Regarding which, see [ur=http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8034733&postcount=31]here.
I mean, here.
Bingo. They have TV stations and radio stations. Rush and friends. They say so much they can not possibly believe. It is big money at work.
So, its your, um, contention, that everyone opposed to the idea of global warming (or the idea that its human caused, or that cutting back a la Kyoto would actually help, or anything related to this) REALLY knows better, and is just saying what they are saying because they are being paid off? That there is absolutely no room for debate on this, that its a total slam dunk?
And you aren’t alone…a lot of folks on this board feel the same way. That the science is completely locked up, that there can be no real debate on this…and that anyone who disagree’s must be a Republican and in denial, or in the pocket of big oil.
I get no money from big oil. I’ve participated in myriad of these debates on this forum. I’ve talked to scientists at Los Alamos and at the labs here…many of them climatologists. I don’t see that this is a cut and dried issue, with no room for debate. I remain unconvinced about some aspects, and provisionally convinced about others. That global climate change seems to be occuring I’m provisionally convinced. What it means…I’m unconvinced anyone can accurately predict that. That humans are causing it? I’m provisionally convinced that humans are having an effect. What effect? I’m unconvinced anyone has a clear idea of exactly what impact humans are having, and what other factors are having an impact. That drastic cuts in our industries (along with the huge economic hit we will all take if we do so) a la Kyoto will actually have an effect? I’m completely uncovinced that anyone has a clear idea of what, if anything, this will actually accomplish that will be benificial in either the short or medium terms. On this particular question, I like to think of it in terms of a book I read where one of the guys is talking about what should you do if you trip and are falling down on a road full of glass. Should you put out your hands to catch yourself (and get cut up)…or run faster. I’m a beliver in the ‘run faster school’.
To my mind, this whole global warming thing actually smacks of a faith based certainty. Where is that good old SDMB skepticism on this subject? Doesn’t exist by and large. Where is the usual rigorous skepticism from the scientific community? Not there either, even though IMHO the science just isn’t solid enough, the models aren’t good enough to make real predictions or to know all the aspects and causes…or to have the kind of rock solid certainty that many here and many in the scientific community feel they have to be making radical changes with far reaching consequences in the global economy. On just about any other scientific subject there is no way, based on the current level of knowledge, that you’d have such a shoulder to shoulder ‘consensus’ about ANY subject…and yet, even with flawed models, lack of long term historical data (as yet…this is building), and flawed predictive theory, we have a huge global consensus from the scientists, with little or no ‘real’ challenge or skepticism. On a theory this new? This untested?
And this raises no flags with anyone?
-XT
Sure it does. Since the science is imperfect, the sceptic can’t exactly refute the claims, either. Stalemate.
Some folks are eager to embrace the Human Sourced global warming claims because:
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It fits in with the view that pollution is bad. Pollution has been increasing for the last 100 years. Everybody seems to be waiting around for someone else to clean it up. If we don’t clean it up, bad stuff will eventually happen.
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Change is bad. Global Warming seems to be happening. The end results could conceivably be dire.
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Desire to control our own destiny, and hope for the future: If humans caused (or at least contributed to) Global Warming, than we can do something about it. If Humans did not cause it, then we can’t control it (as it would then be coming from some more powerful natural force), and points out our inability to control our own destiny, which is not a pleasant reality to consider.
**An additional concern ** with global warming is the increased warmth of the atmosphere is expected to cause and increase in both the numbers and severity of hurricane.
I think we realized in 2004 & 2005 how bad this could be for coastal areas around the world. The USA South East will be particularly vulnerable.
Most scientist appear to support the fact that humans are adding to global warming. If I get a chance tonight I will relate a summary of a reasonable action plan that was outlined in Scientific America for battling Global Warming.
If we choose to, there appears to still be enough time to avert disaster.
Jim
Your attitude sort of reminds me of the story of the mother watching watching the military band that here son is in march by and saying, “Look, everybody is out of step but my Johnny!” You seem to be positing some mechanism by which scientific skepticism has broken down in this case because you are so sure that the level of knowledge doesn’t justify the level of consensus. Might it just maybe be possible that these scientists know more about it than you do and they have good reason to believe the science is much stronger than you believe it to be? Might it be that any scientific theory subjected to this sort of scrutiny would be criticized just as vigorously (case in point: evolution)? [I like to say that if quantum field theory went against people’s strong religious or political beliefs or economic interests, there would be people saying, “How they hell can you trust a theory that gets infinite values for some calculations of physical quantities!?!”]
This is not a new theory! The first calculations of what might happen if human emissions doubled CO2 in the atmosphere was carried at by Arrhenius around 1900 (and some of the ideas he was basing it on go back several decades earlier)! In fact, this is a theory that had a quite long time “in the wilderness” before becoming generally accepted by the scientific community. Before the 1950s, when the first accurate measurements were made of CO2 levels showing that they were steadily increasing, many (if not most) scientists believed that the oceans would likely be able to absorb the CO2 we were releasing by burning fossil fuels. And, even after that, it was a long time before people became convinced that this rise in CO2 would lead to warming that would not be cancelled out by other factors (such as the cooling effects of the aerosol pollutants that we were also releasing and the natural fluctuations in climate…including the belief that we might be overdue for descent into the next Ice Age). Scientists were indeed skeptical for a long time; however, the evidence finally accumulated to the point where nearly all of them active in the field no longer are. A good history of the subject can be found online here.
Mind you, I am not saying that actually calculating the future climate and its effects is an easy problem…It is mind-bogglingly complicated and we are likely in for some surprises down the road. However, it will take some sort of incredible luck if these surprises somehow all break in the direction of it not being a major problem!
One area where I think the climate skeptics’ PR has been very successful is in confusing the different issues involved in anthropogenic climate change hypotheses and the different levels of confidence that apply to them. They have managed to spread the very misleading idea that if we’re uncertain about some things related to climate change, then we must be equally uncertain about everything.
This idea is scientifically stupid but very, very politically effective.
Oh, really? Since when have lawmakers required “rock solid” scientific certainty before “making radical changes with far reaching consequences in the global economy”? I don’t remember anybody providing “rock solid certainty” beforehand about the consequences of trade-liberalization agreements or protective tariffs, for example, or about the efficacy of AIDS-prevention programs, or about the safety of using growth hormones or offal-meal for raising livestock.
It’s disingenuous special pleading to demand that in the area of climate change policy alone, unlike all other policy areas dealt with by government, we are somehow required to have “rock solid” scientific certainty about all the outcomes before we can make any policy decisions. Ultimately, this type of appeal to unrealistically stringent standards of evidence is simply a rhetorical delaying tactic (though I don’t accuse you personally of deliberately using it that way, xt.
The longer we sit around with our thumbs up our asses demanding absurd levels of “rock solid certainty” before we’re willing to take any action at all, the less effective our actions are likely to be. This wait-and-see approach is especially counterproductive given that, as I pointed out upthread, we can be almost entirely certain that we’ll have to cut down radically on our atmospheric CO2-pumping sometime pretty soon. The issue is not whether we need to reduce our emissions: it’s whether we need to start doing it within the next five years or can afford to wait another fifty.
Might it be that I’m wrong? Certainly. Might it be that scientists know more about this than I do? Definitely. SHOULD it be rigorously being scrutinized within the scientific community? Yes, it should be. Perhaps it is and the fact that there is no decention is because the theory is so air tight that its a fact, and the only questions are in the small details. I freely acknowledge all of that jshore, as I have in the past in these threads. I’m just a bit leery myself when I see so may people in some may different fields jumping on the popularist bandwagon…and when I DON’T see a lot of opposing theories or folks calling various aspects into question. From what I’ve read (layman that I am), it just doesn’t seem to warrent the kind of shoulder to shoulder solidarity that come to a theory like, say, Evolution (since you brought it up). Maybe the two are equivelent and in my ignorance I’m just not seeing it. If so, I appologize for my stubornness. I’ve followed these threads whenever they pop up on this board, I’ve read a lot of interesting articles and poured through a lot of data I only half understand, I’ve talked to people who do this stuff for a living…and I’m still not convinced.
Maybe reading through your history will do more to convince me (I plan to go through it tonight, time permitting). For one thing, I didn’t realize the whole global warming thing has been looked at and theorized about for over a century. I thought that scientists believed we were actually in a cooling period, or that we could be going into a new ice age…or whatever. I’ve heard so many gloom and doom scenerios that perhaps THIS time, that its real, my inate skepticism about such things has gotten the better of me and I’ve closed my mind too much. It happens…
-XT
jshore, thanks for your comments above. Consider the following.
Since 1900, the world has warmed about 0.6°C. How much of this is due to humans? Scientists vary on this question, with some saying most, some saying little, many saying in between. The IPCC says somewhere around half.
Lets take that as a working estimate. Now, in 1900 CO2 emissions were quite small, no cars, no trucks, no airplanes. It was horse and buggy days. Since then, we’ve built up a huge economy relying on fossil fuels, and use air conditioners, refrigerators to store food and medicine, and all the rest. In the process, we’ve increase the CO2 content of the air from three hundredths of a percent (0.03%) to about four hundredths of a percent.
Now if the assumption is correct, and all of this did in fact result from a change of one hundredth of a percent in CO2 levels (no proof of that, not even much evidence of that, but let’s assume it did), my question is this:
jshore, are you willing to give all of those things up and go back to the horse and buggy days in exchange for a global cooling of 0.3°C? Truly?
Now I can hear people thinking “we don’t have to do that, just cut back on emissions” … but that’s a fantasy. Supporters and opponents of Kyoto agree that the effect of Kyoto if all the signatories met their goals (few of them have been able to meet them, but that’s another story) is estimated to be perhaps 0.06°C in 50 years. That’s a temperature change too small to even measure … at a cost of billions of dollars already, perhaps trillions in the future.
Then people say “But Kyoto is just the beginning, we need to do more”, which sends shudders down my spine … since “the beginning” has involved spending billions, perhaps trillions, to achieve an unmeasurable change, I must confess I’m not all that interested in taking the next step. What will that involve, spending trillions, perhaps quadrillions, for a barely measurable temperature decrease? Count me out.
In short, we’ve undertaken one of the most expensive projects in human history, in quest of a temperature change too small to measure, based on disputed evidence and primitive climate models … and you ask who’s out of step in the parade?
w.
Does it bother you similarly that there is very little dissent in the scientific community concerning the basic theory of evolution by natural selection? The basic premise of biological evolution by natural selection and the basic premise of increasing atmospheric CO2 causing increased global temperatures both date back to the late 19th century, and both AFAIK are about equally accepted among serious scientists.
You’re quite right that there is lots of room to debate the more complicated parts of global-warming hypotheses, not just the minor details. But AFAIK, absent some really unforeseen natural mechanism for massive spontaneous carbon absorption, there is no serious scientific alternative to the non-controversial statement that IF YOU PUT LOTS OF EXTRA CARBON DIOXIDE INTO THE ATMOSPHERE, THE EARTH WILL GET WARMER.
About that simple premise, AFAICT, it really is true that those who seriously dispute it are either knaves or fools. Yes, there’s a whole lot of uncertainty concerning related issues—how much CO2 counts as “lots”? What’s the minimum amount required to make a detectable temperature change? How much warming will result? How quickly will it happen? What other climate mechanisms will be brought into play that might counteract the warming results? Etc. etc. etc. There is indeed a lot of dissension on these issues, and it’s not being hidden.
But if anybody tries to tell you that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations indefinitely just isn’t going to raise global temperatures, then you can take it as a given that they either (a) don’t know what they’re talking about, (b) are attention-seeking contrarians who just like to seem unconventional and “free-thinking”, or (c) are taking somebody’s money to confuse the public about the issues.
You’re still totally missing the real issue here. Re-read what I wrote above. The point is not to produce a temperature decrease or to reverse the warming that’s already been caused. The point is to find a way to stop our current patterns of emissions before we increase atmospheric CO2 levels to a point that will almost certainly have extremely severe consequences.
Look at it this way. Say you’re sitting in your living room belting back a shot of tequila every ten minutes, like clockwork. Now, after ten or twenty or forty minutes, you may be somewhat drunk, but you’re most likely still basically okay.
Should you bother taking measures to sober yourself up (black coffee, cold water, fresh air, whatever)? No, it’s not really worth it, you’re probably in no danger of alcohol poisoning or other serious ill effects from the amount you’ve drunk so far. But what you do desperately need to do is stop the pattern of belting another shot every ten minutes, because at some point in the not-too-distant future that pattern will land you in serious trouble. See?
Whoops, in my previous post I got kind of loud and scoldy in response to intention, forgetting that I wasn’t still talking to xtisme, whom I know on these boards better than I do intention, and can venture to take more liberties with conversationally. 
I stand by what I said, but I apologize for my, um, forceful tone.
intention, here are some of my thoughts on what you have said (in addition to kimstu’s important point):
(1) If you look back at the history of environmental and health regulation (with the regulation of CFCs being the most recent and analogous), you will see a history of those who have the most to lose economically trying to convince the rest of us that economic ruin will befall us all if said regulations are adopted. In fact, as this piece points out, generally the actual costs of complying with these regulations turns out to be less not only than the industry folks estimate but even than the counterestimates given, e.g., by the EPA. Why? Probably because the market finds cheaper ways to solve the problem than people anticipate. This is not to minimize this situation…Clearly the emission of CO2 is fundamental to any combustion process…and it will liberate CO2 long removed from the atmosphere (and the carbon cycle) if you are combusting fossil fuels. So, yes, we do have a challenge ahead of us. However, it is a challenge that we are going to have to meet sometime anyway. After all, fossil fuels are a finite resource…and for oil it looks like we are getting to the stage where increasing demand and leveling off & eventually decreasing supply are going to push prices up anyway. (Coal will last somewhat longer.) The point of Kyoto and such is to push forward a transition that we are going to have to make eventually anyway. The same people who predict economic ruin will befall us if we start dealing with this problem now don’t seem so concerned of the ruin that will befall us if we just go about our merry ways until the resources start to run out.
(2) This statement about Kyoto only changing the temperature by 0.06 K in 50 years is meaningless…or ill-defined. For one thing, I have never gotten a straight answer from anyone on how this is calculated. I.e., Kyoto only mandates emissions (and then only for the industrialized nations) over a 5-year time period of 2008 through 2012, so what were the assumptions on what emissions would be after 2012? I mean, even if all 6 billion of us took a “holiday” from earth and didn’t emit any greenhouse gases for a 5-year period, we’d only delay the warming by 5 years! What exactly is the point? And, as b[kimstu** notes, the point of Kyoto is to start a process whereby we wean ourselves from our current energy sources and wasteful use of energy. In economic terms, it is a way of internalizing the externalized cost of our greenhouse gas emissions…or, in layman’s terms, it is about not allowing people to use the atmosphere as a free sewer for greenhouse gases. People like President Bush talk about technology investment vs caps on emissions as if they were two separate approaches. In fact, you need caps on emissions exactly for the reason that you want to get (private sector) technology investment. In market economies, people don’t make investments to negate costs that they are not paying for directly (because they are foisting these costs onto everyone else).
(3) Yes, we have to set down a difficult path. But just think what we might have accomplished already if we had invested, say, the hundreds of billions of dollars we are wasting in Iraq in technology to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions! And, with new challenges come new opportunities. Sure, if you are a coal miner, it is not a happy change…but there will be plenty of opportunities for money to be made in the technologies of alternative energy, energy efficiency, and carbon sequestration. Furthermore, the longer that we delay, the more draconian will be the measures we have to take and the more expensive it will be. While the modeling of the economics of this are still pretty primitive, there was, for example, a Science article that showed that under a set of minimal assumptions, it would be much cheaper to start to take actions now under the assumption that it wouldn’t be until 2035 that we would know with certainty what CO2 level we had to stay under, than it would be to delay until then taking action.
After over a century of vigorous debate and study of the theory by multiple scientific disiplines and hundreds if not thousands of scientists for decades? No, it doesn’t bother me at all…the theory is mature enough, the data spans multiple fields of scientific inquiry (from geology through DNA evidence…we are talking about a WIDE range of data points). You might say that global warming has a similar time scale of inquiry and debate…but I didn’t hear the term until a decade or so ago and from what I’ve read in the past the theory is no where near as solid as Evolution. I conceed that I haven’t had time to look over jshores linked history yet though so I’m still speaking from what I know atm.
-XT
By the way, the IPCC believes that “most” of the warming in the latter half of the 20th century is due to greenhouse gases, which means now means at least 50% of what is about 0.5 K (see here). Also, at least some of the warming due to greenhouse gases has likely been masked by cooling due to sulfate aerosols. For good reasons, we are likely to reduce the negative forcing due to these as the forcing due to greenhouse gases continues to grow. Finally, the earth is currently out-of-equililibrium balance with the current amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so even if we were to stabilize all the levels tomorrow, there would still be some additional warming “in the pipeline” (with Ithe estimates of this being, I believe, on the order of 0.5 K).
Because a hell of a lot of respected scientists say so. If they are correct and we are running out of time,whats the cost of rejecting their viewpoint. Huge. Terminal. It may not be totally true. Do you suggest it has no basis . Then you dismiss a lot of respected scientists as an intellectual exercise. I am a skeptic on damn near everything. I do not completely accept this either. But I dont want my son to pay the cost of my arrogance of dismissing because it isn,t proven enough.
Did you read what I actually wrote? No…of course you didn’t. Its you after all. 
-XT
And a snotty remark. It is you after all.
Did you not say human impact unknown. ?Would that imply a wait and see attitude?. Does the impact on industry have to be negative.? Would that not open up new technologies and forms of energy which are new industries. ? if we wait to be sold because it might cause jobs to go, I suggest ecological autos and power industries would result in new business which we forgo by twiddling our thumbs. I think it is way past time to act…
I usually reserve it for you.
Yes…I did say that the complete human impact is unknown. No, I’m not implying a ‘wait and see attitude’. I am, however, against far sweeping social and economic changes at a fundamental level to an industrialized nation without something a bit more solid on what kind of return we can expect for the pain such measures would cause. As I’ve asked in other threads…is Kyoto enough? What kind of return can we expect for the economic distruption? If its not enough…then what IS enough? And whats the projected cost in real terms and for what aproximate gain? Will a few trillion dollars in lost productivity gain us a halt in global warming? A reversal? A slow down?
You seem to want to dictate change, to mandate technology as if you can just do it by government fiat. Lets just DO ecological autos and a whole new power industry…easy, right? Wave the magic government wand and all things are possible. However, watching the Euro’s struggle just to meet Kyoto seems to indicate to me at least that it won’t be all THAT easy…and their situation is completely different than ours in terms of private transport and city lay out. Go there on day and see for yourself. Their countries are like our states…but their populations are really compressed in a lot of cases, very focused. And they have a different outlook on personal liberties than we do in the US…and THEY are having troubles meeting their Kyoto goals. And yet…from what I understand, Kyoto is merely the first (small) step in what REALLY has to supposedly be done.
But oh, you say…what about the huge costs of not doing anything? Well…that could very well be true. However, its not KNOWN what those costs MIGHT be…while (in theory…as I’ve said, I never have gotten a clear answer to this) the costs of attempting to stop GW will be huge, whatever they will be.
And here is the thing…the oil is running out. By this point I think every is starting to come to grips with that. There are ALREADY alternative technologies in the pipeline just waiting to mature…and for there to be a market for them. This might turn out to be a self limiting problem as a poster said above (though probably didn’t mean it this way)…our current pollution levels aren’t sustainable.
IMHO our best bet is to push ahead…not tie up our or stifle our economy but ramp it up! Want cleaner cars? Fine by me. There are ways to encourage manufacturers to experiment more and develop more, to give them an incentive to do so. We are already doing some of that in fact…we could do more, and though it would distort the market I’d be in favor. Want to take a big bite out of emmissions in the power industry? Get the nuclear power back on the front burner in the US and go great guns. Again, provide incentives to make clean and safe nuke plants everywhere…replace all the oil/coal burners that you can. I’m all for it.
-XT
The complete theory of evolution is indeed much better understood and widely accepted than the complete theory of climate change, and I never said it wasn’t. I was comparing the fundamental premises of the two theories, i.e.:
- “Evolution takes place by mutation and natural selection” and
- “Increasing atmospheric CO2 increases planetary surface temperatures” (the “greenhouse effect”).
AFAIK, those two basic statements are about equally solid, scientifically speaking, and anybody who tells you that either of them is seriously disputed by scientists is quite far outside the scientific mainstream.
Your “but I’ve never heard of it until recently” argument doesn’t cut much ice, though (no pun intended). Biological evolution was a very socially controversial topic right from the get-go, and has always attracted a HUGE amount of popular attention. Atmospheric physics theories have a lot less sex appeal, and it’s not surprising that you never heard about this one until it too began to show some socially controversial consequences.
You’ve probably never heard of radial stellar pulsation theory either (it’s an astrophysical explanation of the causes of periodic changes in the luminosity of certain variable stars, which after a century or so of investigation reached scientific-consensus status around the mid-twentieth century). But that’s not because the basic premise of the theory isn’t widely accepted or well-studied; it’s simply because the subject of the theory isn’t glamorous enough to attract lots of attention in popular media.
But as I keep saying, it IS KNOWN that the costs of inaction will EVENTUALLY be almost certainly catastrophic. We can’t keep pumping out large amounts of excess atmospheric carbon indefinitely without very grave consequences. That is KNOWN.
We really don’t have a realistic choice between acting and not acting. We only have a choice between starting to act now and starting to act later. And as jshore pointed out, the evidence strongly suggests that the sooner we start to address the problem, the less draconian the remedies will be.
Moreover, do you have a cite for any of your claims that emissions-reduction strategies will be so expensive? “A few trillion dollars in lost productivity”? Says who? That runs counter to recent research that suggests that efforts to meet Kyoto targets actually have a net economic benefit compared to non-compliance, as per this Nature article.
Exactly. And as jshore noted, to give industries the desired market incentives, we have to stop distorting the market by letting them treat the atmosphere as their free sewer for greenhouse-gas emissions. The chief point of Kyoto is to marketize greenhouse emissions so that the global economy works for emissions reduction instead of against it. ISTM that that would be a lot more powerful and efficient approach than your rather feeble suggestion of merely handing out market-distorting subsidies.