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Rob Honeycutt at 05:00 AM on 30 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
caroza @11... "That's what oil companies are valued on; if the oil in the ground becomes worthless, so do they."
Exactly.
Think of it in terms of return on investment (ROI). The ROI for the few hundred million (US$) that the FF industry puts behind the climate change denial movement is a tiny fraction of what the industry profits each an every quarter they are able to delay action.
It's sort of a no-brainer for the FF industry to make such investments. Ultimately I think it's going to backfire on them, though.
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jhnplmr at 04:56 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
#37 Rob Honeycutt
"but that you're claiming a ~20% difference in insolation seems off by a couple of orders of magnitude. I think you're somehow not understanding the numbers you're quoting "
The problem is that the insolation figures I am using: LINK
are different to those used by HK. He referred to a graph in Wikipedia and I used the figures from that graph to comment on his "little change" hypothesis.
I do understand the figures I am quoting and they are considerably more accurate than those derived from a Wikipedia graph.
(-snip-)
Moderator Response:[RH] Can we get you to use the link function for your URL's (second tab above the comments box) so that your URL's don't break the page formatting? Thx.
[RH] Moderation complaints snipped (see comments policy page).
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:54 AM on 30 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
I think topal needs to read Naomi's Oreskes book Merchants of Doubt.
It's really not speculation that the same tactics that were used for the tobacco industry that are now being used for the fossil fuel industry. In many cases it's the exact same people.
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caroza at 04:49 AM on 30 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
And BTW, the strength of scientific consensus can be measured and calculated, by using a statistical technique called meta-analysis, or by doing a research review like the one John Cook and colleagues did. It is anything but an opinion poll.
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caroza at 04:42 AM on 30 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
@topal, you said: "you fail to understand what consensus means: 'a general agreement about something : an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group'"
Nope. This article is talking about scientific consensus, which is the convergence of expert opinion as a result of replication and new lines of evidence converging to support a theory.
For example, nobody quibbles with the "fact" that aspirin is a painkiller. But that's really a very strong scientific theory. If you dug around in the research literature on aspirin, you'd probably find (I'm guessing) a couple of papers showing that aspirin has no painkilling effect. But there's so much evidence that it does have a painkilling effect that the results of those papers can be put down to poor methodology or a sampling artefact, because the chance they are right is vanishingly small. So scientists in the area of aspirin research can be said to have come to a consensus based on the probability that the bulk of the research, which points in the same direction, is correct.
The scientific consensus on climate science is probably a lot stronger than the consensus on aspirin given the amount of research in the area (versus a few clinical trials). The theory is accepted as a given, i.e. you can assume that it is true when starting a new piece of related research.
But painting this as the "normal", opinion-based sort of consensus is a good denial tactic, as is highlighting the views of the very few contrarian climate scientists (who are in the same boat as the people who authored negative trials on aspirin, if there are any - they're destined for the dustbin of science history.)
Why would anybody resort to deliberate denial? Follow the money. Tobacco is a big industry. I doubt if it compares to the estimated US$27 trillion worth of fossil fuel reserves still in the ground, which will have to stay where they are if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. That's what oil companies are valued on; if the oil in the ground becomes worthless, so do they.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:18 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
And jhnplmr, you might find some answers in Kiehl 1997 and Evans 2006.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:07 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
jhnplmr... I'm not sure exactly where you're off here, but that you're claiming a ~20% difference in insolation seems off by a couple of orders of magnitude. I think you're somehow not understanding the numbers you're quoting and I don't yet understand them enough to say why.
When I come up against something like this, my immediate assumption would be that I'm not yet fully comprehending the science and continue to do research. You seem to be finding numbers that you believe support what you want to believe and then stop your research.
That's called confirmation bias.
A good clue in this situation would be, "Does what I'm saying go against the larger body of scientific research?" If this answer is yes, then you have to continue to try to understand why. The greater likelihood is that scientists already understand this and I (you) haven't done enough research.
Rather than get defensive about your position, I would suggest you dig deeper. See if you can do what real scientists try to do. Try to prove yourself wrong in the process of your research so that you don't end up looking foolish when someone else points out an elemental error.
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jhnplmr at 03:47 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
#33 HK
"The result is similar to this graph in Wikipedia: As you see, very little change for the next 20,000 years!"
If you call oscillations between 560W/m2 to 460W/m2 (rises and falls of 100W/m2) very little change. IPCC gives 1.6W/m2 as the total man-made radiative forcing from 1750 to present day. That is very small compared to the changes in solar insolation.
A fall from 490W/m2 to 400W/m2 (90W/m2) was sufficient to plunge us into the last glacial period yet you dismiss this as very little change!
Moderator Response:[RH] Removed blank lines.
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funglestrumpet at 03:37 AM on 30 November 2013Video: 10 climate myths debunked in under 4 minutes
bratisla @ 3
Let us hope that the oil majors do decide to raise the price of oil as extraction costs increase. Gail Tverberg, a highly regarded actuary, in her blog, Our Finite World, possits that notion that they might instead simply cease production when the extraction cost rise too high, see: http://ourfiniteworld.com/.
If she is correct, and her view is supported by the fact that Shell is walking away from shale gas fracking, then Climate Change will be the least of our worries. Indeed such a move could achieve the reduction in CO2 production that we are all seeking, and then some. There would, of course, be an increase in methane production, but that is perhaps a point best left to the imagination.
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jhnplmr at 03:20 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
#32 Michael Sweet
"You could at least cite where you got the data from."
I have, Vostok ice core data and Jul 65N Milankovitch cycles. Where did you get your data from?
Moderator Response:[RH] Extra blank lines removed.
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jhnplmr at 03:12 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
"I used the Orbital Forcing model just below the GEOCARB model Kevin C referred to in #31 and set the day of year to 173, northern summer solstice"
My figures were based on the data in:
These will take you well past the start of the present ice age, 2.6 million years ago, to 10,000 years into the future. The figures for Jul 65N seem rather different to yours but they show an excellent correlation to both the Vostok core data and the sedimentary data.
"I agree with Rob that this decade almost certainly will be warmer than the previous one, "
Time will tell but if I am right there should be a cooling trend setting in as decreasing use of fossil fuels, due to shortages, loses the battle against decreasing solar insolation.
The way I see it is that we are trying to keep the temperature relatively constant to artificially prolong the present interglacial period but not allow it to go high enough to pull us out of the present ice age. This will require enormous amounts of energy which is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. Faced with a choice between another glacial period and a much warmer "normal" (non ice age) period I know which I would prefer.
Moderator Response:[RH] Extra blank lines removed and hotlinked URL.
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Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
jhnplmr:
"There is a very strong correlation between Vostok ice core temperatures and the Jul 65N Milankovitch cycles. There is more land mass in the northern hemisphere…."
It’s well known that the present layout of the continents makes the northern hemisphere much more sensitive to changes in insolation than the southern and that the resulting climate change is spread to the southern hemisphere via carbon cycle feedbacks. Therefore the correlation between the insolation at 65oN and Vostok temperatures.
More on that on other SkS threads, for instance here."I don't know where you are getting your figures from…."
I used the Orbital Forcing model just below the GEOCARB model Kevin C referred to in #31 and set the day of year to 173, northern summer solstice. The figures will be a bit different if you choose mid July (day 196-197), but the tendency is the same.
The result is similar to this graph in Wikipedia:
As you see, very little change for the next 20,000 years!But back to the topic here:
I agree with Rob that this decade almost certainly will be warmer than the previous one, and that the only realistic way to avoid that is a large (Pinatubo scale) volcanic eruption in the tropics.
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:28 AM on 30 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom, the not-possibly-destructive examples don't work well in communicating the scale of energy involved becase the general public (me for example) don't have a particularly good feel for the amount of energy involved in food or summer breezes, or even thunderstorms (which are much more energetic than I had realised). I did not ingnore these examples, in fact I commented on the food example in my very first post @24
For me the the food analogy doesn't work either because most people don't have a good conception of how much energy there is in a food calorie, it is actually quite a lot, but the body is rather inefficient in turning it into work, so it doesn't seem all that much.
An average western daily diet is about 2,000,000 calories - the amount of energy required to raise 2000kg of water by 1 degree K. It sounds like rather a lot when put that way, but is that the way the general public generally think about their food?
O.K. so we could agree that a Saturn V rocket is an order or perhaps two of magnitude safer than little boy (the probability of one exploding on the launch pad was I suspect not that low for it to be more). But even then is the harm that would be caused by several billion Saturn V rockets taking off a substantially better representation of the harm caused by the equivalent imbalance of the Earth's energy budget than of two billion atom bombs? I would say they were both hyperbolic statements, if the purpose of the widget was to communicate the harm caused by anthropogenic climate change to date, but it isn't; the purpose is to help visualise the vast amount of energy involved.
At the end of the day, large amounts of energy are always potentially dangerous, unless they are highly diffuse, in which case most of us can happily lead our lives without pausing to think how much energy they actually involve - in which case they are not useful analogies.
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michael sweet at 01:04 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
jhnplmr,
Your excuse for not posting your data is not acceptable. If you cannot learn how to post data why should I think you can process data? You could at least cite where you got the data from. Since you have not supported your data I do not need to support mine. There are plenty of fossil fuels, including unconventional fuels like oil sands and shale oil, for the next 50 years. More than enough for mankind to ruin the planet we live on. It is clear that you do not understand the concept of residence time. Why should you be able to calculate Milankovich forcing which is harder to understand?
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johncl at 00:51 AM on 30 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
@topal - its really clear that think tanks like Heartland are using the exact same tactics by denying the established science, and even manufactures their own "research" (NIPCC) much like the "doctors smoke this brand" advertising from back then. These groups don't really do or represent real science, but are manufacturing propaganda to spread doubt as they are representing the fossil fuel interests. Scientists arent really representing anything besides the same stuff that govern physical laws. Gravity isnt affected by politics any more than the properties of CO2.
It's important to repeat this message in the media, as people need to be aware that special interests groups are making a lot of noise that really stops us from acting on the real scientific evidence we have at hand now.
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Philippe Chantreau at 00:39 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Kevin's comment is on point and David Cook's quote was misinterpreted. The residence of a given molecule is quite different from the time it takes for concentrations to change and from the time it takes for temperatures to evolve accordingly. Thre is no incompatibility between a residence time of a few hundred years for a molecule and cooling prevented for thousands of years.
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Anne-Marie Blackburn at 00:34 AM on 30 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
topal, I think you're missing the point. The link between the tactics used by the tobacco industry and big oil has already been established - read for example this report by the Union of Concerned Scientists or Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes and Conway.
You don't need to think long to find a reason for the tobacco industry and big oil wanting to spread doubt about the science behind the link between tobacco and cancer, and behind greenhouse gases and global warming, respectively.
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Philippe Chantreau at 00:25 AM on 30 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
"Trying to find a link between tobacco and climateis pure nonsense."
BS.
The methods used by the interest groups trying to discredit or misrepresent the science on climate are the same methods (refined over time) that were used by the tobacco industry to discredit the science on the health effects of tobacco. Some of the groups practicing disinformation are also the same. The link is very clear, pure nonsense consists of saying there isn't one. In science (real science, as it is nowadays practiced) consensus is possible only if there is a corresponding convergence of research results. That convergence is what gives rise to the consensus, in fact.
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Kevin C at 00:08 AM on 30 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
Residence time is only really meaningfull for first order processes - in fact CO2 uptake happens over several timescales, characterised roughly by uptake due to plants, oceans and rock weathering. As a result quoting a number for the residence time is pretty meaningless.
So I tried it out in the GEOCARB model here: http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/geocarb/
Put a 500Gt slug of CO2 in the atmosphere at T=0. This is an instantaneous release, so for a brief period CO2 levels in the air are higher than current, but it's about right.
After 10k years temps are still elevated by 0.35C. After 100k years temperatures are elevated by 0.2C.
CO2 levels are only slightly elevated at that point (10ppm), however both oceans and land surface have become net sources, gradually releasing the CO2 they took up earlier in the process.
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Tom Curtis at 23:07 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Dikran @42, I considered the argument to be fallacious because in order to demonstrate that " It is hard to think of examples of large amounts of energy that most in the general public will appreciate that do not have some element of destructiveness", you ignored examples I had given that were entirely non-destructive and accentuated the potential for destruction in one example that has never been used for destruction. If that is a legitimate argument, then no example could be considered "safe" not because no samples are safe, but because, by change of circumstances, any example can be made unsafe. Even food, which burns quite well, and the summer breeze (which would be very destructive released suddenly into a vacuum) can with sufficient contrivance be rendered into examples of unsafe energy.
As to safe distances, the minumum safe distance for a Saturn V launch was 5 km, but that was the distance at which you are safe from any likely failure, including an uncontrolled launch and rapid impact with the Earth. It is not comparable to blast radiuses. A better comparison is that the complete and instantaneious detonation of the fuel of a Saturn V rocket (not achievable in practise) would have a yeild of 5.3 Ktones, ie, 1/3rd of Little Boy. So consequently its blast radius would not be orders of magnitude smaller. Of course, in practice, the two fuels were kept seperate, and the far slower propogation rate of the explosion would mean most of the fuel would be forced away from the explosion and not detonated, so that Saturn V was orders of magnitude safer than Little Boy.
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jhnplmr at 23:03 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
# 25: Michael Sweet
"There has already been enough CO2 released to prevent global cooling for over 100,000 years."
CO2 doesn't last that long. From:
David R. Cook Meteorologist Climate Research Section Environmental Science Division Argonne National Laboratory:
"The duration period for carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere is somewhere between 100 and 500 years"
(-snip-)
Moderator Response:[RH] Please keep the discussion more polite. Insult snipped.
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topal at 23:01 PM on 29 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
@John Cook: 'I'm guessing you didn't follow the link and read the article as it begins by discussing evidence:' If there is irrefutable evidence, why do you need a consensus? You shouldn't care about the opinions of those who try to refute your evidence. Unless they come up with evidence that refutes your evidence. That's what we call science, that's how science debates hypotheses.
You will never ever be able to obtain the consensus with every human being on this planet. The majority don't even understand the science or they don't even care about climate (or tobacco). Why should they, they might have better or more urgent things to do. Trying to find a link between tobacco and climate is pure nonsense.
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jhnplmr at 22:47 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
# 25: Michael Sweet
"There has already been enough CO2 released to prevent global cooling for over 100,000 years."
Your evidence for this wild claim?
I can only repeat what I said:
"From the Jul 65N Milankovitch cycle the solar insolation was 469.44W/m2 at the maximum 10,000 years ago. It is 426.76W/m2 today, a fall of 42.68W/m2. It seems to me that you will have to add a lot more than 2.3W/m2 to avoid global cooling in the next 2000 years (minimum of present cycle)"
My "claim" is based on published data, what is your claim based on?
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Dikran Marsupial at 22:26 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom, no problem. I don't view this as a debate, but a discussion, there are I think valid criticisms that can be made about the widget, but also there are plenty of good things about it as well. One thing that won't help the discussion/evaluation though is considerations of motives (I consider both you and John Cook to be my fiends, and I have as much difficulty in imagining John being Machavellian as I would imagining that of you, i.e. rather a lot).
I also disagree that the argument was fallacious; Saturn V rockets are examples of highly focussed, rather than diffuse, energy in much the same way that an atomic bomb is (although ideally less temporally focussed). Would the minimum safe distance for a Saturn V rocket be orders of magnitude less than that for e.g. the Trinity device? I wouldn't have thought so.
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Esop at 22:24 PM on 29 November 2013Video: 10 climate myths debunked in under 4 minutes
Just excellent. Rapidfire delivery keeps the viewers attention.
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Anne-Marie Blackburn at 22:20 PM on 29 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
topal, we are not comparing tobacco with climate, we are comparing the tactics used by the tobacco industry, to spread doubt over the link between smoking and cancer, with the tactics used to spread doubt over the science of climate change. These tactics are well documented.
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jhnplmr at 22:18 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
# 25: Michael Sweet
"Your claim at 23 that fossil fuels are runnig out is false. Please provide a citation to support your wild claims."
If you seriously think that fossil fuels are an infinite resource then I don't need a citation, you need certifying.
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topal at 22:12 PM on 29 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
@chriskoz. you fail to understand what consensus means: 'a general agreement about something : an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group'
My emphasis.
'you comparing two entities - multidisciplinary abstract knowledge and an industrial organisation - conceptually so different, that it does not make sense to even conceive such comparison'
That's why I fell that the idea of comparing tobacco with climate is completely off the rail.
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jhnplmr at 22:11 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
# 25: Michael Sweet
"Saying "if I could find a way to upload my graph I could show you but I can't!" is not very convincing"
The site asks for a URL to upload pictures, I can only point to a location on my computer, as is normal for uploads. If you don't find this "convincing" then I'm wasting my time.
"This is a scientific board. Your unsupported word is not worth much"
That is why I wanted to upload my graph to support my statements.
"Continously repeating the same unsupported claims is sloganeering. If you do not begin to support your claims the moderators will start to edit yout posts."
The graph I am referring to was compiled from the Vostok ice core data and the Milankovitch insolation was derived from: LINK
(-snip-).
(-snip-)?
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic snipped.
[RH] Hotlinked URL.
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Anne-Marie Blackburn at 22:07 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom, you are focusing on a subtext, i.e. the destructive nature of the metrics used, and as such appear to be completely missing the actual message, i.e. the amount of accumulating energy. The problem I have with your line of argument that that your subtext is subjective. In my experience, people are mainly surprised or even shocked at the amount of energy being added as a result of climate change. So as such the widget is fulfilling its role, namely that not only has global warming not stopped, but also that the amount of energy involved is huge. What I'm trying to say is that it's important to understand who the target audience is and whether the message is being communicated effectively with that audience in mind. I guess only time will tell.
But with regards to the notion of destruction, is it necessarily incorrect to tie it with climate change? Again opinions can differ here, but some, such as this article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, argue that the Hiroshima metaphor is justifiable. To quote a few paragraphs:
Second, the Hiroshima meme frames climate change as something catastrophic. The analogy’s primary purpose is to explain the magnitude of the climate threat and to spur action, not to terrify people. (It’s worth mentioning that Hansen is pro-nuclear when it comes to power generation.) The most common reaction to the meme is surprise, not fear: “Wow. I had no idea.”
Sure, the mushroom cloud has become a cliché image for conveying disaster. It’s an apt one in this case, though. The picture of a mushroom cloud over Hiroshima is buried deep within America’s national consciousness, and awareness of the bomb’s impacts is what ultimately led to international treaties aimed at preventing any future use of nuclear weapons. To avert another tragedy of global proportions, the world’s superpowers must now lay down their fossil fuels as well.
Climate change won’t destroy future generations as instantaneously as Little Boy incinerated the people of Hiroshima, but continuing with business as usual guarantees that millions of people will die as a result. If the Hiroshima meme “trades on human tragedy to make an illustrative point,” as one blog commenter complained, it does so with abundant moral justification.
Hansen and Cook did not argue that global warming causes as many deaths as an atomic bomb, but they could have. Climate change is entirely capable of causing mass death—not just by increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as heat waves and floods, but also by creating conditions that make it easier for diseases to thrive and food crops to fail. Climate change is already killing an estimated 400,000 people annually, mostly children. That’s more than the total population of Hiroshima in 1945.
These deaths are happening now, not in some distant future, and not just in developing countries. Between 1999 and 2009, an average of 658 heat-related deaths occurred in the United States alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An international team of scientists who studied the extreme weather events of 2012 recently estimated that events like the July 2012 US heat wave are now likely to occur four times as often as they did when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were at preindustrial levels.
So it seems that a case can be made that the comparison between Hiroshima and climate change is both accurate, which is the key point, and justifiable. Climate change is "loading the dice" in terms of extreme weather, and these events have a destructive nature about them.
Finally I think the point Dikran Marsupial makes about Hanlon's razor is an interesting one in this context. The majority of people "reading between the lines" when it comes to the widget are contrarians, who often have spent a lot time and effort keeping the pause myth alive. Does this mean we should avoid situations where they can "read between the lines"? I think in view of their attempts to keep the pause myth alive, that would be quite futile.
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Tom Curtis at 22:03 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Dikran, I apoligize for offending you, but I was not in anyway trying to suggest that you were disingenous. I was suggesting that you were using a debate tactic that was fallacious. I was not suggesting you believed the tactic to be fallacious at the time you used it (which is required for you to be disengenous).
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Dikran Marsupial at 21:54 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom@33 I was going to write a detailed response to your post, however I found that I could not, after seeing that you had written
"Indeed, you try that maneuvre yourself to suggest that my examples are also destructive. ".
I am very dissapointed to read this, as I consider you a friend, but this is essentially an accusation that I was being disingenuous. I was being serious when I asked how close would someone want to be to a Saturn V rocket at take off, and perhaps you should consider your answer to that question. I shall leave the discussion there I think. I understand that you feel strongly on this point, but that does not mean you have the right to make that kind of insinuation.
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chriskoz at 21:50 PM on 29 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
topal@1,
You fail to recognise that John is talking about "scientific consensus" rather than "opinion". Regardeless, we've already discussed that the scientiic consensus does matter for those who are unwilling/unable to understand the actual science due to lack of time or impossibility to gain the level of expertise required to judge the actual evidence. There are more than many real life examples where you rely on experts' opinions; simplest example being the doctors you consult re your health.
In your second paragraph, you belittle the value of "a consensus" but qualify your critique with the clause "as long as the evidence isn't conclusive". Therefore, by that measure, you are telling us that the climate science consensus cannot be considered here, because we know there are multiple lines of conclusive evidence of climate science consensus validity.
Finaly, in your closing paragraph, you comparing two entities - multidisciplinary abstract knowledge and an industrial organisation - conceptually so different, that it does not make sense to even conceive such comparison, therefore your sentence sounds like completely chaotic rambling. I can only note that commenters on this site are supposed to make consice, logical points; so your rambling should not have been pronounced here.
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Tom Curtis at 21:50 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Dikran @37, there is not any dispute TIAAO among scientists about how to measure the energy of storms or hurricanes. Rather, the total energy is given straightforwardly by the energy generated by condensation of water vapour. Very little or that energy, however, goes into a form that will cause damage by whipping up waves, increasing the storm surge and simply blowing things down. Therefore there are two measures of energy - one for the total energy, and another for the potentially destructive energy. That later is simplified into an index which makes it easy to calculate. There is, of course, significant dispute among scientists as to which is the best index for determining the probable destructive effect of hurricanes, but that is a seperate issue.
Further, I do not object to the use of atomic bombs as an energy comparator per se. I object to the sole use of destructive forms of energy. As I said above, only a range of such comparison truly gets the scale of energy across.
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John Cook at 21:39 PM on 29 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
topal, I'm guessing you didn't follow the link and read the article as it begins by discussing evidence:
MANY lines of evidence confirm that humans are causing global warming. Scientists measure more heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a result of burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Satellites measure less heat escaping to space at the exact wavelengths that greenhouse gases trap heat. Human fingerprints are being observed all over our climate.
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Dikran Marsupial at 21:39 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom@35 with regard to my point @32 the fact that there is not a single obvious way to measure the energy of a storm amongst scientists suggests that it isn't a straightforward matter for the general public. The comparison with Little Man (or indeed Trinity) made it clearer to me that *I* was underappreciating the amount of energy in a storm, which shows how effective it is as a means of communicating very large amounts of energy. Trinity/Little Boy doesn't make much difference to me as the difference in yield was not orders of magnitude different.
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Tom Curtis at 21:34 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
I will add, re thunderstorms, that a thunderstorm comparison appears to me to be an almost perfect. It is a common phenomenon, particularly for people in the tropics, subtropics and the USA. Further, it has a very large amount of energy, only a very small part of which results in destruction. By comparions with a suitable atomic bomb, the raw power of the storm can be appreciated, while recognizing that most of that power is in a non-damaging form. Once readers realize this, the comparison with thunderstorms becomes very informative.
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Tom Curtis at 21:31 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Dikran @32, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. As to the choice of comparator to put thunderstorms into context, I have chosen Little Boy only because that is the chosen benchmark for "Atomic Bombs" in the widget. Introducing Trinity (which I would prefer) would only create confusion due to the different yields of the two devices.
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Tom Curtis at 21:28 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
chriskoz @31, you will find it at the widget's home site, under "understand the science". I disagree that it is the centerpiece of my critique. The centerpiece of my critique of the choice of comparators is that they are all examples of destructive forms of energy, in most cases very destructive; added to the fact that I know that less destructive comparators were suggested (including Trinity rather than Little Boy) prior to publication and rejected because they did not have enough "impact". That "impact" comes at the cost of distorting the scientific message. It is only seen as not a cost if, at whatever level, the alarm engendered is part of the message you want to include.
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michael sweet at 21:24 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
jhnplmr:
Your claim at 23 that fossil fuels are runnig out is false. Please provide a citation to support your wild claims. There has already been enough CO2 released to prevent global cooling for over 100,000 years. Do you really want to argue about what will happen in 500,000 years?
Saying "if I could find a way to upload my graph I could show you but I can't!" is not very convincing. This is a scientific board. Your unsupported word is not worth much. No-one will listen to you if you cannot provide peer reviewed support for your claims. Continously repeating the same unsupported claims is sloganeering. If you do not begin to support your claims the moderators will start to edit yout posts.
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Tom Curtis at 21:18 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Dikran @29:
First comparators.
To date I have included mutliple different comparisons in my discussion, including human food take; the kinetic energy of air in the lower atmosphere; thunderstorms, Saturn V rockets and, now Hurricanes. I believe it is necessary to include multiple comparisons of different types like this if you truly want people to get a feel for large numbers. It is necessary that they understand the very large amount of energy involved in a thunderstorm, and compare that to atomic bombs as well as to the heat gain at the Earth's surface. It is necessary to also appreciate the heat gain in terms of human food intake, and to realize that the total energy of human food intake in a minute and six and half seconds equals the energy of Little Boy when making the comparison. Only in that way, by comparing energy levels across a wide range of forms and entropy levels that they will appreciate the energy in itself, as distinct from its destructive capacity or its presence in low entropy states.
It is also usefull to make different forms of comparison, like the example of how hot the atmosphere would become if all the world's gain of heat had been confined to it. Or the fact that over the last ten years, the Earth has accumulated energy equivalent to seven days and eight hours worth of sunlight over the total of the Earth's surface.
But most important of all, the comparisons should be given scientific context.
I have tried to do all three with my multiple comparisons and discussion of entropy. The figure I have heard is that only 1% of internet discussions result in changing somebodies mind; and I have no reason to think this discussion will be even that successful given that the presentation of the widget means I was unable to change peoples minds in the discussions on the SkS private forum which led, eventually, to my resignation. I figure at least this discussion will give the scientific context, and multiple appropriate comparisons even if the widget does not.
You try to make the point that it is hard to think of non-destructive comparators for large amounts of energy. Most of my examples demonstrate that is not so. Unless, of course, you consider food intake and summer breezes destructive. You might reasonably point out that we do not appreciate the energy in the lower atmosphere, and of course we do not. But when it is compared to that from a nuclear weapon, and to that accumulated due to global warming, we are no longer tempted (if we have understood the comparisons) to treat the explosive, destructive features of the nuclear weapon as being essential, or even significant in the comparison. The nuclear comparison makes the energy evident, but the "summer breeze" comparison makes us aware that energy need not be destructive in any way; and that it is only the energy that is central to the comparison.
In contrast to my diverse comparisons, the widget focuses exclusively on destructive examples. Given a choice among these, it chooses the more destructive examples (Little Boy rather than Trinity), and when describing three of these it personalizes them, imaginatively placing the reader in the position of being the focus of the energy. It is as if in my comparison to Saturn V's I had compared it to the energy of being underneath a Saturn V at blast of - thereby taking the focus of the energy and onto personal destruction.
Indeed, you try that maneuvre yourself to suggest that my examples are also destructive. I very nearly included an example of the Hoover Dam power generation for a comparator. Would you have suggested also that it was destructive because we cold imagine it short circuiting through me?
Second, the website.
To start with, I hate the name of the website. It has entirely the wrong focus, and may well be offensive to Hiroshima survivors. Further, the discussion is too limited, not including any discussion of entropy, nor extended examples which defocus the attention on destruction. Rather, it personalizes it, bringing the focus onto the destruction by the three words highlighted in my quote @28. Beyond that, the links back to SkS are too non-specific. It tries to isolate the message by not linking to blog posts such as this one, and that linked to by Dana above. Beyond that, and the comparators chosen for the widget itself, no I have no significant problem with it (I have not read all of it in detail).
Third, motives.
I can understand not wanting to second guess motives, but sometimes it is necessary. That is particularly the case in that the widget is not science - it is an attempt to communicate part of a complex fact in as simple a form as possible. When you do that, it is very easy for you to identify factors as important to clarity when they are only important to secondary messages. One clear example of just that was the choice of the Little Boy over Trinity (or a host of alternative suggestions). Consequently, I think in this case the identification of secondary motives is appropriate. (I certainly disagree with any suggestion that alarming people is the primary motive involved, such as those raised by Terranova @17, both because it is not parsimonious with the evidence, and because I have participated in related internal discussions and know it is not true.
However, let us leave aside the issue of motives. That does not end the issue of the subtext of the message. Subtexts can be involuntary and even accidental. The simple fact is that people do read subtexts into communications. Given that, what subtext will people read into the widget? And if, as I maintain, it is one of alarmism, how can the SkS team alter the widget to avoid that subtext and bring the focus back to your primary message?
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shoyemore at 20:49 PM on 29 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
topal @1
What is it you want to demonstrate with this article? Prove that the opinion you represent is more worth than the opinion of others?
I think it is John Cook's facts-established-by-research versus the opinions-and-obfuscation of Anthony Cox.
No contest, really, if you read the articles without prejudging them.
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jhnplmr at 20:41 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
#19 HK
"BTW, the summer solstice insolation at 65oN is close to its minimum right now at 481 watt/m2 and will remain between 480 and 493 watt/m2 for the next 20,000 years because the precession that changes the time of perihel will be countered by decreased orbital eccentricity and axial tilt."
I don't know how you plot your Milankovitch cycles but I use the same method that Milankovitch used, ie, using the orbital eccentricity, the precession and the axial tilt to calculate the solar insolation at any time.
Saying:
"because the precession that changes the time of perihel will be countered by decreased orbital eccentricity and axial tilt."
is meaningless as these factors have already been taken into account in the calculation.
Moderator Response:[RH] Removed blank lines.
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Dikran Marsupial at 20:12 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom@30 The subtlety/complexity rather illustrates why thunderstorms are not a good analogy as most of us won't have a good conception of just how powerful a thunderstorm is. In fact the comparison with the Little Boy bomb puts it nicely into context - I find that a rather surprising comparison.
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jhnplmr at 20:04 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
#Moderator Response:[TD]
"No, the next glaciation won't be happening for many tens of thousands of years"
I didn't say the next glaciation, I said global cooling. I am well aware that the present dip in the Milankovitch cycle is insufficient to trigger the next glacial period. The effect of man-made warming is to offset the cooling due to the Milankovitch cycle, that is why the present interglacial has been extended far beyond the duration of the last interglacial period. Plot the graphs and see for yourself.
We are running out of fossil fuels so it is unlikely that we can continue to inject sufficient GHG to offset future cooling.
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topal at 19:51 PM on 29 November 2013Attacks on scientific consensus on climate change mirror tactics of tobacco industry
What is it you want to demonstrate with this article? Prove that the opinion you represent is more worth than the opinion of others? Opinions are not evidence, they cannot be exchanged against facts and evidence. Opinions can easily be influenced, facts cannot.
In the Middle Age, there was a consensus of more than 90% that whitches had to be drowned becaused they were responsible for extreme weather events. You don't gain anything if you have all the opinions on your side, as long as the evidence isn't conclusive.
Climate science is not like the tobacco industry, but there is a commonality between them: both may be considerable contributors to the livelihood of their partisans.
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chriskoz at 19:51 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
Tom@28,
The centrepiece of your critique is the alleged John Cook's "slip of a tongue" that you bring in here in the form of a long citation in the middle of your comment. Specifically, you emphasize the five bullet points & argue that the harm implying words therein should not be used in the description of the widget. However you do not provide any link as the evidence of the validity of your claim. Can you provide one? Thanks. Myself, I cannot find that text with google, so I'm confused where your citation comes from...
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jhnplmr at 19:50 PM on 29 November 2013Climate Bet for Charity, 2013 Update
#19 HK
"while the annual insolation has decreased at high latitudes during Holocene it has increased in the tropics"
There is a very strong correlation between Vostok ice core temperatures and the Jul 65N Milankovitch cycles. There is more land mass in the northern hemisphere so lower summer temperatures here have more effect on global temperatures. Glacial periods are caused by lower summer temperatures where ice doesn't melt. Plot it for yourself, if I could find a way to upload my graph I could show you but I can't!
"BTW, the summer solstice insolation at 65oN is close to its minimum right now at 481 watt/m2 and will remain between 480 and 493 watt/m2 for the next 20,000 years because the precession that changes the time of perihel will be countered by decreased orbital eccentricity and axial tilt."
I don't know where you are getting your figures from but from mine:
-3000 424.1W/m2
-2000 423.61W/m2
-1000 424.61W/m2This shows a clear minimum in 2000 years time. After that insolation will rise.
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Tom Curtis at 19:47 PM on 29 November 20134 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
I have been looking at why Roscoe Braham's 1952 estimate of the energy of an average thunderstorm (cited @28 above) is so much larger than the energy assigned to Hurricane Sandy by the widget. Part of the explanation is that there are two ways to measure the total energy of a storm.
The first, used by Braham, is to determine the total amount of water that condenses in the storm, and determine the amount of energy released by that condensation. It is that energy which, of course, powers the storm, and hence that energy is the total amount of energy produced by the storm. Emmanual (1999) cites a text book by Anthes et al (1978) to the effect that an average Hurricane produces 10^14 watts of energy by this process. R A Anthes did a lot of early work on hurricane energy, so can be taken as an authority on the subject.
Using this estimate, and the the approximate lifetime of Sandy of seven days, Hurricane Sandy would have generated a total energy of 60.5 x 10^18 Joules of energy. This is probably a significant underestimate due to Sandy's large size, but I will use it as a working value. That is 46,000 times the energy of an average thunderstorm, or 900,000 times the energy of the Little Boy bomb, or the equivalent of 2.8 days worth increased energy storage by the Earth due to global warming.
Most, however, of that energy is disspated harmlessly. Much of it is dissipated as increased gravitational potential energy of wind and air carried to high altitude at the hurricane's center (or the powerfull updrafts of a thunderstorm). A sizable fraction is used as the storm disperses and the clouds evaporate, thereby reversing the process which made the energy available in the first place. Consequently there are other methods of estimating a hurricane's energy.
The second way is to measure the dissipation of energy in the form of wind. Over its life time, the energy dissipated as wind equals the energy used to generate the winds, so that the two are equal. Therefore this represents the total kinetic energy of the hurricanes winds. Emmanuel gives the formula in Emmanual (1999). As it turns out, this energy is linearly proportional to the cube of windspeed; and hence forms the base of the Power Dissipation Index (PDI). The later, however, is just an index. It is a linear function of storm energy, but is not in units of energy.
Emmanuel calculates the power of a representative Atlantic hurricane as 3 x 10^12 watts. Taking that value, and applying Sandy's durration, we have a total kinetic energy estimate of 1.8 x 10^18 Joules. Again, this is probably a significant underestimate, but I shall use it as a working figure, lacking the detailed data on Sandy. That values is equivalent to 2 hours energy storage at the Earth's surface as a result of global warming.
These figures are obviously much larger than those ascribed to Sandy by the widget. The reason is that the widget used the figures for the Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE), an index of hurricane destructivity. The IKE of Sandy was indeed reported as being 140 terajoules, the figure used in the Widget. The integrated kinetic energy, however, is not the kinetic energy. To see this, we need only imagine a 2 Kg wait traveling without any forces being applied at 1 meter per second for 10 seconds. Its kinetic energy, give by 0.5mv^2 is 1 joule. In contrast its integrated kinetic energy over the ten seconds is 10 joules. Although the unit of "joules" is retained by integration, the IKE is not the energy of either our example weight, or of a storm. The retention of that unit, however, has lead to confusion both at the Washington Post, and in the creation of the widget.
As a side note, the very much greater actual energy of the storm compared to the IKE shows that there are very strong forces resisting the storm as it travels; which explains why hurricanes dissipate so quickly when their fuel (ie, condensing water) is cut of when they travel over dry land.
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Kevin C at 19:41 PM on 29 November 2013Help make our coverage bias paper free and open-access
Wiley are disputing the payment has been made. I've got the payment tracking details from my bank though, so they've got no legs to stand on.
Sorry about the delay, I'm escalating this as fast as I can.
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