Global Warming - solar radiation changes

Great Debates
101

[QUOTE=jshore]

Look, I don’t really feel like it is a productive use of my time to investigate exactly what all of Card’s deceptions and misstatements are in that article. The whole article is really lame and might even be libelous (against both Mann and Santer) in a country like Britain that has a lower threshhold for suing for libel. But, let’s face it, if this view of what happened was shared by, say, the members of the National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the issue of temperature reconstructions, do you think they would have said what they said? The ClimateAuditors gang are going further and further into creating their own alternate-reality world with things like this. (Hell, in the end, even the most rabid Republicans on the committee that called Mann before it backed off on their accusations and insinuating language.)
[/quote]

Truth is always a defense against charges of libel, which is likely why Mann has never sued McIntyre, but that’s beside the point. You say you don’t have time to investigate whether Card’s statements are true (despite the fact that I’ve provided a host of citations to the main points) … and then you say that despite not investigating it, you know that it contains “deceptions and misstatements”, that it is “lame”, that it “might even be libelous”. How is that possible?

And I hate to break the news to you, but the NAS panel supported each and every one of McIntyre’s criticisms of the Hockeystick study. If you believe otherwise, please provide a citation.

I hate to be crude here, but your reckless use of widesweeping claims without supporting evidence is getting out of hand, and this is as good a place as any to say “put up or shut up”. You are making a claim that Card is deceptive and mis-stating the facts, without offering us a single shred of evidence to support that, while simultaneously admitting that you haven’t even investigated the question. Please provide evidence for the “deceptions” and “misstatements”. I read it through end to end, and found nothing that was not supported by my own research. If you can find different, fine, bring it on … but if not, please stop the outrageous claims of “libel” and the like.

[quote=jshore]

You presented it as if climate science were understood, as if it were a done deal, as if the conclusion were obvious, as if there were “the basic science” which was agreed on. None of those are true, which is why the debate continues. If you want to go with the herd, fine. Me, I’ve seen how often the “consensus” of scientists has been wrong in the past, so I prefer to look at the facts rather than follow the rest of the lemmings …

And I see no sign that the number of people willing to put a price tag on CO2 emissions is increasing. In fact, the opposite seems true to me, more and more people are waking up and saying “wait a minute …”

Of course, some businesses are now agreeing with you that CO2 is a problem, but I suspect that has more to do with “greenmail” than a heartfelt conversion about the science.

You claim over and over that a temperature increase will inevitably have costs … and yet you have ignored my request to enlighten us about what the costs of the temperature increase over the last century were, or where they were assessed.

You think people on this list don’t notice the repeated pattern of the AGW supporters of making claims and then, when challenged to provide facts to back up the claims, of all too often not providing even a comment, much less any facts, regarding the question? At that point, curiously, it’s somehow not “a productive use of [your] time” to actually look for facts rather than to make sweeping accusations.

w.

102

[QUOTE=DMC]
They would? I guess I need to return all of the money I made coding credit risk management, revenue forecasting, smart inventory, and viewer preference prediction software. After all, those require knowledge of computers and modeling, and yet I don’t dismiss predictive climate models out of hand. Does anyone have some spare change for my mortgage payment? Once my clients find out I don’t know anything about computers and modeling, I’m screwed.
[/QUOTE]

:slight_smile: I hope you did not supply software to Long Term Capital Management (LTMC) the supposed ‘hedge’ fund that made the wrong assumption about the Italian bond rates.

[QUOTE=DMC]
If I were you, I’d be seriously wary of attempting to use computer knowledge to separate yourself from others on this board. This place is teeming with gurus from most areas of computing.
[/QUOTE]

Believe me I know that, and reckon that is one of the main reasons why there are so few posters in this thread.

My reason for perservering in this thread is that I have a rather criminal mind (sadly my ethics prevent me exploiting it) and can see that AGW is being hijacked by people with highly dubious motives.

A bit like warning the Mensheviks that the Bolsheviks are not nice people, or the Iranian students in 1979 that SAVAK is safer than Mullahs.

Mostly I guess, computer guys round here dismiss climate modeling as a variant of astrology - however that is just a supposition.

103

For all of you who are involved in computer modeling, and particularly for those who agree with DMC that modeling the climate is like modeling “credit risk management, revenue forecasting, smart inventory, and viewer preference”, there’s an interesting discussion of some of these issues going on [here.](credit risk management, revenue forecasting, smart inventory, and viewer preference)

In fact, modeling huge, complex, turbulent systems like global climate is many orders of magnitude more difficult than modeling credit risk or inventory. This is because, unlike those systems, turbulence exists at all scales including the microscopic. However, because of computer limitations, we cannot model every molecule, or even every cubic kilometer, of the atmosphere and ocean. Because of this, we have to divide the planet up into “gridcells”, which are typically tens of kilometers on a side. We simply cannot model the whole system, or even all of the important parts of the system, and there is no hope of doing so in the foreseeable future.

The problem arises because energy cascades down from the large scale motions like trade winds, hurricanes, and cold fronts, to smaller “subgrid size” but still thermodynamically extremely important motions like thunderstorms and local winds, and eventually ends up being converted to heat on the molecular level. Since we can’t model the subgrid scales, we have to make assumptions about many critical events which are happening there, which means that inherently we are not modeling anywhere near the entire system. This inability to model the entire system leads to exponential growth in the model, which has to be controlled in some artificial way, each of which leads to some other problems.

Thus, a climate model is not really a model in the sense that say DMC understands a model, where there is an entry for every piece of inventory or revenue stream, and we can deal with and account for each item individually. Instead, a climate model is an ill-posed partial model that is essentially unstable, and needs artificial adjustments to keep it from going off of the rails. It is not inherently accurate, it is not a model of an entire system, it contains a host of best guesses and approximations to keep it from spiraling out of control, and there is no a priori reason to assume that it will give accurate answers over anything but a very short period of time.

The problem is that the output of each cycle of the model run, corresponding to a small interval of time, is used as the input to the next cycle. This means that any small inaccuracy in the assumptions we are making about what is happening at the subgrid scales is quickly multiplied by the iterative nature of the calculation into a very large error. At present, there is no known solution to this problem other than artificially damping the system so the exponential growth is halted … which of course makes the model even more inaccurate.

Thinking that a climate model is just another model like an economic or inventory model is unfortunately all too typical of the AGW oversimplification of the complexity of the climate system. The climate is far and away the largest, most poorly understood, and most complex system that we have ever tried to model. It has a host of known and unknown forcings and feedback. It is composed of five major subsystems (atmosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, ocean, and biosphere), each of which is poorly understood. Finally, thermodynamically important phenomena are going on at all scales from the molecular to planet-wide.

It is not just an inventory system writ large, that is a well-meaning but foolish oversimplification, and the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can get off the false, hubris-ridden claim that our climate models are anything more than a tinkertoy representation of the real world.

Tinkertoy models have their uses, to be sure, and there are valuable things we can learn from them. But using them to forecast the climate 50 or 100 years from now is just an exercise in onanism … it’s momentarily satisfying, but at the end of the day, it is a very poor model of the real thing …

w.

104

Mostly I reckon the majority of people who understand machines are aware that we are being fed b/llshit.

My vote is for terminating this thread - we’ll never convert JShore into an impartial scientist and … well it is getting boring.

For the record, I am thinking of buying a place by the sea, but it will be 30’ above neap tide level.

105

[QUOTE=intention]
For all of you who are involved in computer modeling, and particularly for those who agree with DMC that modeling the climate is like modeling “credit risk management, revenue forecasting, smart inventory, and viewer preference”, there’s an interesting discussion of some of these issues going on [here.](credit risk management, revenue forecasting, smart inventory, and viewer preference)
[/QUOTE]
Linky no-worky.

<Snipped a whole bunch of text that boils down to “it’s big and complex, so it can’t be modeled, and DMC doesn’t understand models of this nature”>

I’m fully aware of both the positives and negatives of computer modelling of various complexities (I think you underestimate the complexity of good risk management models, and economic models in general, by the way), including ones that are far too complex to get perfectly accurate results from. You’ll also not hear me say that those models are going to be perfect, mostly right, or even often right. There are good and bad models, and none of them will be perfect when dealing with complex metrics. What they are is predictive. Some are better than others, but that is their job. You’ll note that I responded to:
[QUOTE=FRDE]
You’ll notice that both Intention and I have knowledge of computers and modelling. Anyone with any experience in that area would dismiss predictive climate models out of hand. They would also be highly suspicious of models that purported to represent the NYSE.
[/QUOTE]
There is a huge difference between recognizing the imperfections of complex modelling and dismissing them out of hand.

106

[QUOTE=FRDE]
Mostly I reckon the majority of people who understand machines are aware that we are being fed b/llshit.
[/QUOTE]
Got a cite to back up what you mostly reckon? My experiences certainly don’t back you up, but I’ll happily acknowledge this majority when you’ve demonstrated it to be the case.

Probably because he already is an impartial scientist. If jshore sees overwhelming evidence that AGW is bollocks, I’d be perfectly willing to bet that he would be here explaining to us laypersons why it was bollocks.

107

[QUOTE=DMC]
Got a cite to back up what you mostly reckon? My experiences certainly don’t back you up, but I’ll happily acknowledge this majority when you’ve demonstrated it to be the case.Probably because he already is an impartial scientist. If jshore sees overwhelming evidence that AGW is bollocks, I’d be perfectly willing to bet that he would be here explaining to us laypersons why it was bollocks.
[/QUOTE]

Got a cite to back up what you believe about jshore, that he’s “impartial” and willing to step in to explain things? Heck, I’m still waiting for jshore’s evidence that Orson Scott Card’s description of the Michael Mann fiasco contains “deceptions and misstatements”, a potentially libelous statement he was quick to make but slow to back up, saying it was not a productive use of his time.

I’m also still waiting for jshore’s evidence that “kinda close” is the scientific standard for replication of studies in the mathematical sciences … he says he posted “plenty of examples”, but he would have to find the post … still waiting …

So unless you can provide some evidence, I see none to date that jshore is impartial. Knowlegeable, yes. Passionate, yes. Well-mannered and genteel, yes. Well educated, yes. A good guy, yes. Heart’s in the right place, yes.

But impartial … no. He doesn’t even acknowledge that there is a deep division in the scientific community about the climate question, he thinks the science is a done deal. Given the number, depth, and scientific erudition of the citations that I and others have provided him to show that many scientists disagree on critical aspects of climate, that’s not impartial at all.

w.

108

Apologies, DMC, it’s here.

w.

109

[QUOTE=intention]
Got a cite to back up what you believe about jshore, that he’s “impartial” and willing to step in to explain things? Heck, I’m still waiting for jshore’s evidence that Orson Scott Card’s description of the Michael Mann fiasco contains “deceptions and misstatements”, a potentially libelous statement he was quick to make but slow to back up, saying it was not a productive use of his time.
[/QUOTE]
If I were a scientist, I’d certainly not waste a lot of time debunking some sci-fi author’s claims, especially one who has become a political writer, like Card.

I haven’t seen any evidence that he is partial, and until I do, I see no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I’m not aware of any deep division about AGW in the scientific community. There are differences of opinion about how much of it is our fault, how bad it’s going to be, how soon it’s going to get bad, whether it’s reversible, etc., but not on whether humans are contributing to a problem that’s going to negatively impact us if we don’t deal with it. As far as I’m aware, there is consensus among the scientists who actually work in related fields.

110

[QUOTE=DMC]
If I were a scientist, I’d certainly not waste a lot of time debunking some sci-fi author’s claims, especially one who has become a political writer, like Card.I haven’t seen any evidence that he is partial, and until I do, I see no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt.

…

I’m not aware of any deep division about AGW in the scientific community. There are differences of opinion about how much of it is our fault, how bad it’s going to be, how soon it’s going to get bad, whether it’s reversible, etc., but not on whether humans are contributing to a problem that’s going to negatively impact us if we don’t deal with it. As far as I’m aware, there is consensus among the scientists who actually work in related fields.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks, DMC, your post is appreciated.

  1. It’s not about Card, it’s about the points he made. I have provided a host of citations which support the points that Card is making. jshore has said that he finds Cards claims contain “deceptions and misstatements”, but he declines to say which statements he is talking about, or provide a citation to the facts which would fight our ignorance. In fact, he says it “wouldn’t be a productive use of [his] time” to investigate Card’s claims … which means he hasn’t investigated the question yet …

kimstu noted that Card was a Mormon who writes political essays, and you note that he is a science fiction writer … so what? I am growing very tired of you guys’ puerile attempts at character assassination through ad hominem arguments … I don’t care if Card is a card-carrying suicide bomber, the question is, is he right? jshore has stated categorically that Card is lying, but hasn’t provided a single piece of evidence to back that up. Isn’t this the SDMB? If I did such a thing, you’d jump all over me, and rightly so … but jshore gets a free pass?

You asked for evidence that jshore is not impartial, there it is. An impartial person would investigate a man’s claims before accusing him of being deceptive, don’t you think? And if for some reason he had made such a serious and potentially libelous accusation without investigating beforehand, if he were impartial, he would certainly be willing to take the time to back it up with facts. jshore is a good guy, and I respect his knowledge, but he has clearly shown that he is not impartial.

  1. There is a deep division in the scientific community about

• how much of the recent temperature change is natural

• how much is anthropogenic

• what the mechanism of the anthropogenic change is

• whether recent changes are unusual or unprecedented

• what the size of the climate sensitivity is

• what the most important forcings of the climate system are

• the number, size, and even the sign of important feedback mechanisms

• the reliability and error size of the data for a host of important measurements, from temperatures to albedo to cloud cover

• and what all of this portends for the future.

Almost all scientists think, as do I, that man has had some effect on the climate. But that’s where the agreement ends. Some think that man is responsible for most of the recent change, while others think that man is responsible for very little of the change. Some think the majority of anthropogenic change is from GHG increases, some say from atmospheric black carbon, others say it is from landuse changes. Some say that the climate sensitivity is 1.5°C per W/m2 of forcing, other say a tenth of that. Some say the world is likely to warm over the next thirty years, others forecast cooling. Some say that the warming will cause irreparable damage, while others say that it will be a net benefit.

Perhaps you call that “scientific consensus”, but I call it a deep divide, which is why the debate continues to rage.

Finally, you say:

Huh? I’d need a citation for that claim, I certainly don’t recall saying that. I have been programming computers for 44 years now, and I am more aware than most people of the complexity of economic models, as well as of the strengths and limitations of computer models in general.

But as I said, the climate is orders of magnitude harder to model than the economy. This is in part because the economy is better understood (having been studied for hundreds of years), in part because the climate is a 3-D system while the economy is not, in part because the climate is dominated by turbulent physical processes that are very resistant to modeling or mathematical analysis of any kind, in part because we don’t know which forcings are important and which are secondary, but mostly because the economy doesn’t have important processes going on at the molecular level. There are no atoms exchanging dollars, but there are certainly atoms exchanging heat and kinetic energy. All of this (and more) makes the climate much, much harder to model than the economy.

w.

111

Sorry that I have been kind of absent but I really don’t have the time right now to devote to this thread.

[QUOTE=intention]
Got a cite to back up what you believe about jshore, that he’s “impartial” and willing to step in to explain things? Heck, I’m still waiting for jshore’s evidence that Orson Scott Card’s description of the Michael Mann fiasco contains “deceptions and misstatements”, a potentially libelous statement he was quick to make but slow to back up, saying it was not a productive use of his time.
[/quote]

You seem to think that you can cite some clearly biased source making all these wild accusations and it is then our responsibility to rebut them. That is not how things work here on the StraightDope. It is up to you to provide some credible, unbiased sources to back up the wild claims in that source. You have only provided sources that present a completely one-sided view of the events…a view that, as I noted, if it had corresponded to reality would presumably gotten the rabid Republicans in Congress who started going after Mann to really rake him over the coals…which in the end they didn’t really do, presumably because they realized how weak their case was on Mann having done anything improper. (Was Mann’s original paper perfect? No. It had some problems. However, its conclusions have held up a lot better so far than Spencer and Christy’s original paper looking at the tropospheric temperature trend based on satellite data and I don’t see them being vilified and hauled before Congressional committees.)

I’ve given you general descriptions of papers you will find ubiquitously in physics journals that would not have enough detail to allow others to replicate in the manner that you seem to think should be the standard. But, hell, to make it easy on you, I’ll make you a deal: Find me one specific paper in a physics journal in which enough detail is given to replicate the study in the manner in which you demand. Just one. I am sure you can find one. (There are some that exist…particularly ones that essentially just involve pencil-and-paper theory.) Once you do that, I’ll go and find you 5 that you could not replicate in the precise mathematical sense that you demand on the basis of the information provided in the paper.

What I think is that the science is well-enough understood to state with a high probability that our perturbation on the climate from greenhouse gas emissions is not likely a small one and, if unchecked, will likely lead to deleterious effects…and that some credible actions should be taken to start to change our course. This does not mean that there are not plenty of open questions and things that we still need to better understand in climate science. However, that is not an excuse for inaction. And, of course, this isn’t just my view, it is also the view of the U.S. National Academy of Science and the analogous academies in Britain, Canada, France, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, and India:

Similar views are expressed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the councils of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

It is also a view essentially shared by many corporations including DuPont, Duke Energy, BP, Shell, and Ford and the rest of the auto industry, along with many others.

Yes, clearly, I must be very biased and out-of-touch with the scientific viewpoint on this. :rolleyes:

112

[QUOTE=intention]

Until you guys can dispute any of Card’s statements , can I assume that we are in agreement on them? Because you see, they’re all true.
[/QUOTE]

I am really surprised that you endorse such a shoddy article as Card’s. I actually am not sure I have found a statement in that Card piece that is not disputable. Take this for example:

How many falsities are in just this one description?

(1) He implies some direct connection between the Santer controversy and the Mann controversy. However, the controversy involving Santer is associated with the 1995 IPPC Second Assessment Report, not the 2001 Third Assessment Report where the Mann work first appears.

(2) He uncritically presents the claims of Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz as fact even though Santer responded to them and many other scientists involved rose to his defense.

(3) He bizarrely claims that Santer’s report has since been proven false. I don’t know what he means by this but most of the controversy seemed to surround the rather tepid statement regarding the detection of a human influence on climate that was made in that Second Assessment Report. The statements in the Third and Fourth assessment reports have gotten progressively stronger on this point.

Here is another one of his statements:

Let’s count the falsehoods here:

(1) The name change to “climate change” has been made over time because it more accurately reflects the fact that there are a variety of effects other than simply warming…like changes in precipitation patterns. [Interestingly, it was also the preferred language for Republicans because it sounds less threatening: ‘Luntz advises that, “’Climate change’ is less frightening than ’global warming.’ … While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge”’]

(2) Global temperatures have not been falling over the last 3 years. (I wasn’t sure when Card wrote that piece but since the “Unstoppable Global Warming” book he references is very new, I think it has to be 2006 or 2007.)

(3) Climate models do not predict that the warming will be monotonic from year-to-year. They predict a general warming trend superimposed on the normal variability (due to El Nino - La Nina, among other things). His statement is about as stupid as me saying that this notion of seasons that climate scientists speak about is a bunch of hooey because they claim we are supposed to be heading toward summer when it is warmer and here in Rochester it was warmer a week ago than it has been over the last few days.

113

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Not to take sides in this debate, but I’m wondering about this conclusion. The last IPCC report said, if I recall correctly, that ‘modest’ warming of 2.5 degrees C or lower might actually have a net world economic benefit, while warming above that number would have a net economic cost. Does the new report still say that? If so, then claiming that there is an economic cost associated with global warming is an unproven assertion.
[/quote]

Sam: Well, it sort of said that although I would put the may in bold to note that the effect of a small warming could go either way in terms of net economic cost or benefit. (And, I couldn’t find where the put a clear…as opposed to fuzzy…temperature delineation on it.) And also, that statement came with some pretty strong caveats. Here is the most relevant section of the summary for policymakers and here is a figure. Here is an extended quotation:

The summary for policymakers of this section of the new fourth-assessment of the IPCC report (i.e., the part on impacts as opposed to the climate science basis) isn’t scheduled to be released until April 6 so we will have to see what it says then.

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]

Most others use numbers in the 2-5% range (including the UN’s study, which is being treated here as definitive).
[/QUOTE]

Well, all we have seen so far is a report on a leaked version on that part of the report. So far, the leaks on these things have tended to have a fairly poor track record, not so much I think because radical changes end up being made to the final versions, but rather because the reporters tend to get confused and misreport things. (E.g., there was a lot of confusion regarding estimates of the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 versus projections of the temperature in 2100…which of course depend not only on the climate sensitivity but also on the emissions scenarios and the carbon cycle feedbacks. In this regard, the reporting probably wasn’t that much better once the report came out…but at least then one could go look at the report itself to get the actual statements made.)

114

jshore, thank you for your reply. Let me go over your points.

[QUOTE=jshore]
I am really surprised that you endorse such a shoddy article as Card’s. I actually am not sure I have found a statement in that Card piece that is not disputable.
[/quote]
Many of his statements are disputable … but that is quite different from your claim of deceptive. I note also that you do not dispute any of his statements about Mann, just those on other topics … which may be just an oversight which you plan to rectify?

You are 100% correct that Santer’s statements were made for the Second Annual Report rather than the Third … but then Card never said otherwise. Knowing the history of the dispute regarding Santer and the IPCC SAR, I did not assume that Card was saying that Santer directly supported the Hockeystick by his actions, I understood it to mean that Santer paved the way and the Hockeystick continued the illusion. And Mann’s claim was certainly made more credible, as Card says, by the previous IPCC statement about global warming, which was inserted by Santer in support of his own paper and without the backing of the IPCC scientists.

Regarding the “bizarre claim” that Santer’s report was false, Dr. Legates testified before Congress as follows:

[QUOTE=Dr. Legates]
The IPCC reports are purported to represent the current status of our understanding of climate, climate change, and climate variability. The Second Assessment Report contained the most often cited phrase, “The preponderance of the evidence suggests a discernable human influence on the climate.” Evidence to support that statement was supposed to come from several papers published by Dr. Benjamin Santer and his co-authors – and Dr. Santer was the author that inserted the phrase touting his own work. My research and those of several others pointed out the flaws in their statistical methodology, the biased choices of their data, and the lack of substantial corroboration from independent sources. In essence, their results have been rejected.
[/QUOTE]

Now this doesn’t in any way prove that Santer’s paper was false … but it does mean that Card’s claim that Santer’s conclusions are false is not “bizarre” as you claim.

In the same order as your point …

  1. Both sides endorsed the change in terminology from “global warming” to “climate change” for their own reasons. Greenpeace advocated it because it wanted to claim that extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, could result from increasing GHGs. In fact, they excoriated conservatives who called it “global warming”, saying

[QUOTE=Greenpeace]
**The next step is to understand the evolution of Fossil Fuel Propaganda.
**
First, the conservative radio hacks denied human contributions to climate change outright:

  1. They cited record low point temperatures in local areas to deny “global warming” and refused to use the correct term “climate change”.
    [/QUOTE]
    Of course, there is always the alternate theory …

In any case it is an extremely minor point, and irrelevant to our discussion.

  1. I don’t understand your objection to Card’s statement about falling temperature. The reference you cited says “The year 2006 was sixth warmest on record, exceeded by 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002 and 2004.” The graph also shows cooling for the period 2003-2006 … what’s wrong with Card’s claim?

  2. Since Card didn’t mention models at all, it’s not clear to me what you are objecting to here. The recently falling temperatures, while not proving anything either way, certainly do not provide additional evidence for the idea of a warming world.

Now, I find some of Card’s statements to be debatable in others, but where are the “deceptions”?

More to the core of the discussion, however, none of your objections have anything to do with what we were discussing, the issue of Michael Mann’s claims and actions. Rather than getting side-tracked into questions of whether the global temperature fell from 2002-2006 or not, am I to assume that you have found nothing wrong with what Card said about Mann’s deeds and misdeeds? Because that, as you may recall, was what we were talking about.

My best to you,

w.

PS - Regarding the Santer controversy, there is little dispute that he did alter the scientific findings to bring them more into line with the Summary for Policymakers, since Santer agrees that he did do that.

While the ethics of this are debatable, there is no question that it conforms perfectly with the IPCC’s curious and little-known procedure. This is to write the Summary first, with a few scientists and a lot of politicians deciding what it says, and then to change the scientific sections so that they agree with the Summary … weird, I know, but that’s how they do it. Proves to me that they are a political body rather than a scientific body, but YMMV … I know of no other institution that writes the Summary first and then changes the body of the report to fit the Summary, but that’s why we have the Summary being published in February, and are still waiting for the body of the report.

115

While I spend most of my time over on the GQ forum, I am very intrigued by this particular topic, especially since I find some of my favorite posters in this thread - jshore, Sam Stone, as well as others, and I think intention is making some excellent points also. This is a very enjoyable, informative, and most importantly, a very civil debate. I congratulate everyone for this since it is such an emotionally charged issue. I don’t have the heavy science and research background in this area as others who have posted here, so my relevant contribution is minimal, but I was motivated to respond with a philosophical point by Kimstu’s excellent analogy:

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
A more apt analogy might be the situation of an armed householder suddenly discovering the presence of an intruder. You hear a noise, you quietly slip out of bed and get your gun, you silently go downstairs and see somebody moving about. You think you see a gun in his hand, but you’re not sure. He hasn’t seen you yet, but he’s turning your way and he’s about to spot you. Do you shoot?

The stakes could be very high whichever way you decide. If you shoot him and he turns out to be unarmed and harmless, you will have made a choice that could have ruined multiple lives. On the other hand, if you hesitate and it turns out that he is armed and violent and he shoots you, you’re in diastrous trouble, if not dead outright. You don’t have a no-risk option; you’re in a high-stakes situation with inadequate information to make a fully justified decision in either direction, and whichever choice you make could turn out to be disastrously wrong. The uncertainty is extremely high, but the choice is unavoidable.
[/QUOTE]

I think you’re right, this may very well be the situation we’re in right now! So, in your scenario, should I shoot or not? Many would legitimately maintain that I MUST shoot, as I cannot overvalue the lives of my wife and children (not to mention myself and my possessions). Many others would, just as legitimately, maintain that I MUST NOT shoot, because I may be taking a life unnecessarily.

Kimstu, my hat is off to you - I really feel like you have nailed this argument right through its heart, and clearly show why it’s such a difficult situation. The right answer cannot be known at the point when it’s needed. What many seem to fail to understand is that there really ARE two sides to the debate and either side winning right now would be equivalent to passing a law that says you MUST ALWAYS (or NEVER) SHOOT in this situation. I can’t believe this would be the position of a sane individual. While Kimstu, jshore, and others are insisting that we SHOOT NOW! and intention and others are insisting we wait to make sure the intruder has a gun, there is a very substantial risk either way. We cannot know if we will die through inaction or someone else will die through needless action. While the consequences of not taking needed action are easy to see and understand, we should not make the mistake of thinking the consequences of needless action are not also very real and very deadly. One example is increased deaths due to CAFE standards. This is, admittedly, controversial but it cannot be denied that higher living standards are generally correlated with higher lifespans (and reduced human misery) and fossil fuels are the source of much of our higher living standards enjoyed today. The tremendous amount of carbon introduced into the atmosphere over the 20th century has brought us much that cannot be given up without paying a great price in human misery, especially since most of the price would be paid by the poor.

By the way, my admiration for Kimstu is sincere. You really caused me to look at this issue in a new way and opened my eyes. Thank you!

Okay, so what do we do? In my opinion, jshore had the right answer. One of the major pitfalls of capitalism is the “tragedy of the commons”. Many of the tragedy of the commons items can be very difficult to solve (esp where parcelling out for private ownership is not possible, such as air pollution). In this case, a substantial carbon tax that increases over time (to allow the economy to adjust) coupled with a general rebate of the taxes collected (to minimize impact to lower income individuals and others who might be hurt by this) would allow the “market” to reduce our CO2 discharge in the most efficient way. I advocate this not so much because I believe in AGW, but because the same proposed root cause of AGW is also a root cause of other problems KNOWN to be “bad”: air pollution, oil spills, political dependence on ME oil, traffic jams, urban sprawl, and other general ugliness that results from widespread use of fossil fuels. If this manages to prevent or forestall GW, so much the better.

It took me a couple of days to coalesce and compose my thoughts, meanwhile the thread has run off without me and Kimstu has left town. I apologize for the lengthy post (not my normal style), but I had to get my thoughts down as best as I could. If you made it down this far and have comments or criticisms, I welcome them.

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I had this video emailed to me today, and watched it this afternoon. After I saw it, I had to bring this over here. I was going to start a new thread on it, but it seems that all the resident experts are here already. If this is too much of a hijack, I’ll start a new thread for it.

The video is from the BBC, and is called The Great Global Warming Swindle. Personally, I found it more convincing than the recent Al Gore flick. Anyone want to talk about it? Be warned, it’s about 75 minutes long.

Link is http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831

117

To me the great thing about this debate is that it’s nearly academic because the changes most people are talking about making stand on their own without the threat of global warming. For example, without global warming it would still make a ton of sense to:

  1. Increase the energy efficiency of appliances, homes, businesses, factories, cars, etc.
  2. Build more nuclear plants instead of more coal plants.
  3. Ditto for other so called carbon neutral energy sources.
  4. Try to wean ourselves from gasoline powered automobiles.

Of course, I say nearly academic because there are some measures that only make sense in regards to global warming, such as CO2 capture and storage or taxing CO2 emissions and whatnot. I don’t see that happening in the U.S. for quite awhile though, so it may not really matter anyway.

118

flex727, thank you for contributing a very interesting post. I had not seen kimstu’s analogy.

The problems with kimstu’s analogy are:

  1. In the analogy, it is clear that a decision needs to be made in a split second, with no chance to gather additional information. This is not the case with global warming. I have asked both kimstu and jshore what the possible costs of let’s say a 10-year delay in making the decision would be, and they have roundly ignored the question. So let me take a stab at it.

There are several ways to estimate the cost. One is just to extend the temperature trend of the last five years (not significantly different from zero) for ten years (which gives zero), and thus there would be zero cost. Alternatively, we could extend the trend for the last ten years to the next ten years, which gives 0.14°C

Another way is to use the projected CO2 rise to estimate the temperature change. This, however, leads to a wide range of possibilities depending on the temperature sensitivity. But let’s use James Hansen’s figure of 0.6°C per W/m2. According to this, the difference in temperature in ten years would be 0.14°C, same as one of our other estimates.

But 0.14°C is less than the error of our measurements of global temperature, and so it is not even measurable. Thus, the idea that a ten year delay in making the decision would have huge costs is not supported by the evidence.

jshore counters this by saying that decisions like whether we use coal or gas fired power plants have long range effects … which makes me wonder if he’s never heard of the thousands of coal fired plants which have been retro-fitted with a wide variety of pollution control technology. If CO2 does turn out to be a problem, the number of new coal plants will only be a small percentage of the total coal plants which will have to be retro-fitted to reduce their carbon emissions. Thus, the cost of the delay will still be very small.

  1. The analogy assumes perfect knowledge of the cost of the outcomes (intruder dead vs. wife and children dead). In the real world, things are not anything like that. We have only very limited information on the outcomes of action versus inaction.

  2. The analogy assumes that gun actually works. In the real world, we have no assurance that proposed solutions such as Kyoto will work. James Hansen said in 2000:

So Kyoto simply will not work.

In all, I find the analogy to be fatally flawed, because it bears no similarity to the question we are presented with regarding CO2.

All the best,

w.

119

[QUOTE=flex727]
I advocate this not so much because I believe in AGW, but because the same proposed root cause of AGW is also a root cause of other problems KNOWN to be “bad”: air pollution, oil spills, political dependence on ME oil, traffic jams, urban sprawl, and other general ugliness that results from widespread use of fossil fuels.
[/QUOTE]
I am generally in favor of environmentally-freindly policies, and agree that all the things you mention are bad. But your logic in advancing AGW as a useful myth sounds a lot like crying “wolf.”
The most alarmist, extreme and dire predictions about AGW – the ones that get most play in popular media – will eventually be exposed as bullshit. They’ve been saying for years now that “we only have a decade to act.” When 2012 rolls around and California hasn’t sunk into the sea, popular opinion will turn against AGW, even if the real science is stronger than it is now.

To the extent the environmental movement and the anti-fossil fuel movement are married to AGW as their rationale, they will be weakened, not strengthened.

120

[QUOTE=mstay]
To me the great thing about this debate is that it’s nearly academic because the changes most people are talking about making stand on their own without the threat of global warming. For example, without global warming it would still make a ton of sense to:

  1. Increase the energy efficiency of appliances, homes, businesses, factories, cars, etc.
  2. Build more nuclear plants instead of more coal plants.
  3. Ditto for other so called carbon neutral energy sources.
  4. Try to wean ourselves from gasoline powered automobiles.

Of course, I say nearly academic because there are some measures that only make sense in regards to global warming, such as CO2 capture and storage or taxing CO2 emissions and whatnot. I don’t see that happening in the U.S. for quite awhile though, so it may not really matter anyway.
[/QUOTE]
mstay, this is one of the most reasonable posts so far on this thread … my own included.

Increasing energy efficiency is both wise and profitable for businesses, manufacturers, consumers, and the environment. Fortunately, it is favored by both environmentalists and the free market.

One reason for this is that the benefits from improved efficiency will continue as long as the technology is in use, whereas the benefits from Kyoto, tiny as they are, will end when Kyoto ends. In addition, the benefits from increased technology are certain, while the benefits from Kyoto may never materialize.

If the billions of dollars that have been and will be wasted on Kyoto were put into R&D on energy efficiency, the return would have been infinitely larger … of course, that’s not hard to do, since the return from Kyoto is not even measurable …

Instead, the money has gone into “carbon trading” and “carbon offset” schemes that, among other things, allow Al Gore to use more energy in a month than most people use in a year, and then claim that he is “carbon neutral” simply because he is buying stock in his own company … hey, that makes it all right by me, he must be a really good guy if he’s “carbon neutral”, I guess we shouldn’t talk about his zinc mine and his support of tobacco … but I digress.

Many of the carbon offset schemes are based on inflated numbers and dubious science of the kind made famous by AGW supporters … which I suppose is poetic justice in a bizarre way, that you can claim that you are fighting an over-estimated, over-hyped problem by buying into an over-estimated, over-hyped solution.

Al being able to buy his way out of responsibility for his extravagant lifestyle is uncomfortably reminiscent of the arrangement during the US Civil War, where if you were drafted, you could pay someone else $300 to take your place.

But Al even beats that scam, because he’s not paying $300 to somebody else, he’s paying the $300 to himself. Doesn’t really matter, though, that’s just pocket change, because he stands to make millions if the US institutes carbon trading … but because he’s a good guy, we know that hasn’t influenced his decision to do everything he can to make carbon trading happen, including warning us that if we don’t sign on, there will be a sea level rise that’s ten or twenty times larger than that forecast by the IPCC …

Because really, at the end of the day … what’s wrong with a little exaggeration between friends if it’s in support of a good cause?

w.

PS - Before y’all start abusing me for being a Neo-con, let me go on record as saying that I think Clinton was one of the best Presidents in recent times (except for his little zipper problem), that the situation in Iraq has been bungled beyond belief, that Bush and all of his privacy hating, prisoner torturing, privacy invading, scum-bag lying big business cronies suck the big one, and that I voted for Gore in 2000 …