The myth of global warming

Tools    





Re: Forbes

Forbes is a reputable site. The interests of the site definitely lean toward a business lens, but that's less about POV bias and more attention bias.

And because there's a host of contributors, you're not going to be able to cleanly say any content on the site is "good" or "bad" or "biased" without reading it and considering the individual author's POV.

The Forbes article linked is pretty fair. Beyond thinking it fair, I'd go as far to endorse this particular section:

Would a lower level of consensus convince anyone concerned about anthropogenic global warming to abandon their views and advocate unrestricted burning of fossil fuels? I think not. Even the 2016 Cook paper says “From a broader perspective, it doesn’t matter if the consensus number is 90% or 100%.”

Despite the difficulty in defining a precise number and the opinion that the exact number is not important, 97% continues to be widely publicized and defended. One might ask why 97% is important. Perhaps it’s because 97% has marketing value. It sounds precise and says that only 3% disagree. By implication, that small number who disagree must be out of the mainstream: cranks, chronic naysayers, or shills of the fossil fuel industry.
I think focusing on one number in a discussion as large as climate change (where there are literally thousands of "numbers" to choose from) is a mistake via these types of discussions. Though I understand when politicians use figures like this they either 1) don't appreciate the details or 2) let their gamesmanship get the better of them. And I actually can't really blame them the way I don't really blame someone for writing a flashy yet misleading title to try to get people to read the article. The problem is when people just read the title or just quote the statistic.

I'm probably wading into a much more generalized debate with this, but I also do believe that a sizeable portion of the arguments against specific numbers and specific claims of overwhelming consensus are motivated less by truth seeking and more about delay tactics.

I'm always glad to see skepticism get popular, but it's pretty frustrating to see skepticism used as a cloak for willfully creating ignorance (dare I say it's politically correct?) rather than an honest commitment to verification. I say that less for those here and more for certain political skeptics. See: Agnotology.

I think I agree with you more than I don't agree with you PW. But I think we disagree on strategy. I believe that GW being driven by human activity is extremely compelling (requiring widespread conspiracy to make me doubt the level of consensus). 97% is an easy way to hook someone into a belief perhaps, but we can admit the specific number has faults (like most numbers) while retaining that consensus is very high. Specific numbers will not get a debate like this anywhere (or most debates), it's too complicated.

And more importantly, pinning hopes to specific numbers invites the other side to figure out problems with that one number. I'd rather skeptics/deniers have to debate the general idea of "consensus" than 97%. It's easy to nitpick 97%. It requires a broad argument to dispute consensus.

Or better yet, get down to the actual question. Is the level of scientific consensus robust enough, and the possible negative consequences serious enough, to compel widespread public action?

Honestly, for me, it's an easy yes.

True story, I got lazy and instead of going back to the first page to find the link to the forbes article, I googled "Forbes 97 climate change" and I found this article and I started to get upset because that article crosses over from misleading to dishonest.

I got partway through a condemnation for me to realize I had to be missing something as it was starting to seem really out of character, and indeed, I found the wrong one.



You're right Slappy, I wish I was a better writer. I'm incredibly emotional about all this and I don't 'let it out' very well most days. I have no real strategy. I went to I'm right dot com and found a really good study and ran with it. If the power stays on for the next decade or two I will endeavour to get better at making a case.

I apologize Chris, I had my adblocker on, I got on and am reading a bunch of good stuff by that same author right now, thanks for the links. I too don't care about "the number"... I guess if its 80% or 85% or whatever... I feel it really doesn't matter anymore. Anyway, more later, thanks you two, I really love reading your posts.
__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...



I've read his article twice now. I mean, its good, but its also just one man's opinion. If I put a PhD next to my name would my word be more or less reputable? So, you've proven to me that there isn't as high of a consensus. It really doesn't change anything however. Perhaps it will allow the op a few more years of blissful ignorance about the realities of climate change. But the way this thing is going it will be 99.9% before long and we can hem and haw about that last little .1 percent I guess. I thought this was good. I like articles where people are talking about what's going on right now. I think you can tell that even in the short time from last year to this year he's been doing a lot of reading about climate change. He's talking up a lot of things that there's good data for. And he even admits that he's still "somewhat skeptical of the degree of human contribution to climate change" Not for much longer I reckon.





I'm very disheartened by how often these arguments get kneecapped with vague references to shady people funding things, or what "science" or "scientists" say, or how something is "fake." At what point do we just talk frankly about facts and data, as opposed to spending a lot of time trying to paint various people or organizations as either dishonest, or trustworthy? It seems like the whole discussion is about trying to either discredit someone, or else establish them as an authority, at which point we can stop digging, stop looking at methodology, and no longer have to bother with refuting or defending things. But that's exactly how the extreme climate skeptics think! "Oh, so-and-so used a bogus number. Now I can ignore everything they say about the climate." It's not any better coming from the other direction.
Great quote. I highlighted the part I'd like to actually get to. I realize now that I entered this thread all wrong. The OP started a fraudulent thread to begin with and I was pretty pissed when I first came in here, I admit. I also suck at arguing, ask Omni... Anyway, my main problem here from the start is the claim that global warming is a myth. The op even states flat out: There is no evidence that the Earth has been warming in recent years.

So, I'd like it very much if we could agree on something. Isn't global warming real? I can provide TONS of data that shows the planet is warming. Can you provide evidence that it isn't happening? I'm not singling you out Chris, I just wanted to use your quote because you're right, we need to start talking about way more important stuff than whether or not global warming is actually happening.



Great quote. I highlighted the part I'd like to actually get to. I realize now that I entered this thread all wrong. The OP started a fraudulent thread to begin with and I was pretty pissed when I first came in here, I admit.
Yeah, I can tell this is a very important subject to you. You talk about it differently than most other things; there's a clear emotional aspect. Which I don't mean as a criticism, by the way, just a neutral observation.

I also suck at arguing, ask Omni


So, I'd like it very much if we could agree on something. Isn't global warming real? I can provide TONS of data that shows the planet is warming. Can you provide evidence that it isn't happening? I'm not singling you out Chris, I just wanted to use your quote because you're right, we need to start talking about way more important stuff than whether or not global warming is actually happening.
I don't feel singled out, and don't mind you singling me out, anyway.

I think the earth is generally getting warmer, yes.



I realize now that I entered this thread all wrong. The OP started a fraudulent thread to begin with and I was pretty pissed when I first came in here, I admit.
I missed this somehow, but I want to say I have a ton of respect for this. Because 1) I don't think it's unreasonable to be emotional about political topics, there's a lot that I disagree with on various sites including MoFo, but I typically don't respond unless it made me emotional. That includes this thread, I read the opening post, and got very emotional. In fact, you can usually tell when I've edited myself for emotional content, in my long post earlier there's literally a sentence that starts and just ends out of nowhere, no punctuation, no anything, just stops:

So depending on
I got emotional enough that I actually forgot both where I was going and to even go back and fix it at the time. And now I don't want to fix it, it's an honest point that I had more to say than I could even write down.

2) I don't think emotions are bad at ALL in arguments. It's just that they're not "good" either. You basically kind of have to ignore them in the context of most arguments (unless the arguments are related to the emotions, which they certainly can be). I have this very general grievance with internet arguments that some people seem to think they automatically win an argument if they get the other side to admit emotional, or some people think they win an argument because they feel emotionally about it. I don't think they're unimportant by any stretch (to my life, my inner world matters just about as much as the sensory world I interact with) but part of what makes them emotions is that they are somewhat subjective to the person, and that makes them not very useful for arguments about large public issues. But again, they also don't make you "wrong" (unless it totally clouds your ability to make the actual argument, but again that responsibility rests with the argument and not the emotional state).

3) I also don't think your posts relied too much on emotion, so I'm also impressed that you said something because it wasn't like you made a personal attack and really needed to apologize. Respect.


we need to start talking about way more important stuff than whether or not global warming is actually happening.
I tend to like to model things because it's just how I was taught, so I think this is sort of how I think of it (super duper simplification, don't treat this as actually trying to reduce this to "math"):

[Proper Strength of Response to Global Warming]= R = How much effort, money, time, brainpower, etc. we should commit toward action.
[Magnitude of Negative Consequences]= N = How bad would are the possible consequences of inaction toward GW.
[Probability of said Negative Consequences]= P = How likely are those negative consequences?

So: R = N x P

I don't think I'm breaking any ground here (I'm stealing the very most basic expected benefit calculation) and I think everyone likely has something very similar to this in their intuitive understanding of the issue already, but the reason I like to point it out is that it personally helps me categorize things related to discussions like this.

For example you have the really quick observations like there will be those that argue N is really not a big problem (they might even argue that N is actually a "good" thing, like those that argue opening up trade routes formerly blocked by ice is a greater benefit than the costs) and that it's being exaggerated by groups like the IPCC. But they may believe that yeah, global warming is happening, it's just not that bad.

Or some might argue that P is actually the issue, where sure, if global warming existed we'd expect huge negative consequences, but the probability isn't compelling enough (at least not yet). Even if the consequences of global warming are tremendous, if someone believes there's only a 1% chance of those types of consequences, they'll (properly) conclude they'd only spend 1% of those costs to try to avert it. So lets say if the costs of GW "could" be 10 trillion dollars (but a 1% chance) and the lost benefits of *not* using fossil fuel "are" 1 trillion dollars, they will (properly) conclude we should keep using fossil fuels.

Still guessing this is kinda "duh". But what isn't "duh" to me (and maybe I'm just dense) is when you get into what are the sub-functions of each portion of the argument.

For example if you drill down into each piece of that simple function:

On R: You probably aren't going to get someone to commit to a pure number on N, they'll probably give you a range. Same thing with P. So naturally, R will be proportionally "grey" to how wide those ranges are. And then we get into really interesting arguments, like how risk averse should a society be?

On N: You'll start to get into some of the direct controversy that we see around GW. Because N also includes parallel benefits (basically externalities) like the benefits of "less pollution". This is a HUGE driver in the debate, and personally really interesting to me because many people see what we would have to do to curb climate change and they will often align very well with environmentally conscious agenda so they add those benefits in to N because we wouldn't only get the benefits of avoiding GW, but also we'd ostensibly get the benefits of less pollutants. But obviously that also drives suspicion that environmentalists may exaggerate the possible consequences because it'd give additional incentive to solve some of their grievances.

Additionally, what I like about thinking about this piece separately is the ways in which it betrays the larger function, as even if P is low, the positive parallel benefits of less pollution will likely have a much higher percent chance of positive benefits. So the function at the top would more appropriately look more like R=NxP+(externalities), and then you should acknowledge that the externalities have their own benefit functions, and those have their ow.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

On P: We get into ideas on how one faithfully communicates probabilities. People are hopeless optimists sometimes (including myself). Example, if I'm playing Civ4 and I see my % chance of winning at an engagement at 70%, I will be unreasonably upset if I lose, even though I should lose 30% of the time, which is a lot still! I will make the tactical error where I will see two 70% chances and rely on both going my way when it's actually slightly more likely they won't go my way (51% chance I'll lose one) and I'll be in a huge bind because of it.

So let's say we could even confirm N's value to be 10 Trillion and P's value to be 70%. R's value would be 7 trillion. But in that scenario, it's completely possible that people at large would think, 30% chance it doesn't happen? My gut says that's a lot, I won't spend more than 1 trillion, even though that's an improper response. This has lead some public figures to really try to bolster a number that hits people in their gut (like 97% or 43%) rather than make an argument about costs because people are making gut decisions rather than cost decisions.

So really, what should public figures try to do? People seem to want to react with their gut to problems where it'd take a lot of effort to fix/prevent. If public figures try to use numbers that may be a bit softer than they seem to try to convince people's intuitions, in some ways those public figures believe they "know better" (which people hate). But! If the public figures try to have a conversation with the public that they really ought not to think with their intuitions on this, and here is all the info, they still think they "know better"!

I think what I'm trying to say is this. I think public figures need to be more honest, but that the public also needs to be more receptive to being wrong some of the time. On some level, we are trusting someone that knows better. On some level we are reacting with our intuitions.

I kinda let this one get away from me, but I think I'll stop with this: If the planet isn't warming due to human contributions, if we keep missing benchmarks for slowing CO2 and nothing actually happens and it turns out that it was exaggerated; I'll fully admit I was a fool, I was tricked, I was naive, I drank the kool-aid, etc.

^All this is also why I try to limit emotion and subjective thought sometimes. Because sticking to a specific argument keeps me to a structure, otherwise this mess is the result.

Also, I really think the way in which the public reacts to GW is fascinating, and that I hope someday we get to talk about the reaction to it in an academic way. The breadth of argument and interests at stake is unlike anything I've experienced, and the only comparison points that come to mind are 1) Nuclear Proliferation and 2) When to go to war.



Science is testable and repeatable. There's no room for opinion. The whole idea of "97 out of 100 scientists agree..." is ludicrous. If there is discussion/consternation then it's theory and not proof.

There is evidence of man made global warming.

Evidence <> Proof

Therefore, there is no proof of man made global warming (only evidence for it).

All of that aside, there is also evidence that litigation surrounding 'global warming' (the institution thereof) is a money grab. Especially since litigation affects about 4% of the global population (ie the US economy/taxpayers).

That point also aside, we should be smart enough to know that we shouldn't sh*t where we eat.



I have no real interest in having the debate, however, I thought this article was interesting.


America colonisation ‘cooled Earth's climate’

Colonisation of the Americas at the end of the 15th Century killed so many people, it disturbed Earth's climate.

That's the conclusion of scientists from University College London, UK.

The team says the disruption that followed European settlement led to a huge swathe of abandoned agricultural land being reclaimed by fast-growing trees and other vegetation.

This pulled down enough carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere to eventually chill the planet.

It's a cooling period often referred to in the history books as the "Little Ice Age" - a time when winters in Europe would see the Thames in London regularly freeze over.

"The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas led to the abandonment of enough cleared land that the resulting terrestrial carbon uptake had a detectable impact on both atmospheric CO₂ and global surface air temperatures," Alexander Koch and colleagues write in their paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews.


What does the study show?

The team reviewed all the population data it could find on how many people were living in the Americas prior to first contact with Europeans in 1492.

It then assessed how the numbers changed in following decades as the continents were ravaged by introduced disease (smallpox, measles, etc), warfare, slavery and societal collapse.

It's the UCL group's estimate that 60 million people were living across the Americas at the end of the 15th Century (about 10% of the world's total population), and that this was reduced to just five or six million within a hundred years.

The scientists calculated how much land previously cultivated by indigenous civilisations would have fallen into disuse, and what the impact would be if this ground was then repossessed by forest and savannah.

The area is in the order of 56 million hectares, close in size to a modern country like France.
This scale of regrowth is figured to have drawn down sufficient CO₂ that the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere eventually fell by 7-10ppm (that is 7-10 molecules of CO₂ in every one million molecules in the air).

"To put that in the modern context - we basically burn (fossil fuels) and produce about 3ppm per year. So, we're talking a large amount of carbon that's being sucked out of the atmosphere," explained co-author Prof Mark Maslin.

"There is a marked cooling around that time (1500s/1600s) which is called the Little Ice Age, and what's interesting is that we can see natural processes giving a little bit of cooling, but actually to get the full cooling - double the natural processes - you have to have this genocide-generated drop in CO₂."


Where's the support for the connection?

The drop in CO₂ at the time of the Great Dying is evident in the ice core records from Antarctica.

Air bubbles trapped in these frozen samples show a fall in their concentration of carbon dioxide.

The atomic composition of the gas also suggests strongly that the decline is being driven by land processes somewhere on Earth.

In addition, the UCL team says the story fits with the records of charcoal and pollen deposits in the Americas.

These show the sort of perturbation expected from a decline in the use of fire to manage land, and a big grow-back of natural vegetation.

Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at Reading University, was not involved in the study. He commented: "Scientists understand that the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by several factors - a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a series of large volcanic eruptions, changes in land use and a temporary decline in solar activity.

"This new study demonstrates that the drop in CO₂ is itself partly due the settlement of the Americas and resulting collapse of the indigenous population, allowing regrowth of natural vegetation. It demonstrates that human activities affected the climate well before the industrial revolution began."

Are there lessons for modern climate policy?

Co-author Dr Chris Brierley believes there is. He said the fall-out from the terrible population crash and re-wilding of the Americas illustrated the challenge faced by some global warming solutions.

"There is a lot of talk around 'negative emissions' approaches and using tree-planting to take CO₂ out of the atmosphere to mitigate climate change," he told BBC News.

"And what we see from this study is the scale of what's required, because the Great Dying resulted in an area the size of France being reforested and that gave us only a few ppm. This is useful; it shows us what reforestation can do. But at the same, that kind of reduction is worth perhaps just two years of fossil fuel emissions at the present rate."

The study also has a bearing on discussions about the creation of a new label to describe humanity's time - and impacts - on Earth.

This epoch would be called the Anthropocene, and there is currently a lively debate over how it should be recognised in the geological record.

Some researchers say it would be most obvious in deposits that record the great acceleration in industrial activity from the 1950s onwards.

But the UCL team argues that the Great Dying in the Americas shows there are significant human interactions that left a deep and indelible mark on the planet long before the mid-20th Century.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47063973
__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.



Science is testable and repeatable. There's no room for opinion. The whole idea of "97 out of 100 scientists agree..." is ludicrous. If there is discussion/consternation then it's theory and not proof.



Therefore, there is no proof of man made global warming (only evidence for it).

Funny you should dig this thread up HK. I was thinking about what Toose said awhile back and was sort of curious if he really believes this still. It's really not "97 out of a 100 scientists agree about global warming or man made climate change or whatever you want to call it. I know Toose isn't around much these days but I always meant to come back in here and ask him what his idea of a "consensus' is. And just what he meant by this paragraph. It sort of felt to me like you think there's still a lot of wiggle room or something. I don't know...



Thanks HK for posting that, it was a very interesting and sobering read. I had heard that the pre-western culture in south and central America was much vaster than archeologist had once thought with huge amount of land under cultivation.



Funny you should dig this thread up HK. I was thinking about what Toose said awhile back and was sort of curious if he really believes this still. It's really not "97 out of a 100 scientists agree about global warming or man made climate change or whatever you want to call it. I know Toose isn't around much these days but I always meant to come back in here and ask him what his idea of a "consensus' is. And just what he meant by this paragraph. It sort of felt to me like you think there's still a lot of wiggle room or something. I don't know...
Hi. I would probably back off a bit on my standard of proof from a few years ago. I used to be much more certain that there was black and white truth in the world - not so much anymore. What I meant to say is that, in science, a consensus shouldn’t be relevant. An experiment works or it doesn’t work regardless of one’s belief in wheter or not it should. I still believe that, I just think that a lot fewer things are able to be proven than I did before. Today I would say that global warming appears to be happening but the record of evidence doesn’t go back far enough in time to calculate global warming’s effects on weather etc as those would have to based, in part, on observation. Anyway, I think a move away from fossil fuels is inevitably in the cards. It’s untenable as populations grow across the world.



Hmm, well I'm not so sure you need to back off your standard of proof. Especially on this topic. Part of the reason why the number of scientists who agree on this man made climate change stuff is in large part because of that black and white truth that's slowly (ever so slowly) being revealed. If you look in to some of this stuff you can see patterns emerge pretty quickly. The science and all the studies about this stuff are pretty easy to read. The Media and politicians and just plain old average Joes however seem to really struggle with the concept that man, in fact can and is having a significant impact on this planet. We may even be killing ourselves off if you believe some of these guys. I can tell you one thing that is a fact for sure. Right now, Antarctica is melting 6 TIMES faster than it ever has in human history. Maybe that doesn't mean much to this planet in the grand scheme of things but it sure as hell does for us. Maybe Waterworld wasn't such a bad flick after all, eh?



The OP just made the post and ran away! Anyways all i can say is, it is real.
__________________
My Favorite Films



Right now a cold wave is going on actually . Global warming is just invention of the PC brigade .



Welcome to the human race...
It's as if the reason it's now referred to as climate change instead of global warming is to counter people who pull this kind of "how can it be global warming if it's cold" nonsense.
__________________
I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0



Right now a cold wave is going on actually . Global warming is just invention of the PC brigade .

Dont confuse weather with climate.



A system of cells interlinked
There has clearly been a change/increase in many of the factors that combine to create inclement/extreme weather. Hypothetically, let's say that 30 years ago there were 10 total possible factors (just throwing a number out for this example) that helped create crazy weather when several of them occurred simultaneously. Back then, let's posit that on average, 3 of these factors appeared together once a month somewhere in the world. Now, maybe 4 of these appear together twice a month, creating more intense situations more often, creating more potential for natural disasters etc.

This is kind of a sophomoric and simple example, but it gets the idea across.

Here, let's all go hang out in Hawaii while we think about it. It looks pretty nice over there right now:

__________________
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell