What does Trump as President mean for Climate Change research??

[donsutherland1]

Basic research, which is often largely funded by the government, has led to the development/advance of knowledge that paved the way for breakthroughs in a range of areas.

Some details concerning the impact of NIH research funding:

https://www.nigms.nih.gov/Education/Pages/factsheet_CuriosityCreatesCures.aspx

[BillT]

12 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

Telephone... modern day smartphones are a DIRECT result of the advances in miniaturization made by NASA in the 1960s and 1970s.  This isn't even up for debate.

and that had nothing to do with inventing the phone and the advances were NOT government subsidy to the phones, it was the government developing something for their use that also had practical applications elsewhere......NOT a subsidy directly to the phone makers.

[BillT]

13 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

Basic research, which is often largely funded by the government, has led to the development/advance of knowledge that paved the way for breakthroughs in a range of areas.

Some details concerning the impact of NIH research funding:

https://www.nigms.nih.gov/Education/Pages/factsheet_CuriosityCreatesCures.aspx

TY for the effort but it is irrelevant to the point being discussed.

[pazzo83]

2 minutes ago, BillT said:

and that had nothing to do with inventing the phone and the advances were NOT government subsidy to the phones, it was the government developing something for their use that also had practical applications elsewhere......NOT a subsidy directly to the phone makers.

But that's the whole point - gov't research has broad benefits.

[BillT]

21 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

But that's the whole point - gov't research has broad benefits.

NOT always, and certainly not in the early decades of this nation when it was being built by the citizens with NO help from government. countless government research projects are 100% waste and serve no real purpose for humanity.

[JC-CT]

I think it's good that this is a loosely moderated forum, as differences of opinion are healthy and beneficial to scientific advancement.

However, when someone repeatedly posts verifiably false information without providing any proof to support their assertions (because, of course, there is none) and then questions basic facts that have been well-documented and calls them utter nonsense, I think it may be justified to provide said poster with a timeout at a minimum.

That, or we should elect him president.

[chubbs]

Below is a breakdown of Federal R+D spending showing the minimal amount that is spent on energy and a second chart showing how the energy spend is apportioned, with solar and coal getting similar amounts. This is why a carbon tax is needed. The Federal research support is beneficial, but it is not going to drive renewable energy into the market. Much more important is increasing commercial application and economy of scale to drive down cost.

http://insideenergy.org/2016/12/07/the-uncertain-future-of-energy-rd/

[pazzo83]

28 minutes ago, JC-CT said:

I think it's good that this is a loosely moderated forum, as differences of opinion are healthy and beneficial to scientific advancement.

However, when someone repeatedly posts verifiably false information without providing any proof to support their assertions (because, of course, there is none) and then questions basic facts that have been well-documented and calls them utter nonsense, I think it may be justified to provide said poster with a timeout at a minimum.

That, or we should elect him president.

Outstanding.

[csnavywx]

5 hours ago, pazzo83 said:

Outstanding.

It is getting pretty exasperating having to re-re-re-retread the same basic stuff over and over again and have claims made with zero proof or evidence.

To be clear, speculation is fine - so long as it is presented as such.

[BillT]

21 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

It is getting pretty exasperating having to re-re-re-retread the same basic stuff over and over again and have claims made with zero proof or evidence.

To be clear, speculation is fine - so long as it is presented as such.

please point out anything i have written that is false???....i see several personal comments but no rebuttal of any points.

[csnavywx]

Just now, BillT said:

please point out anything i have written that is false???....i see several personal comments but no rebuttal of any points.

I'm not just picking on you. This has happened on this forum (and eastern, in its day) MANY times over. And I have explained (along with many folks, including ORH and Don) quite a few things recently. Is there any specific point on which you would like to be addressed?

In addition, I would like to ask you a question. What evidence would have to be presented to you to convince you human-caused climate change were real? What's your standard of proof on this matter? I ask because if I take the time to do all of this, I want to know that I'm provoking a genuine, intellectually honest conversation -- a good faith conversation instead of chasing points into the weeds or engaging in cheap point-scoring.

[BillT]

9 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

I'm not just picking on you. This has happened on this forum (and eastern, in its day) MANY times over. And I have explained (along with many folks, including ORH and Don) quite a few things recently. Is there any specific point on which you would like to be addressed?

In addition, I would like to ask you a question. What evidence would have to be presented to you to convince you human-caused climate change were real? What's your standard of proof on this matter? I ask because if I take the time to do all of this, I want to know that I'm provoking a genuine, intellectually honest conversation -- a good faith conversation instead of chasing points into the weeds or engaging in cheap point-scoring.

ok, since the climate is just a set of statistics derived from the previous 30 years weather data for a given area......will you accept that to alter the climate one must control the weather? so to say that humans are the cause of climate change i need some evidence we control the weather....also i need an explanation of the FACT that the climate constantly changes with or without  humans being here IF humans are causing it now what was causing it before us? the natural state of the "climate" is constant change......so evidence that we humans shut off the other factors and took control would be very solid evidence i indeed would accept.

[so_whats_happening]

haha so I guess this thread turned into a banter thread? I get it climate change (anthropogenic warming) is tough topic and many have strong opinions on this subject, I personally am not 100% on the anthropogenic side of what is causing this change its a tough call. My biggest issue with saying it is solely human based is past data. I get we have ice core samples and that we have data from trees as well as other sources where we can then interpolate an idea of what the climate was like during that time but its hard for me to wrap my mind around how this data is 100% accurate even at 80% accuracy, which i get there is variability, but how can we more accurately predict what has happened based off these regional locations from data, the worlds climate, then we can predict what will occur in the coming years? 

From briefly reading some of the IPCC articles, while in school, their projections from modeling have not always met up to what was predicted which says to me there is larger internal variability within the Earth system then first thought and that AGW may contribute somewhat to this but not in the extent we seem to think does. Just a personal thought, I may be completely pulling strings, but it just just doesnt fully click for me in that aspect again not to say we havent contributed to the overall warming impact on the Earth, but is it possible we could be throwing a curveball that the climate wasn't expecting?

I like the idea of implementation of green energy, to me it still doesnt seem quite up to par to fully 100% go over and handle energy needs, but nonetheless adding it in to businesses as an incentive to switch and offer the option to more housing communities are are being built across the country seems to be a better start. I know that was what the old administration was trying to get going by giving tax breaks to those who have changed, but with this new administration are we going to see the same or just completely take this idea off the table?

Topic at hand has there been any talks about climate besides signing executive orders for reducing spending in international women care and talks about taxing of the wall?

[csnavywx]

8 minutes ago, BillT said:

ok, since the climate is just a set of statistics derived from the previous 30 years weather data for a given area......will you accept that to alter the climate one must control the weather? so to say that humans are the cause of climate change i need some evidence we control the weather....also i need an explanation of the FACT that the climate constantly changes with or without  humans being here IF humans are causing it now what was causing it before us? the natural state of the "climate" is constant change......so evidence that we humans shut off the other factors and took control would be very solid evidence i indeed would accept.

This standard is basically impossible to meet and isn't claimed by any credible climate scientist (or meteorologist). We don't shut off natural variability. Natural variability is proven to exist, is significant and has to be accounted for. I also can't grant you that altering climate requires weather control. The best analogy as to why I can't do this is the relationship of steroids and baseball. You can definitively link increased steroid usage to home runs over time, but you can't point to an individual home run and say "that's due to steroid usage". The steroid usage definitely influences those home runs in both frequency and distance, but isn't the only or direct sole cause. There's a little bit of wiggle room there with very extreme events, but the point basically stands. Climate is an average and its change is represented by a change in trend. Weather is extremely noisy and doesn't always follow that trend on short time scales.

Having said all of this, I can get pretty close -- I can give evidence that human induced change completely overwhelms natural variability in the long run.

You are correct that constant change is normal. That isn't really disputed either. Much time and effort has been put into the field of paleoclimate to document and explain past change. The issue raised is the rate of change.

I'll delve a bit further into the paleoclimate angle, but I'd like to first know if the standard we can meet is going to be good enough to convince you.

[heavy_wx]

47 minutes ago, BillT said:

ok, since the climate is just a set of statistics derived from the previous 30 years weather data for a given area......will you accept that to alter the climate one must control the weather? so to say that humans are the cause of climate change i need some evidence we control the weather....also i need an explanation of the FACT that the climate constantly changes with or without  humans being here IF humans are causing it now what was causing it before us? the natural state of the "climate" is constant change......so evidence that we humans shut off the other factors and took control would be very solid evidence i indeed would accept.

Actually, climate largely determines the weather, in a sense of the likelihood of weather events at a given location. Thus climate is really a probability distribution of weather states at a particular location and tells us what the probability of a particular weather state is for that location. Climate includes of course diurnal cycles, seasonal cycles, and even inter-annual cycles that modulate the probability of weather events at a location. For example, rain events are more likely in southern CA in January than in July due to the climatological mean state of the jet stream being farther south in the winter than in the summer.

Now why is the jet stream farther south in the northern hemisphere during the winter than the summer? According to your logic, weather systems unfold every year in such a way that jet stream is always perturbed south, before retreating to higher latitudes in the winter. Clearly this breaks down when we consider the observation that synoptic scale systems do not follow the same patterns year after year; a casual look at any teleconnection time series will show this.

I think the confusion here may be that what we know about the climate of Earth is based on statistics, counting the frequency of each weather state that occurred over the past few decades and thus determining the empirical probability of each of those weather states. I highlight the word empirical because we can only estimate the true state of the climate based on past observations because it is difficult to directly observe climate. Someone living in a particular location for 50 years may remark anecdotally that maybe winters seem shorter now than in the past, but of course humans are not reliable observers of complex systems such as weather and climate.

As far as humans impacts on climate, it is a well-studied problem that increased concentrations of CO2 increase lower tropospheric temperatures. A lot of scientists also study impacts of increased CO2 on global weather patterns; essentially, they are trying to assess how the probability distribution of weather states (climate) will change as a response. And there are certainly uncertainties in how global weather patterns respond to a changing climate (e.g., aerosols, clouds, resulting radiative transfer feedbacks).

[so_whats_happening]

7 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

This standard is basically impossible to meet and isn't claimed by any credible climate scientist (or meteorologist). We don't shut off natural variability. Natural variability is proven to exist, is significant and has to be accounted for. I also can't grant you that altering climate requires weather control. The best analogy as to why I can't do this is the relationship of steroids and baseball. You can definitively link increased steroid usage to home runs over time, but you can't point to an individual home run and say "that's due to steroid usage". The steroid usage definitely influences those home runs in both frequency and distance, but isn't the only or direct sole cause. There's a little bit of wiggle room there with very extreme events, but the point basically stands. Climate is an average and its change is represented by a change in trend. Weather is extremely noisy and doesn't always follow that trend on short time scales.

Having said all of this, I can get pretty close -- I can give evidence that human induced change completely overwhelms natural variability in the long run.

You are correct that constant change is normal. That isn't really disputed either. Much time and effort has been put into the field of paleoclimate to document and explain past change. The issue raised is the rate of change.

I'll delve a bit further into the paleoclimate angle, but I'd like to first know if the standard we can meet is going to be good enough to convince you.

I like that analogy!

[BillT]

23 minutes ago, heavy_wx said:

Actually, climate largely determines the weather, in a sense of the likelihood of weather events at a given location.

sorry but that simply isnt true in any way.....the PAST climate stats exert no control over the future weather

[heavy_wx]

Just now, BillT said:

sorry but that simply isnt true in any way.....the PAST climate stats exert no control over the future weather

Weather is essential noise about the mean state of the climate. Again, we assess the mean state of the climate by taking averages of the weather over time which removes most of the noise and gives an estimate of the underlying mean. Saying the weather influences climate is like saying the act of flipping a coin changes the underlying probability of flipping heads. Actually, the long term mean of many coin flips reflects the underlying probability of flipping heads or tails. The same is true with weather: averaging many weather events reflects the long term probability of weather events at a given location (climate), instead of the weather events themselves influencing the climate.

Of course there may be some feedbacks between synoptic scale variability and the long term climate, but uncertainties in cloud and aeorosol impacts on radiative forcing make their effects difficult to determine.

[so_whats_happening]

7 minutes ago, BillT said:

sorry but that simply isnt true in any way.....the PAST climate stats exert no control over the future weather

Thats what you got out of that whole post. lol I took it as maybe different wording but weather in turn is climate as climate is the long term average of weather. As csnavywx had stated weather is noise and when they plot on a scale for climatology you get the patterns that usually occur, but when you add the large variabilities (one being ENSO) you create a kink in the normal pattern that sets up. Yes weather is ever changing thus climate is ever changing and what happened originally 30 years is not going to be exactly what happens in the same area now a days but you do still get repeat patterns across the US that play into climatology but with a slight adjustment since the storm will not exactly follow one that came across that area or have a similar impact. There is a lot of variability of course.

[BillT]

11 minutes ago, so_whats_happening said:

Thats what you got out of that whole post. lol I took it as maybe different wording but weather in turn is climate as climate is the long term average of weather. As csnavywx had stated weather is noise and when they plot on a scale for climatology you get the patterns that usually occur, but when you add the large variabilities (one being ENSO) you create a kink in the normal pattern that sets up. Yes weather is ever changing thus climate is ever changing and what happened originally 30 years is not going to be exactly what happens in the same area now a days but you do still get repeat patterns across the US that play into climatology but with a slight adjustment since the storm will not exactly follow one that came across that area or have a similar impact. There is a lot of variability of course.

the climo you talk about is determined by the LAND LOCATION not the weather.....the coast of washington get much rain because of its location, that drives both the weather and the climate stats that follow......further north in the NH = cooler climo stats again because of physical location not the weather stats. those exert impact on the general weather conditions but do NOT cause any particular weather event.

[drstuess]

Weather is also just the redistribution of heat resulting from spatially inhomogeneous heat flux, the increase of entropy of the system.  The heat flux and system characteristics/parameters could be thought of as the climate. In that train of thought, weather results from climate.

[BillT]

41 minutes ago, drstuess said:

Weather is also just the redistribution of heat resulting from spatially inhomogeneous heat flux, the increase of entropy of the system.  The heat flux and system characteristics/parameters could be thought of as the climate. In that train of thought, weather results from climate.

i agree with that, ty, consider this the result of doesnt not equate to being in control of....we are discussing two differing things here using the single word climate.....i agree the climate stats are not the same thing as the overall concept of climate....so again ty i would now like to amend my position in this, the climate STATS are not a force, have no power, and exert no control over the weather.....indeed the overall climate is a huge factor in the type of weather that happens for a given area.

[JC-CT]

On 1/26/2017 at 7:11 PM, csnavywx said:

I ask because if I take the time to do all of this, I want to know that I'm provoking a genuine, intellectually honest conversation -- a good faith conversation instead of chasing points into the weeds or engaging in cheap point-scoring.

I believe your question has been answered.

[pazzo83]

On 1/26/2017 at 8:16 PM, so_whats_happening said:

I like that analogy!

Me too - things like BB's 70+ hr season are like our 2010 Summer or something.

[blizzard1024]

here we go at NOAA.....  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article129716229.html

[JC-CT]

6 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

here we go at NOAA.....  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article129716229.html

yikes

 

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/heartland-institute-experts-react-to-president-obamas-signing-of-the-paris-climate-agreement-on-earth-day

HEARTLAND INSTITUTE EXPERTS REACT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA’S SIGNING OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT ON EARTH DAY
APRIL 22, 2016

“President Barack Obama’s commitment to the Paris agreement, which will be signed without the approval of Congress, is the worst unilateral commitment made by a president since President Lyndon Johnson committed hundreds of thousands of combat troops into Vietnam – without a strategic plan. In spite of the government spending $2.5 billion a year on its climate change science program, government scientists have not been able to produce any meaningful evidence that greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, cause global warming or climate change.

“The global climate models government agencies often use to make unjustified claims significantly overestimate the warming of the atmosphere, where greenhouse warming should occur. Already, without the approval of Congress, the administration has diverted $500 million, largely from needed economic development funds, to U.N. bureaucrats claiming they need the money to ‘fight’ climate change. Climate change has been occurring for hundreds of millions of years, long before there was a United Nations or mankind.

“As the ‘evidence’ for limiting the use of fossil fuels continues to disintegrate, the evidence showing wind and solar energies are unreliable replacements continues to grow. What modern civilization can exist on unreliable electricity to run its medical facilities, subways, elevators, heating and cooling systems, refrigeration, and street and traffic lights? Yet, the administration promotes this disastrous program.

“Thanks to modern technology, the United States, along with neighboring Canada and Mexico, have plenty of clean-burning coal, oil, and natural gas to provide for our energy needs in the foreseeable future. According to the Energy Information Agency, the United States in 2015 imported less than 13 percent of the petroleum (including crude oil, gasoline, etc.) it used from outside of North America. The claim that alternative energy is needed for national defense is as obsolete as flintlock muskets.

“No good can come from this unneeded, costly, and destructive agreement. The egos of the environmental zealots, including key members of the Obama administration, will not be satisfied – until they have destroyed everything modern.”

Kenneth Haapala
President
Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

[pazzo83]

EPA's Climate Science pages are now being dramatically altered.  It's happening...

[heavy_wx]

7 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

EPA's Climate Science pages are now being dramatically altered.  It's happening...

The main page still looks about the same to me.

https://www.epa.gov/climatechange

[ORH_wxman]

On 1/31/2017 at 3:00 PM, JC-CT said:

yikes

 

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/heartland-institute-experts-react-to-president-obamas-signing-of-the-paris-climate-agreement-on-earth-day

HEARTLAND INSTITUTE EXPERTS REACT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA’S SIGNING OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT ON EARTH DAY
APRIL 22, 2016

“President Barack Obama’s commitment to the Paris agreement, which will be signed without the approval of Congress, is the worst unilateral commitment made by a president since President Lyndon Johnson committed hundreds of thousands of combat troops into Vietnam – without a strategic plan. In spite of the government spending $2.5 billion a year on its climate change science program, government scientists have not been able to produce any meaningful evidence that greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, cause global warming or climate change.

“The global climate models government agencies often use to make unjustified claims significantly overestimate the warming of the atmosphere, where greenhouse warming should occur. Already, without the approval of Congress, the administration has diverted $500 million, largely from needed economic development funds, to U.N. bureaucrats claiming they need the money to ‘fight’ climate change. Climate change has been occurring for hundreds of millions of years, long before there was a United Nations or mankind.

“As the ‘evidence’ for limiting the use of fossil fuels continues to disintegrate, the evidence showing wind and solar energies are unreliable replacements continues to grow. What modern civilization can exist on unreliable electricity to run its medical facilities, subways, elevators, heating and cooling systems, refrigeration, and street and traffic lights? Yet, the administration promotes this disastrous program.

“Thanks to modern technology, the United States, along with neighboring Canada and Mexico, have plenty of clean-burning coal, oil, and natural gas to provide for our energy needs in the foreseeable future. According to the Energy Information Agency, the United States in 2015 imported less than 13 percent of the petroleum (including crude oil, gasoline, etc.) it used from outside of North America. The claim that alternative energy is needed for national defense is as obsolete as flintlock muskets.

“No good can come from this unneeded, costly, and destructive agreement. The egos of the environmental zealots, including key members of the Obama administration, will not be satisfied – until they have destroyed everything modern.”

Kenneth Haapala
President
Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

 

 

The Paris agreement is complete trash and a waste of money anyway.

 

It's kind of funny...we trash those in congress ignoring the obvious science of climate change, but then those who advocate to implement the "agreement" completely fail the elementary science of the agreement not actually doing anything...at least anything remotely meaningful.

[JC-CT]

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

 

The Paris agreement is complete trash and a waste of money anyway.

 

It's kind of funny...we trash those in congress ignoring the obvious science of climate change, but then those who advocate to implement the "agreement" completely fail the elementary science of the agreement not actually doing anything...at least anything remotely meaningful.

Will, I wasn't saying anything about his position on the Paris Agreement as a yes or no issue. It is the justification he uses:

"government scientists have not been able to produce any meaningful evidence that greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, cause global warming or climate change"

Or this rhetoric towards the Obama administration:

"The egos of the environmental zealots, including key members of the Obama administration, will not be satisfied – until they have destroyed everything modern."

Whether you agree with the Paris Agreement or not, surely you can agree that this guy shouldn't be anywhere near the NOAA.