Remember - 40 years ago it was Global Cooling.
And if you've been involved in climate debates before, you know full well that an article in Newsweek does not mean global cooling was widely accepted among climatologists. It was not.
I can't say for certain how corrupt or not the climate science community is. I can say for certain that there isn't a lot of money in being a scientist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...
"The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is extremely likely (at least 95% probability) that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels."
But I don't understand the intellectual condescension towards people who are skeptical about a theory that claims to not only predict the future behavior of an entire planet's climate but also how much one element of the planet (humans) impacts the climate.
For example, you make a point about predicting "the future behaviour of an entire planet's climate". But you could equally say that we should be skeptical of Newton's theory of gravity because it predicts the future physical movements of every atom of an entire planet. It was a specious point. You just said something that was true in a way that sounded impressive. You didn't even mention the models, let alone give any criticisms of the current state of climate model validation. You just made the target of the model sound complicated, without giving any detailed consideration of how complicated it actually is when taken in aggregate.
If you're going to criticise a science then use science to do it. The quality of the criticism has to be on a par with the interpretation it criticises. Otherwise it's clear you're arguing from ignorance. While it makes sense to be skeptical while ignorant, you can't expect people who aren't ignorant to take your views seriously.
I'm contending that current climate science is different. I think it is too complex to ever boil down to a nice little F = G x (m_1 x m_2) / r^2 package. But perhaps we just haven't discovered that piece yet.
Please understand that I'm not arguing we shouldn't study climate change. The complexity of what climate science is trying to predict just gives me pause.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmospheri...
And no scientist disproved it. And anybody who is able to calculate the orbits is able to use the CO2 formula too.
And it's also nothing new, first such scientific work is by Arrhenius, 1895, that is 120 years ago:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/arrheniu...
And even then he also "stood on the shoulders" of other scientists:
"Arrhenius relied heavily on the experiments and observations of other scientists, including Josef Stefan, Arvid Gustaf Högbom, Samuel Langley, Leon Teisserenc de Bort, Knut Angstrom, Alexander Buchan, Luigi De Marchi, Joseph Fourier, C.S.M. Pouillet, and John Tyndall."
So what does that formula say the average temperature will be in 2014? Because I'm pretty sure we'll be able to predict very precisely where Pluto will be throughout the year.
Imagine we're a colony of super-smart ants, living on the mountain slope, and as the product of our ant economy we pump through some smart pipes some water to some point some meters above our ant city, and there the water is released. That water produces the creek, sloshing around our city, like the water does, irregularly. The ant scientists are able to calculate that the increased sloshing practically didn't exist before the ants started to pump the water. They can estimate the proportion of the waves around the city and claim that if the increase of the pumping continues the water will in a span or two of ants lives reach the city. The ant deniers then claim: "you scientists can't predict a single wave from minute to minute, so we can be skeptical and continue what we're doing, it's good for our economy." The additional catch? The mechanism which the ants use doesn't respond immediately, it has a built-in delay and built-in amplifier. Even if the ants stop now the amount of water will raise, or maybe even blow the fuses of the mechanism, where the increase of the water will never stop.
That's where we are now. Asking for the height of the moment of the single wave doesn't invalidate the formula we know: more CO2 gives more heat on Earth. And we should be aware of the mechanism, which has both the delay and the amplifier.
The humanity released in the atmosphere around 10 billion tons of CO2 in 2012 alone. Around 150 years ago it was cca 50 million tonnes per year, that is two hundred times less than now.
The concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in the ppm (parts per million). Even difference in such small concentrations provably increases the heat on the Earth, the basic formulas are indisputable.
In 2013 the atmosphere reached 400 ppm of CO2, that is 0.04% concentration indisputably produced by human activity:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/14/record-40...
If you're really interested, do read the article.
1) We have much better ways of measuring CO2 than we ever have before. 2) The amount we're detecting is going up and recently passed a major milestone 3) Serious and politically difficult cut backs in fossil fuels are required to decrease CO2 totals
Taking all that as fact because I certainly don't know enough to dispute it, that's for sure, I have a few questions -
1) Is this actually "bad" for the planet, or is it just bad for humans? The article states that the planet had 400ppm 2-4 million years ago. I guess my question is, why is it bad if humans cause this when it wasn't bad when other phenomena caused it?
2) Could the earth have a feedback mechanism that we don't yet understand to deal with this on its own? These seem so common in nature on a small scale. It seems likely one could exist on a large scale, too.
3) If the only way out of this is drastic human behavior change, then it seems like we should switch to focusing on adapting rather than preventing. Humanity just won't make the levels of fossil fuel cuts that the article says are necessary.
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Also, to respond to your ant analogy - I gather that you equate my question of the average temp for 2014 to predicting waves from minute to minute in the analogy. If one year is too short, then what length of time is long enough to predict? I really think that a major reason why climate change is so unpersuasive to many people (myself included) is that the theories aren't testable in short enough windows of time.
Please consider this analogy:
I have invented an algorithm that correctly predicts the average value of the S&P500 over the next 50 years. The algorithm really works and it says the average value is 1000x higher than now. Obviously, people could use it to make a killing, even though the algorithm does not claim what the year to year value will be. I could explain my logic over and over, but most people are simply not going to risk their own money on it. However, if I correctly predicted the value of the S&P500 for 2014, 2015, and 2016, I bet lots of people would take my advice for 2017. Without that evidence can you really blame their skepticism?
2) No, the Earth would certainly not fix it for us, we know how CO2 behaves. A third of CO2 goes in the oceans at the moment, raising acidity which dissolves , for example, corals. It's another place where humans produce extinctions.
3) Human civilization is extremely dependent on the current state, most of the decisions are made like the current state lasts forever (very short term) and the deniers aren't focusing on anything else than spreading the belief that there isn't any need to adapt to anything. They deny the basic facts. You are also still making the same questions doubting the basic facts.
There's absolutely no need to wait for any "confirmation," the scientific certainty is 97% right now. If you don't understand this, imagine that your doctor analyses your blood, your tissue samples, your medical history and many more observations and all results are absolutely consistent with the same illness, and 97 of 100 people die with that results if they don't stop smoking.
In our case, we are actually even more certain than any "uncertain" medical diagnosis of today. We measure the "organism" not with one thermometer but with almost unlimited number of them, and we make the different "tissue probes" also on unlimited number of places all the time. All are consistent. More CO2. More heat. Nobody who understands basic science can deny that.
You ask basically "shouldn't the patient smoke until the certainty that he dies is 100%?" Well then he is actually dead. The problem is, the patient is the whole earth, and we don't have another one.
Precisely predict some measurable events in the future and people will start to believe you. Until then, it is a lost cause.
So again, I ask, if predicting the average temp in 2014 is too narrow of a window, what is a window of time you feel confident predicting?
What is the window of time you feel confident predicting the average global temperature? Initially I asked about an average within 2014, but you implied from your ant analogy that was too small of a window. So, what is a reasonable window of time and what is the predicted value?
Look at the graph:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Enso-glob...
If you would try to understand the numbers you would also understand that in the given limits we can exactly predict, and our observations already match the predictions. It's getting warmer, with the deviations which exist every year. Just like creek water has the flow where you don't know where every drop is but you can observe the flow. It's simply the nature of that.
It is getting warmer, exactly as we predict. And humans are the cause. We proved that too.
I really don't feel like I'm asking for something crazy. Just like from 2013-2023 the average temp will be X. Or if that is too short, from 2013-2050 the average temp will by Y.
For a theory that claims to predict the future climate, I'm having a hard time getting a concrete prediction of the future climate.
Or could it be that the science is still evolving on this incredibly complex system...
For the future, look here (the Figure SPM.10 from the last IPCC report, PDF linked later):
http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2013/10/what-does-the-new-ip...
What will happen depends only on our fossil fuel consumption. The last IPCC reports does predictions for different "Representative Concentration Pathways": Simulations were performed with prescribed CO2 concentrations reaching 421 ppm (RCP2.6), 538 ppm (RCP4.5), 670 ppm (RCP6.0), and 936 ppm (RCP 8.5) by the year 2100.
It you know we're already over 400 ppm, drop the RCP2.6 (dark blue) curve, since to achieve it we have to soon stop consuming fossil fuels (Figure 12.46).
By 2100 it will be between 1.5 and 4 degrees warmer than now, depending on how much we're ready to cut our fossil fuels use. And that is immense increase. We already observe significant differences between now and hundred years ago everywhere, which was only 0.85 deg C difference!
The "short" report (PDF) is:
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGI_AR5_SPM_...
The full report is huge so I link the top page:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
"Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis"
This is a red herring, used to hand-wave away the serious, broad, deep, and highly credible body of evidence that points to significant human-caused global warming.
So-called "global cooling" was a fairly marginal conjecture that was floated in the 1970s but never taken very seriously by most climate scientists. Already by 1970, most climate research focused on warming, not cooling.
It is absolute nonsense to pretend that "Global Cooling" was ever an accepted scientific prediction.
Wikipedia is sufficient for a quick overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
BadAstronomy is a well respected scientific journalism blog that has a more personal and less formal take on this nonsense: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/10/climate_...
Please direct me to a large collection of reports and policy statements published by mainstream scientific organizations 40 years ago that stated that the totality of empirical evidence at the time substantiated global cooling. I want a collection like the following, but one that relates to global cooling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...
Thanks for your help.
Sea level rise has not accelerated in twenty years of measurement[0] (depending how you cherry pick the analysis it is actually decelerating[1]) and will add 160mm or about half a foot if the next fifty years is the same pace as the last twenty. I don't think that's going to collapse very many economies.
[0]http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ [1]http://climatechangedebates.com/sea-level-stats-longer.php
Here's a fun exercise for you: what would the real second derivative have to be in order for it to be clearly positive over a mere twenty year interval?