Asymmetrical Information

It was the Daily News(yes, I would have expected it to be the Post too), two or three weeks ago.

actually, one of the writers of NRO's "The Corner" made just such a comment, but not during the latest winter whiteness, rather during the bitter cold weather of a week or two prior.

best,
bryan

I've noticed before in the NYT, and it's true here too, that empirical evidence for or against global warming always seems to center on the weather patterns in NYC. Sheesh, you guys aren't really the center of the world, you know.

And people wonder why scientists shake their heads about the general public's state of knowledge.

" But who can blame Americans for being skeptical of the science behind global warming when the temperature stays well below freezing for days on end and the weatherman measures the snow in feet?"

Anyone who understands the difference between cycles and trends when analyzing data or making forecasts, that's who.

A few days of cold weather in one region of one country does not mean that a well-established long-term, global climate trend does not exist. Even the Singer-Michaels crowd wouldn't make that mistake.

Evidence for a warming trend includes such things as noteworthy glacier recessions over multi-year periods, across the world.

AFAIK evidence for a warming trend is fairly strong, the biggest controversy is in whether this is mostly a human-casued thing, or a natural cycle -- and if the latter, what effect humans are having toward distorting it.

The absolute best data on the climate for the last 30 years is found here http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/msusci.html Notice that the trend is 0.04 C/decade, and wouldn't even be that big except for the extra large El Nino of 1998 ( There is recorded evidence of EN's for almost 500 years, so that can't be human induced.) Play with the Java applet that lets you look at the data region by region. Especially take note of the fact that there is no discernible warming in the polar regions where the effect of CO2 should be magnified. The evidence for any significant global warming in the recent past is slim to none.

I believe human influence may be present but except for the minor (OK, minuscule) chance of being the last straw for a climate change not worth the political hassle.

The March 2003 Astronomy has an article by Peter Thomas titled, "Mysteries of the Martian Poles." Among the other interesting aspects of the article is the repeated mention that the polar ice caps "are receding at rates up to 15 feet (4 meters) a year."

Someone tell me again just how many of the people there are driving SUV's vs electric cars.

John,

Your Martian reference is interesting. There's some suggestion that some of the Earth's warming may be due to solar effects; presumably any such effects would impact Mars also.

Sounds like a research grant to me!

The ironic thing is the warming may be due to particle reactions deep inside the sun's core.

You can guess at some energy cycles are oscillating around an equilibrium point. What the frequency and magnitude of these cycles are is a nice problem in particle physics. But there has been something funny about the abundance of neutrinos - there! I've gotten technical on you - from the solar interior. A solution has been proposed that is a minor revolution in the understanding of neutrinos (they have a very small mass) which would explain things nicely.

The explanation might also indicate that these cycles (you knew I'd get around to them) may be a sort of natural feedback mechanism at work, varying the sun's energy output over a long period of time.

If true, the explanation is: yes, there are fluctuations. No, there isn't anything we can do about it, absent getting a new sun.

Stay tooned on this one. The work going on is fascinating.

Actually, a mini ice age on the Atlantic coasts of North America and northern europe IS one of the predictions of global warming...

But there have been mini-ice ages before--long before there were cars or electricity or atomic power stations. So--has there been global warming before?

One cold winter (not just in NYC- it has been very cold in a lot of places in the northern hemisphere this winter) is obviously not very significant in the argument over global warming. But global warming has been sold to the public mostly based on short periods of unusual warmth in small regions- not just by tabloids, but by the major networks who wondered this past summer if anyone could deny the reality of global warming based on the unusually high temperatures in Washington, DC and NYC. Some of the European leaders in question have blamed the US for individual flooding events in Europe in the last year. If short term regional weather events should be taken as evidence for global warming, certainly they should also be taken as evidence against it. This winter serves as a good reminder of the natural variability of climate.

As for the prediction of a mini-ice age in northern Europe, that prediction is based on the possibility that the north atlantic drop and the global conveyor might shut down. As they have not yet done so, arguing that cold temperatures in the Northeastern US are evidence of global warming makes even less sense than arguing that they are evidence against it.

The neutrino bit is interesting. Not because neutrinos themselves are any cause for alarm. They don't actually interact with anything on a scale large enough to matter. But as Charles pointed out, they may be indicative of cyclical (self-regulatory?) behaviors in the solar process. On some scale, most stars are variable. Some K-class stars (which our sun is not one of) vary their output on a scale that would alternately freeze and scorch a planet like poor old Earth. Which wouldn't matter much, because all planets out to Mars would actually be inside the photosphere. If I remember, Mira changes size and radiant intensity (not in phase) by something on the order of 20%, over a fairly short (18 months; irregular) cycle.

Given a few of these along with a breathtaking ignorance of astrophysics on my part, I'd be stunned if our star didn't exhibit cyclical behavior on a scale that's sensible to humans.

To Mindles H. Dreck:

An Ice Age happens when the activity of the sun goes down. That activity is known to change in cycles, the most well known of them being a 11-year cycle. There are others, though, but since complete data has not been recorded before the 19th century, they can only be guessed. Since there was great starvation somewhere around 1500 in Europe, it is generally assumed there was what is described as a Little Ice Age ( can´t translate exactly from german to english here ).

So it is not that "they are ultimately poking fun at this form of reasoning (with the "ice age" comparison)" but instead they use a scientific term.

To Paul:

>>Especially take note of the fact that there is no discernible warming in the polar regions where the effect of CO2 should be magnified

It is a well known fact that the climate in the polar regions follows the climate of the rest of the world by a span of app. 1000 years. So, in thousand years you will especially take note of the fact you deny here.

To Tagore Smith:
Global warming is not based on short periods of unusuals warmth in small regions, as you like to put it... the average temperature of the world climate is climbing, glaziers are shrinking and so on. Scientists all over the world state this fact, period. The question just is, is humankind responsible or is this simply the natural variability of climate.

To all: Why not reducing co2 ? Why not doing something for the environment ? Why simply thinking that this is planet belongs to you and not to your children ?

Scientists generally agree that this is probably true. They don't universally agree that it's a fact, because there are still holes in the evidence. Yes, most of the evidence points to a very small amount of warming. Most scientists will admit that there's reason for doubt, but the bulk of the evidence to date supports that hypothesis.

Of course, it's also universally agreed by scientists--and this is a fact--that atmospheric CO2 levels have been much higher in the past than they are today. CO2 is a highly beneficial gas. Why act like this is a dangerous pollutant, spend trillions of dollars "fixing" it, and likely keeping millions of people in poverty longer than necessary, when there are much more pressing and obviously needed environmental reforms that we could be working on?

Gregi, they are indeed poking fun at the form of reasoning that today's weather provides evidence of any longer term trend. A few observations are not meaningful indications of climate change - "little" or grand. Whether you agree with the premise of this jibe is another matter.

As for "why not reducing CO2": The question "why not" almost presumes there is no cost. The real questions are "at what cost?" and "is it worth it?" William Nordhaus has a few trillion reasons why this is not as simple as people who assert things like "all scientists agree" like to suggest.

The late Dr. Bob Stevenson, from Scripps Oceanogrphic, absolutely rejected the concept of global warming. He was tireless in explaining that we're working with limited baseline data, and can't verify the accuracy of the earliest measurements. Ask a meteorologist how long ago we were still measuring temperature using human hair.

There may in fact be climate change. Or, the elctromagnetic shifts (recognized as the movement of magnetic north) may be relocating the weather patterns. Or maybe there's some other part of the process that we haven't quantified yet.

Oh yeah, let's rush to stop a process we don't really understand.

Drlivipr, temperatures have been measured by mercury thermometers for a very long time. You may be thinking of humidity measurements, which did indeed use human hair.

I think anony-mouse nails it. There is a whole lot of evidence for (at least so far) very moderate warming. What is controversial is just what effect humans have had.

When it comes to "public policy," there is also a second question. On balance, just how good or bad is warming? It is traditional to call people who don't like change "conservative" and to dsimiss those who want to "make things like they used to be" as "reactionaries."

R. Lilienthal,

There has been lots of warming and cooling before. In the last 2 milion years there have been ten ice ages and ten interglacials. All of the ice ages were considerably cooler than any time in the last 10,000 years.

Going back even further, there have been even greater temperature changes. During the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum, it was about 15 degrees warmer than it is today. In fact, during much of the history of the earth, it was warmer than it is today. That's because during most of the history of the earth, there was open water at the south and north poles. Snow fell into the water and melted. Now it falls onto land or sea ice and stays there white, reflecting sunlight back into space and cooling the planet.

Going even further back, when the atmosphere was different and there was little in the way of greenhouse gases, most of the planet may have been frozen at several points, the so-called "snowball earth."

Of course, humans have only been around since the last ice age, and only after it ended have there been a significant number of us. But those 12,000 or so years have had numerous ups and downs in temperature. Most recently (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), there's been the Medieval Climate Optimum, followed by the Little Ice Age, followed by the last few centuries of warmer weather.

Such climate change has had significant effects in the past. From about 800-1200, there was a lot of rainfall in what is now the central and southwestern United States. Populations boomed. Places like Mesa Verde were built. But then the climate changed, rainfall went way down, and civilizations crashed. It has never been as wet there since. There's some interesting info. about the American high plains at
http://regionsofmind.blogspot.com/2003_02_01_regionsofmind_archive.html#89235781

Gregi,

The problem with reducing CO2 is that no one is producing CO2 just for the hell of it; it's a side effect of most energy production.

If the global warming models are correct, we actually need to stop all CO2 production right away, and try to figure out how to reduce that already in the atmosphere. Simply cutting our CO2 production in half (say, which would probably cut our GDP by 40%+) would not prevent most of the warming scenarios.

As I've said before, I'll believe the dire predictions when I hear environmentalists saying we have to start building nuclear plants and shut down the fossil fuel ones; this is the only way currently available for significant CO2 production decreases.

Speaking of CO2, does anyone have an opinion regarding the trade of emissions -- specifically regarding the promise of the Chicago Climate Exchange to reduce emisssions?

Spearmint:
You're quite right, thanks for keeping me honest.

The gist of my original comment stands. There are interrelationships within the climatic process that we simply don't understand. We can measure most of what's going on. Why it's going on isn't quite as clear.

Except that the global-warmers have been telling us that THIS YEAR is supposed to be THE WARMEST YEAR IN HISTORY and using that as evidence of global warming. Now, it turns out that this year has been a cold and wet one. So, help us out here. Either you have good science that supports global warming or you don't. And I think you don't.

Some good posts here. Basically the name "Global Warming" is a misnomer, or at least misinterpretted. The "warming" part of it really just refers to the warming effect that CO2 has. The warming is the start of the process, not the general conclusion that the Earth will experience a global increase in average temperature.

The real problem is not one of increased temp, but of the side effects that man-made warming will create, even in the short term. As stated, the direct effects are probably not too important (like slight fluctuations in temperature or changing glacier formations). However, the indirect effects, such as radically changing weather patterns or shutting down the global conveyor are pretty bad.

Climate changes are nothing new, and there are plenty of reasons to expect natural shifts in weather and temperature (some excellent examples given above). How much of an effect humans have in these cycles is unknown and is pretty darn hard to figure out. However, you have to agree that it would be common sense not to recklessly interfere with the planet's equilibrium. I mean, it has kept fairly steady for hundreds of thousands of years.

This doesn't mean we need to kill ourselves trying to minimize human impact, but at the same time it would be stupid to ignore warning signs and red flags.

Josh,

Kept fairly steady? The place where I am typing this was under 1,000 feet of ice 15,000 years ago. And it's not Anchorage, Alaska. It's a little south of Boston, Massachusetts.

There's certainly no reason to recklessly interfere. But nature is not exquisitely and fragilely balance. It shifts around a lot on its own.

It seems to me we can have as much real effect on the global climate as a flea can on the rolling of an aircraft carrier.
Unless we actually achieve global thermonuclear warfare, that is....
On the other hand, I think humans do have a significant on localized environments, and as such, we should take more care. To a realistic extent. Which is probably too much to ask of the Kyoto-proponents.

With my teenagers wearing T shirts to high school on a daily basis, I have great hopes for Global Warming so that they don't get pneumonia too often before they move out on their own. This WSJ evidence of a new Ice Age will kill me with HMO copayments whenever they get sick.

From where I'm living (in Michigan, 50 miles south of the Mackinac bridge), it's pretty clear that something has been going on for at least a decade. This winter is a rugged one, alright, but it's the first one in five years that wasn't much milder than the average winter was when I was growing up 70 miles south of here in the 60's. The two winters before this, we even had rain in February. (That NEVER happened in my childhood.) Even this one isn't too extreme - we've had no more than two weeks of single-digit or below zero cold, six weeks would be more typical of what I remember. There is a heck of a lot of snow, but it's nowhere near the records for this area yet. And today it was melting - in mid-February, which is usually the coldest part of the year. (Note that when it gets really cold, the way it is in mid-February here in a bad winter, there is very little snowfall. The air can't hold enough moisture to make more than an inch or so.)

Anyhow, either my memory is considerably defective, and I'm somehow far better at coping with snow and cold as a middle-aged man than I was as a teenager, or the trend-line here has been towards warmer weather and less snow for 30-some years. Also, a look at the lake levels and water table shows that the average precipitation has been lower than average for at least 5 years. (I hope all that white stuff will bring the levels back up a bit.) Not that this proves anything except that there are weather cycles of various lengths. To prove a long-term trend, you'd have to have a much better and longer record than exists. And what long-term data we do have (glacier growth and shrinkage, mainly) shows that
1. The world, or at least Europe and North America, have been warming up for a few centuries, starting well before the industrial age. However, the variation between individual years far exceeds the overall trend.
2. But still, it was warmer in the 10th century than in the 20th.
3. The world, or at least Europe, was substantially colder for several centuries in the early to mid 2nd millenium. This may correlate with an absence of sunspots for a few centuries - or it may just mean that no one was bothering to look for them or to write about what they saw.
4. Follow the data back far enough, and modern trends merge into a little variation around the expected end-of-the-ice-age warming.

On the other hand, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence... If we really are substantially raising the CO2 levels, it could cause climate changes that are rather too fast and extreme to be handled without a lot of hardship. If you are doing something that might be pretty dangerous, isn't it a good idea to stop doing it until you know how dangerous it is?

And on the gripping hand, we darn well know the harm that cutting 50% of carbon emissions would do, whether or not that makes any difference to the global climate. It's not just hardship, it's starvation in the 3rd world, when fertilizer plants have to shut down due to lack of energy, and food shipments can't move for lack of fuel. That's if the formerly wealthy nations even bother to try to send aid while their own economies are in the deepest depression since the Roman armies stopped protecting the trade routes. I think that, until better energy technology is invented, we'll have an easier time dealing with climate change than with cutting back on energy usage.

Just remember: weather is NOT climate!

Usually this is invoked against global warming rather than in support (I rmember one summer Rush Limbaugh made endless hay). The simple, short phrase above is suffficient to cluebat people into realizing their logical error.

Aziz - is a "cluebat" similar to a 2X4? Would using it to correct others' logic be considered pre-emptive?

If so, I think some of our new commenters will have some very stiff words for you!!

Matt Johnson -- thanks for the link! I may be able to use that as part of an ongoing research paper.

Anony-mouse - check NPR's archives as well, they had an extensive interview with proponets of the exchange.

To markm:

>>I think that, until better energy technology is invented, we'll have an easier time dealing with climate change than with cutting back on energy usage.

Well, the average temperature of the world climate is attracted to so called attractors. Those are points on the scale of temperature where the climate will be relatively unchanged. If it is pushed off one of those points, it will look for a new attractor to set upon.

Now the problem is, that no one knows where the next such point is. It could well be that it takes some degrees of temperature to find it, and that could be hazardous.

Then again, we know nothing for sure. Is it the sun and one of its activity cycles, is it the magnet field of the earth changing ? Or is it co2 heating up the atmosphere ?

So you guys are probably right, until we know for sure we should wait some longer. Hopefully things are not irreversible when we know what we need to know...

Gregi

Consider posting this to the Global Warming channel on the Internet Topic Exchange.

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