Most skeptics have been clubbed over the head with the “settled science” refrain at one time or another. How can you, a layman, think you are right when every scientist says the opposite? And if it is not settled science, how do folks get away unchallenged saying so?
I am often confronted with these questions, so I thought I would print my typical answer. I wrote this in the comments section of a post at the Thin Green Line. Most of the post is a typical ad hominem attack on skeptics, but it includes the usual:
The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes, but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.
Here is what I wrote in response:
I am sure there are skeptics that have no comprehension of the science that blindly follow the pronouncements of certain groups, just as I am sure there are probably as high a percentage of global warming activists who don’t understand the science but are following the lead of sources they trust. The only thing I will say is that there is a funny dynamic here. Those of us who run more skeptical web sites tend to focus our attention on deconstructing the arguments of Hansen and Schmidt and Romm, who alarmist folks would consider their top spokesmen. Many climate alarmists in turn tend to focus on skeptical buffoons. I mean, I guess its fun to rip a straw man to shreds, but why not match your best against the best of those who disagree with you?
Anyway, I am off my point. There is a reason both sides can talk past each other. There is a reason you can confidently say “well established and can’t be denied” for your theory and be both wrong and right at the same time.
The argument that manmade CO2 emissions will lead to a catastrophe is based on a three step argument.
- CO2 has a first order effect that warms the planet
- The planet is dominated by net positive feedback effects that multiply this first order effect 3 or more times.
- These higher temperatures will lead to and already are causing catastrophic effects.
You are dead right on #1, and skeptics who fight this are truly swimming against the science. The IPCC has an equation that results in a temperature sensitivity of about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 as a first order effect, and I have found little reason to quibble with this. Most science-based skeptics accept this as well, or a number within a few tenths.
The grand weakness of the alarmist case comes in #2. It is the rare long-term stable natural physical process that is dominated by positive feedback, and the evidence that Earth’s climate is dominated by feedbacks so high as to triple (in the IPCC report) or more (e.g. per Joe Romm) the climate sensitivity is weak or in great dispute. To say this point is “settled science” is absurd.
So thus we get to the heart of the dispute. Catastrophists posit enormous temperature increases, deflecting criticism by saying that CO2 as a greenhouse gas is settled. Though half right, they gloss over the fact that 2/3 or more of their projected temperature increase is based on a theory of Earth’s climate being dominated by strong positive feedbacks, a theory that is most certainly not settled, and in fact is probably wrong. Temperature increases over the last 100 years are consistent with neutral to negative, not positive feedback, and the long-term history of temperatures and CO2 are utterly inconsistent with the proposition there is positive feedback or a tipping point hidden around 350ppm CO2.
So stop repeating “settled science” like it was garlic in front of a vampire. Deal with the best arguments of skeptics, not their worst.
I see someone is arguing that skeptics have not posited an alternate theory to explain 20th century temperatures. In fact, a number have. A climate sensitivity to CO2 of 1.2C combined with net negative feedback, a term to account for ENSO and the PDO, plus an acknowledgment that the sun has been in a relatively strong phase in the second half of the 20th century model temperatures fairly well. In fact, these terms are a much cleaner fit than the contortions alarmists have to go through to try to fit a 3C+ sensitivity to a 0.6C historic temperature increase.
Finally, I want to spend a bit of time on #3. I certainly think that skeptics often make fools of themselves. But, because nature abhors a vacuum, alarmists tend to in turn make buffoons of themselves, particularly when predicting the effects on other climate variables of even mild temperature increases. The folks positing ridiculous catastrophes from small temperature increases are just embarrassing themselves.
Even bright people like Obama fall into the trap. Earlier this year he said that global warming was a factor in making the North Dakota floods worse.
Really? He knows this? First, anyone familiar with the prediction and analysis of complex systems would laugh at such certainty vis a vis one variable’s effect on a dynamic system. Further, while most anything is possible, his comment tends to ignore the fact that North Dakota had a colder than normal winter and record snowfalls, which is what caused the flood (record snows = record melts). To say that he knows that global warming contributed to record cold and snow is a pretty heroic assumption.
Yeah, I know, this is why for marketing reasons alarmists have renamed global warming as “climate change.” Look, that works for the ignorant masses, because they can probably be fooled into believing that CO2 causes climate change directly by some undefined mechanism. But we here all know that CO2 only affects climate through the intermediate step of warming. There is no other proven way CO2 can affect climate. So, no warming, no climate change.
Yeah, I know, somehow warming in Australia could have been the butterfly flapping its wings to make North Dakota snowy, but by the same unproven logic I could argue that California droughts are caused by colder than average weather in South America. At the end of the day, there is no way to know if this statement is correct and a lot of good reasons to believe Obama’s statement was wrong. So don’t tell me that only skeptics say boneheaded stuff.
The argument is not that the greenhouse gas effect of CO2 doesn’t exist. The argument is that the climate models built on the rickety foundation of substantial positive feedbacks are overestimating future warming by a factor of 3 or more. The difference matters substantially to public policy. Based on neutral to negative feedback, warming over the next century will be 1-1.5C. According to Joe Romm, it will be as much as 8C (15F). There is a pretty big difference in the magnitude of the effort justified by one degree vs. eight.
Always nice to see a prediction come true, isn’t it? On April 15th, I said “There is serious mental deficiency on display here. And I will bet plenty of money that the existence of ice ages will not trouble our ‘climate skeptic’. I would say in no more than a fortnight, we shall see the idiotic repetition of the same old ‘long-term stable’ nonsense.”
And yep, true to expectations, just ten days later you’re out with the same mental deficiency. Astonishingly you still can’t bring yourself to understand a) that Earth’s climate is definitely not ‘long-term stable’, and b) that the phrase ‘dominated by positive feedback’ that you love so much is meaningless.
Refusing to accept that ice ages happen is only one example of your laughable stupidity. Your intellect is probably not up to understanding much science anyway, but you could at least try.
I guess the next installment of braindead regurgitation is due on or before May 9th, then.
Hi Hunter
I’ve been following this blog for the past couple of months. I’m a ‘believer’ in mankind’s part in the climate change we’re seeing but i’m also a statstician and I’ve seen an awful lot of rubbish data analysis coming out of the ‘climate change brigade’, for years, much to my annoyance.
I find this blog incredibly useful as a source for questioning data that so often can be interpreted in different ways.
Do I agree with every suggestion coming from this blog? Of course not and I don’t think for one minute that this blog is designed to be anything other than a vehicle for helping thinking people to question what others often have a vested interest in steam-rollering us into just accepting without thinking.
I value this site for the aid it gives me in questioning. I suspect many others do too. Long may it continue.
On a personal level, I would like to add that I found the tone of your comments rude, condescending and negative. It was those that have led me to write my first comment on this blog, so I guess I should ‘thank’ you for that.
I would also like to suggest that you did not help your own excellent (in my view) point about ice ages, which I too find very hard to see in terms of a ‘long-term stable’ view.
I would de delighted if the Climate Sceptic would explore with us his data-led view on this. (He may already have done so and I’ve just not found it on the Blog yet).
So, Climate Skeptic, I hope you’ll keep kicking out your ‘contrary’ views, backed up with your interpretations of the data.
Hunter, I hope you’ll kick back too, preferably with a bit more consideration for the debate and rather less of the abuse.
Jennifer/Hunter,
What do you think causes ice ages?
If ‘dominated by positive feedback’ is meaningless, what is meaningful?
Hunter
I don’t know what Climate Skeptic is thinking about your ice age rant, but for my part it looks like one of the lamest things you have posted. I doubt he wants to honor it with a response. Instead of wasting bandwidth on stupid questions/statements, perhaps you could engage in a more substantive conversation and explain why you think strip bark proxies should be included in any temperature reconstruction. In the meantime I’m laughing at you, not with you.
I like the characterization of the three step argument presented here. Start with a trend that can be agreed upon, create a shaky framework for magnifying that trend then extrapolate and make worst case scenarios to call people to action. I would maintain that this approach by alarmists has already led to policy that has produced some very severe environmental consequences and human suffering.
If the skeptic community really wants to make a point with AGW believers, they really need to argue the consequences of the climate change solutions and then ask people to choose business as usual or the new “green” alternative. Biofuels, coupled with Wall Streets desire to make a buck manipulating markets, led to grain shortages, rising prices and less food for famine programs as well as higher prices to the poor in third world countries. Extra planting and intensive farming with fertizers in the midwest then led to growth of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t believe many AGW alarmist anticipated this but there are always unintended consequences. There are rainforests in Indonesia and the Amazon that are being converted to farmland partly from the pressure of biofuels. Was this intended?
The cap and trade system set up in Europe has been a windfall for energy companies and energy intensive industries who got to raise prices because of the cost of CO2 emmisions but then traded away the permits they were given. Still other companies who actually made an effort to produce energy intensive products more efficiently find they are not competative with offshore producers not opperating under the same system so less energy efficient processes get used to bring products to market. And who would have thougt that the Russians, because of their gross inefficiencies under the Soviet government, would have more carbon credits to sell to western nations than almost anyone? And the response of Europe is to become more reliant on Russian natural gas because it reduces carbon intensity of energy generation while the Russians have shown they have no qualms about turning off the spigot in a political dispute.
AGW alarmist have computer models that will project what ever they want them to project and use these a clubs to promote “action”. Skeptics have 10 years of history to show that a lot of the corrective “action” on climate change does not produce the results intended. If skeptics spent more time focusing their arguments on the real consequences of the “green” solutions, the average guy on the street (who I think is much smarter than people give him credit for) will start looking 2 or 3 moves ahead and make prudent choices.
“What do you think causes ice ages?”
You’re startlingly ignorant, aren’t you? Slight changes in Earth’s orbital parameters. Changes so slight, in fact, that they could not possibly cause the major shifts in climate that they do cause – unless there were some amplifying factor.
“If ‘dominated by positive feedback’ is meaningless, what is meaningful?
This bizarre question is not meaningful. How about you simply specify what the meaning of the word ‘dominated’ is, in this context?
This is one of the most succinct and thoughtful summaries of the real issue in the current debate about climate change I have read.
I’m not sure where all the “stuff” about ice ages comes from. The reality is that paleoclimatologists and geologists do not have a good handle on the causes of ice ages. Certainly in the currant ice age, the Milankovich cycles have a good correlation but there is good evidence that warming in the past has preceded changes in insolation sufficient to cause warming. Like most things in nature, causes of ice ages appears to be complex and multifactorial and we are just beginning to unravel the puzzle.
All the talk about forcings and positive feedback is theoretical. It is interesting, but not so meaningful if the alleged temperature increase is not factual but instead an artifact of data massaging and and cherry picking of proxies. Sure, the global temperature has moved up and down, generally between a large scale warm state and a cold state. But the alarmists are saying the current temperature is abnormal, above the historical swings, and furthermore due to anthropologically produced carbon dioxide. They use their temperature representation in an effort to validate the alleged large value of positive feedback. There are indications that the climate is entering a cooling phase. The alarmists insist the temperature has gone up over the last 7 years when it has not. They insist that the warming of the last 100 years is abnormal when it isn’t. While seven years does not a trend make, the alarmists continue to dodge issues with their temperature reconstructions. And in fact, cooling is cooling no matter how brief. To me, the temperature trend and reconstruction is more important than the feedback issue at this stage of the game.
Hunter,
Your comments are filled with ad hominem remarks. Using ad hominem typically implies a lack of actual constructive arguments. Please attempt to stick with objective substance, people would take you much more seriously.
Hunter,
Please demonstrate to us how Ice Ages are a consequence of strong positive feedback.
Circular Argument is insufficient. Please provide links to vetted, published papers, as well as well-reasoned counter-arguments to refutations of the thesis.
Ad Hominems are grounds for immediate disqualification of anything further stated by you.
Given that this is obviously such an accepted scientific theory, I think 24 hours is sufficient time to present your argument.
Someone commenting at Matt Briggs blog asked “How can laymen evaluate competing science claims from alarmist scientists and skeptical scientists when we lack a science background?” My response — we ask juries to do this in trials every day. As a lawyer, I look at the ways that experts can be cross-examined in such cases.
A book could be filled with a discussion of all these issues (and I’m thinking of writing one), but the clinchers for me come down to the scientific method and the moral duties of those who seek to impose what amounts to massive punishment on the world’s poor.
I may not know chemistry, physics, etc. in depth, but everyone understands quality control. And everyone can understand what is required by the scientific method and whether it is being followed. We don’t accept as definitive the findings which are announced by a single study. Mistakes (intentional and unintentional) happen all the time. Some scientists have claimed that more than half of published science studies turn out to be wrong. So the scientific method requires that the data, methods, assumptions, analysis, etc. of a study must all be made available to other scientists who then check, audit, and replicate the study. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening in climate science today.
Michael Mann’s comedy of errors hockey stick study overturned everything that the world of science understood to be true about the world’s temperature history for the last 1000 years. It overturned a wealth of findings from a wide variety of disciplines all of which showed a medieval warm period and a little ice age. Yet despite its revolutionary findings, NO ONE checked it, NO ONE audited it, and NO ONE replicated it. The IPCC accepted its conclusions in full and featured it prominently.
This is not the way quality science is done. This is a major failure to operate in accordance with the scientific method. And it is typical of most climate studies.
The temperature monitoring network in the US is a quality disaster. The rest of the world is even worse. It is a farce that so-called climate scientists would make grand pronouncements about the end of the earth without bothering to check that their thermometers were accurate. It is shockingly irresponsible. Add the lack of quality control in the databases for temperature and ice extent and we have a situation that ought to be a public scandal.
Since the climate policies being advocated will inevitably lead to hunger, impoverishment, disease and early death for billions of people, we (as a jury) have a right to expect the “experts” to adopt serious quality controls and follow the scientific method. When they don’t, the only morally responsible position is to dismiss their claims.
#1 could be true – but the result is based on models, not observation. There is in fact no way to validate this empirically, lacking the ability to go back in time and re-run the Earth experiment holding all things the same, but keeping CO2 at preindustrial levels. I would not consider the 1.2degC figure to be settled science. It’s an unverified model result. Nothing more.
Jennifer,
I won my bet. You cannot answer.
You are just an attitude looking for (and failing to find) wit.
Troll on, babe.
Stan:
Just a slight quibble, but I believe that my quibble essentially proves your point. When you say that “NO ONE replicated [Michael Mann’s comedy of errors],” that is not quite accurate. A few studies have replicated Michael Mann’s work, but the vast majority of the authors have been colleagues of Mann and have been called the Team. What has been common in all such studies is the reliance and weight on one or two controversial proxy series that have responsible for the result that “overturned a wealth of findings from a wide variety of discipline.” These controversial series were chosen despite availability of other proxies with less controversy and despite their contradiction to other evidence. For example, today’s retreating glaciers reveal that the climate in Western United States was quite warm a 1000 years ago, contrary to Mann’s bristlecone proxy.
I’ve seen “Hunter’s” regular comment that “Earth’s climate is definitely not ‘long-term stable’” and wonder why he/she comes to that conclusion?
I suppose that taking a view based upon the “600 million year temperature / CO2” graph (derived from Scotese and Berner) where temperature appears to vary between approximately 12 and 23 degrees Celsius, “Hunter” seems to have a point, in that an approx 100% variation between max and min is not exactly a sign of stability. However, basing a conclusion upon an arbitrary temperature scale surely proves nothing, shouldn’t we be working in Kelvin? Whereupon the temperature variation moves to a range between 285 and 296 degrees, or to put it another way, around 4.5% – which is, in my view, pretty stable.
Joshv,
The theory that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and (on it’s own) contributes to global warming is based on known physical processes and, I believe can and has been proven in lab experiments. Making this arguement is just the kind of thing that will attract the attention of the alarmists and they’ll spend their time arguing with you instead of Warren. Roy Spencer believes in the Greenhouse effect of CO2 (check drroypencer.com), Pat Micheals believes it, Steve McIntyre believes it. Holding out on this point essentially makes you a crank.
Jim,
When you mention the “alleged warming”, I presume that you’re talking about unaccounted for Urban Heat island Effects & the questionable quality of many surface stations. True, UHI effects are most certainly not properly accounted for. The U.S. tempurature records are better than you think, for the rest of the world, they’re terrible. So, of the recorded warming, it’s reasonable to consider that about a half of it is artificial. However, that means that there HAS STILL BEEN Warming. Saying that you question any warming risks putting you in the “crank” category. And this is unnecessary. You can stipulate that ALL the warming is real (as Warren does) and still have a very good arguement to make. This has the advantage of making the “other side” focus on your best arguements.
I think Hunter/Jennifer is paid by Exxon/Mobil to make the AGW crowd look bad.
Not all “various groups” agree with the IPCC. Polish geologists don’t.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3310
Original in polish: http://www.kngeol.pan.pl/images/stories/pliki/2.Stanowisko%20KNG%20w%20sprawie%20zmian%20klimatu.pdf
Something that I think this argument, as well constructed as it is, is missing. The IPCC conclusions are based not on a single set of climate models, but three interdependent sets of models, each of which has measurement and forecasting issues.
The first set of models is used to convert proxy measurements of historical biological and geochemical processes into a historical temperature record. It is these that use such data a tree ring widths, sediment deposition, and stalagmite growth to create a record of past temperature. It is becoming apparent that many of these proxies are affected by factors other than temperature, such as rate of precipitation, and even CO2 atmospheric content directly, making them less reliable than originally assumed.
In the second set of models, the historical temperature trends are used as input to extrapolate future effects of CO2 content on climate. It is here that the assumptions of high and net positive feedback are introduced, based on the potentially flawed reconstructions of historical temperatures.
In the third set of models, the climate trends from the second set are input into economic and econometric models to determine what the net effects of climate changes will be on the survival and welfare of various population groups. Many of these seem to have the implicit assumption that the climatic conditions were somehow “optimal” in the first half of the 20th century, and that any deviation from these conditions is necessarily negative in impact.
The big problem gets introduced by the fact that no one knows how good any of these models actually are. It has been my observation, at least in the second and third sets, that the primary criterion for judging both the accuracy and precision of the models is how well they agree with each other, rather than how well they agree with the actual observed trends.
I have spent most of my adult career working with complex computerized systems, and have experienced first hand the old adage of “Garbage in, Gospel out”, or the fact that people have a tendency to believe numbers out of a computer more readily than their own observations. I have also worked with the mathematics of non-linear dynamical systems enough to realize that any model that can calculate the Earth’s climate faster than the climate changes are themselves realized, must necessarily be oversimplified to the point of dubiousness at best.
BillB – I am not denying there has been warming. I am referring to the allegation that the “hockey stick” part of the alarmists’ chart is abnormal and higher than any temperature in the past. There has been warming since the last cooling – and we had nothing to do with the cooling or the warming. The hockey stick part of the chart is a product of “data processing” at its worst along with questionable proxies in my opinion. I think the truth is that we don’t have a very good idea of recent temperatures before satellite readings due to a sparsity of stations. Any attempt to use this questionable data as a basis for the prediction of of future warming or anything else is futile, again in my opinion. For example, alarmists use the hockey stick to “prove” that the sun no longer drives the temperature. It could be that CO2 is causing the warming or it could be sloppy methods cause apparent warming.
I admire the malleability of AGW reasoning as provided by Hunter.
1. There is a huge (undefined) amplification factor that causes (and, I guess, also ends) ice ages. Therefore climate is controlled by large forcing factors we don’t understand BUT ALSO
2. Prof Mann et al. are right that the climate has been utterly stable–almost flatline for millenia so it must be that CO2 is the only factor that matters and the IPCC models understand and account for all factors that matter.
So skeptics are idiots if deny or if they acknowledge significant non-carbon causes of climate change.
The notion that large positive feedbacks are unlikely is not the same as saying the climate never changes. It is to say that when there is change it does seem to tend back, however slowly. There do appear to be tendencies to toward equilibrium rather than one-directional change.
In contrast, the hypothesis of overly large sensitivity requires complex face-saving measures to account for rather modest warming over the last century such as: complex assumptions of a pattern of one-sided behavior by water vapor that hasn’t occurred yet, missing ocean heat content, convenient (almost magic) assumptions about aerosols and, of course, intense revisionism about pre-modern climate history.
AGW theory is reminiscent of the complicated epicycles of pre-Copernican theory of planetary orbits designed to save appearances. The heliocentric theory was a lot easier even though there was a large geocentric consensus.
The known science and the numbers seem to say (1) it’s probably gonna get warmer but not that much and (2) it is not at all clear that such a change will be bad much less catastrophic. The (sometimes lucrative) psychological and/or ideological predisposition to speculate about catastrophic climate outcomes is more a function of modern yuppie narcissism than of actual climate change.
Take a look at this RealClimate discussion of the Hockey Stick issue. Notice that for the most part, they avoid discussion of the specific proxies used in reconstructions. Notice how they use the term “significant data” instead of specific proxies. From the web page: “If you use the MM05 convention and include all the significant PCs, you get the same answer.” They will have to get down to more detail than this to convince me the hockey stick is real.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/
Hunter.
Your time is up.
Hunter,
It is about time this came out. Sometimes, you know – it even gets beyond the science and the lay man can understand whats happening. In its complexity – its that simple.
We (lay people) understand, sure we need to curb our levels of emmissions, stay as green as we can be and clean up after ourselves – just NOT for the reasons you people wish we would – to support another ECONOMY that grew out of Al Gore’s a_ _ e!
So, quite simply, if you want to play science here – PLAY it and speak to people as intelligently as they are trying to make their points to you and other. BUT
If you want to abuse people, then just post your address here and I’ll come over and we’ll have that abusive conversation you are after.
And by the way, I meant your home address (a photo is good also so I can locate you when I see you)
Cheers
Gavin
“has been proven in lab experiment”.
Lab experiments are not the atmosphere. The general consensus around the size of the effect is based on models alone, and is not based on empirical evidence or measurement. I don’t care who concedes the point, it doesn’t change the fact that about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 is not a scientifically measured (or measurable) quantity.
“Holding out on this point essentially makes you a crank.”
From a scientific standpoint the atmospheric warming effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is are unverified hypotheses, nothing more. There might be compelling reasons to believe that these gases cause warming based on simplified models of the atmosphere, but there are no empirical measurements that demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between atmospheric partial pressure of these gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and long term heat retention.
I will grant that wherever you live, the climate is almost certainly warmer today than it was 150 years ago. I am relatively agnostic as to the various hypothetical cause. I think it unlikely that CO2 is the primary or even a substantial driver, though I could certainly be wrong. I also am skeptical of other proposed theories. There simply is not enough data available to be able to infer clear cause/effect relationships.
If climate sensitivity is less than the IPCC says then why is the melting of the summer Arctic sea ice accelerating and proceeding much faster than the worst case IPCC models? Or do you dispute the albedo effect as well?
JR:
1) Where have you been, dude? The Great Arctic Melt of 2008 has been canceled due to large ice coverage that now exceeds that of each of the last 7 years. See: http://digitaldiatribes.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/sea-ice-april-2009.jpg. For a really solid and informative analysis of ice coverage dynamics and history, see http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm.
2) Given that some of the models in the IPCC call for current temperatures to be running substantially higher than they actually are, I am pretty sure we are well below worst-case levels for melting.
3) Nobody disputes the science of albedo effects. At issue is speculation about magic amplifications of such effects. I believe (as you probably do) that black soot deposits on ice masses are a bad thing and that such deposits affect ice melting and thus albedo. However, I don’t believe that the effect is large or lasting.
1.. CO2 has a first order effect that warms the planet
2.. The planet is dominated by net positive feedback effects that multiply this first order
effect 3 or more times.
3.. These higher temperatures will lead to and already are causing catastrophic effects.
You are dead right on #1, and skeptics who fight this are truly swimming against the science. The
IPCC has an equation that results in a temperature sensitivity of about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 as
a first order effect, and I have found little reason to quibble with this. Most science-based
skeptics accept this as well, or a number within a few tenths.
You are dead wrong on #1, and skeptics who accept this are swimming with the flow of the pseudo-science. IPCC is a bullshit organization that makes up all kinds of stuff, like climate sensitivity. The fact that you have “no reason to quibble with it” is not a good reason to just accept its scientific validity.
JR:
Where have you been, guy? The Great Arctic Melt of 2008 has been canceled due to cold weather and sea ice whose extent is now larger that any in the last 7 years. Also, what worst-case scenario? We are experiencing actual temps at the very bottom of the predicted IPCC range.
claudius denk and josh:
The physics of CO2 are well-established. I don’t see any reason to dispute that. The issue is whether the climate system (a) just passively accepts that modest warming; (b) pushes back and reduces it or (c) amplifies it. Present trends validate (a) or (b) and (c) is looking less likely.
Lukewarmists unite! We have been right all along!
JR asks
“If climate sensitivity is less than the IPCC says then why is the melting of the summer Arctic sea ice accelerating and proceeding much faster than the worst case IPCC models? Or do you dispute the albedo effect as well?”
Why look at melting sea ice, when we can look at actual global temperature records. Over the last century the increase in global temperature has been significantly lower than what would be expected by the IPCC climate sensitivity. The IPCC has to “explain” the acutal temperature record. The explanations are based on conjecture, not hard data (e.g. aerosals have prevented expected warming; the warming is in the “pipeline”)
The post states:
“Those of us who run more skeptical web sites tend to focus our attention on deconstructing the arguments of Hansen and Schmidt and Romm, who alarmist folks would consider their top spokesmen. Many climate alarmists in turn tend to focus on skeptical buffoons. I mean, I guess its fun to rip a straw man to shreds, but why not match your best against the best of those who disagree with you?”
Hunter replies:
“Refusing to accept that ice ages happen is only one example of your laughable stupidity. Your intellect is probably not up to understanding much science anyway, but you could at least try.”
I would suggest that we spend our time focused on Hansen and Schmidt and Romm rather than “Hunter”
just to clear up some terms for the discussion there is an important distinction between “ice age” and glaciation.
we are currently in an ice age. it commenced about 30 million years ago. it has a great deal to do with both the presence of a major continent at a pole and with the closure of the isthmus of panama preventing equatorial mixing of the Atlantic and pacific oceans. this ice age will persist for millions of years to come barring a massive rearrangement of the continents.
glaciation is what many of you mean when you say ice age. it’s a period in an ice age where ice spreads sometimes from tropic to tropic. we are currently in the warm period between glaciations which are the baseline state in an ice age. de-galciation is highly correlated to malinkovich cycles in the earth’s orbit and rotation.
the current warm period is cooler than most of the others indicated in the vostok ice cores (among others). in all cases, CO2 rise has occurred but as a lagging variable, not a leading one. when the world cools, it then drops, also as a lagging indicator. this same trend (in rate of increase) can be seen on timescales as short as 4 months. this seems to support the argument that CO2 is an effect and not a primary cause of warmings. this is not to say it has no effect, but rather that the effect is not enough to radically alter climate and that it seems to be muted by other factors that provide negative feedback. most current GCM’s model positive warming feedback from clouds despite clear evidence that clouds and precipitation systems provide negative feedback (see spencer’s work with the AQUA satellite and Lindzen’s “adaptive heat iris” hypothesis.
of further interest are cosmic ray impacts that are left out of GCM’s. a drop in solar output may have more than 1 effect on earth climate. in addition to reducing incoming energy, a drop in solar wind also exposes the atmosphere to more cosmic rays. these rays cause ionization which encourages high cloud cover increasing earth’s albedo and reducing the energy reaching the surface even further.
even the IPCC admits to having a “poor” understanding of many of these feedbacks which makes it utterly astounding that they would claim 90%+ certainty in their predictions when feedbacks comprise most of the warming they posit. from these two facts alone (both of which can be found in the AR4 itself) it is pretty clear that the IPCC is either comprised of very poor scientists or possesses an agenda other that an accurate portrayal of the facts.
Sean wrote: “If the skeptic community really wants to make a point with AGW believers, they really need to argue the consequences of the climate change solutions and then ask people to choose business as usual or the new “green” alternative. Biofuels, coupled with Wall Streets desire to make a buck manipulating markets, led to grain shortages, rising prices and less food for famine programs as well as higher prices to the poor in third world countries.”
I’m a graphic artist, working with the Environmental Protection Agency. One of the scientists here does research on gasoline additives and how they contaminate the soil. I asked him recently how he felt about ethanol in gasoline. He replied that research has shown that when you add ethanol to gasoline, the contaminates move more rapidly into the soil and then disperse at a faster rate than gas without ethanol. He said that Congress had the results of this data BEFORE they mandated that ethanol be added to gas, but chose to ignore it. This is another example of how the solutions cause as many problems as they solve.
On the topic of ducking issues, I would like to add another thought. Many of the pro-AGW arguments I read on the web are based on “all or nothing” reasoning. For example, they assert that the urban heat island effect cannot explain all of the observed warming in the termperature record. Or they assert that the variations in the behavior of the sun cannot explain all the warming observed. Or that changes in land usage cannot explain all of the observed warming. What they do not fully acknowledge is that some of the observed warming may be caused by processes we do not fully understand such as the urban heat island effect, or variations in the behavior of the sun or changes in land usage.
The IPCC attempts to determine the contribution of CO2 to the observed warming by running historical models with and without increased CO2 and then subtracting the difference. The assumption is that increased CO2 is the only significant cause of the warming. It is possible that this is true, but I don’t think we have nearly sufficient data to state with certainty it is true. The notion that this is “settled science” strikes me as an absurd contention.
If each of these processes and perhaps many more, have made some contribution to the observed warming, then the contribution of CO2 to the observed warming would be overstated in the IPCC models.
If even one-quarter of the observed warming has been caused by processes unrelated to CO2 that we have not fully accounted for, then the models will be far off, particularly when they are extended out 100 years.
Carbon dioxide facts:
1.Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a colorless gas that appears as a trace (less than 0.04%)component of air.
2. CO2 is essential for plant growth and is essential for life on earth.
3. It is produced mainly by nature but also as a result of the combustion of compounds that contain carbon, such as coal, petroleum and natural gas.
4. CO2 is classified as a “greenhouse gas”. All components of the atmosphere are greenhouse gases, and without them the earth would be a frozen ball of ice.
5. The greenhouse affect of CO2 is insignificant when compared to that of water vapor in the atmosphere. The Global Warming people disregard water vapor when talking about greenhouse gases.
6. CO2 is sometimes sited as the cause of “Acid Rain” but CO2 when combined with water produces a very mild acid. Acid rain has been mostly eliminated by the removal of sulfur and nitrogen oxides from combustion gases.
7. CO2 has sometimes been blamed for the death of some coral reefs. Coral is an animal which depends on CO2 for the growth of its calcium carbonate skeleton. Coral, like all animals eventually die and do live forever.
8. It is amazing that plant life can live with the present trace amount of CO2 in air. Experiments have shown that a higher concentration will cause faster plant growth.
9. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased only about 0.01% during the past 200 years. That still is only a trace amount.
10. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant or poison because it is about 4% in the breath that man exhales.
JimBeaux, the plot thickens when you look at the history of oxygenates in gasoline. The first major oxygenate was MTBE. In the 1980’s it was hailed as a great example of the oil industry and environmentallists working together to solve an air pollution problem. In reality, the MTBE was needed to reduce emmissions on the fraction of older cars that were not well maintained. It increased cost and reduced gas mileage so everyone paid for it whether needed or not. When MTBE started showing up in a lot of ground water people clammored for its elimination so the powerful farm lobby and AGW activists stepped forward to fix the first fix at an even greater cost to consumers. I point this out because whenever you see diametrically opposed groups hoisting a glass of champagne and touting their joint effort to solve a problem, all it really means is that they’ve found a way to profit from legislation intended to solve a percieved problem, usually without regard to unintended effects.
Please Hunter, do tell us.
What causes Ice Ages ?
Are we in an Ice Age now ?
PaulD – I am still exploring and reading up on global warming. I came upon this site today. There is an interesting chart showing a hockey stick in solar output! I have not looked into it to try to figure out if it is valid or not, but thought I would share it in case anyone had not seen this before. Good commentary on many of the proxies also.
One thing about the global warming cultists is they put out a ton of papers. Too bad the methodology they choose frequently isn’t so good.
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Proxies.html
I am a junior in high school. I don’t understand any of this. I’m not trying to sound like a dunce, I was hoping someone could help explain some of this to me. Do the greenhouse gases have any affect on “climate change”, and if so, how much? And, also, could someone exlain the use of Ice Core Evidence, and whether or not it is a reliable source to prove whether or not global warming is occuring.
Thank you
Jessica,
What do you think ‘climate change’ means?
Over the past 12 months I’ve been publishing a number of ‘common sense’ articles trying to work out what the climate really is doing and why.
For a different perspective on all this try here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=37
There is alot to digest so if interested fix the link as a favourite and dip into it from time to time.
So far my propositions are matching real world climate behaviour very well.
Climate Skeptic, I have one quibble with your answer to AGW alarmists; you call their unproven hypothesis a theory. It isn’t.
Hunter,
Your response to Jessica is, saddly, typical of your total lack of understanding of the science. If you can’t, or won’t, explain it simply and succinctly, so that a high school student can understand, then you are demonstrating either ignorance or are just being your obstreporous self.
Jessica,
Yes, greenhouse gases do have an effect on climate change. The extent of the change is poorly known since there have been times when greenhouse gases have been higher and temperatures have been lower and vice versa. Greenhouse gases help to keep the earth’s temperatures conducive to supporting life. The effect of CO2, is complex. If you double the amount of CO2, you should expect an increase of somewhere around 1.2 degrees, if all other conditions remain the same which they rarely do. You can do some simple math to determine that we would need to get to about 580ppm CO2 to see the temperature rise by 1.2 degrees as compared to pre-industrial times. Then we would need to add another 580ppm (total of 1160ppm) to get another 1.2 degrees. That is, as always, taking into account that all other factors have to remain stable. They don’t.
The earth’s climate is a chaotic system with a considerable number of variables. There are positive and negative feedbacks. The orbit of the earth, the sun’s output patterns, clouds, etc all effect the way the system responds. The bottom line, in my humble opinion is that climate changes, it always has and always will.
JR: In response to your questions: “If climate sensitivity is less than the IPCC says then why is the melting of the summer Arctic sea ice accelerating and proceeding much faster than the worst case IPCC models? Or do you dispute the albedo effect as well?”
If Arctic Ice is disappearing faster than the worst case IPCC models while GMT is not rising and other fingerprints are missing, perhaps the models are missing something in the modeling of Artic Ice. If cash is bleeding out of LTCM faster than the worst case in their financial models, perhaps something is amiss with their models. If the Titanic is taking on water faster than models say is the worst case, perhaps the models are missing something key. In the Arctic, the models are missing the effect of abnormal level of sunshine in 2007 and the winds that blew the ice. Unless one maintains that CO2 changes are responsible for the sunshine and winds – and I have not seen such claims – then the IPCC models are quite inappropriate for discussion of recent Arctic ice levels. Furthermore, IPCC models in AR4 did not model ocean oscillations, and there has been little GCM progress in that area since then. The non-Hansen departments of NASA point out that the culprits in 2007 and 2008 levels were lack of cloud cover, winds, the oscillations – and soot from China. We are not talking about a CO2-driven phenomenon in recent Arctic ice levels.
JNicklin,
I am not trying to be naything negative to ‘Jessica’. And I apologize to her if my question to her comes across as anything less than helpful.
My question was an effort to help her clarify her thinking on this topic.
Your answer is a nice one, however.
(And I am not the phony ‘Hunter’ who posts under my name).
My point would be that GHG’s are an integral part of the climate system.
The atmosphere is composed of gasses which are to a lesser or greater extent acting as greenhouse gasses. Each atmospheric component absorbs different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The oceans, the rotation of the planet and its orbit around the sun,along with the atmosphere, and the land, are the prime parts of the climate.
The sun energizes the entire system.
The rotation sets up coriolis effects and prevents large heating differentials; the angle of the axis of rotation creates seasonal changes as Earth orbits Sol.
The oceans receive most of the energy, and the atmosphere convects the energy around, as well as acts as an ‘insulator’ in no small part by way of the famous greenhouse effect.
Each of the major pieces of the climate system has changed over time.
Life has done OK.
Of GHG’s, water vapor is the most significant.
I hope this helps Jessica. The topic is fascinating.
Hunter (the real one)
I apologize for confusing you with the interloper. Your post adds to an explanation for Jessica quite nicely.
Hunter and JNicklin
Thank you both for your help. I am doing a project for my geology class, and I was having trouble finding information on my questions. There was a question that you both forgot to answer for me. How exactly does Ice Core Evidence work, and how reliable is it? I have found a few websites about it, but they tell me different things.
I appreciate both of your help. I am understanding this much more.
You say “The IPCC has an equation that results in a temperature sensitivity of about 1.2C per doubling of CO2 as a first order effect”
I agree that this is true. However, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that the feedback may be negative — of course it would result in a lesser increase rather than a decrease.
The reason I say that is simply because as you know the numbers are NOT well established and while negative feedback is generally considered impossible by the consensus, I’ve seen no proof or even good evidence one way or the other yet.
I know you don’t often answer to comments in your blog but I’ll try anyway, what are your thoughts on this?
Jessica,
Some people hold out ice cores as a gold standard for not only paleo CO2, but for evidence of things like dust particles, pollen, volcanic ash, and other indicators of atmospheric state. There is controversy about the accuracy of the CO2 micro bubbles trapped in the snow.
Jeff: He never answers. Which is somewhat unique for a blogger. I imagine it does save him a lot of time though.
On the 1.2degC/doubling point – I agree. This is a model result, not an empirical measurement. One can concede that given simplified models, 1.2degC/doubling seems at least plausible. But it’s not a measurable quantity in any scientific sense, and more complex system dynamics which are not currently well modeled could result in a much lower number, even zero.
Jessica,
As snow accumulates and becomes glacial ice, small amounts of atmospheric gases are trapped in the air spaces between the ice crystals. As years pass, each successive year’s ice becomes compressed under the newer layers. What may have been a metre of snow in 10,000BCE could end up as a few millimetres by 2000CE. Ice cores recover the historical layers which can then be disected to recover the gases and other inclusions for analysis. As the real hunter pointed out, this evidence is considered “gold standard” in some circles. Also as hunter stated, there are problems with accuracy. I will try to give you a snapshot of the problems as I understand them.
1. Gases are free to migrate in and out of the loose snow/ice matrix for several years before being trapped in a steady state matrix. So, depending on weather/temperature conditions, the gases in a paleo layer represent several years of mixed gases. Not really a problem at the resolution scales that paleo studies deal with, but could be problematic if you are trying to get fine resolution to prove, or disprove, a point. For really old ice layers the resolution can be decades or centuries or more.
2. Ice under great pressure is not solid, it is more like a soft wax, it can fold and smear. In some cases, older ice layers can be folded over newer layers. If you take a core through one of these folds, the timeline is distorted. High quality researchers will take this into account, if they get the right cores in the right places.
3. Trapped gases in ice are only an indicator of the gases present at that particular place on the planet at a given time. Using them as global indicators assumes that all the gases are well mixed on a global scale, they are not. Today, we use one site, Mona Kea, for measuring CO2. These measurements may or may not be indicative of the levels of CO2 at the polar regions.
CO2 trapped in the ice layers is not a good indication of anything other than CO2 at the time. A better indicator of temperature is O2. In cold periods, ice will trap Oxygen18, in warmer times its Oxygen16. The ratio of the two Oxygen types can be used to determine, in a broad sense, what the temperature was at a given time in the past. Temperature approximations in paleo times are not as precise as readings taken from modern instruments. If you use ice cores to determine temperatures, you should not combine it with modern instrument data. Some researchers (Mann et al) have used tree rings and other paleo indicators to determine pre-instrument temperatures. To be consistent, they should use modern tree rings to determine current temperatures. Tacking on instrument readings to paleo derived approximations can lead to conclusions that confuse the issues.
You should not take any statements made in blogs or any online site as absolute fact, this includes what I have just told you. Do your own research. Some of us can guide you, but you have to be comfortable with your own understanding of the issues.