could this be a way to scrutinize climate science enough for the skeptics

[stone]

Benko, I think you have hit the nail on the head in expressing your distrust of the climate scientists. It is exactly what I was getting at when I suggested "outsider review" of the evidence. This is such a crucial issue that it is not enough to have peer review. You don't trust climate scientists as a breed so why should you care when they say they should be believed because other climate scientists have checked their work. That is why a rigorous formal process of "outsider review" is needed. If a team of scientists say from oil companies verified the findings THEN perhaps those findings might get wider credibility.

Real scientists provide testable hypothesis which they can look at and see if the data fits their hypothesis.  The earth is warming (e.g. faster than normal) is such a hypothesis. When the data clearly did not fit the "global warming" hypothesis (because the globe has stopped warming) they changed it to "climate change".  There is no testable hypothesis (that I have heard) for climate change.  THis is convenient because the climate change folks can never be proved wrong.  OTOH without a hypothesis, it is not science.

Mountaineer, I only think fossil fuel carbon should be taxed.

The fact that the "solution" to a "problem" happens to match the wish list of the same people (we should all use green energy) and the fact that many of these scientists get a lot of funding from global warming means there is a conflict of interest. How much money has Mr. Gore made from global warming/climate change?

Furthermore the fact that the globe has not warmed much over the last 15 years and the fact that global warming scientists were caught suppressing data i.e. acting like politicians not scientists that did not agree with them should be a wake up call.

[stone]

The fact that the "solution" to a "problem" happens to match the wish list of the same people (we should all use green energy) and the fact that many of these scientists get a lot of funding from global warming means there is a conflict of interest. How much money has Mr. Gore made from global warming/climate change?

Furthermore the fact that the globe has not warmed much over the last 15 years and the fact that global warming scientists were caught suppressing data i.e. acting like politicians not scientists that did not agree with them should be a wake up call.

funny how the solutions for the coming ice age (circa 1970) are identical to the solutions for the global warming climate change of today..... why if i didn't trust government, proponents of globalization and special interests, absolutely and without question i would be skeptical...

blog post pointing out the similarities, includes a good list of 1970s ice age article links http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compilation/

Simon and Benko, I'm really interested in whether you see any merit in the "outsider review" option. I've put the excerpt about it below.

I do not believe that Vaclav Klaus is a nihilist nor an idiot.  My impression is that he and other prominent climate change skeptics would have a totally different opinion as to whether we should stop burning fossil fuels if they were not convinced that predictions such as those of James Hansen  are merely a mass delusion spurred on by the political opportunities they offer. As Vaclav Klaus puts it,

"The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence"

Before I recently started looking into all of this, I was completely flummoxed by the rejection of the scientific advice but I think I can now understand how this rejection has come about. The predictions of catastrophic climate change have been through the usual scientific scrutiny of peer review BUT the policy implications are gigantic. We have no option of a trial run; we only have one planet and if we believe the climate scientists we all need to turn our lives upside down. The business as usual, everyday best practice level of scientific scrutiny simply isn’t appropriate for what the climate scientists themselves describe as a fork in the road for the future of humanity. The climate scientists no doubt work very hard at scrutinizing each others’ work and so were dismayed that their peer-reviewed scientific work is not sufficiently trusted. That defensiveness is perceived very badly and the skeptics smell a rat. The response of the skeptics has been to take the most expedient action to clip the wings of any political influence the climate scientists may have had. That has entailed a PR campaign against the science rather than a scientific argument with the science. Opinions have become more inflamed and the debate ever less constructive.

To my mind what is needed by all sides is for a totally fresh set of people from a totally different background to meticulously reexamine the predictions for catastrophic climate change. The issue is not whether climate scientists are any less reliable than any other scientists; the issue is that in this case the stakes are so high that a totally extraordinary belt and braces level of assessment is needed. As a general rule, when assessing scientific findings, people working in the same scientific field are those most able to spot weaknesses that would simply be overlooked by outsiders. What is more, it would be an extremely arduous task to review some scientific work in an unfamiliar field, so people working in the same field are used by journal editors for scrutinizing scientific work. That peer review process however does little to allay the main concern of climate change skeptics.  Their concern is that the field of climate science as a whole has a political agenda or at the very least a worrying level of group think. We need a one-off rigorous investigation expressly designed to be entirely robust against any such danger.

I think it would be perfectly feasible to apply a process of “outsider review”? as a second safety net for this extraordinary case. The expense and effort would be trivial considering the context. It would be vital to keep the focus very tightly on examining the veracity of the key underpinnings behind the predictions of catastrophic consequences from burning all known recoverable fossil fuel reserves. Perhaps the ideal starting point would be a “global all stars”? paper submitted specifically for this purpose, by the climate science field, laying out their best evidence for such a prediction. The team of reviewers could be assembled by a search committee chaired by prominent climate change skeptics (eg perhaps the Koch brothers, Vaclav Klaus and Nigel Lawson). If that search committee had any sense (and I trust they would) they would recruit a team of people who -whilst perhaps being totally unfamiliar with climate science- nevertheless had the capability to get up to speed and do the necessary work over the course of a year of extremely intense full time work. Perhaps the team would be made up from geologists, physicists and chemists from the petrochemical and mining industries along with mathematicians and software engineers previously working in quantitative finance or whatever. By all means they could all be screened by the search committee as having political inclinations that garnered the trust of the skeptics. Salaries and compensation to employers for leaves of absence could be on a pay what it takes basis.

The plan would be to drill down and stress test every point of the argument, word by word, data point by data point. Hopefully it would be possible to provide the team with comprehensive supplementary data and perhaps even access to actual mud cores and ice cores. The computer climate models could be rebuilt from first principles. At the end of the exercise the team could make publicly available their point by point assessment of the science. Just as happens in the current scientific peer review process, the climate scientists could then rejoin with a rebuttal, either clarifying points of misunderstanding, conceding and correcting mistakes or making the case that the reviewers are plain wrong. Unlike the peer review process, this whole exchange would be fully publicly available.

By confronting and dealing with the politics of the science we would be able to get to the point of having a true scientific argument/consensus rather than a political wrangle/PR campaign. We could then focus the political debate on addressing the policy implications

[Pointedstick]

Pointed Stick, I have to apologize that this isn't properly fact checked by me but my understanding is that the Chinese are doing a lot towards getting the world using more renewables. They on purpose are flooding the world with dirt cheap silicon for solar made at a loss in China. You say that renewables make sense on the basis of current costs but with solar there is that underlying subsidy.

Hydro is very very cheap. BUT there isn't much unused potential capacity. In the UK, even if all of the potential energy of every spot of rain that fell was harvested it still wouldn't give us much energy compared to what we use. We just don't have much high altitude land to collect the rain.

Globally we would need to harvest solar either directly or via seaweed biomass if we wanted enough renewable energy. To replace all current oil consumption would require seaweed farms covering about 3.5% of the sea surface -a big effort.

You are focusing on the wrong thing with your collectivist arguments and in the process turning off the individualists, who you have acknowledged your movement has a hard time attracting and convincing. If you want to have a prayer of a chance of converting individualists like me, you need to focus on us, not the whole world. It's irrelevant to an individualist that 3.5% of the ocean would have to be a biomass farm or something; focus on the benefit to THEM of putting solar panels on their roof. Talk about payback periods, increased resiliency, the attractiveness of free energy, how cool the system will be, stuff like that.

Do you see where I'm going with this? If you encounter a person who's skeptical of your premise, you can't just keep hammering away at the same point. It's much more effective to make arguments that they are receptive to that nonetheless accomplish your goals. If hundreds of millions of people start generating their own electricity, that's going to start reducing demand for fragile, expensive, grid-provided power that pretty much necessarily has to be generated from fossil fuels to accommodate instantaneous peak loads.

I mean, I'm telling you how to convince me, here!

[Pointedstick]

Honestly, Stone, I think your "outsider review" idea won't work. Even assuming it could exist and the outsiders would be totally unbiased and the science would be shown to be totally right (all assumptions you've made, it seems), there's still the problem of emotion. People will heavily resist something that's true but that they don't like. Even if you could show with 100% certainty that carbon-based global warming was true such that everyone who heard you was convinced, it's still a tall argument to get them to give up things they're accustomed to. That's why I keep harping on ways to convince people that your proposed alternatives don't actually throw us back in the stone age but actually offer some pretty cool possibilities.  I think you will have much better luck convincing skeptics if you can get them on board with your ideas for how they can improve their own lives that just so happen to accomplish your goals rather than trying to bludgeon them with science by calling in even more experts to explain yet again how this is a very big problem and we all need to take it very seriously and be prepared to pay more money and enjoy a lower standard of living. The only people you can convince that that line of reasoning are liberals.

[stone]

Pointed Stick, the USA is a hotbed of interventionism for agriculture, the primary consequence is to increase the rents on farmland and you all seem happy to pay for that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultur ... ted_States

The United States currently pays around $20 billion per year to farmers in direct subsidies as "farm income stabilization"[9][10][11] via U.S. farm bills. These bills pre-date the economic turmoil of the Great Depression with the 1922 Grain Futures Act, the 1929 Agricultural Marketing Act and the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act creating a tradition of government support.
The beneficiaries of the subsidies have changed as agriculture in the United States has changed. In the 1930s, about 25% of the country's population resided on the nation's 6,000,000 small farms. By 1997, 157,000 large farms accounted for 72% of farm sales, with only 2% of the U.S. population residing on farms. In 2006, the top 3 states receiving subsidies were Texas (10.4%), Iowa (9.0%), and Illinois (7.6%). The Total USDA Subsidies from farms in Iowa totaled $1,212,000,000 in 2006.[12] From 2003 to 2005 the top 1% of beneficiaries received 17% of subsidy payments.[12] In Texas, 72% of farms do not receive government subsidies. Of the close to $1.4 Billion in subsidy payments to farms in Texas, roughly 18% of the farms receive a portion of the payments.[13]
"Direct payment subsidies are provided without regard to the economic need of the recipients or the financial condition of the farm economy. Established in 1996, direct payments were originally meant to wean farmers off traditional subsidies that are triggered during periods of low prices for corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, and other crops."[14]
Top states for direct payments were Iowa ($501 million), Illinois ($454 million), and Texas ($397 million). Direct payments of subsidies are limited to $40,000 per person or $80,000 per couple.[14]
The subsidy programs give farmers extra money for their crops and guarantee a price floor. For instance in the 2002 Farm Bill, for every bushel of wheat sold, farmers were paid an extra 52 cents and guaranteed a price of 3.86 from 2002–03 and 3.92 from 2004–2007.[15] That is, if the price of wheat in 2002 was $3.80, farmers would get an extra 58¢ per bushel (52¢ plus the 6¢ price difference).
Corn is the top crop for subsidy payments. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into vehicle fuel each year, guaranteeing demand, but US corn ethanol subsidies are between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion per year. Producers also benefitted from a federal subsidy of 51 cents per gallon, additional state subsidies, and federal crop subsidies that can bring the total to 85 cents per gallon or more. However, the federal ethanol subsidy expired December 31, 2011.[16] (US corn-ethanol producers were shielded from competition from cheaper Brazilian sugarcane-ethanol by a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff, however that tariff also expired December 31, 2011.[17][18])

[Benko]

Benko, the 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 has had little effect on the climate so far.

So all the comments made about how man made global warming has caused this and that already are false?  I'm shocked.

We'd be crazy to let all of that cloud our judgment when it comes to assessing whether an 8x increase in CO2 (as we will get if we burn all of the fossil fuels) is going to have a massive effect.

Didn't you just make a post on the dangers of certainty?

Stone as I've commented in the past certain groups of people get ideas stuck in their head and reality does not matter.  I would fully expect that as the glaciers migrate south and the next ice age starts, people will still be talking about "Climate change".  There is enough data now, debunked by lots of laymen all over the net. 

And PS has said this better than I.

[stone]

i would like to see an outside review to get a solid determination on mans contribution to warming (add a couple solar scientists to the mix of outside reviewers) assuming for the moment we do have a measurable contribution, the next step after that is figuring out if the proposed solutions will make any difference, what they will cost us in terms of liberty and economically (my hunch is they wont work at all and the cost is exorbitant to lethal for little or no result) and if my hunch is right then what can we realistically do...

i am with who ever mentioned the idea that libertarian types hate waste, i would solar/wind up and build an environmental house because it suits my ERE sensibility and my urge to be independent from "the grid" (if i could afford to). I would rebel against global government mucking up the world economy playing ideological games based on power madness and fear-mongering.. they would almost guarantee i could never afford a independent environmentally sound solution and that many others would become poor or be to poor to be environmentally sound..

Simon, the issue isn't about whether or not we really have a 0.7 oC temperature rise so far thanks to the 40% rise in CO2. The issue is whether burning all of the fossil fuels and so causing an 8x increase in CO2 is going to cause the climate to be like it was last time we had CO2 levels that high.

The people doing the "outsider review" would be chosen 100% by the skeptics. They could be chosen as all being Republican or Libertarian voters. They could be as you say, solar specialists or quantitative finance types, oil industry scientists or whatever the panel of skeptics chose.

[stone]

Benko, I got that link about the dangers of certainty off of a climate skeptic web site:
http://www.thegwpf.org/dangers-certaint ... auschwitz/

I am a skeptic in the literal meaning of the word.

I would actually like to see "outsider review" for my own peace of mind. I do myself worry that I have been suckered and perhaps that the climate scientists have suckered themselves. I'd say I'm 99.9% sure they are acting in good faith and I'm 95% sure they are right. To my mind I would much much rather be say 98% sure as I would be after outsider review. If the outsider review showed it was all bullshit and that we could all continue to enjoy fossil fuels, I would be over the moon.

[stone]

Pointed Stick, if the "outsider review" did show that it was all well founded, then perhaps there would be a mass consumer boycott of fossil fuels and an alternative market in renewable energy. Such a consumer boycott killed the fur clothing industry (rightly or wrongly).

Perhaps that could be a way compatible with individualists and the free market?

[stone]

the temperature goes up the temperature goes down, how much man contributes, and are the predictions that the global warmists made up based on those contribution levels accurate? i remain skeptical because of the politics.... so a review of those questions seems reasonable.
when i hear the solutions proposed, they sound comparable to the idea that taking arsenic in a sufficiently high dose will kill the common cold within a few hours (true but don't try it!). humans and free-market economy are adaptable, this may be one of those situations where doing nothing is the better solution, we probably can adapt to any result of warming faster and more efficiently than any government, global government, regulatory, tax solution can fix the problem, when the steeper part of the down slope on peak oil arrives the dream of non hydrocarbon energy sources will be economically viable and happen efficiently because it will be profitable..

Simon, I don't think peak oil will halt CO2 emissions. Coal is the big deal globally. Synthetic liquid fuels can be made from coal.

you may be right,
fuel can also be made from corn, algae and hemp, but it still gets burned...

[Pointedstick]

At a basic level, Stone, I feel that you're operating from a false premise: that climate change skeptics and those who oppose your preferred policies do so from a position of denying the science. I think you're severely underestimating people's ability to disbelieve something they don't want to believe, no matter how sound the case may be. Even if this panel of independent experts proclaimed it all to be true, I think you might be disappointed to see that precisely nothing changed.

You have to offer people something that makes sense to them. Nobody was ever persuaded by better facts.

[Benko]

I think you're severely underestimating people's ability to disbelieve something they don't want to believe, no matter how sound the case may be.

+++

And this is not only relevant here, but in other beliefs correlated with believing in global warming.

[Mountaineer]

At a basic level, Stone, I feel that you're operating from a false premise: that climate change skeptics and those who oppose your preferred policies do so from a position of denying the science. I think you're severely underestimating people's ability to disbelieve something they don't want to believe, no matter how sound the case may be. Even if this panel of independent experts proclaimed it all to be true, I think you might be disappointed to see that precisely nothing changed.

You have to offer people something that makes sense to them. Nobody was ever persuaded by better facts.

Unfortunately, I agree.

Yeah, me too.  I have a colleague who is a democrat and no matter how many facts about corruption or failed policies I point out to him, he refuses to see there could even be the slightest misdeed by his beloved party.  He is an engineer, trained to deal with facts in his job, but when it comes to politics, it is all about only believing facts that support his preconceived notions.  It is like trying to do battle with a bowl of jello; or in cruder terms, win a pissing contest with a skunk.  Of course, he probably says the same things about me. 

... Mountaineer

[Benko]

Oh and Stone an SF writer (Jerry POurnelle) suggested ages ago that one really good way to get energy is to put solar cells in orbit and beam the energy back to earth (safer than you'd imagine).  I think the Japanese have tried this.  Point being that there are real ways coming to produce energy other ways.  OF course then they can protest about the safety of beaming the energy back to earth (because people's worries/fears trump reality).

[stone]

Are you guys basically saying that each of you personally would be persuaded (not persuaded of policies merely persuaded of the danger) if the hypothetical "outsider review" verified the facts behind the warnings of a 20 oC rise from burning all fossil fuel reserves?

And yet are you are saying that you have zero faith that others with a libertarian outlook have a similarly intelligent open minded view?

i kinda agree with benko on it being a virtual impossibility to actually create a unbiased un-tampered with outside review.
if by some miracle one was created and they reviewed actual science, with a strong investigation into the veracity of collection methods and measurements, and a review of predictive models and ALL the variables that might make the prediction invalid and reviewed the projected results of those predictions and the variables that might invalidate those... and still came up with, or confirmed a "its going to get hot and we are doomed" result i would likely believe it... its a bit of a giant stretch to imagine all that being done and done properly but as an impossible hypothetical then yes i would be a believer...
i cant ever get behind the policy's the climate change/global warming folks are pushing however. they just wont work and are guaranteed to cause harm...

[stone]

If I was to put my Dr Evil hat on, I guess the most effective approach for keeping the fossil fuels in the ground would be to recognize that the only constituency that needs to be won around are the owners of the fossil fuel extraction rights. So the thing to do would be to take inspiration from the wonderful world of agricultural and fisheries subsidies and pay the owners to leave the coal and tar sands etc in the ground much like country landowners are paid to set-aside excess agricultural land.

To me that approach seems very unjust but I guess dispossessing them by way of a carbon tax would also be unjust. Would some blend of a carbon tax and a set aside fee be a happy medium? Of course both are utterly counter to free market ideals.

[stone]

Can some analogy be drawn between this and the political wrangle in the 1800s over whether there should be intervention to ensure that sewerage was dealt with properly rather than being allowed to wash out into the street (as dictated by free market libertarian principles .) ?

http://www.choleraandthethames.co.uk/

The evidence he had compiled and presented to the St James Parish Vestry, (the body responsible for the health of the citizens of Soho) with the help of The Rev. Henry Whitehead seemed irrefutable. However the miasma theory held such a powerful grip over the establishment that higher levels of government refused to accept his conclusions. Snow was not to live to see the triumph of his ideas. He died in June 1858 at the height of what later became known as ‘The Great Stink.’ The hideous state of the River Thames finally forced the politicians to act on dealing with London’s polluted source of water. The man they chose to tackle what seemed an impossible problem was Joseph Bazalgette, whose sewage system helped lead to the final triumph over ‘King Cholera.’

[WildAboutHarry]

[quote=Benko]Oh and Stone an SF writer (Jerry POurnelle) suggested ages ago that one really good way to get energy is to put solar cells in orbit and beam the energy back to earth (safer than you'd imagine).  I think the Japanese have tried this.  Point being that there are real ways coming to produce energy other ways.  OF course then they can protest about the safety of beaming the energy back to earth (because people's worries/fears trump reality).[/quote]

So we are going to go out and capture energy that would not have otherwise arrived on earth and send it to the earth.  That won't result in any additional atmospheric heating, right?  Or is it kind of like a magnifying glass and ants...

[Benko]

Are you guys basically saying that each of you personally would be persuaded (not persuaded of policies merely persuaded of the danger) if the hypothetical "outsider review" verified the facts behind the warnings of a 20 oC rise from burning all fossil fuel reserves?

Stone they are getting someone perhaps it is campaign donor for Obama to review the possible IRS abuses.  What possible conflict of interest could there be?  That is how finding someone "outside" work.  The game would be rigged.  You appear honorable, but the people at the "top" are not (see e.g. Al Gore my mother sung me to sleep to union label song). 

2.  If the climate whatever people still felt as you do (global warming eventually) they would say that.  BUT THEY DON"T.  Why not?  Unless you provide a testable hypothesis it ain't science. Why did they change it from Global warming to cllimate change?  WHy haven't you pointed this out?

3.  Global warming remedies is to climate as
Obamacare (single payer/etc) is to uninsured people. 

There is a goal, and an excuse to implement things that take society toward that goal. 
See Alinsky, or the phrase "by any means necessary".

Clue:  there will always be excuses why the only acceptable remedy is to do things which harm the US.

[stone]

Benko,

2.  If the climate whatever people still felt as you do (global warming eventually) they would say that.  BUT THEY DON"T.  Why not?  Unless you provide a testable hypothesis it ain't science. Why did they change it from Global warming to cllimate change?  WHy haven't you pointed this out?

I did get the "global warming eventually" stuff straight off what I read from the most mainstream (and vilified) climate "alarmist" James Hansen. 
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... ne.0081648

  The principal climate forcing, defined as an imposed change of planetary energy balance [1]–[2], is increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel emissions, much of which will remain in the atmosphere for millennia [1], [3]. The climate response to this forcing and society’s response to climate change are complicated by the system’s inertia, mainly due to the ocean and the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica together with the long residence time of fossil fuel carbon in the climate system. The inertia causes climate to appear to respond slowly to this human-made forcing, but further long-lasting responses can be locked in.

I think it is really important to separate what the "alarmists" REALLY say is behind their alarm from what the skeptic web sites focus on. From what I can see, the alarmists never said that current warming is what is driving their alarm. It was all about likely eventual total CO2 levels and the eventual climate response to that and how that compared to what had happened in the past in the geological record. The climate scientists do also look at current data to see if we can already see an effect but that is very different from it being what is at the heart of their worry.

I agree the transition of wording to climate change is bullshit. My guess it was journalists who came up with that but even if it was some climate scientists, it doesn't mean that the real danger isn't there. It perhaps just means that they are desperate for us to heed their warnings and that dumb PR stuff is a result of their desperation.

The "outsider review" idea is to have key skeptics such as Vaclav Klaus heading the search committee to choose the outside scientists so as to try and guard against any danger of a fix.

[stone]

Benko, I just googled about use of the the term "climate change" and perhaps it isn't as clear cut as we think:
http://pmm.nasa.gov/education/articles/ ... ate-change

To a scientist, global warming describes the average global surface temperature increase from human emissions of greenhouse gases. Its first use was in a 1975 Science article by geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory: "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?"1

Broecker's term was a break with tradition. Earlier studies of human impact on climate had called it "inadvertent climate modification."2 This was because while many scientists accepted that human activities could cause climate change, they did not know what the direction of change might be. Industrial emissions of tiny airborne particles called aerosols might cause cooling, while greenhouse gas emissions would cause warming. Which effect would dominate?

For most of the 1970s, nobody knew. So "inadvertent climate modification," while clunky and dull, was an accurate reflection of the state of knowledge.

The first decisive National Academy of Science study of carbon dioxide's impact on climate, published in 1979, abandoned "inadvertent climate modification." Often called the Charney Report for its chairman, Jule Charney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, declared: "if carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we find] no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible."3

In place of inadvertent climate modification, Charney adopted Broecker's usage. When referring to surface temperature change, Charney used "global warming." When discussing the many other changes that would be induced by increasing carbon dioxide, Charney used "climate change."
Definitions

Global warming: the increase in Earth’s average surface temperature due to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

Climate change: a long-term change in the Earth’s climate, or of a region on Earth.

Within scientific journals, this is still how the two terms are used. Global warming refers to surface temperature increases, while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas amounts will affect.

During the late 1980s one more term entered the lexicon, “global change.”? This term encompassed many other kinds of change in addition to climate change. When it was approved in 1989, the U.S. climate research program was embedded as a theme area within the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

But global warming became the dominant popular term in June 1988, when NASA scientist James E. Hansen had testified to Congress about climate, specifically referring to global warming. He said: "global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming."4 Hansen's testimony was very widely reported in popular and business media, and after that popular use of the term global warming exploded. Global change never gained traction in either the scientific literature or the popular media.

But temperature change itself isn't the most severe effect of changing climate. Changes to precipitation patterns and sea level are likely to have much greater human impact than the higher temperatures alone. For this reason, scientific research on climate change encompasses far more than surface temperature change. So "global climate change" is the more scientifically accurate term. Like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we've chosen to emphasize global climate change on this website, and not global warming.

1 Wallace Broecker, "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" Science, vol. 189 (8 August 1975), 460-463.

2 For example, see: MIT, Inadvertent Climate Modification: Report of the Study of Man's Impact on Climate (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971).

3National Academy of Science, Carbon Dioxide and Climate, Washington, D.C., 1979, p. vii.

4U.S. Senate, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, "Greenhouse Effect and Global Climate Change, part 2" 100th Cong., 1st sess., 23 June 1988, p. 4

[Mountaineer]

Interesting discussion, especially in the comments.  http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-c ... ssions.htm

My takeaway:  No one really knows the impact of CO2 concentration rising or falling in the atmosphere and/or the positive and/or negative consequences thereof. 

What then should we do?  Develop alternate economical energy sources in case man-caused CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels has a negative consequence.  My view is the ultimate source would be controllable nuclear fusion to replace "dirtier" energy sources; most of the other sources have a plethora of issues to deal with, mainly around resource depletion.

... Mountaineer

[Lowe]

The issue is burning our remaining fossil fuels and raising atmospheric CO2 8x current levels. 40% and 1000% are totally different ball parks. A 2oC rise and a 20oC.

Are you saying that politically it would be too awkward to try and avoid a 20oC rise? It is going to be fairly awkward having billions of people migrating to polar regions. Abandoning existing cities and farmland etc etc. London, New York, Singapore being left to the floodwater.

Unless we actively avoid it we will burn all of the fossil fuels. When oil becomes scarce, we will start producing synthetic liquid fuels from coal. People don't seem to realize how much of the total use of fossil fuels has been extremely recent. We have been using them for hundreds of years but the level of use is increasing exponentially. It is now billions of people living a high energy lifestyle whilst it was a few thousand.

Is the 20 degree difference thought to occur only if we burn all the fossil fuel reserves?  If so, is it certain we will use those reserves, before it becomes uneconomical to extract them?

Prices will only be bid so high, before they can no longer support the expenses of mining.  There are alternatives waiting in the wings, which may be more price-effective than synthesizing oil.  The Tesla automobile is a possible example.

[Kshartle]

The issue is burning our remaining fossil fuels and raising atmospheric CO2 8x current levels. 40% and 1000% are totally different ball parks. A 2oC rise and a 20oC.

Are you saying that politically it would be too awkward to try and avoid a 20oC rise? It is going to be fairly awkward having billions of people migrating to polar regions. Abandoning existing cities and farmland etc etc. London, New York, Singapore being left to the floodwater.

Unless we actively avoid it we will burn all of the fossil fuels. When oil becomes scarce, we will start producing synthetic liquid fuels from coal. People don't seem to realize how much of the total use of fossil fuels has been extremely recent. We have been using them for hundreds of years but the level of use is increasing exponentially. It is now billions of people living a high energy lifestyle whilst it was a few thousand.

Is the 20 degree difference thought to occur only if we burn all the fossil fuel reserves?  If so, is it certain we will use those reserves, before it becomes uneconomical to extract them?

Prices will only be bid so high, before they can no longer support the expenses of mining.  There are alternatives waiting in the wings, which may be more price-effective than synthesizing oil.  The Tesla automobile is a possible example.

Has anyone looked at the coal mining stocks and seen how beaten down they are? KOL comes to mind as a long-term play. Regardless of current government threats.....coal is cheap energy and will not go unused.

I don't look at buying stuff like this as catching a falling knife. I look at it as buying cheap. If it gets cheaper then I just buy more, no way to call a bottom except long after it's past. I bought only gold miners pretty much all last year. It's finally turing around and plenty of the shares are in profit now finally.

[Benko]

My takeaway:  No one really knows the impact of CO2 concentration rising or falling in the atmosphere and/or the positive and/or negative consequences thereof. 

No one knows anything [hyperbole for you literal minded] and science changes regularly.  Real scientists know this and are open to new data and do not attempt to supress data being published (political people do) as has happened to data that doesn't agree with Mr. Gore.

My view is the ultimate source would be controllable nuclear fusion
... Mountaineer

Well yes, but fusion has been real soon now for many decades.  And if it ever becomes ready for prime time, I will bet anyone $100 that it will get the Keystone pipeline treatment.  Because you can't fight religion.