Physicists don't believe in global warming anymore?

Great Debates
21

In 1977, Jimmy Carter said that oil would peak in 8 years, and that the oil supply was a crisis situation, and that ‘deep sacrifice’ was the only thing that would save us. Good thing we didn’t listen.

After 3-mile Island, nuclear hysteria destroyed the nuclear industry. Too bad we listened, or we might not have the global warming problem we have now.

When Rachel Carson wrote ‘Silent Spring’, anti-DDT hysteria led to excessive bans, which caused malaria to flourish again, killing millions of children in the third world.

In the 1970’s, Paul Erlich wrote ‘The Population Bomb’, and the Club of Rome declared that we were only two decades away from worldwide mass starvation, and they recommended dramatic programs to curb population growth. Good thing we didn’t listen, because our problem today is a potential population crash.

In 1978, Jimmy Carter declared that the U.S. should equip 2.5 million homes with solar cells. Good thing you didn’t listen, because those old cells were so inefficient that they probably didn’t even reach energy breakeven over the energy used to build them, and it would have been a gigantic waste of resources.

This is the problem with ‘just doing something’. A better rule should be, “First, do no harm.” Rushing willy-nilly to counter every environmental scare that comes down the pike eats up precious resources and costs lives. And furthermore, it’s like the boy who cried wolf - when the time comes when a REAL problem comes along (and this may be one), you have no credibility left to get people to take you seriously.

Do you have any idea what it would cost today to do anything meangingul about CO2 emissions? I don’t mean little symbolic efforts that make everyone feel better but which don’t amount to anything - I mean real, deep cuts in CO2 - say, enough to cut man’s influence on the atmosphere in half. This isn’t a case of just putting a few scrubbers on smokestacks, or changing the regulations so that exhaust has fewer unburned byproducts in it - CO2 isn’t a trace pollutant - it’s the primary result of the conversion of fossil fuels to energy. You can only reduce it by either reducing energy consumption, or sequestering it, or by moving to another form of energy.

Only the last option holds any hope for meaningful cuts, and it’s only going to happen when an alternative is found that is portable enough to use in cars and cheap enough that the world will voluntarily choose to use it. ‘Feel good’ measures like conservation in the U.S. are worse than useless - they’re counter-productive. Oil is fungible, so reducing the use of it here just lowers the price so that more is used elsewhere - and the U.S. uses it more efficiently than anyone. It also reduces the incentive for U.S. companies to find alternatives.

This is not an easy problem, and if you just ‘do something’ by using the hammer of government to push people around, you’ll just destroy the economy and make the problem worse.

22

:rolleyes:

You got that from the same sources as the ones saying the left is hijacking the science and the scientists are not recommending action?

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10175

23

Yep, every year. It’s a big meeting, though – there’s roughly 25 sessions going simultaneously all week. Most of the talks are contributed 10 minute talks. Anyone who wants to give one can. This is how physics graduate students get a chance to present their research despite the fact that no one knows who they are (and thus wouldn’t know to invite them to speak).

24

Like open-mike night at a comedy club. Kinda cool!

Know any stories about some guy who says something everybody scorns, but is later proved to be on to something? Not on something on to something. Love stories like that.

25

Especially if there is beer involved.

26

No offense intended, but I think this is an example of the alarmism you decry in earlier posts. No one is planning to or wants to destroy the economy. I know Rush Limbaugh likes to go on and on about how environmentalists are all Marxists and want to destroy the economy, but I don’t think he can be taken seriously.
The costs associated with switching from a high-carbon emission economy to a low-carbon emission economy look to be around 1% of global GDP (I think that’s from the Stern Report, but I’m happy to look it up if you like,) while the costs associated with unmitigated climate change could run as high as 20% of global GDP. If these costs are anywhere near correct, then it should be a no-brainer rather than a political controversy.

27

This is the exact same argument that was used some decades ago regarding pollution controls. It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.

28

Perhaps someone who is a member of the APS could let us know:

a) How the APS members were polled to come to the APS consensus statement on warming.

b) The actual questions in the poll.

c) How people answered the questions.

You see, this is the problem I have with statements that claim to come from, say, the 50,000 scientists who are members of the APS. When it comes down to it, I have not yet found any organization that actually asked their members before issuing the statement. Sure, the President or the PR guy and a few other folks wrote it and published it, but I don’t know one single organization that actually had the balls to ask their members about their views before issuing the proclamations that you guys seem to find so appealing.

But I’m happy to be proved wrong. I’m happy for you guys to show me that the APS statement, that people here seems to think actually represents the views of 50,000 scientists, really does reflect those views. Or any of the other statements such as the ones from the AAAS or other organizations, for that matter. Bring on the polls asked, bring on the questionnaires that determined the APS or the AAAS or the other published statements on the matter.

I’m willing to wait … but if you can’t show that, perhaps you could estimate for me exactly how many scientists did sign off on the APS statement …

And if you can’t tell me that … then tell me why on earth would you put any weight on an unsigned, un-reviewed statement at all?

w.

29

intention: It is sort of like representative democracy. Organizations like APS have elections to their council and then the council acts on behalf of the members. If the council does something that a lot of members don’t like, chances are the members will elect new ones to fill their place.

At any rate, I could understand if someone wanted to make the claim that one or two organizations got hijacked on some issue…But, to imagine that this has happened with practically every major scientific organization really calls for a big conspiracy theory.

By the way, there was a recent poll conducted of AGU and AMS members in regards to the global warming issue. And, while I am skeptical that a poll is a better way than to actually do it through the councils (where they can make sure that the people who know the most about the subject actually contribute the most) since most of the members of the AGU and AMS are not in the fields of climate science…e.g., some are probably TV weathermen (despite how this report of the poll phrases some of the results), the results do show:

97% believe “global average temperatures have increased” during the past century.

84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring.

41% believe global climate change will pose a very great danger to the earth, 44% rate climate change as moderately dangerous, and only 13% see relatively little danger.

26% rate “An Inconvenient Truth” as “very reliable” and another 38% as “somewhat reliable”. This is higher than the ratings for traditional news sources. By contrast, no more than 1% of climate experts rate Michael Crichton’s novel “State of Fear” as very reliable.

30

jshore, thanks for your response. It would be like a representative democracy, but only if the APS were to elect their president and whoever else decided on their climate policy based on their knowledge of climate science … unfortunately, they don’t.

And as a result of people with little knowledge of climate science making APS climate policy, we end up with things like this latest development in this curious saga:

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

w.

31

intention: Thanks for your post. I don’t see much to that except Monckton being pouty. If he didn’t want what transpired to occur, he should have just been content to publish this article trying to convince physicists of his point-of-view rather than trying to use the APS to lend credibility to an article whose science is atrocious. In particular, he shouldn’t have had the organization that he is “chief policy officer” in put out a press release whose first sentence is packed with falsehoods about the paper.

And, he is wrong if he thinks his article underwent any real scientific peer review. It sounds to me that an editor not qualified in the field just read it over and made suggestions regarding presentation issues. My prediction is that the article will be torn apart by people who actually have a modicum of knowledge in the field; here’s one discussion of some of the issues with it already…And, while I haven’t read most of it (and can’t vouch for having checked Tim Lambert’s claims), I already see that he has proven his inability to correctly interpret a contour plot (in regards to his Fig. 4) and made several wrong statements in the introduction.

I also love how he says: “I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.” Man, this guy is clueless! He doesn’t even know that if it had been a real peer-reviewed journal, not only would he not be paid but he would likely have to pay page charges!

32

By the way, having wasted about an hour of my life reading through Monckton’s article, I can now say that Tim Lambert’s critiques are right on target. It truly is really, really bad.

33

jshore, I keep asking questions, you keep not answering. I had asked regarding the APS statement:

I’m still waiting for an answer to this question. Instead of answering, you gave me a lecture on representative democracy … thanks, but that’s not what I asked. So I ask again …

How many scientists does the unsigned, un-peer-reviewed APS statement represent? Or the unsigned, un-peer-reviewed AAAS statement on climate change? Or the statement from the Russian equivalent of the NAS?

Or, if you can’t answer any of these, perhaps you could answer the last question above …

w.

34

Assuming you mean the APS official stance on global warming, as said by the thing that stance is based on the APS council’s belief. Here’s how large the group is:

http://www.aps.org/about/governance/executive/index.cfm

There appears to be something like a minimum of 14 and most likely significantly more since they add in division and forums directors and a whole bunch of others. As a representatives of their various subdivisions, they of course represent the APS as a whole, and are likely selected for their positions based on general sanity and impartiality. They certainly don’t represent the opinion of every individual within the APS, but they do represent the majority position at minimum–just as any representative system will do.

35

Actually, the only people who tried to put a “50,000” figure into circulation were the ones gleefully seizing on Monckton’s article as a demonstration that one entire discipline of science has decided that AGW is false. I have seen no evidence that anyone, here, believes that the statement from the APS directorate is a statement from 50,000 unified voices.

36

In post #29, I explained what I thought was relevant, to summarize:

(1) I don’t believe that polling the membership is always the best way for a scientific organization to produce such statements. This is because the executive committee (or council, or whatever they call themselves) of such organizations are usually best able to find the people within them who have the relevant expertise, which may be only a fraction of the membership.

(2) Those caveats noted, I did present a poll that was done of the AGU and AMS members. I don’t know of any poll done of the APS members.

(3) I noted that, while I could understand someone having the concern about one or two organizations conceivably being “hijacked” by an executive committee out of touch with the rank-and-file, that would likely result in a large widespread revolt by the membership. Furthermore, suggesting that such hijacking has occurred en masse for all the relevant organizations in the case of climate change seems to require a pretty big conspiracy theory.

37

I believe I’ve seen opinion raised that global warming is established fact based on the overwhelming opinion of the scientific community. Granted the absolute has not been generated because there are never absolutes in scientific opinion. But overwhelming opinion should be regarded in the same light of an absolute barring the obvious because it doesn’t change the weight of the argument significantly.

38

Sage Rat, thank you for showing jshore how to actually answer a question. You say:

See how easy it is, jshore? You just do the research, step up and say “14 people”.

However, Sage Rat, there is no reason to assume that those 14 people in any way “represent the majority position” regarding climate science. That’s like assuming that 14 people elected to run a small town “represent the majority position” of people in that town regarding climate science. Why should they? The were elected to run the town, not to represent the townspeople regarding climate.

All the best,

w.

PS - tomndebb, you say:

Well, Sage Rat says it represents “the majority position” of those 50,000 voices.

And to paraphrase, actually, the only person gleefully saying that Monckton’s article shows that physicists have “decided that AGW is false” is you. The claims that I read in the blogosphere state that this shows the science is not settled, not that AGW is false.

w.

39

Our automobile industry is in the shitter and scrambling to shift to the demands of a market that suddenly cares about gas mileage. Of course, the Japanese have a thirty year head start on us, and Ford may be headed toward a massive government bailout. Good thing we didn’t listen.

40

Yes, it’s a VERY good thing we didn’t listen. Because Oil crashed to as low as $14/bbl, and if the U.S. had converted to a very expensive energy economy demand for oil would have been lower and price might have been lower.

In practice, this would have meant that the U.S. was spending far more for energy than the countries who didn’t listen to the peak oil alarmists like Carter. This would have made American goods more expensive and less competitive, and might have ruined the American economy.