Has Global Warming Stopped?
Ezra Klein , Kevin Drum and Ryan Avent all have posts up that attack George Will’s statement that “If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life”. Kevin Drum describes this as “idiotic”, Ryan as “moronic”, and Ezra responds, of course, with a chart. So does the always-numerate Kevin Drum, and I’ll use his version of the chart:
The funny thing is that if you zoom in on about the last ten years, you see this:
There has not been a lot of measured warming for the last ten years.
It’s hard to dispute this. What Ezra, Kevin and Ryan are arguing is idiotic, moronic or whatever is the notion that the past ten years of data disproves the theory of AGW. Their basic argument is “sure, but look at the long-term trend”. I agree with them about the conclusion that the last ten years of raw data don’t falsify the theory (and have argued this at many times in many places), but I’m not sure any of them have thought through this question fully.
If I observe that it is cooler in New York today than yesterday, no reasonable person would take that as proof that AGW theory is wrong. On the other hand, if we had rapid growth of human population and rapid fossil-fuel-dependent economic development for the next 1,000 years with no increase in surface temperatures, no reasonable person would claim that AGW in anything like its current form had not been disproven. The question is at what point between 1 day and 1,000 years do I have enough evidence that I can reasonably reject the theory? It seems to me that you need a rational standard to answer this question before you simply call ten years “moronic” a priori.
In fact, it’s more complicated than that. If we had no warming over the past ten years (true) and lots more CO2 in the air (true) but also a huge increase in volcanic activity (not true, but posited as an illustration), this would not be evidence that AGW theory was untrue, because the models used to predict warming would have called for no warming because all the particulate matter thrown up by the volcanoes should offset the effect of the CO2. So what we are really looking for is the degree of divergence between the predictions of the models used as the basis for long-run warming predictions versus actual temperatures, in order to falsify or corroborate the operational theory that we can predict future long-run temperature impacts attributable to CO2 emissions. The rigorous version of the question then is: what is a valid falsification period for AGW models?
So, naturally we just go to the escrowed set of AGW models with their predictions made over the past 20 years or so, enter in all data for actual emissions, volcanic activity and other model inputs for the time from the prediction was made until today, and then run the mdoels and compare their outputs to actual temperature change in order to build a distribution of model accuracy, right? Ha ha. Needless to say, no such repository exists.
Almost all humans resist management and audit, and climate modelers are no exception. Because they have been so poorly managed, we have no well-structured program to evaluate accuracy, and instead must rely only on back-testing (or what among climate modelers is termed “hindcasting”). Now, this would be hard to do, for several reasons: the models (we believe) keep improving, so the accuracy of a 1988 model doesn’t necessarily tell us the accuracy of a 2008 model; there is huge signal-to-noise, so it requires several decades (we believe) to have a useful measure of accuracy, while we are being asked to make policy questions now; and so on.
But the instincts of those who are grasping for some way to hold the tools used to make temperature predictions accountable to reality in some way are sound, even if their method is somewhat misguided. They aren’t idiots or morons, they’re just not specialists, and the government they pay for, which in turn funds the model construction project, hasn’t bothered to do its job and provide the best feasible measurements of the value of these models.
Kevin Drum does some sleight-of-hand.
There’s a difference between saying the planet hasn’t warmed and saying the planet has cooled. Mark Steyn (whom George Will was quoting) was saying the former. The latter is in this case a straw man (though I know some AGW deniers tried to use the El Nino spike to improperly show that the earth has cooled recently, that is not what is being claimed in this instance).
— Blar · Jul 24, 06:38 PM · #
1. How long would we need to observe steady temperatures to conclude that current AGW models are wrong (assume no big volcanos, weird sunspots)? If it’s not 10 years, is it more like 15 or 50? Are the models built and published with falsification tests expressly included?
2. I think Blar is right above that Will is not saying that the planet is cooling. Will is also not saying that the ‘1998’ comparison shows that any warming has stopped. He’s using it to explain why Tom Friedman’s Million Young Person’s March in Opposition to Global Climate Change is highly unlikely: young people cannot have noticed any difference in the weather during their lifetimes. I think that’s undeniable instead of moronic.
Will’s main argument, which takes up most of his column, is similar to yours about the enormous costs and small benefits of what the US may do. And he doesn’t believe we can co-ordinate a reduction with the growing economies outside of Europe and North America.
3. The really strange thing about the Klein-Drum-Avent attacks is how personal and insulting they are. Avent manages to associate you with the ‘1998’ point and say it is “moronic”. And Drum must keep a thesaurus of slurs at hand.
Ever since I learned about JournoList, and doubly in light of Mickey Kaus’ compare-and-contrast post today about members Klein & Yglesias, I expect that these things are being discussed and that responses are at some level coordinated.
I wonder if they coordinate tonally too. Maybe Klein takes the high(er) road at the Post, since it’s big media and Will is in the Post family, while Drum and Avent agree to go all out. In any case, I blame their secrecy for my conspiracy theorizing.
— tom · Jul 24, 07:40 PM · #
But the data since 1998 do show a warming trend. From 1998-2002, the average temperature anomaly (from Kevin Drum’s source) was .45 degrees C. From 2004-2008, it was .53 degrees. In other words, it was hotter (on average) in the second half of the last decade than it was in first half, by about .08 degrees C. That suggests around .15 degrees of warming per decade (but it’s a very imprecise estimate, since it’s relying on 11 noisy data points). Or, you could just fit a line to the 11 data points for 1998-2008 – the best fit line has a slope of .0106 degrees C per year (suggesting .11 degrees of warming per decade, though it’s not statistically significant). Even in the cherry-picked data you can see the trend, as long as you look at the data in a reasonable way (i.e., not “well, 1998 was hotter than 2008 so there hasn’t been warming”).
— Brad · Jul 24, 07:47 PM · #
1) Draw in the best fit for the bottom graph and tell us again if the earth hasn’t warmed for “about the last ten years”, even for the last ten years you have to pick the starting and ending points very carefully to get even get a flat line.
2) Enso periods are 7 years or so, PDO’s 15-30, AMO’s 70, and so on…these ocean-atmosphere oscillations move heat around but don’t add heat to the system so yeah, pretty clearly 10 years is too short to use for a temperature trend.
3) The claim that global warming has stopped is clearly moronic, and is a common trope among the anti-science crowd, seems like a bait and switch to then say oh but these concerns about model validation are not idiotic at all. Also GCM’s have no problem predicting several year flat or cooliing periods within a century’s warming trend.
Thanks
— Cameron B McDonald · Jul 24, 07:53 PM · #
Gosh;
Has global warming become the new “abortion” shout fest? What I find interesting as a “quasi-scientist” (a physician) is the now standard perjorative term, “anti-science”. Science lives on doubt, so raising questions about statistical variation, anomylous or otherwise, IS a scientific behavior.
— c3 · Jul 24, 08:08 PM · #
When I look at the chart tracking temperatures since 1880, I wonder what it looks like— not if we zoom in on the last ten years— but if we zoom out to the last 1000. I realize that surface temperature readings were not typically recorded in any comprehensive way until the mid-nineteenth century. Yet, it’s my understanding that a variety of scientific extrapolations suggest that a striking pattern of warming has indeed occurred in the wake of modern industries.
When you have a pretty detailed and uncontroversial record dating back to 1880, it’s strange to try to divine a pattern using only the past 10 years— or twenty or thirty, for that matter. Look at the entire period between 1940 and 1980, for instance. Some might claim warming had stopped, but hadn’t it really stalled?
Imagine somebody who has smoked for forty years. After thirty years of smoking, he has a heart attack. Since then, he’s continued to smoke but has had no recurrence. Would you take the past ten years as an indication that the smoking has done its damage— heck, maybe the heart attack was unrelated, anyway— and that he has no reason to quit?
While I take Manzi’s point that an exhaustive government repository of warming models would be useful, I’m guessing skeptics like Will would be unimpressed. Perhaps for good reason. After all, even if most models that existed ten years ago anticipated a marked warming trend that did not materialize, how would this undermine AGW theory? Wouldn’t it simply mean that most modelers guessed wrong— not about the entire phenomena of man’s influence on global temperatures— but about the degree of the increase in a rather short span of time. If anything, Will would interpret a repository prediction from 1998 of a temperature rise in keeping with the twenty years preceding it as evidence that the scientific community has been seduced by a dire scenario, as he claims they were in the 1970’s by cooling theories.
We’re still left with the need to make certain calls based on trends within a certain range of time. I’m probably being gullible, somehow, but just look at the top chart. Doesn’t it say a lot more than any selective slice? I suppose it’s possible that solar flares are responsible, and it’s just a coincidence that the warming has followed the bloom of fossil fueled industries. Anything is possible. It appears to me, however, that the existing 100-year record indicates a compelling relationship between fossil fuels and rising temps. While the warming has plateaued on occasion, the larger trend is clear. Zooming out, if you accept extrapolations, reinforces the perception of this trend. Zooming in seems like an act of wishful thinking or manipulation.
— turnbuckle · Jul 24, 08:12 PM · #
Cameron, to be clear, you are saying that some of Jim’s statements are moronic. That’s great!
There is a fact dispute on the 10 years of data. You and Brad both say that the chart indicates an increase. Jim disagrees, saying first “There has not been a lot of measured warming for the last ten years” and then “…we had no warming over the past ten years.” Jim, are they right? Does the chart show a non-deminimus increase in the past 10 years?
The bigger question Jim deals with is how the past 10 years is relevant for understanding and testing the AGW models generally. If the models have no useful information within a ten-year time frame, that’s great. And it means no one should ever say “boy that hurricane season and these hot hot summers sure seem like warmimg”. Because that would be moronic and possibly syphilitic. On the other hand, if the models do have a prediction on a ten-year time-frame using what we know about CO2 and the sunspots, and the prediction is 0.9 C, then that means something too.
And the biggest question is what time period with what lack of temperature change would falsify the AGW models that people are relying on today. I guess that people would say the models could predict a range of likelihoods of certain temperature changes during any period given certain assumed sun intensity, expected cyclical weather patterns and CO2 and other gas levels, which is somewhat like saying they are unfalsifiable.
— tom · Jul 24, 08:35 PM · #
@brad
Does that mean the Florida Marlins only have 1 WS victory? I mean assuming that the 2002-04 stretch that you ignored in your comment never happened.
Talk about disingenuous cherry picking.
Fitting the data to all 11 points and revealing a statistically insignificant increase should have been the only point you made instead of losing all credibility. That said, there are a number of flaws in Manzi’s post here. First, there need not be a linear correlation between industrial/anthropogenic CO2 emissions and temperature anomaly considering that there is likely a critical value of C02 and other greenhouse gases that corresponds to different regression values. Second, 11 years is too short a time period to declare warming dead (even if it should be something that models should be able to account for—-and there was even a paper recently by Swanson and Tsonis that claimed one hypothesis suggests we might not see record breaking temps again till 2020) even if one looks at just he past 100-150 years considering the period we saw from 1940-1960. A 25 year period of relative stagnancy/no significant warming would however influence the debate and certainly puncture certain projections made by climate scientists who have predicted rapid warming. Finally, Will, Avent, Klein and Yglesias are worthless voices in the global warming debate. There are actually scientists/analysts out there who debate these things with the correct perspective. Let’s these talking heads posh their babble on less concrete things like utility functions and moral values.
— cherrypicking · Jul 24, 08:49 PM · #
I tried for a second to abandon all my prior knowledge and conceptions and look at those graphs with fresh eyes. Here’s what I got:
Both the century+ graph and the decade+ graph are basically useless. The longer term graph shows what look like stable or cooling temperatures from 1880-1910, 1940-1980, and 2000-2009, and rising temperatures from 1910-1940 and 1980-2000, with what looks like an irregular but upward trend.
If we assume that the amount of carbon dioxide increased for all years on the graph, then I would say the graph is compatible with the following hypotheses.
1) Carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the temperature of the earth, but other natural effects obscured that increase from 1900-1910, 1940-1980, and 2000-2010.
2) Carbon dioxide has a significant effect on average on the temperature of the earth, but whether that effect occurs in any given decade is essentially random.
3) Carbon dioxide does not have a significant effect on the temperature of the earth (i.e., its effect is too small to show up even on this re-scaled graph), so (a) we are looking at a random walk or (b) there are some non-carbon dioxide effects from 1910-1940 and 1980-2000 that caused the temperature to trend up during those periods and not return to its original state.
Without a lot more about the mechanisms involved and a lot more data, just looking at the graphs won’t tell you much about which of those hypotheses is closer to right.
With that said, the more the sceptics say “look how cold it is” now, the harder it will be for the proponents to say “look how hot it is” as proof the next time we have a hot summer.
— J Mann · Jul 24, 08:53 PM · #
One further point.
If we’re saying that 10 years worth of data isn’t worth anything then how long will it take for us to decide whether our efforts have worked. In medicine we’ve found that using intermediary markers (blood glucose level in an adult diabetic to predict reduction in diabetic complications) doesn’t always work. So measuring atmospheric CO2 may be problematic as our surrogate measure.
And if 10 years is too short what is the “right” interval?
— c3 · Jul 24, 09:04 PM · #
You write: “There has not been a lot of measured warming for the last ten years.”
Then you write: “…we had no warming over the past ten years (true)”
You do realize you are contradicting yourself right there?
It may be true that we didn’t have a lot of warming (your first statement) but that chart shows that we did in fact have some warming. On what basis are you asserting that it is or is not “a lot”? Who decides?
Why do we have a class of journalists/pundits who are claiming any expertise in this whatsoever? It is clear you can take that chart and assert all kinds of theories and sound very intelligent on any side of the argument, but there is a reason we have a large scientific community and a lot of people trained in climatology, statistics etc who can help journalists/pundits understand such data in appropriate context. And if you actually did some journalism and spoke to such folks (without cherry picking for any given opinion) you would find that no one other than George Will and a class of innumerate propagandists believes that the last 10 years chart and trend in and of itself means that global warming has stopped or reversed.
-David
— dm · Jul 24, 09:19 PM · #
David, Jim is a data guy and has been trying to be as evidence-based as one can be on AGW for months or more in full articles and long posts. Why would you make such harsh accusations in such a ‘woe is me’ tone without checking that?
Also, I said above that ‘innumerate propagandist’ Will is not really saying what you, Drum et al., claim, and he is using the point more narrowly to explain why he does not expect a million youths on the Mall anytime soon. Can you respond to that?
When someone is going above and beyond to be foolishly civil the way Manzi is, can’t you try to respond with civility and, maybe, research about the basis for this arguments?
— tom · Jul 24, 09:31 PM · #
The issue is not, and should never have been framed as, global warming. Polar warming is the issue, and has a whole host of negative consequences, and is unequivocally occurring at a rapid pace.
— Freddie · Jul 24, 09:48 PM · #
cherrypicking, the first half vs. second half comparison excludes 2003 because 1998-2008 is 11 years, and you can’t split 11 exactly in half. So I compared the average for the first 5 years (averaging 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002) vs. for last 5 years (averaging 2004-2008), leaving out 2003, and found that the latter 5 years was .078 degrees higher. If you instead group 2003 in with the first 5 years or the last 5, then you get either a .062 degree increase (from the first six to the last 5) or a .081 degree increase (from the first 5 to the last 6). They all give fairly similar results.
— Brad · Jul 24, 09:54 PM · #
Jim,
Why, in your conclusion, do you lay the blame on the government for this? What about the role of the Washington Post? Why is it the government’s responsibility to spoon-feed the free press what it needs to evaluate the evidence? Why is it that the Post gives this nonspecialist a national platform to display his ignorance?
— Chris · Jul 24, 11:01 PM · #
So it’s odd numbers that threw you off? How about going to Drum’s source at GISS and the actual data GISS Data so we don’t have to worry about what specific data point that ‘1998’ corresponds to or the ‘2008’. Additionally this means you can do a simple regression with a bunch of data pints and not have to compare baselines (which leads you to that ~.15/decade figure which I’m scratching my head about- when you just got a full decade baseline comparison of ~.08). In any event, both numbers, and the more accurate ~.1 you got are statistically insignificant. Does this prove anthropogenic driven global warming isn’t true? Obviously not, and most ‘intelligent’ skeptics haven’t suggested this. However, it has prompted papers to address this because so many models have NOT anticipated such a lull. It maybe more accurate in this case but it’s apparently now time to pull the ‘natural variability’ card against skeptics.
— cherrypicking · Jul 24, 11:35 PM · #
There is a branch of mathematics known as “statistics” that exist precisely to answer questions like this. The 10 year trend (which is upward slightly) is not statistically significant. At 20 years it is. A few other things that are important to note: 1) It would be better to ask whether current data strengthens or weakens the case for the preestablished trend — trying to establish the slope of the within-decade trend obscures the fact that this has been a hot decade, easily the hottest on record according to any global temp set, and every bit as hot as you would guess from using the 1979-1999 trend, actually a little hotter. 2) The trend over the course of a decade is smaller than the typical year to year deviation, so you should expect to see fake trends over time periods shorter than a decade. 3) You can get a more thorough run through the numbers here
Actually, some past model runs are archived. The IPCC archives are here
Here is a graph of climate compared to Hansen’s projections
And since I’m linking to Tamino a lot I might as well throw in his comparison of IPCC projections to climate
These are forecasts, not hindcasts.
— Eric L · Jul 24, 11:44 PM · #
Above, Tom and others suggest that George Will is simply using temperature data to make a narrow point about the low level of youth interest in global warming.
Anybody who has read Will’s columns in recent years, however, quickly realizes that his interest in the subject is in no way confined to dispassionate critiques of AGW’s power, or lack thereof, as a political cause. He has strong doubts about what have become fairly conventional theories among most scientists about climate change, and he makes no secret of this.
With some regularity, he trots out what he insinuates was a craze among scientists for predictions of earth cooling in the 1970’s. Never mind that his evidence for this was a single Newsweek story and a smattering of newspaper reports from a relatively brief period. Even if the scientific community at the time had been bowled over with convictions about a looming ice age, that moment of hysteria does not necessarily impugn scientific theories, elsewhere, as Will implies.
Generally, I agree that calling Will “moronic” is rude, but calling him disingenuous is completely fair. He never proposes scientific arguments to discredit global warming theory; he selectively carves from the scientific work of others to do so, and this is obnoxious.
My concern about Manzi’s sympathy for Will’s analysis is that it takes energy away from discussions about the severity of climate change in favor of questions about its very existence.
We’re stuck asking, again, does the problem really exist, when for many many years a great majority of people with far more expertise about the matter than Manzi and Will says yes, it is. Effectively, Manzi’s question is, how long do we have to wait before we can say it’s not really happening?
Perhaps a better question is, how many scientists have to come to a consensus and for how long before influential writers like Will stop disputing their findings without any findings of their own?
— turnbuckle · Jul 24, 11:50 PM · #
I think you’re being too generous to Will, and I have two reasons to believe that. One, the claim that the world has been cooling since 1998 is a very common talking point among the denial community, and so any similar reference needs to be understood as intended to reinforce it unless it explicitly does not. Two, some variation of 1998 was hot and this is evidence against global warming has appeared in at least two other columns by George Will over the past year.
— Eric L · Jul 24, 11:54 PM · #
@Eric L
20 years may not even be statistically significant according to some—look at the hypothesis in the Swanson paper that was in Nature Geosciences. Otherwise I think we all agree that Will’s bit wasn’t scientific/meaningful at all (though let’s not pretend like he’s the only one who’s ever been guilty of that) if he’s trying to ‘refute’ global warming. That said some of your statements are puzzling.
<em>It would be better to ask whether current data strengthens or weakens the case for the preestablished trend — trying to establish the slope of the within-decade trend obscures the fact that this has been a hot decade, easily the hottest on record according to any global temp set, and every bit as hot as you would guess from using the 1979-1999 trend, actually a little hotter.</em>
This is a bit meaningless in the outside of science world. What we’re concerned about is increasing warming at rates which would be devastating to people around the world. Whether it’s remained hot is a given and is besides the point. We aren’t basing awful cap and trade policies and eschewing far more sensible carbon taxes because the temperature mean anomaly is still >.5 degrees C. We’re doing it because we don’t want temperature to increase like some of our models predict.
2 is a much needed layman’s explanation of that natural variability term thrown about here.
3 is a headscratcher considering have the raw data.
By the way—the tamino graphs don’t really address this decade period except for that Hansen graph near the end and interestingly enough it looks like we’re currently best matching scenario C.
By the way, let’s throw away the ‘why doesn’t Will produce data’ bit. If you’re going to base expensive policy on science, much of which are based off reconstructions its unacceptable to not have the data/projections examined. In fact, in areas of science where we actually have experiments, you’ll see that replicating a groundbreaking experiment can bump up your h score pretty nicely as well.
— nickswisher · Jul 25, 12:09 AM · #
If I stare at my feet, and only take into account the two square feet around them, it’s obvious that the earth is flat, and anyone arguing otherwise is clearly incorrect. The two thousand miles beyond that are completely irrelevant.
— MouseJunior · Jul 25, 12:46 AM · #
10,000 years ago the glaiciers began to retreat from Wisconsin. In that 10,000years they advanced and retreated many times. I believe all sciencists believe this yet I never hear this enter the discussion.
— Dave Groh · Jul 25, 02:07 AM · #
@nickwasher
I could have been a bit clearer. Yes, the concern is that the trend continues. (Actually, the concern is that the models are correct, but put that aside.) For the sake of argument, let’s say that over the past decade there is no discernable trend. What is the average temperature of the last decade? What I was trying to say before is that, if that average were the same temp as 1999 or 1997, you would have a much stronger case for claiming that warming stopped than you would if the average temp were a good bit warmer, even if the slope within the decade in either case is the same.
Also, I don’t read the Swanson paper that way. They use a trend of 19 years and a trend of 11 years to make their case. And if you pressed them they’d probably say the latter is not statistically significant but feel there is enough data to be suggestive. But I don’t think they would compare a 1979-1997 trend to current temps to make the case for a jump off the existing trendline if they did not consider the 19 year trend to be significant.
— Eric L · Jul 25, 02:08 AM · #
One point that isn’t being emphasized: if you were serious about trying to figure out whether there had been a warming trend over recent years, then you would never do what Will and other skeptics have done, which is to pick out an unusually warm year that was well above the trend line and start your time series in that year, treating it as an ordinary data point. Think about it: 1998 was far warmer than any previous year, and fell well above the trend line because of factors that cause year-to-year variation. But within a few years, the trend line caught up and it is now normal to have temperatures around where they were in 1998. That is warming: abnormally hot became normal. Looking at the time series from 1998 onward obscures that.
But even if you do your analysis the wrong way and treat 1998 as just the first year in your data set, as I showed in my first comment the data for the last 11 years still show a warming trend at a rate somewhere around .1 degrees C per decade.
— Brad · Jul 25, 02:36 AM · #
That swirling sound you hear is the remainder of Jim Manzi’s credibility draining away.
Yes, science has no mechanisms in place to ensure accountability. Yes, George Will is making a good faith effort to improve the accuracy of our climate models. Yes, ignoring climate change is the best way to safeguard the long-term prosperity of humankind. And if that doesn’t work out, in the future, we’ll just genetically engineer trees that will drop diamonds from their leaves. Anyway, shouldn’t we really be spending money on asteroid collision prevention?
— Feist · Jul 25, 02:38 AM · #
Why stop with global warming? That’s a very contentious assumption based on terrestrial observation alone. That is of course unless you are still a flat lander. We should be so arrogant to believe we are the center of this phenomenon. I guess that if there is money to be made and the political deviancy to heard the masses in order to make it, then the sky IS falling.
— JonnyChepe · Jul 25, 04:26 AM · #
C’mon, Jim: This is ridiculous. Will is clearly cherry-picking the data to try to pawn off a result that the data contradict. I’m in the fund biz & I get this all the time (“Over the past 4 years and 21 days our fund is up 20%,” etc etc.) There’s a word for a guy who does this. It’s not “brilliant” or “thought-provoking” or “contrarian” or “journalist.”
It’s “huckster.”
And, of course, implicit in this kind of baloney is the hucster’s belief that his audience is too stupid to understand that it’s being snowed.
Is Will really the kind of guy you want to spend your time defending?
— mars · Jul 25, 04:26 AM · #
As the clock turns, so does the Earth’s climate. In the past 10 million years, the average temperature and CO2 levels have reached maximum and minimum (ice age) 10 times. The scientific evidence of this is available to anyone with a computer. In 500,000 years I guarantee you that my poor dead body turned to dust will be buried under miles of ice. Most people have by now understood that the so-called Global Warming is just the latest attempt to cash in on the two biggest human vices: power and money – and expanding the only thing in life which never shrinks: government. Just like clockwork.
— DaveinPhoenix · Jul 25, 03:31 PM · #
To my friends who fervently believe in man-caused global warming I would say:
1) I generally agree with the science, warts and all
2) terms such as “moron”, “astroturf”, “idiot”, while emotionally satisfying do little to engage and further dialogue to ultimately move toward a mutually-agreed upon action. (Unless, of course, one sees the last part as impossible, then its “gratify emotions all around”)
3) Of course politics and bias are part of this discussion. But can we for once suggest that the prospect of massive worldwide inundation over the next couple hundred years might reasonably concern some and that likewise massive industrial upheaval leading to dramatic a economic downturn might concern some others.
4) the view is great on the moral high ground but its pretty lonely.
— C3 · Jul 25, 04:17 PM · #
In response to DaveinPhoenix and Dave Groh, of course the earth’s climate has experienced fluctuations over time that have nothing to do with human activities. So what? This doesn’t mean that human industrial activity cannot play a role in climate change. Neither does it mean that the consequences of climate change produced by this activity should be shrugged aside.
If volcanic activity suddenly, unexpectedly surged, or the planet was struck by a big object from outer space, these events could affect the climate in ways catastrophic to human existence. However, we simply don’t have the means to predict or control such events.
Obviously, CO2 levels and fossil fuels are a different matter. We have some control over events, in this case. Scientists might debate the potential severity of climate change produced by human industries, but I hear almost no debate within the scientific communtiy— with the exception of a handful of sun spot theorists celebrated on the opinion page of the WSJ— about whether man has or hasn’t precipitated rising global temperatures over the last 150 years.
Sure, the earth will survive and life of some kind will go on in spite of whatever hardships humankind suffers because of global warming. If, though, the scientific community can give us a reasonable range of predictions about how we might contain or relieve the damage, why wouldn’t we respond? The point is, we might have some control over the outcome, because it is our industrial activity that is the issue, not those events of hundreds of thousands of years ago that previously influenced glacier migration or spawned ice ages.
Tragic events outside human control— tsunamis, earthquakes, etc…— claim human lives all the time. By DaveinPhoenix’s logic, we should therefore lift state sanctions against murder, as these are clearly the instruments of greedy government bureaucrats, used to drive up revenues and grab power.
— turnbuckle · Jul 25, 04:26 PM · #
My money’s on nested feedback and beautiful island nations.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 25, 04:34 PM · #
Hmm…all this talk about global warming has me thinking about campfires and s’mores.
— Joules · Jul 25, 06:18 PM · #
James Fallows is on Will too now.
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/compare-and-contrast_reading_o.php
It’s more useful than the Drum/Avent/Klein posts, and I’d like to get the Richard Muller Physics for Future Presidents book he recommends. But it’s still bizarre to me how much these bright columnists are all deferring to the scientists and these models, and how they instead evaluate the scientists based on their tone and their apparent reasonableness.
And I have no idea whether James Fallows is on JournoList, or if all the left-wing brighties just saw it on Memeorandum or something. But all of them have taken dicta from Will’s column, which was largely about the huge costs of trying to avert AGW and the unlikelihood of global coordination. Those are very serious problems. Why would these smart and reasonable guys all choose to focus on the cute line about the great unlikelihood of Tom Friedman’s Million Youth March in Support of Global Improvement in Something None of Them Can See, Touch, Smell or Hear?
On the co-ordination issue, Fallows will have to deal with the fact that neither China (as Will notes) or India, as Drudge noted yesterday, will go our way in, say, the next 10 years. China is Fallows’ current subject, and I would say it is troglodytic and encephalitic for anyone to believe that it or India will go along with any program that hurts in the short-term, without being coerced. And are we really ready for the Great 1st-3rd World Trade War that will happen if we try to impose tariffs and embargos on both of them, which would probably be even worse if one goes along and the other doesn’t?
I think that Will, in his columnisty way, identified the two elephants in the room—horrible cost/benefit ratios, and the impossibility of getting worldwide agreement. Why didn’t Fallows, Klein, Drum, Avent…., take those head on? It smells a little like herring.
— tom · Jul 25, 06:58 PM · #
My reading is that Jim acknowledges that Will’s claim is factually wrong albeit with the rhetorical slight of hand that “there has not been a lot of measured warming for the last ten years.” It’s not clear to me that a fifth of a degree over a decade is small – maintaining that pace for a century would lead to a 2 degree change. That would be at the low end of the IPCC range, but not outside of it.
I believe he is also acknowledging that the approach of comparing 2009 to 1999 is flawed approach for the purpose it is used (“even if their method is somewhat misguided”) – dismissing global warming fears.
But he thinks that’s ok because of some broader concerns he has. This argument resembles to me that Liz Cheney argument that those who doubt Obama’s citizenship are driven by his being insufficiently pro-American.
Personally, I think the analytical focus on the trend in the last ten years is misplaced, unless you have some theory explaining why the trends would have changed in the last decade. Absent that theory, the more reasonable approach is to take the broader dataset. Doing so, for example would lead you to note that the last ten years were the warmest of the time series. I don’t think that’s consistent with theories that nothing is happening.
best,
Tom
— Tom G. · Jul 25, 08:10 PM · #
Tom,
The view that global warming is not occurring is widespread within the Republican base and elected officials. In a National Journal poll, only 13% of Republican congressman believe that human activity is causing global warming.
My perception is that smarter conservatives prefer to ignore this, but I think they are doing their party and the country a disservice. We would have a much better cap and trade bill if there was a block of Republicans who would acknowledge the problem. Instead, the Democratic leadership needs to buy off every last Democrat to get a chance at taking any action.
best,
Tom G.
— Tom G. · Jul 25, 08:16 PM · #
And another! Discover Magazine’s blogger:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/07/23/george-wills-crack-fact-checkers-continue-their-nap/
Zimmer gives more detail on Will as someone who has not agreed that that AGW is real, which is useful. But why are none of these people addressing the two huge flaws in cap-trade or any similar US program: the cost/benefit mismatch and the gross unlikelihood of Chinese/Indian acquiescence? These are not new concerns. And I know Jim went back on forth on the cost/benefit problems with Klein/Avent and others over the past few months. But it is a huge issue to decide that THIS, and not something else, is what we will spend x% of our economic production on. And that none of this can work without the agreement of China and India, and that therefore the largest purpose of cap and trade is to set up something that 10-20 years from now could be used as part of a system to coerce those countries to do what we want?
Instead, we get the AGW blogging police going after ‘1998’ as if it is the key to this all and as if a debunking of George Will’s aside on that would prove anything about the desirability of the cap and trade regime Will criticized.
— tom · Jul 25, 08:17 PM · #
Cosigning to Tom G.
Not only is Manzi wrong about the measurable warming, his overall point of of deducing trends just obfuscates the issue. You have to have a reason to exclude data. You can’t lop off 90 percent of the chart just for shits and giggles. That’s just sophistry.
— Dero · Jul 25, 08:41 PM · #
In several posts, Tom asks why George Will’s critics have focused on the brief moment in Will’s editorial in which he selectively analyzes temperature records. Instead, Tom proposes they should engage Will’s larger questions about the cost of curbing CO2 and the difficulty of compelling cooperation from India and China.
First, I’d note that Zimmer and Klein have certainly made efforts in the past— more thoroughly and honestly than Will— to address cost concerns about cap-and-trade.
Why not renew their efforts in reply to Will’s latest column? Perhaps because his manipulative interpretation of climate data taints the conversation. Will simply does not accept the findings of the broader science community that warming is occurring as a result of CO2 emissions. So, exactly what cost-benefit analysis, no matter how rosy, would ever persuade him to reengage the question of global warming? I doubt any would. His mind is made up on the subject.
When he and Mark Steyn take a skewed reading of climate data to declare nothing is really happening when that same data, read properly, says something in fact is happening, no wonder this rankles some of his readers. It’s a sticking point that has to be addressed right away, to emphasize the bad faith nature of Will’s climate change denial.
If a columnist wrote an article outlining his concerns about the way in which humanitarian funds were being distributed in a country suffering famine, you might be willing to engage him, until you learned that he denies the very existence of the famine. Instead of addressing his distribution concerns, you would first feel compelled to dismiss his conspiratorial delusions. But once you did, you would recognize that the columnist has no interest in honestly improving distribution practices. Rather, he simply opposes any humanitarian aid, whatsoever, and he will exploit any ground on which to express his opposition.
Will operates in the same manner where global warming is concerned.
— turnbuckle · Jul 25, 10:04 PM · #
The most important thing, Will and the OP et al need to get over evading that fluctuations happen over periods of around a decade or so. The being no clear upward trend during a mere ten years is nearly irrelevant, and Will and Manzi (and Steyn) should realize that if they are going to present as scientifically literate. The trend is clearly “upward”, it’s like a growing DJIA with ups and downs (maybe ours is finally down for awhile, but consider the growth periods and how it could vary over shorter time scales.)
tyrannogenius
— Neil B ♪ · Jul 27, 07:04 PM · #
“Never mind that his evidence for this was a single Newsweek story and a smattering of newspaper reports from a relatively brief period.”
Turnbuckle, Carl Sagan and three co-authors published in 1979 a paper in “Science”, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, assessing evidence for global cooling in the affirmative. It is quite difficult to get a paper published in “Science” or its British counterpart, “Nature”. These are not popular magazines, they are academic journals, though not specific to any given discipline (and subject to conventional peer review, I believe).
— Art Deco · Jul 29, 01:30 AM · #
For all this talk of consensus, no one has mentioned that among the skeptics is Dr. Richard Lindzen, who may be the country’s most eminent meteorologist.
“Not only is Manzi wrong about the measurable warming, his overall point of of deducing trends just obfuscates the issue. You have to have a reason to exclude data. You can’t lop off 90 percent of the chart just for shits and giggles. That’s just sophistry.”
Willie Soon’s research has had as its focus a comparison of the last century with evidence of temperatures experienced in medieval Europe. He has also been skeptical of claims such as Dr. Hansen’s
— Art Deco · Jul 29, 01:35 AM · #