So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I enjoyed your writing... keep it coming!

At the same time, the US is cutting back on scientific spaceflight, channeling the money into manned spaceflight so that huge expensive manned craft can fail to do as well as robotic spacecraft, and at twenty times the price.

Aging Earth orbiters are not going to be replaced. Their data sets will exist pretty much in isolation, giving us their kind of data for a slice of time, never to be repeated again.

So now that smart decisions seem to be increasingly important, our national policy is to cut back on knowledge in favor of enriching the same people who gave us the race to the Moon, Skylab, the Shuttle, and the ISS.

What we need are things like replacements for QuikScat and the like.

...consequences will be significant. Melting glaciers raise sea levels, change rainfall patterns, and increase occurrence of extreme weather. Droughts and floods, temperature extremes, and the loss of biodiversity ensue.

For those who have examined the data and concluded that this stuff is actually going to happen on any kind of short-medium term time frame (next 50 years or so), how do you rationalize getting in a car, ever? Flying? Turning on the lights? Shopping at grocery stores?
I'm not trying to troll, just wondering what the standard response to this Michael Chrichton-style argument actually is...

No one disputes the fact that the earth has warmed about one degree in the last one hundred years. The earth does not have an "ideal" temperature and climate variation is the norm not an aberration. What is in dispute is the link between human produced CO2 emissions and any looming climate "catastrophe".

There are many good reasons for our country to seek energy sources other than petroleum,(limited domestic supply, unstable even antagonistic foreign suppliers, etc.) but unsupported claims of an impending climate "melt down" are just irrational.

The climate has certainly changed in the past, but the changes play out over much longer periods of time. Even so, the changes had a dramatic impact on the environment. For example, from about 300 million years to 260 million years ago the Earth went from a state much like the present, with ice caps and roughly current levels of CO2, to an ice-free world with about 2000 ppm CO2. But on the way, the climate swung back and forth between icy and hot several times. See this story about research from Isabel Montanez at UC Davis from January.

Before anyone starts making cracks about dinosaurs driving Hummers, note that the CO2 rise (likely from volcanos, I think) took place over millions, not hundreds, of years.

The climate's effect on fish populations seems to be one hot topic reeling in the grants in the fisheries world. But will it really matter if we wrap our heads about climate change and fisheries if we can't stop wrapping our nets around fish schools...warmed up or not? That said, here is an interesting take on warming, tropic storms, and seafood, succinctly combining the Kirshenbaum/Mooney/Jacquet interests...

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/05/storms_muddy_waters_for_la_…

I really like Penn's comment on their latest episode of BS. It went something like this. Are we leaving problems for our children in the future? Maybe, I don't know about you, but my kids are a lot smarter than I am.

I'm not saying we should ignore the problem, but I'm not going to waste my life worrying what happens to people 100 years from now, it's not of my concern. Plus I really like their solution, Nuclear Power. Clean, Safe, Efficient.

Jordan and friends,
The solution is not an idealized, radically different global society tomorrow, but rather hope is found in each small victory. There IS finally a growing recognition that the planet is warming and we are empowered to do something.

When I arrived on Capitol Hill approximately one year ago, a seasoned, cantankerous old man, who was to become a dear friend shook his head pitying me. "Environmentalists are a dying breed," he said. "No one cares kid, you're fighting a loosing battle."

A year later, the 21-page IPCC report for policymakers linked with "90 percent" certainty, the increase of average global temperatures since the mid-20th century to the increase of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Shortly before that, President Bush called for the use of more environmentally friendly technologies to "confront the serious challenge of global climate change" in his State of the Union address.

Even curiouser, hearings on climate change were recently held by leaders in the House of Representatives and Senate.

Not to mention Al Gore cleaned up at the Oscars and has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for An Inconvenient Truth. Just look to yesterday's NYTimes magazine and I see a reason for hope and an answer to naysayers among us.

Can it be? Do I sense the forces of nature (i.e. the federal government and public at large) are changing their beat? Are we collectively, in fact, RECOGNIZING the Great Warming?

In the words of Bob Dylan..

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Andy says,

"But on the way, the climate swung back and forth between icy and hot several times."

Yes and according to "scientific consensus", and more importantly empirical evidence, rises in CO2 concentration FOLLOWED rises in temperature. Then when the CO2 was still at much higher levels than today global temperatures declined and glaciation followed even while CO2 persisted for hundreds of years at levels much higher than today.

Mann, of realclimate, and hockey stick ill-repute, acknowledges CO2 lagged rather than lead in past climate change and tries to illogically claim that, "unknown" factors caused temperatures to rise before CO2 levels and then claims that CO2 "took over" to raise temps after the mysterious "unknown" factors got the ball rolling.

He makes no attempt to explain why temps declined while CO2 levels remained high for hundreds of years with no "green house gas" warming evident. Apparently CO2 picks and chooses when it drives climate change.

It is just this sort of footloose pseudo-scientific drivel that has led me to conclude that there is no credible evidence of anything frightening happening due to CO2 in the atmosphere, anthropogenic or otherwise.

The bad smell in the air is purely a result of political emanations.

Lance, Mann has clearly and correctly rebutted your arguments on RealClimate many times. What do you hope to gain by mindlessly repeating them?

"90 percent" certainty

Wasn't it over 90% certainty? The curmudgeonly Bob Somerby has been harping on that one (scroll down to "The 90 Percent Conundrum").

Hold tight to your wallet because its going to be a bumpy ride...

I think what we need to do is somehow rediscover some civic mindedness (perhaps the kind we had prior to Mr. Dylan's generation?) It seems to me we've been on a long pendulum swing to the right for the past couple of decades and nursing a kind of hangover from the cold war. Part of the challenge may be to get over some of that and rediscover some more civic-minded values.

Just my two cents...

Lance -

If you are really interested in science, and not pseudo-science, I would suggest taking a look at the
latest IPCC report titled 'The Physical Basis of
Climate Change':
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

FAQs 6.1 (pp. 449-450) and 6.2 (page 465) of chapter 6 address the issue of paleo temperature variations quite succinctly. I'd be interested to hear if your views change after you have had a chance to read these.

Of course Lance Harting's arguments fly in the face of all the scientific research on the subject, so he'd make a good junkscience.com writer.

I knew this would bring out the tired arguments from people who regard the IPCC reports as part of a vast liberal conspiracy of scientists.

I've been working on persuading a conservative friend that this is not part of a "liberal agenda," and when I blogged about it (click my name), I got some predictable responses, but also some interesting discussion about political hysteria on both sides.

I think I'll suggest that my readers check this out. Meanwhile, some Intersection readers might want to see a couple of my recent postings, including one where I describe a paper that makes a reasonable case for adding solar effects as a small piece of the much larger climate change equation.

As the URL indicates, the story begins with observations of Neptune.
( http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/neptunes-brightness-and-solar-variation-… )

I was going to respond to Lance's comment but others have done so, so I won't bother, except to point out that it is also addressed in New Scientist's excellent "Guide for the Perplexed" published last week.

Llewellyn, perhaps he has answered it to his, and apparently your, satisfaction. That does not make it a robust or scientifically valid explanation. I believe my recounting was fairly faithful to his explanation at realclimate. I find it entirely lacking in scientific evidence or even logically consistent.

I believe your use of the word "mindlessly" shows that you are emotionally wed to AGW and incapable of discussing it with out pejorative ad homs. In any case you would care to rebut my actual points I would be glad to entertain a thoughtful discussion.

Hello Jon,

How ya been?

I read the materials to which you linked. One is a political advocacy site, with the catchy name, "The heat is online" and the other, the AAAS site, pretty much hits all the usual stuff.

Prasad,

Thank you for your considerate and thoughtful post.

I have read the IPCC report titled 'The Physical Basis of
Climate Change', along with the other IPCC publications, and much of the source material although they don't make it easy to access the data if you want to dig very deep. (Just take a trip to ClimateAudit.org if you doubt it.)

I find the conclusions of the report are not supported by the evidence it presents. It is full of unscientific statements like "very likely" and "probably". It makes no attempt to quantify any error or give any way of evaluating its accuracy. As a scientist I find it quite appalling.

Hey Fred,

I don't see any "vast liberal conspiracy" just a comfortable acceptance of bad science because it comports with the politics of many NGO's, environmental groups and other sundry governmental organizations and individuals.

I hardly get worked up about it anymore because there is little that can be done to really impact the levels of CO2 that are about to be emitted by not just the current industrialized nations but the quickly developing economies of India, Chine Indonesia etc.

Soon it will become all too obvious that there is no dire linkage between CO2 and climate "catastrophe". Sadly there will be no crow eating since the alleged effects are conveniently put many decades hence by climate alarmists, and they will continue to trumpet, along with an all too eager popular press hungry for sensationalist grist, any weather event or calamity as "proof" of our impending doom.

If anyone has any compelling evidence to the contrary, I'm all ears.

Sheril,

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not sure if my question has been answered...

How does a person who believes that global warming is occurring now, and will be have noticeable, catastrophic effects in the short and medium term justify any use of carbon-emitting technology whatsoever?

If anyone has any links to RealClimate, etc., where these more philosophical issues are addressed, I would appreciate it.

The pragmatic reply..
I don't think it's all or nothing, but I do believe each of us has the choice everyday to curb our own impact.

Related - though not justification, this press release demonstrates we are moving toward solutions that reduce emissions.

It's probably counterproductive to engage with trolling activity too much (I've seen Lance link to junkscience.com). But I would just make the obvious point that while Heatisonline.com is an advocacy site, the page I link to is a list of peer reviewed studies. I shouldn't have to point out that dismissing Heatisonline is not the same as dismissing those studies. (And that will be the end of this exchange for me.)

Jordan,

As the Luddites first taught us in their floundering attempts at slowing the Industrial Revolution, the complete abandonment of technologies by individuals or groups of individuals can do little to slow or change the course of technological development. In such a politically charged topic such as this, it can be counterproductive to your intent when people dismiss those actions as extreme.

Given that the vast majority of the population is unwilling to make dramatic lifestyle changes right now (ie abandoning air travel, scrapping their car, etc.... ), imagine the social response to two courses of action. Were you to abandon all carbon-emitting activities, those who disagree are much more likely to dismiss you as radical and extreme (think: dirty hippie). However, by taking bold strong steps toward a limited impact lifestyle in a rational way, you stand a much stronger chance of persuading others to follow suit.

The real solution to carbon emissions (not to be confused with solving the problem of global warming) lies in substituting non-sustainable technological systems for sustainable ones. Society can still achieve its other technological goals in a sustainable fashion by adding carbon impact to the normal list of design criteria. This can be alternative fuel sources for air travel, public transit and electric based transportation, and renewable power led first by wind (the most economical) and later solar and others. The biggest impact you can make is not by abandoning your car in the current paradigm, but rather by pushing for a paradigm shift while making bold but rational steps in the current paradigm.

The sociopolitical machine is slow and lumbering, but thoughtful action and rational argument can herd it in the right direction.

Here is how that right thinking beacon of AGW orthodoxy, Grist, addresses the little unpleasantry of CO2 lagging paleo-climate warming, often by thousands of years.

"Objection: Over the last 600 million years, there hasn't been much correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels. Clearly CO2 is not a climate driver.
Answer: While there are poorly understood ancient climates and controversial climate changes in earth's long geological history, there are no clear contradictions to greenhouse theory to be found.

What we do have is an unfortunate lack of comprehensive and well-resolved data. There is always the chance that new data will turn up shortcomings in the models and unforeseen new aspects to climate theory. Scientists in the field are working hard to uncover such things -- every scientist relishes the thought of uncovering new data that overturns current understanding. But it makes no sense to reject CO2 as a primary driver of climate change today because it looks, through the foggy glasses of time, like CO2 has not always completely controlled climate changes in the past.
The climate system is complicated -- even the configuration of the continents has a big effect -- so one can not expect complete correlation on all timescales between temperatures and any single factor."

So suddenly the climate system is "complicated" and seen "through the foggy glasses" of the past. How convenient especially when claims are made about the present warming being "unprecedented" with a certainty of "over 90%".

Somehow past CO2 concentration was not the heavy lifter they claim it is now. I like the part about "one cannot expect correlation on all time scales". In fact there is PERFECT correlation in the ice core records from many different studies. CO2 ALWAYS lags warming, by at least hundreds of years, and sometimes thousands, in paleo-climate records.

To pretend that this isn't a "clear contradiction" of the assertion that CO2 is a primary driver of climate is denial on the level I have only seen before with purveyors of creationism.

Lance -

Your statement that the IPCC WG1 report is full of unscientific statements (do you mean terms?) like "very likely" is not accurate.

IPCC does define what these terms mean -
see for example, footnotes 5 and 6 in the Summary for
Policymakers:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_SPM.pdf

Neal,

You draw an interesting distinction between approaches to the problem of excessive carbon emissions. And I appreciate that you are trying to distance your answer from the "solution to global warming." But I think that you will agree that the two are used interchangeably in most public discourse nowadays.

I would like to suggest an interesting parallel: between religion and global warming. I have vastly more respect for the theist who takes an orthodox approach to the practice of her religion, than the casual believer who picks and chooses aspects of religiosity that are convenient to his lifestyle. For those who truly believe that there are invisible, omnipotent beings that concern themselves with our moment-to-moment lives and actions, there can be no other sensible approach to life than that of the most strict adherence to the principles and virtues of that belief.

Similarly, I'm not sure if I can reconcile "belief" in the more dire predictions about global climate change with anything other than the most austere lifestyle. It seems to me that if you evaluate the data, and decide that the worst of what the IPCC says might come true, then the most sensible course of action is total and immediate lifestyle change.

Fully understanding how ridiculous this might look to the layman, I suggest that the environmental leaders take the first steps, boldly and publicly. Why was Michael Chrichton wrong to suggest in the Intelligence Squared debate that he will start to take global warming seriously when the EPA executive board stops using their private charter jet and begins using commercial air travel? (I have no idea if this example is accurate, but I do believe it is probably symbolic of many similar instances. Doesn't the head of the IPCC drive an SUV?)

Actually, Lance, I was referring to Jordan's invocation of Michael Crichton, though your arguments are indeed tired and tiresome regardless of your reasons for denying the value of the scientific consensus.

They pretty much match the ones I've been hearing from my "conservative friend" on my own blog (click my name), and I've addressed them there. That's quite enough for me for one day!

For those who have examined the data and concluded that this stuff is actually going to happen on any kind of short-medium term time frame (next 50 years or so), how do you rationalize getting in a car, ever? Flying? Turning on the lights? Shopping at grocery stores?

Because the problem isn't Jordan flying - its millions of others flying.

You have a point in saying that the leaders are being extremely hypocritical - but as a single, "low lying" individual there isn't much you're going to be able to do by living the movement - the key is in regulations, nes pas?

I thought this would be a good lead-in to the world-wide disappearance of fisheries. I saw Jeremy Jackson talk about this at Darwin's birthday party and I found the near-term implications to be considerably more disturbing than anything I've heard about global warming (and I take the latter problem very seriously).

Prasad,

It is inherently problematic to try to assign error and accuracy numbers to values obtained from disparate multi-proxy climate recreations over vast periods of time. It is even more dubious to assign such values to estimates generated by theoretical climate models.

The fact that tables have been assembled to attempt to quantify these errors does not change the fact that no scientifically valid error analysis was or indeed can be done on these values.

Then to use these highly speculative predictions as the basis for government policy is completely irrational.

You have been quite civil and rational to me and I appreciate that very much. Others have attempted to label me a "troll" simply because I disagree with them. This is emblematic of the reprehensible attempt to silence by intimidation any scientist or person that disagrees with the "consensus".

"Objection: Over the last 600 million years, there hasn't been much correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels."

It's all the damn trilobites fault. I knew it.

The reason that over 600 million years you see, e.g. in the Ordovician 12x current CO2 levels but extensive glaciation is because solar output was lower (and, in the case of the Ordovician, most of the land mass was at the poles).

Similarly, the fact that CO2 lags temperature in ice core data over the past 800k years is probably that the trigger for the switch in to interglacials is shifts in the geometry of the Earth's orbit, but which are potentiated by CO2 swings. Just 'cos your starter motor gets the car running doesn't mean the gasoline motor isn't important.
Similarly, rate of change is important. Slowing from 60 mph to zero mph in 20 seconds is a much more pleasant experience than experiencing said change in 0.2 seconds.

Now, would the fact that CO2 is leading temperature rather than the other way around as per the interglacial shifts suggest to you that this is natural, or artificial?

Jordan,

I agree very much with your suggestion that the environmental leaders take bold public steps toward lifestyle change in terms of their carbon emissions. I also agree with your respect for the orthodox theist over the casual 'christmas and easter' (to take the christian example) churchgoer. The problem with this comparison is that unlike religion, addressing greenhouse gas emissions is not a problem of personal choice, but rather one needing a solution across all of society and the world. As Katie said, the problem isn't you flying its millions of people flying.

My idea is not to dismiss the importance of individual action, but rather to point that a real solution will involve a shift from fossil-fuel based technological systems to those that do not cause such a great impact to the environment. We should all take steps to abandon those activities that are harmful, while replacing them with systems that are not. It will not incite real change in only abandoning without advocating the replacements. Take the biggest steps you can without sacrificing your ability to advocate technological change. While this may seem largely like an example of a technological fix, I mean for it to be a strong combination of both technical and social change.

Lastly to hilight quickly the distinction I mentioned between carbon emissions and climate change, I do realize they are used interchangeably but simply wanted to note that they are distinct. Solve the problem of carbon emissions today, and we will still have climate change to deal with.... it will just be a bigger problem if we don't solve carbon emissions

Hey Satan,

The "objection" was a straw man of Grist's creation, but it approximates the difficulty of the actual paleo-climate CO2 record.

As for current warming being lead by CO2 there is scant evidence of that. Even if a slight increase in global temperatures over the last one hundred years can be shown to be an aberration rather than within natural climate variability, which is a big if, there is no conclusive evidence that CO2 and the proposed positive feedback mechanisms are responsible.

That leaves emotional and political appeals to the "precautionary principle" as raisons de l'irrationnal for action.

Part of the problem with herding society's cats to an actionable solution set can be concisely found in what a commenter above said:

...I'm not going to waste my life worrying what happens to people 100 years from now, it's not of my concern.

This manifests itself in different ways, but the fraction of the population that acts this way poses a big problem.

Best,

D