The problem is exacerbated by the fact that we have no idea what effect the policies have. They could be good, BUT they can also have bad results. I mean bad beyond just the economic implications. Since the climate system has been working a certain way for ~10000 years, I'd say the default position should be that nothing is going to change.
What's missing from your reply is an answer to the data he's showing. A long time criticism of the IPCC is that, well, they're wrong. In the sense that if you compare their numbers with reality, their predictions turn out to be a pile of crap. In a truly absolute sense of the word. The IPCC's 95% certainty bands it gave for 5 years out have been violated EVERY single time (5 times) they made a prediction (for the 6th prediction, the jury is still out until the end of next year. However, it's not looking good).
If they really were 95% sure, that means they had a once in 16 MILLION years streak of bad luck (1/0.05^5 * 5 years) (and unless that 6th prediction works out, and global temperature rises by at least 1.2 degrees in about a year and a half, that will be a once in 320 million years streak of bad luck). That is significantly less believable, in my humble opinion, than the theory that they're just pulling numbers out of their ass (not necessarily intentionally), no matter how unflattering that claim may be to the many smart people working that field.
So in short : yes, I think doing nothing is the correct answer. You can't hope to do a better job doing something versus not doing something in this case, so the best course of action (least cost/maximum benefit) can only be to not do anything. So yes, nothing.
Either that, or switch to climate engineering (ie. change the question : no longer about how to restore "natural" climate, whatever that is. The question becomes : how do we fully bend the climate to our will. That and related questions, like what do we actually want the climate to be (I doubt the answer will be as simple as people think)).
So I don't agree with your flagging this, no. Yes, the article's author is probably not the right person to believe this claim from. But he's right (well, the first few paragraphs). And science is all about what is right, not who.
I disagree in methodology with the article on several fronts however. It basically boils down to them selecting IPCC predictions after the fact, and even after cherry picking what they compare with, they still adjust the data. Then they also cherry-pick what dataset to compare against. Even that is only enough to raise the observed level just above the lower bounds. Even then, I find that the data presented in their graphs does not look at all like a "remarkably good" prediction. But I disagree strongly with this way of evaluating the data. When evaluating a prediction made in the past you do not get to cherry pick out of a set of predictions, you ONLY get to pick the one you found most likely in the past. Second you most certainly do not get to adjust the prediction made in the past in any way. The article violates both. That means if you want to convince me, please unadjusted business-as-usual scenario only.
From the article:
> Figure 2 accounts for the lower observed GHG emissions than in the IPCC BAU projection, and compares its 'Best' adjusted projection with the observed global surface warming since 1990.
In case you're wondering, adjusted means adjusted by the author of the article (in december 2012). That's just unfair. Also "Best" does NOT mean the best scenario as set forth in the IPCC first assessment report, but the one he finds agrees with the data. This is bullshit. Cherry-picking predictions. Adjusting the results of you prediction AFTER the results are known. Sorry, but let me summarize my attitude here : fuck off.
Furthermore he cheats by omission : there are 2 major temperature records, and guess what, he uses the warmest measurement. Not mentioned anywhere in the article.
From the IPCC first assessment report (policymaker's section):
> under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0 3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0 2°C to 0 5°C per decade), this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1°C above the present value by 2025 and VC before the end of the next century The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors.
If you simply take the recommendation from the policymaker's section, and evaluate the temperatures against that, an entirely different picture emerges. I don't intend to make a graph here, but let's summarize :
IPCC prediction in BAU scenario :
0.2 to 0.5 degrees rise per decade from 1990 to 2010
Now obviously there's various ways to calculate the actual temperature difference, but none of them see 0.2 degrees rise:
1990 vs 2000 : 0.03 degrees warmer in 2000 (and no, 1990 was not particularly warm, although 2000 appears to have been a relatively cold year. Taking 1999 or 2001 or even 2002 still doesn't fix their prediction though)
Average of the 90s versus average of 2000-2010: 0.13 degrees rise (this I find the "fairest" way of measuring, but it doesn't allow us to evaluate 2000-2010 yet)
Average of the first 2 years of the decade (meaning you can check accuracy for 2000-2010 as well)
1990 -> 2000 : 0.15 degrees warmer in 2000
2000 -> 2010 : 0.05 degrees warmer in 2010
I have made my own graphs of the situation (Ipython rocks !), and overlayed them on the actual pictures from the IPCC publications, and the simple observation is : we are currently below the 95% certainty interval of the BAU scenario in the IPCC FAR. And it is a matter of 0.9 degrees in 2010 (that is, the real observed temperature was 0.9 degrees below the lower bound set forth in the IPCC's report), which is more than the predicted rise during that period (in other words : the error is bigger than the prediction).
So sorry to say, but this article fixes up the data by cherrypicking from the FAR, adding in "adjustments" and yes, it seems to be able to come to a reasonable picture. I call bullshit on that methodology though, for obvious reasons. If you're defending your prediction made in 1990 you do not get to revise said prediction in any way. You also don't get to make 5 predictions in 1990, then pick the "average" from 2 of them and show it matches the data.
So perhaps I should be more explicit : comparing the current satellite temperature record to the IPCC FAR report's "Business as usual" scenario, without adjusting it, the temperature has been below the lower bound of the 95% certainty interval since 1994. After 1996 there hasn't been a single temperature peak in the IPCC's predicted bounds. They were wrong, and not just a little bit.
A similar problem occurs between my own evaluation of the IPCC's second third and fourth report (and the article doesn't look at the fifth, probably because there's not that much data to evaluate it). I find this article woefully unconvincing.
Climate engineering scares the shit out of me. I think this article is right, we do not fully understand global warming. We know something is happening, we do NOT know exactly what OR why. But we have the fucking hubris to assume that we can make it better (through climate engineering)!? Without even fully understanding the problem.
That said, we can still work on improving the world and cutting down CO2 emissions AND pollution. Global warming or not, no one can argue with the fact that air quality in large cities in US, India, and China is atrocious. Global warming may or may not kill us, but pollution is killing people, now, today. And that pollution is 100% man made, no argument about that.
I personally think we should work on innovation of power production, not conservation of said power. Better battery technology and better solar photovoltaic technology is the future, in my personal opinion.
> Global warming or not, no one can argue with the fact that air quality in large cities in US, India, and China is atrocious.
You can argue with that for the US. "atrocious" compared to what? It's certainly a lot better than it used to be.
> And that pollution is 100% man made, no argument about that.
Not 100%, no. Some of our pollution is nature-made. Los Angeles was smoggy before there were any cars there - the Chumash indian tribe called Los Angeles basin "the valley of smoke". It has environmental conditions conducive to collecting particulates in the air - even pollen and dust and wood smoke from natural fires will collect and form a lingering haze there.
We have the fucking hubris to assume that we can stop impacting it by emitting tons of chemicals into environment, turning tons of earth over, cutting down acres of forests. That's not making it better, that's just not making it as much as worse, as fast. We are way far from 'climate engineering' when we can't even reduce impact by 2%.
Of course he's looking at one small set of data: temperature measurements. Consider the wide range of physical and biological changes occurring. Drunken forests. Polar ice melt. Bird migration changes (earlier spring and later fall, as well as some novel over-wintering). Changes in animal and plant ranges (including massive pest increases in some areas). Dying coral reefs. Increased extreme weather events (ask the insurance industry about their take on that). Screw the models. The data is pretty clear.
What's missing from your reply is an answer to the data he's showing. A long time criticism of the IPCC is that, well, they're wrong. In the sense that if you compare their numbers with reality, their predictions turn out to be a pile of crap. In a truly absolute sense of the word. The IPCC's 95% certainty bands it gave for 5 years out have been violated EVERY single time (5 times) they made a prediction (for the 6th prediction, the jury is still out until the end of next year. However, it's not looking good).
If they really were 95% sure, that means they had a once in 16 MILLION years streak of bad luck (1/0.05^5 * 5 years) (and unless that 6th prediction works out, and global temperature rises by at least 1.2 degrees in about a year and a half, that will be a once in 320 million years streak of bad luck). That is significantly less believable, in my humble opinion, than the theory that they're just pulling numbers out of their ass (not necessarily intentionally), no matter how unflattering that claim may be to the many smart people working that field.
So in short : yes, I think doing nothing is the correct answer. You can't hope to do a better job doing something versus not doing something in this case, so the best course of action (least cost/maximum benefit) can only be to not do anything. So yes, nothing.
Either that, or switch to climate engineering (ie. change the question : no longer about how to restore "natural" climate, whatever that is. The question becomes : how do we fully bend the climate to our will. That and related questions, like what do we actually want the climate to be (I doubt the answer will be as simple as people think)).
So I don't agree with your flagging this, no. Yes, the article's author is probably not the right person to believe this claim from. But he's right (well, the first few paragraphs). And science is all about what is right, not who.