In Europe there is a region called "Karst" (in German anyway), that used to be full of florishing green woods. Now it is a sort of desert, and "Karst" is a synonym for an unfriendly, dry and barren landscape.
How did it get like that? Romans felled all the trees for ship building, many centuries ago.
I know this does not relate directly to the CO2 discussion (which also seems a bit simplistic to me), but driving through that landscape as a kid left a deep impression on me. Surely if the ancient Romans could change the environment, humans can affect the environment in the 21st century. It would be ridiculous to ascertain that humans have no effect on the environment at all, even if we don't understand the precise chain of effects.
I am really and truly surprised at the debate on global warming.
Surely even a back-of-the-envelope calculation as to how difficult it would be to do an accurate mathematical model of climate, and the computing power needed to run such a simulation, would show that any prediction based on a computer model at this point is essentially bogus; much less being able to determine whether or not it is caused by man or by natural causes.
When you add in the fact that an accurate model of "how oceans work" is decades away (we don't even understand the Gulf Stream at this point) you have to wonder, exactly how can you mathematically model something that you don't understand?
It seesm unlikely that human civilization has no effect whatsoever, though. Just because we can't calculate something precisely doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are more phenomena we can't simulate correctly than there are phenomena we can simulate. I guess we can't simulate the weather, either, yet nobody is going around claiming that "hurricanes don't exist".
I wouldn't say my last prayers just yet, either - definitely there are a lot of complex mechanisms at work, and some of them might help to balance the ecosystem. On the other hand there have always been huge climatic changes in the history of earth, so we can't just count on everything staying the same it always was. It didn't work for the dinosaurs, that much is certain. There is no benevolent force that sees to keeping conditions just right for human survival.
As for CO2, I also don't know why suddenly all attention is focussed on that. It seems to be just one part of the problem/puzzle.
I agree. It's puzzling. I mean there are economists who claim to be able to calculate the cost of climate change over 40 years. I urge everybody who believes them to check the 1 year predictions made by the same people.
We're told that if 80 % of scientists agree on something we cannot just dismiss it as nonsense. I would agree with that if even just a few of them had credible methods to simulate complex systems. They don't. Each of them models just a tiny piece of the system and their methods work only within that very narrow context. So what science did the IPCC use to join all those partial models?
That sounds like strawman argumentation: you cite a group of people with bad credentials to denounce all climate researchers.
What method would you propose for dealing with climate changes? What about changes in average temperature over the centures. Since you don't believe in any models, would you just ignore that information?
Is a very complex simulation even necessary? You don't need to simulate every atom in water to determine it's density in relation to it's temperature, for example.
What I'm saying is that there is no scientific basis for making 40 year predictions about complex systems. And I'm not talking about people with bad credentials. Even the best economists' predicitons for a year in advance are pretty bad.
My high school physics teacher had this to say: "as a scientist, with such complex systems, it's really hard to be certain about anything with the evidence we have, however, this is the only planet we have, and I'd prefer not to risk it".
With all due respect, I suggest ignoring that teacher.
This is the 'precautionary principle' which, while it sounds all nice and sensible on first hearing, is actually a recipe for justifying all kinds of mindless nonsense.
"Vaccines might cause Autism -- best not immunise my kids against that killer disease measles."
"WiFi might cause cancer -- best not put wireless networks in schools"
"Industrialiation might cause global warming -- best not let poor countries build power plants"
You are playing a bit of a game by equating something where there are some definite indications in one direction and a lot of unknowns (global warming), with things where there is little real evidence and a much more well understood system (vaccines). And sometimes, it makes sense to be cautious. Smoking did, and does cause cancer and other health problems.
There is pretty good evidence that the climate is changing (glaciers, icecaps) - that much is obvious even for those who don't want it to be true, at this point. The open question is whether it's us that's doing it. Given that we don't know, and we risk serious consequences, a bit of precaution doesn't seem so out of place.
There are sensible ways to start working against global warming without wrecking the world economy - (republican economist) Greg Mankiw's "Pigou Club", for instance:
That's the sort of sensible, cautious approach that makes sense to me: heed the warning, start doing something, and keep studying, without losing your head and doing anything truly rash that would trash the economy, or go overboard the other way and simply ignore/downplay the whole thing because it doesn't fit into your view of politics.
Also, as something of an aside, I have a lot of respect for that teacher - he was/is a bright guy not at all given to doom and gloom or handwaving - he was one of those teachers who could have had a good job in industry, no problem, but really loved teaching. His statement (which I only remember the gist of at this point) summed up both a sense of professional responsibility in admitting that there are a lot of known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and of a cautious, responsible approach to things that are potentially serious and dangerous. That's why I still remember it after 15+ years.
I don't know how this article got so many upvotes. It's mainly name-calling. In the one place where it actually says something, mentioning this ocean salt cycle idea, there are no citations or other substance to back it up.
Gray is a longtime 'climate change' denier. I'm not sure if he is in the back pocket of the oil industry, but probably. Here's an article on real climate written back in April 2006. It should at least raise your eyebrows.
So, 'ad hominem' attacks are not allowed, and therefore nobody should ever take me seriously? That's a pretty amusing argument, I must say.
You're quite right they're emotionally loaded labels. We only get one earth, you know. I actually care about it. So should you.
But in case you think that the possibility for scientific payola is above scrutiny, fine. I also included a link which discussed his actual claims, and the actual science and debate around them. Read it.
> You're quite right they're emotionally loaded labels.
Sure, but when you start debating like that, it drags the forum in question down to the level of sites like reddit. Your other post below is much better!
If you follow the money in medical research, you'll find surprising results. There's plenty of research into the corrupting influence of money on scientists (for citations, the book "The truth about the drug companies" has many).
Unlike most types of experimental science, we only have one earth. So, it seems like a worthwhile activity to look into the motivations of the people on both sides of the debate.
One of the advantages of digging deep and following the money is that you get a somewhat scary sense of the machine designed to discredit climate change science.
Well, let's follow the money: who pays for climate research? And do they pay more if climate guys tell tem "OMG, we're in deep trouble!" or if they tell "well, er, it's quite a complicated system we have here... and we don't, er, fully understand it yet so can you fund some more research, please?"
On this topic, another heretic to publicly speak against the theory of human origin climate change is Claude Allegre, one of France's best scientists (CNRS gold medal, if that matters). Of course, he may be wrong but at least we're pretty sure he's unbiased because, as an eminent french socialist politician he should logically have sided with his neo-marxists comrades on this thesis that capitalism leads to a global environmental crisis.
Well, to be honest I'm not at all clear on whether climate researchers are actually paid more if they claim that the sky is falling. It's not as if good scientists would suddenly be out of a job if global warming turned out to be a hoax. Most climatologists don't even actively work on global warming, because many of the basic questions have already been answered.
Whereas, I'm aware that there actually are scientists paid to express doubt. Some of the worst show up in so called 'libertarian think-tanks' like Cato. Being essentially Libertarian myself, I bought into most of what was said, until I started to read some of the actual papers. It was really really bad. Seriously -- you're technical people, go and read some of this stuff. It's amazing how transparently bad it is.
The statements from 'experts' are then amplified by media echo chambers. This is a well known technique -- you'll see this article, in various forms, swamp the media, and thus, while the majority of scientists think differently, the public perception will be one of confusion and doubt. It's kind of a well known tactic. (a nice book on this is Chomsky's Necessary Illusions.)
To be sure, at one point I was a climate change doubter, and so was a friend of mine. We were both PhD students in Plasma Physics, working on nuclear fusion. So there is clearly some decoupling of political background and belief.
But I did two weeks of research, and pretty thoroughly convinced myself that global warming is humankind's doing -- my friend did the same. I knew about Dr William Gray from before, however. He's moderately famous for starting hurricane season forecasting -- this is kind of barebones statistical work that doesn't have a well developed physics basis but is still quite helpful.
He's done a number of other things too. He attributes a lot of climate change to Thermohaline Circulation, as discussed by RealClimate. You may have been introduced to this effect in the same way I was -- in the public eye it used to get a lot of press, though many of those claims have turned out to be false. I have my suspicions that the reason for the press was that it swept many of the climate change issues neatly under the rug, Dr. Gray has been campaigning for years now.
He's a media darling, for sure. He has a certain type of credibility (though so did Serge Lang when he was saying at HIV didn't cause AIDS), having brought hurricane forecasting to the fore. Yet a lot of the science he represents is just crazy -- like saying "How can we trust climate forecasts 50 and 100 years into the future (that can't be verified in our lifetime) when they are not able to make shorter seasonal or yearly forecasts that could be verified?". I don't see how anyone with a modern training in physical sciences would say such a thing -- there are so many cases where aggregate behavior is more predictable than short term. Given that this was spoken at the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, it strikes me as demagoguery.
One should carefully observe the format of the article as well, in the spirit of Paul Graham's 'The Submarine'. It begins: "ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works"
Now you're drawn to the picture of Al Gore. 1,100,000 pictures via Google, and they decided to pick the one where he looks the weirdest. (here is another example of a fairly transparent smear, using imagery to it's fullest: http://www.nypost.com/seven/04122007/news/regionalnews/attac...)
Then it goes on and on, it cites the statistics regarding Hurricanes, which is his main trick (who said anything about hurricanes? This is Global warming...), and they don't even bother noting that the Associated Press looked asked 100 scientists about Gore's film, and they all said that he basically portrayed the science accurately. They don't say that Dr. Gray has been involved in a decades long continuous debate with mainstream climatology, in which most of his claims were discounted (usually upon the discovery of new evidence). None of that is mentioned, and you don't have to dig too deep to find out about it.
So the article was written with a particular message in mind. Indeed, search the web for, say, "Dr. William Gray Gore" and you'll find clones of practically the same article on a ton of different webpages. Hmm. Starting to look like a PR job, doesn't it?
> It's not as if good scientists would suddenly be out of a job if global warming turned out to be a hoax.
I note that Danifong persists in his\her belief that only certain sources of funding are a source of bias. A critical reader would have noticed the suggestion that there are sources of bias that have nothing to do with funding.
And yes, we have cases where folks have had their research funding threatened for suggesting that AGW is not as St Gore suggests. I'm sure that there are rationalizations to support that behavior, but ....
As far as the evils of a PR campaign are concerned, I note the AGW dog and pony show. Mote/beam and all that.
"It is the most dangerous challenge we've ever faced but it is also the greatest opportunity that we have ever had to make changes that we should be making for other reasons anyway," Gore said.
I have long thought that humans have no effect on global warming, and that the climate change we are seeing would have happened regardless of what we do. For me, this doesn't change much -- I still try to do things the "greenest" way practically possible and think that it is important to reduce your ecological footprint.
However I have only recently realized that this "reduce CO2 or the earth will boil"-publicity is actually really good, even if not scientifically accurate. It makes people think, and it makes people change the way they behave, to reduce pollution.
Therefore I am kind of worried if the public opinion changes into "we did not cause global warming, no worries", as that might kill this new thrive for ecological behavior.
Maybe I should have more trust in my fellow people. Probably not...
Unfortunately it's also an excuse for massive government intervention in all kinds of systems. Still, I agree that the whole affair drives innovation in energy production which is a good thing for many reasons.
Yeah we're all sinners. Seriously - 'man made global warming' is turning into a cult.
It's a very scary movement that is trying to restrict what 3rd world countries can do.
Kinda reminds me of the 'year 2000 bug'... "Oh no the worlds computers will blow up!!! You better all spend loads of money on fixing it"
"Oh.... nothing much happened... well thank god we spent all that money 'fixing' it."
If you have some intelligent argument to make, go ahead. However, it doesn't look like you do.
At the moment you look like the person with his fingers in his ears spouting out endless "If X then Y", that you seem to think somehow 'proves your point'.
Did you read the article? Read any other scientific articles on the subject? Or are you just a 'believer'
I've done both. Are you or gibsonf1 familiar with the mechanics of political oppo tactics? This is a hit piece and not a very subtle one either. The title says it all. It is designed to be the jumping off point for right-wing attackers.
Am I a believer? Yes, In science! Link to a science based article questioning the conventional wisdom of climate change? Fine. Great. All for it. Bring it on. Let's debate. But lazily link to a piece of sensationalized right-wing propaganda when this feed should be primarily about news related to the world of computers and computer science and I feel the best response is parody.
If gibsonf1 hates Al Gore and buys into the perverted slander built up by his political opponents and the Washington Beltway establishment, thats fine too. But he shouldn't bring it on to the Hacker News feed, unless he WANTS Hacker News to head down a road that leads to a site burned a nice crispy shade of brown by battalions of political talking point agenda bots.
the notion that humans could affect earth this much is laughable. we could smother the surface with nuclear explosions and the world would repair itself as an organism, never mind something as negligible as human CO2 emissions
yea, that's in the nuclear case. in the relevant case of human CO2 emissions, nothing is likely to happen. earth is an immensely stable self-repairing system
Again, nobody's claiming that the planet is going to have trouble with global warming. We humans have invested a lot into current climate patterns though, and the transition will be unpleasant.
i'm saying there won't be any transition caused by us
i do like the benefits of seeking efficiency. the sorts of technology that will arise when efficiency is economically supported (for example, by artificial markets a la kyoto or california's propositions) ie by necessity, should be impressive. for that reason i like the global warming movement and hope it continues so long as it has as a corollary a drive for efficiency
Allen Stern, webmaster for CernerNetworks states, "Considering that Y Combinator is all about the startup, this makes no sense. They have a couple other updates to the app as well. First, they will be looking for trolls on the comments for each post which is a good move."
Stern had nothing to say about how the system will handle ill advised postings of blatant political oppo hit pieces by Hacker News leaders.
One of the World's foremost mechanical engineers says that automakers could build a carburetor that would let cars get 100 miles to a gallon, but the Oil companies won't let them!
How did it get like that? Romans felled all the trees for ship building, many centuries ago.
I know this does not relate directly to the CO2 discussion (which also seems a bit simplistic to me), but driving through that landscape as a kid left a deep impression on me. Surely if the ancient Romans could change the environment, humans can affect the environment in the 21st century. It would be ridiculous to ascertain that humans have no effect on the environment at all, even if we don't understand the precise chain of effects.