Fox News On Recent Snowstorms
- Thread starter Formaldehyde
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Merkinball
Deity
The Gulf Stream will be warming too. How else would America get a bazillion more hurricanes from the super warmed waters of the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
Snowstorms in US negate record heat everywhere else in the world. lol
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
The average temperature so far this Feb in DC is highs in the 30s (F) and lows in the 20s. During the snowstorm temps were around 20 according to one resident who posted to the "snowmageddon" thread.
Arctic blast, my ast. When temps hit that range in Michigan, we start thinking spring is coming.
Falling sea levels.
Berzerker
Deity
okay, but why are you talkin to me? Your comments appear detached from mine...
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Mmm hmm. And how, pray tell, do you test for this degree of uncertainty.....?
Global warming is deterministic. It will produce specific and definite effects. Why are those effects uncertain? Because you don't know how to predict them yet.
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
'Cause you introduced the phrase "blasts of extreme cold", thereby making the recent Washington weather sound colder than it actually was. I mean, isn't the Fox News argument bad enough in its logic, without transforming it into something with a false factual basis as well?
scherbchen
well that can´t be good
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2006
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quoted for: dude, ever heard of paragraphs?
Merkinball
Deity
The predictions are less Hurricanes but more severe...
Explanation or it is simply an appeal to authority
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Facepalm is always an option!
You seem to think uncertainty can't be quantified. If that's the case, what the hell is an actuary and how does the insurance industry function?
No, it's not "deterministic" on the micro level, nor across a very short time scale. It's the freaking atmosphere, an awesome assemblage of chaotic forces. Jesus Christ. You can't make predictions like "it will snow more this this year in this place" based on an observation like "the total quantity of heat energy in the earth's atmopsphere will be 5% higher."
What we do know is that there'll be more gigaJoules in the total system, because we know about the greenhouse properties of CO2 and equivalent gases. We know there'll thus be a higher global average temperature. That's high school science.
However, this says nothing, by itself, about the impacts in any one locality in any one year of the aggregate change. We can say there's likely to be more extreme weather events in many places (for instance, bushfires in Australia due to extreme heat and droughts). We probably can't predict precisley where and how weather is likely to change, partly because we're trying to match existing irregular weather cycles to the changed parameters that now exist, because of more megaJoules in the atmosphere. We can say how partiuclar climates are likely to be affected based on the major persistant features of global water and air movements, and thus we can say what sort of weather patterns the shifted climates are likely to manifest.
So we can't, however, actually say there's a one-to-one causation between the changing quantity of gigaJoules in the atmosphere and any one weather event, and of course it's just as stupid to say "climate change caused this" as it is to say "this disproves global warming".
But look who's doing neither.
I'm merely pointing out that a few weather events of increased coldness (or is it moisture?) doesn't actually constitute meaningful data. Individual observations can trend both ways even as the aggregate level moves in one direction. And we know the overall direction because of the aforementioned CO2 -> greater megaJoule retention in the atmosphere high school science link thing.
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Where is there degrees of uncertainty? It's in the effects this increased quanity of megaJoules is likely to have. That gets complex because of all the tipping points and feedback loops involved. How much tundra will thaw, releasing how much methane? What will ocean temperatures do to the quantity of sunlight absorbing micro-organisms? What happens to aggregate cloud cover and how does that change the amount of heat getting in? Etc. So what we do is use the best modeling we can to get the best confidence intervals we can right now so we have some sort of understanding of what policies to respond with. Because what we do know is that "nothing will change" is pretty damn unlikely and we also know the broad direction in which things are moving, give or take the odd snowstorm.
There's a degree of unknown risk. That's bad, that's why we do research and take action to minimise the extent of the risk and to understand the risk so as to more accurately make actuarial calculations based on probabilities and anticipated costs. It's good economic policy because "doing nothing" is a choice with likely costs just as much as taking any partiuclar policy action has associated costs.
Now, how do we quantify uncertainty? It's important to understand that uncertainty is actually a calculable thing - that's why we have actuaries whose job is to calculate the costs of risks and unknowns. That's how insurance works - we need to know how much to charge or spend to remain solvent, so we need to know what risky bad things are likely to occur. We need to calucalte it off incomplete data. That's what's happening here, it's just a lot more complex than figuring out how much car insurance should cost.
Doesn't mean it's not happening. For example, insurance premiums on coastal communities in the eastern USA have increased five-fold simply because insurance companies can no longer do reliable acturial calculations of future risks. People who have a stake in the many industries, sectors and regions which are at risk from the loss of certainty about future conditions, are already calculating those risks and degrees of uncertainty and figuring out how to act. More research, better data, and the security of knowing governments are taking it seriously and trying to reduce risks would help people make these calculations of risk.
The reason we want to minimise climate change is because risk and uncertainty is bad, stability is good. It's potentially economically disastrous, in fact. If all the rain moves from where it normally falls, how much does it cost to move all the farms, the farm towns, the transport infrastructure, figure out what crops grow in the new soil and rain environment, etc? What if the rain recedes from everywhere except where the soil is so poor you can't grow anything in it (a scenario the CSIRO thinks is likely here)?
Climate change's impacts are best thought of as the loss of predictability, confidence and control over a wide array of economic activities - something akin to a major and prolonged Depression as entire industries and countries face unprecedented shifts in their environmental inputs - crops failing, cities becoming uninhabitable, large population movements, industries collapsing, shifting health costs, etc, these are the concrete and tangible stuff we know we don't want to happen if we can help it, because the economic cost of such unpredictable chaos is likely to take a wrecking ball to our standard of living.
The Stern Report took a rough stab at calculating the world GWP (Gross World Product) impact of the most likely impacts, and came up with a figure of 20%. It could be higher, it could be lower, but the bottom line is this: why the hell wouldn't you spend money to avoid losing more money later? Why not invest in trying to maintain some sort of stability? It's the precautionary principle, yo.
Berzerker
Deity
That wasn't me, I was responding to Ziggy. He posted somebody's theory about changing wind patterns due to global warming leading to more arctic blasts. And we were talking about changing climate patterns, not the temperature in Washington.
Leifmk
Deity
Yes.
As anyone who lives in a place which usually gets proper winters knows, huge amounts of snow don't coincide with really low ("arctic") temperatures. You get huge amounts of snow when very humid air hits temperatures that are juuuust below freezing. Typically, when there are large local variations in temperature, so that relatively warm/humid air meets relatively cold air. Putting more energy into the atmosphere will result in that happening more often, overall, and especially in places where it may not be a common thing previously.
GenMarshall
High Elven ISB Capt & Ghost Agent
Fox News as aways, loves to put a spin on there stories to make them more rightwingish.
Merkinball
Deity
Well obviously I'm wrong, considering that global warming nuts are always right...even if they get it wrong because global warming causes everything. Let's face it, everything is because of global warming. Except for good stuff. That's because of Barack Obama.
One thing that I am right about is that reading anything from the IPCC will make you dumber on a scientific basis than if you listen to Glenn Beck. The IPCC could not have discredited itself any more over the last ten years. If an American University made as many blatant errors and committed this kind of academic/scientific dishonesty it would lose accreditation.
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
Talking about "blasts of extreme cold" is a lot more dramatic sounding than "changing wind patterns bring more cold from the Arctic". And in case you forgot, this whole thread is about the recent weather in the East Coast, and what Fox News makes of it.
Washington is both near the center of Snowmageddon and fairly representative of it.
Merkinball
Deity
Talking about "blasts of extreme cold" is a lot more dramatic sounding than "changing wind patterns bring more cold from the Arctic". And in case you forgot, this whole thread is about the recent weather in the East Coast, and what Fox News makes of it.
Well, actually "blasts of cold air" would be more synonymous with global warming than long periods of below average temperatures. Particularly if you're going to follow the mantra that the Arctic is going to warm the most of any other region.
