[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Mar 14 2007, 07:35 PM, said:

We all have heard of the scientific method, and were no doubt taught it in school. the method can be describes as four basic steps but it is really iterative. These steps are:

• Observation or a phenomenon .
  
• Development of a hypothesis explaining the phenomena
  
• Make predictions based upon the hypothesis, to predict the existence of other phenomena or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations based upon the predictions,
  
• Obtain peer review where independ scientist perform experimental tests of the predictions of the hypothesis

Over time, if the independent verification supports the hypothesis, it become more generally accepted, and may eventually become scientific theory (generally accepted), or a scientific fact (proven to be correct). Or as the others test the model, other variables that contribute to phenomena can be discovered and hypothesis modified to fit the new finding. (Of course, the hypothesis might be totally disproven as well by such inquiries). But the scientific method REQUIRES skeptics to test the bounds of the theory. Such scientific INQUIRY into a hypothesis is absolutely necessary and should be encouraged.

Ben

I don't think that anyone here would disagree with what you are saying. Healthy skepticism is a very good thing. However, the issue that I - and many other people - have with so-called most global warming skeptics is that they are not disinterested parties taking part in a scientific debate. Rather, they are paid apologists and propagandists, funded by the tobacco and oil lobbies.

I find it useful to compare and contrast the "money trail" on either side of this debate.

On the one side - the so called skeptics - I can clearly document where the money is comping from. And, surprise, surprise, the money is coming from groups that have a strong vested interest in untaxed CO2 emissions (oil/coal producers) or attacking the scientific method in general (the tobacco lobby)

If we look at the other side, organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace certainly have their own policy agendas. However, they aren't able to bring nearly the same amount of financial resources to bear. I am sure that there are some shills on the environment side as well. I'm sure that there are some complete ideologues who can't be reasoned with. However, by and large I think that they is a lot less bias on this side of the fence.

[inquiry]

Sometimes, you just can't make this stuff up... Global Warming trek KO'ed by cold

Quote

In their trek across the Arctic Ocean, explorers Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

Seriously, what kind of photo from the artic would be proof of global warming? I mean it is March and the polar ice cap shrinks each spring/summer. Ships use to sail up there and get trapped for the "winter" while the expeditions explored. This was a publicity stunt not science. Swimming in the artic ocean for goodness sake.

But the one paragraph I found intriquing was this one from the article.... ""They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

Now, in the last 100 years or so, the average temperature has gone up one degree F. The last time these women were there was 1986. Does that fact taht the average temperature increased 1 degree mean anything for the given temperature on any give day? Since temp varies wildly. Last week we didn't get above freezing, today it is suppose to be 78 here. That is a swing nearly 50 degrees for a high is a week, and this time of year, not that ususual.

What happened on this expedition? One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times

Now that is cold. One got frostbite, and they decided (wisely) to return home. The cause of their problem? Isn't it obvious? Don't know yet, let me give another quote...

"[They were] experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming. But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

That's right. The extreme cold was a product of unpredictable global warming... the temperature (what with global warming and all) should have been much colder. Can they really be serious? Photos taken over a couple of months (was to be long trek) as proof of global warming? No doubt we would have seen part of the ice cap falling into the sea (as it does every spring/summer). This is a publicity stunt that turned out badly, and had nothing to do with the science of global warming.

[inquiry]

hrothgar, on Mar 14 2007, 11:55 AM, said:

On the one side - the so called skeptics - I can clearly document where the money is comping from. And, surprise, surprise, the money is coming from groups that have a strong vested interest in untaxed CO2 emissions (oil/coal producers) or attacking the scientific method in general (the tobacco lobby)

If we look at the other side, organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace certainly have their own policy agendas. However, they aren't able to bring nearly the same amount of financial resources to bear. I am sure that there are some shills on the environment side as well. I'm sure that there are some complete ideologues who can't be reasoned with. However, by and large I think that they is a lot less bias on this side of the fence.

I don't mind if the "science" is provide by someone with an agenda. What I want is to have the findings presented so both sides can weigh the evidence. The data presented, no matter the source of funding, will have to stand up to scrutiny and peer review.

In addition, I think you underplay the power of greenpeace and the Sierra club. Those are for all practical purposes political action groups who try to shape public opinion and thus the political agenda. The fact the US has now has a "Division on Climate Change" as part of its Office of Atmospheric Programs shows the attention the politicians are paying to this issue. The goverment has a "comprehensive" policy on climate change, that no doubt will continue to evolve. You can read about this policy on the EPA webpage (Click for link

A couple of things. The Climate Change Technology Program is designed to funnel funds from different agencies into directed research towards these technologies. This is not new money, but money taken away from other basic science programs and directed towards topic related to climate change. You want these dollars? Describe your research in climate chage language. This is similar to the woman's health care initiative at nih also mandated by congress.

Another one is the Climate Change Science Program. This is another multi=agency initiative that takes money from many different agencies to fund the science behind climate change. Again, as far as I can tell, this is not new money, it is redirected money. If you rely on these agencies for funding you will either switch to climate based research or risk losing your funding (or at least compete for a smaller pool of money with other non-climate based scientist).

I, for one, am never against funding good science. And climate based science is certainly an area that I am interested in (not as a researcher but as a consumer of knowledge generated by the research). Still I have some old fashion ideas, one is that the best science proposed or the most novel and potentially important science proposed, should be funded first. Federal set-asides, however, ensure certain topics will get funded, such that bad science gets funded in these directed projects while good science in other areas ends up being ignored for lack of funds. I am not yet convinced of the crises that setting aside other "good science" (and no I have no specific example) gets pushed to the side to allow directed research to be funded for political means.

Rather than cross-agency funding, there should be a single program in climate science with its own, clear budget. Then let the climate scientist submit proposals and compete for that pot of money, without harming the chance of good proposals unrealted to climate research. The current plan gets "climate issues" stuck on projects which will never have an impact on climate research. Let me give personal example. A group I use to be with was doing some cardiomyopathy studies in rats. One of our members wrote a grant "hyping" the role of cardiomyopathies in patients with HIV and even added some AIDS related drugs to a rat study in an effort to get funding for the ongoing studies, despite our reseach was totally unrelated in any way to HIV or HIV-induced cardiomyopathies. However the logic for the proposal was that at that time was the branch of NIH the grant was being submitted to had "set aside" money for HIV research that was going wanting for lack of proposals. That one was funded, in part with money meant, no doubt, for HIV research. And in my opinion, the science in that proposal was weaker than a lot of other proposals that did not get funded that year. It is clear that scientist will go where the money is and use some pretty far-fetched relationships to justify getting the money. The point being, it is not just big oil money driving one side of the research, that at least, I am certain.

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Mar 14 2007, 08:28 PM, said:

A couple of things. The Climate Change Technology Program is designed to funnel funds from different agencies into directed research towards these technologies. This is not new money, but money taken away from other basic science programs and directed towards topic related to climate change. You want these dollars? Describe your research in climate chage language. This is similar to the woman's health care initiative at nih also mandated by congress.

Another one is the Climate Change Science Program. This is another multi=agency initiative that takes money from many different agencies to fund the science behind climate change. Again, as far as I can tell, this is not new money, it is redirected money. If you rely on these agencies for funding you will either switch to climate based research or risk losing your funding (or at least compete for a smaller pool of money with other non-climate based scientist).

For what its worth, I agree with that the Federal Government often screws up funding priorities.

For as long as we've been debating climate change I've been saying the same two words: "Carbon Tax".

1. Tax CO2 emissions, thereby internalizing the externality
2. Let the market decide on the best response

[luke warm]

ben's post made perfect sense to me... but it's my opinion that when richard says, "However, the issue that I - and many other people - have with so-called most global warming skeptics is that they are not disinterested parties taking part in a scientific debate. Rather, they are paid apologists and propagandists, funded by the tobacco and oil lobbies." he misses the point

to think that only one side in this debate has an agenda, or a vested interest, is to be naive... i've proven in other posts that it's the GW proponents who have come right out and admitted that the truth of the matter is immaterial, this agenda must be pushed regardless... so it seems somewhat disingenuous to oppose "disinterested parties" when they are in opposition to ones own beliefs, and support them otherwise

[helene_t]

I don't have any qualified opinion about this issue. All I can do is to take notes on the level of argumentation and the range of support that either side can gather. If one side comes up with only crappy arguments, it may suggest that no good arguments are available. This would make their case weak. And if one side is supported only by parties with clear financial/political interests, it suggests that no neutral scientist would reach their favorite conclusion.

This kind of reasoning doesn't prove anything, of course. It could be that all arguments are crappy, just some more obviously than others, and that all scientists are sponsored by interest groups, just some more obviously than others. Or it could be that the best arguments just happen to lead to the wrong conclusion in this case.

One thing I observe is that environmentalists that I know often (far from always) have strong anti-capitalist sentiments. Brent Spar comes to mind. I know from primary sources that the mere facts that USA is the per capita largest CO2 emmitor, that energy companies tend to big, privately-owned and often US based, that oil is traded in dollars and that the car is an icon of the American Dream are more than enough to make many environmentalists "know" a priori that CO2 is bad.

If environmentalists genuinely wanted to contribute to a solution of climate problems, they would take serious any initiative that would help solving them. Not at all costs, of course, but at least the potential of nuclear energy, tradeable emission rights (or CO2 taxing) and CO2 sequestering should be acknowledged. This is often not the case. A grotesque example was a speech held by Knud Vilby, chairman of the Danish Third-World support organization MS and said organization's general assembly in 1997. Titled "Methane - an example of environment imperialism" he hammered against the theory that the farts of Third-World cows contribute to global warming, while the Truth (my capitalization) is that global warming is caused by First World capitalists. Note that "Truth" with a capital T is ideological or religious Truth while "truth" with a lowercase is scientific or commonsense truth, and the two should not be confused.

And then there are Ben's concerns which I can only second.

Now Todd starts this thread by bringing our attention to a pseudo-scientific video full of logically flawed, outdated or even counterfeited "evidence" against the greenhouse hypothesis. Completely on par with the "scientific" arguments against evolution, against the viral cause of AIDS, against the carcinogenicity of tobacco smoke etc. The filmmakers making up quotes from a reputed scientist in "support" of their own agenda reminds on all the claims you can find of "Darwin dismissed his own theory".

So far, the stand is, AFAIAC, 2-1 in favor of the greenhouse hypothesis. The cases for it stink of a not-so-well-hidden agenda, but the cases against it are worse.

Bjorn Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is well worth reading. He debunks many of the partisan claims made by the environmentalist lobby. He may be a partisan himself, but that's not his fault but rather to blame on a scientific debate which has been hijacked by politics and leaves no niche for genuine science. The scientific community's fierce reaction tells a lot - Scientific American devoted a whole issue to Lomborg-bashing. But interestingly, Lomborg does not refute the greenhouse hypothesis, he just argues that the political appreciation of it is irrational.

[inquiry]

Damn you Todd for posting this link. I have soooo much more to do than read all this global warming stuff so that I can have an informed opinion. And reading both sides, I have less of an opinion today than before I started... but ok...Let's take one small slice of the argument from the video posted and the response to that argument and lets see how it goes.

The video shows Al Gore standing in front of a huge chart that shows a CLEAR and undeniable relationship between CO2 levels and antartic temperature over 100's of thousands of years. What is apparently not said in the Gore movie is that the CO2 rise follows tempeature rise. The video attacks this oversight and describes the lag in the increase in CO2 as proof that greenhouse gasses (well at least CO2, the one measured) does not drive temperature increases but rather follow it.

First, let's evaluate the claim and the science, the conclusions, and how this might affect the hypothesis that man-made green house gasses might add to climate change.

1. Does CO2 lag behind temperature change historically?

The fact is there is a historical lag between C02 levels and increase in temperature, and both sides of the debate agree on this. A couple of peer-reviewed and published studies confirm this. One available on the web is Sciencs 2003. This article showed a delay of 800 years between the rise in temperature and a rise is CO2. In a more recent study *don't have a link, but I do have a copy of the article as I subscribe to Science* suggest the delay was more like 1900 years between these two events (Siegenthaler, U., et al 2005. Stable carbon cycle-climate relationship during the late Pleistocene. Science 310: 1313-1317)

In web-published "rebuttals" to the video (btw, the VIDEO and the rebuttals are not scientific evidence, they are attempts to use science without showing it to use to refute each others positions).. people refer to this "lag" as "old news" and one quote called the lag "discredited". Well the data goes back 400,000 years, so yes, it is really OLD NEWS ( ), but, the science is not discredited. The data is what the data is, it is the assumptions you can draw from that data and how it affects your view on the hypothesis of man-made greenhouse gas adds to climate change. In otherwords, the man-made GHG hypothesis has to also explain the reason for this lag or why the lag is not relevant to the central hypothesis. Yoo simply can not ignore the lag.

I will not accept that the science in these papers has been discredited. There has historically been a lag in the order of 1000 years between warming "cycles" and rise in CO2. So the question becomes not if the data is real, but what does this do for the hypothesis? Well, maybe we should state a working hypothesis and see what affect this data has on the hypothesis? (for my purpose, the hypothesis will be that "There is a discernible human influence on climate caused by man-made green house gasses, most notable CO2 whose change in atmospheric concentration is a major cause of climate change"

Ok. Working with this hypothesis, what does the data show and how might this hypothesis be changed to based upon the available scientific data? Well, one might say that since temperature had RISEN in the past before CO2 levels did, that increase CO2 levels did not cause the increase in global temperature but rather was a "marker" of the change and the increase in CO2 was a consequence of, not a cause of, the rise in temperature. This is the conclusion reached in the video, and they suggested a source of this CO2 was due to escape (or greatly reduced solubilization) into the ocean. It is a well known fact of physics that less gasses are disolvable in warm water than cold water, so they drew up a new "hypothesis" to explain the observed phenomena.

However, the scientist who found the 800 year and 1900 year lag between CO2 and temperature reached a different conclusion which should, at least, be factored into anyones discussion of the imapct of green house gasses on global warming. In the first article, the authors concluded that since global warming periods last about 5000 years, and the lag was only 800 years, the last 4200 years may have been maintained and added too by the rise in CO2. So that 5/6th of global warming could be affected by high CO2.

So the argument goes like this.. Some process (not CO2 related) causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This results in an eventual rise in CO2 ~800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties.

In the second Science article (when I say science article, I mean published in Science magazine) which noted a 1900 year lag in CO2 production, the authors state... "[that the current data] do not cast doubt [...] on the importance of CO2 as a key amplification factor of the large observed temperature variations of glacial cycles".

So here we have the data. One group (those in the video) use it to draw a completely new hypothesis (warming oceans account for increase in global CO2), another group (web-based environmentallist) dismiss the science and "evidence" in the video as "old news" and "discredited". And the actual authors take the view that the data mearly suggest that CO2 levels is one factor in global warming and both groups suggest that CO2 could be an amplifying affect to maintain higher temperatures (see quotes above).

So let's return to our "hypothesis" which was, "There is a discernible human influence on climate caused by man-made green house gasses, most notable CO2 whose change in atmospheric concentration is a major cause of climate change". First, we will agree that man-made additions to green house gasses 100's of thousands of years ago were nil. So do we ignore the data from these "lag" experiments? No. Can we say that CO2 was a major contributor to the initiation of the global warming in the past? No. In fact, historical global warming periods were NOT initiated by CO2. On this the data is clear.

However, people challenging the role of green house gasses in global warming should not over-reach with their conclusions yet either. All this data says is that initiation of periods of global warming has not been historically related to CO2, but rather CO2 increases have followed an initial global warming event. It does not say that should CO2 rise precipitously it would be followed by global warming. Looking at the data, I think the hypothesis on man-made green house gases would have to be modified to say something like...

"There is a discernible human influence on climate caused by man-made green house gasses, most notable CO2 whose change in atmospheric concentration is a one contributor to climate change", Now the quetion becomes, how much a contributor (or if it is a contributor) is still left open for discussion, observation, and experimentation.

And any solid hypothesis on green house gases and current temperature will have to try to uncover the other factors involved in global warming in the 800 to 1900 years prior to past increases in temperatures, and determine if any of those factors could be involved in the current rise in global temperture. Anyone wanting to disprove the climate change potential of green house gases will have to try to explain why increased heat sinks like CO2, methane, nitric oxide, and chlorocarbons in the atmosphere would not cause a raise in temperature.

It will be very difficult for either side to disprove the other's views. But one thing is clear, past lags in atmospheric CO2 compared to temperature change does not mean that if the CO2 rise add to warming, or that CO2 increase could comes before temperature increases in the future.

A more interesting view would be see if there is evidence of decreased global tempeature in the past while CO2 level remain high. That would be harder to explain based upon the theory of the role of CO2 in climate change. As I look roughly at some of the charts, it does seem that global cooling occurs before the fall in CO2. Perhaps a global increase in cloud cover over thousands of years might explain the phenoma, but I would like to see the data before speculating on how such data may effect the various hypotheses.

[DrTodd13]

Sorry for wasting your time Ben. I agree with what you say though. The more I read the less sure I am. There aren't any disinterested parties here and I don't know how to really draw a good conclusion short of becoming a climatologist. GW proponents even admit

The lag is a fact. Even on here I've got GW proponents to admit to this but they trot out the "well maybe the first part of the warming has some other cause but that latter 4/5 is definitely from the CO2." This result violates Occam's razor so you better have a damned good reason for believing this to be the case. Does anybody have any documents which refutes the stuff presented in this documentary with scientific papers? I'm a bit surprised the whole cosmic ray influence made it into this documentary because I only heard about that for the first time pretty recently. I thought it was based on a pretty new paper.

[Al_U_Card]

There is also the recent work on methane generation that may be a whole new "x" factor in the equation.

Just looking at the Vostok temperature graphs....why the hell arent we in the start of the most recent ice-age???? The forces at work are deep, dark and mysterious but man has a penchant for looking into the nooks and crannies of nature to satiate his curiousity....time will tell

[helene_t]

DrTodd13, on Mar 15 2007, 07:13 PM, said:

The lag is a fact.  Even on here I've got GW proponents to admit to this but they trot out the "well maybe the first part of the warming has some other cause but that latter 4/5 is definitely from the CO2."  This result violates Occam's razor so you better have a damned good reason for believing this to be the case.

I noticed that as well. Indeed it sounds like a bad excuse for something. Anyway, something must account for prehistorical rises in CO2. Assuming that the dinos used coal in their power plants would violate Occam's razor as well.

But the greenhouse effect is a fact. What may be debatable is its importance relative to various other effects. Consider this cyclus:

1) It is cold and CO2 levels are low.
2) Some external factor causes temperature to rise.
3) CO2 is released from the warming oceans. CO concentration rises. And evaporation increases, leading to more cloud coverage and more rain.
4) More rain, warmer air and more CO2 leads to more forrest growth. The greenhouse effect accelerates the warming.
5) Forrests suck up CO2 while the deep-sea CO2 deposits get depleeded. The CO2 curve flattens.
6) Phytoplacton suck CO2 out of surface water (and thereby indirectly from the air) while organic material falling to the seaflour drains carbon from the biosphere. The CO2 level decreases.
7) Decreasing CO2 leads to lower temperature.
8/1: Next time some external factor comes along, the cycle restarts.

As I understand it, this is basically how it's supposed to work. I don't know how important each of the mechanisms is, how long the lags are, and what other mechanisms should be included. Nor do I know how much is known about all this and how good the predictions agree with empirical data.

[Al_U_Card]

Apart from the "snowball" earth that existed way long ago, we are talking about the fairly recent history (last million years or so) where the precipitous but cyclic climate changes occurred with regularity.

Whether it be sun output, or ocean composition or orbital variation related, the only concern is really are we able to modify our habits in such a way as to benefit our current situation. Do we want a higher global temperature and with the CO2 where it is, it looks like it should eventually come down with the arrival of the ice age....... I am still waiting to hear about more recent measurements of the gulf-stream operation.....if it continues to shut-down....

[hrothgar]

helene_t, on Mar 15 2007, 08:52 PM, said:

DrTodd13, on Mar 15 2007, 07:13 PM, said:

The lag is a fact.  Even on here I've got GW proponents to admit to this but they trot out the "well maybe the first part of the warming has some other cause but that latter 4/5 is definitely from the CO2."  This result violates Occam's razor so you better have a damned good reason for believing this to be the case.

I noticed that as well. Indeed it sounds like a bad excuse for something. Anyway, something must account for prehistorical rises in CO2. Assuming that the dinos used coal in their power plants would violate Occam's razor as well.

Real Climate has a lot of good information about the relationship between C02 and temperature. The following article provides a basic introduction to the subject matter.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...2-in-ice-cores/

I am going to try to provide a condensed summary:

1. The relationship between temperature and C02 is a very complex and involves lots of different types of feedback. Its well known that C02 can trap solar radiation and cause an increase in temperature. However, there are also a number of mechanisms by which increases in temperature can cause C02 levels to rise. We also suspect that there are some balancing loops in place (a simple positive feedback loops with no corresponding balancing mechanisms will cause the system to explode. In the past, something has eventually kicked in and dampened the system)

2. We know that the Earth has experienced a number of warming cycles and cooling cycles in the past. There are a number of different theories about what type of actions tigger these cycles. People have proposed mechanism that include changes in solar activity as well as subtle changes in the Earth's orbit.

3. Current theories suggest that warming cycles are triggered by some external event. Once the warming cycle kicks off, you'll see an increase in C02 level (approximately) 800 years after the start of that warming cycle. This lagged increase in C02 levels then causes additional warming to take place.

As the Real Climate article notes, c02 is not driving the start of the warming cycle, but serves to amplify the magnitude of this cycle. However, what we are seeing right now is an example where artifical increases in c02 levels are thought to be driving a warming cycle.

[inquiry]

hrothgar, on Mar 15 2007, 01:36 PM, said:

3.  Current theories suggest that warming cycles are triggered by some external event.  Once the warming cycle kicks off, you'll see an increase in C02 level (approximately) 800 years after the start of that warming cycle.  This lagged increase in C02 levels then causes additional warming to take place. (emphasis added)

I have seen this arguement, I even quoted it above.It is often presented even more strongly than your "additional warming" which could be inturpted to suggest prolonged heating.

But when I look at the data of the charts of CO2 lags versus temperature such as in the AL Gore movie it is clear that the rise in CO2 is not then accompanied by a subsequent increase in temperature. In fact in virtually every case the temperature maximum occurs BEFORE the CO2 maximum, and often before CO2 increases significantly. This does not mean CO2 didn't add to the temperature rise, nor that maybe in the past methane which wasn't measured was elevated earlier accounting for the temperature rise, for instance.

[Al_U_Card]

Interestingly, much of the current info indicates that the polar regions react BEFORE the rest of the globe.......we are seeing a very short term effect but that may be just the precursor of the eventual rise. Don't forget that the "temperatures" recorded in the ice were from the poles (even tho they are O2 isotope ratios etc. there may be another factor at play here)

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Mar 15 2007, 10:47 PM, said:

But when I look at the data of the charts of CO2 lags versus temperature such as in the AL Gore movie it is clear that the rise in CO2 is not then accompanied by a subsequent increase in temperature. In fact in virtually every case the temperature maximum occurs BEFORE the CO2 maximum, and often before CO2 increases significantly. This does not mean CO2 didn't add to the temperature rise, nor that maybe in the past methane which wasn't measured was elevated earlier accounting for the temperature rise, for instance.

In all seriousness Ben, do you understand what the following sentences mean?

Quote

We also suspect that there are some balancing loops in place (a simple positive feedback loops with no corresponding balancing mechanisms will cause the system to explode. In the past, something has eventually kicked in and dampened the system)

[luke warm]

so given all this data, and given the scientific infighting over this issue, why do some still insist that GW is man's fault? why are scientists who are skeptical about this conclusion ridiculed? i suspect it's to shut them up, to make them less inclined to decry pubically their skepticism... if that's the case, why?

hrothgar said:

In all seriousness Ben, do you understand what the following sentences mean?

Quote

We also suspect that there are some balancing loops in place (a simple positive feedback loops with no corresponding balancing mechanisms will cause the system to explode. In the past, something has eventually kicked in and dampened the system)

from all ben's written on this subject, i suspect he understands it at least as well as you do

[helene_t]

luke warm, on Mar 16 2007, 12:31 AM, said:

so given all this data, and given the scientific infighting over this issue, why do some still insist that GW is man's fault?

It does sound plausible, doesn't it? After all, we know that CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere, and the amount of CO2 emited since the beginning of industrialization is easy to estimate and to compare to the rise in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The theory is currently put forward for political reasons but the theory as such is much older than the current political controversy. I recall from the seventies, when some people were afraid of a new ice age. A possible solution was to increase CO2 emitions. Some Soviet scientists advocated the same, not to prevent an ice age but to make Siberia more suitable for agriculture.

Quote

why are scientists who are skeptical about this conclusion ridiculed?

I think this question has been answered sufficiently already in this thread. Some are ridiculed because they make a....s out of themselves, some because they are sponsored by the oil lobby, and some just because they challenge a theory that has been succesful in generating grants for other climate scientists. Which of the three factors is more important obviously depends on one's perspective.

Personally I find it difficult to understand all this fuss. What could USA loose by signing the Kyoto protocol? I'm not saying that they should, but given the enormous energy expenditure of the U.S., it should be easy to reduce it by a few percents without any adverse impact on the economy. Richard's pet instrument, the emision tax, would generate revenues that could replace other taxes. It wouldn't surprise me if the net effect would be more jobs and higher standards of living.

On the other hand, why is it so important for the enviromentalists to mute their opposition? Science needs debate, if I were a climate scientist I would quit immediately and find a job in a dicipline where it's still allowed to think independently. I can understand that they want politicians to be concerned about climate so that they allocate funds to climate research, but aren't they shooting themselves in the feet? Aren't they afraid that their sponsors get tirred of that grant drain that only produces agreement?

[boris3161]

One of the interesting implied criticisms in the original programme went as follows:
1/ Modelling the climate is complicated - a lot of assumptions are put together to build a model
2/ People have assumed CO2 increase leads to temperature rise
3/ If any of the assumptions in the models are wrong the results can be wrong (and the models are mostly "chaotic" i.e. small changes in inputs can lead to large changes in outputs)
4/ The assumption that CO2 leads to temperature rise is wrong
5/ Therefore the output from climate models is wrong.

They also asserted that the input parameters were deliberately distorted to make the effects more dramatic.

There is no doubt that the output from the climate models is simplified and condensed for publication but I really hope that the researchers using the models have done a better job than the programme suggests.....

[hrothgar]

helene_t, on Mar 16 2007, 09:49 AM, said:

On the other hand, why is it so important for the enviromentalists to mute their opposition? Science needs debate,

Hi Helene,

Could you clarify what you mean when you say that environmentalists are trying to mute their opposition?

From my own perspective, I'd be thrilled if the whole global warming hypothesis could be disproved... From what I can tell, the global warming hypothesis looks to be true and the biosphere of this planet is royally fucked. We're in for some very ugly times in the years ahead. We can certainly mitigate the damage, however, this is going to require substantial investment. I want this all to be wrong. I'd be thrilled to see that all the scientific studies about the relationship between C02 and temperature could be disproved.

However, to date, the global warming skeptics haven't produced much in the way of sound science. They have, instead, chosen to focus on a series of propaganda pieces that are deliberately designed to poison the chances for intelligent debate. Take a good look at the hack job that Dr Todd linked on the forums. Many of the experts involved are knowingly presenting outdated information that has already been refuted by the scientific community. For example, when Christy makes his obligatory comments about the how quickly the troposphere is warming he seems to be ignoring the following:

Quote

"Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of humaninduced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies."

In a similar fashion, the BBC show regurgitates tired old disproven arguments like "volcanos emit more C02 than humans".

I think that its entirely right and proper to attack these types of propaganda pieces. I have nothing but contempt for the people who foist this kind of crap on the general populace. For the record, this extends to folks like DrTodd who use this stuff trying to promote their own little libertarian fantasy world or to attack anything that might actually require government action.

(BTW, I will say the following: I'm quite glad that DrTodd is a global warming skeptic. Given his political philosophy he'd probably be launching terrorist attacks against coal plants if he believed in global warming...)

[FrancesHinden]

In defence of the BBC
Please stop calling this a "BBC" Global Warming show.
It was broadcast on Channel 4.

Channel 4 is a commercial TV channel.
BBC is directly funded by the British people and the UK Government.