Re: [asa] Re: global warming

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 8:31 AM, j burg <hossradbourne@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> >It is up to them to prove that we should spend trillions of dollars on
> mitigating what I think is nothing but a political agenda.
>
> Obviously, most people think they have done this. Also -- it ought NOT
> be a "political football." Some (on both sides) try to make it such.
> That's ungood.
>
> >If you can't or won't address the issue, you shouldn't say things like
> Forbes is a GW denier and his credibility is zero.
>
> Yes I can. It has to do with Forbes' scientific credentials.
>
> >If you can't judge the accuracy of GW data or are unwilling to, it is
> unfair to judge the
> credibility of those who disbelieve in GW in such a negative way.
>
> I judge credibility here the same way I (and you) judge the
> credibility of Duane Gish when he espouses YEC. Nothing more.
>
> And BTW I said NOTHING about your credibility. On origins and on oil
> it is (with me) very high. On GW it is unknown.
>

I have spent considerable effort looking into this. I have found people like
Jim Hansen to be very credible and there is considerable evidence behind it.
There are actually many parallels between this and YEC. Like evolutionary
biology climate science uses many different lines of evidence and they all
line up in the same direction. Any particular line of evidence may have data
correction issues as Glenn raised. There was also a recent study that showed
the anomaly of SST temperatures during WWII arose of the differences between
how the Americans and the British sampled the water. If you read the
paleoclimate section of AR4 you will see the wide diversity of proxies. The
same holds for measuring the temperature signal at multiple altitudes.

With respect to who do I trust I tend to distrust even the most
distinguished of scientists when they venture outside of their expertise
(and is why I insist that there be *peer* review where the domain experts
critique the work). There are parallel examples here for Glenn and Jim
Hansen. Glenn has ventured into Jim's massive expertise there and I don't
buy it. But, Jim Hansen did the same by encroaching on Glenn's expertise in
estimating the remaining fossil fuel reserves. This causes his "business as
usual" scenario to be too pessimistic. What we should be looking for is a
price signal for Carbon. Short supplies is the best kind of signal and
furthermore it's natural. One of things Jim Hansen was noting was the large
supplies of coal and drives his moratorium on coal-fired plants crusade. If
Glenn's post from last weekend is true then possibly even here we could get
a natural price signal that will cause other kinds of electrical generation
to be done. Let's just pray that the price rises are slow so that the
technological innovation can keep up. Maybe I'm an too optimistic but I
believe that both Glenn and Jim are being too pessimistic in their
assessments but the thoroughness of both of their expertises gives me pause
for my "gut feel".

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

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Received on Wed Jun 11 11:25:25 2008