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Global Warming Endangered by Hot Air?
oldwindways writes "The BBC reports that leading climate researchers are concerned that the tone of speculation surrounding many reports (scientific as well as in the media) could be making it more difficult for legitimate science to make a case for the future. Is Hollywood to blame? Have we 'cried wolf' too many times with global warming? Or is this just a case of some researchers who are not ready to face the truth? Either way, it raises the interesting question of how greater public awareness of Global Warming might be affecting the course of research and vice versa. Not to mention what happens when public awareness is shaped by factors other than scientific findings. This is especially troubling during what some are calling the warmest US winter in years."
I supposed we should all stay quiet? We shouldn't talk about it? I guess then it won't exist at all.
Please disregard this post as it comments on the taboo subject de jour, and I would hate to make it worse.
We can't seriously believe either side, but must stick to logic and examine all the facts. Both sides have their hysterical evangelists and paid shills.
Is the scientific basis for saying it should be happening.
The simple fact is that carbon dioxide has an extremely strong infrared absorbance and will act like the glass panes of a greenhouse. Very effectively.
It's about the same as knowing there is gravity so you can predict an apple will fall when released.
Couple that with knowing humans are spewing billions of tons of it into the atmosphere - with rates of release increasing every day - and you have a very solid basis to say that the effects of global warming will get stronger. Period.
You can argue all you want that the weather conditions people are seeing now are not global warming. And maybe they aren't. But global warming is happening and the trends will be for stronger effects.
How strong those effects are and will be can be debated, but the fact that they are coming cannot.
So what if we've just had the warmest winter in years? That means absolutely nothing on its own, particularly when you consider the fact thta it's an El Nino (El Nina? I forget wihch is wihch) year, and that the respective seasons are going to be less severe. Maybe some people remember how mild last summer was? I don't believe there was a single day last summer when I didn't feel comfortable to wear long sleeves.
The reason global warming has no credibility is because of reactionaries, yes, but also because the arguments made have not been internally or scientificially consistent for 30 years. You cry wolf long enough bolstering your points with manipulated data, and nobody is going to believe a word you say. Whether it's 'global cooling' from 30 years ago, 'global warming' a year ago, or what they're calling 'global climate change' today (yeah, apparently calling it global warming or cooling doesn't work anymore, because nobody believes a word of it), it doesn't matter the slightest.
It's inconsequential to most people, in no small part to the fact that we've passed a dozen 'population extinction' dates for not only Earth becoming a huge desert, ocean, or desert, but claims that the world's population is going to surpass what the planet can provide (claims which often go hand-in-hand with the global warming hysteria). Nevermind the readily observeable information that while not only Earth's climate is getting warmer, so is Mar's - due to the rotational temperature changes in the Sun. IE, there's not a fucking thing we can do about it, and worrying about it, let alone doing anything for it, is just reactionary fear mongering.
"Global warming" is the Left's "imminent emergency" scenario which they utilize to the greatest political end economic manipulation as possible - just like the Right's "war on terror" is its "imminent emergency".
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Like Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart (a nurse by training, if you can believe that):
"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits. . . Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
As long as the public faces of the global warming scare are building vast energy-hogging mansions, flying around the world in private jets, and shooting down alternative-power proposals that clash with their refined aesthetic sensibilities, I will assume they are all power-crazed liars and mountebanks of the ilk of Christine Stewart.
We are being asked to overturn the very edifice of free-market capitalism, on the basis of wild speculation about the significance of mere statistical noise, teased out of scant and questionable data by grant-chasing academics, and shouted hysterically by power-mad left-wing politicians who won't abide by the same draconian regulations they advocate for the rest of us. No thanks. I'm going to keep living my life as I please.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
In the history of climate research, scientists have seriously warned about global warming only once so far. The evidence is strong, the consequences are potentially devastating, and it appears to be happening faster than anybody initially thought.
Not so. My parents' generation (now 50) was told that if they didn't stop driving their gas guzzling cars NOW, the majority of the world would be desert by the time their children (me) reached 20. I'm a bit over 20 now, and the precipitation levels in the semi-arid area in which I live have been, while not record highs, quite a bit higher than in the previous decade.
Do you have any idea how many times the 'earth doomers' have said we were going to kill ourseles off? If not global warming, then global cooling, over-population, thermonuclear war, genetic (plant) modification, etc. - and all their projected times for extinction or some other cataclysmic life-ending event are well in the past. For instance, I distinctly recall hearing in elementary school that by the year 2000, the world would be too over-populated to feed itself. This, to gullible and impressionable kids! That's reprehensible.
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The fact of the matter is that those that support the notion that global warming is predominantly caused by human activities are so self-righteous about the fact that one has to question the objectivity of their research. If the outcome looks like an assumption, then it looks more like the pushing of an agenda. Moreover, news that these researches are trying to stifle dissent (by removing funding for research projects) doesn't give their arguments any more credibility.
To think that we (as a human race) have a very good understanding of long-term climatic processes is just arrogance.
Did you notice this sounds exactly like the start of an argument for intelligent design?
We have models which we are always refining, but they will always just be speculation. We look back mockingly at how ignorant some scientists were 40 years ago (eg. during the 1960s many/most geologists did not accept tectonic plate theory). It is silly to think that people forty years from now won't be doing the same about us.
The whole point of theory and evidence is so you can be relatively more confident that this is not going to happen. If the criticism of science that it might be overturned one day is sufficient to reject its conclusions, then you should always reject every conclusion, ever.
You're basically asking everyone to assume that you have some great piece of counter-evidence or theory that hasn't been thought of yet. If that were a good argument then you could "disprove" any piece of knowledge about anything, forever, and to be consistent, you'd have to. If later scientists disprove global warming theory some day, you should also reject that conclusion on the grounds that later scientists might disprove them in turn. And so on.
The whole point of science is to come up with knowledge that is less likely to be overturned than other kinds of knowledge (hearsay, religion-based, mere postulation).
That should be particularly true of climatic modelling. There is no robust equation for climate. People essentially just sit down and tweak the models until they get the results they expect, then use them to generate best case and worst case analysis. That folks, is hardly science.
Science is about evidence. Do you have any evidence of any of this happening? Is there any reason to believe you're not making it all up?
I have a hypothesis: you've just made all of this up off the top of your head but it sounds plausible to you personally. I invite you to disprove this hypothesis.
Shorter MarkPNeyer:
I'm ignorant, aware of it, and too lazy to do anything about it, so I'll remain ignorant.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Nope. I just mean to point out that in some areas of science (eg. the laws of motion of slow things where Newton is Good Enough, thermodynamics,...) we have very robust models and in others (eg. climatology, earthquake prediction and functioning of the human brain we do not). We should be careful to take all results from the weaker models with a grain of salt. The "oooh look at last winter" remark in the summary was just plain stupid - particularly in a pievce about being rational.
"... you should always reject every conclusion, ever." Nope. Just be cautious about what you say and to the degree you accept what is being said. The unwashed masses don't understand that some science is robust and other science is very tentative. I personally believe that we are having a global warming impact of sorts, but I don't believe that this is "scientifically proven" or even very strongly modelled. Reacting with alarm is not scientific. That's not to say we should not proceed with caution (ie. we are likely having an impact, therefore we should do things to lessen the impact.).
As for the tweaking of models, well that's exactly what ckimatologists do. They try to make models that describe how the climate operates. Unfortunately this is a very difficult, slow, and error prone process. You cannot set up an experiment: "Say, tomorrow I'll heat up 500cubic km of ocean and see what that does.".THis makes it very difficult to control the variables and make robust models which is why most models have "best case scenarios" saying sea levels will raise by a foot or so, and "worst case" saying by ten feet or more. The result is that we have no real predictions for what will happen.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The movie The Great Global Warming Swindle is a fraud. The filmmaker has been convicted in the past of "creative editing". And sure enough, Professor Carl Wunsch from MIT, who is shown in key moments of the movie, is crying foul.
...." It does not go onto say that the "Swindle" movie offered an alternate reasoning for this to be true, and backed it up with very persuasive data.
The link to your article has nothing by that MIT professor in it.
Also, it was written by someone who obviously hasn't even seen the movie in question (Swindle). Just read the part where he says that "everybody agrees that temps are higher now than 100 years ago and CO2 is high
Another funny fact: many of the "scientists" shown in the movie are introduced as members of renowned academic institutions... which they left long ago. In other words, the movie is misrepresenting lobbyists as scientists. That should speak volumes about the integrity of the filmmakers.
Another funny fact about the IPCC report, which is mentioned in the film, is that there was NOT consensus among the "2500+ scientists" who "wrote" the report. In point of fact, the report was compiled in large part by bureaucrats and many of the scientists, including 1 interviewed in the "swindle" movie, had no involvement or had opposing views to the ones that were published.
One scientist, who proved that malaria would not increase due to rising temperatures (due to global warming or otherwise) told them repeatedly to remove his name from the report, which, of course, stated the worst. Obviously, they ignored him and his (correct, according to me) assessment completely and he wanted his name off the report. After much argument, he finally had to threaten legal action just to get his name removed!
I will not accept data collected and assembled in this manner to form my opinion. The fact that they are grasping at straws of credibility to hold this thing together makes this--"the most important climate change report"--absolutely and indisputably invalid. The scientific community should stand up for themselves and proclaim a "do-over".
I only mention the IPCC report because the 'swindle' movie was mainly just a response to that. It all goes back to the original post of this article: Crying wolf diminishes credibility of anthropogenic climate change "alarmists" (heroes?) as a whole.
Anthropogenic climate change may be real, but I'm reiterating that Gadwin's Law is now in full effect with the popular invocation of the word "denier". The debate is over, but only because we can't behave ourselves.
We may be destroying our planet with greenhouse emissions, or we may be needlessly destroying our economy with alarmism. I don't think we'll know for sure for a long time.
Personally, I've looked at the data, and I'm waiting to be convinced either way.
Latewire