Re: [asa] Creation Care

*What I found is that the "controversy" and "uncertainty" within the
scientific community of climatology is vast indeed--but not regarding the
big picture of global warming trends, anthropogenic influences, likely
consequences of action or inaction, etc. The uncertainties lie in the range
of specific impacts and detailed factors.*

Ok, but two observations here:

1. As to the "consequences of action or inaction," I'm assuming you mean
whether the climate gets warmer or not. I think I'd have to agree that the
best scientific information we have from the science of climatology is that
yes, it will continue to get warmer. A very different question, though, is
what the social and economic consequences of that warming will be. Here, as
far as I can tell, the social sciences, particularly economics, are all over
the map -- unless you have more information here. But it's the social and
economic consquences that arguably are most relevant to the possible range
of policy choices.

2. "the uncertainties lie in the range of specific impacts and detailed
factors" -- could you clarify what you mean here? Again, my impression is
that the best science says the climate is likely to warm, but that there's a
pretty signficant range of estimates about how much it will warm, how fast
it will warm, how long the warming will continue, and exactly what the
environmental impacts will be. These latter data points, again, are
critical to the possible range of policy choices.

Both of these observations, it seems to me, involve things that make this a
particularly tricky problem. It's one thing to suggest the literature
supports a man-made warming trend, but quite another to claim that the only
valid scientific conclusion is that this warming trend will have devastating
social and economic consequences.

On 1/18/07, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@adelphia.net> wrote:
>
> Dave,
> One of the questions I particularly wanted to investigate was the
> source and extent of the controversy and uncertainty. As we all know, the
> key to good science is to know what you know and know what you don't know.
> Folks outside any particular specialty often don't understand what is known
> and what isn't. In climatology, the factors are so vast and complex that it
> is very easy to believe that we know very little. What I found is that the
> "controversy" and "uncertainty" within the scientific community of
> climatology is vast indeed--but not regarding the big picture of global
> warming trends, anthropogenic influences, likely consequences of action or
> inaction, etc. The uncertainties lie in the range of specific impacts and
> detailed factors. The source of the idea that climate models are very
> inaccurate and highly untrustworthy seems to be those who are outside the
> professional community and who amplify various uncertainties, extrapolating
> them to the point where we can't really trust what the scientists say.
> In other words, the scientific literature has no significant
> controversy. One review I found in Science scanned 928 papers on the topic
> and found 75% explicitly or implicitly in agreement and 25% that didn't
> address that issue and none with a contrarian view. Another review analyzed
> 2,000 papers and found 2 that disagreed with the consensus perspective. That
> means that contrarian views are being expressed elsewhere and not in the
> professional scientific literature. No one has published a model that
> substantively differs from Jim Hansen's climate modelling, for example.
> Quantitative details differ but the conclusions aren't significantly
> different. In other words, people outside the professional community seem to
> have taken differences and uncertainties of details and extrapolated to a
> "controversy" which isn't really going on inside the community. There are
> also some scientists who have published alternative scenarios--like a strong
> solar effect, which I discussed with some of the folks--and have received a
> lot of publicity outside the scientific community while the mainstream folks
> have published corrections to the erroneous assumptions in those papers. I
> don't consider that a "real controversy."
>
> If anyone is interested, I can provide a few more details in coming
> days.
>
> Randy
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> *From:* David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> *To:* Randy Isaac <randyisaac@adelphia.net>
> *Cc:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 18, 2007 7:28 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [asa] Creation Care
>
>
> * To my surprise, for example, the global warming issue is quite clear
> with no controversy in the community of scientific expertise in the field. I
> found that global warming is significant and is primarily due to
> anthropogenic sources. *
>
> Based on what I've read and also not being an expert by any stretch, I'm
> inclined to agree that warming is a real problem with anthropegenic
> sources. I don't know how you can say, however, that the issue is "quite
> clear with no controversy in the community of scientific expertise in the
> field." What I've seen suggests the question is clear as mud, particularly
> when it comes to the *extent* of human causation and the projected rate,
> trends and effects of warming, and further that *every* position in the
> scientific community is significantly affected by politics. Why are you
> saying it's so easy to brush off every criticism?
>
>
>
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
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