Posted on 02/09/2007 9:09:59 AM PST by Tolik
If the GW skeptics are right, and if we are actually on the cusp of another cooling trend, the efforts of the GW alarmists will - if effective - take us in the wrong direction. Or, at least, that's how my primitive mind understands these concepts.
Thanks for both of your articles--long reads but worth the time!
There is an awful lot science doesn't understand yet. Every answer uncovers more questions. Job security is great, isn't it?
Brain overload, read later
Long article, but what I read of it so far is good.
Has there ever before in history been a time when massive changes to the economy (and the way we live) have been pushed for based on a relatively new and unproven science like this? I really find it amazing that so many people bought into the Kyoto Accord, for example, without asking a) whether the proof for anthropogenic global warming was there, and b) even if it does exist, is this the best way to combat it? After all, the only way we're going to stop or even reduce global warming, if the science is correct, is to basically completely stop the release of greenhouse gasses from the combustion of fossil fuels. Holding output at current levels or slightly decreasing them only means that the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere won't accelerate, or not quite as much. In other words, if anthropogenic global warming is going to happen, there's nothing we can do to stop it. Or, at least, nothing we can do in terms of reducing CO2 to the atmosphere is going to make a difference. So maybe we'd better concentrate on how we're going to deal with it if it does happen.
"Has there ever before in history been a time when massive changes to the economy (and the way we live) have been pushed for based on a relatively new and unproven science like this?"
Well, Hitler's idea of boosting the economy in Germany by getting rid of the Jews (based on the 'science" of building the "perfect" race) pops into mind.
Bookmarked
placemark
1970's they talked about spreading soot across the polar caps to melt them.
Here is another good summary of the issue http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1732479/posts
He's completely wrong about Mars -- so what else might he be completely wrong about?
Bookmark to self...
...Climate Cassandras say the facts are clear and the case is closed.
The consensus catechism about global warming has six tenets:
1. Global warming is happening.
2. It is our (humanity's, but especially America's) fault.
3. It will continue unless we mend our ways.
4. If it continues we are in grave danger.
5. We know how to slow or even reverse the warming.
6. The benefits from doing that will far exceed the costs.
Only the first tenet is clearly true, and only in the sense that the Earth warmed about 0.7 degrees Celsius in the 20th century.
We do not know the extent to which human activity caused this. The activity is economic growth, the wealth-creation that makes possible improved well-being—better nutrition, medicine, education, etc. How much reduction of such social goods are we willing to accept by slowing economic activity in order to (try to) regulate the planet's climate?
We do not know how much we must change our economic activity to produce a particular reduction of warming. And we do not know whether warming is necessarily dangerous. Over the millennia, the planet has warmed and cooled for reasons that are unclear but clearly were unrelated to SUVs. Was life better when ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there? Are we sure the climate at this particular moment is exactly right, and that it must be preserved, no matter the cost?
It could cost tens of trillions (in expenditures and foregone economic growth, here and in less-favored parts of the planet) to try to fine-tune the planet's temperature. We cannot know if these trillions would purchase benefits commensurate with the benefits that would have come from social wealth that was not produced.
Thanks! I remember that now. And of course now they are covering glaciers in Europe with white plastic to keep them from melting. However, a few glaciers here and there can help maintain the local ski resorts, but won't change the global climate.
...Now imagine that all the variables about global climate are known with less than 100 percent certainty. Let's be wildly and unrealistically optimistic and say that climate scientists know each variable to 99 percent certainty! (No such thing, of course). And let's optimistically suppose there are only one-hundred x's, y's, and z's --- all the variables that can change the climate: like the amount of cloud cover over Antarctica, the changing ocean currents in the South Pacific, Mount Helena venting, sun spots, Chinese factories burning more coal every year, evaporation of ocean water (the biggest "greenhouse" gas), the wobbles of earth orbit around the sun, and yes, the multifarious fartings of billions of living creatures on the face of the earth, minus, of course, all the trillions of plants and algae that gobble up all the CO2, nitrogen-containing molecules, and sulfur-smelling exhalations spewed out by all of us animals. Got that? It all goes into our best math model.So in the best case, the smartest climatologist in the world will know 100 variables, each one to an accuracy of 99 percent. Want to know what the probability of our spiffiest math model would be, if that perfect world existed? Have you ever multiplied (99/100) by itself 100 times? According to the Google calculator, it equals a little more than 36.6 percent.
The Bottom line: our best imaginable model has a total probability of one out of three. How many billions of dollars in Kyoto money are we going to spend on that chance?
Or should we just blow it at the dog races?
So all ye of global warming faith, rejoice in the ambiguity that real life presents to all of us. Neither planetary catastrophe nor paradise on earth are sure bets. Sorry about that. (Consider growing up, instead.)
That's why human-caused global warming is an hypothesis, not a fact. Anybody who says otherwise isn't doing science, but trying to sell you a bill of goods.
Probably.
The article in the thread attributes it to solar activity. It's not solar activity that's causing the observed changes.
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Filed under: Extras— group @ 12:00 am - ()
RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists."
Sounds like a bunch of climatology pimps.
Not only that, but with the inclusion of McIntyre as a peer-reviewer, it has become apparent that peer review does not involve checking the math, or even that the methods described on the data cited are what the author of the paper did at all. More than one "peer-reviewed" journal has responded to his requests for the data so he can duplicated the math with an exclamation that in [x many years] they've been editing the journal, that no one has ever asked for that.
Another comment, regarding the "settled science" claim: Apparently the 4AR IPCC report claims that with all of the new data, the certainty of humans causing GW *now* rises above 90%.
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