Scientists are obviously flip floppers. And lord knows conservatives/republicans and anti climate change* deniers hate flip floppers! *wait, do I mean global warming? Gosh, the name change obviously invalidates things. Nevermind
I've got no problem with them evolving their view. I just wouldn't take it for gospel when they've been so wrong so recently, and continue to be wrong. The IPCC, for example, keeps revising its expectations toward the skeptics' expectations. They'll eventually get all the way there when their current predictions don't hold water.
Science is the art of always being a little wrong, but progressively more right, until you're really wrong... and being okay with all of it. http://kottke.org/13/09/temperature-chart-for-the-last-11000-years The paragraph that is most interesting to me is: "But also, what would have happened had the Industrial Revolution and the corresponding anthropogenic climate change been delayed a couple hundred years? The Earth might have been in the midst of a new ice age, Europe might have been too cold to support industry, and things may not have gotten going at all." So really, the 1977 TIME cover article wasn't wrong, necessarily; it's just that the data was revised and journalists are awful - AWFUL - at accurately representing science without sounding alarmist. Climate change as a "discussion" gives us all enough red herrings to point at to avoid doing anything meaningful about being excellent to the only place we've ever lived, and that makes me a sad panda.
Time is not a scientific journal Let me educate you on the point of notions of cooling in the 70s. Climate was not well understood in the 70s. In 1975 US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council reported "…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…" Also, a survey of peer reviewed scientific papers from 1965 to 1979 show that while a few papers predicted global cooling (7 in total) significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming.
Time is not a scientific journal. They just report what the scientists write in their journals. They should have won a nobel prize! Sorry if I chuckle a bit at the link you posted. It's so much spin, I'm getting dizzy from reading it. The coming ice age deniers have to cleanse history ! You don't have to educate me about science in the 1970s, I was around back then, were you? In the 1970s, they were using things like ice cores and tree rings and other measures of climate/global warmth. Computer models, too. As much as we see crap blasted in the news about AGW these days, there was as much about the coming ice age back then. The funny thing you wrote in your post is "without the fundamental understanding..." - well it is near impossible to have a fundamental understanding of a system as complex as the earth's climate. This is why the computer models consistently are proven wrong, why the science that algore relied on to assure us there'd be no ice in the arctic this year is wrong, ad infinitum. Bryson isn't the snake oil salesman here. He's telling the truth. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.” Like I said, I'm fine with science adjusting its view of things as it learns, but it is dubious that when the science fails there's a rush to spin the failure into a "it still doesn't mean we're wrong." Over and over.
Still, does the idea of changing potentially 3 degrees in under 100 years alarm you? Hell, let's just say 1 degree. Doesn't that make you think it's more serious than deniers let on?
julius, what if the earth is going to warm up 3 degrees even if man didn't exist on the planet? I think that is the true question. EDIT: I don't suggest that warming isn't going on, or that it's not a big problem. I suggest that we can't do squat about it and our money would be better spent building a little bit further from the oceans so we don't see as much flood damage. On the other hand, as the so-called temperature spiked, we've seen considerably less actual damage to our cities and shorelines than decades ago, if you look at how much $$$ it cost to repair.
Actually I think the true question is has there been a 100 year stretch where it rose 3 degrees ever? I think we should concentrate on polluting less, and cleaning up the earth more.
There have been many many 100 year stretches where it rose 3 degrees. And I SERIOUSLY doubt it's going to rise 3 degrees over the next 100. EDIT: It's risen .7 degrees the past 100, my expectation is about the same for the next 100.
First off, that is the IPCC's new "Likely" range, which used to be their "Very Likely" range. Also, if you read the article, they used to have NO UPPER LIMIT for the post 70 years mark, which is what led to all of those insane leftist (and Hollywood) doomsday stories. "OMG, the temps are going to skyrocket! and we are all going to die!" They now have an upper limit estimate. And comments have already been pouring in that the new IPCC report completely ignores several of the most recent papers that lend significant support for a further revision downward. If the "pause" continues for a couple more years, that plus the most current data will cause another downward estimate for the next IPCC report. Then they will say "Somewhat Likely" increase of .5 to 1 C. Here is something to ponder, this group claims that it would cost 50 times less money to deal with the effects of warming that in would cost to stop it. Even if you are going to quibble with their numbers, the 50 to 1 claim has a lot of room work with. What if it cost 5 times as much? Wouldn't it be stupid policy to impose those costs? And, what if as some claim, warming continued regardless of any actions of humans moving forward? We blow up our economies and then still suffer the effects of warming, now without the financial means to respond. http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/#prettyPhoto
Somewhat related: http://crypto.junod.info/2013/09/09...ation-with-modern-day-academia-a-resignation/
How does this prove that there was a consensus of global cooling in the 70s? I'm sorry, your anecdotal evidence doesn't convince me. I did a little fact-checking and the results don't jibe with your argument. http://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...70&year_end=1981&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=
I don't know if this helps or hurts either argument, but I added "new ige age" to the list of terms queried...
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/the-1970s-ice-age-scare/ "Almost every major climate organization endorsed the 1970s ice age scare, including NCAR, CRU, NAS, NASA – as did the CIA." Lots of pictures of newspaper and magazine articles that can't be erased by deleting or editing WWW pages.
10 degrees in 100 years is even more alarming!!! I'm alarmed!!! My model suggests 10 degrees. If it proves to be inaccurate, I'll just say that the model has changed.
Your model doesn't agree with my model. Tell me how to fix the formulae or to change the data so I get the alarming result!
If you want Americans to care or even to read the report, make it relevant to their existence (not 70 years from now), and use Fahrenheit rather than Celsius.
We can disrupt as many ecosystems as we want so long as we can prove those climate scientists wrong on the exact amount of degrees they predicted.
You are making a moral argument. That is fine as long as you recognize when you switch from being a pragmatist to a moralist. And then understand, that many people will not agree with the proposition: It is inherently immoral for humans to impact their environment.
