
The Real Problem With the Climate Science Emails - Perceval
http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_real_problem_with_the_climate_science_emails.php
======
robotrout

        ... the fact is, everything we know about carbon dioxide 
        indicates that it has a greenhouse effect, because it is 
        more efficient at passing sunlight through to the earth, 
        than at allowing that energy to reradiate back into space 
        as heat.
    
    

As much as I hate to beat a dead horse, I find myself compelled to spell out,
for those that may share her confusion, that there is no "indication" that CO2
is a greenhouse gas. We just know, for sure, that yes, CO2 is a greenhouse
gas. That has never been in debate, by anybody. Monkeys know that CO2 is a
greenhouse gas. The debate is, and always has been, whether the 3.2% of
atmospheric CO2 emitted by humans, which comprises 0.28% of the greenhouse
effect on earth (counting water-vapor) is actually significant enough to be
the cause of measurable extra warming, above and beyond the warming that would
occur anyway, here in the waning years of the latest ice-age. It's never been
about whether CO2 was a greenhouse gas or not.

~~~
WilliamLP
> whether the 3.2% of atmospheric CO2 emitted by humans

313 ppm in 1960 to 383 ppm in 2009 is 3.2%? Or is there indication that this
increase isn't human caused?

> which comprises 0.28% of the greenhouse effect on earth

It's 9-26% for CO2, according to Wikipedia. (Which is a surprisingly large
range.) Why the disparity with your figure?

I don't know anything about climate science, and I don't have an agenda, but
I'm just wondering if your figures are based on anything.

~~~
robotrout
There is a link between temperature and CO2 concentration, as you know. For
the last 18000 years, since the last ice age, pretty much, we've been getting
warmer, and CO2 has been climbing. See the Vostok Ice Core Data. Even if there
were no men on earth, the CO2 levels would be rising. That explains at least
some of your 40 year CO2 climb that you mention.

Anyway, no, the 3.2% I reference is just by mass. 3.2% of the CO2 in the
atmosphere is man-made.

If you care, only 2.2% of the warming caused by global warming gasses
(excluding water vapor) is caused by man-made CO2, since different gasses are
better or worse greenhouse gases, and CO2 isn't nearly as efficient as a
greenhouse gas as some other gases, just using mass isn't quite accurate, in
terms of percentage of greenhouse effect.

Now, again, ignoring water vapor, which is insane to do, but is "customary",
your control of the system, if you eliminated all CO2 from every person on
earth (perhaps we'll let you breath, but no campfires) is 2.2%. (Again, it's
actually 0.28%, but just for the sake of argument, say water vapor is not a
green-house gas, even though it is) So, how confident are you, that 2.2% is
enough control to effect a reversal of the temperature rise? Now, given that
you aren't going to get anywhere near a 100% elimination of man-made CO2,
short of killing everybody, how much money are you willing to spend on this
exercise, and shouldn't a little bit of number crunching (dollars per degree)
be undertaken, before we start down this path?

~~~
WilliamLP
Where do you get your numbers from? I'm curious, since they seem to be at
least an order of magnitude off from sources that come up in naive searches.
(E.g. the 9-26% figure cited in Wikipedia for the percent of greenhouse effect
due to CO2, _including_ water vapour.)

I'm not making any economic recommendations; I'm just someone who doesn't know
very much, who is trying to find, say as an impartial Martian might, what the
best interpretation of facts are given the available data.

~~~
robotrout
As I write today, I'm referencing the following sites that a quick Google
search turned up. I'm frustrated that I can't find another one I like, but
this one is very good.

<http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html>

For one thing, the wiki article (which, again, is quoting realclimate.org, so
is already tainted) is giving you a number of how much total contribution CO2
has on earth's greenhouse effect. It's not telling you how much effect _man-
made_ CO2 is having, which is obviously less, as even they would admit that
CO2 is not purely made my humans.

~~~
petewarden
I would recommend comparing this to [http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-
vapor-greenhouse-gas.h...](http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-
greenhouse-gas.htm)

In particular, they give figures of 75 W/m2 for water vapor and 32 W/m2 for
CO2. The link to the original paper where those figures came from is broken
but here's a fixed one:
[http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/at...](http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/atmo451b/pdf/RadiationBudget.pdf)
Look at Figure 3, they also go into some depth about the assumptions and
observations behind those figures.

~~~
robotrout
That's very good. You can't have your cake and eat it too, as they try to do.
Here, they admit it's by far, the dominant greenhouse driver, and yet, in the
next breath, they jump back on the CO2 bandwagon.

~~~
petewarden
What about their figures do you disagree with? It's fairly open and
fundamental science, I'd be very interested in a half-decent paper knocking
holes in it.

------
uuilly
Nobody seems to be mentioning that a major source for climate research has
made a shameful mockery of the scientific process. Regardless of whether their
conclusions are right or wrong, they are doctoring numbers to fit their
desired conclusions and sidelining scientists who raise doubts.

As scientists and engineers this _should_ disgust us. The sanctity of the
scientific process is a much bigger deal than climate change. It embodies all
our technological decisions and it cannot be tainted.

It would be as if the supreme court was burying evidence to convict people
they thought were guilty. It's wrong. Even if we think it achieves the right
result. Once you lose faith in the system, it ceases to be useful.

~~~
pradocchia
_Once you lose faith in the system, it ceases to be useful._

Lost faith will be a dominant trend for the foreseeable future, not limited to
science. Sadly.

------
DanielBMarkham
_Bearing this in mind, I think most people--including me--missed the biggest
part of the climate emails story. ...the CRU's main computer model may be, to
put it bluntly, complete rubbish...The emails seem to describe a model which
frequently breaks, and being constantly "tweaked" with manual interventions of
dubious quality in order to make them fit the historical data. These stories
suggest that the model, and the past manual interventions, are so poorly
documented that CRU cannot now replicate its own past findings._

The interesting thing here is that having a bad model should have been okay --
you'd expect science to iterate a lot over the course of a few decades as it
learned more and more about the climate. But for some reason it wasn't okay to
be wrong any more. And whenever that moment passed it stopped being science
and started being a religion, at least to some of those involved. Religions
have "us against them" they have the elite and the unwashed masses, they have
"we know the solution, just tell me your problem" They frequently have end-of-
world predictions, a hierarchy of who can form dogma, a culture of secrecy, an
emotional and visceral response to anybody who questions their beliefs, etc.

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, only to say once again that this story is
much more than just about the politics of climate change. It's about how
professional science and professional scientists carry out their business.
It's very easy to get emotionally wrapped up with whatever you're doing,
especially if you think you're saving the world. It's critical that we
establish sort of system of ethics to make thinking and acting like this
anathema to professional scientists no matter what field they are in.

~~~
dantheman
A big difference between "climate science" and other sciences is that other
sciences make predictions and perform tests. The duty of the scientist is to
bend over backwards telling you all the ways that their results may be flawed.

Also, climate scientists have strong incentive for there to be AGW. If it
turns out AGW isn't happening then most will be out of work, and their
expertise will be deemed relatively useless.

------
jacquesm
The bigger problem with posts like this is that they fail to appreciate a very
simple truth: Either humans are affecting the climate or they don't.

If they don't then it doesn't matter, if they do then we should study to what
extent.

Reduction to extremes shows that we do, after all, every organism affects the
biosphere simply by being alive, and we do a lot more than just being alive.

So the question to answer is not whether or not global warming is 'real' or
not. If it is we'll find out eventually.

We need to find out long before it becomes evident whether or not we have a
positive, a negative or a neutral effect.

If the planet is heating up and we can't influence it we can stop the debate.
If the planet is warming up or cooling down and we can influence it we first
need to ask ourselves if influencing it is a good thing, and if we can we need
to figure out the best way to go about it.

The current 'fix' to me looks more like development aid in disguise, where
rich countries give poor countries some money so the rich countries can
continue to pollute much like they did before. That certainly won't solve
anything, in the words of Douglas Adams, it isn't the green pieces of paper
that are unhappy. It is us that will be unhappy if we do not take these issues
seriously.

One of the bigger issues with the climate science emails is that anything that
is developed outside of the light of day usually can't stand the light of day.
So we need transparency and really well performed very well checked science,
where each and every result is available to all parties.

With the adversarial nature of the subject I don't doubt there will be plenty
of interpretations of the data so we don't have to worry about finding people
to 'peer-review' the data. The upside is that by the time that the truth will
be out it will be unassailable, whatever it is.

Open source is a great model to apply to science, many eyes works well for
finding bugs, whether it is in software or in climate models that shouldn't
make too much difference.

And then once we all agree on the facts we can look for a solution, if we have
to, and if there is one.

~~~
yters
Why don't people focus more on the benefits of global warming? The scenarios
I've heard of are on the scale of 10s-100s of years, plenty of time where we
can plan a good response. Plus, there's the question: mightn't the earth work
better when it is warmer?

There are so many different ways to go with global warming, even if it is
true, but we're constantly just told to be scared out of our minds about it
and do whatever the experts tell us will save our hides. A sure recipe for
manipulation if there ever was one.

~~~
jberryman
Been paying attention for the last decade? Noticed the record droughts in the
Amazon River Basin or hundreds of thousands killed by the worst tsunamis in
700 years?

Whether humans are the primary cause or not, this is climate change, and its
nothing like the pleasant Hawaiian vacation you seem to imagine it to be. I
don't see the bright side.

~~~
artsrc
I understand our best forecast is that the enhanced greenhouse effect will
increase global rainfall.

The local effect in the Amazon river basin is just as likely the result of
local deforestation as the global carbon dioxide level. As someone else
pointed out Tsunamis are known to be caused by earthquakes not weather. So it
seems that your examples may not the best ones.

Now the effect of rising sea levels on my pleasant vacation on a pacific
island is much less in doubt, some low lying areas will be underwater if the
Antarctic or Greenland ice melts, which seems like it will take quite a while.

The greenhouse effect makes the biggest difference at the poles in the coldest
time of the night. So people will be able to live and farm further north in
Russia and Canada.

The cost of global warming seems to be about the cost of change, and the cost
risk, rather than the cost of a definitively less hospitable climate.

Paying attention for the last decade includes a cooling for the recent past
associated with short term patterns. Global warming is not about the cost of
what we have seen, it is about what we will see if we emit CO2 at various
levels in the future, which we don't know. And not knowing is not a reason to
do nothing, but it is also not a reason to claim calamity is certain.

------
pradocchia
Are there any open source-style projects underway yet to fix up the code &
data? I keep thinking this is the next obvious thing to do.

The climate models must be specified somewhere in the literature. Data can be
munged. What stands in the way? Is the data in some legal netherworld that
prevents redistribution?

~~~
flynth
There were some stories published recently how difficult it is to gain access
to the raw data. CRU and organizations like it have exclusive access to it and
as referenced in few of those emails(they refer to people asking for access as
"loons trying to disprove") are quite reluctant to give the control away. Why
give something so valuable away when by just creating pretty graphs out of it
you can secure government funding, place in most reputable science journals
and hundreds of citations a year from people having to cite YOUR papers
instead of the real data which they can't access?

~~~
rbanffy
I understand their concern.

It's easy to imagine loons (or worse) getting access to the data, publishing
findings that prove the warming is indeed caused by the decline in the pirate
population, getting airtime in Fox News and other similar media outlets and
making, thus, it true to a large chunk of the populace.

We don't need people, deliberately or not, spreading disinformation.

~~~
oldgregg
If I'm the pope and I'm trying to cover up touching little boys in the
naughty-place I would use the same reasoning. Imagine the liberal loons (or
worse) getting airtime on CNN and huffpo and making it sound like all priests
are pedophiles. We don't need those dirty filthy pagans, deliberately or not,
spreading disinformation.

~~~
rbanffy
The difference is that there aren't huge corporations willing to dump tons of
money on research that shows you molested young boys.

And, in fact, if CNN and huffpo decided to say all priests are pedophiles,
they would be spreading a lie.

How would that serve the truth?

~~~
rbanffy
The comparison above is absurd. Nobody os afraid of CNN. What frightens me is
that there is a lot of people willing to do whatever is necessary to preserve
their profits. An easy comparison could be with the tobacco industry and their
studies that proved no connection between smoking and cancer and how addictive
smoking is. Next to big oil, the tobacco industry is a bastion of morality.

------
markbnine
Thought it interesting how the programmers hinted in their code at problems
with the climate model. These were not informative comments. They were
disclaimers. I see them all the time. People put them in their code when they
are too lazy to properly figure something out. They often say something like,
"Yeah, I know. This is an awful hack. Fix later."

Quote from article: _Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU's Fortran
code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: "Apply a VERY
ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!" and "APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION."
Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: "Low pass filtering at century and longer
time scales never gets rid of the trend - so eventually I start to scale down
the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer
time scales!"_

~~~
jgrahamc
That code's not FORTRAN it's IDL.

------
petewarden
Here's a good summary of the fundamental science behind the climate change
consensus:
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/11/bl...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/11/blame_it_on_the_satellite)

It's a complex, messy subject, and as an engineer I hate the reliance on
computer models to make predictions, but the dramatic increase in CO2 levels
is a fact. It's plain common-sense that a big increase in one of the inputs to
the climate has a good chance of causing disruptive change.

There's also accumulating evidence from independent sources that the
temperature is rising, but pretend it wasn't there, would an increase in CO2
from 313ppm to 383ppm over 50 years worry you?

~~~
mhartl
_It's plain common-sense that a big increase in one of the inputs to the
climate has a good chance of causing disruptive change._

It is rarely noted (but undisputed) that the baseline climate response is
_logarithmic_ in carbon dioxide concentration
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_eff...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect)).
Since, absent feedback effects, exponential increases in CO2 levels lead to
_linear_ temperature changes, it's likely that common sense is not a reliable
guide.

~~~
anthonyb
So what's the response in temperature when CO2 increases like this?

[http://www.economist.com/images/mt_blog/democracyinamerica/c...](http://www.economist.com/images/mt_blog/democracyinamerica/chart5a.jpg)

Is that geometric? Or worse?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Assuming that graph is an exponential increase in CO2, then there will be a
linear (not geometric) increase temperature.

So it's considerably better, not worse.

A little calculus goes a long way.

~~~
anthonyb
I meant worse as in faster growth than geometric. It's quite possible,
particularly with feedback taken into account.

------
hop
Pretty amazing none of this info been open to peer review. Shouldn't their
conclusions be replicable by others? Do they just write conclusion papers?

~~~
tome
No scientist of any kind ever publishes his/her source code, as far as I am
aware.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Why not?

~~~
tome
I really don't know. I imagine it's because they're poor programmers.
Scientists rarely have formal training in good software development practice
as far as I can tell. They just seem to pick it up as they go along.

------
nazgulnarsil
the entire debate is moot. even if we are causing global warming and the worst
case scenarios are true, the way we're going about curbing it is out of
fantasy land, not engineering and economic fact.

------
rbanffy
I think we are all failing to realize this is no longer a scientific
discussion. It's politics. It's about allocation of resources, changing
industrial bases and more or less changing, or not, a whole planetary economy.

Did anyone really expect all the political and economical interests to sit
quietly and not try to interfere with scientific research that could be a
matter of life and death to them?

