Global warming - an urgent problem requiring radical solution (no politics or religion)

"1. Question: Why has this story been virtually ignored by the mainstream news media?  Answer: Because progressive journalists haven’t figured out how to reconcile their climate change, environmentalist, pro-EPA dictatorship, “all climate change skeptics are idiots and the equivalent of Holocaust deniers” narrative with its implications, that’s why. This is news, don’t you think? “Fit to print,” correct? Any time some semi-respectable scientist predicts that we have 20 years left to knee-cap American industry or the seas will boil, that’s headlines at MSNBC and the Times, isn’t it? I can’t think of a more blatant example of unprofessional and biased news manipulation for purely ideological reasons than the fact that this story has thus far been isolated to European and Australian news sources.

"2. The theme of environmentalists and the progressive establishment, as well as elected officials who are just as certain about climate change despite not remotely understanding the science, is that the science is settled, that disastrous, man-caused global warming is certain, and that no argument to the contrary will be accepted or respected. Yet scientists just figured out, using a new model, that a massive global cooling will occur just 15 years from now.  Quite simply, according to the angry, insulting rhetoric from the Gores, Pelosis, Obamas and their pundit cheerinbg section, this is impossible. Science has settled, and cannot be wrong, what the temperature will be a hundred years or more from now, and that’s that—no skepticism allowed. The models are undeniable! And yet, a new model, just developed, shows that a decidedly non-warming trend  not predicted by those perfect models is now certain.

"Reconcile those positions. Go ahead. I dare you. If the models have not accurately predicted what the climate will be like 15 years from now, it cannot be more reliable concerning hundreds of years in the future, since, presumably, a massive cooling for ten years will have an effect on the pace of subsequent warming. And might there be another cooling factor, or ten, to be discovered with a new model, or ten, between now and global warming Armageddon? No, you say? How can you be so sure?"

http://ethicsalarms.com/2015/07/13/ethics-observations-on-the-impending-little-ice-age-and-climate-change/#more-27846

Few notes about this announcement and it's reporting in the media.

• The original Royal Astronomic Society press release is about a conference presentation. Any link to the research itself is not given so it's unclear to me if this has been accepted to a peer reviewed journal.
• While it's a big news if Zharkova actually has found a way to predict solar cycles it's too early to speak about that. One should give scientific community time to evaluate the research (peer review alone is not enough for this). I'm sure such claims have been made before.
• The Huffington Post article speculates with a "little ice age" which the original RAS press release doesn't mention. Only a prediction of Maunder Minimum is mentioned (the two are not the same). Many other media reports are similarily sensationalist. This earlier Telegraph article is even worse.
• Another typical media mistake is not to have asked any expert opinion from other scientists.
• Yet one more thing media could do better is to explain what the predicted 60% reduction in solar activity means and what it doesn't. In particular, solar activity is different concept from sun's energy output (the reduction in the latter would be marginal in comparison). This distinction should be clear to the target audience of the original RAS announcement but may not be for the average newspaper reader.

The whole case is mainly an example of bad science reporting. The first basic mistake is to report a research that at this point should not be reported at all. It's just too new to know what to make of it (at least without being an expert). Should the results later become accepted, then report them. Media outlets are usually more interested in reporting spectacular new results without any consideration about how significant and how trusworthy they are than accurately presenting the state of knowledge. Probably the latter makes worse headlines. These articles also show lack of reserach from the part of reporters: no sign of trying to understand and explain what the claimed results actually mean and what not and not asking any expert opinion. Unfortunately, all of this is very typical for the way science is communicated in the media.

For balance, below are couple links pointing out flaws in the media portrayal of the story (and written by actual scientists):

• http://theconversation.com/no-we-arent-heading-into-a-mini-ice-age-44677
• http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/07/13/sunspot_cycles_won_t_cause_a_mini_ice_age_by_2030.html

I used HuffPost because it is a left-leaning source.

The 97% accuracy figure is no doubt derived from checking the mathematical model against the historical record.

The Salon article used this claim to refute Zharkova: " In reality, sunspots fluctuate in an 11-year cycle, and the current cycle is the weakest in 100 years—yet 2014 was the planet’s hottest year in recorded history."

That claim (hottest year in history) was backed off by the people who made it, but exaggeration has a way of living on.

Solar irradiance has a great deal to do with the Earth's climate.  That's not a "conservative" mantra, it is a fact.  It is the primary source of heat energy on the Earth.

Don't think Huffington Post is a reliable source of news. Do some people think otherwise?

That's my understanding about the 97% figure too. Doesn't yet prove that the theory is right - explaining the past is not easy but predicting the future is harder. However, definitely sounds like an interesting proposition by Zharkova. I was criticising the media portrayal of the story not the original research.

I think you are referring to the Slate article (not Salon) by Holthaus? Again, I don't think that the author is trying to criticize Zharkova but rather the Telegraph article ("it’s a wildly inaccurate reading of the research"). I don't know if 2014 is warmest year on record but it's not very relevant to the point being made (see the link given by Holthaus)

It's clear that changes in solar irradiance could have huge effects on climate but it also seems to be true that solar irradiance is relatively stable compared to the solar activity (which was the only thing mentioned in the original press release). The articles I linked in the earlier post seem to suggest that 60% change in the solar activity could only mean around 0,1% change in the solar irradiation. Of course this should still have some effects but from the little I've read scientists seem to think that this alone isn't enough to explain the conditions during the so called "little ice age".

what can i be doing right now to help the cause....could i send some money to someone?

I agree with you completely about the predictive reliability of models.  Yet all the global warming hysteria is based on repeatly inaccurate, misreported, and failed IPCC modeling over the past 20 or so years.

What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.

just wait, your goverment will be in contact with your bank to arrange the appropriate contribution. Or maybe they will just institute a new with holding from your paycheck, what's that called again?

Oh yeah...A TAX.

The whole reason behind the climate drama.

I thought the whole reason behind the "climate drama" was to enrich those fat cat scientists?

"Pause" or "peak"?

IPCC models failed to predict this:

Your graph is out of data or inaccurate: last year was indeed the hottest ever (to within measurement accuracy of 0.02).

But any idiot can see that there are noise fluctuations which make naive comparisons on the short time scale foolish. And anyone can see the rise in temperature since the early 1900s dominates the same noise.

It is odd to see people seriously refering to solar variation (and even sunspots!!) as being anything to do with global warming. All reputable scientists have eliminated these factors as woefully inadequate explanations a very long time ago.

For those whose brains have not entirely atrophied through senility, take a look at Forbes magazine's excellent presentation of the facts:

What's really warming the world?

The five-year running mean in your graph shows the "Pause" as well.  Not very hockey-stickish, is it?

"Science" is, unfortunately, being bought and sold in our current neoliberal environment.

It's the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor, from Hayek.

Compare -- https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-210/feature-philip-mirowski-jeremy-walker-antoinette-abboud/

Here are two long (but choice) quotes from the link provided above --

"Let’s be clear:  carbon trading doesn’t work – and was never intended to do so. Once permit trading is put in place, lobbying and financial innovation will flood the fledgling market with excess permits, offsets and other instruments, so that the nominal cap on carbon emissions never actually stunts the growth of emissions. This, in turn, leads the prices of the permits to trend towards utter collapse, which is precisely what has happened a number of times with the European Union Emissions Trading System since its inception in 2005. Prices of the EU ETS dropped to zero in the first phase in 2007, and have fallen again, even though, concurrently, emissions have risen more or less continuously, excepting a hiccup during the early phase of the financial crisis. The engineered glut of permits is not temporary. In New Zealand, the emissions market has suffered a similar fate, with the carbon price opening in 2009 at around NZ$20 per ton and currently trading at a 90 per cent discount. The Chicago Climate Exchange, a voluntary scheme that traded emissions reductions in anticipation of the US eventually embracing reform, has now closed; the certificates’ value collapsed to zero in the wake of the financial crisis and never recovered."

"Trading systems tend to reinforce oligopolistic power, since they always grandfather in the largest emitters and penalise new entrants. And it is well understood that trading systems tend to stifle further technological measures to curb emissions. Money that might have been used productively to transform energy infrastructure instead gets pumped into yet another set of speculative financial instruments, leading to ultra-short-term investment horizons, windfall profits for traders and all the usual symptoms of financialisation."

The five year running mean is a very unimportant statistic, because it is much shorter than the observed noise scale of the trend. By this, I mean the scale at which the (of the order 0.01 degrees per year) trend dominates the short term fluctuations in temperature due to things like El Nino and other short term oscillations. Indeed this is why I personally chose to write an app for exploring more appropriate and illuminating smoothing algorithms.

The test of any model is its predictive ability.  The IPCC models - every one of them - has failed, and failed miserably.

You are deluded and wrong: average temperatures continue to rise on the scale where short term oscillations are dominated by the signal of the trend (roughly a couple of decades).

Even the most arrogant science-denier can see that temperatures have risen significantly since global warming was identified as a threat. This is a successful prediction. Global warming is a long term phenomenon.

The main prediction is that they will continue to do so to a catastrophic level unless greenhouse gases are reigned in. Wise people who are concerned about future generations have to prevent greedy fools from causing this.

Well, you've pegged delaroach.

With your post, Elroch, you've started the countdown to her (him?) telling us all how smart (s)he is...

Amazing.... Don't agree with someone..

call'm names.

"delaroach"? Seriously?

get over yourself. A nickname based on her (his?) rants and self-aggrandizing.

Ohhh...I am so sorry...my bad. Go on... Continue with your middle school humor...by all means. :D