How the Global Warming Story Changed

How the Global Warming Story Changed—Disastrously

global_temperature_anomaly By Chris Mooney

Back in 2006, the year of the release of An Inconvenient Truth, it felt as though serious and irreversible progress had finally been made on the climate issue. The feeling continued in 2007, when Al Gore won the Nobel and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that global warming was “unequivocal” and “very likely” human caused. Mega-companies like General Electric were burnishing new green identities, and the Prius was an icon. The Bush administration was widely suspected of having deceived the public about the urgency of the climate issue, and journalists were backing away from their previous penchant for writing “on the one hand, on the other hand” stories about the increasingly indisputable science.

Then came the election of Barack Obama, boasting a forward-looking policy agenda to address global warming and a stellar team of scientists and environmentalists in his cabinet and circle of advisers, including climate and energy expert John Holdren and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu. The United States, it seemed, would finally deal with global warming—and just in the nick of time.

Who could have known, at the time, that the climate deniers and contrarians had not yet launched their greatest and most devastating attack? Certainly, it was hard to imagine how they might pull off such a strike: They had virtually nothing going for them, no raw scientific materials to work with. All the science pointed to a greater-than-ever urgency of addressing the climate issue and a quickly closing window of opportunity for action. Within scientific circles, it was even becoming commonplace to discuss planetary modification, or geoengineering, as an alternative last ditch solution if we couldn’t stop runaway greenhouse warming in time.

But the skeptics were lying in wait. They didn’t need good science to make another sally: Their strength has always been in communication tactics anyway, and not scientific exactitude or rigor. And the U.S. public, never overwhelmingly sure about climate change, has long been susceptible to their smokescreens and misinformation campaigns.

The new skeptic strategy began with a ploy that initially seemed so foolish, so petty, that it was unworthy of dignifying with a response. The contrarians seized upon the hottest year in some temperature records, 1998—which happens to have been an El Nino year, hence its striking warmth—and began to hammer the message that there had been “no warming in a decade” since then.

It was, in truth, little more than a damn lie with statistics. Those in the science community eventually pointed out that global warming doesn’t mean every successive year will be hotter than the last one—global temperatures be on the rise without a new record being set every year. All climate theory predicts is that we will see a warming trend, and we certainly have. Or as the U.S. EPA recently put it, “Eight of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.” But none of them beat 1998; and so the statistical liars, like George Will of the Washington Post, continued their charade.

The public was quite vulnerable to such messages: Americans don’t know climate science very well, and the notion that temperatures aren’t actually “rising” after all must have spurred many doubts. Indeed, I suspect the “no warming since 1998” line of attack helped contribute to an alarming finding released in October by the Pew Research Center: the proportion of Americans agreeing there is “solid evidence the earth is warming” had declined to 57 percent, from 71 percent a year and a half earlier. And those attributing warming to human activities—the robust scientific consensus view—had dwindled from 47 percent to 36 percent over the same time period.

This blow, however, was nothing compared to the “ClimateGate” saga of November, in which a bevy of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom were illegally obtained and exposed, thus generating a dramatic scandal over the climate scientists’ alleged attempts to silence skeptics and thwart freedom of information requests. The truth is that, analyzed in their proper context, there isn’t very much that’s damning about the emails (though some of the scientists may have some things to answer for). But even taken at their worst, the emails do not change one whit the urgency of addressing global warming.

Scientists have pointed this out repeatedly, but to no avail: “ClimateGate” generated a massive wave of media attention, blending together the skeptics’ longstanding focus on undercutting climate science with a new overwhelming message of scandal and wrongdoing on the part of the climate research establishment. This story was not going to go away, and even as scientists put out statements (most of them several days late) explaining that the science of climate remains unchanged and unaffected by whatever went on at East Anglia, the case for human-caused global warming was dealt a blow the likes of which we have perhaps never before seen.

Whether we will recover some necessary momentum in Copenhagen—a formal United Nations venue for deliberation where scientific expertise is respected, and where misinformation will likely have less power—is up in the air. Nevertheless, there’s an important lesson here, for the climate issue and beyond.

In our mass media age, on any politicized scientific topic, there is no reason to assume a correlation between increasing scientific certainty about a problem and increasing public awareness, acceptance, or willingness to take action to address that problem. If anything, the two might well become anti-correlated, as in the global warming case. And that is because—to speak in a language that scientists will certainly understand all too well—the state of the science is only one variable affecting public opinion. And in the global warming debate, there has been an utter failure to control for any of the others.

If scientists, their allies, and their supporters want to better ensure the translation of scientific knowledge into action than we’ve seen in the global warming case, there is simply no choice but to work much, much harder to influence public opinion, and anticipate and thwart the skeptics before they can bring about another “ClimateGate.”

[Clarification: This post originally indicated that climate contrarians seized upon 1998 as the "hottest year in the global temperature record"; it has been changed to indicate that this is the hottest year in some temperature records.]

Chris Mooney is the author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”

Posted by Chris Mooney | December 9, 2009 | Share This |

Tags: Climate Change

Comments on this article

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

35 Responses to “How the Global Warming Story Changed—Disastrously”

Paul Shin says:
An excellent article that points out the unethical actions of the global warming “deniers” and “skeptics”! Such activity should be proof that their arguments are untenable at best. We should demand transparency and require full disclosure of their funding! How can they launch such an effective attack on sound science with a PR campaign based on “smoke and mirrors” instead of equally sound science? There must be some hidden agenda sponsored by some hidden groups that need to be smoked out and exposed for who and what they are! The question now become, who will do this and how?
December 9th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Patrick McCray says:
Nice piece, Chris. Parallels to be made to similar “marketing of doubt” campaigns by smoking industry, car industry, etc. over the decades.
December 9th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
SecularAnimist says:
Please stop referring to the deniers, delayers and obstructors as “skeptics”.

Some of them are arrogant and ignorant cranks with delusions of genius.

Some of them are bought-and-paid-for deliberate liars.

Some of them are gullible Ditto-Heads who believe every word that Rush Limbaugh says.

None of them are actually skeptics.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
DavidCOG says:
A weak, hand-wringing analysis that overplays the success of either the 1998 or ‘SwiftHack’ memes. Both have played well only to those who want to believe global warming is a massive hoax perpetrated by evil scientists.

They’ve been no more successful than the “no intermediary fossils” meme for the creationists.

And the author would do well not to facilitate spreading the ‘1998′ meme by letting it pass in this piece so easily. 1998 is only hottest in the CRU dataset because they don’t include temperatures from the Arctic, whereas NASA do. NASA gives 2005 then 2007 and then 1998 as hottest years.

As for the stolen email hysteria: the majority of the MSM have reported: “Emails stolen, claims made, claims refuted, science unchanged.”

And, as SecularAnimist has already pointed out, these people are not ’skeptics’. You devalue the word by using it for them. They’re no more skeptics than creationists are towards evolution. They are in denial. They are Deniers. Or a few are sociopaths in the employ of the fossil fuel corporations.

Altogether this article was a poor attempt at framing the issue and addressing the anti-science brigade that will have the planet cooking before they give up a drop of their precious oil.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
DWV says:
Yeah, why focus on REAL environmental issues, like maybe cleaning up the islands of plastic trash in the Pacific, when we can throw billions of dollars at Wall Street and Al Gore to “solve” a FICTIONAL problem? Great thinking, makes me proud to call myself an environmentalist.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Dan Pangburn says:
The hacked emails of Climategate are not necessary to show that human caused global warming never was.

A simple, science-based EXCEL model has been derived that accurately (sd = 0.064 C) predicts all average global temperatures since 1895. The model did not need any consideration whatsoever of changes to atmospheric carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas.

A description of the model and its development along with an eye-opening graph that shows measured and predicted average global temperature are in the pdf dated Oct 16 at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true
December 10th, 2009 at 4:26 am
giantslor says:
Right, DWV. A “fictional” problem that’s accepted as reality by the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists. Go back to reading your Sarah Palin book.
December 10th, 2009 at 4:58 am
giantslor says:
Hi Dan, which peer-reviewed scientific journal was your model published in?
December 10th, 2009 at 5:00 am
iceandclimate says:
Well said, giantslor. But didn’t you realise that all peer-reviewed science journals are part of the global warming conspiracy and are probably run by the guys with the black helicopters who are coming to take away our SUVs, so it’s hardly surprising that Dan and his friends haven’t had much success in getting their papers accepted.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Non-Alarmist says:
Thanks for this informative article.

Interestingly, you do not mention the divergence of 1998- present global temperatures from the models cited by the James Hanson, Al Gore and others. The perceived failure of these models have likely eroded public confidence in the ability of climate scientists to predict future temperatures.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
DWV says:
@giantslor

Who cares what Sarah Palin is writing about; even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I thought the reason people posted on blogs was to engage in a dialogue.

I have been ACTIVE in many causes I felt were of critical importance to the health of our planet: curtailing the ravages of acid rain in the Adirondacks, propagating municipal recycling programs across the country, etc. I don’t know what you’ve done in your lifetime to combat real environmental problems. Maybe you’re active, too; maybe you DO sincerely care. I won’t take that away from you.

But I will say this: the “man made global warming” cause rings hollow to me. It’s run by a bunch of financially and politically interested parties who have coopted the environmentalist model; who have imposed, from above, what is traditionally a groundroots-up dynamic; and who are using fallacies of relevance (bandwagon, appeal to authority, appeal to force, etc.) and blatant scare tactics in order to take advantage of people who do sincerely care about the environment.

Please understand, I don’t necessarily fault YOUR sincerity, just the sincerity of those pulling the strings here.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
DFH says:
@DWV

Please understand, I fault YOUR sincerity.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
DWV says:
@DFH

Oh, okay, NOW it all makes sense to me.

Sigh.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Non-Alarmist says:
@ DWV (#5 and #11):

You raise excellent points. I share your concern that by focusing so obsessively on climate change, the environmental movement has foregone achievable gains on clean air, clean water, etc.
December 10th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Frank says:
Conflict over environmental and energy policy puts the U.S. ever farther behind other advanced nations. Time for change?

Chris and Paul: I understand intense frustration with climate program opponents. But let me offer the proposition that it is the adversarial status of environmentalists and industry that has caused the U.S. to fall ever father behind other advanced nations.*

Both sides of the environmentalist / industry divide have been tracking each other for a long time. On the left is The Sourcewatch Encyclopedia, sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy. It monitors think tanks, industry-funded organizations, industry-friendly experts, and lobbyists that work to influence public opinion and policy. The environmental NGOs’ bête noir, Exxon Corporation, has come in for special scrutiny by Exxpose EXXON.com, and Greenpeace’s EXXON secrets. Activities of theG.W. Bush administration were followed by BushGreenwash.com and many other organizations.

On the political right are the web sites, Activistscash.com, and DiscoverTheNetwork.org, that compile histories and activities of a long list of environmental activist organizations, along with their funding relations to major foundations. The Heartland Institute maintains Polybot, a massive database of articles, books, and other data. The battles have only deepened conflict.

Right or wrong, both managers and also workers in industry can also get angry when their companies and industries are demonized by massive, single-issue media and political campaigns that don’t hesitate to use distortion to make their case.

Polarized people and their political supporters in Congress get most of the visibility. Mass media ignore more thoughtful experts and report on the horse race. Polarized books hog public attention. For example, Glenn Beck’s “Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government” has 400 reader reviews on the Amazon web site. Al Franken’s “Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them” gets 3000 reviews. The thoughtful, well-written, and balanced treatment of Mann and Ornstein’s “Congress, The Broken Branch”, got 17 reviews.

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of people without the expertise to judge claims about global climate change . What they can identify is ideological partisanship. They’ve seen partisan battles in Congress and local political campaigns. They observe that people who blame and attack also tend to have weaknesses in their case. So when they see similar emotion-driven partisanship in global climate debates, including attempts to ignore or stigmatize skeptics, they suspend judgment on what the “real” story might be.

You interject, perhaps, what about the established experts and preponderance of scientific opinion? , Intellectuals’ regard for authority doesn’t necessarily apply to average people. And don’t they have some basis for skepticism? Consider Alan Greenspan, arguably the most respected expert on finance in the U.S. – who painfully admitted in a Senate hearing that he had been taken by surprise by the housing collapse.

I suggest that when we get opposition it may be better to ask “why”, rather than assign blame.

*Results of five years’ research on the U.S. conflict, compiled in a recently released book.
December 10th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
RickD says:
‘Please stop referring to the deniers, delayers and obstructors as “skeptics”.’

Perhaps “gainsayers” would be a better term? These people argue in a Pythonesque fashion.
December 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
atb says:
Both sides of the debate are using tautological logic. That is flawed logic because it is circular in nature. The warming side claims;
1. Any serious person who knows the field of climate supports warming.
2. The science of warming is settled.
3. The consensus is that warming is happening and is a problem due to humans.
4. It is up to the skeptics to prove that warming is not happening.
5. Everyone who is against warming is being bought out by big oil.
These are all circular in nature. Because you either believe them or you don’t. If you do then everything you hear or say reinforces your preconceived ideas.

The deniers, or skeptics or whatever you want to call them claim;
1. Warmers are part of the blame America first crowd, just using this as the latest scare tactic to make everyone buy into liberalism, etc.
2. The warmers are using concealment and deceit.
3. The warmers have to come to the conclusions they do or they will not continue to get funding.
These are equally circular.

Because of this both sides will continue to draw apart, and the conversation will become more and more talking and less and less communicating. It is already pretty much split so far apart, that the only “communication” that goes on is when one side or the other reads the opposing view to rip it to shreds.

It is up to the warming side to fix this debate. Why the warming side? Because the other side is not advocating change. The other side does not have to prove anything. In science it is the person putting forth the hypothesis that is responsible for the prove, methodology, etc.

So how does it get fixed?

1. The raw data has to be released. All of it. Otherwise it must not be a part of the analysis.
2. The methodology, science, etc. has to be fully disclosed.
3. The logic must be spelled out, and be able to stand up to critism.
4. Neither side is helping their cause with flawed logic. Both sides need to make sure that their arguments hold up.
5. Both sides need to start communicating (yes that includes listening).
December 10th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
David H Dennis says:
You don’t have to work for an oil company to like driving a big car.

You don’t have to work for CONSOL energy to want to heat and cool your home without spending a mint.

You don’t have to be Governor of Alaska to prefer the reassuringly warm glow of incandescent lights to those horrid chilly CFLs.

I do not work for any university or scientific institution; I do not work for any energy company. So I have no dog in this hunt other than my own personal preference for comfort over austerity.

But I do love to drive a big, fast car, I do love having a comfortable home to live in, and I love dimmable mood lighting, not ugly fluorescents. And I especially hate the idea of a nanny state that tells me what I can and cannot do.

And I absolutely detest winter and the cold. Since my childhood, my dream has always been to vanquish the horrors of winter forever. If you told me the world was warming, my first instinct would be to cheer, and to say, in the immortal words of blogger Glenn Reynolds, “Faster, please!”

Cap and Trade, and similar policies, will make it more expensive to drive my beloved large car, more costly to heat my house and nanny state regulations threaten even my right to buy the light bulbs I prefer to own. And I am supposed to do these things happily, to save the planet by making it cooler! Cooler summers, chillier winters. I am supposed to want this, and sacrifice for it?

So with that background, I read the comments here and on other sites, and I am more than a little disturbed.

Sarah Palin writes a very nice essay, including plenty of facts that are in broad agreement with other sources I have read.

The overwhelming majority of people commenting on her essay simply dismiss her as being dumb, a puppet of Rush Limbaugh, hiring a ghost writer, etc.

She may be dumb, and she may have a ghostwriter, and Rush may be her pal, but that doesn’t change clear facts she’s raised.

ClimateGate emails do contain nasty efforts to suppress other research, hide data that should have been released, fire people with the “wrong” opinions, and so on. The ClimateGate notes contain information that casts serious doubt on the quality of the data presented by the Institute. It may be possible to explain some of this away, point to better conducted studies elsewhere, and so on and on, but there’s no question this information now exists and is out in the open.

And yet most of the comments on her essay had the same tone and quality of DFH’s recent statement here, “Please understand, I fault YOUR sincerity”.

Doesn’t mean he’s not absolutely correct in what he’s saying.

To prove DWV is wrong means you would have to create an argument and marshall evidence against his beliefs. The fact that few seem willing to argue in this way against him, and Sarah Palin, speaks volumes.

Personal attacks are the last revenge of those who have no argument … and know it.

D
December 10th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Eric L says:
Interestingly, you do not mention the divergence of 1998- present global temperatures from the models cited by the James Hanson, Al Gore and others. The perceived failure of these models have likely eroded public confidence in the ability of climate scientists to predict future temperatures.

Really, how have they diverged, exactly? Given that simple linear extrapolation from the trend over the preceding two decades predicts this decade pretty well, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. This has been the hottest decade on record, as expected.

Dan, your model must have a very slow response time given that both solar and PDO have been flat or declining for the past 30 years.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Eric L says:
The warming side claims;
1. Any serious person who knows the field of climate supports warming.
2. The science of warming is settled.
3. The consensus is that warming is happening and is a problem due to humans.
4. It is up to the skeptics to prove that warming is not happening.
5. Everyone who is against warming is being bought out by big oil.

I’m not so sure I’d say “everyone” in point 5, but otherwise…

There would be a problem if the only evidence various climate scientists could give eachother for global warming was that everyone else studying it seemed convinced. But that just isn’t the case, and new research is regularly produced testing aspects of our understanding of climate in various ways. If you wanted to read some of this research, you can read the IPCC report, and more importantly, since you’re interested in the “proof,” read the various papers cited by it, since the IPCC really is just a summary of conclusions. You can find links to various papers on the topic here as well.

Now of course there is a good chance you’ll find the above resources very difficult to work through because they assume a certain level of knowledge you may not have. So perhaps you want more of a version for a layman. I recommend reading The Global Warming Debate straight through. Also, the Copenhagen Diagnosis is quite readable. You could buy a book. But if you were hoping it could be proven by a few blog posts and otherwise should be assumed to be bunk, I’m afraid your expectation is unrealistic. (Has anyone proven Quantum Mechanics to you?)

If you feel that no action should be taken on global warming until it is reasonably well proven, well, as far as virtually everyone studying the subject is concerned, it is. If, however, you insist that it be proven to you, then that is going to require work on your part to develop a thorough understanding of the science in all its complexity. No climate scientist or blog-commenting layman can possibly do that for you. Hence the appeals to expertise. Hope that helps.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
atb says:
No actually it does not. Science must be transparent. Science must be able to be independantly verified. Reports are good, but when the underlying data and methodologies are not available, then it is not science. And yes, Quantum Mechanics has been explained very well to me, and the underlying data is available. Same with plate techtonics, optics, cell stucture or any other science.
December 10th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Eric L says:
Reports are good, but when the underlying data and methodologies are not available, then it is not science.

By and large, they are available. I gave you links to get started, and like I said, if this is what you want, you will have to read the actual scientific literature. There you will find methodologies described, or references to other papers where methodologies are described, and explanations of where they got their data.

By the way, independently verifiable doesn’t mean “show me every number you used and every calculation you did so I can do those same calculations and see that I get the same result.” Verifiability in science comes from the fact that because it is the real world you’re measuring someone else could do measurements themselves or do original analysis or experiments or models to get their result, and this is what tests whether we can trust your method. Verifying that you entered everything into the calculator correctly doesn’t verify much at all.

Good to see QM is on such strong footing, though. If the LHC discovers anything significant, be sure to get the data. No, not the processed, reduced, cleaned-up data they release for public consumption, but the raw real data, straight from the sensors, before they’ve let the computers touch it, however many terabytes that may be, so I can really verify their results. Otherwise how do we know it’s science?
December 10th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
DWV says:
@Eric L

Sincerest thanks for contributing a worthwhile post, and for the textual references which I will certainly follow and read.

I think it’s interesting you should draw an analogy to quantum mechanics. In the past I used to SENSE a certain standard of dispassion and scientific rigor among theoretical physicists, that seemed to be sorely absent in other disciplines. Well, the more I learned about the history of theoretical physics, the more I realized this was pure NONSENSE: the truth is that those guys are just as catty and political as any other group of academics are.

Prevailing factions will always promote, and try to cement, today’s popular theory at the expense of the unpopular one; sometimes that theory stands the test of time; sometimes it fails and is replaced by the other.

In the case of “man made global warming,” my overriding concern is that the neither the urgency nor the finality of the science is COMMENSURATE with the sheer magnitude of financial and social intervention proposed by those who would be the main financial and political beneficiaries of that intervention.

Would I feel the same way about a similarly scaled intervention whose urgency and finality derived from the prevailing academic view on 11-dimension string theory? Absolutely.

Does that mean I think the prevailing academic views on 11-dimension string theory or on man made global warming are NECESSARILY wrong? Of course not.

What I do think, is that it’s INEXCUSABLE to use the equivalent of a nuclear weapon to shake a cat out of a tree.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
PB says:
The analogy with quantum mechanics is useful. I’m not a physicist and could not do original work in that field, nor could I easily understand the raw data. The reason I know anything about quantum mechanics is that I read reports and summaries of the research. I trust that the peer review process has produced a theory that is at least our best model, and backed up by data. If there is something I do not understand, or sounds unlikely, I do not assume that all physicists working in that area are frauds, committing a giant, conspiratorial hoax.

Climate Change research produces similar data, not easily accessible for people outside the field. The reason I believe in the AGW model is that I trust that the peer review process will usually get things right. I find it very odd that there is wide belief that all climatologists are engaging in group fraud.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
addicted says:
It is a lose-lose situation.

The East Anglia researchers were indeed working “much harder to influence the public opinion”. The only problem was their strategy was not completely angelic.

And why should anyone believe that a completely angelic strategy would work? On one hand, you have the scientific method, which requires you to point out all your flaws, doubts and uncertainties in painstaking detail, while on the other hand, you have a group that does not even need something to true before they trumpet (ala the 1998 situation). On one side you have a bunch of disconnected (and competing!) scientists, whose greatest source of funding is often government grants, up against some of the richest corporations in existence (who have consistently broken their own records for the most profits in a year).

And this might stand a chance in the US if a majority of the people were scientifically literate. Unfortunately, this is a country where half the people believe in creationism and a 6000 year old earth as much as they do in evolution.

And we haven’t even begun to consider the psychological impacts of making a change in your living habits (if you realize global warming is happening) and natural stages of denial people here are going through. Also, the psychological effects of the guilt that the baby-boomers will have if they accept global warming.

The US is almost a lost cause. The biggest ray of hope here, however, are the young and bright entrepreneurs coming out of college, wanting to create a better world, and making money out of it. A new technology that can not only compete, but beat the years of infrastructure, and legacy carbon emitting industries, and the products consumers depend on, have built up. While unlikely, this is not outside the realm of possibility. Just look at the internet, and how it has destroyed so many conventional industries in a relatively short span of time. Another possibility is to reframe it as a national security issue (which it is, but currently this is not the prime focus when people are arguing for curbing emissions).

The best hope are countries outside the US. Especially developing countries, where students actually learn and understand math and science coming out of high school. The numbers there are overwhelmingly in favor of doing something. Unfortunately, the governments there are not strong, or literate enough to respond appropriately, yet.
December 11th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Eric L says:
@DWV

So it looks like we disagree on a few premises. I find it interesting that, although you’re a self-described environmentalist, in this case you choose the precautionary principle over messing with the economy but not over messing with the environment. I differ for a few reasons. One, I believe the climate is far better understood than the economy ever could be. Two, I think we tend to underestimate the extent to which the economy is dependent on the environment. Three, the economic studies I’ve seen don’t make dealing with the problem seem unaffordable, and the costs of inaction are potentially quite high.

Finally, the main source of uncertainty in these cost estimates is innovation, and it is a very one-sided bias. In the past environmental legislation like the acid-rain cap-and-trade program or the CFC phase-out have cost a fraction of what economic analysis predicted, and not because the analysis was shoddy but because you really can’t predict how much cheaper the necessary technology will get once everyone is putting money into researching ways to make it cheaper because they’re facing a government mandate they’re worried might become expensive. With global warming, the uncertainties mostly seem to cut the other way — for example, the IPCC gives sea level rise estimates that everyone knows are unrealistically conservative, we have more than 10 years of data showing the projections are too low, and we know why they’re too low — we don’t have good models on how the major ice sheets flow and what happens at their bottoms where most of the melting occurs — but if you don’t know how far off you are, you can’t just make up a number for these things. The Copenhagen Diagnosis has more on this.

Anyway, I think that sums up where we differ. Nice chatting with you, and I hope you enjoy the reading.
December 11th, 2009 at 3:17 am
enoriverbend says:
Supporters of anthropogenic global warming may want to pause and consider this:

The thrust of the “consensus” climate scientists over the last decade is to encourage a specific public policy, based on forecasts from their models, which are in turn based on data they control.

How much of this is now under considerable doubt based on the Climategate emails and programs?

The data may be corrupted in a biased way, either deliberately or accidentally, and at the very least has been managed very poorly.

The models based on that data are questionable by virtue of the data problems, and by other associated issues documented in those emails and program notes.

The forecasts of those models has been woefully off the mark; as also mentioned in those emails.

The ethics of the scientists is questionable, as proven in those emails.

And I hardly need to mention the circular nature of claims that it’s all proven by peer reviewed literature, when the emails show many attempts to control and pervert the very nature of peer review.

So a neutral party, such as myself, might quite reasonably question the need for instantly adopting a very expensive public policy based on such.
December 11th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
DWV says:
@Eric L

Thank you again for your thoughts, but this is a misdiagnosis of our disagreement.

I fully agree with both your second and third points. I do disagree with your first point: that the climate is any more or less tractable, or predictable, than the economy is. In both fields of study, models work until they break down; this can be caused by anything from larger cyclical forces to the compounding effects of minutiae. But whether or not we agree on this point is NOT the issue for me.

As I see it, the issue has nothing at all to do with a procautionary principle choice between “the environment” and “the economy.”

Indeed—and I am trying to say this in a gentle tone—this formula of yours

“I find it interesting that, although you’re a self-described environmentalist…”

is the only part of your otherwise very thoughtful post which is disingenuous and insulting: who are YOU, and what have YOU done, that YOU feel entitled to dictate what a “true” environmentalist should think or not think? Especially since it’s always POSSIBLE that the person you’re talking with might have a much deeper and broader history of supporting environmental causes than you do. Youthful exuberance maybe?

As I see it, the driving force behind “man made global warming” is pretty much as FAR AWAY from the true spirit of environmentalism as you can get. For me, the true environmentalist movement has always been an ANTI-establishment response: to stand up, in the name of the people, against corporate neglect and resource destruction.

You bring up the economy. Could we perhaps agree that the entire central banking system—all established under the guise of protecting us from financial fluctuations—hasn’t done a THING to prevent financial fluctuations, and only serves to drive the people of the world further and further into feudalistic debt slavery while enriching the PRIVATE owners and beneficiaries of those global organizations?

If you can understand how a rational person might look at the history and results of international monetary planning, and conclude that it’s a plague on humanity, then you have at least understood the PRINCIPLE behind our disagreement, whether or not you agree that the analogy to global CO2 trading and the IPCC is a fair one.

CO2 is even MORE pervasive to—and inextricable from—global interaction than currency is. I argue that putting CO2 (CO2, of all things!) under the control of those same central banks will, likewise, not do a THING to protect us from environmental fluctations, while serving only to subjugate and dehumanize the people of the world even further.

I don’t think “the environment” and “the economy” are in competition here at all.

For me, the choice right now is clearly between “the environment” and freedom; just as the choice back then was between “the economy” and freedom.

I don’t have a link, but I remember reading a NY Times opinion piece not too long ago, from one of the main UEA climatologists, AGAINST global CO2 trading. At least HE seems to understand my original point: why on earth would we use a nuclear weapon to shake a cat out of a tree?

And I must say, it hardly helps when the same global organizations pushing for CO2 control determine that 1) Al Gore, a quintessential polluter and one of the biggest hypocrites alive today, deserves a Nobel Prize for his anti-pollution efforts; and 2) that Barack Obama, a quintessential warmonger and another one of the biggest hypocrites alive today, deserves a Nobel Prize for his peace efforts.

I will continue to review the scientific history of man made global warming, to try and get a clearer perspective on where the pure science separates itself from the politics.

I hope that you might also, at some point, review the political history of the people and organizations DRIVING the global “protection” agenda, to maybe get a clearer perspective on how the politics might actually be more compromising to the pure science than you may have thought.

Cheers,
DWV
December 11th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
DWV says:
Here’s my summary, if that was too long-winded for a blog post.

Woody Guthrie certainly did NOT have “this machine loves fascists” written on his guitar.
December 11th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Eric L says:
who are YOU, and what have YOU done, that YOU feel entitled to dictate what a “true” environmentalist should think or not think?

I really didn’t mean it that way. What I was getting at was, why don’t you feel we should be cautious about rising CO2 levels? They’re already far higher than they have been during the 2 million years humans have walked the Earth. Even aside from the issue of global warming, there is ocean acidification, and the science there isn’t complicated at all, just adjust CO2 levels in a saltwater tank and see what survives. Turns out we are getting near levels that endanger corals as well as many kinds of plankton that form the base of the food chain. At what point do you say, maybe we don’t want to be dramatically altering the makeup of our atmosphere?

Most of the rest of your post is about what we might do about global warming. I get that a lot of the reluctance to believe the science comes from reluctance to accept a solution, you see plenty of that in this thread, but ultimately a discussion about cap-and-trade is not a discussion about the validity of the science, and I’m not really interested in getting into that discussion.

If you’re going to look at political motives, don’t forget to look at the denial side. Perhaps you might learn about the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland, George C. Marshall Institute, and their long campaigns to cast doubt on the health effects of smoking, and the very similar campaign they’re running now. There is no overlap in scientific knowledge relevant to smoking/cancer and that relevant to climate, yet Richard Lindzen, Steve Milloy, Fred Singer, and many others have put themselves forward as experts in both. And no prominent climate denier disputes that this list includes some of their most credible experts. Why is that?

One online book I forgot to mention is Spencer Weart’s Discovery of Global Warming. In it you will find out how much of the science was already settled a century ago. What were Arrhenius’s and Tyndall’s political motivations?
December 12th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Dan Pangburn says:
It is unfortunate that many bloggers have little ability and may even lack the interest to do their own research on the planet’s climate. As a result they have no technological basis to challenge highly politicized (and sometimes paycheck driven) claims by some of looming catastrophe.

Peer review is intended to keep nonsense from getting published. However, all peer reviewers are limited to their individual understanding which may be incomplete or even incorrect. Papers that agree with the peer reviewers pre-conceived perceptions are far more likely to get published than papers that disagree. So-called peer review can become worthless and even an advocacy tool. Biased peer review is de facto censoring. Unfortunately, many papers regarding global warming or climate change have appeared after ineffective peer review.
December 12th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
DWV says:
Dear Eric L,

It’s really too late for an old socialist like me to be up, but I suppose it’s just my lot in life to continue to fight authority until I die. If there is one bet you can take to the bank, it’s that authoritarians are never looking out for YOUR best interest.

Thomas Jefferson said 20; my generation said never trust anyone over 30; I say never trust any ORGANIZATION over 10.

I believe that you are my friend in spirit, which is why I will say this bluntly:

YOUR SIDE IS THE PIGS

First flush the fuzz out, comrade, then we can talk about the science.

Cheers,
DWV
December 13th, 2009 at 3:26 am
Liz Bell says:
As someone who has been interested in a broad spread of environmental issues for many years, it strikes me that, no matter whether global warming is right or not, we need to clean up our acts on the use of fossil fuels anyway. Dependence on fossil fuels, and on their sources in politically unstable countries, draws us into costly wars, and even if supplies are stable, they are getting more and more expensive and the oil will eventually run out. Burning fossil fuels also causes other pollution problems in terms of air quality etc. Our advanced civilisation, and our much appreciated creature comforts, are dependent on affordable, stable energy sources. So whatever the rights or wrongs of global warming, far seeing governments need to start investing now in renewable energy technologies to make us safe and self sufficient. The existing big energy companies etc could be part of the solution if they wake up to the investment opportunities in renewable energy.
December 15th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Michael F. Sarabia says:
My impression of the same events is that we seem to have forgetten, not our science, but our human nature. The problem is a human characteristic that, if we are honest, we will admit to its truth. J. Palmer said it best in The Bill Moyers Journal interview: “Our ability to deny reality is Grossly Underestimated!”
What do we do when we hear something bad happened?
We conjecture, invent or imagine scenarios that are more mentally acceptable. If we hear someone left long ago on a short trip and has not arrived, we say “they probably stopped for a beer!” There is no limit to what we can imagine in order to ignore the truth. And, that, is the truth.
What “they” do is provide a conjecture that allows those that, simply, cannot handle the possibility of the End of the Huaman Race, can latch on to support whatever notion is “out there”.
In short, our problem is not the lack of science but the natural human tendency to rationalize, particularly if someone writes, like I often do, “this will bake our grandchildren at a temperature twice as high as the ovens in Auschwitz.” Nobody wants that to be true or possible, it’s only natural.

We need to accept reality and take the high and the other road. First: We need a follow-up to “An Inconvenient Truth”, the movie, with the “The Incinerating Truth” with graphic examples, like in Avatar, the movie produced by the same one that brought us “Titanic”, the movie.
At the other focus on ONE scientific truth and find a way to put it out there, over and over and over.
My candidate truth to repeatedly illustrate: “CO2 Once Made,Harms FOREVER.” This can be done in a nearly infinite number of ways. But, there are many others to consider.
Visual, emotional appeal may work, forget science, the real scientists are already convinced by the principles of energy transmission thru gas and its dependence on the temperature of the emanating object, etc.
December 21st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Michael F. Sarabia says:
This is an example of how distortions are used to avoid facing reality: Suppose there is someone that is not aware Pakistan has Atomic Bombs and faced with cost in lives and funds by the troop Surge to Afghanistan, they will simply say, “to xxx with them, let’s bring our troops back home. We are too powerful for them to try anything!”

The fixation on the difference in forces and weapons means that we do not need to be afraid of anyone.
Here, in No. California, they have found tons of illegal drugs hidden in barges. We all know only few of the many containers are inspected by American inspectors and we often rely on papers filled out by others of undetermined loyalties. Yet, I have yet to meet anyone that is concerned about the possibility of their using nuclear weapons against us. The illegal entry of tons of illegal drugs and thousands of people from many other countries (you thought they were all Mexicans?) should be a source of concern, but it is not in the minds of anyone I know.
“The ability to reject reality is Grossly Underestimated” –J. Palmer.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:32 pm