On 12/9/2014 7:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
...
As I said, I haven't developed a strong opinion in regards to anthropogenic global
warming, so I certainly wouldn't label myself a "climate change denier" though perhaps
some would take the fact that my mind is not settled as sufficient reason to put me in
that bucket. However, there are some reasons that I remain unconvinced. Among them:
1. The fact that the question is so heavily politicized and that there is so much money
involved naturally arouses my suspicion (must take every news article and report with a
grain of salt unlike say, a paper on pure number theory)
The money is essentially all on the side of the fossil fuel industry. Nobody gets rich
being a serious climatologist.
2. Lack of consensus on what the effects will be: in the 1970s the fear was
global cooling,
There was never such "fear". It was a popular book based on the cyclic ice ages that
"predicted" a new ice-age (eventually). It has been picked up as by AGW deniers as proof
that climatologists don't know anything.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2008/11/10/203320/killing-the-myth-of-the-1970s-global-cooling-scientific-consensus/
in the 1990s it was global warming, and when neither long-term trend established itself
it has since become climate change and extreme whether, but statistical studies have
found no statistically abnormal increase in extreme weather events.
Why cherry pick extreme weather as the indicator? There's plenty of empirical evidence
for global warming, based on the most cutting edge statistical analysis and data and
conducted by a former AGW skeptic. http://berkeleyearth.org/summary-of-findings
3. Failure of models: Early climate models projected an increase in global temperatures
over the last 10 years, but those increases never materialized.
Ten years is very short in climate terms. And global warming doesn't necessarily imply
global temperature increase. A lot of ice can melt without the temperature increasing.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/has-global-warming-stopped.pdf
(As a side-note, I used to find the existence of models which could accurately follow
past temperature changes used to be extremely convincing with regards to the dangers of
global warming, but years later I found after experimenting with developing currency
trading algorithms that through training, genetic algorithms, etc. that it was
relatively easy to create models that were exceptionally good at reproducing past
trends, yet they utterly failed to have any predictive power. After this experience, I
came to realize that generating models that match a given trend is easy, but that is no
indication of the model's legitimacy)
So you're accusing climate scientists of using adaptive curve fitting algorithms, rather
than physics based models? And the simple calculations of Arrhenius in 1890 no longer apply?
4. Recent exposes on the corner cutting and general bad practices of climatologists
involved in developing reports for policy makers.
What are these "bad practices"? The "exposes" I've read have been cheap nit-picking by
fossil fuel industry flacks.
If human CO2 emissions are changing the climate, does that mean we should adopt a Kyoto
(or similar) proposal? This is even less clear. This would require all of the following
to be true:
Why not add:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
2. Burning fossil fuel puts CO2 into the air.
3. Human burning of fossil fuel has almost doubled atmospheric CO2 - even though about
half of that produced has been absorbed in the oceans.
1. Climate change exists
2. Human CO2 emissions are a significant factor in that climate change
3. Counteractive effects (clouds, biosphere) are understood and won't be enough to
compensate for the excess CO2
Or they will be in the direction of amplifying the effect (e.g. Clouds retain heat at
night. Bacteria will turn tundra in methane when it thaws).
4. We understand the general direction of what that climate change will be
5. The general direction of that change is more negative than positive and
should be avoided
The general direction is warmer, as shown already by Arrhenius. The question is how much
warmer and how bad will it be?
6. Reducing CO2 emissions is the best course of action to prevent the negative
occurrence
Not necessarily. We could artificially reflect more sunlight by putting sulfur particles
into the upper atmosphere. But someone who is suspicious of climate modeling might be
suspicious that there can be unforseen consequences in such enormous climate engineering.
7. Reductions that are possible will lead to a greater good for humanity and the world
than the costs associated with those reductions
Cost to whom?
Items 6 and 7 are the ones I am most apt to disagree with. Geo-engineering technologies
are not only far more promising in being able to able to provide humanity with the tools
to stabilize the environment, but they're also much much cheaper
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/5987229/Cloud-ship-scheme-to-deflect-the-suns-rays-is-favourite-to-cut-global-warming.html>
than the associated economic costs of rationing cheap energy.
You don't know any of that. And drastically reducing CO2 emission is not the same as
rationing cheap energy. Energy can be produced by nuclear, solar, and wind as cheaply as
by fossil fuel - IF the fossil fuel industry had to pay to clean up its pollution.
All of these global warming projections over the next 50 - 100 years fail to take into
account the exponential rate of growth in the power of technology and what the
implications will be for opening new avenues for solving/controlling the problem, should
it turn out to be one.
The IPCC reports include different scenarios assuming different technological and cultural
repsonses.
Are humans having a profound and negative impact on the ecology of the rest of the
planet? Almost certainly. We consume/control 40% of the planet's terrestrial
photosynthesis capability, thus making life very difficult for the millions of other
species who have to fight over the rest. Should we make every effort to conserve the
limited resources we have? Nothing good comes from waste or excess. Would the advent of
safe and cheap nuclear (or other) power bring enormous benefits to humanity and improve
air quality? Again, I also think the answer is yes. But will political efforts or social
movements that have the goal of slightly cutting back the rates of fossil fuel
consumption save life on earth? I doubt it. If we are in peril, it will be technological
change, not political change, that saves us.
Politicians are never for change that would inconvenience their donors.
Brent
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