Resisting Climate Hysteria

[noco]

Derty: Exactly! Both sides yell their message loudly and people choose the message they like, or are already prone to believing for whatever reason. Only a tiny percentage of all people are capable of actually understanding the situation or making a meaningful judgement, almost certainly none of us here, and quite likely, no human alive today.

I like the idea of calling it religion or philosophy rather than science, but we do have some evidence to work on.

In issues like this, we have an extremely complex situation and no easy way to explain it, which is why there are people on both sides. If there was a clear answer, we would have found it, we would all accept it, and threads like this wouldn't exist. For the next few decades, until our technology allows a clear answer or the climate actually changes in an utterly extreme way, people will bicker and argue. A tiny few people will research it properly and the rest of the world will argue based primarily on who debates best, who yells loudest, and which message people most want to believe.

It also boils down to which side of the argument gets the most media attention. In particular, the ABC is, imho biased towards the Labor Party who are hell bent on extracting heaps of dough out of our pockets without any benifit to the so called CLIMATE CHANGE. Very politically motivated if you ask me!

Having lived from the early 30's to now and experienced various climate changes during that period, the ALARMIST are talking about EXTREME WEATHER that happened in my younger days. What's new?

I'm no expert with any scientific back ground, but by hell a little common sense should prevail.

Where will all this lead to? Who will be the ADJUDICATOR to determine who is right and who is wrong? Can anyone give me an answer?

 

[ghotib]

I read this piece when Mickel posted it on the Scientists' Integrity thread, and I've spent a lot of time following it up. As usual, digging into the science has been challenging and rewarding. The challenges are greater now than they used to be because I've moved from high-speed cable Internet connection to temperamental wireless, so my summary has taken even longer than usual to produce.

Although Professor Lindzen is a scientist with a professional interest and record in the science of climate, in this article he makes no attempt to present a scientific case. Maybe because he doesn't have enough space to discuss the science fully, he makes some statements about several of the scientific issues and then sets out his ideas about public policy and the motivations of some of those whose ideas are different. I've tried to find sources and discussion of his scientific statements. I didn't try to follow up his assertions about the economic, political, or business implications of policy attempts to reduce carbon emissions.

I tried not to think about what he means by "precipitous (i.e. steep?) climate action". I just noticed that I kept wanting to read it as "precipitate (i.e. hasty)". Maybe some of ASF's other language lovers might like to comment on that.

1. Lindzen writes that "recent work suggests that natural variability in climate is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th century (Tsonis et al., 2007). This paper applied the mathematics of chaos to global climate data in a way that had not been done before and modelled abrupt changes in climate conditions such as that of the 1970s. They conclude that the 1970s shift, which is usually attributed to changes in the effect of aerosols (I'm paraphrasing like crazy and I'm also battling to keep my feeble grasp on all this. Better explanations and alternative formulations gratefully received) might instead be explained by changes in coupling strength between four indices of climate variability "superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend." Two of the same authors published another paper in February 2009 expanding on the same work. One of them, Kyle Swanson, wrote a guest blog on RealClimate explaining how they see their results fitting in the discussion of human-induced global warming. It's at http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...terrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/. From the conclusion:

What do our results have to do with Global Warming, i.e., the century-scale response to greenhouse gas emissions? VERY LITTLE, contrary to claims that others have made on our behalf. Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.

I take that to mean that this author would disagree with Lindzen's interpretation of their work.

2. The next papers cited are one by Lindzen himself and one by Douglass et al, both from 2007. Lindzen says that these show that actual warming does not show a distinctive pattern in warming of the atmosphere that climate models show. He also summarises a paper from Santer et al thus:

Santer et al (2008) argue that stretching uncertainties in uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.) (original punctuation

I found a reprint of Lindzen's paper online http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=...k3mGvI&sig=AFQjCNGveLv_OuDVgRf9qyAQrFaySZbAfA, but I couldn't find any citations or reactions for it. I think a fair one-sentence summary is that it's a restatement of Lindzen's hypothesis that the cooling effects of cloud behaviour and the movement of water vapour in the atmosphere are significantly understated in accepted climate models. This hypothesis has been addressed in many other places (google Lindzen IRIS). I think the idea is beautiful, but sadly it seems that observations don't back it up (see the next point on satellite observations) and its characterisation of the problems with water vapour in models is questionable.

The Douglass et al paper claimed to show a statistically significant discrepancy between observed temperature changes and modelled temperature changes. Santer et al examines their claims and finds that their statistical test is seriously misapplied. There's a fact sheet from this paper available http://www.realclimate.org/docs/santer_etal_lJoC_08_fact_sheet.pdf, which includes the following comment on uncertainties.

Research groups involved in the development of newer sea surface temperature datasets have reported improvements in the treatment of information from buoys and satellites. This has led to slightly reduced estimates of the warming of the tropical ocean surface (relative to the warming in the earlier surface temperature datasets used by Douglass et al. and in the CCSP Report). Additionally, newly-developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical troposphere than was apparent in the datasets used by Douglass et al. The enhanced tropospheric warming is due to improvements in our ability to identify and adjust for biases introduced by changes over time in the instruments used to measure temperature.

Access to such a rich variety of independently produced datasets has provided us with a valuable perspective on the inherent uncertainty in observed estimates of recent climate change. Based on our current best estimates of these observational uncertainties, there is no fundamental discrepancy between modeled and observed tropical temperature trends. In fact, many of the recently-developed observational datasets now show tropical temperature changes that are larger aloft than at the surface – behavior that is entirely consistent with climate model results.

One of the lessons from this work is that even with improved datasets, there are still important uncertainties in observational estimates of recent tropospheric temperature trends. These uncertainties may never be fully resolved, and are partly a consequence of historical observing strategies, which were geared
towards weather forecasting rather than climate monitoring. We should apply what we learned in this study toward improving existing climate monitoring
systems, so that future model evaluation studies are less sensitive to observational ambiguity.

IMO that's a long way from saying that stretching uncertainties will make the data fit the models, or that the data should always need correcting to fit the models.

3. Next section refers to the ERBE (Earth Radiation Budget Experiment; and I used to think the computer industry used a lot of acronyms). Lindzen cites 3 papers, of which the first is dated 1984 and describes the instruments in the satellites and how their data is intended to be used. I didn't follow that one very far. The second paper was published in 2006 shows details of upgraded data sets from ERBE. In the third paper Lindzen himself is lead author. He uses the ERBE data to show that temperature feedback in nature is significantly different from temperature feedback in climate models. Subsequent commentary demonstrated 3 major faults with this paper, which to my knowledge Lindzen has not yet addressed:

(a) It compared ERBE with models of atmospheric temperature which use sea surface temperature as an input, rather than a result. This is not how things work in the real world, where atmosphere and ocean influence each other, and the ERBE data does not conflict with those models.
(b) There's a discrepancy between the data set described in the text and the data set used in the analysis.
(c) There is an unexplained quantity in the calculation of radiated heat which is required to produce the claimed results. At this stage this looks like outright fraud, but the paper is very recent and there might be an honest explanation.

I've read a lot by and about Professor Lindzen over the last week or so. My overall impression is that he has done very good science in the past, but that most of his efforts now are directed towards promulgating the idea that increasing atmospheric CO2 is not significantly related to increasing global temperature. He's not doing good science any more and this piece doesn't contribute anything useful to policy discussion because it's science is tokenistic.

I don't expect any of this to be particularly convincing to anyone. I'm still trying to digest most of what I've read (not just over the last week; I've been floundering around in this pond for several years) and I'm a long way from being able to discuss it coherently.

I think it's worth the effort because arguments about motivation and integrity of scientists don't tell us anything about how the climate behaves or how much human activity affects it, and that's what needs to drive policy. I hope my struggles will lead other people here to "do your own research" beyond opinion pieces. After all, none of us would invest on the basis of tip sheets, now would we?

Cheers,

Ghoti

 

[Calliope]

Having lived from the early 30's to now and experienced various climate changes during that period, the ALARMIST are talking about EXTREME WEATHER that happened in my younger days. What's new?

God got rid of his sceptics with the Great Flood. He did it with a burst of 40 days EXTREME WEATHER. It looks as though my grandchildren will have to wait 90 years before they can fish off my front verandah. It doesn't seem fair. I can't see them building an ark. They don't seem to be the slightest bit concerned. They are not into dogma or orthodox ideology.

 

[Julia]

Ghoti, I'm in awe of your efforts. Goodonya.

Cheers
Julia

 

[Mickel]

Here is an interview with John Coleman (Weather Channel founder) where he states there are 30,000 scientists (including 9000 PHD's) who are resisting the climate hysteria.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ&feature=related

Also, Al Gore testifing before congress-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNzBRiAyn8o&NR=1

 

[2020hindsight]

thanks ghoti,
and by the way, not sure I ever thanked you for pointing out the cracks in that TV channel 4 "documentary" (or alleged documentary), "The Great Warming Swindle" - which , by the time the ABC's Tony Jones had interviewed Durkins - turned out to be massive cracks and blatant misrepresenations and/or lies. cheers for all that.

 

[basilio]

Beautiful work Ghoti.

Of course if working through the issues of global warming was as (relatively ) simple as scientists cross checking their research, updating their ideas, coming to very strong conclusions and having this accepted by the world community we wouldn't be arguing about "Climate Hysteria".

We are having this discussion because too many institutions and people simply do not want to believe that the planet is cooking and that our current way of life is largely responsible for it. I suspect that no amount of evidence, scientific or otherwise, will be sufficient to change the views of people with a vested interest in the status quo. And it is also fair to say that accepting the reality of global warming is a real downer and human nature being what it is prefers comfortable lies to uncomfortable truths

Shame about that....

 

[Calliope]

the ABC's Tony Jones had interviewed Durkins -

Say no more.

 

[wayneL]

We are having this discussion because too many institutions and people simply do not want to believe that the planet is cooking and that our current way of life is largely responsible for it. I suspect that no amount of evidence, scientific or otherwise, will be sufficient to change the views of people with a vested interest in the status quo. And it is also fair to say that accepting the reality of global warming is a real downer and human nature being what it is prefers comfortable lies to uncomfortable truths

No.

We are having this discussion to arrive at the facts.

 

[Calliope]

I suspect that no amount of evidence, scientific or otherwise, will be sufficient to change the views of people with a vested interest in the status quo.

Or those Guardian readers, so driven by their idealogical dogma, that they convince themselves they should be able dictate what others should believe. But "no amount of evidence'" can change the hysterical beliefs of Fundamentalists.

Shame about that...

 

[Mofra]

But "no amount of evidence'" can change the hysterical beliefs of Fundamentalists.

Don't need the first bit, this sentence sums up some on both sides quite nicely.

 

[derty]

basilo pointed out the inertia present in vested interests wrt the staus quo.

It should be also highlighted that both sides of the AGW argument have backing by extremely powerful vested interests.

On the anti-AGW side the petroleum industry, the coal industry and most of the resources and industrial sector have a lot to lose if global ETS's or similar carbon trading/taxing system is introduced. The energy industries early work at sowing the seeds of doubt in the climate change argument certainly smacked of tobacco industry-like techniques.

In the pro-AGW there are the entities that stand to profit substantially from the introduction of a carbon based trading system, there is the perceived attempt at centralisation of global power by the G8/20 and the scientific community riding high on the amount of research required to address the issue (I do seriously doubt the ability of the scientific community to stage a globally concerted swindle).

Both camps are certainly not without baggage and I certainly view both with scepticism at the moment.

 

[Mr J]

Don't need the first bit, this sentence sums up some on both sides quite nicely.

I don't think it does at all. Few people take the opposite stance to climate change, and it seems the majority of people who are "deniers" really occupy the middle-ground, having questions and wanting answers and proper discussion. I'm talking about the public here.

 

[Mofra]

I don't think it does at all. Few people take the opposite stance to climate change, and it seems the majority of people who are "deniers" really occupy the middle-ground, having questions and wanting answers and proper discussion. I'm talking about the public here.

I disagree - the majority of people in general who occupy the middle ground seek more information rather than just subscribe wholesale to one side of the debate or other.

Both camps are certainly not without baggage and I certainly view both with scepticism at the moment.

Bingo

 

[Calliope]

Both camps are certainly not without baggage and I certainly view both with scepticism at the moment.

Like you, I have no baggage on this question. I know nothing about the workings of "The Science" and am not in a position to refute it.

My scepticism arises from the assertions, that a small excess of CO2 (a gas without which there would be no life on earth) will destroy our civilisation by flood, fire and famine...and that it is my fault.

 

[Mr J]

I disagree - the majority of people in general who occupy the middle ground seek more information rather than just subscribe wholesale to one side of the debate or other.

That is actually my point - one "side" isn't really a side at all. I don't consider those who flat out deny climate change to be a side, because they are a very small minority. The battle seems to be waged against the majority in the middle, as they are unreasonably labelled "deniers" and attacked just for wanting more information.

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

The battle seems to be waged against the majority in the middle, as they are unreasonably labelled "deniers" and attacked just for wanting more information.

Good point.

Also,there is a lack of logical discourse due to propaganda and emotional attacks. Red herrings, straw men etc.

 

[Calliope]

It looks like Kev may have to carry the whole load of the hystericals on his own puny shoulders.

 

[Surly]

Is there such a term as a climate change agnostic?

If these same scientists that have trouble predicting tomorrows weather correctly convince me that I am more responsible than nature for an increase in C02 levels, they then need to convince that the net effect on the planet or human race is actually negative. Will there be more or less arable and livable land? Will the worlds food stocks increase or decrease? Will we have more or less usable water?

Or is it simply change and an opportunity to fear the populace into accepting a new tax regime?

cheers
Surly

 

[basilio]

I know nothing about the workings of "The Science" and am not in a position to refute it.

My scepticism arises from the assertions, that a small excess of CO2 (a gas without which there would be no life on earth) will destroy our civilisation by flood, fire and famine...and that it is my fault.

Calliope

I don't consider those who flat out deny climate change to be a side, because they are a very small minority. The battle seems to be waged against the majority in the middle, as they are unreasonably labelled "deniers" and attacked just for wanting more information.

Mr J

The subject of how our climate can be affected by changes in CO2 in the atmosphere has now been researched for over 100 years. In the last 15-20 years scientists and educators have been providing clearer and clearer explanations for how this happens, showing evidence to demonstrate the increases in global temperature and discovering just how finely balanced our climate system actually is.

I can appreciate that at first glance the impact of a seemingly innocuous (and necessary ) gas like CO2 seems out of proportion. But if you think about it even in commonsense terms an excess of salt will kill us (but we must have salt to survive) and we can even die from drinking too much water.

There is plenty of information MR J. A simple place to start would be National Geographic. NIce overview.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-overview.html

Wikipedia has a very detailed analysis which is pretty challenging but at least takes you to all the questions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Finally there is an excellent overall story of how the scientists have pieced together (and still not completed) a picture of how our climate is affected by many factors including mankinds intervention.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm