You left out Xenon which seems to have a small reaction potential.

There is a wise guy in every crowd.

Bravo, Reverend Major! You've very coherently nailed it.
I'll be sending the link to this piece to several people I've argued with.

When politicians and bureaucrats not only jump on a bandwagon, but try and take it over - Beware!

Wow. Lots of stuff here. As I've said before, agreement is boring so I'll offer my disputes.

Small stuff first: Darwinism, aka Natural Selection, remains as the consensus theory of how evolution occurs. There is debate about the distribution of levels at which Natural Selection works (species, genes, organisms, etc.) but not much about NS itself.

I don't think people refrain from jumping off the Empire State Bldg out of respect for the "theory" of gravity but from their own, every day experience. In other words, knowledge of the existence of gravity is different from knowledge of the theory of gravity. But bravo on a great description of the difference between ordinary use of "theory" and scientific use.

I'm a fairly liberal guy and get about 100% of my news from what a lot of people at this site would call the liberal-biased mainstream media and I have to tell you, Don, that my understanding of the state of consensus about global warming is exactly as yours. I am well aware of the difference between the fact of global warming and the debate about its cause. All of this from the liberal media, so I am not very sure where you get this idea that the media are presenting a misleading picture.

I think most people are aware that a clear majority of climatologists now believe in the likelihood that global warming is man-made, what scientists like to call for reasons that are not clear to me "anthropogenic." I think that most people, too, are aware of the sheer complexity of the issue (weather has long been the metaphor for unpredictability) and that certainty is not imminent.

I think that most people, too, are suspcious of the ideologicaly-driven motives of those who are eager to promote a wait-&-see approach, which seems like a bit of an unnecessary gamble unless you have an unusually high vested financial interest. Or, in many cases, just an emotion reaction againstthe tree-hugging greenie commie dems who hate our lifestyles. But, yeah, sure it is still possible that an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will not have a heat-trapping effect that will cause the average temperature of the earth to rise. That's not proven. So let's just keep belching smoke & burning those fuels cause you don't want to be over-reacting to anything.

Next, the GOP takes on the fraudulent scientific consensus about the Copernican universe.

Note carefully that the IPCC's beginning premise is " human-induced climate change,". Actually I have noted very carefully that the IPCC's beginning premise contains one more word than your assertion, it states " risk of human-induced climate change,". Risk says uncertainty to me - not the ideologically dogmatic basis from which you claim their conclusions flow. As beginning premises do matter, as you rightly point out, I regret that your conclusions may suffer more from a suspect beginning premise than does the IPCC.

which seems like a bit of an unnecessary gamble unless you have an unusually high vested financial interest.

My big problem with the whole global warming thing is the assumption that warming is bad. It will have costs, sure. It will also have benefits. What are they, and how do they compare with the costs/benefits of "doing something"?

Rather than bogging down in the question of "Why is it happening?" we should be asking "Do we even care?"

Why the obsession with status quo among the political movement that gave us the phrase "agent of social change"?

(As an aside, I've been a global warming skeptic since I attended a conference and realized that computer climate models are, shall we say, an inexact science)

BTW loved your "sun's magnetic field" piece so much I linked to it. Very pretty pictures and nice charts.

For those of you who haven't seen it: go visit.

But suppose the sun is in a declining phase? If we reduce CO2 and the climate today is just fine then we may be doing the wrong thing. Which is generally the way politics operates.

For the last 5 or 6 years solar output has been constant - surpisingly the global temperature has also remained constant. I wonder why that is? What with all the extra CO2 and all.

I have heard that the extra CO2 is causing more vegetation to encroach on the Sahara. Which was once (in recorded histry) a pretty fertile place. I haven't been able to confirm the encroachment.

So the issue is not whether the world is warmer now than at some time in the past but how much of that warming is due to human beings and how much can we reduce future warming, even if we drastically reduce our standard of living in the attempt.

There's a further issue of whether it's even desirable to do so.

(In other words, I agree with Rob at #6).

The case that global warming is harmful has yet to be made (excepting fictional movies). There is a reasonable case to be made that global warming will be a net positive.

The productivity of farmland in the Northern Hemisphere is currently limited by winter frosts -- if the Earth is warming then productivity is likely to rise. Has this been discussed in context of Al Gore's "Truth" ? The billions of people that currently spend dollars (and use oil/coal/wood/gas) to heat their living spaces will have less reason to do so -- this may net out a win over the additional energy/dollars spent on air conditioning.

Whatever the human contribution to climate change, be it cooling factor, negligible, unknown, or warming factor (all of which are plausible theories at this point) the fact remains that natural factors such a solar forcing, planetary orbital changes, volcanic eruptions, and biological systems contribute factors with greater magnitudes. I find the case for modifying our net economic behavior to reduce CO2 emissions to be rather weak.

Fred K

Global Warming is merely a way for the new transnational priesthood (Hollywood, the Media, Liberal Dems, Euro Bureaucrats, trustafarians etc) to force the average American to do what the priesthood says.

Indulgences may be sold: carbon offsets.

Heretics burnt at the stake.

People's lives controlled in every particular. While the Priesthood revels in the luxury produced by the many for the few.

That is what Global Warming is all about. It is why no one considers forcing China and India to give up economic growth to "save the planet" but Americans are expected to live in mud huts and recycle their own whatever.

Seriatim:

mark, #3, While it is true that Darwin was the first to describe evolution as natural selection, the Darwinian theory of natural selection - slow, gradual adaptive changes over a very long time - is no longer adhered to. Instead, biologists have learned that new species appeared very rapidly with much fewer intermediate forms than Darwinian theory allowed for. It's not natural selection that has been tossed, but Darwin's theory of it.

#5 Ian Coull - a distinction without a difference. But even so, "Risk says uncertainty," pretty much pops the "consensus" bubble, eh?

#6 Rob Lyman, who wrote, "My big problem with the whole global warming thing is the assumption that warming is bad."

That's why I wondered, What if global warming is a good thing?.

Indeed, there is little to nothing in the 2007 summary that makes global warming out to be obviously bad.

#7 M. Simon - My "sun's magnetic field" piece is here.

#10 Fred K - "There is a reasonable case to be made that global warming will be a net positive. The productivity of farmland in the Northern Hemisphere is currently limited by winter frosts... ."

See the same link, two up, and also note that the IPCC summary report does say that the permafrost line is moving northward in the northern hemisphere. We know that in the Little Climate Optimum (a.k.a. the Medieval Warm Period), 10th-13th centuries, that Vikings crop farmed in Greenland well enough to support a population of a few thousand. Why a longer growing season, reaching more polar latitudes north and south, would be a bad thing is not much explained by the alarmists.

For my part, the AGW fight reminds me of another recent episode: the Internet stock bubble of the late 1990s. You've got the following:

1. Something that is poorly understood by most, but will Change the World in unpredictable ways (although unpredictably good in the case of the Net, unpredictably bad in the case of GW).

2. A sense that there's trillions of dollars at stake.

3. Lots of turbulence on all sides. Business models, government forms, and whole economic and political systems are seen as threatened.

4. Those who "get it" versus those troglodytes who just aren't hip to the whole thing, and ask unpleasant questions such as "can anyone see how this will actually make money" or "what about that whole Maunder Minimum thing"...

5. Obvious historic precedents: the railroad and telegraph boom of the mid 19th century, the Tulip Bubble, and with AGW, the climate-cooling scare in the 1970s, the Club of Rome, and the whole litany of bigthink disasters dating back to Malthus. And "advocates" claim that "this time, it's different".

6. Celebrity promotion and media advocacy. Being hip with AGW is cool and trendy, while being a skeptic is just so Big Oil. Al Gore as the new Maria Bartiromo.

Indeed, doomsday scenarios are more catchy than "things will be more or less fine" ones. The Sci-Fi writer Peter Hamilton played around with runaway warming scenarios in some of his books, though he stated he's no AGW "believer".

The scenario published by the EU (caveats, shovelfuls of salts and all that) says that the Mediterranean region would become much more arid, overriding the benefits of a longer growing season in northern Europe. But I could make an almost equally accurate prediction for the situation in 2060 using a deck of tarots, methinks.

This said, is our Jim Rockford a talented parodist?

Donald,

Punctuated equalibrium, which I believe is the particular theory of natural selection that you are referring to, while gaining ground among biologists, is not yet the majority view. Further, it only differs from Darwin's view in that it posits the following: the physical environment tends to change in sudden and short bursts and therefore the conditions for adaptive changes are few and far between; whereas Darwin assumed constant and gradual change in the environment and therefore in adaptation. But strict Darwinism and punctuated equilibrium share the same 3 basic compoments, i.e., random mutation + changing environment = selection of traits most suited to new environment vs. less suited (i'm oversimplyfing, obviously). The rate of change suggested by punctuated equilibrium is, really, a minor variant of the original theory. It is not substantively different. The mechanics are the identical.

You've certainly done a service in describing, more realistically than often done, what "theory" means in science, and why it's essential.

However, it's worth pointing out that controversy is the lifeblood of science. We make our living disagreeing with each other, picking fights with each others' theories (or with the "null hypothesis" in case we can't find an actual opponent to fight with), and testing our predictions to see who gets to win this particular fight. The reason for noting this is that the existence of controversy is not a reason to think there's some dark secret being suppressed. (Quite the contrary!) It's just business as usual, moving incrementally toward better descriptions of reality.

That said, even with ongoing controversies about climate mechanisms and natural trends and so on, why should we take the "anthropogenic hypothesis" seriously? (That is, what makes us think mankind is doing it?)

Well, we do know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so more CO2 is likely to trap more heat. And humanity has released a huge amount more CO2 into the atmosphere over the last century or so than has been there for the last several millenia.

That's not a slam-dunk. There could be feedback processes that lead to inverse response from more CO2. There could be natural processes raising global temperature that make the human-provided CO2 negligible. Or something else. But there is certainly a reasonably strong prima facie case: it's going in a certain direction, and what we're doing is pushing it in that direction.

If it might be a problem for it to go that way, perhaps we should look carefully at what's happening, and possibly take some action.

But is it a problem? Well, not for the Earth, certainly, which will keep on spinning on its axis regardless. Certainly not for the cockroaches, either, since they will probably survive and flourish after nuclear war. But our industrial civilization and population level depends fairly sensitively on things being about the way they are.

If you pump a bunch more energy into a complex system like the global climate, it doesn't just quietly get warmer in the winter, saving you some heating oil.

Instead, everything moves with more energy, which means the winds blow faster (more hurricanes), the swings are more extreme (colder winters as well as much warmer summers), and flows of ocean and atmosphere might change their courses, which is certain to gore someone's ox.

Sure, we might be fine. But we might not be. The really irresponsible thing is to stick your head in the sand and hope it will take care of itself. We may or may not know the right answer, but at least we seem to be willing to admit (finally!) that the question is important.

Fortunately, the GW crowd is demonstratedly clueless about how to sell average Americans on their idea. Their sales pitch amounts to nagging and stereotypical PC guilt-tripping. Americans by and large don't take well to that. It seems to me a much more effective approach would be to treat global warming as something akin to a giant asteroid on a collision course with the Earth: "Never mind what's causing it, if we don't Do Something About It Before It's Too Late™, we're all gonna die anyway."

Guilt and shame don't sell in middle America. Fear does.

Sigh. Can anyone here tell the difference between a baby and bathwater?

AGW would be easier to believe if the modelers practiced science. i.e. show their work. Computer codes, data, etc, instead of just shipping resulrs.

M. Simon,

in that case probably nobody would finance their investigations.

IMHO "Global Warming" is Socialism revisited after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is based in the same premises: "we know what is good for you", that is, the Common Good; "we know what to do to save you from Apocalypse", that is, you must follow the orders of a world burocracy ("WE"); "capitalism is bad" because industry consumes lots of energy and therefore worsens the problem; even economic growth and success in life might be bad, due to more energy consumption (the old leftist premise that the poor should be kept poor and vote us), and so on.

I think there is no scientific base on it because the World climate is a very complex system and the data we have ranges accurately only forty years, that is, forty cycles, in more than 3,500 million. Moreover, being or future nuclear (due to energy density issue), CO2 emissions will begin to be contained in a few decades. I don't see any reason why our politicians should step in scientific discussions and on them develop and industrial policy.

Donald #12,
You provide us with no less than a 'Time magazine' interviewee to provide the definition of 'scientific fact', a concept you wish to distinguish from 'scientific consensus'. So let's examine what he says about scientific fact: "a proposition affirmed to such a high degree that it would be perverse not to assent to it". Italics mine, and the significant aspect of his definition. He's not claiming any sort of absolute affirmation for scientific fact, nor does anyone understand consensus to mean much more than a majority opinion. Danged if I can see the profound difference between the two, the premise upon which the article appears to be based. If the 'consensus bubble' is popped, I guess the 'fact bubble' is lanced right along with it, ... whatever that means.

#20 from J Aguilar ,

Yes.

#21 Ian,

Try to figure out the difference between "flat earth theory", "anthropomorphic global warming", "gravitational attraction".

Flat earth - almost zero assent
AGW - 30% to 70% agreement
gravitational attraction - >99% agreement to: G*m1*m2/r*r

There's quite a good news article on the IPCC report on pages 754-757 of the 9 February 2007 issue of Science Magazine (www.sciencemag.org), the flagship publication of the AAAS.

They discuss the implications of the report, and of various kinds of controversy around it. They do point out that there are other phenomena that have been proposed as explanations for the (unchallenged) actual warming of the Earth. However, those alternate explanations make more specific predictions (about things like rates of change and geographic distribution) that allow them to be tested, and they have not fared well in the face of the data.

On the other side, the IPCC faces critics who say that this report has not considered the lubricating effect of melting glaciers, which has led glaciers to accelerate their movements to the sea dramatically. (Everyone acknowledges that this is not an oversight: the data is just not ready yet.) But if this is a significant factor, then the glaciers could be melting far faster than current models predict, and sea levels could rise faster and higher than current models predict. Those of you thinking that global warming might be a good thing should consider the effects of a 1.4 meter rise in sea level by the end of the century.

This is serious stuff. A lot of uncertainty remains, of course, but if certain very plausible scenarios turn out to be true, it will be worth a lot to start taking action now. You have to take the uncertainty into account, but you also have to consider the current probabilities of the various scenarios, and take the consequences of inaction into account.

[Or, you could say, "It's just them gol-darned lib-ral scientists at it again, just like they told me to stop smoking, to eat less fats and cholesterol, and get some exercise. They just want to ruin the tobacco, TV, and fast-food industries. I'll show them!" Yes, and you just might win a Darwin award, too!]

Sure some skepticism is essential but when the science keeps affirming the AGW hypothesis without much credible science saying otherwise it's going to get called a consensus.

Sorry I just don't buy the paranoid Green/Liberal/Lefty/UN/AntiCivilisation Conspiracy view of this issue - there's been ample opportunity for alternate explanations of the growing body of data and plenty of powerful people and organisations that wouldn't let a credible "it's not real or important" explanation get buried or overwhelmed by BS. There just isn't one.

As for the view that if it's real it'll be good - that about as optimistic as believing humanity can significantly alter the proportions of atmospheric gases and there'll be no consequences. The modelling of our climate may be imperfect but it's the best we have and to refuse to pay attention to the best available knowledge doesn't strike me as the smartest move.

If the choice is between the most respected scientific bodies in the world and the belief that they've all been taken in by a paranoid hoax there's no contest.

Ken,
I don't think you understand what the scientific process actually is. Computer models are not themselves science. And science is not "affirmed" as in a belief system. Science is a process that involves observation leading to a hypothesis, hypothesis leading to a falsifiable prediction, and experiment / further observation based on the falsifiable prediction confirming or disproving the hypothesis. Anthrogenic Global Warming as a theory has in the past made several predictions, many of which have either not come true or have not been confirmed, such as the difference between predicted and observed temps at the surface and the troposphere.

Some of the foundational science for the claim of the uniqueness of recent warming, the Mann "Hockey Stick", has come apart at the seams and the process of critique of that work has demonstrated the dubious actual "science" among that crowd.

Chris Landsea's resignation year before last over the IPCC committee's misrepresentation of the science concerning claims of increased hurricane frequency linked to global warming was yet another clue that the IPCC is not doing reliable scientific work.

Robin Roberts [#25]:

Have you read the Science article I cite above [#23]? Can you address the points it makes?

Do you have any basis for thinking that Ken [#24] fails to understand the scientific method? At the level of detail of these posts, his choice of the work "affirms" is not a sufficient basis for your conclusion.

You are correct that falsifiable predictions are at the heart of the scientific method, but you omitted the important point (due to Karl Popper) that progress in science requires pairs of hypotheses making contrasting predictions, so that falsifying one leaves a better one. This is particularly important when any realistic model contains many parameters with uncertain values. If an alternate hypothesis does a better job of explaining the data, then fine, it will carry the day. If the current best model has limits, but there are no serious competitors, then the scientific community will work to improve that model (or formulate serious competitors).

You make several claims including phrases like "coming apart at the seams", "dubious actual `science'", and "not doing reliable scientific work", but without citation or even useful explanation. If you would like to have these claims taken seriously, they need better support than you are providing.

You write to give the impression that you have a basis for knowledge in this area. If that's the case, please provide evidence.

As for the view that if it's real it'll be good - that about as optimistic as believing humanity can significantly alter the proportions of atmospheric gases and there'll be no consequences.

First off, you're confusing two beliefs here, the "no consequences" belief and the "only good consequences belief." Neither is my view. I'd say GW will have costs and benefits, just as taking drastic action to prevent it will have costs and benefits. Are you under the impression that humanity can dramantically curtail energy usage and they'll be no consequences?

A status quo bias makes some sense here-- things are working well, why change them-- but it applies equally to a preference for stasis in the economy and stasis in climate.

The modelling of our climate may be imperfect but it's the best we have...

It's quite the fallacy to confuse "the best we have" with "correct." It's possible that the best we can do is get it completely wrong. The global climate is, to put it mildly, a complicated affair, and the models are exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions. Once, when I encountered a modeler told a conference that he had great trouble getting his model to run at a stable temperature in the absence of manmade CO2. I asked him, "How do you know that the climate would be entirely stable in the absence of manmade gasses?" His reponse was "I don't know that."

Oh. OK.

The "best" that primitive cultures had was rain dances and offering animal sacrifice. They did not, I believe, have much effect on climate, despite being the best things available. If the climate is changing regardless of what we do, the Kyoto may well be our very own rain dance.

I finally saw an inconvienent truth, and while I have a few minor problems with it (including the fact that I would prefer a debate instead of a lecture) it's really good and worth seeing. Still, while the extent of the problem is debatable, the idea that this problem is occurring and that it is man-made is preety much assumed in the field right now, or so I've gathered by talking to (and hearing lectures from) atmospheric chemists over the last 5 years.

A few points he made that I thought were worth noting:

1)Scientists have a preety good indicator of the planetwide CO2 levels over the past say 1,000,000 years. And they have never been this high. Furthermore, in 50 years CO2 levels are going to double again. Note: Changes in CO2 levels are rougly parallel with increases in temperature over that 1,000,000 year period.

2) The melting of glaciars, especially land-locked glaciers threatens to considerbly raise ocean levels. Wether or not you beleive in 'warming', changes in land-locked glaciers over the last century will dramatically change ocean currents and sea level. This is happening faster in the last 20 years than previously anticipated.

3) Changes in weather patterns are causing an influx of severe floods and severe draughts.

4) If we pursue ecological technolagies, environmental solutions may also create new jobs in new industries.

The biggest problems I had were with the graphs. They were good, but almost never given any real numbers (I realize he does this because it's a popular audience and not a science audience, but as a scientist that really bugged me)

Rob,

I think you exposed the nub of the debate with this question: "Are you under the impression that humanity can dramantically curtail energy usage and they'll be no consequences?" At least, in so far as the debate has taken place on this site and in similar forums.

I sense that there is a widespread belief among those who advocate a "wait-and-see" approach to, or carry an outright disbelief in, man-made global warming that those of us who do believe global warming is happening & that it is man-made & and that actions should be taken to decrease its acceleration advocate that we dramatically curtail energy usage. This belief, which I will argue is incorrect, has a strong influence on and is a motivating force for the wait-&-seers & disbelievers. It is a gross misrepresentation of our beliefs.

Speaking for myself, who has absolutely no desire to reduce my energy use, what I advocate are laws and financial incentives to do two things:
1) increase the use of non-fossil fuel burning energy sources;
2) increase the efficiency of all energy sources. (doubling the milage a car gets from a gallon of gas, will halve the amount of gas that car need to burn.
I believe that there is a benefit to doing both, even if global warming were not an issue. Among other things, a reduction of our dependence upon mideastern oil should be, in and of itself, sufficient reasons to implement the above policies.

This idea that my wanting to change your lifestyle to conform with my view on how others should live is behind my advocating that gov't take action to reduce the acceleration of our co2 output is just plain old-fashioned nonsense.

No one is arguing for a reduction of energy use. We argue for a slowing down of the increase of energy usages that are inefficient and fossil fuel based. That is a very very different proposition that the one embedded in your question.

Mark,

I don't see how we can possibly reduce CO2 without reducing energy use overall. Nuclear power might, with MASSIVE investment and a brutal suppression of public opinion, be able to take over most of our electrical power needs. Increasing mileage on passenger cars is possible and likely to be helpful, although it won't result in quite the same reductions you believe (if driving is cheaper, people will probably drive more, offsetting part of the benefit). But what about the transportation of goods? How will we replace diesel trucks, locomotives, and cargo ships? How will we heat our homes (I suppose nuke-supplied electricity)?

But even supposing for a moment that we could drastically curtain C02 without curtailing total energy usage, the economic consequences are still enormous. It isn't some kind of accident that fossil fuels are so popular, it's because they have a very high energy density and are easy to get (for the moment). Rapidly replacing them with more expensive energy sources means serious economic dislocation, and doing it gradually means an inevitable sacrifice in quality of life, as more economic activity is directed towards procuring energy and less is directed to everything else.

Simply put, there is no free lunch here, unless you're a summer associate at a big-city law firm. This does not mean that no action should be taken, but it does mean that costs and benefits should be rationally weighed--which simply is not happening in the public debate.

This idea that my wanting to change your lifestyle to conform with my view on how others should live is...nonsense

Well, maybe that's true for you, but I once had a girl tell me I "shouldn't own an SUV" in reference to my...Honda CR-V. THe fact that it gets better mileage than many Big Three sedans and my appreciation of 4-wheel drive in the snow and when hunting apparently doesn't matter.

Rob,

Two quick things: a reminder that I advocate reducing the increase--the acceleration--of energy use, not the use itself. You keep saying that I--those on my side--advocating drastically reducing energy usage or co2 output. But that isn't true. we advocate slowing down the increase.

the other thing is just my suggestion that, as a rule of thumb, what a girl once told you shouldn't become the basis for a belief of what anyone other than that girl thinks.

Alchemist, #28:
"Changes in CO2 levels are rougly parallel with increases in temperature over that 1,000,000 year period."

Question - has it been established that rising CO2 levels have preceded, raher than trailed, rising temps over those 1M years?

I ask this because, IIRC, there is more CO2 in the waters of the earth than any other "container" thereof, including the atmosphere. And CO2 is, again IIRC, held by cold water and released by warm water.

So have ocean warmings preceded global warmings, and the rise in CO2 levels been a trailing, not leading, indicator of warming?

Also, does CO2 have a specific wavelegth of solar radation that it blocks? And if so, once CO2 reaches a certain level in the atmosphere, would it achieve a saturation level above which no additional radiation would be blocked? That is, is there a natural upper limit to the greenhouse effect of CO2, and do we know what it is?

I'm pretty sure there is a heckuva lot more water vapor in the air than CO2. Does atmospheric water vapor also have a greenhouse effect? If so, what is the comparitive difference between the greenhouse effect of water vapor vs. CO2?

Not teasing you, these are serious questions; hope you (or someone else) can answer them.

in response to alchemist:

Unfortunately Gore is an evangelist who will fit the facts to his belief in AGW. A similar situation existed with Carl Sagan and his Nuclear Winter model. It, like the climate models, was adjusted to produce the desired result, but failed when confronted with a testable situation in the real world.

"Scientists have a preety good indicator of the planetwide CO2 levels over the past say 1,000,000 years. And they have never been this high. Furthermore, in 50 years CO2 levels are going to double again. Note: Changes in CO2 levels are rougly parallel with increases in temperature over that 1,000,000 year period."

Yes they have been higher and much higher.
Some scientists even question the cause effect (higher temps may also cause higher CO2 levels)

http://www.junkscience.com/images/paleocarbon.gif

" The melting of glaciars, especially land-locked glaciers threatens to considerbly raise ocean levels. Wether or not you beleive in 'warming', changes in land-locked glaciers over the last century will dramatically change ocean currents and sea level. This is happening faster in the last 20 years than previously anticipated. "

We're exiting an ice age. Some glaciers are melting and some are growing.

" Changes in weather patterns are causing an influx of severe floods and severe draughts."

So he says. CLIMATE IS NOT STATIC! Any event can be pointed to such as droughts , rains and attributed to AGW. Doesn't make it true just because Gore says so. For example Katrina was attributed to AGW but the Hurricane scientists disagree.
As has been pointed out the temps 1000yrs ago were warmer than now and civilization flourished. Gore has already decided that industrial man is EVIL and any thing we do is going to make things worse.

Okay, I promise that my previous comment, #32, was not a setup fr this one. After commenting I followed a link on RCP to a piece in the Washington Times by US Rep. John Linder. Here is the link

It has been known for years that most CO2 is dissolved in the oceans. It is called "carbon sinking." The oceans typically contain 60 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. It is also known that colder waters dissolve more CO2 than warm waters. Which do you think is cause and which is effect? We currently have CO2 levels of about 380 ppm. A recent study completed at UC Davis concluded that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere 300 million years ago was on the order of 2,000 ppm. Then this, "the same increase that experts expect by the end of this century as remaining reserves of fossil fuels are burned." If it is a given that human burning of fossil fuels is what will cause an increase of CO2 levels up to 2,000 ppm in the next 93 years, don't they owe us an explanation as to who burned those fossil fuels 300 million years ago? In fact we are being treated to a modern scientific shell game. The most prevalent and efficient greenhouse gas is not CO2; it is water vapor, which accounts for about 60 percent of the heat-trapping gases while CO2 accounts for about 26 percent. So, why are we being served a daily diet of our destroying the environment with our behavior as it relates to CO2? Because our behavior has little to do with the amount of water vapor, so it is a non-starter when it comes to those whose principal goal is ruling our lives.

He also offers this timely quote of HL Mencken: ""The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."

we advocate slowing down the increase.

That's all well and good, but still subject to the same cost-benefit analysis. You're going to get the biggest impact in "slowing down the increase" in developing nations (China, India), but curtailing (the growth of) energy use there will also inhibit their rise out of poverty.

No free lunch. Doesn't mean that inaction is the best course, again, but the "GW deniers = Holocaust deniers" crowd don't show any signs of appreciating the tradeoffs.

what a girl once told you shouldn't become the basis for a belief of what anyone other than that girl thinks.

Fair enough, mark, but by the same token, what YOU tell me can't be a guide to what anyone other than you thinks.

My point was merely that there are certainly lifestyle scolds in the world, and frankly I'm inclined to think they outnumber the really careful cost-benefit balancers. Certainly in the popular press, hating on SUVs takes up more space than thoughtful discussions of how to slow down Asia's demand for oil.

Don, you raise very interesting questions--as always. And I am certainly not about to say they are irrelevant or inconsequential, because they are most certainly not.

But a little bit of context is in order. here is how I see it. We know that there has been a sudden rise in the average surface temperature of the earth. We also know that there has been a significant increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere leading up to that sudden rise. We have also a fairly decent theory as to how such a cause-and-effect sequence would operate at a molecular level that would suggest a strong likelihood that there is a correlation between the two.

Now, given the nature of phenomena, this theory cannot be fully proven or disproven with laboratory experiments. The variables are far too many for any current computer model to tell us with much promise of accuracy what may happen in the future.

Lets just try to take the most neutral view of the situation. Lets say that there's a 33% chance that if the trend continues the result will be without effect, a 33% chance that it would harmful, and a 33% that it would be beneficial. Since we don't know, and since the risk of harm is quite high, wouldn't it be wise to try to slow down the effect until we have a better idea of what might happen and we can then make a more informed decision. After all, if we discover that pumping Co2 into the atmosphere will have a beneficial effect, we can always rev up the engines later on. If the effect turns out to be neutral, we've lost nothing and acquired a more energy-efficient society. If it turns out to be harmful, then we will have mitigated the effects.

Wouldn't it be wise to be more cautious, assume the worst for the time being, and find effective ways to reduce the increase in the amount of emissions. There are additional advantages to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels as an energy source. The Iraq war leaps out as an example.

In the meantime, no one is suggesting that climatologists stop seeking answers to questions and continue to study the various levels of impact differing factors have on climate. After all, these people were studying the issues long before and independent of the global warming debate.

To sum up, the fact that there is much we do not know is not an argument that we should take no action. The wise course would be to take precautions while continue to study the situation.

mark

The definition of "average surface temperature" is open to question. Distributions of ground stations, changes in equipment and (most importantly in my opinion) Urban Heat Island Effect, contribute to uncertainty as to the reality of the increase that has been reported. Many sites show cooling:
www.co2science.org/scripts/Template/0_CO2ScienceB2C/images/currentissue/lancasterwi.gif),
and the computations based on ground stations disagree with the satellite and weather balloon data. Increased warming should also have a greater affect at the poles but the antarctic interior is cooling.
www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Antarctic1903-2004_small.gif

So you estimate a third negative, a third positive and a third beneficial effects. That says 2 to one it's not a bad thing. But you forgot another case:

A Russian solar scientist is predicting a reduction in solar radiation in the near future. That would mean that slowing down global warming could be a disaster (which happened 500 yrs ago during the Maunder Minimum), because it's the only thing preventing another ice age. Hansen, that champion of global warming, was predicting one in the 70's but everyone is ignoring his lack of track record. So I make that 3 to 1 against the AGW must be stopped crowd.

If the effect turns out to be neutral, we've lost nothing and acquired a more energy-efficient society.

Mark, you've just proved my point for me. Make changes large enough to prevent/slow global warming and we haven't "lost nothing," we've spent a bunch of money and gotten nothing in return. No free lunch, OK?

I could turn your argument around: given uncertainty about climate change, but the certain fact that big changes in energy use will impoverish/prevent the de-impoverishment of huge numbers of people, isn't the prudent course to keep economic growth strong, get those poor people out of Calcutta's slums, and worry about 1 degree temperature changes once everyone has enough to eat and innoculation against preventable disease?

Wisdom does indeed counsel caution. But does it counsel caution in preventing environmental damage, or in preventing economic damage?

Rob, I don't see how moving towards a more energy efficient society will cause economic damage. I also think you are presenting a false choice between alleviating poverty in the 3rd world and moving toward a more energy efficient society. Both seem like inherently good and intellegent courses of action in and of themselves and are not mutually exclusive.

As far as spending a bunch of money goes, that's generally thought to be good for the economy. Spending that money will create jobs...all kinds of them. All that money that gets spent goes somewhere, does it not? It's true that if cars use less gas per mile, the oil company's may not earn as much as they do now since--assuming everyone drives the same amount of miles--they will buy less gas than previously. However, any money lost by oil companies will be offset by income earned by engineers and salesmen and parts manufacturers who collaborate on new efficiency systems. But overall, I think it is widely believed that technological advancements are good for the economy.

I don't see how decreasing the growth of fossil-fuel energy systems and/or increasing the use of non-fossil fuel systems and/or increasing the efficiency of all energy systems can be said to be harmful to the economy.

Finally, I am unaware of any trend--indeed any specific instance--of the popular press "hating on SUVs:" My God, the popular press feeds off SUV ads.

I don't see how decreasing the growth of fossil-fuel energy systems and/or increasing the use of non-fossil fuel systems and/or increasing the efficiency of all energy systems can be said to be harmful to the economy.

How you decrease the growth of fossil-fuel energy systems? Subsidizing other "clean" techonologies that won't be competitive anyways. You know, in my country wind energy costs 12 cents/kWh in the wholesale market at State fixed price, and nuclear 3 cents/kWh at free market price. Why does the Spanish government keep subsidizing wind energy? Because the "green effect" is a good excuse for some scoundrels to earn lots of money, money that comes from my pocket.

If you let the market evolve, it will naturally come to more efficient systems, such as the combined cycle plants, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells or solar water heating, but that is the limit. Beyond there, the State is interfering with the market and things become not more competitive, but uncompetitive and a liar for scoundrels who only seek the easy money of State financing.

If the State wants to finance something, do it in basic research, not in the market. Of course, GW is a good excuse for doing exactly the contrary, which is simply Socialism, the State interfering in the market.

Ok, I'm back. Had to get some things done, then read a bit more. This is outside of my speciality, but I found this website here that gives a fairly good historical review of global warming. While it doesn't answer everything, it's linked to the actual science articles and texts, which is nice.

has it been established that rising CO2 levels have preceded, raher than trailed, rising temps over those 1M years?

This is the best I can find, though one day I may have to dig out the actual articles (don't have time for that at the moment)

During the 1990s, further ice core measurements indicated that during past glacial periods, temperature changes had preceded CO2 changes by a few centuries... Some scientists doubted that the time lag could be measured so precisely, and pointed to data suggesting that the level of the gas had changed ahead of temperature after all.(54) There were many ways the gas level could interact with climate.... or perhaps there were still more complicated and obscure effects.

A key point stood out. In the network of feedbacks that made up the climate system, CO2 was a main driving force.(?)This did not prove by itself that the greenhouse effect was responsible for the warming seen in the 20th century... They found a "climate sensitivity"— the response of temperature to a rise in the CO2 level — in the same range as computer models were predicting for future greenhouse warming. The authors concluded that continued emissions would produce a temperature rise of several degrees during the coming century, "a warming unprecedented in the past million years, and... much faster than previously experienced by natural ecosystems.

Also, does CO2 have a specific wavelegth of solar radation that it blocks? And if so, once CO2 reaches a certain level in the atmosphere, would it achieve a saturation level above which no additional radiation would be blocked? That is, is there a natural upper limit to the greenhouse effect of CO2, and do we know what it is?

A really good question, and especially since moisture and CO2 overlap under STP (standard temp & pressure), and that saturation should prevent any CO2 based greenhouse effect. Unfortunately, as you go to low pressure systems in the atmosphere " CO2 absorption lines [do] not lie exactly on top of water vapor lines.

I thought I read something that answered the saturation question right, but I can't find it at the moment, so I'll finish this question later.

I'm pretty sure there is a heckuva lot more water vapor in the air than CO2. Does atmospheric water vapor also have a greenhouse effect? If so, what is the comparitive difference between the greenhouse effect of water vapor vs. CO2?

This is from here
Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere...However, changes in its conentration is also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization. The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood.

I'll keep digging a bit more

Rob - I'm not as dubious about the merits od driving efficiency into the system - the measure ought to be MBTU/$GDP, and maybe even a couple of different forms of energy MBTU/$GDP...we've improved dramatically in the last 30years, and looking at the economies of Europe and Asia suggests that there continues to be room for improvement...

A.L.

Mark, I have no desire to be rude given that you have contributed many civil and useful things here, but your economic thinking is seriously flawed. You're suffering from the fallacy that would lead some to celebrate Hurricane Katrina an an economic boom: just look at all the money being spent on rebuilding! Look at all the jobs for construction workers and bulldozer drivers! But that's obviously false; that money would have been put to better use had the hurricane not occured.

To bring the discussion round to energy, consider the micro level: what would happen if you decided to make your own life more energy efficient? Say, buy a hybrid automobile. Unless you have an insanely long commute or gas prices go to $10/gal, you'll never save as much in gas as the premium you pay for the hybrid over a conventional vehicle. Unless your commuter car is an 18-wheeler with a full load, you certainly won't be able to save the entire price of the hybrid in gas; you're economically better off just keeping your current car. That means to be more energy-efficient your standard of living must drop: more money sunk into your car means less money to buy college education for your children, a fine bottle of wine, or a pistol with Elvis engraved on it.

Now, of course, you may not consider it a drop in your standard of living; maybe the hottie at the fair-trade coffeehouse has made it clear that her all-organic hemp 36D bra and rainforest-tribe-made sustainable thong are staying right where they are until you get rid of your gas guzzler, so you're willing to give up Elvis on a 1911. That's fine; it's your money and your choice. If everyone decides to make the same decision, then there is no sacrifice in standard of living because we're all getting what we want (although coffeehouse hotties are something of a scare resource).

But most of us make energy decisions based on cash value. To forcibly cause our society to become more efficient, you'll have to lower our standard of living somehow: raise taxes on fuel, forbid the sale of the (cheaper, less efficient) products we want to buy, take more of our money in taxes to subsidize efficient industries, discourage the transportation industry (since locomotives and big trucks don't have nearly as much room for improvement as passenger cars) whatever. More spending for efficiency means less left over to spend on what we really want, and also less left over to save and invest in companies creating new technologies that we really want.

Efficiency can't be magically created out of nothing; it costs money, and somebody has to pay. Certainly new jobs will be created in "efficient" industries, but at the expense of jobs in other industries--just as rebuidling jobs in New Orleans are coming at the expense of jobs in other industries. It is highly unlikely that this process can be managed in a way that produces a net benefit, economically. Central planning simply doesn't have a good track record.

In the US, a reduction in standard of living would not be catastrophic (we have a thriving collectable-plate industry which we could sacrifice), so maybe it makes sense. But we're a highly efficient nation already; most of us have double-paned windows and fuel-injected cars, and our power plants have excellent technology to miminmize waste. The big CO2 wins, if any, are going to come from countries like China and India, which are belching out rapidly increasing amounts in pursuit of smaller output. The costs of efficiency there can probably be counted in lives; they need economic development more than anything else to get their population out of real grinding povery (not the "poor kids are suffering from obesity" kind of poverty we have here). Maybe we can figure out a way to provide foreign aid in the form of technology assistance which does not result in utter, rank corruption and the destruction of indigenous industry; maybe that would be worth it.

AL,

No doubt there is some room for improvement; there is room for enormous improvement in Asia especially. And maybe the benefits do indeed outweigh the costs. But Mark apparently believes there are no costs, which is the point I'm responding to.

Rob,

I don't know why you think I believe there are no costs, or that I believe there is a free lunch, or that I believe in central planning. Everything has a cost---that's is the fundamental fact of economy. Everyday I spend money for food. That's a cost. It's a net loss for me.

You know, I used to be a heavy smoker. I spent a lot of money on cigarettes. I got bronchitus and I had to quit. My tastebuds returned and now I spend a lot more on food and wine than I save on cigarettes. There was a net economic loss on a daily basis. But in the end, I'll probably live longer and thus earn more money over my lifespan. Of course, maybe I'll get hit by a truck next week and end up dying poorer than I would have if I had quit smoking.

I have never said that there would be, could be or should be no costs in trying to increase the efficiency of our engergy systems or in trying to reduce the growth of our fossil fuel consumption. All benefits have costs. The question is: are the benefits worth the costs. I would argue that in this case, yes, clearly they would be.

For crying out loud, Rob, if I break my arm I go to the doctor even though it will cost me money to have him reset the bone. But there are other factors to consider when making cost decisions.

The benefits of less dependence upon fossil fuels as a source of energy are many and large. 1. Reduction of impact of global warming. 2. Less need to engage in wars in the M.E. 3. Less economic leverage of countries like Saudia Arabia, Russia, Venezuala, etc. 4. Less air polution.

Any two of the four is sufficient reason to explore and in invest in increasing fuel efficiency and alternative sources.

The reason I took you to be saying that there are no costs is quotes like:

If the effect [of global warming] turns out to be neutral, we've lost nothing and acquired a more energy-efficient society

and

I don't see how decreasing the growth of fossil-fuel energy systems and/or increasing the use of non-fossil fuel systems and/or increasing the efficiency of all energy systems can be said to be harmful to the economy.

Forcing money to be diverted from things people want to more expensive things they don't want is harmful to the economy. That's doubly true if the more expensive things are parceled out based on which Congressional district they are built in. And any such move will require some element of central planning, whether through "sin taxes" or direct subsidies or mandates like CAFE.

There was a net economic loss on a daily basis.

I would argue not. There is a net monetary loss, but if you're enjoying life more now, then it's a net economic gain for you. I'm not suggesting that buying wine is wasteful or foolish (although I would suggest that buying the Elivs gun is both), I'm saying that being forced by the government to buy fancy wine that you don't appreciate (or a fancy energy-efficient technology) is wasteful and foolish.

Buying things you want raises your standard of living regardless of price; being forced to buy things you don't want lowers your standard of living regardless of price. Most people apparently don't value energy efficiency (above that which pays a good cash return to them) for its own sake enough to buy it without coercion or bribes. Coercion and bribes are bad for the economy.

I should mention that there may be a collective action problem here: perhaps most people would gladly pay extra for gas if it meant the Saudi royal family would be torn to pieces by rabid camels, but can't make that happen on their own. In that case, carbon taxes used to subsidize the camel industry may be an excellent idea.

But Rob, a more energy-efficeint society BY DEFINITION is an economic gain. At least as I understand the word "efficiency." It would mean a reduction in the costs of energy. I'm not suggesting that everyone hook up their home's electrical grid to their own personal set of windmills. That would be inefficient. As I have aleady argued, a more energy-efficient society is worth the costs involved because the gains outweigh the costs. Also, not all the gains are economic in nature, as I have said.

I'm sure I appreciate your distinction between economic loss and monetary loss.

At this point I say let's just agree to disagree and move on.

a more energy-efficeint society BY DEFINITION is an economic gain.

Mark, here's a simple hypothetical. If you pay an extra $5,000 for a hybrid car, which over its useful life saves you $2,000 in in gas, you have lived an more energy efficient life. But you have also spent $3,000 extra for that privilege. Now, maybe the pleasure of dating that coffeehouse hottie is worth more than $3,000 to you. In that case, you have experienced a net economic gain; the extra money bought you something more valuable than anything else you could have bought with it. For my part, I'm married, so I've just blown $3,000 on a car, when I could have spent on something else that I actually wanted. Thus, being energy efficient in this hypothetical is a net economic loss to me.

If the government, seeking a more efficient society, forces me to buy a hybrid--or takes money from other people to bribe me with a subsidy--it generates a net economic loss, either by making me pay more than I want to for a car (reducing how much I can spend on things I do want), or by taking money from other people who would rather spend it on themselves and giving it to me.

Okay Rob, we're still at it are we?

(i would discourage anyone other than Rob from wasting his or her time reading this post)

A couple of things: one, why doesn't your analogy also include some of the other choices available to the car buyer? It simply isn't true that a car with better mileage is more expensive than a car with worse mileage. There's a wide range of choices. Expense isn't necessarily tied to mileage. I don't have to buy a more expensive car to save on gas. Many gas guzzlers are much more expensive than regular cars that have better mileage.

two, no one is suggesting that the gov't force you to buy a hybrid. but the gov't could do several things. it could give you a tax break for buying one, like they give you a tax break when you donate to the local symphony or when you give clothes to goodwill, because it help to achieve a desired social end. The gov't could offer financial incentives to an industry to invest in r&d to bring costs of hybrids down. this could be in the form of tax breaks like we give many industries like the oil industry to encourage exploration and offshore drilling, it could be in the form of subsidies like we give farmers and the steel industry. So I'm not suggesting any radical change in gov't practice, only a thoughtful application of current practices.

Here's my analogy: I like my house at warm 73 degrees. In order to achieve this pleasantness, I burn 2 cords of wood each day at cost of $35 a cord. Suppose I get the idea that if I were to put glass in my windows, I might be able to reach that 73 degrees by burning less wood. But the problem is that I'll have to spend a lot of money on that glass and then I'll have to pay somebody to install the glass.But I have the addded incentive that if I have glass in my windows, when it rains all that water won't get in the house.

Let's say I spend $4,000 to make my house more energy-efficient by putting that glass in the windows. Now I only have to burn one cord of wood.I'm only saving $35 a day and it's going to take a lot of days to make up that $4000. But now, my stuff doesn't get wet, and I save a lot of time because I don't have to stoke the fire but half as often, and I get to sleep all the way through the night now.

I have increased the energy-efficiency of my system. It wasn't free. It cost me an investment. It'll be a long time before I recoup that investment. Maybe I'll die before it ever happens. But there are additional bonuses from the system.

Mark,

I am convinced at this point that we don't actually disagree too much.

Your window example makes perfect sense, and it was also captured by my dating-a-barista-girl example: there are certainly non-financial (but, many would argue, not non-economic) benefits to our spending decisions.

The problem with scaling non-financial benefits up to society-wide application is that not everyone considers them benefits; some people may wish to live without windows, while others wouldn't mind windows but don't think it's worth the expense, because there are other things they like better. Forcing people to either install them at great expense, or pay taxes to bribe other people to install them, entails economic loss because some people wind up spending money on something they don't want (windows or taxes).

(As an aside, tax breaks are not some economic miracle; they just mean other people have to pay more taxes to subsidize my decisions, leading to loss)

Externalities (costs and benefits that do not accrue to the person making the decision) often justify government action; if your wood-burning is polluting the neighborhood, then it makes sense to impose a stiff wood tax representing the economic value of this pollution to your neighbors. Hopefully that will encourage you to put in windows by making it a financially sound decision.

In the end, I don't disagree with you that government action, of whatever form, will produce some benefits. I am not arguing that GW is 100% good, or even 10% good. Nor do I wish to discount the value of externalities, such as pollution and dependence on ME oil, which clearly you value very highly. I just want to be sure--and this starts WAAAAY back at comment #6--that all costs and all benefits get counted. Right now we mostly see costs of global warming (which apparently include anything bad that happens, anywhere) and benefits of government action getting counted.

Saying "let's be extra careful to avoid costs," as you said in comment #3, is a sensible plan of action only if you're actually counting all the costs.

Why does the government should force me to install those glasses on the windows? How much energy cost to melt silicates and other oxides to get those glasses? Why shouldn't I solve the problem instead wearing a wool jersey and an impermeable leather cover obtained from my cattle? Isn't that far more efficient that subsidizing glass producers? Wouldn't that government policy be well supported by the Melted Borosilicate Lobby? Why should they tell me what is more efficient for me?

The answer is simple: the experts in GW know what is better for me, better than I do. That is simply Socialism.

The government might fund long term research, beyond that, the problems ought to be solved by the market and the courts, and let the people decide, because in the end we are the ones that pay.

#12 Don and #15 mark:

I think you have both bought in (in different ways) to Stephen Jay Gould's self-promoting hype that "punctuated equilibrium" is a fundamentally new theory. SJG is widely scorned in serious biological circles for this hype.

Darwin never claimed that evolution proceeded at an even rate. He even identified the types of conditions -- which don't often happen -- such as geographical isolation of a sub-population, which are necessary for significant changes. Gould may have done some useful work on examining some of the details of these conditions, but his claim that this is something fundamentally new is just bunk. At most we are talking about some relative rates of change.

Perhaps an anaology is in order. If you visit the Grand Canyon, they present information saying the canyon formed "gradually" over the last 5 million years. This certainly does not mean that it proceeded at a perfectly even rate over that time. The high river during the spring snow melt most years accelerates the erosion. Drought years slow it. Receding glaciers at the end of ice ages certainly accelerated it. Perhaps there were some absolutely catastrophic floods from the breach of ice dams, as there were in the badlands of Washington state.

But if you could go back in time and take a snapshot every 10,000 years or so, then run them as a movie, the change would still look "gradual".

Curt,

Granted, gradual does not mean uniform. But I think you are being unfair to Gould & Co.'s thesis of P.E. when you say it isn't a significant departure from Darwin on this particular though minor aspect concerning the rate of change. If I remember correctly, Gould postulated, based upon relatively high concentrations of new forms in relatively few strata in the fossil record--as oppossed to relatively even distribution of new forms throughout all strata--that adaptive change was infrequent, that stability of forms was the norm, and that only during rare geologicaly catastrophic periods were conditions ripe for adaptive change and that it was during these times that most signficant structural changes occurred.

Whereas at the end of chapter IX and the beginning of X (in the revised 2nd edition) of Origin of Species, Darwin makes it clear that he believes that the seeming sudden appearances of new forms in the fossil record are misleading and are the result of an imperfect record. Darwin does seem to think that slow gradual change over time--rather than abrubt sudden change--is how natural selection operates. Of course, to be fair, Darwin was arguing against those who saw the sudden apperance of forms in the fossil record as evidence against evolution and in support of some sort of spontaneous creation. But I can find nothing in his work that suggests he considered Gould's theory to be the likely explination for large gaps in the fossil record.

Also, whether or not Gould was liked or was a self-hyper are not criteria by which his theories ought to be judged.

The responses to my comment #24 from Robin and Rob seem to amount to "maybe the science is wrong". Not very convincing. 15 yrs ago it maybe had some merit. In the meantime the science has got a lot better, the body of data they work with has grown enormously and scientifically credible alternative interpretations that put the global temperature rise in the "natural" catagory have not emerged. Whilst there may be some benefits here and there to global warming, best predictions show they're far outweighed by the negatives. Even if you live where the climate has become more favourable for agriculture, the effects elsewhere will flow on - downturned world economy, mass refugee movements, greater international strife and worse national security outlook.

My own opinion is that there ought to be R&D on a scale that reflects the seriousness of this issue. When 100's and 1000's of US$billions can be spent trying to secure a safe future, 10's of billions ought to be affordable to develop better energy technologies for that safe future. Failure to do so is very likely to make the future less safe and less prosperous.

"...best predictions show they're far outweighed by the negatives."

That's a rather gross exaggeration, especially when many of the "negatives" claimed, such as increased tropical storm frequency, are of dubious science in the first place. You are simply exaggerating the certainty and reliability of the predictions - note that the forthcoming IPCC report actually retreats from many of the more extreme predictions of previous IPCC reports.

Ken #24, etc.

I wrote a long response to you a couple of days ago, but it disappeared into the ether when I tried to submit it. At the end of the week, I finally have some time to repeat it (and I'm saving it this time!).

As Robin Roberts points out in #25, a key plank in the case for "anthropogenic" global warming (AGW for short) has been totally discredited. The story is very telling for a lot of reasons. It requires some context.

For virtually the entire 20th century, the "consensus" view of climate history showed significant natural swings over the last hundreds and thousands of years. Key recent features of this history were the "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP) starting about 1000 AD and the "Little Ice Age" starting about 1600 AD. There were (and are) hundreds, if not thousands, of scientific papers supporting this idea.

The first UN IPCC report in 1990 showed a plot of this history, with present temperatures right about average for the last few thousand years, lower than the MWP and higher than the LIA. Not much to get excited about.

Then came the "hockey stick" plot in 1998, extended in 1999. Suddenly, the MWP and LIA were gone, at least in the reporting of the science. They were replaced with a long, slow, constant decline until about 1850, followed by a sudden rapid rise since then, with late 20th century temperatures much higher than those in the supposed MWP. The hockey stick graph was featured no less than 7 times in the 2001 UN IPCC report. The government of Canada sent it to every household in the country. Al Gore made it a centerpiece of "An Inconvenient Truth".

What was this amazing piece of scientific work that instantly overturned a century of consensus of climate history? Fundamentally, it was a piece of statistical analysis done by non-statisticians and "peer-reviewed" by non-statisticians. When real statisticians finally reviewed the study in detail (obstructed every step of the way by the authors) they were appalled. The study was riddled with basic statistical errors. Finally the US Congress requested a detailed review by a committee of top statisticians. Their report to Congress can be read here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf

While stated in measured technical language, it's about as scathing a scientific smackdown as you're going to see.

Fundamentally, the authors of the hockey stick plot invented a new statistical technique that they claimed could better pull "signal" from noisy data. However, it did this so well, it could conjure up a specific signal (the "blade" of the hockey stick) where there was none. In fact, it was virtually guaranteed to do so -- about 99.9% of the time with random data inputs.

The only dataset type they had that ostensibly showed significant 20th century warming was California bristlecone pine tree rings. These did grow faster in the 20th century, but in a pattern completely uncorrelated to local temperatures. The scientists that actually studied these pines thought that the increased growth was due directly to the higher CO2 concentrations. Still, the hockey stick statistical technique weight this dataset 400 times more than most others in greating the resulting temperature plot.

You will notice that the hockey stick is nowhere to be seen in the 2007 IPCC report. It has disappeared without mention, much like Soviet histories. The newest report actually shows a lot less certainty about temperature patterns than the 2001 report.

What bothers me most about the study (and others like it) is not just the errors, but the blatant misrepresentations in it. They reported the study was robust against the removal of any type of temperature-proxy dataset, including all tree rings, which is absolutely false. Just removing the bristlecone pine tree rings removes all 20th century patterns. It turns out they knew this: in data they reluctantly provided several years later under pressure from Congress, in a directory named "CENSORED" (I kid you not) was the study repeated without bristlecones, showing no 20th century anomaly.

Also, the study reported that the temperature reconstruction had very high verification statistics including a high "verification R-squared" (where perfect is 1.0 and nothing is 0.0). Incredibly, they did not state what these numbers were (and the reviewer did not insist on it!). When questioned by a Congressional committee about this statistic, the lead author said he had not computed it, because that would have been "a stupid thing to do". (Remember that his paper said he had computed it.) Two separate recreations of the study, including a "friendly" one by the lead author's PhD advisee, both calculated it as 0.02, which is to say the reconstruction was worthless. And the data provided under pressure from Congress showed they had computed the value and gotten this very low value.

I could go on and on -- it is truly a scientific chamber of horrors.

Now in response to the unraveling of this report, there have been several responses. The first is that several "independent" studies have confirmed the results. However these studies have very overlapping author sets, data sets and statistical techniques -- basically repeating the same errors.

Another response is that it does not matter, because the case for global warming now really relies on the temperature record and the computer models. But keep in mind that both of these have as many opportunities for screwing around with the data as the temperature history reports, and the scientists who run them are even less open. Phil Jones, the scientist in charge of compiling the instrumental temperature record that is most widely used, absolutely refuses to disclose his data and methods (remember that your taxpayer money funded his work). Keep in mind that his data shows much more warming that either the satellite or the balloon data.

Meanwhile, new evidence comes to light every month that the Medieval Warm Period was significantly warmer than present over much of the globe and that the Holocene Optimum period that ended 5000 years ago was warmer still. I don't see any convincing evidence that the present warming is unusual by either level or rate of change.

The computer models have a whole set of different issues, but I don't have time to go into them now. But it has to be remembered that they are very, very, crude models whose original inventors never intended them to be used for these purposes.

NO 'Consensus' on "Man-Made" Global Warming

"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus..." - Michael Crichton, A.B. Anthropology, M.D. Harvard