View 363 May 23 - 29, 2005 (original) (raw)
Friday, May 27, 2005
A Turkish Muslim offers his thoughts on Intelligent Design: http://www.techcentralstation.com/052605E.html in an essay I found worth the time investment to read it. He write in refutation of the "Intelligent Decline" article http://www.techcentralstation.com/051905A.html by Britannica editor Robert McHenry.
My own view is a bit different: either the universe has a purpose, or it does not. If it does not, debates on the "meaning of life" aren't very interesting, and it's pretty hard to conceive of a reason to obey any kind of moral law other than fear of getting caught. It's the Karamazov dilemma: "If God exists, all things are possible; if He does not exist, all things are lawful." But that is going well beyond the evidence, as does McHenry; in my judgment Mustafa Akyol does not. There is also a letter and my reply on this subject in mail.
Global Warming and other matters when I get back from my walk.
There is considerable mail on Bit Torrent.
On Global Warming:
There are several issues here, all twisted together. Those whose funding depends on the "consensus" that leads to the Kyoto conventions find it expedient to wrap them all together into one issue -- Do You Care About Preserving The Earth or Are You a Monster -- but that isn't a very useful thing to do.
First issue: is Earth warming? Yes, of course it is; this is supported by all the evidence. Moreover, it has been warming since about 1800, and we all know it: measure growing seasons everywhere (look in old Almanacs if you like for planting dates and harvesting dates), thickness of the ice in North America (we all know that cannon were dragged across frozen rivers in 1776 in places where the ice no longer gets thick enough to walk on, or never forms at all now), retreat of glaciers all across the world and in both hemispheres. Yes. Earth is warming.
Second issue: is this due to human causes? Not very likely. The very trends that show warming since 1800 also show that the warming has been pretty uniform over that time, and modern industrialization didn't put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to matter until well into the 20th Century. Indeed, early coal burning probably put enough particulates into the upper atmosphere to have a cooling effect. Certainly the 1815 eruption of Tambura had a distinctly cooling effect (causing the notorious "year without a summer" which was so gloomy that Mary Shelley wrote the gothic novel Frankenstein because the Shelley's and Byron's weren't having any fun on Lake Geneva due to lousy weather). But despite a glitch in the trend during 1815 the warming has been pretty well linearly constant from around 1800 to 1960, at which point the warming continued but perhaps less rapidly. This is hard to determine because this was when we began better instrumentation, but that itself can cause ambiguities since we can measure temperature effect undoubtedly caused by humans -- cities for example -- which are highly local.
Third Issue: is CO2 increasing? Yes. Is it having an effect on Global Warming? Probably, but it's hard to see because the trend in warming from 1800 is so strong that a small addition from CO2 isn't easily seen (if at all; there's some controversy on whether the effect has been observed, but no one seriously contends that it is large yet). There is serious debate on the future effects of CO2 on global warming, and people with good credentials take all sides of the issue.
Effects of CO2: the best paper I have seen is http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm and I have yet to have one of the environmentalists give me a serious refutation of what that paper says.
Fourth Issue: is Global Warming likely to continue? Surprisingly, we don't know. If there is a serious possibility of serious global warming we ought to be looking into ways of doing something about it. Alas, the climate trends are such that it's as likely we are in for another period of global cooling as warming, and I can remember when climatology predictions at AAAS meetings were about the possibility of new Ice Ages; Stephen Schneider who now mostly talks about Global Warming wrote The Genesis Strategy http://www.wilmonie.com/cgi-bin/wmb455/105317.html about preparations for global cooling not all that long ago. I took the photograph of him and Margaret Mead that was used for promoting the book. It's not a bad book although like much of Stephen's work it tends to get polemical; which is to say he feels strongly about what he concludes.
Fifth Issue: what should we do? Note that this is policy, not science. My recommendation is that we spend as much as we must to obtain an understanding of what's going on and what we face: should we be preparing for Global Warming or a New Ice Age? Or nothing at all? Clearly the different courses of action are mutually exclusive, and except for the "do nothing" alternative are likely to be expensive.
Why Do Nothing? Doing nothing seems wrong, but in fact might be proper: certainly we should Do Nothing until we know what it is we are Doing Something about. As to why "Nothing" may be the right answer, recall that the Vikings settled Greenland, and prior to about 1325 there was a long period of warm climates, long growing seasons, and generally mild weather: Good Weather. It may be that we are warming back up to that point. Those concerned about CO2 are right to point out that if we have a warming trend to an optimum the CO2 warming may take us well past that point to something we don't like. However, there's little evidence that will happen, and there's even less that it will happen suddenly: the Earth is big and the oceans are large, and warming up the whole mess takes lots of time because there are so many thermal sinks. We have no historical evidence of sudden onset warming.
We do have considerable evidence of sudden onset cooling: England went from deciduous trees to snow and ice in under 100 years in the last Ice Age, and the Little Ice Age came on very quickly. If we're warming up, preparations will be needed but there should be time -- and things will get better for quite a while before they get worse, so there will be more money to spend on Doing Something. If however it's ICE that's coming, things get worse before they get awful, there will be less money, and less time. Schneider's Genesis Strategy is a start on what we might do.
And that, it seems to me, is about where we are.
So: since this seems so reasonable (at least to me) why is there such bitter controversy and so many really horrible charges thrown about, with people denounced, and attempts made to get people thrown out of academic positions and professional societies for having contrary views?
Well, there's a LOT of money at stake. The "environmentalists" generally charge anyone who challenges their conclusions and policy recommendations with being in the pay of the evil oil companies -- and also work very very hard to see that every nickel of funding from other sources goes to people with a big stake in the "consensus" position who won't disrupt the gravy train. When we feared an Ice Age there wasn't a lot of money for some reason; but Global Warming caught on, and there's lots and lots of money for studies and academic positions and travel to conferences in Rio and Kyoto, and if that dries up -- who will support the "consensus" people? I admit that's a pretty harsh view, and it probably doesn't apply to more than a small percentage of the "consensus" defenders: but it emphatically does apply to many of the more vociferous, and particularly to those who go about denouncing those who oppose them.
It may be possible to have rational debates on climatology, but my experience has been that if the opening arguments don't convince you to join the "consensus" then either you will be denounced, or communications will simply cease. That happened in the discussions with NASA's Gavin Schmidt [gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov] here on this web site, and that was neither the first nor the last time.
But the facts remain: the warming trend was going on well before the CO2 levels began escalating. The Earth has been both warmer and cooler in historical times. Computer models produce predictions, but none of those models can duplicate the past (start with 1900 and run a 100 year projection that "predicts" the realities of the Year 2000; or start with 1950 and predict 2000 with the model; or heck, just give us a good picture of what is going to happen next year, or this summer). Observation scientists tend to be less enthusiastic about the "consensus" and many reject it entirely. And there are counter-trends: We don't know if we are headed for an Ice Age or Global Warming, but for a while at least Warming produces a more benign world with more resources to spend. And the return of the Ice Ages would be very bad.
And many of the environmentalist protagonists use tactics that they would (and do) deplore if used by anyone else.
We have some additions and corrections.
Hi Jerry,
This graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png only goes back to 1850 but I'm having trouble matching it to your analysis, and this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png goes back 1000 years and it doesn't seem to jibe too well either.
Both are well sourced although it's still hard to judge bias; perhaps you could disclose your sources?
I doubt that you remember me, the last time we talked it was about relative trade volumes between the US and each of the two Chinas.
Best regards, Mark A Haney
To which I replied :
>Oerlemans Science 308 pp 675-677 "Extracting a Climate Signal from 169
>Glacier Records"
>
>As to the linear nature of warming since 1800 almost everything we know
>including ice thickness, growing season -- look at almanacs for example...
And received the response:
Ahh, thanks, Jerry. Oerlemans' analysis was included in the graph at the second link I sent you, although it's admittedly difficult to see in the midst of nine other squiggly lines.
If I may take the liberty of paraphrasing you as saying: "Almost everything shows a nearly linear warming from 1800 to 1960, with some slowing in the trend after that point", it strikes me that that phrasing would be about as inaccurate as "Nearly everything shows the hockey stick."
If instead one stated: "Most analyses show a roughly linear warming from 1800 to the present", it would be hard to quibble with that.
Take care, Mark
And on reflection I must agree. I will defend my original formulation as being more accurate than what has been said about the "hockey stick", but Haney's more nuanced phrasing is more accurate: in either case the conclusion seems obvious, and the environmentalist movement does not seem to have answered it; and there is no hockey stick in there.
We have comments from Gavin Schmidt as well but I am still studying the references he sent, particularly the observation data; more shortly.
And there is commentary mail.
I have copied this to the "Global Warming Debates"page, which I am updating.