In the Wilds of San Diego

I ran into my friend Tom while mountain biking today ...

... My friend Tom T. Tarantula.

(It be more accurate to say I almost ran over Mr. Tarantula).

More Gloom ... for Apocaholics

The Malthusians of the world are always right until they’re wrong. They’ll warn of impending resource depletion until they’re blue in the face, but time and again human ingenuity (and natural providence) has made fools of them. We’ve seen two welcome new examples of Gaia’s riches this week—what’ll we find next?

So concludes an article at The American Interest. (h/t Instapundit)  It mentions:

 As one of the researchers put it, “[t]here’s a lot more fresh groundwater in California than people know.” The breakthrough here involved searching for water deeper underground than aquifers designated for human consumption typically lie.

...
    

Halfway across the world a different group of scientists employing a novel new detection technique found an enormous new supply of helium gas—an increasingly scarce element that’s critically important for advanced scientific research and medical technologies—in Tanzania. The University of Oxford reports:

[A] research group from Oxford and Durham universities, working with Norway-headquartered helium exploration company Helium One, has developed a brand new exploration approach. The first use of this method has resulted in the discovery of a world-class helium gas field in Tanzania. […]

...
 

Helium prices have quintupled since 2000 as supplies have started to dwindle. You can understand, then, why this discovery is being described as a “game changer,” and not just for the fact of this specific supply alone, either: this was the first place these scientists employed their new surveying technique. They’re batting 1.000, and could now apply this technique in areas with similar geology in different parts of the world.

The Apocaholics, control freaks and statists of varying stripes just never learn...

What's an Animal to Do...

...when desperate?

Find a human to save you, of course!

An injured bull elephant named Ben made his way to the Bumi Hills Safari Lodge in Zimbabwe, in what appears to be a search for help.

The staff at Bumi Hills were very surprised to see Ben, as it is not common for elephants to walk right up to human homes.

Unfortunately, Ben wasn't just popping in to say hello.

Manager Nick Milne realized the 30-year-old elephant was limping and appeared to be severely wounded. [...]

The staff tranquilized Ben and found a deep wound in his shoulder, likely from a poacher's bullet, as well as two more bullet holes in one of his ears.

They were able to clean and disinfect Ben's injuries, and he is now healing on the property, outfitted with a tracking device so the foundation can monitor his improvement.

With the help of his human friends, Ben was lucky to have survived two attacks on his life.

"Settled"

The contribution of scientific experts to a health crisis:

Anyone who thinks it’s enough to rest an argument on “settled science” or a “scientific consensus” ought to read about John Yudkin.
...
“At best, we can conclude that the official guidelines did not achieve their objective; at worse, they led to a decades-long health catastrophe,” Leslie writes.

Nutritionists are only now grudgingly beginning to admit that their approach to nutrition guidelines could have been, well, wrong, and Yudkin’s work is only now being rediscovered.
...

So why didn’t scientists wise up sooner?

Leslie correctly points out that, despite the patina of pure objectivity, “scientific inquiry is prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding toward majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error.”

That’s not to say the scientific method doesn’t eventually correct these errors, but the process isn’t fast or painless.
...
 Yudkin’s plight should be a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks we should blindly follow a scientific consensus, particularly when it involves extraordinarily complex entities like the human body, or when the consensus is used to push public policies that could affect vast populations.

Then there is the consensus du jour about climate:

Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science. 

Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.”) Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.

Progressivism is already enforced on campuses by restrictions on speech that might produce what progressives consider retrograde intellectual diversity. Now, from the so-called party of science, a.k.a. Democrats, comes a campaign to criminalize debate about science.

...

The party of science, busy protecting science from scrutiny, has forgotten Karl Popper (1902–94), the philosopher whose The Open Society and Its Enemies warned against people incapable of distinguishing between certainty and certitude. In his essay “Science as Falsification,” Popper explains why “the criterion of a scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.” America’s party of science seems eager to insulate its scientific theories from the possibility of refutation.
...

These garden-variety authoritarians are eager to regulate us into conformity with the “settled” consensus du jour, whatever it is. But they are progressives, so it is for our own good.

There is nothing wrong with some boldness in believing that knowledge can be advanced by scientific inquiry.  It is however, wise to have substantial humility about the chance for error and the difficulty of error correction in such matters.  This is extremely important when it comes to using such knowledge in the field of public policy.

update: Victor Davis Hanson provides a valuable contribution in The Myth of Progress

President Obama is fond of using the phrase “the arc of the moral universe,” a line derived from Martin Luther King Jr’s longer quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

King, in fact, lifted the often-used sentence from earlier Christian ministers. They, in turn, apparently borrowed the optimistic adage from its originator, Theodore Parker, a mid-nineteenth-century transcendentalist preacher. Obama also frequently favors sayings such as “the right side of history” and “the wrong side of history,” even though these Marxist nuggets refer to the supposed inevitable and morally overdue triumph of statism. Another favored presidential expression is “settled science,” as if natural inquiry always meets the end of history and becomes frozen in amber.

There is an underlying theme in these expressions of President Obama: predetermination. When expressing and implementing his views on government services, taxes, social awareness, racial relations and diversity, gay marriage, foreign policy, or global warming, the president often seeks refuge in the notion that cosmic forces both agree with him and are unimpeachable. As a consequence, further debate is futile. Sophisticates understand that finality; rubes do not.

Let’s take his “settled science” claim first. Unfortunately equating a current preponderance of transitory scientific opinions with eternal truth is precisely the way science does not work. There are some absolute truths in science, like the laws of atomic weight, but much else is up for debate and exploration. The etiology of ulcers and the effects of sunlight on the skin are explained differently today than they were in 1980—and perhaps will be explained differently still in 2080.

Most landmark breakthroughs in any field are not the product of consensus, but the unanticipated work of lone wolves, who were once derided as feral outliers barking at the moon. Had Obama used his majority arguments for settled science against Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin, we might believe that the earth was created 5,000 years ago, gravity did not exist, and the planets revolved around the earth.
...
 “Settle science” became a synonym for progressive dialectics. Obama never references settled science in reference to groups statistically most likely to suffer from hate crimes, or to commit acts of terrorism, or to commit felonies and murders inordinately given their numbers in the general population, or to scientific studies concerning the lack of climate impact from building the Keystone Pipeline, or the proven remedies for California drought relief through additional dams, reservoirs, and canals.
...

What does the president also mean by the “right” and “wrong” side of history, other than equating his side with “right” and thus historically, morally, and logically inevitable? But history has no such predetermined Hegelian course. Roman republicanism and classical culture were certainly on the right side of history for centuries—until life in AD 500 insidiously became far more dangerous, brutish, and materially impoverished. Beheading was supposed to be the signature of past savages, not the highlight of twenty-first-century video ads for ISIS recruitment.
...
Certainly “the arc of the moral universe” may be long, but unfortunately I’m not sure it bends in any particular direction. 
...
And we forget that technological progress can often accompany moral regress—a favorite classical topos from the early Greek poet Hesiod to the Roman elegist and satirist Horace. The gas chambers of the Holocaust were fueled by the most sophisticated cyanide-based pesticide—Zyklon B—that pathbreaking German chemists could concoct. And the crematoria of the death camps were proudly stamped with the trademark “Topf and Sons,” a benchmark of German excellence in the engineering of waste removal.

Nor is there reason to believe that the arc of history bends toward diversity, however noble the sentiment. Prosperous China, Japan, and South Korea have never shared much trust in such ethnic and racial ecumenicalism.
...
 The classical world did not believe in linear progressions, but rather in cyclical ones, often using the metaphor of human birth, aging, and death as a natural referent. Cultures and nations start out in diapers like babies and often end in them too—as do aged humans.
...
 Human nature stays constant as the material world continually transforms. People are not pawns of history or pilgrims skipping up some radiant celestial arc. Sometimes the people, ideas, and movements of the twenty-first century prove better, and sometimes far worse, than those of the past—and they will likewise again when framed against the future.

Human capacity for creativity is truly amazing but so is the willingness to embrace follies such as scientism and historicism.

Part of the official Britain's Met Office forecast for April: "...drought impacts in the coming months are virtually inevitable...".  So confident were they in those predictions that they plastered ads on the sides of buses.

The following picture is the result.

Turns out this picture is not an isolated rainstorm.  Rather, there's been flooding across Britain.  In fact, April was the wettest month for 100 years.

Breaking: Richard Lindzen No Longer a Catastrophic Global Warming Sceptic!

Well, sort of:

"Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating." Richard S. Lindzen, 22-Feb-2012, "Reconsidering the Climate Change Act - Global Warming: How to approach the science", Seminar at the House of Common Committee Rooms, Westminster, London

This latest presentation is an excellent version of his ever improving spiel about why it is very unlikely that the climate is anywhere near as sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide as climate alarmists would like you to believe.

We All Agree

Scientists continue to be surprised at the "denialism" of "non-scientists" regarding global warming: "I am surprised at the way some of the scientific findings have been rejected in an unscientific manner."

I'm surprised they're surprised (why are they such slow learners?), but I've given it some thought and I've formulated the problem in a way we can all agree:

The world has warmed by some amount, human activity is responsible for some part of that warming, human emissions are responsible for some portion of the human related warming, human emissions of CO2 in particular are responsible for part of the warming due to human emissions in general, and since humans will continue to release CO2 into the atmosphere and there is some amount of warming "in the pipeline", some amount of warming will occur in the future.

Without assigning specific numbers to each bit, this view does not in any way contradict the "scientific consensus". In fact, this covers everybody from those who deny any sort of warming (just fill in zeros for everything) all the way to the most rabid warmenist who is certain that the seas will rise 100 meters and boil us all to death.

Isn't it wonderful that we can all agree? Oh sure, the devil's in the details, and we still have to argue about those pesky percentages and amounts of warming. But the other fun thing is that if you ask any two scientists to independently pick numbers, they'll most likely pick somewhat different numbers.

Therefore, we have an overall general agreement of everybody and a specific consensus of nobody. Perfect! Science can progress once again.

The Warming Phoenix Rises From the Ashes

The argument for doing something about climate change is, in my opinion largely based on "appeal to authority". In other words, if climate scientists say something is so, then it must be so.

That's why Climategate was so damaging to the warmenist cause. The credibility and therefore the authority of the main IPCC scientists was called into question. Without that credibility, the warmenists main argument was damaged and public support for doing something disintegrated.

The National Research Council was funded by Congress to study climate change and has now produced 3 reports totalling over 800 pages. I've scanned the first 100 pages and it looks to be nearly a complete regurgitation of the IPCC's last report (AR4), except that at the end of many sections the primary conclusion was that new bureaucracies and scientific organizations should be created to continue studying climate change.

How clever! Since the IPCC's credibility was damaged, why not take more or less the same material and have some scientists with reputation intact spout the same old alarmist stuff. Now the warmenists can appeal to authority again and march forward to world domination or whatever their goal is.

The credibility of the IPCC is dead - long live the credibility of the National Research Council!

Truuuuust Meeeee!!!

Climate scientists are becoming concerned that the public no longer holds them in high esteem and no longer finds them trustworthy. It seems that the leaked University of East Anglia emails ("Cimategate") showing scientists in a less than stellar light coupled with numerous revelations of mistakes in the IPCC's reports has enraged much of the public, especially in Britain.

As a result, many scientists are trying to reach out to the public in order to restore that trust. An example is Dr. Judith Curry's essay that was posted on several skeptics blogs. Here's an excerpt:

Rebuilding trust with the public on the subject of climate research starts with Ralph Cicerone’s statement “Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” Much has been written about the need for greater transparency, reforms to peer review, etc. and I am hopeful that the relevant institutions will respond appropriately. Investigations of misconduct are being conducted at the University of East Anglia and at Penn State. Here I would like to bring up some broader issues that will require substantial reflection by the institutions and also by individual scientists.

Climate research and its institutions have not yet adapted to its high policy relevance. How scientists can most effectively and appropriately engage with the policy process is a topic that has not been adequately discussed ... The interface between science and policy is a muddy issue, but it is very important that scientists have guidance in navigating the potential pitfalls. Improving this situation could help defuse the hostile environment that scientists involved in the public debate have to deal with, and would also help restore the public trust of climate scientists.

The problem is not so much that the scientists are untrustworthy (some are, some aren't just like all other humans), but rather that the system itself is untrustworthy. The interface between science and policy is not "muddy" at all. It's crystal clear that interfaces like that are ripe for corruption and distortion, and not at all amenable to seeking and finding truth.

I decided to write Dr. Curry an email to point that out:

Dear Dr. Curry,

I read your excellent post regarding "Rebuilding Trust" with the public. You are certainly to be commended for being one of the first (and bravest) to attempt to begin a dialogue between an at least somewhat disillusioned public and the Climate Science Community.

However, I believe you've overlooked a critically important question:

Can the overall political-social-scientific system itself be trustworthy when it comes to Climate Science?

If that overall system is untrustworthy, it makes no sense to trust the output of anybody that's part of that system.

From my days of studying Economics and Political Choice Theory, any time you have a mix of big-government, big-advocacy, government funded science, and the possibility of using the output of that science to further big-government and big-advocacy ends, ClimateGate is exactly what you’ll get.

Every time.

It’s not the fault of anybody or even any group. It’s inherent in the system.

I believe that we cannot trust climate scientists because they are part of an utrustworthy system. And there is no way to make the system trustworthy.

Where there is money and power, there is corruption.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. (Lord Acton).

You (and many other scientists) may be saints, but unfortunately, we can't trust the system.

Thanks,
Bret

She actually responded:

Bret, thanks for your email. You may be right, but somewhere in there science needs to be science, and the institutions that support science need to do much better job. Not sure how all this will play out, but hopefully reason will play a role somewhere in all this!

If reason plays a role, I suspect she won't like the result.

Post-Normal Science

Climate scientists have not been shown in a particularly favorable light lately. The "Climategate" emails, a number of high-profile mistakes and retractions by the IPCC, and the continued inaccuracy of the predictions of the climate models have shown the climate scientists to be all too fallible, biased, and not particularly trustworthy human beings.

An Oxford philosopher, Jerry Ravitz, has contemplated the special stresses put on the interface between science and the public and policy makers when there is a situation which can be described as "facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent".

He considers it to be a new paradigm and calls it:

"Post-Normal Science, which until now has not really attracted very much attention in the mainstream. I’ve met people who found it an inspiration and liberation, as it enabled them to recognise the deep uncertainties in their scientific work that colleagues wished to ignore. ... We are not saying that this is a desirable, natural or normal state for science.

"We place it by means of a diagram, a quadrant-rainbow with two axes. These are ’systems uncertainties’ and ‘decision stakes’. When both are small, we have ‘applied science’, which must be the vast majority of scientific work in keeping civilisation running. When either is medium, we have ‘professional consultancy’, like the surgeon or consultant engineer. The basic insight of PNS is that there is another zone, where either attribute is large."

Ravitz, as is the wont of many philosophers, tends to use a thousand words to explain a concept where ten would almost do. The other 990 words are used for nuances that are ornately twisted into pretzels and chained together to embroider and frame the concept (this paragraph is my feeble attempt to directly illustrate the sorts of extraneous prose used by philosophers - did I succeed?). As a result, it's very difficult to know exactly what the hell he's trying to say.

But the gist is that under the "decision urgent" criterion, it is permissible - nay necessary! - for scientists to frame the debate in such a manner that the public and policy makers will come to the "correct" conclusion and therefore take the "correct" actions.

It's no wonder to me that Post-Normal Science "has not really attracted very much attention in the mainstream" since it has some rather serious problems, in my opinion. The most glaring is that if we have "facts uncertain", then in general, and with Climate Change in particular, how can we know that we're in a "decision urgent" state? Especially since "decision urgent" is then used to trump truth, honesty, ethics, legality, and all of the other mores and institutions upon which civilization is built. Especially when the "correct" conclusion involves committing staggering levels of resources, remaking civilization, and consigning masses of humanity to poverty. Other than that, hey, I'm an open-minded kinda guy.

Unfortunately, Post-Normal Science has attracted attention in the Climate Science community. Using Ravitz's logic, Stephen Schneider, a Stanford Climatologist wrote:

...we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.

While the above statement is fairly old (1989), at this point it's pretty obvious to me that this attitude is pervasive throughout climate science, especially for those scientists who interact with the media, directly or indirectly. But Schneider left out one thing. Not only are the scenarios scary, but remember, the science is settled, especially if it's Post-Normal Science.

Subjective Warming

Let's say that scientists determined with certainty that pistachio is the best flavor for ice cream. Pistachio ice cream lovers everywhere would no doubt scream, "I told you so!" and many people might switch to eating only pistachio ice cream. Those of us who dislike pistachio ice might be a little skeptical of the settled science, but we probably wouldn't much care and would continue to enjoy other flavors. The pistachio ice cream lovers might then call us skeptics or deniers and look down on us from their moral high ground.

None of this would much matter, unless pistachio ice cream lovers and scientists latched onto politicians (or vice-versa) to have the government ban (or at least tax and regulate) all flavors of ice cream other than pistachio. This clearly crosses an important line since one group is now limiting the subjective choices and opportunities of the second group. Yet nobody was ever stopping anyone from eating pistachio ice cream.

Now substitute "something should be done about global warming" for "pistachio is the best flavor for ice cream". The substitution, while having elements of absurdity, works surprisingly well.

Even if one accepts that global warming is happening with certainty, and even if one accepts that the scientific consensus is that something should be done about it, once that group forces its subjective preference for doing something on the rest of us, a very serious line is crossed.

It's the line of oppression and totalitarianism.

Hide the Decline

I'm glad I posted my view of the science, economics, politics, and philosophy of Climate Change before the recent email hack of the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia. It enabled me to be a brave contrarian speaking truth to overwhelming consensus (or something like that), whereas now I seem to be just one of the majority skeptics.

I'm, of course, not even vaguely surprised by the revelations found in the emails, code, and data released by the hack. The revelations in and of themselves are not seriously damaging, in my opinion. However, they completely vindicate skeptical climate folk like McIntyre, Lindzen, Svensmark, Spencer, etc. and make it far more likely that people will listen to them now, and in the future. The tide (so to speak) is turning against climate alarmism, and just might be unstoppable.

I sure hope so.

Not Evil, Just Wrong

I just watched the premiere showing of the movie "Not Evil, Just Wrong", a movie/documentary focused on the negative consequences of radical environmentalism.

It's mostly just preaching to the choir, but they were innovative in their approach:

The film highlights the tragic consequences of the first triumph of the environmental movement, the ban on DDT, which has needlessly resulted in the deaths of more than 40 million children and adults in the developing world.

Actually, I'd say the movie more than just highlights the consequences of the DDT "ban". More than 20 minutes were devoted to it with many graphic scenes of children dying of malaria interspersed with seemingly clueless rich white environmentalists saying how important the prohibition on the use of DDT is. While powerful, the case against the environmental movement and the claim of 40 million deaths seems significantly overstated.

Continuing on, the case against Climate Change Alarmism is straight forward. It basically amounts to saying, "See the catastrophe that happened the last time the environmentalist had their way? We'd better stop them from taking action against Global Warming or really bad things will happen again!"

The choir will no doubt eat that up, but those who belong to the Church of Warming are unlikely to buy into this logic since they very likely consider the reduction in the use of DDT a huge success, even to this day.

People who have not yet made up their minds, however, may be swayed because the malaria scenes are compelling. If the Warmenists are not able to produce enough evidence or propaganda in the media to convince those still deciding that much of the movie is untrue, the movie might convert a few more people to the skeptics side.

I hope it does.

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming - A High Level View

Instead of just looking at the science of climate change, I've analyzed it from several different perspectives. In a nutshell, this is what I've found.

Science

Common sense tells me that the fact that we exist and are the result of life having evolved over billions of years indicates that the climate is quite stable as far as life forms are concerned. This is especially true given that "[f]ive hundred million years ago carbon dioxide was 20 times more prevalent than today"[1] and that the climate has been adequately stable to support evolution and ecosystem diversity through catastrophic disasters such as meteor strikes and massive volcanic eruptions.

It is true that common sense isn't always correct. However, when a proposition defies common sense, I require an especially rigorous burden of proof on those making the proposition. That burden of proof is nowhere close to being met.

Global temperatures are affected by the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. All else being equal, a doubling of the concentration of CO2 will increase the average global temperature by 1.2 degrees Celsius[2]. An increase of 1.2 degrees Celsius is very unlikely to be catastrophic.

The scientific case for catastrophic man-made global warming rests on a set of computer models called General Circulation Models (GCMs). These models incorporate positive feedbacks that amplify the warming due to CO2. In other words, a little bit of warming due to CO2 becomes much more warming because of hypothesized effects such as increased water vapor (water vapor also traps heat). Instead of 1.2 degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2, the GCMs, with the positive feedbacks predict much larger warming, in the range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius per CO2 doubling[3].

These feedbacks, while plausible, are not proven. Indeed, some of the effects expected by the GCMs from such feedbacks have not been observed in the real world. For example, while the models predict the warming of the tropical troposphere to be 2 to 3 times larger than the warming of the surface, this relationship has not been observed[4]. In fact, recent research[5] based on measured Sea Surface Temperatures and measured outgoing radiation indicate an overall negative feedback which means that there could be substantially less than 1 degree increase in temperature resulting from a double of CO2. Also, using finer cloud simulations within the existing GCMs seems to reduce the predicted temperature increases[6]. The above are just a sampling of numerous articles that cast doubt on the more extreme global warming predictions.

There are other plausible explanations for whatever warming occurred last century. For example, changes in solar activity may have significant impact on cloud formation[7] in addition to its small, direct effect on temperature. To date, relatively little effort has been expended on researching these alternate explanations, but they are, in my opinion, plausible, and not disproved.

In summary, the science of Catastrophic Global Warming defies common sense, has not been proven, and alternate explanations have been neither adequately researched nor disproved.

Economics

Any significant climate change (in either direction) will produce winners and losers, both in terms of life forms in general and human life in particular. However, given the observation that the density of both life and humanity are much higher in very warm climates than very cold climates coupled with the fact that the GCMs predict that most of the warming will occur in colder climates[8] leads me to doubt predictions of severely adverse economic impacts from global warming.

One of the most dire and well known economic analyses of climate change is The Stern Review[9]. It concludes that we should immediately begin investing at least 1% of global GDP in order to reduce CO2 emissions and that an investment of this magnitude (over $400 billion per year) will produce positive future returns by reducing the impact of climate change.

However, in my opinion, the Stern Review and other economic analyses with similar findings are seriously flawed. First, the Review "depends decisively on the assumption of a near-zero time discount rate combined with a specific utility function. The Review’s unambiguous conclusions about the need for extreme immediate action will not survive the substitution of assumptions that are consistent with today’s marketplace real interest rates and savings rates."[10]. In other words, the Review assumes far, far lower interest rates than can be found in the real world. Spending large sums of money on preventing CO2 emissions will adversely affect billions of people now, miring substantial numbers of those in prolonged poverty. Note that this spending, to be effective, also assumes some level of efficiency. Unfortunately, governments are not particularly good at efficiency.

A second problem is that the Review seriously underestimates future innovations which will mitigate the impact of climate change. If one considers the technological progress that has been made in the last century and projects it forward to the next hundred years, it seems nearly certain that humanity will be ever more connected, mobile, and able to cope with the environment. It's also far from clear that CO2 emissions will continue to increase as predicted. Other technologies such as solar, geothermal, nuclear fission and fusion, etc., will continue to become more cost effective and may displace fossil fuels as energy sources anyway.

In addition, there are likely to be some benefits to warming and these benefits are downplayed in the Stern Review. For example, other economic studies conclude "that moderate warming is an overall benefit to mankind because of higher agricultural yields and many other reasons."[11] This fits with the observation that mankind does better where it's very warm rather than where it's very cold.

Politics

Even if the upper end of the predicted warming occurs and even if the economic analyses like the Stern Review are accurate, it's far less clear that it's useful to take action if only a few rich countries are willing to do anything about.

India and China have flat out refused to reduce future emissions with India even questioning the science of global warming[12][13]. As these countries represent nearly ½ the global population, it make little sense for much smaller countries such as the United States to live substantially less well in order to slightly slow the rate of increase of CO2, especially given that the per capita increase in CO2 emissions in the United States is slowing anyway[14].

There is no reason to get governments involved. If taking action is such a good idea, people can act individually and in non-government groups in order to reduce their carbon footprints. If there are only a few skeptics who don't follow, those few skeptics will have limited impact. In other words, if you think reducing carbon footprints is a good idea, by all means, reduce yours.

There's very little evidence that the world will be able to take significant concerted action anyway. For example, Lomborg[15] shows that the Kyoto Treaty (if the signatories had actually lived up to there promises) would have only delayed the climate change due to CO2 emissions by six years out of 100.

Religion

Catastrophic Global Warming has all the trappings of a religion. The god is “Gaia”, the pope is Al Gore, the priests are (most) climate scientists, they know the Truth (with a capital “T”) with certainty, the message is essentially “Repent or the end is nigh!”, Creationism is alive and well since “Gaia” is apparently supposed to have a specific CO2 level and associated climate, and heretics are dealt with nastily.

As such, Catastrophic Global Warming should be subject to the same Separation of Church and State doctrine as other religions. The believers should, of course, be free to proselytize and live their own lives according to their beliefs, but should not be allowed to impose their beliefs on the rest of us via government taxes and regulation, and should not be free to proselytize in our children's schools.

The concept that if we don't take action against CO2 emissions then we're immoral is not fundamentally different than any other religion that claims that you're immoral if you don't believe in God and live your life according to the Dogma of that religion. There is no objective morality here, Carbon Dioxide has no morally correct level, and there is no morally correct global temperature or climate.

Furthermore, when subjective opinions are stated as objective fact with the goal to control the behavior of others, that is a significant evil. When the majority or even a vocal minority imposes its subjective beliefs on others, that is tyranny and is a major evil.

Summary

Taking action to reduce CO2 emissions in the United States in order to prevent the possibility of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming makes little sense from any rational perspective. The science is not adequately well understood, economically it makes little sense, and it's not politically possible on a global scale. If people wish to choose that as a religion, that's fine, as long as their beliefs aren't imposed on the rest of us.

References

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide

[2] Committee on the Science of Climate Change, National Research Council. Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, pp 6-7.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10139&page=6

[3] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, p 38.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf

[4] Lindzen, R.S. (2007) Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously, Energy & Environment, 18, pp 937-950.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/230_TakingGr.pdf

[5] Lindzen, R.S., Choi, Y.S. (2009) On the Determination of Climate Feedbacks from ERBE Data, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 36, No. 16. (26 August 2009), L16705.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf

[6] Wyant, M.C., Khairoutdinov, M. & Bretherton, C.S., 2006. Climate sensitivity and cloud response of a GCM with a superparameterization. Geophys. Res. Lett, 33, L06714.
http://eos.atmos.washington.edu/pub/breth/papers/2006/SPGRL.pdf

[7] Svensmark, H., T. Bondo, and J. Svensmark (2009), Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 36 L15101.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038429.shtml

[8] Houghton, J.T., Ding, Y. et al, (2001): Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Publications of the IPCC, p 384.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/384.htm

[9] Stern, N., (2008): The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, Cambridge University Press.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/stern_review_report.htm

[10]Nordhaus, W., (2007): The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XLV, pp. 686–702
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/stern_050307.pdf

[11]Happer, W. (2009): William Happer Testimony to Senate Energy Committee, February 25, 2009
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=84462e2d-6bff-4983-a574-31f5ae8e8a42

[12] Lamont, J. et al. (2009): India Widens Climate Rift with West, Financial Times, July 23, 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2896b88-77bd-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

[13] Taylor, P. (2009): China, Russia, Now India: Reject Global Climate Controls,
Los Angeles Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-3089-LA-Ecopolitics-Examiner~y2009m7d6-China-Russia-Now-India-Reject-Global-Climate-Controls

[14] Energy Information Administration (2001): World Energy Use and Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1980-2001, Department of Energy
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/carbonemiss/index.html

[15] Lomborg, B. (2001): The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cambridge University Press, p. 302

Priests of Warmenism

In a comment on a totally unrelated topic, Peter Burnet wrote:

Hardly anybody is qualified to build or interpret climate models. We are all beholden to what the experts say. Even if a layman sets out to study the competing claims of climate scientists carefully, he still is pretty much restricted to comparing theories/conclusions and has a hard time critiquing their underlying methodologies systematically by measuring them against experience.

The "experts" want you to be beholden to what they say and Peter has closed his eyes and walked blindly into their trap.

Virtually all of climate science is based on typical everyday experience and a few minor and easily understood bits of physics. We've all noticed that sunlight (also called visible radiation) makes objects warmer when it strikes them and that when those heated objects are moved out of the sun they begin to cool but we can't visibly see the warmth emanating from them. We've all noticed that hot air rises (in a hot-air balloon, thermal, etc.) and that when the hot air is also moist (humid) that clouds form when it cools sufficiently as it rises. Etc., etc.

The climate is difficult to predict not because the physics is difficult, but because it is so chaotic. All the bits of earth, ocean, and atmosphere heating and mixing at different rates and interacting with each other produces really, really complex responses that are impossible to characterize analytically. So scientists make statistical climate models to try and mimic the past and predict the future. They are really little more than software hackers and statisticians and know little more science (physics) of relevance to their task than the average layman.

So no, we aren't beholden to the priests of warmenism unless we want to be.

Hurricanes Versus Bill Gates

Question: What's the difference between Bill Gates and God?
Answer: God doesn't think he's Bill Gates.

Gates' latest area of playing God involves the simple matter of stopping hurricanes:

Recent patent filings have shown Bill Gates and his friends exploring subjects as diverse as electromagnetic engines and beer kegs. Now they're thinking even bigger -- trying to stop hurricanes.

Microsoft's chairman is among the inventors listed on a new batch of patent applications that propose using large fleets of vessels to suppress hurricanes through various methods of mixing warm water from the surface of the ocean with colder water at greater depths. The idea is to decrease the surface temperature, reducing or eliminating the heat-driven condensation that fuels the giant storms.

The filings were made by Searete LLC, an entity tied to Intellectual Ventures, the Bellevue-based patent and invention house run by Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft chief technology officer. Myhrvold and several others are listed along with Gates as inventors.

The idea is actually pretty simple. Large tubes from the surface of the ocean to some depth are attached to floating platforms. Waves slosh over the edge of the platform and the warm surface water from the waves run down the tube to the depths, requiring no external energy source. Build a gazillion of them, stick them in the possible path of a serious hurricane, and presto!, the hurricane is downgraded a couple of notches relative to what it would've been since it no longer has access to that very warm surface water that would fuel it.

Since these could be completely passive devices, it wouldn't cost all that much to build them. The only question is could you actually build and deploy enough of them to make a significant difference.

Oh! And in the long term, there'd be even more heat and energy in the ocean which would mean even more intense and destructive hurricanes. But hey, that's for another generation to worry about.

Where's the Buzz?

On June 2nd, Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, made a presentation at a conference showing empirically that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is 0.5 degrees Celsius. Since the climate models show a sensitivity that is 3 to 10 times larger, if Lindzen's findings are accurate, this would simultaneously invalidate the results of the climate models and eliminate the possibility of catastrophic man-made global warming. Indeed, at the end of his presentation, Lindzen states:

However, for the low sensitivity obtained from the actual climate system, we see that sensitivity is narrowly constrained to about 0.5C, and strongly implies that there is little to be concerned about.

In a normal field, these results would pretty much wrap things up, but global warming/climate change has developed so much momentum that it has a life of its own – quite removed from science. One can reasonably expect that opportunism of the weak will lead to efforts to alter the data (though the results presented here have survived several alterations of the data already).

It seems to me like this should be fairly big news. Lindzen is well known, with a long track record, from a relatively prestigious institution, with astounding results.

But there is remarkably little buzz. There's no mention that he's going to submit these results in a paper for peer review. The global warming skeptics don't seem to have much noticed these appealing results. The global warming believers haven't bothered to refute it.

The quiet seems strange to me. The debate has never lacked volume before.

Fire up the Skeptics

Everyone is a Skeptic when it comes to religion. There are so many religions that it is impossible to be a believer in all of them so we are Skeptical about at least some of them. For the most part, we keep our Skepticism to ourselves because there is limited downside to letting others believe in whatever they choose to believe in as long as their attempts to convert the rest of us to their beliefs are kept within reasonable bounds.

However, if a religion exceeds those bounds, Skeptics will come out of the woodwork to attack that religion. Nobody wants to belong to a church that they believe is False. The propensity to not belong to someone else's church is so strong that wars have been fought over this sort of thing.

The Church of Human Induced Catastrophic Global Warmenism has exceeded reasonable bounds in trying to convert us all. This Church wants to use the full force and authority of the governments worldwide to force us to join. They want to limit our economic and political freedoms to force us to at least behave as if we believe.

To a great number of people, this is simply not acceptable and, sure enough, there is surge of Skeptics appearing all over the world.

I am one of those Skeptics. The science and economics on which the Church rests is full of holes, and unless that religion is one you wish to subscribe to, it may be safely ignored. If you do wish to subscribe to Global Warmenism, by all means please do so and limit your own energy usage and material consumption as you see fit.

Just don't impose your religion on the rest of us. Thanks.

Monckton of Global Warming

While I think he's a bit of a loose cannon, I rather like this letter and paper by Monckton for being able to describe (and refute) numerous aspects of the science of Global Warming in terms that I think are understandable by a layperson with relatively little familiarity with scientific terminology.

global what?

Top Russian scientist: global cooling coming

For the remainder of this century, it will be global cooling we'll have to worry about, according to highly credentialed Russian scientist, Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin.

The high standing of Dr. Sorkhtin and the inherent plausibility of his argument that climate will continue to follow the same basic causal factor, solar activity, make this another heavy blow to the heavy breathing of the global warming alarmists, who insist there is no argument at all.

We shall see. Meanwhile, we have this:

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980).

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

It will be fun to watch this play out in the public arena.