The news that 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded in Australia comes at the end of a year in which, to the extent that facts can settle anything, the debate over human-caused global warming has been settled. Worldwide, 2005 was equal (to within the margin of error of the stats) with 1998 as the warmest year in at least the past millennium.
More significantly, perhaps, 2005 saw the final nail hammered into the arguments climate change contrarians have been pushing for years. The few remaining legitimate sceptics, along with some of the smarter ideological contrarians, have looked at the evidence and conceded the reality of human-caused global warming.
Ten years or so ago, the divergence between satellite and ground-based measurements of temperature was a big problem – the ground based measurements showed warming in line with climate models but the satellites showed a cooling trend. The combination of new data and improved calibration has gradually resolved the discrepancy, in favour of the ground-based measurements and the climate models.
Another set of arguments concerned short-term climate cycles like El Nino. The late John Daly attributed the high temperatures of the late 1990s to the combination of El Nino and solar cycles, and predicted a big drop, bottoming out in 2005 and 2006. Obviously the reverse has happened. Despite the absence of the El Nino or solar effects that contributed to the 1998 record, the long-term warming trend has dominated.
Finally, there’s water vapour. The most credible of the contrarians, Richard Lindzen, has relied primarily on arguments that the feedback from water vapour, which plays a central role in climate models, might actually be zero or even negative. Recent evidence has run strongly against this claim. Lindzen’s related idea of an adaptive iris has been similarly unsuccessful.
Finally, the evidence has mounted up that, with a handful of exceptions, “sceptics” are not, as they claim, fearless seekers after scientific truth, but ideological partisans and paid advocates, presenting dishonest arguments for a predetermined party-line conclusion. Even three years ago, sites like Tech Central Station, and writers like Ross McKitrick were taken seriously by many. Now, anyone with access to Google can discover that they have no credibility. Chris Mooney’s Republican War on Science which I plan to review soon, gives chapter and verse and the whole network of thinktanks, politicians and tame scientists who have popularised GW contrarianism, Intelligent Design and so on.
A couple of thoughts on all this.
First, in the course of the debate, a lot of nasty things were said about the IPCC, including some by people who should have known better. Now that it’s clear that the IPCC has been pretty much spot-on in its assessment (and conservative in terms of its caution about reaching definite conclusions), it would be nice to see some apologies.
Second, now that the scientific phase of the debate is over, attention will move to the question of the costs and benefits of mitigation options. There are legitimate issues to be debated here. But having seen the disregard for truth exhibited by anti-environmental think tanks in the first phase of the debate, we shouldn’t give them a free pass in the second. Any analysis on this issue coming out of a think tank that has engaged in global warming contrarianism must be regarded as valueless unless its results have been reproduced independently, after taking account of possible data mining and cherry picking. That disqualifies virtually all the major right-wing think tanks, both here and in the US. Their performance on this and other scientific issues has been a disgrace.
John Quiggin 
Willis – no-one is doubting that the climate has changed in the past. What I object to is the unsupported statement “the Earth was warmer that today during the MWP, therefore present warming is natural and can be safely ignored”
3 things are wrong with this statement that I constantly hear, in different forms, from skeptics:
1. There is little evidence to suggest the the MWP was warmer than today.
2. There is no evidence to suggest that the MWP was global in extent, and
3. Whatever the scale or extent of the MWP that is no reason to suggest that recent warming is
a. not happening
b. not harmful, or
c. entirely natural in the face of clear evidence that human activities emit large quantities of CO2 and CH4, that are proven greenhouse gases.
And finally after 300 odd posts I am not going to be drawn into a hockey stick debate for another 2000 posts.
Ender
1. “no reason to suggest that recent warming is not happening” – but if Australia is having an above average hot summer, why is Japan like most of the northern hemisphere having an above average cold winter?
2. Why would less cold northern winters and hotter southern summers be “harmful”? why do Australians like JQ keep migrating from the cooler south to the hotter north? warm northern winters would allow winter cropping, as in Egypt with its 2+ annual cropping cycles which feed 65 million mostly living in an area roughly similar to that of the Canberra-Sydney-Wollongong triangle.
3. Even if CO2 and CH4 are greenhouse gases, allowing radiation through from above but not back from below, and therefore responsible for both Japan’s current snow and our heat, how would Kyoto help? Kyoto’s carbon trading is a zero-sum game in terms of net CO2 reduction, and a negative game in its economic effects, since it involves bribing some emitters to undertake emission mitigation that they would not otherwise find worthwhile in order to allow other emitters to keep at it. Kyoto would be more plausible if its ratifiers had agreed instead to levy carbon taxes, why not fuel taxes of say $2 per litre for starters, but perhaps even $5 would not be enough to keep freight trucks and SUVs off the road whilst generating inflation both directly through prices and through the likely wasteful public spending such extra revenue would encourage.
Tim –
1. spot cold and hot temperatures do not prove one way or another the existance of global warming – only the long term trend can show this. I do not agree with JQ necessarily that the record temperatures of 2005 are conclusive proof of AGW. If over the next 10 years we have several more of these events which normally happen say every 25 years then this certainly would add to the AGW body of evidence.
2. As far as I know the 65 million depend on the the Nile for year round water – the flow of which could change due to warming. If the climate changes as a result of AGW then this is what can cause massive disruptions as one fertile agriculteral land can wither for the lack of water or changed climate. It is not so much the temperatures as the resulting climate change that is the problem.
3. Kyoto cannot help. It was nobbled at the start by the USA and others in a vain attempt to get them to sign something. The original treaty was much more effective. I totally agree about the taxes.
Ken, thanks for your posting. All of the studies that I quoted show a Roman Warm Period, in various parts of the earth.
So I’m mystified when you say “Willis, an assorted collection of regional studies doesn’t show anything if you want to demonstrate global warming. All what you’ve demonstrated is that small areas show larger climate variability than larger areas. This isn’t a surprise.”
How else can I prove than the Roman Warm Period existed other than by showing a collection of regional studies? These studies show that the RWP existed in all parts of the world. What studies do you have to show that it didn’t?
w.
Ian, my post, along with every single post on this page containing the word “refugees”, was about climate refugees. Both of my paragraphs prior to the one saying just “refugees” called them “climate refugees”. I made a foolish assumption, that people would be able to figure out that we were still discussing climate refugees.
So if you truly, actually think that my reference to “refugees” was referring to refugees from the civil war in Sudan, or some other kind of refugees, I simply don’t know what to say …
w.
Ender, thanks for your post. You say:
1. There is plenty of evidence, from plant growth to viticulture records to a host of different proxies, which shows that the MWP was warmer than today.
2. There are literally dozens of studies showing that the MWP was global in extent. Your claim that there is “no evidence” is … well, let me just call it misdirected. I can provide a list of studies if you wish, but only if you agree to read and think about the studies.
3.
a) I am not suggesting that the recent warming is not happening. I said (above) that we have been warming for three centuries. Because of uncertainties about the UHI, however, the exact amount of warming is unknown.
b) The 1700’s were much colder than the present. The warming, generally, has been beneficial, as humans (most particularly poor humans) have a harder time dealing with cold than warmth.
c) Recent warming is very likely not entirely natural. The question is, how much if any of the warming is due to CO2?. CO2 is a second order or third order forcing, and the amount of its effect on the recent temperature is unknown. However, it cannot be very large, because once you deduct the methane and solar and the other forcings from the 0.6°C the globe might have warmed in the last century, there’s not much left for CO2 to be responsible for …
The mystery part of your posting, however, was when you said:
Since I never said that, why are you directing the question at me? Why not ask whoever the person is who made the statement, the person you are quoting?
Or perhaps you are just pretending to quote someone, in order to have a straw man to demolish …
All the best,
w.
noted without comment:
“Ken, thanks for the postings on coral growth. One is of coral growing in an aquarium … don’t think that applies here, we’re talking about the real world.”
ellipse in original.
Willis – No that statement, as I qualified, is a what I have seen written in one form or another in my many arguments with AGW skeptics.
The peer reviewed studies show that the MWP was at least as warm within a degree of uncertainty not warmer. As there was no instrument record from this time the proxies seem to show that it was not warmer. Anecdotal evidence is unreliable. There is no, as far as I know, any direct evidence that it was global. Most of it that I have seen is also anecdotal at best.
As for your statement about cold, talk to people that live in the tropics and think again. Some areas of PNG below a certain elevation are uninhabitable because of disease. Both hot and cold have their share of problems – the argument that warm is better is simplistic at best and is usually most believed by people that live in cold climates.
According to Gavin Schmitt CO2 is a first order forcing and contributes 20% or so of the greenhouse warming of the atmosphere. As it is cumulative and last for 100 years this effect is only going to get stronger.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=186#more-186
Why the Global Warming Debate Hasn’t Ended
There is a serious, bombshell paper just out. January Nature Magazine has an article that clearly shows that
Plant’s Breath Keeps Them Warm
It doesn’t have that title, of course. Here’s the real title, along with the abstract.
–
Methane emissions from terrestrial plants under
aerobic conditions
Nature 439, 148-149 (12 January 2006)
Frank Keppler et. al.
ABSTRACT
Methane is an important greenhouse gas and its atmospheric
concentration has almost tripled since pre-industrial times. It
plays a central role in atmospheric oxidation chemistry and affects
stratospheric ozone and water vapour levels. Most of the methane
from natural sources in Earth’s atmosphere is thought to originate
from biological processes in anoxic environments. Here we
demonstrate using stable carbon isotopes that methane is readily
formed in situ in terrestrial plants under oxic conditions by a
hitherto unrecognized process. Significant methane emissions
from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed during
incubation experiments in the laboratory and in the field. If our
measurements are typical for short-lived biomass and scaled
on a global basis, we estimate a methane source strength of
62–236 Tg yr-1 for living plants and 1–7 Tg yr-1 for plant litter
(1 Tg 5 1012 g). We suggest that this newly identified source may
have important implications for the global methane budget and
may call for a reconsideration of the role of natural methane
sources in past climate change.
—
What are the implications of this?
The first one, of course, is that it highlights our absurdly poor understanding of all of the forcings, feedbacks, interconnections, and dynamics of the global climate system. We have missed a huge, uncounted forcing — astonishingly, we completely missed the fact that plants give off millions and millions of tonnes of methane every year. Missed it completely. The plants’ breath has been keeping them warm, and we never even noticed.
The second implications is that in the course of the plants’ breath keeping them warm,
THE PLANTS’ BREATH MAKES THE PLANET WARMER
This makes perfect sense, from an evolutionary point of view. Plant growth rate is ultimately regulated by temperature, because the chemical reactions proceed faster at higher temperatures. Thus, warm plants in the tropics grow faster than cold arctic plants. So to a plant, warmth is generally an advantage. And methane is the strongest greenhouse gas.
The key point from an evolutionary standpoint is that the release of methane gas by a plant has an immediate warming effect on the plant. Plants that release methane warm instantly, as soon as the gas leaves the leaf, so they would grow faster than plants that don’t.
So the amazing part of this finding is, that plants are warming the planet.
OK. Now that we know that plants are a major methane source, and now that we’ve realized that those insidious green plant devils have been secretly manufacturing millions and millions of tonnes of the most potent greenhouse gas every single year, making that poison in clandestine arboreal laboratories, and even worse, putting it into the atmosphere … now what?
I mean, that bunch of trees in your yard, year after year, are pumping out the world’s MOST POWERFUL greenhouse gas. Those plants are ACTIVELY WORKING TO MAKE THE WORLD WARMER!!!! Are you going to sit there and let them do it?
So that’s why the global warming debate is not over … because at the end of the day, we still, any of us, know so little about the climate.
In that same issue of Nature, the Nature Editorial was on the topic of this methane emissions paper. It concluded by saying:
“This paper will undoubtedly unleash controversy, not the least of which will be political. But there are many scientific questions to be addressed. How could such a potentially large methane source have been overlooked? And what kind of mechanism could produce a highly reduced gas such as methane in an oxic environment? There will be a lively scramble among researchers for the answers to these and other questions.”
Best to everyone,
w.
Oh, yeah, PS … the good news is, methane in the atmosphere is bio-degradable, it doesn’t last too long … the interesting news is, methane biodegrades to water … and CO2 …
Again this makes sense evolutionarily, as CO2 is plant food, so the methane is first the plants’ blanket to keep them warm, and then it turns into food and water. A marvelous investment of plant resources on this most amazing planet.
Does have interesting implications for the debate on counting forests under Kyoto, though …
How else can I prove than the Roman Warm Period existed other than by showing a collection of regional studies? These studies show that the RWP existed in all parts of the world. What studies do you have to show that it didn’t?
Willis, what you need to do is too average the temperature trends. When you start to average the results, you should start to see the larger temperature swings disappear and a more globally accurate picture emerge.
Ken, thanks for the postings on coral growth. One is of coral growing in an aquarium … don’t think that applies here, we’re talking about the real world.
Willis, your real world example consists of a single drilling. I was wonder if you can tell me how the flow of nutrients changed over the last 200 years at the site? And coral predator distributions? And a million and one other variables which could effect coral growth?
The big advantage of aquarium studies is that all sorts of variables can be controlled easily. Anybody with any experience in experimental science can tell you that it is a absolutely massive advantage to be able hold some variables constant while manipulating others.
Do you want to see the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 concentrations on coral growth? Doing it in a aquarium is easy. We will have to wait a few more years for our “real world” experiment reach that point.
Willis – it is not certain what this new discovery, if confirmed, will bring. It is certainly no reason to doubt anthropogenic CO2’s role in recent warming. If plants have been doing this for millions of years then it stands to reason that the carbon is accounted for in the carbon cycle as the level of methane has been relatively stable until now.
Also what if it is a recent phenomenon brought on by environmental stress?
As they say, it sure could get worse, and it could be likely, but will it? My advice is to be very cautious when a “scientist� starts saying things “could� and “might� happen. Sure, they could, so he’ll never be proven wrong … but that’s not science.
My advice is to distrust the words of anybody who feels the need to insult a scientific paper and its authors simply because it comes to a undesired conclusion.
Seriously, your smart enough to do much better than this.
PS. Not making definitive statements without massive amounts of evidence is a very important part of science. When you are talking about future predictions, short of having a time machine, this applies doubly.
Oops – looks like Kyoto may have been wrong after all – read this.
Will:
Ian, my post, along with every single post on this page containing the word “refugees�, was about climate refugees. Both of my paragraphs prior to the one saying just “refugees� called them “climate refugees�. I made a foolish assumption, that people would be able to figure out that we were still discussing climate refugees.
So if you truly, actually think that my reference to “refugees� was referring to refugees from the civil war in Sudan, or some other kind of refugees, I simply don’t know what to say …
end quote
No, Will your whole point, as near as I coudl make out was that it was absurd to expect millions of refugees from global-warming related natural disasters because we didn’t see similar numbers from other natural disasters.
Some people have proposed that there is a significant saturation effect in CO2’s interception of long-wave radiation from the Earth’s surface and that eventually, when the surface reaches a high enough temperature, it will produce enough radiation in the spectral windows to get rid of all the heat. This would imply a fixed ratio of total surface radiation to window radiation in saturation. Thus the saturation surface temperature would equal the fourth root of this ratio multiplied by the black body surface temperature for Earth (which is about 255K).
Alternatively, we could estimate a lower bound for earth’s CO2 saturation temperature (assuming there is one) by using the surface temperature of Venus which would at most be at its CO2 saturation temperture and applying the appropriate reduction in solar radiation for Earth compared with Venus. Venus’s surface temperature is about 748K. Venus’s distance from the Sun is 108 million km and Earth’s is 149 million km, a ratio of 0.725. Hence the sunlight intensity at Earth is 0.725^2 of what it is at Venus. This leads to a surface temperature ratio if Earth had a Venusian atmosphere of (0.725^2)^0.25 = 0.725^0.5. Hence the surface temperature that Earth would have if it had a Venusian atmosphere is (0.725^0.5)*748K = 637K = 364 degrees C.
So if there is a CO2 saturation temperature for Earth, it must be at least 364 degrees C. Somehow I don’t think we’re going to be saved by any CO2 radiation saturation, even if there is such a thing.
Andrew,
You posted this article:-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1545977.htm
The article suggests that Trees emit lots of Methane and this hasn’t be factored into climate models (or even understood) priviously.
If the basic idea suggested in the article is correct then “land clearing” contributes to climate in a similar way to “global dimming”. In other words it’s bad for the earths biosphere and we may want to stop it but it does helps to mitigate global warming.
So we can either reduce CO2 emissions or we can put lots of smog in the air and clear forests. Actually we could achieve the latter by burning forests on a grand scale.
On balance it probably makes the case for CO2 reductions more important. However it does show that we probably still have a lot to learn about how the climate works.
Regards,
Terje.
I said, “This is because of the fourth-power relationship in the Stefan-Boltzman equation, i.e. the relative rate-of-increase in radiation is four times the relative rate-of-increase in temperature.”
Willis said, “He says clearly that a fourth power relationship is four times the relative rate-of-increase in temperature,”
That is correct, the fourth power relationship in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is equivalent to the relative rate-of-increase in radiation being equal to four times the relative rate-of-increase in temperature.
Willis said, “A fourth-power relationship in Stefan Bolzmann does not mean a fourfold increase, as you so blithely assume.”
Where did I blithely assume this?
Willis said, “While you are correct that it is a reasonable approximation,”
I though it was a blithe assumption.
Willis said “Ken, thanks for the postings on coral growth. One is of coral growing in an aquarium … don’t think that applies here, we’re talking about the real world.”
Funny thing to say from someone who carries on about the importance of experiments. Previously he said,
“Because only experiments can give us data to prove or disprove the theories that are built into the models.”
I wonder if there is any such thing as a real world experiment.
Chris O’Neill Said January 12th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Some people have proposed that there is a significant saturation effect in CO2’s interception of long-wave radiation from the Earth’s surface and that eventually, when the surface reaches a high enough temperature, it will produce enough radiation in the spectral windows to get rid of all the heat.
The logarithmic relation ship is valid at least between 30 and 3000 ppm. The increasing effect is in the side lobes of the spectrum.
372 responses – I fear the end of the global warming debate isn’t quite here yet.
The responses to the article http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1545977.htm and the research that motivated it show that there is a long way to go before a lot of people understand what is important about climate science. Thinking that being unaware of every last detail of climate science makes a profound difference to the biggest consequences, or indeed any significant difference, reveals an inability to decide what makes a difference, or what makes a significant difference, to the important outcome. Sure we don’t know all the processes that produce CO2, CH4, N2O etc but the effect of these gasses is the same nomatter where they come from and the large buildups have only one main cause: humans. And sure trees may produce CH4 that only lasts a decade or two but they consume at least hundreds of times as much CO2 some of which would otherwise hang around in the atmosphere for thousands of years (7% lasts 100,000 years). A lot of people don’t have a sense of proportion. Good luck to anyone trying to explain global warming to someone without a sense of proportion.
Chris, you say:
Not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse here or not, but experiment and observation are what is needed. However, you seem to be assuming that any old experiment or observation is good enough.
In this case, we are discussing the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 on coral reefs. You gave a report of what happens to coral reefs in an aquarium when the CO2 in the water is increased.
I gave a report on what happens in the ocean when atmospheric CO2 is increased.
I hold that the report from the ocean tells us what happens in the real world, and the report from the aquarium tells us what happens in the aquarium. Since the results are different, which one is more relevant in your view?
w.
Chris, you say:
Actually, as near as anyone can tell, a mature forest has no net effect on the CO2 levels, it merely cycles the carbon through the forest and back into the atmosphere. There is only a net CO2 uptake while the forest is growing, because the CO2 goes into the increased wood content of the forest. When the forest is mature, the wood content is stable, and the net CO2 uptake ceases.
The situation with methane is different, as the trees are actually manufacturing methane constantly. This increases the amount of methane on the planet, and it occurs whether the forest is mature or still growing.
In addition, while (as you point out) the methane only lasts a decade or two, it decays into CO2 …
w.
Ian,
Adam Smith died a long time ago. So did Marx and Keynes and Jean-Baptiste Say. Yet the economic debate rages on.
I think that by 2100 the climate debate will still rage. I can’t see it being any other way when you have a system of such complex interactions between cause and effect and pronounced lags in some parts of the system.
Regards,
Terje.
I hold that the report from the ocean tells us what happens in the real world, and the report from the aquarium tells us what happens in the aquarium. Since the results are different, which one is more relevant in your view?
Ironically, the methane results that you’ve been commenting on bear out the conclusion that a series of aquarium studies can provide much more useful information than a single “real world” example.
It was only by being able to carefully control the conditions in seal tubes could the researchers detect the methane. Likewise, the controlled environment allowed careful manipulation of the environment to test the effects of altering variables (eg. sunlight, microbes etc).
I find it amusing that you can trumpet one study while dismissing another when the principles behind them are identical.
Ender, you say:
Gotta love it. Three times above I’ve mentioned both that I have lived, and that I currently live, in the tropics, and you tell me to talk to people that live in the tropics?
I talk to them every day … so there’s no need to “think again” as you suggest. My statement stands.
w.
Ken, thanks for the post. You say:
You seem to have missed the difference between the two situations. They are far from being “identical” as you claim.
In their paper, the methane researchers said clearly that they did the experiments in the seal tubes because they could not do the measurements in the field. (Their actual wording was that, “CH4 emissions were difficult to quantify for samples incubated in ambient air owing to the high atmospheric background levels of CH4.”)
This left them no option but to do the experiments in the seal tubes. As soon as someone figures out how to measure this methane emission in the field, their results (being real world results) will supercede the current seal tube results.
Why will they supercede them? Because we don’t really care what plants do in seal tubes — we care what they do in real life.
Coral growth rates, on the other hand, can be measured in the field. Because of this, experimental results (e.g., coral growth in aquariums) that don’t match what is happening in the real world are useful, but they are only useful to determine why the experiment gave results which differed from the results from the real coral in the real ocean.
w.
John (Quiggin), you say:
If a person’s credibility were measured by who they are paid by, most climate researchers would fail the test. After all, if they reported that AGW was a myth, they’d be out of a job, which must carry significant weight.
In reality, however, what you have declaimed is merely an “ad hominem” argument. For those unaware of the term, an ad hominem argument says that the position espoused must be wrong, not for any logical reason, but because of who is espousing it.
As you can see, this makes no sense. If Ross McKitrick is correct, he is correct no matter who pays him, and the same is true on the other side of Gavin Schmidt. The fact that something is published on Tech Central Station does not make it false, any more than something being published on John Quiggin’s blog makes it true. Your ad hominem argument holds no weight at all, and as the Latin name suggests, it has been recognized as a logical fallacy for thousands of years.
In general, an “ad hominem” argument is a clear sign that the person using it has a weak position. It is also used routinely by anthropogenic global warming adherents, as in this case. It is possible that these two facts may not be related …
w.
If a person’s credibility were measured by who they are paid by, most climate researchers would fail the test. After all, if they reported that AGW was a myth, they’d be out of a job, which must carry significant weight.
Can you name a single climate researcher who has attacked global warming and lost their job as a result?
I’m pretty sure that you can’t.
Lets see…
Patrick Michaels – still has his job
Robert Balling – still has his job
Richard Lindzen – still has his job
Roy Spencer – still has his job
John Christy – still has his job
You need to move on from fantasy land.
I’ve always assumed that the AGW was going ahead, but I found Willi Eschenbach’s observations of coral regrowth on a tropical island fascinating and optimistic. Better yet, it was a first hand observation.
Willis – however do you live in the part of the tropics that has malaria or does it reach 50 degrees for sustained amounts of times. Warming will be worse for the tropics. If the summer temp reaches 40 degrees now how do you think the electricity system will cope with 50 degree temps. Most western people survive in the tropical heat only because of air-conditioning.
Ender has said ‘Most western people survive in the tropical heat only because of air-conditioning.’
Not so. When I was growing up in PNG (10 years), we tended to despise those expats who shut up their houses and used air-conditioning all the time. We only used fans and open windows and became used to always being a little sweaty. Our schools were entirely un-airconditioned. I’ve experienced as many really uncomfortably hot days in Melbourne and Sydney as I did in Port Moresby.
Most people can live in most climates.
Ender, thanks for your comment. You say:
No malaria here, but I lived for 6 years in a hot, sticky malarious area. I did so without air conditioning, and with electricity for only part of the day. Here, expats around me have air conditioning in their homes. I don’t.
Sustained temperatures over 50°C (122°F) are uncommon anywhere in the world.
The main issue is this: if it’s too cold, you absolutely have to burn some kind of fuel to keep warm. Be it coal, gas, wood, dung, whatever, you have to burn energy or you’ll freeze. Or, you can put on lots and lots of clothes. Often, you have to do both.
And both of those options, of course, cost money.
If it’s too hot, on the other hand, you generally sweat it out, but at least it doesn’t cost anything. While this is not so important if you’re wealthy, if you’re living on $1 per day, you’d better hope you’re doing it someplace warm. Extra cold is much harder on the poor and the vulnerable (elderly, children, ill) than extra warmth.
Finally, most of the warming has been warming of winter nights. Summer days, in general, have not increased anywhere near as much … and 10°C for the proposed warming? Seems extreme.
All the best to everyone,
w.
Ken Miles Says:
January 13th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
If a person’s credibility were measured by who they are paid by, most climate researchers would fail the test. After all, if they reported that AGW was a myth, they’d be out of a job, which must carry significant weight.
Can you name a single climate researcher who has attacked global warming and lost their job as a result?
I’m pretty sure that you can’t.
Ken
How about the editor of Climate Change who published the refutation of the Mann hockey stick? or those dumped by IPCC because of their views?
I would also appreciate your calculation of the tonnes of CO2 that would have been avoided had not the greenies successfully halted construction of new nuclear power stations in US, UK, Germany, Sweden etc.
Tim
Wrong way around, Tim. It was editors opposed to the corrupt process by which the Soon and Baliunas paper got published who resigned or were forced out check here.
As for your general claim, Christy, Spencer and Lindzen all attracted plenty of funding while publishing research critical of the mainstream view on climate change. The fact that their results did not stand up to scrutiny is the way the scientific process works.
jquiggin Says:
January 13th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Wrong way around, Tim. It was editors opposed to the corrupt process by which the Soon and Baliunas paper got published who resigned or were forced out check here.
As for your general claim, Christy, Spencer and Lindzen all attracted plenty of funding while publishing research critical of the mainstream view on climate change. The fact that their results did not stand up to scrutiny is the way the scientific process works.
John
Not so quick! But you are right, I should have said “resignation was accepted…”
The Soon-Balunias is a perfectly scholarly paper, and in its main thrust has been confirmed by no less than Jared Diamond, with his photo of the erstwhile dairy farm in Greenland 800 years ago or so. Despite all the CO2 resulting from the ban on nuclear energy in the west (and consequential “melting Arctic icecap”), dairy farming has yet to resume there in the absence of pasture.
But if you are right about AGW, I presume you would defend a class action fronted by Slater and Gordon (those altruistic environmentalists who have done so much to screw Papua New Guinea) against the social democrats like you who have prevented adoption of nuclear energy in Australia thereby maximising our CO2 emissions!
Tim
Willis – “Sustained temperatures over 50°C (122°F) are uncommon anywhere in the world.”
Yes but that is the point. Areas that are marginal now will not take a large temperature rise to become unliveable at lease without air-con.
“If it’s too hot, on the other hand, you generally sweat it out, but at least it doesn’t cost anything. While this is not so important if you’re wealthy, if you’re living on $1 per day, you’d better hope you’re doing it someplace warm. Extra cold is much harder on the poor and the vulnerable (elderly, children, ill) than extra warmth.”
So what would you say to the 13 000 Parisians that died in the 2003 heatwave – sweat it out. Also surviving heat takes lots of water. If the rainfall patterns change reducing rainfall then people will not have the water to sweat out. I cannot believe that you can think extreme heat is more benign that extreme cold – both are bad.
“Finally, most of the warming has been warming of winter nights. Summer days, in general, have not increased anywhere near as much … and 10°C for the proposed warming? Seems extreme.”
if the average temperature rises 5 degrees then do you think that it will just be exactly 5 degrees hotter everywhere? Is everywhere the same temperature now. No the temperature rise could change weather patterns dramatically making some areas much hotter than present, well above the average temperature rise. Isolated areas could rise 10 degrees with others even getting cooler with the global average being 5 degrees.
“the ban on nuclear energy in the west”
That’d be like the ban on DDT, I take it.
I’ll assume too that “the west” no longer includes France (amongst others).
As for your suggestion of a law-suit against “social democrats” for preventing Australia developing nuclear energy: nuclear power has never been able to generate power as cheaply as Australian coal-fired powerplants. Apart from some large hydro projects, Australia has the cheapest baseload power in the world.
Maybe that lawsuit should be directed against the coal companies and the electricity generators for being so good at their jobs.
Ender, you ask what would I say to the Parisians who died in the 2003 heat wave? Well, considering this:
I’d guess I’d have to say, “Fix your health system, tune up your agencies and health care services, and stop neglecting your old people” … what would you say?
The truth is, both excessive heat and excessive cold can kill. But if I were poor, I’d rather be too hot than too cold …
Which points out the problem, which is neither heat nor cold, but poverty. American cities (think Phoenix) routinely get much hotter than Paris, but without the deaths …
w.
Willis E in regard to what JQ was said about bias I asked a lecturer in critical thinking and who had his own web page on logical fallacies about the use of the ad hominem and he acknowledged linking backgrounds and bias is relevant and is not considered ad hominem.
Having said that it cannot be used by itself but would be linked to veracity of their claims not only on this subject but others. This does not mean automatically they are wrong but as in any conflict of interest combined with a history of factual errors it calls into question their intellectual honesty.
The same goes for creation scientists linking them to their fundamentalist views, history of misinformation etc and the bias that that entails is not ad hominen.
Fallacies in isolation often lose their authority.
Like the creation vs evolution debate you are in the extreme minority going against mainstream science. The mainstream is moving on leaving it to others to deal with the AGW recalcitrants. Very easy to cheery pick and use out of date points to make an argument seem plausible, the creationists have show how easy that is.
When the world’s leading scientific institutions are backing AGW, the self same agencies that the G8 countries look for their scientific advice, and the best you can come up with is lobby groups and fringe scientists –often outside the field in question- you really have to start to have a good look at yourself.
Especially when it come to the whole system of those qualified in the physical sciences and pier review process, if the it is so corrupted by self interest and overt politics one wonders who any good science could be done at all.
It would seem that only happens when it doesn’t affect business. It is not only climate science called into question by these groups but any science from a whole swath of different disciplines claiming humans have an adverse impact on the global environment and.
BTW even without AGW pure science would still see these climate scientists with jobs. The same cannot be said for the other side.
You know we keep hearing about the ban on DDT and now the ban on nuclear power, but when are we going to hear about the bans on passenger zeppelins, black-and-white TVs and 78 RPM records?
Willis Eschenbach obviously hasn’t been to France. French homes, rich and poor, almost always have heaters. This includes public housing.
On the other hand extremely few people have air-conditioners as excesive heat is very rarely a problem. Old folk have a tendency to dehydrate and to overdress on hot days and therefore succumb to heat exhaustion. It isn’t uncommon on a stinking hot day to see old men and women with a beanie, scarf, jumper and overcoat. Haven’t you noticed this?
Willis can click his heels three times and do a jig if he likes, but this doesn’t change the fact that there was a measurable spike in deaths among the elderly during the European heatwave. Similar spikes have not occurred during cold snaps.
Willis also raised the point of AGW raising night temperatures more than day temperatures. He fails to mention that AGW is also causing greater warming over land masses than over the oceans.
See http://www.realclimate.org for details.
>It isn’t uncommon on a stinking hot day to see old men and women with a beanie, scarf, jumper and overcoat. Haven’t you noticed this?
Which doesn’t change the fact that taking of the scarf and beanie doesn’t require energy, but turning a heater on does.
So I think it is still valid to say that a hotter climate is less likely to kill the poor than a cold one.
Pingu the penguin Says: “So I think it is still valid to say that a hotter climate is less likely to kill the poor than a cold one.”
Whether it is valid or not is an empirical question. Show me the data Pingu.
Steve, thanks for the post. You say:
Steve, you guys are the ones saying that a 2° temperature rise occurring mostly during winter nights is going to kill a heap of people and create a heap of refugees.
Seems like the burden of proof is on you …
Which will be difficult, since we have seen such a rise already (since the Little Ice Age) without any of the predicted dreaded sequelae … malaria hasn’t moved north, Tuvalu hasn’t sunk, etc. …
w.
(PS — Since malaria is historically found all the way up to the Arctic Circle, serious epitdemiologists say that the claims of it moving north in response to warming are nonsense, it’s already north … but that hasn’t stopped the hype.
Willis Eschenbach appears to have swallowed a number of myths from sites like JunkScience and TechCentralStation. One such myth is that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global and represents a stumbling block for AGW proponents.
As IPCC 2001 says “…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this timeframe, and the conventional terms of ‘Little Ice Age’ and ‘Medieval Warm Period’ appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries”
Subsequent studies, such as Mann and Jones (2004), support the IPCC finding. Mann and Jones also deal with the mythology surrounding the growing of wine in England during the MWP and the settlement and subsequent abandonment of Greenland by the Icelanders.
(see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=33)
Willis – sorry wrong again.
“Since malaria is historically found all the way up to the Arctic Circle, serious epitdemiologists say that the claims of it moving north in response to warming are nonsense, it’s already north … but that hasn’t stopped the hype.”
Yes the mosquito is found in the Arctic but the malaria parasite can only survive over a certain temperature. That is why the malaria is uncommon in the Arctic.
“Parasite and mosquito thrive under warm, humid conditions. The mosquitoes require temperatures above 8ºC (or 46ºF), and the malaria parasite inside the mosquito can’t develop if the temperature drops below 15ºC (or 60ºF).”
Again the correct answer can be easily found if you look past the skeptic half truth that malaria mosquitos can be found in the Arctic.