“The science is settled” has been a popular phrase when it comes to global warming, but that statement has come under fire, and even more so recently. The question of whether or not global warming is anthropogenic (caused by humans) is an important one, as it has huge ramifications for our environment, economy and ultimately our quality of life.
Before Nov. 17, 2009, it was unknown that data (including more than one thousand e-mails and thousands of other documents) had been stolen from a server at the Climate Research Unit, but on Nov. 17 that data was uploaded onto a hacked server of the RealClimate website with the message “A miracle just happened.” An administrator at RealClimate promptly noticed the server intrusion and deleted the uploaded information. In time, this information would surface again.
A report on this information by the Science & Public Policy Institute details what the information reveals.
“The Team had tampered with the complex, bureaucratic processes of the United Nation’s climate panel, the IPCC, so as to exclude inconvenient scientific results from its four Assessment Reports, and to influence the panel’s conclusions for political rather than scientific reasons.
“The Team had conspired in an attempt to redefine what is and is not peer-reviewed science for the sake of excluding results that did not fit what they and the politicians with whom they were closely linked wanted the United Nation’s climate panel to report.
“They had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.
“They had expressed dismay at the fact that, contrary to all of their predictions, global temperatures had not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years, and had been falling for nine years. They had admitted that their inability to explain it was ‘a travesty.’ This internal doubt was in contrast to their public statements that the present decade is the warmest ever, and that ‘global warming’ science is settled.”
The incident was later dubbed “Climategate,” but despite the information brought to light by it, many argue against its impact on the theory of anthropogenic climate change. This is understandable as there have been many years of global warming talk and some ideas have become embedded in people’s minds.
The belief in anthropogenic global warming has opened the door to some dangerous political policies, which only increase the need to understand things properly when it comes to Earth’s climate. The first that comes to mind is Cap and Trade, which is a huge energy tax that is supposed to curb our carbon emissions. If don’t believe me that Cap and Trade is a huge tax, believe the President (who is a proponent of Cap and Trade) when he says “under my plan of a Cap and Trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”.
Furthermore, there have been proposed climate treaties that pose a threat to our sovereignty. To my knowledge none of them have been signed, but there was a lot of momentum for the United States to sign a treaty in Copenhagen, which would have made us accountable to foreign entities, and we would be eligible for penalties if we did not meet the goals enumerated in the treaty. This is ridiculous; we should not be signing up to be subservient to any foreign countries or groups. We must be a leader in our own right and conduct ourselves according to our own wishes.
The whole global warming discussion seems to have turned into an issue of peer pressure, on an almost elementary-school level. It’s far too common for people who express any sign of doubt of anthropogenic climate change to be met with charges of being a conspiracy theorist, crazy, or being bought and paid for by the oil companies. When there should be debates, there is name-calling and black-listing. In response to the saying that “the science is settled,” I reply, with all due respect, that the science is not yet settled. In fact, the more people claim that it is, the more they do harm to their own cause by not actually convincing anyone of the science. The less people explain things, the more skeptical of them I become.
Aaron,
Do you really think that “we should not be signing up to be subservient to any foreign countries or groups” but it is okay for others to be subservient to us? Is it okay for us to force free trade treaties so that we can get whatever we want by leaving other countries with low-class jobs, abundant cheap food, technologic crap, high amounts of pollution, etc?
And what do you mean by “we must be a leader in our own right and conduct ourselves according to our own wishes”? What are your wishes? Search, conquer, monoculturize, detroy? Buy, use, “throw away”, repeat? Be a leader and become accountable for the actions you take.
Notice that I am not talking about “global warming,” I am talking about what pollution is doing to our environment (which is directly correlated to our health because this is our habitat). And this you can see and cannot deny. There is only one planet, buddy, we are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Jorge
Jorge,
I do *not* think other countries should be subservient to us. For the example you pose, I do *not* believe we should force treaties on other countries.
My wish is to follow the Constitution. I do not wish to conquer other countries, nor do I wish to diminish any cultures. I’m not sure exactly where you are pulling these ideas from, but they are not my wishes.
I believe my column focused rather exclusively on anthropogenic climate change rather than issues of sustainability. The two are not necessarily one in the same. We can definitely be polluting the earth and wasting resources without changing the climate at all, and it’s still a dangerous thing.
I am in no way endorsing disregard for our environment and as you correctly point out we’re not leaving anytime soon. Please don’t confuse doubt on anthropogenic climate change with reckless disregard for the environment.
I love how you global doomers (SAVE THE PLANET AND CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE etc.) like to have your very own personal definition of the CO2 theory. One that may or may not be promising a planet that is unlivable for us humans. Just as in any religion, you witch burners make a lack of evidence a virtue. We see right through you, so grow up.
We know GWing is not about energy, or fuel economy, of sacrifice, or living with less and greed and capitalism or bad cable service and certainly not the entire issue of pollution itself. You know, pollution. That stuff that Rachel Carson’s revolution defeated starting back in the smoggy 60’s and 70’s. The IPCC theory is what it is, death for our children or our children’s children and to suggest less is being a climate coward crying wolf and yelling FIRE in the movie theatre and rubber necking fatal car accidents. It’s been 24 years now, stop it.
Any of you doomers post climate gate still pushing this irresponsible environmentalism look like the last fella to ever show up to the party in Disco dudes.
Stop scaring my kids. Preserve Nature. Protect Nature and respect Nature. Not follow a destructive and misguided Greenzi mistake that is more suited for the superstitious Dark Age.
Evidence is very important. Evidence is everything we should use to make important, informed decisions.
Here are many excellent sources of evidence, using the best instruments we have yet made, to confirm that our climate is changing due to human caused greenhouse gases and land use.
http://climate.nasa.gov/
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/P06.cws_home/main
http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
Aaron,
The Earth has been working hard for the past 3.8 billion years to create all of these different networks, cycles, relationships, that allows us to thrive in this exact environment. And now, the man almighty has come trying to shape the world as he desires, not realizing the extend that his actions are having on this planet..
Anthropogenic climate change is threating human sustainability, how do you expect for me not to bring up sustainability when you are doubting the impact that humans are having on this planet? By the way, since you brought up “sustainability,” what does it mean to you?
When you mentioned “we must be a leader in our own right and conduct ourselves according to our own wishes,” what exactly were you talking about? Where you relating being a leader while conducting ourselves according to our own wishes in regard to accountability for the pollution that we have created and instigated? Could you please clarify?
By the way, I think this website will entertain you for a while. How to talk to a climate skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/
Jorge,
Your opening statement seems rather discriminatory against the human species. It’s as if you believe Earth was perfect until humans came around, and now we’re messing everything up. What about the dinosaurs and their massive food consumptions? Didn’t they wreak havoc on the environment? What does it say about humans that we are capable of realizing what our impact on the Earth is?
If you believe in anthropogenic climate change, then yes, it is undoubtedly tied to sustainability. For me though the two are not tied (as I don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change). Sustainability is about slowing our use of resources. As I learned in high school physics under the heading of “entropy”, is that nothing is sustainable. What a depressing class that was. For me, sustainability is about being smart in our choices and how we use our resources. I think those decisions should be up to individuals though, not big government.
When I said “we must be a leader in our own right and conduct ourselves according to our own wishes” I mean that we must be the best America we can be by living freely so that our American ingenuity might be as least restrained as is reasonable.
That link did not “entertain” me for long. It cites the CRU (mentioned in my article) and the IPCC report (which has also been discredited). I found this quote particularly bothersome: “There is simply no room for doubt: the Earth is undergoing a rapid and large warming trend.” It is this “shut up, I’m right, you’re wrong” attitude that I addressed in the closing paragraph of my column.
Instead of comparing the human species to an extinct species of reptiles, it might be best to compare humans living in this century to those ancient humans that ceased to exist due to environmental degradation. The Fall of the Maya: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1766096/the_fall_of_the_maya/
Thanks for answering the question with such a philosophical manner, could you now please give me a practical example (you know, something I can picture in my mind, learn by doing instead of learn by theorizing) of what you mean by “we must be a leader in our own right and conduct ourselves according to our own wishes”?
We’re all people of the Earth, a round world last time I checked. The atmosphere doesn’t pass through border checkpoints.
Some problems are big enough that we have to work together to solve them. That philosophy is used to create teams, cities, and nations. It’s okay to extend it one more step and create an international panel to manage the climate. Pride, nationalism, and sovereignty are terrible group ethics, and this is a group problem.
The only source you cite against CRU is Science & Public Policy Institute – which is not obliged by law to reveal, and does not reveal, its sources of funding. SPPI has no authority on this subject. It is a political organization, not a scientific institution.
This is a bad article in poor judgement, argument and research, on a topic best left to the experts.
I only cited one source because it was one of my favorites; there are many others out there and they are easy to find (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TqqWJugXzs). If you think the global warming “science” isn’t political, I suggest you read this article: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1836667/posts
As for leaving things to the experts, I find this logic quite scary. This is the philosophy of dictators: I know what’s best for you and I need not explain my logic or reasoning behind my decisions. If the science is there but just complicated, I have confidence the public would grasp it. There’s much evidence to the contrary however. Remember the global cooling scare of the 70’s? (PDF: http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf)
Is this a parody post / op-ed? Did you really link to a YouTube documentary which references the Illuminati in the synopsis?
This is not on even footing with the evidence below –
http://climate.nasa.gov/
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/P06.cws_home/main
http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
Is it frightening to let a medical doctor explain to you why you need a certain procedure or gene therapy? Does it scare you that nuclear engineers have structured hundreds of tons of uranium in a delicate balance to provide you power?
Yes, when explained clearly and publicly, just like this climate science, it is best to let the experts decide.
Aaron, I’ll put my money where my mouth is. $100 that the Newsweek article cites no research paper published in a proper journal signifying cooling in the long term.
That’s $100 for being wrong.
A political, scienceless private club is one of your favorite sources for climate information? Ho-boy. Wait for it, because you linked me to a YouTube documentary with a summary that references Illuminati.
I’m just calling ’em as I sees ’em.
Shame on you for attempting to earn a degree which employs science for the improvement of the human condition, without understanding science or the interconnected nature of Nature.
The sum of evidence and reason is all we should use to make informed decisions. Here are (few of a large set of) excellent, measured, peer-reviewed sources of evidence on climate science:
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports
http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html
http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/ghg_data_unfccc/items/4146.php
Scientists publicly publish and defend their findings, and good science hides no reasoning. This is why they are called “peer-reviewed, public journals”.
You have confidence that the high school educated public would grasp a complex and dynamical system such as the climate without knowing calculus, let alone Stefan–Boltzmann’s law and atomic spectra absorption… I’ll say no to that. The evidence and reasoning is going to be beyond the majority of people.
Do you give yourself surgeries? Defend yourself in court? Grow all your own food? What a dangerous philosophy of dictators.
Delegating authority to the proper experts is the smart thing to do.
Nicholas Utschig,
I am reluctant in attempting to reply to your posts but I have decided to reply to some extent.
I’m a bit confused as to why you cite an IPCC website when I addressed the IPCC as appearing to have some issues in my article. Furthermore, there is evidence (referenced in my article) that appears to suggest the peer review process has been tampered with on climate science. I’m not saying the peer review process has definitely been tampered with, but there is some reason to believe that it has been. I do not see any response to these allegations in any of your replies.
You posted (more than once) a list of websites where people can do research on this subject. I have done research on this subject, and part of what I’ve found is Climategate. Would you mind addressing Climategate directly? Were the documents manufactured? Are they gross distortions and taken out of context? The former two suggestions are not outside the realm of what I might come to think. I know there is much evidence to suggest that global warming is anthropogenic, but I’ve also found evidence to suggest otherwise. Please help me understand Climategate and why you believe it doesn’t disrupt the theory of anthropogenic global warming. You say “the sum of evidence and reason is all we should use to make informed decisions” and yet you seem to be looking at only part of the evidence and not the sum of it.
I find your question of whether or not my article is a parody to be rather disrespectful and disruptive of any real discussion on the issue. Similarly, I find it very hard to believe that you really think I find it “frightening to let a medical doctor explain to [me] why [I] need a certain procedure.” This type of comment is disruptive and frankly, rude. Can we not make this personal?
The documentary I linked to (The Great Global Warming Swindle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TqqWJugXzs) is quite a good video and I suggest you watch it. One of the people in the documentary is John Christy, who was a lead author for the IPCC (one of the sources you yourself have cited multiple times). The reference to the “Illuminati” was made by the person who posted the video, not the creators of the video. Similarly, I could post “An Inconvenient Truth” on Youtube and reference the Illuminati in the description and that would in no way, shape, or form mean that Al Gore believes in the Illuminati.
The Newsweek article cites a US National Academy of Sciences report called “Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action” (ISBN 0-309-02323-8). The report does suggest there might be cooling in the long term:
“…there seems little doubt that the present period of unusual warmth will eventually give way to a time of colder climate, but there is no consensus as to the magnitude or rapidity of the transition. The onset of this climatic decline could be several thousand years in the future, although there is a finite probability that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the earth within the next 100 years.”
As a matter of disclosure, the report also goes on to say “…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…”
In any event, I did not post the Newsweek article as science, but rather a look into our past to see that there have been global climate scares before. You might very correctly argue that there was not as much science back then to backup the theory of global cooling as there is today for global warming. In doing my own research, that seems to be the case.
I do not think the public needs to grasp all the science behind global climate phenomena. There are many experts that specialize in that field and they report to the public in a condensed and abbreviated format. If global warming really is human caused, and some “scientist” decides to say that it’s not, well then I’d think that the other scientists ought to be able to disprove that scientist rather easily. I generally don’t see the believers of anthropogenic climate change disproving others (in this case, you don’t seem to even attempt to discredit the findings of Climategate) but rather laughing off any dissenters as crazy, much like you suggested I give myself surgeries rather than let a doctor handle them.
What authority do you think should be delegated? Should scientists vote on what is true and what isn’t and then should our government pass any laws it deems necessary to protect us? We don’t all have to be automotive engineers to understand that having explosive airbags in our car is good for our safety.
Aaron Berk,
As long as I have time, I’ll gladly answer your posts.
Circular argument: The claim you use against the IPCC in your article is the SPPI, which is a worthless political club. They publicize this information: their president and their chief policy advisor have long histories working for Republicans and the conservative Margaret Thatcher.
The IPCC has publicly acknowledged valid failures thus far, and none impact the collective evidence and simulations. We have glacier exaggerations from a single source, and nothing from the disclosure of the Climate Research Unit. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed the CRU leak and “determined there was no credible evidence Dr. Mann suppressed or falsified data, destroyed email, information and/or data related to AR4, or misused privileged or confidential information.”
I would greatly enjoy pulling apart any evidence you can provide for non-anthropogenic sources of global warming. Do you agree the world climate is warming? I want to be clear before you respond – the livestock we have would not exist in such number without us here, so they count as a significant human caused source.
I have to double check myself that you’re not joking, or I’d be wasting my time. You can’t find a second YouTube user who hosted the documentary without the craziness? Does it say anything to have such craziness arguing against global warming? Your disapproval of a “dictatorial philosophy” where experts rule the common man made me laugh, so I hoped you’d see the humor in going to an expert in medicine.
The Great Global Warming Swindle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Reception_and_criticism That’s one long section!
We’d be better off to call the Newsweek science source a climate ‘we don’t know’ than a hysterical climate cooling scare. That would be more honest.
Today: “I do not think the public needs to grasp all the science behind global climate phenomena.”
Yesterday: “If the science is there but just complicated, I have confidence the public would grasp it.”
There are no findings of the CRU disclosure to “discredit”. All quotes were shown to be in good standing but taken out of context. A single sentence in a multi-page document. It’s sometimes not easy to disprove another scientist – it’s an engaging and prolonged trial of repeating experiments and measurements. It’s often not worth the effort to smack around every crackpot with a website and some corporate cash.
Authority should be delegated when we lack the resources to properly make an informed response. Consensus is not truth, 100% of scientists can be wrong. The evidence drives a public, expert-reviewed feedback process in this naturalistic methodological process.
Judging by articles like this, we might need to be educated in climate science to understand our only hope is a collective international effort to stem emissions of carbon dioxide. The complexity is too high for the majority of people, and we need to account for our addiction to the energy released through the mechanical revolution and fossil fuels. There is much more acting against understanding global warming than understanding explosives in cars.
These 11 pages are worth reading http://mises.org/etexts/environfreedom.pdf
Moral of the story, if you care about the environment, respect property rights / homesteading and don’t follow government programs that are for “the greater good”.
Like insurance, national security, and public transportation – the benefit of the many can cost the individual. It’s part of being a community.
Amen, Nick.
Journalism comes with great responsibility for the privilege of using a public platform for your ideas. It takes more respect and research, even in opinion pieces, than what was given here.
We are both in training to be engineers. It is our imperative to understand, respect, and use science for the betterment of humankind. I love skepticism, as healthy doubt fades no truth. I find this article to be an affront to reason, a denial of evidence, a parody of skepticism, and dangerous for the readers of the Mustang Daily.
I’ll list out the laws and facts which make global warming true, and you can draw the line where you find it unreasonable.
Carbon dioxide emissions have risen from ~280 ppm to ~390 ppm during our use of significant amounts of fossil fuels, a level unseen in 650,000 years. These are the formative hundreds of thousands of years when our ancestors competed and were selected to our current forms, and in the last few thousands when we built our civilizations. We depend on our climate for agriculture, transportation, energy, and so much more. We strategically placed our ports of trade, sources of food and centers of populations in ideal locations for the climate of their day. Changing the climate has adverse consequences for these investments. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_co2.html
Black body radiation (and Stefan–Boltzmann law) relates the energy radiated by objects with their temperature.
Conservation of energy, as the sunlight which falls on Earth must be radiated out in the infrared, or the temperature will increase until equilibrium.
Spectra absorption of CO2 is opaque in the infrared, transparent in the visible. Which two solar system objects emit in these two ranges? This Earth and the Sun.
These four verifiable facts give us the greenhouse effect.
I want to know if you ever learned this before, or modeled the climate, however simply? We have great resources on our own campus for your personal education in climate science, including an Earth Science major! Google and YouTube haven’t earned their Ph.D yet (give It twenty years). Dr. Schwartz offers an excellent physics of energy course which I have enjoyed and covers what I presented here. He also taught not to argue with a fool. The spectators can’t tell the difference. :-/