Posted on 05/25/2006 9:02:16 AM PDT by cogitator
The Flipping Point
How the evidence for anthropogenic global warming has converged to cause this environmental skeptic to make a cognitive flip
By Michael Shermer
In 2001 Cambridge University Press published Bjørn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which I thought was a perfect debate topic for the Skeptics Society public lecture series at the California Institute of Technology. The problem was that all the top environmental organizations refused to participate. "There is no debate," one spokesperson told me. "We don't want to dignify that book," another said. One leading environmentalist warned me that my reputation would be irreparably harmed if I went through with it. So of course I did.
My experience is symptomatic of deep problems that have long plagued the environmental movement. Activists who vandalize Hummer dealerships and destroy logging equipment are criminal ecoterrorists. Environmental groups who cry doom and gloom to keep donations flowing only hurt their credibility. As an undergraduate in the 1970s, I learned (and believed) that by the 1990s overpopulation would lead to worldwide starvation and the exhaustion of key minerals, metals and oil, predictions that failed utterly. Politics polluted the science and made me an environmental skeptic.
Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming. My attention was piqued on February 8 when 86 leading evangelical Christians--the last cohort I expected to get on the environmental bandwagon--issued the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for "national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions" in carbon emissions.
Then I attended the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, Calif., where former vice president Al Gore delivered the single finest summation of the evidence for global warming I have ever heard, based on the recent documentary film about his work in this area, An Inconvenient Truth. The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance.
Four books eventually brought me to the flipping point. Archaeologist Brian Fagan's The Long Summer (Basic, 2004) explicates how civilization is the gift of a temporary period of mild climate. Geographer Jared Diamond's Collapse (Penguin Group, 2005) demonstrates how natural and human-caused environmental catastrophes led to the collapse of civilizations. Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006) is a page-turning account of her journeys around the world with environmental scientists who are documenting species extinction and climate change unmistakably linked to human action. And biologist Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006) reveals how he went from being a skeptical environmentalist to a believing activist as incontrovertible data linking the increase of carbon dioxide to global warming accumulated in the past decade.
It is a matter of the Goldilocks phenomenon. In the last ice age, CO2 levels were 180 parts per million (ppm)--too cold. Between the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, levels rose to 280 ppm--just right. Today levels are at 380 ppm and are projected to reach 450 to 550 by the end of the century--too warm. Like a kettle of water that transforms from liquid to steam when it changes from 99 to 100 degrees Celsius, the environment itself is about to make a CO2-driven flip.
According to Flannery, even if we reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2050, average global temperatures will increase between two and nine degrees by 2100. This rise could lead to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which the March 24 issue of Science reports is already shrinking at a rate of 224 ±41 cubic kilometers a year, double the rate measured in 1996 (Los Angeles uses one cubic kilometer of water a year). If it and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melt, sea levels will rise five to 10 meters, displacing half a billion inhabitants.
Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.
I am absolutely sure you are right about this. That's exactly what they want. They aren't even very discreet about keeping it a secret. There was a thread here several months ago about some scientist at a conference who admitted it publicly. The organization that was running the conference banned news cameras and other recording devices from the room in which this guy was speaking, because they had advance notice of what he was going to say.
I recommend perusing the RealClimate Web site, for starters, and maybe you'll realize that your opinion is a bit extreme.
In general (because models vary), a trend in climate models with warmer ocean temperatures is increased coastal precipitation and decreased inner-continental precipitation.
Thanks for the site reference, I will definitely look at in in-depth when I have time. However, just reading the first page tends to support my belief that much of the "science" behind global warming is heavily dependent on suspect modeling. If a model cannot be proven to represent what it purports to model with any significant degree of accuracy, it isn't much good. These scientists are working with far too many variables in their models for them to have any real validity, and again, that's the whole point: they simply cannot prove, or even accurately model, the earth's climate. There are too many variables, and too little data to work with.
Again, resources may shift, but overall availbility increases... and lets not also forget MODELS are not real life... Models are only as good as the assumptions they are based on... often Scientists find out in practice their assumptions when speculating things they have never seen before are wrong.
Deserts expand and recede, forests expand and recede, its been going on long before Humans were here, and will continue...
The "sky is falling" fearmongering is crazy.
How many humans do we have living in LA and the Southwest? Most with no naturally supplied water at all anymore? Colorado barely if ever makes it to the Pacific and the Rio Grande rarely reaches the Atlantic.. yet not a whole lot of folks dying of thirst.
And these are the "WORST CASE SCENARIOS"...
There are only 3 constants in the universe... Hydrogen, change and stupidity... The earth is going to change, always has changed and always will change... to try to fearmonger that the next conjectured change is going to be worldwide disaster is silly.
Every way I look at it, assuming we actually do get a 1-2% worldwide surface level temp change it comes out a good thing in the general sense.. more fresh water, more food, more land... yes resources may shift if this happens some, but that's always been the case.. its not some reason to be running scared screaming the sky is falling.
Same here. Going nuclear has a lot of positives. And it's way overdue, at least partly because of the same environmentalists.
BTTT
Mind if we raze your domicile to grow some corn? It's for the environment.
Thankfully, many environmentalists have changed their minds about Nuclear Energy. Some very influential people. Remains to be seen if the GW debate can be wrested away from the Catastrophists.
I'll take your word for it, but I'm going to fact-check you.
In today's world, it's best to link to an authoritative data source for such assertions.
How does the author explain the melting of the ice caps on Mars? Have we been driving SUVs on Mars?
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_snow_011206-1.html
I consider toll roads and bridges the conservative option. The alternative is taxpayer funding, and it is inevitably fairer (and more free-market) to use a user-pays system than a taxpayer-funded system.
As in their original 2004 article von Storch et al had used a coupled climate model (AOGCM) to simulate the temperatures of the last two thousand years. They had then generated pseudo-proxies by adding noise at selected spatial locations to the AOGCM generated temperature histories. The added noise was purportedly designed to represent non-climatic effects such as disease or insect infestation. This simulated 'noisy' world then can be used as a test-bed for the reconstruction methodology. A given analysis procedure is validated if it successfully recovers the original AOGCM noise free results and could be rejected if it fails to recover the original results. Of course such testing only makes sense if the simulated test world has characteristics similar to the real-world.
What's that old saying? If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullsh*t. The last sentence in that paragraph pretty much says it all...
Actually, further down on their site, I came across a piece where they discussed Algore's new film, "An Inconvenient Truth", about which they said, among other things:
"Since Gore is rumored to be a fan of RealClimate"
And this:
"It is an inspiring film, and is decidedly non-partisan in its outlook (though there are a few subtle references to the Bush administration's lack of leadership on this and other environmental issues)."
Hmmm, kind of leads me to suspect their... objectivity, and whether or not they've got a political agenda.
"Much of the footage in Inconvenient Truth is of Al Gore giving a slideshow on the science of global warming. Sound boring? Well, yes, a little. But it is a very good slide show, in the vein of Carl Sagan (lots of beautiful imagery, and some very slick graphics and digital animation). And it is interspersed with personal reflections from Gore that add a very nice human element. Gore in the classroom in 1968, listening to the great geochemist Roger Revelle describe the first few years of data on carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere. Gore on the family farm, talking about his father's tobacco business, and how he shut it down when his daughter (Al Gore's sister) got lung cancer. Gore on the campaign trail, and his disappointment at the Supreme Court decision. This isn't the "wooden" Gore of the 2000 campgain; he is clearly in his element here, talking about something he has cared deeply about for over 30 years. How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought."
Yup, its all about the science and the environment, isn't it? </sarcasm>
So much for the value of ocean-front property.
Of course, the statement is made as if it will happen so quickly that it will create a massive crisis. If it takes from now until 2100 for the sea level to rise 10 meters, nobody is going to drown over it, and people living in lowlying areas have ample time to figure out where to go.
On the other side of this, what benefits might there be? All of the articles push disaster to the fore, but what might be on the other side of the balance sheet? Okay, so maybe Phoenix won't be as popular, but Anchorage stands to benefit. I see a great deal of fear-mongering, but very little exploration of any potential positive aspects of this kind of change.
OK, you've seen it.
Taxpayers are paying whether through tolls or fuel tax or whatever.
What toll roads do (besides bottlenecks and unnecessary leavel of government bureacracy) is hide the cost. For instance there is a myth that only cost is to users. There are, however, many people who take secondary roads solely to avoid the cost of tolls thereby adding to wear and congestion on those roads, not to mention a likely unproductive use of their time.
Then there are shippers who basically have to use the toll roads but pass on their cost to their customers.
Then, there are shippers who avoid ports of entry that would otherwise make more sense due to the cost of tolls.
But as revenue devices toll roads are inefficient at collection and unnecessary hindrance to travel.
Anyway, we aren't trying to shrink government or help the economy by advocting the end of toll roads. We are trying to stop global warming AND SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!!!
Okay, man, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but I've gotta call "B.S." on ya. Sorry. It isn't personal, just that the actual data doesn't at all support your claim.
Here's a source:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/
Note, especially, these charts:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/2005cal_fig1.gif
Things ARE heating up. Slowly. The actual CAUSE(S) may be in question, but the change in temperature isn't.
I don't get this... how can there be so many people on FR that buys this crap?
No one that I know of has said "no warming". If we doubled CO2 we would get +1.2 deg C not anything close to the alarmist are stating.
We also know CO2 levels has been at very high levels and tempature was in an ice age and it was the other way around as well.
No one can predict the weather.
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