samiuela, Most of the anti-warming sites do seem to justify your remarks. Their are a few exceptions that do appear to be hosted by scientists. Their are a lot of valid questions particularly regarding assumptions that have to be made in the absence of adequate knowledge. Although I can follow the debates (if I skip the mathematical formulae) I lack the specialist knowledge needed to fully assess the merits of the various arguments. I can understand why a large proportion of scientist express doubts about human induced climate change, but having doubts is not the same as disagreeing with the IPCC’s conclusions which is the way the survey results are portrayed by the denialists.

Sadly your second point includes a great many free market proponents. They seem to be as poorly informed about the free market as they are about AGW. If we had a perfect free market the atmosphere would not be an unpriced commodity, incandescent lightbulbs would have no market share because owning them costs a lot more than owner a compact flourescent, and prospective homebuyers would obtain an energy audit as routinely as they abtain LIM reports. Perfect information, rational decision making and perfect competition are prerequisites of a perfect free market. Unfortunately governments seem to be just as imperfect and rarely ensure that the shortcomings in the markets are adressed.

In fact, OPECs apparent realisation that it needs to conserve it’s resource to benefit future generations of it’s own populations is probably the only really effective AGW mitigation strategy that any governments have come up with so far.

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jh,

According to the yearbooks:
1955 670,000
1965 780,000
1975 860,000
2005 1,050,000

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Kevyn, what is the population of the South Island? There was a letter to the editor of The Press re their special feature on statistics. The letter writer had been part of the Lyttelton Tunnel feasability study. He said the population then was the same as now… (I assume there must have been an error in the Press)?
jh

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Kevyn, I partly agree with you.

However, the anti-global warming brigade really piss me off for several reasons:

1) They, by and large (there are a few exceptions) do not understand how science works. They use non-scientific reasoning to try discredit the work of hundreds of good scientists.

2) The same people trying to discredit human caused global warming are not usually advocating any mitigation activity against global warming (which they presumably believe has natural causes). Rather, they usually advocate business as usual. This is different from you sewer example, where action was advocated, but for the wrong reason. People trying to stop actions to reduce the effect of global warming (even if it is later found to be natural) really piss me off in the extreme … they are %^%$&^ around with my and your children’s future.

By the way, _personally_ I would put the probability that global warming is caused by human activity at a lot higher value than the IPCC did. One sobering thought is that scientists tend to be conservative … so when the IPCC says something is likely, what does this really mean (they claim a figure around 90% ….)

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samiuela, you could save time by going through the footnotes in the skeptical environmentalist’s new book. It doesn’t really matter what the scientific consensus is, all that matters is whether the consensus is correct. And even if the consensus is wrong it may still lead to the right solutions. The classic example is the scientific consensus that cholera was spread by the miasma. In London the chief engineer of the Board of Works concluded that the miasma originated from the raw sewage floating on the Thames so he convinced the City of the need to build sewers to take the sewage out to sea. It was only when the scheme was almost completed and cholera and typhoid had been eliminated from most parts of the City that it was proved beyond reasonable scientific doubt that the diseases were actual spread by sewage contimanting the ground water. Right solution, wrong reason.

Even if human induced climate change is proved false the solutions implemented will have reduced other proven environmental problems such as particulate polution and oil depletion. And in the case of northern hemisphere farmers installing biogas digesters there are numerous environmental benefits. Reduced water pollution, reduced electricity and natural gas consumption, less use of petrochemical fertilisers, reduced odour pollution, etc, etc.

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stuey, The infamous hockey stick study hadn’t even made it through peer review when it was highlighted by the IPCC purely for PR reasons. The hockey stick gave the impression that the last centuries global warming was unprecedented. Unfortunately the statistical methods used to identify proxies was seriously flawed and had the effect of eliminating the MWP from the historic temperatures on the graph. The IPCC report that introduced the world to the hockey stick in full page, full colour, also included a much more accurate graph in quarter page monochrome.
Unfortunbately the hockey stick is a beautifully simple graphic so it continues to be used despite being proven false. Nobody knows how to get this particular genie back in the bottle.

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One more thing about this supposed lack of consensus. Can someone please present a list of climate scientists who disagree with the assertion that recent global warming is likely due to human activity (including where they work, and their area of expertise)? This should be easy enough to do if more that 50% of climate scientists really have published papers disagreeing with warming being caused by human activity (author affiliation is included in all the journal papers I have read).

To some enterprising person who might actually want to take this task on, I’ll give you some advice on where to start. Start looking at the abstracts of the American Meteorological Society journals, in particular the Journal of Climate. Abstracts are available for free from here: http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-archive

Happy counting (you won’t need to use too many fingers).

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There are many aspects concerning climate change for which there is not a consensus amongst atmospheric scientists, for example what the impact of climate change on tropical cyclone frequency and intensity will be. However, there is widespread consensus amongst climate scientists that the mean global temperature has been increasing during the last few decades, and that this is caused by human activity.

It is my belief that although further climate research is invaluable, the science of climate change is well enough established that we now need to focus on action to avert the worst consequences. Its all about risk management. We may not be able to deterministically predict all the effects of climate change, but something with a very high cost is predicted with even moderate confidence (such as increased TC frequency and intensity), something should be done.

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PEL: Everyone’s output matters because we’re already emitting too much. If we cut back .1% of global carbon emissions, not only is that .1% that someone else doesn’t have to do, but it might also encourage people polluting fifty times more than us to cut back 5% of global carbon emissions

Also, if by “scientific consensus”, you mean universal agreement, even such things as gravity and relativity have their detractors of certain parts of the theory. Here’s how dictionary.com defines consensus:
1. majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month.
2. general agreement or concord; harmony.

If we’re going by dictionary.com’s definition, the scientific consensus is clearly that global warming is real and very likely to be anthropogenic.

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re that supposed “shocking” new study:

“The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy.”

The study hasn’t even made it through peer review to publication yet!

I could write a paper saying I had done a study showing that 99% of people from Eketahuna like polka music and submit it for publication, but it wouldn’t make it true until people had had a chance to check my methods.

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Using 1990 as the base year instead of 1980 or 1970 ensures that the USA is hit harder than the EU. Using 1980 as the base year would treat EU and USA equally harshly and would also improve New Zealand and the other former soviet country’s position relative to the EU.

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Oreskes responds to Schulte

http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/08/oreskes_responds_to_schulte.php

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There is an analysis form Tim Lambert here

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/08/classifying_abstracts_on_globa.php#more

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From Kiwiblogg

# Redbaiter Says:
September 1st, 2007 at 6:01 pm

Survey: Less than half of all published scientists endorse global warming theory.

http://tinyurl.com/ynoggu
jh

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>>There are very few climate scientists who do not believe

You’re wrong. There is no scientific consensus on AGW, therefore it is true to say opinion remains divided.

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PEL: “when will the Green Party enter [the JunkScience contest]?”

Maybe when you donate the entry fee to us:
http://www.greens.org.nz/office/donate.htm

“A fee of $15 is required for each entry submitted. There will be no refunds of entry fees.”

Hmm, this sounds less like a honest contest and more like a money making exercise. Bit like one of those dodgy premium phone call competitions run by TV programmes.

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OK … I have to correct myself. If China made the same CO2 reduction as the US, it would be a four or five times smaller reduction per capita. My maths is not as good as it used to be.

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PEL writes:

“I also have no idea if we’re causing global warming. Opinion amongst those more knowledgeable than myself remains, of course, divided.”

You are wrong. There are very few (numerically or percentage wise) climate scientists who do not believe the current global warming is caused by humans.

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Stuey,

You make a good point about how emissions reductions should be on a per capita basis, rather than a per country basis. It is my belief that the countries (such as Australia) arguing that they can’t make much difference compared to China, are simply not prepared to take any meaningful action, and are looking for a scapegoat.

Put yourself in the position of a Chinese politician: how would it feel to have a country with one fifth the population (the USA) telling you that you have to make as big a cuts in emissions as it does, which in effect equates to a four or five times bigger per capita reduction? Furthermore, China is being asked to make cuts starting from a much lower per capita emission level than the USA.

Of course, this tactic of comparing a nations emissions to China could backfire on the first world countries. It would be quite legitimate for China to front up to an international climate meeting and say:

1) We realise that cutting CO2 emissions to 40% below 1990 levels is critical for environmental reasons.

2) We agree with you that every nation must take responsibility for reducing emissions.

3) Therefore, we propose a global carbon market, with a cap on credits which is 40% below 1990 levels. To be fair on all nations, every nation should be allocated carbon credits in proportion to its population.

The effect of a plan such as (3) would mean the countries such as Australia and the USA would have to make a much bigger reduction than 40%, and it is quite possible China would not have to make any reduction, because of its much larger population. Indeed, it is easy to see a situation where China would sell carbon credits to the USA.

Of course (3) is very unlikely to be implemented, because the current US, Australian, and now it seems NZ governments don’t have a real commitment to serious emissions reductions.

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I’m really hungry but what’s the point of eating one mouthful of food. I mean one mouthful is not going to stop me being hungry is it?

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