Naomi Oreskes
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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Naomi Oreskes is a science historian, professor at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author (with Erik Conway) of "Merchants of Doubt," a book that examined how a handful of scientists obscure the facts on a range of issues, including tobacco use and climate change. Her seminal paper in the journal Science, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," challenged – back in 2004 – the notion that climate change science was uncertain. Her work has documented the spread of doubt-mongering from an industry practice to a political strategy.
Dr. Oreskes did her undergraduate work at the Royal School of Mines in London and received her graduate degree from Stanford University. With her husband, Ken Belitz, and daughter, Clara, the family lives in San Diego. Her older daughter, Hannah, attends Stanford.
Question: Somewhere between your undergraduate and graduate degrees, you became interested in the history of science. What drew you to that field?
Answer: I was always interested in the human side of science, especially why people disagreed about evidence, and the strong - yet divergent - opinions that my professors had about what constitutes good science. Beyond that, it is a long story.
Q: What attracted you to the climate change deniers?
A: I fell into this. I was working on the history of oceanography, and came across the work of Roger Revelle, Dave Keeling and others who’d been working on climate change since the 1950s. I came to understand that the scientific basis for understanding anthropogenic climate change was much firmer than most people knew. That led to my 2004 work, which led to me being attacked. So we started digging and found direct links to the tobacco industry.
Q: How do most mainstream scientists view this contrary viewpoint from their colleagues?
A: They are thoroughly appalled. Because it isn’t a “contrary viewpoint,” in the sense that the scientific evidence is contradictory or incomplete, or that our theories are inadequate to explain the observations. This is not the case, this is not a scientific debate.
Q: Is the need to expose deniers that important in the policy world? Aren't other issues – such as economics and energy – far more important?
A: If we didn’t have the science, we wouldn’t know the cause. We wouldn’t know that we have to control greenhouse gas emissions, and we could just burn coal. It is science that revealed the problem, science that pinpoints its cause, and science (that) tells us what kinds of interventions will be efficacious. Science is not sufficient to solve this problem, but it is necessary.
Q: Are you frustrated by the continuing debate over the reality of climate change?
A: Yes, because some people are now saying, we should just accept that climate change is happening and not worry about the cause. Climate change is caused by greenhouse gases and that is why we need to do something about them. So it’s time we rolled up our sleeves and got to work doing what we know in our hearts we need to do.
Q: What do you do in your spare time? Hobbies, other interests?
A: What spare time? Just kidding. I have a wonderful husband and two beautiful daughters, so they are an important part of my life. My husband and I like to hike and walk on the beach. My girls and I like to bake and cook together. Backpacking when I get the chance.
Q:What do you like to cook?
A: A number of things but mostly Indian food. My family is old-fashioned. We like to have dinner together every night when everyone is home.
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70 Comments
Add CommentIt's pretty clear that the doubt mongering is motivated by opposition to the policies proposed to solve global warming. This in turn seems to be at least partially due to them being the same old proposals needed to solve the pollution, population, and energy "crises". Scientific American authors could help by not combining the climate science and the "solution" in the same sentence as if they were the same thing. They are not. What is happening, and what is causing it is a scientific question. What if anything to do about it should be informed by science, but it is a political, policy, and moral question, not a scientific one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecond Mr Peabody. SA commits a fallacy in combining two different topics. One is, if climate changes. Second is, how society should best react to it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe history of proposed reactions to climate change is disastrous: idea of airplane tax and backing off from it, idea of biofuels and backing off when it was found to starve poor people in the tropics etc.
Good comments and I agree. The science is fairly straight forward and certain. Any actions based on the science are purely political.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut there are really only two courses, mitigation or adaptation, or most likely a combination of both. Mitigation should be tried while it is still possible because if we are adapting it will not really be a choice and we will only be trying to stop something damaging, that has already happened, from happening again.
Unfortunately mitigation is not being discussed seriously because of denial of the problem, so policies to mitigate are not being discussed enough to determine how good and cost effective they will be. We end up in most cases with ineffective taxes where the money goes into a government pot to be often used in none climate related areas.
The ressource gluttons will always try to wriggle free of the war on waste.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy don't you ask a witch doctor and perhaps an astrologer while you are at it. How about presenting the evidence from credible sources on the doubter rather than all this inuendo and presumption?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just think it's telling that the dirty energy industry looked to the very same "scientists" that bought the tobacco industry a few more decades of poisoning their customers before action was taken.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the hole that dirty energy has dug themselves into will not be as easy to climb out of. At least the tobacco companies could still blame their customers somewhat for doing to themselves and they bought of the liability process with a token billion or so. The world is wising up to the dangers posed by fossil fuels and the longer dirty energy companies try to delay action, the greater their culpability will be in the endless string of disasters that will befall our progeny for generations. They will not be able to buy themselves out of this predicament since there's not that much money in the world! Their enablers in the political sphere will be just as vilified.
www.skepticalscience.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ipcc.ch
And may I ask where is your scientific proof that stands up against the info in my links while also explaining the warming we have experienced over the last 100 years or so with ONLY natural climate forcings? What was that? Cat got your tongue?...
And this is why the fanatics will always fail to convince the 'deniers' ... 'what we know in our hearts we need to do'. There is a simple fact that people who want to have things proven to them will not take 'what we know in our hearts' as scientific fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe science is far from proven. The proven facts are: (1) we have released CO2 into the atmosphere and (2) the concentration of CO2 has increased. Anything beyond that is pure conjecture based upon incomplete computer models that do not have the ability to predict what is happening in the Earth's climate system with any degree of certainty.
The other thing that seems to be lost is that whether or not we stop injecting CO2 into the atmosphere climate change is going to happen. So, whether or not we cause it we are going to be subject to climate change way beyond what we have in human history thus far.
Now, instead of whining about the evil people burning coal (and a lot of other fossil fuels) why not propose some real alternatives that are: (1) plentiful and (2) cost competitive. Neither of these two points can be addressed with current technology or without massive government subsidies and/or increases in the cost of energy.
As far as the last two Q & A's in this article who cares? How does this add to the scientific discussion?
You cannot 'solve' global warming. What we may be able to do is stop the human impact at some yet to be determined cost with technology that is not yet available.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have some sort of credible alternative to 'dirty energy' or are you just interested in calling names and trying to prove that you are intellectually superior by posting references to websites that have been constructed by the climate change fanatics?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are a lot bigger threats to her kids than global warming. Like the fact that most Western governments are in the process of destroying the global economy through excessive spending and debt - some of it wasted on ineffective programs to combat global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you just interested in throwing around insults yourself or are you prepared to inhale the output of a coal power smokestack to prove that fossil fuels aren't "dirty"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about I add to your list of FACTS that aren't in debate:
3. CO2 traps heat
4. There's been an observed increase of re-radiated heat coming back down from the atmosphere and a corresponding decrease in outgoing radiation AT THE VERY SAME FREQUENCIES that CO2 absorbs.
5. The Earth has responded to the same climate forcing we are about to subject it to with out excess CO2 time and time again with a 2.5C - 4C increase in global temperatures.
AND
6. The paloeclimate record shows time and time again that a 2.5C - 4C increase will destabilize ecosystems, glaciers and the arctic ice cap. In addition, the oceans are becoming acidic much faster than many species can adapt and we will begin to see the collapse of many marine ecosystems in the 21st Century.
Since you were missing so many facts, it's no wonder that your opinion on Climate Change is so off the mark!
Yet another example of flawed logic!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you going to stand behind your statement about the tobacco users (which by the way is a ridiculous attempt to vilify the energy industry by equating them with tobacco)?!?!?
You used energy to make your comment and approximately 69% of the energy you used came from your so called 'dirty energy' (source: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pecss_diagram.cfm).
So please reply when you have some sort of economically viable replacement which is plentiful enough to work when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing and will not require 500% of the surface area of the US to implement.
Otherwise you can yell all day long about how 'dirty energy' is killing the planet and taking advantage the people. However, it is the populace that is demanding the cheap and plentiful energy that is being supplied and unless you want to see a real economic disaster there is no way that renewable energy is going to be attractive until the cost of your so called 'dirty energy' is in parody without government subsidies.
Also, before you parrot back the thing that you heard about tax breaks for the oil companies you need to realize that those so called tax breaks take the form of what is called royalty relief. The way that royalty relief works is that the person who makes the investment in the well and production facilities (in an area that has not yet proven economically viable) gets to recoup that investment before they have to pay taxes to the government on the production. So the short version is that in order to get more energy cheaply the government allow the producers to recoup their investment before they have to pay the taxes on subsequent production.
Since solar PV has decreased in cost by 50% in 2 years (!), it will be a big player as well as wind power which will be fully competitive with fossil fuels by 2016:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://bnef.com/PressReleases/view/172
Since this analysis assumes that fossil fuel will still have the market tilted in its favor with NO price on carbon and still able to use our lungs as a dumping ground for their waste, correcting for these externailities makes renewables competitive YESTERDAY!
Geothermal, wave, offshore wind, tidal, biomass, and solar thermal baseload can expand rapidly in the next decades as well to supply the 21st Century with clean, renewable energy.
We throw away about half of the energy we use in this country for no good reason. See those cooling towers at a coal or nuclear power plant sending up steam? That's 2/3 of the energy in the fuel going into the air and not doing work. Many power pants and industrial facilities can do cogeneration or share process heat with other users. Installing smart lights and HVAC can save billions in energy costs. Designing cities to offer a variety of transportation options instead of forcing people to buy and operate a car to get anywhere could help solve our obesity problem as well as curtail our voracious demand for transportation fuel. Instituting highly-efficient building standards and retrofitting older building stock can put millions back to work in the construction industry and save us billions more in energy costs at the same time.
Finally, if more people realized that endless consumption growth is IMPOSSIBLE on a finite planet, maybe we wouldn't want to buy so much useless and fragile junk from China after all!
Come up with an alternative to your dirty energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou clearly are living in the academic world where there is some sort of utopia where everyone will get everything that they need with zero consequence.
As far as the forcing goes: yes the climate is going to change and may, or may not, be the next forcing. BFD, it is going to happen one way or another.
If you cannot provide a solution then whether or not we are going to be that forcing is not material.
Point #3
Once again I want to see implementation. Not 'in the next century ...'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople on a whole are not going to change their lifestyle to fit your idea of utopia.
By the way a incandescent light bulb is about 1.6% efficient so there is a lot more energy than you half which is wasted which just goes to show your ignorance of the subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, since the top 5 oil companies made $1 TRILLION in profit over the last 10 years, why do they need more money out of our pockets in the form of government handouts and corporate welfare? Why should I be subsidizing Exxon's stock buyback program or Chevron's massive greenwashing campaign that tries to make people think they're looking into clean energy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, it sucks that I have to use dirty energy to participate in the modern world. I ride a bike to work, but I still have to use a computer like you mentioned. But I am FORCED to use dirty energy against my will. I'm not about to go live off the grid somewhere, but I want to be able to choose clean energy, electric cars and sustainable business practices. Right now, I am forced to aid in harming the biosphere that we all depend on just to respond to your inane ranting.
Gee, I hope she doesn't think I am going to take
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisher word for all these assertions.
Haha what a joke. So now "deniers" are really being treated like heretics. Hey liberals, why not just skip to the end of your socialist path and kill anyone who does not agree with you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason deniers as you like to call us are having issues with your evil human's are causing the globe to warm is anytime anyone has ever predicted the demise of the entire planet, they have been wrong. You sound like that idiot who claimed the world was going to end earlier this year and he was the same nut job claiming it back in the 90s. Every turn of the century a claim that the world is ending, it is supposed to end in 2012. Lets see, back in the 70s, you Warmists, were claiming the world was going to freeze itself into a new ice age and the "proof" was also there, using the same lame data you are using to claim it is going to burn into a cinder and then the claim is just look outside at all the blizzards occurring every year.
Science is very specific, regardless of the field. Were I to run my computer science labs the same way Warmists do , I would be out of a job because I have to use reality and experiments as the basis for my conclusions and recommendations.
This is not to say everything is a bad idea to consider.
Coal really is nasty stuff. It used to cause acid rain and does create a lot of other pollution.
Oil is almost as bad. It really is useful to minimize use of Coal, Oil and even natural gas and this can be claimed without Grand Declarations of the world's demise and ridiculous predictions that we will have 3 extra bad hurricanes sometime in the next 200 years.
The problem YOU warmists dont get is there is NO alternative. I have solar panels, sure they are ok but they are simply over priced and will never be able to handle power needs for something like transportation. Wind power sucks, just drive by Palm Springs and see how many of those thousands of wind generators are NOT spinning on any given day. You really want to plow under every spec of arable land between the gulf of mexico and the arctic circle to grow corn or something for bio fuel? You want to dam up how many rivers for hydro? There is NO ALTERNATIVE yet. Also the problem with you crazed warmists or environmentalists is your solutions are likely to be worse than the problem. Chance are you warmists will come up with some ALT FUEL that you claim has no CO2 but is likely to produce something else that really will cause the planet's demise. Already we have millions of homes and landfills full of Mercury thanks to you people.
The fact that you think I was only talking about light bulbs shows how detached from reality you are on this subject. Although, thanks for helping me make my point with another wasteful example.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI said, "We throw away about half of the energy we use in this country for no good reason." If all we used were incandescent light bulbs, you might've been correct. Well, since you have a 19th Century outlook when it comes to energy development, it's not surprising that you think we're still using Edison's original bulbs for all our electricity consumption! Or that we use ZERO energy in transportation or industry or home heating! Again, it's no wonder that your opinions on this subject are so misguided!
The fact that you think I was only talking about light bulbs shows how detached from reality you are on this subject. Although, thanks for helping me make my point with another wasteful example.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI said, "We throw away about half of the energy we use in this country for no good reason." If all we used were incandescent light bulbs, you might've been correct. Well, since you have a 19th Century outlook when it comes to energy development, it's not surprising that you think we're still using Edison's original bulbs for all our electricity consumption! Or that we use ZERO energy in transportation or industry or home heating! Again, it's no wonder that your opinions on this subject are so misguided!
What these warmists dont realize is the actual evidence of the millions of years of climate history is there have been warming periods many times and today's is no where near the worst one. Since everything about climate change is based on statistics, the likely cause of todays warming is Nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow I may be wrong it could be humans, it could be nature, it could be both. We need to ensure we can adapt to whatever happens because adaptation is what humans do best and ensures our survival regardless of the cause of global warming(assuming it is in fact warming). The Warmists fanatics would leave us completely unable to adapt because they would have taken all of our money and time for their nonsense instead of using it for preparing for any condition the planet may throw at us.
BUT dont expect the fanatical warmists to understand this or your post, the point of being fanatical is to believe something no matter how ridiculous and try to force everyone else to believe their dogma.
Well, according to your logic we're all screwed anyway and we should just start strapping on the "Mad Max" football pads right now to get ahead of the curve! You present ZERO facts to back up your points bashing renewable energy and when you claim, "there is no alternative!" you want to saddle us with increasing fuel scarcity, damaging pollution and a destabilized climate...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGo try to spread your bunkum in Germany, where they are already 20% renewable and they're making money hand over fist doing it. I'm sure your fossil-fueled fantasyland will bump up against real reality in the worst way!
Hmmm. I guess your fossil fuel paymasters fork over more cash when you get 2 accounts and talk to yourself, because I can't tell the difference between you two!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSault friend, if the Oil companies made 1 trillion in the last 10 years, that means the damn governments made 3 trillion in taxes over that same 10 years and you think it is the oil companies taking money from the people?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is possible if the government did not confiscate that much money, perhaps oil companies could have invented either a new energy source or a new way to use oil with less impact on the environment. Your socialist view that money is just a giant pile and greedy exxon, just has a bigger bucket is ridiculous. First Exxon will be able to always pump oil, even if we completely eliminated its use as a fuel. It would still be needed for plastics, roads and thousands of other uses. ALSO, with CAPITALISM, the oil companies, coal companies and anyone else who wants to make loads of money are looking for an alternative because they could charge a premium price on it. This idea the oil companies are not looking for alternatives or blocking others is insane because they would make money.
Now if you want to say the government is blocking research on alternative energy, well that makes sense. Since they stand to lose 3 trillion or more a year in taxes they take on oil and who knows how much on Coal and NG.
By the way Sault, you are not being forced to use "dirty energy". I have solar panels, I run my own NG generator as well keeping me entirely off the grid here in the middle of Los Angeles. So if you have not done this yet, then you are not only drinking the kool-aid of a fake crisis called global warming you are also a hypocrite. Here I am, a heretic denier to you and even though all this crap about CO2 being a poison and the earth is warming is not bought by me, I still agree that more efficient use of available energy sources is the best thing to do AND I ACTUALLY AM DOING IT, unlike you apparently.
In reply to evosburgh - You sound like a professional denier to me. The science is proven and the results are more and more obvious. Glaciers are receding worldwide, sea levels are rising, flora and fauna are adapting by shifting their ranges poleward. They can't mitigate but we can. The longer we wait, the harder, less effective and more expensive it will be. Do us all a favor and get out of the way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been fighting the climate deniers tooth and nail for the past 4 years. I think it is high strangeness and raises red flags to me that this "news" reporter focuses so much effort on soliciting this woman's personal information. Her personal life where her children go to school etc. rather than the facts of climate change. What the heck it that all about?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAhh buddy it is your side of this nonsense that claims the world will end and we will end up creating Mad Max style gas guzzling armored cars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo again, facts.
Go to palm springs and see how many of those wind generators are NOT spinning. Or the one out near Mojave, Ca. They do produce energy but there are days when they do not. AND the wind farm covers more space than the city it only partially powers. Not exactly practical.
Solar as I said, I have it. It works. It would actually be useful to pass a law that says the power companies must install the panels on volunteer roofs free of charge because every single south and west facing roof is already there and taking up space. BUT again, this is limited in scope. My job has me travel all over the US and most of the world and outside of the South and west of America, these panels are just not going to work well.
Natural gas, is just another fossil fuel. Using it will not really do much.
Electric cars don't work unless you plan to limit yourself to about 100 miles of geographic area. Even if we assumed all electricity was magically produced by solar or wind power. The range of the cars is not the problem it is the fact it takes considerable time to charge.
Biofuel is a mistake unless you have been completely ignoring the cost of food going up as a result of so much farmable land being used to fuel cars. Not to mention the ethanol also produces CO2. Why is this important? because your idea is the elimination of CO2. Say we cut it in half, then the population doubles as it will in 20 years or so, we will be back at the same global warming levels of CO2 again. SO what is the point of reduction if it has no effect.
SO what fact am I missing? THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCE. If there was one, we would be using it already. As I said before the market is ready for any legitimate alternative fuel or energy source. It is an instant money maker. The fact that this has not happened means the current alternatives are not viable. They are merely useful ideas in certain conditions.
How about doing us a favor and stop trying to use an invented problem based on statistics and computer models as a means of promoting your green technology companies to make profits as well as more excuses to regulate and tax everyone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no proof at all, nothing claimed by the warmists can be observed in an experiment. The data is cherry picked to always support your claim and you people do not know enough about the climate to make claims like this.
Your models predicted a horrific rise in the average temperature over the last 10 years and it did not happen.
The real fact is you have no idea what is going on and since the climate has changed more drastically in the past many times over this is more likely a natural event.
We should be focused on adapting to the new reality as it comes not preventing something that is natural. Even if it is human caused, adapting is better because the likely human cause is not CO2 from fossil fuel burning alone, it is probably a host of chemicals added to the air, the fact we have 7 billion people and 40 billion domesticated animals all producing CO2 and the fact that we do burn fuels for energy, heating homes and buldings. On the scale all of this is happening and including all of these factors, you might be able to make the case humans are heating the planet. The problem is it is not from CO2, it is from the sheer scale of heat production caused by 7 billion humans and unless you plan to genocide most of the population it means it global warming cant be prevented.
So again best to prepare for it not try to prevent something that cant be prevented, especially with the fact you people are likely to cause worse problems with your alternatives.
Reducing fuel use, alternative energy, more efficient use of all resources is a good idea on its own merit without the need to invent global warming as a problem
It's true that a problem and its possible solutions should be considered separately, but the oil industry attacked the notion of climate change before anyone even began talking about solutions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey were quickly joined by libertarians who realized, as with any economic externality, there could be no free market solution -- and as the free market can solve all problems, if there is no free market solution, then it must not be a problem.
From that point on, it just became part of the cultural war.
Apparently Oreskes wants voters and politicians to jump as soon as scientists come up with recommendations. Sorry, but as a scientist myself, I hope US politics will never work that way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOreskes portrayal of the global warming issue is also greatly oversimplified. She says: "Climate change is caused by greenhouse gases and that is why we need to do something about them."
Yes, climate change is caused by greenhouse gases; we know that now (although the statistical evidence a few years ago was shaky and people were right to question it then). Reasonable projections say that sea levels will rise significantly, coastal cities will get damaged, some croplands will turn into desert, and some areas will become uninhabitable (others will become habitable). That does not automatically mean that we "need to do something". These are still changes that happen over decades or longer and they are changes that humanity can adapt to; humanity has adapted to far greater changes.
In order to decide to do something about it, we need to know that the cost of action is less than the benefit and that action is even realistically possible.
Climates change?!? I'm *shocked* to learn this.. /sarc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientific American, where has your intellectual rigor gone? Is shilling for a particular political position now part of Sci Am's mission statement?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/mediakit/editorial/statement.cfm
Free market is the only way to solve any problem, You have it backwards. It isn't that because free market cant solve the problem so it doesn't exist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue is there is no problem to solve.
The other thing a liberal like yourself would never understand is the free market is the only answer because Government is definitely not the answer to anything. So even if global warming is being caused by humans, the last thing you want to do is take money from the free market and hand it to the government. You do that and not only will the problem continue, the government is likely to find a new way to pollute and kill everyone in the process of saving us from global warming.
So the question is how can i know the free market will work here. Easy, besides the fact that government has never solved anything, there is a heck of a lot of money to be made in alternative energy sources and mitigation techniques as well as finding out how to adapt.
You have to realize the absolute horror of an energy executive, one of the Top Guys, you know, if his company has to implement cleaner technology that it does not yet own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHis yearly bonus could drop from a million four to a mere million one! Or even nine-fifty K! He would then become a moral and intellectual failure! Some wretched mortgage salesman down the street might actually be making more!
Denial is all about people who want more money and are able to bribe politicians to get it. As for the rest, the world revolves around their village, and the sun revolves around the earth.
"the government has never solved anything" "the free market is the solution to everything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEither you are auditioning for Sat. Night Live or are blind, deaf and dumber than a bag full of uprooted weeds.
"Too big to fail" did not start with the banks, it is part of the human psyche. Try to start a serious discussion of how much of the damage arises from the fact that the human population is likely more than double what this planet can support without the disasters we see unfolding and you will get a sense of the problem. That will lead to arguments far more violent and nonsensical than the environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFish populations being decimated, destruction of forests and habitats, coral reefs dying, water tables being sucked down, diseases spread in congested living, fish and animal farming giving rise to drug resistant infections, desertification in process in many areas of the planet, rivers being sucked dry and the hostilities that engenders... Happy stuff.
Something to think about during your morning commute.
What we can do is stop pouring CO2 into the atmosphere. It's called preventing a catastrophe from becoming fatal to our species.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, the climate will keep changing for the worse. However, if we act now by reducing carbon emissions we can stop it getting much worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstead of blaming the doubt mongers and big oil companies. If only all AGW believers would stop using grid electricity and gasoline cars, and install solar panels in their roof and ride bicycles. They can stop global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNaomi is right. It's time for action.
Certainly a large part of the 'communications' difficulty must be there is nobody on the political stage who can be believed; Mr Obama is an example among many others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs one who subscribed for decades to two journals oriented to climate science and carefully scrutinized them for errors or fallacies, I cannot help but wonder how old you are. First, a grade school child can prove the extent to which carbon dioxide retains the sun's energy; all the child has to do is build a small greenhouse to do so. Secondly, the percentage of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is easily and accurately determined. More energy from the sun arrives on the earth every day than is consumed by the entire human race. There is very good evidence to prove that global warming is caused by or exacerbated by our relentless use of fossil fuels. Decade by decade, we can measure the correlation quite accurately.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLeo Toribio
Pittsburgh, PA
The "greenhouse effect" is a misnomer because its warming mechanism is different from the real greenhouse. The latter heats by suppression of air cooling (convection heat transfer). The former heats by absorption and re-emission of infrared radiation by greenhouse gases (radiative heat transfer).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLecture : Scientific heresy. Nov 1, 2011 in Edinburgh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this/ By Matt Ridley /
My topic today is scientific heresy.
When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad?
How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?
www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/1/scientific-heresy.html
Lecture : Scientific heresy. Nov 1, 2011 in Edinburgh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this/ By Matt Ridley /
My topic today is scientific heresy.
When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad?
How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?
www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/1/scientific-heresy.html
It is counterproductive for people to only advocate their solution and discount all other approaches to reduction of greenhouse gases. The point is there are various approaches that should be used concurrently. Natural gas, for example has lower CO2 emissions per kw/hr than coal or oil. Coal and oil burning plants can readily be converted to natural gas. Co-generation can double the efficiency of thermal plants. Cars and trucks can also be readily converted to compressed natural gas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHydro electric power is a great combination with wind power which needs a back up that can be efficiently throttled. The growing efficiency of photovoltaic solar panels means that they can economically be used in many areas they could not be before.
However that assumes there is a logical and scientific approach to the energy industry. The reality is that the economics of the industry have been manipulated to favour the coal and oil lobbies. Only after those sectors can see that they can make as much money by investing in the alternatives to coal and gas will their political pressure wain. That can be done by reducing their royalty holidays.
If both sides of the general debate agree that global warming is a fact, and if the doubters could agree that greenhouse gases contribute and any mitigation would be of some benefit then it seems to be a good idea alone to mitigate and find current cost effective measures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNote: Solar energy (SE) with the exception of geothermal, is most nearly the ONLY energy. Coal received it's energy as SE, Wind's energy is SE & our tilt. So, it seems that if we can exploit SE to it's fullest, every building has inefficient solar pannels, wind farms, energy from tides we'd be better off. Yes cheap, cost effective, considerably inefficent solar panels on every rooftop would make a huge dent in our need to burn fosil fuels. That is until we can grow our own efficient panels from an organic source and leave the rare earth in the ground...
I call baloney on your claim that oil companies aren't out to bury alternatives to their products. Search Wikipedia for National City Lines or Information Council on the Environment or even The Global Climate Coalition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, seems like corporate money buys conclusions from these think-tanks that are always friendly to their bottom line. Every time I see a "paper" bashing renewable energy, I trace it to another dirty energy-funded think tank. Or, given the fact that Republicans have been just about 99% hostile to clean energy ever since Reagan ripped Jimmy Carter's solar panels off the White House, maybe their support for the party is an easy way to limit competition from renewables.
Maybe you should think twice before accepting their propaganda as fact.
I don't know if it's you or one of the other deniers on this site, but one of you is always ranting about how climate change is a "religion" or something. Well, your post opened my eyes on your very own "religion". You said that "The Free Market is the only way to solve any problem", but what happens if the market isn't Free? What happens if certain industries are favored by over a century of government policy and accumulate vast amounts of power through incumbency? What happens if the prices of the incumbent industry's products are artificially low because of corporate welfare and the industry's ability to externalize many of the costs associated with the use of their products? What if people don't really have an alternative and are forced to use a product to live in a modern society? Finally, what if the government expended 100s of billions to protect an industry's supply lines? Would that be a "Free Market"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you are such an adherent to "Free" Market Fundamentalism, you should be familiar with basic economic terms like externalities or incumbency or monopolistic advantage.
Would the "Free" Market have eradicated polio or smallpox? NO! It is merely concerned with making money and those that couldn't afford the cures would be left to die. Could the "Free" Market pull off the Apollo Moon Landings? Could the "Free" Market have built the Interstate Highway System or the Internet in the open and unrestricted way we enjoy it today? If you answer yes, you've been reading so much of Ayn Rand's nonsense that you're delusional!
Are these flat earthers paid to be deniers by linking their oil co pension to the number of posts they make?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that CO2 absorbs and emits IR in the band that the earth emits was discovered 150 years ago. The connection between that fact, and the effect that more of it will cause the earth to retain more heat was figured out 100 years ago. So, I'm wondering what Prid and others think they know that no one else has figured out over the last 100 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIMHO, what is driving denial is basically two things: a) the fossil fuel companies don't want to go out of business, and they have a _lot_ of money to put out propaganda designed to maintain their market, b) there is a natural inclination for people not to want to believe bad news.
Re wasted energy Post 14. Your wasted energy is largely a fallacy. Look up Carnot Cycle. Calling cooling towers a waste is like saying you do not have to have any height difference for a water powered turbine to work. Energy can only be harvested where there is energy high & low side. The cooling side is just as important as the heating side to recover energy & the greater the difference between the two the greater the percentage of potential energy that can be recovered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately the lack of technical understanding dominates the debate on mitigation measures resulting in project after project failing but who cares, the Government will pay for more feel good projects. If the wasted funds had been put into developing nuclear energy, the world would have been infinitely better off & cleaner.
Whoever did the interview needs their supervisor to talk to them. What kind of questions are these? Are we turning the site into a morning talkshow? The skeptics do have a point, up to a point. Please provide the facts on the issues not opinions nor things that come from the heart. Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The reality is that the economics of the industry have been manipulated to favour the coal and oil lobbies."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't the subsidies to renewables higher? I understand solar and wind are more expensive than fossil fuels.
Nope you got it the other way around:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.dblinvestors.com/documents/What-Would-Jefferson-Do-Final-Version.pdf
Takeaway quote:
"As a percentage of inflation-adjusted federal
spending (eliminating increases in new programmatic spending since the introduction of
early oil and gas subsidies in 1918), nuclear
subsidies comprised more than 10% of this
normalized federal budget over their first 15
years, and oil and gas subsidies constituted 5%
percent of the total budget. Measured on a
similar scale, renewables constituted only about
one percent. That is to say, in an apples-toapples comparison, the federal commitment to
O&G was five times greater than the federal
commitment to renewables during the first 15
years of each subsidies’ life, and it was more
than 10 times greater for nuclear."
Indeed, high subsidies to renevable energy raise two questions:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- How are scientists and political figures influenced by companies profiting from renevable energy? (climate mitigation is a multi-billion bussiness in itself, and somebody will either sell these clean technologies or lose money).
- Do scientists studying global warming benefit from bloating importance of global warming? Topic unimportant- no grants, catastrophe coming - big money to study it.
- I read dozens of letters vilifying big business. So, why didn't these evil big corporations simply invest in technologies promoted by global warming activists and profit from the new gravy train?
The analysis of your source is not good. It quoted ave. annual subsidies: oil & gas = $1.8 B, nuclear = $3.3 B, renewables = $0.4 B. The historical periods are different. In the 1920s oil was the main energy without nuclear and renewables. It is expected subsidies would be higher. The figures are absolute amounts. It should be dollar per BTU. I suspect oil & gas have a much larger base and renewables have higher subsidy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was right. Your source quoted the cost of solar at $5/watt. That's more expensive than coal and gas at $1 to $2/watt.
"Q: What attracted you to the climate change deniers?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow that's what I call an excellent leading question which avoids the good Doctor Oreskes having to explain the hateful phrase.
"we started digging and found direct links to the tobacco industry."
I'm sceptical about the anthropogenic contribution to global warming, yet I've no links to the tobacco industry. I've seen evidence that raises doubts about the AGW alarmism; those doubts need no ulterior motive to explain them beyond the evidence.
Oreskes' continual denial of valid questions about the so-called climate "consensus" has become utterly tiresome.
Though she does not, I should mention some evidence: Global CO2 emissions increased by 45% between 1990 and 2010, but the global temperature anomaly in June 2011 was identical to the anomaly in June 1990. In 30 years, the extra carbon dioxide hasn’t made the temperature rise.
How long should we wait? Please don't cite the last ten years being very warm: coming down from a high point, naturally temps are still high. But they have, undeniably, gone down. In their latest report, the IPCC claims they don't expect to see an anthropogenic influence on the climate for the next 30 years.
What more evidence do you want that the entire dangerous AGW myth is, indeed, a myth?
Cheers,
Richard Treadgold
Convenor
Climate Conversation Group
www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz
My apologies. I meant to say "In 20 years, the extra carbon dioxide hasnt made the temperature rise."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll help you out with that. We object to the transfer of $7 - $9 Trillion to the scientific community when:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. AGW is not proved. Postulated yes, proved no.
2. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history.
3. There are no plans yet to *do* anything that might work.
4. Since glaciers have been melting for 10,000 years, how come it's OUR fault, why do we have to PAY to fix it?
5. How do you suggest we fix it?
6. Why do your own private emails admit AGW is a hoax?
7. Dr. Mann's models all create hockey sticks. Put Pi in it 10,000 times (3.14159) and it'll give you a hockey stick.
Models show what the programmers set them to.
Climate Warming Wienies want to disrupt our society. And they want to do that with societies own cash.
Oooooo. Look out, we might wind up like Venus.
Scary.
Go to the pet shop and buy a Goldfish Bowl designed to hold "x" number of fish. Buy that number of fish and the other acccessories you need and take it all home and set up the Goldfish bowl. After everything seems like its swimming along OK go buy another fish and put it in the bowl. When you cross the capacity of the bowl to sustain a given number of fish, not just the extra fish dies, they all die. We live in a Goldfish Bowl and probably have crossed the sustainability limit of the planet. A solution is to reduce the overall demand on resources. While I have no concrete evidence to support my Hypothosis I suspect the same group that denies climate change are also the ones that want to reduce funding for planned parenthood or any other population control measures. Greed and fear of the unknown rattle insecure people. Many pin their hopes on religous beliefs that are threatened by enlightenment that derives in part from scientific quests. So defund the science. Sad, Sad, Sad.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRT,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou aren't very good at math; are you? Here is a good summary you should read.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/going-down-the-up-escalator-part-1.html
According to the logic you used here; global warming has been over half a dozen times in the last 30 years alone. If you go further back, you can find even more short-term cooling trends to reinforce your position. Funny, despite all this lack of warming you are pointing out, every decade continues to be warmer than the last.
Dollar per BTU stacks the odds in favor of incumbent energy industries and masks the fact that renewable energy subsidies have been allowed to lapse several times in the past while dirty energy subsides are written into the tax code. If you would have looked at nuclear subsidies in the 1960s, it would have looked MUCH worse than renewable energy!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow much do you get paid by dirty energy to post stuff?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate Change / Global Warming
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislooks like a straw dog, red herring. Not that it is not important, but it makes most of us feel helpless & angry. What can I do... freeze in the dark for the greater good? The kind of polarization that leads to stalemate is perhaps a sign of balance. Do the pros & cons of this debate have quantifiable mass?
Conspicuous consumption & waste is significant of status. With this in mind, consider the consequence of personal conservation & thrift. Public display of useless expenditure is evidence of wealth, power, leadership. The opposite is humility, obscurity, powerlessness. This paradox leads is to personal responsibility for our habits. People have always organized in hierarchal groups. The selection of leader is based on very old habit, much of which is preindustrial.
So I can't see much difference between people who want the way it was and others who want the way it is now. Neither can have their way!
Before you provide a response giving "evidence" to support your argument please provide information where it can be found. No hyperlinks please. Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDollar per BTU will not favor oil & gas because the time period being compared is first 15 years when the industry is still in development stage. IMO oil & gas are mature industries and should not be subsidized. Anyway the point is to look at energy subsidy objectively and per BTU is the proper measure. If renewables subsidy turns out to be higher, it doesn't mean it's bad as long as it's used to develop new technologies and not simply to enrich some rich capitalists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike Al Gore you mean :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are an awful lot of rich socialists in Durban right now; leaching their way to wealth & privilege in their fossil fuelled jets. No reports of arrivals by sailing ship & bicycle. Hypocrites.
"What can I do... freeze in the dark for the greater good?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho told you that phasing out fossil fuels meant no light or heat? It wasn't someone selling energy produced from fossil fuels was it?
This is the best article that sums up warmist's mentality. The graph that they've produced clearly demonstrates that Hansen's 1988 predictions of global mean temperature haven't been correct for a single year so far, and where 37% wrong and rising as of 2010. Yet, we have this article's author telling us that anybody who points this out works for the tobacco industry. It's not the deniers that are smoking something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this