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Climatologists Wager on Global Warming
coflow writes "The Guardian is carrying a story about a $10,000 bet that a pair of Russian scientists have entered with British climate expert James Annan. According to the article, the Russians believe the world will be cooler in 10 years. "If the temperature drops Dr Annan will stump up the $10,000 (now equivalent to about £5,800) in 2018. If the Earth continues to warm, the money will go the other way.""
Those are indeed other words. In fact they're words with a completely different meaning to the previous ones.
http://savingiceland.org
We *are* releasing a ton of gasses, much more than can be reabsorbed, and two giant economies, india and china, are just the past few years really bumping up the volume on what they burn.
So combine that with the aforementioned geophysical realities, and it looks like more warming coming to me. How long it will last I don't know because of political wildcards. All you can do is guess, but there's only enough oil for some countries to have a robust middle class, not enough for all nations. Anyone can do the math there, it's not that hidden or weird or debateable any longer. There is x-amount projected global demand, with y amount proven reserves/refinery capacity, etc. They aren't the same number and x is a lot larger. That and other strategic minerals, etc. We just *may* have a tremendous global warfare period over natural resources and availability (some contend it has started already),and if this happens, the amount of fires started (call them megafires, as in regional sized) and resultant release of even more gasses plus extra heat that will get trapped WILL be catastrophic. and large wars have started over much less than large nations economic survival.
I think it pays to remember that "leaders" in these various very large nations by and large tend to be *quite mad*. I am pointing in all directions right now, no favorites. You cannot predict what they might do or how things might spiral out of control.
I tend to think at best, just for a SWAG, we have to go on past planetary history. We usually wind up with major wars fought by major powers with whatever the major weapons of that time period were. It has eventually always happened. I see nothing that convinces me todays humans are any better than yesterdays humans in that regard. So the combination of lame hoomannz and natural cyclical warming trends should indicate for the next generation or more we will have _more warming_.
Do you mean the pro-warming scientists or the anti-warming scientists?
Grants from the Sierra Club spend just as well as grants from Exxon, and carry the same risk of biasing a scientist to report what he thinks his patron wants to hear.
I'd be interested in an analysis of the source of funds for climate scientists. How much is coming from the evil corporations, how much from scaremongering environmentalists, and how much from supposedly apolitical government agencies?
Also, you must not underestimate the power of peer review and tenure decisions to bias scientific research. The academic world is tough on people who undermine articles of "progressive" faith.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I'm sorry. ./ you are no longer my homepage.
But
Interesting how you were still afraid to risk your karma on that statement.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
The problem is that we don't know what it is that we ought to be watching out for (we only have trends), and we don't know what the risks are (because there are no scientific results we can draw on in living memory). So, we estimate.
The risk of something (anything) happening is not the probability of it happening, it's the probability of the event happening, multiplied by the consequences. We do have a fairly well-agreed definition of the consequences - there are many ice-cores, strata readings, magnetic effects etc. that show the earth can hit a 'tipping point', and snap to a new environmental mode - in some cases in as little as 50 years. Scientists on both sides of the debate agree with the tipping-point hypothesis, what is not agreed then is the probability of it happening. This is the contention.
I don't know of any extreme of weather where man battles and wins. The destructive power of nature is truly awesome - in the traditional rather than the watered-down Californian meaning. In my opinion, if there is doubt over the probabilities, we ought to be minimising the risk *anyway*, and that means trying to combat global warming (in as much as we are capable of it). Burying our head in the sands is sort of like sitting, waiting for the tidal wave to hit, rather than running to high-ground to try and stay alive. And just as foolish.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
The worst thing about the Kyoto protocol is the harm it could cause if it all went wrong. We have so much to loose because of it.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Sky rocketing markets, wars over energy rights, mass unemployment and rioting as a result of that unemployment. Yes we have a tremendous amount to lose if we're wrong. Not to mention how freaking stupid we would look to future generations for believing something so remarkable without any real proof.
Global climate change is no longer the subject of science, but of politics. The data was in a long time ago, but people continue to ignore it in favor of their own agenda. Climate changes have been documented at various points in the earth's history for various reasons. Instead of using this data to predict future trends, environmental groups use it to further a socialist agenda and industry groups use it to further a complete deregulation agenda. All the research in the world won't matter at this point, so might as well just resort to placing bets. It's no more stupid than the pontificating that's going on right now between everyone involved in the area of global climate change.
Did you notice how this part:
"For some reason he could never comprehend, people were inclined to believe the very worst about anything and everything; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they'd been medically vaccinated against the force of fact. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bizarre reverse-Cassandra effect operating in the universe: whereas the mythical Cassandra spoke the awful truth and was not believed, these days "experts" spoke awful falsehoods, and they were believed. Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker."
is not scientific? Rather, it's just subjective and made up? Really, what's the difference between this impression of his and reading tea leaves?
That might be because that is in fact the consesnus of a majority of published peer reviewed papers in the ltterature.
It's pretty clear that the evidence is there - if you have an open mind.
I have no trouble accepting that carbon emissions could cause warming, however the evidence isn't there yet.
Just what would you require as evidence - a personal note from God? I can list some of the studies indicating a link, but I honestly doubt I could ever convince you...
I have several friends in climatology, geology and astronomy who shake their heads everytime a new panic prediction is released.
And I have many friends in geology and climatology, and I am an astronomer, and I have to say that while the "panic announcements" may not be very likely, I think some of them are more likely than the scenarios presented by the contrarians. Case in point - the West Antarctic ice sheet may not melt this decade, but some time in the next century (given no limits on CO2) it will melt. When it does, that's 10 meters of sea level rise right there. I'll probably be dead, but my children might not be.
They're scientists who see multiple cause for global warming, man being only one of them.
Man being the one we can control, and the largest one, at the present time.
The "better something than nothing" crowd loses traction with me when it comes to Kyoto. It's just a bad plan.
No, be honest. You just spent most of your post arguing against human responsibility for GW; you can't seriously claim that you just have a problem with how Kyoto implements greenhouse reductions, and that you'd support some other mechanism. I didn't hear you say "GW is real, but we should go with voluntary reductions" or something to that effect. You claim that GW is either due to natural causes, or just not real.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
So a joint statment by 11 national academies of science (including the U.S.), or the IPCC doesn't represent a consensus? It's not just a matter of counting abstracts. Keep in mind you can never get every self-proclaimed scientist to agree on everything - so there will always be a few contrarian voices that you can dig up (with enough money), but the overwhelming majority of climate scientists hold the view that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
The Earth's climate in the future is even more difficult to know because it consists of predictions of specific future events. With the previous examples we have physical evidence to look at. Here, the best we can do is look at previous data, make models, and make a guess as to what will happen. One hypothesis is that we will have runaway positive feedback which will work to warm the Earth's global climate. Another is that changes in the sun's sunspots will send the Earth less solar energy and will cool the climate (and if you RTFA, that is what the Russians were basing their predictions on). Another theory (if you believe cheesy Hollywood movies) is that the thermal conveyor will shutdown. There are dozens more, and plenty of other plausible (and not so plausible) theories we have not thought of. Betting on the results isn't too much different from betting on who wins a football game.
The only thing we know for sure is that our planet's climate is very dynamic and depends on many factors.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Yep, leave it to those Americans to oppose a plan which may delay global warming by a few years just because it will devestate their economy (and with it any chance to come up with a technological solution that might actually do something). Why couldn't they just go with a useless knee-jerk reaction to make all the other countries happy? Damn that free will of theirs, it will doom us all.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
WOW, BRILLIANT!. You my friend are a genious!. You have thought of these things that no scientist ever even considered. Those scientists are obviously stupid and greedy. Too stupid to take into account things like the sun, loss of cloud cover and too greedy to be consider things like volcanoes and deepwater CO2. They are just riding around in their bentleys with their fat paychecks from the govt writing about how global warming is caused by human activity.
You should be a scientist man. Truly you are able to think of things not one of climatologists has ever thought of.
evil is as evil does
If you wanted to knock the American economy down a peg or two then convincing us that Kyoto is a good idea is a good way to do it.
Another good way to do it would be to leave America largely dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia, a country which may suffer a political and economic implosion any day now. Or to continue to pour money into that country when there is no doubt that a lot of that money is being used to fund the very people who are trying to kill you.
Global warming isn't the only reason to get off oil. If Kyoto will have that much of an impact on the economy, it's a good sign that something is already very wrong.
Nuclear power, by the way, has experienced something of a renaissance with environmentalists, especially with recent innovations like the pebble bed reactor which are far more resistant to meltdown. The problem with nuclear reactors is that they're expensive.
As for China, they aren't likely to do anything as long as their disregard for the environment and their labour gives them a competitive advantage. Because it isn't like a totalitarian regime is going to listen to the environmentalist lobby--they'll do whatever they can get away with. The only way to put pressure on them is to stop buying their goods. To spell it out for you, we would have to stop buying goods simply on the basis of cheap prices, and start considering the hidden costs. But too many large corporations cut costs by buying from countries that pay their people almost nothing and disregard the environment (Mexico is another example,) and the government looks the other way.
So yeah, that's a good question: why isn't anyone pressuring the Chinese to clean up their neighborhood?
Yes, but most of the ppl who are credible AND have a fair amount of evidence are the ones who are sounding off on man made global warming. To make matters more interesting, the core groups research is moving from simple modeling to pointing to where to look. And when they look at those areas, the data is supporting it. IOW, the models are working
In addition, every time some lunatic fringe group comes up with something to try and destroy the core researchers premises, they get shot down. Good example is the group from Texas, who had satellite evidence that temps were not changing. But once it was closely examined, it turned out that their work was shoddy. Basically, they had major flaws with the data and had not done their homework.
Another example is the melting of glaciars by all areas, except at the extreme poles where they are growing; apparently with increasing temperature raises the humidity. At first, though, the none-global warming ppl used the polar glaciars as evidence to refute it.
Yeah, there are LOTS of alternative theories running around. Just few of them have credible evidence. And the core groups have working models that are increasingly matching what is going on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sky rocketing markets, wars over energy rights, mass unemployment and rioting as a result of that unemployment
Except that those prognostications are utterly wrong: a reduction in energy usage doesn't produce unemployment or result in wars or rioting. If anything at all, in increases employment, both in the development of more energy efficient technologies, and ultimately in the service sector (where automation is replaced with manual labor).
Yes we have a tremendous amount to lose if we're wrong.
No, we (as in "the people") only have to gain from lowered carbon emissions: we get a cleaner environment, less risk from global warming, reduced chance of conflict over energy, and more employment. Who stands to lose are the existing energy companies and manufacturers, who have a huge investment in old energy technologies and production methods; any change to the status quo threatens their business big time.
The problem with waiting for "real proof" is that by then it is too late. I hardly think that anyone would look back on us as stupid if we played it safe with the environment. Also, I think you are highly exagerating the consequences of environmentalism. There was a time when businesses thought that they could not get by without cheap slave/child labor. But eventually it was outlawed to no ill effect. It was the right thing to do and the economy adapted. Then again, maybe we just moved the slave/child labor overseas...
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
We should keep in mind that there are good economic incentives built into the funding system for scientists to overstate their case. There are plenty of examples of this in action:
(i) the advantages of a reusable Shuttle.
(ii) the advantages of a Space station.
(iii) the exaggerated AIDS risk, where the NIH kept on promising a million infected Americans every year, for nearly two decades, before it came true. This one has the distinction from the two above that fighting AIDS is a worthwhile cause that was not properly funded until alarmist statements were made.
(iv) the risk of meteorites hitting earth.
(v) the risks of overpopulation (see Malthus).
(vi) the risks of shortages (see the Ehlrich-Simon wager).
(vii) the benefits of the next $20B megasuperduper-cyclotron (still waiting for my muon toaster oven).
(viii) the benefits of artificial intelligence.
and on and on.
The publicity seekers have been talking about global warming of several degrees C as a fact since the mid 1990s. Examining the literature the picture is different: global warning of just half a degree C was conclusively proven only a couple of years back.
So to sum it up, the risks of global warming are overstated by the scientific press. Something to keep in mind is that tempering the claims of global warming does not mean completely ignoring them (like Dubya does today or Regan did with AIDS in his time).