There are innumerable variables in the climate system that could be responsible for the warming slowdown. These scientists have identified some of the likeliest culprits, but one professor admitted that they “don’t fully understand the relative importance of these different factors.”More at the link.
That’s a big problem, considering most green legislation aimed at reducing emissions calls for measures to prevent very specific degrees of warming. This recent warming plateau is exposing our limited understanding of climate, and it’s effectively killing the rationale for green policies that limit growth and, at the most basic level, try to force people to do things they would rather not do. The biggest cause of climate skepticism isn’t evil oil companies and campaigns of disinformation; it is the inability of greens to refrain from overstating their case and insisting dogmatically and self righteously on more certainty than the frustrating facts can give.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Another good summary
Walter Russell Mead:
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6 comments:
And these absurdities are right there for everyone to see! For example, the IPCC report clearly says that, if Kyoto were fully implemented (a modest step, granted, that was still impossible to meet) global temperatures would be reduced by .02 degrees over 100 years. Fantastic accuracy, considering that most forecasts have trouble getting tomorrow's temperature correct plus or minus 5 degrees. Not only that, but .02 degrees is negligible, even if by some miracle of divination it is accurate! Why haven't we completely dismissed these folks as a bunch of cranks and crackpots?
"Consensus" is more or less the scientific community's equivalent of the legal community's "banging the table." When people talk about consensus--the kind that existed a bit over a century ago on the primacy of Newtonian mechanics, caloric as the means of heat transmission, and the luminiferous aether--you know that the evidence is not there to support the hypothesis and exclude other hypotheses.
In other words, the IPCC is busily aping Mike Nifong and Angela Corey. Can we cut off their funding now?
Also WRM: "we know that we’re emitting greenhouse gases in record quantities, and we know that these gases trap more of the sun’s heat, yet global surface temperatures are significantly lower than what our climate models predicted."
Things we know shouldn't be disregarded because our models aren't sufficiently refined to make exact predictions. By that kind of reasoning we shouldn't stop smoking because we don't know the exact day it'll kill us, or we shouldn't care for our children because they might turn out to be schizophrenic psychopaths and murder us in our sleep, or we shouldn't pay our taxes because I heard on TV that Jesus is coming back to Earth and taking all the good people with him back to Heaven, and I think I'm a really good person, really. If that's how you go about making decisions, looking for perfection in every move you make, and throwing your hands up in the air when the path looks a little rocky, then you're doomed to suffer the fate of an idiot, afraid to act when needed and staggered by the slightest force of change. This model seems to me to be debilitating when the stakes are as high as the fate of our planet. Try and think reasonably for just a second: it took hundreds of millions of years to sequester all that carbon into the earth, and human beings have released a massive amount of it into the atmosphere in the last 150 years, while simultaneously deforesting the equatorial jungle and strip mining and polluting the oceans. All the models point in the same direction: global warming and extinction. Simply because we don't know the time and day of our end, it shouldn't mean that we throw our hands up in the air and say: "What can I do? It's G-d's will." Our challenge is take what we know, leave behind the science deniers, and act appropriately to accomplish our task, just as we did with acid rain, or polio, or fascism, or Ryan Braun, et al.
Things we know shouldn't be disregarded because our models aren't sufficiently refined to make exact predictions.
Strawman argument.
By that kind of reasoning we shouldn't stop smoking because we don't know the exact day it'll kill us, or we shouldn't care for our children because they might turn out to be schizophrenic psychopaths and murder us in our sleep, or we shouldn't pay our taxes because I heard on TV that Jesus is coming back to Earth and taking all the good people with him back to Heaven, and I think I'm a really good person, really.
Strawman argument. Name five people who comment on this board who think that way. Hell, name one.
If that's how you go about making decisions, looking for perfection in every move you make, and throwing your hands up in the air when the path looks a little rocky, then you're doomed to suffer the fate of an idiot, afraid to act when needed and staggered by the slightest force of change.
Another strawman argument. My goodness, you're boring.
This model seems to me to be debilitating when the stakes are as high as the fate of our planet.
Ray Bolger, pick up the white courtesy phone.
Try and think reasonably for just a second:
Physician, heal thyself.
it took hundreds of millions of years to sequester all that carbon into the earth, and human beings have released a massive amount of it into the atmosphere in the last 150 years, while simultaneously deforesting the equatorial jungle and strip mining and polluting the oceans.
Those humans are really a pain in the ass, aren't they.
All the models point in the same direction: global warming and extinction.
Safe prediction -- we've had at least five extinction events on the planet already.
Simply because we don't know the time and day of our end, it shouldn't mean that we throw our hands up in the air and say: "What can I do? It's G-d's will."
Back to the scarecrows.
Our challenge is take what we know, leave behind the science deniers, and act appropriately to accomplish our task, just as we did with acid rain, or polio, or fascism, or Ryan Braun, et al.
Our challenge is to rely less on models and more on actual data. And to study the matter a whole lot more before we try to impose modeling that doesn't come close to understanding all the variables involved. And to use the tools of science to actually build models that have better predictive value than the ones we're using today. No one on this board is saying "oh, it's God's will" and throwing their hands up. But your anonymous certitude is quite inspiring. Please feel free to stop by anytime and provide more flaxen instruction.
The absolute scientific fact here is that the models do NOT predict global warming, nor do they suggest that curbing manmade CO2 will solve the problem of global warming IF they were right, which they aren't. They cannot be. Those who think we have to "do something" are Chicken Little but with hugely expensive taste. I suggest a quick look at the following:
http://www.freedomdogs.com/fd/top-10/112-global-warmingcooling/5061-if-you-are-right.html
Anonymous, to use your example, there is no doubt in science that smoking leads to lung cancer. The relative risk is something like 40.
On the flip side, while all climatology models point to problems with carbon emissions, they also point in a different direction from the actual historic data. In other words, the data are simply not there to prove the case.
I'm all for reducing carbon emissions if we can do it without impoverishing and killing people. I just don't believe the IPCC has come up with any ideas yet that will do that.
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