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Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
The arguments on both sides are right. The climate is changing and the earth is warming. That much is true. However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming. This is also true.
So we should be studying ways to mitigate the impact of climate change, not trying to find ways to reverse the irreversible.
What if an ignorant yeast called you a bacteria, wouldn't you be offended? Fungi have feelings too!
I'm sure everybody here will be interested in reading Lomborg's response before forming an opinion.
Damn right! There is a huge lack of respect for the amount of money and effort the petroleum industry has put into setting the story straight. Listen people, there is no story here, go back to burning everything you can lay your hands on, and we'll tell you if there is a problem.
However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming.
Incorrect, it has: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming
Here we speak of Lomborg, and you immediately begin talking about un-cited "other people" who somehow make Lomborg's mistakes disappear in a puff of equivalency.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
In every thread about global warming I see the same nutjob denialist theories debunked over and over again, yet with no change in the opinions of the hardcore denialists.
Here we have yet another denialist conspiracy to mislead the public debunked by actual science. Previously we had the "smoking gun" theory debunked by a blogger.
How many times do these theories need to be debunked before denialist nutjobs give up their crusade against rational science? It's like dealing with a bunch of raving Creationist lunatics.
...the flame war here will ensure there is.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
You'd have done much better to link to Lomborg's response, than going off on your speculative aura.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
So now we have a celebrity science pissing-match on our hands. This is simple, IPCC was married with politics, like much of the entire debate. Everyone back to the lab, the field, the research. Stop pandering to politicians and environmentalists, and come up with some science! Until then, no I'm not taking you seriously.
That's absurd. Your sweeping generalization ignores the decades of research poured into the topic by research groups from all over the world. There is ongoing research continually improving upon current models with updated and refined data. You can go take a look at the thousands upon thousands of journal articles written by these scientists, assuming you can even understand the jargon.
You know Lomborg was dishonest? Based on what?
Based on the fact that the numbers he used for deforestation were not applicable to the problem, aggregated over different collection methods, and completely irrelevant to the problem caused by deforestation: loss of habitat for endemic species.
And yes, I read his crap. It was a massive disappointment, and the only conclusion I could come to was that he was either ignorant beyond belief, or dishonest.
So yes, we can ignore him. As for your statement "that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research", that's not true either. The closest thing that has been demonstrated is that some researchers are human and petty in their responses to other people's requests and research. That's a long way from demonstrating that EVERY researcher has faked his research.
Feel free to argue otherwise, but to be credible, you're going to have to demonstrate that every single paper arguing for AGW is dishonest. Go ahead.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If he'd be interested in critique, he'd have published a paper rather than a book. This is par for the course for Lomborg. He's been pretty much laughed out of the room by any scientist. I haven't even seen the skeptics refer to his work in a long time.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?
Even if we are how are we going to fix it? Limit CO2 emissions by something like cap and trade? Great concept but India, China etc are not going to play in
a game that is detrimental to their growing manufacturing industries. Or perhaps we create green energy solutions, problem is none of those solutions are cost
effective to be self sustaining. If we are warming the planet who is to say it is not actually a positive thing?
Got Code?
Out of thousands of independent studies done by thousands of scientists that generally lead to the conclusion that climate change is happening and man is most likely the cause, you would ignore all of that because a few scientists might have been dishonest. Yet you would believe one man who has now been shown that there is some issues with his work. If you are truly skeptical you should throw his work too. That still leads to many, many more scientists who have hard data that climate change is happening.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
One of the things that REALLY bugs me about climate research is seeing LEGITIMATE scientists use the word "SKEPTIC" as a SMEAR.
Scientists are SUPPOSED to be skeptic, and I understand that this is not what the phrase is meant to convey, but the mere idea of labeling a scientists "skeptic" to smear him shows how political scientists in general have become. Remember when they were all about the pursuit of truth and knowledge?
I guess it sounds better than "denier", (which sounds like some McCarthy-era witch-hunt-ism), but why can't scientists keep their professionalism in situations which become politicized?
FanFictionRecs.net
A CD that was produced in response to a FOIA request which was ultimately denied after a court battle was nonetheless leaked. It is on wikileaks last I checked. Plenty of proof of professional misconduct there, including source code.
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That's not what he says:
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
It's well established that most people don't actually check footnotes[1]. Thus you can construct an original argument, footnote a few contained facts [2], and the presence of the footnotes lends an air of support to the entire argument [3].
Without reading both books, I can't take sides on the merits. But I will say some of the stuff in TFA sets off my alarms--like spending a footnote on a WHO report just to cite the population of Europe.
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Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So The Lomborg Deception isn't about some spy novelist's later works being heavily ghostwritten?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
In your haste, you misread the first paragraph and proved yourself an idiot. Congratulations.
It's a smear only in a very specific context: Lomborg and his ilk are, unfortunately, often identified as "skeptics" in the press. They're no such thing, of course -- "denier" or "denialist" is much more accurate* -- but when you have a bunch of people spouting pseudoscientific garbage who are handed the "skeptic" label as a gift, it's inevitable that those who point out the garbage will appear to be "smearing skeptics." The only answer appears to be to point out as often as possible that they aren't skeptics by any reasonable definition of the word. There is simply no amount of evidence that will ever or could ever convince them. Their ideology trumps any data in their minds.
And not only is this the way they think, they assume that everyone else thinks that way too; thus the constant accusations of quasi-religion ("warmism") leveled against people who actually study the data and try to figure out what's happening to the environment. Arguing with denialists is closely akin to arguing with religious fundamentalists. Anything that is not of (their interpretation of) God must perforce be of the Devil. They just can't acknowledge that there are other worldviews that don't fit into their box.
*Since "denier" is often prefaced with a word beginning with "H," those who get called "deniers" often take refuge behind Godwin. "Denialist" works nicely, and in fact may be the most accurate term since it describes an ideology rather than just an action.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Reading that very lengthy rebuttal, one thing becomes clear. Howard Friel does not deserve our time or thought. If you are going to criticize someone's work, you need to be doubly careful that the things you take issue with are valid. Here it appears that the criticism is far less solid than the material it critisizes. This does not make the original material correct as a result, but truely; there is nothing to see here, move along.
I haven't read his books, but I live in Denmark so Lomborg gets quite a bit of press here, especially under the climate change conference in December. In interviews he's always come across as a pragmatist more than a skeptic.
He has two main arguments:
1) Think about the return on investment.
Let's say we can cool the earth one degree by spending a trillion dollars. Is it worth the investment? What do we really get out of it? How many other problems could have been fixed with that money?
2) The current approach to fighting climate change is wrong.
UN treaties and money aren't going to stop the developing world from using fossil fuels. The only surefire way to get off of coal is to develop something that is cheaper. Instead of giving money to developing countries to bribe them not to pollute, we should invest the money in new technology, so that in 10, 20, 30 years we can say "here, this is cheaper than coal and doesn't pollute".
I think both of his points are important to consider, though I don't agree with him completely. There are risks to his solution - what if our investments don't bear fruit, and coal is still the cheapest energy source in 30 years? What if climate change causes political destabilization so we don't have enough time to get finished?
I don't think anybody has a perfect solution, but I do think that Lomborg contributes positively to the debate.
When you have an algorithm, for instance, that produces the 'hockey stick' even when fed random numbers, that is positive proof that the numbers have been cooked - manipulated in order to produce the predetermined outcome.
Yes but we don't have such algorithms do we? Instead we have models such as GISS-E which you can download and run on your *nix box at home.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Touche. My bad, absolutely. But whatever; I was clearly trolling. I didn't feel a huge need to be totally accurate. For all the responses I got about yeast being a fungus, I guess Tinactin probably sells pretty well among the /. set.
The CB App. What's your 20?
***because of our placement in a Milankovitch Cycle so it would be very odd if temperature was not increasing like we are seeing.***
Sigh ... Milankovitch cycles are real. They clearly affect climate at any given location. Plenty of evidence to support that. They do NOT affect total energy received from the sun over the course of the year which remains constant. Further, there is no agreement whatsoever amongst those who believe that the cycles nonetheless affect planetary temperature on exactly what the affect of Milankovitch changes are or where we are headed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#Present_and_future_conditions
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
One of the new postdocs in my lab is from the Czech Republic. He says that everything's more advanced in America, including the idiots.
...yet got modded insightful. Kudos, sir!
The problem is not, nor has it ever been that lunatics with their hand out the window yelling, "it feels fine!" are shouted down or ignored. The problem is that over the past 20 years the understanding has evolved that there is a "correct" result, and anyone working to disprove that result is an enemy to be scrutinized, tied to suspicious parties and ostracized.
By contrast, there are respected scientists in every other field attempting to disprove established theories, and should their work pan out, they would publish without fear of immediate rejection by their peers.
It is the nature of scientific theory that it is tested and attacked. That is why we value a theory limke evolution, which has survived these constat attempts to disprove or reduce its scope for a very long time.
Of what value is a body of theory that can only be confirmed, but which brooks no attempt to disprove?
*cititaion [sic] needed otherwise it's just hyperbole
For what, thousands of specialist scientists? Too easy! See Annex II and start counting ...
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
By that I mean there will be people that believe what they want no matter what the evidence. To be clear I mean there's zero solid evidence of Bigfoot yet some will always believe in it.
I think you got your analogies screwed up. Or do you compare AGW to Bigfoot?
I find it bizarre that people refuse to accept we are having an impact on the environment. The evidence is everywhere. I'm not talking global warming both sides of that argument are bordering on religion I'm talking how much the world has changed. Look at common resources. Ever watch any of the logging shows? What they are cutting now are so small no one would have bothered with them 20 or 30 years ago but in many areas it's all that's left and it's so bad that when they do find old growth trees the lumber mills aren't even set up for them. They are simply too rare to bother with.
Deforestation and overlogging are problems that do not depend on the AGW hypothesis. You're making the green fallacy of equating any and all negative changes in the environment to CO2.
Look at swordfish. They said 200 years ago you could all but walk across the Grand Banks because of all the fish. Now the swordfish they take are virtually all immature fish that have yet to reproduce. Most fisheries have collapsed, a fact. When was the last time you saw a butterfly? How many and how often? When I was growing up you'd see them by the hundreds virtually any summer day. Now I see a few a year. Same with frogs.
Speak for yourself. There might be variations in local spiecies populations due to human actions. That has nothing to do with whether CO2 is causing global changes.
Most great apes are down to a few percent of their original populations. It'd take a good sneeze to wipe them out and they are our closest relatives.
Again, caused by deforestation and expanding human land use, not CO2.
People say the snow storms proved global warming was a hoax. Well guess what I live in central Maine and we have already lost most of our snow and it's getting up into the 50s. This is supposed to be the worst time of year for snow and cold. Don't believe anyone or any study if you want.
Individual weather phenomena are never evidence for, or against, AGW.
Trust your eyes. I see radical change everywhere I look.
It's surprising how much "evidence" you can see proving something you've already made your mind up about being real. The same way only deeply religious people ever seem to find evidence by God.
What people still can't get through their heads is the warming is overall and we are experiencing both extreme hot and cold days. It's the average that is towards warming.
No one is really disputing the warming. What is being disputed is how much of it is due to CO2 and what will be the effect in the future.
The real point is we are headed for more extreme weather and that is very bad.
The claim that AGW causes extreme weather is highly disputed even among genuine climatologists.
With species extinction people need to understand it took hundreds of millions of years to create this much diversity and it will take that long to restore it. Even if it came back in a few million years look at it this way we've been around for 200,000. That means no human will ever see it this diverse again.
Statements without evidence based on hubris.
We are in the middle of one of the worst extinction events in Earth's history and we are the cause and there's no debate about that one.
Blatant lie wrapped up in an assertion of absolute truth.
Most species are dying from habitat loss, we call them cities.
Do you even know how many species there exist in the entire world?
Medieval warm period wasnt necessarily a period of global warmth. It may have been a period of north-atlantic warmth. Other areas were cooler. This is one of the many areas where the situation is just flat out more complicated than any popular treatment would lead one to believe. Very often one area will be cooler and another hotter and it's bugger-all difficult to properly sort it out and demonstrate a *global* trend without going to a very long time-scale.
And it wasnt named that because it was actually green - it wasnt. It was named that because Ericsson had previously found it very difficult to attract settlers for his previous development, Iceland, because even though it was in fact quite green at the time, it just sounded cold and barren. So he chose a more attractive name for his second development in the interest of marketing.
Certainly true.
Whether or not this is true is far from a settled question. Mans actions influence the environment and vice versa and always have. How much is "significant?" There is some very interesting research that indicates even the tens of thousands of years of farming prior to the industrial revolution may have altered global climate significantly enough to be detected. However in the broader picture, of course, the natural forces that have driven climate change since long before humans evolved are still at work and dwarf anything we can do or likely will be able to do anytime soon.
I think there is a grain of truth in that, but you drastically oversimplify.
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It's been a while, but I read 'Cool It' and recall that the premise was (generally) "Scientists have proven climate change is real. It's now up to ECONOMISTS to determine which would be worse for humanity- to allow the climate to continue changing or to restructure our economy to prevent climate change."
IIRC, his general premise is that the ball shouldn't be in the court of climate scientists any more. That is indeed a scary thought for folks who earn their livings studying climate change. If we all bought into Lomborg's work, they'd have a bit tougher time getting grant money.
Whether it's an accurate argument or not, I can't imagine any climate scientist out there agreeing that their research is no longer valuable.
There you go again. Conflating "climate change" with whether man is the most likely cause. Its really rather rich. The prime highlight of the IPCCs AR3 was to "forget" the existence of climate change prior to the 19th century. Natural variation over the past thousand years was reduced to quiet gradual downtrend with an abrupt surge upward in the 1800s. In so doing they discarded thousands of studies and work of thousands who previously carefully documented periods of great warming and cooling throughout the history of man.
This can be seen clearly by comparing the IPCC-1990 report, which concisely shows the consensus of an old guard (now largely dead). A very warm, much warmer period during the middle ages (shown in read). The IPCC AR3 and AR4 replaced this with the blue curve. Shown a flat-changeless temperature history with a slight downtrend, suddenly accelerating upward.
But their claim was bespectacled from the start by way of special pleading they had explained away each interruption in warming that occurred during the 20th century, but then after the report was published, yet another unexpected cooling period emerged.
Suddenly the meme switched from being about "Global Warming" to being "Climate Change". The focus shifted from temperatures to sea-levels and hurricanes. Yet this turned out to be an even more tenuous footing. Its already no longer considered reputable among intellectual circles to discuss such extravagances. Eventually the talking point was settled upon: weather is not climate. The recent cooling is just weather.
Indeed, weather is not climate. Climate is the expectation of weather--and so yes, it surely does matter when year after year goes by somewhat cooler than had been predicted by the IPCCs latest report.
Meanwhile, the very people who had steadfastly refused to deny climate-change are now labeled the climate change deniers. This stemmed from an Orwellian campaign to redefine terminology. Suddenly believing in climate-change meant believing in anthropogenic climate change. The language literally twisted to be an embodiment of the "one true belief"--no need for that pesky modifier anthropogenic, and all the better to co-opt what everyone knows: climate changes.
Several very cogent critiques of the AR3 temperature series have been published which eviscerated that graph as a product of flawed statistical methods and bad data. Yet a loud cadre continues to deny any problem exists, and banks on the lack of specialized knowledge among the public and other scientists to trade on their word alone.
And, no, we're saying that there is no contribution from Man. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but its effect on temperature depends on poorly understood feedback effects. These effects are in part also responsible for the long history of natural temperature variation that the IPCC otherwise ignores. Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: The IPCC claims a temperature rise of 2C/century. To arrive at this number they assume almost all strong feedbacks are amplifying rather moderating the C02 driven warming. Why does this matter? Much of the impetus for "ACTION NOW!" stems from the notion of a climate tipping point, but if the feedback effects are more moderating than the IPCC claims, this is highly unlikely.
But if the cause isn't man made, then we can say "don't blame me!" when disaster strikes.
Imagine if this thinking was applied to other areas. Hurricanes aren't man made, so we don't need to get out of the way. Floods aren't man made so I can build my house on the river bank. Lightning is a natural phenomena so I can keep golfing in the rain.
While you make a compelling point that someone somewhere must have spotted this, you don't seem to have any explanations of the phenomenon under discussion.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
If you replace 'suffer' with 'LIVE IN HOUSEBOATS' then global warming becomes AWESOME! :D
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Greenland was colonized during a period of global warmth. That it is why it was named that way.
According to the Reverend J. Sephton in his book Eirik the Red's Saga, Greenland was named as a marketing ploy by Eirik: "Because," said he, "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name."
Yes, it would have been warmer and greener than it was now, but if there was subterfuge in the naming of the country then I don't imagine that it was a tropical paradise. It also doesn't mean that it was as consistantly warmer across the globe as it is now.
But it is also a distraction. Do you deny that being shot by a gun could kill you, merely because other people have died without being shot. Just because it got warmer then doesn't mean that we are not causing it to get warmer now. It is getting hotter, faster and more globally than it did back then.
Man is not powerful enough to change the earth's climate to any "significant" degree. But that big thermonuclear ball in the sky is. A billion petrochemical fueled cars will not influence the sun.
Nobody has every claimed that we are making the sun hotter. This demonstrates that you really don't understand the problem. The problem is that the heat from the sun is being trapped here. As an analogy, my house stays pretty cool even on hot days without the need for air conditioning. As long as it gets cooler at night, it stays pleasant during the day. But if it stays hot at night, it doesn't get a chance to lose the build-up of heat from the previous day and it gets more unpleasant as after day. The days are not necessarily hotter, but the accumulated heat energy means that each successive day has a larger affect.
Scientists are men that can be influenced by propaganda just like any man can be. I think the climate change scare is just another way for politicians to steal our hard earned money.
The climate change "scare" as you call it was instigated by the scientists, not the politicions. They don't just watch the news and think "yeah, I had better parrot that line too". They just follow their data, and all get to the same place. It is either a giant conspiracy or the truth. Which seems the most likely.
However, if you can come up with ANY evidence to back up the claim that it is the politicians that are leading our scientists around then please present it. Oh, have a look at all those CRU emails that were released. They should be able to tell you the names of the politicians who are giving the orders (if there are any). Come back and let us know.
What are you talking about? Climate theory is so primitive right now that it's "disproved" all the time. If climatology were mechanics, we'd be at the "Big rock hurt more than little rock" stage.
Play Command HQ online
Parent deserves to be modded-up. It's clearest argument I've read yet on this thread, and it's marked troll presently.
Classical denialist argumentation from ignorance. If very small amounts of something aren't danegrous, you wouldn't mind drinking a glass containing the same concentration of nerve toxin as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, would you?
There's so much evidence of our ability to affect the climate that it's just silly to ignore it. To get you started, read up on the haze of brown smog hanging over Asia. People are actually changing the climate by simply burning wood. Now imagine what a billion cars can do.
yes
Exactly, when people call AGW a hoax what they are really saying is that a large chunk of fundemental physics is a hoax.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Though I agree that humans are a significant contributor to climate change arguing the point is a waste of effort. Once the window is broken it really doesn't matter whether it was Billy or Jane who was the culprit, the most important thing is to replace the glass to prevent the basement from flooding.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Just because a company uses a situation to make money means it doesn't exist? I guess all those flag-makers taking advantage of 9/11 must mean the Trade Center is still standing.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=temperatures+spike+before+co2+levels
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
The above poster illustrates something very important:
Part of the reason one should be very skeptical of AGW alarmists is their rabies-like demeanor and aggression against all that they perceive as even the slightest heresy against their little modern day apocalypse cult.
Wider implication: Never trust the results in any discipline that is subject to a reputation cascade. (I.e, disciplines where even mild dissenters are ostracized)
Its interesting to note that AGW believers mimic creationists even to the extent of believing that climate was ever stable, that it was destabilized through the sin of Man eating from the Tree of Knowledge called the Industrial Revolution, that the ensuing mess can only be reversed through reverting to enforced poverty and a return to antedeluvian beliefs, that the penalty for not doing so is Apocalypse and the destruction of the Earth, that anyone who does not believe the message of salvation through self-denial is an apostate who is a representative of an evil conspiracy and in Denial of the Truth.
Neo-creationism by any other name.
It's a perfect remapping of Christian Apocalyptic beliefs.
And that would be you.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
You do not "debunk", you ostracize. The main modus of debate of AGW proponents from day one has been moralistic, not empirical.
Hence the conversion of "skeptic" from badge of honor to a mark of shame, and the introduction of the "denier" label to further amp up the hysteric persecution of those who dont go with the program.
This also explains the skepticism of the general public. Joe Blow doesnt know his tree rings from his ice cores, but he sure knows what fanaticism looks like.
After all, how can one trust a science where "skepticism" is career death? The answer is simple: One cant. And as the tip of the iceberg is now visible for all to see - the remaining question is how much is hidden by the sea...
You know Lomborg was dishonest? Based on what?
Based on the fact that the numbers he used for deforestation were not applicable to the problem, aggregated over different collection methods, and completely irrelevant to the problem caused by deforestation: loss of habitat for endemic species.
Citation please.
And yes, I read his crap. It was a massive disappointment, and the only conclusion I could come to was that he was either ignorant beyond belief, or dishonest.
So a blanket condemnation based on a single unsourced reference.
So yes, we can ignore him. As for your statement "that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research", that's not true either. The closest thing that has been demonstrated is that some researchers are human and petty in their responses to other people's requests and research. That's a long way from demonstrating that EVERY researcher has faked his research.
Here we get to the rub. You dismiss Lomberg based on a selective quotation of a supposed mistake and then bend over backwards to excuse data manipulation, censorship and interference in peer review, and other forms of scientific misconduct.
Not human and petty - just dishonest.
No-one has ever claimed that EVERY researcher has faked his research. But the ones which are supposed to establish that there is a climate crisis? Very, very dubious indeed.
Feel free to argue otherwise, but to be credible, you're going to have to demonstrate that every single paper arguing for AGW is dishonest. Go ahead.
Why should we, when you argue that every single quote from Bjorn Lomberg is dishonest and 'crap'.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Your tin foil hat is slipping. Better add more tin foil.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
After reading about half of Lomborgs rebuttal, I think the more pertinent issue is "can Friel read"? Perhaps we can set up a literacy fund to help the good man get some remedial ed?
As for your assertion that "Lomborg paints himself a persecuted DaVinci":
1. As far as I know, he has never compared himself to DaVinci. I.e, you are making shit up.
and
2. He has had the pleasure of being convicted (and then aquitted) of the novel thought-crime of "unintentional dishonesty". Gotta love those cultists - they are at least an inventive bunch.
Unfortunately you are wrong. I honestly wish you were correct but wishfull thinking and ad-homs will get you nowhere.
RF = 5.35*ln(C2/C1) = 3.71 W/M^2 for a doubling of CO2
T = (3/3.71)*5.35*ln(387.5/280) = 1.41 deg C. For the observed change in CO2 concentrations.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's the Jungian shadow. Where there is great light, there is great darkness.
Several investigations found his publications (newspaper articles)to be dishonest
From your link:
The DCSD did not provide specific statements on actual errors. On this point the MSTI stated "the DCSD has not documented where [Dr. Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and ... the ruling is completely void of argumentation for why the DCSD find that the complainants are right in their criticisms of [his] working methods. It is not sufficient that the criticisms of a researcher's working methods exist; the DCSD must consider the criticisms and take a position on whether or not the criticisms are justified, and why.
A Dutch think tank, HAN, Heidelberg Appeal the Netherlands, published a report in which they claimed 25 out of 27 accusations against Lomborg to be unsubstantiated or not to the point.[13] A group of scientists with relation to this think tank also published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics,[14] in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused their authority to suppress Lomborg.
I assume you've read it and know that there are still plenty of other criticisms (like this new book) but as for peer-review and open dialogue I think it's hard to say that Lomborg hasn't had his work examined and even harder to say that he hasn't been forthcoming in responding to detractors in a far more transparent way than any journal I've ever read. I've never read TSE but I can't say that I understand where you get the "frothing" part of his response. Maybe you should imagine it being read by a calm voice, whether you agree with it or not.
... and when you've finished counting, subtract all the scientists who asked for their names to be removed due to being misquoted in the summaries and conclusions (written by politicians and influenced by news reports and other media), but that the IPCC chose to include anyway.
I don't think anyone *denies* that climate is changing.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22climate+change+is+a+lie%22
is is NOT caused primarily by man.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=is+climate+change+caused+by+man
in the past the earth was also hotter and contained more carbon dioxide. Who caused that
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=did+earth+have+higher+co2+levels+and+what+cause
And so on...
Turns out you have to actually search for it as it evidence doesn't just appear in your hand. But I assure you its not really that hard. This took me a minute.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf
"Without reading both books, I can't take sides on the merits. But I will say some of the stuff in TFA sets off my alarms--like spending a footnote on a WHO report just to cite the population of Europe."
When doing math, statistical sources matter. But here we have something substantial to discuss. Is Lomborg dishonest in this case? Read along for the answer!
Friel: "But Lomborg's only source for these figures—a chart in the statistical annex of a 2004 World Health Organization report—contains
no data on human mortality due to excess heat or cold. In fact, the words "excess heat" and "excess cold" make no appearance in the WHO document; neither does the word "heat," and the word "cold" appears only once in a reference unrelated to death due to excess cold.
Lomborg's reference to the WHO document, which allegedly supports his claim that two hundred thousand people die each year in Europe from excess heat, reads in its entirety: "207,000, based on a simple average of the available cold and heat deaths per million, cautiously excluding London and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”
However, page 121 of the 2004 WHO report—The World Health Report 2004: Changing History— which is what this source references, lists no data on cold- and heatrelated deaths per million, or for cold- and heat-related deaths in any context.
Likewise, Lomborg's very next reference-to support his claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold - reads in its entirety: "1.48 million, estimated in the same way as total heat deaths."
Thus, Lomborg's references indicate that page 121 of the 2004 WHO report is the source of his estimates of annual heat- and cold-related deaths in Europe; however, this page in the WHO report lists no statistics for either cold- or heat-related deaths. Consequently, there is no apparent basis here or elsewhere in Cool It for Lomborg's claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. [LD, p. 86, emphasis added]
Lomborg: "In fact, the text and first endnote in this section make it very clear where the figures are sourced from: “Based on the summary of the biggest European heat and cold study (Keatinge, et al., 2000, p. 672).” (p. 170).
In the UK edition of the book, there is even a figure with the numbers, with the further explanation: “estimated in the text, using Keatinge et al., 2000:672.” (p. 233, CIUK) Friel’s claim that I relied on a WHO document that does not support my case is astonishing and profoundly disingenuous.
I clearly used the WHO report solely to provide an estimate of Europe’s population (because WHO uses the standard geographical definition of Europe to the Ural Mountains).This is evident in the text that Friel himself quoted: “and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”
Finding this study on Google Scholar took me all of two seconds using the reference provided by Lomborg (in his book).
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/321/7262/670
The quote is confirmed by Google Books:
http://books.google.se/books?q=estimated+in+the+text,+using+Keatinge+et+al.,+2000:672&btnG=S%C3%B6k+i+b%C3%B6cker
In short, from this example, picked by you - not me, it plainly evident that is Friels honesty or literacy that should be in question, not Lomborgs. This is likely to be representative of the "debunking" in its entirety, going from what I have read of the rebuttal so far.
I don't know about the intersection between deniers and creationists, but they do seem to have a similar philosophy. Both seem to want to think that people do not affect their environment very much. If the creationists admit that, then they couldn't ascribe bad things happening to people to a vengeful G-d. That in turn would mean they have no mooring to achieve their political ends of telling everyone else what to do...a bit like progressives and liberals but with the shadow of G-d as the enforcer. Also, they seem to have a steady state notion of the Universe...conveniently forgetting the Universe periodically tries to kill us all dead with an arrant asteroid or comet. If they were to admit that, then they'd have to admit maybe G-d doesn't think they're so special. They also seem to think that the climate change people are part of a general relativity plot where all morals and ethics are relative and not handed down by G-d. Consequently, they feel perfectly at home being scientific relativists where science is all relative.
The Deniers seem split between the constant Earth and the Earth's dynamics are on a trajectory that cannot be changed. Either one is consistent with a G-d who's pulling the strings behind the scenes somehow. I do think there is a large segment of Deniers who deny merely because to change their lifestyle would be too much trouble. These are rather selfish people who just want to live the high life. Then there are the Conservative Deniers who see another nefarious plot by the Liberals to stop economic and scientific development in its tracks. They are the same group who believe scientists are in on a nefarious plot of squeezing the G-d of the Gaps into smaller and smaller gaps.
Both groups believe so many inherently contradictory beliefs that you would think their heads would explode. The reason they do not is easy, they think of contradictory beliefs on different days so they never meet in their heads at the same time. Think of their brains as being timeshared among various intellectual viruses.
Well it's not like one day oil will cost 50 dollars a barrel and the next it'll all be gone.
As the reserves run dry there will be years during which the price climbs and climbs and people will switch to other fuels.
Ships that run on oil getting too costly to run?
well then some smart buggers will build some more nuclear powered ships or ships which are more efficient or ships which are powered by fuel cells or any other method and they'll make a lot of money because they'll be offering to transport goods far more cheaply than the companies who's ships run on oil.
Having read Lomberg's response to the criticism, I'm more comfortable with his conclusions than I am with Friel's. However, the last word probably hasn't been written/spoken on the subject. Both sides of the argument fall short of absolute proof, but Lomberg seems to be a better mathematician.
I am basing my opinion on incomplete information (as are all the posters on this topic) since, a. Friel's complete book is is not completely available to us and, b. it's a lot of dang work to analyze the books side-by-side in any case. Despite the lack of sufficient info, people will go out and vote (some of them anyway) and the minority of the voters and the general citizenry will be stuck with the results.
The information at hand doesn't support a conclusion of immediate emergency, so I'm holding out against any hasty drastic actions that mostly serve to make Al Gore richer. The urgency is for more research done a manner that we can all trust, untainted by political considerations, BEFORE it becomes a real emergency. Legitimate scientists will examine all sides of the problem before recommending any long-term solutions.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Friel, denouncing Lomborg on glaciers:
"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is Page 18 of 27 very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005). [IPCC, 2007c, p. 493]"
How is that "settled science" working out for you Frielyboy?
You should go and visit "uncommon descent" the blog HQ of intelligent design. They're always bringing up AGW skepticism, since the notion of a far-reaching conspiracy of scientific propaganda and elitist repression is the same excuse they use to wave away the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion is in favour of evolution. Throwing their lot in with other denialists "makes their worldview make sense".
Also institute for creation research states:
Global warming may affect some parts of our society negatively but would likely benefit others. In fact, the current warming trend may be returning our global climate closer to that prevalent in the Garden of Eden. Compared to climate changes which have occurred in earth history, a temperature rise of a few degrees is a small fluctuation which will not lead to a complete melting of the polar caps or another ice age. Earth has a stable environmental system with many built-in feedback systems to maintain a uniform climate. It was designed by God and has only been dramatically upset by catastrophic events like the Genesis Flood. Catastrophic climate change will occur again in the future, but only by God's intervention in a sudden, violent conflagration of planet Earth in the end times
Answers in genesis cry conspiracy and even cite "The Day After Tomorrow"!
The tactic used by Lomborg (quote mining) is the definitive modus operandi of a denialist. It is the bread and butter of Creationists, and for the person employing it, it is a strong indicator of either severe cognitive dissonance or outright lying.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
There'll be a Great Flood as well, sent by God to wash away all the "denialists" and their multitude of sins.
However I think AGW is more like a fascist cult than an Abrahamic religion, because it is an all-out attack on free minds and free thought: "believe exactly as we do, do not question our authority, or the Earth will be destroyed and it will be your fault".
The thought restrictions go way beyond questions about the science. They also require belief in a government solution, summarised by the claim: "Well, even if it isn't happening, why shouldn't we do something anyway? Our plans will make the world a better place no matter what." I've never seen any evidence for that claim, although I believe that Karl Marx wrote a few books about it.
Forget gas chambers and gulags, "if you are not with us, you are against us" is the very definition of fascism. Here are some more:
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
"It is for the Greater Good."
"The science is settled."
"There is a consensus."
"The debate is over."
I never thought I would see a Slashdot discussion dominated by fascists, but here we are. -1, Free Thinking, and +5, Agrees Totally With Authority.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Once the window is broken it really doesn't matter whether it was Billy or Jane who was the culprit...
Unless you want to stop Jane from bashing in any more windows. It's not like we're going to stop contributing to global warming if we ignore the question of whether we're contributing to it.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
... is not his actual arguments (important as they may be), but rather that the attacks on him - in their viscousness, dishonesty and general rage-inducing pompousness - highlight how venal large swathes of the "scientific establishment" have become.
Compared to Europe and the Far East, oil consumption is very high. It takes about twice as much oil to transport an American a mile as a European or a Japanese. It takes twice as much oil to heat or cool large American houses, per occupant. US health care is two or more times as expensive per head as it is in Europe. These are real competitive disadvantages which increasingly affect the attractiveness of the US life style. It is no good having large houses if you cannot afford to heat them in winter or cool them in summer, and cannot afford the long commute to them. Whereas outside the Eastern seaboard and San Francisco, most US cities are not very pleasant to live in. The Chinese have a similar problem with the vast spaces of their interior.
It's worth considering that Lomborg is a European economist, and in many ways his arguments are valid for Europe. They may appeal to many Americans, but adopting his approach could be very bad for the US in the long term. Perhaps that's his intention.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
He's not just saying "Nope, this isn't a problem, ignore it, don't worry, etc, etc." A person like that is much easier to dismiss. What he's saying is "Yes, this is a problem, but not a big one, and certainly not one worth all the money and effort being proposed to fix it. Instead, we should spend that on other things that would have a much bigger impact on quality of life." More or less he's not disagreeing with the fundamental premise or conclusion, he's disagreeing with the policies being proposed because of that.
This drives the global warming proponents totally mad. Most of them seem to be of the opinion that what they have to do is convince people that global warming is real, and caused by humans. Once that is done, people should be willing to accept whatever policies they say are necessary. No questioning of the costs or the utility, they've proven the problem and now whatever they say needs to happen should happen without further question.
So Lomborg has become one of their top enemies because he doesn't fundamentally disagree on the idea that the world is warming, just that it is worth while to try and solve when there are so many other problems to human life. For that, they hate him.
That is one of the things that makes me question motives in this whole thing. I can understand exasperation with people who believe your research is incorrect/false/made up if your truly believe it is right. You think you've got it correct, done a lot of work in that regard, you get mad when people say "Nuh uh!". However, when someone is disagreeing not with that, but with the policies you demand and you get even more angry at them, well that makes me wonder: Is the research really what's important to you, or are you using it just to try and drive policies that you want, regardless of their use? It would seem to me that how to deal with the problem would be open for discussion, yet discussion of that generates the most backlash. Makes you wonder.
Who knows why this got modded interesting, it's fuckin' dumb.
Let's try a little thought experiment, shall we? Two scenarios:
1) Let's imagine that you are working on the bleeding edge of science and you're investigating a question that no-one knows the answer to, like "why does Nt-acetylation of bulk proteins happen?". You do some clever research, and whaddya know, you come up with an interesting answer: "it's because acetylation can function as a degradation signal". That forces a need to revisit thinking on protein turnover, a larger topic, and may even mean that we need to think again about exactly how homeostasis works. So you write it all up and if you can get the paper past your clever colleagues who do peer review, you might get published in Science and you can be very proud of yourself. Look, it's happened here!
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/327/5968/966
2) Now, let's imagine that you investigate something a bit more fundamental to modern biological science. Say, the idea that DNA encodes genetic information about the shape of proteins. Let's say you invent a clever experiment and the findings are very striking -- they appear to show that DNA doesn't encode that information after all! Now for the thought experiment bit: do you think that the standards and scrutiny that will be applied to your claim will be higher or lower than in scenario 1, given that your results will require the setting aside / reinterpretation of an enormous mass of prior experimental results and accepted scientific theory. Why, that's right! Your results will be subjected to more careful scrutiny. They will have to be replicated, validated, tested etc etc every which way from Sunday, because the inherent balance of probabilities is that your results are wrong or artefactual or explicable within the current framework, and that the prior thinking was right. It's not *impossible* that the opposite holds true, but it *is* extremely unlikely.
People who seek to demonstrate that anthropogenic climate change is not happening are much closer to scenario 2 than scenario 1. Scientists will quite reasonably say, "just before we chuck out all the accumulated evidence and thinking about how the world works and accept your argument that you've shown it that is, in fact, possible for humans to add net tens of billions of tons of gases such as CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere in the space of decades without it having an impact on climate, do you mind terribly if we take a very long hard look at your evidence and reasoning?"
The best part is that even on that very page, if you match up the time-lines you can see that the temperature and CO2 graphs don't line up, and that the temperature starts to spike before CO2 amount does.
Unfortunately, there's no -1 misinformative mod.
That is to be expected. Normally, temperature starts to rise due to e.g. distance to the sun decreasing slightly, which leads to increased CO2 which enhances the effect of the warming, causing further CO2 to be released until a new balance is achieved (essentially that the energy absorbed from the sun equals the earths black-body radiation). CO2 increase with temperature because CO2 is less soluble in warm (sea)-water, and a number of other effects (Tundra melting is often mentioned as a big one, though I don't personally know.). Now, into this system we (the humans) release enough CO2 to increase the concentration by what, 30%? What do *you* think will happen?
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
But of course, you knew all this. What pisses me off about all this that while the above is well-known science and has been for a long time, the economic aspects are far from clear to me. Is it worth it to curtail the warming? How much will it cost to adapt vs. prevention? Those are the interesting questions, but few discusses this :/
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
So far, these are my own writeups:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559622&cid=31242704
Thirty seconds and two Googlings confirm Lomborg is right (on an issue raised in TFA) and Friel is a liar.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559622&cid=31242742
Friel biting his own glacial ass. Delicious.
For the whole shebang, do take the time to read:
http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf
What's sad is that useful idiots like you keep dancing around my simple request for evidence. I know the red-herring you are refering to. I can only assume you don't want to post it because it has been debunked to death.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I can't say that I believe in AGW in the same way Christians believe in god. I can't say that I've heard arguments in favor of AGW that didn't accept that our climate is constantly changing, either. It would seem that the argument is that the climate is warming more than it would without mankind's influence.
Many people, like myself, who aren't scientists, but accept that there could be some AGW are more interested in solutions to any ensuing apocolypse. Those solutions are often built upon the "Tree of Knowledge called the Industrial Revolution". There could be no mass manufacture of wind turbines, solar panels, fuel cells, electric cars or anything else that we dream up without the foundations of the Industrial Revolution. What we are suggesting is a Green revolution, which as a side affect disenfranchises energy suppliers that make all of their profit from non-renewable sources. It also disenfranchises localities that rely heavily on those non-renewable resources. For decades those same entities have been engaged in practices which we know to disenfranchise their employees and citizens, and which we have reason to believe disenfranchises the rest of the world. There is a big difference between accepting the likelihood of something that is supported by a broad selection of data, and another to believe a book that has no second sources.
What's more, the religious fanatics seem to rejoice in the glee of their apocolyps, as only the sinners get burned. Those of us that consider the merits and logic of scientific research are worried that everyone will get burned.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
"Sequester the CO2, absorb the CO2, utilize the CO2?"
Piece of cake, Coca Cola has been doing it for ages.
Plenty of proof of professional misconduct there, including source code.
Nope.
You deserve upmods. It seemingly cannot be stated enough, because the "skeptics" don't get it: of COURSE temperature leads CO2 levels. What would a sudden, pre-temperature rise of CO2 levels come from? There wasn't much coal burned in the ice ages.
When no CO2 is added to the system, it merely works as a feedback for temperature changes, magnifying them. Oceans get warmer, reducing their capacity to dissolve gases, releasing more CO2. Rotting vegetation trapped in ice melts, releases methane and CO2. Fortunately, the additional CO2 released from warming is not enough to cause more warming than what released it, so it doesn't run away, it stabilizes at a new, higher temperature.
But when CO2 is added to the system from outside (fossil fuels trapped in the earth for ages), it's not just a feedback. It's a forcing, something that drives temperature change.
So, that CO2 followed temperature rises during the end of the ice ages is not evidence against global warming. It's what you would expect to happen when there are no humans around to burn gigatons of coal, if current theories of carbon feedback are correct.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Come on now, how about a little intellectual honesty? The falsification and other shenanigans by the pro-AGW crowd have been all over the news in recent months. That doesn't make any disingenousness or innacuracy by Lombard excusable and GP didn't say it was.
The whole GW issue has become more about money (grants and taxes) and power/prestige than real science, on BOTH sides.
AGW is not a proven fact, and the shenanigans of both skeptics and supporters of the theory are doing science an injustice.
They do NOT affect total energy received from the sun over the course of the year which remains constant.
Small nitpick here. While the sun is extremely stable when compared to its interstellar cousins, it is by no means constant. For example, there is an 11-year sunspot cycle that varies the amount of solar radiation we receive by about .1%, which is much greater than the amount of change caused by the amount of C02 man has put into the atmosphere. Of course, there are longer cycles as well that may affect climate over a much longer range, but we have not had the instruments to make measurements that far back to nail down the exact effect on the climate.
And while you did say, "over the course of of the year", the orbit of the Earth itself is elliptical enough to vary the amount of energy we receive from the sun.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Everyone will always talk about research to prove the global warming, but no one really knows exactly what this research is. Watching ice melt on Google earth is not research. Saying CO2 in atmosphere contributes to green house effect warming earth is not research. And all the "research" companies funded by governments have yet to reveal their research and prove it. This is why it was a big deal when hackers released information from one of those research firms that actually questions all of their research on global warming.
I will not believe it until there is a research paper that 90% of scientists can agree on. I don't take anyone's word for any of this. Either show me proof or get out of my face. And I don't want to see proof of global warming as YOU see it, I want it as 90% of scientific community sees it. Such research is yet to be published and agreed on.
Technically correct, they show a feedback from CO2, not a forcing, which is what you would expect. There were no things at the end of the ice ages to release CO2 in large amounts, except higher temperatures themselves (which in turn was caused by Milankovitch cycles). As the earth warmed, CO2 was released from oceans and frozen vegetation, causing further warming.
Without the feedback from CO2, the Milankovitch cycles would only cause a very modest change in temperature - not nearly sufficient to cause the ice age/interglacial cycles we know.
Before humans, temperature was driving the change, and CO2 caused the feedback.
Now, CO2 is driving the change (cause we have coal power plants now), and temperature causes the feedback (because warming up the oceans still reduces their capacity to hold CO2)
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I challenge anyone to find a quote from Lomborg suggesting that he questions climate change or its anthropogenic origin.
He does, however, make a pretty convincing case that focusing on it diverts resources and attention away from some other very serious issues. But I guess it's easier to vilify him than to actually LISTEN to him.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
That's unfortunately because the article proves that the "climate skeptics" are frauds too, they've lied and mislead and deceived people for their own benefit which, of course, according to your own standard means they are wrong and can't be believed.
So there, the world must be colder because it's can't be getting warmer because the scientists and the CRU are mean, the non-scientists and IPCC made a mistake in a 400 page report, and the so-called skeptics are continuously and repeated proven wrong over and over again. That's the only possible conclusion. Right? Right?
Wait. Maybe science doesn't work like that.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
LOMBORG: Out of Europe's 731000000 inhabitants, 14000000 die of cold-related causes every year, so warming is obviously a good thing! (cite: WHO documents so and so)
FRIEL: I checked those WHO documents. They say no such thing as 14 million dying of cold related causes every year, you lying scumbag.
LOMBORG: Hey, I only meant to cite the WHO for the population of Europe part! What is this, some kind of witch hunt? I'm being persecuted!!1!
(freely paraphrased from the Newsweek review of Friel's book)
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
But if the cause isn't man made, then we can say "don't blame me!" when disaster strikes.
Imagine if this thinking was applied to other areas. Hurricanes aren't man made, so we don't need to get out of the way. Floods aren't man made so I can build my house on the river bank. Lightning is a natural phenomena so I can keep golfing in the rain.
And that was kinda Bjorn's point. It doesn't really matter so much as to WHY the climate is getting warmer and there is little we can do about it. Sure, we can do some things like make more efficient cars and power our homes with nuclear/wind/solar/hydro power, but with the massive amounts of cash we are throwing at the problem could be better spent preparing for global warming than fighting it. For example, rather than spend trillions of dollars to get third world countries to not build their economies, we could spend billions feeding or moving the people that may or may not be affected by GW.
As to Bjorn's sources being debunked or whatever, this conclusion that I've mentioned above is clearly sited by common sense. No more citation is required.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
And the even larger amount of money that has been poured into convincing everybody that we need to let governments take over ervery aspect of life to prevent "Global Warming/Climate Change". When one looks at the numbers one discovers that Exxon has given more money to people promoting AGW than to people debunking it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
A: Correct. It is about manipulating the IPCC, not the peer review literature itself. I dont really know if that strengthens your case, however. For more extensive discussion, head over to the CRU nemesis himself: http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/17/climategatekeeping-2/
B: But here you go for some cut n paste - how to deep six a "dangerous" paper or journal editor in some easy steps (as far as I know it has not been published so far):
From: Phil Jones
To: rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, "Michael E. Mann" ,tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 08:49:22 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,jto@u.arizona.edu,drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, keith.alverson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more
to do with it until they
rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the
editorial board, but papers
get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.
Cheers
Phil
Dear all,
Tim Osborn has just come across this. Best to ignore probably, so
don't let it spoil your
day. I've not looked at it yet. It results from this journal having a
number of editors. The
responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few
papers through by
Michaels and Gray in the past. I've had words with Hans von Storch about
this, but got nowhere.
Another thing to discuss in Nice !
Cheers
Phil
"From: Keith Briffa
To: Edward Cook
Subject: Re: Review- confidential REALLY URGENT
Date: Wed Jun 4 13:42:54 2003
I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review – Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting - to support Dave Stahle’s and really as soon as you can. Please
Keith"
Hi Keith,
Okay, today. Promise! Now something to ask from you. Actually somewhat important too. I
got a paper to review (submitted to the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and
Environmental Sciences), written by a Korean guy and someone from Berkeley, that claims
that the method of reconstruction that we use in dendroclimatology (reverse regression)
is wrong, biased, lousy, horrible, etc. They use your Tornetrask recon as the main
whipping boy. I have a file that you gave me in 1993 that comes from your 1992 paper.
Below is part of that file. Is this the right one? Also, is it possible to resurrect the
column headings? I would like to play with it in an effort to refute their claims.
If published as is, this paper could really do some damage. It is also an ugly paper to
review because it is rather mathematical, with a lot of Box-Jenkins stuff in it. It
won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically,
but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies,
without showing that their improved inverse regression method is actually better in a
practical sense. So they do lots of monte carlo stuff that shows the superiority of
their method and the deficiencies of our way of doing things, but NEVER actually show
how their method would change the Tornetrask reconstruction from what you produced.
Your assistance here is greatly appreciated. Otherwise, I will let Tornetrask sink into
the melting permafrost of northern Sweden (just kidding of course).
Cheers,
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it
wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either
appears
I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Cheers
Phil
And another one:
Thanks a bunch Phil,
Along lines as my other email, would it be (?) for me to forward this to the chair of our commitee confidentially, and for his internal purposes only, to help bolster the case against MM?? let me know
t
You may want to read the emails out of East Anglia, you know the primary site for the study of AGW? You know the people who admit there has been no warming for 15 years! If we listen to the AGW extremists we should have all burned up by now. Science and politics have ugly babies!
Climate Change Argument Summary: ... 9) ??? (form political action committee?) ... 10) PROFIT!!!
1) Straw man, 2) Defer to expert opinion, 3) ad hominem, 4) ad hominem, 5) red herring, 6) straw man, 7) misinterpretation, 8) ad hominem
Simply, there's no data. It's all correlative, and "green" energy (i.e. nuclear) are better for the economy and national security so we should be utilizing them anyway.
Suddenly the meme switched from being about "Global Warming" to being "Climate Change".
The shift was a result of people not understanding that the term "global warming" referred to the mean global termperature. The media, and Joe Sixpack, did not understand that this meant some regions could still cool, and hence the meme that any cooling disproves global warming was born.
The recent cooling is just weather.
By recent cooling, do you mean Climate myths: Global warming stopped in 1998? Or is this another "they can't predict the weather so how can they predict the climate" post? Regardless, these arguments have already been debunked: What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate? and Climate myths: Chaotic systems are not predictable.
Instead of paraphrasing freely, I encourage you to read Lomborg's actual response. He makes a more nuanced (and scholarly) argument than you suggest, and at only 27 pages is well worth the read: http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf
On page 13 it addresses the point you raised. I've quoted it below for your convenience, but in short the number was calculated directly from a peer-reviewed study, which Friel misunderstood or overlooked in his review of the text.
"The only peer-reviewed study to calculate all extra heat deaths and avoided cold deaths globally shows that the number of avoided cold deaths strongly outweigh the extra heat deaths. This study, (Bosello, Roson, & Tol, 2006), shows that although we are likely to see about 400,000 more heat deaths because of global warming by 2050, we will likely see about 1.8 million fewer cold deaths. Moreover, this effect will persist until at least 2200: 'The first complete survey for the world was published in 2006, and what it shows us very clearly is that climate change will not cause massive disruptions or huge death tolls. Actually, the direct impact of climate change in 2050 will mean fewer dead, and not by a small amount. In total, about 1.4 million people will be saved each year, due to more than 1.7 million fewer deaths from cardiovascular diseases and 365,000 more deaths from respiratory disorders.'"
I think the whole thing has become so politicized that an honest viewpoint from either side is rare. The global warming believers think it's such a big impact if it's true that they feel they can't honestly present counter-evidence, and the unbelievers think the cost is so high that it can't be paid without incontrovertible evidence.
Unfortunately, climate science doesn't have a great record (the planetary ecosystem and climate are pretty goddam complicated). At the same time, we will never have evidence that the average idiot will understand and accept for anything as complex as a checking account.
Most people, myself included, have no real basis on which to make a decision, so we pick the side with the people we trust.
Personally, I trust scientists much more than businessmen. Good scientists are trained to be brutally honest with themselves, and to use methods that expose rather than hide flaws in their own reasoning.
Businessmen are trained to be confident in their abilities and conclusions regardless of reality.
This means that when businessmen look at the objective opinions of good scientists, with their "given this" and "see chart X for exceptions", they blow them off. Then they spend millions pointing out how the scientists can't even make up their mind.
For me, it's an easy choice. That doesn't mean that I am immune to arguments either way, just that I tend to listen with my own slant, and I recognize it.
I personally wish we would just give respected climate scientists some money and some peace for a couple of years to fight it out among themselves without worrying about the viewpoint of uninformed idiots, but I know it's not going to happen.
As someone who believes in man-made climate change I can assure both you and the GP that you are completely wrong about my beliefs.
I don't think we need to give up our modern lives and return to some kind of hippy-farming-commune existence. We just need to develop technology that doesn't pump CO2 into the atmosphere. Sure, that does cost money to develop, but so did drilling for oil or burning coal to generate electricity.
Even if you don't believe in climate change the benefits of not burning coal and oil should be pretty obvious. You can see pollution all around us in the form of the dust and dirt that accumulates on buildings and in my house (which is next to a main road).
Don't think I'm attacking you personally either. We need to change things at government and industrial levels. In the end though there comes a point where we are going to have to force the Chelsea Tractor / Hummer drivers into less polluting cars. I don't see a problem with that - we don't allow people to piss in swimming pools because the majority of people don't want to swim in that. You can't expect to go around spewing crap into the air when there are just as good alternatives that don't do that.
We are not there yet by a long way, but one day we will be and that's all I'm saying:
- We need to develop less polluting technology, if not because of climate change then because of pollution and the finite nature of the oil and coal supplies.
- Eventually technology will get there, but in the mean time I'm still flying long haul and you can still drive your tractor around town. I own a Colt with super-efficient engine, mainly because it's cheaper for me to run. If electric was cheaper I would buy one of these too. Totally selfish and nothing to do with the green lobby.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You've got it backwards - people who seek to demonstrate that anthropogenic climate change IS happening are much closer to scenario 2 than scenario 1. Natural Climate Change deniers/denialists/skeptics are arguing the affirmative in this case, and simply accepting them blindly based on models and anecdotal evidence cherry picked by anyone from GISS to the WWF is a disservice.
We've got a paleoclimate record that shows incredible variation in CO2 and temperature, rates of increase and decrease that overwhelm anything we've seen in modern times, but we're supposed to believe that just because of little old us, and a trace gas measured in parts per million, we're going to suddenly walk outside of the bounds of the negative feedbacks that exist? We've got millions of years of Natural Climate Change, and at most, 150 years of proposed AGW.
Which hypothesis am I supposed to be more critical of again?
Which totally misses the OP's point.
Which is that the scientists (and their political supporters) which you quote above insist that the studies criticizing them be reviewed and must be debunked* while simultaneously insisting that their work is above criticism. Thus 'skeptic' has become, as used by those scientists (and their political supporters) a pejorative term.
Real scientists welcome reviews of their work - but the ones you quote above (and their political supporters) go to great lengths to debunk and marginalize any reviews that don't meet their pre-ordained conclusions.
You then go further in accepting the received wisdom of the scientists (and their political supporters) and treating as though it were as well proven as DNA encoding, which it isn't. It has the appearance of so being, but that's because the scientists (and their political supporters) have spent such time and energy loudly insisting they are right and that anyone who claims otherwise is a 'skeptic'.
*Yes, not incorporated into the existing body of work as is usual in science, but debunked.
So they are fundamentalists?
And fascists as well.
Oh, they are commies too!
And now they're are Hitler and Bush.
Those dastardly conspiring climatologists, is there no boogeyman they can't be compared to?
Good thing you're here to make well-reasoned arguments from facts rather than suggest that everyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi Commie Religious Fundamentalist Neocon in league with Hitler and Bush.
Then again, any political issue will inevitable degrade to a mudslinging contest, so I guess it shouldn't surprise me...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No, he's ignoring the handful of years of increasingly politically motivated conclusions based on those decades of research.
The problem of course being that the models output no result but 'this is because of AGW'. Scientists predict a string of strong hurricane seasons 'because of AGW', and when they don't happen they update the model and 'discover' they didn't happen 'because of AGW'. Warm winter? AGW. Cold winter? AGW.
When the models keep being modified and produce the same output regardless of input - then something is up.
I can find thousands of articles on N-rays and luminiferous aether too.
If the collection methods are normalized, it can work. What Lomborg did what take two different methods of accounting for forest cover, argue that they were identical, and that the resulting increase in forest cover was real. What in fact was going on was that the UN organization responsible for the data collection explicitly stated that the two data sets should not be directly compared.
Could he have normalized the data, and then compared the data sets? Sure. But he didn't. And considering that the warning was right there in the data sets that he used, I can only assume one of two things: he can't read, or he is being dishonest.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
There are several flaws in your argument.
First you say "by 30%". This is often misunderstood. While accurate, it makes it seem that what is being increased in relation to the total. This is not the case as there is no fixed number of molecules in the atmosphere. What you have to realize is CO2 makes up 338 out of every 1,000,000 molecules (today). A 30% increase adds ~100 more molecules for 438 out of 1,000,000 molecules. It still remains a trace element.
Another problem is you assume CO2 is well-mixed, as the IPCC does. The data from the NASA AIRS satellite and subsequent validation by plane measurements, shows it is not well-mixed and that the northern and southern hemispheres have separate carbon cycles. (Due to land mass vs ocean, and land mass distribution)
Another problem is that you assume the forcing is linear, or worse. There is quite a bit of data that suggests it is logarithmic. The observation that CO2 "warms" is done in a closed laboratory environment. (a 1L bottle of 100% CO2)
Another problem is that while you concede temperature rises first, you fail to account for water vapor forcings, which is a much worse GHG, which we can't control. What if we could dehumidify the atmosphere at a fraction of the cost of controlling CO2? Why would that not be a more appropriate avenue?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I don't think your analogy is very good, for two reasons. First, the relationship between DNA and protein folding has been under investigation longer, and second, it can be studied under controlled circumstances.
A better analogy would be paleoanthropology. The science is fairly young, and not very amenable to experimentation. From time to time, someone is able to do something like check DNA from a frozen specimen.
But there doesn't seem to be thesame kind of horrified reaction, with cries of "skeptic" or "denier," when someone proposes an alternative theory in this field.
1. Oops! You used the wrong word there -- you said there are *rates* of increase / decrease that overwhelm anything we've seen in modern times. I'm aware that the *total change* was much larger, but not that the *change per unit of time* was much larger. Rate is important, as faster rates reduce the time for species to adapt.
2. What is this rubbish about little old us? There are more than 6 billion of us on the planet. Why wouldn't a very large number of resource-using large mammals be able to affect the planet? We can and do change physical geography on an ongoing basis -- there's virtually no square inch of England that isn't different from its "natural" state due to active management by humans. We can and do deplete resources or poison environments so that they are uninhabitable.
3. What is this rubbish about "trace gas" and "parts per million"? What is inherently implausible about changes in the quantum of trace gases (it's not just CO2, y'know) having real effects on physical systems?
4. Overall, you've missed the point: there's a ton of physical evidence that climate change is happening (and quite a bit for it having an impact on ecosystems too), plus well-worked through theory with good evidence for how ("the greenhouse effect"). *That's* what will need reconciliation with an assertion that there is no climate change.
In the end, there are two arguments to be discussed:
1) Is it happening?
2) What do we do? -- ranging from nothing to something.
I assure you that I'm quite as attached to home comforts as you -- I just happen to believe that the answers are pretty clear:
1) Yes, it is
2) Doing something is more likely to preserve more of my comforts (and fellow human beings) than doing nothing. You clearly take the opposite view.
As I recall after The Skeptical Environmentalist was published 'Scientific American' offered $$ for articles debunking Lomborg.
NOTE: Not asking for analysis. Money and publishing only for anti Lomborg articles.
Sort of an abuse to call that process scientific.
No brain, no pain.
Without starting a giant flame war (too late?), could someone please explain the following data from two ice-core samples:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2475.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2453.html
This data is referenced in the following article, which claims global warming cannot be man-made:
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3553
I would love for someone to explain either; why the data is wrong, or how it could be misconstrued.
Please please please, no name calling. I'm uninterested in shouting matches, and am only after logical argument.
Apples, a healthy alternative to stabbing yourself in the eye.
If you're trying to argue the money point you really don't have a leg to stand on. The oil industry has orders of magnitude more money flowing through it. If scientists were going to corrupt themselves for money that's the direction they would go in.
Normally, temperature starts to rise due to e.g. distance to the sun decreasing slightly, which leads to increased CO2 which enhances the effect of the warming, causing further CO2 to be released until a new balance is achieved (essentially that the energy absorbed from the sun equals the earths black-body radiation). CO2 increase with temperature because CO2 is less soluble in warm (sea)-water, and a number of other effects (Tundra melting is often mentioned as a big one, though I don't personally know.). Now, into this system we (the humans) release enough CO2 to increase the concentration by what, 30%? What do *you* think will happen?
You have such a simple-minded view of the planetary climate...that is...unfortunately...wrong. Planetary temperatures are not correlated with (in the order you mention them) 1)short-term earth-solar distance, 2)CO2 increases, 3)solar absorbtion-black body radiation 'balance', 4)warming sea water CO2 solubility decrease (also bad chemistry as carbonate chemistry is far more complex than just 'CO2 solubility') or 5) tundra melting.
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
Apparently you have never actually looked at the absorption bands for CO2. There is already more than sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all of the IR radiation that is capable of being absorbed by CO2, within the first few hundred meters of the atmosphere above the surface. Once absorbed, the energy is not trapped but is immediately re-emitted. The wavelength of the reemitted thermal radiation is a probability distribution depending ONLY on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law and it is NOT concentrated within the narrow CO2 absorption band so almost all of that re-emitted raditation is free to radiate out into space untouched any further by your nemesis CO2.
But of course, you knew all this. What pisses me off about all this that while the above is well-known science and has been for a long time, the economic aspects are far from clear to me.
It's precisely all of that 'well-known science' that is giving you so much difficulty.
Sorry,I read the linked page and I couldn't find where they were addressing the points made by BadAnalogyGuy. How about this if anthropgenic CO2 is responsible for significant global warming, then why after the CO2 levels have still been rising, there has been No Significant Global Warming for 15 years?
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It seemingly cannot be stated enough, because the "skeptics" don't get it: of COURSE temperature leads CO2 levels. What would a sudden, pre-temperature rise of CO2 levels come from?
Ok. Just to play devils advocate, I have a couple of questions.
Before humans, temperature was driving the change, and CO2 caused the feedback.
Now, CO2 is driving the change (cause we have coal power plants now), and temperature causes the feedback (because warming up the oceans still reduces their capacity to hold CO2)
So the existence humans changed the laws of physics?
The coldest period in the last half billion years had atmospheric CO2 levels 10 times what we have today. Why wasn't the CO2 driving the change then? It certainly wasn't the temperature.
Maybe if the climate "researchers" would open up their methodologies, source code and data, I might be able to understand it.
I understand why they don't, though. It would be like MS opening up the Windows source code. People would feel very ripped off about what they've been paying for.
If you hide your data AND your entire methodology from ANYONE that would seek to replicate and evaluate your results, you're not practicing science. And until that is all publicly available for consumption (which it IS NOT), I can't consider AGW to be science.
When I hear someone talking out of both sides of their mouth explaining exception after exception to their mythical model that has all the answers, I assume I am dealing with a charlatan. Science is ENTIRELY about being a skeptic. The AGW crowd demean skeptics. Thus, the AGW crowd must not be scientists.
You mean there were no "hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildfires, desertification, droughts, etc. etc. etc." before industrialization? Who knew all these things were man made?
Actually, there's pretty good evidence that some of those things in the ancient world were in good part due to human activity. Probably not the hurricanes, snowstorms or tornadoes. But humans are known to have been involved in at least some of the others.
The case of wildfires is obvious. In several parts of the world, prairie-like ecosystems covered around twice their natural area, and a major factor in all of them was the fires started by humans. This was generally done intentionally, to limit the growth of trees, because a prairie system puts more energy into growing greenery and supports a much higher animal population than most forests. But it only works in dry areas; you can't convert a rain forest to a prairie with fires. And yes, a controlled burn isn't a "wildfire". But controlled fires did frequently get out of control and burn more than was intended, and lightning did start some of those fires. The archaeological evidence supporting all this has only been understood for a few decades, but it is in the literature.
The situation with desertification is also fairly well documented. Thus, historians say they have evidence that the problem of under-irrigation leading to salinification was well understood in the "Fertile Crescent" at least 3000 years ago. But the people chose short-term profit in the form of maximum crops this year, knowing full well what it would do to the land that their grandchildren would inherit. You can see the results in any news videos of the Iraq countryside.
This is much more widespread than just Mesopotamia+Levant. There was a series of experiments back in the 1970s, in which areas across the southwest-Asian arid zone (Syria to Pakistan) in chunks of 2-5 square km were surrounded by goat-proof fences to keep out grazers, and left fallow. In all of them, a year later they were covered with grasses and other forbs. Conclusion: The "desert" in this area is unnatural, and is a consequence of overgrazing. There aren't very many wild grazing critters in this area now; the grazers are almost all domesticated animals. If they could be removed for a year or two, the area would revert to grassland. The land would then support a much larger grazer population than is there now, as long as the grazing were limited so that the bare ground isn't exposed. But humans won't do this; they'll always maximize their grazing animals, until the grasses are killed, and then move on, complaining about how they're mistreated by their gods (or corporations or governments or whatever).
There's evidence that this applies to deserts in other areas, in the form of similar land control development. If you google for "bocage" plus other desert-related keywords, you can find some information about it. (Warning: As you might guess from the term, it's mostly in French. ;-) This term refers to a plot of land surrounded by a goat-proof fence and usually some dikes to catch storm runoff. They have been built in various parts of the "Sahel". By limiting grazers and catching water, people have converted their chunks of dry land to greenery. Of course these are widely considered "pilot studies", and aren't taking seriously by the political system or the people who believe that climate is too big to be effected by humans. Some of the aerial photos of these plots of land are impressive. And this can't much be done in areas where fighting is going on.
This story was covered in a lot of "discussion" sections of various scientific journals back in the 1970s and 80s. The consensus was that the political system probably couldn't be made aware of the implications, and the documented spreading of the Sahara would continue due to overpopulation and overgrazing. But the information has been around, available to people who are interested and apolitical enough to look for it (
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Are you sure they aren't? What your calling Oil companies, think of themselves as Energy Companies, if they can supply our energy needs with economically viable renewables and save the petrolium crude for high profit boutique chemicals they'd do it in a heart beat.
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You know, wouldn't it have been great if climate leaders had gathered together to begin some kind of great scientific technology endeavor to find a way to replace oil and coal? Something like viable electric cars. It would have been like the flight to the moon, except all nations would have been involved. It would have been a unifying experience for the whole world.
Instead they got together and talked about how much money the developed world is going to pay the developing world for the costs of global warming. That is so pathetic in comparison.
Qxe4
Maybe if the climate "researchers" would open up their methodologies, source code and data, I might be able to understand it.
I doubt you would be able to really understand it but their methodologies are available in the peer reviewed literature they have published and more data and code than you could probably analyze in your life is available from the many links on this page.
And your tactic is the scientific equivalent of Godwin's law. You say, "This is something creationists do" therefore implying that it must be wrong. In fact deniers use the same stupid tactic against warmers, of trying to compare them to creationists.
In his defense, the poster he was responding to had demanded to see proof of overlap between AGW deniers and creationists. I'd say he provided that quite clearly.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer