Hat Tip to Tamerlane... Watch this artful debunking of the global warmers deniers. The right wing eruption after the hacked emails 'debunking global warming' were released - are now being debunked...as predicted. Conservatives cherry picked and misrepresented...as usual. All sides are guilty in the long history of cherry picking and misrepresenting - but conservatives have a particularly strong affinity for attacking science when the it has the gall to rattle their world view....but Darwin, Galileo and the rest always win in the end... Read the post here.
Whether global warming is "true" or not is largely beside the point. Change is coming. We Americans will have to change the way we live - and soon. The "drill here drill now" cheering section needs a cold shower. Ronald Reagan did not make nice with the Saudis because he felt some need to preserve vast untapped oil reserves in the U.S. We don't have any. He did it because they have what we do not. The Bushes didn't involved our military in the Middle East because they were worried about Kuwaiti princes and Iraqi "freedom". They did it because they have what we do not. Carter did not declare the flow of Middle East oil an American national security concern because he wanted a bunch of sheiks to get rich. He did it because they have what we do not.
Open up the Florida and California coasts. Open all of Alaska. Boil all the tar sands in Colorado. Sure, we will extract more oil. But it won't be enough and it won't be cheap. That party is over. We change the way we live or we fight wars around the globe for oil. Those are the options. Housing bubbles, market manipulation, inflation, interest rates, deflation - all flotsam and jetsam in this discussion. Energy is the issue- finally and absolutely.
We are in a horrible fix. One quarter into an alleged recovery and oil is at $75 a barrel. Anything remotely close to a genuine economic turnaround and oil will shoot past $100 again...killing the recovery. This cycle will become the new normal.
Also, someone will eventually have to break it to the Chinese and Indians that they cannot all own cars and shop in mega malls. The world's remaining carbon based energy supply won't sustain it.
Whether rising oceans or depleting oil reserves ushers in the new reality first is academic to 99% of the planet's population. There is no replacement for cheap oil. None. Without it the economy shrinks drastically. We move, eat, medicate, and sustain our entire way of life with still relatively cheap oil. The era of cheap oil is ending. Everyone from the peak oil doomers to the U.S. government is clear on this inconvenient truth, even if our political leaders won't cop to it in public. We either build realistic bridges to a sustainable future now or geological reality will strand us in a century of war and deprivation. Of course, there is another - horrific - solution: cut the planet's population in half.
Even if the entire body of evidence behind global warming turns out to be false - the conundrum of how 7 billion of us survives going forward - much less thrives - remains.
The deniers of Global Warming ("GW") like to present themselves as "skeptics" who are merely practicing scientific open-mindedness to the evidence presented by "alarmists". While I question the Deniers' open-mindedness, I make no apologies for raising the alarm about GW. The end result of our unmitigated raising of global temperatures is cataclysmic disruption of our civilization followed by the eventual extinction of all life on Earth.
The evidence on GW is unassailable. Near-universal consensus exists among the scientific community as to the manmade origin of GW and its dire consequences. The climate data used to arrive at this conclusion is copious, covers hundreds of thousands (in some instances millions) of years, and is entirely self-consistent. The model that was developed to explain this data is robust, and has proven itself highly accurate both in predicting ongoing climate change and at explaining newly discovered historical data. (1)
GW Deniers attack this evidence by casting doubt on: 1) the consensus; 2) the data; and 3) the model. When exposed to scrutiny, all three attacks are exposed as shameful deceptions.
1. The Consensus Every major scientific organization in the world has issued statements stressing the reality of GW and the urgent need to address it. With one exception-the National Academy of Sciences had its original statement rewritten by the Bush Administration (2)-no legitimate organization has ever expressed any doubt on the subject.
In reply, the Deniers can only offer an handful of fabricated "petitions":
Senator James Inhofe's list of 400 "prominent scientists" who doubt GW, including 44 TV weathermen, 84 persons in the employ of the fossil fuel lobby, and 90 persons with no scientific credentials whatsoever (3);
Statement by Atmospheric Scientists, drafted in 1992 by the oil lobby, with 46 signatories of dubious credentials; rejects GW based on the economic impacts of combating it; suggests sunspots are the cause of GW (4);
Oregon Petition signed by 17,000 "scientists", defined as anyone holding a B.S. degree; author admits that none of the signatories are climate specialists; claims GW is beneficial to mankind; petition was funded by ExxonMobil; author, Fred Seitz, is a former tobacco industry advisor who has denied the health risks of smoking (5);
Leipzig Declaration signed by 80 "scientists", including 25 TV weathermen and several coal and oil industry figures; all key data contained in the declaration has been invalidated; rejects GW based on the economic impacts of combating it; author, S. Fred Singer, is a former weather satellite technician, lists spurious credentials on his resume, was dismissed from his teaching position at the U. of VA, has denied acid rain and ozone layer depletion; Singer's activities are financed by Rev. Moon's Unification Church and by ExxonMobil, Shell, Unocal and ARCO (6).
2. The Data Deniers nit-pick at the scientific data while offering shockingly little of their own. The Deniers' refutations of the data are either non-sequiturs or simply incorrect, as outlined by BBC News here.
The Denier's own data is limited to one study by Roy Spencer, a meteorologist at the University of Alabama. In 1989 Spencer compiled weather balloon readings, concluding that increased CO2 in the atmosphere had a cooling effect. (7) But to extrapolate Spencer's solitary study on short-term, local weather to reject legion of data collected on long-term, global climate, is naive at best. Even worse, Spencer was forced to admit in 2005 that he had fudged his results, and the readings actually showed that CO2 increases local temperatures. (8)
Relying on Spencer as their champion does not help the Denier's credibility. Spencer is a member of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, "a coalition of religious leaders, clergy, theologians, scientists, academics, and other policy experts committed to bringing a proper and balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development." As host of an Intelligent Design radio show, Spencer rejects Evolution outright, and favors the teaching of Creationism in public science classes. Spencer also denies that DDT has any negative environmental impact. (9). Finally, Spencer is a fellow at three think tanks funded by ExxonMobil and the tobacco lobby. In addition to denying GW, these think tanks also deny the health risk of cigarette smoke. (10)
3. The Model Deniers claim that the accepted GW model is invalidated by Spencer's falsified data. The best "alternate model" they can come up with is some sloppy amateur formulas - thoroughly debunked by professional mathematicians - from a Viscount Monckton, whose scientific credentials are limited to a degree in classical literature. (11)
As a last resort, deniers address the irrefutable link between manmade CO2 and global climate change with the polemic "correlation does not prove causation." That statement is prima facie true. Just because the increases in global temperature precisely match human-driven increases in CO2 doesn't necessarily mean they are caused by them. But it doesn't much help our understanding unless the Deniers offer a plausible alternative: either how increased temps somehow cause increased manmade CO2, or what is the mystery third causation that affects both.
Healthy Skepticism GW Deniers present themselves as "skeptics" who keep an open mind about GW. In truth, they rejected GW from the get-go. They are, as the Skeptic's Dictionary (www.Skepdic.com) defines them, mere "contrarians" - "someone who poses as a skeptic, refusing to accept consensus conclusions...on the ground that there is still some uncertainty." Skepdic notes that "in the vast majority of modern cases, scientific consensus can be expected to hold up under scrutiny precisely because it was reached through a lengthy and rigorous process of professional skepticism and criticism." Contrarian demands for "endless analysis of issues to prevent any action from being taken" only benefit "polluters and anyone else opposed to government regulations..." Skepdic concludes that "the contrarian simply wants to throw dust in people's eyes so they can't see what's really going on..." (12)
Michael Shermer, director of The Skeptics Society, warns that "some people believe that skepticism is the rejection of new ideas..." Shermer instead sees skepticism as "a method, not a position. Ideally, skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true." Shermer rejects the Socratic definition of skepticism - "All I know is that I know nothing" - as "sterile and unproductive." Shermer stresses that "modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, which involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. A claim becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement." For Shermer, the "key to skepticism is to continuously and vigorously apply the methods of science to navigate the treacherous straits between 'know nothing' skepticism and 'anything goes' credulity." (13)
As is plain to see, GW Deniers are not true skeptics applying scientific methodology. They are contrarians, scam artists in the employ of the oil lobby, big tobacco, and biblical literalists. Don't let them throw dust in your eyes any longer.
DATA (in song because this whole thing can get boring)
++ "He out shocked in every single way. He'll stop at nothing just to get his political say" ++
James Hansen is a well known guy in the climate change/global warming debate. He was one of the first scientists to raise concern in the late 80s. At the time of his warning, there was no significant evidence of global warming leading some to doubt it. While Hansen acknowledged the problem, "it is clear that a large part of the eventual greenhouse warming owing to anthropogenic gases already in the atmosphere has not yet occurred", he still believed that there was a "climate time bomb" due to growing green house gases. In fact, it was worse not seeing a response "because the positive climate feedbacks associated with a high sensitivity only come into play in response to the warming." Does that make sense? Increases gases = increased warming = increased feedback. Despite that fact that we had no evidence, if we waited to gather more information, the continued buildup would make things worse. We couldn't afford to wait. He made those statements in 1990, yet they sound so similar to arguments I hear today.
Hansen made news in Nov 16 2008 in the UK Telegraph: "A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record..."
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running…
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with."
Hmmm, October was not the hottest on record in 2008 despite inflammatory claim to the contrary. And scientists aren't doing quality control with the data they are getting? That's disturbing. If that's the case, then why should we trust the data given to us before 2008? Maybe some of their other claims were wrong too. Oh wait.
++ "Me mind on fire. Me soul on fire. Feeling hot hot hot" ++
Wasn't 1998 supposed to be the hottest year on record? It was everywhere wasn't it? Now there is a reasonable explanation for why 1998 was so hot, but some people did not report that. And if they did, they glossed over it. Why? Because global warming is hot. It's sexy. It sells.
USA Today. Jan 12 1999
"Part of the warmth of 1998 was because of one of the strongest El Ninos that the 20th century has ever seen. El Nino, a pool of warm ocean water off the coast of Latin America, affects climate worldwide.
But some scientists view the heat of 1998 as an indication of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, which are released by factories and cars. Many scientists say the gases are building up and trapping heat in the Earth's atmophere."
"El Nino was certainly a contributor," says Tom Karl, senior scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C."...The only explanation consistent with the data is an increase in greenhouse gases."
Actually it turns out that El Nino was a main factor for the warmth during 1998.
National Geographic Magazine. 1999
"It rose out of the tropical Pacific in late 1997, bearing more energy than a million Hiroshima bombs. By the time it had run its course eight months later, the giant El Nino of 1997-98 had deranged weather patterns around the world...
El Nino's abnormal effects on the main components of climate-sunshine, temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, humidity, precipitation, cloud formation, and ocean currents-changed weather patterns across the equatorial Pacific and in turn around the globe. Indonesia and surrounding regions suffered months of drought. Forest fires burned furiously in Sumatra, Borneo, and Malaysia...Temperatures reached 108°F (42°C) in Mongolia"
To be fair, NASA said they were misquoted about 1998 being the warmest year:
"Contrary to some statements flying around the internet, there is no effect on the rankings of global temperature. Also our prior analysis had 1934 as the warmest year in the U.S. , and it continues to be the warmest year, both before and after the correction to post 2000 temperatures. However, as we note in that paper, the 1934 and 1998 temperature are practically the same, the difference being much smaller than the uncertainty."
What about the claim that the ten hottest years were since 1990? Isn't that what Al Gore said? When that movie came out, groups like the Sierra Club were all over that. Looks like they were wrong about that too because I only know of four: 1990, 1998, 1999 and 2006.
++ "City's breakin' down on the camel's back. They just have to go 'cause they don't know when" ++**
These temperature readings come from respected institutions. I do not what to throw entire organizations in the toilet but we must look how the data is collected. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) admitted in the October debacle they had low quality control over the information they received. Turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is having some trouble with their surface temperature stations. Some of the temperature stations are in violation of National Weather Service's standards. The National Weather Service is a department within the NOAA. The weather stations are located next to air conditioners, parking lots, on roof tops and near other structures which can throw off temperature. Also, sometimes weather stations are missing information for weeks at a time, and they fill in that missing information based on computer algorithms. Ask yourself: "Shouldn't we rely on actual temperature data and not extrapolations, especially if those extrapolations occur over a period of weeks?" Also, if that computer algorithm is based on faulty information, how can it be reliable?
"Below is a visual comparison of DMI 1958 Arctic temperatures vs. 2009, showing that temperatures have hardly changed since the start of their record...Below is an overlay directly showing that 2009 temperatures (green) are similar to 1958 (red) and close to the mean. Blue is mean temperature for the 41 year record... Temperatures have warmed since the start of the satellite record, but they cooled even more between 1940 and 1980...
Everyone (including NSIDC) quietly acknowledges that most of the Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than now-so they shift the warming argument to the Alaska side. However, that argument also has problems. Alaska temperatures rose at the positive PDO shift in 1977, and have cooled again with the recent negative PDO shift-as seen below. 2008 was notable in that Alaska glaciers started to increase in size."
++ "I've got to go home. Oh, baby, you'll freeze out there"++
We've been cooling since Jan 2007 and continue to do so today. There's a handy chart here.
Even the NY Times admits that there's cooling happening.
"This was the sixth coolest July on record. The high was 86 on July 17. For June and July, the average as of Thursday was 70.6, the third coolest. As of the end of the day Thursday, the average temperature in July was 72.6, nearly four degrees below normal. "A monthly departure of four degrees below normal is very significant," said Gary Conte, a National Weather Service meteorologist."
If you continue to read that article, they try to dismiss this cooling by citing natural causes, like rainfall, cloud cover and oceans. Yet if skeptics try to use the same line of logic-that increasing climate temperatures are due to natural variations-we're called "The Deniers", we ignore the science, and we're being fed talking points from oil and petroleum insiders who hate the earth and its entire people.
++ "Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air. There's no air, no air." ++
There are two important parts to this debate. Are humans the driving force behind global climate change? No. Do increases in Carbon Dioxide precede temperature increases? No. The bombshell is that CO2 increases AFTER, AFTER, AFTER temperature increases.
Science. March 14 2003:
Nicolas Caillon states (Bolding is my own):
"The analysis of air bubbles from ice cores has yielded a precise record of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, but the timing of changes in these gases with respect to temperature is not accurately known because of uncertainty in the gas age-ice age difference. We have measured the isotopic composition of argon in air bubbles in the Vostok core during Termination III (240,000 years before the present). This record most likely reflects the temperature and accumulation change, although the mechanism remains unclear. The sequence of events during Termination III suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation."
So if there's evidence that increased carbon dioxide comes after increased temperatures, then the notion that we need to reduce our carbon output to stop warming goes up in smoke.
SUMMARY
There is enough evidence for me to doubt the conventional wisdom on global warming. The climate is a complex system in constant flux. The historical record on temperatures has shown that the earth is prone to massive temperature swings. All of these swings happened before mankind created the combustible engine. There's reason to believe that these temperature swings are happening now and we have no control over it. If Venus is a good example of the harm that positive feedback and warming can do to a planet, it's also a good example of how there were no humans on that planet to push that warming along. It happened on its own. While knowledge about the climate has increased, we do not fully comprehend the intricacies of the whole system. If we did weather prediction would be A LOT more accurate. The data produced by respected institutions can be corrupted. It can be corrupted by improper quality control, by faulty readings or by people are politically or personally motivated to pursue an agenda and ignore those who disagree. Heck, even the EPA suppressed contradictory reports about global warming.
The correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature is not as simple as the blanket metaphor commonly used to explain global warming. There are things you must consider. Increasing carbon dioxide does not significantly increase temperature, the logarithmic effect. Also, there's pre-historic evidence that temperature increases occur before carbon dioxide increases. And nearly half of the carbon we emit into the air does not make it into the atmosphere. Where does it go? No one really knows.
You can disagree with me, but you should not ignore or dismiss me. The reality is that there are concrete reasons to be skeptical of anthropogenic global warming. Many of those reasons are based on scientific and mathematical evidence. It is because of that, that we 'deniers' take a cautious look at bills like Cap and Trade. This is something that will have a significant effect on our economy, most of it bad. But, global warming fanatics continue to push this line of a planet in peril and how we must act quickly to decrease our carbon output. It's imperative that skeptics just "Shut Up". President Obama admits that Cap and Trade will increase electricity rates by making it harder to build coal fire plants, drill for oil or natural gas. Europe signed onto the Kyoto Protocol and is still working to decrease their emissions. MIT states that the cap and trade in Europe has had no significant impact "in a macroeconomic sense", but what about on a microeconomic scale? Well, there are employer layoffs due to high energy prices and causing some industries to outsource to other countries like Morocco and China. Spain is having problems because for every 1 "green job" created, 2 conventional jobs are lost. How does a program like that help boost a country's economy? It doesn't. This is why China and India have essentially said "Fuck you guys" and I don't blame them. If you want to decrease our use of fossil fuels, then you have to be realistic about it. Alternative sources are not economically viable. They are unreliable. How do you efficiently store the energy from wind and solar when it stops blowing and turns dark? They are often inefficient compared to common sources. Ethanol blends have less energy than gasoline and reduce fuel economy in cars. They can require more energy input to create than they give out. It takes the energy of fossil fuels like coal to split hydrogen from water via electrolysis. The other cheaper option is to split hydrogen from methane. To make ethanol you have to grow the crops, fertilize them, process them, ship and pump the ethanol in special tanks and pipes. Solar, wind and bio-fuels are heavily subsidized by the US government in order to make them competitive. That means you're paying twice for the same thing- through subsidy tax dollars (which makes it possible for them to bring these energies to market) and then through direct payments to the individual alternative energy companies. It's lunacy. The most viable alternative is nuclear. It's a technology we are familiar with and it can be used to meet current and future US energy demands. But while we are working on this "alternative", we should continue to exploit what we know works and what we have. It just makes sense.
**If anyone knows what the heck they are really saying let me know, because it's all over the map out there.
In the 1970s there were stories about global cooling. From 1945-1968, a 23 year period, the NOAA noticed a drop of 0.5 degrees F. The worry was that we could have been entering into a mini Ice Age. The media hyped this prediction and we got all sorts of crazy "solutions" to this problem. Now with the warming trends we have the same media hype. THE ICE CAPS ARE MELTING!!! POLAR BEARS ARE IN TROUBLE!!! THE ICE SHELF IS COLLAPSING!!! WELL WHAT HAPPEN IF WE DON'T ACT???
CO2 FACTS
-Carbon Dioxide makes up 0.036% of the atmosphere -Of the recognized green house gases Carbon dioxide makes up 9%-26%. Second largest greenhouse gas. -Carbon Dioxide has a logarithmic effect in relation to temperature. -Nearly half of the Carbon Dioxide we emit does not make it into the atmosphere -Compared to Nitrogen and Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide has nearly the same heat capacity at various temperatures -Compared to Water Vapor and Methane, Carbon Dioxide has a significantly smaller heat capacity at various temperatures -Carbon Dioxide increases AFTER temperature increases. (This one is important.)
PREDICTION
Predictive modeling means that you are using past data to predict what will happen in the future. Actually, that is the most common model employed in everyday life, not just in science. If you know enough about a person, you can predict their behavior from day to day- for the most part. So while you are expecting Johnson to arrive at 3:00pm, there was a traffic accident on the way to work and Johnson is 15 minutes late. "But," you say "there is still a trend of Johnson being on time." And that is true. Then, one day, Johnson’s mother died, and Johnson doesn't care if he’s late for work anymore. Suddenly the trend sweeps downward and you have a whole new set of information to deal with and therefore a new model. It is the same thing with climate, except you're talking about something on a much larger scale, which we do not completely understand. That is not to say that you cannot have models, but if your model is based on past information, the model is only as good as the information that you have.
I remember sitting in my Physical Geography class a few years back, and my teacher admitted that when it comes to predicting weather the most accurate prediction is at most 10 days. So when I hear about how temperatures will continue to rise 100 years from now based on a decade's worth of information, my instant thought is: "If you can't accurately predict the weather more than 10 days out, how the hell can you tell me the increase in temperature 100 years from now?" I've read some rebuttals to this, the most convincing one being from skepticalscience.com . "A common argument heard is "scientists can't even predict the weather next week, how can they predict the climate years from now." This betrays a misunderstanding of the difference between weather, which is chaotic and unpredictable and climate which is weather averaged out over time. While you can't predict with certainty whether a coin will land heads or tails, you can predict the statistical results of a large number of coin tosses. Or expressing that in weather terms, you can't predict the exact route a storm will take but the average temperature and precipitation will result the same for the region over a period of time."
Sounds logical, until you realize there's a difference between probability and statistics. With probability you already know the rules; the coin only has 2 sides. Your chance of getting heads or tails is 50%. So while it will not necessarily happen in four turns, you are more likely to see that 50% in one thousand turns. In other words, you start with the rules, and then get the data. But with statistics, you start with the data and then try to figure out the rule. This is what is happening with global warming. We have tons of data points then try to find the rule; we try to "predict" what happens next.
Funny thing is we have knowledge of these crazy things called ice ages, glacial periods with inter-glacials sprinkled in between. We find out about the medieval warming period, around 800-1300AD, and the Little Ice Age, beginning around 1650AD. We also have something known as the Holocene Maximum (9,000-5,000BP), where temperatures rose to a minimum of 2 degrees C and some believe it hit a maximum of 6 degrees C. Over the life span of earth we have evidence of at least 4 major ice ages. It seems that much of this is due to natural variation. As the earth and universe grows older things change, climates shift, rivers dry up, deserts form where forests used to be, islands appear and disappear. While we have a significant understanding of our natural world, we are but a blip on the radar that is earth's history. I just don't understand how 30-50 years of data is enough to make an argument that HUMANS are the main driver of something as large and complex as the climate.
Global Warming Fact and Fiction - a skeptical response. Part 1.
By Xax:
I took some time to think about how to approach this topic. Once you start getting into it, you can really get into it. It's been a while, and between work, sleeping and other things I've done some digging. It's by no means definitive, but I think it's important. My response to the article on Global Warming posted here was just going to be limited to pointing out some problems with it. While I will do that, I thought I would also lay out my case for climate change skepticism.
I know many people believe that scientific endeavors are the end all be all when it comes to "unbiased" information, but I do not believe that is the case. In fact, my starting point for skepticism really started out based on my own common sense and reasoning. Science, believe it or not, has its own dogma. We like to think of dogma in a strictly religious sense, but dogma is the most commonly used invention of man. Dogma is what it is. It has come down from upon high and is never to be questioned. In the case of global warming, those on high are not known as "the creator", but are instead men. Men and their knowledge, as history has shown us, can be fallible; and I believe it is through questioning and debating that we have fleshed out what we know. I do not seek to change anyone's mind, just to clarify my own thinking, and maybe give people a realistic glimpse into the eyes of the global warming/climate change skeptic.
The most common tactic in the global warming/climate change debate is the marginalization of the skeptic. The irony is if you follow the polls, given the environment's standing in our list of priorities, I'll wager there are more of the skeptics than there are of the alarmists. Still, we are deemed "The Deniers", which is kind of like "The Untouchables". So maybe we should all join together in a chorus, named D'ni. Our biggest hit will be a song of us repeatedly screaming at the top of our lungs "UNCLEAN!!!" We are akin to "The Creationists"- bible toting freaks who see the good book as an eternal truth. We are people who despise science, thereby leading our progressive society backwards to the Medieval period, or worse-the 1950s. It wouldn't surprise you that I have some feelings about alarmism. However, I'm not content to use subtle insults so I'll just come right out and say it. It is in my opinion that alarmists are "The Chicken Littles" of the world. I see them now, with their headless body running around in circles and their head in the middle screaming about the falling sky. I believe they are determined to take our technologically advanced society back to the stone ages. Ever on the constant quest to reduce his carbon foot print, the "modern" American will find himself living in cave, with a river bathroom in the back, desperately trying to heat up a Lean Cuisine with a candle and wondering why the hemp container disappears before the frozen block of food is fully cooked.
I have scientific information to help bolster my claims, but my goal is not to dispel pro-Global Warming scientific reports. I have an understanding of chemistry and such, but I am nowhere near the realms of those who have made this their careers. However, I have taken to reading an interesting book titled, "But, Is It True?" The author, Wildavsky, believes that everyday people should be able to reason through scientific claims despite their lack of an intimate understanding. There are two points that Wildavsky brings up which are relevant to this discussion.
One is the over reliance people have on experts. He believes people should "read and ponder and discuss before calling on experts" because it makes no sense to rely on someone's "expertise before you know enough to know what to ask." (Bold is mine). Case in point- how many predictions by experts were we getting on the economy from June-December 2008? How many turned out to be right? Chances are if you relied solely on the experts, you're screwed right now. It is with that lesson, I say-who gives a crap about the "overwhelming consensus" on global warming. In fact, while Tamerlane was correct that many of the 500 scientists who disagree are not directly involved with climate, would it surprise you that approximately 80% of the IPCC scientists do not deal directly with climate. In fact, the Chair of their organization, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, is trained in economics. Is their consensus more or less legitimate now? Will I listen to experts? Yes. Will I just outright believe them because they are the experts? No. I can make my own decisions.
The other concept has to do with toxicity. Example: scientists find out that large amounts of a chemical are bad for mice. However, small amounts caused some random and benign effects, like tumors. But overall, the small amounts caused no harm. Does that mean the chemical will harm humans? He gives another example of a room full of milk. While milk is good, if you're stuck in room with it above your head, you will die. If the room has only 1 inch of milk, you could still die if you really want to, but chances of that happening are low. That is the same concept I apply to global warming. The earth’s atmosphere is composed of 11 substances:
Of that composition Carbon dioxide ranks 5th and percentage wise counts for 0.036% =0.00036. Of that 0.00036 we account for, at most, 5% of that total, because 95% would exist without us. 5% of 0.00036 = 0.00018. So if the atmosphere were just 100ppm, Carbon dioxide accounts for 0.036ppm. And, of that total we account for 0.00000648ppm. An overly simplistic model? Yes, but it helps understand what the numbers are really saying. It's easy to be misled by saying man has doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, but that's like doubling the milk room from 1 inch to 2 inches. Mathematically speaking that number in our simple model doesn't mean much of anything; it can be called negligible. Also, CO2 has a logarithmic effect in relation to temperature, which means the more CO2 you add the less the temperature increases.
Breaking News! I have just been informed that the temperature of the Earth has increased in the last 100 years or so, and the last 15 years have just been NUTS!!! I know this for sure; I've seen graphs. Graphs like this. And graphs like this.
It looks like the Earth is about to cook us all alive...and then I look at that thing called scale. Notice that the temperatures are off by tenths of a percent. The temperature dipped as low as 0.4 degrees C and rose as high as 0.6 degrees C in relation to the baseline. The baseline is the average temperature of the past century. But how do you know that baseline temperature is normal? In a complex climate that has spanned millennia, somehow only the results of the past century are relevant when discussing the earth's temperature. It's almost like me using the next couple of seconds as the baseline of everything I do in my life. I understand we have to work with what we know, and what we know for sure deals with data from the past century. If that is the case, then why is an increase of 0.74 degree C (not even a full degree) such a hazard to my life? How do know that’s not just a part of normal shifts in temperatures?
Part two will appear here on Friday evening, part three on Saturday evening.
Attack of the Luddites When it was published In 2004, Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear, was touted as "proof" that global warming is nothing more than a hoax created by mad scientists. But Crichton was a writer of fiction, and, like his stories about dinosaurs and time travel, State of Fear is a fantasy, too. Crichton's wild distortions played into the hands of a small, cultist, and extremely dangerous cabal: Deniers of Global Warming.
Flying in the face of overwhelming evidence and uniform consensus among scientists that Global Warming (GW) is real, is manmade, and threatens our very existence, the Deniers have succeeded in tricking the general public into doubting these facts. The Deniers’ disinformation is so blatantly false and so calculatingly deceptive, that the distortions and self-delusions of these luddites rival those of Creationists.
Facing Up to Facts Before showing how patently false the Deniers’ claims are, let's review what we know to be true about Global Warming (interchangeably known as Climate Change and The Runaway Greenhouse Effect):
100 million years of data: -Meteorological readings gives us precise measurements for the past 150 years; -Dendrochronology (measuring tree rings) covers the past 10,000 years; -Mud core samples stretch back 1000,000 years; -Ice core samples provide data for the past 300-800,000 years; -Air trapped in amber (sorry, no dino DNA) gives us an idea of conditions up to 100,000,000 years ago;
Fifty years of research: An ever-growing body of weather and climate data has been collected and analyzed for the past fifty years. To explain an unmistakable warming trend in observed data, a scientific model has been carefully developed;
A predictive model: The model of GW is robust, self-consistent, covers all observations, and has accurately predicted future observations, thus meeting all scientific requirements for acceptance. No rival models exist;
An Overwhelming Consensus: -The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), composed of many hundreds of climate researchers from around the world, meeting in 1990, 1995, 2001, and again in 2007, concluded that evidence of GW's manmade origin, and its potentially fatal impact on the planet, was irrefutable;
-The IPPC was only reiterating what every major scientific organization and climate agency in the world, including our own NOAA, has stated. Not a single scientific organization has issued any statements doubting GW;
-The 2009 International Climate Conference held in Copenhagen, where 2,500 participants from 80 countries heard 1,400 scientific presentations, universally confirmed GW;
-A survey of 928 peer-reviewed articles on climate change found that not one expressed any doubt that human activities are a significant factor in recent climate change;
-The Union of Concerned Scientists, with 250,000 members, states: "Global warming is well underway and will have wide-ranging consequences for our health and well-being. The primary cause of global warming is from human activity, most significantly burning of fossil fuels to drive cars, generate electricity, and operate our homes and businesses."
Scientists are by practice exceedingly cautious about speaking in absolutes. That their voices on GW are so uniform and unequivocal should treated as a clarion.
What Will Happen Your household HVAC system is a negative-feedback loop-when the temperature drops, the furnace kicks in; when the house gets too hot, the A/C goes on. If, instead, the furnace turned on when the thermostat went up, your house would quickly become uninhabitable.
Global Warming is a positive-feedback loop: -The more the ice caps shrink, the more heat from sunlight is absorbed instead of reflected back into space;
-The more the planet warms, the more CO2 & other "greenhouse" gases are produced that trap more heat;
-The warmer the oceans get, the more CO2 they release, making the oceans even warmer;
and so on. The warming never stops, it only gets faster.
This has all happened before...on Venus. Billions of years ago, Venus shared nearly identical conditions with the young Earth-moderate temperatures, nascent oceans, a developing atmosphere. But, for a variety of reasons Venus' climate never stabilized. Thick clouds formed over Venus, which allowed sunlight in but prevented radiant heat from escaping. The increasing temperatures caused Venus' oceans to percolate, then boil off, creating even more heat-trapping clouds. Any reflective polar caps had long melted by then. Life likely formed on early Venus, but today none can exist. Surface temperatures there average 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and it rains sulfuric acid.
The only difference between Earth and Venus was the amount of heat trapped. We have now disturbed that variable here on Earth.
Falsehoods, Uncertainties and Disinformation Spreading "FUD" is the tactic of those who know they are wrong, but still hope to fool the public. Tobacco companies practiced FUD for decades. The evidence linking cigarettes with cancer was overwhelming, but Big Tobacco spewed out propaganda along the lines of 'we just don't know' and 'not enough evidence,' while running ads featuring handsome doctors cheerily puffing away.
FUD is also known by its street name of "Lies." The GW Denier's lies fall into a few (contradictory) categories:
Lie #1 No consensus exists whether GW is real
Lie #2 GW is real, but it's not man-made
Lie #3 The planet is actually cooling
Lie #4 GW is just part of a natural cycle
Lie #5 GW doesn't exist, because it would be bad for the economy
Lie #6 GW does exist, but it will be good for the economy
The Lies Exposed
Lie #1 No Consensus Exists As noted above, virtually universal consensus exists in the scientific community of the reality and danger of GW, a level of agreement that parallels that on Evolution, and one which exceeds consensus on popular areas of research like String Theory.
FUD: A list of 500 climate researchers whose work refutes GW
Truth: All of the scientists named are on the record stating that their research confirms GW. The list's compiler simply chose to interpret their data his own way. Several of the scientists have demanded in writing that their names be removed, but the Denier continues to publish the list.
FUD: A petition of 30,000 scientists who doubt GW.
Truth: For this petition, "scientist" is defined as anyone with a college degree in science. Which could be anyone from a computer programmer to a proctologist. Not one is an active climate researcher.
Lie #2 GW is real, but it's not man-made
FUD: Scientists can’t agree on whether GW is caused by man.
Truth: A minor discussion among climate researchers as to the precise extentof mankind's impact in the rapid warming trend (which has recently been resolved and points to a major, pivotal impact) was misrepresented as a debate whether GW was manmade. The same sort of faux controversy was hyped by Creationists in "Is Darwinism Dead?" stories.
Lie #3 The Planet is actually cooling
FUD: It was freaking cold in Detroit this winter.
Cherry-picking random temperatures from around the world to claim a cooling trend exists is fatuous and borders on outright mendacity. More extreme weather conditions are in any case predicted as part of the GW model. Interestingly, Deniers never use this FUD during Summer.
FUD: To perpetuate their hoax, scientists had to change the name from "GW" to "Climate Change".
Truth: The overall trend is a steady, and precipitous, warming of average global temperatures. The term "Climate Change" was adopted, not to hastily explain unexpected cold snaps, but to emphasize that is us humans who are changing the climate.
FUD: A new report shows the Antarctic ice shelf is actually growing.
Truth: The Deniers had kept this FUD on the "shelf" for some time after a chunk of ice the size of Rhode Island, which had been stable for 12,000 years, collapsed into the ocean a few years back and floated away. But now, the deniers publicize out a slight decrease in temps at the Antarctic interior over the past 20 years, but they omit the much-longer trend of overall Antarctic warming the report noted.
Correctly anticipating misuse of their results by Deniers, the researchers who published the study issued a public statement that their data confirms the accelerating melting of the Antarctic ice shelf.
In fact, every single piece of scientific evidence (sic) ever offered by the Deniers has been taken out of context from research that confirms GW. The Deniers know the general public is unlikely to learn of this deception.
Lie #4 GW is just part of a natural cycle
FUD: We are experiencing a temporary warming trend, just like the "Medieval Warming Period." No need to panic; things will soon cool off just like they always do.
Truth: Deniers have no qualms citing the historical data, but they reject the analysis of the very experts who collected that data. While a warmer period did occur during the Middle Ages (it was confined to Europe), and while the records do show cyclical warming and cooling in the past, what we are currently experiencing is off the charts. The current level of greenhouse gases is higher than at any time in the past 400,000 years. The global rise in average temperature over the past century has been significantly hotter, and is rising far more rapidly, than any other change of the past 1,000 years. Tellingly, the observed changes correlate precisely with the onset and expansion of fossil fuel use.
If left unchecked, this rapid increase in temperatures will inevitably perturb the delicate balance of Earth's climate system, and create a runaway effect. The unmistakable signs of an imminent collapse of the system are accumulating each day.
Lie #5 GW doesn't exist, because it would be bad for the economy Amazingly, this absurd rationale is frequently proposed with a straight face. The Neanderthals at the Cato Institute issued a position paper essentially stating that: 'As the Unseen Hand of capitalism never errs, and as an expanding global economy always benefits people, and as to halt GW we'd have to limit growth, therefore GW cannot exist.'
The Deniers are particularly incensed by criticism of trucking orange juice to supermarkets. OJ in the morning is an American tradition, they cry, and the environmentalists who complain about its 'carbon footprint' are un-American, and therefore, must be wrong. (I did not make this one up.)
The excessive cost of combating GW is frequently given as proof of its nonexistence. This makes as much sense as claiming that because new shingles are expensive, your roof doesn’t leak.
Lie #6 GW does exist, but it will be good for the economy With an impressive ability to disassociate, the very same claimants of Lie #5 also sometimes admit that GW is happening, and is manmade, but that increased temperatures will open up new markets, which the savvy investor can exploit.
They conveniently forget that, while climate change may improve some local conditions, on the whole, most of the planet is adversely affected, with flooding, drought, weather extremes and disrupted seasons. The Deniers also ignore the "runaway" part of "runaway greenhouse effect" -things won't just get a little warmer, then level off. How's the economy on Venus, I wonder?
Fact vs. Fiction If the certainty of GW and its implications are so clear to the professionals who study climate, why does such confusion persist among the general American public? The chief culprits are:
-Flippant and distorted coverage by a media that values controversy over truth;
-The prevailing ignorance among the general population as to how Science really works;
-Our bad habit of choosing, as Kurt Vonnegut put it, "the pleasant lie over the unpleasant truth;"
-and, of course, the concerted propaganda of the Deniers.
Science offers a predictive model that completely explains the observed data of the past hundreds of thousands of years, and has precisely predicted both recent changes and new historical finds. This is how Science gets things right. Copernicus came up with a model of the solar system in response to observations: he did not imagine the Earth going around the Sun, then seek evidence. In the same way, no one started out with a theory of GW, then looked for ways to prove it. Only after the increasing power of computers revealed the unmistakable trends in climate data did scientists formulate a model to explain that trend. And after fifty years of development, the GW model is as solid as any in Science.
In contrast, Deniers throw up a patchwork barricade of ad hoc objections, distortions, or outright omission of evidence. They've offered not a single shred of evidence of their own discovery, choosing merely to pervert the work of others. We know why Creationists do this -Evolution conflicts with their biblical view of the world. What causes a GW denier to have the same irrational response as a Creationist?
Why They Deny Anyway Undoubtedly there are a few soulless individuals who know GW is real but who, like the oligarchs in Soylent Green feasting on frozen steaks while the planet died, are too self-absorbed to care. But most Deniers practice an elaborate self-deception motivated by:
Inconvenience: We humans, Americans especially, don't like to give up luxuries or conveniences we're accustomed to. A right-wing talk show host proclaimed, "I don’t mind a few polar bears dying to preserve my way of life!"
Craven self-interest: Industrialists, oil barons, mining magnates, developers, all get rich off of GW. When it comes to consequences of their actions, these pillars of society are well-practiced in the art of denial;
Political & philosophical tenets: Friedmanite Capitalists, entrenched in their dogma, can tolerate nothing that impinges on economic expansion ad infinitum. Anarchists, holding that 'there are no absolutes,' chafe at any certainties that might impinge on their fantasy world;
Fear & dejection: The prospect of the end of all Life on Earth is pretty scary. And the problem at first seems insurmountable;
Tradition & habit: What's worked in the past is assumed to work in the future. This concept applied for 40,000 years, but is suddenly obsolete.
The Way of the Norsemen? We humans naturally resist change, cling to old habits. As 21st century Americans, we can't envision a world without OJ for breakfast. We want to keep driving our SUV on the spur of the moment to buy junk at the Mall. We don't want to get off our fat, lazy asses to turn out the lights in the other room.
We risk becoming like the Norsemen who colonized Greenland in the Middle Ages. As Jared Diamond relates in his sobering account of their demise in Collapse, the Greenland Norse refused to abandon their European customs, farming practices or livestock, despite their unsustainability in Greenland. While the Norsemen struggled to the brink of collapse, Inuit newcomers thrived with a more appropriate lifestyle. But the Norse refused to change their habits, preferring to die as Europeans rather than live as Inuit. And they got their wish.
Today, the predicament of the entire human race mirrors that of the Greenland Norse. To obstinately refuse to abandon old habits, or to don the blinders of denial, is to seal our doom. It's high time we faced up to facts.
Poll: None of the names I suggested yesterday - so I could avoid typing 'Obama' so much, thereby changing the google ads - achieved over 50%. So today- a runoff with the top 2 vote getters. This poll is not scientific in the least - it's not artistic in the least either come to think of it- like me in my 20s, 30s and early 40s, and, God willing, my old age, - it's cheap and easy....vote as many times as you want...
