painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
LoL... while very handy for your home tank, I'm not sure that's practical on a global scale.
wa:do
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Global Warming | Fact or Fiction?
- Thread starter Trey of Diamonds
- Start date
wa:do
shawn001
Well-Known Member
How do you know what they do if you don't watch them? Its like saying the book is bad and never reading it.
"would I bother to watch/read a dumbed down version"
You don't get it, because you have never watched them. To say they are dumbed down version is totally wrong and ignorant. Many scientist watch NOVA. There are also timeline issues here and huge bodies of research. Those dumb down versions are winning emmies and peabody awards and more.
" don't remember any research paper I've read which cites Nova or Frontline."
No you read later about the scientists work in the shows who do the research and then put it in the research papers and then the shows. So yes you are reading scientific work in those journals from the scientist on the shows, only on the shows they show you the actual work they did.
On Nova you see them doing the actual field work and explaning that field work while they do it, which is not something you get from research papers. In research papers you don't get to see the scientists doing the field work before they pulish and how they came to the conclusion of their work and its usally many of them working together.
Obviously you have never watch any of them, to know what they are about. They have information you won't learn reading the research papers.
This came out today
NASA Report: Greenhouse Gases, Not Sun, Driving Warming
NASA Report: Greenhouse Gases, Not Sun, Driving Warming - Yahoo! News
No it isn't. I've never read teen magazine either, nor have I ever watched Jersey Shore. I still know that I don't go to them for science.
Really? To understand most of the research in climate science requires a knowledge of multivariate statistics, advanced calculus, physics, and chemistry. The models of climate systems and subsystems consist of multiple differential equations. The temperature data sets are put together using advanced statistical techniques. Even with relatively simple logarithmic models or "population models" and pearsons r rather than multivariate regression or correlation analysis, most people don't have the background. I know that Nova and Frontline are designed for the average individual. The average individual doesn't have the necessary background to understand the technical aspects of the research.
First, what are you basing this on?
Second, what do they watch it for? I used to watch the History channel just because of how often they distorted the truth to for entertainment.
Those are awards for media outlets.
You are simply wrong. I watched NOVAs lightning video because a friend wanted to. I watched clips from NOVA as an undergrad. The simple truth is that there are sources designed for people without the technical background in the subject area (which is true for everyone for most subjects), and then there the the publications designed for specialists. The former can at best approximate the latter through simplification and generalization.
No you get something better. A methods section that explains (or should) how they collected the data and analyzed it.
And NOVA leaves out the important details because stuff like this-
is stuff most people can't understand because they don't have the background.
work in progress
Well-Known Member
Thanks! It makes an interesting read, although the conclusions of the study are not far off of ones that I have been referring to lately.The following graph is from a 2005 paper published in the journal Geology. You can find the paper here. I did a google image search to find a picture of the graph:
The paper found a strong connection (albeit with a lag) between CO2 and temperature. And note that the highest point on the graph is, as we would expect, in the AGW period. However, the graph trends downward at the end, which we would not expect. Also, granted the connection between CO2 and temperature found by the authors (and others before and since), what caused the fluctuations before? Probably oceanic processes. The issue is that according to this and other papers, we've seen comparable rises in CO2 in the past. Also, some research indicades we've seen comparable warming in the past which has little or nothing to do with CO2 or other GHGs. In a paper published in 2004 in the journal Quartenary Research (you can find the paper here, the research team found rapid climate changes were frequent in the Holocene but the role of CO2 and CH4 was "negligable." Likewise, a new proxy data set was published in the Swiss journal Geografiska Annaler (you can find it here) in 2010. The data suggest first that the highest temperatures were during not just the AGW period but also from c. 800-1300. Moreover, the warmest century was the 2nd century:
Also of note is that, contrary to the first paper I linked to, in this paper the warm periods prior to the AGW trend are thought to be related to solar phenomena.
This study by a UCLA group, done in 2009 and which I have been referencing so much I might start including it in my signature line, contends that their new system of analysis of paleoclimate data is more accurate than past methods, and the only one that correlates accurately with the ice core data results of the last 800,000 years. The ScienceDaily article says that the research is published in the online edition of the journal - Science...if you have that subscription:
Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180 and 300 parts per million over the last 800,000 years until recent decades, said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. It has been known that modern-day levels of carbon dioxide are unprecedented over the last 800,000 years, but the finding that modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years is new.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the carbon dioxide level was about 280 parts per million, Tripati said. That figure had changed very little over the previous 1,000 years. But since the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide level has been rising and is likely to soar unless action is taken to reverse the trend, Tripati said.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the carbon dioxide level was about 280 parts per million, Tripati said. That figure had changed very little over the previous 1,000 years. But since the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide level has been rising and is likely to soar unless action is taken to reverse the trend, Tripati said.
To resolve these discrepancies and to corroborate the concept that centennial-scale CO2 variations are involved in late Holocene climate change, stomatal frequency analysis (Woodward, 1987; Royer, 2001) of tree leaves buried in peat and lake deposits provides an alternative method for detecting and quantifying short-term CO2 fluctuations.
In the introduction: Stomatal data increasingly substantiate a much more dynamic Holocene CO2 evolution than suggested by ice-core data.
Coupled to centennial-scale cooling events, CO2 changes of 2050 ppmv occur synchronously in records from Europe and North America (Wagner et al., 2004).
So far the available stomatal and ice-core records over the last millennium have insufficient temporal resolution and chronological inaccuracies, and have not provided a picture of CO2 dynamics that can be correlated with available high-resolution proxy temperature records
(Rundgren and Beerling, 1999; Gerber et al., 2003).
The discrepancies between the ice-core and stomatal reconstructions may partially be explained by varying age distributions of the air in the bubbles because of the enclosure time in the firn-ice transition zone.
Coupled to centennial-scale cooling events, CO2 changes of 2050 ppmv occur synchronously in records from Europe and North America (Wagner et al., 2004).
So far the available stomatal and ice-core records over the last millennium have insufficient temporal resolution and chronological inaccuracies, and have not provided a picture of CO2 dynamics that can be correlated with available high-resolution proxy temperature records
(Rundgren and Beerling, 1999; Gerber et al., 2003).
The discrepancies between the ice-core and stomatal reconstructions may partially be explained by varying age distributions of the air in the bubbles because of the enclosure time in the firn-ice transition zone.
That's terrific. I'm glad that a simplified version of a complex problem which even mainstream AGW proponents don't agree on was solved today.
Except that headlines like this (and the opposite) have appeared before. And then a paper is published in which the author or authors find(s) that the sun's role is underestimated, and it is responsible for most of the warming.
Once again you continue to link to news and ignore the scientific research. I asked you to stop doing this if you wanted to have a conversation. I asked you to discuss the science. You claimed you had, but when I asked you to point to a post where you wrote an extended explanation or account of the scientific research in your own words, you didn't. Why? You haven't. You haven't provided a link to, or described in your own words, the results of any research paper. Nor have you addressed at all any of the technical aspects of climate science. What you have done is link to website after website, from blogs to press-releases, and copied a lot of text.
If your understanding of climate science is limited to stuff that cuts out all the complexity and your research has all been one-sided than of course you are going to view AGW as you do. What I tried to show you is that this approach misses most of the actual science. But rather than try to educate yourself, either by reading actual research articles or even some extended non-academic/technical explanations written by so-called "denier" scientists which detail their views, you continue to keep going to the same one-sided, neatly summarized, and vastly oversimplified sources.
work in progress
Well-Known Member
Yeah, me included! That looks like the equation I seen in an episode of The Big Bang Theory awhile back and need a translator for. And that is why the general public has to go with the consensus of expert opinion regarding such technical matters.And NOVA leaves out the important details because stuff like this-
is stuff most people can't understand because they don't have the background.
And, there is no valid reason why scientists and science educators cannot explain the science in ways that the rest of us can understand, especially when it is regarding scientific issues that need to be understood for the process of creating public policy.
I don't just take the opinion of a mathematician who can solve those equations easily because all it takes is an engineer's mind to do so; and an engineer is not necessarily able to arrive at the proper conclusions from the technical research. That takes an awareness and a sense of vision that many scientists today do not have; because they are overly specialized and spend little time considering the wider implications of their research. And that is my biggest criticism of the denier climatologists -- lack of vision, and a poorly thought out or considered philosophical approach for applying their conclusions for advice in public policy. i.e. - if the point is that there are a lot of unknowns and noise in the climate data results collected, why are you going with the suggestion to maintain the status quo? Wouldn't the possibility of a crisis motivate a proactive response, considering the scope and scale of disaster if global warming is occurring?
I do. Most of the journals I have access to are through databases, which means sometime it won't have the most recent year, sometimes it will only go back a few decades (or less), etc. However, I have access to Science directly through them (or rather my university does), which I great because it means my access goes from 1880 to right now. Thanks for the link! I'm pretty sure I haven't read this, or if I have it's been a while.
On ice core data, your study mentions several places that they are not able to resolve all of the differences between ice core data and their measurements taken from the analysis of conifer needles, but assumes that the problems are in the gathering an analysis of ice core data and that their system is superior.[/quote]
I wouldn't say they assume. They give reasons why. Also, I wouldn't say that they argue their system is superior. Rather, they believe (for reasons they say) that the ice-cores aren't as robust a proxy for CO2 levels.
That's true. But unfortunately 1) scientists are not immune to groupthink or the effect of Kuhnian paradigms and 2) the more political the issue, the more scientist tend not to be ruled by sciene (and this is true of both sides).
I have no doubt that right-wing groups, certain corporations, and the political views of individuals are behind a lot of the "global warming is a myth" nonsense. I am equally certain, however, that something like the reverse is true as well. I'll give you what I think is a good example from a balanced perspective and then tell you why this is a concern (and it isn't because it means AGW theory is wrong or we shouldn't do something). First:
It's interesting you say this. When there is a dominant view in an academic field, it tends to affect the publishing and review process. Most of the time largely unconsciously. Research articles which challenge the dominant view tend to be over-scrutinized, while those which follow it are often under-scrutinized. The greater the consensus (especially if there are strong idiological/political components to the field), the more this is true.
When the so-called "hockey stick graph" came out (actually it was the result of two different papers published by the same three people) it was a big deal. Then a guy who had been mining coal for years but who happened to be great at math decided to take a look. Here things get murky. According to him after as soon as it became clear to the researchers he was asking for data that he might be a "denier" they stopped providing him with either data or code or anything else. So begins a long game of he said/she said, a number of inquiries, and ongoing drama. After spending a long time reading both sides, watching/listening to testimony, looking at the data and methods involved, I think it is safe to say that at least the following is true:
1) The "hockey stick" graph (MBH 98 and MBH 99) contained a number of mistakes. The extent to which these made a significant difference is debatable. However, not only did the group behind them actually revise their work, a number of independent reviews later found that the studies behind the graph were at least somewhat flawed, possibly much more.
2) None of this should have been necessary. It shouldn't take a retired engineer to point out that two peer-reviewed articles and the inclusion of their findings in the IPCC reports was a problem because the methodology was shoddy.
3) The amount of available data I had to work with when I started (the first time) to understand what was going on (to be honest, I just wanted to show the conservative members of my family that it was ridiculous to take this guy seriously compared to actual experts) was available mainly because of McIntyre (the retired engineer). And a lot is simply not around.
Now, how much of McIntyres accusations are correct, how much he's influenced by politics, how much he's just not seeing the other side, and how accurate his analyses are (both published and not) are questionable. What isn't is that whether purely unconsciously or no, it's a lot easier to get your research published, even with problems, if it supports AGW theory. Science is about proving yourself wrong. Unfortuately, in practice that's rarely the case. The more important the issue, however, the more problematic it is to talk about "consensus" or "the science is settled," because it becomes more important than ever to rely on an unbiased, scientific approach. Alas, that's never what we see.
So to some extent, when the science is heavily influencing public policy, it becomes extremely important to make sure public policy isn't influencing science, whether it's someone trying to censor Jim Hansen or someone trying to "change the peer review process" so that a certain paper won't make it into the IPCC report.
To some extent, certainly. But one of things the "global warming is a myth" people play on is how easily one can turn complexity and uncertainty into "myth." For example, most people who have some understanding of AGW know that it involves GHGs. Fewer no that the only one we're really concerned with is CO2. Fewer still know that the reason we are concerned with it is because of a vastly complicated series of feedback mechanisms we don't fully understand. Throw in the fact that while an increase of 100ppm sound large, it means an total atmospheric increase of CO2 content of a tiny fraction of 1%, and then point to a few other possible explanations for warming (or simply deny it's happening) and you create a lot of doubt. One of the reasons I think that the information available publicly is often misleading is because the more people know about how uncertain we are of so much, the more they won't pay attention.
I'm not advocating for the status quo. There are a lot of things I think should be done.
Again, however, the "precautionary principle" has a fatal flaw: often what we do is just make things worse. Actions and inactions have consequences. It's not clear that a massive reduction in carbon would right now would be very effective, but it is clear that it would be extremely costly (not just economically). Carbon absorbtion is logarithmic. The initial amounts matter a lot more than the later. The more we put in, the less of an effect. Of course, there IS still an effect, and we SHOULD stop pouring CO2 into the atmosphere. There is just a right and a wrong way to go about this, and the more thought process is "we must do something now before it's too late" the more likely it is that what we do won't help or will make the situation worse, and will at the same time have other very negative effecrts.
work in progress
Well-Known Member
I criticize most of the methods proposed to deal with climate change also, but what I am interested in is what the denier alternatives are...if the point about the cure being worse than the disease is accurate.
So, if I go to the guys in Huntsville...because they seem to be the most renowned in that tiny minority of deniers who are actual climatologists, I find this about John Christy's bio:
Contrarians are never in short supply where global warming is concerned. But Christy is unique for both the quality of his science and the depth of his moral fervor. First, he backs up his hypotheses with rigorously vetted data from satellites and weather stations around the globe. Second, his opposition to emissions controls is rooted in compassion: As a Baptist missionary in Africa 27 years ago, Christy witnessed how the energy policies of large nations can devastate small communities dependent on fossil fuels.
Today, inspired for a moment by the lesson from Genesis, he can't resist an aside to his students. "Now, some extreme environmentalists, they say that a whale is more important than your child. These people," he says, leaning forward over a low table, blue eyes twinkling, "they want us to live in the Stone Age." He shakes off the crazy thought and returns to Adam and Eve.
The Gospel According to John | Global Warming | DISCOVER Magazine
That last point is a pretty stupid thing for a scientist to say, because aside from using that emotional appeal to care for our children, that whale is pretty damn important, and we will find out just how important as it now appears that large whale species are in rapid decline along with the decline in fish numbers. I've noticed a lot of fundamentalists who are strongly pre-millenial, have a careless disregard for all dangers we face today, whether it's the environment or the threat of nuclear war. Christy may be motivated more in his attitude about the environment by the notion that 'don't worry, Jesus will come back and fix everything,' than he is by anything coming from the world of science!Today, inspired for a moment by the lesson from Genesis, he can't resist an aside to his students. "Now, some extreme environmentalists, they say that a whale is more important than your child. These people," he says, leaning forward over a low table, blue eyes twinkling, "they want us to live in the Stone Age." He shakes off the crazy thought and returns to Adam and Eve.
The Gospel According to John | Global Warming | DISCOVER Magazine
And Roy Spencer...of the Heartland Institute, and the even worse George C. Marshall Institute....from what I am reading of his foray into economics (Fundanomics)
his simple-minded adherence to discredited libertarian economic theory is likely the driver behind his motives to sow confusion and doubt on the subject of climate change:
FUNDANOMICS is the simplest and most concise exposition you will find of what energizes the Free Market, and why it should be celebrated by all social classes.
Best-selling author Roy W. Spencer looks at the fundamental driving force that propels a society to ever higher levels of prosperity, generation after generation: People having the freedom to provide as much stuff as possible to each other that is needed and wanted...no matter what that stuff happens to be. Everything else in economics is details.........
Even a child might ask if there are limits to growth on a finite planet, but that's asking too much of this expert! His concern for libertarian economics pushes out any misgivings about the potential damage of endless growth. A good analogy that shocks most people is that: if the Earth was a living creature, the rapidly expanding and resource-devouring human race, would be a cancer in the body of the Earth. And here a so called climate expert is celebrating the virtues of cancerous growth!Best-selling author Roy W. Spencer looks at the fundamental driving force that propels a society to ever higher levels of prosperity, generation after generation: People having the freedom to provide as much stuff as possible to each other that is needed and wanted...no matter what that stuff happens to be. Everything else in economics is details.........
I have been critical of many of the actions proposed so far, because many of them (carbon offsets and tree planting) fail to provide the expected benefits when tested. But, my conclusion is that the solution will require international cooperation and an end to globalized capitalism (especially agribusiness) that has fueled the growth and resource depletion, especially since the end of WWII. We need a new economy that is in harmony with the natural economic limits of what the biosphere is able to provide sustainably, and that has led me to a lot of re-evaluation of previous beliefs which I don't find many people from my background willing to take on.
work in progress
Well-Known Member
For my part, I would like to learn more about how Gaia Hypothesis or theory is being developed, now that others are involved in the process. I am not a biologist, but when Lyn Margulis was able to get part of her theory of Symbiogenesis or Symbiosis accepted by the academia in biology (it's pretty well established now that mitochondria in eukaryote cells began as a separate species) she had a lot of criticism attitudes based on gender, and "survival of the fittest" and "selfish gene replicators" would be among them! It's not that Margulis was questioning competition as a means of natural selection, her point was that the all-male realm of biology could only see competition, and were blind to evidence of examples of cooperation for mutual benefit being a contributing factor in evolution. It is similar to the complaint that the first female anthropologists had about their male colleagues who could only talk about "man the hunter" and were only interested in studying hunting and male-bonding behaviour, while ignoring the obvious fact that the food gathering and snaring of small creatures by the women in the group was providing the bulk of their food. The Gaia Theory Website offers this brief explanation of how the entire biosphere would try to optimize the Earth for its own needs, and sounds similar to symbiotics or Group Selection Theory offered up by E.O. Wilson and other biologists who study colony insects:
The Gaia Theory posits that the organic and inorganic components of Planet Earth have evolved together as a single living, self-regulating system. It suggests that this living system has automatically controlled global temperature, atmospheric content, ocean salinity, and other factors, that maintains its own habitability. In a phrase, life maintains conditions suitable for its own survival. In this respect, the living system of Earth can be thought of analogous to the workings of any individual organism that regulates body temperature, blood salinity, etc. So, for instance, even though the luminosity of the sun the Earths heat source has increased by about 30 percent since life began almost four billion years ago, the living system has reacted as a whole to maintain temperatures at levels suitable for life.
Right now, Dawkins and the gene-centered evolutionists are doing everything in their power to try to discredit group selection and the more developed multi-level selection model, and it's no surprise that Dawkins was also a loud early critic of Lovelock and Margulis when they came up with the Gaia idea. I get lost when I read some of the back and forth debates or arguments between David Sloan Wilson (no relation to E.O.) and Richard Dawkins, but my prejudices are on the side of the group models, and one that Gaia might be a part of, because if correct, those theories offer a way to explain processes that are mysteries or left blank by Dawkins's gene-centered approach.
Thanks! Had to edit to fit into comment space. And here's another consequence of ocean acidification which has only been discovered very recently:
Ocean Acidification Could Leave Clown Fish (Like Nemo) Lost at Sea
Could ocean acidification deafen dolphins?
It seems that changes in ocean water ph are also changing water densities and sound-carrying properties, and screwing up the sonar abilities of fish and large marine mammals. This could have worse implications than the health of corals and shellfish, and is being linked as a likely part of the reason for the general decline in ocean fish populations.
It's just more evidence that you never know what damage you're doing if you don't understand how the process works. We have built civilization under the presumption that the world is big and indestructible, and a giant candy store that we can keep taking goodies from once we learn how to extract them. It's time to discover our natural limits and create economics and public policies that are in harmony with those limits.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Just a couple points...
NOVA and crew are great programs, but yes, they are heavily simplified. They are good overviews on subjects but nothing as detailed as a scientific paper.
Yes, they show you scientists doing science stuff, but it's only a cursory view. They can't go into the level of detail of the methods section, which is intended to be detailed enough that others can repeat the experiment the same way.
2. Using stomata may indeed be a more robust model... plants need to respond season by season to subtle localized changes in the atmosphere. They may have a very valid point.
What this paper shows is that there needs to be more work done using indicators other than ice core data. It also shows that atmospheric CO2 is tied to temperature fluctuations... as stated in the abstract:
3. Yes, you can simplify to a certain extent... but some things can't be easily simplified and still have them reflect the reality of how complex a system is. Evolution suffers from this problem, I can simplify how evolution works... but in doing so, you miss the important details that separate it from a "just so" story.
Lot's of things influence the climate. Carbon dioxide is very important, but mostly for the fact that we can control how much we put into the system and we know it is tied directly into atmospheric temperatures.
Again, we know the climate is getting warmer... we know CO2 is a key player in that process... but we don't know what else is involved. This current warming trend is likely not just our fault... it is most likely that we are adding fuel to a fire that would otherwise be burning much lower.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't do more to reduce our impact, there are plenty of reasons that a fossil fuel economy is bad for us specifically and the planet in general. But we need to have a rational discussion about the issue, rather than a "my team vs. your team" fight about it.
wa:do
NOVA and crew are great programs, but yes, they are heavily simplified. They are good overviews on subjects but nothing as detailed as a scientific paper.
Yes, they show you scientists doing science stuff, but it's only a cursory view. They can't go into the level of detail of the methods section, which is intended to be detailed enough that others can repeat the experiment the same way.
2. Using stomata may indeed be a more robust model... plants need to respond season by season to subtle localized changes in the atmosphere. They may have a very valid point.
What this paper shows is that there needs to be more work done using indicators other than ice core data. It also shows that atmospheric CO2 is tied to temperature fluctuations... as stated in the abstract:
3. Yes, you can simplify to a certain extent... but some things can't be easily simplified and still have them reflect the reality of how complex a system is. Evolution suffers from this problem, I can simplify how evolution works... but in doing so, you miss the important details that separate it from a "just so" story.
Lot's of things influence the climate. Carbon dioxide is very important, but mostly for the fact that we can control how much we put into the system and we know it is tied directly into atmospheric temperatures.
Again, we know the climate is getting warmer... we know CO2 is a key player in that process... but we don't know what else is involved. This current warming trend is likely not just our fault... it is most likely that we are adding fuel to a fire that would otherwise be burning much lower.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't do more to reduce our impact, there are plenty of reasons that a fossil fuel economy is bad for us specifically and the planet in general. But we need to have a rational discussion about the issue, rather than a "my team vs. your team" fight about it.
wa:do
Trey of Diamonds
Well-Known Member
:cheer: Can I be on your team? :cheer:
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
I also want to add... that the concerns of the developing world should come foremost.
They don't have the money to spare on high tec green economies and the hypocrisy of the developed world is sadly abundant.
What we need to do is develop solutions that work for everyone and solutions that are catered to the needs of local communities. We need to find ways that developmental needs and ecological needs are shared needs.
wa:do
They don't have the money to spare on high tec green economies and the hypocrisy of the developed world is sadly abundant.
What we need to do is develop solutions that work for everyone and solutions that are catered to the needs of local communities. We need to find ways that developmental needs and ecological needs are shared needs.
wa:do
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Anytime. :jiggy:
No... wait.... No teams... consensus building not team making.... :bonk:
We can have shared mutual concerns and work together to develop solutions to those concerns.
wa:do
Trey of Diamonds
Well-Known Member
Cool, I'll be on your consensus then.
We can have shared mutual concerns and work together to develop solutions to those concerns.
Human history doesn't support this but I'm willing to give it a try.
You may want to read, for example thework of Bjørn Lomborg. First because he believes AGW is happening and is dangerous and second because his background is in economics/social sciences. Many climate scientists lack the background or ability to propose "cures" other than very general ones, let alone weigh costs. To do that requires a whole different background, and dialogue. Economists and social scientists have to rely on the work of climate scientists to identify the problems, and both have to work with the more applied environmental scientists to first develop possible solutions, and then weigh the costs and benefits. The climate scientists are in the best position to talk about the cost of inaction, and they are essential for understanding how effective this or that action will be, but aren't really in a position to say what the effects will be on the global economy, 3rd world (areas of high poverty rates may be greatly effected by some of the proposed soluations), etc.
Actually most climate scientists period didn't actually get a PhD in climatology or climate science, even of those whose focus is on the atmospheric processes. Everything from astrophysics to marine biology and oceanic studies becomes important here, and that's without getting into the need for mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers who specialize in climate studies to (for example) build computer models.
Possibly. But when it comes to fear tactics and emotional appeals, I think the environmentalists have the skeptics/deniers beat. I've corresponded with Christy once or twice to ask about certain things. Despite not knowing me or knowing whether I was looking to twist his words, he was cordial and helpful. I've written to several other climate scientists, and I never heard back from most (including Spencer). I think this is probably a reflection of the political climate (pun intended). I began writing to professors to ask about things I was researching before I began my undergrad studies, and I still do. The vast majority are very helpful, or at least will respond that they don't know the answer and point me elsewhere. I think it's sad that climate science has, thanks to all sides (political and ideological), become such a battlefield where one's source code and data has to be hidden for fear mistakes might be found in one's work.
Could be. But once again, the same kind of ideological bias is found on the other side.
You have to understand that the reason Roy Spencer left NASA, started his own blog, started writing popular books, joined Heartland, etc., happened as a result of not being heard. When there was a lot of controversy over the nature of the hacked emails, one of the most oft used defenses (and at least to some extent it's valid) was that guys like Phil Jones felt "attacked" and were responding to a situation they were put in by constant FOI requests and so on. The same is true for those researchers who end up coming out with popular books or joining right-wing think tanks. Some of them might have joined anyway, and others are right wing. However, for others I think it is pretty clear that the more it seems they couldn't be heard as they used to and their research was held under a magnifying glass while other pro-AGW research was not checked well enough, the more they began to go elsewhere. Spencer used to work for NASA. But he resigned because of the way NASA was (he felt) silencing him.
That said, I'm not to keen on a lot of his economic theory.
A child would, but an expert might realize the possible fallacy in assuming a malthusian stance on resources. Since Malthus, there have always been those who argue that we will run out of resources by X date. And so far, they've all been wrong, mainly for one reason: they underestimate human technological adaptivity and ingenuity. The population on earth today would be dying out on every continent en masse in Malthus' day. But humans have an amazing ability to make resources out of things which weren't, from wind to sun to rocks in the ground (uranium). This doesn't mean that we don't have to worry about limits of growth, of course. Especially on a local scale. However, there's a reason why most of these predictions, especially the dire ones, have turned out wrong. In general, a simple population model is fairly easy: take a logistic function an iterate it. Of course, at certain points even simple models get chaotic:
More advanced models are even more accurate-for animals. While with animals at a certain point you have to leave out relevant factors, there are enough constants which allow for fairly accurate coefficiants: nutritional needs, predator numbers, available nutrition, etc. For humans, however, this kind of modeling doesn't work, or at least it hasn't. On a local scale and small timetable, it's much more useful. But for long term global or even very large areas? There are too many "constants" that radically shift because of techonology.
I didn't know that. That's very interesting, so thank you. It's certainly true that even after universities and the academic establishment started to realize that excluding roughly half the population from its ranks was just pure, bigoted, nonsense, it took a long time for women to gain ground at all, and particularly in the sciences (for a number of reasons, including, I believe, sexism but also because women had already acquired a voice elsewhere through feminist pioneers, authors, etc.). I found it interesting that in Cynthia Eller's very thorough critique of the mother goddess and prehistoric matriarchy theory (which was somewhat harsh, but I think Rosemary Radford Ruether's take in Goddesses and the Divine Feminine was accurate: it may be harsh but it's accurate) that women anthropologists and archaeologists reacted against Marija Gimbutas because they felt that her radical ideas would allow male archaeologists, anthropologists, etc., to dismiss legitimate criticisms of largely "male" interpretation of the evidence by equating them all with Gimbutas' rather eccentric ideas. So it's interesting to here of an example such as this of the "male" perspective missing (and then rejecting) a particular point of view that is correct.
I'm not a fan of Dawkins, but that's more because the "new athiests" such as Dawkins and Hitchins have actually offered far less than the more challenging, critical, and penetrating atheists of the past, from the Existentialists to Freud and Flew. And given how much Dawkins has riding on the "selfish-gene" idea is no suprise that he would be quite against the Gaia hypothesis.
For me, however, the problem starts with the idea of "self-regulation." The earth requires a massive energy source: the sun. And it would be one thing if this energy source was a constant. But it isn't. Everything about it and its relation to the earth fluctuates all the time, from the gravitational field which keeps us from being bombarded by cosmic rays, to the actual energy which sustains life. The change in temperature of the sun over several billion years is misleading. The effects of the sun are both cyclical and erratic and can occur on a decadal timespan to ever several thousand years. It is, however, anything but steady.
The same can be said of life on the planet. Yes, life continuously goes on, but in a constantly shifting and changing environment. That's the mechanism for evolution. Adaptive features allow the survival of certain subsets of a population. The whole notion of stability in a complex system with a fluctuating energy source runs counter to everything we know about dynamical systems, even if we disregard the history of the earth, biology, etc.
It's also hard to reconcile the hypothesis with the AGW theory. Interstingly enough, some "skeptics/deniers" (like Spencer) argue that the earth has natural warming and cooling measures to coap with massive fluctuations in (for example) the CO2 cycle. The whole notion of AGW rests on a relatively small increase in total atmospheric content of a trace gas resulting in massive changes to the global climate system. The theory posits a chain reaction in the climate system which continues to push the temperature up. In other words, the small perturbations cause other perturbations as the system tends to chaos. That's the opposite of the Gaia hypothesis. We know that fluctuations in both atmospheric content and the principal driver of all life on this planet (the sun) occur all the time. According to the standard view, big and small changes have caused species to die out while others evolve. The Gaia hypothesis, or at least as it seems to me, posits a greater degree of regulating mechanisms keeping the system fluctuating around stability than the standard view. But if this is so, then it would follow that these same mechanisms would better compensate for the changes humans cause. So at the very least, our influence would be greatly lessened according to this view. However, according to those who believe in the hypothesis, it isn't. And I'm not sure how.
I agree and I don't (what else is new though, I'm agnostic about everything). It's true that we can (and have) caused a lot of changes. But again, that's what's been happening for all of Earth's history. And the reason life evolved from very simple organisms seems to be because a bunch of them started "polluting" by introducing a corrosive element into the air we call oxygen. Beavers can change a whole ecosystem. A new predator introduced into an environment can as well. Volcanoes, earthquakes, etc., can also radically change an environment. In fact, it's so easy to change an environment that we don't know how to keep one stable, as leaving it alone doesn't work. That said, pumping toxic waste into ponds and streams and emitting massive amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere is just asking for it.
It's a guarentee we are going to change our environment. All animals do. And the fact that humans survive by adapting their environment to them as well as them to the environment allows humans to live almost anywhere, which in turn allows us to affect everywhere. So we absolutely should be careful about what we do, even if for no other reason than that a particular action will cause no harm for us, but will kill off some species we'd rather not see extinct. I wouldn't be suprised if humans could manage to live in a vastly hotter planet having killed off most of the life on it, developing vast artificially controlled and enclosed ecosystems everywhere, with artificially produced nutrients and so on. But I wouldn't want to live in such a world.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Humans are still evolving... not long ago human history didn't support truly inclusive democracies or cultures without some form of slavery.Cool, I'll be on your consensus then.
Human history doesn't support this but I'm willing to give it a try.
...Baby steps. We may yet toddle into maturity.
wa:do
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Given the problems we've had trying to produce such enclosed artificial ecosystems I'm skeptical we could.
The simple neglect of soil bacteria and the reaction between CO2 and concrete to form calcium carbonate "doomed" Biosphere 2 for example.
That one mistake wiped out all the pollinating insects and most of the vertebrate species inside the complex. Unexpected surge in ant populations posed another problem, wiping out several of the bird species.
wa:do
Necessity is the mother of invention. We don't need such systems now. Given both need and technological sophistication on the time table we're talking about (well over a century), I'd be suprised if we weren't able to. Of course, if such ecosystems were truly "necessary" their necessity would mean people were already dying along with an already largely destroyed earth.