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Consensus on Global Warming

Posted by michael on from the heads-buried-in-the-sand dept.

FredFnord writes "Well, here's an interesting one: the fine folks at Science Magazine have done an analysis of the last ten years' published scientific articles (articles from crank or non-peer-reviewed publications were not counted) on the subject of global climate change. The results themselves are interesting, but the most remarkable part was that, of the 928 papers they found, 75% accepted that global warming was caused by human activities, either explicitly or implicitly. 25% made no mention either way. And not a single paper asserted otherwise." JamesBell submits this article by a geologist which suggests that the Earth is in serious, imminent, unavoidable danger.

15 of 1,200 comments (clear)

  1. Great by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Soon, it will be China and India that you're pointing fingers at, and not the US (or Europe).[1]

    So... Then what?

    And uh, is this news? Does anyone credible seriously disagree that emissions from human activity are at least in part contributing factors? Or is this another jab at boogiemen that don't exist? There's nothing "remarkable" about these so-called findings.

    Also, the "Earth" isn't in danger. Yes, I know this distinction is splitting hairs, but what's in danger is Earth's inhabitants. Our actions are not going to alter a several billion year old rock.

    [1] Don't feed me the per capita shit. China will be a far, far greater polluter in this realm, per capita or no. Further, the economic empowerment of the Chinese people will eventually drive them to a level of concern about the well-being of the environment, so, in a way, their accelerated economic development is a good thing, politically and environmentally. Incidentally, China has proven they can reduce greenhouse emissions, even while growing economically (1, 2)...but the point is, they're still on an upward trend. And they've got a lot more people who will begin to thirst for energy-hungry luxuries.

  2. Global Warming on Mars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest
    By SPACE.com
    posted: 03:00 pm ET
    08 December 2003

    Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.

    full story at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html

    1. Re:Global Warming on Mars by FatRatBastard · · Score: 5, Insightful
      This made me think of Michael Crichton's Aliens Cause Global Warming" speech, which is actually quite apropos since he took on the idea of scientific "consensus:"
      In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

      In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

      There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

      Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

      And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy. The list of consensus errors goes on and on. Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
  3. I found the truth! by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the article:

    The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

    The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysica Union? What a bunch of communists. They are just trying to destroy our way of life. They don't want me to live my life the way I want. Now, where did I park my Ford Explorer? I gotta run and buy a pack of smokes...

  4. Re:Interesting article... by EnderWiggnz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I get out of this is "We dont know what it means, but it looks like at least SOME climate changes are caused by man".

    and SOME studies suggest that cigarettes cause health problems.

    some.

    --
    ... hi bingo ...
  5. Re:Predications by tolan-b · · Score: 5, Funny

    No because the heat generated by the Prescott's core far outweighs the benefits to the research ;)

  6. Re:It does matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    China has signed the treaty and is expected to become an Annex 1 country before 2015. Since the United States wouldn't be required to meet polution reduction deadlines until 2010, it wouldn't leave much time that China would be free from the same regulations as the United States. China really isn't a good excuse anymore...

  7. "Blame Bush" fails again by kippy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Bush Administration rejects the Kyoto protocols, whether for good reasons or not, and then refuses to do anything else about global warming.

    Bullshit.

    14 Nations to Participate in Plan to Reduce Methane

    This is largely driven by the US and it includes India and China. It'll have the same greenhouse effect as removing 7% of US fleet of cars from the road and it costs next to nothing.

    Just because Bush doesn't sign up to a program with name recognition, doesn't mean the US government isn't doing anything.

    --
    Blaze a trail to the New World
  8. So what's the news here? by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the article summary: ".. of the 928 papers they found, 75% accepted that global warming was caused by human activities, either explicitly or implicitly. 25% made no mention either way. And not a single paper asserted otherwise."

    Just because everybody is saying it, doesn't make it true.

    But okay, I'm the last person to deny global warming is upon us. Other than some US folks still not convinced or thinking it's not that big a problem (or simply putting their head in the sand), global warming is observed, and the only question is about how much of it is the result of human activities, and how much by natural causes. Oh yeah, and what to do about it.

    For the rest: nothing to see here.

  9. Re:The rest of the story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "...and then consume that output." Funny how those who are so eager to "correct" this mistake never notice their own.

    Seems a far more common and far more damaging oversight, eh? In fact, it's so common that one would almost think that this oversight is a deliberate untruth propogated for rhetorical purpose.

  10. Lies by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bush didn't "pull out of" anything. Why YOUR revisionist history, Anonymous Coward?

    The US is a Kyoto signatory, but "On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". Disregarding the Senate Resolution, on November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification."

    All of this happened under Clinton.

    So, sorry, but your bullshit post is just that.

  11. Re:Bah... by nomadic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is still surprising to me that only 1 in 4 bothered to include alternative polution sources...

    Because they're professional geologists, so that goes without saying? These are peer-reviewed scientific journals, not introductory textbooks. If a physician writes an article claiming some chemical causes cancer, is he going to also mention everything else causes cancer? Is he going to mention the sun also causes cancer? Of course not, because he most likely is not a complete and utter moron, and he assumes his readers aren't either.

    Find me a single geologist anywhere who has ever publicly stated that anthropogenic sources are the only things that cause global climate change.

  12. help! This means you... by Cally · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've been getting gincreasingly despondent reading climate change stories on Slashdot over the last few years, seeing well-established science ridiculed and ignored by people apparently intelligent enough to know better. In particular I see the same tired old straw man arguments, deliberate canards, propaganda, misinterpretion and plain ol' ignorance trotted out again and again. No doubt the comments here are full of the same nonsense - see below for my working list of tired attempts to refute rationality.

    After the most recent Slashdot story I actually steeled myself to do something about it. I re-read the whole story at Threshold 2 to gather UIDs of people who might help. The idea is to build a list of myths and authoritative answers to them. For example, the old line that the sun's getting hotter, and that this explains global warming, comes up over & over again. Many, very patient! and knowledgable people posted to that story with excellent refutations of such nonsense.

    I'm going to put my plaintext mail address in this comment, that's how serious I am about this! You can even help if you believe that Climate Change is hippie nonsense trotted out by pseudo scientists who just want more funding!!

    What I am looking for:

    • A list of skeptical objections to the hypothesis that human CO2 emissions are changing the climate, and that this is a bad thing. I don't really mind how loopy or paraniod your objections are: whatever reason you use to claim that it's nonsense, let me know so I can add it to the list.
    • More importantly - people who can help prepare authoritative, rational refutations of these assertions.

    If you have violent objections to the idea that global warming is a bad thing, please email me at the address below describing why you think this. As you will see if you hit 'see the rest of this comment', the existing list - which were collected from a single Slashdot story - is already pretty long, so this isn't so vital.

    If you can help knock down such gibberish- if you have posted with a calm, well-argued and ideally knowledgable or carefully referenced refutation of a wild claim - please email me and make yourself known; I will get in touch in the next few days.

    If you want to subscribe me to lots of spam lists, don't bother; Gmail are very good at spam filtering, you'll get yourself blacklisted when I hit 'report spam' and you won't be helping your cause one little bit.

    If you can help, mail me at:

    username: imipak; domain (at): gmail.com

    Here's the list I collected from the last Slashdot climate change story, only a few days ago, about "why anthropogenic climate change is a myth". Read it and weep.

    • We only have temperature records for the last few hundred years.
    • The sun is getting hotter.
    • Climate change == global warming - great! It's too cold where I am!
    • Climate change is pseudo-science
    • Climate change is just a theory - we should wait until it's proven before taking action
    • Climate scientists deliberately falsify and/or manufacture fake data to support the theory, because otherwise they wouldn't get grants for further research.
    • Climate science is skewed by unconcious assumptions that climate change is anthropomorphic
    • Climate change is a conspiracy by the UN or the French or Europeans or Chinese to hurt the USA
    • Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans (several variants on this one - eg more than all humans ever, this year, etc)
    • For every scientist who predicts global warming doom and gloom, you will find as many who say that it isn't happening, or that human activity isn't a significant factor.
    • we are barely 10,000 years out of our last one, and may still be warming FROM it? 10,000 years are mere seconds in geologic time.
    • the Earth has sustained worse temperature fluxations. (variants: in human history / last 10,000 years / lifetime of the planet)
    • Cows produce methane!
    --
    "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
  13. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not really. But even if you found some funding (probably from a corp) to do some research in a 'forbidden' direction, try getting your conclusions published in a peer reviewed journal. Won't happen.

    It won't get published for reasons such as poor methodology, maths etc. Not because you view is 'forbidden' or not politically correct. You are simply suffering under a conspiracy theory view of Science if you believe otherwise. In fact, while perhaps not in Science, oil-industry funded research, and some not funded by the oil industry, which argues against the consensus of climate change, has been published. It's rare, true, but this rarity is because the bulk of the evidence points in the opposite direction, not because of some grand conspiracy aimed at ensuring funding for climatic research.

    > What's controversial about this issue? By asking that question it is clear no rational discourse is possible with you, you too are a religious zealot.

    I'm neither religious, not a zealot, and it's called a rhetorical question. I'm asking (as should be clear from the rest of the passage), "where does the controversy here come from?" My point is that there is little scientifc controversy. The controversy is largely injected at the political level.

    Hopefully others reading this thread are less invested in the theory to reject all discussion out of hand on the issue.

    Again, I'm not going to reject out of hand any discussion based on evidence and a scientific understanding of that evidence out of hand. Quite the opposite, I genuinely hope that we are all wrong! I hope to wake up tomorrow and that it was all a bad dream, a mass delusions of the world scientific community caused by some faulty maths somewhere down the line. And you know why I hope this? It's because, at our current state of knowledge, the conclusion that we are headed for a very nasty time climatically is ineluctable and because I have children. But I'm not going to stick my head in the sand on this one.

    [I]f one is politically aware, one notices that the loudest voices in the Global Warming crowd also want to dismantle Western Civilivation

    I consider myself fairly politically aware, but I'm quite unable to see how shifting from oil to uranium amounts to a dismantling of Western Civilization. Perhaps you can clear that one up for me? Again the opposite is true, it's through technological advance alone that we are going to beat this one. We have to move away from this C19th energy source.

  14. Re:In other news... by Nilmat · · Score: 5, Informative
    Not really. But even if you found some funding (probably from a corp) to do some research in a 'forbidden' direction, try getting your conclusions published in a peer reviewed journal. Won't happen. And of course after that you will be blacklisted so you can change careers because you will never be accepted as a 'real scientist' again, because all 'real scientists' believe in Global Warming about like Christians believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Let me introduce myself. I'm a reviewer for a number of peer-reviewed journals and, broadly speaking, a climate change scientist. If a journal sent me a paper to review that questioned some aspect of current theories onglobal climate change, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. If the methodology and data were there and matched the conclusions, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend publication. From past conversations with my colleagues, I know lots of other scientists feel the same way. Look, ultimately it's not that hard to get something published in a peer-reviewed journal of some kind. If scientists were finding evidence refuting global climate warming, it would be published.

    Since I don't feel like finding another post to attach this to, here's a response to a couple of other points:

    1) Forget the whole theory that global warming is simply an artifact of urban heat islands. We fixed that particular problem with the data in the early 1990s. The urban heat island effect is without a doubt the best-understood phenomenon in climatology, and even with the effects removed climate is still warming.

    2) Sunspot activity doesn't explain most of the climate change story either. It's part of the story, but definitely not all of it. If you want to check out a paper on the subject, I suggest the following (I know its a few years old, but the findings haven't changed subsantially since this paper):
    Cedric Bertrand, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Potential Role of Solar Variability as an Agent for Climate Change, Climatic Change, Volume 43, Issue 2, October 1999, Pages 387 - 411

    note: I'm not telling you to believe the paper. Just to read it. If you understand enough about what's going on to do so, please feel free to poke holes in it. That's part of science.