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.
question. if we were able to reduce the global temp what would be the end result? i guess we would have to burn more fossil fuels to keep from freezing thereby increasing co2 again. agw. what a bunch of hooey.
Fred H Haynie
I enjoyed your brillliant presentation.
I hope Anthony asks you do do a guest post
It seems likely to me that the good old beeb is beginning to lay on a few stories so that in the future when this collective insanity comes to an end which it surely must, they will be able to point out that they had a balanced position. At most other times though they yada yada on-message for AGW.
Meanwhile, I just popped over to the Met Office to discover what the winter has in store for us in the Uk:-
[i]Preliminary indications continue to suggest that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder than last year for the UK, but there is still a 1 in 7 chance of a cold winter[i/].
Well, we shall see. I guess sooner or later, the law of averages will ensure they get it right. N.B must make a note of it, in case they amend it.
Another excellent piece on the subject from Bob Carter:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/10/alarmism-contra-science
Fred H. Haynie (09:13:38) :
Your PowerPoint has some interesting ideas that are worthy of further research. Unfortunately, there is a significant likelihood that further research along those lines would provide evidence that could refute the IPCC “findings”.
As a fellow government employed scientist it is my experience that funding for such studies would necessarily be placed at the back of the line. Current policy dictates that funding must be prioritized to those studies that assume that the GCM models are complete and settled science.
Any other studies must delayed until decisions by policy makers to save the planet are are in effect. At that time all funding will necessarily be required to mitigate the financial and societal impacts of those policy decisions.
Fred H. Haynie (09:13:38) :
“..global warming (and cooling) is a natural process that is not caused or significantly contributed to by anthropogenic emissions of CO2.”
Great study! No critical feedback. You’re calculations are way over my paygrade. What with the hysteria of the day I guess we’re doomed to fall into another glacial period before we know what’s really happening. Let’s hope EPA, DOD, DOE, DHS, etc., are all keeping a few of their brightest occupied working out plans for the next global cooling event.
Fred H. Haynie (09:13:38) :
I also just finished reading the contents of you presentation:
http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf
It is a very interesting compilation! It will take some time for the implications of your summary to set in ( need to re-read it in detail now) but my first impression is that your work deserves to be widely read and given some serious consideration.
Thanks for all the effort involved in putting that together!
Larry
It is a peculiar development that scientific truth is now decided through voting.
It would indeed be peculiar if voting were the mechanism for achieving a scientific consensus, but it’s not. Science is precisely about consensus, because consensus is the result of applying scientific standards of methodolgy, evidence, prediction, and explanatory power. Does that sound like a vote to you? I guess not! Since your reference to scientific cosensus has no referent; it follows you are writing gibberish. Therefore I stopped reading.
P.S. The consensus position is very clear, consisting of the following points: (1) the climate is getting warmer; (2) CO2 is the cause for this warming; (3) in particular, the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels; (4) this will turn into a problem if we don’t do something about it. Obviously y’all know this, since you are reading and posting comments on a blog created to deny exactly those four points, multiple times per day. Or is that just a coincidence?
As Dr. Spencer points out there are many persuasive studies that question the conclusions of the IPCC – a political and NOT scientific body. The general tone in this thread appears to be for a trumpeter to spread the word to the general public. It appears this is beginning to happen with the BBC (print and radio) publishing two recent articles in support of the skeptical view. Wary of public backlash may be motivating their change of heart.
Since much of this battle is fought on the fields of public perception, those controlling PR channels have won more mind share. But the advent of “citizen news” via internet blogs and web sites is having a powerful effect. The main stream media is closely monitoring our web content and, as they are creatures of public acceptance, painfully aware of the mass growth of the skeptic view. This is their lifeblood. The real tipping point in climate perception is at what moment and who in the main stream first adopts the skeptic view? And thereby wins new mind share.
The let down at Copenhagen is the likely point. Obama will not appear, there is no G8 agreement, and the spinners are hard at work packaging disagreement to look like success. All needed at this stage is for one focused message – probably administered by a top Madison Ave firm – that asks: “Where is our $30 billion in climate research?”
That is a question of economics. $30 billion in US taxpayer funds has yielded no hard evidence of manmade CO2 caused warming, no current warming trend, and worse, no bloody treaty in Copenhagen! Three strikes and yer…
A brief review of Fred Haynie’s paper is interesting. He concludes:
“The observed rise in background levels of carbon dioxide is globally uniform and is primarily the result of rising temperatures of the arctic ocean sink and not from increases in anthropogenic emissions.”
Thank you for your significant efforts Fred.
Gene Nemetz says:
Excellent strawman. However, the issue is not whether someone believes in God but rather whether they believe “intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism” ( http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=080805I ). When someone makes a statement like that in regards to the accepted theory of the origin of the diversity of life on Earth then it reflects on his scientific judgment. It has nothing to do with his religious beliefs.
REPLY: OK folks, let’s leave the religion discussion at home. No place here for it. – Anthony
Joseph said:
Your conclusion is based on a misunderstanding of how the greenhouse effect works, admittedly abetted by many explanations of it that are too simplistic. Here is a good discussion of the simplistic explanation vs the correct explanation: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm#L_0623
In a nutshell, what is important is not whether or not a photon get absorbed once or zero times but actually the distribution of levels from which the photons are emitted that successfully escape to space. The higher this distribution of levels is in the troposphere, the colder the temperature and hence (by the Stefan-Boltzmann Eq.) the less radiation that gets emitted. As you add more CO2, you increase the average level from which this emission occurs…and hence you get less emission back out into space.
You would be in good scientific company if you raised your objection 60 years ago; today, not so much.
Stefan says:
I think the principle is too simplistic. In the real world, one has to weigh the possible dangers against the costs of avoiding the dangers. However, I think in the case of climate change, some serious dangers are not just quite possible but rather likely especially for some level of CO2 that we would likely obtain if we used our fossil fuel resources to their fullest potential (and didn’t sequester the CO2). We don’t yet really know exactly what level of CO2 is necessary to avoid the worst effects…but we do have enough of an idea that we need to start changing course now…with possible adjustments to either more or less stringent emissions controls in the future.
And, in considering the costs, one has to consider that fossil fuels are a finite resource anyway so it is not like we can continue having that cheap energy source forever. Better to create the market forces to develop the technologies to replace them (by which I mean both new energy sources and increased energy efficiency) sooner rather than later…so that we wean ourselves from fossil fuels before rather than after we have likely done irreversible harm.
NikFromNYC (19:13:59): “…I think nuclear power is the best bet, the only way to undermine the AGW’s side of the equation.”
LOL , I was thinking this last week, my plan is to shadow the next AGW protest wearing a full body white painter suit with a full face mask filter with black gum boots and black gloves with a radiation symbol on a small sandwich sign. No yelling or arguing just stand off to the side and if they move just follow behind them. I think the public will begin to figure it out pretty quick.
Joel, I agree withn “weigh the possible dangers against the costs of avoiding the dangers”.
Now I don’t know if this is right, but I assume you’re not a scientist in the field of climate. On what then, have you based your conviction that,
“we do have enough of an idea that we need to start changing course now”
where by “we” we’re really talking about “them” the scientists?
Just to take a guess, is it that you think that the scientific method produces reliable information, and seeing as numerous official science bodies have declared AGW very likely, then it is indeed very likely true?
If this is so, what is your take on critiques of the cultural aspects of science, like the article “Cargo Cult Science” ?
Joel Shore writes
Scientific truth is what is really happening. It’s independent of human attempts to understand it.
The scientific method is the best we humans have, but it ain’t perfect. And please note that it does not incude ‘appeal to authority’ nor ‘membership of clubs’.
The scientific method involves building then testing a hypothesis – either by an experiment or by observing the natural world. Note that you have to put the hypothesis on the table beforehand and it has to predict events beyond the original observations that led to it. Otherwise you are just in circular reasoning land.
Or worse – you are using omen theory. This is loved by journoes – every event is an omen of worse to come and is also a sure sign of climate change. You see 100s or walruses and the cause – is “climate change”. or you fail to see walruses and its “climate change”.
Fred H. Haynie (09:13:38)
Whilst the statistics used are way over my head, there is a logical progression through the document which makes a great deal of sense to this layman.
Not only have you performed a detailed analysis of available data, you have also offered some predictions against which your conclusions can be tested within a modest period of time. I await the outcome with a degree of confidence that you will be proved correct.
My thanks for what must have been a massive amount of work, and I hope it has the effect that I think it deserves, to place the anthropgenic global warming scandal in the dustbin of history.
FTA: “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.”
Indeed. The belief that the Earth Climate system is marginally stable, but our political and economic institutions are rock solid and able to withstand any shock we artificially impose upon them without any adverse consequences, is one of the the toggled states in the psyches of the disputants. You could make a sort of truth table of the divide, which would look like this: (hope the spaces come out right)
Earth Robust Political/Economic System Robust
AGW Devout 0 1
AGW Rationalist 1 0
“hope the spaces come out right”
Thought it might not. Oh, well.
We had this lame story on the BBC last week – some Scots will be studying the effect of climate change on earthworms.
They did a big study some 20 years ago and want to visit the same areas to count the worms again. This is going to produce… 2 data points. And it’s all going to be invalid because they did not record the climate in the fields 20 years ago – so even if they measure the climate there today they don’t really know if the climate has changed for the worms.
The worms do not know about the climate at the north pole or at the south pole or anywhere else. They do not even know the climate at the other end of their own field so you need to be exact.
Also noted that you could put the worms in tanks and vary the climate for different tanks and see if the ‘climate’ really did affect worms on a farm more than other factors like:
+crops
+pesticides
+livestock
+predators (eg birds)
+worm diseases
+heavy tractors driving around
+weather (rain brings them up)
Better to create the market forces to develop the technologies to replace them [fossil fuels] (by which I mean both new energy sources and increased energy efficiency) sooner rather than later…
Had this been the foundation of the AGW campaign – it would have probably succeeded. The fatal error was to pin the entire campaign on an erroneous finding: CO2 is a “pollutant.”
Now we have an enormous mess with institutional science to clean up.
@Stefan – great post about the spiral dynamics stuff. Makes interesting reading – although the theory does drift off into horoscope land.
Here is the link to Cargo Cult Science from Richard Feynman – 35 years ago…
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
Stefan,
Yeah…I am a physicist, not a climate scientist. So, I am to a certain extent trusting the judgment of those in the field. Although, I have also spent a considerable amount of time reading papers and textbooks in climate science, so I don’t feel that I am relying only on the judgment of scientists in the field; however, there are certainly issues that I feel less “up on” than others.
And, yeah, I am sort of using the royal “we” there.
As for the cultural aspects of science, I recognize that science isn’t perfect and that there are fads and paradigms. However, I think that we don’t have any viable substitute for basing policy decisions on the best understanding of the current scientific view in the peer-reviewed literature; to do otherwise is to open things up to hopeless politicization.
Thus, I think that it is incumbent on scientists who are “skeptics” on AGW to prevail on their fellow scientists to change their views by presenting their evidence in a scientific forum…and I actually applaud Dr. Spencer for working to publish his papers in reputable scientific journals. Unfortunately, the “skeptic movement” as a whole seems to expend most of their energy taking their case directly to the policymakers and the public and publishing in less serious journals…or journals well outside the climate science area of expertise, using arguments that have most often been thoroughly debunked in the scientific realm, rather than trying to prevail on their scientific colleagues…And this alone is, to me, a bad sign. (There is nothing wrong with discussing science directly with the public and policymakers but that should not be your primary approach.)
It is excellent to see that there are professors out there with the balls to fight the hegemony of the left-wing academic elite, which has gradually decided to brand CO2 as the cause of all future environmental ills. It really is bizarre. We live in a world in which there are problems with overpopulation, land degradation, soil erosion, destruction of the ocean floor, global disease running rampant – and yet the molecule required for photosynthesis is being demonized. Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Yes, but a relatively weak one, with large error bars surrounding its effect, and parameterizations for global models partly based on an exaggerated role of its effect on the temp/CO2 relationships of the past 600,000 years, and calibrated against temperature change during a period of long-term natural warming. So, it’s role in climate change is dubious. What do we know for SURE about CO2? It enhances photosynthetic productivity, increases crop yields, increases plant water-use efficiency, increases plant nitrogen-use efficiency and causes no harm to human beings. Concentrations were much higher for millions of years, until the CO2 impoverishment of the past 20 million years arguably (if the dubious connection is true) may have caused a series of glaciation events, the last ending just a few thousand years ago. If it does cause warming, and this is in doubt, the warming would be distributed mainly where it is currently too cold for farming and/or high ecological productivity. It’s not all bad, and Dr. Spencer should be congratulated for boldly standing up to the hegemony and pointing out reality. YES, it is a greenhouse gas. NO, it is not the end of the world. YES, the issue is politicized among scientists and those of us who tell the truth can’t get anywhere in the field of climatology. Somehow people like Profs. Spencer and Pielke get away with giving us real science. I think it is very courageous.
“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.”
Now how’s that for an urban legend! 100%, you reckon? On the basis of exactly what evidence? Until you can provide a source for that claim, I’m going to presume that you simply made it up.
“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.”
And there’s another outrageously false claim. Vast amounts of research have been carried out into all factors which influence the climate. It is impossible to believe that you would be unaware of this, so why would you knowingly make such a false claim?
Fred H Haynie: thank you for your fine presentation. As an engineer, I do like the idea of having starting equations applied to the data. I will look in more detail at your presentation, but at first reading I see no alarm bells.
I will be going through this with a coarse tooth comb and will get back to you if I have any questions.
In summary: fantastic work!