Valid global warming criticism (looking for)

[bascule]

Bascule' date=' you seem to be very knowledgable on this subject. What do you think are the best papers and studies on climate change?

 

(This is open to anyone else who's read something of interest too)[/quote']

 

I'm certainly going to be biased in this, but I recommend Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties (2005)

[bascule]

We are still faced with the incongruity that global warming began in 1750 and greenhouse gases in 1920. No-one has yet given the explanation. If greenhouse gas increase causes global warming, the increase MUST come before the warming.

 

That completely ignores the fact that there are multiple climate forcings responsible for shifts in the earth's radiative imbalance, and that the natural cycle has also caused a warming trend, although one which was dramatically increased by anthropogenic forcings.

[SkepticLance]

bascule.

The degree to which global warming did or did not accelerate after 1920 (with increased greenhouse gases) is rather debatable. It largely depends on the methods used to measure warming. This is not as easy or as obvious as it appears, since gaining the signal out of an awful lot of noise is tricky.

 

If you look at Professor Michael Mann's work, and his "hockey stick" graph, it looks as if there is no case to answer. Look a little closer and you see problems.

1. His upward surge in temperature begins about 1890, well before greenhouse gases start their major increase.

2. His upward surge in temperature coincides with a change in measurement technique. At that time, thermometers became more prevalent, and he uses direct temperature measurements from 1890. Before that, he uses primarily tree ring data. Most thermometer readings are carried out in cities, and as cities grow in size, they warm up, with a local micro-climate effect. I have seen records of temperature in rural areas, and they do not show the same upward surge in temperature. Just a more gentle rise.

3. Mann's graphs do NOT show the Little Ice Age, or the Medieval Warm period. Glacier studies world wide show the Little Ice Age is real. If Mann's work fails to show it, we must treat his work as suspect.

 

If you leave out Mann's work, or that of others who copied him, then there is no extraordinary temperature rise in the last 100 years.

 

I would also ask you why, if human released greenhouse gases dominate global warming causes, that between 1940 and 1976, the world passed through a cooling period?

[BhavinB]

Skeptic,

 

What is your explanation for the sudden increase in mean temperature from 1860 to 1940 then?

[daneeka]

Here is something I think you guys should have a read of. It's a bit off topic (and a tad opinionated) but I think it quite nicely highlights the problems that occur when we attempt mix science with politics.

[SkepticLance]

Skeptic' date='

 

What is your explanation for the sudden increase in mean temperature from 1860 to 1940 then?[/quote']

 

Actually, I don't have to supply an explanation, since my position is based on everyone's lack of knowledge. I hope to puncture that bubble of arrogance held by those who believe they have the answers. I KNOW that I do not.

 

We know a little. We know that sunspots affect global temperature. We can guess at the mechanism. We suspect that orbital variations create changes. Greenhouse gases no doubt have an effect. Water vapour likewise.

 

I know that global temperatures vary, up and down, and always have. I know that lots of theories of global catastrophe have been promulgated over the last 100 years, and that none have actually happened. (Local disasters excepted).

 

Outside of speculation, I would LOVE to know what causes global temperature variations.

[SkepticLance]

daneeka.

Thank you for your Michael Crichton paper. I have seen it before, but had lost the reference. We all need to read that kind of criticism occasionally to get us back onto an even keel.

 

I call myself skeptic. Not for no reason. People often fail to realise that skepticism is an absolutely VITAL part of science. If we do not treat everything with skepticism, the nutters will always win. Science, more than anything else, consists of being skeptical about ideas, and testing everything most rigorously.

[Prime-Evil]

Scepticism is good. But you also need to be sceptical of your scepticism.

[SkepticLance]

Prime-Evil

The two sides of science are skepticism and testing.

Testing is vital, and it must be thorough, rigorous, and based on real world studies.

 

The current paradigm on global warming fails on this count. Computer models do not count as empirical tests. There are no thorough, rigorous, real world testing programs that demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between the global warming of the last 250 years, and human released greenhouse gases.

 

I believe that my skepticism is fully justified. Doesn't prove I am right. But I am correct to question the paradigm.

[Prime-Evil]

You don't have to understand something completely to prove there might be a problem and modify your behaviour as a precautionary measure. What's the big deal? CO2 is now really really high and biomass levels are really realy low, so cut down on deforestation and fossil fuel burning. It's really that simple. What's so great about our way of life that it can't be changed unless everything is understood? Very little. If you want to be sceptical, be sceptical about business as usual, and not just everything opposed to it.

 

Increasing biomass and biodiversity is not just a constraint, or even an enabling objective, it is an end objective in itself. It is self-actualizing. What are biomass levels today compared to 100 years ago?

[Cthulhu]

Are there any good arguements against the theory of global warming? I've heard things along the lines of "we're currently coming out of an ice age and the earth would be warming naturally anyway"' date=' "there is warming in some regions, not in others", "we only have records of temperatures over the past century from the USA and some parts of Europe", ...and perhaps some others I can't remember.

 

..are any of these arguements reasonable? Are there any other evidence/arguements contradicting the theory of warming?[/quote']

 

It depends what kind of skepticism you mean. Just as with the evolution debate you have a whole range of different types of skeptics:

 

-Skeptics that accept that only some warming is human caused and that IPCC projections of future temperature is over-exagerated

-Skeptics that deny any of the warming is human caused

-Skeptics that deny there is any warming at all

 

Although it's not really a category thing - it's more like pick and mix of views on different subjects. I find that the more extreme the skepticism is, the less good their arguments are. I had a skeptic recently denying the greenhouse effect.

 

All the arguments you mention there that you have heard before are not good arguments against global warming, but are typical of the more common skeptic arguments out there. There are better ones but they generally go hand in hand with more of an acceptance of climate science.

[Cthulhu]

Scepticism is good. But you also need to be sceptical of your scepticism.

 

You hit the nail on the head!

[Cthulhu]

Bascule' date=' you seem to be very knowledgable on this subject. What do you think are the best papers and studies on climate change?

 

(This is open to anyone else who's read something of interest too)[/quote']

 

Science papers generally go way over my head, but there are a few other reliable sources rather than having to rely on environmentalist sites, micheal crichton or the media:

 

First is this blog that in my opinion is kind of like the Talk Origins Archive of global warming: http://www.realclimate.org/

Just as Talk Origins set up to counter attacks on evolutionary biology by explaining the science behind it, this blog seems to have been set up to do likewise for climate science. Although I find it can be a bit too techical sometimes and it takes me longer to read.

 

Second Wikipedia is quite good for graphs, data and general overviews. Three relevant example topics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_activity

 

Third the IPCC 2001 report - working group 1 which is soley about the science of climate change (no policy or alarmism)

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/

 

It's very technical and I can only understand very little of it. But it does look like it summarises all areas of knowledge on the subject of climate science up to 2001. Certainly reading realclimate and finding out what things like radiative forcings are really helps make sense of it a lot more. There is another IPCC report coming out in the beginning of 2007 I believe, which will be an update on knowledge gained since 2001.

 

Fourth are the sources the surface temperature records that are referenced in discussion of global temperature trends. There are three seperate temperature records which are each based on global monitoring:

 

GISS which is part of NASA:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

 

NCDC which is part of the US department of commerce (?!)

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html

 

and the CRU which is based in a university in the UK

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/

 

Any newspaper article that says "this year is the Xth hottest on record" will be based on one of these 3 sources usually. The CRU one seems to be referenced by people the most often.

[SkepticLance]

Cthulhu.

I will cease to be skeptical when the proponents of the current paradigm meet the requirements of good science.

 

That is; their hypothesis must be confirmed by solid, repeated, real world testing, and pass the falsifiability test. Computer models are not real world tests. Any other scientific idea must meet this standard. Why not the "anthropogenic greenhouse gas causes global warming" hypothesis?

 

Incidentally, I am not alone in my skepticism. Plenty of climate scientists are leading the skeptics pathway.

Try http://www.climatescience.org.nz

[Cthulhu]

Cthulhu.

I will cease to be skeptical when the proponents of the current paradigm meet the requirements of good science. That is; their hypothesis must be confirmed by solid' date=' repeated, real world testing, and pass the falsifiability test. Computer models are not real world tests.[/quote']

 

Climate models are tested against the real world. Climate models can not only be tested against past data, but they are also tested by future data. And yes by testing I mean they are falsifiable.

[SkepticLance]

Cthulhu.

Computer climate models are, indeed, tested against the real world. And fail the test.

 

So far, there is not a single computer model that can retroactively predict 20th Century climate change. For example : the 36 years cooling which began in 1940.

 

Testing against 21st Century climate change will, of course, happen, but not for decades.

[Prime-Evil]

I don't think you understand what the computer models are for. They are not to identify that there is a problem. You just need to look at CO2 levels to see the problem. The computer climate models just make it a bit more interesting.

[Prime-Evil]

Cthulhu.

I will cease to be skeptical when the proponents of the current paradigm meet the requirements of good science.

 

That is; their hypothesis must be confirmed by solid' date=' repeated, real world testing, and pass the falsifiability test. Computer models are not real world tests. Any other scientific idea must meet this standard. Why not the "anthropogenic greenhouse gas causes global warming" hypothesis?

 

Incidentally, I am not alone in my skepticism. Plenty of climate scientists are leading the skeptics pathway.

Try http://www.climatescience.org.nz[/quote']Again you should be more sceptical or your own sources of scepticism. I think you will find that most of the 'scientists' cited on that link you provided are in fact male prostitutes posing as scientists. Why not the "prostitution within petroleum industry leads to prostitution within scientific community" hypothesis?

[MattC]

Some of the debates (here and elsewhere) about how climate models fail to accurately predict enough to satisfy skeptics (arguably rightfully so) seem so silly to me. Forget computer climate models. Look at a graph of temperature fluctuations over the last couple centuries, or even further. Look at periods when it may be assumed that humans were having negligable effects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years

This is one good source.

 

Do you see a straight line with a set slope? Obviously not - surely humans aren't the cause of all those crazy ups and down that history seems full of. Climate models today do not claim to accurately predict everything - they are attempts by scientists to understand the possible effects of the variables that are already understand, and it is accepted that there are going to be countless other variables that cannot be accounted for.

 

What we do know is that in the best-to-date climate models (and in general, in the short term, in ALL models) increasing atmospheric CO2 increases the retention of heat. It stands to reason, then, that were we able to see an accurate graph (created, perhaps, by some people centuries in the future) and if we could pick out the effects of specific, individual factors, we would find that anthropogenic CO2 raised the temperature. On this hypothetical graph, the earth might go into an ice age at the same time that humans increase the temperature, paradoxical as this may sound. Or, humans may heat up an already hot age instead of an ice age, and then where will we be?

 

Granted, there may be sinks that appear out of nowhere, and the numerous sinks for atmospheric carbon that we already know about may change, allowing more carbon to be removed from the atmosphere. This is possible. Additionally, other human or non-human factors may be cooling the earth, at the same time. There are countless other unknowns.

 

An analogy, now. If I get up from my seat right now, close my eyes, and start running toward the wall, there is a chance (a probable chance) that I will hit the wall. There is also the chance that I'll just get a great little burst of exercise, and something will happen (god knows what) that will stop me from hitting the wall. On the one hand, I have some exercise, and who knows, maybe my girlfriend will see this, get distressed, and decide that what I need to set my mind straight is some good loving. Or maybe I'll trip on a quarter. I love finding quarters, I never seem to have enough for laundry. On the other hand, maybe I'll just hit my head.

 

This may seem a silly analogy, but when global-warming skeptics point to the inability of climate-models to predict/explain what has been measured in the past, they too are engaging in a great deal of silliness, and most definately missing the point entirely.

 

And one more thing. Why is everything always talking about global warming? What about the effects of pollution in the present on human health? What about the degredation of the worlds arable lands, at the same time as the world population starts gaining enough growth-momentum to make scientists question whether or not it can sustain us? I like that global warming is entering into the mainstream, but it's almost a double-edged blade. The arguments against global-warming, while not terribly convincing, are nevertheless legitimate. Are there any legitimate arguments against the claim that human activities have effectively poisoned the atmosphere in many places, resulting in definate increases in the incidence of disease?

 

[/end rant]

[SkepticLance]

Prime Evil

I ask you not to pursue your line of argument. Trying to discredit scientists whose opinions you disagree with is, at the least, in very bad taste. Mud slinging tends to leave everyone splattered.

 

Matt C.

Your statement that more greenhouse gases should, in theory, lead to more warming is not one I, or any rational skeptic, will disagree with. Yes, in theory, you are right. However, the global climate is a very complex thing, with lots of factors inputting to determine outcomes. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases are not, by any measure, the most powerful influence on global temperature. Water vapour, for example, contributes 75% to total greenhouse effect. Other, 'natural', greenhouse gases contribute more than those released by humans. And other factors also exert powerful influences.

eg. the effect on the albedo of the Earth of clouds.

 

There may well be unknown feed-back effects that change the models. One computer model I am aware of, predicted a rise of 3 Deg. C. for the 20th Century. The actual increase was 0.6 Deg. C. Predictions for the 21st are equally likely to be exaggerated.

 

I agree with you on your comment about pollution. If we clean up our act with respect to greenhouse gases, a substantial side benefit (maybe the major benefit) will be reduced air pollution. In places like China, this would lead to massive improvements in human health.

 

I am not opposed to efforts to clean up greenhouse gases, as long as these attempts do not carry a prohibitive humanitarian cost. Most proposals so far, such as Greenpeace's, require that we accept a massive global economic depression. This would have a devastating impact on the world's poor, including millions of deaths from malnutrition. Hunger follows poverty with grotesque inevitability.

[bascule]

I will cease to be skeptical when the proponents of the current paradigm meet the requirements of good science.

 

That is; their hypothesis must be confirmed by solid' date=' repeated, real world testing, and pass the falsifiability test. Computer models are not real world tests.[/quote']

 

I've been working in mesoscale and global climate modeling for over 5 years now, and this statement is simply ridiculous.

 

First, let me begin by saying that I do not yet think global climate models are skillful on multi-decadal timescales. There are simply too many nonlinearities in the climate system which are not yet well-understood.

 

However, to suggest that climate modeling has no scientific value is incomprehensible to me. Climate modeling is constantly used to help understand real-world problems. Model output can be checked for validity by comparing it to real-world observations, especially ones we have questions about. Since the models give you a complete picture of what is happening in the climate system, it can be used to answer questions about that real-world data. That's why you see pre-doctoral climate science students writing their thesis on ten year old hurricanes, while doing all their work with climate modeling software. Their model output must cross-check with real-world observations made of the hurricane, or else a problem with the model (or one of the real-world measurements) has been discovered.

[SkepticLance]

Bascule.

Do not put words in my mouth.

I did NOT say models had no scientific value.

Models have the same scientific value that scientific hypotheses have. This can be considerable. However, like hypotheses, models have to be tested against real world values to determine if they are valid.

[Prime-Evil]

Prime Evil

I ask you not to pursue your line of argument. Trying to discredit scientists whose opinions you disagree with is' date=' at the least, in very bad taste. Mud slinging tends to leave everyone splattered.[/quote']I ask you not to pursue your line of argument. Trying to discredit scientists whose opinions you disagree with is, at the least, in very bad taste. Mud slinging tends to leave everyone splattered.

 

Did you not even read the letter to the Canadian Prime Minister by the so called 60 experts where they do the very same thing you are condemning? This letter, by the way, was published in that wonderful peer reviewed scientific journal - the Financial Post. Those that sling mud, like you say, are likely to receive it. Scientists should stay away from using this sort of political rhetoric in a political public forum, and pretending that it is some sort of legitimate scientific scepticism, which it is not. The gang of 60 was headed up by an economist by the way, not a scientist, and if they were not all connected with the petroleum industry, they certainly are now.

 

So get off your high bloody horse. If you associate with whores, and behave like a whore, and engage in political rhetoric guised as scientific discourse, don't be surprise if people call you a whore. You can call me a whore too if it makes you feel any better. There's no whore like an old whore.

[Prime-Evil]

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

http://www.climatescience.org.nz/

 

28/04/2006 - 60 Scientists Send Open Letter To Canadian Prime Minister

"60 leading world climate scientists, including four from New Zealand, have written to the Prime Minister of Canada urging a review of climate change science and the commitment to Kyoto"

 

1. They are not all scientists, yet are presented as such.

2. They claim that they are experts and that others are not.

3. They are engaging in politics, not science, but present it as science.

4. Their financial and political motives are suspect, yet they don't make them known.

 

So tell me more about this The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.

Where do they get their funding?

[Cthulhu]

Yes, in theory, you are right. However, the global climate is a very complex thing, with lots of factors inputting to determine outcomes. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases are not, by any measure, the most powerful influence on global temperature. Water vapour, for example, contributes 75% to total greenhouse effect. Other, 'natural', greenhouse gases contribute more than those released by humans. And other factors also exert powerful influences.

 

I can see from your post history that you know a lot about evolution and understand how many popular anti-evolutionist claims are flawed. You probably realise that many of them are not flawed in that they are false, but they are flawed as arguments nontheless. For example the claim "evolution is just a theory" is true, but it isn't a valid argument against evolution.

 

Equally while it is absolutely true that water vapour contributes about 75% of the greenhouse effect, this is not an argument against anthropogenic warming. There is a great post here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142 that describes the big difference between water vapor and greenhouse gases like co2. Also the phenomenon that is being explained by global warming is not what contributes to the greenhouse effect, but what has contributed to recent warming. Even if some greenhouse gas accounted for 99% of the greenhouse effect, it can only be a good explaination for recent warming if it has increased.

 

I don't think global warming theory is even 10% as strong as the theory of evolution, but even so there are a hell of a lot of popular arguments and urban legends against global warming out there that are just as flawed as many anti-evolution arguments.