Aug 12, 2008
Climate Change Debunked
So, how’s that for a blog post title? Catchier even than last Saturday’s New Harry Potter Trailer, right? So, is it just another spurious headline designed to grab attention or is there something in it? Well, you will no doubt have read about the recent APS debacle over the paper from Lord Monckton in which he stands up the anthropogenic climate change straw man and, pardon the pun, burns it down.
If you’re in the UK, or have figured out the BBC iPlayer hack to let you use that tool outside the UK, you may have seen the recent global-warming-coming-oil-crisis-we’re-all-doomed drama Burn Up. You probably also heard about a little fella called Al Gore and his inconvenient movie and the Channel 4 documentary that attempted to shred it, perhaps a little conveniently ignoring some key facts as it did so.
Meanwhile, power companies report massive profits and price rises for gas and electricity. They simultaneously pump up prices from well to wheel as the oil price bounces like a proverbial vulcanised rubber ball and everyone is looking to save gas.
Anyway, I thought I’d post a shortlist of concerns expressed by more than a few people about the call to arms regarding climate change, seeing as I’ve published several items about alternative energy sources recently. I still stand by the didact: waste not, want not. It’s important that we cut pollution and it’s important that we reduce the amount of energy we waste. But, given that even the IPCC says there’s a 10% chance that climate change is not anthropogenic, maybe we should be looking at what we are planning for the world, especially in light of madcap schemes like adding lime to the oceans, before it’s too late.
So, how does one answer the climate skeptics when faced with the following alleged myths?
- Myth: The Earth is warmer than it was 100 years ago.
Truth: At most it’s risen by 0.3 Celsius, less than 0.003 degrees annually and at the moment we’re apparently in a cold patch. - Myth: Global Warming must be happening, it’s warmer here in Small Town.
Truth: It’s global averages that matter (see above) - Myth: Carbon dioxide levels and average global temperatures are at a record high
- Truth: Nope, they are among the lowest determined over the last few million years.
- Myth: Rising carbon dioxide levels are directly linked to rising global temperatures.
Truth: Not necessarily, there’s a 400-4000 timelag - Myth: Receding icesheets prove anthropogenic Global Warming is happening
- Truth: Some ice is melting, other areas are actually growing
- Myth: Carbon dioxide is the most potent greenhouse gas
- Truth: No, that’d be water vapour of which there is an abundance in the atmosphere, then there’s methane, and what about nitrogen trifluoride used in the manufacture of flatscreen TVs?
- Myth: If we accept it’s real, we can do something about it.
- Truth: There’s really no point in kidding ourselves, we cannot even control local weather, what makes us think carbon sequestration and seeding the oceans will allow us to affect the climate
- Myth: It must be true, they say so.
- Truth: What if it’s a lot of hot air?
David Bradley
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August 21st, 2008 at 8:15 am
Interesting article Rajinder. I didn’t want to duplicate online content so trimmed it to the intro. Here’s the link you didn’t provide to the Sci Am article.
Meanwhile, Britain having had very wet summers these last couple of years, I note that the UK’s Environment Minister in 2006 is on record as saying climate change would mean hotter and drier summers to come;, it’s almost like he jinxed us.
Anyway, I still cannot see how we can reconcile the definite short-term cooling period we are in these last few years with the global warming trend. Realclimate.org debunks the notion, saying that one cannot compare long-term climate change with temporally local weather variations. But, how does anyone know for certain that a short-term weather cooling will not become the long-term climate trend. Are such cooling effects built into the computer models? If not why not, and moreover, and once again how can anyone know that such short-term trends won’t be the long term history in years to come.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:14 am
Climate has changed for the worse in arid regions of the US
Source: Scientific American
“News - August 20, 2008
Fewer April Showers for U.S. Southwest as Climate Changes
Things could get uglier for desert flowers looking to bloom in May–and for the region’s water supply, year-round
By David Biello
The already parched U.S. Southwest is drying up even more, at least in early spring, because of climate change. A new study in Geophysical Research Letters shows that since 1978, the jet stream that brings rainstorms from the Pacific over the western U.S. has been shifting northward—and so has the rain and snow…..
August 19th, 2008 at 7:58 am
@Rajinder - none of those changes you cite are particularly extreme. There have been periods in the past when there was no ice, there have been periods where there was much more ice. Temperatures have fluctuated wildly over the millennia and so too carbon dioxide levels. However, I certainly agree that our increasing population, rampant consumption and pollution are not a good thing, whether or not that is the underlying cause of any local effects we are currently observing is a different matter, especially given the current global average cooling period in which we apparently find ourselves at the moment, despite the warming trend.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
North pole is going to be ice free this/next year for the first time in thousands of years.
Temperatures have risen much more than reported above. 1.23 degress Celsius from 1880 to 2004. Roughly 0.05 degrees Celsius (0.09 degrees Fahrenheit) per year.
CO(2) has increased from 280 ppm (from 1000 to 1800 A. D. constant) in 1800 to 380 ppm in 2000. (URL: http://earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2004.htm)
Increased population and consumption of natural resouces at a pace which is much more than what Mother earth can sustain is leading to pollution of air, water and land. It is a catastrophy which has already happened in many places. Ground water is non-potable, rivers are befret of oxygen and are becoming sewers and even the sea has developed pockets which are oxygen free.
It is later than one thinks.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for all the comments on this post, I’ve been on vacation so not had a chance to respond.
@Jim - The idea behind the article was not to take a stance, but to throw out some of the ideas that apparently are taken as read, but are not necessarily proven, I’ll leave it to others to dig out the papers that support or disprove the various myths. Nice of you to use the acronymic vernacular of the streets in your comment.
@Anonymoose - thanks for spotting the typo. In my rush to meet the deadline before my vacation I missed that, which is a shame as it probably lost some of the traction because of it.
@Rajinder - Climate is most certainly not to be taken lightly, which is why I think there needs to be more openness about the doubts. @Robert - aren’t we in the middle of a cooling period, within the so-called hockey-stick of warming. I’m totally confused as to how average global temp can be falling if there is all this warming going on. Moreover, the whole debate hinges on average global temperatures, that could mean warming in one part of the globe counteracted by cooling elsewhere.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I am sorry I didn’t see this forum and couple of days ago. If anyone is still looking for scientist references for the basis of this post try: (especially Ella)
http://friendsofscience.org/
August 15th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
David,
Good post.
I think we are forgetting that like nanotechnology and stem cells, any scientific issue that has possible social relevance typically gets picked up by the scientifically illiterate media and rammed down our throats. Unfortunatly, the average American is not sharp enough to actually question what they hear.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I will agree with Rajinder Sandhir. I’ve had the good fortune to live in the US Pacific NW since ‘68, and it’s definitely gotten warmer and drier in that time. Given the doubling of human population since I was in school, and the proportionally even larger energy consumption, I’ll tend to believe that humans are the main cause.
August 15th, 2008 at 4:48 am
# Myth: It must be true, they say so.
# Truth: What if it’s a lot of hot air?
What makes it true if YOU say so? You give no references for your ‘facts’.
You want me to believe you, give me facts.
Otherwise you’re just another screaming monkey.
Rating: P.O.S.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:45 am
And on the flip side of this coin, the AGU and the APS (in spite of Lord Monckton’s ‘burning’, as you put it) updated and affirmed, their positions on the reality of climate change and man’s hand in it. The AGU also took the chance to apply stronger language than they previously had.
I had quite a chuckle when you warned against not erring on the side of the “10% chance” implied by the IPCC’s statement that they hold a 90% certainty that we’re a major contributor. Given that 90% for is a great deal more worrisome than 10% against, which one should we err on the side of again? As a “stickler for scientific accuracy” you no doubt have exposure to statistics and, more to the point, the concept of ‘probability’?
If not, what the IPCC is saying it that it’s probable and that they feel there’s very little chance they’re wrong. And the APS and AGU and any number of august scientific bodies agree.
Further, by your own logic, how much harm we cause if the 10% comes to be? Our complicit impact on the climate isn’t enough to make such great changes, yet our implicit impact on the climate will make great changes? You can’t have it both ways.
And to possumboy: Both of your arguments are meaningless in context. 30 years ago climate modeling was done by hand and using computers less powerful than an iPhone. And the plants and animals you speak of that lived on Earth in a co2 rich atmosphere… are dead. Replaced by plants and animals that cannot. Yes, life will likely go on should such conditions arise again… but YOU will not. And that is the point. The Earth will survive, the question is, “will we?”