At 05:06 PM 1/4/2007, Charles Carrigan wrote:
>"...But it is the absolute concensus of the scientific body that
>human activities have had an enormous impact on planet Earth .."
@ I don't think so. And even if there were "absolute consensus" it
would only be "garbage in" and absolute consensus the "garbage
out". ~ Janice
Dec 28, 2006 Scientists still vigorously debating climate variance
JAMES M. TAYLOR senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and
managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
It is very difficult to read a news article or watch a newscast
regarding global warming without encountering an assertion that "the
debate is over" -- that all, or virtually all, scientists agree
humans are causing a dramatic and harmful change in the Earth's climate.
Quite notably, no hard data is ever cited to support such a
conclusion. A survey conducted by the National Registry of
Environmental Professionals (NREP), released Nov. 16, shows why: The
debate is still very much alive in the professional community.
More than 12,000 environmental scientists and practitioners
participated in the survey, which found:
* 34 percent disagree that global warming is a serious problem facing
the planet,
* 41 percent disagree that the planet's recent warmth "can be, in
large part, attributed to human activity,"
* 71 percent disagree that recent hurricane activity is significantly
attributable to human activity,
* 33 percent disagree that the U.S. government is not doing enough to
address global warming, and
* 47 percent disagree that international agreements such as the Kyoto
Protocol provide a solid framework for combating global climate change.
The poll results certainly demonstrate global warming is an important
issue to many and that human activity is generally assigned some
responsibility. But the results also demonstrate that many scientists
believe climate variance is not a terribly pressing issue and that
recent warming trends are no more alarming than many other naturally
occurring warming trends in our recent past. This, of course,
contradicts claims by environmental propagandists that the debate is
over and that virtually all scientists agree humans are causing
substantial and ominous global warming.
Real-World Observations
Obviously, the global warming debate is not going anywhere anytime
soon. But some have blamed the persistence of the debate on "big oil"
and other vested interests they claim are obscuring the "real"
science. If anything, this poll shows the exact opposite is the case:
Real environmental experts are themselves divided on the issue, and
for good reason.
For one, global temperatures are currently rising at only 0.12 to
0.17 (depending on whether one believes satellite measurements or
ground station measurements) degrees Celsius per decade. This
translates to only 1.2 to 1.7 degrees warming over the entire next
century, even if no intervening cooling periods occur.
Moreover, we are currently in a recurring cycle of approximately
100,000 years of advancing glaciers followed by 10,000 years of
interglacial warming. Our current interglacial is roughly 10,000
years old, and by historic standards we are overdue for another ice
age. In the preceding four interglacials, temperatures reached an
average of 3 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today. In other
words, we would need another two centuries of current warming trends
merely to reach typical interglacial temperatures.
"Worst-case" temperature projections are constantly being lowered as
we learn more about the science of climate variance. In its upcoming
Fourth Assessment, for example, the United Nations' Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is reducing its worst-case temperature
projections by more than 20 percent from what it projected just five years ago.
The IPCC is also lowering its estimate of sea level change to a mere
1 foot over the coming century. By comparison, sea level has risen
370 feet (an average of 3.7 feet per century) since our current
interglacial began 10,000 years ago.
Invoking "consensus" to avoid debating the very real complexities of
climate variance is at best a mistake, and at worst a purposeful
distortion of the truth. Pretending that all resistance to
catastrophic predictions is based on a confusion of science does not
make the facts keeping the debate alive go away.
And, as the NREP poll confirms, the debate over global warming is
most certainly not "over."
James M. Taylor (taylor@heartland.org) is a senior fellow at The
Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
This story can be found at:
<http://www.hernandotoday.com/MGB0X2BR9WE.html>http://www.hernandotoday.com/MGB0X2BR9WE.html
Oh My God, We're All Going to Die!
<http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117782.html>Headline from the
Canadian, via Hit and Run:
"Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012"
In case you are struggling with the math, that means that they
believe Global Warming could kill three quarters of the world's
population in the next five years. And the media treats these people
with total respect, and we skeptics are considered loony? It appears
that the editors of the Canadian have taken
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/07/a_skeptics_prim.html>NOAA
climate research Steven Schneider at his word:
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic
statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have. Each of us
has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and
being honest.
However, this example is a very good one to again raise the issue of
the skeptical middle ground on climate.
The methane hydrate disaster case in this article may be extreme, but
it is consistent in certain ways with the current climate theories of
those who advocate various extreme warming scenarios that require
massive government intervention (i.e. every climate study that the
media chooses to report on). To oversimplify a bit, their warming
models work in two parts:
* Man-made CO2 builds up in the atmosphere and acts to absorb
more solar energy in the atmosphere than a similar atmospheric gas
mix with less CO2 would. Most climate scientists agree that since
CO2 only absorbs selected wavelengths, this a diminishing-return type
effect. In other words, the second 10% increase in CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere has a smaller impact on global
temperatures than the first 10%, and so on. Eventually, this effect
becomes "saturated" such that all the wavelengths of sunlight that
are going to be absorbed are absorbed, and further increases in CO2
concentration will have no further effect on world temperatures. No
one knows where this saturation point is, but it might be as low as
plus 2 degrees C, meaning the most we could raise global temperatures
(without effects in part 2 below) is less than 2 degrees (assuming we
have already seen some of this rise). By the way, though I think
what I have just said fits the climate scientists' current
"consensus," nothing in the italics part ever seems to get printed
in the media.
* As temperatures rise worldwide due to warming from man-made
CO2, other things in the climate will change. Hotter weather may
cause more humidity from vaporized water, or more cloud cover, from
the same effect. As posited in the article linked above, some
methane hydrates in ice or in the ocean might vaporize due to higher
temperatures. More plants or algae might grow in certain areas, less
in others. All of these secondary effects might in turn further
effect the global temperature. For example, more cloud cover might
act to counter-act warming and cool things off. In turn, vaporizing
methane hydrates would put more greenhouse gasses in the air that
could accelerate warming.
* Scientists typically call these secondary reactions feedback
loops. Feedbacks that tend to counteract the initial direction of
the process (e.g. warming creates clouds which then reduce warming)
are called negative feedbacks. Feedbacks that tend to accelerate the
process (warming vaporizes methane which causes more warming) are
positive feedbacks. Negative feedback is a ball at the bottom of a
valley that rolls back to its starting point when you nudge it;
positive feedback is a ball perched on top of a mountain, where one
slight nudge causes it to roll downhill faster and faster. Most
natural processes are negative feedbacks -- otherwise nothing would
be stable. In fact, while positive feedback processes are not
unknown in nature, they are rare enough that most non-scientists
would be hard-pressed to name one. The best one I can think of is
nuclear fission and fusion, which should give you an idea of what
happens when nature gets rolling on a positive feedback loop and why
we wouldn't be around if there were many such processes.
* So it is interesting that nearly every climate model that you
hear of in the press assumes that the secondary effects from
CO2-based warming are almost all positive, rather than negative
feedbacks. Scientists, in a competition to see who can come up with
the most dire model, have dreamed up numerous positive feedback
effects and have mostly ignored any possible negative feedbacks. In
other words, most climate scientists are currently hypothesizing that
the world's climate is different from nearly every other natural
process we know of and is one of the very very few runaway positive
feedback processes in nature.
* I want to offer up a couple of observations based on this state
of affairs:
* Climate science is very hard and very chaotic, so there is
nothing we really know with certainty. However, we have a far, far,
far better understanding of #1 above than #2. In fact, models based
just on effect #1 (without any feedbacks) do a decent job of
explaining history (though they still overestimate actual warming
some). However, models based on adding the positive feedback
processes in #2 fail miserably at modeling history. (Several
scientists have claimed to have "fixed" this by incorporating fudge
factors, a practice many model-based financial market speculators
have been bankrupted by). We have no real evidence yet to support
any of the positive feedbacks, or even to support the hypothesis that
the feedback is in fact positive rather than negative. I had a
professor once who liked to make the lame joke that it was a bad
"sign" if you did not even know if an effect was positive or negative.
* Because global warming advocates are much more comfortable
arguing #1 than #2, they like to paint skeptics as all denying
#1. This makes for a great straw man that is easy to beat, and is
aided by the fact that there is a true minority who doesn't believe
#1 (and who, despite everything that is written, have every right to
continue to express that opinion without fear of
reprisal). Actually, even better, they like to avoid defending their
position at all and just argue that all skeptics are funded by Exxon.
* However, it is step #2 that is the key, and that we should be
arguing about. Though the most extreme enviro-socialists just want
to shut down growth and take over the world economy at any cost, most
folks recognize that slowing warming with current technology
represents a real trade-off between economic growth and CO2
output. And, most people recognize that reducing economic growth
might be survivable in the rich countries like the US, but for
countries like India and China, which are just starting to develop,
slowing growth means locking hundreds of millions into poverty they
finally have a chance to escape.
* I am going to simplify this, but I think the following
statement is pretty close: The warming from #1 alone (CO2 without
positive feedbacks) will not be enough to justify the really harsh
actions that would slow CO2 output enough to have any effect at
all; only with substantial positive feedbacks from #2, such that the
warming from CO2 alone is tripled, quadrupled or more (e.g. 8 degrees
rather than 2) are warming forecasts dire enough to warrant
substantial activity today.
So that is why I am a skeptic. I believe #1, though I know there are
also things other than manmade CO2 causing some of the current
warming (e.g.
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/07/a_skeptics_prim.html>the
sun's output is higher today than it has been in centuries). I do
not think anyone has completed any really convincing work on #2, and
Occam's razor tends to make me suspicious of hypothesizing positive
feedback loops without evidence (since they are so much more rare
than negative ones).
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/08/the_skeptical_m.html>More
on the skeptical middle ground
here.
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/07/a_skeptics_prim.html>Discussion
of things like the "hockey stick" is here. For a small insight into
how global warming advocates are knowingly exaggerating their case,
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/12/the_obesity_non.html>see
the footnote to this post.
The Skeptical Middle Ground on Warming
I did not see <http://volokh.com/posts/1157001708.shtml>the ABC
special the other night on climate, but I am told that as a skeptic
of the extreme global warming scenarios, I was compared to both a
<http://volokh.com/posts/1157001708.shtml>holocaust denier and a
tobacco
executive.
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/08/suppresion_of_s.html>Boy,
you gotta love free scientific inquiry!
One of the tricks of all debaters, not just climate folks, is to
create a straw man opponent who is easy to knock down. Now
apparently this show did not even bother to interview a skeptic at
all, but they chose as their straw man "people paid off by the oil
companies who believe man has no effect on climate."
Well, gee, I certainly can see how with current state of knowledge it
is getting tougher to credibly sell the "no impact at all" argument,
but I would say that with climate and all its vagaries its still a
position that a person can stake out and
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/08/suppresion_of_s.html>not
be a wacko.
There is, though, a middle ground of skepticism that falls somewhere
between "man has no effect" and "temperatures will rise ten degrees
and the world will end unless we make Al Gore our economic dictator."
One of the things they never explain on shows like ABC's is that most
climate scientists agree that when other variables are held constant
(more in a minute), increases in CO2 will only increase global
temperatures by 1-2 degrees, some of which we have already seen. It
is seldom mentioned in the press that there is a strong diminishing
return relationship between CO2 levels in the atmosphere and warming
(leaving everything else equal for a moment). So, the next doubling
in CO2 concentrations will have substantially less impact on global
temperatures than the last doubling. This is something that most
reputable climate scientists will agree with.
So, how do climate researchers get 6-8 degress of additional warming
or more in their models? They get it from positive feedbacks. Most
of Nature's processes are negative feedbacks -- push a pendulum one
way, nature tries to bring it back to the center. Positive feedback
is like a rock balanced on the top of a mountain -- one little push
and it starts rolling faster and faster.
Climate scientists posit (but as yet have not observed and can't
prove) a number of feedback processes that might tend to amplify or
dampen the effect of increase atmospheric CO2 on global
temperatures. The easiest to understand is the effect of water. As
temperatures rise due to CO2 concentrations, one might expect clear
air humidity to go up worldwide (as higher temperatures vaporize more
water) and you might expect cloud cover to increase (for the same
reason). If water vapor goes mostly to humidity, then global warming
is accelerated as water vapor in clear air is a strong greenhouse
gas. One to Two degrees of warming from increased CO2 might then
become four or six or eight. If instead vaporized water mostly goes
to cloudcover, the effect of CO2 is instead dampened since more
clouds will reflect more sunlight back into space.
Generally, one can make two observations about how most of the
climate models that make the news treat these positive and negative
feedback loops:
* Climate scientists tend to include a lot of positive feedback
loops and downplay the negative feedback loops in their models. Some
skeptics argue that the funding process for climate studies tends to
reward researchers who are most agressive in including these
acclerating effects.
* The science of these accelerating and decelerating effects is
still equivocal, and their is not much good evidence either way
between positive and negative feedback. We do know that current
models with heavy positive feedback loops grossly overestimate
historic warming. In other words, when applied to the past, these
positive-feedback-heavy models say we should be hotter today than we
actually are.
My much longer article on the same topic is
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/07/a_skeptics_prim.html>here,
where I also address other things that may be happening in the
climate and reasons why a poorer but colder world may be worse than a
warmer and richer world. I recommend to your attention
<http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/>this article, which is the
best statement I can find of the skeptical middle ground.
Climate "Consensus"
Please stop tell me that I have no right to question Al Gore when he
wants to take over the world economy to his own
ends.
<http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2006/12/climate_change_2.html>And
please stop telling me that catastrophic man-made global warming is
now beyond question:
One of the many disturbing aspects of global warming hysteria is the
way moonbats who use it to promote their ominous political agenda
insist on a consensus that simply does not exist. A
<http://www.hernandotoday.com/MGB0X2BR9WE.html>recent survey of more
than 12,000 environmental scientists and practitioners by the
National Registry of Environmental Professionals shows that despite
the hysteria and considerable pressure to conform to the "correct"
view, many scientists are choosing skepticism over the safety of the herd.
The survey found that:
34% disagree that global warming is a serious problem;
41% disagree that warming trends "can be, in large part, attributed
to human activity";
71% disagree that human activity has significantly contributed to hurricanes;
33% disagree that the US government is not doing enough about global warming;
47% disagree that international agreements such as the preposterous
Kyoto Protocol provide a useful framework for addressing global
climate change.
There are good reasons to believe in some man-made global warming,
but there are very good reasons to doubt it will be as catastrophic
as portrayed in the media, and very, very good reasons not to hand
over the throttle of the world economy to environmental groups in
anticipation of such uncertain
events.
<http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/08/the_skeptical_m.html>My
position on the skeptical middle ground on climate change is here.
Posted on January 1, 2007 at 08:47
PM Source: http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/
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