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 knew this more than 25 years ago.
If we don't know what these 'other influences' are then how is man to be blamed for these 'other influences'?
From your other article:
"The concentration of carbon dioxide in today's atmosphere is about 380 parts per million, whereas the concentration 55 million years ago was about 2,000 parts per million.
And the human activity is supposedly responsible for 30 ppm or so?
Context is a wonderful way to understand the big picture.
"The UHI effect is responsible for real climatic change in urban areas, but it may not be representative of large areas," he explains. "Although significant in magnitude, our estimated UHI is still relatively small compared to the background temperature trends documented in the Chinese long-term climate recordlink
...Zhou explains. "They may have changed climate as much as greenhouse gases over some particular regions of land."
Again, nobody denies the effect UHI have on LOCAL areas. What this data you cite simply says is that urban heat islands have highly been significant in a local scale. which I already knew, since the IPCC said it. This is the number that I and other scientists have referred to as "negligible".
The claim that IPCC conclusions on UHI "may be quite different from what actually occurred in the pristine natural environment" did not come from Zhou, but it was an interpretation of the Zhou's study by the website you cited C02science.org, whose chairman at the time was Craig D. Idso, who has been on the payroll of the coal company Western Fuels in the past.
You can see here that Idso once prepared a report for the coal company Western Fuels, called "Future Climate and The Precautionary Principle: The Other Side of the Story".
When asked where he gets his funding, Idso simply dodges the question, and dodges it again
you asked for one scientific refutation of your assertion that Peterson et all 1999, purporting to show that UHI is of no important effect on attempts to measure GAT over time. I provided you with approximately six subsequent challenges to their conclusions.
You respond by challenging one of the cited studies on the basis that its author, sua sponte and without any data, speculated that the results of his study showing a strong UHI effect in the Shanghai area, might not be of significance in a Global GAT calculation.
The problem, or one of them, is that as to any necessary data base of actual temperature measurements over time, for any period of time which is meaningful, virtually all measurments taken since the beginning of such record keeping were taken until very recently in areas that are likely to have been affected by UHI.
The bigger problem is that the fallacies and errors of the Peterson et al study you rely on... arbitrary definitions of urban areas restricted only to the very largest communities and the arbitary substitution of other data, to replace ignored data sources.
Finally you belie the shallowness and unprincipled foundation of your belief in Global Warming by basing your critcism of an opposing viewpoint based upon whose payroll the person is on, not on any scientific grounds.
Global Warming is a hoax. It has only two kinds of adherents, communists and dupes. How do you like your hybrid, comrade?
Quite possibly one of the best sites for explaining both for laymen and scientists, some of the fundamental fallacies which are so basic and pervasive as to negate any probability that Global Warming is happening at all, is the Marshall institute (www.marshall.org)
What they explain with compelling clarity, among other things, is that current science has no ability to measure underlying non-linear, cyclic variation in extraneous natural phenomena which directly effect climate conditions (cloud formation, greenhouse effect) such that all of the available data (essentially corrupt prior to 1979) is contaminated by these processes which current science has no ability to accurately factor out of the data to determine what changes in GAT might be arising from sources other than those cyclical factors (e.g. 100,000 year movement of earths orbit).
All of the studies, reports, analysis and projections of the IPCC and other GW advocates amounts to no more than gross speculation in the face of the complete inability of science in light of limited real data to seperate the influence of the many natuaral variables impacting climat conditions.
Your argument in favor of GW, consists merely of repeating the dubious conclusions advanced by unrealiable studies and projections based on flawed, and worse, intentionally manipulated data.
To be clear, for example. GW enthusasts harp incessantly on their claim that GAT rose .6(C) degrees over the last century in support of their claim that human source CO2 is driving GAT to a "tipping point" notwithstanding the fact that 80% of that increase occurred prior to 1940 and that increases in CO2 levels to the extent they occurred, generally came well after the temperature increase were recorded.
As noted above, the entire GW movement is a palpable scam.
But feel free to repeat conclusions from your phoney studies if you feel you must.
Feel free to check, but I think if you look for error estimates, you'll find 0.6 +/- 0.2 C.
Co2 increases may only raise the temp 1 degree total, period. The models certainly can't tell us, cuz they are all very inaccurate,
You referenced the other article on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: models for that are going to be different than predictive models for future climate trends. The reasonable range for global warming due to doubled CO2 is 1.5 to 4.5 C. This range is due to the existence of positive and negative feedbacks whose contribution can only be estimated.
Then you cite 'estimates' of changes 5 times that over the next 100 years. With no basis in reality.
What kind of "basis in reality" do you require? The model formulations are based on scientific evaluation of Earth's climatic processes. You would need to read a lot of papers describing the details of the models to get your head around that. Do you have the time and the inclination for that?
But... read this posted comment: #134
GISS states that the 30-year trend is 0.6 C, 0.2 C per decade. This trend is confirmed by arch-skeptic Patrick Michaels, at 0.17 C per decade. If that trend continues, the warming over the next century will be 1.7 - 2 C. That is not insignificant (though Michaels might want us to think so), 1.8 C would be 3x the 20th century rate, and it's grounded in observational reality.
This is out of order, but I wanted to address it briefly:
So there may not have been any warming at all.
Temperature is just one variable. Below is a link to one of my favorite climate studies. See what you think. The first is to a description of the study; the second is to a shorter page with an excellent image.
150-Year Global Ice Record Reveals Major Warming Trend
Historical Trends in Lake and River Ice Cover in the Northern Hemisphere
As we've proven in the other thread, those 'estimates' from modeling are wrong. Or 'not accurate', as you prefer to state.
If that trend continues, the warming over the next century will be 1.7 - 2 C.
But since in the last 100 years the temp went up for 40 years, then down for 40 years, then up for 40 years . . . assuming a constant increase seems to be pretty wrongheaded!
That basic error alone should show you how intellectually dishonest this theory is.
Altho if you aren't even willing to admit that the models are wrong, I'm not sure there's much chance you'd admit this error either, I suppose. Sorry, I don't mean to sound fussy about it. I just can't imagine being so closed.
Below is a link to one of my favorite climate studies. See what you think.
Well that seems to confirm what I'm saying. Some of those are freezing later, some earlier, some not much change at all.
On the whole, not much change.
You haven't proven anything from the other thread, and these models are dissimilar from those models. The estimate is based on several different formulations addressed as an ensemble. That's why there is a range given. Recent studies have indicated that the highest estimates (6 C for doubled CO2) are very unlikely. There have not been similar studies indicating that the low end is unlikely. You're getting tiresome on this "the models are wrong" tack. Models are tools that can be used to provide estimates.
But since in the last 100 years the temp went up for 40 years, then down for 40 years, then up for 40 years . . . assuming a constant increase seems to be pretty wrongheaded!
Every climate scientist knows that there is going to be variability. The variability you cite above has been explained pretty well, and no one is expecting an absolute constant increase. It would be more accurate to say that over the next 100 years, the average trend will be +0.2 C per decade.
Altho if you aren't even willing to admit that the models are wrong,
For me to say that "the models are wrong", it would have to be demonstrated that there is a basic fundamental principle that is either missing or incorrectly calculated -- kind of like the erroneous units conversion that doomed a previous Mars mission.
Well that seems to confirm what I'm saying. Some of those are freezing later, some earlier, some not much change at all.
And the net result of evaluating the freeze/thaw data taken in toto is that bodies of water in the Northern Hemisphere are generally freezing a week later and thawing a week earlier. Do you see that as a climate trend, or not?
Then this is going to be very tiresome for you. Because the models are wrong. All of them. Because we don't know the system well enough yet. We do not know enough about all the variables to make an accurate model. And you have proven that even when I can show that they flat-out state the model is bad, you will ignore that and continue to claim the data is fact.
By which your credibility is very badly damaged, in my eyes, I am sorry to say.
It would be more accurate to say that over the next 100 years, the average trend will be +0.2 C per decade.
No, that would *not* be accurate. You don't *know* how long it will go up, and how long in will go down. You don't *know* at what point it will begin swinging, or what causes that swing.
So predicting that the temp will continue to increase at a steady rate, and doing math to calculate how much, is the height of dishonest science.
For me to say that "the models are wrong", it would have to be demonstrated that there is a basic fundamental principle that is either missing or incorrectly calculated -- kind of like the erroneous units conversion that doomed a previous Mars mission.
When comparing predictions to what actually happened, the model in that other thread was wrong. It underestimated numbers, did not predict several observed facts and made predictions that were not borne out by evidence.
And you can't admit the model was wrong.
What else is there to say about it? You're using the CBS line, "wrong, but accurate". That's spin of the first order. And typically, like with CBS, it suggest you know you're wrong and just continuing to spin.
I mean come on, you actually said, "Not wrong, inaccurate". How much more weasely can you get?
Do you see that as a climate trend, or not?
No, aggregates don't work that way. That is not what that data shows, no. Two freeze earlier, two freeze later, two are unchanged. Your side just isn't being honest when you say that "in toto, it's later". It's all in how you slice the data. Lieing with stats is easy. For example I could say, "Of the 6 areas studiet, 4 froze either earlier or unchanged. Therefore 66% are *not* freezing later."
If you want to continue this next week, do the following:
Find a climate model. Assess its assumptions. Show why the assumptions are inaccurate and why the predictions of the model must therefore be ignored.
So predicting that the temp will continue to increase at a steady rate, and doing math to calculate how much, is the height of dishonest science.
You misunderstood. The observed trend now is about 0.2 C per decade. If that continues (as Pat Michaels expects it will), at the end of the century the average global temperature will be about 2.0 higher. +/- 0.2 C, depending on the year.
Sure, it might not continue. We could also get hit by a big asteroid tomorrow and that would throw all the predictions out the window. But you can say what we don't know, but that's useless. Predictions are based on what we do know -- that's all that is possible.
When comparing predictions to what actually happened, the model in that other thread was wrong. It underestimated numbers, did not predict several observed facts and made predictions that were not borne out by evidence.
The FACT of a greenhouse-gas induced warming at the PETM is not, and was not, contradicted by the so-called "wrongness" of the models that were discussed in the article. Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations at the PETM caused a major global temperature increase. Do you deny that? If you say "yes" (i.e., you deny that fact), then no discussion on this subject will ensue.
I mean come on, you actually said, "Not wrong, inaccurate". How much more weasely can you get?
Modelers count their successes in a different way than you do. If a model reproduced both the trend and the duration of the temperature rise, but not the absolute magnitude, the modelers would tend to think they were on the right track and their basic assumptions were correct. But their second-order assumptions might need adjustment to get a more accurate result on that variable. You'd be hard-pressed to tell the modelers that their model was "wrong" in this case; they'd acknowledge that it needed improvement. (As they did.) But that inaccuracy wouldn't mean they'd scrap the whole thing and start over from the ground floor.
No, aggregates don't work that way. That is not what that data shows, no. Two freeze earlier, two freeze later, two are unchanged. Your side just isn't being honest when you say that "in toto, it's later".
Go back to the figure and tell me which bodies of water don't show a trend of later freeze dates over time. Do likewise for the earlier thaw dates.
1) The study titled "Characteristics of the heat island effect in Shanghai and its possible mechanism. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences", simply said NOTHING about the impact of UHI in global average temperatures or temperature records. Tell me what they concluded about this impact.
The study simply stated that "However, the heat island effect is large for local climate change". (page 1).
2) The study by McKitrick and Michaels:
Let's see: McKitrick is Senior Fellow for The Fraser Institute which received $60,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003. He's a writer from techcentralstation.com...The Tech Central Station Science Foundation received $95,000 from ExxonMobil for "Climate Change Support" in 2003. He is a Contributing Writer for The George C. Marshall Institute which received $185,000 from ExxonMobil for "Climate Change Public Information and Policy Research" in 2002-2003.
Michaels is Senior Fellow for The Cato Institute, which received $55,000 from ExxonMobil in 2002-2003 and Science Roundtable Member of techcentralstation.com, which I already talked about
Can you say conflict of interest?
3) The study by Liming Zhou, who you chose to try to smear after you learned that he concluded that the effect of UHI globally was small.
And I didn't mention that McKitrick is simply an economist graduate with no climate credentials whatsoever.
When asked about McKitrick's criticism towards Global Warming supporters that "Their method looks through the data for hockey stick shapes", Schmidt said:
"This is a tiny step in the hockey stick analysis. If you do it in different ways, you still get the answer you got before, providing you don't throw away any significant data,"and
he says, McIntyre and McKitrick's analysis removes crucial data included in the original hockey stick work.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4349133.stm
He's a meteorologist (not a simple economist) from Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology.
-Won the Outstanding Scientific Paper Award for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1997.
-1998 winner, along with his colleagues, of a WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION AWARD for the paper entitled "A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere"
Dr. Tom Wigley, has referred to Michaels' statements on global warming as "inaccurate," "seriously misleading," and "a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation."
link
Indeed. This is a man who has shown absolutely no respect for evangelicals in the past--- in fact, much if not the greater part of his time is spent publically debunking their beliefs to his satisfaction. We're supposed to believe that he takes their beliefs as authoritative? What, does he believe in the Second Coming now? Why not? And his his next turning point came in watching Al Gore's movie? And he claims these added up to a conversion experience driven by the need for "data (to)trump politics?"
What? Al Gore's sci-fi horror movie that coincidentally comes out as Democrats start to fight to be the front runner in the nest presidential election is supposed to be free from politics? WTF?
And he completely misses Bjorn Lomborg's main point, which was NOT that gloabl warming wassn't happening--- Lomborg's point was that an honest cost-benefit analysis would show that even given estimates like those Shermer buys into, programs that stifle humanity like Kyoto would hurt the human race more than they would help it, especially given the real problems like malaria that need solving like in the world like malaria in Africa.
Jared Diamonds has to be the most over-rated of... well, people writing these days. Everything true in his Gun, Germs and Steel had already been said better in Thomas Sowell's Culture trilogy and everything original in Germs was trivial or false. Besides, how can Shermer take a conference as authoritative when there was no opposing viewpoint presented? This gullible tripe is supposed to represent a "skeptical" point of view? What pathetic drivel. Skeptic, my ass.
You think $55,000 to the Cato Institute--- not to Michaels himself--- somehow compromises Michaels? Are you serious? Look, based on that logic, the funding the Pentagon gave directly to Noam Chomsky would make him... well... adopt saner views that were more like the Defense Department's. We've all looked at work from the Fraser Institue and Cato, and they aren't corporate shills anymore than FR is. Saying they people from those places can't be trusted is equivalent to saying Ed Meese isn't an expert on the Constitition because he was in the Reagan administration. How can you talk about smearing Liming Zhou and then immediately thereafter attempt to smear Michaels and McKitrick?
I appreciate your repeating the essential point that the AGW enthusisasts, last vestige of defense, that of claiming bias, challenging credentials and claiming CONSENSUS, says nothing for the merits of their scientific theories, which do not withstand any reasonable scrutiny.
The series of posts attempting to smear sources of studies and commentary contradictory to AGW, was remarkable for its failure to address key fallacies of AGW, such as the fact that claimed/ actual measured increases (possibly/probably influenced by UHI) over the last 100 years were non uniform and substantially preceeded measured increases in CO2 levels which disproportionately occurred after the temperature increases they claim are caused by CO2 increase.
Clearly there is a small legion of AGW true-belivers who will not be moved by logic, science, or common sense. They are actually few in number, however, and do not seem to respond well when directly challenged.
Interestingly I never "smeared" Liming Zhou, I simply pointed out that if he expressed an opinion to the effect that his proof of Shanghai being a strong UHI, was not proof of a Global UHI influence on GAT, that his study didnt really addresss that question one way or another. Other studies of course, have demonstrated that UHI occurs in very small towns, and thus the only non-estimated historic temperature data predating sattelite measurements (1979) are hopeless contaminated by UHI that none of the IPCC models meaningfully attempts to/ or can deal with. Pluse the multiple, non-linear, often chaotic, natural cycles operating to influence GAT are admittedly not addressed by IPCC studies and further admittedly unknown in their influence on GAT.
Sort of like studying acquarium fish to learn about whales.
And Michaels not only worked for the CATO institute, which receives funding from Exxon. The quarterly he edits, (World Climate Report) is funded by Western Fuels, through the GREENING EARTH SOCIETY. He also was a visiting scientist for the George C. Marshall Institute, which received $80,000 from ExxonMobile for its Global Climate Change Program in 2002.
There is a conflict of interest, even though you believe the energy industry is not attempting to profit from their findings, and that the researchers will not continue to please these companies in order to get more $$$ in the future.
I didn't make those comments, but I think Gail Wynand's point was not to smear or compliment Zhou, but to take issue with the scope of his findings; that is, what you took his findings to show.
This is different than making ad hominem argument against Michaels or McKitrick, even a consistent one. The premise that privately funded scientists somehow are suppsoed to be by definition compromised while scientists funded by NGO's or the government has been shown to be mistaken by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock in Public Choice economics. And it's a good thing, too , or else, using the same reaoning, we would have to distrust private school teachers more than public school teachers, PBS MacNeil-Leher News Hour more than Special Report, All Things Considered's Nina Totenberg more than Micheal Barone. I would submit this would be a bad idea. You seem to know quite a bit about this issue-- my impression is that you can hold your own without imputing base motives without evidence.
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.