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Global Warming 'Undeniable,' Report Says
BergZ writes "Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. 'A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,' the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are 'clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.'"
So far, it's been a scorcher for folks all around the world. So it might come as no surprise that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a report revealing 2010 having the record for warmest June, warmest April to June and warmest year to date. The announcement said 'Each of the 10 warmest average global temperatures recorded since 1880 have occurred in the last fifteen years. The warmest year-to-date on record, through June, was 1998, and 2010 is warmer so far.' So far we are even surpassing 1998's records which held the warmest year (despite directly contradicting reports). It certainly seems the scads of winter precipitation we enjoyed were no indication of how we would swelter through our summer this year. Will 2010 turn it around or are we set to break more records?
Aside from that, I'm not really interested in making comments on this anymore because I'm so sick and tired of the armchair idiocy that follows (and somehow gets moderated up). Prediction: Not even 300 scientists from 48 countries and NOAA are going to convince everyone that global warming is real. At this point, I think it's just going to get worse.
My work here is dung.
I thought they were using the less specific term 'climate change' these days.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
It's been pretty cold recently.
"The planet is fine...the people are fucked."
Living With a Nerd
Why do I get that sick feeling that the heat from this discussion will only make the global warming problem worse?
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
All sorts of facts are denied by those who refuse to change their positions. See cognitive dissonance
There isn't an intelligent person the planet who denies that global warming is real. The debate is all about causation.
I'm somewhat curious about why we got mentioned myself. I mean, I know us Canadians love any acknowledgment that the rest of the world remembers we exist above the states but really? Is it because we're stereotypically cold?
Same asshats that state hot summers or blooming cheery blossoms in the spring are proof of global warming.
The report that the article refers to is the 2009 State of the Climate report. More information about it is available at the NOAA website: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html
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"well the basement is flooding but it's already STARTED flooding so why should we bother going down and turning off the tap? My pants would get wet and it's already a bit wet down there anyways. What do you mean 'structural damage if it gets worse?' That doesn't make any sense to me."
Does it matter if it's anthropogenic? I'm against a hot world with rising seas, melting ice caps and global drought. I'm against all of the other terrible nastiness associated with it. I don't give a damn who we blame, but let's find a way to halt/fix it, shall we?
What does this say then about all the measures taken so far to quell the onset of global warming? If it has just gotten warmer with all the emissions controls, then is it just egotistical to think that what we change has any effect (at least in the US)?
Why would the presence of glaciers 100,000 years ago cause (accelerated) warming in recent times ?
There isn't an intelligent person the planet who denies that global warming is real. The debate is all about causation.
The deniers set up multiple goalposts. There are the ones who deny it's happening at all (a favorite tactic of this group is to start their time series with 1998, which was an unusally warm year, to insist that there's been no warming trend in the last 10^H^H11^H^H12 years) and then the "reasonable" ones who say it's happening but that human activity plays no part. This mirrors the pseudo-split between young earth creationists and "intelligent design" proponents almost exactly, and it's no surprise that there's a lot of crossover between the groups.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Does it matter if it's anthropogenic? I'm against a hot world with rising seas, melting ice caps and global drought. I'm against all of the other terrible nastiness associated with it. I don't give a damn who we blame, but let's find a way to halt/fix it, shall we?
If it's nonanthropogenic, there probably is not a way to stop it.
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There isn't an intelligent person the planet who denies that global warming is real. The debate is all about causation.
Yes, it is now that the incontrovertible evidence is mounting. Of course, you will still find people eager to attack climate change scientists because they talked amongst themselves about the viability of certain data. Or perhaps news organizations (go ahead, guess which one) that go out of their way to announce "It's snowing" as evidence that Al Gore's book on climate change is pure fiction.
Other than that, yeah, it's only about causation. Oh wait, I think a "scientist" just observed that the temperature in Rush Limbaugh's studio was unusually low for this time of year... Now we have to get this debate out again. The ice on Greenland is growing! The polar bears are plentiful (on shore) and simply avoid the water out of a natural phobia, not because the ice is disappearing (it isn't!) Clearly there is reason to doubt this "global warming" thing of which you speak.
This particular report doesn't specify causes. It just goes over the temperature data and factors directly related to it (like humidity and glaciation). Even if the deniers could pick out one of these datasets and show that's its problematic, there would still be 9 others going the other direction--a textbook case of the Strawman.
Anthropogenic factors are proven out in other studies. There isn't a legitimate debate about that anymore, either.
The debate that's left is in the exact effects and what we can do about it. Low levels of extra CO2 in the atmosphere may actually be beneficial, but we've almost certainly blown way beyond that. Then there are large scale geoengineering projects (like putting a solar shield at L1), which are both expensive and may have unknown consequences. They're being discussed because there aren't a lot of better ideas.
Not a typewriter
No, the camps are:
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Am I the only one who thinks news of an impending rise in sea level is brought to us by a group called "NOAA?"
Currently hooked on AMP
There is no credible evidence that supports the hypothesis that humans are causing the alleged, theorized global warming.
The study does not address the cause of the warming.
We know no we have caused acid rain and the ozone hole by releasing different materials into the air.
We know that when we mess around with our environment whether it be with lead, pcbs, dioxins or really another chemical it causes problems.
Why do people find it so hard to believe that the incredible increase in atmospheric CO2 is not a problem?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve
People deny evolution. People deny global warming...
People are incredibly good at denying that reality exists, especially when its reality they don't want to comprehend.
Test your net with Netalyzr
When you look at it from a longer timescale the ice age isn't completely over yet.
I mean who are we to think we have that much power over the entire planet?
We are, as far as we know, the only species on the planet capable of doing the physics and chemistry to understand how CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere. That's a place to start.
Fear of hubris is for barbarians. We're better than that now.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Of course, we might not be able to stop it if it's anthropogenic either. I choose to believe that we have enormous tools and resources at our disposal, and could achieve quite significant change if we wanted to. Modern science is pretty damn impressive. Strictly speaking it is possible to affect the climate globally, whether or not you think it's realistic. And at this point, we'd better be seriously considering trying. Best that current trends not continue.
He appears to be trying to argue that since the last major climate change was clearly not caused by humans that the current one must not be.
While not without some merit, this is logically akin to arguing that I didn't get killed driving home last night therefore it would be impossible for me to be killed driving home tonight.
Convincing the deniers is like arguing religion with a believer since their beliefs are not founded in fact, measurable science or sound theory.
One of the problems with the whole debate is that by the time we have definitive proof CO2 emissions are causing global warming it will be far, far too late. At some point I'd like to actually hear a coherent argument about why it could possibly be good to actively modify our atmosphere from the deniers, so far all I've heard is rote-repetition of nonsense arguments.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
First line of defence there is no warming
Second line of defence the warming is not manmade
Third line of defence I didnt cause the warning so I wont change my way.
Fourth line of defence come closer or I blow your head off.
Fifth line of defence praying will save the world - all stop working and pray with me.
Welcome to the second line.
Just saying it like it are.
The data as presented indicates a recent warming trend, but does not say anything about whether this is man-made or not; a 0.5deg rise in 50 years is extremely small in the scheme of things, and drawing the usual alarmist conclusions from this is quite unfounded.
So read the report itself:
The NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) shows radiative forcing relative to 1750, of all the long-lived greenhouse gases indexed to 1 for the year 1990. Since 1990, radiative forcing from greenhouse gases has increased 27.5%.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) are important atmospheric trace gases with significant man-made sources. Nitrous oxide has the third strongest anthropogenic climate forcing after CO2 and CH4 and is considered a major greenhouse gas (Butler 2009).
The atmospheric N2O budget is out of balance by one-third as a result of man-made emissions, primarily through emissions from nitrogen fertilizers (Crutzen et al. 2007).
Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continued to rise, with CO2 increasing at a rate above the 1978 to 2008 average. The global ocean CO2 uptake flux for 2008, the most recent year for which analyzed data are available, is estimated to have been 1.23 Pg C yr-1, which is 0.25 Pg C yr-1 smaller than the long-term average and the lowest estimated ocean uptake in the last 27 years. At the same time, the total global ocean inventory of anthropogenic carbon stored in the ocean interior as of 2008 suggests an uptake and storage of anthropogenic CO2 at rates of 2.0 and 2.3 ±0.6 Pg C yr-1 for the decades of the 1990s and 2000s, respectively.
In the tropics this increase has been formally attributed to anthropogenic change over the 1988–2006 period (Santer et al. 2007).
all the time series show an underlying rise in OHC consistent with our understanding of anthropogenic climate change.
I mean, the evidence is all over the report. The only thing stopping them from saying that it is conclusively man made is that 1) it's probably impossible to prove it and 2) there might always be some evidence of non anthropogenic warming contributing to the cause but not accounting for all of it.
My work here is dung.
The word used in TFA is 'unmistakable'. Still, all things can be denied/mistaken by hardcore deniers...
--Irrational response squad is a go!--
Rising indicators
1. Air temperature over land
Denial: Measurements are wrong - and the sun did it (despite the solar minimum).
2. Sea-surface temperature
Denial: Measurements are wrong - whales did it, we need to allow more hunting.
3. Marine air temperature
Denial: Measurements are wrong - underwater volcanoes must have done it.
4. Sea-level
Denial: Measurements are wrong - land must be getting lower, or else human sin is causing a new flood.
5. Ocean heat
Denial: Measurements are wrong - sonar must be messing with the equipment.
6. Humidity
Denial: Measurements are wrong - and this is a self-correcting, perfectly natural thing.
7. Tropospheric temperature in the 'active-weather' layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth's surface
Denial: Measurements are wrong - and heat rises, duh!
Declining indicators
1. Arctic sea-ice
Something must be eating the ice! Must be all those hungry polar bears - caused their own problems!
2. Glaciers
Something must be weighing them down - they're just going underwater! Perhaps all those polar bears crowding on them.
3. Spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere
Ha! Is it too much snow, or too little now - confused scientists don't know nuthin'!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a congressional subcommittee to advise.
--/Irrational response--
It's easy to find a 'reason' to deny something, when you don't have a burden/benefit of evidence or peer review. And when all you're doing is stalling for the status quo, denial is all you need.
Ryan Fenton
I had an eye-opening experience the other day over at the Oil Drum, a blog run by folks associated with the industry. Not people you'd exactly think of as being against the consumption of fossil fuels. But the gist of this posting (which had nothing to do with climate change, and received a lot of favorable commentary) was that we're deeply, deeply fucked if we think we're going to continue burning fossil fuels into our old age. The argument was specifically related to the increasing cost of extraction. (In a nutshell, there's a reason we're now getting our oil from wells a mile underwater).
Now, the conclusion of that poster was pretty depressing, though I don't think he covered all of the options. But what struck me is that if you believe his arguments, it doesn't really matter whether you believe that humans are causing global warming. The actions we need to take now to ensure a reasonable standard of living in 40 years are exactly the same actions we need to take in order to deal with the global warming problem. Above all, to place a tax on fossil fuel consumption (and CO2 taxes do this pretty well) as a means to encourage the market to do something reasonable about the problem. The fact that we couldn't even pass the tiny little tax proposed in the recently defeated Waxman-Markey bill tells us something deeply frightening about our chances.
What kills me about the anti-global-warming argument is that its opponents think that it really matters whether AGW exists. It doesn't matter. For either reason we need to dramatically reduce our fossil fuel consumption and develop alternative sources (efficient, cost-effective nuclear, wind, solar, etc._ just to ensure that we and our children have a chance at living a decent life in the future. There's nothing in the universe that guarantees we won't face terrible consequences for our bad decisions, just because we've had a pretty good run for the past few decades.
I can easily disprove the claims of these so called "scientists." They claim that global warming is undeniable, and yet we see people denying it right here in the comments. Ha HA!
Now, if they had said something along the lines of "At this point, the proof is so overwhelming that only mentally deficient conservative hippie-hating anti-environmentalist shills for big business will attempt to deny it," well, that is just self evidently true.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
> who are we to think we have that much power over the entire planet?
Ozone hole. Acid rain. Plastic Gyre. Rain Fores destruction. Species extinction. Desertification of large areas by agricultural practices.
We have done it many times.
Strangely enough, there are also people who believe that global warming is not happening, and that the cause is not anthropogenic.
This camp is surprisingly large.
But the thing is, in order to justify creating the global socialist utopia which is the true goal of the "warmers", ALL the goalposts must be cleared. ALL of the following must be true:
a) warming is happening
b) it's a bad thing
c) human activity contributes significantly
d) it's possible to do something about it
e) the cure is better than the disease
Unless every one of those things is true, then the "green" crusade against global warming falls apart. So yes, you do have a goalpost issue: it's that you have to get past (at least) five of them to even have a shot.
Everything is deniable. Look at all the anti-vacination, intelligent design, 9/11 conspiracists. In each case they have had copious incontrovertible evidence shoved in their faces and they still parrot the same idiotic nonsense as they always did. So it is with the anti-global warming crowd. Some people will not budge from a viewpoint no matter how obviously wrong or idiotic it is demonstrated to be.
If we presume that the environment is ours to do with as we please, then aren't we as guilty of those who caused the destruction of the environment in the first place?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Pretty much.
I have found that apathy is the best approach anyway. Personally, I can make virtually no difference. I limit my trash, try to compost what I can, buy what appears to be more environmentally friendly products (although I'm sure half the things that are marketed so are just lying about it or meet some EPA loophole) and cut my driving down as much as possible. (I don't own a hybrid or anything, but I figure the amount of energy used to create and ultimately dispose of a new car makes my old car energy neutral.)
I do these things because I don't want my own environment to be a dump. I don't want the air in my valley to be smog-ridden. It's that simple.
Is global warming man made? Is it natural? Is it both? Don't know. Don't care. If it's man made it will be solved ONLY when its effects damage the bottom lines of the governments and large businesses the pump out most of the pollution. Until then, a couple people like me trying to live cleaner and more environmentally friendly within our means won't do shit and neither will all the screaming and yelling about the eventual devastation it will cause.
While I believe humans certainly do contribute, what's to be done? Get the government involved? You mean the government that's bought and paid for by polluting companies to do something about it? Ha! If that's your solution, global warming sure as shit isn't your biggest problem. Not even close.
So... focus on your broken political systems, then worry about saving the planet. Global warming will effectively take care of itself when it begins to become costly. Heading it off at the pass will involve reasonable nations, governments and people... none of which actually exist.
If it's nonanthropogenic, it just means we might not be able to stop it by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are lots of other options. I seem to remember someone suggesting that it would be relatively cheap to just blast large amounts of titanium dioxide particles into the upper atmosphere in order to increase the albedo of the earth and reflect some of the incoming solar radiation, thus reducing temperatures on earth. The scary part of this is that it's supposedly cheap enough that a single country could decide to do it unilaterally.
That's just one possible option, there are others.
Here's the only place I'd like to get to: agreeing that 1) climate is warming to a point of unnatural irreversible damage and 2) man made factors are contributing to it.
I think you might succeed on point #2. But point #1 sets an impossibly high bar. Natural CO2 levels have been much higher in the geologic past and thriving ecosystems existed when there was no ice anywhere on the planet.
Is it dangerous and should can we stop it even if it is?
It's not entirely clear that longer growing seasons, more rapid plant growth and expanded temperate zones are a bad thing.
The one fact that counts, regardless of whether it's causing the warming or not, is that oil will not last forever. Whether taking millions of years worth of sequestered CO2 and puking it into the atmosphere in the space of three centuries is tipping us over the edge, the real disaster will happen when the price of a barrel of oil skyrockets to the point where everything from fertilizers to plastic spoons are priced beyond what our economic system can bare.
The reality is that complex long-chain hydrocarbons are goddamned fucking valuable for industrial processes and for the production of a stunning number of chemicals and products. The most idiotic and short-sighted thing we can do with these hydrocarbons is to put them in our fuel tanks. It's absolute madness, and the only cure is the disaster itself, that when oil does reach obscene prices, we'll be forced into using the alternatives. The hope of many was that we, as a species, would for once plan the obsolescence of a fading resource, rather than driving headlong into the wall and somehow hoping we would all pick up the pieces.
At some point in the next fifty to a hundred years that's going to happen, global warming or not, and then maybe not us, but our kids and grandkids, are going to be left the horrible mess that we could have dealt with, if we hadn't been dominated by greedy oil companies who don't give a flying fuck how things go down the shits when the flow of cheap hydrocarbons comes to an end.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada ..."
Hmm. I can't tell if the inclusion of Canadian scientists in the 300 is supposed to make me more or less skeptical.
There is decreasing amounts of doubt that the world is warming up
May be true in across this planet in general, it is sadly not true in the USA. In the USA there is still a very substantial number of people who deny global warming outright for various reasons (often nothing more than political - just wait for this story to be tagged "manbearpig" on the front page).
(especially in the United States) liberals are ONLY concerned with the man-made "portion" of the effect
It is almost impossible to be concerned "only" with that portion - assuming it to be significant. That would be like being concerned about second hand smoke but not lung cancer in smokers, the two are directly connected matters. Whether global warming is caused by activities of humans doesn't change the fact that global warming is having dramatic affects on all life around the world.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't think it makes sense to claim that global warming will lead to water shortages, since it will mean increased precipitation. As long as people build the appropriate dams to capture the extra water, it should lead to an increase in water supply.
Also, I don't think the adverse effects to coastal cities will be as profound as people say. It would take a major increase in sea-level to really cause any problems, but the change to date has been modest.
the discussion about who is at fault for global warming, or even if it exists, is completely besides the point
in fact, make believe, for the sake of argument, that there is no global warming at all
ok: well, mankind's stewardship over this planet is still undeniable. correct? does anyone disagree with the idea that we are responsible for this planet?
therefore, simply for the sake of self-interest, mankind should be monitoring and maintaining the climate according to specifications that suit his purposes. and his purposes are to maintain the status quo. even if rising sea levels were completely natural, no one wants to turn all of our coastal cities into venice. or lose all our crop lands we have invested in to desert, even if, again, that were perfectly natural. therefore, we should do something to counteract whatever is causing difficulties for our status quo
what i am talking about is completely shortcircuiting pointless discussions about who is to blame and pointless discussions about whether or not the climate is changing
if we observe higher heat and smaller crops, we fix that problem. if we don't, we still maintain things as they are, as we are invested in the climate status quo
if we observe rising sea levels, we fix the problem. if we don't observe rising sea levels, we keep watching the sea level. beginning and end of discussion. everything else is pointless hot air, pun intended
in other words, shut the ideologues and politicians up, bring the scientists and engineers in the room:
1. observe
2. if any problems are seen, solve the problems
3. go to 1
every other discussion is methane-rich bullshit. only the problem solvers matter. is there a job to do? then get it done. any else to talk about? NO!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Please turn in your geek card :)
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
So far, it's been a scorcher for folks all around the world.
released a report revealing 2010 having the record for warmest June, warmest April to June and warmest year to date
I thought weather is not climate.
I remember hearing that a lot in 2009. Don't hear it so much this year, for some reason.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
So what about everyone who works in the oil, gas, and coal industries? Their rational is that if we do something, they lose their job. Which is a very legitimate argument. What do we with everyone that is now unemployed? How will they make their livelihood? Will they have to move? People's financial stability are at stake when you talk about legislating changes that would mitigate global warming, so of course they're going to oppose it.
A good example of this is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The people that live there have had their beaches and fishing grounds devastated. But when Obama proposed a moratorium on deep sea drilling, those same coastal states that were devastated opposed it more than inland states. Why? Because that's how regular folks make their money there.
Until you address the social issues that would arise from all these changes, and address them utterly completely, you will have people who will oppose (and yet not necessarily deny) global warming. The UN's Brundtland Commission established that sustainable development is defined as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Until we show that we have firm plans for meeting that, well, we're fucked.
a record going back 500 MILLION years illustrating that our current temps are actually fairly COOL compared to history
lest someone coopts your caveats to deny global warming, and ignores the errors you've made:
1. Anything before a few thousand years ago is pre-history, not history.
2. 500 million years ago the Earth was not inhabited by anything resembling humans, and likely not habitable to us. So referring to it as part of the norm is missing the point.
The point is that pollution is altering our climate in a way that may make the planet uninhabitable by us. Whether that's due to excess warming, cooling, or persistent rains of acid is not relevant. The fact that something bad is happening is true, and the fact that we have the ability to consciously stop it from happening is true.
Al Gore's a politician; calling him a self-promoting dick is a tautology. He's doing good work on this subject, in any case.
It is what it is. Now, what're we gonna do about it?
...can the ship be righted?
Personally I think arguing over global climate change is a red herring. Do we really need an excuse to advocate "green" technologies?
Shouldn't the fact that we would have cleaner air (eg. less smog), and cleaner water (eg. less spills) be enough?
The fact that industry is willing to pollute the air, water, and land to save a buck and use the threat of job losses to keep the populace from demanding stricter environmental regulations should be a huge clue on why we are even having this global climate change debate. It keeps us busy, and as long as we are busy trying to define what global climate change is, we are distracted from the real meat of the argument which is why are we living in this pollution now?
I'm not a registered tree hugger, but even I question why our energy and environmental policies hasn't evolved with the rest of our technological achievements. It becomes more evident by the day that we are keeping a very old and harmful power, industrial, and transportation system just to keep the current revenue generators fat and happy.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Let's assume for a moment that the world is 1/5 of a degree warmer than it was a few decades ago, and that this is causing glacial melt. Here's my question to you all:
So what?
Climate is not a constant. Never has been, never will be, and the variation has been a whole lot more than 1/5 of a degree. CO2 levels and global average temperatures have been higher and lower at many points in history, and we didn't magically turn into Venus or Mars. There have been times when the icecaps disappeared, and life somehow went on. Sea levels have varied by hundreds of feet, without Americans to blame for, well, everything. There have also been ice ages, and somehow the world didn't end.
So what?
There will be winners as well as losers. Canadians and Russians should be happy, as this will result in much longer growing seasons and more arable lands for them. They will be the breadbaskets of the world. And if this doesn't happen, if we decide that the current climate is decreed to never be allowed to change again, will there be a demand for subsidies for what "might have been"? Lack-of-CO2 credits?
So here's a question. If civilization had arisen 10,000 years earlier, and someone observed how quickly the ice sheets were retreating, would there be a clamor to protect the glaciers that blanketed pretty much everything north of 50 degrees latitude? Would THAT climate change be seen as the Armageddon that the proposed climate change is being presented as? Would rising sea levels lead to a frothing panic about the loss of the Bering land bridge?
So once again, I ask: If the climate is changing, so what? Climate is not a constant, things aren't automatically evil just because it's a human doing it, and I fail to see how this is any different from any other climate change in the four billion year history of everything on Earth.
Mod this down because I don't agree with you. It's the Slashdot definition of "fair". I just hope none of you are ever on a jury with the opportunity to destroy someone's life if you don't like their politics or religion or hairstyle or something.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
the cows are guilty
There isn't an intelligent person the planet who denies that global warming is real.
And there isn't an intelligent person on the planet who can't see the Emperor's new clothes. Please don't appeal to vanity as a method of argument.
And even those gotchas only apply if you assume it's even possible to predict the climate.
The sad thing is, about the past, the IPCC is right : the climate *did* warm (mostly) because of co2 increases. Heh, guess I don't even disagree that "global warming is undeniable". But the IPCC is also absurdly wrong, relying instead on a known wrong intuition : this does not mean that a further rise in athmospheric co2 will increase warming. In fact any change could have any effect, so every policy, from let's pollute because we can to killing of the entire human species has exactly the same chances of influencing the climate. Quite frankly, anyone who's had a theoretical mathematics class at any university should know this, but of course ... there's politics. Blacks and whites have to be the same, even when we're talking about melanine levels, all religions and ethnicities have to be the same, even when talking about page count of important documents, science can answer *any* question 100% correctly to infinite levels of accuracy and anyone who believes otherwise is a racist. (get that ? you're a racist if you point out that the bible, as compared to other religions, is a very long book indeed. Or the fact that more people die from medical mistakes than that have their lives saved by medical intervention. What you are when you point out obvious flaws in the foundation of "climate theory" is simpler : unemployed and unemployable. And God forbid any publication on the "deniers" list should publish a quote from you that could, twisted appropriately, indicate you do not agree to doctrine)
So just putting it here, getting it off my chest : why is predictability an assumption ? Because, mathematically, some things are what is called "chaotic". Which means 2 things :
1) it is perfectly possible to predict the past, and to explain it. Down to the last tinyest little detail you can explain every variation in the graphs
2) said fabulous, genius, nobel-prize-winning theories (or other theories), will fail 5 minutes into the future. Whoops.
Climate is ... chaotic. Meaning it has the two properties above.
And despite seemingly credible sources claiming the opposite (hello "newscientist", "nature" ?), chaotic systems persistently refuse to bow to statistics (if they didn't that would be a contradiction of chaos). There are weaker forms of "chaotic behavior" that can be predicted by statistics. However, they've been tested and ... well the weather and climate are really fully chaotic.
Seemingly absurdly simple questions turn out to be chaotic (the coast of Britain to name a famous paper). How long is the coast of Britain ? Depends on your measurement device. Measure with a ruler 1000 km long and it will be seriously shorter than the English claim. Measure with a ruler of 1 cm and it will be seriously longer than the English claim. By varying the ruler's length you can make the coast of Britain any length, but it is impossible to predict what difference a change in ruler length will do to the length of the coast. The motion of the planets (the famous "three body problem"), another chaotic problem.
The consequences of this chaos conept are vehemently dismissed as total crap, even when it's pretty old and well known mathematical theory. The moon could fly away from the earth tomorrow (and while it probably won't happen tomorrow, the chances that it will eventually happen are very good indeed). That's a trivial consequence of the three body problem. Worse : we can't predict when this event will happen (just like we can't predict the motions of comets and meteorites accurate enough to decide if they'll hit earth until they're right on top of us). At best we can hope for a few days' warning. Despite the seeming absurdity one day the papers will announce "the moon left us, tidal currents slowing to a halt", and this will just happen some day, nobody seeing it coming (or at least nobody correctly predicting when it'll happen).
Ok, if you're really curious as to why people doubt AGW, take a moment to realize exactly what its proponents are saying. "Undeniable" implies that the science has proven something. Science doesn't do that. While I'd normally overlook that error by a layman, it's a pretty good indicator that they don't understand the science, and thus they have no idea whether or not the science supports their opinion. Having a climatologist explain it is a little better, but scientists (of any sort) always have opinions about nature that data doesn't support, hence why they gather the data to support or refute those hypotheses (most are wrong). There's also the fact that randomized, blinded trials should be taken with a grain of salt, so climatology as a science is fairly weak. They're making lots of progress, but I wouldn't make important decisions based on their findings at this point. (Keyword: "I", you are free to make your own choices, but I'd prefer if my cooperation isn't forced.)
Second, there's a massive logical non-sequitur between the assessment and plan. If you wake me up to tell me my house is on fire, then suggest I use a squirt gun against it, then I'll assume you're crazy and go back to bed. If post-industrial CO2 levels are causing climate change, then we need to return them to pre-industrial levels. Every year we increase the CO2 level, and cap-and-trade will still allow this. What we'd need to do is cut our emissions even lower than pre-industrial levels so the CO2 level will actually be reduced. (I also like to be optimistic, but not delusional. The only way we'd do this is if it were already too late, so it's kinda pointless IMO.)
Of course, that's ignoring the positive feedback loops that have been triggered (e.g. albedo), and I find the belief that we can control the climate (i.e. stabilize an ever-changing system at the temperature we want) to be optimistic at best. There's also the fact that massive economic hardship will cause a lot more human suffering and death than a change in climate. Sure, it'll cause a mass extinction, but that's not even close to an apocalypse, and humans have proven their adaptability. OTOH, I have a tough time accepting that the lives of a large number of poor people in the developing world are worth more than our precious biodiversity. Rather than wade through the exaggeration and outright lies by both sides, and then grapple with that decision, I've just become jaded about the whole thing.
Governments can only do two things, tax or not-tax, offer a credit. They both are examples of social engineering, but one is a lot more palatable to people than the other, because it really is the carrot-reward, or stick-punish system. that's it.
A hypothetical then to achieve this goal of cleaner renewable energy sources, by reducing demand and use of the dirtier sources.
Say you are joe blow, make fifty grand a year, and after all other deductions and whatnot, the government still walks off with five grand every year. On top of that, you buy stuff, stuff that uses energy to get made, including a lot of nasty coal that stinks up the air and has a negative effect on climate and so on, all in all, we agree it is bad news in mass quantities..
A carbon tax increases what you have to pay, this is the main point of it, increase the costs to discourage use. These companies are in no manner going to eat any new tax, they just will pass it on to the end user. Nature of the beast. OK, that is the stick method. You are still out five grand taxes, plus now a lot of your stuff costs more, so you went negative after this new carbon tax gets put in. And all the coal is still being burnt.
Now, the carrot method. The government offers a five grand tax credit for *you* to use for personal alternative energy stuff, or perhaps for retrofitting a lot more insulation or what not. So now you have a choice, let the government take that five grand, or you get to spend it, and directly improve your economic and comfort bottom line, whilst also doing your personal fair share of improving the environment.
Which would you pick then? I know I'd take the tax credit over the carbon tax and the rising cost of goods. I think most people would, and it would probably result in much faster uptake and use of the alternative cleaner and more long term carbon neutral methods.
Now say the same five grand credit was pro rated, and you could use it for five to ten years. Now you are talking some serious loot, at ten years, that's a *fifty grand* solar system (random example there)for your house you could get that would rock, this directly would eliminate all that amount of coal burning that your previous demand was responsible for, it would add to the demand in general for panels and increase competition and economies of scale (with millions of people taking advantage of that credit), and keep reducing that coal demand for the life of the system, currently 25-30 years and still then at 80% (most new panels today). In other words, a lot. Buhzillions of solar panels would be going up all over, tons of new factories to make them, hundreds of thousands of productive jobs for the factory workers and installers, etc, and the demand for the coal juice would drop exactly as much as the solar production went up, watt hour for watt hour.
To me, I would much prefer the multi year pro rated tax credit, both for individuals and for corporations doing commercial scale (whatever that might be, make it some millions of bucks, 1-5 maybe, the same pro rated for initial deployment), over just slapping a new tax burden on stuff. Both methods are social engineering, this is undebatable, so which suits human nature better and which would be more likely to be adopted at huge scales, and quite willingly and enthusiastically?
We've already seen just partial credits help a lot, these 10-30% credits that exist now, so imagine full 100% multi year pro-rated credits!
I really think it would work a lot better, individuals and companies would just go to the cleaner, more sustainable solutions, given the two choices. With the carbon tax, they are five grand a year, plus rising costs for just about everything, out of pocket..nothing left to invest in cleaner solutions then, they get tapped out, just have to pay more for everything, and all that nasty coal will still get burnt, it just costs more now, but people still need the power, so they will cut someplace else. With the tax, you go broker faster and nothing much happens to the positive for the environment, with the credit, tens of millions go solar (or whatever works for them at their x-y the best).
The real issue is not global warming. The real issue is population. No matter what you do to control "global warming," it's pointless without measures to control population, and if history is any indication, if we don't control it ourselves, mother nature will gladly step in to take a hand.
Go visit China and see it.
I'm curious, where did you get this stupid misconception that SOx and NOx would not turn into acid? A power company I used to work for had to pay a fortune to get a lot of cars repainted when they messed up, put out a lot of NOx and the wind was blowing over the town, so definitly real enough to touch.
Who is it that is feeding you such stuff and creating a generation that is poorly equipt to function in an increasingly technological world?