US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1118

Making sense of this tiresome issue requires stepping back for the long view. If you strip away all of the noise from smaller scientific controversies that clutter the debate—arctic ice, extreme weather events, droughts, and so forth—the central issue is climate sensitivity: How much will average global temperature increase from adding a given level of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere? The most recent “official” estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), given a doubling of greenhouse gases, is a planet 1.1 to 4.8 degrees Celsius warmer a century from now. On the low end of this range—up to as much as 2 degrees—warming would be no big deal, and possibly a net benefit. Warming on the high end of this range would present significant problems, requiring a number of responses. Narrowing the range of outcomes is therefore the most pressing climate science question. Everything else is a sideshow.

It may well be that it can’t be done. Right now the IPCC can’t settle on a best-guess estimate within the 1.1‑4.8 degree range, though a number of scenarios for the year 2100 cluster around 2 degrees of warming. This is nearly the same range and best guess as the previous four reports of the IPCC stretching back to 1990. More astonishing, this range differs little from that proposed by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1896. It was Arrhenius, winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1903, who first supplied the basic equation that forms the basis for modern climate models. Working without a computer, he estimated a range of climate sensitivity from a doubling of greenhouse gases of 1.6 to about 5 degrees Celsius, with a best guess of about 2.1 degrees.

In other words, despite billions spent on climate research and the development of enormously complex computer models, we are no closer to predictive precision than we were 110 years ago. The computer models are still too crude and limited, especially about the crucial question of water vapor “feedbacks” (clouds in ordinary language), to spit out the answers we’re looking for. We can fiddle with the models all we want, and perhaps end up with one that might produce a correct prediction, but we can never be sure so long as our understanding of water vapor behavior remains sketchy.

While climate skeptics are denounced for mentioning “uncertainty,” the terms “uncertain” and “uncertainty” appear 173 times, while “error” and “errors” appear 192 times, in the 218-page chapter on climate models in the latest IPCC report released last September. As the IPCC admits, “there remain significant errors in the model simulation of clouds. It is very likely that these errors contribute significantly to the uncertainties in estimates of cloud feedbacks and consequently in the climate change projections.” The IPCC’s latest report rates the confidence of our understanding of clouds and aerosols as “low,” and allows that it is possible that clouds could cancel out most of the warming effect of greenhouse gases. If anything, our uncertainty about future climate change has increased with each new IPCC report.

The IPCC modeling chapter, which virtually no reporter reads, is also candid in admitting that most of the models have overpredicted recent warming. The 17-years-and-counting plateau in global average temperature, following two decades of a nearly 0.4 degree increase in temperature that boosted the warming narrative for a time, is the biggest embarrassment for a supposed scientific “consensus” since Piltdown Man. The basic theory says we’re supposed to continue warming at about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade, but since the late 1990s we’ve stopped. In one of the infamous emails revealed in the East Anglia “climategate” scandal of 2009, Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist, called it a “travesty” that scientists couldn’t give a good reason for the pause. They’ve been scrambling ever since, offering a variety of explanations, but none of them can minimize the fact that nearly all of the models failed to predict a “pause” of this length, and if the “pause” continues for another 5 to 10 years, all of the models will be falsified.

Where is the missing heat? The climateers are certain it is going into the deep ocean, and while this is a plausible theory, we have very little data to substantiate the hypothesis, and still less understanding of how this might play out in the future if it is happening. If the El Niño (warmer than average surface temperatures in the Pacific) predicted for this coming year is as big as some current data suggest, we may well see a global temperature spike commensurate with the El Niño-related spike of 1998. The specific effects of high El Niño years are hard to predict, but if there is an El Niño-related spike next year, you can be sure the climate campaigners will loudly proclaim that “the pause is over!” But this would obfuscate rather than clarify the reasons for the pause. Other explanations for the pause include western Pacific wind patterns, aerosols, and solar variation. (This last explanation is ironic, since the climateers have been adamant up to now that solar variation plays very little role in climate change.) Some or all of these may be factors, but the difficulty the climate community is having provides reason to doubt their grasp of a matter we are consistently assured is “settled.”

The temperature plateau and the persistent limitations and errors of the computer models strongly suggest the kind of “anomalies” that Thomas Kuhn famously explained should constitute a crisis for dominant scientific theories. What’s more, several papers recently published in the peer-reviewed literature conclude climate sensitivity is much lower than previously thought, making the problem of climate change much less likely to be catastrophic and more likely to be easily managed. But with the notable exceptions of the Economist and straight-shooting New York Times science blogger Andrew Revkin, these heterodox findings, which have steadily eroded the catastrophic climate change narrative, have received almost no media attention.

Despite all this, there has been not even the hint of a second thought from the climateers, nor any reflection that their opinions or strategies could bear some modification. The environmental community is so deeply invested in looming catastrophe that it’s difficult to envision a scientific result that would alter their cult-like bearing.
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On June 17 2014 05:52 aksfjh wrote:

I think you meant to type...

On June 17 2014 05:59 xDaunt wrote:

No, there definitely are republicans who like him. Conservatives =/= republican.

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The temperature plateau and the persistent limitations and errors of the computer models strongly suggest the kind of “anomalies” that Thomas Kuhn famously explained should constitute a crisis for dominant scientific theories. What’s more, several papers recently published in the peer-reviewed literature conclude climate sensitivity is much lower than previously thought, making the problem of climate change much less likely to be catastrophic and more likely to be easily managed. But with the notable exceptions of the Economist and straight-shooting New York Times science blogger Andrew Revkin, these heterodox findings, which have steadily eroded the catastrophic climate change narrative, have received almost no media attention.

On June 17 2014 06:02 Nyxisto wrote:
Nice how the article deliberately tries to confuse the reader by pointing out that the words error and uncertainty are used 200 times, painting the picture of confused scientists that are running around "Oh god I don't know what's happening, I'm so uncertain", where as the words are merely completely normal mathematical terms to describe the deviation of something. "The error range for the result is x".--- > "Oh gosh, he has said error! These scientists don't have a clue what they're doing!"

Or the fact that he seems to be mocking people for pumping billions into climate research, just because someone mentioned the number "2 degrees" around the year 1900. Guess what, Peter Higgs postulated the Higgs Boson in the 1960s, still we had to built the LHC to figure out if he was right. That's the actual "science" part in "scientific research".

edit: also the fact that global warming up to 2 degrees would result in "net profit" is just a blatant lie, and not the position of the IPCC, I have linked the report in question before.

On June 17 2014 06:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Sure, error and uncertainty can be over-hyped, but they aren't trivial concerns. Heck, even if we had an extremely certain number, doing a cost benefit analysis on combating climate change involves more guesswork than real numerical analysis.

On June 17 2014 06:37 Nyxisto wrote:

The point is the article tries to imply that there is no consensus among scientists(seems to be a common strategy among these kinds of people), referring to the use of "error&uncertainty", although these are just technical mathematical terms that you will find in every paper a hundred times. They're not related to the fact that scientists are not sure or wrong about something.

On June 17 2014 06:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Maybe? It kind of depends on how you interpret the text. I think they were trying to say that there was no consensus with the part about paper abstracts, which seems dubious, not sure about the error and uncertainty portion. That came off more as a 'predictions of the future are not facts' statement.

On June 17 2014 07:16 Hagen0 wrote:
There is a clear agnotological effort to undermine and dilute public consensus about global warming paid for by various business interests and conservative think tanks. See Merchants of doubt for instance. There is no question within the scientific community about the existence of anthropological global warming and its seriousness as a threat to mankind.

On June 17 2014 05:32 farvacola wrote:

Find me a pundit who isn't full of themselves and I'll have a nice bridge ready to sell.

On June 17 2014 07:23 Roswell wrote:

And the other side of the coin doesnt have a dime thrown in right?

On June 17 2014 07:26 Nyxisto wrote:


Oh you mean the big business environmental tycoons who try to manipulate the masses just to save the planet? Oh no wait, that's ridiculous

On June 17 2014 07:23 Roswell wrote:

And the other side of the coin doesnt have a dime thrown in right?

On June 17 2014 07:33 Roswell wrote:

The only thing that matters here and will ever matter is money. And if you really think these green companies truly care about the planet then you are blind. The EPA / Government now has the power to implement whatever rule they want and the companies that refuse or simply can't make those adjustments are sinking stones at this point.

The greater good.

On June 17 2014 07:26 farvacola wrote:

Not everyone has the stomach for centrist mealy mouthing, so that's ok.

On June 17 2014 07:39 Nyxisto wrote:


Yes, obviously the US government has the power to implement whatever rule it wants, lol. So to sum up your position the American society is run by evil eco-conspirators that use their powers to put their machiavellian business plans into motion.
I'm done talking to you, it makes no sense.