I am glad this is breaking out slowly but surely and the C02 saga will probably be the greatest scientific scandal of our time. I have been following the story for as far as I remember as I had an interest in Ice Ages. This article http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf is very good at debunking some of the myths. You can play with a model online with this http://cs.clark.edu/~mac/physlets/GEBM/ebm.htm#tiptop and you can download a more sophisticated program http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/ from Goddard, or you can write your own Clojure one, like the one we had yesterday here at HN.
There is no doubt that an increase in CO2 will increase temperatures. However, this is only part of a model. C02 can get absorbed by the Oceans and other earth mechanisms and balance out. If you follow the Palaeoclimate literature (ice cores in Antartica) the rise in temperature gave a rise to C02 and not the other way round.
You can look how the famous hockey stick curve looks if plotted against historical times (it looks more like a series of hills).
Serious variations in temperature (on a global level) are caused mostly by sunspot activity. I am sure other HN posters can add 100's more argument to these.
However, as humans there is no doubt that we are destroying our environment. As such I am very much for better policies in this respect but certainly NOT for trading carbon credits and fattening fat cats further.
> or you can write your own Clojure one, like the one we had yesterday here at HN.
The Clojure one we had yesterday that
1. looked only at data during the "hockey-stick handle" period;
2. found, in his very first graph, a steady increase in temperatures over that period whose magnitude (>2 degrees C) was greater than that in the usual "hockey-stick" graph (~ 0.7 degrees C);
3. plotted a bunch more graphs in ways that would inevitably make changes of ~0.7 degrees invisible (look at the last one -- range from -20 to 80 degrees on the y-axis);
3. claimed to have shown by all this that the hockey-stick is not real?
That one?
> CO2 can get absorbed by the Oceans and other earth mechanisms and balance out.
Perhaps it can, but since it's possible to measure CO2 levels and they are in fact increasing that's not actually happening.
I am not actually suggesting inaction I support any measures that will lower human impact on the planet, however, I am supporting good science and policies that do not have the word TAX in them.
How do you know that the best policies do not involve taxation? (If it's because you take it as an axiom that no good policy involves taxation, then the fact that you don't want taxation in this particular case is perfectly uninformative.)
It's because in general I believe tax money is not utilized effectively and their impact on demand is minimal. Non-tax policies could have similar effects. For example the government could impose a ban on manufacturing SUV vehicles or improve the public transport system. Increasing the age at which one could get a driver's license in the USA would probably reduce petrol consumption by a few percent (as more families have more than one car).
What evidence do you have that the money received in tax would not purchase goods and services that would increase emissions?
I never made an axiom that no good policy involves taxation. It was your assumption. The least you could have done was to ask me to clarify my position.
> What evidence do you have that the money received in tax would not purchase goods and services that would increase emissions?
Eh? Where did I say or imply that it wouldn't? I asked why you're so sure that taxation couldn't be part of the best policy. I didn't say I'm sure that it should be. I don't know what the best policy is.
(In any case, surely what's relevant is not whether any tax revenue would go to purchasing things that increase emissions, but whether the net effect would be an increase in emissions.)
> I never made an axiom. [...] It was your assumption.
You might want to remind yourself of the meaning of the word "if".
> The least you could have done was to ask me to clarify my position.
I am shocked by how many up votes this got. C02 can get absorbed by the Oceans and other earth mechanisms and balance out. The worldwide CO2 production is 4.53 metric tons per capita, that’s metric tons of a gas.http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=en_atm_co...
Calculate the increase in PPM of CO2 with the human production of CO2 and the numbers work out. It’s not like we can’t figure out how much CO2 we released in the last 10 years, and compare atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from 10 years ago. I could do these calculations for you, but work them out for yourself and you can see that yes humans do produce plenty of CO2 to alter the concentration in the atmosphere.
PS: Mass of gas in the atmosphere * concentration increase vs. Mass of gas produced.
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
No-one is denying that concentrations are rising, the Modelling of these processes is being questioned. Also I don't doubt the need for well thought action. In the 70's-80's similar lobbies killed nuclear energy which is one of the cleanest means of generating energy. Since hydrocarbons will one day run out, we should be spending more money towards this. Granted a portion can be generated with solar and wind, but solar or wind on its own cannot provide the current or projected needs.
There are non atmospheric carbon sinks, which as you say absorb a percentage of emissions; however, their net effect is identical to a slightly larger atmosphere. You admit that increasing CO2 concentrations increase temperature and human emissions increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations yet you suggest that it's solar storms which have increased the temperature. Why, as a black body increasing earth temperature from incoming radiation is hard, it's temperature ^ 4 = e which takes a lot of energy for a small increase.
Modeling what the net effects are is a complex topic. Doing a proper cost benefit analysis of reducing carbon emissions is hard. But, we could produce all the energy the US needs from wind and solar, we could even create hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 + water, saying that’s not an option is a false choice. The real question is how far should we change, at what cost and for what benefit. I don't know the answers to that question, but I suspect the optimum choice is less costly than what most might while still dramatically altering carbon emissions.
PS: The total carbon emissions from all cars driven in the US is about the same as produced from coal fires in China, if you focus on low cost solutions to the global problem there is a lot of low hanging fruit.
Retric you are right that it is a very complex analysis. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. Given the present composition of the atmosphere, the contribution to the total heating rate in the troposphere is around 5 percent from carbon dioxide and around 95 percent from water vapor. See for example http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd.... If we assume that temperatures rise, evaporation will rise with the result of reducing the solar insolation at surface. If we had the models we could predict the weather months ahead, which we can't.
I quote a more qualified person than me, Prof. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service (See http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html)
There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "
There are a lot of low cost solutions, starting from not falling prey to marketing and consumerism. I am all for a pro-environment world, but I learnt not to buy into the politics and the lobbies of the day.
I don't know how much I buy the "the oceans are getting more acidic" line. The oceans are 3 orders of magnitude larger than the atmosphere, and CO2 makes up 380 parts per MILLION in atmosphere.
Which is a conclusion with some pretty far-reaching consequences. Most environmental legislation in industrialized countries for the past decade, if not two, might have been based on flawed science.
Considering the egos of the people who would need to go out and say "when the facts change, I change my mind" to clean up this mess, it could take decades. We're hearing a lot about market failure these years, how's this for government failure?
> We're hearing a lot about market failure these years, how's this for government failure?
Govt failure isn't new.
Govt is systemic risk.
When US car companies decided that they didn't want to make the kind of vehicles that I wanted, Toyota was willing to do so.
When the US govt decides to do something dumb, I'm expected to pay for it. And when I point out that it's doing dumb things, I get yelled at by folks who think that I have some obligation to fix the govt that they broke.
Indeed, screw all this 'democracy' business where I'm sometimes in the minority, and this 'free speech' nonsense where people voice disagreement with me. And screw these pointy-headed academics with their sinister hidden agendas, telling businessmen what to do. C'mon boys, let's get our jack-boots on and take care of this silliness once and for all.
"The only conclusion that I 've been able to draw from this mess is: climate science has been seriously compromised"
Really? I'll give you a more plausible conclusion: that the scientists in question got tired of responding to repeated Freedom of Information requests from people whose only interest was to disseminate distortions of their findings.
requests from people whose only interest was to disseminate distortions
How do you know the intent of those asking for information? It seems to me that there are plenty of people here on HN that would just like to try their own hand at models. Who gets to decided when a request merits a response?
the scientists in question got tired of responding to repeated Freedom of Information requests
The one who pays the piper calls the tunes. If you're going to build your business (yes, research and universities are businesses) on public funding, then you've got to be prepared to have your customers -- the public -- ask about what you're doing. It seems to me that they ought to have at least an intern dedicated to maintaining a public web site where everything is made available. Then no annoyance to the researchers would occur.
My understanding is that they couldn't make everything available, because some of their data came from sources with confidentiality conditions attached. See, e.g., http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427393.600-battle-fo... (note: "New Scientist" is less than perfectly reliable, but I have no reason to think they're wrong on this particular point).
The fervent nature of global warming believers makes it hard to separate political posturing from useful action.
Lets get the data sorted out; not so that we know what to do (that is easy, and almost irrelevant to GW issues - just no one is really bothering....) but so that the politicians can't abuse the figures for their own end.
To each their own. I have looked it from both sides. The real-climate science camp seems genuinely concerned about causes and consequence of global warming. The other camp, call them deniers, skeptics, or whatever are more concerned about money. They believe that the cost to combat global warming is too high. It also seems divided along political lines. It is flawed logic but some people do think they can use it for political gain, on both sides of the aisle.
The way I see it is: going green is just sensible irrespective of the actual facts. I just don't see any actual committed progress to being "green" (I could name you 10 policy ideas right now that would have a massive impact).
The climate work, IMO, is about talking a very very close look at how much of an impact we are having - and assessing if our response is enough or if more is required.
But all I see, especially recently, is corruption, money and political manoeuvring on both sides.
EDIT: I disagree with your appraisal of the 2 camps though (I'm guessing you fall into the believers camp). As someone sat in the middle, in frustration, both camps are as bad as the other.
"green is just sensible irrespective of the actual facts."
I totally agree with this position. There are numerous benefits to developing better clean air/water standards.
The climate "work" has been on going for decades. The science supporting the theory of anthropogenic global warming is sound.
Their may be some "believers" when it comes to global warming that just take at face value. I'm more of an accepting skeptic. I was skeptical at first that we could 1) Change our climate 2) Predict climate change with any amount of reasonable certainty. Once you understand the science you can see why its obviously true.
> Once you understand the science you can see why its obviously true.
Sorry, this is my hang up. I understand the science - but the data and methodologies that we know about dont quite follow through for me (sometimes anyway)
The data HAS been sorted out, by people who have spent the better part of their lives studying climatology. And among the group that has spent the most time studying Earth's climate, there is broad consensus that a) Earth's climate is warming and b) increased CO2 levels from human activities is the primary cause.
The great thing about this debate, if you're a lobbyist for industrial groups opposing any action to limit CO2 on financial grounds, is that you don't have to prove all those people wrong. You just have to cloud the issue enough to create the illusion of debate over points a and b. It's the PR equivalent of 'reasonable doubt'.
Trust your instinct and don't lose site of the fact that these cases of bad science are few compared to the good.
My instinct tells me that we're destroying the planet. The effect of global warming is hard to see, but it's not hard to imagine given all of the other messes we've made.
I guess one can't know for sure, but I imagine the climate-change deniers and conspiracy-theorists would have uncovered more than one case of data fudging if it was wide spread.
Money and prestige? Really? I wasn't aware climate science was the path to fame and wealth. Do you only trust the poor and obscure?
No, I distrust everyone, but I distrust someone with an incentive to lie more.
Phil Jones is famous and was reasonably comfortable tenured professor with a guaranteed steady income, and wielding power over most of the western world with prophecies of doom and gloom. It's unlikely he'll say "I've been wrong for the last 20 years" regardless of what science shows.
There are numerous examples: Read Michael Pollen's NYTimes "Unhappy meals", "Is it all one big fat lie" or Gary Taubes "Good Calories, Bad Calories" on how nutrition science is perverted for profit.
Read about the recent raw milk legislation about how medical science is perverted for profit.
edit: Wanted to say I'm not stating anything about climate research, as I don't know enough about it; just that I don't share the "good science outnumbers bad science" view.
The article talks about climate change. You might want to learn the difference between climate change and global warming before you dismiss it with a one-liner.
Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is.
What's clear that this tampering should not be fodder for a flippant response about being the "new swine flu". If we can't trust scientist to do their job without "fudging" the numbers, then who are we to trust? I want my tax money going to more research, but now I am not so sure and thats the real tragedy.
Now, its clear what you were getting at with the reference to the swine flu. As far as carbon tax, its good and bad. Good that it will supposedly encourage competitiveness. Bad that most companies will just move to a state or country that doesn't have the tax.
I'm afraid that in some parts of the world it will encourage corruption instead.
It can also hurt developing countries where better energy sources are not available or insanely expensive. I specifically mean eastern part of the EU where carbon tax is likely to be forced.
That's my point: mistrust to organizations who try to push certain conclusions in order to gain profits, in a similar way as it was swine flu & vaccines. That's the meaning of my comparison.
Btw if you care about your taxes, what about Carbon tax?
Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two.
And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.
Please tell me about the difference. As far as I know climate change is the more general term while global warming can be used to refer to the current climate change. Both terms are equally valid, even if global warming might fall a bit short in describing all the effects of climate change. (It will get warmer, but there will likely be other effects that are often less well understood.)
There is hardly any harm done in using both terms interchangably.
(Edited out ocean acidification - I guess that one is strictly speaking neither an effect of climate change nor of gloabal warming. It's rather just caused by the same thing that also causes the current climate change.)
> There is hardly any harm done in using both terms interchangably.
The only caveat is that Global Warming has been intrinsically linked to the word "Man Made" by various people. Rightly or wrongly the phrase has a much more specific connotation than just a subset of climate change.
Sure it has been. At the moment most scientists think that the current crop of climate change is man made. That's just how it is and that's the reason why the term global warming currently usually implies man made.
You will not change that by complaining about definitions and how words are used. In the 19th century light implied aether. No change of the dictionary could change that, there had actual scientific work to be done to change that.
> At the moment most scientists think that the current crop of climate change is man made.
This is the part of the issue under debate...
However: the world appears to be warming up - that is why the phrase global warming was used. There was no man made connotation either way when it was first used. The linking has been made for various reasons.
Aw, now that sounds so devilish. I don't think so. I would guess that most climate scientists were just fed up with saying "global warming that is caused by humans ..." and shortened that to "global warming". No big deal, and happens all the time. Scientists that don't think so must now say "global warming that is not caused by humans ...", but if they are convincing they surely will be able to shorten their version :)
I always thought that global warming was a subset of climate change. The fact that the title of the article included climate change made me puzzled as to why global warming was used.
Because I'm commenting article content, not the title. Of course the global warming is the subset of a climate change -- the subset most relevant in the article.
And like I said before, your comment was poor. You said it was the new swine flu when it's been around far longer. It was disingenuous and apparently calling you on it is a no no; so be it.
Yeah I bet you would say it's poor also if I said it differently, "global warming is overhyped" or whatever, probably because you just don't agree with it.
Speaking of poorness of comments, I guess in this matter you can rely on how they are upvoted. No offense, just see for yourself..
I don't agree with it, but that's not the issue. Your comment wasn't worthwhile. You're arguing ad hominem and haven't even backed up your silly point still and it's four or five comments later.
Flipping it over on me doesn't change the fact that your comment was poor. There are also obvious counterarguments to your point that popularity means you're right but I don't need to go into them.
Yes, technically, "global warming" refers to modern, human-induced climate change. But outside of paleontological circles, they are the same thing.
There's certainly no need to be criticizing people for that usage, since there's no possibility of confusion; we're always talking about modern climate change.
> I always thought that global warming was a subset of climate change.
Not at all. The term "climate change" didn't come into the discussion until the temperature data started to diverge from the predictions. The terminology change was one of many things done to "hide the decline".
The problem is that nobody care whether the "climate is changing". Change is the only constant. The question is whether it is bad and whether we can do something about it. Neither has been very well established in my mind. If in fact our CO2 contribution's effect is far smaller than the IPCC and environmentalists claim, then natural variation is the dominant factor and even completely giving up industrialization entirely next year may not have a very large effect. This means that it is a lot harder to affect the climate than we have been telling ourselves. And climate changes have been happening continuously for billions of years, so it's not at all obvious that they are a priori bad for anything other than human agriculture. (Which is itself bad, but something we can deal with, and broadly speaking is our problem rather than the ecosystem's problem.)
If environmentalists think they can turn on a dime after thirty years of "anthropogenic global warming -> disaster", they are in for a well-deserved beating in the court of general opinion. Falling back to "The climate is changing" is basically an admission that we have no clue, and more than that, where we thought human effects dominated it, it doesn't seem to. You can't just turn around and apply panic over AGW to panic over "climate change"; it is neither rational nor human-irrational.
If you want to panic over something environmental, how about overfishing, plastic pollution in the pacific, fertilizer runoff, or something else that isn't "debatable" but actually, factually exists? In addition to the fact that it's a bad idea to try to "salvage" climate change as an issue, it isn't even necessary. There are real problems. Unless you personally are driven by using environmentalism as an excuse to destroy democracy and transfer wealth to the poor, if you are really driven by concern for the environment, you don't need to "win" this issue. Trying to build your political case on a lie can only be actively harmful in the long run.
I was asked to source my statements, as I did not do so before.
The IPCC Third Report concludes that climate change might either be caused of a changing mean temperature, a changing variance, or both. What the real cause for climate change is, needs to be carefully assessed. This supports my statement that climate change is not necessarily caused by increasing mean temperatures.
So there is allegedly climate change due to carbon dioxide without increasing global temperatures? I've never heard this. What is the mechanism, and what is the evidence?
It's currently increasing at both.... The polar bear populations are increasing too.
> the dead coral reefs
Runoff from deforestation is killing most of them.
There's some effect from increased disolved CO2, but it goes both ways. (Some creatures/plants benefit, others have problems, and still others don't seem to care.)
Ice is and polar bear populations are increasing? I have only read evidence to the contrary. Please provide a citation so I don't think you just made this up.
You can look up the polar bears yourself. You'll find that the population now is about 4-5x the population in the 60s. It may be decreasing slightly in the past few years, but that's in the noise compared to the recent increases. There's no reason to suspect temp change has had an effect comparable to direct intervention by humans.
Thanks for sharing the article. In looking at the data, one notices a clear cyclic pattern but also a subtle general upward trend in temperature and downward trend in ice cover (i.e. the temperature lows are higher and the highs are higher) over time. But I'm no climate scientist.
With respect to the polar bears, I searched around and found many articles which state that the population in the 60's had been diminished because of hunting and that, currently, the plurality of polar bear populations are in decline because of climate change. The one article I found that supports your argument was from Fox News (no bias there ;-)).
> With respect to the polar bears, I searched around and found many articles which state that the population in the 60's had been diminished because of hunting and that, currently, the plurality of polar bear populations are in decline because of climate change.
I note that you didn't mention the relative sizes of these changes, the former being >4x while the latter is close to the margin of error.
First of all, the "margin of error" theory comes from you and not the articles you told me to search out myself. And the hunting definitely adds some perspective to the ">4x increase" so it's worth mentioning. I'm surprised you didn't mention it to begin with.
I'm not looking to do battle here. In fact, I thought I was being humorous and polite. Moreover, I'm happy to see that the polar bear situation is not as dire as I thought. I've adjusted the thermostat in my apartment accordingly.
There is no doubt that an increase in CO2 will increase temperatures. However, this is only part of a model. C02 can get absorbed by the Oceans and other earth mechanisms and balance out. If you follow the Palaeoclimate literature (ice cores in Antartica) the rise in temperature gave a rise to C02 and not the other way round.
You can look how the famous hockey stick curve looks if plotted against historical times (it looks more like a series of hills).
Serious variations in temperature (on a global level) are caused mostly by sunspot activity. I am sure other HN posters can add 100's more argument to these.
However, as humans there is no doubt that we are destroying our environment. As such I am very much for better policies in this respect but certainly NOT for trading carbon credits and fattening fat cats further.