My Problem with the Global Warming Debate

• It's a Political Debate Masquerading as Science - Ad hominem attacks, stereotyping political parties and ideologies, stifling dissent -- are we talking about the political situation in the United States heading up to the next election? No. We're talking supposedly about a scientific discussion. But it seems all the political tools are out, and one cannot talk about the science without having a political debate.

  So let's get this straight: all skeptics are not flat-earthers. There's a difference. The positive role of skepticism in science is widely acknowledged and has been for hundreds of years. "Prove it to me" is a fair question, and "I don't agree with your assumptions" is a fair statement. Various models of reality (theories) have lesser or greater fidelity to repeatable observations. The tension between theory and observations is what it's all about. Skepticism is critically important.

  Bad money can pay for good science. If scientist X says there are these things wrong with a certain theory or model, then who cares if he got a $10K grant from Exxon? A scientist's reputation is worth a lot more than $10K, and even if they did sell out, arguments deserve a hearing on the merits, not on the quality of the scientist or person making them. Ad hominem attacks are an indication of a weak position in my book. The game of attacking the messenger does not make the message go away.

  And it's not just scientists playing. Now we have a former presidential candidate who is getting nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for what's supposed to be a science movie. What?!? We have political leaders across the globe making scientific statements, like, "there is no time for debate on this anymore". It's reminiscent of the church telling Galileo that we already know how the universe works, no point is continuing those odd-ball observations.

  It seems it is impossible for people to separate the science from the politics. I must admit, with regret, that because I am a libertarian, my hackles are raised by environmentalists who want major changes in my freedom because of an impending doom I do not understand. This is a political, emotional reaction, and I know it. Others, already predisposed to tell the rest of us what to wear, eat, drive, and do with our time, are fine with taking action to avert impending doom, because they are already in that mindset. Nobody is so dangerous as someone who has a feeling of self-righteousness behind them.

  But science isn't about "heck yeah!" comments and me-too, feel-good catch phrases. Man-made climate change might be an inconvenient truth, but it also makes good political theater and we shouldn't forget that. It's just too tempting for politicians to leave alone. So we can't have a discussion about, say, cosmic radiation causing increasing cloud cover, or the secondary role CO2 has had during geologic time scales in climate change, or the paucity of data points from which this catastrophe is predicted, etc, without a lot of name-calling and hand-waving. I plead guilty as charged, but, just like many politicians and first-graders, I'd like to point out that "they did it too!" and "they started it!"
  



• End of the World Predictions have a Long History - In the late 1800s a religious leader convinced all of his flock to sell their possessions and go wait on a hill for the end of the world. Sadly, the world did not end for them, but their livelihoods and possessions did. This would be a sad enough story by itself, but it is not alone. We have hundreds of examples throughout history of people desperately wanting to believe disaster is looming ahead. When you're letting your emotions do the talking, it's all about psychology.

  There's even a science for the various religious end-of-world predictions, Eschatology. And don't fool yourself that this is just a religious phenomenon, this is a human phenomenon. It's a disease. You have it. I have it. We all have it.

  Recently we were all told that when the year 2000 rolled around, there could be power outages, food shortages, even banking collapse. There were computer scientists and experts on TV, in magazines, and in seminars telling us how we'd better stock up on food and batteries, times were going to get tough for a while.

  Didn't happen.

  In the 1970s and 80s, we were told that global population growth was fast out-pacing our ability to provide resources. Doom was on the horizon.

  Didn't happen.

  Instead, population growth has slowed in some areas. Starvation today is almost always attributable to poor political systems, not lack of global resources, and production seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping pace.

  For a fun read, try some of the failed predictions of the past. Here's a link with mostly religious references, here's one with more scientific ones. They're all very similiar. Or take a gander at some disaster movies. Here's a hint: mankind is always to blame. Our immoral ways always leads to our end. It's the same story, told a thousand different ways over ten thousand years of human history.

  Yes, every person wants to believe that they are a truly special person that will change the world, and every generation wants to believe that it is the truly special generation that will make an impact beyond all of the previous generations -- even if the impact is bad! These people making these predictions were not idiots; they were some of the best and brightest people of their time. Reading their predictions, we have dead oceans, ice ages, Jesus returning, billions with plague, extinction by giant comet (still one of my faves), and the sun exploding. It's just human nature. You know, we're really probably not all that special at all in the grand scheme of things. A little humility and self-honesty couldn't hurt when discussing dire predictions.
  



• It's a Complicated Subject Presented at the Level of an Idiot - I've never attended a code review or a technical discussion of the models involved, even on computer discussion boards. That's odd. Modeling is a fairly mature computer science, and a good model depends on what variables you think are important. "Trust us" seems a poor mantra for something like this. I understand that scientists do peer reviews, but wouldn't there be some kind of external computer sciences review as well?

  I read recently where cosmic radiation may cause changes in cloud cover. Sounds interesting. "That's not part of our model" said one scientist. I also read where the ice caps are doing strange things -- becoming cooler in certain parts and warmer in others. Also -- not part of the model. Sea salinity -- not part of the model. Algae, subsurface ecosystems -- not part of the model. The list goes on. We don't have the computer power to do everything, so somebody has to pick and choose what goes in the model and what stays out. In addition, somebody has to pick what the important relationships and functions are. Don't sweat the details, we're told, just trust us.

  Any computer model or program must be coded and tested. Computers are not Gods, and neither are scientists.

  So how do you check a model that predicts 100 years in advance? Well, you obviously can't wait to see if it works. So if the result matches what you've already decided is the proper result, the model must be working correctly. Now you can wrap this up in fancy language -- you can talk about the pieces of the model and the certainty you have of those being important, and you can talk about how the model shows general trends but not specifics, but at the end of the day, the computer model is only as accurate as the theories and observations going into it.

  And I'm not EVEN going to get into chaos theory. Let's just say that if the environment is chaotic, which I believe to be true, and it has settled around an attractor with the currently observed features, perturbations won't matter at all. Or if they do matter, they are probably non-predictable and non-intuitive.

  Hear anybody about that? I haven't. All I hear is about consensus.

  Do you ever wonder If predicting the weather ten days out is so hard, why is it easier to predict the climate a 100 years out? I do.

  Doesn't the climate consist of some of the most complex systems known to man, encompassing biological, chemical, and astronomical variables? Aren't these variables in motion is each molecule of the earth system, all over the world, at the same time? And isn't each of the tens of thousands of systems each affected differently by these same variables? When you think about it, scientists are making a massively amazing claim. We can't predict the price of a stock in the stock market over the next 10 years, which doesn't have near the complexity, but we can predict global temperature over the next 100 years.

  Wait a minute! People might say that we can't predict temperature minutely, but we can sure predict the general trend. To which I say, poppycock! How can you tell me that temperature is a first-order variable? Perhaps the real first-order and composite variable is the weight of microbes in the soil and oceans. Temperature is a specific type of measurement in a climate system that has thousands of measurements, just like the price of an individual stock is a specific type of measurement in a stock market full of different measurements. Hey I'm probably wrong, but it just doesn't make sense to me that our models are that good. I don't understand it, and I'm told the issue is simple. Don't sweat it. From Canada's National Post:

  Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.

  • Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.
  • Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.
  • Step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

  Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

  "In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."

  Really Nir? If so, I'm not hearing about it.



• People are Arguing at the Extremes - To hear activists talk, we're not talking about some minor problem. In an editorial for the Seattle Times, Floyd McKay says
  

  We are stewards of our children's future, and it's damn well time that we gave them a future that is not irreparably damaged by our addiction to carbon dioxide.
  ...
  We cannot wait until 2009 and installation of a president who places sound science above ignorant instincts. The rest of us know better and we must demand action from our politicians. We owe it to future generations.

  
  Action now! Remember the children! Words like this set off my "mushy headed emotional reasoning" alarm. Yes, McKay is probably well-meaning -- heck, I bet he gets a kick out of ringing the alarm bell for the rest of society. Nothing wrong with that, and I'm not trying to make an ad hominem attack on him. it's just that it's an ALARM BELL, it's not a notion or an idea. If a scientist questions Global Warming, he is not a skeptic contributing to the scientific method, he is "Global Warming Denier" much the same as we have holocaust deniers. According to boosters, this issue is REALLY BIG. FREAKING HUGE! It's not like Newton postulated gravity and folks said, "that's nice", it's more emotional and direct than that. It's as if scientists discovered a giant asteroid heading towards earth, and commentators plaintively wonder when, oh when, are we going to take real action to avert the threat? Don't we care about future generations?

  From my experience, when rhetoric gets this emotional and extreme, rational thinking goes out the window. This is the same type of talk that creates lynch mobs and riots. It feels good, it sounds good, it appeals to our general sense of right and wrong and primal brain. Floyd may be exactly right, but I'm naturally leery of this type of discourse.



• Science is not done by consensus - "Global Warming Called 'Unequivocal'" says the International Herald Tribune, which tells us about an international council of scientists (and politicians) who have decided with 90% certainty that mankind is causing climate change.
  

  "Feb. 2, 2007, will perhaps be remembered as the day" when global thinking about climate change moved from debate to action, [Achim Steiner] said. "The focus will shift from whether climate change is due to human activity, to what on earth are we going to do about it."

  
  But you know, last I checked science wasn't about consensus. Things don't fall down because scientists and politicians vote on it, and the sun doesn't burn hydrogen because astrophysicists had a conference in Milan last year. Science is based on philosophy and logic, not consensus.


• Science is no Good Unless it is Falsifiable - And this gets me right to the philosophical point: Every scientific theory (or model) has to be falsifiable. That is, science is supposed to make predictions about things that are supposed to happen that can be observed to happen or not. If you can't show that it is wrong, then it's religion, not science. If Newton tells me that hammers fall to the earth, and how fast they fall, I can go outside right now and verify that Newton wasn't smoking crack. I can verify his claim. That's science.

  Climate change theory does not seem to be able to do this. I ask for a simple experiment: let's make a prediction about global temperatures, sea levels, and storm strength for ten and twenty years from today. In ten years, we'll see whether or not your theory holds true. It's a simple request, really, and one that is most reasonable. Wouldn't this be the next logical step anyway? If we are being asked to limit freedoms based on predictions in certain measurable phenomenon, shouldn't we ask for observational testing of the theory?

  Put up, or shut up, guys.



• Androgenic does not necessarily mean bad or unnatural - While we're having philosophy hour, I'd like somebody to tell me what's wrong with climate change? Or as George Will puts it in Newsweek:
  

  Enough already. It is time to call some bluffs. John Kerry says that one reason America has become an "international pariah" is President Bush's decision to "walk away from global warming." Kerry's accusation is opaque, but it implies the usual complaint that Bush is insufficiently enthusiastic about the Kyoto Protocol's binding caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. Many senators and other experts in climate science say we must "do something" about global warming. Barack Obama says "the world" is watching to see "what action we take."
  ...
  We do not know how much we must change our economic activity to produce a particular reduction of warming. And we do not know whether warming is necessarily dangerous. Over the millennia, the planet has warmed and cooled for reasons that are unclear but clearly were unrelated to SUVs. Was life better when ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there? Are we sure the climate at this particular moment is exactly right, and that it must be preserved, no matter the cost?

  It could cost tens of trillions (in expenditures and foregone economic growth, here and in less-favored parts of the planet) to try to fine-tune the planet's temperature. We cannot know if these trillions would purchase benefits commensurate with the benefits that would have come from social wealth that was not produced.
  

  Last I checked, man was a part of life on earth. He is a very natural part of life on earth. There is, by definition, nothing unnatural about being a person. As we moved from campfires to coal-generating power plants, we've increased the amount of energy we extract and use from the planet. Once again, there is nothing unnatural or bad about this. I suppose, although I don't know, that any planet with a sentient species will have to go through a stage where carbon fuels are extracted and the chemical energy is released. So this is completely the way things are supposed to be as far as nature is concerned.

  As we continue our natural cycle (which probably also involves eating or otherwise destroying large numbers of other species) we will eventually impact our climate. I believe this intuitively. But the predicted temperature change is going to be very slow -- only a degree or so change in the next hundred years. There are no Hurricane Katrinas that can be attributed to climate change: big hurricanes have happened for eons. There are no "Day after Yesterday" killer storms, no giant tsunamis, no plagues of locusts, no giant raccoons ripping the tops from buildings and eating the inhabitants. In fact, climate change as described by scientists today is pretty boring stuff. People will move over time. Cities will fight increasing sea levels over decades of building, which they already do. There's just not a lot going on. It's all just part of nature. It's not good or bad, it just is.

  Now we can argue that we don't want sea levels rising, or parts of Asia to be flooded, or whatever. That's a perfectly fine opinion. But don't tell me it is unnatural or bad -- it's just your ascetic sense of what things ought to be. Evidence shows that the Sphynx may have been built when Egypt was a rainforest. Global climate change has been happening for, like, past forever. If you want to fight nature, then as long as you are not spending my money or limiting my freedom, have at it: spit into the wind, pull on Superman's cape, take the mask off the old Lone Ranger -- whatever.

  And it's not like there's really anything to be done about it anyway. Since we discovered fire, producing and using energy seems is as natural for mankind as breathing is to other animals. In a recent editorial for the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson puts it like this:
  

  
  Don't be fooled. The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution. About 80 percent of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), the main sources of man-made greenhouse gases. Energy use sustains economic growth, which -- in all modern societies -- buttresses political and social stability. Until we can replace fossil fuels, or find practical ways to capture their emissions, governments will not sanction the deep energy cuts that would truly affect global warming.
  ...
  It's a debate we ought to have -- but probably won't. Any realistic response would be costly, uncertain and no doubt unpopular. That's one truth too inconvenient for almost anyone to admit.
  

  
  

I understand that many of the points might seem to be general arguments that could be used for any kind of scientific discussion, from DNA to electrons, but those discussions do not directly threaten my freedom. I also realize that one can argue too much with reality -- take a look at the cigarette companies and the work they did to fight all of those lawsuits. But once again, do you really have an understanding of the truth, or just a close approximation of it? Does smoking cigarettes always cause lung cancer? No. Does smoking cause lung cancer more than 50% of the time? To the best of my knowledge, again no. Hey, smoking is bad, and I don't approve of it, but people should at least get their facts straight. If I remember correctly, most people who smoke die from heart attacks before lung cancer ever gets them!

In fact, the cigarette example is a great example of what we DON'T want to do. Take a look at the second-hand smoke debate, which is now totally political. Is there any question of the science any more? Not that I can tell. It's enough that second-hand smoke is "linked" with bad things. Smoking = bad. Plus, people don't really don't like smoking, let's be honest. It smells bad and it is a nasty habit. We've moved from science to the lynch mob mentality. Smoking will eventually disappear not because we're thinking through the danger of taking freedoms away, but because we've made up our minds already. It's a done deal. It's a big bandwagon and we're all onboard. The villagers all have torches and by golly, we're marching to the castle.

I'm not about to participate in the same political trick with climate change. Over my dead body. To paraphrase Charlton Heston, unless you can communicate to me better information than this, you can have my CO2 when my cold dead body stops making it.

In the larger scene, we may be entering the age of the computer model, to good or ill effect. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and as an architect and expert on complexity in computer systems, simply stating that one has a computer model that does such-and-such does not impress me. I can make computer models too. My grandma can make computer models. So what?

I believe in man-caused climate change, but because I do not understand the science, the terms of the debate are more important than ever.