Global warming and reporting requirements

I was reading drational's insistence that we all should be wary of accepting Greg Palast's 'facts' at On Why Greg Palast is Dangerous, and ended up comparing drational's arguments to the global warming issue.

I long ago tried on dkos to do something of the same about global warming and got abused for my concern.  People were NOT welcoming any rational discourse on the topic at the time.  I generally don't post anything on that subject here anymore.  This is the first I've touched on it in a very long time.  (Trying to un-convince someone of their misconceptions is a waste of time.) The quality of actual facts backing up global warming being anthropogenic are quite a bit less locked-in than what Palast uses to back up his claims that those are Rove's emails - but people here aren't ready to be discerning about that issue yet.

I am a person who wants to go straight to the source whenever possible, and the closer to the source the better.  And the closer I got to the source, the more the arguments about humans being the cause for global warming stopped making sense.  I had no agenda going into it.  But after looking into it, I came away unconvinced.  

DISCLAIMER: I do not work for an energy company or an oil company, nor any of their subsidiaries, nor do any of my relatives, as far as I know.

"How could I be so hard-headed?" my girlfriend has asked me on several occasions.  I get that from some friends, too.  Don't I KNOW that all the scientists are agreed on it: global warming is a fact, and humans are the cause of it?  It is as plain as the nose on my face, isn't it?  When I ask them what they have read, they mention magazine and newspaper articles (which are watered-down for public consumption), and when I read those articles (a LOT of them) inevitably what I have seen are very alarming headlines about urgency and disasters to come, just around the corner, and in the text of the articles there are - almost 100% - hedged quotes from climatologists with a lot of "maybes" and "coulds" and "possiblies" that decry the blaring of the headlines.  But in the articles' conclusions, nearly all have some definitive statement about the certainty and close proximity of the cliff we are all about to hurtle off in our pursuit of material comfort and bigger and more gas-guzzling SUVs.

I recommend to anyone open-minded about global warming the series of articles (subscription required) on The Nation by Alexander Cockburn, one of which is Is Global Warming a Sin?.  Cockburn states the case much more clearly than I can.  An excerpt:

...There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution... [emphasis added]

And one from another of his articles The Greenhousers Strike Back, and Strike Out:

...The greenhousers endlessly propose that the consensus of "scientists" on anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming. By "scientists" they actually mean computer modelers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their computer-modeling coterie include very few real climatologists or atmospheric physicists. Among qualified climatologists, meteorologists and atmospheric physicists, there are plenty who do not accept the greenhousers' propositions. [emphasis added]

This is quite true, by the way; I have spoken to a seasoned climatologist and a trained atmospheric modeling meteorologist about it, and they don't agree at all with the alarmism.

Many others have been intimidated into silence by the pressures of grants, tenure and kindred academic garrotes.

Peer review, heavily overworked in the rebuttals I have been reading, is actually a topic on which the greenhousers would do well to keep their mouths shut, since, as the University of Virginia's Pat Michaels has shown, the most notorious sentence in the IPCC's 1996 report ("The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate") was inserted at the last minute by a small faction on the IPCC panel after the scientific peer-review process was complete. The former head of the US National Academy of Sciences (and president of the American Physical Society), Frederick Seitz, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."

These are heavy indictments.  I trust Cockburn did not put these in without fact-checking.

Note that when I saw Cockburn's articles, I did a double-take, since I'd always thought The Nation was a liberal publication.  Well, it certainly still is, and I was dumbfounded.  But there it was, to my utter amazement.  But weren't all Liberals and Progressives 100% on board on global warming?  Maybe not!    
For those who think every intelligent person who is not on the payroll of the oil or power companies is in agreement on global warming, maybe Cockburn's articles would be a good introduction to one or two of the contrary arguments.

Accepting any position simply because others around us are accepting it makes us like the Red Staters.  Falling prey to fearmongering is abdicating our mental capacities and telling someone else to think for us - whether it is the Bushies and its bogeyman or the progressives and global warming.  It took a LONG time for most of the U.S. to wake up to Bush's phony alarmism.  And it is taking a long time for people to begin to question the global warming alarmists.

If Palast is preaching to the choir and he is required to put up or shut up, let us not forget to require the same on all the issues here.

As drational is requiring of Palast, I want answers to these questions:

1. Is the global temperature really rising?  

2. Where is the data?

3. Is there any contradictory data?

4. How far back doe the data go?

5. How reliable is the data of long ago?

6. How precise is the data of long ago?

7. How well does the data of now and long ago cover the entire earth?

8. Are there natural variations that might explain any warming observed?

9. Have ALL other explanations for the current conditions been ruled out?

10. Have ALL the parameters been included in assessing the situations?

11. Are the computer models reliable?

12. Are all the factors in the computer models fully understood?

13. Are all the factors in the computer models verified and accurate?

15.  Have any variations in sampling occurred which might skew the data?

Each of those could be broken down into several specifics, on things like satellites and weather balloons and ENSO and PDO and the massive reduction in weather stations world-wide since the 1980s...

If I sound like an apologist to the oil companies or the energy companies, please point out which of those questions is showing this bias.

Personally, if the energy companies are ruining our climate, I support any and all efforts to get them to clean up their act and to punish when it would help - jail, the gallows, whatever it takes.

BTW, in the 70s and 90s I worked on the design of water treatment plants, scrubbers and oxidizers to ensure effluent and emissions were cleaned up.  I know to some degree how much money U.S. companies have spent to keep from fouling our air and water.  Trust me, when Cockburn talks about the gargantuan amounts of CO2 we pumped into the atmosphere when we all heated with coal in the pre-1970 era, I know what he is talking about.  If there was going to be some connection between human-produced CO2 and global temperatures, it would have showed up clearly on the record.  It did not.

Well, that is a start.  I am hoping there are some people out there who have begun to question the present mantra.  There IS a discourse to be engaged in, and I would like to see it happen.  All the arguments are not in favor of the global warming alarmists; to the contrary, as Cockburn says,

There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend.

•  hahahahahahahahahahaha!

  I trust Cockburn did not put these in without fact-checking.

  You are, apparently, unfamiliar with much of Cockburn's work. A great stylist, erudite and smart, and absolutely committed to never letting the facts get in the way of ideology.

  by Meteor Blades on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:46:14 PM PDT

  •  OK, you're on: Which ones are wrong?

    Specifics.

    by TravelerDiogenes on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:48:46 PM PDT

    •  Read what these ...

      ...guys have to say here:

      (a) Cockburn claims that there is zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend, despite the fact that not even such strident climate change contrarians as Pat Michaels dispute that there is a measurable influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases on global temperature. Plus there's all the empirical evidence of course (see the new IPCC report). (b) Going further, Cockburn brazenly opines that 'it is impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from human burning of fossil fuels' despite the fact that there is an isotopic smoking gun for this connection. He then (c) fails to understand that water vapor is a feedback not a forcing, and citing 'expert' Dr. Martin Hertzberg, quite remarkably states that 'It is the warming of the earth that is causing the increase of carbon dioxide and not the reverse.' Never mind that isotopic evidence proves otherwise. Upon what evidence does he base this assertion?

      Since no anti-global warming op-ed these days is complete without it, Cockburn (d) resorts to the usual misrepresentation of lag/lead relationships between CO2 and temperatures during glacial/interglacial cycles as if they disprove the causal relationship between greenhouse gas concentrations and surface temperatures (see our most recent debunking of this favorite contrarian talking point here).

      by Meteor Blades on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:57:04 PM PDT

      •  Data? Sources?

        by TravelerDiogenes on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:09:18 PM PDT

        •  Here you go...

          Eric Steig is one of the writers at the RealClimate site I linked. Here is his c.v., as noted on that site:

          Eric Steig is an isotope geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. His primary research interest is use of ice core records to document climate variability in the past. He also works on the geological history of ice sheets, on ice sheet dynamics, on statistical climate analysis, and on atmospheric chemistry.

          He received a BA from Hampshire College at Amherst, MA, and M.S. and PhDs in Geological Sciences at the University of Washington, and was a DOE Global Change Graduate fellow. He was on the research faculty at the University of Colorado and taught at the University of Pennsylvania prior to returning to the University of Washington 2001. He has served on the national steering committees for the Ice Core Working Group, the Paleoenvironmental Arctic Sciences initiative, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Initiative, all sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. He is an editor of the journal Quaternary Research. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in international journals.

          And here is what he had to say about the issue Cockburn includes in his piece:

          When I give talks about climate change, the question that comes up most frequently is this: "Doesn’t the relationship between CO2 and temperature in the ice core record show that temperature drives CO2, not the other way round?"...

          First of all, saying "historically" is misleading, because Barton is actually talking about CO2 changes on very long (glacial-interglacial) timescales. On historical timescales, CO2 has definitely led, not lagged, temperature. But in any case, it doesn't really matter for the problem at hand (global warming). We know why CO2 is increasing now, and the direct radiative effects of CO2 on climate have been known for more than 100 years. In the absence of human intervention CO2 does rise and fall over time, due to exchanges of carbon among the biosphere, atmosphere, and ocean and, on the very longest timescales, the lithosphere (i.e. rocks, oil reservoirs, coal, carbonate rocks). The rates of those exchanges are now being completely overwhelmed by the rate at which we are extracting carbon from the latter set of reservoirs and converting it to atmospheric CO2. No discovery made with ice cores is going to change those basic facts.

          Second, the idea that there might be a lag of CO2 concentrations behind temperature change (during glacial-interglacial climate changes) is hardly new to the climate science community. Indeed, Claude Lorius, Jim Hansen and others essentially predicted this finding fully 17 years ago, in a landmark paper that addressed the cause of temperature change observed in Antarctic ice core records, well before the data showed that CO2 might lag temperature.

          by Meteor Blades on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:49:49 PM PDT

          •  The CO2 reservoirs could give us nightmares

            As a recent article pointed out, the Southern Ocean may have reached its capacity to store CO2.  With continued temperatures rises the traditional CO2 sinks could begin releasing rather than absorbing CO2.

            Trees and plants are always thought of as having the ability to reduce CO2 because that's part of photosynthesis, but rising temperatures can cause plants to rot and give off CO2 and droughts have the effect of stressing plants and trees to the point where they absorb much less CO2.  

            We have a very dangerous global wildland fire feedback system where drought leads to intense fires which release CO2 which causes more wrming, less snowpack, more drought, pine bark beetle infestation, dead trees, more fires, etc.  Very, very bad.  Last year over 10 million acres of forest and grasslands burned the US and one forester I spoke to says this year it will burn until the snow falls.

            by chuck in NH on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 03:13:48 PM PDT

  •  You are saying The Nation didn't vet his article?

    by TravelerDiogenes on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:49:26 PM PDT

    •  The Nation fact-checks its ...

      ...columnists to avoid libel, but inaccuracies float through nonetheless.

      by Meteor Blades on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:59:45 PM PDT

      •  Which points are incorrect?

        by TravelerDiogenes on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:07:25 PM PDT

        •  Two things wrong for starters

          I won't bother with the 15 questions since you'll find all the peer-reviewed answers you want regarding temperature records, the challenges of satellite measurement, historical trends from ice cores, etc on the internet.

          Trust me, when Cockburn talks about the gargantuan amounts of CO2 we pumped into the atmosphere when we all heated with coal in the pre-1970 era, I know what he is talking about.  If there was going to be some connection between human-produced CO2 and global temperatures, it would have showed up clearly on the record.  It did not.

          Two of the assumptions struck me as incorrect straight away. First, where is your justification for calling per-1970 emissions gargantuan? US coal consumption has closely tracked production, and here is production for 1890 to 2005:

          

          Second, the expectation of immediate temperature changes is completely ignorant of delays in climate change effects. Here is an IPCC 2001 graphic indicating that even if a CO2 peak can be achieved within 50 years, lag effects mean temperatures will rise for a few centuries and sea levels will rise for more than 1000 years.

          

          by retrograde on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:14:57 PM PDT

          •  One point. . .

            First, where is your justification for calling per-1970 emissions gargantuan?

            First, a question: Were you alive before the Clean Air And Water Act was passed in 1970?

            Use of coal since then does not equate to emissions.  Why?  Because before that coal was burned in all sorts of home and industrial furnaces, with next to no controls.  After that, almost all the coal burned has been in power plants with serious, serious emission controls - scrubbers mostly - that cut the emissions far below what those millions of uncontrolled furnaces were spewing out.

            The air itself was extremely grimy in most cities, pre-1970.  Much of it was visible, but much of it was not.  I do not have figures on how bad air quality was, but it was - literally - not a pretty sight.

            Gargantuan?  Yeah, I stand by that.

            One specific and extreme example of what it was like is at The Great Smog of 1952.  

            Early in December 1952, a cold fog descended upon London. Because of the cold, Londoners began to burn more coal than usual. The resulting air pollution was trapped by the inversion layer formed by the dense mass of cold air. Concentrations of pollutants, coal smoke in particular, built up dramatically. The problem was made worse by use of low-quality high-sulfur coal for home heating in London in order to permit export of higher-quality coal, because of the country's tenuous economic situation [1]. The "fog," or smog, was so thick that driving became difficult or impossible. It entered indoors easily, and concerts and screenings of films were cancelled as the audience could not see the stage or screen.

            Since London was known for its fog, there was no great panic at the time. In the weeks that followed, the medical services compiled statistics and found that the fog had killed 4,000 people—most of whom were very young or elderly, or had pre-existing respiratory problems. There was relief that Queen Mary The Queen Dowager, then aged 85 and suffering with respiratory problems, was not at Buckingham Palace at the time of the incident. Another 8,000 died in the weeks and months that followed.

            These shocking revelations led to a rethinking of air pollution; the disaster had demonstrated its lethal potential to people around the world. New regulations were put in place restricting the use of dirty fuels in industry and banning black smoke. These included the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and of 1968, and the City of London (Various Powers) Act of 1954.

            It is important to recogniize, though, that that killer smog was only a killer because of the temperature inversion that held the pollution in - the same amount of emissions would have gone into the atmosphere then, anyway, given the time of year; it would simply have dispersed better.  London put out that much on many, many occasions.

            by TravelerDiogenes on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:42:30 PM PDT

            •  Could you tell us exactly how much ...

              ...CO2 has been scrubbed out of that burning coal with those "serious, serious emissions controls"?

              by Meteor Blades on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:53:14 PM PDT

              •  Still waiting...n/t

                by Meteor Blades on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 06:02:27 PM PDT

            •  Clean Air with Coal?

              The Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990 contained tight regulations and a cap and trade system for sulphur-dioxide which has cut SO2 emissions by over 30% nationally.  This item grew out of a citizen action in New Hampshire Town Meetings calling for a reduction in the acid rain that was ruining our lakes and streams.  

              This is a good example of a cap and trade system to refer to when we discuss it in reference to CO2.  The cost was much less than anticipated and by creating a marketplace for emissions, power companies could justify investments to clean up their processes.  Unfortunately this is a rather narrow success and overall, coal fired power plants are still the worst sources of pollution of any power source.  

              Interesting diary a few days ago about a Congressman from West Virginia wants legislation to certify that wind power is safe for birds.

               

              The link to between burning fossil fuel and the increase in CO2 is pretty well explained in realclimate.org based on the ratio of carbon 12 and carbon 13 isotopes.  Eric Steig is very good at explaining this at a fourth grade level although I felt like I was still in third grade for part of it.

              by chuck in NH on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 03:28:22 PM PDT

            •  Actually ...

              ... it's been demonstrated that air pollutants such as smog have an overall cooling effect on the climate, due to the sunlight that they prevent from reaching the ground.  From the link:

              The relative lifetimes of CO2 and aerosol in the atmosphere result in the expectation that reducing fossil fuel use will accelerate warming. [...] [I]f we instantaneously ceased using combustion engines, the (cooling) fossil fuel-related aerosols would be cleaned out of the atmosphere within weeks, while the (warming) CO2 would remain much longer, leaving a net positive forcing from the reduction in emissions for a century or more.

              Analogously, scrubbers actually help to accelerate the effects of global warming, because fewer aerosols are released to (temporarily) offset the effects of CO2.  (Note that they themselves cannot cause global warming -- they just make the effects more immediate.)

              by lemming22 on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 08:07:57 PM PDT

•  I will leave most of this to others, but

  do you deny the data showing that CO2 levels are the highest in 650,000 years? That is not a computer projection.

  One temperature analysis: Some Things Are Too Horrible To Ignore

  by melvin on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:50:39 PM PDT

  •  And is this passage incorrect?

    the most notorious sentence in the IPCC's 1996 report ("The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate") was inserted at the last minute by a small faction on the IPCC panel after the scientific peer-review process was complete. The former head of the US National Academy of Sciences (and president of the American Physical Society), Frederick Seitz, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."

    Did this not happen?

    by TravelerDiogenes on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:59:43 PM PDT

    •  There was debate in 1996.

      IPCC reports, being a product of a gargantuan international committee, tend to run behind the times.  If the report came out in 1996, then the year where articles were reviewed would be 1995, and the articles would need to be written by late 1994.  

      Temperature observations were not as clear evidence of global warming in 1994 as they were in 2005.  The last year of temperatures equal to the 1961-1990 mean was 1985.  By the time the papers were due, only eight years of temperatures above this mean (1986-1993) could be reported.  Reasonable people could decline to diagnose anthropogenic global warming from an 8-year trend and models, especially with El Ninos in 1991, 1992 and 1993 but not 1986-1990 available as alternate explanations.

      When the papers for the current IPCC were due in 2005, we had 19 straight warm years under our belts.  Further, measurements that indicated that increasing pollution after WWII reduced the sunlight hitting Earth (explaining the cooling episode from roughly 1946 to 1978) were only recently compiled.  

      by Yamaneko2 on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 03:23:37 PM PDT

•  Possibly feeding concern trolls here, but...

  Of course the MSM oversimplifies the problem; that's what they do.
  Of the climatologists and geologists that I know personally, most agree that mankind has indeed influenced the climate over a period of centuries, but that it has been an exponential change in line with population growth. Their take on it is pretty stoic in that they believe that, unless every developed and developing country takes extremely radical steps to scale back carbon emission (and their population!), we are definitely seriously fucked. The conclusion being that life on earth will be just fine, but humans...who knows.

  by northsylvania on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 01:53:13 PM PDT

  •  We are the most adaptable of them all

    Plants are doing well with the increased CO2.

    As to animals, I have actually looked high and low for evidence that any specific animal has become extinct in the last decade or so.  If someone has the name of some animal gone extinct in that time, I am all ears.

    All the gloom and doom of the 1970s (Paul Ehrlich, etc.) has proven to be completely untrue.  Time will tell on the present predictions... We didn't run out of oil or copper, or iron, and our lakes and rivers are cleaner by far than they were in the 1960s.  And I don't know about other area of the country, but here in Chicago, the air is pretty darned clean vs 1970.

    by TravelerDiogenes on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:06:54 PM PDT

    •  Read about methane hydrates and the PETM.

      2000 ppm CO2 is no joke. 15% O2 makes for heavy breathing.

      I agree we won't deal with it.

      We won't reduce population.

      The rich will survive better.

      We'll end up with a lot more tall handsome whites and a lot fewer others in the resource wars to come.

      Then, after the atmosphere rights itself, maybe we'll take notice. Or maybe religion takes over im times of climate stress.

      Have a nice day.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/...

      Clathrates, Methane Hydrates, Clathrate Gun Hypothesis.

      Scientific American has done methane hydrates, scary story.

      Do a search in Sciam.com on methane hydrates.

      by ormondotvos on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 02:33:17 PM PDT

    •  Humans depend on technology to adapt,

      plants don't.  Well, except for the domesticated varieties that we humans grow in monoculture that depend on the support of our technology - the ones that are our primary food source.  Not much adapting or even planning for adaptation in that sphere as far as I can tell.

      If the climate changes enough that we start having difficulty growing food in the quantities that current populations require to survive, we will quickly lose the technology that supports the whole house of cards.

      Already, harvests are dwindling and artificial inputs are rising just to keep us from losing ground faster than we are.  There are limits, but we don't know what they are yet.  I find that somewhat worrisome, don't you?

      by sxwarren on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 03:03:17 PM PDT

      •  Consider

        that the remaining topsiol in the Midwest will be sacrificed to grow corn for ethanol.

        by Rimfire Kid on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 03:58:40 PM PDT

        •  Yeah. I expect the economics of that

          boondoggle to fall apart very quickly.

          by sxwarren on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 04:30:12 PM PDT

    •  Other limits to plant behavior.

      The presence of carbon dioxide is not the only limit to plant growth, though abundant carbon dioxide does allow plants to use water more efficiently by keeping their stomata open for shorter periods.  The other limiting nutrients are nitrogren and phosphorous.  If crops respond to fertilizers, then N or P limitation exists.

      Laboratory experiments indicate that plants exposed to increasing CO2 over their lifetimes do utilize it more readily if no nitrogen limitation is present.  Plants raised under conditions of constant, elevated CO2 do not profit as handsomely, though there is some increase in growth.  

      Finally, in a regime where the plants do well, their consumers may not.  If carbon dioxide is the limiting nutrient and that limit is eased, plants may create more tissues with higher C:N ratios that animals (including us) find less nourishing or palatable.    

      I'm downwind from the Calumet industrial belt, and agree that the air and water are much cleaner now than they used to be.  For that improvement, thank the EPA's regulations.  

      The Club of Rome doomsday scenarios erred by extrapolating exponential trends, neglecting human mitigation, and ignoring the spur that moderate scarcity gives to inventiveness.  Birth control, the Green Revolution (both controversial in certain circles) and political reforms staved off the food crisis.  As the price of oil increases, costlier extraction strategies make economic sense.  As the cost of changing ores into metals increases, it becomes cheaper to mine junkyards and curbs than open-earth pits.  

      by Yamaneko2 on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 03:48:34 PM PDT

    •  Coral Reefs: New Yorker, November 20, 2006

      I didn't pay close attention when it came out but, after going through the Climate Project training with Mr. Gore and climatologists and other scientists slide-by-slide over several days in January and finding the most personal resonance in presentations I've done with the hidden effects under the ocean, I went back and took a look this week (not a scientific cite in itself, but a profile of a scientist and cites of her peer-reviewed work).

      In short, the ocean has been soaking up CO2 from the atmosphere and cloaking the effects -- it's worse than it appears. What's hidden beneath the waves is the alkaline ocean getting acidified, interfering with the basic mechanisms of coral and shellfish formation. The scientific evidence on this is relatively recent, but documented, in terms of reduced range of viable coral formation. This will have dramatic impacts throughout the marine food chain.

      I welcome this diary, TD, because it can help us show how overwhelming the evidence is, and how each new data point is adding to rather than contradicting the earlier work.

      I would like to know, though: do you trace a path through the retail distribution chain and back to the farm before wearing clothes each day? Do you doubt this newfangled 'car' phenomenon until it can be proved that there aren't hidden horses under the hood? Remember, Gravity is just a theory, so be sure to glue Velcro (tm) to your shoes.

      I apologize for the facetious sound of the above... what I'm trying to say here, is that humans seem to be built have evolved with innate needs to believe -- or in some cases, to disbelieve, and sometimes I find it helpful to take a step back and examine the reasons why I feel something is, or isn't.

      by raines on Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 05:50:32 AM PDT

•  There's an excellent article

  by George Monbiot refuting Cockburn - I found it via gristmill.org - you should do the same (including the effort to locate it).

  If you really are a person who wants to go "straight to the source", then you should do that. You can find the IPCC reports online easily; you can find some journal articles on line easily; you can spend time at realclimate.org or other places which secondarily report from the primary sources.  You could even (gasp!) go to the library or a bookstore.

  You can bone up on the science involved - at the level you require it isn't that complex. You don't have to understand everything you read (most fields are so specialized that even practitioners have trouble with the technical details), but you can usually follow the conclusions and assess their validity. You can find and study the viewpoints of people who disagree with global warming. Then you can make up your own mind.

  But Alexander Cockburn is a primary source for absolutely nothing, and not even a secondary source. He's a pundit - which is to say a bullshit artist with an opinion.

  If Cockburn hasn't provided at least half-a-dozen somewhat reliable sources that support his point of view and references to the people/science he's arguing against (in other words, some trail for you to follow), then his opinion is of no more value than some drunk spouting off in your neighborhood bar - but maybe it's better written. The fact that you agree with something Cockburn wrote in the past doesn't make him an authority on a subject he knows next to nothing about.

  You can agree or disagree with Cockburn on almost any issue, but you can't claim him as an authoritive source on climate.

  by badger on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 03:53:22 PM PDT

  •  Here is a link

    as a public service to anyone who wanders in.

    Monbiot refutation of Cockburn

    by Mother of Zeus on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 05:44:21 PM PDT

•  Good questions

  to be asking 20 years ago.

  Late in getting to this; in the event you are still reading this here are some things to note.

  First, I do not know why you think Cockburn is a reliable source, but since you are interested in going to sources as much as possible, you should first go here. I know it's long, and there are something like a dozen pages of references per chapter, but then there's an awful lot of data out there. It deals with all of your questions, especially 1,2, 4-8, and 15. You might as well go to the source directly rather than get a secondhand summary from me (or anyone else). If you don't have time to go through it all, at least read the technical summary. If you have issues or questions about the data, you should ask the corresponding author in the appropriate reference. Usually they will be willing to answer your questions, although it may take a little while to get an answer.

  Future projections are really in the purview of Working Group 2: they have a policy maker's summary available from the IPCC home page and will have the full report out shortly.

  That said, I do have issues with some of your points.

  3. [Are] there any contradictory data

  What does this question mean? If the issues are global temperature and climate change, both are mean values, and unless the measurement variance is zero there will be data points below and above the mean. The important thing is to look at all the data available, not just a selection.

  9.  Have ALL other explanations for the current conditions been ruled out?

  We do not know what the entire set of explanations is so there is no way to answer that. But the really obvious explanation that sticks out like a sore thumb is anthropogenic emissions. If you have a system affected more or less equally by a number of factors, it is difficult to estimate the trajectory of the system to changes in any particular forcing. But if there is a particularly strong forcing, the job becomes much easier.

  10. Have ALL the parameters been included in assessing the situations?

  See above.

  11. Are the computer models reliable?

  There is one overriding criterion in science, and that is testability. You make the prediction, and test it. We've been modeling climate for at least 30 years, and while we're getting better and better, in all cases the mean value (you always run a variety of scenarios) has so far been pretty close to the observed. In general the model runs are a little conservative (less warming, more slowly). See for yourself in Figure 4 of the policy maker's summary for Working Group 1 (link above). You can also compare to model projections from the second and third Assessment Reports made in 1995 and 2001, respectively.

  If you claim that the models are not reliable, you must show that the model projections show no skill. If you can do that, you will have done the community a service.

  12. Are all the factors in the computer models fully understood?

  HELL no.

  Do the shortcomings materially affect the predictive skill? Different question, the answer to which is "no, not yet".

  13. Are all the factors in the computer models verified and accurate?

  See above.

  Perhaps I'm misreading something,  but you seem to want a degree of certainty which doesn't exist in science (there are no proofs in science.) Here's something to think about. We know that classical mechanics fails completely at small scales and high velocities: classical mechanics is demonstrably wrong. Yet bridges and buildings, aircraft and cars, electrical power stations, etc are all designed by classical principles, which are demonstrably wrong. Do you have a problem with that?

  by alefnot on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 09:57:45 AM PDT