MIT Professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen has this to say about global warming.
I found the most intriguing paragraph to be this one:
If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less–hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.
(Hat tip to Vernon Smith.)
I’m not an atmospheric scientist, a climatologist, a meteorologist, or any other kind of hard scientist you care to name. (By the way, I’ll bet that the vast majority of people who opine on global warming are just like me.) But I do know a thing or two about economics and the economics of politics. Regardless of the scientific merits of claims of global warming and claims of humankinds’ role (or not) in promoting global warming, it is unscientific in the extreme to assume that government can or will handle whatever problem there is wisely. Simply to assume that, if problem X exists, giving power to government to solve problem X will actually solve problem X, or will do so without creating even worse problems Y and Z, is to ignore history and our scientific knowledge of politics.
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Since environmental costs are the canonical example of an externality, is it any more scientific to assume that the free market will solve the problem more effectively?
Given that the atmosphere is a resource used by everyone and owned by no one, I don't see what possible solution there is to climate change *other* than government intervention.
Look, suppose the solution to global warming is to dump a million tons of iron in some bioavailable form into the oceans (this has been proposed). Who exactly gets to decide whether or not we should start dumping the iron, if not some international governmental body?
Great point as usual Don, well said.
Lindzen is to global warm like Duesberg was to AIDs. Both are reputable scientists who argue against an continuous stream of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Science magazine commissioned a study that examined peer reviewed scientific papers on global warming published since 1992. None of these papers challenged CO2 induced global warming. If you look at the British royal academy of science, or the American national academy of science, two of the most respected scientific bodies, both consider global warming to be real and human induced.
Furthermore what Lindzen is saying should make US citizens worry, the source of dry air that feeds US hurricanes comes directly off the coat of African from the sahara. Less atmospheric turbulence reduces wind shear that breaks up hurricanes, warmer oceans fuel hurricane force winds.
If you simply look at the ocean temperature in the coming hurricane season and follow the trajectories you can make an educated guess about when the hurricanes will pick up force or slow down. When they hit hot water they grow stronger, cold they weaken.
Some of these same global warming models suggest Russia and Canada may be net beneficiaries of global warming, however the US seems to comes out poorly with more droughts in the heartland and increased flooding and stronger hurricanes hitting coastal properties.
The scientific papers on this topic come out regularly. Two of the top journals Science and Nature are fairly accessible to the layman, the most important publications have readable descriptions in the news focus sections. I would encourage you to take a look at these articles, they are eye openners.
I agree with you that government regulations are generally poor policy. However, government must make tax policy choices. I am generally in favor of so called sin taxes rather than employment taxes that effectively increase labor costs. I think a carbon tax policy could easily help both the political environment by cutting off oil funds to horribly corrupt regimes and environmentally by reducing CO2 and pollution. I am generally opposed to mandating efficiency standards.
Economics aside, every global warming proponent has said essentially the same thing: Even if every camp fire were extinguished, furnace stopped run and SUV shut off-every single source of manmade CO2 on the planet ceased the atmosphere would continue to warm. In fact, if there was to be anything done about manmade CO2, it should have been done in the early part of the century to prevent the CO2 emissions in the first place. It's just ridiculous to think that a government can do anything about the warming trend-it's about as likely governments or private enterprises could have an effect on warming as it is to arrest the orbit of Saturn and start it circling the sun the other way round-just a silly mammoth waste of money and lives. Manmade or not, the warming (if it exists) is going to happen, carbon credits or hybrid cars be damned.
Patrick,
You are right the increases in temperature will continue if the CO2 level were stopped now, it take a long time for a mass the size of the earth to equilibrate. However the total warming that occurs is dependent upon the final CO2 concentrations generated. If we don't slow CO2 we might end up with some very warm temperatures 100-200 years from now. This will matter to our grandchildren, it could cost them entire ecosystems and significantly change the wealth of nations. I think the US would be a net loser in global warming.
I really became aware of global warming, climbing in the Cascades, and Tetons, when you look at photos and the trip report from 100 years ago you realize that half the glaciers in North America have melted away. Talking to other climbers it is evident that this is occuring on all the continents in the world.
It is not a silly mammoth waste of money first of all, i don't think it would cost much money, it requires development of new technology, more nuclear, biofuels, hydro, geothermal, conservation. We can either spend this money in our own country developing new technologies and industries of the future, or spend it on oil, supplying oil producing monsters in the world (for instance Iran) with funds for more terrorist strikes.
Slowing CO2 emmisions reduces the final equilibrium temperature and the dislocations that result, this will matter to future generations.
From what Richard Linzen says, it sounds like NON-anthropogenic warming could be responsible for stronger hurricanes. More carbon dioxide would mean more greenhouse effect everywhere, but especially at the poles, where there is almost no water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas. Its like putting a linen sheet on a bed with no blankets. It makes a difference. But everywhere else where there's a lot of water vapor, which is like a thick wool planket, that thin linen sheet makes no difference. So there would be more warming near the poles, reducing the temperature gradient.
But if warming is caused by a hotter sun, the blanket metaphor is out the window. Warming would be actually strongest at the equator, because that gets more sunlight, and that increases the gradient, producing more storms.
Maybe we should be HOPING for anthopogenic global warming.
I am a 'hard' scientist, though not a climatologist (I'm a physical chemist). That global warming is happening is hard to dispute- even data that seemed not to show it has recently been corrected (by fairly skeptical scientists) and shows warming at the lower end of model projections.
Which brings up the really sticky wicket when it comes to mitigation- modeling is a very tricky process. Even the best current models of climate violate thermodynamic and ignore potential feedbacks, both negative and positive. The IPCC's economic models (which perhaps the website know something about) are wildly optimistic about economic growth in the developing world and subsequent emissions, so they are wildly pessimistic about how bad AGW will be in the future. And many current models assume that there is a masking of the 'true' level of potential warming, though the nature of this masking is vague. One recent paper in the lit(forget the citation, but it has been recent) rings alarm bells assuming a tripling of carbon dioxide concentrations by the end of the century. No one thinks this is likely, so I wonder at the logic. Why not pick 10 times?
I understand what the commenter means who asks who will carry out any mitigation if not an international body. But I say that while I am very concerned about global warming, I am even more concerned that we will consume massive resources trying to do something that ultimately does nothing.
I think the comments about Lindzen are unfair- he is a curmudgeon, yes, and a contrarian. His criticisms of the models used are right on the mark. Does his criticism undermine the empirical data? I'm no expert, but I think not so far.
But if I create a completely unphysical computer model that kinda sorta gives the right answers (and most models do not model historical climate well, and again, do not even claim to include all the processes or even conform to basic physics) it is still not right, necessarily. You can fit the data with enough parameters and have no physical insight or predictive power. I mean this- the models might be giving good predictions, and they might not. It is not out of bounds to criticize them when they have problems.
God help us if we let consensus drive science. Go look at the history of plate tectonic theory for object lessons in how wrong consensus can be. The consensus was wrong in many other cases. That there is a consensus is only weak evidence that the models are not horrible, not that they are correct.
Before you begin looking into my connections to big oil or something (I kid, but there is a hideous proclivity of debaters on both sides to smear) I indeed do worry about global warming. But I worry that if it happens at all more slowly than the public has been led to believe, or the exaggerations and doomsday scenarios numb people to the problem, or international bodies do not really come to grips with the economics of the situation of developing economies, our opportunity to deal with the problem will be lost.
I am reminded of a previous post made earlier where it was asked whether or not we really have to worry about leaving later generations materially worse off. In this case, with a materially worse off planet or environment. Is it unreasonable to think that if the climate did change they would be in a better position to determine, using their (presumably) more advanced technology, how best to deal with the consequence, rather than what MAY be a consequence of our actions today?
This presumes that climate change will not be of a sudden nature (like in the movie The Day After Tommorrow), which is not an unresonable assumption IMHO.
The problem with with modeling human effects on global temperature is that earth's atmosphere is inherently a non-linear, stochastic, time-varying system. Therefore, present day models can only crudely approximate — with probality distributions — the influence of human waste on global temperature. So it is important to ask if government (and policy) can have any effect on globabl climate changes. But it is even more important to consider the potential costs that this could have on our society, especically in the wake of Katrina and the recent tornados.
cb,
Thanks for the links. I agree with you (and the article you cite) in that the bulk of scientific evidence suggests that global warming is a real problem and most of it is human induced. But what is still unclear (as it wasn't discussed in the article you cited) is what the potential costs of global warming are to society. And furthermore, even if government regulates the emission of greenhouse gases, it still remains to be seen what is the necessary amount to for the policy to be effective (if any at all). Look, I am not on the side of our hosts in that all government regulation is bad (especially if, without the regulation, huge costs are imposed on society), but simply implementing a policy without knowing the costs of the problem or whether the policy has any benefits is also a dangerous route as well.
Luke,
I don't think the costs are that large, the japanese and europeans are strong competitors, who use far less oil per capita, without significantly reducing their competative edge. The other point is building a society on cheap energy is not a wise the long run move. For instance most oil consumption in the US is for transportation. Increasing fuel efficiency is doable, doubling fuel efficiency would reduce US oil import significantly, reducing the price of oil and cut funding to oil rich terrorist nations. Without oil revenues Iran's nuclear program is no longer a problem, they become another two-bit backward country.
All tax policy has an economic impact. Taxes are necessary for modern society to exist. Do we make labor more costly with income taxes or consumption more costly. I think that targeting consumption areas that we wish to reduce for political, economic, and environmental reasons is a better way of raising taxes than taxing labor.
Are the Europeans and the Japanese fuel efficient, or are their gas taxes just overly high? If they paid closer to american prices for fuel, maybe oil prices wouldn't have gotten so ridiculously low and North Americans wouldn't have gotten into the SUV habit in the first place
CB-
You clearly didn't get my point. So what if there is a consensus? -this does not directly bear on the correctness of the models. Noting a consensus exists is a crude way of evaluating the geist of the science, but is not in itself scientific evidence. There was a theory before plate tectonics that was the consensus model(it was called something like 'contraction theory'). It was wrong, and yet it took about 20 years for it to die.
I am not a denier- but I am concerned that the science is being lost in political activism and this will harm both science and politics. I am concerned that dodgy science will chase out good, and will screw up any chance of fixing anything. The standard has to be higher than "everybody thinks so".
Dave,
Plate tectonics is the current consensus model, the model generally agreed upon by scientists.
Consensus is obviously not a scientific benchmark. Predictive ability is.
The CO2 driven global warming model has been around for over 50 years now. Based on the reputable scientific literature the warming is real, and the likelyhood is very high that CO2 is the primary culprit. Most of the naysayers appear to be non-scientists. I have seen no significant competing theories in the scientific literature. Furthermore no significant refutations of the model have been published. The current model is predictive of the current and historical data collected.
The problem seems to be that misinformation is being spewed by detractors.
See below.
Science 24 December 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5705, p. 2167
DOI: 10.1126/science.306.5705.2167a
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NetWatch
Frustrated by Web sites claiming to debunk global warming, several scientists this month launched their own blog on the evidence that humans are heating up the planet. Realclimate.org is hosted by a public relations firm called Environmental Media Services, but nine academic and government scientists write the content, says co-organizer Gavin Schmidt of NASA (speaking in a personal capacity). They hope to counter industry-supported sites such as http://www.CO2science.org and http://www.junkscience.com, where so-called experts "have a habit of seriously misquoting, distorting, and outright manipulating data," says Schmidt.
So far, the site has addressed topics such as why the heat generated by large cities makes only a minuscule contribution to surface warming and the flaws in Michael Crichton's latest novel, State of Fear, which dismisses global warming as hype. Visitors can chime in, but comments are screened before they're posted.
If the choice is between returning to 17th century standards of living, and dealing with the costs of global warming…
Yeah, no-brainer.
"Consensus is obviously not a scientific benchmark. Predictive ability is."
Whodathunk that the last eight years have seen no rise in average global temperatures? Who would have predicted that one?
Don't get 1)the scientists who agree that the world has, on average, warmed slightly over the last hundred years confused with 2)the scientists who think that the most significant cause of this is people. While the first is true, the second is highly debatable, and is not universally agreed upon.
Yes, we can speculate that global warming, if it continues to occur at the rate it is is now, may harm future generations in some way. I seem to remember droughts being a problem in the Midwest forever (remember the Dust Bowl?), but if you say they will be a tremendous problem, then I guess they will be.
Although I fail to understand how losing a bunch of mountain glaciers amounts to much of anything, since that water would now presumably be going back into the ground or atmosphere, which would seem to mean less droughts, but whatever.
What we can be certain of is that is we limit our growth, as reflected by GNP, then we will definitely harm future generations, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
How rational are you if you choose the latter path over the former?
Oh, and BTW, don't diss Somolia. They are doing much better than you think. http://www.mises.org/story/2066
CO2 is good for plants. Global warming is a non-issue, but makes for fantastic political rhetoric! Human bad, must be controlled. Look how you treat the earth and make it sick.
This planet is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-ton ball of iron. A little CO2 isn't going to phase it.
The dumping iron into the ocean bit made me chuckle.
Humour is an element that adds spice to life and without which may be life would have been very difficult to spend. But contrary to what many people believe, humour is not all about smiling and laughing, though it caters to these fields mainly. Humour is actually the capability to see the lighter side of life, sometimes even in a serious environment. But this lighter view of life should be done intelligently. Slapstick humour is no humour at all, it is just trash.