Well, this will probably go down as one of the longest posts in APS history.
What can I say? This is a complex topic, probably the most complex topic that humans have ever dealt with. One liners aren't sufficient. Even three or four paragraphs won't do, especially when there's so much misunderstanding, misinformation and flat out acrimony about it.
So, here goes.
On a whim, I decided to wander over to APS today. I haven't been here in ... years. (I spend most of my time at THR & MoF.) I really didn't like the vibe here when I enrolled a long time ago, so left and haven't been back.
But, out of curiosity, thought I'd stop by. What was I thinking? (Rhetorical question.)
I'm already sorry I did. I can see I run the risk of getting caught up in this thread because the topic is one that is not only of personal interest to me, but that I've dealt with professionally for years as an educator.
Suffice to say as a preface that I'm firmly in the same camp as Iain and Nitrogen.
Still, up until I read this from my trusted friend Grampster, I was thinking I might just lurk in here for a few minutes, have a few chuckles, then disappear without putting in my 0.02c worth.
The problem that most of us have with global warming, now climate change, has to do more with the arrogance and smug knowitallism perpetrated by mostly leftist scientists, or scientists who's existence depends on government grant. Isn't it strange that most defenders of this "science" are avowed socialists or live in socialist leaning communities?
Now, G'ster and I have had conversations about this topic over a couple of years mostly by private conversation. He KNOWS my position on global heating and climate change ("warming" is a severe misnomer, and yes, emphatically "heating" DOES drive climate change).
He also knows full well that I'm NOT a socialist. Hell, I'm not even a democrat. In fact, outside of stolid support for 2A/RKBA, I'm
totally apolitical. I disdain politics. <spits> Even after hell freezes over, you'll never find me in the "
political" part of this (or any) forum.
G'ster knows that I'm a scientist, first and foremost. PhD in ecology and evolution from a reputable university. Undergrad & MS in biology & mathematics. (No, that does NOT make me any smarter than the average APS participant. But it does make me more informed about the process of science and the natural world than the average APS person. Nothing more, nothing less.)
Yet, he throws out garbage like that quote above. G'ster, honestly, I'm appalled and offended by your comment. It's reflective of a conspiracy theory, and like most, is total horse s**t. I thought you to be above such arguments.
Then, I find this comment by jfruser:
Which brings me back to how computer models interface with the GW racket. To put it bluntly, the GW racketeers who develop, use, and market the output of climate models predicting GW due to human action are dishonest scum I would not trust to jockey a checking account spreadsheet, let along develop and run a climate model. They may be intelligent, but they have no integrity, so they are unworthy of trust.
I know of JF from THR, also, although I know him FAR less well than G'ster.
But I gotta call you out on that statement, JF. That's bull hockey, pure and simple, and an unjust insult to the thousands of professional modelers worldwide who've been working on this problem for decades, suffering the slings and arrows of ignorant people who don't have a clue about the art and science of modeling (ostensibly unlike you), and have made
excellent strides even if their models do - by their own admission - still have flaws. (What's surprising about that? Earth's climate system is the most complex entity that humans have ever tried to build a computer model for, by several orders of magnitude. The fact that they're even close is a feat ranking up there with putting a man on the moon.)
Oh, yeah, JF, although I'm not a professional modeler, I understand modeling very well. I had numerous courses in modeling at university. I worked for a professional modeler as an RA on a climate related ecology project. I also have an MS in probability theory, so I understand the difference between deterministic & stochastic models. I'm also very well versed in nonlinear dynamics (AKA chaos theory), and I'll bet I can smoke you any day on an exam about said topics.
So, let's talk about your "dishonest scum" assertion. Upon what do you base such an outrageous statement? Please cite sources.
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Then, there's this tired old refrain uttered by Desertdog, a favorite among the "skeptics" (read obfuscators and misinformation specialists):
When the "science" can tell me accurately what the weather will be just one month in advance, then I might, just might, start believing them when they forecast six months in advance. But to believe they know what is going to happen in ten years, or more, no way Jose.
Well, sorry, bro, but that one illustrates Iain's point about ignorance about the climate issue.
The point is this: Even though many (but not all) elements of weather and climate models are the same, there is a HUGE difference between predicting weather and predicting climate. HUGE. In order to have an intelligent discussion about this issue, we need to quickly get past that important little misunderstanding. Let's try, shall we?
In short,
weather is what's happening at any given moment, day, week with respect to temperature, precipitation, wind speed/direction, etc in a given place.
Climate is the long term average of weather.
Due to
sensitivity to initial conditions in models, weather forecasters will never - NEVER - even a thousand years from now (assuming our species lasts that long), even with supercomputers ten times faster than now - will never be able to offer an accurate 10-day forecast. Won't happen.
So, I cannot tell you even closely - plus/minus 15* F - what the temperature will be here on January 20. But I'll guaran-dam-tee you that I can already do a credible job of climate prediction even without a model. In January, here on the Pac NW coast, on average, it will be cold (average around 40*F) and wet (average around 7" of precip for January). It will not be hot and sunny.
That's climate. That's what climate modelers attempt to predict: will it be hot and dry, hot and wet, cold and dry, cold and wet, etc. If hot and dry, by how much more than average.
And that turns out to be easier than predicting weather 10-days from now.
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OK, so I guess I'll hang around in here for a few days at least, just for the pure intellectual exercise of it all. After all, if I'm going to have this conversation in public - as I do in my region professionally - nothing like wading into a bunch of "skeptics" for practice, right? Trial by fire? An intellectual Quigly of sorts.
I'm busy as hell, though, trying to float my business during a global economic collapse. (You really think it's going to get better from here? I've got a nice bridge in Brooklyn for sale ...) So, I won't be in here every day. But I'll check in on occasion.
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OK, suggested reading. Iain has already suggested the best single source of information about this topic on the web: based in science, unbiased, supported by the American Institute of Physics. But it's clear that some of you are slacking on it. So, let me reiterate.
Spencer Weart's pages collectively called "
The Discovery of Global Warming".
Every issue raised here,
every element of the arguments that skeptics repeatedly dish up - year after year after year - is addressed in depth in those pages, complete with references to the primary scientific literature.
Weart is as much historian of science as a climate change specialist (physicist). To his credit, his essays not only deal with the current state of climate science, but how we got to our current understanding over the last century (or more). He deals openly with the confusion that existed in the climatology community during the 20th century, including that caused by the "cooling trend" of the 1940s through early 1980s (that we now understand as being caused by sulfur aerosols from industrial activity, predominantly a northern hemisphere phenomenon). He deals with the challenges that modelers have faced - their trials and tribulations, their mistakes, and their amazing progress in the last decade, while acknowledging that they are still underestimating the severity of the problem because most models do not sufficiently treat the nonlinear nature of the climate system, and in particular omit key positive feedback processes that are RAPIDLY spinning the climate out of a balmy interglacial state and into a hellish future.
I could go on. But I suggest that you just start reading. The entire site will require days to weeks of reading and repeated reading. (Why am I not optimistic that will occur? :rolleyes: )
In particular, readers should pay attention to the following of Weart's essays at a minimum to be
at least minimally informed about this issue. By the way, these are required reading for students in my advanced college-level climate class that stretches over 12 weeks. Until discussion participants are conversant about these essays, we are - as the saying goes - pissing in the wind.
*
The Modern Temperature Trend (start here)
*
The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect (Why those who argue that CO2 levels are irrelevant are not only wrong, but similar to those claiming Earth is flat.)
*
Past Climate Cycles and Ice Ages (What we learned from ice core studies, and why we should be concerned about rapid climate change to a
much hotter state.)
*
Rapid Climate Change (Major climate shifts - the equivalent of moving from ice age conditions to balmy interglacial conditions like now - can occur in
less than a decade. Let that sink in.)
*
Ocean Currents and Climate (The real story is in the oceans; we are wasting our time focusing so much on the atmosphere. Water holds 20X as much heat as air. Most of the heat trapped so far is in the oceans, along with half the CO2, which is causing
oceans to acidify because CO2 + H20 --> carbonic acid, a very bad thing.)
*
Biosphere: How Life Alters Climate (Ecological systems play a HUGE role in climate regulation.)
*
Changing Sun, Changing Climate? (Addresses the role of solar cycles, sunspots, etc.)
*
Aerosols: Volcanoes, Dust, Clouds*
Simple Models of Climate (The early attempts at modeling, mostly pre-computer)
*
Chaos in the Atmosphere (Why weather is unpredictable, but climate is not.)
*
General Circulation Models of Climate (About supercomputer models being developed by no less than 14 international modeling groups in multiple countries, their successes and limitations. Successes include being able to start with climate conditions during an ice age and run it forward, inputting changes in CO2 and methane, and aerosols from volcanoes and industrial output, to approximate current Earth climate conditions very closely.)
To those, I add two other suggestions.
* The book
With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change by Fred Pearce. Pearce is a journalist, but he spent years interviewing (mostly on location) climate scientists "on the ground", many of whom contacted him when they learned that he was writing a book about climate change because they are genuinely frightened by the changes in their respective systems that they are observing, all of which spell planetary catastrophe in the making. Furthermore, Pearce is a self-proclaimed skeptic about almost all other "doomsday" environmental issues, which usually turn out to be bull crap being spewed forth by young researchers trying to gain fame. This one, he says, is being driven by older professionals who are not prone to extremist claims, and know that without reliable evidence, their claims will be dismissed. They have reliable evidence. This issue, he says, scares him a lot, and the more he learns, the more scared he gets. I recommend it strongly for bed time reading - guaranteed to give you interesting dreams.
* A blog by climate scientists called
RealClimate. Where as Weart addresses the history and current status of climate change science in a linear, then-to-now fashion, RealClimate addresses the latest releases of new data, new models, new controversies. They are very conservative in their approach (even more than they should be, IMO), cautioning readers to be careful about extrapolating too far from a given set of data or new study. They also not only allow debate among readers, they encourage it.
Here's a particularly relevant recent post by them that addresses the misconception that started this thread: Earth is
NOT cooling as a whole. As pointed out earlier in this thread, the cold weather that most of us in the US are experiencing now is a temporary anomaly driven mostly by the El Nino/La Nina cycle, also known as ENSO, and related oceanic decadal cycles, exacerbated by an aggravated jet stream (expected with climate change driven by excess heat) which pulls down more cold Arctic air. If one only looks at a decade worth of data, there is a slight - no,
tiny (relative to the last century) - cooling trend. But to say that's indicative that Earth is now cooling, that warming is over, is unadulterated crap. Like stock markets, climate changes in a jagged fashion. Even in a single day, let alone over years, stock markets never change monotonically (always increasing or decreasing), but in a "jumpy" way: ups and downs of all sizes.
Climate is no different. Even though the trend is now towards increasing temperatures globally - and it will remain so for a long time - there WILL be temporary dips. That's just how any complex, nonlinear system behaves. Get used to it.
I assert strongly that another ice age, or even a long term cooling trend, now is impossible, because CO2 levels in the atmosphere are higher by far than at any time in the last 650,000 years. They are at 380 ppm (part per million). Highest before now: 300 ppm. Average interglacial levels: 280 ppm. Average ice age levels: 180 ppm. To enter a new ice age, CO2 levels would need to drop below 220 ppm or so. That would take over a century even with a healthy pump down process. In fact, CO2 levels are not only continuing to increase, they are accelerating, now increasing at ~ 2 ppm per year. Even if that rate remains constant and does not accelerate (very unlikely), we'll hit 500 ppm in only 60 years. At that point, the oceans and their carbon pump down processes will fail, and we'll be stuck in "hot" mode for a long, long time.
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Finally, this point. Al Gore is wrong. The situation is worse than he says it is. His presentation and position are based on IPCC models and data, which have substantive flaws. Notably, the IPCC reports are based on data that is already a year old upon their publication. With a system that is changing as fast as climate and with our understanding changing equally rapidly, a year is equivalent to a decade in the mid 1900s. Furthermore, every government that participates in the IPCC report process has line item veto power: anything they don't like can be struck out of the report.
And worse, as Fred Pearce points out, the IPCC models virtually ignore non-linearity in the climate system, representing climate as something that changes gradually, in a linear fashion over long periods of time. It does not; it lurches, and the changes can be extremely violent, nearly beyond human comprehension because our civilization has never experienced such a shift ... before now. (Hence the title of Pearce's book:
With Speed and Violence.)
Gore is wrong in another important aspect as well. Climate change driven by heating is very likely unstoppable now. Even if we had the political and economic will to try - clearly we do not - we probably can't stop a large-scale climate event the likes of which hasn't occurred in 55 million years, since the
PETM. (More on that
here.) There are already too many positive feedback processes kicking in, and too many lags built into the system, including CO2 half life in the atmosphere and ocean inertia or committed heating that insure heating for a century even if greenhouse gases stabilize tomorrow.
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Finally, I got no stock in this argument. Believe what you want to. Ride a bike or drive a hummer. I don't care. It's your right to do as you wish. Each person is going to do as they see fit, and deal with the consequences. Ce la vi.
In a few decades, even though this will still be Earth, it's not going to look and feel like the Earth that we've known for the last 11,000 years since the beginning of the current interglacial (and civilization). It will likely collapse civilization as we've known it, "melting" away tropical forests and turning most of the continents to deserts (simple physics: above about 70*F, soil will not hold sufficient water to support forests without daily rainfall). Agricultural systems will fail; droughts will prevail.
Best we can do at this point is hunker down, batten the hatches & try to adapt.
I'd recommend being ready to move north. Far north. If not you, then your kids.
And carry guns.
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OK, that's a year's worth of post right there.
I've spent two hours on it.
I'm going to take a few days off.
Maybe I'll check back in later.
Maybe not. We'll see.
I don't expect this post will make any substantive difference in the argument here.
People are going to believe what they want to, regardless of reasoned arguments.
That's the reason that, like Iain and/or Nitrogen wrote, I don't spend too much time in forums like this arguing about this issue. It's just not worth it. The issue may be too complex to resolve in a discussion forum like this.
Still, it's fun sometimes to write an essay that addresses the issues. Gives me a good opportunity to see what I know and how well I can express it.
Ya'll have fun arguing.
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And happy new year.
Nem
