Drought, Wildfires Haven’t Changed Perry’s Climate-Change Views : It’s All Politics : NPR
Last week, I drove to College Station to talk with Andy Dessler about the renewed firestorm over global warming. This was the week before actual firestorms roared across Central Texas, killing four people, burning 1,000 homes, and forcing thousands to evacuate. The punishing drought played a major role in the wildfire outbreak, the worst in Texas history, and Dessler says there’s an unmistakable connection between the drought and climate change.
“We can’t say climate change is causing the extreme weather Texas is having right now. On the other hand, we can say humans have increased the temperature of the base climate state pretty much everywhere. And what that means is it makes the heat more extreme and increases evaporation from the soil. We can be confident we’ve made this hellish summer worse than it would have been.”
…
Dessler is not surprised anymore by the vehemence of the emails he receives from people who believe he is perpetrating a fraud.
“People who discount the science of climate change don’t do it because they’ve read the science,” he says. “The science of climate change is a proxy for views on the role of government. From what I understand, Perry’s position is that he doesn’t want government to interfere in private lives or industry. That means climate change — which calls for a government solution; there’s no way for the free market to address climate change by itself — that doesn’t fit anywhere with his political values. So he shoots the messenger.”
The messenger is Andy Dessler and the great majority of other climate scientists who believe human activity is warming the planet.
h/t to Tom Nelson
Blade says:
September 10, 2011 at 10:05 pm
Yeah, I was trying to short-form that stuff to get on to the meat of the matter, which was that the reasons I’d stopped believing in AGW had nothing to do with my feelings about “government solutions.”
Fact is, we used to have a very effective health plan in Ontario (OHIP) in which employees paid a certain (small) amount, the employer paid a certain (small) amount, and the government made up the rest (from taxes, of course). The plan covered all essentials, and could be boosted by extra payments from the individual. Nobody was left behind, and if anyone wanted more, they could get it by putting in some extra money. The plan didn’t cover “alternative” medicine (a term meaning “medicine that has not been proven to work).
And then we decided that it was wrong for employees to put any money into the system, and that the plan should include more and more therapies and medicines. Now we have a bloated, hugely expensive health plan that is constantly on the brink of teetering over.
Government solutions will always involve tax money — it’s just a matter of (1) is there too much tax money being taken from the working populace, (2) is the tax money being well-spent, and (3) is the government solution interfering with the people’s rights (such as making trans-fats illegal because they cause health problems and the government is paying the medical bills)?
That said, I still appreciate not having to worry about losing my apartment because my appendix decided to blow up. I just wish we could get back to the sensible method we previously had.
Andrew Harding says:
September 11, 2011 at 2:30 am
You sound like a good parent. I’d always had a tendency to question authority, even as a small child, but often felt that I was wrong in doing so. Then in grade 11 I had a teacher who made it a priority. At the beginning of the year he told us, “I’m going to lie to you three times this semester, and if any of those lies end up in an essay or exam it will mean double marks off.”
I think he is probably the teacher who had the greatest influence over me during my entire time in the public school system.
@Blade and @Andrew Harding
Oops. The Frank Lee posts are me. I’d logged into my other WordPress account and hadn’t noticed. (Actually, the mistake came in my original comments — I try not to post anything critical about climate change under my real name out of fear that it could turn against me in my work. Cowardly? Yes, but I do like bringing home a pay cheque — however feeble it may be at times.)
Observa:
Several times you use the adjective ‘lunar’, seemingly to designate ridiculous insanity,
although the word merely designates the physical Moon.
Actually, the word you should be using is ‘loonie’,
which aptly describes AGW (and for that matter, every other idea of the Left).
ENSO.
I suppose there are people afflicted with an obsessive compulsion to keep themselves and their environment clean and natural and thus they are very sensitive to claims that we are despoiling the Earth. As far as their own lives go, this obsession may even be beneficial.
Anyone who can read, can read the science. It’s another thing entirely to properly understand it, determine whether the science is valid, make coherent comments about it, and to come to the right conclusions.
I’d give Hugh the benefit of the doubt about whether he has read the science.
Werner Brozek says:
September 11, 2011 at 8:51 am
Thanks for clearing that up for me. Much appreciated. I must say I am glad that all views are allowed to be posted here. Many view Co2 as having some effect, which is a view I respect but disagree with.
Maybe more people should consider the Law of “it”
If it is settled it is not science.
If it is science it is not settled.
Therefore IPCC Climate Science is not Science it is HIWTYL BS.
HIWTYL…..Heads I Win Tails You Lose.
BS…………..Bureaucratic Science or what a bull makes.
And remember Dihydrogen Monoxide (Water) kills more people every year than Carbon Dioxide (Plant Food)
Some people who discount “Climate Science” don’t do that because they have read the science.
They do that because they have done the science themselves, correctly this time, and found “Climate Science” wanting.
I believed in AGW theory way back when I was busy with the family and job while getting inundated with the MSM’s brainwashing, even though i was feeling skeptical all the way, knowing that a percentage change in a gas that exists only as 0.038% of the atmosphere, cannot change the climate. Then, when Al Gore told me that my grandsons would not have a planet where to live on, it got me into getting into the science that I read at university and I discovered that AGW was all a big mistake at best, if not the greatest scam ever perpetrated.
My bottom line is: It’s people who do not read the science who mostly believe in AGW, Climate Change, CAGW, or whatever acronym the alarmists use from time to time. Those who read and understand the science are skeptical about it.
No. The fact that this is the hottest and driest summer in Texas’ 117-year climate record is totally irrelevant to Dessler’s assertions…
“On the other hand, we can say humans have increased the temperature of the base climate state pretty much everywhere”… If Dessler had bothered to look at the actual data, he might have noticed that Texas did not participate in the 20th century global warming…
Texas Temperatures 1885-2011
2011 blew away the previous summer high temperature record for Texas and will probably set an new record high annual average temperature – But there is no warming trend in the 117-yr long Texas temperature record. There no annual, summer or year-to-date trend. Nothing but red noise and the ENSO signal.
“We can’t say climate change is causing the extreme weather Texas is having right now. On the other hand, we can say humans have increased the temperature of the base climate state pretty much everywhere. And what that means is it makes the heat more extreme and increases evaporation from the soil. We can be confident we’ve made this hellish summer worse than it would have been.”
This is so weasely. How much worse? 5% worse? 5.0%? 5.00%? How many significant digits big D? Let’s see the math, how did you calculate the number?
Of course there are no answers to these questions, Dessler’s claim is just a form of lying with statistics, or rather lyinig by being incredibly vague.
David Middleton says:
September 12, 2011 at 6:44 am
The assertion is that there is an average temperature increase. There is provided models which correlate with the temperature stations and to a large degree other observations of natural weather formations so as to retain some identity of natural cycles. So that’s the math provided. Dessler then makes the logical assertion that given there is a new record temperature and heat waves that this is in line with the expectation. That there is no identifiable signal with pure math doesn’t negate that at least “something” is happening. If you believe that CO2 does cause a 1 deg C warming per doubling of CO2, then you believe that it is contributing. Whether its actionable, is something else entirely. I’m interested, do you give any credence at all to what is said, or do you believe it to be propaganda and deliberately misleading?
I think there’s no trend in the Texas data… Neither precipitation nor temperature data exhibit a trend for the State of Texas. Therefore, there is no reason to think that 2011 is anything other than a random outlier.
I don’t think that a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 will yield a 1°C increase in “the temperature of the base climate.” I think that the most accurate climate reconstructions (e.g. Moberg) support a climate sensitivity of no more than 0.5°C and I think that the plant stomata data clearly show that mankind is responsible for half (or less) of the rise in atmospheric CO2 since the late 1800’s. So, I think our anthropogenic CO2 emissions have increased the” temperature of the base climate” by about 0.125°C over the last 150 years and will probably increase it by another 0.125°C over the next 100 years. I don’t think that is enough of an anthropogenic effect to make a measureable difference… And when we hit the peak of the ~1,000-yr cycle somewhere around the end of this century, our puny real AGW effect will make the next Little Ice Age slightly (very slightly) more tolerable than the last Little Ice Age.
I don’t necessarily think that Dr. Dessler is being “deliberately misleading. I think he is “tunnel visioned” in on the current paradigm and to all other working hypotheses. I don’t think he bothered to check the data because his model was so righteous that it was inconceivable to him that it might be unsupported by the real data.
David Middleton says:
September 12, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Thankyou David, You have provided me with some reading to do for sure — Some interesting information and explained convincingly. It’s my misfortune that I’m in a quandary. I’ve been a skeptic for 10 years, but just recently I’ve been thinking that its possible I was fooled by bad science to derail the climate debate. Especially when it comes to practicality of alternative energy. I was given this paper by an alarmist and it has all sorts of high profile individuals attaching credibility to the paper, and it is positively gigantic to read — I haven’t read it yet. http://media.beyondzeroemissions.org/ZCA2020_Stationary_Energy_Synopsis_v1.pdf
That’s just for your interest, I’m not misdirecting the conversation. Thanks again for the thoughtful responses.
Fairly well thought out, but with a few caveats. 😉 ;p
Aside from spelling — cheaper energy is NOT the goal of the AGW crowd. They want pricier energy, and drastically reduced industrial society and population. They are prepared to sacrifice as many of us as necessary.