Sell me on global warming

[Deck Knight]

Indeed. But it's pretty clear that the CO2 'sinks' aren't absorbing the excess fast enough - because the atmospheric levels are RISING.

CO2 is rising because temperature has already risen, and CO2 is a lagging indicator, go some arguments. While it is certain man is contributing to CO2, so is every cuddly polar bear that draws breath.

In any case, the only argument to *do something* is that climate change is inherently bad. But climate change is inherently unstoppable. If atmospheric CO2 levels were falling, would you be in the same state of panic or would you wait until someone held a Copenhagen conference to address catastrophic global cooling? Climate panic is like most other forms of panic: entirely unnecessary. Even if you shut down every economy in the world overnight, you could still argue the feedback loops have gone too far and be panicked about that. Only geoengineering sounds remotely viable to me. It addresses the root cause of atmospheric makeup, and ideally the only politics involved is who sends the spacecraft up to do it. (Arguments about atmospheric makeup are already so specious among politicians that it won't be good enough PR to follow through.)

Given that
1) The basic physics underlying climate is perfectly known
2) Climate models generally agree broadly - the differences are in details
3) The models are able to broadly replicate the past record
it seems highly unlikely that all climate models are fundamentally wrong

1) The details are not perfectly known, and details are where policy should be made. We know the basics of school systems require teachers, students, curriculum, and funding, but you can't just throw infinite amounts of funding at a school system and expect infinite improvement even if the basics of operating a school are perfectly known.
2) Climate models use mostly the same set of base data proxies, therefore it is 100 interpretations of what is essentially the same text. If the text is tampered with then the conclusions are compromised.
3) The Farmer's Almanac perfectly replicates the past record, yet it does not predict the future climate. The first thing they teach you in statistics is that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Any statistician clever enough can create an algorithm that perfectly replicates past data, or uses graphical trickery to set the scale to make it appear the same.

Personally I wouldn't call digging up and burning over 16 million tonnes of coal, 2.9 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, and 3.5 billion US gallons of oil per day 'caution and prudence'.

Yet I imagine in the quest to *do something* you still drive from your coal-fired electric-powered heated home to a coal-fired electric-powered heated workplace in your automobile or take some other carbon-using conveyance. The only reason you can even get worked up about the imprudence of current energy consumption is because burning all that energy made the research possible. Which is the developing world's primary beef with the first world nations now suddenly concerned about burning too much energy.

Furthermore, what is currently being done cannot be called incautious or imprudent, at least from a policy making perspective. It is the norm under which we all live, and largely peaceably at that. It is the proposed solutions that require the tests of caution and prudence, not the problems. "We need to cut back" is an empty platitude. It'd be like Goldfinger making the laser aimed at James Bond's crotch ascend at a slower rate on the basis he's doing Bond a favor, even though his genitals will still be burned off by Goldfinger's laser eventually.

How many tonnes of coal, cubic metres of natural gas, and gallons of oil a day should we be burning, in your estimation?

And how many people are you willing to allow to suffer just so you can feel better about these three numbers getting smaller? Because that is what real policy analysis requires you to look at. The fundamental problem with any "selling" of this policy is the end-goal can be summarized as "avoid climate-related man-made planetary catastrophe." You'll never know you failed or succeeded until large swaths of humanity are wiped out by heatstroke for a continuous decade, presumably. And if no one dies despite CO2 still rising? I guess you failed to not save the planet, even though the carbon boogeyman still lives.

Which is why I find the entire subject of climate policy a ridiculous waste of time and nothing more than a gold mine for political hacks of a generally leftist bent. We don't even know what success or failure looks like for the end goal (avoiding climate-related, man-caused annihilation), only for the specific means of some arbitrary ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is labeled kid safe or something. Perhaps Obama can hire Tom Ridge to color code ppm carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere, and get us all hyped up that we have moved from code Yellow (Potential Catastrophe) to code Orange (Impending Doom). At Code Orange, flights shall be delayed or grounded to lower our carbon footprint for that day.

That is what Climate Policy is like to me: color-coded doom based upon a level of CO2 ppm politicians deem too dangerous. Not for humans, since everyone seems to believe humans will pull out of this just fine as a general rule, but for various animal species who I guess are incapable of adapting to planetary environmental shifts over the course of centuries.

But possibly the most infuriating thing is this: Human arrogance and guilt. We act like we are the only foreign element in any environmental system, and only we have the wisdom capable to "fix" our "mistake." As if dumping all that carbon into the atmosphere is any bigger a mistake than Mt. Pinatubo going off, overpredation in untouched wilds, or any other systemic change caused by inhabitants or natural phenomena on the planet's surface. Or as if by drastically reducing our carbon output and likely reducing the standard of living for all humanity, but especially the poorest nations, we will not have made another mistake because this time, only humans have died from human action. Except if we did that it wouldn't be true either, for all the rats and insects that would multiply by feeding on readily available human carcasses.

Warming, Cooling? Whatever the direction, it's all bullshit. Everything we do is going to cause change, and depending on the rate of change in any given element, that change has already happened and readjusting to previous conditions will not turn back time to the exact way it was. We are already doing something, and that is assuming a guilt for the results of a system that our very existence changed long ago. I'm much more interested in how we're going to be a moral, prosperous, and industrious society than wringing my hands over the gas content of the atmosphere, and how it's all humanity's fault. Provided you can address the latter without obliterating the former, I'm interested in your ideas, but I don't respond to fear or guilt.

And finally, this notion of stability: If we want global temperature stability, we are doing what we think is best for us, not the planet. The planet is an inanimate object that undergoes natural processes. What is good for us is lethal to populations of animals that have not adapted to our current environmental conditions. What is good for us is a fleeting moment conceived in arrogance and conceit, and as soon as we get our statistically imminent astral or supervolcanic asskicking, maybe we'll realize keeping the planet stable for so long, even if we did manage it, was just as much a "mistake" as letting it adjust to all changes, anthropomorphic or otherwise, in its normal way.

 

[cantab]

3) The Farmer's Almanac perfectly replicates the past record, yet it does not predict the future climate. The first thing they teach you in statistics is that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Any statistician clever enough can create an algorithm that perfectly replicates past data, or uses graphical trickery to set the scale to make it appear the same.

The Farmer's Almanac isn't a computer program that takes a fairly small number of inputs. When your algorithm has physical basis, your inputs (a small number of constants, some parameterisations, and an initial starting point) are smaller than your outputs (a long list of numbers representing however many years of climate), so you can't just match anything.

Yet I imagine in the quest to *do something* you still drive from your coal-fired electric-powered heated home to a coal-fired electric-powered heated workplace in your automobile or take some other carbon-using conveyance.

My home's heated by gas, and I've reduced the usage this winter. I take buses (OK, so that's on account of my lack of a driving license). I'm out of work at the moment (damn recession). Coal is a minor source of electric power in the UK (oil and gas, which produce less CO2, dominate) and I've made efforts to reduce my usage.
And why did you feel the need to make a personal attack?

The only reason you can even get worked up about the imprudence of current energy consumption is because burning all that energy made the research possible.

And children working 12 hour days in Victorian factories made the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire possible. Just because something brought us benefit in the past does not mean we should automatically continue doing it.

How many tonnes of coal, cubic metres of natural gas, and gallons of oil a day should we be burning, in your estimation?

I'd go by what climate models indicate will avoid detrimental effects of climate change.

And how many people are you willing to allow to suffer just so you can feel better about these three numbers getting smaller?

The science indicates that reducing those numbers will alleviate suffering.

It's a matter of balancing the negative impact of reducing emissions against the negative impact of climate change. There should be an optimum point.

Which is why I find the entire subject of climate policy a ridiculous waste of time

Then why post about it here?

We don't even know what success or failure looks like for the end goal (avoiding climate-related, man-caused annihilation),

We know what failure looks like. A climate where once-verdant areas are deserts, where once-dry land is underwater, and so on. All the stuff you've heard about.

But possibly the most infuriating thing is this: Human arrogance and guilt. We act like we are the only foreign element in any environmental system, and only we have the wisdom capable to "fix" our "mistake." As if dumping all that carbon into the atmosphere is any bigger a mistake than Mt. Pinatubo going off, overpredation in untouched wilds, or any other systemic change caused by inhabitants or natural phenomena on the planet's surface.

It is naive to assume that humanity cannot affect the Earth's atmosphere. The discovery of ozone depletion by CFCs made it very apparent that we DO. Volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide average around 1% of anthropogenic emissions. Pinatubo had a short term cooling effect, due to putting sulphates into the stratosphere, but over the long term it did little to climate.
Besides, we may not be the only element that influences climate - but we are the only element that knows we do.

I'm much more interested in how we're going to be a moral, prosperous, and industrious society than wringing my hands over the gas content of the atmosphere, and how it's all humanity's fault. Provided you can address the latter without obliterating the former, I'm interested in your ideas, but I don't respond to fear or guilt.

And we will "address the latter without obliterating the former". No politician is going to ruin the economy.

And finally, this notion of stability: If we want global temperature stability, we are doing what we think is best for us, not the planet. The planet is an inanimate object that undergoes natural processes. What is good for us is lethal to populations of animals that have not adapted to our current environmental conditions.

Animals that have not adapted to the current climate have already gone extinct. Animals that cannot adapt to future climatic change will go extinct. As it is it's thought we're in a mass extinction caused by human activity (primarily things other than climate change, like habitat destruction).
And why shouldn't we do what we think is best for humanity? It would be foolish to make things worse for ourself, either by action or inaction. "Saving the planet" is the slogan of the environmental movement, but really, the reason we should (and have, and are, and will) take action on climate change is to help OURSELVES.

Finally, you claim your issue is with the politics. Yet you frequently attack climate science. Why is that? (This thread, incidentally, was started by a question about the science. Discussing the politics is strictly speaking off-topic.)

 

[Altmer]

Too bad the atmosphere is not the only place where carbon is disposed of. All sorts of cuddly critters (and plants as a category) have devised means of pulling carbon from the atmosphere and ocean. The politics of global warming are entirely bullshit, and every day since Climategate broke more and more of the data underlying the nonexistent consensus is proven to be manufactured nonsense at best, deliberate fraud at worse, a Hardcore Gorenography created to titillate the converted.

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm Dutch, please explain your fucking science to me in non-political terms. All I hear is Gore Blah Blah Blah.

Yes, there are natural CO2 sinks. Yes, they absorb CO2. The point is that they don't absorb enough of it (and while we're at it, did you recently check deforestation figures? That's your CO2 sink in Brazil for you). This is not an argument against global warming.

It is true that any fool will know it will be warmer in six months. Most people in the Northern Hemisphere call this natural phenomenon summer (whereas people in the Southern Hemisphere disagree with that premise entirely). It takes a true level of foolishness to believe that the next ten summers after that will each be progressively warmer in the aggregate, and furthermore it will be all mankind's fault, which is the crux of the political aspect of global warming. The bullshit aspect. Never is it considered the prospect that all existing climate models are wrong, one of them must be right, correct? If someone gives me a thousand pieces of different data, someone must have gotten it right, correct? No. This is fallacious reasoning.

No, they don't have to. Who are you gonna trust, scientists that devote their life to this or your tiny insignificant little brain who probably couldn't solve a diff. eq if his life depended on it?

It is possible for any set of limited n data setting a value for a statement x to all be incorrect. The only time this is not true is for infinite data, where by definition at least one must be correct because all possible combinations are included in an infinite set of data. And in this particular case, the data itself has been corrupted. No wonder that no climate model predicts cooling, the data has been "value-added" to describe the conclusion.

Prove the corruption. Stop insinuating and give proof, evidence, yadda yadda yadda. Boring.

The EPA (a political outfit, so no one misunderstands my focus on political aspects of global warming) just declared carbon dioxide a pollutant. I wait with baited breath for the consequences, because apparently exhalation is now a source of pollution. Gorenography is indeed a hard sell.

Water is a pollutant. Given enough of x, everything is toxic and a pollutant. If CO2 levels breach a norm then they are pollutants. That's science and is nothing political.

The problem with approaching this from a scientific aspect is that the scientific facts have been tampered with (again, for political purposes). I do wish we could see earth in 100,000 years, so that we can look back at 2009 and say "Why! Why didn't we forsee Boston and London (or whatever is there then, probably nothing) buried under mile thick glaciers! If only we had consulted the geological record :(." Then again, planetary glaciation can be blamed on mankind too I guess. It's a conclusion that doesn't require evidence because it will always be at least partly true. Any single element of a system effects that system.

Yes.... so because we're all gonna be under an ice cap in 100000 years, we shouldn't do anything now? Logic, people?

Premise 2 is a "safe bet," says the OP? Why? It certainly isn't because the climate never changed when humans weren't using internal combustion engines and coal-fired power plants. Both of these things are jokes compared to the potential climate change wrought from say, a supervolcano going off or a large meteor strike, things that previously shaped global climate patterns. The world also fluctuated between warm periods and glaciations naturally, without massive super-events (unless you count various quirks of solar activity a super-event). New England's very soil is rocky because it used to be crushed under miles of ice.

Probability of supervolcano eruption or meteor strike: minimal - Timescale of such events, gigantic

Timescale of current warming: about a 100 years

stop trying to quote irrelevant data

Here would be a better set of premises:

Premise 1: The climate is a dynamic system.
Premise 2: Man is part of that dynamic system.
Premise 3: Whatever the implications of Premise 2, Premise 1 is neither entirely unaffected by nor entirely controlled by actors specified in Premise 2.
Premise 4: Because of Premise 3, proceed with caution and prudence.

Premise 1: YIPPIE IT'S NOT WRONG
Premise 2: YIPPIE IT'S NOT WRONG
Premise 3: i have issues with this because you can quantify effects properly and you can exercise control over what you do
Premise 4: entirely ambiguous and means nothing

Which would mean not doing things like declaring an essential nutrient for plants and the natural product of animal exhalation a pollutant... for example. The air we breathe is now a danger to the air we breathe under that standard.

pollutant doesn't always mean toxicity

If we go back to our initial list or premises, this basically means that Original Premise 1 is unaltered (considering only recordable history, not recorded, as current levels of component parts are assumed in a dynamic system), Original Premise 2 is weakened severely (dynamic systems have multiple causes), Original Premise 3 is suspect (dynamic systems fluctuate in direction), and Original Premise 4 is thrown out entirely (dynamic systems are no longer dynamic if they can be controlled).

yeah but your premises suck

This doesn't even get into the entirely separate debate of whether any given change in the dynamic system is good, bad, indifferent, or just different.

no but it still makes you wrong

CO2 is rising because temperature has already risen, and CO2 is a lagging indicator, go some arguments. While it is certain man is contributing to CO2, so is every cuddly polar bear that draws breath.

yes that doesn't say anything about the ratio of contribution which you conveniently neglected to mention. the co2 emissions of the polar bear population are completely negligible compared to that of humans, so this isn't a point at all

In any case, the only argument to *do something* is that climate change is inherently bad. But climate change is inherently unstoppable. If atmospheric CO2 levels were falling, would you be in the same state of panic or would you wait until someone held a Copenhagen conference to address catastrophic global cooling? Climate panic is like most other forms of panic: entirely unnecessary. Even if you shut down every economy in the world overnight, you could still argue the feedback loops have gone too far and be panicked about that. Only geoengineering sounds remotely viable to me. It addresses the root cause of atmospheric makeup, and ideally the only politics involved is who sends the spacecraft up to do it. (Arguments about atmospheric makeup are already so specious among politicians that it won't be good enough PR to follow through.)

climate change isn't bad, climate change that makes the earth uninhabitable is

oh wait and i thought you enjoyed living here

Quote:
Given that
1) The basic physics underlying climate is perfectly known
2) Climate models generally agree broadly - the differences are in details
3) The models are able to broadly replicate the past record
it seems highly unlikely that all climate models are fundamentally wrong

1) The details are not perfectly known, and details are where policy should be made. We know the basics of school systems require teachers, students, curriculum, and funding, but you can't just throw infinite amounts of funding at a school system and expect infinite improvement even if the basics of operating a school are perfectly known.

details are known to enough of a degree that the differences are irrelevant

2) Climate models use mostly the same set of base data proxies, therefore it is 100 interpretations of what is essentially the same text. If the text is tampered with then the conclusions are compromised.

If - and only if - the text is tampered with. Evidence please?

3) The Farmer's Almanac perfectly replicates the past record, yet it does not predict the future climate. The first thing they teach you in statistics is that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Any statistician clever enough can create an algorithm that perfectly replicates past data, or uses graphical trickery to set the scale to make it appear the same.

this has already been addressed but this is retarded do you even know anything about statistics come on

Yet I imagine in the quest to *do something* you still drive from your coal-fired electric-powered heated home to a coal-fired electric-powered heated workplace in your automobile or take some other carbon-using conveyance. The only reason you can even get worked up about the imprudence of current energy consumption is because burning all that energy made the research possible. Which is the developing world's primary beef with the first world nations now suddenly concerned about burning too much energy.

I don't own a car, I go to university by bike, I try to keep my energy consumption down, I'm considering becoming a vegetarian for the sake of the universe, and I use LED lights. I separate garbage. I don't know what our current electricity source is but I expect it's gas. Unfortunately solar panels wouldn't be useful on our house considering it faces the wrong side.

Furthermore, what is currently being done cannot be called incautious or imprudent, at least from a policy making perspective. It is the norm under which we all live, and largely peaceably at that. It is the proposed solutions that require the tests of caution and prudence, not the problems. "We need to cut back" is an empty platitude. It'd be like Goldfinger making the laser aimed at James Bond's crotch ascend at a slower rate on the basis he's doing Bond a favor, even though his genitals will still be burned off by Goldfinger's laser eventually.

It's still better than not cutting back. And your analogy is flawed for obvious reasons.

How many tonnes of coal, cubic metres of natural gas, and gallons of oil a day should we be burning, in your estimation?

Close to none. I expect most things will be based on solar, wind, and hydropower, with some biomass and nuclear thrown in, and tidal if it's appropriate. Fossil fuels should account for <10% of global energy consumption. If you check the amount of available solar energy for human use on a daily basis, we can make this eaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasily.

But then again you don't know science.

And how many people are you willing to allow to suffer just so you can feel better about these three numbers getting smaller? Because that is what real policy analysis requires you to look at. The fundamental problem with any "selling" of this policy is the end-goal can be summarized as "avoid climate-related man-made planetary catastrophe." You'll never know you failed or succeeded until large swaths of humanity are wiped out by heatstroke for a continuous decade, presumably. And if no one dies despite CO2 still rising? I guess you failed to not save the planet, even though the carbon boogeyman still lives.

How many people are going to suffer more or less from these policies? Not African or Asian countries, they don't have anything. Western countries? No, they have the tech to keep living their way with less waste. Everybody wins out, and the Americans that can't drive their luxury SUV anymore: fuck them, and fuck you along with it. You probably drive an SUV, don't you? Don't ad hominem when you don't know what you're talking about. I do it better than you do.

Which is why I find the entire subject of climate policy a ridiculous waste of time and nothing more than a gold mine for political hacks of a generally leftist bent. We don't even know what success or failure looks like for the end goal (avoiding climate-related, man-caused annihilation), only for the specific means of some arbitrary ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is labeled kid safe or something. Perhaps Obama can hire Tom Ridge to color code ppm carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere, and get us all hyped up that we have moved from code Yellow (Potential Catastrophe) to code Orange (Impending Doom). At Code Orange, flights shall be delayed or grounded to lower our carbon footprint for that day.

how does anyone profit from climate policy

if anything they won't

what is this bullshit now you just failed economics too next to science

That is what Climate Policy is like to me: color-coded doom based upon a level of CO2 ppm politicians deem too dangerous. Not for humans, since everyone seems to believe humans will pull out of this just fine as a general rule, but for various animal species who I guess are incapable of adapting to planetary environmental shifts over the course of centuries.

oh my god there are rules i can't jerk off when i want to oh my god the WORLD MUST END

But possibly the most infuriating thing is this: Human arrogance and guilt. We act like we are the only foreign element in any environmental system, and only we have the wisdom capable to "fix" our "mistake." As if dumping all that carbon into the atmosphere is any bigger a mistake than Mt. Pinatubo going off, overpredation in untouched wilds, or any other systemic change caused by inhabitants or natural phenomena on the planet's surface. Or as if by drastically reducing our carbon output and likely reducing the standard of living for all humanity, but especially the poorest nations, we will not have made another mistake because this time, only humans have died from human action. Except if we did that it wouldn't be true either, for all the rats and insects that would multiply by feeding on readily available human carcasses.

yes but we have no control over mt. pinatubo, nobody is blaming something like that

we are blaming ourselves for things we've done wrong that is entirely normal stop being retarded

Warming, Cooling? Whatever the direction, it's all bullshit. Everything we do is going to cause change, and depending on the rate of change in any given element, that change has already happened and readjusting to previous conditions will not turn back time to the exact way it was. We are already doing something, and that is assuming a guilt for the results of a system that our very existence changed long ago. I'm much more interested in how we're going to be a moral, prosperous, and industrious society than wringing my hands over the gas content of the atmosphere, and how it's all humanity's fault. Provided you can address the latter without obliterating the former, I'm interested in your ideas, but I don't respond to fear or guilt.

yes not all change is bad and some change is natural - point is this change isn't

DON'T GENERALISE CHANGE

And finally, this notion of stability: If we want global temperature stability, we are doing what we think is best for us, not the planet. The planet is an inanimate object that undergoes natural processes. What is good for us is lethal to populations of animals that have not adapted to our current environmental conditions. What is good for us is a fleeting moment conceived in arrogance and conceit, and as soon as we get our statistically imminent astral or supervolcanic asskicking, maybe we'll realize keeping the planet stable for so long, even if we did manage it, was just as much a "mistake" as letting it adjust to all changes, anthropomorphic or otherwise, in its normal way.

so because we can't manage anything we should all just go back to the stone age

your logic is impeccable please become the president of stupidityland

 

[TEzeon]

CO2 contributes such a miniscule percentage to global warming that it could be ignored. When they say global warming is caused by humans, they are pretty much lying. If we were to stop "polluting" the atmosphere, there is pretty much no chance at all of that stopping global warming.

 

[cantab]

CO2 contributes such a miniscule percentage to global warming that it could be ignored. When they say global warming is caused by humans, they are pretty much lying. If we were to stop "polluting" the atmosphere, there is pretty much no chance at all of that stopping global warming.

Bullshit. Did you even read the paper I linked to earlier? CO2 accounts for something like 25% of the greenhouse effect. That CO2 is a significant greenhouse gas has been known for decades. You won't find a single reputable climatologist who would say "CO2 contributes such a miniscule percentage to global warming that it could be ignored". Even those who hold climate change is not a problem, or that the trends of the past 150 years are natural, can't credibly argue that CO2 can be neglected from their calculations.

And you see fit to accuse thousands of scientists around the world of gross professional misconduct?

 

[Altmer]

CO2 contributes such a miniscule percentage to global warming that it could be ignored. When they say global warming is caused by humans, they are pretty much lying. If we were to stop "polluting" the atmosphere, there is pretty much no chance at all of that stopping global warming.

it's not about the percentage, it's about actual values. 1% of a lot is still a lot, so you need actual orders of magnitude

apart from that you're just plain wrong lol

 

[Deck Knight]

Altmer: Condescension doesn't suit a scientist such as yourself.

You really aren't worth responding to, and you know why:

Just like Brain, you refuse to see what is in front of your eyes.

You refuse to.

I might as well be trying to convince you to convert to Catholicism because there is no evidence that will possibly sway you.

Professional scientists deleting emails and resisting FOI requests will not convince you something is amiss. Scientists acting completely against the most basic fundamentals of the scientific method we learned in grade school will not convince you something is amiss. An entire financial instrument being created around global warming futures will not convince you something is amiss.

I cannot provide you any evidence you will not find automatically invalid. A priori man causes global warming, and everything else is merely an inconvenient distraction from the truth.

Have you looked over the data itself, the source code, the ways they calculated and implemented the variables? I imagine you haven't because McIntyre, a statistician who has been pointing out flaws in their statistical presentations of data hasn't been able to get his hands on it, except for now, after the leak. He's corrected Mann and co several times on their presentations of data. I don't know where you learned science, but even a beggar can question "settled science" and his inquiry will be valid until disproven. Science is never "settled." Religion is settled, you agree with its precepts or you don't, and you can go elsewhere if you don't. Science has no precepts, it is always subject to scrutiny from anyone.

So it is worthless to go point by point with you and illustrate in detail the incredible amounts of taxpayer dollars that go towards funding global warming grants. It is worthless to point out that Al Gore has increased his net worth fifty-fucking fold on trading carbon credits, and that Gore is specifically important because he won a Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC based on his advocacy in a film that has been shot full of holes eight ways to Sunday.

You are the converted. You may be a scientist by profession, but not one in spirit. Are you really a scientist or is that just a persona you use on the internet? If you are, you are among the most incurious sort of scientists I have ever had the displeasure of being belittled by.

The AGW argument boils down to the following:

1. Carbon forcing increases temperatures
2. Man contributes to global carbon forcing
3. Therefore, Man is responsible for increased global temperatures.

But none of this leads logically to any of the solutions drawn out by politicians, which was my argument to begin with before you decided to start calling my mind insignificant. Just because you blew a ton of dough learning facts about the earth or plants or the air instead of facts about daily economic life does not make you superior in any way, especially not mentally if the best you can muster is insult and condescension.

Prove to me the case for doing something. All you have is insinuations we have a 100 year horizon. Prove it Altmer. Mann said we only have 20 years. He said we had 20 years to do something 20 years ago. Gordon Brown said we had to do something within 50 days, and I'm pretty sure that was 50 days ago now, and the world still turns, and he's freezing his ass off too.

It is up to the radical alarmists to prove we must do something now. I don't need to prove jack to you, but I do know all your rhetoric and bullying is a bunch of bullshit. You don't have to make a case for inaction.

Prove the warming horizon Altmer, come on. I'm freezing my ass off here and so is Copenhagen.

Oh, and one last question:

yes not all change is bad and some change is natural - point is this change isn't

Mankind isn't natural? You have just made the case for God.

 

[MetalGearSamus]

Science has no precepts, it is always subject to scrutiny from anyone.

Exactly, and Climate Change/Global Warming/Whateverwearesupposedtocallit has been through that scrutiny, just like Evolution, just like Einstein's theory of relativity, and just like Quantum Mechanics. It has gone through the same process of data collection, hypothesis, evaluation, and testing that they have and after all that most of the scientific community is convinced it is happening. They may disagree on the rates, but not the actual thing.

But none of this leads logically to any of the solutions drawn out by politicians, which was my argument to begin with before you decided to start calling my mind insignificant. Just because you blew a ton of dough learning facts about the earth or plants or the air instead of facts about daily economic life does not make you superior in any way, especially not mentally if the best you can muster is insult and condescension.

First of all, this thread was never about the politics of Global Warming (or what ever it's called now) it was about Surgo's understanding of how we came to the conclusion that a rise in gases such as CO2, CH4, and N2O in the atmosphere would change the global temperature.

Second, I agree with you that Altimer's responses were...unrefined to say the least. But he did have one or two points in his posts, how would one use climate change for profit or power? And I'm all for helping others but the planet's "natural cycle" over the stable survival and advancement of humanity? Really now, that's a little much don't you think?

Prove to me the case for doing something. All you have is insinuations we have a 100 year horizon. Prove it Altmer. Mann said we only have 20 years. He said we had 20 years to do something 20 years ago. Gordon Brown said we had to do something within 50 days, and I'm pretty sure that was 50 days ago now, and the world still turns, and he's freezing his ass off too.

Well, the case for doing something is stability, which is good for our specie's comfortable survival. As for the estimates...nobody should be making them, I highly doubt we have enough data to make more then a VERY rough estimate for "how long we have."

Mankind isn't natural? You have just made the case for God.

Well, I'm not sure how you went from "unnatural climate change caused by humans" to "humans are unnatural" but even then it's not a case for God. Only a god or gods. And then, using you logic, I could say that since humans can create something unnatural and thus be unnatural, the god or gods that created humans must be unnatural! But then something must have created them! And so the cycle goes on indefinitely, an infinite amount of gods creating an infinite amount of lesser gods.

And I apologize for going off topic.

 

[cantab]

Professional scientists deleting emails and resisting FOI requests will not convince you something is amiss. Scientists acting completely against the most basic fundamentals of the scientific method we learned in grade school will not convince you something is amiss.

The emails indicate that there was not even consensus on whether such actions were acceptable within the small group of scientists at the CRU. Scientists are human, and individually they may make mistakes and errors of judgement. But science as a whole manages to overcome those problems. Just as a bullethole in a blimp does not make it crash, the leaked emails do not substantively affect the validity of the anthropogenic climate change theory.

Have you looked over the data itself, the source code, the ways they calculated and implemented the variables? I imagine you haven't because McIntyre, a statistician who has been pointing out flaws in their statistical presentations of data hasn't been able to get his hands on it, except for now, after the leak.

Unwillingness to share raw data is a problem in science that extends beyond climate science. There are a number of reasons. One is that data takes time, money, and effort to get. Another is that some of the original sources of data will give it freely to scientists they choose, but want to sell it to commercial interests. (This is an issue with the UK Met Office, for example.) Thus, the scientists who receive the data are not allowed to share it, for that would destroy the revenues of the original source.
(EDIT: Incidentally, Stephen McIntyre is not a professional statistician. He has a mathematics degree, a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, and spent most of his life as a businessman in the mining industry. He co-authored a paper criticising the 'hockey stick' data with Ross McKitrick, an economist. I have found no evidence his mathematics degree specialised in statistics, or that he did anything in statistics prior to that paper.
None of this in and of itself impacts the validity of his work. (And I'm not accusing him of conflict of interest. Mining has major environmental impacts, but AFAIK it's not a huge CO2 emitter compared to other industries.) But you bolded the claim he is a statistician, in a manner than implies you are appealing to authority to bolster your argument. Substitute the more accurate "economist and businessman who has been pointing out flaws in their statistical presentations of data" and your argument suddenly seems to lack the same kind of force.

Also, about refusing to give data: the scientists at the CRU and elsewhere knew that McIntyre's interest in the data was to find flaws in their hard work. It is entirely understandable, if not justifiable, that the climate scientists would be unwilling to give their data to McIntyre.)

Prove to me the case for doing something.

That's been done. How much more science do you want? Scientists think it's solid enough. Policymakers think it's solid enough. The general public thinks it's solid enough. It's a minority that think the dangers posed by anthropogenic climate change do not warrant taking action against them. Quite frankly, if the climate science to date has not convinced you, nothing will.

Deck Knight, you frequently point out cases where governments are apparently biasing climate research into favouring the anthropogenic global warming theory. Yet you never mention the numerous reports of bias the other way. The Bush administration in particular had a notorious record of attempting to stifle scientists from publishing results in favour of anthropogenic global warming.

 

[Khyl]

In the 1970s top Climate Scientists were warning of a period of drastic cooling. Nowadays, people are worried about warming. There is a consensus among scientists that the Earth's temperature has been rising (about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years) and there is increasing agreement that humans are causing a lot of it.

Climate scientists cannot run experiments on the climate; they can only look at the past and make educated predictions about the future. The science itself is very complex. There are too many variables to make any truely accurate predictions. However, that's not to say that every climate model is wrong; comparing them can allow scientists to reach some conclusions. An Inconvenient Truth's nightmare scenarios are overexaggerated. No climate model shows them happening.

The way I understand it, global warming is, of course, the warming of the Earth. Greenhouse gases absorb sunlight, and that energy is given off as heat energy, thus warming the earth, no? However, greenhouse gases are not the only thing that absorb sunlight. Things such as the ocean, solar panels, and even trees contribute to "global warming" in the sense that the sunlight that they absorb that is not converted to energy is converted to heat energy.

Carbon dioxide is pointed to as one of the biggest greenhouse gases, and enviornmentalists try as hard as possible to get rid of emmissions. Meanwhile, others point out that humans account for only 2 percent of global emmissions of CO2. Many people forget that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas; it's not even the major one! Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2. Cows, sheep, and other farm animals who emit methane naturally release 50% more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, even methane is not the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases. Water vapor is. CO2 has increased from 280 parts per million to 380 in the past hundred years, but 80 million years ago, when mammals were evolving, CO2 was at 1000 parts per million. Carbon dioxide does not mirror human activity. As it turns out, it doesn't necessarily warm the earth either. Ice cores have shown that CO2 levels lag behind the rises in temperature.

As for how different gases affect the climate, not all of them cause warming. Many gases actually reflect sunlight, cooling the Earth. This article can make an argument that reducing some pollutants has actually increased the temperature. As for the ice caps melting? That barely has an effect on sea levels. True, sea levels are rising, but that is because of the warming itself; water expands as it gets warmer. Oceans are 425 feet higher than they were at the last ice age (not the medieval one), but most of that rising occurred in the first one thousand years. Sea levels have only risen less than 8 inches in the past century, and are only expected to rise about one and a half feet by 2100.

That's all I have for now. I'm not going to lie, most of the information is paraphrased from the book SuperFreakonomics, which is not without its fair share of criticism in regards to their chapter of global warming. Whether or not you take the information at face value is up to you.

 

[Deck Knight]

The emails indicate that there was not even consensus on whether such actions were acceptable within the small group of scientists at the CRU. Scientists are human, and individually they may make mistakes and errors of judgement. But science as a whole manages to overcome those problems. Just as a bullethole in a blimp does not make it crash, the leaked emails do not substantively affect the validity of the anthropogenic climate change theory.

Indeed, but there were also disagreements about the scientific conclusions themselves (Trenberth emails). Which is why I balk when policymakers tell me "the science is settled." It clearly isn't, even among its researchers.

Even still, the problem specifically with climate data is that even though there are thousands of scientists working on the data, the actual base of that data is held in very few places, one of which is the CRU. One of the biggest problems with the CRU is that they lost the original base data "in a move" or some such. Meaning that a large swath of the base data climatologists used has been compromised, and they have to take the CRU's "value-added" numbers as given. Which isn't good science, and why I do feel I "need more." "Value-added" data. Like Jon Stewart said, "is that truth plus, now with lemon?"

Unwillingness to share raw data is a problem in science that extends beyond climate science. There are a number of reasons. One is that data takes time, money, and effort to get. Another is that some of the original sources of data will give it freely to scientists they choose, but want to sell it to commercial interests. (This is an issue with the UK Met Office, for example.) Thus, the scientists who receive the data are not allowed to share it, for that would destroy the revenues of the original source.

Which is more important, saving the planet or making sure scientists can eat and live indoors? What happened to sacrifice? I'm obviously being facetious here, but if the argument is that our survival is predicated on buying whatever solution comes out of this, small acts of altruism are not unreasonable.

Again there is a disconnect between the supposed end-goal of saving the planet and the practicalities that address mundane issues. I see no problem with making money off your source data if climate change is considered a mundane issue that merely requires basic attention and small efforts. If it's about global survival and we must do something and it may be too late so we have to hurry and pass something in Copenhagen(WWF Children propaganda vid) and come on do it now we are all doomed and children will live in a ravaged place(Copenhagen opening video) if we don't! then I think such concerns display a frightening lack of concern.

(EDIT: Incidentally, Stephen McIntyre is not a professional statistician. He has a mathematics degree, a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, and spent most of his life as a businessman in the mining industry. He co-authored a paper criticising the 'hockey stick' data with Ross McKitrick, an economist. I have found no evidence his mathematics degree specialised in statistics, or that he did anything in statistics prior to that paper.
None of this in and of itself impacts the validity of his work. (And I'm not accusing him of conflict of interest. Mining has major environmental impacts, but AFAIK it's not a huge CO2 emitter compared to other industries.) But you bolded the claim he is a statistician, in a manner than implies you are appealing to authority to bolster your argument. Substitute the more accurate "economist and businessman who has been pointing out flaws in their statistical presentations of data" and your argument suddenly seems to lack the same kind of force.

He has an advanced math degree and applies it to his specific work, which requires him to have completely audited statistical models for project cost. Or else he loses his job because he has committed fraud. Mining businessman does not even come close to describing what he does. Macleans has this profile on him.

Relevant paragraphs quoted below:

Hide

The world of mining is one in which everyone is constantly aware of how engineering results can be tampered with or misrepresented to rip off investors. And in 2003, when McIntyre first saw the hockey stick graph, it reminded him uncomfortably of some stock promoter’s over-optimistic revenue projection. McIntyre asked lead “hockey stick” author Michael Mann for the underlying data and was startled when Mann had trouble remembering where he had posted the files to the Internet. “That was when the penny dropped for me,” McIntyre says. “I had the sense that Mann was pulling together the data for the first time—that nobody had ever bothered to inquire independently into the hockey stick before.”

To McIntyre, a scientist’s data and code stand in the same relationship to a finished paper that drilling cores do to a mining company press release. “If you’re offering securities to the public,” McIntyre observed in a May 2008 talk at Ohio State University, “there are complicated and expensive processes of due diligence, involving audits of financial statements, independent engineering reports, opinions from securities lawyers and so on. There are laws requiring the disclosure of adverse results.” Peer review in scientific journals is good, he suggested, but it is limited and vulnerable to compromise. “There is far more independent due diligence on the smallest prospectus offering securities to the public than on a Nature article that might end up having a tremendous impact on policy.”

Also, about refusing to give data: the scientists at the CRU and elsewhere knew that McIntyre's interest in the data was to find flaws in their hard work. It is entirely understandable, if not justifiable, that the climate scientists would be unwilling to give their data to McIntyre.[/I])

If climate science is really about "saving the planet," scientists should want the most thorough audit of their work possible. Altering the entire world's economic practices is not something that should be done because we have it on good word that in some decades-long timeframe, doom is imminent.

That's been done. How much more science do you want? Scientists think it's solid enough. Policymakers think it's solid enough. The general public thinks it's solid enough. It's a minority that think the dangers posed by anthropogenic climate change do not warrant taking action against them. Quite frankly, if the climate science to date has not convinced you, nothing will.

The climate "science" has clearly been compromised. It isn't just the CRU, all sorts of fudged data is coming out of the woodwork now like the homogenized models in Darwin Australia. I am not simply going to believe "we know enough about the details, we have perfect knowledge of how the climate system works." Clearly they do not. While I'm certain I will be chastised by the same "weather is not climate!" argument, it's like the weather is laughing at the international global warming cabal. Every time they hold these conventions they get blasted by a cold front. It's so uncanny that some even call it the "Gore Effect," because every single time Al Gore goes somewhere to sound an alarmist drum, cold weather follows him. I'm not even trying to razz on him here, it's just a freakish documented coincidence. Obama got to land with snow falling when he got to Copenhagen and when he returned. On his gas-guzzling jet (Air Force One), no less.

You'd think by now they'd learn to hold these things in July. Or the Southern Hemisphere, as I'm sure Hugo Chavez would host it. How likely is it that we are experiencing catastrophic warming that has only gotten worse when, before even the first official day of winter, both Copenhagen and Washington get to experience several inches of "global warming." Merry Christmas, Copenhagen!

Or how about the warmest year in the last century (for the US anyway) being 1934, not 1998? It got cooler after the 1930's, which is why all the great scientists who knew climate science perfectly then were predicting the next ice age. It isn't like the climate change scaremonger is a new thing. It's been done before and I've no reason to believe the new guys, especially not now.

As to the general public, the American general public believes warming itself is happening, but it doesn't subscribe to internationalist "solutions" based on punitive taxes and wealth transfers. Since the international community always calls on America to lead, that's the only general public that matters. America exists because we saw absolute authority as an abhorrent tyranny, and are subsequently more keenly aware of bullshit. We are not going to "cut back" like servants obeying a master. Instead we will try to innovate ways around the problem, which is why Americans support incentivizing nuclear and other technologies.

Belief is dropping, but its fundamentally the policies America supports regarding climate change that makes the Copenhagen approach ridiculous. Copenhagen was just a shakedown. The only thing that came out of it was $100 billion dollar promise to send more money to the Third World. I'm sure Ethiopia and Zimbabwe will get right on addressing that Climate Change thing. China certainly isn't, and they said as much, and nobody there got them to budge an inch because they have no leverage.

Deck Knight, you frequently point out cases where governments are apparently biasing climate research into favouring the anthropogenic global warming theory. Yet you never mention the numerous reports of bias the other way. The Bush administration in particular had a notorious record of attempting to stifle scientists from publishing results in favour of anthropogenic global warming.

The Bush Administration has no means to stifle international scientists or international media. "Bush did it" is a weak argument anyway. Besides, Bush caused Global Warming, and now he's out of the picture. And this is the first I've heard of "numerous reports" about the Bush Administration's attempt to stifle pro-AGW publications. Bush was not a conservative, he had contempt for many people who attacked his policies from the right. The idea he is some arch-conservative fiend masterminding the entire world is a fabrication of left-wing blogs... who simultaneously told us he was a drooling idiot to boot.

Mann and Jones however do have the means and connections to stifle and subvert the peer-review process, and the emails suggest they talked about and did such things actively. I respect science, but each day this looks more and more like politics than science, and Mann, Jones, etc. look more like hireling advocates than serious researchers.

 

[cantab]

In the 1970s top Climate Scientists were warning of a period of drastic cooling. Nowadays, people are worried about warming.

The prevailing scientific opinion changed. Some people seem to think changing one's mind is a bad thing, but surely being entrenched in a view despite all evidence is worse.

Climate scientists cannot run experiments on the climate; they can only look at the past and make educated predictions about the future. The science itself is very complex. There are too many variables to make any truely accurate predictions.

Same goes for astronomy, cosmology, geology, archaeology, history, and economics.

The way I understand it, global warming is, of course, the warming of the Earth. Greenhouse gases absorb sunlight, and that energy is given off as heat energy, thus warming the earth, no?

Incorrect. Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation given off by the warm surface of the Earth, thus warming the atmosphere. The effect is to reduce heat lost by Earth at a given temperature; thus temperature increases, increasing the amount of infrared radiation emitted by Earth's surface to balance the incoming sunlight.

Carbon dioxide is pointed to as one of the biggest greenhouse gases, and enviornmentalists try as hard as possible to get rid of emmissions. Meanwhile, others point out that humans account for only 2 percent of global emmissions of CO2.

There are many sources of atmospheric carbon, and many 'sinks' that remove it. Human emissions may indeed be only 2% of the sources. However, our activities account for far less than 2% of the sinks; indeed, we are destroying sinks, namely forests. How much carbon the sinks take up depends (considering only things that vary over the hundreds of thousands of years timescale) on the climate and the atmosphere (and differs for different sinks). As long as there is an imbalance between sources and sinks, atmospheric CO2 will rise, and climate will change, until the sinks rebalance the sources. (This reasoning, incidentally, does not care about exactly HOW the climate changes.)

Many people forget that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas; it's not even the major one! Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2. Cows, sheep, and other farm animals who emit methane naturally release 50% more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector.

Do you have a source for that? The only things I've heard on the methane issue is that the major anthropogenic source is rice paddies. In any case, there's no way (that I know of and that is reasonably established and in widespread use) to make cows belch less (though we could raise fewer cows). Whereas we can make - and are making - transportation more efficient; while for power generation we possess the technology to reduce CO2 emissions to zero. (Doing that suddenly would be too costly of course.)
Atmospheric methane levels are far smaller than CO2 levels
And atmospheric methane oxidises to carbon dioxide anyway, over around 30 years I think.

However, even methane is not the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases. Water vapor is.

Correct. Water vapours atmospheric concentration is however highly variable on the short term, and the natural sources and sinks vastly dwarf any human influence.

CO2 has increased from 280 parts per million to 380 in the past hundred years, but 80 million years ago, when mammals were evolving, CO2 was at 1000 parts per million.

Roughly correct. But humans weren't around 80 million years ago. Sea levels were high, with vast areas of North America and Europe under water. (This rise is due to plate tectonics, not climate, but on long time periods plate tectonics itself influences climate as well) Sea surface temperatures were probably around 37 C in the tropics - such temperatures today would lead to violent hurricane activity (we cannot be certain conditions were the same back then.) All in all, probably not a good world for use to live.

Carbon dioxide does not mirror human activity.

Then explain the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels starting rising around about the Industrial Revolution, when humans started burning large quantities of coal.
Further back, it's been suggested the Little Ice Age, a period of cool temperatures recorded in northern Europe, was caused by reforestation of previous-agricultural land that had been abandoned due to depopulation caused by the Black Death. That's far from proven, but it's an interesting connection, and if true it shows human activity (or lack of it) certainly can affect climate.

As for the ice caps melting? That barely has an effect on sea levels. True, sea levels are rising, but that is because of the warming itself; water expands as it gets warmer. Oceans are 425 feet higher than they were at the last ice age (not the medieval one), but most of that rising occurred in the first one thousand years. Sea levels have only risen less than 8 inches in the past century, and are only expected to rise about one and a half feet by 2100.

If ice caps DO melt, they will lead to a big sea level rise. Currently it is correct that they are not melting much, but it's also thought that the melting rate could accelerate. That sea level rise prediction is now reckoned to be rather conservative, not taking into account recent work on the behaviour of ice caps.

(The main mode of 'melting' is by glaciers flowing into the sea. In West Antarctica, massive ice shelves, that 'butressed' glaciers, slowing their flow, have collapsed. The shelves themselves were floating so do not cause sea level rise, but their loss means the glaciers flow into the sea faster. Larsen B, an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island that had existed for 12 thousand years, broke up in three weeks in 2002. Of course it's hard to prove the breakup was due to global warming (though it's strongly reckoned that's the case), but such an event illustrates how ice can vanish rapidly.)

 

[cantab]

Indeed, but there were also disagreements about the scientific conclusions themselves (Trenberth emails). Which is why I balk when policymakers tell me "the science is settled." It clearly isn't, even among its researchers.

The basics are settled.

Which is more important, saving the planet or making sure scientists can eat and live indoors? What happened to sacrifice? I'm obviously being facetious here, but if the argument is that our survival is predicated on buying whatever solution comes out of this, small acts of altruism are not unreasonable.

Share data you were supposed to keep confidential and you can bet you won't get more data.

Again there is a disconnect between the supposed end-goal of saving the planet and the practicalities that address mundane issues. I see no problem with making money off your source data if climate change is considered a mundane issue that merely requires basic attention and small efforts.

A lot of the data does have mundane uses. There's no difference fundamentally between 'weather data' and 'climate data'. The Met Office supplies data to those with financial interest in it, for example in trying to predict what agricultural yields will be next year.
(That data has been collected with taxpayer funding. So they SHOULDN'T be selling it, they should be making it available. This sort of thing is the subject of an ongoing campaign in the UK, which has had successes.)

Peer review in scientific journals is good, he suggested, but it is limited and vulnerable to compromise. “There is far more independent due diligence on the smallest prospectus offering securities to the public than on a Nature article that might end up having a tremendous impact on policy.”

Interesting statement. I know it's a different area of the financial system, but the recession we're in arose because there wasn't due diligence in analysing the real risks of 'mortgage backed securities' and many other complex financial instruments. Business in general is not less guilty of failing to scrutinise things than science in general.

If climate science is really about "saving the planet,"

It is not. Climate science is about studying the climate. Advocating policy changes to mitigate climate change may be done by a lot of scientists, and it is necessarily based on the science, but it is not part of climate science itself.

How likely is it that we are experiencing catastrophic warming that has only gotten worse when, before even the first official day of winter, both Copenhagen and Washington get to experience several inches of "global warming." Merry Christmas, Copenhagen!

You are I believe aware of the hypothesis that global warming will result in colder European winters. And anyway, winter starts on the first of December in my book.

And this is the first I've heard of "numerous reports" about the Bush Administration's attempt to stifle pro-AGW publications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_George_W._Bush#Environmental_record

 

[Altmer]

Altmer: Condescension doesn't suit a scientist such as yourself.

You really aren't worth responding to, and you know why:

Just like Brain, you refuse to see what is in front of your eyes.

You refuse to.

Why? How do you even GET to this conclusion?

I might as well be trying to convince you to convert to Catholicism because there is no evidence that will possibly sway you.

Don't even go there.

Professional scientists deleting emails and resisting FOI requests will not convince you something is amiss. Scientists acting completely against the most basic fundamentals of the scientific method we learned in grade school will not convince you something is amiss. An entire financial instrument being created around global warming futures will not convince you something is amiss.

Evidence, your honour.

I cannot provide you any evidence you will not find automatically invalid. A priori man causes global warming, and everything else is merely an inconvenient distraction from the truth.

EVIDENCE, YOUR HONOUR

Have you looked over the data itself, the source code, the ways they calculated and implemented the variables? I imagine you haven't because McIntyre, a statistician who has been pointing out flaws in their statistical presentations of data hasn't been able to get his hands on it, except for now, after the leak. He's corrected Mann and co several times on their presentations of data. I don't know where you learned science, but even a beggar can question "settled science" and his inquiry will be valid until disproven. Science is never "settled." Religion is settled, you agree with its precepts or you don't, and you can go elsewhere if you don't. Science has no precepts, it is always subject to scrutiny from anyone.

Science may have no precepts but you're not pursuing science, and there's still a difference between bad science and good science. This is no argument at all.

FYI I have. I know science isn't settled but we can all reasonably agree on climate change existing. The whole scientific community agrees on it, so do policymakers and governments. The only people that dissent are those who really want to drive their SUV's and couldn't give a shit about anyone else. I'm sorry, fuck you, I don't have mercy on you.

So it is worthless to go point by point with you and illustrate in detail the incredible amounts of taxpayer dollars that go towards funding global warming grants. It is worthless to point out that Al Gore has increased his net worth fifty-fucking fold on trading carbon credits, and that Gore is specifically important because he won a Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC based on his advocacy in a film that has been shot full of holes eight ways to Sunday.

Stop quoting one irrelevant politician. Carbon trade emissions exist and people get rich off it, so what. That's economics. Sure, there will be people that profit from it. Maybe 3. Maybe 10. Maybe a hundred. But the whole fucking world? Come off it.

You are the converted. You may be a scientist by profession, but not one in spirit. Are you really a scientist or is that just a persona you use on the internet? If you are, you are among the most incurious sort of scientists I have ever had the displeasure of being belittled by.

I am a scientist with common sense. I have a low tolerance for bullshit. You speak bullshit. Therefore I say so. Don't argue the science, you can't. Either shut up or start actually using logic. I'm curious enough about anything that passes my filter if the arguments make any form of sense. Yours don't. It's bullshit rhetoric by "scientists" who probably snort coke between Bible Studies. It's hypocritical bullshit. I don't care what stuff you believe in but don't force your retard science on others.

The AGW argument boils down to the following:

1. Carbon forcing increases temperatures
2. Man contributes to global carbon forcing
3. Therefore, Man is responsible for increased global temperatures.

Yes. Evidence supports this.

But none of this leads logically to any of the solutions drawn out by politicians, which was my argument to begin with before you decided to start calling my mind insignificant. Just because you blew a ton of dough learning facts about the earth or plants or the air instead of facts about daily economic life does not make you superior in any way, especially not mentally if the best you can muster is insult and condescension.

It does. Stop being dense.

Prove to me the case for doing something. All you have is insinuations we have a 100 year horizon. Prove it Altmer. Mann said we only have 20 years. He said we had 20 years to do something 20 years ago. Gordon Brown said we had to do something within 50 days, and I'm pretty sure that was 50 days ago now, and the world still turns, and he's freezing his ass off too.

deforestation rates
fishing rates
temperature change
poverty lines
gross domestic products
etc etc

i could name a million things you wouldn't see

and you drive your suv

It is up to the radical alarmists to prove we must do something now. I don't need to prove jack to you, but I do know all your rhetoric and bullying is a bunch of bullshit. You don't have to make a case for inaction.

I'm not an alarmist. I don't think the world will end tomorrow. That doesn't mean I'm not stupid and don't get the principles of our actions are wrong. The only one namecalling here is you. Don't try to out-clever me.

Prove the warming horizon Altmer, come on. I'm freezing my ass off here and so is Copenhagen.

you've been presented the facts i can't help it you want to stick to your own stupidities. the facts are there. if you still dont want to do anything, be my guest. don't say i didn't warn you

Mankind isn't natural? You have just made the case for God.

Where did I say mankind wasn't natural? I said mankind's actions caused change that exceeds normal terrestrial boundaries. You really are dense.

you failed reading too

 

[Khyl]

Incorrect. Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation given off by the warm surface of the Earth, thus warming the atmosphere. The effect is to reduce heat lost by Earth at a given temperature; thus temperature increases, increasing the amount of infrared radiation emitted by Earth's surface to balance the incoming sunlight.

I assume you mean something along this lines of this chart:

What I was saying was that the Earth absorbs energy from the sun which becomes heat (I did not specifically mention that the Earth's surface releases this energy back and it is trapped by greenhouse gases etc, so I'm sorry if that caused some confusion.). I was basically mentioning that sunlight is absorbed by the atmosphere and the Earth, but I digress. I understand it either way. Your explanation was a tad confusing.

Do you have a source for that? The only things I've heard on the methane issue is that the major anthropogenic source is rice paddies. In any case, there's no way (that I know of and that is reasonably established and in widespread use) to make cows belch less (though we could raise fewer cows). Whereas we can make - and are making - transportation more efficient; while for power generation we possess the technology to reduce CO2 emissions to zero. (Doing that suddenly would be too costly of course.)
Atmospheric methane levels are far smaller than CO2 levels
And atmospheric methane oxidises to carbon dioxide anyway, over around 30 years I think.

Source (specifically part IV). I also agree with you on that "making transportation more efficient" bit. As time goes on there will be more of an incentive for people to shift to more efficient modes of transportation and energy. That's not to say that doing something about cows isn't a way to go about this too. Aside from eating meat less, you could eat kangaroos.

Then explain the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels starting rising around about the Industrial Revolution, when humans started burning large quantities of coal.

I'm not saying that humans don't release CO2, I'm saying that CO2 can change on its own as well. (Which I think is already established.) As for the CO2 correlation to temperature, I meant that CO2 doesn't necessarily mean warming. Source for ice core statement.

 

[cantab]

@Khyl:

Table 3.12, pg 36 of that report, tells us the methane emissions due to agriculture are 2.2 billion tonnes "CO2 equivalent" (that takes into account the fact methane is a more potent greenhouse gas; the real emission of methane is much less than 2.2 billion tonnes.) That is 6.6% of the total anthropogenic emissions from the same table.

That report, focussing on livestock, says nothing about the emissions from the transportation sector as a whole. (Meaning you only referenced half the claim) For that data we must look elsewhere.

This paper,
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0702958104v1.pdf
indicates transport emissions are around 5.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (page 2, fig 1, graph A, adding values for road, aviation, and shipping)

Thus, the claim that agricultural methane is a bigger contributor to global warming than transportation appears dubious. The TOTAL livestock agricultural impact, of 4.6 billions of tonnes of CO2 (and equiv) per year, is comparable to climate.
Of course, the livestock paper does not cover arable farming. But even the total anthropogenic methane emissions are about the same as the total CO2 emissions from transportation (and of course transportation may account for some of that methane too)

 

[Brain]

In the 1970s top Climate Scientists were warning of a period of drastic cooling.

No, not really.

"This hypothesis never had significant scientific support, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles, and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s."

I also recall seeing a nice plot somewhere showing that more papers were published in the 70s that predicted warming than there were predicting cooling. Of course, at that time, too little was known for any solid conclusions to be drawn and "global cooling" was nothing more than undue media hype.

Check your facts next time, please?

Climate scientists cannot run experiments on the climate; they can only look at the past and make educated predictions about the future.

Sounds good to me.

The science itself is very complex. There are too many variables to make any truely accurate predictions.

Depends what you mean by "truly accurate". Predictions can be accurate enough to guide policy.

An Inconvenient Truth's nightmare scenarios are overexaggerated. No climate model shows them happening.

That might very well be the case. It's always delicate explaining science to the masses, though. There is probably nothing one could tell them that they would be able to interpret correctly. The masses are also just as likely to buy fallacies than solid reasoning, because they don't understand either.

In general, people are much more sensitive to spin than they are to sound logic. In that perspective, exaggeration can be seen as a valid strategic choice. If you present the science in a fair and unbiased way, you will lose against any sensationalist who appeals to raw emotion. That is why neither side of any public debate is likely to be particularly accurate.

Greenhouse gases absorb sunlight, and that energy is given off as heat energy, thus warming the earth, no? However, greenhouse gases are not the only thing that absorb sunlight. Things such as the ocean, solar panels, and even trees contribute to "global warming" in the sense that the sunlight that they absorb that is not converted to energy is converted to heat energy.

Actually, greenhouse gases absorb the infrared radiation that the Earth re-emits as it absorbs sunlight.

Carbon dioxide is pointed to as one of the biggest greenhouse gases, and enviornmentalists try as hard as possible to get rid of emmissions. Meanwhile, others point out that humans account for only 2 percent of global emmissions of CO2.

Here is a helpful picture to understand what's going on here. CO2 is emitted, CO2 is absorbed. The figure that matters is how the balance between emission and absorption is changed. If a bridge is supporting 98% of its weight capacity, 2% is what will make it break.

This only takes a minute to check, by the way :(

Many people forget that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas; it's not even the major one! Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2. Cows, sheep, and other farm animals who emit methane naturally release 50% more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, even methane is not the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases. Water vapor is.

You do realize that if it wasn't for greenhouse gases, the Earth would be an iceball, right? Small contributions matter. Furthermore, water vapor's feedback cycle is very quick, which means that it is unlikely to ever be a problem. CO2 sticks around for hundreds of years, *that* is the problem.

CO2 has increased from 280 parts per million to 380 in the past hundred years, but 80 million years ago, when mammals were evolving, CO2 was at 1000 parts per million. Carbon dioxide does not mirror human activity. As it turns out, it doesn't necessarily warm the earth either.

Of course it warms the Earth, don't be silly. I have not verified, but I think the Earth was much warmer back then too. The point is, the rate of change matters. It should be obvious that even though the planet and life in general can certainly survive warming and even thrive in it, if and when it happens, it is not going to be a pretty sight. There will be casualties, and the faster it happens, the smaller the window to adapt will be and the more destruction might occur.

Ice cores have shown that CO2 levels lag behind the rises in temperature.

Yeah but now we're putting it there. Of course it will lag if it's a feedback to a temperature change that was caused by other factors. In the past, CO2 didn't just pop out of nowhere to make the Earth warmer. The point is that it's not a feedback anymore, ever since we started dumping large amounts of it in the atmosphere.

As for how different gases affect the climate, not all of them cause warming. Many gases actually reflect sunlight, cooling the Earth. This article can make an argument that reducing some pollutants has actually increased the temperature.

Indeed, some gases and aerosols have a cooling effect. Volcanoes emit a lot of these and are known to cause cooling. The issue, of course, is to assess whether they might also have undesirable side effects (e.g. acid rain).

 

[Khyl]

I thought I had already clarified most of these points with cantab...?

I think that the hardest thing for many people to agree with is, given that global warming is a mostly natural process, how such a comparatively small amount of 'unnatural' emmissions creates such drastic consequences, hence why people need to be 'sold on global warming'. I know 2% of a lot is still a lot, but to most people, 2% is too small of an incentive to change their lives so quickly.

It should be obvious that even though the planet and life in general can certainly survive warming and even thrive in it, if and when it happens, it is not going to be a pretty sight. There will be casualties, and the faster it happens, the smaller the window to adapt will be and the more destruction might occur.

This is where people begin to be skeptical of global warming. Maybe it is because people don't want to believe it, or maybe because just don't see any connections. When, for whatever reason, they don't believe it, statements like this are just "alarmist".

This is the part of global warming that needs to be 'sold', and most people are not 'sold' on this. I know I'm not.

 

[Sheshi]

It should be obvious that even though the planet and life in general can certainly survive warming and even thrive in it, if and when it happens, it is not going to be a pretty sight. There will be casualties, and the faster it happens, the smaller the window to adapt will be and the more destruction might occur.

I believe the Mayan and the Roman Empire both were at their height during a period of global warming. Also, both empires declined as the temperature declined.

This is where people begin to be skeptical of global warming. Maybe it is because people don't want to believe it, or maybe because just don't see any connections. When, for whatever reason, they don't believe it, statements like this are just "alarmist".

Most people believe global warming because the media encourage the validity of global warming at each chance they get.

Organizations like Greenpeace exist only to encourage global warming. The IPCC only exists because so many organisations are encouraging the view that global warming will destroy us (but it won't). The sceptics are the people who take a breath and look at things as a whole. The alarmist reaction generally comes from people who only know a fraction of the whole argument.

Science needs evidence. However, when it comes to global warming or climate change, most evidence showing the contrary was ignored or omitted. The Mann Diagram (Also known as the hockeystick diagram) ignored a period of global cooling and warming, so as to make the current temperature spike more alarming. This same diagram that Al Gore used in An inconvenient truth was based on shoddy and faulty data. Scientists were requesting the methods and variables used to create the graph. Very little information was released about how the diagram was created, and what little was released was sketchy at best. Scientists who followed the same method had different results and these results were subsequently ignored by all the climate change 'experts'.

Predictions can be accurate enough to guide policy

We do not know enough to make accurate predictions. The predictions are based on current conditions. The people doing the predictions also alter data to further encourage their views of climate change.

In general, people are much more sensitive to spin than they are to sound logic. In that perspective, exaggeration can be seen as a valid strategic choice. If you present the science in a fair and unbiased way, you will lose against any sensationalist who appeals to raw emotion. That is why neither side of any public debate is likely to be particularly accurate.

Generally, the climate change supporters exaggerate even data, which makes it unreliable and invalid. An unbiased report will have global warming supporters and sensationalists on their back, continuously saying how wrong they are without ever proving it.

 

[cantab]

The people doing the predictions also alter data to further encourage their views of climate change.

You realise that that is an accusation of gross professional misconduct, on par with accusing judges of taking bribes, or doctors of murdering their patients.

Incidentally, we already have climate change predictions that were made some time ago, and thus have been tested. The IPCC's First Assessment Report, back in 1990, predicted temperatures in the 21st century would rise on average 0.2-0.5 C per decade. Sure enough, between 2000 and 2005 the five year global average rose by .1 C, in agreement with the prediction. (Using this data from NASA, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ )

 

[Brain]

I believe the Mayan and the Roman Empire both were at their height during a period of global warming. Also, both empires declined as the temperature declined.

At any point in time, some empire was at its height. At any point in time, some empire declined. I mean, the British Empire (the biggest empire to ever exist, if I recall correctly) was at its height at a period of global cooling, was it not? Your point is beyond meaningless. We're talking about the possibility of an unprecedented situation at an unprecedented (short) time scale, history has little relevance here.

Most people believe global warming because the media encourage the validity of global warming at each chance they get.

Not all media do this. There is plenty of media visibility for proponents as well as opponents of global warming as science or as legislation. The claim that the media are pushing global warming is sort of ridiculous: if there's a debate, it is precisely because a large chunk of media is behind each side, else there just wouldn't be one. If you have a bias for either side, you are well covered, at least in the United States, so naturally, a lot of people will end up believing what they want to believe.

Also note that in the eventuality that "alarmist" arguments would be well founded, the media would be quite right to push them...

Organizations like Greenpeace exist only to encourage global warming.

What about fighting pollution and deforestation, protecting endangered animals, promoting recycling, and so on? Greenpeace has quite a lot of battles to fight, so what the hell are you on about?

The IPCC only exists because so many organisations are encouraging the view that global warming will destroy us (but it won't).

The IPCC exists to provide an assessment of current scientific knowledge for the purpose of helping determine what proper policy should be. Your point doesn't make any goddamn sense. I mean, what organizations? Why do they want to encourage this view? How can they even set up a conspiracy so large?

The sceptics are the people who take a breath and look at things as a whole. The alarmist reaction generally comes from people who only know a fraction of the whole argument.

I have nothing against skeptic arguments in principle. But if you are going to present skeptic arguments, make them good. Every single skeptic argument that has been put forth in this thread is simplistic bullshit that shows a deep misunderstanding of science and even facts. For example, we had this argument here that science predicted global cooling in the 70s and hence flip-flopped and should be taken with a grain of salt. One minute of research suffices to figure out that oops! science never actually predicted that! If skeptics are not even going to spend one minute of their time to verify if what they say is accurate, how the fuck can they be taken seriously? They are hurting their case.

Science needs evidence. However, when it comes to global warming or climate change, most evidence showing the contrary was ignored or omitted.

Do you have specific examples?

The Mann Diagram (Also known as the hockeystick diagram) ignored a period of global cooling and warming, so as to make the current temperature spike more alarming. This same diagram that Al Gore used in An inconvenient truth was based on shoddy and faulty data. Scientists were requesting the methods and variables used to create the graph. Very little information was released about how the diagram was created, and what little was released was sketchy at best.

As far as I can tell, all of the data was released and there doesn't seem like any important problem was found with the diagram. In any case, flawed diagrams are dime a dozen in science. Unless climate science rests on that single diagram, which it obviously does not, discovering flaws in it won't change anything of importance.

Scientists who followed the same method had different results and these results were subsequently ignored by all the climate change 'experts'.

Actually, I read quite the opposite - that the methodology would create a hockey stick shaped graph regardless of parameterization (which is not necessarily surprising - after all, they are trying to fit observations). In any case, if you replace "ignored" by "deemed flawed" and remove the quotes around experts, it doesn't quite sound like the same thing. If a paper denying global warming is rejected, it's not necessarily because of any bias. It might just be because the paper is shit.

We do not know enough to make accurate predictions. The predictions are based on current conditions. The people doing the predictions also alter data to further encourage their views of climate change.

This is a serious accusation, but most importantly, it seems completely unfounded. Do you have evidence? Is it actually compelling, or does it just give you the "impression" that data was doctored? Would it stand before judge and jury? Who are these "people"? Do you have names? Are all climate scientists doing this?

Generally, the climate change supporters exaggerate even data, which makes it unreliable and invalid.

Generally? Really? You'd better make a damn convincing case here. Let's see it.

An unbiased report will have global warming supporters and sensationalists on their back, continuously saying how wrong they are without ever proving it.

An unbiased report would probably be called a win by both sides. Climate alarmists would emphasize the fact the report confirms that AGW is very probably real, others would emphasize that the outcome would probably not be as catastrophic as some make it to be.

 

[Ancien Régime]

One thing that intrigues me is that the debate breaks down completely along ideological lines.

Pro-AGW - leftists, statists, socialists, liberals, etc
Anti-AGW - conservatives, rightists, anti-statists, libertarians, etc

To me, this is a terribly disastrous strategy for the latter side to oppose the AGW concept so fervently...even though the scope of the problem is certainly in doubt (I think we have a decent time horizon before we actually do have observable problems), the fact that human activities do affect the climate is fairly established. But what I have noticed is that those who generally oppose state intervention into economic affairs, instead of proposing avenues where people and societies may address climate change without massive government intervention or a severe cutback in living standards, they simply deny there is a problem at all. By taking the market out of the AGW debate, they not only, in my opinion, do a grave disservice to humankind (as I feel top-down "solutions" of the type thrown around at Kyoto and Copenhagen will fail for various reasons) but they do a grave disservice to their own cause.

(I know this thread is more about AGW itself than about policy responses to it but I hope that's okay)

 

[cantab]

One thing that intrigues me is that the debate breaks down completely along ideological lines.

Pro-AGW - leftists, statists, socialists, liberals, etc
Anti-AGW - conservatives, rightists, anti-statists, libertarians, etc

For what it's worth, I'm a left-libertarian.