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Russ R. at 12:38 PM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
As I've written before... one at a time Ladies and Gentlemen.
I have a few things on my to-do list than prevent me from devoting all my time to this site. I'll do my best to get to each of you, but there's only one of me to go around.
Dikran Marsupial,
I'm sorry you feel that I'm not giving you adequate attention. I gave a list of 12 question that were specifically not covered in the "97% Consensus" from Cook et al. (2013), but were all part a critical chain of reasoning to argue for policy action. I wasn't making an argument for or against any of the 12 questions. My point, which I'll repeat again, is that any reasonable person who fully accepts the "97% Consensus" could still oppose policy action for at least a dozen other reasons. Opposing policy action does not make one a "denier" or part of the "3%" of dissenters. Your desire to debate each of the 12 questions was not germaine to the point I was making. Sorry.
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YubeDude at 12:30 PM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
@23
Well who is responsible for the creation and use of these "technological systems" if not humans?
That is like blaming over population on abstracts such as sexual deisre and the biological imperative but not the humans who are actually making all those babies. -
denisaf at 11:44 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
This discussion of climate change would be better if it was not being distorted by the comment that humans have caused climate change. The reality is that the operations of technological systems have disrupted natural operations, including the climate and the ocean. Emphasising that reality would undermine the arguments of the climate change skeptics.
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Steve Metzler at 09:35 AM on 17 February 2014How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
Glenn explains it pretty well here, in terms that anyone familiar with the subject can understand. But a few readers are still having trouble coming to grips with this, so I refer you to a masterful science communicator, Spencer Weart:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
The takeaway paragraph from that article is:
"What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas molecules means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers. Those are colder layers, so they do not radiate heat as well. The planet as a whole is now taking in more energy than it radiates (which is in fact our current situation). As the higher levels radiate some of the excess downwards, all the lower levels down to the surface warm up. The imbalance must continue until the high levels get hot enough to radiate as much energy back out as the planet is receiving."
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Wol at 09:24 AM on 17 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
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afjje1: Agreed completely. The trouble is that, reading the preposterous posts that are the majority of the "debate" in populist blogs shows that the level of basic scientific ignorance is such that meaningful debate is impossible.
When straw man arguments trump facts you know that you are on the losing side.
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Leto at 06:48 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
"Well for me a period without statistically significant warming that was sufficiently long for the test to have statistical power of 0.95 or more, during which atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased at the current rate or higher, and in the absence of changes in external forcings (such as volcanic or solar forcing), or known sources of internal climate variability (such as ENSO) that could plausibly explain the lack of warming."
This would be a sufficient condition for taking notice and wondering at the cause of the observed pause, but surely not a sufficient condition for overturning all the other evidence in favour of AGW. If, by 'statistically significant', you simply mean p<0.05, then this merely means that similar results would have had a <5% probability of occurring 'by chance' in some idealised (nonexistent) world where AGW was false and there was no underlying warming trend. Given the a priori evidence for AGW in the real world, the likelihood that the 'significant' pause had appeared by chance (or because of some unanticipated/unknown confounding factor) would be much higher than 5% (possibly closer to 99%). You certainly would not be 95% confident that AGW had been overturned.
Dikran, I know you know this, but others might not.
That aside, Russ is clearly playing rhetorical games. The vast web of evidence in favour of AGW would require a matching web of counter-evidence, plus some explanation of why all the evidence and theory to date had pointed the wrong way. Several basic tenants of physics would have to be revised, for a start.
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michael sweet at 03:40 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
President Obama and the Mayor of Los Angeles discuss the severe economic effects California is having to deal with today because of Climate Change newspaper report here. Obama discussed these yesterday in the Central Vally of California, the producer of 1/2 the fruit and vegetables in the USA, threatened by unprecedented drought. This will be a multi billion dollar disaster this year. How long will it last?
Russ:
You did not address my data showing that you were comparing a normal cold month in the USA to record setting heat in Australia, the USA and record floods in England. Do you really feel these events are comaprable? It is a waste of time to continue our discussion if you feel normal cold equals record setting heat and floods. What do you think about the multi-billion dollar drought in California, predicted in advance by scientists?
I get the impression that you feel that the propaganda they put on at WUWT equals the data discussed here at Skeptical Science. If you want to continue to post here you need to review the data better.
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mgardner at 03:33 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
@18Rob Honeycutt
Rob, I was going to say something similar; I would be really worried if DM's scenario were to occur. The choice: Question a ton of physics, or start looking for a mysterious phenomenon sucking energy out of the system. (Interdimensional Klingons?)
But your last sentence is really salient for interactions with the Russ's of the world. I have yet to see any of them willing to engage in a concrete discussion about a specific mitigation policy. I like to use rooftop solar as a thought exercise, but pick anything, like a carbon tax, and you will simply follow the same old path of evasion, rhetorical fallacy, and finally appeal to ideology and emotion. (It's Socialism!) And this from the side of the political spectrum that claims knowledge of economics and markets...
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afjje1 at 03:31 AM on 17 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
This site is brilliant; this discussion is vital. I'm eager to hear this community's response to a few thoughts.
1. As others have noted, communication contexts vary considerably. What constitutes effective communication over family dinners is not the same as what constitutes effective communication in publicized debates, or public exchanges with informed opponents, or with uninformed opponents, or in classroom lectures, or through songs and poetry. Abraham's suggestions really do seem on target for exchanges with the most reasonable and best informed climate skeptics - those who genuinely think the climate science is on their side and try to defend this view using good faith reasoning.
2. I don't see much point in trying to figure out a communication strategy that will "work" with climate change "skeptics" in general. What constitutes a successful exchange, what motivates "skeptics", and what they believe are too varied for there to be any silver bullet argument that would move most interlocutors or listeners in the same general direction. The metaphor may be getting tired, but we need a buckshot approach. Abraham's contribution is part of that buckshot, but there is more. I recently saw a post from a park ranger who moved audiences best by using humor. Many people probably saw the viral video of the woman who claimed to have been convinced by the film Chasing Ice. I believe we need to build a knowledge base of what works and doesn't work (with clarity about what "working"means) in a variety of specific contexts.
3. That said, there are two "general" strategies I would like to suggest and get your thoughts about.
First, I would like to see the scientific community (perhaps via bodies like AAAS) take a stand generally frowning upon media debates of the Nye vs. Blackburn, Hoskins vs. Lawson sort. The media's false balance problem and the inherent disadvantage of debate format mentioned by Phil#37 is well understood from creationist debates. Debates are specifically about winning, not enlightening, not connecting, or communicating, and we have known about the advantages of sophistry for millenia. It would be great to see a lot more science education in the media, but that will have to involve refusal to participate in spectacles that have no significant educational value along with insistence on setting the terms of the formats that are acceptable.
Second, I would like to see the scientific community get together with the field of conflict resolution to put together a high profile national media campaign whose specific goal is to break the taboo and polarization paralyzing public discussion of climate change. It's not my area of expertise, but my sense is that agreement on the groundrules of discussion is necessary for polarized parties to enter into good faith dialogue with one another. This might mean pushing the conversation back several levels. What would you count as impartial expertise? What do you think constitutes as evidence of bias? The public seems deeply uninformed that there is such a thing as peer review or how it works, and therefore defenseless against conspiracy theories.
With Abraham, I think most people (not all people) are well meaning. Like many commentors, I think most of the public has been duped about the degree of scientific consensus and so fail to accept the scientific basics that more informed skeptics accept. Like Abraham, I believe on the basis of research (as well as experience with my own students) that many people come around when they realize how extensive the agreement is. And like Abraham, I think we also share many fundamental values across the chasm of disagreement.
But that chasm is clearly deepened and widened by profound distrust between the climate science/advocacy and climate skeptic/doubter communities. Neither facts nor brilliantly devised values-based arguments will rebuild that trust. I suspect we'll need a lot of first-hand direct conversation with people who don't trust those on "our side." But that will require the courage to trust that "they" care about the world and about the truth as much as we do. (Rather in the way that the rapid shift in public opinion on gay marriage has had so much to do with people having the courage to come out, trusting family and friends not to shun them. It's hard to distrust gays as a group when your sister is a lesbian and your coworker is a gay man.) One of the things I admire most about Abraham's post is that it helps demonstrate what that trust might look like.
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Dikran Marsupial at 03:27 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R wrote: "I was ignoring your question because it had nothing to do with Cook et al. (2013) whereas Obama's tweet did. "
I'm sorry, but that is utterly disingenuous, you wrote:
"The "97% consensus" that's you're reporting has nothing to say regarding any of the following, each of which is an essential link in the chain of reasoning that corrective policy action must be taken."
followed by a list of twelve elements of that chain which you claimed to have doubts about. Thus asking you for the reasons for your doubt about one of those links is relevant to the discussion of the concensus, because you raised it as an agrument against the meaningfulness of the concensus.
Russ also wrote "That is an excellent, very well presented answer. But I'd argue that it's only a start. Warming itself isn't the justification for action. The effects of warming and their impacts on the environment, economies and societies are the reason to consider taking action."
So it would seem that Russ R was not actually interested in the answer to the question, as he has done nothing with it, just used it as a springboard to ask another (you asked "what observations...", so wandering off into effects and economics is just evasion).
I'm sorry, but evading questions and asking rhetorical questions and then not doing anything with the ansers is blatant trolling.
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How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
The absorption band of CO2 centred at 667 cm-1 (15 microns) grows wider as higher concentrations of CO2 make the atmosphere opaque at frequencies where it previously was quite transparent. This moves the altitude of heat loss in the “wings” of the CO2 band from the low or middle troposphere up to the cold tropopause while the central part of the band moves to the warmer stratosphere.
These spectra (made with MODTRAN) haven’t taken into account the rising surface temperature, the higher tropopause and the cooling stratosphere caused by more CO2. The latter will partly offset the growing spike in the middle of the absorption band and thus restrict the heat loss to space even more than shown here.
The impact from CO2 is very far from saturated!
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:53 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ... Note that there is far more to DM's answer on the falsifiability of man-made global warming.
Even if all that DM lays out were to happen (95% confidence range, no other external forcings, etc.) there would still be a clear problem with discarding the theory since the theory explains far more than just modern warming. CO2 and greenhouse gas theory explains a whole ton of other stuff including amplification of glacial-interglacial cycles, PETM, snowball earth and more.
So, not only would one be in a position of needing a new theory to explain modern warming, we'd also have to explain a long list of other things that currently fit neatly into CO2 theory.
The theory is quite clearly falsifiable. The issue is that a theory as solid as this is extremely unlikely to be falsified.
And yes, the question at hand is also is a matter of impacts that justify taking rapid action today to avert future disasters. Those are harder to pin down. But the long and short becomes, those are risk assessments that have to be made. Some that are currently predicted may never happen. There are other impacts that we may currently be blissfully unaware of. So, how much are we willing to risk?
What I continually find astounding with the entire climate issue is that there are so many folks out there who seem so much more terrified by the solutions than they are by potential impacts.
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ashieuk at 02:42 AM on 17 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
@Wol. There was a takedown of Booker and the article in question earlier today by Tim Fenton:
Booker Exposed As Total Charlatan
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/booker-exposed-as-total-charlatan.html
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Russ R. at 02:15 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Dikran Marsupial,
"please tell me why we should bother answering your questions, when you blatantly evade those presented to you by trying to deflect the discussion onto what Obama tweeted?"
I was ignoring your question because it had nothing to do with Cook et al. (2013) whereas Obama's tweet did. I also had a fair number of responses to attend to that were on topic. Please don't take it personally.
"Well for me a period without statistically significant warming that was sufficiently long for the test to have statistical power of 0.95 or more, during which atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased at the current rate or higher, and in the absence of changes in external forcings (such as volcanic or solar forcing), or known sources of internal climate variability (such as ENSO) that could plausibly explain the lack of warming."
That is an excellent, very well presented answer. But I'd argue that it's only a start. Warming itself isn't the justification for action. The effects of warming and their impacts on the environment, economies and societies are the reason to consider taking action.
I'm in the process of composing my own answer to the question, which I will share here.
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:19 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R, please tell me why we should bother answering your questions, when you blatantly evade those presented to you by trying to deflect the discussion onto what Obama tweeted?
The question about falsifiability of climate change is a canard that we have seen here many many times before. However, to show that SkS regulars don't need to stoop to evasion, I'll answer your question:
"What observable evidence would cause you to reject your belief that global warming is a serious problem that requires [urgent] [considered, evidence based] policy action?"
Well for me a period without statistically significant warming that was sufficiently long for the test to have statistical power of 0.95 or more, during which atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased at the current rate or higher, and in the absence of changes in external forcings (such as volcanic or solar forcing), or known sources of internal climate variability (such as ENSO) that could plausibly explain the lack of warming.
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Brooks Bridges at 01:05 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ,
The National Academy of Sciences, the International Energy Agency, and the World Bank all accept that global warming/climate change is happening, it's caused by humans and we should have started doing far more yesterday to stop it.
You seem to think the world must cater to your specific requirements for proof. The proof is here on this site. I suggest you would study the material more thorougly.
The proof doesn't have to perfect to be perfectly persuasive.
I for one have written my last post responding to your comments. No reply is ever going to convince you.
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michael sweet at 00:09 AM on 17 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ,
When you start your argument with a false premise and then say you do not want to discuss it it becomes easy to win any argument.
It is completely false to suggest that the current "cold" weather in the US East is unusual. All the reports say something like "coldest since 1996" or "coldest since 1985". Please provide evidence that the recent weather is unusual compared to the weather in 1930, or stop making this completely false argument. January 2014 was the 53rd coldest January in the USA (out of 119), hardly a record. The record cold January in the USA was in 1979 and was 4.6C colder. Even combining the December/Jan data only gives the 33rd coldest on record. 2012 was the hottest year ever in the USA and was 3.2 F above average and 1.0F above the second hottest year. You call the 33 coldest Dec/Jan comparable to the extreme hottest ever? That is not a reasonable argument, perhaps you forgot to look at the data. The 53rd coldest January cannot reasonably be compared to the floods in England you cited whice are the worst in a record over 200 years long. Extreme record temperatures like the record hottest Australia heat wave are significant. Please provide data to support your claim of "record cold" lasting a month anywhere in the world, anytime in the past 5 years, that compares to the record hot Australia or USA records (which were yearly records). If such data cannot be found that proves you are making an empty retorical argument and do not care about the data.
It is perfectly acceptable to cite an extreme record like the floods as evidence of a change in weather while a typical cold snap from 50 years ago is not significant of anything. In the last year there have been 187 yearly high temperatures recorded in the USA and 44 cold records data, and it was a cold year compared to the past decade. This statistical summary of data proves that AGW is here. The 500 year drought currently occuring in California is proof that the problem is dangerous, or do you feel that we do not need fruits and vegetables in the USA any more?
I will be convinced that AGW is not happening if you can prove that Arhennius was wrong in 1896 with his predictions. He predicted: days warming faster than nights, winter faster than summer, land faster than sea, Northern Hemisphere faster than Southern and the Arctic warming fastest. You cannot even provide evidence that science from the 1800's is incorrect, I do not need to cite recent, better supported evidence. What will proove to you that AGW is occuring and is dangerous? It appears you are the one who has an unprovable hypothesis, since the data is overwhelming that AGW is dangerous and you cling to you beliefs anyway.
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Susan Anderson at 23:56 PM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
I find it useful to keep in mind the full strength, though nowadays I prefer greenhouse chaos, disruption, or weirding.
climate change due to global warming caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
The idea that somehow these words, which have been assigned meanings for convenience, can be used to argue away the reality they represent, is misleading and at this point dangerous to our futures, as we all comfort ourselves that it will go away by itself. It won't.
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Wol at 20:32 PM on 16 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
Forgot to add the link!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10639819/UK-weather-its-not-as-weird-as-our-warmists-claim.html
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Wol at 20:31 PM on 16 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
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Since this thread is - more or less - about public perception of concensus - I offer this link to today's London Sunday Telegraph.
Christopher Booker is a sainted (by his followers) jounalist who specialises in dissing AGW on a regular basis.
It is quite evident to those who read his blog regularly that each week there are fewer and fewer people bothering to post the scientific case for AGW: they are just shouted down, often in offensive language, with the same old, unsupported and refuted, arguments.
I see no way to "persuade" most of these people of the reality of the problem.
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bouke at 19:41 PM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
@1:
If I had a die with an extra pip added to each side, rolling a single 2 isn't evidence against the hypothesis that the die is tampered with. Rolling a single 7 however, is pretty convincing evidence!
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chriskoz at 18:43 PM on 16 February 2014How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
To provide further explanation to potvinj@20 question, the analogy to the water heating in a kettle can be considered. The water is heated from the bottom only but being poor heat conductor, it would not be possible to heat its entire volume evenly by conduction only. But convection processes cause bottom parcel rising and top parcels falling creating mixing turbulences and assuring that heat distributes evenly.
The same convection mechanisms happen in gases like air that's also heated from the bottom by the ground absorbing the incoming sun's radiation: the experimental proof is the weather and the rising currents used by gliders/birds as a lift-off. The only difference is that water in a kettle ends up with the same temperature in its entire volume while atmosphere's air temperature equilibrium is defined by the lapse rate as I've shown @13
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Glenn Tamblyn at 17:57 PM on 16 February 2014How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
potvinj
to comment further on Tom's point. We need to differentiate between the mechanisms that can add heat to the atmosphere, and those that can then move heat around the atmosphere once it is there.
From Trenberth, Fasullo & Kiehl 2009 the estimated energy flows into the atmosphere are:
- 356 Watts/m2 of radiation absorbed from the surface
- 80 Watts/m2 of Evapotranspiration from the surface
- 78 Watts/m2 of incoming short wave sunlight
- 17 Watts/m2 of heat from thermals from the surface
So radiation dominates the the sources of heat transfered into the atmosphere. However once absorbed by the atmosphere radiation is then a very poor method of moving heat around within the atmosphere. Every time some radiation occurs it is quickly absorbed and then reradiated in a random direction, making it very hard for radiation to transfer heat in one direction quickly - this is the opposite of what happens when radiation isn't being absorbed by the medium. A similar situation occurs inside the Sun where it can take 100's of 1000's of years for heat to percolate out from the core via radiative transfer.
In contrast air movements rapidly move heat up and down and from one loaction to another. So air movement will quickly propagate a change in one location to bring other parts of the atmosphere into balance with it.
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2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R. - Note the operative term, climate change. While there are frequently media errors claiming that either a single weather event either proves or disproves AGW, the statistics of extremes in warming (and for example the recent eastern US cooling that appears to be tied to Arctic warming) are the result in shifts of average weather, of the climate.
As to your rhetorical question, I don't think it can be left unaddressed. "Is local weather evidence of global warming, or is it not?" - It's absolutely evidence of climate change if the longer term statistics, the averages of highs, lows, rain or drought, change from previous values.
As to what would provide evidence against climate change? Weather remaining consistent with historical values (not the case across the globe), or some alternate explanation for the observations (not to be found).
As to whether or not it will be a serious problem, I would need to see some evidence that 2-4C changes in temperature over the next century, shifts in Hadley cell circulation, growth zones, plant productivity, and sea level rise won't induce truly significant costs and dislocations - and that evidence is sadly lacking. As I see it, the "business as usual" path is the most economically expensive policy choice available.
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MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
Russ R - Regarding the list you presented above, I will accept the correction that not every part of the science has a 97% consensus, and that the Cook et al paper did not go into details on every aspect of the science - simply on whether we are responsible for recent warming. My apologies if I conflated that particular paper with the (generally understood) science as present in the literature.
That said, the basics of the greenhouse effect have been understood for roughly 150 years, the IPCC report is a reasonable summary of the state of the science, and significant disagreement with 1-4, and even 5, of your list puts anyone holding said disagreement in a distinctly minority position. The rest of your post is economics (reasonable debate possible on underlying assumptions such as discount rates and carbon costs, although still quite significant agreement) and political policies, which are not the subject of the Cook et al paper (or this thread).
After some thought, I went back to previous discussions - you have in fact made quite the same arguments with me over a year ago, on WUWT, and I continue to disagree with you on the same grounds as then.
The 'consensus gap' evident in the political landscape, the difference between expert opinion on AGW and the public perception thereof, is an ongoing impediment to reasoned action. Public policy should be informed by the best information available, and the many denials of consensus in the public sphere are an impediment to a well informed public response. If you disagree with the consensus measured by Cook et al, support your argument on the appropriate threads. If you object to a public understanding of that scientific consensus, I would ask why you feel that policy decisions should be made under perceptual errors on expert opinion.
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Leto at 15:55 PM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
DSL @ 9: my father too.
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DSL at 14:23 PM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Leto: "What observable evidence would cause you to reject your belief that smoking causes lung cancer?"
"Smoking doesn't cause lung cancer; it kills the cancer," said my father as I gave him a last sponge of morphine. The parallels are simply astounding.
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DSL at 14:17 PM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ, for crying out loud, don't complain about other people not being precise when you yourself are not being precise:
Russ 1: "What exactly would constitute evidence against climate change? Or is climate change an unfalsifiable hypothesis?"
Russ 2: "What observable evidence would cause you to reject your belief that global warming is a serious problem that requires urgent policy action?"
1 does not equal 2, not even within the broad context of your posts at SkS. To answer your second question:
It would take strong evidence for a much lower sensitivity, and strong evidence against the mainstream sensitivity. I'd need an ECS around 1.3 (i.e. near balanced feedbacks). An ECS of 1.3C per doubling can't explain the last 50 years (the transient response is closer to that). My best estimate ECS is 2.8C, following the array of evidence in AR5.
Given an ECS of 2.8C and the long residence time for CO2, it's fairly certain that we're locked into major ice loss from WAIS and Greenland. It's also fairly certain that the rest of the land ice will likely go away fairly soon. The jet stream will likely continue to weaken, and that will mean persistent change in weather patterns. What we're talking about here is a period of 400-500 years, minimum, of persistent climate change. It's not a step change. It's something different, all the time. The paleo record tells us that the biosphere doesn't like abrupt change, and with CO2 rising faster than at any time in the last 300 million years, I'd say this is pretty abrupt. At the same time, the decline of cheap energy will be occurring. We're also facing, a few centuries from now, the inevitable end of phosphate production. And then there are the usual disasters. There is no better time than now to prepare for these conditions. Tomorrow it will be more difficult. I also note that you ask the question about policy without stating what you mean by "urgent." Do you think urgent policy action is necessary to push us off fossil energy, pre-empting a market-driven scrabble for energy that will, as it always has, lead to death and misery?
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Leto at 14:05 PM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
"What observable evidence would cause you to reject your belief that global warming is a serious problem that requires urgent policy action?"
Russ, this strikes me as a cheap rhetorical device rather than a genuine discussion point. The falsifiability of climate science resembles most other aspects of science for which there is overwhelming consensus. There is nothing intrisically unfalsifiable about the key propositions underlying AGW; there is just so much accumulated evidence that it is hard to imagine what combination of errors and conspiracies could account for the current consensus and the multiple independent lines of evidence backing it up. (It is also hard to account for the lameness of the denialist attacks on AGW. If good denialist arguments existed, we would have heard them by now; it was this more than the positive evidence that helped convince me.)
Perhaps you could establish that yours is a genuine question either by answering the following question, or showing how your question is different?
What observable evidence would cause you to reject your belief that smoking causes lung cancer?
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villabolo at 11:43 AM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
"What observable evidence would cause you to reject your belief that global warming is a serious problem that requires urgent policy action?"
That carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels are not increasing or even decreasing.
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Leto at 11:36 AM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
"The issue is this, you can't use an argument (i.e that specific weather is clear evidence of climate change) when it suits your cause (as with heat in Australia) and then turn around and argue the opposite when it doesn't suit you (as is being done with the cold in the US)."
Russ, you perceive, or choose to perceive, a double-standard here. That is understandable, if you approach the whole discussion with a particular cognitive bias in which you start out believing warmists are inconsistent muddle-headed alarmists, and then merely seek confirmation of that in everything you read. The apparent double-standard disappears entirely if you accept, as plausible, that experts on a subject know more about this than the average blogger and drive-by commenter.
There are at least two reasons that your perceived double-standard is illusory.
One is that there is a big difference between a phenomenon being a sign of X and being proof of X. Thus, the spectacular heat wave in Australia over 2012/2013 is obviously a sign of anthropogenic global warming - subtract out the estimated contribution from AGW and the heat wave ceases to be all that spectacular. But it is not proof of global warming.That proof comes from a vast web of interlocking evidence that does not rely on any single element - and certainly not a single heat wave.
(In the same way, coughing up blood is a classic sign of lung cancer, but hardly constitutes proof of lung cancer. In someone who has not been investigated, it would be foolish to conclude from a bit of coughed-up blood that the correct diagnosis was lung cancer. In someone in whom the diagnosis is already established by other means, however, each new episode of coughing up blood is another reminder of the situation.)
A second reason that the double standard is illusory is that there is a genuine asymmetry in the current burden of proof that denialists and warmists face. A cold-snap cannot provide proof that AGW is wrong, and it cannot even be an indirect sign of the wrongness of AGW, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - and it would be truly extraordinary if the interlocking web of evidence for AGW all turned out to be wrong. A cold-snap simply does not have the evidentiary weight to challenge AGW. A single heat-wave cannot be proof of AGW, either, but it sure can be a sign of AGW, because the evidence for AGW is already so vast.
Instead of reading everything written on AGW from your particular cognitive stance, try looking for genuine understanding for a while.
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Russ R. at 09:47 AM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
DSL,
"Who is "you"? It's not an SkS general position."
Sorry, I meant "you" in the general sense. Perhaps I should have written "one can't use an argument when it suits one's cause and then turn around and argue the opposite when it doesn't suit one." Is that better?
But when, in a single blog post, one presents excerpts from two articles (Nicholas Stern, in the Guardian, and Justin Gillis in the NYT) that take exactly opposite sides of the argument that a particular local weather event is evidence for/against climate change, one would think that one ought to notice the logical contradiction.
"In answer to your question: CO2 would have to stop absorbing/emitting thermal infrared. And "climate change" is not an hypothesis. It is a complex set of hypotheses that form a general theory."
With all due respect, you're completely missing the point of my question, so I'll rephrase it.
What observable evidence would cause you to reject your belief that global warming is a serious problem that requires urgent policy action? (Feel free to replace the bit I've underlined with whatever statement aligns most closely with what you personally believe).
Moderator Response:[JH] If you read the Stern op-ed and the Gillis article, you will find that the two authors are in agreement. The excerpts are the lead paragpraphs of each and do not contradict each other.
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How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
Others here have already explained how the greenhouse effect shifts the Earth’s heat loss to space from the relatively warm and strongly radiating surface up to a colder and therefore less radiating layer in the atmosphere. That altitude is about 5 km on average, but varies a lot depending on the frequency because the atmosphere is virtually 100% opaque in some parts of the infrared spectrum and almost completely transparent in others. The image below (created with the MODTRAN radiation model) shows the source of the radiation escaping to space in different parts of the IR spectrum when CO2 concentration is 400 ppm and the surface temp is 300 K.
Note the thin, upward spike (4) at the centre of the CO2 band. That’s the signature of the warmer stratosphere compared to the very cold, upper troposphere. As the CO2 concentration continues to rise, most of the extra absorption will happen in the “wings” (2) of the big CO2 “bite”, not at the bottom (3) where the radiation already comes from the coldest part of the atmosphere.
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Russ R. at 09:10 AM on 16 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
Rob Honeycutt,
Yes, I spotted that error immediately, in fact, just from reading the headline I figured he'd made such a mistake (ignoring thermal inertia and time lag), and reading his first few paragraphs confirmed it.
I would have been very pleased to take the author to task on it, but I was denied the opportunity as several commentators had already beaten me to it.
"At SkS, each of the posts goes through an internal review process. We apply skepticism, ask questions, point out errors or other problems well before anything sees the light of day on the site."
My humble observation is that the collective "skepticism" here is only ever applied in one direction. And the term for that is "confirmation bias". As an example: http://www.skepticalscience.com/BCCarbonTax2.html#96732
BTW, I'm not singling out SkS for being "selectively skeptical"... everyone does it. It's immensely difficult to be critical of arguments when you already agree with the conclusion.
Moderator Response:[JH] Rob Honeycutt's statement applies to original articles posted on SkS. Reprints of articles, the weekly digest, and news roundups are not subject to a rigorous internal review process prior to posting.
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Philippe Chantreau at 09:03 AM on 16 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
Brooks makes a good point at #47. Carbon based fuels will run out and their end won't be pretty. Every aspect of our easy comfortable lives is dependent on the delirious energy use in which we are splurging. Our food supply is little more than oil transformed into edible products.
The unfettered use of coal gives results like can be seen in China, with smogs so dense and toxic, they seem out of science fiction. The now infamous Asian Brown Cloud is a standard feature of satellite imagery of the region, sedning particles all the way to where I live, in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. China gives a preview of what the world and people's lives will be if we can't go away from carbon, except for the part where it will start running out. Nobody with some sense can look at this and not see that it is sheer madness.
The only way we can make a less uncomfortable transition is to start to go away from industrial scale use of fossil carbon fuels as soon as possible. It will happen at some point. How difficult it will be depends on how much time we have. The forces resisting this change are mostly inspired by private interest groups who will not let go of the enormous profits they get from fossil fuels. I'm sure there are plenty of individuals in these industries bent on ensuring they extract every last penny they can. How much influence should they have on everybody else's lives and future?
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Rob Nicholls at 08:34 AM on 16 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
#33 One Planet Only Forever..."I believe your heartfelt belief that all people are basically good hearted is naïve." I wasn't really trying to say "all people are basically good hearted." I admit I'm not good at expressing what I'm trying to say here! I'll try again: Many vociferous climate "skeptics" seem to me to believe they are right about climate change. Either that or they are very, very good actors (to keep up such an act consistently for years doesn't seem easy). I'm sure there are many people who are paid by fossil fuel barons to say the opposite of what they believe on climate change, or who just don't have an opinion about it, but I just don't think many of the more notable "skeptics" quite fit that category. It seems more likely to me that they are true believers in their cause (which I think makes them more likely to be able to convince others that they are speaking the truth), whether or not they are paid by the fossil fuel industry. I could be utterly wrong, obviously.
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DSL at 08:31 AM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R: 'The issue is this, you can't use an argument (i.e that specific weather is clear evidence of climate change) when it suits your cause (as with heat in Australia) and then turn around and argue the opposite when it doesn't suit you (as is being done with the cold in the US). Wet weather (in the UK) is evidence of climate change, yet dry weather (in California) is also evidence of climate change."
Who is "you"? It's not an SkS general position. Technically, all weather events as they have occurred are the products of climate change. You know that. Any change in global energy storage affects all parts of the system.
You're asking the wrong questions. What you should be asking is "How has global warming contributed to weather event X?" You can harp on SkS all you want, but the main posters here recognize the inextricable relationship between increasing energy storage and changes to global weather. TV newsfolk and politicians do not. The general public does not. When those entities talk about global warming, they say things like, "Scientists say this might have been caused by global warming." It's dumb, but then mainstream news and politicians dumb down things so their audiences don't go away.
In answer to your question: CO2 would have to stop absorbing/emitting thermal infrared. And "climate change" is not an hypothesis. It is a complex set of hypotheses that form a general theory.
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Brooks Bridges at 08:06 AM on 16 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
I think people talking about uncertainty are ignoring the other, really wicked end of that stick - uncertainty means things also could be far worse than currently predicted.
In fact, considering most predictions of the loss of summer ice in the arctic were for 50 years or so from now and Duarte and others are now predicting 5 years or less I'd say worse is the better bet. The much maligned climate models are wrong all right, but not in a reassuring way - they're missing important feedbacks and other mechanisms and are proving far too conservative. (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/may/02/white-house-arctic-ice-death-spiral)
No one can positively guarantee that climate change won't be catastrophic. Why not worry about that instead of worrying about spending money on solutions that everyone agrees must happen eventually?
I agree the fire insurance comparison is best: I don't have to guarnatee beyond a shadow of doubt your house will catch fire for fire insurance to seem like a great idea - assuming you're a "normal" person for whom losing their house to fire would be a financial catastrophe.
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jja at 07:48 AM on 16 February 2014How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
like to show this videotaped response to Dr. Fred Singer's (hired denialist) question on the subject dr. Roy Spencer. His basic response is, "pressure broadening" and "we can measure it increasing so it is not saturated"
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YubeDude at 07:18 AM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Wow, that was a mess of blah blah blah and only one slight reference to the title.
"The shift to such a world could cause mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people away from the worst-affected areas. That would lead to conflict and war, not peace and prosperity."
Speculative pronouncements ("could cause") that fail to explain the cause and effect nexus or use specifics to illustrate why a mass migration would necessarily lead to war ("that would lead to conflict and war") is really just the editor trying to sell a few papers using an inflammatory headline.
Maybe there is a point to the authors position but it requires a little more explanation and details beyond just a catchy title, otherwise it becomes fodder for the “Catastrophic” AGW deskepticons who always look for the outlier of embellishment that they can anchor to while ignoring the underlying truth. -
Russ R. at 07:18 AM on 16 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
"The record rainfall and storm surges that have brought flooding across the UK are a clear sign that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change." - Nicholas Stern, The Guardian, Feb 14, 2014
"Scientists refer to global warming because it is about, well, the globe. It is also about the long run. It is really not about what happened yesterday in Poughkeepsie." Justin Gillis, By Degrees, New York Times, Feb 10, 2014
Maybe Nick and Justin ought to get their argument straight. Is local weather evidence of global warming, or is it not? (No need to debate the answer here... That's not the issue I'm raising.)
The issue is this, you can't use an argument (i.e that specific weather is clear evidence of climate change) when it suits your cause (as with heat in Australia) and then turn around and argue the opposite when it doesn't suit you (as is being done with the cold in the US). Wet weather (in the UK) is evidence of climate change, yet dry weather (in California) is also evidence of climate change.
I'll leave the following question for the good folks here: Science is all about making hypotheses, testing those hypotheses with experiment or observation, and rejecting those hypotheses that are falsified by results. To be scientific, a hypothesis must be falsifiable. What exactly would constitute evidence against climate change? Or is climate change an unfalsifiable hypothesis?
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:48 AM on 16 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
Russ... That WUWT you link to is an excellent example of the relative difference in errors presented on each side.
At SkS, each of the posts goes through an internal review process. We apply skepticism, ask questions, point out errors or other problems well before anything sees the light of day on the site.
At WUWT you have a near constant litany of fundamentally wrong information being presented without even the first hint of skeptism. AND the only litmus test ever applied for any article is that it side toward the rejection of AGW. Period.
That article suffered from an error a highschooler should have been able to pick up on. He's presenting transient sensitivity and claiming it's equilibrium sensitivity.
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Russ R. at 05:43 AM on 16 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
Tom Curtis,
"You are correct that you can both oppose mitigation of AGW and accept the concensus that greater than 50% of recent global warming has been caused by anthropogenic factors."
For the record, I don't categorically oppose all mitigation policies. Some are sensible, some may or may not be effective, and some are very likely to do more harm than good.
"However, that in no way obviates Dana's claim about the actual strategies of AGW deniers. They need not have taken that strategy, but as a matter of historical record, they did. Consequently, I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Perhaps it was that when given a choice of an honest strategy, they chose a dishonest one? "
I agree, people make disingenous arguments all the time... some do so habitually. I see this on both sides. I'm not defending them. The point(s) I am trying to make, and I apologize for not having been sufficiently clear, are as follows:
- Not everyone who opposes a given climate policy is "a denier". One can fully accept the "97% Consensus" (or a more general form of scientific agreement), yet not be convinced that various policy actions are warranted or will be effective. There are plenty of good-faith reasons that people may differ in their beliefs.
- The much touted "97% Consensus" is much narrower than it is frequently portrayed. It is often misrepresented (for example by Barack Obama and KR above) as supporting positions that weren't tested in the paper. Also, it is not, by itself, sufficent justification for any policy action, let alone grounds for being "100 percent certain that Congress needs to pass serious climate legislation..." as Dana wrote in the Sacramento Bee.
That's all.
"Russ, I am glad to see that you have in fact criticized those on your own side"...
I try not to take sides in this. I don't believe there is a right side or a wrong side here. There are good and bad arguments on both sides. I try to correct the bad arguments, but only where I think the person making the argument would actually be receptive and my efforts aren't going to be wated. I have better things to do my time.
"Given that the person criticized was Willis Eschenbach, I would point out that he has deserved such criticism far more than just once."
To Willis' credit, he is meticulous with his analysis, he shows all his work, he debates in good faith, and he admits when he's wrong. Also, he is very quick to point out errors from "his own side". One very recent example...
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Alexandre at 04:37 AM on 16 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
It is not surprising that the peer-reviewed work of Roy Spencer is a lot less contrarian than his stated opinion on interviews, or his blog posts. Once you have to back up your speech with evidence, you will start to align yourself a lot more with the mainstream consensus - and for a good reason.
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Hans Berg at 04:26 AM on 16 February 2014New Video: Climate, Jetstream, Polar Vortex
As far as metaphor goes, how about the difference between a rushing mountain creek heading directly down a valley vs. a slow meandering river on the plain? Slow the fluid down and a stuck high-amplitude pattern results.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:05 AM on 16 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
I wish to elaborate on why I have the perspective I have been sharing to the best of my ability.
My life experience is as a career Engineer with an MBA who has always been 'designing things' others want to profit from. I have also always had a stronger connection to the more real world than the artificial features that humans have built. I prefer a walk in the country and a moment to watch wildlife over any 'man-made condition or amusement'. I am also not a big 'buyer of stuff', and prefer un-powered recreation, under my own power, to any powered form of recreation. That may have given me a perspective that has not been as apparent to others.
I have recognised that it is the Engineering core attitude I hold strongly to that has led to the perspective I have developed. Engineering is about striving to best understand as much as possible about an item that I have been requested to develop the design for. The uncertainties regarding that best understanding is a significant consideration. As an Engineer I am required to 'defer to safety' in any uncertain situation, and not wait until all uncertainties are resolved. I then evaluate the options to determine acceptable or safe, low risk, ways of designing the item. Then I strive to deliver the most effective solution 'from among the acceptable choices'. If the most effective 'safe by conservatively addressing uncertainties' solution is not profitable enough "The item may not get built"! And the evaluation of acceptability is never weighed against profitability or popular desires.
This fundamental protection of the general population and environment, including future generations, from popular or profitable pursuits is 'not negotiable' for a Registered Professional Engineer in any of the regions of the planet where the importance of having such 'gate-keepers of acceptability' has been made the law of the land.
It appears that many people, including people trained as engineers and other applied sciences such as geologists, can be tempted to give the profit motive and popularity pre-eminence to the point of reducing the standard of acceptability. Essentially what many people seem to do is determine what is desirable. They then attempt to defend or justify it so they can get away with unacceptable actions because of higher profitability or popularity.
That attitude of trying to get away with 'desired actions' in spite of evidence of unacceptability is what needs to change. A clearly established basis of acceptability needs to be the first screening of any evaluation. The profit motive and popularity should only be applied to the limited choices remaining after screening out the unacceptable unsustainable and damaging actions.
I care deeply about the development of a sustainable better future for all life on this amazing planet. And I recognize that the socioeconomic system is what needs to be changed. The current most popular socioeconomic systems lead too many people to be tempted to be greedy or intolerant. Even Soviet Communism never developed toward a sustainable better future for all, and neither has China's Capitalist-Communism, though their rapid transition toward more sustainable energy does indicate a potential.
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John Hartz at 02:57 AM on 16 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Markoh:
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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Tom Curtis at 02:56 AM on 16 February 2014How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
potvinj @20, briefly, convection in the troposphere is so strong that it dominates radiation as a method of energy transfer in the atmosphere. The consequence is that within the troposphere the relative temperature at different levels is tightly constrained by convection. If you increase CO2 concentrations, that reduces the escape of heat to space from higher levels of the troposphere. The resulting warm high altitude air slows the rate of convection, which thereby slows the rate of energy rising from near the surface to the upper troposphere. That warms the surface. After the surface has warmed sufficiently, convection returns to its prior levels. This process is quite fast, taking a few hours or so. It is also difficult to detect against the very varied background of changes in hourly rates of convection due to weather and day night cycles.
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potvinj at 02:48 AM on 16 February 2014How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
Thank you Glenn Tamblyn (#3) and Tom Curtis (#4) for showing the error of my thinking (#2). But - still - the 2nd bullet in the intro still rings false to me. Surely, one needs a mechanism to warm up the lower portion of the atmosphere in order to push upwards the height of the high altitude radiative layer, as eloquently sketched in the 2nd diagram of the OP. What is it?
Reading the 2nd sentence of Tom's 3rd paragraph (#4; about the absorption "wings"), it would follow that the lower atmosphere warms up further (in comparison to the pre-industrial regime) because adding CO2 increases the absortion likelyhood over a wider bandwith by adding more absorbers. In other words, those extra absorbers would be more likely to tap photons that used to pass through the lower atmosphere (here are my "untapped photons" again). So it would follow that the deniers' claim that "...adding more CO2 won't absorb much more IR at the surface..." is FALSE. The (lower) atmosphere is not saturated, currently.
Note: Some readers may be thinking that the lower atmosphere heats up more simply b/c less radiation leaks out to space if that radiative layer indeed ends up at a higher altitude. True enough. But what causes it to go up in the first place - say during the times of the beginning of the industrial revolution? To me, it would seem that the reduction of radiative leakage at high altitude acts as a GW positive feedback rather than a direct cause.
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Tom Curtis at 02:05 AM on 16 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
Russ R@23:
1) You are correct that you can both oppose mitigation of AGW and accept the concensus that greater than 50% of recent global warming has been caused by anthropogenic factors. However, that in no way obviates Dana's claim about the actual strategies of AGW deniers. They need not have taken that strategy, but as a matter of historical record, they did. Consequently, I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Perhaps it was that when given a choice of an honest strategy, they chose a dishonest one?
2) Russ, I am glad to see that you have in fact criticized those on your own side on at least one occassion when they deserved it. Given that the person criticized was Willis Eschenbach, I would point out that he has deserved such criticism far more than just once. Be that as it may, willingness to speak up about errors on your own side deserves real respect IMO, so well done. FWIW, I asked about criticisms of Inhofe (a US Senator) because you had chosen to criticize the office of the US President.
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