I can’t tell if you are saying that nobody can predict what the weather will do, or that we can, and that dreadful things are going to occur. If climate is so complex that we cannot create a theory that allows predictions, how do we know that global warming is occurring or will occur? Or are you saying that we know it is happening, but cannot prove it?
Or is it that the models in which you put so much faith are not precise enough to show any effects beyond simple statistical noise?
Your second paragraph is just a restatement of the argument from authority, with a pointless reference to … something or other.
If the Nobel prize-winners don’t have scientific proof, what relevance does their expertise in science have? If they are taking it on faith, shouldn’t you try to get endorsements from the Pope or the Dalai Lama or something?
Your last paragraph is pretty much beside the point. How do we know that weather changes and social breakdowns are caused by global warming? The urbanization effect on temperature measurement has already been mentioned. Is it not possible that this might account for both a perceived increase in temperatures (if that is what you are talking about) as well as social breakdowns? And exactly what social breakdowns are you talking about?
I would also be interested in how you think epidemiology studies are proof of your point. I thought epidemiology was the study of the spread of disease. Is this something you have a cite about, or is it a long word you had somebody tell you while you were driving your cab, and you thought you would throw it into the debate and see if anyone noticed?
And icebergs have been dropping off of Antarctica since time immemorial. Or is the sinking of the Titanic caused by global warming too?
I guess most of my response to your post could be summed up in a word common to this board - cite?
Shodan, I think Mr. Wilson is trying to have his cake and eat it too. I think, though it is hard to tell because his logic isn’t clear, that he believes that the mathmatical models are robust enough to provide a general outline for what will happen to the environment but that the models are not robust enough to actually predict day to day weather conditions. If that is what he is getting at it is a bunch of bunk. On the other hand it could be that he just doesn’t know what he is talking about. Only Mr. Wilson can enlighten us to what he is actually trying to say.
And to Mr. Wilson, to quote you:
<Snipped>
Mr. Wilson, do you realise that your first three statements in the second sentence I quoted describe Einstein to a tee when he worked in the Patent office? Einstein did more valid work before he got a Nobel prize then he did afterwards. Anyway, your whole appeal to authority arguement is just blatantly ignorant.
Thanks, Ace_Face for explaining the sorry saga of the “Oregon petition”…probably one of the biggest embarrassments recently in the intersection of science and policy. To get to the point of being so deceptive that the NAS had to issue a statement disavowing it—It was pretty sad.
This is simply ridiculous. You know in fact that the science in the global warming debate as expressed in the NAS report and the IPCC report and appearing in the pages of peer-reviewed journals such as Nature and Science does not agree with the views of the skeptics. (Admittedly, it does not clearly say that disaster is definitely imminent … But it says that the dangers are very real.)
I agree that one cannot simply accept everything that authority says. But, at some point, one does have to choose policies on the basis of the best understanding of the scientific community at the current time and not on the basis of what a small coterie of industry-funded scientists say (to paraphrase the colorful words used by the editor-in-chief of Science).
Despite your implications, the Working Group III report of the IPCC Third Assessment Report contains lots of economic analysis of costs and benefits. Admittedly, the uncertainties are still large on both costs and benefits of various actions which is why Kyoto is a very modest response. And, if Kyoto were to be the only step taken, as you note, it would be insufficient in and of itself to make a big difference in future warming. Hell, no treaty that only mandates emission levels in 2012 is going to make a huge difference…If we cut our greenhouse gas emissions to zero for 10 years and then resume at our previous rate, it wouldn’t make all that much difference!
The goal of Kyoto is (1) to move to stabilizing emissions in the industrialized countries which still emit the lion’s share of global warming gases and (2) to force a price to be put on such emissions so that the markets in these industrialized countries can respond with the sorts of innovation in the wonderful ways that you, Sam Stone, like to so eloquently expound upon when it involves leaving markets alone externalities and all…but seem to forget about once it comes to actually trying to impose any sort of environmental regulation or tax or whatever to internalize the environmental costs. [The idea is then that the less developed countries will be able to use some of these technologies so that their economic advancement can leapfrog over some of the less efficient technologies that we used that created the environmental problems.]
If we don’t do this now and emissions continue to grow and our wasteful ways continue to be subsidized in our economies then the expense of having to make more drastic cuts more quickly in the future will be far costlier than starting to pursue a more sane course now…And you and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal will be making even more dire claims of the economic havoc that will be wreaked by such cuts. [And, at some point, your predictions of it being so costly might actually start to come closer to the truth!]
Actually, sleestak, the idea that one can predict a lot more about averages of certain variables in the dynamics of a complex chaotic system than one can predict the exact evolution of the variables in time (as one needs to do to predict the precise weather day-to-day) is one of the most basic fundamental principles behind chaos theory. So, if that is the sense in which you think it is bunk, I thin that you are quite mistaken.
Now, admittedly, the science of climate change is still at the state where there are fairly large uncertainties in the magnitudes of the effects. But, this does not mean that it is wrong to say that there is a profound difference between predicting the climate a hundred years from now and predicting the weather precisely on a specific day, say, one year from now. Because of chaos, the latter is a much harder problem; it may well be impossible to ever know initial conditions well enough to do that.
One thing that the chaotic nonlinear nature of the climate system does mean, however, is that we may be in for some surprises if the climate forcings are large enough to cause particularly dramatic nonlinear effects such as shutdown of the jet stream that are not currently included in the climate models. This was the subject of a recent NAS report on so-called “sudden climate change” and is discussed to some degree in the popular science press in an article in the most recent (Sept 2002) Discover Magazine. The science on these sudden climate changes is still pretty young relative to the science of the more gradual changes in response to the greenhouse gas forcings. [Needless to say, if these sorts of effects do occur, then the magnitudes of the human-induced effects on the climate may in fact be larger than predicted.]
P.S.–Just to point out, in the previous thread I’ve linked to regarding global warming, we spent more time discussing the Oregon petition that Sam Stone discusses here…including some of the more easily identifiable falsehoods and half-truths contained in the pseudo-scientific article that accompanied it: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=104877
Jshore: Hang on, I’m not defending that petition. I don’t know how the questions were worded, I don’t know how people were approached, and I don’t know if the signatures represent a significant fraction of professionals working in the various related fields.
I was trying to make the point that appeals to authority, especially as second-hand sources, is a lousy way to win a debate. All it does is shift the debate onto the quality of the authorities, as you’re trying to do now.
I think my understanding of the scientific concensus is pretty accurate. I agree with the figures you posted earlier for likely temperature increase over the next century, but with huge unknowns around that. And to my way of thinking, most of the unknown factors are going to break towards reducing predicted warming, because the system is stable. The rise in temperature we see now may well just be due to hysteresis, and the Earth’s coping mechanisms will start kicking in in unexpected ways.
But sure, we could see some warming, in the ranges you offered.
Where we differ is in evaluating the effect of that temperature increase, and the magnitude of the effect. My understanding is that the best estimate currently is that the world will see a net economic benefit from warming below 2.5 degrees. Above that amount, and there will be net economic damage.
If we knew these numbers exactly, the formula would be simple, as least from an economic standpoint. If the cost of reducing warming is less than damage causes by the warming, minus the cost of the damage done with the reduced warming, then it makes sense to spend the money.
I imagine if you knew all the factors precisely, and plotted economic gain/loss vs cost, you’d see a curve showing increasing cost for relatively smaller benefit. If the curve is exponential, then there will be a point where we gan get the maximum economic advantage.
The problem is, we don’t know any of these values well enough at this point to make intelligent choices. It may be that the poiint of max bang for the buck is already behind us, and we’re better off doing nothing at all. Or it may be that we have to spend a fortune to prevent an even bigger disaster.
We need better numbers. I would support increases for funding environmental research. But let’s wait for some better data before we go off signing expensive world treaties.
(1) Glad that you are not defending that petition. But I would argue that the quality of the authority is very relevant. To some extent, we do have to rely on authority in this debate as neither you nor I are qualified as climate scientists (let alone economists, …). And, I think that it has been a common technique in some politicized scientific debates for one side to counter the growing scientific consensus with “scientific authority” that is intended to fool people into believing that there are equal authorities on each side when in fact there aren’t.
(2) While it tempting to believe that the earth’s climate system is stable with lots of negative feedbacks, evidence from the past does not necessarily suggest this. After all, the geography here in upstate New York is testimony to the fact that it was so much colder ~10,000 years ago that we were covered in hundreds or thousands of feet of glacial ice.
(3) I will have to look into your claim of net economic benefit for rises of <2.5 deg F. My impression was that, while there are some identifiable positive benefits to small warmings, there are also identifiable negative ones and so the idea of such a crossover was very much of a “maybe”…But I’ll try to check.
(3) Even if this is the case, one has to remember that some of a considerable amount of warming is already in the cards. Even if we stopped emitting fossil fuels tomorrow, the world will continue to warm in its slow equilibration to what we have already put into the atmosphere. And, the fact is that Kyoto’s plan is not to stop emitting greenhouse gases by 2012 but just to roughly zero out the growth rate in the emission of greenhouse gases. Some people endorsing Kyoto think that a realistic goal to aim for at this point is stabilizing the CO2 in the atmosphere at twice the pre-industrial value (although environmental groups are generallly still pressing for a lower goal).
(4) Sometimes one has to start taking actions in the face of some uncertainty. Kyoto is a modest step because of this uncertainty. You are talking as if your point-of-view represents a middle ground, a voice of moderation between say the “radical environmentalists” and the coal industry [e.g., the Western Fuels Association]. In fact, your position seems nearly indistinguishable from that of WFA to me. (To read what the President of Western Fuels says, you can go to this NOVA page on the global warming debate: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/ ) And, it may well be to be “to the right” of some self-interested parties such Ford and BP. Whenever we want to tackle some environmental issue, are we supposed to wait until such time as even the most intrinsigent of the special interests believes that action must be taken? I mean if there weren’t people out there yelling and screaming about the dire economic consequences of Kyoto then I would argue that we were way past the point of where we ought to make the decision to go ahead with it…because we have waited to the point where it is in everybody’s economic best interest to do it rather than in the best interest of the world community in aggregate.
I don’t really care where my position lies on some environmental spectrum. And I really don’t care. It’s irrelevant to the debate what Ford or Mobil’s position on global warming is.
I’m just trying to strike a reasonable position. Here are the unknowns as I see it:
How much warming is going on (I certainly agree that there is warming - about 1 degree in the last century. How that translates into the next century is not clear).
How much of this warming is man-made. This is not clear, although there probably is some.
How much we could reduce warming with reasonable steps.
How much economic damage/benefit there would be under the various scenarios.
How much it will cost to reduce warming.
See, here’s the thing. Let’s say we have a prediction that the Earth will heat by 4 degrees over the next century. However, man-made sources of the heating only make up 20% of that. So the BEST we could do, if we eliminate all sources of CO2, would be to lower the expected heating from 4 degrees to 3. But realistically, let’s say that we set an agressive target for CO2 reduction, and cut our emissions in half worldwide. How much will that cost? And if the net effect is to reduce overall warming by half a degree, is it worth the cost?
On the other hand, maybe the earth will heat by 10 degrees, and man-made sources account for all of that. In that case, it would certainly be worth spending quite a bit.
But what if the earth is naturally COOLING, and man-made CO2 is actually preventing that? I remember reading that as a serious possibility back in the 1980’s, when the earlier predictions of a global cooling phase weren’t coming true. Some suggested that the reason the cooling models weren’t working out was because they didn’t account for man-made warming.
If that were the case, then our CO2 ‘pollution’ is actually beneficial. Now, I’m not suggesting that this is likely, but it does illustrate that we are really dealing with some big unknowns here.
This is the position of many of the scientists on that list, btw. The disagreement isn’t that the Earth is heating, or that man is causing some or all of it. The disagreement is that many scientists believe that the data is still too preliminary, and there are too many things that we don’t understand about how the Earth responds to temperature changes.
Well, I think it is quite relevant. When your views lie outside the spectrum of those of most of the scientific researchers in the field but surprisingly close to those people with vested interests (and it seems even to the far side of some of them), I think it says a lot about what the influences (either direct or indirect) that have helped to formulate and educate these views might be.
I mean, it is certainly possible that Western Fuels Association just happens to be right about the science when most of the rest of the world (including even BP, for example) is just getting too worked up about nothing. But that strikes me as pretty bloody unlikely!! Does it not strike you that way?
And, yes, there are considerable uncertainties. But you exagerate them in your examples. For example, I have not heard of any plausible scenario under which the earth would heat up 4 degrees (either C or F) over a period of time of the next century but that it would be due primarily to natural causes. Also when the IPCC makes its predictions for the warming over the next century, these predictions are predictions of anthropogenic warming…They are not saying, “we think the earth will warm 2.5–10 deg C by 2100 but are not sure why.”
Likewise, I haven’t heard of any scenarios in the recent science literature that predict a natural cooling effect significant enough that we balance it with our greenhouse gas forcings. [Yes, there are these sudden climate change scenarios such as that discussed in the latest issue of Discover in which the climate forcing from the CO2 causes enough melting of ice to halt the Gulf Stream and thus cause dramatic cooling over certain areas…But that is a different kettle of fish.]
Yes, but I think what you are doing is exagerating the unknowns. As an analogy, I am sure one can come up with plausible arguments in which second-hand smoke exercises the lung’s natural cleaning mechanisms and thus makes the person more resistant to respiratory problems…But should such scenarios that we can dream up play an important part in our formulating our public policy on smoking in various public places?
To put what I was trying to say a little more succiently: I agree that where you are on such a spectrum does not really constitute an argument about whether you are right or wrong. But, it does constitute a bit of a “reality check”.
I haven’t been able to find a full list of names by googling on the web but this site gives an abridged list of about 125 of them… http://www.uneco.org/swh.html
Thanks for that one link, jshore, but I want to know why the soon-to-be-banned Mr. Wilson refused to post it, after he said he would.
Fascinating. I’ve been out of town for 5 days so I missed this thread in its…umm…development, if one can call it that.
The statement, while good-intentioned, makes some very alarmist and sweeping statements that I don’t think apply equally very well. And it does not seem to emphasize one point that I think is critical nearly enough:
I don’t care what the reasons are or how politically incorrect it is to blame anyone at all other than that Great Satan in Clouds of sulfur (the US) - they need to stop pulling their punches on this issue. “Stabilize” population is bullshit. We need to reduce dramatically the population, especially in those countries which cannot support their current population, and who are at risk of destryoing the environment to try and support a burgeoning population that already lives largely in poverty.
When the developed and developing countries of the World start a “1 family/1 child” policy and stick to it, I’ll start feeling a lot more hopeful.
It’s one area that many conservatives and I disagree upon. I do not know why or how the “right to have a large family” became a core unwritten part of conservative thought, but I think it should be removed. I don’t know if it is due to the religious influence of biblical literalists (“go forth and multiply”) or what.
But I think a key part of the problem is population - and not just population growth. And I categorically reject the notion that the developing nations should be allowed to continue to produce as many children as they wish, while the developed nations should not, so everything will be “fair” and they can “catch up”. That’s just insane - especially from the persepective of protecting the planet.
It’s unfortunate that this is such a train wreck of a thread, Anthracite. There’re a lot of good cites being thrown around… the unfortunate part comes when the people who SHOULD pay attention to them, aren’t.
Anthracite, I pretty much agree with you on the population issue. [At least in the diagnosis of the problem…I think the solutions should probably be implemented in ways that are as non-heavy-handed as possible.]
Okay…But, you are rejecting a notion that I’ve never heard anyone propose. I have heard people argue that in terms of consumption of resources per capita or emission of greenhouse gases per capita, the industrailized nations have to start reducing first given that they are at much higher levels of this and are in a better position to amass the resources and develop the technologies to do this. But, I’ve never heard the claim made about population…For one thing, I don’t even see in what sense the developing nations are “behind” in terms of population! [What I have heard said is that the best way to reduce population growth is to increase the standard of living in these countries since higher standards of living seem to correlate with much lower birth rates.]
I have heard advocates interviewed on CNN from, most notably, India and China, who were rejecting outright a proposed UN resolution that was being discussed which would have urged those two nations to enact strict policies of birth control. And it was both interesting and saddening to me that both sides in the CNN panel (Left and Right) felt like no one had any business telling people to reduce their population…
But what is the cause, and what is the effect here? Would it not be that having fewer children leads to a greater level of affluence and a higher standard of living? Living on my own (and I will never have children) I do a considerable bit better with my finances than all of my co-workers who went through the “baby mania” of the early-mid 1990’s, who now are talking with fear in their voices of how they will afford college for their 3-5 children.
I guess my question is - does increasing the standard of living definitely lead to less children? Or can any cause and effect be meaningfully drawn between the two on either side? I do admit, that in an agrarian economy, sometimes more children are required in order to run the family farm/livestock care. But is that really the case in a place like sub-Saharan Africa? Or even India, for that matter?
I honestly do not know enough about it to put forth a position on that particular aspect of the problem.
Anthracite, I don’t know if you’ve been following the population threads over the last couple of years, but you might want to search them out and read them.
Population growth is a non-issue. Birth rates have crashed throughout the world. India’s birthrate right now is about 3.2, which is barely above replacement levels, considering the higher infant mortality rates. Even Bangladesh’s birthrate has dropped from 6 to about 3.5 per couple.
The only place in the world where birth rates are still high are in the Arab Muslim countries, and that’s largely because the various governments are actively promoting higher birthrates in order to spread the influence and power of their culture.
There’s certainly no need for government population control. China has mandatory limits on population growth, and India doesn’t. Yet, the drop in population growth in India has been almost identical to that in China. Natural forces are at play here.
