… persuade them to stop being rightwingers[1]
I have a piece in Inside Story arguing that the various efforts to “frame” the evidence on climate change, and the policy implications, in a way that will appeal to those on the political right are all doomed. Whether or not it was historically inevitable, anti-science denialism is now a core component of rightwing tribal identity in both Australia and the US. The only hope for sustained progress on climate policy is a combination of demography and defection that will create a pro-science majority.
With my characteristic optimism, I extract a bright side from all of this. This has three components
(a) The intellectual collapse of the right has already proved politically costly, and these costs will increase over time
(b) The cost of climate stabilization has turned out to be so low that even a delay of 5-10 years won’t render it unmanageable.
(c) The benefits in terms of the possibility of implementing progressive policies such as redistribution away from the 1 per cent will more than offset the extra costs of the delay in dealing with climate change.
I expect lots of commenters here will disagree with one or more of these, so feel free to have your say. Please avoid personal attacks (or me or each other), suggestions that only a stupid person would advance the position you want to criticise and so on.
fn1. Or, in the case of young people, not to start.
John Quiggin 
Oh – I did not realise there were different sorts of algae methods, sorry. I’ll try to find a report on the sort you mean.
A list of the main way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:
1. Stop buring coal.
2. Stop burning natural gas.
3. Stop burning oil.
4. Improve land use practices.
The two main ways these can be achieved are:
1. Substitution
2. Improved efficiency
Substitution includes using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.
Improved efficiency includes such things as insulation and electrification of transport.
If humanity were to cut net greenhouse gas emissions by 80% today CO2 levels in the atmosphere would start to fall somewhat rapidly as it was absorbed by the upper ocean waters but this would slow as concentrations equalised. Then the process would proceed slowly as deep water mixed with surface water. On a human timescale CO2 levels would appear to stabilise as natural sinks reach equilbrium.
To reduce the danger from global warming humans can reduce net emissions to zero or go carbon negative. To achieve this at least some greenhouse gas would need to be removed from the atmosphere and sequested. As this is more expensive than improved efficieny or substituton of fossil fuels it will have a small and perhaps insignificant role to play in the early stages of reducing emissions. A short and by no means exhaustive list of methods for removing CO2 from the atmosphere is:
1. Soil admendment with biochar. (Biochar is simply char or charcoal.)
2. Non soil admendment sequestion of biochar.
3. Deep ocean, cold lake, or other sequestion of agricultural biomass.
4. Reforrestation and afforestation.
5. Carbon capture and sequestion from biomass and biogass power plants.
6. Carbon capture and sequestion from cement making.
7. The use of sodium hydroxide, whether in “artifical trees” or not.
8. The pumping of low CO2 concentration water from ocean depths to the surface.
9. Extraction and crushing of olivine minerals.
10. Creating gravel in high rainfall areas or placing rock dust in oceans.
11. Use of carbon dioxide absorbing polymers combined with sequestion.
12. Growth of algae or synthetic lifeforms in open oceans, polymer bags, ponds or other locations, presumably with some form of sequestion.
13. Capture and sequestion of CO2 from fermentation.
14. Sequestion of CO2 as ash produced in biomass power plants.
It is not known which of these methods or others will be “best” under given circumstances. No one method may be best. Some methods are currently much more practical than others. With a carbon price people will have an incentive to attempt different methods and bring down their costs. There is no need to know which method is best in advance. If we knew which one was best we could just say, “Yo, use number seven!” But we don’t currently have that information. This is one of the major strengths of using a carbon price to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
And just to make things clear I will reiterate that it is currently much cheaper to substitute fossil fuels or improve efficiency than to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it on any large scale. This will only be done on a large scale when the carbon price is high enough to greatly reduce emissions. This is a point that human beings in general appear to have difficulty grasping.
@Ronald Brak
Yes, but as you note there would be a process of equilibration between these two major sinks. Importantly though, CO2 in the upper clines of the ocean works much like CO2 in the atmosphere in response to insolation and so SSTs would continue to rise and underpin global temperature rises.
Yes, that’s very likely to be true, but that’s beside the point. Just as preventing disease (if you can) is almost always cheaper and better value than curing it, so too not creating the problem (or continuing to compound it as here) is far cheaper than effecting remedies and has far better pay back (because the incidental and more subtle harms are likewise foreclosed) but if you want to get the patient back to health (in this case the life-giving ecosystem) then you have no good alternative to spend whatever it costs to effect a remedy.
This is really the argument between the ‘low hanguing fruit’ and going figuratively further up the tree. The higher you climb, the more energy you have to expend and the more risky the enterprise but if you simply must have what is at the top of the tree, then it’s moot. That’s what it costs.
It’s important to realise that delay — any delay — creates harms that are not remediable at any cost. You cannot restore biodiversity to what it was before human activity trashed the place. You very probably cannot save the WAIS and avoid the inundation of low lying coastal cities in the 22nd and 23rd century and we may not be able to save the GIS either — and certainly not restore it to what it was in 1880.
The sooner we get concentrations in the atmosphere falling — the less damage we do. It’s a mightily destructive vehicle we have in motion and while it remains in motion, it’s causing harm. We have to stop it and then carefully but swiftly back it up.
For those interested in such things, there’s quite an interesting summary of the movement of carbon between the various sinks and the equilibration process here:
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/greenhouse/sinks.html
It’s not cheery reading.
“ anti-science nonsense on climate change”
Using the term ‘anti-science in the contemporary sense indicates a general ignorance of what science is. Anti-science predates the acceptance of the scientific method and is therefore not relevant to the debate on the scientific merits of the AGW/CC theory.
It is understandable you are “not interested in debating this stuff” because there is strong evidence that the AGW/CC theory could be considered a pseudo-science. The mere fact that your theory has morphed from Anthological Global Warming into Climate Change enhances the argument that AGW/CC is a pseudo-science.
If you want people to accept your so called climate ‘science’ you first need demonstrate that you understand what science is.
Contemporary “science” as defined by Popper is to distinguish between science and pseudo-science.
The criterion of the “scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”
Popper outlines the parameter of the concept here;
1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of “corroborating evidence.”)
7.Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hocin such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a “conventionalist twist” or a “conventionalist stratagem.”)
“Testability is falsifiability” and there is not much if any testability in Climate Science. That does not mean that Climate Change is not happening, because as Popper states, science often errs, and that pseudoscience may happen to stumble on the truth, so the pseudoscience of Climate Change might be right.
It is understandable that a climate believer would not want to publish this post, as their eyes are thus open and they confirmed instances of climate science everywhere: the world is full of verifications of the climate theory. That is why you say the debate is over.
Link to Poppers criteria;
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html#note3
@John Quiggin
This hasn’t been a very satisfactory thread because it hasn’t addressed the initial question (‘how to get right-wingers to accept climate science’). Instead people have been talking about various aspects of climate change response, and an indeterminate number of denialists trolls have been trolling like it was 2009 (with no more up to date arguments) and have been far too indulgently received.
IMHO we need to say to right-wingers that nothing in conservatism tells you to ignore good advice and refuse to face upcoming challenges. Of course plenty of bad conservative leaders have done just this, Baldwin and Halifax in the UK in the 1930s appeasing Hitler, for example. And later on the eve of WW2 Menzies was selling iron to Nazi Germany. He was probably thinking and saying that we couldn’t risk the prosperity of Australia because of alarmist fears, that the dangers of Nazism were overrated, and we should simply adapt (whilst doing nothing to adapt). On the other hand Churchill was busy telling the Conservative Party and others in the UK not to appease, to take the dangers of Nazism seriously. Who came out of all this better?
I think you will find that Menzies was selling iron to the Japanese. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative!
@Megan
Because, allegedly, car and aeroplane emissions are among the agents contributing to climate change. As I said, actions speak louder than words. If you aren’t prepared to forego them yourself, don’t expect anyone else to.
Either put your money where your mouth is or accept that you will only ever be a vocal and taxpayer-subsidised minority. The choice is yours.
@john
Not merely “allegedly” but actually, as a matter of physics …
Most of us aren’t saying people ought to forego them. Most of us favour pricing the externalities aptly. And those who are saying that others should forego them are doing so. Yet whether we do or we don’t the physics is the same.
Actually, most of us are doing that one way or another. Your reference to vocal taxpayer subsidised minorities really ought to be addressed to the polluters, their spivs and PR agents and the Murdoch Press. The taxes of people like me are being sent in their direction.
It’s a lovely thought, but sadly, not the case.
@john
That still isn’t making any sense, john.
Say someone, eg John Quiggin, pledged not to fly or drive for 5 years and carried that out.
You are saying that would “help” you to “believe” in climate change?
You aren’t saying that would “convince” you that climate change is real, or serious, or human caused, or convince you of anything else about it. It wouldn’t “prove” anything that would make you accept the science on the subject.
How much would it “help”? Do you see my point? In other words, I’m guessing that nothing would convince you to accept a state of reality that you refuse to accept.
Do you accept that you are going to die? If so, why do you accept that?
You’ll have to explain how advocates for globally reducing emissions of GHGs are a “vocal and taxpayer-subsidized minority” – the carbon intensive industries (e.g. $5 billion annual subsidies) are definitely vocal and taxpayer-subsidized, but the rest of us don’t fit that description.
> If you aren’t prepared to forego them yourself, don’t expect anyone else to.
Sigh. Seriously, if you don’t understand why people disagree with you you’re almost certainly wrong.
Anyway, no, because travel is communication, communication requires coordination and problems arising out of coordination require coordinated action to fix. Individual uncoordinated action doesn’t work.
In fact, it makes things worse, because not only does “I won’t engage in problematic standard practice” not actually fix the problematic standard practice, but the extra effort you have to put into workarounds mean you’ve got less effort you can put into fixing-the-problem.
“I’ll prioritise minimising my own personal contribution at the cost of doing less about contributions over all” is not the pathway to lowest contributions, you see. Obvious once it’s put in that form, perhaps.
Collin Street,
It is not an either/or decision : you can try lowering your ghg emissions and also learn about what needs to happen overall and in your local area and also try to get more people on board the commitment that we need significant changes
@Fran Barlow
Ken Caldeira (runs the ecology lab at Stanford) estimates that a doubling of C02 would yield a 70% increase in plant growth….an obvious boom for agriculture. Mother Earth is filled with these built in control systems which move it back to homeostasis. Sure you can build a theoretical argument that any one of these has no effect in pulling us back, but none of them are factored into the models that predict disaster. And sure, eventually we can overwhelm the planet’s carrying capacity, but it certainly isn’t going to happen by increasing CO2 levels from .04 of 1% of the atmosphere to .07 of 1%.
I think John is right about actions speaking louder than words for right wing people; all the research and experience of discussing things with them shows that they do not understand ‘the other’, but the real problem is that they do not understand themselves or they assume that they are the default human and the way they behave is natural and normal.
It is not clear why right wingers choose not to attempt the cognitive exercise of understanding the many ways humans can be ‘natural’. Maybe it is not a choice that they can make – perhaps they just do not have the cognitive ability.
But if this is the case, it is the result of an inadequate socialisation process during their upbringing because given an adequate social environment and appropriate opportunities to learn how to behave well and a reason to want to behave well, there would be very few humans who cannot be ‘raised up’ to be useful members of their society.
So, it does seem to be the case that they judge people and the truth value of their words by their external behaviour and the rich and powerful could hide their bad behaviour from us until recently and so people have believed that they did earn their position through hard work and by being more intelligent.
But it seems to me this is changing rapidly and all the evidence we have now that our leaders are not really ‘lifters’, but are really just ‘money-grubbing opportunists’ seems to be working to change attitudes rapidly about some things, and there are right wingers I know who are now listening to what I have to say about the psychology of the rich and why they do what they do.
I think the more ‘normal’ or less ‘ideologically compromised’ of the right wingers – that I talk to anyway – have already accepted that climate change is man-made and is happening but do not have the ‘character’ – backbone? balls? – to admit it out loud.
They need some way to save ‘face’ when they come out, and I think that this is happening as the real lack of ability of those who are supposed to be the lifters is exposed through the small stories that illustrate clearly how not deserving these people are of their riches and the ordinary right wingers can use this evidence to question the truth of their current beliefs.
The story of the way Hockey created some of his wealth through buying a property in Canberra does resonate with my right wing neighbours I use these clear indications of a lack of decency in the behaviour of our so-called betters, as a way of challenging all the unexamined beliefs they have about Capitalism.
@John Quiggin
There are also a lot of people who are educated in science, and have never set foot in a church, who can objectively see the serious flaws in Darwinism. And as far as science, if we were really to have a serious discussion about evolution, it would be best if you were well versed in many disciplines….molecular biology, dendrochronology, palentology, geology, anthropology, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, oceanography, zoology, and cosmogony. It would be easy to have the wool pulled over your eyes by someone who was well versed in just one of these disciplines, but had no clue about any of the others.
@Collin Street
Perhaps I can make my point clearer by putting it like this.
If somebody says ‘Burning coal and oil increases the temperature of the planet’ and somebody else responds ‘What makes you think that?’ — that is a sensible response.
If somebody says ‘Burning coal and oil increases the temperature of the planet’ and somebody else responds ‘Who are you to say? who agrees, and who disagrees, and what makes the people who agree better than the people who disagree?’ — that is not a sensible response; it is a fool’s response.
(Those responses are, respectively, a sensible response and a fool’s response to almost any assertion; substitute, for example, ‘Nat’s a sure bet to be elected President’ or ‘The jury is never going to agree’.)
@Jack King
There are a lot of people who are educated in science and who think they can objectively see serious flaws in Darwinism and who are wrong about that. If you think there are serious flaws in Darwinism, and you think that’s relevant to this discussion, why are you not mentioning what those flaws are?
@Jack King
What does Ken Caldeira say about the growth in parasitic small fauna and micro-organisms under conditions of plant stress and elevated temperature?
There’s no free lunch here. It’s quite a costly one, eating the future.
@Jack King
“And sure, eventually we can overwhelm the planet’s carrying capacity, but it certainly isn’t going to happen by increasing CO2 levels from .04 of 1% of the atmosphere to .07 of 1%.”
That is actually a 75% increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The rise in concentration from .04 of 1% of the atmosphere to .07 of 1% is a rise of 75%. If the gas in question, CO2, is an active greenhouse gas even at concentrations of .04 of 1% (and it is) then a 75% rise to .07 of 1% is certainly going to be significant. The empirical record of global warming matching the CO2 rise proves the case. This is particularly so now that the “missing heat” that the deniers refer to has actually been found by measuring deep ocean temperatures.
Your statement is akin to saying of a dangerous and powerful poison (say ricin); “The amount is miniscule therefore it can’t hurt me. Even if the amount were increased by 75% it would still be harmless.” This is not to say that CO2 is a poison at the above concentrations for it is not. Rather it is to point out that the action of a compound can be powerful at low concentrations in a system. The action of CO2 in the atmosphere (for the purposes under discussion) is as a greenhouse gas.
“Nitrogen, oxygen and argon together make up close to 100 percent of the atmosphere. But all three are invisible to incoming “short-wave” radiation from the sun and outgoing “long-wave” radiation from the Earth’s surface. They play no role in regulating the planet’s atmospheric temperature. But carbon dioxide and other trace gases in the atmosphere do absorb the outgoing long-wave radiation. So while their concentrations are miniscule, their effect is anything but (miniscule)…” – Scientific American.
It is clear you have little knowledge of science and less of logic. Otherwise you would not be making such simplistic and preposterously inaccurate statements.
In case Jack King (a sockpuppet I wonder?) wants to twist the water vapour issue. Climate Change sceptics want to invoke Fact 1 below but they ignore or don’t know about Fact 2.
Fact 1: Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas.
Fact 2: The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere exists in direct relation to the temperature. If you increase the temperature, more water evaporates and becomes vapor, and vice versa. So when something else causes a temperature increase (such as extra CO2 from fossil fuels), more water evaporates. Then, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this additional water vapor causes the temperature to go up even further—a positive feedback.
These facts are excerpts from the SkeptikalScience website.
Ikon
” The empirical record of global warming matching the CO2 rise proves the case. This is particularly so now that the “missing heat” that the deniers refer to has actually been found by measuring deep ocean temperatures.”
You might want to verify these two statements.They contradict each other, are illogical and don’t seem physically possible.
How can warm water be in the deep oceans beneath colder water?
@chrisl
You don’t read carefully do you? I wrote “the “missing heat” that the deniers refer to has actually been found by measuring deep ocean temperatures.”
Did I write “The deep oceans are warmer than the shallow waters?” or “The deep oceans are less dense than shallow waters? No! But in terms of the various possibilities:-
1. It is possible for the deep oceans and shallow waters to both become warmer.
2. It is possible for the deep oceans to become warmer than before but still not warmer than the shallow waters.
3. It is possible for saltier surface waters to be denser than ocean average as well as colder waters being denser than ocean average (but see point 4).
4. Water is actually densest at 4 degrees C so water below 4 degrees C becomes less dense again. And water ice as you must know is less dense than any liquid water.
5. It is possible for oceans currents to cause mixing and complicate the picture.
“Subsurface ocean warming explains why global average air temperatures have flatlined since 1999, despite greenhouse gases trapping more solar heat at the Earth’s surface.”
“The results show that a slow-moving current in the Atlantic, which carries heat between the two poles, sped up earlier this century to draw heat down almost a mile (1,500 meters). ”
“There are recurrent cycles that are salinity-driven that can store heat deep in the Atlantic and Southern oceans,” – From University of Washington site.
The empirical reality investigated and explained by scientific method is always more complicated than these ridiculous simplistic claims and carpings by science deniers and illiterates.
@chrisl
To the Japanese? oh well, that’s alright then, he was obviously a great conservative and friend of business.
Jack King,
Regarding plant growth
there will be extra droughts and changing weather patterns etc that are not good for plant growth, or benefits some plants over others – thus upsetting ecological balances. And also changing temperatures can make trees not be overall storers of carbon but emitters:
“Global warming could cut the rate at which trees in tropical rainforests grow by as much as half, according to more than two decades’ worth of data from forests in Panama and Malaysia. The effect — so far largely overlooked by climate modellers — could severely erode or even remove the ability of tropical rainforests to remove carbon dioxide from the air as they grow.
…
Some scientists and environmentalists have suggested that, given the way carbon dioxide spurs plant growth, tropical forests could in time come to act as a sink, offsetting some of the man-made carbon dioxide build-up.
That optimism will have to be reassessed, though, if photosynthesis becomes less productive in the tropics. The trends measured by Feeley suggest that entire tropical regions might become net emitters of carbon dioxide, rather than storage vessels for it. “The Amazon basin as a whole could become a carbon source,” Feeley says.”
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070806/full/news070806-13.html
Chris, it isn’t necessary for deep ocean to be warmer than that above it for it to have warmed, but warmer water can and does get forced and held below cooler water. The principle mechanism that pushes warm water deep into the oceans is called Ekman pumping (via ocean gyres), and my understanding is that, at least temporarily, until sufficient mixing occurs, that water will be significantly warmer than the water it displaces.
Rob Painting at skepticalscience
Water salinity also plays a role in trapping warmer water below cooler water.
But surely not for 17 years Ken?
Chris, most of that heat will stay down there for a lot longer than that. Also, during the past 17 years the top 700m of the ocean warmed more than the deep ocean and when conditions are such that they keep on pumping warm surface water deep into the ocean the heat in the deep ocean continues to accumulate.
I think it’s unfortunate that surface air temperatures are considered the defining shorthand measure of global warming rather than a more fundamental measure of change like global heat content, as it can appear that every up is an acceleration of underlying warming,and every down a cessation or reversal – even whilst global heat content continues to rise on a much less variable basis.
Surface air temperatures are primarily a consequence of sea surface temperatures, and ocean oscillations like ENSO, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic Oscillation etc greatly effect sea surface temperatures year to year and decade to decade independent of the greenhouse effect. They also effect ocean heat content year to year, but a lot less so because oceans are such a huge heat store. Just one or two more el Nino’s than la Nina’s or vice versa over a period as short as 17 years will skew a surface temperature trend – one reason why a period that short is considered inadequate for determining a real trend, even without looking at why a record warmest year is picked as a start point, rather than a year nearer to average. When, as is actually the case, there were more el Nino’s near the beginning of that period than end, the question should really be why hasn’t the temperature dropped significantly over that period?
When global warming isn’t happening, surface air temperatures go up and down, up and down. Going up and not coming down is what warming should be expected to look like.
@Jack King
@chrisl
The comments from rightwingers illustrate the initial contention of the OP. There is no way to convince these people of the validity of evolution, or climate science, or anything they don’t want to believe. Commenters are welcome to engage if they want, but I predict with very high confidence they will be wasting their time.
Thanks for your comment Ken. I don’t think you have wasted your time.
@John Quiggin
We have 4.5 pages of comments which back up your prediction, sadly.
@John Quiggin
It very often is a waste of time, because the argumentation from the right is driven by cultural or aesthetic preference — by what people would prefer to be true, both about the science and about the policy. That’s why so often the attacks on climate science and policy taking it into account attempt to point to ‘hypocrisy’ in lifestyle choices by those advocating climate policy and why beliefs about the world’s ideal cultural options seem so germane to them in working out what to make of the science.
As Ken and a few of us here have tried to point out, the underlying science is astonishingly complex and arcane. Even as narrow a thing as how CO2 moves between the various sinks, and the figurative rippples these movements create in the wider ecosystem are hard for non-scientists like me to get our heads around. The temptation to simplify in ways that make the subject matter cognitively manageable is very strong and if there’s a cultural imperative, stronger yet.
While there is little doubt in my mind that amongst the RW trolls on this matter are people quite consciously spreading disinformation in the service of their preferred political or social paradigm and/or the fossil HC business, it does occur to me that at least some of them are doing cognitive dissonance. After all, who really wants to process the idea that they and arguably their parents and grandparents are participants in ruining the the world into which their descendants are going to live? Who wouldn’t prefer to think that it was all much ado about nothing rather than imagine places like New York, Sydney and Florida sinking under the waves and swingeing droughts bringing ruin to whole swathes of humanity?
These are deeply troubling — existentially troubling — and the thought that there is nothing, or at best, not very much we can do about them is understandably something many would prefer not to have at the front of their minds. Thoughts like that are corrosive and ultimately debilitating. For rightwingers, the idea of everyone having to set aside their petty interests and all work as a team to avoid disaster, without any kind of guarantee that we could win, and to do so in ways that may trample over all manner of elite property rights is a lot for them to take on board.
This is the place to which I generally move my conversations with the average rightwinger in the street. What is it that you want for your children, and hopefully, theirs? How would you like your generation to be remembered? Would you prefer the world to be better, about the same or worse than the world you inherited? If the world is worse, won’t the sacrifices you say you’ve already made for your children be of limited value, and perhaps even moot?
In my experience that conversation tends to work the best in bringing the right around to accepting the science as the most secure foundation for policy in this area.
Those are all really good points Fran
@chrisl
I am sure Ken appreciates your thanks and we all appreciated the brevity of your comment – I know I tend to be too verbose and I am very remiss in editing my comments so I am not criticising you at all – but would it be possible for you to explain in more detail why Ken was not wasting his time replying to you?
It would be useful for all of us here who are interested in understanding how right wingers do go about making up their minds if you could give us some insights into what it was that Ken said or didn’t say that you found to be thankful for.
Thank you for your brief question Julie. Firstly I wouldn’t consider myself a right winger , or a creationist or a flat earther. It’s just the labels people like to throw around to avoid answering difficult questions. The topic of this post was ” How do we convince rightwingers to accept climate science” Up thread I was called a scientific illiterate and a denialist by Icon. I dont think that is going to convince anybody!
Ken on the other hand gave a considered explanation on what has happened to the missing heat and why the surface air temperature has flat-lined for the last 17 years.It was a plausible explanation, I am not entirely convinced, but it has given me something to think about.
So I thanked him.
Thanks, chrisl but it isn’t really important what label you want to give yourself, it is what you say that tells me more than how you see yourself and what you have said here leads me to assume perhaps unfairly that you are just an ordinary garden variety right winger.
I do understand completely why Ikon called you such awful names and I think you need to expand your mind and consider the context in which you were treated so badly. The context being that this blog is not aimed at naive waverers or whatever label you would like people to use so that they adequately characterise your individualist approach to the problem you have accepting the science of climate change.
Can I ask if you understand why you react so negatively to being called ‘names’? You know about the right to be a bigot and freedom and so forth.
Also, I would be happy to be called scientifically illiterate if I asked the naive and ignorant questions that you ask here – why do you not do some research and try and understand what the scientific consensus is before you engage in a discussion? Did you not learn that this is the polite and the right thing to do when you were growing up?
So I think you are being a whiney little boy with this complaint.
And if you are refusing to accept that there is a scientific consensus that man-made climate change is happening and needs to be stopped as quickly as possible, then you are a denier. So why do these labels upset you so much?
Is that rational or does it just feel good to be ‘offended’ and thereby avoid the cognitive dissonance that you feel when you do reason about this problem, rather than react emotionally?
And one more question. Is it a choice you make to not examine your emotive response and be suspicious of that feeling of irritation and anger that rises up when you feel that people and things are not fair to you?
Choices are so complex are they not? Working out when we are making a choice or just reacting, is not as easy as some people seem to think.
@chrisl
I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on the claim made in the OP. There are plenty of resources available to give you the kind of information you need, most obviously the reports of the IPCC (you want Working Group I, the Scientific Basis).
If reading these reports and comparing them to the information available from “sceptical” blog sites convinces you to change your mind, please do advise us, either on this thread or on one of the regular open threads. Any replicable method of presenting the overwhelming evidence on this issue to those on the political right (including those, like you, who don’t like the term “right winger”) would be immensely valuable.
Are you for real Julie? You seem to be drifting….
I think “right winger” is a difficult term. In America I would be a left winger, in Europe I would be a right winger and in Australia something in between. I think most Liberal Party policies could easily fit within the Democratic Party as evidenced by Medicare and the PBS
I think you often conflate the Liberals and The Republicans which is a mistake.
As for prognostications, wasn’t there a prediction you made about Liberal Governments in power,
and numbers thereof?
And before I go on to read the IPCC reports, what would it take for you to change your mind?
http://trib.al/31TmfOq
On this topic but more broadly. Some of the account is overly reductive, but it’s an interesting read.
@Fran Barlow
Fran….it is very easy to put a negative spin about literally anything. The prophets-of-doom do it all the time. The thrust of my argument is that we should not bet the house on very flawed computer models.
@ZM
Pure speculation as is attested to by words like “could”, “might”, “should”, “Some have suggested”, etc etc. We simply cannot set in concrete long-term policies which may seriously disrupt global economies. The biggest carbon emitters are the massive economies like China, India, and Brazil. They are on an upward growth curve that is lifting millions out of poverty. You are not going to be able to convince them to ratchet back. But give it a shot anyway. Good luck.
@chrisl
As I point out here, the prediction was actually about a Liberal-National merger. But, I was a little too cute for my own good.
https://johnquiggin.com/2012/03/26/perils-of-prediction/
On what would it take for me to change my mind, a return to the global average temperatures prevailing a century ago would convince me that the observed global warming of the last 50 years or so was merely a natural fluctuation. That was essentially what the “sceptics” were predicting in 1990, not that many of them have changed their minds as a result of being proved wrong.
What nonsense Jack King! Our parliament and others are being most derelict indeed in having an economic system that can only ruin the environment and is not equipped to fix all the damage. It is very irresponsible and wicked of them, and I hope they have a great trouble sleeping at night.
Thank you for wishing good luck, I am dubious about you being sincere about it though.
Naomi Klein’s new book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate”, is out next week.
Obviously I haven’t read it yet, but the premise suggested by the title certainly chimes with so many of our problems from illegal wars of aggression aimed at stealing resources, loss of democracy, environmental destruction to grotesque inequality.
When it is out there will be the usual false balance rolled out as a “debate” about the issues raised and then we’ll all be expected to get back to watching the footy or the Melbourne Cup or shopping for christmas etc…
@Jack King
Indeed. You and the denier cohort more generally repeatedly attest to that.
Petitio principii to begin with. To date, nobody has shown that any flawed computer models (I have to laugh at this phrase every time I read it — it’s the joke that keeps being funny) are being used to support claims about the provenance of the current industrial era climate anomaly in human activity. All models are imprecise — that is the nature of models — of necessity they are simplifications of much more complex processes. Yet the models furnish us with an excellent picture of what has occurred that is corroborated in the observable world.
I note too that in seeking to suggest that things might not be so bad in the future under elevated CO2 you sought to advance an alternative model — one far simpler and far less useful — than those which you by implication now wish to deride. If you wish to say ‘she’ll be right mate, no worries’ you are going to have to advance a more accurate model of the climate system than those available and which supports a benign interpretation of a high CO2 atmosphere’s impact on ecosystem services. There is no such model, so your attack on existing models amounts to ignorant special pleading for business as usual policies.
The reality is that you are the one here proposing to bet the house on radically flawed claims. You are willing to risk the ecosystem services that authored the only known life in the universe by persisting with a radical experiment in CO2 augmentation on the basis of … no science at all. Yours is a faith-based argument — ‘she’ll be right’.
There’s no chance of that being the case at all. Conversely, if our current trajectory falls short of proving catastrophic, our efforts will not have been in vain. Your assertions are plainly the rankest humbug imaginable.
@Fran Barlow
They are everywhere. Quiggins himself talks about flawed econometric models in “Zombie Economics”. But here is one more to the point. In her book “Limits To Growth”, Donnella Meadows claims that there would be a global economic collapse by now because we would have run out of fossil fuels, and policy makers had damn well better plan for it because the sky is falling. She based her thesis on a economics dynamics model by MIT’s Jay Forrester. GONG! Thank god the policy makers ignored her
Jack King,
I think you mayn’t have read Limits to Growth?
The claim you are stating is not the books claim – the book has scenarios. Dr Graham turner from the CSIRO and Melbourne Uni a few years ago looked into how the Limits to Growth scenarios compared with the historical reality since the book was published in 1972 . He found that history had followed the ‘standard run’ scenario.
His research paper on it is available as a pdf from the CSIRO website – you can read it there 🙂
@ZM
Not only have I read the book, but I’ve had course work on Forrester’s modeling. The primary variables he used were population growth, agricultural output, natural resource reserves, industrial production, and pollution (I may be missing a few…it was decades ago). When you fired the model off, you would see trend lines rising up and up, until around the first decade of the 21st century, when suddenly the entire system would collapse.
As far as “Graham turner”, Forrester’s trend lines did take more optimistic paths provided policy makers implemented recommended changes. Since I’ve never heard of the guy, I must assume that Mr. turner is using Forrester’s optimistic trend lines. Problem is that globally no policies have been changed. The model clearly does not serve as a crystal ball. This is true of all models. To make drastic policy decisions based on models of what might happen could bring about a worse situation than what the model predicts.
Graham Turner’s work i mentioned is here , it says collapse in LtG standard run business as usual is mid-way through 21st c – not at the start
Click to access SEEDPaper19_CSE_publication%20Standard.pdf
“In 1972, the Club of Rome’s infamous report The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) presented some challenging scenarios for global sustainability, based on a system dynamics computer model to simulate the interactions of five global economic subsystems, namely: population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources.
Contrary to popular belief, The Limits to Growth scenarios by the team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th Century.
This paper focuses on a comparison of recently collated historical data for 1970–2000 with scenarios presented in The Limits to Growth. The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the “standard run” scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century. The data does not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies. The results indicate the particular importance of understanding and controlling global pollution.”
@J-D
Sure. Let’s start with the Cambrian Explosion and see how far we get. In a geological millisecond all the phyla we have today suddenly appeared in the fossil record in the early Cambrian period. The pre-Cambrian fauna showed no evidence leading up to this event. Complex metazoans with respiratory systems, nervous systems, digestive systems excretory systems, reproductive systems…..there have been attempts to explain it….saltation, genetic drift, macro mutations, punctuated equalibrium, but none of them can explain even the sudden formation of a new body part, let alone an entirely new body plan. At any rate, a lot of very educated people with letters after there name have tried to explain it, and have failed, but if you think you can, I’m all ears.