Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[BadBoy]

Last in the BBC series "Frozen Planet" sounds interesting:

On Thin Ice Episode 7 of 7

David Attenborough journeys to both polar regions to investigate what rising temperatures will mean for the people and wildlife that live there and for the rest of the planet.

David starts out at the North Pole, standing on sea ice several metres thick, but which scientists predict could be open ocean within the next few decades. The Arctic has been warming at twice the global average, so David heads out with a Norwegian team to see what this means for polar bears. He comes face-to-face with a tranquilised female, and discovers that mothers and cubs are going hungry as the sea ice on which they hunt disappears. In Canada, Inuit hunters have seen with their own eyes what scientists have seen from space; the Arctic Ocean has lost 30% of its summer ice cover over the last 30 years. For some, the melting sea ice will allow access to trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and minerals. For the rest of us, it means the planet will get warmer, as sea ice is important to reflect back the sun's energy. Next David travels to see what's happening to the ice on land: in Greenland, we follow intrepid ice scientists as they study giant waterfalls of meltwater, which are accelerating iceberg calving events, and ultimately leading to a rise in global sea level.

Temperatures have also risen in the Antarctic - David returns to glaciers photographed by the Shackleton expedition and reveals a dramatic retreat over the past century. It's not just the ice that is changing - ice-loving adelie penguins are disappearing, and more temperate gentoo penguins are moving in. Finally, we see the first ever images of the largest recent natural event on our planet - the break up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, an ice sheet the size of Jamaica, which shattered into hundreds of icebergs in 2009.

 

[Pixel42]

Last in the BBC series "Frozen Planet" sounds interesting:

According to the Guardian

this episode will not be broadcast in the US.

Sadly even the Radio Times felt it necessary to "balance" their article on this episode with a piece by Nigel Lawson in which he deliberately misleads his readers with the usual cherry-picked facts presented with neither context nor explanation.

 

[Gwynpaine]

FREEMAN DYSON; old and full of sleep

I am grateful for to NOSONEW for posting the Barry Bickmore clip. It cannot be posted too often

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNXuX6D60U&feature=youtu.be

It is inaccurate however to call Barry Bickmore “ a long time denier” who has seen the light' He is a trained scientist who simply found the truth easy to avoid. That leaves some excuse for an ignoramus like me. I knew that some qualified climate experts remained outside the consensus and I know still that scientific establishments, like all establishments, can give mavericks a hard time. But until I read Anderegg’s study I did not realise that peer-reviewed dissenters were so pitifully few. Among hundreds of peer-reviewed experts Anderegg et al found fewer than three percent who stood outside the consensus; and some of these few were far from being outright deniers. My own complacency was fed not by pronouncements of aristocratic crackpots or internet troglodytes but by those of some senior scientists. I used to be a great fan of Freeman Dyson. Every maverick opinion deserves a fair hearing, especially when the maverick is so a world famous scientist of the first rank.

When in the presence of any famous theoretical physicist WH Auden felt, he said, like a vicar in the presence of a Duke. I think most of us are prone to such unscientific awe. But when they come out from behind their magical equations, these choice and master spirits of science can display a quite ordinary imagination and sometimes an extraordinary vanity. Let us be grateful. A touch of stupidity makes us all equal.


Here is some things Dyson has said:


"

First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly. Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer. Third, there are many other causes of climate change besides human activities, as we know from studying the past. Fourth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and top-soil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs. Fifth, the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects. Sixth, summing up the other five reasons, the climate of the earth is an immensely complicated system and nobody is close to understanding it."

It was a great mystery to understand how this [Continental Drift] had happened, but not much doubt that it happened. So it came as a surprise to me later to learn that there had been a consensus against Wegener. If there was a consensus, it was among a small group of experts rather than among the broader public. I think that the situation today with global warming is similar. Among my friends, I do not find much of a consensus. Most of us are sceptical and do not pretend to be experts. My impression is that the experts are deluded because they have been studying the details of climate models for 30 years and they come to believe the models are real. After 30 years they lose the ability to think outside the models. And it is normal for experts in a narrow area to think alike and develop a settled dogma.

"

If there was a consensus, it was among a small group of experts rather than among the broader public. I think that the situation today with global warming is similar. Among my friends, I do not find much of a consensus. Most of us are sceptical and do not pretend to be experts. My impression is that the experts are deluded because they have been studying the details of climate models for 30 years and they come to believe the models are real

"[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.

Dyson gives us three reasons, posing as six, to convince us that it is all just too complicated my dears. 1) the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere may do more harm than good, because we have instances of good. 2) There are many natural causes of climate change. 3) the models ignore or cannot cope with crucial factors, such as the presence of other resevoirs of CO2 in the biosphere.

I too “do not know much about the technical facts” but I would be amazed if these things had not been thoroughly considered by those who do “know much about the technical facts” Models are just abstract sketch maps of reality; it does not follow that those who drew them mistake the sketch maps for reality itself. Why should anyone make such a fantastic mistake? If the particular models are inaccurate, of if the essentials of the terrain are in principle too complex to be captured by any model, then that has to be demonstrated - preferably with some reference to “the technical facts”.

Every schoolboy who ever looked at a map has surmised that Africa and South America were once joined at the hip. Wegener, I have read, produced good fossil evidence to support the hypothesis that huge and solid land masses had mysteriously and incredibly moved thousands of miles apart. But until the “great mystery” of how they did so was solved in the nineteen fifties, university scholars continued to treat it as schoolboy hypothesis. The fools! If only they had listened to an undoubting young Dyson. But they were not really such fools, and the conservatism of the scientific consensus is one more reason why a non-scientist should in general put their trust in it rather than in confident schoolboys who boast about not being experts. For an unorthodox hypothesis to be received into the consensus it has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Scientists sometimes picture themselves as disinterested seekers of truth, armed with something called scientific method, sometimes bravely pitted against the expert consensus, sometimes winning it over. But from the lay point of view, the consensus is itself part of the scientific method

 

[Trakar]

I am grateful for to NOSONEW for posting the Barry Bickmore clip. It cannot be posted too often

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNXuX6D60U&feature=youtu.be

It is inaccurate however to call Barry Bickmore “ a long time denier” who has seen the light' He is a trained scientist who simply found the truth easy to avoid. That leaves some excuse for an ignoramus like me. I knew that some qualified climate experts remained outside the consensus and I know still that scientific establishments, like all establishments, can give mavericks a hard time. But until I read Anderegg’s study I did not realise that peer-reviewed dissenters were so pitifully few. Among hundreds of peer-reviewed experts Anderegg et al found fewer than three percent who stood outside the consensus; and some of these few were far from being outright deniers. My own complacency was fed not by pronouncements of aristocratic crackpots or internet troglodytes but by those of some senior scientists. I used to be a great fan of Freeman Dyson. Every maverick opinion deserves a fair hearing, especially when the maverick is so a world famous scientist of the first rank.

When in the presence of any famous theoretical physicist WH Auden felt, he said, like a vicar in the presence of a Duke. I think most of us are prone to such unscientific awe. But when they come out from behind their magical equations, these choice and master spirits of science can display a quite ordinary imagination and sometimes an extraordinary vanity. Let us be grateful. A touch of stupidity makes us all equal.

Here is some things Dyson has said:

Dyson gives us three reasons, posing as six, to convince us that it is all just too complicated my dears. 1) the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere may do more harm than good, because we have instances of good. 2) There are many natural causes of climate change. 3) the models ignore or cannot cope with crucial factors, such as the presence of other resevoirs of CO2 in the biosphere.

I too “do not know much about the technical facts” but I would be amazed if these things had not been thoroughly considered by those who do “know much about the technical facts” Models are just abstract sketch maps of reality; it does not follow that those who drew them mistake the sketch maps for reality itself. Why should anyone make such a fantastic mistake? If the particular models are inaccurate, of if the essentials of the terrain are in principle too complex to be captured by any model, then that has to be demonstrated - preferably with some reference to “the technical facts”.

Every schoolboy who ever looked at a map has surmised that Africa and South America were once joined at the hip. Wegener, I have read, produced good fossil evidence to support the hypothesis that huge and solid land masses had mysteriously and incredibly moved thousands of miles apart. But until the “great mystery” of how they did so was solved in the nineteen fifties, university scholars continued to treat it as schoolboy hypothesis. The fools! If only they had listened to an undoubting young Dyson. But they were not really such fools, and the conservatism of the scientific consensus is one more reason why a non-scientist should in general put their trust in it rather than in confident schoolboys who boast about not being experts. For an unorthodox hypothesis to be received into the consensus it has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Scientists sometimes picture themselves as disinterested seekers of truth, armed with something called scientific method, sometimes bravely pitted against the expert consensus, sometimes winning it over. But from the lay point of view, the consensus is itself part of the scientific method

I don't agree with all the words you've used, but I respect and admire the concepts presented by manner in which you put them together!

 

[CapelDodger]

From Dyson :

"[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.

This says more about Dyson's intolerance of criticism, or indeed of anybody not hanging on every word the great man utters.

Gwynpaine : I, too, broadly agree with your post. As an aside, Wegman wasn't the first to notice the fossil correlation and geologists had long known of the similar correlation in ancient rock formations. The mechanism was where the problem lay, and it was a minority of geologists who confused "not yet conceived" with "inconceivable" - some of whom, of course, went to their graves still denying plate tectonics. As the saying goes, "science advances one funeral at a time".

 

[CapelDodger]

As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/heads-in-the-sand-20111201?page=2

Here’s what has changed for Republican politicians: The rise of the tea party, its influence in the Republican Party, its crusade against government regulations, and the influx into electoral politics of vast sums of money from energy companies and sympathetic interest groups.

Among the most influential of the new breed of so-called super PACs is the tea party group Americans for Prosperity, founded by David and Charles Koch, the principal owners of Koch Industries, a major U.S. oil conglomerate. As Koch Industries has lobbied aggressively against climate-change policy, Americans for Prosperity has spearheaded an all-fronts campaign using advertising, social media, and cross-country events aimed at electing lawmakers who will ensure that the oil industry won’t have to worry about any new regulations.
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there’s no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. “If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political,” he said. “We’ve made great headway. What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril. The vast majority of people who are involved in the [Republican] nominating process—the conventions and the primaries—are suspect of the science. And that’s our influence. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.”

This is a good antidote to accusations that mention of the Kochs is conspiracy-theorising. Conspiracy, by its nature, is covert, but the Kochs and their cronies positively revel in their takeover of the GOP.

 

[Asolepius]

New climate change denial study

This study is going round Twitter right now. As I am by no means an expert, I wonder what folks here think about it? Is it really true that it agrees with hundreds of other studies?

 

[Lamuella]

I haven't read the paper and I'm not a climatologist, but it can be found here if anyone wants to read it: http://csb.scichina.com:8080/kxtbe/EN/abstract/abstract504775.shtml#

 

[Pixel42]

There are plenty of studies that show that over timescales of centuries, variations in solar activity are a signicant driver of variations in global temperatures, yes.

Over timescales of thousands of years a bigger natural driver of global temperatures is the Milankovitch cycles. Other natural climate forcings include continental drift and variations in volcanic activity.

None of this is controversial, and none of it contradicts the fact that the single biggest current driver of changes in global temperatures is the greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere by human activity.

 

[Complexity]

The question should not be whether we are causing the climate changes that we are observing.

The questions should be: What are we going to do in response to these climate changes?

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

The question should not be whether we are causing the climate changes that we are observing.

The questions should be: What are we going to do in response to these climate changes?

Technically, yes; psychologically, no.

If anthropogenic causes are the dominant driver, then regardless of what we do, we must first and foremost feel guilty. [/liberal guilt]

 

[Reality Check]

The OP "climate change denial study" remark is wrong.
This is a climate change study that is being cited by climate change deniers.

The actual paper itself is valid up to the point that it uses the historical data to make predictions:
Amplitudes, rates, periodicities and causes of temperature variations in the past 2485 years and future trends over the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau

Amplitudes, rates, periodicities, causes and future trends of temperature variations based on tree rings for the past 2485 years on the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau were analyzed. The results showed that extreme climatic events on the Plateau, such as the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and 20th Century Warming appeared synchronously with those in other places worldwide. The largest amplitude and rate of temperature change occurred during the Eastern Jin Event (343-425 AD), and not in the late 20th century. There were significant cycles of 1324 a, 800 a, 199 a, 110 a and 2-3 a in the 2485-year temperature series. The 1324 a, 800 a, 199 a and 110 a cycles are associated with solar activity, which greatly affects the Earth surface temperature. The long-term trends (>1000 a) of temperature were controlled by the millennium-scale cycle, and amplitudes were dominated by multi-century cycles. Moreover, cold intervals corresponded to sunspot minimums. The prediction indicated that the temperature will decrease in the future until to 2068 AD and then increase again.

The problem is that they should know that current global warming is not due to solar activity which as been at least constant since the 1970's. Thus the cycles that they see in the historical data have been broken. Or if you like: their power spectrum ananlysis neglects the one-off (hopefully!) modern exception to the cycles. This makes their predictions unlikely to be correct.

 

[Pixel42]

I assumed it was a case of some deniers being sufficiently brainwashed to think that any study which showed a natural cause for past climate change was automatically evidence against the current climate change being anthropogenic. I've certainly argued with a few who were that fundamentally mistaken. But I don't use twitter so I don't know who, if anyone, is misconstruing this study. Perhaps the OP could elucidate.

 

[CapelDodger]

The prediction indicated that the temperature will decrease in the future until to 2068 AD and then increase again.

When does that prediction date from? Does it mean that temperatures will decrease from then, or from now, or from some time before 2068CE until then?

This is garbage, frankly, and I have a feeling that Liu Yu is a serial offender in this form of astrological analysis. He mines cycles out of thousands of years, assigns them to causes, and entirely ignores a completely new mechanism of climate change, which is the wholesale burning of fossil fuels. He might as well be living in the Middle Ages.

I can predict an event that will happen way before 2068CE, but I'll keep it to myself for now ...

 

[CapelDodger]

This makes their predictions unlikely to be correct.

At least it's quickly falsifiable. Denialists are reduced to such short-term expedients, and have been for a while - remember the "60-80 year cycle" in Arctic sea-ice extent which had it well into recovery by now? mhaze used to love that one, but nobody mentions it now. Nor the "we have entered a cooling phase" announcements from the mid-2000's. This will soon go the same way. The paper must have been a year in production, the data must be older, so we're into the prediction period already.

Had this guy predicted the highly anomolous sunspot cycle which just passed I'd be a bit more impressed. I've not heard of anybody who did, though.

 

[Tricky]

Short "New climate change denial study" thread merged into moderated thread, except for posts that wouldn't have passed moderation. Those sent to AAH.

Posted By: Tricky

 

[bit_pattern]

CapelDodger - This is for you. A short essay by one of Australia's leading intellectuals on the ideological divide that separates deniers from reality.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog-how-can-climate-change-denialism-be-explained-robert-manne-4386

It touches on a few different themes, including the one we briefly discussed the other week about denial being a predominantly Anglo-spheric phenomenon and the role the media (in particular the Murdoch meedia) has played in that. There's a few links and whatnot to different studies and other essays you might find interesting too.

Three conclusions can be drawn from all this. In the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, in recent times, the media has played a major role in legitimising climate change denialism. In these three countries the media has amplified or facilitated the work of the many climate denialist “think tanks”, fossil fuel industry lobbyists and denialist bloggers. And in all these three countries, the influence of the Murdoch media is profound – in Australia with 70% of the major newspaper circulation; in the United Kingdom, with The Times and The Sun; and in the United States with the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and, above all else, the immensely influential Fox News. Not only do the Murdoch media preach climate change denialism directly throughout the English-speaking world. News Corp also provides this kind of anti-science irrationalism with a kind of faux-respectability that allows its influence to permeate gradually other non-Murdoch-owned organs of the right-leaning and even the centrist media. One of the reasons climate change denialism is strong and growing in the Anglosphere and rather weak in both Europe and the developing world is the different role played by their respective media.

 

[bit_pattern]

http://csb.scichina.com:8080/kxtbe/EN/abstract/abstract504775.shtml#[/url]

From the abstract:

Moreover, cold intervals corresponded to sunspot minimums. The prediction indicated that the temperature will decrease in the future until to 2068 AD and then increase again.​

Indeed. And the researchers have seemingly identified a sunspot cycle that could well be accurate. And, under normal conditions of natural variability, the sunspot cycles likely do drive down temperature. But to extrapolate that result to predict a "cooling" over the next 60 years, when we have seen some of the warmest years on record despite being in the midst of the deepest solar minimum since Maunder, then I think it is safe to say that the unnatural forcings will far outweigh any natural variability of this sort and temperatures will continue to rise. The bad news is that come 2068, the warming will get progressively worse as the natural variability adding to the positive side of temperature rise.

 

[bit_pattern]

And, seeing as though this is supposed to be a 'denier' paper, I wanted to understand why the deniers are claiming it as their own. The other thing I thought was striking about the abstract was this:

The results showed that extreme climatic events on the Plateau, such as the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and 20th Century Warming appeared synchronously with those in other places worldwide.
​

At first glance this is significant. After all, didn't Team Hockey Stick tell us that the MWP was insignificant and not a global event, localised instead to the north Atlantic, and as such would that mean that THS has actually been deceiving us and it was a significant global event?

Well, they were the titillation and sensationalist thoughts that shot through my mind when I first read it.

If I wasn't so sceptically minded, that's where I might have left it, safe in the assumption that THS had been proven once again to be deceitful liars, but in a more sober, reflective moment I decided to have a look at what the existing data from the period show about the Tibetan Plateau. And, much to my surprise, what did I find but, lo and behold, the Tibetan Plateau did show higher than average temperatures during this period and that this study actually confirms what THS had been saying all along!

Who would have thought it, eh?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=484&pictureid=5282

 

[Trakar]

The Chinese Science Bulletin is an open-source document much of their archive is available for review from Springerlink

http://www.springerlink.com/content/1001-6538/preprint/?sort=p_OnlineDate&sortorder=desc&o=20

The latest edition includes several interesting papers:

"Trend in the atmospheric heat source over the central and eastern
Tibetan Plateau during recent decades: Comparison of observations
and reanalysis data" - http://www.springerlink.com/content/3323660211170784/fulltext.pdf

...Under a global warming scenario, TP warming is powerful,
and the warming trend is much greater than surrounding
regions at the same latitudes [12–15].
(...)
(Ts-Ta) greatly increased over the last 5 years, suggesting
a pronounced warming of surface air temperature.
This finding contrasts with that of Duan and Wu [18] for the
period 1980–2003.
(...)
The weakening trend in SH is associated with the spatial
non-uniformity of global warming, i.e., greater warming at
middle and high latitudes than over the tropics and subtropics.
Recent climate warming primarily results from increasing
anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and impacts of
those emissions on climate change in the plateau region are
likely more serious than in the rest of the world [42]. The
effect of heat changes over the TP on regional weather and
climate may be investigated by a combination of observations
and numerical simulation. Use of such simulation will
be an increasingly important component of future studies...

Interesting stuff and a great many other papers worth looking through.