Flutterby™! : More Climate 2007-06-22 17:13:21.18223+00

More Climate

2007-06-22 17:13:21.18223+00 by ebradway 3 comments

I just stumbled across this series in the Canadian National Post that details the positions of the most prominent Global Warming deniers. It's a good read. Just as there are many really smart folks working diligently towards understanding Global Warming as a problem, there appear to a be decent number of pretty brilliant folks who are trying to make sure the holes in the science get filled (and, maybe a different set of hypotheses accepted and rejected).

It's important to note that even if you take "Global Warming" out as an accepted hypothesis, it doesn't eliminate the data that shows extremely elevated CO2 levels. And it doesn't eliminate the benefits of understanding and preparing for large-scale natural disasters - like Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

"Extremely elevated" depends on how you're looking at it. Going from 0.25% to 0.35% is a significant move, but its actual effect on global warming is debatable, it isn't enough of a change to affect animal life and it may provide significant benefit to plant growth.

Yes, temperatures seem to be increasing, and yes, it's possible CO2 is a major cause of that, but we're nowhere near certain of it. Shutting down the economy of the world to try and bring the level back down only to discover the warming was due to other causes and then struggling to deal with the changes without an economy strong enough to support us would be tragic.

Some earth temperatures are warming, others seem not to have warmed to as great a degree as in the past. Greenland for one, has not warmed enough to be green again.

The hypothesis of global warming is extremely complex, and counterexamples abound. The applicability of those counterexamples has yet to be determined, but they can not be discarded out of hand.

I am not a climatologist and can not speak to the science in the work, but I do have a background in experimental design and analysis including a posteriori studies. I have read the work of Mann, and the criticism of his work by McIntyre and McKitrick. I agree with McIntyre and McKitrick that the so called "hockey stick" gives the appearance of being an artifact produced by Mann's data selection techniques. Without the "hockey stick" the most salient evidence for the global warming hypothesis falls flat.

I have seen similar errors in analysis made by workers in my own fields, and have made such mistakes myself. They are easy traps to fall into. What McIntyre and McKitrick are saying has a high degree of reasonableness, and there is good reason to believe that Mann may in fact be in error.

But, whether Mann is correct or not, that is not enough to decide that there is, or is not, global warming.

Am I really the only one, especially here, who is uncomfortable with the *really* steeply loaded connotations of the phrase "global warming denier"?