An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore

[VinnieK]

I shall be meeting with Amadeus sometime over the xmas period and I'm sure he'd be willing to witness my qualifications (an accredited degree and a Masters) if it is an issue in this debate. I'll even bring along my first mathematical modelling uni project from years ago if you like.

 

No one's questioning your qualifications. However, with all due respect, you're about as qualified to talk about the complicated nature of the Earth and the solar system as the rest of us and little more. A course of nonlinear dynamics and being a bit handy with lagrange multipliers is hardly a substitute for the kind of qualifications in biological mathematics and environmental sciences that are held by many of those scientists you implicitely accuse of groupthink or being government stooges.

 

Global Warming is practically a religeon at the moment

 

Hell, I agree with you! Some do take it to near religious levels of conviction, but that doesn't then imply that all who subscribe to the theory of global warming do so from conviction over reason. It is something that should be discussed using the merits of the argument, not irrelevant laments about so called "dumbocracy" and "group think", which if anything tar you with the same brush by making you appear like you're more concerned about getting The Man off your back and setting yourself up on a pedestal above everyone else by all means necessary than arriving at a reasonable conclusion

[Albert Tatlock]

Hell, I agree with you! Some do take it to near religious levels of conviction, but that doesn't then imply that all who subscribe to the theory of global warming do so from conviction over reason. It is something that should be discussed using the merits of the argument, not irrelevant laments about so called "dumbocracy" and "group think", which if anything tar you with the same brush by making you appear like you're more concerned about getting The Man off your back and setting yourself up on a pedestal above everyone else by all means necessary than arriving at a reasonable conclusion

IMHO, dumbocracy and groupthink are our worst enemies. Just look where they have led us all in the past 10 years alone. Failure to recognise that will allow them to take over even science. If I can get even one person to think about what they 'believe in', regardless of what conclusion they come too even if it is back to where they started, then isn't that a good thing?

[Chinahand]

Causation ... corelation ... and the smelly stuff that comes out of the back of cows; methane, not bullshit really.

 

The physical properties of CO2 mean it is a green house gas. Unless you are willing to claim the electron shells of CO2 molecules are somehow different than "mainsteam" science claims they are if you irradiate it with light of wave length A it will reabsorb light of wave length B; this is what makes a green house gas.

 

If you increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere it will CAUSE global warming; how significantly and how it is manefested we can debate, but CAUSE it it will.

 

CO2 levels are what are driving climate change and they are currently at totally unprecidented levels and the CAUSE of that increase is human emissions of prehistoric carbon and in 30 years time they will be off Mr Gore's chart. No matter how much you hate Mr Gore he's using data and perfectly mainstream projections to say what CO2 levels will be.

 

The world has not seen anything like it for hundreds of thousands of years.

 

CAUSATION is complex because CO2 is not the only factor, as Albert points out volcanoes, sunspots, the earth's albedo affect, clouds etc all affect warming. I'm happy and surprised that noone has said that CO2 doesn't cause global warming because CO2 levels lagged the initial temperature increases out of the ice ages. Just because CO2 isn't the only cause of temperature increases doesn't mean it won't cause them. The atmosphere isn't in equilibrium and guess what climatologists know this.

 

Unless man reduces the output of CO2 and other greenhouse gases ... methane and all ... global warming will occur and the science on the size of these effects compared to the other forcings in the atmosphere are pretty clear ... see my post above about Hansen's work. I'd love to see refutations of Hansen's work, but I'm reasonably certain they don't exist, finesses, improvements, maybe, but noone in climatology is going to claim GHG's have 10 times less influence than we thought, the reason for that is hard physics, and that is the only way you could "refute" Hansen's graphs. Its the GHGs, not the volcanoes, sunspots or clouds we should worry about. And they are man made ... really they are.

[Albert Tatlock]

CO2 levels are what are driving climate change and they are currently at totally unprecidented levels and the CAUSE of that increase is human emissions of prehistoric carbon and in 30 years time they will be off Mr Gore's chart. No matter how much you hate Mr Gore he's using data and perfectly mainstream projections to say what CO2 levels will be.

 

These are peaks that might not even show up in a million years - you can't get down to a year, a decade or even a century when you research this stuff from millions of years ago. It's average values.

 

There are also other factors such as the fact that the earths poles are showing signs they are getting ready to switch again (as it has done hundreds of times in the past few hundred million years). This affects the earths magnetic field in the build up to the process (the magnetic north pole moved around 1100 kilometres in the past 200 years) and the amount of radiation blocked from the sun, and causes the earth to heat up internally. Yet another cyclic inevitable event hardly mentioned. I suspect global warming could well be a major result, and problem during the build up to that.

[VinnieK]

If I can get even one person to think about what they 'believe in', regardless of what conclusion they come too even if it is back to where they started, then isn't that a good thing?

 

It's off topic, but of course, if that belief is unjustified. But I don't believe that, regardless of intention, is the message conveyed by your posts, the majority of which have centred around how the opposite point of view is pure nonsense peddled by hack or incompetant scientists: You've not questioned the 'established' view, instead having merely condemned it and its proponents point blank, and in doing so are not so much encouraging independent thought as you are simply offering an alternative "party-line" for people to swallow whole. Just because that view isn't the one held by some notional establishment doesn't make it any more honourable or the adoption of it wholesale any more creditable.

[manxchatterbox]

and with the UK's largest wind farm getting the go-ahead why can't the MEA get a windfarm up and running above Rushen Mine??

[LoneWolf]

More psuedo-science and conjecture -2006 was Earth's sixth warmest year on record- its very difficult to get thousands of scientists all over the world to go out and accurately measure the temperature, it takes lots of conjecture, modelling and pseudo science -NOT.

We've got records in the UK going back to 1659 - 2006 was the warmest ever.

World wide records go back to 1861 - 2006 was 6th warmest globally recorded. The top 5 are all in the last decade.

 

The trouble with all this fascinating argument ChinaHand is that the facts arent just either/or as one would be forgiven for thinking by reading through the thread.

I believe it was Bertrand Russell who cautioned against the dangers of consensus amongst experts.

While no one doubts the causal link between global warming and carbon emmissions there is some credible evidence that our efforts to clean the environment may have contributed to the acceleration of global warming Clean Air ?

I am sure there are numerous other factors incuding normal climatic variations and various and sundry natural events which might also contribute to the problem.

Ive always been slightly suspicious of bearded men wearing sandals who drive Citroen 2CV cars and are prone to delivering lectures on the future of the planet.

A more hard nosed approach might also consider the likely effect of diminishing fossil fuel reserves on this problem. This is likely to create favourable market conditions for alternative energy sources to be developed on a large scale. Its a hard world and nothing significant is likely to happen until the price is right.

[You cannot buck the market]

[VinnieK]

I believe it was Bertrand Russell who cautioned against the dangers of consensus amongst experts.

While no one doubts the causal link between global warming and carbon emmissions there is some credible evidence that our efforts to clean the environment may have contributed to the acceleration of global warming

 

The problem though is this:

 

We have little else to inform our decisions and evaluation of the credibility of this evidence than concensus and prestige.

 

To use the example of the New Scientist article you quote, we may ask why is this credible? Given that I doubt few of us will have the capacity to read the paper for ourselves and be able to satisfy ourselves by "checking the working" to any meaningful degree, what have we actually got to go on that lends this story credibility?

 

That it was reported in New Scientist is no guarrantee, as they're merely reporting a very basic summary of the paper. We may then look to the original publication of the paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as an indication of quality, but it's appearence in that august journal is due at least in part to the consensus of its peer review system, not to mention the fact that the same academic journal may feature, or have already featured a paper arguing the contrary (given that publication is based on methodology and not content).

 

So what do we actually have? Whilst accepting that the paper has a conclusion based on plausible reasoning and follows from a reasonable hypothesis, we ultimately have little but another paper that we must to a greater or lesser extent take on good faith with regards to how closely its conclusions approximate the truth, with little or no way to reach a direct assessment of its place in the current debate.

 

Since relying on our own interpretation of the evidence risks being unwittingly more open to the argument through our ignorance than the merits of the paper itself, we are left with nothing upon which to evaluate how this should influence our opinions other than:

 

1. Consensus of experts;

2. The prestige of the particular author of the paper;

3. How closely the conclusion resembles our own opinion.

 

Of these, despite Russel's warning, consensus is the safest of these options, and indeed this has been one of the practical roles within society of the scientific establishment for at the very least a century or so (that being to advise upon matters the individual cannot understand or accurately assess for him/herself), so I don't think it too foolish or dangerous to ignore his advice since consensus is the best of a bad lot of options.

 

(It should probably be mentioned that I don't like Russel at all: A good analytic philosopher, but a frequently inconsistent and occassionally incoherent man in all other respects )

 

More to the point, going on what little knowledge that I have on the matter (and thus going against everything I've just said). I'm not sure that paper is as useful as it first appears.

 

If acid rain slows down global warming, it does not then follow that our previous efforts to clean the environment were foolish. After all, acid rain is a potent pollutant in its own right, and related to various other undesirable ecological effects. I remember hearing a lot more in the mid to late 80's about acid rain than global warming, one reason perhaps being that acid rain was at the time a more immediate problem, whereas global warming seemed to be viewed as a serious, but remote hazard to be dealt with at a later date - as such it was reasonable to deal with it at the time.

 

If, however, we hadn't dealt with acid rain we would now have a situation where global warming may still be occurring, albeit at a slower rate (the article in question doesn't state the degree in practical terms of the limiting effect it is concluded to have on global warming), and we would additionally have considerable pollution of freshwater stocks and environmental damage to contend with as well. In short, judging by the article alone, the paper gives us little to actually factor into the public debate (whilst undoubtably adding something of value to the academic debate).

[Chinahand]

I thought this graph sums things up in an interesting way:

 

 

It shows past temperatures: from 1000 to 1860 using proxy data from the northern hemisphere, from 1860 to the present using global temperature records - see how the error bars decrease. It then puts in the projected temperature increases into the future (with their error bars) for various carbon emission scenarios.

 

Now - these projections are wrong - no doubt about it - but they are scientifically wrong and the question is how wrong. The error bars (the grey area) aren't just people messing around: they are the result of huge amounts of work using super computers, the changes in the earths rotation - yes Albert even its magnetic field (check out here for some science on this). To claim the earth isn't going to experience something like these changes requires you to be privy to some paradigm shifting new evidence - and from what I can see that doesn't exist.

 

I find that graph little short of incredible. It's extremely sobering: what will be the consequences of this unprecidented change? I've no idea ... but to say ... bah humbug 6 million years ago it was similar seems a very short sighted approach.

 

There is no doubt the issues raised are hugely complicated with feedback and unintended consequences involved, but I really believe we can't stick our heads in the sand over this. Man is causing these changes - that really is basically indisputable. I'm not into the horses of the apocolypse etc, but mitigating these changes is going to take a huge amount of human ingenuity and effort. And that costs money.

 

I really don't think we can continue with business as usual, and to direct and influence the work necessary to change and mitigate this requires multilateral agreements across the world. God knows who has the leadership to do this - but it is necessary.

 

Edited to add: For a clearer view check out here and for an explanation of the various future scenarios check out here. Data from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001 report: this will be updated early in 2007: should make interesting and important reading.

[Lost Login]

I do not think you will ever convince Albert and would put money on his reply. However whilst I may be doing him a disservice I thing there are many such as the guys that he often quotes who will only accept if and when the scenarios happening. A bit like the Cigarrette manufacturers argueing that they caused no harmful until they reached the point when it was untenable. Until then with their vested interest they pored scorn on the research and reports or worse accepted and understood it privately but denied it in public. The energy lobby etc will continue to deny as long as possible due to their self interest until it has reached a point of no return.

 

My concern with regard to that is that by the time it is so noticeable that it can not no longer be argued with then rather like stopping a supper tanker it will take a long time for any measure put in place to stop or and then reverse. The situation will therefore continue to deteriate long after we have reached the point of no return.

 

There is a lot of accedemic argument in all this and my concern is what are the consequences of getting it wrong.

In my opinion they are more more severe if we are over cautious than if we are over pessimistic. If those who advicate global warming are wrong the downside is financial costs, aggrevation and inconvenience . If it is the sceptics are wrong then i doubt if anybody really has a clue how ultimately the earth will be affected. For the sake of my children and their children I know which I would rather risk.

 

As you say that will take an awful lot of leadership as the inclination will be to nothing until the vast majority agree and there is not even an element of doubt. If they get it wrong then the results may be horrendous. If they get it right hopefully the effects will be small in which case everybody will say what was all the worry amount. Either way in public opinion they will not win which makes me glad to be only a paper pusher.

 

 

I really don't think we can continue with business as usual, and to direct and influence the work necessary to change and mitigate this requires multilateral agreements across the world. God knows who has the leadership to do this - but it is necessary.

[Frances]

actually it was the corrupt tobacco industry who first funded the pseudo scientific 'research institutes' in an attempt to divert criticism - the paper trail from this corrupt exercise leads to many of the existing pro energy lobby equivalents.

[Albert Tatlock]

actually it was the corrupt tobacco industry who first funded the pseudo scientific 'research institutes' in an attempt to divert criticism - the paper trail from this corrupt exercise leads to many of the existing pro energy lobby equivalents.

 

Of course it would. You have loads of links to prove it too don't you? FFS!

 

Someone's programmed you well.

[LoneWolf]

I really don't think we can continue with business as usual, and to direct and influence the work necessary to change and mitigate this requires multilateral agreements across the world. God knows who has the leadership to do this - but it is necessary.

 

Thats only one possible outcome and with the greatest of respect is unlikely to happen. Its unlikely to happen because it would require intervention on a previously unimaginable scale.

Fortunately there are other possible outcomes. There are just as many scientists worried about the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels as there are worrying about the consequence of burning fossil fuels. The former has immediate economic consequences. The most likely outcome in that scenario is market conditions will favour huge scale investment in alternative energy.

The point being, if there is a problem, and we can all agree there is, it needs to be addressed. IMHO the market is the only mechanism capable of driving a solution forward. Nicely framed academic arguments have never solved a crisis and they never will do.

[Chinahand]

actually it was the corrupt tobacco industry who first funded the pseudo scientific 'research institutes' in an attempt to divert criticism - the paper trail from this corrupt exercise leads to many of the existing pro energy lobby equivalents.

 

Of course it would. You have loads of links to prove it too don't you? FFS!

 

Someone's programmed you well.

 

Cough ... but then again its from the Guardian ... can't be true .

For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco.

 

And what has the Royal Society been saying about the contrarian's claims ... well ... something like this:

 

The Royal Society has now attempted to strike at the heart of this campaign by sending its first official letter of complaint to a corporation - the oil company Exxon. And yesterday the society's president, Lord Rees, sent the Telegraph what must be one of the most damning letters it has ever received.

 

"In her sixth article in five months which misrepresents the science of climate change in the business pages of The Daily Telegraph, Ruth Lea erroneously asserts that 'there is wide scientific disagreement' about the likely impact of climate change. In fact, the peer-reviewed scientific literature, of which Lea appears to be completely unaware, shows that continued growth in greenhouse gas emissions will lead to a rise in global average temperature of between 1.4 and 5.8 centigrade degrees by 2100 ..."

 

Who's programming you?

[Chinahand]

I really don't think we can continue with business as usual, and to direct and influence the work necessary to change and mitigate this requires multilateral agreements across the world. God knows who has the leadership to do this - but it is necessary.

 

Thats only one possible outcome and with the greatest of respect is unlikely to happen. Its unlikely to happen because it would require intervention on a previously unimaginable scale.

Fortunately there are other possible outcomes. There are just as many scientists worried about the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels as there are worrying about the consequence of burning fossil fuels. The former has immediate economic consequences. The most likely outcome in that scenario is market conditions will favour huge scale investment in alternative energy.

The point being, if there is a problem, and we can all agree there is, it needs to be addressed. IMHO the market is the only mechanism capable of driving a solution forward. Nicely framed academic arguments have never solved a crisis and they never will do.

 

I'm not sure what to make of what you are saying Lonewolf. I think you are of the opinion that peak oil will rapidly cause oil prices to go to such levels as to massively reduce its use. Maybe, but I think you are on the pessimistic side of the argument. But even given that it is coal which is the real bugbear in this, and peak coal is hundreds of years away. Remove all oil from the equation and I believe little changes overall.

 

With respect to market solutions - Currently there is no world wide mechanism to price carbon, and the European and Kyoto based mechanisms are an artificially created market solution by government fiat.

 

I totally agree with you that the creation of worldwide market incentives to find non carbon replacements is absolutely vital, but that will require the type of multilateral agreements I see as absolutely necessary, and which you seem to be saying are unimaginable.

 

Without Kyoto etc there would be no carbon trading, you need the agreements first, the market will then fill the space they create.