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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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In 1959 physicist Gilbert Plass warned in Scientific American that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was causing climate change. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson warned Congress of the risk. In 1979 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warned against a wait-and-see attitude (pdf).
But we have waited. And now most of us see. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are changing the climate. And a new report from the U.S. National Research Council argues—again—that we urgently need a national approach to reducing that pollution since its impacts will be with us for hundreds or even thousands of years.
One possibility is to make polluters pay for the cost of greenhouse gas emissions. For example, a tax on fossil fuel burned would spur investment in cleaner energy technologies, such as renewables or nuclear power.
Other nations will also have to reduce such pollution. But this latest report suggests that if the U.S. reduces its emissions, we're in a better position to influence others, such as China, to do the same. One thing remains clear—the time for waiting is over.
—David Biello
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
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34 Comments
Add CommentPeon officer: "But captain, it's an emergency!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCptn. Zapp Brannigan: "Come back when it's a catastrophe!"
He is America.
Nik, when you begin childishly labeling anyone who disagrees with you as "marxist" or "communist" or "socialist", your opinions become irrelevant. The overwhelming consensus among relevant sciences indicate imminent climate change is occurring and it is being influenced by man-made factors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The overwhelming consensus among relevant sciences indicate imminent climate change is occurring and it is being influenced by man-made factors."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will label you naive. Since when is science about consensus? Richard Feynman is rolling in his grave. Getting my Ph.D. at Columbia and then spending three years as a postdoc in a hard science at Harvard taught me how good science is done. Climatology is not good science. They don't try to disprove their leading theories, but just try to prop them up. Peer review is broken too. The far left is indeed chock full of marxists. Have you never sat in on a liberal arts course at most any college in the nation? It's straight up unapologetic marxism. Calling them marxists is not childish at all, it merely describes the fact. The only name calling done here was started by your use of the term 'childishly'.
I note that you used an ad hominem attack to avoid even looking at and perhaps commenting on the information payload I dropped here. Your head isn't just in the sand, it's elsewhere. That's par for the course in AGW enthusiast circles. All you have is vitriol to offer, never an actual counter argument.
You wont even LOOK at the archive of tide gauge records I point out in the Ocean graphic. It's all the world's tide gauges, plotted, with a nice Google map too. Oh, no, don't poke around in there...you might see something highly upsetting: you will NOT find one in a hundred long-running single site records that show recent trend change whatsoever. All you will find are linear trends.
P.S. I used to subscribe to Sci American until last year when climate alarmism took it over. When I was a boy my father had a huge collection of issues from the 60s and 70s. My god they were serious articles in those! They were back then written mainly for other scientists who wanted to learn about other fields. And it wasn't full of full of clip art images having zero informative value. What are budding young kids supposed to turn to for that type of crazy sophisticated stimulation these days? I hate what has happened to science since I was raised. No more men outside of Earth orbit any more either. Boo!
Nik, If you really know what good science is then why have you not linked to any? Why make excuses about the peer review process because it isn't telling you what you want to hear? And why use Ad Hom in labelling people who accept the science as Marxist? This looks like some right winger letting their politics trump science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd contrary to what you claim, science is about a consensus of a sort. When every credible scientific organisation in the world agrees with the basics theory that man made climate change is occurring and isn't a good thing that is a consensus than any rational person should take note off any anyone who claims to know better even if they do say they have a Ph.D, needs to be a lot more credible than you come across as.
Argumentum ad potentiam (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative. The most general structure of this argument is:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSource A says that p is true.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.
Oh my god you guys wont even look at what I posted. Wont even look! I have included links within to the most credible peer-reviewed and official sources of information there are: official archives of tide and temperature records. I am making *no* original argument here. I am just the messenger. I'm just pointing at the existing accepted records, hoping against all hope (I guess) that others will look at what logic alone dictates is blindingly obvious: if history is a hockey stick then most of North America and much of Europe should show at least *some* sign of recent trend change in the oldest thermometer records that exist there, ones that are long enough to establish a real pre-emissions trend. It doesn't show up at ALL. When I dug these records up my jaw dropped. It dropped again when I ran into a full tide gauge archive.
The consensus has never been wrong before? Haven't you read about the history of science?! Oh, and Man will never fly. And a virus can't possibly cause ulcers. And non-coding DNA is just "junk". Bacteria spontaneously generate out of nowhere. There is an ether throughout space! There are canals on Mars. Infants are a blank slate with little genetic influence on their temperament. God doesn't play dice since the universe is one big clockwork movement. The Earth is the center of the Universe too. Mercury in vaccines causes autism.
So tell me, why isn't my city showing any enhanced warming trend whatsoever? Why is there not enhanced sea level rise here either? None whatsoever! It's not the most exotic little island in the world. It's Manhattan.
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/12.php
Or another plot if you must have two:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8518750
Just where *is* James Hansen's (who works two blocks up from me above Tom's Diner here by Columbia) support for this 1988 claim of what will happen 20 years later?:
"The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water."
It seems everyone wants to talk about what we can do someday. Most of those plans seem to be connected to something they have stock in. You suggest something we can do today, for free, like having everyone that can telecommute and people look at you like we are nuts. Does not bode well for the future of mankind. We can only hope more company managers will discover the cost savings of having employees working from home in time to give some of these long range plans a chance to happen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow I had to sign up as this guy NikFromNYC is too much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe starts off calling everyone who disagrees with him a marxist despite 98% of all scientists in the field agree. and then he continues with an appeal to authority by posting what selected astronauts feel and then attacks someone else for posting how the consensus actually feels. YOU JUST POSTED ASTRONAUT QUOTES AND YOU WANT TO GO OFF ON APPEAL TO AUTHORITY? MY GOD MAN DO YOU READ YOUR OWN POSTS?
also he ignores than consensuses are rarely this strong or have this amount of evidence behind them
he also wants to pretend the earth isnt warming at all, someone better tell that permafrost to stop melting.
and then he invokes the one man left for him to invoke, Lindzen as he is only of the only people actually in the field that denies the scope of AGW. BUT HERE IS THE THING, HE DOESNT ACTUALLY DENY AGW. HE AGREES MAN IS INCREASING THE TEMP, HE DISAGREES ON HOW MUCH AND WHAT WILL BE THE EFFECT. But he isnt so stupid as to deny the unprecedented warming. and let us not forget the Berkley earth surface temperature study, done by world famous supper denier, richard muller.
hey NikFromNYC how did the richard muller super duper skeptical look at the data turn out for ya?
Nik says;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Argumentum ad potentiam (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy"
Yes I know it is a fallacy but I also understand why it is and you do not appear to.
It is only a fallacy when it is an appeal to an 'unqualified' authority.
If 9 out of ten doctors tell you that you have cancer do you ignore them and claim that to accept what they say is just an appeal to authority? If 9 out of 10 astronomers said the same you might actually have a point.
Do you accept what the most qualified people tell you as the most likely or dismiss it because it isn't what you want to hear?
Sorry Nik, I should have also commented on your Hansen and the Hudson river claim. Even if what you allege is true, if you do understand science like you claim then you should know not to accept opinion, even from a scientist, (that is appeal to authority), unless it is supported in the published literature. I'm guessing than Hansen never published research in 1988 supporting such a sea level rise, but I wait to be corrected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAssuming (arguendo) that climate change due to (or preventable by) human agency is correct -- QUESTION: does manufacture of plastic, fertilizer, pesticides, other chemicals from fossil fuel feedstocks ADD to greenhouse gases MORE OR LESS THE SAME WAY burning fossil fuels as fuels does?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNik, Your starting to sound shrill and irrational.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said "Please select other astronauts for me who support climate alarmism."
I'm not aware of any astronauts who are support climate alarmism but I'm sure most accept the theory of climate change but isn't this just a digression? A smoke screen to get away from a scientifically unsupported position that you hold? Since you are using astronauts for support it is valid to mention the argument from authority fallacy, especially since you brought it up. You claim to be scientifically qualified to PhD level and yet you have to resort to opinion from unqualified people to refute the actual experts in the field - like you say; 'This is like shooting fish in a barrel'.
We do not need to present you with single facts - there is a whole body of scientific research supporting the mainstream position. Are you claiming your astronauts have facts that actual field researchers do not?
What I found was most hilarious is that the very data he links to shows a trend of increasing sea level. Oh, it is a LINEAR increase, oh noez! What exactly is unacceptable about a linear trend? Since when did anyone (credible) claim it wasn't a linear trend? Linear trends were, the last time me and my math degree checked, still trends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTalk about grasping at straws...
I look at it this way. If there is water in the boat you start bailing. You do not discuss what is the best way to get the water out of the boat till you grab something and start bailing and you sure do not try and sell your mates pails. While you are bailing you can discuss better methods if they should be needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe cutting oil usage will not help much with all this record breaking weather. Maybe it will but companies could start sending people to work from home THIS WEEK and we could see where that leaves us. It sure can not hurt us economically to reduce oil imports or lower the cost of doing business either. And maybe just maybe it will buy us enough time to enact some of this blue sky stuff which seems to be all anyone wants to talk about these days. So if you are going to gab about it at least start talking about what you can do today not 20 to 50 years from now. If you want to discuss if the problem is man made or a natural trend then put your money where your mouth and push to make everyone that can work from home. Hey you might just prove your point if we cut oil consumption 30% and nothing changes. And at the same time save everyone in this country a ton of wasted cash. Not to mention time.
Excellent point. It seems that the problem of proving global warming is similar to proving evolutions. Such complex dynamic systems do not lend themselves to the modeling which would provide true scientific "proof". This lack of "proof" is interpreted by the non-scientific community as being questionable. In systems often times the evidence is all around and consensus is all we have. We are the blind men reconstructing the elephant from the small pieces we feel. Let's not wait until we are treading water to initiate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbout the West Side highway being underwater, Hansen was speculating on changes that might happen if CO2 doubled.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSource: “Examining Hansen's prediction about the West Side Highway”, Skeptical Science, Feb 28, 2011
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-West-Side-Highway.htm
To the nay-sayers regarding climate change: In 1959, when global warming was first publicly advanced, several predictions were made; the CO2 level would continue to rise, and due to this, the planet, as a whole, would become warmer and there would be more severe weather, both droughts and floods, more severe hurricanes and other events of severe weather. Anyone who was alive in 1959, and old enough to pay attention to the weather knows that it has gotten hotter wherever you live. We set records almost every year for more severe fire seasons, and floods. This past year set a record for winter snow fall in the eastern 2/3 of the country. Hurricanes such as Andrew and Kattrina have become common events. Yes, there are years without hurricanes along the eastern seaboard of the US, but worldwide, the number of class 4 and 5 hurricanes has increased since 1959. The devastating tornados of the past month were record setting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo those who still resist, I ask one question. What will it take to change your mind? Will enough melting of the northern polar ice cap so that there is a northwest passage open to the west coast be enough? Over 10% of the ice on Greenland has melted over the last decade. Will another 10, or 20% be enough to convince you? A piece of the ice sheet the size of Rhode Island broke off the southern polar ice cap last summer. How much more has to melt? Do we have to suffer a catastrophic crop loss across the middle of the country? Do all the glaciers in Glacier National Park have to disappear? Does Manhattan have to be under water? Any person who is really interested in a scientific approach to problem solving should have an answer to this question. What would have to happen to change your mind? Otherwise, you are just an obstructionist, saying whatever it takes to keep your oil, gas or coal job, or stock portfolio doing well.
A theory is proven when ALL of its predictions come true. It has already reached the point where the damage caused by these extreme weather events equals the cost of changing to clean energy, and global warming has barely begun!
Even Communist China accepts global climate change as fact and has a much more aggressive plan for clean energy than does the USA. China will install 3 times more solar panels than the USA in the next 12 months. Rarely, if ever, has a communist dictatorship been more accepting of change than a democracy.
I agree with you,Nik. I recently subscribed to SA and am very disappointed with their "climate change/global warming" crap. Climate change has occurred for millenia without any help from man, and carbon dioxide is necessary for life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell put, ConinCalgary. My local library dropped SA two years ago after polling patrons for a month and finding no interest. I used to comment more here, but got tired of the zealots and their vitriol. It only gets worse as their predictions continue to fail. There are many better sites out there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRight on, Dr. Jehr1. Almost everything you put in your blog is not factual. Do you look at data or just unthinkingly repeat what you have heard? Nik is by far the most rational of all, Lazarus. Why do you write when you have nothing to contribute? If a PhD is required, I have one specializing in elementary particle physics and I appreciate not only Nik's scientific points, but he speaks English better than all of you. Apparently you can't even understand what he is saying. It seems to be a little over your head. Get real and realize that the temperature excursion is minor and not likely to go anywhere from here, sea level changes are small and non threatening, and CO2 is incapable of driving any large changes. Think about real physics of clouds, cosmic rays, aerosols, absorption of light by the vegetation and the unreliable predictions you are relying on. The climate guys are out of their league. The problem is too big for them and if they were honest they would admit that they don't even know which direction the temperature will go. Do me a favor and simply look at the smooth increase in CO2 and the very non smooth temperature profile. They don't correlate - they don't depend on each other. Many scientists don't agree with the calculations. It's not just Republicans or people working for the oil industry. The science is weak and theoretically unreliable. That is, the fed-back nature of the problem makes a model of behavior impossible, unless you have as much input data as the output data which you don't. Don't panic when your global temperature is about at the level it has been for the last 30 years. Actually you can't fix the problem you expect even if it's due to CO2 anyway, but that's not the science question. I wouldn't comment except for the fact that you are giving science a bad name.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNear-Zero CO2 Plans have been with us for 25 years and it is time that all countries adopt one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder how did CO2 come to be called a green house gas? If you shut off, or slow down, the ventilation in a green house, the temperature increases, but the CO2 decreases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn all of the scientific literature out there, I'm having trouble finding - how do you account for the actual heat that is created when you burn fuels? Why is CO2 the problem, but the actual created heat?
*not
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooking at global data (rather than tide gauge records just from the U.S.) show that sea level rise has been increasing since 1880. The recent rate of sea level rise is greater than its average value since 1930. As for future sea level rise, these predictions are based on physics, not statistics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSource: “Is sea level rise accelerating?” by Tamino, Skeptical Science, April 4, 2011
http://www.skepticalscience.com/decelerating-sea-level-rise.htm
Suggest that you read:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?” by Kevin Judd, Skeptical Science, June 30, 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=71&&n=252
I've been all over that site. The page you referenced doesn't answer my question, it's well, a third grade explanation of CO2 and clouds. How do you account for, in global warming theory, the heat that is created when you burn fuels? Where does it go? How much of the excess heat is from actually burning the fuels? For instance, I use about 1,500,000 BTUs every workday. Where does it go? Has the mass of the atmosphere increased? Has it's mass been measured?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe heat created by the burning of fossil fuels does not have mass. I suggest that you read Wikipedia's article about "heat."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat
I should have clarified. The mass of the fuel is that of which I speak. I know NASA has accounted for about 2/3 of the CO2 we've dumped into the atmosphere. Thinking out loud... A litre of gasoline weights about 850g. Once burned its mass is transferred to the atmosphere. Most of it is water and condenses out. I was wondering how much the mass of the atmosphere has changed as a result of all of human induced combustion. I'll head on over to the NASA site and see what I can dig up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other question was about accounting for the heat generated by combustion in relation to AGW theory. Restated: How does AGW theory account for the heat of combustion? I've never seen it mentioned in the AGW literature. I must be overlooking it, or perhaps just looking in the wrong place. It's not on wikipedia or that blog you mentioned. I can't find it anywhere.
/*starts looking in closet*/
Combustion typically occurs when one molecule of carbon (in the fuel) combines with two molecules of oxygen in the atmosphere. Because CO2 is a trace gas, the "mass" of the atmosphere is not significantly impacted. The chemical compostion of the atmosphere has, however, been altered by mankind's activities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not a scientist, just an ordinary citizen. I've been growing my vegetables for 10 years only but I have noticed a change. Spring is warmer and dryer than it used to be (in Europe/Belgium). I have to saw earlier than before. It's not a trend observed over several decades but when the events forecasted years ago by experts finally become a reality why do we still question them? I think most people and scientists are so cut off from nature that all they do see is data. After the wait and see attitude waybe we should adopt the "what if" attidude. We don't know for sure if this change is man made or not but do we really want to wait until we have the proof? Captain, when the catastrophe is here the ship will sink for sure! I don't have kids so it will be ok for me but don't YOU have children, grand-children? Is this the heritage you want to leave them? Who likes the CO2 smell coming out of a car anyway? Not to mention we'll run out of oil eventually!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome swelling of the mass of the atmosphere must occur. My question is: has the swelling been measured?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am getting pretty fed up with US consumer junkies. They are doing nothing to clear up the mess they are making, and it is others that are being asked to pay for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI beleive that you are correct about climate change impacting the size of the atmosphere. I am researching the issue further and will get back to you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's what I found:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The tropopause is the atmospheric boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. Observations indicate that the tropopause height has increased several hundred meters over the past 3 decades."
Source: "Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming," Skeptical Science. Sep 10, 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Empirically-observed-fingerprints-of-anthropogenic-global-warming.html
There is a large re-insurance company in Germany (Munich Re), which insures other insurance companies against large damages caused by natural catastrophes such as damages caused by large floods, hurricanes, earthquakes etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Munich Re people have a large data base on such catastrophic events (more than 30 000 entries) going back up to fifty years which they use to calculate the risk premiums.
During the last three decades their data base shows a progressive increase in ever more extreme weather events such as hurricanes in the US or extremely dry seasons in Africa and – by the way – also in the US.
Now – the skeptics can always claim, that these are just natural climate changes which have no relation to the CO2 level.
However – the Munich Re data base shows that these increasing extreme weather events are nicely in sync with the ever growing CO2 level.
So the conclusion is – at least for me – instead of having these climate changes drive the increasing CO2 level it is the increasing CO2 level which drives these climate changes.