How Green Was My Scientific Consensus?

From Daily Tech:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science.

Wow.  From the APS editors comments (emphasis added):

With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which, together with Al Gore, recently won the Nobel Prize for its work concerning climate change research. There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion.

Not having read the paper I will guess that the dispute is about "primarily responsible" in the IPCC conclusion; the paper does not dispute that CO2 is a green house gas, but is summarized thusly by Daily Tech:

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling.   A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

If CO2 is less important, other factors presumably beyond our control, such as sunspots or natural climate variation, are more important in explaining the observed levels of warming.  That flies in the face of this Verdes/APS paper from last year, unless other unidentified factors are also lurking in the data.

Or rather than guess as to the dispute, I could cut to the APS home page:

APS Position Remains Unchanged

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

Well, fine, but are human activities "primarily responsible", as per the IPCC?  If the sacrifices demanded by environmentalists will reduce global warming by 8% rather than 80% will people still support them?  The APS position remains unchanged and uninformative.

On a related note - Al Gore wants to put America on an energy diet.  Noble, but... this is a country where 25% of adults are obese, which does not suggest we are great at long term planning and self-sacrifice.  But we did cut smoking rates dramatically.

MORE:  My Official Editorial Position is as bold as the APS - CO2 is a greenhouse gas and humans have been emitting it, so I presume we have made some contribution to global warming (as was hashed out the last time I was excoriated on this topic.).  However, I am with Lomborg in doubting the cost-effectiveness of proposed global warming efforts.

LET'S DO POLITICS:  Folks who back the global warming faith-based initiative won't be swayed by this APS news and are all in Obama's camp to stay.  Folks who think the global warming hype is over-done normally tilt right, but will find McCain, also a CO2 controller, to be as irrititating on this topic as he is on many others (E.g., Mickey predicts President McCain gets behind comprehensive immigration reform quickly).

So perversely, even though Obama is wronger than McCain on global warming, this new uncertainty will help him.  IMHO.

   

Comments

[Tim Lambert]

Monckton's paper is rubbish. He arrives at his lower sensitivity number by pulling "correction" factors out of the air and triple counting the corrections.

[kim]

Tim Lambert is wrong. The sensitivity of the climate to CO2 is unknown but almost certainly exaggerated by the IPCC. See Roy Spencer's new paper finding that the complex feedback among CO2, temperature, and water in its phases, is a small net negative, ruling out runaway scenarios, and tipping points. Monckton is a marvelously acute critic.
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[kim]

Can't you find a drought somewhere to go lie about?
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[Pofarmer]

And the trickle in the dike continues.

From The Australian.

lun

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

[kim]

The present carbon dioxide paradigm is becoming a bluff, and the poor but rising nations are calling it. It is becoming generally recognized that climate sensitivity to CO2 has been exaggerated, and the removal of it as a moral hazard will allow the developing nations, India, China, et al, to do what they had to do anyway. Now, it wouldn't hurt to clean up the soot. We must keep the earth clean. You have to keep your room clean, too. The body is a temple, &cet, Sanity Menes Corporatism, or something romansch like thatsch.
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[Rick Ballard]

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

Hurray for tautological absurdity! Let's try a corollary:

"Emissions of methane gas from ruminant species are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

Both statements are absolutely valid and of equal utility!

It's very amusing that Warmerists are running around the net waving their arms wildly at the mere mention of Monckton. It's almost as if they know on a very visceral level that an APS open debate will knock down their house of cards...

[clarice]

Listening to the warmists, I know how my ancestors must have felt when their neighbors expressed belief in unicorns and witches. ARGH!
These are deeply held beliefs by the(mostly) scientifically illiterate and only a miracle or a hard deep freeze will change their minds.

[clarice]

(substitute ancestors for relatives..I'm still on my first cup of coffee.)

[kim]

Don't sacrifice my virgins for your superstitions.
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[Barney Frank]

Well, fine, but are human activies "primarily responsible", as per the IPCC? If the sacrifices demanded by environmentalists will reduce global warming by 8% rather than 80% will people still support them?

That's only half the question.
Asking the public to spend a few trillion to reduce 8% or 80% of a half degree centigrade increase in temp and a three inch rise in sea level is a rather different question than asking them to support reducing a 10 degree centigrade rise in temp and to prevent having a disoriented pod of Al Gores stranded on their new Nebraskan beach front property.

[kim]

Little known fact: The IPCC is mandated by its founding to investigate only man made hazards to climate; it was to ignore benefits. It's its own fault that the IPCC erroneously ignored land use changes to focus on the chimeric effect of CO2. Pielke Pere continues to show the real effect of human land use changes on climate at climatesci.org
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[Neo]

There have been a few papers of recent that claim that the common school house belief in the "greenhouse effect" is in fact a myth.

The portion of the spectrum coming from the sun that is absorbed by CO2 is so tiny, that the effects of atmospheric CO2 (in conjunction with the sun) on global temperature is incredibly tiny, especially when compared to the spectrum that falls on land and sea and is absorbed there.

The consensus seems to be forming around the variability of the sun's output (roughly 0.7% or translating into roughly 2 degrees C) as the culprit.

No carbon tax is going to do anything to help this problem, so efforts are best spent learning to live with the variability. (Of course, a carbon tax will make some governments & the UN a shitload of cash and give them control on an unprecedented level, not to mention their corporate friends in "green" businesses).

Near term forecast, it's been getting cooler for the last year and a half, and it will continue for at least a decade as sun spot activity (an indicator of increased solar output) is now at an all time low.

[Neo]

The geocentric AGW view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle Al Gore, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's Monckton's presentation of heliocentrism climate sensitivity as proven fact resulted in the Catholic IPCC Church's prohibiting its advocacy as empirically proven fact, because it was not empirically proven at the time and was contrary to the literal meaning of IPCC Scripture.

[anduril]

This issue deserves a visit at this site:

http://getdrunkandvote4mccain.com/

Gotta luv the FR comment:

I don’t think “Get Drunk and Vote for McCain” is going to be sufficient. I think a slogan of “Shoot heroin, snort coke, eat shrooms and vote for McCain while hallucinating that you’re voting for Daffy Duck” should just about do it.

On second thought, maybe you should get drunk, too.

[Cecil Turner]

Hurray for tautological absurdity!

Yep. I read through that entire load of (IPCC) drivel once . . . and am happy to report that I've forgotten most of it. The evidence at the time could only be described as "inconclusive"; but I'm not up on latest developments, so would be reluctant to opine about particular theories, and lack confidence in my own ability to evaluate them.

However, I can spot a fallacious argument from a considerable distance, and the "pro" side of AGW is replete with 'em. In the first place, the proponents should be able to prove their case, and not rely on appeals to authority (a "consensus" of dubious experts being the most common). There shouldn't be a tooth-pulling exercise whenever independent researchers ask for datasets, and detractors should be debated on the merits. A casual observer of the treatment of Bjorn Lomborg could only conclude he was abused, maliciously, by misguided fanatics. A similar ad hominem treatment of Monckton is perfectly unpersuasive.

In short, if the IPCC types want folks like me to take 'em seriously, they can start by making adult arguments, engaging on the merits, and distancing themselves from the tree-hugging brownshirts.

[PeterUK]

CO2 is a "greenhouse" gas.
Greenhouse gases are responsible for the temperature rising.
It is cold dark and dank here more like late September of November,in the middle of Summer.
There is no wind so the massively subsidized turbines stand idle.Fuel costs are going through the roof,yet politicians are wedded to an unattainable reduction in carbon emissions.
The imbeciles are going to kill us all.

[clarice]

Get crackin' Puk--Our pike sharpening kits are in the shed behind the CO2 deflector helmets.

[Don]

"they can start by making adult arguments"

Here's one you fell for hook, line, and sinker last time:

The British Government has learned that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate.

Ok it wasn't an adult making it last time. You still fell for it.

[Rick Ballard]

Cecil,

The very first thing "they" might consider doing is assembling a group of those physicists and a real long blackboard on which to write out the equations which end in "= 2.5°C per century". 'Cause until the equation[s] exist in one place, the rest is babble.

[clarice]

Don, PUK is in England and says they are now experiencing late fall weather. I expect this report is not falling on deaf ears.

Rick, the thing about this report is it's physicists , not folks with PhDs in the science of good driving as so many of the "consensus" petition signers are.

[PeterUK]

"Here's one you fell for hook, line, and sinker last time:

The British Government has learned that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

The current British government,like the Bourbons,"Has learned nothing and forgotten nothing". They are shit for brains socialists, skilled at skulduggery and jobbery,who have found something they can tax.

[Rocco]

Christopher Moncton has proven that the greenhouse signature is missing. That is that warming due to greenhouse would cause most warming in the tropics at about 10 km up in the atmosphere.

In addition to a missing greenhouse signature, new ice core data results have also proven that temperature causes CO2 levels and not the reverse.

[qrstuv]

Can I recommend a book? It's called A Primer on CO2 and Climate, and you can get it at Amazon.

It's a short book that documents a lot of facts that are quite inconvenient for the warmerists, things they'd rather not talk about.

For one, the warmerists claim that CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the oceans

But, unfortunately for them, there's a peer-reviewed article by a scientist who discovered that, historically, ocean warming PRECEDED the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, by some 800 years or so.

I'll bet you didn't know that.

[Cecil Turner]

Here's one you fell for hook, line, and sinker last time:

Right. And chickpeas are the actual cause, I suppose?

I think this makes the "dishonest argument" point rather well, actually. Just not in the way you think.

[PeterUK]

The Great Global Warming Swindle on UK's Channel 4,was on Youtube.Lays out all the contrary evidence to the AGW scam,including the warming preceding the increase of CO2.The sea is the the greatest repository of CO2.

[Uncle BigBad]

I wonder how much co2 the recent California wildfires put into the atmosphere.

Californians had better park their SUVs. They have a lot of compensating to do.

[kim]

Don R stil a maron, and so is the British Government, but not the taxpayers revolting against the cost of green mandates.
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[kim]

C'mon, Tim, so far your argument is about as persuasive as spam. What is wrong with Monckton's article?
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[Bourne Lombert]

"Tim Lambert is wrong."

Tim Lambert is never wrong.

[kim]

How could I have forgotten?
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[Tim Lambert]

Actual APS policy:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

"The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

"Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases."

[shivas irons]

Tim Lambert is a monkey puppet.

[oMan]

I have read Monckton's paper (in July newsletter of APS). I am not a credentialed climatologist but I can follow a scientific argument and the one that Monckton makes, makes sense to me. He also acts like a scientist because he puts his sources and datasets out there for all to check; his mathematical exposition of feedback (or not) is logical and transparent; and he ends the piece as he began it, in plain English. Which is more than can be said of the IPCC"s science by consensus and "black box" modelmaking. Monckton wonders why their model keeps breaking --it has predicted things that don't happen and it fails to predict things that do-- and why, whenever the IPCC takes the cover off to adjust it, the parts fall out and don't seem to fit. Do read his paper, he offers an example of courteous but relentless critique. No wonder the IPCC crowd fear and loathe him.

[very funnny]

I have never known a time in which glaciers have decided to become politically correct. It turns out that many american glaciers, but not all ( those pesky californians always buck the trend) are global warmers, and have dutifully shrunk. But russian and himalayan and even some swedish glaciers, of which there are many, are global warming deniers. All the geological observations looking at these recalcitrant glaciers say that they refuse to get smaller.

what is a global warmist to do?

no matter what they do they cant get a consensus among the glaciers. Surely Cheney has been at work in russia and in India, but what he did to get the glaciers to hold fast and not melt is unknown

[GMax]

I see Tim has fallen to the level of "Well they have not changed their official policy". You left off a word Tim. Insert "YET" at the very end and you will have it just about right.

And while Physicists start discussing this and start seeing the hiding the ball methodology of Mann and Hansen to name just two, it will likely lead to shame and outrage at their leadership. Sunlight really is a very fine disinfectant.

[tanstaafl]

There have been previous IPCC reports that some involved scientists have refused to sign off on.

John McLean takes apart last year's report, including a mention of the confusion and sometimes interchangeability of the terms "anthropogenic global warming" and "climate change".

Which is particularly disturbing in the politicization of the so called "debate".

http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/ipcc_review_updated_analysis.pdf

[Bill Woods]

Monkton is feeling hard done by.

"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. ..."

This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.

...

Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?

[kim]

very funny, directly it's probably Rovian mind rays at work, not Cheney at all. Cheney just gets the blame for the root of it. They're all connected, you know.
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[kim]

Where do I go to get my climate back?
=======================

[kim]

Hey Tim, don't give me geschribben APS policy; what is wrong with Monckton's arguments?
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[Robert H]

The BBC had an incredible program deconstructing the whole myth of AGW. It's so jam packed with information it's necessary to watch it several times to even begin to absorb it all. The Great Global Warming Swindle is the title. It keeps being put up, and then buried under spurious attack videos, and finally taken down. Only to reappear somewhere else. The current location that works at least at the moment is here;

http://revver.com/video/398166/the-great-global-warming-swindle/

Rarely do I consider the BBC to be "must see TV", but in this case it certainly is.

[Tully]

I'm still waiting for that falsifiable hypothesis from the dogmatic warmists. It persists in not appearing, and the AGW alarmists perist is treating any climatic variation as confirmatory of AGW.

The IPCC reports are political documents, not scientific ones. Which is sad.

[Fat Man]

"The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring."

Maybe, Maybe not.

[Fat Man]

Are you sure?, Doesn't look like it.

[NICK]

When is a Greenhouse gas not a Greenhouse gas? When there is no Greenhouse. A Greenhouse is an artificially created environment.It is not a Natural Environment.
it`s like comparing apples and oranges.

Actually my understanding is that you can, also find some Nitrogen (large quantities of this gas) some Oxygen (about 20%) some Water Vapor, alittle bit of Argon(less1%) and a little bit of CO2(less than 1%) and smidgeons of someother gasses in a greenhouse. And of course the primary reason you would want to find CO2 in a Greenhouse is that CO2 supports and sustains plant growth, you might even want to artificially add some.
If only half these people payed attention in high school science class we`d not have this problem today. But, who am I kidding?

[Brian Macker]

Neo,

"The portion of the spectrum coming from the sun that is absorbed by CO2 is so tiny, that the effects of atmospheric CO2 (in conjunction with the sun) on global temperature is incredibly tiny, especially when compared to the spectrum that falls on land and sea and is absorbed there."

It's called a greenhouse gas. What matters is the portion of the spectrum absorbed coming from the earth not the sun. The ideal greenhouse gas would absorb no part the spectrum coming from the energy source and 100% of the spectrum coming from the insulated body. Of course, that's impossible but that would be ideal.

It's about being a one way door of sorts. Lets visible light in and traps the infrared radiation that the earth radiates to outer space.

So you either misunderstood or your source is not doing good science.

[juandos]

Maybe when these grouping of chicken littles get dragged into civil court and sued we'll be hearing a little less of this faux bad news...

[kim]

NICE posse ya' got there, Tim.
==================

[John Oh]

If I remember my high school geology course, there have been several periods of glaciation that have radically changed the face of North America -- creating the Great Lakes and most of the lakes in Minnesot and Wisconsin, for instance. Some kind of global warming caused their retreat and left us where we are now.

Would the global warming zealots, had they been around, paniced when the ice began to recede? Would they have demanded action to get rid of the lakes and return the environment to the pure and pristine way that it had been -- covered by ice?

How is that so different than now?

[glasater]

And then there are the Missoula Floods.

[goy]

"Would the global warming zealots, had they been around, paniced when the ice began to recede?"

Unlikely. Until fairly recently, eternal damnation, witches and the bogeyman have sufficed to frighten the mob into handing over global power and wealth.

But times change, and wannabe despots must change with them. Hence AGW - along with its false prophets, inquisitors and, most importantly, the guilt-ridden hordes desperate to save their souls.

[clarice]

And-goy-the losers who want to make sure everyone devolves to some pre-industrial miserable life like their own.

[goy]

Right. How could I forget the Hippies!! Pining for their communes of the '60s... no hot water, showering once a week... extolling the miracles of collectivist ideology... "sustainability" incarnate. LOL!!

[Extraneus]

Didn't Monckton challenge Al Gore to a debate on this quite a while ago, a challenge to which Al never responded? Yes, he did. And here's his recent paper. Early on, he lays out the context (sorry his list of the IPCC models' shortcomings is so long):

LOBALLY-AVERAGED land and sea surface absolute temperature TS has not risen since 1998 (Hadley Center; US National Climatic Data Center; University of Alabama at Huntsville; etc.). For almost seven years, TS may even have fallen (Figure 1). There may be no new peak until 2015 (Keenlysideet al., 2008).

The models heavily relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had not projected this multidecadal stasis in “global warming”; nor (until trained ex post facto) the fall in TS from 1940-1975; nor 50 years’ cooling in Antarctica (Doran et al., 2002) and the Arctic (Soon, 2005); nor the absence of ocean warming since 2003 (Lyman et al., 2006; Gouretski&Koltermann, 2007); nor the onset, duration, or intensity of the Madden-Julian intraseasonal oscillation, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in the tropical stratosphere, El Nino/La Nina oscillations, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that has recently transited from its warming to its cooling phase (oceanic oscillations which, on their own, may account for all of the observed warmings and coolings over the past half-century: Tsoniset al., 2007); nor the magnitude nor duration of multi-century events such as the Mediaeval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age; nor the cessation since 2000 of the previously-observed growth in atmospheric methane concentration (IPCC, 2007); nor the active 2004 hurricane season; nor the inactive subsequent seasons; nor the UK flooding of 2007 (the Met Office had forecast a summer of prolonged droughts only six weeks previously); nor the solar Grand Maximum of the past 70 years, during which the Sun was more active, for longer, than at almost any similar period in the past 11,400 years (Hathaway, 2004; Solankiet al., 2005); nor the consequent surface “global warming” on Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and even distant Pluto; nor the eerily- continuing 2006 solar minimum; nor the consequent, precipitate decline of ~0.8 °C in TS from January 2007 to May 2008 that has canceled out almost all of the observed warming of the 20th century.

The bottom line is that physicists (real scientists) will now be invited to debate this like real scientists, as opposted to heretics, and that's a good thing if it actually happens.

[Bill in AZ]

Extraneus, what's all this 30 years, 70 years, 11,400! years (did earth even exist then?) MDO's, PDO's nonsense. For libs, history began this morning.

We have, thanks to Gore, a perfect theory for what will happen in the future - who cares about the past. We now know about an absolutely amazing molecule, C02, whose amazing properties makes nukes pale in comparison. Wish we had known about this molecule years ago. Could have saved us billions in oil exploration, nuke plants, etc.

This amazing molecule, at a microscopic concentration of 0.03% of the atmosphere, by itself can absorb and store (outgoing only!) energy, overheat the earth, melt glaciers, melt ice caps - even on neighboring planets. Forget wind, solar, oil, nukes - just harness carbon. Prolly one molecule of carbon will light up an entire medium sized city for a month if we could just squeeze that energy back out of it.

[moptop]

"He arrives at his lower sensitivity number by pulling "correction" factors out of the air " -Tim Lambert ... Computer Thientitht.

Uh, Tim, you are a computer scientist and all, so I am sure that you can assure us that there are no assumptions built into the GCMs used to determine sensitivity? What? You can't? Do you mean to say that not every line of code in there is based on a well documented law of physics or chemistry? What? Do you mean to say that their is so little understanding of cloud dynamics that the modelers just "pull a number out of the air" for that?

That's what I thought, nit-wit.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Don't sacrifice my virgins for your superstitions.

that condition can be cured. Simple procedure. Can be performed in the doctor's office.

Actual APS policy:

Tim, APS policy doesn't determine policy. In fact, I'd argue that APS shouldn't have an official policy; certainly, in 1900 they would have had a policy that the speed of light was not particularly special. In 1920 it would have been rather different.

Scientific fact should be determined by science, not by APS policy, and not by threats of trial for dissenters.

[boris]

Italiacto!