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Congressional Testimony: A Surprising Consensus On Climate
Lasrick writes: Many legislators regularly deny that there is a scientific consensus, or even broad scientific support, for government action to address climate change. Researchers recently assessed the content of congressional testimony related to either global warming or climate change from 1969 to 2007. For each piece of testimony, they recorded several characteristics about how the testimony discussed climate. For instance, noting whether the testimony indicated that global warming or climate change was happening and whether any climate change was attributable (in part) to anthropogenic sources. The results: Testimony to Congress—even under Republican reign—reflects the scientific consensus that humans are changing our planet's climate.
Sadly there is no scientific consensus on whether this method of determining a consensus works or not.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
It's easy. Congress, in general, doesn't believe what scientists say; scientists have no credibility among members of Congress. So it doesn't matter if there is a scientific consensus or not.
The whole reason science in general works is because there are no leaders. Consensus means nothing. The only problem is that science can never discover the "Truth" (tm). The best it can do is come up with a model that has yet to be disproven. If there is no way to disprove it is faith not science.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
On this planet cultural ideology is the rule that all must obey.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Statements by scientific organizations of national or international standing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Concurring:
over 50 organizations including the Royal Society, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Australian Institute of Physics, European Physical Society, etc, etc, etc.
Dissenting:
NONE
1) There is no such thing as climate change
2) Climate change exists, but it isn't happening now.
3) The climate is changing, but it isn't being caused by humans
4) The climate is being changed by humans, but we can't (or shouldn't) do anything about it.
5) We could have averted climate change, but it is too late now.
Apparently, we've just passed step 3. With step 4, expect a deluge of reports about how we shouldn't try messing with the climate because we just don't understand it well enough and probably will make things worse, or because any benefits from changes WE make will be lost because THEY following suit (for various values of "they", but most likely China or India) or because the potential loss of revenue to a few entitled mega-corporations is far too important to risk by imposing ecologically-responsible regulations. In short, the arguments will be that since we can't make everything 100% better, why should we make any attempt at all?
Climate change deniers will continue to be wrong until we reach step 5, when they will suddenly - and to all our misfortune - be right. We can only hope that the ecological mess they cause in the name of short-term profits won't be so catastrophic for the rest of us.
You've got it exactly backwards. If people with private/corporate power didn't act like selfish dicks a lot of the time, maybe we wouldn't need as much government.
And maybe we wouldn't be wiping out species and ecosystems at 100 to 1000x background extinction rate, and maybe we wouldn't be warming the climate and acidifying the oceans.
If only. I'm an environmentalist because I know more about what's actually going on, from both a physical-scientific and sociological perspective, and it scares the shit out of me.
"Environmentalist" is also the wrong term, because it implies we are only concerned when it is going to affect us.
"Eco-system integrity advocate" would be a better term.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I I say that even if we had half of the government we have now we'd still have clean water, fresh air, clear skies, safe and nutritious food, and warm houses. How can I say that? Because generally people aren't dicks to their neighbors and tend to care about their children growing up to have children of their own.
What? Seriously, what?
I live in western PA, the land of strip mining, acid rain, and the Smoky City. Much of the countryside around here is still trying to recover from your idiotic companies who "aren't dicks to their neighbors". Guess what: when money is involved, many people are dicks to their neighbors, their workers, and their own children. Not everyone, but many people, And guess what; those people are the ones most likely to rise, scheme, and backstab their way into running large companies or other positions of power.
Things were getting better (not because of the EPA, sadly, but because it was no longer economical for big industry to exploit this land), but now the frackers are destroying the water table that most people outside of cities in this area use for drinking water.
Seriously, how can you look at history and believe that people are not dicks to their neighbors? We're humans. We don't care about far away people, but we HATE our neighbors. Have you read any history at all? We invented government specifically because it was the only way we could advance beyond tribes of 20-ish people trying to kill our neighbors. You think people can live well without government? Prove it; move to someplace with no effective government (Somalia is nice this time of year) and prove to us all how well they all get along.
Exactly. Science is not a democracy. We don't get to vote on the rules of physics, they are what they are even if we agree with them or not.
However we have no way of getting to know those rules except through a social process in which scientists read and argue about each others' research.
Trust me, if the majority of scientists hadn't agreed on Newton's laws of motions you'd never have heard of him. Of course then we wouldn't be having this technology-mediated conversation; we'd probably be throwing rocks at each other instead.
People that believe we should reduce carbon output and also believe that nuclear power will kill us all are rejecting science twice over.
Disproof by counterexample: me. I think we should reduce carbon output and I think nuclear power could be useful, provided that plant developers post a bond to cover the decommissioning costs. I won't bother to address your point about wind power, but I do recommend you take the the drive from Los Angeles to Palm Springs sometime. You might find it enlightening.
A true scientist would admit we know very little about the environment. Anyone that says they've solved the equation is either delusional or trying to sell something. I'm not buying.
And no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
Just because scientists don't know *everything* doesn't mean they know *nothing*, or that they don't know enough to have a more informed opinion than a layman.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
You are welcome on my lawn.
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
Oh now I see...
https://stevengoddard.wordpres...
The climate and environment in general are a shared resource and nobody wants to be the one to hold back because they'll be the one stuck with the cost while everyone else reaps the benefits.
And unlike at the national level where a central government can FORCE you to pay for it collectively, the environment is a global resource and there is no way to enforce proper sharing of the resource.
If I can't confirm it for myself, it isn't science.
*FACEPALM*
Scientific results exists even if you personally cannot confirm them. The point is that someone can confirm them, and does.
Can you personally confirm that electrons exist? Probably not, because you haven't actually seen one. But there is a great body of evidence that supports the existence of electrons. Therefore, I accept that they exist.
Can you personally confirm that the Pope exists? Probably not, because you haven't actually met him. But there is a great body of evidence that supports the existence of the Pope. Therefore, I accept that he exists.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Genuine question: Who stands to gain from increasing government (specifically environmental regulaton)?
The "consensus" of scientists was pretty clear on that whole phlogiston thing for a while, wasn't it... and then on the whole "caloric" thing that replaced it.
Right, but the astrologers have been consistent all along.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> The consequences for scientists who falsify their results is real and severe,
But often delayed enough to gather several years of funding, years during which many over-eager scientists scrape for vindication of their original claims. I'm afraid that several times in my career, I've worked with scientists whose initial findings were fundamentally false and refused to retract them. Publishing the truth turned out to be very delicate, because the groups whose data were clearly better collected, better calibrated, and thus more valid would be smeared and possibly lose their own funding if they exposed the falsehoods directly. And scientific "churn" also ties to the value of new patents and new technologies: even if the new technology is not significantly better or if it costs more, superficial benefits that are not borne out by experiment are used to sell the new product.
It's a rampant problem in chemistry and electronics: I've recently encountered it with storage technologies, where very exciting and sophisticated new technologies provided no benefit over older technologies that had already been rejected for very good reasons.
Exactly. In the news. Not in peer reviewed scientific papers.
You know what else was in the news? UFOs. Bigfoot. Lassie.
There is an enormous chasm between these two ideas.
Not so much.
Yes there is a broad concensus that we are changing the composition of our atmosphere and this should cause the planet to warm to some extent. *Alot* of sceptics agree with this. But there is no consensus on what the level of warming will be nor is there consensus on the idea that the changes are harmful/damaging to our interests or the planet or that an urgent mitigation based policy framework is needed. There is an enormous amount of disagreement here, scientific disagreement, as there should be because honest truth is we do not know what impacts are likely to be and there are plenty of competing points of view, in literature on this.
We have extensive analysis from one side and moaning, conspiracy theories and lies form the other. If there is uncertainty, this means deviation from the best known predictions of likely outcomes, which are the prediction produced by science. If there is deviation, it is just as likely to deviate in a way that is worse than the prediction as it is to be better than what was predicted. That is what uncertainty means.
So we have:
1. Scientists, who are giving predictions, along with working and evidence, and the broad concurrence of experts. These people have been (fairly) consistently right for 150 years or climate research.
2. Conspiracy theorists and bloggers who make contradictory, conflicting claims about why the scientists are wrong, but produce no evidence, no working and generally misrepresent the truth. These people have been consistently wrong from the start, claiming firstly that the climate wasn't changing (it is) , then claiming that is is changing but because of the sun, then onto somehtign, then back to the sun, now saying yes, we are causing it, but it will be good for us without providing a shred of evidence to support this assertion. Talk about your lack of trust.
3. Then there are the people claim there is uncertainty. Firstly, if there is uncertainty, then a worse outcome is as likely as a better one. Secondly, YOU don't get to tell us what we do and don't know. The alternative is to say: yes, we know the climate change we caused is damaging the long term economic prospects/the environment but we shouldn't do anything about it. That is just dumb.
The cost of mitigating climate change are insignificant next to the costs of ignoring it.
Troll tactic #2: pretend that climate change is some theoretical even that will happen in our future, as opposed to something having drastic costs right now.
Record storms, droughts, floods, forest fires, and heat waves are costing hundreds of billions and tens of thousands of lives right now.
IOW: "we don't really knooooow, so lets not do anything!" Standard climate troll approach, going back decades.
"2. FOX News, conspiracy theorists, and bloggers who make contradictory, conflicting claims about why the scientists are wrong, but produce no evidence, no working and generally misrepresent the truth. " there, FTFY.
On the contrary a leading theory of how reglaciation happens is because of ice melt in the arctic due to warm water influx. The Eemian had a "warm pulse" just before it plunged back into full glaciation.
See Late Eemian warming in the Nordic Seas as seen in proxy data and climate models (Born, Nisancioglu. Risebrobakken)
it's in my head
I know math is hard, but you should try it sometime. According to the article, 86% of the scientists agreed that there is global warming, and 78% of those say humans contribute to it. That means .86 * .78 = .67, or roughly 2/3 believe that humans are contributing to warming. That is hardly a consensus. It's also a good illustration of how statistics can be presented in a way the deceives most readers (like you)..
The reality called 'The united States prior to the EPA' is calling.
It would like you actually learn some history.
We -DIDNT- have clean water.
We -DIDNT- have clean air.
Add in history prior to the FDA and food safety inspections and you also learn that we -DIDNT- have clean/safe food.
80% of the surface waters in the US were unfit for consumption, were polluted from unregulated dumping of manufacturing waste.
It's -WHY- the Clean Water Act happened, and now you take that clean water for granted.
American air quality was then similar to China's problems now.
It's -WHY- the Clean Air Act happened, and now you take the dramatically cleaner air for granted.
People died from contaminated foods regularly.
It's -WHY- they started requiring the food supply chain to be inspected at nearly all stages, and now it's a big deal if someone gets sickened by an E Coli outbreak, yet the actual toll is usually minor, a handful of people, a tiny tiny fraction of what it was like prior to those evil regulations putting a stop to what used to be a common occurrence.
Your magical thinking that it all sorts itself out is blatantly ignorant of reality and our own nation's history.
You are a fool.
(also you apparently are ignorant of the definition of 'communist')
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Exactly. Science is not a democracy. We don't get to vote on the rules of physics, they are what they are even if we agree with them or not.
However we have no way of getting to know those rules except through a social process in which scientists read and argue about each others' research.
Trust me, if the majority of scientists hadn't agreed on Newton's laws of motions you'd never have heard of him.
What everybody relying on 'consensus' seems to be missing is what parts scientists are well agreed upon:
1.The instrumental record, which spans about 100 years, shows a clear warming trend.
2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increasing it's concentration will increase heat storage.
3. CO2 concentrations as observed for about the last 60ish years have been increasing.
4. Humans have been steadily contributing CO2 to the atmosphere for about the last 100 years.
5. The above points clearly are strong evidence that the recent warming has been influenced by human behaviour.
That about encompasses the consensus. 90% of everything that everyone is talking about though does NOT have a broad consensus and is still being actively studied, things like:
1.What quantitative relationship do our CO2 emissions have to future temperature change?
2. What cost is there to us from future temperature change.
3. What cost is there to us for reducing our CO2 emissions by a set factor.
Climate models are one of the key parts to answering these questions, and they are getting better at helping us study our theories on how climate works. Regrettably, the reality is that climate models still do NOT accurately predict or model global Top Of Atmosphere energy imbalance. One of the key tuning processes in model development is still adjusting loosely bound or poorly understood parameters, like clouds, to force a reasonable behaviour of global TOA energy. I hate to have to point it out, but long term predictions of climate, are pretty much entirely driven by TOA energy imbalance as it IS the entirety of the greenhouse effect.
It's probably a skewed result because half of the testimonies will have been selected by republicans because they are reject the mainstream science. This makes the finding even more surprising. For a more balanced view you can look to the statements made by scientific organizations.
Statements by scientific organizations of national or international standing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Concurring:
over 50 organizations including the Royal Society, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Australian Institute of Physics, European Physical Society, etc, etc, etc.
Dissenting:
NONE
You are missing what parts scientists are well agreed upon:
1.The instrumental record, which spans about 100 years, shows a clear warming trend.
2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increasing it's concentration will increase heat storage.
3. CO2 concentrations as observed for about the last 60ish years have been increasing.
4. Humans have been steadily contributing CO2 to the atmosphere for about the last 100 years.
5. The above points clearly are strong evidence that the recent warming has been influenced by human behaviour.
That about encompasses the consensus. 90% of everything that everyone is talking about though does NOT have a broad consensus and is still being actively studied, things like:
1.What quantitative relationship do our CO2 emissions have to future temperature change?
2. What cost is there to us from future temperature change.
3. What cost is there to us for reducing our CO2 emissions by a set factor.
Climate models are one of the key parts to answering these questions, and they are getting better at helping us study our theories on how climate works. Regrettably, the reality is that climate models still do NOT accurately predict or model global Top Of Atmosphere energy imbalance. One of the key tuning processes in model development is still adjusting loosely bound or poorly understood parameters, like clouds, to force a reasonable behaviour of global TOA energy. I hate to have to point it out, but long term predictions of climate, are pretty much entirely driven by TOA energy imbalance as it IS the entirety of the greenhouse effect.
You can read the individual statements of the science academies. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) They go much further than simply stating that radiative physics is a real thing. Most state that the IPCC represents the consensus view and that most of the warming over the last 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
I wouldn't expect a science academy to make judgments on the economic impact. For that you could go to economists: "There is a strong consensus among the top economic experts that, in fact, climate change represents a real danger to important sectors of the U.S. and global economies. Moreover, most believe that the significant benefits from curbing greenhouse gas emissions would justify the costs of action." - http://resources.ofdan.ca/docs...
Or you could go to Wall Street: "because of savings due to reduced fuel costs and increased energy efficiency, the Action (to slow CO2 emissions) scenario is actually a bit cheaper than the Inaction scenario. Coupled with the fact the total spend is similar under both action and inaction, yet the potential liabilities of inaction are enormous, it is hard to argue against a path of action." - http://www.theguardian.com/env...
You can read the individual statements of the science academies. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) They go much further than simply stating that radiative physics is a real thing. Most state that the IPCC represents the consensus view and that most of the warming over the last 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Thank you for confirming what I said. The IPCC's Fifth Assessment report is almost verbatim where my assessment of climate models came from. In Chapter 9, Box 9.1 the IPCC report states:
For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent
the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).
You'll note that the assessment is backed with a wealth of references to papers confirming that climate models almost universally hand tune clouds to prevent unrealistic energy imbalances. That's not a confidence booster in the predictive power of climate models for telling us what to expect the energy imbalance to do in the future, which is ENTIRELY what the greenhouse effect is.
On of the referenced papers(Golaz et al) goes into more depths of the challenges still presented by this:
We have shown that there is sufficient ambiguity in the CM3 adjustable cloud parameters to construct alternate configurations (CM3w, CM3c) that achieve the desired radiation balance. These configurations exhibit only modest differences in their present-day climatology. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to select the “better” configuration solely based on present-day metrics such as those in Figure2. However, CM3w and CM3c differ significantly in the magnitude of their indirect effects. As a result, their predictions of the 20th century warming are strongly affected (Figures3 and 4).
CM3w predicts the most realistic 20th century warming. However, this is achieved with a small and less desirable threshold radius of 6.0 m for the onset of precipitation. Conversely, CM3c uses a more desirable value of 10.6 m but produces a very unrealistic 20th century temperature evolution.
All of which is to point out that the evidence is climate models still can't simulate the absolutely most fundamental and driving factor of future change, Top Of Atmosphere energy imbalance. But hey, don't let that stop you from lumping climate model results into the global consensus and claiming it as fact. I just ask you be more honest and start calling your belief religious consensus and not scientific.
I'm glad we agree. The IPCC represents the best scientific knowledge of our time, but there are uncertainties. That's why the climate sensitivity is given by the IPCC as a range rather than a specific value. "global mean equilibrium warming for doubling CO2 (to a concentration of 560 ppmv), or equilibrium climate sensitivity, very likely is greater than 1.5 C (2.7 F) and likely to lie in the range 2 to 4.5 C (4 to 8.1 F), with a most likely value of about 3 C (5 F)."