Mother Jones on Global Warming

Via Chris Mooney I find this comprehensive Mother Jones feature on the science and politics of global warming. I found it interesting to compare this handy chart of forty think tanks that have received scads of money from ExxonMobil and have denied the existence of global warming with my own table of think tanks that have received money from Microsoft and have attacked Open Source Software.

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When I read the titles of those think tanks, I found it hard not to laugh. Someone should cook up a script that generates realistic think-tank names.

That way we can help them with what probably is the hardest part of getting funding from Exxon, choosing a fancy name :-)

What is astonishing is how little these guys sold out for. Either that or the money comes in multiple streams. You need about 60-70K to support a secretary.

Maybe fraud doesn't pay that well, unless you're closer to the top of the heap.

Just because they take money from like minded people doesn't explicitly mean they are wrong. That is an argumentative fallacy. So perhaps you can help me a little with some points of substance? If the theory that the increased tempo of high points of solar irradiation is causing up to a 5% change in cloud cover proves true, would this not make CO2 controls pointless? Does not the IPCC report admit that this theory is not well understood yet could have a huge impact on climate models? Does this not merit a certain amount of doubt be inserted into the conclusions? There are several more areas of uncertainty, but wherever I go on the web, I read articles attacking people because Exxon gave them money, so obviously they must be wrong. Not exactly a convincing argument.

Yes jet, just because they are paid by Exxon it doesn't mean that they are wrong. But when mainstream science as published in refereed journals is saying one thing and the people arguing the other thing are mostly getting money from Exxon and other energy companies it gives you a clue as to who is more likely to be right.

Why do Global Warming proponents always shy away from the taboo, unfunded, unexplored theory that the Sun's change in irradiance indirectly effects insulation via changing levels of cloud cover? This might help people better understand that the "left's" side isn't less political than the "right's":

"...Steven Lloyd, an atmospheric scientist from the Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, who will chair the session on cosmic rays and climate next week. But "the political implications of the research muddy the waters", he says."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6270

I'm surprised that Shaviv and Veizer haven't been killed by some rabid green punishing all the unbelievers.

Why do Global Warming proponents always shy away from the taboo, unfunded, unexplored theory that the Sun's change in irradiance indirectly effects insulation via changing levels of cloud cover? This might help people better understand that the "left's" side isn't less political than the "right's":

"...Steven Lloyd, an atmospheric scientist from the Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, who will chair the session on cosmic rays and climate next week. But "the political implications of the research muddy the waters", he says."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6270

I'm surprised that Shaviv and Veizer haven't been killed by some rabid green punishing all the unbelievers.


I'm surprised that Shaviv and Veizer haven't been killed by some rabid green ...

Jet, try the decaf.

The mechanism to which you refer is of great interest to climatologists. It is anything but "taboo, unfunded, [and] unexplored." The reason most researchers still do not believe it has a major impact on climate is that

the cosmic ray data do not show a trend
sufficient to account for

observed warming.

No one is going to assassinate climate researchers for arguing that galactic cosmic rays exert a strong influence on cloud cover. If the calculations are sound and the data are replicable, this theory will become part of the scientific consensus. That's how good science is done.

If, on the other hand, this mechanism turns out to be unimportant in influencing climate, then the oil and coal industries will fund another couple of dozen tame think-tanks to raise yet another bogus objection to the conclusions of climate scientists. That's how good PR is done.

Actually no one is shy here. The problem is that Shaviv and Veizer's paper was flawed. See

Cosmic Rays, Carbon Dioxide and Climate by Stefan Rahmstorf, David Archer, Denton S. Ebel, Otto Eugster, Jean Jouzel, Douglas Maraun, Urs Neu, Gavin A. Schmidt, Jeff Severinghaus, Andrew J. Weaver and Jim Zachos:

Several recent papers have applied correlation analysis to climate-related time series in the hope of finding evidence for causal relationships. For a critical discussion of correlations between solar variability, cosmic rays and cloud cover see [Laut, 2003].

A prominent new example is a paper by [Shaviv and Veizer, 2003], which claims that fluctuations in cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth can explain 66% of the temperature variance over the past 520 million years (520 m.y.), and that the sensitivity of climate to a doubling of CO2 is smaller than previously estimated.

Shaviv and Veizer's paper was accompanied by a press release titled "Global warming not a man-made phenomenon", in which Shaviv is quoted stating: "The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man".

We here present a critical appraisal of the methods and conclusions of [Shaviv and Veizer, 2003].

Go give it a read.

Good linky, Dominion. S&V got hammered by their home country's Science overview something-or-other. I don't have the URL here, but a committee - in writing - slammed S&V hard on their paper. Certainly the sites that trumpet this paper aren't going to mention that the paper hasn't withstood peer review, but a quick trip to the library should clear that up. Best,D

Jet
Before George W Bush decided to reject Kyoto, there was no "left" or "right" position on global warming.
If supporting Kyoto is a left-wing position then I guess George Bush senior, John Major and Helmut Kohl must be leftwingers since they were three of the principal architects of the agreement.

Ian Gould,
You have got to be kidding me? Did you just start paying attention to politics when Bush was elected?

"...the U.S. Senate rejected the hard work of former President Clinton when the body rejected Kyoto in 1997 on a vote of 95-0."

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/electricity/articles…

Kyoto was always political suicide in the US. The Congress that passed it would be removed within 2 years.

Dominion,
Thanks for the link it was a good read. When I read Shaviv and Veizer's paper, I thought their cosmic ray analysis was shaky at best. I don't know jack about it, but it all seemed highly debatable. The more important point with me was satellite measurements of cloud cover. I would imagine that the next 3-5 yeas will either finish highly correlating solar cycles with total cloud coverage or show no correlating. Those pretty graphs showing cloud coverage vs measured solar irradiance were what sold me, not the non-intuitive measurements of cosmic rays from meteorites. We shall see.

Jet
Yet a Senate with substantially the same membership came within about 4 votes of passing the McCain/Leibermann Climate Stewardship Act a couple of years later.
Also how does a bipartisan vote agaisnt Kyoto support your contention that climate change is a left/right issue?

Well Jet, I am glad you enjoyed my link, but I have to admit a bit of dissatisfaction with your reply. After all, you had some pretty harsh things to say:

Why do Global Warming proponents always shy away from the taboo, unfunded, unexplored theory that the Sun's change in irradiance indirectly effects insulation via changing levels of cloud cover? This might help people better understand that the "left's" side isn't less political than the "right's":

But it had nothing to do with politics, or the lefts reluctance to look at a theory. It has everything to do with the fact that Shaviv and Veizer produced a paper that was pretty much crap.

Just once, it would be nice if someone ran across information that completely disputes their cherished theory and instead of shifting the goalpost, as you do above, they would just once consider the possibility that there are people in this world that might actually know a bit more about a subject than they do.

There is no "left/right" science. There is just science.

There is no "left/right" science. There is just science.
Isn't it funny how the self-proclaimed opponents of "moral relativism" can't grasp that - or that "we're not killing as many Iraqis as Saddam did" (even if true) isn't a valid defence of war crimes.

Ian, I totally agree. But one point: in terms of victims, the combined effects of the 'imperial medicine' that the US/UK has brutally applied to Iraq probably exceeds the total number of Saddam's victims anyway. And if we throw in atrocities committed or supported by 'our side' around the world in support of military and/or economic expediency, Saddam is left in the shade.