Bill McKibben's recent piece in Rolling Stone, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math", is probably (pound for pound) the best piece ever written about the dire straights anthropogenic climate change has presented the human race.
I can't improve upon Mr. McKibben's words, but I CAN offer an instruction manual on reading his article:
"Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" lives up to its title. Hard numbers are presented. For instance:
Bill! I'm a humble climate change cartoonist -- I didn't know there would be scary math! Hell, I didn't know there would be ANY math!
One of the stages of climate change denialism is to say the warming is all natural, so we shouldn't meddle. Meanwhile, we don't hesitate to drill, frack, and carve up mountain tops for fuel. We don't mind changing the flow of great rivers when it serves our needs. We've almost completely drained large bodies of water when we needed that water. We've converted enormous tracts of rainforest to cow pastures. So why do we hesitate to really take action on climate change?
Like I said recently about resistance to renewable energy, it seems climate contrarians feel the fight against climate change is just too difficult. Fair enough ... I simply ask that they please step aside so others can do the heavy lifting.
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See, "A Challenge to Bill McKibben" at the Center for Industrial Progress:
http://industrialprogress.net/2012/07/29/a-challenge-to-bill-mckibben/
So, how about it, Mr. McKibben?
The world changes.
And has been changing since it began....stop crying that the sky is falling. Everything thing and everyone will adapt....it will all work out.
I read that the ice cap in greenland melted most of it this year....and yet, I have not noticed that the sea has risen.....as we were told.
Perhaps you recall the Ice Age?
There is nothing you can do about it. The planet will adapt like it has the last 100 billion years......and people will adapt as well.
"Well, we're boned!"
Which is more childish, to believe in facts, or to rant against the people who believe in them?
Yes, the statement about the "odds" of 327 consecutive months of above average temperatures being "3.7 x 10-99" is poorly phrased and is missing its exponent sign.
Yes, the number itself is almost certainly wrong because it doesn't account for autocorrelation.
HOWEVER, the basic point is entirely correct: The odds of 327 consecutive months of above average temperatures occurring by random chance alone are staggeringly long. It is, for all practical purposes, impossible. Just think
So let's not get bogged down in minutiae, OK? Just think of the odds as being "about 1 in a gazillion" and move on.
I am in sync with what you've laid out. Having said that, I'd be interested to hear from the "Good Will Hunting" math gurus among us to get some additional perspective. Regardless of one specific calculation, I find Bill McKibben to be an important, dedicated and rational advocate for our survival.
Not sure on that one, Chris. When I switched to calculating the odds without autocorrelation on R (just doing 0.5^367), I got an answer of 3.326531 x 10^-111. I'll have to play around with a time series analysis, figure out the autocorrelation, and recalculate it.
You might be interested in Tamino's post on a similar problem (odds of 13 consecutive months of temps in the top third of its historical distribution). Apparently these things are surprising tricky to calculate. He ends up deciding that a Monte Carlo simulation is probably the best technique:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/thirteen/
BTW, he says that the lag 1 autocorrelation for US monthly data is .150, which is actually pretty low.
"I have a B.S. in mathematics and physics from the University of New Mexico, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. I've also done graduate work in the creative writing department at Arizona State University."
http://davidappell.com/
By the way, Appell also made a mistake in his blog post. He says that this is the same error that Tamino discussed in an Open Mind post, but it isn't.
McKibben's number is about the odds of 327 consecutive months with US temps above the 20th century average.
Tamino's is about the odds of 13 consecutive months with US temps in the upper one-third of the historical distibution.
The questions are similar, and related in some ways, but not the same.
The annual bike ride across the state, RAGBRAI, is going on as planned, so I am hoping no one dies. What folly--no grown-ups called it off, obviously. Today the route will be dotted w/ ambulances ready to assist the inevitable victims of heat stress and stroke.
Yes, I know the difference between weather and climate. I will always choose to believe the word and research of folks like Bill McKibben and career scientists over those who can profit from the status quo rape of the earth (the oil men, etc.) and their paid-off fools.