I admit that I do know everything about this issue.
I will quote one your cites to continue to make my point.
[QUOTE=RealClimate.org]
The correct answer–the one we have indeed provided in previous posts (Storms & Global Warming II, Some recent updates and Storms and Climate Change) --is that there is no way to prove that Katrina either was, or was not, affected by global warming. For a single event, regardless of how extreme, such attribution is fundamentally impossible. We only have one Earth, and it will follow only one of an infinite number of possible weather sequences. It is impossible to know whether or not this event would have taken place if we had not increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as much as we have. Weather events will always result from a combination of deterministic factors (including greenhouse gas forcing or slow natural climate cycles) and stochastic factors (pure chance).
We do not have scientific proof that the current trend of 4 and 5 category storms have anything to do with man-made global warming. Any claim to that affect is conjecture.
Again, I am not saying that it isn’t. I am saying we don’t KNOW it is. That is all.
GreyMatters: The part that you quoted from the RealClimate piece sounds very much like part of my summary of it in the first post that I made in this thread:
However, you then say:
This is certainly not a correct summary of what that particular quote that you gave from the RealClimate piece was saying. They were talking about the ability to assign any particular weather event to climate change, not the ability to discern whether or not the general trend of increasing intensities has anything to do with man-made global warming. In fact, on this latter point, they discuss arguments why such warming would be expected to lead to increases in hurricane intensity and empirical evidence that is is. I won’t disagree with still calling it a “conjecture” or “hypothesis” at this point because the evidence so far is limited, but it is one that has some theoretical and empirical support.
Thanks for keeping me honest by reminding me how to try and frame discussions on scientific “proof” and the Baconian Scientific Method. I will try harder.
I do not think that global warming has contributed to the current increase on high intensity storms because experts in the field, in peer reviewed literature, at the very least, do not agree on the issue.
[QUOTE= Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, in press, 2005.
December. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society.]
To summarize, claims of linkages between global warming and hurricane impacts
are premature for three reasons. First, no connection has been established between
greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes (IPCC 2001; Walsh
2004). Emanuel (2005) is suggestive of such a connection, but is by no means definitive.
In the future, such a connection may be established (e.g., in the case of the observations
of Emanuel 2005 or the projections of Knutson and Tuleya 2004) or made in the context
of other metrics of tropical cyclone intensity and duration that remain to be closely
examined. Second, the peer-reviewed literature reflects a scientific consensus exists that
any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed
variability (Knutson and Tuleya 2004, Henderson-Sellers et al 1998), while the scientific
problem of tropical cyclogenesis is so far from being solved that little can be said about
possible changes in frequency. And third, under the assumptions of the IPCC, expected
future damages to society of its projected changes in the behavior of hurricanes are
dwarfed by the influence of its own projections of growing wealth and population (Pielke
at al. 2000). While future research or experience may yet overturn these conclusions, the
state of knowledge today is such that while there are good reasons to expect that any
conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not
be made in the near term.
GreyMatters: It is true that Pielke and Landsea are more skeptical of the connections, although really the differences between them and Emanuel and the RealClimate folks are small (although large enough that Emanuel was originally going to be an author on that paper…or a similar paper…but congenially withdrew as an author because he decided that he could no longer support the conclusions).
Note in particular that that particular paper focusses on the link of global warming to hurricane impacts. By impacts, they are talking about the economic damage and loss of life caused by hurricanes. It is much harder empirically, or even theoretically, to establish such a connection since the statistics of landfalling hurricanes are much worse and then the damage and loss of life issue has to do largely with where the hurricane hits relative to populated areas and so forth.
On the more particular subject of just detecting changes in hurricanes [e.g., intensity] due to climate change, they say: “First, no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes (IPCC 2001; Walsh 2004). Emanuel (2005) is suggestive of such a connection, but is by no means definitive.” This is not in contradiction to anything that I or the RealClimate folks have said.
By the way, if you wade through the comments section of that RealClimate piece, you will find (amidst the considerable noise) a back-and-forth discussion between Pielke and the RealClimate folks. For example, one issue that they were discussing is whether one needs to see definitive evidence that global warming is having a definitive change on hurricane impacts before considering this a reason to take actions to mitigate the warming. Pielke was arguing that if you can’t detect it, it must not be a very important effect. The Real Climate folks were pointing out that if (in the aformentioned analogy) you were betting on dice, you very well might not want to wait until you had definitive statistics that the dice are loaded before you decide to take action (such as not playing the game anymore) because even if 6’s have twice the probability of coming up as they ought to have, it will still take a fair number of trials to show with a high degree of statistical confidence that the dice are in fact loaded.
I am definitely in more agreement with Pielke on this issue. Even more so regarding the use of the precautionary principle regarding this or any other global warming issue.
I fundamentally disagree with the prcautionary principle with regards to living one’s life all the way through its application on worldwide political/social issues.
This may be where you and I are in disagreement about this and not the science behind whether man-made global warming is currently contributing to hurricane characteristics.
It seems, on one side we have those people saying we can’t yet prove global warming is contributing, but we do have hypothesis that say it might be, so lets act on it. On the other, we have people saying we can’t yet prove it, but we have hypothesis that say it might not be, so lets wait and see.
I would rather wait and see. That is not to say we should wait to do things to mitigate hurricane impact on the world or to reduce pollution or help the poor. I mean wait and see until we have a clearer understanding on what it is and how best to solve the problems associated with climate change taking as much into account as we can.
I am obviously not the person who would/could decide when enough knowledge is enough to act on this issue. Though, IMHO it isn’t enough yet to try and effectively combat the man-made portion of the Earth’s current warming trend.
Well, see, here’s your problem. The experts haven’t unanimously said global warming HASN’T increased hurricane intensity, they haven’t unanimously said it HAS. But you take that as grounds for deciding it HASN’T. What’s more, if, as I and others suspect, some scientists are being used by the business community as foils, you’ll not ever have grounds to decide one way or the other because there will always be SOMEBODY willing to take up the cudgel on behalf of the wealthy and powerful – for the money, of course.
On my cynical days I lean very much towards your side of the issue, oh evil one.
However, I have tried very hard to listen to jshore about this over the years and there is a lot of evidence that CO2 is causing the globe to warm. I disagree on how much of that warming we can attribute to man but not that we are most likely contributing.
I think you have hit on the real problem here. How do we wade through the bias in situations like this one? Where do we find sources of information that don’t have an agenda? On what kind and to what standard do we use “evidence” to base our social/political decisions on?
Like you said, it may never be solved. So, I think, we need the believers and skeptics of any issue like this to have their voice and work together to do their best at finding an answer. If we can’t get it perfect we can at least try really hard.
My part, apparently, is to be a skeptic with horrible debating skills. lol.
As scientists, we are always (or should be) skeptical. So until there is a majority opinion/theory, it’s always safe to assume the status quo. I’m not saying that global warming is not affecting hurricane intensity, I’m saying for now that it’s better to assume it isn’t, until we have some proof otherwise.
While I will agree there is some bad science going on with regards to businesses and science, I highly doubt this is true for the Pielke paper. Chris Landsea is a well-respected researcher with the Hurricane Research Division, and I believe is the team leader for the re-analysis project I mentioned earlier. Max Mayfield is the director of the National Hurricane Center, and Richard Pasch is forecaster/researcher with NHC.
I agree with Viscera on his 2nd point about the Pielke paper. Pielke et al. seem like well-respected folks in the field…and while they may have their biases like anyone else, there is nothing to suggest that they are being unreasonable here.
This is in contrast to many of the scientists who are naysayers on climate change in general (like Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, and Willie Soon) who really have kind of become crackpots…i.e., they don’t do very much significant peer-reviewed research, they present extremely distorted and deceptive statements to the public, and they clearly have extremely strong political agendas and/or industry-backing.
There are some really simple things that are very hard to get into the public mind. Global warming is not a theory. It is a measured physical phenomenon. It isn’t something that might happen, it is something that has already happened over the entire period during which we have accurately recorded weather data.
Prediction of the climate over the long term is not possible with the information and methods we now have. Long term is centuries, when you talk about climate. Decades long cycles are many and poorly understood. Century long cycles probably exist. We have just about one century of data on the subject of weather, and almost all of that is for only the Northern Hemisphere. More than half of it is for North America.
The influence of humans on climate cannot be quantified reliably given the data and methodologies we have now. Projections of future climate changes cannot be reliable until that impact is more thoroughly understood. Most weather scientists find it unlikely that human influence on climate is near zero. It is demonstrable that it is an increasing factor, but that cannot be assumed to make it the primary factor. Gathering data is the undeniable necessary first step, and we just started doing it recently, in climate scale times.
Not interfering with the climate is not profitable in an economic and political sense, for individuals, or corporations. Whether it is critically important for the world is not yet provable, in a scientific sense. We are unable to ascertain if it is already too late, quickly becoming too late, or if we have decades or centuries before it is too late. It may be that we have already overcome the ice age that would have happened without human intervention. The only thing we know is that the data we have do say that the atmosphere, and the surface of the planet are both warmer than when we first started taking data, and that the rate of increase is increasing as well.
Pretend that whatever you find most politically palatable is the truth. That should work.
Just more food for thought: Folks at Purdue predict some dramatic changes in store for the US in the near future. They claim their model is as accurate as any yet created, and implicate human activity (increased greenhouse gases) in the process. The article seems to imply we should expect more Katrinas, as well as more extremes of drought and rain across the US, depending on the region.
That said, the article loopydude cites does say it is an improvement from the other models with the caveat, “To confirm the model’s accuracy, Diffenbaugh ran it using weather data from between 1961 and 1985 and compared the prediction with what actually occurred. “The model performed admirably, which tells us we’ve got a good understanding of how to represent the physical world in terms of computer code,” he comments.”
Diffenbaugh seems to be saying the model does compare well but does not produce the observed temperatures.
I would say that the flaws in this comparison go both ways, temperature measurements and the models output.
Still, it is good to see that the climatologists are making advancements.
I guess I tend to max out on the uncertainty argument. Sure, we don’t know for certain to what degree human activity is altering the climate of the planet. However, with every new report of this kind, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to take the small number of dissenters seriously. Yeah, it’s good to be skeptical in science, and have a diversity of interpretations, but eventually somebody has to make some decisions about the potential impact of human beings on our global environment, even if it means forging ahead with imperfect knowledge. I can’t think of many similar problems affecting public policy where so much scrupulous doubt about the soundness of the science is weighing so heavily on our minds and the minds of our leaders. Given the enormity of some of our other recent endeavors, and the paucity of evidential support for them, I find this need for unequivocally positive data to support the assertion that humans are seriously altering the climate curious, to say the least. To me, there’s already more than enough cause for grave concern. Do we have to be certain to feel the need to act? I can’t see why. It never stopped us from making momentous decisions before.
Yeah, I agree that it’s great climatologists are making advancements. I’d like to think, however, that a prudent society wouldn’t require an iron-clad postdiction of the human impact of global warming to acknowlege its reality, finally accepting much too late that long time ago doing something about it would have been adventitious. I guess, from my perspective, our choice is to either accept that these people may be onto something, and take it seriously, even with a degree of doubt, or continue to wait for absolute certainty (a pretty elusive thing in science), and potentially open ourselves up to some serious, even devastating risks.
I don’t think there is little doubt that the Earth is in an temperature increase trend. The Earth is getting a little warmer. The when, why’s and how’s of this trend are all not fully understood yet, but I would agree that it is a warming trend.
I think that the science is extremely sound in regards to the measurement of CO2 and the hypothesis that it is man’s activity that is causing the increase.
I think the science is very sound with regards to the hypothesis that CO2 is a part of the “greenhouse effect” the atmosphere provides us and that increaseing it, with all else being eqaul, will increase the energy absorbtion of Earth’s thermodynaic system.
However, I do not think the science is very sound regarding the actual affect this increase in CO2 is having on the system.
Finally, I most especially disagree with the extreme “environmentalist” disaster scenarios and solutions to the problem being currently proposed. I personally think that much of the zealousness coming from the extreme “environmentalists” has little to do with the actual affects of man-made global warming and more to do with their political/social positions on polution, government and human beings in general. I think these bias have infected much of the media reporting and politics of this issue, and it has hurt the good science being done out there on it.
I think there is little doubt that the Earth is in an temperature increase trend. The Earth is getting a little warmer. The when, why’s and how’s of this trend are all not fully understood yet, but I would agree that it is a warming trend.
I think that the science is extremely sound in regards to the measurement of CO2 and the hypothesis that it is man’s activity that is causing the increase.
I think the science is very sound with regards to the hypothesis that CO2 is a part of the “greenhouse effect” the atmosphere provides us and that increaseing it, with all else being eqaul, will increase the energy absorbtion of Earth’s thermodynaic system.
However, I do not think the science is very sound regarding the actual affect this increase in CO2 is having on the system.
Finally, I most especially disagree with the extreme “environmentalist” disaster scenarios and solutions to the problem being currently proposed. I personally think that much of the zealousness coming from the extreme “environmentalists” has little to do with the actual affects of man-made global warming and more to do with their political/social positions on polution, government and human beings in general. I think these bias have infected much of the media reporting and politics of this issue, and it has hurt the good science being done out there on it.
In that case you’re impugning most of scientists who are doing the work, as it is they who are calling for reductions in CO2 emissions as much as anyone. They’re also responsible for some of the gloomy forecasts and catastrophizing language you apparently attribute to political bias:
I was not specifically “impunging” anyone Loopydude, lol. Though after reading your quote, David Barber is a prime example of the type of person I am talking about. Thank you for providing me with an example. Your quote says it all.
I also did not say that reducing CO2 emissions is a bad/incorrect solution. There is more to it than that.
You have incorrectly implied specifics to my position. (My first false witness? lol)
I think any pollution is bad and should be responsibly reduced then eliminated. However, there is more to the world of pollution than just polluting. The cause of CO2 pollution, for the most part, is done by things that benefit man. I think that many of the solutions posed today would be a huge reduction of these benefits.
I do not think that any affective solution will be made until humans can still have a chance at receiving these benefits and can reduce CO2 emissions. Technological advancements in energy types and efficiency are, IMHO, the only way man-made CO2 is going to get reduced then eliminated from the atmosphere.
I would vote for the need to reduce man-made CO2 emissions into the atmosphere without any reason other than I am of the philosophy “you pack out what you pack in.” But, I am not going to vote for something that will reduce my benefits without offering another method to receive those benefits. I like modern living. I think a lot of people either want or like these benefits enough that they will not hesitate to possibly hurt the Earth to get them. To many, these benefits far outweigh the current supposed “risk” our CO2 pollutions are causing.
I have clearly stated my opposition to the precautionary principle. I think that is where we would ultimately disagree the most on this issue.
To be fair, I do not think my personal views are any less hairy than the other side on this issue, or provides clearer answers to the solution. However, given my perspective on human nature, I don’t think taking away these benefits, or removing the chance at achieving those benefits from developing countries, is a realistic possibility. Things like the Kyoto Protocol and Al Gore’s call to eliminate the combustion engine are fantasy unless you can provide not only the solution to elimination of the CO2 but also the solution to keeping the benefits.
It seems that you do not believe in market economics, at least market economics as a science (as opposed to free market fundamentalism, which is a religion). If you did then you would understand that technological advancements are not likely to be made in the absence of any market mechanism to make that happen. When the cost for putting CO2 into the atmosphere is set at $0.00 then there is no weight put on minimizing the amount of CO2 one emits…unless one does it out of shear good will.
Talking about regulation of CO2 emissions and technological solutions as if they were two different things is deceptive. It is only through the regulation of CO2 in some way that the market mechanism exists for the development of the technology. One can argue about the best way to regulate greenhouse gases…i.e., whether to use caps or taxes and how they should be distributed internationally. However, it is hard to argue for lack of any regulation under some vague hope that technology will magically appear to solve a problem that you are doing your best to hide from the market.