Just a quickie here

IIRC each time someone runs counter to the "science consensus" :::ahem:::, no matter how researched and footnoted, the Science Protectors of It's Collective Wisdom bring out the pitchforks and torches

The Skeptical Environmentalist anyone?

Sometimes it may be that the dumped on scientists who haven't been swept up in the Man is Stupid and We must stop the Evil Capitalism movement of "environmentalists" have decided if their rational arguments don't make a dent then why not make the opening chapters just as emotional and ranting then the guys who won't listen anyway?

That's a fair point. There are overlooked and wise insurgents confronting politicized scientific dogma, and there are correct conventional wisdoms being challenged by cranks. But on either side of an argument over science (especially science), when the debate has political implications, it's best not frame an argument in a mirror image of the emotional and political context that you're criticizing.

I'm with Bill on this one. Environmentalists have made a lot of dumb, wrong-headed calls, but conservatives are way too reflexively dismissive in this area. Air and water in this country really are cleaner than they were 30 years ago; I'm not wild about the EPA bureaucratic approach, but conservatives just ignored the problem and offered nothing in the way of a credible alternative.

In "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Bjorn Lomberg disputed the facts of the environmentalists' claims; he didn't say they weren't worth arguing with because they were jerks. Same thing here, I think: the report makes a factual prediction about the greenhouse effect, so let's discuss it factually. In ten years, we'll find out who's saying, "Neener, neener."

Bill,
You may be interested in a little site called debunkers.com where we discuss this sort of junk science. There are a few folks who dismiss any report like this out-of-hand, but mostly we're thoughtful scientists who discuss the science and try to get around the politics of the matter at hand.

My opinion on GW? Bunk, and it's of a high order of folly for people to believe that Man has enough power to influence the atmosphere of a planet by changing a small proportion of a few compounds in a vast chemical soup. Reminds me of the Carl Sagan quote along the lines of "only humans would be so arrogant as to believe we're the only intelligent life in the universe."

Thanks for being a voice of sanity, Bill.

I'm glad Bush won, I enjoy hanging out with my new righty friends, but they can be just as knee-jerk ridiculous ignorant-and-proud-of-it about certain topics as the lefties. Feminism is another example. You want to see feminism caricatured and reduced to handy straw-men, hang out with conservatives.

I will believe the enviros on this point when I hear them saying that this is so important that they have decided that nuclear power is the only solution.

I'm old enough to remember prior doomsday scenarios as well. Anybody remember George Wald's prediction (about 1970) that even if we stopped all polluting then, the pollution that had already been released would kill us all by 1984?

Environmental fear mongers have learned that the only way to get attention for their causes is to posit "End of the World" scenarios. The problem is that they've become like the boy who cried wolf; nobody's going to give them the time of day anymore.

It will be interesting to read the Crichton book.

Pat -

Once again, valid point, and the most valid point that the Wizbang post makes - a litany of false predictions have diminished the credibility of this one. But

A. A litany would desire citing more than one in the post.

B. Facts would help to refute an argument for man-made global warming.

My personal instinct is that the scientists are making a hyperbolic deadline based on research that they generally believe, in order to jumpstart political pressure to curb greenhouse gases. But not having plumbed the specific calculations of their research, I can't mouth off about this with smug, absolute certainty.

It very well could be that the man-made global warming phenomenon may contribute to the fact that the temperature is rising, but the deadline is hyperbolic. They may be completely full of shit. I simply do not know.

Odd, my simple rebuttle to this article is to point to another article, also published today.

And it's a good rebuttal.

If "catastrophe" is only 10 years away it's too late to do anything about it. Neither China nor India are going to curtail their CO2 production and the Kyoto Accord wouldn't work even if they were constrained by it (they're not).

Frankly announcing that "Global Warming Is Nie!" on the day a massive blizzard hits the East Coast seems counterproductive. What moron wrote this press release - Al Gore?

Global warming does not mean that the weather is warmer, at all times.

Then it shouldn't be called, "Global Warming", should it? However I concede that "Global Weather Change" just isn't as catchy a name.

No one has shown to me that Global Whatchamacallit is a bad thing. The Earth was warmer 1000 years ago than it is now. It was quite a bit warmer back during the Roman Empire than then. People weren't dying like flies from bad weather back then. England exported wine from its many vinyards. My problem is that the default position of all the global warming advocates is Doom and Gloom; "Oh-by-the-way-give-us-a-blank-check-and-we'll-fix-that-for-you."

I suspect their motives.

I don't know.

I'm not sure that a blogger is required to do much more than vent on occasion.

Yes, if you want to join the debate, please do come with ammo, but commentary demands no such rigours.

I took Paul's piece as commentary, with no apparent desire to actually debate the issue. Seems fair enough to me.

Having read Bjorn Lomberg's book, and having looked up the actual data physically recorded (not modeled on a computer) I find very little evidence supporting the global-warming theorists, and quite a bit refuting it.

Science, in a very general way, hasn't changed much since the days of Galileo; insofar as Scientists are all scrambling for whatever funding they can find by putting out theories that appeal to specific moneyed interests. All to avoid having to clean their neighbor's laundry for a living.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does create the condition whereby less pure Scientists might allow themselves to make their data fit their theory, rather than the reverse.

Can anyone tell me what the 'natural' level of CO2 is? Or what the average temperature of the earth is? or what it is supposed to be?

Since the earth began the climate has been changing, getting warmer then cooler. The amount of co2 in the atmosphere has changed to, but whether or not the co2 proportions in the atmosphere lead the temperature change or are in response to temperature change NOBODY KNOWS!

What is clear however is that even in historical times the planet has seen both WARMER and COOLER periods than we see today. The last Warm period is known as the medieval optimum which occurred between 800 and 1300 AD. In those days agriculture flourished where it does not now because the climate was more benign. When that period ended there was famine and pestilence. The population of Europe fell to about 2/3s of it previous levels.

On balance warming is more likely to be beneficial to the majority rather than cooling judging from histrical precident. STOP WITH THE SCARY STORIES and lets indulge in rational scientific debate

krakatoa -

Purely on the basis of commentary then, Paul is arguing that humans have no business putting forth complex scientific theories that attempt to predict planetary changes that could kill human life. It's "hubris."

That's pretty silly commentary from my standpoint, supportive research or no research.

And venting commentary about scientific phenomena is a bit different than purely philosophical or moral commentary. It requires a minimal use of resource material and/or specificity, in my book.

If weather and climate are by nature chaotic systems, accurate long term prediction is not possible.

The computer models might be good and getting better. They will be needed if we eventually implement climate control.

But even a good model of a chaotic system can do no more than provide an indication of possible outcomes.

Knowing this, the dire predictions combined with a rush to drastic measures looks a lot like religous zealotry or political fear mongering.

Here's a study for you. The findings from a team of
American climate experts suggest that were it not
for greenhouse gases produced by humans, the world
would be well on the way to a frozen Armageddon.
http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/world/Full_Story/did-sgsAtWaxCKF0EsgTbBP-2fa91M.asp

Here's another one. These guys attempted to
reproduce the results of the most quoted study
on global warming. The results: they found it
riddled with major problems and, almost two years
later, the original author still will not
disclose how he possibly arrived at his original
results. These guys achieved results vastly
different from the original study and they provide
total disclosure on how they did it for
total peer review:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html

And one more. This guy shows that the human
contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere is a tiny
fraction of all sources:
http://home.austarnet.com.au/yours/Greenhouse_Bullcrap.htm

I could certainly have listed some other ones, like the coming Ice Age much talked about in the 1970s, or the Population Bomb that was going to result in the "mass die-off" around the world due to food shortages. Or the hole in the ozone layer that was going to have us all dying of skin cancer in our teens. Or the fact that we were going to run out of oil by 1990 if we didn't start charging everybody an extra 50 cents a gallon for the stuff.

There comes a point where you just stop listening, because the other side has been wrong so many times. It may be that I'm wrong here; after all, the story of the boy who cried wolf ended with a real wolf.

As for the science, as I pointed out on Wizbang, I do not see a whole lot of liberal sites (not that yours is liberal) that devote a lot of time to explaining the relative merits of evolution versus creationism. They just laugh at anybody who believes in creationism. I believe, based on the reading that I have done, that global warming and creationism have a lot in common; that they depend more on faith than on science. YRMV.

There comes a point where you just stop listening, because the other side has been wrong so many times.

I suppose. But sometimes defining the other side isn't crystal clear to me in every case. Though the loss of credibility is.

You hit the nail on the head though: unquestioning "faith." In anything, just for the sake of belief or self-identification is tedious, especially with regard to science or medicine.

Bill,

I think the most important thing you said was "in my book".

Paul, as a commentator, isn't using your book. His book may or may not be as objectively good as yours, but insofar as it is his commentary, your book doesn't really apply. Critisizing his commentary adds nothing to the referred debate, and really doesn't do anything other than create a certain friction that could otherwise have been avoided. But hey, maybe that just proves my whole point... commentary just is, and doesn't require much in the way of method or motive to exist.

Certainly I agree with you, in that I would prefer links to back up Paul's commentary. By the same token, I can just as easily understand the shorthand involved here... The enviromentalists have been wrong on every single one of their doomsday predictions so far, the proof being that we are around to debate anything at all... so looking up and linking the research papers seems an exercise in redundancy. Furthermore, given that such material is generally un-sexy filled with graphs, numbers and actual test data, they aren't quite as easy to find and digest as a nice "news" article written up by a true believer.

Looks like some of your commenters here have given you some excellent links. I find a lot of good data, with links to source material, at junkscience.com. This article has lots of links and charts for instance.

Does the site have a political slant? Certainly. But it does seem to provide the ammunition you are looking for.

First of all, Bill, a lot of people have been skeptical of the global warming hypothesis. Not all of whom were or are "rightists". It is no more legitimate for you to cast all skeptics on this as "rightists" than it is for people to answer the global warming advocates with ridicule and hyperbole. If you are not up to speed on the arguments against the global warming hypothesis, I can point you to many good sites that deal with the substantive problems of the science.

However, in Paul's defense, a lot of global warming advocates answer their critics with non-rational rhetoric. The magazine Scientific American a few years responded to skeptic Lomborg with an entire issue that was little more than scores of pages of ad hominem.

"...defining the other side isn't crystal clear to me in every case."

Well, I guess, with the comment about "Righties" and "right-wing commentators". ;)

" It is no more legitimate for you to cast all skeptics on this as "rightists" than it is for people to answer the global warming advocates with ridicule and hyperbole. "

This statement is an incorrect interpretation. I'm not stating that all skeptics are "righties." I'm criticizing the "righties" for all being unwavering skeptics that propose unconvincing arguments. (or at least the ones in the blogosphere that I've come across on this issue)

See the difference?

I take a slightly different angle. Sure, disagreeing with the report should mean using science as refutation. It's the news reporting that's so disgusting, and actually much more important (politically) than the actual scientific report (if that's what you'd call a report issued by politicians).

Most of the public will never see, much less understand, the actual science. They only see what the press repeats. I have been on these PR distribution lists for years and the same thing gets played out over and over again. Enviro-alarmists issue press releases. Uncritical newspapers print them, often without any significant editing. Industry and conservative think tanks urge caution, suggest science-based approach. Press yawns. Environmentalists celebrate over a glass of heady merlot, deciding what will be the next threat to humanity and the Amazon rainforest.

This press report is typical.It's all doom and gloom, and of course includes the one key element that all alarmist PR must include: Act now before it's too late! The only thing that keeps me optimistic is that the American public is fairly weary of this and often tunes it out....an appropriate response, I believe.

Sure, another good point.

But I wouldn't fight the press's fire with fire, if you catch my drift. Explanations of the science can be leagues more relevant and complex than the press account, yet still easy to understand. And the beauty of the internet is that you can shorthand very general opinions with links to specific supporting info. The fact that a few rightie bloggers just attacked the report from a position of orthodoxy without reference mortally wounded their arguments, IMO. And the "global warming? It's COLD today" cliches don't help.

The paleogeologists have seen this before in patterns of data we do not attend to and seldom see discussed in public venues. Viewed in geological time and indexed to core samples, there is nothing new here. No one knows what the CO2 or average planetary surface temperature is supposed to be, particularly projected forward as an artifact of solar physics. Perhaps the most concerning aspect of human-altered global environmental potential is the resurfacing of the earth, the thermal storage it creates and the novel deviation presented by this stored energy and its potential disruption of the nocturnal/dinural pump. The windows of dawn and dusk provide the pivot point of daily climate and microbial phase shift in soils across the planet. Dewpoint is just the beginning. The microbial blooms and species surge and recharge associated with this 'pump' is poorly understood in relationship to the atmosphere and climate and the dynamics of sustainablity for dependent organic life forms driving the nitrogen and carbon cycles that contribute so profoundly to our planetary ecology and atmosphere. Perhaps the next most important issue is airborne particulate and nanoparticulate pollution from human activities. Such are sophisticated systems with far reaching implications. But the sun is the most unforgiving variable. Perhaps the EU, UN and the inguinal rash of craven NGOs can draft the appropriate legislation to subordinate the sun to the devices of international law and academic fashion. Wouldn't that be nice. All the sun needs is appropriate regulation.

Iowa's point -- about the dangers of an uncritical press, particularly for something as complex as climate change -- is a good one. But it's worth mentioning it works both ways. For example, many people (including some who have commented here) believe scientists in the 1970's were sure we were heading towards an ice age; this belief is flat-out wrong (thanks krakatoa), and entirely the fault of the media.

I'm not sure I understand why Bill decided today that he would censure Paul for his brevity. For years now, people have been dissing and laughing at the Kyoto Protocal. This is not new news.
Anyway Bill, I hope you find your missing sense of humour under a blanket of snow real soon! :)

Jesse;
You are so wrong about the Greenhouse doomsayers NOT predicting an Ice age in the 1970s

for example

Schneider S. & Rasool S., "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols - Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate", Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141

Here are the opening paragraphs of that paper -

ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE AND AEROSOLS:
Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate.

Abstract. Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Becuase of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg.K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

Stephen Schneider went on to become one of the leading proponants of Global Warming

andrei:

I don't see it that way, re. Jesse's point. There is a world of difference between these two preambles: "Some Scientists Suggest..." and "The consensus of the Scientific community..."

I was young in the 70's. Most of my fears were tied up with the certainty of Nuclear Holocaust. However, I do recall some news outlets reporting on possible global cooling.

I took this as gospel at the time, being young and impressionable. However, I haven't had much luck finding anything like a small collection, much less a consensus, of scientific research supporting the 70's media semi-hysteria over this.

You have referenced one article from Science. Peer review of his work appears to show quite a bit of disagreement with his methodology and conclusions.

From Wikipedia "CO2 was predicted to have only a minor role. However, the model was very simple and the calculation of the CO2 effect was incorrect by a factor of about 3 - a fact soon recognised."

My personal view on this is that we have created a myth around a few 70's news stories. I could be wrong, but so far it looks like there was no wide scientific agreement that an ice age was imminent.

Bill,
Guess I plead guilty to making fun of the report. I might add that I did actually read it (the report, not the article) before I did so. I’ll also admit to being fairly immature in my arguments (being, as I am, fully in touch with my inner child) but the guys who wrote it did leave themselves open, wide open, to such mockery.
As it happens I’m pretty much in the Lomborg camp. GW is happening, we’re doing it, Kyoto won’t make a dime’s worth of difference at trillions of dollars of cost and in 20-30 years solar energy will be cheap and efficient so we can all stop worrying. (I would also note that I monitor developments in solar cells as some types use the metals that I sell for a living.)
If you want to read what I wrote it’s over there at Techcentralstation.com (apologies for the ad).
The basic point? Pat Curley’s point. In 40 pages of talking about low- and no-carbon forms of power generation they say nothing at all about nuclear power, except a footnote to say that they say nothing about nuclear power. Simply not serious and fully deserving of mockery.

You linked and read the entire report and actually contacted the Taskforce; your snark is orders of magnitude above the Wizbang piece. That in mind, ANY piece would be vastly strengthened by a link to a reasonable source that backs or summarizes some of the presumptions of your "translation," IMO. The beauty of the internet - links as shorthand.

As an example: imagine Dr. Nancy Hopkins, writing about what a chauvanist Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers is, but simply relying on the presumption that we are all privy to a wealth of data that mark his statements on innate gender differences as bunk.

I'm pretty sure that you and the rest of the global warming doubters have a much better case, but it's not being made effectively without any closing references.

Is this not an example of what skeptics are up against?

believe scientists in the 1970's were sure we were heading towards an ice age; this belief is flat-out wrong

Whatever the quibble points are, this statement is flat out lie.

My translations are insults, that and only that. If you prefer, I am imputing base motives to the authors of the report. There are, therefore, no references for me to link to.
I’m a little out of step, I think, with received opinion on media bias (in so far as a TCS piece is part of that media, or, say, an American Prospect piece is)..I’m actually in favour of more bias, more partisanship, more mockery, invective and insult, as long as these are backed up by a clearly announced and obvious declaration that this is bias. I don’t think that anyone who reads anything I write could be unaware of my basic positions, those very biases.
Having said that, I am not, as above, a global warming doubter at all. I seriously doubt whether the proposed solutions (Kyoto et al) make any sense, seriously doubt the scale of the problem, but that GW exists? Sure it does, partly caused by emissions, partly by land use changes and partly just because the world changes. What we do about it is to me the important question.

Tim,

I respect you as an intellect and a writer, and I understand your intention, but I haven't been able to find anything beyond insults and invective on the subject. So I was left with three options yesterday: insults and invective from the right, head bobbing from the left over Bush's environmental policy, and the inevitably shallow and inaccurate read of the newspaper article. Or google and research.

Bill wrote:

Paul mentions that he's going to write a post refuting global warning... I can openly admit that at this moment, even though I am aware of the existence and general conclusions of both insurgents like Lomborg and the environmentalist orthodoxy...

Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist is a great book to read to become a more educated layman. What Lomborg wrote is usually forgotten in the Establishment charges of "heresy!" and the "global-warming-is-bunk!" counterattacks.

On review of the data, Lomborg accepts the existence of the phenomenon of global warming. He wonders about its magnitude, the degree to which it is human-caused, and the power of predictive climate models. He goes on to question the practicality and effectiveness of the Greens' faith-based initiatives, notably the Kyoto Protocol.

Lomberg's book is an excellent 'backgrounder' on the state of the climatological art, and his thoughts on what ought to be done are clear and logical.

One doesn't need to be a climatologist to form an opinion on the perniciousness of the Establishment-approved attacks that Lomborg has endured for his doubleplus ungood thought crimes, notably at the hands of Scientific American and the Danish Academy.

Boris,

Did you even check out the link I provided? (Krakatoa gets credit for finding it, btw.) Did you read the brief exchange between Andrei and Krakatoa? So, why is my statement a "flat-out lie"? All the evidence I can find says this global-cooling-consensus thing is a myth started by the MSM and propagated on the internet. You're welcome to prove me wrong, but some bibliographic references showing a consensus would be required.

One doesn't need to be a climatologist to form an opinion on the perniciousness of the Establishment-approved attacks that Lomborg has endured for his doubleplus ungood thought crimes, notably at the hands of Scientific American and the Danish Academy.

Agreed.

Jesse,
Yes I checked the link.
I remember the hype. No, it is not a myth created recently on the internet.
The MSM did not make it up out of thin air.
Therefore flat out wrong = flat out lie.

People are inclined to listen to warnings, but when the warnings start calling for throwing the baby out with the bath water, peoples's skepticism is aroused, especially when it's their baby.

It doesn't require footnotes and references to convince people that after throwing out all the babies the reason future civilization won't be worried about pollution is not because the water is clean.

It's because there won't be one.

Why, Bill, I’m blushing at such compliments.
I understand entirely how and why you wrote your post the way you did. Given the information at hand you were entirely correct. Don’t want to give the impression that I believe anything else.
There is indeed a useful case that can be made against this report, without insult, without humour or partisanship. I may not be the person to make it but that’s fine. I don’t know if you know The Daily Ablution but Scott has an interesting take on it.

Jesse;
The consensus is that today we are in an Interglacial period (ie warm) and at some point in the future this period will end and the earth will return to a GLACIAL PERIOD (COLD, ICE AGE).When will this happen, WHO KNOWS!

In the seventies some scientists hypothesised that we were heading for the next Glacial period, this was hyped by the scaremongers and surprise surprise human activity was blamed. The average temperatures collected and published did show a cooling trend from the 1940s till the mid seventies, but during the eighties this was reversed and the temperatures started to climb again. Whereupon the scaremongers changed their dire senarios from us freezing to death to global warming.

Stephen Schneider, the example I posted above was in the vanguard of the Climate catastrophe doomsayers both as a 'The Ice age cometh' promoter and a then a 'Global Warming' advocate. The only part of his prophecies that remained consistant is the "INDUSTRIALIZATION IS RESPONSIBLE' componant of his theories.

If you follow the Global Warming literature today you might notice that the doomsayers now are moving to 'Climate Change' rather than Warming or cooling scenarios. Thay can't lose with this because the climate is changing, it always has and always will.

Andrei,

Of course we're in a interglacial period -- ice ages are cyclical, so if we're not in an ice age, we're in an interglacial period.

Maybe there were indeed scaremongers in the 70's, but they weren't scientists. It was the media, as that link should have showed you -- here's another, again courtesy of krakatoa. (I love it that conservatives choose to defend MSM in this case!)

Yes, Stephen Schneider did write that 1971 article. But he was no doomsayer. The last sentence of the paper you cite shows he wasn't too worried: "However, by that time [of the predicted 3.5K cooling], nuclear power may have largely replaced fossils fuels as a means of energy production." So maybe he was wrong -- but he wasn't saying there would definitely be a catastrophe.

Moreover, as krakatoa points out, that paper was immediately called into question. One year later another paper in Science came out (1975:95), by Charlson et al, in which Schneider was a coauthor. They point out that Schneider's 1971 conclusion was "critically dependent on the assumptions of their model, and other reasonable assumptions can produce the opposite conclusion." In other words, their model -- or at least the conclusions Scheider drew from it -- weren't very good. And Schneider admitted as much. So, he was no "vanguard of the Climate catastrophe doomsayers", as you call him.

Two more points:

1) the term "Climate Change" has been pushed not for the reasons you say (covering all their bases) but because the term "Global Warming" is way too political for scientists, and connotes more certainty than most are comfortable with. Admit it, you'd be complaining a lot more if they used the term "Global Warming" all the time.

2) So Schneider changed his position. You take that as evidence that he's a fraud? As indicated above, it's likely he originally believed in cooling, then decided the evidence didn't support his original belief. This strikes me as much, much better than if he were to stick to his guns and argue his first position in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. Which is what GW skeptics are always complaining scientists do. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess?

One other comment before moving on. I decided to read the report today, but there was no link to it at the UK's Institute for Public Policy Research, but there was no link to it there, so I followed over to the America partner's site, the Center for American Progress.

I realize this is attacking the messenger, not the message, but any doubt that this is a political document and not a scientific one should be dispelled by a visit to that site.

The Skeptical Environmentalist has rightly been mentioned here. We really do need more critical thinking like Lomborg's book.