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The debate is over

Writing about: Global Warming – pile o’ shite, 25/03/07, Mike’s Blog

I can’t comment on that blog, so I’ve emailed the author. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but I just find it sad when supposedly intelligent people make bald assertions because they don’t like the answer otherwise.

Mike,

I really wouldn’t rely on Wikipedia as any arbiter of what is correct or not.

The kind of rabid finger-pointing to which Melanie Phillips is prone does nothing to further our understanding. Saying that the current state of science is “utter garbage” would be amusing if it wasn’t so serious. The information she quotes is 10 years out of date; if it was worth the effort, I could comprehensively rebut each and every one of her points. Of you could just have a look through http://www.realclimate.org/

Her article predates the recent IPCC panel report – the authoritative presentation of the current understanding of the science. If you’re really interested in the current state of the science, their summary for policymakers (http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf) is well worth a read.

“Few people were around with the technology to start an iceage centuries ago, so in a similar way, we are not causing global warming..”

What a fallacious argument! We are emitting teratonnes of CO2. CO2 causes increased solar capture. Increased solar capture causes increased surface temperatures. This is all well-understood. The devil is in the details – how much effect will it have? What will be the effect of changing fauna? What’ll happen if the permafrosts thaw? Asserting that “we are not causing global warming” is trivial and wrong. The current argument is all about how much damage anthropogenic global warming will cause.

Incidentally, I’ve blogged this too (http://www.maxhammondphotos.org.uk/blog/)

Max
—
Max Hammond

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 11:12 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The debate is over”

  1. dave sparrow Says:
    March 26th, 2007 at 20:14

    you can tell that guy isn’t too bright, in his previous post he says he listens to and likes Scott Mills. Nuff said.

  2. Max Hammond Says:
    March 26th, 2007 at 20:18

    :-)
    I don’t think it’s necessarily about being bright. Part of it is recognising the complexity of the argument, and part of it is being sufficiently informed about the science. My further email to him follows:

    “Further to the above, a Channel 4 documentary puts out a valid case for the above:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU&mode=related&search
    See what you think!”

    The programme maker gained interviews through duplicity, and misrepresented some of those he interviewed, see http://medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php and references therein, especially the response from Carl Wunsch.

    Don’t get me wrong here – debate is fine, but the people you have referenced aren’t interested in debate, they’re interested in peddling their own political views. The “arguments” they make represent the view of a tiny minority of scientists, many of whom are co-incidentally funded by Exxon. For you to come up with “Oh, it’s a pile of shite” when you clearly don’t have a good understanding of the science behind it is indicative of the problems of conveying science to non-scientists. The media aren’t interested in consensus – they’re interested in conflict. It’s the same as happened with the MMR vaccine – scientists are clear about the balance of probabilities, the media don’t care.

    Essentially, in the scientific literature, the debate about whether global warming is anthropogenic is over (just see the IPCC report). I don’t want to get into an argument about whether global warming is happening – it’s been argued to death, and the outcome is now clear.

    The really really important question is what should we do about it? How much should we hurt our economies now to hedge against a future risk where the potential costs are so hard to calculate? Stern had a go, Europe seems to be going in the right direction. I suspect that China and India will be brought into line through import tariffs (goods made in a non-sustainable manner could be barred or tariffed, probably under article 20 GATT (TBT)). But it’s clear that status quo is not a viable option.

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