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'Gaia' Scientist Admits Mispredicting Rate of Climate Change
DesScorp writes "James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the 'Gaia Theory' and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing 'before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.' Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says: '"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added.' Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."
This guy is saying the sort of things that have been getting me downmodded here on slashdot for years.
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening. But if it is it ain't happening at anything like the rate that would justify dismantling civilization over, we still aren't sure whether it is us or a natural cycle we don't undertstand, etc. And he doesn't go there but I will: too many politicians with a preexisting anti-civilization (Western industrial captialism based ccivilization that is...) bias glommed onto AGW with the willing consent of a lot of brand name scientists, thereby (rightly) harming the public's trust of all science.
Democrat delenda est
This guy is saying the sort of things that have been getting me downmodded here on slashdot for years.
Really? There seems to be some discrepancy with your statement:
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening.
There appears to be no room for that "may not" area in his statements (and largely public sentiment). And the end of the summary:
'Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace.'
I could see how your sentiment would be downmodded, I think the scientific community largely agrees Climate Change is happening, man-made or not.
My work here is dung.
Instead of bowing to political pressure sometimes the most honest thing science can say is the answer isn't available. We thought we understood something, it turns out we don't. It's still worthy of further study and concern.
If he had believed his own "theory" he would have moved to the Arctic. He hasn't.
Don't just whine about it, do something! Personally, I plan on running my air conditioning all summer with my windows and doors open. If we all work together, we can turn this thing around. WHO'S WITH ME!?
Yes, but Lovelock is a nut; he was on the alarmist edge. Always was. The "Gaia" model is a cool thing to talk to the public about, but it's not real science.
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change. If you look at the data from models from 1979 (the National Academy of Science study), or even the models from 1967 (the Manabe greenhouse-effect calculation)-- the actual data fits the model very nearly exactly.
The lesson to take home is that denying climate change is wrong, but exaggerating it is also wrong. Pay attention to the real scientists, and try not to give the fringe too much credance. Look at the data.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm sorry, but Lovelock's hypotheses about global warming have always been over the top. He was predicting that the Sahara desert would be in the middle of Europe by 2040. He is sooooo far off what the majority of climate scientists claim. So holding him up as the example of a typical climate scientist is disingenuous at best. The IPCC claims are very much more conservative than Lovelock's. I see Lovelock's retractions as his recognition that mainstream climate science is probably correct.
This pretty much brings James Lovelock into agreement the mainstream science, where the consensus prediction is for anthropogenic warming of at most a few degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. And hey, that's exactly what you're supposed to do when confronted with actual data, isn't it?
I'm still waiting for the deniers to do the same.
Conversely: Anthropogenic global warming would very convenient for all the scientists researching it, as it brings in tons of research money, therefore it must exist, and be ridiculously powerful. (The thing is that GW as a whole is being exaggerated by both sides one way or the other, and I fear not enough unbiased info is being collected either way.)
So where's the news here? This nut was never a credible climate scientist in the first place, and I don't think any of his previous views were shared by anybody who is a credible climate scientist.
Lovelock makes a living out of making sensational, half-baked pronouncements and selling them as science. Good for him for admitting he was wrong, but that doesn't discredit any of the actual science.
Since when is James Lovelock a climate scientist ?!? His predictions on the subject always had the same value as just about any other rambling slashdoter.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The fact is he is wrong, there has been significant warming already due to global warming. Also he could be wrong about affects, there have been a lot of disasters and the frequency and trends could be increasing. The problem with human perception is that unless something happens immediately, it is not happening. Climate change will be a gradual trend, its not like we go to bed one day and everything is okay and the next day its a total disaster. With gradual worsening change, lets say 2% per year, people often end up seeing the new situation as the "new normal" and "just the way things are". For instance, the level of malnutrition has increased drastically to 1 billion, but because the rate of change has been 1% per year or whatever, it happens overnight, for many people this has just become the new background, the new normal, just the way things are. The earthquakes get news coverage and are immediately recognized as a disaster because it lies withim peoples short memory span, but, a longer term trend which takes centueries to occur, like malnutrition. All people see is the 1% change per annum, not the big picture of the really long term drastic changes. Humans have caused drastic changes to the earth in the past 100 years, vast areas of wildlife habitat have been destroyed, vast amounts of resources have been consumed, the CO2 level has increased greatly, and so on.
1. Stop building Coal power generation plants
2. Build a single Thorium power plant, then activate all others after it with that plant to save money.
3. Dismantle all non-thorium power plants
4. Profit
Thorium is safe, a non-sustainable reaction. Ergo, if the heat sink fails (Japan + Tsunami) the reaction stop by itself. There is plenty of it, enough to keep the U.S. running for a 1000 years, it's cheap, and it takes a mere 100 years before it's not dangerously radioactive anymore. And most of all... ITS CLEAN.
I hate governments saying: "We all have to do our bit for the climate, so we raise taxes on fuel", while building a shitload of coal power plants. So why aren't we using thorium yet? Very simple, it's expensive to put the first one there (even though all others would be cheaper), and, this is the big one, you can't make nuclear weapons with it.
See how easily the problems in the world would be solved if we didn't have retarded politicians?
"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?"
The guy's not a climate scientist by profession or education. He's as useless as the Heartland Institute. Even now he's getting basic facts wrong.
>we still aren't sure whether it is us or a natural cycle we don't undertstand,
Isotope ratios and measurements show that we're producing the CO2, and the pattern of warming (colder stratosphere, warmer nights, less longwave radiation escaping to space) matches causation by CO2.
Yes, Lovelock was being overly alarmist. He also has no expertise in climate change prediction, so his guess is as good as yours. The fact that he's wrong doesn't mean that actual experts who've made less extreme predictions are also wrong.
Lovelock is a black-and-white kind of guy(*), who tends toward hyperbole. His Gaia hypothesis is the same way: he takes a small truth about negative feedbacks in Earth systems and blows it up into some huge quasi-religious theory of everything.
* Yes, that was a Daisyworld joke.
Another professional predictor admits his was wrong. Big surprise.
When are people going to realize just about every "prediction" that people publicly make are complete and utter BS?
The world is ending! The stock markets are crashing! The economy is booming! The earth is turning into a giant fireball!
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Lovelock is a chemist, not a climatologist, and his hypothesis is clearly a chemists view. Also, no living organism supports Lovelocks theory; which shoots it in the foot. In other words: Natural selection would need a means of cross species reproductive communication.
Consensus of actual experts in the field did no agree with the pace of his predictions. Media loved it "FEAR NOW!" and Hollywood used is to spawn another round disaster movies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Conversely: Anthropogenic global warming would very convenient for all the scientists researching it, as it brings in tons of research money, therefore it must exist, and be ridiculously powerful.
People keep making this assertion over and over like it is proven fact, but nowhere have I ever seen any proof that there is substantial economic incentive for any given scientist to come out in support of global warming theory. In fact, the most likely Nash equilibrium if they were to game it would be to have half of them come down on either side of the issue so that they could use the debate to fuel research dollars. That is absolutely nothing like what is happening.
The thing is that GW as a whole is being exaggerated by both sides one way or the other, and I fear not enough unbiased info is being collected either way.
Okay, let's pretend that there is a bunch of bias like you are talking about. What portion of the 90+% of climatologists who purport to believe AGW is a real and dangerous thing do you think are being manipulated? Can you pick a high enough number to convince anybody that we shouldn't at least be highly concerned without also picking a number so high that it would be impossible without a massive global tinfoil-hat conspiracy?
I may not be so well informed on this, but I don't believe Mr. Lovelock took any of your tax money for climate or weather science. For starters, he lives in Great Britain, and is a British citizen. According to the Google.
But if you're paying taxes in Great Britain, he still hasn't taken any of your money. Mostly he just writes books. There's no public subsidy for what he does, and very little science involved. He's essentially a crank.
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening.
That statement is absurd. I cannot believe there are still people pandering this and similar opinions. Read Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William Nordhaus. Climate change is happening, and human activities are likely causing it.
[Not at] the rate that would justify dismantling civilization over...
Nobody is suggesting that. This is nonsensical hyperbole on its face. However, the scientific community is suggesting that we: use less energy, find renewable energy sources, and make less babies. The first two are profitable investments we ought to make regardless whether the climate is changing.
The need to reduce our CO2 emissions is based on the *moderate* UN estimates not some fringe. So fringe Gaia man says "ooh I should have been more moderate in my estimates" and scientific community nods in agreement.
It won't stop Fox misrepresenting Gaia mans admission as 'Climate change is a fraud' but I think you should at least be able to see through the logic problem here.
As to whether it requires dismantling of our civilization, that puts YOU at the extreme fringe. What they're calling for is a reduction in CO2 output which needs steps like energy efficiency and alternate power sources. Not some sort of extreme caveman claim that you're making.
He's a Gaia "scientist". May as well cover "Creation Scientist Admits Earth May Be a Bit Older"...
MC
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
James Lovelock is 92 years old. Born in 1919. He is not a climate scientist. He did not speak for climate scientists 20 years ago when he claimed the world was ending. He does not speak for climate scientists now. Ignore him and he will go away. Soon.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I think the science shows that our planet has gotten warmer by some small %, but science does not _clearly_ show that it is man made. It would be prudent to treat it as such and start changing our habits. A vast swath of moderates and 'average joes' hold this as a palatable view.
However, liberals and Democrats (the primary voice of the AGW fight) will need to distance themselves from the climate extremists, scientologists, and alarmists, in order to gain any traction. I'll be ironic (considering my previous statement) and say no one likes polarization. Dimiss pseudo-science, even it 'agrees with' your cause.
I'm honestly ready to stop buying gas. I'm tired of $100/tank fillups, but hybrid's suck and public transportation isn't convenient. Unfortunately, investment into better options won't occur with high taxes and weak economy.
Wow, only 96 comments. I was expecting 96,000 by now.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
People got alarmist over Global Cooling then Global Warming and then Climate Change when the first two didn't pan out by name at hyped levels. The biggest problem is that people are fighting the wrong fight, being too concerned about CO2 levels. These energies are well intentioned, however they are misplaced.
Climate change is inevitable no matter what we as a species do or don't do. We have a fossil record going back billions of years proving this, forces like plate tectonics and changes from our own solar system or even supernova's all impact our climate.
People have forgotten their environmental basics and in their zeal have created a self feeding hype machine. Scheduled catastrophes kept turning out to be false alarms. The problem is that this is causing a loss of credibility in scientists and science. People need to be concerned about pollution, for the sake of fighting pollution.
Were spending so much time worrying about whether or not the concrete being poured for a windmill is going to have the proper carbon offset. As a result were forgetting about bigger things like rampant unregulated coal power plants in China and the smelting of old electronics by hand in Africa.
We need to get back to science, back to fighting pollution and away from the hype.
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem,
Ah, but that's a very different question from the question of whether carbon dioxide emissions are affecting the climate... and it is a question that gets almost no discussion at all, because the people who think that carbon-credit trading is not a good idea don't address it, but instead argue that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist, or it exists but is saturated, or it exists but volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans so it doesn't matter what we do, or the weather data is wrong, or the scientists who study the problem are all frauds, or the cosmic rays are changing the climate more then humans do, or solar activity has gone up recently, or solar activity has gone down recently, or some hithertofore unknown feedback mechanism cancels out the changes created by humans, or... every six months there's a new purported explanation for why human-generated carbon dioxide doesn't affect the climate. (Yes, I've heard all those arguments, and many more that make even less sense.)
By denying that a possible problem even exists, the discussion of solutions ends up being completely one-sided. No one critiques carbon-credit trading, because the people who would do so are spending their efforts denying that the science.
if there really is a problem.
See? You can't even complete a single sentence before you start suggesting the greenhouse effect isn't real.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You know what would bring in REAL cash? As in, prizes, accolades, grant money beyond your wildest dreams? Proving that everyone is wrong about AGW. If there is money in AGW research, it is in proving it is wrong, not in proving what everyone knows.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yes, oil companies make money, likely more than the research organizations, but all the ranting in the world will not change the fact that GW research DOES bring in billions of dollars. The post I replied to said AGW was an inconvenience to people financially... My point (which you summarily, and ignorantly dismissed) was that money flows both ways, as does the inconvenience.
Speaking of ad hominem, your rant attacks me, and I did not even state an opinion. I am sure climate change is happening; I even think we are causing some of it. Has it really gotten to be such a religion that we cannot even have a professional discussion on the subject?
A true scientists spends his efforts trying to disprove his theories.
It is ironic that these kind of "scientist" can downright lie while some small plagiarism can cost your career as a scientist.
For an excellent review of the climate change issue without the "hot air", check out http://www.withouthotair.com/ "David MacKay FRS is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher, a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995. Since 2005, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about energy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Nine months after the publication of 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot air', David MacKay was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change."
No, manmade CO2 will not affect the climate 100,000 years from now. Nobody has claimed that it would. The Earth will survive. New species will evolve. Even humans will survive. But civilization may not. And the higher methane release rates are a result of methane ices melting because of temperature increases, caused by manmade CO2. It is one of the long predicted positive feedback loops that make our massive CO2 production so dangerous. We live in a thin layer of gas on a solid/liquid surface. There is not that much of a buffer against the changes we make.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Exactly! Follow the $$$ and you'll see all these scientists folks living high on the hog, flashing their bling as they drive past in their Corollas and Preludes.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Citation needed.
Grasslands/forests, oxygen-rich atmosphere, most Carribean/Indonesian Islands are all examples, off the top of my head, of results of how evolution favors organisms that destabilise, then manipulate their environment to suit themselves or their own kind.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Has it really gotten to be such a religion that we cannot even have a professional discussion on the subject?
Yeah, I'mmm thinking, No.
When to express doubt is to be associated with those who implicitly support genocide, then it pretty much shuts down all rational discourse.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
12 years worth of data, combined with the AGE OF THE EARTH is what....a few seconds worth of data? If "man made" global warming was happening, explain the unearthed silver mines that had been covered in glacier ice? Obviously, it was warm enough back then to support someone mining something. Explain how rivers were routinely "walked on" all winter long, but now they never freeze over? It's called A CYCLE. The earth warms, the earth cools. I'll betcha if you really did the research, you would find an almost parallel to the earth cycles and the sun cycles. Amazing! When the sun heats up, has a ton of sunspot cycles, CME's...it effects OUR EARTH. But, this "researcher" saying he was wrong about man made global warming won't get much press, because it doesn't fit the "global warming" agenda of our current administration, the anti capitalist and the "one world order" idiots in the UN.
And eventually we, and all complex life will - as the solar system ages. It doesn't matter if we cause our own extinction, eventually the Earth will simply not have the goldilocks conditions for complex life anymore
Humans need to be in space.
We need to be able to travel.
Once we think we need it it will take to long to get there to be of any use.
Humans will either become extinct or travel to other stars.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change
Pardon my ignorance, exactly what *is* the mainstream prediction?
The currently published consensus (IPCC AR-4) is that climate change will be 2 to 4.5 C temperature rise per doubling of CO2, with a current best estimate of about 3 C (another source, Rahmstorf 2008, says 2.6 to 4.1 C, with most modeled results clustering around 3 C.)
If you want to turn that into a temperature prediction, multiply that by the log base 2 of your prefered prediction of carbon dioxide in the year you want to predict for (divided by the carbon dioxide in the year you take as baseline). The climate science part, however, is not the prediction of carbon dioxide emission (that's sociology and/or politics and/or economics), it's the response of the climate.
(Yes, it's a little annoying that the climate community settled in on log base 2. Temperature is logarithmic in greenhouse-gas concentration-- that's the Arrhenius relation-- and the earlier modellers decided to model the effect of doubling carbon dioxide, hence the log_2.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's not the scientists themselves... they just get to keep their jobs... It is the research organizations (often universities) reaping in the money. Sad they won't even give more of it to the scientists. And, yes, we all know that the oil companies are bringing in more money (each anyway). There are a LOT of organizations making money from GW research funding... of course this produces jobs, which is also a good thing. Many of these scientists actually do make a lot of money. Their choice of vehicle may be for fuel efficiency and overall global impact (i.e., why some do NOT drive a hybrid... the batteries and their production are terrible for the planet) rather than as a status symbol. Of course most make little, but a lot of them are probably grad students anyway, just another source of cheap labor... (In its heyday the Prelude was a pretty cool, and not too cheap, car.)
You are wrong in fact and wrong in logic.
The impact of climate change is not equal. The poor live disproportionately in vulnerable areas. This is true not just for climate change, but for environmental disasters in general. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live on the deforested hillsides that collapse in landslides. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live in flood-prone areas. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who make a living from dry and marginal soils susceptible to droubt. And it is the poor who lack the resources to cope when the water dries up, when food prices rise, when hit by torrential rains or brush fires. Global warming is not like an asteroid. It will not wipe out all life. But it will create great suffering, and that suffering will fall disproportionately on the poor. That is your error in fact.
Your error in logic is your claim of equal responsibility. If you and I are in a car crash, are we equally responsible because we both suffer the same loss? Even though I was speeding, talking on my cell phone and weaving in traffic while you were driving predictably and defensively, but were unable to avoid me when I suddenly swerved in front of you? Of course not. Responsibility results from the actions we take and the choices we make. We in the developed countries have produced most of the emissions and reaped most of the benefits. We are far more responsible for climate change than the peasants of India or Mexico or Bangladesh. Responsibility flows from actions, not consequences.
You keep talking about "facts" as if they exist. In science, there are no facts - there are hypotheses - models of the way the world works. All of these models are wrong to some degree, but the accepted model is the one with the lowest error when properly tested against the data. We have observed an increase in atmospheric co2. Our current models predict that this will cause an increase in the global mean temperature. To contradict this, it isn't enough to claim that "co2 does not cause global warming", you have to actually produce a better model, one that explains the observed data with a lower error. In particular, you need to account for the measured increase in atmospheric co2 - saying "humans didn't do it" is not enough - you have to come up with a better hypothesis, one that explains where the co2 is coming from. If you are going to claim that co2 isn't causing warming, then you need to explain what is causing the warming, and why co2 - a known greenhouse gas - isn't doing what it is supposed to do. You can't just say "I don't believe it" - you need to actually come up with a better hypothesis. That is how science works.
Remember: "All models are wrong... some are useful" and "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Somehow linking that to humans, that's the REALLY controversial part and it's MUCH harder to provide fact in that case. Almost impossible. At least without a several-million-year-long scientifically controlled investigation (and, no, fossil records, ice-cores, etc. do NOT give us the reason, they give us some facts).
We have heard a similar argument:
"Somehow linking that to lung cancer, that's the REALLY controversial part and it's MUCH harder to provide fact in that case. Almost impossible. At least without a hundreds-of-years-long scientifically controlled investigation (and, no, biopsies, lab experiments, tests, etc. do NOT give us the reason, they give us some facts)."
This line of reasoning has been debunked over and over.
It appears that sometimes the start and end of the sub-ice ages could have been abrupt- as little as a decade from various paleo-climate observations. This is much faster than the change in causative factors like greenhouse gasses, earth orbit variation and solar variability, hence the moniker "non-linear". This would mean that our hunter-gather ancestors would have observed signficant seashore and weather changes from year to year.
Its not that easy to model a "non-linear" system in equations or a computer. In fact "non-linearity" is a tautology (circular definition) to explain why your computer model happened too fast or too slow than expected.
And yet, the militaries and oil and mineral corporations are prepping for war for when the arctic ice cap melts and exposes the wealth underneath...
Check your premises.
You're wrong about solar. Prices of solar panels have come down to the $1/W range, and they are going to fall by another 50% over the next couple years as new technologies for reducing the amount of silicon used become common place. From there the remaining problem is finding a way to store the power you generated during the day to use during the night. But I think that if you used the power to produce hydrogen in an 80% efficient process, then burned it in a combined cycle plant that's 60% efficient you could get half your power back. I think that would be a workable solution, especially if you put solar panels on everyone's food so they could use a portion of it when it is generated, generate hydrogen for heating, then put the excess on the grid for storage by a smallish (50MW or so) local combined cycle facility. If you factor in the cloudy/nightime hours, and the 50% storage efficiency, you'd need to install 6 W of solar panels for every 1 W of power you intend to use. Combined cycle generators cost about $0.50 / W, and you could probably build an electrolysis unit for about the same. If you can install the solar panels on people's roofs for about $0.50/W you end up with a total installed cost of about $7/W. That compares with about $4/W which they are expecting for new nuclear plants. If you want a 10% annual return of the installed cost, you'd need to pay $700/kW-yr for the electricity, or $0.08/kW-hr. That's comparable to what people are paying today in SoCal, and bear in mind that the actual costs you'd pay out of pocket are lower depending on how much power you produce with the solar panels on your roof.
I know what you're going to say: what about areas where you don't get enough sun? Well, it turns out the economics are similar for wind power, though you'll end up paying more like $0.12/kWh in the end because there aren't any new technologies being rolled out to radically reduce the price of wind power in the immediate or foreseeable future.
Science does not write the sensational news stories; almost no politicians are scientists; the public embarrassingly seems ignorant about science in general and lends as much credence to an actual scientist as the opposing PR person who has no credibility, that is if they even hear from an actual scientist.
Science is not a game of debate or a political compromise but that is how it is presented and processed by the masses. Science in those arenas appears as an extremist position since it is all about about finding fact.
The fear industry pulls in some scientists and other industries corrupt scientists but those are made into visible figures and do not fairly represent their communities. They can exaggerate and sensationalize minor issues or the unsettled areas of knowledge.
TFA: Global Dimming is fairly recent, the extent of the impact is even more recent and that is just preliminary in the larger picture. Global Dimming is what is saving us from the extreme predictions and delaying them; it used to be a little controversial because it seemed to contradict the rest the science but it turned out with further research it strongly supports it. Nutshell: reflective pollution is helping counter the heat retaining CO2 pollution which is why it is not as hot as if you figure/estimate using pure CO2 alone. Early estimates lacked the data and research from the future which turned out to be quite significant; some got caught up in it a little some a lot, possibly being slow to change if they were too attached to their theory.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You're overstating the case - those viruses and bacteria don't "want" us to die, they "want" us to continue to exist to the extent that our existence provides them with an environment in which they can prosper. If all respiratory life died of the common cold, the common cold virus would itself die out. Diseases that are 100% fatal to their hosts tend to dwindle, and what we are left with today are loads of diseases that have evolved to be less than 100% fatal, because those diseases are more successful since they have a broader base to infect. Life is most effective when it does reach an equilibrium with those organisms on which it depends, which somewhat resembles the "Gaia" theory. Such equilibrium with the dependency chain does not preclude wiping out organisms on which they do not depend though, and occasionally things go spectacularly wrong when a species suddenly spills into an ecosystem which does not have sufficient time to achieve a steady state with it. These occasions are not always caused by man, but man-made examples are easier to find.
The climate change deniers repeating the same talking points aren't just random AC trolls, but members proudly posting and not getting modded into fish food.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
In fact, the most likely Nash equilibrium if they were to game it would be...........
Why people everywhere fail at achieving the Nash equilibrium.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
...please return to polluting at will, everything is fine. Continue to breed, too. The earth can EASILY hold 1 trillion people who consume at the rate of the typical American.
Looks like Exxon, Shell, Koch Brothers, Limbaugh, Palin, Beck, FOX News, and God were right all along.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Problem with the "rate" idea is that the climate has certainly been known to change rapidly in the past. They have uncovered frozen Mammoths with semi-tropical plants in their stomachs - undigested. While it is theoretically possible that the animals in question were flown from a semi-tropical environment to the frozen wastes where they were entombed, the somewhat more reasonable explanation is that they were frozen in place by an extremely rapid (think special effects from "The After Tomorrow") cooling - so rapid that the plants and animals were frozen instantly.
I'd call that a pretty rapid change myself. I don't think 40,000 years ago there was much human involvement, although it might have been those super-scientists from Atlantis some folks keep writing books about. But it would appear to be a natural process at work.
I do not have similar evidence of rapid warming (heating?) off hand, but it is pretty simple to believe that if it can happen with cooling that it can also happen with warming.
Isn't this the institute headed by Amory Lovins, a guy whose predictions turned out wrong, wrong and wrong many times, yet still remains a celebrity?
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=676
By the way, he promotes quite a lot of distributed coal burning.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Yawn. Not that old chestnut again.
No sig today...
They have uncovered frozen Mammoths with semi-tropical plants in their stomachs - undigested.
Citation Needed.
No climate scientist will deny that other factors than CO2 can influence climate. Even high CO2 levels cannot warm the planet enough to stop an glaciation if Earth is further from the Sun. But do note that even during an Ice Age Earth is still warmer than its orbital position should suggest.
In other words, why don't you read up on the literature in Climate science, instead of parroting denier blogs? Not every driver of climate is known yet, but the current theories fit the observed reality pretty well, and the denialists have not produced one decent theory that fits the observed reality as well.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
So we shouldn't have saved the ozone layer from CFCs, because nobody was certain about it? Because in science, nothing is ever really certain.
How did you come to that what he wrote (quoted below)?
There's one kind of scientific corruption, which is obvious and easy to see - saying something you don't believe is true. This is easy to avoid. The more insidious form of corruption is to overstate one's degree of certainty in what you do believe to be true: "You don't understand - if I include all of my doubts, outliers and provisos, a non-scientific reader is not going to understand." That's the kind of corruption that, unfortunately, is at play here. Lovelock is calling this out.
You like red herrings a-la strawman, do you? You kinky you.
Slandering scientists by the think-tank approved "they do it for the graaaaants" gives insightful mods these days. Nice to know. /me waves to the shill brigade.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The Globe is a big place - and "global warming" implies that the *average* temperature is increasing, not that all points on the globe rise as you suggest. You are correct that sea ice in the southern hemisphere has been increasing, but the *land* ice in Antarctica has not only been decreasing, but has been doing so at an *accelerating* rate... Sea ice anywhere is floating and displaces water. Imagine, for a moment, where there missing land ice in Antarctica is going... in your words, "Uh oh."
The OP is a liar and has been posting this trash on Slashdot for years. how did it get through this time? Slashdot needs to look at its servers and see 1) who posted it, 20 who modded it up and who they are. I think we all know they'll find.
...Solar is different. There's plenty of solar power. But current solar-electric panel are still bullshit (I drive past the Soylendra buildings every day)...
I do have to point out that Solyndra was not a large part of the photovoltaic industry, and even if their expansion plans had succeeded, they still wouldn't have been a major player in the photovoltaic industry. The failure of one small manufacturer, out of many, has little to do with the viability of the photovoltaic power.
I will also point out that one (not the only, but one) of the reasons they failed was because competition in the industry had driven the price of panels down so far that their production system couldn't compete. In other words, they failed because photovoltaic panels are much less expensive than anybody had expected they would be. That's not any kind of evidence that "solar-electic panel are bullshit"; exactly to the contrary.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So, this guy said:
GlobalWarming == sky(falling)
and from then on all the deniers had to say is:
If (!sky(falling)) {!GlobalWarming}
and they win
This guys should be burned in effigy every earth day.
It's simple is it?
Can you please explain in detail how a colorless, odorless gas can trap heat from radiating from the planet and act as a blanket? In fact, I've never seen an explanation of the actual mechanism of global warming more specific than "green house gases act as an insulator". I can believe that if they were colored in some way, but they aren't, they're clear.
Sure. Carbon dioxide is transparent in the visible spectrum, but has absorption bands in the infrared. Thus, some of the thermal infrared emitted by the Earth is absorbed by the CO2 in the atmosphere rather than being radiated to space. This energy is then re-radiated (still in the infrared) isotropically. Some of that re-radiated energy escapes to space, some of it is re-absorbed by the atmosphere, and some of it is reradiate downward, to the ground.
The portion reradiated to the ground is the part we need to think about. Essentially, the ground radiated energy upward, but due to trace-gas infrared absorption in the atmosphere, a fraction of that returned back to the ground, effectively reducing the amount of energy radiated. That's what's meant by "acts like an insulator"-- it reduces the heat transfer outward (to space).
Clear enough? If not, you might see what you get if you look for "greenhouse effect" in wikipedia.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
.
The point is that the entire world is motivated by the flow of money, whether it is oil companies seeking profits for their shareholders (is YOUR retirement fund invested in them??), or research organizations trying to get money wherever they can. To think that climate research is NOT influenced by the flow of money is just plain naive.
And to think that grant money is the sole motivator of scientists pretty much is projection on your part. And, as I may add, says a lot about your character. Nothing good though. Besides, I worked in academia for a decade myself. I don't need to rely on the testimony of "friends" or other anally-extracted entities.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
This phrase seems to be the latest indicator of right wing bullshit. Do they train them in camps somewhere? Or maybe it's just one guy who's really busy.
if only the sea level rise would agree with your "uh oh"
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
I never said the money was the sole motivator. Those are your words. Simply that the money is indeed a motivator. Honestly, I think that NOT believing the money to be a big factor says a lot about your character as well. Nothing good, though, as you might say...
I would suggest "More Climate Change in my pocketbook".
I am not trying to start a flame war, I just think fewer people would be outright deniers if there was less doomsday and fear profiteering.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
The calculation done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald
Does that calculation say that the ice caps will melt, the waters will rise, and we will all starve to death? Or does it predict a mild temperature rise like we have already observed?
I don't deny that the world has warmed. But I question the apocalyptic scenarios that say that feedbacks will amplify everything and we all will die.
I have no interest in, nor patience with, "apocalyptic scenarios that say that feedbacks will amplify everything and we all will die," although I'm not actually quite sure who these people are. The climate scientists I pay attention say that the anthropogenic warming effect is, so far, about half a degree. Perhaps Lovelock was saying "feedbacks will amplify everything and we will all die," but the actual climate scientists-- the ones nobody pays attention to-- are a little less spectacular.
Yes, in fact I do have issues with the arguments presented in the blog you cite. It is badly cherrypicked, I'm afraid. I don't have anything like the time required to show how, over and over again, Evans made choices of what data to present and how to present the data that just "happen" to make the predictions look bad, but I will start with just a single question for you. In figure 3, the graph showing how bad Hansen's predictions are, he happens to start the graph with the "prediction" matching the data at the left edge of the graph, at 1988. Now, the Hansen paper he is quoting predictions from was published in 1988, so that paper couldn't possibly have known the temperature in 1988. In fact, eyeballing the graph, it looks like 1988 was a cyclic high point. The paper was published 1988, so it must have been written in 1987, which means that Hansen actually must have baselined his predictions on temperature data from no later than 1986 (1987 data wouldn't have been available yet, of course.). OK, Evans does give his source for the data he graphed, and, yes, it turns out that 1988 was indeed anomalously high. The average temperature for 1986 was 0.41 degrees cooler than the temperature in January, 1988.
So, here's my question: if you slide the predictions 0.41 degrees lower (and two years earlier) than they are shown in the graph drawn by Evans-- that is, start the predictions at the point where the temperature actually was when Hansen made the prediction-- how does the data fit the prediction?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Wow, I'm really impressed with all the climate scientists posting on this story! It's funny, though. So many don't seem to believe that Climate Change is happening or that we should do anything about it. It's a real turnabout from what I normally read, or what I hear when I talk to climate scientists.
Oh, wait. Most of the people rejecting climate science aren't climate scientists themselves?
Listen, I appreciate that you're entitled to your opinion, but if I had that many oncologists telling me I had cancer, I'd sit up and get some damn medical attention. The amount of agreement in the field is actually fairly extraordinary. While I'm a programmer now, my BSc is about 50% climate and earth science. I don't know enough to make predictions, but I do know enough to read papers and figure out when I'm being snowed. Study after study, paper after paper...actual climate scientists have a solid consensus on what they believe the causes are and some good steps to try and mitigate them. Either we believe that climate science is a field that it's possible to have a specialty in, or we believe that anyone that can read a thermometer is qualified to make statements about atmospheric CO2 levels and whether or not they're harmful.
I also appreciate being a skeptic. But at a certain point, you cease being a skeptic and have just closed your eyes all together.
Climate scientists don't have all the answers, but I believe in the science that they produce a lot more than the predictions I hear from oil companies or right-wing pundits.
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It's weird that you chose to a link to a site which argues exactly the opposite of what you're claiming: even when some scientists predicted cooling, six times as many predicted warming.
It's strange how more and more, the "skeptics" are leading me to information that validates AGW theory! Just the other day, some particularly rabid commenters on the conservative blogs convinced me that the "97% consensus" number was totally unfounded and lacked a source. Since I'm the kind of *legitimate* skeptic to whom all claims are suspect but worth investigating, I attempted to track down a source myself and within three minutes had two published papers showing 97% agreement among the scientific community on AGW.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have no interest in, nor patience with, "apocalyptic scenarios that say that feedbacks will amplify everything and we all will die,"
Glad to hear it.
although I'm not actually quite sure who these people are.
Try a Google search for "global warming runaway" or "global warming tipping point". I did the former and found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
From that page: "James E. Hansen has suggested that the Earth could experience a runaway greenhouse effect and adopt a climate like that of Venus if fossil-fuel use continues until reserves are exhausted.[27]"
So there's one name for you, James E. Hansen.
If all the fossil fuel reserves are exhausted?!!!
Good god! You are aware, are you not, that all of the oxygen in our air comes originally from photosynthesis, and that "all of the fossil fuel is exhausted" occurs when every molecule of oxygen has been turned to carbon dioxide? Yes, I would say that if we actually were stupid enough to do that, probably we would return the Earth to its original Venus- like conditions. This is not a realistic condition, however; I would certainly hope that we would stop burning fossil carbon somewhere around when people start dying from lack of oxygen.
I meant: I don't know of who's predicting imminent disaster in the near term. Yes, I agree, if we return all the fossil carbon to the atmosphere, that would be bad. But I don't think you need climate models to say that.
My problem as a layman is that I don't understand how cherrypicking would help the last two-thirds of his article.
The last two thirds? As I said, I really don't have time to comment on a blog post line by line; you're not paying me enough for that. Do I understand your comment to mean that you're saying that although the beginning of the article is twaddle, the last two thirds isn't not?
....The key quote from the article:
Some of the skeptics agree on that. Some think that the greenhouse effect itself does not exist. Some think it exists but is saturated. This is part of the problem, there really isn't a consistent alternate model from the skeptics.
I'm wondering if you agree, and I'm wondering what feedbacks if any were postulated by Manabe and Wetherald.
The Manabe and Wetherald model was a constant humidity model, with no cloud effects. It predicted about 2.2 degrees C per doubling IIRC, which is still within the band of the consensus today. That's well above the 1 that he calls "no feedback": what he means by "no feedback" requires that humidity decreases as temperature rises.
My question is: what is this model he proposed with negative feedback loops that cancel out the well understood positive feedback? Who made this purported model, where has it been published, and what are its predictions? How does it compare with the data? (that's a rhetorical question, by the way; the purported model doesn't exist. Lindzen tried to come up with one about ten years or so back, but even Linzen now agrees that that model he proposed didn't fit the data.)
The article is wrong about cloud effects, by the way; clouds do not necessarily cause negative feedback-- clouds reflect infrared, which increases temperature, as well as reflecting visible, which decreases temperature. In the simplest case of clouds with the same reflectivity in visible and infrared, the first-order effect is zero (proof is left as an exercise to the student. Hint: use the Stefan-Bolzman equation).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yes, the data fits the models, but prediction up to now has largely been based on simple greenhouse effects. The long term predictions, in contrast, involve postulated complicated feedback loops. But let's assume that temperature predictions are correct, large amounts of ice will melt, it will get a lot warmer, sea levels will rise. So what? The amount of change even the worst case predictions entail is small compared to the kinds of changes humanity has undergone over the last century.
The problem with the dire global warming predictions is that it presumes that if we act, the West can keep the current situation indefinitely. That's of course utter nonsense. The 20th century saw mass migrations, vast devastation, and enormous political and social change, and so will the 21st century, global warming or not.
Damn, wasn't logged in. Please direct all scientifically accurate and rigidly quantitative hate mail to Ahfoo.
Way to not address a snarky, opinionated rant receiving a 3. But you're correct that I agree with the AC.
No fishing attempted, by the way.
NON-geek Linux user since 1998
I said it wasn't chaotic, not that it was stable.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
All of the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from reduction of carbon dioxide to oxygen and reduced carbon, so (other than a very small amount currently in biomass) if you burned all of the reduced carbon underground-- what we call "fossil fuels"-- you'd return the Earth to a carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere. That shouldn't be controversial. Yes, if we burn all the fossil fuels, it will have very bad consequences.
I'm sorry I don't have time to critique that website line by line. Given that he manipulated the baseline on figure 3 to move the Hansen prediction upward by 0.4 degrees (and then draws the conclusion "look, Hansen was wrong! His prediction is a whole 0.4 degrees too high!), I don't trust anything else he says unless I track back to the original sources, and I don't have time to do that.
On the subject of feedback factors, there's a decent overview in the IPCC Working Group I Report, "The Physical Science Basis," available here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#.T5lYtO25340
That should, at a minimum, help convince you that feedback factors aren't numbers just made up out of thin air, but do have real science behind them.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
>> The lesson here is, read the actual science, not the advocates or deniers or bloggers or politicians or special interest groups or popularizers.
In other words, Gore is a dishonest idiot. When you're willing to honestly criticize those politically aligned with your own position, only then should we take you seriously. Until that time, you're just a self-serving hack. Read Feynman.
I have little interest in Al Gore. He's a guy who was a failed presidential candidate twelve years ago and made a movie a year or two later. He's definitely not a scientist.
So, yes, when I say "read the actual science, not the advocates or deniers or bloggers or politicians or special interest groups or popularizers," Gore would definitely be on my list of "advocates or deniers or bloggers or politicians or special interest groups or popularizers," and not scientists.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Like it or not we are changing the earth.
And we do not understand the natural swing of global climate.
We can quibble all we want but we do not know if a natural change
will feed or starve millions in the next ten years let alone the next five
generations. Muddy that with the masses of human excrement we are
producing and stink who knows.
Speaking of poo, I once had cause to look at a climate model code.
In the code was "PI=3.14". The reason I had it was a parallel run
mis compare in the 19th decimal digit when doubling the CPU count.
Gaia knows, GIGO.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
here on /. , but If it hasn't yet been said, I consider this fella a scientific hero for saying the truth ..sadly, what was once considered expected behavior in politics, religion and the sciences, is now considered heroic, so perhaps 100 years ago I mightn't have said this .. It's true, that it appears, or did appear, until a couple of years ago, that we are warming up, but it only takes one volcanic eruption to turn things around.. The geologic records clearly show how drastic the climate changes have been over the aeons, and how rapid the onset was also.. Current thinking appears to blame the sun, (of all things) for the variances, as an identical increase in planetary temperature has been measured on all the OTHER planets in our solar system..
I'm not condoning the act of spewing tons of pollutants into our atmosphere, after all, how can it really ever be justified? But don't make the poor countries pay for the excesses of the wealthy.
Yes.
Global warming is FUD to distract us from the REAL issue: The transition from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. The sooner we get started, the better. Critical fact to understand about this: the marketplace will not provide the mechanism to accomplish this. Well, actually, of course it will, but the problem is that the marketplace's solution involves a major human die off to bring demand in line with supply. Overruling the marketplace to move us to towards the goal while avoiding a major die-off is one of the proper roles of government.
Social Credit would solve everything...
"This guy is saying the sort of things that have been getting me downmodded here on slashdot for years.
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening. But if it is it ain't happening at anything like the rate that would justify dismantling civilization over, we still aren't sure whether it is us or a natural cycle we don't undertstand, etc. And he doesn't go there but I will: too many politicians with a preexisting anti-civilization (Western industrial captialism based ccivilization that is...) bias glommed onto AGW with the willing consent of a lot of brand name scientists, thereby (rightly) harming the public's trust of all science."
I also have been downmodded on slashdot. I blogged about the IPCC and how GW was not a problem back in 2005
http://www.barvennon.com/~spin/spin203.html
And just let me clear up the "dismantle". To not use Carbon Fuels we would have to dismantle our civilization. Without carbon fuels a few billion people would die by starvation etc. How else would we grow the food, transport it to cities, keep it refrigerated? Also what about shelter. Do you plan to live in wigwams or igloos? And clothes. Are you planning to have your wives use spinning wheels? How will you move medicine around,
And (in the absence of world peace brought about by a world dictator) how will you defend yourselves from invasion and genocide?
How will you defend ourselves from military attack by gangs of criminals?
If you want to have people spend 25% of their income on food, then you enable the big food producers who are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in their petrochemical fertilizers. That and you need to cut taxes from the total 50-60% rate of gross income (income, sales, VATs, hidden) to free up the money for the increased cost.
Seriously, you lefties don't know much of anything--including how food is actually grown.
Somedays I think the real cause of CO2 increases is all the mindless left-wing Chicken-Little bloviating about CO2 increases...
Enable them by cutting them off and buying organic? I don't even know what you're talking about. What you said makes no sense period, but it especially makes no sense in the context of what I was discussing. Good day, sir. I SAY GOOD DAY!!!
Wow..some actual honesty for once!
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc