Global Warming

[Túrin Turambar]

For a long time I've endeavoured to try and come to a definite conclusion on the global warming controversy. I keep promising myself to sit down and read all the evidence and come to a conclusion. So far, I have not done so. I've tried, but I'm not sure where to start, nor do I know enough about the hidden agendas to trust the sources.

So, I'm open-minded on the issue. I've seen good arguments from both sides. I have no political agenda one way or other. Persuade me that anthropocentric global warming is or isn't occurring.

[truehobbit]

I've not read all the evidence either, but for me this has always been as much a fact as, say, evolution.
So, just as I wouldn't sit down and try to convince someone that evolution did in fact happen, I'm not very likely to do the same about global warming, I'm afraid. But I like your open-mindedness about the issue.

So, very briefly, I guess I just find it normal to expect actions to have consequences. Nothing you do disappears into thin air and becomes as if it never happened.
This means that if natural resources are used up at unprecedented levels, and if carbondioxides (for example) are produced at equally unprecedented levels, it seems illogical to me to assume that this would not have some kind of consequence.

Also, I think that one mistake people who deny the possibility of global warming tend to make is that they expect some really palpable warming. Global warming does not mean the northern hemisphere will have nothing but temperatures in the 90s (F) 365 days a year. So, just because there are still ice-storms doesn't meant there's no global warming. (On the contrary, from what I understand it's the upsetting of the fragile balance of our current climate that might lead to more ice-storms and other extremes of the weather.)

Lastly, thinking that global warming is happening does not mean denying that natural climate change isn't happening, too.

[Rowanberry]

The alternative I would have chosen isn't in your poll: The earth is warming, and the reason is a combination of natural causes and human activity.

Actually, global warming isn't any new issue - already some 25 years ago, the professor who gave the Basics of Environmental Science lectures that I attended, talked about it, and he was an elderly no-nonsense guy.

I'll see if I can find some references to give reasons for my opinion.

[Inanna]

Yes, it isn't a new issue, I have been hearing about it for ever and ever in all my classes since when I was a tiny-winy girl. I think the "new" thing is that we are really seeing the weather-changing effects lately. Its "pay-back time".

[Primula Baggins]

hobby's comparison to the evolution issue is astute, I think. There is a similar lopsided preponderance of scientific evidence on the side of anthropogenic global warming. And there is a similarly fervent opposition claiming (but unable to present) overwhelming scientific evidence for their position, which they largely do not hold for scientific reasons.

And actual scientists, for the most part, shrug; to their minds the evidence is in and the "controversy" is being dragged out by pandering politicians and the media.

[superwizard]

There's no doubt in my mind that Global Warming is occuring. There have been studies that show very clearly that Global Warming is taking place. Also many trustworthy organizations have said so. The IIPC (Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change) recently released a summary report for policymakers stating that it is "very likely" (>90% assessed likelihood) that most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century was caused by human activity.

In my opinion Global Warming is taking place and something needs to be done and soon!

[yovargas]

I would have answered "The earth is warming, but I don't think the causes are certain."

[axordil]

Can we take a vote on the causes of dew forming on the grass in the morning next? I vote for faeries.

Even Exxon-frickin-Mobil has thrown in the towel on the basic scintific question at this point (although they don't see themselves DOING anything about it ).

[Griffon64]

Irrespective of whether global warming is taking place or not, and humans are causing it or not, we need to do something about our pollution. The world is becoming a less pleasant place to live every day ( unless you happen to like smog and polluted rivers, of course ) and I'd like that to stop so I can enjoy this planet in my old age If that is the cause of global warming and it slows that down, bonus. If not, at least the air is clearer!

As for global warming, I think that both what we do can cause havoc with the weather system, and that the whole thing is too big for us to tamper with. Given that we don't understand it completely, and given the incredibly small snapshot we have of weather patterns, having only recorded them for a few hundred years, maybe? we cannot really predict accurately, or even draw correlations accurately, I'd think.

That said, the weather on this planet is turning scary. I've seen Africa get much, much, MUCH drier in just a decade and a half of living there. I read about storms and stuff in other parts of the world, where what we've recorded about the weather indicates they didn't use to be.

[Jnyusa]

As is so often the case with hot political or social issues, I feel that our ability to find answers has been confounded by a disserviceable way of framing the question. Not your fault, Lord M. - ever since atmospheric chemists and ecologist started studying the issue of climate change in the 1960s, business interests have succeeded in framing the question this way: Is climate change happening? If one answers 'yes' then one is forced to launch a secondary argument about whose fault it is, and that is where the thousand and one opinions and contradictions enter and make the truth seem unknowable.

Allow me to approach the issue a different way.

Climate change has always happened on earth and it is happening right now.

This is not an opinion. It is an observable and measurable phenomenon. It is part of how earth operates, how earth interacts with its surroundings in space through stimulus and response mechanisms.

What does it mean to ask whether climate change is natural or unnatural? If a meteor hits the earth and causes a mini ice age, is that natural or unnatural? If a species evolves that amuses itself by sucking a million years' worth of decayed, liquified plant matter out of the earth and setting fire to it, thereby creating a mini heat wave, is that natural or unnatural?

The first perspective that I would like to gain is that what humans do is not less natural than anything else that happens on earth. We are a part of earth, a progeny of earth, and what we do must be accounted as earth's potential. So instead of talking about natural and unnatural, I prefer to talk about cause and effect. We create a stimulus, and all the other mechanisms of earth will create a response. Things are always changing, and species either adapt to those changes or they become extinct. The only sensical question is whether the changes taking place right now are likely to further our survival as a species, and if they are not, how shall we adapt?

In earth's long cycles, absent an extraordinary event such as a meteor hit, we are in a warming trend and have been so for the past 30,000 years, approximately. Over that period of time, we might expect the global mean temperature to rise 3 degrees Celcius, which is enough to make the difference between a temperate climate and an ice age. To judge whether an extraordinary event is occuring, we can ask whether the pattern our climate is following is typical of other long-cycle warming periods. The answer to that question is that it is not. We are warming much faster than we have in the past under similar trends. Specifically, our global mean temperature has advanced in the past 250 years by a magnitude that would typically require 18,000 years. So, some event has happened to disrupt the secular trend.

Is it us? The recent climate report that came out ... two weeks ago, I believe, says that it appears to be us. They are 90% confident that this disruption of the secular trend is not random but the result of some event. (This, by the way, is the lowest level of confidence that would typically be accepted for a scientific study.) We know that humans are doing things which cause heat to be retained by the earth, and no event other than human activity has been proposed to account for this result, so it makes sense to proceed on the supposition that the cause is us and ask the other questions that proceed from this supposition.

What exactly is happening? Rain belts are moving away from the temperate zones, seasonal rainfalls are contracting into cycles of drought and flood (or drought and blizzard), polar ice caps and glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, and it is suspected that an increase in the severity of storms is also part of this phenomenon. It is not an opinion that these things are happenings. They are observable, measurable events.

Do these things further our survival or endanger us? Here you will find differences of opinion. It is important, in my opinion, not to mix into this question that question of what it might cost to alter our own behavior if climate change proves to be unfavorable. For example, I do not like arguments that proceed along the following lines: Sure there will be losses but there will also be gains and we can't condemn the whole world to underdevelopment by restricting the use of fossil fuel. There are all sorts of untruths and political manipulations embedded in this kind of argument, whereas there is an established method for determining exactly how much cost one should be willing to bear to fix a problem of this nature. The first thing we have to do is accurately assess the impact of climate change on human standards of living and development, regardless of its cause. Then we can ask whether the net effect is positive or negative, and if negative how negative, and how far should we be willing to go to change the situation if it can at all be changed.

My own opinion is that the net economic effect will be negative. It will generally cause food prices to rise, it will devalue property, it will cause morbidities to hurt our productivity (because heart and lung disease are caused by the same thing that contributes to climate change), and it will force us to commit more of our income to health care. (This is independent of extraordinary effects like the wiping of New Orleans off the map, if hurricane Katrina can indeed be put on the credit side of climate change.) The quantification of these costs is an important issue and I hope that appropriate scientists (economists mainly) will busy themselves doing it.

Is it possible at all to reverse the climate change we are experiencing? No. If it is the carbon we have put into that atmosphere that is causing our current departure from the secular trend, we have to wait for that carbon to be resequestered, and this is a process that will takes tens of thousands of years. Whatever we have now we are stuck with it.

What we can do is stop making things 'worse,' that is, less favorable to our long term economies and our long term survival as a species. The only thing available to us to do that would really stop things from getting '
worse' is to cease all carbon emissions immediately. So far all we've been able to do, in industrialized countries, is bring the rate of increase in annual carbon emissions to zero. But we are still putting millions of tonnes of carbon particulate matter into the air every year. So the situation will continue to get 'worse' before it gets better. But we can begin planning, setting targets, for the point in time when things will stop getting 'worse.'

How much cost we should undertake to transition away from processes that release carbon particles depends entirely on our assessment of what this climate change will eventually cost us if we do nothing. That is the assessment that must be done. We've wasted the last fifty years attempting to decide from our armchairs whether observable events should be 'blamed' on anyone and we lost of a lot of precious time doing that.

Atmospheric chemist Jim Friend is an acquaintance of mine ... he's one of the guys who was called in to assess the climate effects of Iraq setting fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields during the first Gulf War. At the time that was going on, 1991, we were preparing to give a joint lecture on global warming - he was doing the chemistry end of it and I was supposed to address the economics of it. While we were meeting to plan that lecture he said something to me that I've never forgotten - it was terribly wise and cut throught all the circumlocution that usually accompanies this issue. He acknowledged that there's all kind of things we don't know, and no end to the knowledge gaps that oil companies can trot out to assure the public that scientists are merely speculating and being alarmist. "But what we do right now," he said, "is going to make the difference whether our distant offspring have comfortable lives or are thrown back to the Stone Age."

That's really it in a nutshell as far as I'm concerned. We can take steps to reduce the uncertainty future generations will experience, or we can be lazy and indifferent and cynical. It is not necessary for us to decide whether the rate of increase in our temperature is "natural" or not - that's a red herring. We see a phenomenon taking place which is likely to have long-term deleterious effects on future generations, and we can either do whatever is possible to slow that phenomenon, to mediate it, to adapt to it, or we can shrug it off and let the suffering fall on someone else.

Jn

[Túrin Turambar]

Thanks for the input.

Some posters at TORC have bought some hard science into the debate, which I’ve found to be persuasive. I was kind of hoping for an evolution-thread-style debate, but it doesn’t look like there’re any global warming skeptics here.

So, is it largely the speed of the climate change which tells us that the warming is not part of a natural cycle?

[Maria]

I don't think anyone can still claim that the 2005 hurricanes were caused by global warming- since we only had one Carribean hurricane in 2006 and it only had top winds of 75 m.p.h. - just barely qualifying as a hurricane.

[Primula Baggins]

They can and do still claim it, Maria. The number of hurricanes in a year is a statistic, and statistics fluctuate. But when you plot them over a long period of time, a trend can still be evident, and there are mathematical tests that let us assess how likely it is that the trend is real.

You literally can't deduce a "trend" from only two data points, from the change between two years.

[axordil]

Maria--

Not all systems in nature are linear; in fact, very few are, instead being governed by feedback loops that cause oscillation within longer trends, and variegated by short-term effects as well (think of eddies along the edge of a river--just because the water is flowing backwards in that particular spot doesn't mean the river is changing course or direction). For example, while Atlantic hurricanes were down, tropical storm activity in the Pacific, especially the Western Pacific, continued unabated.

That said, I am more convinced of the indirect link between climate change, in terms of rising sea level, and the increased damage caused by whatever tropical storms do occur. The science linking tropical storms in particular to ongoing climate change is still being actively debated.

[Angbasdil]

Lord M,

I have not and will not answer your poll, simply because, to be blunt, trying to determine scientific truth by taking a poll is just about the dumbest idea there is. Why? Because, in most matters, but especially in matters scientific, the public is a bunch of ignorant morons. Even those of us that hang out on this board. Yeah, I know we seem intelligent and knowledgeable, but that's just because you're comparing us to the rest of those netspeeking chuckleheads you find out there on the net. Next to those nimrods a truckload of hoe handles looks like a panel of scientific experts. But we here on this board aren't really that smart or informed. We're just somewhat less moronic than most people.

Consider this: we all agree that the earth is round. But let's say that maybe you're unsure if the earth was round say, a thousand years ago. Maybe it was flat back then. So you get in your time machine and you go back a thousand years and you ask people if the earth is flat. And they all look at you as if you're stupid and say, "Duh! Of course the earth is flat. Everybody knows that. And what's with those funny lookin' shoes on your feet, that say 'NIKE' on the side? Isn't that some pagan demon? I think you're a witch, what with your round earth and your demonic shoes."
And then they'd burn you at the stake. But as the flames crackle about your feet, you could be secure in the knowledge that the earth was, at that time, flat as a pancake, because that's what everybody back then thought. Even the ones who posted on Tolkien related internet message boards. Right?

Of course that's not right. Because the earth is round, and it was round back then, too. Despite what everyone thought. Public opinion is irrelevant to scientific fact.

Let's take another example that's more relelvant and recent. Roughly half a century ago, if you had polled the American public (which some people did) and asked them if smoking caused cancer, the polls would show no consensus either way. But many medical studies had been done showing a link between smoking and cancer. Every article in every peer reviewed medical journal agreed that smoking caused cancer. To be fair, there were a few doctors who publically disagreed with that idea, but they were all employed, either directly of indirectly, by the tobacco companies. And these medical professionals published papers, but not in any peer reviewed publication. because their conclusions were preordained by their employers, and their data was deliberately incomplete or inaccurate and their methodology deliberately flawed to arrive at the desired conclusion. So their papers would not pass peer review. But these corporate whores still had letters like "M.D." after their names, so they could get on TV and testify in front of Congress and sow the seeds of doubt amongst the public. Which was all the tobacco companies were looking for.

If that sounds like tinfoil hat conspiracy theory to you, please be aware that it's all backed up by documents that came to light decades later during the big tobacco lawsuits. The public court records include actual internal memos at Phillip Morris wherein they lay out their strategy of launching a massive propaganda campaign to sow doubt concerning whether smoking causes cancer.

But we're all so much more enlightened now, I know. We look back at those idiots who believed that the earth was flat and feel superior, wondering how they could ever believe that. And we see those old black and white TV commercials with doctors saying that cigarettes are good for you, and we laugh at the ignorance of those poor backward people. But we're not really so smart ourselves after all.

Somebody from some institute (I forget who) looked back at every peer reviewed article concerning global warming published in the last ten years. Every one of the articles agreed on three things:

1. The earth is warming at a rate far beyond any previous natural cycle
2. Human activity is almost certainly the cause
3. The consequences of this rise in temperature are likely to be severe

Note that I said every peer reviewed article. Not most, but every. They disagreed on how bad it was and what could be done about it, but the jury is in, amogst the scientific community at least. It's real, it's our fault and we really really really need to fix it. Sure, there are some scietists that disagree. But they are all employed, either directly or indirectly, by the energy industry. And they don't publish in peer reviewed publications.

Sound familiar? It should. Because there are memos, leaked to the press, from Exxon Mobil wherein they discuss laying out a propaganda campaign just like the tobacco companies did, sowing the seeds of doubt.

But don't take my word for it. I'm just another moron from the general population. I don't know squat. Instead, go rent a little movie called An Inconvenient Truth. And then go look for a documentary expounding the other side. I don't think you'll find one, because there's simply not enough contrary evidence to fill out a documentary. There's just Rush Limbaugh saying "Is not!:P"

And who wants to watch ninety minutes of that?

[Inanna]

To "recover" from global warming, two Profs have actually designed yachts that will increase cloud cover... frankly, this sounds like worse trouble to me. But then as Ang said, what do I know??

Here's the story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6354759.stm

[Primula Baggins]

It infuriates me to read of people seriously proposing, say, adding dust and particulates to the atmosphere to blot out the sun, just so Americans don't have to face the horror of being asked to waste and pollute less. But then, American kids and Iraqi civilians are dying in Baghdad for the same righteous cause, so at least there is consistency in our national aims.

Ang, I don't agree that a reasonably intelligent person isn't qualified to form a reasonably informed opinion. It's the job of a sensible adult and conscientious citizen to try to understand the world. That often involves taking experts' word about complicated matters, but if they really are experts, I see nothing inherently wrong with that.

[Frelga]

In Business Week, Jack Welch, the quintessential hardnosed businessman, answered this question. He did hedge about how the issue got politisized. But his answer was that this was an update on Pascal's Wager - the consequence of assuming it was not happening and being wrong are infinitely worse than doing something about it and being wrong. Cleaner energy and less pollution aren't such bad results to ger for being mistaken.

[narya]

Just finished watching An Inconvenient Truth, including the update on the DVD. Looks like the only thing that is going to get us out of this global warming spiral is a nuclear winter. Sigh.

Ang, I don't think anyone is trying to prove science with these polls, just determine what our views are, which may or may not be related to reality.

[axordil]

But his answer was that this was an update on Pascal's Wager - the consequence of assuming it was not happening and being wrong are infinitely worse than doing something about it and being wrong. Cleaner energy and less pollution aren't such bad results to ger for being mistaken.

This has been my tack with hard-case skeptics for some time now, dating back to TORC. And it's the one that more and more businesses, even those in the fossil fuel industry, are coming around to...partially because the insurance industry, one of the few industies that makes even big oil and coal nervous, is looking square at them and tapping their fingers.