Epiphany

My religion doesn't have a tradition of celebrating epiphany. I don't get the impression it's a very common part of the Christmas tradition for a lot of protestant sects, though, so that's not all that surprising.

Because I'm curious (and because for me an epiphany is about coming to a realization about something previously confusing), I'm going to ask a question. For those of you who don't believe global warming is an issue (if there's anyone like that who reads this blog, anyway), what is it about the way global warming is presented that makes you feel the way you do? I can understand not wanting to do anything about carbon emissions for economic reasons--I think those sorts of arguments have some amount of validity. I don't get why we can't get to that conversation, though, since we're still stuck on the "is it real or not?" conversation. So, rather than rail, I'm going to ask: what offends you about the assertions of climate change? Are you afraid of what you'll be asked to do if it's real, or do you just not trust the message-bringers?

How cheap do you think I am?

I was talking with some people last night about my research and from their reaction to the news that I study climate change it was pretty clear they think global warming is a vast conspiracy perpetuated by the scientific community on society at large. I know there's no conspiracy--there's no way in ache-ee-double-hockey-sticks the cantankerous, disagreeable, argumentative bunch of scientists I know would go in for that. But it got me thinking, exactly what would motivate scientists to perpetuate fraudulent science? Most claims I've heard revolve around grant money, which sounds almost plausible when you consider the 6 billion dollar budget of NSF. That's got to be enough to pay all of us off, right?

Okay, so 6 billion (6x10^9) and we divide it amongst the approximately 50,000 (5x10^4) scientists who work in education.

6x10^9/5x10^5 = 1.2x10^4

or about $120,000. That's before considering that about 1/3 of the money NSF pays out in grants goes to universities (called overhead). Of course, not all of the 50,000 scientists working at universities are working on global warming, nor is all of NSF's budget going to studying climate change. So this is just a back of the envelope calculation (as it's meant to be). But it does show just how little money there really is floating around for science in general and begs the question, just how cheap do you think I am that I would keep quiet about a vast global conspiracy for a measly 120K a year?

Go Utah Legislature!

Sen. Buttars has another great money saving idea. I'm guessing he wasn't a terribly dedicated student. The Utah Legislature is also looking at a resolution requesting the EPA cease its attempts to control CO2 since global warming is based on "flawed science" perpetuated by scientists in a "well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate "tricks" related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome."

Someday I will laugh about all this. Today, I just want to cry.

It's beginning to feel a bit like winter

Finally. Not that I mind the warmth, but it is a little disconcerting to only need a light jacket this late in November. I said a few weeks ago my garden was done; well, I actually harvested a few heads of lettuce, a pretty good bunch of bussels sprouts, and a few parsnips I'd missed (yeah!) just a couple of days before Thanksgiving. As glad as I am to have fresh, home-grown veggies this late in the year, it seems a little odd. But I guess that's what we're in for in the future--later and later winters and earlier springs.

Apparently there's a bit of a tempest flaring over global warming, specifically over a bunch of emails and some data that were stolen from the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climate Research Unit. Dianne Rehm has a show about the upcoming Copenhagen climate change conference, which includes some discussion of the leak and the meaning of the emails. Michael Mann is his usual arrogant self, incapable of admitting any wrong. While those are useful traits in the realm of scientific discussion (since being right is of paramount importance), and as right as he may be, those traits are off-putting and probably unhelpful when dealing with contrarians (I will adopt his terminology here, as I think it's good).

I haven't read the emails in question, and realistically probably won't. I don't doubt the most damaging statements have been cherry-picked and published out of context. I also don't doubt that passionate scientists expressed some rash opinions in emails they expected to stay private. I hope in the end it won't matter, or even better, that more scientists other than the realclimate crowd--people like Judith Curry--will start to engage the public and contrarian crowds so we can show more clearly why there's consensus and where there are arguments, and which arguments are spurious and which are substantive and worth paying attention to.

On another note, since it's being claimed the reason the data sets in question weren't released to the public stems from them being proprietary (even though most of them were produced by governments using tax money) maybe people will start clamoring for more publicly funded government data to be made freely available. It's always seemed silly to me that scientists or other people wanting to use some kinds of data have to pay for access--even though their tax dollars already paid for the research to be conducted in the first place.

Belief

I've talked about belief before, mostly in a religious/political sense. Scientific belief is quite a bit different in that science isn't so much a "belief" as "I agree X is the best explanation for Y because the weight of data/scientific evidence convinces me it is true." I shorten this to belief for the sake of brevity, but it's really quite different than testimony, which is what I talk about when I reference religious belief, or social/economic/governmental conviction, which is (at least closer to) what I'm talking about with regard to political belief.

Why do I bring this up? Because in a scientific way I believe in global warming and wish there were a better way to express that than to say I believe in it. I am convinced global warming is happening because numerous proxies, including borehole temperature profiles, tree rings, corals, and many others, show the surface temperature of the Earth is higher now than it was a couple of centuries ago. I am convinced our output of greenhouse gases--CO2 and methane primarily--is changing the composition of the atmosphere, and those changes are causing the temperature to increase. Demonstrably shorter and warmer winters, changing habitat ranges for many species, shrinking glaciers--all point to a world that is getting warmer.

Now to my beliefs--I don't believe a warmer world is a bad thing, though I would be sad to loose glaciers and pika, and the pine trees that I associate with the mountains in the west. There are certainly things that will be better, and things that will be worse. I believe it is our reaction to the changes that are going to happen that will determine whether the warmer world we are creating will be a better or a worse one. Which is why I hope the discussion moves swiftly from "is this happening" to "what are the consequences we're going to face."

Back to the real world

This report was released today. I haven't looked through the whole thing, but what I've seen seems like a good overview of our current understandings of the impact of anthropogenic climate change on the US.

I did hear Diane Rehm talking to one of the authors and a couple of reporters about the report. One was pro, one was anti, and both were predictably spin-happy. I really wish the climate debate wasn't so stuck in the rut of scientists and pro people dragging the latest and greatest (or at least the well-accepted by this point) in statistics, while the anti-GW types pull out the same old tired innaccurate, misleading, and downright wrong statistics to muddy the water. It's so frustrating--critical thought is hard enough without people spreading sweet sounding lies.

I've really got to get another climate post up sometime.

Getting warmer...

But still oh so cold!

Of course, observations of the coldness of our current weather apparently suggest to some people (who I will refrain from linking to out of a desire to not alienate anyone) that global warming must not be real since it's so stinkin' cold outside right now.

Argh.

If you, dear reader, happen to be one of those who think that our current cold weather somehow proves global warming isn't happening, I kindly suggest you either quit reading or strap on your thickest skin.

All done?

Now, then, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??!!??

I know, you think you're being funny, saying things like, "Thank you global warming for the coldest winter ever," but really, you're just showing your ignorance. First of all, I promise you this isn't the coldest winter ever. And that's just for the years for which we have good records (which is probably only about the past 125 years at best). Oh, and climate is different than weather. Climate is an average. Weather, since it's not an average, can vary over a much wider range than "average." In fact, you expect weather to reach highs and lows that are at times far outside the average. 'Cause that's how averages work.

Has it ever occurred to you, dear misinformed reader, that perhaps it is your expectations that are to blame for your appalling misinterpretation of the current weather? Did you really expect the weather to do some DC shift upward? Even if that were the case, would you really expect that you'd be able to see a 0.6 degree C temperature shift? Really? REEEAALY?

Please, before you make more bad global warming jokes that do little more than underscore your devotion to the anti-science agenda of right-wing conservatives, please, PLEASE educate yourself.

$24.75

That's all I paid to fill up my car with a little more than 14 gallons of gasoline this evening. I didn't think I'd ever see gasoline that cheap again. As nice as it is to not spend more than $50 on a fill-up, I'm unconvinced this is a good development. Will cheap gas mean a return to our formerly profligate ways, much as low gas prices in the 80's did after the gas crunch in the 70's?

Last Thursday the Union of Concerned Scientists visited Purdue's campus to discuss global warming. The two women who spoke to us were very excited about the results of the recent election (as was most of the room), and were excited about the upheaval in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce as Rep. Henry Waxman seeks to take over the Committee from Rep. John Dingle. Exciting stuff, for those in the know. I am not in the know in general, so the brief view was refreshing.

The UCS wants the US (and really the rest of the industrialized and industrializing world) to make swift and deep cuts in carbon emissions in order to avoid the negative consequences of global warming. "Swift and deep" is the phrase I heard over and over in the discussion. They're right--if we don't stop emitting the massive amounts of carbon dioxide we currently put out, we'll face some rather difficult consequences, from more extreme weather (droughts, floods, more intense storms) to shifting species distributions, to the loss of coastal areas and glaciers. I have no doubt that humans will adapt to these consequences; that said, the faster these changes happen, the more painful the adaptation will be. By unhappy chance, the consequences of global warming will likely be concentrated in the poorer regions of the world--the same regions that have contributed the least to the problem. Many of these regions (particularly sub-Saharan Africa) are already notoriously unstable. Increased environmental stress won't help that instability, and I fear, will cause that instability to spread.

Anyway, if you talk to just about any geoscientist they'll suggest nuclear power would be a good way to reduce CO2 emissions. Talk to UCS and they'll tell you...I don't know. For all the talk of politics and having a chance to really do something I didn't come away with a very good sense of what exactly the UCS wants to cut. Certainly transportation--that's an easy one--but beyond that I didn't get a good sense of what technologies they think will replace our current carbon-emitting ones. Biofuels sound good on paper, but in the end they probably cause more CO2 emissions than gasoline. Conservation--which is a great start--isn't going to be enough without serious structural changes in the way we produce energy in this country. Nuclear energy really is about the best solution currently available, but because of fears of nuclear proliferation it's just too scary to be feasible. I wish that the UCS--the supposedly scientific, environmental lobbying group--were truly objective in their evaluation of the technological options available. I also wish they'd put a bit more of their own lifestyles on the line.

I'm quite superficial sometimes, I know, but I just couldn't help noticing that the woman who spoke to us was well-dressed in new, reasonably expensive, trendy clothing, likely produced overseas and shipped to the US. I'll admit, there really aren't too many other options for clothing, and in a line of work where one works with government I'm sure physical appearance is important; that said, I wish some of these environmentalists would at least look like they're sacrificing once in a while.

Someone had an impressive sense of timing. The the Chicago Climate Action Plan was sent out to the PCCRC email list as we were discussing the impacts of climate change on the Midwest, and the fact that Chicago had already done a bunch of climate projections for the region in order to create the document and craft a plan for mitigation.

Recommended reading

I don't know a good way to argue with anti-global warming claptrap. Those who opine on the subject from the standpoint of "climate change is a hoax" or "CO2 is a good thing" are trying to pass of their opinions as science and many people are very willing to accept opinions like these because they fit in so nicely with pre-conceived notions. If it's a liberal plot to keep us from enjoying the lifestyle they've worked so hard to have, it's easier to dismiss than if it's a real threat. The fact is, climate change, like most environmental change, is incremental, meaning it's not obvious unless you look over a long time. We have looked long enough, and have reconstructed far enough back to have a great deal of confidence that global warming is happening as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. That's not an opinion, and it's not a condemnation of our lifestyles specifically; it is a fact.

Outdated research is one of the surest signs someone is an anti-global warming climate skeptic, though since global warming is a "liberal academic plot" I'm not sure you'd make much headway citing updated research. It's unfortunate that the IPCC used the Mann, et. al, reconstruction in that first (?) report since it really is fatally flawed (though it's conclusions are correct--in fact, better reconstructions show more warming, not less). Even so, more recent reconstructions using better methods still show the current warming as unusual given the forcings we can measure, and show it occurring rather fast. A good, true multiproxy reconstruction that's more recent than the Mann, et. al, 1999 used by the IPCC that actually shows the climate variability over the last couple of thousand years is the Moberg, 2005 reconstruction.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005Natur.433..613M

If you (intrepid readers) are interested in reasons why global warming, and our response to it, is important to consider RIGHT NOW, a book you might think about reading is "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. Some of his examples are questionable (Rwanda being an obvious one), but he does talk about the Vikings living in Greenland, which is frequently cited by climate skeptics as a reason why global warming is a good thing--we could go back to Greenland! He makes a pretty convincing argument that Viking farming practices, in combination with the cooling at the end of the Medieval warm period are really what did the Vikings in. Even without climate change it's pretty evident Greenland is a very marginal environment for a western civilization. The whole point of the book is that it's not so much environmental change that dooms civilizations to collapse, but what societies decide to do in response to environmental limits and difficulties. I personally think one of the hardest things we have to deal with is the human tendency to think that the good times will go on forever (the grasshopper mentality). Every civilization, every population, has the drive to expand to the furthest possible limit. If climate and the water and food supplies that are so critical to living, were constant that wouldn't be a bad thing. Unfortunately, there's a lot of variability to climate that impacts water and food supplies the world over. Additionally, we are pretty sure at this point from both climate reconstruction and from modeling that warming the climate is going to impact water supplies and other environmental variables that impact our ability to produce food. We here in the US I think have largely forgotten that famines can happen. The 1930's are remote, and we've built enough dams and tapped enough aquifers we feel, I think, a tad invulnerable to the impact of our environment. People live by the millions in Phoenix and Tuscon and Los Angeles year-round, isolated from the blistering heat by air conditioning; from lack of water by dams and water projects that pump water from hundreds of miles away to a tap in every home; and from the hunger that most populations face in bad crop years by shipments of food from artificially well-watered central California, Florida, and the Midwest.

Misunderstanding Science, 101

This is just silly. On year erases a 100 year trend? Learn to read a graph before trying to interpret it, please. The graph in question shows monthly global temperatures from the HadCRUT data set for the last 250 months--or, from 1988 to January of this year. The temperature anomaly decreases to about where it was at 100 months from the beginning of 1988, or about 150 months ago. For those who are counting, that means global average temperatures are today about what they were in 1996 or '97. Yep, a whole decade. For even better graphs that show exactly how unremarkable this year is for the last 30 years, see this or read the original and follow-up posts that started the whole brew-ha-ha.

If you're going to deny the science, please at least understand what you're saying.