Latest on Climate Change, Previous Data Unreliable

[Dru]

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_muller101504.asp

[Bill_Simpkins]

Very good article!

Science must withstand testing and scutiny.

[foraker]

interesting. thanks for that Dru!

[scott_harpell]

wow

[bunglehead]

That was a good article.

 

I just hope we don't have global cooling like in

"The Day After Tomorrow"

YIKES! That was the scariest B-movie I've seen this year on global warming!

[Bill_Simpkins]

Watch out bunglehead, next ice age may chase you down the hallway.

[JayB]

"It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution."

 

Good luck.

 

My prediction is that this will have all the impact of the "Hobbit" discovery has had on the field of "Creation Science," which is to say none whatsoever, because ideology has played at least as significant a role as data in the climate change debate. Ditto for genetically engineered crops, etc.

[Dru]

I'd love some of that global cooling, I could climb all the Fraser Valley waterfalls.

[iain]

It might keep eggnog on the store shelves longer too! And that can only be a good thing.

[Dru]

"It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution."

 

Good luck.

 

My prediction is that this will have all the impact of the "Hobbit" discovery has had on the field of "Creation Science," which is to say none whatsoever, because ideology has played at least as significant a role as data in the climate change debate. Ditto for genetically engineered crops, etc.

 

Um, no - I was sent the article by the Climate Change automailer I'm signed up to. This is the scientists themselves paying attention to the problem. Not Rush Limbaugh or whoever. I don't doubt though, that guys like Bjorn Lomborg will use this report out of context to argue that climate change is not occurriong or is not a problem.

[j_b]

Science must withstand testing and scrutiny.

 

yes, it does. this is why McK & M's work will be heavily scrutinized, which is more than what the author (muller) of this article did. Mann and coauthors disagree that their method is off, so do a number of others who have looked at it.

 

http://davidappell.com/archives/00000427.htm

[Dru]

It reminds me of the Thomas & Megahan vs. Jones and Grant peak flow hydrology debates of the late 90's. All settled now with the second generation of hydrology modelling programs definitively answering the question.

[j_b]

for those interested, further discussions of McK's work:

http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2004/10#mckitrick8

 

http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/muller.html

 

also of note, mann et al's "hockey stick" is only one of 3 independent reconstructions of past temperatures which show the same thing.

[RobBob]

Okay, I'm starting to buy into the climate change idea. But you guys still are a bunch of pussies. Reason is that this fits into your whole rage against the machine philosophy, so naturally your solution to this problem is to force US industry to its knees and take away cars from Americans before you think the rest of the world ought to do a fucking thing about it themselves. And you don't think that we ought to leverage the shit out of this issue when trading with the people who are the biggest offenders and who are importing our jobs and $: Primarily those in Asia.

 

I say put heavy trade sanctions in first. No free trade with China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. until emissions are honestly enumerated and regulated , whether they be dung fires in the home, or sweatshops, or vehicles. Stepwise moves into "free trade" as the playing field levels, in both rates of pollutants per unit of hydrocarbons used...and in birth rate.

 

The number of people on this planet has a tremendously simple relationship to its present and future environmental problems. We can simultaneously deal with the Asian brown cloud AND fairly level the economic playing field to ALL nations' advantage in this manner.

[Bogen]

Also see:

 

http://davidappell.com/archives/00000427.htm

 

The gist of it, as with lamberts blog, is that muller's "findings" haven't passed peer review, and that it seems muller has some inconsistant and personally driven history with the subject.

[j_b]

rob - good to hear you are coming around on the idea of climate change. the more of us understand that we have to start acting now, the better we will be able to lower emissions before damage of potentially catastrophic proportions occur (although some think there is already evidence that some of the extreme climatic events of the past few years are due to climatic warming).

 

as far as i know, we emit the largest amount of greenhouse gases (ghgs) both as a fraction of the whole and per capita. it certainly does not change that everyone on this earth has to start changing their habits; however industrialized nations started spewing significant amount of ghgs a long time before others did and thus bear a greater responsibility than folks trying to move on from a mostly pastoral society to modernism. i am personally not opposed to placing some environmental constraints on developping nations but preventing free trade would hurt them as much as it would hurt us and probably condemn them to develop in the most environmentally unfriendly fashion possible. furthermore, a lot more work remains to be done in assessing the true cost of reducing emissions. i don't believe it is clear that once we develop genuine alternative to fossil fuels and account for, among others, the burden on public health, the cost of reducing emissions would so damning.