[origin_path]

No, they are not. Models vs observations:

https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-mod...

Even the modellers themselves admit this. When they felt a need to re-declare victory a few years ago in response to graphs like that one, even then, their argument was "if we re-calculate the original models with better data then they aren't so inaccurate anymore". It wasn't that the original predictions were correct.

Now look at a graph of temperatures as measured by satellites:

https://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Notice that it has long periods where it moves sideways, despite continuing emissions. Models don't predict these apparently arbitrary pauses.

"But I assume nothing will change your politically motivated opinion that climate change is no big deal."

This is a thought terminating cliché. The default non-political position in any discussion of what should government or society do is always "do nothing". It has to be - think about it. It's always the people agitating for change who are engaged in the process of politics, because it's via the process of politics that change on the level of government policy is enacted.

What's happening here is the opposite; the people saying "default to nothing, we think the need is unproven" are the people taking the default non-political position. It's the people demanding massive enforced changes to people's lives that are engaging in politics. And unfortunately, history teaches that people who insist on totally upending society for long term abstract goals must always be treated with suspicion because that is power, power corrupts, and the ground is full of the skeletons of people who died due to the dreams of despots. What they advertised as concern over some abstract ideal (justice, equality, nation, etc) rapidly became a mere tool to enter and stay in power.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer

> Dr. Roy Spencer, Ph.D.[3] is a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a crank with a major persecution complex. His favored form of pseudoscience is global warming denial, though he has also become known as a proponent of Intelligent Design.

[origin_path]

Is that meant to be a rebuttal? You realize that I'm citing data, not even personal opinions?

It's hilarious that the website is called "rational wiki" by the way. Replies like yours are why we must not geo-engineer the earth. The sort of people who insist it's necessary can't handle data and fall back to ad-hominem, so should not be listened to.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Yep, it is a rebuttal. Climate cranks and their misuse of questionable data should not be taken seriously. Relying on them in your arguments, quoting and defending them is likewise an instant credibility fail.

[origin_path]

Rational wiki are well known cranks therefore you should not cite them for anything. There, done, you have no possible answer to that. Do you now wish to address the actual data?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Rational wiki are well known cranks

Incorrect, they do not fit the criteria. Their pages are extensively sourced and annotated, as is the about section of their site, and the Wikipedia article about them

and while we're at it:

> Spencer holds contrarian views on climate change and intelligent design. These views are rejected by the scientific community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(meteorologist)

[origin_path]

I disagree, they're clearly cranks. It's ad hominem all the way, they're authoritarian sandwich board wearers.

But really, so what? We can't agree on that because it's so subjective, and who cares what some rando Wikipedia editors think? They've got no credibility. That's why you have to drill down to the data, the science, in order to resolve disputes. Spencer provides extensive sources, like the raw data I cited already, he has a long career in publishing scientific papers on climatology. If you think the data I cited is wrong, step up and argue that.

Just face it, you're totally beaten here. Faced with data and evidence compiled by an actual expert, you retreat to "I found some website that tells me to ignore him" because you can't handle the complexity and worldview challenge that comes with the truth: climatology is as far from settled as can be, its central theories are contradicted by actual data (which is why they have to constantly rewrite the history of global temperatures), and the people telling you otherwise are lying to you. It sucks, I know. It sucked for me too when I found this out. But it's true, and sticking your fingers in your ears yelling "wiki says no" won't make it go away. Those are the tactics of children.

[upsidesinclude]

Thanks for that reasoned reply

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Is that sarcasm? That's a 100% oblivious reply.

[hotpotamus]

Why are you linking to one guy's wordpress blog? I think this is the kind of research that might take more than one person. And is his data only coming from satellites? Wouldn't it make more sense to get a variety of sensor data?

[origin_path]

Because that's where I happened to find the graphs? Go right ahead and find the papers if you like. The research in question is simply plotting old model projections on a graph along with satellite temperatures.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to get a variety of sensor data?"

By all means, try it. You'll find that satellites and weather balloons disagree with surface level temperature history. The reason is, climatologists keep editing surface temperature databases to create new 'versions' that create warming trends where none were previously visible. This is not scientific, of course. You're meant to fit your theory to the data, not data to the theory. The satellite data presented there is much less tampered with.

[hotpotamus]

How do I know the satellite data wasn't tampered with?

[origin_path]

Good question! In fact some satellite datasets are tampered with. There's a good example documented here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOHrYY3yAGE

The RSS dataset showed no warming for nearly twenty years - a problem, it's not meant to show that. Once the data was released, people with experience with how climatology operates (like Dr Spencer) predicted the data would soon be revised to show warming, somehow. That's exactly what happened. The original data used confidence intervals that widened over time, to reflect degrading instruments and orbits. In the new data the CIs were gone and the new trend line was simply the uppermost value allowed within the CI for each point. Because the CIs were widening, this trick created an appearance of warming where previously there hadn't been any.

Generally, the only way to be sure something isn't being messed with is to review the methodologies. The tampering is public, it's not a secret and they don't hide the fact that they do it, they just don't mention it to the general public and rely on the media to not report what they're doing. It works: awareness of this problem is incredibly low. Still, you can compare the different 'versions' they release over time to see the enormous magnitude of the changes, or you can read the occasional reports that surface in outlets like Nature when really massive revisions occur, and then you can remember that scientists aren't meant to do that. They're meant to add error bars if they have doubts about their data and propagate that uncertainty through to their final graphs and predictions. Climatologists don't do this. Instead they argue that they know temperatures should be going up, so if it isn't, there must be something wrong with the data. Nothing a quick model can't fix.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17700

"An apparent pause in global warming might have been a temporary mirage, according to recent analysis. Global average temperatures have continued to rise throughout the first part of the twenty-first century, researchers report on 5 June in Science. That finding, which contradicts the 2013 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is based on an update of the global temperature records maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The previous version of the NOAA data set had showed less warming during the first decade of the millennium."

[hotpotamus]

Yes, but how do I know the original data wasn't faked to begin with?

[origin_path]

You don't but this is a classic problem to do with proving guilt vs innocence, isn't it. You have to look for explicit evidence of tampering, instead of trying to prove a negative. That is, start from the assumption that the various actors began in a well meaning place, and then react to evidence of wrongdoing, rather than assume wrongdoing from the start and then try to prove innocence. Otherwise you can never bottom out.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Why are you linking to one guy's wordpress blog?

One particular guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(meteorologist)

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer

See particularly Wikipedia:

> "Spencer holds contrarian views on climate change and intelligent design. These views are rejected by the scientific community."

Which, if you translate back from the dry language that Wikipedia uses, says "this guy's a nut".