What saddens me is the first paragraph. The responses to what these men believe. We have come so far in science, yet these blogs show us as the human race to be just like those who condemned Galileo for believing the earth moved around a fixed sun, or condemned people as foolish for believing the world is round when it is obvious that it is flat. ChrisP, I wonder how many of the 80% of UK engineers secretly disagree with Global Warming, but for fear of job or promotion claim to agree. How can scientist have a true honest discussion if the unpopular side is punished for their believes?
You raise the seminal arguement that the AGW proponents refuse to address. That is the issue of model fidelity, model accuracy and model calibration. If the model cannot predict last year's activity from the data before it, the model has significant factors unaccounted for. Over the decade of 2000 to 2010, CO2 rose at an accelerated rate while observed global temperatures were not accelerating and by some accounts were nearly flat over significant periods.
A tenet in modeling and analysis is that correlation does not necessarily indicate causality. As you point out, there are significant factors and feedback mechanisms not presently considered in the models. If the statements that the model temperature rise predictions exceed the actual observed values by a factor of four, the model is far from ready for prime time directing the future decisions for all mankind.
There are huge, uncontrolled sources of CO2 at work in the form of recent volcanic activity. The magnitude of their contribution is, at best, only estimates. Some sources estimate it to be "years worth" of man-generated CO2. Even if it is much smaller but the real number is in the same order of magnitude as man-generated presents a conundrum that the very best efforts to reduce carbon foorprint can be erased by a single "natural" event, and one that has become more common.
So until there are answers to these modeling issues as well as quantification of the potentially swamping impact of natural sources, does a politically induced attempt to force a pre-industrial economy make sense? The so-called solutions seem to take the form of "wealth redistribution" rather than true mitigation. As such, they are suspect. It is truly a question of whether AGW proponents have a scientific outcome or a political outcome as their objective. If you "follow the money, as evo1 and cassiopeia implore us, you find both sides have dirty hands. AGW research is as much a business as the fossile fuel developers are. Should the ultimate ground truth in climate be found, one or both will of these "industries" will likely collapse.
As one post stated, the worst part is the change in "climate of scientific discourse". The scientific method has been hijacked by a community of hooligans and thugs who resort to ad hominem attacks rather than debate. When the truth is ever found, it may never see the light of day, depending on who finds it and who supresses it. If the side that finds it does not like it, it will die; if the side that finds it cannot stand the personal cost, it will die.
HEC wrote "Mt. Pinatubo has been putting out greenhouse gasses over the last 20 years which total more than the total of all human emmission in recorded history. The recent eruptions in Iceland have emmitted enough CO2 to negate all "human" CO2 reductions over the last 4 years."
Totally untrue. If you look at the CO2 levels recorded on the top of Mauna Kea there is NO visible rise in levels at the time of Pinatubo or Iceland. For your statement re Pinatubo to have been true the atmospheric CO2 levels SHOULD HAVE DOUBLED in that time.
No significant change, apart from the normal man made year by year increase.
You are quoting from a scam email written by, and circulated widely and forwarded without question by deniers - and without thinking. Bringing into focus recent reports that they may have difficulty in that area.
Further, irrespective of what nature emits, mankinds CO2 emmisions are on top of that, and are new.
The skeptics are wrong. We don't know everything, but sure as hell there are limits to growth. When CO2 levels acidify the seas such that fish & coral die, is that ok? Do we do it just till we need to carry respirators? Then it will be just us and the cockroaches.
Wouldn't science, scientists, and all the rest of us be better served if these sixteen and all the others in the scientific community would focus on designing better experiments to test the different global warming theories?
Certainly there is a political dimension to the issue, and an economic one, and scientists are entitled to have an opinion on these issues. But they seem to be an aside to the scientific problems -- which is where these men's expertise lies.
It seems that the majority of US engineers are clueless about global warming. The people who wrote the letter appear to be the usual mix of emeritus professors and people from other scientific endeavors - using their name to give themseolves some credibility.
80% of engineers in the UK say that global warming is real and only 10% do not. Thye don't have a continuous drumbeat from the ignorant press and Republicans.
Engineers in the US don't keep up to date with what is going on on the rest of the planet.
The entire CO2 debate (NOTE: There has never been an honest debate, under oath - only a 50 billion propaganda campaign sponsored by some "not so honest people"!
Just apply a little common sense, such as the WSJ article, and do your own "thorough" investigation - not difficult to do!
First, what are the two most important events for creating "all life on earth"?
The SUN & the wonderful trace gas CO2.
I have asked >50 people about "how much of the astmosphere is represented by CO2" & the answers ranged from a low of 3 % to 60 %? The actual is that all CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04 % (their term is 390 parts/million) or 1 part in every 2500 parts! Also, remember that "water vapor" is 25 times more (1.0 %) abundant & creates the heat trapping clouds
A interesting science experiment would be to heat all the earth's Co2 & spread evenly back into the atmosphere - and there would "probably" be "NO TEMPERATURE CHANGE"!
Much more common sense (the internet has volumes of honest data - concentrate on some of the older info generated when science was factual); but we really need an honestd debate, under oath, to resolve this controversy!
What is a scientist doing writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal rather than in the pages of the scientific journals publishing the papers discussing global warming? As Happer states in his op-ed, this is not the way science is supposed to work.
If you search for Happer in Google Scholar, you'll see that he has not published any research supporting his contentions that global warming is controvertible or that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas or that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations do not increase the energy of the earth's climate system thus forcing changes to achieve a new equilibrium. In fact his scant discussion of CO2 leaves completely undiscussed that last issue and its consequences, such as increased extreme weather. The question must be asked why?
I think that his closing paragraph sums up his real concern, and it is about corruption of the policy process, such as that which pushed for cap and trade as a free market answer, not that global warming is not occuring. For one, free market theory is a failed theory, as proven by the existence of bubbles and financial crises, and using it to serve to ameliorate human activity would more than likely result in a few gaming the system to their benefit without reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing global warming. But that is a question separate from whether human activity is causing global warming.
I suggest that Happer et al enter the debate through valid research. As it stands now it seems that he is actually concerned with the economic implications of global warming rather than its effects on life as we know it. He may be honestly concerned with the consequences of human activity and how to best minimize the harm we cause, but he hurts his cause by writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal or First Things:
"First Things is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society."
I think that Happer et al have their own agenda, they should be honest enough to disclose it.
CO2 is increasing, but it is not as simple as you indicate. CO2 is already at a concentration that achieves over 90% absorption at it's relatively narrow band of wavelengths. Doubling the CO2 concentration only increases the greenhouse effect by a few percentage points.
Advocates of the "hair on fire" scenario have to resort to the argument that small increases in warming, due to CO2, cause an increase in water vapor, which in turn really does cause more infrared absorption, hence more increases hence "hair of fire". This completely ignores the opposite feedback, where water vapor causes more clouds to form, which reflect incoming infrared and cause cooling.
Whether the positive feedback or the negative feedback win out is a complex issue that cannot be addressed so naively as "CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming". It is quite likely that the negative feedback works like a thermostat and keeps the temperature relatively stable.
Note that NONE of the computer models so often quoted has a mechanism for cloud formation, not one. This in itself is an astonishing fact, given the absolute certainty with which their proponents declare our future climate.
The article on the dissenting scientists misses a couple of important points. First, scientific truth is determined by evidence and logic, not by nose counts. But even considering numbers, the American Physical Society (of which I am a Life Member) has 50,000 members. Membership is not subject to any qualifying exam, nor (unlike religions or political parties) are dissenting members subject ot expulsion. I believe the other named societies are similar in this regard. Thus it's to be expected that there will be a few contrarians. incompetents, and members with conflicting affiliations within such organizations.
Second, the case for anthropogenic climate change is not based solely, nor even mainly, on weather records. It is predictable from well established physics and chemistry. We know the optical properties of CO2 and how it contributes to a "greenhouse effect." We also can plot the trend in CO2 concentration over a long historical period. This is from direct measurements in the last 50-100 years, and from ice core samples before that. (The two agree closely over the period where both are available.) The amount of extra CO2 corresponds to our consumption of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution began (correcting for that absorbed in known sinks). And isotopic analysis shows that the added CO2 is of fossil fuel origin.
As for the "natural" climate changes (Milankovich cycles) these take place over millenia, not decades, and according to the Milankovich theory we should be in a cooling phase now.
Permit a little analogy. If a kid is batting baseballs at the side of a house, one can predict from the scatter of trajectories and the kinetic energy of the ball that sooner or later he will break a window, even if he has not yet done so.
The legitimate debate in the scientific community is in the details of exactly how the effects of increased atmospheric heating will be manifested. (Which window will break and where will the pieces fall?)
We can think of the atmosphere as a heat engine (or an ensemble of engines), using temperature differences to perform work (wind, the water cycle, and other weather). Adding more heat the the "boiler" will make the engine work harder. This is likely to show up as intensified weather phenomena as well as a general temperature rise. If we wait until the catastrophe has already manifested itself to the satisfaction of the most die-hard deniers, it will be much to late to take any effective action.
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