Consensus on Global Warming 1200
FredFnord writes "Well, here's an interesting one: the fine folks at Science Magazine have done an analysis of the last ten years' published scientific articles (articles from crank or non-peer-reviewed publications were not counted) on the subject of global climate change. The results themselves are interesting, but the most remarkable part was that, of the 928 papers they found, 75% accepted that global warming was caused by human activities, either explicitly or implicitly. 25% made no mention either way. And not a single paper asserted otherwise." JamesBell submits this article by a geologist which suggests that the Earth is in serious, imminent, unavoidable danger.
Official EPA Global Warming Site (Score:5, Informative)
It does matter (Score:4, Informative)
Keep up /. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Like it matters ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Like it matters ... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the Bush administration is pushing hard for renewed development of nuclear power, which is the third recommendation urged by the panel of scientists in the linked article.
Re:Great (Score:2, Informative)
and in another 20 years we will be seeing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It does matter (Score:5, Informative)
"Blame Bush" fails again (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit.
14 Nations to Participate in Plan to Reduce Methane [washingtonpost.com]
This is largely driven by the US and it includes India and China. It'll have the same greenhouse effect as removing 7% of US fleet of cars from the road and it costs next to nothing.
Just because Bush doesn't sign up to a program with name recognition, doesn't mean the US government isn't doing anything.
Re:Like it matters ... (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, a major objection to Kyoto was that it does not require emissions reductions from third-world countries. However, the major third-world producer of CO2-- China-- has been steadily reducing it's emissions anyway. So that argument isn't so compelling anymore. (Then again, they're at 1/8 the US level per capita anyway...)
climate change is a better phrase (Score:5, Informative)
The world-averaged temperature could remain unchanged by cooling some regions and warming others, and both things could be difficult in terms of crop adjustment, etc. And there is a lot of concern about water as well as heat; think drought.
The expanded phrase also includes the "climate of weather", i.e. the slowly varying statistics of the quickly varying fields. For example, we ask whether the weather would be more stormy in the future.
I've never heard it said that climate change is a euphemism ... to folks like me who work in this field, it's a more encompassing phrase.
Lies (Score:5, Informative)
The US is a Kyoto signatory [wikipedia.org], but "On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". Disregarding the Senate Resolution, on November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification."
All of this happened under Clinton.
So, sorry, but your bullshit post is just that.
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
The "pollution credit" system is a way to encourage companies that are in a position to modernize now to do so, and a way to encourage companies that are not in such a position to get in that position as early as possible. Maybe Kyoto implemented it poorly, but the idea is still sound as far as a method of reducing overall emissions without unduly hurting the economy, and in fact improving the economy over the long run.
Re:Supporting the Environment & China (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another danger of Global Warming... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Michael Crichton just said... (Score:3, Informative)
Not only that, but the "warnings" for global cooling and now global warming are coming from the same individuals. Can you say book sales? I know you can.
For the true and not so true believers (Score:2, Informative)
It may help to explain why most "scientists" agree in this topic.
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/264.pdf [marshall.org]
Re:What about rejects? (Score:4, Informative)
For starters, how many papers were rejected from the peer review process is almost entirely irrelevant. The peer review process is in place for a reason, and the reason is to ensure that bad science (not politically unpleasant conclusions) are not published in major journals. Unless you have a strong reason to believe that most peer reviewers have a strong personal stake in suppressing legitimate research because they don't like the conclusions, then this objection is bunk. We aren't talking about a 60-40 split on a controversial subject -- no papers that contradicted human involvement in global warming made it through the process. What possible benefit would it be to any of those reviewers to suppress opposing opinions? They have no personal stake one way or the other, except arguably their reputations, and that presupposes that there is not a single scientist that has done enough legitimate research to be a peer reviewer and yet still thinks global warming isn't a human issue (or at most, no more than a handful) -- a strong argument for thinking global warming is a significant issue, as far as I'm concerned.
You also rant about how these papers are only published because people don't want to lose funding by being perceived as anti-environment. It seems fairly evident that the current government establishment would be most served by producing strong evidence that global warming is not a serious issue -- so why would it be more politically safe to contradict the notion that things are okay, and question the status quo? If people wanted "safe" conclusions to ensure their funding, they would be saying that global warming is no big deal. Furthermore, you seem to be implying that no funding exists for the production of honest results. Again, this isn't a 60-40 split -- if anyone, even a single person, has ever received funding to do legitimate research on this subject, and has come up with findings against human involvement, it has not been able to make it through a peer review, which probably means that it used questionable methods or was otherwise flawed. Peer reviewers are not as politically motivated as you seem to suppose.
How can a survey of peer reviewed journals be a valid source of data when people are afraid to publish "the wrong results"?
A valid question, but one that is entirely irrelevant until you have shown that this fear actually exists.
Re:Supporting the Environment & China (Score:2, Informative)
source:
If interested in more Google the following keywords:
coal fires global catastrophe
Re:Sadly, this isn't going to change anything. (Score:3, Informative)
On average, volcanos emit 200 million tons of CO2 per year. Human activity averages 26 BILLION tons per year.
See here [fs.fed.us], here [csiro.au] or here [nodak.edu], taken from an earlier Slashdot thread [slashdot.org].
Re:0%? (Score:2, Informative)
>>Mt St Helens when it blew in the 80's? It blasted more toxins and pollutants into the atmosphere than mankind has since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Uhhhh...no it hasn't. But then again neither I nor you are backing up either of our assertions with information...how many cubic kilometers of dust and ash were release? Not sure? Go pick up a study and read up on it.
likewise...if you're unsure of any of the global warming studies done out there...go find one...and read it! Some are very dry, and boring for many I assure you but the science is there...and it doesn't lay out a concrete series of future facts. Science as always only draws lines from parallels of known data.
As a Canadian I know it's going to be national concern #1 very soon because we've let atrophy our navy and the arctic sea ice is disppearing so fucking fast that we're going to have to build 10 to 15 ship armada just to police all that new open water. Other nations have even started planting rogue flags to claim territory we haven't been using.
in the end all our posturing is psuhed aside by cold hard fact...Earth warms = less sea and land ice. That is happening now.
Re:Lies (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps, but he did radically change the direction the country was moving in with respect to Kyoto. Had Bush wanted to get Kyoto ratified, he surely could have done so.
He also gutted the Clean Air Act with his dishonestly named "Clear Skies" initiative. Clear Skies weakens the emissions controls of the Clean Air Act, and nearly eliminates New Source Review.
Don' t try to paint this like Bush is a friend of the environment. You can't make that case.
Consensus Science is an Oxymoron (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a scientist that disagrees. (Score:2, Informative)
"Whatever happened to the countless research papers published in the last ten years in peer-reviewed journals that show that temperatures were generally higher during the Medieval Warm Period than today, that solar variability is most likely to be the key driver of any significant climate change and that the methods used in climate modeling are highly questionable?" Peiser asked.
"Given the countless papers published in the peer-reviewed literature over the last ten years that implicitly or explicitly disagree with the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, one can only conclude that all of these were simply excluded from the [Science Magazine] review. That's how it arrived at a 100 percent consensus!" he added.
According to Peiser, Oreskes' assertion that there is a 100 percent consensus about the issue is not backed by science.
"Even [former Soviet dictator Joseph] Stalin himself did not take consensus politics to such extremes," Peiser explained. "In the Soviet Union the official 'participation rate' was never higher than 98-99 percent.
"So how did the results published in Science achieve a 100 percent level of conformity? Regrettably, the article does not include any reference to the [unpublished?] study itself, let alone the methodology on which the research was based. This makes it difficult to check how Oreskes arrived at the truly miraculous results," he added.
Re:Global Warming on Mars (Score:2, Informative)
Global warming and the effect of CO2 on the environment were not idea made up by hippies and environmentalists to get everyone out of their cars. The notion of global warming came from astronomers studying Venus. Isn't it strange, they thought, that a planet so much like ours is so inhospitable? Sure, it is closer to the sun so you would expect it to be hotter but not THAT much hotter. So, why is it so hot? A lot of study eventually revealed that Venus' atmosphere is filled with CO2. Nice thing about CO2 is that it traps heat from the sun's radiation into the atmosphere instead of escaping the atmosphere as it normally would.
Interesting they thought. Then someone said 'hey, aren't we pumping a lot of CO2 into our atmosphere?' and global warming was born. You can argue how deep the effect of our pollution is. You can argue how much of our current, apparent, warming would occur naturally. You can argue about how much C02 the world's forests are recycling. You can't argue that CO2 in the atmosphere traps in heat that would otherwise escape. We see it on Venus and it can be easily proven in labratory tests. You can't argue that the human population is dumping tons of C02 into the atmosphere. Arguing that it simply isn't happening is silly and ignorant.
Scientists have been wrong before, that is for sure. They aren't wrong here. Maybe wrong about the extent or degree of it, we can't know that, but global warming is happening so deal with it. Denying it now is like all of the people 30 years ago who believed the tobacco companies when they said the smoking doesn't cause cancer. Eventually everyone came to understand the bitter truth only it was too late for some.
Re:THE KYOTO SKY IS FALLING! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. But even if you found some funding (probably from a corp) to do some research in a 'forbidden' direction, try getting your conclusions published in a peer reviewed journal. Won't happen.
It won't get published for reasons such as poor methodology, maths etc. Not because you view is 'forbidden' or not politically correct. You are simply suffering under a conspiracy theory view of Science if you believe otherwise. In fact, while perhaps not in Science, oil-industry funded research, and some not funded by the oil industry, which argues against the consensus of climate change, has been published. It's rare, true, but this rarity is because the bulk of the evidence points in the opposite direction, not because of some grand conspiracy aimed at ensuring funding for climatic research.
> What's controversial about this issue? By asking that question it is clear no rational discourse is possible with you, you too are a religious zealot.
I'm neither religious, not a zealot, and it's called a rhetorical question. I'm asking (as should be clear from the rest of the passage), "where does the controversy here come from?" My point is that there is little scientifc controversy. The controversy is largely injected at the political level.
Hopefully others reading this thread are less invested in the theory to reject all discussion out of hand on the issue.
Again, I'm not going to reject out of hand any discussion based on evidence and a scientific understanding of that evidence out of hand. Quite the opposite, I genuinely hope that we are all wrong! I hope to wake up tomorrow and that it was all a bad dream, a mass delusions of the world scientific community caused by some faulty maths somewhere down the line. And you know why I hope this? It's because, at our current state of knowledge, the conclusion that we are headed for a very nasty time climatically is ineluctable and because I have children. But I'm not going to stick my head in the sand on this one.
[I]f one is politically aware, one notices that the loudest voices in the Global Warming crowd also want to dismantle Western Civilivation
I consider myself fairly politically aware, but I'm quite unable to see how shifting from oil to uranium amounts to a dismantling of Western Civilization. Perhaps you can clear that one up for me? Again the opposite is true, it's through technological advance alone that we are going to beat this one. We have to move away from this C19th energy source.
Hard to Justify (Score:3, Informative)
I bought a $1300 fridge that runs on $40 of electricity a year. Extra insulation, new design, better motors, whathaveyou.
Now the payback period on that is almost ten years. Worthwhile as the fridge should last at least that long. But in the meantime I've lost opportunity on that money and I don't have a plasma tv set.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Since I don't feel like finding another post to attach this to, here's a response to a couple of other points:
1) Forget the whole theory that global warming is simply an artifact of urban heat islands. We fixed that particular problem with the data in the early 1990s. The urban heat island effect is without a doubt the best-understood phenomenon in climatology, and even with the effects removed climate is still warming.
2) Sunspot activity doesn't explain most of the climate change story either. It's part of the story, but definitely not all of it. If you want to check out a paper on the subject, I suggest the following (I know its a few years old, but the findings haven't changed subsantially since this paper):
Cedric Bertrand, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Potential Role of Solar Variability as an Agent for Climate Change, Climatic Change, Volume 43, Issue 2, October 1999, Pages 387 - 411
note: I'm not telling you to believe the paper. Just to read it. If you understand enough about what's going on to do so, please feel free to poke holes in it. That's part of science.
Re:In other news... (Score:1, Informative)
Like I said, I haven't had a huge amount of experience with them. Mostly with electrical engineers and a lot of them might not be human, too. :)
Again, you're not reading the literature. Plenty of people win their spurs from publishing theories that dispute anthropogenic climate changes, or by positing hypotheses that negate any warming that might occur.
Ok, so based on that should we assume that the Science article wasn't just useless but also just plain wrong? Or perhaps Science just reduced its sample set to a universe that matches what they wanted to write in the article?
Yeah, because everybody signed that Kyoto Accord and put it into action, right? C'mon - your statement is ludicrous and you know it. Scientists have little influence on politics unless they've found a way to blow people up.
Apparently most of the world has signed Kyoto and they originally hoped that the U.S. would too--that's quite a bit of influence for scientists. Scientists that find new ways to blow people up don't influence politics they just give politicians the means to enforce the whims of the politicians. Perhaps the climate scientists haven't influenced U.S. politicians into passing Kyoto, but they have influenced quite a few other countries and even some U.S. political moves are harder now that every third word has to be environment and a given plans' impact on it.
Me: So why the hell did Science publish this silly article that proves nothing?
You: To sell ads, maybe?
So at least we agree that scientists aren't immune to selfish motives.
To encourage further discussion from the scientists that suspect that global warming is hooey but haven't found proof yet?
To enocurage them? Do you really think this is going to encourage a scientist to publish his or her paper questioning global warming? It's going to hinder it. Many might just prefer not to go against their entire field. Others that may have been considering publishing might hold off and do even more research because they want to be dang sure they're right before opening themselves up to ridicule. Either way this seems to me to be something that would have a chilling effect, not an encouraging one.
To keep the thing interesting? Scientists read dozens of new articles every month, and a little light entertainment is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. :)
Entertainment? Anything wrong with the comics or Michael Moore? This is the kind of sensationalist nonsense that gets picked up by the mainstream press completely out of context and reported as "All scientists now agree with global warming." That's a disservice being performed by Science.
No, no, no, read that carefully now. What I said was no paper has been published which posits that climate change is (as in, is now) independent of human activity.
Actually what you said was "When reliable evidence that supports the theory that climate change occurs independent of human activity surfaces, it will be published." CLimate change does occur independent of human activity. Period. Perhaps you meant to write "When reliable evidence that supports the theory that current climate change is occuring independently of human activity surfaces, it will be published." But that's not what you wrote.
Certainly before humans existed, climate change was independent of human activity. The global warming debate boils down to whether or not this is still the case. Stop playing semantics.
Oh, please. I replied to what you wrote. You mistyped and now are complaining that I'm playing semantics. Fine, we'll move on. But I'm not the only one that read what you wrote the exact way I did.
Again, that's not what the Science article says.
But that is what the Science article says. Obviously we can (and
Re:Ozone is a sign of a process, not THE process (Score:3, Informative)
Did they teach you about two things called rate and equilibrium?
You are correct in remembering that
3 02 + UV -> 2 03
but also
CFC + UV -> Cl* (Cl radicals)
and then
Cl* + O3 -> ClO* + O2
ClO* + ClO* -> Cl2O2
Cl2O2 + UV -> 2Cl* + O2
overall: 2O3 -> 3O2
Chlorine is very effective in catalyzing the decomposition of O3 into O2 faster than UV can turn O2 into O3. Given a constant flux of UV, the equilibrium concentration of ozone relative to normal oxygen is much lower in the presence of chlorine radicals.
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Informative)
Catastrophic? - How do you (or anyone else) know that?
It is an undiputed fact that the Earths climate has been wildly different at different times through the eras and life always managed to survive.
It is also a fact that man is the most adaptable living creature ever discovered; we've been able to live everywhere on this planets surface, plus in the air, under the water and even in space and on the moon. We as a species will survive any climate change given enough warning to adapt (using technology if nessesary).
Now IMHO instead of blindly trying to return the climate state to the level of 'the good old days' we should rather accept the changes (which still may be natural, and which in any case has happened naturally before and may again) and begin the adaption process. The sooner the better.
Sure, things will be different but it doesn't mean it'll be worse (or catastrophic), and it might even be a change for the better in way we cannot imagine at the moment (due to lack of data).
Re:I found the truth! (Score:3, Informative)
Energy, in the atmosphere in the form of ultraviolet light is required to kick off the reaction that causes O2 to become O3. Suprisingly the amount of UV light hitting the atmosphere is greatest at the equators and smallest at the poles (geographic) - if you had ever looked at pictures of the holes then you would see that they covered both poles and occasionally reached as far the south of Australia.