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.
Great questions, that I would prefer to have answered by objective scientific studies than by envirolunatics or conservative political pundits. (And no, I do not expect to read such studies in the thoroughly politicized Scientific American.)
Antrhopomorphic Global Warming is a non-scientific hoax cloaked in techncal jarjon by pretentious psuedo scientists and political con men like Al Gore.
The rise in CO2 levels is not a non-scientific hoax, and humans really are producing a hell of a lot of CO2. I suppose that it is possible that the two are unrelated, but again, that is for science to answer, not politics.
Will the rise in CO2 have negative consequences or not? It is an important scientific question. It is worth keeping in mind that sometimes the wolf turns out to be real.
Gee, thanks for the non-response.
Since I have more than one biology-related degree, and have been aware for decades that plankton contribute a very substantial portion of atmospheric oxygen, I'm not sure who you are addressing, or what the general "plankton awareness level" has to do with my request for links.
"Plankton farming" currently produces only 12 hits on Google, so it appears that your idea has not quite caught fire yet.
It might be a great plan, but it sounds like something you need to promote yourself.
Because I don't buy that CO2 levels are a 'problem' except for the ones that believe in it are going to attempt to destroy our lives.
The Antactic peninsula has warmed, but the cooling in the interior has resulted in a net cooling during the past 20 years. An inconvenient truth.
Thanks for the appeals to authority. Did the NAS or the AGU make a statement specifically about the urban heat island effect? I thought you were discussing urban heat island effect, but now you seem to have switched to global warming.
Yes, and ditto to your comment about hybrids. I can't believe how many of those stupid things I pass on the open highway on my way to work. They drive slower to maintain the pretense that they are saving gas because of their useless electric motor and batteries. But alas there's no traffic or red lights so they are forced to burn gas like the rest of us.
All my statements about urban heat islands have been intended to counter the assertion by one member that "land temperature records are caused by urban heat islands". And he meant GLOBAL temperatures. Not local.
Now if he was in fact talking about local temperatures, I don't know why he did it, because he was apparently responding to a message i posted about GLOBAL land-based temperatures.
And my last post simply said that in regions where urban heat islands are most present, the trend in the surface temperature is not different to the trend of the lower tropospheric temperature.
The reason for this is obvious: The president of NAS, Bruce Albert has had high praises for the ICPP report. In 2001 He signed, alogn with members of 8 countries including the US and the UK, India, etc., a joint statement :
1)We recognise the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
link
It was also said in this statement that It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions.
The AGU has not even attempted to link urban heat islands to land temperature records.
Not a single scientific study purports to know what the Global average temperature will be at any time in the future. The swiss cheese latice work of ambiguity, inneundo and non-sequitors that form the body of work underpinning the positions of the IPCC and similar groups do not even purport to be able to accurately predict future temperatures / impacts of increased CO2 levels, if they actually occur.
Al Gore is to Global Warming as a mutual fund salesman is to the stock market -- a lot of glib talk about TRENDS and STATISTICS appearing to support the sales pitch, but he/they havent a clue what the future will bring. The simple fact is that in a complex multivariate dynamic non-linear system, like climate or the stock market, you can spot all the trends and do all the regression analysis you want. The sixth tenths of one degree claimed increase in avergage global temperature over the last 100 years, and the claimed moderate increase in atmospherice CO2 over the last 350 years, for certain do not foretell a specific future relationship as cause and effect and correlation are not the same thing at all in a system such as Earths climate where at least 50% of the minor purported temperature increase over the last 100 years is due to non CO2 factors. Not even the IPCC has claimed to have scientific prove of the actual results of future CO2 increases if they occur. The have merely issued a set of projections wiht a 400% variance built in, and made such projection subject to numerous qualifications that they really have no idea what the effects of all of the interactions that may occur will be.
As rural areas have become urbanized over the last 350 years, certainly their historic temperature readings can not e fairly compared to what shows up today. This means that even the supposed six tenths of one degee GAT increase over the last 100 years is suspect.
If a rural area in the past 350 years has undergone urbanization, then it would be called "urban" in this study, don't you think?
And...
Show me a study that has ever even claimed that urban heat islands contribute to global surface average temperatures in a way that's not negligible.
The excessive rise in the Fairbanks record has long been recognized as being a result of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect (see for example Magee, N., Curtis J., Wendler, G. "The Urban Heat Island Effect at Fairbanks, Alaska", Theoretical & Applied Climatology, Vol. 64, pages 39-47).
for a full discussion, see http://www.warwickhughes.com
Also,
"THE URBAN HEAT ISLAND IN WINTER AT BARROW, ALASKA", Kenneth Hinkel, Frederick Nelson, Anna Klene and Julianne Bell, available at http://www.geography.uc.edu/~kenhinke/uhi/BUHIS-IJOC.pdf. They show that a full two degree UHI occurs in wintertime in Barrow, a town of only 2600 people, and that the effect can be measured for miles outside of the town itself.
He cannot possibly have been responding to my assertions on local temperatures, simply because i never referred to local temperatures up to that point. I have focused exclusively on impact of serveral factors (including UHI) on the global scheme of things. And proof that this UHI-related warming is minor, is the fact that in the Northern Hemisphere rural temperatures have actually risen at a faster rate than urban ones from 1880 to 1998. link courtesy of the American Geophysical Union
explain this:
Reference
McKitrick, R. and Michaels, P.J. 2004. A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data. Climate Research 26: 159-173.
Background
Nearly everyone who claims that the rate of global warming experienced over the past century was unprecedented over the past one to two millennia also claims that the data used to support that claim have been appropriately adjusted for the urban heat island effect and other non-climatic phenomena or that such non-climatic phenomena only trivially perturb the pure climatic background signal contained within the data.
What was done
In a critical examination of these multiple claims, McKitrick and Michaels (M&M) calculated 1979-2000 linear trends of monthly mean near-surface air temperature for 218 stations in 93 countries, based upon data they obtained from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), after which they regressed the results against indicators of local economic activity -- such as income, gross domestic product growth rates, and coal use -- to see if there was any evidence of these socioeconomic factors impacting the supposedly "pristine as possible" temperature data. Then, they repeated the process using the gridded surface air temperature data of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
What was learned
M&M report that the spatial pattern of trends they derived from the GISS data was "significantly correlated with non-climatic factors, including economic activity and sociopolitical characteristics." Likewise, with respect to the IPCC data, they say that "very similar correlations appear, despite previous attempts to remove non-climatic effects." These "socioeconomic effects," in the words of M&M, "add up to a net warming bias," although they state that "precise estimation of its magnitude will require further work."
AND Respond to This:
The method ...aims to compare temperature change in rural areas and small towns with that in urban areas. The three categories are distinguished according to whether their populations below 10,000, between 10,000 and 50,000, or above 50,000 in the GHCN database. This was the method used by Easterling et al. in 1997 and by Petersen et al. in 1999 [Easterling, D.R. et al., 1997: Maximum and minimum temperature trends for the globe, Science, 277, 364-367: Peterson, T.C., K.P. Gallo, J. Lawrimore, T.W. Owen, A. Huang, and D.A. McKittrick, 1999: Global rural temperature trends. Geophysical research letters , 26 (3), 329-332. Both studies concluded that the UHI effect, as measured by the difference in trends between urban stations on the one hand, and small town and rural stations on the other, was negligible.
Nevertheless, the approach of these papers is not satisfactory, because of the two problems noted above. No account is taken of the rate of population growth in different places, and the population data used are in any case typically understated by up to, or even more than, an order of magnitude [further examples of population data problems] As the Torok et al. paper points out, a further problem is that UHI effects are detectable at populations of as little as 1,000, and decrease logarithmically as population increases. This means that substantial UHI warming could have occurred at places with current true populations of less than 50,000, or even less than 10,000.
The conclusion is that the elements exist in the peer reviewed literature to enable a calculation of the effects of urban heat on aggregates of near-surface temperature:
temperature data exist over time for numerous locations;
population data exist over time for the same locations;
formulas exist for estimating the UHI effect of a given population.
But the work necessary to estimate the UHI impact on the station records used to compile near-surface aggregates has not yet been done. In the meantime, one suspects that those aggregates do contain a spurious warming trend from urban heat that may be greater than the estimates made to date.
Also consider this challenge to your cited 1999 study:
The Urban Heat Island of Shanghai, China
I apologize in advance for missing something (or someone): if you have a point that you want me to address, put it up here.
For Dominic Harr:
You have *got* to stop ignoring what I say and simply repeating over and over again, "It's true -- Co2 and temp are linked". Slow down, listen to my points, and respond to them, one by one. That will be a 'conversation', a 'debate'. Then, I'll respond to your points. And we'll both learn a few things, and maybe both our minds will be better for it.
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.
Increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere alter Earth's radiative balance. There is no doubt of this point. Ask why I'm certain, everyone is certain on this, even the credible skeptics. There are some fringe skeptics who might try to argue this point, but because that is so far from reality, it's pointless to address.
Because the atmospheric concentration of CO2 alters Earth's radiative balance, the general understanding of the climate science community (both paleoclimate and modern) is that higher CO2 enhances the likelihood of warmer global temperatures, and lower CO2 enhances the likelihood of lower global temperatures because of the physics of Earth's radiative balance. ** This does not, in any way, indicate that there are not other, important, influences on Earth's climate. ** But... influences that affect climate over time-scales of 1,000 -- 10,000 -- 100,000 -- 1,000,000 year and longer are not likely to have a noticeable influence on climate on the century-scale (except at unique hinge points, such as glacial and interglacial terminations -- this addresses your comment in #340).
It's also important to address the "ocean burps" link -- the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Despite the uncertainties that might accrue in the interpretation of data that lends insight into what happened 55 million years ago, this event is the best example of Earth's temperature being influenced primarily by a significant change in Earth's radiative balance caused by a change in atmospheric composition.
By the way, scientists very commonly "qualify" their public comments. It's habit; skeptics like to interpret this as uncertainty. That can be misleading (but when one is looking to reinforce their viewpoint, it's normal behavior).
The third, and most damaging, point you have to address is, "When compared to past global temp changes, the current temp changes are not in any way unusual." ... You haven't even shown that anything out of the ordinary is going on here. Less than 1 degree in 100+ years???
Assessed out of context, that might seem inconsequential. But one, the more recent warming trend is much faster than that. (By the way, I prefer Centigrade to Fahrenheit to reduce confusion.) The 20th century had a warming trend of 0.6 C. The last 25 years of the 20th century had a warming trend of 0.4 C -- more than double the "full century" rate. Estimates for the next century converge on 2-3 C by 2100; 3C would be five times the 20th century rate. AND this would be in the context of the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, which due to alteration of Earth's radiative balance has a potential warming effect. Nobody expects a first-principles cooling effect from increasing CO2, despite the possibility of thermohaline circulation alteration. Finally, although analysis of past temperature variability is difficult, the testimony of most climate records indicates that a 2-3 C rise over 100 years is unusual.
For hinckley buzzard:
25 years ago climatologists were warning us of the imminent new Ice Age.
Because of a slight cooling trend in the 60s and 70s, there were some over-hyped media predictions of a new Ice Age. These reports were not grounded in serious science. For one thing, the models were ridiculously simple compared to current state-of-the-art, so most of the media hype was based on observations and not predictions (particularly published scientific predictions).
Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No
For Frumious Bandersnatch:
From my understanding of the Glacier issue, we have only studied a small fraction of the world's glaciers. Of those, about half are receding and half are proceeding.
Retreat of glaciers since 1850 provides a good overview. This does address the effects of the end of the Little Ice Age.
Even if all the corn grown in the U.S. were converted into ethanol, it would not even come close to solving our vehicle energy needs.
Corn is only the leading edge. Real gains would be made from cellulosic ethanol from biomass, switchgrass, and maybe another grass grown in Illinois I just read about.
For hgro and scpg2:
Martians are have the same global warming problem. How do the lefty crisis mongers explain that?
Thusly: Global warming on Mars?
For saminfl:
Why?
Why what?
For aruanan and Gail Wynand:
The land-based temperature records are an artifact caused by urban heat islands.
The Surface Temperature Record and the Urban Heat Island
There are most definitely local urban temperature effects. Urban Heat Island Effect. The Wikipedia link here is recommended.
For Steve van Doorn:
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.
A Japanese research vessel was lost several years ago (1980s?) due to a submarine eruption taking place under their ship. The bubble effect apparently did cause the ship to sink. For the hypothesis above to be credible, there would have to be an explanation of why sufficient CO2 (or more likely, methane) would be released in that oceanic region.
For Gail Wynand and Dominic Harr:
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?
There is a big difference between weather forecasting and global climate modeling. Weather models are based on fluid dynamics. General Circulation Models (GCMs) are based on input/output (flux) physical relationships, and aren't based on fluid dynamics. The common "if you can't forecast the weather, how can you forecast the climate?" debating device obscures the more pertinent question of how climate is actually modeled. (Note that if you allowed me error bounds, I could probably reliably forecast a maximum or minimum temperature for most locations in North America fourteen days from now with reasonable accuracy just by examining climatological data. And I'd be wrong sometimes. So are meteorologists.)
For Ghost of Philip Marlowe:
Ice core samples are not global, they are local. And the climatic and atmospheric characteristics of polar regions are very different from temperate and equatorial regions. It's like saying what you find in the air in your freezer you'll also find in your basement.
That's a good point, and it's not a point climate scientists have ignored. The atmosphere is somewhat well-mixed, so over time changes will integrate and be incorporated into the ice cores; it does vary with the parameter being measured. One way this could be addressed would be to measure the CO2 concentration in the Antarctic and compare it to the Mauna Loa data. I'd expect that there would be year-to-year differences. I would also expect that the Antarctic, like Mauna Loa, would show a generally increasing trend. Precipitation samples the global temperature by getting stable isotope ratios (primarily oxygen). Trends in this data from both poles, and from mountain glacier cores, show similar patterns, but there is always regional variability. [Note that I also appreciate what palmer said about oceanic sediments.]
For jonrick46:
The "inconvenient truth" is that being discussed by University of Ottowa professor and 1992 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winner, Jan Veizer. In an article published in Geoscience Canada, titled "The Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective from Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle," Veizer describes how fluctuations in cosmic ray activity can affect cloud formation. Such fluctuations are the result of activity going on in the cosmos.
Several years ago FR hosted a long discussion of Veizer and Shaviv; it was an interesting episode and generated a lot of scientific interest. Veizer is a really good scientist -- I've even met him, not that it means anything. I could not possibly encapsulate all of the debate, even the peer-review controversy that was generated. So start here:
A critique on Veizer’s Celestial Climate Driver
Cosmic Rays, Carbon Dioxide and Climate
Googling "Veizer Shaviv" finds a lot more, especially if you like scientific arguments.
As for Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (and Lassen), I've followed that too.
Solar influences on cosmic rays and cloud formation: A reassessment
Solar activity and terrestrial climate: an analysis of some purported correlations (PDF -- warning, this is very detailed)
For StopGlobalWhining:
You probably wouldn't believe it if I told you that Antarctica has been cooling since 1986. Check it out, or if you prefer, I'll send you some peer-referred journal citations.
Certainly I'd believe it; it's true. The signficance to the overall climate trend understanding is quite minimal.
Antarctic cooling, global warming?
For Gail Wynand:
McKitrick, R. and Michaels, P.J. 2004. A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data. Climate Research 26: 159-173.
McKitrick Mucks It Up Note: McKitrick and Michaels did attempt to correct the simple error they made. Some of that discussion is found here, described by the person who discovered that error: McKitrick (go to "McKitrick update")
And a summary note: at times I sound impatient, peevish, or overbearing on this subject. I don't know everything -- I admit that -- and climate science is not exact. However, much of the subject matter which was raised here has been discussed before, and in some cases, many times before. The RealClimate Web site (as evidenced by links from there) provides good context despite biases.
And in case anyone is encountering me for the first time: I support nuclear power and wish we had more. I don't, and never did, support the Kyoto Protocol. I believe that the free market will force a lot of changes in energy infrastructure and policy that will have ramifications for the global warming issue. I also believe that government at every level could do more to encourage and promote energy conservation (and I think rising costs, even as seemingly minor as fuel for school buses, will start forcing such promotion and encouragement). And finally, though it isn't nearly as glamorous an issue as global warming, one of my major fears where I feel not enough is being done is the decaying status of our major roadways, especially bridges. If you ever drive I-70 from Frederick to Baltimore and just count the number of bridges and overpasses, you'll see what I mean.
Thanks for the reply, cog. Too little too late (just kidding). The weather / climate modeling is a false dichotomy. Climate modeling depends entirely on weather either explicitly modeled or modeled by various assumptions and parameters. As I type there is a strong convective complex moving in, carrying heat and moisture to the upper atmosphere and triggering other climate-altering weather from it's outflow boundary that is just now sweeping through.
The climate models can handle this in two ways as I mentioned, they can model weather events or they can add parameters accounting for weather events. Here's an example of the former: http://www.noaatech2004.noaa.gov/abstracts/ab5_kerr_orlanski.html and here's one of the latter: http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/IGCM.pdf Here's a sample from their text: The parameters selected were (A) a non-dimensional linear multiplier of the sensible and latent heats, (B) the convective precipitation rate in mm/day at which convective clouds start to form, (C) the large-scale cloud supersaturation for the liquid water path calculation, (D) the convective cloud supersaturation for the liquid water path calculation, and (E) the relative humidity at which large-scale clouds are assumed to completely cover a grid-box.
Note that the parameters they are talking about are just the ones they tuned out of 29. Model parameters like these are the most important factor in determining the effect of the forcing that climate alarmists need to achieve alarming results. It is not the rate of cloud formation (and other cloud parameters) that determines the cloud effects on climate, it is the clouds. The parameters are added simply because the models do not have the fidelity to model cloud formation. They can model clouds as a general set of parameter but not specific individual clouds. Why is this important? Simply because the parameters are not reality, not even good approximations of reality and certainly not good approximations of a wetter reality. An accurate model will exist someday and make this argument moot, but until then there are only parameters and alarming parameters.
Good you are learning.
First, I would like to ask you a simple question that I think can go a long way here: What is the 'margin of error' on these estimates? This is very important. You're claiming that there has been a .6C temp change in global average temp in the past 100 years. Is that within the margin of error?
Increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere alter Earth's radiative balance. There is no doubt of this point.
Perhaps. But how much? The PPM now is what, 200? And increased by man about 20-30, or so? And in the past, it's been > 2000?
Co2 increases may only raise the temp 1 degree total, period. The models certainly can't tell us, cuz they are all very inaccurate, as evidenced by that other article you just posted.
The 20th century had a warming trend of 0.6 C. The last 25 years of the 20th century had a warming trend of 0.4 C -- more than double the "full century" rate. Estimates for the next century converge on 2-3 C by 2100; 3C would be five times the 20th century rate. AND this would be in the context of the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, which due to alteration of Earth's radiative balance has a potential warming effect.
My friend, this paragraph is priceless.
.6 C in 100 years. And actually, it went up until the 50s, then down until the 80s, then up again. But we'll ignore that.
I'll just go back to my first question, above. Isn't that well within the margin of error for a recreated estimate of a global average? So there may not have been any warming at all.
Then you cite 'estimates' of changes 5 times that over the next 100 years. With no basis in reality. As your other article clearly stated, their models are wildly inaccurate. And in many cases just flat out wrong.
Yet you claim that these estimates are reliable?
I'm sorry, I just can't possibly understand how you can say that.
There is a big difference between weather forecasting and global climate modeling.
Of course, but they are similar too -- complex systems that they do not understand well.
Again, your other article you posted made it clear, didn't it? Their models are still wildly inaccurate.
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