I like science and understand the difference between mainstream viewpoints and a few fringe whackos, but there is something about AGW that sets off warning signals in my mind. I don’t like AGW opponents being marginalized as “denyers”, and I am leery of the political turn the debate has taken of both sides.
Some of the things I think about:
The climate has changed dramatically over history. When the Pilgrims landed in NA we were still in a little ice age. Paintings of Holland show skaters on canals that no longer freeze on a tregular basis. What is it about recent changes that make AGW proponents sure that we are seeing man-made changes and not natural ones?
What’s up with the change from “global warming” to “climate change”? It makes it tough to prove or disprove when change in any direction is “proof” of your theory.
The micro-climates of cities, where much of the weather info is gathered, has changed over the years. We now have massive concrete heat islands that affect temperature readings. In addition, within cities many weather gathering stations have moved over the years. Portland’s moved from downtown to the airport. Thses two areas have very different climates.
The affects of AGW are stated in ways that seem extreme. When we hear about cities being “inundated” by rising water it sounds like something that will happen quickly rather than over decades. We aren’t going to be running from waves of water.
I guess my BS meter and general cynicism are kicking in.
A) It was predicted.
B) It follows our understanding the chemical properties of the gases involved, planetary atmospheres, and the greenhouse effect.
C) The rate of change is larger than what we can see in historical temperature changes.
D) CO2 rates are significantly raised above anything in history, tracking back multiple hundreds of thousands of years.
E) We can reasonably quantifying specifically how much change is human-caused.
While the overall average global temperature is rising, regionally, the temperature might be lowering. People who live in areas where the temperature is lowering shouldn’t take that as a proof that “global warming” isn’t happening, which they are liable to do anyways just because of the name and ego-centrism.
Much weather info isn’t gathered in cities. These days just as much of it comes from satellites, but even before that temperature stations were all over and added in.
Not if you confine yourself to scientific studies, which is really what you should do. The studies commissioned by the President and Congress are online and written for people who aren’t scientists. They’re prepared by people who are working 40 hour week day jobs at the EPA or other research groups that any other day of the week could be writing a report on cow methane emissions in Idaho, or any other government research. I.e. they’re steadily employed and gain nothing either way.
Scientists and the EPA have both declared the IPCC report to be the current utmost state of knowledge on the topic, and most of it is quite readable. I would encourage you to read it, and ignore doomsayers and naysayers and any other soothsayers who can’t be bothered to look at the actual data and recommendations as prepared by the people who have the actual skills, and who were specifically hired to look into it.
Not from waves, no. But the evidence is that major climate change can happen in years, not decades. We aren’t going to be able to build a dike around Florida with five years warning, say.
I guess I’m a lefty, but I’ve never believed in global warming, or AGW, or whatever they call it.
Where I live, the “experts” can’t even predict the weather for the next 5 days. Sometimes not even for the next 5 hours. I have no confidence that people who can’t do this can say with assurance that we are causing global climate change.
I am in favor of less pollution, but not because it will hurt the planet. The planet is a big ball of rock. I do think people should have clean water and clean air.
I’m not a Lefty but I completely agree with everything else in this post. I’m sorry, I just don’t buy into the Global Warming thing. I’m not convinced, and short of needing a speedboat to get to work and people in Melbourne being able to grow Palm Trees in their garden, I struggle to think of anything that will convince me that it’s a reality and not part of the planet’s natural heating/cooling cycle.
I’m not a lefty, but I’m left handed so that probably counts
And I don’t know if I buy AGW or not. I certainly don’t have the scientific background to ascertain the truth on my own (to clarify : I don’t doubt global warming itself. That’s a fact, supported by overwhelming evidence and predictions. What I’m not sure about is whether we apes are responsible for it and/or can do something about it)
However, I can see the fairly simple logic table we can use : AGW is either real or it isn’t. We can try to do something about it or keep doing business as usual. So we’ve got 4 possible options :
It’s not real and we do something about it : we’ve just lost money, and developped cleaner energy solutions in the process, or infrastructures that make us depend less on cars. Not optimum, but there’s a silver lining.
It’s not real and we don’t do a thing. Nothing changes until fuel runs out. Then we have to spend money urgently to develop alternatives.
C) It’s real and we do something about it : we’ll never know whether or not we were in any danger, but we’ve survived yet another Doomsday.
IV) It’s real and we do nothing about it : flooding, crops failing, water crisis, year round hurrican season, the zombies rise from the grave. OK, maybe not the last one
So, in the end, the downside of doing something that’s ultimately useless is not only much less of a downside than the cost of not doing something to avert the putative crisis, but the upside of not doing anything is only a short-term, short-sighted gain. History’s full of humans going for those, and they never work out quite right in the end, do they ?
To summarize, the question isn’t “is AGW real or not ?”, but “can we afford it to be ?”
I’m a lefty (I think I might be one of the handful of real lefties on this board) but I am not dubious about AGW at all, for four reasons:
I’ve read the science embodied in the IPPC reports and other places, and it convinced me, as a trained earth scientist (with some tangentially-climatology-related experience in analysing speleotherms).
Counter-arguments about previous climate cycles don’t convince me, because I’ve studied those and can tell the difference between a Milankovitch cycle and what we have now.
We already had the CFC-ozone hole incident to show that we can *easily *affect global conditions with our unwitting actions.
The people objecting to AGW in public are almost invariably tainted with oil industry associations, dubiously relevant credentials, a tendency to either lie or nit-pick and an allergy to publishing in peer review journals. Not very convincing, guys.
Sure, its impossible to be certain. But lets suppose that it turns out to be a dud. And we have invested the required human energy and money into advancing clean energy, and we succeed. Try to imagine the magnitude of benefit that would ensue. Not even close, try again.
We are awash in energy, our diffiiculty in tapping into is a bit like a fish having trouble staying wet. The two main reasons we are still dependent on crude energy sources is a) we are lazy and b) the people who make their money from crude energy would prefer to keep doing so.
So, if we can do it, we should. I think we can. Human intelligence in pursuit of greed can produce miracles, with self-preservation running a close second.
So, lets just suppose we put the effort in, suceed, and then find out it wasn’t life-threatening after all, we made this major advance to clean, cheap energy only to have clean, cheap energy.
Apart from this being a very silly misunderstanding of weather versus climate, I don’t believe your premise. The weather prediction where I live is pretty darn good. I suppose it depends on what level of prediction you are demanding.
The thing about weather is that the farther away you predict, the more likely you are to be correct. I can’t tell you what the weather will be like tomorrow, but I can give you a pretty good guess on what it’s going to be like in six months… and I’m just a layman.
I’m with elucidator, personally. It’s pretty much a guarantee that any money we spend now on researching cleaner sources of energy will have untold dividends in the future. Hell, look at NASA- the spinoff technologies from a hastily-planned propaganda shot at the moon decades ago has revolutionized technology. I view the people who scream about the financial cost of trying to avert AGW as being incredibly shortsighted.
Thanks all for reasoned responses. I agree with the premise that the things we should do if AGW is true are the same that we should be doing anyway.
Der Trihs and Sage Rat: Is there a possibility that sea levels could rise dramtaically in years rather than decades? That’s a lot of ice to melt. However I can see some changes that would be fast and reak havoc; e.g., if the Gulf Stream changed course.
Er, no. The price of all forms of renewable energy are higher than fossil fuel prices, and while prices will fall with economies of scale, none of them look to be better in the long run. (If you think they are, then start up a company right away! Even if Obama doesn’t subsidize you, you should turn a profit.)
So, the price will be higher energy prices, which will show up in higher consumer prices, and slower economic growth. Now depending on your views this may be an acceptable sacrifice to prevent AGW (if any). But let’s not pretend that action is cost-free.
None of them look to be better in the long run? Don’t you mean short run? I don’t see how oil will remain cheaper as we deplete easily accessible reserves and it becomes more and more expensive to extract each barrel from the ground. It won’t happen overnight, but in the long run oil will become more expensive than some cleaner sources of energy. The real question is when, not if.
Section 6.3-4 (PDF) seems to discuss this, but it looks to me like at most there will be half a meter rise by 2100. The larger worries seem to be storms, wave size, erosion, and changed oceanic ecosystem (which could effect many industries). Flooding will be more of the Katrina style, where a dam or other water barrier is broken down simply because it wasn’t engineered to handle the stresses of larger storms, the greater ocean weight, and the stronger waves. It won’t be so much that the ocean rises massively and covers the land.
It’s not just dramatic rises – every little bit adds up. As it is, a LOT of inhabited/arable/urbanized real estate around the world is only a couple of feet above the mean high tide mark so depending on where you are it would not take too much of a rise to cause saline intrusion into your aquifer, turn your cropland (or residential district) to wetland, or force you to urgently replace or relocate infrastructure that may have been built to manage a passing seasonal flood but not a continuous soaking.
It doesn’t all need to melt; plenty can just slide into the ocean to affect sea level. And glaciers are already moving faster.
Exactly; we have no choice but to go to other sources of energy sooner or later. And given the fact that oil is useful for many other things, it’s really stupid that we keep burning it despite having alternatives.
