Global Warming... fact, fiction, or a little of both?

Well, generally, a lot of these impacts are going to be negative to humans. If there's no appeal to objective eco-morality that you'll accept - which is fine with me, because I wasn't about to advance one - then perhaps selfish human interest is sufficient?Many human-caused climate effects are going to have long-term, negative consequences for humans. To my mind that's what makes them "wrong." I don't think that humans should refrain from any impact whatsoever; we do have to live on this planet and should the global climate naturally change in ways that are not beneficial to us I think it's entirely appropriate for us to attempt to counteract that change. Similarly, I wouldn't really give a damn about anthropogenic climate change except for the fact that the long-term consequences for humans, our food sources, and the ecologies they rely on are not likely to be positive. I think the picture is clear enough, quite frankly. Anthropogenic climate change is pretty well-supported; so much so that the burden of evidence is now on those who deny anthropogenic climate change, and I have yet to see any of those people put forth any reasonable conjecture. We know what the climate is doing and we know what's causing it; that our knowledge is imperfect is not an excuse for inaction. No more problematic then when I notice that plugging in my refrigerator heats up the kitchen. Global warming doesn't mean, of course, that every point on Earth gets hotter. It means that there's more heat energy in the atmosphere. The more energy, the greater freedom the atmosphere has to explore different energy states.Good thread, Holmes. Great posts from you so far.

Crichton is a novelist. Not trying to be elitist here but none of his work underwent peer review, and I've heard some pretty strong rebuttals to the so-called "science" of his novel.Now, I've never read it. But the reviews I have read have not been positive, so I doubt I will. (I used to be a big Crichton fan but when I sat down with "Timeline" I was like "how did I used to like this guy? He sucks.") Most damning to me is the criticism that, while his novel functions as a sort of socratic dialogue with global warming's proponents, Crichton stacks the deck - his protagonist never seems to argue with anybody with any real data:

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Crichton's central smart guy is Richard John Kenner, a scientist who heads the fictional MIT Center for Risk Analysis while doubling as a secret agent who likes to bring lawyers and hot babes along on his adventures. Kenner seems a composite of Richard Lindzen, the famed MIT prof and global warming "skeptic," John Graham, who headed the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis before joining the Bush administration (see here for a previous column about what Graham has been up to), and Vin Diesel...

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...Kenner excels at getting equally fictitious lawyers and Hollywood celebrities to see the error of their ways. But for some reason, Crichton never has his mouthpiece argue against another scientist who reads the evidence on climate change differently and can cite literature to back his or her view as well. In our world--the real world--you can find a small army of these. I have interviewed many of them, heard others lecture, and met still more at conferences. In Crichton's universe, however, they seem not to exist.

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Everything I know about global climate change comes from the wiki article "global warming:" Climate change - WikipediaI'm not saying that the wiki is gospel. If you see inaccuracies perhaps you'd be kind enough to edit the article, or suggest edits. In all honesty I'm not familiar enough with the field to know what the relevant works are. What I know is that, like evolution, anthropogenic climate change is the position of the mainstream scientific community, even if they hold their own, usual, internal debates about the extent of the climate change, or the degree to which human industrialization is responsible. But the idea that there is no trend of global warming beyond the usual annual temperature variation, or that its coincidence with human industrial activity is simply chance, gathers almost as little support among the scientific community as creationism does. I don't think that global warming has ever been a simple concept. If you ever held the idea that global warming simply meant that it was going to get hotter everywhere, then I believe you held that position in error. I disagree. I find it highly consistent, or at least not inconsistent. Anthropogenic climate change doesn't mean that the warming trend persist forever. The warming trend itself has consequences, which may include stimulating a period of global cooling. For instance the rise in the temperature of the atmosphere allows it to contain more moisture; more moisture means more cloud albedo and thus less solar energy at the Earth's surface.The question is then, is the new cooling trend limited by the same feedback effect? If it cools too fast, probably not. An expansion of glaciers and record snowfalls increase surface albedo, which prevents warming. Because of its reflectivity, a snowball Earth doesn't heat very quickly.Those are just my speculations, of course. I'm even less a climatologist than I am a biologist. But I see nothing inconsistent about the idea that global warming could trigger some kind of massive cool period, any more than I find it inconsistent that my refrigerator makes my kitchen hotter, or that Harrison Ford can build an icemaker powered by heat in "The Mosquito Coast". Well, I really can't stand his writing style. Drives me up the wall. The guy writes about as poorly as Clive Cussler, in my opinion.And the thing is - it's just a novel. Just because he pads the end with a bunch of footnotes doesn't mean that he's presented the whole story, or even a balanced look. It doesn't mean that he's done his research and presented all the relevant info instead of just cherry-picking from the avaliable data.I appreciate the work you've done in this thread but I think you're going to regret making his novel the centerpiece, rather than his data. It's fine, of course, to use it as a springboard, but I think it's a mistake to wield his novel like any sort of authority, especially since it's been roundly criticised by the scientific community.

And yet, from the Wiki article alone I'm looking at composites of some 10-20 different climatological models that make it pretty clear that the warming trend is already way beyond the recent annual variation.So I'd say your paleoclimatologists are wrong. Mechanism? Greenhouse gases are the mechanism; their inherent chemical properties. I guess I don't understand your question. You're asking for the mechanism whereby greenhouse gases cause atmosphereic warming? Discuss what? The prospect of Earth becoming Venus? I'm not familiar with any climatologist who advances that as a realistic possibility. I agree that "global warming" is a potentially misleading term. I prefer to use "climate change" to refer to anomolous changes in the heat level and other factors of the atmosphere, and "anthropogenic climate change" to refer to those changes that are caused by human activity. And I believe that I successfully made the case that the onset of a cooling trend is one eventual change that we might reasonably expect to see, given one model of the forces that affect the atmosphere and climate.I'm sorry that the term "global warming" doesn't seem consistent to you with the idea of an eventual ice age. That's why I prefer the term "climate change" as there is no reason to believe that the result of human activities will always be warming temperatures. For a brief period between 1940 and 1970, for instance, human industrialization actually caused a reduction in atmospheric temperatures due to the chemical properties of different industrial products. That's still anthropogenic climate change. I started with the Wiki article on his novel, which led me to a blog written by atmospheric scientists, for instance. It was from that article that I originally quoted. As I said I haven't read the book so naturally, I haven't read his footnotes either.

On a board dedicated to the discussion of that very subject? Yes, this is probably true.Might the reason that you're so underwhelmed by the response so far is that you're posing questions in atmospheric science to a group of biologists and biology enthusiasts? Funny, but that's how I've always felt about the climate change deniers. Here's the arguments that I've recieved upon presenting climate data:1) Those are just models (theories.) If GW was real it would be called a "fact."
2) GW proponents, regardless of their scientific credentials, are people motivated by an irrational hatred of SUV's and oil companies.and my personal favorite -3) Climate scienists can't even predict tomorrow's weather - how can we take them seriously about global warming?

Well, you probably have good reason to be cynical.I hope that, at some point, you decide to publish your memoirs, and I hope you stop by to drop us all a line and tell us where we can buy that book.

Meh, I'd simply ascribe that to your basic artifact of science journalism - striving for the false conflict. "Other leading scientists"? That's journalism-speak for "we found two other guys with letters after their names that would agree to disagree with the first guy."Science journalism is, unfortunately, not a process where the scientific consensus is accurately represented. Science journalism is a process where the journalist downplays the majority consensus and emphasizes the minority dissent in order to give the appearance of a balanced and undecided conflict. You see it in evolution, you see it in global climate change, you see it in just about every field.Using science to support a political position? Did it ever occur to you that this guy's political position is based on the science?

It was. "Scientist calls other scientists idiots"? How is that not an expression of conflict? In science journalism? Why would there be facts?If you want the guy's facts, why don't you look up his journal articles?

So what? Holmes, what are you talking about? Did you understand my original claim? Apparently not. Whether it was a political or scientific claim has no bearing on the point I was making. Are you really this desperate to disagree with me? I certainly wouldn't have done your homework for you. And I certainly wouldn't have used a newspaper's science journalism as indicative of any sort of scientific consensus, or even an accurate portrayal of any person's scientific views. At an ecologist so influential in his field that he receieved a knighthood? I don't exactly consider ecology "nothing to do with the field he was making comments about." And that's what it's all about for you, isn't it? Feeding your obsession with arguing with me. Hell, even when I agreed with you, many posts back in this thread, you argued with me about it.You're unbelieveable, Holmes. Your behavior in almost every thread towards me and towards others is abominable. You're obsessed with arguing with me; so much so that no matter what I post you mischaracterize it in order to have something to argue with.I don't know what your problem is. What grave error? In recognizing how science is reported in newspapers? If you're under the impression that I've advanced the position that global warming is making hurricaines worse, you're deluded. If you believe that a science article in a newspaper is an acccurate way to learn about a scientists views, or that its a proper venue for the dissemination of scientific facts, you're an idiot. And if you believe that I'm ever going to respond to any of your posts again, or have any dealings with you whatsoever until your behavior in these matters substantially improves, you can go fuck yourself.

You gave me a CNN article. Whoopy-doo. Of course it does. Ecology is the study of how populations affect and are affected by their environment, and as such, draws from the fields of geology, meteorology, climatology, biochemistry, genetics, sociology, and other disciplines. He's not the only scientist in a relevant field advancing the idea; just the other day I heard a radio program that featered a pair of scientists who put forth their evidence that global climate change was responsible for a significant increase in the severity of hurricanes throughout the world. Let me see if I can find something about them:Yeah, here we go. The guests were Dr. Anthony Busalacchi, director of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland, and Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Pubmed doesn't really seem to do climateology papers so I don't know where to find their research. But their contention on the show was similar to that of Lawton's; global climate change has increased the severity of storms dramatically within the last 30 years, a change not consistent with any known multi-decadal cycles. So, for instance, having a Nobel prize in a field is not indiative of expertise in it? Sure, it's an argument from authority. I employed it in response to your argument that Lawton was not an authority.If you didn't want to play "argument from authority", then why did you start the game? Wrong again, Holmes. This is what I was talking about: You're absolutely unbelievable, Holmes. I make an empty gesture of agreement and acknowledgement of your personal story, a gesture of accepting your perspective on the debate, and you're still arguing with me. You're disgusting. There's no possibiliy of debate with you, only relentless contrarianism. I could assert that the sky was blue and you'd challenge me to prove that the sky was always blue, and never was any other color, even at night. I could assert that most x were y, and you'd prove that one x wasn't y and think you'd done something. No, I asserted that his opposition was inflated by the journalist, a common practice in science journalism. Wouldn't it be rather incoherent of me to assert that there was no meaningful opposition to his statements, given that you've presented direct evidence of that opposition? Wouldn't I have to be the biggest fucking idiot in town to assert such a thing?This is your problem, Holmes. My positions are usually fairly reasonable, and so in order for you to satisfy your need for contrarianism, you have to misstate my position, inflate it, so that you have something to argue against. And yet, you presented an article from CNN as a refutation. I make mistakes almost all the time. One of the largest is continuing to debate with you on any issue. Rest assured that my future posts to you will not be debate; they will be a catalogue of your disingenuous and disgusting behavior, specifically the repeated, systematic distortions of my arguments to you in our previous debates.At such time as you're able to grapple with my arguments, and god forbid, even agree with me on a subject, instead of inventing positions and ascribing them to me, we'll be able to debate. But until you recitfy your behavior debate with you will not be possible.I highly doubt that you could accurately describe any of my positions on literally any issue except in the most general of terms, i.e. "crash is an evolutionist and an atheist." There's absolutely no way, judging from your behavior, that you would be able to accurately get more specific than that.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-24-2005 01:53 PM

No, but I am going to claim that an ecologist recognized as a national authority on the subject is probably going to be familiar with the current state of research in climatology. Pull up from where? I have no source of climatological research. Which paper was that, exactly? Like I said I wasn't able to find their paper; I don't have any sources for climatological articles. Like I said, that's what they said on the radio program. If they misrepresented the results of their research then that's on them. Look, if you say so. I'd agree but you'll simply, incongruously, argue with my agreement again. There's really no winning with you. Ah, yes. The old "I was only kidding" routine. Your last refuge when your infuriating behavior is made apparent.Holmes, I'm not the one with the problem. I simply don't give a damn about you; why would I have a problem? I've agreed with you, in the past - been swayed by your arguments. When was the last time that you can say the same about me? Nonsense, Holmes. That's bullshit. Maybe that's how you remember it, but your first post in the thread was a ridiculous mistatement of my position - as always. And it went downhill from there. You know, unless you're a speaker of English. And the very next post, where I clarified that I wasn't saying that Lawton was right or wrong, should have closed the issue.But it never does, for you. Nine out of ten of my posts to you are me correcting your misstatement of my positions. But no matter how clear I try to make it, you jump to the wrong conclusion. It's not even a misinterpretation - you literally ignore my statements except the ones that you can appear to pervert into the most extreme, most ridiculous position possible.It's no surprise that you understood "your rebuttal of his position falls flat" to mean "I agree with your opponent." To your mind there's no distinction between a recognition that a rebuttal was not successful and advocacy of the opposite postition. The proof is in the pudding, Holmes. The proof is that every time we discuss, our posts get longer and longer because not only do I have to advance new evidence, I have to correct how you've characterized my position and defend myself against the slanderous, decietful tactic you employ of ascribing to me these ridiculous strawmen. And I have, on many occasions. When was the last time you did? I hope you can see the irony of a statement that says "You keep saying I'm contrarian, but I'm not!" Holmes, the only evidence you present that I don't do my best to refute is the mountains of "evidence" you often present that have nothing to do with the discussion. When it comes to actual evidence against my positions you're rarely able to summon any. Did you ever even give me a real example of anti-white discrimination due to affirmative action in the other thread? How many times did I have to ask for it?