Tim Lambert and John Quiggin have both been banging on about global warming rather a lot lately. Tim's Global Warming Sceptic Bingo post is an especially useful corrective source for the spurious and fraudulent material typically trotted out by global warming sceptics.
But Tim's and John's posts caused me to revisit the GISS global mean temperature records just out of idle curiosity. It was these records that caused me to abandon my own former position of moderate global warming scepticism about 12 months ago. The reason was that, although there was neither high solar activity nor an El Nino event to inflate the temperature record, the temperature record seemed to be continuing to show a warming trend.
My previous position, based on a fairly careful though non-expert perusal of the evidence, had been that human-induced global warming, though an undeniable reality, was likely to be quite modest and not a matter for panic or extreme measures. The GISS records in the first part of last year made it look like my conclusions had been wrong: the continued warming appeared significantly greater than you would expect if the long-term warming trend was as modest as I had thought.
But it turns out my assessment was premature. In fact the global mean temperature actually dropped by 0.02 °C in calendar year 2003, and by a further 0.04 °C in 2004. Can anyone recall reading anywhere that the world has actually cooled slightly in each of the last 2 years? I certainly can't. I wonder why?
Now, a global cooling of 0.06 °C might not seem much, but it's almost exactly what you'd expect if, as I had previously assumed from the evidence, the overall amount of warming caused by human emission of CO2 was real but exceedingly modest. The rate of warming since 1978 (before which the world had actually been cooling slightly for the previous 30 years or so, leading some of those now at the forefront of global warming alarmism to make equally alarmist predictions of an impending Ice Age) is about 0.15 °C per decade. The most common view is that about half of this warming is due to increased solar activity (i.e. not human activity), so that human-induced warming is around 0.075 °C per decade. The slight recorded cooling over the last 2 years, when solar activity has been reduced, tends to confirm those proportionate estimates.
So what does it all mean in practical terms? Well, global mean temperature has been increasing in linear fashion over the last 3 decades or so, as has atmospheric CO2. If we assume (not unreasonably) that that trend is likely to continue in the absence of major policy action to reduce human-generated CO2 emissions, then the extrapolated global temperature increase over the next century or so computes to a total of about 0.75 °C. Hardly insignificant, but not cataclysmic "the sky is falling" territory either.
But the UN IPCC asserts that the most likely increase is more like 2-2.5 °C, a much more worrying figure that would certainly have very serious effects on human life, civilisation and the global environment. My glance at the GISS figures early last year suggested to me that those IPCC estmates might just be correct. But the picture now looks much more benign, and approximates to my previous more moderate assumptions.
As far as I can work out from extensive though non-expert perusal of IPCC reports, they only manage to generate a projection as scarey as 2-2.5 °C (rather than 0.75 °C, which is all that can be justified on current trends) by making 2 assumptions, both of which are unjustified by the evidence:
(a) That most climate "feedback" mechanisms (e.g. the net effect of changes in cloud cover in reflecting or trapping heat) will operate to amplify rather than dampen the temperature increase generated by human-induced CO2. In fact the IPCC's own reports clearly show that scientists simply don't know enough at present to be able to say whether the net effect of feedbacks will be positive or negative. Moreover, the record of the last 30 years shows little or no sign of any amplifying influence.
(b) That world economic/industrial growth with be faster and dirtier than in recent decades, and/or population growth will be more rapid. In fact, the most recent world population growth projections show it slowing and then stopping by the middle of this century. Moreover, no respectable economist would hazard growth projections for any longer time frame than a decade and in a single country. Projecting growth over a whole century for the entire planet is just plain silly. Hence the IPCC talks in terms of "scenarios' rather than concrete predictions, but that doesn't stop it purporting to predict a temperature increase of 2-2.5 °C, when current rates of growth and temperature increase simply don't support it.
Thus, while it's certainly true, as Tim Lambert and John Quiggin claim, that most of the global warming sceptics' arguments are spurious, so too are the official estimates exaggerated and speculative and unjustified by the current evidence. There is certainly a "consensus" among climate scientists as to the reality of human-induced global warming, but there is no consensus at all about its likely magnitude. We are entirely justified in treating sceptically claims of large or catastrophic human-induced climate change.
That means we should take modest, considered action to moderate CO2 emissions, but extreme, drastically growth-inhibiting measures simply aren't justified by the current state of knowledge and evidence. It would be a good idea for the US and Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and for carbon taxes and an international and domestic emissions credits trading system to be developed. And it's very important that the third world be required to sign up to Kyoto-style emission reduction targets. First world governments should also continue and expand funding for development of sustainable, non-carbon energy sources (e.g. hydrogen).
But that's about as far as it goes. There's certainly no overwhelming case for major conversion to nuclear energy, at least until generation costs come down and waste disposal and proliferation problems can be more securely managed.
Nuclear or Global Warming?
This is great. Two easy pieces.
It is not true that it is generally accepted that only half of the warming since 78 has been caused by humans. Most estimates suggest that it is more like 110% (that is, it would have cooled slightly without our help). Look at the graphs here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=100
The reason why no-one except global warming sceptics have made much of the small decline from 2003 to 2004 is that year to year changes don't tell us much about long term trends. More relevant is how the year compares withe long term average and 2004 was the fourth warmest year in the instrumental record.
Personally I prefer the options being canvassed by scientists and futurists.
For example, the diffractive lens option. Build a lens which directs away 1-2% of sunlight, push it to L1 orbit. This scheme is very scalable, and compared to carbon taxes, regulations and such, is easy to track for costing.
Or push nanotechnology. It's expected that nanomanufacture will rely heavily on carbon, because of the very qaulities that make it a core element in biochemistry. In one of his books on nanotechnology, Eric Drexler described a scenario in which coalfields had been set alight to replace carbon taken from the air by nanomanufacturing.
Ken,
What you've written is very interesting and I agree with your conclusions. But even relatively extreme reductions in emissions achieved over a long enough time frame to allow technical responses might cost a few percent of GDP but could be easily managed within the context of continuing economic growth.
Ask yourself how much your life would change if you knew that over the next fifty years the price of petrol and fuel would rise say five or even tenfold. There would be all sorts of social, economic and technical changes to minimise the costs to your lifestyle. And lots of zero emissions options (eg biomass based energy production) become viable well below this level. Its a storm in a teacup and we should get on with it. And fifty years will give us a fair bit of time to work out how stringent we need to be along the way. As a technical problem its no big deal. As a political problem - well it won't be easy.
Tim L
The graphs you link don't appear to show what you claim. Do you have a source for your claim that changes in solar activity have had a NEGATIVE effect on global warming in recent decades? This contradicts just about everything I've ever read on the subject.
I agree that just a couple of years of cooling don't prove anything much. But the reason I picked up on it initally was because of a challenge issued by John Quiggin. He in turn had siezed on a remark by the late John Daly to the effect that the absence of enhanced solar activity (moving into a solar minimum) or El Nino over the current few years would provide a test for human-induced global warming. JQ suggested (rightly I think) that if the extreme sceptics were correct and CO2 was having no effect on global warming, then the solar minimum + La Nina should see the global mean temperature fall back to a substantial extent towards the long-term mean. Predictably it didn't, but it DID fall back modestly, to almost precisely the extent you would expect mathematically if solar activity and human-generated factors were each contributing about 50% of the total warming. I'm not suggesting that this proves the respective contributions are 50%, but it's certainly consistent with it and not with your claim of a negative effect.
I went back and looked again at the IPCC Third Assessment Report and, as I had recalled, AFAIK it makes no specific claims for proportionate influence between solar and human-generated CO2. It simply surveys recent research on the solar influence and concludes that it isn't well enough supported to be able to conclude that solar activity is the dominant factor in global warming.
Here is a very recent paper that summarises recent research on the effect of solar factors: http://zeus.nascom.nasa.gov/~pbrekke/articles/halifax_brekke.pdf . It gives a more modest proportionate figure than I quoted above, namely 25% from changes to total irradiance, and suggests it's a generally accepted figure. It also mentions various research areas about factors which may conceivably boost this proportionate influence e.g. increases in UV spectrum irradiance, cosmic rays etc.
But even if we take the 25% figure (rather than my 50% one quoted above), my general position remains unchanged. This only suggests human-induced warming of about 1.1
Mm hmm.
Funnily enough, the warmest years on record were, in descending order, 1998, 2002 and 2003. 2004 was the fourth...If 2005 is the fifth warmest, and this trend continues, we'll be facing ruination from the cold.
One 1/100th of one percent. That's the percentage of the atmosphere that man made CO2 accounts for. Its percentage effect in the greenhouse of gases surrounding the Earth is dwarfed by naturally occurring water vapour.
Excellent researching, Ken. I know we still agree to differ, but I hope you notice that every time you really stop to look at the 'proven fact' of man-induced climate catastrophe, you note the number of 'ifs', 'mays', 'maybes', 'possiblys', 'coulds' etc that litter the expert literature.
Now remember how much research money and how many professional reputations have become hopelessly dependent on the 'truth' of anthropogenic climate disaster (And just how much consideration has been given to the possibility that global warming might have some benefits? To put it politely, there has been something of an emphasis on the possible downsides.)
I'm no climate expert - but I know when politics is at play. Take Tim L's bingo board...Half of the links are to Realclimate.org, a site set up by some of the founding fathers of greenhouse theory to counter the dangerous propositions advanced by Michael Crighton. Take the urban heat island link supplied on Tim's site.
It says:
"The reasoning behind this is that the major cause of urban heat islands is the reduced cooling that occurs at night when the "view to space" of the surface is blocked by buildings."
Bollocks.
According to one NASA paper, (http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/uhipp/epa_doc.pdf), and most other discussions I've seen on UHI:
"In urban areas, buildings and paved surfaces have gradually replaced preexisting natural landscapes. As a result, solar energy is absorbed into roads and rooftops, causing the surface temperature of urban structures to become 50 - 70
"Now remember how much research money and how many professional reputations have become hopelessly dependent on the 'truth' of anthropogenic climate disaster"
You're joking, right Al? Any researcher in it for the money can get far more from the coal and oil companies. And any researcher who manages to knock a serious hole in the prevailing consensus on a major issue has his or her professional reputation made forever - it's Nobel prize stuff.
The likely biases are all towards scepticism. I too was once a greenhouse sceptic, but I think you have to have really strong priors to remain so after the accumulating evidence of the last decade. I call it the King Canute option - "the sea is not rising, the sea is not rising ...".
Al, mate, something can be true even though the left says it is true.
By way of an exaggerated example consider the sequence 5,5,5,5,5,10,9,8 which shows a late downward trend. Nonetheless the late terms are still above the long run average. You still need an explanation for the midseries upturn before making predictions.
JN
That's true. But the explanation is provided by the broadly accepted assumption that solar activity contributes about 25% of the measured warming, and human-induced CO2 75%. Reducing the influence of solar activity at a time of solar minimum in the 11 year sunspot cycle accounts very well for the small late downward trend.
I again emphasise that I'm not arguing that global warming generated by human activity is a myth. It provides most of the explanation for the midseries upturn. My sole point is that, looked at soberly, the figures don't currently justify alarm.
The trouble is, DD, the oceans aren't rising, the Pacific Islands aren't drowning...so there's no need to pull the King Canute caper. And colour me skeptical if you're trying to tell me that there is more money in refuting the hockey stick brigade than whole-heartedly embracing it.
Al. I don't think you realise how funny your comment really is. Go read the real King Canute story.
Nabakov - I must confess, I'm out of my depth on viking history...but wasn't the Canute tale about some geezer trying to order the waves back on a beach? Er, we don't need that sort of caper if the sea isn't actually rising, do we?
Help me out here - never said I was real quick on the punchlines.
Canute sat on the beach and ordered the sea to retreat as a means of refuting courtly flatterers who said he as the king could do anything. It was an exercise in irony, intended to demonstrate how wrong they were.
The question is not about the amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere as it stands. We are all hoping it is still too low to drown King Canute and fill my sea level office with water, flathead and sea-stained copies of the Age.
The issue is what happens if we keep going. The water vapour is a constant (sort of) which sustained temperatures as they have been, with the various bumps we are arguing about. Any more makes a difference.
The physics is pretty simple. A ball of gas changes its composition, with a constant supply of energy. The temperature inside changes. We can show that ups and downs in the CO2 level made a big difference to life on earth in the past.
What the changes mean is very complicated and we need to work them out. But the broad facts remain true. The issue is just how far it has gone, and whether we are going to stop it.
Ken, I quote from chapter 12 of the TAR which is on attribution of causes (and which contains the graphs in the link I posted): http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/448.htm "Recent decades show negative natural forcing due to increasing volcanism, which overwhelms the direct effect, if real, of a small increase in solar radiation (see Chapter 6, Table 6.13)." That is, more than 100% of the warming in recent decades is man-made.
Tim, neither the quote above, or anything else in your TAR link, supports your assertion that "more than 100% of the warming in recent decades is man-made".
In fact, it doesn't support an assertion that any of the warming is man-made.
As the title of the page, "Natural Climate Forcing" would suggest, it compares volcanic and solar forcings.
Moreover, there is also a serious logical flaw in Tim's argument. If Tim poured 9 glasses of water into a bowl and I poured 3 glasses, then someone came along and drank four glasses of water from the bowl, would Tim be able to say that he had contributed all of the remaining 8 glasses? Surely our respective contributions to the bowl (in our present case containing heat rather thn water) would remain at 75/25.
Moreover, the page to which Tim refers says:
"All reconstructions indicate that the direct effect of variations in solar forcing over the 20th century was about 20 to 25% of the change in forcing due to increases in the well-mixed greenhouse gases (see Chapter 6)."
That is, it confirms my earlier statement that increases in solar activity contribute (at least) 25% of current measured warming. It also explains why I had the higher figure of 50% in mind. It's generally accepted that increases in solar irradiance contributed 50% to the observed warming between the late 1700s and the early 20th century, but that the contribution of "solar forcing" since then has been around 25%.
It still leaves us with the bottom line proposition that human-induced CO2 is contributing about 0.11 degrees C per decade to current global warming, or 1.1 degrees C projected over the next century: not insignificant but not deeply frightening either.
However, I should also point out that James Lane's assertion in an earlier comment that "it [the page Tim L links] doesn't support an assertion that any of the warming is man-made" is incorrect. The page DOES primarily compare volcanic and solar forcing (as James observes), but it also (if only in passing) compares their contribution to climate change with that of human-generated greenhouse gases. The latter is dealt with elsewhere in the IPCC report. Just about no serious scientist denies that increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases ARE contributing to global warming. The questions are : what proportion? Are there countervailing or amplifying "feedback" mechanisms? Are there human or other factors that may increase or decrease the amount of greenhouse gases humans are producing and discharging into the atmosphere? The first of those questions is probably fairly well understood now, but questions 2 and 3 involve major unknowns and uncertainties, and the IPCC "most likely" temperature rise claim (2-2.5 degrees over the century) involves making assumptions about questions 2 and 3 that aren't justified by the current state of knowledge.
But the question you were interested is what happens if current trends continue. If we repeat the bowl-and-water thing 100 times, then I'll put in 900 glasses of water (that's standing in for man-made effects). Ken's net contribution will be zero glasses because it represents solar effects which will average out to no change over several solar cycles. The contribution from the third person (mainly volcanic effects) will also average to zero. After 100 times there will be 900 glasses of water in the bowl. You incorrect calculation would predict that there wpuld only be 600 (by multiplying the 6 glasses that you reckon I contributed by 100).
A straight line extrapolation of current warming rates gives us warming of 2 degrees over the next century. This is likely an underestimate because it takes decades for the oceans to come into equilibrium. Even if there were no further increases in CO2 there would still be an additional 0.5 degree of warming.
Ken, you are taking the contribution of solar changes to warming over the 20th century (about 25%) and assuming that this is its contribution to warming over the past couple of decades. This is not correct.
Tim
Your analogy doesn't hold up. We're attempting to estimate likely future man-made warming by extrapolating current trends into the future. The current trend includes a 25% contribution from solar forcing. We have to deduct it to get the contribution of greenhouse gases to current warming, and it's that figure we then extrapolate into the future.
Turning to your second comment, if you claim that solar forcing is not currently contributing 25% of the observed warming (and thus presumably that the increase was confined to the first part of the century and the 150 years or so before that), what is your source for that claim? Again it contradicts my previous reading, and doesn't appear to be supported by the page you linked earlier (or the article I linked in an earlier comment). I'm quite prepared to be shown that I'm wrong, but you haven't done it so far.
Finally, how does straight line extrapolation of a warming trend running at 0.15
You can't safely assume that warming will be linear over a 100 year time frame. Even in the absence of changes in feedbacks, as Tim points out, the thermal inertia of the oceans will render the assumption invalid.
As a comparison, the IPCC projects the warming from 2000 to 2010 to range from 0.14 to 0.24 degrees. The lower numbers are consistent with the rate of growth quoted by Ken; however, the thermal inertia of the oceans will ensure that the lower end of the spectrum is unlikely.
Very sensible post, Ken, and not just because I agree with it. I've seen you flip-flop on this issue on a couple of new significant points of data, and this speaks highly of your nonpartisan scepticism on the issue. You do seem willing to look at the facts and change your opinion as the facts change.
My own beef with the global warming hypothesis is that we know that the Earth has experienced dramatic temperature changes in just the last 2,000 years without any input from man, and these forces are not well understood. It troubles me then to hear scientists talking about a 0.6C change over the last 50 years as unambiguous proof that we're going to hell in a handbasket because of anthropogenic warming.
"It troubles me then to hear scientists talking about a 0.6C change over the last 50 years as unambiguous proof that we're going to hell in a handbasket because of anthropogenic warming."
Which scientist has made a statement like this?
Ken,
I may be bothered to dredge up some names for you. In the meantime, Tim Lambert made the assertion on this very thread.
Coming in very late, I'm surprised by your claim that the IPCC assumes: " That world economic/industrial growth with be faster and dirtier than in recent decades, and/or population growth will be more rapid. "
This isn't true in any of the projections I've seen.
I think you have a problem with your order of differentation here. For the rate of CO2 growth to accelerate, all we need is for the level of emissions to increase, and, under business as usual, this will happen as long as output grows, even if it grows more slowly than in the past.
"For the rate of CO2 growth to accelerate, all we need is for the level of emissions to increase ..."
But it isn't accelerating, despite rapid economic and population growth over the last 30 years and more. That's the point. Atmospheric CO2 has continued to increase at a linear rate, as has global mean temperature (allowing for solar and volcanic factors). Why should we expect that to change?
I find Ken Miles' point much more persuasive i.e. the lag fator of ocean heat sinks may well suggest higher net warming in future decades than has been evident to date, although it appears from the IPCC Third Assessment Report that there's still an awful lot to discover about this area (like many others).
And it occurs to me that there may well be a link between JQ's point and Ken Miles' point. That is, JQ is no doubt correct mathematically that future growth in industrial output (which is to be expected) will necessarily lead to an increase in emissions (in the absence of emissions reduction initiatives), which SHOULD logically lead to an increase in the rate of atmospheric CO2 accumulation and therefore global mean temperature. But to date, despite ever-increasing total industrial output and CO2 emissions, neither the rate of CO2 accumulation nor temperature increase has accelerated. Why not? Maybe because of the oceans' role as carbon and heat sinks (and maybe other feedback mechanisms as well), and maybe the lag effect means that faster increases in both accumulation and temperature can be expected in future decades. I assume that's what Ken Miles is suggesting, and it may well be correct.
Ken, I was going to make exactly the same response to you, but you've beaten me to it.
Um, all these wonderful calculations on economic growth and increased use of fossil fuels - aren't these fuels s'posed to run out at some time in the not so distant future.
Estimates vary, but the average estimate seems to be that the world's reserves of black gold will be exhausted in about 50 years. There's perhaps 900 billion barrels remaining. Perhaps the killer part of this story lies in the fact that the economics of oil supply and demand dictate that the cost will rise dramatically as demand continues to soar and the supply dwindles. The simple corollary of this is likely to be massive slow down of industry. Sad, but highly likely, unless we can harness new sources of energy - and soon (two or three decades - not centuries).
The story is similar on the coal and natural gas fronts. Forget your greenhouse phantoms that are going to smother us under some hokey heat blanket, a much worse fate awaits ten billion people clinging to a planet starved of energy (especially in the colder regions).
Remember what happened last time a major power was starved of natural resources? They set out to form the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere - that little foray ended up causing a lot more deaths than any baloney theories arising from the politically motivated pseudo-science of the Greenhouse Industry.
Have any mental giants like John Quiggin factored the inevitable (and frighteningly rapid) decline of fossil fuels into their scary calculations. Brainiacs like Michael Mann can work tree rings into his hockey stick, but I'm not seeing the point on the IPCC hockey stick where the petrol tank runs empty.
It's gonna be real ugly is my bet. Not just a case of everybody hippily, happily hopping onto a solar powered bus to go to work and leaving their gas guzzler in the garage - sorry, but the wealth of modern society that generates the work we enjoy came on the back of abundant cheap energy. My guess is war, famine and decline of the like not seen in the last millennium. Jeezus H, call me a crank as I'm sure many of you do already, but the real time bomb with fossil fuels is what happens when the world's fuel gauge starts nudging empty.
For that reason, you won't find me banging on about the folly of alternative and renewable energy supplies. They're not just for left-wing enviro-zealots. Even sensible right-wingers know that were going to need something to keep the power supplies in our computers happily ticking over if we're going to continue to argue on the Internet when the legacy from Dorothy the Dinosaur and her mates runs out.
Ken writes: "The current trend includes a 25% contribution from solar forcing. We have to deduct it to get the contribution of greenhouse gases to current warming, and it's that figure we then extrapolate into the future."
This is doubly wrong. The current trend (that is, over the past 20-30 years) does not include a 25% contribution from solar forcing and even if it did, subtracting it does not give the contribution from greenhouse gases.
What you need to do is subtract the contribution from NATURAL forcings not just solar forcings.
Again, from
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/448.htm
"Recent decades show negative natural forcing due to increasing volcanism, which overwhelms the direct effect, if real, of a small increase in solar radiation (see Chapter 6, Table 6.13)."
RECENT DECADES SHOW NEGATIVE NATURAL FORCING. That is, without the man-made effects it would have cooled over the past couple of decades. That means that the anthropgenic contribution to current warming is more than 100%. The current warming trend is 0.17 degrees/decade. Add 10% to get a man-made component of 0.19 degrees/decade Multiply by ten to get about 2 degrees of warming over the nect century.
As for solar forcing being 25% of the warming in the past 20-30 years -- I think you've confused warming over the past century with warming over the past 20-30 years. This paper may be relevant:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf
Fyodor dishonestly asserts that I claimed "a 0.6C change over the last 50 years as unambiguous proof that we're going to hell in a handbasket because of anthropogenic warming."
I said nothing of the sort and I do not appreciate the attemmpt to stuff words into my mouth.
What was that link again? Oh, that's right...
http://Mr-we-have-to-offer-up-scary-scenarios,-make simplified,-dramatic statements,-and-make-little-mention-of-any-doubts-we-might- have.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf
Al can always be relied on to trot out the doctored Schneider quote. Next he'll be telling us about those mythical science books that predicted a new ice age.
I'm standing by my claim, Tim. I think it's at least as credible as some of the computer modelling that turns 'garbage in' to 'conclusive proof of climate doom out'.
Doctored, eh? I guess if 'doctored' means 'to faithfully recreate the original article', well, yeah, you got me.
"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. SO WE HAVE TO OFFER UP SCARY SCENARIOS, MAKE SIMPLIFIED, DRAMATIC STATEMENTS, AND MAKE LITTLE MENTION OF ANY DOUBTS WE MIGHT HAVE. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both." (my emphasis with the caps - otherwise quoted in Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989,)
To me, the capitalised quote, while a ripper, is not the money shot. It's the glazed eyes, hallelujah bit where he says
"And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change."
This is the article of faith that drives the greenhouse lobby. As soon as a scientist gets a cause, you can be fairly certain that their foregone conclusion will be the horse ever thereafter pushing his/her empirical cart.
And I'm curious...I wonder if you'd like to comment on the possible consequences for climate change modelling of:
1. Oil running out in forty years;
2. Natural gas running out in sixty years; and
3. Coal running out in 250 years?
(Those figures incidentally don't come from Junkscience or any of your other favourite stalking horses. They're an average of what I've been able to Google up.)
Al
I agree that even the full Schneider quote shows him as a propagandist of a holy cause, which is a dangerous quality in a scientist who one would hope to be rather more detached and aspiring to objectivity. Nevertheless, the full quote doesn't suggest the epic dishonesty of the truncated version.
In some respects, all Schneider is doing is reflecting on the dilemma that faces any expert author when trying to explain a complex issue to a lay audience. You don't have any choice but to seriously oversimplify or the audience will get bored and won't understand what you're talking about (and the media outlet won't publish your story for those reasons). It's something I deal with every time I write a blog post about public law issues. Moreover, if you're not only trying to explain the outline of an issue to a lay audience but also to make a contentious or 'political' point that you're bona fide convinced is a correct one in light of your evaluation of the issue in all its complexity, you do indeed face the sort of ethical dilemma Schneider discusses.
Moreover, it's drawing a long bow indeed to suggest that the very large number of scientists (certainly the vast majority) who agree that human-induced global warming is a proven reality are also mere propagandists carried away by a holy cause and allowing it to overwhelm scepticism and scientific method.
Nevertheless, picking up briefly on Tim L's throwaway line, it IS true that Schneider wrote a book and several articles in the early 1970s where he hypothesised a new Ice Age because of human emissions of sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere. And he even disparaged the role of human-generated CO2 in countering this cooling effect (Schneider S. & Rasool S., "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols - Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate", Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141):
"We report here on the first results of a calculation in which separate estimates were made of the effects on global temperature of large increases in the amount of CO2 and dust in the atmosphere. It is found that even an increase by a factor of 8 in the amount of CO2, which is highly unlikely in the next several thousand years, will produce an increase in the surface temperature of less than 2 deg. K.
However, the effect on surface temperature of an increase in the aerosol content of the atmosphere is found to be quite significant. An increase by a factor of 4 in the equilibrium dust concentration in the global atmosphere, which cannot be ruled out as a possibility within the next century, could decrease the mean surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!"
However, I don't see this stuff as discrediting Schneider's subsequent work. We know vastly more about the proceses involved now than we did 30 years ago, and everyone is entitled to change position in the light of new evidence. In fact that's what you'd HOPE would be the case. Nevertheless, it would be hard to argue against the proposition that Schneider is temperamentally prone to somewhat hysterical alarmism, and to disregard some of his more technicolour populist pronouncements as a result.
The reality is that, although the vast majority of climate scientists agree that the evidence clearly establishes the reality of global warming, there is no such agreement on the extent or likely future speed of increase. There are huge areas of uncertainty and unknown variables in just about every research field impacting global warming. Nevertheless, I think I have to concede Tim L's point that the balance of current evidence supports the proposition that 0.15 degrees C per decade is a valid starting point for the imprint of human-generated gteenhouse gases on global warming (you DO have to subtract both volcanic and solar factors to isolate the effect of greenhouse gases).
Moreover, I also accept that there's a real (although radically unquantifiable in the state of present knowledge) prospect that the oceans will stop absorbing and storing human-generated heat and CO2 at the rates they've been doing to date and/or that they'll begin releasing some of it, thus amplifying the base warming rate of 0.15 degrees C per decade.
As I said, there are huge areas of uncertainty surrounding such propositions, and other imperfectly understood phenomena that might countervail them. But it seems that there is a significant lag (thermal inertia) in the way oceans react, and it's in part this that creates the dilemma for policy makers. If we wait until enough is known about such phenomena and it turns out global warming IS as big a problem as people like Schneider fear, then it may well be too late to avoid major adverse effects because the oceans lag factor will already have unavoidably "locked in" large amounts of future warming even if we then stop emitting CO2 completely. It's that danger which militates in favour of taking decisive (but not stupid or radically economically damaging) remedial action now depite the huge areas of remaining uncertainty.
Incidentally, it's this lag factor that explains why one can mount a pretty persuasive argument for taking remedial action now despite the fact that fossil fuels (except coal) are likely to be exhausted within the next century (I suggest the balance of evidence indicates that 40 years is significantly too short an estimate for petroleum). That is, even if CO2 emissions are radically reduced starting from around 50 years time because of huge price rises as the fuel becomes scarcer and scarcer, major future warming may already be locked into the climate system.
Two degrees or more of warming over just a century would certainly have very significant adverse effects on both the environment and human civilisation, so it makes sense to take remedial action if there's a reasonable probability of such an outcome without it (and I think I've reached the conclusion for our current discussion that the balance of evidence IS strong enough to suggest a significant probability of such an outcome).
Incidentally, I reckon this discussion is quite a good illustration of how the blogosphere permits complex issues to be explored in a rather more careful and detailed way than you could ever achieve in the mainstream media, that is also both interesting and accessible to at least some members of a lay audience (including me).
It makes you wonder why some prominent climate scientists (like Schneider) don't bother to use it as a vehicle to improve the level of public understanding of the issues. No doubt part of the answer is that they'd just have their time and energy wasted by RWDB zealots fuelled up by assorted "astroturf" organisations, and end up continuously fending off the same tired old canards again and again, no matter how many times they'd been comprehesively debunked to the satisfaction of any reasonable audience.
The very first box in my bingo board is "In the 70s scientists were predicting an ice age #" The link goes to http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94 which is a blog by climate scientists meant to improve the public understanding of the issues.
Tim,
I normally have a lot of time for you, but you're taking the piss on this issue.
You said:
"It is not true that it is generally accepted that only half of the warming since 78 has been caused by humans. Most estimates suggest that it is more like 110% (that is, it would have cooled slightly without our help)."
Then you said:
"That is, more than 100% of the warming in recent decades is man-made."
Then, later on, you said:
"RECENT DECADES SHOW NEGATIVE NATURAL FORCING. That is, without the man-made effects it would have cooled over the past couple of decades. That means that the anthropgenic contribution to current warming is more than 100%."
These comments indicate you unambiguously attribute recent warming to anthropogenic forcing. Feel free to clarify.
Al,
The line that we are "running out of oil" is a furphy. We won't run out of oil [or coal etc.] - it'll get more expensive as it becomes relatively more scarce in an economic sense. As the oil price rises [and extraction technology improves, for that matter], uneconomic deposits become economic and new reserves are "created". That's why any estimate of "reserves" is illusory, and dependent upon price.
Chances are we'll switch to alternative energy sources long before oil "runs out".
Fyodor, you said that I claimed "a 0.6C change over the last 50 years [was] unambiguous proof that we're going to hell in a handbasket because of anthropogenic warming."
I made no such claim. Your refusal to admit this is dishonest.
Boo-hoo.
What part of it do you dispute?
1) The assertion that the observed increase in temperature is unambiguous proof of anthropogenic warming; and/or
2) We're going to hell in a handbasket?
I didn't say either of those things as you know full well.
Nah, Tim, you said the first thing very clearly, several times, and its "dishonest" of you to deny it.
I suspect the reasons why Schneider doesn't have a blog include (in addition to the one you put forth):
* Age (he is 80)
* He already has an awesome website (his collection of papers and documents available to download is unbeatable) so he may fell that he's done his part
* Unwillingness to constantly be called a liar
Fyodor, nowhere did he say that it was unambiguous proof.
Ken, he asserted that recent warming is more than 100% attributable to anthropogenic forcing. How much more unambiguous can you get?
Fyodor, the term "unambiguous proof" should never be used in science. Tim didn't use it, nor anything like it. Your trying to put words into his mouth.
Yes, Ken, people shouldn't state things are certain when they're not.
Ken (Parish),
Thanks for your post. This is fascinating stuff.
I'm very interested in climate change stuff, but the thing that's getting me thinking about your post is the way we process info, and decide what to keep and what to reject.
Fyodor seemed pleased with you that your back and forth on this issue showed that you were sceptical, and a non-partisan thinker (which is to be admired).
Its also possible that you are making quick, sloppy judgements without having good knowledge, or good access to authoritative sources of info and you therefore are changing your mind when you notice something you had missed before. (Consider the flip-flopping juror in 12 Angry Men. He was overwhelmed by the debate, instead of holding back and feeling out the solid ground).
I don't mean to criticise, you already acknowledged in your post that perhaps you were too hasty in your judgement.
I guess what I am finding interesting is how we go about analysing this kind of stuff.
I agree that blog discussion allows a more detailed debate than the mainstream media. But is it good enough?
Is it good enough to view the back and forth between you, TimL, JQ, Ken Miles, Fyodor, Al Bundy etc etc. Is this good enough for being on top of the debate? Is this good enough to feed into public policy creation?
None of us are climate scientists. Which isn't to say we can't analyse the work of climate scientists. However, I find it odd that you would offer your analysis of the situation without actually quoting any published literature. Surely if what you are saying makes sense, someone has already published a similar analysis in a peer reviewed journal.
You seem to be putting up your own non-expert authority against that of the scientists who contributed to and brought together the IPCC reports.
This comment probably sounds like a convoluted appeal to the authority of the IPCC. I guess it is.
I think its good that the IPCC findings be challenged, but via authoritative channels (ie peer reviewed journals.) If there are good arguments counter to what the IPCC is finding, surely these will show up in peer reviewed literature, and laypeople like myself won't need to rely on posts such as your one here to challenge the IPCC.
Out of curiosity can I get a show of hands from the GW sceptics here if they think that the other claimed environmental problems, biodiversity loss, over exploitation of soil, fisheries, forests etc are also myths or aren't as bad as the scientists are saying like Lomborg and Jennifer Marohasy? Just like to know how far your scepticism goes?
Steve
There are several links to an assortment of journal articles and papers scattered through this post and the comment thread, so you can certainly research things for yourself (not to mention using Google). Blogging in general is not a genre where footnotes or journal citations are typically provided (but hyperlinking nevertheless provides much more potential information and checking capability for readers than would ever apply with a mainstream media article).
When I blog about an area where I'm not expert (which is just about everywhere except public law, general law to a lesser extent, and (more arguably) Australian politics), I'm usually looking for information as well as expressing an opinion. That's certainly the case with global warming. I don't profess to be an expert, but I've done a lot of reading because it's a topic that interests me. I know that if I blog about it, there are readers like Tim Lambert and Ken Miles who (while also not climate scientists) have wider knowledge than me, and who can probably tell me if I've misunderstood or overlooked some important aspect. It's a quite deliberate learning exercise, and because I treat it in that way, readers can learn along with me if they treat the discussion in the right spirit. I've ended up on this thread mostly agreeing with Tim and Ken, and hopefully others who followed the thread will have learnt as much as I did.
Hi Ken,
I was perhaps just too sensitive about the reasons why people blog. I've avoided blogging probably because i find it tough putting out my opinion for other people to axe, so I like to be fairly sure of myself before doing so.
But I can see - even clearer now after your last comment - that its maybe better to throw an opinion out, and learn from the responses and discussion that come back. Hahaha, maybe I'm the one who should have been the lawyer - for seeing these blog discussions as more adversarial than they are. Maybe they are more like sparring/practice than actual fighting??
Hi Steve,
I wouldn't expect much enlightenment on the subject of global warming from reading blogs. The two sides of the argument are almost totally partisan.
Ken Parish may be willing to defer to the opinions of Ken Miles and Tim Lambert, but I'm not, particularly in respect of the latter, who claims that 110% of recent warming is due to anthropogenic causes.
Even if we accept the surface temperature record, could Tim explain why temperatures have decreased in the last couple of years, in the absence of positive solar and volcanic forcings (somewhere near where Parish came in)?
James
Yes, that is an aspect that tends to suggest a higher proportionate influence for solar than the mainstream view allows. Tim L has a point, however, that 2 years is far too short a time period from which to draw any clear conclusions. It will be starting to get marginally more interesting if this year's record shows another drop.
I haven't conceded finally that there's no substance in the argument that the proportionate influence of solar activity (or perhaps cosmic rays) is larger than claimed by IPCC. However, I accept that the balance of evidence presently favours the IPCC position. I'm interested in assessing the evidence and finding the truth so we can decide on appropriate policy responses. As far as I'm concerned this ISN'T (or shouldn't be) a partisan political issue, and I frankly don't understand the mentality of people who treat it as one.
All I've done is point out what the IPCC TAR says. Look at the graphs.
There is random variation in the data. To see the trend you have to look at several years. The change from one year to the next doesn't tell you very much.
Simon,
"biodiversity loss, over exploitation of soil, fisheries, forests etc" What's the view of a GW skeptic? Well, skepticism, I guess. Add to that a dose of pragmatism...
Say five thousand species are going to die this decade due to the clearing of forests in South America. So what? - Nothing I can do about it, and people gotta plant crops to eat. I enjoy my daily bread - far be it from me to deny others on the basis of my white guilt. Big Conscience Inc commercials with pictures of some endangered hairy-arsed marmot with enormous brown google eyes sitting on a mossy log while sad music plays in the background doesn't move me - sorry.
Soil depletion, don't know much about it. Good farming practices that avoid erosion, and good planning that puts houses somewhere other than on top of prime arable land - well, that's my contribution.
Fisheries? Over-fishing is a problem that is not about to go away. All we can do in Australia is continue the sensible management practices currently in place, and shoe away the poachers with extreme prejudice. I've worked in the area, and if you want to see International Law at its ineffectual best, just try dealing with fish thieves.
Forests? Not an issue that I've ever looked into. I wonder if they're analagous to 'wetlands', the greenie term for mosquitoe infested swamp (I remember as a soldier the sight of groundwater sending a shudder down my spine).
You see, the problem with enviro-science is that it suffers dreadfully from 'inflation'. That is, there are no headlines in anything that doesn't point directly at Armeggeddon. Anything less than big scary stories just won't cut the media mustard. And each story has to be a bit scarier than the last (the inflation factor). So, yeah, I don't spend my time wringing my hands in sympathy with the save-the-worlders hogging documentary time on publicly funded broadcasting - that would be hypocritical of me.
But let's return to issue-motivated-scientists who subscribe to the 'never report a contrary finding, it will only give the skeptics a free kick' theory of scholarship.
As I think most figured out pretty quickly, my earlier post on this thread warning about the imminent energy catastrophe was an attempt to employ the 'big scary warning' technique beloved of greenhouse 'science'. (Yeah, I know, I'm gonna have to cut down on the 's). Fyodor took the bait, and quietly dismissed the idea as nonsense - a fair enough response. But why the difference when it comes to the religion surrounding catastrophic climate change.
Oh, because 'most' 'reputable' scientists (who peer review dissenters with insult, bombast and ridicule - all with the helping hand of the activist press who want their slice of recognition for saving the world) spout the stuff. Oh, plus the anthropogenic warming set have sites like Realclimate, which are every bit as unbiased as Junkscience - just in the other direction. Spare me.
Interestingly, Fyodor's confidence may be misplaced, and there is plenty of intelligent argument on the topic. Oil supply scares date back to the nineteenth century. But most of the abundant oil resources routinely cited as remaining on the planet are in the form of tar sand and shale deposits. You don't pump this stuff, you mine it. Describing this as a suitable replacement for the liquid stuff we're currently churning through is akin to describing the harvesting of Antarctic ice as a viable solution to drought problems in Australia. The energy taken to convert this sand riddled bitumen into a usable liquid is almost as much as you'll get out of the resultant oil. And guess what they use as the fuel to power that process? Natural gas. Plus it swallows prodigious quantities of water.
The weakness in Fyodor's argument is the assumption that as fluid oil resources (as distinct from 'reserves') run out (and forty years is not an unreasonable estimate) that other technologies will seamlessly fill the gap...Let's hope so, because the implications could be pretty damn dire if they don't.
Yet the argument generates no heat. It's not sexy like climate change. Why is that? Nothing I've read from this thread convinces me that scientists really have a clue about the net effects of volcanism, solar forcing, albido, aerosols, clouds, blah blah blah. I invite you to read Tim L's link to Schneider.com, and see if you don't walk away thinking - "Mm, yeah, this Laut guy seems to be waffling away, but it boils down to this: The skeptics' solar activity chart is fatally flawed because their figures are lies and chicanery. And now they're using it to preach to the dumb lumpen, and contaminating the purity of our wonderful message." The Goddam thing reads like a Gutenberg era pamphlet condemning Lutheranism as a dangerous straying from the One True Way.
Bah, it sounds more and more like angels on the head of a pin, people.
Al, why do you hate science?
I don't hate it, Tim. I just don't have the same unswerving faith in it that I had before the mass hysteria of Greenhouse.
The perfect example of the continuing descent of science into nothing more than the enviros versus the rest is occurring right here in Canberra. The Chief Minister got up the other day and explained why no action was taking place on the replanting of areas denuded in the 2003 bushfires. He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance (like the princess he is) and said words to the effect, "Look, I've got one bunch of scientists telling me to plant pines or we'll face disaster, and I've got another bunch of scientists warning that planting pines will be the end of the world. When they make up their minds, we can get on with the re-planting."
The problem is simple. We need growth to stop the soil erosion and silting of the dams. It needs to be fast growing, mildly fire resistant and SOON.
Instead, we got ourselves a media sideshow of adversarial dogma masquerading as scientific debate. It seems to be a common problem.
Al,
I'm not sure you really understood my point about the economic extraction of resources. I'll give it another shot.
Oil scares pop up every couple of years, normally because there's been a spike in the nominal (i.e. not inflation-adjusted) price of oil. Uninformed observers usually start gnashing their teeth at the frightening rate at which we are using up a "finite" resource. Informed observers, i.e. people who extract oil for a living, merely start looking for new capacity, by looking for oil in more expensive places (e.g. the Arctic, deep water etc.), repumping oil from marginal wells that were uneconomic at low prices, etc. They do so because they know it's worth the extra cost to get oil they can sell at a (now) higher price.
It's not a coincidence that estimates of global reserves of oil change so much, and that we've been "running out" of oil for more than a century. The economic bottom line is that the more expensive oil gets, the greater the economic incentive to find new resources.
Now, you may not have confidence in the ability of scientists to develop new power sources, but there's plenty of work going on in alternative energy, e.g. wind, solar, geothermal etc. As oil becomes relatively more expensive, these technologies become much more economic to deploy, and the incentive to improve their efficiency correspondingly increases. You may not have faith in the scientists, but I have great confidence in man's ability to turn a buck.
1. What's most amusing about the doctored Schneider quote is that those who use it are doing exactly what they accuse Schneider of advocating, namely deleting inconvenient qualifications so they can tell a more dramatic story.
2. I've written quite a bit on why oil won't "run out". See here, for example
2. Also, this report is interesting, though unfortunately few species adapt as fast as fruit flies - the classic lab animal for genetic research.
Hyperlinks not working
2. point to http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/01/17/are-high-oil-prices-here-to-stay-repost/
3 points to http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1355933.htm
Al,
Maybe you need to work on where you source your info from? Maybe we all do - including politicians!
You are mixing up scientists, the IPCC, peer reviewed work, non-peer reviewed work, the media, and armchair experts all in the one bag.
There might be alarmist commentary in the media and from green groups about global warming, but I think language is more conservative and measured in peer reviewed stuff.... which should have priority over the others as far as sources of info on global warming go.
And I dispute your comment that dissenters are shouted down just because they are dissenters. THey (eg. people like singer, lomborg) are shouted down because they get a lot of press for writing books without publishing peer reviewed stuff, they are short circuiting scientific process and avoiding quality control. I have no doubt that more people have heard of Lomborg than have heard of Michael Mann, or Schneider.
You can be a sceptic and have peer reviewed stuff published. Eg. Christy, Lindzen. On the 10th of Feb a group from Stockholm University published peer-reviewed research in nature that offered a temp reconstruction for the past 2000 years that was different enough to Manns to create debate. On realclimate.org, they certainly weren't shouted down with insult, bombast and ridicule.
Steve
You make a lot of really excellent points. The problem I see is that the vast majority of people don't have easy access to peer-reviewed scientific journals; don't have the time, energy or desire to read them anyway; and mostly wouldn't understand what they were reading even if they did. Articles are mostly written for a specialist audience, and even strongly interested amateurs like me tend to struggle to understand them.
That's why I think blogs DO offer a potentially very useful way to explore and understand complex issues, at least for the minority of amateur readers who are interested enough to bother.
As you'll have worked out by now, however, the number of readers who aren't strongly adversarial on a blog like this one seems to be disappointingly small (despite your flicker of optimism in response to my earlier comment). I'm not sure exactly why that is, but I suspect it's at least partly an aspect of male psychology.
Even when I set out with an open mind to learn about an issue (as I did here), I often find myself automatically digging into aggressively defending a proposition I've initially advanced tentatively or as devil's advocate trying to provoke a response from which I can learn. I often have to figuratively beat myself around the head and remind myself that I'm here to learn rather than to compete, and that I don't have any emotional or intellectual capital invested in the proposition. It seems that us blokes (and maybe many female readers as well) are innately competitive creatures, and that questions of ego, status and self-esteem too easily get inextricably enmeshed in debates where you would rather have hoped people would exhibit more open minds.
I sometimes muse about how one might go about promoting more open-minded discussion on contentious issues, but I haven't come up with any magic answers (or in fact any answers at all). Your earlier comment that "[m]aybe they are more like sparring/practice than actual fighting??" might provide the germ of an idea. My partner Jen sees blogs rather similarly, as a "brain gym" where people can test out ideas and expand their understanding and general mental flexibility by debating seriously but in a playful spirit with other fairly intelligent educated people. I'd like it to be that way too, and very occasionally it is, but more often than not discussion just consists of people digging into familiar ideological foxholes and lobbing verbal hand grenades over the top at each other. I get depressed and frustrated when debates get bogged down in predictable rigid left-right ritual stand-offs (which seems to happen more often than not). Jen just gets puzzled and amused, and then bored. I'm sure her reaction is healthier.
I've previously tended to see the answer in terms of encouraging civility in debate, but maybe I've been on the wrong track. Maybe what we really need to promote is "serious playfulness". But how?
Al Bundy
The mosquito infested swamp that you dismiss is much more integral to the environment than the city or town you inhabit. The mosquitos provide food for thousands of animals which in turn provide food for others. Its the thing called the WEB OF LIFE. The mere fact that you can dismiss it as irrelevant shows how far humans are removed from the natural world.
Yet when a wave strikes us we are painfully reminded of how vunerable and puny man's works really are in the face of nature. A simple drought brings into stark relief our total dependance on the natural world that we dismiss.
Temperature rises have happened in the past. Back then there were no fences or towns and the natural world could adapt without the barriers to movement we have placed in the path. Also human pollution has stressed the natural environment so it is less resiliant to change. Just look at the decline of frogs as a guage of the stress - they are the canaries in the mine. Also, barring super volcanoes, the speed of the current rise could well introduce dramatic climate change which we and the environment are ill equipped to cope with.
The water vapour and urban heat islands have been thoroughly dealt with by many people and I am suprised that you even bring them up. It is a sign that the skeptics are starting to repeat religious mantras of their own.
Peak Oil will happen. There are only so much easy hydrocarbons and only so much hydrocarbon bearing rock. We use 80 million barrels a day. Projections of the life of the reserves always start with 'at present rates of consumption'. Demand is increasing and shows no sign of decreasing even though the price of oil has risen from 20 dollars per barrel to 50 dollars. However we are are showing no signs of changing to alternatives because we like our large powerful cars and won't give them up. Have you bought or even driven a Prius?
RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!
"But they're coming from the hills..."
RUN AWAY FROM THE HILLS! RUN AWAY FROM THE HILLS!!!
Which neatly sums up the problem - there is nowhere to run to - we are stuck with it.
No, Ender, what neatly sums up the problem is your earnest, humourless doom-mongering. The only guys who even come close to it are fundamentalist Christians anticipating the Rapture.
But of course your humor filled denialist stance is entirely rational. Seems to me to be more akin to a rabbit who thinks the best way to cope with on coming headlights is to stare them out.
Ooh, "denialist"! Hang on. Let me try that with a capital "D" and DOUBLE scare quotes:
""Denialist"" Kewl.
Well, you gotta laugh, ain't ya?
Yeah, I know, and you brake for the Rapture.
Al I can understand where you are coming but I suppose that if you don't have an interest in the subject and don't take the time to find out what is going on can you expect to give informed comment on the subject.
It seems a rich to use such a wide sweeping overgeneralization that today's environmental/biological science is driven by the need to get into the headlines when you don't take the time to get a cross-section perspective about what is going on. Do you really think that is how institutions like the CSIRO are run?
I'm no expert and one must be careful about appeals to authority but from watching Quantum, Catalyst, Listening to the Science Show and Reading New Scientist and Scientific American for many years I have a better overview of what is going on in science and what is happening to the environment
So Ken you don't have to read every peer reviewed paper there is enough quality science journalism and publications that can -while not making you an expect on the matter- give you an overview of that particular disciple and what is going on in the field.
Uninformed scepticism can lead you anywhere just look at the creation science people.
The item that seperates doom mongerers such as myself and Christian Fundamentalists is that I might be totally and 100% wrong. There could well be no effects from a warming atmosphere, if indeed the atmosphere is warming at all. We may well not run of cheap oil and we may well transition to alternatives with no fuss and bother.
I simply consider such things as unlikely.
Also I am not predicting catastrophe at all. With the right political will we can change to a sustainable energy model. This however will require all of us to reduce energy use. But of course if you do not believe there is a problem then you will totally resistant to expensive unnecessary changes.
So therein lies the problem. In my opinion global warming could cause climate change with unpredictable effects on humanity. In Fyodor et al's opinion the case has not been proven yet and there is no need for any change.
So what do we do? There is no need to build wind turbines if you regard the buildup of CO2 as harmless. I do not see a way out of this because in my opinion by the time the case is proven, if I and others are in fact correct, then it will be far to late to do anything about it - hence why I said that we will be stuck with it - albeit of we are correct.
Again if you think like I do there is a small window, rapidly closing, where actions to reduce greenhouse gases could make a difference. This is where the earnestness that Mr Fyodor accuses me of having, comes from. Talk to me in 10 years if nothing is done and I will not give a stuff - I will be just watching.
"Talk to me in 10 years if nothing is done and I will not give a stuff - I will be just watching."
Come on, Ender, that's a bit defeatist, isn't it? Won't you be marching against CO2 or summit similar? You sound like you're losing your earnestness. It's very important, you know.
No because nothing is going to happen -right?
"No because nothing is going to happen -right?"
Did I say that?
No doubt you'll find something else to agonise over.
John/Fyodor,
I understand perfectly well what you are saying about market equilibrium in the demand/supply situation for a finite resource. The ultimate interruption to the supply of liquid oil will be a matter of economic viability. The resource will never be 'exhausted' per se. Perhaps we could all agree that the question is not "What will happen when the oil runs out?"
Steve,
Mate, I'm just one of your armchair experts, confident that what I say makes not one jot of difference. I used to argue with my workmates, who are all believers. Funnily enough, nearly all of them thought that the biggest concern about greenhouse effect is the hole in the ozone layer...sigh.
You're on the right track to distance science from the alarmist and offensive stuff found at, say, the ABC:
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12649369%5E25717,00.html
"...when ABC radio host Jon Faine this week decided at last to let a global warming sceptic debate a global warming prophet on his Conversation Hour, his co-presenter, TV weatherman and green guru Rob Gell, freaked.
Talking to a doubter, even a scientist, would be like inviting on a "Holocaust denier", Gell protested. Or as he said on radio: "If you were discussing pedophilia, you wouldn't bring in a pedophile to discuss the issue..."
And, indeed, look at the righteous bollocking Lomborg copped - take the words from Minister For Public Decency on the Internet, Clive Hamilton at
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/18/1063625153194.html
"But the death blow for Lomborg's junk science came from his homeland. The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty condemned the book as "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice". Rejecting the work as systematically biased, the committee concluded that the publication was subject to the accusation of "scientific dishonesty"."
Criticising the guy was one thing, but getting officially blackballed by a panel of his professional peers? That sounds like crushing of dissent to me. Fortunately, the Danish government stomped on that one, and the words Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation used were illuminating:
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2299989
"the DCSD has not documented where [Dr Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and...the ruling is completely void of argumentation for why the DCSD find that the complainants are right in their criticisms of [his] working methods. It is not sufficient that the criticisms of a researcher's working methods exist; the DCSD must consider the criticisms and take a position on whether or not the criticisms are justified, and why."
Lomberg is a Galileo? Oh please. Here: http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/
As for the rest -- you don't believe that scientists can do basic statistics. We got that already.
Most of you appear to be well behind the times, Please type 'Global dimming" into google. You will find that the particulates emmitted by industry and cars cause more and smaller rain drops to condense and reflects more sunlight away from the earth, the resultant cooling offsets global warming. Less sunlight means less evaporation from the oceans so we are looking at a drier world with more droughts not good for agriculture. This has been confirmed by pan evaporation rates routinely measured by weather stations - less water is being evaporated in recent decades. This has only been accepted in the past two or three years and many including myself have only been aware of it since a recent 4 corners program about a month ago. If we are successful in removing particulates then we hit the real strength of global warming and the temperature could go up by 10 degrees melting the clathrates in arctic areas and releasing methane a powerful greenhouse gas which could really cook us. I agree with those on this blog who point out the menace of depleted oil supplys. Its not when it runs out but the price rise when supply is restricted. There are 18 new wells coming on stream this year, 8 next year, zilch in 2007. Since world consumption will chew up 2 of these wells in about 19 days our problems may start a lot sooner than you think. How to convince the world that we must cut the burning of fossil fuels is the big question Alternative fuels must be developed but no system I know of comes within 25% (mad guess) of the power produced by oil. To the economist this means negative growth so we will need to reform the economic system as well!
The novelty of the 'global dimming' stuff has been overhyped, I think. The basic point that the cooling effects of particulate pollution offset global warming has been around for a long while and is incorporated in existing models
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/GLOB_CHANGE/ipcc2001.html
The latest evidence suggests that the cooling effect has been greater than we thought and therefore that the contrary warming trend is stronger, but this is still being debated.
Ouch, another cutting dismissal from Algorithm-Boy. No comment on the dubious validity of pre-1929 GISS figures for climate modelling then?
Didn't think so.
So Al is this scientist looking to get into the headlines? http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7321
Simon,
I'm not sure I understand the question. The article to which you link simply seems to expand upon the idea that the Earth is acting as a heat sink, and that this will come back to bite us on the bum even harder down the track as the latent heat is released. Ken has mentioned the theory several times on this thread.
Also, to which scientist - Hansen, Lindzen or Cox - were you referring?
As to the warmest year tallying, everyone recognizes that 1998 was the warmest year. As the years go on, and the temperatures of 1998 are no longer seen, it will become recognized that it was the tip of the 'heatburg'.
Think of it as a roller coaster, where 1998 is at the top. What would you say about the years clustered on each side of the top? Wouldn't you expect all the hottest years to be clustered together? Or would you expect a single hot year surrounded by 'average' years?
The fact is that we're going into our 7th year after the peak, and temperatures appear to be heading down, in spite of the continuing rise of CO2. At some point, it will become evident that we've passed the peak of a warm period, and are heading into another cooling period.
I just hope it is a 'normal' cooling, and not the overdue decline into another major ice age, where earth spends about 90% of its time...
The basis of global warming is some pretty simple science. CO2 is one of the gases that is described as a greenhouse gas. In fact life on the planet is possible because of this greenhouse effect. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is directly measureable. Repeatable experiments show that greater concentrations of CO2 trap more heat. This is a quote from http://www.science.gmu.edu/~zli/ghe.html
"The average concentration of CO2 was about 290 ppmv in preindustrial times; now it is about 350 ppmv and increasing steadily at a rate of about 0.3-0.4%/yr. Since CO2 is chemically inert, it is not destroyed by photochemical or chemical processes in the atmosphere; either it is lost by transfer into the ocean or biosphere or it builds up in the atmosphere."
This data is not in dispute as it is directly measured hard data.
Burning fossil fuels generates CO2. Again this fact is not in dispute.
Scientists with these 2 hard indisputable facts as far back as 1938 thought reasonable hypothesis was that the burning of fossil fuels releasing CO2 into the air would cause the atmosphere to warm as it trapped more heat. So after a long scientific detective story that can be read here http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm seemed to confirm this hypothesis:
"By the late 1990s, many types of evidence showed a general warming at ground level. For example, the Northern Hemisphere spring was coming on average a week earlier than in the 1970s. This was confirmed by such diverse measures as earlier dates for bud-break in European botanical gardens, and a decline of Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the spring as measured in satellite pictures. Turning to a more fundamental indicator, the temperature of the upper layer of the oceans --
Al Hansen, but the point isn't about GW it's about who and how science and science journalism is done. This is pretty typical of the sort of science and science reporting you get. Not over the top doom sayers or headline grabbers. Thousands of scientists doing their research, getting published in peer reviewed journals and being picked up and reported by mainstream science journalism,(notice for and against) which then sometimes regurgitated by mainstream media who are themselves looking for that big headline.
Saying that these scientists are doing it because they are left wing closet greenies/ anti-capitalists or are just in it to advance their careers would be virtually impossible to orchestrate even if they wanted to or get any science done at all, for that matter.
Within one field one could envision institutional bias and group think but across multiple disciplines throughout numerous countries and academic institutions, it would be a big ask.
Should we reopen the smoking doesn't cause cancer debate because of those tobacco funded scientists dissented or start teaching creation science long side evolution because some guys who have science or academic backgrounds champion it? You can find dissenting voices and arguments for anything.
As a lay person when it comes to the physical sciences I think the best bet is to go with the scientific mainstream when there is a consistent line across disciplines that humans are adversely affection the environment rather than like those GW sceptics whose major groups are linked to those with conflicts of interest especially when it comes to money and ideology.
BTW I'm one from the left on the environment who would consider the nuclear option if the cost benefit analysis came out for it so I'm by no means blinkered in my views.
Heh, here's a timely piece for you, Simon:
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=0ITM5J4EBGIDJQFIQMFCM5WAVCBQYJVC?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/05/01/ixportal.html
"Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming..."
Oh, and smokes are bad for you. My parents knew that back in the fifties.
Funny thing, but when I was a lefty, I knew pretty well everything too. Especially when I was 18. A couple of decades and a conservative epiphany later, I now believe that Creationism and evolution are both just theories. Evolution appears to have a lot more physical evidence supporting it than Creationism (or 'Intelligent Design' as Creationists are now calling it). It's easy to think after watching a few nature documentaries that all the answers are in the bag, when really we're just starting to untangle the mysteries of the human genome. There's some big surprises left to come I reckon - and wouldn't it be a boring old world if there wasn't?
Oh, and thanks to Tim Lambert. I was so impressed with the Lomborg fan site he pointed to, that I went out and bought The Skeptical Environmentalist. Money well spent.
Already blogged it Al.
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/bray.html
Not only did the reporter grossly misrepresent the result of Bray's study, Bray's survey was ruined when the URL for particiaption was posted to the climatesceptics mail list. This sort of biased the results.
I agree, Tim, on line polls are pretty useless, especially anonymous ones. FWIW, I thought your point about the 'less than 1 in 10' claim was fair. Your dismissal of Bray's study due to an unsubstantiated implication of ballot stuffing was less so.
However, the crux of the Telegraph article was not Professor Bray's ruminations about the arbitrary dismissal of his poll. Rather, it was Benny Peisner's claims that Dr Oreskes cooked the books on the question of consensus viz the 1000 documents they both claim to have examined.
Dr Peisner claims that:
1. Rather than 75% of the papers explicitly or implicitly backing the consensus view, only a third actually did so. And only 1% explicitly backed the prevailing orthodoxy.
2. In light of this rather startling reappraisal, Science declared that Peisner's findings were 'not perceived to be novel', and had been dispersed on the Net. Yet Peisner claims that his findings have not found their way to the Net.
I read the comments on your site to date, and realise you are chasing up the issue. I can see you and the other attack dogs are lined up to nail him. But for me, the issue here is not whether Peisner is right or wrong, it's this wonderful business of 'peer review' - which in the case of Greenhouse might be better written as 'circle-jerk'. You see, just where the hell is Peisner getting his opportunity to have the counter claim peer reviewed. I could understand if they were saying Peisner was wrong, or his case was weak. But if Science won't publish his refutation because his points are not 'novel', or have been covered on the Net?!?? What, by websites like yours? Sheesh - rough crowd.
Oh, I note you seem to have neglected to mention that Oreskes is, of course, a historian, not a scientist. Hardly remarkable, but something I'm sure you would have referenced in just passing by if that was Peisner's job.
This article:
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041217-044511-3578r.htm
shows that what Dr Oreskes is claiming is hardly that remarkable
"Not one, not a single paper, refuted the basic consensus statement that CO2 (carbon dioxide) is increasing, that it is changing the chemistry of the atmosphere, and it's having discernible effects," Oreskes told UPI's Climate.
"Scientists also agree the CO2 increases are the result of human activity, she wrote in her paper, which was published in the Dec. 3 issue of the journal Science."
Hmm. Peisner could be hard pressed to prove his case since the Oreskes study doesn't exactly appear to shake the world with groundbreaking conclusions, does it? As Roy Spencer at TCS
http://www.techcentralstation.com/120704G.html
phrases Oreskes'research:
"...a careful reading reveals that it really refers to the rather benign (and even meaningless) conclusion that humans are influencing climate..."
It doesn't take a forensic psychologist to work out which side of the debate Oreskes is on...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
"...Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science..."
Oh, puh-leeze.
"... our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it..."
Mm, I imagine our grandchildren will also surely blame us if we sink the economies of the West on the basis of some computer modelling and the conviction, held since the sixties, that we greedy white people are wreaking catastrophe upon poor Mother Earth.
Anyway, it's always a pleasure to read through lot's of websites and pull out the odd gem. Catch of the day was this pearler from a comments thread:
http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005179.html
"In science you identify your errors by comparing the output of your model with the results from controlled experiments. But you can't do controlled experiments on a planet's climate: "climate science" isn't a science in the full sense...What keeps the lab man honest is the possibility that you can repeat his experiments and prove him wrong...[T]his threat is absent when one can't do controlled experiments. Beware of scientists bearing research proposals."
Heh.
Ken Parish writes, "Moreover, no respectable economist would hazard growth projections for any longer time frame than a decade and in a single country."
Heh, heh, heh! So you're saying a Nobel Prize in Economics is not sufficient to convey respectability? ;-)
In the Winter 2000 issue of the Journal of Environmental Perspectives, Nobel laureate Robert E. Lucas, Jr. describes a model to predict world per-capita GDP growth over the 21st century. He projects that the world per capita GDP growth rate will decrease over the 21st century, from 3.1 percent per year at the start, to 2.3 percent per year at the end. Starting from a world per-capita GDP of $7200 USD in 2000, this would produce a world per-capita GDP of $94,000 in the year 2100 (in year 2000 dollars).
This can be compared to the maximum per-capita GDP projected by the IPCC in their Third Assessment Report (TAR), which predicts a maximum world per-capita GDP in the year 2100 of approximately $140,000 (in year 2000 dollars). The IPCC TAR also reported a survey of "economic literature" as providing a maximum value of approximately $110,000 (in year 2000 dollars).
But enough of wrong guesses from amateurs ;-). This is how the 21st century is going to proceed:
In 2020, the world per capita GDP will be over $13,000.
In 2040, the world per capita GDP will be over $31,000.
In 2060, the world per capita GDP will be over $130,000.
In 2080, the world per capita GDP will be over $1,000,000.
In 2100, the world per capita GDP will be over $10,000,000.
So Robert E. Lucas' Nobel Prize didn't help much; he'll be off by a more than a factor of 100 by the year 2100. Needless to say, the IPCC won't be any better.
Tim L, I'm assuming that since you respond to the mention of Bjorn Lomborg with the http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/ link that you endorse the views and statistical methodology expressed therein?