Among the many depressing aspects of our current political discourse is the proudly anti-science stance adopted by one of our major political parties. When it comes to climate change, in particular, Republicans are increasingly united against the scientific consensus. What’s interesting is that this is not simply an example of a conservative/liberal split; elsewhere in the world, conservatives are not so willing to ignore the findings of scientists.
Republicans are alone among major parties in Western democracies in denying the reality of climate change, a phenomenon that even puzzles many American conservatives. Denialism is growing among the rank and file, and the phenomenon is especially strong among those with college degrees. So it doesn’t seem to be a matter of lack of information, so much as active disinformation. Republican politicians are going along willingly, as they increasingly promote anti-scientific views on the environment. After the recent elections, GOP leaders are disbanding the House Select Committee on Global Warming.
What makes American conservatives different from other right-wing parties around the world? Note that it wasn’t always this way — there was a time when Republicans wouldn’t have attacked science so openly. I have a theory: it’s Al Gore’s fault.
Actually it’s not my theory, it comes from Randy Olson. For a while now Randy has been vocally skeptical about An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s critically-acclaimed documentary about global warming. I was initially unconvinced. Surely the positive effects of informing so many people about the dangers of climate change outweigh the political damage of annoying some conservatives? But Randy’s point, which I’m coming around to, was that for all the good the movie did at spreading information about climate change, it did equal or greater harm by politicizing it.
By most measures, Al Gore has had a pretty successful career. Vice-President during an administration characterized by peace and prosperity, winner of the popular vote total during his Presidential run, co-founder of Current TV, winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Nobel Prize. But to Republicans, he’s a punchline. It’s an inevitable outcome of the current system: Al Gore was the Democratic nominee for President; therefore, he must be demonized. It’s not enough that their candidate is preferable; the other candidate must be humiliated, made into a laughingstock. (Ask John Kerry, whose service in Vietnam was somehow used as evidence of his cowardice.) The conclusion is inevitable: if Al Gore becomes attached to some cause, that cause must be fought against.
Here is some evidence. You may think of Jay Leno as a completely vanilla and inoffensive late-night talk-show host. But he’s a savvy guy, and he knows his audience. Which is mostly older, white, suburban middle-class folks. Which political party does that sound like? Between January and September of 2010, Jay Leno made more jokes about Al Gore than about Sarah Palin. You read that right. This is while Palin was promoting books, making TV specials, stumping for candidates, and basically in the news every day, while Gore was — doing what exactly?
Once Al Gore became the unofficial spokesperson for concern about climate change, it was increasingly inevitable that Republicans would deny it on principle. This isn’t the only reason, not by a long shot (there’s something in there about vested interests willing to pour money into resisting energy policies that are unfriendly to fossil fuels), but it’s a big part. Too many Republicans have reached a point where devotion to “the truth” takes a distant back seat to a devotion to “pissing off liberals.” With often nasty implications.
What the United States does about climate change will be very important to the world. And what the U.S. does will be heavily affected by what Republicans permit. And Republicans’ views on climate change are largely colored by its association with Al Gore. As much as I hate to admit it, the net real impact of An Inconvenient Truth could turn out to be very negative.
Gore himself doesn’t deserve blame here. Using one’s celebrity to bring attention to an issue of pressing concern, and running for office in order to implement good policies, are two legitimate ways a person can help try to make the world a better place. In a healthy culture of discussion, they shouldn’t necessarily interfere; if any issue qualifies as “bipartisan,” saving the planet should be it. But in our current climate, no discussion of political import can take place without first passing through the lens of partisan advantage. Too bad for us.
Examining evidence and deciding for oneself certainly sounds appealing, but the plain reality is that at least 99.999% of humans on Earth do not have the time or other resources to learn enough of the facts to make a reasoned judgement about AGW. To decide how to act you have to trust someone, and so the big question is how to decide whom you can trust. In some ways, this is and will remain the central question of the 21st century.
I don’t have any grand answers, but can relate an approach I use when I observe a debate that I’m not qualified to judge myself, which is to ask “Who here is showing better habits?” Two bad habits I often observe, in discussions on many topics, weigh particularly against the AGW deniers/skeptics/what-have-you at the current time:
1. Over-exaggerating the significance of tiny bits of data. Without even trying, it’s quite easy to find officially “smart” people, eg nationally syndicated columnists, writing things like “But the temperature on the tiny island of Outer Sandusky is actually decreasing! So much for global warming!” The data for any particular year, or any particular location, are vastly over-inflated as “disproving” the general trend if they go the other way. Similarly with the research itself: if a handful of scientists, perhaps 1% of the people working on the problem, are found to be inept, corrupt or mistaken then this somehow “proves” that the entire community cannot be trusted.
Yes, it is true that in the study of extremely simple phenomena, like particle physics, a beautiful theory can be “slain” by the ugly fact of a single wrong prediction; but even in that field, theories that are known to fall short of ultimate truth can still provide a lot of predictive power, often enough for a “close enough” answer as needed (ie Newtonian gravity is “wrong” but works just fine for the vast majority of applications).
2. Changing the subject from facts to personalities. I can’t provide videotape here, but it’s nearly universal in my experience that exchanges about AGW will devolve from focussing on the realities of thermodynamics and chemistry into discerning bad motivations in others. A lot of denial/skepticism of AGW that I’ve witnessed is really nothing more than people saying “Al Gore is a sanctimonious blow-hard, therefore anything he says must be wrong!” You don’t need a lot of scientific or logical training to see that the second half of that does not follow from the first half.
The same goes for people who devote all their energy to perceiving conspiracies: “Dissent is being suppressed! They just want more funding! It’s all part of a socialistic takeover agenda!” Declarations of bad faith on the part of others don’t budge the thermometer one bit either way, you know? Facts are what they are, and atmospheric chemistry doesn’t care whether Al Gore is a blow-hard or not. In short, when I see one side spending 99% of its time talking about data and models and uncertainty ranges, and I see the other side spending 99% of its time screaming about how they’re being disrespected and squelched, well, that’s a strong indicator of who’s practicing science and who’s practicing politics.
Dan L wrote (#106) regarding nuclear power plants: “They pump incredibly toxic, very weaponizable waste and there is no way around that.”
Actually there may be. Google “Integral Fast Reactor.” It looks like this could greatly reduce (not eliminate) the problem of long-lived nuclear waste. That’s if development is ever finished. (Clinton stopped it in 1994, three years short of completion.)
This thread is like many I see lately on the subject of climate change: It starts off with people repeating long-debunked talking points. Then people who know what they’re talking about chime in, and it turns into a pretty good discussion. Let me summarize a few early comments.
Things go well for a long stretch. Then, Craig Goodrich (#119) steps up to the plate: “I mean, after two decades and countless billions in research funding, the climate pscientists* have come up with zero [evidence].”
Yup, other than decade after decade of measurements showing the planet’s average temperature rising generally in step with increasing CO2, while sunlight intensity stayed constant or declined slightly. And isotope ratios demonstrating the extra CO2 comes from fossil fuels. But anyone can ignore that “barely discernible” one-degree rise. (The quoted phrase is from Richard Lindzen.)
The evidence is there, mountains of it. You just aren’t aware of it, or are pretending not to be aware of it. Do I have to make it any plainer or blunter?
* Damn, that’s clever. But I think you meant to write “psientists.”
Paul Stankus, Thank you. You’ve redeemed the thread.
Paul Sankus says “Examining evidence and deciding for oneself certainly sounds appealing, but the plain reality is that at least 99.999% of humans on Earth do not have the time or other resources to learn enough of the facts to make a reasoned judgement about AGW.”
Exactly, this is the nub of the matter. Every scientist knows perfectly well that he can question issues in his own narrow field, but outside of that, he accepts the scientific consensus developed as the consequence of peer review . Which just happens to be the best way we have of arriving at the truth of a matter. We always have a few outspoken contrarians, which ordinarily is a good thing as it makes us sharpen our arguments but in this case it is poisoning an important public debate.
The degree of consensus (amongst the experts in the field) helps form the degree of trust we put in the matter. And it so happens that amongst climate scientists there is a high degree of consensus about AGW. It is not enough to snidely dismiss this as an argument from authority as this is an important part of the way science works.
it is funny that the peer reviewed paper argument is brought up so often in support of the view that political actions are needed immediately.
i do not know why “denialism” is so rampant among the physics community, but i can tell one anecdotal story. some of my colleagues (all theoretical physicists) became extreme sceptics after the un report on climate change. why? because this is not how science works. un reports are not peer reviewed papers. and even more, the influence of politics (i.e. big money, lots of permanent position for friends who might happen to find favourable conclusions etc.) is undeniable at this stage. in short, in their eyes the whole community has lost its scientific neutrality with this report.
@131
Exactly. Science does not work the way ‘climate scientists’ operate.
The accepted way is:-
Invent theory -> make predictions -> perform experiment -> if results confirm the predictions then maybe the theory is correct. If not, then the theory is Wrong.
Climate science does it backwards, viz
Make predictions -> Invent theory -> write computer model -> predict future results -> write press release.
No science in there at all. How I wish Feynman was still with us.
The motivation of client scientist is regularly mis-cast by “deniers”. Client scientists are human, and humans tend to have a bias towards their work. Pardon using myself as an analogy, but it’s certainly a subject I know well, as follows (please bear with me):
I am an IT Professional specializing in Microsoft products. I get paid based on my prospects purchasing Microsoft Products. As such, I have a bias toward Microsoft Products. With this, I honestly think that Microsoft has the best options. Is it because they do? I really don’t know because I’ve never spent any significant time researching the options of other companies. I don’t need to know anything about Unix, Oracle, etc. because I get all the information I need to argue against using those products by attending conferences and symposiums that tell me why Microsoft products ARE the correct choice. I can also pull out a “war sheet” to counter the arguments of my competitor. The war sheet is created by Microsoft spending significant resources to help me make my case against their competitors.
Does this make me part of a conspiracy? Does this make me disingenuous? Perhaps… But it’s not an intentional bias toward my competition, it’s based on me having blinders on because I’d like to continue the career in which I’ve spent over a decade.
I’ll spare the words to connect this analogy back to AGW scientists, I think it easy enough to do on your own. And I would think anyone, in any line of work, can see these same biases in themselves.
“client scientist” duh Bob, that’s what I get for blogging at work 😉 Obviously was going for “climate scientists”
Ben #72 is correct about invoking alarmism in discussions. I actually think that there is a deeper issue with alarmism. Typically, the conservative people have decided what the right issues to be alarmist about are, based on their subjective feelings. Typically, these are Iran’s nuclear program (this has replaced Saddam’s WMD threat), Islamic terrorism, Julian Assange etc. etc. Climate change does not appear on this list because that would be in conflict with conservative ideology.
Conservatives do what they do… meaning conserving the status quo. They’d use any scapegoat possible to deny warming or deny its consequences. If Gore wasn’t involved, they would say climatologists are communists. And I believe they actually do.
#114,
“I used “> 1 million” as short hand for “> 650 thousand.” I should have guessed you might have trouble with that.”
Well, yeah! I am a mathematician!
You also missed the fact that we were talking about CO2 levels, not climate.
Yes, I thank Al Gore for awakening me to the fraud that is AGW Alarmism. When he declared the “debate over”, I knew it could not be and I was correct. His propaganda science fiction film has been debunked in a UK court,
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore’s ‘alarmist’ climate change film (Daily Mail, UK)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486969/Judge-attacks-errors-Al-Gores-alarmist-climate-change-film.html
The scientific errors in his film overwhelming,
35 Inconvenient Truths: The errors in Al Gore’s movie (Science & Public Policy Institute)
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Gore has discredited himself by pushing propaganda and making silly declarative statements.
I am college educated, support evolution theory and am religiously agnostic so I fail your usual stereotypes.
As for the question of ideologies, ask any alarmist scientist,
Socialism or Free-Market Capitalism?
I am never surprised by the response.
@ 18. onymous,
It is disappointing to see so many pushing Oreskes propaganda book filled with lies,
Clouding the Truth: A Critique of Merchants of Doubt
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/894.pdf
Pages 170-183
– Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate (PDF) (Nicolas Nierenberg, Walter R. Tschinkel, Victoria J. Tschinkel)
http://www.nicolasnierenberg.com/uploads/1/1/6/6/1166378/hsns4003_02.pdf
Pages 190-197
– The Revelle-Gore Story: Attempted Political Suppression of Science (S. Fred Singer)
http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817939326_283.pdf
“by Sean
Among the many depressing aspects of our current political discourse is the proudly anti-science stance adopted by one of our major political parties.”
“Eppur si muove.”
Capere?
You are not of a position to demand the kissing of whatever is your ring.
Oh, btw,
I’m an atheist, or something largely like it, who earned my living for more than two decades teaching Astronomy in colleges and planetariums.
I’m a non-affiliated political Independent, having been both Democrat and Republican in moments of cognitive weakness.
Yours is the most depressing aspect of our current political discourse: Not so smart as you imagine.
See Trenbeth’s figures here for earth’s radiation budget:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/EarthsEnergyBalance.html
Note that a DOUBLING of CO2 would supposedly increase the flux by about 3.7 watts, from a total of about 490, including latent heat, to about 493.7. Temperature is roughly proportional to the 4th root of the radiation flux, so tempearatures, without any feedback, could be predicted to increese by a factor of (493.7/490)^0.25 = 1.00188.. or about 0.5 + C under current temperatures. Since the effect of CO2 is roughly logarithmic, a quadrupling would only result in about a 1.1C or so increase. We’ll run out of cheap oil long before the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere quadruples.
The scare CAGW figure come from assuming large positive feedbacks, contrary to the
natural history of our planet. The sun started out with about 70% of its current luminosity, yet earth’s oceans have remained liquid throughout that 40% increase in luminosity. In the real world, there have been NEGATIVE, not positive, feedbacks.
The sensible solution is to let the natural market decide when we switch from oil to other sources of energy.
We conservatives are not anti-science, we’re correctly assessing the CAGW arguments as
pseudoscience.
“2010 on Pace to Be Warmest on Record, NASA Says”
“Analyses by the two other repositories of global temperature data, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center and a joint record kept by Britain’s Met Office and the University of East Anglia, also show a warm 2010, and both project that the year will probably either tie or exceed their all-time records for average temperature.”
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/2010-on-pace-to-be-warmest-on-record-nasa-says/?ref=science
This thread in Tim Lambert’s blog, Deltoid, gives a fascinating example of the dishonesty in the denialist camp.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/12/rosegate_rose_does_to_data_wha_1.php
Alan D McIntire wrote: “The scare CAGW figure come from assuming large positive feedbacks, contrary to the natural history of our planet. The sun started out with about 70% of its current luminosity, yet earth’s oceans have remained liquid throughout that 40% increase in luminosity. In the real world, there have been NEGATIVE, not positive, feedbacks. “
Congratulations. Have you bought your tickets to Oslo yet? Having disproved 150 years of climate science, you’re a shoo-in for next year’s Nobel.
—-
OK, enough snark. You’ve put serious effort into your post, and it deserves to be taken seriously. (Though I’m not sure where you got that figure of 490W/m^2.)
Climate scientist Chris Colose writes:
Near the end of this (Part 1 of a 2-part treatment), Colose writes:
In other words, the mainstream view is that these feedbacks amplify the sensitivity by a factor between 6 and 12, roughly. The problem for you, then, is to demonstrate why these feedbacks do not aggregate to a net positive effect on sensitivity, or if they do, why it is insignificant. Let us know how that works out.
Ref:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/09/introduction-to-feedbacks/
I’ve never witnessed such a stupid or more materialistic younger generation in my life! Do what you’re going to do. You’ll age and die like everyone else and hopefully the earth will extinguish you all sooner than later!
wow what a grumpy old man.
i’m pretty sure most of the climate-deniers, just like the gay-bashers, racists, xenophobes, etc etc are your age buddy, not youngsters.
a more materialistic generation huh? what about the one before ours who are responsible for the gluttony of america’s oil use, the rampant consumerism, the addiction to pharmaceuticals and cars, and thirty years of growing economic inequality?
everyone i know eats all their food from the dumpsters that wastefully gets thrown out by people your age eating at restaurants and by companies run by people of your age.
your generation is responsible for us having enough nuclear bombs to blow up the earth 2500 times.
your generation is responsible for perpetual war and empire building.
your generation is responsible for the building of the infrastructure that contributes to carbon in the air like freeways and suburbs and super markets.
your generation is responsible for the vile representative politics that is enthroned to big money.
it’s like you guys saw black peoples fight for civil rights, got pissed about vietnam, and then when that ended, voted for nixon and reagan and thirty years of getting more and more conservative.
don’t blame us, mister, we just got here. and can you really blame most of that our heads are always stuck to some virtual spectacle? i mean, look at the world you’ve given us …
22,000 children die because of poverty every day in the world because of your generations acceptance of inequality and clinging to privilege. former farmers starve in slums because your generation gladly supports imf restructuring and investment ‘innovations’.
however, will ours be much better? probably not. i mean, look at our parents…
In reply to Chris Winter: The figures come from
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/EarthsEnergyBalance.html
which I referred to earlier. The earth’s surface receives 168 watts directly from the sun, 324 in “back radiation”. Add them together, and you get 492. I rounded to 490 in my prior post.
Note that the sun started out with about 70% of its current luminosity, and with liquid water oceans, implying temperatures of over 273 K. Current temperatures, with a luminosity of 1, average about 287 or 288 K, not the over 273* (10/7)^0.25 = 298.46 we’d get with NO feedbacks. As I stated previously, we have gotten NEGATIVE feedbacks from the real world
For more, see
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442%282001%29014%3C2976%3APBOTES%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Chris Colose is figuring that 0.3K effect from a 4 watt incrrease to a 240 watt flux. That 240 watts is what the earth receives and radiates at the top of the atmosphere, not what the earth’s surface receives, closer to 490 watts thanks to back radiation. That 490 watts includes about 100 watts in convection and latent heat of vaporization.
The Stefan-Boltzmann equation for a blackbody goes
T(degrees Kelvin) = S(constant)*(watts/square meter)^0.25. Our first step is to find that S constant.
Doing a google search, I find 1000 K implies a blackbody flux of 56790 watts/square meter.
1000K = S* (56790 watts/square meter)^ 0.25. Click on your calculator and use the scientific view. Plug in 56790
X^Y
0.25
=
and you get 15.43718 Divide 1000K by 15.43718 and you get S = 64.77867
We now know
T(kelvin) = 64.77867 ( watts/square meter)^0.25.
Let’s plug in some numbers.
At 100 watts per square meter flux,
T = 64.77867 * 100^0.25 = 204.848 K, at 400 watts per square meter,
T = 64.77867 * 400^0.25 = 289.699 K
T = 64.77867 W^0.25. From elementary calculus, the derivative of that
equation will give you the sensitivity.
dT/dW = 64.77867* 1/4 * (W^(-3/4)) = 64.77867*1/4 * (1/(W^0.75)).
At 100 watts/sq meter, you get a sensitivity of
64.77867*1/4*(100^-0.75) = 64.77867*0.25* 0.0316228= 0.512121 K/watt per meter squared
At 400 watts/sq meter, you get a sensitivity of
64.77867*1/4 *0.01118034 = 0.181062 degrees K per watt per meter squared
If you don’t know elementary calculus, just figure what the temperature increase would be
with a 1 watt increase, and you’ll get close to the same answer. You’ll get even closer by using a 0.1 watt increase, a 0.01
watt increase, etc. Using this method is actually easier than messing with that derivative equation above.
T = 64.77867*W^0.25 for 100 watts we get
T = 64.77867* (100^0.25) =204.848. for 101 watts we get
T = 64.77867* (101^0.25) =205.358 so a 1 watt increase gives a temperature increase of
205.358-204.848 = 0.51 K per watt meter squared
At 400 watts per square meter, you get a sensitivity of
T = 64.77867* 400^0.25 = 289.699
T = 64.77867* 401^0.25 = 289.87991
289.87991-289.699 = 0.1809 K per watt meter squared.
The flux at earth is about 1368 watts. When you consider the fact
that the earth is a sphere,
with a surface area of 4 pi r^2, and the face presented to the sun
is a circle with an area of
pi r^2, the average flux is (pi r^2/4pi r^2)= 1/4 * 1368 = 342
watts.
For a blackbody, climate sensitivity would be
1/4 dT/ dS
For a surface temperature of 288 K, this amounts to
(1/4)( 288K/342 watts) = 0.21 K/watt
Earth is not a blackbody, the albedo is about 0.3
342 watts *(1-0.3) = 239.4 watts
For a “graybody” earth,
dT/dS = 1/4 (288 K/239.4 watts) = 0.3 K/ watt
That’s where Colose gets his figures, by using Boltzmann’s
equation. which gives a figure for
climate sensitivity of 0.21K/watt to 0.3 K/watt.
@147: Alan, lets complete the analysis. Doubling CO2 causes about a 4W/m2 change in insolation, so then you end up with the nonfeedback sensitivity of 1.2K. There has been a lot of work on the feedbacks, and when these are added in, the total climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is probably between 2 and 4.5K. The midrange 3K, is about half the T change to bring us out of the last ice age.
Didn’t it occur to you that Global ‘Warming’ is a punchline due to the extreme cold in recent years as well as Climategate emails showing it to be nothing more than a hook to get grant money?
Those inconvenient truths made Al Gore, who occupies a huge ‘carbon footprint’ (giggle) the poster boy and chief punchline.
In reply to Mitch. You’ve ignored my post regarding the “faint young sun” paradox (do a web search) and the fact that the feedback in the past has been NEGATIVE.
As to the 1.2K, Colose is in effect computing what the effect on temperatures would be if the greenhouse multiplier stayed the same as it is now, and the output received by earth increased from 240 to 244 watts. What SHOULD be computed is the effect at earth’s surface
when the output from the sun remains the same, at 240 watts, and the surface flux increases from 490 watts, (390 sensible + 100 latent), to 494 watts.