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Comments 62151 to 62200:

62151. william5331 at 07:06 AM on 11 March 2012
       Peter Sinclair interview with Michael Mann
       What amazes me is that for the most part, the climate deniers tend to be professed Christians, often fundamentalists. In my reading of the "good book" I note that god gave man dominion over the beasts of the field and the fish in the sea (or was it the birds in the air). He didn't actually say take it and look after it but I think we can assume that it is what he meant. So why are they hell bent on doing everything possible to trash all this beauty and wonder. Perhaps religious fundamentalism is simply a state of mind, possibly genetically determined, that results in the inability to see evidence outside a notion that has become fixed in your mind.
62152. Chris G at 06:58 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       andylee, R. Gates, I share your conclusions.
62153. Chris G at 06:56 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       An interesting discussion. My own moment of revelation, if you will, came from growing bacteria in a petri dish in 7th grade science class. My colony went from tiny, to thriving, and eventually to overpopulation, decay and mostly death. That took about a week. It made me sad that if only the population had kept itself in check, there would have been enough gelatin to keep the colony thriving for a long time. It struck me that any population without predation would grow exponentially, consume all resources, and then collapse. Humans have managed to effectively overcome all predators. The only effective predator of man is man. Since then, I've always figured humanity was in for trouble at some point, just a question of when and what form. Currently, I think when is the lifetime of this generation of young people, who face a triple jeopardy of climate change, peak oil, and overpopulation. Food energy is a limiting factor for any species; and we have been leveraging energy from fossil fuels to produce food energy. At the same time, emissions from fossil fuels have produced a food security issue through changing the environment. It will take some portion of the energy we have available to shift to an alternate energy production paradigm; so, unavoidably energy costs will rise during the transition. There is also a rising demand for energy to produce food (and comfortable shelter) because of the rising population (and the desire of those eating mostly rice to eating more like westerners), at the same time, fossil energy that is easy to produce and use in mobile applications is in decline. (There is a reason we are drilling for oil under 2 miles of ocean, producing tar sand oil, etc.) Food and shelter at the moment take precedence in people's minds over food and shelter in the future. So, there will be great reluctance to let energy prices rise more, even if would only be temporary, in order to invest in non-fossil energy technologies. It will continue to be exceptionally challenging to convince the general population to take some lumps now in order to avoid far larger lumps in the future. It will be very hard to have a change in energy production paradigm at the same time that energy cost is already causing economic difficulties. Population growth would be a problem regardless of climate change, but it would be easier do deal with whatever limit there is on carrying capacity if that carrying capacity were not also in decline. Less productive land takes more energy (through fertilizer, irrigation, etc.) to produce the same amount of food. I believe the Arab "spring" (It's not any Spring that I would want to experience.) was triggered by rising food prices, which were at least in part a result of the Russian wheat failure, which was caused by changing climate. As heat waves become more common, crop failures will become more common. (I am skeptical of the notion that Siberian and Canadian tundra will convert to productive fields in the near term; nevermind bare rock exposed by retreating ice.) This will result in global food prices continuing to increase. Areas where food represents, say, 5% of the typical income will be largely unaffected; areas where food represents more than half the typical income will be in bad shape. I see people ask when climate change will have what negative impacts, and I think: It has already started; open your eyes.
62154. R. Gates at 06:39 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       @ #13, sauerj: Very nicely put. This part is the heart of my #10 post: "Someday real, substantial pain may slap-up us public dullards, then the argument will change from ‘belief’ to ‘physical reality’, but I believe (ha) that that day, when sufficiently significant mass pain starts to sway the facile and fickle-minded politics, is at least 25 years away." ____ I hope it is not 25 years away, as each year that passes, creates that much more work and difficulty later. Unfortunately, I do think that we are at least 5 to 10 years away, but each passing year will bring more shocks to the system and the obviousness of the situation will only increase until it drowns out the politically motivated "noise". In the meantime, the personal changes that Andy has so nicely detailed for us, are necessary to set the stage and lay the foundation for future consensus of the body politic so that action can be taken once the noise is gone.
62155. andylee at 06:15 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       We have evidence already - lots of it. Communicating it to a scientifically illiterate and unreceptive population is not easy. By the time we have extraordinary evidence, it may be too late to correct. Humanity is going to hit a wall. Why does it have to waste time working out the speed of impact *before* applying the brakes?
62156. Martin Lack at 06:05 AM on 11 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       #65 Please accept my apologies John. That was a bit hypocritical of me. Thankyou for ignoring it. Roe (2006) says: "...variations in melting precede variations in CO2. Thus, the relatively small amplitude of the CO2 radiative forcing and the absence of a lead over dV/dt both suggest that CO2 variations play a relatively weak role in driving changes in global ice volume compared to insolation variations. This certainly does not rule out CO2 as a primary cause of tropical or other climate variations, or of the apparent synchronization of the ice-age signal between hemispheres". To me, none of this could have been - or can be - used to refute what I had just stated is the consensus view (i.e. "...because natural change is temperature-driven we can be sure unnatural CO2 change will cause temperature change because radiative energy balance must always be restored...") Therefore both Lindzen and Monckton conspired to shut me up. Q.E.D.
62157. JMurphy at 05:55 AM on 11 March 2012
       It's not bad
       MarkOhio, I did not intend to over-react but if it is seen in that way then I apologise to mohyla103 for giving that impression, and hope I haven't scared him/her away ! However, I still think it excessive to make the four accusations I quoted in my previous post, without the required solid evidence to back them up. At least, I don't see the abstracts as containing such solid evidence, anyway. And I'm not saying that the accusations are necessarily definitely wrong - just unproven and, so far, carelessly made, in my opinion.
62158. John Hartz at 05:36 AM on 11 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       @Norman #70 Before you get too carried away with your analysis of NOAA tornado data, please ponder the following. “First, the existing record of tornado events is seriously problematic, even here in the US - it's much, much worse outside the US, unfortunately. The existing record of tornado occurrences simply will not support any speculation about trends in the observed events, in large part because the existing record is overwhelmingly dominated by non-meteorological artifacts in the data. I've spent the last 40 years exploring that record (along with several colleagues, including Dr. Harold Brooks). I have a number of peer-reviewed publications related to the topic of severe storm and tornado climatology. Those data simply don't allow us to make any statement whatsoever about long-term trends.” Source: “Sandboxes” by Chuck Doswell, Chuck’s Corner, March 8, 2012 To access this blog post, click here.
62159. sauerj at 04:59 AM on 11 March 2012
       James Hansen's Motivation
       Yes, very good talk! Maybe a bit too simple to sway hard-cores, but maybe simple is better! 3-Cheers to Mr. Hansen.
62160. Bud Ward at 04:51 AM on 11 March 2012
       Peter Sinclair interview with Michael Mann
       Book review complementing the video is online at http://climatemediaforum.yale.edu
62161. chuckbot at 04:40 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       I can certainly identify with a lot of this. I am a skeptic about most things, and climatology doesn't get a free pass. From childhood, I'd been environmentally conscious, including exposure to the idea of global warming. However, I was having serious doubts by the mid-2000s, due to a generally ornery personality and my difficulty believing that a rich politician like Gore seriously cares about the environment. (I still have these traits ;D ) The more I thought about it, it seemed rather incredible that human CO2 emissions were significant compared to natural sources like volcanoes. How did we know it wasn't the sun? And the climate is a complex dynamical system; how is attribution even possible in such a situation? But like I said I'm a skeptic, in the actual meaning of the word - I require that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - and I set out to find what the real story is. It turns out, I was wrong: anthropogenic emissions are orders of magnitude larger than natural ones; solar forcing does not explain observed warming; attribution is a sophisticated geophysical exercise rather than mere correlation-finding; and complex dynamicism doesn't mean acausality. I'd found the extraordinary evidence. SkepSci wasn't the only resource I used in my search, but it was certainly helpful. Thanks!
62162. chris at 04:34 AM on 11 March 2012
       It hasn't warmed since 1998
       s0nathan, the first figure is simply incorrect in two respects. (i) Analysis of the full ocean depth record indicates that the oceans have continued to take up heat at least through 2008 (e.g.): Church, J. A. et al (2011), Revisiting the Earth’s sea-level and energy budgets from 1961 to 2008, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L18601, doi:10.1029/2011GL048794. (since the AGU website is down this afternoon, I'll reproduce the abstract at the bottom of this post) (ii) Climate models don't predict a regular monotonic increase in ocean heat. abstract: "We review the sea-level and energy budgets together from 1961, using recent and updated estimates of all terms. From 1972 to 2008, the observed sea-level rise (1.8 +/- 0.2 mm yr(-1) from tide gauges alone and 2.1 +/- 0.2 mm yr(-1) from a combination of tide gauges and altimeter observations) agrees well with the sum of contributions (1.8 +/- 0.4 mm yr(-1)) in magnitude and with both having similar increases in the rate of rise during the period. The largest contributions come from ocean thermal expansion (0.8 mm yr(-1)) and the melting of glaciers and ice caps (0.7 mm yr(-1)), with Greenland and Antarctica contributing about 0.4 mm yr(-1). The cryospheric contributions increase through the period (particularly in the 1990s) but the thermosteric contribution increases less rapidly. We include an improved estimate of aquifer depletion (0.3 mm yr(-1)), partially offsetting the retention of water in dams and giving a total terrestrial storage contribution of -0.1 mm yr(-1). Ocean warming (90% of the total of the Earth's energy increase) continues through to the end of the record, in agreement with continued greenhouse gas forcing. The aerosol forcing, inferred as a residual in the atmospheric energy balance, is estimated as -0.8 +/- 0.4 W m(-2) for the 1980s and early 1990s. It increases in the late 1990s, as is required for consistency with little surface warming over the last decade. This increase is likely at least partially related to substantial increases in aerosol emissions from developing nations and moderate volcanic activity."
62163. sauerj at 04:30 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       Interesting: Figuring out how to get the globe's "political mind" to catch up with its science is an interesting subject. Personal stories are so important because, in the end, that's what it is all about! Nothing less is required to get a semi-universal acceptance on this matter, thereby getting people to really cooperate with the sacrifices that will be required. If not, then eventually the physics will demand that political & military entities take control (with or without the backing of the masses). Such a non-cooperative prospect is a troubling thought. In my limited experience amongst my little circle of manufacturing chemical engineers, it seems that once a person has PUBLICALLY made a statement casting their deep-seated conviction, they have, in doing so (whether they like it or not), FIXED themselves in immobile concrete. It seems that the very act of a public proclamation has some sort of power over the mind that affixes a person's core convictions. Even if these convictions are based on obfuscated, erroneous information (that might partially trouble a person's inner conscience), once a person publically states his/her personal-defining belief on the matter, it is very hard for them to skeptically listen, let alone accept, any contradictory information. They seem to only listen to what they want to hear and their convictions only become more entrenched. The parallels between this process with that of publically stating one's faith is not an overstatement, I think, as for most of us, who are not privy to “touching” the real data, the whole AGW argument really comes down to trust and belief. Someday real, substantial pain may slap-up us public dullards, then the argument will change from ‘belief’ to ‘physical reality’, but I believe (ha) that that day, when sufficiently significant mass pain starts to sway the facile and fickle-minded politics, is at least 25 years away. In the meantime, changing fixed minds will be a STEEP, uphill battle. To be fair, all of us are guilty of this (both sides of the AGW argument). Addressing this is, at its core, the whole idea of this 'skeptical' site; it hammers home the idea of always fighting (deep in ourselves) the possibility of getting entrenched in erroneous bias. Over my years as a chemical engineer, I have been wrong about MANY things dealing with process & management issues around our corn wetmilling plant. It is humbling to look back and think about the stupid things I screamed about, but which turned out to be non-issues (or else minor issues that we were able to overcome without the dire consequences I forecasted). This has been a good life lesson for me, humbling me to, instead, start off my thinking, on any subject, with the strong likelihood that I'm probably more WRONG than RIGHT (although, I'm probably being overly kind to myself on this ‘humble’ characterization). Good character traits are rudimentarily very important here: 1) that it is better to see 'GRAY' and not 'BLACK & WHITE', 2) swallowing one’s pride and accepting the real possibility that there might be real truth on the other side of the argument ... and, I think most important, 3) that an OPEN ARENA of COMMUNICATION is fundamentally required to changing minds. We must allow everybody to feel that they can openly voice their little, deep-seated argument s (without being ridiculed). If we instead bully people to submission, we will never really get cooperation (which, speaking for myself, is my lofty goal). The bully approach will only get people to nod their heads ‘yes’; but then, after we part company, fight me with even more vigor than before. I’m sure that all of this is at the heart of John Cook’s visionary project here. This site is really quite a ground-breaking combination of virtue mixed with social networking. As the years pass, I will be very glad to look back and remember little bright spots on this whole geopolitical endeavor. And, I am most confident that Mr. Cook’s work here, along with all the climate scientists working so hard without any thanks, will be near the top of this bright list.
62164. Andy Skuce at 04:21 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       Thanks for the comments everyone. I appreciate all the personal stories . MA Rodger: To be clear, my point about the Gore movie wasn't that it was bad (it was mostly good, I think now) but that I obsessed about one aspect of it and concluded that because one politician had framed an issue deceptively then that somehow was evidence that climate scientists generally exaggerated. Chris@5: Yes the old gradualism/catastrophism debate in geology is similar to the debate between the gradualists like Richard Dawkins and the punctuated equilibrium model of Stephen Jay Gould (although I believe that the "debate" was really almost non-existent among biologists and something of a vanity project kept alive by Gould). As I understand it the gradualist "creeps" largely prevailed over the catastrophist "jerks" in evolutionary biology as they did in geology. Sometimes the creeps overreached in geology, for example in the long and bitter debate over the origins of the Scablands in Washington State; where a catastrophic origin for these valleys is now orthodoxy.
62165. Dikran Marsupial at 03:48 AM on 11 March 2012
       It hasn't warmed since 1998
       s0nathan I suspect the response for the first figure would be to ask for it to be plotted again, this time showing the uncertainty on the observations and the spread of the model runs (which is an indication of the uncertainty in the projection). For the second image, try this article.
62166. dana1981 at 03:45 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       To give some credit to Gore, my climate 'trigger' moment was in watching An Inconvenient Truth. Before then, like Kate @1, I only had a vague notion that global warming was a problem. The film got me curious and started me researching the subject, and 6 years later I haven't stopped.
62167. KR at 03:39 AM on 11 March 2012
       Peter Sinclair interview with Michael Mann
       One important note regarding my last post - the pressure shown is the partial pressure of CO2, and since we're at ~392 ppm, we are simply not on the chart for anything but gaseous CO2 on Earth.
62168. s0nathan at 03:38 AM on 11 March 2012
       It hasn't warmed since 1998
       I am trying to find a response to the data collected by Dr David Evans. It show climate modeling has not proceeded as predicted and flattening in the ARGO data. Four fatal pieces of evidence
       Response:

       [DB] Please limit image widths to 450 pixels (now fixed).  And keep in mind this site's Comments Policy.  You deleted comment was in violation of it.

62169. KR at 03:37 AM on 11 March 2012
       Peter Sinclair interview with Michael Mann
       jyyh - "The level of stratospheric high concentration might be the one level where CO2 can freeze?" An interesting question - one that got asked at WUWT, with respect to Martian atmosphere, but was (correctly, I might add) answered. No. [Source] The lower the pressure, the lower the solidification point, and there is no location in the Earth climate with temperature/pressure where CO2 might freeze naturally.
62170. Jim Eager at 03:35 AM on 11 March 2012
       We've been through climate changes before
       Eric writes: "I could equally well argue that technology will allow humans to live comfortably in 130F desert or in high heat indexes or in -70F Antarctica." True, given sufficient energy. There's the rub.
62171. Norman at 03:32 AM on 11 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       JR @ 66 I do not mean to ignore issues brought up. If you are talking about the tornado issue you brought up in earlier posts, I have not ignored it, I am working on a database using the NOAA web page, but it takes awhile to get the data. The other posters I have responded to them.
       Moderator Response: [JH] With all due repsect, you have not responded to all of the questions that have been posed to you.
62172. MarkOhio at 03:22 AM on 11 March 2012
       It's not bad
       I want to point out another peer-reviewed article, which I think is quite relevant to this thread. It is a research review assessing the economic impacts of climate change (Tol 2009). Here is the link [link] Some findings from the paper: 1. Negative economic impact is more likely for temperature increase exceeding 2 degrees C (minimum estimated in IPCC AR4 for year 2100). See figure 1 in the paper. 2. Table 2 shows estimated carbon taxes (per metric ton) that would compensate for the expected future economic loss. In Tol's words: "The best available knowledge—which is not very good—is given in Table 2. A government that uses the same 3 percent discount rate for climate change as for other decisions should levy a carbon tax of $25 per metric ton of carbon (modal value) to $50/tC (mean value). A higher tax can be justified by an appeal to the high level of risk, especially of very negative outcomes, not captured in the standard estimates (Weitzman, forthcoming)."
       Moderator Response: [RH] Embedded link that was breaking page format.
62173. MarkOhio at 02:59 AM on 11 March 2012
       It's not bad
       JMurphy: I think you may be over-reacting to mohyla103. Questions raised are reasonable, and are still valid based on info reported in the abstracts. Remember, those of us outside of the paywall don't always have free access to the entire paper. Also, mohyla103 reacts reasonable to KRs evidence presented @182, suggesting motives are in line with seeking the truth.
62174. R. Gates at 02:09 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       This is an excellent essay, and traces well the individual changes in perception that occur when one begins to really grasp what the science is saying about anthropogenic climate change. I happen to be of the opinion that humans began altering the climate of Holocene sooner (many thousands of years ago) rather than later, and thus the Anthropocene started well before our modern mass fossil fuel induced changes, which only have radically accelerated those changes. But the bigger issue is really not about individuals changing their minds about this topic, but rather, the perception and will of the body politic. This is a much more complicated issue as it is not subject to the same influence of reason and appeal to ultimate facts of science, but rather is much more subject to emotions and the mentality of the herd, and as we've learned throughout history, herds seldom do the right thing, but rather, must often be forced to by the shear power of nature. Thus, while we might hope that the herd of the body politic will do the right thing when it comes to anthropogenic climate alteration, we should expect it will take a series of increasingly strong nudges from an increasingly chaotic and out of balance climate system to move the herd in the right directions. Appeals to reason will not stop a stampeding herd from heading toward a cliff, but a few strong bolts of lightning directly in their path may nudge them in a different direction.
62175. jzk at 02:09 AM on 11 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Martin Lack @62, Martin, you said that you "attempted to rebut his obfuscation and was silenced by Lord Monckton." So then, you must have been ready to rebut it then, so why not rebut it now? What is the obfuscation of Lindzen and Roe?
62176. Tom Curtis at 01:54 AM on 11 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       Norman @66, I am not interested in playing your game of erecting arbitrary standards such that, no matter how compelling the information, you will not accept if if it does not meet your arbitrary standard. That is particularly the case as you have been proven in the past that you are quite willing to simply change the standard when it is shown the information meet it after all. Indeed, you have done just exactly that. Your claim was clearly that Munich Re unreliable because its geophysical catastrophes where "relatively flat" whereas the actual number of earthquakes as determined by the USGS had increased significantly. But when it turns out that they had both increased by the same amount, you suddenly shift the goal posts. Now the argument is that the Munich Re data can't be reliable because when you eyeball the data you can't detect a correlation. Well, as it happens, I didn't eyeball the data. I just used the spreadsheet function to determine the Pearson's Correlation Coefficient (r), which turns out to be 0.384, indicating a moderate positive correlation. No doubt the target will now shift again from correlation, to at least 90% correlation, or some such. The simple fact of the matter is we are looking at areas in which there is very little coordinated high quality data. Therefore you use the data which is available. You don't just throw up your hands and make ignorance your profession. Sorry, reasonable people make use of the data available. In contrast, you do throw up your hands and make ignorance your profession. Indeed, it is very noticable that when clear cut data is available on the topic of extreme weather events (which normally draws you like a fly) you go completely missing. Apparently you are not interested in discussion when there is something to learn, only when you have an opportunity to spread your brand of fud.
62177. Doc Snow at 01:30 AM on 11 March 2012
       The Monckton Maneuver
       Devastating. Most amazing of all, perhaps, is the reaction from WUWT--"black is white." Doublethink is alive, and much too well for comfort.
62178. Martin Lack at 01:19 AM on 11 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       #62 Not yet. But I know 100's of genuine climate scientists that most certainly could. Meanwhile, I am catching-up with them fast.
62179. Daniel Bailey at 01:14 AM on 11 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       @ muoncounter All those points and then this one: In a comment long-since deleted, Norman also strongly (and with crude language) challenged the integrity of Munich Re itself. Those of us with memories beyond yesterday read that comment and remember. And that is but one brick in the wall of doubt against himself that Norman has self-erected. His agenda: Categorically ignoring anything that differs from his predetermined supposition, fie the evidence to the contrary.
62180. muoncounter at 01:02 AM on 11 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       Norman, "It is not a change in belief that is needed. It is a change in information source." As usual, you've focused your laser-like approach on a single information source. You're forgetting all of the other information that shows conclusively that weather/climate events, not geophysical events, form the basis for increasing catastrophe counts. What you're doing (again) is to presume you are right (based on 'I made a graph') and those who study these data for a living are wrong or somehow biased. That's the common theme: 'I can't see what they see in the data, so I am right and they are wrong.' Why are we expected to accept that you aren't similarly biased? "The only acceptable scientific approach to see if events are increasing is to give actual numbers and then determine if those numbers are indeed increasing." No, the scientific approach is to first understand that scatter in data obscures trends. Second, look for a trend if there is some underlying mechanism that warrants a trend. Third, look to those who knows something about the question and see if there's some agreement with your findings. Fourth, put it all in context, which is change in climate. The fact that you refuse to do those things and continue to pound the table with 'I am right and they are wrong' is why people to lose patience and suspect your motive.
62181. Yvan Dutil at 00:34 AM on 11 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       I don't remember when I became first aware of the global warming question. I have done my degree in astrophysics and it was obvious to me that increasing CO2 will increase the temperature. My first mental shock occurred in 1998, when I was doing my first postdoc in atmospheric remote sensing. I had to use MODTRAN for my job. In MODTRAN, CO2 concentration is a variable, by default it use the pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm, but I needed the actual value for 1998, which was 365 ppm. This was disturbing. Meanwhile, I became aware of the But, the real eye opener came in November 2005, when I was participating to a Bar des Sciences about the search of extraterrestrial life. At some point in the debate, someone brought the question of the prioritization of resources given the environmental problems including climate changes. At that point a paleontologist took the microphone and climate that climate change was true and totally unnatural. She was followed by a specialist of meteorites, who supported her position. This was shocking for me because they were geologist who are supposed not care about climate change and they were clearly worried and deeply concerned. But the real tipping point was this paper of Gutowski et al. (1998) described in the blog of New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2008_04_01_archive.html). This paper demonstrated that even the homeless have an unsustainable environmental trace due importance of infrastructures in developed countries. Later that year, I became a candidate for the Quebec Green party. With the peak oil, climate change, the general loss of biodiversity and at least another dozen a civilization threatening problems that nobody speak about, my effort are likely to be vain. Nevertheless, I will be able to stake my grand children in the eyes and not be shame to tell them I try to do something.
62182. jzk at 00:32 AM on 11 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       Martin Lack@61, Lindzen was halfway through explaining Roe's findings when you interrupted him to "rebut his obfuscation." Could you rebut his and Roe's "obfuscation" here? Thanks!
62183. Paul from VA at 23:45 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       I was probably in the lukewarmer camp for most of my life, accepting that AGW existed, but not that the magnitude was anything to be worried about until November 2009. The catalyst for change? Ironically enough, "Climategate." As a science grad student, it was patently obvious to me that the hacked emails did not show the vast conspiracy alluded to by the right-wing media in the USA. So I wound up reading up on actual climate science from Realclimate and here (and a bit of tamino as well). The most scientifically convincing thing to me was the SkS rebuttal of the "Global warming=UHI" myth. The fact that climate scientists had tried and tested multiple clever ways of ruling out UHI convinced me that one side was making research and the other was making excuses.
62184. chris at 23:41 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       folke_kelm, I am curious about your reference to Jan Veizer and his apparent non-acceptance of plate tectonics. I guess you have first-hand experience that informs your comment on this. It's not really that big a deal but it does give some insight into the nature of knowledge and how one acquires one's world view, and Veizer's an interesting example. In another context he has at various (or the same?) times both supported a view of Earth surface temperature variability in deep time that is (i) contrary to the evidence-base that informs the scientific consensus (he suggests a dominant role for cosmic ray influence on surface temperature), and (ii) entirely consistent with the evidence-based consensus view (i.e. a major role for greenhouse gas variations). I've always assumed that Dr. Veizer likes being controversial, provocative and embracing novel ideas, none of which are bad things! But I do wonder whether he really does doubt the fundamental role of plate tectonics in Earth history, and might not be being a little provocative (e.g. in order to stimulate some insightful thought on the part of his students!). Where this has a deeper importance (and now I am drifting towards the subject of the recent Lindzen Misrepresentation thread), is how a tendency to be scientifically provocative can drift towards something less admirable. I've similarly assumed that Dr. Lindzen's early pronouncements about climate (that increased tropospheric temperatures would cause the upper atmosphere to dry and thus act as a negative feedback; the negative feedback associated with his "Iris hypothesis" etc.), were examples of provocativeness. Unfortunately, if provocative ideas strike a chord with those that have rather less noble agendas, then the support and adulation one may receive from these scientifically dubious quarters, may cause one to become rather too fond of one's ideas even as the evidence accrues against them. At that point "provocativeness" may drift into something less savoury including a tendency to misrepresentation of one's own and other's science in order to maintain a facade of authority... ...this doesn't apply to Dr. Veizer, but it may well do in the case of a very tiny number of elderly scientists who are rather idolised in some quarters for making demonstrably false pronouncements about contemporary climate science that go far beyond being "provocative"...
62185. Lloyd Flack at 23:19 PM on 10 March 2012
       We've been through climate changes before
       Eric, Eventually yes, but will technological changes arrive in time to prevent massive harm. There is a saying "Don't schedule breakthroughs."
62186. Lloyd Flack at 23:08 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       My background is mostly statistics and biology with a good general knowledge of other scientific and mathematics related fields. I first heard about the danger of global warming in the 1970s. The arguments for it looked convincing. It seemed to be physically inevitable. But the question was how much and how quickly. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. Later I wondered how long a data stretch we would need to tease the signal out of the noise. As an Australian and working a lot of the time on water environmental problems I was very aware of the large natural fluctuations that we had. I thought we would need data over a very long period before the magnitude of the trend could be reliably estimated. I did not realize the magnitude of the trend and I overlooked the fact that global temperatures were what counted and their variability would be much less than that of Australian temperatures. I was also wary about predictions in general especially those from complicated models. Primarily I was interested in other things and did not take the time to look closely at climate science. I was aware that climatologists were becoming more certain that current trends were dangerous and something had to be done. Since unless I have a good reason to believe otherwise I trust the judgment of scientists in their field I thought they were probably right but not having found out much in the way of details I felt no sense of urgency. I was sceptical of those denying the trends and could see the political motivation. What got my attention was when the predictions of the models which had clashed with tropospheric temperature records turned out to be right. The records had a bias. This successful prediction impressed me and gave me much more confidence in then modeling. I started looking up what I could find on climate science. Real Climate was the most useful source. I discovered that modern climate science gave explanations that fit together and were as comprehensive as could reasonably be expected. In particular they made sense of paleoclimate. I found out about the footprints of different sources of warming and how what we had was that expect from greenhouse gases. Also I found that the other things which could have brought about a trend had changed little over the past half century. I found out that the temperature sensitivity could be divided into four components. Two, those of non precipitating greenhouse gases and of water vapour, could have ballpark estimates of the equilibrium sensitivity calculated fairly simply and reliably. Those were nailed down hard and were big enough to be dangerous unless a net negative feedback reduced them a lot. I found out that most of the uncertainty came from other atmospheric feedbacks especially clouds. These were thought to be small positive feedbacks but could be small negative or larger positive feedbacks. The thing is for there not to be a danger these had to be big negative feedbacks and there was no evidence that I could see of this. Then there were the non atmospheric feedbacks, primarily albedo and natural greenhouse gas releases brought about by the heat. There was no way these were going to be anything but positive and substantial even though there was no way to get a good estimate of them. While the estimates of the sensitivity had an annoyingly large range the all roughly coincided. And they had been obtained by a variety of methods. This gave me confidence that the true value was unlikely to be far from the point estimates. I realized that climate change was going to be a major danger to future generations. I was not thinking that it was going to affect us much but that we had a responsibility not to wreck the world for them. Most of the predictions of danger were for fifty or so years down the track. But over the past couple of years especially it has become plain that the danger is hitting earlier than expected. The predictions of the ultimate state have not been changing much. The predictions of the speed of change and consequences have. Ice sheets won't slowly melt in place. They will collapse. We should have expected that from the way that glacials end much more quickly than they start. It looked like extreme weather would be hitting us earlier than expected, like right now. And there are fears of possible methane releases. I don't know how grave these are. Sorry this post has been so long but I think it is too complicated to cover in a shorter post.
62187. chris at 22:53 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       Andy, the essential similarities of the underyling "tenets" of geology with those of evolutionary biology are interesting since the latter also incorporates the fundamental roles of "deep time" and "gradualism" ("uniformitarianism" is rather taken for granted since it's beyond question that the molecular mechanisms of genetics are essentially uniform through time). The major differences (which is hugely relevant to consideration of the climate change and its consequences) are the roles of "catastrophism" and "adaptation" in evolutionary biology. I'm sure that modern courses in Earth sciences now consider the roles of catastrophism since catastrophic events are part of the deep time geological record (even if catastrophic events may be mere "blips" of which the gradualist geological progression is largely indifferent). But these are fundamental to biology as can be seen by the association of major extinctions with corresponding evidence for massive tectonic (or extraterrestrial impact) events, raised temperatures, raised CO2 levels, ocean anoxia etc. So the question is not whether events involving massive alterations in the Earth's atmosphere, surface and oceans do or do not profoundly affect the ability of species to survive (since the evidence shows strongly that they do), but the extent to which the effects on the atmosphere, surface and oceans of the contemporary astonishing release of greenhouse gases are going to pressure the ability of contempory species (including us) to adapt. Perhaps the answer to the problem of educational "bias" on the part of the broad geology community is for Earth science courses to include strong elements of the association between the geological and biological records in deep time, since these are fundamentally intertwined to the extent that causality acts profoundly in both directions. In fact I expect that good Earth science departments do this, and one only has to look at recent(ish) TV series (e.g. the various BBC series presented by Ian Stewart on Earth history) to see that this association is both fascinating and hugely instructive of our present circumstances. In this respect I would strongly recommend Earth Story (presented by Aubury Manning): This is a truly inspiring and instructive account of the interplay of the gological and biological in Earth history and is presented in such a straightforward and scientific manner to make one almost weep with intellectual pleasure!
62188. Hopeful at 21:56 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       Sometimes I have tried to explain this to people confused by the different opinions of scientists they have heard. I have tried to explain that everyone has bias including people with scientific training, sometimes we don't know what we don't know - it is just one of our human limitations/ frailties. Thinking about AGW needs to be based on understandings derived from decades of peer reviewed reseach across multiple fields of science which are summarised for the average citizen by Academies of Science around the world. What can be done to get the media and politicians to be really clear on this, to put aside opinion and concentrate on communicating the evidence-based understandings in regard to AGW.
62189. Rob Painting at 21:06 PM on 10 March 2012
       Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
       Bruce - "Does anyone out there have any idea how to get 7,8, or 9 billion people to voluntarily comply?" People can either change, or the planet will make them change. The laws of physics cannot be repealed. "Is anyone reading this trying to live on less than one ton of Co2?' Perhaps your question should be addressed to those who seek to thwart the move to sustainable forms of energy? Everyone else isn't addicted to the idea of burning fossil fuels for energy.
62190. Eric (skeptic) at 20:49 PM on 10 March 2012
       We've been through climate changes before
       In the near term there is adaptation. Humans are not cattle but some of the same principles apply, http://www.aseanbiotechnology.info/Abstract/21025697.pdf such as cooling, diet and genetic alterations. The long term is 100% speculation. I could equally well argue that technology will allow humans to live comfortably in 130F desert or in high heat indexes or in -70F Antarctica.
62191. Bernard J. at 20:14 PM on 10 March 2012
       James Hansen's Motivation
       If science doesn't move the denialists, perhaps they should consider the escalating cost of action once even they can no longer deny the truth: 1) 3% CO₂ emissions reduction per annum had reduction started in 2005 2) 6% CO₂ emissions reduction per annum if reduction starts in 2013 3) 15% CO₂ emissions reduction per annum if reduction starts in 2022. As Hansen observes, the last is next to impossible - if voluntary control is desired...
62192. folke_kelm at 20:06 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       Nice to read a post from really geological point of view. It is very easy for e geoscientist to have an optimistic bias. We geologists are educated to think in geological times. We know, that humans are not at all able to "destroy the earth". If we speak with people who are not educated this way, we often forget, that we have a totally different point of view, and often we are not able to see our own shortcomings and our own bias. I have a very optimistic point of view myself, reagrding to geological times. It does not matter what we do with the earth if we take some 10 million of years from now. I had to learn that we are not speaking about earth history but about human civilisation, and that is a totally different thing. Further you maust have in mind, that just in the geosciences there has been a tremendous advancement in knowledge over the past 20 years. When i was at university from 1982 to 1989 there were still many teachers not accepting plate tectonics. I have met two of these people during my own student time and later, (one of them Jan Veizer, he is still out there). Geology as science has gone through a paradigm shift from describing science to experimental an d more exact science like physics and chemistry. During my education mathematics was not included in geology. Now it is a required part of the basic education world over. You must have in mind, that there are many teachers still at work, who have grown up in the old world of geology and unfortunately stuck in their conception of the world, still teaching it to the students, and you must always have in mind that students only are humans, often not able to overcome their adopted conception. This is, why so many geologists reject the theory of global warming due CO2.
62193. MA Rodger at 20:03 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       I would agree with AndyS's poor view of Gore's "Inconvient Truth" which I feel only preaches to the converted & doesn't reach across to the 'disbelievers'. Then a film had a similar counter-productive input into my own 'conversion'. In common with those that watched it with me, I found Channel 4's "The Greenhuose Conspiracy," (a 1990 precursor of "The Great Global Warming Swindle") entirely unconvincing. Its message of a mythical AGW that was nothing to worry about was so poor that it converted a roomful of potential skeptics into the exact opposite.
62194. Martin Lack at 18:57 PM on 10 March 2012
       Lindzen's London Illusions
       #60 A brilliant slide-by-slide de-bunk posted by John P.Reisman over on Real Climate has prompted me to clarify myself further: Whilst I am extremely grateful to John P. Reisman for taking the time to detail all of this so clearly, I am bound to indulge in a little bit of “I told you so”. For the benefit of those who may have skated-over any or all of my previous comments, with reference to the video of the Q&A session (very kindly posted by Repealtheact.org onto my Blog), let me explain: 1. I was there. 2. I saw the whole thing. 3. I could not believe what Lindzen was doing. 4. I blew my chance to ask a question by seeking to correct Lindzen’s obfuscation of the Milankovitch CO2/Temperature time lag; and why it is now the other way around for anthropogenic climate disruption. 5. I believe Lindzen deliberately interrupted to me to stop me talking. 6. I attempted to rebut his obfuscation and was silenced by Lord Monckton. 7. Lindzen can apologise and re-insert as many graphs as he likes; but he is merely digging himself an ever-bigger hole (IMHO). 8. Lindzen has even now re-inserted the “missing” graph of Keeling v Temp., the screenshot image of which I have on my blog along with the following caption: “If you stretched the temperature axis far enough, they would have correlated perfectly. Therefore, this [not now] ‘missing’ graph neither proves nor disproves anything.” 9. This implies that Lindzen doesn’t even appreciate why it is so meaningless and misleading. 10. This is why I was so gobsmacked by the whole thing. It was either complete incompetence or transparently disingenuous.
       Response:

       [DB] Fixed link (the link was right but you were missing the "r" in "href").

       Preview, preview, preview...  :)

62195. Norman at 18:54 PM on 10 March 2012
       A Sunburnt Country
       Tom Curtis @65 Thank you for understanding my point. I do greatly appreciate that effort. I would concede to your point except it does not seem to be established in the data provided. I can't link to my excel sheet but I did enlarge the Munic Re graph to the point where 2" = 200 counts on the Munich Re chart. Then to the nearest 16th it determined the actual Munich Re count. Here is my data. Left column is earthquake number (from USGS web page) starting at 1980 and ending at 2011. The right column is a close approximation of actual Munich Re numbers given in the OT chart of natural catastrophes. 119.... 83.3 103.... 66.64 95.... 74.97 140.... 108.29 99.... 66.64 124.... 83.3 95.... 99.96 123.... 91.63 101.... 99.96 86.... 116.62 127.... 141.61 112.... 108.29 179.... 116.62 149.... 124.95 159.... 116.62 203.... 133.28 164.... 133.28 136.... 166.6 129.... 141.61 134.... 141.61 173.... 166.6 142.... 99.96 143.... 116.62 155.... 99.96 159.... 108.29 151.... 108.29 153.... 124.95 196.... 124.95 180.... 116.62 161.... 99.96 175.... 108.29 205.... 91.63 When I make a line graph of the two number sets in Excel I do not see a correlation between the two lines. It is not a change in belief that is needed. It is a change in information source. One that has no basis in populaton or property values. An indepentdent variable. Actual tornado counts, actual earthaquake numbers, actual counted numbers of hurricanes, actual floods, actual droughts. I am mainly requesting information that has no bias and let the information determine the reality without any potential for bias. I still do not understand why this request is met with hostility or accusations of dishonesty or intentional misleading of potential visitors to this web site. The Munich Re report uses property and population in their determination of catastrophe. It seems possible that they are lumping all catastrophe categories together in this graph, from the smallest to largest so it is possible that a person killed by a lightning strike is given the same weight as a massive flood, hurricane or earthquake. All are equally counted as one catastrophe. This approach does not seem logical, reasonable or informative. The only acceptable scientific approach to see if events are increasing is to give actual numbers and then determine if those numbers are indeed increasing. I do not see why this request is considered "trolling" bad or inappropriate for this scientifically based web site. If it is can anyone provide an explanation as to why this constitutes unacceptable behavior?
       Moderator Response: [JH] You raise issues, those issues are responded to, and you ignore those repsonses. You are either playing a game with us, or you have blinders on. Either way, you are exhausting our patience.
62196. climatesight at 18:02 PM on 10 March 2012
       Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
       Andy, this is a FABULOUS piece. It is so eloquently written and well thought out. My own story of discovery is much less remarkable. Going through grade school I vaguely knew there was some problem called global warming, but almost nothing else. I was lucky enough to have my first real introduction to the subject from a climate scientist at one of the local universities, during a day long environmental workshop for high school students that I went to on a whim. His presentation was, in retrospect, a total life changer for me (given how much of my time I spend on climate science, and the fact that I am beginning a career in the field). I remember that my thoughts on the presentation were not "we're all going to die" as much as "wow, this research is really interesting!" The very fact that oxygen isotopes could be used as proxy data for temperature sort of blew my mind. Previously I had enjoyed science in school, but mostly because it was so nicely organized and I have always enjoyed classification (apparently my mum first suspected I would be a scientist when she noticed me sorting the contents of my Christmas stocking into categories). This was the first area of applied science, however, that really appealed to me. Previously I had always liked theory and concepts more than applications - ie, the periodic table over chemistry labs, even if explosions were involved. So I approached climate change like a scientist, rather than an activist, from the very beginning, and have more or less remained that way since. I think the only obvious psychological influence on my position was the fact that I was brought up to trust experts like doctors and scientists. The credibility spectrum, in a very crude form, was present in my mind at a very young age :) Kate http://climatesight.org
62197. jyyh at 17:48 PM on 10 March 2012
       Peter Sinclair interview with Michael Mann
       Thanks much Tom Curtis, this got me searching for the vertical profiles for CO2 in the troposphere as well, it turns out they change pretty much with seasons, as should be expected for the biosphere uptake/release: Some of the middle/upper tropospheric level variation is probably due clouds (CO2 gets dissolved in cloud droplets). The level of stratospheric high concentration might be the one level where CO2 can freeze?
62198. Rob Honeycutt at 17:11 PM on 10 March 2012
       James Hansen's Motivation
       Best talk I've seen Hansen give. And I totally dig the hat.
62199. Tom Curtis at 15:28 PM on 10 March 2012
       Peter Sinclair interview with Michael Mann
       jyyh @10, with regard to the stratosphere, Bischof et al 1985 write:

       "Although many measurements of the abundance of CO2 in the troposphere have been made, knowledge of its stratospheric abundances and variability is sparse. Here we report mid-latitude vertical profiles of CO2, up to 35 km, measured in 1979, 1982 and 1984 by analysing cryogenically collected balloon samples supplemented by air samples taken aboard aircraft. CO2 mixing ratios are not constant with altitude but rather decrease by ~7 p.p.m.v. (parts per 106 by volume) from the tropopause to the mid-stratosphere. The growth rate of the atmospheric CO2 abundance caused by anthropogenic emission, which varies between 1.0 and 1.5 p.p.m.v. yr–1 at ground level1, is also observed at all stratospheric heights up to 35 km. The shape of the profiles suggests that excess CO2 above 20 km enters the stratosphere through tropical upwelling rather than mid-latitude diffusion. The time lag of this height region with respect to the tropospheric CO2 level is ~5 yr."

       These results have been confirmed by Daube et al, 2002: Original caption:

       "Fig. 7. (a) CO2 and (b) N2O from the ER-2 (light crosses) and OMS (dark filled circles) intercomparison flights of 23 Jan 2001. ER-2 data are shown only for the descent into Kiruna, Sweden, since that occurred at the same time the balloon was ascending from Esrange. The profiles were separated by 1.25°–3.75° lat and 1°–3° lon, with the largest separation at the highest altitudes"

       You may also want to see Carlotti et al, 2007 for a more detailed picture. The pools of "CO2 on the ground" have come from the overturning of volcanic lakes, which brings the bottom water with a very high concentration of CO2 to the surface and releases it to the atmosphere in a cool form. Direct volcanic emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere are unlikely to form volcanic pools IMO because the gas will be warm, and hence rise.
62200. Composer99 at 15:26 PM on 10 March 2012
       We've been through climate changes before
       MattJ, as a matter of taxonomical convention, the one instance of Homo sapiens in the article, if written correctly, would be written as I have done in this comment. Minor nitpick of a nitpick...

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