Is the science on climate change settled?
- Answer (14)
- · Comment (1)
- · UnfollowFollow (3)
Answer by The Logo
Hardly:
1. The predictions made by the "Inconvenient Truth" school of climate change have proved false.
- From 1995 to 2010, the global population has gone up 20.4%, CO2 levels have gone up 7.9%, and temperatures have been statistically flat. One of the most prominent global warming researchers, Dr. Phil Jones, admits the lack of warming, although he calls this a "blip."
2. New, upending discoveries are made all the time. Examples:
- In a press release titled, "Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming," NASA researcher Dr. Roy Spencer describes how much more heat was lost to the atmosphere from 1999-2010 than the IPCC models predicted.
- One set of scientists found that doubled atmospheric CO2 will have "a lower probability of imminent extreme climate change than previously thought" Science, December 2011.
- Norwegian scientists are predicting that local temperatures will decrease by 3.5 degrees Celsius from 2009 to 2020.
- Last year, even the IPCC admitted (p. 9) the following: "Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain." In other words, it won't be noticeable, and they don't even know it temperatures will go up or down.
3. There is no consensus, even if one were relevant. As the late Michael Crichton noted in 2003, "There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
- Over 700 were listed in a Senate Minority Report as opposing theories of man-made global warming. Given the scandals among global warming theorists since then, that number is probably a lot higher in 2012.
Related Ricochet Conversations:
Rob Long: Brace Yourself: Climate Change from CO2 May Not Be a Big Deal." Dec. 21, 2011
Blue Yeti: "Radio Free Delingpole #3: The Last Word on Climate Change," Nov. 29, 2011
Adam Freedman: "Not that the Climate Change Brigade is Hysterical...," Jun. 9, 2011
Mollie Hemingway: "Climate-Change Doomsayers Need To Put Up Or Shup Up," May 31, 2011
Tommy De Seno: "Hey Ricochet! Help an Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?" Apr. 25, 2011
George Savage: "Global Warming Is So Over," Jan. 15, 2011
: 700 seems like pretty small potatoes, particularly up against the 3146 "Earth scientists" who responded to a survey sent out by the "Climate Change" magazine. 82% believe that "human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures."
- #1
- · Jan 19 at 10:15am
- · LikeUnlike (0)
The Logo: There are a number of problems with this survey. First, most geological researchers and geoscience faculty probably know next to nothing about the effects of atmosphere on climate. Second, the preceding question frames the temperature increase as from the pre-1800s to the present. Given that all of the climate change skeptics I recall acknowledge temperatures increasing due to the end of the "little ice age" (c. 1550-1850), the question hardly seems differentiating. Third, at no point does it ask about the severity of future increases in temperature due to human activity.
The surprise may be that 69.3% of the sample didn't answer such slam-dunk questions, and that 18% of those who did said, "no."
- #2
- · Jan 19 at 10:17am
- · LikeUnlike (1)
Join Ricochet or Sign In to add your comment.
Answer by Diego Sun Devil
The list of scientists is over 1000 now...
http://traffic.libsyn.com/rbushway/2010_Senate_Minority_Report.pdf
I would say that the Climate Change debate is more unsettled now than it has been for decades. The models continue to be wrong in terms of predictions and the best excuse for the 'missing' warming is that it is 'being hidden'. Given these developments, I think there is less stigma for scientists to question the underlying assumptions, and that's what scientists are supposed to do.
Answer by Diane Ellis, Ed.
MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen in his 2009 WSJ op-ed entitled "The Climate Science Isn't Settled" wrote:
Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA [globally averaged temperature anomaly] has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.
[...]
The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man.... Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.
Answer by GLDIII
Not if the occasional food fights in our cafeteria are an indication. Your Government spent over 15 billion for the definitive global earth measurement system in a series of 3 satellites. They have provided the data for the much "discussions" that are erupting into the public conscience that the "science" is not settled. Orthodoxy and professional careers prevent many from admitting that the King has no clothes in a more non obscuring manor. The up side of this investment is that your weather predictions, which many may, or may not, have noticed, (in precision and accuracy) is far and away better that it was a decade ago. While weather prognosticating does not seem like an earth shattering modern nicety, I have seen studies suggesting it has a 20% to 30% impact on our GDP. (i.e. futures, commodities, farmers, aviation, powerplant energy management, watershed management, insurance......) I should perhaps mention that the major storm tracking/predicting also has improved from the senors developed for those missions.
Perhaps spending 15B to prevent the havoc of a global tax credit system on fossil fuels (per Al Gore) was worth it.
Answer by Tom Meyer
It's worth noting that climate science is an unusually difficult field of study. Not only is experimentation difficult-if-not-impossible -- hence the reliance on computer modeling -- its variables include all those that might conceivably influence the planet's surface temperature. That's a stupefying amount of data to process through an even more stupefyingly complicated model.
Answer by Western Chauvinist
Was browsing around WattsUpWithThat and found this: The Myth of Settled Science. I haven't read it, but I thought it might do.
UPDATE: I've read it. It's a succinct answer to your question, Troy, invoking facts and philosophy. Give it a whirl.
Answer by Diane Ellis, Ed.
Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming
WSJ, 1/27/12
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
Related Ricochet conversation:
Mollie Hemingway: "Scientists Who Hate Science"
Answer by David Williamson
Science, by definition, is not settled.
If it's settled, it ain't science.
Oh, wait, Michael Creighton already said it.
Answer by Fred Cole
Science, by definition, is not settled.
I second that.
However, there are certain things we know, one of them is that the climate is changing, and that it's man caused.
How much it's changing, how much of a problem it is, how much humans are responsible and what to do about it are highly debatable and still open questions.
But there's still plenty of science to do!
Tom Lindholtz: Actually, I'm not sure we do know that. We think we know that CO2 has an impact on climate. And we know that man produces CO2. We know that global climate changes were greater when man wasn't here than since man was. So anthropogenicity is not proven. Corollation is not causality.
- #1
- · Jan 27 at 3:32pm
- · LikeUnlike (0)
Join Ricochet or Sign In to add your comment.
Answer by Don Tillman
Note that any definition of "science" includes validation through experiment.
Climate study isn't especially conducive to experiment for obvious reasons, so they use simulation with computer models instead. And while that can be interesting and all, it's closer to playing video games than practicing science.
Answer by Fred Cole
Ron, you can also validate science through observation.
Answer by flownover
Why bother, if a volcano can erupt and in five days expel ten times the amount of all the carbon "saved" to that date by human means, what's the point ?
If the Missouri River is going to flood , then what is the point of stormwater separation to protect the river from the salt runoff in a parking lot or small sewage overflows ?
If God wants to , all our efforts are obliterated in a second.
Wealth transfer by failed statists and socialists is all it ever was anyway. Appropriate technology has it own sets of rules. The market has another. We'll never succeed in substituting the rules of man for the rules of nature and the flow of mankind's history.
The myths are forever, Indians drove herds of animals off cliffs, leaving 90% behind.
Burned down prairies to trap rabbits and fox. Charcoal denudes forests while Chernobyl is choked with vegetation. WTF ?
provocative question though Troy. What do you think ?
Ottoman Umpire: The last I checked, even the direction of the change (if any) is in question.
Edited on Jan 26 at 12:26amJoin Ricochet or Sign In to add your comment.