Update 16-02-11: a slightly revised version of this post is now on ThinkorSwim where a lively discussion ensues…
Update: Sept. 4th 2011- the post at ThinkorSwim was taken down, along with another interesting discussion- I have posted the comments from there here.
Last week’s BBC Horizon progamme Science under attack featured the new President of the Royal Society Professor Nurse investigate the mindset of those who would question the “scientific consensus” on climate change, including an interview with acerbic Telegraph journalist James Delingpole. (Available here on youtube if you are not in the UK.)
Poor old James. He certainly seemed to get as bit lost during the interview and was extremely upset with the Twitter comments of well-known skeptics Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh (see Singh’s response here).
The “scoop” in the interview comes when Nobel prize-winner Nurse tries to explain the concept of scientific consensus to Delingpole, using the analogy of consensus in cancer treatments: Delingpole faltered, looked rather shocked like he had never thought of that before, and objected that the analogy was unfair. Someone in his position should certainly have been used to debating such points; Nurse gave him the perfect opportunity to argue that there is no consensus, but he flumped it.
Or he could have argued that the analogy Nurse makes to cancer cures and quack medicine is inappropriate, as has climate skeptic Ben Pile on Climate Resistance:
the climate is not like the human body; climate change is not like cancer; climate scientists are not like oncologists; and climate science research institutions are not like hospitals. But worse is the fact that Nurse’s thought experiment defeats its purpose. He’s asking us to believe that there has been an attack on science, and that trust in science is being eroded. But if we presume that Delingpole is forced by the analogy to accept that he should trust the consensus formed by scientists, we must conclude that science is not under attack. An ‘attack on science’ would reject both climate change and medicine.
However, questioning the consensus on climate science is not a strong position to maintain for a journalist like Delingpole who goes on in the interview to freely admits he does not read the peer-reviewed science. One might justifiably have doubts and be unsure of the details, and even suspect the possibility of a global conspiracy- as Delingpole apparently does. But to be as sure, certain or even as confident as he appears to be that there is no real consensus in science on climate change, and that there is a high level of certainty to the contrary is to play loser. If you are not a scientist, and are not reading the science yourself I dont see you have much option to accept the “consensus” view and let the scientific process- which has been so successful in general- do its thing.
On the other hand, the comparison made in the documentary with AIDS and GE crops is very interesting (where can I get some of those blight-free GE potatoes?! They looked fantastic!!) because many in the environmental movement who accept the consensus on climate change are likely to think of GE crops as a conspiracy by evil corporations and as being “unnatural” (a meaningless concept in scientific terms). So there are indeed good reasons to be skeptical of the motivations and ideologies of some climate activists, but this needs to be separated from the actual science.
But this isn’t just about climate change, but also of concern to the skeptics community, which is of necessity based upon science. Thus, skeptics generally if not always come from the scientific view on any given topic, and tackle pseudo-science and logical fallacies.
What does it mean to be “skeptical” in a field as politically charged as climate change? Have climate “sceptics” expropriated the term “skeptic” for their own ends?
Massimo Pigliucci thought so when he took leading skeptic James Randi to task for falling for some logical fallacies more typical of homeopaths: for example, that “science has been wrong before” and so might be wrong about climate change as well.
A few years ago Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society, changed his stance on climate change. Perhaps oddly however, rather than quoting the peer reviewed science and the consensus amongst scientists, he refers to four books that convinced him, including Jared Diamond’s Collapse which isn’t about AGW at all; and Al Gore’sAn Inconvenient Truth.
Gore is one of the most influential and controversial figures in the climate change world, vilified by skeptics who ask why he would build a mansion by the seaside in Florida if he is so worried about rising sea levels.
Gore’s film was in fact found to contain several scientific errors by a London high court after a parent took their child’s school to court for repeatedly showing the film, which had been distributed by the government to all secondary schools in England and Wales.
One particular exaggeration is the section on sea level rise. This is an important part of the film as computer graphics showing various parts of the planet being inundated and drowned by the sea are accompanied by Gore’s solemn voice-over- “millions of people will lose their homes… even the site of the World Trade Center Memorial will be under water…” Sea level rise of several meters will happen, we are told “if the Greenland Ice Sheet melts”- what we are not told is that this is something that would take thousands of years to take place, not decades as implied in the film.
It seems that the likely rate of melt in Greenland is one of the areas of uncertainty. When I was giving presentations on climate change a few years ago I used a slide of the famous photo dramatically showing melt water pouring down through a crevasse all the way to the rock beneath where it was believed it would lubricate the entire ice sheet which could slip towards the sea and greatly accelerate melting.
However a recent study suggests otherwise:
“The Greenland ice sheet is safer than we thought,” said Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, who led the research published tomorrow in Nature…[Shepherd's team] discovered that, above a certain threshold, the slipping began to slow. On-the-ground studies and work done on alpine glaciers suggest that higher volumes of meltwater form distinct channels under the ice, draining the water more efficiently and reducing the formation of a lubricating film.
Watching Gore’s film again now I have little patience for those who try to downplay the exaggeration or defend it- the scene is carefully staged for maximum effect, doom-mongering pure and simple.
Remarkably, the review by Eric Steig, one of the scientists at the leading climate science blog Real Climate, ignores this point, concluding:
The small errors don’t detract from Gore’s main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change.
which is odd because where Gore’s film really falls flat is in his list of banal changes that he feels we need to make to avert catastrophe such as changing our lightbulbs. First he misrepresents the science by claiming we are facing near certain doom, then he completely downplays the kind of changes we would have to make to prevent catastrophe if we accept the worst case scenario.
Philosophy Professor Pigliucci devotes a chapter of his recent book Nonsense on Stilts to climate change, in which he compares from a “skeptics” point of view Gore with Bjorn Lomborg. The book is mainly a perfectly decent book on skepticism and critical thinking applied to various topics, but he come seriously unstuck in this chapter.
His first point is that the IPCC ascribe 90% certainty that “human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet’s surface” and then goes on to point out that if you thought there was a 90% chance or even much less of your house being wiped out by a storm you would be very concerned- “and yet, as we shall see, there are people who have written very large volumes on climate change and are very much in a position to influence public opinion and policies who quibble on percentages and the exact range of estimates…”
But this is just apples and oranges. The 90% certainty of human’s effect on warming does not translate into 90% certainty of disaster- as Matt Ridley points out. The actual effects of climate change, what will happen in the future depending on a range of scenarios, and what is the best way to respond to the issue are very different things from the consensus that humans are warming the planet. The question remains for me: how much of the proposed draconian and unrealistic cuts to CO2 emissions that are proposed are essentially a function of the precautionary principle, potentially destroying our economies now in order to hedge against outlier worst-case scenarios?
He then goes on to explore the issue of skepticism and climate change by comparing and contrasting two books: Gore’s and Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist.
He finds much to critique about Lomborg, not least the fact that The Skeptical Environmentalist is “a ponderous book, at 515 pages and a whopping 2.930 endnotes!”- something he alludes to twice more in just a handful of pages, as if that in itself is enough to discredit the content.
He then goes on to point out that “Lomborg is not a climate scientist. In the preface of the book he clearly says so: ‘I am not myself an expert as regards environmental problems.’ Why then attempt to write a scholarly book about the ‘true’ state of the environment, one might wonder?”
But Lomborg is a political scientist with expertise in economics, which is really what the book is about; Gore on the other hand has no technical expertise at all yet Puggliucci does not ask the same rhetorical question of Gore. Again, he complains that Lomborg’s book is not peer-reviewed; neither is Gore’s of course, but Pigliucci finds “the American sticks pretty much to the facts and to reasonable interpretations (with a couple of exceptions)”; but the complete lack of references in Gore’s book makes it “little more than a long, and largely uninformative slideshow” and sums up the two books:
while Lomborg misinforms his readers, Gore gives them very little valuable information to go on, with the result that two of the most talked about books on the environment of the last several years are most decidedly no starters when it comes to learning either facts or (reasoned) opinions about global warming
But while Pigliucci ignores the scientific critiques of Gore’s scare-mongering as given in the court judgment above, and the way it was used politically by being sent into every school in the country, he goes on to quote the scientific opinions of Lomborg, such as Michael Grubb, “in contrast to Lomborg, a climate scientist” who wrote in Science “I can only describe his [Lomborg's] analysis of climate change as at best inconsequential… He shows no appreciation for the practical or moral dimensions of impacts on potentially billions of people”.
I would beg to differ here- Grubb misrepresents Lomborg who tries to make the case that the costs of cutting emissions as proposed by Kyoto may cause more harm than climate change. I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that the expertise of a climate change scientist like Grubb does not necessarily extend to issues around “practical and moral implications”- leastwise, no more than that of a social scientist like Lomborg.
Other scientific criticisms came from Pimm and Harvey, former colleagus of Pigliucci, who went so far as to start a website called Anti-Lomborg- surely stepping seriously beyond what could be called scientific objectivity and into the world of ideologically motivated politics.
Some commentary on Lomborg can be found here, claiming that “the entire eleven-page Scientific American treatment of Lomborg specified only nine factual errors: ‘Seven of these melt away upon inspection.’ “
Pigliucci makes some quite pertinent critiques of Lomborg, including his view of the use of models which seems false, but does so in a conspiratorial tone: the suggestion is not far from being made that Lomborg is an elaborate fraud, adept at “sudden switches of focus, apt to confuse the reader”. I think this is implausible, or at least no more true than of Gore; Lomborg should be tackled on his own terms.
Pigliucci makes much of Lomborg’s focus on economics, and this is really where the fault-line lies: Pigliucci sees the historic focus on economics as the cause of the problem in the first place; Lomborg sees growth, technological progress as the way of dealing with potential problems like climate change, as well as all the other problems we have anyway of hunger, poverty and pollution.
Most environmentalists would, I think find Lomborg’s assertion that we are likely to be many times wealthier by 2100 than we are today- both the developing world and the developed- incredible and therefore the rest of his case irrelevant, but how many realize that continual economic growth is the assumption made also by all the IPCC scenarios? If you strongly believe that the world is coming to an end anyway because of human destruction of the environment, drastic climate change-motivated reductions in fossil fuel use will clearly come as a handy way of achieving one’s goals. I dont think however that you can really argue there is a scientific consensus around this.
It seems to me that at some point the science ends and there is a cross-over into politics and ideology, and this is why Lomborg is important because he takes the conversation away from the purely technical issues of CO2 and emissions into what is the most cost-effective response. He could be wrong in his conclusions- I dont know. Pigliucci clearly thinks he is wrong, but his own ideology comes through most strikingly when he defends Gore against the charge of hypocrisy for his high-energy lifestyle while telling the rest of us we must cut back on everything to save the planet: “Gore pays for offsets to his travels in order to achieve a zero-carbon balance, just as he encourages the readers of An Inconvenient Truth to do.”
This is surely a joke. The idea of offsetting is absurd, at least on an individual basis for the rich, given the narrative Gore has created of saving the planet at all costs. Pigliucci misses here how such an approach will inevitably feed the suspicions that this whole climate change thing is really a thinly veiled front for furthering the pre-existing environmental agenda of controlling people’s personal lifestyles. It is that much more than attempts by Lomborg or other, more extreme skeptics such as Monkton to “confuse the public” that is leading the climate change movement to lose ground.
Not quite sure what you’re getting at here, Graham. Is your point that the debate on climate change is hopelessly tangled? If so then I’m with you on that.
I first heard about climate change in about 1989-90 as part of an undergraduate science degree, and we were taught, as a well established fact, that adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would result in a warmer planet. After all, the existence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the reason why the Earth’s average surface temperature is higher than the moon’s, which receives the same amount of solar energy; and also the reason why the temperature drops as you go up a mountain. What’s to be skeptical about?
Since then there’s been no fundamental changes in basic physics, so far as I’m aware. I still get warmer in bed when I put another blanket over myself, as well. It follows that anyone who claims to not believe in anthropogenic climate change (by the way, even Bjorn Lomborg has now shifted his position on this – which doesn’t alter the fact that he’s still a self-publicist extraordinaire) is either ignorant, deluded or mendacious. It should, however, come as no surprise that these three groups combine to form a powerful lobby which is able to effectively tie the debate up in knots.
Hi Robert “even Bjorn Lomborg has now shifted his position on this” Many critics of Lomborg claim he has changed his position on AGW but both his books clearly state he accepts it; I see no evidence of him having changed his fundamental view that AGW is real and is a serious problem and needs to be adressed. If you think he has maybe you could quote his words on this.
“which doesn’t alter the fact that he’s still a self-publicist extraordinaire” which is hardly relevant- but in any case might also apply to Gore, no?
Hi Graham,
Gore a self-publicist – well yes, he’s a politician, it goes with the job… Lomborg is supposed to be an academic, I guess, and they’re allegedly meant to be self-effacing. But that’s merely a snide aside and hardly relevant as you say.
As to whether he’s changed his position about climate change, if you’ve actually read his books, you have the better of me, who’s merely going on hearsay… I was under the impression that in “The Skeptical Environmentalist” he had actually called into doubt the reality of anthropogenic climate change, rather than merely questioning its high priority as a global issue. Serve me right for listening to hearsay.
Robert, Your fallacy is confusing GHG theory with apocalyptic clap trap from alarmists.
Read your piece on “ThinkorSwim”, wanted to comment there but after you – the author of the original piece – were insulted as a troll, I followed you here instead. Hope you don’t mind. (Had a similar experience on outing myself as a skeptic on an environmentally friendly building forum last year. As if I would research building materials, window companies and learn how to calculate u-values for over a year just so I could spread “disinformation” once AGW came up.)
Found your article interesting, well argued and quite to the point of my problems with the more fervent supporters of (catastrophic) AGW. Claptrap on the other side is an evil, claptrap on their own side is forgiveable as the intentions are pure.
To me outcome is the only important issue. Surely rubbish is rubbish, whatever the intentions behind it. I am particularly aggrieved at the perceived need to dumb down the science for the public but, sadly, climate change is hardly the only area where this is done.
Btw, if you research Dansgaard-Oeschger events you could of course find a lot of arguments against the Royal Society’s latest Doom and Gloom, “4 degrees rise in 50 years” scenario as thrown at you by John, but I doubt it would make any difference. Forgive me if you know about this already, but it might be informative to your readers all the same.
In short, Dansgaard-Oeschger events are considered to be the most important signal of short term (i.e less than 1000 years) climate change in the last 100K years or so. They are characterized by a dramatic rise of temperature in Greenland (one shows an 10K rise over just 3 years, but usually it took a few decades), followed by a much slower cooling over a few hundred years. They used to be considered merely localised events, significant only for Greenland, but are now widely accepted to reflect global warming events with smaller increases in temperature. In a bi-polar seesaw effect, Antarctica usually moved in the opposite direction but with a much lower amplitude. Mann et all. know of these events of course, some of the most fervent AGW scientists having published on the subject, but still they persist with the “unprecedented warming” mantra. It’s not, it’s not even as dramatic as the planet has seen before, but unless you read the actual papers you wouldn’t know about it.
It was a no-brainer to me to hear Al Gore talk about how we are damaging the planet. I had seen it growing up in my region, my father having long since taught me that we were all responsible and capable to protect the planet in a thousand small ways. But while I still consider myself an environmentalist, I no longer believe in catastrophic AGW. Once I started reading the actual research papers, I could only conclude that the certainty confidently stated in the press is limited to just a few facts and uncertainty prevails over pretty much everything beyond the basics. What an eye opener that was!
I have come to fear that the global warming movement might turn out to be the biggest liability to the environmental cause, but still I am hoping that maybe some good might come of it after all.
Hi Mae Thanks for your comment, very interesting. It’s good to be back home after a few days amongst the zealots! Know I didnt know about the Dansgaard-Oeschger events, thanks for that. I find the technical scientific arguments difficult to press, as a non-scientist- it is just too easy to come up against opposing technical arguments. Instead, I try to focus on inconsistencies in people’s arguments. that’s why I was quite shocked when I realized just how biased Gore’s film was- and even more so having seen the responses from ToS. More than anything so far this has confirmed for me that, whatever about the science, many activists are indeed religious in their beliefs around AGW. Funnily enough I was actually just reading this site as your comment came through: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
I’m going to write a commentary to the whole experience at ToS in my next post so thanks for checking in!
@hunter: Maybe so. Perhaps you’d like to tell me your magic formula to distinguish science from claptrap. Personally I tend to go on basic accepted scientific principles and on what the majority of scientists in the field say.
@graham: Read your piece and the heated debate on ThinkorSwim.
I think there are two different levels of “skepticism” involved here.
Being skeptical about what (if anything) ought to be done about climate change is one thing. If that’s being a “climate skeptic” you can count me as one; I don’t believe that the solutions being sold by the media and mainstream politics (Kyoto or its successors, cutting personal emissions, carbon offsetting) are going to work. You might argue, as per Lomborg, that it’s a much lower priority than other problems. That’s a political and economic debate where everyone can express an opinion.
Being skeptical about whether anthropogenic climate change exists is another thing altogether. According to basic physics there’s really no reason a priori to doubt that human emissions of greenhouse gases will cause global warming. Sure, there is doubt as to exactly what the likely effects are (and how can we know the answer for sure, if we can’t even predict the weather next month?) But to be skeptical about the very existence of anthropogenic climate change is simply to deny the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence. OK, this “could” be wrong, just as I “could” win the lottery. But don’t bet your planet on it!
@Robert I think we basically agree- the question is, what exactly DOES the science say? While as Lomborg explicitly states, the idea that CO2 has a warming effect is “uncontroversial” the alarmist view expressed on SinkorSwim seems to claim that specific policy recommendations follow in a linear fashion straight from the science. I dont believe that the “science is settled” for example that if we dont cut emissions by 50-80% by 2050 that civilization is doomed, and scientists who claim that this is the case are arguably well outside their field of expertise. The really odd thing about the SinkorSwim experience is that some alarmists simply dont believe Lomborg when he- or I- says we accept the science- for them, the science and the policy are one and the same thing, and this is the crux of the matter I think.
Robert, Not believing in magic, I have no magic formula ;^). But here are some instructive historical examples of separating science from claptrap: 1) invocation of an apocalypse 2) the confusion of basic science with specific policy 3) the extrapolation of linear predictions from non-linear processes. 4) breathless declarations that anything that happens is proof of the basic claim. 5) historical illiteracy. An historical example of claptrap: Evolution is real. Eugenics, which grew from a mixture of evolution and late 19th century progressive intellectual prejudices, was claptrap. CO2 is a ghg. So what? Even if it is the primary driver of today’s cliamte, where the climate is being driven to is no place is not been in terms of extreme weather in the historical past.
Let me just add that I disagree completely with Lomborg that climate change isn’t a high priority. It’s potentially very important indeed, but it’s so difficult to deal with that understandably plenty of people, including him, would prefer to pretend that it either doesn’t exist or isn’t a serious matter.
Robert if ‘climate change’ (by which I believe you are meaning ‘dangerous changes in the climate caused by CO2) is so potentially dangerous, why are the signs of it indistinguishable from normal weather.? I think a way to look at this that will be better for all us is to ask if CO2 is actually making the climate do anything unusual or dangerous?
@Robert With respect Robert, you already have indicated that you havnt read Lomborg- better to quote him direct because he is so often misrepresented. “Let me just add that I disagree completely with Lomborg that climate change isn’t a high priority.” I think he does ascribe it a high priority- but not as high as several other things such as AIDS poverty and hunger which are manifestly more pressing- but his real point of disagreement is that the methods proposed to tackle it (CO2 reductions) are the wrong ones, they won’t (and can’t) work and will make other problems worse. This is backed up with voluminous data and IMHO reasoned arguments.
Many others agree- see from this site: http://tiny.cc/to7zg
“Skepticism about climate science has been motivated by concerns about the remedies that greens have proposed. The solution is not more climate science but rather a different set of remedies.”
The basic physics that a doubling of CO2 equates with a 1 degree warming is not controversial- but it is becoming clear to me that the science itself just does not justify the alarmist calls for drastic CO2 cuts which are motivated much more by an anti-modern/ anti-technology ideology/religion.
Interesting reading again Graham. Picking out hunters point as I think it points to the elephant in the room.
“the confusion of basic science with specific policy”
It seems AGW has become another stick that those with some pre-existing policies beat the rest of us with to get what they want. The policies are many and sometimes contradictory, AGW and the science behind it have just become the latest tool to try and achieve these aims. We shouldn’t however dismiss the science just because the optimum population trust, back to the land types or the neo-ludites pick from it selectively. Those of us with a liberal view also shouldn’t simply go along with the alarmists putting this one problem before all others just to avoid being associated with those on the extreme on the other side many of whom are even less appealing.
As always the truth and the proper action is probably somewhere in the middle and those in the AGW alarmist camp are equally as guilty as those who will deny that we can have any impact on the climate in creating a situation where rational debate becomes almost impossible.
Anyone exploring the internet looking for truth will stumble into a blog or forum and if they have the strength to de-lurk the first time they as a question the locals try and figure out which tribe they are in. The question or answer doesn’t really matter only the position and belief.
It reminds me of a certain pub in Scotland (one of many like it).
The first question “who do you support” (no clue in the answer), the second “which school did you go to” (still no clue), as patience wears thin “so are you a protestant or catholic. In my case the answer was atheist, “so was your father a protestant or catholic”…
We don’t matter, the issues don’t matter, putting AGW into a bigger picture of environmental destruction, improvements in living standards and changes in patterns of poverty don’t matter all that matters is which tribe are you in.
By the way in the pub I mentioned being an atheist was really far worse for the tribe than being a catholic, at least they knew why they hated catholics (they were catholic), they had to think of a reason to hate me. The worst thing you can do to someone who has adopted a tribal position is ask them to think unfortunately we seem to be hard wired this way. It’s so much easier than actually trying to think through problems and it works well in day to day activities. I don’t have time to think through the issues I have every day at work but my biases come into play and I only think “do I have a reference for this” the rest happens somewhere else in my brain. The problem comes when we try to handle the big picture stuff in the same way.
Thanks again
@graham: Umm, actually no, I still haven’t read Lomborg (but there’s no reason I couldn’t have read him since my previous comment, is there?) However, I did watch his TED video, so I do know what I’m talking about. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html
He and his colleagues in the Copenhagen Consensus believe in continuous, exponential economic growth. He outright says that everyone in the world will be very wealthy in 2100 – never mind the physical resource limitations that make this impossible. Naturally, any problem with a long time horizon (such as climate change) becomes insignificant when you look at it through those particular back-to-front binoculars.
Actually, I did come out with some respect for his methods – and agreed with many of his conclusions – it’s just that his basic assumptions are, to me, absurd.
“The basic physics that a doubling of CO2 equates with a 1 degree warming is not controversial” – Like hell it isn’t. Where does that 1 degree figure come from?? The IPCC uses a range of 1.5C to 4.5C with a probable figure in the range of 3C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity
Graham, I’ve been visiting and commenting on your blog for a while because I thought that you were valiantly trying to bring rationality and skepticism into the permaculture movement, where, let’s face it, it is sorely needed. But now, to be honest, I am starting to think that your skepticism has moved into denialism. If so, this is where I get off the Zone5 tour bus.
@hunter: “if ‘climate change’ (by which I believe you are meaning ‘dangerous changes in the climate caused by CO2) is so potentially dangerous, why are the signs of it indistinguishable from normal weather.?”
They are not indistinguishable, though they aren’t immediately obvious to the casual observer either. For example, in northern Spain where I live, the temperature since 1973 has been rising, on average, about 0.3 degrees per decade. (That’s based on figures compiled from six different weather stations across the region.) Not the sort of change you could notice by going outside and sticking your finger in the air, is it? But if it carried on like that, with no acceleration (despite rising CO2 levels), then by 2050 we’re looking at an overall rise of 2.4 degrees since 1970. Which is a really significant change in my lifetime – almost the difference between the west of Ireland and here. And when you’re trying to decide what kind of trees to plant for your children (like I am), it’s something you need to know about.
@dode: Yes, a very good point. I admit I had to hold my nose in order to watch Lomborg’s talk – not because he’s a “global warming skeptic” (he may or may not be, depending on what kind of skepticism you’re talking about) but because he’s a conventional (cornucopian) economist, a tribe I have no time for. (Also an annoyingly self-important man, if you ask me.)
But be careful of equating tribe with belief system. I’d be readily identifiable as a member of a “tribe” often called permaculturists – though I prefer to call myself an ecological designer since I don’t subscribe to a particular school of design. But I’m a scientist by training and an atheist/anarchist/Taoist by conviction (try sorting that one out) whereas a lot of the people involved in this movement (at least round where I live), I’m sad to say, are new-age hippy types who believe in The Secret, planting by the moon and dowsing. But they’re the ones planting organic gardens and building sustainable housing, so I’m with them. Better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than the wrong thing for the right reason, I guess.
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p>@Robert:
Yes indeed you may well have read Lomborg since your last comment- but if you had, I dont think you would be continuing to misunderstand him:
“He and his colleagues in the Copenhagen Consensus believe in continuous, exponential economic growth.” So does the IPCC- again, if you look at the discussion on ThinkorSwim under this post you will see i tried to raise this very issue with John Gibbons who made exactly the same point that you make (and I’m pretty sure Gibbons hasnt read Lomborg either, though he spends a lot of time calling him a denier) :
“He outright says that everyone in the world will be very wealthy in 2100 – never mind the physical resource limitations that make this impossible.”
Yes that is what many environmentalists say, peak-oilers etc (of whom i was one!) but where is the peer-reviewed science to back it up? Growth does not depend only on physical resources but also on innovation and technology. In your opinion where do the majority of climate scientists stand on this- do they support the IPCC position that growth will continue? If your opinion of Lomborg is colored by his belief in continued growth, why is your opinion of the IPCC not colored in the same way- all Lomborg does is use the IPCC projections and work with them (which you would know if you had read his book
)
““The basic physics that a doubling of CO2 equates with a 1 degree warming is not controversial” – Like hell it isn’t. Where does that 1 degree figure come from?? The IPCC uses a range of 1.5C to 4.5C with a probable figure in the range of 3C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity“
That is including feedbacks based on IPCC models of (to stress this point again) different rates of continued economic growth; look further down the same page that you yourself linked to (my emphasis):
“”Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 (which amounts to a forcing of 3.7 W/m2) would result in 1°C global warming, which is easy to calculate and is undisputed. The remaining uncertainty is due entirely to feedbacks in the system, namely, the water vapor feedback, the ice-albedo feedback, the cloud feedback, and the lapse rate feedback”;[6] addition of these feedbacks leads to a value of approximately 3 °C.”
So the assumptions about how much CO2 will increase depends on your assumptions about economic growth; like most climate activists I have spoken to on this, you seem to accept the likelihood of warming but reject the likelihood economic growth that will cause this warming! However, the feedbacks are actually much more uncertain than policy makers and activists would have us believe- without going into it all here, I think the skeptics have a point here: there isnt really a consensus, there are far too many unknowns and uncertainties, while the models depend on assumptions. So then we are right back at the Precautionary Principle.
Lomborg has always believed that CO2 is a ghg and it is effecting the world climate. The question is to what extent and what can be done about it that would me a difference and not bankrupt us or make things otherwise worse. Since history shows a great deal of wealth growth around the world for many centuries, I do not think it is radical to project that wealth will continue to grow. I am unaware of anyone outside a script writer for Star Trek claiming everyone in the world would be rich by a date in the future. Saying that the world will be much richer is not the same as saying everyone will be rich. Adaptation has served us very well and as soon as we decide to adapt to climate we will do fine. As long as we flatter ourselves- at great cost in cash and opportunity- that we are going to manage the climate by controlling CO2, we will not be adaptin as well as we should. As the Australians in Queensland learned recently.
@Robert – on tribe vs belief system – I understand the point but think maybe we have increasing moved from community of place (tribe) to community interest (share or at least overlapping belief systems). You are right though I’m being too general and need to think longer on this. Doing the right things for the wrong reason doesn’t make it any easier to have a rational discussion on other things we should or shouldn’t be doing.
@Graham: You seem to muddle several separate issues: future economic growth being one, likely CO2 emissions another, and the direct and indirect response of the climate to CO2 emissions another.
On the third point, which is the only one related to actual climate science rather than politics and economics: Your bald statement “The basic physics that a doubling of CO2 equates with a 1 degree warming is not controversial” without any qualification was misleading. It implies you think that a probable value for overall warming due to feedbacks, over and above that 1 degree figure, is zero. It’s a mistake to value a factor as zero just because you don’t have a high confidence in estimations of its value. Unless you can present anything better, you should stick with the IPCC figures.
On the second: There is no need for CO2 emissions to rise (concomitant with future fossil-fuel-based economic growth) in order to cause warming. We’re already destined (it’s virtually a physical certainty, I believe) to substantial warming.
On the first: You seem to think that the IPCC consists of only climate scientists! No, there are plenty of economists in there as well. They’re the ones who make the economic projections. I think recent financial history is ample to demonstrate why it is right to be skeptical of what economists say, and justifies me in not wasting more time than necessary reading the predictions of conventional economists.
No, I don’t believe in consistent future economic growth. I actually think that much of the alleged economic growth in the recent past was fictional, consisting of money not backed up by anything of real value. Much of the growth that has taken place was due to increased consumption of fossil fuels, especially oil, which sometime soon will start to peak if it hasn’t already. To be sure, not all economic growth is based on cheap oil, but it underlies everything. (You know the script, I’m sure.)
@hunter: I guess it all depends on what you mean by wealth. I differ greatly in this from mainstream economists, who by and large seem to equate wealth with money and assign zero value to things that can’t readily be bought and sold. I don’t think real wealth can grow exponentially because once you have enough to eat and a decent place to live, health care and social security, I don’t think additional economic growth adds to real wealth.
But, absolutely yes, we do need to adapt. But adapt to what? Should we be planning for 2 degrees or 4 degrees of warming? Clearly, 2 degrees is a lot more manageable. I hope to hell we don’t get 4 degrees in my lifetime or that of my kids. But people who continue to challenge, without any evidence, the basic science of climate change, are making it that much harder for us to start the real debate which should be about what measures should be taken in order to make sure that we don’t go beyond 2 degrees.
@dode: No, it certainly doesn’t make it any easier to have a rational discussion. Tell me about it!
It suggests that you think (based on what evidence?) that a probable value for overall feedbacks over and above that basic 1 degree figure is zero.
Economists and climate scientists are two entirely separate groups. Why should climate scientists have an opinion of economic growth (except is their capacity as citizens)
@Robert I assure you the muddle is entirely yours. You seem unable to distinguish between the “basic science of climate change” and your own political ideology. Dont worry, you are not alone in this!
“Your bald statement “The basic physics that a doubling of CO2 equates with a 1 degree warming is not controversial” without any qualification was misleading. It implies you think that a probable value for overall warming due to feedbacks, over and above that 1 degree figure, is zero.”
It implies nothing, but merely means what it, says nothing more and nothing less. It’s not me who is making assumptions, but your good self. The doubling of CO2 leading to a 1 degree increase in temperature is all that constitutes the “basic science of climate change”; beyond that we just do not know, and all the educated guesses made by the IPCC with computer models will not provide that surety. The feedbacks could be high or they could be low; we do not know and there is certainly not a scientific consensus on this, nor on whether the climate change is likely to be dangerous, much less on what if anything we should do about it. You are of course aware of the rather large body of debates on the blogs about “consensus” etc, so Im sure we dont need to quibble about it here, though I intend to blog about it in future.
“There is no need for CO2 emissions to rise (concomitant with future fossil-fuel-based economic growth) in order to cause warming. We’re already destined (it’s virtually a physical certainty, I believe) to substantial warming.”
Interesting! Because that is not what the IPCC thinks- but hey, what do they know? The IPCC give a range of temperature increase from 0.9- 2.9 degrees if CO2 levels are held at 2000 levels. (which obviously they have not been). This is a big range (though not nearly as big as the full range for all scenarios)- basically, they dont know. Actually this last sentence of yours is a good example of how easy it is to start by appealing to the science and then surreptitiously move further and further away from it. There is no certainty, nor is there a consensus on this; “substantial” is a weasel word that sounds scary but is actually your own personal opinion.
“You seem to think that the IPCC consists of only climate scientists! No, there are plenty of economists in there as well. They’re the ones who make the economic projections. I think recent financial history is ample to demonstrate why it is right to be skeptical of what economists say, and justifies me in not wasting more time than necessary reading the predictions of conventional economists.”
Now this is interesting, and possibly original. You accept the “science” of the IPCC but reject the economics. So where does your IPCC range of “1.5C to 4.5C with a probable figure in the range of 3C” come from? Not from zero growth surely. And again, it also depends on feedbacks, which could be negative even. We just dont know. But the more interesting question is, is the IPCC a political/economic organization or a scientific one? You are of course well up to date with all the issues about who writes the Summary for Policy Makers, who reads it and how far it may have wandered from the scientific viewpoints -just as some of your own comments have wandered.
“Economists and climate scientists are two entirely separate groups. Why should climate scientists have an opinion of economic growth (except is their capacity as citizens)”
well within the IPCC (which you hold so much faith in) the scientists work together with the economists and the scenarios depend on different projections of economic growth. There is no “Peak Oil/Collapse?Energy Descent” scenario considered- why not? What would the temperature be likely to do in such a scenario- your own scenario? More scary or less? There seems an obvious contradiction in your position.
Why do you care anyway what I or anyone else says about climate change if you only pursue a personal survivalist solution (obviously not open to the vast majority) and reject any attempt or even possibility of continual growth and innovation and technological solutions (including in energy- nuclear, decarbonising through substitution with gas etc.)?
The problem is Robert that when ideologues like you bandy about inflammatory accusations such as “denier” you are talking about ideological/political beliefs, not science. And you really do need to figure out the difference if you are to stand by such ad hominem attacks, because the whole “the science is settled and anyone who questions this is a denier” tactic has nothing to do with science and a lot more to do with religion.
@Graham: Thanks for making your position clear. Clear as in “as clear as mud”, I mean. I won’t bother with this timewasting anymore. You can go off and feel as if you’ve won, if you want.
You know nothing about me if you think I’m following a personal survivalist solution. Read my website if you actually care. Thanks for the debate, however fruitless, and goodbye.
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