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[itisnotlogical]

The horizontal axis of the graph is on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years. There is clearly a cycle happening on a massive timescale, before the present (as the horizontal axis is labelled "years before the present"). At 0 years before present—the modern day—there is a massive spike in atmospheric CO2, hundreds of ppm above the uninterrupted cycle for hundreds of thousands of years before. Coincidentally, in the range of the graph, temperature pretty closely follows CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

Now, the graph is poorly-constructed because a one-pixel-wide line looks like an error. But if the reader assumes the graph was correctly made, and has good eyesight, it's pretty easy to read and understand the implications of.

[wobbly]

Eh, clear to you. I put out the random challenge to show it to a random stranger & see if it's clear to them or if they go WTF does this mean. (As in WTF does that graph mean rather then why is a random stranger shoving graphs in my face).

[Frumple]

Also somewhat helpful is to check the current CO2 ppm levels (which are actually higher than that chart goes ). Then you can really look back at the chart and go "~135% of the highest amount recorded in last ~half million years say what?"

[Orange Wizard]

Eh, clear to you. I put out the random challenge to show it to a random stranger & see if it's clear to them or if they go WTF does this mean. (As in WTF does that graph mean rather then why is a random stranger shoving graphs in my face).

Random strangers would probably be put off by any graph, really. This one's good in any context where the thin red line can be pointed out and explained.

[wobbly]

Was about to post a reply then took another look & got what maniac & itisnotlogical were saying. The graph is poorly presented to see the last spike. A simple bit of white spacing would probably highlight that. The point still stands it's not going to be obvious to most people whether you see it or not.

Edit: & by all means point out that thin red line & explain it to people. Do you actually understand what it means? Will they get it? Will they believe you?

[SalmonGod]

And while the numbers associated with climate change science are severe, and it likely is the most dire issue, it is far from the only dire issue facing the environment due to human activity.  I kind of wish it would step down a notch sometimes, even, because I get the impression many people at this point automatically think "climate change" when someone says "environment".  But we have plasticized dead zones the size of Texas in our oceans, rampant deforestation and habitat loss, huge chemical spills that wipe out most life from major fresh waterways with regularity, we literally pulverize mountains into rubble to get at coal, and we had another oil spill in the gulf just this past weekend.  I very deliberately use the term " environmental destruction" instead of climate change whenever mentioning the environment as an issue.  Because it doesn't really matter what your stance on climate change is.  Shit would still be fucked up enough without it to be alarming.  Environmentalism needs to elevate itself as a political agenda in general, independent of climate change science.

[mainiac]

There is a bit of instinct to dig in your heels when climate change is clearly a problem but some people deny it.

[Frumple]

I... pretty sure it does, SG? Certainly most of the literature and whatnot I've encountered throughout my life notes and occasionally puts extra emphasis that stuff, too. Hell, even most of the successful environmental movement related legislature I'm aware of that's got through is revolving around that sort of thing. S'just, well. Climate change gets the most attention for a reason.

Also not just plasticized dead zones! We got other shit going down, too. Some of it even very clearly man made, heh.

[Max™]

And while the numbers associated with climate change science are severe, and it likely is the most dire issue, it is far from the only dire issue facing the environment due to human activity.  I kind of wish it would step down a notch sometimes, even, because I get the impression many people at this point automatically think "climate change" when someone says "environment".  But we have plasticized dead zones the size of Texas in our oceans, rampant deforestation and habitat loss, huge chemical spills that wipe out most life from major fresh waterways with regularity, we literally pulverize mountains into rubble to get at coal, and we had another oil spill in the gulf just this past weekend.  I very deliberately use the term " environmental destruction" instead of climate change whenever mentioning the environment as an issue.  Because it doesn't really matter what your stance on climate change is.  Shit would still be fucked up enough without it to be alarming.  Environmentalism needs to elevate itself as a political agenda in general, independent of climate change science.

Well, in my case I absolutely agree that the floating plastic continents, coal in general (ever worked in a coal plant? I did for a couple weeks, made about a grand a week at 18, which is INSANE, the pores in my nose are still fucked up, fuck coal), deforestation, overhunting, habitat destruction, and shit like the new oil spill (really? I didn't even know about that, fuck) are huge problems. I do not think it is wise to keep burning through fossil fuels, and love our little animal bros that have to share the planet with us. It just frustrates me more seeing people bitch about "carbon footprints" though. Even the AR5 report had to note that plant productivity has been enhanced by CO2, and would be even in the most dire scenarios. Colder climactic periods sucked, by the way. It's no concidence human civilization didn't take off until the most recent glacial period ended.

Smokey the Tailpipe says "Remember kids, only YOU can prevent glaciation, so give a hoot, pollute!"

Spoilers because it's cumbersome and I doubt most of those here care about this discussion, honestly my heart isn't too into it either, as I fear it will just lead to disappointment, I'm mostly just compelled to explain why allowing politicians to vote on scientific research mean the results are no longer science. I was bummed to learn how much of the IPCC reports end up getting cut out and filtered for political reasons in the production of the summary for policymakers. Seeing the word consensus brought up as if it matters in the least for science is another source of disappointment I've had to get used to.

Spoiler: Orange Wizard (click to show/hide)

How do you determine the temperature of points with no measurements?

Measure them, obviously

Sounds obvious, but there isn't as full a coverage of temperature stations as one would hope, in situ measurements are surprisingly sparse, but it is good to have them to compare with satellite observations, though again, these are only useful for informing about local conditions around the instrument.

My real point though is that it is a calculated value which doesn't uniquely represent some aspect of the climate system

It represents the overall temperature of the planet

Again, I'm not sure what your background is, but that isn't a well defined thing.

I've long since discovered that trying to do this is futile. The fact that it is discussed in terms of a consensus should have been the giveaway, but I'm dense. You don't change a political position with science, and trying to argue politics on the merits of science goes nowhere.

Yeah rising temperatures are all politically motivated, definitely no solid science and observations involved

Temperature changes are not unusual. Arguing that they are catastrophic and that we have to enact various policies is, well, politics.

It was for a school project ... I set it up in the bathroom

This was before it clicked that I was wasting time trying to argue science in a political discussion, of course.

I'm sure it's because all the scientists involved are disgusting treehuggers too, your bathroom science is 100% as reliable as any professional studies

My bathroom science was science, and reproducible. It was done to test predicted behavior according to a hypothesis, and the results are what they are. I never said it was flawless, I specifically pointed out a couple of the problems I found in my own work, because that is what you should do, bend over backwards to try and show the other guy where you may be wrong. I didn't go into the full depth because you probably don't care, like I said, it was just a matter of honesty that made me feel I should explain what I had done.

Ideally you would run your own experiments.

*vague scary sounding stuff without even a chart to point at*

http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/style/images/uploads/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

That looks like the GISTEMP chart, so here's the newer one.

Notice the difference between the LOTI and the stations chart, btw.

Plus a zoom on the more recent period.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

That's still just trivia though, and the big scary chart I was talking about pointing at was the one with the model spaghetti showing doom-and-gloom land in the future, the temperature recovery from the cool period in the 1700~1800s is just an (average of) observation(s with interpolation) and of course the anthropogenic CO2 hypothesis only claims that the warming since the 40s or 50s was mostly/largely manmade. You have read all the reports right?

Spoiler: redwallzyl (click to show/hide)

I like the longer term graph. it really shows the connection. Pictured Glacial and Inter glacial periods shown by tempriture over the last 450,000 years and CO2 concentrations.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/400000yearslarge1.gif

you could also look at it simmply as a disruption of the dynamic equilibrium of the energy balance. see diagram below.

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/images/earth_rad_budget_kiehl_trenberth_1997_big.gif

Notice in that chart that the cooler atmosphere is listed as a source of energy for the warmer surface, and if you're interested refer back to the post where I explained that I had just tested the idea that averaging input across a period of time reproduced the behavior of a system with full input over half the time. The reason the atmosphere needs to supply additional energy to the surface is because of the unrealistic averaging method used. So trying to fix an unphysical averaging of input requires introducing what amounts to a violation of thermodynamics (but then when you start to argue this it gets dialed back to "well it's preventing cooling" and so forth until you end up at the greenhouse insulation metaphor. I tested that too, some of the boxes I had the thermometer and testing materials in had a film layer which intercepted light but allowed warmed air to escape through the sides, the other boxes trapped warm air inside.

Unsurprisingly the sealed boxes reached a higher peak and maintained a higher average (note of course that the averages are of the same system over time, which is a sensible representation of the energy remaining within the system, unlike if I had averaged sealed and vented boxes, or averaged the 4xbulb tests with the 2x bulb tests or whatnot) because that is actually how a greenhouse works: preventing convection.

Again though, that doesn't matter because I'm trying to use scientific findings in a political discussion.

The problem with the first graph is that humans aren't programmed to see a thin vertical line (right at the end) and think "holy shit!"  It takes years of rigorous training to make people crap their pants if they see that.

Well, that and to make them not ask questions about the other higher peaks, what the method used to determine these temperatures is, what part of the world they represent, what possible sources of error there are, or the reason why sometimes CO2 changes preceded temperature changes, and sometimes they followed them. We need scared voters, not informed ones, after all.

Spoiler: Reelya (click to show/hide)

Perhaps it was symptomatic of the "science" you were doing not being very good, rather than a corrupt system that ignores alternate views.

You had two different arrangements of heating/cooling, which gave different results. If you heat something all the time, there's twice as much time for the residual heat to actively dissipate. I'm not sure what you are saying about this in relation to climate science. You doing some bathroom heating experiment is clearly not going to trump laboratories who've studied this under more controlled conditions.

Valid points, I did consider them though. I used 240 W worth of bulbs (not exactly 240 Watts impinging on the targets of course, just that value) of the same type from the same package, which I tested turning on for half an hour, and an hour, with half an hour/an hour off. I checked temperatures during this process so I could monitor the profile of warming and cooling.

I also used 120 W worth of bulbs, same types, from the same package, in varied orders to account for possible bulb quality variation, for an hour/two hours on. I checked temperatures during this process at the same intervals I checked with the 240 W tests. I performed these tests several times over several weeks, always leaving time for the room to cool to the same starting temperature between tests, varying the order of the tests, and deliberately doing them at the same time in the early morning with the same outside temperatures to attempt to account for heat dissipation through the walls.

I did various runs with a tub holding a small amount of water, with the first bags I had tried to inflate with CO2 (some messy baking soda attempts bleh) and later with the sealed in soda bottle method because it gave the most confidence that I could get very high CO2 concentrations in the bags. I was using styrofoam medical shipping containers with a vent in the top of the box that had a layer of plastic from the same freezer bags over it, with a vented box and a sealed box. I also tested altering the albedo of the containers by lining them with black plastic trash bags to dermine what effect there was. I tested with the tops completely off, with intact tops on, with the window unblocked by any plastic. I tested having the thermometer directly on the bottom of the box, on top of the tub, against the inside of the box, and as I recall I wound up using a toothpick with the thermometers hanging from them. Naturally I switched thermometers between tests to account for that source of error.

Finally I compiled all my data, and used it to determine the most reliable method to control for the effect I was testing, and performed another series of runs with the sealed/vented top, dry tub upside down with the termometer on it so air could flow around it, with the CO2/room air bag obscuring the window vent from the interior of the box.

Using a light bulb for the sun, and filling a small room with CO2 from a coke bottle to try and prove or disprove something about atmospheric CO2 is frankly idiotic and has nothing to do with the actual phenomena. The problem with the closed-room system is that all the light turns into heat energy. The actual "greenhouse effect" is about visible light that should get emitted into space, but gets reflected back to Earth because of particles like CO2. Since in yourclosed room, all light gets absorbed (by the walls if nothing else), the amount of CO2 would not make any difference to the energy emission rate.

I wasn't using it for the sun, just as a controllable energy source. The CO2 was contained inside of a large freezer bag, and mostly an afterthough because I couldn't actually remove CO2 from the room, fill it entirely with CO2, and so forth. It struck me that I could test using the bag+coke bottle apparatus so I repeated the runs with it.

Incidentally the radiative greenhouse effect states that the visible light which passes through the atmosphere and strikes the ground is the emitted as longer wavelength infrared, some of which is supposed to be absorbed by the atmosphere, reradiated back to the surface, and somehow warm it further.

The purpose of the window vent with the freezer bag plastic over it was to allow the light in so I could do the vented/sealed study, but I did coincidentally test the "IR trapping" concept to some extent, freezer bags are visible light transparent (mostly) and have a decent portion of infrared absorption. This no doubt reduced the effectiveness of my CO2 bag apparatus, but it is what it is.[/quote]

Spoiler: wobbly (click to show/hide)

Not an attack on what your saying. I agree with questioning everything. Especially things that become well known "facts". Problem as I see it is decisions are being made that run counter to best know information/theory. & that's the realm of politics, psychology & such rather then science.

Well, like I said, I've been following the IPCC reports and associated discussion since they came out. Ultimately there are problems with physics as described by physicists and engineers, and the physics as described by climate scientists. This is a problem I have with both "sides" of the discussion. The supposed skeptics are just as bad about attacking someone when they point out flaws with the underlying assumptions. They'd much rather argue that "it is happening, but it isn't as much/isn't bad/isn't caused by us" than consider basic flaws in the model put forth by Arrhenius and repeated over and over since then.

Ultimately the CO2 back-radiation argument relies on using a flawed method of calculating what the temperature of the planet should be (by averaging the input over a full rotation/the full surface) and then tries to solve the problem that the planet isn't actually ~255 K by introducing a way for parts of the atmosphere to trap energy and then through roundabout efforts to avoid violating thermodynamics they claim it is capable of heating up the surface by emitting radiation it intercepts back, adding to the available energy there. It is explicit in that Trenberth energy budget posted above. ~239 input, 168 at the surface, which is then recycled with the atmosphere and latent heat from water and whatnot so it emits 324 back to the surface, which then emits 390 itself, with various portions being absorbed again, and ultimately ~239 making it back out to space.

I don't know why the idea of emissions from the cooler atmosphere making the warmer surface heat up is acceptable to so many people, but the lengths they will go to argue around admitting it is impossible are remarkable.

As I found from my own experiments, the temperature profiles and average temperatures of systems with averaged energy input over a period of time and higher cyclical energy inputs are not similar, and the higher input/half time tests had a higher average, suggesting that the problem of explaining the surface temperature being higher than calculations say it should be from averaged energy input is a problem with the use of averaged energy input rather than a physical effect. A corrected energy budget is possible without introducing this back-radiation heating effect, but that is something which apparently nobody involved in the climate discussion wants to hear.

Why? Because it's about politics, not facts.

It's weird because the experiment is fun to talk about and was fun to do. Science is fun, and something which you can literally do in your back yard or bathroom or kitchen. As long as you remember what Feynman said, you'll be fine.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi.

I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to do as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf

Unfortunately it ends up bringing in the political parts, there are people who are more or less inclined to believe me because of what their favored politicians say. I'd much rather be so doubted that other people tried the experiment, came to me with their findings, explained what they did differently, and so forth, than be believed because I happen to fall in with certain preconceptions.

Vote Me 2016: Doubt is not a dirty word, but [REDACTED] is.

[mainiac]

3/10 trying too hard to troll. 

[smjjames]

And [REDACTED] is what, 'compromise'?

[Max™]

It's when you [REDACTED] on a nun's [REDACTED] and then [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with a croissant and [REDACTED] it all over [REDACTED], I think.

Also, it's really sad that the first thing I thought when I found something about the most recent oil spill was "oh, well, it's only 100,000 barrels"... dammit BP.

3/10 trying too hard to troll. 

Me? Not even 5/7? Honestly not even sure what came across as trolling there.

[wobbly]

Seeing the word consensus brought up as if it matters in the least for science is another source of disappointment I've had to get used to.

Hey, you're posting in a politics thread so you've gotta expect some politcal speak back but feel free to bitch about it, that's also par for the course. If I was a blunt person (which I am) I'd say your posts have contained as much political speak as actual science, so fair is fair. Reread them again if you don't believe me.

[Orange Wizard]

I'm mostly just compelled to explain why allowing politicians to vote on scientific research mean the results are no longer science

The Climate Change Research Bill 2015 failed 24-88, meaning scientific consensus is now in denial of global warming

That's not how science works. The politicians are voting on policies, not research

Ideally you would run your own experiments.

Um, why? I can see empirical data that already exists. It's really cool that you're willing to test things yourself, but a bathroom is not a planet.

That's still just trivia though

He says, having linked a bunch of charts showing temperatures skyrocketing

You have read all the reports right?

Have you? There's like a million of the bloody things. Ain't nobody got time for that.

that doesn't matter because I'm trying to use scientific findings in a political discussion

Why? Because it's about politics, not facts.

Fuck's sake man, we have thousands of scientists who do this shit for a living telling us that temperatures are rising fast, our atmospheric carbon levels are absolutely obscene, and the two are inextricably linked.
Then you're sitting here in the wake of the hottest year on record saying, "nuh uh the scientists are all politicians and don't know how to science, I know this because I puffed some balloons around in my bathroom, everything will be daijoubu".

And [REDACTED] is what, 'compromise'?

EVERYTHING'S GONNA BE ALL RIGHT NOW

[mainiac]

Me? Not even 5/7? Honestly not even sure what came across as trolling there.

It's like a textbook example of concern trolling:

Even the AR5 report had to note that plant productivity has been enhanced by CO2, and would be even in the most dire scenarios. Colder climactic periods sucked, by the way. It's no concidence human civilization didn't take off until the most recent glacial period ended.

Smokey the Tailpipe says "Remember kids, only YOU can prevent glaciation, so give a hoot, pollute!"

Acting like it's some big fucking surprise that reality is complex as if everyone else was too stupid to realize this.  Concern trolling of the highest order. 

But why limit your august enlightenment to climate science?  How about spreading your amazing thinking to medicine?  For instance people think that sickle cell anemia is bad but even <mainiac cant be arsed to look up a medical journal> admits that it gives resistance to some infectious diseases.  Or how about economics?  People act like unemployment is bad.  But even the latest Federal Reserve forward guidance statement acknowledged that unemployment puts downward pressure on inflation.  Or why not be a true edgelord?  Everyone acts like murder is so bad but every grade school gym teacher can tell you how important physical exercise is to your health!

No, god didn't grant you with some amazing ability to see both sides of the issue that lesser mortals can only look upon in awe.  You are just ignoring the fact that of the two sides of this argument, the importance overwhelmingly weighs more on one side.

2/10 wasn't even intentional trolling.