Your views on climate change

[Wikkiwallana]

Because a small number of inaccuracies in one report invalidate an entire scientific field.

It is a shame that you cannot acknowledge that such such inaccuracies cast doubt where science should be concrete. I'm not seeing that.

Remember, for 200 years everyone thought Newton was right - but he turned out to be wrong. People are far too willing to put all their faith into something. I urge caution.

The Galileo Gambit? Really? That's all you've got?

[Zitru]

Does anyone mind if I use some information from this topic for my NationStates Mail?

[Wikkiwallana]

Climate change I believe, has been confirmed by enough independent sources to justify it as a real and pertinent issue facing our planet at this time.

Though the actual theory of distinctly anthropogenic climate change is not quite so justified in my mind, without a doubt humans are contributing to global climate shift, but we are by no means solely to blame for it.

The most serious issue I believe we are facing today is deforestation and ocean pollution, provided these two things could be adequately checked, the relatively small amount of human contributed CO2 could be effectively removed from the system adequately with minimal concessions to lifestyle and comfort. Air pollution and CO2 emission themselves honesty ought to be relegated to a backseat position because there is simply no way for humanity to effectively eliminate their carbon footprint without mass starvation and a return to pre-industrial levels of wealth.

Or we could use carbon capture:
http://www.marcgunther.com/2011/09/08/s ... -solution/
http://www.power-eng.com/news/2011/09/1 ... pilot.html

[Ridicularia]

This debate is almost as bad as evolution debates.

It doesn't matter if you think the government is using the issue. They used the issue of the deficit - that doesn't mean the deficit doesn't exist.
Scientists agree that humans are significantly contributing to climate change.

And if that screw-up at the IPCC invalidates climate change, why aren't you all over evolutionary scientists for the Piltdown Man hoax, or any number of other minor errors?

[Farnhamia]

It is a shame that you cannot acknowledge that such such inaccuracies cast doubt where science should be concrete. I'm not seeing that.

Remember, for 200 years everyone thought Newton was right - but he turned out to be wrong. People are far too willing to put all their faith into something. I urge caution.

The Galileo Gambit? Really? That's all you've got?

That's all climate change skeptics have, really. They're like creationists in that regard. They have to convince people that because one item of data is wrong or was stated incorrectly, the entire body of work is invalid.

[Wikkiwallana]

The Galileo Gambit? Really? That's all you've got?

That's all climate change skeptics have, really. They're like creationists in that regard. They have to convince people that because one item of data is wrong or was stated incorrectly, the entire body of work is invalid.

I know, and it's really, really depressing.

[Avenio]

I never argued against that. In fact, I am actually pro-sustainability, believe it or not.

Coulda fooled me.

Considering Einstein's equations - which replaced Newton's - produce slightly different answers than those of Newton, even on an everyday scale (if you go accurate enough), I think it is fair to say that Newton is wrong. And if you reject that, you don't understand how science works.

You know what's interesting? Einstein's equations derive from Newton's. He just adds components and tweaks them to deal with things like the fact that objects change their mass and time tends to dilate from the point of view of an object moving at fractions of c. Newton's equations work perfectly whilst working under non-relativistic conditions; when you pass beyond that, Einstein's move in. Both sides get extremely messy when they move outside of their original bounds, and both may not work at all under those circumstances. That's why Einstein's equations are corrolaries, rather than replacements of, Newton's laws.

So who doesn't understand how science works, again?

[KludgeMUSH]

I am of the view that whatever influence humans may have on the climate, that influence is going to be short-lived at best, as the present behavior of human civilization dooms it for collapse within the next 30 years anyway. Either people radically change their behavior in that timeframe, or we run out of oil and civilization collapses anyway. As such, human-induced climate change is simply not a real concern: We're either going to stop doing it, or we're going to run out of fuel to do it with.

If all emissions stopped now, we'd still see massive effects. Hell, if I'm remembering the numbers correctly we're looking at a one meter rise in sea level just from thermal expansion by the end of the century.

That's quite likely. We could very well see massive effects, possibly even in the opposite direction. IF humans are actually responsible for this rise, at least some amount of life has gotten used to the abundance of CO2 we allegedly cause. If all emissions suddenly stopped, we could instead be looking at an ice age as all of the life which has gotten used to our CO2 emissions devours it all without us replacing it.

None of this really matters. We don't really KNOW why this is happening. If we are the cause, then the cause must stop on its own, because the means by which we are causing it is not sustainable and will run out of fuel very soon, forcing a stop. If we are not the cause, then nothing we do will matter. Given these two possibilities, my conclusion is that it is a non-issue.

Remember, for 200 years everyone thought Newton was right - but he turned out to be wrong. People are far too willing to put all their faith into something. I urge caution.

This argument demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand what science is about. Science is not about magically knowing all the answers. Science is about always asking the questions. Newton was not "wrong", the Newtonian model is simply not complete. Scientific laws are descriptive, not proscriptive. Things aren't so because Newton said they were so, Newton said they were so because they appeared to be so. We have since found that under extreme corner-case conditions, Newtonian effects are superceded by relativistic ones. That doesn't invalidate Newton, it just tells us that there is more out there. Science isn't about "Eureka!" moments, it's about "Hmm, that's odd..." moments.

It doesn't matter if you think the government is using the issue. They used the issue of the deficit - that doesn't mean the deficit doesn't exist.
Scientists agree that humans are significantly contributing to climate change.

Debatable point. Humans are contributing, that much is known. How significant the contribution is, that part is up for debate. However, *I* think that the entire issue is moot. Human-induced climate change is predicated on the continued burning of fossil fuels by industrialized society. But the oil is running out. Industrialized society will begin its collapse within 30 years unless we change our ways and find alternative means. Whether or not what we're doing is causing it, we simply can't keep doing it, because we are going to run out of fuel to do it with. Therefore, climate change is irrelevant.

[Ridicularia]

Whether or not what we're doing is causing it, we simply can't keep doing it, because we are going to run out of fuel to do it with. Therefore, climate change is irrelevant.

That's like saying, "Well, the meth might kill me if I take another dose, but hey! I'm running out anyway."

[Thalam]

And if that screw-up at the IPCC invalidates climate change, why aren't you all over evolutionary scientists for the Piltdown Man hoax, or any number of other minor errors?

I don't know if that's the best example, because creationists do use those, and there seems to be a big overlap between climate change deniers and anti-evolutionists

[Farnhamia]

That's all climate change skeptics have, really. They're like creationists in that regard. They have to convince people that because one item of data is wrong or was stated incorrectly, the entire body of work is invalid.

I know, and it's really, really depressing.

I know, but if we don't respond the numbskulls will win. As we used to say in Old Lagash, libish! courage!

[Wikkiwallana]

I know, and it's really, really depressing.

I know, but if we don't respond the numbskulls will win. As we used to say in Old Lagash, libish! courage!

No plans to give up, plenty of plans to sigh and go "This shit again?", then go play video games to lift myself out of the funk.

[The Merchant Republics]

Climate change I believe, has been confirmed by enough independent sources to justify it as a real and pertinent issue facing our planet at this time.

Though the actual theory of distinctly anthropogenic climate change is not quite so justified in my mind, without a doubt humans are contributing to global climate shift, but we are by no means solely to blame for it.

The most serious issue I believe we are facing today is deforestation and ocean pollution, provided these two things could be adequately checked, the relatively small amount of human contributed CO2 could be effectively removed from the system adequately with minimal concessions to lifestyle and comfort. Air pollution and CO2 emission themselves honesty ought to be relegated to a backseat position because there is simply no way for humanity to effectively eliminate their carbon footprint without mass starvation and a return to pre-industrial levels of wealth.

Or we could use carbon capture:
http://www.marcgunther.com/2011/09/08/s ... -solution/
http://www.power-eng.com/news/2011/09/1 ... pilot.html

Yes, that too. But clean plakton-filled oceans and forests are better and more economical in the long-term that carbon capture technology, barring some method of recycling that carbon profitably.

[Farnhamia]

Or we could use carbon capture:
http://www.marcgunther.com/2011/09/08/s ... -solution/
http://www.power-eng.com/news/2011/09/1 ... pilot.html

Yes, that too. But clean plakton-filled oceans and forests are better and more economical in the long-term that carbon capture technology, barring some method of recycling that carbon profitably.

Yes, those, too, but it's acceptable to pursue both short- and long-term solutions.

[Wikkiwallana]

Or we could use carbon capture:
http://www.marcgunther.com/2011/09/08/s ... -solution/
http://www.power-eng.com/news/2011/09/1 ... pilot.html

Yes, that too. But clean plakton-filled oceans and forests are better and more economical in the long-term that carbon capture technology, barring some method of recycling that carbon profitably.

I was offering it as an alternative to mass starvation and wealth destruction, not as an alternative to replanting the forests and cleaning out the oceans.

[The Merchant Republics]

Yes, that too. But clean plakton-filled oceans and forests are better and more economical in the long-term that carbon capture technology, barring some method of recycling that carbon profitably.

Yes, those, too, but it's acceptable to pursue both short- and long-term solutions.

So long as they're relatively economical decisions, I'd agree.

The thing I was getting at is that we can solve deforestation and ocean pollution economically, both of these are coming about mostly because of an inflated tragedy of the commons that can be solved at least slightly better by allowing the market to price them, but air is harder, because air pollution is too hard to trace and property simply can't apply to air. The government's solutions to air pollution will always be more intrusive and less economical than a market one, we may still have to pursue some measures, but in general it would be cheaper and no less effective to simply manage and protect our carbon sinks.

[The Merchant Republics]

Yes, that too. But clean plakton-filled oceans and forests are better and more economical in the long-term that carbon capture technology, barring some method of recycling that carbon profitably.

I was offering it as an alternative to mass starvation and wealth destruction, not as an alternative to replanting the forests and cleaning out the oceans.

Which were themselves alternatives to mass starvation and wealth destruction, so I treated it as an alternative to those alternatives, sorry if I misrepresented you.

In the long term we need to focus on carbon sinks, not stopping ourselves from producing carbon, we can stop producing carbon dioxide, but we can increase the capability of the Earth to dissipate that carbon dioxide.

[Wikkiwallana]

Yes, those, too, but it's acceptable to pursue both short- and long-term solutions.

So long as they're relatively economical decisions, I'd agree.

The thing I was getting at is that we can solve deforestation and ocean pollution economically, both of these are coming about mostly because of an inflated tragedy of the commons that can be solved at least slightly better by allowing the market to price them, but air is harder, because air pollution is too hard to trace and property simply can't apply to air. The government's solutions to air pollution will always be more intrusive and less economical than a market one, we may still have to pursue some measures, but in general it would be cheaper and no less effective to simply manage and protect our carbon sinks.

So creating a new industry where people build machines to suck carbon from the air is uneconomical? Given the amount of carbon that needs capturing that's a lot of potential jobs. And given the chemical utility of carbon, there shouldn't be much trouble selling the product. Plenty of modern industries started out government run until there was enough of a market for the private sector to get interested.

[Wikkiwallana]

I was offering it as an alternative to mass starvation and wealth destruction, not as an alternative to replanting the forests and cleaning out the oceans.

Which were themselves alternatives to mass starvation and wealth destruction, so I treated it as an alternative to those alternatives, sorry if I misrepresented you.

In the long term we need to focus on carbon sinks, not stopping ourselves from producing carbon, we can stop producing carbon dioxide, but we can increase the capability of the Earth to dissipate that carbon dioxide.

Carbon capture doesn't stop us from producing carbon, it simply supplements natural carbon sinks to remove even more carbon from the atmosphere. Since, as you pointed out, there are limits to how much we can reasonably reduce our carbon production, we are going to need something to cover the time it takes for the natural ones to recover, because it's going to be a very slow process: saplings don't take in nearly as much carbon as mature trees, and there's a lot of gunk and trash to remove from the seas.

[Yupun]

I'm highly sceptical of human-caused climate change.

In fact, I'm sceptical the world is even warming...I'm thinking more of a global cooling to come.

In that movie that al gore guy made he said that making it warmer also makes the winters colder, but honestly is sounds sorta weird. but i am not sure if i wana trust an american x-politician anyway...

[Morrdh]

Thing is during the 1970s they said we were heading for another Ice Age.

Read something somewhere that over the last few years global temperatures have actually dropped, hence why people are just calling it Climate Change rather than Global Warming.

Also our carbon emission reductions are rendered pointless each time a volcano decides to erupt, effectively neutering 4 years worth of emission reductions in one go.

[Keronians]

There is some doubt whether he was saying that out of modesty, or poking fun at his rival, who was short.

That I did not know. Who was he making fun of? Leibniz? Hooke?

Hooke.

[Keronians]

In science a Law is simply the mathematical statement of a concept that works under the conditions in which it applies. Newton's laws begin to break down under conditions that are not similar to the ones it was formulated to work for.

Not true for Newton. All of Newton's 'Laws' are based on the concept of absolute space and absolute time - which is wrong. The inaccuracy of Newton's equations on the everyday level are so small they are irrelevant for virtually all purposes. But the inaccuracy exists, nonetheless.

The slight inaccuracy (which is almost always a result, not of faults in his equations, but of other factors) is negligible.

[Malthusian Oligarchs]

Alarmists Got it Wrong, Humans Not Responsible for Climate Change: CERN

NASA Study: Global Warming Alarmists Wrong

Brand new reports.

[Avenio]

Thing is during the 1970s they said we were heading for another Ice Age.

The Global Cooling Myth

Every now and again, the myth that “we shouldn’t believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970′s they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling” surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full ignorance) and the egregious Crichton manages to say “in the 1970′s all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming” (see Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion). You can find it in various other places too [here, mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics, because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn’t stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups though.

I should clarify that I’m talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we’re only responsible for the scientific press. If you want to look at an analysis of various papers that mention the subject, then try http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.

Where does the myth come from? Naturally enough, there is a kernel of truth behind it all. Firstly, there was a trend of cooling from the 40′s to the 70′s (although that needs to be qualified, as hemispheric or global temperature datasets were only just beginning to be assembled then). But people were well aware that extrapolating such a short trend was a mistake (Mason, 1976). Secondly, it was becoming clear that ice ages followed a regular pattern and that interglacials (such as we are now in) were much shorter that the full glacial periods in between. Somehow this seems to have morphed (perhaps more in the popular mind than elsewhere) into the idea that the next ice age was predicatable and imminent. Thirdly, there were concerns about the relative magnitudes of aerosol forcing (cooling) and CO2 forcing (warming), although this latter strand seems to have been short lived.

The state of the science at the time (say, the mid 1970′s), based on reading the papers is, in summary: “…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…” (which is taken directly from NAS, 1975). In a bit more detail, people were aware of various forcing mechanisms – the ice age cycle; CO2 warming; aerosol cooling – but didn’t know which would be dominant in the near future. By the end of the 1970′s, though, it had become clear that CO2 warming would probably be dominant; that conclusion has subsequently strengthened.

George Will asserts that Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned about “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”. The quote is from Hays et al. But the quote is taken grossly out of context. Here, in full, is the small section dealing with prediction:

Future climate. Having presented evidence that major changes in past climate were associated with variations in the geometry of the earth’s orbit, we should be able to predict the trend of future climate. Such forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends – and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted.

One approach to forecasting the natural long-term climate trend is to estimate the time constants of response necessary to explain the observed phase relationships between orbital variation and climatic change, and then to use those time constants in the exponential-response model. When such a model is applied to Vernekar’s (39) astronomical projections, the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate (80).

The point about timescales is worth noticing: predicting an ice age (even in the absence of human forcing) is almost impossible within a timescale that you could call “imminent” (perhaps a century: comparable to the scales typically used in global warming projections) because ice ages are slow, when caused by orbital forcing type mechanisms.

Will also quotes “a full-blown 10,000-year ice age” (Science, March 1, 1975). The quote is accurate, but the source isn’t. The piece isn’t from “Science”; it’s from “Science News”. There is a major difference: Science is (jointly with Nature) the most prestigous journal for natural science; Science News is not a peer-reviewed journal at all, though it is still respectable. In this case, its process went a bit wrong: the desire for a good story overwhelmed its reading of the NAS report which was presumably too boring to present directly.

The Hays paper above is the most notable example of the “ice age” strand. Indeed, its a very important paper in the history of climate, linking observed cycles in ocean sediment cores to orbital forcing periodicities. Of the other strand, aerosol cooling, Rasool and Schneider, Science, July 1971, p 138, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate” is the best exemplar. This contains the quote that quadrupling aerosols could decrease the mean surface temperature (of Earth) by as much as 3.5 degrees K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!. But even this paper qualifies its predictions (whether or not aerosols would so increase was unknown) and speculates that nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production (thereby, presumably, removing the aerosol problem). There are, incidentally, other scientific problems with the paper: notably that the model used was only suitable for small perturbations but the results are for rather large perturbations; and that the estimate of CO2 sensitivity was too low by a factor of about 3.

Probably the best summary of the time was the 1975 NAS/NRC report. This is a serious sober assessment of what was known at the time, and their conclusion was that they didn’t know enough to make predictions. From the “Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations”, we find that they said we should:

Establish National climatic research program
Establish Climatic data analysis program, and new facilities, and studies of impact of climate on man
Develope Climatic index monitoring program
Establish Climatic modelling and applications program, and exploration of possible future climates using coupled GCMs
Adoption and development of International climatic research program
Development of International Palaeoclimatic data network

Which is to say, they recommended more research, not action. Which was entirely appropriate to the state of the science at the time. In the last 30 years, of course, enormous progress has been made in the field of climate science.

Most of this post has been about the science of 30 years ago. From the point of view of todays science, and with extra data available:

The cooling trend from the 40′s to the 70′s now looks more like a slight interruption of an upward trend (e.g. here). It turns out that the northern hemisphere cooling was larger than the southern (consistent with the nowadays accepted interpreation that the cooling was largely caused by sulphate aerosols); at first, only NH records were available.
Sulphate aerosols have not increased as much as once feared (partly through efforts to combat acid rain); CO2 forcing is greater. Indeed IPCC projections of future temperature inceases went up from the 1995 SAR to the 2001 TAR because estimates of future sulphate aerosol levels were lowered (SPM).
Interpretations of future changes in the Earth’s orbit have changed somewhat. It now seems likely (Loutre and Berger, Climatic Change, 46: (1-2) 61-90 2000) that the current interglacial, based purely on natural forcing, would last for an exceptionally long time: perhaps 50,000 years.

Finally, its clear that there were concerns, perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer review and editing process involved in scientific publication was sufficient to provide a sober view. This episode shows the scientific press in a very good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any such process in the popular press, then and now.

Further Reading:

Imbrie & Imbrie “Ice Ages: solving the mystery” (1979) is an interesting general book on the discovery of the ice ages and their mechanisms; chapter 16 deals with “The coming ice age”.

Spencer Weart’s History of Global Warming has a chapter on Past Cycles: Ice Age Speculations.

An analysis of various papers that mention the subject is at http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.

Read something somewhere that over the last few years global temperatures have actually dropped, hence why people are just calling it Climate Change rather than Global Warming.

Global average temperatures are going up; that average increase causes more extreme weather events, like stronger and more frequent hurricanes and scorching droughts, but also harsh winters and ferocious snowstorms over the course of the seasons. If you average out those seasons over time, you get the data they're talking about.

Also our carbon emission reductions are rendered pointless each time a volcano decides to erupt, effectively neutering 4 years worth of emission reductions in one go.

Not really. It'd have to be a pretty big volcano to effect global CO2 levels, verging on supervolcano-sized. Mostly they generally effect the global temperature (as with the Year Without a Summer in 1816, caused by Mount Tambora's eruption) via volcanic ash and atmospheric sulphuric acid particles, not CO2.