Engaging With Climate Skeptics 822
In the wake of the CRU "climategate" leak, reader Geoffrey.landis sends along a New York Times blog profile of Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech. "Curry — unlike many climate scientists — does not simply dismiss the arguments of 'climate skeptics,' but attempts to engage them in dialogue. She can, as well, be rather pointed in criticizing her colleagues, as in a post on the skeptic site climateaudit where she argues for greater transparency for climate data and calculations (mirrored here). In this post she makes a point that tribalism in science is the main culprit here —- that when scientists 'circle the wagons' to defend against what they perceive to be unfair (and unscientific) attacks, the result can be damaging to the actual science being defended. Is it still possible to conduct a dialogue, or is there no possible common ground?"
A question (Score:5, Interesting)
Where do all the scientists who are skeptics fit in?
Common Ground? (Score:5, Interesting)
There may be people on either side of the debate that aren't interested in the truth... in fact, there clearly are, in both camps. Those aren't scientists, though, and they aren't doing science. They're just people interfering with science. Best to publish all data, and keep discussion reasonable and non-accusatory. The amount of political and activist cruft attaching to the believers and deniers are harming the TRUE cause, which is to find out the truth.
Even the common labels, "believers" and "deniers", are ridiculous; they have more of a place in religious debate.
But it goes beyond the computer models. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's have some light shone on the temperature data and how it is collected:
From Surfacestations.org [wordpress.com][pdf], a project to survey all 1221 of the climate-monitoring stations in the U.S.:
During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.
We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.
In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.
And let's not forget the international methods [wattsupwiththat.com] of survey.
No (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Maybe now the debate will actually occur? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now there is a question that is often glossed over.
I am inclined to think that they are the only ones with the power to do anything. They have set themselves up as the requirers. They set regulations, and everyone else either abides by them or risks punishment. Nobody else can rightly claim that position (lest THEY find themselves on the receiving end of an assload of "justice")
That said, I would like to think that there are other ways, I just wonder if they can happen fast enough or thoroughly enough.
Then again, there are those more powerful than governments. Insurance companies.
What would happen if major insurance companies became so convinced of the need to take action (assuming there is such a need, there is little to discuss hear without the need, so we have to assume it for the purposes of this line of thought) that they simply stopped offering to sign or renew policies without commitment agreements to take measurable action to reduce pollution and carbon footprint?
Few businesses can get very far without insurance of some sort.
Do your research before you get conned by Al Gore (Score:1, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
Re:ESR said it very well - Open Source Science (Score:2, Interesting)
Moderating parent troll is moderation abuse. Some are in denial when they think this scandal only impacts a few climate scientists. It significantly impacts many other entirely different fields of science, so of course it seriously impacts the credibility of ALL climate research. NIWA made a partial explanation of the adjustments they made to the data in New Zealand, but they haven't committed to releasing an explanation of all their calculations. Furthermore their glacier melting graph looks a little misleading. The glacier melting in that graph doesn't look significant, especially if you realize most of the down part of the graph was only a couple years. According to the graph, the glaciers grew considerably for periods not long ago when global warming should have been melting them. It makes me wonder if the whole glaciers and arctic melting, and sea level rise are fake also. There may not be any global warming at all, or maybe little more than minor natural fluctuations.
Re:ESR said it very well - Open Source Science (Score:2, Interesting)
Why was this guy moded as a troll? What he's saying is all over the news in Europe. [telegraph.co.uk]
Re:Great... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would be classified as a skeptic. I'm not convinced that they are wrong, I'm just not convinced that they are right. The first one would be my fault, the second is theirs. I'm not one of the "earth can't change" types. I'm positive that it is changing, I'm just not convinced that:
A We are responsible for it
B That it's the end of the world as many seem to believe it is.
I am employed as a scientists, in an admitedly unrelated field. My industry is also under fire by "Skeptics" and I can relate to the frustration evidenced in the leaked emails. However, I've always believed that enganging those who are willing to listen, and ignoring those who made up their mind and as you say "Started with a conclusion and worked backwards". My industry is only recently taking the innitiative and it seems to be working.
P.S. I would NEVER use a word like "Hide" in context of normalizing a dataset. That smacks way too much of fraudulent data manipulation.
Re:Extraordinary claims... (Score:2, Interesting)
This normal cycles thing is one the denialists' straw men. Of course there are normal cycles. Every climate scientist knows all about the normal cycles (what do you think they study in graduate school? The big secret is that grad school is all about what to write on grant proposals). No one has ever denied there are normal cycles. Some of the normal cycles (they occur at different frequencies and even irregularly) have been quite dramatic in the past. The point is that normal cycles don't explain all of the changes in the observational record. What else could explain it? Well one likely culprit is the work of humans. What contribution to the observational record comes from the things people do? It's a perfectly obvious question to ask given the overwhelming evidence that billions of humans can cause dramatic changes, easily observed, to the "natural" (non-human) system.
Wrong results (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:People like you are a large part of the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, but you forget one thing: Green-washing is now a valid way of bringing in the big bucks from consumers. Look at things like the Toyota Prius, which is blown out of the water in fuel consumption by pretty much any modern diesel of the same size or smaller (and the diesel doesn't require environmentally unfriendly battery production/destruction techniques) - but it doesn't matter, that, because the Prius has been cemented in the public consciousness. Mention diesel to people, and it conjures up images of the smoky, rattling behemoths spawned by the 70s oil embargo. It's not about better, it's about perception. The public is so willing to give up money and comfort now to save the environment (which fills me with an odd pride in humanity) that they'll give up their supposedly errant ways for ones that are perceived as helping reduce damage.
The big thing, the elephant in the room that nobody is talking about is the farm industry, by FAR the most polluting industry out there. One cow puts out more methane by belching (cows don't fart) in one year than a Land Rover Discovery. Put down that steak, and pick up that asparagus!
Yes, I know I didn't cite anything, but I felt like ranting. I read it somewhere, I think. Anyway, that's still a more robust source than most of the envirogangsters' info.
I'm a climate sceptic, but not how you think... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the whole 'climate change' debate is bizarre, and I am deeply sceptical about those who use climate change to push tenuously related political agendas.
If prompted for my strongest climate-sceptic view, it is this: while I'm willing to accept that substantial data shows that mankind's activities have resulted in atmospheric change - and while I'm willing to believe that this influences climate, I've one key question: is the change for the worse? Really? How can you be so sure?
I dislike the doom-laden 'climate change will wreck our environment' crowd for one key reason: they can't provide any evidence that I wouldn't prefer the climate after it has changed. Lots of things have been affected by mankind - and, frankly, I prefer to live in the world in which these changes have been made.
While I applaud being economical - and dislike pollution as much as the next sane person... I also think mankind belongs on earth... and I'm not willing to blindly jump on the change implies disaster bandwagon. I'd like the scientific debate to be, erm, more scientific... science can't tell us what we should chose for our future - it only illuminates mechanisms... if we want to engage in a debate about what influence we should exert on our own futures, maybe we need to bring in philosophy and ethics. All I can assure you is that I expect no clear cut answers.
To the believers (Score:4, Interesting)
I am unfortunately forced to put most "believers" in Human-Caused Global Climate Change into the same group that believe in the "not a sparrow shall fall" form of biblical fundamentalism. Beliving that humans are fully in control of the Earth's climate and can change it at will is just as dangerous as those that believe in a personally involved God that oversees every event on Earth.
Right now, we have at our disposal enough information that we can see most of the inputs to the Earth's climate. We do not yet understand all of these inputs and their relative weightings. Nobody has any real knowledge of how much energy is stored in oceans or how much effect solar variance has on oceans.
Sure, we know there is a lot more CO2 than there was 100 years ago. And some fairly obvious conclusions can be drawn from there being more CO2, but we have real information for only an extremely short period for the Earth. We might know some things about the climate 1000 years ago, but the information is very incomplete.
Could the climate be changing? Sure it could. Can we materially change this, given what we know today? Almost certainly not, at least not without huge inputs of energy or removal of what energy we are putting into the climate system. Neither of which is proposed. The Earth's climate engine is something that is measured in gigajoules. So far, the proposals on the table are not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They are like dusting off the tower that held the Trinity device.
It is obvious that nobody in any position of power really believes there is some onrushing global catastrophe. Most of the rather weak carbon emissions reductions that have been proposed will have zero effect on emissions for a decade and even then it is a decrease in growth, not a real decrease in emissions. Of course, the costs for this decrease in growth will affect everyone in US and Europe in some pretty unpleasant ways. But still, regardless of the cost, the net effect is so close to zero as to be meaningless. And there is nobody saying that if these steps were taken immediately there would be any net change.
So what else could be done? Well, for starters we could eliminate passenger air travel. The reduction in emissions might only be 20% of the total but it would be a 20% decrease in emissions rather than a reduction in growth. We could require special permits to enter a large city by car. You can't outlaw cars in the US because of the way cities have been built for the last 70 years or so. By requiring such a permit it could eliminate much of the commutting by car that is happening. Might not cut emissions by more than 5%, but again it would be a 5% decrease rather than a decrease in growth. This might take years to be able to implement, but it could be done.
The problem is, if we did this what would happen? Nobody really knows. There is a theory that it might change the climate, or stop a change that we don't seem to like much. But the ugly truth is that we simply do not know what would happen. Clearly, the leaders of the world today do not believe (as some do) that it would save thousands if not millions of lives.
Instead, in the US we are looking at utterly pointless plans to implement some sort of point trading system that will enrich a few at the cost of all consumer goods going up in price. Oh the price for manufacturing them will stay the same, but transport will cost more. You can't bring manufacturing back to high-labor-cost US from cheap-labor-cost Mexico and China, but the traders can get rich. Net effect of this will be somewhat lower sales and the three or four manufacturers still in the US will be forced to move out. But little else will really change. Except the growth of emissions will slow just from economic changes.
If you believe that humans can change the climate in a few years with minor energy inputs you are almost certainly wrong. It is extremely arrogant to believe that the energies commanded by humans today could do any suc
Re:Oftentimes, simply no... (Score:1, Interesting)
You come off as an arrogant bastard. No lay person could possibly understand what you do because you're just so much smarter than they are? Or is it that you spent 40 years poring over data day and night? Are you THAT smart? Give me a break. Anyone who has the hubris to think that their work can only be understood by those in their field is just aching to be smacked down by some un-educated smarty. Look, its attitudes like yours that make the rest of us 'non-scientists' think you're an idiot. Give people some credit, we're not all morons.
Re:Which questions? (Score:5, Interesting)
"My experience is that a good number of 'those questions' -- at least as they filter out into popular discussion -- are either ridiculous or end up having credible responses in support of anthropocentric climate change."
The first and largest was "what did your simulations actually DO when calculating this predicted climate change?"
And yes, the answer was, basically, "shut up - we know what we're doing, you don't need to see the computer code."
Whereas the truth was "the computer code sucks, it doesn't give the 'correct' answers, so we filled it full of hard-coded routines that gave us the answer we wanted."
Another question was "have you adjusted the raw data?" They said "no," the truth was "oh, hell yeah, and we're going to delete it before you can get an honest look at it."
The straw man questions you post were, oddly enough, not that straw-mannish, especially since the guy who is the godfather of the global warming computer models apparently did the computer model that predicted global cooling back in the day. I guess you didn't know that, though. It's another of those "dumb" questions you didn't even know was asked, much less the answer to...
Re:ESR said it very well - Open Source Science (Score:1, Interesting)
Hey, genius, in case you forgot, forty or fifty years ago everyone was in a state of panic due to global COOLING.
Re:ESR said it very well - Open Source Science (Score:2, Interesting)
While we're all busy questioning the motives of the scientists and what possible financial motivations they may have in all of this, the converse is clear...
The motives of the big money behind Global Warming denial are absolutely pure.
They want to keep making money the same way they've been doing it.
They don't want any impediments to the continuation of their business model.
No deception about this one, at all.
Unfortunately, clarity of purpose and motivation have little to do with what's going on, just in the arguments about what's going on.
Also unfortunately, there isn't any simple way to establish and measure what turns out to be a very long-term trend. It only comes out in computer models, projections, and testing of those projections.
This is now science at its most essential level. Too bad that we've gotten hooked on technology, and most of us have forgotten what science really is. Even if the truth is out there, it's not coming out. We're too busy arguing about side-shows, and ignoring science completely. By the way for those who are making money off of industries that may be causing global warming, this is perfectly fine. As long as we're all arguing, we're not doing anything to constrain their business.
Re:But it goes beyond the computer models. (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you not read the first page of that PDF at all?
Regardless, I'll admit that should that be accurate data, it's yet more noise that needs to be dealt with in an already very noisy dataset. However, I'd very much like to see such research done by respected scientists and published in respectable, peer-reviewed journals. A book being sold by the Hartland Institute comes nowhere close to being a respectable publication.
If it's true that those stations are in such bad positions, it still doesn't invalidate climate change. The trends will still be there, despite the extra noise. It's not like 800 thermometers were suddenly moved from cold, dark places to hot steamy ones, and that's the sole basis for climate change. Even if they are located poorly, year after year they should have the same operating conditions. And if year after year they show consistent temperature changes, that's still a signal that you can pick out of the noise.
I'm pretty well acquainted with people who make use of the network of weather stations around the US. They know which ones are consistently abnormal, since they pour through the data every single day. I'm skeptical that there is any such major issue in the US because of that. While I'm sure there are some bad weather stations, the scale in that book is unlikely. Meteorologists track weather systems. If a pocket of air suddenly rose 10 degrees when it passed over a weather station, then dropped on the other side, it would be very obvious.
A link from an untrustworthy source combined with my experience dealing with experts in the field makes me very skeptical indeed.
There is no "global cooling" (Score:3, Interesting)
[i]They have no explanation for why global temperature has not increased during the last ten years. They are just as astonished by the exceptionally cold, wet weather they see outside their window as everyone else.[/i]
No, actual scientists are not astonished because the magnitude of natural variability per year is significant, and the rest of the physics of the planet doesn't take a nap.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig1.gif [nasa.gov]
Do the above show something particularly odd or incompatible with mainstream climatological opinion in the last 10 years?
No.
Damn! There is a great deal of thought going on! (Score:3, Interesting)
Every third post on this difficult and complex subject is about eight vertical text inches of solid and earnest thinking. The brain cells are firing nicely and people are really considering this issue. It's nice to see so many varied ideas.
I have my own opinions, which in a nutshell are these. . .
Man-Bear-Pig was unfair, thanks Parker & Stone. You try hard, your contributions to rational debate are appreciated, but you take rather too many over-the-counter no-doze drugs to be entirely reliable and effective researchers. You also have accumulated rather too many barnacles on the ship of your public opinion to back down from opinions you might later realize are incomplete or outright misinformed. Basically, you are human.
Even at the end of, "An Inconvenient Truth" the notion was laid out that too much glacial melt stops the ocean convection currents and turns on the planetary big freeze. So Global Warming isn't global warming at all. It's Global Cooling. I've yet to see any evidence to the contrary and so I don't really understand why everybody is pissed off with whatshisname. . , Gore and his video. Despite imperfect data, he's basically right to be concerned about climate change. The weather is totally messed up. Anybody with a balcony window and a memory which goes back more than twenty years can (and will) tell you as much.)
It's the governments and political maneuvering which are annoying. Everybody with a stick in the fire is trying to take advantage of the situation. Fuck that. I don't think anything can actually be done. The cattle will be eaten. It's not in our hands anymore. We're too stupid and ignorant and easily manipulated as a race. Too bad. The blood will flow. But thankfully, that's just one step in a much larger program of existence.
-FL
Re:People are debating the wrong question (Score:3, Interesting)
As pretty much a climate scientist, I have to concur with you. My major talking points:
1) Yes, climate change is happening. Nobody worth a shit disagrees.
2) No, the world isn't ending. No, we're not all going to die.
3) Can we do anything about it? No, probably not.
The biggest issues with climate change are that it's slow and a long way away. Our current carbon emissions have a 20-40 year range of effect. That's longer than most politicians are in office, for sure. How do you get politicians to spend political capital on something with no visible benefit to them?
In the long run, climate change will be bad. It will disrupt 10k years of stable climate, in which we built civilization. But, at least in first world countries, the primary effect will be.....insurance rates. We're at a point now where insurance will be the driving mover for the first world. When the coasts see more flooding from storm surges, insurance rates will go up. As that happens, less and less people will be able to afford the insurance, and so they will move from the coast inland. When the sea level rises a foot, and two more Katrinas come through New Orleans, who will be able to afford the insurance to build in the flood plains?
The people who are really fucked are the third-world countries. Unless they benefit from climate change, (Mongolia, perhaps?) they will be really screwed. Floods, famine, ecosystem changes....those things suck when you don't have the science, technology, or insurance to deal with them.
I'm directly tied to climate science, but like most scientists, I'm not about to proclaim doom and gloom to sell copies. We're about to see climate change unlike anything humans have ever been able to record. But personally, I'm not worried. I've got insurance. Does it help the rest of the world? Nope. But that isn't my forte. That's not what I'm going to school for. I can't affect politics. I can't make everyone stop dumping carbon and methane into the atmosphere. That isn't my job. I just model climate change. Hell, whether or not the models predict it doesn't even really affect my paycheck. I'm working under a grant to study it, period. I guess this ramble ends with this: I'm a climate scientist. Climate change is happening. No, I'm not panicking. Yes, lots of people are going to have a hard time. Yes, the poor will be the hardest hit, since they don't have insurance.
Re:Forcing people into impoverished lives (Score:2, Interesting)
The real AGW arguments (and the motivation of all the parties involved) seem to be about the remedies rather than the climate. The AGW believers want to use governments to force people to lead objectively poorer lives. Many of them have wanted this since before Global Warming was even theorized.
What do you mean "people would lead objectively poorer lives"? By reducing energy consumption and waste?
As a bad analogy, some "poor" people are/stay poor because they can't manage their money. People grow rich by conserving and saving. Spending our energy and materials budget wisely makes us richer. Truly green products have a total cost (including externalities) of manufacture, maintenance, and disposal that is lower than non-green products. That is the definition of a green product. Reducing consumption means we can spend our energy and non-renewable materials on the most valuable and useful products.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know where this fits into the current "climate-gate" issue and the raw data, but here is a story I was told by the state climatologist for the State of Utah:
He was reviewing climate data and digitizing historical records for temperature and rainfall data for the State of Utah when he look up some climate models based on some of the data that he, himself, sent in. He noticed that some of the data was being modified and "fixed up" with some algorithms.
Some of this is legitimate, as the data was recorded by volunteers that on occasion made some pretty huge mistakes. For example, if the high temperature in July was recorded as 19 degrees (F) and the nearby stations were recorded in the 90's and upper 80's, it seems likely that the number was inverted when it was recorded. Particularly when the daytime high is lower than the nighttime low. Numbers input in this manner were reviewed, including automated equipment when something was seen to perhaps malfunction and give a similar kind of error.
Here is the real "criminal" offense that happened: The data "scrubbing" algorithm fixed up the raw data set and then simply replaced the numbers for the "raw" data being used. Yes, the original "raw" data set was simply discarded and never to be seen again. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bias in the numbers being modified so earlier temperatures were kept somewhat cooler and the more recent numbers were made a little bit warmer. Certainly the algorithm used for this scrubbing was kept separate from even the climate model software.
Since this climatologist still had the original paper documents (not digitized), he reviewed some of the data points on some arbitrary day that he selected, and noted what data points were changed and what were kept. Out of about 30 data points for the State of Utah that were modified, he agreed that about 3 of them should have been changed.
Seeing this, he asked for the original "raw" data set on a much larger sample to run his own scrubbing algorithm, and was simply told that such a data set simply didn't exist. Upon pressing the issue, it turns out that all of the raw numbers for the USA and the U.S. Weather Bureau that had been digitized (about 30 years worth at the time) had been scrubbed like this with all of the original data set removed and discarded. The raw physical paper copies of the weather data were still available, but who would bother with trying to re-enter data that supposedly already was in digital form just to correct some data errors?
More to the point, the climate models are working off of bad data to begin with, so there is little more to really trust what those models are predicting when they are predicting based off of an already biased dataset.
This was more than a decade ago when I first heard about this issue... I think the issue has only become worse since then, and very little to try and fix the problem as well.
Re:But it goes beyond the computer models. (Score:3, Interesting)
A year later the NOAA was backtracking and thanking McIntyre for finding Hansens fucking retarded mistakes.
Lets not mention the DECADE of statistical studies that were all based on that bad data, that are still taken as gospel.
Let me repeat that. The NOAA had been passing out bad data to climate scientists, data that greatly exaggerated the recent warming. Climate scientists used this data to support the AGW and Global Warming theories. Two years ago, after a decade of this bad data being used, it was discovered how bad it was. But all of the studied based on the bad data are STILL CITED AS PROOF OF AGW.
Hansen of course claims that the bad data was "inconsequential" and that the results of those studies would be the same with the good data, even though they had to admit that 1998 is NOT actually the warmest year on record. The hottest year on record is actually 1934. Thats right. 1934. Plenty of hot years back then, as it turns out.
These guys are hacks with an agenda.
Straw-man much? (Score:3, Interesting)
Straw-man #2: That my concern over the validity of one data set means I'm incapable of considering any of the datasets valid
Straw-man #3: That increased hurricane strength an Al Queda have anything to do with each other.
I'm not saying that all the data is suspect, but the dataset that is frequently indicated to be the best is IMO suspect. Not necessarily completely invalid, but compromised. I'm not ignoring any other data, In earlier posts I indicate that I believe the climate is changing I'm just not convinced that their conclusions as to the causes and magnitude of the changes are accurate. Even valid data does not by itself indicate valid conclusions. I've reviewed papers where their work was good, but their discussion was completely off base and their conclusions were in direct contradiction with their own results.
As to your irrelevant screed at the end. Talk about facts not in evidence.
The problem with knee-jerk reactionary types like yourself are that you jump to the emotional name calling instead of rational discussion involving actual data. I recognize that a lot of other skeptics may be less interested in actual discourse, but until you know more about a persons reasons you should give them the benefit of the doubt. By that I mean you should assume they are willing to look at evidence previously unseen and change their mind. I started out believing in the anthropogenic explanation for global warming, but the more I've looked at the data manipulations performed on the raw data, the less convinced I am.
My political affiliation has nothing to do with my judgements as a scientist. If anything my political affiliation is based on my scientific nature. I changed party affiliations based on the philosophical inconsistencies of those leading the party with which I was previously affiliated.
Also, I am by no means and ideologue. I only bothered to join a party at all so that I can participate in primaries. On election day I vote for the best candidate, regardless of party, and have probably voted for an equal number of Democrats and Republicans over the years.
So in summary, you built up several straw-men and then did an admirable job of knocking them down. However, none of those straw-men even remotely resembled me. You then proceeded to attach the character of a fictional "Climate Change Denier" as though he and I were the same without any evidence to support that assumption. In short, you provided nothing of any value by posting. Better luck next time!