Kyoto is an inheritantly flawed document. It is hard to defend it.
Reducing Emissions however just doesn’t have a downside and should be strongly encouraged.
Burn less Oil: reduce dependancy on foreign oil, remove some funding from terrorism, Reduce particulants that increase asthma and smog.
Jim
Michael Crichton is not a scientist. He is a guy who makes money by writing alarming science fiction: “Andromeda Strain”, “Coma”, “Jurassic Park”, etc.
Scientists, who are just as bright and spend a good deal of time studying the issue, have reached a different conclusion. Search this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=318013&highlight=global+warming for “Beyond the Ivory Tower”. Amongst the scientists who specialize in related fields, there is no debate.
IMHO, Cecil really dropped the ball on this one. While Kyoto is a flawed document, it does one important thing that Cecil missed–establish a carbon trading market.
So Cecil’s argument that carbon reduction=economic poverty is patently false. It rewards nations that find ways to keep their carbon emissions lower via the market–the very financial reward that Cecil ignores. The hope is that the lower emission nations will not just curb growth–but use that money to invest in methods that will allow them to grow while keeping emissions low.
And it causes the biggest violators to start incorporating the true economic cost of carbon emissions into their bottom lines. Thus, using the “stick” to push nations and companies to find ways to cut carbon emissions.
Kyoto was supposed to be the first step (Kyoto won’t stop climate change), allowing the world to figure out the details of a carbon trading market, the proper cost/rewards of the market, etc. Its goal was not to solve the issues of climate instability in one fell swoop. The followup to Kyoto is supposed to do more about carbon emissions.
Cutting/Stopping carbon emissions will not “solve” climate instability–we’ve already set the gears in motion (read all the recent articles about the greenland and antartica ice sheets) – but differences in carbon emissions will definitely affect the degree of severity of anthropogenic climate change.
As far as the discussion of anthropogenic causation to climate instability/change, I’ll refer everyone to the recent articles from NewScientist (especially the first one):
Climate: The Great Hockey-Stick Debate
Editorial: Climate Change is all Around Us
New analysis says global warming boosts hurricanes
Small heat rise may offer big boost for malaria
Evangelicals and environmentalists united
Climate blamed for mass extinctions
Air heats up high above Antarctica
Climate change: Awaking the sleeping giants
Read all that…and then respond intelligently. And if anyone is trying to read the articles and getting caught by the subscriber only stuff, let me know, and I’ll send you a copy of the article.
Your Email is not public, so could you please email me the articles. Mine is public. Click on my user name and you will get an option to Email me. I will be happy to read the articles. I enjoy New Scientist but I only subscribe to Scientific America.
Jim
I’m not interested in consensus. That may sound egotistical and dismissive, but it’s not meant to be. What I’m interested in is data. According to the “Beyond the Ivory Tower” article mentioned, of 928 “climate change” abstracts from 1993 to 2003, 75% accepted the concensus and 25% took no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Okay, but has anyone developed correlative equations or graphs that match past climate change and predict future changes?
The IPCC Third Assessment Report, from 2001 said that “The long term prediction of future climate states is not possible” and this is the body to whom all those consensus’ were referring. Also, according to the IPCC Assessment, they predict (odd, considering the previous statement) a rise of 1.5 to 6 degrees in global temperature by 2100. A 400% variance in a prediction indicates that the science is not present.
The Crichton speech refers to SK Solanki, “Solar variability and climate change,” Astronomy and Geophysics, vol. 43, 5: 5.09-5.13 saying that solar heating may account for a .35C global temperature change and Kalnay, Eugenia, and Ming Cal, “Impact or Urbanization and Land-Use on Climate,” Nature 423 (29 May 2003); 528-31 saying may account for a .25C change, then the change attributable to carbon dioxide becomes less than may be thought.
I don’t see anyone constructing a model that gives predictive results accurate enough to recommend global changes in technologies.
That said, I think it’s common sense not to waste or pollute when possible. If you care about my agenda, know that we recycle; we insulate; we have a tankless water heater; we’ve put in compact-flourescent bulbs. I drive a diesel volkswagon and we want are looking at getting a hybrid next time. We’ll also see how electric and fuel cell cars are when we’re ready. I made all these changes because we say what the real world effects would be.
Crichton is not a climate scientist. However, he is a graduate of the Harvard Medical School. He is a medical doctor and one can assume he is well versed, practiced and professional in his ability to think and reason scientifically. I doubt many of the all knowing posters on this board can boast of such a resume, yet their posts are evaluated on content and not credentials. His points are salient and dead on the mark with this issue. Attacking Crichton’s background to refute his points is absolutely not the way to prove his points wrong.
Also, a consensus in science makes a mockery of science. There does not need to be a consensus on anything scientific. Oh sorry, Crichton already pointed that out, clearly. He is right.
GreyMatters, would you mind terribly translating your previous post into your choice of English or technical jargon? I’m reasonably fluent in both, but I can’t make heads nor tails out of it.
Oops, my apologies; I’ve had this thread open for a while and forgot to refresh before replying. I meant post #12.
Chronos,
There is little coherent debate that humans are putting CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 is matter, has mass, and can “heat” up. Simple stuff there. No one I know argues that point. The introduced CO2’s mass and the heat it captures from the sun are artificial. Again, no argument there. The debate with the IPCC theory skews from here in at least two parts.
The first is related to the IPCC’s theory on radiative forcings. The second is that the statistical modeling used to detect the actual human induced heating lacks error analysis and has an inherent flaw, which to their credit is unaviodable, of being a model and not a true scientific test; this comes out in the model results which have yet to accurately predict reality.
Basically, the two camp’s views on the radiative forcings create two separate models. In the IPCC model, with its radiative forcing theory, the CO2 induced heating related to increased CO2 emissions is exponential. In the more conservative theories on radiative forcings, the heating is logrithmic. Dr. Pielke, and others, do not agree with the IPCC’s theory on radiative forcing. They feel it is overestimated and is inflating the models’ output.
The second debate train is the one I am most concerned with at the moment, being that I am a statistical modeler myself and know all to well the flaws of this type of analysis versus real world outcomes. Error analysis is basically the part in the analysis process where one determines the accuracy and precision of the results generated. Ok, I understand the statistical detection methods used are so cumbersome and complicated that it has been difficult to incoporate error analysis. The modelers are doing the best they can. Fine.
So how can we determine if the models are “right?” We look at the output and compare it with reality. Well, the models don’t match with reality. They are close but not close enough for me.
I hope that clears up my clumsy, non-expert thoughts on the subject. lol.
Whew, I didn’t even bring up the socialist aspect of the Kyoto protocol or how humans continually want the world to end today and have latched onto global warming to prove it really, really, really, for sure is happening today.(Just ask Time magazine or SentientMeat.)
Oh yeah, one last thought: Cecil has once again gained the top spot on my hero pyramid. Goooooooooo Cecil!!!
Forgot to say: Give me a break. I may not be the most lucent, gramatically correct writer in the world, but I hardly think I needed to be insulted over it. Thanks for being polite.
Okay, I had a little time on my hands, went to the links provided in your original post. Sorry, it’s still all unconvincing claptrap as far as I’m concerned.
First link – British enviro secretary Marget Beckett saying UK will probably miss the greenhouse gas emission target it set, but is doing all it can, and an unnamed person from the Green Alliance saying the government isn’t doing enough (gosh, what a surprise that is – the Green Alliance bashing a government over greenhouse gas emissions – never saw that one coming!)
Next link – European Environmental agency expects the 15 members of the EU to hit their greenhouse gas emissions targets, but wants more (gee, no kidding?! Who’da thunk it!?) Oh, yeah, and the Archbishop of Canterbury weighs in on this one, too. (Are you serious?!)
Next link – Prof John Schellenburger (did I spell that right?) of the University of East Anglia bashing the British government – and you’ll never guess why!
Oh, yeah, and then there was that chart. Now, I have a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in English lit – this chart makes no sense to me whatsoever. It can say whatever SentinentMeat wants it to say, I guess. You could tell me it means my wife’s arches will fall when she hits 65, and there is no way I could refute it. It’s simply meaningless.
OK, I get it – SentinentMeat watches BBC a lot. I watch MSNBC. Big whoop.
Cecil, on the other hand, presented a well-reasoned, well-written column that, frankly, takes a bunch of the hot air out of the global warming myth. As for SentinentMeat and other enviro-geeks who love to scare the bejesus out of us simple folk with their esoteria, let me quote from my own area of expertise: Hamlet, speaking of his mother, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” (Scene III, Act 2, Line 209.) You gotta’ read the line in context, though.
Crichton having a medical degree from anywhere does not make him an expert on climatology. I am closer to one, but I am not one. My dissertation topic was in General Relativity. That does not make me an expert on climatology. Those for whom it has been their primary research focus are the experts.
At some point, you have to decide whom to believe, because you can’t be well versed in everything. I choose to believe the experts whose careers are in those fields - just as I choose to believe my doctor about my health. As the study in the link I gave shows, essentially 100% of the experts accept global warming. I choose to believe them.
Wow. My faith in Cecil has been shattered. Putting the debate aside for a moment, I’ve got to nominate this week’s as the absolute worst Straight Dope column of all time.
No, I don’t think I will. If you don’t have the room to adequately address the topic, the least you can do is narrow the scope of the question to that which you can address. The question isn’t “is global warming for real?” Even Essenhigh isn’t arguing that average global temperatures aren’t rising; he’s arguing about the cause.
Cecil might as well be answering the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything. “Answer: beats me and doesn’t matter.” Gee, thanks, Big Guy…we’re all really impressed down here. Has the Straight Dope run out of questions or something? Maybe Cecil should go back to topics that he thinks really do matter, like planes taking off from treadmills.
You completely missed my entire point.
Credentials mean nothing. Evaluate what they said, the points they make and then make comments on that.
If I followed your way of thinking then G.W. Bush would be a great source on how to run a country. See how that works?
The mere fact that you don’t know indicates your level of ignorance of the research. AFAIK, that is the primary technique for calibrating the models.
There are few fields in the Earth sciences for which “long term” means as short as 100 years, but even so they have to qualify the statement because of uncertainties. For example, one popular theory holds that global warming leads to an ice age. That is counter-intuitive, because it is a poorly undersood, nonlinear affect. Only once it is understood can one make “long term” predictions. Where do you get a 400% variance? A range of predictions varying by a factor of four certainly does not indicate “the science is not present”. Look at the estimates for Higgs boson mass, particularly before lower limits were placed by failed attempts to find it. (Or pretty much anything in cosmology -age of the universe, size of the universe, etc. until the late 1990s.) All you can say due to that factor of four is that significant aspects of global warming are poorly understood, not that “the science is not present”.
Ok, because of a max .6C, out of the range you quote as 1.5 to 6 (C?) might not be due to anthropogenic sources (oh wait, .25C of that .6C is due to man!), you are rejecting it all.
I’m sorry you see so poorly.
Those are the very sorts of changes that are advocated. Your typo, though, makes it hard to understand the last sentence. Did you mean “see”?
I dunno what it is regarding this particular subject that, in the US exclusively, it seems, turns this from a scientific discussion into a political discussion couched in refutation of minor points to obscure the larger picture.
I’m no scientist, and nor do I claim to have the grand picture. But I have been listening intently to meteorologists and climatologists for years, and apart from one former green in Sweden, the only other refutation of this appears to be emanating from one minority community in the US.
With that in mind, in light of the scorn poured on the UN, the “socialist aspect” of Kyoto - and a blanket dismissal of the UK government DEFRA’s conclusions, etc. etc., amd since you distrust SentientMeat’s cites, I’ll give you a tinly few samples of what the US government has to say.
US DOE
US EPA
U.S. Global Climate Change Policy, Department of State
US Global Change Research Program in 1995
I would include the overwhelming volume of stuff from NASA, but I get the impression that this particular minority community would consider NASA a little “socialist”, so I’ll omit it.
No, I got your point. You miss my point. I’m glad you are smare enough that the few hours a week you might devote to this topic make you more of an expert than essentially every full time researcher in the field. You clearly have missed your calling. Me, I’m not that smart, and so I’m going with the guys who think about this area full time. The same as I choose to believe nuclear physicists about the details of how the sun works.
Perhaps you can correct my poor grasp of the essentials. Over the last 100 to 150 years, the amount of carbon dioxide (and methane) in the atmosphere have increased greatly. (IIRC, for CO2, 30%-40%). At the same time, people have been burning fossil fuels and denuding land, thus creating CO2 sources and removing CO2 sinks. CO2 and methane (and, yes water vapor, but we only influence that as secondarily to raising the temperature in the first place.) affect radiative transfer in a well known manner (although apparantly a mechanical engineer and some other experts disagree with the strength). The only way warming does not occur, is if there is some countereffect occurring simultaneously. For example, perhaps increased anthropogenic aerosols modify the albedo of the earth and counteract the radiative forcing. (Increased cloud cover or increased snow fall changing the albedo of the earth would be the results of warming, not countereffects, because first the warming must occur and then the effect happens.) Exactly what countereffect is there that would make globabl warming not happen?
You say you got my point and then prove you didn’t, but hey who’s keeping count?
I never claimed to be the end of all knowledge on this subject. I also did not claim that man is not increasing earth’s temperature. I claim the the estimate of how much it is increasing has not been worked out, and that a consensus on this issue has not been reached. I even provided a link to a very well respected climatologist to support these claims. I also think the gloom and doom being put out by the same scientists you so vehemently defend is adsurd and truly bad for science in general.
Also, your attack to try and silence my dissent is EXACTLY the opposite of what a reasoned scientific debate is all about. You are trying to censor through bullying and it should not be apart of this type of discussion.
You go though with all your sarcastic clap-trap. It is cute.
Chronos, is that how you do that? I hope so because your board, insulting techniques are what I strive to attain.
Maybe, maybe not. That’s why Cecil admitted to not knowing with, “Beats me.” It could also be the sun itself, you know. It’s been angrier and flarier than it’s been in a long while even though the sun’s supposed to be in a solar minimum with it’s usual cycle. It’s giving off all sorts of electrical energy (which is fueling all the tornadoes and hurricanes when it flows through our ionosphere to the ground) and light, heating up the Earth. Let the onslaught of people who are trying to keep the casual reader stupid now commence with comments like “They’re not electrical in nature!!! It’s warm rising air!!! Don’t listen to him! He’s crazy, move along!”
The thread I first quoted was based on a NASA study that said:
Note that this is a comparison of input to output. The sun pouring out more energy can not account for these measurements, but a climate model does quite well.