'Runs away and hides'

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

The debate has been framed as either man-made or natural causes, but this strikes me as 1, an unscientific approach and 2, a bit beside the point.  

First, we do not live separate from our environment, we have a symbiotic relationship with it.  So trying to untangle that to evade blame or responsibility seems a little daft.  If I breathe, I am effecting the environment.  If a meteor hits the earth, it is effecting the environment.  Your need to eat to survive impacts the environment.  Beaver dams impact the environment.  I think the more logical debate should be between how much of our environmental impact is necessary and how much is gratuitous.  Unlike trees and beavers and meteors, humans have quite a bit of free will and the ability to comprehend the long term impact of their actions.  And with our unique powers come unique responsibilities.  

Moreover, regardless how much of climate change is attributed to causes besides human behavior, I don't see how that absolves us of our need to use and impact our environment in a sustainable manner.  Pollution and deforestation have very measurable negative impacts on life on earth aside from their relation to global climate change.  And surely access to clean air and drinkable water are basic human rights, even if you don't think polar bears have basic rights.  

I believe climate change is an observable reality, and that it can be catastrophic for at least some species, species who don't have a say in what we do, and I feel a personal obligation to prevent animal and plant species from unnecessary suffering and permanent extinction when possible.

Whether it is for precautionary or reactionary reasons, maintaining a healthy planet is important.  I might die as a result of being hit by a bus, but I should still probably stop smoking.  You know.  Just in case.

Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

... the current emissions of CO2 are benign in order to justify permitting CO2 emitters to engage in the experiment and just hope for the best?

No, I do not.

It is clear and evident social insanity to frame the question as something that "the science must prove beyond reasonable doubt" before those engaged in the experiment have their social entitlement to play with the CO2 levels in the atmosphere revoked.

The only sane way to proceed is to demand that those who wish to emit at a rate that increases atmospheric concentration of CO2 and other GHG need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to be safe. Because the risk if they are wrong about it being safe so far exceeds the benefit if they are correct about it being safe that if they are wrong, emissions reduction is not a cost-benefit trade-off, but a priority decision.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

there is plenty of evidence, too. Between CO2 histories from mountains in Hawaii and ice-cores in Antarctica, we have a fairly strong indication of a human-induced rise in carbon dioxide - as I'm sure you are aware. The effect of various artificial, volatile chemicals on atmospheric ozone seems to be demonstrated. Reduced albedo due to reduced ice caps is certainly working in a complementary fashion with 'greenhouse gases'.

Acidification of the oceans indicates that some of the buffering actions that might mitigate climate change have been 'neutralized'. poemless mentions deforestation, which is well-documented. Besides the loss of the forests' carbon-sink, there is the use of the land after logging, such as planting sugar cane for ethanol production for use as fuel. It may be a minor example in terms of portion, but even the fallow clear-cut is giving up CO2 and methane via decomposition.

So, yes, I believe in human-induced global warming, however much non-human influence there may be. And here's one to add to the list - NOx - which is a more potent 'greenhouse gas' than CO2. Modern (last century or so) internal combustion and turbine motors generate vast quantities. This component of the issue has not been studied to the same extent as CO2, because the tests are much less developed. For one thing the molecules are much more reactive than carbon dioxide, so how do you distinguish NO that has become a nitrate from a geologically-generated nitrate? Meantime, the original NO was airborne for awhile, but what did it contribute to the 'greenhouse effect' while it was still NO? Another problem is that much less NOx is generated in a turbine than CO2, so it is harder to detect, but yet it has more effect as a 'greenhouse gas'. Point being that we have a potentially strong influence that was introduced to the equation rather recently and about which we lack study.

Beyond that, I will throw in my eccentric POV - it is a mistake to rely on machines and fuels to the extent that we do, if for no other reason than that humans must connect with their own lives via muscle-power, face-to-face communications with their fellows, skill development, contact with wood and dirt and plants and animals. It is gratifying, aesthetically pleasing, less expensive, and, ultimately I hope, communitarian.

paul spencer

I've bashed asiegel on the same thing earlier this year - but I am ardent on the use of correct language here. I don't believe things in science. Ideas are inferred, interpreted, recognized, detailed, described, hypothesized, theorized, proven.

No believing.

Having said that, I've remaining issues with the climate change "camps". The crucial question being: to what extent do increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, that is, what is the 2xCO2 (the doubling of atmospheric CO2) sensitivity of the planet? I don't think there has been an adequately shown answer to that, although  a range of estimates have been published.

But should this answer truly matter in determining policy to reduce and moderate the current excessiveness of carbon output? I refer to the posts of Bruce and poemless above.

I think there is a problem with your premise that various scientific hypotheses suddenly swing from violently opposed to mainstream.

Your example of peak oil is a good one, because the peak oil theory has been around for a long, long time--as I'm sure you are very much aware. The people who claim or claimed that it was invalid had a vested interest in having people think that way so that they could maintain a profitable industry, whether carmaking, oil drilling, plastics manufacture, fertilizing, etc.

Another example that you didn't mention, but that frequently comes up, is that continental drift was disbelieved by geologists for decades but then proven to be true, thus they all changed their mind. Which is not what happened, what happened was that nobody could explain it until they got decent magnetometer readings of the ocean floor.

What troubles me is that the global warming "debate" (if you can expect a bunch of frothing-at-the-mouth talk show radio hosts to be capable of debate) is between the non-believers (see comment above about the role of belief in science) and the CONSENSUS of the atmospheric science community. The important thing here is that the consensus is what you can get all of them to agree on; it's not even the median or mean of the models or observations but just the lowest common denominator of what everybody agrees about. That means that there are plenty of perfectly reputable models and scientists who think that things are a LOT worse than the IPCC reports say. MUCH, MUCH worse, in fact.

I'm sure you've seen this picture, for example.

During the 2008 melt season, Arctic sea ice declined by 10.58 million square kilometers (4.08 million square miles). This was slightly more than the previous record for loss over an entire melt season, set in 2007, which was 10.51 million square kilometers (4.06 million square miles).

http://www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Just a couple of days ago there was a report that the tipping point concentration of CO2 was more like 350 ppm, not the 450 ppm that has been proposed as an almost unbelievably unachiveable "withough immense economic disruption" level.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/11/09/stabilize-at-350-ppm-or-risk-ice-free-planet-warn-nasa-yale-sh effield-versailles-boston-et-al/

I look forward to hearing about the problems you have with the atmospheric models, and assume that you will have vetted them at http://www.realclimate.org before exposing them here--just to avoid the first level of foolish argumentation...  :-)

I stopped arguing about the details of it.  Did it happen this way or that is now irrelevant.  What is relevant is how that event changed the world.

The paradigm works.  With global warming  I embrace my 3M6B theory which says the profit potential for wealth extraction from formerly oppressed people is the real reason for all the hype, sudden and elite  sponsored hype, behind this current CO2 carbon trading scam.

It was never about fixing the enviornment it is about control of people.

There is another option missing in the poll: I don't have an opinion.
Actually another one: We don't have a way to know for sure.

For me, the most interesting point is if the theoretical scientific framework. I don't know nothing about climate change. But I know about other computational simulation frameworks: namely conservation genetics, population genetics and spread of malaria drug resistance.

I owe the European Tribune a long post explaining my views, but for now I would say: trust this theoretical "science" at your own peril. Of course, more empirical evidence (of the type "there was always ice on place X but not anymore", falls in a different category, and is probably more trustworthy.

Like Nomad I don't like the term 'believe'.

I also don't like the binary will/will not be catastrophic. There's too much uncertainty in the science to be that hardline and in any case what qualifies as 'catastrophic'?

Having said that I voted for the 'anthropogenic/catastrophic' option because that's closest to what the physics predicts and the evidence supports.

Regards
Luke

-- #include witty_sig.h

Should I think for myself or trust the scientific, political, industrial and religious authorities who know so much more than I do about these issues?

Four groups lumped together - I hope you do not give them an equal weighting on this subject. Only one of them makes any serious attempt at being impartial.

Most people believe in the theory, but science is certainly not a democratic thing - even if an idea is supported by the majority it might be completely wrong. Or right.

That is not the relevant metric however. The relevant metric IMHO is the percentage of people knowledgeable enough to actualy form their own opinion, and having decent knowledge of the relevant literature. Science is not a democratic endeavor exactly because of this. Only those that actually participate in it actually have a gnosiological vote.

On the other hand the majority of a research community is infrequently wrong - it might not be "right enough" (i.e. their theories might not be sufficient after a significant extension of a field's empirical base), but wrong? Whenever that happened (i.e. with Wegener, say) you know about it. But for every Tectonic Plate theory, there are a thousand N-Rays, Lysenkoisms and more interestingly and productively Steady State Cosmologies.

So let me ask back: do you "believe" in General Relativity? In Carbon dating? In the Indoeuropeans? In CFCs damaging the Ozone layer?

If one wants to go beyond belief however in this case, and nearer to the empirical data, one has only to check early (and much less sophisticated) climate forecast models against actual data. The results [1, 2, 3 (fig. 1.1. pg 6)] are certainly not unimpressive and make "disbelief" AFAICT a harder option.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake