Global warming! Here!

[PonoBill]

Oh, well.

What a sideshow. That would be the crackpots with credentials I was talking about.

[Lobes]

This article was in todays Fairfax news (Australia). I have a few quibbles with certain aspects as they are presented but all in all I think it presents a very good analysis of how and why the level of public trust in Climat Change science is what it is. The 4 point description of hierarchys is particularly enlightening and a good riposte to those bores who mindlessly liken Climate Science to being a quasi-religious movement.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/blogs/godless-gross/the-ets-and-a-crisis-of-faith/20100430-txda.html

________________________________________________________________

Most of us cannot understand science so there is much we need to take on faith.  And we often do take science on faith.  Every time we switch on a computer, fly in a plane or go under the knife we are completely accepting of science, even if the consequences of the science being wrong would be calamitous.  Climate change cannot command that sort faith yet notwithstanding great scientific consensus – not unanimity but overwhelming consensus.

As I have blogged before, there is a hierarchy.  Science does polarise us, at time seeming heroic and at other times being vilified.  There does seem to be a discernible trend.  The more intangible or inaccessible an area of science is, the more easily some in the community will be receptive to populist repudiation of that science.  The further you go down the hierarchy, the more tangible and, therefore, plausible a scientific approach becomes. The problem of climate change science is that it is high on the hierarchy and so prone to doubt regardless of the robustness of the science.  But I think change has occurred, in just the past few months.

DICK’S HIERARCHY OF ASCENDING SCIENTIFIC PLAUSIBILITY

1. Pure Science  - {e.g.: astrophysics, pure maths}.  The common response is ''Geek central.  Who cares what these white coated nerds think?''

2. Intangible Applied Science -  {e.g.: applied maths, statistics, climate change}.  The common response of the laity is ''Unreliable – you can prove anything with statistics!''

3.Tangible Applied Science  -  {e.g.: research on medical cures}.  The common response could be characterised as ''We believe and acclaim these visionaries.''

4. Commercialised Science - {e.g.: IT, surgery, air travel}.  The public response could be portrayed as ''I embrace and use this miraculous science without a second thought''.

When I last blogged on this hierarchy of plausibility, I thought that climate change was in category two, with as yet intangible consequences.   Evidence is coming to light that makes it a category three science – the climate evidence is too manifest to ignore. The future is now.

I recently saw a photo of a house in McLaughlin’s Beach in Gippsland, Victoria, which had sandbags piled along its right-hand side!!!  Storm events are already making parts of our coast so flood-prone that buildings are at risk and adaptation is required.  This is just the start.

The rate of sea level rise has increased since 1990 and is now almost twice the rate of the 20th century average.  Forget projections, sea levels in Australia have risen six centimetres since 1970!  No wonder there are floods that are so common in some remote beaches that the SES will not attend to assist.  That will soon spread to less remote coastal regions.

In Byron Bay, the courts have landed the council (and because of the power of precedent, every other government in the country) with a huge liability for the eroding beach.  In Victoria, the retreat from the coast has commenced in places such as the Honeysuckles where there is pressure to prohibit development.  We have the world’s first environmental refugees from PNG!  The Carteret (Tulun) Atoll, is now uninhabitable due to continual inundation.

This is just one area of data.  In every relevant area, from diminished rainfall, to fire susceptibility, to heat, to coastal flooding, the trickle of data has become a surge.  The climate change science is no longer intangible relying on projections of the future.  It is no longer an area where we need to accord blind faith to science.  The climate scientists are emerging as the visionaries who took the hits from the pig ignorant opportunists that understood that it is easy to vilify difficult science if the news is scary.  But the future is now.

Climate change does not need faith or trust any more, just the ability to read.

[log man]

Lobes, how incredibly depressing . To think our ETS has been scuttled by a combination of Andrew Bolt, Tony Abbott,  Family first and the god botherers, and the power of the right wing shock jocks. Democracy at work I guess . So there you go..... the ETS is dead and buried in this country and what do we do now?. Maybe we should have been more forceful at the start and attacked the shit out of the opposing camp and chased the deniers down every burrow. Maybe we should have explained to people at the start of all this that there's an easy way to do this or there's the hard way.  Any way BOO HOO . Log

[Lobes]

To be honest I'm not sure if an ETS would have been better than a straight tax on Carbon. I think thats what we should have really been aiming for but the bankers and corporations got their claws into it and figured they could make a killing doing dodgy deals in the marketplace so ETS is what we were offered. Of course thats all gone by the by now. An ETS would not have been perfect but at least it would have been a start and yes it is sad that we dont even get that now.

[Lobes]

You are mistaken if you think that the scientists interviewed in that video are "prominent". They are on the fringe. The only one who is a scientist at an actual University with a tenure track position is Richard Lindzen, who is a well-known shill for Exxon-Mobil, OPEC, etc... He also is on the record as saying that cigarette smoke doesn't cause cancer. He likes to be a naysayer.


I guess you will have some work finding some kind of dirt on 30,000 scientist of which 9,000 have PHD's . This law suit filed by creator of the weather channel.

Al Gore sued by over 30.000 Scientists for Global Warming fraud / John Coleman

As I think we have established I have technical difficulties watching these videos but I was intrigued by your claims of a 30'000 scientists petition. You were (deliberately?) vague describing just who and what this petition was about but could you be referring to a climate change petition by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and allegedly signed by more than 31,000 scientists?

I just so happened to have come across an article in an American magazine called the National Review that casts serious doubt on the validity of this petition. Please read this extract and let me know if you still think the petition is a worthwhile piece of evidence in the Climate Change debate.

The extract is from a review of a book called Liberty and Tyranny by a chap called Mark Levin, who admittedly, I have not heard of before:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTMzMTY2ZmU2ZGY1YzQ3N2Q0MWY4M2M4OTMyZGRjMjY=

I’m not expert on many topics the book addresses, so I flipped to its treatment of a subject that I’ve spent some time studying — global warming — in order to see how it treated a controversy in which I’m at least familiar with the various viewpoints and some of the technical detail.

It was awful. It was so bad that it was like the proverbial clock that chimes 13 times — not only is it obviously wrong, but it is so wrong that it leads you to question every other piece of information it has ever provided.

Levin argues that human-caused global warming is nothing to worry about, and merely an excuse for the Enviro-Statists (capitalization in the original) to seize more power. It reads like a bunch of pasted-together quotes and stories based on some quick Google searches by somebody who knows very little about the topic, and can’t be bothered to learn. After pages devoted to talking about prior global cooling fears, and some ridiculous or cynical comments by advocates for emissions restrictions (and one quote from Richard Lindzen, a very serious climate scientist who disputes the estimated magnitude of the greenhouse effect, but not its existence), he gets to the key question on page 184 (eBook edition):

[D]oes carbon dioxide actually affect temperature levels?

Levin does not attempt to answer this question by making a fundamental argument that proceeds from evidence available for common inspection through a defined line of logic to a scientific view. Instead, he argues from authority by citing experts who believe that the answer to this question is pretty much no. Who are they? An associate professor of astrophysics, a geologist, and an astronaut.

But he says that these are just examples:

There are so many experts who reject the notion of man-made global warming and the historical claims about carbon dioxide they are too numerous to list here.

He goes on to cite a petition “rejecting the theory of human-caused global warming” sponsored by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and signed by more than 31,000 scientists. There are a few problems with this survey that Levin doesn’t mention. More than 20,000 of these “scientists” lack PhDs in any field. There was very little quality control: At least one person signed it as Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.  Scientific American did the hard work of actually contacting a sample of individual signatories, and estimated that there are about 200 climate scientists who agree with the statement in the petition among the signatories. And most important by far, the text of the petition is not close to Levin’s claim of rejecting the notion of man-made global warming. In the key sentence it says that signatories do not believe that there is compelling scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic heating and disruption of the earth’s climate. Depending on the definition of “catastrophic,” I could agree to that. Yet I don’t reject the notion of man-made global warming.

On one side of the scale of Levin’s argument from authority, then, we have three scientists speaking outside their areas of central expertise, plus a dodgy petition.  What’s on the other side of the scale that Levin doesn’t mention to his readers?

Among the organizations that don’t reject the notion of man-made global warming are: the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; The Royal Society; the national science academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand. Russia, South Africa, and Sweden; the U.S. National Research Council; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the American Chemical Society; the American Physical Society; the American Geophysical Union; and the World Meteorological Organization. That is, Levin’s argument from authority is empty.

I am just wondering, SEA, is this petition for real or does it just tell you what you want what you really really want?? 

[kwhilden]

Why climate scientists and climate change skeptics can't talk to each other... It's simple, they are different species.

BBC News - Neanderthal genes 'survive in us'

LOL. This thread has been quite boring lately, so enjoy...

[log man]

That whole Gene thing is a conspiracy.

[Weasels wake]

Here's a new twist for ya, is global warming too big to fail?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHY CLEANER AIR COULD SPEED GLOBAL WARMING
Aerosol pollution, which is now on the downswing, has helped keep the planet cool by blocking sunlight. Tackling another pollutant, soot, might buy Earth some time.

[WALL OF TEXT]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That’s right, the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring from industrial smokestacks, and continue to reduce our carbon footprint, the increase in global warming could be profound. We are damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. Pollute, we destroy the planet. Don't pollute, global warming. We all die either way.

Soooooo, 'cap and tax' could conceivably speed up global warming.
How fu(ked up is that??  

Global dimming is a fairly recently discovered phenomenon but already pretty well understood. Basically particles in the atmosphere act as tiny little sunshades and reflect sunlight thereby cooling the earth underneath them.

These particles can be human emitted from power stations, diesel engines or suchlike or they can be naturally emitted from things such as volcanos. In fact in the 18th Century a large volcano erupted in Iceland and caused global temperatures to plunge for at least a year or two afterwards.

However they do more than just act as little sunshades, they also contribute to acid rain and several other phenomena. All in all I think its better to have cleaner emissions but as you rightly point out this leads to greater amounts of sunlight hitting the earth and speeding up the Greenhouse Effect.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't indeed. However I think you are making some pretty big assumptions to say that cap and tax will impact this one way or the other. What is your reasoning?

Well, if you were to believe the hype behind the measure, you'd think that it will actually be good for the enviornment.  But I don't believe that assumption, I think it's just another 'quilt' tax and nothing more.

But I find it interesting that you seem to believe it wouldn't help the enviornment either, by saying that my original post on cap and tax, which was satirical, "making some pretty big assumptions". 

[Lobes]

Weasels go up a few comments and read my response to Logman re the ETS. The Emissions Trading Scheme (or ETS) is basically analogous to a cap and trade (or is it Tax - not sure if you're being satirical or not?).

I am fairly cynical about the prospects of success for these schemes as they buy into the current scenario which I believe is unsustainable. I believe they are more open to abuse by the financial industry and other big players. Yet for the same reasons they are the most likely schemes to be able to be passed as these same corporations have our systems of government in a headlock.

Nevertheless I am genuinely interested in hearing the pros and cons of the schemes hence my open question. I suppose I wrote "assumptions" because to be honest your criticism of Cap and Tax seems less a measured analysis than a reflexive reaction to a policy supported by your political antithesis.

I wasn't really aware it was satire because in general satire translates very badly into the written word.

I still think a flat tax on carbon is the best option. It will take more adjusting to initially but its less likely to fail in the long run as these complicated carbon trading schemes will be.

[kwhilden]

Just when you thought this thread might die... it comes back to life! (like the undead zombie that it is...)

Obama Begins "Spill-to-Bill" Pivot:
"The catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf right now may prove to be a result of human error – or corporations taking dangerous short-cuts that compromised safety.  But we have to acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth – risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes.  Just like we have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and grandchildren….

"The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future.  That means continuing our unprecedented effort to make everything from our homes and businesses to our cars and trucks more energy efficient….  And it means rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies so we can prioritize investments in clean energy research and development.

"But the only way the transition to clean energy will succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future – if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed.  And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution….

"The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive energy and climate bill, and there is currently a plan in the Senate – a plan that was developed with ideas from Democrats and Republicans – that would achieve the same goals.  The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.  I will make the case for a clean energy future wherever I can, and I will work with anyone from either party to get this done.  But we will get this done.  The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century.  We will not move back.  America will move forward.

More on this here:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/02/obama-pivot-bp-spill-climate-bill/

[PonoBill]

The latest issue of wired magazine (the iPad version anyway) has an article about the difficulty in communicating global warming information and why it has failed so badly. I didn't write it, but I could have.

What President Obama has a chance to do is place all these issue into a context that makes the issues comprehensible to the general poplulace, and to develop a sense of urgency. I believe people who understand the technical aspects of an issue often fail to understand the political aspects of communication. Without general support a politician can't drive forward any sweeping measures, and general support is fleeting unless communication is flawless.

They have a chance to get this right. Unfortunately they have already bobbled some of the early communications. I hope they do better over the coming weeks. Obama should have spent memorial day on the gulf coast with his family. I really can't believe he didn't do that. You may find that trivial, but that's how it's done. Symbolic acts are how you show importance.

[SEA]

This article does a great job of showing why Obama or any other president for that matter won't ever get this right. It's all about the almighty Dollar.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/05/30/barack-obama-liar-warlord-and-corporate-#more11751

[log man]

Ha! Brilliant!

[kwhilden]

If you think there may not be a conspiracy by 'Big Oil' to prevent climate change legislation... think again. It would be tragic if this ballot initiative were passed, and I'm dreading the campaign adverts that Big Oil will sponsor on this measure.

Measure to delay greenhouse gas cuts qualifies for November ballot
June 22, 2010|By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/22/local/la-me-0623-climate-ballot-m

An oil industry measure to postpone enforcement of California's 2006 global warming law qualified for the November ballot Tuesday, setting up what promises to be a nationally watched struggle over the future of renewable energy.

The initiative, launched six months ago by Texas oil giants Valero Energy Inc. and Tesoro Corp., comes as the oil industry has fallen under intense scrutiny in the wake of the gulf oil spill disaster.

California's law, by limiting greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, oil refineries and other industries, has already begun to create a huge market for solar, wind and other clean energy sources in the nation's most populous state -- an effort that could falter if the initiative passes.

Under pending regulations, the law, AB 32, would require that a third of the state's electricity come from renewable sources by 2020, up from less than a quarter today. Proponents are calling their measure "The California Jobs Initiative" and painting the climate law as "an energy tax." The initiative would halt enforcement of the law until unemployment in the state, now over 12%, sinks to 5.5% for at least a year.

"AB 32 will impose billions of dollars in higher utility rates and fuel prices on California families when they can least afford it," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. and co-chair of the initiative campaign.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lashed back, saying, "This initiative sponsored by greedy Texas oil companies would cripple California's fastest-growing economic sector, reverse our renewable energy policy and decimate our environmental progress for the benefit of these oil companies' profit margins."

He added, "I will not allow this to happen on my watch."

Proponents of the measure spent $3 million, of which more than two thirds was contributed by the two Texas companies and other energy interests, to gather more than 800,000 signatures to place the measure on the ballot. To qualify, the initiative needed 433,971 signatures, equal to 5% of the ballots cast in the 2006 general election.

"The Texas oil companies think if they can kill their clean energy competition in California, they can do it everywhere," said Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for opponents who call their organization "Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs."

Valero, which owns several California refineries, has mounted an aggressive campaign against federal efforts to pass climate legislation, including a House bill that was modeled in part on California's law. Environmentalists acknowledge that postponing California's rules to limit greenhouse gases could damage the chances of any federal legislation.