The Climate Change Climate Change

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html

by nice1 • 17 years ago

25 41 17 years ago

online.wsj.com

callmeed2• 17 years ago

Here's my beef: I feel it's almost impossible to find (fairly) objective information about climate change and then make my own, informed, decision.

Part of this problem stems from the fact I'm a christian and conservative in ways ... yet, at the same time, the environment and stewardship are important to me. Regardless, I'm not going to take a stand on climate change/global warming simply because someone on the left or right says I need to.

How does one find information on climate change that isn't politically motivated?

jswinghammer3• 17 years ago

Part of the problem is that everyone is so certain particularly on the side that man-made global warming is real and a serious threat. This probably the biggest cause I have for doubting it. The philosophy of science is very interesting to me and one thing that's a recurring theme is the discussion of the limits of empiricism. Another thing to consider is the awful track record of prediction from virtually everyone who is deemed to be an expert. I find it difficult to take seriously people who don't make serious room for their margins of error and who rely on computer models of the future to predict.

All that being said the people who promote global warming as a serious issue that we need to do something about could be right of course. It could also be that they're missing some key piece of information that they don't even know exists. The unknown unknowns here seem impossible to get your head around for something as difficult to understand as climate change.

I'm not sure where you find information that isn't biased one way or another on this topic. I've pretty much given up.

callmeed2• 17 years ago

"I've pretty much given up"

Well, at least I wont be alone if I give up too ...which is very possible :)

antidaily• 17 years ago

I don't know. Is an organization like The Climatic Research Unit (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/) politically motivated?

bokonist2• 17 years ago

They appear to be a government funded research institute. The bigger the fear over global warming, the more funding goes to such institutes. That does not mean they do bad science. But it does not mean that you should not take their reports as the unbiased truth. Institutional selection effects ensure that people who have views harmful to a given institution will not rise to the top of that institution.

curtis• 17 years ago

I think most of the actual science is pretty good. It's when people start talking about what should be done about global warming that things get dicey.

bwhite3• 17 years ago

Mod parent up.

This is why Bjorn Lomborg is reviled: not because he doubts that anthropogenic global warming is for real, but because he has the temerity to suggest that the cure (spending a kajillion dollars to achieve relatively small changes in climate) may be worse than the disease. See http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioritie....

And dancing about, declaring that the science is settled, and claiming to know the One True Solution to something as inherently complex as climate is indicative of failure to understand the science, which leads to politically motivated footballs like this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa-conf...

bokonist2• 17 years ago

I very much disagree. There is still a lot of contention over the basic science. See this article for the best critique I have found of the science behind global warming: http://commentlog.org/bid/4409/The-Case-for-Global-Warming-S...

jswinghammer3• 17 years ago

I don't have a problem with the science exactly but rather the predictions that have been made from that science. Predicting the future is very difficult and I'd really like to see more discussion of that when this issue comes up.

msie2• 17 years ago

One thing to do is to NOT read the WSJ opinion page. Don't be seduced by this article's cheerleading for the skeptics.

cwan• 17 years ago

That seems to be a rather ostrich like approach to what's supposed to be a rather big important issue - particularly one that could result in a rather large "climate change tax" scheme that's being voted on today. If they're wrong on the merits, then have it out, but the article only points out the growing skepticism within the scientific community for anthropogenic warming. So the question becomes more about what should/can we do about it since if it's going to cost the world that much in money surely we should have an expectation that these efforts will have an impact?

ryanvm• 17 years ago

Or NYT opinion page, or HuffPost, etc.

Alex39172• 17 years ago

"How does one find information on climate change that isn't politically motivated?"

As for as the facts are concerned, the idea that all information on climate change is poltitically motivated is itself a lie spread by certain forces within society.

As far as policy is concerned, the role of environmental groups is to create recommendations on how to manage limited resources among multiple stakeholders who want to use them. Some of the more leftwing environmental groups believe that their job is just to protect the earth, whatever that means, but the more mainstream ones are in the business of solving tragedy-of-the-commons problems like climate change. They are probably you're best bet for sound policy advice, albeit they often on specific tactics.

edit: @EnvDefenseFund has some good tweets about what is going on today.

CWuestefeld2• 17 years ago

And unfortunately, many of those "more leftwing groups" are those that take center stage. Take Al Gore (please):

[Question:] There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?

[Gore's Answer:] ... I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

http://www.grist.org/article/roberts2/

Elfan• 17 years ago

All of the IPCC reports are available online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#E...

jerf2• 17 years ago

How do you judge science as an outsider? You judge the correctness of the predictions made.

How has global warming fared on the accuracy front? Terribly. We were promised monotonically rising global temperatures for the next hundred years, and instead, they plateaued, then dropped, only ten years into the predictions.

As an outsider, the rest hardly matters. Why the predictions were wrong is something for the scientists to go work out. Explaining away the wrongness with "whys" doesn't change the wrongness, it only explains it.

If you think I'm wrong, show me the prediction from 2000 or so that actually matches what happened to the real climate. Show me the error bars that the global temperature is still within. (Most global warming graphs don't even have error bars, which itself is pretty telling.) As far as I know, you can't.

Explaining that failure doesn't change the fact of failure. If the last ten years is "mere weather", then the error bars should have reflected that.

That is how you judge science as an outsider. You may not understand materials science, but the bridges the materials scientists help build behave as they predict (mostly). You may not understand organic chemistry, but plastics behave as such people predict. You may not understand political science, but the real world only sort of acts as they predict, so their science is less reliable.

You may not understand climate science, but their predictions completely fail to come to pass. Fairly routinely, too. Make your conclusions about the validity of their science based on that. You don't have to be a climate scientist to do that. (As it happens, it is the same standard they should be using themselves, and the field's apparent refusal to do so is also very telling.)

(Where no predictions can be made, there is no science. Sometimes that's just the way it is; economics isn't going to be a very real science anytime soon. There's nothing wrong with that, there's only something wrong with according it the belief levels in the predictions made by the field that should be reserved for real science.)

Bjoern5• 17 years ago

http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25...

Global warming is influenced by a multitude of contributing gases etc. Some of them can also cause cooling. Weather, being unpredictable of course screws up predictions. Also the oceans are taking a substancial amount of CO2 gases for instances which causes warming delays.

I agree with the error bars but climatology is not exactly a easy science if you have so many variables. Its not that we fully understand "just weather" yet.

Interesting question though, temperatures were constant for more or less 1 Mio. years (thanks ice-core probes for that information). Why suddenly in the last 100 years or so do we see a difference if you look in the timeframe of 1900 to now?

Even if I play your logic and go for a moment on your side and say ok who knows maybe the predictions are wrong. Does it makes sense to drive the Coal/Oil/Gas burning train? There is more waste coming from burning these than just CO2 you know.

yankeeracer73• 17 years ago

Regardless of whether you believe global warming is real or bullshit, isn't there a geo-political argument to be made that we should simply be using less oil and trying to become more efficient so we don't continue to prop up monarchies and radical theocracies in the Middle East who are wholly funded by their oil businesses?

tc• 17 years ago

Many of those regimes are funded directly by US taxpayers in the form of foreign and military aid. It would seem more rational to stop that before using force to interfere in the choices of private individuals.

bwhite3• 17 years ago

This is a geo-politically complex situation. Assume this program was wildly successful. All of a sudden Saudi Arabia is destitute; Venezuela is broke; Russia is impoverished; Mexico is crippled; Nigeria is even poorer than it is now. Has the overall geopolitical environment gotten any better? Or do you now just have a bunch of very unstable countries, some of whom have WMDs?

hyperbovine• 17 years ago

Well, how about we take some of the $700 billion a year that we would suddenly /not/ be sending overseas to Russia, Latin America and the Middle East to build schools, hospitals, libraries in the hardest hit countries? Increasing efficiency _always_ has the potential to leave everyone better off. Econ 101. What you choose to do with the extra money left on the table is up to you, but you should never pass up the chance to do better simply because of inertia.

lesterbuck• 17 years ago

As a scientist in a previous life, I love Michael Crichton's idea that there should be strict separation between the people that collect the data and the people that analyze & interpret the data for politically charged areas of science. Both would operate from independent institutes, funded by all stakeholders. If you let me collect and analyze my own data, I am open to all sorts of influence depending on who is funding my work, peer pressure, etc. Once the data has been collected, then the analysis portion could even be split tested, with two independent groups funded to do the analysis independently on exactly the same data set, and then we can compare truly independent conclusions.

The other problem that pervades climate change is the shockingly bad statistical analysis. At the least, there should be a separate statistical institute that can put its stamp of approval on the statistical parts of the results. With such limited historical climate data older than a very recent period, and projections made far into the future, we must ensure that only the very best statistical analyses make it into the public awareness. Alas, climate researchers are often not at the leading edge of statistics.

Tichy4• 17 years ago

Surely any half-decent government should be able to find some scientists it can trust? I don't think this issue should be decided by "number of believers" vs "number of non-believers".

CWuestefeld2• 17 years ago

Sorry for a cynical answer, but your comment assumes that there are any governments that believe it's important for them to be trustworthy. I certainly don't get that feeling here in America, on either side of the aisle.

Tichy4• 17 years ago

Not the government, the scientists. Assuming that the government wants to make the right decision about climate protection. But you are right - that is probably too much to assume. Realistically they will only worry about reelection.

Bjoern5• 17 years ago

[..] today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role.

Is this a bad joke?! Believe?! What has believe to do with this?

Please if you don't know - watch this talk from Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf ( http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/ )

Video H264 720x576 Encoded http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25... (From 12/2008, CCC Congress 25C3)

Information and further links about this talk: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2863.en.h...

His job is to give scientific advice to people who need to make decisions on these Global Warming topics.

Global warming will destroy the sea, the animals, plants and finally us. Stop this whole argument of is this real or bullshit and read the research for yourself if you still doubt it.

Who needs money when we all can't go outside anymore because its 50 degrees Celsius outside?

jswinghammer3• 17 years ago

If you say something and claim it to be factual it's still up to me to believe you or not. I think belief has a lot to do with it.

Bjoern5• 17 years ago

Thats the beauty of the argument. Science gives us a tool to eliminate believe from the equation. Believe is something which has no place there.

With Science we make assumptions and lay them out for everybody to see or counter argument. After enough iterations of opinions and results we end up with something that gives us at least a high probability of being right.

Claim has to be followed by proof. Proof does not need believe as it stands by itself. If you believe it or not.

robotrout• 17 years ago

> Global warming will destroy the sea, the animals, plants and finally us.

Not only that, but I heard that if not stopped, Global warming would make cats chase dogs, Jerry Springer would retire, and leprechauns would roam in large bands across the earth, spreading death, destruction, and lucky charms.

maukdaddy• 17 years ago

WTF? This is the second OPINION piece that's been posted today. Don't upvote this crap!

The Climate Change Climate Change

Related Stories