What Do We Think About Climate Change

wardd · Oct 13, 2010

sounds like a cheny canned hunt only cheny will shoot anything or anyone

Boston · Oct 13, 2010

o joy
another game of "Find the Flaw"

its just to much fun G man cause you humiliate yourself with virtually every post

Guillermo said: ↑

Your problem is not only one of comprehending science: It is the basic one of comprehending what is written:

it is evident something does not work at all in the AGW theory, which implies a water vapor feedback to the weak CO2 forcing to boost the increase of temperature.
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oh it is evident eh
now would that be evident in say the accuracy of the IPCC predictions which have proven to be extremely accurate or erring on the conservative side

no wait I'm sorry that would mean you were wrong again
lets try that one more time

maybe that would be evident in say the modeling of the observed cooling from the Pinatubo eruption Soden et al (2002) and the coresponding drop in total atmospheric vapor content

oh wait my bad again, that clearly showed that airosol emissions drove the observed atmospheric vapor content based on temp just like CO2 drives the atmospheric vapor content based on temp.

gosh I cant believe I mentioned that cause that would be another reason you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about

of course I could just point out that once again you are mindlessly denying the science and simply spewing something that has no basis in research, direct measurement or laboratory experimentation. Basically you have not one shred of evidence to back up that BS and yet here you are again attempting to spread the oil and gas industry propaganda to the readers

guess what
your not fooling anyone and you only embarrass yourself G because its obvious who doesn't comprehend the science around here and its not me buddy, its not me at all.

lets read that article again and then you spew your tripe about how water vapor isn't being forced by CO2 so the readers can laugh along with the rest of us

maybe it will help those few of less than stellar character if I highlight a few things

Water vapour: feedback or forcing?
Filed under:

* Climate Science
* Climate modelling
* FAQ
* Greenhouse gases

— gavin @ 6 April 2005 - (Deutsch)

Whenever three or more contrarians are gathered together, one will inevitably claim that water vapour is being unjustly neglected by ‘IPCC’ scientists. “Why isn’t water vapour acknowledged as a greenhouse gas?”, “Why does anyone even care about the other greenhouse gases since water vapour is 98% of the effect?”, “Why isn’t water vapour included in climate models?”, “Why isn’t included on the forcings bar charts?” etc. Any mainstream scientist present will trot out the standard response that water vapour is indeed an important greenhouse gas, it is included in all climate models, but it is a feedback and not a forcing. From personal experience, I am aware that these distinctions are not clear to many, and so here is a more in-depth response (see also this other attempt).

First some basics. Long-wave (or thermal) radiation is emitted from the surface of the planet and is largely absorbed in the atmosphere. Water vapour is the principle absorber of this radiation (and acknowledged as such by everybody). But exactly how important is it? In terms of mass, water vapour is much more prevalent (about 0.3% of atmospheric mass, compared to about 0.06% for CO2), and so is ~80% of all greenhouse gases by mass (~90% by volume). However, the radiative importance is less (since all molecules are not created equal). One way to quantify this is to take a radiation model and remove each long-wave absorber (principally the greenhouse gases, but also clouds and aerosols) and see what difference it makes to the amount of long-wave absorbed. This gives the minimum effect from each component. The complementary calculation, using only each particular absorber in turn, gives the maximum effect. Generally these will not be equal because of overlaps in the absorbing spectra (i.e. radiation at a particular frequency can either be absorbed by water vapour or CO2).
Removed absorbers Fraction LW Rad. Forcing
absorbed Tropo. (W/m2)
None 100% 0
H2O 64 (64, RC78) -56
Clouds 84 (86, RC78) –
CO2 91 (88, RC78) -23
O3 97 (97, RC78)
Other GHG 98 -3
H2O+Clouds 34 –
H2O+CO2 47 -89
All except H2O+Clouds 85 –
All except H2O 66 (60-70, IPCC90) –
All except CO2 26 (25, IPCC90) –
All except O3 7 –
All except Other GHG 8 –
All 0% –
Instant calculation, global mean, Jan. 1, 1979 RC78=Ramanathan and Coakley (1978)
‘All’ includes aerosols, O3 and other minor gases as additional absorbers.

The table shows the instantaneous change in long-wave aborption when each component or combination of components is removed using the radiation code from the GISS GCM. (The source code is available for those who have the patience to get it to work). This isn’t a perfect calculation but it’s quick and easy and is close enough to the right answer for our purposes. (N.B. This is very similar to what was done by Ramanathan and Coakley (1978) using a single column model – their numbers are in the table for reference). Because of the overlaps, the combined changes are larger than the changes due to each individual component. Another calculation is the instantaneous radiative forcing at the tropopause, but that is complicated for clouds, O3 and Aerosols which have impacts on solar radiation as well as the long wave, so I only give that value for the ‘pure’ greenhouse gases.

The overlaps complicate things, but it’s clear that water vapour is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO2 alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O3 and the other minor GHG absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect, respectively. The remainders and uncertainties are associated with the overlaps which could be attributed in various ways that I’m not going to bother with here. Making some allowance (+/-5%) for the crudeness of my calculation, the maximum supportable number for the importance of water vapour alone is about 60-70% and for water plus clouds 80-90% of the present day greenhouse effect. (Of course, using the same approach, the maximum supportable number for CO2 is 20-30%, and since that adds up to more than 100%, there is a slight problem with such estimates!).

Since we are looking at the whole of the present-day greenhouse effect (around 33 C), it is not surprising that the radiative forcings are very large compared to those calculated for the changes in the forcing. The factor of ~2 greater importance for water vapour compared to CO2 is consistent with the first calculation.

So where does the oft quoted “98%” number come from? This proves to be a little difficult to track down. Richard Lindzen quoted it from the IPCC (1990) report in a 1991 QJRMS review* as being the effect of water vapour and stratiform clouds alone, with CO2 being less than 2%. However, after some fruitless searching I cannot find anything in the report to justify that (anyone?). The calculations here (and from other investigators) do not support such a large number and I find it particularly odd that Lindzen’s estimate does not appear to allow for any overlap.

While water vapour is indeed the most important greenhouse gas, the issue that makes it a feedback (rather than a forcing) is the relatively short residence time for water in the atmosphere (around 10 days). To demonstrate how quickly water reacts, I did a GCM experiment where I removed all the water in the atmosphere and waited to see how quickly it would fill up again (through evaporation from the ocean) . The result is shown in the figure. It’s not a very exciting graph because the atmosphere fills up very quickly. At Day 0 there is zero water, but after only 14 days, the water is back to 90% of its normal value, and after 50 days it’s back to within 1%. That’s less than 3 months. Compared to the residence time for perturbations to CO2 (decades to centuries) or CH4 (a decade), this is a really short time.

Only the stratosphere is dry enough and with a long enough residence time (a few years) for the small anthropogenic inputs to be important. In this case (and in this case only) those additions can be considered a forcing. Oxidation of anthropogenic methane (which is a major source of stratospheric water) and, conceviably, direct deposition of water from increases in aircraft in the lower stratosphere, can increase stratospheric water and since that gives a radiative forcing effect, they do appear on the forcings bar chart (under “H2O from CH4“). Some scientists have argued that changes to irrigation and other land use changes (which effect evaporation) are also direct forcings to water vapour amounts, but I think it’s cleaner to think of that as an indirect water vapour response to the change.

When surface temperatures change (whether from CO2 or solar forcing or volcanos etc.), you can therefore expect water vapour to adjust quickly to reflect that. To first approximation, the water vapour adjusts to maintain constant relative humidity. It’s important to point out that this is a result of the models, not a built-in assumption. Since approximately constant relative humidity implies an increase in specific humidity for an increase in air temperatures, the total amount of water vapour will increase adding to the greenhouse trapping of long-wave radiation. This is the famed ‘water vapour feedback’. A closer look reveals that for a warming (in the GISS model at least) relative humidity increases slightly in the tropics, and decreases at mid latitudes.

How do we know that the magnitude of this feedback is correctly simulated? A good test case is the response to the Pinatubo eruption. This caused cooling for up to 3 years after the eruption – plenty of time for water vapour to equilibriate to the cooler sea surface temperatures. Thus if models can simulate the observed decrease of water vapour at this time, it would be a good sign that they are basically correct. A good paper that demonstrated this was Soden et al (2002) (and the accompanying comment by Tony DelGenio). They found that using the observed volcanic aerosols as forcing the model produced very similar cooling to that observed. Moreover, the water vapour in the total column and in the upper troposphere decreased in line with satellite observations, and helped to increase the cooling by about 60% – in line with projections for increasing greenhouse gases.

To be sure there are still some lingering uncertainties. Some recent data indicates that tropical upper tropopsheric water vapour does not quite keep up with constant relative humidity (Minschwaner and Dessler, 2004) (though they still found that the feedback was positive). Moist convection schemes in models are constantly being refined, and it’s possible that newer schemes will change things . However, given the Pinatubo results, the models are probably getting the broader picture reasonably correct.
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thus proving once again Guillermo that you have no idea what you are talking about

but thanks for playing another rousing round of "Find the Flaw"

care to play again

cheers
B

ps
post 10187 is also a great example of how you simply dont understand or deliberately misrepresent what you are reading

once again you forgot that bit about what is forcing what and why.
might want to brush up on that before embarrassing yourself again making assumptions about what other people work represents

Boston · Oct 13, 2010

now Guillermo you might want to take some time and study the issues rather than just fire into another round of "Find the Flaw" cause so far your pretty much just embarrassing yourself

oh
and the barrage of meaningless insults is certainly not helping you any. I'm sure the readers see on the one hand a polite and detailed if somewhat sarcastic response and compare that to snippets of abstracts you clearly dont understand followed by mindless insults and name calling on the other. Something tells me if I were just reading along who would have the greater credibility.

reminds me of that article so aptly named
bring on the clowns (or something like that) were the tactics you so dearly cling to are well defined as being the bread and butter of the online posy of posers and miscreants who when confronted with a truth to which they do not subscribe simply attempt to insult there way out of the embarrassment, which I might add need not be embarrassing at all but could be a valuable learning experience. Of course that would mean you might actually have to admit you were human and that you were mistaken concerning a given issue. Or would you really rather just sprout horns and a tail and pretend your childish rants are actually convincing anyone.

you might also work on comprehension cause often an article actually says pretty much the opposite of what you try and make it out to say

anyway thanks for playing "Find the Flaw" its always kinda fun

think of it this way
there is a reason they call it denial
and its obvious

Guillermo · Oct 13, 2010

Boston, my stupid Weasel:

You already fool nobody here, don't you realize that? You so blindly try to "find the flaw" in my posts that you do not take the time to read and understand what is written. Or, what is worst, you do not mind at all about what is written and just discredit and scorn.

You are poor idiot with no brains, hiding behind a nickname to insult people, pretending to be who you are not to hide your illiteracy, only able to play that idiotic game of "find the flaw" by just desperately copying and pasting articles from Real Climate you do not understand, because you are totally unable to think and work numbers/graphs by yourself.

So my more precise actual opinion about you is:

Boston is a useless, illiterate, coward, cheeky liar, spiteful idiot.

Guillermo · Oct 13, 2010

"I am a Scientist"

Credentials:
http://www.maxtanks.com
http://www.denverwoodandmill.com
.

Boston · Oct 13, 2010

If I only had a nickle for every time you flop yourself onto the ground and throw a tantrum

LMAO

ok then I guess since you have no possible rebuttal to the errors being pointed out in your logic ( or ilogic in this case ) and given that you appear incapable of admitting when you are wrong ( which has been pointed out numerous times by numerous posters ) then I suppose I should have expected another childish outburst.

care to throw yourself of the ground and kick your feet or have you graduated to jumping up and down with your little fists curled and holding your breath

its not like your post has any merit or anything I just kinda wanted to save this one cause its so classically you whenever you are cornered and unable to act like an adult

Guillermo said: ↑

Boston, my stupid Weasel:

You already fool nobody here, don't you realize that? You so blindly try to "find the flaw" in my posts that you do not take the time to read and understand what is written. Or, what is worst, you do not mind at all about what is written and just discredit and scorn.

You are poor idiot with no brains, hiding behind a nickname to insult people, pretending to be who you are not to hide your illiteracy, only able to play that idiotic game of "find the flaw" by just desperately copying and pasting articles from Real Climate you do not understand, because you are totally unable to think and work numbers/graphs by yourself.

So my more precise actual opinion about you is:

Boston is a useless, illiterate, coward, cheeky liar, spiteful idiot.
Click to expand...

Oh its not blindly Guillermo, the flaws ( there are typically multiple flaws in any one of your posts ) are generally so glaring that its laughable.

so I have to ask
wanna play "Find the Flaw" again cause its not like it takes much effort to uncover the typical deniers diatribe in your posts and I kinda have today off

love
B

ps
question though
how is exposing half truths, misinterpretations and cherry picking data not reading and understanding
just curious

Guillermo · Oct 13, 2010

The only flaw here is between your ears fake "scientist"

Boston · Oct 13, 2010

once again with the personal attacks rather than present a coherent and complete counter hypothesis to the group

or were you planing on taking off on another binge of half truths and misrepresented snippets while remaining as ambiguous as possible in your assessment of what it all means

your tactics are almost play by play the typical deniers diatribe

1. Conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theories have been growing in strength in recent months as personal attacks on climate scientists have intensified. In particular, there has been accusations of manipulation of temperature data with the result that “the surface temperature record is unreliable” has been the most popular argument over the last month. This is distracting people from the physical realities of global warming manifesting themselves all over the world. Arctic sea-ice loss is accelerating. Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing ice mass at an accelerating rate. Spring is coming earlier each year. Animal breeding and migration are changing in response. Distribution of plants are shifting to higher elevations. Global sea level is rising. When one steps back to take in the full body of evidence, it overwhelmingly points to global warming.
2. Fake experts
A number of surveys and petitions have been published online, presenting lengthy numbers of scientists who reject man-made global warming. Close inspection of these lists show very few qualifications in climate science. On the contrary, a survey of climate scientists who actively publish climate research found that over 97% agree that human activity is significantly changing global temperature.
3. Cherry picking
This usually involves a focus on a single paper to the neglect of the rest of peer-review research. A recent example is the Lindzen-Choi paper that finds low climate sensitivity (around 0.5°C for doubled CO2). This neglects all the research using independent techniques studying different time periods that find our climate has high sensitivity (around 3°C for doubled CO2). This includes research using a similar approach to Lindzen-Choi but with more global coverage.
4. Impossible expectations
The uncertainties of climate models are often used as an excuse to reject any understanding that can come from climate models. Or worse, the uncertainty of climate models are used to reject all evidence of man-made global warming. This neglects the fact that there are multiple lines of empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming .
5. Logical fallacies
Strawmen arguments abound in the climate debate. Often have I heard skeptics argue “CO2 is not the only driver of climate” which every climate scientist in the world would wholeheartedly agree with. A consideration of all the evidence tells us there are a number of factors that drive climate but currently, CO2 is the dominant forcing and also the fastest rising. Logical fallacies such as “climate has changed before therefore current climate change must be natural” are the equivalent of arguing that lightning has started bushfires in the past, therefore no modern bushfire is ever started by arsonists.
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Guillermo · Oct 13, 2010

American Physical Society statements in response to Harold Lewis resignation:

"On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree (well, as per the latest research not more than 75-80%, with great uncertainty due to the small number of responses to the surveys among climate scientists. That's not "virtually all") with the following observations:

* Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity; (True)
* Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; (True, but note they do not say how much) and
* The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years. (depends on what they understand by "dwell" time. Anyway they do not say again how much this influences temperature)

On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain."

(blue remarks are mine)

Guillermo · Oct 13, 2010

"I am a Scientist"

Credentials:
http://www.maxtanks.com
http://www.denverwoodandmill.com

CHEEKY LIAR!

(Look, I know how to be shrimpy too! )

Boston · Oct 13, 2010

score
another game of "Find the Flaw"

Guillermo said: ↑

American Physical Society statements in response to Harold Lewis resignation:

"On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree (well, as per the latest research not more than 75-80%, with great uncertainty due to the small number of responses to the surveys among climate scientists. That's not "virtually all") with the following observations:

* Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity; (True)
* Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; (True, but note they do not say how much) and
* The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years. (depends on what they understand by "dwell" time. Anyway they do not say again how much this influences temperature)

On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain."

(blue remarks are mine)
Click to expand...

I notice you dont note this latest research of which you speak, could it be that its not from a reputable source. I suppose the statement could have also mentioned that virtually every accredited university that has a climate science program has made statements supporting the theory

your second statement is also misleading in that just because they dont say how much that doesn't mean it plays a subordinate role as has been pointed out to you in my last few

lastly the uncertainties of which you speak are what have led these agencies like the IPCC to make there predictions on the conservative side and revise upwards rather than vise versa

while the models might always be improved they are well able to make accurate predictions as has been shown numerous times

you make a number of implications designed to cast doubt when in fact there is very little doubt
for instance we know what the influence of CO2 is and simply because some organization doesn't add some bit of minutia that you would like to see included does not mean that there is any doubt concerning its function

cheers
B

a bit more subtle this time but still a bunch of hog wash trying to instill doubt when in fact there really isn't any

Guillermo · Oct 13, 2010

Don't run away, please. Respond to this:

"I am a Scientist"

Credentials:
http://www.maxtanks.com
http://www.denverwoodandmill.com

CHEEKY LIAR!

wardd · Oct 13, 2010

Guillermo said: ↑

The only flaw here is between your ears fake "scientist"
Click to expand...

can I be a fake scientist and get paid to deny agw?

boston could nominate me for the nobel , then I would be a nobel nominee

Boston · Oct 13, 2010

oh joy
the spread doubt strategy again

Global Warming Deniers and
Their Proven Strategy of Doubt
For years, free-market fundamentalists opposed to government regulation have sought to create doubt in the public’s mind about the dangers of smoking, acid rain, and ozone depletion. Now they have turned those same tactics on the issue of global warming and on climate scientists, with significant success.
by naomi oreskes and erik m. conway

In recent months, a group called the Cooler Heads Coalition — a creation of the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) — has fostered a public image of climate science as a criminal conspiracy. The CEI itself has accused NASA, the largest funder of climate science, of faking important climate data sets. In February, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, whose positions are frequently cited and promoted by CEI, called for a criminal investigation of 17 climate scientists from a variety of institutions for allegedly falsifying or distorting data used in taxpayer-funded research.

The recent shift in the community of global warming deniers from merely attacking mainstream climate scientists to alleging their involvement in criminal activity is an unsurprising but alarming development in the long campaign to discredit the established scientific fact that burning fossil fuels is causing the world to warm. This latest escalation fits seamlessly into a decades-old pattern of attempts to deny the reality of environmental ills — smoking, acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming. Similar or even identical claims have been promoted for decades by other free-market think-tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, and, most persistently, the George C. Marshall Institute. These think tanks all have two things in common: They promote free-market solutions to environmental problems, and all have long been active in challenging the scientific evidence of those problems.

In researching a book on global warming deniers, we often felt demoralized by the efficacy of doubt-mongering tactics and depressed that

There is strong evidence that the contrarian campaign is enjoying success.

the American public had been repeatedly fooled by the same strategy and tactics. On the other hand, we felt cautiously optimistic because disputes over other issues — tobacco smoking, acid rain, second-hand smoke, and the ozone hole — ended with the scientific evidence prevailing, and with regulation that (however delayed or weakened) addressed the problem.

Global warming was the great unfinished story, but with the mainstream media and many politicians acknowledging the reality of global warming in recent years, it seemed that there was real progress. “The debate is over,” California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared in 2005. “We know the science. We see the threat posed by changes in our climate.”

Now it seems that progress has been reversed. In recent months, as the U.S. Senate prepared to consider climate and energy legislation, there has been a stepped-up effort on a broad front to belittle the overwhelming evidence of human-caused global warming. As they did with smoking and acid rain, the so-called global warming skeptics have had one overriding goal: to sow doubt in the public’s mind and head off government regulation.

In the case of global warming, there is strong evidence that this contrarian campaign is enjoying success, with recent polls showing that more than half of Americans are not particularly worried about the issue and that fully 40 percent believe there is major disagreement among scientists about whether climate change is even occurring. This confusion is no doubt due, at least in part, to the persistent campaigns of obfuscation by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other global warming deniers who use right-wing talk radio, the Internet, and television programs such as Fox News to propagate their message of doubt.

The story begins with the tobacco companies’ long-running effort to cast doubt on the links between cigarette smoking and human health effects, including lung cancer. One of the scientists the tobacco industry recruited to this cause was Frederick Seitz. Seitz was a distinguished solid-state physicist, who believed strongly in the role of science and technology in defending the United States during the Cold War. In the late 1950s and 1960s he rose to high levels in national science policy, serving, among other positions, as president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

However, in 1979, toward the end of his career, he took a new job: running a $45 million program for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to support scientific research to defend the “product” — that is to say, tobacco — long after scientists and physicians had come to virtually unanimous agreement on the overwhelming harm that it caused.

In the words of one industry document, Seitz’s program was to develop “an extensive body of scientifically, well-grounded data useful in defending the industry against attacks.” The goal was to fight science with science — or at least with the gaps and uncertainties in existing science, and with scientific research that could be used to deflect attention from the main event. Like the magician who waves his right hand to distract attention from what he is doing with his left, the tobacco industry would fund distracting research, such as studies on the dietary causes of atherosclerosis and the role of patients’ psychological attitudes on the progression of disease.

In 1984, Seitz took up another cause, joining with two other prominent physicists, William Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow — both also long active in space and weapons programs — to found the George C. Marshall Institute. They created the institute to defend President Reagan’s Strategic

After the Cold War, the Marshall Institute found a new enemy: environmentalists.

Defense Initiative (SDI) from attacks by the mainstream physics community. The Marshall Institute drew its funding from a handful of conservative political foundations, and it defended SDI by loud claims of Soviet military superiority, claims that were found only a few years later — when the USSR disintegrated and the Cold War ended — to have been exaggerated, at best. However, although the Soviet threat was gone and the Cold War was won, the institute didn’t go out of business. Instead, it found a new enemy: environmentalists.

In the early 1980s, Nierenberg had chaired a major National Academy of Sciences review of global warming. Scientists had formed a consensus in the late 1970s that global warming was likely to result from increasing greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels, and that this would have serious consequences: glaciers and polar ice sheets would melt, causing sea levels to rise and inundating coastlines and major port cities; deserts would expand, reducing food production; and rapid habitat change could lead to serious biodiversity loss. But as chairman of the panel, Nierenberg rejected the conclusions of his fellow physical scientists and recruited several economists who argued that, rather than trying to prevent climate change, we should simply wait and see what happened and then adapt as events unfolded. If adaptation proved impossible, humans could always migrate, Nierenberg concluded, ignoring the overwhelming historical evidence of the widespread human suffering that has typically accompanied mass migration.

Nierenberg also joined with another physicist, S. Fred Singer, to undermine regulatory action on sulfur dioxide, the principal cause of acid rain. In response to two National Academy reports suggesting that acid rain was real and serious, and its primary causes known, President Reagan commissioned an independent peer review of the existing scientific evidence. Most of the panel members were, actually, independent, and agreed with the National Academy that regulatory action to control sulfur

The contrarian attacks became more virulent, more unprincipled, and more personal.

emissions was warranted. However, Nierenberg and Singer worked to challenge that conclusion, adding a policy-oriented appendix by Singer — which was not approved by the entire panel — that first advocated free-market approaches to controlling pollution, and then concluded (but without a real quantitative analysis) that the cost of reducing acid rain would very likely exceed the benefits. Nierenberg also worked behind the scenes with White House Science Advisor George Keyworth to soften the conclusions of the report’s executive summary and to make them seem more ambiguous than they had originally been. (Something Nierenberg would later accuse climate scientists of doing — only in the reverse.)

Despite these machinations, the acid rain report was still stronger than the Reagan White House wanted, and the administration delayed releasing it until after Congress had defeated pending acid rain legislation. Several congresspersons later stated that had the peer review report been available when the vote was taken, it might well have gone the other way.

It took several more years before the administration of George H. W. Bush implemented an acid rain reduction program organized around a cap-and-trade system. In one sense, this program has worked, reducing acid deposition in the Northeast by more than 50 percent, and — contrary to Singer’s claims — at one-tenth of the projected cost. But it was also too little, too late. Continued work by ecologists such as Gene Likens shows that Northeastern forests are still dying.

In the late 1980s, the Marshall Institute turned to the denial of global warming. As scientific evidence emerged that warming was not only going to happen, but was perhaps already happening, the institute’s attacks became stronger and more unprincipled. These “contrarians” — because their positions were contrary to the majority scientific view — began taking evidence out of context, cherry-picking data, and misrepresenting what was actually being published in the scientific literature. For example, they distributed a “white paper” in 1989 falsely claiming that a review from NASA climate scientist James Hansen showed that recent warming was largely due to increased solar activity.

When confronted with incontrovertible evidence that their arguments and cherry-picked facts were incorrect, the deniers refused to correct their mistakes and continued to spread the same misinformation. Indeed, as the science strengthened, and the evidence of the human fingerprint on the climate system began to strongly emerge, the contrarian attacks became more virulent, more unprincipled, and more personal.

In 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepared to release its second assessment report, which would declare that the human effect on climate was now “discernible.” That same year, a fossil-fuel industry-funded group called the Global Climate Coalition accused Benjamin Santer, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and lead author of a key IPCC chapter, of committing

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“scientific cleansing” — that is, of removing mention of uncertainties in the chapter to make global warming appear more certain than it was. The men of the Marshall Institute then splashed that accusation onto the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. Investigations found nothing untoward had happened. All Santer had done was include new findings on global warming suggested by fellow scientists during the peer-review process and to clarify language that was also suggested in the peer review process. Various colleagues and IPCC officials defended Santer and tried to set the record straight, but it didn’t matter. Indeed, in 2007, Fred Singer repeated the charges in a new book, and they continue to be repeated on the Internet today.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. Similar attacks were launched against the scientific evidence of the ozone hole, of second-hand smoke, and of the harms of DDT. As one tobacco executive put it in 1969, “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.” Casting doubt about climate science is simply part of the effort to prevent regulation of fossil fuels. The point of merchandising doubt was, and remains, the prevention of government regulation.

These opponents of science are free-market fundamentalists, unwilling to accept that global warming and many other pollution-induced ills are market failures, and that government action of some kind will be needed to address it. Market fundamentalists believe that free markets are the solution to social problems and government intervention can only do harm. The reality, however, amply demonstrated by experience, is that pollution is external to the market system — there’s no cost to dumping waste into the air and water. And as Lord Nicholas Stern has recently noted, global warming is the biggest market failure of them all. But this is yet another truth that the free market fundamentalists prefer to ignore.

Meanwhile, the contrarians’ campaigns continue, and with significant success: Many Americans accept the deniers’ allegations as true, or at least are confused by them, and therefore do not know what to think or whom to trust. Science has been effectively undermined, which has eroded public support for the decisive action needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
Click to expand...

Guillermo · Oct 13, 2010

"the truth will out my friends
the truth will out"

"I am a Scientist"

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What Do We Think About Climate Change

wardd Senior Member

Boston Previous Member

Boston Previous Member

Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

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Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

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Boston Previous Member

Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

Boston Previous Member

Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

Boston Previous Member

Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

wardd Senior Member

Boston Previous Member

Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

Climate change

Climate Change is Political Football, Not Just a Complex Subject

Climate Change is a Complex Subject, Not Just a Political Football

The Climate Change Hoax

Climate change falsehood

How will Climate Change change our boating world, and what can be done?

Rapid Global Climate Shift and its socio-economic effects

ocean conditions are changing due to Rapid Global Climate Shift

Water Skiing in Warmer Climates

Cruising boats flee Thailand after rules change