TokyoTom:

1) I believe I did. Reread one of my several posts. Note carefully that I distinguish alarmists from the mainstream consensus. Gore, for example, is an alarmist. To repeat one example, I consider making strong claims based on the extreme maximum range results of computer models with highly questionable assumptions built in to be unscientific.

2) I believe I answered that question about Greenland already in one of my previous posts. Please reread it more carefully.

3) Why did I lump Greenland in with the Antarctic? I believe I made that clear as well. Together they include most of the world’s land glaciers. That is important, considering the slow rate at which Greenland is “thawing.” As for the Antarctic peninsula, I consider being less that 10 percent of the continent’s landmass to be rather tiny in comparison to the whole.

4) What you admit to here is one of my answers to to 2). It’s reflected in other scientific output? It doesn’t seem to be in all, or alarmists wouldn’t be so alarmist.

I’ll add, or clarify, another reason: global temperature has been rising at a constant and not alarmingly high rate, not an exponentially increasing or alarmingly high rate.

False “global cooling then, global warming now” claim? It seems to me the guy got it wrong. How is that false?

Got any proof for that claim about no ice age for 30,000 years, seeing as how you keep badgering me for proof for mine?

And is it really established that those in the tropics will receive net costs? And even if so, how much? Keep in mind that this calculation of net benefits or costs ought to include economic progress these regions could make if they don’t adopt harmful environmental regulations or economic progress they don’t make if they do. One of the marks of an alarmist is to simply assume the costs will be negative. Another is to fail to take into consideration all important factors that might lead to net benefits or net costs.

What is this nonsense about the US and China not being eager to agree to accept costs that will redound to be benefit of poor nations? Do you mean an elimination of protectionist measures that hurt poor nations? In which case I would agree with you. Or do you mean adopting sacrificial policies like the Kyoto Protocols? In which case I would disagree with you and question your libertarian credentials. In global warming debates among libertarians, you really can’t leave yourself so open to being interpreted as a statist. Not that I’m saying you are…but you need to be more clear about what specifically you have in mind.

David,

I posted the same url and briefly summarized the conclusion that Dr. Hertzberg arrives at in Cockburn’s article, and flat out asked for a response from TT and the other greenies.

Still waiting…

TT,

Please don’t take this as a taunt, I genuinely want to know what the green response to this argument is. I had never heard it before. Is it quack science? Is Dr. Hertzberg generalizing data where he shouldnt be? Is he reading the data wrong? Everything else that anyone says here is speedily answered. But not this.

In fact, I did some searches yesterday to see if Cockburn’s article had generated any worthwhile discussion anywhere. I am astounded by the silence. Perhaps, if you are unable to answer yourself, you could point me in a better direction.

Dan,

Sorry I missed your post. Guess the double posting doesn’t hurt, though, given the importance of the message. And “The Great Global Warming Swindle” documentary makes the same point about CO2 increases being a consequence of global warming, not a cause of them.

“I think that it is difficult to dispute that the ‘dramatic changes the earth’s climate has undergone in the past’ are matters that have not only been discovered by climate scientists of one stripe or another, but concerns them quite deeply. Such news may come as a surprise to the uninformed, but such is life.”

Did not Mann’s “hockey stick” depiction of supposed human-caused global warming leave out the so-called Medieval warm period when temperatures apparently were warmer than at present, but CO2 levels were lower than today and humans emitted a tiny fraction of CO2 compared to present emissions?

Here’s another cat for yer pigeons:

http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=263746

Goodness – so much to respond to, yet so little time. Let’s take these one at a time.

Geoff:

1. Sorry, but I failed to note that you “distinguish alarmists from the mainstream consensus” – I saw your use of the “alarmist” rhetoric but no express acceptance of any scientific work, much less a “consensus”. I am relieved that you are NOT saying that “the mainstream consensus” itself is alarmist.

By the way, I would agree that “making strong claims based on the extreme maximum range results of computer models with highly questionable assumptions built in [is] unscientific.”

2 & 3. Greenland: Not so fast.
You made three conclusory and unsupported statements about Greenland, and now say that you “answered that question about Greenland already in one of my previous posts.” Well, no, you did not – your previous response was to the effect that I should make the effort myself to find the support for your claims. I decline.

While I think it is fair to point out that we are hardly in any immediate danger that Greenland or Antarctica will lose their ice sheets, it is also fair to note that Greenland is on net thawing remarkably and that part of Antarctica is as well. While you assert that “Greenland has been losing ice but at a very slow rate geologically speaking”, I would hazard a guess that geologists would say that the rates of ice loss in Greenland look to be rather high, geologically speaking.

4. You like to keep pointing to “alarmists” as not having a sophisticated understanding of the science. I am happy to agree to that generally and move on, while noting that there are two side to that coin.

5.
- “global temperature has been rising at a constant and not alarmingly high rate, not an exponentially increasing or alarmingly high rate.”

So? Do you think that the “consensus” view is that there is only one forcing – from CO2 – and nothing from other natural or anthropogenic factors, and that all forcings are immediately felt? No one is saying that we have simple, linear system. But, simply, we do know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that is one pedal we are definitely pushing.

- “False “global cooling then, global warming now” claim? It seems to me the guy got it wrong. How is that false?”
Geoff, come on. The point is over-simplified and in any case the assumption that noe progress has been made in understanding the climate system in the past thirty years is absurd. Perhaps this will help you: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/global-cooling-again/#comment-20427

- “Got any proof for that claim about no ice age for 30,000 years, seeing as how you keep badgering me for proof for mine?”
Proof? Of course not. But links to what is informed speculation? Sure. Try the comments section here, starting with comment 2:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/global-cooling-again/#comment-20427

- If you care to comment seriously then you should do more research about the costs and benefits of climate change. You again bandy more strawman rhetoric, while ignoring fundamental Austrian principles yourself: “One of the marks of an alarmist is to simply assume the costs will be negative. Another is to fail to take into consideration all important factors that might lead to net benefits or net costs.”

Since when was it an Austrian approach to resource issues that net costs and benefits to society are important when analyzing whether any individual is unjustly bearing costs for the benefit of one or more others? http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=532

Be careful, or some here might conclude that you are a utilitarian.

- “What is this nonsense about the US and China not being eager to agree to accept costs that will redound to be benefit of poor nations?”
Think, Geoff, and spare me the crap about “nonsense”. The main effect of the climate trewaties is to impose costs on the developed economies (that have emitted the CO2 etc that have accumulated in the atmosphere) and to provide subsidies to the developing economies for as long as their relative CO2 emissions remain small. The US refuses to act to impose costs on carbon releases for as long as China remains similarly unhindered (even while we shove clean development subsidies at them), and are happy to laugh at our allies for bearing costs that we have sloughed off.

Dan, I haven’t respond to you (or David) on the Cockburn/Herzberg piece for the simple reason that, until now, none of you has asked me to, and I don’t consider it my job to respond to every single post here. You certainly did NOT “flat out ask[] for a response from TT and the other greenies”.

Next time, try giving me a holler directly. Happy to try now.

I had not seen the Cockburn piece before, but here are a few comments:

- “it is impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from human burning of fossil fuels.”

My understanding is that Herzberg is simply wrong, ask can be demonstrated by calculations of our use of fossil fuels and looking at carbon isotopes. See these:
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-5/p16a.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/ (“In summary, we know that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is entirely caused by fossil fuel burning and deforestation because many independent observations show that the carbon content has also increased in both the oceans and the land biosphere (after deforestation). If the oceans or land had contributed to the rise in atmospheric CO2, they would hold less carbon.”)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=81

- “We’re warmer now, because today’s world is in the thaw following the last Ice Age.”
The thaw basically ended 8,000 years ago: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

- “”So the greenhouse global warming theory has it ass backwards,” Hertzberg concludes. “It is the warming of the earth that is causing the increase of carbon dioxide and not the reverse.” He has recently had vivid confirmation of that conclusion. Several new papers show that for the last three quarter million years CO2 changes always lag global temperatures by 800 to 2,600 years.”
Of course the conclusion is too hasty, but so what? Milankovich cycles are the triggers for warming, which probably then lead to oceanic releases of CO2 – which is a greenhouse gas that we know has a further effect on temperatures. We also know that THIS TIME, we are the ones screwing with normal procedures by producing the CO2 (and other GHGs). Shall we suspend the laws of physics because we didn’t wait for the temperature to warm first? http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

And while the oceans warm, we can eventually expect CO2 releases from the oceans (along with methane releases from both land and sea, and along with higher atmospheric water levels – humidity – that higher temperatures enable).

Your friendly people hater,

TT

TokyoTom,

2 & 3) If you don’t want to find the data and do the math yourself, you can have a look at the Patrick Michaels article that I cited (linked to) earlier. He does it for you. I believe that the specific number is .4%/century.

Geologically speaking may be a relative term that different people will define differently. Is it only a natural rate? Or can it include human accelerated loss? I think the latter and even if .4% per century is faster than the natural rate – I’m not saying it isn’t – it is still too slow to be alarming.

5) On the scientist in the 1970′s who thought we were heading for global cooling… I never said science hasn’t improved since then. I merely questioned your apparent claim that he didn’t get it wrong at the time. It was indeed implicit in my questioning, however, that if scientists could get it wrong 30 years ago, they could get it wrong now (despite the improvement in climate science). But this isn’t the same thing as failing to recognize that progress has been made and that there is better reason now than then to think that climate scientists are right (at least about their most general claims, viz., that global temperature is rising and that human beings are at least partly responsible; the more specific claims are another matter).

“Since when was it an Austrian approach to resource issues that net costs and benefits to society are important when analyzing whether any individual is unjustly bearing costs for the benefit of one or more others? http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=532

Be careful, or some here might conclude that you are a utilitarian.”

Of course I am not one. The important issue there is rights. However, I had to call you out on not taking into account all the important factors involved in determining whether global warming will be a net benefit or net cost to people in general and to people in the tropics in particular.

I don’t now if I’ve already written this above, but if I’m not mistaken scientists generally believe that most of the warming will be felt at the mid- to high latitudes, during winter, and at night, when it will be most beneficial. Correct me if I am wrong, but the tropics don’t appear to fall into the mid- to high latitudes.

I wrote: “What is this nonsense about the US and China not being eager to agree to accept costs that will redound to be benefit of poor nations?”

You responded: “Think, Geoff, and spare me the crap about “nonsense”. The main effect of the climate trewaties is to impose costs on the developed economies (that have emitted the CO2 etc that have accumulated in the atmosphere) and to provide subsidies to the developing economies for as long as their relative CO2 emissions remain small. The US refuses to act to impose costs on carbon releases for as long as China remains similarly unhindered (even while we shove clean development subsidies at them), and are happy to laugh at our allies for bearing costs that we have sloughed off.”

As if I didn’t think? Come on. Your response only served to muddy the waters even more. Are you saying what I THINK you are saying here? That is, what it is hard not to interpret you as saying? That you are actually in favor of the Kyoto Protocols being enforced? Admittedly, I agonized over including that word “nonsense” after I hit the send button. I thought maybe it would come off a little harsh, be unfair to you. But perhaps it wasn’t crap to use the word after all.

If you are not in favor of the Kyoto Protocols, then I am afraid you are still having trouble making that clear…and making it clear that you are a libertarian environmentalist and not a statist one. Just come out with it: are you or aren’t you?

Regarding methane, that post of mine does does represent a “growth in my knowledg” in one sense: I have indeed learned something about methane as a greenhouse gas. However, it doesn’t represent a “growth in my knowledge” in a different sense: I didn’t just learn it after we started debating and right before I posted it. I’ve known it since before this thread started. As to the reason I posted it, well, it was to buttress my claim that against the alarmists.

One final note:

You wrote: “I am relieved that you are NOT saying that “the mainstream consensus” itself is alarmist.”

Correct. But to say that the mainstream consensus itself is not alarmist (at least in comparison with people like Al Gore and his acolytes) is not to say that I think that all of their claims are correct or not overstated. Climate science is an empirical discipline after all. The IPCC has been revising some of its estimates downward over the years, such as likely sea level rise (which Gore exaggerates by about 2,000%, btw). This demonstrates that at least some of their claims have been overstated in the past. Current claims may be as well. Some claims have turned out to be flat-out wrong; more may as well in the future.

At present I find myself aligning with the “mainstream skeptics” like Patrick Michaels. Unlike many environmentalists, however, I’m not prepared to dismiss the more extreme skeptics out of hand. They may yet be proven right. The alarmists on the other hand have obvious ideological biases that alarm me.

If you care to comment seriously then you should do more research about the costs and benefits of climate change.

This is one of the most preposterous comments I have ever read from you, TT. You cannot calculate the costs of climate change a priori, unless you are willing to argue that you can predict future climatic conditions. Costs can only be known after market transactions, and not before (we call it the Price System).

I believe you are actually basing your whole argument for caps and costs upon industry on this misunderstaning of economics and of complex systems.

Geoff:

Thanks for your further comments.

2&3. Greenland. Thanks for finally coming up with something to support your conclusory statements that “Greenland’s ice loss is not unusual. It is not extreme…coming in at a fraction of one percent per century. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

Well, are you looking at anybody but Pat Michaels? Those who are summarzing the most recent data think that what is now happening in Greenland – in accelerating rates of melting now at or above 1% per century – is unusual and alarming:

“The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

“The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

“According to the scientists’ data, Greenland’s ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth’s gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean.

“We have only been watching the ice cap melt during a relatively short period,” physicist Jianli Chen said Thursday, “but we are seeing the strongest evidence of it yet, and in the near future the pace of melting will accelerate even more.”

“The report on Greenland is being published today in the on-line edition of the journal Science by the University of Texas scientists at Austin, including Chen, aerospace engineer Byron Tapley and geologist Clark Wilson.

“According to the researchers, surface melting of Greenland’s ice cap reached 57 cubic miles a year between April of 2002 and November of 2005, compared to about 19 cubic miles a year between 1997 and 2003.

“The sobering thing is to see that the whole process of glacial melting is stepping up much more rapidly than before,” said Tapley in a statement.

“But, according to Chen and his Texas team, the melting of Greenland’s ice cap is already raising global sea levels by six-tenths of a millimeter each year, and the Colorado group estimates that melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone is adding up to four-tenths of a millimeter of fresh water to sea levels each year. In other words, the global sea level, due to melting of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica combined, is already rising 10 times faster than the IPPC’s tentative estimates, the two analyses indicate.

“In a recent summary of the ice cap melting problem and its effect on sea levels reported by Richard Kerr in Science, geoscientist Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton said, “The time scale for future loss of most of an ice sheet may not be millennia,” as glacier models have suggested, “but centuries.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/11/MELTING.TMP&type=science

Mark Chandler, a climate researcher at Columbia University: the fate of the world’s ice sheets is “probably the biggest concern that people are looking at right now” in the field of climate prediction.” “There’s a lot of fear out there right now, even among scientists, that ice caps are not all that stable,”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385475/

Isabella Velicogna of the University of Colorado, Boulder (published results in the scientific journal Nature last fall): “We have to pay attention,” Velicogna adds. “These ice sheets are changing much faster than we were expecting.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070327122328.htm

Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University: “When you look at the ice sheet, the models didn’t work, which puts us on shaky ground.”

“There is no consensus on how much Greenland’s ice will melt in the near future, Dr. Alley said, and no computer model that can accurately predict the future of the ice sheet. Yet given the acceleration of tidewater-glacier melting, a sea-level rise of a foot or two in the coming decades is entirely possible, he said.”
http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/nyt_01_16_2006.htm

5. Glad to see you walking away from the canard about 1970s cooling. Let me stress again that the caution about an ice age (in a paper co-authored but not written by Schneider) specifically is premised on particulate pollution growing to multiples of then existing levels – phenomenon which was not remotely reached as a result of clean air legislation.

6. Others.
- Costs: You assert that you are “calling me out” on “whether global warming will be a net benefit or net cost to people in general and to people in the tropics in particular.” It seems to me that you simply want to ascribe unsophisticated strawmen to those who are concerned about climate change. Go ahead. Even though climate is changing most rapidly at the higher latitudes, it is still changing in the heavily populated developing countries, who have populations who are much more vulnerable to change and have much less adaptive ability.

You might try looking at the relevant chapters in the Stern report (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm) and this 2000 survey, which concludes:

“studies clearly suggest that:
- developing countries are, on the whole, more vulnerable to climate change than developed
countries;
- at low magnitudes of climate change, damages are more likely to be mixed across regions, but
higher magnitudes virtually all regions have net damages;
- the distribution of risk may change at different changes in climate.
Developing countries tend to be more vulnerable to climate change because their economies rely
more heavily on climate-sensitive activities (in particular agriculture), and many already operate
close to environmental and climatic tolerance levels (e.g., with respect to coastal and water
resources). And if current development trends continue, few developing countries will have the
financial, technical, and institutional capacity and knowledge base for efficient adaptation (a key
reason for the higher health impacts).”

http://ideas.repec.org/p/sgc/wpaper/2.html

- Kyoto/commons: We were discussing various nations’ reactions to Kyoto, not my personal policy recommendations. My point is that the global atmosphere is an open-access commons (and its relation to climate a public good), international negotiations among countries is in the nature of a prisoners dilemma with all of the predictible attendant problems, compounded by domestic rent-seeking. Every party’s actual behavior is understandable, even as it may not in the long run be optimal.

My personal view is that we ought to frankly acknowledge what resources are open-access commons or have a strong public goods nature, and analyze them and discuss what institutional arrangements might help us to resolve the problems with overuse/lack of investment in protecting the resource. This requires an investment of time, money and good will.

- methane. Ah, there you go attacking “alarmists” again. The casual reader may think you mean anybody who is clear about climate change. Well methane remains a GHG and its levels are not falling.

- “the mainstream consensus itself is not alarmist”. So far so good.

IPCC: “The IPCC has been revising some of its estimates downward over the years …. This demonstrates that at least some of their claims have been overstated in the past.” Some ranges have been narrowed as levels of confidence have increased. It is hard to read the IPCC (in comparison with earlier reports) and come away with much relief. And as noted above re: Greenland, the IPCC produces a conservative documents that reflects consensus and does not reflect the most recent data, which is not encouraging.

- Gore: I think that the most that can be fairly said is that, probably to heighten dramatic effect, Gore has not always pointed out the likely timeframes of ice melting/rising sea levels, even though the statements in his book have been consistent with the IPCC: http://mediamatters.org/items/200703150012.

- Skepticism: One should of course be wary of “obvious ideological biases”. But even as biases (and rent-seeking) affect so-called “skeptics” and those who are alarmed by “alarmism” as well, there are quite a few former skeptics who have managed to the difficult task of changing their minds in the face of growing scientific evidence. Hope springs eternal!

Francisco, thanks for your comment.

- “You cannot calculate the costs of climate change a priori, unless you are willing to argue that you can predict future climatic conditions.”

I agree that it is very difficult to do, Francisco, but we knew 100+ years ago that CO2 and methanse were GHGs, and could estimate their affects on climate, and the billions the the US and other governments have been throwing at this is aimed precisely at the prognosis problem.

- “Costs can only be known after market transactions, and not before (we call it the Price System).”

Not sure what your point is, but I hope it’s not that global public goods have no value because, by virtue of their nature, they are not priced.

- “I believe you are actually basing your whole argument for caps and costs upon industry on this misunderstaning of economics and of complex systems.”

What argument have I made, Francisco, except for the very basic one that if open-access resources and public goods are “free” and are not protected, they are likely to be abused and debased, simply because market transactions do not fully reflect the value of such resources into account?

Care to clarify your point of dispute?

Regards,

Tom