Global Warming. Let's do it again.

Great Debates
141

Do you have a cite for any instance of a qualified climate scientist publishing peer-reviewed research disagreeing with the AGW hypothesis in a reputable scientific journal and getting “shouted down” rather than refuted with other peer-reviewed research?

Certainly there’s a lot of shouting going on in the popular press, on both sides, and certainly opinionated non-specialists don’t always get treated respectfully, on either side. But AFAICT, qualified scientists conducting research that measures up to scientific standards are not being “shouted down” by their peers, even if their opinions don’t agree with the majority.

Of course not. But that doesn’t automatically mean that climate change doesn’t have severe consequences for human societies and economies. Nor does it mean that there can’t be a new kind of climate change, caused by unprecedented phenomena such as anthropogenic carbon emissions, that could have unprecedentedly severe and far-reaching effects.

Exactly what hypothesis are you suggesting here? Are you arguing that volcanic dust may be a significant factor in recently observed rapid increases in global temperature? Do you have a cite for that hypothesis or for the physical mechanism(s) by which it might work?

Vague references to “dust and other stuff” are not adequate as a counterargument to an AGW hypothesis based on serious scientific models of climate systems. Sure, those models are very complicated and not yet fully understood, but that doesn’t mean that any old handwaving objection is good enough to refute them.

It’s definitely true that any field of scientific study could always use more data in order to improve its theories. But you seem to be implying some kind of cutoff point for credibility. Where is this cutoff point, according to you? How much recorded climate data would you consider enough to evaluate a hypothesis such as AGW?

Very true, but nobody so far has used them successfully to explain why we appear to be seeing significant temperature increases on a much shorter timescale, i.e., within the last several decades.

True in part, but humans have also biologically adapted to colder climates over millennia. Physical features such as low melanin levels (pale skin), that allowed northern populations to make enough vitamin D from scanty sunlight, did not develop within a couple of decades.

Are you quite sure that you know enough about the subject to recognize an adequately definitive answer when you see it? Don’t be offended, as I’m in the same boat myself as a fellow layperson, and have had to pester PhD physicists like jshore with stupid questions for a long time even to acquire my current level of only fairly well informed layperson’s understanding.

I’m not saying that we should just trustingly accept every scientific consensus as absolute gospel—we need to go on trying to understand as much of the facts as we can for ourselves. But I think we do need to approach complicated scientific subjects with a certain amount of humility about our own ignorance, and not expect that every answer that seems confusing or inadequate to us therefore necessarily implies that the scientists don’t know what they’re talking about.

Well, the laissez-faire “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” strategy for dealing with anthropogenic climate change may also be hooey. Possibly very dangerous hooey. I just don’t understand why climate-change skeptics think it’s okay to be concerned about comparatively trivial costs of AGW prevention/minimization while not worrying about potentially catastrophic AGW effects.

As for potential economic costs of emissions reductions, they’re just things. Humans learned to do without aerosol cans and other CFC-producing comsumables when those were banned to protect the ozone layer, etc.

I still don’t see why people who can be so complacent about the first of those two scenarios get so upset about the second.

Sure, but again, the effects of the natural climate cycles tend to happen slowly and locally. There is nothing in there that should automatically reassure us that we’ll easily be able to adapt to rapid major climate change, or that its costs will be trivial.

I’m sorry, I don’t understand how that relates to my point 1 in post #131. That point was about the statement “Humans are significantly increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2”. Are you saying that you disagree with that statement or consider it insufficiently certain, and if so, why?

142

I really don’t know how to argue with someone who thinks losing a few cities to sea level rise is worth the trade-off so that it does not become any less economical for people to drive Hummers!

You are mixing timescales…Things that take many thousands of years vs. things that we are going to do within a few generations.

Ice ages generally don’t happen overnight; the descent into one takes thousands of years. The latest thinking is that the current interglacial would likely have lasted tens of thousands of years more without any anthropogenic interference. Even if this is not the case, however, the amount of greenhouse gases needed to keep us out of a new ice age is considerably less than the levels now…let alone what they will be a hundred years from now if we don’t do anything to stop them from rising. We are already charting a course that is taking us back to CO2 levels that likely haven’t been observed for something like 10-20 million years! It is a grand experiment on the climate of the only planet we’ve got. We know enough now to know that it is not a small perturbation and to have a rough idea of what is in store if the climate system responds pretty linearly to the perturbation. However, we also have some notion from the past that the climate system does not always behave so predictably to perturbations…and we may be in for some pretty nasty surprises!

What you seem to want is proof and certainty before you are willing to entertain taking the tiniest steps. Science does not deal in that; it deals in uncertainties, probabilities, and the preponderence of the evidence. Those who best understand science in general and the science of this field in particularl, i.e., the scientists themselves, are now quite directly telling the world (e.g., through the joint academies statement) that the time to start taking action is now. But, somehow you seem to feel like you know better for reasons that are not clear to me.

143

Don’t put words in my mouth: I didn’t say that. That’s not the first time that has been tried in this thread.

Now I know you’re talking from ignorance. I gave the example of the Cinque Ports: the Cinque Ports were built by people, not many hundreds of years ago. Look, I know you believe in what you’re talking about, but please go away and come back when you know what you’re talking about.

144

Well, you may not have explicitly said this. However, the proposals on the table these days for starting to deal with AGW are modest and will have the effect of starting to change ways from a state of extreme wasteful use of energy (as symbolized by what I said about Hummers). And, your attitude seems to be…you can of course correct me if I am wrong…that you don’t want to take these steps because, hell, maybe the worst consequences won’t happen and, furthermore, we’ve had to rebuild major cities before…so we should we get so bent out of shape about potential sea level rise.

Whatever. So, I am not an expert on Cinque Ports. And, yes, I probably shouldn’t have grouped the erosion of shorelines into the things that occur on timescales of thousands of years since it can occur faster. However, we are still talking about making changes (to climate, sea levels, …) very rapidly as compared to what we have experienced in the past, particularly during the rather stable Holocene climate of the last ~10,000 years or so and going into a regime of CO2 concentration that likely hasn’t been experienced for many millions of years. (In fact, we know from ice core data that CO2 concentrations are already higher than they have been for the last 700,000 years…and likely a long time before that.)

By the way, here is a good manuscript I recently found framing the issue of global warming. It gets into a lot of different things, such as the economic and political issues involved, but I most strongly recommend the first two sections which explain some of the basic science and put it in context.

145

Quartz, this doesn’t sit very well coming from someone who had to have jshore explain to him even the elementary errors in climate science made by the anti-AGW blogger whose site you linked to above. You are not really in a position here to lecture anybody else on the sin of ignorance.

Look, we all acknowledge that the issues of climate science are complicated, and few people even among the experts can engage in long discussions of them without making any misstatements at all. But you seem to be grasping at comparatively trivial misstatements and uncertainties in order to provide an excuse for not taking the core issues seriously.

So once again, could you please tell me which of the core issues that I laid out in points 1–6 of my post #131 strike you as unconvincing or inadequately determined? Because if you aren’t actually disagreeing with any of those points, then you are basically admitting the validity of the scientific hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming which is based on them.

146

Quartz, I should also note that we have very different ways of handling the fact that we are not experts in this field. My way (and that of Kimstu, Sentient Meat, etc.) is to listen to, and learn from, the acknowledged experts, e.g., the IPCC and the National Academy of Sciences, whereas your way seems to be to listen to a small minority viewpoint (as expressed by Bjorn Lomborg and a conservative blogger quoting a few scientists, mostly affiliated with conservative think-tanks and the fossil fuel industry) who views presumably happen to align well with your own ideological biases.

147

Based on this exchange, it would seem that you should go away to discover what you are talking about. Name any of the Cinque Ports from which the shore line has actually receded. The cities and the coast are all pretty much where they had always been, but, like Brugge, Belgium, several were located on estuaries that silted up. A claim that the land has radically changed its conformation in a short time is simply not supported by an appeal to the Cinque Ports:
New Romney had been on an estuary in the middle of Romney Marsh. As the estuary silted up, reducing its usefulness as a port, the marsh was filled in by human actions to claim grazing land. Distance from the sea: about 1 mile, same as always.
Hythe has a similar history, being an inland port on the River Rother at one end of Romney Marsh that became a port when the river was diverted and lost its port status when the river diverted again with no significant change to the coastline in either event. Distance from the sea: less than 1/2 mile, same as always.
Sandwich was, again, an inland port on the River Stour that never moved in relation to the coast although the silting of the river destroyed its importance as a port. Distance from the sea 1 1/4 mile: same as always. (3 miles by the Stour valley, but then we are only talking the silted river, not changes to the coast.)
Dover and Hastings still maintain their ports on the ancient sites. Distance to the sea: 0 miles.

So, if you are going to make claims for certain phenomena, it would be well to:

  • actually describe the phenomena correctly and
  • not post snide comments about the knowledge of other posters.

Ratchet down your observations about posters and stick to presenting factual information.

148

(And if you are going to try to make a claim for Winchelsea or Rye, it should be noted that they too are the same distance that they have always been from the coast, but that in each case, either a marsh estuary (Winchelsea) or a riverine estuary (Rye) silted up to prevent the sort of 500 tonne shipping traffic that they originally accomodated. It is true that Rye is a whopping two miles from the sea–but it has always been two miles from the sea.)

149

The point about the Cinque ports, is, of course, that they are no longer ports. Silting up (since you give the example) is a natural phenomenon. Who’s to say that the current climate change isn’t an equally natural phenomenon? I could have equally cited assorted sunken ruins in the Med. I didn’t know the answer, and I still don’t.

Umm… exactly where did I say that I agreed with it or that it was correct? I did point out that the guy had put his name to it, unlike some anonymous blog entry or message board post. And it was arrogantly dismissed, thereby demonstrating the arrogance of the pro-AGW crowd.

Actually, as I said in one of my early posts in this thread, I listen to both sides. I note that much of Lomborg, for instance, has not been disproven. If you can’t answer the gadflies, maybe you need to rethink your theory?

I’m ignorant, but at least I know that I’m ignorant. In this debate, I’ve had words put in my mouth a number of times, failed to be distracted by a red herring, and probably more. I believe I’ve shown that those pro-AGW have a lot to cover. So I’m out of this thread.

150

You didn’t, but you couldn’t identify what was wrong with its arguments until jshore explained it to you.

In order for it to be “natural”, by which I presume you mean “not anthropogenic”, there would have to be a scientifically valid and consistent explanation for it that invoked only non-anthropogenic factors.

At present, however, there isn’t any such explanation. That’s not to say that there couldn’t possibly ever be one, but the workable explanations at present involve anthropogenic causes.

If you can’t convincingly refute one or more of the key claims of those explanations, you haven’t got a scientifically valid reason for rejecting the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change.

Complaining about debating styles (either here on this board or in the popular literature), nitpicking minor errors, offering vague allusions to possible factors like solar activity and volcanic dust, and questioning the motives of the climate science research community simply don’t count as convincing refutations.

Bye.

151

Then perhaps you should have. Trying to link the siltation of shallow river ports (an event that happens to every shallow river or estuarine port that is not cleared by dredging) with global warming–even as some vague analogy–is a bit of a stretch.

However, you are changing your “point” in that it was originally

when, in fact, not one of them (unless we want to stretch a point regarding New Romney) is any farther from the sea than they were when they were built.

152

A BBC link that I think might be relevant. I think tom, Kimstu,** jshore** and others are doing a great job here. Hearing that old “the Earth has always been changing” canard from people who have no concept of geological time always amuses me. I think there are people out there who still buy the “mammoth with a mouthful of dandelions” timeframe for ice-age onset.
duffer, are you any closer to clarity?

153

I think anyone interested in global warming, on any of countless sides of the debate would find this article interesting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305.html

It gives several global warming skeptics the chance to get their general messages out.

154

Note that that article pretty much lists the entirety of the literal handful of (independent) climatologists who deny ACC, and their arguments are IMO mere nitpicks even then (eg. the CO2 graph scale is ‘phony’ - that’s still a 30% increase you’re looking at, doofus).

If these last few eccentrics are a “side of the debate”, then we must reopen the “debate” on evolution, falt-eartism and Holocaust denial.

155

I love this quote, by S. Fred Singer: “We spent 500 years looking for a Northwest Passage, and now we’ve got one.”

Yeah, Fred, I’m with you. Polar bears, who needs them, anyway!

156

A bit of a divergence but still within topic…having quickly scanned this tread and being bleary eyed at night, I haven’t followed any of the links. However, living in mid central British Columbia and knowing winters are not as cold as they were (and not as long) we have a pine beetle outbreak here that has just about eliminated the lodgepole pine forest. Continuing at the present rate, we should have virtually NO pine in a couple more years over 2 meters in heigth. In the past, we always thought young trees produced so much sap they literally pitched the beetles out from boring into the tree’s cambium layer and only the older and decadent trees were susceptible. However, even the young trees are now being killed, probably due to the sheer numbers of beetles overwhelming the tree. Normally the beetle populations were controlled by periodic (and fire) sudden temperature drops in the range of -30 F or more whereby the larvae were unable to acclimate to the extreme temperature drop and died. The majority of the forest base here is lodgepole pine and this forest is now decimated and with its loss an active carbon sink has also been lost. The pine beetle population will severly collapse allowing a new forest to grow, after all, it has literally eaten itself out of house and home. However a new seedling forest will not lock as much carbon in the near future as the present forest. In my area the next most common tree is the Douglas Fir, this forest also has a species specific bark beetle. It too is vulnerable to beetle infestation with the same control mechanisms of cold tempature drops to kill or limit beetle populations. Returning to the pine, the Rocky Mountains are a major barrier to the beetle from reaching the pine forests to the east of the adjacent province of Alberta. Again, there is another however. The pine beetle in British Columbia has advanced to northern BC, on the other side of the Rockies, and now the boreal jackpine forest could be at risk. Similarly rising ocean tempatures are severly impacting the Great Barrier Reef, threatening plankton production and so forth that maybe, just maybe…in spite of arguments of past fluctuations…we are responsible for a change so quick that good old mother earth may not be able to adapt quickly enough to save us from an ecological collapse. Right now in the Cariboo-Chilcotin Region where I live the economic impact of no longer have a sustainable forest land base, which is our major economic engine, is just beginning to dawn on some of the residents. Put bluntly, we are screwed and we don’t even have to wait for the oceans to rise or any other esoteric discussion.

157

Well, if this sort of thing is what it takes to finally get it across to some of the diehard climate skeptics, who keep squawking about how we can’t afford to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that global warming hurts the economy too, then at least the lodgepole pines may not have died in vain.

Sure, the planet itself will survive global warming, and even most species will probably survive global warming, almost certainly including our own. But it’s going to require a hell of a lot of adjustments, some of them trivial, some of them painful, some of them downright catastrophic.

There’s nothing we can do, at least in the near future, about the warming that we’ve already caused. But we can, if we want to, at least stop or diminish future warming before we make things too much worse.