From CO2 Science: "A 221-Year Temperature History of the Southwest Coast of Greenland"
The following appears here
A 221-Year Temperature History of the Southwest Coast of Greenland
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reference
Vinther, B.M., Andersen, K.K., Jones, P.D., Briffa, K.R. and Cappelen, J. 2006. Extending Greenland temperature records into the late eighteenth century. Journal of Geophysical Research 111: 10.1029/2005JD006810.
What was done
Combining early observational records from 13 locations along the southern and western coasts of Greenland, the authors extended the overall temperature history of the region - which stretches from approximately 60 to 73°N latitude - all the way back to AD 1784, adding temperatures for 74 complete winters and 52 complete summers to what was previously available to the public.
What was learned
In the words of the authors, "two distinct cold periods, following the 1809 'unidentified' volcanic eruption and the eruption of Tambora in 1815, [made] the 1810s the coldest decade on record." The warmest period, however, was not the last quarter century, when climate alarmists claim the earth experienced a warming that was unprecedented over the past two millennia. Rather, as Vinther et al. report, "the warmest year in the extended Greenland temperature record [was] 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s [were] the warmest decades." In fact, their newly-lengthened record reveals there has been no net warming of the region over the last 75 years!
What it means
With approximately half the study region located above the Arctic Circle (where CO2-induced global warming is suggested by climate models to be most evident and earliest expressed), one would expect to see southwestern coastal Greenland's air temperature responding vigorously to the 75-ppm increase in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration that has occurred since 1930, even if the models were only half-way correct. However, there has been no net change in air temperature there in response to the 25% increase in the air's CO2 content experienced over that period. And this is the region the world's climate alarmists refer to as a climatological canary in a coal mine? If it is, real-world data suggest that the greenhouse effect of CO2 has been hugely overestimated.
Reviewed 28 June 2006
Comments (121)
Uh oh, another TokyoTom lure.:~)
Published: June 27, 2006 1:00 PM
"CO2 Science" is funded by Exxon. Come on, you guys are usually such independent thinkers--you can do better than rehash this stuff.
Published: June 27, 2006 1:00 PM
I wouldn't care if CO2 Science was funded by Karl Marx. Debate the evidence. If the evidence is flawed then show that it is.
Published: June 27, 2006 1:11 PM
Brian:"CO2 Science" is funded by Exxon." So you suggest they have a conflict of interest? What about the university scientists who promote global warming? Could it be possible that they want to exaggerate the danger in order to keep the taxpayer money coming their direction, as well as promote their leftist agenda?
Published: June 27, 2006 1:31 PM
There may be externalities with Greenland which went cold in the little ice age, and became depopulated as much due to deforestation.
But, go to Anchorage Ak and find the Portage Glacier. Huge recession there, as well as other ice formations in Ak.
One data point.... is like saying the Green Zone is safe so Iraq is safe.
Published: June 27, 2006 1:35 PM
"Showing that the evidence isn't credible means that we don't have to debate it."
And the only honest way to do it is to present evidence of the contrary. Is there anyway to get rid of self-interest in a scientific study?
Probably not, but I tend to agree with those that make their living not stealing my money, and finding rationalizations for that theft.
"But, go to Anchorage Ak and find the Portage Glacier. Huge recession there, as well as other ice formations in Ak."
Why even go that far. The ice tray I accidentally left sitting out of the freezer yesterday is completely liquid. The culprit: global warming.
You are correct, but its wrong to not take evidence into account in a place that 'predictions' show it should be the other way around.
"It's easy to see that the evidence isn't credible. A good start might involve typing "co2 science" into Wikipedia and seeing what comes up. If you don't belive that evidence, then keep Googling. It's worth keeping an open mind, sure, but not so open that your brains fall out."
Why is this credible and the other not?
Published: June 27, 2006 2:13 PM
CMB,
Apparently you have found the logical fallacy of attacking the source to be an easy way out on this debate. It is precisely this attitude in most of academia that keeps this issue at bay rather than actually exploring all of the data available.
I'm not claiming to have any expertise on global warming, nor am I an advocate of any particular position as to whether or not human activity is *causing* global warming.
But surely your quick, back-handed dismissal of Co2 Science must strike you as too easy a way to end the debate?
(I suppose if Philip Morris tells us that smoking is unhealthy--with statistics and all--we ought to ignore anything they have to say over neutrality issues).
Published: June 27, 2006 3:05 PM
I doubt you'll find anyone "disinterested" enough to be a credible source on either side. All you can do is examine their methods and results. Then make up your own mind. Personally, I have found the methods of the alarmists to be much more questionable than those of the other side.
Published: June 27, 2006 3:14 PM
I'm willing to concede that warming is occurring. And CO2 levels are easy enough to measure.
I am somewhat more skeptical that the cause of the warming is anthropogenic. Correlation is not causation.
So far, the predictions that have been issued have been shaky. No one I am aware of has been on the money using any of the various models.
Anyway, assume this is true too. We see an X ppm increase in CO2, and we see a Y degree rise in average temperature. We believe this is definitive evidence. What then?
How could such a problem be addressed in a libertarian (or anarcho-capitalist) framework? How would a restoration of private-property rights vis-a-vis pollution work in contrast to the super-statist recommendations of the doomsayers? What is the state apparatus doing or permitting to be done right now that would cease to be in a purely free market?
Published: June 27, 2006 3:45 PM
Using melting glaciers as a sign of global warming is an incredibly simplistic argument. There is this study, for exmple, that shows that Andean glaciers are far more susceptible to recession due to increased sunspot activity than CO2 levels.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/24/8937?etoc
Published: June 27, 2006 3:48 PM
Another point that should be mentioned is the choice of the base period upon which to make comparisons. One can argue that the base period chosen to "prove" global warming was an unusually cold one.
Also, the energy emitted by the sun is absolutely enormous, and minor changes in sun spot activity can have significant effects on the earth's climate. (The sun spot influence was mentioned in posting above.)
In addition, the earth's atmosphere is immensely more complex than a simple, controlled greenhouse, and given the predictive record of climatologists and meteorologists, I believe it is fair to say that there is much that they still do not reasonably understand regarding climate dynamics.
Finally, as I have mentioned previously, the geologic record contains evidence that many dramatic changes in climate occurred long before man evolved. Also, the earth warmed up substantially from its last major ice age of roughly 10,000 years ago, long before man emitted any carbon gases of consequence.
Published: June 27, 2006 8:47 PM
The global warming crusade is a good example of how command science invariably distorts what should be a search for truth, into a qwest for power. In the Seventies, Steven Schneider, patron saint of the Green movement, and his ideological allies were screaming about an impending Ice Age, caused, they insisted, by man's polluting the earth's atmosphere. However, temperature readings in the next several years failed to back up their thesis. By the early Eighties, persuaded that their crusade against capitalism based on a Crises of Ice was going nowhere, Schneider and his fellow Greens switched directions, proclaiming that now the world faced a NEW crises of global warming. But their philosophical outlook remained unaltered: once again, man's "polluting"--this time in the unlikely form of C02 formation--was said to be responsible for this updated version of impending doom.
In spite of extravagent and fawning press coverage of the "science" behind the global warming ideology, the "computer models" that supposedly prove something are bogus. The theory that greenhouse gases are directly responsible for changes in the earth's climate and temperature, and that man's activities are distorting nature's supposedly delicate balance, is unproven and incredible propaganda. For consider the components of the greenhouse gases that comprise our atmosphere: 98% of greenhouse gases are water vapor, and roughly 2% are C02. Of this 2% component, man's activities are estimated to contribute perhaps 5%! So man accounts for roughly 1/10 of one percent of the earth's greenhouse gas. A doubling of man's output is supposed to presage climate catastropy.
Unfortunately for the Green Faithful, temperature readings do not support their religious outlook. We hear a lot about the Hockey Stick history of global temperature, whereby temps have supposedly climbed to "unprecedented" heights since 1900 or so. But the Hockey Stick history, made famous by its incorporation (following political wrangling)into a UN report in 1996, has been demonstrated as bogus science in recent studies. The Hockey Stick was based on gaps in historical sequences, distortions of data, arithmetic errors, and other blunders accidental or intended. There is abundant evidence from ice core and earth core analysis that today's temperatures are not unusually warm; earlier periods featured higher temperatures, (or lower temperatures with vastly higher concentrations of C02).
Moreover, there is good evidence that temperatures have been trendless, or even cooling slightly, since 1940. Land-based readings are favored by Green ideologues, but those readings which show a small rise are distorted by the heat island effect (where cities expand around weather stations at airports, increasing temperatures.)Temperature readings from weather balloons and satellites show NO RISING TEMPERATURE TREND.
The increase in C02 from man's activities has been greatest since 1940, following the Depression and leading into the great wave of economic progress since that year in the US and Europe. However, the temperature increases the Green's claim to fear occurred PRIOR TO 1940. So much for causation based on correlation.
The supposedly frightening phenomena of melting glaciers "all around the globe" is misleading reporting, to characterize it charitably. Of the earth's ice covering, 90% is represented by the Ice Cap covering Antartica; 5% is represented by the Greenland Ice Cap. Both the Antartic and Greenland ice concentrations are adding mass and thickness every year, despite reports of huge ice bergs spliting off the Antartic ice cap and supposedly rising temperatures across Antartica. The truth is that the melting ice cap and rising temperatures we read about are confined to a comparatively small portion--a peninsula--of the Antartic, that comprises about 5% of the continent! Across the rest of the Antartic, temperature readings have been dropping. The Russians recently had to abandon an Antartic weather and research faciltiy, because over the years it has been buried under something like 100 feet of accumulated new ice!
Published: June 27, 2006 10:10 PM
Dennis,
I bet you fill your car's gas tank up at Exxon! This probably being the case, all of your "arguments" and doubts about anthropromophic climate change are not credible.
Published: June 27, 2006 10:15 PM
Wikipedia is TRASH!
Published: June 28, 2006 12:04 AM
Even if we go back to the exticntion on the dinosaurs 60 million years ago, (when, incidentally, the CO2 levels were 3000ppm - more than 10 times the current levels), 200 years represents a mininiscule amount of time. To try to infer the dynamic climate model from such a small amount of data is preposterous. Recent studies of arctic ice cores reveal relatively recent times when the arctic climate was tropical.
None of the climate simulation programs can reproduce this sceneario.
Incidentally, the observation that a change in CO2 concentration produced no climate change is actually consistent with the "real scientific theory". Warming by man-made CO2 is predicated on the false assumption that the solar flux is constant. Once this error is corrected, the change in global temperatures is accounted for variations in the flux of energy from the sun. This change in solar flux accounts for the change in temperature of Uranus. (When confronted with this, Al Gore joked the he didn't even know that we had sent a rectal thermomenter into space! Good one AG! ). However, joking aside, this is evidence that the solar flux constant is not in fact constant. If variation in the solar flux explains the change in temperature, then the change due to manmade emissions of CO2 has to be zero, which is exactly what George's article shows.
Published: June 28, 2006 12:49 AM
Dear Professor Reisman:
Thank you for posting a small piece of actual climate change science! Allow me in the posts to follows to help you in your efforts to expand our understanding of this matter, which it will not surprise you to note that I consider to be somewhat more of a serious concern than you.
1. Let me note first that Greenland and the Artic are important places to look for evidence of global warming – evidence which, unfortunately, is piling up at a rather convincing rate [note to self: do not say “alarming�]. Here are some recent summaries, which I have no doubt you will also be very interested in:
From the State Dept in November 2004:
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2004/Nov/08-21489.html
“A four-year study of the Arctic by international scientists shows that the region is warming at nearly twice the rate as the rest of the globe and that increasing greenhouse gases from human activities may make it even warmer in the future, according to a November 8 press release from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA).
At least half the summer sea ice in the Arctic is projected to melt by century's end, along with a significant portion of the Greenland Ice Sheet because the region is projected to warm by another 4-7 degrees Celsius by 2100.
The changes will contribute to global sea-level rise and intensify global warming, according to the ACIA final report.
The ACIA -- with participation by the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation and Sweden -- was initiated in 2000 at a ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Alaska. The Arctic Council commissioned the assessment.
Findings and projections were released November 8 and will be presented in detail at a scientific symposium in Reykjavik, Iceland, November 9-12, 2004.
"The impacts of global warming are affecting people now in the Arctic," said ACIA chair Robert Corell. "The Arctic is experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate change on earth. The impacts of climate change on the region and the globe are projected to increase substantially in the years to come."
Climate change is a serious long-term issue, according to the U.S. government position, that calls for a science-based global approach.�
Further, NASA satellite data show the Arctic sea ice on a whole has declined by 25% since 1978 (8.5 percent per decade). http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/arcticice_decline.html
This melting has apparently reached a tipping point. http://www.physorg.com/news6897.html
According to that damnable pack of fire-breathing liberals, the American Geophysical Union, it looks like there will be an open Arctic Ocean in a few decades, for the first time in 800,000 years. Here's a recent press release and here's the short paper, authored by 21 scientists. http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0530.html
http://atoc.colorado.edu/~dcn/reprints/Overpeck_etal_EOS2005.pdf
As for Greenland, although some interior portions are building ice as more snow falls (more moisture), huge portions of the ice sheet have been melting away. http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/steffen/greenland/melt2005/
Scientists believe Greenland's glaciers are sliding into the ocean much faster than earlier thought – about twice the rate of only five years ago: http://www.physorg.com/news10948.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=267
More bad news can be found by simply Googling “Greenland melt 2006�
2. Allow me to make a few comments on the partiality of “CO2 Science�, the site to which you linked. I presume you are aware
that the proprietors of the site, who are agricultural scientists, are hardly impartial. The Idsos are funded by Exxon and coal interests, have devoted the site both to propounding the “upside� to increased CO2 levels while denying that global warming is occurring. They co-authored one of the infamous and discredited “hockey stick is broken� papers (which have subsequently be shredded post-publican by peer reviews) which take the position that as there were warm periods in the past during pre-industrial periods, it is impossible that the climate change which is now in evidence could be due to human activity despite our heavy and continuing emissions of GHGs. It is no small wonder that the Idsos enjoy funding from those industries that have the most to gain from continued inaction on climate change.
Here are some links on the Idsos, their funding and their shoddy work on climate change: http://www.knowmore.org/index.php/ExxonMobil:_Opposing_the_Science_of_Global_Warming
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=24
http://www.answers.com/topic/center-for-the-study-of-carbon-dioxide-and-global-change
http://heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=4309&method=full
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0310.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/draft-do-not-post/#more-109
In a following post I hope to add a few more handy references to climate change science generally.
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: June 28, 2006 7:28 AM
Those who have been following the "hockey stick" discussion about the temperature record might note that Mann and his co-authors have been vindicated by the National Academies recent report to Congress specifically on this issue, which says the following:
"It can be said with a high level of confidence
that global mean surface temperature was
higher during the last few decades of the 20th
century than during any comparable period
during the preceding four centuries.
The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998,
1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the
Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during
at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has
subsequently been supported by an array of evidence
that includes both additional large-scale surface
temperature reconstructions and pronounced
changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such
as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers
around the world, which in many cases appear to be
unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.
Not all individual proxy records indicate that the
recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger
fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced
exceptional warmth during the late 20th century
than during any other extended period from A.D.
900 onward.
Based on the analyses presented in the original
papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting
evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the
Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last
few decades of the 20th century than during any
comparable period over the preceding millennium.
Surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence."
The NAS report, which was approved at the highest levels, can be found here:
http://fermat.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html
http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/Surface_Temps_final.pdf
http://dels.nas.edu/basc/Climate-LOW.pdf
Regards,
Tom
Published: June 28, 2006 7:36 AM
As to the science more generally, I am sparing you all extensive links and quotes, but here's a post of mine at RedState that may be helpful. If anyone is really interested, of course I can provide more.
http://www.redstate.com/comments/2006/2/17/85716/1778/228#228
Regards,
Tom
Published: June 28, 2006 7:42 AM
The general argument of the "Greens" on this blog is an appeal to authority: Only scientists, and only those scientists of whom they approve, have valid opinions on the subject. It's not much different from appealing to the Pope to solve a religious arguement.
If the Greens have a valid case, they should present it in such a way that intelligent people can make up their own minds about it. After all, it's not rocket surgery! But they have failed to do that, so they try to pull rank on the rest of us.
BTW, I haven't read anyone mention methane. Someone above mentioned that water vapor is the greatest source of greenhouse gasses. That's true, followed by methane. CO2 is a very small part of the equation. Why don't Greens talk about water vapor and methane, the main greenhouse gasses? Because they're not produced by capitalist societies. Nature produces both. I read recently that the jungles (rainforests to the Greens) produce far more methane than the CO2 they absorb. So chop down the Amazon jungle if you want to stop global warming!
One last point. How long have glaziers been melting? Since the last ice age! At one point they extended below the Great Lakes. Is it possible to say that the earth has been warming since the last ice age?
Published: June 28, 2006 8:50 AM
"Tom", whomever you are,
Your comment, which is reproduced below, is worthless to the discussion. Grow up.
************************************************
"Dennis,
I bet you fill your car's gas tank up at Exxon! This probably being the case, all of your "arguments" and doubts about anthropromophic climate change are not credible.
Posted by: tom at June 27, 2006 10:15 PM"
Published: June 28, 2006 10:48 AM
Global warming is a socialist political movement not a scientific fact. Check out this article by Michio Kaku which talks of increases in energy usage.
http://www.mkaku.org/articles/physics_of_alien_civs.shtml
Published: June 28, 2006 10:59 AM
"But you've got to ask whether it can really be the case that a global conspiracy with that kind of scope involving so many scientists who surely have an overriding interest in getting to the bottom of things and involving the need for so much coordination can really be what is behind all the talk of global warming."
I would respond that for years the Western academic/scientific consensus did not recognize the existence of the Soviet Gulag and the tens of millions of humans that perished in it. Nor did this same consensus recognize the fact that Mao had killed 50 or 60 million people in his Cultural Revolution. In fact, during the 1960s Mao was a darling of many of the left-wing chic. It was in the professional and ideological interest of many of those in this consensus not to come to terms with the reality that these atrocities took place under socialist regimes.
Published: June 28, 2006 3:16 PM
"Professor's Reisman's post was based on an "appeal to authority."
No, he was just presenting evidence for us to weigh. An appeal to authority would have required him to assert that the authors are the best authorities, which he didn't.
I intended to use "Greens" in this blog to refer to those who think global warming is human caused. It was just short hand. Sorry if I offended.
"I can't speak/write for Toyko Tom, but he was pointing out that those with the training to work this stuff out seem to be in agreement that something is amiss and that humans are probably causing it or making it worse."
You're correct that the majority opinion among scientists is that global warming is human caused. After all, the National Academies of Science of the leading eight industrial nations have come down on your side. But as with Austrian economics, the minority is often proven right in the long run. A minority of scientists disagree. We see evidence of political motivations in the majority. I've studied the issue for over 20 years, read everything I can get my hands on and I still have to side with the minority. I think they present a better case.
Published: June 28, 2006 4:13 PM
By definition, a man cannot “step out� of his humanity and then cast a judgement upon it simply from “outside�. It’s reminding of all the bogus common evolution knowledge about “mankind comes from ape�. In order to think that concept you have to think yourself basically as a non-human. Again, I seriously doubt this is possible. You could say however “ape comes from mankind� talking about a common evolution lineage, but it’s curious how one never hears anybody ever say that! They want you to understand that a human being is no better than a monkey “if you just step out of your human skin for a second and look at it with the eye of …a God�. But in fact, if you’re human, you are “better� than a monkey, even if your name is Darwin!
Global warming politics does a bit of the same except it is not the whole mankind, just industrialization that’s questioned “from outside�. No doubt that a horse and carriage is more lovely than a car with engine from a certain point of view, why it’s alive, and still, industrialization is a process that starts “inside� men. No centralized government should be trusted to annihilate that.
Published: June 28, 2006 5:31 PM
Dennis, doesn't this other Tom's first post above show that his response to you is purely tongue-in-cheek?
Now what was I suggesting to you about perception on Reisman's prior thread? Just because you don't like a fella's name you get all bent out of shape, and fail to discern that he's on your side!
Regards,
TT
PS: I'm on your side, too.
Published: June 28, 2006 8:56 PM
Artisan:
Not sure where you're going with your denial of evolution or our ability to theorize on it, but I would agree with you that there are funadamental limits to our abilities to perceive and to understand ourselves and the world.
However, I think you would also concede that we have proven immensely clever and, by biting the forbidden fruit in the garden, have harnessed knowledge and technology to improve our understanding of the world, the laws by which it operates and our material surroundings. We're also smart enough to perceive and, with effort, to correct, the ways in which our own behavior is counterproductive.
I agree that no centralized government should be allowed to destroy industrialization, but if that's what you think this is about then this conversation is rather dificult.
My own perspective is rather that this exercise is about understanding generally how some of our insititutions can be improved to better address irresponsible private behavior (irresponsible simply from the view that while it may represent the best interests of the decision-maker, imposes uncompensated costs on others due to lack of clear or adequately enforced property rights) that cumulatively can have very serious negative consequences.
We fail to address and solve such problems at our own peril. That we can capably solve such problems without destroying either our country or our economy, and without sliding into communism, should be evident from our rather successful attempt at addressing the rampant air, land and water pollution problems of the 60s, 70s and 80s (that we can also greatly improve the cost-effectiveness of our existing environmental laws is also evident, but besides the point). The problems remaining in the West are, domestically, rather small issues relating to government ownership and mismanagement of "public" resources. but there are a whole passel of transborder, international and foreign issues - largely also cases where there are lack of effective private property rights regimes - that remain unsolved. Global warming is one of them.
Just as a wise driver pays attention to the condition of himself, his vehicle and the road up ahead, so should we be paying attention to what is happening to the global environment. Right now, we are accelerating rapidly in a car that we have no current ability to break. You seem to advising that not only do we keep the pedal to the metal, but put on a blindfold as well.
Pray tell, who is advocating a road to ruin?
Regards,
TT
Published: June 28, 2006 9:32 PM
Are these Climate Scientists also "young earth scientists" of the same ilk as "Creation Scientists"? In other words, do they believe that the eath was formed in 4004 BC or there abouts? If not, why is there little or no reference to other geologic epochs in any of their cited research? Or is this just a cynical ruse so as to not alienate the religious right, whose votes are required to get the Kyoto Protocol implemented in the US?
Published: June 28, 2006 11:12 PM
We read and hear continually that "glaciers all around the world are melting", a claim advanced to "prove" that global warming is both reality and a looming crises. And since man is the official villain in this drama, enlightened political "leaders" must impose draconian restrictions on man's "addiction" to fossil fuels and other "wasteful" activities. Almost never does one encounter comment or fact that contradicts this claim, which is endlessly repeated by the political establishment at top volume. But as I will point out below, this claim is bogus; there is abundant evidence to the contrary that receives the silent treatment from the establishment.
Naive people assume that if the most prestigious institutions and famous spokespeople support the idea of anthropological global warming, it's got to be true. And so the trusting and naive wonder to themselves, who are we--any of us--to question proclamations issued by the National Academy of Sciences?
What this outlook misses, however, is that when a culture absorbs a lot of philosophical confusion and misconceptions about very abstract fundamental stuff--dealing with issues such as "what is the nature of the universe?" or "of man?" or "of man's attempts to acquire knowlege?" or "of the nature of knowlege and whether or not knowlege is really even possible?"--such confusion and misconceptions misdirect the teachings issued by damaged institutions. This intellectual damage becomes entrenched corruption when the State coercively subsidizes "correct science" and punishes "deviant science". The crusade for global warming is a prime example of the hazards of command science, just as was the "science" of eugenics underwritten by the German State prior to the Second World War, just as were Lysenko's bizarre biological claims that, under Joseph Stalin, reached a pinnacle of prestige and influence for decades in the USSR.
Now back to the claim that the world's glaciers are melting, and that mankind faces a crises of unprecedented proportions. Please go to the following link, which opens on several articles written by various sources, all of which document that the ice mass in the Artic,inclduing Greenland, and the Antartic, are growing thicker every year to the tune of hundreds of billions of tons: http://iceagenow.com/Antartic_Ice_Cap_Growing_Thicker.htm
I could post other links to authorities who have proven the "Hockey Stick" history of "global" temperatures is a prestigious falsehood. But this is enough for one evening.
Published: June 28, 2006 11:19 PM
Not sure where you're going with your denial of evolution or our ability to theorize on it
I didn't think it was a denial of evolution; I think it was saying that the vulgar idea of evolution, of "man evolved from apes" is wrong. Which it is; humans and apes have a common ancestor, and we might call that ancestor an ape I suppose, but it's not the same as modern apes. Saying "apes evolved from man" is just as good as "man evolved from apes"
Published: June 28, 2006 11:53 PM
Robert:
You say that "Global warming is a socialist political movement not a scientific fact."
Don't let your own rhetoric fool you. Are theinvestors, major corporations and Republican representatives noted below all socialists? If not, what other reason can you come up with to dismiss outright what they have to say? (This is not a rhetorical question - I'm seriously interested so I can avoid wasting my time on them, too.)
Hank Paulson, whom Bush has designated as Treasury Secretary: "We don't have a lot more time to deal with climate change." http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2006/06/01/treasury/
Rupert Murdock: http://www.theclimategroup.org/index.php?pid=822; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/nyregion/10hillary.html?ex=1304913600&en=ff6d1ba374427b83&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175036,00.html
Bill Gates: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13390519/site/newsweek/page/2/
Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR)- two-dozen institutional investors, managing more than $1 trillion of assets: http://www.incr.com/
American Enterprise Institute:
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.8393,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
These corporate members of the PEW Center on Global Climate Change:
ABB
Air Products
Alcan
Alcoa Inc.
American Electric Power
Baxter International Inc.
Boeing
BP
California Portland Cement
CH2M HILL
Cummins Inc.
Deutsche Telekom
DTE Energy
Duke Energy
DuPont
Entergy
Exelon
GE
Georgia-Pacific
Hewlett-Packard Company
Holcim (US) Inc.
IBM
Intel
Interface Inc.
John Hancock Financial Services
Lockheed Martin
Novartis
Ontario Power Generation
PG&E Corporation
Rio Tinto
Rohm and Haas
Royal Dutch/Shell
SC Johnson
Sunoco
Toyota
TransAlta
United Technologies
Weyerhaeuser
Whirlpool Corporation
Wisconsin Energy Corporation
http://www.pewclimate.org/companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/index.cfm
The US companies reported here:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2006-05-31-business-globalwarming_x.htm
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=7037026
http://blog.issproxy.com/2006/06/interesting_column_on_climate.html
The major US companies that publicly supported mandatory GHG restrictions at the US Senate Energy Committee’s (headed by Pete Domenici) April 4, 2006 Climate Conference: http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Conferences.Detail&Event_id=4&Month=4&Year=2006
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senator. Lugar::
http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_congress/s_res_312.cfm
The US House Appropriations Committee: http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=234959&Month=5&Year=2006&Party=1
The US Senate:
http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=234715&Month=6&Year=2005&Party=0
Exxon: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/CCR5/climate_science.asp
Are these all people who just pretend to love capitalism, but are really insidiously trying to detroy our way of life? Inquiring minds want to know!!!
Regards,
TT
Published: June 29, 2006 12:13 AM
TokyoTom, while I think the quotes and clues you are giving on the subject are very interesting, I believe you are getting perhaps carried away in the meaning you give to my and other posts. As Peter correctly insisted, I do not fight the idea of evolution, or as a matter of fact, the idea of decadence (from the golden age, as air was still unpolluted). Nor do I recommend to go all the way with polluting the earth...
As you look at politics however, you start to wonder why climate change becomes such a big thing lately. Many scientists make genuine research, sure. The question is why does government make so much publicity around it? Is it a coincidence that oil reserves dramatically shrink? As someone posted here, - “how come they all talk about CO2 and not about methane?�.
I believe this is all a set of arguments to promote a new “safe and clean� atomic era, in fact.
The environmental argument against atomic waste pollution is a bit different than that against global warming though.
As a libertarian I would recommend that polluting corporations should be held liable for disturbing the use that their neighbors make of the environment, if not they should stop their business, as Rothbard implies. Now to claim someone may change the weather still doesn’t make him necessarily liable to pay damage fees… The weather changes are - within certain limits - believed to be accepted by everyone.
However, the atomic trend seems to be at least as much of an actual threat to mankind (and private property) than CO2 is, especially with the increased risk of terrorism that exploiting corporations don’t bother to insure against. Global warming is an argument that needs to be scrutinized very critically when it comes to “government taking actions against it� thus. And if libertarians don't criticize it, who's going to do it?
Published: June 29, 2006 3:24 AM
Mark: Thank you for your wonderful help in showing that the problem is exactly opposite to what you have stated. Garbage in, garbage out, I say.
1. First, your link brings us nowhere, because you've misspelled Antarctic. However, interested readers can find it by going to the home page - http://iceagenow.com/ - and clicking on Growing Glaciers and from there on Antarctic Icecap Growing Thicker, which brings us to a web page that is more than a year old.
2. Second, before providing more information on the specific topic of the Antarctic, a side discussion of this website is instructive. Let me simply quote from an article published in the Guardian last year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1480279,00.html):
"Iceagenow.com was constructed by a man called Robert Felix to promote his self-published book about "the coming ice age." It claims that sea levels are falling, not rising; that the Asian tsunami was caused by the "ice age cycle" and that "underwater volcanic activity -- not human activity -- is heating the seas."
"Is Felix a climatologist, a volcanologist or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a "former architect." His Web site is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says. But there, indeed, was all the material that Bellamy cited in his letter, including the figures -- or something resembling the figures -- he quoted: "Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55 percent of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich."
reliable source?
"The source [is] … given as "the latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology"
21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive, until you discover that it is published by Lyndon LaRouche.
LaRouche is the American demagogue who in 1989 received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax-code violations. He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate, that former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger is a communist agent, that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.
It wasn't hard to find out that this is one of his vehicles: LaRouche is named on the front page of the magazine's Web site, and the edition Bellamy cites contains an article beginning: "We in LaRouche's Youth Movement find ourselves in combat with an old enemy that destroys human beings ... it is empiricism."
Oh well, at least there is a source for [Felix’s] figures. But where did 21st Century Science and Technology get them from? It doesn't say. But I think we can make an informed guess, for the same data can be found all over the Internet. They were first published online by Fred Singer, one of the very few climate change deniers who has a vaguely relevant qualification (he is, or was, an environmental scientist). He posted them on his Web site (www.sepp.org) and they were then reproduced by the appropriately named junkscience.com, by the Cooler Heads Coalition, the US National Center for Public Policy Research and countless others. They have even found their way into the Washington Post.
They are constantly quoted as evidence that man-made climate change is not happening. But where did they come from? Singer cites half a source: "A paper published in Science in 1989." Well, the paper might be 16 years old, but at least, and at last, there is one.
Surely?
I went through every edition of Science published in 1989, both manually and electronically. Not only did it contain nothing resembling those figures, throughout that year there was no paper published in this journal about glacial advance or retreat. …
It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world's most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals."
This former architect believes we are due for an imminent ice age - to be triggered by the underwater volcanoes he believes is responsible for rising atmospheric CO2 - he publishes only selective and old data that supports his argument. Nonetheless, this type of easily disproven crap is widely spread around the internet by climate change deniers.
http://timlambert.org/2005/06/pearson-claims-that-undersea-volcanoes-cause-global-warming/
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/03/guides-by-category.html
3. Okay - back to glaciers and the Antarctic.
The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) data mentioned at the iceagenow site is available at http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/dataexp.html. This is merely raw data that is mirrored at the U of Colorado's The National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is a data repository for NOAA and NASA as well. http://nsidc.org/about/
The NSIDC reports as follows: http://nsidc.org/sotc/glacier_balance.html
"Because they are so sensitive to temperature fluctuations, glaciers provide clues about the effects of global warming (Oerlemans, J. 2001). The 1991 discovery of the 5,000 year-old "ice man" preserved in a glacier in the European Alps fascinated the world, yet the discovery meant that this glacier had reached a 5,000-year minimum. With few exceptions, glaciers around the world have retreated at unprecedented rates over the last century. Some ice caps, glaciers, and even an ice shelf have disappeared altogether. Many more are retreating so rapidly that they may vanish within decades."
An excellent chart showing the rapid accelerating drops in glacier mass from 1961 to 2003 is at the same web page. annual and The Global Glacier Mass.
Other recent news from the NSIDC is here: http://nsidc.org/news/.
Those of you with further interest on Greenland might enjoy this recent long special report by the LA Times, "Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away": http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-sci-greenland25jun25,1,1483560.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Finally, thorough discussions of the Antarctic can be found here at these pages of reaclimate.com, which is maintained by those true villains - yes! - climate scientists:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?s=antarctic
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/antarctic-cooling-global-warming/
All of their pages are open for comment, to which the authors devote considerable to to responding.
My understanding is that "data from the "Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment" (GRACE) satellites to show that the Antarctic ice sheet has been losing mass at a rate of 150 +/- 80 km3 each year since 2002. That's equivalent to about 0.4 mm of sea level rise each year. This is about twice other recent estimates, while IPCC 2001 actually gives negative 0.1 mm/yr." http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/catastrophic-sea-level-rise-more-evidence-from-the-ice-sheets/
"The "iconic" Antarctic temperature trends are the large warming seen on the Antarctic Peninsula, which has had various repercussions including the collapse of several ice shelves. ... [and] around East Antarctica there is a general warming of the troposphere, greatest at around mid-height (at 600 hPa) at 0.7 ºC/decade over the last 30+ years."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/significant-warming-of-the-antarctic-winter-troposphere/
4. You say: "We read and hear continually that "glaciers all around the world are melting", a claim advanced to "prove" that global warming is both reality and a looming crises. And since man is the official villain in this drama, enlightened political "leaders" must impose draconian restrictions on man's "addiction" to fossil fuels and other "wasteful" activities. Almost never does one encounter comment or fact that contradicts this claim, which is endlessly repeated by the political establishment at top volume."
Wow - you certainly have the victimization/persecution complex down. Now if you would just your head out from wherever you're hiding it, you might realize that the reason you feel the way you do - at least on the science - is because you're wrong, and because you don't want to change your mind the clear preponderance of the evidence is weighing you down. Well, okay; we all make mistakes, but we can change our minds and move on - in fact there has been a veritable avalanche of prominent skeptics conceding that they are now convinced that the climate is changing, it's man's fault and we'd better do something about it. I gave alot of links to them earlier this week at Reisman's prior post here: http://blog.mises.org/archives/005221.asp
You may disagree with what some are saying in the debate over what should be done - it take it that your rostrum, even if you're wrong on the facts, is nothing - but many economists do not think the needed restrictions are "draconian" but in fact are quite affordable (and much less than the all-in costs of the Iraq war so far). http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Conferences.Detail&Event_id=4&Month=4&Year=2006. The principle is to eliminate the subsidy to GHG production that results from the lack of effective property rights in the atmosphere. This can be solved, just like we didn't tank the economy on solving other pollution problems, and have introduced effective proporty rights solutions in SO2 emissions and fisheries.
And, contrary to your whining, it is readily demonstrable that the "establishment", backed by the rent-seekers, has effectively squelched meaningful action on climate change for many years now, and there are many well-funded smear and smog machines (starting with the WSJ editorial page) that endlessly publicize so-called uncertainties about climate change science, along with fear of enviros. Let me know if you really need me to demonstrate this for you.
5. You say: "when a culture absorbs a lot of philosophical confusion and misconceptions about very abstract fundamental stuff--dealing with issues such as "what is the nature of the universe?" or "of man?" or "of man's attempts to acquire knowlege?" or "of the nature of knowlege and whether or not knowlege is really even possible?"--such confusion and misconceptions misdirect the teachings issued by damaged institutions. This intellectual damage becomes entrenched corruption when the State coercively subsidizes "correct science" and punishes "deviant science"."
I can agree with the notion that public investment in research skews the market and is potentially corrupting, but are you really saying you mean we had no Manhattan Project, no Moon project, no space probes or telescopes, no funding of basic physical research, no funding of biological, chemical or climate sciences - all because it leads inexorably to Lysenkoism and eugenics? I'll agree there are some dark sides to government research, but it seems to me that knowing more about how the planet works is kinda a good thing.
Your first sentence, however, is simply a welter of confusion. I don't blame you, though - the world is increasingly a difficult place to understand, what with acclerating internationalization, culture change, vulnerability to terrorism, government abuse and so on. I think we have a limited ability to handle very rapid change - which is why we all long for simpler days and simpler problems. We also all have a difficult time with paradign shifts in scientific understanding - from Gallileo to Newton to Einstein to Pasteur.
Believe me, I wish it were true, and that it was impossible for man to have an impact on climate or regional ecosystems. However, one must now deny too much reality to accept that illusion. We've had a profound impact on the planet and will continue to have one. It behooves us to understand how, and to make sure our institutions have the right feedback mechanisms to that undesired and uncontrolled changes do not get out of hand.
6. Finally, whom to trust? Excellent question. I don't recommend a trusting and naive assumption that any one source is unfailingly coreect or unbiased. One must balance the sources and volume of the evidence and make up one's own mind.
On this point, it strikes me as curious that you seem place an unfailing trust in (i) the Bush administration, which has lied us into disasters such as Iraq, stifles all internal dissent and even classifies the toilet paper (maybe an exaggeration), (ii) crackpot non-scientists and (iii) the very voluable pundits and scientists whom - surprise! - are funded by those very people who have the greatest to gain from the gravy train they are now on, conducted by an Administration and party which have found that unstinting partisanship and fear-mongering helps them secure control over the huge rents now available under our burgeoing federal government.
Sorry, but I tend to find our NAS and other scientific organizations much more credible, especially in view of the Administration's well-known attempts to squelch those scientists who have a message that the Administration does not consider politically advantageous.
Regards,
TT
Published: June 29, 2006 5:21 AM
Artisan, thanks for clarifying your position.
1. Why is why climate change becoming such a big thing politically in the US lately? Well, first, could it have something to do with the fact that the science is becoming so overwhelming recently that it's almost untenable to deny? Second, do you suppose the partisanship might have something to do with how the Republican party has brazenly sold out the country to special interests, all the while mocking the Democrats? By the way, it's been clear that the special interests have been funding most of the alarmist skepticism about the untrustworthiness of the scientists, the enviros, the Democrats, the EU, the Chinese and everyone else who hates our freedom and wants to destroy the foundations of the American economy (including gays, too, of course!).
2. Why does no one talk about methane? Well, of course the climate scientists do, as a cursory review would show you. Methane is actually a more potent GHG than CO2, and is exacerbating climate change as melting permafrosts are leading to huge methane releases and warming seas could do so as well. I suspect you may be aware that the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol and the European trading systems certainly do take methane into account. In the US, methane is only a minor part of the discussion because methane has a positive value in itself, so it is really not an industrial waste gas.
And of course there is plenty of opposition to taking action to deal with the property rights failure that global warming constitutes - mostly cynically funded by those who benefit from exploiting global resources for free, while exporting costs to everyone else. See this article, for example: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html, as well as other articles by Chris Mooney detailing the misuse of science: http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/articles.php.
What's a good libertarian to do? May I suggest: (i) think clearly about the science, (ii) recognize the property rights failure that lies at the core of it, (iii) pay attention to whom is benefitting from doing nothing, and (iv) push for solutions that address the problem in a manner most consistent with libertarian principles - such as the successful transferrable property rights programs that are being implemented to solve overfishing problems and the SO2 permitting program under the Clean Air Act.
Regards,
TT
PS: What country are you native to?
Published: June 29, 2006 5:54 AM
Roger, I'm late in addressing your indirect comments since CMB capably responded to part of them. Let me respond to some point that he omitted.
As to methane, see my above response to Artisan. Of course the biggest risks are the permafrosts and clathrates, but I imagine you already know. I suspect you already know that the Amazon continues to be rapidly removed - pursuant to subsidies to do so - and deforestation there and elsewhere have long been significant CO2 contributors. You might also be aware that with the disruption of the hydrological cycle, the Amazon is rapidly warming and drying, and is now in an extended drought. You may also have heard the latest from the Panamanian tropical research center that higher temperatures are actually disrupting photosynthesis and SLOWING the uptake of CO2.
I have provided here and on other posts countless cites to climate change information that is responsive to all of the questions you pose. Let your fingers do the walking - I am happy to make specific suggestions, but you really have to make up your own mind. My understanding is that the many different scientists at many different institutions in many countries have examined and take into account, in warning about the forcing by human-generated GHGs, all of the current knowledge about Malkinovich and sunspot cycles.
But it seems to me that, by referring to the scientists themselves as leftists, you have already allowed your politics to distort your view of the science. Can I take it you also don't believe in evolution, think the moon landing, Mars rovers and Hubble telescope to be faked, and that the Administration really cares about balancing the budget and that the never-ending war on terror is actually the best way to secure a good future?
I think you might benefit from reading a little bit more about what the skeptics of the skeptics have to say: http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/articles.php
While I think the science is convincing and provided ample links above and elsewhere - at the invitation of Dr. Reisman's presentation of what he considers to be persuasive in the face of much stronger countervailing evidence, my main point in posting on climate change here at Mises has been simply to note that the economics of the problem are quite easy to understand from a Misean perspective as a failure (and abuse) of property rights. Failing to remedy the problem, like other market failures, leads to damage to many for the benefit of a few - and in this case those few have been very generous in funding the pundits who have loudly trumpeted our ignorance and purveyed a fear of enviros. There are obvious Misean-type solutions to tragedy of the commons problems.
You and others might very well decide that leftists, greens and even most on the right don't understand the nature of the problem, and that the solutions they propose - such as more leaving GHGs unregulated while offering subsidies to other energy sources and huge public works projects - are wrong-headed; on which point I would agree, and say you should loudly proclaim it, as these policies simply waste taxpayer money. However, I do think that this is a serious issue, and we should not let the propoerty rights failure go unremedied.
I have addressed this issue in many posts previously, but am happy to take it up again if you are willing to discuss.
Regards,
TT
PS: I think this addresses Vince's questions as well. Yancey, why are you holding out?
Published: June 29, 2006 6:41 AM
Tom,
I apologize for my comment. I forgot about your initial posting, which does indicate that your second posting was tongue-in-cheek. Again, my apologies.
And thank you TokyoTom for refreshing my memory regarding Tom's initial comment.
Published: June 29, 2006 6:48 AM
Yes, I was joking. No need to apologize. I should have put a smile :) after my comments.
Published: June 29, 2006 8:14 AM
TT:"But it seems to me that, by referring to the scientists themselves as leftists, you have already allowed your politics to distort your view of the science."
That university professors are overwhelmingly leftist has been demonstrated by numerous polls. Most scientists are university professors who get their research money from the government. So it's safe to assume most scientists are lefties. Also, it has been demonstrated that keeping the federal money flowing toward your pet research project requires scaring the wits out of the public. Hence the conflict of interest on the part of scientists in the GHC debate. To scientists who are not university faculty, I apologize.
"Can I take it you also don't believe in evolution, think the moon landing, Mars rovers and Hubble telescope to be faked..." Your biases are showing, Tom. You seem to think everyone who disagrees with you is stupid.
Published: June 29, 2006 8:51 AM
Tom, thank you for alerting readers to my error in linking to http://iceagenow.com/, where they can read documented science that indicates the ice cap of Greenland and Antarctica are growing in volume, rather than melting. Another fascinating link on Felix's web site is to an article by world renowned atmospheric scientist Zbigniew Jaworowski, whose career spans fifty years taking ice cores from glaciers. Scroll to near the bottom of Felix's web page to "Approaching Ice Age" or similar, which features Jaworowski's article in unabridged form as published by non other than the nefarious Lyndon LaRouche. (Jaworowski's article was previously published in a Polish scientific journal).
I leave it to readers to decide for themselves if a thinker, such as Jaworowski, who has incurred tangible disapproval from the so-called intellectual establishment for his incorrect ideas about climateology, is capable of good insightful science. As to Tom's comments about the supposedly laughable and pathetic efforts of Robert Felix, who lacks what Tom obviously esteems above all else, namely tinsel prestige and academic "credentials", what can one say? Either one primarily looks for facts and evidence, or one primarily seeks guidance from "prestigious" authority. I like facts and logic, and I know Felix does because I've read his book (one of Amazon's best sellers).
I also like Robert Felix, because he is willing to sign his name to his iddeas and writing.
Published: June 29, 2006 3:34 PM
Roger, thanks for your note. If I thought you and others here - including Dr. Reisman - who disagree with me on the science, economics or political economy were stupid, I wouldn't waste my time or your trying to persuade you otherwise.
Rather, as I noted on Reisman's prior post, http://blog.mises.org/archives/005221.asp, I think that people have a hard time changing their minds, especially on matters that are not staring them in the face, and even very highly intellegent people and, yes, scientists. Me, too. We did not evolve to truly understand the world, but to understand enough to help us to survive and have off-spring. The result is that we build basic maps of reality in our heads and reform them when we have to. Cognitive science shows that we subconsciously filter out much dissonant information, and we all know that it is easier to defend our current reality and to dismiss information that would force us to do to much work in changing our minds. That's why Darwin, Pasteur and Einstein had such a difficult time. Don't they say that acceptance of breakthroughs in science occurs one death at a time, as the "old guard" dies?
On this, you mistake my question, which is not derogatory but meant to ask you to examine what your thinking leads you to. If you reject the scientific papers of university climatologists on the basis that they are "leftists", "greens" or whatnot, should you not also dismiss on the same grounds all other science that comes from universities? And like Mark, will you also dismiss all climate science (and other science)coming from government-employed scientists? What scientists's views will you then accept, on anything? My point here is that I presume you are not really a skeptic of university or government science generally, so I hope you will examine why you are so resistant to listening on climate science.
In my view, you are struggling against accepting the bulk of the science because you have a pre-existing view that you naturally and understandably find easier to defend than to change, so you find ways to dismiss outright the dissonant information. I don't mean to be offensive in suggesting this, but it does seem that your off-the-cuff dismissal and labelling are hallmarks that this very human phonomenon is at work. I have a very intelligent sister who is very resistant to accepting any part of evolution, so I have spent years trying to figure her out. The cognitive science of how our brains function has been helpful to me in getting my head around this, as well as my own resistance to acknowledging error or changing my mind.
On the climate science again, please note that even though you might prefer not to listen to university scientists or government scientists, there are plenty of others out there - in business and on the right - who are convinced on the science. Some have maintained consistent positions, but many have changed their minds and their public positions as the evidence has become more convincing. Even Exxon (see link above) has now publicly acknowledged that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. As I noted with links on Reisman's prior post, these include prominent libertarians and skeptics - don't read me, go see what they have to say. Go read what the fundamentalists who have, in a painful public schism with their brethren, made a 180 degree turn have to say:
http://www.christiansandclimate.org/
http://www.christiansandclimate.org/pub/scientific_business_perspectives_fact.pdf
http://www.christiansandclimate.org/pub/macfarland_briefing_hires.pdf (March 2005 presentation by Mack MacFarland, DuPont Inc. Senior Scientist to evangelical leaders and Senate staffers).
http://www.creationcare.org/resources/climate/
Here are some more handy quotes for you that come from above (pun intended):
Lord John Browne, CEO of BP: “We’ve found that an emissions trading system, which ensures that resources are applied in the right places, is the best way to keep costs down, and we’ve emonstrated that, far from being a cost burden, reducing emissions by eliminating waste can add value … In fact within the first three years we
added $650 million of value, for an investment of around $20 million … Our aspiration is to turn a threat and a risk into an opportunity.�
Charles O. Holliday, Jr., CEO of DuPont: “DuPont believes that action is warranted, not further debate. We also believe that the best approach is for business to lead, not wait for public outcry or government mandates. From our experience of the past ten years, we know that integrating environmental considerations into our business strategies enhances our ability to achieve sustainable growth.�
Michael Morris, CEO of the U.S.’s #1 coal-burning utility and largest electricity generator, American Electric Power: “The science debate goes on, but we know enough to move now.�
Business Week Editorial: “we do know that the world is warming – the ‘90s were the warmest decade in centuries. We know that businesses can save money and increase efficiency by cutting energy costs. And we know that a national policy that cuts fossil fuel consumption converges with a geopolitical policy of reducing energy dependence on Middle East oil. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is no longer just a ‘green’ thing. It makes business and foreign policy sense, as well.�
James E. Rogers, CEO of Cinergy, a utility with $4.6 billion in annual revenue that produces 95% of its electricity from burning coal: “…I am convinced that it is prudent to take action now to address what we do know (about climate change).�
Paul Anderson, CEO of Duke Energy, an electric utility: “Personally I feel the time has come to act.� “We will be proactive on the issue of global climate change … Ideally, U.S. public policy should encourage a transition to a lower-carbon-intensive economy through a broad-based approach, such as a carbon tax or other mechanism
which addresses all sectors of the economy.�
Jeffrey R. Immelt, CEO of General Electric (the country’s largest company), in announcing the GE’s “Ecomagination� efforts : “I think [global warming] is something we need to start figuring out and taking proactive steps to make improvements on.�
Anyway, I'm sorry if I come across as slighting you. I'm definitely poking you, but I don't think I've been unfair.
Regards,
Tom
Published: June 29, 2006 9:44 PM
I'm fascinated that TT appears to believe energy executives unquestioningly when they support his preconceptions, but considers scientific papers which oppose them worthless when there may be some connection between their funding stream and those same energy companies.
Note to TT: scientists, whatever they believe, are human. The phenomenon of scientists generating results that tend to increase their importance and funding stream is hardly restricted to those supported by the energy industry.
In fact, scientists in most fields today spend at least 1/3 of their time fund-raising, and they are seldom shy about using any tactic that will get them a buck - science is a very competitive business, and if you don't stretch your grant applications your peers will. I find this famous quote from GW bigwig (and MacArthur winner) Stephen Schneider quite informative:
Hope is, of course, the operative word.
Anyone interested in checking TT's flood of GW science should spend a little time at climateaudit.org.
The Climate Audit researchers, McKitrick and McIntyre, wrote the original paper which resulted in the NAS panel, which essentially found the "hockey stick" research statistically worthless - while papering it over with the text that TT quotes above, which declares that even though Mann's papers prove nothing, other research shows the same "facts," so it doesn't matter! Of course, if the hockey stick is any evidence of the quality of work in the GW field...
Note that McKitrick and McIntyre are some of the only independent people looking at the field - McKitrick is a professor in a completely different area, McIntyre is a mining consultant.
I find a comparison between the discussion styles at ClimateAudit and at the "official" GW site, RealClimate, extremely telling. I am not a statistician, but I suspect anyone used to analyzing technical Internet discussions will understand my perspective.
A good example is this discussion:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=725
Published: June 30, 2006 2:47 AM
Mark:
Thanks for your note, but I notice that you have failed to respond to a single aspect of my long post to you. Why?
Why do you feel so certain that non-scientists like Felix and a few iconoclasts like Jaworowski have all the answers?
1. I am happy to keep correcting your links, because I think that the balance in weighing the volume and credibility of the evidence is clearly favor of the view that anthropogenic global warming is discernable, progressing and will continue to grow worse. I don't at all mind you holding up non-scientists and a few iconoclasts for comparison; in fact, I encourage you to trot out more of them, as they help discredit the very position that you are clinging to.
There are plenty of places to find the iconoclasts - "iceagenow.com", the Lyndon Larouche website where you also like to drag up things, the WSJ editorial page, and countless other special-purpose Exxon and coal-funded sites and other sites that do contract work for these industries. They are not ignored by the real climate scientists, and you can find plenty of credible rebuttal.
But I would just think you might want to pay a little more attention to the fact that the most honest of the pundits have been jumping the skeptic ship en masse recently, leaving only those who are still taking paychecks from industry and those for whom internal mental hurdles have as of yet been too difficult to surmount. Are you going to be one of the last passengers on this sinking ship?
2. As for Jawoworski, let me remind everyone again that the Larouche site, by it own advertising, also flatly rejects the theory of relativity, quantum theory, and other achievements of modern science. Why isn't Jawoworski publishing in peer-reviewed journals? Maybe the answer is that he is a nuclear researcher and runs a radiology lab focussing on exposure to radiation and Chernobyl fallout - although in that capacity aparently has been on alot of glaciers, his interest in climatology is purely a personal hobby.
Obviously, the fact that his interest in climate is not professional doesn't disqualify him from commenting, but it is readily apparent that his very limited "scientific" work (as opposed to his work for lay readers), in which he questions the reliability of CO2 records extracted from ice cores, simply isn't tested against peer scientists and what has been reviewed subsequently has been shown to be full of errors - as the links below clearly demonstrate.
http://timlambert.org/2005/01/hissink3/
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=12
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=19
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=16
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=18#comments
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=25
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2005/06/jabberowski.html
My favorite post is rather lengthy, but here is a taste: http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7
"How can they possibly pack so much misinformation into such a small space? To honor exceptional achievement in mendacity, I would like to present the Golden Horseshoe Award to that writer who has out-performed his or her peers in density of false statements per column-inch.
"To receive the first Golden Horseshoe Award, I can think of no more worthy recipient than Zbigniew Jaworowski.
"This post is an examination of the Jaworowski statement, and the Golden Horseshoe Award is a celebration of just how mind-bogglingly wrong, from beginning to end, it manages to be.
"Jaworowski makes several specific assertions that the methodology used in atmospheric measurements from ice cores is flawed. Each and every one of these assertions is mistaken.
"He makes sweeping accusations of data manipulation by climate researchers. Those accusations are unsupported by any evidence, direct or indirect.
"These extravagant claims of bias and dishonesty in the scientific community reveal a deep misconception of the state of climate research, and of the scientific process generally.
"Jaworowski’s statement is not likely to help the public understand the state of our planet’s climate and the process by which scientists go about investigating it.
"In fact, there is so much wrong with this statement that it’s hard to know where to start."
That's someone else's view, but I find it convincing after doing a bit of reading up. Despite his climate change work being garbage that is published in very obscure places, Felix still manages to attract attention by the likes of Steve Milloy at FOX News. Milloy is financed by Exxon, publishes JunkScience.com and is an adjunct scholar at CEI (having been removed from Cato due to his involvement in the Abramhoff scandals): http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188176,00.html
Milloy's piece is addressed here: http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=48
FOX, of course, doesn't mind that it is being used to publish paid opinion pieces for industry shills: http://laweekly.blogs.com/judith_lewis/2006/01/why_wont_fox_du.html
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060206&s=thacker020606
That Jawoworski also somehow merits inclusion with the other sixty "accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines" to be included in a published letter to Canadian prime minister Harper -
http://www.restoringamerica.org/SpecialFeatures/sixty_scientists_call_on_harper_.htm - provides some indication of how little credibility these scientists have on climate change. I would note that the American Meteorological Society (AMO) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) alone, which represent over 50,000 scientists worldwide and whose members include most scientists involved in climate change research, have officially adopted position statements recognizing that human-induced climate change is occurring and should be addressed.
3. You say that the efforts of Robert Felix are "supposedly laughable and pathetic" - I agree, but those are clearly your words, not mine. I am happy to see your acknowledgement that Felix lack prestige and academic "credentials" in climate change, but you don't go far enough - he's an architect, for Pete's sake, and doesn't himself claim to have any professional STUDY or EXPERIENCE in any part of the field of climatology. That you find him to be full of facts and logic says volumes about you and others who seek their authority in climate change in the likes of him. The book reviews at Amazon make facinating reading! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0964874687/ref=cm_rev_next/104-9510802-3345557?ie=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=11.
Not sure what makes you think I "obviously esteem above all else ... tinsel prestige and academic "credentials". I weigh what I read from different sources, and make my judgments based on track records, my evaluation of the consistency and reliability of what they to say, and what I understand to be their self-interests. Personally, I do find scientists to be more credible in the fields of their expertise than non-scientists, but that's just me, being a fool, I suppose.
4. Yeah, I noticed that Robert Felix signs his own name, and I use a nom de plume. Guess that makes me totally unreliable? Well, try this as a thought experiment - I'm aware that I'm not posting here under my name, but I still have a reputation to establish and protect - a brand, so to speak. I'm posting here, and even spending time responding to you, because I'd like to persuade people. For that reason, I try to be as logical as I can be, using arguments amd insights that I think are helpful to understanding and can be supported if challenged. For that task, does my real name matter - or yours?
It's sufficient that people know my brand name. The reputation I earn I'm willing to live with.
Regards,
Tom
Published: June 30, 2006 3:12 AM
TT,
You can go on and on with unending lists of all kinds of people with multi-various credentializations from the most august institutions and that's all well and good.
What's puzzles me is that I've yet to hear [any] of the anti-GHG/ pro-GW mouthpieces say that the technology to remediate many kinds of noxious emmissions have been with us for many years.
As we coverse about this, the technology to put the vast majority of "Smokestacks" out of business sits, on the shelf, ready to go.
Not only can "Smokestacks" be put out of business, but the Industrial Gas cartel, another huge source of pollution, in its own right, & a major slurper of energy inputs, can be made redundant in the same exercise.
That none of your vaunted "experts" give rise to the idea that their beloved Gov't is responsible for deforming the Marketplace into a schema predicated upon Waste, should, rightly, open your eyes.
You should really understand the full extent of the massive economic reordering the U.S. underwent during the administration of FDR.
Your "arguments" sail, too easily, past some very serious impediments to rectifying the "problem(s)" you perceive. So much so, that it sounds as simple as: "Everyone's doin' it!~".
You really aren't paying attention, I would have thought, as well, that you would have called "fraud" in the face of: "The great Wal-Mart Success Story" on the grounds of the tremendous environmental degradation occuring in China, alone.
But, maybe, because they(China) were never a target of Kyoto, they don't count?
TT, you're a good dude. Do better. Do different.
Published: June 30, 2006 4:02 AM
Curtis, many thanks for your comments.
1. You say "TT appears to believe energy executives unquestioningly when they support his preconceptions, but considers scientific papers which oppose them worthless when there may be some connection between their funding stream and those same energy companies."
I'm curious as what has made you think I "believe energy executives unquestioningly" in any circumstances. To what preconceptions of mine are you referring?
The second part is clearly an over-generalization, but would you agree with the point that (1) one should take with a grain of salt any statements by pundits with respect to a matter in which a particular industry has a financial interest, when it turns out that the industry is actually funding the pundit, and (2) that it is quite interesting to note that when this funding is broad and masked insofar as possible? Would you also agree that this is very much the case with respect to global warming?
I would direct readers who are interested in the way corporate money has corrupted the debate to take a brief look at the research reported here:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/exxon_chart.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/world_burns.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/mckibben_introduction.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/snowed.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/05/gelbspan.html
As to preconception, we all undeniably have them and are influenced by them. I try to be as consciouly aware of my own as much as possible. I certainly have my own views on climate change and other issues, but they are not etched in stone and continue to evolve - even after I showed up here three months ago - due to the influence of others' perspectives and additional data.
Finally, you refer to my deeming "scientific papers" funded by interested industries to be worthless. There are very few of these - mostly there are public articles or speeches that are financed. As for scientific papers that are peer-reviewed or used by industry for its own purposes (other than PR), I have no doubt that industry can and does generate excellent science. Exxon, for example, has conducted and supported climate science research for 25 years, produced more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed literature, and has scientists serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies. http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/CCR5/climate_science.asp
But even though Exxon now publicly acknowledges that "the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere poses risks that may prove significant for society and ecosystems, ... [and] that these risks justify actions now, [e]ven with many scientific uncertainties," it still remains in Exxon's financial interest to delay any effective approach to climate change.
2. Scientists are human and have to find financing for their work? An important point, but hardly news, and hardly relevant to this discussion - except as it may pertain to certain iconoclasts who lose the competition for funding for real work and find it easier to sell out to the fossil fuels spin machine.
There is no monolithic science, but thousands of scientists, all competing for funding and fame - and the Bush administration and the fossil fuels industry have deep pockets and an agenda for delay. Do you really mean to imply that all of the university, government and corporate scientists have no interest in tapping those funds to deny that would show that climate change is NOT a problem? Of course they are - it's just that there is apparently no strong anti-global warming case to be made. Just a dwindling number of iconclasts and non-experts.
Schneider's quote of course goes to an entirely different point - how to explain menaingful scientific results to non-scientists, especially in the face of dedicated opposition from people with a vested interest in the status quo. Perhaps you've noticed (i) we're still trying to convince the bulk of America in evolution (resistance from the religious community and from politicians eager to curry favor) and (ii) a huge portion of Americans seem to believe we invaded Iraq because Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and that the WMD's also really justified the invasion (partisan political advantage and financial interests of special interests)?
3. Climateaudit is not a bad site, but they are focused on recent controversy with respect to a very small piece of the evidence for climate change relating to the pre-industrial past, before we started dumping vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. Further clarity will come from that debate, and that's a good thing and shows how science is done. But it doesn't change our present impact on the climate, the rapidly rising levels of CO and methane, and the rapid changes in climate that are already in evidence. It does not change the debate, which has really shifted to the question of how much will the climate change based our our emissions so far, and how can we start to get our impact on the climate under control.
Can you tell me if you think I've lost sight of any particular trees while keeping in mind that the forest is burning, Craig?
Regards,
TT
Published: June 30, 2006 5:57 AM
MEH:
You make excellent points that I haven't particularly been trying to argue except tangentially, because Reisman's threads here have been about what he sees as the lack of evidence for climate change.
I HAVE noted that the source of the problem is both a property rights failure and political delay caused by rent-seeking and partisan opportunism. I also have noted that the government is massively involved in screwing up both environmental regulation generally and with subsidies to the energy companies - see my post to Robert Bradley.
As to Walmart and China, yes - China is massively degrading its environment, yes I'm worried (and am directly downstream), but no, I think we need to drag China and others into an international agreement to have an effective solution, and there are plenty of levers to do it with. We only have one global atmosphere. But, believe it or not, I've got a job and simply didn't see there was a fun thread out there clamoring for my attention. Next time you think I'm need, can you drop me an email?
Regards,
Tom
Published: June 30, 2006 6:09 AM
TT,
The Wal-Mart puff piece is here: http://www.mises.org/story/2219
on the same page of this weblog.
Seems that the good Author of said piece, wide-on for CorpoStatism, notwithstanding, has gone missing since being hoisted by own petard(s).
For me, flap about AGW is akin to believing in "Peak Oil", or, better; "Oil is a "Fossil Fuel"". Pollution, at least, is able to be measured, in the here and now, and many of its ill-effects are readily knowable.
I hear you about the fallacy(-ies) of "externalities", the conceit is truly a ruse.
Reagan had it easy, he could point to a physical wall. We're not so fortunate, the walls we must tear down are made of the stern stuff of superstition, psuedoscience, and sanctimony.
Failing that...
Published: June 30, 2006 7:08 AM
TT sez;
"You say that "Global warming is a socialist political movement not a scientific fact."
Don't let your own rhetoric fool you. Are theinvestors, major corporations and Republican representatives noted below all socialists? "
In a word, yes. I don't accept appeals to authority, especially not political or large-scale corporate authority, who are mostly just positioning themselves to benefit from whatever statist solutions are imposed. If not, they would be acting independently and not waiting for a state-imposed solution.
But yes, most of them are at least demonstrably statist and incipiently socialist, so, no, their endorsements cut no ice with me. Let's stick to the scientific evidence pro and con. There's certainly a lot of it.
Published: June 30, 2006 8:31 AM
TokyoTom,
Your quotes from certain prominent utility executives do accurately reflect the positions of a growing number of those in the electric utility industry. However, other considerations motivate them. Specifically, complying with carbon gas emission caps would likely require the utilities to make additional capital investment in their generating plants, and under the existing regulatory framework these companies will very likely be permitted to earn a return of and on their investments. And, I might add, a quite reasonable risk-adjusted return. So agreeing with the proponents of man-caused global warming represents an excellent, relatively low-risk strategy for these utilities to grow earnings.
In addition, you probably can find quotes from proponents of nuclear power also agreeing with the advocates of man-caused global warming, and I believe the reasoning here is obvious. This is not a criticism of nuclear power on my part, just an identification of motivation.
In all of this, maybe Rothbard's dictum regarding economic/historical research bears mentioning: just follow the money.
Published: June 30, 2006 8:11 PM
"Whether your arguments about a particular issue are valid or not does NOT logically depend on whether you are supported by issue advocates or partisans or not. Your arguments are either valid or invalid, period."
"A person who indulges in ad hominem attacks instead of addressing another's ideas, has in effect conceded intellectual defeat."-- Bevin Chu, antiwar.com, Oct. 22, 1999
"When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."
-- Socrates
"It's far easier to support people who agree with you than to bribe people to do your bidding." -- Brian Doherty, ReasonOnline, May 6, 2003.
-- from this page on "The "Who funded it?" Fallacy
Published: July 1, 2006 7:37 PM
TT,
Thanks for your reasoned comments.
I understand your faith in the institutional structure of science, but - based on my own personal experiences in the scientific world, and what I've read of others' - I find it misplaced.
As liberal intellectuals, our belief in scientific consensus is a historical product of the reputation that "science" has built up over the last 300 years. For most of this time it was fighting with a competing species of institutional truth, which was called "religion." Religion focused on supernatural explanations for physical phenomena, whereas science looked for simple mathematical laws.
In this struggle science had two key advantages.
One was the wisdom-of-crowds effect: scientists were not organized. They did not have to respond to central administrative bodies which judged their rightness or wrongness. There was some patronage, but it was rarely institutionalized, and scientists with heterodox views who did not have private wealth could usually support themselves by teaching. Erroneous groupthink did occur, often associated with early forms of centralized science such as royal societies, academies, etc, but the lack of specialized monocultures insured a high level of herd immunity.
Two was Popperian falsifiability. (I am well aware that Popper's views on economics were primitive and that Mises used the word "science" in a thoroughly un-Popperian way. But I think that in today's world, where "science" has the level of positive association that any religion could envy, Popper's minimalistic definition is preferable. Words are just words.) Falsifiability is so effective that even in a thoroughly broken institutional environment like the Soviet Union, a lot of excellent science got done. Combined with real research independence, it almost earns the spiritual trust we associate with "science."
The problem with the vast reams of GW research you cite is that its level of both falsifiability and independence is very low. Therefore, I see very little reason to be influenced by it.
As you point out, the historical dendrochronology work that the ClimateAudit guys have debunked - the NAS panel, many of whom are part of the GW establishment - is not a terribly important part of the argument for GW. It has been more important to the media campaign. The real meat of the GW argument is the result of various computer models of global climate which incorporate CO2 forcing.
These models are a classic case of unfalsifiable research. It's not that their results are uninteresting, but they are essentially weather predictions on a global and secular scale, modeling "cells" which are measured in square kilometers by a few simple variables. Obviously if a model predicts that Earth should have turned into Venus in 1988 it is falsified, but the effects in question are nowhere near on this scale. In fact, since (as you never see in the papers) the greenhouse effect of CO2 is proportional to the log of the concentration, a simple incorporation of doubled CO2 into the models leads to very little temperature increase, on the order of one degree I think. To get the results the modelers claim, you need all kinds of intricate feedback effects - which, of course, occur. But you are inevitably including some effects and not others, because you don't have a computer the size of Jupiter. The whole system is so subtle and sensitive that if alarming results generate press, attention, and (inevitably in a system of state-funded science) money, and non-alarming ones don't, it requires no conscious dishonesty whatsoever for an evolutionary effect to occur that produces only alarming models. I think of the ClimateAudit work as a canary in a coal mine that reveals this tendency in a field where it is easy to catch and describe formally.
As for funding, as I mentioned in another thread, I think you need to put yourself in the position of the scientists involved. Central funding of science, by bodies like NSF in the US, generates very powerful orthodoxies, inevitably handing a lot of power over one's career to a very small and intellectually monolithic peer group. If your work is in a falsifiable field, and you happen to be right when the orthodoxy is wrong, it makes sense to challenge them in any way you can, because if you can demonstrate it you can pull off a palace coup and gain this power for yourself and your acolytes. But since GW doesn't really have any falsifiable problems, bucking the groupthink makes very little sense. I don't know that anyone has compiled any numbers, but the funding available for anti-AGW research from interested companies is surely miniscule compared to that of NSF and all the eco-NGOs. It may disappear at any time as companies like Exxon take the route of BP and decide, as large companies tend to do, to go with the political flow. And it has the added little side benefit of making all your peers think of you as a shill and a traitor, and getting you on McCarthyist hit lists like exxonsecrets.org. It's no wonder that most of the professors on the anti-AGW side are people like Richard Lindzen who are protected by academic tenure. In fact, it's probably a lot easier to develop a new career as an Austrian economist than as an anti-AGW researcher, and that's saying a lot.
None of this, I must repeat, tells us in any way that the AGW theory is wrong. It does not mean that, pace Exxon, "carbon dioxide is life." It just means that "scientific consensus" is not a particularly good argument for creating new institutions of global government to attack the problem.
Science, in the Popperian sense at least, does not answer most questions of public policy. The question with AGW and measures to counter it is simply the usual one of making decisions about risk in the context of uncertainty.
Seeing as (since we are on mises.org) in the 20th century, big government killed a lot more people than bad weather, I find the perspective that minimizing government in the 21st century is more important than minimizing CO2 generally compelling. Of course, this is a matter of opinion and you're free to disagree. But I hope you understand why I don't find the work of the climate researchers particularly illuminating to the question.
Published: July 2, 2006 12:31 AM
Vince: Maybe I misunderstand you, but it sounds like you are joining with some others here to discount all climate change evidence whatever its source. Or are you simply rejecting what but remain willing to listen to all scientists, regardless of source of funding? Does that mean you reject pundits of all stripes, as well, including those funded by industry? Please clarify.
It strikes me that by rejecting all reference to authority in discussing a scientific issue you throw away too much. Would you have denied the existence of air, water and ground pollution in the 60s and 70s on the same grounds that all persons arguing for or against action were "just positioning themselves to benefit from whatever statist solutions are imposed. If not, they would be acting independently and not waiting for a state-imposed solution."?
I too would prefer to see private actions and solutions, but isn't the fact that there are so many voices angling for benefit or struggling to protect one itself evidence - as with respect to pollution in the 70s - that there is a serious problem?
As for private action, I presume you are aware that many corporations are taking private actions on climate change, and firms like BP are finding that efforts to control GHG emissions is actually making money for them. The members of the Business Roundtable and many others are engaging in private actions, most property insurers are reviewing their underwriting and pricing policies, and institutional investors are quizzing many major companies on their climate change planning.
But they key point of course is that as long as there are no clear or enforceable property rights pertaining to GHG emissions, private actions will continue to result in costs to others that the emitters will not have to compensate. The result will be a continuing tragedy of the commons, and effectively a subsidy to current consumption of fossil fuels and climate change, at the general cost of all and future generations.
We should be offering solutions that recongize the property rights failure and have the least degree of government influence, such as management of fisheries through individual transferrable quotas.
Rgeards,
TT
Published: July 3, 2006 1:14 AM
We should be offering solutions that recongize the property rights failure and have the least degree of government influence, such as management of fisheries through individual transferrable quotas.
And who, pray tell, has the legitimate right to issue these quotas? The answer to that question defines the true owner of the air/water/whatever. I presume you're saying governments have that right. Well, that's not going to find a lot of favor around here, I think. The only proper answer is given by the homesteading rule.
Published: July 3, 2006 1:42 AM
Herbert: I think you're right in part about the motivations of the utilities and nuclear technology sellers. They and others have something to gain from regulatory certainty. By the same token, I hope you see that Exxon and other fossil fuel producers and consumers stand to gain from continuing to deny global warming and to delay effective action. In other words, also follow the money that has been blocking action for so long.
I hope you will also see the short-term political gains Bush and the Republicans have largely sought to capture by denying that climate change requires any action now.
I think you're off on the utilities, by the way - if they were assured they could pass through to customers any costs relating to climate change measures that may be required, then they would be neutral to taking any action. It is because they do NOT have assurance they they can pass through (and are worried about pressures from public utulity commisions to keep rates down), and think that there is a significant global warming problem, that the utilities want to see nation legislation BEFORE they make investments. Once the investments are committed, additional regulations will increase costs without a guarantee of pass-through, and will lower returns. From a national perspective, it makes sense to address climate change now, simply to avoid the expensive mistake of locking ourselves into hundreds of new coal-fires facilities rather than coal gasification/sequestration facilities, and then requiring retrofits.
Regards,
TT
Published: July 3, 2006 1:43 AM
Peter: Very good observation. Before we discuss solutions, do you acknowledge that there is a problem, and that there is presently a tragedy of the commons underway because of the lack of clear and enforceable property rights relating to GHG emissions and the atmosphere?
Or are you implicitly taking the position that because the problem seems difficult to resolve in an ideologically acceptable way, then ipso facto, no problem actually exists? That is the deus ex machina postion that Reisman and others here take.
My own view is that there is a clearly a global warming problem tied to GHG emissions, and reulting from property rights failures globally. It's an ugly problem to try to deal with it, but deal with it we must.
What's your view?
Regards,
TT
Published: July 3, 2006 2:21 AM
Rick:
Thanks for your interesting quotes. It seems to me that the first three quotes sum up quite well Dr. Reisman's approach to the science of global warming.
I took a brief look at your rather eclectic website, which has links and ads at many others, but it seem that your skepticism extends only to liberals. This is not meant as an ad hominem attack, but I think it's fair to note here that it seems clear from your website that you fully support our war in Iraq, the invasion of our civil liberites and the continued fear-mongering by the Bush administration. Can I suggest that more balanced skepticism may be in order?
As to your quotes, I don't view a discussion of a pundit's financing as an "ad hominem" attack. It is the consideration of information that is useful in determining how to weigh the credibility and significance of the positions taken by such a person.
There are plenty who would dismiss outright the published, peer-reviewed science, based on the fact that the researchers are funded by governments or universities. Perhaps you would also classify such dismissals as ad hominem attacks? I believe that an understanding of motives is quite relevant, though I would disagree that government funding means all science is unreliable. The significant funding by Exxon to a guy like Steven Milloy, who you link to on your site, does make anything he say rather questionable. See my links on Milloy noted further above.
The last quote from someone at Reason is also true, and there have been many who were skeptical of the global warming science for their own reasons, even while Exxon and others have provided much direct and indirect financing. But the non-bribed skeptics have been jumping ship in droves, as the science has become more convincing. I take the liberty of copying the following from my notes on another thread:
Here are some long-time skeptics who have just changed their minds:
Gregg Easterbrook:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/opinion/24easterbrook.html?ex=1306123200&en=a4df3b808f1716da&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Michael Shermer. "Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.� http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000B557A-71ED-146C-ADB783414B7F0000&colID=13
David Attenborough:
“we may be facing major disasters on a global scale.� http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article570935.ece
Libertarian Ron Bailey, skeptic at Reason:
“Gore is correct that the scientific consensus is that humanity is causing global warming.� http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/05/inconvenient_un.shtml#013924
“The question of how much danger the trend toward higher average global temperatures poses is still open, but that the earth’s temperature is going up is not. The debate now is how bad it might get.� http://www.reason.com/rb/rb040306.shtml
“So what about the future? According to an article last October, Michaels [a climate skeptic] seems unlikely to offer another bet on lower temperatures. "We already know that the world is warming and that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (with or without any greenhouse gas emission controls)," wrote Michaels. "Record temperatures will continue to be set every couple of years or so."� http://www.reason.com/rb/rb040306.shtml
“Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up. All data sets—satellite, surface, and balloon—have been pointing to rising global temperatures. In fact, they all have had upward pointing arrows for nearly a decade, but now all of the data sets are in closer agreement due to some adjustments being published in three new articles in Science today.� http://www.reason.com/links/links081105.shtml
Regards,
TT
Published: July 3, 2006 3:13 AM
Curtis, thanks for your note.
I think skepticism is healthy and necessary, but I note that cognitive science shows us that it can easily shade into denial - since it may be easier to defend our views than to change our minds.
I appreciate your acknowledge that the climate models may very well be correct, but I'd say you are ignoring huge pieces of the picture, which include the FACTS about what we know of how human activity has affected atmospheric levels of GHGs, how those concentrations continue to sharply climb, how those concentrations compare to past concentrations, how global temperatures are climbing (in all levels of the atmosphere), how ocean temperatures and acidity continue to rise and all of the documented and accelerting changes in the climate over the past decade and more that are fully consistent with the models of which you speak. The models of course cannot fully predict the future - such as the time of the CO2 doubling, which depends on human economic activity and policy - but they are becoming increasing accurate and can still tell us very good information on what will be the effects of a doubling. In any case, it is undeniable that the world is rapidly changing. It is hardly wise to wait for the models to prove 100% accurate in predicting the future when the effects of global warming are right before our eyes.
Your speculation that scientific peer pressure or whatnot may have produced an unconscious evolution towards an "alarmist" model hardly makes sense - and smacks of the same argument that fundamentalists make about evolution (actually they make the same argument about climate change). See this: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/06/the_role_of_the_ipcc_in_climat.php. There are thousands of scientists (government, university and industr) in many different fields researching many different aspects of climate change - both paleoclimatology, ongoing changes and modelling - publishing thousands of papers with their results. They are all striving for their own bit of discovery, fame and bread - fame that can be earned by disproving the conjectures and results of others. That a consensus view is developing over the big picture, even as there is much ferment over details, is not a conspiracy but an attestation to the progress of science. Do you think Exxon would be throwing in the towel also on the big picture, even as it continues to fund pundits to maximize delay in policy measures, if the so-called consensus were a sheer crock??? I think Exxon's position, along with all of the pundits who are now jumping ship, is strongly indicative that the the scientific picture has become convincingly clear.
Maybe you should ask what has convinced these others, and then ask yourself what YOU need to be convinced. I know what it's like to be a doubting Thomas, myself.
BTW, the AGW scientists I think understand skepticism; see this, for example: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/how-to-be-a-real-sceptic/#more-210.
From my own perspective, I understand climate change in the contexts of a property rights failure and standard rent-seeking. With this, the sums spent by Exxon and others to cloud the science and political debate can be seen as themselves evidence that the science is rather strong - if it were not, they wouldn't need to waste their money. They're getting a substantial free ride and they have found it worth their while to pay something to keep the free ride going, because they have seen that there is convincing evidence of a problem that would justify removing the benefit.
It's also clear that this Administration has done its damndest to lie to us for partisan political reasons (and to benefit rent-seekers) wherever it could, including not only Iraq but also climate change. Where's your skepticism on these points? It seems to me that most skepticism at this blog is simply a skepticism of convenience - people would really rather not change their minds, and so prefer not to read the science and to dismiss all who proclaim that there is a problem. It's quite understandable, even while being essentially reflexive.
Regards,
Tom
PS: I leave you and others with Naomi Oreskes's rather innocuous summary of the scientific literature:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26065-2004Dec25?language=printer
Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.
The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program, the IPCC is charged with evaluating the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action. In its most recent assessment, the IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities . . . are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents . . . that absorb or scatter radiant energy. . . . [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
The IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. A National Academy of Sciences report begins unequivocally: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and it answers yes. Others agree. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all issued statements concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.
Despite recent allegations to the contrary, these statements from the leadership of scientific societies and the IPCC accurately reflect the state of the art in climate science research. The Institute for Scientific Information keeps a database on published scientific articles, which my research assistants and I used to answer that question with respect to global climate change. We read 928 abstracts published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and listed in the database with the keywords "global climate change." Seventy-five percent of the papers either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view. The remaining 25 percent dealt with other facets of the subject, taking no position on whether current climate change is caused by human activity. None of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. There have been arguments to the contrary, but they are not to be found in scientific literature, which is where scientific debates are properly adjudicated. There, the message is clear and unambiguous.
To be sure, a handful of scientists have raised questions about the details of climate models, about the accuracy of methods for evaluating past global temperatures and about the wisdom of even attempting to predict the future. But this is quibbling about the details. The basic picture is clear, and some changes are already occurring. A new report by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment -- a consortium of eight countries, including Russia and the United States -- now confirms that major changes are taking place in the Arctic, affecting both human and non-human communities, as predicted by climate models. This information was conveyed to the U.S. Senate last month not by a radical environmentalist, as was recently alleged on the Web, but by Robert Corell, a senior fellow of the American Meteorological Society and former assistant director for geosciences at the National Science Foundation.
So why does it seem as if there is major scientific disagreement? Because a few noisy skeptics -- most of whom are not even scientists -- have generated a lot of chatter in the mass media. At the National Press Club recently, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen dismissed the consensus as "religious belief." To be sure, no scientific conclusion can ever be proven, absolutely, but it is no more a "belief" to say that Earth is heating up than it is to say that continents move, that germs cause disease, that DNA carries hereditary information or that quarks are the basic building blocks of subatomic matter. You can always find someone, somewhere, to disagree, but these conclusions represent our best available science, and therefore our best basis for reasoned action.
The chatter of skeptics is distracting us from the real issue: how best to respond to the threats that global warming presents.
Published: July 3, 2006 6:37 AM
Peter: Very good observation. Before we discuss solutions, do you acknowledge that there is a problem, and that there is presently a tragedy of the commons underway because of the lack of clear and enforceable property rights relating to GHG emissions and the atmosphere?
I doubt any such problem exists, but I can't say for sure either way.
Or are you implicitly taking the position that because the problem seems difficult to resolve in an ideologically acceptable way, then ipso facto, no problem actually exists? That is the deus ex machina postion that Reisman and others here take.
I don't believe that, either. Reisman is saying "show me the evidence", and nobody is able to do that. I continue to believe that if there was believable evidence, Reisman would accept it. So would I. Your insistence on believing without evidence is religion, not science.
But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there really is "a problem". What do you want to do about it? If the answer involves initiating the use of force, I'd rather have the problem! And make no mistake: "tradable quotas" is initiation of force, since the person or organisation issuing the quota "rights" has no justifiable ownership of what they're issuing "rights" over! (You can't just go inventing fake "markets" and claiming to have a "market solution")
Published: July 3, 2006 6:40 AM
Peter, thanks for your response. Wow.
You say "Reisman is saying 'show me the evidence', and nobody is able to do that. I continue to believe that if there was believable evidence, Reisman would accept it. So would I. Your insistence on believing without evidence is religion, not science."
As to the science, I reference all of my posts above and on related threads over the past week, the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on climate change, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many corporations with relevant scientif expertise such as GE, Dupont and Exxon.
That you can call my acceptance of these reports "religion, not science" is flabbergasting. Do you REALLY mean that? If so, then I would say that it seems to me that your the one who's got problems with reality, not me.
I would also say that it's fairly clear that Dr. Reisman is NOT saying "show me the evidence" - he's got his mind made up, and he's denying the evidence, like you and others. Although there is now a veritage stampede of "skeptics" changing their minds - because they have been carefully watching the build-up of evidence and denial have become nearly untenable - I am afraid it will take a very long time for him and others such as you to be convinced that there is a problem. In the meanwhile, the world warms, everyone stews, and the process of getting ready and the costs of adaptation grow.
I think it is fair to say that the difficulty in crafting "acceptable" solutions also plays a role in denial. Unfortunately, government must play a role; this need not be the end of the world, just as pollution controls, as inefficient as "command and control"-style regulation has been, did not destroy the US economy or significantly affect individual political or economic freedom. Mises-friendly policies that create clear and enforceable property rights, such as transferrable fishing quotas and tradable SO2 permits, as good examples.
But the difficulty in addressing the problem doesn't excuse us from the effort. If you were riding in a bus that had no brake pedal with the accelerator stuck in an on position, wouldn't you try to do something, like unstick the accelerator, fashion a brake and prepare for impact? That's global warming for you.
Modern western economies typically, through property rights and regulation, include the feedback mechanisms needed to avoid environmental collapses of the type Jared Diamond has documented in other societies. However, those mechanisms are largely lacking in undeveloped countries and in the "common property" natural resources that remain in the interstices of nations - in the oceans and the atmosphere. Ignoring the absence of property rights in these case will continue to breed problems that affect all of us.
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 3, 2006 8:42 AM
Tom,
All I am saying is that whatever the scientific basis, believing that any research or policy prescription must be true, on an Austrian basis, because (presumed free-market proponent / beneficiary) XYZ Corporation endorses it is a big mistake.
Most large firms and wealthy people in our system benefit from some level of statist intervention. Therefore their positions on such a sweeping issue as MMGW, and what is to be "done" (by government) about it are extremely suspect, and therefore should not be viewed as "evidence" in this debate. Many of these firms have no independent research or information of their own - they are simply trying to garner a place at the table.
They are simply positioning themselves to benefit from (or at least not be hurt by)whatever legislative solution is imposed.
Published: July 3, 2006 9:10 AM
Vince, I believe the science; I trust Exxon as far as I can throw them.
I agree with you that we can use an understanding of their statist, rent-seeking type behavior to guess as to their real motivations and objectives. In this case, I can see that while they have been busy protecting their free ride, they are quite aware of the science - having contributed substantially to it as well as to the PR over the years, and now investing hundreds of millions in research at Stanford - and are now getting ready for the regulation that they see as inevitable (and justified by the science as well).
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 3, 2006 9:32 AM
...which is why I believe that a governmental solution to the problem, to the extent it exists, will be the WORST possible way to address it. Government is inevitably subject to regulatory capture. Any government solution will not be effective, but is guaranteed to erode property rights even further.
Published: July 3, 2006 11:41 AM
Vince, you are right about regulatory capture, but too much of a skeptic. We could certainly do better with our environmentla laws and save tones of money and free up the economy more by shifting from command and control to performance-based and property-type solutions, but in any case it's clear that we're better off now for having the government act - albeit imperfectly - in the 70s to deal with the obvious pollution problems.
But there is no reason why the government cannot act based on the experience we have been acquiring on property rights solutions, such as transferrable fishing rights and SO2 emissions rights. And part of the package could be a liberalization of environmental regulation generally, so that dealing with climate change could be a huge plus for our economy.
Published: July 3, 2006 10:35 PM
The New York Times once referred to Maurice Strong as the “Custodian of the Planet.� Strong, the Godfather of Kyoto, is also an oil tycoon!
http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
Published: July 3, 2006 10:55 PM
That you can call my acceptance of these reports "religion, not science" is flabbergasting. Do you REALLY mean that? If so, then I would say that it seems to me that your the one who's got problems with reality, not me.
TT: nobody doubts the science. The "religion" part is where you believe things that science doesn't tell you: i.e., observation says that the heat maximum seems to have occurred in the 1930s; and there's no particular reason to believe humans cause it. Religion is where you assume it's human-caused and continuing. Now, I'm not saying it isn't possible, but there is not real evidence in support of that belief. The "evidence" you point to is no more persuasive than the "evidence" creationists use to support their beliefs, etc.
Published: July 3, 2006 11:41 PM
Peter, nice try - except that it is the creationists who are also among the climate change skeptics (see Roy Spencer at U. Alabama) and who accuse the skeptics and the group of breakaway evangelists who acknowledge climate change of Godlessness. Don't you think it is interesting how Bush has managed to assemble and keep together a coalition of the faithful, gullible and blockheads, in support of positions that are quite favorable to the rent-seekers who are close to the Administration?
When you say "no one doubts the science", can I take that to mean you don't doubt that portion of the science that you accept, but all the rest of what scientists say you DO doubt, and dismiss as religion? Or is there something that I'm missing? I've done nothing here but report on what the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on climate change, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science are saying.
Shall we run through those reports one by one, so we can isolate where you think all of these scientists are acting based on faith, rather than verifiable and testable methods? Scientists are aware of the many factors that have been involved in natural climate change in the past, and think it is undeniabile that mankind is now playing the lead role in driving temperatures up. CO2, CH4 and water vapor levels are all increasing and will surely lead to even higher temperatures and an exacerbation of the changes that are already being manifested in loss of mountain glaciers, acceleration of glaciers and melting in Greeenland and parts of Antarctica, the melting of the Arctic ice, thawing of the permafrosts, bleaching of corals, accelerating Springs, and more frequent sever weather events.
As to what happened prior to the last decade plus of record temperatures, go ask a climate scientist. There is natural variability which is being overridden, but what I have read suggests that the mid-century cooling was due largely to particulate pollution in the north that was largely cleaned up. Bust as to what the scientific academies are concluding, I am not putting words in anyone's mouth.
Published: July 4, 2006 4:19 AM
Peter, nice try - except that it is the creationists who are also among the climate change skeptics (see Roy Spencer at U. Alabama) and who accuse the skeptics and the group of breakaway evangelists who acknowledge climate change of Godlessness.
Well, this is exactly the sort of thing I mean. You're saying "creationists believe X, therefore X is false; I believe not-X, so I'm right". I don't care if creationists, communists, Nazis, etc., believe X; whatever insane other-beliefs they have has no impact whatsoever on the truth of X.
When you say "no one doubts the science", can I take that to mean you don't doubt that portion of the science that you accept, but all the rest of what scientists say you DO doubt, and dismiss as religion?
No; I'm not saying I believe or disbelieve the scientists; I'm saying I believe the science. Scientists are people. They have opinions, insane beliefs, etc., just like all other people. Read as: I doubt everything scientists say, unless they have science backing them up.
I've done nothing here but report on what the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on climate change, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science are saying.
But I don't care what they're saying. I care what the science is saying - which, from what I can determine, is "not enough information"
Published: July 4, 2006 5:44 AM
Sorry again, Peter. You're trying to lump me in with creationists - whom apparently you find to be less than credible. I have noted the fact that creationists are also among the climate skeptics - I have NOT said that climate skepticism is wrong merely because creationists are their bed-fellows.
You say that you "doubt everything scientists say" and "don't care what they're saying", "unless they have science backing them up" - and then summarize YOUR view of the "science" as "not enough infomation".
Well, it's very clear that the scientists are together saying that THEY (all of our prestigious academies and those of our allies) think they have enough information to publicly announce that human-induced global warming is underway and poses sufficient risks that we should do something about it. You seem to be implying that these public statements by scientists - including those funded by the Bush administration and by industry - cannot be trusted. This is more than a bit silly, as the statements by the academies are backed by thousands of papers - if you don't like the academies's statements, shall we trot out the underlying papers one-by-one?
You're welcome to your own degree of skepticism, but you are essentially taking the position that you will become a climate scientist before you will change your mind (already made up) on any aspect of the mattter. I am sure you, and other readers, will recognize that this is a recipe for complete and total policy analysis - not only on climate change, but anything. It is not how wise humans and wise human organization behave, and of course at the end of the day it will not guide our national decisions - which have clearly been held up by industry financing using the same tactics and many of the very same people used by big tobacco to deny that smoking causes cancer.
But I'm being to suspect that policy paralysis is your objective. Either that or you've got huge case of simple denial.
Published: July 4, 2006 6:13 AM
TokyoTom,
You seem to be on a crusade against creationists. In my experience, most people who slam creationism haven't even read a book on the subject. Have you?
Most creationists are accomplished scientists in their fields. The Creation Research Institute offers advanced degrees in the sciences an is staffed with scientists holding PhD's from top universities and many years of experience in research. The Discovery Institute, the founders of Intelligent Design, is made up of top scientists as well.
I'd like to hear your scientific arguments against creationism.
Published: July 4, 2006 8:24 AM
Roger,
Allow me to take a swing at the argument on Tom and Peter's behalf:
All people of intelligence and with scientific minds know one of two things:
1. There is no God. or
2. If there is a God, he absolutely could not have created the various forms of life as we know them.
Ergo: regardless of the absolute dearth of paleontological evidence that gradual evolution occurred along the lines that Darwin had postulated, we know that nevertheless, evolution must have occurred some way or another. One day, science will discover exactly how. In the meantime, we will continue to suggest only a fool could believe anything to the contrary to the thought that some form of evolution explains life and our existence.
Furthermore, have the ignorant creationists not heard of punctuated equilibrium? It is the wise, intelligent and scientific minded man's creationism. (Ooops, is that sacrilegious of me to say?) It is where we can finally recognize the scientific evidence that all species remain static in equilibrium for very huge periods of geologic time with absolutely negligible change, punctuated by extremely huge rates of change and development and "evolution" in extremely small periods of time. This period of time and this process is such that it leaves behind no evidence that intermediate forms of life existed at all. It may sound almost as crazy and unscientific as creationism, but of course it has the advantage of being minus a creator, and explains why we may never find paleontological evidence for Darwinism. It’s much more scientific than ignorant creationism.
Published: July 4, 2006 12:49 PM
Tom,
I continue to be unconvinced by your arguments from authority. I find your faith in officially constituted institutions puzzling for a poster on mises.org.
Governments and churches, too, are not a bunch of shills or liars. They are full of smart people who in general all believe in truth and the common good. Nonetheless, they seem to be quite capable of systematic error. It is not clear why you believe 20th-century scientific institutions would be immune to this effect.
I also would encourage you to look into the concept of falsifiability.
And for a summary of the outlines of the case you should be trying to refute, I suggest this link.
Published: July 4, 2006 1:28 PM
All people of intelligence and with scientific minds know one of two things:
1. There is no God. or
2. If there is a God, he absolutely could not have created the various forms of life as we know them.
Not at all. 1) There's no evidence of a god, and therefore its existence is highly unlikely. 2) The way people who believe in a god imagine that god to be is impossible, and therefore if there is a god, it's not like that. 3) If there is a god, it obviously could have directly made all the various life forms as we know them (that's part of the definition of being a god, I suppose), but 4) if there is a god, it didn't do that. 5) If there is a god, it could just as well have made all the life forms by evolution as directly, and 6) if it exists, it obviously did that.
[I'll also note that 7) the only people who believe in direct creation nowadays are absolute nutters. "Only in America", as they say.]
Personally, I believe that belief in gods is a mental illness, as is belief in faeries and gnomes at the bottom of your garden, but I acknowledge that I have no hard evidence that gods, faeries, gnomes and such don't exist. However, there are plenty of religious people (majority, i.e.) who are not creationists.
regardless of the absolute dearth of paleontological evidence
What absolute dearth of evidence? Only nutty creationists deny that there is evidence. Hell's bells, you can watch evolution happening in a lab! Why do you think doctors tell you not to stop taking a course of antibiotics just because you feel better?
Published: July 4, 2006 9:34 PM
My, my Roger - of course I'm not "on a crusade against creationsts" or intelligent design proponents here, I'm trying to help flush out the many issues relating to CLIMATE CHANGE. Have you not noticed this, or noticed that it was Peter, not me, who introduced the topic of creationism by stating that "The 'evidence' [I] point to is no more persuasive than the 'evidence' creationists use to support their beliefs, etc.
"? Or are you, Peter and Paul all happy to have something else to discuss than climate change?
I certainly have views on the subject, but for now, can we kindly stay on topic? If you really have a beef on that issue, please take it up with Peter.
Regards,
TT
Published: July 4, 2006 9:54 PM
Tokyo Tom,
Curtis posted a link to an excellent article refuting GHG-induced global warming. Here is the link again: http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ .
I'd like to see your take on it.
Published: July 4, 2006 10:28 PM
Hi Fred - I have been preparing a response but my system has hung up in the middle of it and it looks like I might have to have another go at it.
In the meanwhile, perhaps you can give me your thoughts on the PR and partisan sides of climate change denial, as emblemized by the Oregon petition and the Luntz memorandum?
In doing that, you might note that junkscience.com is owned by Steve Milloy, who - as I have noted above is not a skeptic but a paid denialist. That makes him a party with a direct financial interest at stake, and not all a impartial observer with an interest in the truth for its own sake.
Regards,
TT
Regards,
TT
Published: July 5, 2006 12:38 AM
Curtis - this is the third time I have drafted a response to you; I have lost two because my system hangs up when I run a page search in the middle of a post. I won't do that this time, but I also won't spend much time on this.
I do not blindly accept what the academies have to say, and I defy to to find any real support for that in my many posts on the subject. I have tended to view what they say as much more credible than, say, an ex-architect, a Lyndon Larouche site, and various so-called "skeptics" whose positions are financed by the very parties who have the most to gain financially by painting both the science as "uncertain" and those who accept it as radical enviros, leftists, Marxists, Nazis, atheists, gays or otherwise.
There are many, many reasons to think that the science academy views are credible - I elide, but these run the gamut to the nature of science to the many differing interests of the scientists, academies, employing institutions, governments and media involved, and the fact that there are many checks in the system designed specifically to ensure the reliability of individual pieces of work and collective statements made by groups. Research is peer-checked and made public, liars and frauds can be sniffed out, and there is fame, reward and more financing to those whose work breaks the greatest ground and proves with time to be most reliable and valuable.
I do not accept what the academies say on faith, but because I consider it, based upon many factors, to be reliable.
Perhaps you can care to tell me why you consider what Steve Milloy, the proprietor of the site you've linked to, to have even remotely the same degree of reliability as the national and international science academies and the national science agencies? In doing so, I hope you will refer to the material I provided above on the "Junkman".
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 5, 2006 2:17 AM
Hi TT,
As for the Oregon petition and the Luntz memorandum, neither of them has any bearing on the truth, or lack thereof, of human-induced global warming.
I believe the Oregon petition is the petition signed by 17,000 scientists who say that GW is not real, right? If it is a legitimate list of scientists, it just shows that there is not a scientific consensus (which would counter the arguments of some GW proponents). Of course, scientific consensus does not equal truth, so it doesn't influence me either way. It was the consensus of (almost) all economists in 1929 that the economy was recession-proof and that a golden-age of never ending expansion had begun. These were the experts. They were all wrong. LTCM was run by a Nobel-prize-winning economist. Surely he was the greatest expert of all! Unfortunately, his venture lost the better part of a trillion dollars.
"All" scientists also once believed the world was flat, the world was the center of the universe, etc....
As for Luntz ...
IF he believes in human-induced GW, but is trying to use underhanded methods to convince people otherwise, this also has no bearing on the truth of GW. In this case, it could simply mean that he incorrectly believes in GW ... period. After all, he is not a climatologist, or even a scientist.
The global warming debate is certainly complicated, and it is easy for a layman to unintentionally/accidentally promote the correct side of the argument (even if said layman *thinks* he is lying/deceiving).
Published: July 5, 2006 2:49 AM
P.S.
Tokyo Tom ... why don't you compose your posts in Outlook Express or Word or something and hit CTRL S (save) every minute or so? Then you can just cut and paste your responses when they're ready.
Published: July 5, 2006 2:57 AM
Curtis and Fred, allow me to add a few remarks.
While Popper said that "the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability," he did not particularly address how we should attempt to apply falsification to an experiment in which we are a part and cannot step outside of and test over multiple runs.
As Hans Suess and Roger Revelle noted in 1957,
"Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past, nor be repeated in the future. This experiment, if adequately documented, may yield a far reaching insight into the processes determining weather and climate."
At what point will you be satisifed with the results of the experiment before you consider it wise to change direction?
Here are a couple of links you may find interesting:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=210 (skepticism in the science)
Data links and reports from the National Climate Data Center:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/whatsnew.html
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/ncdcspotlight-banner.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/climateextremes.html
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html
Published: July 5, 2006 3:20 AM
http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/DefectiveGlobalWarming.pdf
“Global temperature is predominantly driven by variations in solar irradiance, the Earth’s and Sun’s magnetic field strength, coronal mass ejection and galactic cosmic ray flux rates. The Earth is presently experiencing a warming trend because we are coming out of the Little Ice Age that began in the early 1300’s caused by a nearby supernova event, RX J0852.0-4622.�
http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/IceAgeCometh.pdf
“The root cause of global cooling is a byproduct of an exploding star, a supernova. Our solar system is currently in an active region of space producing nearby supernova events. This repeating pattern or string of nearby supernova produce and reinvigorate Great Ice Ages. Supernovas produce Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs), high-energy charged particles that interact with the lower atmosphere to spawn cloud creation. A burst of GCRs produces a period of intense low cloud cover, which blocks sunlight, reflects solar radiation back out into deep space producing depressed temperatures globally. The clouds form into great storms, which move moisture to higher latitudes where it drives a buildup of solar reflective snow and ice contributing to a prolonged period of cooling.
"Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) are high-energy charged particles that originate outside our solar system. About 85% are protons (nuclei of hydrogen atoms), 12% alpha particles (helium nuclei) and the remainder are electrons and the nuclei of heavier atoms. These cosmic rays typically have energies in the 100 MeV to 10 GeV range. Cosmic rays are produced when a star exhausts its nuclear fuel and explodes into a supernova. These stars are generally new short-lived blue stars of the spectral type O (20-100 solar masses) or blue-white stars of spectral type B (3-20 solar masses). Supernova explosions occur in our Milky Way galaxy about every 50 years.
"When GCRs collide with the Earth’s atmosphere, they release in nuclear collision a cascade of secondary particles (protons, neutrons and muons), which continue to penetrate deeper and deeper into the atmosphere. This cascading effect continues until the particle’s energy falls too low to undergo further collisions. This generally ends around 16 kilometers above the Earth’s surface in the lower atmosphere. The ions produced within the troposphere by cosmic rays are important element of aerosol production. In the troposphere, ionization contributes to gas-particle formation of ultra fine (
"Low clouds tend to be optically thick and are efficient at reflecting sunlight back into space. An increase in low altitude clouds will result in planetary cooling.
"GCRs are a very effective amplifying mechanism for climate forcing because the energy needed to change cloudiness is small compared with the resulting changes in solar radiation received at the Earth’s surface.
- James A. Marusek
I think we should do our best to prepare for the next ice age due to supernova activity, rather than worry over the earth’s slight warming, which is quite arguably nothing at all but a good thing for us humans given the big picture.
Published: July 5, 2006 4:06 AM
This is turning into quite a little game of whack-a-mole.
Paul, do you really think that the science academies and everyone else is totally unaware of the factors that have driven climate change over the LONG term, such as wobbles in the Earth's orbit around the sun, changes in radiation received from the sun, and cosmic rays?
The point is that (i) greenhouse gases also play a significant role in modulating the temperature of the Earth, (ii) we are really rapidly ramping up GHG concentrations through fossil fuel use and land changes, and (iii) scientists can demonstrate that the other driving factors ARE NOT undergoing SHORT-TERM fluctutations, and so cannot be responsible for the warming we are now experiencing.
See this on cosmic rays, for example.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/on-veizers-celestial-climate-driver/#more-153
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/non-significant-trend-in-cosmic-galactic-rays-and-climate-change/#more-42
Marusek seems to be a smart guy with an active mind who's got a theory on just about anything; unfortunately, he is an armchair thinker and not engaged in peer-reviewed climate change research. His speculation is interesting, but that's what you should take it as.
Drowning men grasp at straws; you, too, Paul?
Regards,
TT
Published: July 5, 2006 6:11 AM
Tom,
“This is turning into quite a little game of whack-a-mole.�
But you need a mallet to play, Tom. Go find a mallet.
“Paul, do you really think that the science academies and everyone else is totally unaware of the factors that have driven climate change over the LONG term, such as wobbles in the Earth's orbit around the sun, changes in radiation received from the sun, and cosmic rays?�
I don’t think you read Marusek’s explanation of how the supernova and cosmic ray flux (CRF) can put the earth into an ice age and that nothing plays anything close to such a significant role in global climate. Read it and tell me if you think it is right or wrong, and how so.
“The point is that (i) greenhouse gases also play a significant role in modulating the temperature of the Earth, (ii) we are really rapidly ramping up GHG concentrations through fossil fuel use and land changes, and (iii) scientists can demonstrate that the other driving factors ARE NOT undergoing SHORT-TERM fluctutations, and so cannot be responsible for the warming we are now experiencing.�
So you say. But recall that the earth is coming out of an ice age, Tom; an ice age put in place by the affects of CRF, not human CO2 emissions, or lack there-of. The real point is that you are either unaware of what phenomena the physicists believe put the earth into an ice age, or you are ignoring the implications of these facts. These influences are more significant, by far, than what piddling influences man can ever have on global weather. If we are coming out of an ice age, it stands to reason the earth should be warming. It turns out that this is a good thing.
“See this on cosmic rays, for example.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/on-veizers-celestial-climate-driver/#more-153
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/non-significant-trend-in-cosmic-galactic-rays-and-climate-change/#more-42�
I just did. Thank-you. Neither links even address let alone attempt to refute Marusek’s description of how a supernova and CRF can influence world climate. This further suggests you either did not read, or else did not follow his argument. That’s not so good, Tom.
“Marusek seems to be a smart guy with an active mind who's got a theory on just about anything; unfortunately, he is an armchair thinker and not engaged in peer-reviewed climate change research. His speculation is interesting, but that's what you should take it as.�
Well you seem to be a smart guy as well, Tom. But fortunately, the force of your argument or lack of it doesn’t strictly derive from that alone. As for Marusek, his work cites the work of many others who have produced peer-reviewed climate change research such as “GSA Today� here for instance.
http://www.fiz.huji.ac.il/%7Eshaviv/Ice-ages/GSAToday.pdf
(Nir J. Shaviv, Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
91904, Israel
Ján Veizer, Institut für Geologie, Mineralogie und Geophysik, Ruhr Universität, 44780
Bochum, Germany, and Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, University of Ottawa,
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada)
I appreciate that your bandwidth to read and gather the necessary information to address Marusek’s claims must be limited. We’re all in the same boat. However, I’d expect you to show at least a small hint that you understand what he is saying before you resort to calling it interesting speculation.
Drowning men grasp at straws; you, too, Paul?
LOL. Tom. First give some indication you have absorbed the argument; then try to give links to articles that actually attempt to refute the argument; that is, if you aren’t up to rebutting the argument yourself. And finally, stick to the argument or at least to some argument. This way we can all be surer that your drowning man metaphor does not apply more aptly to yourself than to your adversaries.
Published: July 5, 2006 11:31 AM
TT writes:
"The point is that (i) greenhouse gases also play a significant role in modulating the temperature of the Earth,..."
True ... water vapor being the most significant in terms of importance/influence on climate, and CO2 being relatively insignificant. C02 is a tiny fraction of total GHGs. See the JunkScience article, and refute these basic claims if you can.
"...(ii) we are really rapidly ramping up GHG concentrations through fossil fuel use and land changes,..."
Not all GHGs are created equal. While humans may be causing a significant increase in some GHGs relative to historical levels (i.e. C02), we do not appear to be ramping up the concentrations of those gases which have a significant impact on climate ... water vapor, for example. Do you deny this?
"... and (iii) scientists can demonstrate that the other driving factors ARE NOT undergoing SHORT-TERM fluctutations, and so cannot be responsible for the warming we are now experiencing."
Your own citation (NOAA) does not even attempt to argue that the slight temperature increase measured in the last century could not be a result of natural processes!! Under the heading, "Can the observed changes be explained by natural variability, including changes in solar output?", they write (among other things) "our understanding of the indirect effects of changes in solar output and feedbacks in the climate system is minimal. There is much need to refine our understanding of key natural forcing mechanisms of the climate, including solar irradiance changes, in order to reduce uncertainty in our projections of future climate change." Short answer ... yes.
Obviously there is no solid evidence for any significant anthropogenic GW. But even if there was, we still have to show that this is an undeniably bad thing. No one has done this, to my knowledge. Even further, we would have to show, using some kind of cost/benefit analysis that "we" can/should do something. We are nowhere near that stage, and it doesn't look like we'll ever get there (logically, at least), because the evidence for anthropogenic GW appears to be non-existent.
Remember TT, players on both sides of this argument have much to gain. On the one hand, we have the oil companies who may wish to avoid being accused of causing a negative externality, and on the other hand we have people who will use the GW scare to expand government and even attempt to create World Government (incrementally, of course). So again, your attacks on sources is irrelevant.
Published: July 5, 2006 3:07 PM
"Professor Revelle co-authored an article in the house journal of the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC in 1991 which concluded, “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.� Professor Revelle died shortly after the article appeared. This conclusion apparently dismayed Gore whose staff worked behind the scenes to spread the rumor that Revelle's co-authors had taken advantage of a senile old man and that Revelle's name should be taken off the article. This sorry episode ended with a lawsuit in which another Harvard professor who had conferred with Gore's staff formally apologized for making his insinuations."
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb061606.shtml
Published: July 5, 2006 4:31 PM
Paul, thanks for your response. Please note that I consider you to be a fellow seeker, and not an adversary. My apologies for my snarky question about straws.
Allow me to make a few comments.
1. Marusek has done NO peer-reviewed or journal published work. His oeuvre seems to be entirely self-published. As a result, apparently no climate scientist has even seen, much less commented on, any of his work, including Shaviv or Veizer, who have published in peer-reviewed journals.
You seem to really want to hang your climate change skepticism hat on the Marusek – but will you acknowledge that he is completely untested? Can you explain to me and other avid readers here why you find him convincing, other than the fact that he seems persuasive and you think the thousands of climate scientists are wrong? Why don’t you persuade him to submit his work to peer-review and publishing (perhaps he has tried and failed)? I imagine that Shaviv and Veizer would be sympathetic, and might pursue his lines of thought if Marusek is uninterested in mainstream peer-review and publishing.
2. As I previously noted, work that is peer-reviewed is NOT ignored, and there IS an ongoing discussion of the published work of Shaviv and Veizer relating to the possibility that long-term ice age cycles may be related to cosmic ray flux/galactic cosmic rays. In my view, the debate is clearly running against Shaviv and Veizer.
With respect to the two links I provided earlier – which link to more Shaviv’s and Veizer’s work - you say that “Neither links even address let alone attempt to refute Marusek’s description of how a supernova and CRF can influence world climate.� You’re absolutely right here, for the simple reason that these links address what Shaviv and Veizer have to say – not Marusek, who is unknown and unpublished.
Those two links, as well as these additional ones, show that other climate scientists are reviewing, checking and rebutting the Shaviv and Veizer work:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?s=veizer (the comments show an active dialogue involving Shaviv and Veizer, and lend credibility to RealClimate as a whole)
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_etal_eos_2004.html (a response published in Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, in response to a 2003 paper by Shaviv and Veizer)
http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=en&q=cosmic+rays+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fstephenschneider.stanford.edu
http://www.sciencebits.com/ClimateDebate (Shaviv’s personal website)
3. In some ways the process of vetting the proposals of Shaviv and Veizer has been unusual, since Shaviv and Veizer have chosen to engage in science by press release and over-statement rather than merely publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The press release was soon overspun by industry-funded climate change denialist pundits.
Discussions of this process can be found here:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/Contrarians.html (discussing Shaviv and Veizer, among others)
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/html/discussion.html (a discussion between the authors of the AGU piece and Shaviv and Veizer)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/draft-do-not-post/ (this refers to the GSA Today piece you referred to). I quote the relevant portion below – readers can go to the original, which has embedded links:
“Shaviv and Veizer (2003) published a paper in the journal GSA Today, where the authors claimed to establish a correlation between cosmic ray flux (CRF) and temperature evolution over hundreds of millions of years, concluding that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide was much smaller than currently accepted. The paper was accompanied by a press release entitled “Global Warming not a Man-made Phenomenon", in which Shaviv was quoted as stating, “The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man�. However, in the paper the authors actually stated that "our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion-year time scales". Unsurprisingly, there was a public relations offensive using the seriously flawed conclusions expressed in the press release to once again try to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are influencing climate. These claims were subsequently disputed in an article in Eos (Rahmstorf et al, 2004) by an international team of scientists and geologists (including some of us here at RealClimate), who suggested that Shaviv and Veizer's analyses were based on unreliable and poorly replicated estimates, selective adjustments of the data (shifting the data, in one case by 40 million years) and drew untenable conclusions, particularly with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations on recent warming (see for example the exchange between the two sets of authors). However, by the time this came out the misleading conclusions had already been publicized widely.�
This is now a prevalent phenomenon with respect to “contrarian� research, regardless of its relative significance or merit – any piece of contrarian news is quickly picked up by funded pundits. This also indicative of another trend, whereby the scientists who publish contrarian research deliberately play a part of this game, by releasing their research by press release to facilitate the exploitation of their position.
4. Shaviv and Veizer are investigating the interactions of the solar wind and cosmic rays on climate; whatever comes of this will be interesting, but Shaviv and Veizer do not deny that global warming is underway, that there is an important greenhouse effect and that the sharp anthropogenic CO2 and methane rises are playing a role in increasing temperatures (though they argue cosmic rays are more important).
5. I presume that the above will NOT be sufficient to convince you of anything, even though (i) it is clear that Marusek has convinced NONE of his peer, (ii) Shaviv and Veizer’s views about the roles of cosmic rays on ice age cycles is disputed – and contrary to the principal view that Milankovitch cycles in the Earth’s orbit affecting the degree of insolation play the primary role, and (iii) the rapid rises in GHGs and in global temperatures is undisputed. Even Shaviv states on his website that we should reduce our GHG forcing.
You make it clear that your mind is made up – despite the balance of the evidence, and despite the lack of convincing authority for your position. I am puzzled on what logical basis you can maintain your position, while claiming that mine is unfounded.
On this point, I wonder how familiar you are with the cognitive science on the difficulties we have with changing our minds?
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 6, 2006 1:15 AM
Fred:
On the Oregon petition scam, please see my long post and many links on it here: http://blog.mises.org/mt/comments?entry_id=5248
As to Luntz, the point is that the sophisticated PR spin on "uncertainty" and heroic denailists and non-expert scientist has been not only funded by industry, by closely coordinated with the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. Luntz, who is documented as playing a key role in this, now recants and claims he believes that human-caused global warming is occurring and merits action. Despite that, he is selling the same snake oil in Canada to Prime Minister Harper - for similar partisan political purposes.
I agree that Luntz's views on the issue do not themselves demonstrate their correctness.
Regards,
TT
Published: July 6, 2006 1:26 AM
Fred:
Thanks for your questions. The fairly basic scientific information you're looking for on water vapor and greenhouse gases can be found at these links. I believe that they will show that, true to its name, JunkScience generally publishes "junk science". The reason it does so is that is its paid mission. See my links on Steve Milloy above.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=220
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=133
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/ (IPCC TAR Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis)
http://www.acia.uaf.edu/ (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment)
As to what NOAA is allowed to say when it publishes, surely you've noted the politcal muzzle that the administratin has placed on it - using young staffers hired from and returned to Exxon? What is remarkable is that, despite all of that, NOAA and NASA and the other federal scientific agencies publish reams of data showing that global warming is a serious phenomenon now underway. You might check this out, for example,
the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment's recent Overview Report entitled "Impacts of a Warming Arctic" at http://www.acia.uaf.edu/.
You say: "Obviously there is no solid evidence for any significant anthropogenic GW. But even if there was, we still have to show that this is an undeniably bad thing. No one has done this, to my knowledge."
Fred, your lack of knowledge is showing. Here is some more science, if you care/dare:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/internat/dangerous-cc.htm
http://timlambert.org/2005/04/gwsbingo/
I also would direct you to, on the Evangelical Climate Initiative page, the links to the July 2005 Q&A in front of the US Senate by Sir John Houghton, a devout evangelical Christian who is one of the world's leading climate scientists and was Chair from 1988-2002 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): http://www.christiansandclimate.org/resources/senate.
I reject your assertion that someone must establish that climate change is universally bad. No one is arguing that, and everyone is aware that there may very well be some positive benefits regionally from having longer growing
seasons, milder winters, etc. But there will still be plenty of economic dislocation, even where the change is purely positve. There will of course be lots of damage from warming - I don't need to list or link to them, do I? The Arctic report gives some idea of what is happening up there, and we have droughts and heavy downpour in the continental US and many climate zones shifting.
As to cost/benefit analysis, if you would recognize that the atmosphere is an unmanaged global commons then you would then see that doing nothing to manage it results in a subsidy for current abuse of it. Yes, if global warming posed little risk, then the costs of introducing some type of ownership regime might outweigh the benefits. But the costs of inaction are significant and growing, and we are doing next to nothing to get ready. Instead, we find ourselves easily side-tracked by a well-financed campaign by the existing rent-seekers to do nothing that would remove their existing subsidy.
This was also done for partisian gain, so besides shoving money at more research and subsidies for new technologies, the Administration finds it has painted itself into a corner - and the Dems are turning up the heat. Republicans are trying to find a way out, which is why Bush wants to appoint Paulson, who is a firm supporter of manadtory steps on climate change, and why Republicans in Congress are backing a number of Senate and House resolutions to move things forward.
If you were alert, you'd notice these things, and how the debate is moving away from denial and towards getting ready. On the Republican and rent-seekers side, of course there is a large group that prefers to avoid acknowledging any responsibility for the high costs of delay and the desirability of regulating carbon, but to sidestep this neatly to a focus on more government pork-barrel for new technologies, such as the funds been shoved at China and India and towards clean coal technologies.
Here's some more food for thought that might help you rethink your position:
http://www.redstate.com/comments/2005/11/28/22425/471/70
http://www.redstate.com/comments/2005/11/30/223549/05/36
Regards,
TT
Published: July 6, 2006 3:26 AM
Rocco, thanks for linking to the Reason article about Gore. http://www.reason.com/rb/rb061606.shtml
I won't bother to do any research about whether
there's another side to the Revelle story, but would note that (i) there were plenty of others who had strong and opposing views in 1991 and (ii) now, 15 years later, we know significantly more about how our little unplanned and uncontrolled experiment with the Aerth's climate is going - in fact, enough so that an avalanche of skeptics have recently changed their public positions, including Exxon as I have noted elsewhere and Ron Bailey, who used to edit books filled with diatribes by now-discredited skeptics.
In fact it's quite interesting and puzzling how you managed to extract that small gem from Ron Bailey's piece - which is about an elaborate attempt at self-serving face-saving as I have every seen - but totally ignored all the parts of the article where he essentially says that "Al Gore is right" (the "I was wrong" part is rather neatly side-stepped!). We all have problems changing our minds, but your failure to even notice Ron Bailey's conversion seems to be paradigmatic generally among skeptics, including the doubting Thomases (hey, me too!) here.
For those unwilling to let there fingers do the walking, here are some excerpts of what Bailey said - designed to emphasize where he agrees with Gore, and to downplay his self-serving nitpicking:
"I have long been a critic of former Vice-President Al Gore, but [I am] a recent convert to the view that humanity is contributing significantly to the current increase in average global temperatures …
"Well, the "consensus" of climate scientists as represented in the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that sea level is likely to rise between 4 inches to 35 inches with a central value of 19 inches. Nineteen inches is not nothing and is 3 times greater than the sea level rise the world experienced during the 20th century, but Manhattan and most of Florida will most likely still be above water in 2100. …[I]t would be a good idea for builders and insurance companies to keep the projected rise in sea level in mind.
"Gore shows that many mountain glaciers are melting away all around the world—glaciers in Alaska, Europe and Mount Kilimanjaro—are responding to increased warming.
"As further evidence of warming, Gore notes that permafrost is melting in parts of Alaska and Siberia. The temperatures in central Siberia are thought to have increased by 3 degrees Celsius over the past 40 years. This not only causes engineering and infrastructure problems, but might also release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as once frozen organic matter begins to decompose.
"[P]olar bears evidently survived when Arctic temperatures were warmer 6000 years ago. Of course, if predictions [taken by the American Geophysical Union] that the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free in 100 year turn out to be right, then the polar bears will have a problem.
"Gore also argues that global warming will increase storminess. [This is undisputed by anyone.]
"Of course, the increase of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is thought to be the chief contemporary driver of global warming. All things being equal higher carbon dioxide levels lead to higher temperatures. … The one interpretation is that orbital changes start periods of warming which then affect ocean circulation such that the oceans begin to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which leads to further warming. In any case, current carbon dioxide levels are 27 percent higher than they have been in the last 650,000 years.
"Gore allows that some skeptics of global warming catastrophe may be sincere in their beliefs; however, he apparently assumes that most such global warming "deniers" are similar to "tobacco scientists" who were paid for "studies" that sowed doubt about whether or not cigarettes can cause lung cancer. Make no mistake about it—what the tobacco companies did was a despicable attempt by corporations to hijack and distort science to protect their profits and it backfired. Perhaps some global warming skeptics are paid advocates (liars), but many are not. .. Why does he bother with such low tactics since the bulk of the scientific evidence supports his views now?
"In any case few climate scientists now contest the idea that humanity is contributing to the current warming trend. All of the various data sets, surface thermometers, satellites and weather balloons, now show global average warming of about +0.16 degrees Celsius per decade since 1979. Whether or not this rate of warming would lead to catastrophe or not is still very much an open question.
"Unfortunately, those who have been skeptical that global warming was happening at all will now have a credibility problem with the public when it comes to policy recommendations on how best to handle any future warming.
"Gore has won the global warming debate—the world is warming as a consequence of human activity, chiefly the loading up of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels."
Rocco, you want I should quote you more from Ron Bailey or other recanting skeptics?
BTW. did you really not notice Bailey's conversion?
Regards,
TT
Published: July 6, 2006 4:07 AM
TokyoTom,
Do you deny that climate scientists could be rent-seekers as well? How hard do you think it might be to get academic funding from governmental agencies if one is skeptical of anthrogenic global warming? Even though I accept that humans are warming the planet, I am bothered by the consistent reliance on denigration of the skeptics by labeling them rent-seekers or the pawns of rent-seekers. In addition, I am bothered by the reliance on "peer-review" as a standard for excellence. By its very nature, peer-review will tend to exclude everything that is not part of the conventional wisdom, even if peer-review is intellectually rigorous, which it often isn't in the branch of science I practice, and I have no reason to believe climatology would be significantly more rigorous.
On the other hand, I think we will simply have to adapt to the warming to come. It is pretty clear that no new nuclear power plants will be built and operated in the United States during the next 20 years, and even those planned and under construction in China will not even supply half of the increased energy consumption of that country in the next 20 years. At best, the rate of increase of CO2 might be decreased, but I am pretty certain that fossil fuels will be consumed until depletion absent a collapse of civilization. As I wrote before, I am open to using carbon taxes as replacement for present taxes and as an incentive to develop the more costly alternatives, but I am under no illusion that such a system will stop CO2 increase. Those who think that possible during the next century are vastly underestimating the scope of the problem.
Published: July 6, 2006 9:25 AM
That should have read "anthropogenic global warming".
Published: July 6, 2006 9:26 AM
Tom,
“Paul, thanks for your response. Please note that I consider you to be a fellow seeker, and not an adversary. My apologies for my snarky question about straws.�
No worries mate.
“1. Marusek has done NO peer-reviewed or journal published work. His oeuvre seems to be entirely self-published. As a result, apparently no climate scientist has even seen, much less commented on, any of his work, including Shaviv or Veizer, who have published in peer-reviewed journals.
“You seem to really want to hang your climate change skepticism hat on the Marusek – but will you acknowledge that he is completely untested? Can you explain to me and other avid readers here why you find him convincing, other than the fact that he seems persuasive and you think the thousands of climate scientists are wrong? Why don’t you persuade him to submit his work to peer-review and publishing (perhaps he has tried and failed)?�
Marusek’s views are based on the works of people who have published in peer-reviewed journals such as Shaviv and Veizer. I believe that he has obtained a good grip on the CRF/cloud cover argument and has presented it in a clear, if distilled form that someone who is not a physicist can follow. The strength of the argument does not rest strictly on the renown of the person making the argument or the consensus his conclusions have drawn.
“I imagine that Shaviv and Veizer would be sympathetic, and might pursue his lines of thought if Marusek is uninterested in mainstream peer-review and publishing.�
This statement makes it sound as if you are unaware of the implications of the work of Shaviv and Veizer and the fact that they have come under attack for their work because of them, and that they also seem to form a significant basis for Marusek’s position in the first place.
“2. As I previously noted, work that is peer-reviewed is NOT ignored, and there IS an ongoing discussion of the published work of Shaviv and Veizer relating to the possibility that long-term ice age cycles may be related to cosmic ray flux/galactic cosmic rays. In my view, the debate is clearly running against Shaviv and Veizer.�
Nir Shaviv and J´an Veizer answer their critics Royer et al. (2004) here:
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/%7Eshaviv/ClimateDebate/RoyerReply.pdf
and conclude the following:
“In summary, while we acknowledge that the proposition of Royer et al. (2004) has some merit and likely will result in some modification of the _18O signal, the CRF still remains the primary climate driver for any realistic pH correction (see also Wallmann, 2004). Even for the scenario that entirely disregards the ice-volume effect, the impact of CRF would still be at par with that of CO2.�
“With respect to the two links I provided earlier – which link to more Shaviv’s and Veizer’s work - you say that “Neither links even address let alone attempt to refute Marusek’s description of how a supernova and CRF can influence world climate.� You’re absolutely right here, for the simple reason that these links address what Shaviv and Veizer have to say – not Marusek, who is unknown and unpublished.�
The argument to be addressed that was not, was that it is supernova induced CFR rather than CO2 that puts the world into its ice ages. This is the Shaviv and Veizer thesis.
“Those two links, as well as these additional ones, show that other climate scientists are reviewing, checking and rebutting the Shaviv and Veizer work:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?s=veizer (the comments show an active dialogue involving Shaviv and Veizer, and lend credibility to RealClimate as a whole)
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_etal_eos_2004.html (a response published in Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, in response to a 2003 paper by Shaviv and Veizer)
http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=en&q=cosmic+rays+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fstephenschneider.stanford.edu
http://www.sciencebits.com/ClimateDebate (Shaviv’s personal website)�
Yes; thank-you. And I have read Shaviv and Veizer's response to Royer et al. (2004) and I linked to it above as well.
“3. In some ways the process of vetting the proposals of Shaviv and Veizer has been unusual, since Shaviv and Veizer have chosen to engage in science by press release and over-statement rather than merely publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The press release was soon overspun by industry-funded climate change denialist pundits.
“Discussions of this process can be found here:
…
portion below – readers can go to the original, which has embedded links:
“"Shaviv and Veizer (2003) published a paper ..."".
"Unsurprisingly, there was a public relations offensive using the seriously flawed conclusions expressed in the press release to once again try to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are influencing climate. These claims were subsequently disputed in an article in Eos (Rahmstorf et al, 2004) by an international team of scientists and geologists (including some of us here at RealClimate), who suggested that Shaviv and Veizer's analyses were based on unreliable and poorly replicated estimates, selective adjustments of the data (shifting the data, in one case by 40 million years) and drew untenable conclusions, particularly with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations on recent warming (see for example the exchange between the two sets of authors). However, by the time this came out the misleading conclusions had already been publicized widely.�
Tom. The arguments are difficult and technical enough. I don’t have the bandwidth to assess whose side is over spinning the worst or using the press more to their advantage. Frankly, until this year, I’d never heard anything BUT the CO2 side of the argument. I guess the CO2 side gets better public exposure, but i don't hold that against them strictly.
“This is now a prevalent phenomenon with respect to “contrarian� research, regardless of its relative significance or merit – any piece of contrarian news is quickly picked up by funded pundits. This also indicative of another trend, whereby the scientists who publish contrarian research deliberately play a part of this game, by releasing their research by press release to facilitate the exploitation of their position.�
Just the arguments please.
“4. Shaviv and Veizer are investigating the interactions of the solar wind and cosmic rays on climate; whatever comes of this will be interesting, but Shaviv and Veizer do not deny that global warming is underway, that there is an important greenhouse effect and that the sharp anthropogenic CO2 and methane rises are playing a role in increasing temperatures (though they argue cosmic rays are more important).�
They are denying that CO2 is as significant as CRF in the big picture of the world’s climate, “the CRF is still the main climate driver, while CO2 plays only a secondary role.�
“5. I presume that the above will NOT be sufficient to convince you of anything, even though (i) it is clear that Marusek has convinced NONE of his peer,�
Correct, Marusek’s failure to gain consensus, which I doubt was ever in his mind to do, is irrelevant to me.
“(ii) Shaviv and Veizer’s views about the roles of cosmic rays on ice age cycles is disputed – and contrary to the principal view that Milankovitch cycles in the Earth’s orbit affecting the degree of insolation play the primary role, and�
Shaviv doesn’t discount the influence of Milankovitch cycles; in fact he is predicting an ice-age based on one, as is indicated here:
"On the time scale of tens to thousands of years, the appearance of ice ages is probably not due to CRF, but instead due to wobbles in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, known as Milankovitch cycles," Shaviv says. These wobbles change the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth, and combined with a high CRF they can cause ice ages lasting for tens of thousands of years.� (“SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY: Blame it on the supernova�)
However, acknowledging the significance of Milankovitch cycles in generating ice-ages, in no way promotes the view that mild global warming due to CO2 is a significant problem.
“(iii) the rapid rises in GHGs and in global temperatures is undisputed. Even Shaviv states on his website that we should reduce our GHG forcing.�
Perhaps he does. Nevertheless, the science suggests that the sun and cosmic influences, rather than CO2, are the substantial influences on the earth’s temperature.
“You make it clear that your mind is made up – despite the balance of the evidence, and despite the lack of convincing authority for your position. I am puzzled on what logical basis you can maintain your position, while claiming that mine is unfounded.�
My view is this: it appears that science indicates that CO2 is not or probably is not the significant forcing element in global temperature that the consensus oriented establishment scientists would have us believe. Therefore promoting a world government that could enforce quotas and legislation reducing man-made CO2 is likely to be folly on top of folly.
Secondly, there is something you should understand about my thinking: consensus reasoning does not appeal to me. In fact, it kind of repulses me. I would have been substantially with Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, and all the radicals despite how unpopular their message was or is, and despite how many of the establishment “experts� attempt to refute or cast aspersions against them. All that is important is the soundness of their argument, and the facts behind their arguments. This applies to Shaviv and Veizer as well.
“On this point, I wonder how familiar you are with the cognitive science on the difficulties we have with changing our minds?�
Good question. We should each encourage the other to study this subject and then take a good introspective look at ourselves.
Published: July 6, 2006 5:17 PM
I entered this debate with a link about the man who started it all and his ties to the oil industry. This is why I’m skeptical. I offer it again…
The New York Times once referred to Maurice Strong as the “ Custodian of the Planet.� Strong, the Godfather of Kyoto, is also an oil tycoon! Along with former Canadien Prime Minister Paul Martin, he once chaired a very powerful and influential company called Power Corporation founded by Paul Desmarais. Desmarais’s son, Andre is married to former PM Jean Chretien’s daughter, France. Andre Desmarais also sits on the China International Trust & Investment Corp.
Power Corporation holds controlling stock in the biggest oil company in France, TotalFinaElf, now called Total. TotalFinaElf, also holds 14.5 % of the french nuclear industry Cogema. Cogema by the way, is the french run industry in charge of Niger’s yellowcake mines. Power Corporation is also linked to the UN’s Oil for Food scandal through the Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas or BNP Paribas.
When Chretien stepped down, he led a delegation to China and then Iran on behalf of a Canadien oil company called PetroKazakhstan . China is eager to buy Canadian natural resources to feed its burgeoning economy, particularly oil from Alberta province's oil sands, the second biggest oil deposit in the world.
I did notice Bailey’s conversion. I also noticed his closing sentence, “He’s a global warming exaggerator.� There’s a 2 mile thick brown cloud over China, yet the world’s conscience, Canada is selling all of their coal to a country that has no conscience…and I wonder why?
Published: July 6, 2006 5:30 PM
Rocco, I'm sorry, but I still don't understand where you're trying to go with the chain of links you've tied Strong into. People who want to be in powerful positions affiliate themselves with those with money/powerful corporations and industries. As a result, I am not surprised to find that those public figures who take conservationist stands also have links into industry. These industries probably see, as one set of implicit subsidies being removed, opportunities to latch onto other subsidies for cleaner technology - as well as market opportunities for such technologies.
Outside of the US, most of the fossil fuels industry supports coordinated global efforts on climate change because they see it as a problem. The difficulty of course is that steps by some players that leave important others out - like the US, China, India and Australia - leaves those taking action in a competitively disadvantageous position. It's a classic tragedy of the commons.
As to Canadians or Australians selling their resources, why would you expect them not to? First, much of the resources are privately owned and not nationally. As to the environmental destructiveness of China's development, we have no effective levers now and very little moral high ground. Do you think a coal/oil sands embargo on China would make any sense? Our best opportunity we have turned our back on - which would be to push diplomatically to require China to accept CO2 caps, using trade sanctions as a tool. You might have noticed that the US Senate just passed a resolution calling precisely for this.
As for Bailey - he basically admits he's wrong and Gore's right. The exaggeration closing is not only nitpicking, it's a ludicrous attempt to claim moral and analytical high ground on a crucial issue on which to date Bailey has done nothing but provide cover for the denialists.
Regards,
TT
Published: July 6, 2006 8:56 PM
Paul, thanks for your response.
I admire your attempt to understand the issues; I think you will see that I have tried to do the same. My view is that while the climate and science relating to it are extremely complicated and difficult for the scientists - working in many discplines - to get their heads around, much less laymen like me, we can understand the concepts of commons and property rights failures resulting in over-exploitation of resources and pollution. We can also understand that such situations result in implicit subsidies for current consumption, lack of incentives to conserve, and the pushing out of negative consequences onto others.
Thus, I find myself in the position that, on the science, I need to analyze the relative merits of the information coming in, from all parties, based on considerations as to the reliability of the information and the interests of the parties originating and testing it. I also feel, given the practical importance of the issue, the difficulties in slowing down a warming once it has started (century scale) and the very strong evidence that we are in a marked warming trend, that one cannot simply stand idle by while our presently uncontrolled "experiment" with the Earth's climate continues - nay, accelerates. So while I admire your attempt to figure all of this out yourself, this is simply in a different category from, say, evolution v. ID, string theory or what have you.
On this, I simply think it is irresponsible to stand on the sidelines and let the this and other tragedies of the commons that now are apparent simply continue unchecked.
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 6, 2006 9:21 PM
"There’s a 2 mile thick brown cloud over China"
and, China, to say nothing of India, was exempted, from the beginning, from Kyoto.
"There’s a 2 mile thick brown cloud over China" and Slaves, virtual and real, manning their factories that the American worker is supposed to enjoin in "Free Trade". (funny what has happened to the "Japan Inc."-era idea of non-tariff trade barriers)
"There’s a 2 mile thick brown cloud over China" and we teach our young generation (see: Paul Kirklin, here: http://www.mises.org/story/2219 )
to venerate organization(s) that utilize financial price arbitrage to sever the cognitive abilities of Economic enterprises.
"There’s a 2 mile thick brown cloud over China" and we get pummeled by professional rhetoricians, see: TT, aka Tokyo Tom, as an example, extolling the dire day to come if we, the U.S., or the OECD, writ large, don't immediately bow to, and except as Gospel, the nascent "Science" behind GHG induced AGW.
The simplistic answers handed to an honest Questioner, Rocco, don't wash. He is quite right to wonder the nature of the set-up that is destroying Nature, itself, and, with it, our own natures.
Published: July 6, 2006 9:28 PM
Yancey, nice to see you finally weight in on this thread. Yes, the problem is huge, and the Earth’s climate system doesn’t turn on a dime but responds on century scales. As a result, yes, it is unescapable that we will have significant climate change and economic and ecological damage as a result. We will have to simply make do. However, we do have some ability to change course and to avoid even more costly and extreme warming, I agree that it is a mistake to turn our attention away from mitigation (dampening GHG emissions, removing GHGs from the atmosphere) – to do so will simply exacerbate our problems and shift even greater costs to the future.
I agree that we need to dampen CO2 increases and the key, rather than having the government select or force all of the investments to be made (in nuclear, coal gasification/sequestration, biofuels and conservation), is to adopt measures that will reflect a GHG emissions cost in the pricing of energy derived from fossil fuels (just as such fuels already reflect other environmental costs). Carbon taxes are one approach, as you suggest; I prefer a more Misean-style solution that focuses on property rights (tradable emissions permits).
Yancey, we are all self-interested, even scientists. Even though the vetting process is not perfect, they check and compete with each other, are not sheep simply to be herded about, and, like the rest of us, have changing their minds and reaching consensus on anything. (There is tons of material that shows this process is live and well in the IPCC and science academy reports, etc.) Excuse me for finding the scientists generally much more credible than the PR spokesmen that industry has purchased. There are legitimate skeptics in climate science, but they are few, aging and dwindling, engaged in a rear-guard battle and are no longer convincing to the bulk of their peers. My conclusion is that they simply have difficulty changing their minds and losing faces, especially as they have invested so much personally in their skeptical positions (but some, such as Christy, have rather reluctantly changed their minds). Some of them, as well as a small batch of newer skeptics without particular climate expertise or peer-reviewed work, are clearly financed by industry and are trotted out by the industry’s pundits whenever possible, including sweeping PR whenever they release a new report – before it is subject to peer-review and discreditation.
Why do I attack the rent-seeking of the industry (and the partisan gate-keeping) more than I criticize possible flaws in the endeavors of the scientists to summarize what the view as a problem? Are you serious??? There’s a tragedy of the commons underway with respect to a global commons – I think the proper focus should be on recognizing the problem and finding solutions. The scientists are NOT the ones who are creating the problem – not even proposing or crafting solutions - they are merely reporting on it.
But what is industry doing? Trying to buy time while they continue to feed free at the public trough and pushing costs onto the rest of us. This deserves criticism, even while it makes perfect sense from their narrow self-interests. Please understand that I am NOT criticizing their self-interest – what I am consistently doing is drawing attention to their deliberate, and very effective, smokescreen, in which they have made great use of paid pundits – at Ron Bailey conceded as quoted above – and political division that demonizes Dems and enviros while ignoring rent-seeking. This latter aspect was also a deliberate (and documented) Republican political strategy. (I do not assert that all pundits and commentators were bought – no doubt many have been sucked into this through a disinclination to accept the science and an inclination to take a Republican or libertarian “hands off� approach, and a distaste both for liberal government control approaches and the enviros penchant for Cassandra-like approaches to fund-raising and awareness raising.)
In sum, there is a clear pillaging of public resources underway; excuse me for trying to keep my focus on this, instead of thinking that the messengers reporting on the problem deserve equal criticism.
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 6, 2006 10:13 PM
Tom,
I would caution you not to trust scientists as a group more than other people. I am a scientist, and I have abundant personal experience that their ethics are no higher than that of the average human being (no worse, but certainly no better). And you too easily dismiss the idea that climatologists might have a financial self-interest in exaggerating AWG.
I detest rent-seekers, but you are blaming industry for a problem that is actually the fault of every consumer in the world. When I drive my pickup it is me that is putting CO2 into the atmosphere, not Exxon Mobil, when I run the heating system in my house, it is me that is putting CO2 into the atmosphere, not the company that produced the heating oil.
One last thing, I would encourage you to abandon the tradeable permits idea. In the realm of CO2 emissions, you would need to trade such permits on the individual level, and the enforcement mechanisms are sure to be non-libertarian in the extreme. In addition, such permits would be sure to bring a flock of rent-seekers that would be eyeing government granted profits.
Published: July 7, 2006 8:26 AM
TokyoTom should remember that the industry he loves to hate has spent billions on research into alternative fuels. The current leader seems to be hydrogen. If the entire oil industry collapsed tomorrow, the oil companies would dominate the hydrogen energy industry and make even more money from it than they currently make from oil. TT tries to portray them as drug pushers with with just one drug. But that's very far from the truth.
Published: July 7, 2006 8:38 AM
TT dismisses scientists who work for large corporations, especially oil companies, as hacks. That reminds me of when I got a BA in journalism and went to work in PR for an oil company. My "friends" in journalism accused me of selling out.
People in academia have always looked down on people in business as something close to prostitutes. In their minds, if you are truely smart and selfless, you'll go into academia or government work; only the greedy go into business.
The truth is that many of the best minds go into business, thank God! It may be that those scientists predisposed to capitalism will go into business and those disposed to socialism into academia and government. Surveys of the political affiliations and attitudes of professors seem to prove that. It may be that the scientists working for Exxon are far better scientists than those in academia, but they valued capitalism in general, and making money for themselves, more than they valued writing for professional journals. They may have dislike the politics involved in academic research, too.
So to dismiss scientists who work for corporations the way TT does is just irrational.
Published: July 7, 2006 11:32 AM
Yancey:
Thanks for your note.
However, I am perfectly aware that scientists are human beings and thus imperfect, like myself. I am aware that they have moral failings, and are subject to personal self-interests, group-think and other cognitive issues that may affect their thinking and their behavior.
However, like the checks and balances that the Founders - being aware of the foibles and failings of man - tried to set up with our national government, there is an elaborate system of checks that applies to the scientific process:
the competition for fame and income,
the competition between institutional viewpoints (employers and grant providers),
the process of openly publishing one's research results - thus providing an empirical and methological basis for confirmation or criticism,
the process of peer-review prior to publishing - with the journals acting as gate-keepers and providing a quality-check before publishing (they are concerned about their reputations and competitive position as well),
the checks provided by ongoing public disclosure and
the ultimate vindication in the market as investors make decisions in technologies based on the pereived merit of scientific ideas.
It is this type of process that provides some kind of vetting for scientific work that provides the work with credibility, despite the human weaknesses and failings of scientists.
As for your next point, I most certainly am NOT "blaming industry for a problem that is actually the fault of every consumer in the world." I am fully aware that climate change is a complex problem resulting from the nature of the atmosphere as an unowned and unregulated global commons. The result, as you indicate, is that the market does not take into account the negative costs of GHG emissions (and such costs are not included in fossil fuel pricing), so we all play a part in the problem. I blame certain actors who gain the most from this broken system for investing in making sure it remains broken, and thus creating bigger problems for all of us. For failing to deal with an issue like this is not simply a problem delayed, but a problem further compounded by increasing GHG emissions. I also blame many for an ideological unwillingness to perceive the problem. This leaves us easily manipulated and leaves us blind to the need not only to take action to avoid climate change, but to get ready for a large degree of climate change that is now inevitable and unavoidable - since it will take a long time simply to slow the increasing GHG emissions to an equilibrium level, which level which will probably be at least a doubling of pre-indusustrial levels (leading to global average temperature increases of about 5% F).
Tradeable permits of course do not have to be on an individual level, but can be restricted to producers and power generators - the economicv effects will by price signals then be sent throughout the economy.
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 12, 2006 10:11 PM
Roger, you keep attacking everything but the positions that I actually take. I certainly do NOT "dismiss scientists who work for large corporations, especially oil companies, as hacks."
You might note that I responded to virtually the same charge made by Curtis earlier. The cheif point is that we can and should distinguish between industry's real scientific research and what it simply promotes indirectly as part of a self-interested PR campaign. These two things are quite different, the distinctions between them are clear, and Exxon enages in both. The PR campaigns are not about science but are about securing economic and financial benefits through a clever and masked participation in the political process. It is entirely fair and appropriate to point out those efforts.
For your convenience, let me quote my response to Curtis:
"Finally, you refer to my deeming "scientific papers" funded by interested industries to be worthless. There are very few of these - mostly there are public articles or speeches that are financed. As for scientific papers that are peer-reviewed or used by industry for its own purposes (other than PR), I have no doubt that industry can and does generate excellent science. Exxon, for example, has conducted and supported climate science research for 25 years, produced more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed literature, and has scientists serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies. http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/CCR5/climate_science.asp
But even though Exxon now publicly acknowledges that "the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere poses risks that may prove significant for society and ecosystems, ... [and] that these risks justify actions now, [e]ven with many scientific uncertainties," it still remains in Exxon's financial interest to delay any effective approach to climate change."
Although I have previously excerpted this earlier, for your convenience allow me also to quote what Exxon says about climate in its lates annual report: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/CCR5/climate_science.asp
"Managing the risks from increases in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is an important concern for ExxonMobil, industry, and governments around the world. We support the public reporting of GHG emissions on a consistent basis by all companies. We advocate for policy decisions that consider the consequences not only for environmental risks, but also for social and economic development, especially in developing countries. …
Climate science: what we know
ExxonMobil has conducted and supported climate science research for 25 years. Our work has produced more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed literature, and our scientists serve on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies.
Based on this experience, we recognize that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere poses risks that may prove significant for society and ecosystems. We believe that these risks justify actions now, but the selection of actions must consider the uncertainties that remain.
Our world has changed.
Since the 1800s concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere have increased by roughly 30 percent (from 280 to 380 parts per million today). Concentrations of other greenhouse gases have also increased — including a doubling of methane levels. Human activities have contributed to these increased concentrations, mainly through the combustion of fossil fuels for energy use, land use changes (especially deforestation), and agricultural, animal husbandry, and waste-disposal practices.
Surface temperature measurements have shown that the average global temperature has risen by about 0.6ºC since the mid-1800s. Other changes, consistent with the surface temperature rise, have also been observed. For example, scientists have documented a decrease in the volume of mountain glaciers and an increase in the length of growing seasons. These observations have fueled concern about the potential longer-term consequences of climate change. …
Even with many scientific uncertainties, the risk that greenhouse gas emissions may have serious impacts justifies taking action. The choice of action must consider environmental, social, and economic consequences, as well as recognize the long-term nature of climate change."
Why do you suppose they're now publicly drinking the global warming KoolAid, as have BP and Shell ahead of them, as well as the recent avalanche of skeptics? Can it be that the science is really now so convincing? Maybe you wanna tell Exxon and all of these other companies that they have their science wrong?
BTW, I am not anti-industry or an academic. More that half of my work is in the oil and gas industry, for Japanese oil and gas companies.
Your speculations about where scientists find employment and why are interesting, but flawed I think. As Yancey notes, all scientists are self-interested. They follow the money, prestige, freedom and other matters they find important. I think many find that remaining in academia allows them to maximize most of their goals. It seems that those who are engaged in hard or theoretical sciences stay in academia (as corporate funding is falling - see Bell Labs), while those most interested in applied science go into industry. But those in academia remain entrepreneurial in seeking grants and business opportunities - such as the many scientists from academia involved in biotech ventures.
So I am afraid I don't find your proposed capitalist/socialist division of the scientists very persuasive. But run with it if you like - perhaps you can tell me what the implications might be for economists, such as Dr. Reisman, who choose to remain in academia rather than to work in industry?
Regards,
TT
Published: July 13, 2006 12:57 AM
Tom,
If you really think capping and trading permits at the producer level is appropriate, then a tax levied at the user endpoint is much simpler and effective. The problem with the cap and trade mechanism is that it puts government bureaucrats in charge of setting the level of production, regardless of the efficacy of the alternatives that would have to carry the balance- if the alternatives cannot serve at any point (lets say a poor corn harvest cuts ethanol production by 50%, or the month of July is cloudy and rainy over the northeast), then there is no flexibility and shortages are certain to develop. The other major problem, that you did not address, is that the permit system would bring a host of rent-seekers claiming credits that they may not deserve, and the attempts to stop this by closely monitoring and regulating energy production will be intrusive to the extreme. Such a system works OK with things like powerplants which are few in number and their production does not move around, and pollutants like sulfur dioxide which can be easily removed from the discharge stream. CO2 is a completely different animal. No, a tax is the only mechanism anyone with a smidgeon of libertarian bent could ever possibly embrace in this arena, and as you have found, most libertarian won't even embrace that. In other words, you are mostly wasting your time in this part of the ideological world.
Published: July 13, 2006 9:08 AM
MEH:
Sorry I missed your previous comment about Rocco. Okay, I'm dense and provide simplistic answeres, but I'm afraid I didn't really understand his point. Do you care to clarify (as he didn't), or just to jab?
I'm no professional rhetorician, but I think you may have meant "bemoan" instead of "extoll" and perhaps "accept" instead of "except". Yes, it will be a dire dire but of course the science is more than nascent, or you wouldn't even bother to post on this thread!
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 14, 2006 3:04 AM
Yancey:
Thanks very much for your note.
If posting on this topic were a complete waste of time, then Dr. Reisman wouldn't be posting and no one would be responding. He's posting because he's looking for ideological affirmation on an issue that obviously troubles him; I'd like to think that have him and others bang their heads on me might force some reconsideration.
As to the right "cure", I favor cap and trade and fail to see the difficulties that concern you. A tax would put revenues in the hands of a government that would probably misues them, and practice has shown that tax levels are too often adjusted to provide clear signals in the long term. But what would you propose to tax and at where?
I would rather try to stick to what I see as the most Misean-friendly solution, which is to try to craft property rights by creating a right to pollute, just as we have SO2 credits and tradable fishing permits to divide up resources in air basins and fisheries. If one is worried about providing a windfall to polluters, then the permits could be auctioned and the revenues distributed as tax rebates to all citizens. In any case, post-allocation, creating a property right such as this would allow economic actors to make decisions based on known values. The cap level could be set at today's emissions levels - or even generously at levels expected in several years. But then everyone would have incentives indirectly to lower GHG emissions, either because they have to purchase and hold permits (this could be upstream or midstream or a combination - fossil fuel producers/importers or utilities/major users) or because there is a price signal filtering through (consumers etc. would not need permits). The permits could be offset by sequestration or emission-reduction projects approved by the government. Having the permits or emission-reductions tradable would allow for least-cost reductions, so that those who could cheaply lower their emissions would do so and sell their permits to others with less flexibility. To the extent trades and offsets could be done internationally, costs would be even further lowered.
Then, because this is a property right, it would not be subject to government manipulation, except by purchase - so if the government decided to it wanted to lower the amount of emissions below the cap, it would have to purchase permits on the market, as would environmental groups.
You might be aware that the US Senate Energy Committee had hearings on how to structure a US program in April; a very brief conclusion is this:
"In both the written submissions and comments at the workshop, many participants and respondents expressed the view that the risks associated with a changing climate justified the adoption of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. While opinions varied on the stringency of initial limits, there was support for the notion that a program should begin modestly and strengthen gradually over time. Consistent with the success of the acid rain program and other market-based approaches, most participants supported a market-based approach that would set a “forward price� on greenhouse gas emissions in order to provide both the flexibility and incentive needed to accelerate technology development and deployment."
The statement from which this summary was taken, the submissions and testimony are interesting reading and available here:
http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=235005&Month=6&Year=2006&Party=1 (press release with summary)
http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Conferences.Detail&Event_id=4&Month=4&Year=2006 (link to written submissions)
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/senate08ch109.html (transcript of oral testimony)
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 14, 2006 3:47 AM
TT,
Truly, the except/accept error was a brain-lock.
I think Rocco's point of asking: "There’s a 2 mile thick brown cloud over China, yet the world’s conscience, Canada is selling all of their coal to a country that has no conscience…and I wonder why?", was to question: "Who benefits from the current schema predicated upon Waste? Who'll benefit from the proposed "changes"? And, why do they seem to be the same?"--seems it's all in his post, above.
nas·cent (nsnt, nsnt)
adj.
Coming into existence; emerging
pro·fes·sion·al (pr-fsh-nl)
adj.
1.
a. Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.
b. Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.
2. Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.
3. Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.
4. Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.
Published: July 14, 2006 7:03 AM
Tom,
The cap itself is the major problem with your proposal. Since fossil fuels are the most flexible energy source, capping their use with a hard limit introduces inflexibility into energy production. As I outlined, many of the alternative sources are more variable in their reliability and you will need the "cap" on the most flexible source of energy to be variable; otherwise you will create shortages of energy- shortages whose occurance in time cannot be easily predicted and hedged against. In other words, politically, your cap would be close to useless since it would have to be repeatedly removed due to circumstances beyond the control of mankind.
As for creating rights to pollute, taxes on carbon users serve essentially the same purpose; and though I understand your concern about giving the government additional money (not my proposal, by the way), for the United States, for example, the total of the tax could be returned on an even per capita basis to the citizenry.
You too easily dismiss the problems associated with cap and trading mechanisms. As I pointed out, the possibilities for rent-seekers and thieves to manipulate such a system to their benefit is almost endless, the the very presence of such opportunities will require a vast government bureaucracy to regulate, even if the government officials were inclined to actually fight against such shenanigans rather than use their additional power to simply milk the system as well. You and others rely too much on the experience of the SO2 system used in electrical power generation when proposing a similar system for CO2. The SO2 can truly be removed and sequestered from the pollutant stream, and there are practically no other methods for SO2 reductions other than removal/sequestration at the source or the burning of clean fuels (methane, for example)- so the players involved are very, very few in number and the chances for rent-seeking are limited (but, I would point out that this still happens).
I realize that you feel it is absolutely mandatory the CO2 emissions be capped, and soon, but the system you propose will simply not work and will create chaos in its wake.
Published: July 14, 2006 8:19 AM
MEH, Rocco says he's skeptical because some who profess to care about the environment have ties to energy interests.
Would it surprise you to know that I, who also care, use electricity without purchasing the voluntary offsets that are now available?
The point being that we all respond to pricing signals as they are, even as we recognize structural and institutional problems that it would be in the interests of all to resolve. But pending resolution, we all rush on, in our own self-interest.
When do you suppose the various aspects of science relating to climate not be nascent - when there is a consensus that it is not nascent?
By the way, you might note that 154 nations considered the science sufficiently developed to warrant the negotiation and signing of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. The US also signed and ratified it in 1992. What's not agreed domestically and internationally are the political steps to deal with GHG emissions.
You're still being ambiguous about "professional". I don't mind writing on this, but it's certainly not my job.
Regards,
Tom
PS: Did you see my comment on the brown cloud thread?
Published: July 15, 2006 3:32 AM
Yancey, since you have an interest I certainly hope you'll look through the Senate submissions and testimony.
I'm not an expert on the solution, but we need to be discussing one. I think cap and trade is more Misean and think it could work. I note that if there is a certifiable process for proving downstream GHG emission reductions and sequestration, then the need for permits could be satisified by these other methods, which would essentially create new emission rights. Accordingly, I don't see how a cap would create shortages. It would simply affect market pricing.
Do you mind resorting in an appeal to authority and recommending any reading on the points of your concern?
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 15, 2006 3:44 AM
Paul Edwards:
I just got an email from the author - who posts at RealClimate.com - of a peer-reviewed paper just accepted for publication about the lack of evidence for a contribution by global cosmic rays in the current warming.
"GCR has been purported to affect Earth’s surface
temperatures through a modulation of the cloud cover [Marsh and Svensmark, 2000; Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997]. However, the lack of a significant trend in the GCR, as well as in Rz, SCL, and 10.7 cm flux, suggests that there is no empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that solar activity can explain the recent global warming."
The abstract is here; please email me (or the author) if you'd like the full piece:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/18093129
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 21, 2006 2:02 AM
Paul Edwards:
I just got an email from the author - who posts at RealClimate.com - of a peer-reviewed paper just accepted for publication about the lack of evidence for a contribution by global cosmic rays in the current warming.
"GCR has been purported to affect Earth’s surface
temperatures through a modulation of the cloud cover [Marsh and Svensmark, 2000; Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997]. However, the lack of a significant trend in the GCR, as well as in Rz, SCL, and 10.7 cm flux, suggests that there is no empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that solar activity can explain the recent global warming."
The abstract is here; please email me (or the author) if you'd like the full piece:
www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023621.shtml
[If my first version of this post made it through; obviously the link was wrong. Here's the correct one.]
Regards,
Tom
Published: July 21, 2006 2:04 AM
Hi Tom,
Thanks, I'd be interested in looking at the article.
I notice in the abstract, that it is data obtained since 1950 that seems to be the basis of the analysis concluding that galactic cosmic ray flux is not connected with global temperatures. But i'll have to read the article to see how this could be evidence to cast doubt on the conclusions of Shaviv and Veizer who are basically saying that the earth is coming out of a CRF induced ice age from supernova activity both in the very distant past, millions of years ago, and i believe, the more recent time of the 1300's. My understanding is that it is the very lack of the cooling influences of CRF, in more recent times, that allows the earth to continue on its moderate warming trend.
The corollary to this is that any increased incidence of CRF on the earth's atmosphere from supernova activity, if it were to occur, which it is expected it will eventually, would cool the earth once again, moving the earth back in the direction of another ice age.
Abstract
New estimates of the solar cycle length are calculated from an up-to-date monthly sunspot record using a novel but mathematically rigorous method involving multiple regression, Fourier approximation, and analytical expressions for the first derivative based on calculus techniques. The sensitivity of the estimates to smoothing are examined and the analysis is used to identify possible systematic changes in the sun. The solar cycle length analysis indicates a pronounced change in the sun around 1900, before which the estimates fluctuate strongly and after which the estimates show little variability. There have been speculations about an association between the solar cycle length and Earth's climate, however, the solar cycle length analysis does not follow Earth's global mean surface temperature. A further comparison with the monthly sunspot number, cosmic galactic rays and 10.7 cm absolute radio flux since 1950 gives no indication of a systematic trend in the level of solar activity that can explain the most recent global warming.
Published: July 21, 2006 3:27 AM
TT,
You were asking if I saw your post on the brown cloud thread, did you mean that thread from the WMT puff-piece? If so, yes, I saw it.
Also, maybe a different thread, but you were giving answers like WTO, UN, NAFTA, et al, as examples of "successful instances of trading Sovereignty for "greater Harmony" (and a copy of Kumbahya(sp?), no doubt)
Bud, are you serious with answers like that?
Who have those orgs helped?
Good to see you about, thought that Brown Cloud Anthropomorphized, and Swallowed you whole...
Published: July 21, 2006 4:12 AM
Tom,
Seriously, do you really not see how a cap on fossil fuels could create shortages? I don't need to appeal to authority on this- it is self-evident. The only way to maintain a cap with practically no chance to create shortages is to set the cap well above the actual usage of fossil fuels. The alternatives, outside of nuclear, are much more variable, by their very nature.
Published: July 21, 2006 8:40 AM
Yancey:
The point is to establish some property rights and then let a market function through purchase and sales transactions that actually place more than a zero value on emissions. In the US, CO2 increases have been tailing off so it would be rather simple to set a cap at some amount greater than total emissions today and establish emission rights within that cap. More rights could be created through accredited sequestration projects.
If the government or individuals decided it wanted to reduced emissions, they could then do so simply through purchasing and holding permits.
This is the same solution we apply to fisheries, and should apply to whales (yeah, we have to get others to agree to, but it's better than a simple moratorium).
Published: July 23, 2006 5:29 AM
Paul, if you want the article you've got to get me your email address. You can get mine at my blogger profile.
Regards,
TT
Published: July 23, 2006 5:32 AM
Both Global Warming and The Theory of Evolution are hoaxes. Why are all these scientists talking about 500,000 year old "core samples?" The earth is only 6,000 years old anyway. There are many facts to back that up. Plus all the ice they take samples from came from Noah's flood, so the "data" that the scientists try to get out of it is bogus.
Take Back the Country From the Damned Lying Liberals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Published: July 25, 2006 3:25 PM
A carbon tax is a much better method to accomplish what you wish, that does not affect flexibility as much, and minimizes the avenues of rent-seeking- and it does all of this with the minimal amount of new government bureaucracy.
Published: July 25, 2006 4:29 PM
Dear Everyone, I think the fact that we don't know is simple cause enough for immediate action. You don't send your children to a school where you don't know if they'll be safe. Why are we going to send our children to a world which may be on its way, whether it's in 5 years or 500, to self-destruction?
There's no reason we can't switch our nation's automobiles to electric cars and cut 70% of the greenhouse emissions from the 1/3 of total CO2 in the atmosphere from man-made sources. There's no reason we can't switch our Government's and National focus to sustainable energy and resources and to mass production of sustainable technologies. There's no harm from it actually, and it makes us better neighbors with the rest of the world.
What I think the debate here should be about is not 'if global warming is happening' but 'why are we taking any chances?'
Published: May 3, 2007 3:38 PM
The fact that we don't know is cause enough for NON-action, not action. Further study is warranted for understanding not only what is happening, but also just what we can do (if anything) to change that (if we need to do something).
I remain leery of governmental or international solutions like carbon taxes. The "solution" might be more dangerous than the problem. I mean really, what OTHER problems have governments successfully solved with regulation, taxes and the like??
Instead, let's look at how rights exist and are protected without government to get ideas about how environmental and climate problems can be solved.
Published: May 3, 2007 7:15 PM
Today, Dec. 8th 08, it seems that CO2 science has once again been wiped from the Internet. Another attack against free speech and scientific argument. As a geologist I can confirm that CO2 NEVER drove climate in the geological past and it does not now. Read the data sets from round the globe and look at the science. The theory of GHG's is flawed and breaks one of the basics of Thermodynamics. Heat cannot flow from cold to hot which is what this theory says is happening. Complete rubbish. This planet has temperature regulated by water vapour and this temperature is driven by solar input and the Milankovitch Cycles. I think that CO2 Science is not supported by Exxon. But everyone is paid by someone. If you think that Science as related by Greenpeace is true then you are thinking simplistically. Greenpeace tells lies to get the public to pay them money so that they can live in luxury! They are a charity and survive only by frightening the public. Climate alarmism is just such a fright and a complete sham.
Published: December 8, 2008 4:36 AM
C02 Science should not be used as a source for anything. They are shills for the Western Energy Cooperative and have been paid nearly $100,000 that is documented by Exxon. They're one of those groups owned by shady characters whose job it is to plant doubt. Not a single thing they write can be trusted.
Published: February 22, 2009 9:20 AM
There's strong evidence that Climate change is purely natural regardless of Man
Scientists are measuring CO2 output at Mt. Redoubt, an Alaska Volcano ready to blow. I was informed the Volcano is pumping out 10,000 tons of CO2 daily as we speak.
Natural Climate Change Phenomenon:
REVISTING MAGNETIC INTENSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE: A STRONG CORRELATION
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFMGP11A0709M
AND
www.gsaaj.org/articles/TempPaperv1n22007.pdf
P.S. Neither side wants to prove the other right or wrong: THERE'S NO MONEY IN IT......
Published: February 22, 2009 12:18 PM
"Since the fall of 2008, AVO has flown 13 gas measurement flights, and of these, 5 have occurred since the eruption began on March 15, 2009. .... Starting in late January 2009, and coincident with a strong increase in seismicity, gas emission rates rose to a level (> 5000 tonnes/d) suggesting significant unrest at the volcano, and emissions stayed at this level until the eruption began. Since that time, emissions of both CO2 and sulfur dioxide (SO2) have been very elevated, sometimes reaching levels in excess of 10,000 tonnes/d. These volcanic gas emission rates are among the largest ever measured in Alaska, though such high values are consistent with an openly degassing volcanic system that is actively extruding lava. Based on measurements and observations from Redoubt's previously observed eruptions, these gas emission rates are likely to drop substantially when the eruption wanes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Mount_Redoubt_(Alaska)_eruptive_activity
http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/reliable-sources-climate-realists-craig-idso-ocean-acidification-edition/
Published: June 5, 2009 10:34 AM