Global warming consensus ignored.

[gerryhatrick]

Global warming consensus ignored.

Thursday, 11 May 2006

Editorials continuously claim that there’s “no scientific consensus” that human activity is causing global warming.

The level of consensus in the scientific community concerning climate change is incredibly strong. The National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (w/ 2500 member scientists), The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), have ALL issued statements concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.

Rest here--> http://allpoliticsnow.com/content/view/15/1/

It goes on to mention how not one scientific peer paper out of 1000 was against the position that it's happening and C02 causes it.

[GostHacked]

You know of another thing that produces alot of C02?

Humans. Just so you know.

[BHS]

The full post:

Editorials continuously claim that there’s “no scientific consensus” that human activity is causing global warming.

I don't doubt that this claim is made in editorials all the time, but how lazy do you have to be to eschew providing even a single example?

The level of consensus in the scientific community concerning climate change is incredibly strong. The National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (w/ 2500 member scientists), The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), have ALL issued statements concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.

To what extent does anthropogenic modification occur? This paragraph suggests that all three organisations have reached a similar hard numbers conclusion, but I've read over reports from them and the reality is that they are far more reserved in their conclusions than the political activists portray them to be.

Of 928 abstracts published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 not a single one disagreed with the consensus position (source: Naomi Oreskes “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change”).

Not mentioned: Naomi Oreskes' faulty search criteria restricted her to only reviewing 928 out of 12000 reports about climate change written within the given timeframe, including many papers that showed no warming occuring.

It’s absolutely disheartening and beyond belief when media promotes partisan misinformation on a subject of such incredible importance to all people. In doing so they abdicate their responsibility to serve our best interests.

It would be more disheartening if news media bought into the apocolyptic viewpoint wholeheartedly and abdicated their responsibility to report all sides of the story.

[BHS]

I reread my reply above and realized I was guilty of doing the same thing that I'd accused the poster I was criticizing of doing, namely making a claim without providing even a single solitary outside reference. Shame on me.

Here's the National Academy of Sciences' report to the Whitehouse about the IPCC's third report on climate change. Read through this document and see if you still come away believing that the "concensus" thing is settled business.

[gc1765]

Not mentioned: Naomi Oreskes' faulty search criteria restricted her to only reviewing 928 out of 12000 reports about climate change written within the given timeframe, including many papers that showed no warming occuring.

I would be much more convinced if they actually gave the references for these "34 abstracts [that] reject or doubt the view that human activities are the main drivers of the "the observed warming over the last 50 years"

I don't feel like reading 1,247 papers...but I could easily read 34.

[BHS]

Wow. That was a short thread. I guess Gerry doesn't have any rebuttal for my comments.

[gerryhatrick]

Wow. That was a short thread. I guess Gerry doesn't have any rebuttal for my comments.

Sorry 'bout that. Not paying attention to this thread. Your guess was wrong.

Regarding the Peiser "study", his big thing was that

"34 abstracts reject or doubt the view that human activities are the main drivers of the "the observed warming over the last 50 years".

In fact, he appears wrong on that:

http://timlambert.org/2005/05/peiser/

If you don't have time to read the 34 abstracts Peiser claims his "gotcha" on, here's the reaction of others on them:

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/05/take-t...ing-taste-test/

http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/05/peisn...-abstracts.html

gc1765, you expressed an interest in reading these 34 abstracts. See the Tim Lambert link above and let us know your thoughts.

BHS, you provide a link to a 2001 report which you feel supports a claim you made. Which claim was that and where in the report is it supported?

[gc1765]

Thanks for the link gerryhatrick, I'll read those soon.

[BHS]

BHS, you provide a link to a 2001 report which you feel supports a claim you made. Which claim was that and where in the report is it supported?

My claim was that I had read the reports in question and had come away with the impression that the authors were less than convinced about certainty of anthropogenic warming being the primary driver of global warming. The link I provided was not to any of the reports in question, but to a review of the IPCC Third Assessment Report commissioned by the American government, written with a consise clarity that would be impossible for me to replicate with my meager education. I direct your attention to the following paragraphs:

The IPCC WG I Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) serves an obviously different purpose than the scientific working group reports. When one is condensing 1000 pages into 20 pages with a different purpose in mind, we would expect the text to contain some modifications. After analysis, the committee finds that the conclusions presented in the SPM and the Technical Summary (TS) are consistent with the main body of the report. There are, however, differences. The primary differences reflect the manner in which uncertainties are communicated in the SPM. The SPM frequently uses terms (e.g. likely, very likely, unlikely) that convey levels of uncertainty; however, the text less frequently includes either their basis or caveats. This difference is perhaps understandable in terms of a process in which the SPM attempts to underline the major areas of concern associated with a human-induced climate change. However, a thorough understanding of the uncertainties is essential to the development of good policy decisions.

Climate projections will always be far from perfect. Confidence limits and probabilistic information, with their basis, should always be considered as an integral part of the information that climate scientists provide to policy- and decision-makers. Without them, the IPCC SPM could give an impression that the science of global warming is "settled," even though many uncertainties still remain. The emission scenarios used by IPCC provide a good example. Human decisions will almost certainly alter emissions over the next century. Because we cannot predict either the course of human populations, technology, or societal transitions with any clarity, the actual greenhouse gas emissions could be either greater or less than the IPCC scenarios. Without an understanding of the sources and degree of uncertainty, decision-makers could fail to define the best ways to deal with the serious issue of global warming.

And further, to the following paragraph that appears about a page and a half later in the report:

Predictions of global climate change will require major advances in understanding and modeling of (1) the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols and (2) the so called 'feedbacks' that determine the sensitivity of the climate system to a prescribed increase in greenhouse gases. Specifically, this will involve reducing uncertainty regarding: a) future usage of fossil fuels, future emissions of methane, c) the fraction of the future fossil fuel carbon that will remain in the atmosphere and provide radiative forcing versus exchange with the oceans or net exchange with the land biosphere, d) the feedbacks in the climate system that determine both the magnitude of the change and the rate of energy uptake by the oceans, which together determine the magnitude and time history of the temperature increases for a given radiative forcing, e) the details of the regional and local climate change consequent to an overall level of global climate change, f) the nature and causes of the natural variability of climate and its interactions with forced changes, and g) the direct and indirect effects of the changing distributions of aerosol. Because the total change in radiative forcing from other greenhouse gases over the last century has been nearly as large as that of carbon dioxide, their future evolution also must be addressed. At the heart of this is basic research, which allows for creative discoveries about those elements of the climate system that have not yet been identified, or studied.

[gerryhatrick]

My claim was that I had read the reports in question and had come away with the impression that the authors were less than convinced about certainty of anthropogenic warming being the primary driver of global warming.

Seriously?

[BHS]

Seriously?

Oh, come on. What sort of a reply is that? I just posted three big juicy paragraphs that I feel neatly make my case for me. The least you could do is hack out some feeble ad hominem against the Academy, if you feel that tackling the relevance of the uncertainties presented in those paragraphs is too much for you.

[jbg]

You know of another thing that produces alot of C02?

Humans. Just so you know.

As well as sulphorous gases (my view of the global warming alarmists). More on this when I'm not exhausted.

[gerryhatrick]

Seriously?

Oh, come on. What sort of a reply is that? I just posted three big juicy paragraphs that I feel neatly make my case for me. The least you could do is hack out some feeble ad hominem against the Academy, if you feel that tackling the relevance of the uncertainties presented in those paragraphs is too much for you.

No offense, but I don't see it. Your case being "made" from those paragraphs, that is.

In any event, it was written in 2001. Are you aware of the statement issued by the NAS in 2005?

In 2005 the national science academies of the G8 nations (including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences) - and Brazil, China and India, three of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the developing world, signed a statement on the global response to climate change. The statement stresses that the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action [1], and explicitly endorsed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Academy_of_Sciences

Guess that makes my case, huh?

I think the most interesting thing that perhaps you could address are the 34 abstracts that supposedly

"reject or doubt the view that human activities are the main drivers of the "the observed warming over the last 50 years", according to Peiser. With the abstracts linked to do you admit that Peiser is another in the long line of deceivers who have joined the "debate" on the "no global warming/no human cause" side?

[sharkman]

The title of this thread is inaccurate to say the least. It's just that the MSM is not allowing voices in the scientific community to be heard, since with their bias, these opposing scientists must be wrong. In this link, many scientists who disagreed with Gore's movie were ignored while those who had an analysis approved by the AP got to speak!

And they wonder why more and more don't trust the Main Stream Media.

[gc1765]

The title of this thread is inaccurate to say the least. It's just that the MSM is not allowing voices in the scientific community to be heard, since with their bias, these opposing scientists must be wrong. In this link, many scientists who disagreed with Gore's movie were ignored while those who had an analysis approved by the AP got to speak!

And they wonder why more and more don't trust the Main Stream Media.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Link

P.S. your link doesn't work

[jbg]

The title of this thread is inaccurate to say the least. It's just that the MSM is not allowing voices in the scientific community to be heard, since with their bias, these opposing scientists must be wrong. In this link, many scientists who disagreed with Gore's movie were ignored while those who had an analysis approved by the AP got to speak!

And they wonder why more and more don't trust the Main Stream Media.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Link

P.S. your link doesn't work

Your link merely disses a Bush Administration official. In this New York Times article some truly crack-brained ideas. Remember the old idea of throwing carbon black onto the ice? (excerpts below)

In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

contrast with:

We are currently emerging from this Little Ice Age. Temperatures started to rise about 1850 and rose fairly steadily until about 1945, when they began to drop again until about 1975 when they started to rise again.

The drop in temperatures from 1945 to 1975 is interesting as it was interpreted by many as being the start of another ice age. Rather amazing suggestions were made, including the spreading of carbon black on the Arctic ice cover in order to melt it! Many of the scientists who are now foretelling catastrophe from global warming were in the 1970s predicting disaster from global cooling.

I personally remember articles in Time Magazine around the time of my High School graduation discussing this idea, back in 1975. This is not just some internet crank reminding us of the throught of stopping global cooling by blacking the ice caps.

[gerryhatrick]

I personally remember articles in Time Magazine around the time of my High School graduation discussing this idea, back in 1975. This is not just some internet crank reminding us of the throught of stopping global cooling by blacking the ice caps.

Another useless anecdote tossed out as though it has relavence to global warming.

It does not. If you are going to relate these tidbits as part of your attack on the reality of globa warming you should do a little research.

However, I guess truth and accuracy isn't the goal of the denial campaign.

[sharkman]

Your link merely disses a Bush Administration official. In this New York Times article some truly crack-brained ideas. Remember the old idea of throwing carbon black onto the ice? (excerpts below)

In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

contrast with:

We are currently emerging from this Little Ice Age. Temperatures started to rise about 1850 and rose fairly steadily until about 1945, when they began to drop again until about 1975 when they started to rise again.

The drop in temperatures from 1945 to 1975 is interesting as it was interpreted by many as being the start of another ice age. Rather amazing suggestions were made, including the spreading of carbon black on the Arctic ice cover in order to melt it! Many of the scientists who are now foretelling catastrophe from global warming were in the 1970s predicting disaster from global cooling.

I personally remember articles in Time Magazine around the time of my High School graduation discussing this idea, back in 1975. This is not just some internet crank reminding us of the throught of stopping global cooling by blacking the ice caps.

I'd never heard of this spreading of carbon black on the ice. But I know we are in a warming trend, and I can't wait for a cooling trend to make the Global 'sky is falling' Warmers quiet. Like I've said before, I guess even they need their hobbies.

[jbg]

I'd never heard of this spreading of carbon black on the ice. But I know we are in a warming trend, and I can't wait for a cooling trend to make the Global 'sky is falling' Warmers quiet. Like I've said before, I guess even they need their hobbies.

The carbon black spreading was never done. It was suggested. It was part of the same alarmist" sky is falling" mentality that the Kyoto set embraces.

[gc1765]

Your link merely disses a Bush Administration official.

I guess you missed the point of this link. In 636 articles from the MSM on global warming, over half (52.7) give conflicting viewpoints, which leads to the common mistake that people think scientists are in conflict over global warming. While there may be a few scientists questioning global warming, the vast majority agree that it is occuring and that it is due to human activity. That is reflected in the fact that in 928 scientific articles, none of those disagree with the consensus. It is because of the MSM that people believe there is no consensus. Re-read the first paragraph:

A little food for thought on the accuracy of what you hear from the media about global warming

A study in the scientific journal, Global Environmental Change, in September 2004 examined 636 articles on climate change in 4 major U.S. newspapers between 1988 and 2002. It found 52.7 percent presented the story as a matter of conflicting viewpoints, with just one-third emphasizing the role of humans. This is in sharp contrast to the conclusions of a late 2004 article published in the esteemed Science Magazine. The study reviewed 928 scientific studies of climate change and found that 75% of them accepted the idea that the earth is warming and that this warming is caused by human activities. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

In this

New York Times article some truly crack-brained ideas. Remember the old idea of throwing carbon black onto the ice? (excerpts below)

In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

This is irrelevant. The topic of this thread is about the consensus on global warming, not some 'futuristic' ways of dealing with it.

contrast with:

We are currently emerging from this Little Ice Age. Temperatures started to rise about 1850 and rose fairly steadily until about 1945, when they began to drop again until about 1975 when they started to rise again.

The drop in temperatures from 1945 to 1975 is interesting as it was interpreted by many as being the start of another ice age. Rather amazing suggestions were made, including the spreading of carbon black on the Arctic ice cover in order to melt it! Many of the scientists who are now foretelling catastrophe from global warming were in the 1970s predicting disaster from global cooling.

I personally remember articles in Time Magazine around the time of my High School graduation discussing this idea, back in 1975. This is not just some internet crank reminding us of the throught of stopping global cooling by blacking the ice caps.

I love it when anti-global warming people bring up global cooling as if it is some way to argue that global warming doesn't exist because some people thought it was cooling in the past. I guess you don't believe that the earth goes around the sun? Since the ancient greeks up until the 16th century, the geocentric model was the widely held view. It was gradually replaced by the heliocentric model of the solar system (yes, some scientists still clung onto the geocentric model, suprised?). But I guess since scientists used to believe in the geocentric model, the heliocentric model can't possibly be true.

[BHS]

I personally remember articles in Time Magazine around the time of my High School graduation discussing this idea, back in 1975. This is not just some internet crank reminding us of the throught of stopping global cooling by blacking the ice caps.

Another useless anecdote tossed out as though it has relavence to global warming.

It does not. If you are going to relate these tidbits as part of your attack on the reality of globa warming you should do a little research.

However, I guess truth and accuracy isn't the goal of the denial campaign.

Hold on a second. Aren't you the guy who's decided that global warming is the end of the world and the most pressing issue that humanity faces? Why isn't a previous case of unwarranted panic useful to this conversation? Other than it has the tendancy of making you personally look like an irrational hysteric. And accusing people of failing to do research and thereby denying the truth is pretty weak coming from an individual who's entire argument rests on unquestioning adherence to "concensus".

Furthermore, jbg adds an interesting element to the conversation: the whole proposition of the global warming religion is that humanity's activities have had an unintended but drastic effect on global climate. Unintended, because there was no way to know what effect carbon dioxide loading would have on global climate when we began burning fossil fuels in vastly increased quantities. (My argument has been, and continues to be - see below - that we still do not know what that effect amounts to.) Now, people who are alarmed by the possibility that humanity has caused serious damage to the world's climatic systems propose direct anthropogenic tampering with the climate to "fix" the problem, without any regard to how their "solutions" very likely have their own unintended negative consequences. I'd say that's a fairly serious topic that requires some thought and discussion. But you chose instead to dismiss his entire post out of hand, because it makes you look bad by relating true and relative facts from the history of climate alarmism and earlier proposed anthropogenic solutions that would have made today's situation worse.

* * *

Our earlier posts dealt with the NAS' reports from 2001 and 2005, and you pointed out that the 2005 report more or less falls in line with your argument that the concensus side has won and that the argument is over. Fair enough - I can't very well argue that the NAS' conclusions in 2005 are wrong without throwing out their earlier conclusions. However, I'd like to ask you to answer for me how it came to be that the questions posed in 2001 came to be answered by 2005. The 2005 doesn't go into scientific reasoning for why the uncertainties have been eliminated. In fact, the 2005 report looks more like a fact-free political sop to progressive transnational cooperation than it does a genuine attempt to clarify the situation by updating previously held positions. So, where did the uncertainties of 2001 go?

Further, I'd like you to spend a few minutes reviewing this other interesting article I've dug up from the dinosaur days of 2001, by researchers at Harvard. Way back then they seemed to be adding non-renewable fuel to the fires of uncertainty. Have the problems they identify been subsequently solved by anything other than "scientific concensus"? I'd appreciate a link.

[BHS]

I love it when anti-global warming people bring up global cooling as if it is some way to argue that global warming doesn't exist because some people thought it was cooling in the past. I guess you don't believe that the earth goes around the sun? Since the ancient greeks up until the 16th century, the geocentric model was the widely held view. It was gradually replaced by the heliocentric model of the solar system (yes, some scientists still clung onto the geocentric model, suprised?). But I guess since scientists used to believe in the geocentric model, the heliocentric model can't possibly be true.

Your reasoning here is faulty, and your comparison is inapt. Your seeming suggestion is that pointing out that an older hypothesis was incorrect, is seen by your opponent to be a valid argument that newer hypothesis concerning the same phenomenon must also be incorrect. This is illogical and that's not the point jbg or anyone else is making. What he's attacking isn' the conclusion but the method of arriving at that conclusion, which in this case is "scientific concensus". Which, as you've pointed out (rather rudely I thought, as if strict discipline was a defining feature of conversations on a political webforum), is the topic of this thread.

[gerryhatrick]

Hold on a second. Aren't you the guy who's decided that global warming is the end of the world and the most pressing issue that humanity faces?

It is the most pressing issue we face, yes.

I never indicated it is "the end of the world".

It is a common rightwing tactic of deceit to try and portray anyone speaking about the seriousness of global warming as an over-the-top alarmist. Don't employ it against me, please.

[gc1765]

I love it when anti-global warming people bring up global cooling as if it is some way to argue that global warming doesn't exist because some people thought it was cooling in the past. I guess you don't believe that the earth goes around the sun? Since the ancient greeks up until the 16th century, the geocentric model was the widely held view. It was gradually replaced by the heliocentric model of the solar system (yes, some scientists still clung onto the geocentric model, suprised?). But I guess since scientists used to believe in the geocentric model, the heliocentric model can't possibly be true.

Your reasoning here is faulty, and your comparison is inapt. Your seeming suggestion is that pointing out that an older hypothesis was incorrect, is seen by your opponent to be a valid argument that newer hypothesis concerning the same phenomenon must also be incorrect. This is illogical and that's not the point jbg or anyone else is making. What he's attacking isn' the conclusion but the method of arriving at that conclusion, which in this case is "scientific concensus". Which, as you've pointed out (rather rudely I thought, as if strict discipline was a defining feature of conversations on a political webforum), is the topic of this thread.

Maybe I misinterpreted jbg's point, but my interpretation was that pointing out how scientists once believed in global cooling somehow discredits scientists from now saying that it is warming. I have seen that exact same argument on other threads, and I assumed that was jbg's point (since he/she didn't make any mention of "scientific consensus", or any other explanation for bringing it up). I shouldn't have made that assumption, but I'll him him/her explain the purpose before I reply further.

BTW: What did I say that was so rude?

[BHS]

Perhaps rude was hyperbolic. How about schoolmarmish? (I know, like who am I to talk?)