Re: [asa] Creation Care

Ok, I know I'm beyond my post limit and probably annoying everyone by now,
but let me ask my interlocutors this: have you read the recent NY Times
piece on the "middle ground" in the warming debate? I wish I could link it,
but the archive is fee based; here's a link to Volokh discussing it (
http://volokh.com/posts/1167922177.shtml). Essentially it is this sort of
perspective I'm trying to articulate.

On 1/19/07, Charles Carrigan <CCarriga@olivet.edu> wrote:
>
> David,
>
> Forget policy, and forget the UN, and Al Gore, and whatever. Let's focus
> simply on a small part of the data of climate change science, because the
> data speak for themselves. No one is suggesting that climate change
> scientists should set economic policy. Policy can only be set once the
> public is convinced of the science - which clearly has not yet occurred.
> This is in part due to the tendency of the general public to distrust that
> which they do not understand and in part due to the scientific community not
> adequately communicating the scientific information.
>
> Re: "dramatic"
> How about instead of "dramatic", I said "exceedingly anomalous compared to
> natural variability"?
>
> I have posted previously on the concentration of CO2 and CH4 in Earth's
> atmosphere. Data exist for the last ~650,000 years, preserved in the
> Antarctic ice. Look at the data yourself here:
>
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/
> http://www.realclimate.org/epica.jpg
> http://www.realclimate.org/epica_co2_f4.jpeg
>
> The concentration of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere has fluctuated between
> ~180-290 ppm over the last 650,000 years, with only a very few data points
> going just slightly above or below this trend. CO2 in the last 150 years
> has risen from ~285 ppm to present day levels near ~375 ppm. ~375 ppm is a
> ~30% increase over the *maximum* natural levels during the last half a
> million years, and this increase has occured in only 150 years. Is that
> dramatic? The concentration of CH4 in the atmosphere tells the same story.
>
>
> Furthermore, the correlation between the concetration of these gases in
> the atmosphere with global T is incredibly robust - the per mill delta D
> values also plotted on the graphs are an indicator of the amount of
> continental ice present on the globe. It is completely clear - when CO2 and
> CH4 are high, continental ice is low, and vice versa. What should we expect
> continental ice to do now that we've disturbed the system the way we have?
> And what does the data regarding the polar ice caps tell us about their
> current behavior?
>
> Re: "devastating"
> If we will agree that the flooding of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina
> was a "devastating effect", then we have a standard by which we can
> compare. New Orleans is ~7' below sealevel; the only things keeping it dry
> are large pumps and levees. If the entire polar ice caps were to melt, sea
> level would rise ~227' - anything and everything currently below ~227' in
> elevation would be underwater. This includes most the major cities in the
> N. Eastern US (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, D.C. completely gone), all
> of Florida and Louisianna, a significant area of gulf coast Texas, much of
> the California coast and great valley (Bay Area completely gone), and the
> area around the Puget Sound including Seattle. What percent of the
> population of the US would have to move? What cost would it be to move all
> of those people and rebuild? Of course this is a worst case scenario - but
> suppose sea level only rose a small fraction of that - would a 10' rise in
> sea level have devastating effects?
>
> Where does the evidence point?
>
> Best,
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________
> Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of Geology
> Olivet Nazarene Univ., Dept. of Physical Sciences
> One University Ave.
> Bourbonnais, IL 60914
> PH: (815) 939-5346
> FX: (815) 939-5071
> ccarriga@olivet.edu
> http://geology.olivet.edu/
>
> "To a naturalist nothing is indifferent;
> the humble moss that creeps upon the stone
> is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the
> valley or the mountain:
> but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of
> a former world,
> the mossy covering which obstructs his view,
> and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone,
> is no less than a serious subject of regret."
> - James Hutton
> _______________________________
>
>
> >>> "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com> 1/19/2007 11:20 AM >>>
>
> *There is essentially a complete concensus among the specialists that
> human activity, esp. the burning of fossil fuels, is dramatically altering
> Earth's atmosphere and climate, and that alteration will lead to devastating
> effects, including the extinction of many species and the destruction of
> human habitat. *
>
> Terms like "dramatically" and "devastating effects" are hard for me to
> swallow. What do you mean by "dramatically?" Dramatic in terms of
> geological history? Maybe, but does the literature really support that?
> Dramatic in terms of its effect on human society? How could a climatologist
> make a scientific judgment about whether a change is likely to be "dramatic"
> in that sense or not?
>
> And what are "devastating effects"? On human social and economic
> activity? Again, how could a climatologist make a scientific judgment about
> that? What is the relevant literature on the projected effects on human and
> social activity, and is there a consensus on that front?
>
> *Given all of this, the rest of us have a choice - do we trust what the
> specialists are saying, or not?*
>
> Specialists in what, and trust them with what? Am I willing to trust
> climatologists to decide the best public policy course? No. They are not
> specialists in a host of relevant disciplines, economics and law not the
> least of them.
>
> It is a real problem, and I don't disparage the work of the climate
> modelers. But I don't think the policy questions can be settled on the
> basis of that work alone. (Note, and let me say again, that I'm not in the
> "do nothing" camp. I just can't occupy the "panic and turn things over the
> United Nations" camp at this point).
>
>
> On 1/19/07, Charles Carrigan <CCarriga@olivet.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > David,
> >
> > I understand that you do not completely grasp all the data and issues
> surrounding climate science. Neither do I. There are many unanswered
> questions in my own mind about it. I think it is human nature to doubt
> things that we do not understand. So I want to point out a couple of things
> relevant here:
> >
> > The US government has spent many millions of dollars funding climate
> change research. I wish I had a more exact figure on this, but I bet it
> would be startling.
> > There are thousands of journals articles in tens of peer-reviewed
> journals where specialists who are most familiar with the generation and
> quality of the data have placed their arguments into the public record.
> > There is essentially a complete concensus among the specialists that
> human activity, esp. the burning of fossil fuels, is dramatically altering
> Earth's atmosphere and climate, and that alteration will lead to devastating
> effects, including the extinction of many species and the destruction of
> human habitat.
> >
> > Given all of this, the rest of us have a choice - do we trust what the
> specialists are saying, or not?
> >
> > You say there is no argument from authority. But do you believe that so
> many of those specialists are simply turning a blind eye to some critically
> important fact? Do you think that the specialists have not considered all
> of these objections you raise, as well as many others that you and I don't
> even yet imagine?
> >
> > We have spent an incredible amount of funding on this, and the answer
> comes back very clearly - this is a problem.
> >
> > Note that here I'm concerned with climate science - climate policy
> inputs a whole new set of variables where there is no concensus.
> >
> > Best,
> > Charles
> >
> >
> > _______________________________
> > Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor of Geology
> > Olivet Nazarene Univ., Dept. of Physical Sciences
> > One University Ave.
> > Bourbonnais, IL 60914
> > PH: (815) 939-5346
> > FX: (815) 939-5071
> > ccarriga@olivet.edu
> > http://geology.olivet.edu/
> >
> > "To a naturalist nothing is indifferent;
> > the humble moss that creeps upon the stone
> > is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the
> valley or the mountain:
> > but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals
> of a former world,
> > the mossy covering which obstructs his view,
> > and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone,
> > is no less than a serious subject of regret."
> > - James Hutton
> > _______________________________
> >
> >
> > >>> "David Opderbeck" < dopderbeck@gmail.com> 1/19/2007 8:08 AM >>>
> >
> >
> >
> > Strikingly similar to the "evolution controversy".
> >
> > Charles, in some ways I think you're right, and that's unfortunate I
> think. Our gut reaction is to shy away from questioning the consensus
> because we don't want to get caught with our pants down around our ankles
> (like many of us did when we first had to face the facts about YEC).
> >
> > At the same time, though, the argument from "consensus" bothers me
> deeply. At the end of the day, it's just an argument from authority, which
> is no argument at all. I'm not willing to commit to a radical greenhouse
> gas policy only because climatologists have reached a consensus about a
> warming trend. First, I need to understand exactly what the consensus
> really reflects. Then, I need to understand the basis for the consenus.
> Then, I need to understand the social and economic implications, which
> requires input from other disciplines.
> >
> > In this regard, I think it is fair to point out that climatology is a
> relatively young science, that weather systems are dynamic and notoriously
> hard to predict over the long term, and that the computing power simply
> doesn't yet exist to model climate change in any realistic detail. Thus,
> while the science so far strongly supports a human-caused warming trend, it
> can't yet say with any degree of accuracy how rapid or extensive that trend
> will be over a century or more. Do even climatologists dispute this?
> >
> > It's also fair to point out, I think, that, while there is a non-trivial
> volume of climate modeling literature, comparatively speaking, the
> literature remains thin compared to other established disciplines. I read
> about one literature review that surveyed 900 or so journal articles, which
> I took to be the corpus of major work in the field. It would be interesting
> to see how many authors and academic institutions are represented in those
> 900 articles, how many of those articles present truly new models or
> approaches to modeling, how extensively the models have been cross-checked
> through work in other disciplines, etc. It's not a trivial amount, I'm
> sure, but it doesn't approach the volume of work that's been done, say, on
> biological evolution.
> >
> > Finally, I think it's fair to point out that there are politics involved
> in this science. This isn't to suggest that the people publishing in this
> field are purposefully misrepresenting results or engaging in any kind of
> unethical activity. It is to suggest, however, that the politics might
> influence funding opportunities, doctoral and post-doc work, research
> choices, departmental hiring and tenure decisions, and peer review, perhaps
> in subtle ways. Maybe this sounds like some kind of attack on the
> scientists working in this field, but it shouldn't sound that way.
> Everyone, everywhere, in every occupation, is influenced to some degree by
> social and political pressure. With a highly charged political hot potato
> like warming, it defies experience to believe that the science is pristinely
> objective.
> >
> > Of course all of the above sounds like the criticisms ID folks raise
> against evolutionary science. I guess there's an extent to which I have
> some sympathy for those criticisms on the sociological level. Consensus
> should always be subject to challenge. Even scientists with the best
> motives are influenced by social and political factors. Where warming is
> different from ID/evolutionary science, I think, is in the extent of the
> conclusions that legitimately can be drawn from the science to date and in
> the breadth of the consensus. The volume of work done, the
> cross-disciplinarity, the correlation with predictions and observations, all
> are far more extensive in evolutionary science than in the science of
> climate change at this point in the respective research programs. At the
> end of the day, it seems like apples and oranges to me.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/18/07, Charles Carrigan <CCarriga@olivet.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Strikingly similar to the "evolution controversy".
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Charles
> > >
> > > _______________________________
> > > Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
> > > Assistant Professor of Geology
> > > Olivet Nazarene Univ., Dept. of Physical Sciences
> > > One University Ave.
> > > Bourbonnais, IL 60914
> > > PH: (815) 939-5346
> > > FX: (815) 939-5071
> > > ccarriga@olivet.edu
> > > http://geology.olivet.edu/
> > >
> > > "To a naturalist nothing is indifferent;
> > > the humble moss that creeps upon the stone
> > > is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns
> the valley or the mountain:
> > > but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals
> of a former world,
> > > the mossy covering which obstructs his view,
> > > and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone,
> > > is no less than a serious subject of regret."
> > > - James Hutton
> > > _______________________________
> > >
> > >
> > > >>> "Randy Isaac" < randyisaac@adelphia.net> 1/18/2007 9:05 PM >>>
> > >
> > >
> > > 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
> > > To: Randy Isaac
> > > 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
> > Blog: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
> > MySpace (Music): http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
>
>
>
> --
> David W. Opderbeck
> Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com
> Blog: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
> MySpace (Music): http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
Blog:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
MySpace (Music):  http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
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