Slashdot Mirror
Swedish Farmers Have Doubts About Climatologists and Climate Change
cold fjord (826450) writes with this excerpt from ScienceNordic: Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing ... But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists. The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings. Therese Asplund ... was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change. Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicals ATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem. But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues. Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course: "They explained that they didn't quite believe in climate changes," she says. "Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities."
(Original paper here.)
Repeat that after me, Mr. Fjord.
It is expected that there will be areas of happy, mild weather in any scenario you care to imagine. It is to be expected that a bunch of locals in regions suffering from happy, mild weather might not be as concerned about the issue as someone who had their house wiped out by a tornado.
But it the concerns and insights of either set of persons would be irrelevant to the discussion of GLOBAL climate change (hint, the word that is BOLDED is important).
Climate in not weather. Weather is not climate.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"...don't believe in Global Warming"
A little polar bear goes up to his mum and asks her, “Am I real polar bear?”
“Of course you are” his mum replies. “I’m a polar bear, your dad’s a polar bear, so you’re a polar bear”.
“But are you sure I don’t have any brown bear or grizzly bear in me?” he asks.
“Listen, if you don’t believe me go ask your grand-dad”
So he goes and asks his grand-dad
“Grand-dad, are you sure I’m a polar bear. I don’t have brown bear or grizzly bear in me?”
His grand–dad looks down on him and smiles.
“Listen, my boy, I’m a polar bear, my mum and dad were polar bears, and your granny, she was a polar bear, so your dad is a polar bear and so is your mum and her mum and her dad and her grand parents. We’re all polar bears so you are a pure, 100% polar bear”
The little polar bear doesn’t look convinced so his grand-dad asks him’
“What’s worrying you?”
“Well” he replies, “If both mum and dad are polar bears and all my grannies and grand-dads are polar bears, and even their mums and dads were all polar bears, and there’s no trace of grizzly or brown bear in methen why am I so fucking cold?”
Anecdotally, I don't believe the Earth revolves around the sun and YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.
That doesn't mean it's not the case, that I'm qualified to research or understand the model or that my opinion holds ANY weight whatsoever.
What it means is that on some topics, the "majority opinion" doesn't really have much bearing on the facts of the matter - and thus "Democratic" approaches to dealing with problems that are important but beyond the scope/scale of one person or group's anecdotal experiences probably won't be successful without education.
Should we listen to what they have to say? Absolutely. With that grain of salt handy, absolutely. They aren't 99% of the world's climatologists.
We can safely discard decades of satellite data and trends on global weather and climate, and the analysis of all climatologists all around the world, because a few carefully choosen farmers in sweden think that it is not happening.
Your brain is small. Really small. Being outdoors probably isn't going to help you understand climate patterns any more than watching Fox News will help you understand politics.
We have measured the increase in the percentages of several gasses in our atmosphere, big or small, it has changed - denialists like you need a hole in the head.
You have no idea how "minor" or major the effects of human industry are, because you're too stupid/feckless even to honestly look. Go die of thirst already.
Maps showing anomalies for summer heat in the paper "Perception of climate change" by Hansen et al. show Sweden as having led a charmed existence so far. http://www.pnas.org/content/10...
The US Northwest and Mid-Atlantic, A region around the Urals and China have been fortunate thus far as well.
"Farmers also spend a lot of time outdoors, unlike researchers, and have a better idea of how minor human effects are."
They also shat in their fields for millenia giving all the population worms and other parasites before science told them to stop.
That was a 'human effect' too.
Someone who can see more than one paticular area and who keeps particular records of temperatures and weather patterns?
"Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing" if this was true, there would be no climate deniers, we would all agree"
If you were a RESEARCHER, that is.
There's plenty of people who believe that germs don't cause disease, that the Earth is the center of the universe, that Einstein was wrong, that the Holocaust didn't happen.... so does their denial indicate they have a point, or that there's always a few idiots who believe nonsense?
"We're gonna need a bigger re-education camp"
Some people.
My friend from Norway is paranoid about Global Warming slowing the gulf stream and leading to a localised ice age.
Bjorn Lomborg Is Part Of The Koch Network — And Cashing In: http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
I don't believe the two concepts are mutually exclusive, for a few reasons. First, "Random" is a subjective term, in the sense that a particular person considers something "random" if he can't spot a pattern. Secondly, most Christians I know consider it perfectly consistent with their worldview to believe that evolution is a mechanism by which God achieves His goals.
Then presumably that's true for persons on every side of an issue, no?
Definitely not the one who thinks that farmers dealing with weather means the same farmers are dealing with climate
Well, if you read the article, the farmers are not denying that the climate is changing, as they can clearly see this themselves. They are disagreeing about the cause. Now, how much experience do farmers have with climate change and its possible causes ? Not much at all. They've only seen climate change once in their lifetimes.
The key is the last item in the article:
“This is a resistance to decrees which they think undermine competitive Swedish agricultural production,”
The researcher has probably never spent time on a farm. She apparently had a stereotype of farmers as victims of big industry helplessly struggling to live in harmony with nature in the face of changing climate. In real life farmers are industry - the agricultural industry. They work very hard to maintain a farm, a farm being something radically out of balance with nature. Unless the laws and 'free' 'trade' agreements change to alter their economic incentives, their focus will be on their immediate, short-term economic situation and whatever mythology is tied up with their understanding of those economics.
The telling part is "Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities." If the climate is changing, then the question of the cause is the first part of finding a solution, but the problem does not magically become less serious depending on who or what the cause is. Someone who goes off-topic about human activities is trying - poorly - to rationalize their denial.
And as we know, farmers are on the cutting edge of science.
But, but, but...
What happens if we clean up the environment and it not the cause of global warming. All we'd have then is no smog, non-polluting power and clean water.
... IPCC has been furiously back pedaling...
Furiously back pedaling? - or - Careful restatement of certain specific points based upon new information, while keeping the overall context intact?
.
I've seen so much over the top hype and hysteria from the climate change deniers, that I no longer believe their 10 word or less summaries of why climate change is not happening.
The climate change deniers need to start presenting a better level of peer-reviewed data and conclusions, and stop their unproven assertions (note: hypothetical research papers funded by the oil and coal industries, however well that funding is hidden, do not count.)
If you think an intelligent agent is causing changes to DNA, that is absolutely at odds with thinking the changes are random mutations. When I hear people say that some Christians believe that evolution is how God achieves his goals, I always thought that meant that an intelligent designer set the process in motion and went away and let nature run its course. Are you saying that people who say this believe that an intelligent agent is actively changing DNA? If so, how many changes are due to the agent and how many are natural? And how do you tell?
People who disagree because of their worldview are typically at odds with vast amount of evidence that falsifies their beliefs. From the disagreements I've seen, it generally a two-sided issue with evidence firmly coming down on one side, and the other side unwilling to change their beliefs to fit the evidence. In the case of evolution and AGW, the evidence comes down firmly on the side of natural process without intelligence for evolution, and human-produced greenhouse gases causing warming for AGW.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Secondly, most Christians I know consider it perfectly consistent with their worldview to believe that evolution is a mechanism by which God achieves His goals.
Yes. I think he was smart enough to realize it is a lot easier and kewler to do creation using procedural generation with DNA evolution than having to hand carve every model by hand.
[citation needed]
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Quite the opposite. As of 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement,[ no scientific body of national or international standing rejected the findings of human-induced effects on climate change. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
So while I'm not ready to completely discount the stories of some Swedish "focus groups" (from the article), that anecdotal evidence would be balanced (overwhelmed? flooded? washed away? submerged?) by the experiences of tens of millions of rice farmers here in S.E. Asia (Mekong delta) who are literally seeing their future disappear before their eyes.
I think the rate of inundation by the ocean here (I live in Vietnam) is getting ridiculous, I frequently read in the local papers about KILOMETERS per year of rice paddies being lost to the sea; if not by direct submergence then by saltwater infiltration. I don't think there's a shadow of a doubt to these farmers that SOMETHING very bad is happening, though honestly I'm not sure if many of them have even heard of climate change.
Now of course there are a lot of other things going on that could be contributing to this. Overuse of groundwater, damming of the Mekong, improper irrigation; I'm not a climate scientist and I haven't screened out those effects (of course climate scientists who've looked at this closely have and they say the effect is real). But neither are those Swedes climate scientists so if their unprofessional opinion is that nothing out of the ordinary is going on, well I've got ten times (a hundred times? a thousand times?) more opinions here to counter that. Then again, there just might be some biases in listening more to white europeans as opposed to brown asians so maybe their opinions don't count. (I rarely if ever see any articles in Western media about the tremendous loss to agriculture that these farmers in the Mekong are facing; the rice basket to HUNDREDS of millions of people; nor do I see articles about the gloomy forecasts made by the governments here that in 20 years or so millions of people in cities like mine, saigon, will be flooded out).
If we get rid of all the farmers, not only will we have unity of ideas, but everyone will starve so we've solved anthropogenic global warming.
Of course, even at this point it may well take a long time for the existing effects to reverse, but we can rest easy in our graves. ;)
(Extreme tongue in cheek warning for the humorless bastards on both sides of this flamepit topic who'd take anything seriously no master how ridiculous.)
Anthropocentric global warming is being forced down our throats. But not in the way you meant.
ivory tower
I've got a working hypothesis that anyone who uses the term "ivory tower" generally has a massive chip on his shoulder and very little idea what he's talking about. I have yet to see a counterexample.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What happens if we clean up the environment and it not the cause of global warming. All we'd have then is no smog, non-polluting power and clean water.
This kind of post shows ignorance about reality. CO2 is not smog, stopping AGW is orthogonal to cleaning the water (and could make the water messier, considering all the mining that must be done for lithium batteries etc).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Swedish farmers, like most people of Fennoscandia do indeed see less effect from global warming that vast majority of planet's population.
First of all, our ground is rising several times faster than global warming is rising sea levels. This is because of depression caused by recent ice age, and after ice mass retreated, the ground started to rise to the state in which it was before vast amounts of ice were sitting on top of it. This is an ongoing process that completely eliminates the problems from rising sea levels around here.
Then there's the fact that our winters are more dependent on Gulf Stream than on any other global trend, and Stream is still going strong enough to keep us warm. That amortises the effect of global warming to a significant degree.
I guess we Americans aren't the only stupid people in the world!
Just yet another small group relying on provincialist reasoning to deny the existence of something that vast majority of the world's experts agree, after carefully collating data collected on a truly global scale, does exist. Same ignorant denialist shit. Different day. If you substitute "Energy Industry Shill on Fox News" for "Swedish Farmers" would this even be news?
Actually, deniers usually go like this: Climate isn't changing (there's a pause!). Even if the climate is changing, it's not caused by CO2 (it's the sun!). Even if CO2 causes climate change, humans didn't produce it. Even if humans have caused it, the effect isn't bad (CO2 is good for plants!). Even if the effect is bad, it's not catastrophic (I like it a bit warmer where I live). Even if the effect is catastrophic, there's nothing we can do about it.
It's Norway, how would they even know a "localized ice age" kicked in?!?
You go on a viking to a place that you used to raid for wine, and find out that they don't have any because grapes don't grow there anymore?
You know, Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries are really a lot like the US. It looks really liberal if you're in the big cities but it starts to get distinctly redneck if you head out of town. The farmers there are like the farmers in the US, a conservative bent that things should stay they way they always were and that the distant remote government really doesn't understand them (same with loggers, another big industry in Scandinavia). Doesn't help that Scandinavian TV likes to portray rural people as ignorant hicks (same as US TV actually!).
So I can really understand that Swedish academics get confused if they spend their lives in the middle of Stockholm and think that the rest of the country is equally liberal. Then all these European countries feign shock and surprise when suddenly there's a surge at the elections for center and right-of-center parties. The real difference in US is that there a broader balance of political power between the urban, suburban, and rural areas.
But then again, I'm in California, and I'm always surprised by how many people assume CA is solidly liberal through and through, when we're more like a 55/45 split (all those red/blue states look purple if you look at it county by county).
Having actually been there and visited a few of the glaciers, some of them have signposts that say how far they've receded. There's posts along the path with years on them. Thing is the posts go clear back to the late 1800's. Heading back in a couple weeks, I'll take pictures this time.
Actually... successful farmers do need to keep up with the latest and greatest and evaluate cost/benefit of those advances. I really hate that people think that farmers are idiots. The ones that are, went out of business years ago.
So are you suggesting they should publish their methods and data? Good thing that's part of the scientific process. Pick a reference: http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...
People often deny fact and logic based on nothing more than conviction. If that doesn't make them stupid, it makes them something much worse.
The problem is not their method or whether they publish it. I believe their methods are quite sound.
The real problem is two-fold: First, weather is an extremely complex process. I doubt that we understand enough of it to reliably predict what's going to happen if one or more factors change.
Second, as was said before, the data they have to work with is very young. And what they use to 'create' older data might or might not be very accurate.
I don't quite believe that we are able to say without a doubt whether this change we are seeing now is unnatural.
That said, prudence suggests that we limit our consumption and production of waste of any kind to a tolerable minimum. Even if climate change were not caused by us, that doesn't mean that we're not running out of resources.
I would be amazed if any sign there were older than 1897. However, yes, you are correct that that is when the warming trend started -- somewhat earlier than the rest of the globe. You're implying that this stands in opposition to AGW. Let's review:
The foundation of AGW is based on the physical properties of CO2, specifically its absorption spectrum. This is measurable both under laboratory conditions and via satellite. Theoretically you could measure it yourself. Sunlight shines on Earth, and Earth re-radiates this same energy at a lower wavelength. This is described by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. You can trivially calculate that, based on the incident solar irradiation and Earth's albedo, the planet should be about -18 degrees C. The effect of the atmosphere is to slow radiation leaving the Earth (the atmosphere is mostly transparent to incoming solar radiation). Outgoing radiation is absorbed and re-emitted often before it reaches space.
The lower atmosphere is already pretty much opaque to outgoing radiation; increased CO2 does not block more radiation than would otherwise be blocked. There was a point where it was theorized that no warming could occur because of this. However, it was determined that the effect of an increased partial pressure of CO2 was to extend the CO2-rich region further into space. That this increases the heat energy on the planet's surface should be obvious. The direct effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere is extremely easy to calculate, again using Stefan-Boltzmann, and it comes out to 3.7 W/m^2, which is usually considered to be equivalent to 1 degree C.
Unless you can find a new way to radiate energy to space, or unless everything we know about radiation is wrong, then the Earth must experience at least that degree of warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Anything further than that is a matter for study and scientific debate, and of course the effects in different places. However, given that warming must be happening, the ability of scientists to say whether specific incidents are or are not related is more plausible.
I am glad you visited Alaska. I lived there for about 25 years, in the middle of the Chugach Mountains. There was some degree of glaciation on all of the surrounding peaks. Being in an isolated town meant that going anywhere else meant traveling across a great deal of the land. The glaciers have been melting my entire life, but the warming accelerated in the late 1990s; retreat measured in meters or tens of meters per year is very noticeable. This is very easily explained as an effect of AGW. Some other plausible explanation would be quite welcome; anything that would give me the hope of some day having the Alaska of my memory back. Unfortunately there is a great deal of science that speaks against the possibility.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.