Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[Kirkhill]

Just for information as to what the scientific community is up against.  And a bit of why there is so much opposition to believing in man-effected global warming and consequences:

http://www.desmogblog.com/slamming-the-climate-skeptic-scam

This is by a well respected and influential spin doctor in Canada.  A BS artist who finds the anti-global warming BS spinners too much to bear.

 

From Jim Hoggan's website: http://www.desmogblog.com/about

Jim Hoggan, founder of James Hoggan & Associates, one of Canada's leading public relations firms

His client list includes real estate development companies, high tech firms, pharmaceutical, forest industry giants, resorts and academic institutions.

He is a Board Member of the David Suzuki Foundation.

 

[a_majoor]

Just for information as to what the scientific community is up against.  And a bit of why there is so much opposition to believing in man-effected global warming and consequences:

http://www.desmogblog.com/slamming-the-climate-skeptic-scam

This is by a well respected and influential spin doctor in Canada.  A BS artist who finds the anti-global warming BS spinners too much to bear.

From Jim Hoggan's website: http://www.desmogblog.com/about

He is a Board Member of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Priceless!

Over at Chaos Manor, some more discussion about the research:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view423.html

I was referred recently to the real climate web site as authoritative. http://www.realclimate.org/

When there I saw first thing:

"Never let it be said that we at RealClimate don't work for our readers. Since a commenter mentioned the medieval vineyards in England, I've been engaged on a quixotic quest to discover the truth about the oft-cited, but seldom thought through, claim that the existence of said vineyards a thousand years ago implies that a 'Medieval Warm Period' was obviously warmer than the current climate (and by implication that human-caused global warming is not occuring). This claim comes up pretty frequently, and examples come from many of the usual suspects e.g. Singer (2005), and Baliunas (in 2003). The basic idea is that i) vineyards are a good proxy for temperature, ii) there were vineyards in England in medieval times, iii) everyone knows you don't get English wine these days, iv) therefore England was warmer back then, and v) therefore increasing greenhouse gases have no radiative effect. I'll examine each of these propositions in turn (but I'll admit the logic of the last step escapes me). I'll use two principle sources, the excellent (and cheap) "Winelands of Britain" by geologist Richard C. Selley and the website of the English Wine Producers. (more...)"

I have never heard Fred Singer or Sallie Baliunas say a damn thing about v) therefore increasing greenhouse gases have no radiative effect and I seriously doubt that whoever wrote that has ever heard them say it. I know of no one who disputes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that there is what they call a greenhouse effect (Farmers will say 'Humph! Ain't the way MY greenhouse works,' but that is another matter entirely). What I have heard is doubt that it is the cause of any detected climate trend, and serious doubt that there's any proof that CO2 is provably the cause of any detected climate trend; which is quite different from the straw men this site seems eager to knock apart.

I didn't see any reference to dairy farms in Greenland, growing seasons and planting dates, almanacs, and other sources that lead us to believe that between 800 AD and 1325 AD there was a definite period of warmer climates. Instead there is this look at wine growing in England. I didn't bother to follow their references because their language already tells me what they are looking to find. Apparently we are to take this for serious "real climate" research and an example of the evidence that the consensus relies on.

Incidentally, most people would call them "principal" sources, but perhaps they have a consensus on principle sources?

and:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail423.html

Subject: Further on the Wegman Report /buffy willow

Dear Jerry,

I've read through the main body of the "Wegman Report" three times now, and did some other googling about Dr. Wegman. I think Mann may soon be looking back on the internet duel with McIntyre/McKitrick as 'the good old days'. Mann quickly blew off Dr. Wegman and his colleagues with a snotty realclimate.org press release type posting a few hours after the Wegman Ad Hoc Committee Report was released. An interesting reply and venue because Dr. Wegman:

a. Sits on the NAS Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications (BMSA).
b. Is Chairman of the NAS-BMSA's Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics.
c. Specifically stated on page 4 of the Report that: "This committee does not believe that web logs are an appropriate forum for the scientific debate on this issue."
d. Stated the Ad Hoc Committee has not only studied MBH98/99 to the extent permitted by Mann's incomplete disclosures, but has also been researching Michael Mann's doctoral dissertation. Which dissertation was also only accepted in early 1998. And stated the MBH98/99 methodology cannot support the conclusions that were presented.
e. Disposed of the often cited 'confirming studies' by noting virtually all employ the same data sets, proxies and methodologies, so it's natural they reach the same conclusions.
f. Stated paleoclimatology fundamentally depends on applied statistics, yet is working in isolation from 'mainstream' statisticians and should no longer receive any funding except as part of interdisciplinary teams including 'mainstream' statisticians.
g. Stated the Ad Hoc committee has reproduced and confirmed the McIntyre/McKitrick findings. They also said they have "extended" the M/M findings, which sounds ominous in context.
h. Stated Dr. Wegman presented his findings to the Board of the American Statistical Association prior to publishing the Ad Hoc Report.
i. Characterized 'peer review' in paleoclimatology as being a small tight knit mutual backscratching society.
j. Devoted a large portion of the Ad Hoc Committee report to identifying the other members of the Paleoclimatology Mutual Backscratching Society
k. Repeated what you've said. This field of research is too important to let the current low standards of Paleoclimatology prevail any longer.

It may be as one climateaudit blog poster said. Mann is now positioning himself as a new popular martyr, at a high rate of mass media pay and without the usual physical inconveniences. Mann's reply to Dr. Wegman was odd for someone anticipating a long term academic career.

I doubt this will change your minds, but at least know there is no monolithic consensus about the state of the Earth's climate, and when scientists use scientific methods to analize the data sets, they are not coming up with the results so eagerly reported in the popular press (point g above).

 

[couchcommander]

Hey Mr.Majoor - thanks, I wasn't aware of the particular problems with that study. Surely, however, you do not believe that an entire field of science is limited to one flawed paper?

Anyway, that fails to address the substance of the last few of my posts.

Please post a scientific paper, several to be convincing, from a peer reviewed scientific journal in good standing that clearly says that natural factors can account soley for the current warming.

Unfortunately a comment to a blog regarding hersay about an ad hoc committee doesn't really hold much weight with me.

I have shown that climate models exist which account for the previous warming and cooling trends.

I have shown that the current warming cannot be accounted for without considering human actions.

I have shown that the current warming trend is unique as far as we can tell.

Is there anything about the above you'd like to dispute?

*edit* In the end, I am confused as I am not sure where your absolute insistence upon this not being true despite vast vast amounts of evidence to the contrary comes from. Yes, Mr. Majoor, you will find loads and loads of various persons on the internet posting about irregularities or "it doesn't account for this!"....  allow me to say though that would be like me going across the internet finding all of the posts about how the American's did not land on the moon. If you're going to dispute the contents of these reports, don't just say they don't do this or this, or they're bunk science, etc. please provide a credible informed reference for it - as really, if they are out there, I would like to hear about them. Barring that, I urge you to take my offer of access to the journals. I think just seeing the vast vast vast amount of research that has been done will change a lot of your thinking. It's not a bunch of NDPers sitting around a table with a calculator making up theories, this is science done by tens of thousands of people who've spent their entire life doing this using amazingly advanced technologies and methodologies.

Yes, you are right that this is not 100%. This is a scientific topic, and like anything, we are not 100% sure. It's not the "Law of Global Warming".

There will always be discourse, and there will always be dissent or debate. Theories will change; right now they are saying that things will get even worse than we thought. In a few years they could say that things will be not as bad as we think.

However, right now there is a widely held scientific view which is supported, as far as the best and brightest of our time can tell, by the evidence (please don't reference the 1970's "They thought we were cooling down"... that has little to do with this).

Do you choose to "not accept" relativity as well?

I don't really know why this was turned into such a politicized topic - though I suspect it's because it threatened the livelihood of a lot of rich people with connections, thus it was turned into something for "the right" to "attack" or "not believe".

In the end, I just ask that you please look at the research itself, examine it, and see it with your own eyes. Don't go into it thinking "oh this global warming is a thing for lefties".

Please though, if you do choose to address this post, make sure to address the substantive part of it that I began with.

 

[Kirkhill]

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf

Here's the report referred to in the obscure blogreport.   

US Congress, Committee on Energy and Commerce.  Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations.

Short form:  Mann didn't know enough stats to be able to prepare a case.  The available evidence doesn't support conclusions.

Please send resume, list of financial contributors and explain why supporting findings have come from 43 co-authors and you apparently have not released the algorithm employed for analysis.

Yours truly etc.  14 July 2006.

Now, about your models again.   Please prove there is a problem.

 

[a_majoor]

Thanks Kirkhill.

 

[couchcommander]

Nevermind, there is no problem.

One report from 1998 has methodological issues identified by a US political subcommittee. Thus decades of research by thousands of individuals DO NOT, in fact, provide any meaningful evidence - no we don't need to actually publish anything to prove that either. The entire thing was invented to deprive people of their cars, and force them to ride bicylces wearing birkenstocks like good boys and girls.

Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants

...Indeed, more than 80% of the species that show changes are shifting in the direction expected on the basis of known physiological constraints of species. Consequently, the balance of evidence from these studies strongly suggests that a significant impact of global warming is already discernible in animal and plant populations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12511952&dopt=Abstract

Relative contributions of greenhouse gas emissions to global warming

....On this basis, carbon dioxide emissions account for 80% of the contribution to global warming of current greenhouse gas emissions, as compared with 57% of the increase in radiative forcing for the 1980s.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v344/n6266/abs/344529a0.html

Biological consequences of global warming: is the signal already apparent?

....Evidence from long-term monitoring studies is now accumulating and suggests that the climate of the past few decades is anomalous compared with past climate variation, and that recent climatic and atmospheric trends are already affecting species physiology, distribution and phenology.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10652556&dopt=Abstract

Further evidence of the effects of global warming on lichens, particularly those with Trentepohlia phycobionts.

Increasing evidence suggests that lichens are responding to climate change in Western Europe. More epiphytic species appear to be increasing, rather than declining, as a result of global warming

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16697507&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_DocSum

Weakening of tropical Pacific atmospheric circulation due to anthropogenic forcing

Since the mid-nineteenth century the Earth's surface has warmed, and models indicate that human activities have caused part of the warming by altering the radiative balance of the atmosphere...Observed Indo-Pacific sea level pressure reveals a weakening of the Walker circulation. The size of this trend is consistent with theoretical predictions, is accurately reproduced by climate model simulations and, within the climate models, is largely due to anthropogenic forcing

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16672967&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_DocSum

Tropical drying trends in global warming models and observations.

Anthropogenic changes in tropical rainfall are evaluated in a multimodel ensemble of global warming simulations....we find a number of measures, both global and local, on which reasonable agreement is obtained, notably for the regions of drying trend (negative precipitation anomalies

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16606851&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_DocSum

The relative roles of sulfate aerosols and greenhouse gases in climate forcing

Anthropogenic sulfate aerosols contribute a globally averaged annual forcing of -0.3 watt per square meter as compared with +2.1 watts per square meter for greenhouse gases

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993Sci...260..311K

The ice record of greenhouse gases

Changes in the levels of greenhouse gases during the glacial-interglacial cycle overall paralleled, at least at high southern latitudes, changes in temperature; this relation suggests that greenhouse gases play an important role as an amplifier of the initial orbital forcing of Earth`s climated and also helps to assess the feedbacks on the biogeochemical cycles in a climate system in which the components are changing at different rates.

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6884382

Sun and dust versus greenhouse gases: an assessment of their relative roles in global climate change

Many mechanisms, including variations in solar radiation and atmospheric aerosol concentrations, compete with anthropogenic greenhouse gases as causes of global climate change. Comparisons of available data show that solar variability will not counteract greenhouse warming...

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v346/n6286/abs/346713a0.html

Simulation of recent northern winter climate trends by greenhouse-gas forcing

Here we use several different climate-model versions to demonstrate that the observed sea-level-pressure trends, including their magnitude, can be simulated by realistic increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations.

http://atm.ucdavis.edu/~grotjahn/Arctic/Papers/shindell_etal_99.pdf

External Control of 20th Century Temperature by Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings

More than 80% of observed multidecadal-scale global mean temperature variations and more than 60% of 10- to 50-year land temperature variations are due to changes in external forcings. Anthropogenic global warming under a standard emissions scenario is predicted to continue at a rate similar to that observed in recent decades.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;290/5499/2133

Modern Global Climate Change

Modern climate change is dominated by human influences, which are now large enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability. The main source of global climate change is human-induced changes in atmospheric composition. These perturbations primarily result from emissions associated with energy use, but on local and regional scales, urbanization and land use changes are also important

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5651/1719

Now, this is important:

CLIMATE CHANGE AND GREENHOUSE GASES

Infrared (IR) active gases, principally water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and ozone (O3), naturally present
in the Earth’s atmosphere, absorb thermal IR radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. The
atmosphere is warmed by this mechanism and, in turn, emits IR radiation, with a significant portion of this energy
acting to warm the surface and the lower atmosphere. As a consequence the average surface air temperature of the
Earth is about 30° C higher than it would be without atmospheric absorption and reradiation of IR energy
[Henderson-Sellers and Robinson , 1986; Kellogg , 1996; Peixoto and Oort , 1992].
This phenomenon is popularly known as the “greenhouse effect,” and the IR active gases responsible for the effect
are likewise referred to as “greenhouse gases.”...

...Of the several anthropogenic greenhouse gases, CO2 is the most important agent of potential future climate warming
because of its large current greenhouse forcing, its substantial projected future forcing [Houghton et al ., 1996], and
its long persistence in the atmosphere (see above).

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/pubs/BNL66903.pdf

(I was hoping you'd spend the 45 minutes and come across this yourselves).

But yea, don't worry about it, it doesn't exist, it isn't really happening, there is no greenhouse effect we need to worry about, it's all bunk, a straw man, no real science behind any of it.

(if you somehow feel that the above isn't enough to convince you, once again, feel free to PM me and I will give you access to the journals).

 

[Brad Sallows]

>some information on what the scientific community agrees on with respect to global warming.  Unless, of course, it is as it appears, and you think it is a pile of rubbish and the scientists involved have no business conspiring to offer such predictions.

The scientific community "agrees" that we are currently in a warming phase (at any point in time, we are always in either a warming phase or a cooling phase) and "agrees" that what people do makes a contribution (that should be self-evident; everything we do has an impact on something).  Whether or not a majority continues on to "agree" they know exactly what the problem is and what should be done about it is meaningless right now; what is important is that they prove the hypothesis.  What currently passes for a debate has been reduced to a bunch of bar bouncers standing around puffing up their chests and tensing their biceps - "we have more publications than you".

>I have shown that climate models exist which account for the previous warming and cooling trends.

Your claim is overly broad.  I doubt very much that there exists a model which can take any set of initial conditions and produce the conditions at a later point in time (see the last sentence of this paragraph).  If you are prepared to accept that what amount to kludges are sufficiently representative of the actual climate, you have my sympathy.  If you ever have to review a model, I suggest you head straight for the assumptions, the simplifications, the missing data, and the fudge factors.  (From experience, I assure you there will be fudge factors.)  Those will give you guidance as to how reliable the model may be expected to be.  How the general public has been conned into accepting the phrase "computer model" as an approximation of "infallible" I can't imagine.  Find the paper that lays out all the coupled equations that explain climate and a model which solves those equations - that is the model that is needed.  If we knew the equations and had the model, we'd also have near-perfect weather prediction, because the weather solutions would just be a subset of the climate solutions.

>I have shown that the current warming cannot be accounted for without considering human actions.

No one has accounted completely for the current warming.  That should be a clue that there is more work to be done.  Energetically researching only part of a question isn't a very sound methodology.  From a policy formulation perspective, it isn't sufficient to come to the table with only decision factor.

>I have shown that the current warming trend is unique as far as we can tell.

"As far as we can tell."  That spells it all out right there, doesn't it?  "We assume."  The mother of all unpleasantness.

>Do you choose to "not accept" relativity as well?

Bad example.  Special relativity is derived from two simple, if insightful, assumptions and a simple process of deductive reasoning.  The math isn't even particularly complex; you can work out most of the important results with algebra (ie. without resorting to calculus).

>One report from 1998 has methodological issues identified by a US political subcommittee.

The advocates who share your views staked a lot on the "hockey stick".  I expect there are many who would like to forget it ever happened.  What I found interesting in the recent Wegman report was not so much the confirmation of the statistical errors and sloppy methodology, but the examination of the tendency of some climate scientists to behave like an echo chamber.  A positive feedback loop of research bias doesn't necessarily give correct answers, but it does yield a lot of papers which say the same thing and sound like "concensus".

 

[couchcommander]

Brad,

If you want, please look at some of the other 20 papers I've posted. They are by no means exhaustive. You will find, just by looking at the excerpts, they do in fact use a wide array of methodologies, and approach the subject of climate change from different angles (I specifically looked for that). They use different models, look at different aspects, even examining climate change in terms of things like it's effect on plants or animals.

Yes, you are right to question it. Yes, you are right that there are fudge factors, simplifications, etc. etc. The term "account" was used in this sense to mean that theories, backed up by research, have been able to reasonably approximate the events. No, they cannot tell you if it is going to rain on that particular Tuesday. However, the models used are getting more and more complex, and more and more accurate as time goes on. Unfortunately, they are continuing to support the previous conclusions.

Special relativity is actually a great example. Greenhouse effect IS that easy. We learned it grade 10 chemistry. Certain gases have an insulating effect and absorb and re-emit IR radiation. I hope you do not question this simple process.

The human influence is equally easy. CO2 in the environment before has been shown to coincide with warmer periods. C02 has increased 30% in the last few decades. The mean surface temperature is increasing WAY faster than it should..... connection?

Again, please post a few papers that show CO2 is not actually a greenhouse gas, or that it's influence is marginal. If you accept those two points, then the rest should follow. 

In the end, I have posted some 20 papers backing up my opinion with research and evidence from everything from ice core samples, to analysis on how plants, and animals are reacting, to yes, computer models, all from respected journals. If you choose to ignore them, then that is your choice.

However, at this point I am done arguing "opinion". Please provide evidence to support your "side" - no that doesn't mean pointing out "flaws" in a few more articles, no that doesn't mean editorials, that means finding research that actually backs up "the projected rise in C02 would not in fact have a statistically significant impact on the temperature of the earth."

 

[Kirkhill]

couchcommander:

Please prove that you have stopped beating your wife.

I accept that plants and ice-bergs, lakes and deserts respond to warm temperatures.  I accept that plants react well to increased levels of CO2 and that animals react poorly.  I accept that temperatures, CO2 and 02 levels, not to mention H20 levels vary considerably over time and location and with human activity.  Cities reduce CO2 uptake and generate more heat locally.  All accepted.

I don't accept that there is a demonstrated problem.  No control system, no matter how well regulated, achieves stasis.  The term is dynamic balance.  You are always working to achieve stasis and never quite get there.  The point is that things always change.  In process control systems in factories and vehicles temperatures oscillate around a set point.  Devices add energy or remove energy to keep them there.  Without that active effort the balance is upset.  Sometimes the set point changes and efforts have to be taken to move system back to the desired set point (ie a comfortable living temperature).  Sometimes the set point stays the same but the oscillation becomes extreme.  One second it is very hot.  The next it is very cold.  Efforts have to be taken to try and restore the equilibrium.

Demonstrably in the past great changes have occurred and life has continued.  Life ultimately has had to adapt to the changes.  In the process it created an impact on the environment.  Plants producing all that noxious oxygen killed off all those poor sulfur loving bacteria that created the conditions that allowed the plants to grow in the first place.

If we don't act, we die.  If we do act we may not die.  To survive we have to change our environment.  That is how we got this far.

If you choose to believe there is a problem, then that is your choice.

By the way - have you decided what you are going to do once the glaciers advance again? 

 

[couchcommander]

I don't have a "wife" ;D, want me to post the first page of my taxes? (....I do have a common law partner of five years...., but she's not a wife, is she now? ).

Actually you're absolutely right re: the cycle. There was an interesting paper on that.

http://www.springerlink.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/media/78u409g6rg6xwj8ahb7j/contributions/l/0/2/m/l02mm8757231t250.pdf

Assuming a peak in C02 concentrations in the 22nd century, they actually do predict that the warming will, in the end, either lead to a temporary cooling of North America and Europe and then a recovery, or a complete collaspe of the system and a semi-permanent cooling of these two continents (along with a drying). So yes, things *may* eventually return back... at this point we don't know. 

Either way we're in for a few centuries of real trouble, and that is the problem for me. I have no doubt the world will go on... but will it be able to sustain 11 billion humans?

We present global warming scenarios computed with an intermediate-complexity
atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model which has been extensively validated for a range of past climates
(e.g., the Last Glacial Maximum). Our simulations extend to the year 3000, beyond the expected peak
of CO2 concentrations. The thermohaline ocean circulation declines strongly in all our scenarios
over the next 50 years due to a thermal effect. Changes in the hydrological cycle determine whether
the circulation recovers or collapses in the long run. Both outcomes are possible within present
uncertainty limits. In case of a collapse, a substantial long-lasting cooling over the North Atlantic
and a drying of Europe is simulated....

...In the present climatic state, the northern North Atlantic and northwestern Europe
are exceptionally warm for their latitude because they benefit from ocean heat
transport. The data analysis presented in Figure 1 illustrates this; annual-mean air
temperatures off Scandinavia exceed the zonal average by more than 10 C. Hydrographic
measurements (Roemmich and Wunsch, 1985) and simple heat budget
calculations confirm that the thermohaline (i.e., density-driven) component of the
ocean circulation, sometimes dubbed ‘conveyor belt’, is responsible for the unusual
warmth. Paleoclimatic records from Greenland ice cores (Bond et al., 1997) suggest
that this mode of operation has persisted, with some smaller fluctuations, since
the last major reorganisation of ocean circulation terminated the Younger Dryas
cold event ca. 11,500 years ago (Severinghaus et al., 1998) and the Holocene began.
The time period before that, going back at least 100,000 years, is characterised by
repeated large cooling and warming events associated with mode changes of the
Atlantic thermohaline circulation (Bond et al., 1993; Dansgaard et al., 1993)....

...We present a new set of long-term greenhouse scenarios which demonstrate
that a permanent and large cooling over the northern Atlantic and parts of Europe
may indeed be triggered by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Our scenarios
assume that greenhouse gas concentrations will peak in the 22nd century and
decline afterwards. The results suggest that the climate system may not recover
from the temporary peak in greenhouse gas concentrations for a very long time,
but may be pushed into a different quasi-stable mode of operation without North
Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation. In a sensitivity study we explore the
causes of anthropogenic ocean circulation changes; we find that an initial decline
of the Atlantic circulation over the next century is mainly caused by direct thermal
forcing, while the long-term fate of the circulation is determined by the amount
of freshwater input. We address the uncertainty in the freshwater forcing, the most
probable cause for differences between different models, by introducing a hydrological
sensitivity parameter. Within the current range of uncertainty, both outcomes
of the anthropogenic peak in atmospheric CO2 content are equally possible: a decline
and subsequent recovery or a complete collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline
circulation.

Just goes to the complexity of the climate, and to show that "warming" will in fact lead to cooling in many places. In the end, the problem is distruption of agriculture and our way of life.

Re: the glaciers... probably live with it. My concern is humans screwing up the planet, not the planet doing it's natural own thing. At this point I don't think we are S-M-R-T enough to try and fuck with it - better just to try and leave it alone, and don't do anything dumb like pour massive amounts of greenhouses gases to mess up the plumbing.

 

[Kirkhill]

but will it be able to sustain 11 billion humans?

That then becomes what is known as a "self-regulating system".

 

[couchcommander]

lol, touche

 

[Brad Sallows]

>If you want, please look at some of the other 20 papers I've posted.

I haven't the time.  But, let's examine what you propose: that 20 papers, or 200, or 2000, mean anything.

Climate scientists must be the most productive and intelligent humans in the history of the planet by several orders of magnitude.  In any other branch of science, the author (or team) which publishes a paper generally advances science by a small amount: measuring a constant to a new precision, examining a heretofore unknown or little known property of something, telling us a little bit about a small part of the function of some subsystem of the human body, etc, etc.  Once in a while, a real genius (eg. Einstein, Hawking) produces something profound.

And what about other complex subjects: how many papers have been published about human psychology, political science, social science?  There must be hundreds of thousands of papers out there by now, and who knows how many detailed computer models of the mind, of political systems, of social systems.  I suppose they've figured out all the answers and I've just missed the announcement that human behaviour, politics, and human social interactions are all reliably and boringly predictable now.

But these climate science guys?  Hey, a few papers, and WHAM!; we've got all the answers to a highly complex system laid out in front of us.

Put another way: what the fcuk did they do to manage such a suspension of disbelief and skepticism, and such a broad and uncritical acceptance, among so many people?  Organized religions everywhere want to know.

Here's what I think: climate science is in its infancy; the big names today are tomorrow's footnotes to luminiferous ether, phlogiston, and Freudian analysis in the obligatory "history of our subject and where our predecessors went wrong" five-minute introduction to the semester.  I don't leap to believe when someone loudly proclaims he's discovered cold fusion, or "proved" that children fare better in non-profit public childcare, or decreed that "conservatives" are psychologically unbalanced, or any one of any number of fashionable modern beliefs underpinned by a gnat's eyelash worth of evidence.

>Special relativity is actually a great example. Greenhouse effect IS that easy. We learned it grade 10 chemistry. Certain gases have an insulating effect and absorb and re-emit IR radiation. I hope you do not question this simple process.

Easy to describe a simplified or special case is not easy to predict, nor easy to describe how it works.  Special relativity is called that because it's a special case.  Care to take a crack at describing gravitation (how it works, I mean; not merely describing what you see)?  There's probably a Nobel Prize in it for you.

>CO2 in the environment before has been shown to coincide with warmer periods. C02 has increased 30% in the last few decades. The mean surface temperature is increasing WAY faster than it should..... connection?

Solar output has been shown to coincide with warmer periods.  Solar output has increased.  Warming effects appear to be observable on Mars and Jupiter.  Connection?  Correlation is not causation.  That in stressed even in the "soft" sciences.

>please post a few papers that show CO2 is not actually a greenhouse gas, or that it's influence is marginal. If you accept those two points, then the rest should follow.

I didn't claim C02 is not a greenhouse gas, although H20 is the dominant GHG.  You've overstepped the bounds of logic if "the rest should follow" simply from the influence being non-marginal.  Do you understand that GHGs are not the only influence and accept the likelihood that there are coupled relationships between GHGs and everything else that influences climate?  Here's a novel idea: don't stop with the first explanation conceived; develop other ideas and test them.

>Please provide evidence to support your "side"

My "side" is that we know very little and need to learn more, and is certainly not any straw man that you care to create.  For your part, you could explain how you come by your confidence that we already know everything we need to.  Follow the herd if you wish.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>In the end, the problem is distruption of agriculture and our way of life.

Why do you assume the result must be a net loss rather than gain?

 

[couchcommander]

Climtology is a science in it's infancy, so are a lot of other sciences really.... does that mean we should automatically disregard their concluions because they are new and scary?

My point through all of this Mr. Sallows is that this isn't based on a gnat's eyelash of evidence - this is decades of research, hundreds, if not thousands of papers. I don't know why you continue to think otherwise.

I didn't claim C02 is not a greenhouse gas, although H20 is the dominant GHG.

Really... now, I wouldn't have posted that... oh say like 7 posts ago:

This all brings up a big question for me to you.... please explain how a 30% rise in the second most important greenhouse gas (behind water) would NOT lead to increasing global temperatures?

continuing....

  You've overstepped the bounds of logic if "the rest should follow" simply from the influence being non-marginal.  Do you understand that GHGs are not the only influence and accept the likelihood that there are coupled relationships between GHGs and everything else that influences climate?  Here's a novel idea: don't stop with the first explanation conceived; develop other ideas and test them.

No, of course not. Though I do remember something about it from the excerpts I took the time to highlight for you...

Many mechanisms, including variations in solar radiation and atmospheric aerosol concentrations, compete with anthropogenic greenhouse gases as causes of global climate change. Comparisons of available data show that solar variability will not counteract greenhouse warming...

Anthropogenic sulfate aerosols contribute a globally averaged annual forcing of -0.3 watt per square meter as compared with +2.1 watts per square meter for greenhouse gases

In the end, please at least take the time to at least read the excerpts. It's been explored Mr. Sallows, by people a lot smarter than you and I. 

RE: special relativity, you're the one implied it was easy! I was just agreeing with you. You don't need more than grade 7 math to do mass-energy conversions, just like you don't need more than grade 10 chem to understand greenhouse effect.

So, let us just then be sure where we stand though... you admit that C02 is a greenhouse gas, but you question it's role in global warming despite the research to the contrary?

Not to mention, no one has yet to accept my challenge to provide research backing up the assertion that: "the projected rise in C02 would not in fact have a statistically significant impact on the temperature of the earth." You'd think if this was all so straw man and garbage, at least one reputable person would grab onto it.

 

[Kirkhill]

In the end, the problem is distruption of agriculture and our way of life.

Actually couchcommander, in that one sentence I believe you have the problem.  The problem is the disruption to our way of life.  Particularly urban life as opposed to a nomadic life.

We have invested so much in the urban lifestyle that that is what puts life at risk: all our eggs in one basket.

Cities die. Nomads survive.  When cities die millions die with them.  When nomads die it is individuals that are affected.

People concentrated in cities are at risk if:

Their supply of raw materials, including food and water goes away;
Their wastes accumulate creating a toxic environment;
Their lines of communication are cut isolating them from their raw materials;
Some portion of their divided and specialized labour force is removed by strike, disease, natural disaster or commercial considerations;
Earthquake, Flood or Volcanic eruption occurs.

Nomads are equally at risk but dispersion makes them less susceptible to the threat and their mobility makes them more able to adapt to the change.

From that it would seem to me that folks in Vancouver, eg, that are calling for greater "densification" at the same time they are demanding more heroic efforts be taken to protect them from the massive earthquake they fear are barking up the wrong tree.  The simple solution to all of their problems, smog, allergies and ill-health included is to disperse.  Get an SUV and head to the hills and communicate via internet.  ;D

 

[couchcommander]

You're right about the challenges facing cities. Cities, however, also do provide a lot of advantages for humanity as well.

I suppose I'm just too attached to my fresh roasted coffee...

 

[a_majoor]

This is a lot like the analysis of why Socialism still exists despite its catastrophic record during the 20th century, this is a belief system more than iti is an idiology or science:

http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?s=pf&page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/7/24/72528.shtml?s=lh

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Al Gore's Own 'Tower of Babel'
David Klinghoffer
Monday, July 24, 2006
This article by David Klinghoffer originally appeared in The Forward.

If you've seen Al Gore's global-warming scare movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," you may have come away as I did, wondering about the highly partisan nature of the climate-change debate. Why is it partisan at all? If carbon-dioxide emissions are perilously raising global temperatures, surely that's a problem which can be left to scientists and other non-ideological experts.

That's a big "if." As a new report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee makes clear, statisticians doubt the work of those climate researchers who seek to show that the climate for the past 1,000 years was stable until recent times when it suddenly rose sharply. On the contrary, the climate has always varied, up and down over centuries and millennia.

So what exactly are we fighting when about when we fight about climate change? Maybe a resolution of the mystery can be found in the Bible's famous story of environmental catastrophe: that of the flood and its sequel, the tower of Babel.

God sent the deluge to erase life and get a fresh start with Noah and his family. Later, a group of the children of these flood survivors settled in the land of Shinar, saying to one another, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed across the whole earth" (Genesis 11:4).

This plan greatly displeased God. "And the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city" (11:8).

What was so wrong with constructing the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a skyscraper? The Talmud, in tractate "Sanhedrin," has an illuminating answer. When the notion of building a tower was decided upon, it was thanks to the collaboration of three groups of citizens.

The first group said, "Let us ascend [to the top of the tower] and live there." They thought they could "live," survive the next flood by propping up the heavens to prevent them from spilling forth their contents to drown humanity once again. The second said, "Let us ascend and worship idols."

The third said, "Let us ascend and wage war." On whom? Well, who else resides in the heavens? They wished to wage war on God Himself.

When the call went out to construct the tower, few citizens had an inkling of what the most subversive in the society had in mind, which was to free humanity of God's rule. The sincere environmentalists were fooled into panicking about a non-existent threat. For everyone should have been aware of the promise God made to their ancestor Noah, that "Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth" (9:11).

Perhaps there is an implicit recognition on the part of today's enviro-skeptics that the present fight isn't merely about the environment. That's what the novelist Michael Crichton argued in a 2003 speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco: "Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western world is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice of urban atheists. Why do I say that? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st-century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."

It's clear that climate-change activists have a moral message. But it's a completely different one from any you'll find in the Bible. Basically, it has to do with shedding the encumbering complexities associated with modern industry and technology.

Environmental religion has an ancient pedigree. When the book of Deuteronomy warned, "You shall not plant for yourselves an idolatrous tree, any tree, near the Altar of the Lord your God" (16:21), it had this in mind. In "The Golden Bough," James Frazer devoted a chapter to the cult of nature: "In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural. For at the dawn of history Europe was covered with immense primeval forests, in which the scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in an ocean of green."

Global-warming partisans are not self-aware like the tree-worshipping druids of old. Which might lead us to ask if perhaps, like the first party of builders, the second party are being used and manipulated without their being conscious of it.

As for the party who would make war on God, consider the implications of spiritualizing the environment, of equating God with nature, a favorite green theme. Writing in the journal First Things in 1997, Father Richard John Neuhaus put it well: "When all is God, there is no need for God." Which explains the affinity of secularism for environmental causes.

What we argue about when we argue about global warming probably in fact has little to do with the weather. It is not surprising that traditionally religious people would turn away from an environmental issue like global warming, especially when the science behind the theory remains ambiguous at best, and distrust a political party committed to panicking unreservedly about it.

As I've written here before, between America's two major political philosophies the major dividing issue isn't really political at all. It is religious. It's about God.

David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is author of "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History" (Doubleday).

 

[couchcommander]

Well, that may be this gentleman's, and your, way of looking at it. It appears to be gaining popularity amongst "the right".

Let me be clear though, there is nothing religious about any of it. I do have a "religion" as it may be understood by the western world, but it has nothing to do with this.

Quite frankly, turning people's viewpoints into "religions" is nothing but these individuals trying to explain others using their own decision making model. They see the world through "faith" and so they superimpose this upon other people's actions and viewpoints when it is nothing of the such.

 

[exsemjingo]

"What was so wrong with constructing the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a skyscraper? The Talmud, in tractate "Sanhedrin," has an illuminating answer. When the notion of building a tower was decided upon, it was thanks to the collaboration of three groups of citizens."

Eh!  Wrong!  Genesis may have been called a mythical allegory by scholars trying to dis-credit the Bible, but mainsteam scholarship says otherwise.  This is no skyscraper from a fantastical past.  The Tower of Babel refers to the Zigguarts that the Babylonians really did build, many of which survive to this day.  The thinking was that high places were holy places (read up on it, you'll see), so if they got high enough they could take God on.  It is this blasphemous attitude that would have offended YHWH, or if you rather, the writer of the Biblical account.
Secondly, if you say Judeo-Christian values are environmentalist, what you really mean is that you hold both these values and want to make the one support the other.  All it takes to dismantle this argument is someone else with different beliefs to do the same.  When the political wind changes, people will say Judeo-Christian values reflect something else.
Do not cheapen the Bible so.

If you want to tangle on this issue, start a new thread and we'll do it.  This one is for discussing global warming, alternative fuels, and the politics and fallacies thereof.