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.
Excellent response.
These leftists and their deceived followers are of the same persuasion that latched onto the theoretical illusions of Marx and Engels at the end of an earlier century, with about the same results as humankind will get if the political establishment continues to swallow the Global Warming hoax.
It is extremely important not to attribute intellectual integrity to the purveyors of this scientific mysticism. They are merely frontmen for the worst kind of totalitarian impulses, and their fear mongering and technical gobbledegook needs to be seen for what it really is.
It looks to me as if a pretty small proportion of the co2 is man made, unless I am missing something. That being the case, "if" there is genuine global warming, and "if" it is significantly caused by man made co2, then we're just SOL because we can't eliminate that much co2 without destroying our economies.
And, I submit, were we foolish enough to do so, the resulting poverty and disease in 75% of the world would be a whole lot worse than theoretical damage from global warming.
How many millions have died in the third world for the [dubious] benefits of eliminating DDT?
IMO 95% of discussions and "research" RE global warming are not science anyway, they are "political science". I am not referring to you, this is a general remark.
The positions of the continents have much more to do with the average temperature of the Earth than CO2.
very good thank you.
I'm going to provide you with a few references which you can read or not read, at your discretion. To put it bluntly, you're wrong. But you won't ever believe me that you're wrong, and I doubt that you'll try to convince yourself otherwise, but you should.
Reducing uncertainty about carbon dioxide as a climate driver
Feedback Loops in Global Climate Change Point to a Very Hot 21st Century
Ocean Burps and Climate Change
Enhanced CO2 and Climate Change (PDF)
What Drives Climate? (Discover magazine, very digestible)
Take-away message from the last link:
" As researchers have learned to read the dramatic story of climate changes from fossils, rock deposits, and subtle chemical clues in ocean sediments, they have offered a host of explanations. The slow drifting of the continents can open and close straits and seas, altering the pattern of warm and cold ocean currents. Volcanoes can spew out clouds of ash, spreading a cooling sunshade over the planet. The sun itself has been fingered as a suspect in some episodes, including the one that drove the Norse from Greenland; though seemingly a reliable companion, over decades or centuries the sun may flicker and pulse like an old fluorescent tube. Over thousands of years Earth itself wobbles in space, changing the amount of energy it can intercept from the sun.
None of these forces, however, seems sufficient to account for long-term global climate shifts, and researchers have been grasping for an explanation. Curiously, in case after case, they see the hand of carbon dioxide, the same heat-trapping gas that may now be warming the globe. CO2 molecules behave like one-way mirrors for heat radiation from the sun; like greenhouse glass, they allow radiation to get through to Earth but absorb it before it can get out into space again. Long before engines and industry started spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, researchers believe, Earth’s natural respiration was blowing the gas into the atmosphere and sucking it out in enormous, and sometimes sustained, gulps. During a recent global freeze, for example, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is known to have been 30 percent lower than it is today."
I wish you well on your journey toward enlightenment.
JasonC got the equilibrium temperature of the Earth wrong by about 30 K. Try that on for size while I keep working on the implications of it.”
I am not sure what Cogitator is referring to but I was hoping you might shed some light on it?
Thank you JasonC
You might be. The primary unmistakable cause of atmospheric CO2 increase since 1850 is human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning.
That being the case, "if" there is genuine global warming, and "if" it is significantly caused by man made co2, then we're just SOL because we can't eliminate that much co2 without destroying our economies.
I don't take that dim view. Our economy and the global economy is very, very vulnerable to energy production. As fossil fuel prices go up, that's going to change, or there are going to be serious economic consequences. Changing our energy infrastructure -- increasingly viewed as necessary -- will accrue environmental benefits. And, I submit, were we foolish enough to do so, the resulting poverty and disease in 75% of the world would be a whole lot worse than theoretical damage from global warming.
There are potential problems from global warming (increased drought potential, loss of freshwater resources, spread of tropical diseases) that aren't pretty. But one thing that must continue is raising the economic levels of citizens in Third World countries. That has environmental benefits as well.
Interesting--haven't ever read that before (not that I am very well versed on this subject) but that makes sense.
Interesting--haven't ever read that before (not that I am very well versed on this subject) but that makes sense.
I was watching I think it was the History Channel the other day. I wish I paid more attention but the Scientist was explaining what ‘could’ (Hypothesis) of happened to ships in the Bermuda triangle. He was hypothesizing the possibility that a very large volume of CO2 could bubble out of the earths crust. He was showing how if the Ocean had this much CO2 in the water any ship passing through the area would lose buoyancy.
I don’t know much about it but I thought it was interesting.
There is a lot about the earth we just don't know, but to point fingers at the first sign of something that looks odd is just wrong.
Sir:
What will be the 2PM temperature in Milwaukee, Tuesday after next?
Surely, if you can forecast average GLOBAL temperatures for 2100, you can forecast the tempurture in one North American location in the next 14 days? If not, you are admitting undeterminable variations in data which of necessity contaminate your long term forecast at least equally with the skies over Milwaukee in two weeks.
Like all Global Warming devotees, your conclusions are those of a scientific pretender, a regurgitator of the irrelevant, of the incomplete and of the distorted.. This qualifies one, for an appearence on the MSM, but does not lend validity to pretentious speculation.
A 1% difference in the origin temperature (absolute) makes essentially no difference in predicted temperature response to 2W, 4W, or 20W power changes. Specifically, to get a 5C increase from 288K requires 7.13% more total power, while the same from 291K as a base requires 7.05% more total power.
Maybe 0.2 watt difference in the needed power to support 5C warming. With more needed to bring about a 5C increase from a lower starting point than from a higher one, because it is proportionally a slightly larger change if the starting point is lower.
Straws, anyone?
I think it was methane not CO2.
And again, you haven't once referred to my point.
So, you don't listen to others, and bluntly claim to know absolutely for sure something that no one knows.
And you claim your theory as "enlightenment". Well, I'm fairly certain that 'enlightenment' would include an open mind that listens, analyzes and responds to evidence that contradicts your conclusions . . .
Maybe you've found a new type of enlightenment. One that can include a closed mind.
Do you think your refusal to even address my point pretty much explains why you might be easily fooled by these articles? You seem unwilling to consider context info they don't include. You don't listen to me, discuss with me or debate with me, instead simply posting a host of links that you liked. Then, when I insist on trying to discuss, you wave me off as unenlightened.
You are a true believer, that's for sure.
It is possible that Co2 causes global warming like silicone breast implants caused health issues. It didn't but the press, using science selectively and ignoring any context that proved them wrong, convinced the world of an untruth.
Those charts I'm posting are a big slam-dunk against your position. They *are* convincing to most folks. They show a large history of temp fluctuation that can not be related to Co2.
Ignore it, fine. But good luck with that.
Therefore, the suggestion that man is causing global warming is, at best, wild speculation.
At worst, it's a sad attempt to gain power.
25 years ago climatologists were warning us of the imminent new Ice Age. The reality of global warming at all, per se, is still very much unproven,lurking as it does in the range of statistical error, much less anthropogenic global warming. Your sequence of lines in the sand may reflect the media presentation of skeptical observers, or the random opinions of psoters here, but it does not do justice to real climate scientists who have serioous and abiding doubts about it all. The jury is very much out--and the most powerful proof is the blind raging assertions of "There is NO DEBATE!" howled by the GW enthusiasts. If they had the data they would stand in line to debate. But sensible people like Lonborg are still shunned.
Combining their estimates with standard climate model assumptions, they calculated how much these rising concentration levels caused global temperatures to climb, further increasing carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and so on.
"Standard Climate Model Assumptions". Again, one of the points I'm making that you ignored was, they can't even predict the temp next week, how can you assume the models are accurate???
While there are huge uncertainties in almost every aspect of this study, this research shows that we can "connect the dots" from a methane hydrate forcing to the observed global warming.
Yet, you're certain. This is the 'enlightened' viewpoint. As long as you don't ask any uncomfortable questions, I guess!
Which means, the models are still wrong. Incomplete, at best. Other variables still have a big effect.
There is reasonably good geophysical evidence for a correlation between such astronomical changes and the climate on Earth, particularly the ice ages. This is known as the "Milankovitch Effect."link
No. It's been "warming" since the early 50s according my experience and "warming" since the 1870s according to my reading. Of course, the press may have written otherwise at times.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.