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Tom Curtis at 07:23 AM on 22 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
Mark Harrigan @33, your point (1) is clearly addressed by Dessler in his video, as shown in the transcript @37. The "hole in the logic" is, it turns out, simply a matter of your not paying attention to what was said.
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Tom Curtis at 07:19 AM on 22 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
Mark Bahner @35, you are angling to suggest that Andrew Dessler does not adress the issue as to which has the greatest net cost, switching to renewable energy or maintaining business as usual. That, however, is not the case. He adresses the issue very specifically from 4:38 in the video. He says:
"There are several reasons to think that switching to renewable energy, even if climate change turns out to not be a very serious problem, is not a terribly bad action. There are co-benefits, such as cleaner air and political benefits of not using fossil fuels. In addition, its a reversible decision. If we choose not to burn coal now, we can always burn it later. And finally, it is inevitable. We're going to run out of fossil fuel, and we're going to have to make the switch; and in general the earlier you start making these changes, the cheaper they are - so starting now has that advantage.
It is also worth pointing out that climate change is, at a very fundamental level, irreversible. Every cubic kilometer of ice we loose, every centimeter of sea level rise that occurs - those are not going to be reversed on any timescale that we care about. Those are irreversible changes so far as I'm concerned. And irreversibility means that you have to be very certain of the costs and benefits before you take an irreversible action.
And so when you put all this together, it seems very clear to me that the worse error is not taking action on climate change, and having it turn out to be severe. And I think that if you want to argue that we should listen to the 3% of dissident scientists, then you have to make the argument that that is not the case - that switching to renewable energy is the worse mistake. I think that that's an extremely difficult argument to make."
I would add to that that:
1) BAU will result in a change in global means surface temperature as great as the difference between the last glacial maximum and the preindustrial average; and the assumption that such a large change can be made without major disruption of agriculture is fanciful;
2) Global warming has a high probability of completely or partially destroying major ecosystems including all arctic and subarctic ecosystems, the Amazonian rainforest, and the Great Barrier Reef (which is an almost certain casualty of ocean acidification alone, let alone the additional impacts of global warming) and the idea that humanity can swan along unharmed amidst such wide spread ecological catastrophes is again, fanciful; and
3) The most detailed economic analyses of the issue, as represented in IPCC WG 2 and 3 show the economic cost of BAU to be greater than that of taking action to prevent climate change, even though they make the absurd assumption that no matter how great the impact of climate change, it will never slow economic growth.
Thus, Dessler adresses the issue you raise and your complaint appears to boil down to that he does not do so in the same detail as WG 2 & 3 within the scope of a six minute video.
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scaddenp at 07:19 AM on 22 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
Mark harrigan - you argument would be better if you could cite some credible science supporting a climate sensitivity of less than 2. Hoping it will be low without also doing any kind of risk assessment for it being greater than 3 doesnt sound like sensible strategy to me. Words like "severe" or "mild" arent really that useful. Better is to look at what the projected climatic effects will be for a sensitivity of 2 and compare those impacts with costs of mitigation now.
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Tom Curtis at 06:42 AM on 22 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
Sphaerica @26, there is one instance in the self rated papers of a paper rated by abstract as explicitly endorsing with quantification (1) being self rated as explicitly rejecting with quantification (7), ie, a difference of -6, which is not shown on the graph. That represents the same percentage of papers as that shown for differences of -4 and 4. It is, therefore, not consequential, but should be shown for accuracy.
It is very amusing to see Joeygoze trying to suggest that the data has been hidden, when it is freely available for download.
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Bob Lacatena at 05:34 AM on 22 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze,
In case you don't find it in there (although you really should read the post to which I linked -- you seem to be suffering from a lot of misconceptions based on "yeah, but what if..." thinking), the self rating data is here.
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Leland Palmer at 05:32 AM on 22 August 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
Apparently, according to the IMPACTS group modeling, the sea of Okhotsk may be very important to the U.S. Their modeling shows a severe anoxic region in the northern Pacific, originating in the sea of Okhotsk, after 30 years of methane hydrate release, according to their conservative modeling. The figures in their Powerpoint slide show illustrate this anoxic region extending across to Alaska, down the west coast of Canada, and all the way down the California coast to around Baja California, wandering out into the Pacific near the equator, then continuing in diluted form along the west coast of South America.
Will there be hydrogen sulfide clouds rolling in from the Pacific into northern California within my lifetime?
A lot of that probably depends on the global methane hydrate inventory, and whether hydrate dissociation will be a top down, orderly process.
Is the real global hydrate inventory 80,000 (or more) cubic kilometers of hydrate or around 4000 cubic kilometers?
Whatever the methane hydrate inventory is, Dickens says that under projected warming conditions, the methane hydrate stability zone will shrink by about 50 percent. So, whatever is down there, maybe half of it is likely coming out, over the next decades or centuries.
Does the IMPACTS modeling take into account gas driven pumping of sea water through the hydrate deposits, for example? Wouldn't gas release into methane chimneys make the seawater in that chimney less dense, pumping upward flow? Would warm water flow down an adjacent channel, to fill that chimney? Could a sort of chaotic or oscillating flow driven by gas pumping and alternating chilling of water in adjacent channels result?
How sure are we that gas pumping will not lead to pumping of sea water through the hydrate deposits, when gas releases by the hydrate deposits increase by tens or hundreds of times?
Here's a paper that talks about very slow flow, driven by gas pumping, tidal pumping and various other forces through a normal hydrate deposit, not yet much affected by global warming:
How much will gas driven pumping increase when methane gas emission from shallow hydrate deposits increases by tens or hundreds of times?
All of this would seem to make the slab models used by the IMPACTS team at least questionable, and possibly actively misleading.
If scientific conservatism is helping to kill the biosphere, maybe it's time to try something else.
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jja at 05:29 AM on 22 August 2013How much will sea levels rise in the 21st Century?
MA Roger @37
you said, "I have yet to see anyone describe how an energy flux can be created large enough to melt enough ice for anything like 5M SLR."
You have also said (@19) that "To melt enough ice to achieve 50mm SLR p.a. would require roughly 5 ZJ p.a"1. If 11/5 of total SLR is due to thermal expansion and not ice melt (probably closer to 1/3 ) and
2. We want to find how much ice would be needed to melt to raise sea level by 5M
and we use your assumptions then
5 ZJ (ice melt) = 5 CM sea level rise, 100ZJ (ice melt) = 1 M sea level rise, Target Sea Level rise = 4 M = 400 CM = 400ZJ (ice melt)
Current Energy imbalance according to Hansen and Soto is 11.6 ZJ per year
Total Energy imbalance from today to 2100 = current energy imbalance + Increased RF between now and 2100 = (11.6 ZJ per year (corresponding to .75W/m^2) + 46.4 ZJ per year to 69.6 ZJ per year) , (corresponing increased RF from now to 2100 of between 3 to 4.5 W/M^2 additional forcing)Therefore the total energy imbalance at 2100 compared to today will be between 58ZJ per year and 81.2 ZJ per year.
These total energy imbalance values will yeild an average imbalance between now and 2100 of (approximately) 29 and 40.5 ZJ per year.
So, over an 86 year period, the total period extra energy absorbed by planet earth is between 2,494ZJ and 3,483 ZJ between now and 2100.If Atmospheric temperature is increased to +7C by 2100 and Arctic amplification due to early summer sea ice loss occurs then the deposition of 400ZJ (conservative estimate) is certainly plausible.
compare with alternative calculation below, the
The value I used was indeed RF values not energy imbalance. If I use your math and Hansen & Sotos value of .75 (they adjust for the solar minimum) I get a value of (7.5 * .75/.58) * 1.2 which is equal to 11.6 ZJ p.a. this will make a total earth cumulative energy imbalance of 1,000 ZJ by 2100 (86 years) If even a few of the non-linear feedbacks are taken into account and a higher (more realistic) emission scenario is used then the value of energy imbalance by 2100 could easily be 4-6X the current value. Therefore the total cumulative energy by 2100 will be closer to 3,000 +2,000/-1,000 ZJ . This will increase if I used the slightly higher values of Balmaseda, Trenberth & Kallen
In addition, if the ECS value is 4.3 then surface warming will be greater and the proportion of heat transferred by convection to land-based ice will increase. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:02 AM on 22 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze #24,
That information is available, and in fact has already been published here, at SkS, along with the following histogram:
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NewYorkJ at 04:10 AM on 22 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze,
See "Table 5. Comparison of our abstract rating to self-rating for papers that received self-ratings."
Useful would be to read the full study, the supplementary material, the FAQ, and examine the full list of papers and authors yourself, and as a learning exercise, doing your own ratings. Most of the criticism tends to be from individuals who do not have a good understanding of the study, or hope their target audience doesn't.
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joeygoze9259 at 03:22 AM on 22 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
NewYorkJ - So can you point me to the following data? From the article in your link.
"We invited the scientific authors to categorize their own papers, so if they responded, their 'correct' classifications of the full papers are included in our database. As illustrated in the graphic below, we found the same 97% consensus in both the abstracts-only and author self-rating methods." I see the graph below the text but it is expressed in %s, want to see the number of papers in which authors also gave a response and agree with the classification, is that available?
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NewYorkJ at 03:06 AM on 22 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze,
Mr. poptech's argument has been addressed.
Remember there were 12,000 papers surveyed. What percentage are then under dispute by those carefully-selected skeptical authors?
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John Bruno at 02:33 AM on 22 August 2013Where SkS-Material gets used - Coursera's Climate Literacy Course
Just wanted to say I use SkS material all the time in my teaching at UNC and also in various outreach endeavors (blogs, talks to the public, etc). I even have an SkS graphic in a new book chapter coming out. It is all so invaluable!
One tip though: the axis and tic labels on SkS graphs are often way to small. Please start making with much larger font:)
Thanks Gang!!!
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Mark Bahner at 02:32 AM on 22 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
Tom Curtis,
You're right. Here is what Andrew Dessler said, "Future warming may be severe."
Here's a comparable statement, "An asteroid may hit the earth in the next century. The effects may be severe."
Neither statement is scientifically actionable, because there is no further explanation for either the phrase "may be" or "severe" in either statement.
Here's information that Andrew Dessler could have provided to assess the need for action:
1) What 97% of scientists think is the most likely global average surface temperature increase, in the absence of action, and with action.
2) What 97% of scientists think is the most likely global average sea level rise from 2013 to 2100, in the absence of action, and with action.
3) What 97% of scientists think the most likely worldwide average life expectancy at birth will be for someone in 2100 without action and with action.
4) What 97% of scientists think the most likely worldwide average per-capita GDP will be for 2100, with and without action.
5) What 97% of scientists think the most likely number of malaria deaths will be, with and without action.
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michael sweet at 01:17 AM on 22 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
mark,
I directly addressed your comments. You claim (without any support) that renewables are more expensive. I referred you to another thread where that was discussed and the conclusion was that renewables are not more expensive. Because you did not read the link you do not realize why you are wrong. Recently I linked to a peer reviewed study where they calculated the cost of using renewables compared to fossil fuels in the New York area. They built three times as much nameplate wind as you point out above (natural gas also only produces 30% of nameplate, does that bother you?). The renewables were cheaper than the fossil fuels. I cannot find the link because it was not on the correct thread (it is on one of the weekly review threads, why don't you find it since you like to post on unrelated threads). Since you have provided no links to support your wild claims and do not bother to read links I give you, I do not need to provide links here. Peer reviewed data shows that you are incorrect in your claim that renewables are more expensive. Post on the correct thread if you want more information.
You also claim incorrectly that it might not be too bad. There is a thread for that argument also. If you do not follow the organization plan the arguments become too repetitive, because everyone thinks they have a new argument. Your argument is not new and has already been addressed on the appropriate thread.
Your point three is obviously wrong. It is rude to come to a site and tell the moderators how to run their site when we have developed rules over several years. If you posted to the correct thread, and cited your claims, I will provide the information you claim you want. Read the background information you have already been linked to.
Your conclusion was refuted on the link I gave you. Read the links. It is not my responsibility to spoon feed you everything you want. You are required to do your homework and read the background information.
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joeygoze9259 at 00:59 AM on 22 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
OK, so even if I accept the "standard practice" of throwing out papers that do not take a position and look at 3,870 papers in which 97% of them support human driven AGW, let's look at that set more deeply from Cook et al.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html#Update2
Many scientists, when spoken to about their papers and how they were classified in the Cook et al. paper claim that their paper was not classified correctly. One scientist makes the same point that I made earlier, "Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren't necessarily correct. Moreover, as you can see from the above example, the analysis (in Cook et al.) itself is faulty, namely, it doesn't even quantify correctly the number of scientists or the number of papers which endorse or diminish the importance of AGW." (quote from Dr. Shariv, Astrophysics, Univ. of Jerusalem)
Phil Cohen - On your statement, " if you have evidence against AGW, that's new and important, and why in the world wouldn't you put it in your summary?" Maybe because Cook et al. recruited a bunch of die hard AGW believers to help conduct the study and any work that contradicts the faith may have been ignored? I would rather see a study to proove consensus would be a survey study sent to scientists to answer straight forward questions thus you eliminate the entire difficult process of analyzing the words of a paper and subjectively determine what the authors meant.
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Mark Harrigan at 00:36 AM on 22 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
(-snip-)
Point 1 - There IS a hole in the logic. I am not saying it cannot be filled. But it IS necessary to address the issue of what the are costs of mitigation (via renewables, reduction in consumption and efficiiency). It needs to be shown that these are less than the costs of the damge that climate change will produce
Point 2 - To have some say (as they did) that the chance of warming turning out to be mild (i.e. at the low end of the climate sensitivity arguments) is zero is just as egregious and scientifically ignorant as the deniers who refuse to acknowledge that it might be much worse. The fact is we do not know. There is non- negligible risk climate sensitivity is high and the damage function similarly high - but it also may turn out not to be so/ (-snip-).
Point 3 - (-snip-)
Moderator Response:[JH] You are skating on the thin ice of excessive repetition and sloganeering, both of which are prohibited by the site's Comment Policy. Please cease and desist, or face the consequences.
[DB] Off-topic snipped. The next off-topic comment will be deleted in its entirety.
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CBDunkerson at 23:54 PM on 21 August 2013Coumou & Robinson on Extreme Heat: Choose Your Own Adventure
Thanks Byron. I was wondering why the change appeared most clearly near the equator when the poles have seen the most rapid warming. Your comments about regional variation provide a logical explanation.
The way this study looks at the data should also correlate well with what the average person thinks of as 'extreme heat'. That is, there is often a disconnect when you tell people that the Arctic has undergone 'massive warming'... because even after that warming the temperatures there are still 'cold' by the standards of most people (who live in warmer climes). On the other hand, areas which will experience 'extreme heat' as identified by this study should correlate well to what most people think of as extreme.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 19:03 PM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
"For example, is a scientific paper that is peer reviewed but has conclusions that you disagree with automatically misinformation?"
It isn't disagrement with the conclusions that makes something misinformation joeygoze. It is the use of cherry-picked data, logical fallacies and playing on the ignorance of your audience to falsely produce a 'conclusion' that can't be identified as spurious by your audience.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 18:55 PM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze #11 You might want to read this post about the Lu paper you reference.
Misinformation? Dunno. Fairly sloppy work? Yep -
Byron Smith at 16:18 PM on 21 August 2013Coumou & Robinson on Extreme Heat: Choose Your Own Adventure
Thanks for this summary of a fascinating study. It's worth pointing out the reason why there is a greater increase in 3 and 5 sigma events near the equator: because the natural temperature variation in those regions is considerably smaller than near the poles, so even a small rise in temperatures rapidly starts to become extreme on the distribution chart. Now, since these are the areas where there is already a lot of heat, then extra heat in these places can be particularly damaging to human and natural systems. Nonetheless, this statistical quirk (of smaller natural temperature variation near the equator) can serve to hide just how extreme the Arctic warming is projected to be. Since the Arctic naturally experiences much more year-to-year temperature variability, then even the effects of Arctic amplification (where more of the globe's extra heat ends up in the Arctic than anywhere else) don't show up clearly in Figure 2.
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Tom Curtis at 14:53 PM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
ubrew12 @30, human senses are not good at recording "temperature". Rather, they record heat flow, which can change with age. Further, human memory is not crash hot either, and is unikely to register a change of 0.7 C in temperature between youth and current conditions. I know that early each summer, temperatures feel hot which late in the summer I would consider cool because I am better adapted to the heat. Given that, the idea that I could reliably register the difference in temperature now compared to that 45 years ago (when I was seven) is not plausible, even if I was in the same city (which I am not).
Having said that, my mother accepts climate change implicitly because she has noticed that the Jacaranda's in Brisbane now bloom a month earlier than they did when she was studying teaching here. Specific anecdotal evidence like that, or like the date cherries bloom in Japan, or ice forms on lakes in Canada can form significant evidence of a changing climate - and have been used in scientific studies for just that purpose.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:53 PM on 21 August 20132012: One of the 10 Warmest Years on Record
The discussion of whether 2012 is the 8th, 9th 10th or 11th warmest annual global average surface temperature is intellectually engaging (and a bit of a waste of the engaged intellect), but a more significant point is that the warm years since 1998 have all occured without a transient bump comparable to the one that 1998 recieved from the signifcant El Nino that occured. As mentioned, 2012 was warmer because a weak La Nina ended.
How much warmer the globe has become compared to 1998 can only really be commented on after an El Nino influence on the global average surface temperatures similar to the 1997-1998 El Nino occurs, and other transient or cyclical influences on the "annual average" are considered.
The difference in global average between the 1982-83 El Nino event and the 1997-98 event may give an indication of how much warmer than 1998 the yet to come next major El Nino year will be.
The rolling average of 30 years still climbs with every new month of temperature data.
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Tom Curtis at 14:47 PM on 21 August 2013Coumou & Robinson on Extreme Heat: Choose Your Own Adventure
One interesting point is the comparison between model and observations for 1 sigma events. Clearly, from figure 3, obervations show lower percentages of the land area with 1 sigma events relative to the models from 2000 to 2012, but quite the opposite impression is made by figure 2, where it appears that observations overshoot the model projections. I wonder if the discrepancy is due the the large extent of areas not observed in the African and South American tropics, areas which if they match their neighbouring regions, would have had a very high percentage of 1 sigma events. Did Coumou and Robinson normalize figure three to compensate for this unobserved land area? That is, does the percentage of land area shown represent the percentage of total land area? Or the percentage of actually observed land area?
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Roger D at 14:26 PM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
unbrew12: I don't know about that method for increasing the number of people that accept the reality of human impact on climate. I'm a bit over 50 and I can't say I've seen a change in climate. From what I understand, we are only now starting to see the impacts in some of the indicators. John Q Public living near the coast can't tell that sea level has risin since he was a kid. And even if he imagined he could see a difference he doesn't have to believe there is a large human caused influence. You'd be better off surveying, say, those responsible for water supply planning that are familiar with historic reservoir fill data and runoff curves and such in areas that are starting to be impacted. There are lots of other examples that are probably valid as well. But I think the main thing is to somehow get the population to realize the reality that scientists are much more trustworthy source of information than the other purveyors of opinion such as thinktanks whose purpose is to market doubt. It may (I hope not though) be the case that future generations will be able to say they've seen the climate change..."my dad used to have a farm but the droughts got more frequent and..." We don't want to get to that point. As a population we need to accept the results of the work done by experts, have the basic literacy to comprehend the graphs, etc, and not be fooled by false skeptics. That is what it will take.
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ubrew12 at 13:31 PM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
As an adjunct to John Cook's excellent polling of Climate Science papers since 1990, and Climate Scientists themselves, perhaps someone should just go out there and ask anyone over Age 50: has the climate changed or not?
The deniers have convinced themselves, and an astonishing fraction of the population, that the ENTIRE Climate Science profession is being paid off by Mr. Gore himself, to lie about an aspect of nature they can access themselves by going out the front door and looking UP. So why not enlist THEM, themselves, as the 'climate scientists'. Have you, if you're over 50, seen a change in climate? It could be useful.
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JasonB at 11:34 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze,
The 12,000 papers that were assessed were simply the set of all scientific papers published during the period of question that survived a set of easy-to-apply filters to make the manual task easier. They do not represent all papers that might be relevant to the question at hand, nor do they represent only papers that might be relevant to the question at hand. They are merely a (hopefully unbiased) sample to estimate the level of consensus in relation to the question at hand in the whole of the scientific literature.
As such, any calculations of endorsement that involve all of the papers in the sample, rather than just those papers that were deemed to be relevant to the question at hand on manual inspection, are invalid. After all, with sufficient resources, it would be possible to assess every single scientific paper ever published, guaranteeing that all relevant papers were assessed, but also guaranteeing that the percentages of endorsement and rejection out of the whole sample would be approximately zero due to the large number of irrelevant papers involved. In spite of that, we have a fair degree of confidence that if all of the irrelevant papers were excluded from the calculation, the levels of endorsement and rejection should be quite similar to that found by Cook et al due to the scale of the survey conducted by Cook et al and there being no demonstration of bias that I've seen to date in the filtering algorithm used to narrow down the sample size.
All of this has been discussed previously. If you feel you have some new insight to bring to the table then please do so, but it's annoying to have the exact same comment being made over and over again by an unending stream of different people who apparently think nobody else has considered this issue and can't be bothered reading up on it. But keep in mind two things:
1. The classification of "relevant to the question at hand" was obviously very conservative, in that the author's own ratings of many papers that Cook et al classified as "No position" based on the abstracts were actually claimed to take a position by their authors based on the entire paper. This means that the true value of "papers out of the 12,000 that support the claim" is actually much higher than 33%.
2. The authors' own ratings gave very similar results despite large numbers of "No position" papers being reclassified by their own authors — so even though significant numbers of papers were added to the pool of relevant papers, the ratio of endorse:reject barely changed.
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Treesong2 at 11:29 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
Oh my, someone's discovered the word 'cherry picking'! The nonsense is familiar but I haven't seen it mixed with 'cherry picking' before.
In fact, of course, everyone but the very few denialists knows that AGW is a fact, so there's no point in expressing support for it, any more than articles on evolution need to point out that the earth is not 6000 years old. On the other hand, if you have evidence against AGW, that's new and important, and why in the world wouldn't you put it in your summary? If anything, dropping the 67% that didn't take a position underestimated the consensus.
And if that weren't sufficient demolition, let's recall that scientists were invited to rate their own papers' support for AGW, and once again the consensus was over 97%.
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scaddenp at 11:16 AM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
For evidence of extent to which FF companies fund US politicians, this link is pretty interesting.
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Roger D at 10:53 AM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler,
some thoughts I have on your comments in @26.
You took exception to @1 mike roddy's comment about oil companies influence. You say you don't think big oil is buying votes or controlling congress. I would just say it doesn't take "control" to accomplish the goal of preventing action and appropriate leadersip for addressing climate change: it takes "monkey wrenches". This is the point the comment @1 was making I think, and in my opinion this is what is happening.
And yes, exact prediction is impossible. The magnitude of the negative impacts of climate change can only be approximated. But I'm convinced that these approximations are valid. To compare the best estimate of impacts from a concensus of the science will yeild an approximation of reality that is likely to resemble the actual reality. The majority climate science contrarians influencing public opinion, as far as I can tell, are not interested inhonestly bracketing the problems a warming planet might cause us, but instead have the goal downplaying the science to the point that those that most of the public is misinformed.
And I'm not sure your example about the accuracy of weather predictions and climate models is a very good one. A better analogy might be a groundwater flow model where a basin scale model can answer the gross flux issues with good accuravy but modeling localized pumping interference effects is much more difficult.
What can one person do? Not much. One person flying a private airplane full of sandwiches to Berlin in 1948 would not have helped. One coal plant scrubbing emissions would not make dent in the acid rain problem. Too bad all those Berliners were starved, and the acid rain problem has continued to worsen over the decades - wait that didn't happen.
It takes good leadership, looking at the problems seriously, honest players without ulterior motives, and buy in from the public. Don't know a better way to put it than that an honest person could find much fault with news stories leaning towards "AGW will bring problems", but also find the "it's no problem"-bunch of contrarians to be happy to point the public in the oppisite direction of reality.
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scaddenp at 10:41 AM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
Stealth, perhaps you might like to look at the "Its too hard" argument. Frankly, your comments come across someone who is trying to rationalize doing nothing rather engaging with science. The evidence is that climate has a sensitivity between 2 and 4.5. Even at low end, mitigation is cheaper than adaptation. You think studies are making rediculous claims, so how about you cite a study you think is flawed, and give us some evidence as to why it is flawed (in an appropriate thread).
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StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler at 09:29 AM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
This whole video is flawed because it a form of Pascal’s Wager. No one really knows the odds one way or another, so people do not see either choice as valid. Inaction is a typical response.
@1 I don’t think big oil is buying votes or controlling congress. Democrats line up on environmental issues, and Republicans don’t (they line up behind corporations). No amount of money is going to change any of that, so no one is buying anything or any control.
I think most people do not tend to believe the dire AGW forecasts or predictions for a couple of reasons:
1) (-snip-).
2) (-snip-).
3) (-snip-).
(-snip-). Reduce fossil fuels because it is a good thing to do. There is a finite amount of it, so we’re going to run out some day. But right now, it is cheap, cost effective, and very high energy density. Until something comes a long that is better, then things will not change. People will not change, or allow laws to change, if it costs a lot more or reduces capability. The majority rules, and the majority is cheap.
(-snip-).
Moderator Response:[DB] Sloganeering snipped.
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skywatcher at 09:17 AM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
Mark Bahner, the fundamental flaw in your logic is that there are no known >1-2km asteroids on a collision course with Earth, and it is highly unlikely such objects will be discovered over the next century or so, albeit the risk is non-zero. Therefore, despite >97% planetary scientists agreeing that such impacts are likely on geological timescale (indeed, near-certain), there is precious little that is "actionable" about an impact threat from an undiscovered object. You can't divert/destroy an object you have not found! We could launch some kind of defence system "just in case", but it would likely not need used.In contrast, >97% of climate scientists understand the hazard of global warming caused by very real, very present, and (contrary to what Tony Abbott thinks) very visible greenhouse gases, emitted by human activity. They are there, demonstrably casing the warming now. Reducing our emissions of those gases is very "actionable" indeed. We can actively mitigate this threat immediately - ie actively significantly lower the probability of significant damage, unlike with your undiscovered asteroid. -
joeygoze9259 at 08:14 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
Billy Joe - no, you are making a non-argument by not acknowledging a problem in the study that out of a set of 12,000 papers that deal with climate change, only 33% support the claim of CO2 driving climate change. You prefer to cherry pick data that out of the 33% that took a position, most support the concept that man made CO2 is driving climate change and that is where the 97% consensus comes from.
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Tom Curtis at 08:08 AM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
Mark Bahner @23,
First, this point is an obvious attempt at distraction from the fundamental disanalogy within your example - ie, the estimated probability of the event within the next 100 years.
The difference between the devastation of an asteroid impact, and that of global warming is that the former is localized while the later is global. Thus, quoting the peak energy release is not a relevant comparison.
Consider a 1.6 km iron asteroid hitting Earth at 30km/s and an angle of 45 degrees.
It will release 1.84 million megatonnes energy. Never the less, at 1000 km, the most severe immediate effect will be to shatter glass. Its ejecta is likely to also cause a short lived episode of very cold years. Of course, within 600 km radius, devastation is almost complete.
In addition to providing almost total devastation to 0.2% of the Earth's surface, the devastation of a 1.6 km impactor would be very limited in time, with direct effects being over within days and indirect effects excluding damage.
An ocean impact is in many ways worse, with the tsunami at 1000 km being 11 to 22 meters, and an impact midway between the US and Europe causing a tsunami of about 3 to 6 meters on both shores. It does so, however, with 14 hours notice, so the actual loss of life should be minimal (4 hours at 1000 km). Further, the effect would only ever by felt in one ocean basin (indeed part of any single ocean basin)
It is ambiguous whether you are saying 1 billion would be killed by a 2 km impactor, or a 1 km impactor, but the extreme localization of the events make such estimates very dubious. A 1.6 km impact in Germany, for example, would kill almost everybody in Germany, and a significant population near Germany, but residents of Spain, Britain and Greece would be effectively untouched. The death toll would be 100 to 200 million. In contrast, an impact in the Antarctic would have a death toll only in the 100s. The 1 billion is clearly the upper end of a large probability range.
For comparison, the upper end of the probability range for AGW is currently about 6.25 billion. The lower end of the probability range is around 500,000 (approximately 3 times the estimate of the current annual death toll from global warming). The reason for the high potential death toll from global warming is that, unlike the very localized effects of a 1 km impactor, global warming is ubiquitious.
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joeygoze9259 at 07:51 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
Tom Curtis - actually I am making the opposite argument, that the consensus argument is a worthless conversation and the paper that claimes the 97% consensus is suspect in anycase. The abstract from the paper (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article) states, "We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming." So out of ~12,000 papers that were looked at, 66.4% take NO position (~7,970 papers). Only ~32% of the papers (~3,840 papers) that took a position happened to take a positive position that manmade CO2 is driving climate change. In looking at the set of 12,000 papers, that looks to fall short of what I would think someone would define as a consensus. Also, papers that took NO position, what were the results. Did they suggest something else was driving climate changes aside from CO2, and if so, what? This type of study is not Black and White and we as much as the other side should be just as critical of things if the science looks dodgy.
KR - You are certainly fine to disagree but stop crying about public misperceptions because of some lobbying effort from the other side. Maybe our messaging must be better? (-snip-)
Moderator Response:[DB] Sloganeering snipped.
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BillyJoe at 07:39 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
@Bay Bunny #5
"You seem to be suggesting AGW isn't dangerous."
Nope.
I'd just like to clarify what the J Cook paper actually says about the consensus
(I'm not sure what is causing the formatting errors in my post???)
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BillyJoe at 07:35 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
@John Haetz #4
"Exactly how do you distinguish between "dangerous AGW" and "AGW"?"
AGW could just be an interesting fact.
Dangerous AGW requires action.
If even Andrew Watts and Christopher Monckton agree that AGW is happening, then concluding that 97% of climate scientists agree that AGW is happening doesn't say much. If these same 97% agree that action is required to mitigate its effects, then that is saying something meaningful.
Nobody here seems to want to address my question...
What exactly does J Cook's paper conclude ?
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Tom Curtis at 06:58 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze @6, given the concerns you have raised, you no doubt have examples from the scientific literature of scientists arguing that a concensus of climate scientists agree with AGW, and that therefore AGW is true. Absent such examples, you are clearly raising a straw man. So, could you please list even one such article.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze - You appear to be ignoring the majority of my last comment. The public perception of expert opinion is incorrect, distorted by mis/dis-information. And that public perception drives public policy.
The science is just fine, with papers finding acceptance or dropping into irrelevance based on the data. The public perception of agreement on the science, however, is incorrect, and that leads to poorly considered policies. Nobody is arguing about the science in this particular discussion - that's a red herring in regards to public perceptions and policies. I have to consider diverging to various papers as wholly off-topic on your part.
Again - you appear to be arguing to allow public misperceptions to continue, misperceptions fueled in part by extensive lobbying. And I disagree.
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joeygoze9259 at 05:42 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
KR - The public policy must be driven from the science and proper scientific process. Not a bunch of people agreeing with each other.
I would have to understand what you define as "misinformation". For example, is a scientific paper that is peer reviewed but has conclusions that you disagree with automatically misinformation?
Would a paper such as this: (http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979213500732) which looks at solar radiation and CFCs as a major driver of global warming be considered "misinformation" to you?
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze - Do you feel it desirable or appropriate for the public to be misinformed regarding what is an important policy issue affecting everyone? Because currently, they are.
This is a its core a public policy issue, not a climate science issue. Public policy as an input incorporates public perceptions of expert opinion - perceptions which (due to a great deal of disinformation) are currently quite distorted. Your position would appear to be allowing those misconceptions to persist, letting disinformation go unchecked - I would have to disagree.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze - Correct, science doesn't work by consensus, rather consensus is the result of the majority of scientists being convinced by evidence. It's an outcome, not a starting point.
Public policy, on the other hand, is entirely driven by public consensus - and understanding and trusting the experts is a significant part of public opinion. Currently there is a large gap between the public understanding of the consensus in science and what that consensus actually is (fueled in no small part by lobbyists, disinformation, false 'balance' in mass media presentations, and a considerable pile of money).
Claiming a lack of consensus is a delaying tactic that has been used by the tobacco industry, over the ozone hole and DDT, mercury pollution, on and on, and now by those potentially impacted by climate action. Far better that the public should understand the expert opinions, and develop political will and action along factual lines rather than lobbying slogans.
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Harperdog at 03:52 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
joeygoze, it was deniers who first started claiming there was no "consensus" among climate scientists, therefore no reason to take the science seriously. Now deniers are trying to move the goalposts, saying that consensus isn't important. I am old enough to remember the same tactics about science showing that smoking causes cancer. Different topic, but same strategies.
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shoyemore at 03:43 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
Actually, Professor Richrd Tol pointed out quantitatively what is meant by Dangerous Climate Change - it is 2C above pre-industrial global average temperature, a figure internationally agreed, by others including President Obama, and signed off by him in Copenhagen.
There should be no doubt then about what the President meant.
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joeygoze9259 at 03:23 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
The groups that push the concept of "consensus" as some kind of proof for the reality of AGW are actually the ones that are disregarding scientific process. Science does not work by consensus, you don't get 1000 scientists in a room and if they all agree about something, then it is true. Scientific process is Hypothesis, Experimentation, Results and Conclusion. Just focus on the data for AGW, not the number of people that believe in AGW. When one does that, you are moving from the realm of science to the realm of faith.
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Bay_Bunny at 02:54 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
@BillyJoe #2 - You seem to be suggesting AGW isn't dangerous. Perhaps you would like to investigage that notion elsewhere on this very site:
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bibasir at 02:53 AM on 21 August 20132012: One of the 10 Warmest Years on Record
The fact that every year in the new century was hotter than every year except 1998 says that warming has not stopped as deniers claim.
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Mark Bahner at 02:41 AM on 21 August 2013Andrew Dessler on Why It's Stupid not to Act on Climate Change
In contrast, at least 80% of relevant scientists (see my post @17) think it very likely that AGW will cause devastation on a similar scale to the asteroid impact within the next 100 years.
Please name 10-20 of these "scientists", because the statement that AGW could cause "devastation on a similar scale to the impact of an asteroid (1-2 km in size) in the next 100 years" is patently ridiculous. Here are some projected effects of a 1 km asteroid hitting earth:
1) Energy release of 46,000 megatons of TNT. (Comparable to the explosive power of all the nuclear weapons on earth exploding at once.)
2) A crater 14 km in diameter. (In contrast, Meteor Crater in Arizona is only 1 km in diameter.)
3) An 18-meter tsunami at a distance of 1000 km from an ocean landing site (and 8 meters at 3000 km from the landing site).
And the effects are much more devastating for a 2-km asteroid. Estimates for that size asteroid are that more than 1 billion people would be killed.
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John Hartz at 00:55 AM on 21 August 2013Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Closing the Consensus Gap
@BillyJoe #2:
Exactly how do you distinguish between "dangerous AGW" and "AGW"?
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MA Rodger at 00:48 AM on 21 August 20132012: One of the 10 Warmest Years on Record
Klapper @6.
It might have been a wiser move to check the source document rather than faff about on your own. On the PDF's page 28 it says:-
Globally-averaged, 2012 ranked as the eighth or ninth warmest year since records began in the mid-to-late 1800s, according to four independent analyses (NASA-GISS, Hansen et al. 2010; HadCRUT4, Morice et al. 2012; NOAA-NCDC, Smith et al. 2008; JMA, Ishihara 2006). The year was 0.14°C–0.17°C above the 1981–2010 average, depending on the dataset considered, which provides some estimate of “measurement uncertainty” (Table 2.1)
And Table 2.1 gives Land, Ocean & Land/Ocean thus:-
Table 2.1. Temperature anomalies (°C) for 2012 with respect to the 1981–2010 base period. For ERA-Interim, the values shown are the analyzed 2-m temperature anomalies for both land and ocean. Note that the land values computed for HadCRU used the CRUTEM4 dataset, the ocean values were computed using the adSST3 dataset, and the global land and ocean values used the HadCRUT4 dataset.
Global Land & Ocean
+0.17 NASA-GISS+0.15 HadCRU
+0.16 NOAA-NCDC
+0.14 JMA
+0.16 ERA-Int
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