Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Could you give me a hint as to the shape of your tin foil hat? If your claims are purely faith based in nature, I can't address them without knowing what religion I am dealing with.

Bear in mind, I'd be the last to assert that any particular thing is The Cause of climate change (in fact, that is exactly the type of behavior to which I object).

However, you asked about the galactic topography issue. I can offer two levels of links.

Layman-level:
National Post article
the blog of an Israeli researcher
another one from him, regarding experimental confirmation of his contention

Publication-level:
Fireballs in Dense Stellar Regions as an Explanation of Gamma-Ray Bursts
The Spiral Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, Cosmic Rays, and Ice Age Epochs on Earth
Life Extinctions by Cosmic Ray Jets
Cosmic Ray Diffusion from the Galactic Spiral Arms, Iron Meteorites, and a possible climatic connection?
On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget
Detailed Response to Royer et al.’s letter “CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic Climate”

And frankly, this is only one possible driver that is being neglected due to ignorance in the rush to make models. Models that, without it (as I keep saying) are good for nothing more than producing sets of squiggly lines.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

However, you asked about the galactic topography issue. I can offer two levels of links.

Layman-level:
National Post article
the blog of an Israeli researcher
another one from him, regarding experimental confirmation of his contention

I'll start with the laymen's links.

The first link talks about stellar arms. The impression it gives is that astrological causes have been much more a driving factor during the long term than greenhouse gasses. I have already put up the numbers in previous posts. The spiral arms effect causes 15 degrees of forcing over a period of 135,000,000 years, plus or minus 25,000,000. Greenhouse effects have caused .6 degrees over the last 100 years. Yes, 15 degrees is much stronger than .6 degrees. Cosmic effects are stronger over all than human caused greenhouse...

Assuming you care more about the very long term than the decisions that we have to make over the next few decades. As I have noted before, the spiral arm effect drives climate change at about 0.0000024 degrees of warming per century. This is negigable in terms of global warming. I have already rebutted the above argument. You claimed that the argument I rebutted was not one that you were making. You wanted nothing to do with spiral arms. The first link you gave me was a spiral arm link.

Bah, humbug. Are you reading the stuff you are linking to?

Let me repeat one of the standard diagrams from the peer reviewed reality based universe before going into the next link's tin foil hat land.



In a puff of cause and effect sophism, the author imagines he has made the blue curve vanish, and argues that the red curve should be much stronger. As the blue curve and the red curve are shaped identically, simply by making the red curve stronger one can explain everything. As the blue curve produces an effect of .7 degrees C in the last century, while the red curve produces an effect of .2, one would have to multiply the red curve by a factor of 3.5 to make things come out about right.

The problem with this is that the red curve is not identically shaped to the blue curve. The red curve shows 11 year sunspot cycle variations. The blue curve does not. If solar forcing was the dominant cause of global warming, with no help from greenhouse gasses, the 11 year cyclical pattern in the black net temperature graph ought to be 3.5 times stronger. In short, the author of the non peer reviewed blog just lied through his teeth when he said the blue and red curves have the same shape. He ignored the data, which includes a very well known signature in the solar record. No way could he get that published in a reviewed journal.

The third link reports on an experiment that confirms a link between cosmic rays and cloud formation, and thus a link between solar cycles and spiral arms and climate change. He reports as if this is exciting and new. It isn't, really. The link between cosmic rays and climate is not controversial. I've mentioned it in spiral arm entries which Justin recently dismissed as unimportant. What the author hasn't done is identify a source of out of solar system cosmic rays which is stronger than the sun's variation, a source which might produce .6 degrees a century of change without being detected by every gieger counter on the planet. He identifies no invisible nebula, nor identifies any reason to believe a spiral arm will suddenly materialize in the next few decades. He just experimentally confirmed one element of the spiral arm theory, the same theory which Justin recently disparaged.

In short, one, two, three strikes, you're out, in the old ball game!

I'll try working through the peer reviewed stuff, but most of the titles seem to be associated with the 15 degrees in 65,000,000 years spiral arm effect.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Bear in mind, I'd be the last to assert that any particular thing is The Cause of climate change (in fact, that is exactly the type of behavior to which I object). . . .

And frankly, this is only one possible driver that is being neglected due to ignorance in the rush to make models. Models that, without it (as I keep saying) are good for nothing more than producing sets of squiggly lines.

Justin, what you're saying here, in essence, is: "Our knowledge is not 100% complete. We cannot say, with total and absolute certainty, unplagued by any doubts whatsoever, regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable those doubts may be, that there is not some other cause for the global warming we observe which we have not yet considered."

That is true. However, you can transpose that argument to any scientific theory whatsoever and it will apply equally well. Actually, you have given voice to the fourth assumption on which science is founded: that we DON'T have complete and perfect knowledge and never will, and so all knowledge must be held tentatively and with the understanding that it may be reversed in the future as knew data are acquired.

To say that we can take no action until we have achieved that 100% degree of perfect certainty is to say that we can take no action, ever.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Bear in mind, I'd be the last to assert that any particular thing is The Cause of climate change (in fact, that is exactly the type of behavior to which I object).

However, you asked about the galactic topography issue. I can offer two levels of links.

Layman-level:
National Post article
the blog of an Israeli researcher
another one from him, regarding experimental confirmation of his contention

Publication-level:
Fireballs in Dense Stellar Regions as an Explanation of Gamma-Ray Bursts
The Spiral Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, Cosmic Rays, and Ice Age Epochs on Earth
Life Extinctions by Cosmic Ray Jets
Cosmic Ray Diffusion from the Galactic Spiral Arms, Iron Meteorites, and a possible climatic connection?
On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget
Detailed Response to Royer et al.’s letter “CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic Climate”

These articles are dealing with the cosmic ray effect on climate. By invoking galactic topology do you mean the effect of our position in the galaxy on the influx of cosmic rays? If so then why not just say cosmic rays rather than be deliberately obscure with this galactic topology stuff?

I already dealt with cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are measured so one doesn't have to bloviate about galactic topology as if that mattered at all in the climate debate. None of the articles you cite are saying that galactic topology (and not the sun) is producing the warming observed in the last three decades. A number of of them deal with paleoclimate and so are not relevant to today's climate.

The simple fact is that while temperature has been rising in recent decades, the secular trend in cosmic rays has been flat over the last half century.



Cosmic rays levels are affected by solar activity as tracked by sunspot number (as Ben Espen showed above). But the secular trend in sunspot number has also been flat (as one would expect since the cosmic rays trend is flat).



This means that the trend in cosmic rays and solar activity or as Justin likes to say galactic topology and solar hydrodynamics, has been flat over the past half century. So they haven't been factors in recent warming.

Here is a nice article on the effect of "galactic topology" on climate.

The effect of topology is the effect on cosmic ray flux of the solar systems position as it moves through the galaxy. This position is with respect to cosmic ray emitters, all of which are much farther away than the nearby stars that constitute the visible constellations. Thus the effect of "topology" on cosmic rays will change at a much slower rate than the shapes of the constellations will change. Long before topology could have any detectable effect on cosmic rays (and hence climate) the constellations would have become totally unrecognizable due to Earth's motion through space. Since the constellations look the same today as they did when I was a kid, or for that matter centuries ago, we can safely ignore the effects of "topology" on climate change within our lifetimes.

Nir J. Shaviv, one of the scientists Justin referenced has the great figure showing the effect of cosmic rays on cloudiness. Note that this graph also shows no secular trend in cosmic rays or cloudiness for the recent period of warming.



In previous posts when I talk about solar effects or sunspot effects on temperature, I am talking about this cosmic ray phenomenon that Justin thinks makes global warming go away. The effect of cosmic rays on cloudiness is direct as the figure shows. The effect of cloudiness on temperature is negative. This implies a negative correlation between cosmic rays and temperature as this figure shows.



As Ben Espen showed earlier cosmic rays and sunspots were inversely correlated. This means that a direct effect of sunspots and temperature. Such an effect can be used to crude model temperature for the past few centuries. Such models are based purely on correlation and were produced before the cosmic ray mechanism was known. This graph shows one such model. Note how it works pretty well expect for the recent warming which has been happening during a time of flat solar activity.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

The two have nothing to do with each other. And really, you're doing a great disservice to the goal of having a nice place to live and not wasting things by tying them to such a potentially-discreditable herring as 'anthropogenic global warming'.

Oh, come on. As I read her question, she distinctly separated the two issues. You're the one who put them back together.

Surely all of us with kids put a high priority on them growing up healthy; but how many jump onto every (superficially plausible) passing fad just on the off chance that it may be the right thing to do? I mean, what's the harm if you are wrong? And it is your kids' health you are talking about....

Certainly you'd rather that your wife and kids ate fish that didn't have high levels of mercury or PCBs (assuming you all might be fish-eaters)? I think the science is pretty good on the relationship between ingesting those chemicals and developing certain birth defects.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

Oh, come on. As I read her question, she distinctly separated the two issues. You're the one who put them back together.

Certainly you'd rather that your wife and kids ate fish that didn't have high levels of mercury or PCBs (assuming might be fish-eaters)? I think the science is pretty good on the relationship between ingesting those chemicals and developing certain birth defects.

Certainly dear Justin hasn't a come back on this PCB score, why, how could he retalitate against pretty science?

Ah, she's so danm cute, who is Justin to call her a lying son-of-a-bitch, eh?

Originally Posted by zilch

Ah, she's so danm cute, who is Justin to call her a lying son-of-a-bitch, eh?

I think it has more to do with Justin having at least a toenail's grip on civility.

(And how can a "she" be a "son-of-a-bitch"? Marc, are you back on the sauce?)

And now for something completely different, and yet the same...

The Washington post recently put up an article on climate change and global security. For discussion purposes...

The Army's former chief of staff, Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, who is one of the authors, noted he had been "a little bit of a skeptic" when the study group began meeting in September. But, after being briefed by top climate scientists and observing changes in his native New England, Sullivan said he was now convinced that global warming presents a grave challenge to the country's military preparedness.

"The trends are not good, and if I just sat around in my former life as a soldier, if I just waited around for someone to walk in and say, 'This is with a hundred percent certainty,' I'd be waiting forever," he said.

Part of the sense of urgency, the generals said in interviews last week, stems from the fact that changing climatic conditions will make it harder for weak nation-states to address their citizens' basic needs. The report notes, for example, that 40 percent of the world's population gets at least half its drinking water from the summer melt of mountain glaciers that are rapidly disappearing.

"Many developing nations do not have the government and social infrastructures in place to cope with the type of stressors that could be brought about by global climate change," the report states. "When a government can no longer deliver services to its people, ensure domestic order, and protect the nation's borders from invasion, conditions are ripe for turmoil, extremism and terrorism to fill the vacuum."

For quite some time I've been suggesting that this 4T, ecological issues will create poverty, which in turn will cause security problems. Looks like the professionals are starting to catch on.

Now, if we could just get rid of remove from power the denialists who just refuse to see...

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Now, if we could just get rid of the denialists who just refuse to see...

I hear the Germans have invented a new microwave oven for that purpose. It seats six.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

Certainly you'd rather that your wife and kids ate fish that didn't have high levels of mercury or PCBs (assuming you all might be fish-eaters)? I think the science is pretty good on the relationship between ingesting those chemicals and developing certain birth defects.

Not sure what that has to do with what I was saying. Of course, there are scientifically-grounded things-to-watch-out for (and, contra as seems to say Brian, I'm far from asserting that knowledge must be somehow perfect to be actionable). But, whereas the link between health problems and mercury and PCB exposure is both well-documented and fairly well-understood, the anthropogenic global warming models are far from it. You know, I also put sunscreen on my kids when we take them to the beach. Because the sun-exposure/sunburn correlation is easily demonstrated, as is the sunscreen/less sunburn one. Those hardly count as fads.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

These articles are dealing with the cosmic ray effect on climate. By invoking galactic topology do you mean the effect of our position in the galaxy on the influx of cosmic rays? If so then why not just say cosmic rays rather than be deliberately obscure with this galactic topology stuff?

Deliberately obscure? It's not just cosmic rays that matter; just that they are the best-studied of the topological (and I apologize if my terminology hurts your feeling; I understand that the word has clear terrestrial derivation, but I just can't seem to come up with the right word for the space-stuff context) phenomena. Other things matter, too -- or not, maybe; but how can you say when you haven't checked?

I already dealt with cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are measured so one doesn't have to bloviate about galactic topology as if that mattered at all in the climate debate. None of the articles you cite are saying that galactic topology (and not the sun) is producing the warming observed in the last three decades.

Of course not. It hasn't been studied to any significant degree yet. But the fact remains that they are a significant driver, and that you don't know what they are doing now. Flatly, you have no idea what effect topology has on the climate, and even though it is known that cosmic events can cause sufficiently severe, sufficiently rapid climactic changes as to bring about mass extinctions, you simply dismiss them as 'bloviation'. Kudos to you for your dedication.

Cosmic rays levels are affected by solar activity as tracked by sunspot number (as Ben Espen showed above).

Among other things, yes. Did you not read the Life Extinctions by Cosmic Ray Jets paper? There are plenty of other things that can affect the environment in which the Earth travels other than the sun. Sunspot number is not necessarily correlated with those. And they would therefore be external to the secular trend of that metric. It's just another potential driver that was dismissed due to inadequate data -- which is a pretty pathetic approach for a soi-disant scientist to take.

Originally Posted by Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney

in the Wa Po

Scientists excel at research; creating knowledge is their forte. But presenting this knowledge to the public is something else altogether. It's here that scientists and their allies are stumbling in our information-overloaded society -- even as scientific information itself is being yanked to center stage in high-profile debates.
...
Here again, a delicate balance is required. Any recasting of an issue needs to remain true to the underlying science. As effective as the "hope for cures" message has been, some advocates have gone too far in their claims about potential advances.

Thankfully, scientists seem increasingly aware of the need to convey their knowledge better. There is even a bill in Congress that would allocate funding to the National Science Foundation to train scientists to become better communicators. That's a start, but scientists must recognize that on hot-button issues -- even scientific ones -- knowledge alone is rarely enough to win political arguments, change government policies or influence public opinion. Simply put, the media, policymakers and members of the public consume scientific information in a vastly different way than the scientists who generate it. If scientists don't learn how to cope in this often bewildering environment, they will be ceding their ability to contribute to the future of our nation.

$ell the $izzle, not the $cience to consumptive Commercial Republicans

Originally Posted by Justin '77

and, contra as seems to say Brian, I'm far from asserting that knowledge must be somehow perfect to be actionable.

In general, I think that's true. But in this specific context, that's exactly what you're saying, or rather, it's the implication of what you're saying even if you haven't recognized that yet.

1) Global warming (regardless of cause) is a measured fact.

2) The increase in greenhouse gases due to human activity is also a measured fact.

3) That the second can, in theory, cause the first is a fact emerging from physics, chemistry, and atmospheric science.

4) Based on #3, models have been created which show that the amount of global warming measured is consistent with it being caused, in fact as well as theory, by #2, allowing for the countereffect of particulate emissions which tend to cause cooling.

That in a nutshell is the argument in favor of global warming being anthropogenic. Your counterargument on this thread amounts to proposing highly speculative non-anthropogenic causes, and when challenged in regard to any one of them, you respond that what you're really saying is that there are possible causes we haven't eliminated yet, and not advocating any particular one cause.

Justin, there will ALWAYS be possible causes we haven't elmininated yet. If nothing else, there is always the possibility that some unknown law of physics is operating, or that we're being attacked by a malign alien civilization, or that God is mad at us. This reasoning leads, inevitably, to paralysis in which no action can be taken.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Deliberately obscure? It's not just cosmic rays that matter; just that they are the best-studied of the topological (and I apologize if my terminology hurts your feeling; I understand that the word has clear terrestrial derivation, but I just can't seem to come up with the right word for the space-stuff context) phenomena. Other things matter, too -- or not, maybe; but how can you say when you haven't checked?

Well, you did manage to be obscure enough to fool yourself. In one post, you denied you cared about the spiral arm effect, yet most of the papers you reference are related to the spiral arms.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Among other things, yes. Did you not read the Life Extinctions by Cosmic Ray Jets paper? There are plenty of other things that can affect the environment in which the Earth travels other than the sun. Sunspot number is not necessarily correlated with those. And they would therefore be external to the secular trend of that metric. It's just another potential driver that was dismissed due to inadequate data -- which is a pretty pathetic approach for a soi-disant scientist to take.

An artist's impression of SS433
Goddard Space Flight Center

Cosmic Ray Jets! Black hole binaries! Neat! A few years ago, I picked up a science mystery book about a real strange solar system emitting signals no one could understand. The final answer was a binary star system, where a black hole was circling close to a larger star. The two are so close together, the black hole pulls in gas from the other, spinning it around in an accretion disk (a ring of gas spiraling down into the black hole) then throwing some fraction of the matter out along the axis of the disk at speeds close to that of light. SS433 might be one of the stranger systems out there.

Black hole binaries are one of those types of radiation producing objects that one is more likely to encounter in a spiral arm than in a galactic void. One might reasonably expect such things to play some role, however small, in that statistical .0000024 degrees per century shift.

But we are looking for a .6 degrees per century shift. Justin keeps proposing mechanisms that do not match the phenomena we are trying to explain. Not even close. Spiral arm effects are too slow. Novas are too fast. Solar effects have a 11 year cyclic effect. Black hole binary systems are very rare and very noisy. If there was one in the neighborhood, we would have spotted it. We are spotting planets now by watching for stars wobbling, being tugged back and forth by objects circling them. A black hole is just too heavy to be missed in such a survey, even if it were not pulling in gas from its neighbor, and doing a galactic lighthose act.

Justin's basic problem is that you can detect cosmic rays. Cosmic rays can and do effect climate. However, a cosmic ray source strong enough to effect climate can be traced to its source. He has yet to suggest a cosmic ray source that matches the .6 degrees C per century signature we are looking for... or explain how one might have cosmic rays effecting the weather when we haven't detected any changes in cosmic ray intensity. He keeps throwing out any paper that might suggests cosmic ray sources and climate effects, without seriously considering whether the proposed mechanism matches the effects we are seeing.

They aren't. I have problems conceiving of a ray source that can match the signature. The ray source has to be weak enough to be undetected, yet strong enough to dwarf the easily detected variations in the solar cycle. Novas are too fast. Spiral arms are too slow. Solar energy has the 11 year signature. Cosmic jet sources are not present. That does leave us in tin foil hat land, looking for UFOs, angry gods and unknown laws of physics.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

In general, I think that's true. But in this specific context, that's exactly what you're saying, or rather, it's the implication of what you're saying even if you haven't recognized that yet.

1) Global warming (regardless of cause) is a measured fact.

2) The increase in greenhouse gases due to human activity is also a measured fact.

3) That the second can, in theory, cause the first is a fact emerging from physics, chemistry, and atmospheric science.

4) Based on #3, models have been created which show that the amount of global warming measured is consistent with it being caused, in fact as well as theory, by #2, allowing for the countereffect of particulate emissions which tend to cause cooling.

That in a nutshell is the argument in favor of global warming being anthropogenic. Your counterargument on this thread amounts to proposing highly speculative non-anthropogenic causes, and when challenged in regard to any one of them, you respond that what you're really saying is that there are possible causes we haven't eliminated yet, and not advocating any particular one cause.

Justin, there will ALWAYS be possible causes we haven't elmininated yet. If nothing else, there is always the possibility that some unknown law of physics is operating, or that we're being attacked by a malign alien civilization, or that God is mad at us. This reasoning leads, inevitably, to paralysis in which no action can be taken.

Justin is, unfortunately, allowing himself to be drawn into a scientific debate concerning a matter that is essentially political. The data underpinning global warming are irrelevant to the political solutions that are being proposed to it, which conveniently involve the concentration of ever more power into the hands of national and transnational bureaucracies, the institutions least able to make sense of the science and act on it appropriately. The environmentalist agenda, which is not identical with a healthy ecological perspective, is to arrest human civilization in the name of planetary security. While it appears reasonable to argue that a chaotic system, such as the global climate, cannot be modulated (or even predicted) with the crude tools currently available to human science, the real issue is that the proposition that such a thing even be attempted is a screen for global totalitarianism. We are, after all, talking ultimately about giving the state control over the weather.

What is really needed is a transformation of the culture. A "greening" of popular consciousness, which is arguably already taking place, though not at the pace or in the direction powerful interests would like. The manufactured urgency for environmental legislation, fueled by academically-facilitated media hysteria, is an effort to preempt the long-term, bottom-up cure to the environmental ills of industrialization with an immediate top-down treatment that can be hierarchically managed (without ever actually solving the problem). In short, it all boils down to control.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Deliberately obscure? It's not just cosmic rays that matter; just that they are the best-studied of the topological phenomena. Other things matter, too -- or not, maybe

This is not obscure?

Of course not. It hasn't been studied to any significant degree yet. But the fact remains that they are a significant driver, and that you don't know what they are doing now.

Yes we do. Cosmic rays have been measured for decades. And we also have fairly good proxies for historical variations in these quantities so yes a considerable amount is known about them.

None of these papers say that topology has anything to do with climate that does not involve cosmic rays. What sort of cosmic rays we receive depends on our position wrt to cosmic ray emitters. As the solar system moves through space over time the cosmic rays that reach it will change as a result of that motion. This is the effect of topology. Another thing that happens as the solar system moves through space is that its position wrt to the nearby stars that make up the visible constellations changes too. This is manifest by changing constellations as viewed from Earth.

Cosmic ray emitters are farther away than the nearby stars. Thus, the constellations will have become totally unrecognizable long before cosmic rays will have changed significant due to the motion of the solar system through space. As the seeming permanence of the constellations show, the effects of the topology of the galaxy changes very, very slowly and is essentially constant on the time scale of decades and centuries.

There are plenty of other things that can affect the environment in which the Earth travels other than the sun. Sunspot number is not necessarily correlated with those. And they would therefore be external to the secular trend of that metric.

What things? Now you are invoking mysterious forces. Yes I suppose a deus ex machina could arrive and save us all.

The shape of the temperature profile is inconsistent with the idea that there are "things out there" independent of sunspots that matter greatly to climate forecasts. If this were the case then the temperature over time would be obtained from a moving sum of a bunch of independently changing (random to each other) forcings. If this were so the temperature plot would show Yule-Slutsky-type cycles (spurious cycles that appear in moving sums of random data that imply a structure than doesn't exist).

But it doesn't, instead it shows real cycles and secular trends. For example, it has been established that a real 11-year solar cycle produces a real cycle in temperature. These cycles are not artifacts of a 3-4 year moving average or sum of semi-randomly changing forcings. Not only that but the secular trends outside of the solar cycle can be seen directly without averaging and can modeled reasonably well with a single parameter correlative model using sunspots.

The fact that people have been able to do any modeling at all of historical climate means that there must be a small number of important independent climate effectors.

The cosmic ray effect may be an important effector of climate, but it's not an independent one. It's effect correlates with solar activity and so sunspot-based correlative (not mechanistic) models (like the one I showed) already take the effect of cosmic rays on historical temperature trends into account--without knowing anything about the mechanism.

It has been long known that sunspots did a better job of explaining recent historical temperature trends than did CO2. Such observations were puzzling because nobody understood why sunspots and temperature should correlate--they just did. The effect of sunspots was not because of changes in total solar irradiance, because the changes were simply too small. Nevertheless, even though people didn't know why sunspot number affected temperature, they could still use the correlation between the two in predictive models that explained temperature change as resulting from changes in sunspot number. Such models are in principle no different that the successful use of the calender to predict the seasons and length of day despite ignorance of the cause of the seasons and variations of length of day.

The cosmic ray mechanism neatly explains why sunspots "work" to explain historical temperature, just as Earth's orbital mechanics neatly explains why the calender works.

Did you not read the Life Extinctions by Cosmic Ray Jets paper? There are plenty of other things that can affect the environment in which the Earth travels other than the sun.

This paper deals with catastrophic releases of cosmic rays. Sure if a nearby neutron has collapsed it would change the cosmic ray background, but this would be detectable here. It hasn't been so what is your point?

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Justin is, unfortunately, allowing himself to be drawn into a scientific debate concerning a matter that is essentially political. The data underpinning global warming are irrelevant to the political solutions that are being proposed to it, which conveniently involve the concentration of ever more power into the hands of national and transnational bureaucracies, the institutions least able to make sense of the science and act on it appropriately. The environmentalist agenda, which is not identical with a healthy ecological perspective, is to arrest human civilization in the name of planetary security. While it appears reasonable to argue that a chaotic system, such as the global climate, cannot be modulated (or even predicted) with the crude tools currently available to human science, the real issue is that the proposition that such a thing even be attempted is a screen for global totalitarianism. We are, after all, talking ultimately about giving the state control over the weather.

What is really needed is a transformation of the culture. A "greening" of popular consciousness, which is arguably already taking place, though not at the pace or in the direction powerful interests would like. The manufactured urgency for environmental legislation, fueled by academically-facilitated media hysteria, is an effort to preempt the long-term, bottom-up cure to the environmental ills of industrialization with an immediate top-down treatment that can be hierarchically managed (without ever actually solving the problem). In short, it all boils down to control.

I can acknowledge the problem of global warming might be divided into multiple levels, and effect multiple fields. In addition to science and politics, there will be economic and military aspects as well. The article I posted on the upcoming Security Council conference on ecological collapse leading to economic, health and security concerns reflects this. Crises are complex. In any crisis, I fully expect to find moral, religious, economic, cultural, political and military elements. This one is not apt to be different.

Thing is, if one expects any sort of logical approach to the problem, you might want to first define the problem, second explore the various alternative solutions, then finally implement that set of problems which are most cost effective and least disruptive.

Or, in short, you have to get your facts straight before you choose a solution.

I don't deny there is politics in science. The object of any research project is to some degree to convince the powers that fund research grants to think their money well spent, and to suggest there will be good return on the next research project by the same authors. There is also politics in politics. The object of each campaign contribution is to improve life in some way for the person contributing. If the individual has a shared concern for all, this can be a good thing. If the person has selfish short term interests, not necessarily so good. The petroleum industry, which financed the current administration, is at least as political as the scientists. Their motivations are not necessarily as benign and universal as the scientists.

But democracy can't work without free speech. With the Bush administration censoring scientific work on global warming, they cross a certain line. If the scientists can't get their findings to the public, the public can't make an informed judgement at the polls. You end up with people like Justin, no scientist, not really reading the research well enough to understand what it is saying, muddling fuzzily along thinking the problem doesn't exist. How can the problem get solved when political censorship of science prevents a solid appreciation of the problem by the public?

If someone will admit a reasonable grasp of the problem, I'm willing to go on and talk about solutions. I'm dubious about crises being solved by individual action. I don't see how the British could have been gotten out of Boston, the Slaves freed, Hitler defeated, etc... by individuals acting in an uncoordinated fashion. People are willing to make sacrifices if they are shared. People don't individually and spontaneously act in a coordinated enough fashion to address crisis level problems. The entire society needs to be mobilized. Generally, the mechanism for attacking crisis scale problems has been government. This doesn't mean that big government isn't a good size part of the problem right now. I can share a lot of your concerns about giving government more power. There is a need to find structures in government to give voters more control over government.

I'm also concerned about biases towards maintaining the old culture. There is always a faction in any crisis which refuses to acknowledge problems, which profits by old social structures, which does not want to let go of that power which brings with it privilege and wealth. Will science claim more power over capitalists this time around? Will the wealth accumulated by the upper classes be distributed more evenly? Will the gap between rich countries and poor be narrowed? Will votes become more important, campaign finance contributions less? These sort of shifts are typical in a 4T. They are not apt to happen in other turnings. I think such basic shifts in power and values will have to happen if the problems we are facing in this crisis is to be address. I don't see that the problems we are facing can be left unsolved.

The establishment will resist. They will censor science. They will lie about causes for starting wars. They will obfuscate and evade. They will refuse to see the risks they are taking, and the moral implications of maintaining and old culture that is failing to address the major problems of the time. Justin's will to disbelieve is an echo of the slave owner's old bias towards believing blacks were less than men. Cultural inertia, often driven by perceived self interest, is a powerful force that can make men less than fully sentient.

So, yes, politics and the drive to power are part of human activity. Whatever else changes this crisis, that is unlikely to change. Men will cling to power and wealth while others strive to overturn them. The establishment has the advantage of being in place, of holding the reigns of power. They tend to lose out in time of crisis to the faction that has the answer to problems the establishment doesn't want to address. Denial of the existence of the problem is traditionally the establishment's first line of defense. It is not in the interests of anybody that we allow this line of defense to stand.

So, sure, outline your list of voluntary options already available. Let me know how widely they have been accepted, and the impact they have had on greenhouse gas release or similar factors. Convince me that enough has been done voluntarily that the seas won't rise, the glaciers melt, and the Third World fall into a spasm of water wars. Let's see if your science is any better than Justin's.

My take on global warming:

Probably real...at least when comparing temperatures since the "Little Ice Age" that began around 1300.

I am less inclined to trust man-made temperature measurements taken before, say, the 1940s or so. And, even then, I wonder how current T measurements are affected by urban heat island effect.

Still, given disappearing glaciers and permafrost and listening to the accounts of native arctic peoples, I think that something interesting is going on.

Everybody knows that earth's atmosphere is warmed by a greenhouse effect. I think that this cannot be disputed. However, carbon dioxide is just one small component of the mix. The C=O bond absorbs energy in the infrared, true, but it doesn't plug up the entire IR spectrum. The peak only occupies a portion. Other more efficient gases include H2O, methane, and some of the freons.

Also worth noting is that all gases in the atmosphere are in equilibrium with Earth's most giant solar collector ever assembled: the oceans. Huge quantities of gas remain dissolved in the oceans whether directly or loosely bound in carbonate sediments. When the oceans warm, more gas is released. When they cool, more is absorbed. In this way, they act as a climate amplifier for changes in solar intensity. Of course, if excess gas is being absorbed in the oceans, that is a problem, and they become more acidic. But that is not the same as global warming per se.

Also, as others here have pointed out, you can't diss the effects of clouds or cloud formation. Depending on altitude, clouds may either warm or cool the earth's average T. In particular, nighttime clouds moderate temperature.

Finally, while small volcanoes can have a negligible effect on gas emission, the bigger, more rare ones can belch out quantities that rival or surpass human industry.

In lieu of all this, thrown in human industry. That cannot be trivialized either. Could human beings be contributing to global warming? Perhaps. But human beings cannot perform climate experiments in a mini-earth to verify or discard the global warming theory. All we have is planet earth, and it is a highly complex, multi-variable, and non-linear problem that went through drastic changes before humans and will do so again.

So. As I see it, human beings have much to learn about global warming and what might cause it. The debate is far from over, contrary to what the media is trying to tell you. The believers are pointing their fingers at the skeptics with zeal that calls to mind inquisitors and commissars. They are not behaving like any scientists I have known, who may passionately cling to some beliefs, but are always interested in hearing revisions to the present model and enjoy a good challenging exchange of ideas.

Many of the global warming zealots can be forgiven, though, because they are human beings acting in a very human way, and are convinced that the earth is being ruined and that only they can save it with their persistent efforts. If I were completely convinced, I too would probably act the same way. (Some of the global warming prophets just want to keep their labs running, and scary looking data wins them publications and hence more grant money. But I doubt that this is the case in most examples.)

However, if panicked scientists, howling from ivory towers in academia were the entire story--the tone of news coverage on this issue would take the tone of a debate. Because there are many scientists with plenty-high IQs who might not be convinced--or in the very least--might enjoy publicly playing devil's advocate. But this is not what we see today. And I am puzzled as to why.

My guess is that the reason for this monolithic news coverage about global warming is that hysteria is what the large, multinational corporations want us to hear. As everybody knows, giant corporations are large and powerful, and don't want to struggle to compete for profit in a free market. They would prefer to do it the cheap way: i.e., maintain their power by browbeating governments into creating regulations and fees that out-price the smaller competition and create artificial or exaggerated scarcities. Hmmm... perhaps some of these companies might even include oil corporations!

I'll go even farther. A great many governments--i.e., those in the EU--want to be on board with this, because adjustment to global warming will fall far more heavily on the United States--with its giant land mass, greater extremes of temperature, and vast carbon-processing petrochemicals industry. The UN wants to be on board, and get a peace of the action from a global carbon tax. With a weaker United States, the EU can be the ones sitting in the geopolitical catbird seat.

That's just my 0.02. Human caused global warming--perhaps real. Global warming grandstanding and blatant cynical politicking--definitely real.

The Green Autos-de-fe, they are hybrids are they not?

Originally Posted by Mr. Nick Cohen

in the Observer (UK)

The morning after Al Gore collected the best documentary Oscar for his film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research spoiled his celebrations. Researchers for the right-wing think-tank in Gore's home state used freedom of information legislation to access the fuel bills of his Nashville mansion. They found that while Gore was filming pleas for Americans to save energy, the Gore family consumed more electricity in a month than the average American household did in a year.

The story went round the world but, sensibly, the media treated it as a joke. Exposing a politician or anyone else as a hypocrite damages his standing but not his argument. The case that man-made global warming is causing climate change stands whether Gore leaves his lights on all night or not. The centre hadn't denied global warming; if anything, its call for Gore to practise what he preached was a small contribution to the campaign to mitigate its worst effects. The furious reaction of American environmentalists, therefore, took it aback.

Nicole Williams, the think-tank's vice-president, had to go ex-directory after receiving death threats. Someone posted her old home address on the net, and caller after caller phoned to scream at her. 'I was accused several times of being a "redneck bitch",' she said. 'I was repeatedly called a "whore".'


The American conservative magazine, the National Review, went through 3,000 abusive emails and pointed out how the quickly the veneer of political correctness dissolved. To spare the feelings of delicate readers, I won't quote the choicest messages, but even the publishable insults show an almost racist hatred of American southerners.

'You are the most despicable and pathetic type of people of all time. I hope you all die slowly and have your hearts and brains trampled to pieces, you small-minded, ignorant, backwoods ideologues,' one correspondent declared. There was also homophobia - 'You guys are the faggiest fags I've ever come across' - and murderous fantasies: 'You are a total waste of skin and air. Help the environment and jump off a cliff.'
...


There are many who would be more than happy to see difficult decisions about global warming go the same way - and not all of them from the American right. Earlier this year, Dr David Reiner of Cambridge University commissioned a poll of public attitudes towards energy and the environment. Somewhat embarrassingly, he found that readers of the Guardian, the Independent and - ahem - The Observer were no more likely to have taken specific energy-saving measures than readers of the tabloids and were less likely to have insulated their homes.

Liberal newspaper buyers talked about their fears of climate change and fervently expressed their support for green policies, yet when it came to making personal sacrifices, they imitated Al Gore and backed away.

People will have to be handed over to the civil authorities and the low-emission bonfires can be fed with bitches, whores, faggots found out by the Progressive Inquisitors, that clergy clad in robes of verdure.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Justin is, unfortunately, allowing himself to be drawn into a scientific debate concerning a matter that is essentially political.

Well, that's true, in a sense you may not have intended: the scientific debate is over, the political one needs to begin. Not about WHETHER to do something, but about precisely WHAT.

The environmentalist agenda, which is not identical with a healthy ecological perspective, is to arrest human civilization in the name of planetary security.

Interesting caricature. What environmentalists are you paraphrasing here? Certainly not this one.

What is really needed is a transformation of the culture. A "greening" of popular consciousness

Wait a minute, am I talking to Arkham or to Eric?

If this were 1970, I'd agree with you. As it is 2007, I don't. The popular consciousness is sufficiently green already. The problem lies in the fact that $20 billion in annual federal subsidies are going to the fossil fuel industry, and should instead be invested in green technology and efficiency technology. The problem lies in the fact that the government's priorities all flow towards promoting highways, automobiles, and other uses of fossil fuels. I'm not even convinced we need MORE government action to solve the problems we face (although I'm not convinced we don't, either), but I'm certainly convinced we need different ones than are being undertaken at this time.

All of that is institutional, though, not cultural. It has nothing to do with consciousness and everything to do with politics.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I can acknowledge the problem of global warming might be divided into multiple levels, and effect multiple fields. In addition to science and politics, there will be economic and military aspects as well.

There is also the economic aspect, which will end up driving any response to climate change. Two groups that come to mind who are very worried about climate change are California wine growers and insurance companies. Somehow, Gallo and Allstate don't strike me as running with the PETA crowd.

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

People will have to be handed over to the civil authorities and the low-emission bonfires can be fed with bitches, whores, faggots found out by the Progressive Inquisitors, that clergy clad in robes of verdure.

A while ago, I posted a link to a blogger civility code. The only response was from Zilch, who thought advocating free speech and courtesy a sign of fascist oppression. The problem goes both ways. Conservative websites will also publish personal contact information of opponents, and encourage large numbers of readers to discourage those who speak out. This is one of the behaviors the civility code was intended to deter.

Your own post is an example in itself, associating those you disagree with with the worst of the Agricultural Age religious authoritarians, and using foul language. Yes, bad behavior is inexcusable. Dehumanizing, insulting and harassing political opponents for exercising free speech and voicing valid opinions is inexcusable.

So what's your excuse?

Ad-hominem and strawman are worth zilch. I know you care more for humor than Truth or Clarity, but there ought to be limits to how far you push your insulting characterizations of those who displease you. There are times you give the impression of being a throughtful civilized person. When you drop out of character, it spoils the illusion.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

The environmentalist agenda, which is not identical with a healthy ecological perspective, is to arrest human civilization in the name of planetary security. [Emphasis Added]

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Interesting caricature. What environmentalists are you paraphrasing here? Certainly not this one . . .

. . . I'm not even convinced we need MORE government action to solve the problems we face (although I'm not convinced we don't, either), but I'm certainly convinced we need different ones than are being undertaken at this time.

Arkham is correct that there is a subset of Greens who are essentially misanthropic, but most of the ones I know would agree that the problem boils down to our per capita footprint in regards to the biosphere. And yes, eliminating civilization, or even humanity, would be ONE way of doing that.

But that's not what "most" Greens have in mind. Most advocate implementing solutions that provide us with similar amounts of energy as we have now (if not more) without increasing entropy in the biosphere (at least to anywhere near the degree we do now). In this, er, light, solar and fusion seem very promising.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I can acknowledge the problem of global warming might be divided into multiple levels, and effect multiple fields. In addition to science and politics, there will be economic and military aspects as well. The article I posted on the upcoming Security Council conference on ecological collapse leading to economic, health and security concerns reflects this. Crises are complex. In any crisis, I fully expect to find moral, religious, economic, cultural, political and military elements. This one is not apt to be different.

Thing is, if one expects any sort of logical approach to the problem, you might want to first define the problem, second explore the various alternative solutions, then finally implement that set of problems which are most cost effective and least disruptive.

Or, in short, you have to get your facts straight before you choose a solution.

I don't deny there is politics in science. The object of any research project is to some degree to convince the powers that fund research grants to think their money well spent, and to suggest there will be good return on the next research project by the same authors. There is also politics in politics. The object of each campaign contribution is to improve life in some way for the person contributing. If the individual has a shared concern for all, this can be a good thing. If the person has selfish short term interests, not necessarily so good. The petroleum industry, which financed the current administration, is at least as political as the scientists. Their motivations are not necessarily as benign and universal as the scientists.

Some of the effects of global warming could themselves be Crises. Old and distinguished cities ending up under the waves might not themselves be Crises because people will move, and precious objects will be evacuated to safer places.

Some have argued that world climates would on the whole be moister and milder, allowing greater agricultural production from land that now exists but now is locked out of production because of permafrost. Fine -- except that general change in climate means that some place become hotter or drier. Such densely-populated areas as greater Phoenix, Iraq, the Nile Valley, and Pakistan exist at the warm fringe of habitability. Slightly warmer conditions would make agriculture impossible because outdoor labor would give almost instant heatstroke to anyone. To state that some thinly-populated areas in Canada and Siberia would become temperate ignores that some of those places have no fertility.

But democracy can't work without free speech. With the Bush administration censoring scientific work on global warming, they cross a certain line. If the scientists can't get their findings to the public, the public can't make an informed judgement at the polls. You end up with people like Justin, no scientist, not really reading the research well enough to understand what it is saying, muddling fuzzily along thinking the problem doesn't exist. How can the problem get solved when political censorship of science prevents a solid appreciation of the problem by the public?

It's very simple: people are expected to defer to the only experts allowed to speak -- that is, the special interests whom the Bush Administration has designated as the only ones suitable for making public policy on energy and transportation: the Oil Cartel.

Generally, the mechanism for attacking crisis scale problems has been government. This doesn't mean that big government isn't a good size part of the problem right now. I can share a lot of your concerns about giving government more power. There is a need to find structures in government to give voters more control over government.

It's hardly surprising that government takes a far bigger role in a 4T than in a 3T. The "simple", profit-driven decisions by persons and business entities that seem to work in a 3T break down because conflicts arise in a 4T that almost nobody anticipated. Government in a 4T becomes the arbiter between conflicting groups (let us say the auto industry versus Big Oil) and regions, let alone classes. 3T economics is a thinly-disguised pyramid scheme whose exposure as such contributes to a 4T.

Government becomes the difference for some between being fed and starving, and it also becomes the investor of last resort -- the only entity capable of making certain investments whose benefits are obvious but can't be organized easily for profit.

I'm also concerned about biases towards maintaining the old culture. There is always a faction in any crisis which refuses to acknowledge problems, which profits by old social structures, which does not want to let go of that power which brings with it privilege and wealth. Will science claim more power over capitalists this time around? Will the wealth accumulated by the upper classes be distributed more evenly? Will the gap between rich countries and poor be narrowed? Will votes become more important, campaign finance contributions less? These sort of shifts are typical in a 4T. They are not apt to happen in other turnings. I think such basic shifts in power and values will have to happen if the problems we are facing in this crisis is to be address. I don't see that the problems we are facing can be left unsolved.

1. Science will come out of the 3T as one of the few institutions worthy of obvious trust. It may be too cautious and impersonal for most 3T tastes... but in a 4T its drudgery (most science is drudgery as a career) will be more attractive than much else. The cultural wars that pitted science against religion and politics will be over. The best and brightest will again find science or engineering a more desirable career than, for example, stock brokerage, much in contrast to the world of The Bonfire of the Vanities, almost a stereotypical early 3T depiction of life.

2. The wealth gap will by necessity be resolved by progressive taxes upon those still doing very well (taxing the destitute isn't worth the effort) just to bring budgets in line. In the meantime, the paper profits of the latter part of a 3T will disappear as the speculative bubbles pop and luxury spending based on the belief that the bubble has a solid foundation will disappear. Asset values will plummet, and a lot of them will be written off in accordance with accounting practice. Because much of the wealth is illusory but concentrated in the hands of a comparatively few people, the wealth gap is likely to shrink.

3. Poor countries that have been supplying luxuries to Americans will be burned badly. In a 4T the word "luxury", a word treated in a 3T as if a virtue, will be re-defined to include a lot that people are now buying on impulse -- like videos, recorded music, latest fashions, logo clothing... Americans will be patching and repairing old things, which means that they won't be importing so many textiles. Countries that got in on the ground floor in the textile business, like India and Bangladesh, are going to get burned badly.

Think of the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Until 1930 the United States was one of the biggest importers of silk, and Japan was one of the biggest suppliers. Japan was then far poorer than the United States, but it was already a supplier of high-priced luxuries. Let's not make that mistake again.

4. In comparatively good times, 'cultural' issues are easier to exploit in politics. Karl Rove called such an issue a "metric". In a 4T people will be more concerned with beans and bread than with pie in the sky. Survival will be everything, and political contributions that might have served to fine-tune the economic environment on behalf of a company or an industry will themselves become the sorts of expenses most easily cut from company budgets.

5. People will indeed vote their pocketbooks.

The establishment will resist. They will censor science. They will lie about causes for starting wars. They will obfuscate and evade. They will refuse to see the risks they are taking, and the moral implications of maintaining and old culture that is failing to address the major problems of the time. ... Cultural inertia, often driven by perceived self interest, is a powerful force that can make men less than fully sentient.

So, yes, politics and the drive to power are part of human activity. Whatever else changes this crisis, that is unlikely to change. Men will cling to power and wealth while others strive to overturn them. The establishment has the advantage of being in place, of holding the reigns of power. They tend to lose out in time of crisis to the faction that has the answer to problems the establishment doesn't want to address. Denial of the existence of the problem is traditionally the establishment's first line of defense. It is not in the interests of anybody that we allow this line of defense to stand.

Not long into the 4T, almost everyone will recognize that a return to the 3T is a pipe dream. People now oblivious to the deadly riptides of the 3T will know them more for tragedy than for thrill.