Is global warming falsifiable?

Great Debates
161

Gigo, it is nice that you can link to youtube. Really, that is neat. However linking to YouTube isn’t an argument.

About the models, you are right . I don’t put much faith in them. However, those who
Claim the science is settled and that we know EVERYTHING rely on models. So showing that some models come to different or new conclusions highlights that we really don’t know everything.

Next, the scientist say the CO2 sequestration in the deserts is likely temporary. However that ‘likely’ is a guess. The history of science is littered with things that scientists thought were likely that turned out to be absolutely wrong. Additionally, this is a new finding. How many other things out there are poorly, or not, understood? From what I can tell there is a whole lot we don’t know that we don’t know.

As to you not.liking CO2.Science, well I’ll drop them as a source as soon as you drop Skeptical Science which is ran by the worst of the climate alarmists.

Slee

162

And that is only shooting the messenger, that was Richard Alley, a well renown paleoclimatologist.

Only that as I showed, not much of a difference, usually what happens in cases like this is that you reply thanks to the spin already made from denier cites that claim that difference, only to find out out that the paper itself is relying on the current research and not so far from what is commonly agree that is going on.

Is that a record for dumping a cited scientist, that did not worked out as expected, under the bus by a contrarian? :slight_smile:

Again, “the history of science is littered with things that scientists thought were likely that turned out to be absolutely wrong.” The problem here is that even if it is correct (and needs verifying) the numbers are not enough to sequester all what we are spewing, this is only buying us a few years and it is part of the explanation why there is a “pause”.

No, you drop it because their conclusions are wrong, declaring that there is no ocean rise, nor that CO2 is not a reason goes against a mess of many other scientific papers that were and are published on higher quality journals.

I will not drop Skeptical Science because even conservative scientists recommend their use and even contribute to it.

The point here is that it is not just me who arrived to the conclusion that Co2science is the pits, using it only shows the company you keep:

163

Unless the OP wishes to come back around and show his evidence for these assertions presented as fact:

Then he or she should retract them.

Failing either of those things, we should close this thread. Threads about climate change can be purposeful and allow for debate. But when a thread is started with such a faulty premise by an OP who then vanishes, it’s purpose is not to debate and nobody should try and be coy and think otherwise.

164

Biologist Predicts Need to ‘Eat the Bodies of Your Dead’

Yep, he’s back.

165

The difference on what Skeptical Science and sites like CO2science does is striking, I just looked at Skeptical Science and it pointed at the latest IPCC report with lots of papers reporting about the ocean rise.

Co2science just sits on one unlinked paper, and no clue on where they figure out how they dealt with the physical properties of having more CO2 in the atmosphere not having an influence in the ocean rise. The actual paper does not deal with that, at all, CO2Sciece pulled that “not due to CO2” claim from their asses, the scientists did not claim that, and they clarify that the linear (and still going up) trend is not accelerating now because of other factors.

And then, because of the uncertainty levels they encountered regarding if the trend will be linear or accelerate:

http://kaares.ulapland.fi/home/hkunta/jmoore/pdfs/Jevrejevaetal2013GPChange.pdf

Bottom line: yet another paper misrepresented by CO2Science. The authors of the paper actually reported how things are not likely to remain so “linear”.

166

And indeed he is jeered, and with reason, IIRC he also claimed that because of global cooling (in the 70s) was an even-money bet whether England would survive until the year 2000. What is curious here is that usually his name pops up a lot in contrarian sites just to show how “warmists” are loopy. However, almost all sources I use do not give him the time of the day, they ignore him or put him down too.

167

I know GIGO has already responded to these quite well, but I have a couple of comments of my own.

Nice job constructing a ridiculous strawman. I don’t recall anyone ever claiming that “we know everything”. What the current state of climate science tells us, and what the IPCC, the National Climate Assessment, the National Academy of Sciences, and the national academies of all the major nations of the world state is that we know enough about the serious implications of climate change to be actionable, and we’ve known it for quite some time. Failure to understand this just demonstrates ignorance of the science or willful denial.

No, this is yet another demonstration of someone completely failing to understand a scientific paper. As a matter of fact it’s not even a paper, the referenced piece is a commentary in Nature about a paper, the paper in question being the Poulter et al. paper in the same issue. And that paper (and Metcalfe’s commentary) talks about inter-annual variations in atmospheric carbon. A better understanding of carbon sinks is important to improved climate modeling but has very little to do with the overall impact of the 35 billion metric tons of CO2 we emit annually. That’s why the CO2 concentration curve looks like this. As a matter of fact Metcalfe himself (along with many others) has suggested that there is a risk that saturating carbon sinks is an inevitable positive feedback that will accelerate the rate of CO2 accumulation. This is inevitable particularly with the oceans warming and saturating.

Wrong again. Increasing overall ocean temperatures are a direct and inevitable result of increasing global temperature. It’s been known for a long time that SSTs vary to due a wide variety of global and regional circulation systems like the AMOC, the PDO, the AMO, the ENSO (El Nino), and the entire thermohaline system. These are all internal variabilities whose impact is limited in duration and/or regional scope. The ocean as a whole responds to changes in the earth’s total energy budget and in the long term that’s all that matters – the net gain of thermal energy, not moving it around from one place to another. This is another attempt to spread FUD by obfuscation due to either not understanding or misrepresenting a scientific paper.

Ha ha – “published in CO2 Science” – lol – an oxymoron if ever there was one! CO2 science is a paid shill for the fossil fuel industry, run by denialist brothers Craig and Keith Idso and their dad Sherwood, all of whom have been on the payroll of coal company Western Fuels and receive funding from Exxon Mobil to run one of their many denialist astroturf fake-science front groups.

The reality is that sea level rise is accelerating, rising in recent decades at an average of about 3.2 millimeters a year, roughly twice the average rate of the preceding 80 years, directly correlated with the accelerating losses of Arctic and Antarctic land ice. Moreover, recent findings of unexpectedly massive melt in the west Antarctic suggest that the rate of sea level rise will accelerate still further.

So you want to compare the website Skeptical Science with a coal and oil industry shill like CO2 Science? Skeptical Science is an accessible site that provides informal explanations of climate science concepts to the general public. It’s not scientifically rigorous, but it’s generally accurate and informative. Since you claim the site is run by “alarmists”, I’d be interested in knowing what scientific inaccuracies you’ve ever found on that site. If you don’t know of any, then please stop bullshitting.

168

Not directly, but on the other hand anyone who has a problem with any aspect of current global warming theory is labeled a ‘denier’. And the ‘consensus’ of scientists is used to shout down arguments over aspects of global warming theory that enjoy no such consensus. So there are plenty of straw men on both sides.

‘Actionable’ implies that you have a reasonable action plan. I have yet to see one. I’ve seen lots of calls for more government regulation, higher carbon taxes and other expensive interventions, but I have yet to see anyone show how those actions will reduce global CO2 emissions by a significant amount - especially relative to their cost.

I keep asking how you plan to get around the problem of China, India, and Russia refusing to play along, but no one ever has an answer. Just lots of claims that “we have to start somewhere”. That’s kind of like having an action plan to start bailing water out of a boat that has a huge hole in it because you have to start somewhere and you haven’t figured out how to fix the hole.

And aside from China, Russia, and India, I’d like an explanation of why so many ‘green’ countries failed to meet the Kyoto targets they themselves advocated for, and why we should agree to serious financial harm now in the hope that the rest of the world will follow suit when they clearly didn’t the last time a global agreement was attempted?

For that matter, how do you respond to the argument that unilateral reductions in carbon output in the U.S will drive up energy prices locally and reduce fossil fuel prices globally, giving other countries a comparative advantage in manufacturing - so long as they do not follow suit? It seems to me that without a global agreement, taking unilateral action actually makes it less likely that other countries will follow suit because you’ve now incentivized them to keep using fossil fuels to undercut energy-intensive American goods.

And if you’re going to claim that we can cut carbon at low cost (I guess the notion of a ‘green economy’ has finally been killed by reality), I would ask you to have a look at what’s happening to German energy prices in the wake of their intensive efforts to transition to renewable energy. Germany is now in the position of having to force manufacturing facilities to close on certain days because they don’t have enough energy to power them, then pay reparations to the manufacturers and charge the cost to electricity consumers.

Oh, and Germany’s greenhouse gas footprint is actually increasing. It went up 1.5% last year, and this year coal imports are expected to increase 25%. As it turns out, solar power doesn’t work very well as a base load energy source. Something well known to everyone outside the ‘reality-based community’. On sunny days Germany produces too much power and has to export it at a discount. Then on cloudy days it doesn’t make enough, and has to import energy at a premium or ration it.

So I guess that brings me to my next question: If you’re going to shut down all the coal plants, what are you planning to replace them with? Or are you expecting people to be okay with skyrocketing energy prices and the occasional brownout or blackout as an over-stressed grid fails? Germany might be able to sell its excess energy to the EU, but where is excess US energy supposed to go? Mexico? Canada? Good luck with that.

So where’s the scientific validation of whatever your action plan is? I’d like numbers, please. How much will it cost, how much CO2 will be restricted globally, and what will the difference of that restriction be on global warming 50 and 100 years from now? How much money in damages will that save us in net present value, and how does that compare to the cost of your plan?

Before we spend trillions of dollars and cut GDP growth that we might need to be able to afford mitigation activities, surely you can come up with some basic answers to those questions? Ones that take into account things like capital flight to countries that have lower energy costs and the stimulative effect of lowered U.S. demand for fossil fuels in countries that would like to burn more of them?

169

You need a fat cite for that, otherwise it remains just empty rhetoric as John_Stamos’_Left_Ear and others noted.

170

“Your plan?” Sounds to me a lot like the Serengeti tactic. Mind you, I’m really getting tired to see posters think that no one can check were the “original ideas” or strategies used in discussions like this one are most likely to come from.

What it should be noticeable is that the insularity of where some get their information just means that a lot like studies like the next one are completely ignored, and we get affirmations that sound like if they think that no one had done at least some calculations on the matter. Or that the experts in the matter are only guessing. Lets concentrate here in the most likely predicted ocean rise:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/20/these-20-cities-have-the-most-to-lose-from-rising-sea-levels/

Mind you, that is based on a few cities, and with conservative estimates. That is, before the latest studies on what is going on the Antarctic came out.

When the Cayman Islands will be a memory, I think that it is you who is not thinking this carefully. :slight_smile: When one takes the latest studies into account, in the long run many more of those countries will be more unstable thanks to the loss of territory and unrest; so I do think that by then a lot of the ones that told us to do not much of anything will be remembered like the doctors that for years denied that bacterial infection was an issue and rejected the antiseptic ideas of doctors like Lister.

Not very fondly really.

171

No. I (and many others) have been more than willing to engage in reasonable discussions about climate science. But when someone posts nonsense, they can expect to be called out on it. As I’ve had to do in my immediately preceding post, for example – the very one that you’re responding to. The problem is that drivel denying the very existence of AGW is so rampant that it’s hard even to get to the point of being able to discuss either the nuances of specific uncertainties or action plans.

Then you must not have seen this. Or this.

Since the bulk of the emissions out of China and India are in support of manufacturing for us in the western world, it’s more than a little disingenuous to pretend that we have no control over enforcing their compliance with climate policy if we had the political will.

172

Really? So your idea of unfairly picking out straggler notions is to request an actual plan that makes sense and is backed up by some serious numbers?

You really need to stop with this meta-debate you’re engaged in. Your response to hard questions is invariably something along the lines of, “This question sounds vaguely similar to <insert ‘denialist’ source here> therefore, it’s irrelevant and doesn’t have to be answered.”

That’s a useless debating tactic. It amounts to a clever, extended ad-hominem.

Let’s not, because I didn’t ask anything about ocean rise. I asked for your plan to stop it.

Once again, this becomes a shell game. It goes like this:

“Global Warming is threatening the planet! We must do something about it!”
“Okay… What?”
“The oceans are rising!”
“Okay… How does your plan stop that?”
“Denier! Look at the evidence!”
“I’ve seen the evidence, and I agree it’s a problem. How much will your plan cost, and how much warming will it avert?”
“Are you not listening??? WE HAVE TO ACT!”
“Great… Show me a plan. Give me the numbers. Tell me what it will cost, and what we will gain for that cost.”
“THE POLAR CAPS ARE GOING TO MELT!”

And so on… I’ve already accepted that the Earth is warming, man is helping to cause it to warm, and the result could be anything from a net wash to a big disaster, with the median result being reasonably bad outcomes that will cost a lot of money and displace a lot of people - something we’d like to avoid if the cost of doing so isn’t greater than the harm we will avert with our efforts. So you can stop responding with more evidence that global warming might be bad.

To borrow a phrase, let’s Move On, shall we? Let’s concede the science behind global warming, and talk about realistic plans to stop it.

173

Apologies for the generic ‘you’ in my comment. Of course the AGW side of the argument has reasonable people and unreasonable people in the public debate, as does the ‘denier’ side. I have no quarrel with you in particular in terms of your willingness to engage in reasonable debate.

That’s true, and if you’ll look at my posting history for the past several years I’ve been one of the ones trying to move to the more difficult questions and concede the basic science of warming. I’ve even started several threads where I asked to specifically discuss these issues and set a guideline that for the purpose of the thread we would assume that global warming is real, and that it could cause the level of harm described by the IPCC.

What I discovered is that no one wants to have that conversation - on either side. I suspect that’s because the ‘denier’ side doesn’t want to concede anything, and the ‘AGW’ side would rather that the debate be centered on whether or not global warming is happening, because that’s where their strongest arguments are.

I have seen that. It’s a large document, so perhaps you could point me to the section where it lays out a global strategy, breaks out the costs of the strategy, estimates how much CO2 emission can be averted, and gives a cost estimate for how much damage will be avoided? I don’t care if there are big error bars around the numbers - we can correct for risk and uncertainty. But I’d like to at least see the plan.

Most of what I’ve read in that document talks about how to have the debate and what factors need to be considered, but doesn’t get to the point of drawing up actual quantifiable policy proposals that can be debated. But maybe I missed it.

Yeah, I’ve read that one in its entirely. It’s a useless document. Like much of what comes out of this administration, it’s nonsense. And besides, it doesn’t answer any of the questions I asked - it just says what Obama plans to do - not whether it will actually do anything to mitigate climate change.

For a quick example, the document says this:

Actually, I can’t quote from that document. It’s got some weird layout in it that makes it impossible for me to quote from it. But the section I was going to quote says “Hey, we’ve managed to regulate and cut arsenic, mercury and lead emissions from power plants, so why not force them to cut CO2 as well?” Of course, the other elements are not fundamental byproducts of the process the way CO2 is. There are many ways to scrub SO2 out of a smokestack - there is only one way to significantly reduce the amount of CO2 produced from a coal plant, and that’s to reduce total output. It’s a fundamentally different problem. I don’t include sequestration in that, because sequestration is not reasonable nor is it cost-effective.

So the net effect of that ‘plan’ will be to simply force all the coal plants to close. Obama has admitted that before. There is no reasonable plan to replace all that lost energy. Solar and wind can’t come close in the reasonable future, and nuclear power is not moving very fast in the U.S. and even if it were it would take a decade or more to bring a new plant online.

So… a trade war? How much will THAT cost? How much political support do you think you’ll get for that when, on top of skyrocketing energy prices at home you put tariffs on Chinese goods which drives up the price of our iPhones, our clothing, etc? How much support for those tariffs do you think you’ll get from the Democrats when they realize that those price hikes disproportionately affect their own constituents?

Seriously, stuff like this is just hand-waving. “Well, we’ll FORCE them to comply!” Okay… tell me what that will cost. Explain how this will not result in them simply retaliating by freezing import of American goods to China? The U.S. exports $120 billion per year to China. Most of those exports are in the form of high value goods like cars, industrial automation products, jet engines, etc. In other words, the products of the biggest, most politically connected companies in the U.S. Just how much support for a trade war do you think you’re going to find in Washington?

174

No, my complain was based on what I commonly see coming from you so far: You are demanding things that are very odd to be demanded from anyone that claims to be aware of the issue and with command like things like the IPCC reports, sounding indeed like if in reality you are not aware of them, at all, so please stop complaining when I point out that there is a lot of arguments from ignorance coming from you.

Yes, lets, of course looking at your tirade it just became painfully obvious that you are not willing to talk about the one the Washington Post was talking about.

On edit: And based on that, I really have to say that you are only avoiding what wolfpup posted also.

175

“Your plan?” The reason why there is a meta debate is precisely because of things like that one. And part of my plan, as a simple poster on a message board, is precisely to educate others about the groups that are preventing plans from people that have more experience than me from becoming reality.

The point here also is that the contrarian plan to not do anything because of economical considerations is becoming more discredited. It is Penny wise, Pound foolish; more so as the ocean rise is the most likely thing that is coming as a result. No wonder you do not want to deal with it.

Plans have to change now to reflect the changing environment and latest reports, unfortunately a lot of the GDP you are expecting thanks to the idea of not doing much of anything will be swallowed by the need to adapt just in protecting coastal cities and the problem here is that the costs of adaptation increase constantly the longer we wait. As many countries in Europe and in some regions of the USA demonstrated there is a lot that can be done but it is political will the stumbling block now in the USA.

Of course we know why you do not want to talk about the big Republican elephant in the room.

176

Really? If I’m missing information that obvious, perhaps you could provide a link to the kind of study I’m talking about so we can debate it? One I’m aware of is the Stern report, but that is outdated and hilariously bad anyway. Can you link to a better effort that outlines a comprehensive plan and has realistic assessments for how much CO2 it will reduce globally and what that will cost?

Which one is that?
[quoote]On edit: And based on that, I really have to say that you are only avoiding what wolfpup posted also.
[/QUOTE]

No, I don’t think I am. I think we’re talking past each other.

177

Oh, stop being so literal. I mean, “A plan coming from the side advocating action.” I.E. if you say we have to do something now, you must have an idea of what to do, what it will cost, and what its benefits will be.

And which groups are preventing ‘your’ side from even coming up with a plan? I understand there are roadblocks to implementing various plans (coming from very surprising sources once you actually try to do things that cost people money), but before you get to the point where the evil Republicans thwart your plan, there must be a plan to thwart. So what is it?

Really? Can you give me a link to a cite that discredits this plan? I presume it will be a site defending the ‘do something’ plan based on real numbers.

It’s not ‘Penny Wise’ if it turns out to be 800 trillion pennies. Nor is it foolish if those 800 trillion pennies are spent in an attempt to prevent 100 trillion pennies in damage in net present value. Of course, maybe it’s the other way around, so if you’ve got some numbers…

That’s not clear at all - if the adaptation is to prevent damage in 50 years, you have to consider the opportunity cost of investing that money now instead of in things that would grow the economy.

Really, what are you talking about? The U.S. has reduced greenhouse gases, but that’s due to the discovery of new natural gas fields available through fracking - something that was not exactly cheered on by ‘your’ side. Other than that, what have you got?

How about Europe? I already posted that Germany is backing off its ‘green shift’ due to high costs and power shortages, and is actually increasing its CO2 emissions.

But you are still missing the big point - local efforts do almost nothing in the absence of an enforceable global treaty. If everyone but China and Russia cut their fossil fuel use in half, the net winner wouldn’t be the planet - it would be China. Fossil fuel costs would decrease, China would have a huge edge in manufacturing of energy-intensive products, and the reduced social cost of carbon due to others’ conservation efforts would take the heat off China to follow suit, so to speak.

Tell me how the scenario of the U.S. driving up its own energy costs doesn’t have an end result of high-intensity manufacturing simply moving to China? And if China’s overall energy efficiency is lower than the U.S.'s because of older technology or less capital investment, might that not actually increase the carbon footprint of those products?

And we need to talk about political will as well, because it doesn’t do anyone any good to impose hundreds of billions of dollars of costs onto the economy, only to see all the changes undone in four years as people choose to scrap those plans in favor of short-term economic gain. Which, you know, is happening all over the place.

And what would that be?

178

Remember, we are here for the falsifiability of the basic science, we already know that you still have a problem with the models (that are part of basic science too) even when the scientists still stubbornly get results, even if when it is a complex thing, as they showed before with many other issues like CFCs in the atmosphere. Which is why I do not think your “I’ve been one of the ones trying to move to the more difficult questions and concede the basic science of warming.” to be accurate yet. There is still a lot to go.

What I can tell you about your odd request here is that it ignored that there is already and acknowledgement that we can not go cold turkey, and there are already changes that are inevitable, as I pointed before, we re indeed passing from discussing CO2 reduction to the acknowledgement that some adaptation is coming, As it was pointed by wolfpup the IPCC report on mitigation is a good place to start. And the summary can be checked. But that is not really the point of this thread.

The one you did not paid attention, I guess I have to post it again:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/20/these-20-cities-have-the-most-to-lose-from-rising-sea-levels/

And in the article the Post does link directly to the paper:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1979.html

I posted it because it is related to the costs that have to be taken into account now even more because the latest reports are telling us essentially that the few scientists you rely on got it wrong. What I do think is that any talk about costs is not a good one if the costs of not doing anything vs the costs of preparing early is not taken into account.

Could be as you want to have a discussion that is not really part of the OP, as I see it, there is plenty of evidence to show that your say so that “there are plenty of straw men on both sides.” is still based on an equivalence with little to no support.

179

Not the point again, and it was discussed before. Suffice to say that I reported that no solution will be the same far all countries, the only common denominator is to reduce greenhouse gases in the end as as the IPCC reported:

Nordhaus, Alley and others have been cited before, not my problem that you deny that they did so before. (And a different subject again)

And there is your condescension that is baseless, in reality I have the right to say that you did not paid attention before.

Magical thinking, and unsupported too.

The same scenario I said before but as usual you ignore on purpose: I expect nothing less than the end of the communist party and the fall of whoever follows the Russian rulers’ footsteps: if not much is done and the effects then are much worse regarding the ocean rise alone.

**You are describing the problem that is caused in large part thanks to the misinformation going on from right wing sources. **

Oh, stop being so silly. :slight_smile:

180

Come to the central US in June and experience the drought. We used to have amazing summer storms when I was a kid, now we mostly have “rain” that evaporates when it hits the ground if not before.

The places that used to be the kind of semi-arid climate we’re becoming? They’re pretty much on fire all the time. (Southwest US, parts of Australia)

Empirical evidence, directly experienced reality, is the very definition of falsifiable.

Climate change is happening. If you refuse to see it, then you are presumably one of the following: somehow sheltered from it, young and ignorant, or willfully blind.