mood: warm
music: The Album Leaf – Shine
(or, ha! Get it? That was a play on words. Because…we’re talking about global warming? Get it?)
In the early part of the 21st century, a vocal group of people began to question the circumstances behind what some considered to be one of the defining disasters of the times. This small but outspoken crowd began to discover problems with the reports coming in from the various research groups and independent investigators – something wasn’t adding up. They claimed they wanted only to find the truth – a disaster creating destruction on this scale required nothing less. They even released films highlighting some of the problems with the “official reports”. To them, a disturbing trend was emerging as they looked at the evidence – one of massive conspiracy by the government, with the end result being to curtail our liberties and advance anti-American ideals.
The problem is that their claims rely on little more than innuendo, unverifiable evidence, and hearsay. Their claims aren’t just controversial – they’re laughable. Are we talking about the people who claim that September 11th was in inside job? Nope. We’re talking about global warming “skeptics”.
Climate science has turned from an obscure academic discipline to the center stage of a raging worldwide dispute over facts and figures, which I seriously doubt climate scientists were going for. It’s also become an oddly polarizing topic among people who generally accept science and evidence-based conclusions. I’ll delve into that particular topic a little bit later, but for now, let’s talk about the scientific method and why you’re not qualified to disagree with climate scientists.
Science is Real
Science is not a corporation. It is not a state. It is not a giant book filled with the collected knowledge of everyone, everywhere. It is a process. It is the process by which data is observed, collected, analyzed, and acted upon. It’s something you do. It’s a verb. And it’s never focused in just one area.
For instance, the Hubble Space Telescope is a marvelous feat of mechanical and optical engineering. One of the most beautiful pictures it ever took also happens to be one of its most famous: the grandly-named “Pillars of Creation”.
This picture is breathtaking, in scope and color and grandeur. But for all of Hubble’s technological sophistication and amounts of incredibly important and beautiful data it sends back, is it the end-all-be-all of interstellar knowledge gathering? Of course not.
We know better than to put all of our observational eggs into one low Earth orbit basket. (I might have just stretched that metaphor a bit.) The Hubble is amazing, but it can’t land on the surface of other worlds and sample the soil. It can’t fly by Saturn and discover a giant hexagonal cloud pattern around the north pole. It can’t fly human beings to the moon and set them down on a barren yet hauntingly beautiful landscape. It’s an important tool, but it’s not the only tool. It’s not made to operate outside of its design parameters.
And so it is with all of science – and especially a science as highly scrutinized as global climate studies.
Nobody who has anything worthwhile to claim about a system and large and complex as the Earth is basing his claims on a single data point. And no expert is. The evidence comes from multiple sources. And most of the time when I hear someone picking on AGW as a whole, they are attacking a misunderstanding – or, more often, an extreme over-simplification – of one particular data set. Take, for instance, the so-called tree rings divergence problem.
Here’s the idea: scientists use tree rings as one of (many) methods to reconstruct climate conditions of the past 2,000 years. Traditionally, they’ve looked at tree ring width and density, preferably from trees at the very edge of their comfort zone as an indicator of temperature. The temperature signal will be strongest in trees living in extreme environments where cold is a major factor limiting growth. Trees grow more when it’s warmer, and less when it’s cold. But in recent decades some – although not all trees have stopped responding positively to higher temperatures. How do we know? For the past 150 years, we’ve been measuring the temperatures directly with various instruments. And trees seem to follow the temperature levels, growing more during warm years and less during cold – until around 50 years ago. Then, even as our direct measurements continued to register rising temperatures, some trees starting growing less.
Now, if you were tree ring growth as your only temperature data set, you’d conclude – wrongly – that temperatures were falling when, in fact, they were rising. That’s why scientists sometimes omit tree-ring data from recent decades in favor of more accurate instrumental data.
There are several theories about why this is happening, and they’re not mutually exclusive. But here’s the key point: for more than 100 years, tree rings and instrumental data track each other closely. They only diverge during the last 20 years. And it’s further worth noting that this isn’t some new, controversial problem that scientists are working hard to cover up. It’s been discussed in scientific literature since the mid-1990s. And it doesn’t invalidate using tree ring proxies as a whole – the problem is generally restricted to trees from high, northern latitudes. The phenomenon has been studied, and shown to be limited to certain known areas. Tree ring proxies, once you account for divergence, are reliable at least back to the Medieval Warm Period.
My point is that this is how science is done – it’s not a single set of data thrown onto a pretty pie chart to show that the world is getting warmer. It’s a process – hundreds of years in the making and still being refined. And corollary to this is that unless you’ve read the reports, pored over the data, and studied the effects of introducing greenhouse gasses into a dynamic system like a planet, you aren’t qualified to call climate change scientists’ claims bogus. You can question, and research, and ask questions. But may not outright reject the science unless you have solid evidence to back up your claims.
My understanding of the current state of global climate science is this: the earth has been, over the last century at least, on a trend toward a significantly warmer climate, and that the best (current) explanation we have for this is human forcing via CO2 and other greenhouse gas production. If this trend continues, there will probably be very significant unpleasant consequences – for everyone.
You Are Not Entitled To Your Own Scientific Facts
Facts are not opinions, and vice versa. What is most annoying about the AGW row is how many of the skeptics (I feel that this term unfairly co-opts the legitimate discipline of critical thinking, but I’m willing to tolerate it for this article) engage in non-skeptical arguments and downright logical fallacies when arguing about it. One of the primary arguments I hear from people who doubt the veracity of the current consensus on AGW comes in the form of what to do about it.
The skeptical community seems to be (and this is an over-simplification) made up of a lot of people on the liberal side of the fence, with a sizable minority being libertarians. And the libertarians tend to be the most outspoken about proposed measures to reduce carbon emissions. But this is looking at the wrong thing. Libertarians value free trade and personal liberty above all else, and as far as I can tell (and I could be wrong) much of their objection to the science of climate change is based on the unwanted side effects that curtailing AGW will have on free trade. Many have legitimate objections to programs like cap and trade and carbon credits. But those are ultimately political arguments. And while the politics (policies, proposed measures to help the problem) of global warming can’t be completely separated from the science of global warming, to argue against the reality of it by pointing out problems with proposed fixes is a red herring.
This tendency was illustrated to an even greater degree during the recent “Climategate” scandal. I don’t have much to say about this, other than two things that I think are extremely clear: the public’s understanding of the science is climate change is abysmal and appears to be largely based on Fox News reports, and two, the CRU scientists were not following the rules of transparency and had developed a bunker mentality. The best evidence says that they were not engaged in deliberate fraud. They did not – although it was (sadly) discussed – destroy e-mail records. Further, an analysis of the e-mails shows that the hackers had targeted them by keyword, including “Yamal”, “tree rings” and “Phil Jones” – and so the leaked e-mails comprise a very small sample size of the whole of the correspondence at the CRU.
So here’s the thing: looking for truth is one thing, but when you find it, you have to accept it. Being overly-skeptical – or inconsistently skeptical – is counter-productive and foolish. Humans believe anecdotes. We want to believe anecdotes. We love to have “one-up” information on the masses. Or we place such a high value on the ideology of free trade and laze-faire economics and fear the consequences of acknowledging their effects on the planet so much that we turn a blind eye to the reality of the situation. We don’t believe governments and scientists giving us peer-reviewed studies and papers. When people see things like Climategate or the tree-ring divergence problem, and immediately jump to the conclusion that these incidents confirm all of their most extreme opinions, they’re not doing good science. They’re confirming their damn biases.
The result of that is disastrous. Anomaly hunting and confirmation bias are not good arguments. Neither are ideological objections to proposed fixes. I still haven’t heard a legitimate scientific argument from global warming deniers as to why I should reject the claim that global warming is happening and that is has a strong anthropogenic component. I am not impressed by political arguments, liberal conspiracy theories, or junk science. If you think I’m wrong – and I may be – then let’s discuss the science. If you truly wish to wear the cloak of “Skeptic”, then focus on that. My opinion can be changed.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks
“the CRU scientists were not following the rules of transparency and had developed a bunker mentality.”
They are not the only ones doing this, so are journals. Read this interesting little story;
http://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/McKitrick_gatekeeping.pdf
So this guy, Ross McKitrick, is fairly well-known as the guy who “debunked” the hockey stick graph. An economist, he’s claiming to have found this one huge, gaping flaw that disproves every study that used land warming measurements.
No.
This is the sort of junk science I’m talking about. This paper purports to debunk a single statement in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, one denigrating the conclusions of a previous paper by McKitrick and Patrick Michaels. A full rebuttal of this paper could fill its own post, but to hit the major points:
– A review of the relevant scientific literature reveals substantial flaws in the previous analyses of McKitrick and Michaels. That, rather than any close-mindedness or “censorship”, is the real reason why McKitrick’s analyses have become increasingly marginalized in the scientific literature, if not in the right-wing press.
– McKitrick’s description of the CRU “Climategate” event is inaccurate and slanted.
– Regarding his dissection of Section 3.2.2.7, a discussion of the spatial distribution 20th century warming trends: the passage he disparages is explicitly based on the longer period from 1901, not the relevant period from 1979. The areas mentioned can clearly be seen on the lefthand map (e.g. southeastern Brazil) in the IPCC report. The reference is obvious in the text of the passage as well.
– The IPCC reference to locations “most warmed by atmospheric circulation changes” is not a description of the “effects of trends” in the AO or other oscillations. (Which tend to be trendless.)
– For a review of the paper itself, check here: http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=3349#comment-169055. tl;dr: both his methodology and conclusions are spurious.
When compiling temperature recods, NASA GISS go to great pains to remove any artifacts due to the Urban Heat Island Effect. They compare urban long term trends to nearby rural trends. Then they adjust the urban trend to it matches the rural trend. This process is described in excruciating detail on the NASA website. What they found is that in most cases, urban warming is small and fell within uncertainty ranges. The point is that they’re aware of UHI and rigorously adjust for it when analyzing temperature records.
Also, the surface temperatures are confirmed from multiple, independent sources:
– Surface temperature analysis by NASA GISS found strong correlation with two independent analyses by CRU GTR and NCDC.
– Weather balloon measurements have shown that from 1975 to 2005, the global mean, near-surface air temp warmed by approx. .23C/decade.
– Satellite measurements of lower atmosphere temps show rises of between 0.16C to 0.24C/decade since 1982.
– Ice core reconstructions found the past 20th century to be the warmest of the past five, confirming earlier proxy reconstructions.
– Sea surface temperatures, bore hole reconstructions, and ocean temperatures all show long-term warming trends.
So what I’m saying, Kelm, is that “Friends of Science”…aren’t.
The CRU problem was one that brought into question the integrity of scientists, moreso than that of the science itself. On the deletion of emails. No the emails weren’t deleted. The problem is that a “scientist” asked another scientist to do so.
Why are tree rings a problem. Exactly what you mentioned, they are accurate back to the MWP and they are not accurate since the 1960’s so the two latest abnormal upswings are missing. So can we really use the tree rings to back up any claims on abnormal highs in the temp records?
There are several other problems with the records that we have. The auditing of USHCN weather stations has shown massive urbanization problems with longstanding weather stations; and that is not just an urban heat island problem. There are problems in remote areas of America, Australia, Greenland, etc… where even though there is not any urban influence that you can point to, there are still newly erected manmade heat influencers around. Airport expansion, parking lots, air conditioners, tree removals affect these stations even when they are made on small scales.
Another problem is with the acceptance of temperature variations in the arctic. There are very few weather stations above the arctic circle, yet the standard practice is to average temps from the ones available. I call shenanigans on that.
I will probably return to this to give you more crap about scientists running our policies, but for now my training session that has given me time to judge your blog thoughts is over.
What, we had this idea that scientists weren’t fallible before the CRU debacle? They’re human, they make mistakes. That they still manage to do well under such ridiculously intense scrutiny is admirable. We hold scientists, and climate scientists in particular, to standards far above and beyond the standards of any other organization – congress, politicians, you name it. Also, a scientist didn’t ask another scientist to delete mails – it was suggested.
And no, tree ring proxies are accurate for trees in certain areas. They didn’t suddenly loose accuracy after 1960 – we simply realized that ones from higher northern latitudes weren’t accurate any longer. They’re still used, just not as much, and we know how to correct for the problems.
As for the rest of your claims, you don’t provide any sources. [citation needed]
Really, I think the last sentence is the most telling. Knowing you personally, (and as I’ve said in the past) the biggest issue for you is the “scientists running policies” issue, not the science. You have a fundamental disagreement with the various ways people have proposed to deal with the problem. Your complaints may be legitimate, and I may have some of the same disagreements, but they should be directed toward politicians, not the data.
“suggested” How’s it going President Clinton? Have you figured out what the definition of “is” is? The problem with the CRU is that the scientist are being accused of trying to maneuver around the safeguards that are in place to insure scientific integrity. It also brought into question the inbred nature of science journals and the editing processes that decide on what gets published.
sources – http://www.surfacestations.org/-
– Google Danish Met Inst and compare to GISTEMP – why the discrepancy? GISTEMP interpolates.
-http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/28/giss-polar-interpolation/
– which includes quotes from my favorite “scientist” James Hansen – http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2009/2009-06-23-01.asp and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5908377.ece and http://www.climatedepot.com/a/4993/Time-for-Meds-NASA-scientist-James-Hansen-endorses-book-which-calls-for-ridding-the-world-of-Industrial-Civilization-ndash-Hansen-declares-author-has-it-rightthe-system-is-the-problem and http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/02/jim-hansens-newfound-peers-at-the-capitol-climate-action/
Do I really hold scientists to tougher standards than politicians? Maybe I haven’t spoken with you enough about my thoughts on politicians. Besides that, look to the sources above about James Hansen and ask yourself if he is a scientist or if he just might have put himself into the political realm.
But lets go straight to the horses mouth on all of this. Why is the IPCC using WWF publications in its report?
And my battery is dying so I will save the rest for another time.
I leave you with this. There is economic certainty as to what will occur and the effect it will have on people’s lives if the policies that most climate scientist suggest. Is there as much certainty with the science? I don’t believe there is.
James Hansen’s views on what we should do != science.
You’re anomaly-hunting, and I don’t want to devote the entirety of my free time to being a climate science researcher. I think I’ve sufficiently explained my position for now – I don’t have sufficient evidence to dismiss the scientific consensus.
You need a cookie. I’ll make you some when I get back.
I always need a cookie. I get frustrated being called a denier instead of a skeptic. I appreciate your use of skeptic, but you felt it necessary to qualify the term. I have read enough on both sides to understand the arguments. I leave saying that we need more info, as do most of the people that I know to be skeptical of the conclusions of the IPCC.
Is there room for scientists being offended and defensive when questioned by the people funding them? Is there enough evidence to alter the entire economy of the world and limit freedom in America in a way that I think would require a constitutional amendment. This is the problem that people have, and unless scientist can answer that (and they haven’t) they will continue to be questioned as to both their science and their political and financial motives. I don’t see how that is not fair.
Love you.
Scarlett wants to say something on the topic.
jh34 5gt76xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I debated a long time about whether to post this. You sadly know that the way to my heart is through my head, so here are the answers to your skeptical queries. You knew I couldn’t resist, didn’t you?
But here’s my serious question for you: true skeptics have to know what it would take to convince them, and that requirement of evidence must be reasonable. What are your criteria for accepting that AGW is a real phenomenon?
Anyway. On to the data. I’ll address the questions about surface stations and the arctic temperatures first.
Watts is correct, NASA did indeed extrapolate the temperatures from very few weather stations. And then backed it up with measurement from infrared satellite observations, record low sea ice concentrations, radiosondes, ships and buoys. They’re not relying on a single data set, and the extrapolation has been confirmed via other means. They’re not blindly grasping at straws here.
Further, the data and software used to produce these reconstructions are publicly available from the NASA and CRU websites, it’s been tested and shown to work as advertised (By Ron Broburg, and the Clear Climate Code project) and the results were identical.
As for the weather stations, that microsite influences affect the data is demonstrably false.
The website surfacestations.org enlisted an army of volunteers, traveling across the U.S. photographing weather stations. The point of this effort was to document cases of the weather stations being subject to microsite influences – near car parks, air conditioners, airports – all the things you pointed out that might impose a warming bias. While photographs are compelling, they’re not science, and the only way to quantify microsite influence is through an analysis of the data. This has been done (PDF) And in fact, there is a bias. But probably not what you expect. Poor weather stations show a cooling bias.
Weather stations are split into two categories: good (rating 1 or 2) and bad (ratings 3, 4 or 5). Each day, the minimum and maximum temperature are recorded. All temperature data goes through a process of homogenization, removing non-climatic influences such as relocation of the station or changes to the time the observation is made. Poor sites tend to show a cooler maximum temperature compared to good sites. Why?
The cool bias occurs primarily during a time when about 60% of the USHCN (United States Historical Climatology Network) converted from one type of sensor enclosure to a different type that is limited by cable length. (Why, I have no idea.) Ergo, they were located closer to heated buildings, paved surfaces, etc. Investigations into the impact on temperature data have found that, on average, the new sensors recorded lower daily maximums than their CRS counterpars, and slightly higher daily minimums. Only about 30% of the good sites have the newer MMTS-type sensors compared to about 75% of the poor locations. It’s the newer MMTS sensors that are responsible for the cool bias imposed on bad weather station sites. The cooling bias itself came from a coincident change in the time the measurements were taken – switching from afternoon to morning measurements.
A net cooling bias probably isn’t what Anthony Watts and the surfacestations.org volunteers were expecting to find, but we can appreciate that they performed a valuable task in helping identify a bias.
Further, the airport thing is such a prevalent claim that I will address it on its own. There is no significant difference between airport and non-airport stations.
Lastly on this topic, the temperature increases are present in other data sets, not just the GHCN database (from which GISS, CRU, and NOAA get their raw monthly data). There are satellite measurements of the lower troposphere from sensors on NOAA’s polar orbiting Earth observation satellites, analyzed by Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama-Huntsville which show the same trends. And there’s the Global Summary of the Day database.
These results are replicable. Independent studies using different software, different methods, and different data sets yield very similar results.
Finally, a small word about James Hansen:
So he protested the opening of another coal power plant? Great! I hate coal, and you should, too – it’s dirty, and the emissions it puts into the atmosphere are seriously nasty, unhealthy stuff. Coal is an awful energy source. Its only upside is that it’s dirt freakin’ cheap.
I didn’t watch the page that had a like a billion video clips embedded in it, I’m on a tour bus with really slow internet.
So he….endorsed a book? Granted, it’s a pretty inflammatory book, and pretty fairly on the “wacko” side of the doom ‘n’ gloom scenarios, but that doesn’t strike me as particularly egregious. Glenn Beck endorses his book “The Christmas Sweater”, about a boy who gets an ugly sweater for Christmas. Meh. James seems most upset about coal and people who flat out deny the science. Also, in case this comes up, he never called for the punishment of climate skeptics.
Hansen = Government employee who uses the name of NASA to garner publicity to his personal protests. Glenn Beck = random guy that says whatever he wants because he is not employed by tax dollars.
What would it take to convince me? Any of the multitude of predictions made since our friend Mr. Hansen addressed the congress with the air conditioner off in 1988.
Why do people bring up the scientific predictions in the 70’s that said we were going to enter a new ice age? AGW skeptics fully realize that with better instruments and data, they would not have made such predictions in the 70’s, therefore those predictions have nothing to do with the current climate debate. But they still made suggestions as to what the government needed to do to stave off the impending doom. If those suggestions were followed it would have jacked up our economy to a point where addressing the AGW problem you perceive would be impossible.
Back to Hansen, and others, if your science is so sound then you don’t need to protest. If your science is so sound then you don’t mind being audited (official or through internet). If your science is so sound then you don’t mind FOIA requests. If your science is sound you don’t need to use WWF sources in the IPCC. The problem is that there are enough questions with the issue that altering the lives of every human on Earth is nowhere near prudent. I agree with you that research should continue at a rapid pace. But when the entire world economy is on the line scientist should be able to present a higher level of certainty than Hansen et al’s shenanigans.
Compare to religious belief. I can make an easy argument that those that really believe in God should live in a way that does not invite reproach. CRU shows scientist that are more concerned with themselves than any dread of Global Warming disaster.
And I must…
But here’s my serious question for you: true skeptics have to know what it would take to convince them, and that requirement of evidence must be reasonable. What are your criteria for accepting that GOD is a real phenomenon?
I love knowing the face I just made you have.
Well, science knows it doesn’t know everything. Otherwise, it would stop.
“If the science is so sound you don’t need to protest”? Whatnow? That’s giving the general public a fabulous benefit of the doubt, isn’t it? The science is sound, so why do scientists have to spend so much time telling people that the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years? The science is sound, so why do doctors have to protest loudly that medicine does work, and that vaccines save lives, and don’t cause autism? Because there are really loud cranks on the other sides that are really good at capturing the public’s attention. I’m pretty sure the CRU scientists are politically naive, but more concerned with themselves than with their work? Engaged in deliberate fraud? That seems extremely unlikely.
Nevermind that several independent investigations have cleared the CRU employees of any wrongdoing. It would be silly to distrust an entire branch of science because a few scientists behaved badly. They obviously felt justified in frustrating what they believed to be frivolous and harassing FOIA requests – as would /anybody/. It’s litigation bullying.
Jeff Masters explains that resistance to FOIA requests was not an attempt to conceal fraud, but was resistance to harassing trivial requests by amateurs who were putting an undue burden on the data managers. In fact, they suspected that some of the requests were meant to distract them from their work and eat up their resources.
Also, the vast majority of scientific papers in the 1970s predicted warming. Nearly all of the “new ice age” predictions were media hype. Further, in the 1970s, the most comprehensive study on climate change (and the closest thing to a scientific consensus at the time) was the 1975 US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Report. Their basic conclusion was “…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…” That’s a pretty reasonable conclusion.
And, again, maybe Hansen makes outrageous recommendations, but from what I’ve seen, he mostly just hates coal. Saying that the “entire world economy is on the line” toes the line of hyperbole.
The face I made was a smile, actually, and believe it or not I guessed that you would ask this very question. 🙂 I’ll pass over all the questions about what exactly you mean by “God” and assume you mean the Christian God of the Bible. Sadly, most Christians define their God in a manner that is simply too extreme to justify on any evidential basis — a manner that virtually ensures that no set of evidence could ever be counted in favor of His existence. Further, if you’re asking what it would take for be to believe that God definitely exists, rather than might exist or very probably exists, you’re out of luck, because in the sense in which we’re talking, proof if something you can’t have.
My criteria for accepting that the God hypothesis is very probably true:
1) A completely unambiguous prophesy that was unambiguously fulfilled, that could not be explained by simple guessing (ie, “the Savior will be born!” – it has to be extremely specific), confirmed by multiple, reliable sources and dealing with subject matter impossible to replicate in the natural realm. (To exclude hoaxes. Mistranslations of the Hebrew word for “young girl” don’t count.)
2) Prayers routinely answered. For instance, the healing of amputees would go a long way toward helping me believe.
3) The bible lists a lot of impressive miracles – water into wine, raising the dead, walking on water, giving the blind sight, etc. If I saw one of those in a situation that I felt was unequivocal, than it would be clear something was going on. Though I think you run into a definitional problem about “what is god”, and the “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” problem. You’ll notice that miracles like that are pretty rare these days. The catholic church requires a documented miracle to declare somebody a saint, and if you look at the “miracle” that is used, they’re pretty weak.
4) The Bible containing scientific knowledge or cultural advancements known to be unknown to everyone else at the time. For instance, if the Bible unambiguously mentioned DNA or the existence of extrasolar planets along with their orbital periods and material composition, or condemned the practice of slavery, proclaimed the genders equal, and made it a grave sin to mutilate the genitals of female children in the name of preserving their chastity, thousands of years before any culture decided or discovered these things, that would also push me toward belief. Basically, anything to show that the Bible was something more than a product of the time and place in which it was written.
It is not giving the general public the benefit of the doubt. It is just not being so smug to think that you are better equipped to make decisions for the general public than they themselves are. You need to realize your own propensity to desire to be king.
13.7 billion years old makes a good argument for my stance that we are prematurely pulling the trigger with AGW claims. That number has changed many times over the last century with better and better instrumentation and analysis. Why do we not think that AGW info will change with better instruments and analysis?
Can you give me an example of a government paid doctor going to a protest and using his government credentials to get media coverage on a political issue? That is why I respect my doctor and follow her advice. She sticks with the science.
I don’t care what their problem with FOIA was. You get millions of public money and have a staff member that is completely dedicated to FOIA requests, you do it, and you stop whining. Anything else is subverting public scrutiny.
Hansen has endorsed the views of Keith Farnish = industrial civilization itself is fatally flawed and needs to be removed from the face of the earth, before the inevitable ecological collapse brings it down in far more horrible circumstances.
One of the few things I like about Hansen is that he is honest about the economic sacrifice he and his ilk is asking for. Look at the economies that have really embraced what the AGW cause is asking for i.e. California, Spain… They have hurt them significantly and done little to nothing to curb emissions. And those examples have only done a portion of the recommendations.
Energy is what provides everything else economically. One can even look at agriculture. One of the reasons that we can produce so much is that we are not relying purely on solar to create calories. Increasing the cost of energy affects everything else. When we add cost that do not increase production it is a net loss to everyone.
If scientists really thought this was an issue, they would put all of their efforts into making affordable alt fuels. So far they haven’t. There is continued pushes on failed efforts that do nothing but boost the bottom line of Iowa farmers 😉
On the God issues
#2 – Prayers are always answered. You just don’t like the fact that God disagrees with you on how the world should proceed. If “God” routinely did what you wanted then he ain’t much of a “God”.
In general I wasn’t speaking of a god with particular aspects. I was actually speaking of god (creator) in general. While I think that nature points to a specific God, I think that it is immensely hard to argue that it doesn’t at least point to a god.
Furthermore I come back to Pascal’s wager. Without concrete proof (think AGW claims) then one has to go with the math of probabilities. You argue that without individually satisfying evidence that you should not give up your life to God. I argue the same thing with AGW theories.
Last but not least, can you babysit tonite?
Using borehole data, we can reasonably conclude that the earth is warmer now than at any other time before approximately the year 1500. And if our reading of the Holocene is correct, it is warmer now than at any other time in over the last 100,000 years. There are two requirements for understanding what happened at a particular climate change in geological history. One is an internally consistent theory based on physical principles and the other is sufficient data to determine the physical properties involved. Although we are far from that elusive Perfect Understanding ™ of the climate, there is also no known climate change in the Earth’s past that provides a solid contradiction of the theories that underpin Anthropogenic Global Warming. How much certainty do we need before acting on solid physical principles – especially considering the predictions about what will happen? The precautionary principle would seem to apply.
Oh, Hansen was made to look like a liar in 1988. As part of that testimony he presented a graph that was a part of a paper published soon after. This graph had three lines on it, representing three scenarios based on three projections of future emissions and volcanism. Line A was a temperature trend prediction based on rapid emissions growth and no large volcanic event and was a steep climb through year 2000 and beyond. Line B was based on modest emissions growth and one large volcanic eruption in the mid 1990’s. Line C began the same as in B but with reductions in the growth of CO2 emission by the turn of the century, the result of hypothetical government controls, and also had the same volcanic eruption as scenario B.
As it happens, Mt Pinatubo did erupt in the 1990’s, though early in the decade, not in the middle, and emissions have grown at a modest rate in the years since Hansen made this testimony. In other words, the forcings scenario of Line B in this graph was remarkably similar to what actually came to pass. It also just so happens that the observed temperature trend has matched very closely with the prediction represented by Line B. James Hansen was right on the money and the models he used proved successful.
When Patrick Michaels made his testimony before the congress in 1998, ten years later, he saw fit to erase the two lower lines, B and C, and show the Senators only Line A. He did so so that his testimony that Hansen’s predictions had been off by 300% would be believable. He lied by omission.
I think it’s possible to strike a reasonable balance between industry and not killing the planet. I don’t think the solution is what Keith Farnish recommends, but I do think his inflammatory views are meant to shock people to action rather than be practical suggestions.
Scientists ARE working on alt fuels, man! The National Ignition Facility is working on fusion power as we spea…er, type, and thousands of people all around the world are trying to figure out new ways to use solar power, wind and water in new and increasingly efficient ways. Why would climate scientists not study climate? They’re not alternate fuel engineers. And yes, I agree with you about ethanol. It’s a very silly thing to use corn for.
What, God never wanted to heal an amputee? Ever? Saying that the answer is “no” is a cop-out. God doesn’t show favorites (He says so Himself) so He should do for all what He’s done for one. Also, I think I’ve discussed the paradoxical nature of praying if you believe God has a “perfect will” before, anyway. Also, I think that the argument against nature pointing to a god is very compelling. The creation of all existence would at most only require accepting the existence of a very, very powerful being — and even then, only at the time of creation. Nothing about such an event necessitates belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, or even currently existing being. And such being would have to be incredibly complex and powerful, and would require massive prior complexity to exist himself. From whence, then, comes God?
Pascal assumes that God rewards self-delusion. The only time you take the wager is when all things are equal – you have no reason to believe in God, but you decide to to escape eternal torment anyway. If there is a god, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. Maybe He’ll really punish people who take the Pascal’s Wager, because they’re just trying to save their own skins and are not sincere. Further, how do you know you’re wagering on the right god?
(The comment section for this entry is now closed. Good discussion, but ultimately futile. This is my blog, not an open forum – this thread has run its course. 🙂 )