It's propaganda versus propaganda now.
I will never forgive whoever has made global warming a political issue, because it means debating rationally about it has become impossible.
Climate is a very complicated thing, especially when studied on a planetary scale. It's a bunch of chaotic parameters, and any prediction about it is likely to be wrong, or imprecise.
Much of science works that way, but problems arise when you need to make political decisions about such matters. You can't make large-scale decisions that will affect millions based on flimsy predictions that may turn out to be wrong.
That's right. Want to see the real stuff with your own eyes? Revisit the glacier you have have been at 10 years ago. If you you are not into mountaineering, use historical pictures.
The issue is that it has become a political issue before we were sure what the issue was. Now we don't know whether or not we should act, instead of deciding what we should do.
Well, it was a plausible scenario, if not definitely certain. It would have been wise to reduce the worldwide emission of greenhouse gases while the science was being done, but were in a typical prisoner dilemma situation here, and convincing everyone has proven impossible (notoriously because of the USA, China, India and probably others).
By focusing public attention on something else. It's not as if we had a shortage of problems.
Then, the matter of climate change could be settled in a scientific manner, as opposed to a religious debate involving legions of people who don't know what they're talking about.
Obviously, i'm being unrealistic. Once it's become politicized, it's already too late.
Engineers can't do that. You have to give them a goal and then you have to decide whether you like their plan for achieving the goal. The political process becomes important before engineers spring into action.
Yes, but they're usually not the ones making a fuss in the media about it, and they're not the ones who will ultimately make or not make political decisions.
Long before people started measuring CO2 concentrations in ice cores we knew, unequivocally that the climate on the planet "changes." It has been both warmer and colder in the past, there are fossil records, there are glacial valleys, there are even pictures painted on cave walls.
Some scientist asked the question "Since we know climate changes, is it changing now? And if it is changing now, how is it changing?" And in response to that question lots of great research was done to look at factors which could affect climate.
Generally the science has always started with a basic model describing net energy, energy added to the planet minus energy radiated from the planet. The theory being that the laws of thermodynamics tell us that if the net energy was positive the overall planet would get warmer over time and if the net energy were negative it would get cooler over time.
Once that was established as the basic framework, people set out to try to identify every way in which energy is 'added' to the planet (sources) and every way in which energy 'leaves' the planet (sinks). Each of these sources or sinks have an unknown contribution to the overall equation.
Many of the sources and sinks are variable, which is to say they change in magnitude over time. So a sub-problem that people have invested a lot of time and energy in trying to identify 'proxies' or direct ways to identify variability. The classic example is of course CO2.
CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas in that it traps energy because it is opaque to infra-red light. Higher frequency light passes through it and is absorbed or reflected by what that light hits. Light that is reflected returns to space, light that is absorbed is re-radiated as infra-red light (black body radiation). CO2 in the atmosphere prevents that radiation from leaving the planet. So like a car with the windows up, or a green house, the infra-red light is ‘trapped.’ The amount of infrared light that will be trapped (and its energy content) is proportional to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. More CO2, more energy is trapped, less goes to space.
Once you have a bunch of sources and sinks, and measurements of their variability over time, and measurements of the temperature over time, you construct a 'model' for how they all contribute to the climate. The model is a series of coefficients to attach to each source or sink based on its relative contribution to the other sources and sinks.
You pick numbers kind of out of the air as to the co-efficients to give each source or sink, and you use the measurements you've taken and put them in your model and get back a predicted set of temperatures. You compare that to the temperatures that were actually measured and look to see how well they correlate.
You continue to measure these things, you feed your new measurements into your model, and you predict future changes. Then when the future becomes the present, you look at what you predicted and compare that to what the model said would happen and if they don't agree you go back and fiddle with the co-efficients until they do.
That is all good solid science. But in climate science something unfortunate happened.
Of all the things folks were putting into the models, the one that had the biggest co-efficient (which defined it as the greatest overall contributor to the climate) has been 'greenhouse gases' (which includes CO2 and Methane). Scientists being scientists identify all the sources of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And one of them, CO2, is a byproduct of 'industrialization' (aka human activity).
That observation, created a religion. The religion's first principles were:
) The climate is changing. (remember this)
1) Greenhouse Gas is the biggest factor affecting the climate.
2) CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
3) Human activity creates CO2.
4) Human activity is the* dominant factor in the warming of the climate.
5) If Humans would apply themselves to eliminating the production of CO2 the climate will stop changing.
The first tragedy here is that science didn't "discover" the climate was changing, they knew the climate changed, they were only trying to figure out if the current change was a warmer period or a colder period. That green house gases was the dominant factor was a surprise because it creates a new question “What are all the factors that change the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?” One of the things the science agreed on was that the climate changes whether or not humans are present, so the religious tenet that we can control the climate by eliminating our production of CO2 is false.
Several people did however recognize that the religion met the model for enacting large scale changes. That model is :
1) Find a really big threat, explain how the threat will kill you.
2) Describe how only by following the religion can the threat be averted/met.
3) Explain that people who aren’t part of the religion aren’t just stupid, they are threatening our ability to meet the threat and should be eliminated/marginalized.
This scheme works and so people use it. Whether you’re un-american for not agreeing that Communisim will destroy life as we know it, or that your un-american for not reducing your carbon footprint and averting the coming flood of rising seawater, if you’re not fighting with us against the boogeyman, you are the Enemy.
So the science of climate change is still working on their models. This solar minimum will give us new data to update our models and co-efficients. If it exposes the Global Warming religion for what it is, then I don’t think Al Gore will take the fall, I think science will, and that makes me sad.
No, it wasn't, you started to make a point, but then veered way off into some BS about 'religion'. Even if there's a dreadlocked hippie somewhere who views this stuff as a religion that has nothing to do with its veracity.
I take it you don't see two different ways in which Global Warming conversations take place? How about discussions on the merits of nuclear power? gun control? reproductive rights? gay marriage? Generally all of these share the properties that there are some people who want to talk about them rationally and there are some people who want to talk about them emotionally. At least that has been my observation.
And btw its 'not some dreadlocked hippie' (what a horrible generalization) its people like you and me.
I get angry with people who hijack legitimate scientific enquiries to manipulate others into doing their bidding. And I get frustrated with people who argue conjecture and theory as fact.
There is great science in climatology. Its fascinating and we learn new things every day. None of it suggests that any actions humans take will change the fact that the earth's climate is changing. Just like you can't simulatenously both believe in the science of evolution and that it no longer is a factor in humans.
So its scientific to say that our models show that CO2, as a green house gas, has a significant influence on climate. Its not scientific to say if humans make less CO2 the climate will stop changing. It is perfectly reasonable to say that if humans reduce their CO2 generation it will change the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere.
A great web site which focuses on the science is Skeptical Science [1]. I like it because they are pretty aggressive at seeking out all the journal articles and papers and seem to be pretty good about even talking about papers they don't agree with.
A recent article they posted talked about the PETM extinction event [2]. In that event, where there were no humans present, CO2 levels on the planet shot up, the planet warmed and lots of things died off. The study is great, the science is sound, and I'm sure the paper is cited often. Unfortunately nobody has yet figured out why the CO2 shot up.
So when you read this, on the one hand you can say "Look it doesn't matter why, human activity is causing a similar jump in CO2 and it killed lots of stuff then we need to address this." I don't disagree with that statement at all.
I disagree with the non-scientific statement "if we address human CO2 generation this won't happen." Is that a subtle difference? I don't think so. What ever caused CO2 to spike without human help could happen again, and if it does we're in a world of hurt. So people who approach this issue less emotionally talk about both changing how much CO2 (or any other green house gases) we liberate into the atmosphere and ways to survive climate changes. When people try to tell me that if I do what they say it will "help stop climate change" I get irritated with them.
Well, empirically speaking, we're dumping an absurd amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, there's a pretty clear model that suggests it warms the planet, and the planet is in fact warming. You don't need to religiously care about change or warming perse in order to notice that said warming will be very inconvenient for coastal areas, where most major cities and population reside. If that's the case.. who cares if idiots agree with you? They're useful. Trust me, disbelieving in global warming lines you up with all kinds of useful idiots.
It's propaganda versus propaganda now. I will never forgive whoever has made global warming a political issue, because it means debating rationally about it has become impossible.
Climate is a very complicated thing, especially when studied on a planetary scale. It's a bunch of chaotic parameters, and any prediction about it is likely to be wrong, or imprecise.
Much of science works that way, but problems arise when you need to make political decisions about such matters. You can't make large-scale decisions that will affect millions based on flimsy predictions that may turn out to be wrong.