How You Can Tell Some Global Warming Skeptics Aren’t Interested in the Truth
Posted by
Kevin
Look a this piece of propoganda from Senator Inhoe:
“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,” declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing the new study which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Another scientist said the peer-reviewed study overturned “in one fell swoop” the climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore. The study entitled “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” was authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz.
…. The new study was also touted as “overturning the UN IPCC ‘consensus’ in one fell swoop” by the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Joel Schwartz in an Aug. 17, 2007 blog post.
“New research from Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes,” wrote AEI’s Schwartz, who hold a master’s degree in planetary science from the California Institute of Technology.
The whole piece reads like that: its a mish-mash of “the sun is the cause” nonsense that has already been thoroughly debunked and breathless claims that the new study has disproved, “in one fell swoop”, global warming consensus. People interested in the truth would not trout out the sun causes it nonsense, and people who were serious about the truth would not breathlessly claim that one study — that hasn’t even been published yet and thus hasn’t had the full thrashing out in scientific circles it needs to be taken seriously — overturns anything, much less a scientific consensus with the enormous work behind it that the global warming consensus has. There are no qualifiers in these statements, not even a token “if this holds true …”, no discussion of why this study is right and the other work done on this issue to date has been wrong. There is no attempt, then, to grapple with the very real questions about this work — or any new piece of scientific work, for that matter. There is just the headlong rush into claims of certainty and victorious whooping that their enemies have been defeated. All that is missing is the phrase “nyah-nyah” and claims that their daddy can beat up yours.
No one with an ounce of honesty or intellectual independence could look at this as anything other than a crude piece of propoganda published by people with little interest in the actual truth of the matter. If global warming skeptics want to be taken seriously, then perhaps they should act more like adults and less like eight year olds at a ballgame.
Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, now that the paper is out, its been shown to be poor work:
Usually, I am happy to let RealClimate debunk the septic dross that still infects the media. In fact, since I have teased them about their zeal in the past, it may seem slightly hypocritical of me to bother with this. However, this specific paper is particularly close to my own field of research, and the author is also rather unusual in that he seems to be a respected atmospheric scientist with generally rather mainstream views on climate science (although perhaps a bit critical of the IPCC here). However, his background is in aerosols, which suggests that he may have stumbled out of his field without quite realising what he is getting himself into.
… His numerical values for t and C are 5+-1, and 16.7+-7 respectively (with the uncertainties at one standard deviation). It is not entirely clear what he really intends these distributions to mean (itself a sign that he is a little out of his depth perhaps), but I’ll interpret them in the only way I think reasonable in the context, as gaussian distributions for the parameters in question. He claims these values gives S equal to 0.3+-0.09, although he also writes 0.3+-0.14 elsewhere. This latter value works out at 1.1C+-0.5C for a doubling of CO2. But the quotient of two gaussians is not gaussian, or symmetric. I don’t know how he did his calculation, but it’s clearly not right.
In fact, the 16%-84% probability interval (the standard central 68% probability interval corresponding to +- 1sd of a gaussian, and the IPPC “likely”) of this quotient distribution is really 0.18-0.52K/W/m^2 (0.7-1.9C per doubling) and the 2sd limit of 2.5% to 97.5% is 0.12-1.3K/W/m^2 (0.4-4.8C per doubling). While this range still focuses mostly on lower values than most analyses support, it also reaches the upper range that I (and perhaps increasingly many others) consider credible anyway. His 68% estimate of 0.6-1.6C per doubling is wrong to start with, and doubly misleading in the way that it conceals the long tail that naturally arises from his analysis.
… He estimates a “time constant” which is supposed to characterise the response of the climate system to any perturbation. On the assumption that there is such a unique time constant, this value can apparently be estimated by some straightforward time series analysis - I haven’t checked this in any detail but the references he provides look solid enough. His estimate, based on observed 20th century temperature changes, comes out at 5y. However, he also notes that the literature shows that different analyses of models give wildly different indications of characteristic time scale, depending on what forcing is being considered - for example the response to volcanic perturbations has a dominant time scale of a couple of years, whereas the response to a steady increase in GHGs take decades to reach equilibrium. Unfortunately he does not draw the obvious conclusion from this - that there is no single time scale that completely characterises the climate system - but presses on regardless.
… In fact there is an elementary physical explanation for this: the models (and the real climate system) exhibit a range of time scales, with the atmosphere responding very rapidly, the upper ocean taking substantially longer, and the deep ocean taking much longer still. When forced with rapid variations (such as volcanoes), the time series of atmospheric response will seem rapid, but in response to a steady forcing change, the system will take a long time to reach its new equilibrium. An exponential fit to the first few years of such an experiment will look like there is a purely rapid response, before the longer response of the deep ocean comes into play. This is trivial to demonstrate with simple 2-box models (upper and lower ocean) of the climate system.
Changing Schwartz’ 5y time scale into a more representative 15y would put his results slap bang in the middle of the IPCC range, and confirm the well-known fact that the 20th century warming does not by itself provide a very tight constraint on climate sensitivity. It’s surprising that Schwartz didn’t check his results with anyone working in the field, and disappointing that the editor in charge at JGR apparently couldn’t find any competent referees to look at it.
Even more here, but the above gets the gist of the matter in an easily understandable fashion. One wonders if Senator Inhofe will offer a retraction. An serious man interested in the truth would.
Whether or not there is a consensus or not is irrelevant anyways. The strength of a scientific theory is based on its amount of evidence, not its amount of support.
Comment 8/30/2007
Stormy:
That’s true, but it’s also true that the amount of support something gets from qualified experts is often a good shorthand for getting an idea about how much evidence there is to support it. You can’t go just by that, of course, but it’s not a bad starting point.
Comment 8/30/2007
TG,
The obvious question is under what conditions consensus constitutes a good proxy for reality. (Shockingly similar to some of the questions necessary to analysing climate.) Personally, I think it’s a pretty good one these days. Especially since the current models are actually quite successful, the physics matches what’s used for engineering, experimental mathematics has been proven both necessary and useful, and there are no longer state religions calling science heresy.
By the way, this is the first time i’ve seen a document outside of a scientific forum, discussing GW, that actually recognizes that statistics involve distribution shapes and variances. Gods, it’s almost like GW is a matter of science, using math! Can’t tell that from most of the discussions of it.
Comment 8/31/2007
tgrisch:
The problem is that we increasingly see people acting as though consensus is itself a form of scientific proof rather then just a proxy (and a rather poor proxy at that).
Comment 8/31/2007
Isn’t this something of a red herring?
Semantically, “consensus,” as it refers to this discussion, is used in the context of a consensus within the scientific community, which almost by definition is based upon scientific evidence.
It is more among the lay-persons that the idea of consensus passing for evidence becomes a problem. This is especially true in the field of psychology, as people think they understand how they think and why they form the opinions they do, but rarely are they proven correct in study.
This happens in sports often too. There’s a consensus that what Albert Pujols has done to start his career is unprecedented; however there is evidence to the contrary - specifically that Frank Thomas did in fact exist.
I don’t see that sort of contradiction present in this discussion. The “consensus” referred to is a scientific one.
Comment 8/31/2007
Stormy:
What makes you say it’s a “poor” proxy? I’d say it’s a pretty damn good one in most cases.
What irks me about AGW deniers is that at the same time they complain about how wrong it is to believe X just because the overwhelming majority of qualified scientists believe it, they believe “not X” because a select few scientists tell them it’s okay to, and because “not X” is much more politically convenient for them.
Make no mistake: the global warming debate in this country is entirely about politics, and nothing else. The AGW deniers are too afraid, too lazy, and/or too selfish to make the kinds of sacrifices required to deal with the problem, so instead they resort to age-old tactics of obfuscation. They don’t even work all that hard to try to hide the fact that they’re doing it.
Comment 9/1/2007
How do these people get away with pretending that we haven’t had satellites in space for 50 years that actually measure the Sun’s energy coming to Earth?
How do they get away with suggesting that solar energy levels are something we deduce, or guess at?
WE FRIGGIN’ MEASURE THIS STUFF DIRECTLY! There is no debate. There is no mystery.
We can and do, every single day, directly, exactly, instantly measure solar output and the amount of solar energy reaching earth.
ARE THESE SO-CALLED GW ‘SKEPTICS’ TRYING TO SUGGEST THAT CLIMATE SCIENTISTS JUST ‘FORGOT’ ABOUT ALL THE DATA THEY HAVE ABOUT THE SUN????
WTF??????
Comment 9/2/2007
El Cid:
As http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irrad.html shows, measuring solar irradiance isn’t as easy as one might think. The measurements vary quiet a bit from satellite to satellite which makes any long term trend dependent on assumptions of how to best composite those differing measurements together.
Comment 9/3/2007
SD -
I’m sorry, but I don’t see any evidence for the assertion that the data “vary quiet a bit from satellite to satellite” at that link.
The widest variation between satellites I could identify in any given year was less than 1%. In fact, the greatest variation, period, regardless of whether the high and low were in the same year, still appears to be less than 1%. How is that “quite a bit?”
Comment 9/5/2007
Tgirsch
“Make no mistake: the global warming debate in this country is entirely about politics, and nothing else.”
Sit down for this… I agree with you. This global warming thing is the only thing that Al Gore has left to cling to. Knowing how much you enjoy facts, here are a couple interesting articles for you.
This one debunks the myth that there is a consensus of scientists. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=8641
Here’s one that tells us that… gasp!… the earth has actually warmed and cooled in the past! http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/07/06/greenland_ice_yields_hope_on_climate/
Comment 9/6/2007
I’m glad that Global Warming Fear Mongers are starting to get their due - they’re all fools and they pander to fools. Led by the biggest fool - that guy that invented the internet - that guy that actually won the 2000 election even though subsequent recounts proved he didn’t - yes, I’m talking about ALGORE.
The Earth is warming - yes it is. It’s done this every now and again for all it’s entire life. Mars is warming too - I suspect for the some of the same reasons that Earth is.
So we may have to deal with an Earth that is warming - but that doesn’t mean that we’re causing it. The affect C02 has on the Earth’s climate is still not well understood. Shucks - 30 years ago - the same scientists that now claim it causes warming of the climate claimed (then) that it actually caused cooling - ZOMG! Another ice age. I rather liked the prospect of an ice age - it conjurs visions of herds of Wooly Mammaths moving gracefully across those icy plains - and there’s plenty of ice to chill the kool aid the liberals are always drinking.
Comment 9/8/2007
*Sigh.* Not that anyone’s likely to get back to this thread, but:
… that invented the internet…. A mischaracterization, at best. Given how thoroughly debunked it is, probably an out-and-out lie.
even though subsequent recounts proved he didn’t Try again.
It’s done this every now and again for all it’s entire life. Not that there have ever previously been coastal cites, wide-spread agriculture, or six billion people to support.
Mars is warming [for] the same reasons that Earth is. There’s been a 35% increase in CO2 levels in its atmosphere in the last 150 years? That’s be pretty weird, since it was 95% CO2 in 1976 when Viking landed. Perhaps you mean to say that Earth’s climate is warming due to vast dust storms the size of Texas reducing the albedo of the planet. Huh.
same scientists From 30 years ago? Sure, this guy, who appears to have been the primary researcher to discuss glaciation in the 70’s (though not claim that it was a reasonable prediction), still thinks we’re on your way to an ice age … by way of global warming. It was popular pseudo science that ever said there was a current risk.
kool aid So, do you think all “liberals” use LSD, or are you saying that we’ve all been brutalized by autocratic religious fanatics? Perhaps you just think you look smart when you quote Bill O’Reilly.
Thanks, that was pretty laughable, but it’s nice to now have a nice little set of links for explaining how much reality gets in the way of “global warming skeptics”.
Comment 9/15/2007