# trust vs science (yet another global warming catfight) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 29, 2015, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303 "2015-08-29T17:13:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/61 "2015-09-15T15:01:00Z")
It is clear that \*\*FXMastermind \*\*does not know that “seemingly” means. > [@](#): > > [The paper is not challenging the physics of climate models; its value lies in helping the community interpret their output. “While this study does not change our understanding of the fundamentals of global warming, it is always useful to have simpler models that help us understand why our more comprehensive climate models sometimes behave in superficially counterintuitive ways,” says Isaac Held, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory who was not involved in this research.](http://oceans.mit.edu/featured-stories/missing-peice-climate-puzzle) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/62 "2015-09-15T15:47:37Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I must say, **Sam** , that was one of the worst misrepresentations of IPCC statements that I’ve yet seen from you. I’m disappointed. I’m not going to go through every single misrepresented item in that long diatribe but I’ll address the major ones. > > For starters, you state that “_the biggest ‘positive feedback’ posited for large values of climate sensitivity is water vapor. What’s the consensus on what has actually happened with water vapor?_” and then you provide a quote from the IPCC about large uncertainties regarding stratospheric water vapor. > > The overwhelming proportion of water vapor effect is in the troposphere, not the stratosphere. Here, the operative factor is basic physics – the Clausius Clapeyron relation – that says absolute water vapor will increase in direct proportion to temperature. This constitutes the most powerful single feedback in the climate system, and there is no uncertainty about it whatsoever. Yet for some reason you chose to provide a quote from the IPCC about water vapor in the stratosphere, which is an entirely different beast, and then go on a page-long rant about how we apparently don’t know anything about water vapor! Mea Culpa on that one. I missed that it was referencing stratospheric water vapor. You’re absolutely correct. > [@](#): > > You make several statements about uncertainties regarding cloud cover. Yes, but this is not – and has never been regarded as – a major influence in the climate change balance and there’s been no systematic trend; clouds have both positive and negative feedbacks depending on altitude, and on balance are expected to continue to be a relatively small (and probably consistent) negative feedback. According to the IPCC, cloud feedbacks are not one of the larger components of global climate sensitivity, but they have a major effect on the latitudinal distribution of warming, and therefore have a major effect when trying to calculate the impact of global warming. They could make the difference between climate change mostly warming the high latitudes, which might actually be beneficial for moderate warming, or for warming to mostly affect tropical climates, which could be very bad. And there is still low confidence in our ability to model and predict cloud response to warming. From [here](http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/274.htm): > [@](#): > > It is beyond question that the increased cloudiness prevailing over the warmer portions of the Pacific has a strong effect on the surface energy budget, which is fully competitive with the importance of evaporation. Determination of SST, however, requires a consistent treatment of the top-of-atmosphere energy budget, and cannot be effected with reference to the surface budget alone. This does not preclude the possibility that other cloud feedback mechanisms could have a profound effect on tropical SST, and **in no way implies that cloud representation is inconsequential in the tropics**. Meehl et al. (2000) illustrate this point when they show how a change from a diagnostic prescription of clouds in the NCAR atmospheric GCM to a prognostic cloud liquid water formulation **changes the sign of net cloud forcing in the eastern tropical Pacific and completely alters the nature of the coupled model response to increased greenhouse gases.** Bolding mine. It seems to me it’s pretty hard to model the impact of warming in the tropics when one of your major uncertainties could ‘completely alter the nature of the coupled model response to increased greenhouse gases’. Don’t forget where I’m coming from on this. I’m not using any of this to claim that global warming isn’t happening. The whole point to my message was to show areas where there was still no consensus on what the science says, to break the myth that the entire global warming debate is one that has ‘the consensus of over 90% of scientists’ on one side and ‘deniers’ on the other. What I am trying to show is that the issue is very complicated, with varying degrees of consensus over various parts of it - some small, some large. And also that there is still much uncertainty remaining in the model responses, as is shown by the wide spread in projected warming values that the IPCC is willing to commit to. > [@](#): > > You claim the predictions of drought got it all backwards because California should be getting more rain, not less. Completely wrong. The IPCC statement is about central North America, not the west, and it’s not a prediction, it’s an observational statement about what has actually occurred since 1950. My assumption was that ‘Central North America’ meant mid-latitudes, as opposed to southern or northern regions. > [@](#): > > You somehow see fit to characterize the summary statements on the urgency of climate change mitigation issued by the US National Academy of Sciences, the national science academies of the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa, along with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and virtually every major science body on the planet as being politically motivated. This is nothing short of the worst of the denialist conspiracy theories and I’m pretty sure you don’t really believe that, but if you do, our conversation here is done. I went to some length to say that it is NOT a conspiracy. My point was that when 90% of your members are liberals, you are likely to discount or even deny the cost of higher taxes, giving up national sovereignty to international organizations, etc. It’s bias, not conspiracy. I happen to believe that political leaning is a big factor in the climate debate. The fact is, the proposed solutions to climate change are all policies that tend to align with what the left prefers anyway. Or do you think it’s a coincidence that the global warming debate seems to have polarized people down political lines and not scientific ones? This is not conspiracy, it’s a real and valid consideration. If I believe that high energy taxes are dangerous, and you believe that higher energy taxes will, at worst redistribute wealth from oil barons to the common people, then clearly we are going to weight the cost of those tax increases very differently. If you believe that strengthening extra-national institutions will help the cause of social justice and I believe they are a serious threat to liberty, then obviously we are going to weight the cost of those differently. So even if both of us agreed completely on the science, we could still completely disagree on what should be done about it due to our political differences. And in fact I think that’s what’s really going on in the climate change debate. The debate over the science has been polarized and obfuscated by activists on both sides because it’s become a proxy war in the endless political struggle between the right and left. And that’s a shame, because it’s an issue that is complex enough on its own without being distorted by politics. And yes, both sides do it. On your side, when the global temperature doesn’t rise as much, or if there’s a quiet period in storm activity, your side is very quick to remind everyone that short-term weather is not indicative of long-term climate changes. But every time there is a drought or a hurricane, activists on ‘your’ side run out and start yelling that this is obviously a result of global warming. And people on the other side do the same thing in reverse. Now, I’m not claiming that you specifically are doing this, or even that the global climate science community is doing it. I’m talking about the advocates on both sides who are not scientists (and a few scientists who are also activists). [quote] You seem to try to refute the greatly improving accuracy of global climate models by claiming “_[the scenarios] aren’t science. The IPCC calls them ‘storylines’._” Like “storylines” was supposed to imply “fairy tale”, or something. The concept of RCPs is that one of the major uncertainties in climate change projection is what our future emissions will be. The science can only operate based on specific GHG levels. The RCPs are intended to offer a range of projections based on different mitigation scenarios which helps establish danger levels and mitigation targets. The “storylines” are a holistic view of the entire socioeconomic pictures in the different scenarios, and you’re right, that’s not hard science, and no one said it was. But the underlying models _ **are** _. I am fully aware of that. You are conflating the models with the scenarios. The scenarios are things like “In this scenario, the world moves to an information economy, and there is less cross-border migration”, or “In this scenario high economic growth causes X and Y”. They are ‘pictures’ of the future world, and they are highly speculative. The IPCC ameliorates this by having many different scenarios to cover a number of possible outcomes, then modelling the climate response to the CO2 emissions predicted under each scenario. This type of activity falls into the category of, “Hey, it’s the best we can do.” No one can predict the future, so you predict multiple futures and hope that you’ve covered all your bases. But there’s no reason to believe that any of these scenarios are even remotely correct. Our history of being able to predict the future past a couple of years in the future is dismal. As I said, where’s the ‘peak oil’ model? Or are we pretending that peak oil is no longer an issue at all? If so, when did that happen? And no, coming up with scenarios for how society might evolve is not science. It’s not remotely science, even if scientists are doing it. It’s simple prognostication and extrapolation based on the opinions of experts. It’s a set of assumptions to be used to come up with some numbers that can be input into models to predict the future. > [@](#): > > You claim the IPCC AR4 predicted beneficial effects. Absolute garbage. What has been said on occasion is that warming itself, disregarding all the extreme weather and biosystem consequences, may temporarily increase some crop yields in some northern latitude regions, but that these isolated effects will not be sustainable before lack of adaptation to climatic and ecological effects reverses them. Most other areas, especially Africa and tropical regions **notably the most vulnerable to the consequences of crop failures** , will see only negative impacts. Sorry, it looks like that info was in AR3. I searched AR4, and they reference a graph from AR3 and contrasted it with the Stern Report’s impact assessment, which does not show the net benefit. You can see that here: [https://www.ipcc.ch/publications\_and\_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch20s20-6-1.html](https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch20s20-6-1.html) Note that the graph marked IPCC 2001(b) which definitely shows net benefits for moderate warming, although only one study on that graph extends it to 2.5 degrees. While I was searching for the info in AR4 and AR3, I also found this meta-study: [http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.23.2.29](http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.23.2.29) Figure one shows a graph of estimates impacts from 14 different studies. All but one shows net global economic benefits for warming up to 2.3 degrees. > [@](#): > > [Does this look like it will be beneficial?](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/fig/figure-spm-2-l.png) Those are overall impacts include environment. I was referring to the estimates of human economic benefits and costs, which aren’t referenced on that graph at all. An example of some of the possible benefits: Opening the Northwest Passage would substantially lower the cost and energy requirements of shipping between many countries. One of the reasons why you can have net economic benefits is that the countries that are hurt the most have lower economic contributions globally, while the countries that might see net benefits have a disproportionate effect on the global economy. A slight inccrease in crop yields in the northern ‘food belt’ would have a large economic impact, even if more people in the tropics might be hurt by global warming. This was not an argument saying moderate global warming is a net good - just that it might result in net positive _economic_ benefits. A very different thing. Also, I should admit that the latest assessment is more pessimistic about the effect of global warming on crop yields than earlier assessments. But this is yet another area where there is a lot of uncertainty. > [@](#): > > My rebuttal to your “complex adaptive system” argument stands – your argument is irrelevant when there is a long-term consistent forcing that drives the system in a particular direction. We have no idea if it will drive it in a particular direction _over anything but the short term_. The transient response is certainly positive, but we have no idea what the result will be after various feedbacks kick in - especially after a period of multiple iterations. Complex systems can respond to shocks by over-correcting, by collapsing into a new state, or by having a series of complex responses. We could see warming, followed by climate responses that ultimately result in cooling, followed by further responses that cause warming again. Or we could see the rise of CO2 sequestration mechanisms (plant growth, algae blooms, etc) that begin to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere at a faster rate. If we stop adding to CO2, those mechanisms could wind up driving CO2 below recent historical levels. After all, CO2 in the atmosphere has fluctuated substantially in the past, without any human contribution. CO2 is part of the complex climate system and does not exist in a fixed steady state in the atmosphere. Of course, these responses could be a long time coming and not be useful to humans. Or maybe they’ll happen over a generation or two. Or maybe the long term response will be to correct, but the short and medium term response could be a positive feedback that makes things worse for the next couple of hundred years. This stuff is frustratingly hard to understand and predict, and scientists have a history of underestimating the difficulty of dealing with complex systems. This is a chronic problem in macroeconomics, for example. Now, I’m not saying that this is going to happen, just that we don’t know enough to validate your claim that a forcing must always push a complex system in one direction. > [@](#): > > In this case, the constantly increasing thermal energy being accumulated by the planet. You seem to find contradictions in the fact that specific regional changes and specific timings are hard to predict yet we have confidence about long-term global impacts. There is no contradiction – this is a lot like the weather vs. climate argument. As in that argument, a lot of the misunderstanding stems from the failure to recognize that, for instance, global climate models can make reliable global projections despite having relatively poor spatial granularity, or otherwise treating spatial and temporal details statistically. What it looks like to me is that the very short term is unpredictable (weather), the medium term is more predictable (annual and decadal climate), but the long term becomes less predictable as the long-term global feedbacks enter the mix. > [@](#): > > If there was some specific point that you feel I didn’t address let me know. If you just want to rant and promote denialism then I’m not likely to participate. After the way you distorted the statements of the IPCC I honestly don’t know any more how interested you are in a factual debate. I’m not trying to distort anything. I wasn’t trying to provide a comprehensive assessment of what the IPCC is saying. I was specifically addressing the argument that ‘the science is settled’ or that there is a strong scientific consensus over every aspect of the global warming debate. There is not. There are still serious uncertainties in the climate models, and future projections of human impact require projections of human economy, population migration, technology breakthroughs and other social factors that are totally outside the expertise of climate scientists and for which the track record of prediction is quite dismal. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/63 "2015-09-15T16:05:02Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And yes, both sides do it. On your side, when the global temperature doesn’t rise as much, or if there’s a quiet period in storm activity, your side is very quick to remind everyone that short-term weather is not indicative of long-term climate changes. But every time there is a drought or a hurricane, activists on ‘your’ side run out and start yelling that this is obviously a result of global warming. And people on the other side do the same thing in reverse. Sounds more like a strawman, in reality as I point many many times before (and the vast majority of experts and environmentalists I refer to ) we can not talk about an specific hurricane or drought as being caused by global warming, that may came later if worse things than the ones expected by nature come. What many do talk about (like Kerry Emanuel) is that all that excess water vapor in some regions, and the increase in heat already observed is making extreme weather events worse. In the case of the hurricanes, just the rise of the oceans will increase the damage the hurricanes will bring when they eventually come on land. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Now, I’m not claiming that you specifically are doing this, or even that the global climate science community is doing it. I’m talking about the advocates on both sides who are not scientists (and a few scientists who are also activists). The point once again stands, you do need to calibrate even your activist balance. Even conservative scientists do notice who is more accurate. > **[“Why Don’t You Bash Al Gore?”](https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/why-dont-you-bash-al-gore/)** > > Since I took the plunge and started publicly criticizing certain climate change contrarians, notably certain Utah politicians and Christopher Monckton, people on the other side of the fence have of… > [@](#): > > 1. Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, is not that bad, frankly. > > Yes, there are a couple errors. Yes, in a few cases he focuses on “worst-case scenarios,” rather than communicating the full range of risk. But the fact is that he got the most important points right, and the problems aren’t that serious from the perspective of most scientists who have examined the movie. Tim Lambert collected reactions from a number of scientists about a list of nine alleged errors in the movie, for example. While they didn’t always agree about the status of individual “errors,” there was general agreement that the list was too long. In most cases, it was questionable whether they were really errors at all. > > In the cases where Gore presented “worst-case scenarios” instead of depicting the full range of risk, try to look at it from the perspective of the scientists involved. The vast majority of scientists are saying, “Human-induced climate change is very likely to be a very big problem, and somewhat likely to be a very, very big problem.” Are they supposed to get all worked up when a popularizer like Gore goes around saying it will be a very, very big problem? The reaction of most scientists has been exactly what it should be. “Well, maybe he overstated his case somewhat, but he got the gist right.” > > Now, contrast this with someone like Christopher Monckton, who goes about proclaiming that climate change is a “non-problem,” and to support his case he completely misrepresents the scientific literature he cites. Whom do you think scientists are going to want to spend their time criticizing? > > And no, I didn’t vote for Gore. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/64 "2015-09-15T16:43:08Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > What it looks like to me is that the very short term is unpredictable (weather), the medium term is more predictable (annual and decadal climate), but the long term becomes less predictable as the long-term global feedbacks enter the mix. Incidentally I also did notice many mistakes in your previous post, but I decided to look more into the trust issue rather than the science, I’ll let \*\*wolfpup \*\*deal with those. Suffice to say here is that this is nothing more than wishful thinking, just about the worst one can do when looking for solutions, and here one has to point out that just about all republicans in power do go for this wishful thinking. The reports I have seen point to an increase in the like hood that the feedbacks will become more positive or the ones you wish will increase will be overwhelmed by the main ones. > **[Global Warming](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page5.php)** > > Global warming is happening now, and scientists are confident that greenhouse gases are responsible. To understand what this means for humanity, it is necessary to understand what global warming is, how scientists know it's happening, and how they... > [@](#): > > Climate Feedbacks > > Greenhouse gases are only part of the story when it comes to global warming. Changes to one part of the climate system can cause additional changes to the way the planet absorbs or reflects energy. These secondary changes are called climate feedbacks, and they could more than double the amount of warming caused by carbon dioxide alone. The primary feedbacks are due to snow and ice, water vapor, clouds, and the carbon cycle. > Snow and ice > > Perhaps the most well known feedback comes from melting snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Warming temperatures are already melting a growing percentage of Arctic sea ice, exposing dark ocean water during the perpetual sunlight of summer. Snow cover on land is also dwindling in many areas. In the absence of snow and ice, these areas go from having bright, sunlight-reflecting surfaces that cool the planet to having dark, sunlight-absorbing surfaces that bring more energy into the Earth system and cause more warming. > Photograph of the retreating Athabasca Glacier, Jasper National Park, Canada. > > Canada’s Athabasca Glacier has been shrinking by about 15 meters per year. In the past 125 years, the glacier has lost half its volume and has retreated more than 1.5 kilometers. As glaciers retreat, sea ice disappears, and snow melts earlier in the spring, the Earth absorbs more sunlight than it would if the reflective snow and ice remained. (Photograph ©2005 Hugh Saxby.) > Water Vapor > > The largest feedback is water vapor. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas. In fact, because of its abundance in the atmosphere, water vapor causes about two-thirds of greenhouse warming, a key factor in keeping temperatures in the habitable range on Earth. But as temperatures warm, more water vapor evaporates from the surface into the atmosphere, where it can cause temperatures to climb further. > > The question that scientists ask is, how much water vapor will be in the atmosphere in a warming world? The atmosphere currently has an average equilibrium or balance between water vapor concentration and temperature. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere becomes capable of containing more water vapor, and so water vapor concentrations go up to regain equilibrium. Will that trend hold as temperatures continue to warm? > > The amount of water vapor that enters the atmosphere ultimately determines how much additional warming will occur due to the water vapor feedback. The atmosphere responds quickly to the water vapor feedback. So far, most of the atmosphere has maintained a near constant balance between temperature and water vapor concentration as temperatures have gone up in recent decades. If this trend continues, and many models say that it will, water vapor has the capacity to double the warming caused by carbon dioxide alone. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I’m not trying to distort anything. I wasn’t trying to provide a comprehensive assessment of what the IPCC is saying. I was specifically addressing the argument that ‘the science is settled’ or that there is a strong scientific consensus over every aspect of the global warming debate. There is not. There are still serious uncertainties in the climate models, and future projections of human impact require projections of human economy, population migration, technology breakthroughs and other social factors that are totally outside the expertise of climate scientists and for which the track record of prediction is quite dismal. The impression I get is that you are going way overboard with the assumed lack of consensus. And once again the science is not settled but it is understood at levels where it is really irresponsible for policy makers to continue to ignore. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/65 "2015-09-15T19:24:03Z")
> [@anthonymortadella](#): > > Another thing I meant was, and this thing is probably bigger than the above two, you shouldn’t have to “trust” anybody when it comes to a scientific subject. Good news, you don’t have to. First, spend 4 years at a university getting a relevant degree in whatever field you don’t trust. Then, spend another 4 researching at that university while studying for a PhD in said field. Then either get funding for your own laboratories or gain access to existing ones with your credentials. Then spend most of your life repeating research other people already did to make sure it’s true. Boom, no more trust required! 🙂 There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? > [@](#): > > Such as AGW. As long as I’m not mentally retarded, I should be able to understand any a priori argument you throw at me about this matter, and you should, if you know this topic from head to toe and have concluded that AGW does indeed exist, be able to give me that argument. It shouldn’t matter whether you’re a scientist in the pay of a famous university, or merely a layman interested in meteorology; that argument should be comprehensible, and the same (assuming you believe the same theory, of course). Unfortunately, “should” is not the same thing as “will”. I had a friend once, he was a smart, upstanding fellow, and no matter what evidence I presented, no matter how I worded my case, he _would not_ acknowledge that HIV caused AIDS. The fact is that sometimes, otherwise intelligent people become dogmatic and fail to understand incredibly simple things. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Complex systems are not predictable. And yet, I’m pretty sure that if Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase all simultaneously went bankrupt, it would be _bad_ for our economy. I’m pretty sure 99.9999999% of economists would agree with me. Jeez, how could we make such a prediction about an unpredictable, complex system? And of course, the comparison to economics is just plain wrong. Economics is dependent upon the capricious whims of several billion humans going about their daily business. Any prediction based upon it relies on understanding the human and cultural psyche. The enrivonment is dependent upon a large number of interrelated but ultimately calculable and deterministic systems. Systems governed fundamentally by laws and rules that we can determine. And the massive increase in CO2 is less in the category “people seek out less loans” and more in the category “every major bank in the country goes belly-up at the same time” in terms of how obvious the effects in many regards are going to be. The details are still fuzzy, but the obvious and inescapable result is _baaaaad_. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/66 "2015-09-15T19:35:42Z")
> [@anthonymortadella](#): > > Matters like “CO2 is opaque to IR and therefore the subsequent warming of the Earth will cause the oceans to rise by 10 ft within the next decade” should not have anything to do with the concept of “trust”. Then there is the other really big problem. All the far too alarmed predictions which didn’t happen. (the mights, coulds, mays and “possibly happen by 2013”) But that turns it into just another debate over current idiocy in the news and journals. > [@Is the doom and gloom environmental movement another expression of moral/religious anxiety?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/63): > > Ever since I heard of global warming as a political issue, I’ve been waiting for this program, something dumbed down just a little for laypeople, that explains fundamentally and incontrovertibly, from A to Z, how artificial activity has affected the Earth, and the evidence for it. > > I’m still waiting. Yes, you would think something that is so important (the biggest threat ever in the history of all mankind) would have multiple shows about it, and it would be clearly explained, over and over. In all media. > [@Is the doom and gloom environmental movement another expression of moral/religious anxiety?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/64): > > Can someone translate \*\*anthonymortadella’s \*\*stream-of-consciousness post, please? > [@Is the doom and gloom environmental movement another expression of moral/religious anxiety?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/65): > > Apparently he wants someone, anyone, to laboriously explain AGW to him. Here we see the “answer” that is constantly spewed forth, rather than even attempting to explain things. Why this happens, it’s the topic. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > And once again the science is not settled but it is understood at levels where it is really irresponsible for policy makers to continue to ignore. And that is the science people want to know about. Nobody wants to here nebulous claims, or sneering derision from the people they want to explain it. That raises more than just suspicions about motives, it takes it firmly into pseudoscience. The vast amount of text in this topic alone, **that doesn’t explain anything** , shows how much time and energy will be spent “not explaining”, when what people want is an “idiots guide to global warming and why it matters enough to change everything”. I checked and the “For Dummies” information [is simply atrocious](http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-effects-of-climate-change-and-gl.html). > [@](#): > > Global warming is also known as the greenhouse effect and the gases involved are called greenhouse gases [because concentrations of toxic gases in the Earth’s atmosphere](http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-effects-of-climate-change-and-gl.html) prevent heat from escaping back into space just as the glass walls and roof of a greenhouse prevent heat from escaping a greenhouse Really? You really are selling that? > [@](#): > > The impact of global warming will increase in the coming years, but the degree of change will vary greatly, depending on where you live and depending on how rapidly nations around the world reduce greenhouse emissions. [No matter where you live, though, the unchecked impacts of climate change are potentially catastrophic in the long-term.](http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/global-warming-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html) Is it any wonder people would ask for a program to simply explain it, and show the evidence? There is just so much bad information. Who wouldn’t want the good info? In a way that anyone can understand it? ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/67 "2015-09-15T19:39:56Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > The enrivonment is dependent upon a large number of interrelated but ultimately calculable and deterministic systems. Here’s where you need to give citations, sources for such a claim. because that is hilarious, and quite wrong. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/68 "2015-09-15T20:59:24Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Yes, you would think something that is so important (the biggest threat ever in the history of all mankind) would have multiple shows about it, and it would be clearly explained, over and over. In all media. Clearly FX did read this tread either. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/69 "2015-09-15T21:05:50Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > And that is the science people want to know about. Nobody wants to here nebulous claims, or sneering derision from the people they want to explain it. That raises more than just suspicions about motives, it takes it firmly into pseudoscience. The sneering comes \*\*after \*\*simple and complex explanations are ignored. > **[RealClimate: Start here](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/)** > > RealClimate: \[Note this is page is updated regularly. Please notify us of any dead links. Last update: 10 May 2022.\] We're often asked to provide a one stop link for resources that people can use to get up to speed on the issue of climate change, and... ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/70 "2015-09-15T21:07:28Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Yes, you would think something that is so important (the biggest threat ever in the history of all mankind) would have multiple shows about it, and it would be clearly explained, over and over. In all media. My mistake, I wanted to say that FX did \*\*not \*\*read this tread. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/71 "2015-09-15T21:07:47Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Wait, the OP is trying to claim “science” for the denial side and “trust” for the AGW side? It’s weird even to type that, it’s so backwards. > > PBS should do that program. You are correct, OP! Unfortunately, the PBS of our youth is gone. Defunded! The new monster that wears its face works for the same Koch Foundation that has funded the denialists. Corruption has kept that show off the air. That isn’t the take I got from his post. I got that he wants to understand, in detail, exactly why and how and what to do about it, if found by him, to be true. He wants it explained, and I can honestly say that I agree. There is plenty of science about the issue. But what the scientists have failed to do, is get the average Joe to understand the science. Understanding is possibly the first step to belief. Gigo has posted numerous “facts”, linked to numerous studies and papers (usually long winded ones). There are people who dissect them and find fault with some (cherry pick has been used) but the fact that there are errors at all over something that they say is so important to the habitat that we live in is harmful to their cause. The explanation is the part they have failed at. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/72 "2015-09-15T23:56:50Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > And yet, I’m pretty sure that if Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase all simultaneously went bankrupt, it would be _bad_ for our economy. I’m pretty sure 99.9999999% of economists would agree with me. Jeez, how could we make such a prediction about an unpredictable, complex system? We’re not talking about immediate responses, but the long term effects as the affected system adapts and adjusts to the change. So predict what effect those collapses will have on GDP 20 years from now. And I’ll throw a dart at a dartboard marked with GDP gains and losses centered around the mean for historical GDP growth, and we’ll see who is more accurate. From Nate Silver’s _The Signal and the Noise_, which I highly recommend: > [@](#): > > We forget - or wilfully ignore - that our models are simplifications of the world. We figure that if we make a mistake, it will be on the margin. > > In complex systems, however, mistakes are not measured in degrees but in whole orders of magnitude. S&P and Moody’s underestimated the default risk associated with CDOs by a factor of two hundred. Economists thought there was just a 1 in 500 chance of a recession as severe as what actually occurred. > > Of of the risks of the information age, as I wrote in the introduction, is that even if the amount of knowledge in the world is increasing, the gap between what we know and what we think we know may be widening. This syndrome is often associated with very precise-seeming predictions that are not at all accurate. Silver goes on to show how many serious predictions utterly fail - not just in economics, but predictions of many complex systems. For example, he looked at the political predictions of _The McLaughlin Group_’s political roundtable over a period of of many years. He chose that show because it has a section called ‘predictions’ where everyone has to give a firm prediction of some event happening. His panel is made up of people from the right and the left, and they are supposedly among the best political analysts around. He evaluated nearly 1,000 predictions made on the show, and found their accuracy to be no better than flipping a coin. And it made no difference whether the panelists were on the left or the right. And yet, we still listen carefully to political pundits and their predictions every election season. They are dutifully reported in the media and debated on message boards. And guess what? They’re just noise. So then he looked at professional political scientists. He looked at the work of professor of Psychology Philip Tetlock, who began collecting expert opinions in 1987. Opinions on a variety of subjects: Domestic politics, economics, and international relations. He looked at almost every major event of the 1980’s and 1990’s. And guess what? That large collection of experts 'had done barely better than chance - regardless of their occupation, experience, or subfield." And they did _worse_ than rudimentary statistical models. Silver goes on to discuss the flaws in deterministic models applied to complex adaptive systems, and finds them very wanting. One very sophisticated simulation of European weather patterns showed radically different outputs with very tiny changes in input simulating tiny measurement errors. As another example the National Weather Service’s sophisticated software for predicting temperature does little better than just looking up historical temperature averages once it goes past about 3 days into the future. He then looked at earthquake forecasting models. Earthquakes are devastating, and therefore much effort and money has been spent trying to model and predict them. The models are very sophisticated and incorporate a lot of knowledge about the cause of earthquakes. After all this effort, the official USGS position is that earthquakes cannot be predicted. At all. Then he looked at economic predictions, which are equally dismal. In fact, says Nate, “Fairly often in fact, these forecasts have failed to predict recessions _even while they were underway._”. A majority of economists did not think the U.S. was recession at all at the start of the last three major recessions in 1990, 2001 and 2007. He looked at the survey of professional forecasts - people who make their living doing nothing but forecasting future economic conditions. In November 2007, their median prediction was that the economy would grow by 2.4% in 2008. This was after the crisis had already started, BTW. Not only that, but they assigned very high confidence to their prediction, and the consensus was that there was only a 3% chance that the economy would shrink in 2008. They said there was only a 1-in-500 chance that the economy would shrink by more than 2%. But that’s what happened. Silver then looked at the past 18 years of their forecasts for GDP in the next year. Guess what? The actual value fell outside their 95% confidence interval six times in 18 years. Going back to 1968 their estimates fell outside that range _half the time._ Those people still have jobs, and their predictions are still taken seriously. We have a burning need to believe that we can predict the future of chaotic systems. And it goes on and on. Flood predictions, medical research, psychology, finance… All complex systems. And the success rate of prediction is about the same in all of them - almost nonexistent. > [@](#): > > And of course, the comparison to economics is just plain wrong. Economics is dependent upon the capricious whims of several billion humans going about their daily business. Any prediction based upon it relies on understanding the human and cultural psyche. Actually, Silver says that economics should be one of the easier of such systems to predict because we have tons of data right down to the micro level. > [@](#): > > The enrivonment is dependent upon a large number of interrelated but ultimately calculable and deterministic systems. It most certainly is not. The environment is a complex adaptive system with nonlinear feedbacks. Such systems are not deterministic at all, because their outcome is highly sensitive to tiny changes in initial conditions. A simple example of a nonlinear system is a pile of sand. Start dropping sand on the pile, and try to predict what the height of the pile will be with each new grain. Good luck. > [@](#): > > Systems governed fundamentally by laws and rules that we can determine. This is just wrong. You should do some reading. An anthill is easily modeled and is definitely structured around some very simple rules. And yet, predicting the future size, shape and direction of an ant colony is virtually impossible. Don’t forget that these systems generally have very random elements. Lightning strikes are a chaotic feature that can alter forests dramatically. That in turn can change drainage patterns and cause permanent changes to large areas of land. Had the charge potential at that moment been just a tiny bit different, the lightning might have struck in a different area and had no effect. There are millions of random events that happen all the time, and since systems like this are sensitive to initial conditions, they can become unpredictable. I’m sure you’ve heard of the butterfly effect. Just a few days ago tens of thousands of antelope in one herd dropped dead. Occasionally we find hundreds of dolphins and whales beached. Algae blooms can appear that contain as much carbon as some countries produce in an entire year, and we still can’t predict them. [Six wolves](http://www.yellowstonepark.com/2011/06/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/) managed to reshape the ecosystem in Yellowstone park through a complex series of cascading interactions that were utterly unpredictable. Now obviously some changes can have obvious effects. I think it’s safe to predict that major bad things would happen if the temperature went up by 20 degrees. We can predict what will happen to an anthill if we take a torch to it. The question is what happens to them when small changes are made to input. > [@](#): > > And the massive increase in CO2 is less in the category “people seek out less loans” and more in the category “every major bank in the country goes belly-up at the same time” in terms of how obvious the effects in many regards are going to be. The details are still fuzzy, but the obvious and inescapable result is _baaaaad_. You know, that’s not what the IPCC says. They refuse to state that any particular outcome is ‘obvious and inescapable’. Everything is expressed in probabilities and levels of confidence - as it should be. And many of the possible outcomes are far from being catastrophic. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/73 "2015-09-16T00:21:28Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > That isn’t the take I got from his post. I got that he wants to understand, in detail, exactly why and how and what to do about it, if found by him, to be true. > He wants it explained, and I can honestly say that I agree. > > There is plenty of science about the issue. But what the scientists have failed to do, is get the average Joe to understand the science. Understanding is possibly the first step to belief. > > Gigo has posted numerous “facts”, linked to numerous studies and papers (usually long winded ones). There are people who dissect them and find fault with some (cherry pick has been used) but the fact that there are errors at all over something that they say is so important to the habitat that we live in is harmful to their cause. > > The explanation is the part they have failed at. I’m afraid I have to say that you are relying on more ignorance here. As pointed to **Sam** you need to calibrate your balance a lot the “skeptics” that dissect them do not tell you how wrong they are. You are missing that a lot of research was done recently to check if those “errors” do allow us to dismiss one of the main theories. The theory does stand as Professor Muller, former skeptic, found out: > [@](#): > > but these were all people [top skeptical scientists (who now are former skeptics)] who shared the same doubts that I had. So we wound up doing an enormous effort completely rebuilding a program to use historic temperature records and did it in what we believed to be the best statistical approach to doing this we managed to put together a record, we study the systematic…I had no hope that would be would we able to wrestle all the systematics. > > In the end we could and that came as a wonderful surprise to me, each one required a great deal efforts; poor station quality; the urban heat island effect, the data adjustment that’s been done; and most important of all: the data selection bias, the fact that every other team was using less than 20 percent of the data and in some cases only about seven percent their data, so how they pick their data? And does that lead to a bias? Even an inadvertent bias? > > So we managed to address all these and in the end we got a nice curve curve that showed the temperature and it was rising! Now we never expected to address the question of what caused it. > > I tried fitting it to an exponential… actually wasn’t very good fit… try a parabola… no, it wasn’t a good fitting either, okay try the US population… no, that wasn’t so good. > > Hey dummy! :smack: Try carbon dioxide!.. Smack on! > > … > > **Not only was global warming real and roughly consistent with what the previous groups had said > but the match to carbon dioxide and the fact that solar variability was not responsible… we just had ruled out the primary alternative theory.** > > Another alternative theory is that the absence of volcanic eruptions in the recent period is why it’s warmer but we could see these individual volcanic eruptions because we went back further in time and we can see that their effect was temporary so we can rule out the other one, in fact we can rule out every scientific theory other than the greenhouse gas theory. > > Now there are some people who say “Oh, I believe it something else” “That there were changes in the earth’s orbit”… I wrote a book on the changes of the earth’s orbit, a technical book meant for graduate-level study on the so called milankovitch cycles, it doesn’t match those! > > Some people say “well there’s something else going on!” and I say “what is the prediction you make?” “Oh, I don’t know, it’s random”… That’s not what we call a scientific theory. > > If you say “well it’s something else and I don’t know what is” my answer is: > > Something else that just happens, by accident, to perfectly match the carbon dioxide increase… > > Are you serious? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/74 "2015-09-16T00:27:27Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > There’s a lot of invective and misconception to battle, but I just want to ask about one point: > Can we have a cite for the clause I’ve underlined? No, silly, not a cite that tropical rain forests thrive on tropical temperatures and rain 😛 , but a cite that they are expected to increase in coming decades. > > The Amazon basin, ideally situated for rainforest (lots of land in the tropics) is expected to get much less rain in coming decades. Is the claim that new rainforests will develop in Africa? How long does it take a rainforest to develop? How about if it would encroach on a large human population already using the land for something else? > > Deforestation (and the associated reduction in rainfall) may be a bigger threat to rainforests than just climate change. Some think Africa is moving towards desertification, but even if rainforests there somehow expand, they will be deforested! The claim in the above quote really does need some evidence. > > I realize the rainforest issue was only a tiny part of your … comment, but I am sincerely curious about it. I read about it a while ago, but I believe this is the paper in question: [http://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/436](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/436) > [@](#): > > Feedbacks from the terrestrial carbon cycle significantly affect future climate change. The CO2 concentration dependence of global terrestrial carbon storage is one of the largest and most uncertain feedbacks. Theory predicts the CO2 effect should have a tropical maximum, but a large terrestrial sink has been contradicted by analyses of atmospheric CO2 that do not show large tropical uptake. Our results, however, show significant tropical uptake and, combining tropical and extratropical fluxes, suggest that up to 60% of the present-day terrestrial sink is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2. This conclusion is consistent with a validated subset of atmospheric analyses, but uncertainty remains. Improved model diagnostics and new space-based observations can reduce the uncertainty of tropical and temperate zone carbon flux estimates. This analysis supports a significant feedback to future atmospheric CO2 concentrations from carbon uptake in terrestrial ecosystems caused by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This feedback will have substantial tropical contributions, but the magnitude of future carbon uptake by tropical forests also depends on how they respond to climate change and requires their protection from deforestation. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/75 "2015-09-16T00:30:57Z")
**Sam** we already dealt with your ants before, suffice to say Silver did miss somethings in his book and it is clear that much more on it is not really good news for the skeptics: > **[Nate Silver's Climate Chapter and What We Can Learn From It](https://skepticalscience.com/nate-silver-climate-chapter-review.html)** > > In the interest of full disclosure, many Skeptical Science team members are big fans of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog at The New York Times.  Silver runs a model which uses polling results and various other input factors (such as economic... > [@](#): > > In the interest of full disclosure, many Skeptical Science team members are big fans of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog at The New York Times. Silver runs a model which uses polling results and various other input factors (such as economic indicators) to predict election outcomes in the USA, with an impressive track record of accuracy. > > Thus we were intrigued to hear that Silver had included a chapter on climate change in his newly-published book The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t, particularly since we at Skeptical Science are often forced to explain the difference between signal and noise. Having great respect for the work and climate-related opinions of Michael Mann (who Silver consulted in writing the book), we were also concerned to see his criticisms of Nate Silver’s climate chapter. > > Nevertheless, Mann recommended that people read the book for themselves, praising much of the content. So I did just that, and overall I believe that if we take Silver’s analysis a step further, we can learn a lot about the accuracy of climate models. It’s also important to remember that, as Silver himself notes in the chapter, our basic understanding of how the climate works and how much it will warm in response to our greenhouse gas emissions is not just dependent on models. > [@](#): > > Testing Hansen’s 1988 Model Accuracy > > Sliver attempts to evaluate the accuracy of climate models by examining the model projections made by James Hansen in 1988 and the IPCC in 1990 and 1995. We should note here that Skeptical Science has evaluated many other temperature projections going back as far as Wallace Broeker’s 1975 paper in the Lessons from Past Predictions series, with the results summarized in Figure 1 (though not all of these are based on climate models). Note that most of the accurate predictions have come from mainsream climate scientists and models, while the least accurate predictions have come from various ‘skeptics’. > [@](#): > > Silver is right that Hansen’s 1988 model projected more warming than has been observed. But what can we learn from this? > > The overall climate sensitivity (the total amount of climate warming in response to a given greenhouse gas increase, including feedbacks) in Hansen’s model was 4.2°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels. This is significantly higher than most of today’s climate models, which put the value around 3°C for doubled CO2. In order to accurately project the ensuing warming, Hansen’s model sensitivity would have had to be close to that in today’s climate models (Figure 2). > > Thus we can be confident that today’s climate models are, not surprisingly, more accurate than James Hansen’s 1988 model. > [@](#): > > Good Points in the Chapter > > \*\*Silver’s climate chapter also makes many good points for which he deserves credit. > > [ul] > [li]**It debunks the myth that most climate scientists were predicting global cooling and/or an impending ice age in the 1970s, noting that this was primarily a media construct. [/li] > [li] As noted above, Silver discusses the cooling effect of human aerosol emissions over the past decade and the fact that correlation is not causation.[/li] > [li] Silver points out that climate models simply cannot replicate the current climate without accounting for greenhouse gas increases.[/li] > [li] \*\* The chapter contains a graphic similar to The Escalator to show that there are often short-term changes in the opposite direction of the long-term trend, but that this just represents noise in the system.**[/li] > [li] **Silver references William Nordhaus in noting that uncertainty is actually a reason to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because the worst climate scenarios cannot be ruled out.** [/li] > [li] The chapter debunks myths associated with Climategate.\*\*\*\*[/li][/ul] > So aside from the issues noted above, the chapter does contain a lot of good information. > > Discouraging Conclusion > > The chapter ends on a bit of a discouraging note, with Silver suggesting that climate scientists should not try to directly influence climate policy. > > ``` > "It is precisely because the debate may continue for decades that climate scientists might do better to withdraw from the street fight and avoid crossing the Rubicon from science into politics." > > ``` > > Note that by “politics” Silver appears to refer to “policy” in this context. However, the problem with Silver’s suggestion is that we simply don’t have decades to waste. The evidence that humans are causing dangerous climate change has been building for many decades, with climate scientists advising the importance of emissions cuts, and yet policymakers have continually failed to achieve the necessary action to steer us away from this path. Climate scientists have essentially been forced into pressing harder and harder for serious climate policy - to put it simply, we are quickly running out of time to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change. > > Silver’s discouraging conclusion may result from not taking that extra step to evaluate why the past warming projections discussed here were too high, as we have done. Silver may have drawn the conclusion that the climate is not warming as fast as we expect, which would suggest that we have more time than climate scientists believe to solve the problem. > > However, when correcting the model projections to account for the actual greenhouse gas emissions and forcing changes, we see that their temperature projections have been very accurate. Thus climate scientists are correct to worry that unless we quickly enact climate policies to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions, we will suffer some very painful consequences. In fact, as Silver himself notes in the chapter, we don’t even need climate models to realize that we’re in for a lot of global warming this century. > > Silver is right that we are making too little progress in terms of climate policy, and he is is of course correct to note that climate scientists must be careful to ensure that their predictions and warnings are scientifically accurate and defensible. However, remaining silent in the face of a potential catastrophe is simply not an option. Effective policy depends on active engagement between policymakers and the scientific community. It’s important for scientists to know the limits of science in shaping policy, but it’s also vital to ensure that policy grapples with scientific realities. If climate scientists say nothing, this creates a vacuum to be filled by people like Armstrong and other climate contrarians Silver discusses, who frankly are way out of their depth when it comes to climate science and climate models, but don’t know enough to realize it. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/76 "2015-09-16T03:23:21Z")
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. I don’t disagree with anything you bolded above. I’ve never used the argument that scientists used to predict cooling, for example. But the authors seem to think that Silver’s argument comes down to whether the models have accurately predicted current temperature, and that’s a red herring. See, the problem with using the traditional method of testing models by sequestering past data and then seeing if the model can predict that data has a serious flaw - at best it tells you that the model could accurately describe the system as it existed in the past. But a complex adaptive system _adapts_. As they say in the financial biz, “Past performance is not indicative of future performance.” This is also a problem for climate science when it seeks to examine historical evidence for climate sensitivity, as if there is one fixed number that can be discovered by studying enough tree rings or other proxies. Again, just because the climate responded to CO2 in a certain way in the past does not mean it will do so in the future. There are a lot of scientists who refuse to accept the implications of complexity theory on their own work. Economists, for example, are very stubbornly clinging to the old equilibrium models that are based on 19th century physics, despite the fact that it’s eminently clear that these models are at best an approximation of something much more complex and at worst completely wrong, and despite the fact that their predictive models routinely fail and that two economists using the same models on different data can and do come to opposite conclusions. The same goes for policy people - especially on the left. It really sucks to be a central planner and discover that not only can you not predict what’s going to happen in the future, but that your grand plans to ‘fix’ the economy will result in little more than more adaptations and unintended consequences. So they are ‘deniers’ as well. Silver’s point about complex adaptive systems is that they are not predictable in the long run, period. It doesn’t matter whether the models have succeeded in predicting past performance, or even that they can predict climate in the short to medium term (say a decade or two or three). The longer you get from the baseline, the more the system veers away from the old trend lines and the more unpredictable it becomes. However, this is a fair point: > [@](#): > > Silver references William Nordhaus in noting that uncertainty is actually a reason to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because the worst climate scenarios cannot be ruled out. This is absolutely true. There is a fair point to be made in saying that, since the future climate cannot be predicted, man-made forcings have an unknown effect and therefore could be very dangerous. I believe Nassim Taleb makes the same point about climate, and supports action to fix the climate on that basis even though he does not believe that climate models are going to be accurate. By the way, the inability to predict the future of complex systems is the consensus position of complexity theorists. You wouldn’t want to deny the consensus of experts in the field, would you? Okay, to be fair that’s a little glib, if fun. There are obviously things we can learn about complex systems, and there are predictions we can make in broad strokes and within the range of certain parameters. I said before that the direction and future size and shape of an anthill can’t be predicted, and that’s true. But I CAN predict some things - for example, if I spray ant pheromones all over the place it will screw them up. If I kick an anthill ants will come swarming out. If I destroy a food source it will cause more ants to begin milling about. The trick is to know what’s predictable and what isn’t, and under what constraints. I actually think climate is one of the hardest complex systems to understand and predict for the simple reason that the timescales are so long, and therefore it’s very hard to test theories and models. When iteration cycles are long and you have to wait years or decades to find out how well your model fits, it’s a real problem. We have a hard enough time understanding complex systems that operate fast enough that we can test and re-test hypotheses against future changes very fast, and attempt to refine our understanding. It’s like looking at clouds. In real time they look like puffy, discrete objects slowly moving across the sky. But if you look at time lapse footage of the same clouds, your perspective shifts and you start to see that clouds are just the result of moving air masses. The clouds appear, but they’re just a symptom of something else. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/77 "2015-09-16T03:33:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. I don’t disagree with anything you bolded above. I’ve never used the argument that scientists used to predict cooling, for example. > > But the authors seem to think that Silver’s argument comes down to whether the models have accurately predicted current temperature, and that’s a red herring. > > See, the problem with using the traditional method of testing models by sequestering past data and then seeing if the model can predict that data has a serious flaw - at best it tells you that the model could accurately describe the system as it existed in the past. But a complex adaptive system _adapts_. As they say in the financial biz, “Past performance is not indicative of future performance.” So how come they can be used in other planets? > [@](#): > > Science of global climate modeling confirmed by discoveries on Mars > > ([Phys.org](http://Phys.org))—Scientific modeling methods that predicted climate change on Earth have been found to be accurate on Mars as well, according to a paper presented at an international planetary sciences conference Tuesday. > > An international team of researchers from the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, working with French colleagues, found that an unusual concentration of glacial features on Mars matches predictions made by global climate computerized models, in terms of both age and location. > > PSI Senior Scientist William K. Hartmann led the team, which included François Forget (Université Paris), who did the Martian climate modeling, and Veronique Ansan and Nicolas Mangold (Université de Nantes) and Daniel Berman (PSI), all of who analyzed spacecraft measurements regarding the glaciers. > > “Some public figures imply that modeling of global climate change on Earth is ‘junk science,’ but if climate models can explain features observed on other planets, then the models must have at least some validity,” said team leader Hartmann. As I pointed before you are trying to use complexity as a show stopper, and it is not really. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/78 "2015-09-16T04:09:07Z")
Forgot the link in the last quote: [Science of global climate modeling confirmed by discoveries on Mars](http://phys.org/news/2012-10-science-global-climate-discoveries-mars.html) BTW you are indeed once again going into debating the science, a big no-no as you even said, but as usual you do not keep it that way. As Silver noted, what we can expect in a warming world does not depend solely on computer models. Paleoclimatology pointed before at what the oceans, for example, are bound to do with all that CO2 that is being released into the atmosphere. [https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/12/03/what-does-400-ppm-look-like/](https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/12/03/what-does-400-ppm-look-like/) > [@](#): > > Recent estimates suggest CO2 levels reached as much as 415 parts per million (ppm) during the Pliocene. With that came global average temperatures that eventually reached 3 or 4 degrees C (5.4-7.2 degrees F) higher than today’s and as much as 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) warmer at the poles. Sea level ranged between five and 40 meters (16 to 131 feet) higher than today. This points to the current estimations of how much of a sea rise we can expect in the future to be very conservative ones. > **[NASA scientists warn of accelerating sea level rise as ice sheets melt](https://mashable.com/archive/global-sea-level-rise-mapped)** > > NASA scientists warn of accelerating sea level rise as ice sheets melt > [@](#): > > On Wednesday, NASA scientists said they expect several feet of global sea level rise by the end of the century, with an increasing likelihood that conservative projections will turn out to be too low. Recent scientific findings on the speed and scope of melting ice sheets in Greenland and parts of Antarctica suggest that global average sea level rise may approach or exceed 1 meter, or 3.3 feet, by 2100. AFAIK many estimates of the costs to protect our coastal cities are based on the lower estimates. (And as pointed before in another thread, it was not cheap at all). The problem now is that the republicans in the USA are bound to not even look at prevention because they do not believe that there is a problem, because they do not trust science indeed. If you think investing in prevention and adaptation is expensive consider the cost of not investing. That is what even Wall Street is beginning to notice (in the already cited Citibank report). ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/79 "2015-09-16T04:21:17Z")
Watch, here’s the contradiction: > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I think it’s safe to predict that major bad things would happen if the temperature went up by 20 degrees. We can predict what will happen to an anthill if we take a torch to it. The question is what happens to them when small changes are made to input. > > […] > > You know, that’s not what the IPCC says. They refuse to state that any particular outcome is ‘obvious and inescapable’. Everything is expressed in probabilities and levels of confidence - as it should be. And many of the possible outcomes are far from being catastrophic. The science behind CO2 being, essentially, the thermostat of the planet is well-known and well-established. Pump more CO2 into the atmosphere with a constant solar output, and the planet gets warmer. It doesn’t matter how many chaotic events can affect this; _this is the signal_, and it’s not as open to initial conditions as you think it is. To appeal to the system being chaotic given the information that we have about CO2, solar output, and temperature is simply not reasonable. We know that pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere causes warming. We have tons of historical and experimental data establishing this. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2015, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303/80 "2015-09-16T05:15:04Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > No, it is not. In fact, it’s the basic stuff that is causing all sorts of uncertainty. You can claim each basic thing is easy to understand, but the moment you combine even two of the basics, (coupled models) it becomes so complicated the supercomputers give wildly different responses, so much that the range of possible outcomes is greater than natural variability alone. This is true even for basic global warming theory, where coupled models show results that do not match the theory at all. The basic theory starts with the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, like CO2, reducing the amount of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) to space; thus, energy accumulates in the climate system, and the planet warms. That’s as basic as it gets. But climate models don’t show this happening. Warming is shown to be primarily caused by an increase in absorbed solar radiation (ASR). So right away it becomes complicated, and in fact what we observe doesn’t match the theoretical. > > What? What does that even mean? ==\> [why climate models generate a finding seemingly at odds with our basic understanding of global warming.](http://oceans.mit.edu/featured-stories/missing-peice-climate-puzzle) So I read your link, and I don’t see how it contradicts anything about global warming. To summarize the points made in the article: 1. CO2 warms by absorbing infrared radiation that would otherwise escape into space. So as CO2 is increased, you would expect to see less infrared radiation escaping the atmosphere. 2. Current models of CO2 behavior at the planetary level don’t see the decrease in longwave radiation, but rather an increase in absorption of shortwave radiation, which doesn’t seem to make sense since CO2 is trasnsparent to shortwave radiation. 3. As it turns out, it all makes sense after all, because the absorption of longwave radiation causes heating, which adds water vapor to the air. Water vapor absorbs shortwave radiation, as anyone who tries to look far on a humid day can tell you. I’m an amateur astronomer, and it’s well known that when it’s humid atmospheric transparency falls. Visible light is shortwave radiation. Hell, I can see it through my telescope. 4. In the meantime, the hotter earth emits more infrared or longwave radiation, only some of which is absorbed by the CO2, so it looks like the mechanism is backwards. But it’s really not. It’s just that there’s a secondary effect that sort of causes a flipping of the polarity of the longwave/shortwave signal. The reason this doesn’t really matter is because the old scenario and the new one both require the same warming effect of CO2. Again, the fact that CO2 behaves this way is uncontroversial. You can put a mix of atmospheric gases in a test tube and measure the heat transfer, then add a little CO2 and measure it again and see the change. You can measure it. You can watch such an experiment [right here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt6gLt6G5Kc) Another easy-to-do experiment is to simply shine sunlight through a prism and examine the spectra, then do the same while passing the light through some CO2. You will see the absorption lines of the CO2 in the spectra and tell exactly which frequencies are being absorbed. This is basic science. At a planetary scale we can also test this by looking at the temperature of other planets with CO2 in their atmospheres and compare them to what they should be from surface heating alone. Here’s a paper that compares Earth, Venus, Mars and Titan, all of which have CO2 in their atmospheres, and finds greenhouse effects on all of them attributable to CO2 and aligned with theory: [http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/eschwiet/essays/greenhouse\_ASTR555.pdf](http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/eschwiet/essays/greenhouse_ASTR555.pdf) > [@](#): > > The above example was in fact a response to your claim “the science there is sound and nearly incontrovertible.” What is incontrovertible is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that CO2 is increasing, and most of the increase is coming from human activity. Therefore, _all else being equal_, we would expect the temperature to rise as a result. Now, the real sticking point here is the ‘all else being equal’. And in the short term, it is. It’s the long term that’s more iffy, as an increase in CO2 triggers many other effects. It causes an increase in plant growth, warming causes albedo changes. Warming also changes ocean currents, which move the heat around and affect sea life. There are many other changes that occur - some of them causing positive feedbacks, and some causing negative feedbacks. Having looked at many adaptive systems, the feedbacks are often not very intuitive. Who would have guessed that adding six wolves to an ecosystem would change the direction of rivers? Because complex adaptive systems are not ‘designed’ but instead evolve, the mechanisms can be bizarre. Bees keep temperatures constant in hives because many species mix together, and each species beats its wings at different frequencies at different temperatures. Put enough of them together, and they switch on and off in proportion to temperature swings and regulate it smoothly. Certain parasites cause ants to climb grass stalks and wait for birds to eat them, then the birds poop out the remains including the parasites, and that’s how they spread and survive. This is a bit of a digression, but it’s incredibly cool. Lately I’ve been fascinated by slime molds. Slime molds are actually huge single-celled creatures. No brain at all, no nervous system, nothing. And yet, they can solve complex problems like the travelling salesman problem. They can find the shortest paths through mazes. And watch as one figures out how to efficiently plan the Tokyo rail system: [Urban planning slime mold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwKuFREOgmo). The oat flakes in the video are placed in the same relative location as the towns in the area around Tokyo. At the end of that video you can see a lot of paths between the flakes. If you overlay a map of the Tokyo rail system over it, it’s almost a perfect match. The mold solved a wickedly complex problem that civil engineers have to work on for a long time, and it did it in a few hours with no brain. That’s an example of how sophisticated adaptive systems can be, even at the simplest levels. Imagine a globe full of them all through the ecosystem. To believe that we can predict what’s it’s going to be like 100 years from now after we apply a shock to it takes a real leap of faith. By the way, when those slime molds start to dry up, they have another trick up their sleeve. Their behavior changes entirely and they start to grow ‘pods’ full of spores, then they sacrifice themselves to elevate the pods to the point where the wind can catch them. They fly away over long distances, then the pods break open and disgorge the spores, spreading the slime molds to new regions where there is more moisture. There they eat decaying vegetation. So nature has evolved a creature that moves from area to area feeding on dead vegetation. That’s yet another feedback - if climate change causes an area to dry, slime molds will suddenly lift off and fly around, descending on other ecosystems and changing them. Other animals that eat the same decaying vegetation have their own complex responses, and so it goes. We have only begun to scratch the surface of our understanding of how all this interrelates at a global level. And these effects are not necessarily small - The 1997/1998 El Nino/La Nina event caused algae blooms that resulted in the trapping of 700 million metric tons of CO2 - an amount equivalent to half of the U.S.'s annual carbon emissions. If we use a ‘social cost of carbon’ of $50 per metric ton, that one event equates to $350 billion dollars in carbon reduction (assuming all of it was permanently sequestered, which it wasn’t, but I’m just pointing out the scales here). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trust-vs-science-yet-another-global-warming-catfight/729303.md?page=5)