I’m taking a course based around the global warming controversy, and I would like to make sure that no facts are obscured - as the professor is a “skeptic.”
Here are claims that warrant constructive criticism in no particular order:
There is a lag between the graph of increasing temperature and the graph of increasing CO2 - that is: CO2 is a consequence of heat and not the other way around.
The guy who originally measured C02 increase on a Hawaii island (near a volcano - sorry I forgot his name) never cleaned the sensors so the data showed a slow build-up of CO2.
The hockey stick graph of increasing CO2 and temperatures looks like it will top out if the graph is made proportional (not crushed horizontally).
This is a natural heating period which is “likely” followed by a consequential cooling. (The global climate “tipping point” is one that will lead to cooling rather than more heat.)
I’m mostly interested in information that will somewhat definitively show whether the recent heating (~100years) is anthropogenic (human induced), or natural.
The IPCC concluded that:
“most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”
I’ve looked through some of their science ( http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf ), and it all seems straight so far. However, I’ve been told that the IPCC holds biased members who were the source of this conclusion. Maybe one of you could point out where they went wrong…
I hear all too often that we don’t have nearly enough information (which usually the case with science - especially when the topic is as general and colossal as global warming), so it’s mostly based on opinion - but I hope straight dope’s correctness will cut through to something concrete in this case.
Want to add another:
5) The melting glaciers will bring the inter-oceanic conveyor belt to a halt thus drastically cooling the planet. (Other cooling theories like: current global warming -> creation of condensation (at poles) -> snowfall -> glaciers reform.)
You’re a member. Please do a search. This topic has been done to death in GD. At least one is active on the front page right now.
For past warming events this is certainly true. For the current warming event that seems to be true as well, but that is necessarily indicative of anything.
Firtsly if we accept from past events that warming causes an increase in “natural” CO2 emissions then we would expect to see a lag in response times. Hypothetically humans initiated warming event which released “natural” CO2, humans added still more CO2 and that released still more CO2. CO2 emmissions are always going to lag behind temperature if we accept that warming increases atmospheric CO2, doesn’t matter whether the warming is anthropogenic or not. And of course if we dont; accpet that warming releases CO2 then we have to invoke coincidence to ecplain why CO2 lags benhind temp anyway.
Secondly all the currrent AGW hypotheses require fudge factors such as increased cloud or particulates to explain the observed lag, so it already relies on one human activity masking another.
As it stands the point is perfectly compatible with both sides of the argument. At best it provides a data point for thiose who wish to argue that human CO2 release is conincidental to climate change rather than causative.
Even if true it’s hardly convincing on its own. However if you go through past threads you will see that these sorts of errors crop up with astonishing regularity from the pro-warming crowd.
Impossible to say. Certainly this idea was widely touted by scientists in the 70s. Theprobelm with the use of terms such as “liekly” is that they are so subjective as to be meaningless.
The IPCC is the best science to this end, and they stop well short of claiming anything defintive.
We’ve had this debate many times too. Insofar as IPCC members and collaborators depend at least in part for their funding on the phenomeon existing they are certainly open to claims of bias, but there is nothing we can do about that.
See previous threads or wait for Intention to show up. Amongst other thinsg the IPCC accepted the Mann hockey stick without quesioing its validity. Once again the supporters will say that this is just a single error that doesn’t change the overall result. The skeptics will say that if the process allows these sorts of errors ot creep in so regularly (and these are just the ones we are able to catch) it simply isn’t trustworthy.
No, it’s definitely not opinion. It is based on a huge number of assumptions, particularly with respect to the models. If you agree with the assumptions you wil agree with the conclusions. If you disagree with the assumptions then you won’t. The problem is that many of the critical assumptions are ultimately untestable and can only be evaluated by subjective (albeit educated) guesses. Which data to use, which to reject, what forcing to use, which to ignore. What value to give the forcings.
Change the assumptions and you can get totally opposing answers from equally valid science. And that is the problem. The science itself is prone to error and ultimately can’t provide a scientific answer. Instead resolution inevitably comes back to consensus, and of course consensus has no role in science. We don’t take votes on the facts.
Once again, we just can’t know. Many scientists are arguing this as possible or highly likely,others reject it out of hand. The toruble is that we just dont; have any working theory of climate. Hell, we can’t even say with reasonable certainty that “the inter-oceanic conveyor belt” actually exists in any meaninful form. We assuem it does because we know water moves, but the actual energy exchanges taking place are wide open to debate, ad the effect of melting ice doubly so.
Why would you bother taking a course from such an idiot? He disagrees with about 95%+ of the scientists, including nearly all of the most recognized experts in the field.
The guy who originally measured C02 increase on a Hawaii island (near a volcano - sorry I forgot his name) never cleaned the sensors so the data showed a slow build-up of CO2.
:dubious:
There is an implication here that the measurements have been contaminated by the surrounding volcano and by using a dirty instrument. First, Mauna Loa was chosen for the Mauna Loa observatory because it is isolated from vegetation, human habitation and away from any active volcanic vents. The air up there is “clean”. The volcano that is currently erupting (Kilauea)is miles and basically, downwind. As to it being dirty, the machine uses a reference gas to determine if the gas analyzer is working properly. One doesn’t clean something that ain’t dirty.
Well, someone said you could “wait until intention shows up”, so how could I resist?
As with most claims about warming, some seem to be true, some seem to be false, and in general, we don’t have enough information about any of them for a definitive answer.
In order, you say:
Both directions appear to be true - CO2 increases with heat and heat increases with CO2. The unanswered question, however, is the important one – by how much? That, we don’t know.
Not true. The guy was Keeling, and the sensors are about twenty miles up the volcano from my house. As someone else pointed out, the sensors are checked against known reference samples on a regular basis.
You’re talking about two separate graphs, one of CO2 and one of temperature. The one of temperature may have already topped out (little change in the last decade), while the one of CO2 has continued to rise.
Two separate claims here: 1) this it a natural heating period, and 2) it will be followed by a cooling period.
For the first claim, we have no evidence that this is not a natural heating period, as the earth has been warming about 0.5°/century for the last 300 years or so. In addition, the recent warming is not statistically different from the 1920-1945 warming in amount or slope, so we can’t reject the null hypothesis that it is natural. Note that this does not mean it is in fact natural, just that we can’t say scientifically that it is not. Yes, I know the IPCC says otherwise, but they admit that they have no scientific proof of their claim, just “expert opinion” … and at the end of the day, that’s opinion, not science. Given that they are reluctant to listen to anyone who disagrees with them, I don’t give their opinion much weight.
For the second claim, we don’t know whether tomorrow will be warmer or cooler. My guess is cooler, because the sun appears to be heading for a minimum around 2030 or so, but like with the IPCC, that’s my opinion, not science.
The huge problem with all of this is the lack of data. It has been greatly exacerbated by some of the climate scientists’ habit of hiding their data. I have just been partially successful in getting the data upon which the HadCRUT3 global temperature dataset is based. I had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get it, however, and it took me six months to get it, and they still held some back … when someone starts fighting hard like that to keep their “science” secret, it definitely raises suspicion.
Even without those shenanigans, however, the data is very poor. Our thermometer based ground stations were not built to measure temperatures for teasing out a tiny signal, they were build for rough temperature measurements for weather. In the past, nobody cared if trees grew up around a thermometer station, or if a parking lot was put in next to it, and the temperature changed by a degree or two. It didn’t matter.
Now, however, we are trying to tease out a signal of one or two hundredths of a degree per year from very poor station data. Stations have moved, they are missing days, months or years of observations, thermometers have been changed, and changed again, times of observation have changed, often records are very short or fragmentary, it’s a mess. Take a look at surfacestations.org to see just how bad the US stations are … and these are likely among the world’s best.
In addition, 70% of the globe is covered by ocean, where the temperature records are few, far between, and clustered along trade routes with huge areas left uncovered.
As a result, nobody has been able to show that the temperature rise of the last century is un-natural in any way. Does this mean humans didn’t affect the temperature? By no means. It is a reflection of the short, inaccurate nature of our records.
Finally, the climate system is complex beyond belief. I have said it before, but it bears repeating. The climate is a driven, multi-stable, chaotic, turbulent, resonant, constructal, tera-watt scale planetary sized heat engine. It has a host of forcings, parasitic losses, natural cycles, and feedbacks, both internal and external, and both known and unknown. It contains important phenomena on all spatial scales from molecular to planetwide, and on all temporal scales from nano-seconds to millions of years. It has five major inter-related sub-systems (ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere). Each sub-system has its own forcings, resonances, and feedbacks which affect both itself and all of the other sub-systems.
The idea that we understand the climate well enough to predict how a small change in a small part of that huge, unimaginably complex system will play out one hundred years from now is one of the larger scientific misconceptions of the century. So unfortunately, if you’re looking for something solid and scientific, climate science is not the place to look.
I hate to send this to GD, since there are still a couple of active threads on the topic there. However, it seems that no fact anyone cites on the subject, no matter how well supported, won’t be disputed by someone. Therefore, given the broadness of the OP, I don’t this can really be dealt with in GQ.
Thanks for the info intention and ouryL - do you have a cite for the “dirty censor” dispute?
Intention:
You seem to have significant insight into this field. Do you think there should be CO2 regulation? What are your other responses to this crazy climate jumbo - tipping points, ice ages, and so-called global warming solutions?
I doubt global warming can be successfully addressed – simply not enough people are willing to change their lifestyles – so I have to hope it will be a good thing in the long run. The Northwest Passage opening up meaning cheaper shipping costs, warmer climate meaning more growing seasons, that sort of thing. There may be big upheavals in places, but hopefully that will settle down in a century or two.
My own feeling is that at this point, we should confine ourselves to two groups of actions: “No-regrets” actions, and cleaning up the science. We simply do not have enough information to do anything else.
No-regrets actions are those which are of value whether or not warming is a problem. The “Three-R’s” are first, which are reduce, re-use, and recycle. Can’t go wrong with that.
A second insight into no-regrets options comes with the realization that all of the catastrophes that are forecast from global warming are with us today. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, disease, cold spells, hot snaps, and all of the rest of the litany are happening right now. Thus, anything that we can do to protect ourselves from these climate disasters now will be valuable if they should increase tomorrow.
“Cleaning up the science” means to focus on what we think we know, before we start looking at predictions, forecasts, or scenarios. Much of climate science is based on shifting sands of unarchived data, unrevealed methods and code, untested models, undocumented surface stations, unreplicated studies and the like. Before we start trying to build yet another edifice on those shifting sands, we need to shore up the basic, underlying foundations of the science. None of this is rocket science - we need to test the models using V&V and SQA, we need to archive the data, we need to make public the codes. Simple stuff.
As just one of a host of examples, we don’t even know how much the surface data says the planet has warmed. The trends of the two main surface temperature datasets (GISS and HadCRUT3) are statistically significantly different (p<0.05). This is surprising, since they are based on the same global network of temperature stations. Which one is right? Well, we don’t know. James Hansen has recently bowed to intense public pressure, and after years of requests, he has revealed the code that he has used to produce the GISS global temperature dataset. The HadCRUT3 folks, on the other hand, still have not revealed their code, and only revealed the stations they used after my Freedom of Information Act request. Millions of dollars spent on climate science, and we still don’t even have agreement on this most basic question … that’s how much of a joke climate science is. Why should I have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get a list of !@#$%^& climate stations used in a study funded by tax dollars? What kind of “science” is that?
Before we run off and spend billions of tax dollars on some unproven schemes, let’s get the basic stuff brought out into the light, and see what kind of cockroaches run from the brightness.
w.
PS - even the supporters of Kyoto admit that, in the unlikely event that the people who signed on to it fulfilled their quotas, it would only make a difference of 0.06° - 0.1° in fifty years. This is too small to even measure. Capping CO2 is a destructive fantasy designed to let people feel good, and to enrich Al Gore’s company. It will make no difference. If CO2 is a problem, which is an open question, CO2 caps and taxes are not the answer.
“We have no evidence” is too strong a statement, AFAICT. “We have no conclusive proof” is certainly accurate in this case, as it is with most things involving climate science. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no difference, in terms of scientific plausibility, between the “null hypothesis” of totally natural warming and the AGW hypothesis.
The strongest argument against the “null hypothesis”, as far as I can tell, is simply that nobody’s succeeded in coming up with a plausible explanation of observed warming trends based solely on natural physical phenomena. The AGW hypothesis is still largely uncertain and very far from proven, but it’s still far and away the most robust and comprehensive scientific hypothesis that currently exists for explaining global warming
Moreover, if we accept the “null hypothesis” that anthropogenic greenhouse gases aren’t contributing to global warming, then we have to come up with a scientifically valid way of explaining why they aren’t. As you note above, there is a pretty solid cause-and-effect relationship between atmospheric CO2 and heat. And we do know that human activity has significantly increased atmospheric CO2 within the past couple centuries, especially within the past few decades. So far, no climate skeptic has been able to satisfactorily explain why that CO2 wouldn’t be a significant factor, if not the main driving force, in observed global warming.
It’s true that opinion is not proof, but it’s not true that opinion carries no weight in science. The opinions of experts frequently are good guides in scientific matters—being that the experts are people who are, well, expert, i.e., very well-informed and knowledgeable about the issues. Like it or not, the opinions of thousands of professional climate scientists do, and should, carry more weight than the opinions of the rest of us when it comes to climate issues.
Moreover, I don’t think it’s quite fair to characterize the IPCC as being “reluctant to listen to anyone who disagrees with them”. In fact, the IPCC reports and summaries are threshed out in prolonged discussions between hundreds of different parties who disagree on the various issues involved.
Again, like it or not, what the IPCC reports attempt to present is the closest thing possible to a summary of the views of climate science that are mostly agreed upon by the vast majority of climate scientists. It seems kind of silly to complain that an overwhelming-majority position doesn’t adequately represent the dissenting positions of a small minority. Well, of course it doesn’t, kind of by definition.
Um, cite? It always kind of amuses me how so many climate skeptics can, in practically the same breath, decry “alarmism” and “exaggeration” and “unsupported hyperbole” in claims about the dangers of AGW, and then spout their own alarmist hyperbole about the economic destructiveness and the sinister political implications of emissions-control measures.
Despite all the accusations, I have seen to date no conclusive proof (or even solidly persuasive arguments) that carbon taxes and/or caps will necessarily “destroy” economic prosperity, nor that the people who advocate them are motivated solely or chiefly by greed for personal gain. The skeptics could stand to apply a bit of their own much-vaunted skepticism to these accusations, IMHO.
Note to any who care: Sorry for having dropped out of ongoing discussions in GD abruptly this past summer, I just moved to a new city and started a new job, and am finally visiting the internets again in the brief post-midterm breathing period. I may not get to post here again until the brief post-finals breathing period!
Well, not quite. There was this young kid called Johannes Kepler, for example…
But you’re quite right that Galileo’s views on heliocentrism were not a “fringe” or tiny-minority viewpoint among those of his contemporaries that we’d now call “scientists”. Most professional astronomical researchers of Galileo’s day either subscribed to the heliocentric hypothesis themselves, or at least took it very seriously as a possibly valid theory.
Galileo definitely does not qualify as a lone “skeptic” being suppressed by an entrenched scientific establishment. He was at loggerheads at varying degrees at varying times with the Church establishment, but that’s another matter.