Guest post by Warren Meyer
Likely you have heard the sound bite that “97% of climate scientists” accept the global warming “consensus”. Which is what gives global warming advocates the confidence to call climate skeptics “deniers,” hoping to evoke a parallel with “Holocaust Deniers,” a case where most of us would agree that a small group are denying a well-accepted reality. So why do these “deniers” stand athwart of the 97%? Is it just politics? Oil money? Perversity? Ignorance?
We are going to cover a lot of ground, but let me start with a hint.
In the early 1980′s I saw Ayn Rand speak at Northeastern University. In the Q&A period afterwards, a woman asked Ms. Rand, “Why don’t you believe in housewives?” And Ms. Rand responded, “I did not know housewives were a matter of belief.” In this snarky way, Ms. Rand was telling the questioner that she had not been given a valid proposition to which she could agree or disagree. What the questioner likely should have asked was, “Do you believe that being a housewife is a morally valid pursuit for a woman.” That would have been an interesting question (and one that Rand wrote about a number of times).
In a similar way, we need to ask ourselves what actual proposition do the 97% of climate scientists agree with. And, we need to understand what it is, exactly, that the deniers are denying. (I personally have fun echoing Ms. Rand’s answer every time someone calls me a climate denier — is the climate really a matter of belief?)
It turns out that the propositions that are “settled” and the propositions to which some like me are skeptical are NOT the same propositions. Understanding that mismatch will help explain a lot of the climate debate.
Full essay here at Forbes (well worth your time, Anthony)
I really wish that those knowledgable folks in this climate debate, including Warren Meyer, would stop confusing theory with hypothesis. Per the NAS, an hypothesis is a “tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation. Scientific hypotheses must be posed in a form that allows them to be rejected.”, whereas a theroy is “a plausible or scientifically acceptable, well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena and predict the characteristics of as yet unobserved phenomena.” CAGW has not yet risen to the level of theory, nor have the many hypothesized negative impacts of a warming world.
Warren Meyer says “We are discussing the hypothesis of “catastrophic man-made global warming theory.” Huh? And then he says “….scientists are looking for confirmation of the theory in observations.” If it hasn’t been observed, supported by emperical evidence, passed falsification tests, and shown to have predictive capability, it ain’t a theory. Saying CAGW is a theory unjustifiably elevates its status.
Marty Cornell,
I agree, “theory” is an often misused term. Actually, I think CAGW fits the definition of a conjecture, since it is not testable. Even AGW is not testable, as far as I know. Here’s a good explanation of the levels of scientific confidence:
http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/64_07_Conjecture_to_Law.pdf
Thanks R. Gates. I like using phrases that you hate like “thermal inertia” or “in the pipeline” because those phrases have been broadcast to the public as a reason for future concern and it forces you to confront them. Deep oceans are of course a short term heat sink, not a source of any kind of heat regardless of any circulation changes (which could cool or warm in the decades we are talking about here).
Are you sure you are not overestimating that 1 to 1.2 degrees from various feedbacks? I don’t see how forests around the edge of Greenland is going to make a huge difference. Most places on Greenland the ice is a centuries scale feedback. Wouldn’t other plant changes (e.g. transpiration) increase the water cycle?
I believe the equilibrium temperature is only partly determined by the radiative balance that includes the extra CO2, but mainly by the patterns of weather as determined mainly be geography. For example, stick a large new mountain range somewhere (in a variety of potential locations) and the earth’s equilibrium temperature will probably drop. The question with 1C of added CO2 warming is how weather patterns would change and how that change would affect the equilibrium (the weather pattern changes essentially dictate sensitivity).
R. Gates says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:16 pm
“Suggest you read a bit more about the changes going on to the biosphere and cyrosphere, and stop trying to give me schooling on basic radiational physics.”
Don’t know what you’re alluding to. CO2 makes corals go berserk? Is that it? I heard they grow with an unsustainable speed. Yeah, that must be it. Soon there’ll be no more space for the water in the ocean basins. Which will obviously lead to some severe flooding. Quick, have a platoon of researchers in Boulder write papers about it. And run for the hills.
R. Gates says:
February 9, 2012 at 11:31 am
<>>
I agree that it is stupid to use 390ppm as a start point. But I cannot follow the rest of your statement, and certainly, I am unaware how you can support those assertions..
I’d call it hand waving, but from the massive sweeping statement its more like flag waving!.
1) Where, when and why and for how long has CO2 ever been in ‘equilibrium’ during earths history – (who says what ‘value’ equilibrium is?) and just for the heck of it, give us a ppm value at the same time – and since you are obviously hand waving, why not give us the corresponding/correlating temp as well!!
2) Who will say when equilibrium (an imaginery figure, any sensible person will agree, but we will let that slide for now) is reached, and how will we know? How do we know that equilibrium (an imaginery state as I already suggest) has not technically ‘occurred’ – no warming for some years despite increasing CO2. Mind you, I could accept that we are seeing CO2 rises as a result of temp increases 800 years ago!
3) There is still no certainty that the NET effect of increased CO2 is indeed positive (despite IPCC protestations) – it is entirely feasible that the sum of all the supposed changes within the climate will be a negative feedback effect. (Personally, I consider this to be the most likely scenario, as Earth has ALWAYS come back from past climate extremes and with much higher CO2 values!)
Thanks Warren, very good article.
I have been publishing about the Global Warming debate and the science of climate in my page “Climate Change (“Global Warming”?) – The cyclic nature of Earth’s climate”, at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChangeBW.htm
I agree completely that the position one holds must be clearly defined so that discussions can be engaged and conclusions can be reached eventually. Honesty is required of all participants for discussions to have value.
BTW, I think both global warming and cooling have happened and will happen again, cyclically and naturally.
Some man-made contribution is possible, but has to be proven first. This with real evidence, not models.
Nice one, Warren. I also read your column on Hugh Hefner’s responsibility for abstinence while I was there. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, and so expensive.
You people amaze me. Why anyone would respond to r gates after seeing what his past comments have been is …well amazing.
Not impressed. The whole reason the CO2 debate became so heated was because it was swiftly and deliberately enmeshed within a political agenda by those who were arguing for catastrophic consequences for increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. By describing this in a rather bloodless fashion as an almost purely scientific debate, Meyers obfuscates the reasons for the two sides supposedly talking past each other. Have we not seen here countless pleas for the warmists to show us the evidence that temperature increases are beyond normal ranges and to show us to what degree these changes are due to anthropogenic CO2 effects alone? Two sides talking past each other implies a circular argument, but that is not what is going on here: I think most of us understand and reject much of the rhetoric put forth by the alarmist scientists.
And I don’t think the business of the 97% of scientists agreeing with CAGW was well deconstructed by Meyer, who makes it sound like a huge number of scientists really is in agreement with some version of AGW: saltspringson above gives a much better reminder in the comments above of the actual derivation of this figure. Meyers should also have mentioned the funding context which leads to so many scientists to write articles that include specious connections to the AGW issue.
I hate it when people start talking about the albedo change because of reduced sea ice in September in the Arctic.
1) It’s around the equinox, the incidence of the Sun means a lot of the incoming SW will be reflected.
2) All that exposed sea means that the Arctic is uninsulated & energy can escape from the waters. It’s a NEGATIVE feedback!
DaveE.
Not covered is after “knowing” what is happening then “knowing” what to do. Of course at what cost is any action?
DirkH says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:49 pm
R. Gates says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:16 pm
“Suggest you read a bit more about the changes going on to the biosphere and cyrosphere, and stop trying to give me schooling on basic radiational physics.”
Don’t know what you’re alluding to.
_____
I recognized that. Suggest you go to google scholar and type in: slow earth system feedbacks CO2.
Among the many excellent scholarly articles, you’ll come across this one:
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/2/211/2011/esdd-2-211-2011.pdf
If you actually read enough about these, you’ll come to the conclusion that the 3C estimate of warming for a CO2 doubling is probably a pretty good one when factoring in slow feedbacks, and that the paleoclimate data shows that the models don’t fully capture all the slower feedbacks, and hence, underestimate the warming we saw in the past when CO2 levels were at higher levels. All this leads me to the conclusion that the .7C or so warming we’ve seen in the past century (not all due to CO2 mind you), but that figure is probably not indicative of the final equilibrium temperature from 390 ppm of CO2, and so even if we stopped pumping up the CO2 level, we’ve probably got another .3 to .4C of warming “in the pipeline” already, based on slow earth system responses to the CO2 already present. As we go higher in CO2, methane, and N20 concentration, approaching that 3C in global temperature rise is well in range for a doubling of CO2 when factoring in the slow earth-system responses especially. On the current trajectory, we’re likely heading for Pliocene climate conditions, or even possibly late Miocene over the next few centuries. Will this be a “catastrophe”? Who knows? It will certainly present humanity with interesting challenges…
Has anybody noticed that the Forbes piece got only 13 comments, but there are roughly 60 at WUWT?
Love the Ayn Rand story. Very quick witted she was.
How did they manage to find even 3% who would disagree with one or both of those trivial assertions?
“The two researchers obtained their results by conducting a survey of 10,257 Earth scientists. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers — in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.”
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/03/lawrence-solomon-97-cooked-stats/#ixzz1A5px63Ax
The only credible (although far from perfect) surveys conducted that I have been able to find were done by Hans von Storch. The current numbers are that around 80% of climate scientists endorse the IPCC position. This seemed to be up from a survey done a few years earlier which suggested 60% agreement at the time. However, because the methodology was improved and the questions less general, it is difficult to do a direct comparison between the two surveys.
any correlation between 500+ nuclear tests 1944 – 1988 and heat in atmosphere?
R. Gates said:
This is a very ignorant statement, and indicates that you obviously know nothing of the field of medicine or biology where feedbacks play a vital role in nearly all aspects, and are talked about in much the same way as climate scientists do. In this regard, the paradigm of viewing the Earth as a single living organism with all the same complex feedbacks as any organism has is quite valid.
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Just to check my own perception, I ran this comment past a friend who is a senior biochemistry researcher. He replied “This person doesn’t know what they are talking about. Any comparison between the Earth and a living organism in the use of the term ‘feedback’ is science fiction, not science”. Oh, and I didn’t tell him in what context the comment was made.
Climate researchers may well coin a term like ‘feedback’ and (assuming agreement on the meaning) use it in their own field. But if science means anything at all, it means being very clear about terminology. Biologists and medical researchers (reputable ones, anyway) don’t use the term to mean ‘just like Gaia’, or ‘as used in climatology’.
I also agree with vigilantfish that the issue has been mischaracterised as a falling-out in the common room between academics. While this approach may well serve a gentle back-pedalling without loss of face for those in academe, in the real world it has been much, much more. We are starting to see people who profited immensely from the CAGW paradigm leaping off the ship, making their eyes go big (with the occasional tear) and saying that like Victorian former maidens, they were cruelly deceived. No, they weren’t – they hopped on the bandwagon and raked in the benefits.
Baa Humbug says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:04 pm
R. Gates says:
February 9, 2012 at 11:31 am
An excellent summary. One specific bit to quibble with however is the lack of a distinction between fast and slow “earth system” feedbacks. The planet has not yet found an equilibrium point to the current level of greenhouse gases, so it is huge misstatement to give any specific increase to 390 ppm, as even if somehow the CO2 level suddenly stopped rising, there are still decades worth of warming ahead until all the Earth system feedbacks have caught up to reach equilibrium.
Yeah I agree Mr Gates. When the sun rose this morning, I didn’t feel it’s warmth, what I felt was the warmth from the sun that rose many decades ago.
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Of course, when I took a hot shower this morning, I felt the warmth of the sun from many millions of years ago, as the water was heated by natural gas, which is of course stored ancient sunlight. In burning this natural gas, I convert this energy to unusable easrw heat, burn up this stored sunlight, and increase the total entropy in this universe.
johanna says:
February 9, 2012 at 8:02 pm
R. Gates said:
This is a very ignorant statement, and indicates that you obviously know nothing of the field of medicine or biology where feedbacks play a vital role in nearly all aspects, and are talked about in much the same way as climate scientists do. In this regard, the paradigm of viewing the Earth as a single living organism with all the same complex feedbacks as any organism has is quite valid.
——————————————————————————————
Just to check my own perception, I ran this comment past a friend who is a senior biochemistry researcher. He replied “This person doesn’t know what they are talking about. Any comparison between the Earth and a living organism in the use of the term ‘feedback’ is science fiction, not science”. Oh, and I didn’t tell him in what context the comment was made.
——
All I can say to that is I feel heartily sorry that someone so smart (it takes a good deal of intelligence I would imagine to be a senior biochemistry researcher) hasn’t got a clue about the incredble interconnectedness of the systems of this planet. From the carbon and rock weathering cycle, to volcanic activity, to the connection between plankton and the composition of the atmosphere, to the magnetic field that protects us like the skin of a cell, for this biochemcial researcher to not see the vital living connectedness of this Earth, and the multiple interrelated systems and feedbacks there are, and how those are very much like living organism, proves this person lacks not imagination, but true scientific vision. How much more wonderful it will be, in the not too distant future, as we discover more and more planets spread across our galaxy capable of supporting life, and come to realize that life, and creating these living planets, are in some amazing way, what this universe seems to be all about.
R. Gates says:
February 9, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Surely you mean you felt the warmth from the forcing of CO2 from many millions of years ago. The sun alone just isn’t powerful enough remember?
I’m glad you grasp the silliness of your original statement. Self deprecation is good humour.
R. Gates says:
February 9, 2012 at 11:31 am
even if somehow the CO2 level suddenly stopped rising, there are still decades worth of warming ahead until all the Earth system feedbacks have caught up to reach equilibrium
You could be right, but it would really be nice to get a tiny hint of the feedbacks in the meantime that prove CO2 is a possible culprit. Suppose that you calculate that a 180 pound man needs 1,800 kcal (or Cal) of food every day to maintain his weight. You could make a model that if he got 2,300 kcal every day, he would gain weight and his health would be in danger before too long. So if this man got 2,300 kcal every day for 15 years and there was no weight change, what would you conclude?
A. Your model was wrong.
B. Your model was correct but the man exercised every day to make up for the extra kcal.
C. Your model was correct, but 15 years is too short a period to necessarily notice a change. So the extra weight is somewhere deep inside his entrails where no scale can detect it. However it is there somewhere and unless billions are spent now, the man will balloon up by the time 17 years are up.
D. Other? If so, please specify.
P.S. See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
Warren –
Yes, a questionnaire about what skeptics and ‘believers’ are denying or believing would be a good thing.
As much as skeptics are ridiculed, I am sometimes squeamish about voicing what degree of skepticism I have. Although I am a Liberal and reasonably moderate in my overall approach to things, over time I have come to the following realtively extreme denial positions:
1. I do not accept that warming is occurring, because I do not trust the past data, especially the proxy data.
1.a. This is in part because in looking closley at tree-rings over a reasonable length of time, I’ve decided that dendroclimatology is a pseudo science, in that its assertions that tree-ring growth correlates linearly with the temperature is unsupportable.
1.b. This is also because the climate scientists are stonewalling FOIA on releasing which data has been used and what adjustments have been made.
1.c. This is also because the climate scientists’ keep adjusting the past temperatures, which IMHO is a fraudulent activity. The past data, once determined, cannot change. If there is reason to modify it, a full paper should be published ONLY on that subject and pointing out to everyone the reasons and informing everyone to adjust all their work in this area. Such openness is not happening; the new adjustments are simply sneaked into reconstructions with no notice and no explanations. This is such bad science I don’t even know strong enough words to use to label it.
1.d. The Hockey Stick is so patently wrong, what with pretending the MWP and LIA didn’t happen. The collective climate community should have laughed Michael Mann right out of town and branded him as a data fudger, preventing him from ever getting a job again in the field. Instead, he is winning awards. The entire field should be ashamed of itself.
2. I further do not accept that any warming that might really be occurring is due to human industrial activity in terms of CO2 emissions.
2.a. No paper or series of papers has been presented to falsify any other forcing. It was my first assumption when I first got interested in this subject: That obviously they wouldn’t be going around claiming, “Humans did it,” if they hadn’t ruled out other possible forcings. Those papers simply have never been done. Assertions about single factors are all over the place, but no falsification studies of alternate explanations have been done to date.
2.b. No reconstruction adequately accounts for UHI. If humans are affecting the climate, it is MUCH more likely to come from UHI and the ‘great dying off of the thermometers’ than from CO2.
2.c. The great dying off of thermometers conveniently occurred right at the base of the Hockey Stick blade. No one, to my knowledge, has looked into what effect this has had on the reconstructions.
If these people weren’t trying to destroy Western civilization and its necessary industrial base, I wouldn’t even pay it any attention. The climate scientists are so obviously cherry picking and massaging the data that they really wouldn’t be worth my time. But to destroy industry WOULD take down Western civilization, and I believe they know it – which leads me to believe that the climate scientists are all misanthropes of the highest order. The world needs to be protected from them. I applaud and support everyone who opposes them.
Again, I remind that I am a Liberal and thus should be on board with “cleaning up the planet for our grandchildren.” But I can’t agree with terrible science and human haters who would cause the starvation deaths of many tens or hundreds of millions of people.
James Hansen is the most wacko guy I have ever seen. Everything out of his mouth is a terrible and massively exaggerated lie.
I may be Liberal, but I am not stupid.
Steve Garcia
R. Gates says:
All I can say to that is I feel heartily sorry that someone so smart (it takes a good deal of intelligence I would imagine to be a senior biochemistry researcher) hasn’t got a clue about the incredble interconnectedness of the systems of this planet. From the carbon and rock weathering cycle, to volcanic activity, to the connection between plankton and the composition of the atmosphere, to the magnetic field that protects us like the skin of a cell, for this biochemcial researcher to not see the vital living connectedness of this Earth, and the multiple interrelated systems and feedbacks there are, and how those are very much like living organism, proves this person lacks not imagination, but true scientific vision. How much more wonderful it will be, in the not too distant future, as we discover more and more planets spread across our galaxy capable of supporting life, and come to realize that life, and creating these living planets, are in some amazing way, what this universe seems to be all about.
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You may be surprised to find that many people on this site (including me) are awestruck by the natural world. Not only that, many of us are keen to mitigate change to the bits of it that we especially like. I make this point because landscapes, like animals, have a ‘cuteness’ factor. However, change is going to come, whatever we do. That is the one thing we can be sure of.
Nevertheless, as soon as you start to confound Gaia concepts with science, we are back in the realm of animism and shamanism. These are mystical traditions, and if you want to live by them, fine. But please do not confuse them with science, or expect others to suffer material deprivation because of them.
It is insulting to claim that refusing to conflate scientific terms is a result of lack of ‘true scientific vision’. True scientific vision is where people see things clearly and they see them whole. No fudging of terms or concepts is involved.
R. Gates… you said…
“This is a very ignorant statement, and indicates that you obviously know nothing of the field of medicine or biology where feedbacks play a vital role in nearly all aspects, and are talked about in much the same way as climate scientists do.”
Well, the truth is, there IS a difference between what medicine and biology discusses as feedbacks, and what climate science discusses as feedbacks.
The difference?
Simply that in biology and medicine, the feedbacks can be identified, quantified, and their mechanisms demonstrated explicitly.
In climate science, the term feedbacks is used loosely, with hand waving in the direction of possibilities, but with nothing actually quantified or with any mechanisms actually demonstrated. In other words, your “feedbacks” in climate science are simply fudge factors that you make up in an attempt to get your models to work out the way you want.
Climate science “feedbacks” are not at all the same thing as feedback mechanisms in actual science.