines this situation and thinks: "Hmm... should I believe the overwhelming majority of rationalists, or the few people with financial incentives to be contrarians?"
The alien concludes: "Since there are two sides to the debate, that means each side is exactly 50% likely to be right. The answer must be unknowable, and therefore they shouldn't make any decision on it and just maintain the status quo (making the contrarians the victors)." Just kidding. The alien says, "Wow, if this species is stumped on this one, I'll just come back later and harvest their newly melted water and filter all their corpses out."
I'm certainly convinced at this point that climate change is a real thing that we should be concerned about, but that's only because I have (to the best of my ability as a cs person) critically examined the position taken by the climate scientists.
no one is immune to bias and misaligned incentives, especially on contentious political issues, and especially in fields where your entire job depends on government funding. in general, I am quite skeptical of academics.
I'm not saying we should accept it all unquestioningly, but I feel like that ship has sailed a long time ago. As a society, we should be taking action yesterday, not still asking if it's real or not. The only reason why we are still doing it is because of malicious high-influence individuals holding everyone back, trying to squeeze every last drop out of society.
Scientists and academics indeed have their own biases, but when you look at the big picture of the distribution of peoples' motivations, very clear patterns emerge that scream out: there is a lot of bad-faith, deliberate disinformation out there, and we need to take that into account. As rational people, it's tempting to just take arguments at face value and focus on the information. But this is all taking place in a larger context where psychology and game theory play a role. Impartiality is exploitable - tying up people's judgement is just a victory for the status quo.
Maybe, but if the alien wants water, the easier path is to just go to Europa, which has more water than Earth, plus a lower gravity well. We have no way of stopping them from harvesting resources from anywhere in this star system.
This is not an accurate characterization of the debate. "The world's scientists" are in fact a small cadre of self-described climatologists whose academic careers depend on this being a real issue.
If you want to be skeptical of the skeptics, fine. We all should be. But the notion that the bias is one-sided is silly.
> "The world's scientists" are in fact a small cadre of self-described climatologists whose academic careers depend on this being a real issue.
Really? I think a lot of countries have scientific agencies whose job it is to as accurately as possible monitor and predict the climate because those countries economies (eg especially important for planning in agricultural economies) depend on it. If they had scientists that could show it was a non issue, those governments would be all over that. And after all those scientists would still need to be employed predicting the natural climate cycles anyway.
The world would fall at the feet of scientists that could scientifically refute this. That would be the hugest money making opportunity for any climate scientist, and instant fame. To contend that whatever secret international cabal in favour of promoting climate change can outcompete the fossil fuel industry for resources is frankly nutty. If these academics are as corruptible as you seem to claim, why would they choose the low reward side of the debate?
You seem to be trying to inject some false "balance" to this.
Climate change science isn't the result of a small cabal of academics, it's a vast interdisciplinary study involving all fields.
Bias isn't a binary proposition: it's not that since both sides have some bias, they should be equally distrusted. It's that one side has 0.02 bias and the other side has 0.6 bias, so weigh accordingly.
Study of the history and effects of climate change is indeed a vast interdisciplinary science. But the study of cause is much more narrowly focused.
Of those scientists who have backgrounds that would qualify them to contribute in this particular area, the consensus is not at all clear. But the ones who seem most concerned about rapid AGW appear to be those with skin in the game.
Are you serious? The "alien" here is just a metaphor to convey a basic concept. It couldn't even be used as an authority if we wanted it to be-- it's completely made up!
I never understood why "climate change" advocates don't see past this glaringly obvious fact: almost every time there is some action advocated to "stop climate change", the source comes back to some progressive group. They are always advocating some pet progressive agenda like mass transit, human population reduction, or the reduction of living standards by forcing energy use reductions. Hello??? It's so frustrating.
We need to find ways to reduce CO2 emissions that will improve the lives of people instead of making them worse. How about massive R&D into nuclear power to make it safer, education about radiation so that people are not so irrationally afraid of it, fusion power research, a carbon tax and research into how to remove CO2 from the atmosphere so that, if we can get cheaper power, we can use it to fix the problem. The Tesla Roadster and the Model S is how you get people to switch to electric cars, not at huge gas tax (they tried that in Europe, btw).
> I never understood why "climate change" advocates don't see past this glaringly obvious fact: almost every time there is some action advocated to "stop climate change", the source comes back to some progressive group. They are always advocating some pet progressive agenda like mass transit, human population reduction, or the reduction of living standards by forcing energy use reductions. Hello??? It's so frustrating.
That's not quite true - there are plenty of non-partisan and even conservative groups that accept climate change. For example, the US military and the Department of Defense: not exactly a progressive think tank. Yet they accept the reality of the situation, since they are pragmatic and actually have to deal directly with the consequences. They study how climate change affects world stability and combat and are actively preparing for it. Many oil companies have finally admitted to the facts and tip toe around the issue for PR safety. Even Trump is building sea walls around his vulnerable properties while milking the political benefits from denialism.
As for your second paragraph, yes, I agree, let's focus on the implementation. There's a lot of imperfect solutions that we need to sort through. I just wish we could already all be at that stage.
> Certainly not the CEI's (Competitive Enterprise Institute) who distributed your figure.
The CEI is only one of many places that "distribute" this figure. As you can see from the lower left of the figure, it was actually made by John Christy, a climate scientists who showed it in testimony before the US House of Representatives in 2015. A good discussion of the chart and what it means is given in the Judith Curry article I linked to in another post upthread.
Notice that all the graphs in the previous charts have that weird step where warming stops for while around 2005 then suddenly shoots up after 2015 to get back to predicted levels? Your graphs end at 2014.
The US east coast has post-glacial rebound and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown to compound their sea-level problems. But most the rise is nothing special compared the rest of the world, which is the worst part of this.
Calculating what the sea level rise will be if certain amount of ice melts is quite complicated because of gravitational attraction due to the large mass of the ice, changes in ocean circulation due to the temperature and saltfree content of ice meltwaters, change in the earths axis of rotation due to ice melt, change in ocean currents, etc.
When part of the Greenland ice sheet melts the global mean sea level rises, but it is likely to cause sea level drops in some places around the northern Atlantic. How and where is going to be almost impossible to model and we will just have to wait and see how it plays out. Journal articles here [1,2]
Unfortunately no, not here. The metaphor I've heard is continent as couch cushion: the glacier was "sitting" on the upper part of North America, pushing up the edges. Now that weight is gone, the coasts are dropping slightly.
Ah, that’s interesting and believable. Do you know where you heard that?
I found this article, which talks about a slightly different effect: If Antarctic ice melts more quickly than arctic ice, then the Antarctic land rebound will shove southern-hemisphere water north, raising sea levels in the northern hemisphere. The opposite effect happens if arctic ice melts before Antarctic ice.
The article doesn't even mention the effect of gravity, which is also significant. Ocean water is currently gravitationally attracted to the ice caps, and when an ice cap disappears, all that "bunched up" water will spread around the globe. This effect reduces sea level rise in a large area around the ice cap, and increases it everywhere else.
It depends on where you are. If you were underneath the ice sheet (which is Long Island and further north), then you are rebounding since the ice was pushing down on you. If you were further south, then you are slowly sinking due to the rebalancing of weight.
