Who says that the climate debate is not evolving? According to the daily newspaper the Guardian, a new application (‘app‘) has been written for iPhones that provides a list of climate dissidents’ arguments, and counter arguments based on more legitimate scientific substance. The app is developed by John Cook from ‘Skeptical Science‘. It’s apparently enough to have the climate dissidents up in arms – meaning that it’s likely to have some effect? Some dissidents are now thinking of writing their own app.
Here on RC, we have developed a wiki, to which I also would like to bring the reader’s attention. Furthermore, I want to remind the readers about other useful web sites, listed at our blog roll.
#286 ken
Yes, the models are wrong on the ice extent…
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/images/arctic/arctic_sea_ice_extent6_800pxW.jpg/view
ad infinitum, the models are wrong
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/models-can-be-wrong
Essentially what you are saying is that your family consists of a certain number of people. You know this because every thanksgiving that certain number of people show up for dinner.
Then one year, someone does not show up because of an emergency dental appointment.
So now, you claim that your family has one less member because that person did not show up for dinner…
Are you beginning to see the fallacy in your logic?
Read this:
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/weather-v.-climate
—
The Climate Lobby
Understand the Issue
http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/
Sign the Petition!
http://www.climatelobby.com
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to
Adlai E Stevenson ‘Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!’
Stevenson called back ‘That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!’
http://home.att.net/~jrhsc/ad.html
> How can you talk to them?
> It would be like trying to explain homotopic geometry to a giraffe …
“300
Joe Hunkins says:
22 February 2010 at 3:30 PM
“Climate Dissidents” is a great improvement over
“deniers” which has always been a questionable way to address those with different opinions.”
But Climate Deniers is a great and ACCURATE way to address those with NO opinions, only the faith that AGW is wrong.
They DENY AGW, and have nothing to replace it with (or replace it with anything that sticks at the time, they have nothing to BUILD with, only a NEED to destroy).
A reminder — if you’re in the US, at least — the people you need to reach and convince are over age 65.
Consider your methods, language, and level of sarcasm and snark, with forethought:
“… by far it is the alienation of voters aged 65-82 that has been most damaging …
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/the-party-of-aarp/
Use me as your man on the street. I don’t know what to believe. For every article there is about the planet getting warmer, there is another article about adjustments to how temperatures are measured. Both sides make good logical points. Here is where I have my problem. While I believe that the climate models MAY be accurate in a very macro sense, I don’t think they are accurate enough to justify a tax on carbon. Since the models are never 100% accurate, and are constantly revised to deal with changing conditions, how accurate do they have to be so that they can be considered reliable enough that no future modifications will be needed?
How can you convince me, that the models are not being manipulated to produce the desired results? You come up with that answer, and everything else will fall in line.
[Response: Because you don’t need models to know that there is a risk to the climate (but if you want to look at models, the code is available for you to run and/or examine). The models will never be perfect, but none of the complicating factors we’ve introduced over the last 30 years have altered the basic response of the climate to increasing greenhouse gases. – gavin]
Have people not realised that Denial Depot is a joke? The tag line surely gives it away.
I’ve been thinking for a while that we need more spoofs of climate rejectionism (good word). Let’s face it, it’s ripe for taking the mickey.
> dissidents
Yeah, they’d like that word; heck, they’d luuvve that word for themselves.
They can see themselves that way, embattled, like these guys:
“President Ronald Reagan welcomes dissidents …
http://www.hoover.org/hila/exhibits/17264409.html ”
But they’re not dissidents, and climate science isn’t soc ia lism.
Distinguish septics from the skeptics and denialists–traditional in climate:
http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2004/12/septics-and-skeptics-denialists-and.html
Ken@286:
“Extent is the key. The models predicted a reduction in extent, we have seen an increase. i.e. the models were wrong. Why does that not raise alarm bells?
[Response: Because you are comparing a single winter with a projected century long trend? – gavin]”
Also because having lots of snow for a couple days or weeks in areas you’re not used to having it so deep doesn’t mean the extent is greater …. talking about the US or the continent, was the extent of snow coverage greater even during that storm? Have we “seen an increase”? Maybe you need to check the definition of extent?
Tech writer and Ph.D. biochemist Ken Chiacchia, who used to be in my writers’ workshop, forwarded me this link:
http://www.treelobsters.com/2010/01/118-skeptics-charlatans.html
304 Hank Roberts – Yeah, there may be some truth in that. But my 30-year-old and her 25-year-old sister, both urbanites, are having great laughs with their friends, as we speak.
305 Bill Teufel says:
“While I believe that the climate models MAY be accurate in a very macro sense, I don’t think they are accurate enough to justify a tax on carbon.”
The models are more than accurate enough to justify a carbon tax. The tough part is pinpointing what the tax rate should be, especially 20+ years from now. The problem however is mostly with the reliability of economic modeling, not the climate modeling.
But if you were to let the uncertainty of economic modeling stop you, you wouldn’t be able to justify any tax rate for anything.
To me, the obvious approach would be to start with a relatively small tax (like $10 or $20 per tonne) and then slowly increase it and let the economy adjust.
wilt (270): That irritates me as a scientist
BPL: You’re a scientist???
Something interesting and important you might want to participate in.
http://www.theclimatesummit.org/
Until such time as the original data is made available the so called “consensus” does not pass scrutiny. The essence of science is reproducibility. SHOW ME!
[Response: You need to be a little more specific. – gavin]
“deniers” which has always been a questionable way to address those with different opinions
that contains a fundamental error, at least for much of the high profile propaganda. For example when I criticised the Great Global Swindle I was told that it was “just a matter of opinion”.
But manipulating the calendar , distorting nearly all the graphs , framing remarks about the thermohaline circulation to make them appear to be about the rise in temperature, pretending that climate science started in the 1970’s with some concern about a few cool years, making a scientist appear to say the opposite of what he meant (a familiar stunt now) in at least two different ways,making up a century of sunspot data , needs a more appropriate name than having “different opinions” .
[By the way the name of one such man of ‘opinion’, Martin Durkin, has been omitted from the “by author” list in the Wiki. He has not gone away, and is still around denouncing the people at the CRU].
Hi wilt (#259). I find it extremely refreshing that you have performed a calculation (zero sarcasm). The vast majority of people with misgivings over global warming make a few accusations and leave without meaningful engagement.
“And don’t misunderstand me: I realize that increasing CO2 probably will have a contribution, but I am trying to find the truth or at least the best approximation of the truth: how much will CO2 affect temperature and climate, and when, and how.”
Doubling CO2 is generally considered to raise temperature by 3C based on many independent studies (excluding models). If this were to occur there is considerable evidence it would negatively affect the agricultural norms our civilization has relied upon to date. My understanding is that it would also melt much of Greenland in time.
When and how (assuming how to mean the trajectory taken)? The difficult questions… How much energy will the ocean absorb compared to the atmosphere across any given timeframe? How will ice-sheets behave and in what timeframe? How will precipiation, wind patterns and ocean currents change in such a dynamic system? RC is a great resource for current thought on such topics.
From my reading, the overall prognosis is poor. There is no sign of a concerted effort to deal with CO2 emissions. However it plays out, the additional energy trapped by increased GHG’s will have to go somewhere. With rising population, diminishing resources and increasing temperatures (decade on decade) I expect severe problems much earlier than a phrase I commonly hear from the general public – “it won’t be a problem in my lifetime”.
Bill Teufel (305):
One thing to remember is that policy decisions are reversible. Climate change not so much.
I was watching the Weather Channel when the blizzard hit Washington DC: the temp there was 34!
What a world.
Joeduck@300, As soon as people acknowledge the evidence they cease to be denialists…not before. The evidence is not a matter of opinion, and until there is another coherent interpretaion of ALL of it, we have to go with the theory that best explains the evidence.
There is a new name for deniers here http://www.skepticalscience.com/American-Thinker-claims-to-have-disproven-global-warming.html among a number of interesting comments in the thread. “Eyeballers”.
Ammonite – “From my reading, the overall prognosis is poor. There is no sign of a concerted effort to deal with CO2 emissions.”
From my reading there has not been a PROVEN correlation between CO2 emissions and climate change.
From a blogger at the IrishTimes:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1207/1224260240126.html
I am tired of hearing all of this pseudoscience. The complex non-linear dynamic system that it is, long term climate prediction is simply impossible. If there is a problem, which we can’t say, our only hope is climate control. Climate has many variables (solar activity, volcanic activity, orbital variations of the planet, CO2 atmospheric concentrations etc.). Of these sets of variables the only one we can possibly control is CO2 concentrations. For this there is no consensus on the sensitivity of climate to this variable. Even if it were significantly sensitive, it is the only one we can control. To put this in simpler terms it would be like trying to drive a car (which has many control variables) when all that you can control is the accelerator (no brakes, no steering wheel). Control also requires accurate short term predictive models (turn the wheel right the car goes right). That we don’t have that is dramatically demonstrated by the deception attempt by climate scientists: the car went right when it should have gone left, and they tried to pretend it was going right even to the point of trying to silence occupants seeing it going left. So they are not really in the driver’s seat; the question is should they collect a fare from each passenger, grossly enriching themselves nevertheless? That is the question?
[Response: The question is whether, when you are driving a car at high speed in a fog, and someone tells you there is possibly a cliff ahead, do you slow down or simply accuse declare the map to be pseudo-science? – gavin]
Reality check:
“This explains why meteorologists (and engineers I might add) are so skeptical of climatologists. We use mathematical models on a daily basis and see firsthand what the real world limitations are. Climatologists don’t.
Climatologists lack those two key fundamentals of good modeling and they are trying to predict deviations in multi-thousand year climactic cycles caused by CO2 and other GHG’s. Their inputs are based (with the exception of the past 150 years) primarily on proxy data of unknown accuracy. And since the models look at time spans of tens or hundreds of years, they get very little real work feedback to compare their results to.
Based on the limitations of these models, how the hell can any one say that they are 90% certain that the earth will warm 3.2degress Celsius by 2100? What the hell could they possibly base that level of certainly on? For example, out of the dozens of feedback loops so critical to the accuracy of climate models, only a small portion of them can be directly measured. This means that these feedback loops, essential to the completeness of the model, cannot be independently verified and errors in them propagate with an unknown level of bias throughout the entire model. Right there climatologists have introduces dozens of errors into their models, and what compounds this, is that they cannot quantify those errors with any degree of accuracy.
You should sit down sometime and talk with people who use these tools on a daily basis (as well as the people at places like ANSYS, Inc who work on code) to get a better understanding on what’s wrong with them.”
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/hot_air.php?page=all
[Response: Did you even read this story? And have you ever read anything written by climate modellers themselves? – gavin]
> Kate7
> reality check
Really, check it out, it certainly is that:
—excerpt follows—–
“… somewhere along the way that narrow professional authority had been misconstrued as a sort of all-purpose scientific legitimacy. It had bolstered meteorologists’ sense of their expertise outside of their own discipline, without necessarily improving the expertise itself. Most scientists are loath to speak to subjects outside of their own field, and with good reason—you wouldn’t expect a dentist to know much about, say, the geological strata of the Grand Canyon. But meteorologists, by virtue of typically being the only people with any science background at their stations, are under the opposite pressure—to be conversant in anything and everything scientific. This is a good thing if you see yourself as a science communicator, someone who sifts the good information from the bad—but it becomes a problem when you start to see scientific authority springing from your own haphazardly informed intuition, as many of the skeptic weathercasters do….
… when Breck talked to local schools and Rotaries and Kiwanis clubs about climate change, he presented his own ideas: warming trends were far more dependent on the water vapor in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, he told them, and the appearance of an uptick in global temperatures was the result of the declining number of weather stations in cold rural areas.
These theories were not only contradictory of each other, but had also been considered and rejected by climate researchers years ago….”
—end excerpt—-
Check. http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/hot_air.php?page=all
[Response: The question is whether, when you are driving a car at high speed in a fog, and someone tells you there is possibly a cliff ahead, do you slow down or simply accuse declare the map to be pseudo-science? – gavin]
Bad news… it is not just “a someone”…it is a group of the best international radar experts in the world with four different types of radar mounted on the car…and they can detect that the land ends somewhere ahead…but with the ground clutter they can’t tell you exactly where…but only that a cliff edge is indeed there somewhere ahead and that you will reach it at your current speed and direction. All the radar experts in the car have just shi _ _ ed in their pants.
IPCC 2007.
Kate7 (322),
The American Meteorological Society’s latest position statement says:
“Human responsibility for most of the well-documented increase in global average temperatures over the last half century is well established. Further greenhouse gas emissions, particularly of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, will almost certainly contribute to additional widespread climate changes that can be expected to cause major negative consequences for most nations …”
Policy Statement of the American Meteorological Society
321: Kate7 wrote: “I am tired.”
You ought to make an effort to actually learn the science before you dismiss it as pseudo.
Re 284
Agree with: sometimes inescapable is appropriate. Personally I don’t think we are there yet with AGW. I don’t deny the science behind CO2 , but are the climate sensitivity and feedback sorted out well enough ? There are reputable people like Spencer who don’t think it is. (Please don’t give me the usual funding bs in his case, or that there was a connection with the Bush administration in his past; or that he believes in ” intelligent design”; so what?)
You thought when first reading about bacteria causing stomach ulcers that it sounded reasonable even though you knew pretty well nothing about the subject. (unless you are also a physician?) Turned out you were right and the experts were wrong. Barry Marshall stated ” for years everyone was against me but I knew I was right”. No, stress and stomach acid have little to nothing to do with the far majority of gastric ulcers. H.Pylori produces copious amounts of urease which neutralizes the acidity locally. This causes an increase in a hormone called gastrin, which increases HCl production. So the fallacy was that increased gastrin and acidity was seen as the cause for the ulcers rather than the consequence of the H. Pylori infection causing ulcers. A classic mix-up of cause and effect. (A bit like the way Al Gore presents the Vostok data in his movie. Yes I read Michael Mann’s explanation, maybe correct but not the most convincing, but there is a cause and effect mix-up in the way Al presents this and it really ticks me off that we show this to schoolkids as is.)
Marshall could grow H.Pylori in 1982. The American College of Physicians Internists section did not come out with guidelines for treating H. Pylori until the mid 90s. It was very hard for the experts to admit that they had missed the boat. These people weren’t stupid, or agenda driven or anything, they were/are very bright. They had studied the subject very extensively , the literature was very impressive. It sometimes just takes time to unravel things, but in the end truth always prevails.
So please don’t tar everyone who isn’t convinced of the “settled science” with the same “denial sphere”
etc. brush. I can see that you get upset about people spouting non-sense and twisted stories. I can get seriously annoyed by some naturopaths etc. that use snippets of science as if they invented it and than misinterpret it and tag on the most absurd conclusions to promote their view. In the same vein: I understand that there is the constant misconception at WUWT regarding temperature trend (anomaly) versus absolute temperatures. (Got confused about that initially myself; not smart). Or the denial of the “greenhouse” effect. Or even stating that the temperature has not increased or the CO2 has not increased, or that the rise in CO2 is not man made. And then the metaphysical arguments as you have pointed out that have no place in science.
I am glad your posting at 284 is not as snarky as 236.
the term “ignorance” I used probably got you ticked off. I should have phrased it differently .
You are with OSS. And advise people on how to counter arguments against AGW . I read a few of your posts and can tell you are very well informed. But if I can give you my humble advise: try not to get too sarcastic with your opponents. It tends to sound arrogant and you can win the argument but loose the battle.
BTW H Hak is my real name. my first name is Henk to my friends. So call me Henk if you want.
Bill Teufel says:
“””””Use me as your man on the street…
How can you convince me, that the models are not being manipulated to produce the desired results? You come up with that answer, and everything else will fall in line.”””””
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You really think the world climate science community since 1824 is so stupid as to use only one line of evidence to basically declare a near state of emergency?…they are not morons you know.
They use at least FOUR lines of corroborating evidence and climate models are only one of the four lines of evidence…and the climate models have done a da_ned good job so far (They are not weather models for _ _ _ _ _ sake, and average out the starting conditions unlike weather models because climate models usually have 30 years or more to work with while weather models have only a week or so).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Four Reasons scientists future warming…
Mainstream peer-reviewed science since 1824 uses at least five lines of evidence to state that human-caused global warming/climate change is happening (90-95% confidence level-IPCC 2007) and will continue…not only one line of evidence from climate models as contrarians cite:
1) Climate models (different than weather models. Climate models average out starting conditions and weather models don’t)…The first working climate model was in 1896 (Arrhenius, 1896). Climate models have correctly predicted (alright- “projected”) many things in the peer reviewed literature that have held up over time, including average global surface warming (human-caused global warming since 1988), poles warming, the cooling effects of Mt. Pinatubo, many periods in the ancient past such as the last glacial maximum, the mid-Holocene (warming and then cooling), the hothouse PETM, the 8.2 ky cooling/drying event, the cooling of the Pliocene and responses to solar and orbital forcing among others, and hindcasts. Arrhenius S. 1896. On the influence of the carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature on the ground. The Philosoph. Mag. 41,237–276.Ambio,Volume 30, Issue 3 (May 2001), Svante Arrhrenius-1897- Model, grids, predicted more warming at poles, night and winter…AMBIO peer-reviewed journal, 1997, vol. 26, no. 1. (Published by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)http://www.ambio.kva.se/ . A Journal of the Human Environment ).J Uppenbrink – Science, 1996, Wild and Liepert, 1998, K Hasselmann – Nature, 1997.RE Benestad – Climatic Change, 2003, Rahmstorf et al., 2007, Science V Ramanathan – Science, 1988, Hansen 1988, IPCC 2001, AR3 IPCC 2007, AR4, Hansen et al. 2006).
2) The Earth’s energy imbalance (satellites, models, oceans warming, physics since 1824).
3) Current observations…speed and duration of the current average surface warming, oceans warming to their depths, speed of arctic sea ice disappearing, 1000 year record sea level rises, speed of ice melting, world-wide retreat of glaciers (many over 6000 years old whether there is short lived black carbon present or not-soot), 20,000 year old ice shelves collapsing, world-wide seasonal changes, world wide storm tracks/jet streams moving toward the poles (“expansion of tropics”), animals, birds, plants fish moving toward the poles, how the poles are warming up faster than the rest of the Earth, etc. These current observations also include knowledge of why the planet closest to the Sun is not the hottest-mainly carbon dioxide (yawn, not the high surface pressure that creates the heat, dude…atmosphere expands with heat…not like in a closed container). I wish someone would take high school physics at least.
4) Past observations of the ancient past… We know when glacial periods/warm periods happen (about in 100, 000, 40,000 and 26, 000 and 400, 000 year cycles varying with the Earth’s wobbling, tilting and shape of orbit around the Sun). We should now be descending into the next 100,000 year glacial period (“ice age”) now (and we were on track until humans started pumping C02- (mainly), methane, nitrous oxide, black soot into the atmosphere and cutting down whole rainforests)…not violently breaking Earth’s average surface temp records. When Co2 was high, temps were high, animals were warm loving ones, trees/plants were warm loving ones, beetles were warm loving ones, plankton was warm loving ones. When CO2 was low, the opposite was true.
5) Physics: How carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases works (and must work) at the vibrational, atomic and molecular level and temperature levels and what happens to them when they are excited by heat/IR/longwave energy). The physics of how oceans hold heat, delay climate change effects by 30-50 years and expand when heated. The physics of how a planet keeps warm and working out equations to explain them (starting in 1824, Fourier). Knowing how CO2 and temperature increases work together: first temps warm, then Co2 goes up )mainly out of oceans, then the planetary temperature sharply rises mainly due to CO2 (from ice cores). This is rocket science, and unless you do peer review climate change work that holds up over time, you should not be telling publishing climate scientists whose work holds up over time whether human made global warming/climate change is going on and how severe it is. You would not tell a heart surgeon the procedures to operate on your child.
After having been in the climate change community for over 11 years, I have had nightmares about human-caused global warming…and if you really want to have some fun…talk privately to the world’s best publishing scientists whose work holds up over time in the world wide peer reviewed literature as I have…then you will really get creeped out.
IPCC 2007 and the world wide peer reviewed literature that stands up over time.
““This explains why meteorologists (and engineers I might add) are so skeptical of climatologists. We use mathematical models on a daily basis and see firsthand what the real world limitations are. Climatologists don’t.”
This is a (common) instance of people over-generalizing from their own use of computers to other kind of models. I wrote about the common errors of this sort, by discipline, at RC a while ago.
Re: 303 Completely Fed Up says: 22 February 2010 at 3:58 PM
“They DENY AGW…”
Not to mention their political strategy is to deny others a rational
apprehension of reality.
OT Here’s something a bit unusual to enjoy outside in mid February.
305 Bill Teufel: Would you rather be taxed or extinct? THAT is the real question. GW can kill everybody. We just don’t know when.
258 Ros: Democracy is based on the average person Understanding the issues. The average person DID understand the issues, until recently. Conscience alone has never been good enough. In the early days of democracy, everybody DID understand the issues. Mere literacy was good enough until recently. EDUCATION is essential to democracy. The more complex the issue, the more education is required. Democracy is NOT a bet on conscience.
There is no “power gap” between scientists and voters because scientists have no power. The people who have power are the people who have the money to buy advertising and pay lobbyists. This country has become a plutocracy. Plutocracy is the rule of money. Money rules because of the incompetence of the average voter.
“my usual feeling is that I am being drowned by the language and the contempt.” is total nonsense. RealClimate has given you the means to educate yourself. There is no contempt unless you are referring to your self contempt. Scientists are NOT the authorities. NATURE is the ONLY authority.
“You are being too arrogant, you are saying it is outside of our control, that there is no place for hesitation or mitigation or that we can adapt, when the earth goes bonkers.”
The scientists are NOT being arrogant. YOU are being arrogant! YOU need to gain a proper respect for Mother Nature, the sovereign of the Universe! Nature cannot be fooled. Scientists ARE ONLY THE MESSENGERS!!!!!!! If humans do not respect Nature, it is the human race that will perish! Religious language is well justified.
A new study on hurricanes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100221/ap_on_sc/us_sci_warming_hurricanes
I admire the accuracy of the predictions, given the uncertainties on climate sensitivities and emission scenarios. The scenarios used in the study are even not indicated.
[Response: IPCC A1B scenario by 2100. It’s in the main paper. – gavin]
And notice this lovely quote:
“In 2007, the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it was “more likely than not” that man-made greenhouse gases had already altered storm activity, but the authors of the new paper said more recent evidence muddies the issue.
“The evidence is not strong enough that we could make some kind of statement” along those lines, Knutson said. It doesn’t mean the IPCC report was wrong; it was just based on science done by 2006 and recent research has changed a bit, said Knutson and the other researchers.”
LOL. After all, Ptolemaeus wasn’t wrong. He was just using the science done by his time.
Ray Ladbury (#283), two final remarks on this:
I agree with you that the CO2 effect during 1910-1940 is not negligible. I have only tried to point out that it is not as strong as you initially suggested: it’s about 25% and not ‘about half that of 1975-1998’.
I have explained before (#270) that I regarded your remark as a miscalculation. I have never used or implied the word fraud with respect to your comments, and I am sorry if you concluded otherwise. I have complained that there are often unsupported exaggerations in this field, especially with respect to climate predictions. But even for instance in the case of the Himalaya glacier story I am not sure if one should call it fraud, maybe it was just a stupidity to rely only on one unreliable (and certainly not peer-reviewed) source. And the real PR damage was done when honest glaciologists were trying to correct the error and were called voodoo-scientists.
I keep seeing stories about the mistakes that Climatologists make in their data or analysis. The stories claim the mistakes show that the earth is not getting warmer or that is not man made. Well, What about publicizing the mistakes that actually showed the opposite but turned out to be mistakes as well? I am sure there were just as many but nobody got accused of fabricating those?
Wake up people.
Paul L, 306, check out my humble attempt by googling 14 Most Heinous Climate Villains. It has appeared on over 40 internet magazines and blogs.
“Climate dissidents” sounds like one more attempt at “framing” by fossil fuel funded PR firms. Whatever they want, let’s reject. And if they hate being called deniers, that means it must be the perfect term.
Richard Ordway, thanks for taking the time to do that summary. I’m just a lay researcher specializing in forestry carbon (hint: industrial logging is a bigger problem than most scientists realize), but I know enough climate scientists to have learned that many of them are both scared and frustrated. I’ll continue to try to help in any way I can.
Re #329:
I read your linked comment, and it awoke my curiosity: are there any surveys about AGW-skeptics (like their education, occupation, income, nationality etc.)? I heard the same about creationists (ie. many are experts in their own field different from biology).
Are those observations only supported by anecdotes, or are there any more serious studies about it out there?
By the way I suspect that those people, who are successful experts in any field tend to be more confident in general and are easier to believe that they can form an expert’s opinion about something not in their field of expertise.
Re #329
Just to add to #329. Engineers also may have less experience of the underpinning of their own devices by basic science. Take condensed matter physics for example.
A bright beginner would have been horrified at the complexity of the actual problem. It would have been so easy to attack the simplifications made in the models being used. Yet the best people learned how to find a path through all these complications. In most cases later scientists came along and produced better models including more complexity, but the broad features of the early models would survive. Just one of many examples is Einstein’s theory of specific heat , which was absurdly simplified (compare Arrhenius theory of CO2 driven warming produced a short while before) but roughly ‘right’ in the sense that it revealed how quantum effects would operate in that area.
As a second example consider the independent particle model for calculating the electrical and optical properties of metals and semi-conductors. That ought to look absolutely terrible to an outsider because of its neglect of correlations between the motion of different electrons and again because of its grossly over-simplified way of dealing with the quantum effect of “exchange”. Since then there have been major refinements such as Landau’s quasi-particle theory and a some major advances in computational science but much of this is just disregarded by researchers because the early outrageous models are still easier to think about and are good enough to answer many questions.
H. Hak,
How many times do I need to say this? We have over a dozen different lines of evidence that constrain CO2 to the range 2 degrees to 4.5 degrees per doubling and all of them favor 3 degrees per doubling. How likely are ALL OF THESE to be wrong and still give the same value?
Your argument about H. Pylori and ulcers is also a red herring. “Medical science” has only been practiced scientifically since about the 40s. Climate science dates back to the 18th century, with the greenhouse effect dating from 1824, prediction of anthropogenic greenhouse warming in 1896 and global climate models since the ’70s.
By any standard you choose, anthropogenic causation is established at the 90-95% CL. In any other scientific endeavor, you can take that to the bank.
So, as near as I can tell, you have presented two justifications for your reservations. One would seem to be contradicted by the evidence (that regarding CO2 sensitivity). The other has nothing to do with climate science. I wouldn’t call that a strong case.
Kate7: From my reading there has not been a PROVEN correlation between CO2 emissions and climate change.
BPL: Read this, please:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Correlation.html
HH: I don’t deny the science behind CO2 , but are the climate sensitivity and feedback sorted out well enough ?
BPL: Please read:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html
“So please don’t tar everyone who isn’t convinced of the “settled science” with the same “denial sphere””
But the “settled science” is a denialist tactic.
If you SPEAK the language of racism, people will CALL you a racist. This CAN happen and is one of the few reasonable reasons for the changing of “-man” to “-person”.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
IR interaction with CO2 ***is*** settled.
Cloud response to out actions ***is not*** settled.
HOWEVER, the biggest possible effect clouds could have to ameliorate climate change from CO2 is absolutely insufficient to counter CO2’s effects.
Therefore the result of CO2 effect on climate is practically as settled as CO2/IR interaction.
When you add in that the most likely effect of clouds on climate change is to reinforce the warming/cooling of CO2 change and therefore exacerbate the problem, complaining about “settled science” is a purely denialist trick.
Something else for the iphone?
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
(Beware of imitations)
Ammonite (#316): I appreciate your calm approach to the debate, that is refreshingly different from several over-heated responses one often gets when a critical remark is made about AGW projections.
You write: ‘Doubling CO2 is generally considered to raise temperature by 3C based on many independent studies (excluding models). If this were to occur …’
As you probably know this value of 3 degrees Celsius from one CO2 doubling is only the mean value of the different projections from GCM models, that predict an increase anywhere between 1 and 6 degrees.
[Response: This is not true. 3 deg C is the best estimate from multiple observational constraints, not GCMs. Which in any case show a range of 2.1 to 4.5 deg C in the latest AR4. – gavin]
CO2 alone would cause a rise of approximately 1 degree for a CO2 doubling, everything more than that is based upon the assumption of strong and continuous positive feedback mechanisms. And precisely in this area there is much and increasing doubt. One feedback is the release of CO2 from the ocean upon warming, recent evidence suggest that this factor is 5-fold lower than previously thought. The most important feedback is based on the effects of water vapor. The recent article of Solomon in Science on stratospheric water vapor suggests that at least in the stratosphere there is no simple scenario of positive feedback. Previously Paltridge has suggested that at higher altitudes of the troposphere there has been a decrease of relative humidity in recent decades, whereas in the models it has always been assumed that relative humidity would remain constant. If he is right, then there is actually a negative feedback from water vapor.
I do agree with you that rising population and diminishing resources will cause severe problems in the near future, and in my view those problems deserve most of our immediate attention (and money) as long as there is so much doubt about the magnitude and precise nature of the CO2 effects.
“By any standard you choose, anthropogenic causation is established at the 90-95% CL.”
Please remember too that the politicians (who, under some theories of conspiracy are driving the scientists to push AGW as a scare story for their own enrichment) made the scientists change to this confidence level from the one the SCIENTISTS wanted to use: “Greater than 95%”.
a) If the politicians were driving this, they would have driven it the other way
b) Note how this 90-95 is transmogrified into 90% to eke the biggest uncertainty. it is 80% likely that the CL is bigger than that if assessed correctly in the band. 100% if you consider real numbers rather than integers.
Kate 7, many climate scientists have doctorates in physics. Now, are really trying to tell us that they do not understand the reality of complex, non-linear systems? Perhaps you would like to compare backgrounds with them. Your dogmatic assertions are embarrassing to you and your profession.
kate7@321
Hmm. I’m confused. Last week, you were posting a link to a website using a statistical model that you claimed predicted “climate”. Now you link to an Irish blog that claims predicting climate is impossible. Which is it?
Well, I guess the advantage of being a denialist is that you never have to take a consistent position.
The fact of the matter is that climate models have actually been very successful at explaining paleoclimate and looking at the response of climate to various perturbations:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html
What is even more astounding is your contention that the failure of the models would support your advocacy of inaction. The temperature record, the melting ice, phenological studies… all paint a picture of exceptionally rapid warming. The characteristics of that warming (along with simultaneous stratospheric cooling) do not fit any other mechanism, but are easily explained in terms of the known properties of greenhouse gasses. Paleoclimatic studies show that the consequences of rapid warming can be severe indeed (e.g. mass extinction events, severe polar melting and sea-level rise…). This evidence is more than sufficient to establish a credible risk to the climate of the only habitable planet we know of. The models are one of the most important tools we have for bounding the risk due to climate change.
Uncertainty is not the friend of those advocating inaction. But then, you’re a troll. You don’t advocate anything, do you?
gavin – “The question is whether, when you are driving a car at high speed in a fog, and someone tells you there is possibly a cliff ahead, do you slow down or simply accuse declare the map to be pseudo-science?”
I am not convinced that your observations in nature support this mind-picture.
The question is, to me, whether while I am driving on a sixteen-lane freeway in Chicago, the road will suddenly end at a dropoff within the next mile.
“330
Tim Jones says:
23 February 2010 at 1:15 AM
Not to mention their political strategy is to deny others a rational
apprehension of reality.”
And that is why I don’t mind people who don’t believe, but they don’t bother to see if they’re right but STILL piss in the pool others are trying to enjoy swimming in.
It’s a crime against the noobs that nobody seems to be complaining about, especially the noobs themselves.
How many times have you heard someone say, after, for example, being shown that Greenland wasn’t a tropical paradise therefore there was a warmer global period in the past “Thanks for that. Why did so many people try to lead me wrong?”
Never.
A few thanks for information, but nothing about why someone lied to them.
You can change people’s minds on a one-to-one basis, but you need to be there face-to-face. Sometimes, especially for the older, the problem isn’t the science but the blame.
They did it.
It is *now* known to be bad widely enough for them to know it’s bad.
Therefore it’s blaming them when you talk of AGW.
Very similar to second hand smoke. They forget that a child’s lung is smaller and still growing (so any error will be magnified) but hear “second hand smoke can be more dangerous than smoking” and scoff. It’s *blaming* them so they don’t consider that at the time almost every adult smoked, so the only second hand smokers were children.
But explain to them that the problems caused was their fault, but they are not to blame because they weren’t to know and they are less hostile to smoking/cancer links.
Same here.
In the 70’s you had to be a climatologist to know that AGW was a good, solid theory.
In he 90’s it became well known.
And then it became “Oh, right, yeah, MY FAULT again” and anything that helps avoid blame, even if that blame is self inflicted is welcomed.
But you need to find face-to-face what the individual’s problems with the idea is.
Internet is not private enough and not interactive to anything close to the degree it needs to be.
And those able to explain questions are heavily outnumbered by those wanting to avoid clarity on the subject, never mind the ones needing talking with.
“CO2 alone would cause a rise of approximately 1 degree for a CO2 doubling, everything more than that is based upon the assumption of strong and continuous positive feedback mechanisms”
Whither now the “H2O is much bigger greenhouse gas!” point?