Greenhouse warming could total 11C 27 January 05

Following the “Bellamy – Monbiot” debate of September 2004, on this blog, I wrote to an old contact of mine, David Shreeve, about Global Warming & Wind Power – basically giving him a hard time about it. (Davids Bellamy & Shreeve run the Conservation Foundation.)

Anyway, bumped into David Shreeve today, and we chatted briefly about wind power again (I was arguing in favour etc.). Maybe I can persuade him to change his views?! Or maybe not!

Anyway, the reason for my entry is that David Shreeve said he had just come back from a big briefing from the Scientific Alliance who were dismissing the threat of Global Warming. I suspect the briefing was to counter the report that you have just mentioned, Mark. It looks like this issue is getting even more politicised than I thought.

Keep abreast of the Scientific Alliance at:

www.scientific-alliance.org

also:

http://www.scientific-alliance.org/news_archives/climate/kyotossmokescreenimperils.htm

There’s a busy, and for the most part idiotic, conversation going on about this at slashdot. Now that everyone has whetted their gentle blades with cries of ‘Go Back to Work, Norbert Zangox!’, which incidentally I mean to put on a t-shirt, perhaps it’s time to take the argument to the infidel…

This received some coverage in the Guardian today including mention of a “warning” about the Scientific Alliance from Professor Bob May, President of the Royal Society.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1399585,00.html

Mark

I wonder what the going rate is for a Global Warming sceptical article is these days? Can anyone put me in touch with the appropriate person at Esso?

;-)

Sorry – joke alert

Just picked that up! I really hope GW doesn’t get too political over here!

Peter

I too would like to know how much skeptic pay is. If you hear of anyone willing to pay me for writing these notes, please let me know. I would love to have the income.

By the way, the Philadelphia Eagles is a team in the American football professional league. They won their semi-final game last week and will play for the championship next weekend, Feb 6 I believe.

I’ll keep you posted. Perhaps, we will get some idea of how well my beliefs correspond with reality.

and calculate a more middling figure for the warming, between 2 and 11 degrees. That would put us at 6.5 degrees. Oh well, either way, 11 degrees or 6.5, it means a replay of the Permian event, but 11 degrees would probably do the extinction job 100% – except for a few microscopic critters. Then we could really start all over again, from evolutionary scratch. My unscientific guess is that since we are farther from the sun than Venus, we might eventually stabilize again at a more life-hospitable climate millions of years from now. Or billions. I’m not a scientist. I just live on planet earth.

There’s a report on the meeting at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1400561,00.html

It’s no wonder that any casually interested member of the public would feel confused with all this going on.

Interesting that each subsequent report from the scientists paints an ever bleaker picture!

The uncertainty of climate science coupled with thermal inertia is already enough for us to deal with. Knowing that what problems we may be creating today will not manifest for decades means we have to think ahead of the game. The uncertainty does not help reassure us that our efforts will help prevent or mitigate the problem. That is already a difficult thing to deal with when you add the human resistance to changing our energy infrastructures, our habits, and our lifestyle.

With that said, we have climate scientists, as you say, which paint an ever bleaker picture. It appears to me that no one has a plan to deal with this scenario in a manner that reassures us or at a minimum does not create the image (false at times) where we have to go through personal sacrifice. This can easily lead people to either hopelessness or denial in most everyone.

Now with the critics, we add even more confusion and controversy to the mix. In addition to saying our circumstances are not going to be as bad as the mainstream scientist indicate, they say that we have no concern at all and all this warming will actually benefit mankind. The confusion from all this is that there is not even any common ground on the issues to create even a middle viewpoint between two extremes.

It becomes politicized and polarized and somewhere the truth may lie in the middle or even on the fringes but this confusion only helps to instill both skepticism and hopelessness which leads to further inaction and complacency.

For me, I wonder why the critics bother at all because I see enough complacency already. Why anyone would think we need to promote more complacency is beyond me.

For not only the casual interested member of the public, but actually most everyone, I would think that we would inwardly desire that the critics are correct and that everyone else is wrong. As much as I have posted here, I even fit that description.

The worst part is time. Most of us, including me, do not have the time to understand and check out for our own satisfaction the truth of everything. We have to use our own intuition on who we trust and that is very sad. It is like the critics are offering us candy and they are saying that it OK to eat that candy.

It would be easy to take that candy and not have any more anxiety about climate change and to alleviate our own responsibility to decrease our energy usage and change habits that would mostly be of financial benefit to us as Lynn articulates so well.

I wish the science would not be subject to such extreme controversy. It is already difficult enough to adequately deal with prevention and mitigation strategies which require incredible focus, time, and attention.

For me, it appears that it is not climate change that is our major problem. It is us as a species. We are our own worst enemy. I think we can do a mighty job in bringing ourselves back to a more natural balance if we give ourselves a fighting chance to do it.

And what odds would you give for the Eagles to win?

And for you to be right about global warming?

;-)

Well done, Dan.

I personally don’t feel I need to know the nitty-gritty of the science.

It seems clear that there is a risk to the planet, and there are few credible down-sides of taking action.

The argument which I really do not buy is that this will prove too bad for the economy. In general, with good planning, design, investment etc. etc., that absolutely need not happen.

(Whether it is good for Esso etc. is another thing!)

Peter

The bookies have decided that the Eagles are the underdogs. If they know what they are doing, the odds against the Eagles are high.

I think that the odds that I am correct about global warming are somewhat better.

We have entered the cooling half of the sun’s activity cycle. We should see declining temperatures until the sun reaches a minimum activity, sometime around 2008. I am optimistic that by that time we will have come to our senses.

Sent that message before I typed it! LOL

Doesn’t matter who wins the Super Bowl-they won’t be winning it at home! Eagles and Patriots both leave the Northeast to go play in the SOUTHeast-Jacksonville, FL, to be exact!

Sane, of course, given the time of year, but kind of weird, too. All that effort to get to The Big Game, but you don’t get to play it at home for the fans! Ah, pro sports….

The ClimatePrediction.net experiment has produced a range of 1.9 to 11.5 C for the climate sensitivity. It says NOTHING about how likely any particular temperature rise is. That is the focus of another experiment.

If you have a reasonably fast computer (anything bought in the past couple of years would be suitable), download a model and run it from http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/index.php

I was just making the point that what ultimately happens is not necessarily the high end, though environmentalists are right in focusing the worst case (even if it isn’t likely), because we should be about avoiding false negatives, rather than false positives, as scientists are.

I also read other sites since my post, including RealClimate.org, and they assure us that the likely range is the same as before, up to 5.8 degrees by 2100 with 2 X CO2.

Bellamy also spoke at that Scientific Alliance meeting.

Someone on this site mentioned they “knew” that Bellamy was funded by Anti-wind-farm organisations. Does anyone know whether Bellamy is funded by any sceptic lobbys or scientists?

I am trying to build up a picture of who is funding the British sceptic lobby…

Any help would be welcomed!

R