Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
David Victor, in a presentation in January at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as part of a seminar series titled “Global Warming Denialism: What science has to say”, fairly recently highlighted here at Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog in the online International New York Times, made several very important points that I think that maybe we can, and should, all agree on, as a starting point to all of our subsequent discussions on “global warming/climate change”.
First, let it be said that David Victor, in his speech, self-describes himself as follows: ”I consider myself part of the mainstream scientific community on climate change, and I do all the things that the mainstream does. I teach about climate science and policy; I participate actively in the IPCC; I publish in all the normal journals.” He is a dyed-in-the-wool, self-proclaimed, practicing, Global Warming believer. He uses the term “believer” in his speech to describe adherents to the IPCC consensus. In any case, he cannot be mistaken for any kind of a climate change skeptic.
Each of the five following points of agreement is quoted directly from his speech, though not in sequential order, with some with emphasis added, each quote is followed by some comments by myself, in italics like this, to clearly differentiate them from Victor’s quoted words:
1. “First, I’d like to suggest that calling people who disagree “denialists” is clouding our judgment. If you really want to understand what motivates these people and what motivates the captains of industry and voters who listen to them, stop calling them denialists.”
The word “denialists” is offensive in its connotation, intended or not, of Holocaust denialism, and is, in any case, incorrect, no one (“nutters” excepted), denies “climate” or that climate changes. Later in his speech, he uses a better word which I will suggest here for all of us, if we must separate people with a binary system denoting disagreement with IPCC climate change science consensus: climate change consensus DISSENT and DISSENTERS.
I will add that though Victor seems comfortable referring to climate change consensus supporters as “Believers”, if I were a professional scientist, I would find this very distasteful. It sounds way to much like something skeptics often accuse them of. I would propose they settle for consensus SUPPORTERS, which doesn’t imply slavish following of every line of a doctrine-like set of beliefs.
2. “We in the scientific community need to acknowledge that the science is softer than we like to portray. The science is not “in” on climate change because we are dealing with a complex system whose full properties are, with current methods, unknowable.”
Dr. Judith Curry , who hosts the Climate Etc. blog, is the goto expert on the issue of climate change uncertainty, and has written extensively on the subject; and its known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
3. “The science is “in” on the first steps in the analysis—historical emissions, concentrations, and brute force radiative balance—but not for the steps that actually matter for policy. Those include impacts, ease of adaptation, mitigation of emissions and such—are surrounded by error and uncertainty.” … “We all agree, you say, on some basic facts—that CO2 concentrations are approaching a mean of 400ppm, a value far above the 280 or 290ppm of the pre-industrial value. We agree that the climate will warm in equilibrium when net radiative forcing is added to the atmosphere, that humans are all but certainly responsible for at least half of the observed warming since the preindustrial era, etc. etc. That zone of agreement is impressive, but we must face the reality that those aren’t the questions that really matter for policy.”
Nearly all believers and skeptics alike agree on these basic points of the science (I place emphasis on the percentage of human contribution, many serious scientists still hold this bit in question, but in the end most agree that the exact percentage probably doesn’t really matter that much for policy). Before quibbling about radiative balance, note he says brute force radiative balance – not the nitty gritty picky details…we agree that this is not yet settled and is still a moving target for many.
4. “but [the science is] not [“in”] for the steps that actually matter for policy. Those include impacts, ease of adaptation, mitigation of emissions and such—are surrounded by error and uncertainty. I can understand why a politician says the science is settled—as Barack Obama did last night in the State of the Union Address, where he said the “debate is over”—because if your mission is to create a political momentum then it helps to brand the other side as a “Flat Earth Society” (as he did last June). But in the scientific community we can’t pretend that things are more certain than they are.“
This simply has to be acknowledged on both sides of the climate divide – and not over-emphasized by skeptics. Some things are fairly well understood and some are still basically mysteries – surrounded by error and uncertainty — and some are in-between and require more study – clouds, ocean currents and overturn, effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation – there is quite a known list – and then there are the as-yet unknowns.
5. “…in the scientific world, there are no bright lines and the whole idea of “consensus” is deeply troubling. There is a consensus that 2+2=4. After that, we are in shades of grey. “ …“The instinctual unease with consensus helps to explain why some of the world’s greatest scientists have been climate skeptics and why the public has such a hard time understanding why these people are so disagreeable. They are disagreeable because the selection mechanisms in science demand it. If you want to find people who agree then hire an accountant. Nobody has caused bigger trouble than Freeman Dyson whose skeptical views on climate first came into focus through a 2009 New York Times Magazine profile. How do you dismiss perhaps the most accomplished physicist of his generation as an uninformed imposter? You can’t.”
This applies to many other world class Climate Scientists, Physicists, Meteorologists, and other professionals (and serious citizen scientists as well) who are regularly trashed, thrashed, dismissed as frauds, Big Oil shills, and uniformed imposters by those who should know better on the Support’s side of the Climate Divide and in a far too-cooperative mainstream media. Likewise, some skeptics label some serious climate scientists as crooks, criminals, and frauds because they produce mainstream climate science which they find disagreeable.
Let’s agree to agree with David Victor: How do you dismiss these people? “You can’t.”
(Has there been misbehavior and are there some bad apples? Yes, maybe so—but if so, then let’s honesty admit, in both apple barrels. )
If you go on to read David Victor’s full January speech, understand that he does not follow his own admonition not to call dissenters “denialists.” It gets grating very quickly. He uses other disagreeable words as well. There are interesting things in Victor’s speech about where climate fight money comes from and whom it goes, admissions you won’t see elsewhere. I’m sure you will find things to agree with and many other things that David Victor says to disagree with as strongly as I do. Truthfully, it doesn’t seem to me that he agrees with himself much of the time: he’d do better if he stuck to the basic points above and worked from these. But, as I have said so many times it annoys even me, “Opinions Vary.”
I do agree with David Victor on these five simple points. Maybe we can at least all try to agree on #1, and let’s refer, if and when we must, to those who don’t agree with the IPCC Consensus as “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” Consensus DISSENTERS and to the subject as Climate Change Consensus DISSENT, and encourage others to do so. I think it’s a pretty good alternative though I’d be glad to hear your suggestions. I’m sure none of us like being called deniers or denialists.
Thank you.
# # # #
Authors Replies Policy: I will be glad to discuss why I agree with these five points made by David Victor.
I cannot, of course, speak for David Victor as to why he made these statements in the first instance. If you wish to understand his position better, read his original speech and place it, and David Victor, in their original contexts (see the first few paragraph of this essay). I have not listened to his latest , May 15th, presentation.
This is not a technical thread and I am not prepared (or able) to discuss, defend, or even generally talk about technical points such as brute force radiative balance or percentage of human contribution to CO2 concentrations or observed warming.
I welcome the challenge to use the supporter and dissenter.
Ive suggested supporter and critic, close enough.
Anthony can do a lot to encourage people to use these terms.
from little things like changing the blog roll descriptions, to other things like working with the mods
to enforce a policy, to leading by example for other blogs. To writing an Essay, “why I dissent”
Its not enough to tell people to stop using the word denialist
Actually Mosh, I’ve been wanting/intending to do a “my position” piece for a long time, this would be a good impetus to do so.
Rule for radicals was dedicated to Lucifer the people at the very top off this actually believe that they must bring about a one world government .Then Lucifer will appear to lead them into and age of glory
Nick:
I was fine with your statement till you slipped in that “Anything but.”
Prove the harm. Dances will not sway. Yes, the CO2 molecule is called a ‘greenhouse gas’; so are many other molecules.
So just how many gigatons of CO2 do you think are still available for burning? Forgetting the CO2 residual rate or earth’s CO2 capture rate and even as the percentage of energy converted to work increases. If 350gtons raised CO2ppm by 100ppm, what is the worry for the next 350gtons? Is 500ppm a real worry?
Geological evidence points to other epochs where atmospheric CO2 were higher and life flourished, including mankind and mankind’s ancestors.
Indeed, plant life flourishes when greenhouse CO2 levels are raised to over 1000ppm. Exactly how high? Well, commercial growers have their own experiments and results that they have no intention of sharing. Specific CO2 levels for each type of plant are as important to them as secret formulas for sauces. You do owe some of the better flavor to high greenhouse CO2 levels for winter greenhouse fruits, berries and vegetables.
When Earth’s plant life flourishes so does all life dependent on plants. After all, just what is your view of the ‘Garden of Eden’? Walking on ice looking for roots or walking amongst abundant harvests wearing…, well the clothes CAGW climate emperors are wearing.
There is no doubt that there is a significant safety cushion for CO2 levels. There is no proof whatsoever for CAGW fears. Observations to date do not help the CAGW cause.
Nor does the knowledge that history provides substantial proof that cold spells are disastrous for mankind. Warmth can be uncomfortable and sometimes inconvenient, but is only deadly to the unprepared man?
Are cities hot and uncomfortable? I think so and I’m quite curious why research in this area is so weak? One would think that in this day and time, we’d have calculated UHI for every day in every city.
In any case, there appears to be quite sufficient evidence that mankind has time to truly develop next generation energy solutions.
I’ve favored nuclear for decades and invested in green tech while it was hot, but sold out of it over a decade ago. No, I didn’t have inside knowledge; I didn’t like the answers for generating hydrogen, alcohol supplies or storing intermittent energy. Energy solutions that are incomplete or contrived worry me. I’ve spent enough time as a Budget Manager to recognize when money is thrown at solutions looking a problem and disavow myself from their convolutions.
I’m still waiting for that thorium generator powering my neighborhood. Perhaps Tesla’s atmospheric energy transmission ideas will be re-investigated for personal vehicles? Why not, after all of the largesse granted to the doomers it is time to devote some to true research again…
Nick Stokes;
And yes, there are uncertainties. That doesn’t mean it is safe to do it. Anything but.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What are the uncertainties associated with mitigation? What are the impacts of denying the vast majority of humanity access to electricity, sanitation, transportation, food production, refrigeration, air conditioning, central heating, cost effective clothing and shelter?
Is denying humanity those things safe Nick? Or anything but?
Nick Stokes;
We’re not dependent on the “experiment” of burning 350 Gt C to know the effects of CO2. That comes back to radiative physics that has been known for over a century.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, the radiative physics have been known for a century:
1. The direct effects of CO2 are logarithmic
2. The cooling response of the planet is exponential
3. The feedback effects are unlikely to be anything more than slightly positive, and likely to be slightly negative.
4. The direct effects can have no other option but to even out temperature differences on the planet, hence resulting in less severe weather.
These are the known physics of the last century Nick. These are commensurate with the observations of the last century Nick.
If the debate was restricted to the known physics Nick, there never would have been one.
@Nick Stokes
“We’re not dependent on the “experiment” of burning 350 Gt C to know the effects of CO2. That comes back to radiative physics that has been known for over a century. We do know that we burnt 350 GT and it warmed. That is consistent with what the physics said. We need to work out what the next 1000 Gt will do, as best we can. And then some.”
Don’t be so sure. We burnt around a third of Your 350GT(I thought this number to be larger since we put in 30 GT in 2010 alone, but never mind) during the last 15/17 years and it didn’t warm. Negative feedback or low natural warming or something else you name it. But You will have to proof it….
David Victor/Kip Hansen
I regard this thesis “Man burning Co2 is responsible for past and future global warming” as falsified and until there is no new theory there will be no compromising with warmists. The scientific respect for climatology is gone, as far as I am concerned.
Resistor. Even the electrical analogy works.
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Good grief! I find myself completely agreeing with Steve Mosher and mostly agreeing with Nick Stokes in the same thread!
Small caveat though Steve, while I accept that critic is far better than many of the other terms; I tend to think that the title critic is a little strong for many if not most of us.
Critic is sufficient though and especially beneficial in that it is a term of respect. Both of the terms you propose are terms of respect and I definitely agree with your suggestion that all of us pursue discussions using only terms of respect.
I certainly have lowered myself many times, (e.g. above posts) to utilizing demeaning terms and I am probably going to revert when the tone I’m disagreeing with is not professional.
Thank you for the hope though!
Kip, you have outed David Victor! He will suffer the fate of Bengtsson! /sarc
You make him seem to be a good scientist. How does he remain in good standing with the “climate consensus?”
How can an otherwise intelligent person like Nick Stokes believe in something that has no supporting scientific evidence, and plenty of contrary evidence?
I think the media barrage has colonized his mind to the extent that he actually believes there is a looming catastrophe.
Some folks just cannot be objective enough to admit that every alarmist prediction has turned out to be wrong. All of them, no exceptions: CO2 is rising, but temperature is not. Oceans are not ‘acidifying’. Sea level rise is not accelerating. The Arctic has plenty of ice. All measurements show that rising CO2 is caused by rising temperature, but there is no evidence showing that CO2 is the cause of rising T. And so on.
Nick Stokes should admit that when all predictions of catastrophe are wrong, that maybe the original premise was wrong. If he can’t admit that much, then the planet will make him look increasingly foolish.
I also prefer “critic” of several theories related to the greenhouse gas CO2, such as runaway anthropogenic caused warming, anthropogenic driven weather extremes, anthropogenic driven polar ice trends, anthropogenic glacier trends, etc…
Why? First, the additional energy made available by just the anthropogenic portion of total CO2ppm isn’t sufficient to cause any of these large energy intensive climate/weather conditions. Second, of the CO2 in the air, only a small portion is anthropogenic, yet AGW enthusiasts ascribe half to all of a temperature trend to anthropogenic greenhouse gas. That is a false statement and completely unsupported by the known physics of instrinsic climate and weather drivers.
Excuse me but we are NOT ‘dissenters’…we are REALISTS.
This is a key point and giving it away to the warmists is strange, not to mention, destructive.
There are so many human sin attributed disasters around not limited to Tartarus. Cannot possibly take them all seriously or be labelled by absence of the related fears. How about everyone keeping their fears to themselves until presenting a proof of a quantifiable risk verifiable with scientific methods?
Gregory says:
May 18, 2014 at 6:34 am
Step3: If willing to agree to step1 & step2, I’m ready to ignore your past insults and discuss step4, step5, etc. If not willing, I will take you even more seriously. I will conclude you do not want to have a discussion and look for agreement and solutions. You are the aggressor, you started a war and you limited the range of my responses. I have too much life experience with people like you. Nothing good ever came out of appeasing your kind.
First, my thanks to the author for bringing up these issues. I was doing well until I came to point number 3.
Number 1, which says don’t go out of your way to insult your opponents after they have repeatedly requested that you refrain, is a measure of just how cosmically foolish the AGW supporters are. Nobody gains points by that kind of demonization.
Number 2 says the science is not yet settled … duh. Again, like number 1, the fact that someone on their side actually has to point these things out is depressing.
But in number 3, the story goes off the rails.
I strongly dislike this approach. In the guise of looking for agreement, he is making (and the author is supporting) the very fundamental (and undecided) argument for his point of view—that the change in temperature is a linear function of the change in forcing. Or as he says, “We agree that the climate will warm in equilibrium when net radiative forcing is added to the atmosphere …”
Sorry, David and Kip, but you can’t slip in your claims like that. You’ve just agreed that the science is not settled, and then you try to list things as “settled” when they are not. I hear this bogus form of discussion all the time, things like “Well, we might disagree on the minor issues, but we all know that warming is bad.” … Well, no, we don’t all know that, and more to the point, you don’t get to assume that. On my planet, claiming that “climate will warm in equilibrium when net radiative forcing is added” is as dumb as claiming that “human core temperatures will warm in equilibrium when radiative forcing is added”, and for the same reason—both statements ignore the existence of homeostatic mechanisms.
Nor do I agree that “humans are all but certainly responsible for at least half of the observed warming since the preindustrial era”. We have far, far too little understanding of the climate to make that claim, and Kip and David trying to slip that in under the guise of “we all agree” is just more of the underhanded nonsense I’ve grown to expect.
Regarding #4, the author says:
The problem with this formulation is that it assumes that we can tell which things are understood and which are mysteries. Heck, if we knew mysteries from beliefs, then there wouldn’t be any issues … as the saying goes,
Climate science is in that position. As a result, I find this whole idea that we find areas of agreement to be alluring, but treacherous … just what is it that the AGW supporters are assuming that we agree to? Because I sure don’t agree with what the authors of this article seem to think is common ground … well, other than the idiocy of gratuitously insulting your opponents …
Finally, #5 was rolling along fine when the author said:
Whoa, there, Skippy. I’ve labeled certain mainstream climate scientists as crooks, criminals, and frauds because they are condemned by their own words and actions. There would have been criminal proceedings in Climategate if the Statute of Limitations hadn’t run out.
But I don’t know of any serious player on the skeptical side who has accused a mainstream climate scientist of being a crook, a criminal, or a fraud simply because they disagreed with their science. Please either supply some evidence for that most unpleasant charge, or retract it.
Sorry, not buying that argument at all. Your claim of moral equivalence, that somehow “both sides do it”, is just an attempt to excuse the actions of the AGW supporters. As far as I know, there is not and has never been any group of scientists on the skeptical side who did a tenth, a hundredth of what the unindicted Climategate co-conspirators did. There is no one on the skeptical side who did anything like what Peter Gleick did. The AGW supporters just hounded a man off of the GWPF Board. I don’t recall skeptics ever doing something like that.
So your claim that there are “bad apples in both barrels” is true in the sense that most every barrel has at least a few.
But the AGW barrel is full to the brim with either a) rotten apples, or b) apples who don’t say a word about rotten apples. Stop trying to pretend that there is some moral or ethical equivalence between the two sides. The facts don’t agree. The AGW side has said, more than once, and has demonstrated by its actions, more than once, that it’s OK to exaggerate, hide data, lie, cheat, and steal, if one is Saving The World From Disaster™.
Skeptics in general don’t agree. So no, the two sides are NOT morally equivalent.
The thing that all of these “let’s make our communications better” folks don’t understand is that we were lied to. We were cheated. We were denied opportunity to have our voices heard. AGW supporters acted in concert to subvert the IPCC rules, see the “Jesus Paper”. They pressured editors. They dismissed each others work in private as being rubbish, and at the same time defended it strongly in public. They destroyed evidence of their wrongdoings, and when their wretched actions came to light, NOT ONE OF THEM APOLOGIZED. Not that I know of.
And now, folks on the AGW side say “well, let’s just see what we agree on and move on” … sorry, guys, the world doesn’t work that way. Once you’ve lied to people, once you’ve done your best to alarm them and scare them with terrifying predictions, when the lies become evident and the predictions fail time after time, when you are found lying and cheating and you refuse to even apologize, much less change your ways … at that point, dear friends, you have lost the people’s trust.
You don’t get it. We don’t trust mainstream AGW supporting climate scientists, and for damn good reason. You could earn that trust back … but you don’t regain that trust by saying there are bad apples in both barrels to try to establish a false moral equivalence. You don’t get trust back by trying to find areas of common agreement.
So while in general I applaud the attempt by Kip Hansen and David Victor to get out of the pit they’ve dug for themselves … I fear that attempting to improve communications, while laudable, does not even begin to address the underlying problem.
w.
PS—AGW supporters, through their mad desire to increase energy prices, are condemning millions around the world to further poverty, disease, and death. Please don’t lecture us on morals while you are doing that …
Aha! The bargaining phase. To heck with that. Roll on with the depression and acceptance.
Nick Stokes wrotes :
“That comes back to radiative physics that has been known for over a century.”
Radiative physics does not define the extent of surface warming because it depends on the behavior of the convective flux in presence of an increase in greenhouse gases.
About this convective flux (denoted qc), we read in Ramanathan et al. 1974:
“Here we will be mainly concerned with the formulation for the convective flux. An exact treatment for qc would require the solution of equations of motion and contunuity in addition to the solution of the energy equation. This ambitious task has not been attempted by any of the radiative-convective models, qc is accounted for by semiempirical or empirical techniques.”
In this respect, the situation has not changed since 1974. This means that we ignore the effect of increased CO2 on surface temperatures. To get, after all, results, modeling pose a thermodynamically unacceptable condition : it is assumed that the temperature gradient is independent of radiative phenomena.
It sounds like a step in the right direction to me. But I don’t think the politicians or news agencies will buy into it.
Leonard Weinstein sez (parenthetically): “keep in mind the increase followed a particularly cold period, which was much more a problem”
Indeed, cooling is the greater problem, one that receives little to no attention. Why is this? There’s ample evidence that certain species, e.g. corals, would thrive in a warmer environment, while the iconic polar bear has survived in a climate significantly warmer than present. I’d mention homo sapiens, but nobody seems to care about this evil creature…
Kip,
Of all of the hundreds of papers I’ve read, I know of no good supporting evidence for this statement:
“that humans are all but certainly responsible for at least half of the observed warming since the preindustrial era, “
Can you provide even a single reasonable reference?
Perhaps you would reconsider?
The regulations being imposed in the name of “fighting global warming” are extremely expensive. This is money that comes out of the pockets of people and can not be put to other economic use. It is money that can not be set aside for education, a home, a car, a medical need, etc. It also has the impact of being an extremely regressive tax. When energy costs rise by some percentage it hits the poor and the elderly highest because they pay a greater portion of their income for energy. Also, in many cases huge amounts of federal money are used for various projects and subsidies. This is money borrowed from our future earnings and our children’s future earnings.
If we, globally, are going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this, we have a responsibility to future generations to ensure that it is not being wasted. As it stands right now, these projects are a great redistribution of wealth within countries from the people to the entities that control “alternative” energy production. Internationally, there is a great transfer of wealth from the developed industrial country to the developing countries, most often run by corrupt despots, whose countries are exempt from CO2 and other environmental regulations.
If we are going to pick our grandchildren’s pockets, lets make sure we have good cause.
Note that a lot of people set themselves up as the arbiters of the “middle ground”. I suggest that until we have a better grasp of what the middle ground is, we should be just as skeptical of these self-appointed moderates as of catastrophic global warmers. If something is unknown it’s unknown.
We see at the top of this thread, and reiterated elsewhere, the erroneous assumption that we already know that human-produced CO2 has produced “x” amount of global warming. We don’t know this because we don’t know the amount of CO2 created naturally by our world. We don’t know what percent of CO2 is itself a product of warming. We don’t know what the sensitivity of our atmosphere is to CO2. And we don’t have an exact idea of what the warming is, thanks to the fallibility and agendas of the record-keepers.
Nick Stokes: Keep repeating it. You may be able to elevate this idea to the status of truth.
“The science is “in” on the first steps in the analysis—historical emissions, concentrations, and brute force radiative balance—but not for the steps that actually matter for policy.
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Kip, this is total hogwash……don’t tell people to play nice…and then post something this absurd
Temps have flat lined and gone down….and no one knows why
Face it……no one knows squat
” Likewise, some skeptics label some serious climate scientists as crooks, criminals, and frauds because they produce mainstream climate science which they find disagreeable. “
Plainly Victor needs educating. Unjustified adjustments to data sets galore and even upside down graphs (Tiljander). Yes I do find those things “disagreeable”, though my choice of adjective would be much stronger.