10 Comments

Todd
October 10th, 2009 | 2:01 pm

Temperatures are part of weather, which is distinct from climate. Probably the most significant change in the last ten years is the reduction of the summer ice cap on the Arctic Ocean.

The result of carbon dioxide emissions may well melt ice, which might alter ocean currents, which in turn might give Europe Canadian-style winters. That may be a factor for “little ice ages” or even a return to widespread glaciation in North America and Eurasia.

The problem isn’t necessarily that westerners get a few more days of shorts-and-t-shirt weather, or even that billionaires will start buying up waterfront resort property in Nunavat or Kamchatka. Human beings have lived in a world with stable climate for about 400 years. It would seem to be wise to do all possible to maintain this, or at minimum, understand why climates react to change as they do.

Wesley J. Smith
October 10th, 2009 | 3:05 pm

I’m not against research. But I am against deconstructing our economy, stifling development among the impoverished, redistributing income, and granting increased power to bureaucrats, particularly since we don’t really know.

anon
October 10th, 2009 | 3:24 pm

Todd,

Then the same standard must be applied to the identification of warming. If trends of a few decades are not enough to show global cooling, then a few decades of warming is not enough to prove global warming.

Caffeinated Thoughts
October 10th, 2009 | 10:00 pm

Latte Links (10/10)…

Stuff I’ve been reading over the weekend (and during the Iowa-Michigan game – go Hawkeyes!).  Anyway, enjoy the miscellany!

The Gospel Coalition: Walking a Mile in Their Shoes by Peter Beck

The Washington Post: Tort Reform Could Save $54 Bill…

Peter West
October 11th, 2009 | 1:12 am

It is certainly remarkable that such a story should come from the BBC.
See, for instance, http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/8/bbc-backing-climate-change-alarmism-official.html
and, more recently, the comments from Peter Sissons http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/07/bbc_stifles_climate_change_deb.html

Perhaps they’re beginning to respond to the criticism.

As Todd demonstrates, Anthropogenic Global Warming is Pandora Science – an explanation for all ills. If it’s hot – global warming. If it’s cold – global warming. More storms – global warming. Fewer storms – global warming. No matter what we actually observe, there is an AGW explanation for it, ex post facto.

The big story of the moment, though, comes from Yamal, by way of Keith Briffa and Steve McIntyre. Read all about it at http://www.climateaudit.org/ and across the climate blogsphere.

You can even find it at http://www.realclimate.org/ but you may have to dig around a bit.

I doubt that this one will show up on the BBC for a while.

Todd
October 12th, 2009 | 1:08 am

The warming trend has been pretty clear since the mid-1600′s–it would seem we were in a warming trend after the Little Ice Age anyway. The melt of glaciers and the rise of sea level has accelerated since the time of significant industrial pollution and over the past several decades.

That the last ten years weren’t warmer than 1998 doesn’t demonstrate a cooling trend. When you look at graphs of temperatures you always see peaks and valleys. You can say today was a whole lot cooler–and if you lived in my neighborhood, you would be right. On a day to day scale, there’s always highs and lows. Climatologists look at large-scale trends. And the trend of the past century is undeniable: higher temperatures rising faster than they did before western industry.

If you have an alternate reason why the human production of greenhouse gases isn’t the best corollary, I’m all ears. But you have to do better than say, “The world is getting cooler since 1998.” Ten years is nothing for climate trends.

“Global warming” isn’t my term, friends. You’re the ones using it. Climate change is the concern, and its more of a concern than a shorter ski season because of a few degrees rise in temps. The danger of climate change is hitting a tipping point that will cause widespread famine or political instability. A warmer world won’t kill people, not like a flooded Bangladesh might send tens of millions of refugees through Asia, or a shift in the monsoon cycle bring famine to India, China, and Indonesia.

steve from brisbane
October 12th, 2009 | 3:31 am

So, one BBC science correspondent writes an article which airs some skeptical lines, and that should convince me that there is nothing to AGW after all? Well, I’m glad it’s as simple as that.

I strongly recommend that people who are feeling convinced by skeptic arguments go and read the climate scientist’s take on the specific skeptical propositions. I think the Skeptical Science site is one of the best there is for this purpose: it has an extensive list of every anti-AGW argument you have ever heard of, and explains the reasons why they don’t convince the great majority of climate scientists.

It can be found here:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

Besides which, even if it was proved tomorrow that the world is not going to heat from CO2, for some years now there has been increasing concern that CO2 levels will lower ocean pH (a process commonly called ocean acidification, even though the ocean will not actually turn to an acid) in such a way as to cause very significant ecological changes within the next 100 years. Some shelled species may cease to exist due to changes in the carbonate chemistry, including many species which are an important part of the food chain. The future of coral reefs is also believed by many to be very, very bleak. Areas of the ocean which are anoxic from time to time (without oxygen for any fish) are believed to be likely to increase in size. Some plankton may benefit from more CO2, some won’t, but the outcome of the change of the plankton mix is very unclear.

Research on this is underway, but it is a complicated thing to be able to predict precisely how the foodchain in the entire ocean will react. However, there are, as far as I can see, no scientists working in the field who think that this is not a genuine concern.

So, for a number of years, I have taken the attitude that ocean acidification alone is reason to take CO2 seriously. I wrote an opinion piece here about it last year, which provides links to many relevant resources:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7626&page=1

Finally: I get exasperated about how many conservative Christians (which is how I would describe myself) of either Catholic or Protestant persuasion are dismissive of climate science, basically because (as far as I can tell) it is seen as too close of environmentalism as an “alternative” to religion. It is true: there has been exaggeration on the side of some of the AGW advocates, and I certainly was not persuaded to take it seriously by the likes of Al Gore. It is also true that environmentalism can be a type of religion substitute for some people, and I would expect that liberal Christians, to whom the actual reality of God is an optional part of their belief, are virtually all convinced that CO2 is a problem.

But: to let all those factors dissuade you from being convinced that there is a strong scientific body of evidence supporting the position that CO2 is a major concern is just a massive case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

JP
October 12th, 2009 | 4:34 pm

Todd,
You make good points, but you give the Climate Alarmists too much credit. For over a decade they’ve used short term and rather subjective weather events to make thier point concerning Climate. Currently, 30 year trends appear to be the metric; however, NOAA, GISS, and HadCru use different 30 year periods. To complicate matters, they all seem to have different verisons to thier temp database that coincidentially warm current year, but cool past decades. Most recently NOAA stopped using UAH and RSS satellite soundings to measure sea surface temps, and now use the much more sparse buoy data. Thier reason being that satellite data introduces too much of a warm bias.

The main point of the BBC article is what many sceptics have been pointing out for years; that the models over fit warming. Year after year, and now for 2 decades, the General Circulation Models have had over forecasted global temps by as much as 1.5 Deg C per decade. The trend from 1998-current has the globe about .8 deg C cooler, or about 2 deg C based on the 1995 IPCC AR. Currently, the Alarmists call this natural variation that is subsumed within the the warming trend. But, the data doesn’t fit this, and one would think that with all of thier post-hoc fitting they would have picked up on this the last 11.5 years.

Todd
October 12th, 2009 | 7:35 pm

Right off, I’m suspicious of an argument that uses pc-speak like “Climate alarmists” or “AGW.” The case for warming has been established. The planet’s climate has been warming since the middle of the last millennium.

The warming trend has accelerated over the past hundred years, not thirty. One can debate how much, if any, that has been caused by human industrial output. Other causes have been studied, considered, and rejected.

The truth is that human beings are responsible for somewhere between 0 and 100% of the uptick. Most climatologists are not alarmists, but they understand more than politicians or conservatives what could be around the corner for Planet Earth.

My first course in the geology department in college was Climatology 204. One of the main emphases of the course was ice ages. To this day, mammoths are still found flash frozen with their mouths full of food. Clearly one moment the hairy beasts were enjoying some greens, and the next they were dead.

I’m concerned about climate change. I’m not sure about the specifics of what should be done politically. I’m more concerned western culture is more into living for the moment (and maximum profit) than in delayed gratification. But given that scientists tend to be conservative in their predictions, I’m worried that we’re spending too much time debating with people who still deny warming. The discussion has moved on, and you’ve been sidelined. But if you have an alternative to human emissions, you haven’t made it yet.

Leo
October 12th, 2009 | 11:57 pm

Retired Prof Easterbrook is in a tiny minority, the vast majority of scientists who have studied this matter believe that human emissions are warming the planet and we are in danger. See the primary sources here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

Climate Myths according to the UK Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/

How should a layperson decide on an area they do not have expertise in? If most medical researchers said smoking causes cancer or HIV causes AIDS, but a few mavericks disagreed – whose opinion would you stake your life on?