"Climate Change - Doubts, Denials, Scepticism, and Politics"

[JimC]

Just catching up with this thread after a bit of a hiatus involving eye surgery (can only do a limited amount of posting at the moment...)

As a mod, glad to see everybody playing nice in the Ratz tradition...

Anybody read anything by Ian Plimer, an Aussie geologist famous in his day as a great enemy of creationists, now firmly in the climate change sceptic camp...

[Fact-Man]

now, having expanded my little polynomial, i'd like to emphasize that i understand that weather is integral to climatology and i agree with most of Mystrugi's and your points, but not necessarily the conclusion that there's little we can do
i also think you disregard the happy side effects of maybe getting the world on a more sustainable energy paradigm and pulling on the same rope for the first time in human history in the process of objectively tackling a worldwide problem.

I've not seen any reason to doubt your understanding of the difference between weather and climate, despite the fact that your polynomial seemed a bit discombooberated. You had made it clear in earlier posts.

Onward indeed! your and Mysturji's brand of knowledgeable skepticism is very much needed for an informed dialectic

I'm no skeptic in the sense of the skepticism we see in the denialosphere, which appears rather obviously to be almost exclusively driven by the huge corporate $$$ that are at stake in the issue.

I'm satisfied that the AGW theory of global warming is at bottom good science, with some further developments yet to come that will make it even better and will resolve remaining questions, such as the climate system's sensitivity to GHGs and the role that clouds play in warming, among others.

Over the coming decade I think we'll see significant enhancements in the resolution at which descriptions of the warming phenomena can be elaborated and from that we'll see better predictive capabilities arise. But even given that, the IPCC stated in AR4 that its forecasts were at a 95 per cent confidence level, which seems to be sufficiently high to base action upon ... action we have yet to take in strongly meaningful ways.

The problem lies in the relationship between our economic schemata and what the science is telling us we have to do, in which the former lacks the flexibility to support the action we must take and so we take none, while having to fight against the doubts and confusion sown by corporate interests, who seek to maintain the status quo.

Hence it becomes much more of an economic problem, as opposed to a scientific problem. The great bulk of the world's scientists and policymakers have accepted AGW science and wish now to move on and take the action that it tells us is necessary. But the economic problem is severe in that our economic schemata isn't sufficiently flexible or resilient to allow that action to be implemented ... without causing some rather severe economic dislocations and losses to occur.

So that's where the rubber meets the road on this thing. We may find that we'll be forced to make fundamental changes to our economic schemata if it's unable in its present form to facilitate the action we need to take. It seems doubtful we'd hang on to an economy that prevents us from saving the world from some pretty severe consequences that will come in the not too distant future if we don't act soon.

Policymakers and politicians alike have been wringing their hands and pulling their hair out as they try unsuccessfuly to find ways to make our current economic schemata adapt itself to the new reality the science has brought to us. At some point the science will overwhelm the economic blockage, in some form or other, and force policymakers and politicians to make whatever changes in economy that will allow us to proceed apace and take the action that's dictated by the science.

[Fact-Man]

Just catching up with this thread after a bit of a hiatus involving eye surgery (can only do a limited amount of posting at the moment...)

As a mod, glad to see everybody playing nice in the Ratz tradition...

Anybody read anything by Ian Plimer, an Aussie geologist famous in his day as a great enemy of creationists, now firmly in the climate change skeptic camp.

I'd hardly waste my time reading Plimer. He's an Australian geologist who sits on the boards of three different mining companies, which I presume are doing coal.

Any geologist with that big an interest in coal mining doesn't strike me as being someone who could speak objectively on the question of global warming. Plimer has published 40 scientific papers and a half dozen books, only one book of which had to do with climate change or climate science, and it was not well received.

Plimer is listed as an "Allied Expert" for a Canadian group called the "Natural Resource Stewardship Project," (NRSP) a lobby organization that refuses to disclose its funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball.

An October 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article on who funds the NRSP, states that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him [Tom Harris] to say whether energy companies are funding his group."

Tim Ball is a notorious denier who ran around for years claiming to be the first Canadian climatologist, a claim that was later refuted by facts and evidence.

Investigators from http://www.deSmogblog.com recently uncovered information that two of the three Directors on the board of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project are senior executives of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto based lobby firm that specializes in “energy, environment and ethics.”

A search of 22,000 academic journals shows that Plimer has published more than 40 research articles in peer-reviewed journals, mainly on the subject of ore deposits.

Plimer is not well qualified to speak on GW or CC.

I hope your recovery from eye surgery goes well.

[piscator]

I'm no skeptic in the sense of the skepticism we see in the denialosphere, which appears rather obviously to be almost exclusively driven by the huge corporate $$$ that are at stake in the issue.

please forgive me for lumping you (and Mysturji) in with the Daily Fail/American "Culture Warrior" crowd
in mitigation, such as it is, i'm used to being mobbed by peasants with pitchforks and broad brushes are economical in that situation
and it got us to your excellent post without a lot of bullshitting around about scientific methodology and stats and papers written by meteorologists with axes to grind and $$ to make
another log on the bonfire of empirical evidence to support the Big Bait theory...

I'm satisfied that the AGW theory of global warming is at bottom good science, with some further developments yet to come that will make it even better and will resolve remaining questions, such as the climate system's sensitivity to GHGs and the role that clouds play in warming, among others.

Over the coming decade I think we'll see significant enhancements in the resolution at which descriptions of the warming phenomena can be elaborated and from that we'll see better predictive capabilities arise. But even given that, the IPCC stated in AR4 that its forecasts were at a 95 per cent confidence level, which seems to be sufficiently high to base action upon ... action we have yet to take in strongly meaningful ways.

The problem lies in the relationship between our economic schemata and what the science is telling us we have to do, in which the former lacks the flexibility to support the action we must take and so we take none, while having to fight against the doubts and confusion sown by corporate interests, who seek to maintain the status quo.

Hence it becomes much more of an economic problem, as opposed to a scientific problem. The great bulk of the world's scientists and policymakers have accepted AGW science and wish now to move on and take the action that it tells us is necessary. But the economic problem is severe in that our economic schemata isn't sufficiently flexible or resilient to allow that action to be implemented ... without causing some rather severe economic dislocations and losses to occur.

So that's where the rubber meets the road on this thing. We may find that we'll be forced to make fundamental changes to our economic schemata if it's unable in its present form to facilitate the action we need to take. It seems doubtful we'd hang on to an economy that prevents us from saving the world from some pretty severe consequences that will come in the not too distant future if we don't act soon.

Policymakers and politicians alike have been wringing their hands and pulling their hair out as they try unsuccessfuly to find ways to make our current economic schemata adapt itself to the new reality the science has brought to us. At some point the science will overwhelm the economic blockage, in some form or other, and force policymakers and politicians to make whatever changes in economy that will allow us to proceed apace and take the action that's dictated by the science.

i think you are spot on that AGW is indeed the Tragedy of the Commons writ large, and i think it's important to point out that 40+ years of political philosophy, game theory, and evolutionary biology have yielded essentially 2 ways out of the trap: enlightened self interest of rational agents, and the superior force of enlightened external agents

the common denominator is, of course, enlightenment
which sort of brings us back to the OP and the "What, me worry?" approach i've criticized

clearly, the way to get rational agents off dead center is to make it in their own best interests to do so

[JimC]

Just catching up with this thread after a bit of a hiatus involving eye surgery (can only do a limited amount of posting at the moment...)

As a mod, glad to see everybody playing nice in the Ratz tradition...

Anybody read anything by Ian Plimer, an Aussie geologist famous in his day as a great enemy of creationists, now firmly in the climate change skeptic camp.

I'd hardly waste my time reading Plimer. He's an Australian geologist who sits on the boards of three different mining companies, which I presume are doing coal.

Any geologist with that big an interest in coal mining doesn't strike me as being someone who could speak objectively on the question of global warming. Plimer has published 40 scientific papers and a half dozen books, only one book of which had to do with climate change or climate science, and it was not well received.

Plimer is listed as an "Allied Expert" for a Canadian group called the "Natural Resource Stewardship Project," (NRSP) a lobby organization that refuses to disclose its funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball.

An October 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article on who funds the NRSP, states that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him [Tom Harris] to say whether energy companies are funding his group."

Tim Ball is a notorious denier who ran around for years claiming to be the first Canadian climatologist, a claim that was later refuted by facts and evidence.

Investigators from http://www.deSmogblog.com recently uncovered information that two of the three Directors on the board of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project are senior executives of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto based lobby firm that specializes in “energy, environment and ethics.”

A search of 22,000 academic journals shows that Plimer has published more than 40 research articles in peer-reviewed journals, mainly on the subject of ore deposits.

Plimer is not well qualified to speak on GW or CC.

I hope your recovery from eye surgery goes well.

I'm getting there little by little - reading mainly by one eye at the moment, which is a little weird...

Yes, I gather he is very active in the corporate world of the Australian resources sector, so he has a financial interest in not rocking the boat...

[Tarby]

Anybody read anything by Ian Plimer, an Aussie geologist famous in his day as a great enemy of creationists, now firmly in the climate change sceptic camp...

Here's a whole load of folks who read it and, well, kind of tore it apart
http://tbp.mattandrews.id.au/2009/06/06 ... -and-earth

Here's Tim Lambert's list of no-no's by page number:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04 ... rom_ia.php

An astonomer suspects Plimer thought the book wouldn't be reviewed by an astronomer.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ia ... 5710387147

George Monbiot read it, too, and he and Plimer eventually had a face-to-face via satellite. Even the show's host gets somewhat fustrated with Plimer's evasions.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12 ... -video.php

There is one hilarious gaff which I can't find right now. Basically, Plimer's own section on ice ages actually confirms low sensitivity to CO2 if the science is done properly.

[Mysturji]

"Peak heat" doesn't hardly amount to a hill of beans. It only took a 7C rise in earth's mean annual temperature (MAT) to bring an end to the last Ice Age.

Pardon me for finding an ice age impressive. There's a term I learned at University. "Invalidation/invalidating". This means simply dismissing something with a wave of the hand and a "Pfffft", as though it merits no consideration. I'll be using it again later.

The denialosphere has produced a lot of scary scenarios on this front as they try to browbeat people into doubting the science of AGW.

As scary as the propagandasphere?

This is about a quarter of an inch from trolling.

But I'll not rise to the bait and will say instead that you'd have to show some evidence of AGW scientists or adherents to it actually propagandizing with scare mongering before I'll award your remark any merit.[/quote]
Remember what I said about different flavours of kool-aid?
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/ ... -you-think
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate ... ario_N.htm
http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 43957.html (Note the picture)

Mr. Bellamy has been thoroughly debunked, in case you hadn't noticed.

Yes I had. In fact I can poke holes in that article myself. But that's not the whole issue, is it? The way most people see it is this:
Here's a well-known, well-liked, respected scientist who (at the time) was frequently seen on national TV enthusing about plants and forests and all things natural and living, explaining scientific facts about living things and making it interesting and he obviously cares about the environment, but here he is saying that the climate change people are exaggerating the problem and it's really not that bad, they're just trying to scare us. OK, he's wrong about some things, but calling him a "botanist" as though it's synonymous with "idiot" is just invalidation. As an argument, it's no better than his. It won't convince anyone, and in the meantime, some people are getting the feeling they're being lied to. Yes. There is propaganda on both sides. "Pfft" won't make it go away.

First of all:

Edit: And since everybody else seems to be doing it...

Excellent!

Indubitabubbly!

A little pedantic, but I get your point. What about cloud seeding though?

You think THAT'S pedantic? This is Rationalia. You'll find out.
Cloud seeding only offers a very limited amount of control, it's very localised, and the conditions have to be just rightbefore you even start. Early days yet.

indeed, and i think we can both agree that "weather" is a bit of a non sequitur in a discussion of climate change, regardless of how often it seems to be slipped in by deniers and the denialist industry

Remember this...?

Climate is the average weather over a minimum period of 30 years.

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... rs#p352378

Top Tip: If you guys are going to be arguing on the same side, you might want to get your stories straight.

there's a lot of empirical evidence to suggest that we can and do control "weather", whether we like it or not
despite the circular reasoning of denialists

When I read that statement, I thought it was so wrong, I could only think of 6 possible explanations for it, but if I laid them out here, most of them could be construed as personal attacks, so let's just say that IMHO, that is a ridiculous statement.
The two explanations I could think of that could not be construed as personal attacks were:

English is not your first language
It's a trap!

Since reading further, I have pretty much ruled out the first one. Now that I've "taken the bait" we'll see...

We cannot control the weather (or the climate).
We influence the weather (and the climate).
We affect the weather (and the climate).

i thought i noted that 'weather' is something of a non sequitur wrt climate?

weather and climate are not equivalent terms; they are not even synonymous

you seem to take an atomistic view of climate to make the grand assumption that since we can't manipulate weather to your satisfaction, then the same must be true for climate
this a classic fallacy of composition, about as true as saying that since we lack the ability to manipulate the probability cloud of electrons in atoms of iron, there's no sense in trying to build an engine

weather is not climate, and makes a poor model of climate, which is probably at the root of why you have problems with mankind trying to mitigate our impact on climate

it may be cold in your flat, but that has trivial applicability to climate science, which incorporates terms like albedo and ocean temps and Greenhouse Effect and much larger values of t than 'weather' or 'room temperature'

in essence, your points are like the blind man holding on to the elephant's tail and saying, 'I don't understand all the fuss about this little skinny little thing with a tuft of hair on the end - why worry about it?" - you are apparently taking one small term of the elephant that is climate science and trying to extrapolate a model whereby it's just fine to do nothing but ignore the smell and sanguinely await the inevitable

Again with the misrepresentations.
Top Tip: When you're trying to convince people about the truth of your claims, dishonesty doesn't help.
Neither does an air of smug superiority.

I was going to say more, but the more I think about that , the more I think what's the point?
I'm certain that I will be misrepresented as "that kind of kaffir", and that arguments I never made - and have denied making time and again - will be thoroughly debunked, so I just hope the audience has been paying attention.
I wanted to present my argument. I have done so, and it has not been trounced. There was one polite disagreement regarding my interpretation of some of the evidence, but the complete lack of debunking of what I actually said indicates to me that my argument has merit. I have got some food for thought out of this, and I will chew it. I hope I have provided some as well.
So fine, put words in my mouth. I've said my bit. I'm feral OT, and there are entendres lying around, un-doubled. I'm off to the pub.

[piscator]

Again with the misrepresentations.
Top Tip: When you're trying to convince people about the truth of your claims, dishonesty doesn't help.
Neither does an air of smug superiority.

I was going to say more, but the more I think about that , the more I think what's the point?
I'm certain that I will be misrepresented as "that kind of kaffir", and that arguments I never made - and have denied making time and again - will be thoroughly debunked, so I just hope the audience has been paying attention.
I wanted to present my argument. I have done so, and it has not been trounced. There was one polite disagreement regarding my interpretation of some of the evidence, but the complete lack of debunking of what I actually said indicates to me that my argument has merit. I have got some food for thought out of this, and I will chew it. I hope I have provided some as well.
So fine, put words in my mouth. I've said my bit. I'm feral OT, and there are entendres lying around, un-doubled. I'm off to the pub.

from your OP [emphasis mine]:

Could that perhaps be because - besides the fact that the weather has always and (for the foreseeable future) WILL always be beyond our control - if we (as a species) were able to do anything to stop it (if indeed it needs stopping

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9094



sorry to be so dishonest, cruel and unrepresentative of your words Mysturji, perhaps i was mistaken when i thought you were talking about weather?

[Reverend Blair]

Well, here's something from before the drummer choked on somebody else's vomit... Play it loud, and maybe take some drugs, just for good measure.

Also, it's Nun Splashing Week in Winnipeg. That 2 weeks earlier than usual. Just sayin'...

And now that we have the niceties out of the way...

You think THAT'S pedantic? This is Rationalia. You'll find out.

Dude, I'm a writer. I once saw a fist-fight break out over whether a comma or a semi-colon was more appropriate. Also, writer's have a reputation for drinking a lot, but some writers aren't very good at it. I take them out to practice as often as possible...kind of my own personal mission to make the world a weirder place.

Anyway, I have a deep understanding of pedantry, which is why I said, "a little pedantic." Perhaps I'm just being pedantic though.

Cloud seeding only offers a very limited amount of control, it's very localised, and the conditions have to be just rightbefore you even start.

It's still control. It might be limited and the technology might be in its infancy, but it is control of the weather.

I was going to say more, but the more I think about that , the more I think what's the point?

Er...what are you trying to do, destroy the internet? What do you mean, what's the point? There is no point, it's the internet. You make an argument, others make an argument to counter your argument, we pretend that we are involved in an intellectual pursuit and people who know us say, "Well, at least he's not hooked on black tar heroin." Then we all pretend not to look at porn. Are you new at this or something?


And here's something for after the after the drummer chokes on somebody else's vomit...

[Fact-Man]

"Peak heat" doesn't hardly amount to a hill of beans. It only took a 7C rise in earth's mean annual temperature (MAT) to bring an end to the last Ice Age.

Pardon me for finding an ice age impressive. There's a term I learned at University. "Invalidation/invalidating". This means simply dismissing something with a wave of the hand and a "Pfffft", as though it merits no consideration. I'll be using it again later.

No pardon needed, the last Ice Age was indeed impressive, no argument on that score.

But check my point, it didn't take but a relatively small increase in the Earth's Mean Annual Temperature (MAT) to bring the last Ice Age to an end and melt nearly all of the ice it had created, vast untold volumes of the stuff in fact. And I should add that this relatively small increment of change in Earth's MAT occurred over thousands of years.

What's the relevance you ask?

The relevance is what a small increment of change in Earth's MAT can do to climate. We're now looking at a similar degree of change in Earth's MAT over the next 90 years, a rapidity that's absolutely unprecedented in the climate record.

In other words, if a 7C degree rise can end an Ice Age and melt nearly all the ice created during it, what do we think a 6C degree rise will do over the next 90 years? Doesn't sound like a picnic to me.

The denialosphere has produced a lot of scary scenarios on this front as they try to browbeat people into doubting the science of AGW.

As scary as the propagandasphere?

This is about a quarter of an inch from trolling.

But I'll not rise to the bait and will say instead that you'd have to show some evidence of AGW scientists or adherents to it actually propagandizing with scare mongering before I'll award your remark any merit.

Remember what I said about different flavours of kool-aid?

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/ ... -you-think
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate ... ario_N.htm
http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 43957.html (Note the picture)

Let's take these one at a time. My comments about these pieces will come after we review them each:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/ ... -you-think
Mr. Drum writes about what he perceives to be some mis-communication between a Washington Post reporter, the United Nations Environment Program, and the Climate Action Initiative....a group that collaborated with climate researchers at the Vermont-based Sustainability Institute, Massachusetts-based Ventana Systems and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do an analysis of a recently published UNEP report.

Juliet Eilperin reports in the Washington Post:

Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of climate change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.

That's odd. This is 3.5 degrees Celsius. A couple of hours ago that same story said 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or 4 degrees Celsius. But if you click on the link and read the UN report, neither of those numbers appears. At least, not that I can find. What's going on?

Robert Corell, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative....collaborated with climate researchers at the Vermont-based Sustainability Institute, Massachusetts-based Ventana Systems and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do the analysis. The team has revised its estimates since a new U.N. report went to press and has posted the most recent figures at ClimateInteractive.org.

The group took the upper-range targets of nearly 200 nations' climate policies — including U.S. cuts that would reduce domestic emissions 73 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, along with the European Union's pledge to reduce its emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 — and found that even under that optimistic scenario, the average global temperature is likely to warm by 6.3 degrees.

Ah. The number comes not from the UN report, but from Robert Corell. And it's been updated, which presumably accounts for the Post story being updated.

Except that if you go to ClimateInteractive.org, their graph still says 4 degrees Celsius. And it seems to be based on a model called C-ROADS, not the UN report.

So color me confused. Except for one thing: both the UN report and Corell's analysis agree that climate change is much worse than we thought even a few years ago. Virtually every measure of warming is increasing faster than our models predicted — something that regular readers of this blog already know.

From the first chapter of the UN study:

The climate forcing arriving sooner-than-expected includes faster sea-level rise, ocean acidification, melting of Arctic sea-ice cover, warming of polar land masses, freshening in ocean currents, and shifts in circulation patterns in the atmosphere and the oceans.

....In early 2008, a team of scientists published the first detailed investigation of vulnerable Earth System components that could contain tipping points. The team introduced the term ‘tipping element’ for these vulnerable systems and accepted a definition for tipping point as “...a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system...”

The nine tipping points are below. Three of them could happen within ten years, and two more are possible within 50. Time to quit mucking around, folks.

This last sentence merely reflects things that have been known for some time and which have been previously reported in many instances.

Next:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate ... ario_N.htm
In this article reporter Doyel Rice writes that "Pundits and journalists like to deal in "worst-case scenarios" in stories about weather and climate. Like it or not, eye-grabbing headlines like "Worst drought on record;" "Worst hurricane season ever;" "Worst loss of Arctic since records began" really do catch readers' eyes, even if the period of record is as low as 30 years."

Ahem, pundits and journalists, not necessarily climate scientists

Reporter Rice goes on to write about Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, whom he claims does just that in an opinion piece in this week's journal Nature, looking at the absolute "worst-case" climate-change scenario, based on an atmosphere with 1,000 parts of carbon dioxide per million by the year 2100. (Current levels are about 390ppm.) The essay is a companion piece to the studies out in the same Nature issue covered in this Reuters story out today, which talks about how the world can "safely" burn only 25% of the planet's remaining coal, oil and gas.

Next:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 43957.html
In this piece, Lord Stern, the economist who produced the single most influential political document on climate change, says he underestimated the risks of global warming and the damage that could result from it.

The situation was worse than he had thought when he completed his review two-and-a-half years ago, he told a conference yesterday, but politicians do not yet grasp the scale of the dangers now becoming apparent.

"Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet," Lord Stern posed to the meeting of scientists in Copenhagen.

It appears to me that Mr. Stern was reacting to the UNEP report referred to above, the introduction of which is reproduced here:

Climate Change Science Compendium 2009
The Climate Change Science Compendium is a review of some 400 major scientific contributions to our understanding of Earth Systems and climate that have been released through peer-reviewed literature or from research institutions over the last three years, since the close of research for consideration by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

The Compendium is not a consensus document or an update of any other process. Instead, it is a presentation of some exciting scientific findings, interpretations, ideas, and conclusions that have emerged among scientists.

Focusing on work that brings new insights to aspects of Earth System Science at various scales, it discusses findings from the International Polar Year and from new technologies that enhance our abilities to see the Earth’s Systems in new ways. Evidence of unexpected rates of change in Arctic sea ice extent, ocean acidification, and species loss emphasizes the urgency needed to develop management strategies for addressing climate change.

An up-dated version of the Climate Change Science Compendium 2009 was uploaded to the Internet on 21 October 2009. It follows feed-back from researchers, experts and members of the public following the launch last month. UNEP welcomes further constructive comments so that the report evolves as a living document containing the latest peer-reviewed science.

In effect, this report updates the IPCC's 4th Assessmet report, AR4.

You may refer to your referenced articles as being "scaremongering" but close examination shows them to be rather routine reporting on a new scientific publication, UNEP's "Climate Change Science Compendium 2009," which does indeed update the findings published in AR4 and does indeed make it clear that the view of what we can expect to occur climate-wise over the coming 90 years is probably worse than what was portrayed in AR4. Note that UNEP's report is predicated upon and reflects "some 400 major scientific contributions to our understanding of Earth Systems and climate that have been released through peer-reviewed literature or from research institutions over the last three years," and is, hence, built on what we can only consider to be good science.

Now, pundits and journos can write anything they wish (and can get past their editors and publishers), nobody has much control over that. And pundits and journos aren't known for their accurate reporting of science and do in fact have a strong tendency to do what Mr. Rice of USA Today alleges, which is to write "eye-grabbing headlines like "Worst drought on record;" "Worst hurricane season ever;" "Worst loss of Arctic since records began" really do catch readers' eyes," and, I would add, they do this to help sell newspapers.

Any of us who are following this issue have learned a long time ago to ignore what pundits and journos are reporting and go directly to the science they are reporing on.

The plain truth is that things might well be worse than we thought, which is no crime but a simple reality, the kind of reality that often emerges from time to time as science improves and gets better at what it's doing, with better resolution.

For example, when the Brits and the French developed the Concorde they had no idea that their airplane would ultimately be prevented by law from overflying populated geographies owing to its damaging sound footprint at ground level. But by the time they got Concorde into the air better science showed that flying it over populated geographies simply would not work because of the mayhem its sound footprint would cause in communities and on farms.

Concorde was never allowed to overfly such geographies at its cruising speed and not allowed to engage in transcon flights in the US or in Canada.

We can probably assume that this was not good news for the builders and operators of Concorde, but they had to abide by it anyway, and they did.

In climate science we cannot be absolutely assured of any predicted state at any given time because the science itself is still maturing and developing its capacity to predict at high levels of confidence.

The articles that you consider to be "scaremongering" are no such thing, despite their apparent bad news scenarios. They aren't scaremongering because they are to a very great extent based on good science, as published by UNEP.

I wrote that you'd have to show "some evidence of AGW scientists or adherents to it actually propagandizing with scare mongering before I'll award your remark any merit," and neither Mr. Drum nor Mssrs. Rice and Stern are AGW climate scientists nor do they appear to necessarily be adherents of it. Mssrs. Drum and Rice are journos, Mr. Stern is an economist.

You may claim that UNEP's report is "scaremongering," but it too isn't that either. It is science, and while science can sometimes be scary, the act of scaremongering is considered to be the spreading of frightening rumors, and rumor isn't either science or fact and is more commonly pure invention, and UNEP's report is not a rumor.

So if you will pardon me, I will say that you haven't met the test. Try again.

Mr. Bellamy has been thoroughly debunked, in case you hadn't noticed.

Yes I had. In fact I can poke holes in that article myself. But that's not the whole issue, is it? The way most people see it is this:

Here's a well-known, well-liked, respected scientist who (at the time) was frequently seen on national TV enthusing about plants and forests and all things natural and living, explaining scientific facts about living things and making it interesting and he obviously cares about the environment, but here he is saying that the climate change people are exaggerating the problem and it's really not that bad, they're just trying to scare us. OK, he's wrong about some things, but calling him a "botanist" as though it's synonymous with "idiot" is just invalidation. As an argument, it's no better than his. It won't convince anyone, and in the meantime, some people are getting the feeling they're being lied to. Yes. There is propaganda on both sides. "Pfft" won't make it go away.

No member of the public who needs "convincing" is reading this forum.

If I were to go after Mr. Bellamy in a more widely read public domain, my case would be broader and deeper than merely saying "he's a Botanist."

But in general it remains true that a Botanist, even a well known and well liked one, isn't quite qualified to speak on the subject nor does he have the credential or track record to speak on it authoritatively. He can issue forth with opinions and his readers can judge them as they will, but he cannot speak as an authority.

What I've brought to your three articles is discipline, the discipline to look more closely, to apprehend what their writers were doing with their reportage, find the basis for what they've reported (in this case a new scientific Report) and read that report (which I did weeks ago).

The tendency to jump to conlcusion and not apply a requiste degree of discipline in evaluating such articles is a common failing of those in the denialosphere, because they aren't really interested in the truth or even cogent analyses, they're after headlines, as nearly any good propagandist will be.

You've said you're not an outright denier or heavyweight skeptic, yet your commentaries in this formum appear to belie that because to me they do come off much in the way and manner of those who are truly in the deniers camp. This may well be a misperception on my part but having been engaged in this issue for more than decade I know how those in the denier camp come off, I've reads tens of thousands of their words and engaged in debates with too many of them to count.

Perhaps it's a matter of degree, these lines can be hard to draw. Perhaps as this thread unfolds your position will gain clarity. But right now, your attitude and your commentaries strike me as reflecting one who is pretty staunchly in the denier camp.

But that's more of an impression than any particularly factual thing, an impression that can and will change when you earn it.

[piscator]

Well, here's something from before the drummer choked on somebody else's vomit... Play it loud, and maybe take some drugs, just for good measure.

point taken, Martin Eden, but as it stands now the OP's foot is nailed to the deck because it depends on a conflation of weather and climate

if climate were the same thing as weather and the commutative property applied, science wouldn't draw a distinction


besides, a better writer than me once said "Brevity is the soul of parsimony"...

[Reverend Blair]

point taken, Martin Eden, but as it stands now the OP's foot is nailed to the deck because it depends on a conflation of weather and climate

If climate were the same thing as weather and the commutative property applied, science wouldn't draw a distinction

Ah, but this thread is entitled "Doubts, Denials, Scepticism, and Politics." The conflation is a very real part of the doubt, denial and politics of the issue. This is something that always seems counter-intuitive to me. Anybody who has been following the weather for the last few decades surely realizes that something is going on. We've seen pretty large changes in the thirty years or so that I've really been paying attention, especially to the weather during spring and fall. It matches the changes predicted by scientists who started predicting warming in the 1980s and earlier to a large extent. In other words, an examination of the weather show global warming predictions made in the past to be accurate.

So why do the denialists point to the weather and say that it's not warming? I don't get it. I also don't understand why the media doesn't go back into their own archives and dig out the predictions that are now proving true. That would be journalism.

This is why I mention Nun Splashing Week. It comes earlier every year. What used to be an early to mid April phenomenon around here now occurs in March. Last year we had a brutal la nina winter, but it still started late and Nun Splashing Week came early.

I guess I should tell you about Nun Splashing Week. It's nature's first try at spring around here...the first chain of days when there are puddles everywhere. Sometimes it gets cold again after Nun Splashing Week, sometimes it doesn't, but the week itself has been coming early every year.

By the way, we named it Nun Splashing Week a few years ago when a kid named Justin splashed some nuns. He didn't just splash them, he nailed them with a wall of puddle water about ten feet high. It was one of the funniest bits of accidental slap-stick I've ever seen. It made the criteria for Nun Splashing Week clear though. It has to be consistently warm enough to produce huge puddles, and it has to be pleasant enough to induce nuns out for a walk.

And in honour of those nuns:

[Luis Dias]

Yes, Reverend, we all know the weather is "changing".

Even this elusive character knows it:

The change which has taken place in our climate is one of those facts which all men of years are sensible of and yet none can prove by regular evidence. They can only appeal to each other’s general observation for the fact.

I remember that when I was a small boy, say sixty years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter, to my knee very often, to my waist sometimes, and that they covered the earth long. And I remember while yet young to have heard from very old men that in their youth the winters had been still colder, with deeper and longer snows. In the year '72, thirty-seven years ago, we had a snow two feet deep in the Champain parts of this state, and three feet in the counties next below the mountains...

While I lived at Washington, I kept a Diary, and by recurring to that I observe that from the winter of '02-'03 to that of '08-'09 inclusive, the average fall of snow of the seven winters was only 14½ inches, and that the ground was covered but sixteen days in each winter on average of the whole. The maximum in any one winter during that period was 21 inches fall, and 34 days on the ground, the minimum was 4½ inches fall and two days on the ground...

May I take the audience for a guessing game of what character are we talking about?

[Surendra Darathy]

We WILL survive it, as a species. We aren't the most successful vertebrates on the planet for no reason. We will adapt to our changing environment and survive as a species, though it may not be pleasant and our civilisation may be in for a bumpy ride.
So let's prepare for it.

Hey, if at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

Especially, redefine it short of completing a task. IOW, "self-importance" is achieved regardless of "success".

In the year '72, thirty-seven years ago

May I take the audience for a guessing game of what character are we talking about?

I added 37 to 1772 and got 1809. I figure it was some guy in a powdered wig, which rules out Jane Austen.

Anyway, I vote for spewing a lot of powdered alumino-silicates into the tropopause to increase the reflectivity of the planet. We could hire volcanoes to do this. Volcanoes get a lot of negative press, but they are your friends. Trust them.

[Tarby]

May I take the audience for a guessing game of what character are we talking about?

Jefferson, 1809. What's your point, Luis? "Hi" by the way.