Conservatives like to debunk global warming fears and they may have a point – but then they may not. The issue, of course, is not Al Gore’s pomposity vs. Michael Crichton’s brilliance, just as the war against Islamofascism is not about George Bush, despite what some liberals might think. In the case of global warming, it should be about a search for scientific fact. Science is evidently reporting this month tremendous increases in polar meltdown with an attendant rapid rise in sea levels. One of the spokespeople warning usof an impending disaster from all this is Jonathan Overpeck, an earth scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who co-authored the studies for Science. Overpeck says the seas could be a meter higher by the end of this century, which I imagine would make the recent New Orleans contretemps rather small change. Is Overpeck right? Probably not. But if he’s half right maybe we should pay attention. This National Geographic article has some of the details.
By the way, I am an agnostic on this issue. But it may be one about which erring on the side of the environmentalists is less risky than erring on the side of their opponents.
Roger
If we’re in the midst of global warming, why have I been freezing my a** off the last three weeks here in Los Angeles, uh??? How come???
Y’know, I’ve been asking the same question. This is the coldest March I can remember around here. Maybe I should have gone into the Pacific towarm up.
The existence of a warming trend…for whatever reason…is separate from the religious zeal of the environmentalists who claim that anything…whatever…is to be done, without regard to the likelihood of success.
Assume the worst….as you may be doing…and then look to the “doable” for solutions. Where are they? What is proposed that will stop the warming? Put out the sun?
Kyoto is dead…but even if resurrected, there’s a miniscule effect predicted on temperatures for the next CENTURY. By then, if they’re right, NY etc. will be under water.
So, we’d be better off designing methods to cope, rather than screaming “don’t just stand there…mill around, act confused.”
The problem with the Global Warming debate is that it’s political. Scientifically, it’s much simpler. Here’s the deal:
Climate is going to change!
It always has and it will undoubtably continue to do so. You can argue, if you want, over whether man is speeding it up or slowing it down, but the change is absolutely inevitable.
Repeat: it’s climate is going to change no matter what we do. Sea levels, temperatures, rainfall patterns, etc, etc, have always changed and they will continue to do so.
This isn’t even the first time humanity has had to deal with vast climate change: the last ice age had profound effects on the development of the human race.
All of the time spent squabbling over whose fault it is just takes effort away from trying to come up with strategies to deal with it.
We would be much better off spending our energies dealing with the problems than trying new and better ways to use climate change to political advantage.
So far, the best reason I’ve found for those of us still trying to figure it out to side against the environmentalists is that their ‘solutions’ will be more damaging and disruptive then the problem. And far more expensive then many concretely useful projects (say, for instance, getting third worlders clean drinking water).
Personally, I’ve almost given up hope of finding honest straightforward science on this issue when even the scientific magazines have become cheerleaders and political tools. Weather has been around for hundreds of millions of years and its done lots of crazy things all on its own, without our help. Our hard data is virtually non-existant. We’ve got lots of data for the last hundred years, a fair amount for another few hundred, and skeletal information on a few thousand years. In the face of millions and millions of years, what is that?
We don’t know if there is a warming and, if so, we have no evidence that human behavior is behind it. In fatc, what we don’t know is a lot, and I’m continually amazed by ‘scientists’ willingness to propose grand expensive schemes to combat something they have so little information on.
By “We don’t know if there is a warming,” I mean that we don’t know if the weather’s behavior is unusual (again, because we have virtually no information on what is usual).
I, too, Roger, have long been confused by the shifting currents of the science involved in this debate. That is, until today, just now, right here, when my eye perchance feel upon the stunning technical/cognitive breakthrough announced above by Dr. P. Romoguy.
I really can’t thank you properly.
And in this case, “erring on the side of the environmentalists” means reducing dependency on Arab, Persian and Venezuealan oil, as well as encouraging American technological innovation.
A win-win-win situation.
Interesting how policy ideas relegated to the political margins can get new life when powerful constituencies embrace them. Hopefully, something similar will happen with single-payer health insurance. The working uninsured and underinsured, and their advocates, have no political muscle to push for this. But corporate America — eager to have the government take over their employeees health costs — and Americans WITH insurance — tired of reduced benefits and greater costsharing — certainly do.
ìBut it may be one about which erring on the side of the environmentalists is less risky than erring on the side of their opponents.î
One should think twice before falling for the ìbetter safe than sorryî con job. We could all also drive twenty miles per hour on the freeway. This would dramatically cut down the number of traffic accidents. First of all, scientific studies conclusively show that human beings have little to with the warming of the earth. A single volcano eruption can be more harmful than thousands of factory smoke stacks and the emissions of millions of automobiles. Secondly, the financial harm would be enormous. More people would almost certainly suffer and die due to the devastating financial consequences. This is especially true for those residing in the third world nations. Do you really want to be prudent? If so, then advocate that our society, for the most part, do little more than itís already doing!
I recall learning in basic science class the law of bouyancy and water displacement. When an ice cube melts in a glass of water the water lever gets NO higher.
The principles of Science don’t change. So how are coastal towns etc going to be submerged when the we have the polar meltdown?
Uh, we need to be precise about what we’re saying. There’s certainly some fairly good reason to think there is an overall average increase in temperature. I don’t think there’s much contention on that point.
But the question is whether the warming is unusually large, and whether, if it is, it’s because of human action (“anthropogenic”).
On the anthropogenicity question, there are several things that call it into question, maybe the most glaring being that Mars and Pluto appear to be warming too.
The idea that this is an unusual variation is based on climate modeling done right down the street from me at NCAR (among other places.) Now, climate modeling is pretty difficult anyway, and having done my PhD work in modeling stuff, I can tell you that there’s a real problem with models that one can unconsciously slant the model: models tend to confirm your favorite hypothesis.
One good test of modeling is to see what happens if you feed random numbers to them as input: that way, you see what the conclusions are if you aren’t giving them any information as input.
It turns out (I had articles on this in YARGB and American Thinker just recently, you can find them in the archives I’m sure) that the models that predict or show dramatic and unusual global warming in the 20th century show nearly identical warming when fed random numbers.
My own guess is that there is some anthropogenic warming, but that it’s more like 15 percent of the total, or less. Doing Kyoto-like approaches are very expensive, and unlikely to actually affect the tempurature much.
(By the way, there are at least some people predicting that warming is about to turn down again, on the basis that there’s a solar cycle involved.)
You might want to buy a rowboat, though.
Markus, a couple of points about this: first, reducing dependence on oil from the Mideast and that psycho in Venezuela doesn’t necessarily change anything (what if the answer is to use clathrated methane from the sea floor?), and second, if the cost is extreme but the effects are small (which is what I think the science suggests right now) then we’re spending lots of money that could be spent on something more productive.
David Brin’s book Earth has a lot of nice details on what would happen if global warming is true. Rising oceans, certain lowlands flooded. Some of it is pretty grim stuff.
But there are a few questions that really need more debate.
Is global warming real. If so is man the cause in any significant way (I’ve heard one volcano can do more damage than a hundred years of human involvement and the Russians are now suggesting the asteroid impact in Siberia…). If global warming is real how can we reverse trends that take decades to being. Cutting down our own output may not be enough, but as Crighton has pointed out sometimes our attempted solutions make things worse in ways we haven’t imagined yet.
None of this debate will happen until Global Warming stops being a religion and starts to become a scientific theory again.
I’m not competent to argue all the science when it comes to anthropogenic global warming. However I am distressed that so many environmentalists (those who have committed themselves to global warming orthodoxy) look to dismiss those who question their position as “skeptics” as if skeptic is somehow a bad word in science.
Science depends on skepticism to move forward — good theories aren’t proven, they fail to be disproven. What scares me is when scientists set out to prove theories rather than disprove them. When they become so enchanted with the data that may support their contentions that they dismiss data that may disprove them.
Obviously there are a lot of good scientists who take anthropogenic global warming very seriously and are deeply convinced that the theories (and there are a lot of theories) around it are valid. But I’m scared that this science is so dense, so complex, and often ambivalent and/or contradictory that the “scientific community” invested in it may lose their own skepticism.
When scientists start demonizing skeptics, they’re not scientists any more. They’re theologians.
The sad thing is, an awful lot of voters have been conditioned by years of Green theology to disbelieve every single thing the Greens say, on the not-unreasonable assumption that all Green motions are directed toward the tranzi utopianian dictatorship. Global warming–the issue–sounds like global warming, the tactic.
This bad-driving-out-good is one of the early “unintended consequences”.
2 questions that I have never seen dealt with in this debate are:
1) How does a tiny increase in CO2 from human activity produce such a huge swing in temperature?
I understand the idea of Greenhouse gasses, but, this is easily testable by anyone and adding a tiny amount of CO2 to a close greenhouse has virtually no effect.
2) How can a “global” phenomena show such incredibly local symptoms? Use Crichton’s example of NYC, West Point and Albany. If this is a Global problem why is NYC a lot hotter, Albany a little cooler and West Point about the same? Then if you come up with a possibility, explain why that is a liklier answer than the fact (undisputed) That NYC is a veritable furnace.
One think I’ve always been is sceptical of “averages”.
Considering the fact that the sea levels have been rising for thousands of years and ancient cities from India to Egypt have ended up under water I don’t think rising sea levels [in and of themselves] is enough to decide if man and his SUV are destroying Mother Earth.
As for greedy corporations it seems to me that environmental causes has turned into a big business all by itself. Listening to these people talk about the corrupting influence of capitalism is like listening to some millionaire movie star who got rich off of the corporate entertainment industry speak truth to power.
I think the earth and the sun [that great big ball of fire in the sky] have their own cycle and we can either learn to cope with it or go the way of the dinosaur.
I’m concerned about the impact we have on the environment, but I’m leery of the information I get from the media. Global warming is acquiring the whiff of religious belief.
I wonder why for example, we don’t see headlines that say Antarctica is gaining ice mass in recent years:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=030306H
And while we have seen many headlines describing the loss of Greenland’s coasts, we never see the headline that says Greenland’s ice is essentially ”in balance” and that the loss along the coasts is not primarily due to melting, but to a change in ”ice dynamics.”
http://www.gcrio.org/ocp2002/OCP2002back.pdf#search='greenland%20increased%20ice‘
Don’t get me wrong: if global warming is a threat, let’s do something about it (not a cure that’s worse than the disease, but sure let’s do something.) But you’re not going to get me on board with hysteria and propaganda.
Charlie: “On the anthropogenicity question, there are several things that call it into question, maybe the most glaring being that Mars and Pluto appear to be warming too.”
Mars and some of the moons are warming indeed: late 2004, astronomers were writing about unusual and “alarming” melting of the Martian polar caps. So while I am inclined to think there is warmong, I doubt it is the fault of anthropogenic issues to any large extent. Pluto may be a special case: astronomers say its warming may be a residual of it orbit, which made its closest approach to the Sun (again!) not long ago.
Scan junkscience.com for links to many articles about the issue. There is politics on both sides, but enough plain science to cast serious doubt on the Kyoto reasoning. Also, it seems that the IPCC report which kick-started the political side was biased in its “overview for politicians”, which was scary, while the full report’s referenced studies were all over the place.
One big consideration for me is the refusal of the “hockeystick” originators to release their computer program/model: this does not accord with any version of scientific behavior – with the possible exclusion of weapons research – that I know. Too, when things like the “Medieval Warm” were first raised they said it was a Northern Atlantic anamoly owed to the Gulf Strean: later tree-ring and other proxies from China, South America, and Africa showed that it was world-wide. Too, it does not account for (ignores) the “Little Ice Age” which among other things repeatedly froze the Thames solid enough to be used for huge Royal parties, maneuvers of troops, etc. and which stopped long before the “hockey stick” upswing of temperature.
Concede that the earth is warming. So what? Temperatures were much higher when Greenland was green.
The issue, is the warming caused by man? The theories are not persuasive – climate models are currently simplistic and unreliable. I’m no expert, but skepticism swings into high when the fanatics:
Cherry pick data.
Attempt to silence or exclude dissenting views.
Ignore contributing factors like the activity of the sun because that would weaken the “message.”
Exaggerate the magnitude of the problem.
Ignore the ineffectiveness and costs of their proposed solutions.
I would like my children to live in the best possible world, but I’m not sure it’s the one the envirofanatics fantasize about. But hey, you believe what you want. I’m far from persuaded.
“I recall learning in basic science class the law of bouyancy and water displacement. When an ice cube melts in a glass of water the water lever gets NO higher.
The principles of Science don’t change. So how are coastal towns etc going to be submerged when the we have the polar meltdown?”
That’s only true when the ice is floating. If the ice rests on land (like Antarctica and Greenland) then the melted ice will increase the sea lavel. So the Arctic icecap melting only matters inasmuch as it would reduce the saliniuty of the sea. The Antarctic and Greenland icecaps are what raise the sea level.
“1) How does a tiny increase in CO2 from human activity produce such a huge swing in temperature?
I understand the idea of Greenhouse gasses, but, this is easily testable by anyone and adding a tiny amount of CO2 to a close greenhouse has virtually no effect.”
The quantity of CO2 is not miniscule. At Mauna Loa the CO2 went from 0.316% to 0.377% between 1959 to 2004. That may not be perfectly representative, and ultimately satellite data will give us better numbers, but it’s undeniable that CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing quite a bit. The question is, what is the effect of the increase?
The earth is nothing like a closed greenhouse, it loses lots of heat through radiation to outer space. A real greenhouse will lose very little. As CO2 increases you’re effectively increasing the thickness of some extremely thin glass panes on a poor greenhouse.
“2) How can a “global” phenomena show such incredibly local symptoms? Use Crichton’s example of NYC, West Point and Albany. If this is a Global problem why is NYC a lot hotter, Albany a little cooler and West Point about the same? Then if you come up with a possibility, explain why that is a liklier answer than the fact (undisputed) That NYC is a veritable furnace.”
And this is why everyone should be very suspicious of ground measurements. They are biased to being in cities, and to being near airports. As cities grow, and economic growth happens around airports the ground temperatures have to go up. Satellite data and even water temperature trends are much more useful. But water temperatures have other problems, and good satellite data haven’t been around very long. The task is very hard – you’re looking for tiny changes in temperature over a long time scale, while temperatures have huge fluctuations on an hour by hour basis, as everyone knows.
By big gripe on all of this is that experiments to use long range speeds of very low frequency sound to get accurate trends of average water temperature were scuttled because of fanciful concerns about whales. The one thing we really need to understand ‘global warming’ is better data.
My research at the Polar Tropical Fruits Association proves beyond a doubt that global warming is really no problem at all.
I again note the irony that so many who would denounce as appeasment any skepticism about the magnitude of threat posed by rogue regimes like Iraq and Iran, are at the same time counseling prudence, multiple second opinions, and, sometimes, Panglossian optimism when it comes to the issue of anthropogenic global warming.
In both cases, we have the very unfortunate politicalization of what should be an area of impartial investigation. It is particularly unfortunate since scientific laymen are usually unable to deal with the technical debates directly, and need to have them translated, or simplified, through books and other media materials. People end up not knowing whom to trust.
Buddy Larsen is correct when he talks about the use of ISSUES as tactics, as a means to an end. If accurate intelligence about Saadam’s WMD program would have led to Uday and Qusay coming to power, then its a good thing that we had a massive intelligence failure. If an accurate assessment of the threat of global warming leads to lower corporate profits, then this must be endlessly questioned. If a very fat man gets a physical and is told he needs to stop eating Big Macs, well, then, he really needs to get a second opinion.
And before anyone jumps on me, YES, the same goes for leftist sacred cows.
Charlie (Colorado) — “the cost is extreme but the [benefits] are small”
The possible correct response — probably yes, probably no, or the jury is still out — can only be made by qualified scientists after in-depth study. How many climatologists not receiving money from private industry are truly skeptical about anthropogenic global warming? I’ve heard they are quite a minority.
As others have pointed out the “science” behind “global warming fears” leaves a bit to be desired. Standard questions have already been raised:
- Is the GLOBAL climate warming to a signficant degree? The answer to that seems to be “yes”
- Is it caused, to any significant degree, by human activity?
That question is still open but given that there are warming and cooling cycles of various lengths and intensities and large portions of earth has frozen and thawed many times before, the effect of human activity seems dubious or, at the very least, there’s more than sufficient room for healthy scepticism.
- Is there anything humans can do to slow the warming, assuming it exists and won’t cycle back toward cooling?
Another open question the “scientists” aren’t answering? If the human contribution is, say, 15% as Charles suggested above, that means there’s an additional 85% contribution. How much disruption and pain should we undertake to partially reduce the 15% contribution when the 85% is beyond our control? And would “solving” half or two-thirds of the anthropogenic portion of the contribution have any effect whatsoever? And at what cost?
- Is warming something to be fought against tooth and nail?
Why is it assumed that global warming would have such a negative impact? Perhaps it would benefit the vast bulk of earth’s species over the long run or open the way for beneficial changes we can’t even imagine.
Two years ago the BBC released a story on-line that killed, for me, the fiction of man-man global warming once and for all. It quoted a scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratories, now this was the BBC remember, that the polar icecaps of Mars had been discovered to be melting.
Boy howdy, Henry Ford must have a really long reach to be effecting the climatology of Mars, even if it is our closest neighbor in space (apologies to Mr. Moon).
Global warming, yes, but who was causing it. The Son maybe, er excuse me, the Sun? As Traffic use to sing it, “it’s nature’s way, it’s natures way.”
Buddy Larsen’s research conclusions are as accurate as most anything else, even if his data is not as complete.
Not only that, the left/green’s/enviro/tranzi/concerned citizen approach to the issue is so drenched in foreboding and B-grade sci-fi flick melodrama as to thoroughly inundate (to use a term) their credibility.
Why need “man” be “worried” at all. Have none of these people learned anything in history class, let alone american history class?
Wasn’t it George Carlin who advised “if you don’t like the weather, MOVE!”
Once again, the “problem” is not changing global weather patterns, the problem is thinking there is a “problem” with global weather patterns.
A lot can be gained from these essays on the “Little Ice Age” and the “Midieval Warm Period”–both in recent recorded history, both beyond the realm of mankind, and both rather staggering in effect–implying the need to adjust to nature (as well as adjust our natures), rather than mount some possibly (who can know?) catastrophic attempt to adjust nature itself.
Global Warming. See, this is what happens:
Stuff melts, we get more clouds, clouds hold in heat, sea levels rise. Clouds get really thick, block/reflect the sun, things get cold, ice forms, sea levels go down. People move from Malibu to Simi Valley, Miami to Orlando.
The fact that this all occurs over 10-50,000 years should mean what to us, exactly?
And as far as the Carbon Cycle, if India would just stop bellying into Asia, the Himalayas might quit popping up, exposing all that sedimentary deposition to the weather, and releasing all that carbon to the air. Call your congressperson.
“A lot can be gained from these essays on the “Little Ice Age” and the “Midieval Warm Period”–both in recent recorded history, both beyond the realm of mankind, and both rather staggering in effect”
I did read somewhere a hypothesis that the little ice age may have been related to massive deforestation in Europe between (around) 950-1250 AD. So it is not entirely clear that humanity had nothing to do with it. When you think that in Roman times all of Northern Europe was deep forest it’s obvious that there have been huge changes since then.
I am becoming more and more amused by this entire issue. Charlie (CO) is completely spot on. He understands the science. And the science, as most everyone here seem to agree, is sorely incomplete and thus healthy scepticism is warranted. There are too many variables, the period of record is too short, there are variables that are simply not fully understood, no one knows the anthropogenic contribution, and environmentalism as theology clouds the picture even more. But beyond all of that; even if it were all to be true and the most dire predictions a certainty (and it is far, far from that), what does anyone realistically propose to do about it? Even if you could get some general consensus that something should be done, how would humankind actually accomplish it in any meaningful way? Tell me how 6 billion people from 1000+ cultures, an unknown number of different economies, myriad political structures, and an infinite number of largely selfish motivations are all going to suddenly embrace the common program and goal? Never happened before on any other less than global issue that I can recall. It is a joke folks, it is idealism at it’s most ludicrous extreme and the epitome of human arrogance. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder who or what might lead this great world saving crusade (a great term to use in this day and age!)the more I roll on the floor laughing my ass off! Good luck, charge!, fight the good fight!, give em’ hell!, right the wrong!, abolish the global injustice!, and send in the politicians! And call me in a couple of thousand years so I can see what great progress has been made.
MikeD, it is clear that you shall require extensive treatment in our future Dear Leader’s Happy Earth Re-education Facility.
nittypig, the science coalesces around
decreased solar activity (about .25%) and several very large volcanic eruptions as setting off the atmospheric chain of events AKA “Little Ice Age”. Hadn’t heard N European deforestation, but interested to see the details. Forgive me, but at first blush I sense a ‘convenient’ Green meme. You know, mankind can’t be held accountable for the sun or a volcano, but, deforestation? Well, HELL yes!
Even tho ’twas G*d Almighty who made those AD 1000 farmers want to not starve or freeze to death.
Enjoy your blog! Here’s an alternate scientific view of global warming. This has been floating around from several scientific sources for the last couple years … but has not gone mainstream in the political dialogue. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
I have to say that I don’t remember where I read this, and it was clearly no more than a hypothesis. But baed on the idea that the little ice age was a local European phenomenon (and I don’t think we really know one way or the other), the idea was that the local climate changes when the ecosystem changes. It seems like an interesting idea, although I have to say that I don’t see how the little ice age ENDS under that scenario. I mean Europe hasn’t been reforested last time I was there.
Proceeding from ignorance here, but could it be that people who kept any weather records were the ‘local European phenomenon’?
Roger, there are two types of Global Warming: One is a political phenomenon, a sort of Mein Kampf of the Econazis, the 20′th century’s Piltdown Man; the other which includes cooling, is real and has little or nothing to do with the greenhouse gas nonsense. I found two excellent links
http://www.sitnews.us/BillSteigerwald/032306_steigerwald.html
What? The Sea 400 feet lower 20,000 years ago? 20k years BF, Before Ford.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
Algore should have called his book Mein Planet. The “environmentalists” are political demagogues pimping an agenda.
Nuke Iran’s nuclear facilities. The global winter will cool things down. A twofer.
Back in the 1970s the geologists were saying the next ice age was imminent.
That’s because in the 1970s nobody could keep their car running.
Buddy,
Not even time in “future Dear Leader’s Happy Earth Re-education Facility” is likely to overcome the degree of cynicism I hold on this issue. (Though I sense you know that.) The staggering lack of comprehension about the magnitude and complexity of the phenomena that is global warming amazes me. Everyone addresses this as though it is a “problem” that can somehow be addressed by turning out light bulbs and driving hybrid cars if only the US would acknowledge the need, pass enabling legislation, confess their sins, and join hands with the rest of the far more prescient world. But “science” doesn’t seem to be willing to acknowledge that the present variation in the heat balance of the ENTIRE BLOODY GLOBE could be an almost entirely natural phenomenon. Or that anthropogenic influences, which clearly exist, might be largely insignificant. But then, even if we could quantify the causative anthropogenic impact, “science” has no real idea whether this is a result of the cumulative activities of 10, 50, 100 or more (take your pick) years and, more importantly, whether or not, even if the world instantaneously reverted to a stone-age level of economic activity, it would have any ameliorating impact on the trend of global temperatures within a natural cycle. Combine this level of ignorance with the impossibility of coordinating the activities of the earth’s diverse cultures and populations and the absurdity of all the teeth-gnashing, vexation, and bloviating should become apparent. But I’ll play along, give up the pickup truck and start riding my horse more if somebody will convince several billion Chinese to abandon their economic expansion and revert to the bicycles they used 25 years ago. Hell, I’ll even attend re-education classes without the smirk on my face! ROFLMAO, again!
Well then the horse manure would need a treaty.
In line w/ your thesis, here’s a short, readable little paper on the size and duration of the natural process.
Note that there is an email address at the bottom, where a reader can notify the National Science Foundation that the essay’s conclusion re/ Kyoto is somehow missing any notation as to why there are objections to what is presented as a cost-free, for-the-good-of-all, protocol.
The belief in the correctness of the Global Warming hypothesis has transcended science and has now entered the realm of religion. The problem with the Global Warming hypothesis is that there is no scientific basis for validating it. That does not mean that Global Warming is not happening, it just means that we don’t know enough at this time to make a valid conclusion. And more importantly, we are unable to make valid predictions. Thus, the Kyoto protocol is meaningless because we don’t what, if anything should be done. Merely doing something because it shows our good intentions is stupid and meaningless.
Simply put, we don’t understand the science behind Global Warming. In physics, modeling is a useful tool for attempting to understand physical phenomena, but one should never confuse the model with reality. The reason we model is that we do not understand the mechanisms at work so we try to create a simplified view of reality and see if it gives us a clue to what is really happening.
Even worse in the case of Global Warming is that there is not one model, but many models. Each of these models not only disagree with each other, but are not capable of reproducing the measured climate data. And in case you think that is just my opinion you couldn’t be further from the truth. You can go onto the Lawrence Livermore website and read the following (emphasis mine):
The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison ( PCMDI ) was established in 1989 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), located in the San Francisco Bay area. Our staff includes research scientists, computer scientists, and diverse support personnel.
The PCMDI mission is to develop improved methods and tools for the diagnosis and intercomparison of general circulation models (GCMs) that simulate the global climate. The need for innovative analysis of GCM climate simulations is apparent, as increasingly more complex models are developed, while the disagreements among these simulations and relative to climate observations remain significant and poorly understood. The nature and causes of these disagreements must be accounted for in a systematic fashion in order to confidently use GCMs for simulation of putative global climate change.
I will repeat the key line “disagreements among these simulations and relative to climate observations remain significant and poorly understood”. So this is the basis for believing that Global Warming is real and influenced by man? Don’t get me wrong. Research on Global Warming is necessary. However, until we know if it is happening, how it is happening, and what, if anything, we can do to change it, then doing something now is not only foolish but can be counterproductive.
The url for the Lawrence Livermore lab website is
http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/about/index.php
WHEN THERE IS ACTUAL EVIDENCE OF THE SEAS RISING, THERE WILL BE SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT. TO DATE ALL WE HAVE IS PREDICTIONS BASED ON MELTING OF POLAR ICE. AT THE SAME TIME THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ICE IN THE WORLD IS NOT SHRINKING TO ANY MEASURABLE EXTENT.MOST OF THE ICE IS IN THE ANTARCTIC AND THE OVERALL DEPTH OF ICE OVER THAT CONTINENT IS NOT SHRINKING AND MAY, IN FACT, BE GROWING. SINCE WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OCEAN EVAPORATION, WE CERTAINLY DO NOT KNOW WHETHER THE SEAS WILL RISE OR FALL.
UNTIL WE ARE ABLE TO MEASURE THE EFFECT ON OCEAN TEMPERATURE CHANGES RESULTING FROM EL NINO AND FROM CHANGES IN THE SUN, AND UNTIL WE ARE ABLE TO MEASURE THE REDUCTION IN ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE RESULTING FROM TREES AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE U.S., THERE IS LITTLE REASON TO MAKE DRASTIC CHANGES IN AMERICAN SOCIETY.
The science on global warming is simply inadequate to make good predictions. Man has increased CO2 dramatically (about 275ppm to abut 360ppm sinced 1850) but CO2 is still a trace gas. Furthermore, the earth has extremely complex feedback systems. My climatologist friends do not believe that there is adequate data to make any sort of science based extrapolations.
The attempt to create models is, IMHO, very iffy. The models have to be calibrated against past data, and the only reliable temperature data starts in 1850 – not nearly enough data.
But there’s another far more damning issue: no matter what the science says, we do not have the social engineering ability to make a significant difference. How do we get India and China, developing rapidly and needing a lot of energy, to reduce their emissions. If one is to believe the (suspect) models, cutting carbon emissions enough to matter would cripple the world’s economy, causing massive social forces to be unleashed. According to those (IPCC( models that Kyoto was based on, a dramatic (40% less than 1990) reduction in global CO2 emission would be required. Kyoto was always a sham, according to the very (suspect) science its advocates used.
If the trend is real and anthropogenic, the only hope in the relatively near term is the development of a CO2 neutral energy infrastructure. BUT… even if we had the money, we don’t know how to do that. The “hydrogen economy” is a joke. Biofuels, which have little net energy yield, would require vast amounts of land just to support US needs.
The future may provide:
-genetically engineered plants with a much more positive energy yield
-better batteries or other mobile energy storage systems, allowing us to use nuclear power to create the energy and electricity to spend it.
-unforeseen technological breakthroughs
In summary, the only thing we should do now is continue to research, and increase our ability to cope with the consequences of the warming, just in case the modellers are right.
Let me see If I got this right. Earth gets hot, sea rises, we all drown. Earth gets cold, sea freezes, we all become popicicles. I blame AlGore.
“How does a tiny increase in CO2 from human activity produce such a huge swing in temperature?”
It’s a nonlinear, non-equilibrium system. Small changes in initial conditions have huge results.
This is the same reason why it is so hard to model climate: physics is built around linear, equilibrium systems. Absolutely brilliant work is being done on the most outlandishly huge computers, and it’s nowhere near enough to settle these questions. Certainly not with the “authoritah” that Greens brandish.
I’m with “Charlie (Colorado)” above on this issue. The human component of anthropogenic climate warming (ACW) might be double (30%) his estimate, or even as high as 40%. But what little can be done about it now or soon will be dwarfed by what can be done in 50 years. It is in the nature of technological progress that much more can be done at much less cost as science and our tools improve.
But unlike Roger, I wouldn’t put much stock in a recent piece of alarmism. Short-term trends do not make for good science policy, and all the longer-term studies show that we are no where near where the polar warming observed in the early 20th century and the Medieval Warm Period (ie, when Greenland was actually green and supported crops and grazing).
Present day climate models can’t even explain the sudden warming before WWII (before the rapid rise in man-made CO2), much less the marked cooling that followed the next three decades. So how does that constitute a recommendation for following them now?
The fact is that “Science” will publish anything on climate science fitting an alarmist agenda (as has ruefully been observed at http://www.climateaudit.org) – and then fail to correct falsifications of Naomi Oreke’s late 2004 study about the “scientific consensus” on ACW. The truth is that “Science” like “Nature” like “JAMA” and other of the biggest named periodicals in science are edited not by scientists as you’d think, but elite J-school grads. Why? They are “profit centers” to larger organizations, Take Columbia Journalism School’s Melvin Mencher’s longtime bestselling textbook “News Reporting and Writing.” A journalist is supposed to be an advocate for social justice – neither dispassionate nor objective as a scientific and sober approach dictates.
Nevertheless, the potential of sustained planetary warming deserves watching because the consequences are possibly enormous. Satellites do that for us best these days. The Ross Ice Shelf melting in the Antarctic is offset by gains over the central portions of the continent. Is there recent increased melting in the Artic, however? If so, this is very recent, but could be consistent with higher latitude, higher low-temperatures that have been observed, as well as the decadal northward migration of biota.
If, in five or ten years, the rate of polar warming levels out, we’ll easily adapt. If it instead accelerates, there will be bigger debates down the road than we have today. That’s where my graduate environmental science studies at the (much less hysterical than US scene) University of London puts me.
Meanwhile, the much hyped “hockey stick,” proclaimed by the UN as “proving” that the last decade was the “warmest ever” is indeed broken. The layman can catch up with the best in skeptical climate science in the topical overviews in “Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming,” edited by Patrick Michaels, published at the very end of 2005.
“In line w/ your thesis, here’s a short, readable little paper on the size and duration of the natural process.” Thanks for the reference Buddy, I’ll take a look at it. From a quick glimpse it appears to be of interest and value. After 30 years of academic and geoscience experience it is uncanny that more information is to be found in the less well know and “unscientific” press.
And you are quite correct. If 6 billion of us were to start riding horses the manure problem would likely dwarf the global warning question. Imagine the logistical consequences! On the other hand, given all of that shoveling, we would be in great physical shape!
And could easily run to high ground!
Orson, I’ve seen the 30 percent number as well. As I said, it’s my guess, based on a knowledge of the relative magnitudes involved, along with looking at some data, reading some of the stuff at Climate Audit, and some Tennessee Windage I smuggled in when I moved back west.
But the Telegraph article references above goes along exactly with the Martian polar caps data: something is making things warmer in places we can be positive there are no significant anthropogenic effects.
Let’s suppose for the sake of argument we have global warming occurring now on the Earth.
Is this a problem? Why? Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it is a problem.
In this case, all that really matters is finding a solution. Even then, not just any solution, but a solution which is cost-effective. What that might mean in practice is dependent upon one’s answer to the above question–why exactly is global warming a problem–because only by understanding the nature of what it is we are trying to fix can we be clear on what is a reasonable price tag for fixing it.
But there’s a deeper point here, which is that whether the matter is anthropogenic is irrelevant. If there is global warming and if it is a problem then we have to do our best to fix it, whether we caused it or not. So, whether we caused it is completely irrelevant except insofar as it affects the solution.
And therein is shown the essentially religious nature of the debate. The debate is never framed as an engineering problem to be solved (which it is if there’s a problem at all); it is always framed as a moral issue, a case study in modern-day sin. And, as is common with this sort of religious thinking, as an excuse to beat up on those–Americans, SUV drivers, light-bulb users–who are not yet “of the body” within this new religion. It is not sufficient for the believers in this new religion to have these new beliefs; it is also necessary that they convert the unbelievers around them. Viewed from this perspective, the many SUVs with bumper stickers enjoining us to save the Earth and denounce big oil are not at all surprising nor even logically contradictory: the real message of the bumper stickers is that the drivers are “of the body” and in the end that’s all that’s required.
Take a look at this web site and get a perspective on Global Warming and ocean flooding…
http://www.john-daly.com/
I take a look at the global warming issue and come to the conclusion that political science does not make for good weather forecasting.
As a geologist I do admit that minor, short resolution items can impact the ecosystem on this planet, but the global trend from 65 MYA is *downwards*. With carbon dioxide much higher in the past the planet had a relatively stable, balmy climate. But also note that the entire set of continents are riding higher now as they are moving faster than they did 65 MYA. So that needs to be factored in, as well. Do large, but mostly shallow oceans raise overall global temperature? And could that be an adequate way to explain the cooling trend the globe has experienced as of late… well, within the last 65 MY…
This period of having a number of glacial periods with interspersed warming trends is pretty unique in global history, and we are riding a fine balance between tipping back and forth for other reasons.
Now, as to how to address it… has *anyone* done a study to demonstrate lost economic valuation in seaside property against reduced industrial output and economic stagnation to control carbon dioxide levels? Is there a real correlation between carbon dioxide levels and global temperature? And one may not cite a mere 100 years of fine data… a hiccup to a geologist. If solar output was increased 0.01% we would have global warming and no way to counter it. Note that Mars is also warmer the last few decades than previously.
Basically, would would happen to the worldwide standard of living if industrial production and productivity started to decline to meet carbon dioxide goals? What is the cost in health care and human lives agains the cost of some social infrastructure lost while an orderly transition to higher ground is made?
Yoo-hoo!! World-wide economists!! Your cue! Time to pull out all of those fancy industrial models and standards of living impact models and start putting in the numbers… you do have those, don’t you? Or are geologists the only ones to consider climate on a global scale along with its impacts?
Wake me when the studies are done… probably in a decade. I will go back to worrying about Yellowstone and loss of our civilization.
What is the real harm from global warming? While some places will flood or become less habitable, other places will become *more* habitable. The best farming in the northern hemisphere will move north — into Canada and Russia. And there is a cost to environmentalism. Is maintaining the climate of Paris worth a lowered standard of living for the entire world? The population of the world cannot sustain itself by moving to communes and working the land in “victory gardens”.
I’m not arguing which is better, only that global warming is a trade-off, not lose-lose situation. As other comments have mentioned, this isn’t a scientific debate, it’s a self-righteous, religious debate. Global warming will cause disruption, but the measures necessary to stop or reverse global warming necessarily will cause disruption as well.
So everyone seems to be in agreement that we need further study and only then can we choose a cost effective solution. So what’d be cheaper, cutting emisions or moving New York City?