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What Would You Need to Know to Worry About Climate Change?
I’m neither a climate alarmist nor a skeptic, and I’m unqualified to be either. I reckon that somewhere between Proposition A (life as we know it on Earth is coming to an end and we’re all going to boil to death) and Proposition B (an entire scientific field, along with the media, is engaged in a massive conspiracy to perpetuate a hoax, for reasons no one can explain) there’s a huge, very complicated scientific literature I haven’t read, comprising many specialist disciplines about which I know nearly nothing.
Right now, if you asked me clearly to explain to you what a Milankovitch cycle is, why pacific decadal oscillation matters, or my opinion about the influence of past ice volume change on modern sea levels — well, you just heard the totality of my opinions. If you told me to assume carbon dioxide levels will double in the coming century, that I have a month to model the effect this will have on the climate, that I have to do it unaided, and that if I fail to do it in a way that suggests passing familiarity with the state-of-the-art research, I’ll die? I’m dead.
I have no strong and defensible views on climate science, save the certainty that to arrive at strong and defensible views, I’d have to learn quite a bit. I find it impressive that many people who clearly haven’t got more reason than I do to have a strong view have one nonetheless.
With issues like this, I suspect, the position one takes is more a matter of accidental association than of any underlying or consistent ideology. There’s no special reason, for example, for American socialists to like granola. But they love the stuff, so American conservatives are instinctively suspicious of granola. In truth, the relationship between granola and any meaningful understanding of “right” and “left” is incidental.
I do have a friend, though, whose views about this are genuinely well-informed. If I wanted to outsource my opinions about this to someone else, I’d choose him. He’s a physicist I’ve known since he and I were undergraduates; he went on to have a distinguished career in sea-ice modeling. He’s current with every aspect of this debate. I know his character to be honest and modest: I just can’t imagine him claiming to know something he doesn’t, participating in a hoax, or having no clue what he’s talking about.
Recently, I sent him an e-mail asking him what he’d concluded after studying this problem for 30-odd years. How useful, I asked, are computer simulations of the Earth’s past, present, and future climate states? What really happens when you couple components of the climate system without resorting to flux adjustments?
I thought I’d share his reply. (I’ve lightly edited the exchange for his privacy and so that the chronology makes sense).
Here’s what really bothers me: reading about climate change in, say, a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. What a predictable load of nonsense, year after year. In contrast, here’s a well-informed, closely reasoned piece of semi-technical science writing. There are no equations, but it helps to know some science (for instance, what the Coriolis effect is), and it takes some effort to keep causes and effects straight.
I’m curious: When you read this article (taking you as an examplar of a bright, well-educated, but scientifically untrained layperson), does it make sense to you? It’s a good example of a puzzling observation (expanding Antarctic sea ice) that scientists hammer away at from different directions for a decade or so, until they have a more-or-less satisfying explanation, while the big picture (dumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year is a bad idea) remains unchanged.
But start with the fact that Antarctic sea ice is expanding and hand it to the editors of the Wall Street Journal. You’ll get something like this: “Climate scientists would have you forget that, while Arctic sea ice area is declining, the area of Antarctic sea ice is actually increasing! And the scientists have no explanation! The models are wrong! Climate has changed in the past, it’s changing now, it’s all part of a natural cycle, and there’s nothing to worry about!”
The Wall Street Journal doesn’t indulge in exclamation points, but this is always the structure of the argument. Good luck finding in the popular media a detailed exposition of the science. I think science writers have decided that the details are simply too complicated for most people, so they try to emphasize that the core science (that which one needs to know to make rational policy decisions) is settled, while scientists are still quibbling (as they should) about the finer details.
In other words, he firmly believes the core science is, indeed, settled, basically in favor of Proposition A.
Goodness, I replied. That’s dreary. What policies seemed to him genuinely merited by the science? And whatever they were, how would he propose convincing China and India to adopt them?
His reply:
I agree that most liberals who hold strong views about climate change would have as much trouble rigorously defending their views as most conservatives. But since we can’t all be experts on all aspects of science (for instance, I’m clueless about medicine and biology), I think it’s legitimate to defer to the science consensus, where there is one. The burden of rigor should rest on those who deny what really is an overwhelming consensus.
I don’t think it’s a historical accident that liberals trust climate science and conservatives don’t. Since dealing with climate change requires some degree of international government action, it makes sense that those on the right would be less welcoming of the science. My naive hope at one time was that most people would accept the science (to the extent that there are clear and compelling reasons to believe it), and then we’d have a vigorous debate over the appropriate policy responses (taxes versus carbon markets versus top-down regulation). No such luck.
Among people I know at the lab, there’s a generational split. Nearly all the climate skeptics I know are over 60. One of my friends thinks this is because people born before about 1960 grew up with assumptions of unchecked material progress, whereas those born later find it easier to accept the idea of limits to growth (the big blue marble, the End of Nature, and all that).
Which policies would I like to see adopted? In the US, I’d like to see a carbon tax, levied at the point of entry (ports, pipelines, etc.), starting low (say, $25/ton of carbon) and increasing gradually and predictably over time. I’d refund the proceeds to everyone on a per capita basis, so that anyone who uses less than the per capita mean amount of energy comes out ahead. (This would be the majority, since median energy use is well below the mean.) In this way I’d try to build a constituency of energy-conserving right-leaning voters: “Keep your big-government hands off my carbon refund!”
I’d supplement this tax with gradually tightening efficiency standards for vehicles, home appliances, building insulation and so on. I’d avoid cap and trade.
I’m out of my depth when it comes to diplomacy. But I suppose that for India and China, I’d try to make broad deals like the agreement announced a few weeks ago. Also, the carbon tax would apply to imports from any country that didn’t have an equivalent internal tax, so there wouldn’t be a free ride for countries that lack adopt similar policies.
Overall, I think of myself as a raging moderate.
There we go. I don’t know enough to have my own opinion, but when I outsource the question to the most qualified and trustworthy person I know, that’s what I get.
So, my questions for everyone here would be:
1) What kind of scientific evidence would persuade you, personally, that the alarmists are basically correct?
2) If you don’t think you could hope to master the relevant literature to the degree required to assess that evidence, would you be willing to outsource your opinion about it to someone else? If so, who? And why?
3) Assuming the alarmists’ most extreme predictions are correct, what policies do you think would have any hope of mitigating the damage? (I don’t have an informed view of the science, but I do have an informed view of diplomacy, and I agree with my friend that he’s out of his depth. The Paris climate accord is no more enforceable than the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It won’t work.)
Assuming his views about the science are correct, can anyone here imagine a policy strategy that might save the planet?
Published in General, Science & Technology
On age differences and views on climate change, there are a few retiring climatologists who have declared their skepticism but have pointed out that if they’d done so early (or even more recently) in their careers they would simply have received no federal grant money. Federal dollars go for research supporting the proposition.
In his 1961 Farewell Address, better remembered for his military-industrial complex warning, President Eisenhower also gave another warning:
We are being told that in less than 12 hours we will have a snow storm (or not). According to the computer models it may miss us. It may rain. We may have freezing rain. We may only get an inch of snow or we may get two feet of snow. The headline on the news is “Snowmageddon? Too early to tell.” So 12 hours before a localized weather event it is too early for the computer models to tell what is going to happen. Now explain to me why and how I am to trust the climate change models that are going to predict what the global temperature is going to be 500 years from now when they cannot do it with confidence 12 hours from now. Want me to believe what the computer models about weather patterns 100 or more years into the future? Start by getting the weather predictions for next week right, then next month, then next year. When they can do that with a reasonable level of confidence then I will believe predictions about weather decades and centuries into the future.
There is significant change in this attitude among environmentalists in recent years. There is still a faction that thinks as you describe, but there are others that are interested in urban ecology – and see that as just as interesting and legitimate field of study as past studies of “pristine” natural communities.
I see that one of the grad students at my old workplace was just featured in an article in Nature about genes from domestic animals finding their way into wild populations – and this is being viewed just as another aspect of evolution, not as a bad thing. At one time people would have viewed it as some sort of corruption of the natural world.
I live on the southern shore of Lake Ontario (Rochester, NY). One of my favorite facts about the lake is that because the ice sheets melted later on the north side, the Canadian shore is actually rising faster than the US side (the entire shore is rebounding from the weight of the ice sheets at about 12 inches – or 30cm if you hate America – per century).
In other words, the impact of the last ice age is still being felt in very tangible ways.
My only point is that there are huge environmental effects still being felt that the alarmists seem to gloss over to focus on relatively minor tremors in the data. That is the whole impetus for the hockey stick. If the temperature record shows that we were significantly warmer during the Medieval Warm Period, and still coming out of the Little Ice Age, how can we justify massive global action for comparatively minor fluctuations in the recent temperature record?
We can’t. So Mann, et al smoothed the record into oblivion.
Another serious problem with the AGW hypothesis is that correlation does not prove causation. So CO2 levels have been increasing over the past 50-odd years, and temperature was increasing for part of that period (mostly 1980-1998; it has plateaued since). So there is a correlation.
But if you plot a graph (or do a regression analysis) of CO2 levels with anything else that has been increasing — population, GDP, illegitimacy, whatever — you will get the same result. It will probably even be “statistically significant.” One of the problems with multivariate statistical analysis is that the existence of an omitted variable undermines the entire analysis.
Another thing that would make me more likely to accept the AGW hypothesis would be if they had some plausible explanation as to why temperature hasn’t increased since 1998. Their model says it should, based on increased CO2. That might be true, and there might be some unknown factor that has been causing cooling, hiding (the technical term is “confounding”) the effect of CO2.
But if there is an important unknown factor, then how do we know that the same unknown factor wasn’t responsible for the 1980-1998 warming?
Has the global temperature plateaued? All of the news today is about how 2015 just smashed! 2014 as the warmest year on record.
Here is a question you should ask your friend. What would convince him climate change won’t be a problem? What data would make him think we don’t need to institute a carbon tax?
Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that discrepancy, too. I keep hearing this argument Arizona Patriot mentions i.e. “temperature hasn’t increased since 1998,” but the lead story in today’s Mercury News claimed 2015 was the hottest year since record-keeping began in 2015. So which is it?
A pseudoscience is marked by not having any conditions that can disprove the theory.
They will not accept there is any data that disproves the theory.
Global Warming theory is a pure pseudoscience.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair given the time scales involved. The basic prediction of the theory is that global average temperatures will rise very slightly over the next several decades, but within this there will be ups and downs. The overall trend will be slightly up. They don’t claim to be able to predict the temperature for any specific year.
I think if there’s been no measurable warming whatsoever, say, 100 years from now we can pretty conclusively say the theory is bunk. Until then, the jury is still out. The problem is that the activists say we can’t wait 100 years to find out if the theory is correct or not, we need to act now.
The thing is, every time their “theory” is challenged by actual conditions, they change the qualifying conditions. Thus, Global Warming became Global Climate Change after the warming slowed down significantly. After all, unless the climate doesn’t change at all – which would be pretty crazy actually – they are proven right! Hurray for them.
I have science-friends who set conditions, and made a wager some years ago. It involved ocean levels, ice coverage, etc.
The data ended up being very inconvenient for them. Instead of recanting, they stopped talking to me.
Over the last 20 years, a lot of these prominent “scientists” have made some extremely bold predictions.
Also see here. and Here.
So it is entirely fair to suggest that, once the facts did not match the predictions but the predictors did not recant, Climate Change moved into the realm of pseudoscience.
Let’s put the activists in prison. If that isn’t action, I don’t know what is.
I gather from this Reason piece that one explanation might be a difference between surface-measured data and satellite-measured data.
While not a climate scientist, I’m an atmospheric scientist who has been researching weather phenomena for 30 years, using numerical models not unlike those employed for climate predictions. I find it painful that climate science has become politicized. Politics curdles everything it touches, and in this case causes suppression and self-censorship of good ideas and rational discussion, and induces otherwise intelligent persons to make uninformed statements. A few comments, all IMHO:
– The poorly named “greenhouse effect” is real and well understood. Yes, the climate is always evolving, but we are unequivocally part of the recent change, for worse or better.
– The fundamental problem is the climate system is very complex, and contains many positive and negative feedbacks.
– Climate models contain an enormous number of assumptions and approximations, thus uncertainties are substantial. In such cases, forecast ensembles are often employed, but it remains that many models share ideas, if not actual code, which makes the individual forecasts less independent than they might otherwise appear and the ensemble mean may be meaningless. This can lead to false confidence.
– All observations, especially surface-based ones that are most widely examined, have flaws and limitations.
– The attached plot, from Prof. John Christy, illustrates the problem neatly. The read curve is the ensemble mean of 102 climate models. The others represent completely independent sets of observations (satellites and weather balloons). It appears current climate models are overpredicting the trend.
There is much to learn, but physics and politics don’t mix well.
In #105, I lamented that politics has poisoned the climate change discussion. A few additional remarks:
Robert A. Heinlein observed “the human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” Although any binary classification is simplistic, there is some utility to this view. Often, certainly not always, the controllers reside on the left side of the political spectrum — at least with respect to the freedoms I cherish.
I think “progressives” are drawn to the “climate crisis” notion as a compelling justification for greater government power: over our lives, economy, future, etc.. (For our own good, of course.) It is consistent with their previous proclamations of doom: population, famine, peak oil, etc.. They are going to continue proclaiming not just doom but their kind of doom until they get one right.
IMHO, a large part of conservative resistance to the climate change discussion directly represents antipathy to progressives. Many of us won’t take it seriously because we don’t like the messengers (like Al Gore); the older among us also recall those many false dooms.
In this instance, because it is convenient, the progressive will appeal to authority and consensus, and apply pejorative labels on “deniers”. But authority and consensus don’t actually matter (some climate activists are also against vaccines), they’re just tools.
There will be no inclusive discussion of climate change until it stops being a political football.
I don’t perceive that happening any time soon.
Cyrano
We can divide folks between those who want control and those who don’t. But an important question would be can those who want control actually deliver new technology, better adjustment, reduced energy consumption, lower CO2 production? The answer is almost certainly no.
I’m sure it can be, at the right dose, although whether you call that “poison” is not the issue here. The issue is whether something essential to life can be a threat to life. It can be and everyone with an elementary school science education has learned as much.
Short response: I believe you’re almost certainly correct.
Longer: We should play a game – transport ourselves back to the mid-to-late 1970s. We’re rapidly running out of oil and food. The population bomb. Limits to growth. Malaise. Inflation. Pollution run amok. These fears may not have been monolithic or universal, but that was the consensus of learned folk. It was nearly certain that the invisible hand wasn’t going to solve our problems, and only government and government-organized action could.
Many measures were proposed. Some were quite drastic. With the crisis at hand, there was no time to consult or educate the people, or rebut the crisis deniers. Democracy is such a slow process.
Say the doomsayers won, so gas rationing was imposed, population controls were put in place, economic restrictions – unilaterally, without discussion. For the greater good. Suppose further these survive Supreme Court challenges.
What would 2016 look like? What would world population, oil price be? How developed would China and other nations be now?
One sure bet: the population would be larger than at present, despite draconian controls. The single biggest brake on population growth is economic prosperity.
We’ve been going to Hell for a very, very long time.
I’m coming late to the party so forgive me if this has already been covered.
Personally I need the following to get concerned.
Is the climate changing?
I need proof it’s happening. Not a computer model that up to now has not been able to model the real world ( the 18 year “pause” in the Satellite temperature data). And not manipulated data like the infamous “hockey stick”. And stop with the phony appeal to authority with the “97% of scientists believe it”. That’s a lie
What’s the cause of the change?
The climate has constantly changed throughout time without any input from man. Currently, the Sun seems to be entering a quiet cycle, and a mini ice age may be right around the corner..
If the cause is man made, will the change be harmful, and to what extent?
Will a slight increase in temperature over a century cause significant harm? It’s been warmer in the historical past, and it wasn’t a catastrophe. Greenland was farmed. The English had vineyards. Cold weather is much harder on humanity then warm.
If the cause is man made and significantly harmful, what can we do, and at what cost?
Energy = Wealth. If the answer is to drastically limit our access to fossil fuels, good luck convincing Wang, and Deepak, Jesus and Mobutu that they and their children are going to be poor to save a couple of degrees of warming in 100 years. And if they don’t go along, we in the West making ourselves poor is not going to affect a solution. In addition, if the “solution” includes a Global Government, the ability to Tax to ensure compliance, I see that as a greater threat then any warming could be.
From what I have read, and studied, we are still at the first step. Despite the panic and shrill cries that ” it’s decided you Denier!”.
And here’s the crux of the issue. Most scientists today are liberals. To a liberal, taxing big energy, strengthening the UN and weakening national sovereignty, transferring money to the 3rd world and other ‘solutions’ to climate change are things they would like to see done anyway, so the bar for action is extremely low. Combating climate change seems like a ‘no-brainer’.
Imagine if climate change were being caused by big government, and the only solution was to shrink the size of government, lower taxes, and reduce regulations. NOW do you think the scientists would be so quick to endorse action? Do you think the right would be full of ‘deniers’? Or would the roles flip and we’d be the ones touting the science?
It’s a rhetorical question, but we have a perfect example of this: Nuclear power. In the nuclear power debate, science is definitely on the side of nukes – especially if you think global warming is a serious problem. Nuclear is the only solution we currently have that can remotely hope to replace a significant percentage of fossil fuel power in the timeframe the alarmists are claiming before permanent harm is done.
So why is the left downplaying it so hard, or even moving away from it? Because it doesn’t fit their view of the ‘proper’ future. It doesn’t empower the UN. It doesn’t allow for millions of ‘green jobs’ installing solar panels and cleaning them. It doesn’t require transferring huge amounts of wealth from the rich to the poor.
So our best solution to global warming is ‘denied’ because it doesn’t come with a grab bag full of left wing wish-list items. The UN ignores it because it doesn’t result in more power and control and money for the UN.
That tells you a lot about the real concerns of the political climate change activists. They’ve hung their hat on carbon taxes, despite the many obvious flaws in that as a solution to global warming, because hey, taxes. Taking from those evil oil companies and giving the money to cronies in the solar industry is a much better idea, even if it won’t work.
They want to outlaw coal without having a suitable replacement, because ultimately they’d prefer a lower-growth, lower-energy economy anyway. And if that throws a whole lot of people out of work, well, that just gives them more excuses to intervene in the economy with social programs and ‘jobs programs’. And if that forces taxes to go up, well, the rich need to pay more anyway, right?
Pure genius. I am going to steal this. Thanks!
What Dan Hansen said, a thousand times.
The Global Warming fear mongering, IMHO, goes along with so many stupid movements, like banning plastic bags.
There are some people who aren’t going to be happy until I’m carrying my groceries on my head and cooking a hamster in a cave.
It’s anti modernity and glorification of a peasant’s life.
On a true global timeline this is all bs. The planet is 4.5 billion years old and has had far more cataclysmic cycles, epochs and eras.
Dinosaurs roamed the planet for almost 200 million years and they are gone. The inland sea the went all the way to Canada and possibly into the arctic was during the Cretaceous Period 145 to 66 million years ago. Now that is some serious ocean rise.
The Great Ice Age dates from about 1.8 million to 8,000 years and had glaciers tearing up North America down to present day Kansas.
During the Permian Extinction, 250 million years ago, the planet lost 90% of the earths marine organisms and more than 70% of all terrestrial organisms. Of all 5 major extinctions the earth has wiped out more than 90% of all living creatures and biodiversity.
So now that MAN is here its gotten ‘serious’, c’mon, give us all a break.
So the planet has heated up dramatically and frozen like an ice cube and its still here. In the scale and timeline of the planet we are complete drama queens.
Wasn’t that the Khmer Rouge’s whole point?
Look at the graph in #105 above. Temperature has been essentially flat since 1998 — while the AGW proponents’ models show that there should have been a big increase.
There is nothing inconsistent between “temperature hasn’t increased since 1998” and “2015 was the hottest year on record,” as long as you understand that we’ve essentially been at a temperature plateau, with minor (and unexplained) divergences from the plateau.
What AGW proponents need, to support their theory, is observations over the past 17-odd years showing steadily increasing temperature, which is what their model predicts. The facts are otherwise.
Now, to be technically correct, someone should do an analysis of whether there has been statistically significant warming since 1998. I don’t have the data, or the time, to do this.
Maybe a vegan hamster.
And now that fireplaces and “open flames” are banned in so many cities, I guess I don’t know how I’m going to cook it.
Hamster tar-tar anyone?
Hamster is a luxury item. What are you, part of the 1%?
Real proles eat bugs. Haven’t you heard they are the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet?
I absolutely agree that I can’t take seriously anyone who tells me climate change is a problem, but (implicitly) that it’s not as much of a problem as nuclear power. That’s a position so internally inconsistent that I’d immediately mentally disqualify anyone who made it. But what of the many scientists who avidly support nuclear power precisely because they think it’s the most rational way to address the problem of climate change? (I linked to one paper, but I can show a lot of evidence that the view is now very common.) I wouldn’t outsource my opinion to anyone who didn’t view nuclear power positively, because clearly that’s a sign, as you say, or an agenda that has nothing to do with evidence. But I’d like to hear your thoughts about the more sensible people who make the case for climate alarmism.
(I’d support nuclear whether or not I was persuaded that climate change is a problem, because it’s so much safer than coal and so much less environmentally damaging than oil. I look forward to the day when stories like this are considered part of humanity’s ancient and backward past.)