tom

So now you are proposing reducing free trade?

I'm suggesting that fair trade makes more sense than one sided free trade.
It was the naive belief in "free trade" and the "wisdom of the markets" that allowed the neo-mercantilist states of the far east to usurp the US high tech manufacturing. It was people like you buying the simplistic message of Reagan and his successors that corporations always made the best decisions....without government involvement. And that by letting them run loose everything would come up roses.

Fax points to Germany, a country where industry and government work hand in hand to develop long term strategies....a country which has a balanced economy of exports and imports, and a country where no one handed over entire industry sectors the way the US has.... That inherent good sense has provided their economy the strength to hold up their small weak sisters in the Euro economy as well..

Now you point to the idea that the lack of regulations in the Far East was what drew business from the US. Actually it was the larger profits that corporations could get over the next few quarters. Yes, arrived at by cheaper manufacturing costs due to pollution and labour laws being lower. But once the industry is gone, the far east tigers can ramp up their regulation and costs...as they are doing even now, to respond to unrest in their nations labour force, and the corporations generally have no US domestic alternative. They've given away the entire industry.
The American domestic market is an enormous poker chip. Access to that market should always come with appropriate benefit to the country. And not just lower prices at Wal Mart. Long term, that means that the Us can't run head offices in New York and have 90% of its labour force, and manufacturing offshore. To turn the trend around means replacing the mantra of free trade to one of fair trade. And replacing the wisdom of the markets with a national industrial strategy.
There is still hope that can be accomplished in Green energy. That requires long term thinking, and the ability to nurture the industries development, including long term manufacturing, in the US. Unfortunately unsophisticated understanding of "free trade" and "free enterprise", particularly by politicians and the public, handcuff the US.
The president of Cisco said, "I sometimes worry what my grandchildren will do for a living", when reflecting upon the out sourcing of so many jobs.... Wouldn't it be nice, if instead of only responding to shareholders immediate concerns, that people like him did something about those worries? For that to happen would take a government that has the sense of the Germans, to get involved. And a populace that had more than a fractional surface understanding of what capitalism is really all about.
Capitalism is a system, but countries should not be run for the benefit of capitalists...rather capitalism should benefit the country. Only an active government involvement in setting and guiding policy that ensures long term benefits and nurtures capitalistic efforts to secure the furture of the economy can ensure this happens.
The US may practice free trade (with the exception of agriculture which is the opposite). But no one else does. And for that reason, the trade deficits continue.

and far east jobs are moving back thanks to their increased regulations and fairer pay. I am a buyer, I have done so myself over and over as prices in China have been rising. An example, I used to buy circuit boards in the US and Canada, then for the past 10 years China just destroyed the prices of domestic board manufacturers, they shipped them via air at no extra charge to boot! And they had all new machinery compared to older firms here. But now I am at about half and half with the US share rising rapidly (sorry, my Canadian guy is out in left field still). Local companies have SLOWLY begun to bring industry back as well.

Don't get me wrong, I think it was horrible to ship off jobs like that. The biggest problem is corporate culture, short term profits are more appealing than long term. That mindset is not as prevalent in Germany, though they too have indeed shopped out some of their jobs as well. Free trade is good, but it has to be done on equal footing, the US government should never have allowed such equal trade when China has few pollution laws, they have few patent laws, they have prison labor, child labor laws are lax, it goes on and on and that is a big problem. We agree to a point Ricky, but your suggestion is a bit simplistic, you want free trade but suggest government control this and that, the more government interferes, the less free it is. Notice I am not on the side of complete freedom either, much less so than you however!

Fun article that underscores one of the reasons I'm not worried about climate change.

Something here for both Mach (how to make AGW work for you) and ricky (green jobs will probably go overseas).

This guy took my profiting from the hurricane hysteria and went several million times better. "If solar is going to get all kinds of delicious subsidies and people are going to buy it against their economic best interests...let's make the best-darn solar product out there and then, when the chumps hand over their cash, they'll be handing it over to us." Genius! Can a man disbelieve AGW and still profit from it? Yup.

And ricky...I don't know when this became a free trade thread but Rodgers actually addresses your points. 1- If you enact enough anti-manufacturing policies...manufacturing will go away (see California). 2-Green jobs are manufacturing jobs...how are they going to be any different than DVD players and plastic toys?

X, thanks for the GFDL link. Good stuff there. It looks like modeling has come a long way. But I'm still not seeing the linkages between extreme temps and ice cover to other 'wow' factor indicators (sea level at Nantucket Island, crop yields, water flow through the U.S. etc.). Though one of the GFDL scientists did just do a presentation on AGW and hurricanes where, again very refreshingly, he admits the failure of an older model, concedes that storms will actually be decreasing in number...and happily says that human activity probably hasn't and won't have a detectable effect...and if it becomes detectable will probably add up to just a few % worth of extra intensity and rainfall.

It'll be hard to build a policy overhaul on that...

PCHiway wrote:...one of the GFDL scientists did just do a presentation on AGW and hurricanes where, again very refreshingly, he admits the failure of an older model, concedes that storms will actually be decreasing in number...and happily says that human activity probably hasn't and won't have a detectable effect...and if it becomes detectable will probably add up to just a few % worth of extra intensity and rainfall.

It'll be hard to build a policy overhaul on that...

I'm a bit disappointed in this reporting you've done. "Admits", "concedes", and "happily" are not appropriate words to use in describing a scientific report like this; they color results with emotional baggage that simply isn't there - it's only in your head. Much more importantly, while you may have read the entire report and absorbed everything it says, you've reported only a fraction of it, and not very accurately at that. For instance, contrary to what someone might infer from your reporting, the report also includes this:

...it is likely that greenhouse warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century to be more intense globally and have higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes.

Pray tell if we are "happy" about that. Further, the author didn't say "human activity probably hasn't and won't have a detectable effect" (as you report), he said:

..it is premature to conclude that human activity--and particularly greenhouse warming--has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity.

You report, "and if it becomes detectable will probably add up to just a few % worth of extra intensity and rainfall." But here's the report's words:

The model also supports the notion of a decrease in the overall number of Atlantic hurricanes with projected 21st century climate warming. However, the study also projects approximately a doubling of the frequency of very intense (category 4-5) hurricanes in the Atlantic basin by the end of the 21st century... ... There is some indication from high resolution models of substantial (~100%) increases in the numbers of the most intense hurricanes even if the overall number of tropical storms or hurricanes decreases. ... ...the effect of increasing category 4-5 storms outweighs the reduction in overall hurricane numbers such that we project (very roughly) a 30% increase in potential damage in the Atlantic basin by 2100. This estimate does not include the influence of future sea level rise...

Again, you think the report, as you paraphrase it, "happily says that human activity probably... won't have a detectable effect [on storms]." But here's what it really says when I quote it directly:

...one can ask whether the change in Category 4-5 hurricanes projected by our model is already detectable in the Atlantic hurricane records. Owing to the large interannual to decadal variability of SST and hurricane activity in the basin, we estimate that detection of this projected anthropogenic influence on hurricanes should not be expected for a number of decades.

Not that there's no projected change and not that the change won't be detectable - only that due to natural variability the statistical revelation of the change will take some time to be made apparent.

Bottom line: you cite this report inaccurately, or at best partially. You could have been much more honest in your reporting and still have made a relevant point about models and hurricanes. The article does state that the models aren't good enough to prove anything about the past/current effect of AGW on hurricanes. In that sense it sheds some light on the limitations of modeling as the art stands today. That's important stuff to know. But remember that scientists tend to understate things. I find it surprising, for instance, that the models are good enough to do this:



That seems impressive to me. Read section "D" of the report for more explanation. And the news you find so newsworthy, that hurricane frequency (but not overall severity) is expected to fall, is itself the outcome of modeling. This gets doubly important to understand because it shows how simplistic approaches to this science (such as Walter Russell Means exhibits in the very stupid punditry Mach likes) are inadequate. Let's start with this:



The blue line is sea surface temp (SST) and the green one is the Power Dissipation Index (PDI), "an aggregate measure of Atlantic hurricane activity, combining frequency, intensity, and duration of hurricanes in a single index." The correlation is high. So if AGW is correct, shouldn't hurricanes be getting a lot worse every year in all respects? And if we see a year with low frequency, shouldn't we be ROTFLOL when the guys in white lab coats come up with some excuse?

What this report is really all about is this: when you look only at the simple one-factor correlation revealed in the above graph, as many previous models did, you wind up projecting large increases in hurricane frequency. But global warming does more than simply raise SST. Here's the critical bit, with my underlining added for emphasis:

..current climate models suggest that tropical Atlantic SSTs will warm dramatically during the 21st century, and that upper tropospheric temperatures will warm even more than SSTs. Furthermore, most of the models project increasing levels of vertical wind shear over parts of the western tropical Atlantic (see Vecchi and Soden 2007). Both the increased warming of the upper troposphere relative to the surface and the increased vertical wind shear are detrimental factors for hurricane development and intensification, while warmer SSTs favor development and intensification.

Ah! Things are a bit more complicated. So which will be more influential on hurricanes, the factors that impede them or those that enhance them? That's what this new model was designed to study, and those are the results reported: fewer storms but worse ones.

Science is a never-ending endeavor that features a very healthy dose of self-correction and sees refinement of understanding increase in a jerky, not a smooth manner. A lot of climate skeptics seem to think that any display of correction or refinement should be taken as evidence that the entire body of scientific knowledge has zero credibility. When stated like that such a belief seems beyond absurd, but we always get an "Aha!" from the skeptics when some fault is corrected. "Admits" and "concedes" are PCHiway's words, not the author's.

For the record, it should be noted that this study's results are somewhat tentative. The author mentions "relatively conservative confidence levels attached to these projections." He goes on to contrast his inability to assign high probabilities to man's influence on past hurricane activity to the case with AGW in general, where "...the IPCC 4th Assessment Report (2007) presents a strong body of scientific evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past half century is very likely due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions." Nothing he reports lessens the credibility of AGW in any way.

That last post is why I wanted to see PCH and Min X discuss this!

Minister X wrote:I'm a bit disappointed in this reporting you've done. "Admits", "concedes", and "happily" are not appropriate words to use in describing a scientific report like this; they color results with emotional baggage that simply isn't there - it's only in your head.

You are quite correct X. I indulged in some triumphalist point-scoring which this thread was supposed to avoid. I apologize.

And, upon closer examination, my initial post is even more flawed than you pointed out. I claimed that the author was debunking a former model. Not so. Instead, he is holding up two competing models for Atlantic hurricane activity and explaining which one he favors and why.



The author seems to favor the less dramatic model and gives a good argument for why he does. And he's set the stage for something that seems rare in climatology. A showdown. One of these models is more accurate than the other. Which one? We'll have a pretty good idea within 5 years.

The graphs on the overall number of storms are also interesting. The one you posted shows a very impressive accuracy through 2005. Though one wonders why the last 4 years were omitted. Does the model hold up through 2010? And take a look at 2006...the last year on that graph had the biggest difference between observed and modeled hurricanes...what went so wrong?



Above is the graph for expected numbers and intensities of hurricanes through the next century based on CO2 levels. Again, a disprovable hypothesis...which I heartily approve of. In a few years we'll be able to see if this model works and what factors need to be added/weighted/ignored. The overall thesis he promotes is for fewer, yet more intense, storms. But he can't be shown to be wrong until long after he's retired. I suppose this is one of my main problems with the modeling as it stands. If a model can't stand up on an annual basis...it's not terribly useful as a policy driver.

I get that we're talking about a huge system which has many variables and that one cannot simply discard a hypothesis on one or two years of results that don't match your model. I don't mean to imply that AGW as a whole should be dismissed based on a few years of fewer-than-expected hurricanes. Nor do I mean to dismiss the implications that any increase in severity or rainfall could be big bad news for coastal dwellers.

But it's been 5 years since Katrina. After that event we were told byHollywood, Science Magazine, the blogosphere, the Washington Post, NatGeo, and the government through flat statements or implication that climate change means more frequent and more intense hurricanes and anyone who says otherwise is a paid shill of the oil companies.

Well, it's been 5 years and the stuff being published on hurricanes by GFDL now dovetails with what those "deniers" of 2005 were claiming. Seems to me that's grounds for a little crow-eating from the AGW proponents...perhaps an admission that "deniers" can be right from time to time. But I won't force the issue.

What am I getting at here? First, I don't think we need to wait the decades the GFDL scientists state in their report to test the validity of their model. If we don't see the results they forecast within 5 years...something in the model is broken and they ought to have a reasonable guess as to what it is. Is 5 years a reasonable timeframe to test climate models' validity?

Secondly, I'm having trouble visualizing how scientists will demonstrate the affect humans have on the severity/intensity of weather events. I just can't see how one would create a control for modeling purposes. Can someone help me out?

PCHiway wrote:...it's been 5 years since Katrina. After that event we were told byHollywood, Science Magazine, the blogosphere, the Washington Post, NatGeo, and the government through flat statements or implication that climate change means more frequent and more intense hurricanes and anyone who says otherwise is a paid shill of the oil companies.

Did you put this together yourself or adapt it from some source you ran across? I ask because once again I think you've not lived up to the research standards of which you are capable. First of all, the only scientific journal you've included (Science) has a link that doesn't work unless you are a subscriber or willing to pay-per-article. I assume you've read this. Can you please quote at length the relevant sections? I'm not a member of the AAAS. (Yet )

As for the rest, let's consider them one by one...

Hollywood: a chance to buy Al Gore's movie. Okay. Al Gore grossly misrepresented things. He deserves much blame for alarmism. However, he is not a scientist, and the word "hurricane" doesn't even appear on the page to which you linked. What exactly did he say about hurricanes?

The Blogosphere: you found an alarmist website. But here's what the linked page says about hurricanes:

Super powerful hurricanes, fueled by warmer ocean temperatures are the “smoking gun” of global warming. Since 1970, the number of category 4 and 5 events has jumped sharply. Human activities are adding an alarming amount of pollution to the earth’s atmosphere causing catastrophic shifts in weather patterns. These shifts are causing severe heat, floods and worse.

Notice they don't say humans are causing changes in hurricanes nor do they say hurricane frequency is increasing or will increase. You wrote: "we were told by [X, Y and Z] through flat statements or implication that climate change means more frequent and more intense hurricanes..." You couldn't find a single page on the blogosphere that matched your accusation better than this one?

The Washington Post: This is a report by a journalist on two studies that had recently been released. One study suggested that warming might cause an increase in frequency; the other suggested that observed increases in frequency were illusory. The journalist reports: "neither study answers what to me are the most intriguing questions in this field, such as whether the strongest hurricanes will occur more frequently and get even stronger from warming seas as climate change progresses..." The very worst little bit one could extract from this is a line from the press release of the Mann paper that reads: "It seems that the paleodata support the contention that greenhouse warming may increase the frequency of Atlantic tropical storms," said Mann. "It may not be just that the storms are stronger, but that there are there may be more of them as well." That's one "seems" and three "mays" - hardly alarmist rhetoric. And the WAPO, who is the party you are criticizing, reported both papers and drew the proper conclusion. I think you are batting zero for three so far.

National Geographic: This link is to an extremely brief item about a 2004 hurricane. The relevant line is: "Scientists suggest that climate change may be leading to more devastating and more frequent natural disasters, like hurricanes and floods." Does this say that scientists predict more frequent hurricanes? Not really. In any case, NatGeo doesn't give us links to the scientists they say are doing the suggesting. But I'll give you some partial credit here: a popular mag - a part of the mainstream media - reported (maybe) that scientists were suggesting that hurricanes may get more frequent and severe. I can't believe better examples of hurricane alarmism couldn't be found in the popular press.

The Government: you link to a page from the "Global Change Research Program" that's a very brief discussion of extreme weather. The relevant wording, with my notes [LIKE THIS]:

The power and frequency of Atlantic hurricanes have increased substantially in recent decades [TRUE], though North American mainland land-falling hurricanes do not appear to have increased over the past century. Outside the tropics, storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are becoming even stronger. In the future, with continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity [NO MENTION OF HURRICANES HERE]. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity, and storm surge levels are likely to increase [NO MENTION OF FREQUENCY]. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights. [WHAT ARE "COLD SEASON STORMS? HURRICANES DON'T OCCUR DURING A "COLD SEASON"]

I googled "cold season storms" and it seems they are not hurricanes - they are storms (like "noreaster" snow storms) of other types that occur outside of hurricane season. So your "government" page has nothing even remotely like a "flat statement that climate change means more frequent hurricanes".

Finally, we have your complaint that "and anyone who says otherwise is a paid shill of the oil companies." This has a link to a HuffPo piece by one warming "activist" criticizing another warming activist. Is your point simply that there are people who will attack any self-described skeptic who receives money from energy companies? (HERE is the wiki page on the guy targeted in that HuffPo piece.) I concede the point.

What did the 2007 IPCC Report say about hurricanes? How alarmist were they? I think that whatever case you are trying to make would be strengthened if we could show that they were unduly liberal with their projections of frequency. HERE is the summary for policymakers. The only relevant projection: "Intense tropical cyclone activity increases." The confidence level: "likely", which is less than "very likely" which is less than "virtually certain". No alarmist there, and intensity is mentioned, not frequency. The more detailed section of the report, HERE, reads as follows:

Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical sea-surface temperatures. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.

Reasonable, accurate, not alarmist.

BTW you missed a great opportunity with that last bit. The HuffPo blogger is Laurie David, former wife of Larry David, who got rich as the creator of Seinfeld. Her wiki page is much more interesting than that other guy's!

In an interview with The Guardian in November 2006, David acknowledged that owning two homes on opposite sides of the country and flying in a private jet several times per year is at odds with her message to others. In the interview she notes "Yes, I take a private plane on holiday a couple of times a year, and I feel horribly guilty about it. I probably shouldn't do it. But the truth is, I'm not perfect. This is not about perfection. I don't expect anybody else to be perfect either. That's what hurts the environmental movement – holding people to a standard they cannot meet. That just pushes people away." ... In 2005, and then again in 2009, David was cited by the Chilmark Conservation Commission for paving over protected wetland areas on her estate on Martha's Vineyard.

Ya' gotta love that stuff.

I thought you and I were going to talk about the science, not about politics and idiot bloggers. Regarding the science of models, you ask: "Is 5 years a reasonable timeframe to test climate models' validity?" Good question. I notice you wisely used the plural for models - we're talking about many different models. Regarding any one of them, my understanding is that the confidence with which you can assess a model's utility and/or reliability (two slightly different things!) will increase with time. There's not one point in time where you can't make an assessment and then add one day and have a final assessment, or a perfect one, or anything like that. Models can be applied retrospectively to test their abilities, so in some senses you don't have to "wait" at all. But the pudding will indeed be the future.

Which future? When building a model one designs it to work at the time frames considered most important. If I'm modeling the process of crop growth on a hectare of Kansas to determine what my yield is likely to be I hardly care about individual minutes, or about centuries. A season is the most relevant time frame. With AGW, we know there won't be enough warming in five years to cause big problems. The real issue is what the latter half of the century will look like. Therefore models are designed to yield answers to multi-decadal questions, and that's a time frame you'll see mentioned quite frequently in the modeling literature. That doesn't mean that we can't look at what happens in five years and start drawing conclusions about the models' validity. We can start even sooner. But the next question is: what exactly are we going to look at? The main bit of data these models are generally designed to project is hemispheric mean surface temperature. No matter what, that is going to move slowly in terms of mere years. And I a genius if, given that it's 10° outside right now in Albuquerque (yikes!), I project that it will be 11° in a half hour? The real trick is projecting what the average temp in Abq will be twenty years from now. Models are designed to different scales, and the figure you are looking for is not just confidence-dependent but also scale-dependent. I don't think I'm smart enough to suggest a solid single figure for you. I'll be very curious to see how the next five years turn out vis-a-vis the current projections, but if in five years the scientists can explain why they need to refine the models I'm not likely to demand they all be fired and replaced by bloggers.

PCHiway wrote:Secondly, I'm having trouble visualizing how scientists will demonstrate the affect humans have on the severity/intensity of weather events. I just can't see how one would create a control for modeling purposes. Can someone help me out?

I'd like to have a better feel for this also, but I think this is how it works:

1) We calculate, from data collected in a variety of ways, how much CO2 humans are creating. There are figures, for instance, on how much cement is produced in Nigeria annually, and how many acres of forest are cut down in Bangladesh every year.

2) That number gets translated into changing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (at different elevations). Things like the efficiency of the ocean as a carbon sink are relevant here.

3) The effect of CO2 concentration on warming (at different elevations) is quantified. Some of this is done in the laboratory and some via observations of the real world.

4) Models of climate dynamics have, as one set of inputs, the temp at various elevations. Output: simulated "weather events" including measures of severity/intensity.

So, by varying the projected human production of CO2 as a model input, and no other input, output differences can be attributed to the only thing that changed. In the same way, we can measure changes that might be attributed to solar radiation variation, or changes in aerosol levels.

I pulled those links together myself.

The 'Inconveninent Truth' website was an 'implication' example. I suppose one could argue that having satellite picture of a hurricane superimposed over a picture of a factory doesn't necessarily imply that one follows the other...perhaps Al just meant to say that factories produce swirly clouds right over their smokestacks...

What? You don't have a Science website sub? Heh...Firefox helps me forget what needs passwords and what doesn't. It's an editorial that lays the blame for Katrina at the feet of the U.S. and forecasts more reaping the whirlwind due to our pollutin' ways.

And I'll concede your government website point. Cold season storms are not hurricanes...who knew? And I'll even further admit that the WaPo did a good job of showing both sides...though in my view their writing favors the 'more frequent viewpoint.'

But I pulled these together without trying hard....I'm sure if I put my mind to it... ah!

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... 02,00.html

So is global warming making the problem worse? Superficially, the numbers say yes—or at least they seem to if you live in the U.S. From 1995 to 1999, a record 33 hurricanes struck the Atlantic basin, and that doesn�t include 1992�s horrific Hurricane Andrew, which clawed its way across south Florida in 1992, causing $27 billion dollars worth of damage. More-frequent hurricanes are part of most global warming models, and as mean temperatures rise worldwide, it�s hard not to make a connection between the two.

Most global warming models eh? Blast you Time! Footnote and make my job easier!

I'm sure I can pull out more later...though maybe I drew the wrong conclusions in 05-06. Fellow RS-ers I put it to you...did you come away from Katrina properly educated about the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes or did you, like me, get the message of "more frequent/ more severe"?

The Wave, by Susan Casey

http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Pursuit-Rogues-Freaks-Giants/dp/0767928849/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296598192&sr=8-1

A fabulous read that combines extreme sports and science... Susan spent a year tracking the men who attempt to surf 80, 90 and 100 foot waves... And learning from scientists and business men dealing with the reality that over the last thirty years the intensity and size of wave activity have increased. And are expected to continue increasing...

Why is this important? in this decade; every week, two large ships sink . Most just disappear. The major culprit: enormous waves that crack open holds and flood cargo ships ...
For the last dozen years the European Space Authority's satellite Enervast has provided increasingly complete information of the surface of the earth, and the oceans in particular. The interesting thing is that with increased data, modelling is becoming more and more accurate. [u]Where a 30 year term might have been a period that would have to pass befiore we could understand the accuracy of climate models .... increasingly good data is shortening this period... [/u
This is noted for PC who wodners about the accuracy of model predictions... And I refer you also PC back to the models predictions of Pinitubo's eruption and its affects. Very accurate predictions resulted...a one year span.

The really worrisome part of climate change is the oceans. The increased wave activity, erosions and weight of the seas has all kind sof potential repercussions. Tsunamis for one... It might seem strange to think there is a connection, but if the oceans rise an inch, they increase the weight on the tectonic plates and in some areas cause the release of volcanic eruption or landslides. And landslides create tsunamis. Think that won't affect most of the world? In 64 Anchorage lost an entire suburb to a tsunami. Lisbon was utterly destroyed in 1755 by a tsunami. There are dozens more examples...)
As a species we tend to inhabit coastal regions..... And depend upon the oceans for inexpesnive food, and inexpensive transportation. As energy is increased in the atmosphere (Thats what CO2 does, it causes an increase in energy) that energy has to find a release.... Hurricanes are just one way, the other are storms, wind, waves.... We are putting our "cheap transportation" at more and more risk.
Cheap food? Increased acidifying of the oceans, casued by the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is helping wipe out already stressed fish stocks...
Now, the point in all this... we see its happening. Sceptics slow down the response. (They don't slow down the understanding becasue few if any are part of the scientiific community advancing the knowledge in this area.) But they affect the political will to address ways to promote industry that can help us adapt to our approaching reality. A changing and less hospitable world.
We don't need to know exactly how much change PC. We just need to understand the direction and the approxiamete speed of the change...

1- If you enact enough anti-manufacturing policies...manufacturing will go away (see California). 2-Green jobs are manufacturing jobs...how are they going to be any different than DVD players and plastic toys?

Who said "fair trade" is anti-manufacturing? Fair trade happens when your trade negotiators and policy makers provide domestic industry with a level playing field. WHich means that, for instance, you might require foreign factories to have the same pollution standards as American factories if they are going to get access to the market.
Since 1980 the US has rolled over and offered jobs in return for cehap prices at walMart.
Unless there is a mind set change, I suppose green jobs will go to India too. My point is that this industry still has its innovation in the US, it could also have the manufacturing if your trade bnegotiators and law makers started caring about their domestic industries and started trying to nutrue jobs and industries raterh than let corporations chase the next record profit quarter.... Green industries could greatly benefit the US and provide those good hourly wages that have disappeared.

PCHiway: I guess I just don't understand the point you're trying to make. Is it that modelers at one point thought hurricane frequency (not just severity) would rise, and that Al Gore and the popular press went overboard in reporting that, whereas now there's some new study that says severity will rise but not frequency, and therefore... what? That the models are unreliable? That Al Gore is? Maybe if you'd state flat out what assertion this is all evidence for, I'd be able to agree with you. For instance: I'd agree that the press has hyped global warming stories. (Also stories on just about everything else imaginable.) I'd even agree that some scientists who ought to know better have exaggerated likely risks when talking to the press. At least,k I'd be shocked if you couldn't find some. But what you've found in no way detracts or adds to what we might understand about the models, and I thought we were going to talk about the science.

I'd meant to comment on this:

PCHiway wrote:If a model can't stand up on an annual basis...it's not terribly useful as a policy driver.

Again, I don't understand your problem. With AGW we're worried about what's going to happen over the course of a century. Imagine, if you will, an extremely simple graph of global temps for every year from 2011 to 2111 with two lines on it. One line (this graph will be drawn 100 years from now) is actual recorded temps and the other is a projection made in 2011. Let's say the projection was that from 2011 to 2012 there'd be a .03º increase but in fact there was a .02º decrease. Then the model said things would be flat from 2012 to 2013 but in fact there was a .04º rise. And so on, the projection getting every single year wrong. But the projection had temps in 2111 ending up 5.2º higher than today and in fact they ended up 5.3º higher, and except for the zig-zags never matching up year-by-year, the two lines were otherwise tracking each other very closely, with some decades rising sharply and others not so sharply - the lines never separated by more than a quarter of a degree. Would you say that model had no utility as a policy "driver" in 2011? As models go, and for the purpoise the model was designed for, it was all but perfect. Yet it "can't stand up on an annual basis". (Assuming I know what you mean by "stand up".)

Let's change scales and models by way of illustration. Imagine if I could make a model that could predict exactly how much rain would fall next month, and we tested it and I was dead spot on. However, day-by-day my model was useless. I couldn't predict daily rainfall but I was perfect at the monthly scale. Wanna' bet some farmers would pay me lotsa cash for the code?

Models are like maps in some ways. Maps are a crude representation of some geographic reality, with much detail lost depending on scale. If, however, a map helps me find my way its failings as a representation of reality are no big deal. A map of Manhattan isn't designed to help me avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalks, just to find my way from Times Square to MOMA. We don't fault the map for not showing every storefront along the way, or even if a block is mostly commercial or residential. If we're walking, we don't care if it shows arrows for one-way streets. If we're driving we don't care if it shows subway routes and stations.

Climate models used to study AGW, and to help politicians set policy regarding AGW, only need to provide a rough idea of how much different rates of carbon release will affect temps on a global basis over a period of decades. You want them to provide small-scale predictions year-by-year with great accuracy because you want to be convinced that they're reliable, and that's understandable. And I bet the modelers would like to be able to oblige you. But the models have been in development for a long time, and they are designed to study a phenomenon that moves much more slowly than your need for proofs. Perhaps some modelers will cease working on models that have scientific value and start working on some that will have more utility as PR tools. I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad thing. Probably good. The science isn't going to be worth much if voters won't let politicians do anything about it.

One of the interesting things about the models used for predicting elements of climate change is how open they have become to interested parties. Perhaps something sugnificant was learned in the last decade?
Here's an example...Wave modellling software that is used to predict the future of wave action . have a read if only to see how documented it is, and how available it is to people capable of making use....

http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/wavewatch/

I think it points out a lot about the sophistication of modelling all of the aspects of climate change... There are hundreds of potential efects due to an increase in energy in the atmosphere and the oceans due to increased CO2 concentrations....
Some of these things are only beginning to be examined. Things like methane gas stored in trillions of suboceanic balls, that with as little as one degree change could release their gases. Its estimated that there is as much fossil fuel in these methane sources as currently available on earth....
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Why do we know models are improving? Partly because data collection has been improved so much with satellites, especially the European ENERVAT. , but partly becasue the constant examination of near term results versus expected near term results cause constant rexamination of all the parameters.

The science isn't going to be worth much if voters won't let politicians do anything about it.

The debates amongst the public, like on this board, about the reliability of models and the reliability of prognostication are counter productive. They've delayed a generally understanding and acceptance by the public but they have contributed exactly zero to the ongoing work done by the scientific community. . The models in use are accepted as the best we've got by the scientific community and by most governments., Its also accepted that they are getting better by people who actually understand how they work, and who can actually contribute knowledgably to the arcane debate about the parameters of each model. Thats why there are constant revisions and enhancements. (In the one I linked you to they talk about enhancements to past versions,.)
All of the knowledge that has been added over the last two decades is generally unknown to a public that sees the "climate debate" nthrough a lens that reduces the information to a debate over Al Gore and Climate gate and cranks with wild theories.

Meanwhile the mass of information being gathered and understood goes wanting for exposure to a public that would rather ignore science then embrace it.

X, one of the points you made and that I agree with is that climate change, or at least our understanding of it, lives and dies by the models. I chose the hurricane model because 1- I have some experience profiting from misconceptions surrounding it, 2- it's one of the more recent reports released and would have the freshest takes, and 3- hurricanes are a good 'wow' factor climate event that cost lives and billions of dollars in damage and lost revenue every year (well...almost every year). They're a great "or else". "Stop polluting or else we'll all be killed by megacanes."

They would, I thought, be a good answer to the questions I asked earlier. To wit: "What's the 'or else' if we don't change our carbon-emitting ways?" and "When will this 'or else' happen?"

And I'm understanding that the answer to all the 'or elses' is "sometime in the future."..and "sooner if we don't change our approach to energy." With hurricanes the timeline is a probable overall increase in intensity over the next 100 years and beyond. With ocean levels we could be looking at several hundred, if not thousands, of years before big changes happen and we can begin accurately assessing the effects.

I think one of my problems is that I'd like to do a cost/benefit analysis...even one based on rough, possibly inaccurate, numbers. After all, I can build a model that will show what effects reducing CO2 emissions to x level will have on our economy. That model will show, to a high level of confidence, the expense, sunk costs, and timing involved. I've got years worth of data for a good control of "business as usual" so I can argue cause/effect rationally. My model will be easily tweakable as my results will be accurate/inaccurate at the end of every year and the reasons for accuracy/inaccuracy will be clear. I'll be able to put an annual price tag on all efforts to stem the tide of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the problem is that climate change doesn't lend itself to a standard SWOT or amortization model. It's not like building a bridge or a toll road. It's money that's spent or unearned with no means of ever determining if we've gotten our money's worth. The timeframes are too long, the consequences full of unknowns, and success/failure only in the eyes of the beholder. That means that the risk analysis skills I've honed my whole life are useless as tools when looking at this issue. Perhaps, at its core, that is my real issue with AGW...there's no solution to it...there's no way to win...there's no way to even know if we're making a postive difference.

To help me grasp the concept (and since my repeated pleas to the peanut gallery have gone unaswered) I've picked up an audiobook I'm listening to on my commutes. The Global Deal by Nicholas Stern. I'm very specifically not reading any Amazon ratings, looking for fisking/debunking sites, or skipping to the end. If any of you know the punchline...please keep it to yourselves. I'll put down 'aha' moments here in the thread as I come to them.

I've asked before for a figure: "How much will the Earth heat up with/without humans?" Stern gives an answer pretty quickly in the book. 2 degrees C more of warming if we cut off all emissions now...a likely 5 Degrees C more if we don't.

"Over what length of time?" Not sure...over the next several hundred years.

"What will those higher temps do?" That's unclear. More dynamic weather overall going forward though it will be impossible to attribute any one weather event to climate change. The oceans will change levels though that may take centuries to happen.

The spectre he holds up is not that of hurricanes or droughts per se but of mass displacement of people as regions become uninhabitable. He hasn't gotten into specifics but I'm hoping there will be scenarios later in the book. I'm getting the impression that the answer will be that it's impossible to know where or when the displacements will happen...just that they will happen eventually if we don't slow the rate of emissions.

And Stern is quite clear about one thing. The fight to stem emissions needs to be a worldwide effort...not just that of the developed nations...to have any meaningful effect as the developing nations are going to go screaming past the EU and US in terms of overall CO2 output in the next 50 years. If we don't...we'll be in the position of having to spend untold trillions in haste when the mass migrations start.

But this lends itself to yet another model...one not dealing with hurricanes or temperatures at all. That of Game Theory. Countries, expecially developing countries, are going to have to act against their short-term best interests in favor of a nebulous better future. It's been a while since I read my von Neumann but if I remember it correctly...we're hosed and need to start with the country-specific mitigation pronto. Individuals (countries) will tend to act in their personal interests rather than that of the greater good.

But there were lots of different game theory scenarios. I'll have to research some to see if any fit better into an AGW scenario.