At WUWT, one thing we pride ourselves in is helping visitors learn about the issues and the science, even if those visitors should already know what these things mean. Take for example, Michael Tobis proprietor of “Only In it for the Gold” and “Planet3.0”, both heavily pro-warming sites. Readers may remember Mr. Tobis from his famous F-word Fusillade.
Mike came to WUWT to ask a simple question, and of course, we are always happy to help him out.
Original comment asking to define “CAGW” here.
Honestly, I thought most everyone (especially the bloggers) in this debate knew this term, but apparently not. So, this post will make sure everyone does now.
CAGW is an abbreviation for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming
For more abbreviations, see our WUWT Glossary Page
Andrew has good advice. If all of us education-loving “progressives” are so smart and open-minded, we need to start investigating these totalitarians.
Obama has appointed Superior Human Being John Holdren to be our science czar. Holdren co-authored “Ecoscience.” Go google that and you will find all of the Brave New World ideas in the crazy heads of tese elitist intellectuals: birth control in the water supply, requiring people to apply for approval to be parents, etc.
When nominated,this 1970s “text” was noted. Holdren’s defense of these ideas was that the text merely presented issues for discussion and consideration.
THese elitist totalitarians fit in well with the authoritarian marxists. They all want to control society from the top-down.
Reading Margaret Sanger can cover the 20s and 30s.
Harrison Brown can be read to bridge you into the 1950s.
From there, you can begin with Paul Ehrlich, Holdren’s buddy, writing at end of 1960s.
Read the opening of Paul Ehrlich’s best-seller “Population Bomb.” Abt how unpleasant it was for him to be in urban India – now, it comes across as pure classism and racism. Back then it was seen as “modern progress,” and so wonderful.
You can google and find the “original port huron statement” and begin to see how the marxists joined up strongly with the elitist totalitarian intellectuals. the ‘students for a democratic society” evolved then, The marxists at that time really began their move into academia. This includes yet another buddy of Obama, William Ayers.
Ronald Radosh’s book “Commies,” abt his personal experience in the present era is a very readable book on marxist politics in the U.S.
Yes, you should start googling and read up for yourself what these ppl have in mind. They sell their ideas to us based on reasonable things, such as we all recognize that pollution and racism is bad.
totalitarians like Hilter of course are going to out a smiley face on things. Do you think they are gonna walk up and reveal their true intent?
Go read yourself, everyone. Marxistinternetarchive.org has tons of stuff.
@thelastdemocrat
Yeah…what he said!
…btw I thought the last democrat was ‘Scoop’ Jackson…I guess I was wrong…again.
Michael Tobis
Congratulations on being one of the first CAGW advocates to start the inevitable backpedaling process.
Compared to the “incontrovertible” and “on the brink of consequence” assertions of the recent past, “much more likely than not” and “over the next century” is a sizeable step in the direction of reasonableness. Many such steps will be required in order to bring “climate science” back into the realm of evidentially supportable science. The trick will be doing this in such a way that few notice the shift in order to maintain credibility throughout the process. Over the course of many years “much more likely than not” can become “more likely than not” then just “likely” while “catastrophic” can be replaced with “unpleasant” and eventually the whole hypothesis may read something like: Continued accumulation of greenhouse gases at or above modern rates over the next century will have a barely measurable effect on climate and that effect will be largely beneficial to most organisms as well as humanity.
I wish you good luck on your journey through this maze of incremental recantation.
Michael,
I might have been superseded because of the time I have taken to post this. So you, backed up by the evil Connolley, are trying to re-frame the debate so that you can deny there is such a position as CAGW. I cannot understand why. So perhaps you have never used the convenient term CAGW, therefore it is not an accurate description of your beliefs. Let us parse it.
W = warming. You believe that the Earth is warming and will continue to warm until such a time as it starts to cool.
G = global. You believe that this warming is happening over the whole surface of the planet.
A = anthropogenic. you believe that the only driver of the warming we have experienced since about 1980 is due to human emissions of CO2 and , possibly, other GHGs, although this possibility is rarely alluded to.
C = catastrophic. You believe that, if nothing is done to stop or slow down human emissions of CO2, that there will be terrible consequences – flooding in Bangladesh killing thousands of people etc.
Do you accept that this is a fair summary of your views?
If so,. why do you shrug away from the characterisation of your views as “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”? CAGW is a useful shorthand notation of these beliefs.
Now I know that people such as you and the egregious Connolley like to categorise people who disagree with you as “denialists”. But that is shallow and beneath you – although not beneath Connolley.
Do your opponents deny that warming is happening? Yes, some people deny this. The thermometer record is patchy. large areas of land are unmeasured – central Africa, the Chacos, Antarctica, central Asia. 2/3 of the planet is covered by water, and the measurements are paltry, to say the least. However, for 30 years we have had satellites measuring something close to temperature. So some?a lot of sceptics, me included, can agree that the planet is warming. Although the satellites show less warming than the sparse thermometers…fancy that..
Is it global?….perhaps. Same caveats. we have a global temperature index or set of indices that do not agree very well. the overall trend is up and the satellite measurements show less warming than the thermometers.
Is it due to human emissions of something? Who knows. If there were a simple relationship between emissions and temperature rise then the record would look different. it seems to have stalled, although GHG emissions have increased during the 2000s. Is it more complicated than you experts (including the egregious Connolley) pretend? The temperature trend is certainly running lower than the models…are the models in any way reliable? Have the various IPCC reports discovered new feedbacks to explain these discrepant results? Maybe sulphates can be blamed for the new divergence. Are nitrates properly modeled now?
is it catastrophic? No, Malthus. The next generation, unless taught by Connolley, will be smarter than us. Solutions will be found for the problems. If you had a PC 30 years ago, the gold on the circuit board would have had a worthwhile value. Now you have to harvest hundreds or thousands of mother-boards to get a recoverable amount of gold. Silicon is abundant.
Should we take measure to stop polluting the planet? yes, of course. However, we should not prevent the painful process of economic development. let us help the Chinese develop beyond one bowl of rice per day by giving them access to cheaper and less polluting technology..
Does this help, Michael? (knows that Connolley is out of his depth).
“You believe that, if nothing is done to stop or slow down human emissions of CO2, that there will be terrible consequences”
Yes. I would be very surprised to find out otherwise.
But the key here is the conditional: “IF nothing is done”. So I would be happy to agree that I hold a position of “potentially catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” which at least has the flavor of a hypothesis. I believe that the more policy action is delayed, the more likely and sever the consequences will be.
Indeed I think we have already delayed long enough to drive up the probable costs both of needed action and of unavoidable consequence.
And I think we’ve already seen a catastrophe or two. Ask my neighbors in Bastrop, Texas, for instance. And we still haven’t seen much in the way of climate change consequences on a global scale. Spikes in commodity prices driven in part by heat and drought-driven crop failures, perhaps, feeding into instability in poorer countries. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
I am not comfortable with the idea that I “advocate” Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Indeed, from where I’m sitting, it’s y’all that are advocating it. Personally I remain opposed to catastrophes.
So I don’t care for the name, but I can’t control what you guys say or do. All I’m asking for here is a definition. You use the term as if you knew what it meant, but nobody outside your circles has a clear idea.
So how about this, then?
CAGW: The hypothesis that if nothing is done to stop or slow down human emissions of CO2, that there will be terrible consequences.
Michael Tobis says:
February 1, 2012 at 4:00 pm
“So how about this, then?
CAGW: The hypothesis that if nothing is done to stop or slow down human emissions of CO2, that there will be terrible consequences.”
Sorry can’t accept that as a ‘hypothesis’. You as a professor should recognize when you make errors like you just did. I will assume it was simply an error of grammar. You left out NULL.
If that was by intent, then let me know…and I will give you a lesson in logic.
Andrew
Michael Tobis says:
“The hypothesis that if nothing is done to stop or slow down human emissions of CO2, that there will be terrible consequences.”
First, that is a conjecture, not a hypothesis. A hypothesis is testable. And all your “what if” scenarios are either assigning blame to CO2 for droughts [a classic argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy], or outright speculation.
Study up on the climate null hypothesis. Nothing unusual is occurring. Temperatures are completely normal. The incidence of floods, tornadoes, droughts and hurricanes is not increasing. If anything, unusual weather events are becoming less frequent.
CAGW doesn’t have “the flavor of a hypothesis”, it has the flavor of mass hysteria based on ignorance. And saying “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” is about as anti-science as you can get, considering that we haven’t seen any global harm that has been confirmed as being attributable to the rise in CO2. [While you’re at it, define “terrible”.]
But there is plenty of verifiable evidence showing that CO2 is harmless, and very beneficial to the biosphere. You need to face the fact that you’ve been sold a bill of goods. “Carbon” isn’t a problem. In fact, the increase in CO2 has been an unmitigated good thing. More is better, not worse.
Ask yourself: who benefits from climate alarmism, and from the demonization of “carbon”? A relatively small subset of the population is making $Billions every year off the CO2 scare. And it is based on a conjecture, with zero verifiable supporting evidence.
The Pascal’s wager analogy is clever but I think it misses the mark. Here’s why.
Pascal’s wager is based on the truth or falsehood of a particular religious doctrine, for which the only evidence is the traditions of the place and time of Pascal’s life. We now understand that there have been many religious beliefs over time, and that whatever else you may say about religion, the wager itself offers no guidance in selecting among them.
In the case of AGW, we have a longstanding estimate of the sensitivity of the system to CO2 doubling of 3 degrees C +/- 1.5 C. How much confidence one chooses to give the estimate is arguable. I would argue that there was no motivation for bias at the time of the Charney report in 1979 and nearly none now except perhaps to cluster around that first estimate in a sort of herding instinct. You may disagree.
But still, what we are talking about is an estimate. The midpoint sensitivity appears to be enough to indicate major climatic shifts. Again you may disagree, but again you need to provide an estimate and confidence bounds.
The policy you advocate requires not only a low sensitivity but tight confidence bounds around that sensitivity.
This isn’t a wager on a hypothesis that is true or false. It is a wager on a number that is in the opinion of most experts somewhere between 2.5 and 3, while you ask us to behave as if it were certainly smaller than 1.
That is, the number you implicitly propose is inconsistent with the opinions of the best of American science in the 1970s, as well as on the opinions of all leading scientific bodies today. Not only are your estimates implicitly much lower than theirs, your confidence is implicitly much higher! Those of us trained formally in the field do not understand the basis for your claimed confidence that the number is near zero, which implies far greater precision than we believe is warranted.
And yet it is mainstream science that stands accused of overconfidence!
@Michael Tobis
Dr, thanks for your response. I don’t have time for a well reasoned reply at this time…sometimes I don’t let that stop me…but I have dinner to cook, so I hope to read your reply carefully before I spout off. I will be honest with you, I didn’t know of Pascal’s wager analogy. I took Philosophy 101 Intro to Logic my last quarter of my Senior year in ’91…and all I needed to do was pass to graduate…and I was honestly nervous at the graduation ceremony, not knowing for sure if I did indeed pass. So you will understand my desire to check a few facts before I respond.
You clearly must know more about Pascal and Null Hypothesis than I.
Thanks!
Michael Tobis says:
February 1, 2012 at 4:00 pm
It is important that you understand that temperature leads CO2. It is important for you to understand that the world’s oceans are a buffering system for CO2 whether emitted by man or whether naturally occuring.
Bastrop TX ?
It was warmer in the 1930s according to nearby rural stations:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425004154290&data_set=13&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425004162760&data_set=13&num_neighbors=1
These days, in all of the warmist camp model factories and peer-review redefinition centers, CAGW actually stands for:
Can Anyone Generate Warming …. please?
Bob Moss says:
February 1, 2012 at 5:15 pm
The Texas record is 120 and was set at Seymour in 1934 (I think). That has since been matched at another location which I don’t recall. It is interesting that Seymour is 100 or so miles east of the Caprock which serves as a ‘dry line’ where the dew points are much higher to the east and much lower to the west. It takes more energy to heat wetter air to 120 than it does dry air.
Bob Moss, “Bastrop TX ? It was warmer in the 1930s ”
maybe so, but the Lost Pines forest did not burn to the ground for ten thousand years until last summer.
@ur momisugly Michael Tobis “..maybe so, but the Lost Pines forest did not burn to the ground for ten thousand years until last summer.”
Irrelevant, the cause was not global warming, nor climate change nor climate disruption. Nothing related to climate at all:
Source: Austin, Texas Statesman http://www.statesman.com/news/local/bastrop-fires-apparent-cause-trees-hitting-power-lines-1869910.html
In a nutshell Mike, there were no power lines in the forest for the last 9,900 years, but there were plenty of droughts and heat waves during that time.
Your argument is therefore denied.
My Pascal’s wager thing was not in response to Andrew but to Gary Hladik. Sorry for any confusion.
A question for messrs Tobis and Connolley:
If, as you have admitted, you believe we’ve catastrophically altered the global climate, why are you still using computers and presumably a host of other modern conveniences? Why haven’t you resorted to a subsistence lifestyle in order to lead by example? Or are you hoping for some magic bullet “free and clean” energy breakthrough? I don’t think your Club Of Rome and like-minded buddies would like that, except for them, of course.
And you think that’s because of too much CO2? If so, again, why are you still part of the problem?
So many good ones here. How about
Create Al Gore’s Windfall
@ur momisugly Alan Watt
I believe we have a winner! At least my vote!
Michael Tobis says (February 1, 2012 at 4:37 pm): “That is, the number you implicitly propose is inconsistent with the opinions of the best of American science in the 1970s, as well as on the opinions of all leading scientific bodies today.”
Argument From Authority (AFA). Politics is about opinions, science is about proof. Alarmist claims, including the 3 degree climate sensitivity, have been shot so full of holes here at WUWT and elsewhere that “swiss cheese” is an acceptable dictionary definition of the term “CAGW”. I don’t know the value of “CO2 climate sensitivity” (or even if it’s a constant), but I’m “overconfident” that nobody else does, either. (I also doubt that even the “consensus”–i.e. political–value of climate sensitivity would lead to catastrophe, but that’s another subject.)
“Pascal’s wager is based on the truth or falsehood of a particular religious doctrine, for which the only evidence is the traditions of the place and time of Pascal’s life.”
Exactly. In his ignorance, or will to believe, or whatever, Pascal accepted the prevailing AFA that the cost of declining the wager would be so “catastrophic” as to outweigh any possible cost of accepting, despite a lack of proof. Michael Tobis, for whatever reason, believes the CAGW AFA, despite evidence to the contrary, perhaps because it’s been sold as “science” instead of snake oil. CAGW and Pascal’s Wager aren’t that different after all, are they?
Perhaps a good subject for Michael Tobin’s (hopefully) upcoming article at WUWT would be climate sensitivity, and the evidence for his “opinion” that the number is around 3 degrees C. In a follow up article, perhaps he could show why that particular sensitivity, if roughly correct, would lead to “catastrophic” consequences under a business as usual scenario.
Anthony: “In a nutshell Mike, there were no power lines in the forest for the last 9,900 years, but there were plenty of droughts and heat waves during that time.”
Michael, if you please, not Mike. Or just “mt”.
Yes, that is to some extent a fair argument. Lightning strikes were few and far between at the peak of the drought and would have been so if there were ever comparable heat-droughts in this part of Texas in the past.
On the other hand, we don’t know of any, and the (happily receding at the moment) recent summer drought and heat was an extreme outlier in the instrumental record.
And things can have more than one cause. Had the forest not been so stressed by the drought, the fire could have been more easily contained and surely would not have been so extraordinary.
Nevertheless the point is sound.
Gary Hladik, frankly, much of the evidence presented at this site is misleading or confused in one way or another. It is difficult to rebut. The number of people equipped to rebut most of it is unfortunately small, and we are otherwise occupied. There is the problem of selective moderation as well.
I see that you believe otherwise, and consider the barrage of complaints here definitive. In that case I am no more arguing from authority than you are. You’ve just picked some unusual authority figures.
I think, however, that I know what I am talking about and that I am among the authorities in the sense you mean. But there’s no simple proof of that. So let’s just say we trust different authorities and move on, for the present.
For myself, my earliest training was as an engineer, I consider myself an engineer, and I approach the climate problem as an engineer.
I see nothing close to a satisfactory demonstration that the system is robust to the way that we are treating it.
I think that given unprecedented inputs to an existing critical system, the burden of proof would be on the people who advocate such inputs. Specifically, those indifferent to continuing accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere ought to be able to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that those changes are safe and do not endanger the entire world.
You cannot do this. Therefore the behavior you advocate is enormously risky and extremely ill-advised.
Michael Tobis says:
February 1, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Hi Michael
You stated..
If nothing is done? Nothing has been done since man started emitting industrial quantities of CO2 about…what…160 years ago.
Nothing has been done since the acceleration of these emissions immediately after WW2 66 years ago.
Nothing has been done since the industrialisation of some 4 billion people in Asia and SE Asia from about 20 years ago.
Now I’m supposed to believe “there will be terrible consequences” if nothing is done.
Sure, I’ll go along with it, as soon as I’m shown some solid proof that the last 160 years, the last 66 years and the last 20 years of reality will be different and different in a “terrible” way.
You got any?
regards
baa, quantities matter.
There’s a nice graph in this article that answers your question:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/06/04/the-entire-planet/
There are multiple lines of evidence that this rapid increase is likely to be a problem.
“Proofs” in earth science are as rare as those in the military. You still have to come up with a strategy that is the best one given the information at hand.
Michael
I don’t see how a graph of Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations answers my question.
I didn’t cast doubt on increasing CO2 concentrations, in fact I stated as much by drawing attention to historical emissions.
What I stated was that all those increases have thus far not caused “terrible consequences” and asked for evidence that despite the lack of past “terrible consequences”, there will be future “terrible consequences”.
Taking your military analogy, I can point to thousands of past factual events (e.g. half a million Huns at your door step with blood dripping from their swords and a trail of scrched Earth behind them) that point to an inevitable “terrible consequence”.
Where is the blood dripping sword of CO2 in a 4.5 billion year historical context? Where can I find a single instance of CO2 induced “terrible consequence” in the past 10, 100, 1000, 1,000,000 years?
Michael Tobis says (February 1, 2012 at 10:16 pm): “Gary Hladik, frankly, much of the evidence presented at this site is misleading or confused in one way or another. It is difficult to rebut.”
Michael Tobis and I agree on the second point. I could opine that the first point more appropriately applies to MT’s site(s), but I won’t. 🙂 MT could of course attempt to make his case with a guest post at WUWT (hint hint).
“I think that given unprecedented inputs to an existing critical system, the burden of proof would be on the people who advocate such inputs. Specifically, those indifferent to continuing accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere ought to be able to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that those changes are safe and do not endanger the entire world.”
Au contraire. There is nothing unprecedented about the current situation, including CO2 levels and temperatures. Given the indisputable benefits we gain from these precedented inputs, and the indisputable harm that would result from curtailing them, the burden of proof is on those who warn of a hypothetical and–given our abysmally incomplete understanding of the earth’s climate system–currently unprovable disaster to come.
BTW, since it’s impossible to prove that MT won’t be accidentally killed when he leaves his domicile (after all, some people are), I have to wonder if he ever does. Which leads me to wonder if extreme agoraphobia correlates with fear of CAGW.
http://panicdisorder.about.com/od/agoraphobia/a/fearleavinghm.htm
But I digress. My point is that we’re back to Pascal’s Wager again, what with MT’s (Pascal’s) requirement to either “demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt” the safety of CO2 emissions (the non-existence of God, Heaven, and Hell) or mend our ways (accept the wager). No doubt Pascal would be proud of his pupil MT.
MT:“But you guys indeed had better be really sure of yourselves that we are completely wrong. Otherwise you are being hugely irresponsible.”
Arh, the good old post normal science, blessed be the day that branch of science dies, you cannot simply take the worst case scenario and say this is why I need all your money.
To use another alarmist’s straw man, you don’t go to the dentist with a wobbly tooth to be told they all need to be pulled out just in case.
I just found an alternate designation for CAGW in my newsfeeds for the day, it’s, “Citizens Against Government Waste .”
http://www.cagw.org/
Speaking of waste, there may be some mission overlap here.
Gary Hladik says:
February 2, 2012 at 12:30 am
I’ve challenged mt about temperature leading CO2 to which he so far has refused to address other than indicating it’s a ‘long story’.