Climate Hawks Letting off Steam?
Oh, this should be good for another noisy round of meaningless climate warfare:
“Our biggest problem is to deal with the skepticism and denial of the cult-like lemmings who would take us over the cliff,” said [California Governor Jerry] Brown, a Democrat, eliciting cheers and laughter from an audience of roughly 200 policymakers, businessleaders, and activists. “The skeptics and deniers have billions of dollars at their disposal … But I can tell you we’re going to fight them every step of the way until we get this state on a sustainable path forward.”
More laughter came when [IPCC Chair Rajendra] Pachauri joked that Branson could give climate deniers tickets on the aviation mogul’s planned flights into outer space. “Perhaps it could be a one-way ticket,” Pachauri said, smiling, “though I’m not sure space deserves them.”
So these yucks come on the heels of a toothless agreement that kicked the climate can down the road for another decade, and these guys are joking about sending “deniers” to the moon. Seriously, though, do Brown & company really believe that climate skeptics are the “biggest problem”? When will these guys and the rest of the climate concerned movement realize they are fighting the wrong adversary?
OK I’ll ask.
Why fight anybody?
Is it really preferable to doing stuff.
Alex
I’m glad you mentioned Durban – were the ranks of deniers filled to bursting during those happy days in the South African sun? It seems to me any lack of progress had nothing to do with climate scepticism at all – everybody was on board the consensus train right from the get-go. I think practical politics, national interests and huge practical and economic realities might have been some of the stumbling blocks. It certainly wasn’t Dragon Slayers convincing delegates that DLR is an egregious fiction.
When I watched the press briefings it appeared that everybody was either James Hansen, James Hansen’s stooge, or James Hansen’s stooge’s doppelganger.
If I might also gently observe, climate denial outside of America is painfully thin on the ground. There are small enclaves in Britain, and a couple of ex-colonies but in the world at large the people you need to blame are the not-very-bothered. Partially because they mostly have one or two other things higher up their agendas.
I don’t know – maybe in California, rich nasty oil barons have hoodwinked millions of voters, making policies difficult to carry out, but in the world at large I don’t think denialism is a significant factor. A lack of actual climate change might be worth investigating, though.
Its funny to hear about these guys talk this way in California where environmental and other regulations have essentially made the place a no-man’s land in terms of new industrial sitings.
Sometimes I think the main effect of CAGW is to make liberals crazy, conservatives smug, and dumb down the conversation to me vs. them. So what am I, with my liberal credentials, to do? I try to get my liberal friends to look at the temperature record first to see where we’ve been and where we are. Then, for those few that haven’t relegated me to the denier who needs a one way ticket to the moon (my, my, big carbon footprint doing that) I try to get them to look at what is known- atmospheric physics, the carbon cycle, etc. Then I try to get them to look at what is unknown and uncertain so they can begin to make their own informed judgement on the role of AGW and the threat of the IPCC model projections of CAGW. There’s room for a range of informed opinion, and I come down on the skeptical side. I agree that the Brown/Pachauri type rant hurts what they consider their Earth-saving cause. Why haven’t they figured that out?
Patchy’s comment tells us again why he should not have his job and why any pretense of scientific objectiovity at the IPCC is the real joke.
Moonbeam is just being Moonbeam. That joke is on CA.
I t looks like climate science desperately needs skeptics to explain why nobody listens to them.
Branson… isn’t that the guy who runs Virgin Atlantic? Kind of funny how oil producers are portrayed as criminals and those who use their products can be credible environmentalists.
Love it, Keith
The skeptics and deniers have billions of dollars at their disposal…
Where, O where is this money I’m missing? But to really earn your shilling let’s join the shell funded Friends Of The Earth or the more than salubrious Greenpeace! O I envy, I do, their riches!
What should be done then in response to the misinformation? Let it stand unchallenged? You are deceiving yourself if you think it doesn’t influence people’s views – many people want to hear enough doubt that they can justify not thinking about the problems, carry on with their busy lives in denial. These people are the biggest problem, but challenging false ‘scepticism’ is a major part of the solution.
why do so many clever people talk like this, amongst themselves, speaking to their tribe… without apparently realising that it will reach a wider audience… and many sceptics are equally at fault
yet the climate concerned have the positions of authority.
@9
I went searching for video of the panel and curiously I failed to find any. At the Governor’s own web site http://gov.ca.gov/m_multimedia.php all the other panels are available including the last with Arnold but not the first that many have found so provocative.
#8
many people want to hear enough doubt that they can justify not thinking about the problems, carry on with their busy lives in denial
I don’t deny Somalia is a complete mess. I knew that 30 years ago when Jimmy Carter trotted me off to the Middle East for a year long course in the world is ugly and not everything has an easy solution and many solutions have ugly unintended consequences.
(Try a front row seat for the Iraq-Iran wars 1/2 million+ dead and the Soviet-Afghan conflict – 1/4 million dead)
In the world of ‘adults’ problems have to be prioritized. They can’t all be fixed now and if you try to fix them all at once you will end up fixing none of them.
Everything else that has been tried in the last 30 years has been a failure.
The fact that pretty much no one in the political sphere is proposing parking 50,000 peace keepers in Somalia doesn’t mean they are in ‘denial’ that a problem exists. It means that on the list of priorities Somalia doesn’t rate 50,000 peace keepers. For the time being the ‘on the cheap’ attempts to fix Somalia will have to do.
Let’s talk about ‘denialism’ as related to population control.
The magical solution is to just hand out condoms in high birth rate countries. The problem being that illiterate girls won’t insist that illiterate boys who are thinking with their ‘small head’ use them. So to get the condom plan to work we have to educate all the girls in countries that for all intents and purposes have no functioning government. So first we need a functioning government – see the Somalia problem.
Let’s move on to addressing climate change – fixing that is just a matter of replacing all the fossil fueled fired infrastructure on the entire planet with something else. We don’t have the storage technology to do it with intermittent energy sources. Nuclear power carries with it a risk that sooner or later one of the plants will cook off.
The people who are in denial are the people who believe wickedly complex problems have simple solutions that are being suppressed by Exxon Mobil.
Keith -you are right, skeptics and deniers are not the real problem with getting something done, it’s that for a vast majority of people, other things in life are more important and immediate, whether it be family, job, health issues, or wondering where your next meal is coming from. The number of vocal skeptics or deniers is minute compared to masses of the indifferent.
#8 OPatrick
many people want to hear enough doubt that they can justify not thinking about the problems, carry on with their busy lives in denial. These people are the biggest problem, but challenging false “˜scepticism’ is a major part of the solution.
Looks to me like most believers are equally content to carry on with their busy lives, with one difference: They moan about emissions but do very little to cut their own emissions or consumption. Action is usually limited to symbolic gestures.
harrywr2
“The people who are in denial are the people who believe wickedly complex problems have simple solutions that are being suppressed by Exxon Mobil.”
Does anyone believe there are simple solutions? There are simple actions we can take (and I’d partially agree with Jarmo that some people aren’t taking actions their rhetoric would suggest they should, though many are) but these will only be part of a solution. On the other hand, finding a complete solution will be harder and more distant if we don’t at least start taking these partial steps.
Just because in some places making birth control widely available won’t work because of low literacy levels, and in others attempts to improve literacy levels will be nullified by poor governance doesn’t mean that making birth control available and improving literacy levels aren’t broad goals worth pursuing.
“Just because in some places making birth control widely available won’t work because of low literacy levels, and in others attempts to improve literacy levels will be nullified by poor governance doesn’t mean that making birth control available and improving literacy levels aren’t broad goals worth pursuing”
This is a good example of what I often see in all sorts of political debates; the conflation of a policy’s good intentions with its efficacy(or lack thereof).
And to counter that, Menth, your’s is an example of what I see in all sorts of political debates: a perceived, though possibly real, problem in one area being extended to justify inaction across the board.
@16 Sure, I think I understand what you mean. Using your example, I agree that it would be silly to cut a program across the board when it is working in certain locations.
But as you said “…doesn’t mean that making birth control available and improving literacy levels aren’t broad goals worth pursuing”
A person saying a program is ineffective in a particular location doesn’t mean they’re advocating against the principle of the policy just that inspite of the good intentions of the policy it isn’t effective in reaching its goals.
Allow me to try to illustrate this with this oversimplified hypothetical situation:
The government aims to improve the lives of orphans by creating a new “Orphaned Children Life Improvement Agency”. The sentiment of this agency is certainly one that voters can get behind, after all who doesn’t want to help disadvantaged orphans? But what if the agency doesn’t actually do anything other than sit around in meetings and eat catered lunches? What if despite the good intentions of the policy the lives of orphans don’t improve? Or what if it works so well that orphans are now living above average lives?
The problem I see is that as soon someone comes along and points out that despite the program’s good intentions it’s not effective/relevant and the funding could be better spent elsewhere, they get labeled as some kind of a**hole who hates orphans.
Anyways, I think I’m derailing this thread as I’m prone to do, apologies.
Anteros #2:
“I’m glad you mentioned Durban ““ were the ranks of deniers filled to bursting during those happy days in the South African sun? It seems to me any lack of progress had nothing to do with climate scepticism at all ““ everybody was on board the consensus train right from the get-go.”
This analysis really convinces me of exactly the opposite of its (and Keith’s) thesis. Had the delegations (other than the most threatened small nations) really understood the risks, “kicking the can down the road” would not have been considered an acceptable outcome.
The reason people do not understand the risks is because of the pretend scientists, tobacco crusaders, their funders within the fossil fuel sector, and their enablers in press and politics.
The chief American negotiator was heard muttering something like “2, 2.5, who cares?” That is mighty ignorant stuff if he is serious, and I think he is.
If this is not a victory for pseudoscience over science it is hard to imagine what such a victory would look like.
So, no, sorry. If this is the point Keith is making that I am still not getting, it is wrong. David Roberts is right in his analysis.
If the 10% of the people who are most completely and utterly sure the whole business is nonsense were to simply go away, the problem would be addressed at a responsible level of seriousness.
The social dynamics, however, will not go away.
Accordingly we are already very late to address the problem, and getting later. Of course, the longer we delay, the worse the prognosis, both in costs and benefits. It would be nice if the issue weren’t set up that way, but it is.
So although I think 2.5 vs 2.0 is a very big deal, I am already resigned to 2.5 and probably to 3.0 (degrees C peak global warming). I think we missed the last boat to 2.0 in Copenhagen.
It’s clear that ecological costs go up very rapidly with the temperature change. What happens in other spheres is very difficult to know, but it surely increases nonlinearly in some way. After all, if we reach +85 C, the ocean boils and we are literally cooked.
Social catastrophe definitely lies somewhere between 1 and 85. There’s a very crude consensus that it probably lies somewhere between 4 and 7, but nobody knows. At that point, we lose such capacity as we have to collectively tune our environment, and we enter a global collapse of human civilization, in a world where the environment that once sustained us is itself in a shambles.
Ecological decline is already bought and paid for and under way.
So what would you have us do?
You write “Simon Kuper argued that all the attention lavished on climate skeptics has created “a one-dimensional argument about climate change: do you believe it’s real or not?” Kuper says he’s found that “many people can only read articles about climate change as statements of either belief or skepticism. This obscures better questions, such as what exactly we should do about climate change.”
Well, yes. That’s exactly my point. Stop allowing the Anteroses of the world to make a whole broad spectrum of crucial decisions about how to manage a crowded world into a yes/no question about carbon sensitivity.
Can it be, Keith, that I have failed to understand our disagreement because we agree? I blame your ilk and you blame mine, but we agree on what ought to be happening!
So why isn’t that happening? Is it science’s fault, or the press’s?
Activists will be activists, of course. But reality will also be reality, and the situation at present isn’t looking pretty.
The question is what responsible people ought to do about it. And as long as we are arguing a yes/no question we are wasting everybody’s time on a fictitious courtroom drama when there are difficult and nuanced decisions to be made at a global level.
I’m not going to wade into a conversation that’s been had a thousand times before but this wins my unintentionally funniest quote of the day award:
If the 10% of the people who are most completely and utterly sure the whole business is nonsense were to simply go away, the problem would be addressed at a responsible level of seriousness.
Of course, Menth, if OCLIA have had to put up with repeated attacks from people who argue that orphans don’t exist, that not having parents is good for children, that children can easily adapt to being without parents and so on their knee-jerk reaction to yet another perceived attack might be more understandable.
M Tobis writes:
“The reason people do not understand the risks is because of the pretend scientists, tobacco crusaders, their funders within the fossil fuel sector, and their enablers in press and politics.”
MT, you simply do not understand why people do not ‘understand’ the risks which you think you ‘understand.’
Until you get past this simplistic ‘us v them’ cartoon version of reality you never will.
#19 Menth, here’s my pick for quote of the day:
“After all, if we reach +85 C, the ocean boils and we are literally cooked.
Social catastrophe definitely lies somewhere between 1 and 85.”
MT @ 18 –
“If the 10% of the people who are most completely and utterly sure the whole business is nonsense were to simply go away, the problem would be addressed at a responsible level of seriousness.”
When people we don’t agree with, continue to keep not agreeing with us, it is very tempting to think we should find ways to just ignore them so that we can get what we want. We would like to make them just “go away“. Of course, we would have to be so convinced that we are right – that our beliefs somehow resemble ‘truths’ [about the climate a hundred years hence!!] – that they become like religious convictions. Strange, that, because wanting to make our opponents ‘disappear’ is also a characteristic of religious funadamentalism.
I admit, what you speak of – the tobacco lobbysists, for instance – may indeed have a much greater impact in the US than they do here in the UK. In fact I think more than half of all the out-and-out denialism resides in the States (although we have a small contingent here), so perhaps your viewpoint is a little more understandable from your location. But in the wider world? I think not – it is the dis-engaged, not-bothered, and otherwise-occupied that you need to work on. I agree with Pielke Jr in this post, that skeptics aren’t the barrier to action –
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/12/about-those-skeptics.html
I think I might take offence at your anti-democratic bid for more power here – “Stop allowing the Anteroses of the world to make a whole broad spectrum of crucial decisions about how to manage a crowded world into a yes/no question about carbon sensitivity” – if it made any sense at all. Why shouldn’t the well-informed, literate, moderate and pragmatic Anteroses of the world have their democratic say about all the crucial decisions of the world? I generally say very little about carbon sensitivity – and the last thing I tend to do is to push people towards dichotomous yes/no questions.
Finally, I must bring some relativism to bear here. You say –
“the situation at present isn’t looking pretty” –
This certainly isn’t a true statement. But it can be made into one with relative ease. If you add a couple of words at the end, you can effortlessly create a sentence with a truth function viz –
“the situation at present isn’t looking pretty, to me”
If you then accept that what we see is to a large extent created by the viewpoint we use for our seeing and you’ll understand why 1) people disagree with you looking at the same ‘facts’ 2) why it is hard to understand why other people can’t see properly 3) how neutral, objective bystanders will readily characterise your attitude as dogmatic. fundamentalist, and anti-democratic.
You see the world one way, the Anteroses of the world (among others) see it very very differently.
@20 Hehe, thanks for playing along.
Just for the record, I don’t think orphans are a hoax. The people at OCLIA do fine work and I’m sure would appreciate a considerate donation at this time of year; they have a staff party to fund.
Anteros. There are values and there are facts.
I don’t think I singlehandedly rescued Moynihan’s law from obscurity, but unlike most folks I’ve been repeating it since he (Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan D-NY) said it.
You’re entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.
We may be closer together on values than you think. I simply believe you have the facts wrong.
To be fair, on the present topic, it is not entirely the fault of our foes that you, with the best of intentions presumably, have the facts wrong. Some of our allies haven’t helped much.
But where the facts are is not determined by whom you’d prefer to have a beer with.
@22
Mmmmm hot fish soup. That would be good with a roll but of course I’m sure the wheat crop would have surely failed by then. Dang.
25#
the not entitled to own facts ‘soundbite ‘ has been used quite a lot rcecently, without actually presenting the facts, or discussing them, just a nice sweeping statement..
I’ll bite..
please name your top three facts… specifically..
we can work through discussing them, you Anteros and me, and anyone else that feels like joining in.. then we can move on to the next facts.
I’m not going away… even though I have zero money, the cambelt in my 8 year old car has just gone, and I’ll find out Monday if the engine has had it… and have to write the car it. and me and my wife will have to decide how we can afford to replace it.. so that we can get to work (public transport a disaster, non option)
Those big oil fossil fuel funded ‘deniars’ cash is just not trickling down to a C list ‘sceptic/lukewarmer/denier blogger like me..
It is a fantasy, to explain why the concerned are failing..
This is NOT to be confused with comapnies lobbying for special interest, ie coal vs wind, gas vs solar, nuclear vs everthing else.. they are not fighting climate science, just pleadeing special interest.
Imagine what they would do if they REALLY spent some money, going all out for scepticism.
The world (general public, mos scientists, most politicians, etc) does not know we (Keith, Michael, me, RC, Climate Audit, WUWT, etc exist)
Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban failed, because of China, India and the rest of the devoloping world, refusing to do anything to damage their economic growth, the west refusing to cut emission whilst the worlds biggest emitter emit more.. as per capita emission rise in the ‘devloping world’ (Dubai a non Annex 1 country !? !)
Now tha China’s per capita emissions are ahead of France, en par with Italy, Poland and other EU countries and projected to go ahead of the EU17 and EU25 average in the next year no one is about the commit econmic suicide, not Canada, not Russia, not Japan, etc,etc
the climate concerned(for want of a better description, need the ‘deniers’ as a scapegoat for their policy failures.. the rest of the worls does not care, or know that those in the climate bubble (keith, Me, etc included) exist.
Barry Woods, saying that the rest of the world doesn’t know that those within the ‘climate bubble’ exist is missing the point – they are influenced by what comes out of the bubble. I hear watered down versions of the tired talking points from many people, and these doubts are enough to keep their concerns supressed.
MT –
I agree with you that there are values and there are facts. I perhaps don’t agree with the implication that there aren’t plenty of other (relevant) things as well. Such things can be neither values nor facts – hypotheses, for instance and expectations.
Where we seem to disagree is about what can be understood as a fact. I’d expect you to think that the 2.5/3 degrees C eventual temperature rise as factually a catastrophic thing, as you do the situation not looking pretty and all the biomes finding themselves struggling. I’d not only disagree with your view, but also that these things constitute facts. They can’t possibly be facts – they’re just impressions, personifications, expectations.
We could agree roughly on the facts of recent sea level rise. We could not agree or disagree about the known facts of future sea level rise because there are none. We have expectations, models hypotheses, theories etc etc. And where we disagree most is where there are clearly no facts in sight – what for instance a three foot sea level rise would mean to humanity if spread over a century.
Where are the ‘facts’ we disagree about? What facts do I have wrong? Because if they concerns ‘how bad things are or will be’ I don’t think you’re talking about facts at all.
I agree in a way we may share many values and I’m very pleased to hear you retain optimism. But I certainly don’t share this view that we’re ‘on the brink’ as many people have felt throughout human history, and we have to agonise about whether we’ll ‘make it’ or not.
I live in an environmental paradise surrounded by thriving, teeming life. I believe my descendants will have the opportunity of doing the same – but they’ll need to see the world that way. It isn’t a question of facts, but of viewpoint.
@28 So it’s like a climate change denying butterfly effect? A skeptic in Iowa writes a blog post and on the other side of the world a comprehensive global treaty on climate change fails?
“I hear watered down versions of the tired talking points from many people, and these doubts are enough to keep their concerns supressed.”
OPatrick (28) I’m not a big fan of argument by anecdote. What “many people” are you referring to? If they are Tea Party Republicans who get their news primarily from Fox News, I’d be inclined to believe you. And if that’s the case, there’s not much that can be done about it.
What Barry Woods (27) said about the reasons for the failures at Copenhagen and Durban is correct and had nothing to do with WUWT or Marc Morano. And mind you, I’m not suggesting ignoring the extremes (I don’t), I just think it’s convenient and wrongheaded to focus so much on the politicized doubters of climate change, instead of the real obstacles to global action on greenhouse gases.
No, it’s much more direct than that. ‘Sceptic’ blogs bang on about scientific consensus in the ’70s predicting an ice-age, someone sees this being picked up somewhere, in a newspaper article, the Parish magazine, whatever, and grabs hold of it as a comforter. ‘Phew, we don’t need to worry. They’ve been wrong before so they’ll probably be wrong again’. The political will isn’t there yet.
Keith #31, no it’s people who read the Daily Mail, the Times, watch Channel 4, any media outlet really (in the UK, you’ll notice – can’t say I’ve ever come across a real, live Tea Partier). Everyone to a greater or lesser extent. Where do people get their information from about climate change? The vast majority through the mainstream media and I think there’s little doubt that many of the talking points we mull over endlessly here get into these reports. Small shifts in emphasis are enough to give people the doubt they want.
With enemies like that, who needs friends?
MT –
Here is a very good example of what I mean. 1980’s European environmentalists in an enormous panic about forest die-back. A large number of people believed there were facts about the number of trees dying and facts concerning the cause – specifically that the only possible explanation was acidic deposition from coal fired power stations.
These weren’t ever facts. We were hopelessly wrong. To the nearest one percent, the number of European trees that died from airborne acid pollution in the 80’s was none. Which is OK – human beings are wrong about a lot of things. What now seems unforgivable is that we believed we were in possession of facts when we in just had a convincing but completely erroneous hypothesis – a ‘guess’ as Feynman would put it. Here’s a article from the period when we were struggling out of the embarrassing mess created by having a ‘belief’ that had too much certainty attached to it [like all doomsday myths do] and so appeared to be like a ‘fact‘ –waldsterben
The most important thing to me about this is the parallel with climate change. Acid deposition is, of course, a real phenomenon – there isn’t any place for yes/no dichotomies about its existence, just as the radiative properties of carbon dioxide are real. However there are more than just one or two steps in reality from an observable phenomenon and a full scale catastrophe, and we need to be sure that we do definitely have facts and not just fears and imagination.
And I disagree with you that the outcome at Durban had nothing to do with the constant barrage of ‘scepticism’. These are complex and tortuous negotiations and even if the political will was strongly pushing them forwards I doubt we’d see any easy agreements, but that lack of urgency is apparent. The politicians, who I believe are generally more convinced personally than their actions and rhetoric would suggest, are yet to feel the pressure for action from their electorates.
# 32 OPatrick
Try looking at that scenario in reverse.
ANY convenient AGW doomsday story is immediately printed and broadcast throughout the usual global mainstream media while those who accept this line are all saying ‘I told you so’ as it confirms their beliefs.
Compare the ‘volume’ of that message (outlets/audience reach/ repitition/appeal to authority) versus the contrary messages (formerly resticted almost entirely to little known blogs). Consider also the full tilt ‘denier’ smear campaign and the academic groupthink shunning of those who dared ask questions.
Yet still, as you say, “The political will isn’t there yet.”
Why would that be? Based on any objective analysis of this scenario, it cannot simply be that the ‘skeptic’s’ messaging has changed public perceptions. That was only a small but vital part of it. It was the AGW proponent’s own messaging that did most damage to their cause. Crying wolf has inevitable consequences when the wolf keeps looking like a poodle.
If you are going to persuade people that addressing some future threat is actually worthwhile, you need very compelling and credible scientific evidence. Not just someone saying it is so, over and over, while pointing to some model and a picture of a cute polar bear cub.
We have been told that the IPCC is ‘truth central’ for this scientific evidence. Then we have this comment which Keith posted from the (unqualified) head of this supposed core of authority:
“Pachauri joked that Branson could give climate deniers tickets on the aviation mogul’s planned flights into outer space. “Perhaps it could be a one-way ticket,” Pachauri said, smiling, “though I’m not sure space deserves them.”
Get it? Why would anyone take the ‘science’ coming out of an agency headed by such an obviously unobjective hack seriously? To paraphrase Patchy, looks like a home for ‘voodoo science’ to me.
So. No credible scientific evidence, an agenda that has little to do with climate concerns in any case, a laughable cast of characters with a track record of ridiculous exaggeration and wrong predictions. And then Climategate(s) put the icing on the cake.
Such a project will understandably not be enthusiastically be supported by anyone except those who remain ignorant and those who will directly benefit from it.
Let’s see. BBC. In the US, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC. In Canada CBC and CTV. In Australia ABC. Etc.
Most of the public gets its ‘news’ from TV (unfortunately).
What coverage have any of these dominant media outlets given to any ‘skeptical’ coverage?
What coverage have they given to almost every and any pro-AGW story or snippet they can find?
And some people would like to blame the media for not doing enough to tell the AGW story.
Yes, it is that bad Fox News that did it! But even that does not fly. While their coverage does not follow the AGW party line, they barely cover this story at all.
Why not just make it really, really simple and just blame Delingpole for everything.
#25 Michael Tobis
Your entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts
What a cliché. That is simply naive and obtuse. For your benefit (though facts do exist, but not as some hard, recrudescent obstinate ‘thing’, with ‘substance’ but rather as, more or less, well established hypothesis, attested, for now, by the evidence, as is – there are no ‘atoms’, essential ‘elements’ that are ‘axiomatic, are beyond dispute) there are no ‘facts’, there are only interpretations of ‘facts’.
EdG, there is false balance in the media, even in the BBC, though less than there was now, which gives greater weight to ‘sceptic’ arguments than they merit. However, even if that weren’t so it is much easier to sell doubt and inaction than it is confidence and responsibility. There are many people who are very anxious to hear the message that no significant action is called for from them, so the ‘they are crying wolf’ message is easy to get out.
Follow any of the common ‘sceptic’ talking points to its roots and see how empty the arguments are, this would convince anyone of the bad faith of most of those who are stridently opposing action. But that takes time and effort. Much better to accept an element of doubt and absolve yourself of the need to think seriously about these questions.
# 40 OPatrick
I do get your theoretical point but we must be living in completely different universes.
You said that “there is false balance in the media, even in the BBC, though less than there was now,”
Even in the BBC. To put that very mildly. In the Pre-Climategate Era they were relentrless propagandists on this, with daily AGW doomsday reports by David Shukman (which I do miss for their entertaining Monty Python qualities).
Now they are less blatant. Just relentless ‘extreme’ weather’ coverage, and with video cameras everywhere that often means some minor flood in Peru that nobody ever would have heard about before – and definitely does NOT qualify as significant ‘world news.’ Subliminally feeding the new improved ‘Climate Disruption’ line.
(And then there’s Richard Black on their print end.)
I have yet to see a single report of any actual contrary research on the BBC. Not once. But I may have missed it. Perhaps you could provide an example of that. Or from any of those media outlets I noted.
Thanks.
#41 The idea that there is such a thing as “contrary research” shows a think tank/lawyer’s office view of nature of science and of the universe. And therein lies the problem.
# 42 – Semantics. You know what I meant but are choosing to evade the point.
But since you apparently dismissive of the views of lawyers on scientific topics, I assume you must laugh every time the Sierra Club, etc. speaks out.
No? Well therein lies your problem.
I am pretty sure I have made myself clear enough and that Anteros is smart enough that he can construct my answer to #29 for me. Failing that, it’s left as an exercise for the reader.
Re #35, of course any particular scientific assessment is tentative, and contingent on new evidence.
That general point conceded, modern science is rarely overturned in any major way. So the story Anteros alludes to in #35 is indeed potentially of considerable interest. So, A., if you would be so kind as to pony up some evidence that things are as you described regarding acid rain and forest decline at the peak of SO2/NOx emissions, I will endeavor take the time to follow up on it.
The current assertion at Wikipedia is “Places significantly impacted by acid rain around the globe include most of eastern Europe from Poland northward into Scandinavia,[38] the eastern third of the United States,[39] and southeastern Canada. Other affected areas include the southeastern coast of China and Taiwan.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Affected_areas
I am pretty sure I have made myself clear enough and that Anteros is smart enough that he can construct my answer to #29 for me. Failing that, it’s left as an exercise for the reader.
Re #35, of course any particular scientific assessment is tentative, and contingent on new evidence.
That general point conceded, modern science is rarely overturned in any major way. So the story Anteros alludes to in #35 is indeed potentially of considerable interest. So, A., if you would be so kind as to pony up some evidence that things are as you described regarding acid rain and forest decline at the peak of SO2/NOx emissions, I will endeavor take the time to follow up on it.
The current assertion at Wikipedia is “Places significantly impacted by acid rain around the globe include most of eastern Europe from Poland northward into Scandinavia, the eastern third of the United States, and southeastern Canada. Other affected areas include the southeastern coast of China and Taiwan.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Affected_areas
Re #44, acid rain. More informative than you might imagine.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/05/26/documentary-on-the-german-waldsterben-hysteria-looking-back-30-years/
#43 I don’t follow your answer at all.
I have no affiliation with the Sierra Club and don’t see why anything I said makes me responsible for everything they have said, whatever that was, or how their legal staff behaves, however that is.
What I’m saying is that the idea that climate science has two “sides” is a total misrepresentation, very much as wrong as the idea that there were two “sides” to oncology when the tobacco industry rounded up some pet PhDs to muddy the waters about links between tobacco and disease.
Your response is that the Sierra Club has lawyers in it. I guess you’ve run rings around me logically.
@ 25
You’re entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.
Neither are you.
MT & EdG –
Concerning acid rain [I’ve seen the doc’ you link to EG, and you’re right] – it surely is a good proxy for climate change because even 20 years after most of the hysteria died down, we still apparently have no facts. For those of us that were emotionally involved [most of the research came across my living room table] at the time, it was clearly as case of fear-mongering out of control. But it surely didn’t appear so to the alarmists of the time.
MT – I’ve given you a link to a comprehensive survey of the scientific literature at the time sanity was returning to European forestry. What Wikipedia says today was probably written by the Stoat’s rabid nephew. Take your pick.
But the proxy is still a good one. A real phenomenon. Some grounds for concern. Much investigation. And all the while an imagination-driven hysteria that believed it was in possession of facts – much as climate alarmists are today. It was the certainty that was misplaced – as well as the doom-laden predictions.
The reason I am not an alarmist about climate change is the same reason I wasn’t an alarmist about acid rain. Climate change is a much bigger issue, but it doesn’t persuade me to be proportionally more hysterical.
MT. You dismissed ‘lawyers’ with a broad brush so that would, if applied so simply, dismiss whatever the Sierra (Lawyer’s) Club said. Or the Centre for Biological Diversity for example.
I did not say that you had any affiliation with them. But I was wondering whether you applied your blanket dismissal to all lawyers, or just the ones you disagree with. Many people do that.
I fully agree with you that climate science or any real science does not simply have two sides but that is the simplistic ‘us v them’ box it has been put in, particularly for public discussion. That is the FIRST part of this problem.
Thus Keith’s recent posts about finding a ‘middle’ here are very helpful. There theoretically are no ‘sides’ in the middle, making it the ideal place to start.
Let’s start with the central premise that we have no idea what drives climate change over time and explore all possibilities from there.
That is what real science would do.
But really MT, enough about the old ‘tobacco’ story. If anyone actually thinks about it too much it will backfire on your arguments. The heavily funded and well organized ‘tobacco scientists’ don’t look like the ‘skeptics’ to me. But they do look more like the ‘Team.’
Must sign off for now. Christmas festivities. And since we have found some common ground on the absurdity of the “two sides” dynamic, seems like a fine time for an enjoyable pause.
@47 –
That was right in front of my face and I missed it!!
EdG, I’ve no doubt you are aware of the BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science, I also have no doubt what your reaction to this will be.
The Imperial College content analysis includes, for example, this about the BBC reporting of the ‘climategate’ reviews:
All reports referred to a lack of openness in their introductions but none opened with the finding that the review had found nothing that undermined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments.
This is a clear example of the imbalance I see even in the best reporting available. You won’t see this imbalance of course.
Perhaps you could suggest the earth-shaking ‘contrary’ research which hasn’t been reported on by the BBC? Bear in mind that there are literally hundreds of scientific papers published on the subject of climate change every year, the vast majority of which reinforce the scientific consensus and the vast majority of which get no attention at all in the mainstream media. I would contend that there is actually a strong bias towards reporting on studies that challenge the consensus position as these are perceived as being more newsworthy.
MT –
Just a thought. I think you’d be surprised at the list of ‘facts’ we could agree to. I like to say climate science is primitive and immature but I disagree with EdG @49. i think we have quite a good idea of what drives climate over time and particularly about the radiative properties of Co2.
There’s plenty more to learn of course but FWIW to my mind the most conservative thing in AR4 was the assertion that ‘very likely most’ of the late C20 warming was anthropogenic. Most? As in as little as half? I wouldn’t argue with a stronger statement, even though quantifying attribution seems to me an intractable problem.
Actually, I think AR4 might even have been slightly conservative about sea level changes too, for all the reasons of non-linearity that you’d expect. But that again has little to do with facts..
I think I was right not to be worried in the 80’s, though of course you’ll say “this one’s the big one..”
P.S I’m genuinely intrigues to find the facts we disagree about – seems a logical impossibility to me.
Regarding acid rain, this is a good summary.
http://www.isws.illinois.edu/pubdoc/CR/ISWSCR-457.pdf
Anteros, do you have any concern about the assertion that global warming is “the latest bandwagon concept” by Skelly and Innes in the article you quote above?
NiV –
Your link is interesting. I’ll peruse it at length, though it is relatively unrelated to my point to MT [which concerned, specifically Europe, and forestry, not watersheds].
The very fact that the acid rain story can be interpreted in a number of ways makes it an even more apt analogy for climate change. There were certainly [justified] charges of obfuscation and denialism too, though as far as I know more so in the US than in Europe.
One aspect that I haven’t head much explored is that if I were one of the activists from the 80’s I would be sorely tempted to say, well the exaggerations and alarmism were needed to overcome inertia and business interests on fitting So2 scrubbers to power stations… Of course I’d then go back to saying that there isn’t any exagerration at all about climate change – it is really as bad as we say it is…. So then I’d have to admit that I was just plain wrong saying that there was a catastrophe in progress in the mid-80’s….. even though I was certain and thought I was using scientific ‘evidence’..
54 –
No – should I have ‘concerns’?
The last people the AGW advocates are going to blame for their ongoing failure is themselves.
And that is a good thing.
A scarier proposition is they will actually truly look inward, diagnose their own short comings, and come out with more effective messaging. One based on transparency, giving skeptics a voice at the IPCC, breaking up the team as their “leadership”, clamping down on alarmism, etc.
If they want to blame it on the skeptics, that’s fine with me. If they believe business as usual is going to carry the day, then please keep trying.
The definition of insanity…
The empirical temperature record trend is a Rorschach test. Take it and find out your confirmation bias and even more! The climate sensitivity test is a personality test. Take it and find out if you are an optimist or a pessimist! Finding the temperature trends and studies of climate sensitivity is a mensa test. Take it and test your mensability. The emotive test requires a passionate display of interest and concern on the “climate” blogs. If you pass that test, go back and begin at the top of paragraph.
@57
You have a point, but what would be the more effective messaging? If I were one of the climate alarmed I think I’d go for the scary scenarios – one because I can’t think of anything else that would work and two because I guess I’d believe it was true! I don’t think OPatrick and MT are making up their concern – I think it is entirely genuine. So it isn’t really a message, more (their) truth.
56
Yes, I think so given that this appears to be your main source for your assertions about acid rain, which on a cursory examination seem to be at odds with the balance of opinion.
Do you not think that the use of an obviously partisan term like ‘bandwagon’ should alert you to the possibility that the authors are not being fully objective?
Its most interesting to see that these folks in California are mocking climate deniers. California’s governmental finances are passing the point of no return. Private businesses are fleeing the state in droves. And the economic consequences of global warming/environmental policies are front and center as causing this decline. See:
http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=107tub30gl0dufh&1=1&xid=yqkvmscgyetgwo&done=.yr69kg5cyi7yqk&_credir=1324168107&_c=107tub30gl0dufh
Brown, Pauchari, and Branson are all cheering on policies that are strangling California’s economy. And they are too oblivious of reality to see the path they are on and that it is all in service of a wholly fallacious pseudoscientific hoax.
Several times the point has been made here that the opponents of AGW are not the “real” problem. That is certainly true, but not in the manner intended.
@60
Are you serious? After all that stuff about ignoring statements from environmentalists as not representing environmentalism? You take one word – one single word – and want to use it to dismiss a survey of a whole area of science because it happens to fit your own very partisan agenda? I’m amazed.
You think you can cast aspersions on the integrity of two researchers you know nothing about because they choose to use one word that irritates your prejudices? And they do so about a completely unrelated part of science? When the scientific consensus hadn’t even been born? When, in fact there are, and always have been people jumping on the bandwagon?
Why don’t you just admit you’re too partisan to bother with the science as it tends to undermine your alarmism? It might be a coincidence, but a tiny bit of research would show to you that John Innes is the about the least partisan scientist you could imagine. And he’s not a climate sceptic.
It seems ironic you would have the audacity to use the term ‘objective’ as if you knew what it meant.
#61
Fred, the State Senate Republican Leader might not be the most objective source of analysis on the Californian economy.
#62
Anteros, I’m not sure how you’re getting this idea that acid rain was some kind of emotional outburst with weak or little scientific backing. The NAS issued a number of reports in the 1980s, which demonstrated strong evidence that sulfur dioxide and other emissions were indeed causing acid rain. Isn’t that why legislation was enacted to reduce these kinds of emissions, and the reason acid rain is not as much of a problem today as it was 30 years ago?
In places without such pollution controls, like China, the effects of acid rain are very obvious, and attempts at regulating such pollutants are being made by the Chinese government:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11192&page=73
“Sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from coal combustion are a primary contributor to acid rain and poor local air quality in China. Besides having adverse effects on human health, acid deposition has been recognized as an environmental threat to China’s agricultural productivity. Acidic substances adversely affect aquatic systems, forests, monuments, and regional climates and alter the sensitivity of lakes, forests, soils, and ecosystems. In the long term, acids leach nutrients from the soil and diminish agricultural yields.”
Are we to believe these are all alarmist fabrications and exaggerations? Or that the CCP leadership is unduly influenced by Chinese environmentalists who are eager to cry wolf?
Alex –
If you read my comments from the beginning you’ll see that I made some specific points. I wasn’t referring to North America at all. I was interested particularly with the hysteria about forest die-off [as I was at the time] in Europe.
I said
“Acid deposition is, of course, a real phenomenon ““ there isn’t any place for yes/no dichotomies about its existence”
I also made these comments –
” A real phenomenon. Some grounds for concern. Much investigation. It was the certainty that was misplaced”
And you might have noticed I acknowledged both types of partisans –
“There were certainly [justified] charges of obfuscation and denialism too”
There were a number of concerns about air pollution that came to a head in the early 80’s in Europe, but the main issue was the die-off [allegedly] of large areas of forest. There was definitely weak and lacking evidence tying the health of trees to airborne acid deposition – it was just assumed by the James Hansens of the day – and then the Green activists – because correlation was mistaken for causation.
A simplistic and fundamentalist mindset developed that was immune to reason, and it took a long time for science to re-assert itself and show that acid deposition had precious little to do with the health of European trees. People had simply made up their minds – and then closed them.
My main contention is this – with all the hysteria about alleged catastrophes that will be caused by AGW what can the lessons of the 80’s tell us? That a genuine phenomenon, when mixed with activism, imagination, doomsday-ism, exaggerated certainty, a tribal mentality and a political bandwagon might end up appearing to be something it is not. Do you know many people that haven’t ‘made their minds up’ about climate change?
Alex (63):
California’s economic demise is there for all to see, including its current 11.3% unemployment rate. This is, of course, among the highest in the nation.
No one in their right mind will build a manufacturing facility in California today. This is due to environmental and other regulations.
“Green jobs” in California, as in Spain, proved to be a mirage. What a surprise!
Alex (63):
For a little more about California’s business climate… CEO magazine has ranked California as the absolutely worst state to do business in for the seventh straight year. The Tax Foundation ranks California’s competitiveness as 49th in the nation. All just more Republican propaganda, I’m sure.
People (including politicians) who believe in global warming seem also to be limited in their understanding about those conditions that further economic growth. Someone should do a study on this correlation.
Michael Tobis –
I’m not sure if you are aware of this or not, but a whole bunch of E-mails were leaked which demonstrate that the climate scientists pushing global warming hysteria are manipulative liars.
Anteros, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. Are you saying that, since some very specific outbreaks of hysteria in a certain region, which are documented in a documentary film, and involved an unknown percentage of Europe’s population with unknown political impact, we should not believe anything any scientist says about global warming because some people are alarmist? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? Furthermore, how do you know that “forest die-off” was the “main issue” in Europe, and how does that apply at all to the appropriate policy responses to acid rain, much less global warming?
My impression is that you believe (and correct me if I’m wrong) that climate science, as a whole, is dominated by spurious research, perpetrated by a tightly-knit community of some tens of thousands who commit fraud with impunity, and therefore these scientists should not be trusted to base any sort of policy. But I can’t see how you can justify that position based on the case of limited European hysteria. Even if it turns out that every single European falsely believed in sudden forest die-off, that doesn’t mean sulfur dioxide emissions shouldn’t be controlled, because there are already very good reasons for that.
Fred, I’m sure you’re right in that Spain’s economy is ailing and unemployment in California is high. But does it make sense to attribute it “green economy” policies, based on sources like CEO Magazine and the Tax Foundation? It seems a little silly to distrust climate scientists by default but vice versa for popular magazines and political think tanks. And how is it that Denmark and Singapore have very relatively healthy economies with all their green policies?
Tom C (67): I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but pretty much every investigation of the Climategate e-mails (I think there are twelve now, including from organizations with a vested interest against action on climate change like the Department of Commerce) have turned up no evidence of scientific malfeasance. The worst thing we could accuse the handful of scientists involved is insufficient openness. Now that the CRU has released almost all of its raw climate data, I’m not sure what they can be faulted with anymore. On the other hand, I suppose to get all these different organizations to falsely exonerate the scheming scientists proves just how far their tentacles reach.
Alex –
Its a little tricky to respond because when you ask the question “are you saying…” my answer would be “no – read what I wrote”. And when you say “My impression is that you believe (correct me if I’m wrong)” I obviously have to correct you because you are wrong.
So, I’m not saying what you imagine I’m saying, and I don’t believe what you imagine I believe. It’s not a very productive way to proceed.
Why would I think that ‘tens of thousands of scientists commit fraud with impunity’ – is that what you believe? As far as I know there was no fraud – or even allegations of fraud – in European forestry in the 80’s. I certainly never saw any – and I was looking quite attentively.
What happened is that very many people – including scientists – believed, with unjustified certainty, that effectively all of Europe’s forests were going to die by the end of the 20th century, because of a theory that was chronically underdetermined by the evidence. It was a kind of madness, and when it passed no-one was quite sure how it had taken hold. Environmentalism in Germany is still scarred by it; scientists are still not trusted as a result.
So. In the knowledge that all the same social, psychological and political pressures exist today – perhaps many times more strongly – it is prudent to remember the lessons of the past. It might avoid such follies as feeding corn ethanol to cars and letting people starve as a result. What did the CRU email liberation tell us – really? That there is vastly more uncertainty in the climate science community than is communicated publicly. And climate science is primitive and immature anyway.
If you have ‘certain’ beliefs about what is going to happen to the earth’s climate I’d recommend having a check as to where they came from.
Alex –
You might have missed this link waldsterben which is a survey of the science published as it became clear that the causal relationship between acid deposition and tree die-offs was an illusion.
Alex –waldsterben
I’ve just been watching, for the first time, Battle Star Galactica, the ‘War and Peace’ of our television age. I am, I mean I identify with, Doctor Gais Balter and am honest enough (!?) to admit it* – this complex, rich and, ultimately, defeated character. Where is my comment leading? That there are doubting Thomas’s and that there are convinced Michaels – people who are so quick to put out confirmations of themselves and their perspectives, flippant and unthinking and those who wait, hold steady the tiller and are often sunk because of it. It is not the difference between ‘men of action’ and ‘men of thought’, since action is enacted but in the full and ugly glare of doubt and being ‘sicklied over with the pale cast of thought’. That does not say I am right, these are the facts but rather, balancing on an unsteady tightrope, this is my best guess at footfall. Thought – a mystery dearly bought with much blood and treasure.
*(Of course, the woman in my head is not a fake doll of a cylon but someone truly beautiful and truly lost.)
I can’t help it, Keith, but here goes, bin it if you must:
Gais Balter, his flaws are beautiful, like cracks in a diamond!
The rest of the Grist post (see Keith’s link) really says it all:
So, how does Brown propose to pay for his ambitious climate protection agenda? Noting that California is the eighth-largest economy in the world, the governor declared, “We have a huge amount of capital in California. This is not Greece … When something is important, you can find the money.” Referring to efforts to build a new home for the San Francisco 49ers, Brown added, “When a few people wanted to build a stadium to play 10 games of football a year, they found the money. If we can find $1 billion for relatively trivial reasons, we can find that money for more important things.”
The crowd applauded enthusiastically, overlooking how the governor had just conflated spending by investors seeking private profit with spending by government on behalf of the public good. That’s no small sleight of hand, given the severe budget problems in California. In 2009, the state briefly had to issue IOU’s when legislators could not agree on a budget; this year, Republicans’ refusal to increase taxes has led to massive cuts in education, health care, parks, and other public services.
Asked as he left the stage how he actually planned to pay for the climate actions he had just outlined, Brown told Grist, “I’m going to the people.” The governor hopes to place an initiative on the ballot next November that would authorize higher taxes on California’s wealthiest citizens. “Thousands of people have signed on, we’ve raised a couple of million dollars [to promote the initiative], and I’ll be raising more,” Brown said. “That’s how we’re going to do it, and I think we can win.”
How do the rich people react to additional taxes? Take for example Pachauri’s and Brown’s friend Branson:
Branson is the 4th richest citizen of the United Kingdom and 254th richest person in the world, according to the Forbes 2011 list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of US$4.2 billion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson
Virgin Enterprises’ Geneva move could help avoid millions in tax
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin brand division’s relocation from London deals blow to chancellor aiming for more UK-based firms
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/27/virgin-enterprises-geneva-tax-saving
Super-rich paying no income tax
British members of the super-rich who live here can minimise their tax bill through trusts in tax havens such as the Channel Islands or British Virgin Islands. If the assets owned by the trust are not held in the name of the individual and any income or capital gains is not returned to Britain, these are usually beyond the reach of the taxman. Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson uses offshore trusts, as does Formula One billionaire Bernie Ecclestone.
Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1611272/Super-rich-paying-no-income-tax.html#ixzz1gsboiMLZ
Anteros #62, you impose the message you want to hear onto what I wrote. I ask you about considering the possibility that the authors are not being objective, the term ‘bandwagon’ being a provocative one, you declare that I have dismissed their work to fit my partisan agenda. It remains the case that their conclusions, at least as you present them, appear at odds with the balance of opinion that acid rain has not significantly impacted on European forests. Even then on a more thorough reading of the Waldsterben article you linked to I would say you have significantly misrepresented it in #35. This quote for example:
“the only general consensus at the present time is that this (forest decline) is a complex problem involving a range of stress factors, including pollution, but that no single hypothesis can explain the forest decline phenomena observed in different locations on different species.”
is not their conclusion but rather a conclusion they are criticising. This suggests something much more nuanced than your declaration that
“A large number of people believed there were facts about the number of trees dying and facts concerning the cause ““ specifically that the only possible explanation was acidic deposition from coal fired power stations.”
should be read from their work.
The consensus on global warming was very much a reality when they were writing, as were the attacks on the science. And if anything, the story they outline contrasts with that of anthropogenic climate change, where a systematic review of the available science has been set up to analyse the threats objectively.
not “not”
And now, Vaclav Havel has gone and what else is there left to say. The blows of death hit one again and again in the solar plexus. The Czechs, his people, where ambivalent about him – he made an extraordinary brave decision early in his Presidency – he decided that since one couldn’t determine who was a criminal and who a political prisoner one should let all of them out. And they hated him for that. And his yearly soliloquies, his radio ‘sermons’, reminding them of their complex but beautiful Capek (sic! Sorry, I forget) roots. These extraordinary brave people, flawed, yes, for look how they continue to treat, despite their better nature, the so called ‘Gypsies’, but riddled with the ultimately Pyrrhic cancer of freedom. Vaclav, you were the best, the better self of ourselves and I feel guilty that latterly I didn’t pay attention to you. The power of the powerless, my friend.
Alex (69):
I know California businessmen who are political liberals who are at the end of their rope regarding how hard the state government of California is making it for their businesses. If you think California has an attractive business climate you are hopeless. For further evidence of the economic illiteracy of Gov. Brown, simply read Jarmo (76). “Green” policies are a big drag on the economy. Think Keystone Pipeline, Solyndra for a few examples.
As for “It seems a little silly to distrust climate scientists by default…” after Climategate distrust of climate scientists is not by default. My take on them after reading Climategate e-mails is that they are devious and deceptive. Even before Climategate McIntyre work on the “hockey stick” graph told me all I needed to know about whether to trust climate scientists. How gullible do you think people are?
“told me all I needed to know”
[…]
“How gullible do you think people are?”
Jarmo
The governor is a little confused. I think he was referring to AT&T Park the home of the Giants, where they play about 80 home games a year.
The Giants did pay for construction of Tat Park but it sits on city-owned property at the foot of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, near downtown. Beautiful spot and probably some of the most expensive real estate in the country; the Giants got to use it for free for the first 10 years. The city also kicked in $80 million in infrastructure improvements.
In contrast to Gov. Brown as discussed above, there is a California politician who understands that AGW is a harebrained theory which has wreaked billions of dollars of economic damage. Congressman Rohrabacher recently made the following remarks:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/17/congressman-rohrabachers-speech-on-climate/
More laughter came when [IPCC Chair Rajendra] Pachauri joked that Branson could give climate deniers tickets on the aviation mogul’s planned flights into outer space. “Perhaps it could be a one-way ticket,” Pachauri said, smiling, “though I’m not sure space deserves them.”
Reminds one of Lenin, Trotsky, and Berea speaking about the Kulak peasants.
Check out this paper by Pate-Cornell which makes the case that seems to express the frustrations that Keith and I share, and apparently even EdG is in some sort of agreement.
It concludes:
“Therefore, methods that are most likely to provide a reasonable degree of objectivity are those that focus on the gathering of a group of well-informed and socially adjusted individuals, on the construction of a complete set of hypotheses, and on the assessment of axiomatically correct probability distributions based on all scientific evidence. At that stage, an adversarial procedure can be counterproductive if it leads to the truncation of the evidence base to focus on extremes. In the courtroom when the objective is a verdict ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, it may be
appropriate. In a public policy arena where scarce resources must be allocated and therefore, priorities must be set, an adversarial process is likely to lead to bad economic decisions and eventually to failure of public policies.”
This is the point. This is where politics and the press and the adversarial model fail us. This is where IPCC, to varying degrees in different chapters and reports, sometimes succeeds. And this is why almost anything referring to “both sides” on scientific question is profoundly counterproductive. By its nature it selects for positions that are at odds with any reasonable consensus process.
Now, the fact that this adversarial model plays into the hands of people who do not want a consensus is not mentioned in the article. But that is a fairly obvious corrolary.
Durban failed by AGW is a dying movement and its members have never, even when holding near unquestioned sway in the public square, done one thing that actually worked.
That incompetents like Brown and corrupt leaders like Pachauri seek to blame skeptics for their failures is just part and parcel with a loser movement. The only reason AGW has failed to mitigate CO2 in the climate, reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, or pass any meaningful legislation that could ever do this is because the AGW movement is pushing bs.
By the way, Brown & gang are turning Cali into something that will be worse than Greece as fast as they can build trains and piss away money on other enviro scams.
MT:
Pate-Cornell’s piece is a proposal to circumvent the democratic process. Attempts to impose a “solution” to the alleged global warming problem regardless of the opposition necessitates a regime that controls all aspects of society and will deal with conflicts by force, coercion, and power. That is, it will be totalitarian.
Your bringing up this proposal comes in a thread starting with a story of how the IPCC chair has bizarre fantasies about banishing to outer space those who do not believe in global warming.
And Pate-Cornell’s proposal comes in the context of another demonstration via released e-mails of what appears to be political paranoia within the narrow group of Climategate scientists who turned any hint of disagreement with their agenda into a matter of us vs. them.
In sum, go fly a kite.
on the construction of a complete set of hypotheses, and on the assessment of axiomatically correct probability distributions based on all scientific evidence
Holy cow, MT. I’ve been saying this for years and I ain’t get no credit.
MT:
Sorry for the intemperate ending to my earlier post, but giving a committee of climate scientists power to totally re-order the economy (which a global warming finding would do) superseding the democratic form of government is a bit much to ask for. Especially for an issue like AGW which many of us believe is a hoax.
Short of a revolution, Pate-Cornell’s approach is, fortunately, beyond reach.
#85
In a public policy arena where scarce resources must be allocated and therefore, priorities must be set,
Exactly.
You somehow seem to assume that politicians would set global warming as #1 priority if there were no pesky skeptics questioning the science. Global deals would be struck and emissions would go down.
May I suggest I bit different approach: think of the problem in terms of the greatest industrial project ever undertaken. One that would have to started right away, would last for at least 50 years and whose main beneficiaries would be biodiversity, foreigners and their children.
Make this into a political platform and sell it to voters.
This old paper still illustrates the real problems well:
OF MONTREAL AND KYOTO:
A TALE OF TWO PROTOCOLS
http://www.climatechangeinsights.com/uploads/file/Of%20Montreal%20and%20Kyoto(1).pdf
#90
The way I read the piece that MT referred to Lindzen and christy and spencer and ANY expert who hypothesis does not violate known laws should be invited to the baysian bash.
Any the only way you get kicked out of the bash is if you say somebody elses hypothesis gets a zero probability.
Its pretty well know that if you have a group of people who all have
“positive” opinions of each other and each others ability to form hypothesis that you can mathematically derive a consensus from the group by an iterative process.. provided they all “approve” of each other.
As far as I can tell the approach suggested in that document would only rule out those who said C02 had no effect.
#91
giving a committee of climate scientists power to totally re-order the economy (which a global warming finding would do) superseding the democratic form of government is a bit much to ask for.
This is a massive red herring. Even in the event of an absolutely unquestionable “global warming finding” that doesn’t mean that scientists have the power to dictate to governments what the solution should be.
Am I a socially adjusted individual? #89 Are you?
Doug (#95):
I have no idea who or would not meet your definition of “socially adjusted.” Nor do I see its relevance here. Explain, please.
ooops, I should have referrenced # 86 instead of #89. So sorry, but we must exclude Sir Isaac Newton from this socially adjusted gathering. Any others?
@97 Doug,
Einstein was pretty unpleasant in many ways. And Rammunajan talked to his favorite Hindu goddess for inspiration. And Edward Teller arranged for Oppenheimer to get canned. and Oppeheimer was pretty odd ball himself. And of course Mann is proving to be the Capt. Queeg of science for his generation…..
hunter (98) and MT (86):
Corroborating hunter’s characterization of those prominent scientists is that a very good psychologist once told me that many scientists manifested a “schizoid personality.” Apparently, this makes it likely they will not be characterized as “well-informed and socially adjusted individuals.” Nor will they show much common sense.
We see a lot of these characteristics coming out in the Climategate e-mails. Not a group you want making public policy if you care about the welfare of society.
@99 Fred,
Cliamtegate e-mails at the very least shows that the self-named ‘team’ has developed a very unhealthy dynamic towards their work, their science, ethics and integrity. Who would think of going to theortical astronmoers for advice on how to develop rocket and spaceflight technology? Yet climate scientsts claim to know the problem, what causes the problem, what biological, ocean, weather, agricultural and civil engineering implications of the problem are, but also the only cure for the problem. That is strange on its face.
72 Anteros:
“very many people … believed”
How many people exactly? How does this reduces the necessity of policy action to mitigate acid rain? The effects of acid rain are very well-known, and China shows these impacts most clearly. I don’t see any links between what seems to be an exclusively European phenomenon involving relatively few forest pathologists, and climate change involving 97% climate scientists, except for what appears to be guilt-by-tenuous association. Indeed, if most forest pathologists are saying that forest-die-off is a myth, then doesn’t that show how science is effective at correcting misconceptions?
About your point on uncertainty: Doesn’t the IPCC mention “uncertainty” thousands of times in their working group reports? Don’t they make their definitions of uncertainty quite precise and specific, in Box TS.1? I think we should all know what science makes no claims of certainty, and even scientific laws and constants are subject to change. So why insist that “certainty” is required to do anything? We buy house and car insurance even though the probability of our houses being destroyed in individually slim. We put on seatbelts even though the chances of getting into a car crash are slim. Engineers generally aim for one-in-a-million failure rates. Why adopt a more cavalier attitude towards climate change, when the consequences are vaster and more severe?
Hunter #100 “Yet climate scientsts claim to know the problem, what causes the problem, what biological, ocean, weather, agricultural and civil engineering implications of the problem are, but also the only cure for the problem.” A ridiculous straw man argument. Nobody makes such a claim for their self. This is why we need a formal process, and why we try to have one.
“on the construction of a complete set of hypotheses, and on the assessment of axiomatically correct probability distributions based on all scientific evidence”
Sashka #90: “Holy cow, MT. I’ve been saying this for years and I ain’t get no credit.”
On you, Sashka, it looks like a delaying tactic. By “axiomatically” they mean consistent with the laws of probability, so that a joint Bayesian analysis is feasible. You, on the other hand, seem to me by “axiomatically correct” mean “reducible to established principles in mathematical physics”. If such a thing is even possible, it will be far in the future. We need contingent decisions, now, which is one of the points explicitly made in the paper.
The question of who is reasonable and socially adjusted is indeed key. The whole argument breaks down if the condition of the field is as disorganized and weak as some people seem to think. But in that case, I would argue, that no consensus as to who should be at the table would be possible.
I believe that the community does not consider Lindzen reasonable anymore.
What one “believes” about CO2 is not the issue. The issue is intellectual and social sophistication. There is nothing for it.
And yes, that’s obviously problematic. It is a very hard characteristic to formally test for, though a publication record is a useful proxy. In the end, nothing will do except peer review.
Lindzen, for instance, will not budge above a half degree sensitivity, though famously he is not willing to place bets on that basis. This means either that he is right and almost everybody else is wrong, or he is stubborn. And excluding stubborn people is crucial to finding a group that can cooperate sufficiently. Clearly the sense of the community will be to exclude him.
Whether or not this is justified cannot be tested except by looking into the original choice of the panel. If you start with guys who show up at Heartland you’ll end up with exactly what they indeed up with in Singer’s Not-the-IPCC report. Pate-Cornell’s approach can formalize existing processes, but it can’t tell you whether you
got the right people to start with. (Presuming, of course, that your panel understands well enough what an axiomatically consistent well-formed probability space looks like, which in the case of many prominent naysayers I would doubt.)
Mutual regard, relevant knowledge, social competence, and intellectual capacity are what we need for the process to work. People incapable of doubting their own hypotheses can bias the process.
@ 103
I was wondering what they call “axiomatically” which is why I didn’t put it in the bold to separate my position away from this, because I never said this word. Apparently the distinction is not as subtle as I thought. You understood me correctly though in that, in my view, the pdf must be calculated based on laws on physics and nothing else. I’m pretty sure that most people with training in hard sciences, yourself included, would normally hold the same position. This amazing attempt to circumvent normal scientific process is just for climate, with the best intentions, no doubt, but not any more convincing nevertheless.
It sounds like an attempt to replace hard science with soft and fuzzy one. If so I don’t think it can fly.
What do you mean by “contingent decisions”?
@ 104
People incapable of doubting their own hypotheses can bias the process.
Is irony lost on you?
Anteros @ 23 (responding to Tobis @ 18):
“I think I might take offence at your anti-democratic bid for more power here – “Stop allowing the Anteroses of the world to make a whole broad spectrum of crucial decisions about how to manage a crowded world into a yes/no question about carbon sensitivity” ““ if it made any sense at all. Why shouldn’t the well-informed, literate, moderate and pragmatic Anteroses of the world have their democratic say about all the crucial decisions of the world? I generally say very little about carbon sensitivity ““ and the last thing I tend to do is to push people towards dichotomous yes/no questions.”
But the Anteros in question is flat-out dishonest on the subject of carbon sensitivity. You seem to have forgotten your earlier problems with this.
You have described climate scientists as the ‘orthodox alarmist priesthood’ here, on this blog. Subsequently you said:
Yet again you are wrong to think that I need CS to be anything at all. It makes no difference to me. You mistake me for a fundamentalist like yourself.
But everything you say is predicated on a belief that AGW is not a problem and the “˜orthodox alarmist priesthood’ of mainstream climate science is a fear-mongering religion. This requires a low CS.
You sum this up:
The exaggerating and doomsaying will be forgotten and the recollection will be how close we were to disaster.
For your argument to maintain internal coherence, you do need CS to be low. That is, in the 1 ““ 2C range.
Posing as an agnostic, or claiming that a bit either way doesn’t matter (“˜It makes no difference to me’) is dishonest. But you have done it repeatedly on this blog.
Your recent attempts to portray yourself as the soul of reason do not work on those of us with functional memories.
So perhaps MT has a point.
#106, not at all. I am aware that there are those who think I am stubborn and incapable of doubt. It is indeed ironic, because I question my confidence all the time.
In fact I would be thrilled rather than threatened if either the balance, or own my understanding of it, were to change in a more benign direction.
I don’t even say that something like the naysayers’ position is impossible.
I simply can’t see giving enough credence on present evidence to the idea that the sensitivity is grossly overestimated that it would justify the gross inaction that is currently the situation. Indeed, the amount of reassuring new evidence would need to be enormous.
In order to change my policy position, the probablity of near-consensus or worse-than-consensus outcomes would have to go to below 10 % or so and the probability of some of the various Heartland fringe positions or something similar would go above 90% or so.
Some people affect such a belief. I can’t imagine how they convince themselves once they look into either the evidence or the history of the problem.
Some resort to bizarre dreamlike conspiracy-mongering. Knowing the people involved my prior on the conspiracy angle is infinitesimal. As Abby Hoffman said about the Chicago Eight “these people couldn’t agree on lunch”. Except instead of eight strong-willed arrogant people conspiring you’d need a hundred thousand. Good luck with that.
re #105.
A complete theory of climate with sufficient precision to really constrain all the relevant parameters to eliminate policy uncertainty may well require thousands of years of data collection. Or, even worse, it may well prove impossible.
But decisions are always made under uncertainty. If the bulk of evidence that points to huge shifts in the climate over the next couple of centuries in response to cumulative emissions is correct, it is necessary for us to dramatically reduce those accumulating emissions.
The idea that this is “abnormal” or “unscientific” strikes me as coming form a bizarre and very narrow view of what science is or isn’t, which is to say, mathematical physics or nothing.
I doubt that Sashka, next time he gets medical advice, will reject it on comparable grounds. Decisions must be made on imperfect information. There is nothing remotely unusual about it. Rather, the cases where mathematical physics can be scaled up to the human scale natural world are the rarities. (Engineers often manage something like this but someone like Sashka would be horrified by the fudge factors and rules of thumb that intervene on the way to a successful deployment.)
Again, we are talking about extracting collective best estimates from a problem that cannot be solved in every detail, but about which there is substantial knowledge.
Steven Schneider: “Climate Science is a systems science. It’s like trying to understand your body.. or how is the education system going to work most effectively… or how do we stay secure. Every one of these complex system problems has multiple components…. rarely do we know everything and rarely do we know nothing.”
See Stephen Schneider: Science and Distortion
Yet still we must make decisions. The question is exactly how to make use of partial information in making decisions.
# 104 MT writes:
“The question of who is reasonable and socially adjusted is indeed key.”
Are sure you really want to go down this road?
The first time I ever saw your name was due to your expletive-loaded hysterical rant publicized by WUWT.
Not reasonable, and arguably not “socially adjusted” – depending on how one might choose to interpret that conveniently mushy term.
This whole line of argument smells like North Korea to me. Or back in the USSR when those not suitable “socially adjusted” to their lemming status were sent to ‘psychiatric’ prisons.
#105,
I wondered about “axiomatically correct probability distributions” too. I somehow doubt that they’re talking about measures over sigma algebras! For the sorts of distributions they’re talking about here, that would be a trivial requirement.
I think what they’re referring to is the well known fact that “expert judgement” does not usually act as a consistent probability measure. What I expect they’re asking for is probability assessments constructed so as to be at least consistently interpretable as probabilities. You can either do that by estimating the distributions from observations or Monte Carlo models using statistics (and assumptions), or you can back-calculate from a minimum independent set of ‘expert judgements’ what the probabilities of all the other events would have to be to keep things consistent. Either way, there doesn’t appear to be any guarantee that the result will be correct or justifiable, let alone derived from physical first principles.
Since many of the IPCC judgements and conclusions do appear to be based on the authors’ ‘gut feel’ judgements, it is actually a step forward. But a small one.
MT:
Do you ever tire of being accused of cheerleading for totalitarianism? It’s getting kind of bizarre. Not that it wasn’t strange to begin with.
81 Fred:
I know of Ontario businessmen who think the green policies of the province are a great idea. Personal anecdotes don’t really help the argument. I have also mentioned in the previous comment a few economies with strong green policies that are doing fine.
On Climategate, didn’t twelve investigations reveal no scientific misconduct, except for insufficient openness to laymen and non-cooperation with FOIA requests? Apparently their data is not in doubt, Clear Climate Code, BEST, and various bloggers have demonstrated that. Are all twelve investigations mistaken or corrupt, even the IG for the Department of Commerce who has an interest in obstructing climate policy? Is Richard Muller’s team and CCC also corrupt?
On the hockey stick, there are now more than two dozen studies reconstructing temperatures over the past one or two millenia. Here’s a few that don’t include any authors who are members of “the Team”:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5722/675.abstract
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5945/1236.abstract
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD012603.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044771.shtml
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n6/abs/ngeo865.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0459.2010.00399.x/abstract
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044771.shtml
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/abs/nature10581.html
If the Mann et al. are deliberately misinterpreting the data, why produce data that is similar to everyone else’s results? If their results are spurious, does this mean that everyone else in the paleoclimate community also incompetent and/or corrupt, all in the same direction?
@MT 102,
While we both agree it is ridiculous, I would point out that no less than Hansen has done exactly what I described. And I believe a reasonable review of the public square will show Hansen is not alone in doing what I describe.
Ridiculous, agreed. Strawman? Ask your guys who do it.
My f-bombing of Mosher was a one-time thing.
I write a lot and I don’t habitually write like that.
But sometimes I want to remind people how very angry I am about the CRU hacking and its aftermath, which were simultaneously petty and malicious at the same time as being extravagantly destructive on a grand scale. The vileness of the whole character assassination business continues to leave me slack-jawed in amazement and horror.
It’s interesting that people find it so memorable that out of the thousands of things I’ve written on the web there’s one that uses the f-word eleven times, yet nobody seems to remember why I wrote it.
I suppose it’s just a little more character assassination. Cal it icing on the cake. At least I can take comfort that I am in good company.
But as for EdG’s more serious question, yes, I’m afraid we all have to go down this road together if we’re going to make progress. You do want to make progress, don’t you?
Back to the scientific questions, if they actually matter. This look at the key question of climate sensitivity, noted in some comments here, is food for thought:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/18/co2-sensitivity-is-multi-modal-all-bets-are-off/
Yes. I know it is in a library that some people don’t like to visit…
# 115 – MT. To paraphrase Clinton, that all depends on what your definition of “progress” is.
113 Hunter:
“public square”
Key words. James Hansen is entitled to have his own opinions and has the right to voice them, just like the rest of us. Now if Hansen published peer-reviewed papers on economics and public policy that were clearly outside of his expertise, this might raise an eyebrow. If it is unethical for James Hansen to say anything at all outside of this expertise, wouldn’t you and I be just as guilty for talking about these subjects publicly like this?
If we wanted to ask an economist about climate change, we have no shortage of those making policy recommendations either. Richard Tol is often sympathetic to skeptics but he still concludes that a carbon price of some kind is necessary. I actually can’t think of a single mainstream economist who says the opposite. Even Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek say that it’s the government’s role to correct externalities. I think you’d find a similar consensus among city planners and civil engineers, in that they would generally conclude that municipalities should implement adaptation measures of some kind.
If Hansen (or some other scientist, or you and I for that matter) repeats these views, rather than making it seem like they were the originators, I don’t see what the big problem is. To claim that they do pretend to be the originator of all knowledge on climate change is essentially creating a strawman argument.
@112
“I know of Ontario businessmen who think the green policies of the province are a great idea”
They don’t happen to work in the renewable sector perchance? Unsurprisingly, yes it is possible to find a businessman who is willing to have the public subsidize his business.
I know of an auditor general who has a less rosy view of the policy:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/touch/story.html?id=5813926
@ 108, 109
It’s not that the sensitivity is grossly overestimated. It is simply unknown to the extent necessary for a rational discussion. There is no mean nor error bar b/c there is no distribution. (But let’s leave that alone for now.) What you are selling as a “mean” estimate is not even factor of 2 of what can be as reasonably considered as error bar. Say 3C, +/- 1C. That’s a ridiculous uncertainty. You might say that 2C is bad enough but I’ll say even 3C may not be such a big deal. And BTW, I can’t rule out 1.5 (and 4.5), too.
Surely complete theory of climate is too hard, most likely impossible. But it may (or may not) be impossible to narrow the uncertainty down from the current 2C (or so) to something more manageable, say 0.5C. If it’s impossible, then too bad. You guys, the scientists, should come out clean and deliver the bad news to general public. Just don’t tell us that the science is on your side. It isn’t.
I agree that decisions are often made under uncertainty. I offered you my gangrene analogy a while ago and I still think it’s most apt. (No, I woudn’t let them amputate my arm on suspicion.) We will indeed have to make a decision under uncertainty. I just don’t want the uncertainty to be ignored or played down as many of your camp want.
Sorry, I don’t believe in collective best estimates and neither should you. Your training in science should have inoculated you. I am appalled that it didn’t. Many times I brought to your attention to how well collective best estimates worked during financial crisis. I will probably have to do it again and again. I don’t know how you manage to block out the inconvenient facts but you do.
Steven Schneider is not an authority for me. No only that he had no training in climate but his contribution to science is really minor. “Systems science” is just a fancy way of say it’s not a science. It’s true that we know more than nothing, but “systems science” won’t help us make the right decision. Not that I want to pretend that I know what it is.
I don’t know how to go about making the decisions. But I think I know how not to.
#117 +1 Thank you, Alex, well and truly said.
“Surely complete theory of climate is too hard, most likely impossible. But it may (or may not) be impossible to narrow the uncertainty down from the current 2C (or so) to something more manageable, say 0.5C. If it’s impossible, then too bad. You guys, the scientists, should come out clean and deliver the bad news to general public. Just don’t tell us that the science is on your side. It isn’t.”
Some may read this as childish nonsense, but it is more than that. This is really the clearest statement I have seen to date of Sashka’s position. As such I am grateful for it.
It is far more clear than the way Sashka has expressed it in the past. This will save much nailing Jello to the wall later.
To be fair, Sashka, do you confirm that a factor of two on effective carbon sensitivity is hardly more useful than no information whatsoever?
If so, what fractional value for uncertainty do you require? It seems an odd coincidence that you place such a strong threshhold between a factor of 2 and a factor of 1.3. That gap seems no insuperable.
Meanwhile, given that you have stipulated somewhere between 2 C and 4 C, would it not at the least be sensible to design policy accepting that the sensitivity is at least at the low end of the consensus bounds?
I took no offense at what MT said. I’d rather folks drop it. As I have said many times I admire his passion. There are things we disagree on, and will probably never settle those issues. So, I’d rather see if there areas that we can agree on. This doesnt mean i wont correct factual errors.
#121,
I don’t think it was the size of the uncertainty region that was of concern, but the kind of uncertainty.
I’d like to tell you the parable of the Emperor of China’s nose.
The Emperor lived in the Hidden City, where nobody had ever seen his face, but scholars came to be curious about the length of his nose. So what they did was to send a survey round to all the people in China, 100 million of them at the time, asking each citizen to estimate the number. They did not know, nobody having ever seen the Emperor, but they each managed to put down some sort of guess.
And then the scholars took all the answers, added them up, and divided by 100 million. The answer, they reasoned must be 10,000 times more accurate that all the individual guesses, because each guess was independent – no collusion. And given that the spread of guesses was less than 10 cm, the final answer is therefore accurate to better than a micrometre!
But the scholars thought they could do better. The simple average weights all guesses equally. They could instead weight them according to their ‘nasal sensitivity’ and get an even better answer. So they also asked all the people to estimate the lengths of the noses of the Emperor’s guards. They then went and measured the guard’s noses, and selected those ballots that came closest. The closer they were, the more ‘nasally sensitive’ the estimator, the greater the weight it was given in the calculation. Those who got it completely wrong were discarded.
And when they plotted the resulting weighted averages for all the guards, all overlaid on a ‘noodle graph’, they were amazed at how closely the weighted average tracked the actual values! It was working!
Well, you can work out the rest of the story for yourself. The scholars were using unexceptionable statistics, with the most sophisticated Bayesian updating of probability distributions, and getting ever narrower confidence bounds out. But what was it all based on? How does the information propagate out from the nose itself?
All the estimates are based on reasoning and observations and assumptions, but many of those will be in common, often without people even realising it. (e.g. without realising that they are assumptions.)
The average is a measurement of the experts beliefs rather than of the system under study, and considered as such can be very accurate. But to make real progress you have to first validate your models and sources individually, prior to selection.
Hey, guys, I just ran out of popcorn 🙁
Michael T #121:
I think I understand the Kevin Anderson view, by that I mean I have tried to figure out how he comes to his conclusions. Given what we know and the accuracy see ascribe to that knowledge we can construct emission scenarios and come up with an estimate of the chance that each scenario has of staying below some threshold temperature rise, say 2ºC but other values can be chosen.
My understanding of that view is that the COP negotiations, even if successful, are leading to a low probability (less than 50:50) of staying below the 2ºC threshold. E.G. that staying below that level would require the sensitivity (CS) to be low, say < 2.5ºC or =~ 2ºC. The level of ambition in the COP process would be insufficienct should the CS turn out to be 3ºC.
Such is the dark hole that David Roberts (Grist) has looked into, desrbibed, and come away seemingly a little shell-shocked. It is a view in which the COP process is itself either badly informed or in denial, at best a case of wishfull thinking stemming from an incorrect, outdated, or unjustifiably optimistic reading of the scientific basis.
In that view the COP process is already deeply fudged and compromised, has already given out so much slack that it risks loosing the end of the rope.
I have termed it the Anderson view, but I suspect others have got there before he. Perhaps you and others like you have seen this for some time, based on a suspicion but on the fairest reading of the science they can muster.
I take, and express the view, that we need to embrace the uncertainties and I guess that makes me seem a bad boy, essentially unhelpful. What is not so clear, is when explored such an approach does not dodge the issue, it isn’t a get out of gaol free, it is not optimistic. In my interpretation, it is not the risk of very large values of CS (>>3ºC) that is the issue, it is the low probabilities that CS <=~ 2ºC that is the issue.
As a private excercise, I make what optimistic yet plausible assumptions I can muster, for CS, a temperatue threshold, emission reduction rates, etc, and attempt to match these with thermal uptake rates and aerosol factors etc, in much the way that others can do at that moderate level of sophistication and still I crash the planet. I don’t go near the “bad” options. High values of CS or thermally induced methane production are not the issue. I don’t go looking for trouble.
Perhaps someone would do us a favour and build for us a gaming version of the scenario models, picking sight unseen, compatible parameter values from the IPCC probability space, equiping it with the necessary, macro-economic, social and political levers and readouts and we could all find out difficult or easy it is to fly the planet and whether the climate has a coffin corner and if so do we have the skills and resources to go there and yet safely land.
If readers gather anything from this, perhaps it will be the apparent disconnect from where the debate currently is. The view I am expressing is not from the same planet as a notional 1.5ºC threshold, or that we should put our hope in worrying about methane release. It is a view that says you can forget all that.
Michael, I cannot say which bits of this you and others would agree with and which not, you could comment but this view exists no matter what. If it be criticised then in fairness be that on whether it springs logically from the IPPC scientific analysis. If it does, it is its extention, and those that concur with that analysis need to consider it. I think it does, and I must think that Kevin Anderson thinks something similar be the case.
Alex
Alexander Harvey
A very good summary. Thanks for that. Clipping bits out does the whole no justice, but even so, I think this bears emphasis here:
As a private excercise, I make what optimistic yet plausible assumptions I can muster, for CS, a temperatue threshold, emission reduction rates, etc, and attempt to match these with thermal uptake rates and aerosol factors etc, in much the way that others can do at that moderate level of sophistication and still I crash the planet. I don’t go near the “bad” options. High values of CS or thermally induced methane production are not the issue. I don’t go looking for trouble.
MT. your dropping the f bomb about climategate is just because deep inside you know it is sinking your faith. You are acting no different than a fundie hearing about evolution or that the Earth is billions, not 6,000, years old.
hunter,
Comments such as these and others you’ve been leaving of late increase the noise to signal ratio. I presume you are aware and that is your intention.
BBD,
Thanks for the thanks. I will try not to add or subtract from the content, I laboured to make it honest and I could upset that.
Yet I will make it clear that it is most applicable to those that concur with the IPCC analysis and that I have a dislike for those that take refuge in bad cases.
Alex
@ 121
Some may read this as childish nonsense
I respect your opinions, too.
do you confirm that a factor of two on effective carbon sensitivity is hardly more useful than no information whatsoever?
Useful for what? For helping make relatively painless decisions (e.g. improving energy efficiency) it is very useful. For making very hard decisions it is not very useful.
If so, what fractional value for uncertainty do you require?
10
It seems an odd coincidence that you place such a strong threshhold between a factor of 2 and a factor of 1.3.
I didn’t.
you have stipulated somewhere between 2 C and 4 C
I didn’t.
would it not at the least be sensible to design policy accepting that the sensitivity is at least at the low end of the consensus bounds?
If just that one (all-agreed, which it isn’t) number would describe the whole situation (which it doesn’t) then yes.
I don’t understand how policies can be set on the expectation that climate sensitivity is 2 vs. 3 vs. 4 degrees. Regional climate models have no skill. Roger Pielke Sr. has been saying this for a long time and getting savaged by the Team. Read his latest post, though, and see how the IPCC authors admit as much in private.
Tom C
That’s an avoidance tactic, not an argument.
NiV @ 123
Are we then to suppose that we can know nothing of value about CS? What exactly are you trying to say here?
BBD –
It’s a tactic for avoiding doing something wasteful.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that models accurately predict CS. The value of CS tells you nothing about whether location A will be wetter or drier or have more droughts or less droughts, or more hurricanes or less hurricanes than location B. So why and how should the residents of location A implement policies?
The common sense response at this pont is to realize that it was warmer 800 years ago and everyone did just fine.
And before you jump in, Alex, regarding how many studies prove the hockey stick, read the E-mails from Cook and Briffa that state (in private) how much confidence they place in these reconstructions. Then read how the supposedly confirming studies all use smuggled versions of Yamal, BCPs and Tiljander.
NiV is trying to say with this analogy that nobody has ever done any climate science and what we are talking about is all guesswork. I didn’t see him say it was impossible, simply that it hasn’t happened or might not have happened.
Evidently, it is NiV who is guessing, and wrongly as well.
EdG, I define progress as moving closer to a reasonable understanding of what the evidence shows and an informed public consensus on how to respond to it.
I presume that is the purpose of public discourse and the key mechanism for democracy. If we are not going to get things drastically wrong, we need to find ways to think about those things that tend to get reasonable answers.
In short, if I am wrong I want you to convince me of it, and if you are wrong, I want you to allow me to convince you of it. That is exactly the definition of reasonableness and social adjustment that Pate-Cornell referred to.
If you have some other definition of progress, then I need some convincing that I should engage with you at all.
Tom C
The common sense response at this pont is to realize that it was warmer 800 years ago and everyone did just fine.
Not this again.
You are claiming that global average temperatures were higher 1200CE than the present. They weren’t.
References please.
You are missing (avoiding) the point, which is simple and clear: rapid warming will disrupt and reorganise the climate system in a multitude of ways. There will be many more losers that winners, irrespective of current inability to make accurate regional projections. The warmer it gets, the higher the proportion of losers to winners.
# 136 MT writes:
“I define progress as moving closer to a reasonable understanding of what the evidence shows and an informed public consensus on how to respond to it.”
Sounds like a fine working definition to me. Even gives me a little ‘hope and change’ buzz. I certainly hope that that kind of thinking guides us going forward. That would be a major change and improvement on what has happened re ‘climate change’ so far, which has been a case of the unreasonable promotion of selected evidence and a deliberate and concerted attempt to manufacture a misinformed public consensus.
Unfortunately, what these ‘climate hawks’ said and the attitude that underlies that suggests that this change will be very slow. Indeed I see Patchy as sort of an anti-canary in the coal mine. As long as he is still head the IPCC there is no real progress at that level, and his anti-science mentality will just keep seeping downward.
Of course, this whole thing is not about science in any case. This is a political project using ‘science’ as leverage. That is why people like Patchy are where they are.
In the meantime, Climategate has broken open the gates and more research is coming out, more is being scrutinized properly, more junk is being tossed out, and, as usual, the climate continues to change as it always has and always will. With the CO2 blinkers removed we will eventually understand more about this process.
@ 125
I crash the planet
Before we get too far with hyperbolas, could explain why you think that 2C warming will be a net negative for the planet? After that we could discuss the crash.
137. “There will be many more losers that winners, irrespective of current inability to make accurate regional projections. The warmer it gets, the higher the proportion of losers to winners.”
I’m confused. So while we don’t “know” what will happen, we *know* what will happen?
Menth
I’m confused. So while we don’t “know” what will happen, we *know* what will happen?
We have enough of an idea to make hiding behind the argument that ‘models lack regional predictive skill’ as patently absurd as it is patently an evasion.
The more we alter the atmosphere the more two things happen:
1) We create dramatic shifts that existing systems are maladapted for.
2) Our predictive abilities decline.
We cannot use uncertainty as cause for delay for quite a few reasons. Here’s another one: we can’t use uncertainty as an excuse for delay because the more we delay, the worse the uncertainty. The advance of science will likely not keep up with the increasing number of unanticipated nonlinear couplings.
So,
“I’m confused. So while we don’t “know” what will happen, we *know* what will happen?”
If you push something hard enough it will fall over. The fact that it is difficult to predict in advance what little pieces it will shatter into when it falls is no reason to keep pushing.
Really, it’s practically all like this. The delayer/naysayer/denier arguments make astonishingly little sense when you look at them carefully. This thread has been good for baring the underlying silliness, though.
@ 142
we can’t use uncertainty as an excuse for delay because the more we delay, the worse the uncertainty. The advance of science will likely not keep up with the increasing number of unanticipated nonlinear couplings.
Stunning. Now we are supposed to jump to action right away because the scientists are failing to do their job. This begs the question: is it rational for us (the society) to continue paying you?
BBD and Tobis – You are giving faith-based answers to the question of what a couple degrees GMT warming would bring. What is the evidence? To repeat, the overwhelming body of literature suggests (not proves, suggests) that it was warmer 800 years ago. The literature you cite to the contrary is not credible since it uses highly problematic proxies.
This thread has been good for baring the underlying silliness, though.
When the arguments end the insults begin. Yawn.
Tom C
I think you will find it is you who is relying on faith:
BBD and Tobis ““ You are giving faith-based answers to the question of what a couple degrees GMT warming would bring. What is the evidence? To repeat, the overwhelming body of literature suggests (not proves, suggests) that it was warmer 800 years ago.
I asked for references for the assertion that global average temperature ‘800 years ago’ was as high or higher than the present. You haven’t so far provided any. Yet you now claim that this is what ‘the overwhelming body of literature suggests’.
So let’s have a convincing set of references then.
“we can’t use uncertainty as an excuse for delay because the more we delay, the worse the uncertainty.”
Why wouldn’t delay – ie watching what happens – result in more certainty? Observation does in every other science.
The switcheroo to “climate justice” and “intensity” of GHG emissions are both calculated to delay mitigation and come entirely from the “climate concerned.” I assure you, no “conservative” or “tea partier” came up with the twin sillinesses of a $100 billion annual climate slush fund and “emissions treaties” that exempt the largest emitters for political reasons.
Let’s be clear who really has been “delaying.” Do you think it was the climate skeptics who pushed Germany’s decision to switch from nukes to fossil fuels?
If you refused to start the car for an hour because I was five minutes late getting out the door, which one of us “delayed” our arrival at the party by an hour? Which one of us “denies” the need to be on time?
Tom C asks a much more sensible question than others here. It deserves an answer at least. I would say several answers.
We do not know at what point the damage becomes severe enough as to reduce the wealth of the world, at what point it becomes severe enough to create refugees and major population pressures, at what point it limits and starts reducing the total human population. The 2 C level is a rough consensus, much cruder than the sensitivity and delivered by less mature sciences.
We do know that ecological damage has already begun.
There’s plenty of literature on this, of course. But it’s far from unanimous. I will be working on essays on this question.
Was it worth the page views, Keith?
http://www.grist.org/climate-skeptics/2011-12-16-new-approach-to-climate-deniers-launch-them-into-space
This article by Mark Hertsgaard was criticized following publication by Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who said that the article badly misquoted his remarks at the “Extreme Climate Risks and California’s Future” conference. Via email, Dr. Pachauri denied he said anything about giving climate change deniers “a one-way ticket to space.” That joking comment, Pachauri went on, was actually made by Sir Richard Branson, the chair of the Virgin Group, and it referred not to climate change deniers but to officials with the US government housing authorities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who were allegedly obstructing California’s efforts in energy efficiency. Branson agreed, through a spokesperson, that it was he who made the “ticket to space” comment.
Hertsgaard had sought, prior to publication, to verify the accuracy of his article by checking his notes of the discussion against video that had been shot of the conference and was supposed to be posted on Gov. Brown’s official website, but the video of that portion of the conference was not yet available. The video was, however, added to the website over the weekend, and Hertsgaard viewed it on Sunday afternoon Pacific Time.
The video shows that there were in fact two occasions during the discussion when the notion of a “one way ticket to space” was discussed. Branson and Pachauri are correct that on the first occasion (which comes roughly 40 minutes into the video), it was Branson who made the comment, and that he was referring to the federal housing officials. On the second occasion, at roughly 55 minutes into the video, it is Dr. Pachauri who reprises the phrase, though he does not direct it specifically at climate change deniers; indeed, it is not absolutely clear to whom Pachauri is referring when he says, again with a joking tone, “Those who are becoming obstacles in implementing what is rational should be made the responsibility of Sir Richard to give this one way ticket to outer space. Of course space would be unfortunate to get some of these guys.”
Hertsgaard and the editors of Grist regret not making the specifics of these two exchanges clear in the original version of the article. We have now revised and corrected the text to reflect the quotes documented by the video. Hertsgaard and the editors also apologize for any misunderstandings that may have arisen from the article. Finally, they remind everyone concerned that the comments in question were, after all, only a joke.
“Why wouldn’t delay ““ ie watching what happens ““ result in more certainty? Observation does in every other science.”
Because we are driving the system further and further from the conditions where we have observations.
You know how you feel, for example, if you miss a night’s sleep. But you probably don’t know how you feel when you miss a week’s sleep. You can be pretty sure that it would be “lousy”, but no amount of study of a night’s sleep deprivation will tell you much about the week’s sleep deprivation. You have to do the experiment.
Well, fortunately, you don’t actually have to do it. That’s the point. It’s fair to say that it would be terrible without actually knowing how that terribleness would manifest. We know enough to know that.
Now Sashka is saying, basically, that we’ll have more money if we work 24 hour days, and since we don’t know exactly what would happen, why worry about it?
Again, these arguments make precisely zero sense, and if we apply them analogously to more mundane situations the weakness of the arguments becomes obvious.
Now Sashka is saying, basically, that we’ll have more money if we work 24 hour days, and since we don’t know exactly what would happen, why worry about it?
A small problem: I’m not saying that. But don’t let it stop you. Carry on, it just gets funnier.
Admittedly, using analogies in discussions with bullheadedly stubborn people is rather pointless. All they seem to care about is why a raven is NOT like a writing-desk. But that was the best I could do on short notice.
There are analogies and then there are analogies. Since you are not very good at those, perhaps you can try making sense for a change?
# 148 MT writes:
“We do know that ecological damage has already begun.”
Could you please provide one example of this damage which is solely related to climate change?
Every example I have seen used is actually much more complex than that – like the mt pine beetle story discussed on another thread. Or the Mt Kilimanjaro poster child.
And in terms of evidence, models and model-based speculation do not count, so don’t bother answering if that is all you have.
Here’s an alternative question. What specific examples of ecological damage can we identify as caused by the CO2-AGW cause? That one is much easier to answer. Let’s start with biofuels. Or windmills.
The human impact on ecosystems is not a simple story easily reduced to convenient poster children and selected causes. That is the view one would inevitably have if one escaped their mental bozes and looked out from ‘the middle.’
Oops! “bozes” = “boxes”
@141,142
I wasn’t trying to be a jackass or anything I guess what I’m asking is if we don’t know how to make accurate regional projections how do we *know* there will be more losers than winners? Why not more winners than losers or an equal amount of winners and losers?
I agree that you can’t add X amount of energy per square meter to the earth and not expect any changes (even negative ones) I just get suspicious when there seems to be a presumption of catastrophe and what in my opinion is an overestimation of the fragility of human societies, economies and ecosystems.
Of course, I’m not saying that you’ve presumed catastrophe and I take you on the good faith assumption that you’ve examined the data and made your conclusions subsequently. I just know plenty of people (intelligent people) who believe in imminent catastrophe and clearly do not understand anything about climate. I believe that a portion of this belief is due to a trust in scientific institutions of which climatology is one but I also think a larger portion is due to a very influential tendency for pessimism and apocalypticism that is hard wired in the human brain. Again, I’m not saying that this is what you are doing here just that the phenomenon exists and therefore skepticism of catastrophic claims is justified.
Steven (149)
Are you implying that I should not have quoted from a story appearing at Grist under the byline of a long-time environmental reporter?
I can only imagine what you might have said had this story had been reported (and botched) by Fox News or a climate skeptic blogger.
In any case, regarding your crack about pageviews, do you see any ads on this site?
The amount of winners and losers is an irrelevant question. As soon as you have losers, the winners are no longer relevant, and all policy must focus on fixing what is happening to the losers. This is especially an issue for climate change due to who the winners and losers and and who is responsible for the most of the problem.
This is why we have laws against things like theft.
re #156
grypo’s thought provoking point notwithstanding, it is clear that for sufficiently large, sufficiently rapid climate change there are no winners.
Back in the 80s we thought Canada and Russia might defect from global cooperation because the warming would be good for them. But we see, insofar as the changes are maximum in Canada and Russia, the greatest and most obvious environmental disruptions there, as forests retreat under the onslaught of unfamiliar predators and competitors, tundra melts releasing methane, coastlines collapse, and no newly habitable terrain emerges in compensation.
There are two parts to climate change: amount and speed. The greater the amount of shift (especially in outlier seasons and severe events) the worse adapted extant systems, both natural and artificial, will be adapted. And the greater the rate of change, the more the adaptational stresses. As we begin to enter scopes and rates far outside those experienced by our species in the past, everyone everywhere will be challenged.
Sea level rise on a natural earth is compensated by retreating ice sheets, but this is happening too fast for us to get much benefit from the retreating ice sheets but will soon be happening fast enough that coastal systems will have trouble adapting.
In short, the ideal climate is the one you evolved for, give or take small natural changes. We are busting out of that range about now, but it will get much worse by all evidence.
The simple fact is that the only “winners” are people who own fossil fuels, and even for them it is highly dubious. I think it would be more fun to be middle class on a rich world than rich on an impoverished world.
It seems sort of odd to be making these points. It’s almost 2012. Why do people not understand these things already?
First of all, I think far too much attention is paid to the attribution question, which amounts to far too much attention paid to the naysayer fringe as opposed to the main body of thought on these matters.
Just as no individual storm is “because of” climate change, though the increased prevalence of extreme rainfall events apparently is, each colony of each species will meet its end because of some combination of events, not because of a thermometer. Nevertheless, we consistently see poleward and upward migration of most species ranges. And that is clearly attributable.
As these changes accelerate, they will contribute to increased stresses on individuals, colonies and species, as co-evolved species respond to the new inputs on separate schedules.
See
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6918/abs/nature01286.html
It seems sort of odd to be making these points. It’s almost 2012. Why do people not understand these things already?
Good question. My guess is because humanity is flourishing in ways unprecedented in history and until that starts to measurably change nobody will give a sh*t that frogs are being found in more northerly locations and what that “means” about the future.
If affluence is the cause of our ignorance, (never mind of our franticness and bottomless anxiety) it’s not a very attractive form of flourishing, I’ll say that much.
What’s more “measurable” decline clearly isn’t enough to break through those defenses, since we have that already. Even palpable decline seems to work on a retail basis.
What’s more “measurable” decline clearly isn’t enough to break through those defenses, since we have that already. Even palpable decline seems to work on a retail basis.
I mean a measurable decline in things like I mentioned in a comment the other day here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2011/12/19/while-looking-ahead-lets-also-look-back/#comment-92486
MT –
“We do know that ecological damage has already begun”
I know EdG has already commented on this but it really jumped out at me. It sounds to me that you think this sort of thing is one of those ‘facts’ whereas as an even slightly objective assessment will reveal it to be a ‘view’ or an expression of a disposition or even a prejudice. It most certainly has no truth-function.
I can say quite categorically that, to me, it makes no sense. You might as well talk about damage to the shape of a cloud. If you ask what observations, reasons, science, sober judgement reveals, the answer can only be ‘some change’. If you personalise or anthropomorphise that change by using terms like ‘stress’ and ‘struggle’ you’re expressing just values – not talking about facts.
I should point out that this kind of conversation in my experience only ends one way with environmentalists. It is so predictable that I could call it Anteros’ law. The longer a discussion with an environmentalist concerns whether changes in the environment can be neutral, the closer to certainty it is that you will hear the phrase ‘Mass extinction’
What this implies is that deep down environmentalists think of change [particularly if it is caused by human beings] as bad because it is one little step towards a mass extinction. It seems to me you ‘see’ signs and wonders everywhere you look – but only of terrible stresses and negative changes. I don’t see the last 6 degrees of temperature rise as a terrible change – just a change.
@ 158
As soon as you have losers, the winners are no longer relevant,
But we don’t yet.
… and all policy must focus on fixing what is happening to the losers.
If our first priority is to be good guys (which would historically unprecedented) than yes.
This is especially an issue for climate change due to who the winners and losers and and who is responsible for the most of the problem.
Sorry but we don’t know who is who just yet.
@158 &165 –
The implication of talking about the ‘losers’ is that they are primarily vulnerable to climate change. This is false – it is the big illusion of the climate change debate. What they are vulnerable to is climate. They are vulnerable irrespective of any change.
If anybody hasn’t noticed yet, the reason people are vulnerable to climate is because they are poor.
I recommend spending a few enlightening minutes watching this –
Esther Duflo – poverty
It might move attention from fantasies about the ‘struggling biomes’ towards real people and real catastrophes.
Oops – Esther Duflo – poverty
Sashka #139:
In terms of the IPCC science and the apparent goals of the COP process we have some information that can be followed through and some conclusions made as to the likelihood of achieving that goal.
I picked neither the IPCC science nor the goal. My thoughts on either will change neither. What I wrote was in reference to IPCC/COP. Whatever I think about the validity of the IPCC/COP would not change what I can infer from IPCC/COP.
What I think I can reasonably infer from the given position is that we are unlikely to meet the stated goal. I could be wrong. As best as I can see it would be reliant on reducing all GHG emissions by around ~70% by around ~2050 and further more gentle reductions of aorund ~10%. That would be for all GHG emissions including methane. Here I have made a judgement, I am not sure that this is possible and I think that too many things would have to happen too neatly and that we would need a low end sensitivity and we would need to see emissions dropping rather more abruptly between 2020 and ~2050 than anything I know an country (perhaps other than the UK) is even contemplating.
Given the IPCC science and the fastest global emission reductions I think credible the planet will pass the stated goal.
There is however a difference, with mitigation of that order we could be seeing temperatures starting to stabilize by 2050, without mitigation the well known scenarios A1B, etc would be passing 2ºC around 2050, the particular choice of scenario not making much difference upto that point, nor the sensitivity for that matter provided a consistent set of parameters are chosen. Without mitigation, the trajectory at 2ºC would be positive and stabilizing would still be a multi-decadal project. It is my view that the BAU type scenarios are unlikely but that is just my guess. I expect that emissions will plateau before then but others might well disagree.
If there is a bad outcome above a certain temperature we have alternative ways of finding that out. We can either attempt to nudge the limits at around or a little over 2ºC or we can reach them and breach them by the overshoot due to the latency before we can reduce emissions and the degree of thermal lag in the climate system. Currently that overshoot is from here to 2ºC, a little over 1ºC. In the future it may still be around that value, much may depend on the exact emission/aerosol/technology mix.
The expected delay to stabilization and the pre-mitigation rate of climb in temperatures seem important should bad consequences occur as they give an indication of how far beyond the onset temperature (for bad consequneces) the peak temperature will be. We could gain additional control over that by either preparing for a shorter stabilization period or obtaining a ahallower trajectory. That much seems clear to me. It would seem sensible to be able to stop with minimal overshoot should we wish to.
Given the IPCC science and the type of emissions reductions I indicated above starting in 2020 we are over 1ºC and ~40 years away of being in a position where we could decide to maintian, slowly reduce, or increase the temperature further. Prior to that point we would be largely along for the ride. During that ride we can adapt, we could attempt to geo-engineer. The amount of adaptation necessary during that period when based solely on the various temperature trajectories, would like those trjaectories not seem to vary much so it is perhaps a given to the best of our knowledge and could be got on with.
I think that the >1ºC and ~40 year timescale before we can stabilise the temperature rise is a bit of an issue. Perhaps no bad consequences will arise but if they do then it is not clear that we will be able to back away from them. We would risk a bumpy ride until the temperatures peak and pass back down below the threshold at which bad consequences occurred.
Obviously none of that might happen, there may be few consequences, we may have misunderstood many many things. That still leaves open the question of how we intend to find out. We could do so having prepared to be in a position where we could more quickly back away, or not be in a position to so readily back away.
So that is about it, my understanding of the implications of the IPCC science and what I consider plausible in terms of mitigation. Where at best we are currently in for a ~40 year ride which may or may not get bumpy and we don’t know what we could do about that.
I cannot see why this should bother anyone that doesn’t accept the implications of the IPCC science. I have tried to see the implied consequences as best I can. Given different science I would see different consequences, so could anyone, but that wouldn’t change the consequence of the IPCC science. I would be interested when and if someone can come up with different and more favourable consequences based on the IPCC science. I am not much interested in consequences based on a different science.
Alex
KK,
What an odd response.
My comment didn’t stem in the least from any protective interest in Grist or its reporters (whom I don’t know from Adam, frankly). I came to know this story via Revkin’s site, where he’s calling for Pachauri’s resignation. Especially in light of how this particular little ‘scandal’ has played out, I think that’s an overreaction to say the least. Then I saw that you had jumped the gun on it too.
If nothing else it could do to update your post with a link to Grist’s correction, to let the new reader know what has transpired.
About the rest, since you mention it, I think ‘skeptics’ are ONE of the biggest problems impeding forward motion on climate change mitigation policy in this country, because to our misfortune , their numbers include some currently powerful and apparently highly motivated political, business, and media figures. Motivated by *what* you may ask? Well, that’s what the quotes around the word ‘skeptic’ are asking too.
161 Menth:
I think I’ve seen that argument before, from Lomborg and more recently Matt Ridley of Northern Rock fame.
Yes, it’s wonderful that our life expectancy is higher than ever and GDP is rising overall and all that. Well, maybe not GDP so much, but clearly we are doing much better for ourselves than we were 50 years ago. I agree, that’s wonderful. The question is, can these trends continue infinitely into the future? What is all this growth based on? If it is possible for most of humanity to reach the lofty heights we in the First World/developed world/Global North currently enjoy, why is this possible and why should we all place our faith in this? And how do we know it is impossible for costs of the impacts of and adaptation to global warming will not exceed these gains?
You may be right that nobody gives a shit about frogs, but there are of course other impacts of global warming beyond frogs, right? To give some examples, reinsurance firms, risk managers, economists and some military leaderships disagree with you.
And what’s the probability of exceeding “dangerous” levels of global warming (+2 C) under the business-as-usual emissions pathway? It’s close to 100% according to Sokolov et al. (2009). As Alexander Harvey and the blogger Idiot Tracker points out, the minimum plausible level of warming exceeds 2 degrees C. “Catastrophic” warming (+4 C) is likely, and around +5 C is the mean estimate, around where we might expect complete ice sheet wastage and eventual sea level rise of 70+ metres. There is a 9% of chance of exceeding +7 C, a level of warming so extreme that some parts of the Earth will be rendered uninhabitable to large mammals due to heat stress. A change of 7 C within 100 years is, correct me if I’m wrong, completely unprecedented in the history of the Earth save for large impact events, and makes a new mass extinction event close to completely certain (sorry Anteros). And the warming doesn’t just stop at 2100 AD, but it keeps on going in the 22nd and 23rd centuries, and sea levels continue to rise even after that.
Imagine that I was a car salesman and, bound by some law to tell you the best available knowledge on our models, I tried to sell a certain car to you and said, “Well this Ford Pinto is a wonderful car, but there’s a >99% that you will suffer at least broken bones and future chronic pain when the car explodes. There’s also a greater than 50% that it will severely maim you and leave you physically disabled for life, and a 9% chance that you will transition to a persistent vegetative state. But hey, this is all very uncertain and the probability distribution is very large, so maybe it won’t be so bad. Also I’m sure you’re a tough guy and you can adapt to any such changes. After all, you’re getting a raise from work, right? You could hire some live-in help or wait for medical advances.”
You’d be insane or suicidal to purchase or drive such a car. Yet with regards to climate change, some of us feel content at taking a cavalier approach, except that the risk extends to everyone all over the globe and future generations. Maybe Sokolov and Betts and everyone else working on these projections are fools and/or fudging their results. Maybe all paleoclimatologists and cryosphere scientists are horribly mistaken. Maybe 5 degrees is totally adaptable at trivial cost to society. Maybe.
# 164 Anteros
“You might as well talk about damage to the shape of a cloud.”
Wow. Brilliant. And so was the rest of your post.
Tom C
146?
EdG
Anteros knows either nothing or very little about climate sensitivity. But climate sensitivity is the core of the problem.
Anteros deliberately misrepresents his position on climate sensitivity in order to promote his fallacious argument (see 107).
Might not your confidence in him be… misplaced?
BBD –
You really are a disgrace to the internet – which is quite saying something. You make patently false allegations, get called on them and squirm around like a worm on a hook. You repeat demonstrable falsehoods and refuse to apologise – we can go through them all again if you like. Any time you want, we can go right back to the beginning of your embarrassment when you painfully failed to understand the simplest of two sentences. Then had to pretend you didn’t. Again and again. Worst of all. after shouting your mouth off for an age and a day you suddenly whimpered out with.
“Its not worth arguing about”
You can flail about all you like but I think any sane person would realise that they should have kept your mouth shut right from the beginning. If you want to start all over again and embarrass yourself some more why don’t hit the start button. I make the statement –
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“Here’s a prediction based solely but firmly on psychology and sociology ““ with Milikan’s oil experiment as an exemplar. The consensus estimate of net climate sensitivity will fall over time”
This was obviously too complicated for you at the time, and I had to repeat it over and over again. To no avail. You didn’t want to learn so I recommended you read some Feynman. Are you up to speed yet? If so, I’m ready when you are.
Of course you can forget your stupid statements about what I must believe. They are false – you don’t know what you’re talking about. Above is my statement on climate sensitivity and that is what I believe. If you think my internal logic is inconsistent you have not the faintest idea of what constitutes logic.
You would have avoided the embarrassment if you had either asked some humble questions about what I was saying – or if you hadn’t become such a closed-minded fundamentalist.
“Sorry but we don’t know who is who just yet.”
Those most at risk are those who live within the means that their local environment and climate provide to them and use very little in fossil fuels
“If our first priority is to be good guys (which would historically unprecedented) than yes. ”
I would expect nothing less than this be a top priority. This is how we’ve progressed from feudalism, to slavery, to wages. As society becomes more democratic and open, our ethics related to each other and the environment around us lean toward the “good”. Our law ethics evolve with our economy and politics. Otherwise this entire conversation is moot, and uninteresting.
You really are a disgrace to the internet ““ which is quite saying something. You make patently false allegations, get called on them and squirm around like a worm on a hook.
It’s all at 107 and links therein. Why keep digging?
You have made one misrepresentation too many, Anteros. Normally I wouldn’t bother with you, but you are so voluble, and so wrong, it’s necessary.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, your entire position rests on a misrepresentation of climate sensitivity. Either you are too daft to see what you have done, or too dishonest to admit it.
Okay, BBD & Anteros, let’s cool it. The argument between you two has become too personal. Chill.
Keith
How, exactly, is one to respond to sustained misrepresentation here?
@ 175
Those who are most at risk are not the losers yet. When the risk will become a predictable certainty then they will become losers but it won’t be risk anymore. So far the losers are not known.
I think your expectations of humanity reaching moral highs in just a few decades are highly unrealistic.
@ 178
That’s easy. By trying to find a ‘middle’ ground 😉
Sashka:
There’s that demand for “certainty” then. We don’t know for certain that the Netherlands, the northeast coast of China, low-lying small island states, Bangladesh, etc. will be severely affected by sea level rise. Imagine trying to use this argument to convince civil engineers not to waste their government’s money on silly things like flood defenses and disaster preparedness.
I don’t think grypo can be so easily dismissed. We could summon the ghosts of Thrasymachus and Thucydides, who can tell us all about how either human nature or the structure of the system prevents people from doing good. They may well be right, but we can plausibly argue that the ethical landscape of society is changing for the better. Slavery and infanticide have almost completely disappeared. Wars and terrorism have decreased in number and killed fewer people with the passing of time. All countries today are either democracies, or their governments feel compelled to portray themselves as such.
There’s an interesting contrast between Sashka’s total pessimism about human capacity to do good, and Menth’s total optimism about human capacity for economic growth.
Alex,
It’s a fairly simple and obvious point: greater sacrifices require more certainty that it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s controversial at all.
The approach to protecting from possible (or likely) problems that creep on slowly – like sea level rise – is not the same as dealing with inevitable earthquakes in highly seismic areas. This should be pretty obvious too.
Wars and terrorism have decreased in number and killed fewer people with the passing of time.
I’m not sure we live on the same planet.
Marlowe Johnson @ 78
Nicely dry. Have to agree with that 😉
# 173 BBD
“Might not your confidence in him be”¦ misplaced?”
My comment specifically referred to his #164. That did not address the point about climate sensitivity which seems to have been the basis of your comment. So best if you read that again to make a valid or relevant point.
That post was essentially about world view. Sort of like whether one sees the glass half empty or half full. Like Anteros I see how much better things have become over the past half century in terms of the environment while others, presumably including you, see the opposite. There is no mass or even minor ‘extinction crisis’ on the continent where I live (North America) and by virtually every measure things have improved. This is indisputable when you actually look at the specifics and just becomes more obvious when you know the historical background. The real extinction crisis in North America happened about 100 years ago, and that scenario gave birth to the modern conservation movement. It worked.
I think you are in the UK. Given the history and population density there, one might expect some sign of an extinction crisis there. Is there any? How about continental Europe?
Conservation works, and contrary to modern popular mythology, it didn’t start yesterday.
Sashka
Isn’t the problem with sea level rise that it may not ‘creep on slowly’ but be a non-linear response to temperature?
I thought the suggestion was that if the major West Antarctic ice shelves break up because of sub-surface warm currents, the gravity-driven glacial drainage of the WAIS would accelerate irrespective of surface air temperatures. Significant (>1m in <50y) SLR would result.
Mean sea level during the Eemian was ~5m higher than the present, with GAT ~1 – 2C higher than present. The latest thinking is that melt from the Greenland Ice Sheet contributed ~1m and melt from the WAIS contributed ~4m.
EdG
So best if you read that again to make a valid or relevant point.
Climate sensitivity is absolutely central. The point is valid.
If the ~3C estimate for ECS is about right, then there will be rapid, global-scale environmental change by the end of the century. The detail may be uncertain, but the big picture is not: mass extinctions will occur.
It’s not just the temperature change, it is the rapidity of change that over-writes ecosystems.
That post was essentially about world view. Sort of like whether one sees the glass half empty or half full. Like Anteros I see how much better things have become over the past half century in terms of the environment while others, presumably including you, see the opposite.
Things have become much better over the past half century in therm of the environment? Really? Perhaps you are confusing the standard of living in the Western democracies with ‘the environment’?
It doesn’t matter. You are arguing about the wrong things. Or looking in the wrong direction, if you prefer.
# 186 BBD
As we have discussed before – directly and indirectly – I agree that the question of climate sensitivity is THE question re AGW.
But that was not what # 164 was about. It was about perception.
You went on: “Things have become much better over the past half century in therm of the environment? Really? Perhaps you are confusing the standard of living in the Western democracies with “˜the environment’?”
I was specifically referring the environmental state of North America and, yes, by almost every measure it is better, much better, than it was a half century ago. In most cases you can stretch that comparison back 100 years.
Where we live NO species or subspecies or anything has been extirpated or gone extinct, only one subspecies is actually significantly threatened, many species populations – including key ecological indicator species – are at historic highs, and more native species have expanded their range into this area (primarily due to human-caused landscape changes). Thus there is more biodiversity here now. So…
Of course there are parts of the world where things are worse. The question is why they are.
I don’t know the UK details. What is so ecologically bleak there? And again, given the population density and history there, the eco-doomsday vision would predict that that whole place would be a total disaster, wouldn’t it? If it isn’t, the question is why?
EdG
It’s hard to tell if you are deliberately avoiding dealing with my points or simply not reading my comments (eg 186 – essence completely ignored). Either way, it is unhelpful and it forces me to repeat myself:
If the ~3C estimate for ECS is about right, then there will be rapid, global-scale environmental change by the end of the century. The detail may be uncertain, but the big picture is not: mass extinctions will occur.
It’s not just the temperature change, it is the rapidity of change that over-writes ecosystems. They cannot adapt fast enough to cope.
Also, I was under the strong impression that decades of agricultural monoculture and pesticide use had done grave harm to biodiversity in the US and the UK (especially flora and insect fauna) but there are others here far better qualified to discuss this than I am.
# 188
Oh BBD. You addressed my comment re # 164 which only very tangentially touched on your ‘climate sensitivity’ baby, and I have already acknowledged that was THE central question about AGW.
So, no, I won’t be steered off the point of #164 or my response to it. Nor will I attempt to discuss your conveniently meaningless generalities based on broad AGW speculation when what matters, to anyone with a clue about ecosystems, are the specifics which you choose not to address.
You wrote “I was under the strong impression that decades of agricultural monoculture and pesticide use had done grave harm to biodiversity in the US and the UK (especially flora and insect fauna)”
Impressions don’t count. That said, it is undoubtedly and obviously true that areas converted to monoculture agriculture have lost their natural biodiversity. Just like areas covered with pavement. So if that is all you look at then you are right. But that is not all there is.
EdG @ 189
Well, that clarifies matters considerably: you are deliberately avoiding my points.
This is, in both senses, a pointless exchange.
#190 – Oh BBD. You jumped in on my comment to another commenter that had virtually nothing to do with your chosen point, and now you are upset that I won’t get sidetracked by that.
If you wanted to go on about your chosen point you should have pounced on a comment that was more relevant to it.
So, I agree, this exchange was rather pointless and futile.
EdG
Anteros’ point requires a low climate sensitivity. That you cannot see this speaks volumes about your level of understanding of the discussion.
EdG
Your position requires a low climate sensitivity. Yet you don’t seem to grasp that there is no evidence that it is much below 3C for 550ppmv CO2. Doesn’t this ever trouble you?
This, the best scientific understanding, strongly suggests that there will be rapid and significant environmental change – with concomitant extinctions – by century’s end.
You deny all of this on the basis of… personal certainty. Because you’re a ‘glass half full’ sort of a chap.
Doesn’t this ever trouble you when (if) you really stop and think about it?
BBD. Sigh. Your obsession with your chosen topic has apparently impacted your reading skills.
Here’s the final line of Anteros’s comment, which to me is the bottom line:
“I don’t see the last 6 degrees of temperature rise as a terrible change ““ just a change.”
Do you see any suggestions about the causes of this change?
Do you see anything else in that comment that does?
Do you see that his comment is actually about how we perceive change and the world in general?
Some people see change as ‘bad’, some see it as ‘good,’ and some just see it for what it is, neither or either, depending on your personal perspective and biases.
In terms of climate change, whether what happens is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ first depends on where you happen to be and what specific changes occcur. That has ALWAYS been the case. Evolution is not the story of all winners all of the time. And I assume that you do believe in evolution, don’t you?
What is different now is the globalization of the economy and the size of the human population. Thus ‘bad’ climate change in one part of the world can have more impacts on other parts. But in terms of threats to that global system, I see climate change as one of the least of our worries.
Do you see that his comment is actually about how we perceive change and the world in general?
Rhetoric. Avoidance tactics. Nonsense. Denial. Stupidity. I can’t face any more of this tonight. Somebody else have a try, please.
Sashka,
I’m afraid I don’t follow. So you do feel that, in regions vulnerable to sea level rise (according to finnicky and uncertain science), it IS a waste of time and money to invest in adaptation? I bet adaptation would be very expensive, and the Dutch are utter fools for planning to beef up their flood defenses.
On whether or not we live on the same planet, argument from incredulity is never a good idea.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2006.00419.x/abstract
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/terrorism-attacks-increased-worldwide-while-deaths-declined.html
Alex, you’re right in one thing: you don’t follow indeed.
BBD –
A very nice summary of the evidence for a MWP equal to or greater than modern warming is given in Soon and Baliunas (2003). Please note that the evidence is much more than just uncertain proxies, as it encompasses historical and archeological records as well.
Best regards
[Stand back everyone, I fear BBD’s head may expode]
BBD, if you think THAT’S bad, try using an analogy.
In fact, nobody serious argues for a negligible sensitivity anymore. But plenty of nonserious people are willing to make lots of noise. And the press is unwilling to judge.
And so I have yet another opportunity to link to Dr Boli’s parable of the duck. So all is well that ends well.
Tom C
A few things.
First, you claim that ‘the overwhelming majority of the literature suggests’ that global average temperatures during the MWP were as high or higher than the present (144). I asked you for a convincing set of references (146).
You have provided just one paper. And not any old paper either. One so poor that its publication in Climate Research resulted in the resignation of the editor that approved it (along with numerous other weak ‘sceptical’ papers) the managing editor of the journal, Hans von Storch, and with two of his colleagues.
Here’s what von Storch said in a WSJ opinion piece at the time:
And what of the alarmists’ kin, the skeptics? They say these words show that everything was a hoax””not just the historical temperature results in question, but also the warming documented by different groups using thermometer data. They conclude I must have been forced out of my position as chief editor of the journal Climate Research back in 2003 for my allegiance to science over politics. In fact, I left this post on my own, with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper“”a skeptic’s paper, at that.
Here’s the official statement from the journal’s publisher Otto Kiner:
The paper that caused the storms (Soon & Baliunas, Clim Res 2003, 23:89″“110) evoked heavy criticism, not least in EOS 2003 (84, No 27, 256). Major conclusions of Soon & Baliunas are: “˜Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millenium.’ (p. 89) and “˜Overall, the 20th century does not contain the warmest anomaly of the past millenium in most of the proxy records which have been sampled world-wide’ (p. 104). While these statements may be true, the critics point out that they cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper.
von Storch again confirms this:
After a conflict with the publisher Otto Kinne of Inter-Research I stepped down on 28. July 2003 as Editor-in-Chief of Climate Research; the reason was that I as newly appointed Editor-in-Chief wanted to make public that the publication of the Soon & Baliunas article was an error, and that the review process at Climate Research would be changed in order to avoid similar failures. The review process had utterly failed; important questions have not been asked, as was documented by a comment in EOS by Mann and several coauthors. (The problem is not whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the 20th century, or if Mann’s hockey stick is realistic; the problem is that the methodological basis for such a conclusion was simply not given.)
You have fallen rather short of showing that the ‘overwhelming majority of the literature’ supports your claim that the MWP was as warm or warmer than the present.
In fact the opposite is the case. If you believe otherwise, you need to provide supporting references as originally requested. S & B (2003) doesn’t cut it by a country mile.
Michael Tobis
I ate the last of the analogies weeks ago, before I was forced to start on the dogs. I see little hope, but must press on.
Wonderful link – and entirely new to me. Thanks. It almost makes it all worth while.
197
Well then, Sashka, please help me understand. You said that total certainty was necessary before taking any measures to address climate change. Isn’t that what you said? And you say this even though there is no other sphere of human activity in which the same standards are demanded. Did I misinterpet you? If so, how did I misinterpret you?
And in your earlier post, I noticed something else unusual. We can assume, based on projected changes in forcings, committed warming to current levels of GHG concentrations, the long inertia in such processes, and paleoclimate analogues that continued sea level rise is almost certain. But you said that earthquakes were, on the other hand, “inevitable,” which seems to me like you’re saying it is foolish to adapt to sea level rise (slow, predictable, relentless and with abrupt secondary impacts, with nearly 100% probability), but a good idea to adapt to earthquakes (fast, unpredictable, no trend, and also nearly 100% probability). Why is one a waste of time and money and the other a good policy?
Alex,
An on-line discussion is impossible when one of the parties cannot understand what the other is saying. In (187) I thought I was pretty clear when I said:
greater sacrifices require more certainty
That alone should be enough to figure out the corollary: smaller sacrifices require less certainty. I also said as much explicitly replying to Tobis in (130). I assume you saw that. Thus the answer to
You said that total certainty was necessary before taking any measures to address climate change. Isn’t that what you said?
is: no, I never said, never meant it and I don’t have a first clue where you got it from. I hope it helps.
The most devastating earthquakes occur in certain places (read some into seismology and plate tectonics for more). The exact moment (or even year) of the next big one in Japan is unpredictable but it is virtually certain that it will occur some time this century. It had been known for a while. It would have been suicidal for them not to adjust their building codes to this inevitability and so they have.
The sea level will rise. We don’t know how far and how fast. But we know that the rise will be negligible over the next few decades. Conclusion: we have to think about adaptation strategy but there is no need to panic. By strategy I mean the framework that would allow flexible adaptive approach to this slow threat. It should be a plan to rise the dykes by 20 cm if that’s all we need or by a meter if that becomes necessary. For now we only need to plan how to approach this project and see whether mitigation is a cost-effective.
So sea level rise is certain, but we should do nothing but think about it until we know exactly how much sea levels are going to rise? Given that the construction and upgrading of such infrastructure could take decades, wouldn’t it be too late by the time we knew precisely how much sea levels will rise?
#204 – Since the sea level has been rising throughout modern history, it appears that it has not been “too late” to deal with it as it happens so far. The actual measured sea level rise is hardly unprecedented. Just the most extreme model projections are alarming, and they are not remotely credible.
Moreover, what one should do about this (or any real or imagined climate change effect) depends entirely on the local specifics. If the land is rising faster than the sea level is then one can imagine other problems, if one wants to imagine problems.
Funny thing though. All this talk about rising sea levels and the great threats it poses yet little if any evidence of them in the real world.
EdG
You may be missing the point. Please see:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2011/12/16/climate-hawks-letting-off-steam/#comment-92865
#206 BBD,
OK. Read it. But not sure if I got your point. Is it that there could be more rapid sea level rise than is currently or recently happening?
If so, that makes sense to me. There has been much more rapid sea level rise even in the last 14,000 or so years. But there was a great deal more ice to melt when that was happening.
Or was that your point?
Or was it that sea levels were much higher still further back?
Again, I’m not quite sure which point you think I missed.
In any case, I have no problem with reactively building protective infrastructure in response to such changes when and where they are significant. There is time. We are not talking about tsunami speed flooding, to put it mildly. But my response was to Alex’s thoughts that we should be building things based on dubious predictions of worst case scenarios. I see better uses for scarce resources.
EdG
Again, I’m not quite sure which point you think I missed.
Reason doesn’t work.
BBD
Cut the snark please. How about just making your point in your own words? As noted there were several possible points to be drawn from your comment.
Alex,
Why do you need to twist and distort what I write? When we know that it’s at least 20 cm we can start building for that. If the estimate changes upwards we build more. The good part is that seal level rise is very slow. I do not suggest doing nothing until we know everything.
Given that the construction and upgrading of such infrastructure could take decades
Given by whom? But even if so we do have decades at our disposal.
But that’s the thing: you counsel not actually starting construction, or upgrading existing infrastructure, but merely that we wait for more certainty and think about it a lot. To give an example of lengthy construction periods, the Delta Works in the Netherlands were originally planned in the 1950s, and the Maeslantkering Barrier was finished 1997. For some developing nations and all small Pacific island states, the resources are simply not available to build such elaborate flood defenses.
If we don’t know for certain that it will rise for more than, say, 20 cm and existing dykes can handle that then I see no point building anything now. But I do see the point of preparing to begin work if and when it becomes unavoidable.
For poor countries, it will probably have to be paid out of our pocket. And it also needs to be thought about and planned in advance.
EdG
This isn’t snark. You are being deliberately evasive and I have had enough of it.
According to Rohling’s work, the average rate of SLR during the last interglacial was 1.6 m, which equilibrium sea level between 4-6 m higher than today. Equilibrium sea level at today’s CO2 concentrations have an analogue in the mid-Pliocene. which is estimated to be around 25 m higher than today. So it’s definitely going to be greater than 20 cm, although as you say it could be very slow.
I should have added that you can stop pretending that I am at fault. There’s no need to bother responding further here. Enough time wasted as it is.
Sashka
Explain something to me: why was MSL ~5m higher than at present during the Eemian, when GAT was ~1 – 2C higher than at present?
When you’ve done that, can you remind me why you think MSL will ‘only’ rise by 20cm?
On what are you basing this figure btw?
BBD –
You know your catechism well, which is why I baited you with S&B 2003. You went for the bait, hook line and sinker.
S&B are respected scientists and their paper was well done. As might be expected with scientists of this caliber, they understand the limits of the data so their conclusions were qualitative. Jihad was waged against them because, as we know, “we have to get rid of the MWP”.
Contrast that with the Mann papers, which were filled with methodological errors: series of rainfall used in place of temperature, temperature data from one location used for another location, upside-down data series, ad-hoc and incorrect statistical procedures, etc. Yet somehow they claim to have uncovered the global temperature 1000 years ago to a precision where it could be compared to the global temperature today. This is insane.
It is also insane to think that a PC method can “extract” a temperature signal from remains of diverse, 1000 yr old biological phenomena. Maybe this is due (sorry Sashka) to the low level of analytical skill amongst climate scientists. Certainly one would expect at least some in this profession to register a protest against what informed people in every other technical discipline can easily see.
But, back to the original question. The overwhelming body of literature that I referred to has nothing to due with the highly uncertain proxies that so impress you. It is rather the historical and archeological records that testify to a period of warm climate extending over 2+ centuries and found world-wide. This carries much more weight with me and others who understand the limits of proxy analysis.
I’m done letting off steam, so…
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Tom C
At 144 you said:
To repeat, the overwhelming body of literature suggests (not proves, suggests) that it was warmer 800 years ago.
I have asked you to provide references to the overwhelming body of literature and you came up with S&B (2003).
Now you say:
The overwhelming body of literature that I referred to has nothing to due with the highly uncertain proxies that so impress you.
And provide no references.
This is, or should be, embarrassing.