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The Real Copenhagen Fraud?
Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse.
Johann Hari reports in the Independent on the truths Copenhagen ignored (hat tip Tom Naylor):
So
that's it. The world's worst polluters – the people who are drastically
altering the climate – gathered here in Copenhagen to announce they
were going to carry on cooking, in defiance of all the scientific
warnings.
They didn't seal the deal;
they sealed the coffin for the world's low-lying islands, its glaciers,
its North Pole, and millions of lives.
Those of us who watched this conference with open eyes aren't
surprised. Every day, practical, intelligent solutions that would cut
our emissions of warming gases have been offered by scientists,
developing countries and protesters – and they have been systematically
vetoed by the governments of North America and Europe.
It's
worth recounting a few of the ideas that were summarily dismissed –
because when the world finally resolves to find a real solution, we
will have to revive them.
Discarded
Idea One: The International Environmental Court. Any cuts that leaders
claim they would like as a result of Copenhagen will be purely
voluntary. If a government decides not to follow them, nothing will
happen, except a mild blush, and disastrous warming. Canada signed up
to cut its emissions at Kyoto, and then increased them by 26 per cent –
and there were no consequences. Copenhagen could unleash a hundred
Canadas.
The brave, articulate Bolivian
delegates – who have seen their glaciers melt at a terrifying pace –
objected. They said if countries are serious about reducing emissions,
their cuts need to be policed by an International Environmental Court
that has the power to punish people. This is hardly impractical. When
our leaders and their corporate lobbies really care about an issue –
say, on trade – they pool their sovereignty this way in a second. The
World Trade Organisation fines and sanctions nations severely if (say)
they don't follow strict copyright laws. Is a safe climate less
important than a trademark?
Discarded Idea
Two: Leave the fossil fuels in the ground. At meetings here, an
extraordinary piece of hypocrisy has been pointed out by the new
international chair of Friends of the Earth, Nnimmo Bassey, and the
environmental writer George Monbiot. The governments of the world say
they want drastically to cut their use of fossil fuels, yet at the same
time they are enthusiastically digging up any fossil fuels they can
find, and hunting for more. They are holding a fire extinguisher in one
hand and a flame-thrower in the other.
Only
one of these instincts can prevail. A study published earlier this year
in the journal Nature showed that we can use only – at an absolute
maximum – 60 per cent of all the oil, coal and gas we have already
discovered if we are going to stay the right side of catastrophic
runaway warming. So the first step in any rational climate deal would
be an immediate moratorium on searching for more fossil fuels, and fair
plans for how to decide which of the existing stock we will leave
unused. As Bassey put it: "Keep the coal in the hole. Keep the oil in
the soil. Keep the tar sand in the land." This option wasn't even
discussed by our leaders.
Discarded Idea
Three: Climate debt. The rich world has been responsible for 70 per
cent of the warming gases in the atmosphere – yet 70 per cent of the
effects are being felt in the developing world. Holland can build vast
dykes to prevent its land flooding; Bangladesh can only drown. There is
a cruel inverse relationship between cause and effect: the polluter
doesn't pay.
So we have racked up a climate
debt. We broke it; they paid. At this summit, for the first time, the
poor countries rose in disgust. Their chief negotiator pointed out that
the compensation offered "won't even pay for the coffins". The cliché
that environmentalism is a rich person's ideology just gasped its final
CO2-rich breath. As Naomi Klein put it: "At this summit, the pole of
environmentalism has moved south."
When we
are dividing up who has the right to emit the few remaining warming
gases that the atmosphere can absorb, we need to realise that we are
badly overdrawn. We have used up our share of warming gases, and then
some. Yet the US and EU have dismissed the idea of climate debt out of
hand. How can we get a lasting deal that every country agrees to if we
ignore this basic principle of justice? Why should the poorest restrain
themselves when the rich refuse to?
A deal
based on these real ideas would actually cool the atmosphere. The
alternatives championed at Copenhagen by the rich world – carbon
offsetting, carbon trading, carbon capture – won't. They are a global
placebo. The critics who say the real solutions are "unrealistic" don't
seem to realise that their alternative is more implausible still:
civilisation continuing merrily on a planet whose natural processes are
rapidly breaking down.
Throughout the
negotiations here, the world's low-lying island states have clung to
the real ideas as a life raft, because they are the only way to save
their countries from a swelling sea. It has been extraordinary to watch
their representatives – quiet, sombre people with sad eyes – as they
were forced to plead for their own existence. They tried persuasion and
hard science and lyrical hymns of love for their lands, and all were
ignored.
These discarded ideas – and dozens
more like them – show once again that man-made global warming can be
stopped. The intellectual blueprints exist just as surely as the
technological blueprints. There would be sacrifices, yes – but they are
considerably less than the sacrifices made by our grandparents in their
greatest fight.We will have to pay higher
taxes and fly less to make the leap to a renewably powered world – but
we will still be able to live an abundant life where we are warm and
free and well fed. The only real losers will be the fossil fuel
corporations and the petro-dictatorships.
But our politicians have not chosen this sane path. No: they have
chosen inertia and low taxes and oil money today over survival
tomorrow. The true face of our current system – and of Copenhagen – can
be seen in the life-saving ideas it has so casually tossed into the
bin.
You can watch Johann
explaining some of the appalling loopholes being smuggled into the
Copenhagen treaty below.
You can watch Johann explaining some of the appalling loopholes being smuggled into the Copenhagen treaty below. Also, listen carefully to this CBC interview with James Hansen.
He's widely regarded as the most influential climate scientist in the
world and rightly dismisses cap & trade as pure "gimmickry".
It's a shame but it looks like Copenhagen was
another climatic bust, just like Kyoto and Rio were. Next up, the
global pension bust.
»
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Umm, from CBC:
"He's widely regarded as the most influential climate scientist in the world."
Did you even bother listening to the entire interview???
You buffoon Hanson is part of the lunacy of the CRU debacle...and you use him an advocate? Fucking hilarious...
Can we not hear you again here at ZH?
very familiar with Hansen - I will listen but he is not a climate scientist read his CV
Nor is Pachuari... head of the IPCC
@dnarby
Thanks for the clarity. Do people hate the truth or what? Even more so when it contradicts their politics.
I didn't study it much, but it seems possible that the weakening magnetic field of the earth (which is completely unaffected by life on the surface) is a much greater cause of climate change than any other factor. Without the magnetic field around the earth, the Sun's radiation would be intolerable. The earth's magnetic field is in a stage of weakening. The magnetic strength and polarity have frequently changed through the eons.
Wish people would start talking about meaningful facts instead of their constant shallow hyperbole propagated by lazy university professors.
@dnarby
Thanks for the clarity. Do people hate the truth or what? Even more so when it contradicts their politics.
I didn't study it much, but it seems possible that the weakening magnetic field of the earth (which is completely unaffected by life on the surface) is a much greater cause of climate change than any other factor. Without the magnetic field around the earth, the Sun's radiation would be intolerable. The earth's magnetic field is in a stage of weakening. The magnetic strength and polarity have frequently changed through the eons.
Wish people would start talking about meaningful facts instead of their constant shallow hyperbole propagated by lazy university professors.
Leo, stick to Pension Fund meltdown analysis. The stuff I've read of yours here has been pretty damn good. I'm old enough to have gotten a signed hardback of Paul Ehrlichs first book on planetary starvation--and lost sleep over it. (Population Bomb?). Honestly--its scale Leo. Human pollution can't compete with Solar quiet periods, a large asteroid impact, or even a decent eruption. We're not that important.
Dnarby's point happens to be an inconvenient truth: "correlation is not causation". The hockey stick graph shows how many ice ages occurring regularly and cyclically long before man discovered the internal combustion engine? Lighten up on the irrational fear, "name-calling" (deniers), and sarcasm. It doesn't become you and persuades no one.
Euclid
I think that cows farting was one of the biggest contributors to global warming. They have been farting for millions of years. Just think, the buffalo might have caused the midevil warming period and the white man saved the world by killing off 100 million of them. I never gave it much thought until I read up on this, but everything that decays in the world emits C02 and methane and most likely our burning stuff is a drop in the bucket.
"most likely our burning stuff is a drop in the bucket."
it's not the farts that may be the problem, it's that we refuse to clean up our shits (including those that leak out in the farts). it's a sanitation issue more than anything, and that's worth debating over...but not yet it seems.
but yes, excellent point, the boys in power wanna charge us for farting while pretending that their shit don't stink.
Here's another fraud...
In 1965 only 5 million cards were in circulation and by 1996 some 1.4 billion cards were out floating in the market. How can this be? You have some people that have ten or more cards. As of today over 70 percent of eligible households have a credit card. This isn’t stunning since the average American needs to establish credit through this racket because of building up a FICO score. In many cases this score determines your interest rate or even whether you get a rental. How did people do it in the 1950s or before? They actually spent time vetting the person instead of deferring the hard work to some magical three digit number.
I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the massive growth in credit card debt. This week Bank of America sent me a letter discussing the new changes to my credit card because of the new legislation kicking in 2010. A few key points include not being able to hike up your rates on all cards if you miss payment on one card. This is known as universal default. And another key was not being able to hike up your rate without advance notice. The letter was sent as if it were fantastic news. This is nonsense. This is like someone sending you a letter saying, “after 20 years of robbing your bank account, we have decided that we will no longer steal your money with both hands but only with one.” Is this really the kind of reform the corporate oligarchs have in mind for us?
And while this reform is coming, credit card companies are screwing as many customers as they can before the new legislation comes into effect. I made the inopportune mistake of acting in frustration and anger. One day as I arrived home after a tough day, I opened up a letter from Chase showing that my fixed rate of 4.9% was now going up to 18.99%. The letter in point 6-print stated that if I did not want this, I should pick up the phone and call some person half way around the globe to discuss a very local problem. I dialed away and told them that I wanted to completely opt out. Who in the world would say yes to this? Well as it turns out the rate shot up anyway and the card was closed because somewhere in the clause, not opting in was reason to move on the change. Furious I had my attorney draft up a letter and we sent it to Chase. They managed to get the rate back down. No late payments. Years of on time loyalty mean nothing here. Even a solid FICO score. My attorney just shook his head and said he is seeing this over and over.
>card was closed
Another way they screw us is to close the account to you but not report it to the credit agencies. This then denies you credit as the open account shows up as active and an available credit line. This then forces you back to them since others will deny you credit.
So when you close an accound you must lower your credit line to $1, which they must allow you to do, then wait for your next bill to prove it was done and only then close to account.
Yeah, been there done that. And don't think for a minute you can force them to report your account as really closed. Again, been there, tried that.
I do think we are on a collision course because of financial, political and environmental problems. But even if it is correct that because of co2 sea levels would rise, I don't see anyway to stop emmiting large amounts of co2 (20 % reduction or more) without wrecking our economie and millions of suffering people as a result. And because of the co2 hype we seem to totally forget the many local ecological disasters...
Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/world/middleeast/14euphrates.html
TVA Coal Ash Spill in Kingston, Tennessee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_JM3o0c8J0
global warming is about as real as this economic recovery...
Thanks to subsidised wind and solar and pending carbon taxes... global warming IS our new economy.
Well, I guess it just goes to show how flawed our economic systems are.
Who "our" is I'm assuming would be the US. If that's the case, then I would take theses things over what has been our current economic engine- financing and militarism, which, unfortunately, are likely to latch onto anything that tries to replace them.
OK, I guess I'll keep repeating this until people actually bother to look at the data.
CO2 is a lagging indicator. That means it rises *after* temperature, indicating that temperature rise causes a rise in CO2 concentrations, not vice versa.
Therefore the central premise of AGW is false on it's face.
Don't take my word for it.
Get a copy of the historical temperature vs. CO2 graph. Increase the size so it's easy look at. You'll notice that CO2 concentration changes lag temperature about 800-1200 years.
If you have difficulty determining which comes first, look at the peaks and valleys. These mark turning points and make it easier to see which comes first.
I guarantee you most AGW advocates *and* skeptics haven't bothered to do this. But if you're going to hold an opinon on it, you really should.
And if you hold an opinion on it and *have not done this* IMO you really should STFU. Nothing personal, you understand... It's a personal quirk of mine that I have low tolerance for strong opinions based on sloth.
OK, y'all that claim it's not getting warmer. Anecdotal evidence. I've owned a New Hampshire farm for 20 years. The growing season for the last five years has been three weeks longer than it was for the first five years. And the last time I saw -20F was February of 2000. We broke -25 every year from 1990 to 1995.
I understand that you think 1998 was holy. To me it was the worst ice storm in a century. Montreal had no power for a week. I bet you are ignorant enough to think an ice storm in Montreal means cold.
The deniers are the ones replacing observation with fraud. The glaciers are melting.
A New Hampshire farm, y'all? Without a doubt - you can't get there from here, Anonymous. Thanks for the anecdotal input not, as 1998 was indeed a "Super El Nino", and the spike stands out as the peak of the warming phase we have witnessed. Remember, we are not debating whether warming has occurred - shall I repeat that? We are not debating whether warming has occurred, but whether it is CO2 driven, and catastrophic. Only a 20 year New Hampshire farmer who still says y'all would bitch about a longer growing season. My tomatoes could have used more dry heat this year, as rot and blight was the buzzword throughout the Northeast.
I'll post the #1 most important AGW question I've NEVER heard asked, much less answered in any media forum. Anywhere...
Ready for it???
"So, smartest guys in the room, what is the ideal temperature of this planet? What are we shooting for here?"
It makes me laugh to think we can control it, (As a met I've seen so many articles on solar output and can't fathom how that aspect is just swept under the rug) but say we can do our own crude modification of temperatures via C02... and we turn the cooling spigot on a bit too hard... in 100 years when we've gone cooler than our current average, will we have 'fanatics' maybe 'environmentalists' pleading with every citizen to do your duty and have a trash barrel out back. --"Everyone please, burn paper, plastic, anything. We need to reverse this global cooling!"
There's no controlling anything, silly rabbit!
While many over-react, many under-react.
We're going down in flames no matter what. But, we absolutely can have an effect. Unfortunately the Capitalist system won't allow any. Not that I think that anything that we do could be done quick enough anyway.
For fun I recommend people read Jared Diamond's accounting of the Greenalnd Norse in his book Collapse. Starvation isn't going to be fun: thanks to Capitalism we've severely dminished diversity, diversity that would be the best hedge for whatever the planet ends up doing/reacting to.
Thanks for playing!
I think you missed the point of my question though. (There was plenty of sarcasm in there)
Seems 'officials' and 'experts' are convinced that turning the CO2 spigot lower will result in a clear deceleration of warming, ie an increased cooling effect.
If that's what they believe, then in the future, when is 'mission accomplished'? Holding at 1990s temps? 1960s? 1830s temps?
And until that -which I believe should be the first question that should be asked- can be answered, there is no point in moving forward with a plan. (And no, I don't think that question can be answered because I don't believe we can control climate, especially via small CO2 maneuvers, however, officials clearly believe it's possible)
///officials clearly believe it's possible///
How should not the poet dote
on its mystic tongue,
With its primeval memory
Reporting what old minstrels told
Of Merlin locked the HAARP within, --
Merlin paying the pain of sin,
Pent in a dungeon made of air, --
And some attain his voice to hear, --
Words of pain and cries of fear
r.w. emerson
http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/56.1/articles/cavanaugh.asp
dnarby,
Yes, CO2 is a lagging inidcator in historical temperature/ CO2 graphs over the past milleniums. Indicating that as it gets warmer the CO2 concentration rises with a lag. This is just a positive feedback, earth gets warmer, feedback of CO2 rising keeps it warmer for longer. Then it gets cold again. The AGW debate asks what happens if we raise the CO2 alone, will temperature then follow? these graphs you refer to indicate that yes it does. Otherwise the earth would get cold as soon as the solar intensity reduces with the milankovich cycles.
The graph is the dog wagging its tail, AGW is the tail wagging the dog. Hang around the tail and rear end of the dog long enough and their gonna be a steaming pile of shit. Your logic stinks just the same. Especially your misplaced confidence in a logic that is incorrect and obviously so. If your finnancial management is as confident I am glad your casino is paying out.
"And if you hold an opinion on it and *have not done this* IMO you really should STFU. Nothing personal, you understand... It's a personal quirk of mine that I have low tolerance for strong opinions based on sloth."
I have low tolerance for ZH cowards who insult people over the internet. The fact is that Copenhagen was full of shit, and it had nothing to do with the silly distortions from 'Climategate'. You can believe what you want, I know we're on a collision course with destiny. Nature will give humanity a rude awakening and the deaths of millions of innocent people will all be due to political inaction and global warming deniers like you.
Leo, where is the land that is under water? This is a scam out of London, NYC and Switzerland to collect fees out of the world. CO2 doesn't make a bucket of piss in the pacific ocean against the sun. This is flat earth policy and for that matter is nothing more than global fascism. The Hockey stick is more of another type of hockey I used to hear about when I was a kid, like Horse Hockey.
Before Copenhagen, before Climategate, there was "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Check it out on Google Video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647&ei=RQgvS9Hh...
Smu, good link...thanks.
So 'look at this info or shut up' is out-of-bounds, but _you're responsible for millions of people dieing in the future_ ("deaths of millions of innocent people will all be due to political inaction and global warming deniers like you") is OK? Seriously?
Well then since you are going to start the rude shit let me follow on. You are a fucking loon if you think this climate shit is anything other than an attempt by a bunch of similarly loony motherfuckers to run my world.
Yes Leo the world may indeed be getting warmer...or it may be getting colder and that is just the way the world works. Matter of fact if you look at the overwhelming history of the world its MOTHERFUCKING COOOOOOLD most of the time. I take warm...with warm we lose some low lying lands...with COOOOOOOOLD WE ALL DIE! But hey that is what most of your radical Gaia loving friends want isn't Leo...?
There is too much 'religion' in the global warming debate. From my inexperienced POV, the earth is warming. Is it caused by humans, CO2, or the sun? Is the recent warming part of a longer cooling trend? Who knows?
Unfortunately the static has shifted our frame of reference in the wrong direction. Let's not focus on what causes global warming, but how we should live and die on the earth. CO2 is not a pollutant. SOX, NOX, CFCs, PCBs, chloroform and heavy metals are. Let's focus on them first.
Once again the American Indians were long ahead of us on the debate: Honor Mother Earth and leave nothing behind. "Remember, O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return."
Leo, 10,000 years ago Hippos swam in the Thames. About 900 years ago, Greenland was greener than it was now.
Over the course of history, we've had innumberable climactic change events of heating and cooling which occurred at a faster pace than the last 100 or even the last 50 years.
Climate change is normal, it should be expected. At what point will climatologists admit this? Because they don't really - they use EVERY event to claim an indication of AGW. This is truly impossible.
Many glaciers which are melting are in regions that do not spend appreciable time above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. So that cannot be global warming causing glacial melt. In some cases, it is wind, in others, radiant light. Neither are related to global warming (Kilimanjaro is a great example of this).
The IPCC has many members who disagree with the consensus. They have asked for the IPCC to be more circumspect - only to have other members silence them and attack their reputations. Climategate was a classic example of this.
Almost the entire case of AGW is based on model building. There is little evidence that is incontivertible outside of the models which says AGW is real.
Meanwhile, as a model builder in business, I can honestly say that models are bunk. They are great guides, but they change frequently....and never the way you believe.
Climategate was evidence of this, too. More importantly, Climategate pointed out the tricks which have been employed to make the models work a certain way - to promote AGW. As a model builder, when I heard that word - "trick" - I was immediately put on alert. Why? Because model builders use tricks all the time to ACHIEVE A RESULT OF PREDETERMINED CHOICE. In other words, if I'm building a model to show 15% profit growth this year, I can do it if I "trick the system" and alter variables in a manner which may not be real, but achieve the desired result. It's perfectly legitimate (as the CRU claimed), but it is fundamentally flawed.
Furthermore, while switching from (limited value) proxy tree ring data to real temperatures (which are beginning to be shown as increasingly fraudulent - come see the temperature gauge near my house and I'll show you fraud at work...I've complained to NOAA, which monitors this gauge, to no avail. It sits under an air conditioner in the summer, next to blacktop. The area changes were made in the last 15 years - just as its temperature reports "spiked".)
Fact is, while you and I may disagree the ONE SINGLE ITEM which we both agree on is that the science is based on CONSENSUS.
Sadly, Galileo was the victim of consensus. Today, we see that he was right. But at the time, the Church was holding the most heavily believed science of the time, and they refused to listen to Galileo - trying to ruin his reputation. Sound familiar?
We don't know what is really happening. We know climate change over millenia is normal. We cannot ascribe it directly man. All we know is that we've been able to measure it more accurately over the last 50 years, but we cannot tie it directly to anything specific. Some say we can - and have some minimal evidence of this. Others say we can't - and have some minimal evidence of this, too.
In the end, the BEST result is none from Copenhagen. Remember, in the 1970's scientists wanted to melt the ice caps in fear of GLOBAL COOLING. Imagine if they'd been successful in their political choice - where would we be today? The money spent would have led not only to economic, but climactic, disaster.
Today, these same scientists have a different view. But they are better organized, with more money and power behind them. They are probably no more right, though. They just have a better voice.
I agree we have a date with destiny - but that destiny may be very different than you perceive. It may be different than I perceive. Either way, the best I can say is that we MAY BOTH BE WRONG. So why should we get scared until all the best research in in hand? Why should we panic?
I am against this fraudulent approach because we are no closer to disaster now than we were 100 years ago. In fact, cooling over the last 10 years indicates we are farther from disaster (the cooling which the CRU so adamantly tried to hide and led to the wish for disaster "just to prove AGW is real"). That particular wish, to me, showed the desperate straits these scientists are faced with. They know they are twisting science, and are hoping for a disaster to "prove" their case. How absurd!
In the end, the point which I find particularly interesting is how AGW proponents treat everyone who disagrees with them with utter disdain. Most of us who do not believe in AGW (aside from the fellow above) usually are willing to say it's a possibility that it could be true. But we do not see the evidence. AGW proponents claim to have the truth - just as a religion would. They push that truth as the ONLY truth.
This is where the breakdown occurs. I cannot accept that as scientific reality. Nor would any good scientist. Is it any wonder that many physicists are the biggest skeptics?
Are you saying Dnarby denied global warming?
I don't see it. Anyway, maybe you should taser him, or do something else politically active - like make him pay a global warming tax? Then you'll solve the problem, I'm sure. And they'll give you 10 browny points at the next Bilderberg conference...
Are you saying Darnby denied global warming? Maybe you should taser him, or do something else politically active -like a global warming tax? Then you'll solve the problem, I'm sure. And they'll give you 10 browny points at the newt Brown shirt conference....
The Climate Science Isn't Settled
Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted..ArticleComments (535)more in Opinion ».EmailPrinter
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. Text .By RICHARD S. LINDZEN
Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned.
Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.
The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.
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.The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming.
That said, the main greenhouse substances in the earth's atmosphere are water vapor and high clouds. Let's refer to these as major greenhouse substances to distinguish them from the anthropogenic minor substances. Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called "climate forcing."
There is general agreement on the above findings. At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.
The IPCC's Scientific Assessments generally consist of about 1,000 pages of text. The Summary for Policymakers is 20 pages. It is, of course, impossible to accurately summarize the 1,000-page assessment in just 20 pages; at the very least, nuances and caveats have to be omitted. However, it has been my experience that even the summary is hardly ever looked at. Rather, the whole report tends to be characterized by a single iconic claim.
The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.
Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.
The Climate Emails
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Global Warming With the Lid Off
Climate Science and Candor
.Of course, none of the articles stressed this. Rather they emphasized that according to models modified to account for the natural internal variability, warming would resume—in 2009, 2013 and 2030, respectively.
But even if the IPCC's iconic statement were correct, it still would not be cause for alarm. After all we are still talking about tenths of a degree for over 75% of the climate forcing associated with a doubling of CO2. The potential (and only the potential) for alarm enters with the issue of climate sensitivity—which refers to the change that a doubling of CO2 will produce in GATA. It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about.
Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities. They do so because in these models, the main greenhouse substances (water vapor and clouds) act to amplify anything that CO2 does. This is referred to as positive feedback. But as the IPCC notes, clouds continue to be a source of major uncertainty in current models. Since clouds and water vapor are intimately related, the IPCC claim that they are more confident about water vapor is quite implausible.
There is some evidence of a positive feedback effect for water vapor in cloud-free regions, but a major part of any water-vapor feedback would have to acknowledge that cloud-free areas are always changing, and this remains an unknown. At this point, few scientists would argue that the science is settled. In particular, the question remains as to whether water vapor and clouds have positive or negative feedbacks.
The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."
For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.
There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.
What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of "bait and switch" scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.
The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.
Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.
Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.
Mr. Lindzen is professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Without doubt Copenhagen was full of sh*t regardless of which side you are on, but the fact remains that there is no scientific or economic logic behind any sort of climate modification schemes, particularly ones that involve payments to the international thugocracy. Hugo Chavez receiving thunderous applause for his insane speech revealed the truth behind this gathering of thieves and murderers. It is true, by the way, that the Greenland ice core data shows huge swings in climate over the last 100,000 years quite independent of CO2, which does tend to rise after some warming.
So, that settles it. Everybody go back to leveling forests and driving SUVs. I'm sure that it'll all end up OK; OK, that is, until this current inter-glacial period ends...
Before the first atomic bomb was detonated there were several scientists who warned that it might ignite our atmosphere. Silly them! Good thing that we didn't listen to Them! So, here we are today sitting on tons and tons of nuclear waste and worrying about dirty bombs...
Sometimes getting mired in details results in missing the forest, which, btw, we're leveling... We can ignore trees because they are carbon nuetral, or, because it doesn't matter in the CO2 equation! Never mind that the resultant loss of animal and plant diversity and soil errosion will expedite the loss of life, and our lives. Party on! Capitalism rocks!
I agree. Save the forests, fight pollution, take care of the environment, ND AGW due to CO2 is complete and utter nonsense. Party on!
I agree. Save the forests, fight pollution, take care of the environment, ND AGW due to CO2 is complete and utter nonsense. Party on!
Boy, somebody is a True Believer.
Silly distortions? Faking results, destroying data, blackballing opposing views. Those are serious issues that invalidate all the scientific conclusions these "scientists" made. The emails are enlightning, but the code for their computer models is damning.
Skepticism is the foundation of the scientific research. Science has been hijacked for politics in the case of global warming.
Facts are immutable and not a matter of belief. Opinions on the fact are many and none matter. Really. None.
That settles it then.
I'd like to discuss it further, but only on either scientific grounds or religious beliefs. No grey area in between. Pure science or religious dogmas, your choice.
Would you agree that the earth has experienced several glacial and inter-glacial periods? Further, would you agree that these have appreared to represent cycles? And further, would you agree that we have been able to reasonably measure the duration of these cycles?
Ok, folks, let's all wait for three independent double-blind placebo controlled studies to make sure global warming is really happening. The results will be available in three decades, and hopefully we will all be around to see the truth on global warming. If I am right, you'll all be getting religious on me.
But you're religious now.
I get "religion" when the evidence proves the point. I believe in God because of one thing - the need for an unmoved mover in physics. The miracles and beliefs and traditions? All manmade bunk. Fun stuff, sometimes, but still bunk.
Interestingly, that's just like the climate models - manmade bunk. Nothing useful comes from them. They haven't predicted a damn thing. Except that the polar icecaps would melt by 2010 (they didn't) and hurricanes would increase in power and number (they haven't, they are still on their 15 year cycle).
The other accoutrements of AGW are manmade bunk as well - the belief in solar and wind as the "savior". Neither are. They do not provide a decent return (yet). It will be at least 10 years, possibly 15, before they do. Even then, they cannot provide the level of energy required to power our current needs.
The ONLY alternative energy which is economically feasible today is geothermal, which I am investing in today. Because it makes multitudes of sense.
The ONLY way other alternatives will provide economic returns is this - MASSIVE CARBON TAXES.
Leo, you may wind up being right in your investment ONLY because of political nonsense. But it's nonsense which will cost our economy tremendously, while increasing the political power of outdated and corrupt ideologists like Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.
This isn't to say Republicans are better - they are not. In fact, they are in the pocket of big oil.
But the ideology of Obama is bankrupt and borderline dangerous.
If you're right - congrats. But I think you'll only be right because of corruption at the highest levels.
The reality of AGW is something very different than either you or I know or believe. In all likelihood, it's crap. But it's reached religious proportions, and the UN has even said this is a good thing, that religion is what is needed to increase the fervor of belief.
That's just plain disgusting, in my book.
Leo - for my part, I'm following CERN's 'CLOUD' series with interest. Particularly as they should be able to publish preliminary results before long. I would judge from your comments you've resolved most of the questions surrounding AGW to your satisfaction. The work of Henrik Svensmark and that series, in progress in Switzerland, might move you away from certainty and into the realm of skepticism.
There is no consensus on this subject among researchers, regardless of how forcefully advocacy organizations and media repeat that canard. That the IPCC and a fair proportion of the English-speaking press hold a particular view is no substitute for a rational process.
Incidentally, there's little that's 'silly' in connection with the manipulation of data at Hadley and elsewhere. That you're dismissive leads me to discount your credibility in other subject areas.
Sarcasm aside, Leo, it is precisely the impossibility of any kind of meaningful experimental study that is one of the most important factors in discouraging many people, myself included, from supporting policies designed to prevent anthropogenic global warming. I am enormously dubious of claims that "the science is settled", when applied to something that has not been (and indeed cannot and could never be) subject to rigourous controlled testing. Climate science, as many before me have noted, has far more in common with economics than it does with physics or chemistry: it relies on measurements which can only be considered in any way accurate for the most recent tiny fraction of the object of its study's history to draw conclusions about a vast and unimaginably complex system, without any (or almost any) possibility of finding enough comparable independent events to provide a meaningful sample size on which to base such conclusions. My concerns about the reliability of the prevailing thinking in the field's accuracy are only furthered by the following factors:
1. Climate science is an interdisciplinary field, full understanding of which would entail detailed knowledge of (at a minimum - I suspect there are others I have overlooked) solar physics, fluid particle and thermo-dynamics in large bodies with complex shapes, the interaction of magnetic fields with radiation, paleobotany, paleogeology and statistical analysis. Not only is this more than any one person could possibly manage in terms of the diversity of expertise, worse, it includes at least one field (large scale fluid dynamics) in which the totality of human understanding is minimal. Anyone making pronouncements about the future direction of climate change (which of course we all know certainly happens) is certain to be either ignoring or taking substantially on trust extensive research from fields other than their own.
2. Aside from the specific difficulties of climatology, it is my personal experience that truly gifted academics almost never choose to specialise in broad interdisciplinary areas, usually choosing something narrow and in most cases utterly obscure to laymen. Interdisciplinarians tend to be showy third-raters. That the most prominent climate science centre in my country is at the University of East frickin' Anglia does little to persuade me that climatology is any different.
3. It is very easy for cognitive biases to pervade work in pretty much any field other than mathematics and perhaps the "hard" sciences. Climategate makes it pretty clear that cognitive biases were infecting the thinking and hence the models of at least some of the most prominent advocates of human emissions as a major driver of climate change, and that they were making deliberate attempts to suppress the work of dissenters. This does not give me faith in their public pronouncements.
I appreciate that I am giving what might be termed "second order" arguments. I would not like you to believe that I have not extensively read first order arguments (scientific studies and responses to them), but I am ill-equipped to detail such arguments in comparison to others whose work on the subject is readily available online at sites of which I am sure anyone with an interest in the subject is already aware. The larger point I am trying to make is this: it is often said that it is difficult for laymen to form an opinion on climate change, because one cannot know which "experts" to believe, but in fact I would contend that it is prima facie highly implausible that any of the "experts" really know, which makes their vocality on the subject especially suspicious.
My skepticism towards the notion that human activity impacts meaningfully on global climate stems almost entirely from Ockham's razor: it seems to me that the known facts can be as adequately explained without the notion as with it, so I see no reason to believe in it. Epistemologically new facts could of course change that position. Given this considerable uncertainty, both as to whether highly damaging climatic change will occur and whether it could be prevented, it seems to me more prudent to adapt flexibly to changes as and when they occur than to commit vast amounts of up-front money that we can ill afford to what may very well be a fruitless effort.
Please add my +10^10^10. Climate change is so complex that no one really knows more than jack squat.
Cui bono...? Follow the money.
+6.022*10^23
Very well said.
This is something about which I know a great deal, with first-hand knowledge of these "models" and "data".
Most humans *cannot* understand basic math, and basic proportion. The issue is one of trends and variable relative effects -- which is hard even for the people good at it (and most are not). Geologic time is something *far* beyond what most people can comprehend. People do not understand issues with data collection and normalization itself. Because of this, it is so easy for the snake oil salesman to manipulate the crowd and make themselves rich, so that's what we're seeing.
It is nothing more than a "fleecing of the sheep" by those that want to raise their self-importance in an artifically constructed world, and to become rich.
No one should lose sleep over climate change.
A shame, I'd actually be excited about the prospect that the Earth were warming -- more wealth, prosperity, and happiness for all humans everywhere. Unfortunately, the Earth is cooling, and we are headed into another Ice Age (having almost nothing to do with humans). That will suck in another few thousand years or so.
Correction - it sucks now. Record snow is bad for my bone "health", and they are letting me know it. I would rather shovel a couple feet however, than sit in the Chunnel for 12 hours because frigid air from France shut the trains down.
+1,476,291
A very well reasoned and objective argument in my "rather subjective" estimation of course.
Great post Mr. Shush