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Koch Bros Study Finds Global Warming Is Real And Man-Made
bledri writes "The results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature are in and Richard Muller, the study's director (formerly an AGW skeptic) declares, 'Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.'
The study was funded by the Folger Fund, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates), the Bowes Foundation, the Koch Foundation, and the Getty Foundation."
...is global warming good or bad.
For some it will be good. For some bad. The diversity of life has historically increased with warming. Coastal cities won't like a sea level rise though.
The Koch Brothers were among several funders, some of whom actually had decent motives. For example, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are not partisan conservatives. And FICER (the Gates-funded organization) actively depends on global warming existing, because their whole raison d'etre is pushing geoengineering as a solution, which would obviously be unnecessary if there were no problem for geoengineering to solve.
In fact that's probably why the outcome was actually scientifically legit: it was a study by actual scientists with a fairly broad set of backers, done at a university rather than in the private sector.
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(Bjorn Lomborg) as two prominent if not THE most prominent AGW skeptics to change their minds. (I've heard of these guys and if I've heard of them, since I'm not a specialist, I figure they must be prominent).
So what's it going to take? Convincing every last person that this isn't real? That's going to be pretty damned impossible because as Upton Sinclair wrote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.". Substitute the word "salary" with "lifestyle" (or even "SUV") and you'll see how the average American thinks.
I've read that a ten percentage increase in electrical costs would be enough to sequester all the CO2 we're currently emitting. So the fact that a ten percentage increase in something that is not a big item in the average American budget is keeping us from potentially preventing great harm to our ecology, biosphere and a great number of species on this planet (including us!) makes me realize that we will deserve the hell on earth we get.
Step one was to deny it was real. Now we are on step two: admit it is real but that it is too expensive for us to fight it. Step three is to build another mansion on higher ground and put in larger A/C units.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Global warming will also destroy crop yields - just look at the corn yield THIS YEAR.
which will affect beef production/
Global Warming will also affect fisheries. Between GW and over fishing around the World, we're going to see some real devastation there - and fisheries around the World are already in trouble. That's why you keep seeing new and different species of fish behind the counter - the other ones have been almost wiped out. (Farmed fish is an environmental and nutritional joke. But that's for another time.)
See, that's the thing that annoys me. Just about all of the "debate" in the popular media about global warming is about "lifestyle", taxes, nationalism, ... everything but food supply except when it comes to ethanol. (The corn lobby needs to be destroyed. Farm subsidies mostly enrich Cargil, Monsano, Tyson, and other huge corporate food processors. It lowers input their costs.)
So, while the general public is being distracted my non-issues about GW like losing control of our government to the UN, higher taxes and other non-sense, the folks who are profiting dearly from our current policies are getting away scott free.
And the above is just ONE facet of the true forces behind the issue.
AFAIK The Koch Foundation isn't the same as the Koch Brothers (the folks who donate to conservative political candidates.)
There are two Koch foundations, one founded by each of the infamous Koch Brothers. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this Koch foundation was the same one that provides funding for Nova (or did at one time).
I'm a little curious as to why, in a list of 5 organizations that funded this study, the headline and OP singled out Koch. Hoping for additional impact that wouldn't be achieved by just saying "Climate Change Skeptic Changes Mind"?
Our increase of CO2 is still far below any volcano ...
Not surprised you cower behind anonymity when spouting utterly wrong claptrap like that. Hint: try actually finding things out before demonstrating your ignorance in public.
According to the USGS, man-made CO2 emissions are 35 billion tons per year, total volcanic output (from land and under the seas) ranges from 0.13 to 0.44 billion tons per year. Even in a year of abnormally great volcanic activity, volcanic output is tiny in comparison to that of human activity. There are only a few Mount St. Helens scale eruptions per year, but it would take 3500 of them every year to equal current man-made CO2 emissions.
From the same USGS page, in 1900, the annual anthropogenic CO2 output was about 18 times that of volcanism. In 2010 it had increased to about 135 times the annual volcanic output. These ratios are based on the maximum estimate of volcanic CO2 output. So the increase in annual anthropogenic CO2 output dwarfs the annual volcanic CO2 output.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"nobody seems to be able to find anything he's ever said that put him in the "skeptic" camp..."
Especially if they don't have 5 seconds with which to perform a google search.
Here's the latest. Scientific American has now published an interview with Richard Muller, in which Muller repeats the most popular climate denial talking points related to Mike Mann's famous and endlessly replicated hockey stick temperature graph, and throws in unsupportable slurs against Al Gore, the IPCC, and climate science in general. The magazine's editors did not see fit to fact check any of the statements.
Source
It's hard to believe there are still people stupid enough to spout these two talking points, a good decade or more after they've been debunked, soundly and repeatedly.
Clearly there are though, and they're proud of their extreme ignorance.
What a misleading summary. What Muller claims to have shown is:
1. Warming is happening; criticisms of statistical methods can either be worked around or are shown to not be valid.
2. Solar activity and/or other proposed non-CO2 warming drivers are not responsible for the observed increase.
3. Atmospheric CO2 is by far the best correlate with global surface temperatures.
However, he then adds, "These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism," and goes on to reject a number of "alarmist" (his word) consequences of warming (more frequent hurricanes, the U.S. drought, polar bears dying, etc.)
He himself uses that term, in the quote that's right here in the Slashdot summary! It's not some kind of external appellation. He says:
The 3-years-ago part I believe is referring to "Climategate", which Muller was very critical of. In addition, he's criticized the methodology of studies over the years, which has caused him to be viewed as something of a skeptic. In 2004, he wrote a now-famous editorial attacking the "hockey stick graph" for being "poor mathematics".
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How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.
Because the Koch brothers have been the hugest anti-global-warming proponents since day one, as so much of their money comes from businesses that pollute heavily.
This is all just liberal propaganda paid for by... ...oh wait...
If you didn't think the argument involved multiple parts, then you weren't paying attention. I find this to be one of the biggest problems with many self-proclaimed proponents of AGW is that they think if they prove something, then the argument is done, over, everything else follows logically and there can be no question. No, not at all. There are multiple stages to the argument.
The first is the claims of fact: That average surface temperature is increasing and that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are increasing. These are claims of facts about the world, things to be observed or measured. CO2 is pretty easy given the nature of gasses diffusing to uniform, temperature is quite a bit harder. However, it looks pretty solid that yes, temperature has been increasing. So that's step one, verify the facts behind the theory.
The next step is the central theory: That the primary or exclusive cause of the observed warming is the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere due to human emissions. Like all theories, it attempts to explain the connection between facts, how things relate. So that the facts are true does not automatically imply the theory is correct. That is the point of this (and other) studies. See if there are facts that would falsify this theory, or are there other theories that would fit the available facts better. So far, it does not seem so which means that this theory is probably correct.
This is not the end of the argument though. All you've done is shown why something is happening. That doesn't mean anything in and of itself. The next part of the argument is where things get more specious: The claim that this will be a bad thing for humanity as a whole. That's not a scientific theory, that's an over-arching claim, a judgement call. It is based on a number of theories and hypothesis out there. However to be accurate it needs to be backed up by theories with evidence that indicate that things will change in negative ways. Also you have to weigh just how positive and negative all the predicted changes will be. Anyone who pretends something is all positive or all negative is pushing an agenda and/or ignoring reality. Everything has a downside, a cost. The question is how does it weigh overall?
This is a discussion that doesn't seem to happen much. The "It will be a bad thing," seem to be parroted as dogma. You accept or you get shouted down. Any hypothesis that says something bad will happen is accepted as true, any hypothesis that says something good will happen is said to be false. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
Then, after you've shown it is a net negative overall, that it is something that would be better if it didn't happen, you get down to the policy of what to do about it. This is not science at all, there is no one right answer. It is a matter of deciding what we wish to do based off of costs, likelihood of success, other downsides and so on. "Just stop burning fossil fuels," isn't the "correct" answer. It is a possible course of action, but not the only one. Geoengineering solutions would be others. Still others would be not to try and change what is happening, but rather to change ourselves and prepare to deal with the changes since though this change may be human caused it is likely at some point another will happen that isn't and thus we may not be able to affect.
So if you are hoping for the magic moment of "All debate ends and everyone agrees with me," well sorry you aren't going to see it. As I alluded to, the big thing at this point would be to show that this change is going to be a net negative for humanity. That's complex, so no surprise it is hard. Even once that is in the bag, the question remains as to what to do. To that there will never be a final "correct" answer, only possibilities that eventually will need to be weighed and chosen from (including the possibility of doing nothing).
No, the Kochs are the same billionaires. They must have either figured out a way to monetize global warming, perhaps through an environment-monitoring division, or figured out that most people would rather have oil than a stable atmosphere.
Or maybe their foundation accidentally backed the wrong science. Even billionaires can hire people who make mistakes.
John
Gates, Koch, Getty and Bowes. That's a pretty diverse group. Either you don't trust anyone or that's about as close as you are going to get to a fair determination.
That is a lesser evil than half of Africa starving to death because of increased food prices caused by carbon taxes on farmers in the US and elsewhere.
Of course, we COULD just abandon our idiotic de facto ban on nuclear research and build LFTRs everywhere, both halting the growth of CO2 emissions (among other more potent greenhouse gases) and making energy cheaper for everyone, improving everyone's standard of living.
At some point, you might as well be abusive. Moon vs Earth temperatures is a good an example as any he could give. The difference between the two? Greenhouse effect. More Greenhouse leads to yet higher average temperatures.
The whole debate is not about who is right and who is wrong. It is about people fighting for their right to deny reality in exchange for clinging to their religious beliefs or a fat pay-cheque. There is no merit in that. No moral principle. The debate consists entirely on one side bringing up irrelevant and minor points and demanding that they be refuted in detail. This gives them time to come up with the next batch of irrelevant details
In some sense, the fact that this study was conducted was a huge gimmick: the outcome was obvious, and any scientist (yes even a physicist) who thinks he'll get better results than the guys from a field he's not from has a clearly overinflated ego.
Since this is the second time that line is misread that particular way, I'll offer an explanation, even though it should be obvious. California's government happens to go bankrupt from time to time. That doesn't make the state poor, because there are also people and companies in the state who own and produce assets that are valuable. Interesting that you would think that only the government can create or maintain value ;-)
As for why the state of California regularly goes bankrupt: having the populace vote on every tax increase is a surefire way of never getting taxes increased. If at the same time people vote pro-spending, government becomes unsustainable. Not that hard to figure out, definitely a construction failure, and fairly unrelated to the question of regulations.
(BTW slashdot sitll doesn't allow unicode? Why can't I put something as innocous as the not equal sign into the subject? It's 2012, not 1992)
nobody seems to be able to find anything he's ever said that put him in the "skeptic" camp...
And yet the people who are pro-AGW have heard of him, and have felt the need to create a rebuttal page listing what he has said and where he went wrong. Here is an article written by Muller about the hockey stick graph.
The problem is that he is not an extremist, and when he finds evidence that does support the climate change then he accepts it. However, he does have problems with some of the claims from the scientific community and he calls them out on it. He is a true skeptic, unlike the people who keep insisting that they are called skeptics who turn nasty on anyone who actually has their mind changed by scientific data. Those so-called skeptics are really just deniers.
No one is telling you to go back to a hut in the middle of a forest. You're making it up. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions means producing energy using solar, wind, and nuclear sources, and improving energy efficiency. It will mean higher tech than we have now, not lower tech.
But in any case, we can simply tax goods from countries with higher carbon dioxide emissions. That will give them economic incentive to lower their emissions.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
" The diversity of life has historically increased with warming".
Sure, but the same can be said of asteroid impacts; new studies have indicated that after as short as 10 million years, the biosphere has recovered and maybe even opened up a few new ecological niches by dislodging the old dominant species (bye bye dinosaurs!).
The problem is the word "short". On any human timescale, ten million years is a long time. In a few centuries which really is the blink of an eye in a geological sense, we'll be altering the climate substantially. For many species (millions?) it will be too fast for them to evolve.
So they'll die.
Global warming will NOT extinguish life on earth (well not unless we manage to cause a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus). It does have the potential of creating a less diverse world filled with crabgrass, cockroaches and rats and other generalist species (like us) that will take over. Our descendants for TENS OF THOUSANDS of generations may curse their selfish, short-sighted ancestors of the 21st century.
And Americans in particular.
The earth has been known as roughly spherical - since 1500-1200 BC or thereabouts.
Ptolomaic astronomy, from the 2nd century AD, while geocentric, assumed a spherical earth, at the center of concentric heavenly spheres. Each of these had there own spherical planets embedded in their arc.
It is true that there were doctrines espoused by the Byzantine Church, which promoted a "Christian Cartography" that used Biblical references to mandate a flat-earth. These were always widely contested with the complete awareness of Ptolomaic models - solely on the basis of "Pagan" versus "Christian". These views were held by a minority of relatively unimportant European barbarians.
Using the idea that a "flat earth" was a commonly held belief in the middle ages does not illustrate the folly of an opposing argument. Rather, it demonstrates how fully history and "common knowledge" are propagandized folly.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
After the storm of 1900, the entire Island of Galveston was raised by 10 or 20 feet. If they could do it back then with limited technology and resources while dealing with thousands of dead bodies and 50 ft tall piles of debris, I think we can deal with a centimeter per decade rise.
The economic focus of southeast Texas also left Galveston for Houston, never to return.
Galveston had been Texas' primary seaport. Now it's little more than a cute tourist trap. (Which still needs to be totally evacuated every few years.)
The economic costs to Galveston for being too close to sea level have been utterly devastating to that city.
That may be Muller's own opinion, but that is NOT what the Berkeley study says.
The only thing Berkeley has done so far is to gather their own statistics about land surface temperatures. That data does -- roughly -- tend to support other climate scientists statistics about PAST surface temperatures. But that's ALL it does. So far they have not even compiled ocean temperatures yet... much less come to any conclusions about CAUSE.
This article is nothing but more propaganda. The Berkeley study ONLY tends to confirm PAST, LAND, temperatures. That's all it does. They do not even have the data yet to even TRY to make conclusions about causes.