In the Wall Street Journal this morning there’s a very interesting open letter, signed by sixteen prominent scientists that
- Urges calm in “de-carbonizing”
- Condemns the Lysenkoism-like enforcement of orthodoxy in an area in which there is no consensus
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
My own views are that
- I think that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is legitimate cause for concern and deserving of substantial study.
- The proposals for dealing with whatever problems carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may cause are draconian, don’t do a great deal about the problem, but would create a ruling oligarchy.
- The lack of increase in global warming over the last ten years has, shall we say, cast a cloud over the models that predicted global warming.
- A considerable proportion of the increase in extremes of weather in recent years can be explained by the Asian Brown Cloud, which now extends into central China.
I’ve been in favor of a Pigouvian tax on gasoline for the last 35 years, mostly but not exclusively for geopolitical reasons. The only significant presidential candidate to propose such a thing was resoundingly defeated at the polls. Technology and exhaustion of the Middle East oil fields among other reasons may render that view obsolete. We’ll see.
I think it’s ironic that the rush to do something about carbon dioxide emissions embodied in the defunct Kyoto Protocol may have actually induced some of the problems it was intended to solve. More of European reduction in carbon emissions has been accomplished by off-shoring manufacturing to China (where the problem becomes intractible) than by their cap and trade system which, fortunately, we have elected not to emulate.
I’m also concerned that political correctness has caused us to ignore the tremendous concentration of population in enormous cities in India, China, and the rest of the developing world creating substantial heat islands which themselves would seem likely to influence weather at least locally and, possibly, intercontinentally. But that’s a subject for another post./li
I do find the assertion that global warming has stopped coming from folks who reject the very idea of global warming amusing. Puts me in mind of what someone once said of Santyana, that he believes there is no God and Mary is His mother.
nice one sam. A partner threw this Wall Street Journal article on my chair this morning; he feels both confirmed in his views and annoyed that the weather has been too warm for his new snow blower.
That’s a myth. Seven of the top ten hottest years on record have happened since then, and the not-really-a-pause only showed up in one set of data. More here.
Heat islands have been accounted for in the models they use for years.
Carbon Dioxide is a result of not the cause of warming, and it usually follows about 100 years after a warming trend. The reason is outgassing from the oceans as they heat. The oceans are an enormous heat sink. They are heated from the sun and the Earth’s core. Changes in the ocean temperatures have a huge effect on the weather.
Climategate II was the final stroke for man-made global warming. As scientists with expertise in various aspects of “Climate Science” begin to look more closely, most of the Anthropological Global Warming (AWG) theory is falling apart.
The first glaring problem with the “science” is that the predicted temperature changes are greater than the precision of the instruments. For temperatures prior to the thermometer, it is a joke. Temperatures from satellites are able to provide the precision needed to predict changes less than a degree, and these temperatures are “normalized” to match the land based thermometer readings.
I suspect the reason most scientists in the hard sciences have not spoken up sooner is because the “science” is a joke at best.
“For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”
If you are correct, then the pH of the oceans should be rising. They are not.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100204144811.htm
Steve
I don’t dispute the science of global warming even though I think proponents are overconfident in their conclusions. What I do dispute, however, are claims about what will happen in the future if the earth’s temperature, for instance, rises 2-3 degrees C, and I especially dispute the claims that global warming is a proximal cause for recent weather disasters.
They’ve been accounted for, but have they been accounted for accurately? The models actually make many adjustments to the raw temperature data and then “fill in” gaps in both space and time. There’s a significant dispute about the uncertainty these changes introduce with regard to the precision of the model predictions (ie. less than 1 degree c).
I don’t know either way, but I’m distrustful of modeling in general, especially when the input data is significantly “massaged.” I’m also distrustful of models that claim to be able to detect small changes in large complex systems (ie. global climate).
Following up on Andy’s point about accuracy, how confident can we be about China’s census? I think it would be pretty easy for Western model-makers to drastically under-estimate the effects of interior Chinese cities where Westerners rarely go. To whatever extent we can rely on the figures released in China’s 2010 census the population of China’s largest cities has increased enormously over just the last 10 years, as much as 50%. Considing their size I would think that models would need quite a bit of updating.
Additionally, my understanding (which may be wrong) is that the models being referred to are not open source and statements about them are not sworn testimony. How reliable are off-hand comments and hearsay about them? My point is not that the models are irrelevant or even wrong. My point is that their margin of error may not warrant the sweeping statements made and we really have no way of knowing.
Also, as I’ve mentioned before here, personal carbon production in the U. S. is disproportionately on the part of the highest income earners. They are less likely to respond to the measures being proposed to remediate whatever problems are being caused by carbon production while they are likely to have substantial impact on the poor (who produce relatively little carbon by comparison).
Also, this is a pretty big problem.