What ever happened to “Chris B.”?

AT = S + T + GH + O.

“Global warming” peddlers pretend: AT = GH.

TT,

Care to provide solid evidence that ICECAP is merely a disinformation site for hire? I mean real, solid evidence. Not a link to ExxonSecrets or SourceWatch, mind…but some overwhelming, conviction-winning evidence of intellectual dishonesty and selling out. Perhaps an internal leaked memo saying something like “We know this is wrong but we’re going to say it anyway because X paid us to spin it.” Unsupported ad hominems are no way to win an argument.

You make a number of other interesting insinuations. Do you really think I haven’t heard of the IPCC? What would make you think I’ve overlooked it? You know very well I’ve mentioned it before and I’m sure you have mentioned it and even linked to it. Not very nice of you.

As for melting sea ice and glaciers…did I say they were simply data artifacts? No, I did not. I would appreciate it if you would debate fairly, TokyoTom. In light of everything that follows it, your statement thanking me for “providing further balance to our understanding of the climate science” has a ring of sarcasm and insinuates that I am rather willfully and dishonestly obfuscating the truth. I’m getting tired of tactics like this, from both you and others. Stop it, or I’ll have to write you off of my very short list of climate scientists and environmentalists I can have a reasoned discussion with on climate change. It would be a shame, because it remains a very short list. I’ve found so few environmentalists who could be respectful while engaging in a discussion on this subject. I’m not going to waste my time with someone who apparently would rather appear to win an argument with rhetorical tricks rather than engage in reasoned discussion.

Also, in case you couldn’t tell, “exaggerated” does not mean “there has been no real global warming.” It just means what it says, that it seems reasonable to believe right now that recent warming may be overstated. How much? It would be difficult to say without a systematic examination of all of those recording stations and until the problems with the tree-ring data are ironed out.

Is it really true that “by far the bulk of the discussion by climate scientists is at” RealClimate? RealClimate has 11 full-time contributors. I’m sure that many other climate scientists read the site and even comment on the posts. But I imagine even more of the readers and commenters are non-climate scientists. But “the bulk” is an awfully strong statement, especially since the statement refers to discussion on the blog, not just reading it. In any event, RealClimate is only one take on the global warming issue. Are you suggesting that we all should get our information primarily from only one source? RealClimate has a well-known bias, including in my opinion excessive reliance on and trust in computer models, but also a left-liberal activist bias. Quite frankly, I don’t trust RealClimate to be my only or even my main source of information on climate change. So I follow a number of different sites and blogs, including others that I didn’t link to above. And I hardly need to link to RealClimate for others since you have already done so before and will no doubt do so again.

Is my approach to global warming indicative of the Austrian approach? I don’t know. Why is the question even relevant? How would you describe my approach? Haven’t I described it in at least some detail over these many threads? For one thing, Austrian economics is, of course, not climate science so there is no distinctly Austrian way of approaching the science of climate change as a whole. Many Austrian economists are probably qualified to say in a limited way something about the strength and reliability of the methods employed in climate science, insofar as it is empirical, statistical, computer simulated, and so forth – especially when it comes to including socio-economic variables. It is primarily on the policy side of the issue that Austrians are most qualified to respond, and here the approach will be praxeological, subjectivist, private property rights-based, and free market. But you already knew that. As I’ve said before, Austrians ought to address the actual policy proposals of the statist environmentalists and offer alternatives. They can also strive to become educated laymen on the science of climate change and then they will be able to form a considered opinion on the science. To do this, they should do what they can to study all sides of the debate over the science, not just read the IPCC reports and RealClimate.

By the way, I’m not an economist by specialization. I’m a political philosopher/political scientist, although I think I have a good understanding of economic principles. I don’t recall, TT, whether you have ever said what your expertise is. Are you a climate scientist? (A direct observation guy or a modeler?) Or an educated layman? Are you an economist? Something else? You have many of us here at a disadvantage I’m afraid, since you don’t appear to have a website or anything

As for the methane, if methane has indeed leveled off as it seems to have done, and if it doesn’t start increasing again, that would mean that there is one less reason to worry about run away global warming. That’s all. Don’t most IPCC models assume methane will keep increasing? All else equal, a leveling off without a subsequent drop would mean that global temperature ought to stabilize, right? Feel free to correct me if I am wrong here. In any event, I was just educating a fellow commenter on the radiative strength of methane and its concentration in the atmosphere. I made no other claims. You are certainly free to supplement what I wrote, but drop out of attack mode, please. If you continue to treat me like I am one of those “disinformation sowers for hire” – (My 2006/2007 Earhart Fellowship for a dissertation unrelated to climage change and my wife’s QA job in the food industry surely don’t qualify me as an industry shill even by lowly ad hominem standards.) – then I’m afraid we have nothing more constructive to say to one another.

Of course, all else is not equal; CO2 concentration is still increasing. But I have read that as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, subsequent additions of CO2 have a diminished warming effect. Additionally, I haven’t seen enough evidence to suggest that runaway global warming is very likely. Indeed, it seems to me remarkable that the global temperature has not increased a lot more in the past thirty years considering the size of the spike in CO2 emissions during the same period. This is not to say that continued warming at the current or similar rate will not be a problem for many people. (Notice I focus primarily on the effects on people; that’s partly indicative of an Austrian approach.) But it seems to me that we need not fear Gore’s twenty foot sea level rise and other catastrophy-level scare stories, at least not yet.

Again, I’m still on the fence regarding the A in AGW and even if (or when) I come to accept AGW I’m not sure I’d that agree that GHGs are the overwhelmingly dominant cause to the virtual exclusion of all others and I will probably remain skeptical of the catastrophe stories (unless overwhelming evidence is provided; none has been yet), but I have no vested interest in being an AGW skeptic. I would be nice, I imagine you would agree, if GW turned out not to be A, because it would most likely mean its just a natural cycle that will turn around at some point and its not our fault. But if global warming is primarily caused by us, so be it. I can accept that. I am not, however, simply going to take your or RealClimate’s word for it without giving it some serious and critical thought, which includes looking into the science itself as well as the other sides of the debate. Consensus, whatever importance it has, does not mean that he debate is over. To argue that it does is to attempt to stifle the scientific process. (I don’t recall whether you have explicitly argued this, but others have.)

So…are we going to play nice? Or are the gloves officially off?

Regarding the Nat’l Geographic article:

On the first page (of 4) I see an opening emotional tie-in. Typical. The article then proceeds to offer mainly anecdotal evidence with apparent journalistic license regarding some specific locations and doomsday scenarios.

“Two of the outlet glaciers have since slowed down. [Hhmmm...] But other satellites detected a minuscule weakening of Greenland’s gravity, confirming that it is shedding ice at a rate of tens of cubic miles a year.”

What does “minuscule weakening of Greenland’s gravity” mean?

If things are truly turning really bad as quickly as the article suggests, is there really anything we can practically do (provided everyone suddenly turned believer) to stop it before it reaches catastrophe level short of instantly reverting to pre-industrial lifestyles (with the result being that most of the world’s human population would shortly die off)? And how likely is it such unanimity could even be garnered in time? I know this sort of reaction is dealt with in the various “how to talk to skeptics online handbooks” but if things are really looking so bleak as the article implies in several places the questions are serious ones that need an answer. The attempts by people like Gore, who profess to be true catastrophe believers, to get ineffectual bills passed in Congress merely as first attempts to get the ball rolling hardly strike me as actions by people who are truly so alarmed by the coming catastrophe. Are they going to try to circumvent the democratic process soon since it probably won’t work fast enough? Or are things not really so bad as all that but they feel the need to exaggerate considerably in order to scare people into actually doing something statist about the less than catastrophic but still problematic effects of global warming?

There’s a little balance to the hyperbole buried in the article here and there though.

As a temporary aside from the article: Isn’t the temperature today comparable to the Medieval Warm Period? By some estimates, it is slightly cooler, by others slightly warmer, but at least roughly comparable. Granted temperatures continue to rise at a steady pace, but the current temperature wasn’t catastrophic then.

All in all, I see little in the way of hard data presented in the article. A few numbers and estimates here and there. Some modeling predictions that of course won’t be tested for decades at best. I’d much rather see some scientific research that includes a comprehensive empirical study of all of the sea ice and glaciers, with long time horizons, some statistical comparisons of rates of ice loss in proportion to total ice mass, etc., as well as temperatures in all of these locations clearly specified. Journalistic articles like this one often don’t put local temperatures and ice melt into context.

I’m not saying the melting isn’t a problem. But a journalistic article isn’t going to convince me Gore was right.

As one example, it appears Gore’s much touted Mount Kilimanjaro glacier melting example wasn’t caused by increasing air temperature. The retreat has resulted because of dropping humidity and precipitation combined with increased shortwave radiation due to decreased cloud cover. Moreover, its glaciers have been melting since 1880, the end of the Little Ice Age. And it had higher retreat rates in the early part of the 20th century than in the last 30 years. On this, see:

Cullen, N.J., Molg, T., Kaser, G., Hussein, K., Steffen, K. and Hardy, D.R. 2006. Kilimanjaro glaciers: Recent areal extent from satellite data and new interpretation of observed 20th century retreat rates. Geophysical Research Letters 33: 10.1029/2006GL027084.

Kaser, G., Hardy, D.R., Molg, T., Bradley, R.S. and Hyera, T.M. 2004. Modern glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro as evidence of climate change: Observations and facts. International Journal of Climatology 24: 329-339.

Molg, T., Georges, C. and Kaser, G. 2003a. The contribution of increased incoming shortwave radiation to the retreat of the Rwenzori Glaciers, East Africa, during the 20th century. International Journal of Climatology 23: 291-303.

Molg, T. and Hardy, D.R. 2004. Ablation and associated energy balance of a horizontal glacier surface on Kilimanjaro. Journal of Geophysical Research 109: 10.1029/2003JD004338.

Molg, T., Hardy, D.R. and Kaser, G. 2003b. Solar-radiation-maintained glacier recession on Kilimanjaro drawn from combined ice-radiation geometry modeling. Journal of Geophysical Research 108: 10.1029/2003JD003546.

Granted, this is just one case, but it might be so for other cases as well. I want to see less hyperbole and more studies carefully analyzing individual case studies in a more comprehensive context.

Geoff, your penultimate response above raises some good points.

First, let me explain the tone of sarcasm that your snark-detector picked up on. While I agree completely with the sentiment you express here – “I am not, however, simply going to take your or RealClimate’s word for it without giving it some serious and critical thought, which includes looking into the science itself as well as the other sides of the debate. Consensus, whatever importance it has, does not mean that he debate is over.” – my snark was directed towards the fairly one-sided sets of links that you provided to Michael.

Michael comes looking for information, asking whether there is “anyone here with a scientific background or expertise solid enough to discuss the greenhouse effect in all neutrality?” and noting that he is “not an expert in those issues”.
How do you respond? By offering up three factoids that tend to downplay a reason for concern about warming, from various websites that exclude what are clearly more well-known and “mainstream” sources of information, and while failing to note that you do not claim to be an expert yourself.

Even while I concur that it is useful to look to skeptic sites for balance, to be frank what you offered to Martin was NOT any kind of balance. Rather, it looks like nothing more than an attempt to persuade him that there is little to be concerned about. Perhaps my imagination is getting the best of me, but this hardly seems like you are even trying to be even-handed.

Even as the sites you offer up may be useful, they are limited, and serious readers should, as you say, do what they can to study all sides of the debate over the science. Surely this includes reading the IPCC reports and RealClimate, even if neither is complete. In particular, in the context of Martin’s question, it is very puzzling that you made no mention of the IPCC’s reports discussing the current understanding of the relative forcings of various factors.

Second, it was in that context that I offered a few points that noted that, even as the situation is quite complex, there is a very real world out there that is clearly changing and cannot be disregarded. The fact that methane seems to have stabilized doesn’t mean we don’t need to worry about it, and disputes over the impact of heat island effect on data doesn’t negate the fact that melting is underway. No, you didn’t say that melting sea ice and glaciers were simply data artifacts, but failing to mention the evidence of warming even as one may dispute the causes seems rather glaring.
Third, you keep asking me to “play fair”, but it seems to me that you display your own lack of balance. This, of course, is a difficult problem, as our perceptions are affected by our predilections and frequently by our tribal conflict modes of behavior. For example, while you are right to perceive that the post you took offense to was in “attack mode”, but your claim that I “treat [you] like [you are] one of those “disinformation sowers for hire” surely goes too far. Now who’s attacking whom? I’ve pointed out before on other threads how you have often made unsupported insinuations about me – it is ironic that you continue that pattern by expressing your own dissatisfaction with what you perceive as another unfair attack by be. Well surely this should, at least, help you to sense how many of your other posts to me have made me feel (and in the context of some very direct personal attacks that I have had to grin and bear over the last year plus here).

But that said, I certainly have noted that you have been making an effort, and I don’t want this conversation to turn into a reflexive argument designed to “win”. I am happy to try harder to avoid the snark with you – but that’s really a two-way street. Can you consider your own reactions, and also make sure that you separate the “alarmists” with political agendas from the views of and discussions among scientists (qua scientists)?

Fourth, other points. While there are other channels for scientific discusion, it is clear that by far the widest and deepest discussion that are open/visible to the public are at Real Climate. Full stop. Those discussions include scientists of all stripes in addition to the blog proprietors.

As to the new “ICECAP” site, I had actually not even heard of it until you brought it up. (I had heard of another, older ICECAP – http://www.icecapltd.com/index.asp – which is probably none to happy with this confuson of trade name.) But it is easy to see that, despite claims to be “the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public“, it is in fact a clearly partisan site dedicated to promoting views outside of the science as expressed at the IPCC and Real Climate, including views on politics that would warm the hearts of most fossil fuel producers.

While it is not clear how the founder, wealtherman Joe D’Aleo, plans to make money at this website, it seems that he plans to emulate Pat Michaels, who through his enterprises is in the business of selling advocacy papers. Info on Pat Michaels is here: http://www.nhes.com/ and http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/personnel/.

It seems that ICECAP, who D’Aleo launched with the help of unnamed “private investors” (that he says includes both individuals and think tanks), also intends to provide advocacy services (though this is not crystal clear) or merely a steady stream of mutually inconsistent “alternative” views and criticisms:
“Through ICECAP you will have rapid access to our experts here in the United States and to experts and partner organizations worldwide, many of whom maintain popular web sites or insightful blogs or newsletters, write and present papers, have authored books and offer interviews to the media on climate issues. We spotlight new findings in papers and reports and rapidly respond to fallacies or exaggerations in papers, stories or programs and any misinformation efforts by the media, politicians and advocacy groups.”

It may be that ICECAP ends up (1) providing a valuable role in augmenting CO2 Science, Pat Michaels’ World Climate Report, Dr. Pielke Sr.’s Climate Science and Climate Audit, and (2) simply being a non-profit hobby of Joe D’Aleo. But in any case, for now it appears to be a for-profit and distinctively partial source of information.

As for me, I am a wayfaring stranger, trying to make sense of this world through which I travel. That means I bring no particular expertise to this discussion, merely accumulated baggage. As I am trying both to improve my understand and to share some of mine, I will try harder not to show too much how closed my mind truly is – the better o have a meaningful discussion. Unfortunately, as a male I am often tripped up by my desire to win arguments.

Sincerely,

Tom

Yancey:

“Of all the things you have written here on this site, that statement is the most hilarious.”

Glad to know you find me occasionally amusing – I aim to please. Before I start with a substantive response, can I ask you to help satisy my curiosity with a partial list of other things I’ve said that you find to have been hilarious, amusing, naive or otherwise bonkers?

Any others who care to chip in are also welcome.

Regards,

Tom

Oh, and to top it all off, TT has made some reasonable points, including the idea that real, market-based solution to global warming would also be desirable goals in themselves, EVEN IF AGW isn’t true, and thus worth pursuing separately. And if AGW is true, they provide pre-emptive arguments against national and international regulatory schemes that would fail due to a lack of economic understanding and the law of unintended consequences.
Ron Bailey and REASON seem to be pushing for carbon taxes–the least Austrians could do is explain why carbon taxes (or carbon markets) won’t have the desired effect.

Just a few comments,

Tom:

…is it your prediction that the next president will drag us into the war with Iran that Cheney is now mongering, and not undo any of the damage that the Bush administration has wrought?

The pattern we see is that government expands its powers dramatically during a crisis (real or otherwise), then falls back when the crisis is over, but never to the same level as before. Our next president may well extract us from Iraq, but I am rather skeptical that we will see a repeal of the Patriot Act.

Why cannot Austrians be proposing environmental and energy law reform/liberalization as part of a “grand bargain” that would recognize government action that has the effect of nudging prices on fossil fuels?

There is a danger in these kind of alliances. It has been pointed out many times that limited liability would likely not exist without state coercion. This could conceivably mean an end to corporations, which the left would love to see, and could be used as a common talking point for libertarians and socialists. However, the danger of this should be immediately evident, since socialists want to get rid of corporations for altogether different reasons than libertarians.

Subsidies should be opposed because they distort the market. If abolishing them helps with AGW, so much the better, but it is important that this not be seen as the first step in a series of government actions, which is how many of the AGW activists would want to frame it.

Mises Blog authors and commentators often deride private actions as misguided, ineffective “feel good” efforts

Often those type of efforts are nothing more than political statements or outright dead-ends. Real progress occurs through innovations such as this and this. The free market solves problems by responding to demand, in this case, the demand for energy and the products that rely upon it. Government, of course, would subsidize the hell out of it all, but hopefully we’ll still come through alright.

Okay, but what category do the new compact fluorescent bulbs fall into?

Right now, manufacturers can’t sell CFLs on energy savings alone. Consumers also consider purchase price, quality of light and aesthetics. In addition, there’s time preference to consider: a buyer might not want to fork over the extra cash for a CFL at the time of purchase, even if it would mean greater future savings.

To compete with incandescents, CFLs need to satisfy a range of consumer wants. Indications are that CFLs are getting substantially better in all of the categories I mentioned, but they also need to overcome their poor history with consumers. I suppose that is where marketing comes in.

And how well does the market respond to costs imposed on others by outputs that are free to the emitter?

The only workable solutions that I can see are private litigation and consumer choice. Litigation has some obstacles to overcome, such as how to quantify damages when there are so many possible plaintiffs. This is also the difficulty with carbon taxes, which, if enacted, will demonstrate yet again that government can’t (and never will) calculate–and the rent-seekers rejoice.

Consumer choice should not be underestimated. If the cost of solar power technology continues to decrease (and all signs point to “yes, quickly”), I see more and more businesses and homeowners opting to install solar panels. Solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear each have much greater flexibility to scale up than fossil fuels, but need more time to develop. Scary AGW might be credited with a small part of the impetus for eveloping these alternate energy sources, but I attribute most of it to the simple need for more energy, and the fact that fossil fuels can’t go on meeting that increasing need forever.

There will come a point at which one or more of these technologies (probably combined with advanced flywheels for energy storage) will catch fossil fuels in terms of cost and efficiency. At that point, it will be up to consumers to vote with their money for their technology of choice.

You may note that I show great confidence in the unknown vagaries of technological development. I consider it a much smaller leap of faith than believing that government won’t botch the whole thing needlessly and probably hold us back for a decade or two.

Yancey: Aah, so you favor carbon taxes! This has certainly piqued my interest. Care to clarify?

- “I am perfectly willing to entertain options that assign ownership of the commons to each individual with the right to sell such ownership to fossil fuel producers in return for the right to sell fuel. The most logical way to accomplish this is to set a tax on fossil fuels with the proceeds being distributed on a per head basis. However, there are other approaches to accomplishing the same thing.”

As a practical matter, are you approving government action to set up this rights system/tax. And what “other approaches” do you have in mind?

- “The Cassandras of the movement, and you have to admit that they are legion in the political sphere, are not supported by the science itself, which is far more circumspect about its results and its extrapolations into the future.”

I think that this is misinformed. Scientists are extremely worried, more so than any politicians. Can you read James Hansen here, and conclude he is simply barking mad? http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html (Of course scientific understanding doesn’t dicate any policy response, so I diagree with his reaction to NASA’s Griffin.)

- “I am just about certain that we will, in fact, do nothing and ten or twenty years from now we will have more real data with which to evaluate the costs and benefits.”

Perhaps you are right, but it its likely that such a delay will prove to have been extremly costly, with many regretable and practically irreversible consequences.

Lies from enviromentalist have cuased deaths and suffering the facts are DDT wasnt harming the birds and AL GORES big lie about GLOBAL WARMING is another one and many of these radical eco-freaks want humans to become extinct completly