An Expensive Urban Legend
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
About.com describes an “urban legend” as an apocryphal (of questionable authenticity), secondhand story, told as true and just plausible enough to be believed, about some horrific…series of events….it’s likely to be framed as a cautionary tale. Whether factual or not, an urban legend is meant to be believed. In lieu of evidence, however, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely on skillful storytelling and reference to putatively trustworthy sources.
I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.
But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.
Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.
Just as the tales of marauding colonies of alligators living in New York City sewers are based upon some kernel of truth, so too is the science behind anthropogenic global warming. But there is a big difference between reports of people finding pet alligators that have escaped their owners, versus city workers having their limbs torn off by roving colonies of subterranean monsters.
In the case of global warming, the “putatively trustworthy sources” would be the consensus of the world’s scientists. The scientific consensus, after all, says that global warming is…is what? Is happening? Is severe? Is manmade? Is going to burn the Earth up if we do not act? It turns out that those who claim consensus either do not explicitly state what that consensus is about, or they make up something that supports their preconceived notions.
If the consensus is that the presence of humans on Earth has some influence on the climate system, then I would have to even include myself in that consensus. After all, the same thing can be said of the presence of trees on Earth, and hopefully we have at least the same rights as trees do. But too often the consensus is some vague, fill-in-the-blank, implied assumption where the definition of “climate change” includes the phrase “humans are evil”.
It is a peculiar development that scientific truth is now decided through voting. A relatively recent survey of climate scientists who do climate research found that 97.4% agreed that humans have a “significant” effect on climate. But the way the survey question was phrased borders on meaninglessness. To a scientist, “significant” often means non-zero. The survey results would have been quite different if the question was, “Do you believe that natural cycles in the climate system have been sufficiently researched to exclude them as a potential cause of most of our recent warming?”
And it is also a good bet that 100% of those scientists surveyed were funded by the government only after they submitted research proposals which implicitly or explicitly stated they believed in anthropogenic global warming to begin with. If you submit a research proposal to look for alternative explanations for global warming (say, natural climate cycles), it is virtually guaranteed you will not get funded. Is it any wonder that scientists who are required to accept the current scientific orthodoxy in order to receive continued funding, then later agree with that orthodoxy when surveyed? Well, duh.
In my experience, the public has the mistaken impression that a lot of climate research has gone into the search for alternative explanations for warming. They are astounded when I tell them that virtually no research has been performed into the possibility that warming is just part of a natural cycle generated within the climate system itself.
Too often the consensus is implied to be that global warming is so serious that we must do something now in the form of public policy to avert global catastrophe. What? You don’t believe that there are alligators in New York City sewer system? How can you be so unconcerned about the welfare of city workers that have to risk their lives by going down there every day? What are you, some kind of Holocaust-denying, Neanderthal flat-Earther?
It makes complete sense that in this modern era of scientific advances and inventions that we would so readily embrace a compelling tale of global catastrophe resulting from our own excesses. It’s not a new genre of storytelling, of course, as there were many B-movies in the 1950s whose horror themes were influenced by scientists’ development of the atomic bomb.
Our modern equivalent is the 2004 movie, “Day After Tomorrow”, in which all kinds of physically impossible climatic events occur in a matter of days. In one scene, super-cold stratospheric air descends to the Earth’s surface, instantly freezing everything in its path. The meteorological truth, however, is just the opposite. If you were to bring stratospheric air down to the surface, heating by compression would make it warmer than the surrounding air, not colder.
I’m sure it is just coincidence that “Day After Tomorrow” was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed the 2006 movie “Independence Day,” in which an alien invasion nearly exterminates humanity. After all, what’s the difference? Aliens purposely killing off humans, or humans accidentally killing off humans? Either way, we all die.
But a global warming catastrophe is so much more believable. After all, climate change does happen, right? So why not claim that ALL climate change is now the result of human activity? And while we are at it, let’s re-write climate history so that we get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice age, with a new ingenious hockey stick-shaped reconstruction of past temperatures that makes it look like climate never changed until the 20th Century? How cool would that be?
The IPCC thought it was way cool…until it was debunked, after which it was quietly downgraded in the IPCC reports from the poster child for anthropogenic global warming, to one possible interpretation of past climate.
And let’s even go further and suppose that the climate system is so precariously balanced that our injection of a little bit of that evil plant food, carbon dioxide, pushes our world over the edge, past all kinds of imaginary tipping points, with the Greenland ice sheet melting away, and swarms of earthquakes being the price of our indiscretions.
In December, hundreds of bureaucrats from around the world will once again assemble, this time in Copenhagen, in their attempts to forge a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. And as has been the case with every other UN meeting of its type, the participants simply assume that the urban legend is true. Indeed, these politicians and governmental representatives need it to be true. Their careers and political power now depend upon it.
And the fact that they hold their meetings in all of the best tourist destinations in the world, enjoying the finest exotic foods, suggests that they do not expect to ever have to be personally inconvenienced by whatever restrictions they try to impose on the rest of humanity.
If you present these people with evidence that the global warming crisis might well be a false alarm, you are rewarded with hostility and insults, rather than expressions of relief. The same can be said for most lay believers of the urban legend. I say “most” because I once encountered a true believer who said he hoped my research into the possibility that climate change is mostly natural will eventually be proved correct.
Unfortunately, just as we are irresistibly drawn to disasters – either real ones on the evening news, or ones we pay to watch in movie theaters – the urban legend of a climate crisis will persist, being believed by those whose politics and worldviews depend upon it. Only when they finally realize what a new treaty will cost them in loss of freedoms and standard of living will those who oppose our continuing use of carbon-based energy begin to lose their religion.
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What is Groupthink?
“Groupthink, a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment” (p. 9). Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups. A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making.”
http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm
Symptoms of Groupthink
1. Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
2. Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.
3. Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
4. Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.
5. Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
6. Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
7.Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
8. Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.
@ur momisugly artwest (20:18:39) :
Thanks for the link. It’s a truly excellent piece by Clime James, whom I have always admired. It’s great to learn that he’s a sceptic, both in the general sense and also with respect to global warming.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002wv05
It may only work in the UK. If you’re in a hurry, skip the first half and get to the meat in the second half.
It’s also remarkable that, once again, sceptical material has emanated from the BBC. Could the Beeb be moving toward a more balanced and less biased treatment of climate change? Who knows….
Chris
Dr Spencer
Thank you for this observation:-
In one scene, super-cold stratospheric air descends to the Earth’s surface, instantly freezing everything in its path. The meteorological truth, however, is just the opposite. If you were to bring stratospheric air down to the surface, heating by compression would make it warmer than the surrounding air, not colder.
It was at this point in the film that I lost interest and could no longer suspend my disbelief.
I was taught in Meteorology 101 that the warm dry and generally still air at ground level, inside the vortex of a hurricane, is formed of stratospheric air.
Just like in a whirlpool of water, where the vortex cone can reach the bottom, allowing air to touch the stream bed, the eye of a hurricane is where the stratospheric air touches the Earth’s surface.
Dr Spencer
Excellent article. But do not despair democratic science appears to be producing a result in the UK!
Late last week, as the result of apparent pressure from the government, the Science Museum launched an exhibition to remind the public of the perils of climate change in the run-up to Copenhagen. The museum also launched the online poll, ‘Prove It’ (see Anthony’s thread) which asks voter to be counted in or counted out to the proposition:”I’ve seen the evidence. And I want the government to prove they’re serious about climate change by negotiating a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen.”
As Anthony suggested it might, the poll is going spectacularly wrong for the government. As I type the latest figures are 486 counted in as against 3243 counted out – a ratio of 6.67:1 against the desired result.
A reminder – the website address to vote is http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit.aspx
I think the urban legend is also based on another kernel of truth, and this might even be the more powerful one. Although it isn’t actually a “truth” in the sense of an objective fact, rather it is a sincerely held core value. It is what some people feel to be most important, and it might be a core part of why the urban legend is so compelling.
In developmental psychology there are several models of how people develop through stages, but just look at this description of one cultural values stage from the model called Spiral Dynamics. (In Spiral Dynamics there are 8 stages, each named/labelled by colour: BEIGE, PURPLE, RED, BLUE, ORANGE, GREEN, YELLOW, TURQUOISE):
GREEN Communitarian/Egalitarian MEME – starting 150 years ago
Basic theme: Seek peace within the inner self and explore, with others, the caring dimensions of community
• The human spirit must be freed from greed, dogma, and divisiveness
• Feelings, sensitivity, and caring supersede cold rationality
• Spreads the Earth’s resources and opportunities equally among all
• Reaches decisions through reconciliation and consensus processes
• Refreshes spirituality, brings harmony, and enriches human development
The authors of this model and research estimate that about 25% of people in the West are centred mostly around this cultural values stage. It is called a “values system” because these are the things that people value most.
The research originated when a psychology professor asked his students to write an essay defining, “what is a healthy human?”, and he got back more than one kind of answer. With further research they identified 8 core values. Each one is what a person feels to be “good” or “heathy”. Notice the GREEN ‘answer’ above makes no mention of being able to compete or being able to be strong. Competition is considered unhealthy by GREEEN.
Because a values system is core—it is what a person values most—then if you want to really see eye to eye with someone, you need to frame what you’re talking about in terms that resonate with their core values.
Consider, why do most AGW supporters dismiss technical fixes? There are just a few years left—there is desperately little time—and yet technical fixes, ie. things which we could implement quickly, are often flatly rejected. Instead, AGW supporters are most vocal about changing people’s behaviour—a notoriously slow process, by the way, just look at how long it has taken for women’s rights, at least 100 years and still going, or how long South Africa continued with Apartheid when the world had sanctions against them—but nevertheless, AGW supporters want to change people’s behaviour even whilst China and India and Africa are pressing ahead with construction.
What is AGW supporter’s answer to this? I picked up a little book, “What about China?”—I thought I’d be open minded and see what they proposed to do about China—the book said, “set the example, and they’ll follow”. Really? In 6 years? A billion plus Chinese will decide to “follow” our sterling example?
No, it is patently obvious that AGW is not about AGW. If AGW was really the core issue for AGW supporters, they’d opt for technical fixes. The boat has sprung a leak, so do you get to work with buckets to remove the water? or do you sit and preach the benefits of going on a diet to lose weight? The buckets are the technical fix. But they don’t want that. They want people to lose weight. (They want people to be less greedy).
What they want is to change people’s behaviour. Look again at that description of the GREEN vmeme, a description published decades ago based on research going back more decades.
“freedom from greed… sensitivity… feelings supersede cold rationality… decisions by consensus… harmony… spirituality…”
If you’ve met people who are actively GREEEN, they are quite lovely people. Remember, this is what those people feel is the most healthy way to be. They feel that the technological world went amok with greed and competitiveness, and it continues to cause damage everywhere. So their feeling is that it is healthier for everyone to embrace a spiritual freedom beyond greed, a harmony that comes from cooperation. Instead of war and conflict, they want consensus and equality.
About 25% or maybe even 30% of people in the West resonate with GREEEN.
There’s an important feature of most of the vmemes in the Spiral Dynamics model; each vmeme believes that it is the best vmeme. GREEEN thinks people at ORANGE are greedy. ORANGE thinks people at GREEEN are ineffective and naive. BLUE thinks all the other memes should submit to the authority of the One True Way, be it the One True God, or the One Nation.
The West has a lot of ORANGE and GREEN. But travel to the parts of the world where they still do things the really old way, and you find people who’s way of life is structured around kinship, clans, and blood loyalties. This is the old tribal world of PURPLE values. The West comes in and tries to install an ORANGE democracy, but the people don’t value ORANGE, they value PURPLE, which has been their way of life for thousands of years. Chaos ensues.
We may be one planet, but we are not all on the same page. Groups of people are very different, and each vmeme will come up with its own answers to problems, based on their own core value system.
I don’t know if Spiral Dynamics is the best model or the most accurate, but I find that without it, a lot less makes sense.
What most AGW supporters want, judging by their proposed solutions, is for everyone to become GREEN, just like them. Remember, each vmeme believes itself to be the most healthy.
ORANGE looks at AGW and sees it as a cost-benefit analysis, perhaps requiring some technical fixes here and there, or perhaps simply wait and see; let the energy marked do its thing.
GREEN looks at AGW, and sees that human consensus can lead to reduction in greed, which can reduce our consumption, and reduce our footprint, and give us more time for care and bonding—instead of competition, we’ll have “sustainability” (ie. no competition).
I think that basically, you can guess where people are coming from based on which solutions they prefer/value. AGW has from the beginning been framed as a problem about reducing materialistic consumption (greed) and it has resonated with anyone who is strongly active in GREEN values. Most of these people are in the West, as the West has the high standard of living that makes it possible for people to develop to the GREEEN values-stage.
This is where I disagree most with GREEN answers to AGW. The prosperity that made GREEN values possible, was built by ORANGE technical competitive achievement. If we downscale our industry and energy, we risk reducing our standards of living, and we risk throwing ourselves back culturally. In Spiral Dynamics, no one values stage is better than any other, but they each are adaptions to particular life conditions. If life is hard, people shift to earlier values structures. If life is very hard, you end up back down in PURPLE, which as it happens, is very fond of slavery and tribal war.
The kernel of truth in AGW is that its proponents have framed it in ways that appeal to GREEEN values. GREEN was never that bothered about the cold rationality of science. They prefer feelings and intuitions. (I used to be very GREEN in my 20s, and have since shifted as the demands of life have changed, so I don’t mean to be mean to GREEN).
OK, so far I’ve tried to give a brief discussion on SD as I understand it—I’m no expert so I may have got things wrong here. I’m trying to write this in good faith.
So what about possibilities? If this is the game, how do we play it? First, I think that GREEEN will gradually realise that AGW’s call “we have to do something” is not working, and people are not shifting to GREEN en-masse in response. That’s really like expecting people in Iraq to all shift to ORANGE just because we wrecked their infrastructure, invaded, occupied, killed innocent family members, and shoved ballot boxes down their throats. Well, they didn’t shift. And the rest of the world isn’t going to shift just because it might get a little warmer, and somebody somewhere might get hit by an extra hurricane. If anything, most people in the world are probably trying to figure out whether they can use AGW to help destroy their enemies—most of the world’s population is not GREEN, but is rather part of some more ruthless vmeme.
However, 25% of the West is GREEN, and that number will hopefully continue to grow—as I say, they are really nice people! So what GREEN needs is something that’s more GREEN than AGW. AGW is only a cold bit of science at the end of the day. What really resonates with GREEN is feelings, intuition, care, bonding. This is why “sceptics” are characterised as holocaust “deniers”—it’s not because you’re technically wrong, it is because you look like you don’t care.
Maybe GREEN needs a cultural movement in the arts that’s about spreading spiritual health to the masses. Meanwhile, technical matters like nuclear power can simply be redressed in ways that support spiritual development—make the installations smaller, make them less “corporate” looking, make them more about freedom from dogma and freedom from greed. Nuclear is nature’s way of making light. Nuclear is about small things that leave the countryside alone. After all, GREEN is always going to need the hot water to make the coffee at those community centre meetings.
Wind power is often filmed from a great distance, where they look like a child’s paper windmill, blowing in a gentle breeze. Instead, they should show a turbine being built, they should show men labouring to pour the concrete. The blades’ steel should be shown being smelted in a steel furnace. Men should stand next to the turbine gears, filmed up close, to show the scale of the machinery, and corporate logos should be visible everywhere, and the noise of the turbine should be heard. Slow motion images of a bird in graceful flight being hit by a blade should be shown, and the number of kills should be compared to the numbers of animals kept in cages for medical experiments.
I have a fair amount of GREEN in me, and I just don’t find wind turbines very GREEEN.
Ken Gregory
2. A 3% increase in water vapour has the same effect as a 100% increase in CO2.
This feedback is entirely due to the belief the water vapour is increasing in the 300 to 400 mb altitude, but as the graph above shows, it is not increasing. It is decreasing. A temperature change can not cause this. It is a direct result of increasing CO2 content.
The result is that there has been no increase in the total effective amount of greenhouse gases, as characterized by optical depth (transparency to long-wave radiation), in sixty years, as demonstrated by the green line on this graph, according to the radiosonde data.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Optical%20Depth2008.jpg
Hi Ken, good to see you posting here. The pyrheliometry data on optical depth seems to say something different. Hoyt found no change to 1968 but Philipona et al who continued the work using the Hoyt time series as a baseline find various changes in optical depth since.
http://acp.web.psi.ch/acp_publ/documents/proceedings/2002_9_20_Atmos.Res.JFJ_Davos.pdf#page=23
Comments?
I never thought I would be the one to point out the glaring flaw in Dr. Spencer’s article.
Roy, your data is wrong, your theory lies is in tatters!
“Independence Day” was in fact, made in 1996 not 2006 as claimed in this report.
Turboblocke (03:06:27) :
Does that mean that Spencer’s research is not funded?
I thought everyone knew Roy Spencer is in the pay of big oil.
🙂
We are witnessing a process which is beyond science and facts and measuring. We are witnessing the dawn of a new global religion. Interesting times for non-believers.
artwest (20:18:39) :
The BBC World Service has just broadcast a short radio talk by Clive James on the importance of scepticism. He culminates by stressing the necessity of remaining sceptical in the face of AGW claims. Another little crack in the wall?
Listen again (might only work in the UK):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002wv05
I heard that as well, and was very pleasantly surprised. Here is the print version:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8322513.stm
Vincent (04:11:50) :
Yeah, but the best part of the movie was when Will Smith said “don’t you be shootin’ that Green stuff at me !! “
Great post Stefan.
“However, 25% of the West is GREEN, and that number will hopefully continue to grow—as I say, they are really nice people!”
Unfortunately they are children and should not be allowed to vote if they refuse to be practical and rational, it’s like giving kids guns.
Good summary of the GREEN “faith” – As also expressed many times.
Ecotheism is their core belief, expressed above as GREEEN (?) vs BLUE vs PURPLE, but most especially against the dreaded, feared and haed “capitalist” real world of reward, punishment, strength, and work.
But those are against the GREEN faith that some 25% to 31% of Western “we are already rich but we are also ashamed of it” population. Oddly, their “solutions” won’t work, they know they won’t work, and the punishment (the taxes and fines and wealth transfer is going to be from productive cultures to the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt third world dictators.
But the people in those third world dictatorships will be prevented from gaining anythign at all.
The GREEN population will feel better however.
OT/ Mr Spencer, is it possible to find MSU SST channel since 2002 in monthly averages? Thanks a lot!
(Now I am copying daily SSTs manually into MS Excel but it is helluva work :-/)
O/T…but a good read.
global biofuels program INCREASES C02…perfect.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/mbl-ns102009.php#
JimB
Ken Gregory:
You are referring to water vapor feedback…I was referring to the direct radiative effect of adding more CO2, without feedbacks.
Turboblocke:
My research is funded by govt. contracts that are somewhat open-ended, like “testing of climate models with satellite data”. I have yet to see a research grant given to investigate global warming as a manifestation of natural climate variability.
Sorry about the 10-year error in the release date for Independence Day.
The characteristics of ‘groupthink’ are distressingly similar to the insidious nature of movements that generate ‘true believers’—cf. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer.
/Mr Lynn
Roy,
“Sorry about the 10-year error in the release date for Independence Day.”
Tis ok. My comment should be taken as a parody of those trolls that scan a skeptics article looking for the smallest error, no matter how trivial, then trumpet the claim that the author cannot be trusted.
BTW, I love your articles.
Unfortunately the green brigade will never admit that AGW is a myth, and even if millions died from a repeat of the LIA episode they would continue to cling to the idea that mankind is destroying our planet.
Luckily these die-hard’s are only a tiny proportion of the total populating and not only does the average man-in-the-street not believe the AGW climate mantra, most do not rate it as even one of their top concerns.
The people who run the world have been selling us a big lie and once AGW has been demonstrated to be wrong I feel sorry for what will happen to the scientists and politicians who tried to use it for their own benefit.
hotrod (19:59:23) : “I don’t know the exact answer to the question, but I suspect that that is proper point of view to figure out how to get through that shell of self deception.”
Harry G (20:06:13) : “A wise man once said,“You cannot reason people out of something that they have not been reasoned into.” This is the root of the problem as I see it.”
Here is how I see the problem. Most people will form opinions on the basis that if “a” is true and “b” is true than “a+b” must be true. They look no further than that, it keeps their life simple and uncluttered. Only those that have a skeptical personality will bother to check further to be sure there are no consequences of “a+b”. Now most people have been conditioned all their lives to follow and obey someone they see as an authority figure. “Obey your parents”, “do what the teacher says”, “the boss is always right”, “the cops are always right”, and now “the government is always right and always looking out for your benefit”. Questioning authority and searching for truth takes time, energy and perserverance. Most people couldn’t be bothered. It is easier to simply trust someone else.
When I first wondered (about 30 years ago) why the Earth continually goes back and forth from cold to warm I came to the conclusion that a cold Earth has more CO2 which warms it up which allows more plants to grow that eventually covers enough of the Earth that they start reducing the temperature until so much CO2 is removed that it gets cold again and the process starts all over. I gave no consideration to which came first or how it all started. I knew nothing of Milankovitch cycles, solar insolation variances or the “greenhouse effect” of water vapor. I didn’t even know how long the cycles of warmth and cold were. Then I heard that scientists had discovered that CO2 was increasing due to humans and that it was going to unnaturally change the balance. Well, that fit my view and seemed logical. However when a politician, AL Gore, tells me the science is settled and that it is time to follow blindly and just do what he says, big giant red flags went off in my head. You see I don’t trust any politicians. So I decided to start to learn more and here I am today.
Yesterday evening I heard the Climate Change minister in the UK, Ed Miliband, say in an interview with skeptic, James Whale, on LBC 97.3, that he’s only acting on what the scientists are telling him….well if you’ve funded them to tell you what you want to hear, with innocence, you can’t claim that the research result is nothing to do with you!
It’s all painting-by-numbers, scientifically controlled propaganda. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
As Thoreau advised: attack the root, not the branches.
And yes, it goes way beyond just being wrong.
Yeah, it lends a whole new meaning to the term “It’s a crock”
Dear Dr. Spencer, I think that you’re setting the bar a bit too high there. As you say in your Global Warming 101, that I quoted earlier: ““Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthing the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface. As of 2008, it is believed that we have enhanced the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect by about 1%.”…
“Now, you might be surprised to learn that the amount of warming directly caused by the extra CO2 is, by itself, relatively weak. It has been calculated theoretically that, if there are no other changes in the climate system, a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would cause less than 1 deg C of surface warming (about 1 deg. F). This is NOT a controversial statement…it is well understood by climate scientists. ”
On the basis of the above, If I was responsible for giving out grants would I favour someone who is just looking for natural variation, ignoring the anthropogenic component, or would I favour someone who is looking at both natural and anthropogenic variability?
Alternatively, if I was to write a grant application aiming to prove that there is no man-made component in climate change, would you approve it?
In any case, I imagine that most research grant applications would be as vague as possible, rather like your own example which is to investigate without having a pre-determined result in mind.
kim (18:51:45) :
Bring back the EcoInquirer.
That was a funny website.