[Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory

[Gary Crabtree]

According to folks of a religious persuasion, I'm informed that there will
be a drastic increase in temperature in my personal future​. The good news
is it will be a rather dry heat. The bad is the duration will be lengthy.

g

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 7:30 PM, Paul Rumelhart <paul.rumelhart at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but for me it comes down to a desire not
> to be manipulated by fear as well as the desire not to be demonized for
> it.  According to Wikipedia, we have had a temperature increase since about
> 1900 of 0.74 +- 0.18C.  CO2 levels back then were about 280ppm, we're
> currently at about 400ppm.  Calculate that out, and it would appear that we
> should expect an increase of around 1.7C for a doubling of CO2.  OK,
> great.  I'll keep that in mind over the next 80 years or so.  Not nearly as
> high as what they are trying to scare us with.  I keep an eye on sea level
> data at http://sealevel.colorado.edu.  That first graph has been pegged
> at 3.2 +- 0.4 mm/yr for the last couple or more years now.  Not even a hint
> that it will start erupting upward anytime soon.  We're talking a little
> over a foot a century.  Nothing to piss our pants about.  Sea ice in the
> arctic continues to frustrate those who keep expecting an ice free summer.
> No idea what it will do this year.
>
> Almost everything else is speculation and over-exaggeration as far as I
> can tell.  I don't buy into the "man is killing the planet" morality play.
> I don't see any need to put any brakes on the economy in order to force us
> off of oil.  If anything, we need the economy as strong as possible so we
> can be effective when we need to be.  I don't think we should be messing
> with geoengineering schemes quite yet.
>
> If things take a sudden turn for the worse, I'll rethink my position.
>
> That's my basic take on it.  I'm not interested in yet another
> back-and-forth exchange.
>
> Paul
>
> P.S.  As for the possibility of religion trumping my common sense on this
> topic, I have no idea what spiritists / occultists think about climate
> change; as far as I can tell there is no position on it.  Maybe all 12 of
> us should sit down and discuss it sometime.
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 6:15 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Seriously, Scott?  I think Debi was serious... Was she joking and I did
>> not get it?
>>
>> Perhaps I misunderstood, or you were engaging in hyperbole for
>> amusement...
>>
>> You can't really mean to suggest that *everyone *who has a view on
>> anthropogenic global warming is merely "clinging tightly to their own blind
>> biases."
>>
>> Or just the people you "hang with?"
>>
>> Scott Dredge wrote:
>>
>> "The motley crew that I out hang with just clings tightly to their own
>> blind biases  on this issue."
>> --------------------------------
>> There will always be some who take extreme unreasoned views on most any
>> important issue, on one side or another.  Thus Deb makes a good
>> point about some who "melt-down," who are denying the validity of the
>> thousands of peer reviewed scientific studies indicating significant
>> anthropogenic climate change is occurring, when confronted with this body
>> of science.
>>
>> But as I recently told a local climate change activist, if you want to
>> find peer reviewed published scientific studies that question the consensus
>> scientific view on anthropogenic climate change, they can be found.  I have
>> made a deliberate effort to study the scientific theories that indicate
>> anthropogenic climate change is not a problem to the extent most competent
>> scientists indicate it is...
>>
>> Below are a few that have generated considerable discussion in recent
>> years.  I'll not present the scientific refutations of these published
>> scientific papers, but refuted they were.
>>
>> Note the first paper below is authored by the famous Richard Lindzen from
>> MIT, who former NASA climate scientist James Hansen described as "the dean
>> of anthropogenic climate change skeptics" in Hansen's book "Storms of My
>> Grandchildren:"
>>
>> Published in "Geophysical Research Letters:" 26 August 2009
>> <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract#publication-history>
>>
>> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract
>>
>> On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
>> Richard S. Lindzen, Yong-Sang ChoiNote this comment from the Abstract:"...the
>> inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem
>> in climate prediction."
>> -------------------------------------------
>> Published in "Remote Sensing" July 2011:
>>
>> http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603
>>
>> *Roy W. Spencer* <http://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=Roy%20W.%20Spencer>*
>> * * <roy.spencer at nsstc.uah.edu>* and **William D. Braswell*
>> <http://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=William%20D.%20Braswell>
>>
>> On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in
>> Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance†
>>
>> Claiming a "misdiagnosis" indicates the "skeptical" analysis here...
>> -----------------------
>> Regarding your statement "The sad reality is that throughout history
>> science has been routinely trumped by politics and religion until it can be
>> proven beyond all doubt." demonstrates a misunderstanding, according to my
>> study of epistemology, theory of knowledge, and the scientific method, of
>> the nature of scientific inquiry.  Nothing can be "proven beyond all doubt"
>> technically speaking.  New data or theory can always alter a given
>> scientific consensus, though some scientists would argue this is
>> philosophical nit-picking on some very well established theories.
>>
>> But consider the millions of people who insist that the theory or
>> evolution, insofar as it indicates homo sapiens evolved over millions of
>> years from other species, is not a "proven" scientific theory, despite the
>> overwhelming scientific evidence.  *Science is still "trumped" by
>> religion on this issue.*
>>
>> *Given the bias of some people, it does not matter how well "proven" a
>> scientific theory may be... it will still be denied!*
>> ---------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Scott Dredge <scooterd408 at hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Seriously Debi?  The motley crew that I out hang with just clings
>>> tightly to their own blind biases on this issue.  They just reject any
>>> report and / or attack the source that doesn't align with their own
>>> unalterable belief.  The sad reality is that throughout history science has
>>> been routinely trumped by politics and religion until it can be proven
>>> beyond all doubt.  And personally, I'm OK with that to some extent because
>>> the effect is that it forces very comprehensive and far reaching studies to
>>> unearth all the facts and impeach all of the fiction.
>>>
>>> This short video is a good parallel of what happens whenever the topic
>>> of climate change comes up with either my 'global warming is a myth'
>>> friends or with my 'we are going to die because of global warming' friends:
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvSjiq1pLVY
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>> From: debismith at moscow.com
>>> To: starbliss at gmail.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
>>> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 19:32:23 -0700
>>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early
>>> Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks, Ted. this is good info, and assists me when i talk to folks with
>>> little science background and a denier agenda---you are always on top of
>>> it!  I have watched climate denier folks melt-down when confronted with
>>> facts that refute their disbelief---even they can only suspend disbelief
>>> until their arms hurt a bunch....and most of them don't have the muscle
>>> mass....
>>> debi R-S
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> *From:* Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>
>>> *To:* Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>>> *Sent:* Friday, April 17, 2015 6:44 PM
>>> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early
>>> Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
>>>
>>>  I was surprised to just today read on Realclimate.org a piece dated 13
>>> April 2015, by climate scientist William Ruddiman, discussing how the
>>> scientific community has received his controversial theory regarding early
>>> (before major fossil fuel powered industrial civilization) human climate
>>> impacts.
>>>
>>> His Realclimate.org piece argues, and I quote, against the alleged
>>> "censure from a nearly monolithic community intent on imposing a mainstream
>>> view" that is sometimes claimed to exist by those critical of the science
>>> demonstrating major human impacts on climate change.
>>>
>>> I was particularly interested in this Realclimate.org piece because I
>>> referenced his theory in a 2007 op-ed in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News,
>>> which now has a Google News webpage of an actual scan of the actual op-ed
>>> page in the Moscow-Pullman DN.  How or why this scan happened I do not
>>> know, but it can be read at the webpage below:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2026&dat=20070223&id=x14zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MvAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3113,2791746&hl=en
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------
>>> Ruddiman's Realclimate.org article mentioned above is pasted in below,
>>> and comments generated by his article are also available at the website
>>> below:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/a-scientific-debate/
>>>
>>> A Scientific Debate Filed under: Climate Science — mike @ 13 April 2015
>>>
>>> Bill Ruddiman, University of Virginia
>>>
>>> Recently I’ve read claims that some scientists are opposed to AGW but
>>> won’t speak out because they fear censure from a nearly monolithic
>>> community intent on imposing a mainstream view. Yet my last 10 years of
>>> personal experience refute this claim. This story began late in 2003 when I
>>> introduced a new idea (the ‘early anthropogenic hypothesis’) that went
>>> completely against a prevailing climatic paradigm of the time. I claimed
>>> that detectable human influences on Earth’s surface and its climate began
>>> thousands of years ago because of agriculture. Here I describe how this
>>> radically different idea was received by the mainstream scientific
>>> community.
>>>
>>> Was my initial attempt to present this new idea suppressed? No. I
>>> submitted a paper to Climatic Change, then edited by Steve Schneider, a
>>> well-known climate scientist and AGW spokesman. From what I could tell,
>>> Steve was agnostic about my idea but published it because he found it an
>>> interesting challenge to the conventional wisdom. I also gave the Emiliani
>>> lecture at the 2003 December American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference to
>>> some 800 people. I feel certain that very few of those scientists came to
>>> my talk believing what my abstract claimed. They attended because they were
>>> interested in a really new idea from someone with a decent career
>>> reputation. The talk was covered by many prominent media sources, including
>>> the New York Times and The Economist. This experience told me that
>>> provocative new ideas draw interest because they are provocative and new,
>>> provided that they pass the key ‘sniff test’ by presenting evidence in
>>> support of their claims.
>>>
>>> Did this radical new idea have difficulty receiving research funding?
>>> No. Proposals submitted to the highly competitive National Science
>>> Foundation (NSF) with John Kutzbach and Steve Vavrus have been fully funded
>>> since 2004 by 3-year grants. Even though the hypothesis of early
>>> anthropogenic effects on climate has been controversial (and still is for
>>> some), we crafted proposals that were carefully written, tightly reasoned,
>>> and focused on testing the new idea. As a result, we succeeded against
>>> negative funding odds of 4-1 or 5-1. One program manager told me he planned
>>> to put our grant on a short list of ‘transformational’ proposals/grants
>>> that NSF had requested. That didn’t mean he accepted our hypothesis. It
>>> meant that he felt that our hypothesis had the potential to transform that
>>> particular field of paleoclimatic research, if proven correct.
>>>
>>> Were we able to get papers published? Yes. As any scientist will tell
>>> you, this process is rarely easy. Even reviewers who basically support what
>>> you have to say will rarely hand out ‘easy-pass’ reviews. They add their
>>> own perspective, and they often point out useful improvements. A few
>>> reviews of the 30-some papers we have published during the last 11 years
>>> have come back with extremely negative reviews, seemingly from scientists
>>> who seem deeply opposed to anything that even hints at large early
>>> anthropogenic effects. While these uber-critical reviews are discouraging,
>>> I have learned to put them aside for a few days, give my spirits time to
>>> rebound, and then address the criticisms that are fair (that is,
>>> evidence-based), explain to the journal editor why other criticisms are
>>> unfair, and submit a revised (and inevitably improved) paper. Eventually,
>>> our views have always gotten published, although sometimes only after
>>> considerable effort.
>>>
>>> The decade-long argument over large early anthropogenic effects
>>> continues, although recent syntheses of archeological and paleoecological
>>> data have been increasingly supportive. In any case, I continue to trust
>>> the scientific process to sort this debate out. I suggest that my
>>> experience is a good index of the way the system actually operates when new
>>> and controversial ideas emerge. I see no evidence that the system is
>>> muffling good new ideas.
>>> ---------------------------------------
>>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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