Is it getting warm in here?

"And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn't it?"
-- Al Gore

Global warming, climate change, catastrophe of heretofore unknown proportions, that's what we're heading for, I hear.

This is a tough one for me. As a rule, I like to base my reactions to the big questions of the day on what I can see around me. I can look around and see the results of capitalism, (relatively) free trade, and a tolerant society. Even on subjects as complicated as evolution, I can put together the pieces:

random mutation + persistence of mutated traits through inheritance (DNA as a mechanism) = natural selection

Check. My struggling brain can put together the pieces and analyze the results, no problem.

When it comes to global warming, what the hell do I know?

If person A tells me, "We're in for disastrous global cooling, just look at these figures!", well, okay, looks plausible to me. Then person B tell me, "This chart of the last 1000 years shows that we're warming through the roof!", well, okay, looks plausible to me.

The numbers, they sure is pretty.

These arguments, where we're sometimes talking a degree or two over years or decades, in the context of a global history of naturally occurring climate change, don't result in something I can wrap my head around.

This means I am stuck trusting someone. Which means someone who, while I can't understand how they are deriving particular conclusions, I can understand their general approach to solving problems.

And here is where I get into trouble. Because, see, the people I most often trust when it comes to skeptical questions like alternative medicine, Bigfoot, and little green men, well, near as I can tell, when it comes to the climate change thing they just don't apply the same sort of critical thinking to the subject. They appeal to me to trust the "consensus" and they often pillory people who I do trust on the subject while simultaneously stating they don't actually know what those people believe. Yeah, Steven Novella of the otherwise incredibly excellent Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, I'm talking to you, Mr. "I haven't read Bjorn Lomborg's work but I believe he's wrong"...

Really, he's wrong when he says things like:

Q: Does Lomborg deny man-made global warming exists?

A: No. In Cool It he writes: "global warming is real and man-made. It will have a serious impact on humans and the environment toward the end of this century" (p8).

Q: But he used to deny it, didn't he?

A: No. In both his first Danish book in 1998 and the English version of The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001, Bjorn Lomborg stressed that man-made global warming exists. The introduction to a section on climate change in The Skeptical Environmentalist clearly states, "This chapter accepts the reality of man-made global warming" (p259).

Just what is it in what he hasn't read here that Mr. Novella disagrees with?

Further, people like James Randi express their support for the whole global warming thing, and one of the guys on his (unpaid) staff calls Al Gore's statement's "rock solid science" in a podcast interview...but then I look at what Al Gore is saying, and he's saying populist unscientific pap like the quote at the beginning of this post, and I instinctively recoil.

What's a good skeptic to do?

I find I can do nothing but continue to look for those who take a skeptical, critical thinking approach to the subject and thereby sway me with their arguments. To date, Bjorn Lomborg does that as well as anyone I've found. I would summarize what I've learned from him as:

• Global warming exists.
• Man-made global warming exists.
• The impact of global warming is nowhere near as catastrophic as extremists would have you believe.
• Whatever resources we decide to devote to the issue of global warming must be done in a context of all the other things we might due to improve the plight of humanity.

Simple as that. Doesn't seem too evil, does it?

Much more important than the question of global warming is Bjorn's approach to how the world should solve the biggest problems we face. Here is Bjorn discussing how to determine just what we should be trying to fix in this world:

He also edited a book on the subject of what we should be trying to fix today. Check it out. Feel free to disagree, but I hope you'll do so after you know what the guy actually believes and what things he feels need to be fixed first in this world.

Comments

[Guy T.]

> The impact of global warming is nowhere near as catastrophic as extremists would have you believe.

As usual I haven't watched the required viewing (if it's worth saying, it's worth saying in text!) but I think this point is the Achilles heel of global warming. Let's say it results in less ice, higher oceans, and bigger deserts. That also means more arable/habitable land closer to the poles, and more rain (from more evaporating water) and consequently bigger harvests. Sure the big coastal cities get swamped a little, if it doesn't occur to anyone to build dikes when the water starts rising; but the people who live there are city slickers anyway. (Though of course I like some of them, so I hope you live on a hill.)

[Ronald Hayden]

> That also means more arable/habitable land closer to the poles

The well-meaning guys in the Starship Sofa podcast -- which usually covers classic science fiction -- once exasperatedly expressed disbelief that anyone talks about the "good side" of global warming. What nuts people are to try and find something good in this!

This feeling, which I think is widespread among those particularly concerned about global warming, is very revealing. It betrays an attitude in which global warming is a form of rapture or global nuclear war, after which only bad can be expected. It treats this as a form of unmitigated evil.

But that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. As mentioned in my post, the climate has always changed and will always change. In the time of humans it's been hotter and it's been colder. Water levels have changed in various places significantly, requiring some of us to move or build barriers to the water.

Further, when people were theorizing global cooling, we heard all the same sorts of doom and gloom. Is it really the case that if it gets colder everything will go to hell, and if it gets warmer everything will go to hell, and in neither case will anything that benefits anyone occur?

The most legitimate argument in favor of that that I've heard is that we've built modern society around the current climate, so any change is bad. Perhaps. But as Lomborg has pointed out elsewhere, when in recent history water rose in some areas as much as the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) estimates will occur in the next hundred years, people simply adapted. They don't stand in the same place while the water pools around them...

And, as you say, part of that change will have some benefits in some areas of the planet, and we would be irresponsible to not consider those as part of the package while we formulate a response to climate change.

Here is my bet: Say we totally mitigate climate change in this century (good luck with that) -- we will then have doom and gloom newspaper articles about the benefits we have given up by not allowing some amount of warming.

Because, you know, doom and gloom is what newspapers are here for, regardless of what actually happens...

[Guy T.]

> Say we totally mitigate climate change in this century (good luck with that) -- we will then have doom and gloom newspaper articles about the benefits we have given up by not allowing some amount of warming.

After the bugaboos of Global Cooling, Global Warming, and Global Climate Change comes... Global Climate Constancy!

> Because, you know, doom and gloom is what newspapers are here for, regardless of what actually happens...

The other day I accidentally found a term for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_World_Syndrome

[Mike Devx]

I'd like to add that the "Global Warming" movement advocates steps that require a radical restructuring of our civilization. Shouldn't they be required to present proof that these steps are necessary, before being allowed to proceed?

In science, you have to come up with a hypothesis that is then proven, and it becomes a theory. Of critical importance is that it must also be predictive. If we now observe X, and my theory says that we must then observe Y, then Y must be observed. And it is here that the Global Warming movement loses me. I also find the evidence compelling that we have been cooling since 1998, and there is absolutely nothing in any of their literature that suggests that possibility, and its too late for them to invent one. If we are in fact in a ten-year cooling trend even as worldwide economic activity has exploded, that is one fatally serious blow. Hence the sudden switch in the propaganda from "global warming" to "climate change".

Can one say that yes, man-made global warming exists, but that the effects of solar activity totally dwarfs it? The science here is not complete but to this novice seems far more compelling to me. To proceed with a radical restructuring of our civilization, causing a depression on the scale of what is claimed as the worst effect of our current credit crisis, when the models' predictions are wrong, when they try to shut down debate and dissent... My conclusion is that they've got a lot of rigorous work to do to reestablish any validity to their arguments.

There are predictions made about the effects of the strange, extremely worrisome disappearance of sunspots during the last two months of our current Maunder minimum that, should they prove true, should provide compelling and near-irrefutable evidence that the Global Warming community is wrong. Wrong on the nature of the problem; wrong therefore on a solution of implementing policies that would cause us grave harm while providing no solution.

In sum, I just don't see that they've proved their case, and why should we agree to anything so radically transformative without that proof?

[Mike Devx]

If I may add an item I ran across this morning.

I offer this in support of my statement above that the bizarre lack of sunspot activity allows global temperature and climate models to offer PREDICTIVE evidence that "global warming" models do not allow, or on those rare cases where they make claims, are quickly proven absolutely wrong.

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A Canadian scientist says the largest known hole in the ozone will occur over the South Pole in the next week. If that happens, it will help us understand global warming.
[...]
Currently, the World Meteorological Organization uses the photochemical model to predict that the Antarctic springtime ozone hole will increase by another 5–10 percent by 2020. In sharp contrast, Dr. LU says the severest ozone loss will occur over the South Pole this month — with another large ozone-triggered hole occurring around 2019.

If the South Pole gets an ozone-hole maximum in the coming weeks, it will strengthen the case for cosmic rays, and endorse a Modern Warming driven by solar variations rather than human-emitted CO2. The solar model is already endorsed by oxygen isotopes in ice cores from both Greenland and the Antarctic, by microfossils in the sediments of nine oceans and hundreds of lakes worldwide, and by cave stalagmites from every continent plus New Zealand.

The case for a solar-driven climate is also strengthened by a drop in global temperatures over the past 18 months: The temperature decline had been forecast by the sunspot index since 2000, but was not predicted by the global climate models.
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From:
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWExNDZhOTM5YTUyOGRkMmJiNzE5NjdiZGY5NTg2NzY=

Thx,
~mike

[Ronald Hayden]

Mike Devx said:
In sum, I just don't see that they've proved their case, and why should we agree to anything so radically transformative without that proof?

As I'm sure you've heard any number of times, their easy answer to this is, "We just don't know, so shouldn't we do everything we can in case the worst-case predictions are true?"

Someone trying to sound more moderate might say, "Shouldn't we do something? After all, Kyoto is just a commitment to do something..."

After all, we're talking the End of the World here! Steps must be taken!

The sunspot theory is also pushed by the documentary The Great Global Warming Scandal, which has been very influential in Britain (also probably a future post).

I have no idea if it's correct (as I say, anyone can show me numbers that anything is correct related to the climate, and I have no basis on which to independently understand and verify their claims), and it's also possible that even with sun spots or some such as the cause we'd determine that there is a climate trend that will cause us some hassles, so I'm happy to go along with Lomborg's approach, which is to say, "Let's say the global warming guys are right -- what then should we do?"

He provides a persuasive argument that if the non-silly predictions (see Gore and his projected water levels for the silly ones) are correct, then there just isn't much we should do. Perhaps most importantly, he expends a lot of time and energy getting the smartest minds around to figure out what we actually should do to have the maximum positive impact on the world; the project is called the Copenhagen Consensus...