Article: Climbate Change Irreversible - What to do now?

MasterChief096 · 2012-07-10, 04:33 AM

http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...imate-refugees

http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...time-get-ready

These two articles basically state we've already screwed ourselves. We now need to take action to mitigate the suffering necessary to get through the tribulations ahead.

I've known this for awhile, I am a pretty avid science reader, I am subscribed to several journals and magazines, and am majoring in Biology/Astronomy.

However, most articles always retain some sort of optimism for our condition, while over the past few months I've noticed a general trend in articles becoming more pessimistic.

What do you think? The solutions presented are IMPOSSIBLE, yes literally IMPOSSIBLE for the world to implement in the TIME FRAME needed to mitigate damage and survive the coming effects.

People should have listened to climate scientists 60 years ago when shit was already hitting the fan and data was already turning up, instead of shunning them and scaring people away from the field.

I really wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef one day... dammit.

Vreki · 2012-07-10, 05:59 AM

Just wait for someone to post an article that argues the opposite.

It should be obvious by now that science really don't have a clue with regards to large scale phenomenons like the earth's climate.

So each scientist goes off writing about his own pet theory, and due to the sheer number of different opinions one of them will possibly be almost right.

But good luck guessing which one beforehand.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-10, 06:17 AM

Originally Posted by Vreki

Just wait for someone to post an article that argues the opposite.

It should be obvious by now that science really don't have a clue with regards to large scale phenomenons like the earth's climate.

So each scientist goes off writing about his own pet theory, and due to the sheer number of different opinions one of them will possibly be almost right.

But good luck guessing which one beforehand.

It's important to understand that scientists don't operate like the crazed ones you see in comic books, toiling away in solitude and slowly going mad investigating the secrets of the universe. They don't work in a vaccuum. Instead, they usually communicate their findings on a constant basis, working with others in their field, and publish papers that consist of research conducted by teams of individuals all working towards similar goals.

The general consensus seems to be that the damage is severe and we're still not doing much to stop it from getting worse, and the longer we take, the worse we're making it for ourselves. The specifics are under debate, but predicting the future is enormously difficult. But just because a climate scientist can't tell you what the ocean levels will be on April 9th, 2035 doesn't mean the findings should be disregarded until he can.

Vreki · 2012-07-10, 06:38 AM

I will believe them when they start to agree, but as it is now we get a steady stream of conflicting opinions.
There is always something new out there waiting to kill us all, which must be fought at enormous cost to society.
Holes in the ozone layer, radon in our houses, mad cow disease etc.
And yet a couple decades later that threat will just be a footnote in history.

"Science" has cried wolf one time to many.

therandomone · 2012-07-10, 07:18 AM

Originally Posted by Vreki

I will believe them when they start to agree, but as it is now we get a steady stream of conflicting opinions.
There is always something new out there waiting to kill us all, which must be fought at enormous cost to society.
Holes in the ozone layer, radon in our houses, mad cow disease etc.
And yet a couple decades later that threat will just be a footnote in history.

"Science" has cried wolf one time to many.

I think you're mixing up science and media. There is quite a difference in the two, just look at Fox!

Figment · 2012-07-10, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by Vreki

I will believe them when they start to agree, but as it is now we get a steady stream of conflicting opinions.

Ehr...

Could you define "start to agree"? 20% of scientists in the field of climatology? 40%? 60%? 80% 90%? 99.999999%?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...fic_literature

Surveys of scientists and scientific literature

97–98% of the most published climate researchers say humans are causing global warming.[106] In another study 97.4% of publishing specialists in climate change say that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.[107]
Main article: Surveys of scientists' views on climate change

Various surveys have been conducted to evaluate scientific opinion on global warming. They have concluded that the majority of scientists support the idea of anthropogenic climate change.

In 2004, the geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change.[108] She analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and concluded that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Oreskes divided the abstracts into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Seventy-five per cent of the abstracts were placed in the first three categories (either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view); 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, thus taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. None of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be "remarkable". According to the report, "authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point."

In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that "currently available scientific evidence" substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; and 84% believe global climate change poses a moderate to very great danger.[109] [110]

Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey in August 2008 of 2058 climate scientists from 34 different countries.[111] A web link with a unique identifier was given to each respondent to eliminate multiple responses. A total of 373 responses were received giving an overall response rate of 18.2%. No paper on climate change consensus based on this survey has been published yet (February 2010), but one on another subject has been published based on the survey.[112]

The survey was composed of 76 questions split into a number of sections. There were sections on the demographics of the respondents, their assessment of the state of climate science, how good the science is, climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation, their opinion of the IPCC, and how well climate science was being communicated to the public. Most of the answers were on a scale from 1 to 7 from 'not at all' to 'very much'.

To the question "How convinced are you that climate change, whether natural or anthropogenic, is occurring now?", 67.1% said they very much agreed, 26.7% agreed to some large extent, 6.2% said to they agreed to some small extent (2–4), none said they did not agree at all. To the question "How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?" the responses were 34.6% very much agree, 48.9% agreeing to a large extent, 15.1% to a small extent, and 1.35% not agreeing at all.

A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 76 out of 79 climatologists who "listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change" believed that mean global temperatures had risen compared to pre-1800s levels. Seventy-five of 77 believed that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature. Economic geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in significant human involvement. The authors summarised the findings:

It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.[107]

A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers and drew the following two conclusions:

(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.[113]

In an October 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, researchers from George Mason University analyzed the results of a survey of 489 scientists working in academia, government, and industry. The scientists polled were members of the American Geophysical Union or the American Meteorological Society and listed in the 23rd edition of American Men and Women of Science, a biographical reference work on leading American scientists. Of those surveyed, 97% agreed that that global temperatures have risen over the past century. Moreover, 84% agreed that "human-induced greenhouse warming" is now occurring. Only 5% disagreed with the idea that human activity is a significant cause of global warming.[114][115

Also... Stream of conflicting opinions? Have you been watching Republican channels again young man? Because they're the only ones who - as a party under strong corporate influence from companies which try to avoid having to invest in costly ecological protecting measures - insist it's all bullox based on the opinion of JUST OVER 1% OF SCIENTISTS IN THE FIELD OF CLIMATOLOGY.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-10, 08:08 AM

Originally Posted by Vreki

I will believe them when they start to agree, but as it is now we get a steady stream of conflicting opinions.
There is always something new out there waiting to kill us all, which must be fought at enormous cost to society.
Holes in the ozone layer, radon in our houses, mad cow disease etc.
And yet a couple decades later that threat will just be a footnote in history.

"Science" has cried wolf one time to many.

A couple have already jumped on you based on the things you said in the part I've bolded above. Allow me to jump right on top of that pile.

It is the nature of science that there is almost never 100% agreement. It's actually vital that this be the case, otherwise scientific knowledge would never improve. There always has to be someone willing to poke at something and ask, "Yes, but really?"

If you listen to lectures or read essays by scientists, you will oftentimes find that the most exciting discoveries are when previously-held standards are shown to be false, because we're always replacing the old-and-wrong with the new-and-closer-to-right. But if you're waiting for science to be in 100% eternal agreement on everything, man, I suggest you just give up on science and go be a priest. Because that's just not the way it works.

Scientists investigate the evidence and draw the best conclusions that evidence provides us. We cannot but act in accordance with that evidence until new, better evidence is discovered or provided. To sit on your hands and do nothing until you get handed a Golden Ticket is to sit forever doing nothing. To say nothing of the fact that when it comes to climate change, there's a wide swath of agreement, and the disagreements tend to focus on the specifics.

And for Odin's sake, people... stop watching cable news. It makes you stupid.

Vreki · 2012-07-10, 08:24 AM

Obviously I am no going to trace very single quote on wiki, but just a few examples:

Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey in August 2008 of 2058 climate scientists from 34 different countries.[10] A web link with a unique identifier was given to each respondent to eliminate multiple responses. A total of 373 responses were received giving an overall response rate of 18.2%. No paper on climate change consensus based on this survey has been published yet (February 2010), but one on another subject has been published based on the survey.[11]

A study where only 1 in 5 responds is flawed since it is not a truly random sample. You do not know if those with a particular viewpoint are more likely to respond, or encourage each other to answer through their network.

The section "Surveys of scientists and scientific literature" includes a survey of people who published scientific articles on climate change:

'A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 76 out of 79 climatologists who "listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change"'

And that was answered by this:

This poll is not relevant as it contains a fundamental flaw. People who publish articles on climate change are of course more likely to believe in climate change. How much time is someone likely to spend studying something they believe does not exist? Surely if you polled people who write scientific articles about dragons, you would find most of them believe in dragons

Lets take another quote from wiki:

The strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain, which is measured by its ability to make falsifiable predictions with respect to those phenomena. Theories are improved as more evidence is gathered, so that accuracy in prediction improves over time.

And I have yet to see them do that. They probably cant due to the time-scale and large number of factors involved.
So yes, temperature may be increasing. Is it human caused and irreversible? And will it continue to increase?
How are they going to prove that? Can they make any falsifiable predictions to validate their claims?

As for the Republicans channels, they are pretty much restricted to the asylum, so we don't get them over here in EU.
On the contrary the scary stories off global warming tend to be what makes it into the newspapers in slow periods. Because scaring people sells newspapers. AND gets your research papers quoted, for that matter.

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

Scientists investigate the evidence and draw the best conclusions that evidence provides us. We cannot but act in accordance with that evidence until new, better evidence is discovered or provided. To sit on your hands and do nothing until you get handed a Golden Ticket is to sit forever doing nothing. To say nothing of the fact that when it comes to climate change, there's a wide swath of agreement, and the disagreements tend to focus on the specifics.

And for Odin's sake, people... stop watching cable news. It makes you stupid.

Thats a bit presumptive, FOX News is largely an American phenomenon. Over here they are mostly known for The Simpsons

And since we are talking scientific methods, I would like to quote these two maxims.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
"Correlation does not imply causation"

Figment · 2012-07-10, 08:56 AM

Originally Posted by Vreki

And I have yet to see them do that. They probably cant due to the time-scale and large number of factors involved.
So yes, temperature may be increasing. Is it human caused and irreversible? And will it continue to increase?
How are they going to prove that? Can they make any falsifiable predictions to validate their claims?

Computer simulation models with controlled input (meaning you can also try to show it would happen if humanity hadn't done anything different by simply applying the data from natural changes).

So yes, they can make those models. And they happen to accurately predict the climatological changes over the past hundredfifty years as the anthropogenic models correspond far more accurately with the data received.

Meaning the model conforms accurately with reality. If you let the model run along to extrapolate, the main point of questioning is the input. Which is why models are always ran with various likely or possible inputs, next to trying to find some optimal inputs.

So really, all you need to do to verify they're not right, is to show the models are wrong and the input is wrong, while with accurate model and input you'd get a similar accuracy in results or better.

Vreki · 2012-07-10, 09:10 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

Computer simulation models with controlled input (meaning you can also try to show it would happen if humanity hadn't done anything different by simply applying the data from natural changes).

So yes, they can make those models. And they happen to accurately predict the climatological changes over the past hundredfifty years as the anthropogenic models correspond far more accurately with the data received..

But there lies the problem. Those models are based on historical data, so of course the output of those models will match the historical data. To be predictive, it will have to match future data, and there we again have the problem with the timeframe.

Now, I am actually a great fan of clean energy, and think it is a worthy goal regardless of global warming. And I also think that we should take note of changes in the environment and adapt to them before its to late.

But I argue against The End of Days Due To Global Warming being presented as a fact. It is not. It is a theory, and IMHO one that is a bit weak on the parts that usually are required to be called a scientific theory. e.g. falsifiable predictions.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-10, 09:28 AM

Originally Posted by Vreki

But there lies the problem. Those models are based on historical data, so of course the output of those models will match the historical data. To be predictive, it will have to match future data, and there we again have the problem with the timeframe.

Now, I am actually a great fan of clean energy, and think it is a worthy goal regardless of global warming. And I also think that we should take note of changes in the environment and adapt to them before its to late.

But I argue against The End of Days Due To Global Warming being presented as a fact. It is not. It is a theory, and IMHO one that is a bit weak on the parts that usually are required to be called a scientific theory. e.g. falsifiable predictions.

As has been pointed out in many times in many places, there's nothing more reliable in scientific parlance than a Theory. Gravity is a Theory. Conservation of Energy is a Theory.

Theories are the graduate degrees of scientific ideas. They are literally the highest honor an idea can be awarded. So saying "It's just a theory" is like saying "He's only dead." There's nothing bast the 'just'.

Theories are falsifiable, yes. That's why science is better than, say, voodoo.

Vreki · 2012-07-10, 09:46 AM

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

As has been pointed out in many times in many places, there's nothing more reliable in scientific parlance than a Theory. Gravity is a Theory. Conservation of Energy is a Theory.

Theories are the graduate degrees of scientific ideas. They are literally the highest honor an idea can be awarded. So saying "It's just a theory" is like saying "He's only dead." There's nothing bast the 'just'.

Theories are falsifiable, yes. That's why science is better than, say, voodoo.

No, they are Scientific Theories. But a theory does not become scientific just because it is made by someone with a degree. In fact, that would make all my theories scientific

As far as I can see, Global Warming does not fullfill this criteria for being a Scientific theory: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...ntial_criteria)

The defining characteristic of all scientific knowledge, including theories, is the ability to make falsifiable or testable predictions. The relevance and specificity of those predictions determine how potentially useful the theory is. A would-be theory that makes no observable predictions is not a useful theory. Predictions not sufficiently specific to be tested are similarly not useful. In both cases, the term "theory" is hardly applicable.

Or at least, it has not been validated, and can not be so for a significant timespan, possibility decades, simply because it predicts events that we cannot reproduce in a laboratory, but must observe as they happen.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-10, 09:58 AM

I'm not commenting on climate change in this sense. I'm just pointing out that you're using the word 'theory' wrong. What you're talking about is a 'hypothesis'.

I just find it very annoying when someone says something can't be trusted because it's "just a theory". Now, 'just a hypothesis' is a fine objection; that's an idea that is still being tested. The pitfall of climate change is it's a hypothesis that we're still investigating because we're trying to build predictive models based on information that is staggering in its variability. What I don't think, however, is that it's all a hoax, or that there is no profit to fundamental, sustainable, permanent changes to our energy consumption.

It's like, what's the worst that happens? Oh no, we've made the planet all clean and nice, for no reason. What a bummer. I hate living in clean environments. Phooey.

Vreki · 2012-07-10, 10:19 AM

Fair enough, we mostly agree then.

ziegler · 2012-07-10, 10:26 AM

Your main problem with bringing the masses on board...is the scientists themselves. 40 years ago, we were all going to freeze to death say the scientists.....and yet...here we are.....

Then when you do something like the gent from england, in destroying the data you based your hypothesis on and expect everyone else to accept it.

We're getting hotter...so is mars. Humans may have a slight impact on global warming, but it is not the main factor and regardless of what humans do...the earth will still be here. Perhaps without humans...but I dont think that would be a bad thing. Global warming scientists arent worried about the planet...they are worried about controlling humans.

Too many scientists are not concerned with doing accurate science, but more so in coming up with science that supports their belief.