August 07, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:People who don't believe in global warming are big fat stupidheads! So there!
You know what the problem with debates like the debate over global warming is? It's that the journalists writing about it, in general, seem to have absolutely no clue as to how one goes about evaluating scientific claims. They don't understand about levels of confidence, they don't have the faintest clue how models work and how seriously one can take various forms of models, and they seem to be unaware that most scientists come to believe that whatever they are working on is the most pressing, consequential thing happening on the planet.
I'm more than prepared to believe that global warming is a real and dire threat. I'm also more than prepared to believe it's a manageable concern that we can fix when we get around to it. But most of the journalistic coverage out there isn't any help at all in determining which. 99% of the journalists covering the topic seem to have already decided what the truth is before they made their first phone call: either it's 100% certain science, refuted only by evil monster scientists who are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the oil companies; or it is an environmentalist shibboleth invented by stupid people who hate economic prosperity. This Salon article, which touched off this rant, is absolutely typical: the author seems to think that the way you refute bad science is to keep telling the reader that the scientists took money from Exxon, while quoting such scientific luminaries as Ralph Nader's Center for Science in the Public Interest to refute them.
While my limited research shows that it is indeed the consensus of the scientific community that global warming is real, there is no consensus about its extent and reach, a distinction that appears entirely lost on the majority of journalists who cover it. In other words, the fact that the scientific community believes it is happening does not mean that they endorse the wild doomsday scenarios promulgated by various environmental groups, and using their "consensus" to support such claims is bad journalism.
Journalists should also keep in mind that just as economists are ill-qualified to judge how well meteorological models work, scientists have little ability to evaluate the economic outcomes of their suggestions. In other words, they are prone to suggest things without understanding what the costs would be. A meteorologist who says that we should reduce our carbon emissions by 25% probably has no idea what sort of drop in GDP that would entail, and has difficulty imagining what such a drop would actually mean to everyday citizens. He is therefore probably looking only at the societal costs of his warming predictions, without looking at the costs of the measures he proposes to reduce the warming. If he were looking at both, his suggestions might be very different.
Finally, we are all prone to think that we are right. Scientists advocating aggressive models of warming may be right -- or they may be overconfident. A look at the history of downward revisions in warming projections is educational on that score. According to journalists, the scientists were every bit as certain about projections that were as much as 4 degrees celcius higher, just a short time ago. A little humility about the much-vaunted scientific consensus is in order.
I'd also note that the majority of journalists I know who believe that global warming is settled science believe thusly because -- they have heard it from other journalists. Few of whom were out building climate models in their spare time.
Which is not to say that global warming isn't happening, or that we shouldn't do something about it. But the level of superstition and ignorance surrounding the debate is appalling. People on both sides should hold off on the ridicule and contempt until they're sure that their own understanding of the science is rock solid.
Posted by Jane Galt at August 7, 2003 03:19 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksJane, Are you sure you aren't talking about whether Kobe is guilty or innocent? I think it just boils down to people with strong opinions and wild assertions being more entertaining. If we all sat around and waited for the evidence to come in, we'd be pretty bored.
-Brad
Posted by: Brad Hutchings on August 7, 2003 03:30 PMThere's at least 3 separate issues which almost always get conflated wrt Global Warming:
a) Is the Earth getting warmer?
b) Is a warmer Earth a bad thing? The Earth has been both warmer and colder in the geologic past. When it was warmer, it was mostly the polar regions, not the equatorial ones, which warmed up. So Florida stays about the same temperature, but Siberia gets warmer.
c) Is the warming caused by human activity? Since the Earth has had warmer periods and ice ages in the past, long before human technology or humans themselves, it's possible that this is just part of a natural cycle, and has nothing to do with man made pollution. (In geologic time, we did just come out of the last little Ice age.) If so, there's not a durn thing we can do about it.
Jane,
I tend to agree with your overall comments. Having made the journey from being a believer in the global warming theory (1) to a skeptic to my current position which I would probably consider “apathetic agnosticism” (I don’t know if it is or is not happening but am pretty much unconcerned about it compared to other problems) a lot of people seem to be pretty much uninformed or ill-informed about the issue.
Most of the people who say they believe in the GWT probably just believe it because they’ve been inundated with various propaganda in the name of “eco journalism” that doesn’t address issues of certainty and tries to condense a complex theory about an even more complex climate system into a three minute news segment.
Then we have those who base their opinions on the matter based on what the other side is saying – people who don’t like the fossil fuel industry or the consumption patterns of America versus those who don’t like fear-mongering environmentalists who seem bound and determined to regulate nearly every portion of our lives, liberty, and property in the name of the environment or whatever the next cause celeb.
The Earth’s overall temperature may be warming or cooling – I don’t know and there are models and measurements which can contradict each other. It may be natural or it may caused in part by man’s activity – I don’t think we know because it seems impossible to hold so many different complex and unknown variables that affect the climate constant to do a sound comparison and make an accurate prediction. If global warming happens it may have some bad effects and it will probably also some have mitigating good effects. It may be that the cost of prevention is more expensive than trying to deal with any problems created. It could also be something that goes in cycles (as the ozone hole now appears to be) and will fix itself in which case it’s moot.
Thorley
(1) By the “Global Warming Theory” I mean “the theory that as a direct and primary result of human activity increasing the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we are causing the Earth’s aggregate temperature to increase at an unnatural rate which will be on the aggregate detrimental to human existence.”
Posted by: Thorley Winston on August 7, 2003 04:03 PMI seem to remember about 30 odd years ago there were a bunch of dire predictions about "the coming ice age," complete with pictures on the cover of major magazines of icebergs floating in New York harbor. Whatever happened to this trend?
PS You are absolutely right about the scientific illiteracy of the average journalist.
Posted by: Former Philadelphia Lawyer on August 7, 2003 04:11 PMJane,
Another factor to consider when understanding science is the stability of the consensus. What was the consensus 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Today? Are we converging or diverging? Are there standard models, metrics, tools, practices and institutions?
I think there is consensus at the level of global warming being an interersting and worthy phenonmenon to study. I don't see any consensus on method of study or causal mechanism theories. We are Darwin sailing back on the Beagle wondering "What's the deal with these Finch beaks?".
Paul
"PS You are absolutely right about the scientific illiteracy of the average journalist."
True. Average journalists also seem to be incapable of understanding legal proceedings, and it shows in their reporting -- but only to people who do understand the proceedings, and sometimes then only if you were actually there.
And that affects the political discussions about tort reform, "ridiculous" jury verdicts in criminal and civil cases and other legal issues.
Posted by: denise on August 7, 2003 05:10 PMLee Willis writes, "There's at least 3 separate issues which almost always get conflated wrt Global Warming:..."
Luckily, all these issues are addressed in Mark's (Most Excellent) Global Warming Website:
http://pages.prodigy.net/mark.bahner
Mark...author of Mark's (Most Excellent) Global Warming Website :-)
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 7, 2003 05:17 PMOops!
I see that, due to a programming error, the page "Is it bad?" can ONLY be accessed thru the main page of the website.
Here is the page, "Is it bad?" for people too lazy to click to the main page first:
http://pages.prodigy.net/mark.bahner/is_it_bad.htm
Sorry! This error will get fixed, sometime before the end of the 21st century. ;-)
Thanks for your patience,
The Management at Mark's (Most Excellent) Global Warming Website
> c) Is the warming caused by human activity?
Actually, that's not particularly relevant.
The interesting questions near that one are:
(1) can we do anything about it?
(2) if we can, what should we do?
Andy, you forgot about:
1.5) Is there enough of a problem to worry ourselves over?
I'd think a "yes" answer to that question would be a prerequisite for considering any action.
Posted by: David Perron on August 7, 2003 05:39 PM"It could also be something that goes in cycles (as the ozone hole now appears to be) and will fix itself in which case it’s moot."
Hmmmm...bit of a sticky wicket, there!
The "ozone hole" does "go in cycles" and does appear to be getting "fixed." But there's a fair amount of scientific consensus that the "ozone hole" is NOT "fixing itself."
Rather, the "ozone hole" is getting better in signficant part because humans have drastically reduced emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). This has caused concentrations of CFCs in the stratosphere to peak and begin to decline.
http://www.environment.govt.nz/indicators/ozone/conc.html
So most scientists would not agree that the "ozone hole" is something that "goes in cycles" and therefore will "fix itself." (The logical implication thus being that it was NOT necessary to reduce emissions of CFCs.)
A future topic for Mark's Ozone Hole website, perhaps. :-( (Oy, vey! Maybe after retirement.)
Mark Bahner (environmental engineer)
"I seem to remember about 30 odd years ago there were a bunch of dire predictions about "the coming ice age," complete with pictures on the cover of major magazines of icebergs floating in New York harbor. Whatever happened to this trend?"
"~" = "approximately"
Worldwide surface temperatures appear to have:
1) increased from ~1880 to ~1940,
2) decreased from ~1940 to ~1975,
3) increased from ~1975 to the present.
http://www.linmpi.mpg.de/~natalie/climate/glch_body.html
The worries about an ice age were in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 7, 2003 06:00 PMHmmm...that chart shows that CFCs are all pretty much on the increase (or at least maintaining a constant presence), except for methyl chloroform. What conclusion ought we to draw from this?
From what I've heard, it's still a matter of discussion to what extent CFCs affect the ozone hole. Given that the chart you've given as evidence doesn't exactly show a large rate of reduction in CFC use, I'd say it's not resolved.
Posted by: David Perron on August 7, 2003 06:02 PMThe whole problem is that journalists (and sometimes other folks) are pretty unclear on the concept that correlation does not imply causation.
Secondly, folks don't understand compelx models. Sure a simply one-degree polynomial is pretty simple. But climate ain't a one-degree poly-thingy. There is now a growing notion that in fact the very increase in temperature may result in a massive temperature crash, because some complex ocean-current thingy might decide to call it quits.
Thirdly, is the whole (it's so nineties) chaos thingy. Climate is (arguably) a chaotic system and is therefore non-deterministic, robust and unstable. What does it mean? Beats me. All I know is that they properties of a chaotic system are probably beyond tehe education of the average J-school grad.
Posted by: Anticipatory Retaliation on August 7, 2003 06:17 PMMark said:
Rather, the "ozone hole" is getting better in signficant part because humans have drastically reduced emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). This has caused concentrations of CFCs in the stratosphere to peak and begin to decline.
I remember seeing a TV special about some big volcano that blew up (in the Phillipines?) 10-15 years ago. One statement that caught my attention was that the eruption launched more CFC's into the atmosphere during a few days than mankind created in hundreds of years.
Was that statistic B.S.? If not, how can any hole in the ozone be blamed on human activity?
Posted by: Mycin on August 7, 2003 06:20 PM"Another factor to consider when understanding science is the stability of the consensus. What was the consensus 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Today? Are we converging or diverging? Are there standard models, metrics, tools, practices and institutions?"
Yes, those are interesting questions. And those questions actually apply to (AT LEAST!) 3 questions:
1) What is the consensus regarding temperatures in the 20th century?
2) What is the consensus regarding how human emissions of greenhouse gases affected those temperatures?
3) What is the concensus regarding FUTURE greenhouse gas emissions and FUTURE temperatures?
VERY roughly speaking, the answers are:
1) Agreement seems to be converging pretty firmly that ***surface*** temperatures increased during the 20th century. (Which, unfortunately, isn't necessarily even a relevant question, if the issue of debate is global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.)
2) There is some convergence on the idea that human emissions caused at least a part of those temperature increases.
3) There is virtually no convergence on what future greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures will be.
In fact, the general pattern on #3 has been:
a) IPCC (Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change) report #1 predicted......I forget (and am too lazy to look up).----->Climate "skeptics" laughed, and said the numbers would be much lower.
b) IPCC report #2 predicted lower than report #1.------>Climate skeptics laughed, and said, "We told you so, but the numbers are still too high."
c) IPCC report #3 lowered the lower prediction, but RAISED the UPPER prediction!----->Mark Bahner and climate "skeptics" howl in protest, especially since the raised upper predictions were inserted AFTER PEER REVIEW!
http://www.cei.org/gencon/019,02967.cfm
Mycin -- Mount Pinatubo 1991.
An aside--we had fabulous sunsets in Kansas for much of the '90s. Supposedly the volcanic ash and dust from Mt. Pinatubo floated around for years and caused them.
Posted by: denise on August 7, 2003 06:29 PM"Hmmm...that chart shows that CFCs are all pretty much on the increase (or at least maintaining a constant presence), except for methyl chloroform. What conclusion ought we to draw from this?"
Well, actually, if you look at the graph really carefully, you'll see that the others have essentially plateaued, rather than that they are continuing to rise.
And the key part of the graph is the sum of all of them. If you look really hard, the peak of the total of all of them occurs circa 1993-1994 (at about 2800 ppt), and has decreased since then (to about 2700 ppt...which isn't a lot).
In any case, most scientists think that the "ozone hole" will gradually continue to get better, being totally "fixed" (at pre-1970s levels) by 2030-2050.
"I remember seeing a TV special about some big volcano that blew up (in the Phillipines?) 10-15 years ago. One statement that caught my attention was that the eruption launched more CFC's into the atmosphere during a few days than mankind created in hundreds of years."
If they said "CFCs" that's flat out wrong. CFCs are entirely a man-made substance.
But what they *may* have said was "chlorine". And that would be "true"...volcanoes inject chlorine (including chlorine in hydrochloric acid, or HCl) into the atmosphere.
But that's the ATMOSPHERE. Ozone depletion occurs in the stratosphere.
Scientists (generally) agree that little or none of that chlorine from volcanoes makes it up into the stratosphere. It's too reactive.
How volcanoes ARE thought to affect the ozone layer is that the small particles that volcanoes release DO make it up to the stratosphere (at least for a very powerful eruption).
These particles then form a surface on which ozone in the stratosphere is more easily destroyed.
This effect goes away after a few years, as the particles get eliminated from the atmosphere.
Yeesh! What a mess! ;-)
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 7, 2003 06:41 PMI wrote:
It could also be something that goes in cycles (as the ozone hole now appears to be) and will fix itself in which case it’s moot.
To which Mark Bahner replied:
The "ozone hole" does "go in cycles" and does appear to be getting "fixed." But there's a fair amount of scientific consensus that the "ozone hole" is NOT "fixing itself."
I agree, my earlier comment referred to the ozone hole paranthetically to only the first half of the setance "cyclical" as opposed to the second half "fixing itself." I should have written that more clearly though, my bad.
Posted by: Thorley Winston on August 7, 2003 06:59 PM"c) Is the warming caused by human activity? Since the Earth has had warmer periods and ice ages in the past, long before human technology or humans themselves, it's possible that this is just part of a natural cycle, and has nothing to do with man made pollution. (In geologic time, we did just come out of the last little Ice age.) If so, there's not a durn thing we can do about it."
Natural cycle or not, that doesn't mean we'd want to just let it happen. I imagine if an ice age was oncoming we'd want to find a way to stop it.
Posted by: Jason McCullough on August 7, 2003 06:59 PM"There is now a growing notion that in fact the very increase in temperature may result in a massive temperature crash, because some complex ocean-current thingy might decide to call it quits."
Yes, this sort of speculation is fairly troubling to a hairy engineer like me.
The speculation is that the melting of the north polar icecap will shut down the thermohaline circulation that causes the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/thc/
This speculation is troubling to me, because it seems ***very*** suspicious that "they" (those worrying about this possibility) are now saying that warming might cause bad cooling!
It seems suspicious, because it's almost like "they" want to see a problem, no matter what. That is, if the temperatures decreased over the next 30-50 years, would they be screeming for funding to worry that the thermohaline circulation might shutting down, to cause this cooling?
A fundamental tenet of science is that true science must produce falsifiable predictions...that is, predictions that can be shown to be wrong.
For example, if greenhouse gases cause WARMING, and the earth doesn't warm over the next 30-50 years, we should be able to say we're alright. But if "they" then say, "No, there's STILL a problem...the greenhouse gases are causing COOLING!"...they have essentially said that greenhouse gases can cause warming OR cooling. That's not a falsifiable prediction, and therefore isn't science.
"I agree, my earlier comment referred to the ozone hole paranthetically to only the first half of the setance "cyclical" as opposed to the second half "fixing itself." I should have written that more clearly though, my bad."
No problem. I'd like to drop the ozone hole discussion completely, if possible. :-)
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 7, 2003 07:04 PMJane,
Were *you* "out building climate models in [your] spare time"? Of course you and journalists aren't doing your own research.
Posted by: samson on August 7, 2003 07:11 PM"Natural cycle or not, that doesn't mean we'd want to just let it happen. I imagine if an ice age was oncoming we'd want to find a way to stop it."
Yes, I agree that's absolutely true.
But if the warming is natural, and we intervene to CAUSE an ice age, we've screwed up big time!
The whole pattern of the last...geez, it's been at least 5 million years, I think...is that there have been 80,000-100,000 years of ice age, followed by ONLY about 10,000 years of interglacial warmth.
We're right at the edge of the length of time where we might expect an ice age (i.e., we've had ~10,000 years of warmth).
Suppose only the additional greenhouse gases that we've put into the atmosphere are keeping us FROM an ice age? (That's only one possibility, of many, of course.)
This is, as I see it, a fundamental point that is missed in the whole global warming debate: we ought to ALL acknowledge that the worst that could happen would be another ice age.
It takes only about 5 degrees Celsius cooling to produce an ice age. It would be MUCH better to have 5+ degrees Celsius warming, than 5 degrees Celsius cooling.
In fact, it can be argued quite strongly that it would be better to have 1 degree Celsius warming than 1 degree Celsius cooling.
Or 2 degrees Celsius warming than 2 degrees Celsius cooling. And so on.
I discuss that issue here:
http://pages.prodigy.net/mark.bahner/is_it_bad.htm
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 7, 2003 07:14 PMThat's not my point, Samson. For one thing, I am a journalist. But my point was that the echo chamber effect -- Global warming is a big problem because my fellow journalists say it's a big problem! -- has produced the odd phenomenon of articles ridiculing people for disputing science that the writers haven't the faintest inkling how to evaluate themselves.
Posted by: Jane Galt on August 7, 2003 07:17 PMThere are I think 3 main lines of evidence that bear on whether
global warming is occurring.
First there are proxies like say the varying quantities of
certain isotypes in layers of sediment at the bottom of the
north atlantic which are believed to vary in proportion to
the percentage of the year the surface above is covered
by ice. I read a paper on such a proxy in Science somewhile
back and from this it was deduced that ice pack cover in
the north atlantic has varied substantially in the last
ten thousand years and even in the last thousand.
Proxies say nothing directly about whether global warming is
occurring today but instead define what is "normal." The
proxy record reveals that for much of the earth the normal
pattern is considerable climatic variation. Within the
confines of the areas that the known proxies cover the typical
pattern is change. An area may maintain the same climate for
centuries but then it will abruptly change to something else,
or the oscillations occur even faster.
Now this might not seem like saying much, but what the
proxies could have revealed was that the climate (temperature
and moisture) stays pretty constant in a given area
for millenia at a time. That is not what they show.
Because of this it is difficult to deduce that any climatic
swings we are seeing today is evidence of global warming. As
far as I know every change observed is within the bounds
of the kinds of swings that the proxies reveal.
At this point I'm talking about the second line of evidence,
not proxies, but temperature and moisture levels recorded
by man. That record is very short and most of the world is
not covered. There are only a few areas where sampling has
been dense enough to infer that there might be something wrong
with a neighboring station's technique. The largest such area
is in the united states and it also has the longest duration,
about a hundred years.
Measurement in the united states has been dense enough that
for large areas one can exclude stations in cities and airports
and still redundantly chart the climate. When this is done
there have been definite oscillations but the trend over the
last hundred years is close to flat. Something similar can
I believe be said for the short list of other regions around
the world where measurements are dense enough to construct
such redundant rural networks.
If fact rural stations everywhere around the world whether
isolated or part of a network show not much change. Certainly
not one of the them looks like the famous "hockey stick puck"
graph that so many seem to believe in.
None of this though proves that global warming is not occurring.
Given what the proxies show it could be that in the absence of
human activity global temperatures would be dropping and in fact
a near flat trend is really evidence of warming. But we don't
know what would be happening in our absence and so we can't deduce
that.
Climatic models are the third line of evidence. The models are
mathematical/programming constructs that plug in what we think
we know about how the climate works and try to project the impact
of rising carbon dioxide levels. All of the models predict
rising global temperatures with rising carbon dioxide -- they
vary considerably though in the level of predicted rise.
There are two obvious reasons to doubt the models. First not
one can successfully "predict" the past. In most fields of
science, maybe that's every other, modelling like this isn't
going to be taken seriously until it can least purport to
explain something that has already occurred.
The second obvious problem is that carbon dioxide in the
quantities we are talking about, isn't, by itself, much of
a greenhouse gas. All the models that predict global warming are
assuming that the tiny direct rise in temperature induced by
carbon dioxide will be enormously amplified by the presence
of water.
Why this is a reasonable assumption is not clear to me. If the
atmosphere is dynamically unstable like this then why didn't it
oscillate out the band of temperatures in which life could be
sustained long ago?
Whatever, the assumption that it will induce a large increase
in the greenhouse effect of water, is not based on our understanding
of the behavior of water in its different phases in our atmosphere.
How water behaves is in considerable part a mystery. What we
do know about it is for the most part beyond the computational
capacity of the computers we currently have to plug in to the
climatic models.
A fourth line of evidence bears not on whether global warming
is occurring but on whether raising carbon dioxide levels
is an obvious logical risk. After all if the atmosphere had
maintained a certain percentage of carbon dioxide for the
last billion years and we raised it 33% in the last century
then regardless of whether we could predict what the impact
might be it would seem reasonable to anticipate that something
bad might happen.
Fortunately this is not the situation. Even with the recent
rise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are about the lowest the
earth has ever seen. Geologically carbon dioxide levels have been
dropping for a long time. Carbon dioxide is a limiting nutrient
for many plants and most contemporous plants originally evolved
at much higher levels. There's a paper in a recent issue of
Science reporting, based on satellite data, that in the last
twenty some years living land biomass has increased six percent.
There could be other explanations for that but it's had to not
suspect that the increase of nine percent of carbon dioxide in
the same time period hasn't had something to do with it.
"Were *you* "out building climate models in [your] spare time"? Of course you and journalists aren't doing your own research."
One can build one's own climate "model," fairly easily.
A "model" is just a simplification of the real world, that allows one to make predictions of the future.
For example, if weather usually comes from west to east where I live (true for many places), I can build a model that says:
"Dark clouds in west?"---->"Rain coming."
"Dark clouds in east?"--->"Rain has already passed."
If greenhouse gases cause global warming, one can fairly easily guesstimate what FUTURE warming they will cause, by what PAST warming they've caused.
I discuss this here...unfortunately, without actually getting to a conclusion. But the conclusion is, essentially, "Less than 1 degree Celsius warming should be expected in the 21st century."
http://pages.prodigy.net/mark.bahner/what_will_happen_to_us.htm
Important caveats:
1) If global climate is sufficiently chaotic, there is essentially no way for anyone to predict future warming, based on past relationships between greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature increases (see discussion of possibility of thermohaline shutdown), and
2) If global climate is significantly affected by the sun, we can know future global climate only by knowing what the sun will do in the future.
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 7, 2003 07:28 PM"That's not my point, Samson. For one thing, I am a journalist. But my point was that the echo chamber effect -- Global warming is a big problem because my fellow journalists say it's a big problem! -- has produced the odd phenomenon of articles ridiculing people for disputing science that the writers haven't the faintest inkling how to evaluate themselves."
And a tremendously well-put and important point it is!
It's ridiculous for a writer in Salon to put down global warming "skeptics" without having even the faintest clue of how the writer disagrees with those "skeptics" (i.e., for the writer to assume someone is right or wrong based on Authority).
Science is not religion. Who the people are that say things, and where they get their funding, do NOT matter. All that matters is who is right, and who is wrong.
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 7, 2003 07:35 PMThe real problem is that it's 94 degrees in France, so of course all of us journalistic types decide we should be running "global warming" stories.
Then "Ah-nuld" announces his run for governor, Kobe's in court, and oh my God, the health segment is about diagnosing breast cancer via "Queer Eye For A Straight Guy". So we push a global warming story with scientific analysis back to the third segment, chop it into a 15 second reader consisting of the following:
"Forget baked Alaska, it was France that was broiling today. Temps reached 94 degrees today, leading some to wonder if this is another example of global warming."
Posted by: Cam on August 7, 2003 07:58 PMAnd one more skeptical point. The simulations of global climate, as complex as they are, may still be far too coarse grained and simple to be useful in predictions. A few years ago, I recall reading that the main simulations could not properly "retrodict", that is predict the past weather. Don't know whether that is still true, but if it is, it shows a fatal flaw in them.
Posted by: Jim Miller on August 7, 2003 08:04 PMWow, I'm very impressed that this comment thread has reached 30+ without any trolls or crazy people posting. Nice work!
But more to the point, someone mentioned the possibility that only human intervention is staving off another ice age. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle addressed this somewhat fancifully in Fallen Angels. Not a great work of literature, but still fairly amusing.
Posted by: Brent M Krupp on August 7, 2003 08:42 PM"I'd also note that the majority of journalists I know who believe that global warming is settled science believe thusly because -- they have heard it from other journalists."
"Few of whom were out building climate models in their spare time."
Why should that matter? I've built 1-D networked environmental models for watersheds, I've also contributed to a handbook on economics of environmental technology, and dimly remember in the days of college sweating over an exam question where we had to work out the effect of CFCs on ozone in the upper atmosphere, given variables like the mass flux of CFCs, the kinetics of the free-radical reactions, and the UV radiation flux.
But when I comes to global warming, I have to rely on the opinion of, say, the folks working at the Pew Center of Climate change, the American Geophysical Union, the IPCC, and the NAS. Why? 'Cos even with a vaguely relevant technical education, it is still outside of the an area where I have sufficient relevant experience or knowledge to evaluate the primary literature, or where I keep up with recent publications.
(Now, I could ask at lunch the atmospheric chemists where I work what they think, but usually they're too busy playing bridge).
Based on looking at, say, Pew, or the IPCC, or the NAS's publications, or asking geophysicists I know socially, they seem to think that anthropogenic global warming is a done deal. There are a few skeptics who are *actively published atmospheric geophysicists/chemists*, but they are few and dwindling in number.
Just for information's sake - speculation on the linkage between CO2 and the earth's temperature goes back to (the great Swedish chemist) Arrhenius.
(And sorry, a statistician [like Lomberg], a bunch of protein chemists [like Robinson & son of the OISM, who got printed in the WSJ editorial page in 1998], don't cut it. Maybe those two guys at Cato doing climate work might.)
Posted by: Tom on August 7, 2003 08:57 PMTom, I'm not disputing global warming. Nor am I arguing that everyone should be able to build their own climate model. But there is a basic level of scientific literacy that at least helps you pick out when people are having real scientific arguments and when they're afflicted with Lone Wingnut Syndrome. My problem is not that journalists think global warming is real; it's that they don't appear to have any good reason to think so, and are thus reduced to argument from authority -- which authority always turns out to be another journalist who lacks even basic scientific literacy.
Posted by: Jane Galt on August 7, 2003 09:14 PMJane,
There are several issues here. First, journalism is first and foremost about sensation, not information. Second, journalists are basically ignorant people, not by choice but because it's simply impossible for anyone to have in-depth knowledge of the many different subjects that a reporter covers. Third, journalists come from the ranks of humanities majors. Very few were trained as scientists so their ability to understand a scientific dispute is going to be limited by the way they inherently look at the world. Which is as politics. Yes, scientists are political, just like everyone else, but science isn't decided by majority rule, who yells the loudest, or has the most influential friends. It's decided by facts and the ability to predict phenomena. If the facts don't fit and the predictions are wrong, so long.
Now with regard to "global warming". It's junk science. There is next to no evidence in the satellite data http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/msusci.html of any warming trend in the last thirty years. There's a blip in 1998 due to a large El Nino, but that's a phemenon that's been around for millenia with other occurences in the past that are even larger. The satellite data is collected at 30,000 points covering 80% of the earth's surface every day. The polar orbit rotates so that 100% of the earth's surface is covered every six days. The satellite data has been validated by comparison with balloon borne thermometers that measure the temperature of the lower atmosphere using a completely different physical process. As the earth heats up and cools down, the temperature of the lower atmosphere has to follow. It's simple physics. Think of holding your hand over a pan on the stove to gauge its temperature. The satellite data doesn't show any heating since its inception in 1970.
Compare this to the ground based measurement, http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/, which is made up of measurements from thousands of weather stations around the world. Weather stations are on land which only covers 30% of the earth's surface. The quality of data from the stations varies widely. Some is very good and reported regulary, eg, NOAA stations, but imagine what comes out of places like the Congo, if it's reported at all. The worst part is that there is an inherent upward bias in weather station data, the urban heat island effect. As soon as a road, building, airport, or even a tennis court gets put in nearby you get human induced warming. Asphalt and concrete soak up the heat during the day and give it up at night. As the old song says "hot town, summer in the city." There's no way to model this effect, so the only way to get rid of it is to restrict ground based thermometer data to "rural" areas. As one of your readers noted, if you use the best US rural data, there's no evidence of any warming for North America.
Despite all the well known, insoluble problems with ground based measurements "Global Warming" is the only scientific discipline where the ground based observations are prefered over the satellite measurements. From oceanography to cosmology, as soon as it's possible to take instruments into space, scientists do it because it gives so much better coverage and less biased information than ground based measurements.
Finally an anecdote. A former colleague and full professor of physics at a big time university decided about a decade ago to do research on the climate. Beacuse of his work, he was invited to sit on the NAS panel on global warming. He told me it was a horrible, unscientific railroad job. The global warming proponents knew the answer before anyone had started on the report and made sure that it reflected their views and no one else's. Straight politics, no science.
Posted by: Paul on August 7, 2003 10:41 PMJust to clarify, Mark, I did include the possibility that other CFCs had had their levels relatively unchanged. It is rather difficult to read data from a picture of a graph.
Good points all around. I'm still a little taken aback by those who want to start doing something, anything about global warming long before it's reached any substantial degree of issue consensus in scientific circles. The engineer in me wants something resembling proof, and there's not much of that to be had.
Posted by: David Perron on August 7, 2003 10:44 PMSince I don't know any of the relevant science, I refuse to read technical arguments about global warming; I simply would not be able to evaluate them properly. Instead, I try to find out what the consensus (if any) is amongst atmospheric scientists. This is not easy to do. Both journalists and scientists are more than willing to lie in order to promote their views. The only hope is to take the most right-leaning statement about the consensus I can find from a left-leaning scientist or organization, and assume the truth is somewhat to the right (or vice-versa).
The UN IPCC is generally acknowledged to be left-leaning, and its 1995 report on climate change was one of the principle bases for the Kyoto meeting. All I've read of it, and all I have to read, is one paragraph in the first part of the Summary that clearly summarizes the whole report:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sarsum1.htm#four
"Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long-term natural variability and the time-evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface changes. Nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate."
The last sentence contains 3 waffle words (balance, suggests, discernible), and doesn't even mention warming. And yet the Kyoto protocol was justified largely by using this report. Kyoto was a fraud, and this paragraph is proof. It's possible, of course, that the lies that were told us in Kyoto about the scientific consensus have since become true. But I can have no way of knowing this, since I know that these people cannot be trusted.
Given that we can measure things to accuracies of parts per trillion, "discernible" utterly fails to raise any alarms on this side of the screen. Let's hear some commitment, eh? Something to the effect of "Given the current, gradual warming trend, we believe humans to be responsible for 10% of it, and here's the evidence". Until such statements are being made, there's just no sense in getting alarmed over vague allegations.
Hell, for all we know, human influence has had a negative effect on the local warming trend. Sure, it goes against intuition, but I haven't seen anything resembling science that rules it out, either.
Posted by: David Perron on August 8, 2003 09:22 AMYes, the average journalist could no longer pass their high school physics or biology final. Most people couldn't, of course (and that's not good, by any means), but it's worse for journalists.
Years ago I worked at NASA and we would all gather around the radio and listen to the change-of-shift press conferences when a Shuttle mission was going on (they never told us anything, we had to listen to the news). The questions those boneheads would ask! You simply have no business reporting on the space shuttle if you can't get straight in your head the difference between hydraulic power and electrical power or if you can't quite grasp Newton's three laws. These weren't podunk journalists, either, but the elite media from the big, international companies.
Trust nothing you read in the mainstream media about science - it has almost certainly been twisted to punch up whatever dramma the journalists believe the story has at the expense of the actual facts.
Posted by: Rob on August 8, 2003 09:48 AMThere is a central fact to the global warming debate that you almost never hear mentioned: Climate Changes!
The earth is a dynamic system and it changes constantly. It has historically been both much warmer and much cooler than it is today. Only a few thousand years ago North America was covered in ice. The climate is going to change no matter what we do. We certainly should be concerned that we do what we can to minimalize the fluctuations (taking into account the costs and results as with any other policy). There is, however, absolutely no doubt that climate will change. We should be figuring out how we're going to deal with it, not trying to optimize political fallout from it.
Posted by: Rob on August 8, 2003 09:54 AMCouple of questions for the peanut gallery:
I’ve heard that there has been some satellite data which shows that there is actually an aggregate cooling by something like half a degree or a degree centigrade. Does anyone know if this is true or not? If so, where I can I find the data and how reliable would you consider it to be compared to temperature measurements showing an increase in temperature? If this isn’t true, does anyone know where this story originated from or how this claim was later refuted or discarded?
I’ve also heard that most of the temperature increase from the twentieth century occurs in the first half of the century while most of the increase in man-made carbon dioxide emissions is from the second half. Is this true and if so, doesn’t this challenge the premise that man-made carbon dioxide is largely responsible for increases in temperature? If this is also true, does anyone have a source showing the data and if not, does anyone have a source which might shed some light on how this myth came about?
The thing I always wonder about when hearing the dire warnings of global warming is how the activity of mere humans can overcome the combined effects of this planet being in close proximity to a raging hydrogen bomb (the sun) and also spinning thru space where the typical temperature is -578F.
Posted by: glenmore on August 8, 2003 11:27 AM"My problem is not that journalists think global warming is real; it's that they don't appear to have any good reason to think so, and are thus reduced to argument from authority -- which authority always turns out to be another journalist who lacks even basic scientific literacy."
.....whose authority is professional climatologists. I'm not sure what you're objection is here.
Posted by: Jason McCullough on August 8, 2003 12:25 PM"But when I comes to global warming, I have to rely on the opinion of, say, the folks working at the Pew Center of Climate change, the American Geophysical Union, the IPCC, and the NAS. Why? 'Cos even with a vaguely relevant technical education, it is still outside of the an area where I have sufficient relevant experience or knowledge to evaluate the primary literature, or where I keep up with recent publications."
No you don't!
Go to my website:
http://pages.prodigy.net/mark.bahner
Or, if you're not willing to wade thru every page, go straight to:
http://pages.prodigy.net/mark.bahner/what_will_happen_to_us.htm
That page contrasts IPCC predictions of global warming in the 21st century with my predictions. Editor's note: Actually, I still haven't gotten to *my* temperature predictions, but given the info I already have on the page, one could reasonably assume that there is a 50% probability that warming in the 21st century will be less than 1 degree Celsius, and probably 95%+ probability that warming will be less than 2 degrees Celsius.
So, there you have IPCC predictions and my predictions. You can read how I got my predictions, and to a limited extent, how the IPCC got their predictions. (You could go to the IPCC website for how they got their predictions, but that website wouldn't tell you about how Robert Watson and friends slipped in a bunch of bogus "stories" after peer review had been completed.)
You can then make a reasonably informed judgement, as a lay person, who is right. You may be wrong in your assessment...but SOMEONE is wrong (the IPCC is, or I am) in predictions of 21st century warming. So you won't be alone.
Never, never, never rely solely on Authority in questions of science. Authority is for questions of religion, not science.
Mark Bahner ("I want the TRUTH!" :-)) ("You can't haaandle..." ;-))
There was a panel on the political (mis)use of science at the AAAS meeting in February, and Naomi Oreskes of UC-San Diego included in her presentation the story of how an experiment that would have measured the earth's temperature was shut down by environmentalists who feared it would be bad for whales.
I did a column on it (and she was kind enough to say afterward that I had understood her talk) of which the relevant part is:
Oceanographers proposed to measure the earth's temperature by measuring the temperature of the earth's oceans, a project called Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC).
You can do that because the speed of sound in water depends on the water temperature. Sound travels faster in warm water, so the time it takes sound to travel over long distances measures the average temperature of the water it passes through, according to the ATOC home page.
What you do: Measure speed over a long distance, for example between California and Hawaii. Do it in several of the world's oceans. Repeat for a decade or so and you have an answer to one of the most contested political questions on the planet.
The science was well understood and the technology straightforward. There was even funding available, Oreskes said. A pilot program of transmissions starting in 1995 demonstrated the project was feasible.
So it's 2003; is the answer to this highly important question forthcoming? No, because advocates for marine mammals raised such a stink about it that the project was shut down. They worried that the sound transmission would interfere with the singing of humpback whales.
The whole column should be available at
http://ww2.scripps.com/cgi-bin/archives
/denver.pl?DBLIST=rm03&DOCNUM=4836
but sometimes the pay-per-view archives don't allow access
Posted by: linda seebach on August 8, 2003 12:32 PMJane,
I want a straight answer! Were you peeking inside Paul Krugman's brain while he wrote today's column? He scribes:
"Before last year's elections Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, wrote a remarkable memo about how to neutralize public perceptions that the party was anti-environmental. Here's what it said about global warming: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science." ... But as a recent article in Salon reminds us, this appearance of uncertainty is "manufactured." Very few independent experts now dispute that manmade global warming is happening, and represents a serious threat. Almost all the skeptics are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries."
It's all very suspicious that your post appeared before his column.
Posted by: Robert Musil on August 8, 2003 12:34 PM"People should hold off ... until their sure that their own understanding of the science is rock solid".
I tend to believe the experts, myself, rather than trying to learn everything on my own. The ballplayer, Carl Everett (now with the Texas Rangers) was quoted as saying (in explaining his creationist beliefs) "I don't believe in dinosaurs... I've never seen a dinosaur." I'm sure he would agree with your point.
Posted by: wallster on August 8, 2003 12:52 PM"I’ve heard that there has been some satellite data which shows that there is actually an aggregate cooling by something like half a degree or a degree centigrade. Does anyone know if this is true or not?"
That depends on what the definition of "true" is. ;-)
No, I'm definitely kidding!
First, satellite temperature data only started being recorded in 1979. Somewhere in the late 1990s (I don't know about the exact year, but it was probably *before* 1998), John Christy and researchers came out with an analysis that the trend was actually SLIGHTLY downward. I don't think it was anywhere near 0.5 degrees Celsius, let alone 1.0 degree Celsius.
Then, other researchers pointed out problems with the satellite data (decaying orbits that weren't being corrected for, some other stuff that escapes me).
After correcting for this, and updating through 2001, everyone (including Christy) agreed that the trend was slightly upward. We're talking about on the order of 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade. (That's 0.05, NOT 0.5 per decade.)
So the people who say the satellites show "no warming" aren't really correct. Better phrasing would be "show very little warming," or "show much less warming than the surface measurements for that time period."
"If so, where I can I find the data and how reliable would you consider it to be compared to temperature measurements showing an increase in temperature? If this isn’t true, does anyone know where this story originated from or how this claim was later refuted or discarded?"
I just summarized the GENERAL sequence of events. Go to Google, and type "John Christy satellite temperature trends" or some such thing, and you could get the gory details (in a half hour's search, anyway).
My website (click on my name for this post) covers these events under the questions, "Is it happening" and "Are humans causing it?". But I've never gotten around to putting in hyperlinked references, so you can't follow it to the source literature.
"I’ve also heard that most of the temperature increase from the twentieth century occurs in the first half of the century while most of the increase in man-made carbon dioxide emissions is from the second half."
See my post of August 7 at 6:00 pm for discussion of temperature trends. This is the website I referenced for that:
http://www.linmpi.mpg.de/~natalie/climate/glch_body.html
"Is this true and if so, doesn’t this challenge the premise that man-made carbon dioxide is largely responsible for increases in temperature?"
See the temperature graph yourself to decide whether it's "true" (I'd characterize it as "more true than false").
Does it "challenge the premise that man-made CO2 is largely responsible for increases in temperature"?---->Well, it doesn't help that premise. But one could come back with a contention that sulfur dioxide, which tends to form cooling sulfates, has also increased in the latter half of the 20th century. So those sulfates may be masking the warming that we'd otherwise get. Also, in general, warming would be expected to increase as the LOGARITHM of the concentration of CO2, not linearly with CO2. With a logarithmic situation, the initial say, 50 ppm of CO2, causes a bigger temperature increase than the next 50 ppm rise in CO2. (Of course, if one starts to think in those terms, it becomes harder to justify that global warming will be a big problem in the future, because it takes expontial increase in CO2 to produce each linear increment of temperature increase.)
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 8, 2003 01:03 PMThorley,
Go to this site:
http://www.john-daly.com/
and scroll to the bottom for the data you want regarding the satellite vs. surface data. He includes links to the original sources.
Another interesting article on that site deatils the installation of a new weather station in Death Valley, specifically sited in a spot guaranteed to produce a "record high" temperature reading.
Steve
Posted by: Steve Keeley on August 8, 2003 01:09 PM"Very few independent experts now dispute that manmade global warming is happening,..."
Hmmm...probably true.
"...and represents a serious threat."
Complete BS. There are plenty of experts who dispute that global warming is a serious threat.
"Almost all the skeptics are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries."
First of all, EVERY scientist should be a "skeptic." If there are "true believers," then they aren't practicing science. But more importantly, in matters of science, the source of funding is IRRELEVANT. People are either right, or they are wrong.
I work at a place that does research for the U.S. EPA. We often deal with research done by industry. So we have research that my organization does, we have research done by other organizations for the U.S. EPA, and we have research done by industry.
Sometimes research done by industry is right, and sometimes it is wrong.
Sometimes research done by other organizations for the EPA is right, and sometimes it is wrong.
Sometimes research done by my organization--by me personally--is right. I take pride in thinking that the research is almost always right. But sometimes it's wrong.
The source of funding is not relevant in science. What is relevant in science is who is right, and who is wrong.
"My problem is not that journalists think global warming is real; it's that they don't appear to have any good reason to think so, and are thus reduced to argument from authority -- which authority always turns out to be another journalist who lacks even basic scientific literacy."
But my point is that, if you don't have a recent PhD in the area, or have recently published, you're going to be reliant on Reliable Authorities on the Subject.
The organ you write for probably has some of the best science journalists around, so I'd take their interpretation of the current wisdom seriously.
Obviously, it's preferable if they can weigh the reliablity of the authorities; rather than presenting the views of Dr. O'Pinionphorsayle representing the Global Climate Coalition (who might not have published in the area for 20 years) as being equivalent to, say, a professor from, say, Caltech in atmospheric sciences who's acknowledged by his peers as being a leading researcher in the area.
Mark wrote:
"You can read how I got my predictions, and to a limited extent, how the IPCC got their predictions."
Why should I take an interest in your predictions, when I don't know what your qualifications are, or whether you've published in the field?
Also, you say, in http://pages.prodigy.net/mark.bahner/what_will_happen_to_us.htm
"It turns out that the IPCC hasn't ever made probabilistic (i.e. probability-based) estimates of what CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations, methane concentrations, and temperatures will be in the 21st century."
Instead, you criticize 'em 'cos they present 40-odd "stories". This is essentially scenario-based predictions, and is about the only way to do long-range predictions that don't rely on based on extrapolation of current trends (i.e. pulling numbers out of one's colon), which, BTW, your numbers appear to be based on; you even call it a "black box" approach.
You then criticise the IPCC's "probabilities" of emmissions, when in fact they explicitly *did not* present probability distributions of emissions in their report; instead, you're relying on Wrigley of Pew's Climate Center's probablity numbers, which he devised based on IPCC's scenarios; you then attribute Wrigley's numbers to the IPCC.
It's one barely step up from a straw man, Mark.
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 01:19 PM"Why should I take an interest in your predictions, when I don't know what your qualifications are, or whether you've published in the field?"
lessee..a quick google, and I find this:
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/id/hwirwste/pdf/risk/data/s0033.pdf
So, you're an engineer (probably either civil or, maybe, chemical), with some experience with modeling of risk assessment of solid waste units. I've done similar work, and it is *not relevant* to global climate models.
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 01:32 PMTom, I don't think we're disagreeing. Obviously, journalists are not going to do their own climate research. What bothers me is that for the citizen who is trying to stay informed, their stories rely far too much on "Well everybody knows that global warming is an enormous problem!" than "this is what scientist X says, this is the range of confidence, this is a range of estimates of what it would cost to fix it, and here's where they're doing more research to try and get a handle on it." An article on science that quotes the CPSI is a travesty. The author cherry-picked sources that agreed with her preconceptions in the strongest possible terms. You may not like Soon et. al., and they may well be wrong. But given their affiliations, they're certainly more reputable than the hacks-for-hire at a Nader group. My problem is that I have no way of evaluating whether they're right or not, because the journalists who write about them are clearly both biased against them, and completely ignorant of what makes for scientific credibility. I know the journalist is not going to be able to read the models and tell us which is right. But they could at least show us where the terms of debate are being framed among the moderate center of the scientific community -- and if you're going to trash Soon et. al., how about letting us know about the global warming scientist's who've been quoted saying they exaggerate for effect? And I agree with Mark about funding -- while it's possible that the funding affected their research, I'm rather shocked that Krugman is so positive that professors from Harvard and Berkely can be bought and paid for so easily. After all the time he spent telling us that he'd never sell his academic integrity, too.
Posted by: Jane Galt on August 8, 2003 02:03 PMActually, Tom, all it takes to be an effective skeptic is to point out bullshit when you see it, and to have the ability to detect said bullshit. It doesn't take a climatologist to figure out that handwaving in lieu of arguments based on data means there's something fishy going on.
Posted by: David Perron on August 8, 2003 02:03 PMwho really cares? I'll be dead before I see a 1 degree change, and it will still be to cold.
The earth naturaly is warming, the sun is getting bigger, the ice caps melt. hasn't been alot of volcanic activity, and we manage forest fires better, so we get less carbon and dust in the air than we did even 200 years ago.
Some disaster will happen, like a dozen mount.st.Helens at once, then you won't be whining about global warming... It will be Bushes fault too....
Posted by: Nathan Zachary on August 8, 2003 02:52 PMTom writes, "Why should I take an interest in your predictions, when I don't know what your qualifications are, or whether you've published in the field?"
Because "qualifications" and "whether you've published in the field" are NOT the issue in science.
A ***patent clerk*** predicted that, if an object was accelerated up to near the speed of light, time aboard that object would actually slow down. It was NOT relevant whether he was a lowly patent clerk when he made that ridiculous prediction. The only thing that was relevant was whether or not he was right.
I wrote, on my website: "It turns out that the IPCC hasn't ever made probabilistic (i.e. probability-based) estimates of what CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations, methane concentrations, and temperatures will be in the 21st century."
You responded, "Instead, you criticize 'em 'cos they present 40-odd "stories". This is essentially scenario-based predictions,..."
But the key thing is that they did NOT assign a probability to any of those predictions. If you have 40-odd predictions, and do NOT assign any probability to any of them, you're essentially not making a prediction at all.
If I give you a set of 40 "stories" (scenarios) by which my weight on August 8, 2004 might vary anywhere between 160 pounds and 240 pounds, that doesn't do you any good.
First of all, you'd need to know what my current weight is. And you'd want to know how my weight has varied in the past. Based on that information, you could assign reasonable probabilities to the scenarios. Absent some estimate of probabilities, "stories" are useless.
Tom continues, "You then criticise the IPCC's "probabilities" of emmissions, when in fact they explicitly *did not* present probability distributions of emissions in their report; instead, you're relying on Wrigley of Pew's Climate Center's probablity numbers, which he devised based on IPCC's scenarios; you then attribute Wrigley's numbers to the IPCC."
First of all, it's Wigley, not Wrigley. Thomas Wigley works at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). It's a non-profit organization involved in atmospheric research:
http://www.ucar.edu/ucar/about.html
Second, Thomas Wigley IS a member of the IPCC. In fact, he's one of the most important IPCC members on the issue of future trends in emissions and temperatures:
"Thomas Wigley has contributed substantially to the forthcoming IPCC Working Group I Second Assessment Report, especially on the carbon cycle, future climate, and sea level change and detection of anthropogenic effects on climate. Wigley's carbon cycle work deals with the issue of stabilization of CO2 concentrations, and he has documented the implications of alternative concentration pathways for emissions, climate, and sea level."
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/asr95/cas.html
Since the IPCC did NOT publish probabilities for their scenarios ("stories"), their scenarios are completely worthless. Only with probabilities do the scenarios have any predictive capability at all. Since Wigley is a prominent member of the IPCC, my website has his probabilities as representing the IPCC.
This is being CHARITABLE to the IPCC. But I will redo the wording on my website, to make it clearer (I thought it was already clear) that the probabilities are Wigley's, BASED on the IPCC scenarios.
But you seem to be basically ignoring the question at hand: I have made predictions, and Wigley (based on the IPCC) has made predictions. Who do YOU think is right, and why?
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 8, 2003 03:09 PMTom,
You said, "But when I comes to global
warming, I have to rely on the opinion
of, say, the folks working at the Pew
Center of Climate change, the American
Geophysical Union, the IPCC, and the
NAS. Why? 'Cos even with a vaguely
relevant technical education, it is
still outside of the an area where
I have sufficient relevant experience
or knowledge to evaluate the primary
literature, or where I keep up with
recent publications."
There's much to be said for paying
attention to people who dedicate their
lives to studying this sort of thing,
but even so that doesn't mean that
outsiders can't make a useful critical
contribution.
For example it doesn't demand mastery
of climatic modelling to notice that
current models can neither "predict"
the past nor the future. Nor does it
demand mastery of other fields to
notice that most places modelling,
whatever it is that is the subject,
isn't taken seriously until it can at
least "predict" the past.
Another simple observation that anyone
with a logical working mind can grasp
is that current climatic models do not
for example model clouds. Since clouds,
their extent and their distribution,
clearly have a big impact on temperature
and humidity, here's one easily
understandable factor that all by itself
explains why current climatic models have
such a poor record of reflecting reality.
I do not need to be in the field to make
these assertions, nor do you to understand
them. It would change things if a climatic
modeller jumped up and said, "This is wrong!
My model does 'predict' the past and/or
does model clouds." At that point I might
need to be much more knowledgeable to
evaluate the truth of such a claim. But
that's not where we are at, these two easy
to understand observations above are
something most climatic modelers will more
or less readily acknowledge.
I can make more complicated statements that
most of the population won't get. For example
I can note that the intrinsic warming of the
projected carbon dioxide increase is quite
small and that most of the projected warming
is based on an assumption that a little warming
(due to carbon dioxide) will pump more water
into the atmosphere which will cause a lot of
warming (well over 95% of the assumed effect).
Now as I say many people won't get that, but
there are quite a few science and engineering
types that will even though there could barely
begin to make sense of much of the detail of
a climatic model itself. Furthermore many of
these same engineering types will get it when
I say, "Wait a minute! This is an assumption
of positive feedback. If the atmosphere is
dynamically unstable like that, how in the
world did multicellular life survive for the
last 700 million years!"
These are useful questions and they deserve
an answer. It does not require that one be a
climatic modeller to make them or to understand
them.
When I was an undergraduate, we had an exercise in one of my classes taken from Paul Ehrlich’s work (from “The Limits to Growth,” I think). It consisted of a set of differential equations relating various quantities to one another (e.g., increasing “population” decreases “fossil resources;” increasing “pollution” decreases “agricultural output”). It was obviously simplified, but the individual assumptions seemed pretty reasonable.
The model predicted a catastrophic collapse of the human population by about 1990, and so too did Ehrlich. I’m sure today’s models are a lot better, but they couldn’t possibly be any worse.
Here is a long, interesting review of “The Skeptical Environmentalist:”
http://server.kozinski.com:8080/~alex/articles/gorewars.pdf
(if pdf link is down, try Google cache:)
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:kb8yqECGQNYJ:server.kozinski.com:8080/~alex/articles/gorewars.pdf+gore+wars&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
"Since Wigley is a prominent member of the IPCC, my website has his probabilities as representing the IPCC."
And that is not an intellectually honest thing to do. You are putting the views of one member of the IPCC's panel as representing the views of the IPCC.
"But you seem to be basically ignoring the question at hand: I have made predictions, and Wigley (based on the IPCC) has made predictions. Who do YOU think is right, and why?"
Wigley. I've read Wigley's work before, his work in the field is peer-reviewed, he gives a fair consideration of the views of the opposition, he has a deep understanding of the underlying models and he doesn't compare himself to Einstein.
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 04:17 PMWell, now, Tom. I thought at first you were interested in swapping ideas, but now I see you're rather more interested in throwing tomatoes. Did you really get that Mark was comparing himself to Einstein? I'm not sure how you could have read that into what he said.
That said, you're confusing the politics of scientific organizations with actual science. And you've provided zero basis for your asserion that Mark did anything intellectually dishonest.
Posted by: David Perron on August 8, 2003 04:31 PMTom writes, "And that is not an intellectually honest thing to do. You are putting the views of one member of the IPCC's panel as representing the views of the IPCC."
Tom, as I have already written, the IPCC's "stories" are completely useless without probabilities. That's the whole point that I just made. If the IPCC provides 40 "stories," and refuses to have the scientific integrity to assign probability to those stories, then who is to say that ALL of the stories don't have less than 0.000000000000001% chance of occurring? How does anyone know those "stories" are anymore realistic than the story of Jack in the Beanstalk, if they don't assign probabilities?
But beyond that, I've already agreed that it would be better to reword the page to say "Wigley (from IPCC)" rather than "IPCC."
I wrote, "But you seem to be basically ignoring the question at hand: I have made predictions, and Wigley (based on the IPCC) has made predictions. Who do YOU think is right, and why?"
Tom responded: "Wigley. I've read Wigley's work before, his work in the field is peer-reviewed, he gives a fair consideration of the views of the opposition, he has a deep understanding of the underlying models and he doesn't compare himself to Einstein."
It looks like you don't have the courage/honesty to answer my question. Character assassination is easy. Science is much harder.
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 8, 2003 04:50 PMDavid wrote:
'Did you really get that Mark was comparing himself to Einstein? I'm not sure how you could have read that into what he said.'
Mark wrote:
'Because "qualifications" and "whether you've published in the field" are NOT the issue in science.
A ***patent clerk*** predicted that, if an object was accelerated up to near the speed of light, time aboard that object would actually slow down. '
How else would you read it?
Now, when Einstein formulated Special Relativity was after he was awarded a PhD in physics fromt he University of Zurich, and he had published theorical physics papers. He wasn't in a university, but he was far
"That said, you're confusing the politics of scientific organizations with actual science."
No. When it comes to science, I'm split between a Kuhnian & Feyerbendian view of the history of science. I think that scientific knowledge is what *the experts in a given field* agree is scientific knowledge.
And I think the days a lay person could contribute to a particular developed scientific subdiscipline ended 100-150 years ago.
"And you've provided zero basis for your asserion that Mark did anything intellectually dishonest."
I think getting attributions correct would be a prerequisite for that, wouldn't you?
Wigley > IPCC.
If you want a specific objection to Mark's projections, here's one: it's that he took the trends over the past decade or so, and . My reading would be that in that reduction would be a series of one-off reductions in point sources of VOCs (e.g. regulation of methane discharges from remote wells, reductions in methane from landfill sources by low-water permeability caps, regulation of methane emissions from glycol dehydration units for natural gas pipelines). He admits himself that he used a "black box" model. Given that, a linear extrapolation of recent trends would under-predict methane concentrations.
Well, what I got from Mark's statements about Einstein was that right is right, regardless of how recognized you are in your field. Anything else you carried away from it is your baggage, not mine. Or Mark's.
Oh, and although he did attribute Wigley's work to IPCC, the IPCC has stated that Wigley's a major contributor. I'm not sure how, if Wigley's a major contributor, their work could fail to reflect his. Any ideas?
As far as not attributing correctly, Mark's already admitted that this was an oversight. Are you saying that any oversight can be chalked up to intellectual dishonesty? If so, I hereby dub thee intellectually dishonest for your earlier misspelling of Wigley.
Not really; that would be petty.
Posted by: David Perron on August 8, 2003 05:03 PM"If the IPCC provides 40 "stories," and refuses to have the scientific integrity to assign probability to those stories,"
OK then. Given your scientific integrity, maybe you could tell me the market penetration you assumed fuel cells would achieve in 2050. Do you think the stack will be polymer-based membrane, or do you think the price & price volatility of platinum-group metals will force us down the solid-oxide path, given that the current cost of PGM metals in a PEM fuel cell is ~$300/kW, wheras current IC engines are $30/kW?
"then who is to say that ALL of the stories don't have less than 0.000000000000001% chance of occurring? How does anyone know those "stories" are anymore realistic than the story of Jack in the Beanstalk, if they don't assign probabilities?"
I don't think you understand the idea of scenario planning. Some companies, e.g. Shell, do long-range planning using alternate scenarios of the future, based on different "stories" of what the future might look like, based on e.g. demographics, governmental character & regulation, rate of technological change.
Do Shell assign probabilities to those scenarios? No. But they still use 'em in planning their R&D and long-range strategy. So they're prepared for a certain contingency if it occurs. Seems to have worked well for them.
Look, if the IPCC *had* assigned probabilities, you go hunting for reasons why they're wrong. Why can I say this? Because you went looking for probabilities you could criticize when you couldn't find them in the IPCC report, and you (misleadingly) attributed them to the IPCC.
Remind me again why I should trust your work over Wigley's?
"Oh, and although he did attribute Wigley's work to IPCC, the IPCC has stated that Wigley's a major contributor. I'm not sure how, if Wigley's a major contributor, their work could fail to reflect his. Any ideas?"
Yes, how about this: Brad Delong was in the Clinton administration's Council of Economic Advisers, therefore what he writes in a private capacity on his weblog must represent the economic policy of the Clinton administration.
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 05:23 PMOh, excuse me! I didn't realize you were answering the question, Tom. My sincere apology for that last post. (Ms. "Galt," if you'd remove my last post, I'd be much obliged.)
You think Wigley is right, because:
a) "His work in the field is peer-reviewed."--->Yes, his work in the field is peer reviewed. So is Patrick Michaels' work (published in the journal, "Climate Research"). But Patrick Michaels' work reaches very different conclusions:
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/2003/vca3.htm
b) "he gives a fair consideration of the views of the opposition,"
Can you cite an example of this behavior, especially regarding people who disagree regarding 21st century predictions for atmospheric methane and CO2 concentrations, and 21st century temperature predictions?
c) "he has a deep understanding of the underlying models..."
Again, so does Patrick Michaels.
d) "and he doesn't compare himself with Einstein."
That's what I was referring to about the "character assassination." I never compared myself with Einstein.
Just in case you aren't aware, if you think Wigley is right, that means you think that there is a 50% chance that the atmospheric methane concentration in 2030 will be 2490 ppb...as compared to the 2000 value of 1752 ppb.
Considering the fact that atmospheric methane concentrations have plateaued, that seems rather unlikely.
It also means that you think that there is a 50% chance that CO2 will increase to 438 ppm by 2030. Considering that such a rise would represent 23 ppm per decade from 200 to 2030, that also seems rather unlikely.
Finally, it means you think that the (surface?) temperature in 2100 has only a 5% probability of rising by LESS than 1.68 degrees Celsius. Considering that the rise in the 20th century was less than half that much, THAT seems extremely unlikely.
If you, or Tom Wigley, or anyone who thinks Tom Wigley's predictions are correct would like to bet on the matter, there's a website we could do it:
http://www.longbets.org
Tom writes, "Given that, a linear extrapolation of recent trends would under-predict methane concentrations."
In fact, I didn't linearly extrapolate recent trends in methane concentrations. A linear extrapolation in methane concentrations would predict that methane concentrations would DECREASE in the future. See the "growth rate" portion of the Figure:
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/gallery/index.php?currDir=./Data_Figures&pageType=image&image=ch4trend_global.jpg
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 8, 2003 05:50 PM
"Oh, excuse me! I didn't realize you were answering the question, Tom. My sincere apology for that last post. (Ms. "Galt," if you'd remove my last post, I'd be much obliged.)"
Don't worry, I'm thick-skinned.
"You think Wigley is right, because:
a) "His work in the field is peer-reviewed."--->Yes, his work in the field is peer reviewed. So is Patrick Michaels' work(published in the journal, "Climate Research")."
Mark, you didn't ask me to compare Wigley's and Michael's work; you asked me whether to compare Wigley and your work.
BTW, I think Michaels has been published in other journals. You can get a sample of his "Satanic Gases" work here:
http://www.catostore.org/pdfs/satanic5.pdf
I'd say we're in Feyerbendian country. I don't, and I don't think you have either, the background to really sift through the models & assumptions that Michaels & Wigley and others in the field use. So we have to pick the authorities we trust.
I feel more comfortable with my choice, 'cos, outside of Michaels, that guy at MIT, Wentz, Soon, and a few others, there are a limited number of practising climatologists who are GW skeptics. And many who are skeptics (like Michaels) have nailed their ideological beliefs to the mast. Which they're entitled to do; just as I am entitled to discount their views. (Let's face it, it'd be pretty f**king surprising if two Cato scholars came out with "yup, there's a problem; looks like we'll need the gubmint to internalise this economic externality".)
On Soon's paper (from Jane's earlier comment): I think their meta-analysis didn't quantitively assess the proxy data they used; a study by Jones of UEA and Mann of U. Virginia did, and reached opposite conclusions, Mann and Jones said of the Soon paper 'Nothing in the paper undermines in any way the conclusion of earlier studies that the average temperature of the late twentieth century in the Northern Hemisphere was anomalous against the background of the past millennium,'
cf. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007A664-3534-1F03-BA6A80A84189EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2
"d) "and he doesn't compare himself with Einstein."
That's what I was referring to about the "character assassination." I never compared myself with Einstein."
My apologies. The reference to the patent clerk above seemed a bit self-aggrandizing, and reminded me of Sagan's "They laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the clown" aphorism.
But you were inaccurate: Einstein was not an outsider to theoretical physics in 1905; he'd published several papers and had a PhD in the field, even if he did not have a university appointment at the time.
"Just in case you aren't aware, if you think Wigley is right, that means you think that there is a 50% chance that the atmospheric methane concentration in 2030 will be 2490 ppb...as compared to the 2000 value of 1752 ppb."
"Considering the fact that atmospheric methane concentrations have plateaued, that seems rather unlikely."
You're extrapolating previous trends into the future, c.f. my comments on VOC point sources above. (Now, as it turns out, I will be doing something similar in a current project, but only at the insistence of the client).
"OK then. Given your scientific integrity, maybe you could tell me the market penetration you assumed fuel cells would achieve in 2050. Do you think the stack will be polymer-based membrane,..."
My model didn't include those factors. As I wrote on my website, I don't think such models give good predictions...at least based on the IPCC's predictions for worldwide CO2 emissions.
Since you seem interested in people with "credentials," Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University--a leading expert on "decarbonization" of the U.S. economy--has made essentially the same criticism of the IPCC predictions that I've made.
http://www.globalwarming.org/econup/econ2-19-03.htm
"Look, if the IPCC *had* assigned probabilities, you (sic) go hunting for reasons why they're wrong."
No, that's absolutely wrong. If the IPCC had assigned following probabilities:
1) Warming greater than 1.68 degrees Celsius by 2100--->Less than 40%,
2) Warming greater than 3.06 degrees Celsius by 2100---->Less than 5%, and
3) Warming greater than 4.87 degrees Celsius by 2100---->Less than 1%...
...then I would have totally have agreed with them, because their predictions would have matched mine.
"In fact, I didn't linearly extrapolate recent trends in methane concentrations. A linear extrapolation in methane concentrations would predict that methane concentrations would DECREASE in the future."
You're making that assertion on two years of data?
I may have overestimated you.
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 06:19 PMArtDOdger,
That definitely sounds like "The Limits to Growth." However, it was not done by Paul Ehrlich (though it reaches conclusions similar to his). It was done by a group of wealthy people who called themselves The Club of Rome. I think the model was mostly done by Jay Forrester (who had previously done a similar model, which can be found in his book "Urban Dynamics").
Posted by: Roger Sweeny on August 8, 2003 06:33 PM"I feel more comfortable with my choice, 'cos, outside of Michaels, that guy at MIT, Wentz"
Sorry, wrong side of the satellite-decay debate. I meant Christy & Spencer, instead of Wentz.
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 06:34 PM"Mark, you didn't ask me to compare Wigley's and Michael's work; you asked me whether to compare Wigley and your work."
Did you actually read the information I gave you on Patrick Michaels' work?
He makes the exact same points I do, regarding CO2 emissions and CO2 concentrations:
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/2003/vca3.htm
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/2003/vca3.htm#fig1
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/2003/vca3.htm#fig3
So if you disagree with my predictions in this area, you are also essentially disagreeing with Patrick Michaels' predictions.
"I don't, and I don't think you have either, the background to really sift through the models & assumptions that Michaels & Wigley and others in the field use. So we have to pick the authorities we trust."
No, that's not right. I trust no one. Seriously. That's the whole meaning of the word, "skeptic." I don't "trust" Patrick Michaels. I agree with him when he's right, and disagree with him when he's wrong. (I don't even trust myself. I agree with myself when I'm right, and disagree when I'm wrong. ;-))
For example, the paper of Michaels' that I cited has TEMPERATURE projections, in addition to CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations. Those temperature projections I don't agree with; they're too high.
"I feel more comfortable with my choice, 'cos, outside of Michaels, that guy at MIT, Wentz, Soon, and a few others, there are a limited number of practising climatologists who are GW skeptics."
This is the problem with meaningless phrases. EVERY true scientist ought to be a "skeptic." If there are GW "believers," they aren't engaged in science.
Further, it doesn't even convey useful knowledge to say the phrase "GW skeptic." What does that mean? Can you outline what a "GW skeptic" thinks...i.e., what are the views of a "GW skeptic?"
"Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University--a leading expert on "decarbonization" of the U.S. economy--has made essentially the same criticism of the IPCC predictions that I've made.
http://www.globalwarming.org/econup/econ2-19-03.htm"
And he gets the ratio of H:C in wood spectacularly wrong when talking about decarbonization. Wood is mostly made up of cellulose, hemicelluloses (carbohydrates) & lignins. None of these compound classes have a H:C ratio of 1:10, as Ausubel asserts. (Besides which, he should be using moles carbon/kJ, anyway).
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 06:46 PMI didn't address this before, but as Roger Sweeney noted, Limits to Growth wasn't by Paul Ehrlich.
The Limits to Growth (which was a book about computer modeling of future population, natural resources and environmental fates) was by Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens III.
It did indeed make a bunch of wrong predictions.
Then they published Beyond the Limits, which made a bunch more predictions, which will also almost certainly be wrong. But since they were so wrong the first time, they made it clear this time that they aren't actually predicting anything. Like the IPCC, they insist they are just presenting scenarios. (Or "stories"...as in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.)
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 8, 2003 06:50 PM"And he gets the ratio of H:C in wood spectacularly wrong when talking about decarbonization. Wood is mostly made up of cellulose, hemicelluloses (carbohydrates) & lignins."
I think he knows that:
http://phe.rockefeller.edu/PDF_FILES/Wood_HC_Ratio.pdf
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 8, 2003 07:01 PM
"If you, or Tom Wigley, or anyone who thinks Tom Wigley's predictions are correct would like to bet on the matter, there's a website we could do it:
http://www.longbets.org"
I've a better idea for a bet: Why not buy property on what's now considered a 100-year floodplain.
Tom (at the top of a hill 300 feet up, on bedrock, with a house bolted on a concrete foundation, thank you.)
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 07:03 PM""And he gets the ratio of H:C in wood spectacularly wrong when talking about decarbonization. Wood is mostly made up of cellulose, hemicelluloses (carbohydrates) & lignins."
I think he knows that:
http://phe.rockefeller.edu/PDF_FILES/Wood_HC_Ratio.pdf"
Good to know someone else rubbed his nose in it. Like I said, he should have used mol carbon/kJ (or suchlike).
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 08:18 PM"I've a better idea for a bet: Why not buy property on what's now considered a 100-year floodplain."
I was serious. In fact, having had a chance to jog and think about the matter, I'll demonstrate to you just how wrong Wigley (based on IPCC) is:
According to Wigley (based on IPCC), there is a 50% chance that methane concentrations in 2060 will be 2490 ppb. (Note: This is from Table 3 of "What will happen to us on my website.)
Since the methane concentration in 2000 was 1752 ppb, that means that concentrations will increase by 738 ppb in 60 years. That's an average of 12.3 ppb per year.
If you truly think that Wigley is right, you'd be willing to bet me $1, every year until 2060, that methane concentrations will rise at least 12.3 ppb each year.
Would you like to bet? If not, get Tom Wigley. I'm callin' him out. :-)
P.S. This gets back to a point I made on Brad DeLong's website: the only reason Tom Wigley and the IPCC are willing to make their ridiculous predictions is that they have no money riding on the issue. If there was a futures market, they definitely wouldn't be stupid enough to waste their money on backing their predictions.
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 8, 2003 08:33 PMLessee...(consults CRC handbook & Perry's)
Methane is around 20,000 BTU/lb. that gives us 27,000 BTU/lb. carbon.
Wood is around 8,000-9,000 BTU/lb. That gives us 20,000-24,000 BTU/lb. carbon.
Hmmm...now I know why Dr. Ausubel preferred to use 1:10 "H:C" ratio for wood and 4:1 H:C ratio for methane when presenting his "decarbonization" thesis.
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 08:49 PM"Good to know someone else rubbed his nose in it."
As far as I know, no one "rubbed his nose in it," Tom. He thinks he's right. He is explaining his ratio as follows:
Wood is approximately 80% cellulose and 20% lignin.
The water in cellulose gets driven off such that when combusted it's essentially pure carbon (charcoal). The lignin, after also driving off water, is essentially 1 atom of carbon and per 1 atom of hydrogen.
Combining 80% of pure carbon with 20% of 1 atom of hydrogen per atom of carbon, the effective H:C ratio is 1 to 10.
That sounds reasonable to me. What do *you* think it should be?
"Like I said, he should have used mol carbon/kJ (or suchlike)."
The whole point of the effort is simply to show that there's a lot more carbon per unit energy produced when burning wood or coal than when burning natural gas. So redo the numbers however you like...they should STILL come up with the same general answer that there's a lot more carbon per unit energy produced when burning wood or coal than natural gas.
"Wood is around 8,000-9,000 BTU/lb. That gives us 20,000-24,000 BTU/lb. carbon."
Sorry, that's for wood fuel pellets. More like 6,000 BTU/pound for dry wood; so that's 16,000 BTU/lb carbon.
On methane: eyeballing the data, we see a ~8 ppb/year increase. Don't bet too much against Wigley.
" So redo the numbers however you like...they should STILL come up with the same general answer that there's a lot more carbon per unit energy produced when burning wood or coal than natural gas."
But China has mostly lignite..
Posted by: Tom on August 8, 2003 09:01 PMI found the Salon article remarkable for completely ignoring what we're supposed to be doing about Global Warming. Apparently it's something ExxonMobil, Ford, GM, and other evil corporations don't want us to do. (BTW, is the "energy biz" really "the largest industry in the world"? Bigger than the "food biz"? How about the "government biz", or the "war biz"?)
Granted that most climatologists are willing to agree that human-caused CO2 increases are having some effect (or will have some effect) on global temperatures, that's not much help in deciding what to do. Kyoto only envisions rolling back CO2 emissions to 1990 levels, which would have a pretty crippling effect on current US energy production, less on Europe's, and not affect the Third World countries at all. But if manmade CO2 is going to significantly, adversely affect the climate, Kyoto won't do more than slow it down slightly.
I still maintain that we don't need to worry about Global Warming until the environmental groups start talking up the benefits of nuclear power.
But China has mostly lignite..
Doesn't Kyoto let China pretty much entirely off the hook as regards greenhouse gas production, anyway?
Posted by: David Perron on August 9, 2003 03:30 AMYes, how about this: Brad Delong was in the Clinton administration's Council of Economic Advisers, therefore what he writes in a private capacity on his weblog must represent the economic policy of the Clinton administration.
No. If Brad wrote something in private that ran counter to work he did under the Clinton administration, then I might think you have a point. But that would then impeach DeLong's credibility, wouldn't it?
Either Wigley's private work supports that of IPCC, or it doesn't. If it does, then I'm not sure where you think there's an issue. If it doesn't, then there is an issue of consistency and integrity, but not with Mark.
The original subject of jane's comment wasn't
whether global warming will occur but why journalists
report things the way they do. Some years back
I had the privilege to work with several journalists
who were covering NIH (the National Institutes of
Health.)
One of the things that surprised me was the number
of times Jeremy Rifkin was cited. Now Rifkin at
this time had absently no formal background in the
subjects he was asked to comment on, never having
worked in these fields, never having taught on the
subjects at a university and without even a relevant
undergraduate degree. Perhaps even worse, as could
easily be verified, he had a long history of making,
interspersed among his authorative opinions, assertions
of fact that could readily be proven false -- by those
of a scientific mind.
At the same time there were literally hundreds of
scientists working in the relevant subject areas who
would have been delighted -- it would have made their
weeks truely -- to have been called up and asked their
opinion. My rough impression is that Jeremy Rifkin
was being cited more frequently than all these
scientists together.
Now why?
Part of it was simply that many scientists if they are
called up will talk for a long time in a language that
they think is transparent. The journalist at the other
end is having great trouble understanding but this isn't
apparent to the scientist who thinks he's making
everything clear. The end product is often an
article that makes the scientist in question look
ridiculus, because the message reported doesn't make
sense, or the scientist is asserted to have said
something that corresponds remarkably to whatever the
journalist understood of the subject before the scientist
in question had even been interviewed.
Jeremy Rifkin on the other hand was comprehensible,
said things that jibed with the worldview the journalist
already held, and even better made news by making
statements that incrementally expanded on and confirmed
the aforesaid worldview.
Another factor is that the politics and worldview
of the journalists in question definitely tended
towards a certain direction. I've noticed that if
someone believes they know what the "truth" is, they
can be remarkably resistant to reporting on a scientist
that says something to the contrary.
I think all of the above is basically human nature
and near impossible to change.
Something that I imagine could be changed is for a
news organization to deliberately try to have a staff
with a diversity of worldviews. The downside of this
might be a staff that fights like cats and dogs. The
upside might be a diversity of viewpoints that partially
correct each other.
David Perron,
You ask, "Doesn't Kyoto let China pretty much entirely off the hook as regards greenhouse gas production, anyway?"
Yes, "developing" countries (like China and India) are not covered by the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto very deliberately only applies to "developed" nations. It was felt that applying it to poorer countries would 1) be kind of cheeky, because they were putting out so much less greenhouse gases than the richer countries, and 2) would absolutely doom the Protocol, because the poorer countries would not ratify it.
This is one reason that Kyoto will have so little actual effect, even if the US were to sign and abide by it. All honest proponents of Kyoto agree with this.
However, they hope that with time 1) developing countries will come on board and reduce their GHG emissions, and 2) developed countries will accept lower and lower emissions limits.
Posted by: Roger Sweeny on August 9, 2003 03:45 PMThere seems to be a great deal of home surrounding the global warming community, Roger. Hope that the relatively undeveloped countries will, instead of continuing to burn wood in their stoves, do...something else. Hope that some figure in the pro- or anti- global warming scientific community will publish something, anything conclusive that's not deeply flawed. Most likely, I think, hope that they can get a great deal of scientific funding from the government to work their pet research problem. Just a guess; I see few other reasons for the abominable science being done in this area.
Posted by: David Perron on August 9, 2003 08:57 PM"it doesn't demand mastery of climatic modelling to notice that current models can either "predict"
the past nor the future. Nor does it demand mastery of other fields to notice that most places modelling, whatever it is that is the subject, isn't taken seriously until it can at
least "predict" the past."
Amen, and amen.
If any statistician claimed to be able to predict the future by using a model which couldn't predict the past, he'd be laughed out of the room.
Not only have climatological models (eg. the Canadian and European ones) been unable to predict the past, their level of accuracy has sometimes been less than 50% -- ie. you'd have a better chance of an accurate prediction by tossing a coin.
WHEN these guys can put a model together which works, I'll worry about what they have to say.
I do find it interesting, however, that "global cooling" became "global warming" became "global climate change" inside the space of thirty years.
What is also clear is that a great deal of funding, and employment, is dependent on global climate concern -- and if we discover that mankind's influence on global climate is essentially irrelevant compared to, say, volcanic eruptions or the Sun's variable distance from the Earth (neither of which we can control), then a whole lot of people are going to be out of work.
Forgive me for sounding skeptical. I just follow the money, and try to apply a little common sense.
I reject utterly, however, the thought that only "experts" can make pronouncements in a field -- it's plain intellectual arrogance -- and is akin to dismissing the cry of the little boy that the Emperor had no clothes on, because the little boy wasn't a fashion designer.
Posted by: Kim du Toit on August 9, 2003 10:29 PMLet me throw something else into this argument at this late hour: Presentation of the GWT in textbooks. (This is not an e-mail on textbook criticism per se, which is a whole 'nother subject; Diane Ravitch does it best in her new book; send her your posts on the general issue!)
And this as I sit here & read that the Networks have all used the current heat wave to "prove" the GWT, whereas less than 6 Months ago I was shoveling 30 inches of snow in my daughter's driveway in the North East. (Anecdotal evidence is not enough, guys.) And, I have a "recovered memory" (as do others who've posted here) of being told 30 or so years ago that Global Freezing was gonna get me if I lived too much longer.
To the point: Based on my wife's having worked in the field, I feel that when someone dares question the deeply held (to borrow from Chuckie Schumer), but factually unproven, beliefs of textbook people, authors, editors, producers, etc. (TBP), he/she is compared to the witch hunters that Arthur Miller was warning us against in The Crucible, which somehow gets revived every few yrs on B'way.
The problem is that some who are really quite intelligent & well read & who are really quite able to absorb & judge data supporting GWT find it an uphill battle to get their case put forth in what all would, certainly, agree is a most important area: the textbooks used to educate our young. The objectors, not being empowered (to use a liberal cant phrase) in the textbook area, are often reduced to laughing at the TBP's dishonesty like some Czech underground playwrights when the Commies ran the show.
So, last year, acc to a fair & balanced (to coin another phrase) article from the NYTimes (not some VRWC screed) a woman in TX, on behalf of a Conservative foundation, asked that, in effect, a warning label be added to a textbook's polemic in favor of Global Warming, specifically, a note to the effect that GWT was just that, a theory, & a note that some scientists either didn't accept GWT or didn't think that it was the Big Thing the TBP claimed it was.
Now, pls note that the woman didn't say "gobble, gobble warming" & was not a caricature of the angry, fundamentalist, extremist, biased know-nothing, e.g., she didn't want added a phrase like "Jesus is so cool that his love would overcome any GWT problems". No, all she asked for was a reasonable, scientific caveat to the textbook's one-sided presentation of the GWT as, we might say, Revealed Truth, & the removal of a sentence indicating that "immediate action should be taken to curb" GW.
The TBP, ritualistically claiming that only they had science & reason on their side, threw their whole arsenal against her, making her out to be an angry, fundamentalist, extremist, biased know-nothing.
When I pointed out to an individual who is a TBP how Crucible-like the TBP's conduct was, this individual endorsed it! Apparently 'cause said individual's brother-in-law, the scientist (but not a climatologist), had marshaled material to bolster the GWT, which said individual proceeded to dump on me, as if I were some dolt who was unaware of it & said individual then proceeded to reject any attempted rebuttal of mine. All that is fine, but the issue wasn't whether said individual was gonna convince me about GWT or vice versa, it's about (a) TBPs evading their responsibility to provide for their ultimate customers, the taxpayers, a forum for ideas & (b) TBPs constantly repeating their beliefs as if they were revealed truth & pretending that all doubters are loonies. And TBP wonder why the public objects. We're not that loony.
Truism: TBPs (& anyone else) who espouse a theory have the burden of proof, & intellectual honesty demands that theory holders identify their theory as such, above all, in a textbook, to educate the kiddies, & in this instance to allow 'em some hope that they'll make it to adulthood w/o burning up.
Ungullible
PS The following are exerpts from the NYT article:
"Among other things, those books were criticized ... for saying there was scientific consensus that global warming was changing the earth's climate."
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"At the suggestion of the ... [conservatives] the ... [textbook] company rewrote the sentence 'Destruction of the tropical rain forest could affect weather over the entire planet' so that it now reads, 'Tropical rain forest ecosystems impact weather over the entire planet.' It also added these sentences: 'In the past, the earth has been much warmer