New Orleans facing castrophic flooding - again.

I'm all for looking behind that curtain as long as you do it with the humble acknowledgement that your own inherent bias (human objectivity being a total farce...) will be trying to curate what you look for while you're back there.  <thumbsup>

*speaking of the generic 'you', meaning any of us

You saw a show and read an article, both from media sources who thrive on monetary income from things like this.. follow the money indeed. I guess you're educated on climate change now.

Cool, you do you.

I'll keep reading the real papers that don't push alarmism for headline cash and grant money, and are generally much less bullish on AGW effects.
It's only the real outlying alarmist stuff that gets pushed for headlines anyway.

But I don't debate on this much anymore. What I've found is that nobody really wants to change their beliefs through debate. They want you to state your thoughts so they can have points to go Google and post the first negating item they can find.

It goes nowhere, much like I can sense this is going.

We’ve been diverting into politics too much lately...can we all agree to drop the AGW discussion

I'm originally from Destin FL. After we got hit with like 6 major hurricanes in 2 or 3 years they moved the insurance to the state for control. My wife has worked in the insurance business for over 11 years now and it was really shitty to see piles of insurance companies file bankruptcy and leave people hanging. FEMA was the life line. Most people got free roofs, some with catastrophic damage got new homes, nearly everyone got the I'll never forget blue tarps on their roofs. After that happened all the insurance carriers got pushed out of FL and the state backed one company that all the agency's had to write coverage through, it was mandatory. Premiums were much higher but if something happens the federal government isn't paying the majority of the bill, FEMA pushes some funds into the state but that one carrier is backed by the state so people don't have to worry. I don't know how it is in Texas or LA but I'm sure if it's still a wide open playing ground there are a lot of carriers getting their bankruptcy filings ready. Pretty sad.

From what I remember. Before Katrina hit, scientist were on the news warning that the Levees wouldn't hold and 99% of them predicted exactly what happened. I remember so many debates on nearly all the major news outlets between scientists and politicians. The crappy part is they didn't listen to those screaming scientists and you see what a cluster Katrina turned into. If those same scientist are screaming and issuing stark warnings I'd hope the agencies take it seriously this time. We'll see. The river stage is twice what it should be though, no matter what that's not going to be good for someone.

The majority of the imagery that is used for determining overall ice extent, glaciers included is algorithmic in nature.  Humans don't necessarily look at any of these pictures.  Only pictures fit for use as illustrative tools are usually published. 

In practice, they use a brightness index to equate reflected light to ice/snow extent on a pixel basis.  The thresholds for determining whether an area has ice/snow or not is completely arbitrary and comes with a large margin of error.  They'll say something like "Arctic ice extent is down 10% this year" but they won't state that the margin of error is 20%, which means that it could actually be in the "gain" region of error due to changes in albedo due to cloud coverage, soot/dirt/dust, foliage, etc, but those who control the data control the narrative, and as stated, places like GISS are run by single-minded activists without much accountability to anyone.  Being treated like experts gives them full run of institutions that have zero accountability to anyone else, which is a hallmark of public employment. 

They actually found that the satellites weren't seeing the ice loss that they expected to see so they adjusted the data to fit the models after changing their calibrations.  They then claim that their models are very accurate and call the adjustments corrections.  Some climate scientists, even the pro-AGW ones objected to this process but it happened anyway and they continued to back-adjust data to fit the new adjustments which created warming trends in historical data that weren't present previously.  They then republish the data as a new dataset so that future use of the dataset has the warming baked into it.  They and other dataset publishers have been sued by 3rd parties for doing this and for failing to publish the raw data to the public as most of it was sourced using public funding.  At least one of the defendants lost in court, and then claimed to have accidentally "lost" the raw data, leaving only the adjusted data as the basis going forward.  History has now been effectively changed.

Anyway, the Himalayan glaciers..  Yes some were/are receding, but others are growing.   it seems to be a regional change in albedo and rainfall that dictates whether they are growing or not.  Similar to how Glacier national park's glaciers are now growing after receding for a decade, or the Peterman glacier in Greenland which was the poster-child for glacier collapse just a few years ago, which is now growing once again.

In fact, here's a good look at how they apply their algorithms using pictures of Peterman glacier.  If you look at the picture, you'll see that the 2018 picture shows a LOT more ice coverage into the bay, but most of that is actually floating ice chunks, not solid, so you'll also notice the lines across the neck of the glacier that show the termination point that is dictated by arbitrary values.  So even though the ice clearly extends well beyond the 2018 termination line in the optical picture, the algorithm has determined that the ice stops well short of where your eyes might determine the extend of the glacier flow.

Now, if you adjust that algorithmic threshold 1% upwards, you can probably guess that the brightness-curve line fitment would move well up the neck of the glacier since the shades of white don't change much at all. 

realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Petermann-2012-2018-1.gif

Got it.  So the second option (conspiracy).  

Well I don't have anything to rebut any of that, nor am I interested in doing so.  

In general, I find it less likely that an organized cabal of ideological frauds permeates the entirety of a discipline and more likely that those of us with dogs in the fight construe things to fit whatever narrative we've (consciously or unconsciously) sworn some allegiance to.  That could mean you, me, the climate scientists, etc.  

But you've obviously looked at this a lot and you're a smart dude so that's something for me to consider.  Since I'm at a university these days, I'll ask someone who studies this about the points you make here and see what they think.  

Agreed.  

But also, anecdotal experience of weather, irresistible as it may be, is largely worthless in drawing any conclusions about climate writ large.  

Nonetheless, social media is eternally populated with, "i ToOk mY sWeATsHirT oFf aND Im FrEezing!  wuT hApPenED tO gLobaL wArmINg, hUh??"

Obviously.   It was a brief attempt at levity in a thread that will no doubt devolve into shit throwing and temper tantrums.....

But, just as current weather is irrelevant in the big picture - so is studying the climate over the last 20-50 years and drawing iron clad conclusions.  One needs to look at things in the hundreds to thousands of years to really get a grasp on the realities.  and unfortunately, we don't have the data for thousands of years ago.  We do know there was an ice age though, so we must have had global warming....  

Well, that falls into the "common sense science" trap.  Makes perfectly logical sense to a lay-person (and indeed no doubt there's some truth to it) when in actuality, climate scientists have all kinds of ways of getting at data from far back into the geologic time scale.  They all come with uncertainty of various types but that's the entire career of trained scientists.  Propagating that uncertainty and applying it to models and ideas and coming up with circumspect, non-overreaching conclusions is what the discipline is all about.  

Ain't perfect but it's a far, far cry from what a casual observer might reasonably think (ie "well, they only have data going back a handful of decades...must all just be guesswork then...").  

You may be right.  But all the same dynamics are in play on the other side too.   

People love nothing more than seeing themselves as a scrappy band of brave free-thinkers working against Big Brother and the Elites^TM.  

Also, I'm not talking about what a given 15-year-old believes about climate.  I'm talking about serious, career climate scientists.  

It's a hard sell for me that they're what you say they are, in an organized way and at such a scale as would be necessary to brainwash the lot of them.  It's a sexy, exciting narrative, no doubt.  And there are at minimum kernels of truth to it.  But I don't buy the whole story arc as of yet.  I am listening though and I don't have much allegiance to any particular narrative.  

But damn. I promised I wouldn't go on about this and I shouldn't. I'm glad folks here are cool enough not to start bickering, but as others pointed out, climate science is truly politics at heart and I should abide by the "no politics" rule, so I'll really stop now.

If you believe, or not, either one is cool with me. Freedom to believe whatever you want is a natural right nobody should take away.

Just go do your research and determine why you believe that way. Don't trust the media, the government, or even me for that matter. Find the real papers, read them and determine this stuff for yourself. That's the only way to find the truth.

The enemy of truth is political spin.

I really wish the best for the folks on the coast, and those threatened by the storm and flooding.