Is there a coherent anti-AGW narrative?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I hardly ever see any discussion of Global Warming here...not.*

GW threads quickly descend into bickering and as a non-expert I find the exchanges hard to follow, so I thought I'd start a thread to ask a specific question.

Basically, I just don't get what those who reject the idea that humans are warming the world are actually presenting as a counter-argument. The narrative supplied by the consensus view makes sense to my layman's mind. If I list the steps in that narrative could someone please tell what the opponents say.

As a first approximation, if I can't identify a coherent narrative from one side in an argument (Cf. Homeopathy!) it seems a strong indicator that their argument is not coherent but simply represents deliberate contrarianism, where success is claimed by nit-picking at single elements in the orthodox opinion but without reference to whether the individually picked nits constitute a valid alternative view.

1. Temperatures have risen since human industrial activity commenced.

2. Evidence for temperature rises is derived from many sources including. Individual signals may be hard to identify, but the accumulated evidence is self-reinforcing.
2a. Actual records of temperature in historical times.
2b. Temperatures inferred from geological evidence.
2c. Records of such things as glacier coverage and sea-ice coverage

3. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen since human industrial activity commenced.

4. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

5. CO2 has risen enough to increase that greenhouse effect.

6. That increased greenhouse effect has increased global temperature.

From what I have read, I can accept that 1 can be hard to spot in the noisy data, but I don't see how 3 can be honestly refuted. If 3 cannot be refuted then it looks like attempting to refute 5 is at least rational even if actually wrong.

Any takers? Specifically, could someone from the "anti" side present a simple coherent summary of their view? Thanks.

 

[volatile]

Funny - I just had this exact thought. Some say it's happening, but it's not anthropogenic. Some say it's not happening at all. Some say it's sunspots or simply climate cycles... some even say the Earth is cooling!

Which is it, guys?!

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Funny - I just had this exact thought. Some say it's happening, but it's not anthropogenic. Some say it's not happening at all. Some say it's sunspots or simply climate cycles... some even say the Earth is cooling!

Which is it, guys?!

And some seem to say, "Of course it's happening, but it doesn't matter because technical fixes will help us adapt and overcome it". This latter party would seem, logically, to be part of the orthodox party agreeing about what is happening but simply disagreeing about the appropriate response. Yet, they come across as disbelievers in AGW and this internal contradiction, "Yeah, well, even if it is happening we can fix it" makes more sense if the underlying motivation is a desire to avoid changing our current lifestyle at all rather than an acceptance of the reality of AGW but a different view of the solution.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

I wish you good luck in your endeavours.

AAA

 

[DogB]

I hardly ever see any discussion of Global Warming here...not.*

GW threads quickly descend into bickering and as a non-expert I find the exchanges hard to follow, so I thought I'd start a thread to ask a specific question.

Basically, I just don't get what those who reject the idea that humans are warming the world are actually presenting as a counter-argument.

Honestly that’s because there’s probably as many theories as there are skeptics. I can give you my take but that doesn’t mean everyone on ‘my side’ of the argument will agree with me.

The narrative supplied by the consensus view makes sense to my layman's mind. If I list the steps in that narrative could someone please tell what the opponents say.

Good idea.

As a first approximation, if I can't identify a coherent narrative from one side in an argument (Cf. Homeopathy!) it seems a strong indicator that their argument is not coherent but simply represents deliberate contrarianism, where success is claimed by nit-picking at single elements in the orthodox opinion but without reference to whether the individually picked nits constitute a valid alternative view.

Sure and to be perfectly honest there is a fair bit of that in the anti-AGW camp.

1. Temperatures have risen since human industrial activity commenced.

Probably. As you state below there’s a lot of noise in the signal. There’s also a possible cooling or plateau period from about the 1950’s to the 1970’s. This is usually attributed to aerosol and SO2 production.

2. Evidence for temperature rises is derived from many sources including. Individual signals may be hard to identify, but the accumulated evidence is self-reinforcing.
2a. Actual records of temperature in historical times.

OK for the last 100 years or so but much better over the last 30 or so.

2b. Temperatures inferred from geological evidence.

Sure. Paleoclimate research often looks at landform and such to identify glaciation events. We can also track volcanic eruptions.

2c. Records of such things as glacier coverage and sea-ice coverage

Also somewhat useful. The further back they go the more they stray into the realm of anecdote.

You also have to include the various proxies in this list. Tree rings, ice cores, sediment cores, isotope analysis and probably a dozen others. These range in value from excellent (ice cores) to near useless (IMHO tree rings).

3. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen since human industrial activity commenced.

Indeed.

4. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

True.

5. CO2 has risen enough to increase that greenhouse effect.

Um, I’ll give this true also but see below.

6. That increased greenhouse effect has increased global temperature.

Um, I’ll give this true also but see below.

From what I have read, I can accept that 1 can be hard to spot in the noisy data, but I don't see how 3 can be honestly refuted. If 3 cannot be refuted then it looks like attempting to refute 5 is at least rational even if actually wrong.

Sure but Q6 is the kicker. We have to ask the question ‘by how much’. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere should warm the surface. But what if other effects are more significant? What if the CO2 effect is negligible?

The following are my questions. The one’s that I’ve yet to get what I consider an acceptable answer.

1. In the past CO2 levels have trailed major climate changes. It is suggested that they amplify said changes but after all this time I still fail to see how that follows. It's like claiming that when I light a fire the ash it produces amplifies its warming effect. I just don't see any reason to believe that.

2. In the far distant past climate and CO2 levels seem to have been ‘decoupled’. During this time other drivers were much more significant.

3. It is quite possible that climate events to dwarf the current changes have occurred in the past. For instance the end of the Younger Dryas may have seen a temperature increase of 7 degrees in just a few years.

4. There are some suggestions that some, if not all, of the current warming could be explained by various theories about cosmic ray interactions with cloud formation and how that is affected by the strength of the heliosphere. At least one major experiment is underway to check this idea.

5. Small climate excursions happen all the time. The most recent and well known are the medieval warm period (MWP) and the little ice age (LIA). It is fairly clear that the LIA ended in the mid 1800’s and the world has been warming ever since. The warming may be accelerating but the undeniable long term natural warming is a conflicting data point in assessing the effects of AGW.

6. Some people have suggested that many interlocking climate cycles are operating at all times and that the recent warming is just an expression of a few of these.

There are other points but that list will do for now. So do they add up to a coherent counter argument? The honest answer is - not at the moment. What they say clearly to me is that the science is anything but settled. Much more research needs to be done.

Any takers? Specifically, could someone from the "anti" side present a simple coherent summary of their view? Thanks.

Hope that gives you an idea of my mindset.

For me it is not political; the political party I vote for have an emissions trading scheme as an integral part of their platform. It is not financial; I’m currently spending a significant amount of money to install sufficient solar panels on my roof to provide an over unity installation – ie overall I’ll be adding power to the grid.

No, for me it is all about the science. In particular the willingness of our leaders to listen to scientific advice. The world is going down a path of spending unimaginable amounts of money on mitigating CO2 production. We had better be right because if we aren’t, the next time, when we really need them to listen to us, maybe they won’t.

 

[Hallo Alfie]

Nice job Dogb.

AAA

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Thanks, DogB. I can't use the quote functionvery easily at the moment- browsing with my phone, so i won't quote your actual words back to you.

re: Trailing. I've seen that cited, but our best data are current data with a fine temporal resolution, but a short timespan. Do we have enough temporal resolution in paleo data to make any comment at all other than to say they are correlated?

It seems to me that citing other greenhouse gases gets close to being a tu quoque fallacy. It does not address the question of whether CO2 raises temperatures but citing them creates a lot of snow and static in the argument.

You concede that CO2 has[\I] risen and does affect temperature. Your central question is to ask to what degree it alter temperatures. In other words, your narrative is essentially the same as AGW orthodoxy except at that point. Is that a fair summary?

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

So, your question would be, given that CO2 does raise temperature, dose the temp rise caused by forseeable CO2 rises matter? Conversely, at what CO2 level, hence at what time pont, does a damaging temp rise occur?

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Furthermore, another problem I see with those denying AGW is that they often seem to get very close to implying that CO2 could be allowed to rise without limit, which cannot ne rationally sustained.

 

[macdoc]

I'm going to short form this DogB as you are smart enough to chase the answers further and they have been given elsewhere...

The following are my questions. The one’s that I’ve yet to get what I consider an acceptable answer.

1. In the past CO2 levels have trailed major climate changes. It is suggested that they amplify said changes but after all this time I still fail to see how that follows. It's like claiming that when I light a fire the ash it produces amplifies its warming effect. I just don't see any reason to believe that.

C02 can be both a driver OR a feedback - now and in the case of the Siberian Traps it was a driver.
As a feedback it involves the ocean uptake or release...warming earth due to orbital/albedo changes = less carbon solubility = more carbon released and around it goes as a positive feedback - that same feedback will work in reverse, cooler ocean due to orbital, more C02 capacity in the ocean, less in atmosphere, cooler around it goes.
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/678.html

2. In the far distant past climate and CO2 levels seem to have been ‘decoupled’. During this time other drivers were much more significant.

Of course - why would you assume C02 would be a driver then?? There are other forces at work including young sun.

3. It is quite possible that climate events to dwarf the current changes have occurred in the past. For instance the end of the Younger Dryas may have seen a temperature increase of 7 degrees in just a few years.

Thermohaline

William Patterson, from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and his colleagues have shown that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini ‘ice age’ in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would take tens of years.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by a mini ice-age, known by scientists as the Younger Dryas, and nicknamed the ‘Big Freeze’, which lasted around 1300 years. Geological evidence shows that the Big Freeze was brought about by a sudden influx of freshwater, when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This vast pulse, a greater volume than all of North America’s Great Lakes combined, diluted the North Atlantic conveyor belt and brought it to a halt.

http://www.esf.org/media-centre/pre...lunged-europe-into-ice-age-in-months-592.html

C'mon DogB you should have known that...there are numerous reasons for regional temperature swings....even abrupt ones...

There is also the comet hitting ice hypothesis...
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/03/14/did-climate-change-kill-off-woolly-mammoths-and-giant-wombats/

4. There are some suggestions that some, if not all, of the current warming could be explained by various theories about cosmic ray interactions with cloud formation and how that is affected by the strength of the heliosphere. At least one major experiment is underway to check this idea.

Stop with the polemics - it's not a "major experiment" - it's a faint hope to find a link and has been discounted in numerous papers
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/why-the-continued-interest/
at best it has a minor affect as
a) there is no mechanism
b) there is no observation
c) you would have to also explain why GHG which is a known mechanism has stopped (see Myriad's post below )

5. Small climate excursions happen all the time. The most recent and well known are the medieval warm period (MWP) and the little ice age (LIA). It is fairly clear that the LIA ended in the mid 1800’s and the world has been warming ever since. The warming may be accelerating but the undeniable long term natural warming is a conflicting data point in assessing the effects of AGW.

see above about regional NAO, ENSO, PDO and thermohaline and even in the large scale continental positioning....
"Natural" warming still has to have a reason DogB and we are in a cooling phase of the orbital cycle. In fact if you look at the global temps you will find they WERE declining in keeping with the orbital position ( it's a very slow process) until it reversed as fossil C02 as a driver kicked in.'
Here is the Holocene - note present time on the left - you can see the overall drift down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

6. Some people have suggested that many interlocking climate cycles are operating at all times and that the recent warming is just an expression of a few of these.

Those are inside the grey box - just moving energy around regionally - not increasing the total energy content..
Ocean cycles are overlaid on the increasing energy/thermal load and you get peaks like the 1998 El Nino and quiet periods like the back to back La Nina's in the mid last decade ending at the beginning of this year.

I or others will be happy to expand or point you to papers on any of the above.....so in the future you cannot claim they have never been answered.


•••

Now it's my turn....answer Myriad....

Originally Posted by Myriad
As one of those non-experts on climatology, but possessing a passing knowledge of basic physics, here's my take on all the "things I may not know about climate change."

There is a gray box, which represents the earth's surface. Specifically, a region encompassing the atmosphere, the ocean, the soil, and the top few meters of bedrock. This overlaps substantially with the biosphere but is not necessarily the same, so rather than possibly misuse the term (or some other) I'll invent my own and just keep calling it the "gray box."

The gray box contains a certain amount of heat.

There are two significant heat influxes to the gray box: solar radiation, and heat conducted and convected to the surface from the earth's interior.

There is one significant heat efflux from the gray box: radiation into space.

(There are in addition a number of other heat influxes, which I judge to be insignificant. These include kinetic energy of meteors, tidal friction, radiation from the moon and other astral bodies, and nuclear reactions occurring on or near the surface.)

Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere decreases the rate of thermal radiation into space.

Therefore, additional heat will accumulate in the box and its temperature must increase.

"But it's more complicated than that," say the "global warming skeptics." And then proceed to describe all kinds of things going on inside the gray box. Ocean currents, water vapor, ice, plant cover, soil microbes, and so on endlessly.

And I think, no it's not more complicated than that. Heat in > heat out means temperature goes up.

If anyone wants to convince me that AGW is not a real concern warranting measures to reduce it, they must show compelling evidence of one or more of the following hypotheses:

1. That greenhouse gases are not accumulating in the atmosphere due to manmade causes.

2. That greenhouse gases do not decrease the thermal radiation efflux from the gray box.

3. That something will cause (or is causing) a decrease in heat influx (either solar radiation or heat from the earth's interior) to the gray box that balances the expected decrease in heat efflux.

4. That despite an accumulation of heat energy inside the gray box, its temperature will not rise.

5. That an increase in the temperature in the gray box is not a concern.

Number 1 appears to be contradicted by direct measurements.
Number 2 appears to be contradicted by basic rules of optics.
Number 3 requires a complete description of the mechanism, and strong evidence confirming that it exists.
Number 4 appears to be contradicted by basic laws of thermodynamics.
Number 5 requires addressing each of the obvious expected consequences of a temperature increase including melting ice, shifting climate zones, redistribution of fresh water supplies, and threats to locally adapted flora and fauna, in a quantitative way.

Number 5 is the only one that requires looking in detail inside the gray box. So, the best chance for making a convincing argument for #5 would be to work with and build upon the expertise and tools developed within the field of climatology.

The problem for most "AGW skeptics" is that they dismiss climatology in the mistaken belief that climatologists being wrong about aspects of climatology would somehow argue in favor of hypotheses 1, 2, 3, or 4. This is futile because nothing we don't know (or might be wrong about) concerning what happens inside the gray box can refute "Heat in > heat out means temperature goes up."

Abandoning the discipline of climatology leaves them with only handwaving of the "maybe the heat only heats up things whose temperature doesn't matter" or "maybe the temperature increase will be so slow that we won't notice" variety to bring to hypothesis 5.

So, back to the "AGW skeptics": what don't I know about climate change that supports hypothesis 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5?

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[volatile]

No, for me it is all about the science.

Why, then, have you taken a position contrary to that of pretty much everyone in the world qualified to make the scientific call? Do you imagine that the doubts you express have not occurred to the climate scientists at NASA or at the IPCC, with PhDs in climatology and decades of study behind them? Do you think that they have not examined things like cyclic variability, accounted for them in their data, and still come to the conclusion that climate change is anthropogenic?

That's what bugs me about these debates - laypeople who doubt the AGW hypothesis will always bring up things like prior warming in order to cast doubt on the claims for the cause of warming now, because of nothing more than "common sense". They ask questions, but are not interested in the answers! They don't even care that people have gone to time, money and trouble to answer the exact questions they're asking. "But what about Medieval Warming?!", they'll crow; as if that undermines the AGW hypothesis. They don't care about the hundreds upon hundreds of research papers which have investigated that very question and still concluded that global warming is a present and man-made problem.

 

[DogB]

Thanks, DogB. I can't use the quote functionvery easily at the moment- browsing with my phone, so i won't quote your actual words back to you.

That's fine.

re: Trailing. I've seen that cited, but our best data are current data with a fine temporal resolution, but a short timespan. Do we have enough temporal resolution in paleo data to make any comment at all other than to say they are correlated?

I've seen 800 years quoted but I'm not sure how big the error bars are. It's fairly visible on the ice core data.

It seems to me that citing other greenhouse gases gets close to being a tu quoque fallacy.

I wasn't aware that I had. The only thing I can say about other greenhouse gases is that they almost certainly amplify the main effect. A warmer world will definitely have more atmospheric methane and water vapour.

It does not address the question of whether CO2 raises temperatures but citing them creates a lot of snow and static in the argument.

The argument is full of snow and static. Don’t blame me.

You concede that CO2 has[\I] risen and does affect temperature. Your central question is to ask to what degree it alter temperatures. In other words, your narrative is essentially the same as AGW orthodoxy except at that point. Is that a fair summary?

Quite fair with the proviso that I keep open the possibility that the CO2 effect is completely negligible once all the effects are taken into account.

 

[DogB]

So, your question would be, given that CO2 does raise temperature, dose the temp rise caused by forseeable CO2 rises matter? Conversely, at what CO2 level, hence at what time pont, does a damaging temp rise occur?

Exactly.

Furthermore, another problem I see with those denying AGW is that they often seem to get very close to implying that CO2 could be allowed to rise without limit, which cannot ne rationally sustained.

Also true.

Of course the problem is eventually self limiting. There is only so much coal and oil. I would hope that we would not be so short sighted as to wait until it’s all gone before figuring out good alternatives.

Also there are other problems we need to address. Ocean acidification is the one that springs to mind easily.

 

[DogB]

Why, then, have you taken a position contrary to that of pretty much everyone in the world qualified to make the scientific call?

Because I don’t believe in science by consensus? Because there are questions that need to be answered.?

BTW I won’t bother to point out the gaping holes in the ‘answers’ that macdoc posted above. Anybody that’s been following the subject on this site has seen them debated ad infinitum.

Do you imagine that the doubts you express have not occurred to the climate scientists at NASA or at the IPCC, with PhDs in climatology and decades of study behind them?

Oh I’m sure it’s occurred to them.

Do you think that they have not examined things like cyclic variability, accounted for them in their data, and still come to the conclusion that climate change is anthropogenic?

Perhaps you can point out where they have done this. Hell most of the cycles I’m talking about are still not proved. Climate science is a rapidly developing field.

That's what bugs me about these debates - laypeople who doubt the AGW hypothesis will always bring up things like prior warming in order to cast doubt on the claims for the cause of warming now, because of nothing more than "common sense".

Well what’s wrong with that? If it’s happened before then the likelihood is that it will happen again. And maybe, just maybe, it’s happening right now. It’s hardly rocket science.

And past attempts to muddy the water reveal that certain elements in the pro AGW field realise just how compelling the argument is.

They ask questions, but are not interested in the answers!

Sure we are.

They don't even care that people have gone to time, money and trouble to answer the exact questions they're asking.

What worries me is when people think that asking questions is somehow anathema to science.

"But what about Medieval Warming?!", they'll crow; as if that undermines the AGW hypothesis.

Well what about it?

They don't care about the hundreds upon hundreds of research papers which have investigated that very question and still concluded that global warming is a present and man-made problem.

No I’m more concerned with the hundreds of papers that have ignored it. And maybe more than a few that tried to sweep it under the carpet.

 

[volatile]

Because I don’t believe in science by consensus? Because there are questions that need to be answered.?

BTW I won’t bother to point out the gaping holes in the ‘answers’ that macdoc posted above. Anybody that’s been following the subject on this site has seen them debated ad infinitum.



Oh I’m sure it’s occurred to them.



Perhaps you can point out where they have done this. Hell most of the cycles I’m talking about are still not proved. Climate science is a rapidly developing field.



Well what’s wrong with that? If it’s happened before then the likelihood is that it will happen again. And maybe, just maybe, it’s happening right now. It’s hardly rocket science.

And past attempts to muddy the water reveal that certain elements in the pro AGW field realise just how compelling the argument is.



Sure we are.



What worries me is when people think that asking questions is somehow anathema to science.



Well what about it?



No I’m more concerned with the hundreds of papers that have ignored it. And maybe more than a few that tried to sweep it under the carpet.

Do you know more about climate science than NASA, the IPCC and all the other bodies that have studied these issues in depth? Do you think your criticisms are novel? Paper upon paper upon paper have addressed the very concerns you cite, and still come to the conclusion you disagree with.On what basis can you - a layman - presume to know more than the experts?

Asking questions is not an anathema to science. Ignoring the answers is.

----

ETA: Is there any reason you skipped over MacDoc's post?

 

[Pixel42]

BTW I won’t bother to point out the gaping holes in the ‘answers’ that macdoc posted above. Anybody that’s been following the subject on this site has seen them debated ad infinitum.

I have spent a lot of time studying this subject and have been following these threads for several years. macdoc's summary matches my understanding, and I have never seen anything he said sensibly debated, let alone refuted, on this board. So I would be grateful if you would indeed "point out the gaping holes in the ‘answers’ that macdoc posted above".

 

[uk_dave]

I have spent a lot of time studying this subject and have been following these threads for several years. macdoc's summary matches my understanding, and I have never seen anything he said sensibly debated, let alone refuted, on this board. So I would be grateful if you would indeed "point out the gaping holes in the ‘answers’ that macdoc posted above".

Seconded

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

(see Myriad's post below )

Crikey, that's neat. Can you link to it's original appearance so I can see the context in which it was posted?

Is it actually the case that no one has ever refuted this?

 

[macdoc]

Yeah I've posted it here and at Dawkin's numerous times and you'd think it was the black plague carrier just walked in given the "disappearing act"......

It's been out a long while.
It's a very good summary which is why I hung on to it.

I figured it was a quid pro quo situation here....

 

[lomiller]

re: Trailing. I've seen that cited, but our best data are current data with a fine temporal resolution, but a short timespan. Do we have enough temporal resolution in paleo data to make any comment at all other than to say they are correlated?

Note that CO2 changes are predicted to trail temperature changes unless the change was initiated by a change in CO2. DogB’s response is an argument form ignorance. He doesn’t understand how this prediction comes to be so he considers it untrue.

The easy version is that small variations in the earths orbit cause a smallish initial change in temperature, but this releases CO2 that causes the rest of the temperature change. You can also approach it from then perspective of feedback theory and show the same thing. It’s completely implausible for the correlation between these orbital variations and climate to be anything but causation, but they are far to small to explain the changes in climate without the amplification effect of greenhouse gasses.

You concede that CO2 has[\I] risen and does affect temperature. Your central question is to ask to what degree it alter temperatures. In other words, your narrative is essentially the same as AGW orthodoxy except at that point. Is that a fair summary?

The unforced natural variation in the earths climate is observed to be ~ +/- 0.5 deg C in any given year with a mean close to 0 past ~30 years. I.E you don’t expect any change in mean temperature on a scale of greater then ~30 years unless *something* changes. Changes in volcanic and solar activity are generally sufficient to explain pre-industrial temperature changes.

If you assume a much higher climate sensitivity then is currently believed you can even explain temperatures to ~1950 this way. The only know change capable of explaining the last 40 years, however is greenhouse gas levels. This also allows us to assume a climate sensitivity that is consistent with what’s observed in the paleo-climate record.