I don't do much blogging on climate any more because the conversation has become unproductive and at the end of the day very little changes in our understanding of the key questions (and 99.9% of media writers don't even know what the key questions are)
- People are still extrapolating from tail of the distribution weather events and attempting to use these as evidence of climate change
- People are still claiming trends (eg drought or more hurricanes) that don't actually exist when one looks at the data
- Most scientists still think the actual direct sensitivity of temperatures to CO2 is low
- Most catastrophic warming forecasts are still driven by assumptions of very large net positive feedback effects that multiply small amounts of direct CO2 effect many times
- We still don't have a good handle on the value of these feedbacks, or even their net sign. They are the single most important variable in this public policy debate, & media never mentions them.
- And we still are doing all our work based on surface temperature data that sucks
To this last point, the article below highlights issues with the US surface temperature data (which is in turn likely the best in the world). It discusses two problems with the data
First, the signal to noise ratio in the data set is low. Specifically, almost the entirety of the 20th century warming signal we are trying to measure is in the manual adjustments we are making to the data -- the raw data shows very little temperature rise
Some skeptics will falsely argue that this makes this means that the historic temperature rise is "fake", but that is the wrong conclusion -- though the warming may be exaggerated. (Satellites, using a totally different methodology, shows warming too but less)
What it means is that the data is not of high quality, and we likely under-estimate our errors as scientists are likely over-estimating their confidence in the various manual adjustments they make.
The second problem highlighted here is the disappearance of stations and the infill of missing station data with what are essentially educated guesses. The FIRST investment we should have made c. 1990 was not in windmill subsidies but in a new temperature measurement network.
There are still problems in the network (though the one I documented below has since been fixed). But it is inexcusable that our measurement of such a key variable in policy debate should be getting worse. coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/20…
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Another Phoenix sunset, courtesy of megatons of dust in the air. No Photoshop, no filters, straight into the cell phone camera on my run. Zoom in on the second two, the detail is almost fractal like a Mandelbrot set (lol I first wrote Mandalorian set) #phoenix#sunset
I have given up ever seeing the @aclu defend property rights. But I find their abandonment of the First Amendment over the last several years to be depressing and has caused me to cease my long history of donations to them
Not to mention the fact that our government is shutting down businesses, creating night time curfews, locking people in their home, restricting their movement, invading their privacy w/ testing, collecting personal data in restaurants-- and the @aclu has not said a word about it
Abortion rights supporters (I am one) are super-pious about the sanctity of one's body & privacy, except when they are not. If they really believed what they say, they would be opposing many government COVID interventions on the same grounds they oppose abortion restrictions
We had an amazing sunset tonight. Cell phone camera does not do it justice but look at the detail of oranges and reds in the clouds. This understates what we saw #sunset#Phoenix
This is, by the way, one of the reasons to live in Phoenix. I have lived many places. I have seen sunsets many places, including on the ocean. But nothing matches Phoenix. The secret sauce, I think, is the megatons of dust we have in the air from the desert plus the low humidity.
This is why it is good to always have a batch of cocktails mixed up in the fridge. "Honey, drop everything and bring the cocktails and let's watch the sunset."
Because formally publishing this would result in an earth-shattering barrage from @UniversalPics lawyers raining down on her head (see exception at end), here is my daughter's full children's book version of Jurassic Park.
I have been predicting for years a new prohibitionism, this time driven from the Left rather than the Right. I see government-provided healthcare used to justify all sorts of micro-behavioral interventions in the name of reducing costs to public spending
One small example is motorcycle helmet use, where attempts to mandate helmet use are often justified by arguing that helmet use would decrease public health costs from costly head injuries in motorcycle accidents
I can just see some folks nodding their head and saying, "good, they should mandate that." And the same folks are also likely wanting to ban soda pop, snack foods, and a zillion other things in the name of reducing public health care costs.
The "jobs saved or created" stats in the media are totally abused. When they like an industry, the number has everyone who even tangentially touches it, with multipliers added (eg sports teams). When they don't like it, they use the narrowest possible definition
My guess is if these same folks talk about "green energy", suddenly wind and solar will employ millions based on a far more expansive definition. The sugar industry is a master of this defending their tariffs. Personally I ignore any jobs saved or lost number I see in the media
I wrote this in response to Matt Ygglesias, but this is a bipartisan game. I can't even remember the name of that pipeline that was being blocked, but defenders said it would create some absurd number of jobs.