Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming

http://www.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?

by llambda • 14 years ago

87 134 14 years ago

it is a common tactic of climate change deniers to line up some number of scientists to convey the sense that there is some question about climate change. but this isn't how science works; it's not the case that because one or 10 or 100 scientists have questions about gravity it means that gravity doesn't exist.

the existence of climate change caused by humans is settled science. no amount of wall street journal editorializing or smears by conservative politicians is going to change that.

ceejayoz11• 14 years ago

Precisely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Steve

vasco• 14 years ago

From the article:

  >We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues 
  >are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!

I was under the impression that currently accepted scientific discoveries required that the majority of the scientific community to be in agreement. If this is not the case could you point me to an explanation? I'm really curious, not trying to be a smart-ass or something.

hollerith• 14 years ago

>the existence of climate change caused by humans is settled science.

the editorial does not question that. it questions the need for drastic action to reduce carbon emissions.

jeffreymcmanus6• 14 years ago

Sure it questions it. As a helpful thought experiment, try this: look at how many phrases are placed in quotation marks in this piece. Each time the writer encloses a phrase like "global warming" or "pollutant" in question marks, he's trying to cast doubt in your mind. It's a very transparent and sophistic technique.

The writer (Claude Allegre) is, in fact, a climate-change denier. He's not merely trying to foster more scientific investigation into climate change or slow the pace at which we adapt to it (although it looks like that's what he wants you to believe here). He doesn't believe that humanity is causing climate change at all (a view that flies in opposition to the long-settled science on this subject), and therefore he's trying to get you to believe that simply slowing down our response to climate change is perfectly OK. But this just isn't the case; it's a recipe for permanently hosing the environment.

At the end of the day, there's an Occam's razor test you can apply to this kind of thing. If this were real science, it'd be published in a peer-reviewed journal, not a conservative mouthpiece of big business like the Wall Street Journal.

mturmon2• 14 years ago

And some of these "scientists" have little to no credentials in climate science or adjacent fields. Many of them are also retired or emeritus.

Burt Rutan a scientist? Edward David (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_E._David_Jr.), an engineer who spent 8 years as a research director for Exxon? J. Scott Armstrong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Scott_Armstrong), an advertising and marketing professor?

It's a freaking joke. Compare the publication records, science activity, and career impact of the people on the other side. These tend to be people who have spent their lives seriously measuring and analyzing climate, not just dilettantes with a grudge. (E.g., http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Miller/, who's the science PI of a satellite designed to measure CO2, and a contributor to the fourth IPCC report.)

ceejayoz11• 14 years ago

The first guy listed, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_All%C3%A8gre, is a real winner too...

Asbestos removal a leftist plot, telling a Nobel Prize winner in physics that atmospheric drag doesn't affect the speed an object falls, etc.

cicero• 14 years ago

I'm curious what would it take to overturn "settled science," or are you saying that is impossible. I was not aware that science took that kind of a dogmatic stance.

jeffreymcmanus6• 14 years ago

It's not "dogma" to say that gravity exists or that fire is hot. Just because science is a constant process of investigation and discovery, it doesn't mean that we can never arrive at any conclusions or take action based on what we know to be true.

srl• 14 years ago

> I'm curious what would it take to overturn "settled science,"

Evidence to the contrary. Or, failing that, a lack of the traditional continual build-up of supporting evidence is often enough to cast a theory into doubt.

I feel like I should note: I know next to nothing about climate science, and this comment is meant neither in support or in denial of any related theory. I'm merely defending science as a whole. (Remediating the sad state of my knowledge about climate science is high on my todo list.)

lukifer3• 14 years ago

Though I agree with your core point, "settled science" is a contradiction in terms.

jonhendry7• 14 years ago

Look at what's been going on with the "faster than light neutrinos".

That would really overturn settled science. But to do so is going to require more than 16 people writing an op/ed saying that the results were correct and the effect was real. It's going to require more than articles in newsmagazines.

The scientists behind the original results have examined their work for mistakes, and rerun the experiment controlling for possible confounding issues. The apparent effect remained.

Now other labs are going to try to produce a similar result.

If you want to overturn "settled science", you need data to clearly back up your claim. It's not enough to have a contrary interpretation of existing data. You need more data to support your interpretation as the correct one.

durandal1• 14 years ago

Agreed, climate change is built into cycles of earth's atmosphere, everyone agrees about that. The reasons for climate change, and the question if whether how much we can do about is up for debate. Lining up scientists for popular press articles are a "tactic" often used for all kinds of arguments, no need to call them out for that.

gavanwoolery7• 14 years ago

It's not really a conservative or liberal issue. Yes, many liberals are pro anthropomorphic climate change, and many conservatives are anti, but it goes both ways.

Nothing is settled science until you can prove it beyond reason of doubt - i.e. see it in action.

If the earth does warm dramatically in X years, then we can measure the temperature difference against our CO2 output and past warm periods like the Medieval Warm period. That is REAL science. Anything else is speculation or...wait for it...a HYPOTHESIS.

Keep in mind, even minorities can be right, even when it seems completely foolish or counter-intuitive. Remember when everyone thought the earth was flat, and that we lived in a geo-centric or helio-centric universe?

jmmcd2• 14 years ago

Anthropogenic

Reasonable doubt

I agree that seeing it as a conservative versus liberal issue is unhelpful.

gamble• 14 years ago

Except that it is now a conservative issue. There used to be bipartisan consensus among politicians and the public that global warming was a real phenomenon. Then Kyoto asked people to do something about it, and denial became an article of faith among conservatives. You just have to look at the polling: ten years ago, conservatives and liberals had the same views on global warming, but since Kyoto support for denialism has skyrocketed among conservatives. It is almost impossible now to be a conservative politician in America without denying global warming.

I think it's a false equivalence to claim that it isn't a conservative vs. liberal issue when denial is almost entirely confined to one side, and that side is massively biased.

tsotha3• 14 years ago

This makes no sense. We've been assured now for years AGW is true because it's the scientific consensus. Isn't that how it became "settled science", after all? And now you say it doesn't matter how many scientists are skeptical. Is this some kind of one-way street, this settled science?

I mean, clearly the models are wrong, so it wasn't that. They've utterly failed to predict the lack of temperature rise in the last decade or so. Come to think of it, besides the models, what makes anyone think it's real? Oh yeah, settled science. So... it's like phrenology, then?

yequalsx• 14 years ago

Your claim about temperatures not rising over the last 10 years is not true. [1]

[1] http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/index.php?option=com_cont...

pbreit2• 14 years ago

The words "settled" and "incontrovertible" have little place in science.

jeffreymcmanus6• 14 years ago

Not so. In fact the opposite is true; as scientists reach consensus about facts, it enables science to progress. Just because facts exist does not mean the process of scientific discovery ceases.

InclinedPlane6• 14 years ago

The very idea of "settled science" is antithetical to the scientific method. Science is not a popularity contest. Nor is it a matter of dogma vs. heresy. It is a matter of evidence and theories that are either backed up by evidence or refuted by it. Discussing science on any other level is counterproductive.

lutorm3• 14 years ago

The very idea of "settled science" is antithetical to the scientific method.

Huh? Theories that are backed up by enough evidence are generally regarded as "settled". That of course doesn't mean they can't be "unsettled" if some truly remarkable data shows up, but it's still a useful heuristic to concentrate on things that are more uncertain.

lutorm3• 14 years ago

I actually wish the APS had avoided the statement "incontrovertible", because I think that overstates it. They could have said something along the lines of "the evidence is strong enough that failing to take action is now indefensible". The guy that resigned does have a point in saying that we can discuss whether neutrinos are faster than c, and the uncertainties when it comes to climate change are certainly larger than that.

wdr1• 14 years ago

How is this different from the tactic of its supporters to line up inflectional politicians & hollywood to make movies waxing romantic over nature, anecdotal polar bears stories, or the ice caps on Kilimanjaro?

I mean, for or against, global warming, both sides are filled with blowhards.

It just makes it a frustrating endeavor to get at real data.

_delirium• 14 years ago

This article is a bit high on polemics and low on science for my tastes (unsurprising since it's a WSJ editorial, but still). Is there a more sober whitepaper version that spends less time explaining that CO2 is colorless (true but irrelevant) and talking about the ominous drumbeats of their opponents, and more time on their thesis? Not just a rhetorical question; it seems like they might have a defensible thesis, especially about the cost/benefit profile, but it's hard to tell as presented.

gavanwoolery7• 14 years ago

You will find most arguments for and against global warming a bit high on polemics, and a bit low on science. Asking whether or not the earth will be warmer in 100 years is about as fruitless as asking whether or not it will rain in 100 days. The earth has warmed and cooled dramatically long before human existence, and will continue to in spite of us. Our CO2 output is only one of many factors in a very difficult to compute equation of thermodynamics. Keep in mind, its not just activity on earth, but the state of the sun that largely determines temperature, and both are very complex systems that are virtually impossible to model accurately.

Downvote this if you agree with me. :)

gavanwoolery7• 14 years ago

I should add that in spite of what anyone's stance might be, we should still reduce our dependence on coal and fossil fuels for a number of reasons.

mturmon2• 14 years ago

You don't have to model the solar contribution to temperature, you can measure it.

We have in fact been measuring total solar irradiance (TSI) for a few decades now. See http://acrim.jpl.nasa.gov/ for the newest version of the instrument.

It's hard to paste the time series together from multiple instruments; not all of them work the same way, and there are discontinuities (TSI has to be measured from space, and you have to schedule launches to obtain overlap between the time series of successive instruments).

Someone wrote a long article about it, citing most of the experts in the area (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/VariableSun/variab...). (Confession: I have not read the article carefully; it seems about right.)

The current thinking is that there's no way that TSI increases can explain the warming we have measured of the Earth. The TSI changes are just not large enough.

***

In fact, here's a nice recent summary of the big picture regarding remote sensing of climate variables:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/

It's no exaggeration to say this contains infinitely more usable information than the OP.

schiffern• 14 years ago

Here is the William Nordhaus paper referenced: http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/documents/Nordhaus_Copenhagen_...

As far as I can tell, that was the only point in the article that wasn't vague, irrelevant, an outright falsehood, or an appeal to weasel words.

gersh• 14 years ago

Check out http://climateaudit.org/. He has obtained lots of data and caught bad data which exaggerates global warming.

gaurav_v• 14 years ago

Googling the cosignatories names revelas that several work for Exxon. I don't see how the WSJ didn't consider this relevant information to disclose, instead presenting them only as 'distinguished scientists.'

ceejayoz11• 14 years ago

> I don't see how the WSJ didn't consider this relevant information to disclose...

It's a WSJ editorial. They probably wouldn't consider it relevant info if the article writer worked for Exxon.

glenra7• 14 years ago

If you're going to make allegations of that sort, you should at probably list the "several" who you conclude "work for" Exxon. Better yet, link your sources.

saulrh2• 14 years ago

Sixteen Thousand Concerned Scientists: Get These Posers Out of Our Hair and Let Us Save Your Food Crops

moonchrome• 14 years ago

If we are going to be using crops for food by the time global warming effects become significant we deserve to die out. They are already using bacteria to produce amino acids industryially, few decades in that are is inevitably going to bring us to a point where you can have a shallow pool of water with bacteria in it under UV lights, stacked on top of each other producing amino acids, carbs and fats. Maybe even directly synthesize some of those using a large scale chemical reaction.

That's sort of the answer to "global warming problems". All of those problems are going to exist anyway and a far simpler solution is to modify our environment (eg. large protective domes around cities that can withstand the stress of a tornado, filter cosmic rays, etc.) and technology instead of trying to regress to "organic farming" and cutting energy consumption. That might sound like SF but considering the technological progress, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect advances in nanotechnology/materials/construction/food production etc. in that time-frame. The biggest hurdle seems to be energy, with Thorium and micro nuclear reactors looking very realistic in that timeframe. Who knows, maybe we get efficient nuclear batteries by then.

saulrh2• 14 years ago

Two small notes.

First, this is a serious problem. People don't seem to realize that "sixteen scientists" don't matter. Sixteen thousand would have; just sixteen is a drop in the bucket. The problem is that headlines like that sell ad impressions. Our media has a conflict of interest, and the news is losing.

Second, this post has been bouncing back and forth between 6 and 14 karma for the last two hours, which I find amusing.

glenra7• 14 years ago

It only takes one scientist to be right about something. We don't measure scientific truth by weighing or tallying up the numbers of religious adherents on each side, we do so by evaluating the arguments and the evidence given.

mkramlich• 14 years ago

It's possible to get 16 people to come forward and back any particular claim or position. So take this with skepticism.

TiredGrump• 14 years ago

I have 16 experts who strongly disagree with your position.

sambeau2• 14 years ago

This calls it:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkabl...

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 “scientists.”

(Note: I wish he hadn't put the word "scientists" in quotes as it, sadly, undermines a good editorial piece.)

molecularbutter2• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, it's not just the WSJ, it's anything related to News Corp and Murdoch.

Here's a list of media sources you shouldn't trust:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Co...

buff-a• 14 years ago

The piece is not designed to be credible to you and me. Its simply so that Fox News can report "New evidence that global warming is a myth is being reported today by a respected newspaper."

ceejayoz11• 14 years ago

Hell, just start Googling people from the list of contributors. The first is "Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_All%C3%A8gre

> In 1996, Allègre opposed the removal of carcinogenic asbestos from the Jussieu university campus in Paris, describing it as harmless and dismissing concerns about it as a form of "psychosis created by leftists". The campus' asbestos is deemed to have killed 22 people and caused serious health problems in 130 others.

I think I'd pass on his endorsement, personally...

MaysonL2• 14 years ago

And the second is J. Scott Armstrong, Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School.

radu_floricica4• 14 years ago

Isn't it accepted fact right now that removing asbestos creates more cases of cancer then leaving it where it is? What happened at the time was a very un-rational and unproductive response - the removal of all asbestos everywhere, with no regard to costs and side-effects.

glenra7• 14 years ago

Was it the asbestos that allegedly killed 22 people, or was it the asbestos removal effort - against Claude's advice - that did so? Given that he objected in 1996 and the article claiming some number of deaths and injury was written in 2007, the timing works with either interpretation...

nobodysbusiness• 14 years ago

I don't think that it's wrong to put the word "scientists" in quotes. Consider this: it seems that one of the 16 concerned individuals is Burt Rutan. He is a well-known aerospace engineer who has a high level of skill in a difficult technical field, and he has accomplished a great deal in his life. But is he a scientist? That might be the reason for the scare quotes.

sambeau2• 14 years ago

My problem is that it justifies one of the points made in the letter, that: if you are a scientist who makes a case against global warming you are actively excluded from the scientific community.

jl6• 14 years ago

Well the headline at least is correct: even in a dire emergency, panic is the wrong response.

jonhendry7• 14 years ago

The problem is, by doing everything they can to delay any response or preparation, the WSJ is in fact making panic more likely.

The WSJ approach would insist that it would be a mistake to insure your home against fire and buy fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. That would be "panic".

darksaga• 14 years ago

I actually have two points about this.

First of all, I still remember reading articles from the 1970's from scientists who were convinced we were headed for another ice age. That's right, another ice age. The exact opposite of the what climate experts are telling us now - less than 40 years ago.

My other point is this - let's just assume all these scientists are right. Wouldn't it be better if we just did what they suggest and reduce our impact on the planet? If they're wrong, we help the planet. If they're right, we're still ok. I would prefer this outcome to not doing anything then finding out they're right and then we're really screwed.

For reference, here's the Time Magazine 1974 article about the coming Ice Age - http://bit.ly/zNZfI8

ghouse3• 14 years ago

That someone was wrong in the past does not mean someone else is wrong in the present-day.

jshen• 14 years ago

One magazine article is not the same thing as the mountains of evidence for climate change.

dantheman2• 14 years ago

Unfortunately - reducing our impact in the way many advocate has serious consequences on the poor and impoverished. In fact the best way to lower humanity's impact on the environment is to reduce third world poverty and thus reduce population growth. Many scientists advocate a mixed approach - where we work on improving crops so that they'll grow in warmer climates, improve water processing, and in general improve humanity's ability to handle climate change all the while allowing developing countries to use fossil fuels to improve their standard of living. As technology advances they'll move to other means of energy.

ThaddeusQuay22• 14 years ago

"In fact the best way to lower humanity's impact on the environment is to reduce third world poverty and thus reduce population growth."

False. When you reduce poverty in a third world population, they simply breed more. This has repeatedly been observed. If you want to loosely throw around words such as "fact" and "best", then I submit that the following, although potentially unpleasant to you, is closer to the correct usage: "In fact the best way to lower humanity's impact on the environment is to eliminate third world population."

tzs• 14 years ago

The popular press greatly exaggerated concerns of an ice age. Wikipedia has a pretty good discussion of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

jonhendry7• 14 years ago

""For reference, here's the Time Magazine 1974 article about the coming Ice Age - http://bit.ly/zNZfI8

1. Time Magazine isn't a science journal, and that they did a story doesn't mean there was anything resembling consensus at the time among scientists. Magazines like Time regularly do stories based on 'intriguing' claims by a few scientists, that never actually pan out.

2. We have 40 years more data now, and better data, than they had in 1974. You might consider how the 'ice age' thing was an early 70s blip, but the data supporting warming has only been increasing for DECADES.

If Time magazine had run a story in 1974 about "Life in 2012", with flying cars and jetpacks, and it was wildly wrong, would you use that to dismiss or question the work of today's scientists and technologists?

gavanwoolery7• 14 years ago

Actually, a few prominent scientists still argue that we are still headed towards another "Little Ice Age." I'm not saying they are right, do your own research, but if you look at the graph of past temperatures (the Medieval Warm period and the last Little Ice Age, it does not seem completely unreasonable).

fhars• 14 years ago

And I remember reading book from 1906 (not when the books were first published, obviously) from scientists who were convinced that the unavoidable warming due to enhanced industrial carbon dioxide emissions would actually be beneficial, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_eff...

And the trend in global temperatures has changed quite dramatically since the mid-70ies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly...

So in 1974 there were reasons to suspect that some powerful effect might have reversed the expected human driven rise in global temperatures typical for the first half of the century in spite of continuing strong carbon dioxide emissions. Today we see that these decades were just a temporary deviation from the expected trend, caused mostly by vulcanic ashes and soot in the atmosphere.

themgt• 14 years ago

"Easter Island 2: Earth" is going to be so much more entertaining for the people 1000 years from now. We didn't get to read through all their "why cutting down the last tree won't be so bad - plus we need more Moai statues" hack WSJ op-eds from concerned islander scientists

What I learned from this letter: CO2 emissions are good for plants and poor people; controlling CO2 emissions is Stalin

shingen3• 14 years ago

Humans won't be around in 1,000 years. Our shelf life is nearly at expiration. We'll become some other configuration of life.

gus_massa• 14 years ago

Modern humans appeared 100.000 / 200.000 years ago. We probably won't evolve into a new specie in the next 1.000 years.

gavanwoolery7• 14 years ago

I love how religious everyone gets about this.

What does that mean? A group of people preach one thing, and everyone takes their word for it. Your college professor told you anthropomorphic climate change is the real deal, and you took their word for it. Your conservative talk show host told you the opposite, and you took their word for it.

I do not care what f_cking side you are on. Yes, that's right, I called your "science" a religion. It is religion when you use more faith than reason or logic. Its a religion when you get emotionally involved in your belief.

Think for yourself. What does a REAL scientist try to do? Disprove their hypothesis. Look for holes in your argument, fallacies, unknown variables, false positives, etc.

shingen3• 14 years ago

One case where the rant should have continued.

That they don't spend as much time and effort trying to disprove their owns theories, is the prime indicator that something is wrong with the conclusions being drawn.

ghouse3• 14 years ago

As a society, we know how to take action under uncertainty and imperfect information. It makes no sense to me when people argue we should take no action. The only rational viewpoint I understand is taking action (and realizing cost) proportionate to our confidence. Risk-based cost-benefit analysis.

The "It's took expensive to address the problem" argument doesn't hold water; it presumes the outcome is binary.

celoyd• 14 years ago

The "It's took [sic] expensive to address the problem" argument

It’s amazing how common this is. It was smart of Gore to use the phrase “an inconvenient truth”, because so many arguments boil down to “it isn’t happening, because if it were we would have to do a lot of work”.

tomjen34• 14 years ago

But the longer we wait the more certain we are of the exact changes, if any, and we will have better tech to deal with it.

And dealing with it does not mean cutting down on CO2 -- just because the environmental groups contains a vocal minority that feels guilty by not being a hunter/gatherer -- it means building dikes, transport water, etc, etc.

ghouse3• 14 years ago

I agree, but that statement will always be true. The longer you wait, the better you'll be informed. Forever. That statement is a perpetual excuse for inaction.

The other factor that changes over time is the cost (if any) to address the problem (if any).

As an example, if burning oil does lead to global warming, then why do we as a society subsidize the price of oil to encourage its consumption?

kristofferR• 14 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if WSJ starts promoting Intelligent Design as a real scientific opinion soon too.

dantheman2• 14 years ago

Flagged - this type of article doesn't really belong on HN as there isn't really anything new presented in it and will merely cause a flamewar.

VMG• 14 years ago

The SOPA stories seems to have left the impression for some that HN is a place for political discussion.

lukifer3• 14 years ago

Politics doesn't happen in a vaccuum: it can and does involve issues that intertwine with real life, of which SOPA was just one. Ecology underlies both economics and tech; Earth's ecosystem is the ultimate platform.

snowmaker• 14 years ago

It is news that the WSJ is continuing to print articles of this nature. Regardless of the truth or quality of the op-ed, the fact remains that the WSJ has a large audience and this article will be influential. Such an event warrants discussion.

intended• 14 years ago

By that criteria, many wsj op Ed pieces will be food for discussion.

I agree with the parent post, this is not suitable for hn and is flame bait.

prawn• 14 years ago

Here is a thread on AskScience regarding this article: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p04l4/how_accura...

gerggerg2• 14 years ago

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle.

Ok lets play this game. The fact is that H20 is not a pollutant. It's a molecule that sustains life and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle.

Bring on the ice age!!

grannyg00se2• 14 years ago

I found that statement interesting as well. Anything can be a pollutant given the right concentration.

An interesting game to play with the H20 "non pollutant" is to see how much of it you can consume before you become ill.

jonhendry7• 14 years ago

Poop is not a pollutant. It's a substance that sustains life and is a key component of the biosphere's life cycle.

Thus, there's no point in controlling it, or making sure it doesn't accumulate.

(The next time a person in Congress tries the "CO2 is natural etc" gambit, I'd love someone to stand up and ask if that person has stopped wiping their ass.)

lutorm3• 14 years ago

Yeah, that's the most retarded passage in the whole article. And that says something.

Maybe people are not aware that most things are toxic in concentrations higher than natural, including, for example, oxygen. And even if elevated CO2 caused humans to walk around in a blissful high, it would have nothing to do with its impact on climate...

ceejayoz11• 14 years ago

Plus, CO2 apparently has an odor (metallic) at high concentration, and our exhalations aren't particularly high - just 4-5% more CO2 than the air we inhaled. Three basic fact fails in one sentence.

radu_floricica4• 14 years ago

The point they made is that more CO2 is not necessarily a bad thing. It's not my place as a non-specialist to judge how likely global warming really is (so I'm not judging) but I do wonder if it's really a bad thing. I mean, everything I know tells me making the earth a bit warmer and richer in CO2 is a good thing. And there is a distinct lack of credible apocalyptic scenarios... most I've seen say basically "there will be losers", i.e. there will be countries where the climate change will make things hotter and more arid. But for me, in central/eastern europe, warmer winters would be great...

gerggerg2• 14 years ago

Ok, here's the issue. We don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

The problem: If it's a good thing... whatever. If it's a bad thing... Mass Death. Seriously, that's not an exaggeration. Any slight imbalance and we're talking catastrophe. Unless you don't think natural disasters matter much.

We're not saving the environment we're saving our goddamn selves. The environment isn't even a thing. But humans are, and we need a stable environment to get on with our lives.

mathattack• 14 years ago

It would be interesting to follow the money trail on these 16 scientists.

I do somewhat buy the plausibility of the economic arguement that reacting to global warning is more efficient than trying to stop it.

The "it's not proven" crowd seem to be in the same camp as the folks claiming you can't prove smoking causes cancer.

pg_bot• 14 years ago

I find climate projections to be very similar to financial projections of startups. A typical chart will show hockey stick like growth (temp vs revenue) over a long period of time. Since both groups need to prove that they will have an impact in order to get funding they are motivated to show the most drastic/promising future. As a statistician I tend to discount any long term projections for complex systems because I know that there are too many factors that will influence the results.

unabridged• 14 years ago

My #1 doubt always comes from what constitutes a statistically significant temperature change on a 100-150 yr scale (or however long we have had consistent measurements). What is the variance in 100 yr temperature differences over the last 100K to 1M years? Even if the current historical models are accurate do we really have accuracy at this resolution? 2 or 3 degrees C change over 100 yrs may be a common occurrence.

To me it like trying to judge whether a stock price movement over the course of 10 minutes is significant based on historical daily stock prices.

grannyg00se2• 14 years ago

As far as I'm aware, there is (indirect) data on that. In fact I believe part of the concern is that the data suggests that when the planet was in fact 2 or 3 degress off, it was a rather less hospitable planet.

Regarding your stock analogy: People make real money decisions based on ten minutes of stock price movement and historical daily stock prices.

molecularbutter2• 14 years ago

More Global Warming denialism from a Murdoch news source? I'd pretend to be shocked, but really the only thing surprising is that the WSJ is still even vaguely respectable considering it's ownership and bizarre bias.

tomjen34• 14 years ago

Even if the oceans were going up 10m in a week it seems counterproductive to panic -- it might be better to buy a boat or build a dike.

jonhendry7• 14 years ago

If you wait until oceans were going up 10m in a week, you're going to have a lot of people panicking and fighting over boats.

In order to avoid panic, you have to prepare well ahead of time. Airlines tell you what to do in an emergency when the flight starts, they don't wait until the plane hits the water.

jmmcd2• 14 years ago

> The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth.

Yes, and ozone is a poison, but in the high atmosphere it still protects you from skin cancer. This arguments seems calculated to appeal to the most scientifically ignorant of audiences.

> This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today.

Yes, because evolution happened at a single point in the past, and no evolution at all happened in the many millions of years since CO2 concentrations dropped below that level.

etfb• 14 years ago

I think the heading is wrong. Should be "Sixteen Concerned Physicists, Administrators, Politicians and a Couple of Ex-Climatologists: No Need to Blame Us For Obama Getting Re-Elected"

pbreit2• 14 years ago

The editorial is confusing. On one had, it seems to be suggesting that while human-caused global warming is happening, it is not necessary to panic and in fact it would be better to divert resources away from global warming mitigation and back to regular ole projects.

But then it also makes a number of suggestions that global warming is not happening or that if it is, it is not human-driven.

I do think scientists questioning aspects of the global warming debate should be able to have their say but they need to make sure their arguments are sound and fact-based.

lukifer3• 14 years ago

It's quite possible that the dangers of climate change are alarmist and overstated. But to think that aren't serious side effects to over a century of industrialization is to be short-sighted and willfully ignorant. There's a reason that geologists now refer to the current era as the "Anthropocene".

InclinedPlane6• 14 years ago

This editorial seems weak and poorly constructed. What does that say about the degree to which anthropogenic global warming exists and will be a significant hazard in the 21st century and the courses of action that are sensible to do anything about that, if any?

Absolutely nothing. One way or the other.

melonakos3• 14 years ago

Not all scientific fields are created equally. Some simply have access to better experimentation methods than others. Climate scientists have ridiculously poor measurement methods, historic records, and computational models to possibly be coming up with any conclusions.

An article on this topic: Err on the Side of Bologna – According to Scientists, http://bit.ly/wYbEIB

melonakos3• 14 years ago

Aliens Cause Global Warming: A Caltech Lecture by Michael Crichton, http://bit.ly/vZX5si

vannevar• 14 years ago

Flagged for containing deliberate falsehood:

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

This is demonstrably false, and it is at this point impossible for those who published the article to be unaware that it is false if they made any effort whatsoever to verify it. The quote given has nothing to do with the overall rate of global warming, and it has been made abundantly clear since the quote was made public that it did not refer to global warming.

tripzilch• 14 years ago

BREAKING!

"Same group of people again proves willing to go on public record to agree on position they've already agreed with on public record in the past"

"Astronaut, CEO, ex-US Senator, Chemist, Cardiologist, former Exxon Manager of Strategic Planning, Electrical Engineer and Rocket Scientist remain unconvinced by Climatologist Research on Climate" [1]

in other news,

- - - - - - - -

http://online.wsj.com/article/plumber-discovers-higgs-boson.... -- HONORARY PLUMBER DISCOVERS HIGGS BOSON "When the LHC folks called me in to fix their toilets, I knew it wasn't something ordinary clogging their pipes. So I got to work, and there it was, hiding in the drains", tells the plumber, honorary member of the New York-based Royal American-Italian Society for Interdimensional Drainage and Fungal Kingdoms. Recently, the Society has come under fire by animal-rights group PETA for allegedly wearing raccoon fur-suits[2]. "These guys never give up, do they? You accidentally step on a turtle once, and they'll hound you forever."

- - - - - - - -

[1] As wel as 2 or 3 people who's credentials I've been completely unable to verify except for being a "honorary" or "life" member or fellow of some (always US industry funded) scientific foundation or other and having worked closely with ExxonMobile in the past.

BTW weird how it's always ExxonMobile, not other oil corporations such as Royal Dutch Shell or BP, anyone know why it's specifically Exxon being involved with all the climate research?

[2] True story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/peta-super-mario-ta...

jvandonsel• 14 years ago

Seems to be the standard three-pronged argument:

1) The climate isn't warming.

2) But if it is warming, it's not due to man.

3) But if it is due to man, it might be a Good Thing.

Very tidy.

Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming

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