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Judge Orders EPA To Produce Science Behind Pruitt's Climate Claims (scientificamerican.com)
EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary drivers of global warming, a federal judge has ruled. From a report: The EPA boss has so far resisted attempts to show the science backing up his claims. His critics say such evidence doesn't exist, even as Pruitt has called for greater science transparency at the agency. Now, a court case may compel him to produce research that attempts to contradict the mountain of peer-reviewed studies collected by the world's top science agencies over decades that show humans are warming the planet at an unprecedented pace through the burning of fossil fuels. Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, "I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." The next day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the studies Pruitt used to make his claims. Specifically, the group requested "EPA documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change." On Friday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, ordered the agency to comply.
that's why it takes someone with knowledge and experience to lead this effort. Just kidding, the POTUS and I are golf buddies...
It was nice knowing you. But now you're just getting in the way of the current administration. You were signed into law by a Democrat, so expect to be repealed soon by a Republican majority Congress.
You know... because asking someone to provide proof of a claim is anti-conservative.
OK then, it sounds like you can provide the stack of peer-reviewed papers that Pruitt is being directed to cough up. Links?
You cn label this as a Troll, but do not fool yourselves, it is exactly his "science". P.. There are people who paid a lot of money to buy his opinion. Do not cross them - in Today's America, money determines physics.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
precisely! "me thinks you protest too much" via the "mountain of studies" if the hypothesis is wrong so is the conclusion... look at the argument against dark matter - the mountain of evidence is entirely inconclusive as to what it is.
nothing to see here - move along
It's a demand for evidence. Perhaps in your world evidence is not scientific? Methinks you haven't the foggiest notion what does or doesn't constitute a scientific demand.
Does not Agree does not necessarily require more scientific studies.
Does not agree needs an explanation. The concept that human inserted CO2 and methane into th eatomsphere requires invalidating some laws of physics.
You don't validate a theory by claiming everyone else is wrong. Gotta show the work proving your theoty is the right one.
Otherwise you can simply say Humans do not prodoce CO2 warming because God ignores it and won't let the temperatures change. That's as valid an idea as any of the denial ideas. It isn't science, because it can't be proven wrong, but there we go.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They didn't pin him down. They simply are asking for the research behind his statements. If you're the head of the EPA and make a statement such as he made I think it's totally rational to ask for the research.
Sent from my TARDIS
Technically, the judge has not ruled that the EPA must prove the claim. The judge has ruled that the evidence must be released under the FOIA request. Even if the EPA only releases one rough non-reviewed report and says "that's all we have", they're in compliance with the court.
Then it's up to the American public to recognize this is ridiculous, and vote for something better. Good luck with that.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
What is the "other side" to Copernicus' view that the Earth revolves around the Sun? It's been almost half a millennium, so you've had plenty of time to come up with something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah he's just going to be releasing his used toilet paper and calling it a day, nobody is going to be shocked he just pulled it out of his ass.
Proper science has no junkscience paid liars positing claims not published in peer reviewed formal journals of climatology.
Does not Agree does not necessarily require more scientific studies.
It does when you are the head of a purported scientific agency and have been using Does not Agree as the basis for rolling back policies and programs that have been backed by scientific studies. He doesn't agree that humans contribute to global warming? Fine. Show us the the studies that led him to that belief. It's the Environmental Protection Agency. Their default action should always be "what protects the environment".
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It isn’t possible to met the judges demand.
Sure it is. All he has to do is show evidence of what is the primary driver of global warming. If that primary driver isn't humans, then voila, it's done!
First, you have to prove global warming is happening
That's already been demonstrated by the temperature of the sea rising.
Pruitt may contend this is a normal fluctuation.
If this is true then there would be evidence of it (which there is not).
The “consensus view” on global warming being manmade is based on a flawed study of the papers at a climate conference where the famed 97% figure arose.
A lot of good research has been done on the topic. No single study shapes the view of the scientific community. Living in denial is fine... as long as you don't stand in the way of people trying to address the issue.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Yes it is. You produce whatever it was that made you make the assertion in the first place. No, you can't prove a negative, but if you make an assertion, you're not being asked to prove a negative, you're being asked to show your work.
If Pruitt has said that global warming is not caused by humans, then he needs to produce the evidence behind that, or shut the fuck up.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The “consensus view” on global warming being manmade is based on a flawed study of the papers at a climate conference where the famed 97% figure arose. But the actual authors of the papers used to generate this statistic say the study is in error, because their paper was misinterpreted, they didn’t conclude there was global warming, they said global warming was occurring but it wasn’t manmade, they said global warming was occurring but it was a normal fluctuation, they said global warming was occurring but the effects would not me drastic, or global warming was occurring but it would be potentially beneficial. So, consensus is not at all been achieved.
So it should be simple then for Pruitt to provide follow-up studies proving flawed methodology or data with the original research and providing evidence that climate change is a completely natural occurrence with minimal human influence. That's all the court is asking for. I'll just leave my car running since I'm sure it won't take too long.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
An organizational leader shouldn't make informed decisions?
What kind of leader do you want?
Oh wait, I think I know.
As I learned in grammer school, Ocean currents play a pivotal role is weather.
Yet oddly, in this "grammer" school you learned neither spelling, correct sentence case, nor syntax.
Any scientific organizational leader that doesn't make policy based on scientific research is incompetent.
FTFY
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
If Mr. Pruitt thinks that there is research going on casting serious doubts on the results the IPCC is basing its recommendations on, then he surely is able to point to that research. Because it was Mr. Pruitt who demands that the EPA needs more scientific transparency. This is just the demand to actually cast some light to make the science more transparent for us to judge.
A few minor niggles:
1) science, of any sort, doesn't imply any specific policy - assuming that it does is a fallacy;
2) "scientific research" must be distinguished from "sciencey research", the former requiring a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, the latter requiring only lab coats and control over the peer review process;
3) the EPA is a government organization, not a "scientific" one.
That's a silly reductionist position. The EPA is a government agency that has both a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers, as well as a responsibility to the well being of *citizens*. The "environment" is only a proxy here for protecting humans, and we must *obviously* take off the table those things that protect the "environment" but harm people.
Their default action should always be "what policy balances the costs and benefits for the people".
You're right, but in regards to number 3, I would argue that a government agency has a duty and obligation to make informed policy decisions. Granted though that many are not and have not for some time, but that is the ideal that should be strived for.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Except the Democratic party actually finds ways to pay for what they spend. The Republicans love their deficit spending. Bush Sr did it. Clinton had to clean it up which is why a lot of military folks hate him for closing all those bases except that Republicans forced him to balance the budget so he did what he hand to. Bush Jr created a whole new cabinet position with DHS while cutting taxes so again we couldn't pay for it. Of course going to war at the same time as tax cuts was pretty foolish as well. That lead to Obama having to clean up except he had zero support for anything. Republicans at least worked with Clinton to clean up the mess prior.
With Obama's weak leadership paving the way for the Trump era I don't expect our deficit to be in good shape for the next President especially with even deeper tax cuts while still being involved in Iraq and Afghanistan among many other hot spots that aren't cheap. Nevermind all the increased spending on border security which again can't be paid for without raising taxes which he just cut or severely cutting other programs which will cause issues like childhood hunger which was a solved problem in the Clinton era to come back with a vengeance as it has through Bush and Obama years.
People keep talking about entitlements being a problem when they were created to solve a specific issue. If you remove the entitlement you better prepare to address that issue in a new way or at the very least admit your solution is for people to die in the streets instead of getting public assistance.
please promptly find a roof to walk off.
He'd just float. Gravity is liberal fake science bullshit too. Stupid ivory tower intellectuals with their "experiments" and "proofs". There are opposing views to every theory, and mine is that the surface of the planet is all sticky and that falling is just liberals throwing the Earth at you when you try to leave it.
no one ever asked epa to provide "proof" that global warming exists
Conservatives have asked, on numerous occasions. It has been provided as research papers, peer reviewed. And in some cases the data has been collected from multiple sources. And the hypothesis are testable and in some cases independently reproduced.
Just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean you weren't given an answer.
tl;dr- climate change is occurring. oceans are warming. global changes in weather is inevitable. these changes is caused, at least partially, by human activity. these are the things we know. ask me in 10 years and I can give you an answer with more detail and be able to predict even more.
I guess the problem is that uncertainty is a thing, and even where we may be certain about specific bits of science, our "science" of economics is notoriously uncertain, and a straight line cannot be drawn between where we know things, like the absorption spectrum of CO2, and to a field where we obviously don't, like economics.
So even if you accept that AGW is real, significant, measurable, and unprecedented, there is no fundamental justification for believing it would be catastrophic, much less what economic policies would be the most efficient in addressing the problem (say, dramatically curtailing energy usage versus funding adaptation strategies).
I'll leave with this - I believe that if any viable economic model existed that could reliably predict the future, we would have found it by now. The entire western world is incentivized towards it, with the base greed inherent in humanity fueling its fire. But there is no possible way that we can predict what 2050 is going to look like economically, just as the people of 1968 had no possible way of predicting what the economies of 2018 would look like. Heck, we've got no reliable model of economics on *any* timescale :)
Now, to really screw with your head, compare world economics to world climate, and ask yourself which is the simpler problem to solve :)
Ocean temperature rise may or may not be human-caused, that's why the research needs to continue. The current administration wants to just say "it's not human caused, case closed", and start burning the research, censuring or outright firing scientists that disagree, and actively discouraging anyone, government or private, from doing any further research. That's the sort of bullshit that needs to be stopped; it smacks of Dominionism, of religious zealots who actually believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that we don't have to give a damn about it because it's all going to end soon anyway. This isn't just about climate change, it's about Real Facts and the neverending search for Real Truth versus dogma.
Ocean currents are not generally been part of the climate models... sigh this is not the place to debate science anymore.
Dude, you are so wrong; wrong enough that I've wasted quite a few mod points to post this.
5 seconds with Bing and the search term 'gcm that includes ocean currents' had Evaluation of the GISS GCM ModelE in the top few results. This article is dated 2002 and talked about how ocean currents are included in the GISS GCM. Ocean currents have been part of GCMs (General Circulation Models) for at least that amount of time.
Now, I am skeptical of the robustness of GCMs. Their predictive power appears to be weak over time (look at how accurate the CFSV2 is over a three month period, for example); and probably because their resolution is quite low; GCMs typically having a horizontal resolution of between 250 and 600 km, 10 to 20 vertical layers in the atmosphere and sometimes as many as 30 layers in the oceans. But that will change as computers get faster or more massively paralleled.
Disagree with GCSs all you want. But at least try and do some rudimentary research on why you disagree with them..
Actually, no. His model makes no sense whatsoever. It's basically "Pacific ocean warm, Ogg happy". Meanwhile, the warming in the recent 20 years is now way over 95% significance threshold. The acceleration of the global warming rate is also now statistically significant.
Oldie, but goodie: https://skepticalscience.com/g...
Unfortunately, the two are intrinsically linked, so any solution will be complex.
I highly suggest reading the book Doughnut Economics on this topic. The essential argument the author makes is that ultimately our economies are based upon the systems of the earth. We can make things out of wood without trees, we can't grow food without soil, etc. Even things like mineral extraction and fossil fuel use are also ultimately rooted in earth systems.
If we want to have a robust world economy that creates opportunity for everybody, it *must* be ecologically sustainable. Anything else is just borrowing from future generations and will eventually collapse when resources run out.
The doughnut economics book also traces a lot of the history of economic theory to sets of mathematical models invented to describe things limited in scope that have now been taken grossly out of the original context.
There are also plenty of economic models that are just too damn simple. A number of these came about shortly after Newton wrote down the basic laws of planetary motion, which inspired other disciplines to describe the world with mathematics. Of course, the systems are radically different. Planetary systems are relatively simple when compared to economics, which can involve literally millions of people making independent decisions.
The models claim that temperature correlates with CO2. But here is data that shows the two do not correlate. So which is right - the data or the model?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The scientific method requires starting with the foundation of a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
To wit:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Having mounds of evidence "consistent with" your hypothesis is not sufficient to make it scientific - after all, astrology has mounds upon mounds of evidence and measurements. What makes a hypothesis scientific is falsifiability.
Yes, AGW would be falsified by CO2 not existing, but the mere existence of CO2 doesn't imply that AGW must be true. Same with the wavelength absorption properties of CO2 - their existence might be *necessary* for AGW to be true, but it is not *sufficient* to exclude natural (or other different man made) climate drivers.
To date, there has never been presented any necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW, much less CAGW (which would at that point possibly drive policy).
So give me the current work that invalidates the Greenhouse effect on a planetart scale.
Remember current work. Everything I have seen so far has been invalidated. This is usually based on cherry picking data, and anything that isn't understood is waved like a smoking gun -showing that all of the data is wrong. The best example of this was the smoking gun difference between satellite observations and high altitude balloon measurements. This differnce was touted as the destruction of any and all Global warming period. I was referred to many pages touting this work.
Problem is, later work brought the differences into agreement - including by the team who wrote the paper notint the anomalies.
Regardless, the US Environmental Protection agency is presumably not a organization that marches in lockstep to the Republican administration, andrelies on science. to make it's decisions,
Surely they have this evidence that completely refutes AGW, and perhaps The entire physic of energy retention (or rejection) of certain gases based on their presence. Seems a little odd that the head of the EPA refuses to show the work. that will silence the purveyors of incorrect science - I mean, he is using truth and not politics, amirite?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Except they DID provide the evidence global warning exists, now the current administration is claiming otherwise without presenting any evidence for why they changed conclusions.
The thing is, his model is basically curve fitting. It's a purely phenomenological model with lots of tunable parameters. And as Fermi said: "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."
Meanwhile, CO2-based climate forcing has purely theoretical explanation. In the end it's a simple heat balance equation.
How do you make the retrograde motion of planets work in a geocentric system? You really going to try to make planets jumping around in space "work"?
I'd suggest you do a quick primer on frames of reference in the theory of relativity. But who knows, maybe Einstein was wrong about all that stuff...
Bringing up Special Relativity when the subject is rotating non-inertial reference
frames doesn't really help your case. You might want to dial down your smugness.
Consider that the United States obesity epidemic has been caused by a government policy to promote carbohydrate consumption and discourage fat consumption. That policy was based on scientific research.
Not true.
These recommendations emanated from hearings held in the mid-to-late 1970s by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, despite a “boisterous mob of critics,” including those within the scientific community who pleaded with the Committee to wait for more research “before we make announcements to the American public.” In response, Committee Chairman Sen. McGovern responded that “Senators don’t have the luxury that the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in.”
This was a classic case of, "We have to do something, this is something, we have to do this." The scientists were very clear that there was no research supporting the policy recommendation.
Nope, no sig
Real conservatives are, indeed, pro science. That any can call themselves Republican in the face of the current Republican party I doubt. They either qualify what the mean by Republican to explicitly refer to some previous edition of the Republican party, or they are fake conservatives. (I count people who just close their eyes and go la-la-la as fake conservatives.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There are no complete climate models, and, in addition, there cannot be. Weather is chaotic, and therefore climate is also chaotic. You cannot collect sufficient data to have a complete model.
What you can have is models that work fairly well. Normally what they do is create an ensemble of models that work well on past data and project the places where they agree. Unfortunately, for, among other reasons, political reason, the ICCC eliminated from consideration models that made extreme forecasts. This caused them to underestimate the amount of warming to expect. They felt they had to do that to avoid being seen as alarmist if the projections were wrong.
OTOH, since controls of CO2 haven't been applied even as strongly as has been agreed upon, things are looking rather ... unpleasant. Expect continued slowing of the jet stream and for hurricanes, heat waves and cold spells to continue to become more extreme (due to lingering in one place for longer).
Please note that the prediction includes more extreme cold spells as the result of global warming. This is why they called it climate change rather than global warming, because people have a hard time understanding that a local cold snap can be due to warming elsewhere. Most of the warming, however, has been in the Arctic and Antarctic areas, as was expected. This has resulted in slower jet streams. It's not yet clear how ocean currents will be affected. It's possible that the Greenland melt will shut down the northern branch of the gulf stream, which could lead to extreme freezing on the US East Coast and in Europe. So far it's weakened, but has maintained it's direction, if not speed. OTOH, if it slows sufficiently, then the sea level rise along the US East coast should be diluted by being spread elsewhere. I don't know how this would affect Europe.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
5: Prophet!
So, let's not prove the negative, lets prove it is man made.
Technically you can't prove anything in science but that aside, there's a very large body of evidence supporting the hypothesis.
I don't think that's possible.
That's because you're a total fucking moron. Viz:
We've had as much success with our climate models as we have of finally eradicating cancer.
The measured temperature is well within the bounds of the first IPCC report. The fact you don't know that reality matched the models at this point yet feel the need to vomit your ignorance all over the threads means you are intentionally ignorant.
There is no excuse.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
true science rigorously performed that will once and for all and without question
Why should he do anything that any undergraduate who has taken a course on the philosophy of science can tell you completely contradicts the scientific method.
Any and every advocate who prattles that 'the science is settled' needs to be ignored. That's just how it works. The science is NEVER settled.
No kidding. Here's your Whoosh.
But for all of the truth in "The science is never settled", at some point things cross from good theory to that 99.99 percent certainty level. Maybe gravity doesn't actually exist. It's possible that the speed of light is quite variable, and what looks like an ancient universe is fully compatible with the 6000 some year old age of the universe. It is possible that the so called greenhouse effect - or anti-greenhouse effect - doesn't hold up on a planetarty scale. Or perhaps it doesn't exist in the first place.
Well then - make the hypotheses, test them, and report back. Do you realize the fame and likely Nobel prize(s) for the scientist who proves AGW nee GW does not exist? Damn, that would be a relief. I'd bust open the Tequila, and to hell with the popcorn - we're gonna have caviar nachos at this party! But if your weapon is merely sowing doubt, In tactics ripped from the Tobacco lawyers playbook, that is showing that the "science" you are depending on is one of the soft sciences of psychology.
I've seen a lot of science, and never one paper plausibly debunking AGW. Did you kow that scientists look for papers like that so they can debunk deniers claims? I'm waiting though - because as you insist - the science is never settled. But I'm not holding my breath. Although it might be possible that we really do not need to breathe, and don't need oxygen - that science isn't settled either.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah he's just going to be releasing his used toilet paper and calling it a day, nobody is going to be shocked he just pulled it out of his ass.
Flag as Inappropriate
Personally I just wipe. Is shoving the paper actually up there something we expect from those in high office?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Welp found the contrarian.
They laughed at Einstein. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown. You ain't Einstein.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And that is quite possibly the case - but it makes them look REALLY bad if they have to admit that the agency charged with protecting the environment has taken an official position in direct opposition to the scientific consensus, without having ANY evidence to back their position. Makes Pruitt look like a traitorous corporate whore, and the rest of the agency like his complicit bitch.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You're right - those two scenarios are not reasonable.
Ecological sustainability is basically the question of whether or not a given practice could be done for a long time without causing damage. Think for example of the air we breath. A question of sustainability is a measure of how much pollution we are putting out. Is it little enough that it can break down at least as fast as we make it? What is washing into the various lakes, rivers, etc and what is the half life on all of those things? How does that rate compare to the rate of input? Another example is the rate of soil formation compared to the rate of soil loss with industrial agriculture. Too much of that leads to desertification. What is the rate of groundwater formation compared to aquifer extraction?
We are not doing well at most of these metrics right now, which is only going to bite us in the ass down the road. This is all without even mentioning climate change.
This balancing of the load we put on the rest of the planet with our own outputs is exactly what is meant by ecologically sustainable.
Naturally, this will be ever evolving.
There's zero science in the current EPA, as well as most of Trump's administration. He cannot produce any real science because he has none. Or at most, he'll be giving a bunch of stuff that have some pretty curious links to coal corporations, produced in the late 70s or something.
And it'll either be blatant lies that wouldn't pass peer review, or just something vague like "more evidence is needed", which btw, we already have.
I needs no repeating, but there is OVERWHELMING evidence and consensus that climate change is man made by the entire scientific community. And this includes people who have been studying it for a good part of their lifetimes. It includes an incredibly substantial body of evidence from multiple perspectives. It comes from analysis with historical records, measurements taken from recent years, modeling and prediction, how the planet is already changing, and the relationship with all sorts of pollution that you can go out and see today.
I don't think deniers get how massive the body of evidence is. We even have researchers from a couple of decades ago hired by oil companies saying it was happening back then, only of course these companies chose to hide the research and exploit the information for themselves instead of releasing it in public.
"I doubt it" by brainless politicians and by the coal industry do not get a pass. I don't know what else is needed for deniers to get this, but I suspect it's gotten to such an extreme that they'd rather drown in a coastal city while shouting it's not happening rather than considering the idea that they might just have been wrong all this time. It doesn't take a whole lot to step out of your cult-like status and think a bit.
All the extreme weather events that are likely related to climate change happening several times a year and somehow it's still hard to believe. This sort of stubborness only ends in death. Asking to produce science will do nothing, because it was never backed by it. It will eventually get to a point where it's either them with their baseless claims or it's us paying the price for their ignorance.
The worst thing of it all is that even in the fictional scenario that they were right, there is simply no reason to be against the general measures against climate change. US is just like the anti-social entitled asshole idiot that behaves like a baby while the rest of the world is taking responsibility. Coal, oil and gas dependancy have always been a health hazard, it benefits no one to keep it, and even countries that were highly dependant on those are realizing after too long a time that it's simply not worth the damages it causes... you know, countries like China, famous for cities so heavily polluted during some days of the year with coal mines that people were simply collapsing and dying on the streets. Both China and India already have some generations condemned to live with lung related and respiratory diseases, why would anyone want to follow their past model?
Do people really want to get into scenarios like those, or go back to industrial revolution era pollution levels? Like, fortunately the global economy, scientific community, people who already accepted man made climate change as a reality, and people overall against Trump's EPA have enough power to continue the transition... coal dependancy will end whether politicians like it or not. But if it wasn't for that, de-regulation and climate change denial would logically end up resulting in pollution levels of the same scale of China and India.
And it's not like the US isn't already littered with superfund sites to show what happens when things like that gets ignored.
It's incredibly sad to see how entire groups of people cannot learn anything from history. Makes me think that in the end, our species will meet it's mass extinction event way sooner than other species because of our so called great "intelligence".
Of course it is. In the glorious past, people didn't need no science to believe in stuff, no matter how crazy it was. Conservatives would like to conserve it.
Ezekiel 23:20
We cured cancer years ago and no one said anything?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Here is an interesting one
An interesting paper, thanks. I'd say the authors have substantially contributed to our understanding of the long term evolution of ice sheets, and their models will (within boundaries and with significant uncertainties) go some way towards predicting how the northern hemisphere ice sheets will change over the coming decades.
Still, it's worth pointing out that the fact that it was briefly warmer 5000 years ago doesn't contradict either the notions that CO2 traps heat or that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere causes global warming, or the notion that mankind is responsible for rapidly increasing the concentration of atmospheric CO2.
As regards your other nugget:
...which is what led Phil Jones, Director of the CRU of East Anglia and a primary contributor to the IPCC, to agree that
according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical
. So if the heating over those periods - two well before the rapid rise in CO2 - are the same as the "big trigger" that caused the whole IPCC/global warming issue in the first place, then how do we know that it's because of CO2?
That's a good question, and I guess the answer is "We don't, completely". Numerous factors influence the climate, not just levels of CO2. The fact remains though that we are rapidly increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2, whereas we have no control over the other factors.
I feel it's worth pointing out, just in case someone reads your post and doesn't follow the links, a couple of things:
Firstly, unlike your "quote" which is actually the question that was asked (missing the question mark), Phil Jones' response was that "the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Ascribing false certainty, as you do, might lead one to question the integrity of your argument.
Secondly, it's also worth pointing out that, since the rates are similar, it also follows that temperatures have been consistently rising, and are continuing to rise. One might think that this alone justifies concern over what will happen as they continue to rise, with regards sea levels, weather patterns and behaviour, and so on.
Finally, since you linked to the article, why don't we give Phil's answer to the question "Would it be reasonable looking at the same scientific evidence to take the view that recent warming is not predominantly manmade?". His answer: "No"
This is not an easy question, and you are certainly right that going back to 1850 is not the answer. You are also right that part of sustainability is directly tied to efficiency, but efficient by what measure?
The free market is immensely powerful at optimizing, but it is largely just concerned with a single variable - short term, direct financial cost. Our food system is based partly on this variable and partly on the government efforts to avoid food shortages which take the form of food subsidies.
I once did the calculation - if you take the total government subsidies around corn, compare that to the bulk commodity prices, and divide by the total US population, you find that the US government buys every single person in the country about a ton of corn each year. The ripple effect of this policy is that there is a glut of corn, so there is cheap animal feed (and cheap meat), plus a lot of cheap raw material for the industrial food system. Corn syrup is the tip of the iceberg. Read some packaged food ingredients and many of the strange names (xanthan gum, maltose, dextrose, etc.) are made from corn.
I digress, though, one of the biggest issue around food and sustainability is really tied to meat production. This corn feed is brought to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAPO). Although efficient by a measure of money, these operations cause lots of secondary problems. The animal density is so high, diseases are common, hence the push for antibiotics, which then leads to antibiotic resistant microbes, which leads to human health issues. There is also a glut of manure from these operations, which easily turns into another health risk as it trickles downstream into the waterways.
Again, there is no magic bullet solution, but this current system is hugely wasteful. The manure, which is full of all kinds of nutrients, is allowed to just wash away while the original soils get depleted. A step in the right direction is capturing some of this manure and direct injecting it into the soil (to prevent runoff), and people are working on other approaches.
In the end, though, I think food prices are going to have to go up, especially for meat. This then brings us right back around to my original point - the issues of ecological sustainability are directly tied to issues of poverty and global equity.
The exact future system is not clear, but that doesn't mean we can't start working on it. I am lucky enough that I make enough money that I can afford to pay the premium for the local, more sustainably raised foods. It's also tastier. The pasture raised pork I get from a local farm is orders of magnitude tastier than what is sold in the chain grocery stores.
Lets cut the crap... republicans and conservatives are traitors to the country and people
Fucking moron. This is NOT a partisan issue. Voting democrat will NOT help. Just stop. The problem is corruption and nepotism which infects BOTH political parties. Even if it is possible to say one side is worse than the other, it makes no difference. It is like saying being burned alive is worse than being drawn and quartered. You may be correct, but you are still going to die an extremely painful death. Let's talk about the dying rather than the method of dying.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
The cooling during that period was very slight. It's pretty clear that it was caused by the increased particulates in the air at that time.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
You are however correct about one thing, CO2 isn't our only big problem
Greed is the root of all evil.
I disagree. I'm pretty Pruitt will produce a thick, professional looking folder that is literally overflowing with all of his evidence, which, of course, will be several hundred photocopies of his butt.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
that's bad news. Because if the sun is the driver of the increase in world average temperature since the beginning of the industrial revolution, it's basically slowly going nova and we're all toast.
Sorry, but almost everything you wrote is wrong.
When you only ask one side to provide proof of something, that's bullshit.
That's true, however...
When the one side making the absurd claims is the side that has not conducted any repeatable experiments on the matter, has not been able to accurately predict things, and keeps revising both their models and data points in order to fit their hypothesis, yet they're the "accepted" side, that's bullshit.
I absolute agree with you that Pruitt needs to produce some evidence to support his position. But, of course, in you thought you were attacking climate scientists. However, nothing you wrote actually applies to them. They provide the data, the methods, the models and the repeatable experiments for virtually everything they do. Curiously, however, your statements apply well to every single alternative theory that tries to explain the observed facts of climate change. None of them have been able to survive even casual scrutiny from interested reviewers.
But the most bullshit thing is not realizing the simple fact that carbon dioxide is absolutely not the primary cause of global warming.
Except, of course, that it actually is. It's the primary driver of global warming because of the volume and longevity of CO2 produced by human activity.
Not only is CO2 a weak greenhouse gas, human production of it doesn't account for the majority of it.
The majority of the total CO2 in the atmosphere? That's true, for now, since pre-industrial levels are estimated to have been lower than 290 ppm and we're currently around 411 ppm. However, human activity has produced all of the increase in CO2 since pre-industrial levels. We know that because natural factors have been acting as a CO2 sink and absorbing more CO2 than they release. CO2 is a relatively weak CO2 gas but again we produce a lot more of it and it last a very long time in the atmosphere so it's the primary driver of the change, and then it is amplified because a little bit of warming from CO2 increases the average amount of water in the air which drives further warming. It's similar to pennies, they might not be worth much individually, but a million pennies is worth a lot more than a dozen hundred dollar bills.
The primary cause of warming and cooling is the fucking sun, by far.
No, it's not. The sun has cooled slightly while the average temperature continues to rise, and that's a good thing because the earth would be warming even faster if the sun were actually warming. In any case, the effect of the sun's tiny variation in output is far smaller than the effects of the increase in the greenhouse effect.
If you want to get into secondary factors, then plain ol' water vapor beats out CO2 by a country mile.
Because water vapour content is driven by average temperature, it's considered an amplifier rather a primary cause of warming. It applies the effect of every other greenhouse gas, but it can not be increased or decreased independently and that's why CO2 is considered more important as a greenhouse gas than water vapour.
You've got a few things right, but you've failed to understand what those things actually mean.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
In 1972, J.S. Sawyer calculated there would be about 0.6 C of global warming by the end of the century (the actual amount of warming was 0.5 C as the CO2 concentration was a bit lower than predicted). In 1967, Manabe & Wetherald predicted that doubling the CO2 concentration would increase global temperatures 2 C. (see here for more early papers.)
Neither of these papers were based on a sophisticated computer model, they were based on energy balance calculations - greenhouse gases slow down the exit of energy to space, therefore the surface warms - plus feedbacks such as the relation between temperature and absolute humidity.
The early predictions of global warming came during a period of global cooling. The scientists stuck their necks out and got the right answer then - so if you don't trust computer models, feel free to trust that early pre-computer-model research. It got roughly the same answer the computer models are getting today.
It's true that some models disagree: some say the ECS is closer to 2.0 C, others closer to 4.5 C. Meanwhile the average temperature over land has increased over 1 C since 1975. None of these numbers justifies inaction to fund clean energy.
In fact, the Cook 2013 study found about 4,000 papers that gave or implied an opinion about whether global warming is caused by humans, with 97% supporting that view, at least implicitly, and 78 papers (under 2%) that "minimized" or rejected human causation, at least implicitly. Since the research results are completely public, if I was Pruitt, I'd just ask my secretary to download those 78 papers and select the ones I like best.
Alternately they could find references via the 2016 paper "Learning from mistakes in climate research" whose goal was to find patterns of errors in 38 contrarian papers.
Human-caused global warming has been predicted by scientists since Svante Arrhenius in 1896 (See this list of early global warming papers).
Many of these papers were produced during the global cooling trend before 1975. Climate scientists predicted global warming before it happened and now over 90% of climate scientists are in agreement on the subject. Numerous studies show humans as the cause of recent global warming. Yet you think mainstream scientists haven't made their case?
Until you add feedback mechanisms such as the increased absolute humidity that corresponds to increased temperatures (water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas). Then it has a much greater effect.
Sort of. We started with 280 ppm in the atmosphere, now we're up to 410 ppm, so I guess humans are responsible for less than half!
However I assume you are referring to the myth that humans release less than 4% of all the CO2 that is "released" each year.
In a very twisted way, this is correct. A glass of water evaporating in a room with 90% humidity does not just "release" water molecules, it also absorbs them from the air. But if someone uses this fact to argue that water glasses will fill up in a humid room, there is something wrong with that, isn't there?
Similarly the ocean "releases" more CO2 every year than humans, but it absorbs more than it releases. Drawing attention to CO2 coming out of the ocean while completely ignoring the CO2 going into the ocean is highly misleading. The ocean's pH is dropping, why do you think that is?
Humidity depends on environmental conditions. When temperatures increase, the water vapor concentration (absolute humidity aka vapor pressure) also increases.
The 11-year average of solar irradiance has varied by only about 0.1% over the last century and solar output has decreased in recent decades.
Heat flow from the earth's core is 0.08W/m^2, compared with an average solar insolation of 340 W/m^2 (which has been known to trend by 0.5W/m^2 over periods of several decades) and an additional forcing of almost 2 W/m^2 from the CO2 humans have recently added.
... unless you're suggesting that the souls recently added to Hell from our burgeoning population have caused satan's furnaces to suddenly heat up?
So, no, heat from the earth's core is not really a top contender. And why should it be? Even if this number were much larger, there's no reason Earth's core should suddenly warm the earth much faster than it did in previous centuries and millenia
What Phil Jones said was, "Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below)."
The temperature record of the 19th century is not considered particularly precise among experts who study it, nor is a 20-year trend considered important by climate experts because ocean fluctuations lasting several years can affect the trend over such a short time.
But if we assume the early records are accurate, the temperature increase from 1910-1940 can be explained as a combination of (1) human greenhouse gas emissions, as we were indeed burning them before 1960, (2) volcanic activity much lower than average (stratospheric aerosols from volcanoes cause cooling, thus their absence causes warming), (3) increasing average solar irradiance in that time frame, and (4) internal variability, such as differences in ocean currents.
No. When people say things like "science is never proven" they are referring to the fact that inductive reasoning doesn't "prove" something unobserved can't happen or doesn't exist. (Granted, as a practical matter, assuming there are no black swans until one is observed is often the smartest thing to do. Similarly, assuming CO2 will probably have the effects predicted by laws of physics and observed in the paleoclimate record is the smart thing to do.)