Paul Johnson on Marxism, Freudianism, the Theory of Relativity, and Global Warming

Vidyohs,

Welcome back, and I hope you escaped the hurricane without damage.

Holy Toledo! Oh my God!

muirduck,

After nine months or a year you finally got it right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Damn, I just hope your diagnoses of children illnesses don't take that long.

"during the dawn of civilization as plants/trees from those times are being found in the tracks of now receding glaciers.

Posted by: muirgeo | Sep 19, 2008 12:12:02 PM"

Muirgeo,

First, it's a physically calculable parameter, then it's a best estimate. Then you go on to describe the feedback effects I've already discussed without contradicting any assertion I've made.

We're discovering happens when the temperature warms now. You don't actually know, and you also don't know how long the current warming trend will last. You think you know, but you don't.

In reality, the theory continually changes to fit the continually changing data. The IPCC's assessment in 1990 predicted a 0.6 deg C rise by 2010. We're nearly there, and it's looking closer to 0.2 or a bit more with measurements leveling off in the last decade. But CO2 concentration has continued rising, even risen a bit faster.

What happens to crop yields when CO2 concentration rises? You don't know that either.

The tale of the hockey stick fraud.

Astronomical influences.

Problems with climate models.

Evidence of 1,500 year climate cycle.

Maybe warmer is better. Who are we to say? More people die each year from cold temperatures than from warm temperatures. Also, we could use a longer growing season up here in the Northeast. We welcome a warming trend.

Really Hammer?

Look at my graph and note were the line is now compared to 1950. Now do the same for your graph. That's called a divergent trend.

The temperature data from the 1850's is well backed by multiple lines of proxy data from glaciers to bore hole temperatures to ice core samples.

There is little doubt now the global temperature is warmer then the Medieval Warm Period and warmer then it was 5,000 years ago, during the dawn of civilization as plants/trees from those times are being found in the tracks of now receding glaciers. If it was this warm in the past 5,000 years those plants would have previously decayed after their exposure to the air from a subsequent melting.

While we are looking at graphs, here is a link to a fun one about sun spots:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sunspot_Numbers.png

Looks a lot like your graph, including a rise towards the end of the 20th century... interesting!

So Muirgeo, how accurate do you figure those "global air temperatures" listed on that graph are back in the 1850's?

Further, are those yearly averages? Medians?

What is the "anomaly" temperature this is bouncing around? How do they determine normal in this case?

And more importantly, is it really worrisome that we are rotating around +/- .6 degrees over years?

I also note that the current trend is decreasing... so in a few years we might well be back to below the normal?

Not much of a “greeney” but I thought the retort at greenfyre blog was very good.

“The Nonsense of Paul Johnson: The Dunning-Kruger Effect on Display”

http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/
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** - SK


With the human races ability to change the Earth surroundings, I am not surprised that the Earths climate has been affected in someway. Weather (play on words) this is a very, very, bad – “we must all repent and change our ways or go straight to hell” - I’m not in agreement.

My biggest disagreement is the solution for the alleged CO2 problem can come from the “Government”. The Holy Government coercion of its subjects money (STEALING), used by the consecrated that have been influenced, despite there divine virtuousness, by the special interest demons.

Not trying to commit the Fallacy: “Confusing Cause/Effect Questionable Cause”; is it just a coincidence that......

...... the leading environmental polluters of toxic waste stuff (not CO2), come from countries where the major resources and means of production are owned and controlled by the government.

In other words if one had a scale that listed countries with massive government control on one side and minute government control on the other; The more government control the more toxic waste is released into the environment.

Just a coincidence?

This global warming scare is an example of marketing genius. First, create a need for something and then, sell the people the solution. Al Gore created the global warming panic and then went into the business of selling carbon credits. Brilliant.

Then the politicians bought into the madness and are using our fears to generate pressure to socialize the capitalist world.

This will go down in the annals of history as The Age of Foolery.

Martin,

You're wrong. The rise in global temperature from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is a physically calculable parameter. The best estimates are that a doubling (with all other things staying constant) would increase global temperature by 1.2C.

What happens when the temperature warms?

The bodies of water warm and evaporation increases. Water vapor is itself a strong greenhouse gas so it creates a positive feedback. As he earth warms more still highly reflective snow and ice melt exposing dark heat absorbing surfaces and the Earth warms even more. Those are the significant major factors.

The estimate is about 2.5 C for a doubling of C)2 after 100 years.

It all makes sense, it's happening and the data supports and doesn't negate the theory.

Karl Popper said theories need to be falsifiable. Anthropogenic climate change theory is indeed falsifiable. If this graph were inverted and I continued to proclaim the theory was sound people would be right to call me looney.

Now how about the theory of classic liberal economics? Is it testable/ falsifable? Well we did on experiment last century and let the markets "do there thing" we all know the results. And now for some unknown reason some people have continued to support the theory and got their way and we repeated the experiment.... lets see how that's going...Off to read the morning news.

You guys have not one inverted grapgh but now TWO and you are still clinging to your theory. That's LOONEY!

Oh by the way my graph still supports my theory and I'm quite sure it will continue to do so long into the future.

CO2 absorption of infrared radiation that is.

... the consensus seems to be that CO2 emissions is the predominant source.

The consensus in my neck of the woods is that Jesus is coming soon ...

The AGW consensus now is that rising CO2 concentration somehow drives rising water vapor concentration driving rising cloud cover driving rising temperature. The greenhouse effect of the additional CO2 alone isn't even in the ballpark.

A few decades ago, before modeling of CO2 absorption alone utterly failed to account for rising temperature, this absorption was supposed to be the cause.

The link between fossil fuel burning and a CO2 rise seems reasonably well established, because the carbon in fossil fuels has a characteristic isotope signature, and the concentration of "old carbon", not just carbon generally, is rising.

The link between CO2 and rising temperature is highly theoretical and is not simply a matter of CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas. No one says that CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas accounts for observed warming. That's not the AGW hypothesis as it has evolved over the decades.

The link between observed warming and the laundry list of climate catastrophes is highly dubious.

Perhaps you can elaborate on your claim about the theory "financed by billions of state dollars positing a critical need for trillions of state dollars".

I've read that governments (maybe the U.S. government alone) finance Climate Change research to the tune of something like four billion dollars annually, roughly a twenty-fold increase in climatology research since the AGW hypothesis became conventional wisdom. For the last couple of decades, a community of professional climatologists has grown up around the hypothesis, and this community dwarfs the one that preceded the hypothesis. I don't have precise figures or a source at the moment, but the multiple billions figure seems credible enough to me. You can google it yourself.

That's the billions.

Here's an article in The Guardian from June '08 titled "Cost of tackling global climate change has doubled, warns Stern". The article reads,

"The author of an influential British government report arguing the world needed to spend just 1% of its wealth tackling climate change has warned that the cost of averting disaster has now doubled."

I was actually referring to the earlier report citing a mere one percent of global GDP.

That's the trillions.

Randy, I partially agree: It's not easy to specify which set of circumstances would refute the theory - and that certainly is a weakness. Still, I guess it's not completely impossible. There's an interesting discussion of the issue at:

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/what-weather-would-falsify-the-current-consensus-on-climate-change/

"It is obvious to even the casual observer that the weather is a stochastic phenomenon, and one month of horrendous weather does not invalidate the theory of global warming."

Actually, there is no way at all to invalidate the so-called "theory" of global warming (or is it "climate change" now?). That is precisely the problem. It is not a scientific theory at all, but rather, a political action.

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar - and sometimes a warm day is just a warm day.

Quote from SK: "First, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Earth is warming. Second, there is a scientific theory which explains why this is occuring. Third, there are (in a sense) "natural expirements" (other planets) which confirm the theory. Fourth, there are very real costs which are likely to follow from global warming. (John Houghton's book on the matter provides an accessible introduction.)"

There is plenty of evidence that parts of the Earth are warming. These parts that are warming do not fit the predictive models. There is also plenty of evidence that parts of the Earth are cooling, also not predicted by the models.

The scientific theory you cite to explain the warming is not accurate at predicting the past or the present. Why would we think it can predict the future.

Comparing Earth to other planets is silly. Even the most untrained observer can see that almost every planet is unique. For example, no other planet has been found to have plate tectonics, which obviously has a huge influence on the Earth's climate. Earth has an oxidising atmosphere. All other comparable planets have reducing atmospheres. How can these comparisons be at all predictive?

There are absolutely costs to doing something, anything to combat just the possibility global warming. These costs are real, but global warming is only a possibility. These costs are put on everybody based on the value decisions of a few, a rather vested few, individuals.

You can cite any writer you feel like, but it doesn't change the facts. It's just more opinion.

@Martin Brock:

Perhaps you can elaborate on your claim about the theory "financed by billions of state dollars positing a critical need for trillions of state dollars". Sounds conspiratorial. Do you believe that the large number of scientists are first and foremost interesting in increased public funding? That they have little concern for the truth of the matter?

As for your statement that "pinning it all on CO2 seems dubious scientifically": Sure, as far as I can tell from what I've read about the subject, there are multiple contributing factors. But the consensus seems to be that CO2 emissions is the predominant source.

Second, there is a scientific theory which explains why this is occuring.

There are many theories, including the one financed by billions of state dollars positing a critical need for trillions of state dollars.

Let's be clear. Global warming is real and man-made.

A CO2 rise is real and substantially man-made. A warming trend is real, and man may contribute to it, but pinning it all on CO2 seems dubious scientifically. Oceans rising 20 feet and flooding Manhattan is a lot of hysterical nonsense.

Charlie,

Juan C. deCardenas did a much better job of summing up the arguments against AGW than I can. A principle reason why I believe people like Mr. deCardenas rather than His Holiness: The Divine Prophet Algore I, is that His Holiness and His acolytes are green people saying dumb things that almost always end with a variation on the theme, "The only way to combat this menace is to surrender more of your liberty to the Political Class."

Dear Russ,

It is obvious to even the casual observer that the weather is a stochastic phenomenon, and one month of horrendous weather does not invalidate the theory of global warming. I am certain that Paul Johnson knows as much, and I hope that this introduction is merely a means to describe the uncertain nature of the climate. The absence of a longer-term trend in warming, not one bad August, would count as proof in this matter.

While it is a virtue to be skeptical, Paul Johnson is out of his depths when he compares the theory of global warming to Marxism and Freudianism. First, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Earth is warming. Second, there is a scientific theory which explains why this is occuring. Third, there are (in a sense) "natural expirements" (other planets) which confirm the theory. Fourth, there are very real costs which are likely to follow from global warming. (John Houghton's book on the matter provides an accessible introduction.)

Obviously there is uncertainty, but uncertainty is not necessarily an excuse for inaction or a refusal to accept the reality of global warming. It is uncertainty that leads people to insure themselves, and the argument in favor of tackling global warming is much the same. This, of course, does not mean that ill-advised and costly measures should be introduced to counter global warming. As Bjorn Lomborg, the well-known "skeptical environmentalist", wrote in his recent review (WSJ) of Tom Friedman's new book:

"Let's be clear. Global warming is real and man-made. I take as my starting point the findings of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Denying climate science is foolish. But so is denying climate economics, the costs of which could run into the hundreds of trillions of dollars."

As an aside: Would you, by Popper's criterion, characterize economics (or history for that matter) as being scientific?

Marx claimed to be constructing a theory of scientific materialism based on scientific history and economic science. "Science" and "scientific" were words Marx used constantly. Far from formulating his theory with a high degree of scientific content and encouraging empirical testing and refutation, Marx made it vague and general.

All true. But frankly, it sounds like "scientific economics" more generally. These days, it certainly sounds a lot like "scientific finance" anyway. Even a principle as simple as "diversification" is based on naive assumptions about the distribution of yields, market efficiency suggesting that the distribution doesn't satisfy assumptions of the Central Limit Theorem. Rothbardian economics often fits the same description, never mind the more mainstream stuff.

Often, what passes for "economic science" in the nominally Capitalist states is hardly more scientific than "scientific socialism". I'm not denying that an economic science exists, but what goes by the name is often a rationalization of statecraft little more credible than Marxism, and the best economics seems to emphasize what we can't know about market organization, rather than what we can plan about it. It's a lot like the weather.

I know Freud's work, and its demise has been greatly over rated.

I am a meteorologist as as such I know a few things about climate. I was also raised and lived a big chunk of my adult live in that communist hellhole that Cuba is. I guess I have a certain level of experience on both AGW and Marxism and I found Paul Johnston article very insightful.

About AGW, lets just say that the computer models in which it is based are just as full of hubris, conceit and biases as the financial computer models that so successfully overrode the common sense and prudence of the "experts" in our financial system when laymen like me saw it coming.


Modelling complex systems and advancing theories is not the problem per se but rather the attempts by activist, zealots and bad scientists with an agenda to present them as the ultime truth beyond further inquiry or questioning. Needless to say nothing can be farther away from the scientific method.


Finally, as a libertarian I am far from blaming everything on the government but I am always mesmerized by the belief of socialist and statists that the hordes of politicians, burocrats and experts that forms the government are somehow excempted from the failures that human condition brings to private endevours as well as by their deliberate ignorance of the miseries that they preferred option has brought about everywhere it has been consistently applied.

-brotio

Would your argument for why it is junk be that you heard a "green person" say something dumb once? Would you pay someone to make that argument? Would you pay forbes to pay someone to make that argument?

Charlie

"I love how anyone can be printed calling global warming junk science." - Charlie

I love it too! Anthropogenic Global Warming is junk science. I just wrote that and I'm confident it will be printed as soon as I hit 'Enter'.

It doesn't take a historian to find a "green person" who says something dumb. Muirduck is an acolyte of His Holiness: The Divine Prophet Algore I. I'm sure he'll be commenting soon.

I don't have any scientific background but I don't feel that disqualifies me from opining on the bullshit of AGW, any more than my lack of scientific background disqualifies me from agreeing that the moon is 240,000 miles from earth.

"Too much sun? "Global warming." Too little sun? "Global warming." Drought? "Global warming." Floods? "Global warming." Freezing cold? "Global warming.""

This part is funny. The first thing I thought of is how a libertarian's response to everything is "Too much government."

I love how anyone can be printed calling global warming junk science. It doesn't have to be someone who's ever read a scientific study or have any scientific background, rather it can just be some historian who met a "green person" and heard them say something dumb.