Great article by Brendan O’Neill on the attempts – vain, I hope – to silence folk who dare contest the Truth of Global Warming.
Right, it is Friday evening, I have a life, so have a good weekend and try not to think about English football.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Free speech and the environmentOctober 13th, 2006 |
 21 comments to Free speech and the environment |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Funny piece on global warming in light of October’s early snowfall here(Link):
Vain? It is already instituionalized policy!
Hmm. This brings a strong whiff of the Salem witches trial.
Climate change is completely unsupported by any observation, but it’s supported by computer climate models. which take a worried pride in predicting climate while current models cannot forecast weather one week from now.
The readings from instruments carried in satellites and in balloons contradict observations carried on the surface, where climate models take their projections.
Let’s also ignore the fact that historically whenever there’s been a warming period (like the Little Optimum in the middle ages) it’s been just dandy for people. Crops increase, trade increases, population increases.
Even if you concede that global warming is a reality why would you immediately jump on the catastrophist bandwagon?
I wonder why they don’t mention that in Canada and Alaska, once everyone stopped hyperventilating about melting glaciers and actually see what had bee underneath, they found remains of forests from about 600A.D.. But of course we wouldn’t let facts about earths variable climate get in the way of good politics.
Even the referenced article falls into the trap of accepting that “global warming” (undefined) is occurring. Michael Crichton’s novel “State of Fear” spends a fair number of pages describing an effort to make a legal case that “global warming” is occurring, and concludes that the case would likely fail. The data is very sparse, very poor — and the better the data, the less evidence it provides of any warming trend. About the most definite observation is that the stratosphere is cooling (i.e. the upper part of the atmosphere is becoming cooler, yes COOLER) — and from that we are all supposed to believe that the surface is becoming warmer? The simple fact is that we have not even defined what “global climate” means, and we certainly don’t know how (or if) it is changing.
One of the interesting thing about Al Gore’s global warming movie is that Al is clearly using the fear of alleged anthropogenic global warming as a partisan political tool — something to divide & conquer the poor dumb voter. If he really believed that alleged anthropogenic global warming was a major threat, surely the last thing he would want to do is politicize it? That points to the obvious conclusion — the people pushing the fear of climate change are more interested in controlling other people’s lives than they are in saving the planet.
Wenley,
Climate change is completely unsupported by any observation,[…]
Nonsense. The more study is done on it, the clearer it is that there’s been a lot of climate change in the past, that it can happen quite quickly, and there’s some going on now (it would be odd if it stopped). What “climate change deniers” are accused of denying is not the fact of climate change, but the assertion that what is going on now is rapid warming caused principally by anthropogenic carbon dioxide and other gas emissions of civilization and that this necessitates a particular (not very good in their own terms) set of policy prescriptions having priority over all other considerations.
It is a mistake to suppose that because models can’t predict behaviour in detail they can’t give a longer term, broader view correctly. (It is a bit like a creationist objection to the ‘likelihood’ of organisms.) If that’s the case, thermodynamics, physical chemistry and all statistical physics is stuffed for a start. Climate models probably aren’t much good yet, and we know most of them are wrong, because they don’t give the same results, and that they can’t be run backwards shows there are some unknown factors missing. But that weather models are bad, doesn’t prove climate models are: they are differnt problems, and there are god reasons for believing weather ie harder.
Weather looks good from where I’m sitting.
But what I wanna know is what is this “life” thing that you speak of?
Yes. The new mantra of environmentalists everywhere is “the climate change debate is over”, presumably having been concluded in their favour (and I use the word “favour” quite deliberately).
This is utter rot, of course, but that doesn’t mean it won’t catch on, making great legislative efforts to quell the “problem” an inevitability. That’s what the greens want, because it means all the more money/credibility/status/esteem for them.
Guy,
I’m not sure what you’re getting at in your second paragraph.
This not necessarily the case. Climate models are by their very nature gonna have to be hideously non-linear and complicated. And that means chaos comes into the picture. It’s not really a suprise that one of the early pioneers of Chaos Theory was a meterologist at NOAA Boulder, Co – Ed Lorenz.
This I don’t get. Stat Mech is essentially a mathematical toolbox for getting from the micro to the macro – it’s not about to be disproved because nobody has managed to apply it to a particular problem.
I see no particular reason why they’ll get better any time soon. I’ll give you a closely related example – sunspot cycles. Sunspots have been recorded for a few centuries and certain cycles like the 11 year one are pretty well established and can be tied into the theory – nuclear fusion and fluid dynamics in this case. But this doesn’t explain many of the peaks and troughs in the observed incidence of sunspots. People have Fourier analyized the data till the cows come home and the results usually hint that there is probably a cyclical component with a period longer than the length of time of the data-set. Bugger. The Earth’s climate is a similar problem, involving similar timescales and a similarly huge chunk of fluid dynamics. Do we have a sufficient data set ? And no, geological and paleontolgical info on “average global temperature” won’t do because climate change isn’t about everywhere being x Celsius warmer or cooler. I also, of course, chose the sunspot example because solar activity has a very direct effect on the Earth’s climate. It’s one of the things we are going to have to understand if we’re going to get past first base in terms of understanding climate change.
I am very sceptical of the climate change lobby. I’ve done a fair bit of computational fluid mechanics in my time (and for my sins) and I am know that while computer modelling is a very powerful tool it is one that must be used with caution. The map is very much not the territory. Moreover I despise people who use the same sort of techniques I learned in the apolitical world of theoretical astrophysics to push what is essentially a political agenda. I think understanding climate is too important a goal for science for it to be a tool of the green lobby.
Although I’m also pissed off about the amount of tax I’ve just paid on some flights to the USA.
Buffalo got 22 inches last night…that is just a brutal snowstorm and rather early in the year. They are supposed to get 3 more inches today before he heads east.
I was recently was interview by MORI about climate change. I made it fairly clear that I find the who thing a load of ole’ tosh. It was most surprising to the polster.
Buffalo got a souvenier from a storm that just went through the northern midwest. It had a low in the center of it that the meteorologists compared to a cat 2 hurricane.
The reason Buffalo got so much lake effect snow is because the lake temperature was 60 degrees F. This huge storm pulled Canadian air farther south than it usually comes this time of year. Since the same storm probably sent as much warm air north, it does not necessarily equate with over all colder temperatures. Just a really big storm.
There is a bit of an echo chamber going on in here but Uain hit on something that, if he can support it, makes a key point. Weather and global temperature fluctuate a lot. (Can you give us a link, Uain?)
I’ll leave the statistical analysis to Guy and Nick, but sometimes fundamentals tell a lot. When major cold sinks dissappear, that means something. And all major cold sinks (glaciers, ice caps, etc) are shrinking. All the statistical analysis in the world can’t deny that they are absorbing energy and the stored cold is dissappearing.
Remember, just because the ‘Global Warming Lobby’ is a bunch of hijackers with a political agenda doesn’t mean that there is no global warming.
And denying it prevents us from adapting in a useful way. I’m really confused by some of the people here who seem to be saying there is no global warming but the way it’s getting warmer is a good thing.
Here’s something from the January 2006 issue of Astronony:
Does this not seem to be precisely the sort of news that would be particularly relevant to the: “Are humans the primary cause of global warming?” debate?
Isn’t it odd that this information wasn’t more widely reported?
I think there is a good chance that one day, the environmentalist movement will regret very much investing so much of their intellectual capital in the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis (religion?).
If it is demonstrated to be resoundingly false (not the warming bit, the humans causing it bit) their movement won’t be credible again for decades.
They do have a history of this sort of silliness though, don’t they? In my youth, I remember many of these same characters warning us about the coming of global cooling with the same smarmy, patronizing tone they’re using today.
The best rationale for environmentalism is also the simplest – don’t foul your own nest. I personally find that my own enjoyment of nature is suffiicent to motivate me to want to preserve it, the histrionics of the more radical types do a lot more harm than good.
The trouble is that the counter-arguments aren’t well made, or if they are, they aren’t well publicised. It’s a bit lame to have to rely on Lomborg’s enjoyable but amateur and outdated Skeptical Environmentalist and on Michael Crichton’s sensationalist musings (and to be quite honest some of the posts above are based on nothing more than that).
Still, I have never seen or read a convincing argument, based on sound scientific reasoning, that climate change is man-made, is historically unusual, is a bad thing, and that enforced economic slowdown (i.e. probably losing my job) would make the slightest difference.
Anyway, it’s the whole concept of Thoughtcrime that is the real issue here, not the dubious science. How can sensible people even contemplate the idea of using force to prevent me from expressing an opinion about a hugely subjective scientific debate?
And most importantly of all, if anyone tries to categorise me with the moon hoax theorists again, I’m going to get really angry.
Manuel, I agree with most of your points but I do not share your rather harsh assessment of Lomborg. Lomborg did us all a favour by taking the same factual data that is used by the doomongers and showing, by his own statistical expertise and training, that their predictions are dumb. He has also pointed out that even if global warming is a reality – and I am prepared to accept that it is – it may be more useful for mankind to devote its energies to things like fixing water supplies, ensuring decent sanitation, and spending on flood defences, rather than hammer the global economy, as the Greens would love to do.
BTW, I have not read the Crighton book yet but I may get around to it eventually.
I loved the Lomborg book, and most of his points are absolutely incontrovertible, and present a rather chilling view of the sloppy propagandist approach of the Greens. It’s an endless source of anecdotes and stats to make hectoring green bores look stupid at dinner parties.
In particular, I feel that all kids should be taught in the National Curriculum about how the Greens estimate annual species loss (a widely accepted piece of conventional wisdom), which is this: in 50 years time we will have lost about 300 millon species, which means we must be losing 6 million a year. There’s no more evidence than that.
Nevertheless, he is a statistician, not a climatologist. I’d like to hear more from the various climatologists who at least question the science – and there are plenty of them about. It’s hard for them to get heard without being accused of being Stooges Of Big Oil (and may soon be illegal), but we won’t win any arguments by just quoting Lomborg at people, less still Crichton.
(That was my first Crichton, and my last. Some great little anecdotes, but shockingly 2-D plot and characters).
Guy Herbert dismissed as nonsense my critic thoughts on the absence of supported observation for climate change. I like Guy’s posts and I realize that I should have clarified that there is not evidence of a catastrophic one. After a Google search it seems that the recorded increase in temperature ranges somewhere between 0.4 and 0.8 °C. I might be horrible wrong, but even those records are disputed. For instance, they do not seem to affect all the atmosphere but only the ground temperature.
As for the constant, sometimes abrupt, climate changes in the past, they correlate better with changes in the solar activity, something that should give the programmers of computer models some pause as neither they can predict the changes in the number and size of sunspots, nor they can predict volcanic activity or cloud formation.
As for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, records seems to agree that registered amount in 1988 was of 365 ppm (parts per million), a notation used to denote extremely low concentrations of chemical elements. This solid data has the double merit to give some scientist something to chew on and to foster plant life.
On the other hand, about 60% of the temperature increase mentioned above occurred before 1940, but only 33% of the increase in carbon dioxide concentration had occurred by then, which to the insidous, might indicate that increased carbon dioxide was not the cause of the temperature increase.
Regarding the value of computer models, I agree with Guy. They might be an essential to estimate climate changes if they would able to sort out with the expected degree of precision, the multiple variables that affect climate, their future activity and how they are influenced by each other. Not to mention, the possibility of atmosphere mechanisms that may blunt by themselves the influence of those data.
It is my uninformed personal impression that global warming is distant to be a scientifically verified hypothesis.
It is easy to find out whether someone is really concerned about “globel warming” or whether they are just using a claim of concern as an excuse to attack industry (and the mass of ordinary people in general).
Ask what they think about nuclear power. Someone who (rightly or wrongly) really is concerned that C02 emissions are leading to terrble problems (such as James Lovelock) will be in favour of nuclear power, someone who is just a rich kid striking a pose (such as “Zac” Goldsmith of the so called “Conservative” party) will be opposed.
Yes MidWesterner,
I read an articel that referenced this awhile back. At your prodding, did a google search on “forests beneath glaciers”. Also if you want to filter out much of the anthrocentric global warming tosh, use “Global climatic oscillstions”.
Forests beneath glaciers
Oh well,
Somehow got the link wrong, also spell “oscillations” correctly.
Link = http://bulletin.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/114/7/896
Paul, thank you for that. It’s something that I’ve kind of done intuitively put hadn’t yet thought of using as a simple test. I imagine it would take no more than one or two followup questions to know for certain if the person is thoughtfully concerned or driving a political agenda.
Wenley, your last post is in a direction that leads towards better understanding, I think. Something I had explained to me that I can only relay, and not very well at that, is the effect of complexity on small temperature changes. I’m sailing whenever I can (not often enough) and weather predictions are a major hobby among sailors.
A small change in temperature when it occurs near a transition point like freezing, or dewpoint can have a major effect on where precipitation occurs. It can move a rain storm by even several hundred miles. When this occurs on a ‘permanent’ basis, as in a global warming of say, half a degree centigrade, it can shift a rainy area enough to seriously mess with crops and ultimately water tables.
I am in the camp that thinks that human effects on the environment, while existing, could be significantly self compensating. I certainly think they are too complicated to start tinkering with deliberately. I cite the contrails discovery often because it more than anything convinced me that all attempts to effect the environment should be very cautiously tested first. If the Greens, in a hypothetical coup, had succeeded in grounding all civil aviation in order to fight warming, it appears to me now subsequent to the 3 day experiment post 9-11, that it would have been disastrous.
Uain, thanks for the link. While I was thinking about that, something else occured to me. If I remember my geology correctly, the fjords in Norway were made by glaciers. Obviously they are not there now and haven’t been for some time.