Some Thoughts on Copenhagen and Climate Change

Written By: guyjin on December 10, 2009 8 Comments

With many of the world’s scientists and politicians converging on Copenhagen this week, this is an important time for the people of the world to carefully consider the issues related to ‘climate change’.

For a start, I really don’t like that term. It is as undescriptive as the term ‘global warming’. Indeed, the climate has always been changing, and always will. The media and others that discuss this issue really should use the term AGW (anthropogenic global warming), since this is the issue that is really being discussed. Not only ‘is the climate changing?’, which is a given, but ‘is man a major contributor to these changes?’, ‘to what extent are these changes happening?’, and ‘what, if anything, can be done about it?’. These last three are the vital questions that climate research needs to answer, as well as the often hyped fourth question – ‘how damaging will the climate changes actually be?’.

Over the last decade or two there has been an increasingly shrill voice from those whose answers to these four questions are ‘yes, massive, a whole lot, and devastating…’ One of the more vocal and prominent of these of course is former US Vice President, Nobel Laureate and Academy Award Winner Al Gore. He has made it his mission to preach the climate change gospel, and has been instrumental, along with others, in building so much momentum behind the issue that many in the ‘climate industry’ have now proclaimed that ‘all debate is dead’. Gore himself, in a television interview just a few days ago declared that the science behind climate change theories is as settled as gravity. The actual point he was making was in regard to the concept that CO2 sucks in heat, and this is in fact settled science. But the impression that he left, as always, was that the entire field of climate science, including the reasons for climate change, the extent of changes, and the ‘remedies’ to ’save the earth’ (not to mention the polar bears) are just as settled. This is, frankly, nonsense.

I believe that many people in the course of their casual consumption of daily media have a very superficial understanding of the issues surrounding climate change and AGW. This is because the vast majority of media reports are based on extremely casual descriptions of the science and of the words of people that have jumped on a bandwagon that they don’t know very much about. There are many knowledgeable scientists that have a deep understanding of the issues, of that I have no doubt. But day to day media products do not do a good job of explaining both the ’settled science’ and the ’speculation’, and how to tell the difference.

Nor is there sufficient weight or exposure given to those who are sceptical of what has become an ‘AGW scientific/political machine’. Some of these scientists that have studies refuting specific elements of the four AGW questions above are presented in the media without the weight that their credentials and opinions deserve. Their theories are often presented in such a way that its like they are telling us that they had taken a trip on a UFO to Venus, and knew Tom Cruise in another life…. And we all know that no serious public figure would ever say anything as crazy as that…..

The fact is that there is a great deal of science that refutes specific elements of the climate change models, and this body of work seems to be growing all the time. Is it sufficient to derail the ‘prevailing consensus’ that AGW proponents insist upon? That much is still unclear. But I have read enough from a wide variety of sources over the last ten years to believe that there is at least SOME amount of doubt. And that doubt should be something that any true scientist should be fascinated with.

Why should ‘doubts’ fascinate scientists? Because this is what science is all about. I am not a ’scientist’ in the strict sense of the word, but I do have two Masters degrees, and I know a thing or two about research and the ’scientific method’. I am a scientist by nature, always questioning and looking for facts and truth, and one thing that I have been taught over and over again was that we should question everything. Not only that, but the nature of science itself is to verify, and re-verify, and re-verify, in order to generate laws and rules that can be relied upon. In such a process, there should never be any fear of shedding as much ’sunlight’ as possible upon the data, the processes, and the results. Nor should any true scientist reject an alternative explanation out of hand until it has been fully investigated and ruled out.

As far as I can tell, this process has not been followed completely with regard to AGW science. Cliques have developed, and certain groups of scientists and public figures have become like watchmen on the guard tower of AGW theory, unwilling to allow intense scrutiny of their data and sources, unwilling to engage in intense debate, and single-minded to the point of not adequately investigating alternatives. None of this means that they are wrong, per se. They may in fact be correct. But the process by which we have arrived at this point has not been scientific. It has been far more political.

As a result of this unwillingness to allow contrary views to vigourously take on the ‘prevailing wisdom’, there are far too many unanswered questions about the science. The latest ‘Climategate’ scandal out of East Anglia University was not a smoking gun, but was at the very least a worrying confirmation of some of the politics and ‘fudging’ that may have been going on at the highest levels of the AGW clique. And the scandal itself has been all but ignored by many in the media.

The fact is that no models have yet been able to accurately predict changes in the climate, and most scientists now acknowledge what the sattelite data has been showing us – that the earth has not warmed at all over the last decade. The fact that this was not predicted by the models, and that the ‘current science’ has no consensus explanation for it point to the need for a lot more research on this issue. There have also been countless studies that cast doubt on such issues as rising sea levels and ice density in the Arctic and Antartic, as well as studies that show correlations between sun activity and warming. There is also a great deal that is unknown about the extent to which the ocean captures and releases CO2, as well as the patterns of clouds and other weather related activities. My point is not that any one of these issues is a smoking gun over the issue of AGW, nor all of them together. But there is more than sufficient doubt, in my own mind and in the minds of literally thousands of scientists around the world, that some of these issues require MORE debate and investigation, and not less. Far from closing down the debate, the scientific investigation of the climate should be RAMPING UP.

And so we come to Copenhagen. Where a massive number of both scientists and politicians have converged to discuss and craft what will eventually be a political, and not a scientific agreement on what the world should do next. The problem of course is that whatever agreement is finally signed by the leaders of the world that will gather, it will not make anyone happy. Those who are adament about the dangers of AGW will find the measures insufficient. Those who are not convinced of the robustness of the science will find the measures excessive. And those in between will all find themselves directly affected by the measures, but without really knowing why.

Last Friday, Time Magazine ran a story on their web site by Bjorn Lomborg. Lomborg is not an ‘AGW sceptic’, but he has spent many years researching the issues and comes at the issue from the exact pesrepctive that I would like to see a lot more of. Many pushers of AGW use the emotive question ‘what would it harm if we try to save the planet and we end up being wrong?’. They argue that this would result in a ‘cleaner planet’, and we would all be much happier. But this utopian view is not accurate. I would far rather approach the issue from a more positive perspective, and ask the question ‘what other things could we achieve with these resources if we use them in the most efficient way?’.

Lomborg argues at length in his books that there is no real evidence that a warmer planet would necessaily be worse for human life than it is now. Indeed, crops grow better in warmer conditions, and humanity is far more adaptable to increases in heat than we are to decreases in temperature. In fact many people, including Lomborg, have argued that warmer conditions may in fact be better for us, overall. Aside from that, there is a cost involved in placing so much of our attention and focus onto the issue of AGW.

In purely monetary terms, Richard Tol, a lead author for the UN climate panel has determined that in order to meet the often touted goal of keeping temeratures from rising a further 2 degrees, it could cost as much as $40 trillion a year by 2100, which would be about 13% of the entire GDP of the world. If this is what it takes to keep us alive, then it would certainly be worth it. But if this is all just a giant hoax, or even something inbetween a hoax and a life-threatening problem, this is a cost that could be far better used in other ways. Lomborg notes in his article that the expected cost of doing nothing, in monetary terms, has been estimated at about $3 trillion by 2100. So we would be giving up $40 trillion in order to save a cost of $3 trillion (again, in purely monetary terms).

But there are also a great number of other costs, including opportunity costs. Millions of people around the world still lack access to such elementary necessities as fresh water, a balanced diet, and simple life-saving drugs and medical expertise. Millions more live in poverty or lack an elementary education. And many countries that are struggling to develop their own infrastructure and globally competitive industries have increasing energy needs that many in the developed world would tell them they need to hold back on.

All of these issues, and more could be vastly helped by the kind of resources that we are talking about investing into AGW measures. And the farce of it all is that by the time any agreement comes out of the political cauldron of Copenhagen, it will not even come close to being strict enough or ambitious enough to ’stop global warming’ (if that is even possible). And yet, it will still cost billions and billions of dollars, and will ultimately affect the day to day life of you and me more, probably, than any increase in temperature by 1-2 degrees would do…

Last Friday, Time Magazine ran an article on their web site by Bjorn Lomborg. Lomborg is not an ‘AGW sceptic’, but he has spent many years researching the issues and comes at the issue from the exact pesrepctive that I would like to see a lot more of. Many pushers of AGW use the emotive question ‘what would it harm if we try to save the planet and we end up being wrong?’. They argue that this would result in a ‘cleaner planet’, and we would all be much happier. But this utopian view is not accurate. I would far rather approach the issue from a more positive perspective, and ask the question ‘what other things could we achieve with these resources if we use them in the most efficient way?’.

Tags: AGW, Al Gore, Bjorn Lomborg, Climate Change, Climate Change Sceptics, Copenhagen, Science, Scientific Method

8 Responses to “Some Thoughts on Copenhagen and Climate Change”

David Meyer says on: 10 December 2009 at 5:31 pm

A very sensible analysis. I wish more people would cool down and look at the issues rationally.
~ says on: 17 December 2009 at 5:39 am

I commend you for keeping a level head on the issue, it is heartening that you attempt to

keep a fair view on the analysis, and I hope that my discussion will be received fairly.

The casual media analyses of climate science is often quite poor, that is agreed, and

encourage people to jump on a bandwagon they do not have sufficient knowledge of. That

bandwagon, however, currently seems to be the ‘lots of scientists doubt anthropogenic

climate change’. Short of introducing everyone to the issues, I would prefer it if the

media did accept the the core science is ’settled’, rather than misrepresenting or simply

lying about it being doubted.

The doubts are, as you said, over specific aspects of the models. This models are often

complicated, with multiple factors and inter-linked feedback mechanisms, and when dealing

with such complexity there are bound to be readjustments and reappraisals to components.

These are fine-tuning the extent to which some aspects will be affected, but do not throw

off the overall conclusions. I am a biological scientist, and so routinely read the peer-

reviewed scientific journals relevant to environmental sciences, and I do not recall the

masses of climate change doubting papers certain commentators are reporting.

The fact ‘that the earth has not warmed at all over the last decade’ is rather misleading.

This claim has been widely circulated and is only valid in the sense that 1998, the hottest

year ever recorded has not been surpassed. The overall trend has most definitely been an

increase, as multiple independ sources agree, and the 2000’s has been the hottest decade

ever, which the 1990’s were before and the 1980’s before that.

The assertion that ‘crops grow better in warmer conditions’ is a new fact to me, even

though I am a plant ecologist. Some crops, in some regions, may well grow better (for

example in the UK, where I live, some of our crops can expect increased growing seasons), but globally there is little reason to be optimistic. Already arid regions are going to struggle even more, and even if one doubts anthropogenic climate change, there has been much research done on how plant growth is altered in increased CO2, indicate a general decrease in nutritional value and shifts in plant communities.

It is odd to argue that money being spent in trying to avoid climate change might better be used to provide water and food provision in the developing world. A change of 1 to 2 degrees may seem piffling, we go through much greater changes every day, but the ecological effects of such a change seem likely to massively alter global ecology, with loss of water supply and crop production making certain areas completely inhospitable. It is also wirth mentioning that this 1-2 degree change is what might be achieved WITH action taken by global governments, without the shift is estimated up to as much as 6 degress.

It is difficult to argue with Lomborg’s analyses. Not because they are irrefutible, but because it comes down to what economic costs to agree with. His values for the potential costs of climate change are comparitively low, for example when compared with the UK government’s own review. Even ignoring this, I fail to see what is so bad about taking the safe view and cutting emissions anyway. What is there to lose from a cleaner world? It is my believe that most of the changes to be made a for the best anyway, and there there are wide benefits to living in a more efficient, considerate world.