Climate Change & Blogging
Veeeerrrry interesting. I wrote a little post on Climate Change (a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail regarding Rex Murphy’s latest bit of climate idiocy). And I got two comments from people who have certainly never been to this site before. I presume there is a concerted blog/commenting effort, probably funded by PR companies, to troll through the blogosphere and make “grassroots” comments. I noted this kind of thing before on my Zune post a while back, and if I were a PR company, I would be doing this too. Good, cheap, and very direct way to get your message out. Even if you don’t reach the writer (in this case me) you might sow some doubt in other readers of the post.
I was going to answer these fellows in the comments, but it’ll take some links etc, so I’ll do it here instead.
First, Ken Ring from predictweather.com has explaned his position onglobal warming: here. He’s from New Zealand and predicts weather partterns using moon cycle analysis. Here is his comment, and my response below:
Instead of berating Murphy, how about listing the ACTUAL evidence that the world is warming. By the world I don’t just mean the tiny areas occupied by the cities, I mean the oceans, icecaps, swamps, craggy monutain ranges, deserts etc that comprise, without human habitation, 98.4% of the Earth’s surface. Oh bother, there aren’t any thermometers in those places. (Now aint that the inconvenient truth..)
Evidence coming, but first some propositions:
1. earth’s climate is a complex system
2. human civilization has developed in a period of relative warmth & climate stability (allowing for agricultural food production)
3. global temperature is directly correlated with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere
4. if CO2 concentrations rise, there is a good chance that temperature will rise too
5. if the temperature rises significantly, the complex system of the climate will be destabilized
6. if the climate system is destabilized, our ability to manage a global agricultural system will be destroyed
7. if we cannot manage a global agricultural system, human civilization as we know it is finished.
8. CO2 is rising, partly due to human emissions of CO2
Now for some evidence, the most powerful piece of data I have seen in climate change science, from the Vostok ice core:
Note CO2 concentrations follow temperature. Note also that the past 10,000 years (far right of graph, blue) have seen something extraordinary: relatively warm, stable temperature, also the period when human civilization developed.
Now perhaps doubling or tripling or quintupling C02 concentrations is fine. But if I were a betting man, given a graph like that, I would say there is 50% chance that rising CO2 will raise the temperature. And knowing a little about the history of the earth, I would say we don’t want temperatures to go up, and we should do what we can to make sure they don’t.
If you want some more evidence, in counterpoint to climate-denial, a good place to start is this article from Realclimate.org: Wall Street Journal vs. Scientific Consensus.
Regarding Ken’s other comment about measurement of temperatures out of cities, I’m not sure that’s even worth responding to, but satelite data, and the Vostok ice core (from Antarctica) are a good start. For more reading, see: NASA’s GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. For less theoretical evidence (ie. the kind you can feel in your cold, wet toes) here’s an article about the melting Arctic.
I think that’s all for Ken.
Now for the other commenter, Jeff Jones, no URL. Here’s what he had to say:
Notice how the doomsayers claim, as the host does, that each year the scientific community gets more certain. Which scientific community? Certainly not the 19,000 who signed the Oregon petition.
It’s the kind of dishonest device that the Church used to deny Copernicus and Galileo.
Maybe you mean the scientific community made up of political scientists like David Suzuki whose goal is to destroy the corporate basis of Western democracy.
So, the famous Oregon Petition is widely regarded as bunk. There was no control on petition signers, no required proof of academic creditials, no stated affiliation with academic institutions. I did a cursory search through the signatories, and of 15 names I checked I was able to find three academics: Earl Aagaard, professor of biology at Christian creationist university; Arthur Ballato, an Electrical Engineer with the US Army; and Daniel J Cantliffe, a biologist at University of Florida. None of whom has any direct experience with climate science, as far as I can tell.
But rather than spend time on the discredited Oregon Petition, better to answer the question directly: Which scientific community does get more certain? Well, for one (sorry, for eleven) the National Academies of Science of the following countries: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and the USA.
Say these Academies, in the following document (Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change-pdf):
We urge all nations, in the line with the UNFCCC principles, to take prompt action to reduce the causes of climate change, adapt to its impacts and ensure that the issue is included in all relevant national and international strategies.
As for scientific literature, Naomi Orseskes did a random study of 928 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, with the key-words “climate change.” Of the articles, about 75% of them deal with the question of causes of climate change, 100% support the view that a significant fraction of recent climate change is due to human activities.
And what exactly is the consensus? According to realclimate.org, the consensus is:
1. The earth is getting warmer (0.6 +/- 0.2 oC in the past century; 0.1 0.17 oC/decade over the last 30 years)
2. People are causing this
3. If GHG emissions continue, the warming will continue and indeed accelerate
4. (This will be a problem and we ought to do something about it)
So … as they say: who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
With regards to your propositions (you seem to have made a typo while numbering, so I’ll refer to the two #5s as 5a and 5b, respectively), I have this to say: 1 and 2 are undeniable, and I’ll give you 5b, 6, and 7. But I’m not sure I agree with 3, 4, and 5a:
3. global temperature is directly correlated with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere
4. if CO2 concentrations rise, there is a good chance that temperature will rise too
5(a). if the temperature rises significantly, the complex system of the climate will be destabilized
While there is lots of evidence (primarily from ice cores) that suggests that CO2 increases in the atmosphere have been ACCOMPANIED by increases in air temperature, it has also been suggested that increases in concentrations of other gases (some equally bad, like methane) have also been accompanied by increases in air temperature. So increase in CO2 may not in fact be the _dominant_ cause of temperature increase.
But I think that the most difficult proposition to accept is 5a. Though I’m sure you know, I think it’s worth pointing out that the earth’s climate-regulating systems are quite complex and not completely understood, with lots of cause-effect feedback loops; that it’s unreasonable to think that the disruption on atmospheric balance caused by man will result in the collapse of the global agricultural systems and, through disrupting global climate, ultimately the demise of man. I think we’ll die from methane poisoning or something before we get to the collapse of the global agricultural systems.
You can claim for example that CO2 and other gas emissions will continue to result in temperature increases, but this in turn will cause ice caps to further melt, and that in itself might cause the salinity of the north atlantic to decrease which will then decrease the density of the north atlantic and quite likely disrupt thermohaline circulation. If thermohaline circulation is disrupted, arguably the rate at which heat is carried up from the south atlantic will decrease and subsequently temperatures in the north atlantic will drop, re-freezing ice caps.
It’s feedback phenomenons such as the above, paired with the fact that it’s not yet sure what the cycles/duration of all dominant climate change causes are, that make me a skeptic w.r.t. the effects of real climate change on the global economy.
But despite all this and FWIW I agree with most of the suggestions of climate-change activists with respect to reducing gas emissions. Pollution sucks for a variety of reasons.
Comment by Bosko — December 10, 2006 @ 1:51 pm
Climate Change & Blogging
Trackback by University Update — December 10, 2006 @ 2:05 pm
Hi Bosko, I updated the numbering. so your comment might be a bit confusing (i might go in and edit your numbering to match).
Of course there are other gases that have greenhouse properties, you can find the whole list (from IPPC) here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases
But greenhouse effect is an actual physical property … not at all in doubt. That is, more CO2, physically traps more heat, and no one questions that. The mechanism is understood clearly. What might be in doubt is how that impacts the whole complex climate system (postiive and negative feedback loops). But regardless, that there are other worse gases (eg methane) does not change the fact that CO2 is an important greenhouse (ie heat-trapping) gas.
On the worries of methane/CO2, there are a few points to note:
-methane breaks down in the atmosphere in 10-15 ys, while CO2 breaks down on the order of 100s of years
-current CO2 concentrations are 365 ppm
-current methane concentrations are 1.7 ppm
so even recognizing that methane pound for pound is more of a climate change worry, the amount of CO2 makes it more significant.
Still, it’s irrelevant that there are other (possibly more worrisome) climate forcers, the worry is that climate is getting forced at all, and what impacts that might have. In fact, the *biggest* greenhouse effect comes from water vapour - which of course is a positive feedback loop: hotter temperatures mean more evaporated water, means more heat-trapping.
more on methane: I have not ever seen any evidence that methane poisoning is a worry - do you have a reference for that concern?
The big methane worry I *have* read about is melting permafrost in the Arctic, especially Siberia. If the frozen peat bogs of Siberia do indeed melt, billions of tons of methane (and almost a billion tons of carbon) are expected to be released into the atmosphere, with huge impacts on climate. See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1546824,00.html
And it appears that Western Siberia is heating up faster than any other region in the world. A potentially catastrophic positive feedback loop.
Regarding my point 5a = 5, or “if the temperature rises significantly, the complex system of the climate will be destabilized” … well there is no doubt about that … the question is when. Again, look at the Vostock chart above. The climate goes through cycles - heating and cooling with 5 heat peaks in the past 450k years, each followed by ice ages. So there seems to be an internal regulation: once things get too hot, the system rejigs itself, and temperature drops. If it drops down far enough, agriculture, for most of the world anyway, will be done. When is a different question.
But we depend on this complex system and it seems to be grossly irresponsible (not to say totally irratonal) to continue on a path that appears to be forcing a complex system out of equilibrium, when that equilibrium is what we depend on for human civilization. In fact, to me it seems insane.
Again, look at the graph above. The far right is present, and temperatures have stayed warm and stable for the past 10,000 years, the period during which human civilization developed. I would argue that the only reason that humans have been so successufl is that we were evolutionarily well-suited to this particular environment (stable climate, allowing our brains to exploit things like regular growing seasons). Without stable climate, we will not be nearly the successful beings we have been.
Finally, you are certainly right that the feedback loops (positive/negative) are not well-understood. But the risk of fucking with those loops are potentially catastrophic. The concern is not about longer growing seasons in Minnesota, or some flooding in Bangladesh, or the possibility that we will be able to wear shorts in January in Montreal. Slow change we can adapt to well enough. The real worry is throwing a complex system into disequilibrium … imagine say a decade of climate chaos across the globe. I think it’s unlikely that human civilization could survive such a situation.
Let’s be conservative and say there’s a 1% chance of catastrophic climate change in the next 50 years. What would be the smart thing to do? Do you insure your home for fire? Based on what risk percentage?
To me its a matter of simple risk analysis. I think the risk is significant, and so the wise thing to do is take action to mitigate risk. Anything else, as I have said above, seems to me to be insane.
Comment by hugh — December 10, 2006 @ 5:38 pm
Just one other thing: we spend billions on potential problems all the time. Take for instance a military doctrine of Pre-Emptive strike… Saddam Hussein *might* have been a threat to the US … he was not an immediate threat, he was a potential threat. Percentage? What’s your guess.
That threat (aslo: threat of losing oil supplies, threat of china’s power in middle east etc) was worth some $450 billion per year of military spending.
So: is the climate risk as big ? bigger ? smaller?
I would say much bigger, and so I would think an equivalent logistical and political seriousness should be applied to the problem.
Comment by hugh — December 10, 2006 @ 5:46 pm
You’re right Hugh, it is a concerted PR effort - see the comments to this post.
Comment by Justin Beach — December 10, 2006 @ 6:08 pm
“… I presume there is a concerted blog/commenting effort, probably funded by PR companies, to troll through the blogosphere and make “grassroots” comments.”
When I read these kind of nonsensical, laughable, conspiracy theories which have nothing to do with the science I question the motivations of those making them. They are just a parrotting of ideological rants of the likes of Suzuki and Gore, neither of whom are climatologists, but who are famously known for their political science activities.
Actually I was just surfing to learn more about this issue, since I lived through the early 1970’s when scares of the new ice age where being flung around by doomsayers who of course always get the attention of media. As for your examples, I can copy boiler plate equally as well as you can if I were so inclined. Or I could just rely on the example of the discredited and fraudulent “hockey stick”graph by Michael Mann, the poster boy for the doomsayers a few years back who forecast rapid increases in global temperatures in the early 1990’s, which was the basis of ICCP and still used by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and an independent researcher refuted the basis of the “hockey stick.”
Obviously neither of us is a climatologist or expert in a related field so we are forced to rely on others. Friends of Science is one site authored by skeptical climatologists which is as valid as any other but whose authors seem to be the object of personal attacks from leftists and a rag tag miscellany of world statists, including the elitists at the CBC.
As for Orseskes’ claims, they’ve already been refuted. According to British social scientist Benny Peiser, less than 2% of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called “consensus view” that human activity is driving global warming.
Sure no doubt the Oregon petition had bogus names on it. Which petition doesn’t? And what would you expect from 19,000 names? So deduct a few. Deduct 5,000. Deduct 90%, it would still leave 2,000.
So much for scientific consensus.
All we have is consensus among leftists and statists who have seized another cause now the Soviet empire has imploded.
Comment by Jeff Jones — December 10, 2006 @ 8:09 pm
Hi Jeff, thanks for coming by again. I’ll pass on the conspiracy stuff, as it is irrelevant. Maybe I am paid by Suzuki, who knows? But for the facts:
1. 1970 cooling, see here for an analysis. Two important points there: 1940-1970 did see cooling; and the science has advanced since 1970 to much better understand the climate system. That is, even if there was some worry in the scientific community (overblown in the press) about a coming Ice Age, it was acknowledged at the time that the scientific evidence was uncertain. 30 years, and much more research has passed. So one would hope the conclusions and predictions now would be different.
2. The Mann Hockey Stick, see here for an analysis. Main points: The hockey stick is one piece of evidence, not the only piece. Science works that way: you don’t get consensus based on one study. It takes many different types of corroborating evidence to make a scientific theory stick, so to speak. You can lose one data set, and still have a robust theory. Further, the main conclusions of the Mann study in fact are corroborated elsewhere. So though the Hockey Stick had some problems, other studies confirm its conclusions.
3. Sources of Information. I would not agree that Friends of Science is “as valid as any other.” I prefer to put my vote with more credible sources, such as the National Academies of Science (pdf) of: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and the USA. I think they carry more weight than a website run by a couple/few/tens of climate skeptics.
4. Benny Peiser/Oreskes. Peiser has withdrawn most of his criticisms of Oreskes study. And now says: “I do not think anyone is questioning that we are in a period of global warming. Neither do I doubt that the overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact.” For more see here (pdf).
5. Oregon…I think you’ve done enough yourself to remove that from serious debate.
6. Consensus/leftists/statists. Perhaps you are right. But more importantly, we have an overwhelming consensus of scientists. As reflected best, I think, by the statements of the National Academies of Science of the eleven most powerful countries in the world. That’s the group I’ll go with, over the Oregon folks.
Comment by hugh — December 10, 2006 @ 9:10 pm
Hugh, your discussion with Jeff has taken several different paths so I’ll abstain from joining it; but to respond to your reply to me (comment#3):
“Still, it’s irrelevant that there are other (possibly more worrisome) climate forcers, the worry is that climate is getting forced at all, and what impacts that might have.”
The real question is whether our current activity is really any sort of dominant force (within any meaningful cycle) on the current climate change apparently-cyclical pattern. If we refer solely to your Vostok chart, I’m not so sure; while we are on an upswing of atmospheric CO2 and global temperature, I’m not sure that the dominant driving force is human behavior. It’s an apparently cyclical pattern; we’re not helping the upswing, but then it’s not completely obvious that we can prevent it by lowering CO2 emissions, even significantly.
Like I said though, I don’t disagree with fighting pollution through government-imposed means (sometimes), but I do think that it’s important to not make sweeping claims with respect to the causality of climate change (and the systems that govern it); most importantly because doing so undermines the anti-pollution argument itself — and there are many other reasons besides for just global climate change that deserve attention. Immediate health issues for example (increase of asthma cases in newborns, smog-related health issues, the destruction of wildlife, etc. — ironically some of these may end up forcing climate change in the longer run, but by then we’ll be too dead to care about our failing agricultural system).
Comment by Bosko — December 10, 2006 @ 10:25 pm
but that’s what science is for right? you get thousands of scientists who work on thier corner of science, and you end up having a web made up of nodes of knowledge that reinforce understanding of things. You’ll lose some nodes, gain more, and eventually you get a solid understanding of some of what’s happening. Not everything of course.
So, you don;t have to rely solely on the Vostock charts. There are many other bits of evidence you can look at. Read this: WSJ vs Scientific Consensus.
But to answer directly: the scientific consensus happens to be that human activities (CO2 and other emissions) are forcing the climate system. So I’m not going on *my* opinion, I am taking the mainstream scientific opinion.
In the long run, of course we can’t stop climate change. The world has seen and will continue to see huge fluctuations in global climate (20k years ago most of the world was under a kilometer of ice). But if we like human civilization then we’ll want to avoid doing anything to upset the equilibrium we are in (in fact, maybe, when knowledge is more advanced, we’ll take action to countervail natural cycles). Again, scientific consensus is that human CO2 and otehr emissions ARE forcing the climate system beyond what is expected due solely to natural causes.
As for sweeping claims, again I will say: I’ll put my faith in what the majority opinion within the scientific community. If research begins to show something differen then we can talk again of course.
Finally, the other types of (mostly) local pollution are a totally different issue. I don’t really expect that we’ll see human civilization collapse in the next 50 years, or 100 years. But I’d like to make my political decisons to help make sure we don’t collapse. The local issues are important, but their impacts are smaller and controlled. The worst-case climate risk is totally uncontrolled. That’s pretty scary.
Comment by hugh — December 10, 2006 @ 11:06 pm
Hugh,
Can you post irrefutable evidence (or cite sources) in two areas:
1) If correlation does not imply causation, did the temperature rises precede or follow the increase in CO2 concs in the atmosphere over the past millions of years ? This is along the lines of: What were the relative contributions of the other drivers that may have led to an increase in global temperatures and CO2 ? On a related note, if likely this is an autocatalytic process, i.e. higher temperatures leading to higher CO2 concs further promoting higher temps, then what set it off each time ?
2) I’m especially curious about the anthropogenic component of the CO2 conc. While conceding that pos-industrial revolution we have been dumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, does it matter if simultaneously the biggest driver for increasing CO2 concs is something else ?
Comment by Beemer — December 11, 2006 @ 11:20 am
Beemer,
1) the physical process by which CO2 (and othe greenhouse gases) let energy from the sun in, but not out - the greenhouse effect - is well-understood, and not in doubt. without the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere, we would be a freezing ball of cold. so there is NO DOUBT that CO2 (plus other gases such as methane … and water vapour) increases will trap more heat.
However there is a positive feedback loop (as well as other more complex feedbacks, not all of which are fully understood): more CO2 means warming, which in turn results in melting of decayed matter (eg peat bogs of siberia) releasing more CO2.
There are of course other factors (radiation from the sun, earth orbit cycles) which also force the climate. But analysis and modelling is showing that the current rate of warming (10 x greater than any other time in the past 1 million years) cannot be explained by natural forcing. It can however be explained by CO2 (and other GHG) emissions.
2. What is the *biggest* driver of climate change is not relevant to the question: are we forcing the climate system out of equilibrium. There can be many forces in play in the climate, but if you really throw one out of whack (say by doubling the atmospheric concentrations of CO2) you will throw the whole system out of equilibrium.
Is it worth the risk?
Comment by hugh — December 12, 2006 @ 9:07 am
These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.
Comment by Annerose — June 3, 2007 @ 9:44 am
You’re right not to take any notice of Ken Ring’s silly claims. His weather prediction is based on astrology and he has zero scientific credibilty. This page debunks his methods:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~nogods/ring.html
Comment by John — August 6, 2007 @ 4:58 pm