Tim Lambert summarizes an informal survey of 59 right-wing bloggers: 100% of them deny the idea that humans are the primary cause of global warming, contradicting the scientific evidence. They were also asked about other issues—the majority approve of the “surge” in Iraq, think Bush is doing an acceptable job in foreign policy, and believe Democrats like the idea of losing the war in Iraq, but only on global warming is their unanimity.
It’s too bad the survey didn’t ask about other science issues. I’d like to know if they are similarly wrong about evolution, HIV as the cause of AIDS, and whether the earth goes around the sun rather than vice versa.
Here, let me cut off what will likely be the conservative response:
240 blogs were polled, and only 60 some odd responded.
that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a random sample of those blogs, so you must be overstating your data here.
now on to the reality:
However, even if all 180 of the other blogs might have responded otherwise, that even 60 of them responded in such a fashion still suggests an overwhelming bias, and at the very least a problem that should be addressed by the putative “moderates”.
The advice that all of them, all 100% of these right wing bloggers who responded (about 1 of 4 to whom the survey was sent) denied AGW stopped me for sure. None of them? Not one of them admits what is plain day science? I can appreciate a few people, even today, might wish to say they still believe the Earth is flat. But such a plurality? Science does not belong to anyone, and certainly not to any ideology. So this is a pretty strange result. It is like saying they do not believe in arithmetic, or gravity. I do not think they are entitled to be that stupid.
I’d hate to turn the blog into a global warming blog, but is it in fact the overwhelming consensus of climatologists now that humans are, beyond any reasonable doubt, the “primary” “cause” of the earth’s present warming period?
Speaking for myself — and I’m far from highly educated on the subject — I believe that human actions are very likely a signficant contributor to the average temperature of the earth. But a “primary cause” of the warming trend?
Is the consensus anything like that of relevant experts with respect to claims such as “HIV causes AIDS” or “life on earth evolved over billions of years”?
And just to be clear, one of the facts which gives me pause (and correct me if it’s not a fact) with respect to the proof of the “primary cause” claim is that the average temperature of the earth appears to rise and fall for reasons that are independent of the sorts of global-impact activities associated with recent (last 200-300 years) populations of humans.
I’d hate to turn the blog into a global warming blog, but is it in fact the overwhelming consensus of climatologists now that humans are, beyond any reasonable doubt, the “primary” “cause” of the earth’s present warming period?
hmm, seems to me i recall not one, but two large consesus reports to that effect being released within the last 6 months.
you could likely easily google them up.
Is the consensus anything like that of relevant experts with respect to claims such as “HIV causes AIDS” or “life on earth evolved over billions of years”?
likely not quite, but at what point did we require essentially 100% consesus in order to make reasonable decisions?
GWW,
I’d hate to turn the blog into a global warming blog, but is it in fact the overwhelming consensus of climatologists now that humans are, beyond any reasonable doubt, the “primary” “cause” of the earth’s present warming period?
The short answer is, “yes.” I guess you could question whether the IPCC Assessment Reports truly represent “the overwhelming consensus of climatologists” and the precise meaning of “beyond any reasonable doubt,” but the latest IPCC Report (or, at least, the Summary for Poliymakers) estimates the probability that human activity is the primary (yes, primary) cause of recent (that is, since about the mid-20th century) global warming to be at least 90%.
Well, duh, Ichthyic, we started requiring that the moment GWW showed up and decided to pull down his pants and start the ‘proof of AGW dick-measuring contest’.
Well, duh, Ichthyic, we started requiring that the moment GWW showed up and decided to pull down his pants and start the ‘proof of AGW dick-measuring contest’.
exactly why i prefer he argue with the consesus reports themeselves, rather than with anybody on this thread.
If there is a point of disagreement with the consesus reports themselves, that would be interesting to discuss.
if only tangential to the actual topic of this thread.
Now, now gentlemen. Let’s stay calm.
at what point did we require essentially 100% consesus in order to make reasonable decisions?
That’s a strawman of your own design, not mine. I support many, if not all, of Gore’s proposals for reducing pollution, energy consumption, etc. Such proposals are very reasonable and I would support them whether or NOT humans are considered universally by experts to be the “primary cause of global warming.” For instance, it would be reaonable to support those proposals, I think, if humans were merely a “significant factor” in observed increases in the earth’s temperature.
Get it?
So what I’m hearing from a couple commenters is that if I get on the phone and randomly call 100 experts in climatology from the best universities in the world, I’ll get at least 90% of them agreeing without equivocation that “humans are the primary cause of global warming.” Is that right?
If so, that’s news to me. I knew that a majority of scientists believed that humans were a significant factor but now it’s the overwhelming consensus that humans were the “primary cause” … wow! That’s impressive.
I guess you could question whether the IPCC Assessment Reports truly represent “the overwhelming consensus of climatologists”
Well, is it? I mean, is it like the overwhelming consensus of biologists that life on earth evolved over 5 billion years? Or is it a somewhat less overwhelming consensus.
Again, I’m not pushing the angle that there’s a good reason to be a “global warming denier.” But I must say that I’m not entirely convinced that the humans are the “primary cause” of the recent warming trend. I grant you that they certainly MIGHT BE. I just lack the statistical sophistication to understand the data, I understand that this conclusion by the IPCC is fresh, and I understand that there are experts who dissent.
That’s all.
[finishes beer and chucks bottle in recyling container]
If there is a point of disagreement with the consesus reports themselves, that would be interesting to discuss.
Maybe if you’re into climatology. I’m not. I think it’s boring.
On the other hand, I think lumping people who aren’t convinced that humans are the “primary cause of global warming” with those who think the the earth goes around the sun is a bit misleading.
Do you think that someone who thinks that humans are responsible for, say, 40% of global warming is as deluded as a moron who thinks that Ivory Billed Woodpeckers are still flying around on earth?
the earth goes around the sun
You know what I meant.
I don’t know how strong the consensus on the IBWP is, but on AGW it’s indeed that human activity is the primary cause.
Along lines similar to Great White Wonder, it’s not just an issue of knowing what a majority of those in the climate modeling field think, but also of knowing how to evaluate the field of climate modeling. It’s not the case that all fields and all theories are the same. Evolutionary biology is a field with long legs, it draws on data from morphology, genetics, paleontology, field research, geology, and other sources, its basic theories are relatively simple and have deep consequences, and they have been put to the test for a century and a half by tens of thousands of scientists directly studying evolution and in related fields. In contrast, climate modeling is a new field, its basic data is hard to obtain and involves considerable interpretation, its theories are complex and require difficult computer programs to yield predictions, these having various assumptions embedded and even recently giving quite different predictions, and however much hard work has been put into their testing, I think it would be silly to compare it to evolutionary biology in this regard.
Yes, no doubt, climate modeling is more advanced than I realize. It is often the case with new fields that they are advancing quickly and those outside the field don’t know the state of those advances. But that’s just the point isn’t it? That knowledge propagates eventually, and people outside the field start to see the relevant signs that let them know what to think of the field. During that process, it is asking for an act of faith for someone outside the field to say, “here is this field, and here is the consensus opinion on question X, so believe it.”
That’s a strawman of your own design, not mine.
actually, it wasn’t so much of a strawman as a pre-conclusion based on the content of your question, which as you well know often leads to the poster essentially claiming there is no consesus to act on.
I apologize for concluding such in your case.
But I must say that I’m not entirely convinced that the humans are the “primary cause” of the recent warming trend. I grant you that they certainly MIGHT BE. I just lack the statistical sophistication to understand the data, I understand that this conclusion by the IPCC is fresh, and I understand that there are experts who dissent.
oops.
On the other hand, I think lumping people who aren’t convinced that humans are the “primary cause of global warming” with those who think the the earth goes around the sun is a bit misleading.
now THAT’S a strawman, if you intended to apply that to me based on the previous quote of what I actually said.
see why I didn’t think the issue worth actually debating with you?
you essentially have said the very content of the reports themselves is boring to you, so I can only conclude you just want an adrenaline rush.
not biting.
either read the consesus reports and decide for yourself whether you agree, or don’t.
as you well know often leads to the poster essentially claiming there is no consesus to act on.
But here I was very clear that I believe there is more than enough consensus to act on.
Crystal clear, in fact. I wonder how you could have missed it, Ichthyc?
now THAT’S a strawman, if you intended to apply that to me based on the previous quote of what I actually said.
I was thinking of PZ.
[note to self — Ichthyc is paranoid]
either read the consesus reports and decide for yourself whether you agree, or don’t.
I can assure you I will never read the reports. I do hope that most people find the reports persuasive, of course, because I care about the environment.
I remain curious as to the extent of “consensus” among the relevant scientific community at large as to whether it is proven that humans are the “primary cause” of the current warming trend.
I wonder, for instance, are there any self-identifying “liberal” or “card carrying Democrat” climatologists who disagree (even if mildly, as I suggested above) with the IPCC “consensus”.
Great White Wonder,
This link was posted over at RealClimate.org
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf
Read it come to your own conclusion.
As for whether or not there is a consensus.
“The IPCC assesses the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for understanding the risk of man-made climate change. Its regular reports are based mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific and technical literature. The assessments are produced by three working groups which bring together hundreds of leading experts from around the world. The reports thus represent the most authoritative global scientific consensus on climate change.”
I sit on the board of directors of my condo association and recently had to bring the twenty owners to a consensus over a silly parking dispute. If I got a few gray hairs out of that experience then imagine how hard it must be to get a consensus out of hundreds of experts in any field. That has gotta be a little bit harder. So I’d bet it’s probably pretty darn close to “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”
GWW — it might help for you to go over to http://www.realclimate.org for your factual Global Warming inquiries and then come back.
[note to self — Ichthyc is paranoid]
GWW acuses me of making strawmen of his arguments, and then when shown he is the one making strawmen, accuses me of being paranoid. rhetoric, anyone?
as usual, you aren’t interested in substantive debate, you just want an adrenaline rush.
what makes you different from a garden variety troll, again?
You keep reminding me why they booted you from PT.
’nuff said.
you can play with yourself and see if you can get off. Since you have effectively derailed the topic of the thread, I’ll wait patiently until your done masturbating and then see if anyone is left that actually is interested in posting something relevant.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the IPCC’s reports for a few years now. It totally amazes me that people have decided to be wilfully ignorant of the science.
In my nastier moments, I almost hope that the global climate change shit hits the fan in a big way so that some of these GCC deniers get a kick in the pants. But with the realization that they would consider it to be Armageddon (and hence god approved), and the fact that it would also deleteriously effect the rest of the population, I don’t see any way of bringing them over to the side of reason.
The most worrying part is the thought that they are denying ANY possibile human involvement in Global Climate Change, because they believe that it is god’s will. If this is the case, they may actively and continuously denounce human involvement as they would have a vested interest (according to their religious beliefs), IN Armageddon.
Needless to say, they scare the crapola out of me.
GWW writes:
I saw one the last time I was in Arkansas. If only I had brought a camera!
GWW acuses me of making strawmen of his arguments,
Uh, I did more than accuse you, Ichthyc. But don’t take it so hard. Global warming is an emotional issue for a lot of people. I don’t like the harcore deniers either.
The issue I’m raising is simply one of degree. The probability that humans are the primary cause of global warming was set (by math most humans will never understand) at 90% by the IPCC.
What’s the probability that scientists are correct that life on earth has evolved over the past several billion years? It has to be nearly 100%.
What’s the probability that scientists are right that the earth revolves around the sun? It’s has to be near 100%.
So is it right to lump deniers of evolution or heliocentric theory with those who are not entirely convinced that humans might not be the “primary” cause of the current warming trend?
I don’t think it’s right. Am I deeply upset by PZ’s comparison? Fuck no. Do I find it disturbing in any way? No. In any case, it’s not nearly as annoying as the knee jerk assholery of certain would-be environmentalists.
The most worrying part is the thought that they are denying ANY possibile human involvement in Global Climate Change, because they believe that it is god’s will.
Word.
you have effectively derailed the topic of the thread
LOL. Republicans suck!!!!
There, I’ve put us back on track.
To answer what I thought was a reasonable question, from what I’ve read one could safely rank the theories thusly:
Earth orbits the sun – so certain one has to be daft to not agree.
Evolution – very certain, and should be clear to any thinking person who examines the evidence, however many interesting question exist about mechanisms.
Global Warming – fairly certain, the possibility of a major reversal of learned opinion is not outlandish, but is nonetheless very small. Debate is likely to focus more and more on not whether, but how much.
Add the caveat that Global Warming is the newest of the theories, and thus has the most room to add certainty with additional data.
A common myth about Global Warming science is that it rests on just one or two pillars, which if not 100 percent true, brings the entire building down. The “Science”, if you will, is an enormously large number of independent lines of evidence that all point in the same direction. The internal redundancy resulting from the many independent lines of evidence is what makes the Science so robust and gives scientists so much confidence in the edifice as a whole.
The current “consensus” GW theory already incorporates non-human-caused warming causes into it, ie. potential increases in solar radiation, cosmic rays, etc.. that may also be contributing to the warming signal that is being observed.
To completely negate human-caused GW one must first:
a) Devise a full theory, with supporting data, which fully explains the observed warming signal without any human contribution.
b) Explain exactly how the climate system is completely cancelling out any warming effects from the human greenhouse gasses measured past and present.
Without doing a and b — you don’t have an alternative explanation. And without a plausible, testable alternative, you’re really just saying “i don’t wanna believe it cuz I don’t wanna.”
And the more robust the evidence, the more easily it can be denied by people with the proper training.
Religion, and Christianity in particular, conditions people to believe that faith in things that can’t be rationally supported is desirable, and faith in things that are utterly absurd and impossible is the greatest virtue.
So denying the obvious becomes a powerful political statement: that your allegiance to your faction is stronger than even rudimentary common sense.
beepbeepitsme:
That’s just standard fare, and goes along with the diverse and vapid criticisms they make. It’s one thing to have some uncertainty about how to view these notions, recognizing that that likely is one’s own ignorance. It’s something quite different to be certain that something is wrong, and to offer a host of truly stupid arguments why it must be wrong. Alas, most polls don’t well distinguish such.
When your conclusion is predetermined, how you reach that conclusion isn’t very important.
Religion, and Christianity in particular, conditions people to believe that faith in things that can’t be rationally supported is desirable, and faith in things that are utterly absurd and impossible is the greatest virtue.
That point can’t be emphasized enough. One fundy I knew proclaimed to me, upon hearing my arguments about scientific findings refuting her beliefs, that she was THRILLED that science didn’t back up her religious beliefs. She wasn’t so dense that she couldn’t understand the science. She understood it quite well. That’s part of what made her even more convinced in the bible–she saw that a literal interpretation of the bible didn’t jibe with science, and so declared that she must be the most pious, devout xtian there could be, to be holding on to her faith even in the face of obvious evidence against it. The more proof she had that her religious claims were wrong, the better she felt as a xtian. She had an overwhelming desire to show allegiance to her sky daddy.
To answer PZ’s question, I have no clue why “righty” blogs have such a negative reaction to something as non-partisan as physics and chemistry (all climate science really is …)
How can you be opposed to basic science, wouldn’t that be like opposing evolution ?
oops …
It’s easy: To acknowledge that GW is primarily caused by humans and that it will have devastating economic impacts over the next decades to centuries would cause them to have to admit that the Right is wrong on not just one but two issues:
1) Full throttle (pun intended) Capitalism is having provably negative effects on the overall well-being of humanity due to classic ‘tragedy of the commons’ behavior and regulation of the commons (in this case the emission of GH gases) is needed. This alone is enough to give the Republican business base a heart attack. This is why you don’t see them readily acknowledge dangerously high arsenic levels in water supplies, destructive mis-use of Federal Parks, overfishing of ocean stocks, destruction of watersheds, or overgrazing problems, either.
2) The “Treehugging Liberals” were Correct about #1 the whole time.
Nuh huh. Not going to happen. The “righty blogs” would rather slit their own throats than admit to #2.
what makes you different from a garden variety troll, again?
I shave every other day.
Trolls post only to get a reaction. If GWW is trying to express a point, he’s not a troll.
Trolls are not “whatever posting styles you don’t like”.
Even worse!!!
Only 13% Of Congressional Republicans Believe In Global Warming
No doubt it is fashionable among righties to be wrong about scientific issues.
One of those votes was from my friend and righty blogger, RW. He and I have gone back and forth quite a bit on the topic, and his position – as it currently stands – isn’t on the “whack-o” side of unreasonable. In fact, for all I know, he may be right in his summary statement, that while human activity may be an influence in climate change, solar variability may be the primary cause. He casts that answer over a more-or-less geological time-frame… i.e. the sun has had more effect on climate change over the historical long-term than human activity has had recently.
IIRC there was one paper that suggested that over the past 100 years, up to 50% of climate change was solar forcing. If you figure that cow farts were a percent or two, then it is possible that, over that time frame, human activity may *not* be *the* primary cause.
I’ve stretched him out on this topic a good bit already, so I’m probably not going to jump back in and ask him to come to terms with the fact that the next 100 years will put us in the drivers seat for certain. He’ll get there after he’s had time to mull it over for a while.
I guess the point is that this survey may be giving a somewhat *too* bleak picture of the right-o-sphere. At least that one vote acknowledges the fact of global warming, the fact of a human contribution to it, and the possibility that we might ought to do something about it
Two points…
1. Attempting to reverse GW has the potential to have a devastating affect on everyone by massively disrupting the global economy. For that reason, a very high degree of certainty about humanity’s role in GW is necessary. Imagine if you had an infection in your leg, and the doctor told you that amputating your leg was the only way to save your life. How would you then feel if he said that he was 90% certain that the amputation was necessary to save your life? That 10% becomes pretty damn important.
2. I have many questions about our impact on GW, but can’t seem to find answers. Is there a site for GW analogous to http://www.talkorigins.org?
Two Responses:
1. Failure to reverse (or at least significantly slow) GW will have a much larger devastating effect (estimates are at least 4 times worse) on the economy of the world than the economic cost of mitigating GW. So the cost/benefit analysis tells you the *expectation* of the cost for doing nothing is quite a bit larger than the expectation of the cost of doing something.
Your cancer of the leg is a very apt analogy for reasons you failed to follow through on: Losing a leg is devastating. Uncontrolled cancer is fatal. When doing a cost/benefit analysis, a 90% certainty of death in 1 year vs (for argument’s sake) a 50% loss of mobility but a (let’s say) 80% chance of an additional 30 years of life is a no brainer. You get the leg amputated: Immediately.
2. http://www.realclimate.org/
Which foreign policy. Did I miss something?
Smijer, your friend is, at least with regards to the last 30 to 50 years, wrong. Solar variation has already been taken into account in the IPCC work. However he is not necessarily even correct with regards to solar variability over a geological time period, given that ice ages usually seem to line up with orbital forcings. Besides, what is the point of saying that the sun has had a greater effect on solar variability in geological time periods? Even if it was 100% true, that still has nothing to do with the period we are now in, where humans are causing most of the warming, and we can forecast roughly how warm it will become.
You do note that nobody here is saying humans were the prime affector of climate over the past 100 years. Hence that statement is irrelevant.
To completely negate human-caused GW one must first:
a) Devise a full theory, with supporting data, which fully explains the observed warming signal without any human contribution.
Around 700 AD, Eric the Red gave Greenland its name, becaue the place was, well, green. Why? Because the global temperature then was 2.5 degs C warmer than it is now.
I don’t have a theory for why that is, but that particular “warming signal” happened without any human contribution.
Which means, however it happened, it can. So if it could happen without human intervention last time, why must it be this time?
It is also worth noting two things:
1. The single most potent greenhouse gas is water vapor.
2. No climate model includes the effect of clouds, because computers need to be roughly six orders of magnitude more powerful to do so.
Does that mean humans are not the primary cause of global warming? No.
Should excluding the most significant greenhouse gas be cause for some doubt about just how dead certain those conclusions are? One would think.
Finally, as someone noted above, even if we take as stipulated the IPCCs conclusions, only devestating the global economy would suffice to meaningfully curtail CO2 emission.
That means lots of human suffering.
Considering that humans got along perfectly well 1300 years ago with an Earth 2.5 deg C warmer than now, perhaps the costs of curtailing CO2 emissions would greatly outweigh the benefits.
guthrie – all very correct (though orbital forcing is still not man-made)… I just wanted to point out that it isn’t unforgiveable to think that humans might not be the *primary* cause. Simply put, the question wasn’t designed to give us a picture of the more relevant attitudes toward GW in right blogistan. Likely less than 100% would have answered “no” to a question like “does human activity have a significant impact on climate change”.
Frisbee, I’m not convinced that reductions of CO2 would necessarily devastate the global economy. Surely some economic sectors would be hit very hard if they could not adjust nimbly enough to comply with a CO2 unfriendly regime – but that doesn’t mean that the overall economy would necessarily suffer.
GWW,
Actually, if you got on the phone and called climatologists, I think 99.9% of them would say that they think global warming is primarily caused by humans. The 90% in the IPCC report doesn’t refer to the number of climatologists who think that global warming is manmade, it refers to the error bars they’re putting on their predictions.
Global warming is not as solid as evolutionary theory, but it’s not new either. Though it only started making the news in the late 90s, climatologists have been talking about it since the 70s, and it’s been pretty serious as an idea since the late 80s. The news media always manages to find someone who says it’s not happening, but keep in mind that reporters will look far and wide to find a dissenter, even for HIV/AIDS and evolutionary theory.
The only real controversy is in the magnitude of the effect, not in whether or not it’s happening.
Umm… Eric the Red naming Greenland was a major PR stunt to get people to move there. Though it has gone through changes in temperature (like the rest of earth), it hasn’t ever been a particularly habitable place, except for folks with remarkable skills (like the Inuit).
Seems pretty obvious to me. If power takes a hit, everyone takes a hit, and if transportation takes a hit, everyone takes a hit. And those two industries are major, major fossil fuel users.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never worked for any business that didn’t depend pretty heavily on having the lights stay on and the trucks run on time.
Electric cars that can travel 20 miles without needing to be recharged are all very well, but are they going to be able to supply my local grocery store? And where does the electricity come from? Rising electricity costs will increase the operating cost of pretty much every business in the industrialized world. And the part of the world that isn’t industrialized yet really, really wants to be, because it allows so much more productivity of everything, including food and medical care.
Only if amputation is the only option available. The comparison is between all options, not between one particular option and not-doing-anything.
The first step is to get a second opinion, not to amputate the leg.
Chris – yeah it “seems obvious”. But something seeming obvious doesn’t convince me of its truth, especially where it concerns something as complex as a global economy. I’ve seen a few cost analyses, but what I have seen have been worst case doomsday scenarios painted by right-wingers. Maybe accurate, maybe just convenient… and always overly simplistic. I’d be curious to know what the anticipated costs/benefits are on anything we do to curb CO2 emissions, but I’m not going to assume anything just because it “seems obvious”.
More like 900…
That particular coast was a bit greener than in the middle 20th century, but (just to make sure no stupid misunderstandigs happen) the last time there was no inland ice on Greenland was 400,000 years ago. At that time the sea level was 22 m above today’s. You don’t want that back.
Wrong, the local mean annual temperature. The poles always have the widest swings in temperature and the tropics the smallest when the global mean annual temperature changes.
Also, note that clouds do not consist of water vapor, and that clouds are included in the latest few climate models (maybe not to their full complexity, but still). Water vapor is of course included in the models; guess what, everybody knows it’s the most important greenhouse gas. Don’t rely on data that are 10 years out of date, and never assume that scientists haven’t thought of what is most obvious.
More like 900…
That particular coast was a bit greener than in the middle 20th century, but (just to make sure no stupid misunderstandigs happen) the last time there was no inland ice on Greenland was 400,000 years ago. At that time the sea level was 22 m above today’s. You don’t want that back.
Wrong, the local mean annual temperature. The poles always have the widest swings in temperature and the tropics the smallest when the global mean annual temperature changes.
Also, note that clouds do not consist of water vapor, and that clouds are included in the latest few climate models (maybe not to their full complexity, but still). Water vapor is of course included in the models; guess what, everybody knows it’s the most important greenhouse gas. Don’t rely on data that are 10 years out of date, and never assume that scientists haven’t thought of what is most obvious.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Now consider that the IPCC report alone represents hundreds of individual opinions.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Now consider that the IPCC report alone represents hundreds of individual opinions.
True. However, as David Marjanović pointed out, the IPCC report represents over 600 opinions by specialists in the area. How many more “second opinions” do you need?
Just as Creationists and ID types reject evolution because of what they believe are its religious implications, global warming deniers reject the new consensus because of what they think are the political implications of doing something about climate change. They think that green ideas are stalking horses for one-world government and socialism. Which is why arguing about the science with them doesn’t help very much. From their point of view, what’s at stake isn’t a scientific question at all. You might as well assume that Philip Johnson was motivated by a sincere desire to understand nature.
Frisbee: “2. No climate model includes the effect of clouds, because computers need to be roughly six orders of magnitude more powerful to do so.”
I think they do. From the 2001 IPCC report…
“As can be inferred from the description of the current climate models gathered by AMIP (AMIP, 1995; Gates et al., 1999) the cloud schemes presently in use in the different modelling centres vary greatly in terms of complexity, consistency and comprehensiveness. However, there is a definite tendency toward a more consistent treatment of the clouds in climate models. The more widespread use of a prognostic equation for cloud water serves as a unifying framework coupling together the different aspects of the cloud physics, as noted in the SAR. The evolution of the cloud schemes in the different climate models has continued since then.”
From my understanding, the argument about “if” humans are the major cause of global warming kind of goes like this:
1. Take a pot.
2. Fill it with water.
3. Set it on a stove and turn that to where its warm, but not quite enough to boil.
4. Light a match and hold it under the pot.
The people arguing against humans being the primary cause babble about the stove being more significant than the match. The other side is saying, “Yeah, but if some idiot didn’t stick the match under it, it still wouldn’t have started boiling!”
The match “is” insignificant by itself. Human interventing “is” insignificant by itself. The problem is, in neither case is it insignificant when added to the existing system. And worse, in the case of global warming, the argument goes, “If one match isn’t significant, then why should it matter at all if we add one, two or twelve more matches *before* the first one has burned out.” Or in terms of Global Warming. If adding 2% more of something isn’t significant, why would adding 2% per year matter? Umm… Because 1% of the first years crap is **still** up there, so you now have 3%, not 3% the next year, then 3.5%, then 3.75%, and so on. Mind you, the percentages are likely smaller than I am using here, but you get the point, if only half of it “leaves” the atmospher each year, then you are still left with half + what ever you add. And with GW its worse than that, because there is a cap on how much you can remove. I.e., its a curve. The more you have “in” the atmosphere, the less you can get rid of. If you could remove 100% of it in year 1-10, you might only get rid of 99% in year 11, 98% in year 12, 95% in year 13, 85% in year 14, 50% in year 15, etc. Until eventually, without reducing the amount you output, you can literally put more back into the system that the planet can ever remove naturally. Some will “always” still be removed by nature, but if you are pouring out 2 times what you can remove, then you *are* looking at the sort of progression I used in my example.
The, “Humans can’t be doing it!”, types all seem to be looking at the “large” trend of total amount in the atmospher, while ignoring the slow creeping, but only now becoming significant enough to worry about, fractions. Those add up. It doesn’t matter if its 1000 parts per million that *can* be safely removed each year naturally and we are only adding in .0001 parts per million more than that, or 5000 parts per million that is safe and we are actually producing 5100 parts per million. The only question is “how fast” is this going to become a problem, not **IF**. And if you wait around until is 5000 naturally removed and 6000 produced, its not going to fracking matter at that point because we probably can’t do a damn thing to prevent the decades or centuries of draught and famine that it produces.
Remember, we are talking about a delayed reaction here. If you dump 5,100 into the atmospher you “must” reduce your output to 4,900 to balance it out, or for every year you don’t those extra 100 *are* going to cause the temperature to rise. If you only reduce it to 5000, its not going to have any effect at all, while reducing it to 4999 means it will take 100 years to “restore” things to a sane level, since only 1 part per million is going to be “lost” from the atmosphere each year. The problem is… We are producing like 6000 or 7000, and some places like China are ramping that number of yearly, while everyone else argues over how much “extra” causes each 100th of a degree of temperature and “if” that just a wobble, given that some “cycle” might be heating things up anyway.
Imagine if the people that did the Apollo 13 mission had used that sort of logic. “Well.. CO2 is definitely growing due to the lack of scrubbers, but we have this other group some place that says that it increasing at only 1% over what the scrubbers can deal with might not really be that big of a problem. Hello, hello? Damn.. Wonder why they aren’t responding anymore?” But because its happening in the span of half centuries or more, they get to babble about how “big” the change really is, while completely failing to recognize that its not about how big the change is now, its about the fact that the change keeps getting “bigger” the longer you spend arguing about how big it is *now*.
Hell, the math is so simply even a six year old should be able to comprehend it. Short of complete denialism, I can’t comprehend why adults can’t get it.
From my understanding, the argument about “if” humans are the major cause of global warming kind of goes like this:
1. Take a pot.
2. Fill it with water.
3. Set it on a stove and turn that to where its warm, but not quite enough to boil.
4. Light a match and hold it under the pot.
The people arguing against humans being the primary cause babble about the stove being more significant than the match. The other side is saying, “Yeah, but if some idiot didn’t stick the match under it, it still wouldn’t have started boiling!”
The match “is” insignificant by itself. Human interventing “is” insignificant by itself. The problem is, in neither case is it insignificant when added to the existing system. And worse, in the case of global warming, the argument goes, “If one match isn’t significant, then why should it matter at all if we add one, two or twelve more matches *before* the first one has burned out.” Or in terms of Global Warming. If adding 2% more of something isn’t significant, why would adding 2% per year matter? Umm… Because 1% of the first years crap is **still** up there, so you now have 3%, not 3% the next year, then 3.5%, then 3.75%, and so on. Mind you, the percentages are likely smaller than I am using here, but you get the point, if only half of it “leaves” the atmospher each year, then you are still left with half + what ever you add. And with GW its worse than that, because there is a cap on how much you can remove. I.e., its a curve. The more you have “in” the atmosphere, the less you can get rid of. If you could remove 100% of it in year 1-10, you might only get rid of 99% in year 11, 98% in year 12, 95% in year 13, 85% in year 14, 50% in year 15, etc. Until eventually, without reducing the amount you output, you can literally put more back into the system that the planet can ever remove naturally. Some will “always” still be removed by nature, but if you are pouring out 2 times what you can remove, then you *are* looking at the sort of progression I used in my example.
The, “Humans can’t be doing it!”, types all seem to be looking at the “large” trend of total amount in the atmospher, while ignoring the slow creeping, but only now becoming significant enough to worry about, fractions. Those add up. It doesn’t matter if its 1000 parts per million that *can* be safely removed each year naturally and we are only adding in .0001 parts per million more than that, or 5000 parts per million that is safe and we are actually producing 5100 parts per million. The only question is “how fast” is this going to become a problem, not **IF**. And if you wait around until is 5000 naturally removed and 6000 produced, its not going to fracking matter at that point because we probably can’t do a damn thing to prevent the decades or centuries of draught and famine that it produces.
Remember, we are talking about a delayed reaction here. If you dump 5,100 into the atmospher you “must” reduce your output to 4,900 to balance it out, or for every year you don’t those extra 100 *are* going to cause the temperature to rise. If you only reduce it to 5000, its not going to have any effect at all, while reducing it to 4999 means it will take 100 years to “restore” things to a sane level, since only 1 part per million is going to be “lost” from the atmosphere each year. The problem is… We are producing like 6000 or 7000, and some places like China are ramping that number of yearly, while everyone else argues over how much “extra” causes each 100th of a degree of temperature and “if” that just a wobble, given that some “cycle” might be heating things up anyway.
Imagine if the people that did the Apollo 13 mission had used that sort of logic. “Well.. CO2 is definitely growing due to the lack of scrubbers, but we have this other group some place that says that it increasing at only 1% over what the scrubbers can deal with might not really be that big of a problem. Hello, hello? Damn.. Wonder why they aren’t responding anymore?” But because its happening in the span of half centuries or more, they get to babble about how “big” the change really is, while completely failing to recognize that its not about how big the change is now, its about the fact that the change keeps getting “bigger” the longer you spend arguing about how big it is *now*.
Hell, the math is so simply even a six year old should be able to comprehend it. Short of complete denialism, I can’t comprehend why adults can’t get it.
Sorry about the double up there, something in between here and there was acting wacko and I kept getting a “server timeout” error. Still showing all “no response” events from the router that caused it in the chain, even though somehow the data is now getting through… Bloody screwy.
‘Human-emitted GHGs are the primary cause of the present warming’ has been surviving increasingly arduous test since the 1970s – a little bit longer than ‘HIV causes AIDS’. Less arduous tests go back to the 1890s. ‘life on earth evolved over billions of years’ has been surviving rigorous tests for quite a bit longer than the other two. Please see Spencer Weart’s The Discovery of Global Warming, if you haven’t already.
Well, this whole thread is fascinating to me, no matter how old hat it may seem to some of you guys. I’m a recent persuadee of human-caused global warming. Some of my former resistance was, ironically, based on an idea I had that it wasn’t good science, and a mistrust of the political motives of the people who seemed to buy into it uncritically. Recently I have seen a lot of good evidence that it is good science and that thinking people are becoming convinced regardless of their political ideology. The more of this evidence I see, from more places, the more I understand the reasons why it’s so accepted.
Kagehi, you just provided me with information I did not already know. I know it seems to you like everyone knows it, and maybe they should, but they don’t. I find your math pretty straightforward and agree that once you hear it, assuming it is an accurate representation of what is going on, you have to be in denial to ignore its significance.
I want to thank everyone who is taking the time to teach rather than harangue. There’s a place for rage, and a place for understanding. I know the subject of global warming is often a place for both. As someone who identifies herself as a humanist, I don’t like to uncritically accept scare stories of the “humans are bad” variety.
Just a word of caution: Please remember to always tell the unvarnished truth. Don’t ever think you’re helping to convince people when you exaggerate. No cause is so noble that it can justify a lie. If I find out that you misrepresented something in order to help make your issue look cosmetically more convincing, it will have a negative effect that will far outweigh the positive effect.
Remember, I’m on your side. But I just got here. Please help me learn.
Douglas Watts: E O WIlson has popularized the name consilience for that aspect of science. You are quite right to draw attention to it; unfortunately I think it is both the most important aspect of the scientific world view and the least understood. Both by the layman, and by philosophers and scientists who have struggled with how science works to explain. (Needless to say the second affects the first.)
Kagehi: Another failure to understand I’ve seen is – “Only two degrees? That’s tiny!” Of course, two degrees can change the nature of a system completely, as melting or boiling or sublimation or whatever else illustrates.
A fair point, I guess. But one thing we’re definitely not getting away from is the first law of thermodynamics. If we want energy to power our industry and transport our goods from one place to another (and boy, do we ever), we have to get it from somewhere. And for many forms of effective transportation we have to get it from somewhere *portable*. (And I didn’t even mention other industries that inherently require portability, like construction.) Now maybe that something will be hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells (recharged by solar, geothermal, hydrodynamic, nuclear or some other non-CO2 producing power source); but maybe it won’t, and we shouldn’t take too-drastic action against carbon combustion without having an alternative in place that is actually implementable on the necessary scale.
Basically, all I’m saying is that we should beware of causes that are worse than the disease. A sea level rise of a meter per century isn’t going to kill anyone – we can all move fast enough to get out of the way. Other climate changes are more potentially worrisome, but we may be able to compensate with specially bred or genetically engineered crops, for example.
The fact that global warming is a real problem shouldn’t be used to provide cover for Luddism. Abandoning industry now *will* cause billions of preventable human deaths. For the foreseeable future we’re stuck with some kind of industrial technology, despite its downsides.
Let’s hope so!!!
Think Bangladesh. 144 million inhabitants.
Let’s hope so!!!
Think Bangladesh. 144 million inhabitants.
smiler:
Frisbee, I’m not convinced that reductions of CO2 would necessarily devastate the global economy.
In order to make the kind of reductions that would be required, we would have to give up the car. At an abstract level, that might be a wonderful thing. However, in the real world, doing so would devastate essentially advanced economy.
All of them consist of widely dispersed residential and work location settlement patterns. That kind of network topology only works if it is densely interconnected and people rely on personal transportation.
There simply is no undoing that, without devastating industrial economies.
And there isn’t waving any magic wand to get rid of some form of carbon in providing the fuel to make cars move.
Also, the alternatives to getting rid of CO2 become vanishingly small if one excludes nuclear energy.
What is worse, though, is the absence of alternatives to massive — and destructive — government intervention in the economy.
For instance, S. S. Penner, (Journal of Clean Technology and Environmental Sciences 3, No. 3/4 (1993), who works at the University of California at San Diego, has estimated that the conversion of about 2% of the jet fuel in commercial jet airliners during a four-year period into particulate forms (by adding powdered coal to the fuel) similar to those emitted by volcanoes could cool the Earth by about 3 ºC. Extrapolating to expected air transport in the year 2050, he estimates that this could be done by the same means in one year rather than four.
Factician:
Though [Greenland] has gone through changes in temperature (like the rest of earth)
Yes, indeed it has, many times. Just like the rest of the earth since time immemorial.
But this time it is all about mankind?
Even if one accept AGW as a given, the consequent temperature rise is well within historical changes (and beats heck out of a change the other direction). None of those changes were devastating, so why should we conclude this one will be?
David:
Wrong, the local mean annual temperature. The poles always have the widest swings in temperature and the tropics the smallest when the global mean annual temperature changes.
Fine, but that doesn’t change my point any. It has been warmer before than it is now, for reasons having nothing to do with humans, and the consequences were far from devastating.
In fact, it may well be that an increase of 2.5 deg C in global mean temperature will provide a net gain to humanity.
Also, note that clouds do not consist of water vapor, and that clouds are included in the latest few climate models (maybe not to their full complexity, but still). Water vapor is of course included in the models;
Clouds — and their reflective effect — are not included in any meaningful way in current global climate models. The cell size in current models is so large that cloud effects are included only as a WAG.
Since clouds are a fundamental component of weather, that does rather seem to qualify the answers climate models provide, does it not?
Benjamin:
as David Marjanović pointed out, the IPCC report represents over 600 opinions by specialists in the area.
Specialists selected by the IPCC, that is.
Does that mean the conclusions are wrong? No.
Does is open the possibility to realized expectations? Yes.
No discussion of climate change can be complete without The Maunder Minimum. Mentally overlay global mean temperatures on the presented graph.
Also, this series of articles, IMO, should give anyone pause when concluding AGW is an accomplished fact.
To summarize this overlong post:
— Given the state of climate modeling (last time I heard, no climate model was able to reliably replicate historical weather from known starting conditions over anything like a 200 year span), the extreme sensitivity of models to assumptions, and the frequent historical climate changes, AGW is not a foregone conclusion.
— The conclusion that the predicted increase in global temperatures will result in devastating changes is almost certainly wrong. It hasn’t before, why should it now?
— There may well be far better ways to stabilize temperatures than massive government intervention.
I suspect many here regularly excoriate conservatives as unthinking religious fanatics.
From where I sit, the unquestioning support for AGW, and the reflexive insistence on massive government intervention, has characteristics very similar to religious belief.
Yes. How do I know? Simple: all other possible causes do not operate this time, except for the sun, which explains part of the warming, but far from all of it.
Besides, you can measure how the amount of CO2 in the air is increasing, and you can measure how the amount of CO2 in the oceans is increasing. We haven’t had such values for, like, ten million years.
Wrong. The global mean annual temperature is already 0.5 °C above that of the middle 20th century; last time we had that, the Sahara was green. And the temperature keeps rising.
For starters, we didn’t have 144 million people in Bangladesh back then.
Not “now”, but the middle 20th century.
If the Sahara becomes a savanna again*, like it did last time, I can see the benefit. But I still can’t see how you can move hundreds of millions of people fast enough to make that a net benefit.
* The warmer it is, the more evaporation happens, and therefore the more precipitation; if it gets warm enough, as it has been for long periods in the Earth’s history, all deserts disappear (unless there’s a supercontinent with an interior that is far enough away from all coasts). However, the direct cause for why the Sahara turned green at the end of the last ice age has to do with the monsoon… now there’s so little rainforest left in west Africa that the monsoon may not expand north the way it did last time.
Yes. How do I know? Simple: all other possible causes do not operate this time, except for the sun, which explains part of the warming, but far from all of it.
Besides, you can measure how the amount of CO2 in the air is increasing, and you can measure how the amount of CO2 in the oceans is increasing. We haven’t had such values for, like, ten million years.
Wrong. The global mean annual temperature is already 0.5 °C above that of the middle 20th century; last time we had that, the Sahara was green. And the temperature keeps rising.
For starters, we didn’t have 144 million people in Bangladesh back then.
Not “now”, but the middle 20th century.
If the Sahara becomes a savanna again*, like it did last time, I can see the benefit. But I still can’t see how you can move hundreds of millions of people fast enough to make that a net benefit.
* The warmer it is, the more evaporation happens, and therefore the more precipitation; if it gets warm enough, as it has been for long periods in the Earth’s history, all deserts disappear (unless there’s a supercontinent with an interior that is far enough away from all coasts). However, the direct cause for why the Sahara turned green at the end of the last ice age has to do with the monsoon… now there’s so little rainforest left in west Africa that the monsoon may not expand north the way it did last time.
Link doesn’t work.
Well, carbon dust can’t be one. Over time, it oxidizes, producing… guessed it…
Link doesn’t work.
Well, carbon dust can’t be one. Over time, it oxidizes, producing… guessed it…
I forgot the silliest objection:
Go find me ten dissidents. You will find five with a little googling. Finding ten will be difficult. Yes, worldwide.
How many climatologists do you think there are in the world?
I forgot the silliest objection:
Go find me ten dissidents. You will find five with a little googling. Finding ten will be difficult. Yes, worldwide.
How many climatologists do you think there are in the world?
Since the real objection to global warming is not that it is untrue but that dealing with it will increase the power of government, it might be worthwhile to point out what kind of steps are being recommended to deal with greenhouse gases. Do they amount to “massive government intervention?”
The role of governemnt in dealing with climate change appears to be threefold:
1. Paying for research about the issue.
2. Promoting behavioral changes through public education.
3. Altering existing regulations.
Some of these measures certainly cost public money, though not necessarily huge amounts of it. As far as I can see, however, they don’t require governments to do anything qualitative different than they are doing now. The U.S. already requries electric utilities to limit the emission of certain substances. The various health-related agencies work to reduce smoking and promote exercise among the population. The Feds subsidize an enormous amount of research. So what are the conservatives so afraid of? Public service ads telling you to turn off the damned lights?
The irony is that unchecked climate change will certainly require a great increase in government investment. If you think CO2 sequestration is expensive, wait until you see the bill the Army Corps of Engineers runs up trying to save Florida.
The other way around. If they weren’t afraid, they wouldn’t be conservative.
Ignorance produces fear, and fear produces conservativism.
Or political extremism (all extremes alike), but that requires outright paranoia plus a messiah complex.
The other way around. If they weren’t afraid, they wouldn’t be conservative.
Ignorance produces fear, and fear produces conservativism.
Or political extremism (all extremes alike), but that requires outright paranoia plus a messiah complex.
David:
Also, this series of articles, IMO, should give anyone pause when concluding AGW is an accomplished fact.
Link doesn’t work.
Apologies, try this.
(Memo to self, make Preview your friend.)
You seem to have missed my point. As recently as 1100 years ago, the mean global temperature was warmer than now. Last summer was the warmest in 1500 years. In geologic terms, that is a mere instant. Warm periods are frequent, as are cold interludes. Before this one, none involved man, and this one is strongly correlated with significant insolation changes.
It is at least worth considering that the models, which do not replicate historical weather, suffer from expectation bias: their entering arguments are modified until they produce the result everyone knows they are supposed to. Given that such models are extremely difficult and expensive to construct, there aren’t very many around. Even an ordinary amount of skepticism should make one leery of a herd effect.
After all, everyone knows the explanatory power of the “hockey stick.” Only one problem, when expert statisticians got a look at it, the stick vanished. The IPCC loudly trumpeted the HS in their 2001 report, but has since conspicuously neglected to mention it is no longer “operative.”
Well, carbon dust can’t be one. Over time, it oxidizes, producing… guessed it…
A vanishingly small of CO2, and enough reflectivity to reduce insolation by 1.5%, which cancels global warming whether its cause is the Maunder Minimum, or AGW, or both.
The other way around. If they weren’t afraid, they wouldn’t be conservative.
Ignorance produces fear, and fear produces conservativism.
Would that you could see the religious fervor contained in the unexamined acceptance of AGW (including calls to suppress dissent). Ironic, since most at this site are extraordinarily quick to see religious fundamentalism on the other side.
Besides, the cause of conservatism is the conviction that human nature is not some malleable plaything for the chattering classes.
Jim:
The role of governemnt in dealing with climate change appears to be threefold:
1. Paying for research about the issue.
2. Promoting behavioral changes through public education.
3. Altering existing regulations.
None of which will come anywhere close to sufficiently reducing CO2, provided AGW is really as bad as it is said to be.
David:
Go find me ten dissidents. You will find five with a little googling. Finding ten will be difficult. Yes, worldwide.
Here is a presentation by climatologists, earth scientists, and official IPCC reviewers raises serious objections to AGW.
Frisbee, that material is at least two years old, and the advisory board of that organization is comprised of … five people. Still looking for the other five. Color me unconvinced.
It’s also interesting to note that the President of “Friends of Science” is a consultant to the oil and gas industry. And he’s not the only one. I think what we’ve got here is another AGW skeptic tank fueled by large amounts of cash from the petroleum industry. Is this news? Nope.
Kseniya:
Those are all ad-hominem arguments.
Please demonstrate where they went wrong. For instance, the hockey stick argument has seemingly been well and truly demolished.
As well, no climate models adequately deal with the primary greenhouse gas, nor do they do a good, or even approximate, job of modelling historical climate.
Which could have something to do with building models to replicate the presumably correct hockey stick. Fine, if it is a valid phenomena against which to check the model, very not fine, otherwise.
In any event, either their objections are incorrect — which should be easy enough to demonstrate — or they are valid.
If so, then the only analytical response is to conclude the case for AGW remains very much open, and the skepticism this post cited well grounded.
BTW — did you read the other link?
Frisbee, true, true. You’re right, but refuting the presentation is not on my program tonight. Let’s just say I’m skeptical, based on past experience with flawed “studies” funded by big oil, and for that reason I thought it was worth pointing out the connection. I won’t pretend that’s a valid substitute for a genuine refutation, but it’s reason to be skeptical.
Did I read “the other link?” You mean the Solomon article? Not the whole series, no, though it looks very interesting. I have to say, though, I take issue with his opening statement:
I don’t think that anybody with even rudimentary knowledge of the issue thinks that global warming is “man-made” in the simplistic sense implied, nor do I think that many proponents of the case for AGW advocate “intervening massively in the economy.” He’s framing the debate in extreme terms while calling them “broad” and that makes my antennae twitch. I detect the faint whiff of journalistic bias. Or maybe my roomate dropped an egg salad sandwich behind the couch a few weeks ago. (Note to self: investigate both possibilities.)
In other words: Judgement withheld until article read. :-)
It might be worth noting that if I massage the Solomon passage I quote a little bit, it expresses my own opinion on the issue pretty well:
I believe that on the general question the science is settled, that global warming is potentially very serious and has a clear anthropogenic component, but one whose isolated impact is difficult to gauge. Prudence dictates that urgent action be taken to promote further research to learn more about global warming and its likely effects so that, should it be necessary, we can better understand how to more effectively mitigate or prevent a future calamity, but without applying unnecessarily radical interventions that may have profoundly negative economic consequences.
A lot of the obvious actions that address global warming are also sensible from the point of view of energy conservation, our other pressing problem. I’m not sure how increasing mileage standards or switching to more efficient lighting counts as “unnecessarily radical interventions” or what the downside of such measures is supposed to be.
I note that people who think the science is in doubt have no doubt whatsoever that delaying action will have no bad consequences. Since there is a huge amount of inertial built into political systems, especially in the U.S., we’re more likely to end up suffering fromb our procrastination than from our rash actions, whatever they are supposed to be. I’m still unclear what the right wing fears.
I’m not sure how increasing mileage standards or switching to more efficient lighting counts as “unnecessarily radical interventions” …
They don’t.
Actually I’m with you, Jim, because I don’t think “unnecessarily radical” interventions (such as these idiotic doomsday prophesies based on the idea that all industry will be instantly shut down, or something) will be attempted, or that too much will be done too soon. (For the reasons you’ve stated, that will never happen.) Otherwise, there is no such thing as “too quickly.”
What does the right wing fear? I don’t know, but I think they fear:
– That the consequences of GW might actually be as bad as some say
– The the alarmist left might actually be right about someting
– That unconstrained free-market enterprise and industry might not actually be paving the way to a better world
Increasing mileage standards and switching to more efficient lighting are not radical interventions, and both seem like good ideas, but they won’t do much to reduce carbon emissions, either.
The issue of policy response to global warming is really, really complicated and difficult and requires at least as much guidance from the social sciences as from the natural sciences.
Thanks for the link. The article is about the guy who disproved the hockey stick (or at least the first version of it — I haven’t quite read up on what has become of it, and it was all several years ago…). Good. But you see, science has moved on. We don’t need the hockey stick anymore.
Not only have you missed my point, you have missed what I actually wrote: 1100 years ago, the mean global temperature was warmer than 50 years ago. It was not warmer than now.
Regarding that summer, isolated weather extremes don’t prove anything, and last winter had pretty much snow in Austria (almost at 1980s levels)… but when was the last time before the winter that is currently ending that there was no snow all over western and central Europe?!?
Incredibly hot summers have become common. 1998 was a freak, sitting on top of El Niño. 2003 was just as hot, without an El Niño. 2004 was quite hot, too; 2005 was incredible; and 2006 was mind-boggling. All other summers I remember had 35 °C for a few days in August, not for the whole summer.
Now let’s see if snowless winters will become common, too.
Thanks for the link. The article is about the guy who disproved the hockey stick (or at least the first version of it — I haven’t quite read up on what has become of it, and it was all several years ago…). Good. But you see, science has moved on. We don’t need the hockey stick anymore.
Not only have you missed my point, you have missed what I actually wrote: 1100 years ago, the mean global temperature was warmer than 50 years ago. It was not warmer than now.
Regarding that summer, isolated weather extremes don’t prove anything, and last winter had pretty much snow in Austria (almost at 1980s levels)… but when was the last time before the winter that is currently ending that there was no snow all over western and central Europe?!?
Incredibly hot summers have become common. 1998 was a freak, sitting on top of El Niño. 2003 was just as hot, without an El Niño. 2004 was quite hot, too; 2005 was incredible; and 2006 was mind-boggling. All other summers I remember had 35 °C for a few days in August, not for the whole summer.
Now let’s see if snowless winters will become common, too.
Is that even still true?
This, it goes without saying, is an incredible accusation.
OK. Where can I learn more? (I’m still worried about the sulfur…)
Why should I care? I have examined, and I’m not calling for suppression of dissent. I merely think the dissenters have overlooked some data.
Is that even still true?
This, it goes without saying, is an incredible accusation.
OK. Where can I learn more? (I’m still worried about the sulfur…)
Why should I care? I have examined, and I’m not calling for suppression of dissent. I merely think the dissenters have overlooked some data.
David:
I said:
suffer from expectation bias: their entering arguments are modified until they produce the result everyone knows they are supposed to.
To which you replied:
This, it goes without saying, is an incredible accusation.
No, it isn’t; it certainly isn’t an accusation of perfidy. If you are building a model to gauge some outcome, by definition you must assess the suitability of the model against what should (the expectation) show.
If you know going in that increased CO2 levels must warm the atmosphere, then any model that yields the opposite is ipso facto wrong. Fair enough; it may well be. Unfortunately, we have absolutely no track record upon which to go. All existing climate models are highly speculative, and all are judged against the presumption of what must occur.
Which ties in to the hockey stick. During the time that was taken as objective truth, then all climate models had that as the standard against which their predictive value was judged.
That makes complete sense, to the extent that it helps draw modeling away form reliance upon expectation. However, to the extent the hockey stick is wrong — apparently a pretty good extent — then models using that as their yardstick have an expectation bias built in.
Absolutely nothing perfidious about it; rather, completely unavoidable. However, when answering the question as to whether human activity is wholly, primarily, partially, or not at all responsible for existing climate variation (the question for which the Right is being criticized for answering “incorrectly”), the intellectually honest answer is: dunno.
After considering the Maunder Minimum, historical climate variation just as large as the current instance, the extremely sensitive interaction between assumptions in models, and the (so far as I know) complete inability of existing models to mimic historical climate trends, then the conclusion that climate change is due uniquely to human activity amounts to more of a religious belief (complete with suppression of heretics) than it does a reasoned conclusion.
Regarding that summer, isolated weather extremes don’t prove anything …
Exactly. Please send that to Jeffrey Sachs, who recently had an op ed perfectly happy to cite Katrina as prima facie evidence of global warming, while neglecting to mention last summer’s astonishingly quiescent hurricane season as proof of precisely the opposite.
Remember, the question is not whether climate change is occurring — climate change is always occurring. Rather, the question is whether humans are uniquely responsible, and, if they are, what to do about it.
Given the nature of modeling, the inability of current models incorporate cloud effects, etc, the conclusion that humans are responsible has nothing more going for it than post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
If you take the IPCC at its word, there is no alternative to impovershing the world. (Unless the UN is suddenly to become friendly to free market technological fixes).
Fancy lightbulbs and fuel efficiency (which will happen on its own if it is in the context of net efficiency) are merely gestures that provide the warm fuzzy feeling of good intentions, but fail to have any meaningful consequences.
“…the conclusion that climate change is due uniquely to human activity…’
But, Frisbee: Nobody is saying that except you!
Kseniya:
From the opening sentence of Dr. Myers post:
Tim Lambert summarizes an informal survey of 59 right-wing bloggers: 100% of them deny the idea that humans are the primary cause of global warming, contradicting the scientific evidence.