[Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
Scott Dredge
scooterd408 at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 19 01:47:00 PDT 2015
To Gary: I'm tempted to say that I'm 100% confident that you're going straight to hell, but I learned long ago not to cast judgement.
To Ted: Regarding Debi's post, I was having trouble relating to her comment that presenting data to those with little scientific background coupled with a denier agenda would have any effect whatsoever on those types. How would an exchange with those such deniers even go down? It would pretty much exactly like the video link I posted. At best, you might have someone with an open mind who leans toward an opinion of 'global climate change is no big deal' and who could be persuaded that it is a big deal if presented with new data. This might be someone along the lines of a Paul Rumelhart. A couple of my denier friends are huge fans of Steven Milloy and have referred me to his junkscience.com website to back their assertion that 'global warming is a myth'. One of those friends in particular (and he does have a BSME from the U of I) goes a little too far (in my opinion) and laments that 'global warming is a hoax perpetrated by other countries that are trying to take down the greatest nation on earth'. There's not really much to work with here in talking sense to these guys because they've already rendered their verdict which is odd to me considering the scientific method is self-correcting. If you want a good example of the exchanges I have with my some of my buddies, I found this one from last September that devolved from a conversation that started about stock valuations:
--- start of exchange ---
Denier buddy:
'So we invest in sentiment now? Will there be sentiment charts on CNBC in the future? "The ultimate driver of company's share price, he says, may simply be momentum."
Or should we be investing in momentum? Why can't anything be about real numbers or hard science anymore?'
Me:
'You tell me. As far as I can tell, you're the only one of the 3 of us
that is flat out rejecting, mocking, ignoring any reports that don't
align with you and your conservative brethren's worldview (aka dogma)
regarding climate science. Or as you might refer to it 'climate
science'.
Scientific opinion is that the earth is unequivocally
warming with a greater than 95% probability that this warming is
influenced by human activity.I
personally don't care too much one way or the other as this issue
doesn't raise my hackles. Science will adjust as it always does due to
its
self-correcting process of factoring in new and more precise data as it
becomes available. In the interim, religion and politics will trump
science as has been done since the beginning of their existence. God
and the almighty dollar wields a mightier sword than do the propeller
heads.'
Denier buddy:
'Please inform me on these reports of climate science that I am
ignoring. All I see is real data showing that the earth hasn't warmed
in 17 years while Scientific opinion said with 97% certainty that the
earth would warm. Or the latest data that shows record summer polar ice
while the Political opinion says the arctic would be ice free by now.
You can wait all you want for climate science to adjust to the new
data. That stopped being science 15 years ago when they started fudging
the data to get the answers they wanted. The answers that kept the
research dollars coming. Which I guess proves your point about the
almighty dollar. '
--- end of exchange ---
Ted, as you can see, once the other side gets to the point where they're making claims such as 'that stopped being science 15 years ago when they started fudging
the data to get the answers they wanted' and in the same paragraph they're referencing data that fits their own unalterable belief, it pretty much becomes a futile effort to attempt to present any real facts to them. Those types are better off ignored.
Later,
-Scott
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2015 19:58:28 -0700
From: moscowlocksmith at gmail.com
To: paul.rumelhart at gmail.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
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
On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE dataRichard 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 * and William D. Braswell
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:
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
To: Moscow Vision 2020
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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