The Climate Science Isn't Settled
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
In my mind, the real problem is that we do not account for the value of natural resources and the environment in our economics. That, combined with a rabid consumerist mentality is rapidly leading us down a rode of polluted resource-exhaustion.
Couldn't agree more. We're not going to get anywhere by turning the issue into a polemic "debate". We should be focusing on central tenets so obvious they're impossible to disagree with: wealth is derived from the underlying ecosystem of nature, and securing the long-term health of that system is in everyone's best interest.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
It strikes me as somewhat arrogant and insulting though when others ask seemingly legitimate questions, "scientists" and policy advocates attempt to crush those who ask them instead of at least attempting to make a reasoned response. Immediately they label these people as "deniers" / "skeptics" or even paranoid. Now we learn that one of the leading climate institutes (not just some university in the UK) didn't keep/destroyed original data sets and even a number of their defenders are calling for heads to roll (e.g. George Monbiot).
From TierneyLab @ the NYT (http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/hacking-the-c...): "I’ve long thought that the biggest danger in climate research is the temptation for scientists to lose their skepticism and go along with the “consensus” about global warming. That’s partly because it’s easy for everyone to get caught up in “informational cascades”, and partly because there are so many psychic and financial rewards rewards for working on a problem that seems to be a crisis. We all like to think that our work is vitally useful in solving a major social problem — and the more major the problem seems, the more money society is liable to spend on it.
"I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that scientists are deliberately hyping it. But when they look at evidence of the threat, they may be subject to the confirmation bias — seeing trends that accord with their preconceptions and desires. Given the huge stakes in this debate — the trillions of dollars that might be spent to reduce greenhouse emissions — it’s important to keep taking skeptical looks at the data. How open do you think climate scientists are to skeptical views, and to letting outsiders double-check their data and calculations?"
No, I didn't read the article. But lately there have been far too many items on the HN front page that are nothing more than conspiracy theory ramblings, and with comments to match. There -have- been a few with reasonable takes on the scandal, but most are just... bleh.
That so many, in my opinion, stupid items end up on the front page annoys me for two reasons: 1) they're not "hacker" (and not business either) and obscure real content, and 2) it lowers my respect for the HN community.
Oh, and the comments did suggest that the article was something I might want to read, I just haven't had time to do it yet.
Why do so many hackers/HN types seem to be skeptics? I would have thought of all people, hackers/entrepreneurs would be forward-thinking and realistic about what is happening to our environment!
Here's how I knew that global warming was happening and caused by man: a friend told me the top scientists agreed it was true.
I will actually accept a lot of information based on scientific consensus. However, recently, I learned eminent scientists are lying to me (and their colleagues), so my whole basis for belief fell apart. Also, I started looking at some of the data and discussion, and there are plenty of reasons to doubt - sane, statistical reasons... not like 9-11 is an inside job type conjecture.
I am an Obama-loving, liberal, pro-recycling, bike-owner, but I am no longer convinced that climate change is human-created, and I'm not satisfied that carbon abatement is the one true path to salvation. I actually do tend to believe these things are likelier true than not, but I am no longer one of the faithful.
When top scientists start lying to us, "cleaning up" data, and warning of the apocryphal end of man, I start to wonder if these scientists aren't just the witch doctors of another era, with different vestments and potions. But then I think, nah... the WSJ is right. They aren't superstitious, they are just human, corrupt, and greedy.
I liked your analogy to witch doctors better. Where do we turn to understand the universe and frame our decisions? Science. And why do we vest science with such authority? We trust it. We trust the scientific process, we trust the Space Shuttle and our little iPods, which seem the very embodiment of science's revealed truths.
Any time people start throwing around the words "science" and "scientists" a lot I get increasingly skeptical. They don't add much to any discussion that isn't centered on appeals to authority.
Unwavering belief and fanaticism is inherently dangerous and stupid, yet unwavering belief and fanaticism is all global warming has had for the past decade. The fanaticism has clearly got to the point of doctoring evidence and attempting to sabotage critics. How long would it have been until we got to an asinine crusade against non-global warming believers . . . oh wait, that's already started amongst the GW scientists!
http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/...
http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/opinion-global-warming...
Of course it's healthy to be skeptical, but it really seems like most people writing about GW have an agenda. The politics of the issue are simply too charged for any objectivity to sneak in.
But in a "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" kind of way, I'm hopeful this mess spurs renewed efforts to (re)construct a healthier, scientific basis for objective analysis.
We might be able to make some observations about trends in the weather, but we don't have long enough baselines to really be able to tell what is going on.
I'm not saying that I think the whole anthropomorphic global warming thing is completely false, I'm just saying scientists who point to what is essentially noise in our woefully short record don't do a good job of convincing me.
I'm a fan of sustainability, and mining economies make me edgy. For that reason, I think a move away from fossil fuels is the obvious choice.
I'm also a fan of not screwing up the environment, but most of the green movement ends up as barely disguised anti-corporatism, with a fair amount of dead-horse beating.
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers.
As the leaked emails have demonstrated, merely having credentials does not prevent your work from being partisan garbage.
i know nothing more about him than what wikipedia says, and having credentials does not make one ethical by default. i'm taking everything from either side of this issue with at least a grain of salt thanks to the politicization of the science.
"MIT’s Richard Lindzen is one of the world’s leading climate scientists. He is also a climate 'skeptic,' rejecting claims that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are likely to create a climate catastrophe. Above all others, he is the climate skeptic environmental activists most fear, as he has unimpeachable credentials. As a prominent climate scientist who believes global warming could cause an environmental catastrophe confided to me, Dr. Lindzen’s views are not easily dismissed, even if his views are somewhat outside the 'mainstream' of climate science. (Of course, we may have to reconsider what constitutes 'mainstream' climate science after the leak of e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.)"
http://volokh.com/2009/12/01/mits-lindzen-on-climategate/Even before the CRU leak, I suspected the science behind it was bad, because there was no transparency, skeptics were being marginalized, and discussion about the core issues behind it were forbidden. These are not the actions of concerned scientists trying to get the word out, these are the actions of political thugs angling for more power.
I think the majority of skepticism is rooted in folks smelling something fishy with this whole issue.
The basic problem is that the Wall Street Journal is a newspaper. You can't address scientific questions in a newspaper. You just can't. It's a tightly-controlled broadcast medium, in which all arguments must be kept simple enough for the average reader to understand without being a professional in a related field. All three of those factors (control, broadcast, simplicity) actively work against science.
What scientists need to do is find ways to address these kinds of oversimplifications in ways that the average reader can understand. It's hard, yes, but someone's going to need to do it if the public discourse is ever going to get onto the right track.
I see a pretty strong parallel between 9/11 truthers and global warming deniers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
In the context of the environment it essentially states that if there is a reasonable chance that AGW can be true then since the risks are so great we must take action as if it were true.
This is what leads me, a hard core skeptic (and trained but very long ago lapsed climatologist) to support reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. We can not afford to be wrong.
I personally do not find persuasive the idea that decisions involving high stakes should warrant an approach which embraces risk management over skepticism. All things in proper order.
It all depends on the probabilities you assign things. If Traditional Christianity has a 50% chance of being true, then of course the risk mitigation of heaven and hell dominate decision making. But I should like a better assessment of the odds before entering risk management mode. If the odds are near zero, I shall ignore the claim--however horrid the hell or enticing the heaven.
So with AGW. Perhaps the doomsday is quite terrible (though even this does not seem obvious to me). I should like to see sound evidence that results in--at a minimum--clear odds before I am willing to worry about it.
After all, as with Pascal, I may have other doomsdays to worry about. Perhaps the real doomsday event is a killer asteroid, and nothing matters except a relentless pursuit of technology aimed at a robust presence in space. If that were the case, retarding industry out of a concern for your bogeyman might actually be the cause of doom.
One cannot worry about every street preacher who claims the end is near.
At any rate it's not the same thing. The precautionary principle is an insurance sale, not some metaphysical nonsense.
And you're being unfair about your characterization of Global Warming. It is just not any doomsday scenario. There's enough reputable scientists getting their panties in a knot that it should be cause for concern.
The rational reaction to a possible crisis in which one lacks information is not to jump immediately away from what looks like the scariest outcome. That tends to make things worse. The right reaction is to focus on research until a decision absolutely cannot be avoided--and even then, make the minimum decision the evidence warrants.
I view that as the case here. If the evidence is sufficient to convince and act on, okay. Act on it. But if it is not, the stakes being high do not change anything. By all accounts, there's time yet to be more certain, so let's take the time and be more certain.
Incidentally, "a lot of reputable scientists are concerned" is a statement about state of the evidence, and not a very persuasive one to me. I know a thing or two about simulating complex systems; a non-predictive simulation, a theory concerning a single variable input, a loose-but-not-awesome correlation? In a complex system, that really is street preacher kind of evidence. Absolutely it warrants theoretical concern; follow that line of research. But as a call to action? Nah. Call me when you've got a robust enough model that you can use it to win wars or make money, and we'll talk.
I spent a couple years living in mainland China with pollution so bad that you literally could barely see across the street. On many clear sky days you could look directly at the sun with no issue. I flew over the country to different cities dozens of times and always the entire country was covered in a thick smog for thousands of kilometres. We really have no idea here in North America of the scale of things going on. And China is going to massively increase their emissions in the coming decades.
But it's also important to realize that even if Climate Change isn't man made pollution still is and we need to do our best to reduce it.
Global Warming has been the specter hanging over our heads for the last decade telling us to clean up our act but we need to start stressing the importance of pollution cleanup and recycling outside of the climate change debate as it is hugely important in its own right.
I agree that pollution is a very general term that encompasses things which don't 'contribute' to Global Warming but saying that Pollution and Global Warming are different issues is misleading.
You may have different definitions for Global Warming vs. Climate Change but I have heard them used interchangeably, if there is a difference I'd like to know what it is.
1. Pollution is listed as one of the sources of the (alleged) artificial global warming, but not the only one.
2. Pollution and global warming may be related but they are different issues. For example, even if it turns out that global warming is not happening or is not a problem, pollution will remain a big deal and will have to be taken care of.
3. They are sometimes used interchangeably but this is a logical error (if not worse) and should be avoided.
It's not that simple. "Doing our best" to reduce pollution is a process that carries staggering costs of its own.
It is not realistic to achieve a pollution-free lifestyle across all segments of humanity, so we're going to have to decide where the lines are drawn. That, regrettably, is always going to be a political process, and not a scientific one.
Global Warming has been the specter hanging over our heads for the last decade telling us to clean up our act but we need to start stressing the importance of pollution cleanup and recycling outside of the climate change debate as it is hugely important in its own right.
That's rather a strange and arbitrary direction to turn the discussion. You could just as well have said:
But it's also important to realize that even if Climate Change isn't man made (Pollution | War | Starvation | IE6 | C++ | Rape | AIDS | Child Porn | Stubbed Toes) still is and we need to do our best to reduce it.
From:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/dear-science/Content?oid=...
There are other reasons to stop the burning of coal, for example: respiratory illness.