Re: [asa] Creation Care

*This is the kind of articles that are always in the premier journals.
When you review the literature as Randy and I have you do not find the
apocolyptic predictions which could not survive peer review but the
more moderate defensible positions like above. BTW, the modest
increases such as above IS the consensus.*

Thank you Rich, Pim and Randy for helping clarify these things for me. Now,
if modest increase scenarios are the consensus, would we agree that alarmist
popularizers such as Al Gore are misrepresenting the science and disserving
the public? Does the climate science community welcome Gore et al. or run
the other way?

On 1/21/07, Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/21/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
> > But -- what is more likely to get publicized, to draw funding,
> resources,
> > notoriety, a cover in Science or Nature or Time, etc: a study that says
> > human produced greenhouse gasses will cause 20 degrees of warming by
> 2110,
> > putting New York and LA entirely underwater, or a study that says the
> more
> > likely range is 2-5 degrees, causing relatively modest disruption?
>
> Let's look at last's week Science to see what gets published:
>
> "A semi-empirical relation is presented that connects global sea-level
> rise to global mean surface temperature. It is proposed that, for time
> scales relevant to anthropogenic warming, the rate of sea-level rise
> is roughly proportional to the magnitude of warming above the
> temperatures of the pre–Industrial Age. This holds to good
> approximation for temperature and sea-level changes during the 20th
> century, with a proportionality constant of 3.4 millimeters/year per
> °C. When applied to future warming scenarios of the Intergovernmental
> Panel on Climate Change, this relationship results in a projected
> sea-level rise in 2100 of 0.5 to 1.4 meters above the 1990 level."
>
> This is the kind of articles that are always in the premier journals.
> When you review the literature as Randy and I have you do not find the
> apocolyptic predictions which could not survive peer review but the
> more moderate defensible positions like above. BTW, the modest
> increases such as above IS the consensus. More below.
>
> I think
> > the NY Times article I linked in the discussion thread is telling
> here: why
> > are the climate scientists who accept human induced warming but project
> more
> > modest effects called "heretics?" Why do even mainstream climate
> scientists
> > feel threatened if they don't speak in catastrophic terms?
>
> The problem with the NY Times article is the so-called heretics have
> the same views as mainstream climate scientists. Those who project
> more modest effects are not called heretics they are called
> mainstream. Far from feeling threatened they still give the more
> moderate predictions because those are the ones that are
> scientifically defensible. See here:
>
>
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/01/consensus-as-the-new-heresy
>
> "In reading about the new 'heretics' then, one might have expected
> that associated with them would be statements that would contradict
> IPCC or that we (as mainstream scientists who do not claim to be
> heretics) would otherwise find objectionable. So let's consider the
> specific tenets of the 'new heresy' mentioned in the article:
>
> From Carl Wunsch: 'It seems worth a very large premium to insure
> ourselves against the most catastrophic scenarios. Denying the risk
> seems utterly stupid. Claiming we can calculate the probabilities with
> any degree of skill seems equally stupid'. Agreed.
>
> "Many in this camp seek a policy of reducing vulnerability to all
> climate extremes while building public support for a sustained shift
> to nonpolluting energy sources". Sensible.
>
> There is "no *firm* evidence of a heat-triggered strengthening in
> storms in recent years" (our emphasis). Well, what the WMO statement
> to which this assertion is attributed actually said was (first bullet
> point): "Though there is evidence both for and against the existence
> of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate
> record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point." We
> agree with that statement - this particular subject is definitely in a
> state of flux.
>
> "Recent increase[s] in the impact of storms was because of more people
> getting in harm's way, not stronger storms". Again, the WMO report did
> not state this. What it stated was (third bullet point of statement;
> emphasis added): "The recent increase in societal impact from tropical
> cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of
> population and infrastructure in coastal regions". These are not quite
> the same. Once again, we agree with what the WMO actually said.
> Interestingly, the second bullet point of the WMO statement, not
> mentioned in the article, "No individual tropical cyclone can be
> directly attributed to climate change" was voiced by us more than a
> year ago.
>
> "Global warming is real, it's serious, but it's just one of many
> global challenges that we're facing,". Of course.
>
> From Mike Hulme: "I have found myself increasingly chastised by
> climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on
> climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental
> drama," he wrote. "I believe climate change is real, must be faced and
> action taken. But the discourse of catastrophe is in danger of tipping
> society onto a negative, depressive and reactionary trajectory."
> Agreed. And we said much the same thing when commenting on the
> 'Climate Porn' report.
>
> "It is best not to gloss over uncertainties". Duh!
>
> "efforts to attribute recent weather extremes to the climate trend,
> though they may generate headlines in the short run, distract from the
> real reasons to act". We couldn't agree more, and have stated as much
> before.
>
> "'An Inconvenient Truth' may push too hard". Perhaps at last, there is
> a (moderate) difference of opinion. We agree with Eric's review of the
> movie earlier this year, i.e. while there were a few things to quibble
> with, Gore got the science basically right.
>
> The only substantial disagreement, then, is over a movie review. On
> all other points of substance the 'heresy' and the old orthodoxy are
> the same."
>
> ...
> "Much of the sensationalist talk in the public discourse (and to which
> the scientists in the piece, and we, rightly take exception) are not
> the pronoucements of serious scientists in the field, but distorted
> and often out-of-context quotes that can be further mangled upon
> frequent repetition. We have often criticised such pieces (here, or
> here for instance) and it is important to note that the 'shrill voices
> of doom' referred to by Mike Hulme were not scientists, but
> campaigners."
> ...
> The plain fact is that the vast majority of scientific judgement on
> this issue - as outlined in the IPCC documents including the AR4
> coming up in February- does indeed cover the 'middle stance', which we
> would state as being in agreement with the statement of the National
> Academies of the G8 last year that 'the scientific understanding of
> climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking
> prompt action'. As Jim Hansen states in his quote - it's still
> surprising that there are some people who don't know this yet.
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
Blog:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
MySpace (Music):  http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.