Climate science: A sensitive matter

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions

by iProject • 13 years ago

64 83 13 years ago

economist.com

Retric2• 13 years ago

I can't help but wonder why the economist would mention something and then say "This study has not been peer-reviewed." I would assume there are plenty of peer reviewed literature to look at so why did they bother to even read it? Is this something that has revived little research, because people are still assuming it's a short term anomaly?

As to energy-balance models's they don't account for the huge difference in average temperatures between the poles and the equator, it takes far less energy to maintain a 3C increase in Alaska than Florida. As such weather patterns are really important.

pav3l• 13 years ago

"Peer-reviewed" does not mean correct, or vice versa. The study they are talking about was done by the Research Council of Norway. I am assuming the goal was to inform the public, not to get published in a scientific journal. It was not an academic exercise. I, for one, am very happy that the Economist included this study in their survey.

Retric2• 13 years ago

The primary advantage to being peer reviewed is to avoid stupid mistakes. That's not to say it's correct, but it's like saying here is my book I did not have anyone proofread it. It could be a great book, but I just had a few red flags pop up.

Now, if the goal is to inform the public you base it on some peer reviewed research and repackage that instead of releasing original research in that fashion. All I am saying is the way the economist presented it was odd. I was assuming they where looking for something to create a little controversy to keep things interesting, but it just seemed odd to use something as a reference and then make it seem less credible at the same time.

btilly4• 13 years ago

Given how much peer-reviewed research they also referenced that came to similar conclusions, I would assume that it is to make the point that this is an area of currently active research.

crazy1van• 13 years ago

Why is it so hard to believe that the Earth is a stable system that can absorb shocks like CO2 emissions? It has supported life for millions of years. Clearly it is not as brittle as the typical climate scientist would have us believe.

DanBC• 13 years ago

> Why is it so hard to believe that the Earth is a [. . .]

Because of the wealth of evidence that tells us otherwise.

> can absorb shocks like CO2 emissions? It has supported life for millions of years.

'absorbing shocks' and 'supporting life' doesn't mean 'supporting human life comfortably'.

I don't understand the outrage about climate change, since reducing co2 emissions is mostly about being more energy efficient. How is that a terrible thing? My parents lived through 'Pea Soupers'[1] (a 4 day fog killed 4,000 people in London); we've seen the effects of gridlock and poor public transport; working on better solutions before the billions of China and India need a gas-guzzling car each doesn't feel like having any downsides.

[1] (http://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/history/topics/perspect/london.h...)

marknutter• 13 years ago

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be energy efficient but when that means telling developing nations like China and India that they are not allowed to burn as many fossil fuels as developed nations did when they were developing you're likely to get some pushback.

The only feasible solution to the problem is to find energy sources that produce at or above the levels the world requires today, but does so in a clean way. The only one that comes to mind for me is nuclear power.

paganel• 13 years ago

> absorbing shocks' and 'supporting life' doesn't mean 'supporting human life comfortably'.

And why do we think of ourselves as being superior to other past species? I generally don't like metaphors, but I remember reading somewhere (there were also a couple of animated representations in support) that we're more like a virus that has infected the Earth (its ecosystem etc.).

Looking at it through those lenses we have a couple of options left open until the host (Earth's ecosystem) ends up changing in such a way that will eliminate us. We can slow down the rate of infection by lowering our numbers or at least our growth rate. This has already started happening by itself in the more "advanced" countries. It will probably also happen in the rest of world at some point.

Or we can keep our numbers and numerical growth-rate but we'll need to start inflicting lesser and lesser pain on our host. Realistically, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Or we can increase our efforts in finding a new host, or at least a "disease transmitter" (or whatever the scientific term is) that will carry and support us until we stumble upon a host similar to Earth. Let's say a space-ship or something of the sorts. I know this looks too much like science-fiction right now, but if we're serious about our long-term survival as a species we need to start looking at it that way.

kgmpers• 13 years ago

This is the thing I've never understood. Building a house that doesn't need to spend as much energy(money) heating and cooling is a better house. Just the same as a toilet that uses less water to flush is a better toilet. These aren't part of a UN plot to control your life, it's just a smart decision.

Secondly, regardless of what someone might think of climate change, you can't get around the fact that the Earth doesn't have infinite resources and is neither an infinite wastebasket. Something has to change about with how we do business to fix that fundamental issue.

criley3• 13 years ago

>"It has supported life for millions of years. Clearly it is not as brittle as the typical climate scientist would have us believe.

This is a bit shortsighted, I think. It has supported life, yes, but it has not supported CIVILIZATION for millions of years.

Many hypothesize that human civilization, specifically our population size, would be completely and totally unsustainable with even a minor climate change.

Sure -- Earth would be fine! Life would be fine! Heck, we'd likely trigger what we would call an extinction event, but life would recover.

Humanity and civilization however are absolutely dependent on a narrow range of climate for our agriculture. Them's the facts.

If temperatures rise even 10° average, then about the majority of human population centers will be underwater and agriculture as we know it (the plants we're used to eating in bulk) are no longer feasible in the quantity or quality we expect. Those temperatures were seen in the Jurassic, and Earth and life were fine! But I do not think human civilization would be a fraction of what it is under those totally natural circumstances.

So sure. Life will be fine. Humanity could be on the brink, though.

kpierre3• 13 years ago

> agriculture as we know it (the plants we're used to eating in bulk) are no longer feasible in the quantity or quality we expect.

of course everyone will have to move, but isn't there a huge amount of land that will become good for agriculture, e.g. siberia, northern america, maybe even some of antarctica?

bane• 13 years ago

A climate of some form will always exist. Both Mars and Venus have climates. The question is will the steady state of any change in Earth's climate result in one that is favorable for humans? That's the crux of the problem.

Most likely humans will survive, but large investments in infrastructure and civilization in general made across millenia could be irreparably damaged. Shifting away from thousands of years old population centers (and the associated shifts in supporting infrastructure like farms and logistics) would not be an easy thing.

sopooneo• 13 years ago

Does the Earth's having supported life for millions of years support the idea that our CO2 emissions are not a problem?

I want to see all angles here, so is there something I'm missing? Are there cases where volcanoes were spewing out CO2 at a similar rate and ocean levels did not rise by amounts that would have been bad for humans, or plant and animal species did not go extinct in a way that would have been bad for humans?

obviouslygreen• 13 years ago

While there may be other angles, I believe what you're replying to here is an invalid assumption regarding what "absorb shocks" and "stable system" mean and imply.

The GP seems to believe that the Earth's climate will simply revert to whatever was convenient for life while failing to understand that there's no reason to assume disruptive large-scale chemical changes in the environment can't or won't result in a new equilibrium that's inhospitable to life as it evolved for conditions present before such an event or series of events.

3am• 13 years ago

Hey, I'm going to call you out on, "Clearly it is not as brittle as the typical climate scientist would have us believe."

What do you mean? Do you mean that you think the Earth's temperature will not rise as fast as climatologist consensus? Or that the affects wouldn't be as bad as consensus predictions? If it's the latter, I'd love to know where you got the data (surveys of 'typical' climatologist community?) or if it's just a general impression of yours.

moultano• 13 years ago

Earth has wiped out most of the species on it many times due to volcanism induced global warming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event

btilly4• 13 years ago

Of course the Earth can absorb shocks - it has a feedback loop. However what happens when you push on a feedback loop? It absorbs some, and moves some.

The whole article is about how different ways of estimating that feedback process leads to different estimates of how much it moves in response to force. The upper and lower estimates point to different numbers, but are in general agreement. Each produces numbers in the uncertainty range of the other, and both agree that global warming is real.

If you read any of this as evidence against global warming, you've misunderstood the article. Go back and read it again. Just because we don't know the exact response, doesn't mean that there isn't a significant one.

underdown• 13 years ago

it does however mean that the estimates put forth by scientists are pretty flimsy.

rayiner• 13 years ago

The question isn't whether Earth is a stable system that can absorb shocks like CO2 emissions. The Earth will be fine--it'll just move to a different equilibrium. The question is whether we will be able to absorb those changes.

During the last ice age, the average temperature of the Earth was only 5C cooler than today. Life survived just fine. Indeed, humans survived just fine. But that 5C difference meant Chicago was under miles of ice.

Look at what happened to Japan because of one tiny hurricane. We think of ourself as resilient because of our technology, but that comes from watching to much Sci-Fi. In reality even very small changes in the Earth's equilibrium could cause serous pain. Especially economically. Look at how painful the Great Recession has been in the U.S. That was with a financial shock that merely caused GDP to decline 4%.

scott_s• 13 years ago

Because science is not based on intuitive feelings about how things may work, but on theories which try to explain how they actually work. It's not enough to have a nebulous idea like "the Earth is a stable system that can absorb shocks." You need a model that describes exactly that, and then you need to see if the data agrees with that model.

sageikosa4• 13 years ago

I usually try to dissuade myself from using global-scale abstractions, such as calling the Earth a "system". After that, the idea that any part of the verifiable models we throw in the Earth-systems bucket is particularly stable is frankly unrealistic.

That off my chest, I would also think that the global-scale political institutions are not nearly stable enough, nor will they ever be, to sustain a global effort to alter mass-behavior in such a way to consciously control the environment either for the good of all life on earth (whatever that may be), or for the "future of humanity": depending on whose book of revelations one chooses to follow for planning humanities future.

jellicle• 13 years ago

Nobody has said the Earth will become barren of life.

FD3SA• 13 years ago

We seldom address climate discussions from a perspective of geological timescales [1].

From this, it is clear that life has existed on earth throughout an extreme range of atmospheric conditions. However, it is quite possible that nature's response to these conditions may be severely limited due to human intervention (clear-cutting rain forests, etc.).

I hope that in the near future it will be economically advantageous to transition away from fossil fuels. Elon Musk believes this will be the case [2], and I sincerely hope he is correct. Fossil fuels are a non-sustainable energy source which are being rapidly depleted and already cost far more in externalities than we realize (pollution, war, market instability, etc.). Climate change should not be the only impetus for a transition to a sustainable energy infrastructure.

1. http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg

2. http://www.treehugger.com/cars/elon-musk-ted-talk-2013-tesla...

vixen99• 13 years ago

Not my impression. Any denizen of climate sites is rather familiar with a wide range of historical climate graphs created from an amazing number of proxies. My favourite is the analysis based on algae which synthesize a range of saturated and unsaturated fats denpending on the water temperature.

sageikosa4• 13 years ago

Nature doesn't respond to conditions. Evolution isn't a process of intentions; such that we can state: "nature intends" for such-and-such a species to exist/thrive/die, except for the intervention of unnatural events.

Nature is conditions, and man is a part of the equation.

hackinthebochs2• 13 years ago

This comment is quickly going the way of "correlation doesn't equal causation" style of karma-whoring. It's so overused, and more often than not misplaced, that it's a net negative to the discussion.

Yes, evolution doesn't have intentions or goals, but scientists, actual zoologists and evolutionary biologists, speak of "intentions", "goals", etc when speaking of evolutionary processes (just open a Dawkins book). Anthropomorphizing a natural process is a short-hand that allows one to communicate ideas more effectively and more naturally. Everyone knows that there isn't an actual Gaia-like being pulling the strings of nature. Pointing this out is just noise in an otherwise productive conversation.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

"We seldom address climate discussions from a perspective of geological timescales"

I used to make fun of people who talked about "The { biggest | smallest | hottest | coldest | whatever } <thing> in recorded history!" By drawing a bar for "History" (4.5 billion year planetary existence) and "Recorded History" nominally a 5,000 year stretch at the end there. Basically about .0001% of the length. So you draw "history" as a meter long bar on the chart and "recorded history" is a strip .1mm wide. Basically thinner than the line an ultrafine Sharpie(tm) pen draws.

Needless to say, it wasn't a really compelling way to make a point. :-)

jpadkins• 13 years ago

isn't recorded history only 150 years? How long have we had accurate thermometers with reliable, consistent recordings?

jessriedel2• 13 years ago

If you're going to quote Elon Musk, you might also quote him pointing out that there is a good chance we have new future hydrocarbon fuels sources (fracking, I think, and its cousins) that will ensure cheap fuel for a very long time. Limited sources of fuel is not a good argument.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

All energy sources have negative externalities. Hydroelectric dams are by far the most effective sustainable energy source yet, but they are terrible for riparian ecosystems. The national movement in the U.S. right now is to remove dams wherever possible, not add new ones.

adventured• 13 years ago

Currently enjoying a foot of snow in my yard in Spring, with this being the 4th greatest snow fall season in recorded history locally.

Yeah I'm a skeptic. Global cooling -> global warming -> global climate change. As the climate fails to heat up as predicted, the names and claims will once again shift.

cgh• 13 years ago

Climate != weather. This is a pretty basic distinction.

mason240• 13 years ago

Unless it's bad weather. Then it will be used as an anecdote to "prove" AGW (as Hurricane Sandy is).

gmac• 13 years ago

Which is why the phrase 'climate change' is preferred to 'global warming'.

Mean global temperatures will rise, and a key result of this may well be higher variability, with correspondingly more extreme weather events. There is no sense in which a freak snowfall disproves climate change: quite the reverse.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

Granted, but a little over a hundred years ago there were some might fine blizzards not equaled since.

I think they key here is, people lost interest when every little thing was declared global warming and then started rolling their eyes when the switch was made to "climate change". Fanaticism has a tendency to cause people to tune out, worse is when its driven to political and financial benefit of a few.

jbooth3• 13 years ago

Take a look at this graph, I think it sums up your argument: http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47

rimantas• 13 years ago

Why not this one: http://xkcd.com/605/

kbutler2• 13 years ago

I'm more impressed by graphs like this: http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0134849d...

Climate changes naturally a whole lot more than we are comfortable with.

martythemaniak2• 13 years ago

You don't sound like a skeptic, but a simple denier. Being a skeptic doesn't mean you automatically disbelieve the consensus - it means you question it and investigate yourself.

Richard Muller was a skeptic, then he got a lot of money from the Koch Brothers to rip apart climate science and upon closer inspection he found everything checks out.

http://www.businessinsider.com/koch-brothers-funded-study-pr...

Your justification (a simple repetition of right-wing talking points) only serves to showcase your lack of reasoning.

kbutler2• 13 years ago

Speaking of repeating talking points...

Muller himself stated he was never a skeptic - he just criticized the shoddy science of the global warming advocates. His BEST project confirmed to him his previous belief in anthropogenic global warming.

"I was never a skeptic -- only a scientific skeptic," he said in a recent email exchange with The Huffington Post. "Some people called me a skeptic because in my best-seller 'Physics for Future Presidents' I had drawn attention to the numerous scientific errors in the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth.' But I never felt that pointing out mistakes qualified me to be called a climate skeptic." [Huffington Post - not a scientific source, but probably reasonable to accept quoting a person about himself. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blackberry/p.html?id=1072419]

You can read more about his recognized bias and scientific approach in a 2003 MIT technology review article: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402357/medieval-global-...

polymatter• 13 years ago

global warming, could result in local cooling. weather is not a simple system.

For example, global warming could disrupt ocean currents that countries like the UK rely on for warmth. without it, UK freezes like Moscow which is on the same latitude, even if the rest of the world is warmer on average.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

The fossils in the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles

http://www.skepticblog.org/2013/03/27/mysteries-of-the-tar-p...

provide a rich record of a variety of mammal and bird species going through almost 30,000 years of the last glacial-interglacial cycle. What's remarkable about the fossils is the statis in the body forms of the wide variety of animals trapped in the tar pits. Significant climate change resulted in indistinguishable evolutionary change in those animals. As scientists continue to work on predicting the probable effects of future climate changes, looking back on verifiable examples like well dated fossil beds will be helpful in putting bounds on the predictions.

btilly4• 13 years ago

There is nothing remarkable about that. 30,000 years is very short evolutionarily. The best response to climate change in that time frame is migration, not adaptation.

Daniel_Newby• 13 years ago

30,000 is an evolutionary eternity. The huge variety of bizarre dog breeds was created over a few centuries. Foxes were turned from nigh untameable wild animals into pets in a few decades.

guscost2• 13 years ago

Politicians shouldn't be allowed to manipulate the energy industry, period. Questions about the analysis of temperature signals are interesting but often beside the point.

pagekicker2• 13 years ago

And the energy industry shouldn't be allowed to manipulate politicians?

guscost2• 13 years ago

Of course, but that doesn't justify corruption.

gmcquillan3• 13 years ago

I don't know that I agree with the thesis of this article whatsoever; basically some cherry-picked research estimates "we may only see 1.5 to 2 degree increases, and we haven't had any real warming in the past 10 years; Therefore, we might want to reevaluate the amount of energy and attention we spend on mitigating carbon emissions"

That seems like a pretty flimsy argument.

1. I don't think there's strong evidence that 'global average temperatures stopped increasing.' Many of the world's largest average temperature readings have happened in the last ten years (2010, especially, but even recent reports show upward trends: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/13).

2. Cherry-picking a few people whose models show a lower than average range, doesn't tell me anything other than the author of this article is suffering from wishful thinking.

3. The heart of the article seems to be suggesting this: "If climate change isn't that bad, maybe we don't have to do anything about it, " but ignores the opposite proposition. Oddly, I'm not even sure why such an article is necessary since the world collectively isn't making any earnest attempts to curb carbon emissions. Any reductions have been economically based, not environmental.

No, I think this is a hit piece on the climate change movement couched as due-diligence and beneficial skepticism.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

Interesting take on it. I didn't see it as a hit piece so much as a "Hmm, what do we make of this?" piece.

The data that the temperature for the last 10 years has remained basically flat is coming from the exact same sources that have advocated awareness of anthropogenic change, the IPCC being one of them. Unless things change a lot we're very much in danger of having the mean temperature of the planet land outside the error bars in the models.

What that means is that climate is a complicated thing (not too surprising), and that the models are missing some components.

The article wasn't about "Cherry picking" as far as I read it was more along the lines, "Well if all 21 models of the IPCC are inaccurate, what are some of the models they rejected?" That is asking the question, "If we don't have the right answer, what other answers were proposed?" Finding a model that both explains the previous temperatures with the data we have and is more accurately predicting the changes we're observing is the goal.

gmcquillan3• 13 years ago

And the "What do we make of this" is definitely a valid question. Every model is going to be inaccurate to some degree. We should strive to improve them!

I took issue with picking a few individual researchers' models which have a lower range than the IPCC estimates (which are influenced by those lower estimates). The case could, and probably is, be made for higher ranged estimates. The point is, if you curate a subset of models to bolster your bias, you're not contributing any meaningful data to the discourse.

Tycho2• 13 years ago

Have you noticed that no one talks about 3rd world debt these days? Remember Live 8?

There seems to be a hierarchy of problems that the public/media keeps track of. 8 Years ago we were all talking about global warming and 3rd world debt. Then the economy crashed. Now we talk about the economy all day, with climate change relegated to occasional page 4 articles when a new study is published. Nobody even mentions 3rd world debt.

And that gives you an idea of how likely anyone is to change their behaviour based off the predictions of climate scientists (or even based off actual climate change, given that it happens so slowly).

unabridged• 13 years ago

I don't understand the fascination with 3rd world debt, either the countries keep paying at the detriment to domestic spending or they default and end up with higher interest rates. That is it. These are non-recourse loans, the IMF or World Bank or whoever is not going to invade to get paid back.

Debt forgiveness is still default, just more socially accepted. But just like default it will still end with less trust and higher interest.

Tycho2• 13 years ago

Do existing national debt payments and potential higher interest rates for future borrowing have an equilibrium? I mean obviously the former helps keep the latter at bay, but can you really say they are in balance and that it wouldn't be better to simply default on the debt and then borrow less in future?

I suppose if more countries got serious about cancelling the debt, there would also start to be talk from charities/activists of guaranteeing future rates.

ramblerman• 13 years ago

I'm not versed in climatology or environmental science, and frankly neither are most people. The issue of global warming really confuses me to the point that I'm now on the fence. I've seen people with no knowledge on the matter become violent when it is challenged. A typical rebuttal might be "Well the glaciers are disappearing" in the same way christian fundamentalists use one liners to negate evolution. Science shouldn't be emotional, and I find that worrying.

--- P.S I have no doubt we are screwing up our environment and need urgent change, but the psychology surrounding global warming is odd and interesting.

Climate science: A sensitive matter

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