www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall More Proof of Global Warming?

I have always believed that Chicken Little had it right all along.

There is no one in this forum who is in any position to judge the hypothesis that global warming is driven by human generation of CO2. In fact the vast majority of scientists have no in-depth knowledge of the research supporting the hypothesis. We can look at the positions of the handful of people who are knowledgeable and there is still the problem of who is funding what research with what agenda and whose positions are being suppressed. CO2 is up and the earth is warming. I know from my training in economics how difficult it is to prove causation when dealing with historical time series. I am skeptical of the ability of complex econometric models to predict anything and I expect the climate models are similar in their predictive power and in their limitations.

Suppose we accept the hypothesis as true. Then two questions immediately arise: first, is there some policy initiative that the US government could take that would lead to capping CO2 emissions on a global level; second, supposing that you could cap carbon emissions globally, what is the cost of doing this versus adapting over a long time horizon to the climate changes that would result. I do not believe there is any policy that the advanced nations could adopt that would entice the Third World to limit emissions. I also believe it is an open question whether the wrenching adjustments required to cap emissions are less costly than adapting to long range climate change.

CRW, do you think that it might be worthwhile to apply Pascal's wager to the situation in a sensible manner?

We can certainly apply a type Pascal's wager, but in fact the analogy is not apt. Pascal said it was better to believe in God because the consequences of not believing and being wrong were infinitely worse than those of believing and being wrong. After all, he was talking about the fate of the immortal soul and the possibility of eternal damnation.

On the other hand, climate change does not present such a stark set of alternatives. As with all policy measures, it can be subjected to "cost benefit analysis", which is, to be simple, a way of saying, "How much must I spend and what do I get in return?" Ironically, it is the proponents of anthropogenic climate change who reject the very notion of cost benefit analysis in favor of a pure Pascal's Wager. To hear them put it, the alternatives are stark: either we accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change and radically alter our behavior to reduce carbon emissions, or we will all die (or perhaps just most of us--depends on how silly the people making the statement are being).

Such an approach first begs the question of whether CO2 causes or drives climate change, then goes on to hypothesize catastrophic results for doing nothing, or even just less than they propose; if we don't roll back our emissions to something prior to pre-industrial levels, we're all gonna fry.

Prudent public policy works a little differently. First, it engages in rational inquiry into the existence, extent and causes of climate change. Then it determines the extent, if any, to which human activity causes such change. Finally, it looks at the range of potential outcomes for different options, establishes a cost for each, and then determines which yields the most outcome for the least expenditure of resources.

So far, we haven't done the first half, that is, coming to a definitive conclusion regarding the existence of global warming, human contribution to it, and the potential outcomes assuming such warming is real. It may not be possible to come to any definitive conclusion, simply because we do not--and may never be able to--understand the complex phenomenology and make accurate predictions.

This has not dissuaded some people from looking at the proposed remedies to global warming and subjecting them to cost benefit analysis. Most such analyses have concluded that attacking global warming by reducing CO2 emissions is an extremely cost ineffective way of dealing with the problem,: you spend a lot and you get reductions of only a fraction of a degree or so. In return, you cripple the world's economies and condemn people in the Third World to perpetual poverty. Precisely because people in the Third World refused to live in squalor to assuage the consciences of rich, liberal Europeans and Americans, they are proceeding with the construction of coal and oil-burning power plants at an accelerating pace, which is why, even assuming that American and Europe meet their impractical carbon targets, global carbon emissions will continue to rise. That realization is one reason why Europe is quietly walking away from such targets--it hurts them and does no good.

Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, who accepts the existence of anthropogenic global warming, rejects the notion of limiting carbon because it is ineffective and inefficient. He uses a different metric than most people, looking at the number of lives saved per billion dollars of input. In The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg proposes that we should not spend our resources like King Knut trying to hold back the tide, but rather on ameliorating the worst effects of global warming and rising sea levels; i.e., more (not less) electrification, building dikes and other flood control systems, changing methods of agriculture to deal with shifting patterns of rainfall, etc. He notes, and backs up with statistics, that more people are killed by extreme cold than extreme heat, and postulates that global warming--even in its more extreme manifestation--will result in a net saving of lives, which can be increased through the use of air conditioning and other methods.

Lomborg understands that environmentalism is a rich man's indulgence. People living in poor countries simply cannot afford it, and focus instead on the most important thing, which is survival. Thus, he says, the best way to reduce environmental degradation--which today overwhelming takes place in the Third World--is to raise them to a level of wealth at which the state of the environment becomes something about which they can afford to take notice. For Lomborg, the most important developments in the world today are the rising wealth of China and India. When both of these countries have reached the standard of living found in the U.S. in the 1970s, the conditions will be met at which environmental problems can be addressed. And that would include things which contribute mightily to the problems associated with global warming, such as deforestation, desertification, salinization, etc.

Stuart,when I said apply the PT in a sensible fashion, I was thinking of precisely what you were referring to in the second paragraph of your piece. I do beg to differ with you about the aptness of using the PT. Here is why; if those who are true believers in the idea that there is no such thing as global warming and nothing need be done about it are wrong, we will be facing our maker sooner rather than later. If you are right, it won't make a difference. I have no problem with meeting my maker, but I rather have it not be due to environmental factors that mankind may have a hand in.

Here is a question I would ask you in light of your comments in the last paragraph. What happens if it becomes clear that the world is going to hell in a hand basket before China and India's economies become strong enough to be able toafford to do something about what some call"global warming.'? Does one just stand there and do nothing?

"I do beg to differ with you about the aptness of using the PT. Here is why; if those who are true believers in the idea that there is no such thing as global warming and nothing need be done about it are wrong, we will be facing our maker sooner rather than later."

Johnzonaras,

The scales are not weighted in the way you seem to believe. In fact, the catastrophic scenarios were always the least probable, and this is now recognized even by most pro-global warming groups. Sea levels will not rise by 20-odd feet, temperatures will not rise by 6 degrees centigrade (although such an increase would be within the range of past temperature increases, which in general saw an improvement in the human condition), and increasingly human activity is seen as a marginal contributer to the overall increase in temperatures (assuming such an increase even exists, as the data is not conclusive--particularly once we take out all of Jim Hansen's fudge factors).

"Here is a question I would ask you in light of your comments in the last paragraph. What happens if it becomes clear that the world is going to hell in a hand basket before China and India's economies become strong enough to be able toafford to do something about what some call"global warming.'? Does one just stand there and do nothing?"

Again, I suggest you take a look at Lomborg's data and reasoning. You get far more bang for your buck treating global warming symptomatically than by trying to eliminate its systemic causes. The richest countries can cope with global warming and its effects with relative ease; the poorest countries cannot. The solution, then, is to make the poor rich, and, to the extent needed, helping the poorest countries cope with the effects, rather than attempting to reverse the causes of global warming.

I was taking the argument to the extreme about what to call the application of the PT. I do find myself in the camp with CRW for all the reasons he advances. I do think you have part of the answer, but not all of it. I guess i am not willing to make the bet you are willing to make without having something kind of backup plan (running concurrently with the bet you seem to be willing to make) to fall back on.

"I was taking the argument to the extreme about what to call the application of the PT."

If things are that bad, then I would suggest you lay in a supply of dry ice and chill, because even rolling back carbon emissions to preindustrial levels will have only a modest effect on temperature rise according to the very models which predict such radical rises in temperature.

In short, there is some sort of cognitive dissonance going on here: On the one hand, we are called upon to reduce carbon emissions by a factor that would mean returning to a preindustrial state; on the other hand, doing so won't solve the problem.

"When in danger, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout"--this seems to be the attitude reflected by this. On the other hand, you can't go too far wrong with the motto, "Don't just do something, stand there!". Most problems just work themselves out without any government intervention. When it is steamboat time, you steam--and not before.

Of course, what a number of us have been trying to tell you, without success, is this is not really about global warming, or climate change or whatever, but about a massive expansion of government's role in the economy and the private lives of individual citizens. it's a power grab, pure and simple.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said some pretty perceptive things about this. read them.

So screw the science. Follow emotion, bad science and politics! That is true belief in princes, in sons of men!

But JZ misses the point. If science is right (and following a non-scientific direction is rather silly) it will make a difference. Bad science (like JZ recommends) means people will be fleeced from their hard earned dollars in a wealth redistribution program that will destroy millions of jobs. Check out what happened in Spain. Spain adopted a similar "green" program and found that for every "green" job it created (mostly government jobs) it killed 2.2 jobs in the private sector (and the tax revenues those people paid), and now has an unemployment rate of 18.1% (double the average in the EU). "Green" that is not based on solid science hurts people. Why do you, JZ, wish to hurt people? Even this silly Cap & Tax has almost no return for great amounts of money spent (high in promise, low in exptected or measurable results). Why do you not think it would be better to follow solid science and do things where we know there will be a demonstrable return? Why adopt what Spain and Europe are now rejecting?

There is no evidence of global warming. Global temperatures are falling, not rising. And the whole thing appears to be cyclical.

Good stewardship means that we be careful stewards of our resources. There is nothing wrong with drilling for more oil, natural gas, etc., AND encouraging the development of new energy sources.

I read a column today that I found interesting and could probably support (depending on how it would be developed). Rather than penalize and tax ordinary citizens about $1,000 / year / family on their utilites (in the near future should the Cap & Tax legislation get signed into law; in future years an average of over $4,000 / year / family according to the legislation) and force them to use potentially dangerous mercury-filled light bulbs (which are harming workers in China) it would be far better to make the development of new energy tax free. Free markets create jobs and spur technological development. Imagine a new fuel source that gets the equivalent of 150 mpg gasoline, but that pollutes far less than gas and is cheap to produce. A no-tax promise is a wonderful carrot, and it will work far better then the stick of tax penalties.

About China. It's a communist country. It has and always has had a bad environmental record. Sorry, but a country that forcibly murders its children with its evil "one child per family" policy is not going to be interested in anything "green" soon (even if we use my definition of "green" policies being rooted in solid science). Even if it was, it is morally correct to encourage it to choose to allow the babies to live even if it means putting anything environmental on hold. If you don't care about the babies being murdered consider the workers in the light bulb factories who are being harmed by the mercury.

You have to consider ALL the consequences of the actions you promote. They do make a difference and they cannot be ignored. In many cases, so-called "green politics" hurt both people AND the environment.

"About China."

China has now surpassed the United States as the leading generator of carbon emissions. It has also announced plans to double the number of coal-fired power plants in service, and refuses to be bound by any international agreement to limit carbon emissions. India is following suit. They would be insane not to do this, because only through rapid electrification and industrialization can they bring their people to a level of material prosperity that will ensure social stability over the coming decades. India has one billion people, China has 1.3 billion people. That's more than one out of every three people on earth. In light of their policies, whatever the United States and Europe do to reduce their own carbon emissions is essentially futile.

June has been the coldest month on record in a number of places across the earth. The climatologists tell us that if the trend continues we will have another year where the earth's overall temperature falls. That will make it 7 years of falling temperatures in a row.

If global warming gets any worse we're all going to freeze to death!

Massachusetts reflects on 'the year without a summer' [pembrokexpress.com]

Global Cooling Chills Summer 2009
Let the cold times roll.

By Deroy Murdock

As cap-and-trade advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called “global warming,” Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth’s temperatures continue a chilling trend that began eleven years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream, and push their pet theory — just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Consider how the globe cooled last month:

June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal — the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated on July 1: “The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May . . . but not in June was back in 1903.”

In Phoenix, June’s high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. In California’s desert, Yucca Valley’s June average was 83.5, 8.5 degrees below normal. Not far away, downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, five below normal.

Boston saw temperatures 4.7 degrees below normal. “This is the second coldest average high temp since 1872,” veteran meteorologist and Weather Channel alumnus Joseph D’Aleo reports at Icecap.com. “1903 is the record.” D’Aleo told me, “It has been so cool and so cloudy that trees in northern New England are starting to show colors that normally first appear in September.” Looking abroad, D’Aleo noted: “Southern Brazil had one of the coldest Junes in decades, and New Zealand has had unusual cold and snow again this year.”

New Zealand’s National Climate Centre issued a June 2 press release headlined, “TEMPERATURE: LOWEST EVER FOR MAY FOR MANY AREAS, COLDER THAN NORMAL FOR ALL.”

South African officials say cold weather killed two vagrants in the Eastern Cape. Both slept outdoors the evening of June 26 and froze to death.

July also has been more than a bit brisk.

“FREAK SUMMER STORM DUMPS SNOW ON YONKERS,” the New York Post blared after a July 8 storm brought a wintry mix to that city just north of Gotham. That same day, the high temperature reached 65 degrees at O’Hare International Airport, making it Chicago’s coldest July 8 since 1891. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, Australia, temperatures have been 10 degrees below average, while frost has covered lawns and windshields. On July 13, Albert Gore will appear in Melbourne to explain to Australians that they are shivering due to warming.

Simmer down, global-warmists retort. These are mere anecdotes, handpicked to make us look silly.

Well, one would be foolish to challenge space-borne satellites that gauge Earth’s mean temperatures — cold, hot, and average. Here again, evidence of global cooling piles up like snow drifts.

[Linked Image]

“There has been no significant global warming since 1995, no warming since 1998, and global cooling for the past few years,” former U.S. Senate Environment Committee spokesman Marc Morano writes at ClimateDepot.com. Citing metrics gathered by University of Alabama–Huntsville’s Dr. Roy Spencer, Morano adds: “The latest global averaged satellite temperature data for June 2009 reveal yet another drop in Earth’s temperature. . . . Despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled 0.74 degrees F since former Vice President Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth in 2006.”

Earth’s temperatures fall even as the planet spins within what global-warmists consider a thickening cloud of toxic carbon dioxide. (Never mind that fauna exhale it, and flora devour it.)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, consistently and reliably has measured CO2 for the last 50 years. CO2 concentrations have risen steadily for a half century.

[Linked Image]

For December 1958, the laboratory reported an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 314.67 parts per million (PPM). Flash forward to December 1998, about when global cooling reappeared. CO2 already had increased to 366.87 PPM. By December 2008, CO2 had advanced to 385.54 PPM, a significant 5.088 percent growth in one decade.

This capsizes the carbon-phobic global-warmist argument. For Earth’s temperatures to sink while CO2 rises contradicts global-warmism as thoroughly as learning that firefighters can battle blazes by spraying them with gasoline.

[Linked Image]

So, to defeat so-called “global warming,” there is no need for the $864 billion Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, a Kyoto successor treaty, elaborate new regulations, or United Nations guidelines. Instead, let the cold times roll.

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Alan Carlin, a Caltech-trained physicist and 35-year-veteran Environmental Protection Agency analyst, recently raised some of these issues in a 98-page paper he and a colleague co-authored. “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA,” they wrote.

As the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel detailed July 6, the Obama administration ordered Carlin to clam up.

His boss, Al McGartland, e-mailed Carlin to prohibit “any direct communication” on his paper with anyone outside his office. McGartland later told Carlin: “You need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc., at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.”

#ad#It is one thing to have a national debate about a serious problem, with adults differing over which solution might work best. Reasonable people, for instance, can dispute whether growing federal involvement would heal or inflame our health-care system’s serious maladies.

But as so-called “global warming” proves fictional, those who would shackle the economy with taxes and regulations to fight mythology increasingly resemble deinstitutionalized derelicts on an urban street corner, wildly swatting at their own imaginary monsters.

— Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.

[Linked Image]
A note from Richard Lindzen on statistically significant warming
11 03 2008

Yesterday, in response to the thread on “3 of 4 global metrics show nearly flat temperature anomaly in the last decade” I got a short note from MIT’s Richard Lindzen along with a graph. I asked if I could post it, and he graciously agreed:

Look at the attached. There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995. Why bother with the arguments about an El Nino anomaly in 1998? (Incidentally, the red fuzz represents the error ‘bars’.)

Best wishes,

Dick

==================================================
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

link here [wattsupwiththat.com]

Even if I were to reluctantly agree that the planet is warming, nothing cracks me up more than the fact that there have been several ice ages that have come and gone in the past, all without combustible engines and evil oil companies

Monomakh

Here is an example of the kind of really bad science [wattsupwiththat.com] that lies behind so much of the global warming furor:

GISS: World’s airports continue to run warmer than ROW
15/07/2009
Guest post by John Goetz

As noted in the previous post, GISS has released their monthly global temperature summary for June, 2009. This month’s whopping anomaly of 0.63C is once again much higher than that of RSS, UAH, and even NOAA, which is the source of the GISS temperature data. Not only is the anomaly higher than the other metrics, but it is trending in the opposite direction.

Temperature data from 1079 stations worldwide contributed to the analysis, 134 of them being located in the 50 US states. Data from essentially the same few stations have been used for the past twenty-four months. Many, many hundreds of stations that have historically been included in the record and still collect data today continue to be ignored by GISS in global temperature calculations.

Once again, the bulk of temperatures comprising the present-day worldwide GISS average come from airports – in this case 554 airports, according to the NOAA metadata from the V2 station inventory. In the US, the ratio of airports to total stations continues to run very high, with 121 out of the 134 reporting stations being located at airports.

Why worry about airports? Aside from recent posts on this site documenting problems with airport ASOS equipment in the US, WUWT has also documented a number of equipment siting problems, notably the typical close proximity of the equipment to a tarmac heat sink. Airports can introduce a mini-UHI effect where one would otherwise not be found.

The NOAA metadata is not entirely accurate, and several stations located at airports are not noted as such. Some examples include Londrina and Brasilia in Brazil, Ely / Yelland in Nevada, and Broome in Austrailia. Those stations were easy to find because they had “airport” (or some variant) in the station name. A check of coordinates using Google Earth confirmed the airport locations.

Let’s examine the metadata a little further, shall we?

NOAA says that 345 of the stations it passes on to GISS are rural and presumably free of UHI influence. Fifteen of those stations are located in the US. However, only 201 of those rural stations are not located at an airport, and therefore presumably free of UHI effects (including tarmac heat sinks). In the US, only one of the fifteen stations is listed as both rural, and not located at an airport: Ely / Yelland in Nevada.

Doh!!! As noted above, that station is located at an airport – confirmed not just by Google Earth, but also by NOAA’s NCDC website as well! This means that all of the US temperatures – including those for Alaska and Hawaii – were collected from either an airport (the bulk of the data) or an urban location.

As for the rest of the world, some of the stations listed as being rural and not at an airport have metadata indicating they are located in an area of “dim” or “bright” lights. Filtering those out, we find a total of 128 stations that are rural, not at an airport, and “dark”.

Why are “dark” stations important? Recall that GISS uses dark stations to adjust for UHI in the urban stations. With only 128 dark stations available, none being in the US, it would seem this is an impossible task.

Fortunately, GISS adjustment rules allow old data to be used in adjusting new data. The older “non-reporting” rural weather stations continue to adjust reporting urban stations, even though the most recent two years of overlap is missing.

Thankfully, the algorithms are robust enough to calculate adjustments to the 100th of a degree even when data is missing.