Watching the news on the ITN television channel last night, the lead item was about the current high temperatures we are experiencing at the moment. What I thought was interesting was the way in which presenter David Suchet announced that “global warming is happening” as if it were no more controversial a statement than to say that night follows day.
Over at the BBC website, meanwhile, you can read all about climate change. Again, the main page presents climate change as a given assumption. There is no place for dissent, scepticism or doubt. For that you have to delve into places like the recent book by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, etc.
Now, unlike some red-blooded defenders of free enterprise, I do not challenge the Greenhouse Effect case as something being put around by neo-luddite technophobes and control freaks. It may just be that the Greenhouse Effect is genuinely occuring. If so, then a good question for the likes of liberty-loving folk is to ask what, if anything, can citizens in a liberal order do about it?
It seems to me that this is a more interesting way to present our case rather than simply say, when hearing the latest piece of doomongering, that so-and-so is a Luddite.
In the meantime, thank heavens for the invention of air conditioning.
Ecology is the new religion, and as an article of faith you can’t argue against it. All you can do is show you’re a non-believer by displaying Lomborg’s book on your coffee table, installing air conditioning and buying the biggest SUV you can afford. 🙂
Hi Jonathan,
You’ll notice we haven’t actually got to Britain’s highest temperature yet, though we’re approaching it. Even if we don’t hit it, this week will go down as another week ‘proving’ Global Warming. And if we do hit it, everyone journalist out there who needs to fill his copy quota, is going to go overboard, even if its 0.1 degrees over.
And we haven’t even considered the ever-expanding concreting of the south-east, which soaks up and retains heat better than green earth, and which therefore will lead to increased temperatures all by itself.
And then there’s the fact that we’re in the middle of an Inter-Glacial, either on an up-stroke, where it will continue to get warmer, or a down-stroke, where we’re heading towards the next ice age.
So maybe it is getting warmer (thought I doubt it). Why must it be something to do with us, when this world has spent its entire 4 billion years going through enormous heat ranges, often over rapid periods of time, as in our current ice age epoch.
We should do a lot more research onto the causes for the increase and decrease of ice caps, over the last three million years, before we can draw anything like significant conclusions about any other form of climate change. It’s like it’s there in your face, the most obvious form of global weather change, something which directly shaped the evolution of mankind, as the ice encroached and then receded, many times, and we all just ignore it, like a great big blank grey wall, and focus on the anthropomorphic importance of our own species.
But yet, you’re right, man-made global warming is now taken as a given. And so they’ll try and foist upon us poverty-producing measures, to tackle it, and other measures which co-incidentally increase statist intervention (such as making us pay more for electricity, to prop up subsidies to wind-electricity generators).
It’s a good job Joe Public takes absolutely no notice of all the synthetic Guardianista rage, as they turn up the heat-producing air-conditioning units, buy ever more heat-producing fridges, bigger cars, and bigger houses requiring more heating (if they can afford them), and fly further and further around the world (thanks Ryanair :), burning up more and more aviation fuel.
When they turn off all the air-conditioning in the Guardian’s offices, to prevent global warming, and all Guardian journalists stop taking foreign holidays, by air, then I might take them a little more seriously.
Good point in the original posting: people can easily be right for the wrong reasons. Knowing what’s happening, and knowing what to do about it are two different (if related) things.
There’s no doubt whatever that an awful lot of climate change has happened in the past, and it is overwhelmingly likely it is happening now. (If it isn’t, then something really screwy has happened.) There’s where the certainty ends, unfortunately. We’ve got some plausible theories about what’s going on and why, some or all of which may be true, and none of which is easy to test.
But people like stories with a moral. That’s why increasing amounts of evidence for the fact of global warming are so often taken as proof of one presumed cause: because blaming human villany is satisfying.
Policy driven by such considerations might be useful, even though the motive is irrational. But it could as easily be irrelevant or dangerous. And we really can’t tell which, because predicting what happens next is quite a bit harder than finding out where we are now.
Glad to hear the agnostic position. It’s the only really scientific one. I’ve basically come to believe that outside the scientific community (and to some extent within it) those who claim with religious fervour that climate is changing are invariably leftish. Likewise, I find the vast majority of the non-scientist crowd claiming “there is no global warming” to be pretty hard right.
As for myself, I tend to think it is real (and yes I have a copy of Lomberg, albiet in pdf). I’ve got too many questions unanswered by the “t’isn’t” side of the “T’is”, “T’isn’t!” debate which passes for argument in politicized circles.
I’m with Dale. I think it likely is real, but there is certainly enough doubt that I could well be wrong. I think the most interesting question to stem from this is “Are the likely effects bad?”, for which I think the answer remains very open. Certainly there are some (many) places where the positive consequences of weather being a few degrees warmer outweight the negatives. (Lomborg talks about this a lot). In some parts of the world, warmer weather means more evaporation means more rain means more fresh water, which is generally good. As to whether the likely positives outweight the likely negatives, I don’t know.
Certainly, however, things like Kyoto are close to completely useless as remedies. The question is what technological means will we have in 50 years time to fight the consequences of global warming (assuming it is real). There is a certain amount of faith required, but I do think the technological means will be impressive.
Check out http://www.john-daly.com
This site is dedicated to de-bunking global warming.
Very interesting read.
I’m agnostic on the issue, too. But I have confidence in market-driven human ingenuity to solve any problems that might arise from global warming, so I see no need for the “We’d better start doing something, just in case” position. If the world heats up, we’ll be fine; we’ll cope.
The majority of people who think it is happening believe that we should therefore stop using electricity, ride bikes everywhere, eat mud, etc. It’s not their belief in the phenomenon that makes them Luddites; it’s their belief in the cure.
The preliminary questions are: is the climate getting warmer? If so, is the warming due to human activity? If so, is a reduction of human activity the remedy? To which my own answers are: maybe, probably not, and definitely not.
Yes, this is all terribly interesting but I just cannot bring myself to overlook the highly suspicious provenance of the whole ‘global warming’ and ‘fragile earth’ belief system.
I clearly recall the emergence of these bleatings in the 1970’s at just about the same time as the po-mo left had realised that the working class could not be relied upon as a revolutionary cadre.
New science or new ‘proletariat’?
The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Speaking of Lomborg’s book, Mr. Pearce can find there exactly what he is looking for. Lomborg accepts some fairly pessimistic projections about global warming at least for the sake of argument, and then proceeds to a sober economic analysis as to what responses can be undertaken without doing more harm than good. (Kyoto, needless to say, is a non-starter by that criterion.)
See this week’s Spectator leading article
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2003-08-09&id=3395
Try again…
See this week’s Spectator leading article
What if the GHE is real? Big effing deal. Buy lightweight clothes, sunblock cream, and shades. If the sea level shifts, build sea-dikes. And speculate on land futures in the artic tundra.
HOTTEST WEATHER EVER!!! Or rather since the temperature recordings began. As I was slogging my way up Duncton Hill on my bike yesterday morning with the sweat pouring off me and down on to the bars, stem and top tube, I was struck by the thought that the hills and valleys I was fighting were created by glaciers! And again that also a thousand plus years ago a fairly large scale viniculture existed in southern England when it wa even hotter then as it is now.
Make the most of what you’ve got, and jump in the English Channel when it’s warm enough like I did last evening!
Anyone interested in seeing the evidence for and against global warming batted around by folks who know what they’re talking about would do well to follow the discussions here. The community in general has an anti-warming bias, but there are several pro-warming scientists who post regularly who are definitely not kooks. The daly site mentioned above is referenced frequently, and there’s currently an interesting thread in which the author of a site purporting to debunk Daly’s is having it out with a few of the regulars about the merits of his own site.
There’s also a forum about tobacco science, but the “secondhand smoke will cause the victory of satan in the apocalypse” types really serve only to make themselves and the EPA look like asses. Still a good read.
I saw that ITN bulletin (you were watching Die Hard, yes?) – anyone would think, by the way it was presented, that Armageddon had just happened, or that a meteorite was about to wipe out all life or some such catastrophe, yet all the story was really about was the hot weather we’ve been having.
Just enjoy it while it lasts, ferchrissakes! Five months from now the same people will be moaning about how cold it is.
Johathan, I can’t say I am convinced that the phenomenon of ‘global warming’ is real but I will not rule out that climate change may be occuring although it’s worth bearing in mind that scientists know very little about long-term cycles of climate change, particularly since this kind of research hasn’t been going on for very long. The current ‘warming trend’ is calculated to have started before humans began to release a significant amount of carbon dioxide into the environment, which would suggest that if the earth is heating up, it is a natural occurence which we can’t (and possibly shouldn’t even bother trying to) stop.
If real evidence of ‘global warming’ does emerge and it is appears that without viable human intervention we’re all doomed then government regulation and additional taxes to ‘discourage’ the production of negative externalities such as carbon dioxide emission are not workable solutions. Free market approaches and property rights-based solutions must be sought and implemented – if there really is a need to fight some sort of ‘global warming’ and it is within our means to do so. At present, the scienfitic evidence would suggest that the people bleating about ‘global warming’ are predominantly dellusional socialists intent on finding any excuse they can to persuade governments to implement their ‘environmentally protective’ measures, such as higher taxes and increased regulation. (If these people are really interested in fighting some sort of environmental disaster shouldn’t they at least be capable of considering free market solutions to the alleged problems?)
I’m going to agree with Andy Duncan on this one: we’re in an inter-glacial period at the moment, all odds that actually we are bound for another ice-age. In the meantime, temperatures will be flux. Imagine if environmentalists 25 years from now are braying about how ‘global cooling’ is because of human intervention.
One thing I am sure of is that humans are the most adaptive species on the planet. We made it through the last ice age with just fur, after all, and now we have Columbia (Nasdaq: COLM).
I seem to remember Lomborg’s book being roundly dismissed by the scientific community. If you look at the strong consensus that global warming is real and anthropic, the few and troubled critics (the latest is the Soon disaster) make an insufficient case. Some politically-minded people think their opinion counts more than the NAS’s opinion, though….
Steve Story, what you remember was actually a smear campaign carried out by a limited number of scientists (a few of those involved might better be characterized as soi-disant scientists) with strong commitments to environmentalist ideology, not by any means the same thing as a “round dismissal by the scientific community”. (But why not read the book, whsoe arguments are all based on facts and statistics gleaned from official, readily available sources, and judge for yourself?) Moreover, the section in Lomborg’s book on global warming was, of all the topics he considered, the one in which he argued _least_ with the conventional environmentalist wisdom- his approach was to take the inevitablity of substantial anthropogenic warming for granted, and analyze the impact of a range of possible responses.
It’s all Vladimir Putin’s fault!
The front page of the Independent seems to think that if he signs up to Kyoto he can cool Britain down!!
What right away? What was he doing in 1976 and 1995 both blazing hot summers if I recall?
Bonkers.
“Edmund Burke’s” first comment pretty much says it all.
Meanwhile, here’s my theory: The weather on the US East Coast has moved to Europe, and vice versa. Here in coastal Carolina, it’s been raining every day for about three weeks, with no break in sight. And the daily high temperatures hover in the mid-80sF. For us, that’s practically sweater-weather. The WaPo has an article today, ‘Shivering in the Surf’, about bitter cold ocean temperatures at Atlantic recreational beaches.
If it is ever proven that it would be to our benefit to reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the challenge would be to find the technical means to accomplish it. Useless mechanisms like the Kyoto protocol can only be indulged if there is no actual danger, because it would accomplish nothing.
So if it ever became essential to lower the CO2 we would have to assemble something like the space program to develop CO2 sequestration techniques. I could envision a massive nuclear reactor powering a machine to sequester CO2 into abandoned oil wells, for example. In any case the solution will be the development of new technology, not suppression of human activity.
I think the whole “global warming” thing is a crock, but if perchance we humans ARE affecting the natural greenhouse effect, changes to the way we live (such as hydrogen-powered cars) will prevent any significant problems from occurring.
These changes are taking place anyway. Governments don’t need to wave their big sticks.
A few hasty comments during my lunch break, Mr. Labonne. My statements about the Lomborg book and global warming were based on many critiques of the book and the actions of people at Harvard, The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, UC Irvine, the National Academy of Sciences, the journal Nature, the APS, Scientific American, Skeptic Magazine, and a few other sources, coupled with my primitive but somewhat informed understanding of chemistry and thermodynamics. Based on this, I stand by my acceptance of GW. As for why not read it and judge for myself, my own experience in physics has taught me that laymen cannot do this reliably with complex science. That half the laymen in this country find creationism reasonable supports this point. My experience has taught me that in scientific matters in which I’m not expert, the most reliable strategy is to provisionally accept a consensus if it appears sufficiently broad, as this one does. It’s difficult enough to have complex technical opinions within one’s own field. It’s also pretty arrogant to think that you or I have the analytical power to justify opposing the NAS on a scientific topic. That the support for GW is broadly scientific, and the opposition is overwhelmingly political, also adds weight to this position.
I think your comments are more forcefully applied to for instance Edmund Burke’s post at the top of the page here.
Kevin, sequestration wouldn’t be necessary. Look at the recent data on the reversal of the rate of ozone hole formation after the banning of CFC’s for the reason why.
The janitor is also a “person at Harvard”, Steve. Do try thinking for yourself some time. Lomborg makes that easy to do with his book- nearly all the facts in it are referenced to WWW sites; you can check for yourself whether he has his facts straight, and having done so can evaluate the logical force of the arguments based on them. You can do the same with the Scientific Am., Nature, etc. hatchet jobs.Of course, when your ideology already tells you all the answers, it’s so much easier to just surrender your opinion to the ‘experts”. But as a scientist myself, I’m trained not to do that.
P.S. Much of Lomborg’s argument- and nowhere moreso than in the chapter on global warming- is actually not about science at all but is economic, statistical and sociological. (Lomborg is not a scientist, and simply used current scientific consensus as his starting point- his factual corrections to the conventional wisdom are generally not criticisms of published science, but instead demonstrations that environmentalist rhetoric often misstates the publicly available scientific information.) Thus, many of the most vitriolic critics were in fact themselves quite lacking in any qualifications actually relevant to the task.
Oh, okay, I’ll try thinking. Thanks for the useful, relevant, respectful comment. Ditto about the janitor statement.
I’m so happy to hear that you’ve decided to start thinking. I wouldn’t want you to burden your newly activated brain by actually reading the damned book yet, so instead start here for some perspective, from a senior scientist in an envioronmentally relevant discipline, on the ferociously dishonest and ideological nature of the smear campaign against Lomborg.
Even if global warming is occurring you still have to go a long way before you saying something has to be done about it.
First of all, is it really a bad thing?
Second, if it is what are the costs of acting and are they genuinely outweighed by the benefits?
I would say the greens have a lot of work to do.
“If you look at the strong consensus that global warming is real and anthropic, the few and troubled critics (the latest is the Soon disaster) make an insufficient case. ”
there are more things in heaven and earth Steve Story, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Now the folks in the first link may not be at HARVARD, but perhaps the fella from Yale counts, even if the others don’t. The second is signed by 2,660 atmospheric scientists, 5017 folks in the broader field of life science, and 17,100 plain ‘ol scientists. Of the 19,700 signers, 17,800 have been independently verified (so they arent just making these people up). If a theory with that much dissent in the scientific community adds up to a consensus, well, I think we’ll have to redefine consensus.
“It may just be that the Greenhouse Effect is genuinely occuring. If so, then a good question for the likes of liberty-loving folk is to ask what, if anything, can citizens in a liberal order do about it?”
i) (most likely) – talk a lot of hot air, squabble over political power for vested interests, spend a lot of money on wasteful projects, and pointlessly reduce global living standards
ii) (rather unlikely) – organise effective group action to combat global warming, while taking great care to avoid negative secondary consequences
iii) (absolutely no chance of ever occuring) – stock up on some cold beer, work on your tan, and realise that it’s really not that big a deal in the first place
How did my car make this happen?
Some people cannot believe that there is any bad thing that happens that is not man’s fault. At least they no longer burn old women at the stake like their ancestors.
I think that one problem is that people tend to confuse the issue of Global warming with the Greenhouse effect theory.
James Hansen of the NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies , who did the original greenhouse effect model has been changing his tune (a bit) and now says that aerosols (soot) may have a much greater effect than he originally thought.
Serious people now think that global warming is caused by a mix of man made and natural causes. The debate is really over how much of each is involved. One of the biggest causes may be the measurable increase in solar radiance and the series of unusual double peaks in the 11 year sunspot cycle.
Yesterday I read, (in the Telegraph, I think, an article about the European hot summer), a quotation from Meteo France which was something like “…this year, 2003, has been the hottest for 84 years…”.
Well now, isn’t that interesting!
In 1919 was there a PREVIOUS FRANCE WARMING?
If so, why only France?
How can France have suffered a WARMING in 1919 without the rest of the globe experiencing something similar?
Therefore we must assume that in 1919 there was a previous GLOBAL warming.
It can’t have been over-population, because we had just finished off a very succesful programme of actively reducing the population.
It can’t have been industry because the industrial base then could not compare with that now (yes, it was coal-based which is more polluting than oil, but now we have so much more oil).
Could it be whispered, that perhaps weather cycles?
Could we be in just another hot cycle?
The earth’s environment isn’t really interested in what either activists or scientists say. It’s just doing its thing.
First… let me address the original posting. It is quite politically incorrect to call for any action regarding global warming other than blind acceptance, and the reduction of CO2 emissions. If you look at the IPCC data, Kyoto reductions are trivial compared to what would be required to make any difference… if you believe the models (see below). What this means is that, barring radical engineering breakthroughs, the only way to achieve the reductions is to destroy the world’s economy.
Rationally, one would want to consider how to deal with warming. We already know that increased CO2 improves agricultural yields, for example, so it isn’t all bad! This approach, however, is un-PC because it assumes that we will let the earth warm, and to the ecoreligionists, this is sinful. So it is rarely discussed.
Likewise, if one is really worried about CO2 emissions, one would rationally be for nuclear power, which could reduce stationary emissions significantly. But that also is rarely even mentioned, because anything nuclear is evil in the ecoreligion.
Instead we hear about renewable energy sources, but any numerate analysis shows that these just won’t do the job, and they will cost a lot. As an aside… why do environmentalists like to clutter up the landscape with huge, bird-killing windmills, while objecting to anything else man wants to build? BTW… it isn’t just environmentalists taking a religious or ideological approach – Rush Limbaugh hasn’t a clue about science and rejects global warming because mankind supposedly just isn’t capable of screwing things up on that scale! Wrong!
So realistically, the global warming debate (as opposed to global warming science) is about religious and political issues, and is far too polarized and irrational to yield to something as simple as reasonable solutions!
…..moving on to the actual science…
Anthropogenic global warming is a legitimate hypothesis. Unfortunately, the process of actually proving it (or more accurately, failing to falsify it) simply cannot be done right now.
In other words, in spite of all the hot air coming from those shouting, we just don’t know whether we are causing the earth to warm or not. We also don’t know whether that would be a good or bad thing, since we may be staving off an upcoming ice age (this latter for those who imagine that the precautionary principle should be applied). Personally, I suspect that humans are influencing somewhat the earth’s temperature trends, but that’s more of an educated guess than any kind of scientific pronouncement!
I am not a climatologist. I have friends who are. They are very skeptical. One is a prominent skeptic and thus has been roundly trashed by many activists. The other is a quiet skeptic. Their reasons for skepticism are many, but fundamentally they boil down to:
Not enough data. We don’t know climate history very well (paleoclimatic data is really pretty spotty and indirect). We don’t know how the climate history is tied to forcing factors.
The models are inadequate. The models use the laws of physics, but they make dramatic simplifications, and have large amounts of paramterizations (tweakable parameters).
The time series since man started significantly increasing the atmospheric CO2 (and there has been a major increase and it is due to man0 is too short to be meaningful in this debate.
Politicization of the field has resulted in skewing of the distribution of research projects and acceptance of papers for publication.
Finally… one more comment… someone in this thread used Scientific American as a source when discussing the attacks on Bjorn Lomborg’s book. Scientific American has astrongly left-wing and environmentalist bias, and has for too many years (which is a real shame). It’s attacks in this case were unprecedented and shameful – the actual articles hardly addressed the real issues at all, but rather picked at nits or made ad hominem attacks. Hardly scientific! When Lomborg tried to Fisk the article by putting it on his website and inserting his own comments, SciAm, in the spirit of true scientific inquiry, threatened to sue him if he didn’t take down their copyrighted material (even though his use was ‘fair use’).
Moore: I just read the SciAm attack on Lomborg and his response. Not only is it odd that two of the scientists that SciAm used had histories of being exactly the kind of folks that BL was talking about (my favorite is the resource scarcity guy being one of the fellas who lost a grand to Juliam Simon), but also that he was so often able to refute their claims of his “ignoring” or “overlooking” something by simply quoting his own book.
If we’d had the coolest summer on record, or a 1987-type hurricane, or a dozen minor tornadoes, or no rain at Wimbledon, there would be an article in The Independent saying it’s all proof of GW.
Even those who believe (I don’t) that GW is real should be letting others know that Kyoto would only make matters worse. Many people would falsely interpret the energy saving measures and higher taxes themselves as prima facie evidence that GW exists and that it’s all our fault because of our inherent greed and wickedness, etc. This would then give green politicians the clout to impose further measures. The downward spiral would damage our economy and make creative technological solutions less likely. It would also increase emissions in the 3rd world relative to the non-Kyoto scenario.
They should also be encouraging and personally funding research into the climate and fostering tech pilot projects to give us more knowledge and more options, should the worst prove to be true. Ditto with regard to averting the next ice age, the next asteroid mega-impact, etc.
This is what GW-believers should be doing, because the environment is worth caring about.
Of course, tech solns would be opposed by most present enviromentalists; as Andy Duncan suggested, only poverty-inducing ‘solutions’ would be sanctioned.
Some scientists recently proposed spraying iron-rich solution onto a patch of the Pacific to see how much CO2 the resulting algal growth would take up (afterwards, the algae can be baled so it sinks to the ocean floor). Even this small-scale *experiment* was opposed by enviro-loons on the grounds of unforeseeable ecological consequences (they want them to remain unforeseeable).
Only if and when GW is established scientific fact, beyond reasonable doubt, should we declare war on it and impose (temporary) restrictive measures (if necessary). To coerce people before then is immoral, and we here must claim the moral high ground.
This weather calls for nuclear winter!
Peter Melia wrote:
Could it be whispered, that perhaps weather cycles?
Could we be in just another hot cycle?
Be reasonable, Peter, it’s not fair on the ‘environmentalists’ for you to introduce logic into the debate – you’re going to crush their ‘arguments’ without even trying. Logical and rational thinking aren’t things most ‘environmentalists’ tend to be acquainted with.
John Moore: […] someone in this thread used Scientific American as a source when discussing the attacks on Bjorn Lomborg’s book. Scientific American has a strongly left-wing and environmentalist bias, and has for too many years (which is a real shame).
One of Lomborg’s strengths in this context (and maybe why he got the publicity) is that he has a strongly left-wing and environmentalist bias. He could be a poster-boy for greenery: young, good-looking, gay, from impeccably socialist Denmark. His great crime is apostacy.
According to his own account the book started out as an attempted fisking of Julian Simon. Though the fame conveyer may have him now, his original motive wasn’t to make the world safe for capitalism or to debunk Greenpeace. It was outraged honesty on finding the case he had believed in was so generally misrepresented by its leading advocates.
We could do with more honest men of all political viewpoints.
Cracking comments, thanks! JP
Couple of things.
Here in Atlanta it is nowhere as hot as it was last year. And there is this strange phenomena of very cold ocean water off the east coast of the US. Scientists as of yet don’t fully understand why but a young woman nearly died of hypothermia swimming in the surf off of Maryland in August. Weird.
Also I have read that in the past the sudden rise in the atmospheric tempature of the Earth has been a precurser of ice ages or sudden tempature drops. This occurs because when the sea ice melts it is much heavier than the Gulf Stream and causes the Gulf Stream to subside which in turn causes the oceans to grow colder. And the cycle begins again. That was rather truncated but it hits most of the points.
As George Carlin has said, “Everybody’s worried about the planet. What’s going to happen to the planet? The planet is going to be fine. We’re the ones who’re fucked.”
that should be temperature. Sheesh, I gotta proofread.
While we’re having a few record temperatures, the thing that is getting lost in the noise was, on average, the 1990’s were the hottest decade since records began. If the current trend continues the 00’s will be hotter.
Every day, I’m more and more glad we don’t have to deal with President Gore through all this.
I’m not sure human civilization would survive.
Dave O’Neill writes:
‘…. the 1990’s were the hottest decade since records began. If the current trend continues the 00’s will be hotter.”
As that’s the second time today you’ve claimed this, I’ll address it on this thread for the sake of simplicity.
As bald statements go it’s pretty hairless. But is it true? Or, as seems more likely, is it a convenient factoid planted by the eco-lobby in the minds of those who get their science from newspapers?
Satellite data show a slight cooling of in the earth’s climate over approximately the past two decades. The data purporting to demonstrate warming are taken from ground-based thermometers and, as such, are questionable.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 1995 estimate of average global warming at the surface until the year 2100 is +0.18 degrees C per decade. It isn’t happening. None of the satellite data support this prediction.
Even were it true, are you seriously suggesting we should cripple the world’s economy due to a short-term, inexplicable fluctuation in temperature?
What is getting ‘lost in this debate’ is reasoning and proper science. It is being drowned-out by eco-propaganada and the parroting of clichés.
G Cooper,
Have you looked at any academic sources post-1995?
I have a number of friends working in the Met Office Bracknell who are of no doubt that the mean temperature has increased. They remain uncertain of the causes.
A quick Google on “Global Mean Temperature” brings up a lot of sources post 1995 which support this position from a variety of sources most of them academic.
Even were it true, are you seriously suggesting we should cripple the world’s economy due to a short-term, inexplicable fluctuation in temperature?
I am not proposing that we cripple the world economy, I’ve not, to my knowledge on her or elsewhere said anything about that subject.
I’ve merely been pointing out that the knee jerk response here against data which suggests global warming is occuring is as flawed as the idea that we’re all doomed.
My concerns are simply, while there are lots of fossil fuels left, they are a finite resource. Using natural gas, for example, to generate electricity in the UK, is an insane waste of a precious resource. I would prefer that through sensible policies to encourage the market, like tax breaks and the like, a move is made towards a nuclear/hydrogen economy.
Not only does that make economic sense, but from a security perspective it would make us less reliant on imports. The deal we’ve just signed with Russia, for example, doesn’t make me feel particularly comfortable about our future energy needs being met.
What is getting ‘lost in this debate’ is reasoning and proper science.
Yes, absolutely. And from where I’m sitting both sides are as guilty as each other.
As bald statements go it’s pretty hairless. But is it true? Or, as seems more likely, is it a convenient factoid planted by the eco-lobby in the minds of those who get their science from newspapers?
Just to get some science back into this, the following links to the Met Office (now moving to Devon I hear).
Lots of General Met Office Info on Global Mean Temperature
Met Office Conclusion that warming in Europe and US is due to human activity
Statement that 9 of the 10 warmest years occured between 1990 and 2001
Sorry, I seem to have left an Italic tag open
My sympathies about the weather. It can kill directly and by food poisoning in second-wave attacks. People who aren’t ready for it don’t deserve what it does.
One of the things I’ve always been jealous of Britons about is the lack of 110-degree-plus days (I’ve been outside in temperatures as high as 118 here in Texas). I can survive hot weather, but I’ll never learn to like it (my genes are Irish and never fail to remind me I’m outside of the climate band God intended for me).
Whether or not you worry about the politics of heat here, keep in mind that heat can kill. Err on the side of caution and don’t touch metal surfaces that have been in the sun.
Dave O’Neill writes:
“Just to get some science back into this, the following links to the Met Office (now moving to Devon I hear).”
The UK’s Met Office is one of the leading proponents of the global warming hypothesis – hardly an unbiased source.
‘Have you looked at any academic sources post-1995?’
Certainly. Have you looked at any of the satellite data?
Elsewhere you say: ‘I’ve merely been pointing out that the knee jerk response here against data which suggests global warming is occuring is as flawed as the idea that we’re all doomed.’
No one is disputing that there are contradictory data. But the knee-jerk response, such as it is, is coming from people who bought the ‘manmade global warming’ package without first unwrapping it to see what was inside, primarily because it confirmed their worldview.
Your original statement about the past decade was both highly disingenuous and a shining example. So what are we supposed to infer from it? Even if it were true, there isn’t a shred of evidence that it is due to mankind’s activities, so why quote it at all? Presumably you were trying to make a point. What was that point if it wasn’t to be taken to imply that ‘it’s all our fault’ and therefore that ‘we must do something about it’?
Opponents of the global warming theory tend to be cautious (true advocates of a precautionary principle) who want something a little bit more convincing that computer models and readings taken at heat islands before distorting the free market with potentially devastating consequences.
Surface temperature records are distorted by many factors:
Urban heat island effects are significant. Our low temperatures here in Phoenix, AZ are much higher than they used to be. Researchers at our local university (ASU) have measured a significant urban heat island, which is to blame.
Changes in sensors. The NWS here moved the weather station from its original position to a new one a mile away. Temperatures dropped about two degrees. The old one had been in the center of the airport complex. At the time it was placed there, it was in open desert. Now it is surrounded by about a mile of asphalt or concrete in all directions. Another smaller city in Arizona intentionally moved their sensor to a very hot area, so they could get publicity by periodically being the hottest city in the country.
Biased locations. Weather sensors are located a population centers. Population centers are not uniformly distributed across the earth! They tend to be close to oceans, in valleys on rivers, etc.
There are other sources of data than the basic weather grid – for example, ships have long measured ocean surface temperatures.
But basically, it’s really easy to come up with “warming” by just picking the right source.
The UK’s Met Office is one of the leading proponents of the global warming hypothesis – hardly an unbiased source.
But can you fault the raw data?
Like the fact that last decade was the warmest on record.
The biased sensor data question was big in the mid-90’s, Channel 4 did a programme on it. OTOH, more recent data is thought to adjust for a lot of the factors discussed.
Certainly. Have you looked at any of the satellite data?
Yes, I’ve also read the points made regarding the flawed application of the data.
Opponents of the global warming theory tend to be cautious (true advocates of a precautionary principle) who want something a little bit more convincing that computer models and readings taken at heat islands before distorting the free market with potentially devastating consequences.
You keep saying this. I’m not sure where I’ve made any reference to distorting the free market, except where there is genuine long term economic benefit. Such as reducing our insance depedence on hydrocarbons.
More recent data isn’t going to adjust very well for past sensor data problems! As I have mentioned before, paleoclimatological data is very shaky.
It is NOT insane to depend on hydrocarbons. In fact, it is, with the current state of technology, quite sane. It IS INSANE to oppose nuclear power generation, which could both reduces the cost of power (done right) and cut down on CO2 emissions. It is not a coincidence that those most opposed to nuclear power are largely the same folks who scream about CO2 emissions and global warming.
To bring CO2 increases in the atmosphere to a stop would require either a series of dramaitc discoveries or breakthroughs in engineering (or bioengineering) or enormous economic costs, which would result in depression, and the deaths of tens of millions in already poverty-stricken countries. Furthermore, the political consequences of thsoe economic consequences mean that it is almost certainly impossible to actually take those measures.
Thus folks should quit whining about our dependence on carbon combustion and start dealing with the reality that the CO2 content of the atmosphere will increase even more. The consequences of that are unknown but may include global warming. They should also stop opposing the few practical measures that can work, such as nuclear power.
They should also stop opposing the few practical measures that can work, such as nuclear power.
I agree very very strongly.
I also find it amusing that while the most glum predictions of the IPCC only call for a 5.5C raise occuring gradually over the next 100 years, people have a fit when there is a heat wave where the temps often are 10 or 15C over average.
If the heat waves are linked to “global warming,” why are they orders of magnitude higher?
And as others have pointed out, cold snaps are generally met with a conspicuous silence on the part of the GW hysterics.
Steve Story: These three links will provide you with plenty of GW info to chew over:
CO2 Science
Links and Facts
GW and water vapor
Having read a great deal on the subject over the last few years, I think it was summed up perfectly by “s. weasel” above.
However, if you’d like to read some of my thoughts, they are available here.
Without inveighing against the deconstructive behaviour of Bush & his neocons clique about Kyoto, and without worshipping ecology, could anyone confirm or infirm that the jet stream has recently changed its route through Europe, thus explaining the formidable storms that occurred in 1987 in Britain & Brittany, in 1999 in France, & twice in 2001 in France & in Denmark?
If this the route followed by the jet stream has actually changed, does anybody know about hte reasons?
Kodiak;
The jet stream constantly changes its route, often by over 1000 miles, and no one knows the reason why, although there are, of course, many theories.
Kodiak, a simple factual point – Congress voted unanimously against ratification of Kyoto in 1998, when Clinton was President. Hence Bush was not responsible for killing it off.
Such facts tend to get overlooked, no doubt because it makes it harder to portray Bush as the son of Satan.