Do global warming "skeptics" honestly see us as a benign species?

Great Debates
1

In the context of modern industrial life, does anyone claim that these problems are primarily caused by an agent other than Man?

air pollution aka smog
water pollution, plus damming and diversion of rivers
deforestation (beavers don’t knock down millions of acres)
overfishing (many ocean species are in serious decline)
ocean dead zones due to agricultural runoff
loss of biodiversity
species extinctions (see “The Sixth Extinction”)
topsoil loss and erosion (often tied to deforestation)
soil salination from over-watering
desertification and dust bowls (e.g. U.S. 1930s)
unnatural chemicals in food and the environment
radiation far beyond natural levels*
etc.

To put it another way, is the species that “can’t be causing global warming” also “not causing” the environmental problems listed above? I see apathy about fixing those problems, but little debate about the species that’s at fault. So it seems well accepted that Man is capable of altering and damaging nature.

But the notion that little old Man can’t harm big old Earth is common among global warming deniers (sorry, I meant skeptics). Why the disparity on that one topic? Are fossil fuels that sacred? Is it solely about money?

*Smog is a very close analogy to AGW, and you don’t even see Rush Limbaugh claiming that Man isn’t responsible for it. The main difference between smog and CO2 is that the latter is invisible and its impacts occur over decades, not days. Plus, CO2 at natural levels is a good thing, so it doesn’t have an existing bad reputation like visible smog.

2

Many Americans did in fact deny those things are serious problems.

The environmentalism movement has unfortunately been framed as “tree hugging”. If you tell someone of conservative leanings you’re an environmental scientist, they will often label you a tree hugger. I’ve heard it my whole life, even though I care more about public health than I do “trees” (and I actually REALLY love me trees). But lots of people don’t think of public health when it comes to the environment. They think of the buzz words that work their nerves, like “save the whales”. They don’t think of lung cancer caused by air pollution, neurological conditions caused by mercury and PCBs in seafood, or low fertility rates caused by endocrine disruptors in drinking water and consumer goods.

My guess is that for the average American, they don’t really think pollution causes health problems, except only in the most remote abstract sense. And why wouldn’t they? We don’t turn on the six o’clock news and hear about our friends and neighbors dying from mercury contamination. When we do hear reports of stuff, there’s always a talking head willing to go on CNN to challenge it. The US isn’t like China, where environmental fall-out is an everyday sight. We are blessed with regulation. But we are also cursed by it because it lulls us into a false sense of security. If we don’t see it happening, then the threat doesn’t exist. Anyone who talks of “threats” is seen as a Chicken Little.

Those things on your list, like biodiversity and species extinctions? Lots of people simply do not care about these things. The dinosaurs went extinct, and yet the world is still turning. If the Spotted Owl goes extinct, oh well. At least people can get jobs now. Blah blah blah.

Then there are some people who ARE bothered by these kind of matters. But they are also deeply religious and believe that God will make it right somehow, if that’s his will.

3

Yes. There are factions that do not deny the existence of global climate change, but believe it’s another natural shift in the balance of the the planet, and that human activities are at most a small part of the cause.

I won’t say that’s entirely congruent with my beliefs on the topic, but I do note that the rabid AGW types seem utterly dismissive of the many climate shifts in the last 100k years, and are dogmatic that the shift we’re seeing MUST have a specific, non-natural cause.

4

But the climatologists are neither so dismissive nor so dogmatic.

5

It took more than 100 years to arrive to that conclusion, the problem has been that powerful groups are still pushing the alternative explanations when most scientists circa 1950-1970 found that other explanations stopped being as important as the current cause of the warming.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

6

More than any of the other examples given, global warming is a problem that (a.) is directly the result of energy production, an absolutely indispensable part of industrial civilization, and (b.) a literally “global” problem in that purely local action to deal with it is likely to be largely futile. And the free market will have no solution to offer until cost-effective substitutes for carbon-emitting technologies become viable,

The upshot is that the majority of proposals to deal with global warming call for massive government interference in the marketplace and peoples’ economic choices. This regulation would have to be universal in scope and almost by definition imposed top-down. In the most extreme proposals, something like modern day sumptuary laws banning comforts and luxuries we now take for granted would be mandated. Such a global regimen would nearly mean the end of the free market as we’ve known it since Adam Smith’s day. Some hard-core proponents of such measures go so far as to claim that AGW is a real-life example of the Tragedy Of The Commons- that since individuals freely pursuing their self-interest led to such a disaster, society must be reformed to be administered by deliberate planning. Critics of such proposals use the phrase “eco-socialism” to express their disdain of the social, economic and political mindset it would entail.

The loony right claims that the whole thing is a conspiracy to gain support for a New World Order in which apparatchiks would dictate to the proles how to live their lives. The less paranoid might acknowledge that global warming is real but maintain that the proposed cures are worse than the disease.

7

Not really as Richard Alley, that formerly worked for the petroleum industry and is a Republican, explains:

What I always like to say to those critics that think that the free market will end is to look at the past examples of what civilized places endured economically to get clean water and get hundreds of lives saved because they do not get cholera or other diseases like that. What many of them miss is that other trades and jobs also appear that did not exist before.

To those that maintain that I would say: ‘Why do you hate Joe the Plumber?’ :slight_smile:

8

(shortened for clarity)

The global tempurature isn’t increasing. The IPCC guesstimations failed to reach their predicted results. Many people worked together to address the issues you mentioned in the OP. A division was created by the IPCC supporters who demanded, and still demand, that everyone accept the IPCC’s failed “science” as fact. The science isn’t settled just because the IPCC supporters say it is.

9

The other problems you mentioned are hard to deny, because someone can see their effects directly, and see that they’re bad.

The problem with global warming is that nothing bad has happened yet. Yes, you can look at data and see about a few degrees Celsius warming over the past 100 years. But we’re still here, and everything still seems pretty normal. Some regions of the country are experiencing weather that’s different from the norm over the past 30-40 years, but that’s hardly surprising and impossible to prove that it’s the direct result of global warming.

Yes, we are told by scientists that global warming will be a problem. But, as a general rule, a climate skeptic does not have a lot of respect for scientists, particularly climate scientists, for one of three reasons:

  1. They distrust science in general. Enough said on this one.

  2. They realize that scientists are imperfect, and that climate science is a much less rigorous field than other sciences because you can’t really follow the scientific method re: your key conclusions. In most fields, particle physics say, you can form a hypothesis, make a prediction, perform an experiment to test your prediction, and then analyze the results and determine the validity of your hypothesis/theory.

This is the fundamental method through which all success in science is achieved. It is known, expected and perfectly okay in science that your hypotheses/theories will occasionally (perhaps most of the time) be incorrect - you discover that following your experiment, and then revise them until you are arrive at the correct result.

For the key result in climate science - that X% increase in CO2 will result in Y% increase in surface temperature - there is no way to test that hypothesis, no way to perform an experiment, other than to just wait and see.

Yes, you can perform experiments on a small scale, and test parts of your hypothesis, or aspects of your theory, but you can’t test your theories on the entire, enormously complicated climate system. You just have to wait and see if you were right or wrong.

The particle physicists at CERN did not announce the discovery of the Higgs Boson until they were 99.999% sure it was not a statistical anomaly. Climate scientists are nowhere near that level of certainty in their predictions. Their claim is not “We are absolutely, 99.999% scientifically certain we’re correct!”, it’s “Well, we’re pretty sure it might get really bad”, and when you’re asking people to give up or drastically cut back on the fundamental energy source of the modern industrial society, that’s not as convincing as it needs to be.

  1. The results from climate scientists’ models suggest that they lack predictive power.

Here is a plot comparing the observed surface and atmospheric temperature increase over the past 30 years, to the predictions made by about 90 climate models. You can see that most models over-predict the amount of warming.

Now, that does not mean warming will not occur. It simply means that the models are lacking accuracy in modeling some major unknown component of the climate system. The climate is very complicated, and it is impossible to predict what the models will predict when this inaccuracy is rectified.

(Additionally, many climate models involve “free parameters” that are not derived from first physical principles, but rather calibrated empirically from data gathered over the past 30 - 100 years in order to make models match the historical record)

Coupled with 2), climate skeptics would like to wait just a little longer to see if the scientists revise their theory before upending modern civilization.

10

No, nobody denies that smog is human-caused. But we’ve had smog for a couple hundred years, as well as most all the other things on your list, and – rightly or wrongly – the perception is that things are still “okay.” Push comes to shove, the average man cares less about the environment than he does about maintaining/improving his current consumption patterns. None of those things have (yet) had the kind of global, catastrophic effect on human life that is being predicted for AGW.

11

Repeating strawmen will not make them turn into good arguments.

Besides ignoring the facts, contrarians that go for this kind of arguments, even after the serious skeptics told them that the earth is warming and man has something to do with it, are not doing science.

12

I would not deny much of what you say above. In that regard I am not skeptic.

But you are missing the point…as many so-called “skeptics” might say. So perhaps in that regard, I am a skeptic.

The point is…what is your objective function, as a human being? Is it to cause absolutely zero impact on every molecule that was already in existance on Earth?

Or is it to maximize the utility function of yourself and other human beings?

This is where debates about the forest and the trees start to get jumbled. Bjorn Lomborg does a solid job of (1) not being a ‘skeptic’ whilst also (2) asking some tough questions about what, exactly, we are trying to optimize as our objective functions.

As one of the posters above said…there is smog in L.A. It contributes to poor air quality. We aren’t denying that.

But so what? How bad is it, really? If it allows people to drive automobiles to connect desirable places to live with flexibile employment opportunities that increase earnings power for themselves and their family, so what? If they are highly-educated middle class professionals, their life expectancy is probably in the low-80s and still slightly increasing.

So why is a little smog so bad? I’m not saying it is or it isn’t. But the tone of your post implies that a tradeoff must be made to reduce it to zero. To return the Earth to its primal state.

Why?

13

It is clear that many do need to read the history of the discovery of global warming. I would think that more than 100 years of investigating this would be enough time to wait.

The probabilities of getting cancer from smoking are less than the likelihood of climate changing, ocean rise and ocean acidification if emissions are not controlled, and yet society has found that we should do something about smoking.

Full stop here, that is Spencer, the last guy one should be relying for information on this subject.

14

Absolute, not only does Spencer use the mean of a projection as though it was the definitive projection (it isn’t, and that’s a horrid misrepresentation on his part), but his own model is a pathetic failure when compared to the IPCC’s projections.

15

This is a poor argument. I have read the history and I don’t think that drastic action needs to be taken. Even if we completely eliminate GHGs tomorrow and live life on berries and already-cooked meats (from the already-cooked meats tree, of course), most models show the climate continuing upward for around 50 years. (To be fair, some models show the trend continuing for less than 20 years, and some for more than 100.)

The solutions proposed for this are and have always been “Add taxes to discourage consumption.” The tax method has varied, but it ends up being a tax anyway.

Instead of taxing, it would be better to continue the investment into the alternatives that we already are funding, such as as battery materials, more effective and efficient solar, better wind turbines, plans for better nuclear, methods for scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere, and so forth. We can add more funding to this arena, but I doubt that we’ll get much additional bang for our buck in terms of research. Having these technologies will allow us to wean ourselves from the carbon-emitting forms of energy production and use methods that aren’t as harmful.

As well, we could be making growth-allowable mandates to certain industry. Perhaps all new car engines should be electric by 2020, instead of mandating tighter and tighter MPG requirements? Perhaps we can move off the terrible efficiency indicator of MPG so that consumers can make better judgements about what vehicles to buy (liters/100 kms–or gallons/100 miles)? Perhaps we can subsidize the replacement of existing car engines with electric motors for owners over the next ten years?

The problem is that activists (who aren’t scientists - although a few scientists are activist-y) took science and made it their “cause” and this has started perverting the findings of the science. Interested parties on all sides have started doling out the cash to encourage/prevent the regulatory outcomes instead of trying to find a solid solution. On top of that, everyone is suspicious of everyone else in the climate arena. Everyone goes out of their way to smear others. The activists - both pro and con - need to GTFO of the way so that people can see the science clearly, both for what it says and, more importantly, the places that it is lacking. That’s the only way we can even get to a place where an informed populace can agree on changes to our way of life.

This link doesn’t dispute the posted trend series. I would like more context for that particular graph from both sides. For example, is that a comparison of actual to medians, averages, lows, or highs of the models? Why is this chart bad, beyond “That guy blows.”?

16

Where any of this graph’s models used in the IPCC projections? How did the IPCC use those ones that were included? What series did they use on the same models?

17

I think you need to be clear who you’re talking about when you refer to skeptics. I like the presentation in this article by Warren Meyer. One can be skeptical that the planet has generally heated up over the past century or so; one can be skeptical that humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to it; one can be skeptical that humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have caused all of it; one can be skeptical that the results from global warming will be as catastrophic as some environmentalists are predicting. I personally don’t doubt that humans have caused the planet to heat up by emitting greenhouse gasses. I am skeptical about the more disastrous predictions of what will result in coming years.

18

My rule of thumb is that any warning about greenhouse gases that mentions the planet Venus is scare-mongering.

19

But it’s very cold in Chicago today. Where’s your “global warming” NOW?

QED: global warming is a hoax. :wink:

20

No, this is the argument that is the poor one, to begin with you miss the point, the answer to the previous poster was to deal with the gross idea that there has been no experiments done for a long time.

Then the rest is a strawman, the IPCC and other groups already acknowledge the reality that we will not be able to cut emissions “cold turkey” and once again as Richard Alley and many others reported, there is no demand that civilization as we know it should end. What you should see here is that change is part of our civilization. The point should be made that many ignore that this change is common, a major shift was needed on how to deal with clean water and sewage in our cities, civilization did not end.

There may be indeed activists that do not shit from shinola, but as Barry Bickmore would tell you (Scientist, Conservative, Republican from BYU), their errors are less off the mark than from the the ones that grossly misrepresent the reality, those ones deserve harsher criticism.