Climate Change!

[The Old Man]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Settlement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland

A cautionary tale:
The "Little Ice Age" was only slightly cooler, but the impacts were significant in Europe. There was also the "Medieval Warm Period." As far as Greenland the evidence is fragmentary (and not conclusive), but suggests climate change as a factor in the demise of the Norse settlements.

"The study also found that the lowest winter temperatures of the last 2,000 years occurred in the late 14th century and early 15th century." The last known written document on the Norse in Greenland was recorded in 1408 for a marriage in Hvalsey, Greenland.

[George the original one]

@jen - the survey reported in the Forbes article is of a professional group of geoscientists and engineers in Canada (*). You know, people who work in the mining, oil, & gas industries. I wouldn't think it odd that, as a whole, they're uncomfortable with man-made climate change. Nor do I think that Forbes magazine would be interested in reporting the survey if the result went the other way.

I'm not saying they're right or wrong, rather that acknowledging the bias is important.

Also, there are many people who do not believe the climate is changing at all, not even naturally. So, no, it is not obvious to everyone that the climate changes.

***
Edit: from the survey's report... "The discussion was becoming increasingly heated among a vocal few and, for the association, it was unclear whether these few were representing the majority of members. Given this debate, APEGA initiated a broad survey of its 40,000 members (as of 2007) concerning their beliefs about climate change, sources of knowledge, and opinions about the appropriate roles for individuals, industry, APEGA, and government. The first author was engaged by APEGA to develop the survey and analyze the results. The survey questionnaire contained closed- and open-ended questions and was published in The PEGG and on the website in October 2007.2 A total of 1077 completed surveys were received and 12 respondents emailed or mailed in additional comments."

1) Survey results were voluntary.
2) Only 2.7% of the membership bothered to complete the voluntary survey.
3) The survey was perfomed in 2007, but Forbes chose to highlight it in 2013.

The meterological survey (AMA) was in 2012. The links from the article to the original documents are dead. From the Forbes' author's earlier article summarizing the AMA survey, it reads a bit like he is twisting the words.

[chenda]

The comments in that article were interesting, even another Forbes writer thought he was being misleading:

'Your headline says, “Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis”

A better headline would be, “According to a non-scientific survey, a majority of petroleum engineers working in Alberta accept that humans are in part responsible for climate change”

[Gilberto de Piento]

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team has circulated an unusual 74-point questionnaire at the Department of Energy that requests the names of all employees and contractors who have attended climate change policy conferences, as well as emails and documents associated with the conferences.

In question after question, the document peppers Energy Department managers with pointed queries about climate science research, clean energy programs and the employees who work for those programs. More broadly, the questionnaire hints at a significant shift of emphasis at the agency toward nuclear power, and a push to commercialize the research of the Energy Department’s laboratories, long considered the crown jewels of federal science.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/po ... .html?_r=0

I've observed Republicans doing something similar at the state level. They identified scientists whose research was not friendly to business and their ideology and cut the scientists' positions.

[jacob]

What I have learned so far...Seems like one of the problems is that there really aren't very many climate scientists, and scientific education up to the level of B.S in STEM field actually magnifies differences in viewpoint, depending on both "cui bono" and ideology. I took a brief quiz to identify my ideology. I am moderately egalitarian (as opposed to hierarchical) and right on the boundary of "individualistic" and "communitarian" in my ideology. Therefore, I am on the "free market" fringe of those who are likely to want to believe in climate change.

Not sure what you mean by "there really aren't very many climate scientists"? How many should there be? The other observation is rather spot on. It's easy to get the impression [from the English-speaking internet] that skepticism is widespread all over the world, but it's really only concentrated in Anglo-Saxon cultures (UK, US, CA, AU) where free-market belief/culture dominates (cf. mixed-economy belief in countries where people speak one of those pretentious foreign languages). If you draw a Venn diagram (of "English first language" and "free market"), you'll see very little from the skepticism echo-chamber outside these domains and see the strongest effect where they overlap.

I don't know if there's a positive correlation with STEM. I would suspect it's one of those situations where "a little learning is a dangerous thing" because it easily leads to confidence that one understands more than one actually does (the Dunning Kruger effect for technical issues---might be stronger than for things like humor or grammatical ability because the amount of relevant scientific knowledge in the population is an extremely skewed distribution. Most people understand practically no science, so it's easy for someone who took a handful of science classes in college to think they know everything (relative to their fellow history, econ or polisci majors anyway) not realizing that there's far more to learn... kinda like climbing a mountain with a false hill before reaching the point where you realize you're nowhere near the top yet). Indeed, a lot of the technical (<= actual equations ... and not just some stat plot or op-ed) skeptical objections that are floating around the blogosphere show indications of the author having a Bachelor level in some discipline but not knowing crucial pertinent information from other important fields. For example, the saturation argument (which IIRC was discussed in the other long thread) suggests that the person knows quite a bit about laser physics because all the absorption calculations are correct making it look rather plausible to the uninformed STEM reader; while at the same time completely ignoring the more important consideration of how the thermodynamics of a planetary atmosphere is quite unlike your average laser beam in a small test tube, thus bringing the argument crashing to the ground for anyone who understands how atmospheric physics works. But how many people would understand that? Not that many! So most people keep believing what they wanted to believe in the first place.

This is typical. Crackpot arguments will always manage to convince a finite percentage of random readers because there will always be some who lack the requisites to put things in proper perspective---however on the internet all you need to spread unsupported bs is some critical level of virality. Given that, the idea will live forever no matter how often it gets disproved. This is also why people keep lists of standard objections. It serves as a "fake news" vaccination.

It may also explain why professional skeptics (and there really aren't that many of them --- with some 5000 people making, say 50-100k/year working for these think-tanks, probably less, the entire world wide budget for successfully politicizing a scientific subject in the mind of the general public is around 250-500M/year(+) tops at the very most ... which is extremely cheap and comparable to the profits of a single midcap company so imagine how tempting is it to manipulate public opinion for your average CEO ... if every company pitch in and deduct it as a business expense, eh?) mainly hail from fields other than climate science which is sort of an interdisciplinary research field anyway. It's pretty easy to see how an amateur who is looking to rationalize their position (like Haidt's elephant with a STEM rider) would just disregard the all-important thermodynamics as a minor issue and latch onto the arguments from a "fair and balanced" laser-specialist with a phd to justify their elephant.

(+) I leave the comparison of that amount, which is the cost of kicking the can down the road by gaslighting the public/internet, relative to the output of the global economic output to the 1%/year cost-drag (what McKinsey says) on the developed world's economics that it would take to prevent the problem as an exercise for the interested student.

Now if the elephant's rider is actually somewhat in control of the underlying elephant, I would suggest reading a book instead of trying to learn science from blogs or newspapers. Mann's "Dire Predictions" (which I would have titled "Climate Science: What we know and how we know it") would be suitable for the intelligent layman. And McGuffie's Modelling Primer for those who aren't scared of a math level comparable/slightly above that of the ERE book.

However, the thing I've realized is that people really have to want to learn in order to learn anything!

Most people prefer/expect to be spoonfed insofar they're undecided; and insofar they're decided, they'd rather use it as a chance to polish their debate skills as if scientific matters are decided with rhetorical arguments or demonstrate their google-fu instead of reading a book. Been there, done that.

In general, when I get frustrated with other humans, I go read some Confucius

I do not enlighten those who are not eager to learn,
nor arouse those who are not anxious
to give an explanation themselves.
If I have presented one corner of the square
and they cannot come back to me with the other three,
I should not go over the points again.

I agree with this. Going around lifting all the corners or worse fighting over which corners to lift ... is just not for me anymore. So I guess my solution here is to punt the PR problem to other people and work on more technical matters which haven't been solved yet.

My second dilemma would be that it bums me out to not be able to paint a bright picture for the future of the 5 year old refugees whom I teach.

Well, first off ... why would you be discussing the big picture future with 5 year olds? Second, maybe some perspective would be in order, because it's easy to get lost in large numbers.

Suppose it's year 1915 and that pretty much the entire community of medical scientists makes the prediction, based on current trends, that a century from now, over 50% of everybody will die prematurely from cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and severe emphysema---diseases that were practically irrelevant/unknown to most people at that time---and that instead of increasing the average lifespan to an expected 95 years, if best practices are followed, the average lifespan will be capped around 75 or so, "unless we act soon". You kids better eat your kale and not adopt a sedentary position, literally and figuratively, or many of you will see 30 years of sensible wine&dine retirement enjoyment cut to 15 years of medicated suckery. Hey don't cry!

Well, now, one century later that's exactly what happened ... except for the lack of predictions ... but living through those periods, including now, would you say that this prediction given that it happened as predicted sounds worse than reality turned out to be judging by your personal experience or nicer ... or ... In particular, if you think the prediction above sounds too alarmist? If so, what would have been a better way or strategy to disseminate that information. Should it even have been disseminated at all? Seeing as no such alarms were raised back then, we now consider it pretty normal that the average person dies of lifestyle diseases before age 80 and don't consider it a big deal. The average person does not lament the loss because they have no idea of what could have been. Most people think that being on one or more prescription drugs starting age ~45 is normal now, so ...

WRT losing the planetary support systems in an orderly manner, all it really takes to bring the world population from 7G to 3G is a -1%/year decline over some 70 years. Compare to Russia in the 1990s at -0.5%/year. I could imagine far worse than that. Given the level of complexity insight in 2016, it wouldn't surprise me if most of these kids wouldn't even notice. It could very well be just like how old timers today spoke of how they used to see more snow or how they used to see more variety wildlife where they used to live when they were kids.

Humans are amazingly adaptable.

So, my question for the members of this forum might be "Is there a free market solution to global climate change and/or peak oil that does not involve terrible, relatively early, form of death (violence/starvation/infectious disease previously eradicated/poisoning through contamination) for approximately 4/5ths of the current or likely to be born in next 20 years human population?"

Absolutely ... just like there's a free market solution that avoids diabetes, practically all instances of cardiovascular disease, and most cancers.

[BRUTE]

the same Mann who's been admitting to lying "for the greater good"?

[Gilberto de Piento]

the same Mann who's been admitting to lying "for the greater good"?

Link? He was part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_ ... ontroversy but my understanding was that it was a manufactured controversy. I can't find any quotes where he says "for the greater good." or anything about lying.

Is this the beginning of BRUTEgate?

[BRUTE]

brute doesn't have any references, just something he seems to remember from climategate.. so adding grain of salt advisable. people are saying.

[jacob]

brute should know better #thanksinternet

[stand@desk]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-1 ... comes-next

The Climate has Changed back! We are once again ok? And Hurricanes at their lowest levels since the 1950s, but current narrative more storms with climate change?

So confusing..

[DSKla]

I guess that ZH article is very damning if you're the type who believes that climate change would be a linear movement and there are no other factors than temperature. The problem with the destabilization of massive ice sheets and things like methane hydrate releases is that it will probably be mostly "fine" until we reach a tipping point and things get really not fine in a hurry. Imagine looking at a house of cards, deciding it's still standing, so obviously you can put more cards on it. But when it collapses, it does so suddenly and the effects cascade throughout the house.

And the condition of polar ice, the West Antarctic glacier, permafrost, etc. is pretty obviously in a warming trend.

The problem is that we might inch closer to positive feedback events in a way that isn't perceptible to people in a lot of places (ermagerd it's cold today, climate change is a hoax!), but once that point is reached the feedback loops can run wild very quickly.

This is not directed at stand@desk, by the way, but at the author of the ZH article and other people who take any non-linearity as a sign of fallacy.

[vexed87]

Hopefully there are a few unknown unknown negative feedback loops that are ready to kick-in and help us out because I have been spending more time reading up on all this, the models are pretty damning. Yikes...

I have never been a skeptic, but always assumed CC would play over many centuries and we'd have time to adapt, and the worst case scenarios that I'm learning about are a major eye opener.

[jacob]

@stand@desk -

You just referenced an article that was originally posted on a libertarian blog and then cross-posted to another free-market blog. Aside from citing itself, the post mainly cites two other bloggers (Goddard (BS Geology + MS E.Eng) and Watts (never graduated) neither of whom have formal backgrounds in climate science) and both of whom have been associated with the Heartland Institute that ties back to Koch and Exxon.

You pretty much checked every single box I warned about in my post above. (Did you read it?) In particular, the part about trying to learn science101 by reading finance blogs. That's like trying to learn about nutrition by reading menus from fast food restaurants.

If you're really interested in this, please, for the love of God, go read a book on the subject (I suggested a couple above). It's the continual propagation of blog posts like this that causes so much frustration for informed readers and so much confusion for uninformed readers.

PS: No personal offense intended, but you were the OP on this thread, and at this point, I figure I have lifted my one corner of the square.

[chenda]

This gives a pretty good critique of the zero hedges claims: https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=337

To summarise: This argument uses temperatures from the top of the Greenland ice sheet. This data ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began. It also reflects regional Greenland warming, not global warming.

[7Wannabe5]

jacob said: Not sure what you mean by "there really aren't very many climate scientists"? How many should there be?

According to the course I am auditing, there are only approximately 100 Climate Scientists in the U.S. For purposes of comparison, there are approximately 500,000 licensed plumbers in the U.S. So, if there were 20 individuals at your Thanksgiving gathering, the odds are pretty good that one of them might have been able to offer well-informed opinion on problem with toilet seating, but the odds would be pretty slim that one of them might have been able to offer well-informed opinion on climate change.

Well, first off ... why would you be discussing the big picture future with 5 year olds?

Oh, obviously I don't really do that. It's more that I have moments where I feel sad about Bangladesh ending up underwater because many of the children I encounter from that culture are so charming, intelligent and well-behaved.

In particular, if you think the prediction above sounds too alarmist? If so, what would have been a better way or strategy to disseminate that information. Should it even have been disseminated at all?

I don't think the prediction sounds too alarmist, and I absolutely believe the information should have been disseminated. I don't know what would have been a better strategy to convince people of truth or consequences.

WRT losing the planetary support systems in an orderly manner, all it really takes to bring the world population from 7G to 3G is a -1%/year decline over some 70 years. Compare to Russia in the 1990s at -0.5%/year. I could imagine far worse than that. Given the level of complexity insight in 2016, it wouldn't surprise me if most of these kids wouldn't even notice. It could very well be just like how old timers today spoke of how they used to see more snow or how they used to see more variety wildlife where they used to live when they were kids.

Humans are amazingly adaptable.

This cheered me up. I am 1/4 Irish-American Catholic, so the decline in that quadrant of my family, over the course of my lifetime has been much larger than -1%/year. My father had around 30 first cousins born in the 20s and 30s on his Irish side. Those 30 cousins probably had around 120 children born in the 50s and 60s, but my generation only had slightly less than 2 kids each, and our kids will almost certainly have even fewer kids. Meanwhile, almost all of my father's generation has already died, and mostly from lifestyle (cigarettes, alcohol) related diseases. However, as you noted, a human-time-frame slow and orderly decline does not have the feeling of a tragedy.

OTOH, it does not seem to me that global climate change will necessary result in a human-time-frame slow and orderly decline. Being swept out of your home by a flood and then starving in a refugee camp at the age of 3 seems like more of a tragedy to me than a 75 year old person who chose to smoke cigarettes, in spite of exposure to health information, dying of emphysema. However, it has also occurred to me that even though I am in the pre-grandma phase of life and have a bit of time/energy on my hands, taking undue responsibility for the fate of other people's children may not be warranted or advisable. Sometimes other people give me unsolicited advice about what I should do in relationship to my own adult children, and I almost never appreciate it, and only rarely act upon it.

[jacob]

OTOH, it does not seem to me that global climate change will necessary result in a human-time-frame slow and orderly decline. Being swept out of your home by a flood and then starving in a refugee camp at the age of 3 seems like more of a tragedy to me than a 75 year old person who chose to smoke cigarettes, in spite of exposure to health information, dying of emphysema. However, it has also occurred to me that even though I am in the pre-grandma phase of life and have a bit of time/energy on my hands, taking undue responsibility for the fate of other people's children may not be warranted or advisable. Sometimes other people give me unsolicited advice about what I should do in relationship to my own adult children, and I almost never appreciate it, and only rarely act upon it.

Well, for some humans it will certainly appear abrupt, life-changing, and quite up close and personal. The impacts will definitely not be equitably distributed (in time, place, and wealth) just like the impacts of diabetes or COPD aren't equitably distributed between individual humans (in diet and phenotype). In both cases (lifestyle diseases and climate change impacts), it's possible to significantly either decrease or increase one's personal risk by taking appropriate measures.

Think of the impact as having a distribution with a slight-moderate negative(*) mean but a large variance---so some will be adversely impacted because they're making stupid choices as the tide is going out, but some will do well because they're making smart choices as the tide is going out.

(*) Average mitigation costs given inaction are expected to come to about 10-20%/year(&), so the current prediction is that humans(+) will be 10-20% poorer than they otherwise would have been towards end of this century "unless we act now". Eventually, when we turn out not to have acted much, this reduction will just be the new normal ... --- maybe not so much different from how we now spend 3% of our wealth on the military because humans failed to figure out how to act civilized on an international level.

(+) And when I say humans, I mean humans on average. Likely China (the individual Chinese) will be somewhat better off relative to where they are now. OECD will be about the same (which is a far cry from the 20th growth experience).

(&) "Wow, that sounds ridiculous!" ... Well, not really ... it would be as if food costs doubled which doesn't seem unreasonable given where the current "weaknesses" in the global system are. That's not a big problem if your normal food budget is 10% like in the US ... but if it is 40% of your budget, like in Egypt, it would be a BIG problem.

This is also why I don't feel too sorry anymore when cities and countries suffer adverse consequences. The information has been out and freely available for years. People could just have gone and read it ... As far as I'm personally concerned, it's a bit like solving the gun-issue. On a personal level, it's very easily solved by U-Haul; whereas on a national level it's pretty much impossible to solve. Same with diabetes, etc. ... So I just don't feel that sorry. More like a "Well, duh! What did you expect given where you lived or what you ate? It's not like doctors and scientists didn't warn you for 20 years straight, eh?" Fair, enough?

Whether things will be slow and controlled or fast and uncontrolled depends on one's personal coupling strengths to the impacts. That's why I initially said that my greatest [personal] worry were in terms of food security and other people (refugees). Another factor that enormously discounts how humans feel about tragedies is how far away they are and how much happens at once. One local bus crash is far worse than the same bus crash in another country; and it's worse than a larger number of car crashes with the same body-count. Unless ... unless, one was personally in the crash.

[steveo73]

This gives a pretty good critique of the zero hedges claims: https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=337

To summarise: This argument uses temperatures from the top of the Greenland ice sheet. This data ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began. It also reflects regional Greenland warming, not global warming.

I love how this site gets used as factual. This site is as bad as any GW skeptic site. I think it's worse.

All the confidence about this subject is also pretty amazing. It's nowhere near as clear cut as what people are stating. What you have is an echo chamber in here.

We don't know if anything at all is happening. I could cherry pick facts that clearly state that nothing is happening.

[chenda]

@steveo73 What are your specific criticisms of the sceptical science article ? When do you think the ice core data cited in the zero hedges article started - 1905 ? 2000 ? Why did the cited source of the graph - Richard Alley - apparently confirm to skeptical science in was 1855 ? I'm not being rehetorical, just interested in why you have concluded it's wrong.

[jacob]

I love how skepticalscience.com references peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals by actual scientists to back up their arguments and makes the effort to explain the science at several different levels of educational foundation from basic (layman) over intermediate (interested S(TEM)) to advanced (scientific experts).

I'm not so impressed by skepticism bloggers who reference each others' blogs ad nauseum and who are mostly think-tank sponsored college dropouts (and not the good kind of dropout) or have degrees in political science, geology, or meteorology earning 50-100k/year grants from fossil fuel companies spreading op-ed pieces to whatever newspaper or problogger or sponsored econ journal will take them.

Professional skeptics have been cherry-picking and manipulating graphs to delude an uninformed public for 20+ years by now and unlike real scientists, their meanderings aren't even supported by basic physics. Skeptics have yet to create any physics-based theory to show that climate change isn't happening. Therefore, the skeptic strategy still relies on cherry-picking data hoping that enough people can't tell the difference so that the memes keep making the rounds. Therein lies the difference.

[stand@desk]

The system of democracy carries greater weight than science in our world as of current. That is until the one's running the show get shown up by their faith in democracy and get played by the one's who actually vote (see Boaty Mc Boatface, John Scott voted to NHL All Star Team, Brexit, Trump getting elected etc.) Then the one's running the show want to change the rules so that those who voted don't count as much or quiet down so they can't make change (Fake news, not allowing the vote to stand, re-voting the same thing but at a higher level by different people). So it seems the things that were important in the past "democracy, freedom of speech (can't have it anymore, too many trolls etc) doesn't work anymore or how it is "supposed to."

So in conclusion, the need for power and status and the fight for it by x camp and y camp is possibly, probably too strong to play by the old rules anymore and solutions can't be made because in the fight for status there can not be a positive sum game. End rant.

Side rant: Look at the explosion of "You Tube Stars" all competing for status "subscribe me, follow me!" The need for status and power is more important as long as we have everything we do now (internet, too much food, plenty of time to squander) than to actually work toward bigger problem solutions.