Is Global Warming the Next Big Thing or an Existential Threat to Civilization?

edited 7/27/2011


We will eventually know the answer

Eventually the argument about Anthropogenic Global Warming will be settled and become common knowledge.  It will not, however, be settled soon, or by those frustrated scientists demanding that the conversation cease.  It will be settled when scientists on all sides of the argument arrive at the same conclusion from different research and directions of inquiry.  At that point it will all seem to have been obvious.

Scientific results that are replicable, reputable, transparent, open to challenge, empirically defended, characteristics lacking in the current argument, will pile up in the corner of the eventual winning viewpoint.

Six Billion Points of Light

I have been in an ongoing conversation (online) about Global Warming with a friend who has impeccable scientific credentials. He is entirely convinced that CO2 levels are rising. I tend to defer to him regarding the science. He is honest, successful and I have known him most of my life. We agree that facts are facts.  We also agree that:

"No one knows exactly how the climate will change as heat accumulates, or the ocean's food chain evolves as it gets hotter and more acidic." 

Me:   Exactly my point. In geologic time CO2 levels have been much higher in previous epochs. I think it damages science, polity and the ability of humans to dispassionately respond to or examine current conditions when the profiteers demagogue science to enhance their own position, financial or otherwise. Additionally, to claim, as some have said: "We know what needs to be done" in a field that is notoriously inexact (climate) is simply false.

Friend: So, I think we agree on the basics. Although, I'm perhaps more skeptical about how well prepared we are to operate in previous epochs.

Which profiteers do you think demagogue science?

How much more climate science exactness do you want before we assign a price to an assessed risk? Not picking winners. Just letting the free market do its thing.

Previous Epochs:

With regard to previous epochs we know this: We are here (humans) alive and well, the most successful predators in the kingdom, having successfully enslaved all other animals, vegetables, minerals and plants to our (perceived) benefit. We do not operate in previous epochs, we are the result of previous epochs. The debate tends to be about what is to humanity's present and future benefit.

Which Profiteers?.. All of them:

Voltaire & Hayek: Humans are predators who will always work to their own advantage. Humans wish to accumulate power, advantage, wealth, dominance, sex and other worldly goods and services (see Maslow). Humans will always default to the pursuit of their own perceived advantage. The Crisis (any one will do) is always presented as: “We have a “good idea”, give us the power, we know the way, we are the truth and the light, we will fix the problem for you, it may be a little uncomfortable for awhile but trust us.” This inevitably results in the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” the revolutionary committees, the Gulag, the Nazi Death Camps, the Death Committees, Purging the Kulaks, exterminating the Jews, killing the apostate Shia, killing the infidel Christians and so on throughout history.

Some Agreement from the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal Weighs In
The Facts About Fracking

Riddle me this: A Global Warming Question

The much discussed hockey stick graph is a graphic depiction of one thousand years of weather data, only a small part of which data is actually observed data. The quality and adjustment of this data has been much debated. 

CONDITIONS: If the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old as determined from the oldest minerals so far discovered, and; the earliest life forms, “protists” a complex single cell with nucleus, appeared approximately 1.8 billion years ago, and; we assume that life forms require “Climate” in its broadest definition to exist, and; we establish the average data measurement period as one year of average high/low temperatures, and; we elect to use the total life of the existence of “Climate” as the overall population of data points, and; we have gathered a sample of 1000 years of "Climate" data:

Q1. Is 1000 years a valid sample size to produce a statistically valid prediction of future “Climate”? (1000 years yields a sample of only 5.56E-07 with a multitude of variables, many unknowable from geological records, most of which are inferred rather than observed.)

Q2. Since Chaos Theory posits sensitive dependence on initial conditions in order to accurately forecast future events, what initial conditions as of 1.8 Bn years ago were used in the climate change forecasting models and to what extent can these models cleanly replicate known historical climate records or even general climate conditions during a geological period between -1.8Bn years and -1000 years.  For instance, the Pleistocene Epoch?

Q3. If you start a climate sample at year 1000 and do a linear regression trend line, the first 1.79999 billion years necessary to determine the actual trajectory of the linear regression is missing.  Therefore, of what value is a climate graph depicting the 1000 years between 1000 A.D. and 2000 A.D. in predicting large scale effects of temperature changes on the planet?

It is therefore evident that the trend line from the 1000 year sample would in fact tell us very little about future “Climate”.  In fact, the absence of "initial conditions" and trend lines for the preceding 1.79999 Bn years would skew the scale of change relative to the elapsed time.

In short, predictions of the consequences of Global Warming from any cause, as reflected in the “Hockey Stick Graph” whether accurate or not, are fatally compromised.