For those of you tired of ad hominem, a rather common sense, logical approach to the whole topic:
Action on climate is justified, not because the science is certain, but precisely because it is not
Mar 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
CLIMATE-change legislation, dormant for six months, is showing signs of life again in Washington, DC. This week senators and industrial groups have been discussing a compromise bill to introduce mandatory controls on carbon (see article). Yet although green activists around the world have been waiting for 20 years for American action, nobody is cheering. Even if discussion ever turns into legislation, it will be a pale shadow of what was once hoped for.
The mess at Copenhagen is one reason. So much effort went into the event, with so little result. The recession is another. However much bosses may care about the planet, they usually mind more about their bottom line, and when times are hard they are unwilling to incur new costs. The bilious argument over American health care has not helped: this is not a good time for any bill that needs bipartisan support. Even the northern hemisphere’s cold winter has hurt. When two feet of snow lies on the ground, the threat from warming seems far off. But climate science is also responsible. A series of controversies over the past year have provided heavy ammunition to those who doubt the seriousness of the problem.
Three questions arise from this. How bad is the science? Should policy be changed? And what can be done to ensure such confusion does not happen again? Behind all three lies a common story. The problem lies not with the science itself, but with the way the science has been used by politicians to imply certainty when, as often with science, no certainty exists.
What went wrong and what did not
When governments started thinking seriously about climate change they took the sensible step of establishing, in 1989, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was designed to get scientists to work out what was happening to the climate, and to get governments to sign off on the scientists’ conclusions. It has done the job of basic science pretty well. There have been occasional complaints both that it has overstated the extent of the problem, and that it has understated it. Its reports trawl through all recent climate science. The wide range of the outcomes it predicts—from a mildly warming global temperature increase of 1.1°C by the end of the century to a ish 6.4°C—illustrate the uncertainties it is dealing with.
But the ambiguities of science sit uncomfortably with the demands of politics. Politicians, and the voters who elect them, are more comfortable with certainty. So “six months to save the planet” is more likely to garner support than “there is a high probability—though not by any means a certainty—that serious climate change could damage the biosphere, depending on levels of economic growth, population growth and innovation.” Politics, like journalism, tends to simplify and exaggerate. Hence the advertisements that the British government has been running, using nursery rhymes: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.”
Such an approach may, in the short term, have encouraged some voters to support measures to combat climate change. But implying that Britain’s children face some sort of Saharan future is wrong, and dangerous. This week Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority slapped the government for its infantile advertisements. And there has been worse.
In November, shortly before the Copenhagen climate summit, a stash of e-mails from and to various researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia somehow found its way onto the web. They revealed an unwillingness to share data which broke the spirit, if not the letter, of Britain’s Freedom of Information act, an aggressive at ude to the peer review of papers by opponents and an apparent willingness to hedge science in the face of politics. Around the same time it emerged that the most recent IPCC report had claimed that the Himalayan glaciers were going to disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. The panel’s initial unwillingness to address this mistake, and the discovery of further problems with its work, raised troubling questions about its procedures.
How bad is this? Sceptics point out that each mistake has tended to exaggerate the extent of climate change. The notion that the scientific establishment has suppressed evidence to the contrary has provided plenty of non-expert politicians with an excuse not to spend money reducing carbon. So the scientists’ shameful mistakes have certainly changed perceptions. They have not, however, changed the science itself.
As our briefing explains in detail, most research supports the idea that warming is man-made. Sources of doubt that have seemed plausible in the past, such as a mismatch between temperatures measured by satellites and temperatures measured at the surface, and doubts about the additional warming that can be put down to water vapour, have been in large part resolved, though more work is needed. If records of temperature across the past 1,000 years are not reliable, it matters little to the overall story. If there are problems with the warming as measured by weather stations on land, there are also more reliable data from ships and satellites.
Insuring against catastrophe
Plenty of uncertainty remains; but that argues for, not against, action. If it were known that global warming would be limited to 2°C, the world might decide to live with that. But the range of possible outcomes is huge, with catastrophe one possibility, and the costs of averting climate change are comparatively small. Just as a householder pays a small premium to protect himself against disaster, the world should do the same.
This newspaper sees no reason to alter its views on that. Where there is plainly an urgent need for change is the way in which governments use science to make their case. The IPCC has suffered from the perception that it is a tool of politicians. The greater the distance that can be created between it and them, the better. And rather than feeding voters infantile advertisements peddling childish certainties, politicians should treat voters like grown-ups. With climate change you do not need to invent things; the truth, even with all those uncertainties and caveats, is scary enough.
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There is a sister do ent hyperlinked above, but worth reading on its own and meriting a more specific mention here:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/dis...ry_id=15719298
It is a MUCH longer read, that I might post later in the thread, but here are the closing paragraphs of that briefing:
It seems unlikely that the errors, misprisions and sloppiness in a number of different types of climate science might all favour such a minimised effect. That said, the doubters tend to assume that climate scientists are not acting in good faith, and so are happy to believe exactly that. Climategate and the IPCC’s problems have reinforced this position.
Using the IPCC’s assessment of probabilities, the sensitivity to a doubling of carbon dioxide of less than 1.5ºC in such a scenario has perhaps one chance in ten of being correct. But if the IPCC were underestimating things by a factor of five or so, that would still leave only a 50:50 chance of such a desirable outcome. The fact that the uncertainties allow you to construct a relatively benign future does not allow you to ignore futures in which climate change is large, and in some of which it is very dangerous indeed. The doubters are right that uncertainties are rife in climate science. They are wrong when they present that as a reason for inaction.
Man can't control the climate, even if he wanted to.
The world was once much hotter and had much higher concentrations of CO2 than today. And yet, we still had ice ages.
To think that human activity is affecting the climage in any significant way is the height of arrogance -- as is the thought that we can bend it to our will.
Time for green activists to find another hobby.
If the humans became extinct tomorrow, the climate would still change. Just like it has done for billions of years.
DarrinS has just overturned and trumped 1000s of professional scientists and decades of scientific research and data.
thank you
I'm shocked.This newspaper sees no reason to alter its views
We must reduce co2 emissions because the climate may warm, cool, or stay the same and co2 levels may or may not have anything to do with what the climate does.
Strawman, and not what the article says.
Try again.
Ad hominem.
THe Economist is not quite the starry-eyed bunch of ideologues that some like to paint all of "the media" with.
CO2 affects climate.
Man can affect how much CO2 he dumps in the atmosphere.
Man can therefore affect climate, QED.
The second bit is a non sequitur.
I like mangos.
It is so laughable how many ways the activists say we must curb our energy usage.
The Anthropogenic part of the Warming Scare is no longer sound science, so they play on the "what if's". Problem is, it is now obvious that instead of the the 0.6 to 0.9 C increase being cause from CO2, we now know that black carbon contributes 0.45 watts more than previously thought, and they never have been honest of the solar forcing which contributes at least 0.6 watts more than given credit for. This means the 39% rise in CO2 contribute at least 1.05 watts less than what the IPCC claims. By their math with 1.66 watts of forcing giving as high as 0.85 degrees of warming, that amounts to about 1/2 C per watt. At 1/2 C per watt, doubling of CO2 would be 1.9 C. However, if we use 0.61 watts for CO2 as a maximum, then CO2 warming is a maximum of 0.3 C of warming from 1750 to 2005. At 0.61 watts, doubling of CO2 yields about 1.4 watts, or 0.7 C for doubling. Less than half the IPCC's assumptive math shows with obviously wrong values.
If enough people spit in the ocean, it could potentially cause sea levels to rise enough to cover Australia. Therefore, drinking water should be regulated to reduce the amount of saliva that may, or may not be spit into the ocean...Australia is too important for us to take a chance with even if we're wrong about the science.
Therefore and henceforth...1.5 cups of water shall be allocated to people over the age of 2. 2 Cups if over the age of 6 1/2 yrs. 2.69 cups over the age of 12. 2.89 cups over the age of 18, until age 55...where we reverse the process until age 72. At age 72 water will be reduced at a rate of 2.5 ounces a day...until death.
It's all about saving the planet...
...and the Roo's.
This is MUCH too important to ignore...even if we're wrong.
Last edited by SouthernFried; 03-19-2010 at 10:06 PM.
i think i might have found a new height of arrogance
I'm not curbing .
u mad?
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