Great column, as always.

- Do we understand global warming well? (No)
- Well enough to be likely of implementing successful climate control schemes? (No)
- Do we know the cost of not acting? (No)
- Do we know the cost of acting, ie attempting control? (No)
- How much should time and energy should we spend investigating all this? (Only voluntary expenditure, no taxes, please)

Before I address specifics you respond to above, I have to note that I don’t think you took “chaos” and “complexity” in the sense that I meant, ie the field of study Gleick first brought to the layman’s awareness with his book “Chaos”, whose work was inspired by Mandelbrot’s “The Fractal Geometry of Nature” and that has evolved into the science of complexity theory, now most avidly researched at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. I was not using these terms in the common sense, and that is potentially one root cause why we might disagree.

Chaos and complexity are terms that science and mathematics are defining better as we learn how little we can really understand causality in and predict the behaviour of non-linear dynamic systems, of which the earth’s climate is one. And one, I should add, that does not satisfy the assumptions required by the math being applied in global climate models, like statistical mechanics.

This is not uncommon in science. It is frequent to assume the “ideality” of the subject under study. “Ideal gases” led to Boyle’s law, and Newton ignores Einstein, and neither causes trouble provided one stays at the right level – gasbags for Boyle and cannonballs for Newton. But their laws are meaningless at the sub-atomic level. With climate we are dealing with an open thermodynamic system (so things like the second law of thermodynamics do not necessarily apply), and not a closed one, and we are trying to predict long term macro behaviour with micro tools. Climate is complex and chaotic in the mathematical sense and we will never fully understand it, and will be lucky to even make a few winning calls.

To your response.

I agree Einstein didn’t debunk, but to say he just figured out the extreme conditions is a bit extreme. Think mushroom clouds and maybe our salvation from evil oil.

Maybe you haven’t yourself read enough of those emails and code comments. I’ve read enough and it is damning. And to argue that the comments are likely the result of sloppy unprofessional coding, ah, well, wouldn’t that be a problem? I understand building software, and coders, and when one checks in (gawd, maybe they weren’t even using a revision control system!) a file containing:

“ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently—I have no memory of this at all—we’re not doing observed rain days! It’s all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I’m going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?… OH F–K THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found”

in the temperature database manipulation code that is being used to justify mass transfers of wealth, let’s just say I am concerned about the integrity of the results, professional coding or not, and would like an independent audit. Steve MacIntyre is trying to audit these guys, and they don’t like the idea. Sound familiar? Isn’t the UN near Wall Street and the Fed? Geez, seems NO ONE wants to get audited these days

On to the science, then, where I have to stop you at point one. I will grant you the first doubling in “the models” is around 3.7W/m2, it sounds familiar, as it does that there is likely a logarithmically decreasing dependence, multiple potential feedback-loop effects already identified, and much uncertainty about it all (from perusing notes in IPCC documents at climateaudit.org, where they are beavering away trying to get to the root provenance of the equations and constants that these guys are using).

I am not sure you grasp the absurdity of trying to express the behaviour of even a single, amorphous dimension of the earth’s climate – “average global temperature” – in a set of simple little equations. I have read one definition of a complex system as being one for which the only means of prediction is simulation. The only way we can really know the equivalent solar forcing of a doubling in CO2 would be to have a spare Earth and try it out. Seriously. If you can write:

“The fact that climate appears to be chaotic does not mean that it cannot be understood. It is more chaotic in the shorter timescale of weather than in the longer term of climate”

then you have failed to understand the nature of chaos and complexity. In the sense I want climate understood, so that we might model, predict, and control it – it being chaotic means precisely that that understanding cannot be achieved. Further, chaos, if present, is fractal and self-similar across timescales – what you say violates established mathematics.

Chaos and complexity is pretty humbling stuff, because it has a lot to say about how little credence we can put in predictions about systems where it is present. As I said, we might make a winning call and find a little piecewise fit around some constrained operating point for the system, but without a spare Earth the predictions of climate science are pretty hard to test. The experiment-to-date seems to indicate that a hypothesis of “weather fine until struck by asteroid” seems to hold, as Mother Nature seems to have some pretty nifty feedback loops running, more and finer than any legion of IPCC climate engineers could conjure up.

You are correct in understating: “There is much less certainty here, because all the feedbacks are not completely understood…” but when you say “The IPCC estimates are in the range of 2.5 to 4.5 times the original forcing…” that’s when my chaos-driven bullshit detector kicks in and wants Steve to finish the audit so we can at least know the fudge-factors they use.

I’ll paraphrase your answer to the question of impact as “Warmer? Sounds ok, but it’s complex and we don’t really know” with which I would agree. I have great faith in nature’s ability to adapt. We may lose some species as climate varies, and that would be sad, and I think bad, but we’ve lost 99.9% of them so far, and well, here we still are. And if that was really our root worry, we should be more concerned about habitat destruction, overfishing, pesticides than CO2.

I don’t know much about ocean acidification, even less than I know about climate. Is the math and science there any better than climate? How could it not be? Sea levels? Are we talking measured or predicted? Measured, not much seems to be happening. A few millimeters a year one way or the other is pretty far down in the noise as far as I am concerned.

Your comments about my comments about Jeff Rubin and peak oil serve to emphasize the old adage that governments are great at coming along to fix problems not long after the market has figured it out for itself. But we will not ship fewer dollars to our petro-friends, just get less oil for it.

It seems the IPCC Working Group One report has been superseded by something called “The Copenhagen Diagnosis” and I choked on the first paragraph:

“if global emission rates are stabilized at present-day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2°C, even with zero emissions after 2030.”

That is an entirely unsubstantiable statement, and it was statements like these that drove the scientists with any credibility out of the IPCC long ago. Yet for some reason, it is like a crazy conspiracy, the media, our politicians, David Suzuki, and all kinds of folks just lap this stuff up like it is “true” or something. The truth or falsehood of that statement cannot be tested. Politicians wrote this stuff, not scientists. But I will read deeper.

At any rate, you wrote: “In summary, I think this is no time to cut back on climate research.”

Great, so go write a cheque to your favourite climate scientist today (there is a tip jar at climateaudit.org, by the way), but don’t demand that anyone else do, or worse seek policy justified by the IPCC, because the science is just too shaky.

This global governmental juggernaut must be stopped.

James Benson Bacque

First, Einstein did not debunk classical physics, he merely found a solution for some problems it was having with extreme conditions. This did revolutionize our understanding of nature, but I would point out that most of your profession is still soundly based on 19′th century physics. And add that you might not appreciate someone from outside your profession telling you that you are doing everything wrong. I can show you respected scientists from outside of climate science pushing the end of the world story. For example, Peter Ward is a top level paleontologist from the Univiersity of Washington. I have avidly read every book he has written about his expeditions to understand the conditions on Earth in the deep past, but I was shocked by his latest book, “Under a Green Sky”, where he launches into a diatribe about how global warming will recreate the Permian Extinction, with clouds of sulfur bubbling out the ocean (ie. green sky), etc. This issue has a way of making people crazy, on both sides.

I do not want to dwell on the stolen e-mails, but I do not see any real evidence of actual fraud or destruction of data. I do see what should be a group of professional scientists behaving in a political manner, for example trying to control the contents of an acedemic journal. The same type of behaviour is happening on the other side as well. As a software professional, I can tell you that stray comments in code mean nothing. Faking subsystems is what we do to make the framework hang together until the real code arrives. Failing to clean up comments happens all the time, especially in code written by non-professionals, as climate models generally are. And by the way, that does not mean the models do not work, only that they could be easier to read and maintain.

Lets get back to the science. I see four different levels:

1. The physics of the greenhouse effect.
2. The effect of increasing greenhouse gas levels on climate.
3. The consequences of changing the climate on ecosystems and human wellbeing.
4. If the previous three add up to a problem, what resources should be devoted to solving it compared to other problems that we face.

The radiative property of greenhouse gases has been understood for more than a century, and now the direct effect of changing greenhouse gas concentrations is known to better than ten percent. To use an inflammatory term, this is “settled science”, which I doubt even Plimer challenges. Specifically, doubling the amount of carbon dioxide will cause an additional forcing to the climate of 3.7 watts per square meter. I assume you do not question that carbon dioxide levels are rising, and the cause is almost entirely anthropogenic. So we can move on to the next level.

The fact that climate appears to be chaotic does not mean that it cannot be understood. It is more chaotic in the shorter timescale of weather than in the longer term of climate. I have not read Plimer’s book (I am number 43 on the library waiting list), but I gather it spends a lot of time discussing how much climate has changed in the past, which one would expect from a geologist. This is exactly the evidence that makes me take climate change seriously, not computer models. Relatively small external forcings have large effects, such as changes in the Earth’s orbit can cause ice ages to come and go. The changes is solar activity that (along with some volcanoes) drove the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice age were under one watt per square meter, compared to the four watts per square meter that are probably coming. There is no way this will not have a significant effect on climate.

The question is, what effect will this change have on top of the normal climate “chaos”? This question is called climate sensitivity, the effect of an external forcing on the climate, whether it is greenhouse gases, solar changes, or whatever. There is much less certainty here, because all the feedbacks are not completly understood. Since the ability of the atmosphere to hold water vapor increases 7% per degree celsius inrease in temperature, and water is the strongest greenhouse gas, the feedback is significant. The IPCC estimates are in the range of 2.5 to 4.5 times the original forcing.

Now for the third question – so what if the world gets a warmer climate? After all, with a longer growing season and carbon dioxide fertilization, what is not to like? This is a much harder question for at least three reasons: large scientific uncertainty, vastly different regional effects, and most important, different consequences over different time scales. Lets start with my simple climate model, based on the observation that the climate warms about one degree C for every 140 km change in latitude. Since global warming projections are given in terms of global average temperature, and the land warms faster than the ocean, lets use 200 km / degree. So the IPCC mean of 3 degrees warming over the next century means you look 600 km south to see what the climate is going to be like. So Ottawa gets the climate of New Jersey, which does not seem so bad. But California gets the climate of Mexico, and Spain get the climate of Morocco, which could be a problem.

Of course, it is not really that simple. One example is the large scale insect damage to trees on the west coast, because winters are no longer cold enough to kill the insects. The new climate is perfectly compatible with forests, just not the trees that are there now. This is a problem of transition, and the faster the transition the bigger the problem. There are other issues such as ocean acidification and sea level rise due to melting ice caps. We can discuss that if you like. In summary, I think this is no time to cut back on climate research. Real climate change is coming, and large changes are quite possible. It is important that we understand this.

The point about the projections of Jeff Rubin and others is well taken. I have noticed that the estimated reserves of coal were reduced by half recently, while the vast reserves of methane hydrates under the continental shelves that were going to flood the atmosphere with methane (exactly how I do not know) have been reduced by an order of magnitude. Some scientists are claiming that the higher end IPCC emission scenarios are not possible due to lack of fuel. If this is the case, then reduction is fossil fuel use intended for climate reasons will also serve to prepare us for a softer landing for when peak oil arrives. And anything that will reduce us sending vast amounts of money to our Islamist enemies is a good thing.

I have quoted the IPCC a few times here. I do not have a very high opinion of the UN with its unholy alliance of third world autocrats and western liberal utiopians, but the IPCC is actually independant of UN politics. Think of it as an endorsement, something like Tiger Woods endorsing Nike. I think the IPCC 2007 Working Group One report is sound science, based on the fact there is no serious criticism of it from qualified scientists, including skeptics such as Patrick Michaels and John Christy. You should read it – it does not really say all the things the alarmists say it does.

In summary, while I do not think that climate change is the end of the world, and yes we can adapt to it, it still may make sense to reduce its magnitude. We are looking at creating a climate different than that experienced in human history, and that should not be done lightly.

It would indeed seem possible that Plimer had done so, as one even less probable in fact did. Relatively how probable is it that a patent clerk should debunk two centuries’ settled science and change the entire world forever? It is not improbable, it is rather the way of nature, and thus of our attempts to understand it. Science is black swans’ theories lurching towards truth.

I can’t speak for John, but I think the credit for this particular de-bunking rather has to go to a Toronto businessman and amateur statistician, Steve MacIntyre, who was so swept up in his quest for some simple scientific candor that his hobby studying the statistics of climate evolved into climateaudit.org, along the way eliciting the wrath and duplicity of those at East Anglia’s CRU whose emails are now a matter of public record, and ugly they are.

The database coder’s comments are wholly damning as far as the reliability of CRU’s results (and thus the IPCC’s), and Jones et al’s clear and clearly successful attempts to prevent application both of the scientific method and of the rule of law are particularly shocking, especially given the credence the CRU has been granted by the world, and assumed by all those myriad “climate scientists” that comprise those settled snuggly in the global warmth that is the UN’s IPCC, and upon whose opinion, and I picked that word carefully, the world’s political leaders seem intent on basing our economic future.

While I cannot condone the illegal methods that led to “climategate”, as an engineer (and, somewhat, scientist), I abide by a code that commands me – damn the consequences – to blow the whistle when I know something serious is amiss, so I understand the motivation of our as yet unknown whistle-blower in this case.

Blair, it is facile and tautological to say “adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will change the climate” as that is how that subset of all gases is defined.

What is at issue in terms of social and economic policy, or should be, is:

- precisely the extent to which we currently understand the greenhouse effect and our ability to exert a successful control regime upon climate using it (much less than the IPCC would have us believe, maybe little or not at all, which would align with my understanding of the complexity of the non-linear chaotic system we call global climate, and the peculiar nature of “causality” in such complex feedback systems);

- the cost of the effect (if warming, I believe the cost is in fact negative, ie there is a net benefit to mankind and most species from a slightly warmer “average” global temperature, which seems to be what everyone is so excited about);

- the cost to society of trying to prevent the effect, assuming we made it unscathed through understanding and successful mitigating control, and further that I am wrong about it being better from a utilitarian perspective if the world were slightly warmer (here it seems likely that the cost would be high indeed should we follow some of the proposals currently circulating, and we can’t leave out the high cost of enforcement, as the oxidation of carbon compounds is a pervasive practice);

and finally, how much time, money and effort we should expend in our hunt for accuracy and precision in our study of climate to address the above. I think our money to date has been wasted, because, as you point out, it is not the only problem we face and it has commanded an unfair share of our attention, and further that the balance of probabilities and costs above tell us so. At least it tells me, from my – more time than I wanted to but it was necessary because they were showing Al Gore’s sensationalist fiction to my kids and telling them it was science – perspective.

You might call me a conservative. I don’t deny that we face problems. But I do deny, based on the above, that the IPCC (and the UN that gave them birth) has much credibility, and that Canadians (or anyone, for that matter) should consider basing economic policy on what they say. It is simply the case that climate is another of the myriad things in our lives over which we have little or no control, and to which we must instead adapt. I personally would favour 25-hour days, for example. Adaptation does appear to have been a fairly successful strategy for dealing with climate so far.

No, there are other environmental concerns that bother me much more than the weather. We are destroying lots of stuff that might take a long time to grow back, and some stuff might never. But if you really must worry about something big and nasty, instead of the myriad smaller problems to which we could likely find much more utilitarian tradeoffs, I suggest the unexpected large asteroid collision, for which we currently probably get about a few weeks notice. Bet the dinosaurs wish they had. Plus, astronauts are sexier than carbon-cops and Belgian bureaucrats. And if you believe Jeff Rubin, we won’t need to worry about burning hydrocarbons for much longer anyway, they’ll be mostly gone soon enough.

Blair, John seems not yet to have responded to your willingness to address particular issues he raised, so I offer up myself as a meagre substitute.

Let’s not quibble over matters of style, what does he (or I) say that is untrue, in your opinion?

Sincerely and seriously, but not so much so that I have completely lost my sense of humour,

James Benson Bacque

When I first started looking into this issue, I assumed it was just another environmentalist scare story, like many other end of the world predictions that failed to materialize. I spent much more time than I had ever planned learning what the science is all about. In summary, adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will change the climate, though it is not necessarily quite the disaster the activists tell us it is. And it is certainly not the only problem we face as a society, perhaps it gets too large a share of our attention.

Unfortunately, conservatives have largely dealt themselves out of the discussion by denying there is any problem at all. leaving the left wing free to manipulate the issue to their advantage. I hope you will do more research and reconsider your hasty analysis. If you want, I am willing to discuss any of the particular issues raised in your article.

if you got this far, thank you for reading this, and keep up your (generally) good work in your columns.

Sincerely,

Blair Dowden

This article on Remembrance Day and the poem, “Flanders Field,” is beautiful, thoughtful, and true. Thank you very much. Those who won’t wear a poppy because they don’t support the war in Afghanistan or whatever reason, should be ashamed–someone has sacrificed and another would sacrifice so they have that choice.

that he did

Still, a lot of ‘pragmatism’ (!) had ‘snuck in’ into the Conservative policies while Harper listened to that {insert insult of your choice} Mulroney….that is when the Conservatives and their politics began to leave the ‘blue’ track and, to an uncomfortable degree, resemble the Liberals.

Please, do not resurrect THAT ghost: it’ll haunt the Conservative legacy!

(…sorry, could not resist the Halloween imagery…)