Euroscepticism has gone from mad to mainstream. The same thing will happen to ‘climate change’ scepticism

I try to take a purely pragmatic point of view that if they have trouble forecasting the weather a week ahead their predictions on the climate which is a much more complicated problem are probably wide of the mark.  But having said that we do know that from past history climate is unstable and subject to rapid change, we don’t understand fully how the system works and messing it with it by adding lots of carbon dioxide probably isn’t a good idea. I think the standoff between climate experts and skeptics is not terribly productive.

I have crossed swords with you a number of times in these blogs Dr. Oddie, but as far as this thread goes, I am pleased to see that you are siding with the commonsense people. You have seen through the Global Warming propaganda.  You appear to have seen through the “Once size can be made to fit all” pantomime that has been crafted for Euroland by those who cherish One World government under a world leader as their dream.

Perhaps there is hope for you after all?

How long will it be before you see through the machinations of those who are promoting Vatican II and its rotting fruits?  They are aiming for a unified world religion based on a human concept of global acceptability and their main vehicle is global ecumenism.  The only way this can come about is by the spread of the idea of religious freedom, where anyone can think whatever they like, and yet still believe that it will gain them eternal life.  All it will lead to is religious indifference – anything goes.

Come and join the Traditional people, Dr. Oddie.  Those people who believe that there is only one version of the Truth, and that it is that version revealed to the world by Jesus Christ and the Apostles.  Become a “Vatican II sceptic” and lend your influence to the cause. 

“The harvest is great but the labourers are few“.

The trouble is, by the time the climate change sceptics like you are proved wrong it’ll be too late, we’ll have well and truly trashed God’s creation. But you needn’t worry too much, Dr Oddie, you are (like me, in truth) in the privileged Western Middle Class who’ll be the last to suffer. As always, it’ll be the poorest with the least resources who’ll suffer first.   Meantime, by proudly declaring that you don’t believe the warnings of the *vast majority of scientists* you can continue with a wasteful and extravagant lifestyles with an easy conscience. Convenient, eh?

As Napoleon supposedly said once : “do not credit malevolence to what can very well be explained by mere incompetence.”

Even if we admit global warming is real, there are two further objections to drastic regulation that never seem to get discussed: (1) Whether or not it’s man-made, thus able to be slowed by reduced carbon emissions, and (2) Whether or not it’s actually a problem at all. People who complain about greenhouses gases don’t seem to realize that greenhouses themselves are constructed to provide BETTER growing environments for planets.

I hope this will be the case. The climate changes constantly. Where I am sitting now was once under hundreds of feet of ice. It melted. Ergo the temperature rose. We were not around in sufficient numbers in those days to have that effect.
I have to say your first sentence is a classic,and rings true for me.

I do not think that any intelligent  person denies climate change (didn’t it used to be “global warming” – wonder what happened? ) but many scientists (contrary to what you imply) are sceptical about blaming human activity as its major cause. The green lobby and the generally left leaning political class have used the man-made climate change argument to oppose the interim efficient usage of carbon based fuels until nuclear power (which they have done everything to delay over the last 50+ years) comes on stream. These same people at the moment oppose the means to help feed the world’s increasing population – viz: the proper exploitation of GM crops, fertilisers and insecticides. The latter two items, the fruits of chemistry, helped the postwar green revolution which transformed, for example, India in my lifetime. Then there was the scandal of the total ban on DDT and the consequent rise in malaria leading to the death of millions. Now chemists, biochemists and geneticists can help to feed the poor as well as the still relatively comfortable west in the coming years but many obstacles are put in their path. It is the ignorance of science and technology among our rulers that is the problem. I believe that the green lobby, including human climate change proponents,  are the biggest obstacle to the development of poorer countries and the welfare of millions.

 I too am a Catholic and scientist and have been frustrated for years by the by the ignorance of those in power and opinion formers who complain about the deleterious effects of “chemicals” and want only green (whatever they mean by that) production and products. They remind me (pace Fr Lucie-Smith) of the nobility of pre-revolutionary France before the storm struck. How do we cope with warming and feeding the coming increase in population?- “let them use condoms” perhaps or even let them die, or kill each other. The latter views, of course are never openly expressed by such people but do appear in comments on the internet.

The political elite have no interest in good science – they merely use the arguments of some sceintists to further their own agenda which they believe popular with their fellow liberals, and which, knowingly or unknowingly to themselves, is hampering the welfare of fellow humans especially in poorer countries.

If only you were right, but the cost of ‘green’ policies is enormous. The idea that there will be a big benefit which will cost us little isn’t supported by the reality. For example the policies of Chris Huhne will result in many more people in energy poverty with the rise in bills and the destruction of the English countryside by windfarms and the governments attempts to reduce carbon emissions will likely result in the bankruptcy of the country. Even George Monbiot is calling for drastic measures and says that it will be necessary to limit peoples’s freedom because of global warming. Maybe these measures are necessary (personally I’m not convinced), but don’t say that the cost will be small.

Global Warming, aka Climate Change has become a kind of pseudo religion for the far left. There is still much to be discovered about whether or not climate change is driven by human activity primarily. I would remind everyone that scientific consensus, or the way that many scientists have framed the issue doesn’t mean said interpretation is a fact. Skepticism is definitely needed, especially amongst scientists who have become quite dogmatic and certain about the severity and the causes of climate change. There are ideological agendas afoot here–that is clear. So a healthy reasoned skepticism about the alleged “compelling” evidence for man-made climate change is exactly the right attitude to maintain until the political and ideological fog clears.

I do not know enough about climate change to be able to decide either way. What does concern me is the way that a number of Catholic charities, CAFOD in particular, justify their work almost entirely on the basis of anthropogenic climate change rather than the simple fact that it is pretty obvious that we are not stewarding God’s creation in a very responsible way and need to do better. Whilst much of the work that CAFOD seeks to do (let’s not touch the condoms debate in this thread) is praiseworthy it concerns me that they justify it by reference to something which may be disproved rather than by our indisputable responsibility to God as stewards of his creation. Similarly outside the Catholic world, if climate change is proved false, do we simply think that that would justify using the world’s resources in any way that we wished?

When a claim of science is falsified it’s put into the trash can. When a claim of religion is falsified it becomes a metaphor

“.Do a little and it will be a big benefit and cost you little: no: it will cost so much it could have a very serious effect on our economy.

Only 4 of the top 10 warmest years
occurred in the past 10 years. Out of the top 10 warmest years half
occurred before 1940. The years 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 were cooler than the
year 1900. Mean temperatures show a general standstill in overall  “global warming”  since 1998. You people have yet to confront these facts: all you do, as the Climategate scandal showed is try to avoid the facts, or claim they are in some way statistically non-existent. Sorry, it’s not good enough to say you’re a “scientist” and we must therefore defer to you: we just don’t trust the integrity of the “scientific  community” any more.

I completely agree with your points about GM crops, fertilisers and insecticides etc. You are right in saying the green lobby are doing a lot of harm in this regard, and I would never vote for the green party for example, because I see a lot of their policies as actually rather anti-science. I also think they’re wrong in opposing nuclear power. The only part of your post I would disagree with is where you say many scientists are sceptical that human activity is to blame for climate change. There is overwhelming consensus in the scientific community about the causes of global warming. Consider the dozens of statements on climate change from various scientific organisations around the world representing tens of thousands of scientists, and the consensus position represented by the IPCC reports for example. There are some exceptions, but the number of sceptics is getting smaller rather than growing. In January 2009, a poll of 3146 earth scientists found that 82% answered yes to the question: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”. Of the 77 climatologists actively engaged in research, 75 answered yes (97.4%). The scientists most likely to answer no were petroleum geologists.

It is noticeable that Proponents of Anthropogenic Global warming, assault skeptics with verbal attacks:  “unsubstantiated rubbish”, “..based on some rubbish you read in the tabloids”  “deliberately misleading, or you are ignorant of the facts”  “you must be barmy”   “…reptilian aliens”.  This approach culminated in the infamous video of last year, in which those who oppose AGW were blown up, blood spattering everywhere.
This approach is not only suspect, but it definitely damages the case for AGW.

  Would you please stop the Ad Hominem?  Would you please stop blowing up skeptics?  Would you please realize that skeptics have some reasonable questions about AGW?  And would you please address yourself to an objective examination of these questions?  And most of all, would you please end the Ad Hominem, and engage in an even tempered, polite debate about AGW?  It is most important that there must be an open, fair, and objective debate about APG. 

To put it as simple as possible:  The AGW advocates like yourself, avoid discussion of the facts, and instead, take as your goal, the demeaning and smearing of your opponents. 
So, I’ll ask you a direct question, which would you please answer:  What Scientific basis or proof is there, for selecting the 20 year period, 1979 to 2000, as the standard baseline, or norm, for Arctic icepack area? 

My answer:  There is none.  It just happened to be the start of satellite surveillance, and so this 20 year period has no real Scientific Basis, for estimating the increase or decrease of icepack area, from a norm.  The norm is not known.  Therefore, any suggestion that the icepack area is decreasing, has to be very tentative, and not a proven Scientific fact.   

Your answer?:

I have addressed every factual point in the article relating to climate change, and in every reply to my comments thus far, so please don’t tell me im avoiding discussion of the facts. If you’re speaking in general terms about people who accept climate change, then tell the authors of the thousands of scientific papers, the position statements of science academies and organisations, and the IPCC reports that they are not discussing the facts. Or don’t do that because it might make you look a bit silly.

To answer your question: The reason for comparing the current extent of the Arctic icepack to data going back only as far as 1979 (well, October 1978 actually) is out of scientific honesty. From that period onwards we have an almost continuous series of data, collected in almost the same way (polar orbiting microwave satellite with only small differences in detail of instrument used). Using data collected from different sources in a single time sequence can easily introduce false trends in the data. Since the changes in the icepack are small, these errors could overwhelm the small but real changes we’re trying to detect. We do have data that goes back further including from a different satellite (EMSR) in the early 70s, AARI maps going back to 1953, US-Russian atlas going back to 1950, Arctic ocean ship tracks going back irregularly to 1872, and information on the Nordic seas as far back as 1750, amongst other sources. So we do know that the current minima we are observing are far from what has been previously observed, going back much further than the last 32 years.

Even if you were correct in the belief that the evidence for declining sea ice in the Arctic is on shaky ground, that would not be much of a refutation of AGW, as the scientific evidence for this comprises much more than just observations of the Arctic ice pack, as im sure you know. None of these observations by themselves prove the world is warming, but put all the data together and you have an overwhelming and growing body of evidence of a warming trend.

“ It is the height of arrogance to assume that we can control forces which we only understand dimly”
Actually I agree that we only dimly understand the complexity of the planet, and also that the arrogance of some science is indeed frightening.But are you suggesting that the domination of humans on the earth is not having a global impact?  That burning fossil fuels, releasing the carbon that has been locked up over millions of years into the atmosphere as CO2 doesn’t change the planet? That sounds like head-in-the-sands and a recipe for a global equivalent of the story of Easter Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island

OK.  This is an improvement in tone, and a good discussion.  Of course, we are going to disagree about this, especially your conclusion that “put all the data together, and you have an overwhelming and growing body of evidence of a warming trend”.  I agree absolutely.  But this is due to the fact that we are in an interglacial period, like occurred after the ten prior ice ages, when the weather warmed, and the ice melted.  That is NOT in dispute.  What is in dispute, is that mankind is causing the ice melt.  Climate is not in the control of man.  If a large volcano erupts and debris clouds blanket the earth, or if the Solar output decreases, or if earth gets hit by a comet or asteroid, and finally, due to the Milankovitch cycle, that is what controls the climate.  We men are mere onlookers for these great events.   We know that glaciers have covered the earth in the past, and the sea level decreased below present levels, by hundreds of feet, and then the glaciers have melted, and the sea levels have risen to well above present levels.  This all has happened many times, before the advent of mankind.  So, why should this present cycle be any different as to cause?
But thank you very much, for an erudite, polished, educated, and polite discussion.  That is very much needed.

At the most basic level there are two reasons why the earth warms or cools. If it is warming then it is either absorbing more solar radiation, or reflecting less of it. If its cooling then its either absorbing less solar radiation or reflecting more of it. The coming and going of ice ages over the past millions of years were triggered by small changes in solar heating caused by Milankovitch cycles, and the effects amplified by ice sheets reflecting radiation and transfer of CO2 between the oceans and atmosphere. On a shorter time scale the eleven year sunspot cycle also effects climate. As you have pointed out, there are MANY natural factors which effect the climate. However, just because the planet has been warmer at various times in the past, does not mean that we can dismiss the current rapid warming as just natural variation. So how much of the current warming can be attributed to natural effects?

One of the most important pieces of evidence comes from an ice core drilled from a feature in central Antarctica called Dome C. It is 3km long and records Antarctic temperatures going back 740000 years, spanning eight ice ages. Importantly, it was the first core to record an interglacial period known as Termination V around 430000 years ago. All interglacials are slightly different but Termination V is the most similar to our current one. It mirrors the pattern of solar warming between seasons and at different lattitudes caused by the Milankovitch cycles. Based on this record, the Earth should not currently be warming as rapidly as it is.

On a much shorter scale, studies have shown that over the past sixty years, natural effects including changes in solar radiation and natural volcanic aerosols have actually had a cooling effect, leading to a slight underestimate of human induced warming. Taken together with the cooling effect of man-made sulphate aerosols, they offset about a third of the warming we would have otherwise experienced due to man made greenhouse gas emissions.

The mistake made here by Curry, deliberately or otherwise, in claiming warming has stopped since 1998 is a simple one. She has taken a large data set showing a gradual increase in temperature, picked out a small part of it and said it shows no increase. This is like being very high up in a plane, seeing that the surface of the Earth is curved, then standing on the ground and saying “nope, looks flat from here!”. Just as you could stand anywhere on the ground and the Earth would appear flat, you could pick out any short enough period of time from the data and there would appear to be no increase in temperature. There is nothing special about the period since 1998 in this regard. Cherry-picking the data like this, instead of looking at all of it, is what you have to do when you have already made your conclusion before you’ve seen the evidence. It is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty.

Thanks for the discussion, Paul, it’s been serious fun. This will be my last comment, because maybe we will never agree, and it’s time to end.
But I’d like to address your remarks about ice core analyses.  First, if one examines the results for CO2 analysis from say, Vostok ice cores, CO2 exhibits quite a bit of variation.  There are around a dozen lesser maxima and minima between each ice age maxima.  It’s quite difficult to extrapolate trends from this degree of variation, and each ice age also shows variation from the others.   There are also in between random swings of temperature up and down, also difficult for prediction, and bear in mind, these swings last hundreds and thousands of years.  This is quite a bit longer than we would like, and because we are human, and our lives are short, we tend to draw conclusions based on short term data. We may never be able to resolve this problem, because we cannot collect data from future variations which will occur over geologic time spans.
And worse, we will never know if there will be one of these lesser, but still considerable downturns, in say, a hundred or two hundred years, resulting in another Maunder minimum.   Also, there are problems with ice core analysis.  The annual snowfalls tend to melt and refreeze, and also, get compressed over time.  This blends the snow layers quite a bit, so that the analyses are really averaged over a many year time period.  The result is that maxima tend to be reduced towards the average, helped along by this considerable blending of the snow crystals over time.   
My opinion, based on these problems, is that it is not very realistic to make any long term predictions about climate, and that mankind is really reduced to the role of being observers of climactic factors which are far beyond our control.  It”s been fun, thanks, Paul.   

We could go into a lot of detail about ice cores but I’ll be brief since neither of us wants this discussion to go on forever. The most important point in relation to AGW is that detailed studies of ice cores have shown there is a remarkable correlation between CO2 levels and temperature over the past million years. A good place to start for detailed information on how ice core analysis is carried out, which answers some of the points you raise is this paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/20859 (superseded somewhat by more recent studies but i happened to have the reference for this one at hand). A quick point in relation to the Maunder minimum – this is usually associated with the so called “little ice age” that coincided with it. This cooling was not however a global one, but a regional phenomenon. Your general conclusion seems to be that there are too many factors to make climate predictable. Well, you cannot predict the exact path a ball will take as it bounces through a pinball machine. But you can predict that the average score will change if the entire machine is tilted. Similarly, while we cannot predict the weather in a particular place and on a particular day in 100 years time, we can be sure that on average it will be far warmer if greenhouse gases continue to rise. To account for the influence of all the different variables, climate scientists run the models repeatedly, with slightly different starting conditions. The difference in outcomes gives us an indication of the uncertainty in any given prediction, of the range of possible outcomes. The IPCC reports make these uncertainties very clear. There is however, no generally acceted model where human influence has no impact on the climate. Even if you still disagree with me, I hope you have found some of this interesting enough to go and do some more investigating yourself.

Just to stick my oar in here: it has to be pointed out that the startling retreat of glaciers just happened to have taken place during the end of the Little Ice Age, for which there is at least anecdotal evidence in the southern hemisphere as well.

Secondly, my own study on African palaeoclimates showed a general increase of 4°-5°c increase all over Africa, during the Holocene Altithermal. In that time, the Sahara was covered in grass and the montane forests of South Africa were widespread enough to leave pockets of forest species in regions which today are only grassy hills. That indicates that the models’ predictions of reduced rainfall in Africa with an increase in average temperature are  not accurate. And, if the polar bears could survive the temperature increase of 7000 yrs BP, they’re going to be OK.

Quite apart from that, the ‘Climategate’ scandal has massively damaged the credibility of scientists in general and climate scientists in particular. The phrase ‘hide the decline’ was particularly damning (as is ‘got rid of’). I know the herd mentality of scientists very well, and if there is consensus, the motives for that consensus are not above question.

He was talking about this video, or set of videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH71XCmsbCc