It won’t have escaped many of our readers’ notice that there has been what can only be described as a media frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere. While the UK newspaper scene is uniquely competitive (especially compared to the US with over half a dozen national dailies selling in the same market), and historically there have been equally frenzied bouts of mis-reporting in the past on topics as diverse as pit bulls, vaccines and child abductions, there is something new in this mess that is worth discussing. And that has been a huge shift in the Overton window for climate change.
In any public discussion there are bounds which people who want to be thought of as having respectable ideas tend to stay between. This is most easily seen in health care debates. In the US, promotion of a National Health Service as in the UK or a single-payer system as in Canada is so far outside the bounds of normal health care politics, that these options are only ever brought up by ‘cranks’ (sigh). Meanwhile in the UK, discussions of health care delivery solutions outside of the NHS framework are never heard in the mainstream media. This limit on scope of the public debate has been called the Overton window.
The window does not have to remain static. Pressure groups and politicians can try and shift the bounds deliberately, or sometimes they are shifted by events. That seems to have been the case in the climate discussion. Prior to the email hack at CRU there had long been a pretty widespread avoidance of ‘global warming is a hoax’ proponents in serious discussions on the subject. The sceptics that were interviewed tended to be the slightly more sensible kind – people who did actually realise that CO2 was a greenhouse gas for instance. But the GW hoaxers were generally derided, or used as punchlines for jokes. This is not because they didn’t exist and weren’t continually making baseless accusations against scientists (they did and they were), but rather that their claims were self-evidently ridiculous and therefore not worth airing.
However, since the emails were released, and despite the fact that there is no evidence within them to support any of these claims of fraud and fabrication, the UK media has opened itself so wide to the spectrum of thought on climate that the GW hoaxers have now suddenly find themselves well within the mainstream. Nothing has changed the self-evidently ridiculousness of their arguments, but their presence at the media table has meant that the more reasonable critics seem far more centrist than they did a few months ago.
A few examples: Monckton being quoted as a ‘prominent climate sceptic’ on the front page of the New York Times this week (Wow!); The Guardian digging up baseless fraud accusations against a scientist at SUNY that had already been investigated and dismissed; The Sunday Times ignoring experts telling them the IPCC was right in favor of the anti-IPCC meme of the day; The Daily Mail making up quotes that fit their GW hoaxer narrative; The Daily Express breathlessly proclaiming the whole thing a ‘climate con’; The Sunday Times (again) dredging up unfounded accusations of corruption in the surface temperature data sets. All of these stories are based on the worst kind of oft-rebunked nonsense and they serve to make the more subtle kind of scepticism pushed by Lomborg et al seem almost erudite.
Perhaps this is driven by editors demanding that reporters come up with something new (to them) that fits into an anti-climate science theme that they are attempting to stoke. Or perhaps it is driven by the journalists desperate to maintain their scoop by pretending to their editors that this nonsense hasn’t been debunked a hundred times already? Who knows? All of these bad decisions are made easier when all of the actually sensible people, or people who know anything about the subject at all, are being assailed on all sides, and aren’t necessarily keen to find the time to explain, once again, that yes, the world is warming.
So far, so stupid. But even more concerning is the reaction from outside the UK media bubble. Two relatively prominent and respected US commentators – Curtis Brainard at CJR and Tom Yulsman in Colorado – have both bemoaned the fact that the US media (unusually perhaps) has not followed pell-mell into the fact-free abyss of their UK counterparts. Their point apparently seems to be that since much news print is being devoted to a story somewhere, then that story must be worth following. Indeed, since the substance to any particularly story is apparently proportional to the coverage, by not following the UK bandwagon, US journalists are missing a big story. Yulsman blames the lack of environmental beat reporters for lack of coverage in the US, but since most of the damage and bad reporting on this is from clueless and partisan news desk reporters in the UK, I actually expect that it is the environmental beat reporters’ prior experience with the forces of disinformation that prevents the contagion crossing the pond. To be sure, reporters should be able and willing (and encouraged) to write stories about anything to do with climate science and its institutions – but that kind of reporting is something very different from regurgitating disinformation, or repeating baseless accusations as fact.
So what is likely to happen now? As the various panels and reports on the CRU affair conclude, it is highly likely (almost certain in fact) that no-one will conclude that there has been any fraud, fabrication or scientific misconduct (since there hasn’t been). Eventually, people will realise (again) that the GW hoaxers are indeed cranks, and the mainstream window on their rants will close. In the meantime, huge amounts of misinformation, sprinkled liberally with plenty of disinformation, will be spread and public understanding on the issue will likely decline. As the history of the topic has shown, public attention to climate change comes and goes and this is likely to be seen as the latest bump on that ride.
BPL: “Disastrous.” And what part of “complete collapse of global agriculture in no more than 40 years” do you not regard as disastrous?
JT: And what would the original source of THAT be? Greenpeace? WFF? This is exactly what I mean. When these positively absurd statements are shown to be what they are, people won’t believe in the actual science.
Face it. The chances of getting public support has been lost by not refuting the ignorant statements of people like Gore and the deception of Pachauri (what else can you call it, when he calls something ‘voodoo science’ when he knows it’s correct). Confounding science with ‘gray literature’ from biased sources such as Greenpeace and WFF speculating on the consequences of GW has destroyed the credibility of the IPCC.
There is no choice but to start over with a different cast of characters. Right now people are saying, “If the situation is so dire, why did the IPCC MAKE THINGS UP?” And you can’t blame them. The Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035; the rainforests are not extremely sensitive to draught; the Arctic isn’t going to melt in the next couple of years; hurricanes are not getting stronger. The story was strong enough without exaggeration and misstatements. Perception is EVERYTHING, and the public now perceives the ENTIRE IPCC report to be sloppy at best. Congratulations for completely screwing this up.
And those who knew better when Gore started misrepresenting the effect of GW but remained silent should be taken to the woodshed for not insisting on an honest presentation of the situation.
Rattus Norvegicus (841)
I did some more research on your little (ugh) ECPA law. It seems that “The Stored Communications Act” part of EPCA is the section that comes closest to email privacy. It is quite deficient in protecting your email from the government – the thrust of ECPA – or from private parties (ISPs) which pretty much avoid 4th amendment protection anyway.
A privacy oriented 2004 “User’s Guide” from GWU Law School can be downloaded from : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=421860. In addition to trying to explain this confusing arcane legislation, the author recommends three areas where additional legislation would be desirable. The third area for improvement would seem to be most applicable to “climate gate” :
“…The third reason that the Fourth Amendment generally offers weak privacy protections online is that most ISPs are private actors. Most are commercial service providers, not government entities. Under the private search doctrine, the Fourth Amendment is wholly inapplicable to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, effected by a private individual not
acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official. As a result, even if the Fourth Amendment protects files stored with an ISP, the ISP can search through all of the stored files on its server and disclose them to the government without violating the Fourth Amendment.
Taken together, these three reasons make it difficult for robust Fourth Amendment protections to apply online. Because private files are held remotely by private ISPs, current doctrine does not protect remotely stored non-content files and leaves the protection of stored content files unclear. And even if those files are protected, they likely can be subpoenaed by the government without probable cause. And even if the files cannot be subpoenaed, private ISPs can search through the files and disclose the fruits to law enforcement under the Fourth Amendment’s private search doctrine.
As I have written elsewhere, these details of how the Internet works make it almost “custom designed” to frustrate claims of strong Fourth Amendment protection in remotely stored files under current Fourth Amendment doctrine…”
Enjoy
I took a little survey at lunch today. I asked several people “What does Global Warming mean to you.” The most popular answer was “Duh .”
Then there was “Ozone.”
You can safely assume that the student has not read the assignment. That includes the journalists. I wouldn’t assume that they ever read anything, or ever will read anything. Better start with radio or television. For journalists who ask for interviews, require them to watch some PBS TV at least, prior to the interview. There was at least one PBS TV show on GW. Make the interview into an oral exam of THEM on the PBS TV show. The journalists won’t be interested in doing that. Their agenda is to find something wrong and controversial, to sell newspapers. You should NEVER assume that a journalist has the best interest of the public or the truth as a goal.
As one clown said: “Don’t take life seriously. It isn’t permanent.”
That is our problem: WE take life seriously. And WE CAN do math. Most people lack a math co-processor. I doubt that you could force the journalists into a situation in which they have to be the students, but it seems like a good idea.
“Start here” leads to things that have to be read. Instead, or in addition at the top, put in things that can be downloaded into an iPod or viewed as a downloadable movie. Keep It Simple. You are not dealing with physical science graduate students.
lucky dog: I would really like to see a reporter/ author publish the story of how it became possible for mankind to understand with certainty how this planet’s climate works.
BPL: Ignoring the “with certainty” straw man, try here:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
John Peter @ 455: Congratulations, you have identified an anthropogenic effect of CO2 for which there are no skeptics or deniers
BPL: On the amazon.com “science” forums I find many people saying ocean acidification isn’t happening, isn’t a problem, or is happening too slow to matter.
John Peter: Copenhagen “decisions” are projected to cost upwards of a billion African lives.
BPL: What decisions would those be, specifically?
BPL: “Disastrous.” And what part of “complete collapse of global agriculture in no more than 40 years” do you not regard as disastrous?
JT: And what would the original source of THAT be? Greenpeace? WFF?
BPL: No. Peer-reviewed scientific investigation:
Battisti, D. S., and R. L. Naylor. 2009. “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” Science 323: 240-244.
Dai, A., K.E. Trenberth, and T. Qian 2004. “A Global Dataset of Palmer Drought Severity Index for 1870–2002: Relationship with Soil Moisture and Effects of Surface Warming.” J. Hydrometeorol. 1, 1117-1130.
12% of Earth land surface “severely dry” by Palmer Drought Severity Index 1970. 2002 figure 30%.
UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025
Published by Jim on Monday, October 5, 2009 at 4:15 PM
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) — Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet’s soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned.
“If we cannot find a solution to this problem… in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected,” Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday.
Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report.
“There will not be global security without food security” in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital.
jt: This is exactly what I mean. When these positively absurd statements are shown to be what they are, people won’t believe in the actual science.
BPL: People like you ALREADY don’t believe in the actual science.
Read my lips: In 40 years, you will no longer be able to waltz into a grocery store and buy food just because you have the money. You’ll be lucky to be shooting it out with your neighbors over who gets the scraggly, greenish tomatoes growing next to an outhouse. You’ll be luckier still if you can get rations from a food line once a week.
It’s already happening, dude. Just not in the first world… yet. Although Argentina, Africa, and Australia are hurting pretty badly due to drought.
“As one clown said: “Don’t take life seriously. It isn’t permanent.”
That is our problem: WE take life seriously.”
I have NO PROBLEM with someone saying that. Live isn’t permanent.
Now, is he taking AGW seriously and arguing against it?
Well, that’s taking it seriously. That’s actually interfering with other people who DO care about life. That’s actually not doing what they state they’re doing. This is called lying. Mendacity. Porkies.
If life isn’t permanent, the ONLY way you can survive in a society of more other people than yourself is by agreeing “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
If life isn’t permanent, then your life isn’t all that important. So why should 99.9999999999999% of the rest of the world put up with your actions that harm them?
That guy is only a clown if they say that but don’t act that.
JT: And what would the original source of THAT be? Greenpeace? WFF?
CFU: I think you’ll find it was said by BPL. WTF? Do you think that ANYTHING you personally off nothing more than your “gut feeling” (the greeks used to think that was the center of reasoning and the brain was just an organ for cooling the blood) think is ridiculous must be from Greenpeace???
Have you done ANY work to see if it’s actually ridiculous? Or do you think that maybe it’s possible, even if unlikely?
Don’t you insure against your home being flooded?
It’s unlikely to happen, but you buy the insurance.
Why? Does Greenpeace make you???
“500
Sere says:
19 February 2010 at 1:12 AM
Let’s clarify this debate. The most important claim of the AGW theory is actually a subset of the theory: let’s call it *Tipping Point Theory.* ”
Why is that the most important claim?
The MOST IMPORTANT CLAIM is that human actions are causing a climate problem.
Being human caused, it can be avoided by NOT DOING IT ANY MORE.
TPT is important because we have unbounded risk. That is NOTHING to do with AGW theory. It’s a worrying consequence.
CONSEQUENCE.
“Kate7 says:
18 February 2010 at 10:54 PM
29. when they crank through petabytes of climate simulations and find no reliable temperature records.-
Balasz
Exactly”
wrong!
There aren’t petabytes of MWP era temperature information.
This is hard to make it even merely wrong.
But Kate never lets facts get in the way.
Gruff.
“493
John Peter says:
18 February 2010 at 9:58 PM
This is not about legal, it is about expectations”
Yes it is.
Both the idea that there is an expectation of privacy in general and that this case, in particular, where someone downloaded reams of information that didn’t belong to them and spread selected quotes around to smear (libel) some people, this is MOST DEFINITELY a legal thing.
“two moon says:
18 February 2010 at 9:39 PM
Since then, more millionaires (more billionaires for that matter) have been created that at any other time in US history”
And many more people in jail, in the army (because they don’t have a chance of work elsewhere), many more people poorer.
Wealth disparity is not made less by concentrating wealth in more billionaires.
Have a look at Saudi Arabia.
Jimbo, it is illegal to speed past a schoolyard in 1989 except that the statute of limitations for such a crime has now passed and we don’t have any cam footage.
Therefore Jimbo is guilty of speeding in a residential area.
This is EXACTLY the stance you’re taking to justify whisltblowing and accuse Dr Jones of criminal acts.
Are you REFUTING that it’s illegal to speed past a schoolyard in 1989 in your home town?
Are you refuting that the prosecution of you for doing this would go nowhere now?
If you don’t, then you too are guilty of speeding in a residential area.
BTW: NO COMMENT is how all politicians weasel out of admitting guilt.
“484
Frank Giger says:
18 February 2010 at 8:36 PM
Remember the IPCC got a Nobel Prize for Peace, not Science. Think about that.”
Yes, I’ve thought.
And myu thought now is “so what?” The work is centuries old (millenia, even) and is hardly breathrhough science, so would not give reason for a Nobel prize for Science.
But what have many wars been about?
Someone else has land with resources you lack.
And when the world gets hotter, wetter, we will have more drought and more desert. What do you think was a major contributing factor to the Dust Bowl? An extremely HOT US temperature for years.
Now when it comes down to it, if your country no longer supports food production for your family, do you sit around and starve, or do you move north and take the land that isn’t devastated?
If you’re invaded by a foreign country, what would you do?
War?
You betcha.
And an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.
Sere, Although tipping points are an important aspect of the theory, they are by far only one type of risk of inaction. The climate, as self-proclaimed skeptics keep telling us is complex. Solomon et al.’s PNAS study showed that even without any sort of tipping point, we could wind up irreversibly altering the climate
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/irreversible-does-not-mean-unstoppable/
The climate achieves equilibrium again only very slowly, so every ton of CO2 we put into the atmosphere moves us further from a stable climate.
Moreover, keep in mind that we have no effective way to mitigate climate change effects. Developing such strategies will take time–and we have already squandered 20 years arguing about established science.
We also know with 100% certainty that the climate has tipping points–not only from the physics, but also from the paleoclimate. The loss of Arctic Sea ice is one such tipping point. This greatly decreases the albedo in the arctic and will accelerate warming in that region significantly in Summer, Fall and Spring. We also know that the ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 is not unlimited–at some point they become a source, rather than a sink of CO2. This would accelerate warming and slow down recovery even if we somehow managed to invent Dyson’s magic carbon-gobbling trees. What is more, using the ocean as a dumping ground for our CO2 is a bad idea, since it acidifies the oceans. Not only does this degrade reefs, which are crucial to global fisheries (already under severe strain), at some point it begins to favor micro-organisms that produce H2S, rather then O2. Paleoclimate gives us ample evidence of what happens then–the PETM saw one of the largest mass extinctions of all time.
Paleoclimate also gives us evidence of other tipping points. The lag of CO2 behind temperature in glacial/interglacial cycles that denialists (and sorry, these guys are in denial) love to cite is actually evidence of a tipping point: Temperatures began to rise due to increased insolation, melting polar ice and exposing permafrost. The permafrost then gave a pulse of CO2 over an extended period of time, further warming and prolonging the warm temperature.
There is plenty of evidence that there are tipping points, and we have no idea how close they are. This is an area where uncertainty is definitely not your friend.
Steckis says, “Specifically they state that ignoring the influences of the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere as interacting forces along with human influences gives a biased and wrong interpretation of climate.”
And since climate studies quite specifically do consider these effects, that makes the subcommittee statement a straw man, which I suspect is why the rest of the academy ignored it.
News is always more interesting when it’s local. The story is bigger in the UK because the CRU is in the UK. Al Gore is a US “local” so he is still getting the attention of the US media during their cold snap.
The thing that scares me more than ignorant/malevolent press reports is that anti-science is an organised political movement in the US. The latest bit of craziness from the UTAH state government is just the tip of an iceberg of ignorance, ideological dogma and vested interest.
As an Aussie I don’t get off scott free either. I unreservedly apologise for unleashing Rupert on the world but that’s not to say he’s stupid or ignorant. Like the US think tanks that produce the bulk of the anti-science propoganda for his media empire, he knows exactly what he is doing.
Since the 70’s I have often wondered how the Easter Islander’s could have been so breathtakingly stupid as to cut down the last tree and thus ensure their own extinction. Over the last few years I have come to see how it’s not only possible but actually very probable that a “sophisticated” civilization would behave in such a self destructive manner.
500 Sere,
I am not a climate scientist (in the narrow sense) but would like to say 1) that you have a point – yes, tipping points is an important issue, whether they exist, where they are, how certain we can be (factual) and also political (the notion of tipping points are increasingly an important tool for climate advocates)
2) the point is only partly valid. Whether climate change is important or not does not stand and fall with tipping points. Climate change is very complex, there is hundreds of issues. We have to consider ALL of these.
Sou says: (thanks for measured reply btw) in post 494
“@413 Hotrod:
A lot of people say they have been put off by exaggerations. Maybe it’s just they cannot conceive of climate having an effect on the world. For example, using the threats you’ve given, are you saying that you don’t agree that a hotter climate isn’t already threatening polar bear populations, or that malaria could extend its boundaries with increasing heat and humidity, or that the deltas in Bangladesh might not have more frequent and worse flooding as sea levels rise?”
Sou, my post was really expressing surprise at the awful outrage that Gavin expresses at the MSM for recent news flow, when so far as I am aware no such outrage has been expressed by the community at a (imho) supine media over last couple of decades repeating exaggerations.
On your specific points re polar bears etc, which I picked as typical past headline exaggerations:
Polar bears – no, I don’t agree that a hotter climate is already threatening polar bear populations
Malaria – no I don’t think materially correlated to increasing heat (does AGW theory predict greater humidity, I can’t recall?). Insectologists or whatever they’re called dismiss increased malaria as an effect of GW.
Bangladeshi flooding (I take your point to exclude extreme weather events) – Bangladesh has been expanding (silt) at c 20 square km pa for last 30 years (from memory) during a period of historically normal sea level rises. Clearly unusually rapid sea level rises will have a flooding effect on low countries everywhere, if we have them.
Sorry Chaps,
I have a bit of a complaint. This is a thread about ‘Whatevergate’. Reasonable things to discuss are:
The robustness of the WG2 part of the IPCC report.
Coverage of the various ‘gates’ in the media.
How this plays to public opinion.
How should/could we respond to these issues, as they arise, better.
If we have learned anything, the proper way to prepare WG2 in the future.
The Overton window(?)
Unreasonable things to discuss:
Grapes.
The science of Nuclear Energy.
The science of Pendulums.
Privacy laws.
Long listings of scientific papers, one way or another.
Acrimonius abuse, because someone doesn’t see it your way.
As of writing this there are 503 responses, Mostly OT.
Please!
#501 jton
jtom’s post is a good example of why exagerated predictions of doom do more harm than good. The hysterical claim that 8 billion will die in the next 30 years is just that: Hysterial.
OTOH, hurricanes ARE geting stronger, rainforests ARE extremelely sensittive to dry conditions and the arctic sea ice and glaciers in Greenland, the Antarctic Peninusula, the Andes, etc ARE melting at an alarming rate.
When the already brainwashed like jtom (correctly) reject hysterical claims, they reject substantiated claims at the same time.
They don’t need to be highly likely to be taken seriously. ‘Somewhat likely’ is bad enough; it’s called risk management for a reason. Do your own homework, starting with PETM. We don’t owe you an education — you do.
…and by the way, “Tipping Point Theory” is just as silly a term as “Falling-Down Theory” or “Geosphericity Theory” or Apes-to-Humans Theory”.
Re #500
If there was no TPT, there would be no passionate discussion of AGW theory.
Really? Its odd then that I can’t find the terms ‘tipping point’ or ‘runaway’ in the index or glossary of the book ‘Dire Predictions’ by Mann and Kump. Notice that, ‘dire’ even without TPT.
So why is most of the propaganda focussed on people like Mann and Jones? Where has the latter written about TPT? What have the hockey stick papers got to do with TPT?
I think the propagandist strategy may have been to direct their fury on those whose writings fall into the centre or moderate end of the Overton window for climate sensitivity.
You haven’t been paying attention.
Let’s not.
Sere #500,
After all, if there is no really good evidence for TPT, then there is nothing to worry about.
No, there is no need for there to be a “tipping point” in order for us to be seriously concerned about the AGW and its likely consequences.
The kind of temperature increases we could see even without a tipping point would be serious enough in themselves.
Great points in this post.
I think that the main problem is the correct communication of the science behind climate change. It is so complex and main stream media love simple stories. Their editors are lazy and do not like to verify facts. They have pressure to write an article, and they take what they can get. If we can get this right, in a scientific, facts-based, yet easy-to-understand fashion, we’ll win! (Good example: iPhone application)
513 Completely Fed Up: There are more poor people and more people in jail because there are more people, period. The army is smaller now than it was in the 50’s & 60’s. Disparity in wealth distribution waxes and wanes with the tempo of economic and social change. Our present era is notable mainly for the unprecedented broad base of wealth creation.
John Peter has been posting a huge diversion here …
Expectation of privacy of e-mail is not the issue.
Illegally breaking into someone else’s computer – not just the UEA mail server, but the server that hosts Real Climate – is the issue, and it is a crime.
Just ignore the rest of his crap.
Can someone help with the Phil Jones/BBC interview, please?
(Or point me to where I can find the answers)
The BBC interviewer wrote that some of the questions that he asked of Phil Jones had been suggested by sceptics.
Has anyone, or could anyone, go through the questions and attempt to tease out those that were probably suggested by sceptics? The sceptics, if they know their stuff, and I assume in this case they are “credible” sceptics, would have put questions deliberately to probe any weaknesses in Phil Jones’ replies. So which questions show the fingerprint of sceptics?
BPL (506)
The projection was made by one of the more progressive one of the MSM writers. She was very disappointed that the developed nation’s and China were unwilling to commit to bigger targets for CO2 reduction.
I have no way of knowing if her article and numbers were correct. I would put them in the class of non-scientific write-ups that we have been complaining about in this thread. However they were supporting, not denying AGW.
I would be delighted to withdraw the number if someone has a more scientific estimate. I believe she was referring to famine and disease.
BPL (505) That may be true, I’m not a biological scientist. I do see references in Science to negative effects on ocean species due to ocean acidification , if you care to look.
twomoon, This is OT, but your post is misleading. In 1976, the richest 1% owned 22% of the nations wealth. In 2004, they owned 34%. The median income of the top 1% is nearly 200 times the US median income. One man, Bill Gates, owns as much wealth as the bottom 40% of US households. The top 1% control more wealth than the bottom 90%. Distribution of wealth in the US is roughly equivalent to that in third world economies like Guatemala or Malaysia.
OK, in keeping with my “kinder, gentler” approach, let’s give Sere some credit for at least trying to find a way to move the debate to a factual basis rather than a personal basis.
Sere, do you see, especially given the account of the Solomon article I cited and the Mann and Kump Geoff cited and Andreas argument, why your concentration on tipping points might be considered a straw man?
However, I also think that there is good evidence of tipping points (of varying degrees) in climate, and the Arctic is the place to look for them.
Bob (482)
I detest invasion of privacy by anyone, anytime, period.
It’s just that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has figured out how to write a meaningful statute protecting non-government browsing of other people’s email. Until they do, you will have to encrypt any information you wish to conceal from prying eyes.
Actually encrypting is much easier than wording a good email privacy law. Maybe that’s why we don’t have one.
With admirable concision, GSW in 521 lists a few “reasonable things to discuss” in this thread. In 55, I should have listed two explicit phrases of the same sort. This thread should engage two things that are new:
* The new and metastasizing contempt for an entire subfield of science.
* Politicians’ dishonest but snowballing efforts to use this new cancer to electoral advantage in this year’s congressional election.
#357. It is bizarre to see this legalistic argumentation over the word “hack,” a term which has no precise legal meaning. Among the computer literate, the usage of “hack” is at least as broad as the usage of “trick” among scientists (a roughly synonymous term for which there have also recently been some foolish attempts to assign an overly narrow definition). Like “trick,” “hack” is frequently used to refer to benign activities, such as clever or rapid programming, but it can also refer to illegal data access by methods ranging from sophisticated remote computer intrusions to trivial unauthorized access by deception or gaining access to another user’s password (e.g. a “social engineering” hack). Many academic servers are not really well secured against data intrusion by somebody who is able to gain physical access to the server, although the fact that there was a presumably remote intrusion into RealClimate’s computers raises the possibility of a more sophisticated external attack
Here’s a study concluding that there has been less ice in Greenland than today between 400 and 1014 AD by analysing organic remains found +-3km from the historic ice cap retreat line.
“Organic Remains from the Istorvet Ice Cap, Liverpool Land, East Greenland: A Record of Late Holocene Climate Change” American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007 Lowell, Kelly et al.
Antarctica has 20Million km3 Ice; 150km3 loss per year is really a very small amount. I’d like to understand how ice can melt in a place where temperatures never get above 0 C°
trrll (537)
I agree.
If all that was done to RealClimate server was an unauthorized upload of a bunch of emails and data, it will be very hard for RealClimate to prove damage to their (blog) server. Proven “Damage”, in addition to unauthorized access, seems to be a requirement of the computer hacking laws.
If we are to clean up the cooling elements of AGW (black carbon and sulphur dioxide) then would warming double per decade from 0.18C to 0.36C as is stated in this New Scientist article.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527481.400-smoke-bomb-the-other-climate-culprits.html
lots of good stuff in here about the nature of anthroprogenic cooling agents
David Benson wrote: “SecularAnimist (425) — Already done. Read Mark Lynas’s ‘Six Degrees’ and Peter D. Ward’s ‘Under a Green Sky’.”
And how often are those books addressed and discussed by the moderators of this site — let alone the discussion pages — compared to the number of posts that address ExxonMobil-scripted denialist BS?
For every dozen articles explaining in thorough and respectful detail why liars and frauds like Monckton or Morano are wrong, is there even ONE that discusses why the worst-case scenarios may well be correct?
Again, my point is that even for this site, discussion of phony-baloney denialist pseudoscience is within the bounds of acceptable discourse (the “Overton window”), but discussion of plausible, science-based, worst-case scenarios seems to be out of bounds.
Consider Lynas’s book. It was published three years ago. Would it not be appropriate for the RealClimate moderators to give us an update, with a review of the ongoing empirical observations of CO2 emission rates, cumulative CO2 levels, the ongoing effects of same, and the plausibility in light of those observations of leveling off at 2 degrees vs. skyrocketing to 6 degrees of warming? I think such a review would be, to put it mildly, sobering.
Is that not at least as important as writing one rebuttal after another to the deliberately dishonest and deceptive denialist trash?
Gavin did a piece on the use of the phrase “tipping points” some time ago –
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/runaway-tipping-points-of-no-return/
Catchy phrases tend to have a life of their own, “quantum leap” being another example. The media, of course, love them.
Arthur, use Google Scholar, not blog science, if you want reliable information about what’s in a published paper.
Scholar gives you the subsequent work referring to the same paper and by the same authors.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.12.008
“If all that was done to RealClimate server was an unauthorized upload of a bunch of emails and data, it will be very hard for RealClimate to prove damage to their (blog) server”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack
And, since possession of illegal items can get you into trouble
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry
Plus illegal entry, illegal access and computer trespass.
No need to show damages (in money). Just ask RIAA.
“528
two moon says:
19 February 2010 at 8:36 AM
513 Completely Fed Up: There are more poor people and more people in jail because there are more people, period.”
Our survey said:
Brrr Bwrrr.
Nope, as a percentage (which scales with the number of people in the population), those trends are true.
PS two moons, wouldn’t that argument be one destroying your idea that the US is more prosperous because you have more billionaires?
Isn’t that because you have more people, period.
?
526, Andrew Adams: No, there is no need for there to be a “tipping point” in order for us to be seriously concerned about the AGW and its likely consequences.
The kind of temperature increases we could see even without a tipping point would be serious enough in themselves.
On that I think that you are wrong.
Without tipping points, the changes will be slow in coming, and most likely sufficiently reduced as the people of the world create replacements for the diminishing fossil fuels. The US and EU already have in place programs that will create renewable energy sufficient to reduce their CO2 output persistently over the next few decades (and may be reducing their CO2 output already), and China and India have programs that will begin to reduce CO2 output sometime in 2030-2060, and AGW will begin to recede. Only the threat of tipping points creates the urgency to act more intensely than we are acting now.
GSW (521)
I am looking at the organization of IPCC WGII. It would seem to me to have a sensible organization, given its mission and a reasonable size given that the WGI activity is improved.
I rescanned the Pachauri interview in the Economist. It seems to me the interviewer pulled no punches and Pachauri tried to respond. For IPCC #5 the exchange was:
“The Economist: Are you hoping to have the working groups working closer together this time?
Dr Pachauri: Absolutely. I think there is outstanding teamwork this time around, not that there wasn’t the previous time. But I also know, I mean I was learning on the job at that time, I feel I can really bring about much greater consistency across the working groups this time around.
That said what are you looking to influence in WGII? Aren’t we shooting at a moving target?
CFU (544)
Let’s agree to disagree.
I am trying to show reality, real case law as I can find it. You want to discuss ideals and unenforceable statutes.
Legality on the internet is very difficult. Problems have yet to find workable solutions. Write your congressperson.
To repeat the advice of the GW Law professor, encrypt your emails and beef up your firewalls. Currently the justice system is really not going to be of much help.
515, Completely Fed Up: And an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.
It might be worthwhile to have a thread devoted to estimates of monetary costs and benefits of prevention versus mitigation. What if every dollar for prevention saves two cents of mitigation? Or is money irrelevant because the people who benefit from AGW (through their increased prosperity from fuel use) are not those who suffer from it (because their land is flooded or drought destroys their agriculture)?