What we going to do about Global Warming?
Read more about: Climate Change 
Science is fact, isn’t it? Pure fact, no ego, nothing but truth. It would be great if that was true and, indeed, science is that, but the people who come up with the science are as human as anyone. In 1801, Thomas Young proved that Newton’s corpuscular theory of light was wrong. In the famous two slits experiment, he showed experimentally that light was a wave and not a particle as Newton thought. (Newton’s was in no way thinking of wave-particle duality). His experiment was dismissed by scientists because Newton was Newton and, well, who really was this Young. The prevailing culture of the day that Newton was “god” was what dictated the scientific truth, not the actual science. We now know that Young was right and Newton incorrect on this matter. But it does beg the question how much is science being dictated by the pressures of the want of an answer rather then the actually answer?
One of the big global issues at the moment is Climate Change. Today’s Irish Times tells us “Ireland off target on Kyoto and facing stiff penalties.” Now, I am no expert on Climate Change, and please feel free to call me names, but I have a few issues with the whole thing.
Firstly, the whole basis that this is the hottest time ever is based on weather data that goes back to about 1605 or 500 years. In the scale of the life of the Earth, that really is a miniscule data set. Take the history of the Earth and graph the temperature change over the last million years. 500 years takes up 1/20000 of the graph. To me that doesn’t seem very good. Go up to most scientists and say that you can extrapolate that this is the highest point on the graph from the 1/20000 the full set of data points and they will say there is no way of knowing that. For all we know maybe the last 500 years has been very cold and that we are only now coming back to normal temperatures for Earth. Most of the temperature data that is used for prior weather data temperatures are based on other methods such as Oxegen 18 levels, which are not as reliable on weather data and even based on that kind of data while temperatures are warm they are not unprecedented.
One of the main causes of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England was rivalry between French and English wine growers. Other than the glorious monks of Buckfast Abbey, how many wine growers are in England today? Very few certainly, nothing near French scale, and the reason is that England is simply too cold to grow grapes. Yet, it was warm enough up to the 13th century to grow grapes?
Now, I am no climatologist and don’t claim that anything above is proof that global warming isn’t happening on the scale that it appears to be happening on, but it does make me wonder if the desire for an answer is tainting people’s views on the subject. Are we looking to blame the corporations when it is nature to blame? Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, who disputes many of the asserations of climate change, said:
Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
The problem with climate change is that a lot of it is guesswork. We are trying to extrapolate meanings from data of a process we understand very little about. Some aspects of climate change end up causing other effects that cause global cooling; it is highly complicated and we simply don’t understand it. Global warming could cause devastating effects worse than we can imagine, or it could cause feck-all change, or it could be natural and no matter what we do, or what protocols we pass, it is going to happen.
So what should we do? Aim to deal with the worst and abandon all our civilisation, ban aircraft, ban cars, ban fossil fuels, ban cows or should we do nothing and hope for the best.
Update: Economic impact of climate change highlighted from RTE.ie
Oh dear Lord! Where do I start! I won’t go near climate change, but I will write about wine and the Hundred Years’ War.
Wine was (a small) part of the reason the Hundred Years’ War, but it wasn’t English wine but Gascon wine. And contrary to what some may say, England did, from time to time, have vineyards, but they were never on the same scale as the continental ones, not even in the south of England. They were dotted around the country and were mostly small private vineyards and the climate always conspired against the people cultivating them. It’s something of a fanciful myth that wine was a big industry in medieval England, and it’s not supported by the Domesday Book, or studies of the known sites.
The real reason behind the wars was England controlled vast important tracts of west and north France, so much so that move of it was under English rule than French rule. You could consider it as series of wars of independence. And then there was the long-standing claim by the English to the French throne.
I wouldn’t use Richard Lindzen as a reliable source: his funding sources (ExxonMobil, anyone?) aren’t exactly the kind that would support his objectivity.
No, the system’s actually quite simple, but the effects are quite complex. Most of our recent understanding of meteorology comes from chaos theory. Sea-sawing temperatures is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect.
Yes the wine production in England was never as substaintial as the French but it did exist. And I was wrong about the referance to Gascon wine. But there is about 40 Vineyards in the Doomsday book. Wine growing until recently was not workable in Britian until recently due to climate change.
No, the system’s actually quite simple, but the effects are quite complex.
But not all the effects cause warming some cause cooling. Trying to track all these changes to see the overall effect is complicated.
What I am wondering is not that the climate is changing but a.) Is man made and b.) If that is the case is there anything we can do about it.
“Firstly, the whole basis that this is the hottest time ever is based on weather data that goes back to about 1605 or 500 years. In the scale of the life of the Earth, that really is a miniscule data set. Take the history of the Earth and graph the temperature change over the last million years. 500 years takes up 1/20000 of the graph. To me that doesn’t seem very good. Go up to most scientists and say that you can extrapolate that this is the highest point on the graph from the 1/20000 the full set of data points and they will say there is no way of knowing that.”
Actually we have a good deal more to go on than just 500 years of recorded weather data, specifically ice cores and such like which can reveal climactic changes going back many hundreds of thousands of years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
Yes Joe I know about the Ice Cores but if you look at them you can see that there has been times in the past where there has been simular temperature changes. Indeed it looks vagegly periodic indeed they show that there were hotter times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
The point i was making about weather data is that alot of people use that. And facts like we have had loads of huricanes in the past ten years. We simply don’t have enough data on that to say whether that is unusual or something that happens every 200 years.
Of course there were hotter times. We have also had ice ages. The fact that the earth may have experienced these temperatures before won’t make it any more comfortable for us.
What many people don’t understand about climate change is that the whole business will probably be a matter of supreme indifference for the planet itself. It’s ourselves we need to worry about. Humanity has of course survived great climactic adversity in the past, but most of its civilisations didn’t.
Virtually all of which were small vanity projects that didn’t work well, or were used for producing non-potable alcohol and vinegar.
Yes, that’s why it’s called climate change.
Complicated in that you need a lot of different sources to trace weather from before records were kept, but that something is complicated and difficult isn’t to say it’s impossible. After all, you could say that about most scientific endevour.
Of course, there’s a certain amount of climate change that’s natural, but I think the primary reason behind strongly suspecting that we’re to blame for the recent change in weather patterns is how it coincides rather inconveniently with extremely large-scale industralisation and that the changes have been far too fast and violent to have been solely natural.
It’s common sense that we, through our actions, have some effect on our environment; we don’t live in hermetically sealed bubbles after all. The real question is how significant that effect is.
No, that’s all somewhat melodramatic. The a good argument can be made for minimising our effect on the environment. After all, that’s the reason behind renewable energy: rather than mining the earth for energy, take advantage that the earth itself is a giant solar power plant and siphon off a small quantity of that energy. After all, it doesn’t make much sense to mine a resource when you don’t have to. Should we stop using fossil fuels? Yes, where there’s a viable alternative. Should we ban cows? No, but minimising the amount of methane they produce is a good idea. Ban aircraft? No, but aiming towards being carbon neutral is a good idea. Doing nothing and hoping for the best is never a viable strategy in these matters. Too many civilisations have fell precisely because they decided to do that at the expense of their environment.
The fact that the earth may have experienced these temperatures before won’t make it any more comfortable for us.
Yes but it does suggest that it is possible it has got nothing to do with us and thus we can’t do anything about it.
coincides rather inconveniently with extremely large-scale industralisation and that the changes have been far too fast and violent to have been solely natural.
It is not unnaturally rapid. Climate has changed this fast before. Then all we have left is that it is conincedence.
Yes, that’s why it’s called climate change. my point is that their is some effects that cancel out the other effects. i.e. Climate change can cause effects that increase and decrease the temperature at the same time. Thus canceling out the effects to a certain extent. Hence why it is complicated.
“Yes but it does suggest that it is possible it has got nothing to do with us and thus we can’t do anything about it.”
The former point goes against the current scientific consensus. You’re perfectly entitled to challenge such a consensus of course, but I don’t think this is the appropriate forum, as none of us are scientists in a relevant field. If you think the scientific establishment is all mixed up on the question of anthrogenic climate change, please feel free to pursue that theme and come back to us when your first peer-reviewed paper on the topic has been published.
The latter point is of course arguable – there may indeed be nothing we can do about it. However, there may very well be something we can do about it. Until it’s proved conclusively that all is lost, I believe we owe it to ourselves to at least have a go, don’t you?
Until it’s proved conclusively that all is lost, I believe we owe it to ourselves to at least have a go, don’t you?
Yes I do.
The above post was just some of the stuff that makes me wonder about climate change.
Gaughan:
How disgraceful to dismiss someone of Lindzen’s background and stature in that way. You are effectively accusing him of lying. He is not a paid stooge, he is a responsible climate scientist with impeccable scientific credentials. These ad hominem attacks show how desperate the warmers get when they cannot disprove the science facts quoted by Lindzen, Singer, Baliunas, Soon, Michaels, Ball etc etc, This is the sort of attack found on the the arrogant web site Real Climate.org. Real scientists welcome debate and don’t denigrate their peers.
The Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age are a matter of record, sunspot cycles are a matter of record, they fit climate cycles far more than co2 levels do. There are comparable periods of warming in the 1700’s before co2 was deemed a problem. There are so many lies being told about global warming, from drowning polar bears, (4 after a storm), to accelerating sea level rise, (not happening), to melting ice caps, (the Arctic was warmer in the 30’s), Antarctica is getting colder except for the West Antarctic Peninsula. You don’t need to read Lindzen, there is a mass of research out there that contradicts the climate models, but of course only the favourable stories are published.
“There are comparable periods of warming in the 1700’s before co2 was deemed a problem.”
Nobody doubts that there have been warm periods in the past with causes other than CO2. That doesn’t prove that CO2 isn’t causing global warming today.
Also, if you’re so concerned about the tone of debate, it might be a good idea not to start off by addressing another poster by just their last name.