[LINK] the weather makers

[Richard Chirgwin]

Stewart Fist wrote:
> Kim writes:
>   
>> I have a question for you: what would it
>> take for you to believe that global warming is actually happening?
>>     
>
> You've missed the whole point Kim.
>
> I do believe that global warming is happening -- because that is the one
> measurable change that scientists agree upon
>
> But global and regional temperatures change all the time.  It warms then it
> cools. It warms here, while it cools there.
>
> It's not easy to measure temperatures on a global scale -- and its not sure
> that the measurements we take today are comparable with those that were
> taken 100 years ago with glass-and-mercury thermometers.  But while the
> scientists say they can measure this warm change, I have to accept it.
>
>
> When it does warms (even in the remote past) apparently the levels of CO2 in
> the atmosphere increase -- and when the levels of C02 increase it apparently
> gets warmer.  So this is a reinforcing system.  But if this were an isolated
> cycle (with nothing counteracting the heating), then the world would head
> off into an irreversable episode of every-increasing global heating.  But
> there's no evidence that this has happened in the past.
>   
Stewart,

As it happens, nobody in "real" science is suggesting an irreversible 
ever-increasing episode in today's scenarios, because the models don't 
run out that far in the future. We can, however, already observe current 
temperatures and measure current CO2 concentrations and emissions. Just 
sticking with what we can observe is sufficient for worry.

> I think Flannery is a good science promoter and museum administrator, and an
> excellent popular science writer.  But he is only acting as a science writer
> when he writes outside his own field, and therefore shouldn't be elevated
> into unquestioned secular sainthood.
>
> I also agree that many professional climate deniers owe their public stance
> to the generous funding of the energy industry.  But that doesn't make every
> 'denier' automatically corrupt.
>   
However, Stewart, the population of truly independent sceptics is 
vanishingly small; and the attention given to "funded" sceptics is 
unreasonably large.

In this,  the media has been duped by itself. There is some perceived 
need to give "equal" coverage to the "denial" case, because of a 
perceived need for balance. Problem is, facts aren't balanced. They're 
facts.
> Despite the fact that scientists and lay people holding unpopular sceptical
> views on this, constantly get told they are idiots
... See above. Which scientists? ... by which I am asking, which 
scientists are on the record, with no inducement or interest to 
represent, as flat-out deniers of climate change, and for which they 
have been told they're idiots. As for the lay public; their views are 
more likely to be shaped by the bought men of the Institute of Public 
Affairs, which is in the "ear" of the editors and politicians (or for 
that matter by the Piers Ackerman-type editorialists recycling 
backgrounders from right wing think tanks) than by the views of a 
scientist whose voice they haven't heard and whose name they don't remember.
>  - there are plenty of
> top-class independent scientists who hold a position very similar to mine.
>   
We can hardly assess the views of the scientists without names or 
citations, can we?
> 1. I agree that if the consensus of metereological opinion is that the earth
> is warming, then we have to accept their evidence and act on it.  But we
> have the right to ask: Ddo they really know?  Have they measured in a
> consistent and accurate way?
>   
Yes, we have the right to ask this. But if we don't have the expertise 
to assess the consistency and accuracy of the science, then we don't 
have the right to "pick and choose" what we'll agree with.
> 2. I don't agree that this means they know what has caused the temperature
> increases -- this is opinion or speculation, based on some good evidence
> probably (but not overwhelming).  I want to know how they define what are
> the proportional contributions of man-made and natural causes.  I don't
> think this is anything more than educated opinion -- and some good scientist
> disagree with the majority.
>   
Actually, the number of available causes of a change in temperature are 
not so great as to be completely bewildering.
> If they did know how to apportion this, and what caused the natural
> component, then they could explain the history of climate change. They
> can't.
>   
That's not quite so, either. There exist quite a number of models for 
discussion of past events. What scientists avoid is trying to make an 
absolute statement about something like "what happened 100,000 years 
ago", because they are quite aware that anybody can claim to have 
"predicted the past".

What happens, however -- in a think-tank technique borrowed from 
creationists -- is that a general wariness about 'predicting the past' 
is held up as "see? They admit they can't tell with certainty what 
happened in the Little Ice Age! We can't trust what they say about 
global warming!"

This is deliberate and dishonest: people who know better are deploying 
lies and misdirection to try and avoid the "man in the street" forming 
an unfavourable opinion.
> 3. Just because a theory becomes fashionable, doesn't mean it is right (nor
> does it mean that it is wrong, either of course).  It just means that those
> who disagree and still want study grants, tend to keep their heads down and
> keep silent.  Popular science often acts as a suppresser of open inquiry.
>
> In the case of climate change, a number of scientists have kept their heads
> down for years -- ever since the 1962 Rio Summit made this a political and
> economic issue in scientific circles.
>
>
> 4. The secondary projections that arise from this warming -- sea-level
> rises, ice-cap collapse, long-term droughts, starvation, extinctions of
> species, islands disappearing, etc. etc, -- are yet another level removed
> from the science, which is itself in dispute.  All this is even further
> abstracted from any real evidence.
>   
Umm, I usually like to keep to "parliamentary language" in Link 
discussions, but Stewart, where did you start borrowing arguments from 
the bollocks bin?

Sea level rises are not "another level removed from the science". They 
are empirical observation - as are the ice-cap issues. Islands 
disappearing is a very mundane addition to the observed sea-level rises 
- and in fact, this has already taken place (some little island in the 
Indian Ocean). Species extinction may be viewed as speculative, except 
that some species are already experiencing catastrophic decline (eg, 
small alpine marsupials); the fact of extinction is not in doubt, merely 
the extent (about which there will be varying predictions).
>
> 5. And my main point, is that computer processing of massive amounts of
> contemporary data is not a substitute for real evidence and logical argument
> arising from provable events in the past.
>   
"Logical argument", I am sorry to say, is not science (and in fact is 
just as often deployed against science as for). Science is the boring 
stuff of observation, analysis, theory, prediction, etcetera.

A temperature change observed in ice cores is a provable event ... more 
so than, for example, "grapes in Vinland" which may have been another 
slice of Erik the Red's propaganda! Just because the proof lies in 
knowledge not available to the lay training does not invalidate it as 
science. And ice cores aren't the only indicator of very long-term 
climate trends.

My final point: humanity doesn't need a "end of life on earth" climate 
change for a crisis. We only need enough crisis to make our own society 
non-tenable, our current practises or farming non-viable. The Earth will 
go on quite well without us.

There is no inherent risk involved in reducing our energy use. Switching 
off unnecessary lights is not an act which involves privation or loss of 
the Western lifestyle; it's just that a bunch of idiots (there, I used 
the word!) believe that simple frugality must somehow be associated with 
"green communism" - in other words, in the strange world of the IPA, the 
Cato Institute, the Frazer Institute and other bought lobbies, *not* 
being recklessly wasteful with every available resource is evidence of a 
political state of mind which is a threat to the western way of life. 
What's wrong with calling "B.S." on such drivel?

RC
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