Tom Nelson writes in a Response to Don Cheadle, some things I thought worth repeating here, because it succinctly sums up the position of many climate skeptics.
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(This post was written to respond to Don’s Twitter question here)
Don, off the top of my head, here are some things I believe:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas
2. Greenhouse gases have a warming effect
3. Human activity has caused atmospheric CO2 to increase over the last 100+ years
4. The Earth warmed during the 20th century
5. Global sea levels rose about 7.5 inches since 1901
6. We can’t burn fossil fuels forever without running out
7. Alternative energy research is a good thing
8. Energy efficiency is a good thing
9. Destroying the environment is a bad thing
10. I want the best, safest world possible for future generations
Some things I don’t believe:
11. The Earth is a more dangerous place at 61F than at 59F.
12. Carbon dioxide taxes can prevent bad weather
13. Trace CO2 causes drought
If the hard evidence supported the idea that trace CO2 is dangerous, I would be fighting very hard ON YOUR SIDE.
CO2 hysteria risks making energy less available and affordable for poor people who currently have no connection to stable grid power. Many of those people’s lives could be greatly improved by a big honkin’ coal plant instead of some solar panels and wind turbines.
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I would add these to “Some things I don’t believe”:
14. Global warming/climate change causes severe weather (There’s no proven link.)
15. “Ocean acidification” as a claimed byproduct of increased CO2 (It is not a significant problem).
15. Michael Mann (on anything).
16. Various explanations for “the pause”:
Ok, here it is:
timg56 says (April 15, 2014 at 12:11 pm): “I’m reminded of the time that Sissy Spacek and Jessica Lange were asked to testify before Congress on the plight of farmers as they considered the Farm Bill.”
Hee hee! I remember that. It says all you need to know about our overseers in Washington. Jane Fonda was there, too:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2457&dat=19850507&id=lhA9AAAAIBAJ&sjid=bS4MAAAAIBAJ&pg=2273,3311010
To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “Celebrities! Is there anything they don’t know?”
Patrick B
“NOPE – you can’t have that. You can have the “best” world or the “safest” world – but not both.”
Are you saying that it is all or nothing? If you are, that is nonsense. It is possible to compromise.
Steven Mosher says:
April 15, 2014 at 11:26 am
1. The physical universe we live in is limited & bounded, not infinite.
2. Human stupidity has no such limit.
3. There are more things, then, that I disbelieve than things that I believe. & let’s be honest, no matter how many of somethings there are, if you compare it to an infinite well of stupidity, you can’t go with percentages or orders of magnitude when mathing it up. You can bitch & moan all you want, but until I’ve already listed an infinite number of things that I don’t believe in, I’m not statistically bound to name something I do believe in. The proportions are still fair, you know.
3. Math is hard.
Jimbo says: @ur momisugly April 15, 2014 at 10:55 am
I am not convinced that 600 ppm of CO2 will destroy our biosphere. On the contrary, I think it will thrive.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am with you Jimbo. I want to see a MINIMUM of 500 ppm and preferably 1000 ppm of CO2.
Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California
Carbon dioxide starvation, the development of C4 ecosystems, and mammalian evolution
Thanks, A. Tom’s belief system is sound and consistent.
“Energy” research is a good thing and the amount of fossil fuel resources the Earth actually holds is unknown. “Energy efficiency” is a myth as it is commonly applied (will reduce energy usage)
The Efficiency Paradox (Peter Huber, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, MIT)
The Virtue Of Waste (Peter Huber, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, MIT)
– – – – – – – – –
Poptech,
Regarding energy efficiency, I think I agree with you. Efficiency has a cost. That cost cannot be discounted in evaluating the real worth of efficiency gains.
As to fossil fuel resources on Earth, they are not known although they must be finite. I think one could calculate a ‘cannot be reasonably exceeded upper bound’ on what the resources might be given the context of our current data. Historical such upper bound estimates on fossil resources seem to have been consistently low.
As to energy research being a good thing, I generally agree with one caveat. I would caution to add considering at the expense of what? Henry Hazlitt had some insightful thoughts on values forgone in any economic decision (his book ‘Economics in One Lesson).
John
John,
The Sun’s energy is finite too but it does not mean we are going to run out anytime soon. The reason the estimates on upper bound limits to our resources has been low, is generally due to improvements in technology for locating new resources and for extracting existing resources. Here is an example:
Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells (The New York Times, March 5, 2007)
My comment on energy research was in general and was not advocating for federal funding.
I would like to add two points.
First after all my reading I see nothing to support a “Global Warming Tipping Point” If there is a tipping point or as Dr. Brown would indicate a jump to another strange attractor, it would be to a cold state.
Dansgaard–Oeschger oscillations extends as far back as 680 million years and during the Holocene become the more muted Bond Events. These events appear to be the upper limits on earth’s warm state and I see nothing to indicate humans can force the earth to a state beyond these upper limits.
The second point is warm is better than cold as the misery during the Little Ice Age and even the 1969 -1970 grain shortage due to a cold snap showed. Willis E. has shown in several different ways that the tropics do not warm past a certain point thanks to thunderstorms. This means warming would be in the more northern latitudes if it did occur. The Dutch have shown it is quite possible to ‘Recover’ land below sea level and various papers and just plain physics shows a warmer world is a wetter world with less storms. In a word a much nicer habitat for humans.
To put it bluntly if you are inclined towards panic then panic about being slightly past a half precession cycle old, when Quaternary science suggests it is time for the next glaciation. If we, as a civilization are going to do anything “For the Children” it would be making sure we have a robust, wealthy, energy efficient and technologically advanced civilization capable of dealing with any climate scenario. The back to nature luddites have the exactly wrong end of the stick.
I absolutely agree Gail. I think what we have at present is arguing too much about graphs to prove particularly scientific irregularities written by some and not concentrating on the inevitable should this planet enter another very cold status Should we be putting more funds into preventing extreme climatic events killing humans. E.g., I mean levies on flood prone areas. Cyclone proof homes, bush fire preventative measures (well in Australia at least) and forget clean energy as even Hansen thought that was useless, and recommended nuclear. We can’t change the weather and if we try we will like millions of our generations have before tried, it is a waste of time and money. We can only hope that various governments start to rethink global warming and think global cooling. Clean out the trash and see what the horizons could be.
What about these reported experiments where increased atmospheric CO2 causes nitrate to not be converted to protein in food plants ?
Anyone got the ‘goss ?
Have these experiments been previously covered here?
Here’s a link to one such:-
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10886
The “explanation” is this (apparently)-
“The catch is that the higher levels of carbon dioxide also changed the plants’ chemical processes. Assimilating more CO2 left less room for nitrogen, a key component in protein formation. Growth rates went up, but nutritional value went down.”
Something just doesn’t smell right about this. There could be a few reasons why protein levels were lower in the plants grown under higher levels of CO2
farmerbraun says: @ur momisugly April 15, 2014 at 8:21 pm
What about these reported experiments where increased atmospheric CO2 causes nitrate to not be converted to protein in food plants ?
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Yes there was a long discussion on that here at WUWT a few years ago. I just dug it out this morning for someone else as a matter of fact. See: link
farmerbraun said:
“The catch is that the higher levels of carbon dioxide also changed the plants’ chemical processes. Assimilating more CO2 left less room for nitrogen, a key component in protein formation. Growth rates went up, but nutritional value went down.”
This actually seems like a positive to me. The proteins we find in grains like wheat are absolutely harmful to humans, I don’t know how many different proteins there are in wheat but if we limited just gluten and gliadin we’d see a huge health benefit in the population.
In the January, 1953 issue of Popular Science, this was published on the discussion of interglacial and sea level rise:
That quote, given by Dr. Carter over 50 years ago, was printed in the editors column of Popular Science, and made very little headlines anywhere else. What I do find significant about this prediction is how it was made in 1953, as a prediction on sea level rise that is higher than the predictions made by the I.P.C.C. in AR4 some 55 years later.(the IPCC has since upped the ante)
That is very suspicious. I believe that the IPCC authors already knew this and hoping no one remembers what was predicted half a century ago and then use those same predictions as their own.
If I was to add to this list of things I don’t believe, it would be:
#21 . Don’t believe a goddamn thing Mann or an other warmists says or predicts even if their right, because more than likely, they stole the prediction from some real scientist from a time they think we all but forgot about.
“4. The Earth warmed during the 20th century”
Some places did, others didn’t. Averaging all those dids and didn’ts together is physically meaningless. The phrase as presented has no factual meaning.
# 3. “Human activity has caused atmospheric CO2 to increase over the last 100+ years.”
I, for one, do not believe that “human activity” has any relationship at all to atmospheric CO2 levels. These levels are in thermochemical equilibrium with the vapor pressure of CO2 from seawater. LeChatlier’s principle modifies the source-sink dynamics to maintain this equilibrium. There is no one who can say that atmospheric CO2 would be reduced in any way even if human civilization were not to exist. Since this seems to be the case with ice ages and cycles of CO2 increase and decrease, the point is proven.
I don’t think the fact that Co2 is a trace gas should detract from the fact that trace gasses can have a serious impact. Concentrations of Carbon Monoxide at 350 parts per million are considered to be lethal by some researchers. Aldo describing Co2 as plant food, is like describing O2 as animal food.
But CO2 is chemically inert. And humans in subs can work for months under concentrations much higher (ten times?) than 400 ppm.
That is true Roger, but my point is that the virtue of a gas being a trace gas in itself is not a good indicator of whether it is harmless or not, or whether it can have an impact much larger than its quantity would suggest.
Consider: There are only three points on which Tom Nelson differs from the warmists. Yet politically, emotionally they are poles apart.
It’s not about science.
Sea level rise – is that net, after soil depth/thickness increase from cosmic dust, earthworm and other processes?
also – – thank you, Gail Combs plus 7
John
Increasing energy efficiency causes the total rate of energy consumption to go up. Jevon’s Paradox.