…to the charlatans like Jim Hansen. Here are two useful books. First, Cool It, by Bjorn Lomborg who, while he doesn’t deny the science behind global warming, he doesn’t need to, because he has actually prioritized useful government policy actions based on cost and benefit (something that the warm-mongers refuse to do, e.g., Kyoto). Second, from Chris Horner, Red Hot Lies, which is well described by its subtitle: “How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.
Yup. As many reviewers note, “climate change” isn’t really about science–it’s just the latest ideology to come along for the collectivists to use in their latest attempt to bend us to their will.
28 thoughts on “A Corrective”
It’s even worse than that. The AGW folks demand huge carbon taxes, but if you take the IPCC’s own cost numbers, you find that the carbon tax to deal with the problems is around $2/ton,
which wouldn’t even be a noticeable change in gas prices and certainly wouldn’t price coal out of the market.
I suspect that the AGW folks will go more targetted, such as SUV taxes, which reveals that they’re not actually interested in carbon, but in sin.
I didn’t realize Lomborg had put out a new book. I read his Skeptical Environmentalist tract a while ago (back when there still existed some doubt, however small, about the reality of anthropogenic global warming), and as a statistician, I thought he made some good policy points. That being said, if you have ever bothered to read the IPCC reports, you’d be aware that there is not, in fact, any real doubt left about the science of global warming. Here, you recommend two books, neither of them authored by a scientist working in a relevant field (Chris Horner isn’t even a scientist at all, if I’m not mistaken). Think about this: have these books undergone peer-review, or are they just political tracts? How about the literature showing evidence of global warming — has that undergone peer-review? (Do you even know enough about this field to comment?) I am passingly familiar with the climate change literature (I used to follow it much more closely than I do now), but the evidence I’ve seen is pretty overwhelming.
Anyway, rule of thumb: ‘science’ published in anything except a peer-reviewed journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism.
Here, you recommend two books, neither of them authored by a scientist working in a relevant field (Chris Horner isn’t even a scientist at all, if I’m not mistaken).
Why should they be? This is not about science.
Think about this: have these books undergone peer-review, or are they just political tracts?
Are those the only two options?
The first one is a cost/benefit analysis and associated set of policy recommendations. This is not a job for a scientist. It is a job for someone who understands economics and the actual policy implications of various actions.
The second one is a critique of those who have hijacked the science, regardless of its validity, for their own ideological agenda. Again, that’s not a book that need be written by a scientist.
“That being said, if you have ever bothered to read the IPCC reports, you’d be aware that there is not, in fact, any real doubt left about the science of global warming.”
Apart from the inconvenient real world data about the current lack of warming, failure of the oceans to warm, no sign of the water vapor feedback and no tropical mid troposphere hot spot, along with a cooling Antarctic(which was predicted to warm). Nope no real doubt at all.
I haven’t read it and haven’t anyway paid that much attention to effects and cost of mitigation and adaptation, as the basic political problem is that a significantly enough large size political block denies the *existence* of the whole phenomenon and manages thus because of that to stop much progress.
I’m all for intelligent discussion about the effects and a cost (and other factor) analysis about them, but it’s not possible in an atmosphere where half of the people think the whole thing is a hoax.
Interesting then that if even Lomborg doesn’t battle the science why Rand and many here in the comments must.
I don’t “battle the science.” How can an agnostic be in a “battle”?
By taking a religious “I don’t know” viewpoint even when very strong evidence is at hand, by constantly calling the scientists frauds and linking to stupid false material.
By taking a religious “I don’t know” viewpoint even when very strong evidence is at hand
I haven’t taken the time to look at all the evidence to determine whether or not it is “strong.” Thus, I remain an agnostic.
…by constantly calling the scientists frauds…
“Constantly”? I don’t think so. And “the scientists”?
Just one.
…and linking to stupid false material…
That is an opinion, not a fact. And so what if I link? A link is not an endorsement.
I’m all for intelligent discussion about the effects
Sure. Unfortunately you’re opposed to any rational discussion about the science BEHIND your assertions because they distract from the discussion about how we can slow down developed countries economies for the benefit of developing countries economies. So we can all be equal. Woo-hoo. Without even contemplating the fact that if you slow down developed countries economies you automatically accomplish the same in the developing world. Which will condemn countless numbers of humans to poverty, starvation and early death. But hey, HUMANS? Not important. Nothing more than a disease on the planet. Besides, they exhale carbon dioxide; the fewer the better.
Curt Thomson, you’re a good example why rational discussion about the subject over here is impossible.
Actually, mz, I read Curt as being rather snarky in response to your complete lack of rational argument. You are making unsupported assertions, and calling names, but that’s about it. Here’s a hint: if your concern is that about half of us think that it’s a hoax, the proper response from a scientific point of view is to lay out the evidence, make the argument, and try to convince. I have yet to see that done anywhere, and I have asked more than once for someone to convince me. So you are welcome (at Rand’s sufferance) to try to convince us, but don’t expect us to fall down weeping in shame because you say rude things about us.
Yeah, probably should have used the tag. mz’s a little slow.
Did you bother to read the page about your Antartic graphic mz? Just for starters there appears to have been cooling over some substantial fraction of the continent, the trends are small anyway, the measurements to produce that graphic are problematical and that is allegedly the skin temperature of the surface whereas the “surface temperature” in meteorology is taken to be the air temperature at 4 feet above the surface. The text also says the measurement uncertainty is 2 -3 deg C which makes any trend as shown somewhat problematical. I’ve seen that graphic before and it doesn’t gibe with other data and was rightfully shredded on another climate website. Sorry I can’t remember where, I look at a lot of them.
As for my other points, for someone with such a big mouth about global warming as you to not be familiar with them is a little amusing. Nothing like arguing from a position of ignorance I guess.
Jack: “Anyway, rule of thumb: ‘science’ published in anything except a peer-reviewed journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism.”
Corrected: “Anything published in any journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism.”
You can verify the truth of my version by looking at all the experiments that people reproduce even AFTER results are published in peer reviewed journals.
Peer review is not the cornerstone science – experiment is. Peer reviewed articles are the currency with which to buy a tenured position.
My take: The skeptics don’t have to prove AGW theory wrong, just find reasonable doubt in the evidence and models. The proper burden of proof is on those using AGW claims to justify big government intervention. Proof not only in the theory, but that the proposed fixes will help more than they hurt.
Peer review is not the cornerstone science – experiment is
Indeed. I can’t imagine someone who’s actually been part of the peer-review process, either receiving or giving, who would swallow the pious crap that’s flung about regarding the sacredness of peer review.
If nothing else, there’s l’affaire Sokal. I also personally recall a J. Stat. Phys. article in the 80s which prompted an apology from the editors because the wags who submitted it added Professor Stronzo Bestiale of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Palermo as a third author (“stronzo bestiale” means “animal shit” in Italian) and it was published.
But surely anyone who’s had a few nontrivial papers published has gotten at least one complimentary review that completely misunderstood the paper. It’s true, if you’re publishing something that challenges the established paradigms, you can look forward to your work being worked over with a fine-toothed comb.
On the other hand, if you’re merely chiming in wow me too! I agree with all the rest of you guys! funny world, huh? you’ll probably be OK unless you accidentally leave all the nouns out of your text, fail to cite The Leading Authorities enough times, or in the captions of your graphs explain that you scaled all the data by the volume of your dick in cubic parsecs to make it better fit the theory.
Yes I realized Curt’s stuff was snark. That’s why I wrote what I did.
Jeff, I’ve given links to the science and evidence in practically in every comments thread I’ve participated, go read these links:
Note that they are summarizing other research. It is remarkable that people can say there is no evidence.
CO2 passing visible light but absorbing infrared is already strongly hinting at the greenhouse effect. You can get some very preliminary rough numbers with very simple models, like a zero dimensional one: “let’s assume CO2 absorbs some percentage of the total outbound infrared radiation and radiates half of it back, how does that affect Earth’s temperature in an equilibrium state?”.
Or one can look at paleoclimate, or Venus or Mars, measure the temperature profile of the atmosphere etc etc…
PeterH: The skeptics don’t have to prove AGW theory wrong, just find reasonable doubt in the evidence and models.
On the other hand, those who profit (nearly everybody) from injecting billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere are not under your sceptics’ magnifying lens?
If there is more than reasonable doubt that the changing of atmosphere causes harm to some (which includes other parties not doing it themselves), that’s still not enough to perhaps try to avoid it?
Just in principle.
I do agree with the part that cost benefit analyses on climate action need to be done as well.
Yes, mz, there are web-sites you can show that back the case that global warming is happening and caused by human release of CO2.
On the other hand, I can post several web-sites (shown below) that show just the opposite. Here at Rand’s site, the majority of us feel this issue is open for debate and has not been conclusively decided. You are the close minded person, describing those of us who don’t believe in man-made global warming as “people who believe the whole thing is a hoax” and that we are “linking to stupid false material”. You don’t know that the material is stupid or false – I must have missed the post where you show your global science creditentials. It looks to me that you are more of a follower of the global warming religion and less of a ‘scientist’.
Rand said Crichton is a voice of reason on climate issues, while Crichton compares global warming to religion, and his host Inhofe calls it a hoax.
Rand links to indeed very wrong things, like an Australian guy saying an ice age is imminent since for a few months it had been cooling. That is stupid and false to anyone who has even rudimentary information about climate.
Or to Cockburn (though Rand of course says they are just links and not endorsements, and in this case the blurb did not contain any endorsing language) who claims there is no evidence of the CO2 being from human sources. Again patently false, you can see coal and other fossil fuel use and calculate it, and check it out with isotope ratios too.
Now, two of the articles you now link to don’t debate against the science, they are just talking about social phenomena around the issue. The third one is the old solar magnetism claim, which doesn’t really explain the temperature very well.
See this for example on why: http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/09/sunspots-vs-global-temperature.html
Not making the case against the content itself, just explaining on why such articles pop up, is of course that for example Steven Milloy of Junk Science is a fossil and tobacco industry paid lobbyist with a long history.
For anyone interested I’ll throw in a couple of names:
Prof Bob Carter, William Kininmonth. Carter is a paleoclimatologist and Kininmonth was boss of Australia’s National Climate Centre for about 8 years. Google and see what they say. They are eminently qualified.
As for mz’s last link, the site seems to be run by another religious convert who can’t be bothered by facts because he’s made his mind up and completely and superficially misconstrues the Svensmark work and doesn’t distinguish between increased low level cloudiness (causes cooling)and increased high level cloud (warming), mostly that is. His commenter also claims that we “ran the experiment” as a result of grounding aircraft after 9 -11. Sorry, no, there’s a paper around that shows we actually didn’t and any temperature changes in the days following were due to normal meteorological phenomena.
Not making the case against the content itself, just explaining on why such articles pop up, is of course that for example Steven Milloy of Junk Science is a fossil and tobacco industry paid lobbyist with a long history.
Ah, now there is the reasoned and intelligent debate. “The guy I disagree with gets paid by an industry that is tangental to the argument, but bad all the same, so don’t listen to him”. Of course, one could say the same thing about ignoring Al Gore as his dad grew tobacco, worked for an oil company, and a coal company.
But I suspect this was not the intelligent debate that some were hoping to have. Perhaps those people would like to do better than: the old solar magnetism claim, which doesn’t really explain the temperature very well. and then link to a blog that starts with these two quotes to set the stage:
Probably the weakest reason for mistrusting us climate scientists is the idea that we are in it for the money. When I was a starving grad student, I told a dignified lady from rural Mississippi that I was doing climate modeling. She was briefly taken aback. After a beat, she gathered her wits and politely replied “Oh, that must be… lucrative”.
Saving the planet is not an after-dinner drink, a digestif you take or leave. Climate change does not disappear because of the financial crisis.
Get it… he’s not doing it for the money. He’s totally altruistic in saving the planet. Therefore, we can take the rest of what he says as credible. Now, if he actually said something that people would pay for, then he’s a paid shill.
And at what point can I point out that Tom linked to an article suggesting many issues related to global warming. One was about solar magnetism, but in relation to sunspot formation and not about cloud formation. MZ then links to an article debunking solar magnetism affecting cloud formation, which is actually a criticism about a totally unrelated article. This is apparently what passes as intelligent debate: rebuttal a point being made by using a third party argument made about another point.
Umm, the sunspots (well they are only an indicator) affect cloud formation indirectly (via mediation of cosmic rays) – that’s the thesis propagated by some people. Dennis Wingo has been telling about it here for years.
But there are multiple problems with the theory.
Umm, that wouldn’t be my thesis, and that wasn’t the thesis in the article. You made a supposition that was what meant.
Let’s disregard the other weird stuff on the page for a while.
Length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters–the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature
What’s the physical mechanism they propose? Direct solar radiation? You said it’s certainly not via mediation of cosmic rays and high clouds, that’s the current one some people are proposing (I assumed automatically it was the same since the page is so vague).
Let’s see, you discard stuff because you think it is weird. What you don’t think is weird, you make automatic assumptions about that turn out to be wrong. Then you paraphrase me: “You said it’s certainly not via mediation of cosmic rays and high clouds”, which actually I never did write.
If you are just going to make up strawman arguments and beat them around, then there is no hope in having an intelligent conversation with you.
On the subject of jet aircraft and net effect on climate; there is speculation that jet aircraft in particular may have a zero or negative effect on the heat budget of Earth. Why? Of course they emit CO2 – but they often also cause contrails, and often those spread. I have seen estimates that cloud cover over the North Atlantic has increased by something like 20% since the introduction of mass jet transport.
Of course, this has no bearing on the effect of CO2 emitted at a lower altitude than that.
Rand: “Why should they be? This is not about science.”
It is, though. You’ve absolutely got to design policy from a knowledgeable standpoint of the underlying issue. What should our policies be with regard to climate change? Yes, you’re right that it’s a cost/benefit analysis — but those costs and benefits can only be determined if you understand the process under consideration.
Rand: “The second one is a critique of those who have hijacked the science, regardless of its validity, for their own ideological agenda. Again, that’s not a book that need be written by a scientist.”
I haven’t read this book, so I will only say that even this sort of critique requires the author to understand the underlying issue. How can you say a group has ‘hijacked’ the science, without understanding the science?
Mike: “Apart from the inconvenient real world data about the current lack of warming, failure of the oceans to warm, no sign of the water vapor feedback and no tropical mid troposphere hot spot, along with a cooling Antarctic(which was predicted to warm). Nope no real doubt at all.”
There’s three distinct issues here: first, do we observe warming, second, can we draw a reasonable conclusion that warming is anthropogenic, and third, how much can we trust the general circulation models? So, let me state that I don’t trust the GCMs. A lot of my own research (in an unrelated field, biophysics) involves dynamical simulations, so I’m wary of trying to make forward predictions for such a complex system; if you’re simulating, say, transcription initiation rate as a function of transcription factor concentration, you know going in that your dynamical model incorporates all kinds of simplifications — but you can then sit down at the bench and test your forward predictions, then adjust your model accordingly. With a GCM, you’re stuck saying, Well, this matched previous data pretty well. But that can just be curve fitting: congratulations on bouncing around parameter space until you found a set that fit pretty well, but will that model work for making forward predictions? Maybe not. In particular, I think there’s so many external factors that are not taken into consideration in the GCMs, as well as parametrizations for factors that are included but that we know we’re not able to model accurately (the effects of cloud cover, surface albedo, etc.), that quantitative in silico predictions about climate change shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The reason I’m going on about this is because I think it’s important to differentiate between saying Our quantitative forward predictions (using these GCMs) were wrong, which is a well-founded criticism, and saying The observed global temperature data is wrong!, which isn’t.
So, that being said, back to the empirical question: have we observed statistically significant warming? Yes, and perhaps more importantly, the observed warming is nonlinear: recent years have seen it accelerate, and the per-continent surface temperature average increases are consistent with increased sulfate aerosols and greenhouse gases. (I can provide you with a list of references for this, if you like.) Furthermore, although ocean temperature has been increasing at a slower rate (about half, IIRC) of the land surface warming, it absolutely is increasing, and this observation isn’t limited to the ocean surface — temperature increases are observed down to depths of several thousand feet. Your point about Antarctica is well-taken, and illustrates two important points — that global and local temperature trends are often conflated, by people who should know better, and also that Antarctica (and parts of the tropics) has substantial gaps in its historical temperature data set. This data has been ‘filled in’ with data interpolation and averaging techniques, but in any consideration of Antarctic temperature trends, it’s important to keep this caveat in mind.
Second, is this observed warming trend anthropogenic? This is tricky, because you need to de-couple it from natural climate forcings — for example, obviously the Medieval Warm Period wasn’t caused by man-made aerosols. So, you’re trying to draw a statistical correlation between anthropogenic forcings (GHGs, aerosols) and temperature, and you’ve got GCMs to make this link — and as I mentioned before, I’m leery of the predictive power of these models. However, current GCMs are able to accurately reproduce past climate trends — so, given the known caveats about the GCMs, what do these associations look like if you incorporate only natural forcings, only anthropogenic forcings, or both, into the model? There was a PNAS paper put out a few years ago that went through this, and in my opinion made a strong argument that you could draw this joint attribution. (I can dig up the reference if you like, it was actually a pretty interesting paper — they had a creative biological surrogate for temperature to reduce the error built into actual temperature recordings. Like Rand, I was a bit of an agnostic on this subject before reading this analysis, and came away persuaded that AGW is a reality.)
Anonymous: “Corrected: “Anything published in any journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism” … Peer review is not the cornerstone science – experiment is.”
Right — specifically, reproducibility. The point of peer review (which, yes, I have participated in) is to ensure that an article’s experimental methods are reproducible, and that the data analysis done is reasonable (and relevant). Another poster mentioned Alan Sokal’s nonsensical submission to a social journal (Social Text?) — but I think the take-home point of that was that it was a social science publication. Anyone think a social scientist could have pulled off something similar on, say, Physical Review Letters? A more telling example might be the infamous Pons and Fleischmann ‘cold fusion’ publication — because, although it was published, it was quickly debunked, and IIRC, their academic careers sort of imploded after that. Or the Korean researcher (I forget his name) who brought on that cloning scandal recently.
So, my point is that yes, you absolutely should read peer-reviewed articles skeptically — some journals, even high-impact ones, have a reputation for occasionally putting out papers that are garbage. The authors could have analyzed their data wrong, or using some weird metric. The results could be due to consistent experimental bias, which shows up sometimes in biology papers that try to find trends in qualitative and/or subjective data. The authors could even be lying; peer-review is not really set up to guard against fraud. But a non-peer reviewed article should be viewed with an even greater skepticism, particularly if it claims to refute well-accepted and/or politically unpopular science — for example, relativity, evolution, climate change. Cranks like to use Einstein, overthrowing Newtonian physics single-handedly, as their inspiration — but they forget that even Einstein knew he had to publish his work in a peer-reviewed journal for it to be taken seriously. If On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies had been published as a newspaper editorial instead of in Annalen der Physik, would it have been noticed?
It’s even worse than that. The AGW folks demand huge carbon taxes, but if you take the IPCC’s own cost numbers, you find that the carbon tax to deal with the problems is around $2/ton,
which wouldn’t even be a noticeable change in gas prices and certainly wouldn’t price coal out of the market.
I suspect that the AGW folks will go more targetted, such as SUV taxes, which reveals that they’re not actually interested in carbon, but in sin.
Note that even at that level, it’s unclear whether the costs of eco taxes are justified.
“Ecotaxes are likely to involve distortionary costs at least as high as those involved in raising equivalent revenues through existing taxes. If the question is posed whether we would choose to use energy taxes, in preference for existing taxes on labour and other bases, in the absence of any environmental benefits, then the answer is almost certainly that we would not. Energy taxes would be likely to involve just as much distortion of the labour market as income taxes, and at the same time distort the commodity market. Only if there are expected to be environmental gains can the use of environmental taxes be justified, and the case for ecotax reform must be made primarily on the basis of the environmental gains that would result.”
I didn’t realize Lomborg had put out a new book. I read his Skeptical Environmentalist tract a while ago (back when there still existed some doubt, however small, about the reality of anthropogenic global warming), and as a statistician, I thought he made some good policy points. That being said, if you have ever bothered to read the IPCC reports, you’d be aware that there is not, in fact, any real doubt left about the science of global warming. Here, you recommend two books, neither of them authored by a scientist working in a relevant field (Chris Horner isn’t even a scientist at all, if I’m not mistaken). Think about this: have these books undergone peer-review, or are they just political tracts? How about the literature showing evidence of global warming — has that undergone peer-review? (Do you even know enough about this field to comment?) I am passingly familiar with the climate change literature (I used to follow it much more closely than I do now), but the evidence I’ve seen is pretty overwhelming.
Anyway, rule of thumb: ‘science’ published in anything except a peer-reviewed journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism.
Here, you recommend two books, neither of them authored by a scientist working in a relevant field (Chris Horner isn’t even a scientist at all, if I’m not mistaken).
Why should they be? This is not about science.
Think about this: have these books undergone peer-review, or are they just political tracts?
Are those the only two options?
The first one is a cost/benefit analysis and associated set of policy recommendations. This is not a job for a scientist. It is a job for someone who understands economics and the actual policy implications of various actions.
The second one is a critique of those who have hijacked the science, regardless of its validity, for their own ideological agenda. Again, that’s not a book that need be written by a scientist.
“That being said, if you have ever bothered to read the IPCC reports, you’d be aware that there is not, in fact, any real doubt left about the science of global warming.”
Apart from the inconvenient real world data about the current lack of warming, failure of the oceans to warm, no sign of the water vapor feedback and no tropical mid troposphere hot spot, along with a cooling Antarctic(which was predicted to warm). Nope no real doubt at all.
Oh the Antarctic has warmed, mostly.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8239
Dunno about all the rest, seem like new points, haven’t yet investigated them.
Interesting then that if even Lomborg doesn’t battle the science why Rand and many here in the comments must.
There is a site detailing many of the errors in his book here.
http://lomborg-errors.dk/
I haven’t read it and haven’t anyway paid that much attention to effects and cost of mitigation and adaptation, as the basic political problem is that a significantly enough large size political block denies the *existence* of the whole phenomenon and manages thus because of that to stop much progress.
I’m all for intelligent discussion about the effects and a cost (and other factor) analysis about them, but it’s not possible in an atmosphere where half of the people think the whole thing is a hoax.
Interesting then that if even Lomborg doesn’t battle the science why Rand and many here in the comments must.
I don’t “battle the science.” How can an agnostic be in a “battle”?
By taking a religious “I don’t know” viewpoint even when very strong evidence is at hand, by constantly calling the scientists frauds and linking to stupid false material.
By taking a religious “I don’t know” viewpoint even when very strong evidence is at hand
I haven’t taken the time to look at all the evidence to determine whether or not it is “strong.” Thus, I remain an agnostic.
…by constantly calling the scientists frauds…
“Constantly”? I don’t think so. And “the scientists”?
Just one.
…and linking to stupid false material…
That is an opinion, not a fact. And so what if I link? A link is not an endorsement.
I’m all for intelligent discussion about the effects
Sure. Unfortunately you’re opposed to any rational discussion about the science BEHIND your assertions because they distract from the discussion about how we can slow down developed countries economies for the benefit of developing countries economies. So we can all be equal. Woo-hoo. Without even contemplating the fact that if you slow down developed countries economies you automatically accomplish the same in the developing world. Which will condemn countless numbers of humans to poverty, starvation and early death. But hey, HUMANS? Not important. Nothing more than a disease on the planet. Besides, they exhale carbon dioxide; the fewer the better.
Curt Thomson, you’re a good example why rational discussion about the subject over here is impossible.
Actually, mz, I read Curt as being rather snarky in response to your complete lack of rational argument. You are making unsupported assertions, and calling names, but that’s about it. Here’s a hint: if your concern is that about half of us think that it’s a hoax, the proper response from a scientific point of view is to lay out the evidence, make the argument, and try to convince. I have yet to see that done anywhere, and I have asked more than once for someone to convince me. So you are welcome (at Rand’s sufferance) to try to convince us, but don’t expect us to fall down weeping in shame because you say rude things about us.
Yeah, probably should have used the tag. mz’s a little slow.
Did you bother to read the page about your Antartic graphic mz? Just for starters there appears to have been cooling over some substantial fraction of the continent, the trends are small anyway, the measurements to produce that graphic are problematical and that is allegedly the skin temperature of the surface whereas the “surface temperature” in meteorology is taken to be the air temperature at 4 feet above the surface. The text also says the measurement uncertainty is 2 -3 deg C which makes any trend as shown somewhat problematical. I’ve seen that graphic before and it doesn’t gibe with other data and was rightfully shredded on another climate website. Sorry I can’t remember where, I look at a lot of them.
As for my other points, for someone with such a big mouth about global warming as you to not be familiar with them is a little amusing. Nothing like arguing from a position of ignorance I guess.
Jack: “Anyway, rule of thumb: ‘science’ published in anything except a peer-reviewed journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism.”
Corrected: “Anything published in any journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism.”
You can verify the truth of my version by looking at all the experiments that people reproduce even AFTER results are published in peer reviewed journals.
Peer review is not the cornerstone science – experiment is. Peer reviewed articles are the currency with which to buy a tenured position.
My take: The skeptics don’t have to prove AGW theory wrong, just find reasonable doubt in the evidence and models. The proper burden of proof is on those using AGW claims to justify big government intervention. Proof not only in the theory, but that the proposed fixes will help more than they hurt.
Peer review is not the cornerstone science – experiment is
Indeed. I can’t imagine someone who’s actually been part of the peer-review process, either receiving or giving, who would swallow the pious crap that’s flung about regarding the sacredness of peer review.
If nothing else, there’s l’affaire Sokal. I also personally recall a J. Stat. Phys. article in the 80s which prompted an apology from the editors because the wags who submitted it added Professor Stronzo Bestiale of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Palermo as a third author (“stronzo bestiale” means “animal shit” in Italian) and it was published.
But surely anyone who’s had a few nontrivial papers published has gotten at least one complimentary review that completely misunderstood the paper. It’s true, if you’re publishing something that challenges the established paradigms, you can look forward to your work being worked over with a fine-toothed comb.
On the other hand, if you’re merely chiming in wow me too! I agree with all the rest of you guys! funny world, huh? you’ll probably be OK unless you accidentally leave all the nouns out of your text, fail to cite The Leading Authorities enough times, or in the captions of your graphs explain that you scaled all the data by the volume of your dick in cubic parsecs to make it better fit the theory.
Yes I realized Curt’s stuff was snark. That’s why I wrote what I did.
Jeff, I’ve given links to the science and evidence in practically in every comments thread I’ve participated, go read these links:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
and
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
Note that they are summarizing other research. It is remarkable that people can say there is no evidence.
CO2 passing visible light but absorbing infrared is already strongly hinting at the greenhouse effect. You can get some very preliminary rough numbers with very simple models, like a zero dimensional one: “let’s assume CO2 absorbs some percentage of the total outbound infrared radiation and radiates half of it back, how does that affect Earth’s temperature in an equilibrium state?”.
Or one can look at paleoclimate, or Venus or Mars, measure the temperature profile of the atmosphere etc etc…
PeterH:
The skeptics don’t have to prove AGW theory wrong, just find reasonable doubt in the evidence and models.
On the other hand, those who profit (nearly everybody) from injecting billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere are not under your sceptics’ magnifying lens?
If there is more than reasonable doubt that the changing of atmosphere causes harm to some (which includes other parties not doing it themselves), that’s still not enough to perhaps try to avoid it?
Just in principle.
I do agree with the part that cost benefit analyses on climate action need to be done as well.
Yes, mz, there are web-sites you can show that back the case that global warming is happening and caused by human release of CO2.
On the other hand, I can post several web-sites (shown below) that show just the opposite. Here at Rand’s site, the majority of us feel this issue is open for debate and has not been conclusively decided. You are the close minded person, describing those of us who don’t believe in man-made global warming as “people who believe the whole thing is a hoax” and that we are “linking to stupid false material”. You don’t know that the material is stupid or false – I must have missed the post where you show your global science creditentials. It looks to me that you are more of a follower of the global warming religion and less of a ‘scientist’.
And for those web sites:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=3061015&page=1
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/14/nasa-debunks-part-global-warming-myth-will-media-report-it
http://www.junkscience.com/news/robinson.htm
Rand said Crichton is a voice of reason on climate issues, while Crichton compares global warming to religion, and his host Inhofe calls it a hoax.
Rand links to indeed very wrong things, like an Australian guy saying an ice age is imminent since for a few months it had been cooling. That is stupid and false to anyone who has even rudimentary information about climate.
Or to Cockburn (though Rand of course says they are just links and not endorsements, and in this case the blurb did not contain any endorsing language) who claims there is no evidence of the CO2 being from human sources. Again patently false, you can see coal and other fossil fuel use and calculate it, and check it out with isotope ratios too.
Now, two of the articles you now link to don’t debate against the science, they are just talking about social phenomena around the issue. The third one is the old solar magnetism claim, which doesn’t really explain the temperature very well.
See this for example on why:
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/09/sunspots-vs-global-temperature.html
Not making the case against the content itself, just explaining on why such articles pop up, is of course that for example Steven Milloy of Junk Science is a fossil and tobacco industry paid lobbyist with a long history.
For anyone interested I’ll throw in a couple of names:
Prof Bob Carter, William Kininmonth. Carter is a paleoclimatologist and Kininmonth was boss of Australia’s National Climate Centre for about 8 years. Google and see what they say. They are eminently qualified.
As for mz’s last link, the site seems to be run by another religious convert who can’t be bothered by facts because he’s made his mind up and completely and superficially misconstrues the Svensmark work and doesn’t distinguish between increased low level cloudiness (causes cooling)and increased high level cloud (warming), mostly that is. His commenter also claims that we “ran the experiment” as a result of grounding aircraft after 9 -11. Sorry, no, there’s a paper around that shows we actually didn’t and any temperature changes in the days following were due to normal meteorological phenomena.
Not making the case against the content itself, just explaining on why such articles pop up, is of course that for example Steven Milloy of Junk Science is a fossil and tobacco industry paid lobbyist with a long history.
Ah, now there is the reasoned and intelligent debate. “The guy I disagree with gets paid by an industry that is tangental to the argument, but bad all the same, so don’t listen to him”. Of course, one could say the same thing about ignoring Al Gore as his dad grew tobacco, worked for an oil company, and a coal company.
But I suspect this was not the intelligent debate that some were hoping to have. Perhaps those people would like to do better than: the old solar magnetism claim, which doesn’t really explain the temperature very well. and then link to a blog that starts with these two quotes to set the stage:
Probably the weakest reason for mistrusting us climate scientists is the idea that we are in it for the money. When I was a starving grad student, I told a dignified lady from rural Mississippi that I was doing climate modeling. She was briefly taken aback. After a beat, she gathered her wits and politely replied “Oh, that must be… lucrative”.
Saving the planet is not an after-dinner drink, a digestif you take or leave. Climate change does not disappear because of the financial crisis.
Get it… he’s not doing it for the money. He’s totally altruistic in saving the planet. Therefore, we can take the rest of what he says as credible. Now, if he actually said something that people would pay for, then he’s a paid shill.
And at what point can I point out that Tom linked to an article suggesting many issues related to global warming. One was about solar magnetism, but in relation to sunspot formation and not about cloud formation. MZ then links to an article debunking solar magnetism affecting cloud formation, which is actually a criticism about a totally unrelated article. This is apparently what passes as intelligent debate: rebuttal a point being made by using a third party argument made about another point.
Umm, the sunspots (well they are only an indicator) affect cloud formation indirectly (via mediation of cosmic rays) – that’s the thesis propagated by some people. Dennis Wingo has been telling about it here for years.
But there are multiple problems with the theory.
Umm, that wouldn’t be my thesis, and that wasn’t the thesis in the article. You made a supposition that was what meant.
Leland, let’s get to the bottom of this, what is the mechanism that page really is proposing?
http://www.junkscience.com/news/robinson.htm
Let’s disregard the other weird stuff on the page for a while.
Length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters–the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature
What’s the physical mechanism they propose? Direct solar radiation? You said it’s certainly not via mediation of cosmic rays and high clouds, that’s the current one some people are proposing (I assumed automatically it was the same since the page is so vague).
Let’s see, you discard stuff because you think it is weird. What you don’t think is weird, you make automatic assumptions about that turn out to be wrong. Then you paraphrase me: “You said it’s certainly not via mediation of cosmic rays and high clouds”, which actually I never did write.
If you are just going to make up strawman arguments and beat them around, then there is no hope in having an intelligent conversation with you.
On the subject of jet aircraft and net effect on climate; there is speculation that jet aircraft in particular may have a zero or negative effect on the heat budget of Earth. Why? Of course they emit CO2 – but they often also cause contrails, and often those spread. I have seen estimates that cloud cover over the North Atlantic has increased by something like 20% since the introduction of mass jet transport.
Of course, this has no bearing on the effect of CO2 emitted at a lower altitude than that.
Rand: “Why should they be? This is not about science.”
It is, though. You’ve absolutely got to design policy from a knowledgeable standpoint of the underlying issue. What should our policies be with regard to climate change? Yes, you’re right that it’s a cost/benefit analysis — but those costs and benefits can only be determined if you understand the process under consideration.
Rand: “The second one is a critique of those who have hijacked the science, regardless of its validity, for their own ideological agenda. Again, that’s not a book that need be written by a scientist.”
I haven’t read this book, so I will only say that even this sort of critique requires the author to understand the underlying issue. How can you say a group has ‘hijacked’ the science, without understanding the science?
Mike: “Apart from the inconvenient real world data about the current lack of warming, failure of the oceans to warm, no sign of the water vapor feedback and no tropical mid troposphere hot spot, along with a cooling Antarctic(which was predicted to warm). Nope no real doubt at all.”
There’s three distinct issues here: first, do we observe warming, second, can we draw a reasonable conclusion that warming is anthropogenic, and third, how much can we trust the general circulation models? So, let me state that I don’t trust the GCMs. A lot of my own research (in an unrelated field, biophysics) involves dynamical simulations, so I’m wary of trying to make forward predictions for such a complex system; if you’re simulating, say, transcription initiation rate as a function of transcription factor concentration, you know going in that your dynamical model incorporates all kinds of simplifications — but you can then sit down at the bench and test your forward predictions, then adjust your model accordingly. With a GCM, you’re stuck saying, Well, this matched previous data pretty well. But that can just be curve fitting: congratulations on bouncing around parameter space until you found a set that fit pretty well, but will that model work for making forward predictions? Maybe not. In particular, I think there’s so many external factors that are not taken into consideration in the GCMs, as well as parametrizations for factors that are included but that we know we’re not able to model accurately (the effects of cloud cover, surface albedo, etc.), that quantitative in silico predictions about climate change shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The reason I’m going on about this is because I think it’s important to differentiate between saying Our quantitative forward predictions (using these GCMs) were wrong, which is a well-founded criticism, and saying The observed global temperature data is wrong!, which isn’t.
So, that being said, back to the empirical question: have we observed statistically significant warming? Yes, and perhaps more importantly, the observed warming is nonlinear: recent years have seen it accelerate, and the per-continent surface temperature average increases are consistent with increased sulfate aerosols and greenhouse gases. (I can provide you with a list of references for this, if you like.) Furthermore, although ocean temperature has been increasing at a slower rate (about half, IIRC) of the land surface warming, it absolutely is increasing, and this observation isn’t limited to the ocean surface — temperature increases are observed down to depths of several thousand feet. Your point about Antarctica is well-taken, and illustrates two important points — that global and local temperature trends are often conflated, by people who should know better, and also that Antarctica (and parts of the tropics) has substantial gaps in its historical temperature data set. This data has been ‘filled in’ with data interpolation and averaging techniques, but in any consideration of Antarctic temperature trends, it’s important to keep this caveat in mind.
Second, is this observed warming trend anthropogenic? This is tricky, because you need to de-couple it from natural climate forcings — for example, obviously the Medieval Warm Period wasn’t caused by man-made aerosols. So, you’re trying to draw a statistical correlation between anthropogenic forcings (GHGs, aerosols) and temperature, and you’ve got GCMs to make this link — and as I mentioned before, I’m leery of the predictive power of these models. However, current GCMs are able to accurately reproduce past climate trends — so, given the known caveats about the GCMs, what do these associations look like if you incorporate only natural forcings, only anthropogenic forcings, or both, into the model? There was a PNAS paper put out a few years ago that went through this, and in my opinion made a strong argument that you could draw this joint attribution. (I can dig up the reference if you like, it was actually a pretty interesting paper — they had a creative biological surrogate for temperature to reduce the error built into actual temperature recordings. Like Rand, I was a bit of an agnostic on this subject before reading this analysis, and came away persuaded that AGW is a reality.)
Anonymous: “Corrected: “Anything published in any journal should always be viewed with the utmost skepticism” … Peer review is not the cornerstone science – experiment is.”
Right — specifically, reproducibility. The point of peer review (which, yes, I have participated in) is to ensure that an article’s experimental methods are reproducible, and that the data analysis done is reasonable (and relevant). Another poster mentioned Alan Sokal’s nonsensical submission to a social journal (Social Text?) — but I think the take-home point of that was that it was a social science publication. Anyone think a social scientist could have pulled off something similar on, say, Physical Review Letters? A more telling example might be the infamous Pons and Fleischmann ‘cold fusion’ publication — because, although it was published, it was quickly debunked, and IIRC, their academic careers sort of imploded after that. Or the Korean researcher (I forget his name) who brought on that cloning scandal recently.
So, my point is that yes, you absolutely should read peer-reviewed articles skeptically — some journals, even high-impact ones, have a reputation for occasionally putting out papers that are garbage. The authors could have analyzed their data wrong, or using some weird metric. The results could be due to consistent experimental bias, which shows up sometimes in biology papers that try to find trends in qualitative and/or subjective data. The authors could even be lying; peer-review is not really set up to guard against fraud. But a non-peer reviewed article should be viewed with an even greater skepticism, particularly if it claims to refute well-accepted and/or politically unpopular science — for example, relativity, evolution, climate change. Cranks like to use Einstein, overthrowing Newtonian physics single-handedly, as their inspiration — but they forget that even Einstein knew he had to publish his work in a peer-reviewed journal for it to be taken seriously. If On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies had been published as a newspaper editorial instead of in Annalen der Physik, would it have been noticed?