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Worldview Blogby A Concerned Citizenback to the Worldview Menu |
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Worldview Blogby A Concerned Citizenback to the Worldview Menu |
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31 Jan 08: Norman Finkelstein and Academic Freedom 29 Jan 08: Free Speech is Threatened 28 Jan 08: How Bill Clinton Betrayed the Democrats 14 Jan 08: Horror in the Congo 13 Jan 08: Presidential Frontrunners and Human Rights 01 Jan 08: Presidential Campaign Blather 31 Dec 07: Pakistani Nukes 22 Dec 07: Our Constitution is Threatened 20 Dec 07: Uri Avnery: The Gaza Hell Hole 19 Dec 07: Bill Moyers: Buying the War 18 Dec 07: Liberals and Ron Paul 04 Dec 07: NIE Report Plays Down Iran Threat 01 Dec 07: Endless War and American Politics 28 Nov 07: Why Not To Bomb Iran 26 Nov 07: The Democrats and Iraq |
Global Warming Hype 01 February 2008 Some evidence against global warming hysteria I am a global warming skeptic, even though I am admittedly no expert in climate science. Based on what I have read, I doubt very much that humans have caused any increase in global temperature that is cause for alarm, especially along the gargantuan and ruinous scale of the Kyoto Protocol. How can I be so sure? I am not completely certain, but my confidence is high that the global warming scare science is unproven and unlikely, if not altogether refuted. A few reasons are: (i) recent temperatures and temperature changes are not exceptional when viewed on a geological timescale; (ii) the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (let alone man-made CO2) drives temperature is not supported by the evidence; (iii) there is much better evidence that the sun drives global temperature; and (iv) the idea that computer models could make accurate long-term predictions of such a complex and chaotic non-linear system as climate is highly dubious. There are yet other reasons for being skeptical, such as the crucial but poorly understood role of clouds in trapping heat, or the fact that CO2 becomes 'saturated' as it absorbs heat, or a study showing that a 30% drop in industrial C02 during the Great Depression had no effect on atmospheric CO2, or the simple fact that water vapor dwarfs CO2 as a 'greenhouse gas' and is poorly modeled. And the list goes on... The first two videos below present, in my opinion, a convincing case that the global warming science is seriously flawed. If you wish to delve further, then the Climate Debate Daily website does a good job of presenting the pros and cons. There are other good websites taking one side or the other, but I suspect the important articles all show up here. (As of today, I find the articles on the pro-warming side to be quite weak, as far as the theory is concerned.) Alexander Cockburn is a well-known leftist who has come under fire ('almost witch-hunted') for challenging the leftist embrace of global warming theory. Indeed, it has become something of a religion to many leftists and environmentalists, few of whom really understand the science. Isn't the political left supposed to be rational, secular and all that? I suspect the culprits are a group of self-serving climatologists who have learned a lesson from the military-industrial complex!
Criticism of the criticism of global warming UPDATE (2 Feb 08): Perhaps it comes as no surprise, but the Wikipedia article on The Great Global Warming Swindle mentions critics who claim that the evidence presented in the video is falsified, out of date, misleading, etc. What can I say? I can't verify the evidence, and anyway, scientists often argue over evidence. If the ice-core curves showing that CO2 increases after warming are valid, as I suspect they are, then this is rather persuasive evidence that CO2 doesn't drive global warming. (Off the top of my head, I would expect ice-core data to be far more reliable than, say, the notorious tree-ring proxies.) One might argue that man-made CO2 presents something radically new, but this sounds rather ad hoc to me. Moreover, the evidence shows that temperatures and CO2 have been much higher or lower than at present, and nothing terribly unusual is happening. See Bob Carter's video. All the fuss seems to be over statistical fluctuations taken for real and permanent, as has occurred throughout the history of stock markets, most recently with the dot-com boom and bust. And if that is not enough, there is now doubt even about recent temperature data, which may have been contaminated by urban heat islands and other effects. Really! We need to all cool down and sort this mess out. But the alarmists demand drastic action now! That, too, sounds highly suspicious to me. Am I becoming cynical with age? Now it is also true that continents have shifted and oceans have risen and receded over the eons, often dramatically, and this has indeed disturbed life and even affected the course of evolution. No reasonable person can expect New York or Tokyo to last forever; the sea level will surely rise some day. It's taking socialism too far to demand that government control nature! We must expect unavoidable change, and life has developed an ingenious solution called adaptation, helped along tremendously by technology. I have nothing against clean and green improvements, but not if they are rammed through by unfounded hysteria, in which case they will probably be done wrong. Let technical progress proceed in a natural and evolutionary fashion. The solar driving hypothesis seemed persuasive to me, but the Wikipedia article claims that the correlation has been less evident of late. Well, it was rather evident in the curves in the videos, over statistically significant periods. We must expect some fluctuations in the correlation. Of course, one can always claim that any given curve is falsified or misleading. Somehow, the critics shown in the movie seem professional enough to me... Something truly remarkable is happening, which raises serious questions about science. If many pro-warming scientists are indeed jumping to conclusions, then this shows that the scientific process must be taken with a grain of salt, especially when money, politics and egos are involved. Most scientists should be skeptics, except for very solidly confirmed theories, like Newton's Laws or Quantum Mechanics. Global warming hardly seems like one of these theories to me. That so many scientists have a messianic fervor about dubious theories involving highly complex non-linear processes, where even some of the basic data require serious scrutiny, does not reflect well on science as a whole. Has politics swallowed up everything? (By the way, I reject the demand of pro-warming climatologists that only climate experts be included in the discussion. The careful debunking work of an outsider like Steve McIntyre clearly needs to be considered. The consensus of the experts proves nothing in this particular and peculiar debate, especially given the enormous and costly stakes. There is even controversy over whether there is actually a consensus! And let us take the impressive-sounding words 'peer review' with a grain of salt.)
Here are some pro-global warming articles:
A few more points UPDATE (6 Feb 08): As I read more articles on global warming, I realize that a detailed technical discussion of this topic is like quicksand, which may in fact be part of the strategy of global warming advocates. But let me make a few more points. A minor one is that ice cores may not 'be far more reliable' than tree-ring proxies, but they are probably more reliable, because with ice cores the scientists perform simple and direct measurements on gases, whereas the tree-ring proxies are based on a complex and convoluted statistical scheme, which seems to have been quite persuasively debunked by Steve McIntyre and others. A more important point is that the global warming advocates have an explanation for why the ice cores show that CO2 increases lag temperature rises, by some 800 years or so. This lag would seem to be quite persuasive evidence of a causal relationship in which temperature changes produce CO2 changes, and not vice versa. However, the global warming advocates postulate a feedback effect, in which a temperature rise initially releases some CO2, but the CO2 then kicks in with a mean feedback effect that drives the temperature rise! With arguments like this, it seems rather clear that what is really happening is that, due to the complexity of climate, one can postulate any Rube Goldberg mechanism one wishes to keep one's pet theory afloat. The actual measurements are often so controversial in themselves, and so close to the 'noise', that this game can go on forever, especially if a small clique of 'experts' are playing the peer-review game to stifle debate. That's the real story here. I think that the rather evident 800 year lag between temperature changes and CO2 changes is strong evidence that temperature drives CO2 and not the other way around. And there are many other reasons to doubt global warming science. We can certainly say that the situation is sufficiently muddy that any ruinous Kyoto Protocol would be irrational at this point. I would rather spend a small fraction of that money to pay really smart physicists (like the ones who work on quantum mechanics) as well as professional statisticians to thoroughly investigate the global warming racket and find out just what they have been up to. If taxpayer money is paying for that research, then all their documentation should belong to the public and should be made available for scrutiny. Better grab it before they destroy it!
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