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

[macdoc]

I notice france has taken some steps to make anonymous posts illegal...interesting experiment.

People with common names - it would be a nightmare.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

Right then. First of all, can someone please provide the science paper that proves CC is man-made and not a natural event.

I have fallen down on the skeptics side of this debate, but I'm open to persuasion from the pro-AGW folk.
Having watched programs and read articles about CC, all I seem to see is natural CC. For instance, one program started off telling us how CC is going to effect us and is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, then take us back millions of years ago and told us how CC effected the dinosours and other animals. No mention of Gas gussling cars though, so we know that CC can be a natural event.
And of course, climate observations started at the end of the little ice-age, so temperatures will rise?
And we're about 10,000 years into an interglacial period. Isn't another ice-age due?


Having said all this, I do believe we should clean up our act anyway. End our reliance on fossil fuels and look for cleaner, renewable energy. Stop deforestation. End overfishing. Etc.
But I'm not in favour of hitting the poorer people with sky high taxes, and not giving them an alternative.
I drive an old diesel car and cannot afford a Toyota Prius, but I need the car to get to work. Public transport is a no go. Car sharing is not possible. I have no choice but to pay any taxes due. To a wealthy person, no amount of tax will stop him driving a big car or flying off for a few foriegn holidays, so all it's going to do is make the poor poorer, while the wealthy carry on as normal.

P.S. This post is meant as more of a question than a statment of fact

[macdoc]

You certainly haven't read the science given your confusion here....

There is a natural carbon cycle and in most cases in earth's history ( not all ) C02 is a feedback from other climate change drivers...most notably Milankovich cycles.

C02 is a feedback in both directions...it can make a climate getting colder move in that direction as it is absorbed more readily in a cooling ocean and so there is less to keep the atmosphere at a liveable temperature.

In the current case we have dug up fossil carbon and raised atmospheric carbon levels to those not seen in 15 million years...and that has consequences for the climate and we have not yet even begun to see the extent of them.

Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years ...
8 Oct 2009 ... You must go back 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels as high a

s

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 152242.htm

The links I sent you will allow you to explore the science and consequences.

perhaps seeing the fossil industry's own scientists acknowledging AGW as "incontrovertible" might give your skepticism pause.....they knew that back in 1995.

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
24 Apr 2009 ... A fossil fuels industry group campaigned against an idea its own ... On Climate Issue, Industry Ignored Its Scientists (April 24

, 2009) ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/scien ... 4deny.html

••••

Putting AGW reality to bed then leaves us with a much more difficult set of issues....what to do about it and how.
That's a very very difficult path to chart....
To get on that path tho one must accept there is a problem to confront and deal with ....

at this point in time and body of climate science...NOT acknowledging the reality of AGW is very akin to denying evolution....the evidence in both is overwhelming and the body of knowledge grows every day.

Where there is uncertainty is how much change and how rapidly and unfortunately as the evidence grows the time frame grows shorter....even 10 years few thought the Arctic could change as rapidly as it has.

Nearly all parameters the change has come more rapidly.

Some nations like Sweden and Norway are committed to carbon neutral by mid century.

Leaving climate aside the risk to the oceans via acidification is unacceptable as well.

#
#
Global Scientists Draw Attention To Threat Of Ocean Acidification
1 Feb 2009 ... The scientists issued this warning Jan 30, 2009 in the Monaco Declaration, .... Attached to the 10-foot-diameter buoy are sensors to measure climate . ... Acidifying Oceans Add Urgency To Carbon Dioxide Cuts (July 6, ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 124553.htm

If you think about it for a second...C02 could not impact climate in the past and yet stop impacting now ...there were a couple of other episodes where fossil carbon drove the climate ....when volcanic basalt intruded into carboniferous rocks.
Look up Siberian traps.

This time, right now....we're the primary driver of change ( and not just C02 but other gases and land use )
Up to us to alter our behaviour and it can be done via nuclear power and a number of other approaches...

I fully intend to have a rich sophisticated existence and be carbon neutral...I'm part way there now and the countries that are the heart of the problem are also the countries with the wealth to change the way we source energy.

So let's see if we can gently get you off your skeptics fence AGW reality and then deal with the real problem of how to deal with it....no one has a pat answer on that issue.

[Fact-Man]

Right then. First of all, can someone please provide the science paper that proves CC is man-made and not a natural event.

Climate change is much too complex an affair to be explained in one paper.

The only alternative I'm aware of is to download the IPCC's AR4 Report and go through it. This report is freely available on the web and is contained in several PDF volumes. You can find it easily using Google.

Aside from that, there are also a number of recently published books that explain AGW rather well. One I'd recommend is David Archer's "Global Warming, Understanding the Forecasts."

CC is not something we can spend a hour reading up on and get a good idea. It takes some study.

I have fallen down on the skeptics side of this debate, but I'm open to persuasion from the pro-AGW folk.
Having watched programs and read articles about CC, all I seem to see is natural CC. For instance, one program started off telling us how CC is going to effect us and is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, then take us back millions of years ago and told us how CC effected the dinosours and other animals. No mention of Gas gussling cars though, so we know that CC can be a natural event.

Earth's climate is not a static thing, it's always changing. But, its changes are very slow and involve very small increments of change in atmospheric composition. But a volcanic eruption like Krakatoa or Penatubo can spew forth so much gas and dust they do change the atmosphere's composition and hence affect climate in noticeable ways, albeit for relatively short periods.

Past changes in earth's climate have been caused mainly by what are known as "Milankovich curves," which define certain long wave or long term alterations that occur in earth's orbit round the sun and thus cause differences in earth's average mean annual temperature. These alterations repeat on long reasonably well known cycles and are the cause of Ice Ages.

And of course, climate observations started at the end of the little ice-age, so temperatures will rise?

Climate observations, mainly in the form of weather observations, only began in 1850, which is when the instrumented record is said to have begun.

Going backward in time past 1850, all climate "observation" has come in the form of paleo-reconstructions, which are built mainly from data obtained from tree rings. deep ice cores, and sedimentary rocks.

And we're about 10,000 years into an interglacial period. Isn't another ice-age due?

No. The current interglacial we are enjoying probably has a lifepan of 24,000 years.

Having said all this, I do believe we should clean up our act anyway. End our reliance on fossil fuels and look for cleaner, renewable energy. Stop deforestation. End overfishing. Etc.

But I'm not in favour of hitting the poorer people with sky high taxes, and not giving them an alternative.
I drive an old diesel car and cannot afford a Toyota Prius, but I need the car to get to work. Public transport is a no go. Car sharing is not possible. I have no choice but to pay any taxes due. To a wealthy person, no amount of tax will stop him driving a big car or flying off for a few foriegn holidays, so all it's going to do is make the poor poorer, while the wealthy carry on as normal.

All the talk we hear about the cost of reducing emissions and mitigating global warming is at this point just so much hot air, much of it shot through with money making schemes created by nefarious parties, e.g., cap and trade. The denialosphere has produced a lot of scary scenarios on this front as they try to browbeat people into doubting the science of AGW.

It won't be free of course, but at this point nobody really knows what the costs will be or how they will be paid, contrary to what we might hear on the subject.

I think it's fair to say that any scheme of payment that causes hardship to ordinary people just isn't going to fly, not especially when the fossil fuel industry has been using our atmosphere as a free sewer for its wastes while making $trillions in profits. How about the concept of polluter pays?

P.S. This post is meant as more of a question than a statment of fact

Fair enough.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

OK, thanks. I've been provided with plenty of reading matter via PM too, enough to maybe plant a seed of doubt against GW skeptisism. We'll see.

Now, if the other skeptics would like to post something to the contrary?
In the past I've been reading articles like this....
http://www.stopcambridgewindfarm.org.uk ... arming.htm

[Reverend Blair]

Right then. First of all, can someone please provide the science paper that proves CC is man-made and not a natural event.

I have fallen down on the skeptics side of this debate, but I'm open to persuasion from the pro-AGW folk.
Having watched programs and read articles about CC, all I seem to see is natural CC. For instance, one program started off telling us how CC is going to effect us and is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, then take us back millions of years ago and told us how CC effected the dinosours and other animals. No mention of Gas gussling cars though, so we know that CC can be a natural event.
And of course, climate observations started at the end of the little ice-age, so temperatures will rise?
And we're about 10,000 years into an interglacial period. Isn't another ice-age due?

There is no single science paper proving anything. What exists is a huge body of science which provides a massive amount of evidence.

I started out on the other side of this argument, long, long ago. I was pretty sure that it had to be wrong, and pretty sure that I could show it. I expected to find a bunch of easily debunkable pseudo-science. Instead I ran into a mass of strong scientific evidence that dovetailed with what I knew of other, seemingly non-related science.

Things were easier back then. This was before Rio, and the politics hadn't muddied things yet. There was a lot less science too, so it wasn't as massive an undertaking as starting from scratch today would be. Still, everything pointed in the same direction. I basically got my ass kicked by the science and had to change my position.

MacDoc is likely the easiest source of the science if you are really interested in looking at it. He's got a lot of links etc.. Follow the links within those links. Go look up papers that sound interesting or within your area of knowledge. There's a ton of science out there, and it's a lot of work just to keep up.

Contrast that with the other side of the argument. They have basically no science on their side. They do no original science. The few peer reviewed papers they do have are pretty questionable (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt with that statement). What they mostly do is attack science and scientists from the field and those attacks have become increasingly dishonest over the years.

Having said all this, I do believe we should clean up our act anyway. End our reliance on fossil fuels and look for cleaner, renewable energy. Stop deforestation. End overfishing. Etc.
But I'm not in favour of hitting the poorer people with sky high taxes, and not giving them an alternative.
I drive an old diesel car and cannot afford a Toyota Prius, but I need the car to get to work. Public transport is a no go. Car sharing is not possible. I have no choice but to pay any taxes due. To a wealthy person, no amount of tax will stop him driving a big car or flying off for a few foriegn holidays, so all it's going to do is make the poor poorer, while the wealthy carry on as normal.

This is a huge part of the problem and a lot of us are in the same boat. I need a truck and there are no really good alternatives available for a price I can afford, so I bought another V-8 Chevy. Oh, I got a smaller one and it's better on gas than the old one. Oddly enough, one the same size as the old one would have been even more of a gas guzzler than the one I already had. We've been moving backwards since 1980.

Because valid political action has been so badly delayed by the denialist lobby, we are left with very few alternatives. Most of the alternative technologies we are looking at aren't new. If we would have been developing them and introducing them since the energy crisis of the 1970's, we'd have options in place now and we'd be well on the road to a carbon neutral world. That's not the way things went though, for purely political reasons.

There are things you can do though...things that will save you money and/or make you more comfortable. Don't leave the TV on for the cat when you are out. Shut out the lights when you leave a room. Turn the heat down and put on a sweater. I can produce a pretty full list ranging from the free to the quite expensive if you are interested. Not all of it will apply to any one person, but some of it applies to almost everyone.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

I'm always interested in saving money (not that I have any to save. )

I know about not leaving the TV on standby, turning the heating down etc.

[Fact-Man]

OK, thanks. I've been provided with plenty of reading matter via PM too, enough to maybe plant a seed of doubt against GW skeptisism. We'll see.

Now, if the other skeptics would like to post something to the contrary?

In the past I've been reading articles like this....
http://www.stopcambridgewindfarm.org.uk ... arming.htm

Bellamy is not a climate scientist. He's a Botanist. He's also a pracicing Anglican, for whatever that's worth.

Any half decent climate scientist could easy shoot his piece full of holes, hell, even I could shoot it full of holes.

He's daft. Spreading untruths.

[Reverend Blair]

Bellamy is not a climate scientist. He's a Botanist. He's also a pracicing Anglican, for whatever that's worth.

Most importantly of all, he quotes the Oregon Petition. It is, at its very base, a fraudulent document. Anybody who quotes it as "proof" of anything is immediately discredited.

It's one of the clues that I look for when reading literature about the subject. If an alleged expert mentions the Oregon Petition, the fully discredited work of Soon and Baliunas, etc., I know they are politically motivated, not scientifically motivated.

And now, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils:

[ginckgo]

In the past I've been reading articles like this....
http://www.stopcambridgewindfarm.org.uk ... arming.htm

Does anyone know the actual bibliographic reference for the article he cites as "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Over The Last Glacial Termination". Google it, and just about every instance only comes up with a direct quote from Bellamy's post.

[Fact-Man]

OK, thanks. I've been provided with plenty of reading matter via PM too, enough to maybe plant a seed of doubt against GW skeptisism. We'll see.

It dawned on me that you or me or anyone who engages in this debate should know what they're going up against.

It is often true that newcomers to the issue don't have a good idea of its wider landscape, but those who start out in an anti-AGW stance should realize that AGW science has the stamp of approval from the United States National Academy of Science, the national science academies of all Western nations, and almost 50 professional scientific societies and organizations, and hence when one chooses to stand against the science they are taking on these bodies and their considered conclusions.

That means any skeptic or denialist is taking on several thousand scientists from all scientific disciplines. It doesn't say they can't take them on it just measures what they're taking on, beyond the climatologist's themselves.

[macdoc]

Came across this about acidification...



http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2 ... d_test.php

I've not watched due to bandwidth restrictions while I'm away from home but it comes recommended.

There is another post up beside it worth considering as well

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2 ... ceptic.php

[macdoc]

February 22, 2010 |

Despite Climategate, IPPC Mostly Underestimates Climate Change

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, James McCarthy of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment noted that the IPCC usually errs on the conservative side. Steve Mirsky reports

Lost in the coverage of the so-called climategate email controversy is a key point about the IPCC’s track record of climate change estimates. James McCarthy is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment. He spoke February 21st at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego:

“If you were to go back and map the IPCC projection for sea level rise and temperature in 1990, look at it in 1995, look at it in 2000. In retrospect you would find that they were conservative. So we talk about errors. If you were to do two ledgers—here are IPCC overestimates, here are IPCC underestimates—over the 20 or so years that these assessments have been running, the underestimate ledger would be much larger than the overestimate.

Even with glitches—clearly erroneous editing or sloppy editing that led to these erroneous statements that got us in trouble recently.”

—Steve Mirsky

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podca ... d-10-02-22

[Fact-Man]

Came across this about acidification...

(youtube video snipped)

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2 ... d_test.php

I've not watched due to bandwidth restrictions while I'm away from home but it comes recommended.

There is another post up beside it worth considering as well

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2 ... ceptic.php

Great stuff!

And timely because the ocean acidification problem has not gotten enough attention and yet it represents a pretty serious issue, a very serious issue really.

Thanks for sharing, MacDoc.

[Mysturji]

How could you feel "more at home here"? There weren't any GW or CC threads here until MacDoc and I showed up.

I just meant that I've been at Rationalia for a year and I feel more comfy here than I did at RDF - especially after the first schism.

and thought I would be more likely to get a word in, because over there (it seemed to me the last time I tried to post in a CC thread) that anyone who doesn't completely toe the AGW Party line (even just a "yes, but...") is immediately shouted down by a pack of rabid wolves and dissed as completely ignorant of all science in all it's forms. The peanut gallery then chips in with a flurry of ad-homs, they pat each other on the back, then the wannabe Cali's step in with links to 23,971 peer-reviewed papers and say "See: Proof! Go away and don't come back until you're read it!". Because unlike the original version, they can't "Blind them with science" or construct a valid argument, so they BURY the poor fucker in cut&paste science for DARING to say "Yes, but...".

Well, you're exaggerating here.

Yes, I do that. It's part of my posting style. I figure even when you're making a serious point, you can still have fun and/or raise a chuckle. That's why my exaggerations are so ludicrously over-the-top that they couldn't possibly be mistaken for a serious comment.

Well, not usually.

Well, it creates problems because it's very hard for others to judge if you are being "ludicrously over-the-top" or being serious or what.

I won't judge your posting style but I will say that it seems to me it risks misinterpretation or even confusion and in a science thread it seems that more plainly spoken posts will almost always serve better. But, do what ya do. I'll be more watchful in future so that hopefully I won't misinterpret.

Fair point. I'll avoid it in this thread. I read more science threads over there than I posted in.

Have I questioned the science?

Please re-read my posts and tell me if you think I have. If something I said needs clarification, I will clarify it.
My one and only issue with the science is that SOME people (not all) seem a little too cocksure about climatology's predictive powers. (And even that issue is much less about the actual science than it is about the arrogance of some of the people involved.)

And that's the only "denialist" stance I have ever taken, but that's for another day.

This is a good clarification, because the impression at least was to the contrary.

I made a small error of ommission there - I think because I had mentioned it previously somewhere (though perhaps not very well): My other major issue with AGW is that some people seem to grossly over-estimate our ability to "combat" it. So two issues, not one, and neither directly critical of the science itself.

I don't concern myself too much with anyone who accepts AGW theory and does so even without question

Why should you? But then, why don't you? It's still misinformation.

, because, afterall, that puts them in my camp.

Fair enough. We're only Human.

I do concern myself with those who drink the Kool Aid offered up by the denialosphere in an uncritical manner. sort of a mirror image of those who accept AGW theory uncritically.

IMHO, that's just a different flavour of kool-aid.

What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

I would hope that you have some concerns with the tsunami of mis and disinformation that's flooded the airwves and print media over the past 15 or 20 years on the efficasy of AGW. In the in-house memo that was leaked from Exxon on this, they said, "Our product is doubt." And they have spent $millions spreading exactly that. Is this fair to the public? I'd rather think not. Fortunately, and despite their efforts, polling shows that Americans at least remain convinced of AGW theory by about 55 per cent, only down from 65 per cent a few years ago.

I am very much against mis and disinformation. (I think I've demonstrated that )

It sure seemed like a mistake when someone who had joined this forum less than 24 hours before waded in and bitchslapped a long-standing member, telling them what they could or could not post and where, throwing fallacies and misrepresentations into the mix. Who died and made him mod?

I've addressed most of this at the beginning of this post.

I think your characterization of my response to your initial post as a "bitch slap" is an exaggeration. I think a careful read of it will demonstrate this.

Or, if your calibration is such that you do see it truly as a "bitch slap," all I gotta say is you never want to be on the receiving end of a bitch lap from me!

Woah! Slow down there. I was not talking about you. I was referring to these posts:
http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 33#p353333 (Delusions of modhood)
http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 69#p353469 (Misrepresentations and attempted bullying)
You've been quite calm throughout.

I've never liked bullies, and I don't take that shit anymore.

None of us should. But I'm no bully, far from it.

Never said you were. See above. Sorry for the confusion.

But as I've been trying to say... I'm not disputing the science. I'm not that kind of kaffir.

OK.

It does however take some familiarity with the issue to do this, one has to know which arguments have already been debunked for example, one has to know AGW science pretty well and have some undertanding of where its weak spots may be. That's a fairly tall order but I'm the last guy who will claim it isn't possible.

And it's rather frustrating when people debunk those canards in response to one of your posts when you never said any such thing.

I reckon we all suffer this to one extent or another. You sound pretty bitter about it. It pushes us to be clear. We can always ignore the dolts who don't get our point, purposeully or out of ignorance. I don't think we should waste our valuable time on such dimwittery. Pass on it and pass on them. Why waste your time?

I'm not bitter. It's just that when you have known bullying, there comes a point when you won't take it anymore. I may over react sometimes, but I calm down again.

I think the best approach is when you run across an argument you think has merit in debunking AGW to first throw it out there as a question, rather than as an assertion. "I ran across this paper and it appears to me it debunks AGW, has it been discussed? Is it holding water? Can it be trusted? Is my source reliable? Then see what you get by way of response and carry on from there. That is, of course, a non-confrontional approach and is, rather, a collegial one

If things remain civil here (as I hope they do) I will probably be doing that. [/quote]

They will remain civil if I have anything to do with it!

As a matter of fact, as if by magic, this week's New Scientist looks interesting, but I haven't read it yet, so no spoilers. K?

(Edit: fix quotes)