The Right Approach to Global Warming

[A_Wanderer]

Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic) wrote this great opinion piece where he does a turnabout on anthropogenic global warming, I remain to be convinced on the nature and degree but this is definitely the right approach to the subject

In 2001 Cambridge University Press published Bjørn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which I thought was a perfect debate topic for the Skeptics Society public lecture series at the California Institute of Technology. The problem was that all the top environmental organizations refused to participate. "There is no debate," one spokesperson told me. "We don't want to dignify that book," another said. One leading environmentalist warned me that my reputation would be irreparably harmed if I went through with it. So of course I did.

My experience is symptomatic of deep problems that have long plagued the environmental movement. Activists who vandalize Hummer dealerships and destroy logging equipment are criminal ecoterrorists. Environmental groups who cry doom and gloom to keep donations flowing only hurt their credibility. As an undergraduate in the 1970s, I learned (and believed) that by the 1990s overpopulation would lead to worldwide starvation and the exhaustion of key minerals, metals and oil, predictions that failed utterly. Politics polluted the science and made me an environmental skeptic.

Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming. My attention was piqued on February 8 when 86 leading evangelical Christians--the last cohort I expected to get on the environmental bandwagon--issued the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for "national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions" in carbon emissions.

Then I attended the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, Calif., where former vice president Al Gore delivered the single finest summation of the evidence for global warming I have ever heard, based on the recent documentary film about his work in this area, An Inconvenient Truth. The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance.

link

I suggest reading the whole article.

 

[Irvine511]

[q]July 27, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Cold, Hard Facts
By PETER DORAN
Chicago

IN the debate on global warming, the data on the climate of Antarctica has been distorted, at different times, by both sides. As a polar researcher caught in the middle, I’d like to set the record straight.

In January 2002, a research paper about Antarctic temperatures, of which I was the lead author, appeared in the journal Nature. At the time, the Antarctic Peninsula was warming, and many people assumed that meant the climate on the entire continent was heating up, as the Arctic was. But the Antarctic Peninsula represents only about 15 percent of the continent’s land mass, so it could not tell the whole story of Antarctic climate. Our paper made the continental picture more clear.

My research colleagues and I found that from 1986 to 2000, one small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had actually cooled. Our report also analyzed temperatures for the mainland in such a way as to remove the influence of the peninsula warming and found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had cooled than had warmed. Our summary statement pointed out how the cooling trend posed challenges to models of Antarctic climate and ecosystem change.

Newspaper and television reports focused on this part of the paper. And many news and opinion writers linked our study with another bit of polar research published that month, in Science, showing that part of Antarctica’s ice sheet had been thickening — and erroneously concluded that the earth was not warming at all. “Scientific findings run counter to theory of global warming,” said a headline on an editorial in The San Diego Union-Tribune. One conservative commentator wrote, “It’s ironic that two studies suggesting that a new Ice Age may be under way may end the global warming debate.”

In a rebuttal in The Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, the lead author of the Science paper and I explained that our studies offered no evidence that the earth was cooling. But the misinterpretation had already become legend, and in the four and half years since, it has only grown.

Our results have been misused as “evidence” against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel “State of Fear” and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.” Search my name on the Web, and you will find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate policy committee documents — all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that the earth is warming. One recent Web column even put words in my mouth. I have never said that “the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle.” I have never thought such a thing either.

Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that as the ozone hole heals — thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals — all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An inconvenient truth?

Also missing from the skeptics’ arguments is the debate over our conclusions. Another group of researchers who took a different approach found no clear cooling trend in Antarctica. We still stand by our results for the period we analyzed, but unbiased reporting would acknowledge differences of scientific opinion.

The disappointing thing is that we are even debating the direction of climate change on this globally important continent. And it may not end until we have more weather stations on Antarctica and longer-term data that demonstrate a clear trend.

In the meantime, I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.

Peter Doran is an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/o...881840f4fa41e3&ex=1154232000&pagewanted=print

[/q]

 

[INDY500]

Another Ice Age?

Monday, Jun 24, 1974 Time Magazine cover story

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

Here's what's interesting to me about this 30 year-old article. Take out the dates and switch all references about cooling to heating and you'd swear you were reading a 2006 article on global warming. Because it:
1) Quotes lots of scientists.
2) Cites anecdotal evidence as proof.
3) At some point blames humans.
4) Uses the word catastrophic at least once.
5) Concludes the article with a prophecy of doom.

One final question. If, as this article suggests, mankind was now up to our ass in an Ice Age in the year 2006...would SUVs still be evil?

 

[all_i_want]

hmmm... ok, what happens if you guys are wrong, and Al Gore is right? Would we just say 'Oh, too bad'?

 

[randhail]

hmmm... ok, what happens if you guys are wrong, and Al Gore is right? Would we just say 'Oh, too bad'?

Isn't that a lot easier than actually doing something about it?

 

[all_i_want]

Isn't that a lot easier than actually doing something it?

you have a point. it actually IS pretty easy!

 

[nbcrusader]

Please define "doing something about it".

 

[A_Wanderer]

Precicely, the ability to actually do anything about it is very important, Kyoto does not do anything about it and is an effectively dead treaty. We should be spending a fraction of the spent setting up these absurd regulations to get a better idea of the facts and then start applying cost-benefit analysis.

 

[verte76]

Please define "doing something about it".

Participating in research to come to a definite conclusion on the whole controversy would be very constructive indeed. That way we'd have a better idea of who's "right" and who's "wrong".

 

[A_Wanderer]

But thats not what Gore or any of the doom mongers are advocating, they just use the issue to pursue their own political agenda, green politics is left wing.

 

[verte76]

But thats not what Gore or any of the doom mongers are advocating, they just use the issue to pursue their own political agenda, green politics is left wing.

I know they're not, and I think they are making a mistake by not advocating research. There's a way to resolve this controversy. To be perfectly honest, I'm not a huge Gore fan. I was really turned off when he endorsed Howard Dean. He should have been endorsing his old running mate Joe Lieberman. The guy has loyalty problems.

 

[deep]

But thats not what Gore or any of the doom mongers are advocating, they just use the issue to pursue their own political agenda, green politics is left wing.

did you read the article you posted ?


(as you suggested we do)



or did you just stop with what you posted


he has gone from skeptic to believer

because of the evidence and science

Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.

as for Al Gore

at least he is getting the message out

that the "House is on fire"

while all the others are just saying
"isn't it cozy"

If people will stop debating the message
maybe we can put the fire out

 

[A_Wanderer]

I posted the story because it shows the right way to approach the issue, he has weighed up the evidence and come to a conclusion, I tink that more work needs to be done on what exactly is going on before finding the most effective solution, I respect the manner in which he reached the conclusion.

 

[deep]

I think that more work needs to be done on what exactly is going on before finding the most effective solution, I respect the manner in which he reached the conclusion.

he is a regular on one of my public stations
and i live driving distance to Cal Tec
and have almost gone to hear him speak
he is a rational thinker, repectful of religious people,

anyways, his conclusion is that time is running (or has ran) out

it is time to do something
not study it more

 

[A_Wanderer]

What course of action if any delivers a positive result? What are the benefits of a warmer planet, what are the costs?

 

[Rono]

The best aproache is not pollluting and consuming up the planet
Tell me , what is wrong with being carefull with energy use, stop using to much polluting materials ( and eat ecologic food ). Maybe it does not change the global warming but at the end we will have a better planet,..

I don`t care if the world is warming up by humanity or by natural causes. We should be carefull an responsable with our home call earth anyway.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Well for starters the land required for "ecological food" (I assume that you mean so-called organic pesticide free vegetables) is significantly greater than that with those technologies, we would not have enough land to produce the food to feed people.

We expect to be able to live our lives with consumable products, electricity and high living standards. These things are going to be coming to more and more people over the coming decades and it is simply impossible for these to be delivered without using up resources and investing in new technologies. Humanity will have a lower impact when we can deliver clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels and can maximise land use even furthur.

 

[Rono]

Well for starters the land required for "ecological food" (I assume that you mean so-called organic pesticide free vegetables) is significantly greater than that with those technologies, we would not have enough land to produce the food to feed people.

.

No, i don`t mean pestcides free but we should be very carefull using it.

Well, a lot of land is used to produce food for animals, look at the uuuuuggggeeee soya fields in Brazil . At the end, meatproduction is more energy using, more harmfull for nature , and the transport cost for meat is also less effecient that the transport of vegies.

No, i am not a vegitarian

 

[A_Wanderer]

the transport cost for meat is also less effecient that the transport of vegies.

People have to eat a lot more vegetables to get the benefits of a lot less meat.

 

[U2DMfan]

Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic)

I heard him on George Noory's radio show once debating some other guests and he got owned like a fith grader trying to box Mike Tyson in 1988.

It was hilarious.

Maybe his opinion on this matter is 100% correct, just saying in general, he was owned when put face to face with some good critical debate. Not unlike just about anyone who is asked to stand up for opinions outside of their comfort zone.

It was actually funny. The Penn and Teller show 'Bullshit' painted him as some source of skeptic knowledge and he was good of course great on their show but he got embarassed when Penn Gillette or his buddies couldn't edit his content.

I like that show alot, I actually think the guy does make some sense, I've seen hijm on the ol' Kevin Nealon show and a few others, as well as all the History channel and Discovery shows, but a free form debate to answer some of the unexplained, he's useless. In other words, he's needs the official version to work or he's got nothing. When presented with something he can't explain, he becomes the worst skpetic of all, he starts inventing reasons rather than just saying "I don't know".

He is a smart guy and he has a lot of great answers and healthy skepticism, I just have roll my eyes when someone can't answer a question and just bullshits there way out of it rathe rthan saying " I don't really know, we don't know". Fuck, there is no answer to things like the Phoenix lights or Mexico City, or dozens of other incidents, when you as a skeptic start inventing the answers, you are no better than a religous nut apologizing for a void.

 

[A_Wanderer]

The Phoenix Lights were aerial flares from a training excercise by the Air Force. There is no substantaitive evidence of extra terrestrials and skepticism to wild claims is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Salome]

The best aproache is not pollluting and consuming up the planet
Tell me , what is wrong with being carefull with energy use, stop using to much polluting materials ( and eat ecologic food ). Maybe it does not change the global warming but at the end we will have a better planet,..

I don`t care if the world is warming up by humanity or by natural causes. We should be carefull an responsable with our home call earth anyway.

 

[Angela Harlem]

Well for starters the land required for "ecological food" (I assume that you mean so-called organic pesticide free vegetables) is significantly greater than that with those technologies, we would not have enough land to produce the food to feed people.

We expect to be able to live our lives with consumable products, electricity and high living standards. These things are going to be coming to more and more people over the coming decades and it is simply impossible for these to be delivered without using up resources and investing in new technologies. Humanity will have a lower impact when we can deliver clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels and can maximise land use even furthur.

I think that is the entire point. Strange and difficult to grasp, I know. Since the industrial revolution society has moved at warp speed comparably. There's no valid reason beyond gluttonous waste and laziness that we keep it up at this pace.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I would argue that keeping it up at this pace is what will ultimately solve the problems of today and giving us both rewards and risks that we cant possibly imagine.

 

[Angela Harlem]

Ah, to have faith in something we can't even imagine. Look at what we've damaged in the last 200-250 years. Compare it to a thousand years before that. See a slight increase? And what exactly are we/science doing to slow it down, let alone stop it?

 

[verte76]

The best aproache is not pollluting and consuming up the planet
Tell me , what is wrong with being carefull with energy use, stop using to much polluting materials ( and eat ecologic food ). Maybe it does not change the global warming but at the end we will have a better planet,..

I don`t care if the world is warming up by humanity or by natural causes. We should be carefull an responsable with our home call earth anyway.

 

[randhail]

The best aproache is not pollluting and consuming up the planet
Tell me , what is wrong with being carefull with energy use, stop using to much polluting materials ( and eat ecologic food ). Maybe it does not change the global warming but at the end we will have a better planet,..

I don`t care if the world is warming up by humanity or by natural causes. We should be carefull an responsable with our home call earth anyway.

That's probably the best approach to it. The way we currently live is like giving the planet as a whole a big middle finger. Sooner or later it'll catch up to us and I don't want to be the primary reason for another mass extinction.

 

[INDY500]

Ah, to have faith in something we can't even imagine. Look at what we've damaged in the last 200-250 years. Compare it to a thousand years before that. See a slight increase? And what exactly are we/science doing to slow it down, let alone stop it?

What was the average life expectancy for humans 250 years ago again?

If this was only about reducing CO2 emissions than you'd think the global-warming alarmists would be praising the virtues of nuclear energy. But that's never gonna happen is it? Why? Because before the siren cry of global-warming there was the China Syndrome and forecasts of three-eyed fish and uninhabitable cities. Sure, there's some science in those scenarios, but not much. Sorta like the catastrophic predictions of many global-warming computer models. More a desire to get noticed and therefore receive more research grants than real science. What? You really think a study that concludes "Nothing to do with man, it's just how our planet works." is going to get additional funding when the other guy's study predicts "Florida to be underwater in 10 years!"

No, too much of this issue is really about the "sin against nature" of energy consumption by human beings, Western civilization in particular, and the desire by some to strangle future industrialization and growth. Under the guise of environmentalism.

If human activity is indeed changing our climate then technology and free-markets, not more political control over the world's energy use, is where the answer lies. Some of you need a little more confidence in human creativity and resiliency and a little less propensity to believe scaremongers with an agenda.

Sorry not have a PowerPoint presentation to go along with this.

 

[A_Wanderer]

 

[Angela Harlem]

What was the average life expectancy for humans 250 years ago again?

If this was only about reducing CO2 emissions than you'd think the global-warming alarmists would be praising the virtues of nuclear energy. But that's never gonna happen is it? Why? Because before the siren cry of global-warming there was the China Syndrome and forecasts of three-eyed fish and uninhabitable cities. Sure, there's some science in those scenarios, but not much. Sorta like the catastrophic predictions of many global-warming computer models. More a desire to get noticed and therefore receive more research grants than real science. What? You really think a study that concludes "Nothing to do with man, it's just how our planet works." is going to get additional funding when the other guy's study predicts "Florida to be underwater in 10 years!"

No, too much of this issue is really about the "sin against nature" of energy consumption by human beings, Western civilization in particular, and the desire by some to strangle future industrialization and growth. Under the guise of environmentalism.

If human activity is indeed changing our climate then technology and free-markets, not more political control over the world's energy use, is where the answer lies. Some of you need a little more confidence in human creativity and resiliency and a little less propensity to believe scaremongers with an agenda.

Sorry not have a PowerPoint presentation to go along with this.

You think the life expectancy increase is due to what damage we've done to the environment? I am failing to understand what this has to do with anything when life expectancy is largely due to increases in health and medical research and access to the results of such. And then you finish with the cute jab about a PowerPoint presentation. Ironic. But that's your problem.

Anyway, even you wrote "If human activity is indeed changing our climate..." so your post is about as imformative as anyone else's in this thread and of those not involved in working on it so to state that the opposing view is a result of scaremongering is about as worthy as me saying you are one of the ignorant stupid arses who are indifferent to the real effects humans have on this planet.