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Global Warming Debunker Debunked
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Nov 14, 2006 03:17 PM
from the you're-getting-warmer dept.
from the you're-getting-warmer dept.
Earlier this month we ran an article linking Christopher Monckton's attempt to discredit global warming. The submitter asked plaintively, "Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong?" George Monbiot has now done so. From the article: "This is a dazzling debunking of climate change science. It is also wildly wrong... In keeping with most of the articles about climate change in [the Sunday Telegraph], it is a mixture of cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation, and pseudo-scientific gibberish. But it has the virtue of being incomprehensible to anyone who is not an atmospheric physicist... As for James Hansen, he did not tell the US Congress that temperatures would rise by 0.3C by the end of the past century. He presented three possible scenarios to the US Senate — high, medium, and low. Both the high and low scenarios, he explained, were unlikely to materialise. The middle one was 'the most plausible.' As it happens, the middle scenario was almost exactly right. He did not claim, under any scenario, that sea levels would rise by several feet by 2000." And on the political front, the only major ally for Pres. Bush's stand on global warming, Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, is now willing to look at carbon trading.
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Global Warming Debunked? 1120 comments
limbicsystem writes, "I'm a scientist. I like Al Gore. I donate to the Sierra club, I bicycle everywhere and I eat granola. And I just read a very convincing article in the UK Telegraph that makes me think that the 'scientific consensus' on global warming is more than a little shaky. Now IANACS (I am not a climate scientist). And the Telegraph is notoriously reactionary. Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong? Because it seems to be solid, well researched, and somewhat damning of a host of authorities (the UN, the editors of Nature, the Canadian Government) who seem to have picked a side in the global warming debate without looking at the evidence." The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist and former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher.
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An Inconvenient Truth 1033 comments
There's a movie teaser line that you may have seen recently, that goes like this: "What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?" The answer is "I'd try." The teaser's actually for another movie, but that's the story that's told in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth": it starts with a man who, after talking with scientists and senators, can't get anyone to listen to what he thinks is the most important thing in the world. It comes out on DVD today.
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Moo (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just pandering to those who want thim to respond. But there's really nothing to see here if you don't like name calling.
Re:Moo (Score:5, Insightful)
The first article did NOT make an argument. Instead it attempted to convince everyone he was correct by saying how X,Y and Z arguments are false. But there are 100's of arguments for global warming. OF COURSE some of them are false.
The first article was a poorly thought out piece of crap, because it did NOT do what science must do: present disprovable data. Instead it simply disproved a small portion of other people's arguments.
That is called Cherry Picking. It is a stupid way to argue, I can use it to prove anything.
Here: Some people (my 3 year old nephew) claim that Communists killed Jesus. This is patently false, because Jesus was killed and ressurected years before Communism was invented. Others (my 10 year old niece) claim that Communists killed their father. I have here a signed affadaivit that her father is alive and well, and living with a 19 year old stripper in Miami. Finally, some people (my insane neighbor), claim that Communists are poisoning our water supply with fluride, but I have here ten studies, all double blind, showing that Fluride is not harmfull in the quantities placed in our water.
Therefore Communists do not kill people.
This is EXACTLY what the first article did. It picked a VERY few articles, that may or may not have been false, and attacked them. This is called Cherry Picking. Such a methodology is foolish and proves nothing.
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Re:Moo (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Moo (Score:5, Insightful)
Further -- the Monbiot article says that "climate sensitivity is an equilibrium concept" -- meaning that CO2 release precedes its effects by several decades. Nice, but the original (Monckton) article claimed that the problem was that warming preceded CO2 rise, which means Monbiot didn't really rebut him. There are many, many specific claims in the original article (and the linked-to PDF is even more detailed); Monbiot tackles very few of them adequately. Rather than slamming a journalist for lack of sufficient credentials, he should be congratulated for attempting to meet the scientists halfway by speaking their own language, and set right where he needs to be set right. The truth has nothing to fear from polemic.
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Re:Moo (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody says "I believe in gravity." I think Michael Crichton made this point first, but it's still relevant.
The main problem serious people have about global warming is the reactionary solutions, most of which seem to primarily be a kind of retroactive success-tax on Americans. Example: Kyoto didn't deal with emerging countries who are both 1) ramping up energy use, and 2) aren't saddled with any of the green regulations that 1st world nations put on themselves.
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Re:Moo (Score:5, Insightful)
You miss the point. Global warming is sold as a religion, which is why the instinct to say "I believe..." is so strong. It's presented as established science fact, when it's really highly dependent on a lot of assumptions and guesswork. Not that there's anything wrong with that--our climate is not a simple system that we can easily model. However it doesn't take too much thinking to come up with plausible alternative reasons for the phenomena we see.
Example: it's been asserted many times that there's been a rise in temperatures that coincide with the industrial revolution. Now why is that? Could it be because that temperatures were being measured where people were, rather than where people were not? It's reasonably clear that human concentration in urban areas increase local temperatures. We weren't taking temperature readings in the 1800s because we were worried about the Earth. We wanted to know about the local weather.
A simple thought experiment such as that starts to bring the data into question. If pressed, the climatologist may get frustrated because, in their mind, they've already accounted for that, but the full answer isn't simple to express. So what you get is, basically, "trust me, I'm a scientist", which is bollocks. For one, wearing the moniker "scientist" doesn't make you right; and two, if you're a scientist make some testable predictions. The ones mentioned in the original article sure didn't come true. That makes it bad science. The goal is not to make testable predictions, the goal is to convince people to act now. That's a religion. Or marketing. Either or, it's not science.
You say you want to expose people to the debates, but that's the last thing that's going on. People who wander off the human-caused global warming reservation are not treated as skeptics, they're treated as heretics. Anti-science heretics, with suspicious agendas.
Note I say this as a person who is supportive of some of the aims of the global warming activists. I think we do need to de-emphasize our easy-motoring lifestyle and to support more mass-transit systems. I think part of the reason we got where we are is because of intrusive and expansive government killing the incentive for people to remain in urban centers and driving the middle class out to the suburbs, and I find it daft that the proposed solution to the problem is invariably more intrusive and expansive government, this time on a global scale. It's crazy.
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Re:Moo (Score:5, Insightful)
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NASA GISS GCM on your laptop (Score:5, Informative)
The EdGCM [columbia.edu] project provides this free GCM wrapped in a GUI. If you want to add CO2 or turn down the sun or whatever, you may now do so with some checkboxes and sliders.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I really don't understand how people ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The earth *IS* getting warmer. This is a fact. Annual temperatures are hotter than they have ever been since we started keeping records, glaciers are drastically smaller than they've ever been in recorded history, and the polar ice caps are shrinking. The earth _IS_ getting warmer, ergo, global warming is real.
What is causing it, however, is another matter... some say there is proof that humans are causing it, others will say it's merely circumstantial... that this warming is just part of a natural cycle the earth goes through before another ice age and then a gradual reheating (the latter period being one in which we are currently living).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the same kind of logic that keeps people smoking when they know exactly what it is doing to them. They simply don't want to think about what is happening so they ignore it - it's the elephant in the middle of the room.
plus, as many people here have said climate science is one of the most tainted - my fingers personally are pointed at the oil businesses
Re:I really don't understand how people ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, this is part of the reason that people follow the concept blindly and vehemently, attacking any who attempt to raise even the specter of a rational debate.
It is a lot easier to believe that we are responsible than it is to believe that we cannot do anything about it.
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Re:I really don't understand how people ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I really don't understand how people ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"As opposed to what? The 1500's? The 1700's?? The late Cretaceous???"
All of the above.
"Was anyone keeping record of the ACTUAL temperature back then? No. We have only been recording these kinds of things for the last 200 years at best."
Did you personally check the temperature 200 years ago? I mean, all we really have is some marks on a peice of parchment that appear to be temperature observations made by some human of unknown reliability.
Can we conduct experiments in plate tectonics? There may be lots of reasons the eath shakes. Nobody has ever seen a tectonic plate. Clearly geology is only based on scientific theory at best.
Love that phrase, by the way, "only based on scientific theory at best". As if there were anything better anything could ever possibly be based on. Your suggestion the sun will rise tommorow is only based on scientific theory at best.
Science attempts to construct explanations for observed data. Then it tests those explanations. No one is ever super-completely-definitely-sure, but they keep testing and trying to fit their explanations into the web of data and theory. Some things fit really well, and survive huge amounts of double checking.
There are several ways to estimate pre-instumental temperatures via proxy records, including ice cores. They all agree fairly well. Nobody with knowledge of the available evidence could reasonably suggest our best guess estimates of pre-instrumental temperatures are so incredibly, radically wrong as to make the last hundred years warming look unexceptional. It's not different by a little bit. It's different by a fricking huge amount.
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Re:I really don't understand how people ... (Score:5, Informative)
1) This is why people prefer global climate change rather than global warming, because it gives people who read only headlines the wrong idea. What that article refers to is thermohaline inversion and the stopping of the Atlantic conveyor belt, which is responsible for a good chunk of the nice coastal temperatures in Europe. For more details, and just because I can, I'll point you to alink [nationalgeographic.com] that is in the same article you just quoted.
2) The Clean Air act is supposedly responsible for this nice little event. As for whether this would be able to affect the global climate in the level that we're seeing it, I'll refer you to this link.
3) Nice little effort at cherry-picking your events. For an actual event, you can go to Greenland and see how their farming efforts are a little easier now. However, the bad events far outweigh any positives we've gotten so far, primarily because it takes time to profit from change. Until we learn to take advantage of what Global Climate Change can do for us, we'll have seniors dying in droves from heat waves, pipelines and houses buckling due to vanishing permafrost and crops dying in areas that are getting too hot for comfort.
4) Since this is the same exact point as in 2) (complete with link to article that has the same quote), I'll refer you to the link I posted there. Besides, that article is a complete light weight when it comes to determining how much more light has reached the earth, its causes (which, btw, include reduced albedo, which is a side-effect of Global Climate Change) or its impact on what we're seeing.
Try again.
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Tomorrow on Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tomorrow on Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
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no no no (Score:5, Interesting)
I really think almost all of these questions end up as what I call side of the room questions. People line up via their political orientation, and they end up on the side of the room with Michael Moore and Al Gore, or Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. You might not like everything about the people on your side of the room, but if you find the other side of the room more unpalatable, you shut up and live with your reservations. The polarized nature of politics makes you at least act as if you buy into everything from your side of the room--if you vacillate (waffle!) you might embolden the other side of the room. Aaargh! So smart people end up believing stupid stuff, just so they don't have to stand on the same side of the room as Michael Moore (or Anne Coulter, depending on your aversion). And no, I'm not exempting myself from this. I find Michael Moore's stuff smarmy and irritating, but I'd do some serious soul-searching if I ended up on the same side of the room as Anne Coulter.
Re:no no no (Score:5, Insightful)
As a scientist working in a related field I find this desire to polarise the whole thing utterly exasperating. For whatever reason, mainstream scientific opinion gets lumped on one side of this divide, and the other side is left fixated on fringe opinions from a tiny minority of dissenters on one wing of the science. The media then jump into the fray with their desire for "balance" and give these fringe dwellers equal airtime and column space with the mainstream, in doing so manufacturing a series of debates which are not really there.
If you want balance, and you want to put the opinions of a handful of scientists on one extreme of the argument into it, then leave the vast majority of us in the middle out of it and go find the same level of extremism on the other side. Those who argue that we're in danger of imminent collapse of both the East Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, or who talk alarmingly of extreme "runaway greenhouse" feedbacks, for instance.
Alternatively of course you could all just stop fixating on tiny minorities of fringe scientific opinion. There is plenty of genuine debate going on and opportunity for journalistic and political "balance" in covering it - but it is simply no longer over such big picture questions as "is the climate warming now?" or "are human emissions largely responsible for this warming?"
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The Bush position (Score:5, Informative)
"I recognise the surface of the earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem," he said during a visit to Denmark en route to Gleneagles.
Monckton was debunked at Real Climate (Score:3, Informative)
Who cares about the CAUSE for Global warming (Score:3, Interesting)
I was told: "Higher than that you'd be crazy"
Today I see SPF 50 on the shelves and nothing below SPF 16.
Maybe once I see SPF 1000 we'll finally know what is the cause of Global warming.
Until then we should still cut back on any emissions that would make things worse in terms of climate change, REGARDLESS OF the real cause.
While we're at it cut back,..err, cut out polution of ANY kind. I have to dump my AA batteries in the garbage because they wont recycle that but they'll gladly polute the air and water to recycle my newspaper which can rot by itself anywhere.
Why primary sources matter (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there's what Hansen said, and there's what got reported. The meta-debunker went back to primary sources and found:
I was at U with C W Monckton (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, part of the reason for his behaviour is a long standing medical problem. I wouldn't mention this if it were not for the fact that Wikipedia has seen fit to publish it.
What I would like to see (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like everyone I see starts with the premise that Global Warming is reaching epic proportions or that it is bullshit. It doesn't seem like anyone is going out there from a neutral point of view.
It seems like anyone can spin data to prove a point they already have in mind.
A more devious issue (Score:5, Insightful)
One can only speculate on the motives of these 'debunkers'. Obviously there are those who profit mightily and so have a powerful interest in the status quo. Next, there are skeptics who will never accept anything, no matter the evidence or risk of inaction. As near as I can tell, their only goal is to drag as many people as possible to their side. Finally, as an Albertan, I see many other people who have been frightened by the economic doom and gloom emanating from certain quarters. These people will not accept Climate change because they see it as an attack on them and their livelihood. They don't want to change how they live so they choose only to believe what will enable them to continue as they are. The first two groups of people can never be convinced so we shouldn't really bother trying, rather we must be mindful of their effects on legitimate debate. The third, and far largest group, can be convinced once they realize that combating climate change is not just a problem but can be an opportunity; an opportunity to reinvent society and unleash innovation! Certainly, once you accept the science behind climate change most rational people must acknowledge a moral imperative to our fellow human beings to combat this issue.
Beware Howard's repentance (Score:5, Informative)
John Howard has been using his absolute majority in both Houses to force all sorts of ideologically motivated laws through, regardless of how they may change Australian Culture. He seems to be intent on making us a new state of the USA. He is the person responsible for ensuring that the USA is not alone in its' Kyoto stance. He is responsible for a "Free Trade" agreement which is dismantling our fair-use provisions under copyright, is introducing DMCA legislation, is changing our patents office to be in line with the US model, is diluting our PBS (the Government sponsored sale of pharmaceuticals, all of which must happen before 2010, yet the USA is under no obligations under this agreement until 2022.
He is responsible for setting up concentration camps for refugees (more precisely, for illegal immigrants who are requesting refugee status). Most of these camps are in the back of beyond. There are children who have liven for most of their lives behind the razor wire, and there is a horrific incidence of mental illness associated with this detention in sub-human conditions.
Now that public opinion can be shown to be swinging against the US Republican approach to the Middle East and "The War on Terror" he's simply waving an extremely large, colourful and exciting flag (climate change acceptance) to distract people from his complete failure to interface with the Democrats. The news is now that the Democrats are going to demand a US inquiry into the AWB scandal (The AWB, run by Howard's mates, was busted paying hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam Hussein to get around the trade sanctions, abusing the UN "Oil for Food" program).
I, along with many other informed Australians, do not believe there is any change of heart in Howard's new "Climate friendly" position. It's all just an attempt at distraction from the real issues.
this guy presented no new info... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically this article says "Global warming is happening, accept it" while providing no evidence other than "This guy's an idiot, he doesn't even have a degree". He only tries (very weakly) to debunk one of his claims, that the world has been warmer in the past. A claim which if not confirmed by the warm period of 5-600 years ago, is certainly confirmed in the earth's history. I read an article in Scientific American or National Geographic just last month that conceded this point, stating that the fluctuation of the earth's temperature has a range of 15-20C over the past 3-5 million years. Obviously more than 5 9s of that data is pre-industrial revolution (thus not caused by man). Those articles also plainly laid out that we are at historical lows in both temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
If this Stefan-Boltzmann equation is designed to model a "black body" how is the UN justifying any modification to this model? What are they basing their alterations on? How do they decide how "non-black" the earth is.
The only other thing he mentions is Hansen's predictions. Ok, so Hansen had 3 predictions low, middle, high and said it would probably be middle, and it was close to that (.1C). The UN itself had much higher predictions (3C-5C) so why are we supposed to believe the UN now when they say 5C-9C over the next 100 years if its going to be closer to
In short, this is a completely typical article to see from global warming believers. They pretty much all go like this "The world is over, if we don't turn off all electrical devices by tomorrow and start riding bikes then global warming will kill us all. If you don't believe this statement you are an idiot!". If you ask global warming advocates for evidence they say things like "The evidence is all around you! Look at the hurricanes! Look how many people died in the heat wave last year!" People die in heat waves every year, the temperature and localized weather events fluctuate wildly. The climate on the whole remains pretty steady, and if anything activity on the Sun is much more likely to change the climate than anything we do.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Global Hubris (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Global Hubris (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trying to be a troll - I'm just asking...
Re:Global Hubris (Score:4, Informative)
CO2 provides the most climate forcing due to its chemical properties and relative bulk in the atmosphere. To forestall the atmospheric H2O canard - H2O is a more powerful GHG, but it only maintains the current temperature. It is not a forcing agent because it cycles too fast. H2O cycles in 14 days. CO2 cycles in ~150 years.
The comment about rain scrubbing is utterly nonsensical. It shows no time component and is irrelevant because rain doesn't fall evenly over every square meter of the planet.
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Rain scrubbing (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more importantly, rain only falls in the lowest parts of the atmosphere. Anything above 40,000 feet won't ever see a drop of rain until it falls to lower altitudes. So expecting rain to clean the entire atmosphere is, at best, a slow process.
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Re:Global Hubris (Score:5, Informative)
Both. One of the reasons we need computer models. Especially since warmer climates speed up some processes that *absorb* CO2 as well as speeding up processes that release CO2.
CO2's causal role is simple phsyics. The numbers on feedback have been hard to pin down. But there's not any question that *other things being equal* more CO2 means a warmer planet on average.
>Humans are unlikely to be the cause:
We are, indeed, responsible for only a small percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The amount that was there before we started is responsible for keeping the oceans from freezing. A small change to that large an effect is worth thinking about.
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Re:Global Hubris (Score:5, Informative)
[ http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/siple.htm [ornl.gov] ]
>>
An atmospheric CO2 record for the past 200 years was obtained from the
Siple Station ice core.
[...]
Neftel et al. (1985) concluded that the atmospheric CO2 concentration
ca. 1750 was 280±5 parts per million by volume (ppmv) and that it
increased by 22.5% to 345 ppmv in 1984 essentially because of human
factors.
>>
[ http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.htm [ornl.gov] ]
>>
The Mauna Loa record shows a 19.4% increase in the mean annual
concentration, from 315.98 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of dry
air in 1959 to 377.38 ppmv in 2004.
>>
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Let's re-write some physical laws... (Score:3, Insightful)
This one nearly made me spill my coffee !
Ever hear of the law of Conservation of Mass?
Put in simple terms, it says that the amount of Carbon in the can is fixed at the time the can is sealed.
Heating it, cooling it, or giving it a really good shake makes no difference.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No idea about him and the scientific method, but he definitely bothers with logic in this article..
Any discussion on this piece is a waste of time. Please see the appropriate peer-reviewed articles in the appropriate scientifi
Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so I'll have to repeat my standard response to stuff like this.
I love this logic:
1. The climate has always been variable.
1a. The climate is variable on other planets.
2. Therefore, man is not having an impact on today's climate!
QED, right?
Here's an exercise: Explain to me how increased levels of CO2 (which are rising due to humans- I challenge you to find an alternative explanation that has not been debunked from here to Shanghai and back), which Arrhenius demonstrated over 100 years ago [nasa.gov] could cause climate change, can't possibly be causing climate change?
Hey, climate science is uncertain, and questioning the current consensus is great. But if you are going to do so, please find a coherent argument why the current thinking is incorrect (again, please stick to the stuff that hasn't been shown to be wrong 100x over). So please go read RealClimate [realclimate.org], debunk them (you have to do better than the M&M side show [uoguelph.ca]), and then we can have a conversation.
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Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:5, Insightful)
As Arrhenius predicted, both carbon dioxide levels and temperatures increased from 1900-1999. However, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased much more quickly than he expected, but the Earth hasn't warmed as much as he thought it would. (Graphs by Robert Simmon, based on data from NOAA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who believes that carbon emissions have no effect at all on the global temperature. What's in debate is just how much effect they have. Will a tripling in global carbon emissions cause a 5 degree rise, or only a
That's the kind of questions which lead to questioning of the overall global warming theory, because they've never been successfully answered. And that's why questions about climate change on Mars and Venus become relevant - because if the temperature is changing on those planets then it's quite possible that carbon dioxide is an almost insignificant factor in the temperature rise which OUR planet is experiencing, and that the major cause is the sun.
Hell, for all we know, the rise in CO2 might be the symptom instead of the cause of global warming. Granted, it's unlikely, but how do we know for sure? Has anyone measured CO2 levels on mars and venus? So far the only proof we have that co2 is linked to global warming is that any time in the past when temperatures have gone up, so has CO2. How can we prove which one is the cause, and which one a symptom? And if we can't even prove that, how in the world can we possibly expect to determine exactly how much effect CO2 has on temperature?
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Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a nice strawman, that we have to go to war to reduce CO2 emissions. It's especially funny that you talk about turning 'global politics upside down', like the status quo hasn't had any of that (see: Middle East oil). The cost of (low carbon) energy independence, fully accounted, might not be so high.
I agree that China and India are huge factors in the CO2 game. Especially considering their economic growth and coal reserves. Kyoto doesn't cut it. Agreed. One interesting issue here is fairness. In the U.S. we've generated a lot of wealth by burning fossil fuels; hardly seems fair to make the rest of the world cap their emissions at a fraction of our per capita emissions. But that's a challenge, not a deal-killer.
I would submit that we can address our CO2 problems without "massive global economic disruption," but that's another debate for another time. I need to ride my bike home and play with my kids.
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Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the "perfect is the enemy of good" argument. If we can't solve the entire problem then we should take no action at all. Not even a little.
It's a dumb argument. Saying that you don't know the exact degree of risk and beause you can't quantify it to nth degree of certainty you will do absolutely nothing is just insane.
"nd we CAN be certain that the only truly effective ways to combat CO2 pollution would also cause massive global economic disruption, as well as requiring force to implement. So let's do a little more research first, huh?"
Bullshit on all accounts. Oh and by the way I think a little more research has been done. It's just that you refuse to believe it. I don't think more research is going to change your mind. Lucky for us not even bush is that stupid. Even he is starting to come around.
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Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, in the past CO2 has lagged temperature. However, that doesn't mean that it hasn't sustained climate changes as a positive feedback. What it does mean is that CO2 has often not been the driver for climate change events. Until now.
We are generating lots of CO2. A small amount relative to natural fluxes, but enough to . Can anyone provide a plausible alternative hypothesis for current conditions? [doe.gov]
CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. This is basic physics. What's not so basic are all of the other feedbacks, positive and negative- water vapor, ice cover, and so forth. That's where the action is. Let's talk about that. But to get caught up talking about whether we are responsible for increases in CO2, and whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas, is just a colossal waste of time. It's basic frickin physics and chemistry. It's the fluid dynamics that makes everything so hard to resolve.
To recap:
Climate varies naturally. That doesn't mean it can't be affected unnaturally.
Historically, CO2 concentrations have lagged temperature changes (b/c yes, Virginia, there are other factors that affect climate). That does not disprove that you can drive climate change with CO2; it just hasn't been tried often.
All else equal, higher CO2 = higher temperatures. Basic physics. The problem is the all else equal part.
Humans are trying an interesting experiment. What happens if we try to force climate change with CO2?
Why does everyone here think that they are smarter than climate scientists?
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Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:4, Funny)
I can't, but I'm sure the Republicans are behind it.
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Re:Georges Moonbat. Great choice there. (Score:5, Insightful)
2) If you are talking about human recorded temprature mesurements from those periods then we agree. And so scientists generally try and use non-human recordings, such as effects on tree rings, the growth of coral (very temprature dependant, and in the middle of a huge heat sink), etc... So there is a lot of data that can be distilled into good records.
3) If you took engineering then you should know about the laws of thermodynamics, and thus know that you are mearly playing with where the energy is absorbed or reflected, not changing those ratios. You should also know that most of the suns energy output that is absorbed by the earth is not in particales that are affected in any real way by magnetic fields.
4) Your source does not say that Jupiter as a whole is warming up... only that certain spots seem to be. There is a huge difference in those two statements.
5) We don't know enough about Mar's climate to be able to take any lessons out of it. In fact your article states this repeatedly.
6) The answers to many of the rest of your questions are avalible from a lot of sites. A lot of them do examin cyclical effects, and look for the causes. But the very people who are doing those studies and are the best informed about these things are the ones who are very loudly sounding the alarm.
The better question is why do people keep listening more intently to politicions and businessmen who have a vested interest in the status quo, as opposed to the scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying these things and have no vested interests (or at least not as big an interest).
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Re:Slashdot position (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I suppose it depends on what you mean by "consensus". Certainly not all qualified scientists believe "human caused global warming" is a dominant factor in current climate change. You might check this 2002 article (for instance):
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/14 /161152.shtml [newsmax.com]
The one tangible thing that's been done to try and address global warming is the Kyoto Protocol. It is quite flawed, though, in that it gives exemptions to the countries which are most likely to be big polluters in coming decades. It would also impose economic penalties on countries like the US which are already doing quite a lot to reduce their environmental impact.
If /.ers want to rally around a single approach that would be beneficial not just to human related global warming if it exists, but also to energy independence and reduced pollution, do whatever you can to advocate constructing new nuclear reactors here in the US. That is the single best thing we could do at this point.
Those who can plug in hybrids or electric cars to charge would then be running nuclear powered vehicles...sweet! :-)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We just need to learn how to breath in carbon dioxide, and exhale oxygen. This would not only help with global warming, but if this is something we can do on demand, it will help tremendously in the field of Scuba diving.
If I sound flippant, it's because I'm not really sure there is an answer any more. Many climatologists appear to believe we've already gone too far, we could have done something about it ten years ago, but we've squandered the opportunities that were available to us. And suppose someone
Re:Repair (Score:4, Informative)
The report can be found here [hm-treasury.gov.uk]
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Re:personal attacks and sloppy science (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason that the "save the rainforests" is quieter now is because people are actually doing something about it.
Finally, this entire "you have to present both sides of a story" has to stop. Now. This is not a game show where you get to choose which door to open. There is a public debate on an important topic, and that debate needs to happen in public. That's true. However, debating something in public does not mean that you simply pick a side you like and then clamor that everyone needs to listen to you "because all sides need to be heard". It means debating the theory, the data, the methodology, investigating problems and striving towards finding the most reasonable answer or theory. Granted, most news stories don't get this either, but that doesn't mean that we can't tell them to stop being idiots about the way they present science debates.
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