So, to paraphrase, you are asking "I know how to read science papers, so should I base my stance on the preeminent issue of the day on an article in (an admittedly) reactionary newspaper?". (I pose the paraphrase in the best tradition of answering the question you wish you were asked, rather than the one that is actually asked).
OK. Well, I'm not a climate scientist, but I am an atmospheric scientist, and the answer to your question is: For the love of God man, what are you thinking? Did you think about the question before you posted it? I haven't read the article and I don't intend to. I can't imagine a more pure waste of time than trying to get educated on a science issue by reading a newspaper.
The more polite version of my answer is that if you want to get some measure of the science on climate change you'd better start reading review articles in the literature. They're not that hard to read, especially if you've got a career wading through papers in some other discipline. If you really want to start off with some light reading there are some easily digested summaries is things like EOS Transactions and such. I'd link all these nice things, but it's kinda pointless, you only have free access to the things you need if you have access to online journals via your school libraries and such.
Just so we're clear on this: I've done graduate level work in Atmospheric Science. Actually, just for fun I'm working on my PhD right now and I've worked as a research contractor for a bunch of years. And in my time I've picked up a few useful nuggets of information.
A couple of relevant tidbits to the topic at hand:
1. Hurricanes are big. Really big.
2. Humans are little. Really little compared to hurricanes.
3. So are ships, planes, icebergs and nuclear weapon detonations.
The question is not whether we can change hurricanes but rather whether we can do anything at all that a hurricane could even notice. I think there's a story about some crazy king-guy ordering the tide to stay out (and getting rather wet), but I'm sure that's not relevant to the topic at hand.
nb: There is of course a side issue, specifically whether anyone other than the most flagrantly stupid people would screw around with the dominant mechanism by which excess energy is re-distributed throughout the atmosphere and what incidentally may be a major source of fresh water to the US south east. But nevermind.
Clearly we need to start some classes in trolling. This is a perfect example of the decline in trolling quality that we've seen at slashdot in the last few years.
How, in the name of all that is holy, can you have a Bible troll like this without at least one direct reference to male homosexuality or bestiality! And there isn't even an attempt to blatantly steer the debate to make it a debate on abortion or prayer in schools.
At long last, do you have no sense of troll decency sir? Oh usenet trolls of alt.athiesm, why have you abandoned us?
I spent the last nine years in the US and let me tell you, it doesn't get any better with exposure.
Personally I'm so turned off radio I cant even bring myself to listen to radio again now that I've moved back to Australia. Listening to radio is simply not something I even contemplate doing any longer.
You are absolutely wrong. The real question is; Is the research outcome correct or not?
You think that the right way to figure this out is to ask where the money is coming from? So what if the research is paid for by the Sierra Club, or George Soros, or the Democratic National Committee? Do you think this will change the answers? Make the statistics less true? The only reason one would ask for this kind of financial detail is if you have decided that the research is deliberately falsified and you want to track the evidence of deliberate manipulation.
There are many mays to figure out whether research conclusions are true or not. In the case of research published in 1998 and 1999 you can check the subsequent papers which cite the original works and see where the consensus is. This is easy. You can do it yourself, most of this stuff is online. You will discover that the scientific community finds little to complain about, subsequent work has upheld and repeated the conclusions quite independently. To that end I find Dr Mann's response to Barton's request very interesting reading, you can check it out here: http://www.realclimate.org/Mann_response_to_Barton.pdf
This request by Joe Barton is clearly meant purely as intimidation. If Barton really wanted to understand the science I am quite sure that most responsible climate scientists would actually be delighted to spend some serious time with him going over the science and helping him comprehend how we come to conclusions like this. The fact that Barton attempted no such contact shows clearly his bias in this matter.
Well, most of these so-called 'scientists' are aware that Mars has a surface and Saturn does not. Most of the ways we imagine life starting involves goopy watery pools. Saturn is a gas giant. Pools don't form on planets without surfaces.
Can you at least check Wikipedia before you started breaking out the pejorative references to people whose work you plainly do not understand?
Fact is there isn't anything remotely approaching a consensus that human activity is in any significant fashion "contributing to climate change". The jury is still out, primarily because we don't have the data required to construct a global climactic model, much less point to specific causes of change. The system is so complex that constructing such a model is at present beyond our capabilities. Any decent scientist will admit as much.
The beginning of all science is a measurement. Sometimes we use the word 'observation' but we really mean the same thing. If we're really lucky we find something unusual in the measurement that requires explanation. That's paydirt in science because we'll get to write papers, impress our colleagues and get people to fund us to do more work. A proposed explanation is only useful if it leads to more measurements we can use to test the validity of our explanation. That is the scientific process.
The word apparently missing from this statement? Model. Actually it's not missing, because it doesn't really belong here, unless the model is the explanation I mentioned that leads to new measurements. So, what does this mean? A model cannot prove anything. Read that again, check my first paragraph and find the logical hole.
A model then might only be as good as the measurement that subsequently proves the model. That's a pretty big statement, since model have a lot of output. What does it even mean to "prove" such a thing. We can prove parts of it work properly. This will give us more confidence that the rest is working properly. If have ever seen, say, a weather forecast that was wrong, then you know the global climate modelling (GCM) is very far from perfect. Any decent scientist will certainly admit as much.
If this is all true then what role does a GCM or something similar play in the scientific method I described, if any? Fundamentally, when we create and run a model, we are testing how well we know the maths that describes the atmosphere. When a model fails, it can be a good day for the guy running the model. That means that there is some process not well represented by either the maths we use to describe or (more likely) the approximations we used (used because we knew from the outset that that maths was too complicated to be used directly). We use models then to test how well we know the atmosphere and learn what we don't know about how things interact.
My point then (finally) is that if you are waiting for a modeller to prove to you that climate change is anthropogenic you really will be waiting a long time, and not because models aren't accurate and precise enough for you yet. In my opinion, we probably overplay the use of models, particularly to the general public. So, stop reading up on global modelling and start reading on the Earth Radiation Budget. That's where the meat is in this business.
You may not want to believe this, but proving that we have an impact on climate change does not require that we know what those changes are. All we need to show is that what we are doing is making a measurable impact on the energetics on the atmosphere. Getting a good understanding of this is much easier than making some hypothetical super global climate model. We are pretty much there right now as a matter of fact, and on that basis we are pretty sure that we are having an impact on global climate change. I cannot tell you exactly what's going on with the global climate system, but I can tell you that we are making significant changes to how energy is transported with the atmosphere-ocean system with the water vapor and carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide and other things that we are adding to this system. And that's not good.
Candidly, there is plenty of solid evidence that we are at least contributing to climate change. Faith is not required. A little reading and some science is required. If you are simply unaware of this, it might be a good time to do a little reading. On the other hand, if you've simply chosen to ignore all this, then I don't know why you even need to comment. Are you trolling?
I was interested in your idea of combating the changes. Because the idea that we have any hope of doing so is pure hubris, or at best naively optimistic. There is significant uncertainty in this arena of climate change. There is very little uncertainty in the idea that we are at least contributing to the changes we are seeing. What we really do not understand is how this global change will manifest itself in the regional and local scale. There are many significant feedback cycles in the ocean-atmosphere system that are not really well understood. At best we can speculate on what might change and where.
The prospect of combatting climate change? The best analogy I can think of as I sit here is to imagine this: pour some dye in a jug of water. Mix well. Now remove the dye and leave the water. By hand. With a spoon.
Honestly, the best we can probably hope for is to adapt to the changes as best we can and hope for some good luck.
Hmm, not so fast. There really is 0% uncertainty in what I said. I think what you write might be better stated "all measurement has as associated uncertainty".
So: We know, from a quantum mechanical understanding of how radiation and gases interact that gases effect the radiative environment. And we do know this with 0% uncertainty. QM has been postulated and proven. Some people might doubt that, but this does not mean that there is any reasonable room for doubt. Different gases reflect and transmit radiation differently. Again, a fact that is known.
The fact that measurements have uncertainty does not mean that we cannot know things. For instance, the Earth is round and travels around the Sun, and we know this absolutely. The radius of the Earth has an uncertainty and so does our measurement of the time it takes to travel around the Sun.
Science suggests we should be having an effect. Not 'Scientists'.
To rephrase what I wrote: Basic physics states that gases have different radiative transfer properties. The gases we are putting into the atmosphere are doing something. There is 0% uncertainty in this statement.
If you really think about it, it's kind of hard to work out whether you have a consensus on an issue when the group you are polling never meets. And as far as I can tell noone's volunteering to host a meeting of the world's atmospheric scientists so we can have a vote on the matter. A general reading of the literature (and that means reading much more than Nature and Science) suggests that
a) the science says we "should" be having an effect on global temperature, and
b) we are observing long term temperature change.
The consensus is that a) and b) are connected. For sure there are scientists, some prominent, who claim that the consensus is wrong. However claiming there is no consensus is just not a very useful activity, you really do have to go searching to find scientists who just refuse that this connection exists. That alone should tell you something.
Sadly the nature of the debate for the last 30 years over global warming has been a tug-of-war between very vocal and strident people, most of whom seem to have a political axe to grind and aren't too squeamish to let things like facts and good analysis get in the way of a catchy story that might get you into Time or The New York Times. It's a pity really, because like a lot of younger atmospheric scientists, like myself, really worry about what kind of planet our kids are going to be left with.
What a lot of people don't seem to realise is that, in private, the conversation amongst atmospheric scientists is moving on from whether there is an anthropogenic effect in global warming and onto what the hell we are going to do about the likely impacts. The newer consensus that I think is forming is that the political process is so deeply flawed that only a truly cataclysmic disaster is going to bring about change in the global arena. So basically, we know pretty much what's wrong and we're largely powerless to do anything about it. Just so you know, it leaves you with not such a great feeling. If you look around you'll find smaller conferences and meetings now looking at local climate changes, trying to assess how things are changing and discussing how we might ameliorate some of the changes we are already observing. Over time these will probably become more common till, at some point in the future, the general public will realize that the 'debate' has completely moved on from 'is global warming happening?' and on to 'how are we going to save lives?'. Should be interesting times.
Slashdot Mirror
So, to paraphrase, you are asking "I know how to read science papers, so should I base my stance on the preeminent issue of the day on an article in (an admittedly) reactionary newspaper?". (I pose the paraphrase in the best tradition of answering the question you wish you were asked, rather than the one that is actually asked).
OK. Well, I'm not a climate scientist, but I am an atmospheric scientist, and the answer to your question is: For the love of God man, what are you thinking? Did you think about the question before you posted it? I haven't read the article and I don't intend to. I can't imagine a more pure waste of time than trying to get educated on a science issue by reading a newspaper.
The more polite version of my answer is that if you want to get some measure of the science on climate change you'd better start reading review articles in the literature. They're not that hard to read, especially if you've got a career wading through papers in some other discipline. If you really want to start off with some light reading there are some easily digested summaries is things like EOS Transactions and such. I'd link all these nice things, but it's kinda pointless, you only have free access to the things you need if you have access to online journals via your school libraries and such.
Just so we're clear on this: I've done graduate level work in Atmospheric Science. Actually, just for fun I'm working on my PhD right now and I've worked as a research contractor for a bunch of years. And in my time I've picked up a few useful nuggets of information.
A couple of relevant tidbits to the topic at hand:
1. Hurricanes are big. Really big.
2. Humans are little. Really little compared to hurricanes.
3. So are ships, planes, icebergs and nuclear weapon detonations.
The question is not whether we can change hurricanes but rather whether we can do anything at all that a hurricane could even notice. I think there's a story about some crazy king-guy ordering the tide to stay out (and getting rather wet), but I'm sure that's not relevant to the topic at hand.
nb: There is of course a side issue, specifically whether anyone other than the most flagrantly stupid people would screw around with the dominant mechanism by which excess energy is re-distributed throughout the atmosphere and what incidentally may be a major source of fresh water to the US south east. But nevermind.
Clearly we need to start some classes in trolling. This is a perfect example of the decline in trolling quality that we've seen at slashdot in the last few years.
How, in the name of all that is holy, can you have a Bible troll like this without at least one direct reference to male homosexuality or bestiality! And there isn't even an attempt to blatantly steer the debate to make it a debate on abortion or prayer in schools.
At long last, do you have no sense of troll decency sir? Oh usenet trolls of alt.athiesm, why have you abandoned us?
I spent the last nine years in the US and let me tell you, it doesn't get any better with exposure.
Personally I'm so turned off radio I cant even bring myself to listen to radio again now that I've moved back to Australia. Listening to radio is simply not something I even contemplate doing any longer.
You are absolutely wrong. The real question is; Is the research outcome correct or not?
You think that the right way to figure this out is to ask where the money is coming from? So what if the research is paid for by the Sierra Club, or George Soros, or the Democratic National Committee? Do you think this will change the answers? Make the statistics less true? The only reason one would ask for this kind of financial detail is if you have decided that the research is deliberately falsified and you want to track the evidence of deliberate manipulation.
There are many mays to figure out whether research conclusions are true or not. In the case of research published in 1998 and 1999 you can check the subsequent papers which cite the original works and see where the consensus is. This is easy. You can do it yourself, most of this stuff is online. You will discover that the scientific community finds little to complain about, subsequent work has upheld and repeated the conclusions quite independently. To that end I find Dr Mann's response to Barton's request very interesting reading, you can check it out here:n .pdf
http://www.realclimate.org/Mann_response_to_Barto
This request by Joe Barton is clearly meant purely as intimidation. If Barton really wanted to understand the science I am quite sure that most responsible climate scientists would actually be delighted to spend some serious time with him going over the science and helping him comprehend how we come to conclusions like this. The fact that Barton attempted no such contact shows clearly his bias in this matter.
Well, most of these so-called 'scientists' are aware that Mars has a surface and Saturn does not. Most of the ways we imagine life starting involves goopy watery pools. Saturn is a gas giant. Pools don't form on planets without surfaces.
Can you at least check Wikipedia before you started breaking out the pejorative references to people whose work you plainly do not understand?
The word apparently missing from this statement? Model. Actually it's not missing, because it doesn't really belong here, unless the model is the explanation I mentioned that leads to new measurements. So, what does this mean? A model cannot prove anything. Read that again, check my first paragraph and find the logical hole.
A model then might only be as good as the measurement that subsequently proves the model. That's a pretty big statement, since model have a lot of output. What does it even mean to "prove" such a thing. We can prove parts of it work properly. This will give us more confidence that the rest is working properly. If have ever seen, say, a weather forecast that was wrong, then you know the global climate modelling (GCM) is very far from perfect. Any decent scientist will certainly admit as much.
If this is all true then what role does a GCM or something similar play in the scientific method I described, if any? Fundamentally, when we create and run a model, we are testing how well we know the maths that describes the atmosphere. When a model fails, it can be a good day for the guy running the model. That means that there is some process not well represented by either the maths we use to describe or (more likely) the approximations we used (used because we knew from the outset that that maths was too complicated to be used directly). We use models then to test how well we know the atmosphere and learn what we don't know about how things interact.
My point then (finally) is that if you are waiting for a modeller to prove to you that climate change is anthropogenic you really will be waiting a long time, and not because models aren't accurate and precise enough for you yet. In my opinion, we probably overplay the use of models, particularly to the general public. So, stop reading up on global modelling and start reading on the Earth Radiation Budget. That's where the meat is in this business.
You may not want to believe this, but proving that we have an impact on climate change does not require that we know what those changes are. All we need to show is that what we are doing is making a measurable impact on the energetics on the atmosphere. Getting a good understanding of this is much easier than making some hypothetical super global climate model. We are pretty much there right now as a matter of fact, and on that basis we are pretty sure that we are having an impact on global climate change. I cannot tell you exactly what's going on with the global climate system, but I can tell you that we are making significant changes to how energy is transported with the atmosphere-ocean system with the water vapor and carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide and other things that we are adding to this system. And that's not good.
Mark
Candidly, there is plenty of solid evidence that we are at least contributing to climate change. Faith is not required. A little reading and some science is required. If you are simply unaware of this, it might be a good time to do a little reading. On the other hand, if you've simply chosen to ignore all this, then I don't know why you even need to comment. Are you trolling?
I was interested in your idea of combating the changes. Because the idea that we have any hope of doing so is pure hubris, or at best naively optimistic. There is significant uncertainty in this arena of climate change. There is very little uncertainty in the idea that we are at least contributing to the changes we are seeing. What we really do not understand is how this global change will manifest itself in the regional and local scale. There are many significant feedback cycles in the ocean-atmosphere system that are not really well understood. At best we can speculate on what might change and where.
The prospect of combatting climate change? The best analogy I can think of as I sit here is to imagine this: pour some dye in a jug of water. Mix well. Now remove the dye and leave the water. By hand. With a spoon.
Honestly, the best we can probably hope for is to adapt to the changes as best we can and hope for some good luck.
Heh. Of course empirically you get:
a) Many bruises
b) very few walked-through walls.
Hmm, not so fast. There really is 0% uncertainty in what I said. I think what you write might be better stated "all measurement has as associated uncertainty".
So: We know, from a quantum mechanical understanding of how radiation and gases interact that gases effect the radiative environment. And we do know this with 0% uncertainty. QM has been postulated and proven. Some people might doubt that, but this does not mean that there is any reasonable room for doubt. Different gases reflect and transmit radiation differently. Again, a fact that is known.
The fact that measurements have uncertainty does not mean that we cannot know things. For instance, the Earth is round and travels around the Sun, and we know this absolutely. The radius of the Earth has an uncertainty and so does our measurement of the time it takes to travel around the Sun.
Science suggests we should be having an effect. Not 'Scientists'.
To rephrase what I wrote: Basic physics states that gases have different radiative transfer properties. The gases we are putting into the atmosphere are doing something. There is 0% uncertainty in this statement.
If you really think about it, it's kind of hard to work out whether you have a consensus on an issue when the group you are polling never meets. And as far as I can tell noone's volunteering to host a meeting of the world's atmospheric scientists so we can have a vote on the matter. A general reading of the literature (and that means reading much more than Nature and Science) suggests that
a) the science says we "should" be having an effect on global temperature, and
b) we are observing long term temperature change.
The consensus is that a) and b) are connected. For sure there are scientists, some prominent, who claim that the consensus is wrong. However claiming there is no consensus is just not a very useful activity, you really do have to go searching to find scientists who just refuse that this connection exists. That alone should tell you something.
Sadly the nature of the debate for the last 30 years over global warming has been a tug-of-war between very vocal and strident people, most of whom seem to have a political axe to grind and aren't too squeamish to let things like facts and good analysis get in the way of a catchy story that might get you into Time or The New York Times. It's a pity really, because like a lot of younger atmospheric scientists, like myself, really worry about what kind of planet our kids are going to be left with.
What a lot of people don't seem to realise is that, in private, the conversation amongst atmospheric scientists is moving on from whether there is an anthropogenic effect in global warming and onto what the hell we are going to do about the likely impacts. The newer consensus that I think is forming is that the political process is so deeply flawed that only a truly cataclysmic disaster is going to bring about change in the global arena. So basically, we know pretty much what's wrong and we're largely powerless to do anything about it. Just so you know, it leaves you with not such a great feeling. If you look around you'll find smaller conferences and meetings now looking at local climate changes, trying to assess how things are changing and discussing how we might ameliorate some of the changes we are already observing. Over time these will probably become more common till, at some point in the future, the general public will realize that the 'debate' has completely moved on from 'is global warming happening?' and on to 'how are we going to save lives?'. Should be interesting times.