Some parts of the blogosphere, headed up by CEI (“CO2: They call it pollution, we call it life!“), are all a-twitter over an apparently “suppressed” document that supposedly undermines the EPA Endangerment finding about human emissions of carbon dioxide and a basket of other greenhouse gases. Well a draft of this “suppressed” document has been released and we can now all read this allegedly devastating critique of the EPA science. Let’s take a look…
First off the authors of the submission; Alan Carlin is an economist and John Davidson is an ex-member of the Carter administration Council of Environmental Quality. Neither are climate scientists. That’s not necessarily a problem – perhaps they have mastered multiple fields? – but it is likely an indication that the analysis is not going to be very technical (and so it will prove). Curiously, while the authors work for the NCEE (National Center for Environmental Economics), part of the EPA, they appear to have rather closely collaborated with one Ken Gregory (his inline comments appear at multiple points in the draft). Ken Gregory if you don’t know is a leading light of the Friends of Science – a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group based in Alberta. Indeed, parts of the Carlin and Davidson report appear to be lifted directly from Ken’s rambling magnum opus on the FoS site. However, despite this odd pedigree, the scientific points could still be valid.
Their main points are nicely summarised thus: a) the science is so rapidly evolving that IPCC (2007) and CCSP (2009) reports are already out of date, b) the globe is cooling!, c) the consensus on hurricane/global warming connections has moved from uncertain to ambiguous, d) Greenland is not losing mass, no sirree…, e) the recession will save us!, f) water vapour feedback is negative!, and g) Scafetta and West’s statistical fit of temperature to an obsolete solar forcing curve means that all other detection and attribution work is wrong. From this “evidence”, they then claim that all variations in climate are internal variability, except for the warming trend which is caused by the sun, oh and by the way the globe is cooling.
Devastating eh?
One can see a number of basic flaws here; the complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales, the common but erroneous belief that any attribution of past climate change to solar or other forcing means that CO2 has no radiative effect, and a hopeless lack of familiarity of the basic science of detection and attribution.
But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we’ve discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc. I’m not quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four rounds of international scientific and governmental review of the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports….
They don’t even notice the contradictions in their own cites. For instance, they show a figure that demonstrates that galactic cosmic ray and solar trends are non-existent from 1957 on, and yet cheerfully quote Scafetta and West who claim that almost all of the recent trend is solar driven! They claim that climate sensitivity is very small while failing to realise that this implies that solar variability can’t have any effect either. They claim that GCM simulations produced trends over the twentieth century of 1.6 to 3.74ºC – which is simply (and bizarrely) wrong (though with all due respect, that one seems to come directly from Mr. Gregory). Even more curious, Carlin appears to be a big fan of geo-engineering, but how this squares with his apparent belief that we know nothing about what drives climate, is puzzling. A sine qua non of geo-engineering is that we need models to be able to predict what is likely to happen, and if you think they are all wrong, how could you have any faith that you could effectively manage a geo-engineering approach?
Finally, they end up with the oddest claim in the submission: That because human welfare has increased over the twentieth century at a time when CO2 was increasing, this somehow implies that no amount of CO2 increases can ever cause a danger to human society. This is just boneheadly stupid.
So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that’s the best they can do, the EPA’s ruling is on pretty safe ground.
If I were the authors, I’d suppress this myself, and then go for a long hike on the Appalachian Trail….
#336 Doug Bostrom
Sea state changes the local grazing angle, though not too much until high sea states are reached. The incidence azimuthal direction relative to prevailing wave motion also causes a variation in local grazing angle. When sea state gets to the point that a lot of white water is generated, it seems we are back to something similar to ice.
And re #344 CM,
As for simple sea water, the problem is well handled by the physics of reflection of electromagnetic waves on planar surfaces. It is mostly not a matter of diffuse reflectivity, hence albedo is a secondary factor in energy absorption considerations.
If sea water albedo is higher in polar regions this only means that there is less energy to consider in the planar surface, specular reflection process. The sea water in general reflects in two parts. One is the diffuse part which is the albedo part. The second is the planar surface, specular reflection part. The combination of these effects would need to be compared to ice albedo.
As I said before, ice still might be better, but it is still not true that polar sea water absorbs most radiation from the sun. Considering the albedo makes it even further off the mark, since 20% of the energy gets diffusely reflected, which only increases the total reflected part.
RE: 350
Hey All,
Final line should have read:
(I have heard of applying FFT for isolating signal from noise, though I do NOT think that the noise contributors are defined by this method.)
Thanks,
Dave
HELLO
The peculiar story of a “suppressed” report at the Environmental Protection
Agency continues to grow, despite the fact that the agency appears to have done
nothing worse than holding its employees to professional standards
Jim Galasyn #142
“Rod, falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus”
That would mean every scientist is “falsus in omnibus”. There has been no scientist that has not been false in some aspect of their study.
I try to study both sides of this subject. I am just appalled by the condescending putdowns and ad hominems employed in this post. The Carlin memo certainly DOES contain references to peer-reviewed papers, and those deserve to be discussed seriously and soberly. I spent a number of years in academia myself, and I know how the game is played: when you don’t want to have to deal with opposing ARGUMENTS, taking them apart line by line, just gather your friends around you and sneer. Unfortunately, in a herd environment, it usually works.
[Response: Pick one then. I picked on the issues that they had highlighted in their summary, which presumably they felt were the most important. But sure, let me know which other critique buried deep in the text I should have talked about. – gavin]
Unbelievable: Senator James Inhofe plans to investigate the “suppression” of the Carlin report.
Meanwhile:
“The Carlin report’s central premise, along with four key sections, came directly from a November, 2008 World Climate Report blog attack on the EPA proposed endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions.”
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/30/suppressed-carlin-report-based-on-pat-michaels-attack-on-epa/
[Response: And curiously enough neither WCR, Michaels nor Knappenberger are mentioned anywhere in the document. A very odd lacuna… – gavin]
#346 Demitri:
“And why do you end your post by insulting the Appalachian Trail?”
Until just a few days ago, “hiking the Appalachian” implied a perfectly innocent activity performed with the intent of getting away from mechanized transport and instead enjoying the opportunity for fresh air, solitude, reflection and lots of healthy exercise.
Post-Sanford, “a hike on the Appalachian Trail” involves international air travel, air delivered from a gasper, the company of many strangers, a concerted lack of reflection, but at the end of it all lots of exercise though all things considered of dubious health benefit.
I think events overtook Gavin’s post; there was a brief transitional period when “hiking the Appalachian” only implied dropping out of sight, not specifically hiding with a third wheel between sheets located in a different hemisphere.
“…hunter-gatherer societies were much more healthy, happy, and prosperous.”
Sure, if by “healthy and happy” we mean we’re accustomed to rampant intestinal parasites delivered in our meat, teeth worn to stubs by eating grit along with tubers, etc. Me, I’ll stick with food cultivated by expert organic farmers. I’m pretty sure I’m happier this way.
Re:333: “At low grazing angles, as per polar regions, incident electromagnetic waves, including that from the sun, are largely reflected from water. Ice being irregular and rough, reflections from that ice tend to be diffuse and energy is not as efficiently reflected…..”
Are you suggesting that water can absorb incident sunlight in the polar regions , more efficiently than ice, due to angle of incidence and state of the water(or ice) surface? Do you have any studies,papers,or any other kind of investigations to corroborate this?
If you do it would be revolutionary to say the least. A well known mechanism for positive feedback is that as the polar regions warm, more sea and land ice melt, causing more absorption by the darker surfaces left behind, causing more warming, causing more ice to melt and on and on.
The North Polar region has warmed faster than other parts of the globe, largely due,I believe, to this feedback effect.
#356 DeepClimate:
“Senator James Inhofe plans to investigate the “suppression” of the Carlin report.”
I don’t think it’s really counterintuitive to say that if Senator Inhofe were sincere either in his stated beliefs or his professed interest in the public good, he’d stop wasting time and money on political theatre and insist on pouring funds into climate research until whatever reservations he professes about climate science were satisfied, for good or ill.
It’s diagnostic of Inhofe’s seeming mental and political corruption that instead of demanding more and better data, he chooses instead to expend his influence throwing gravel into the gearbox of progress. I won’t insult the population of Oklahoma by saying they’re witless to choose him as their Senator but it’s a mystery to me how they swallow their embarrassment at his dung-flinging antics. Maybe it’s sentimental attachment to past glory days.
http://www.ogs.ou.edu/fossilfuels/pdf/OKOilNotesPDF.pdf
DeepClimate: awesome!
Darren wrote @313: “Intricate statistical trend analysis seems like the kind we need to avoid.”
I was the one talking about dead ends.
Apparently you haven’t done much work in a “hard” science, have you?
Now I’m going to ask you how, exactly, you propose to discern a broad, unmistakable trend in climate from the noisy data of month-to-month, year-to-year and decade-to-decade weather variability without intricate statistical trend analysis?
You might want to get a clue about why intricate statistical trend analysis is required before you reply.
You might try here:
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/results-on-deciding-trends.html
and here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/cold-hard-facts/
and here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/stupid-is-as-stupid-does/
and here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/dont-get-fooled-again/
The again, you might not and just rely on eyeballing the temperature graphs.
Which brings us back to my first question at the top of this comment.
Jim Galasyn, I take that to mean that if he’s wrong about X he must be wrong about everything else under the sun. No help, but thanks for the effort.
#300 Hank Roberts and #259 Jim Bullis
This is a very basic statement and clearly it is wrong for polar regions where grazing angles are low. It is a matter only of the most basic physics. If an important conclusion is based on wrong physics, it is not likely to be a correct conclusion, or at least it might need to be better justified using correct physics.
In pointing this out, I overstated my case; and partly due to your stinging rebuke, I checked my reference papers and was reminded of the polarization effect. Even so, much of the radiation at small grazing angles is reflected from sea water. So the flawed statement by authority remains flawed.
I understand you would want to prove the conclusion stands anyway. Ok. But it certainly can not be based on the reasoning of the scientist writing the report.
I am not settled on the answer, though I have to agree with the authority that things will probably be worse, though not as catastrophically as the report suggests. Diffuse reflection from white ice will probably reject a fairly high amount of energy incident radiation. The reflected energy from the sea water after the ices has melted will depend on the sum of the horizontally polarized energy (very high) and the vertically polarized energy (variable around 40% to 60%. So that sea water reflection will also reject a lot of incident energy. My numbers on this are not completely applicable, since they are for longer wavelengths.)
About this time of year at ~80ºN and noon (where the edge of the ice might be) the angle of incidence will be fairly close to Brewster’s angle (~56º) where the perpendicularly polarized light will have a reflectivity of ~15% and the parallel polarized will have a reflectivity of 0%.
Shortwave radiation in the vicinity of the pole at this time of year averages around 300 W/m^2 whereas IR radiation is also around 300W/m^2 however the angle of incidence of the IR will average ~0º.
Just stop there … he’s not. He’s scientifically illiterate (intentionally so, IMO).
No one should even think of discussing the relevance or not he quotes. Just go after him, and attack him. With some politicians it’s worthwhile playing clean. With Inhofe, embrace and love whatever mud you can find.
#356 DeepClimate (again):
As a taxpayer, I must say I resent that Carlin appears to have been permitted to plagiarize on my dime. On the other hand, the devious part of me is delighted to see Carlin apparently caught plagiarizing on taxpayer time while bringing those whose work he copied (or took down, stenographically?) into further disrepute. I’m guessing the “victims” were not the slightest bit surprised to see their “work” regurgitated in unattributed form in latter day comedian Carlin’s work.
All this muttering about global conspiracies among climate scientists by the hydrocarbon chumps and now it turns out they’ve got their own Mayberry Machiavelli aspirations. Oops. What a hoot.
# 231 Mal Adapted
Thankyou for your remarks. You have my permission to reproduce this text, suitably edited, to advance the argument I made in other fora.
I strive to choose my words carefully, but sometimes in the process I do get a little too wordy!
#275 Nick Gotts
I take your point about the effort needed to transform infrastructure to meet the demands of the US/Allied effort in WW2. For mine, this underlines an important point.
In the case of WW2 it was decided by US policy makers that the threat to US interests was both compelling and immediate. That judgement rendered questions of efficiency much less important than effectiveness. In any system where one is focused principally on one outcome and is essentially indifferent to all the other negative consequences of this pursuit, then efficiency is moot. There can be little doubt that the US government was right to make this call.
You say that the challenges of climate change are comprable. I’m inclined to agree and indeed, I suspect the potential harm associated with uncontrolled climate change might ultimately put the horrors of world war 2 in the shade. I don’t see humanity recovering from that as quickly as it did WW2.
It’s that ‘ultimately’ that is the question mark. It may well be (though it isn’t certain) that we have ten years or so to get policy into the right place to avoid a catastrophic reversal in the fortunes of that part of humanity alive in the last half of the 21st century or after. If so, that gives us the ‘luxury’ of a more orderly transition to a low CO2 emitting set of human arrangements, in which we can keep mistakes and the sacrifice of sunk costs in existing infrastructure to a minimum, while continuing to gather the data needed to best inform the measures needed to foreclose catastrophe. The GFC may well have given us a slight extension. One would hope so.
If however, our timeline isn’t 10 years, but (as is quite possible) more like the one that policy makers in the US saw in the lead up to WW2, — i.e. 2-5 years, then we and especially our descendents are in a hell of a lot more trouble than most accept. Sadly, the data to establish this new more urgent timeline is simply not there. We may not find out before it is too late.
Personally, I’d like a much more aggressive and ubiquitous set of goals for 2020 — more along the lines of Lester Brown’s Plan B sert of wedges, but we also live in a world where we cannot move faster than the systems of governance covering most of the major emitters. In nominally democratic countries — Britain/Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia/NZ for example there remain significant elements of the populations who oppose radical mitigation strategies. Since most politicians operate on cycles of fewer than five years, they are very sensitive to being seen as “trading jobs” for environmental outcomes, especially now. Accordingly, governments are selling their plans as consonant with preserving much of the infrastructure and entailing only modest impositions on the populace. And using market mechanisms is one way of allaying fears about new impositions, government bungles, ensuring business certainty and so forth. We either need much more scary data right now that the public can understand, or we must, regrettably, hasten slowly.
I’m not sure how many in the US would support more radical action, but in Australia, one can measure this constituency by the support for the Greens — which could be as high as 14-15%. Currently, 2/3 back the government’s ETS, which is far less ambitious and includes free certificates for “trade exposed” industries, leaves out transport and agriculture until 2013 and aims only at 20% reductions by 2020.
That said, I suspect many would support direct state investment in renewables and perversely, this might undermine opposition to more radical targets and reductions in subsidies for big polluters, since they’d be able to meet targets using the said renewables, so the politics may not have been done all that well.
Mark (332),
In response to me you wrote: “However, an uncertainty doesn’t go only one way. So it could make things better, or it could make things worse.”
I absolutely agree, and I haven’t claimed otherwise.
“Well, it’s true that by figuring out how to temporarily feed a lot of people by producing nitrogenous fertilizer using gobs of fossil hydrocarbons we’ve thereby extended lifespans, as well as making a lot more lifespans.”
It’s also been shown that going back to old-style farming with no oil based fertilisers and oil based weedkillers produced just as much food as the farmland had done with them.
The theory being that such intensive farming works for a few years and then you either have to use increasing amounts or your yield goes back to sustainable levels for the land itself.
PS Did better healthcare, better pre and postnatal work not help? Better diagnosis and so on not increase average lifespans much more than more food?
Rod writes:
Only if you tell me what the question is.
Demitri [sic] writes:
Considering that people kept pouring into the cities to obtain factory work in that period, life in rural areas must have been even worse. Google “enclosure” to start to understand why.
Speaking as someone who once veered between disinterest and mild scepticism about AGW, it might hearten you to know that I had my awareness raised after watching the risible Great Global Warming Swindle. It was obvious to me that the makers of that “documentary” were at best scientifically inept, or at worse were trying to deceive. Since then I have educated myself on the science and am now convinced that AGW is real and will almost certainly be the key political issue of the next 30 years.
I hope that my case demonstrates that the public resent being lied to (maybe even more than they resent paying taxes). The deceptions of the denialists will become ever more transparent if they rely on patent nonsense like the Carlin and Davidson paper.
Jim Bullis (at #351 or so, replying to my #347, where I referenced an estimate ocean albedo of 15-20% near the poles),
Thanks for clarifying, and correct me if I’m way off base, but could there be a simple misunderstanding here? You are assuming a strict definition of “albedo” as the diffuse component of reflectivity, excluding specular reflection — so you argue that high specular reflection at the poles must be added to the albedo figures I cite. But in climate science, doesn’t albedo tend to mean simply the fraction of solar radiation reflected by a surface or object (see e.g. the IPCC glossaries)? Including both the diffuse and the specular components? I expect this is the case for the ocean albedo estimate I cited, in which case you don’t get any extras.
Presumably it’s also averaged over the light season and over a range of weather conditions (cloud, waves). No doubt you can get spectacular albedo due to direct reflection of low sun from calm seas on a cloud-free day in spring and fall, but hey, this is the Arctic we’re talking about. It gets cloudy up there.
As I understand it there remains work to be done on understanding sea-ice albedo under a range of conditions and parameterizing it in the models so I guess there’s much uncertainty about the magnitude of the feedback. But we were discussing the claim that “most” of the radiation be absorbed by the ocean. Can you show that 50% or more will not?
—
ReCaptcha has “frigates” on the “45th” — too far south to contribute to this discussion.
Jim Bullis,
29 June 2009 at 7:53 PM
Do you mean that albedo is only related to diffuse reflection? This seems to be supported by this wikipedia entry: “The albedo of an object is the extent to which it diffusely reflects light from the Sun.”
However, this Nasa glossary makes no distinction between specular and diffuse reflection: “The ratio of the amount of radiation reflected by a body to the amount incident upon it.”
Which is it?
You didn’t mention clouds. At the poles they increase the average angle of incidence and thus increase absorption of light by seawater. Can you elaborate on that?
In your response to Doug Bostrom, you brush aside the importance of sea state. Can you support that with evidence?
To prove your point, do you have a calculation or a reference that shows that on average, over a whole year, less than 50% of incoming solar radiation in polar seawater is absorbed? What you have shown so far are only words, and they don’t make a lot of sense to me. But that’s probably my knowledge falling short. By offering a few calculations, you might give me the insight necessary to understand what you mean.
I think I agree with Gavin on this.
I don’t think debating climate science via blogs is the right forum. I think public debates with experts representing both sides of the debate are a better forum.
Like the Intelligence Squared debate where they debated “Global Warming is Not a Crisis”. With Lindzen, Crichton and Stott for the motion and RC’s Gavin, Brenda Ekwurzel and Richard Somerville against the motion.
It’s quite a good debate and both sides make good points.
Darren #244,
yes, this is the classic rationale of an economist not trusting them climate models.
What you completely miss is that climate science is a natural science, that is, it is based on falsifiable/verifiable basic natural laws which are not made up (and thus would be tainted by subjectivity) but found out (sometimes against the gusto of the researcher, cf. e.g. Einstein and Black Holes).
Economics, to the contrary, is not a natural science but a social science. Its principles are not found experimentally, but “made up” by humans (cf. e.g. that grotesque rational agent, alias Homo “Sapiens”).
So it is no wonder that economic models often fail the test of reality, for they are not rooted in objective reality, but rather in human subjectivity.
To draw any conclusions from economics models to the models of a natural science is to know nothing about science.
I also had a question which I forgot to ask in my last post. It’s probably been asked before but just in case…
Gavin, do we know what the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 is and what the error range is? I think that the IPCC suggests that 2CO2 would lead to a 3C rise in mean global temperatures.
I ask this because I’ve read some recent papers which purport to show the IPCC’s sensitivity value is too high.
A recent paper by Douglas and Christy seems to claim that either 2C02 1C then some forcing other than aerosols must be “masking” CO2’s effect. I believe aerosols where the canceling agent used in AR4?
I’ve also read some papers by Compo and Sardeshmukh and Spencer and Braswell which seem to claim that they have come up with possible natural forcing which could explain the observed temperature changes over the 20th century (as opposed to CO2). I believe the natural variation they site is changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
Spencer states that a 1% to 2% variation in low-cloud cover coming from internal climate variability would be enough to explain most of the warming. I believe the largest uncertainty in the GCM models is to do with the modeling/parametrization of clouds is that right?
Caldwell and Bretherton also seems interesting as they find that warming would indicate a stronger effect from low-clouds in a warming world. If I read their article right, it did seem quite technical.
I’m not a climate scientist but I’m trying to get my head around this issue and I guess I’m trying to figure out where the scientists agree, where they disagree and where there is just too much uncertainty for either side to be able to draw conclusions.
Cheers
Steve
[Response: You need to widen your source reading. For a start, Compo and Sardeshmukh has nothing to do with climate sensitivity. Read our previous discussions on why we think 3 deg C is a reasonable number. (Note it has very little to do with the topic discussed in Spenser and Bracewell). As for Caldwell and Bretherton, there is a lot of good stuff in there, but it doesn’t affect any top down assessment of the sensitivity. – gavin]
TO the commenters (I can’t find the numbers right now) thaet said human health and wealth has increased with Co2 emissions, and therefore we should not try to curb them: that correlation is far form ironclad, and just because benefits increase because of one activity doesn’t mean that a) you can’t do something else to get the same effect and b) curbing it will automatically result in a lower standard of living.
The standard of living in the US went up dramatically because of agricultural exports driven by slavery, therefore we should return to that! It’s obvious!
The standard of living for many people rose as a result of the tobacco industry’s jobs — It’s encourage smoking! It’s good for you!
The stupidity of this kind of thing amazes me to no end.
Bart 368: “I absolutely agree, and I haven’t claimed otherwise.”
And I never said you thought otherwise.
However, you hadn’t SAID it, and this point did need to be made explicit.
Especially with people like Max, RodB and Darren around…
#314 Doug Bostrom
No prejudice against Europeans. They have their culture, we have ours.
Those who assert that “human health and wealth has increased with CO2 emissions” are using the wrong metric.
Human health and wealth has actually increased with the availability of cheap energy. That energy was not always provided by burning fossil fuels (think hydro-electric power generation), and there is no requirement that it continue to be.
This is just a more subtle variation on the deceitful “you warmists want to send us back to the preindustrial agrarian utopia/stone age” meme.
Darren – since you are confused about the sun’s role, I would like to offer you a small thought experiment.
The temperature is 100F degrees outside. You put on a short sleeve shirt and shorts, and you spend an hour directly out in the sun. After the hour is up, you come back inside the house and change your clothes. You decide to put on two heavy long sleeve shirts, three pairs of sweat pants, insulated coveralls, gloves, and finally a heavy coat. After you are fully dressed, you spend another hour directly out in the sun.
“especially when you consider the size of our little civilazation against the size of the sun–which would seem, at first look, to be the main consideration. Anything man can do is infinitesimally minute compared to that thing.”
By your logic, you will see no difference between the two differently ways you dressed in the thought experiment. Since the sun is so powerful, the amount of clothes you wear on a hot summers day should make no difference. But it does make a big difference as you should be able to clearly see. In a basic nutshell, global warming is dressing our planet in heaver clothing.
Paul A
30 June 2009 at 5:21 AM
I had the same sort of eye-opener a few years back when reading an article on JunkScience.com that suggested something like ‘I did some calculations based on IPCC data, and the Earth shoud warm by 5ºC per year (!). They know that is not happening, so they tinkered with the models until they got the value they wanted’.
They are like a child that is convinced it can fly by gluing feathers to his arms or fix daddy’s car by turning a few bolts under the bonnet.
The worst part is that these people call themselves skeptics and cry “ad hominem!” if you don’t take them seriously.
Paul A’s story warms my heart — thank you for sharing.
Hi Mark, don’t paint RodB with the same brush you’d use for your garden-variety contrarian. He’s one of my favorite voices here, and he keeps up on our toes.
reCaptcha: “1:34(5) Movie showgirl”
> albedo
I’ll put any further response on that in the Groundhog topic since it does keep popping up, but is unrelated to the CEI/Carlin topic.
Steve I saw the IQ*2 debate and several others. I have always come away from these type of debates suspecting there was a lot more that could have been said that wasn’t. I think a debate in writing with plenty of time for argument and rebuttal would be much more conducive to a fair match of arguments. An interesting first debate might be a comparison of warming rates of the land ocean and atmospheric temperatures in comparison with model projections. Of course no politicians, journalists, or science fiction writers; just scientists involved in the fields being debated. For this purpose a blog with very limited access would be ideal. Of course this would require a considerable expenditure of time and the arguments are already out there. None the less it would be interesting to read the arguments in a debate type setting.
Mark (369), if your Iowa corn-growing farmer can get as much yield without fertilizer as he does with it, why would he expend thousands of dollars from his return for fertilizer??
BPL (370), see post #288
It might be worth giving some love to Steven Andrew at the Orlando Examiner for this post: What if the climate scientists are right? It’s a gentle critique of Tom Fuller’s approach.
Jesse (378), The standard of living in the US grew magnitudes faster with the advent of cheap plentiful energy (roughly 1900 on) that in did with Southern slaves producing ag stuff (roughly 1600-1850). Also, as a smoker I am improving the standard of living. I’m providing for the expansion of children’s medical insurance, paying off recent doctor’s med school lo-ans (in TX), largly supporting secondary education in Texas, supplementing many state medical programs, supporting infrastructure around the country, and even allowing for a professional sports franchise or two.
On the other hand, your main point is well taken. Our standard of living was greatly increased by (indirectly) emitting CO2. But that doesn’t mean that’s the only way to continue, as you say (and in line with AGW theory might lessen it this time). But it doesn’t mean that stopping emissions would not lower our standards, either. It’s a matter if it is done smartly or stupidly and precipitously. For instance the recent Cap & Trade bill is in the latter, IMO. (Though I’m not aware of the significant last minute changes in the bill that might have improved this aspect. ‘course neither is anyone else aware, including the whole Congress :-P )
388: “if your Iowa corn-growing farmer can get as much yield without fertilizer as he does with it, why would he expend thousands of dollars from his return for fertilizer??”
It was an Asian farmer for a start.
He’s running with RoundupReady corn, so he’s already in hock.
Customer lock-in.
Companies love it.
Jim 385, he wasn’t head of the list, but RodB has been here a long time whereas the newcomers still have all the vim and vigour of recent missionaries.
#375 That was a good debate, but the end result wasn’t convincing either ways. I think this forum is far more effective in dealing with skeptics, therefore they seldom show up here. If they do, they simply look silly, anti-science like and basically mean against poor climate scientists.
Over the years, presentation tools have improved:
Take
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
and compare to
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/19790629.png
I’d like to hear Lindzen explain the thinner less expansive ice..
If someone explained that it was a warmer Pacific current, Novaya Zemlaya missing ice is not explained. If someone explains its a “cycle” it must be beyond 5000 years of human Arctic habitation, must be millions of years in the making proving the splitting of the Bowhead species, therefore its not a cycle at all. That is what was missing in any debate, the ice everywhere in the world speaks for itself, the climate is warming despite fictitious fantasies or otherwise statements.
381 “This is just a more subtle variation on the deceitful “you warmists want to send us back to the preindustrial agrarian utopia/stone age” meme.”
369 “It’s also been shown that going back to old-style farming with no oil based fertilisers and oil based weedkillers produced just as much food as the farmland had done with them.”
346 “…hunter-gatherer societies were much more healthy, happy, and prosperous.”
Jim, I agree, the meme is out there, but I don’t think you can pin it all on the denialists. I do think the denialists would be wise to use it to thier advantage.
#380 Bill Hunter:
“They have their culture, we have ours.”
Kind of says it all. Thanks.
Re 375:
It is like the Pope and Newton debating gravity. The Pope may lock Newton away, but gravity still works every day. Newton is not gravity, he only describes it.
Stupidity and ignorance may “score a point” in one forum or another, but global warming continues. “They” could burn every scientist in the world at the stake, and global warming would continue, just as surely as gravity would still work. Even burning Al Gore at the stake would not stop global warming. Again, he is just a messenger. Burning him might make the mob feel good for a few hours, but it will not stop global warming.
The question is, “Can society recognize the problem and take appropriate action.”
Thanks RealClimate for continually researching and educating us on the real science behind these issues! I only wish our society as a whole was getting “smarter” and not “dumber” (or is it selfishly, short sighted ignorance?) Anyone can publish anything these days cant they and find people to believe them … sigh.
Responding to Steven Andrew, Tom Fuller has a new post, What if the climate scientists are right about global warming? Part 2, which might be a bit more conducive to interesting discussion.
steve
30 June 2009 at 9:34 AM
You realize, don’t you, that this is what Science, Nature, GRL, et.al. are for? Every paper, every letter is part of some debate.
Please note as well that the word “debate” as i just used it does not mean the same thing as the more common usage. Common usage of debate means a contest to be won or lost. Scientific debate is about finding the best explanation of observations.
The US legal system uses the common type of debate. Courts are not about truth or justice, they are about winning. Why do you think that if you can afford the very best defense lawyers, you will be aquited of anything? (The lawyer who defended Imelda Marcos had never lost a case!)
Public debate, even a written debate, would not be about understanding reality. It would be about winning and losing. Time consuming, and not very useful for a working scientist. On the other hand, the denialists get absolutely apoplectic when Al Gore, skilled in rhetoric, enters the fray. He is better at the game than most of them, so they descend into “he’s still fat!”
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