Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, led by Dan Kahan, has a new working paper examining public perception of the risks posed by climate change: “The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change.” The results are interesting, and perhaps a bit counter-intuitive — particularly the finding that those who are more scientifically literate are less likely to believe climate change poses a catastrophic threat. Here’s the abstract:
The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones. More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: Respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased. We suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: The individual level, which is characterized by citizens’ effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments; and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens’ failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. Dispelling this, “tragedy of the risk-perception commons,” we argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication.
UPDATE: Steven Hayward comments here.
eyesay says:
Climate change in the form of global warming is real. It is happening now. It is caused in large part by increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide and methane. These increases are attributable to human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuel and the husbandry of cows, which emit methane. This is all in the record. We can argue about whose model is best in terms of how many degrees the average global temperature will increase, or how much more or less rain will fall on average in any location, or how much the sea level will rise. But those who argue that it is not happening at all, or that it isn’t caused by human activity, are just plain wrong. I do not plan to return to comment further on this point, because there is no convincing those whose “values” require them to believe untrue things.
July 5, 2011, 1:27 pmgooners says:
Slightly less likely. R = -0.05, p = 0.05 to be exact.
July 5, 2011, 1:28 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
.
The authors of that piece chose to discuss controversy over “climate change” when virtually 100% of the population knows the climate has changed and will be ever changing. That is not controversial. What is controversial is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. The more that science discovers, such as that warming in interglacial periods precedes rather than follows an increase in CO2 or the Medieval Warm Period was world wide, the more that CAGW looks like an hypothesis that does not fit the facts.
But facts aside there is big money in wind turbines, solar cells, hybrid vehicles, expensive light bulbs, more expensive appliances, etc., etc. Oh, and don’t forget a tsunami of grant money to study the “problem.”
.
July 5, 2011, 1:30 pmChrisHo says:
Well you must be fun at parties.
July 5, 2011, 1:37 pmBlue says:
I think the slight increase in doubt among the more scientifically literate is explained by two factors:
1) Making an Argument from Authority as a significant portion of their case. The scientifically literate are more likely to recognize this as a logical flaw and to recall many cases in the history of science where the full weight of authority was arrayed on the wrong side of the truth.
2) The pro-climate change case has not been sufficiently circumspect in its claims–again, very much against the way science in other disciplines is conducted. In other words, those who have been communicating on behalf of the global warming case have often run way ahead of the actual data they possess.
Note that these two points don’t even begin to address own-goals scored by the pro-climate change camp such as East Anglia being unable to reconstruct a critical data set.
July 5, 2011, 1:42 pmJohn David Galt says:
Both the authors of Yale’s project and the first commenter, eyesay, insult everyone’s intelligence when they attribute non-belief in the “climate change catechism” to ignorance or ideology.
The proponents of human-caused climate change have not one but TWO major credibility problems, both addressed at length in Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion”. The smaller problem is all the dubious statistical practices (“cherry picking”) that went into selecting the data that became the Hockey Stick curve.
The much greater problem is the corruption proven by the ClimateGate e-mails — corruption not only on the part of their authors, but also by the leadership of all the institutions whose response has been to join in the coverup by whitewashing those authors, including the University of Virginia, American Physical Society, EPA, Royal Scientific Society, IPCC, and even the Nobel Committee of the Swedish parliament. All of these institutions have discredited and disgraced themselves, and no sensible person will trust a word they say until they make the effort to repudiate their frauds and purge themselves of liars. And up to now, they don’t even see the need to begin.
There are no science-deniers. There are only corruption-deniers.
July 5, 2011, 1:46 pmSeaDrive says:
Ponderous language and minimal results. Makes me glad I’m not an academic.
Their “large sample” (N=1540) would be on the small size for that typical political poll we’re used to with a margin of error of maybe 5% on a binary (yes/no) question. And the result is “people who are not like us should be more like us.”
July 5, 2011, 1:49 pmwm13 says:
Is there any reason to believe that “the best available scientific evidence on how to promote [our] common welfare” exists? It seems to me that the authors are substituting hand waving for a lot of epistemological and historical hard work.
July 5, 2011, 1:49 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Isn’t a third possibility that many who are more scientifically literate may recognize that proving humans contribute to climate change does not, without more, demonstrate that climate change is a near-catastrophic phenomenon requiring particular policy responses. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly here and elsewhere, there are many experts who accept eyesay’s two claims, but still reject the “sky-is-falling” position. [Of course, I should also note, I don't believe one has to demonstrate the "sky-is-falling" proposition -- that climate change is likely to be catastrophic -- to justify certain policy responses.]
JHA
July 5, 2011, 1:53 pmgecko says:
That warming is occurring is almost universally accepted by even skeptic scientists. Its a shame that the pundits both conservative and otherwise have cast the debate in terms of whether warming is occurring or not. Anthropogenic causes is more controversial but fairly mainstream.
The thousand pound gorilla is whether anything can be done and if it is worth it. I think given what we’ve seen so far the answer is crystal clear.
July 5, 2011, 1:54 pmgecko says:
Yale Scholar’s Definition of Rationality: DAT DER GLOBULL WARMING GUNNA GIT US…..WEEEEZZZZZZZ ALLL GUNNNA DIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 5, 2011, 1:56 pmAnthony says:
I think this thread is proving the truth of the observation about polarization.
July 5, 2011, 1:57 pmgooners says:
That’s not true at all.
July 5, 2011, 1:59 pmDilan Esper says:
Just so you know, deferring to expertise is not a logical flaw. So long as nobody claims that authorities are infallible or are using fake authorities, it’s perfectly logical (and indeed preferable to popping off about things one has less knowledge about than the experts) to rely on the experts.
July 5, 2011, 2:01 pmgooners says:
They found that whether a person believes climate change to be a problem is not based on ignorance, but on ideology, and they found that through empirical data. If that insults your intelligence, it’s a personal problem.
July 5, 2011, 2:03 pmEngineer says:
Yes exactly.
In the field of optical communications engineering just about all the relevant variables affecting a system are well-understood and quantifiable. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to prove concepts in the lab and things often don’t work exactly as expected.
Yet the AGW crowd frequently makes categorical statements about the accuracy of its models despite the fact that climate is much more complex and not as thoroughly understood.
July 5, 2011, 2:06 pmSmooth, Like a Rhapsody says:
for eyesay and all those whose notion of “true” is so unassailable that they simply refuse to engage those who disagree with them:
Let us assume that all humans (and all cows, if that makes you happy) walked in an orderly fashion into the sea over the course of the next three months.
How would the climate be different in 100 years than it would be if we all just decided to stick around?
Also: What solutions are you Guardians of Truth proposing to this problem that the Chinese and the Indians are willing to sign on to?
July 5, 2011, 2:10 pmCrunchy Frog says:
Therein lies the problem, at least in this instance. A good portion of the populace has assumed good faith among the “experts”, and has believed what they have been told. As tired as I am reading about Ilya’s “Rational Ignorance” theory, it is appropriate here. Climate science has proven to be too arcane for the people employed in the field – how is the average voter supposed to know what is accurate, and what is bullshit? So, as a society, we appeal to authority, and to the consensus of those supposedly in the know.
Unfortunately, bullshit by consensus is still bullshit.
Promise?
July 5, 2011, 2:12 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Virtually everyone I know believes the earth has warmed since the end of the last ice age and the much more recent little ice age. Also that the world has cooled from the 1930′s and warmed since the 1970′s. The problem you observe IMHO is the use of “warming” as a linguistic shorthand for CAGW.
.
July 5, 2011, 2:12 pmRaoul says:
“we’re going to have to live with less”
James Cameron, Los Angeles Times
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKZ4RolQxec
As long as the public face of “climate change” is people like James Cameron and Al Gore, as long as the “climate change” community refuses to denounce these individuals as the hypocrites, frauds and hustlers that they are, I’m not going to lose any sleep over “global warming”.
July 5, 2011, 2:15 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Those that hide data and methods are not to believed. Those that won’t show their work are engaged in opinion, not science.
July 5, 2011, 2:18 pmgooners says:
Seems like this is how we’re doing it:
Do you think Al Gore is a decent human being?
Yes = humans are causing global warming
No = humans are not causing global warming
Science!
July 5, 2011, 2:21 pmSmooth, Like a Rhapsody says:
@Raoul:
“…denounce these individuals as the hypocrites, frauds and hustlers…”
(and “usurpers”; don’t leave out the “usurpers”…)
July 5, 2011, 2:29 pmDave M. says:
Actually, the biggest problem facing advocates of CAGW is that their models utterly and epicly fail. They typically use only 200 data points for a global projection model. That’s some pretty crappy model resolution. The original Nintendo probably had better resolution than that.
Further, they claim the models are good (which is a testable hypothesis), but their models fail when we run back the clock 50 years and plug in data from 1950, run the model, and see how well it compares to year 2000 data. Using such a test, their models quickly reveal that their value is little higher whale crap.
July 5, 2011, 2:31 pmMost Americans Want Scientists, Not Politicians, to Lead Climate Debate | Latest Live News Update says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Climate Change, Cultural Perception, and …The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, <> [...]
July 5, 2011, 2:34 pmTed says:
Just so you know, you’re technically wrong. Appeal to authority to resolve a particular syllogism is indeed a logical fallacy. For instance, consider the following:
All birds are black. Bob is a Bird. Color and bird expert Sandy says Bob is white. What color is Bob?
What you are referring to, where deferral to authority is appropriate, is “reason” or “rationality,” used to evaluate conclusions when presented with imperfect or unbalanced information, i.e., the real world. That’s fine, but it’s not “logic.”
July 5, 2011, 2:38 pmHarryEagar says:
Odd you should say this finding — for what it is worth, probably not much — is counter-intuitive.
My experience is that the better the scientist, the more likely he is to either be a skeptic about CAGW or an outright scoffer.
My other experience is that it the returns for saying so in public are strongly negative, so they don’t say so in public.
It remains incontrovertible that Le Roy Ladurie’s work proves Mann is wrong. There isn’t even any wiggle room to argue about it.
July 5, 2011, 2:50 pmDesiderius says:
“Dispelling this, “tragedy of the risk-perception commons,” we argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication.”
So much for diversity.
Someone call Michigan to let them know the gig’s off.
July 5, 2011, 2:53 pmDilan Esper says:
I’ve seen this argument before, and my logic professor would have given anyone who made it an F.
“Appeal to authority” is an informal fallacy, not a formal one. People who make appeals to expertise are not– or at least should not be– making syllogistic arguments. They are making inductive arguments, i.e., “because experts X, Y, and Z believe this to be true and it is a fact likely to be within their expertise, it is more likely to be true”.
And that argument is only fallacious if in fact X, Y, or Z are not experts or the fact is not likely to be within their expertise.
Here’s Wikipedia:
“On the other hand, arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.”
I have found, in fact, that people who don’t like experts or science very much are precisely the people who have no idea what the actual fallacy of appeal to authority is.
July 5, 2011, 2:59 pmIspep Teid says:
Why is so little of the debate devoted to whether we should attempt to reduce CO2 emissions? Assume that Big Bad Warming is coming and that humans are a major cause. Does acting now change much? Is dealing with the consequences less costly than attempting to prevent the cause?
July 5, 2011, 3:13 pmBruce Hayden says:
But, I don’t see that at all. You could, for example, cherry pick your “experts”, and their saying something was true would not increase the likelihood that it is more likely to be true.
That said, I do think that there is a political element here, in that I would suggest that those on the left are both more willing to accept authority, in this case, in the form of “experts”, and, similarly, expect that the general populace should follow the advise of experts. This is implicit in the concept of the centralized state, that experts are better than the general public at making decisions for people.
And, I think that that is a big reason that this debate tends to break the way that it does, with communitarians more likley to believe in the pronouncements of the “experts” here, and the individualists tended to be more skeptical.
July 5, 2011, 3:15 pmBruce Hayden says:
I do find it interesting that you would argue from authority basing your claim on what many authorities accept as being a highly biased source when it comes to political subjects such as this – Wikipedia.
July 5, 2011, 3:17 pmgooners says:
Wikified for ya.
July 5, 2011, 3:24 pmTed says:
Odd, this is exactly the opposite of what my logic professor told me. That said, it seems our dispute, as usual, is based on misunderstanding. I don’t use the term “logic” as synonymous with “reason,” “inductive reasoning,” or “informal reasoning”; you apparently do. To me logic is the root system upon which the others are based, but is a closed system involving only premises and conclusions and operations (e.g., Boolean logic).
Inductive reasoning is not “logic,” as it does not seem subject to any kind of logical validity testing. For instance, consider the following:
You can only conclude with certainty that Bob is, in fact, white if you equate “expert” with “infallible,” i.e., substituting the opinion of Sandy for an absolute factual premise. I don’t do that, and I don’t think that “expert” is ever really used in that way. Certainly not in law or science; maybe certain branches of theology…
Anyhow, it seems we agree that appeal to authority is, indeed, a formal logical fallacy. And we agree that it is not a fallacy in informal forms of reasoning. So just use “reasoning” instead of “logic,” and fisticuffs won’t be necessary.
P.S.: Trust me, I’m was a philosophy major and I am a lawyer… ;) (Actually, I’d love to hear from ChrisTS on the subject.)
July 5, 2011, 3:25 pmBruce Hayden says:
The later really doesn’t follow from the former. Or, I maybe should say that the former is really a straw man argument – no one really questions that someone can argue that an assertion by an authority is true. Just, as they can argue that it is false.
But the second sentence does not follow. That is not the fallacy, or, rather, not the only one, which is what is stated here. Rather, much more is being asserted as being true based on the statements from the authorities here. What is inevitably implied by an argument to authority is that the proposition being asserted is more likely true than if the authority had asserted such. Or, in the case of CAGW, that the proposition actually is true based on the pronouncements of those authorities.
July 5, 2011, 3:27 pmTed says:
If a large asteroid is going to hit the earth, are our resources better spent trying to prevent the impact or trying to adapt to (read, “flee”) the consequences? Must it be either or?
July 5, 2011, 3:30 pmScientists finally get angry about indifference to climate change | Latest Live News Update says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Climate Change, Cultural Perception, and …The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, <> [...]
July 5, 2011, 3:31 pmBruce Hayden says:
Not sure what you point was there – mine was that there are plenty of experts who consider Wikipedia to be a biased source when it comes to political subjects, and, thus, was itself an appeal to authority.
July 5, 2011, 3:31 pmElliot says:
There is no reason to believe experts when they refuse or resist releasing their data.
July 5, 2011, 3:32 pmgooners says:
The most interesting part of this, especially now that the update had the AIE chiming in, is that while the anti-AGW crowd is crowing about their superior scientific knowledge they are ignoring the fact that the slight negative correlation shown in the study is so slight as to be insignificant. And they are also ignoring the actual findings of the study – the very significant correlation between thinking global warming is a danger and ideology, and that within each ideology a greater understanding of science leads to a greater assertion of the danger/lack of danger of global warming.
July 5, 2011, 3:32 pmHasdrubal says:
Looking at the authors, I see 4 people from law schools, one from “decision research” and one from psychology. Why are they asking questions so far afield, why not something closer to home? As lawyers and psychologists, why are they grading responses on a field that they themselves aren’t qualified to answer? Why don’t they pick something from law, psychology, or decision theory?
I haven’t read the paper, but the abstract really sounds like “People with more education are less likely to agree with me on what to do about global warming than those with less education.”
And seriously, anyone who uses a phrase like “Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons” seriously needs his game theory license revoked.
Do they even know how daft that sounds? How would the lawyers among us react to an economic paper on the cross price elasticity between renting and buying homes titled “The Miranda Rights of Prices?”
July 5, 2011, 3:33 pmaeolius says:
I think this is exactly on point
Guardian 7/5/2011
It is odd for a law-centered blog to advocate the correctness of consensus based reality
July 5, 2011, 3:34 pmSeaDrive says:
OK, call it 2.5%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error
Still, not much data for a multi-valued issue.
July 5, 2011, 3:35 pmgooners says:
According to?
July 5, 2011, 3:40 pmChrisHo says:
Leaving out the subject of the study it comes across as, those who tend to worry, worry more.
As for eyesay, science becomes religion when there is no room for debate
July 5, 2011, 3:42 pmgooners says:
Oh. When people use phrases like “may authorities” on Wikipedia, someone else adds as [who?] tag.
July 5, 2011, 3:53 pmDilan Esper says:
I have been through this debate before, on other fora, and I can confirm that a similar discussion to that contained in Wikipedia appears in Austin Freeley’s Argumentation and Debate and other major argumentation textbooks.
July 5, 2011, 3:57 pmBruce Hayden says:
The problem here is that it is not all that clear that mankind would be worse off with a warmer climate, even assuming that AGW is happening, etc. For example, parts of the Sahara are greening, for the first time in a millennium or two. Why? One theory is based on the fact that warmer air has a greater carrying capacity for water than cooler air.
The assumption that AGW would be bad for mankind seems to be based on models that show the weather over much of the world being dryer. But, there seems to be a lot of actual data showing the opposite. And, that doesn’t even start to address the issue of AGW potentially opening up large swathes of Russia/Siberia and Canada to farming.
The point there being that there isn’t a lot of debate as to what a large meteor or asteroid hitting the planet would do. But there is significant reason to believe that we might be better off, not worse off, if AGW were true. And, as a result, is it reasonable to spend many trillions of dollars trying (fruitlessly, given that 2nd and 3rd world countries seem to be ignoring AGW concerns with their increases in power generation) to prevent something that is probably more likely to help mankind than hurt mankind?
July 5, 2011, 3:58 pmDilan Esper says:
The problem is, nobody’s making syllogistic, deductive, “logical” arguments on this issue or just about any other political issue. They are making inductive arguments.
So when someone comes in and says “that’s a logical fallacy, you’re relying on experts”, they are just trolling and derailing the discussion.
The issue is whether it is justified to appeal to these authorities in this situation, not whether it is a logical fallacy.
July 5, 2011, 3:59 pmHoosier says:
Phlogiston is real. Dephlogistication is happening now. I do not plan to return to comment further on this point, because there is no convincing those whose “values” require them to believe untrue things.
July 5, 2011, 4:01 pmG.R. Mead says:
Everybody knows that blackbirds are not bobwhites and that bobwhites are brown….
July 5, 2011, 4:06 pmSam Hall says:
eyesay is a typical warmer who has found a new religion. He states some “facts” and then refuses to debate them.
July 5, 2011, 4:07 pmHarryEagar says:
It’s either warming or it’s cooling. It never stays the same. No question the next Ice Age will be catastrophic for living the way we live now.
Question is: What would cause the next Ice Age to begin?
Follow-up question: When was the last time you noticed a ‘climate scientist’ addressing this question?
July 5, 2011, 4:08 pmBruce Hayden says:
As before, it depends on what those authorities are being trotted out to prove. More often than not, they are being used to shut down debate.
But, maybe even more so, the problem is that there is so much politics involved, that accepting authority becomes problematic. We constantly hear that any anti-AGW research is funded by the oil companies and the like. But what about the pro-AGW research? Is that research as white as the driven snow? I think highly unlikely. We saw some of the sordid underbelly of this with ClimateGate. Is the reason that there is more pro-AGW research a result of it being more likely true? Or, that it is easier to get funding for pro-AGW research, than for anti-AGW research? Oh, and the IPCC is even more suspect, esp. given how much of their stuff came from advocacy groups (and much of the rest appears to come from the scientists implicated, directly or indirectly, by ClimateGate, etc.)
July 5, 2011, 4:11 pmUncle Fester says:
The problem with the author’s position is his failure to understand the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific fact. Anyone who has seen a glacier lake knows that the earth has had times of warmth and times of cold that had nothing to do with man’s actions. They want us to act on weak data, questionable analysis, and without much confidence that the “solution” will accomplish anything.
July 5, 2011, 4:12 pmTed says:
That’s a good point. And I apologize to Ispep Teid, if I missed that in his comment.
July 5, 2011, 4:17 pmTed says:
Well, you said this:
When responding to this:
Is this position deductive or inductive? Formal logic or informal reasoning? Whether expert opinions are true is a subject of debate. That debate cannot be resolved by saying, “but they’re experts!” Rather, that is very conclusion questioned when questioning the veracity of an expert’s claim, is it not?
Formal logic prohibits a non-tautological conclusion from proving itself, i.e., begging the question, assuming the conclusion). I think that is Blue’s point, and there is nothing “illogical” or incorrect about that. He disagrees that the experts are right; he is, in essence, asserting that they are not experts. I haven’t heard his argument for this position, but you can’t counter that argument by arguing that they are experts!
July 5, 2011, 4:32 pmBlue says:
Yeah, I was thinking of including that as a third point–that more scientifically literate people are also more likely to be able to discern the difference between the propositions “A is occuring” and “We must do something about A.” The evidence for the first does not necessarily support the second.
July 5, 2011, 4:35 pmaeolius says:
Professor Adler
July 5, 2011, 4:56 pmI am rather surprised that you seem to confuse the dependent and independent variables. Climate change is the dependent variable. A convenient vehicle for studying the current conflict in America between the ability to form individual opinions and “Cultural Cognition” which to this uneducated individual is another name for mob behavior. Their emphasis on the scientifically educated is that even there the learned ability to interpret scientific evidence is overwhelmed by by group factors.
I am sure that you did not miss the reference to the tragedy of the commons, where the rich and powerful were able to overwhelm long-held individual rights.
It would seem that the use of mass-media to shape Cultural Cognition, first fully developed by Goebbels has come to fruition in today’s United States. It is pathetic that you seem to applause this.
Mr Heywood is correct. The Right is much better at using Media then Al Gore and the Left.
Their mistake was to appeal to individual reason frather then mob affect.
mariner says:
As amply illustrated by your comment.
July 5, 2011, 5:04 pmmariner says:
No, it isn’t. But the comment addressed argument from authority, which is a logical flaw.
So is straw man.
July 5, 2011, 5:12 pmShelbyC says:
Winner.
July 5, 2011, 5:13 pmIspep Teid says:
Good questions. I would hope people would ask them.
July 5, 2011, 5:17 pmJoe - Dallas says:
The skepticism from the more scientific knowledgeable has to due with the implausibility and inconsistencies of the story.
1) First – there was no Medieval warming period, when caught, the story changed to only regional, still they have no explanation for a spcies of fruit trees in china growing 300 miles north of their natural range during the MWP when the NOAA claims the proxy data shows that it was colder than average. Is it even plausable that there was a 300 year high pressure zone covering 10% of the globe as both NASA and the NOAA would like us to believe – ask a meteoroligist if that is even possible.
2) The proxy data no longer tracking the instrument records – how convenient to claim that the extra CO2 is causing the divergence – not that the proxy data was off to start with.
3) The claim that the earth would be 30-40 degrees colder without the greenhouse CO2 gas, yet with nearly a 50% increase in CO2 the planet has warmed less than 2degrees over 150 years.
4) The recent study out of the U of Penn showing the sea level rose by approximately 1mm per year during the little ice age, rose less than 1mm per year during the MWP, ie very little deviation on the rate of the rise, in spite of the little ice age and mwp, unless you believe Mann’s hockey stick. (not to mention using the outer banks to determine the sea level 100 to 1,000 years ago from the sand even though the sand churns on a daily basis)
5) How a trace gas could drastically affect the Earth temp but the other 99% of gases have no effect on maintaining the earths temp.
That is not to say that the earth has not warmed – just the scientific basis for AGW is at best a theory with very inconclusive empirical data to support the conclusion along with too many “cute” answers to explain the inconsitencies.
July 5, 2011, 5:28 pmDaoud Al-Amriki says:
At least this debate is a step up over those who posit that climate change skeptics are mentally ill.
As someone said above, assuming man-made global warming is occurring, there is little, if anything, we can do to arrest, let alone decrease, the amount of greenhouse gases we are putting into the atmosphere in the short term. In geologic time we might be able to decrease said gases but typically Americans aren’t very happy to hear that a problem will be solved a million years from now. A curse upon anyone who uses the term “anthropogenic”. (or urtext)
July 5, 2011, 5:35 pmRobert Allen Leeper says:
Dilan Esper says:
Ted:
Just so you know, you’re technically wrong.Appeal to authority to resolve a particular syllogism
Stop. Fatal semantics error at ‘syllogism’.
‘Resolve a syllogism’ is gibberish.
July 5, 2011, 5:39 pmTed says:
Bah. It’s not “gibberish.” It’s just imprecise. Dilan and Bruce understood what I was talking about. But, how about:
Does that cause any syntax errors? Or, why don’t you provide the correct syntax, and I will be sure to use it at your command prompt.
July 5, 2011, 5:45 pmJoe T. Guest says:
I’m fairly scientifically literate compared to most people and I’ll believe anthropogenic global warming is a human species-ending cataclysmic threat when Al Gore and the other public faces of this new cult, who suppposedly have access to incontrovertible truths about the threat, give up their private 707s, multiple mansions and jet setting lifestyles. Many of the people urging us to take drastic action against our immediate self-interest are living like The Elect, lecturing us rabble on how we must exchange our middle class lives for something like the penury in the lives of characters in The Road to Wigan Pier. It is hard to take them seriously, just as it must have been hard to take a Renaissance pope’s lectures on the moral value of poverty and chastity. The attempted cover-ups of crooked data manipulation and the inability of leading institutions in this crusade to explain themselves just fuels my apathy, and makes it hard to take the purported incontrovertible truth of their scientific claims – a facially invalid claim per Popper and a claim that also requires a huge leap of faith – very seriously. Honestly, when something is “undeniable” it is “unfalsifiable” and it makes the leap from being science, to being a faith. Even if there is truth there it makes me quite uncomfortable, because the hallmark to good science is supposed to be falsifiability, and we’re told that (1) man is causing severe change; and (2) that it will be cataclysmic; and, (3) this cannot be denied. Really? That sounds inquisition-like. Our chief weapons are fierce loyalty, a NASA scientist, and almost fanatical devotion to Al Gore… The fact that every solution to the problem involves more government, more control over individuals and less individual liberty, does not do much to convince me of the righteousness of this cause either.
And as for carbon credits… well, that’s just the buying and selling of indulgences, often in securitized form. Very clever stuff but I’m not sure the people involved are actually saving anything, except for big downpayments toward 707′s and the afforementioned mansions.
July 5, 2011, 5:47 pmSkeptical Reader says:
The results are counterintuitive only if you believe that anthropogenic global warming is a well-verified theory. Many of us scientists know that much of the temperature data related to AGW was biased (mostly by urbanization effects), some was falsified, and the rest was improperly weighted with oceanic temperatures (that involve two-thirds of the planet) getting short-shrift. Many of us scientists also know that the climate computer models were biased towards finding a CO2-warming link, that all 25 of the models submitted to the IPCC in 2003 failed to meet the IPCC’s own accuracy criteria, and that the meta-model created by the IPCC was deliberately fudged to predict higher polar temperatures (by 4-6 degrees centigrade). Also, not one of the models took into account the affects of temperature on cloud formation. Those are some of the reasons why fewer “scientifically-minded” people believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
July 5, 2011, 6:03 pmDilan Esper says:
As I said, crediting the views of experts as being more likely to be true on the ground that they are experts is not fallacious.
The people who are asserting that it is are misusing a logical fallacy to try and avoid having to acknowledge that some people have studied a problem more than they have.
July 5, 2011, 6:10 pmStating The Obvious says:
It makes intuitive sense that people who are familiar in a field but are not experts in that field are more polarized than either experts or layman. Layman follow conventional wisdom, as they see it. Experts in the scientific field follow the data – which they are more exposed to. People with just a bit of knowledge are likely to pick and choose the data they believe to confirm their preexisting bias and worldviews. Since we live in some of the most ideologically polarizing times, it makes sense that those with just a bit of knowledge would be the most polarized.
You can see this in economics all the time. Despite the factual knowledge reinforced daily by economists that spending fiat as opposed to saving it produces an increase in employment, you have many of those with just a bit of knowledge saying that increasing spending kills or prevents jobs (I’m not arguing that *we the people* should spend fiat, I’m arguing the empirical effects of spending are itself knowable).
This probably wouldn’t be as striking if those who were against “we the people” stopping climate change did it from a libertarian position – that we shouldn’t work together because doing so destroys freedom – as opposed to claiming a scientific rational.
Likewise it would be better if those who are against “we the people” spending our fiat to say that doing so destroys liberty as opposed to saying it destroys jobs.
P.S.
July 5, 2011, 6:11 pmI’ve started using “We The People” in place of “Government” as it elucidates the absurdity of what libertarianism is against.
Grover Gardner says:
The fact that 72% of respondents know the Earth circles the Sun, and only 45% know it takes a year to do do, suggests that we’ve got a bigger problem than climate change.
July 5, 2011, 6:12 pmStating The Obvious says:
Actually that is exactly what an informal fallacy is. It isn’t about probabilities. There is no logical connection between the truth of something and the people who state it. There is most certainly a statistical one.
July 5, 2011, 6:14 pmG.R. Mead says:
Excellent summation, Cardinal Fang. More soft cushions.
If a conclusion cannot be falsified, it is not a conclusion that can bear the name “scientific.”
As it happens, I believe that Purgatory, the Communion of Saints, the Real Presence and the Resurrection of the Dead are all true and conclusive…but I make no pretense that they are scientific conclusions of truth … mainly because it would misunderstand the nature of the knowledge that gives cause to believe that they are true and that they are conclusive.
Authority only operates as effective evidence of truth when there is independent confirmation of the conclusions that authority gives one to hold. Acceptance of authority — even in explicitly authoritative settings such as the Church is never blind and unquestioning, even as it is accepted as authoritative.
As Chesterton pointed out — when one ceases to believe in God the problem is not that one believes in nothing, it is that one will believe in anything.
As a falsifiable proposition, the AGW movement has provided sufficient confirmation of G.K.’s conclusion to make it now a scientific one…
The Prophet of Picadilly is proven, once again, correct.
July 5, 2011, 6:14 pmBruce Hayden says:
Isn’t that, in fact, the definition of a year? In other words, if the earth rotated 500 times as it circled the sun, wouldn’t our year then be 500 days?
July 5, 2011, 6:18 pmGrover Gardner says:
I’m just quoting what it says in the paper. People were asked how long it takes for the Earth to circle the Sun–a day, a month or a year. Apparently 55% answered incorrectly.
July 5, 2011, 6:22 pmrilkefan says:
Cite, please.
July 5, 2011, 6:26 pmrilkefan says:
Cites to peer-reviewed – oh, why bother.
July 5, 2011, 6:33 pmGiant Frog says:
A small nuclear war with Pakistan.
Or maybe just burning plenty of dirty coal since “massive coal burning in China may have slowed global warming over the past 10 years …”
July 5, 2011, 6:42 pmDilan Esper says:
This is a misuse of the word “logical”, or rather an attempt to mislead.
It is simply not fallacious to argue that people who are experts are more likely to have accurate knowledge about something. Now, if you are talking deductive, formal logic, that isn’t a deductive, formal, syllogistic argument, but since there’s plenty of knowledge that is outside the realm of deductive syllogisms, that’s not really here or there.
More importantly, I question the sincerity of people making the claim that this is fallacious. For instance, I assume that when they get ill, they don’t go to the hospital or the doctor and self-treat. Can’t assume the doctors have any more knowledge than they do, right?
July 5, 2011, 7:04 pmFoobarista says:
One element that few have discussed is that far more people are highly educated (at least in terms of credentialed education) than ever before. Given that PhD’s are a dime a dozen nowadays, people who are similarly educated aren’t nearly as impressed by them, or by what they say, as “ordinary people”. This is particularly true if their claims are heavily based on specious – and quite well-understood – stuff like computer simulations coded by graduate students.
As for the “understanding of risk” arguments, many people are skeptical of grand government solutions of any sort, and make a quite rational calculation that the risk posed to humanity by the bureaucratic and legal apparatus required to effectively “fight” global warming is at least comparable to the risk posed by global warming itself.
July 5, 2011, 7:05 pmTed says:
I can’t remember the last time I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with something I didn’t already know I had. Rather, I go to a doctor to get treatment I could not otherwise perform myself, e.g., x-rays, antibiotic eye drops, stiches. I do not assume doctors have any more knowledge than I do regarding run-of-the-mill ailments. Also, the fact that they are doctors, does not affect whether or not I have a particular condition. Have you ever been misdiagnosed by a doctor? How do you explain that?
July 5, 2011, 7:15 pmBob from Ohio says:
Yes, as Giant Frog just noted, the science is settled. Burning coal both causes and prevents global warming at the same time.
I understand why eyesay and his ilk are crabby. The political tide has turned in the US and all the momentum has shifted to the skeptic side. Keep up hope though, the Labor Government in Australia is just about ready to commit suicide on behalf of the planet.
July 5, 2011, 7:19 pmA. Zarkov says:
Well okay believe what you want. Now let’s assume the truth of AGW. What are we going to do about it? China, India and the rest of the Third World get a pass. China already emits more carbon than the US, and owing to their greater energy intensity, and carbon intensity their emissions swamp everything in 30 years. The US could go to zero carbon emissions and it would make no difference. As long as China gets a pass, our actions are moot.
At this point the scientific question matters little. China is not going to give up on coal and other fossil fuels because they provide the cheapest way for them to develop. China does manufacture some so-called “green energy” products, but that’s mainly to sell to the West. Not for their own development which is firmly based on fossil fuels.
The fatal flaw in the whole alternative energy program is economics. The common thread is the replacement of chemical energy flows with electrical energy flows and that means an enormous jump in capital costs. The green energy advocates are on the wrong side of physics and history. The future is shale gas.
So go ahead, believe whatever you want of AGW. IT doesn’t matter.
July 5, 2011, 7:55 pmBen P says:
You haven’t talked to a medical student recently I take it?
Your doctor’s medical advice might be “here’s antibiotics, get some rest and drink plenty of fluids” but he or she was taught a hell of a lot more than that.
On the other hand, arguing that expert opinion on climate change should be discounted on that basis that “ordinary people” disagree is kind of like asking “Do you ever notice that when someone dies in a hospital there’s almost always a doctor around?”
July 5, 2011, 8:04 pmBruce Hayden says:
There are a lot of problems here. One problem is that not everyone agrees on who is an expert in what here. This isn’t like medicine, where an MD degree and medical license shows some degree of both expertise and responsibility – the later being that if unprofessional advise is given, they can lose their medical license, or at least be liable in tort. Not so here – Michael Mann didn’t even get his hands slapped for his hockey stick.
Second, what constitutes an expert in this area? Obviously, the supposed experts that everyone was citing don’t know all that much about computer programming, statistics, or physics, and their knowledge of tree rings has been questioned.
Third, why should we trust them? Many of those implicated by the ClimateGate emails appear to have gone out of their way to slant the reporting of the science, through manipulation of both the peer review process, as well as the IPCC process.
Fourth, you make it sound like a yes/no situation – all the experts (however that is defined) agree, and we are supposed to accept their pronouncements, maybe not as absolutely true, but true enough, apparently, to spend many trillions of dollars. But, the more this debate extends, the more obvious it is that the “experts” are not in agreement, or, really, even close.
July 5, 2011, 8:05 pmJoe Horton says:
There I was planning to respond to eyesay’s comments and I find that the rest of this group has done such a good job I have nothing to add.
I find it deeply reassuring, and not counter-intuitive, that the more scientifically literate the person, the more skeptical he is about religions, for example, the Church of Man-Caused Global Warming, led by Pope AlGore I (who invented the internet). This skepticism makes me cautiously optimistic about humanity. Who knows? We might actually become sufficiently rational to save ourselves.
July 5, 2011, 8:06 pmBruce Hayden says:
It depends on how this is phrased. Someone yesterday was arguing that, right now, pro-electric vehicle means pro-coal (and pro-nuclear), since coal produces so much of our electricity.
But, I don’t think that is what you had in mind, but rather, the idea that we can replace fossil fuels with “renewable” energy sources. And, that is what would be so costly. With, of course, no appreciable impact on world CO2 levels (and, China is not the only offender, but rather just the most visible and blatant).
July 5, 2011, 8:10 pmAnym_Avey says:
There is nothing wrong with coming from a legal background when attempting to examine a debate that depends upon carefully analyzing the structure and validity of arguments; or coming from a psychology background when examining how people think and react to arguments. If anything, the average person who wants to study and analyze arguments with more clarity and precision would do well to read up on both fields from time to time.
July 5, 2011, 8:18 pmTed says:
Sure, sure. I was pointing out that Dilan’s example was a bit narrow. I have not recently attended a physician or PA to obtain any medical knowledge that I did not already did not know before attending. That’s all. I’m not saying they’re not experts, I was merely providing my anecdotes as a counter-example. On the other hand, if I had a medical concern that I did not know about, I would indeed go to a doctor (expert) for diagnosis or treatment, but the truth value of the diagnosis, and the efficacy of the treatment doesn’t have anything to with being a doctor…does it?
July 5, 2011, 8:22 pmBruce Hayden says:
I am not so sure of that. Some of the PhDs I know, who, BTW, have never voted Republican in their entire lives, have told me that the science as to AGW is definitive, and to get with the program.
I first became a bit cynical about PhDs about 15 years ago. I had two inventors, one with an MS and the other a PhD. I pointed out a weakness in their system, and the MS saw it almost immediately. The PhD took a couple of days to understand the problem. This happened several times. I have worked with upwards of 100 PhDs over the last 20 years. Some are very bright, and some less so.
The point is that PhDs really aren’t any smarter, on average, than the average lawyer, doctor, etc. They mostly just know a lot about a very narrow nitch – and we found out that the nitch was really too narrow here with the major scientists controlling the debate. I know some PhDs who got their degrees in 3 years, and some in 10. Not that the former are necessarily smarter than the later, but the later shows that some get their degrees through a lot of persistence.
So, yes, it probably hurts that most of us here probably know a number of PhDs, and know that they put their pants on the same way that the rest of us do.
July 5, 2011, 8:36 pmDave M. says:
Please prove that the “natural range” of a plant species cannot change over generations as it continually mutates, adapts, and cross-pollinates.
Also, in meteorology, there are things know as semi-permanent pressure systems. I wouldn’t bet that it sat in one place for 300 years, but if it did stick around that long, it would move north and south with the seasons, since that what semi-permanent pressure systems do. And I can attest to that as I was a meteorologist when I was in the military.
If the proxy data is in question, then what other evidence would you offer to support the MWP which you profess transpired? A more plausible explanation, to me, as a former meteorologist, would be the urban heat island effect and the elimination of over half of all automated weather stations (most of them being rural stations, where said effect would not be present) in 1990, would better explain the divergence.
This is an effect of the physical chemistry of CO2. I can’t recall its blackbody physical properties off the top of my head, but if the shape of its ability to capture heat as a function of atmospheric concentration is shaped like the graph of sqrt(x), then the claim you contest is more than plausible.
No objection from me on this one.
Again, this is a question of chemistry and physics, not one of meteorology or climatology.
I agree.
July 5, 2011, 8:36 pmElliot says:
Isn’t this settled science?
July 5, 2011, 8:59 pmBlue says:
Since that comment touched off a lot of discussion, I should probably follow up.
When I am talking about how an argument from authority is a logical fallacy and weakens the case of AGW among the scientifically literate, I’m really referring to things like this:
http://www.nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
That’s a political document, not a scientific one.
July 5, 2011, 9:24 pmRicardo says:
Then you appear to be in excellent health. I’m not sure what this has to do with the point that experts generally have more and better information available to them than non-experts, though.
July 5, 2011, 9:43 pmBruce Hayden says:
Not sure what you mean by “this”. But, if the answer is AGW, or, in particular, CAGW, then no, it isn’t settled, regardless of how many proponents try to tell you that it is.
July 5, 2011, 9:45 pmHarryEagar says:
We have direct observational evidence of the MWP, at least for about a quarter of the globe.
If somebody wants to argue that the other three-quarters was exceptionally cold at the time, so that the global temperature was lower, then go ahead, but that isn’t what Mann et al. argue. They argue that their proxies are better than the direct observations.
That’s why climate science isn’t science (at least all those sectors of the field that are associated with Hansen, Mann and co.).
July 5, 2011, 10:01 pmGreg Q says:
The quote that should live in infamy: “Why should I give you the data when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?”
That was Phil Jones, a “leading climate scientist”. The problem being that anyone who knows anything at all about the scientific method knows that no honest scientist would ever say something like that. And anyone who knows anything about the history of scientific fraud knows that the inability of random outside researchers to be able to replicate the results from a scientific paper is a significant indicator of fraud.
If the response of the “climate science community” to ClimateGate had been “that is horribly unprofessional behavior. We do not approve, and are going to withdraw all their papers from publication until they produce the data and methods behind them”, then, assuming the released data and methods were found to be legitimate, the field would have emerged with its reputation intact.
But that’s not what happened. And the only reasonable supposition for why that didn’t happen is because the other
researchersgrant recipients are pretty sure that the people at East Anglia did indeed game their data, and an honest analysis of the data and methods would make the field look worse.And that is why this person with an advanced degree does not believe a single claim made by the “climate science” field. If you refuse to release all the data and methods behind the work you’ve published in a “scientific” paper, then your paper is garbage. And if others in your field let you get away with it, your field is garbage.
July 5, 2011, 10:06 pmElbabe says:
I have a gut feeling many people here are not climate scientists, or even scientists at all. However regardless of how one feels about the likelihood of climate change, I can’t understand why anyone thinks continuing to use fossil fuels is a good idea. I consider there to be a decent chance climate change is occurring. But even if you are 100% certain it is not happening, fossil fuels are a bad idea generally. Dependence on foreign oil is one of America’s biggest economic and national security problems. Fossil fuels are nonrenewable, one day they will be gone. Yes, this day is distant, but why wait for things to become a problem? We don’t have to wait around on China to take action, indeed, if we can form a new economy powered by mostly renewable sources we will have a huge head start on them.
So while some may debate the wisdom of taking action to stop climate change, I can’t understand how anyone debates the wisdom of a transition to green energy.
July 5, 2011, 10:37 pmJCC says:
@ Hoosier -
A new word for the day. But now, how to use it…
Yeah, I had to look it up.
July 5, 2011, 10:41 pmKen Arromdee says:
That’s one of the reasons why: people’s reactions are that it’s just a little too convenient that the things we must do to stop climate change are the things you want to do anyway for other, mostly ideological, reasons.
July 5, 2011, 10:47 pmRicardo says:
You have made this claim before and it is not correct. Le Roy Ladurie uses data like crop yields and commodity prices in certain European cities to attempt to reconstruct what the climate was like several hundred years ago. Mann et al. use data from ice core samples and tree rings to reconstruct what the climate was like several hundred years ago.
Both are proxies and neither is a “direct observation.” Whether a certain tree somewhere grew abnormally thick in the year 1400 (based on the width of the tree’s ring) or whether a certain feudal lord 20 kilometers outside of Paris experienced an abnormally large harvest of wheat for that year (based on primary sources that happen to survive until today), both are proxies that give us some clue as to what the weather was like.
July 5, 2011, 11:02 pmElbabe says:
That seems paranoid. If I could somehow convince the vast majority of scientists that something was true I’d try for something more sinister than climate change. On point, I don’t think “fossil fuels are bad for a variety of reasons” is an ideological statement. I think it’s a factual one.
July 5, 2011, 11:04 pmRagebot says:
Just as an aside you may be interested in reading this book, it is one of the most readable books I have come across.
http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Kings-Unexpected-Carrington-Astronomy/dp/0691141266/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307641818&sr=8-1&tag=thevolocons0d-20
Richard Carrington is one of the fathers of modern astronomy and a giant in the field. The book is a history of Solar observation, and among other things details how speculators in the English commodities market hired solar observers to provide details of sun spots and used that information to buy or sell futures.
There is also a brief explanation about how radiation from the Sun increases the temperature in the Earth’s atmosphere (you know how it get hot when the Sun comes up and cools off when it sets) and changes in the chemical composition of elements and compounds in the atmosphere determine how fast or slow the Earth cools. It also explains how the Sun is a variable star (in fact all stars are variables) and the amount of energy radiated varies, for ill understood reasons.
A highly recommended read.
July 6, 2011, 12:07 amGreg Q says:
No, actually, it’s a meaningless statement. “Bad”, compared to what? Is it worse than thousands of people dying during heat waves because they can’t afford, or can’t get, air conditioning? What’s worse: people driving cars, or people being forced to live packed together in densities that make mass transit viable? If you value individual freedom, you favor the cars. If you value unions, you favor making people dependent upon mass transit, so the unions can hold the people hostage with strike threats.
If the environmental movement was filled with people pushing to phase out coal fired power plants, and replace them with nuclear ones, that would be one thing. Then a reasonable person could believe that your issue was with fossil fuels, rather than with modern society. But the opposition to nuclear power makes it clear that your opposition is not to carbon releasing energy forms, but to the concentrated energy forms that make modern society possible.
Want people to actually believe that you believe in AGW? Great. Come up with ways that deal with the “problem” that don’t impoverish the rest of us, and don’t empower governments or the political class. Until then, we will remain rational, and believe that your interests lie in pushing a political agenda, not in “saving the environment.”
July 6, 2011, 12:09 amGrover Gardner says:
Actually, neither of these things are necessarily true. If you’ve ever read anything about the discovery of the structure of DNA, or the race to chart the human genome, there was a tremendous amount of professional jealousy and withholding of data going on in both instances. And the inability to replicate experimental results is fairly common and only rarely an indication of fraud. It certainly calls the results into question, but it doesn’t necessarily point to fraud.
July 6, 2011, 12:33 amWayne Lusvardi says:
GW is like a big Rorschach test – you see what your value system wants you to see. Just think for a moment. There is no reliable data on which to be certain whether GW is worsening or is nonexistent. There is no way to calculate an average worldwide temperature.
The only way thus far to make a claim that there is GW is from statistical models which are prone to manipulation.
So this study doesn’t help either side in the debate.
There is about as much certainty about GW as there is about whether a fetus is human — which means to say that there is no way to say there is global warming or that fetuses are human OTHER THAN FROM HUMAN VALUE STANDPOINT. This is why those more educated scientists who are less concerned about AW are not disturbed about it and those less educated who are concerned about GW go ballistic with just the idea that GW is wrong or merely a theory. If the certainty of their values are threatened they don’t care for the theory or the study.
Cognitive dissonance will step in here and those who believe in GW will have their values get stronger in spite of the evidence.
July 6, 2011, 12:57 amA. Zarkov says:
That’s true. I did a calculation for the Tesla electric and it produces more CO2 than an ICE if the electricity used to charge the battery comes from coal.
Exactly.
July 6, 2011, 1:08 amA. Zarkov says:
Fossil fuels are wonderful. If they didn’t exist we would have to invent them. Nothing else except hydrogen gives you comparable energy density (by weight or volume). However hydrogen is not a feed stock and has some nasty properties. You can mitigate the bad properties by adding carbon, and you get… fossil fuel substitutes.
Fossil fuels make airplanes possible. How do you propose we run airplanes without fossil fuel? Ditto for trucks. Electric cars are barely functional. Too expensive with too little range and they take too long to recharge.
Yes in a few hundred years, the natural sources for fossil fuels will run out and we will have to make them using another energy source. In the meantime there is no point in destroying our economy by making energy expensive.
BTW wind turbines, and electric cars, including hybrids, require rare earth material such as neodymium for the high-field permanent magnets. Currently China is the only source for these rare earths. We are much better off importing oil from many sources rather than rare earths from one source. The market for oil is both wide and deep.
July 6, 2011, 1:21 amzuch says:
What this says is not quote so clear (even if the Powerline people are jumping up and down like Christmas came early).
The study doesn’t say that more informed people think that AGW isn’t occurring.
The study doesn’t say that more informed people think that nothing needs to be done.
They may well think (and I’m sure a number do) that we can do something to ameliorate any bad effects of such. They may have more confidence in the power of science and technology to address the issue. But the denialists such as Inhofe, etc., that deny tha anything is happening at all, won’t actually do anything to address the issue, so they’re not the same group of people. Effective action requires a minimum grounding in, you know, actual facts….
Cheers,
July 6, 2011, 1:40 amBruce Hayden says:
A couple of notes. First, I noticed this today: Solution to the rare earth problem could come from the sea. Apparently, the Japanese have discovered a huge amount of rare earths on the ocean floor. Should be interesting to see how this works out – could be a land rush there.
Secondly, it looks right now that the only way that the Obama Administration can prevent us from being energy independent when it comes to fossil fuels is if they manage to prevent fracking. We shall see how that works out. But it does fit into your market theory – that if the price is high enough for oil, as it is now, then more fossil fuels will magically appear.
July 6, 2011, 1:42 amzuch says:
A lot more fun than that guy that gets drunk and argues ever the more loudly the less people listen to him.
Cheers,
July 6, 2011, 2:31 amzuch says:
Pile’O'Crapola.
Any time you pick “random” series built with pink (1/f) noise that must correlate with the 20th century temperature records, you’ll get a hockey stick. That’s because pink noise (1/f noise) is not random, and even less so when you’ve tossed the noise series that don’t correlate with some actual physical measurement. Pink noise has very high LF components, but (as they tested) no DC bias. As such, you’ll get a regression to the mean long term, and the “hockey stick”. But just because you can produce something with sources that are (well, not quite) random, doesn’t mean what you’re seeing is random. I can produce a nice Gaussian with any number of random methods, but I can also produce it with measurement of mean and SD for a 2, 4, 8, 12, or 20-sided die’s outcomes, by which process I can tell a lot about how many sides the die has (a concrete physical fact).
Cheers,
July 6, 2011, 2:41 amzuch says:
Yes, indeed. The more the AGD denialists look, the more they see corruption here, there, and everywhere. Even the Nobel Committee is in on it. How will we ever trust scientists again? (well, there’s hope, this study seems to show that the more informed people trust scientists more).
This is great science: The more people that are against you, the more your claims of (even a conspiracy of) persecution are proved, and therefore the righter you are.
Cheers,
July 6, 2011, 2:46 amBruce Hayden says:
Except that the trend seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with more scientists with some climatic credentials coming out against, or at least skeptical about, AGW each week.
July 6, 2011, 3:11 amrhhardin says:
They ought to survey people who’ve actually done numerical solutions of the real Navier Stokes equations; or people who’ve tried to distinguish a cycle from a trend without data extending over much of the cycle, just to name two killer reasons for thinking AGW is entirely grant-seeking.
July 6, 2011, 4:31 ammarkm says:
From the Steven Hayward link:
In my case, that’s because I know enough of how scientists work, and have learned enough of the work of the alarmists, to no longer regard them as scientists.
July 6, 2011, 6:46 amSeaDrive says:
Liquid fuel, yes. Fossil Fuel, not necessarily.
July 6, 2011, 9:08 amJoe-Dallas says:
One of the points I was stating was that initially Mann et al appeared to be claiming the MWP did not exist, then when confronted with known historical documentation, they changed the story to the MWP was only regional. We have anedontal evidence that it wasn’t just regional, such as the fruit trees growing 300 miles north of their natural range in china during the MWP. However as Dave M points out, mutations, etc can alter a plant species natural range. (so the anedontal evidence can be somewhat discounted)
July 6, 2011, 9:26 amJoe-Dallas says:
Dave – I appreciate the rational response. I agree with mutations adaptations, etc, the natural range of a plant species can change over time. However, the NOAA and NASA both shows all of Asia including china to be colder than normal. Assuming no mutations, etc, the growing range should have been farther south of its current normal range, not 300 miles north. The point being is that the ancedontal evidence indicates it was warmer in that region of the world, not colder.
July 6, 2011, 9:36 amJoe-Dallas says:
Dave M – again I appreciate the rational response – With regard to the divergence problem – we may be discussing two different issues, the heat island effect which you refer to probably has caused some biases in the data collection.
My point is the proxy data not tracking the instrumental temp readings post 1960. The divergence problem – whereby the proxy data is consistently several degrees colder than instrumental data. The AGW crowd claims the divergence is due to the extra CO2 in the atmosphere causing changes in plant growth and therefore throwing the proxy readings off. We have only had good instrumental readings for 150 years with the late 1800 and early 1900′s having limited data collection. Instead of recalibrating/reevaluating the proxy data with the known discrepancies, The AGW crowd as doubled down on the validity of the proxy data. (The heat island effect may be part of the divergence problem post 1980′s)
July 6, 2011, 9:49 amA. Zarkov says:
Would this “liquid fuel” perchance be a hydrocarbon? Tell me what non-hydrocarbon liquid fuel do you have in mind?
July 6, 2011, 10:05 amgoodspkr says:
You need to realize the irony of your last statement, “there is no convincing those whose “values” require them to believe untrue things.”
So where’s the hotspot?
July 6, 2011, 10:28 amgoodspkr says:
So if I’m reading you right, it is perfectly logical and even preferable to rely on experts, rather than actually doing some research to see which experts to believe in. I have done that kind of research and was dumbfounded by how little proof there is to the AGW hypothesis.
Add to this the absolute unbelieveable claims made by the AGW crowd and you have fertile ground for people with some knowledge to doubt these so called experts.
As Judy Curry said in her blog: “But you don’t need to be a Nobel laureate to understand this. I have gotten many many emails from scientists and engineers from academia, government labs and the private sector. As an example, here is an excerpt from an email I received yesterday: “My skepticism regarding AGW has been rooted in the fact that, as an engineer/manager working in defense contracts [General Dynamics], I would have been fired, fined (heavily) and may have gotten jail time for employing the methodology that [named climate scientists] have used.”
July 6, 2011, 10:49 amtimb says:
well said
July 6, 2011, 10:50 amgoodspkr says:
Someone who is saying appealing to authority is okay, should really reconsider using Wikipedia as their authority later in their statement.
July 6, 2011, 11:02 amgoodspkr says:
Timb, it is only well said if you aren’t conversant in the actual science involved. In fact eyesay suffers from what he accused others of suffering from, that is, “those whose “values” require them to believe untrue things.”
July 6, 2011, 11:20 amgoodspkr says:
Don’t expect a reply very soon.
July 6, 2011, 11:33 amgoodspkr says:
Your discussion with Dave M is a very good one. I think the real issue you are highlighting is how fraudlent the AGW crowd has been in the entire temperature record area. Dave points out the bias the left used in closing down rural temperature stations and failing to adjust urban stations for the HIE. Your point about what Mann and the others did, that is, to hide the decline. They needed to make their case as to why the surrogates suddenly weren’t accurate, but chose hide that fact.
We’ve had 65 years of increasing CO2 and we have only 25 years of increasing temperatures. The AGW crowd says the warming was suppressed from 45-75 by pollution and now they are saying for the past 15 years we have the same situation, that is, pollution is cooling the planet.
Yet what happened from 75 to 98 that allowed the temperatures not to be suppressed? We were cleaning up the pollution in the West and it hadn’t started in earnest in the underdeveloped world. But couldn’t the warming we saw in the period of 75-98 be at least partial explained by cleaning the air, allowing more sunlight to reach the planet? Add to that the high rate of sunspots (generating fewer clouds) and you have a formula for warming, none of which requires CO2.
July 6, 2011, 12:14 pmGiant Frog says:
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts” — Feynman
“Researchers at Brown University have found that specific genetic variations can predict how persistently people will believe advice they are given, even when it is contradicted by experience.”
But I don’t necessarily believe it…
July 6, 2011, 12:41 pmgoodspkr says:
Giant Frog. Grins.
It reminds me of the saying, “All generalizations are wrong including this one.”
July 6, 2011, 12:51 pmBits and pieces - In The Agora says:
[...] recent Yale study has found that “the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.” I haven’t been able to [...]
July 6, 2011, 12:53 pmBruce Hayden says:
This has always been, to me, the elephant in the tent of AGW – that a/the primary independent variable driving global temperatures is solar energy output. And, as a/the primary independent variable, I would think that it must be controlled for before anyone can even think about looking at the effects of CO2. And, indeed, before looking at CO2, I would suggest looking at and controlling for the more influential and powerful greenhouse gases – water vapor and methane.
July 6, 2011, 1:02 pmSeaDrive says:
I was thinking of the tests running jet engines on various bio-fuels.
Although it wasn’t clear in your question, I imagine you are thinking that growing enough soy beans (or corn or whatever crop) to fuel all those airliners is impossible. Probably is; I wouldn’t know. I do have faith, however, that if the energy is available, someone will find a way to stuff it into an airplane, and liquid fuel seems the most likely medium.
How would society be organized on a planet that didn’t happen to have fossil fuel reserves? Would everyone walk everywhere?
July 6, 2011, 2:10 pmDilan Esper says:
As I said, Wikipedia took that passage from Freely or one of the other argumentation texts. It’s really not controversial– and any logic or philosophy professor would be extremely upset about global warming deniers misusing this fallacy.
July 6, 2011, 2:20 pmDilan Esper says:
To be clear, I am not decrying anyone– including even climate change deniers– doing their own research. I’m simply saying that it’s not FALLACIOUS to give the opinions of experienced scientists weight.
July 6, 2011, 2:29 pmHarryEagar says:
He also uses paintings and drawings of the glacier fields in the eastern Jura, and those are direct observations.
I understand that crop yields and tree rings are proxies (although whether tree rings are proxies for temperature is a real question). Do you understand that a painting of a glacier field is a direct observation?
Did you read Le Roy Ladurie or just the attempt by (as I recall) somebody at Greenpeace to impeach the validity of his vine and grain proxies?
The vine and grain proxies are, indeed, arguable.
July 6, 2011, 2:34 pmDilan Esper says:
Bear in mind that the hockey stick incident has been overused by opponents. It’s true– experts are human beings, and sometimes make mistakes, have political agendas, exaggerate things, etc. But that’s why it WOULD be a fallacious appeal to authority to say “scientists believe this, therefore it MUST be true”.
But the converse– that because a small group of scientists engaged in some chicanery, one should infer that every scientist who is talking about climate change is wrong or dishonest– is just as unsupportable as an inference.
The rest of this is legitimate enough. I am not arguing that the fact that experts think this is happening ends the matter; only that it is not fallacious to defer to their opinions. By all means you should do your own research, look for alternative explanations, and determine which people are likely to have the most relevant expertise. But none of this is to say that the opinions of experts don’t matter either, and bear in mind, plenty of people on the anti- side of this debate make grossly overbroad arguments (often almost in the form of conspiracy theories) as to why climate scientists should not be believed at all.
July 6, 2011, 2:36 pmElliot says:
But Al Gore told me it was all settled science.
July 6, 2011, 2:40 pmBryan Willman says:
It’s worse.
Let us suppose that:
a. Anthropogenic effects are an important cause of Global Warming, AND it is practically
possible for behavoir changes (albeit severe ones) to blunt the effect.
b. Let’s further suppose that the effects of AGW are in fact all bad. (Peculiar, but suppose.)
c. Let’s further suppose that those effects will mostly befall the poor and downtrodden of the world.
The sad truth is that an important number of people DO NOT CARE. The whole history of humanity is littered with strong groups and nations abusing poor ones. And with people favoring themselves over the future good (lead in gasoline anyone?)
So the greatest fallacy of all is the notion that “this is so bad everyone must and will agree to do major things to remediate it”.
July 6, 2011, 4:24 pmNo. Large groups of people wouldn’t agree to remediate slavery or Jim Crow without major force.
And in the current circumstance the major force is surely in the hands of the “we-don’t-believe-it/it’s-not-that-big-a-deal/we-don’t-care/we’ll-actually-gain-from-it/oh-F***-off” elements of society.
Blue says:
Actually, it can be.
I posted an example above: the signed statement of the National Academies of Science. There’s a lot wrong with that sort of appeal to authority.
The reality is that scientists are experts in very, very tiny fields. For, say, an expert in tree rings to make broad statements about, say, the thermodynamics of weather patterns, the economic and social impacts of weather change, and the virtues of a particular policy position and imbue these additional statements–in which he is NOT an expert–is indeed a fallacious appeal to authority. This is because it links the narrow range of expertise (tree rings) with areas outside the scope of that individuals expertise.
July 6, 2011, 7:17 pmBlue says:
And here is a whole page of fallacious appeals to authority.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
I mean, come on–does the “National Academy of Sciences of Madagascar” really carry any weight?
July 6, 2011, 7:27 pmzuch says:
Well, that seems to be the perceived trend … by the same people that also deny global warming….. ;-)
Cheers,
July 6, 2011, 11:50 pmzuch says:
“I would have been fired, fined (heavily) and may have gotten jail time for employing the methodology that I think [or assert] that [named climate scientists] have used.”
FIFH.
Cheers,
July 6, 2011, 11:57 pmzuch says:
Who says they said “no Medieval warming period”? You’re entitled to your opinions, but you’re not entitled to just make sh*te up.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 12:24 amzuch says:
Not exactly. You do know that the earth rotates 366.26 or so times per solar year, right?
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 12:30 amzuch says:
If you’re talking clinical practise, you’re not talking research, for the most part. Both in medical research and other areas of science, they deal with the issues of competency and validity through publication, replication, and peer review. Strangely enough, the denialists aren’t doing so well here … in part because they’re carpers from the sidelines, throwing stones but producing nothing themselves as an alternative.
Mainly because they didn’t find any wrongdoing.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 12:38 amzuch says:
They did. At least three panels have looked into the affair and given a relatively clean bill of health (albeit not Miss Congeniality awards). You’re still bitching though.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 12:44 amzuch says:
Hmmmm. I spanked Kazinski badly for his “calculations” on the Leaf a while back. Give me a link, and perhaps I can — uhhh, ‘look at’ — yours as well….
BTW, I had the pleasure a couple of days ago of viewing the electric car parking lot near the Akershus in Oslo. In there was a lovely old Citroen CV2, which had been converted. Probably a step up as the CV2 had a 12 hp ICE, and a good electric can go far beyond that (my hybrid has some 100 hp of electric power).
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 12:57 amGreg Q says:
And that “clean bill of health” indicates dishonesty on the part of the panels.
The people have announced that they can not replicate their own results. In any sort of real science, that means you withdraw the paper. Period, dot, end of sentence.
The fact that climate”science” panels haven’t demanded that does not mean the East Anglia people are ok, it means that climate “science” is a joke.
July 7, 2011, 1:30 amA. Zarkov says:
Bio-fuels are hydrocarbon fuels. However the carbon in bio-fuel does come from the natural carbon cycle, and not from the legacy carbon in the earth’s crust. As such they should not add to the total carbon driving global warming. However as suggested by Freeman Dyson, we could change the carbon cycle by planting lots of CO2 absorbing vegetation.
Without legacy carbon such a planet would most likely never have developed a technological civilization. Life there would be like life on this planet before 1850– walk and ride animals. If that planet once had legacy carbon, but used it up, then they would be making hydrocarbon fuels using energy generated from fast breeder reactors.
July 7, 2011, 1:58 amA. Zarkov says:
I have not published my calculation, but I used some of the results from the Oak Ridge code. Otherwise it’s a fairly simple calculation. However carbon emission is the least of the problem with the Tesla and other electric cars. In a word the electric car is a loser, baring a major breakthrough in battery and other technologies. Even with a battery that would rival the energy density of gasoline, there’s still many other problems like rapid charging.
July 7, 2011, 2:03 amJoe says:
Zuch – michael mann, et al, the hockey stick – all tried to whitewash the existence of the MWP.
July 7, 2011, 6:52 amrarango says:
nothing like a global warming/climate change thread to get a huge number of hits–If Professor Adler could only find a way to bring in Sarah Palin, this thread could easily hit 1000.
Me? Not selling my bahamas property and plan to visit the maldives in about five years.
the only thing I “know” is the earths climate has changed considerably over the last 5 billion years–long before homo sapiens were on the planet–and I suspect it will continue to change irrespective of homo sapiens.
July 7, 2011, 8:31 amSeaDrive says:
Basically, we got to 1900 without the internal combustion engine. That got us through the harnessing of electricity and Tom Edison’s most important invention of all: the research and development laboratory. Anything after that is pretty much a guess.
It seems pretty likely that low-energy transportation, e.g. rail, water would dominate high energy transportation like flight and individual cars and trucks.
July 7, 2011, 10:29 amSammy Finkelman says:
If people who know more about science (as proven by test questions?) are more likely to believe that less likely to believe climate change poses a catastrophic threat maybe that’s because in fact it doesn’t. But what’s even worse of course are the other assumptions:
1) That the ONLY factor is man-made. (when climate has varied a lot anyway)
2) That the only man made factor is carbon dioxide.
(di-hydrogen monoxide is a much more potent greenhouse gas.)
3. That anything we do can make a difference – It’s innumeracy. Or we just postulate, for no good reason, that we are near some kind of tipping point. Well, we *could* be, maybe.
4> That is too difficult to adjudt.
5) That we can’t add somethig ELSE to the atmosphere to counteract the greenhouse effect.
6_That the effects are all bad.
July 7, 2011, 11:44 amSammy Finkelman says:
Does anyone realize what Al Gore means in Latin? Believe it or not.
July 7, 2011, 11:47 amSammy Finkelman says:
Algor?
Sometime around 1978?
Actually it is proposed that we are headed now for that. Never mind whether that is right or wrong – it is superficially plausible.
July 7, 2011, 11:52 amA. Zarkov says:
We got to 1900 without the ICE, but we still used hydrocarbon fuels starting around 1850. Rail and ship transit burned coal. The 19th Century saw the rise of the heat engine, and the heat engine replaced muscle power. Ultimately oil replaced coal in transportation because refined oil has a much higher energy density than coal. We use coal to generate electricity because coal is cheap and power stations don’t have to move around.
Without hydrocarbon fuels, rail and ship transportation would have had to burn wood. Wood has about half the energy content of coal per unit mass, so the range would have been limited, and that increases cost. Not only that, we would have run out of wood to burn.
Hydrocarbon fuels are the bedrock of the modern industrial world. If they didn’t exist we would have to make them.
Hydrogen is an even better fuel than coal or oil, but we have no legacy hydrogen. All the feedstock has to be manufactured using some energy source. We might have made hydrogen using electricity from falling water and biomass combustion, but that would have been very costly and limited. Moreover, hydrogen is nasty stuff. It catches fire and burns with an invisible flame. Having a small molecule, hydrogen leaks through metal pipes and fittings. Hydrogen is not practical now let alone in the 19th Century.
Learn to stop worrying and love hydrocarbon fuels.
July 7, 2011, 12:16 pmzuch says:
“… because anything that goes against what I believe is obviously wrong and therefore just more evidence for some deep conspiracy….”
Well, they didn’t withdraw the paper … mainly because they never said they couldn’t “replicate their own results”. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to just make sh*te up.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 12:44 pmzuch says:
No, they didn’t. They recognised such. Just didn’t think it was all that big. I gave you a link to that.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 1:13 pmzuch says:
So we’re just fine and ducky: Things are as they always were … if we don’t mind homo sapiens not being part of the picture.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 1:22 pmHarryEagar says:
And I looked at it. ‘Paled in comparison’ is close enough to ‘no MWP’ for this country boy. However, even if you disagree that it is the same as saying ‘no MWP,’ it is unquestionably incorrect.
As they should have known from Le Roy Ladurie’s direct observations.
Not really. Once the residual heat of coalescence radiated away, the global temperature shows remarkable stability. Over the last 4.5 billion years or so, there is no trend.
Even over the past 600 million years, the period of interest to us metazoans, the fluctuations have been remarkably small, although life is so finely titrated by temperature that small fluctuations can have big effects.
July 7, 2011, 1:31 pmDilan Esper says:
It can be WRONG to overrely on experts, but it isn’t a logical fallacy unless one is arguing that the experts are infallible.
July 7, 2011, 2:08 pmSammy Finkelman says:
It’s not exactly a joke that Al Gore (if he were successful)could cause global warming.
I’ve known this since 1988. That year, peiople knew that if carbon dioxide emission were suddenly to stop, temperatires would go UP, and they wouldn’t be back to the level they were at the start for about 20 years. (This according to standard globa warming theory)
Rush Limbaugh had something about this Wednesday:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_070611/content/01125113.guest.html
Kook: The ChiComs Burning Coal Halted Global Warming, Cooled Us
July 6, 2011
Listen To It! WMP | Flash
Audio clips available for Rush 24/7 members only — Join Now!
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I promised this global warming story. It’s from the French News Agency. (laughing) “China’s soaring coal consumption in the last decade held back global warming as sulfur emissions served as a coolant, according to a study that takes head-on a key argument of climate skeptics.”
[It takes it on head on, because it argues that reductions in temperature are not a sign the general theory is wrong, but they have gone down only for a special reason]
Now, I would think this would prove that climate skeptics are right. Was not the burning of coal the worst thing we could do to create greenhouse gases that elevated the earth’s temperatures? Obama wanted to put the coal business out of business because it was the number one contributor to global warming, and now the planet hasn’t warmed in ten years, and so they’re saying China and its soaring coal consumption is the reason why.
“While 2005 and 2010 are tied as the hottest years on record,” that’s BS. I don’t even want to get distracted with that. “skeptics have charged that an absence of a steady rise from 1998 to 2008 disproves the view that people are heating up the planet through greenhouse gas emissions. Robert Kaufmann, a professor at Boston University, said he was motivated to conduct the study after a skeptic confronted him at a public forum, telling him he had seen on Fox News that temperatures had not risen over the decade.” This guy panics. He hears that somebody said on Fox News that the temperature haven’t gone up, so he had to go out and do a study.
“‘Nothing that I had read that other people have done gave me a quick answer to explain that seeming contradiction, because I knew that carbon dioxide concentrations have risen,’ Kaufmann told AFP.” And, of course, it was simply out of the realm of possibility that carbon dioxide levels do not cause an increase in global warming temperatures. They can’t let go of the theory, but they don’t. I mean, folks, here’s the summation. This is truly hilarious. A scientist set out to prove the global warming skeptics at Fox wrong, which, by the way, is the epitome of bad science. That’s not how you do science is to go prove somebody else wrong. Anyway, he wanted to find an explanation for the lack of any global warming over the last ten years, so he blames China’s burning of coal because that prevents the sun’s ray’s from reaching the earth, which is exactly what they used to call the greenhouse effect, which is what they used to call global warming.
So I don’t know how to accept this. The very culprit is now being cited as the savior, or the explanation for why there hasn’t been any warming. So by this guy’s study we ought to start burning coal left and right if indeed there’s global warming going on. We ought to throw away this green energy crap right now and just go all coal, all the time. More hilarious, the study claims that temperatures rose in the seventies after nations started to take action to curb sulfur emissions. So the real culprits to blame for global warming are the environmentalists who made us cut back on our use of coal. That’s what we have to conclude here. (laughing)
[Not a joke. When did we have the most massive reductions in coal burning? In the 1930s. The Great Depression.
At that time energy use was very well correlated to the economy. Carbon dioxide emissions and the like dropped by a third. And what was the result? After several years, record high global temperatures in 1934 and 1935. The Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Yes, the Oklahoma Dust Bowl was *caused* by the Great Depression. It was not a coinicidence]
..China’s coal burning stopped global warming. How many of you, seriously, ask yourself, how many of you heard for years that coal leads to global warming? Now the temperatures didn’t rise, they didn’t go up out there for ten years, and they panicked, and experts at Fox were saying, “See, there’s no global warming,” so this yuckety-yuck had to get into action to try figure out the explanation.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I want to go back to this French News Agency story on the lack of global warming and the explanation for it (laughing) being way too much coal being burned by the ChiComs. The cherry on top of all this: The study was coauthored by none other than Michael Mann. Disgraced from the University of East Anglia, the Hadley Climate Center, Michael Mann is the author of the bogus hockey stick chart showing warming trends since the 1700s. Everybody now admits that the hockey stick chart is wrong. Some won’t admit that he fabricated it, but everybody knows that it is wrong.
Here is the article:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jGJC93jCEX0EZ80katgzOO_K1cpg?docId=CNG.9dbab75e3418bf50a4b7b8244b8b6207.b41
China coal surge held back warming: study
By Shaun Tandon (AFP) – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON — China’s soaring coal consumption in the last decade held back global warming as sulfur emissions served as a coolant, according to a study that takes head-on a key argument of climate skeptics.
While 2005 and 2010 are tied as the hottest years on record, skeptics have charged that an absence of a steady rise from 1998 to 2008 disproves the view that people are heating up the planet through greenhouse gas emissions.
Robert Kaufmann, a professor at Boston University, said he was motivated to conduct the study after a skeptic confronted him at a public forum, telling him he had seen on Fox News that temperatures had not risen over the decade.
“Nothing that I had read that other people have done gave me a quick answer to explain that seeming contradiction, because I knew that carbon dioxide concentrations have risen,” Kaufmann told AFP.
The US-Finnish study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, named a culprit — coal.
The burning of coal jumped in the past decade, particularly in China, whose economy has grown at breakneck pace. Coal emits sulfur, which stops the Sun’s rays from reaching the Earth.
Kaufmann said that there was a precedent — greenhouse gas emissions also soared in the post-World War II economic boom in Western countries and Japan.
“What happened was at the same time, sulfur emissions increased very rapidly, thereby canceling much of the greenhouse gas effect,” Kaufmann said.
Global temperatures rose after the early 1970s when major developed nations started to take action to curb sulfur emissions, the study said. Global coal consumption again rose by 26 percent between 2003 and 2007, with China accounting for more than three quarters of the increase.
China remains the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and its output keeps rising. But it has also started to take action to address rampant pollution, including by installing scrubbers on its coal plants.
“So we already see temperatures starting to increase again. It rose in 2009, it rose in 2010 and that may be one reason for that increase,” Kaufmann said of the Chinese moves.
Both the US and Chinese governments want a a future for coal, a major industry. But while sulfur serves as a temporary coolant, it also contributes to major problems, such as acid rain and human respiratory problems.
Turning to sulfur to curb global warming is like saying, “We’ll pick our poison,” Kaufmann said.
“You could certainly make that argument, but I don’t think many people would view that as a very satisfactory solution, especially if it meant living in a very polluted atmosphere like in China,” he said.
The study also found additional factors that limited warming in the period, including a natural dip in solar activity and the effects of the El Nino and La Nina ocean patterns.
Joe Romm, a fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, criticized the study for speaking of a hiatus in surface temperatures. He pointed to record temperatures in 2005 and 2010 and a rise in ocean heat.
“There has been no hiatus in global warming,” Romm wrote on his blog, saying that the years 1998 and 2008 were “the favorite cherry-picked endpoints of the deniers” due to outside factors such as El Nino and La Nina.
Climate change skepticism has been on the rise in the United States. Leading lawmakers in the Republican Party, which triumphed in last year’s congressional elections, argue that the science is unproven and that action would be too costly to the economy.
————–
There’s nothing new here. All this has been known for more than a quarter of a century.
July 7, 2011, 5:33 pmzuch says:
IOW, your singular opinion is better than the NAS panel’s, eh? You put your own twist on someone else’s words, and then shout “Fraud!”? Funny you should do such a thing; maybe a mirror is in order.
You think that grain prices in Europe are a better proxy that others that actually have been calibrated?!?!? Well, publish away! The world awaits these exciting results….
But I’d note you have a very — ummmmm, “interesting” — definition of “direct observations”.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 7:36 pmzuch says:
Rush is a moron (and not solely for this emanation). If they’re saying that sulphates are counteracting the warming, there’s two admissions: One is that there is warming, and second, that human-produced sulphates also affect global climate (not to mention acid rain). Neither conclusion fits with the AGW denier’s claims.
Cheers,
July 7, 2011, 7:44 pmHarryEagar says:
Go back and read my reply to ricardo. Obviously, neither you nor he has read Le Roy Ladurie.
I know what you did read. I read it, too. It was a dishonest hack job by somebody in, I believe, Michigan or Wisconsin (it’s been some years since I read it).
But there is much more than secular price series in Le Roy Ladurie. In fact, those (along with the vintage dates, which you and ricardo don’t know about either) are a minor, supporting argument to the main part of the book, which is about glaciers.
But you didn’t know that, did you?
July 7, 2011, 10:08 pmzuch says:
OK, feel free to validate that proxy (and the actual data). And if you feel that glaciers are good proxies, what do you conclude from the present state?
Cheers,
July 8, 2011, 1:08 amHarry Eagar says:
Since the present state of the eastern Jura glaciers is much larger than the MWP state, I conclude that Mann is wrong, incontestably wrong.
If glacial retreat in the 20th c. uncovers a 12th c. chapel, then it must have been warmer 800 years ago. But you didn’t know that, because neither you nor ricardo bothered to read the document.
Glaciers aren’t a proxy for temperatures, at least Le Roy Ladurie was not such a fool as to pretend he could recover temperatures to within a tenth or hundredth of a degree. They are direct evidence for a warmer climate, right in the middle of the place that Mann thinks it was cooler.
Mann cannot possibly be correct, and much follows from that.
It is so revealing, though, that the CAGW community refuses even to look at Le Roy Ladurie.
Another thing we know for certain: Le Roy Ladurie was not in the pay of Big Carbon.
The whole CAGW enterprise falls apart on his evidence. It’s a hoax.
July 8, 2011, 2:13 pmzuch says:
Uhhhhh-huhhhhhh. Ever read what you write? Or understand what you write? Because something’s or somebody’s missing here.
And you know this exactly how? Show your work.
Ahhh, yes, proof by anecdote. All that data is wrong because of a singular account. At least, it is when that’s what you want or need to believe. You know, just like the Paluxy tracks and polonium haloes disproved evilution and the 5BYO earth.
BTW, you know that glaciers are a lagging indicator of temperature, right?
Cheers,
July 8, 2011, 9:26 pmHarryEagar says:
So?
The Mannian claim is that the recent decades were the warmest in a thousand years.
That cannot be correct if we have direct observation of glaciers that were smaller a thousand years ago.
We have plenty of proxies that say the same, like Finnish lakes with full-grown trees from a thousand years ago 100 km north of the current tree line.
The Paluxy tracks and polonium haloes are a feeble ad hom, since you cannot show that I believe that nonsense.
The glaciers grow and shrink. But they never shrank in the 20th c. as much as they did in the past millenium.
You seem to be able to believe nonsense when convenient. There isn’t any direct observational data of global surface temperatures earlier than the 21st c. and you know it, or you ought to.
Mann is a hoaxer. I think he hoaxed himself, a Class III hoax in my system. (Class I, the straight con, Class IV, the mere jape. Class II, the fudge meant to deceive the unwary for their own good.Class III, a Class II in which the hoaxer forgets he was fooling other people — like Zuch — and starts fooling himself.)
Your claim, btw, that Mann never said there wasn’t a MWP is incorrect. He may not have said that in a peer-reviewed paper, but he he said it, flat-out.
July 8, 2011, 11:35 pmScientific literacy and global warming « Internet Scofflaw says:
[...] new paper (well, new a month ago) finds the more scientifically literate a person is, the less likely he is to believe that global warming poses a catastrophic [...]
July 28, 2011, 6:45 pm