Dr. Roy Spencer doesn't allow comments on his
blog. Rightly so -- he'd likely get some indignant replies and/or pithy retorts. I would rather address his contentions. So here I do. I will email the good doctor with my link. I doubt he'll respond; he's much too busy promiscuously promulgating his worldview. And besides, I'm just Oakden Wolf, not a "prime time player". But I can certainly smell the smoke that Dr. Roy is blowing.
About.com describes an “urban legend” as an apocryphal (of questionable authenticity), secondhand story, told as true and just plausible enough to be believed, about some horrific…series of events….it’s likely to be framed as a cautionary tale. Whether factual or not, an urban legend is meant to be believed. In lieu of evidence, however, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely on skillful storytelling and reference to putatively trustworthy sources.By "putatively trustworthy", Roy is probably referring to hundreds of research papers that support the current scientific viewpoint on how climate change is occurring, and all the scientists in laboratories and universities around the world who have written those papers. By using this phraseology, he is calling the trustworthiness of all of these people, their honesty -- collectively -- into question.
I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.Not just "theoretically", Roy. Modeling recent warming requires increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and their radiative effects. The models don't even come close otherwise. I suspect Roy's response is that the models don't include natural cloud feedbacks, so they can't be trusted. But when you use the radiative effects of increasing atmospheric CO2, they reproduce the recent warming pattern quite well. Hmmmm....
But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.Thank you for your interpretation, Roy. It may also have been phrased this way out of necessity, with the need for clearly articulating the steps necessary to avoid serious climate consequences which could potentially affect the life and health of future generations of humans on this planet.
Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.And the melting ice lakes of Greenland, draining through the ice surface in minutes, are not real, Roy? Yes, some politicians have made statements that strain credibility, to communicate with constituents. Apparently this is a new development that you have not witnessed before!
Just as the tales of marauding colonies of alligators living in New York City sewers are based upon some kernel of truth, so too is the science behind anthropogenic global warming. But there is a big difference between reports of people finding pet alligators that have escaped their owners, versus city workers having their limbs torn off by roving colonies of subterranean monsters.Point taken, you are right here.
In the case of global warming, the “putatively trustworthy sources” would be the consensus of the world’s scientists. The scientific consensus, after all, says that global warming is…is what? Is happening? Is severe? Is manmade? Is going to burn the Earth up if we do not act? It turns out that those who claim consensus either do not explicitly state what that consensus is about, or they make up something that supports their preconceived notions.Horse hockey, Roy. If you ask climate scientists involved in the process, they will say it is happening, it is partly-to-mostly caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (yes, "manmade" - from human activities), and they will agree that a 2-3 degrees Centigrade temperature rise (or higher) would cause significant climate changes, most of which are likely to lead to serious problems.
If the consensus is that the presence of humans on Earth has some influence on the climate system, then I would have to even include myself in that consensus. After all, the same thing can be said of the presence of trees on Earth, and hopefully we have at least the same rights as trees do. But too often the consensus is some vague, fill-in-the-blank, implied assumption where the definition of “climate change” includes the phrase “humans are evil”.This is called "conflation". Since you like definitions, conflate means "to bring together : fuse b :
confuse OR to combine (as two readings of a text) into a composite whole. So what you have done here, Roy, for dramatic effect, is to conflate "climate change" with your own biased societal viewpoint, that many of those working toward altering the climate trajectory are adding to this a bias against humans and human activity. That's your opinion, unsupported by fact, and the statement here is added for emotional effect. Add to this that you're an evangelical Christian and some brand of Creationist, and your science partner John Christy is also a devout Christian, your viewpoint here is a projection of your religious bias onto the argument, wherein you view supporters of the natural environment as atheists or pantheists who do not apparently accord humans the same place in the theological Universe that is accorded humanity in the Christian religion.
And I'll support this:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/3/749593/-Melding-Creationism-and-Climate-Denialism:-Dr.-Roy-Spencerhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/14/203632/973/595/457049http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/yes-roy-spencer-is-a-creationist/It is a peculiar development that scientific truth is now decided through voting. A relatively recent survey of climate scientists who do climate research found that 97.4% agreed that humans have a “significant” effect on climate. But the way the survey question was phrased borders on meaninglessness. To a scientist, “significant” often means non-zero. The survey results would have been quite different if the question was, “Do you believe that natural cycles in the climate system have been sufficiently researched to exclude them as a potential cause of most of our recent warming?”Your thesis here is totally wrong. Scientific truth is NOT decided through voting. The opinions of scientists here were sampled by polling. And your dimunition of "significant" is deliberate. There is a definite difference between "non-negligible", "detectable", and "significant" ---------- and you very likely know that.
And the answer to your next question among those who study climate enough to understand it would certainly be a strong "YES". There might be a few more hedgers, but not many.
And it is also a good bet that 100% of those scientists surveyed were funded by the government only after they submitted research proposals which implicitly or explicitly stated they believed in anthropogenic global warming to begin with. If you submit a research proposal to look for alternative explanations for global warming (say, natural climate cycles), it is virtually guaranteed you will not get funded. Is it any wonder that scientists who are required to accept the current scientific orthodoxy in order to receive continued funding, then later agree with that orthodoxy when surveyed? Well, duh.Once again impugning motives and honesty in the scientific community, Roy? The problem is, there is little plausibility in questioning the effects of greenhouse gases on climate, because their effect has been established in a multitude of ways, and proven to be a major actor on modern and past climates. It is not "orthodoxy" -- it is established scientific fact. Questioning it effectively requires the strong refutation of all these multiple lines of data and analysis. Your fringe scientific interpretations do not have a strong base of support. And I guess you must not have gotten funding for a long-shot proposal, either.
In my experience, the public has the mistaken impression that a lot of climate research has gone into the search for alternative explanations for warming. They are astounded when I tell them that virtually no research has been performed into the possibility that warming is just part of a natural cycle generated within the climate system itself.Hmmm... might they be similarly "astounded" to discover that virtually no research has been performed into the possibility that the extremely high surface temperatures on the planet Venus were generated by the proximity of Venus to the Sun? After all, the Sun is hot and Venus is a lot closer to the Earth than the Sun, isn't it? Your possibility is not a reasonably hypothesis because paleoclimatological research and modern-day observations have quantified the role of natural climate variability, and something else is needed to sufficiently drive temperatures upward or downward SIGNIFICANTLY -- i.e., to induce a climate trend lasting centuries or millenia. You've done some fairly good scientific research with satellites, Roy, but your idea is a non-starter, DOA, hardly better than the work of an amateur hack questioning the Theory of Relativity on the back of a paper napkin.
Too often the consensus is implied to be that global warming is so serious that we must do something now in the form of public policy to avert global catastrophe. What? You don’t believe that there are alligators in New York City sewer system? How can you be so unconcerned about the welfare of city workers that have to risk their lives by going down there every day? What are you, some kind of Holocaust-denying, Neanderthal flat-Earther?Again with the conflation. Why is it that any calls to take prudent steps to address the potential serious consequences of climate change are met by conservatives and skeptics with this persecution complex? The level of climate skepticism evinced publically is on the level with belief in the flat earth or Obama's illegitimacy to be President based on supposed uncertainty about where he was born or who his father was. It is indicative of belief held because of an underlying political and philosophical position, with psychological underpinnings. (Similar to Scientific Creationism and Intelligent Design belief in light of the evidence of science.) It is opinion, based on the workings of the emotional mind, not the intellectual mind. [This might be perceived as saying that religious belief is related to the working of the emotional mind, and that it doesn't have a intellectual component. Religious belief can have both, but it is likely rare indeed to find someone whose religious belief (not their theological knowledge) does not have an emotional/mystical(spiritual) aspect.]
It makes complete sense that in this modern era of scientific advances and inventions that we would so readily embrace a compelling tale of global catastrophe resulting from our own excesses. It’s not a new genre of storytelling, of course, as there were many B-movies in the 1950s whose horror themes were influenced by scientists’ development of the atomic bomb.Our modern equivalent is the 2004 movie, “Day After Tomorrow”, in which all kinds of physically impossible climatic events occur in a matter of days. In one scene, super-cold stratospheric air descends to the Earth’s surface, instantly freezing everything in its path. The meteorological truth, however, is just the opposite. If you were to bring stratospheric air down to the surface, heating by compression would make it warmer than the surrounding air, not colder.Oh, please Roy: was "The Core" or "Volcano" based on real geology? Hardly. These are brainless entertainment. Tommy Lee Jones' shoes would have caught fire when he was suspended over a molten lava flow. No science here -- move on.
I’m sure it is just coincidence that “Day After Tomorrow” was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed the 2006 movie “Independence Day,” in which an alien invasion nearly exterminates humanity. After all, what’s the difference? Aliens purposely killing off humans, or humans accidentally killing off humans? Either way, we all die.Emmerich seems to have a fondness for watching famous landmarks get destroyed.
But a global warming catastrophe is so much more believable. After all, climate change does happen, right? So why not claim that ALL climate change is now the result of human activity? And while we are at it, let’s re-write climate history so that we get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice age, with a new ingenious hockey stick-shaped reconstruction of past temperatures that makes it look like climate never changed until the 20th Century? How cool would that be?
This is a blatant falsehood, pure and utter. Neither of these climate events have been eliminated; they have been better characterized. This is further promulgation of a long-lived skeptical strawman -- a hallmark of propaganda. Roy, here you're sucking on the milk expressed by the body politic of the climate skeptics here -- and that's not an appealing image.
The IPCC thought it was way cool… until it was debunked, after which it was quietly downgraded in the IPCC reports from the poster child for anthropogenic global warming, to one possible interpretation of past climate.
It is far more than that. There is a good understanding of the MWP and LIA and what caused them, and their climate extents.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf
On page 467, the plots look particularly hockey-stickish. This constitutes a downgrade? I suspect you want your readers to think so. By the way, the next two pages provide a detailed discussion of the Medieval Warm Period. Would you allow me the usage of an actual quote?
"The evidence currently available indicates that NH mean temperatures during medieval times (950–1100) were indeed warm in a 2-kyr context and even warmer in relation to the less sparse but still limited evidence of widespread average cool conditions in the 17th century"
So this is the actual reality of "getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age". Not so disappeared as you would have your gullible gobblers think, is it, Roy?
And let’s even go further and suppose that the climate system is so precariously balanced that our injection of a little bit of that evil plant food, carbon dioxide, pushes our world over the edge, past all kinds of imaginary tipping points, with the Greenland ice sheet melting away, and swarms of earthquakes being the price of our indiscretions.Hmmm... you say "imaginary". I have a question, Roy: will you please evaluate the climate consequences of a massive injection of continental glacial meltwater into the North Atlantic Ocean? This happened near the end of the last glacial period, as the glaciers were receding. There was an effect on the Earth's climate. What happened? Are there tipping points related to oceanic circulation?
Would you also please evaluate the effect of massive amounts of methane injected into the atmosphere approximately 55 million years ago? Was that a tipping point (and did greenhouse gases have anything to do with it)? Are there tipping points related to extinctions and marked global temperature changes?
In December, hundreds of bureaucrats from around the world will once again assemble, this time in Copenhagen, in their attempts to forge a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. And as has been the case with every other UN meeting of its type, the participants simply assume that the urban legend is true. Indeed, these politicians and governmental representatives need it to be true. Their careers and political power now depend upon it.Oh Roy: it is true. That's the point of my responding to you like this. It's not an urban legend. It is a salient fact.
And the fact that they hold their meetings in all of the best tourist destinations in the world, enjoying the finest exotic foods, suggests that they do not expect to ever have to be personally inconvenienced by whatever restrictions they try to impose on the rest of humanity.This frames the argument as one of elitists (rich) vs. the general public. It is [sigh, again] an attempt to appeal to your audience on an emotional level. It is unfortunate that international diplomacy is conducted this way, but it is. I would prefer virtual Web casts, but much of diplomacy is performed out of public sight, by handshakes and gentleperson's agreements and by face-to-face contact. Attacking the messenger is just SO propagandish. Unfortunately it works.
If you present these people with evidence that the global warming crisis might well be a false alarm, you are rewarded with hostility and insults, rather than expressions of relief. The same can be said for most lay believers of the urban legend. I say “most” because I once encountered a true believer who said he hoped my research into the possibility that climate change is mostly natural will eventually be proved correct.The evidence is contrived and biased, the "research" has been refuted (sometimes within days of publication), the alternative hypotheses have been weighed and tested and found to be lacking in explanatory power. That's why there's hostility -- because this is the employment of fraudulent science to affect policy. Does smoking cause cancer, Roy? What is your opinion of the scientists and corporations who systematically tried to cast doubt on that linkage?
Unfortunately, just as we are irresistibly drawn to disasters – either real ones on the evening news, or ones we pay to watch in movie theaters – the urban legend of a climate crisis will persist, being believed by those whose politics and worldviews depend upon it. Only when they finally realize what a new treaty will cost them in loss of freedoms and standard of living will those who oppose our continuing use of carbon-based energy begin to lose their religion.And finally, here you fall back to your pal Christy's contentions, that the cost of not raising the standard of living of the poor and oppressed -- the same citizenry whose representatives are asking that the rich nations of the world accept their responsibility to future generations, which is to help them respond to the increased threats of climate change -- is more important than taking steps to insure the continued viability of the global ecosystem as the impact of
climate change increases.
I don't know how many gullible people you influence with your propagandic editorializing, Roy, but I know you are followed and read by many who find you various ways, potentially through Rush Limbaugh or Tech Central Station or Marc Morano or Watts Up with That. But I do know that it is sad a well-trained mind must warp his perceptions and his science in service to a political and philosophical viewpoint. But over time, I have come to expect this from you.
