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Tom Curtis at 07:12 AM on 14 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
I second Synapsid @10's comment.
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Synapsid at 06:48 AM on 14 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
JH @ 8:
tlitb1 has three posts. In the first he asked for sources for two statements by Howard; the second was a thank-you for a source for one of them; in the third he said that he hadn't received a source as yet for the other statement. In what way is this excessive repetition?
Moderator Response:[JH] Upon further review, I made a mistake. I have therefore struck through the comment.
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tmbtx at 06:18 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
I was looking at the briefing page in the link Kevin provided. When you look back at the curve comparisons to 1980 the agreement is good until the most recent 16 years.
Is it a well established finding that Arctic heating has accelerated more than the globe over the last decade or so? -
Matt Fitzpatrick at 06:16 AM on 14 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
Easy fix, remove the quotes from around "religious zealots".
There's no doubt that Howard calls climate activism a religion, and more than once. And, from the text of this speech, I see Howard drawing no meaningful distinction between climate activism and climate science. In fact, Howard conflates activism and science on page 4 of his speech, by invoking the specter of the "Climategate" East Anglia e-mail theft, and repeating the old "redistributing the world's wealth" quote mine to accuse the IPCC of advancing political agendas.
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Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
The coverage issue is definitely something to be aware of when reading the literature or looking at blog discussions for models vs. observations - camparisons have to be made with the same masking of effective area to be informative.
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Tom Curtis at 05:48 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
Congratulations Kevin and Robert. Well done.
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DaneelOlivaw at 05:33 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
It's a nice reminder that every time you start looking for an explanation, you first need to be sure that there's an effect in need of one.
I'm curious to see how this research fits into other studies about the "pause" (AKA, "the paws"). Seems that Kosaka & Xie 2013 might be at odds with this finding since their POGA-H model had an excellent fit with the original temperature record.
That brings me to a question. When a model is compared with a temperature record, ¿do they use the same averagin method? It seems to me that if you are using an average observed temperature that doesn't include the Arctic, then you should construct an average model temperature with exactly the same converage. I don't know if that's customary but if that's what K&X did then there would be no problem.
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tmbtx at 04:43 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
doug_bostrom: "But when I think about it, I had no reason to assume."
Yeah.... same here. I started to type a few other things about why I didn't know that and realized it was because I hadn't checked. You know, like 99.99% of all people whether or not they're informed on the issue overall.
But now there's a problem, even with well-intentioned media coverage, of having to explain why the temperatures are really going up faster without looking like we're cooking the books. *I* know the books aren't being cooked but how do I convince people of that?
The difficulties of scientific communication have never looked so intractable to me. -
vrooomie at 04:29 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
What Doug Bostrom said, at #4....we are inba much more dire sitation that any may have thought.
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Doug Bostrom at 04:25 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
tmbtx: I assumed that's what had already been done, unfortunately.
Me, too, pretty much. With polar amplification being significant where a substantial part of the 16% of missing coverage lies and especially given the unexpected excursion of sea ice "up there," my assumption was that somehow, some way the gap was accounted for before banging on about a pause.
But when I think about it, I had no reason to assume. Which brings us back to the old saw about "ass u me." :-)
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tmbtx at 03:57 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
Expanding a bit on Doug's point about public discussion - how do you present to a general audience the various decisions that are made in reconstructing temperature data? Obviously a discussion of kriging isn't really material for the local pub, but temperature curves published by the media get portrayed as "this is the temperature" not "this is the temperature we get from using stations with 85% global coverage and we suspect the other 15% would be warmer."
Nice work though. It's pretty clear the hybrid approach is better. I assumed that's what had already been done, unfortunately. -
Doug Bostrom at 03:44 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
There's an object lesson here in terms of how we may forget that our public discussion can be perilously dependent on speculation without our pausing (!) to carefully consider what we fairly know. For all the sound and fury expended over "the pause" we didn't actually know what was happening, not enough anyway to get in a lather about it.
Now, suddenly, it appears "the pause" has shrunk rather dramatically, thanks to people who look while the rest of us leap. Sheepish looks should be the hangover, not that it's likely any of the more extreme hyperbole we've witnessed is going to be accounted for.
I'm truly surprised this previously gaping hole wasn't emphasized more in all the premature chatter. Particularly it's strange that people who should and do know better have gone on to formalize "the pause" in various embarrassing places.
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DSL at 03:31 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
Thanks, Kevin and Robert, and congratulations!
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Kevin C at 03:03 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
Thanks Andy.
For anyone who is interested there is a longer video abstract, a detail background document, and every single piece of code and data required to reproduce our results from scratch on the project website.
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Andy Skuce at 02:49 AM on 14 November 2013Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows
This result is staggering. My congratulations to Kevin and Robert for a great piece of work.
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jdixon1980 at 02:04 AM on 14 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
I'm disappointed that suckfish @1 got a down vote. I see no reason to assume his questions were anything but an honest and relevant inquiry.
I do like the way chriskoz and Dana responded with a wealth of information; that's what makes this a great site. That is, with the exception of chriskoz's admonishing opener, "Your assessment is simplistic and incorrect," a mischaracterization of suckfish's comment - suckfish was explicitly airing out an "impression," not making an "assessment," and even inviting the impression to be corrected. All of us get wrong impressions from time to time due to gaps in our own level of understanding/expertise and/or incomplete information, and there's nothing wrong with that. (What can be harmful is precisely when people mistake their own wrong "impressions" for thorough and sound "assessments.") A purported "assessment" would reflect a belief by the speaker that she has considered enough of the relevant data and evaluating the conclusions of others to form her own firm conclusion. It would not be accompanied by a question about what the latest research indicates, and it would not itself be punctuated by a question mark, both of which appear in comment #1.
I don't know if there may be some history related to any prior comments by suckfish in other threads that may have triggered the downvote and/or the (in my view, inaccurate, as explained above) admonishment, which might justify them in a private conversation, but in a public forum it would regardless tend toward giving a wrong impression to anyone unaware of that history that we here at SkS are quick to assume anyone questioning any part of the main post is just a troll to be criticized and condescended to.
I think I speak for the community of regular visitors and contributors (my own small contribution so far consisting entirely of a single Spanish translation of the "ocean acidification is not a problem" climate myth, though I aspire to pick up the pace soon and start adding more translations) when I say we want to encourage honest and relevant inquiry, and that there is no shame in approaching an issue with initial impressions that may turn out to be incorrect.
Moderator Response:[PW} I agree: the never-ending onslaught of denier drivel has had, unfortunately, a corrosive effect on even the most genial of discussions and some--I am not absolved in this either--of us have an 'itchy rigger finger,' when we think we see a concern troll in its initial salvos.
I think it instructive, this bit of behavior and the poster's observations about it, and urge all to give everyone who visits SkS the benefit of the doubt, unless/until they show what their true motives are in commenting here.
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:17 AM on 14 November 2013Models are unreliable
dvaytw It sounds to me as if your firnd may be thinking of "flux corrections" but modern climate models have improved to the point where they are no longer necessary. Sadly unless he can give a concrete example, it is difficult to address his concerns more directly. The modellers do however perform experiments to determine the sensitivity to the parameters, which I understand are called "perturbed physics experiments". IIRC there are on-line repositories that contain the results of such experiments resulting from a sort of SETI@home type project where people can use their spare processor time to run climate models (I'll see if I can find it again).
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dvaytw at 01:06 AM on 14 November 2013Models are unreliable
I have a friend of a friend who is a physicist. He is ~not~ an AGW denier; he does however have objections to models as he claims they are used in climate science. He fears that, to quote him:
Where are the studies of model sensitivity to variations in the way any given model fixes up non-conservation of mass and/or energy? Every model I have looked at in detail has non-conservative processes, and they are always fixed up by hand at the end of each time step. This is a very bad thing. and I have yet to find any study on the sensitivity to the various choices one might make as to how to do this.
I suggested he post this question himself, but since he didn't feel it worth his time (which, I pointed out, is maybe why, though ignorant myself, I shouldn't take his objection too seriously), I told him I'd post it and see what people had to say. If this question doesn't explain his position clearly enough, I have some longer expositions of it I can post as well.
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DSL at 00:43 AM on 14 November 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #46A
GISS L-OTI for October is out: 0.61C, the fifth warmest October. By simple average, I have 2013 at .596C, on track to be the third warmest year in the record and easily the warmest for years with MEI average negative.
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Esop at 00:07 AM on 14 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
Fall of 2009: Svensmark predicts an immediate and rapid cooling
2010: Warmest year on record (tied with 2005)
Svensmark has been much less outspoken in the last few years.
Still heraleded as the man who proved AGW wrong by sections of the anti-science crowd, of course (and clueless MSM journalists, especially in Norway)
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tlitb1 at 22:46 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
@BillyJoe
Google is your friend. Try "john howard religious zealots".
Thanks but I’m afraid Google isn't my constructor. I've tried Google and not found any examples of Howard literally describing scientists as "religious zealots".
In the above linked speech I *do* see he talks about
"...zealous advocates of action on global warming..."
"...public support for over-zealous action on global warming has passed."
But I have found nothing that remotely supports this statement:
Howard characterised scientists who accept the evidence that humans are disrupting climate as “religious zealots”.
This preceding statement implies it is derived from specific source statements emanating from Howard himself, not interpretations found in the media.
This piece is supposed to be "deconstructing Howard" not the media.
I think any reasonable person would think a more direct quote or reference can easily be offered up to justify the claim that Howard has described any scientists as “religious zealots".
Moderator Response:[JH] You are on the verge of skating on the thin ice excessive repitition which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Pleae read the Comments Policy and adhere to it. Thank you.
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Tom Curtis at 22:39 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
tlitb1 @1, I am not aware of John Howard calling climate scientists "religious zealots". In the lecture, he does say:
"I chose the lecture’s title ["One religion is enough"] largely in reaction to the sanctimonious tone employed by so many of those who advocate quite substantial, and costly, responses to what they see as irrefutable evidence that the world’s climate faces catastrophe, against people who do share their view. To them the cause has become a substitute religion."
He does not call anybody a "zealot" in the lecture, but refers to "public support for over-zealous action", and refers to "the more zealous advocates of action on global warming". Neither term implies directly that anybody are zealots as such. There is widespread reporting of the contents of the lecture as indicating that Howard had called the "climate change spruikers religious zealots" to quote a headline from The Australian. Note, however, that "religious zealots" does not appear in quotes, and so is not a direct quotation, but rather a paraphrase or interpretation of Howard's claims.
Absent evidence of a direct quotation, it appears that John Cook has mistakenly taken an indirect quotation to be a direct quotation. It is not clear whether he was original in doing so, or accepted, without due diligence, the mistake of another. In any event, the phrase "religious zealot" in the OP should not be in quotation marks.
Response:[John Cook] Howard does actually use the term zealot - but you have to watch the YouTube video of the speech where he opens with some off-the-cuff remarks. I've updated my blog post an excerpt of his exact words. Thanks for the comments, Tom.
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BillyJoe at 22:11 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
tlitb1,
Google is your friend. Try "john howard religious zealots". Lots of links. This one explains his ignorance:
"Mr Howard revealed before the speech that the only book he had read on climate change was Lawson's An Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming, published in 2008.
Mr Howard said he read it twice, once when he was writing his autobiography, when he used it to counter advice for stronger action on climate change given to him by government departments when he had been prime minister."http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-claims-are-exaggerated-john-howard-rejects-predictions-of-global-warming-catastrophe-20131106-2wzza.html
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shoyemore at 22:03 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
Howard's remarks put me in mind of a saying of the great statistician and management consultant W.E. Deming.
"In God we trust; all others must bring data.“
Abbott and Howard (more like Abbott and Costello) are saying "Trust me; I know better than the data"
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BillyJoe at 21:59 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
John Howard supported an emmissions trading scheme in 2006 for the following reason:
"... late in 2006 my Government hit a 'perfect storm' on the issue. Drought had lingered for several years in many parts of Eastern Australia, leading to severe restrictions on the daily use of water; not for the first or last time the bushfire season started early; the report by Sir Nicholas Stern hit the shelves, with the author himself visiting Australia, and lastly the former US Vice President Al Gore released his movie An Inconvenient Truth. To put it bluntly 'doing something' about global warming gathered strong political momentum in Australia"
He is now rejecting action on climate change for the following reason:
"In the past five years, the dynamic of the global warming debate has shifted away from exaggerated acceptance of the worst possible implications of what a majority of climate scientists tell us, towards a more balanced, and questioning approach"
In other words, political expediency.
(plagiarised from here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-07/green-when-grave-facts-and-political-calculation-collide/5076354)
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tlitb1 at 19:31 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
@SCM
Thanks for that link. I see the full quote and context now :
"I've always been agnostic about it (climate change)," Mr Howard told reporters in London before his address.
"I don't completely dismiss the more dire warnings but I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated.
"I don't accept all of the alarmist conclusions."
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SCM at 18:10 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
The second quote is from media interviews prior to his speech:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/global-warming-exaggerated-former-pm-john-howard-says/story-e6frg6xf-1226753872134
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Ari Jokimäki at 17:18 PM on 13 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
Few years ago I wrote about the beginning of the cosmic ray hypothesis from a different perspective.
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tlitb1 at 17:16 PM on 13 November 2013Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change
Howard characterised scientists who accept the evidence that humans are disrupting climate as “religious zealots”. Consequently, he is not so convinced of the scientific evidence.
Could you show your source for where Howard specifically used the phrase "religious zealots" applied to scientists? I ask because it is not seen in the speech you link to.
On what does he base his views? Howard states that “…I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated.”
Also, could you show your source for this partial quote from Howard? It too is not included in the speech you link to.
Thanks.
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dana1981 at 11:57 AM on 13 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
chriskoz @7 - you're referring to me @4. Me @5 points out that me @4 got low/high clouds warming/cooling backwards.
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Marcin Popkiewicz at 10:31 AM on 13 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
@LuisC & others with technical problems
Plese check in order:
1. The game must be unpacked to a folder with writing rights - i.e. 'C:/WorldAtCrossroads', not 'C:/Program Files/WorldAtCrossroads' (which is write-protected)
2. On some computers the game may be blocked by an antivirus software (it was necessary to mark the file as "allowed" and everything run fine).
3. In one case the game run only on an admin account (not clear why, but it worked this way).
The above steps vere sufficient in every case - if the game still doesn't work, please send me an e-mail (marcin.popkiewicz@wp.pl), I'll do my best to help.
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chriskoz at 09:46 AM on 13 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
dana@5,
You've got it opposite to me@2, therefore one of us must be wrong.
All of the credible resources, including our own graphic of Cloud Feedback point that you are wrong. The science of cloud feedback is not intuitive, so it's easy to get it wrong. Thhe best way to remember it is, as I pointed @2, by thinking of clouds as reflecting the sun in summer: low clouds (usually heavy and dark) "obstruct a lot of sun rays" therefore cool you down, especially in summer when the scorching sun may be unbearable. On the other hand, the high, very thin clouds (like jet contrails) have little influence on scorching summer sun. That's the main difference. Difference in IR absorbtion by low vs. high cloulds, although goes in the same direction of climate feedback, is not that signifficant.
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Doug Bostrom at 07:49 AM on 13 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
Linux+Wine: me, too. No gyrations required.
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Jeff T at 04:30 AM on 13 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
Dana, thanks for an informative summary of recent work. Although there doesn't seem to be any contribution from cosmic rays to the secular trend of temperature, there does appear to be a correlation between CR and decadal temperature fluctuations. Of course, that correlation may just result from the correlation of CR with total solar irradiance (TSI). You could add Foster and Rahmstorf (Environ. Res. Lett. 6 (2011) 044022) to the evidence against a strong CR influence on temperature. They found that the amplitude of the TSI effect on temperature fluctuations since 1980 is no more than 0.05C. The TSI effect would implicitly include any CR effect. Since the sun is quieter now than it was in 1980, they found a small negative net solar effect from 1980 to 2011.
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LuisC at 04:24 AM on 13 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
Didn't work. The program is running in the background but nothing displays.
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dana1981 at 03:13 AM on 13 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
Sorry, I got that backwards @4!
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Kevin C at 02:52 AM on 13 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
For Linux users: I tried it and played a couple of turns under Wine, so you don't need Windows to play it.
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bouke at 02:34 AM on 13 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
Great game. I just finished my first playthrough (rule the world/fate of the world) and finished (in 2200) with orbital solar panels, CO2 at 400 and falling (from a top of 480) and sea level at 2 meters above pre-industrial. My enlightened leadership was a resounding success ;-)I was googling around for a forum where people can have a discussion about this game, but couldn't find anything. Are there plans to create something like that?
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dana1981 at 01:26 AM on 13 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
suckfish @1 - it depends on the type of cloud. As a general rule, low level clouds tend to have a net warming effect while high level clouds tend to have a cooling effect. Cosmic ray theory suggests more low level clouds would form.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:49 AM on 13 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
Barry,
Why is there still any "desperate poverty" if the GDP has grown so many times quicker than the population?
Every nation has the wealth to ensure that none of its people are desperately poor. The most fortunate nations have excess ability that can easily assist less fortuante nations. And yet that simple and possible to do thing "does not happen", except in small grudging ways, or only if the more fortunate see a bigger personal payback.
The probable explanation is the way that callous selfish interest can become popular. Marketing of mass-consumption consumerism promotes the "bad attitude". A higher percentage among the poor are willing to do more to help other poor people. That is because the callous greedy ones have a competetive advantage leading them to be concentrated among the more fortunate. That competetive advantage can also result in the callous greedy ones having more political and international trade infuence. It is easier to appeal to self interest than generosity. Guilt can be used to get better bahaviour out of the less generous, but guilt is not a sustainable way to get someone to behave in a more caring and considerate manner. Also, guilt does not work on the "career callous pursuers of more for themselves".
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barry1487 at 23:10 PM on 12 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
"It is interesting to note that Global GDP has grown significantly faster than global population, yet there are still many people living in horrible poverty."
By all metrics that I know of, increased GDP has led to reductions in poverty. A notable example is China, which has achieved rapid growth over the last 30 years (arguably stimulated by fossil fuel development amongst other things), and steep reductions in poverty. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor has widened.
While a sizable fraction of the world's population still live in poverty, this fraction has decreased over the last 50 years. In the short term at least, accelerated productivity seems to have been a boon to the impoverished. The future under a changing climate is generally assessed as less optimistic.
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barry1487 at 20:52 PM on 12 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
suckfish,
You can access the AR5 chapter on clouds and aerosols here, Chapter 7, describing the complexities and uncertainties and giving best estimates.
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chriskoz at 20:38 PM on 12 November 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #45
Have you noticed many "obvious" typos in my posts?
I don't know if the editor in the "Submit" box has the spell checker (a little squiggles would do for me, I usually know the spelling and prefer British English, according to the country of my residence) and how to enable it. Anyone knows and/or has an easy tip for me how to fix my typos before "Submit"?
Moderator Response:[JH] Check the HTML version of your draft. It has a spell-check feature.
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Paul D at 20:31 PM on 12 November 2013Climate Science History - interactive style
kampmannpein@11
Interesting web site. Nice to see you embeded it successfully.
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chriskoz at 20:31 PM on 12 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
suckfish@1,
Your assessment is simplistic and incorrect.
"clouds-keep-heat" (not just "at-night" but 24h) when they absorb ountgoing IR. Such property is attributed to high "Cirrus" clouds. Their effect is warming.
Other clouds, like low "Stratus" clould, do not a bsorb IR but they are very good at scattering the incoming solar radiation (with that respect they act as if they increased the Earth albedo), that's why the "look dark" from below. Their effect is cooling.
But on global average, the "cooling clouds win", i.e. stratus effect outweigh the effect cirrus effect. So, if the increased CR results in more cloud seeding, the net effect is cooling, assuming on average all types of clouds are seeded uniformely. I think that's the assumption of this article.
Of course, verious "sceptics" might argue only certain type of clouds (depending on their agenda) are seeded by CR, I don't know much about CR to comment on that. All I can say is: in the present trend, they seem to try reinforcing the fading "it's the sun" myth by pointing out that sun's energy variation has a positive feedback from CR. It seems now, that the feedback, even if positive, looks miniscule, unable to explain the Earth energy budget and its history.
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Paul D at 20:20 PM on 12 November 2013Climate Science History - interactive style
Hi Lei@14.
The timeline covers over 200 years of history and the Vostok Core was extracted in the 1990s. As you can see in the project, space is constrained and when designing anything like this, information has to be edited in order to fit in with a design.
I have had many discussions with Skeptical Science contributers about what should and shouldn't be included, the reality is we all had different projects in our heads and this one is I guess the result of me leading it! If someone else had led it, the result would have been different.I take your point though. We have the Argo project in the timeline which is a project that provides data, so why not mention Vostok?
It's probably one for the to do list!
I'll point out that the project data is not 'static'. The data can be added to and in theory that is my intention. For example we did consider including the IPCC AR5 report, but I thought that because it is a 'history' project, AR5 isn't really history yet. It's to soon to include it and it can be added laterThe software is designed to automatically configure itself to new data, so that in the future it can be extended to as many years as is needed.
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suckfish at 17:50 PM on 12 November 2013Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming
Re (3) of the hypothesis (fewer clouds will warm the earth) - is that true?What's the latest on the relationship between cloud cover changes and global temperature?I was under the impression that clouds-keep-heat-in-at-night and clouds-reflect-sunlight basically cancelled each other out? -
One Planet Only Forever at 14:19 PM on 12 November 2013Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
In my formative University years there was a program developed to simulate the development of a nation. The interface was a real-time responding dot-matrix text printer (pretty slick at the time).
Through trial and error, what could be seen was that rapid industrialization produced a higher GDP, but with horrible social costs. A much slower, smaller scale economic development of cottage-style collective activities (no investors just making money because they had money), took much longer to produce higher GDP but never produced the horrible social consequences of rapid industrialization.
It is interesting to note that Global GDP has grown significantly faster than global population, yet there are still many people living in horrible poverty.
Slow and steady, sustainable development is possible and is better, except for those who want as much as possible for themselves as soon as they can get it.
Short-term interests are not helpful. And the interest rate spike of the late 1970s played a significant factor in magnifying the focus on the short term. Unfortunately, the recent long stretch of low interets rates has not undone that tragic change of attitude. It seems that our currently popular socioeconomic delusion is not only producing damaging development, it is significantly influencing people to "more desperately want more for themselves as soon as possible", which feeds the pursuit of damaging unsustainable behaviours.
A more fully informed population is the answer, but that is not easy to achieve.
Part of the required solution is an end to the success of "partial information deceptive marketing". Full information marketing is seldom used because it is boring, more expensive, and would probably produce results that are contrary to the ineterests of the people with the money to develop and deliver it. Full information about climate change is never used by those trying to discredit the scientific findings. It is also never used by promoters of a hoped to be "Profitable Pursuit".
Another part of a sustainable better future for all is the lifestyle of the most fortunate being sustainable. If the most fortunate were not consuming non-renewable resources and were not over-consuming the renewable resources "everybody could develp to be more fortunate - for a very long time", no conflict, no unneccessary poverty.
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scaddenp at 13:14 PM on 12 November 2013Climate Science History - interactive style
Oh, and lets have some perspective on the relative drivers. The milankovitch forcing that drives ice age is due to change in forcing that is about -0.25W/m2 per hundred years at 65N. Globally, its maybe a tenth of that. By comparison, anthropogenic GHG is about 2.29W/m2 (from the latest AR5) over last 150 years on a GLOBAL scale. Given that 0.25 on one point of the planet is very much smaller than 2.29 averaged over entire globe, I think we stop worrying about ice ages.
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scaddenp at 12:26 PM on 12 November 2013Climate Science History - interactive style
The iceage cycle is the defining characteristic of the Pleistocene. However, we have put CO2 at levels not seen since the pliocene when we didnt have ice ages, and yet the same orbital drivers would have been present then.
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