www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/george-f-will-takes-on-science-loses.html
according to George F Will, many scientists were convinced in the 1970s that global cooling was a significant threat to the planet. And if those scientists were so wrong before, why should we trust them when they say that global warming is a threat now? There's just one little problem with this story, which reappears every so often in conservative discourse on the environment. Certainly in the 1970s there were a handful of scientists and scientific reports that were concerned about the prospect of global cooling, the mechanism for which was usually given to be the greater number of aerosols -- tiny particles -- released by man-made pollutants that might concentrate in the atmosphere and block sunlight from reaching the planet's surface. An even smaller handful of these scientists may have been rather alarmist about the prospect;
At the same time, there was also already concern a about greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions that would result in planetary warming. There was a fair amount of debate at the time about which of these two effects -- the cooling effects of aerosols, or the warming effects of CO2 emissions -- would win out, or the planet would get lucky and stabilize at some sort of equilibrium between the two. But there was certainly nothing of a scientific consensus, as Will sneakily implies, around global cooling. How could there have been given such underwhelming evidence in the temperature record to support the hypothesis?
This is disappointing stuff coming from Will, who has one of the best research staffs on either side of the Potomac, and whom I've usually regarded as being fairly intellectually honest.
entrepreneurs who re-oriented their businesses to make them more sustainable (and increased their profits in the process). That so little progress has been made on climate change and sustainable energy in spite of the overwhelming economic, environmental and national security imperatives to do so is perhaps the single greatest indictment of our democracy.
After months of calming down and leaving An Inconvenient Truth on the shelf unwatched I started thinking "Maybe Al is a little extreme and it isn't that bad". I'm just baffled by people who can't fathom how little ole "man" can impact the planet.
There is a degree to which even those such as George Will should be grateful for the contribution of aerosol particulate pollution to the Earth's albedo (reflectivity), as right now it is helping to reduce the effects we're seeing from global warming right now. In other words, yes, there is some global cooling due to particulate albedo effects, but it is not a NET cooling effect -- rather, it is helping to reduce the dominant rise is the Earth's global energy budget due to the reduced rate at which outgoing longwave IR photons carry Sun-absorbed heat back into space.
This is disappointing stuff coming from Will, who has one of the best research staffs on either side of the Potomac, and whom I've usually regarded as being fairly intellectually honest. As a rational progressive, that's what you have to think, because to do otherwise would be extremist and populist. Like David Brooks, he's just shrewd enough to do as much harm as he can without saying totally ridiculous things often enough to completely discredit himself with weenie Democrats.
SnW: Quiet, you (Seriously, though, framing that debate as being between 'rational' and 'irrational' liberals is like framing the abortion debate as being between those that are 'pro-life' and those that are 'pro-death').
Nate, can you (or anyone else) link the temperature data for the charts you have, indicating how it was collected and commenting intelligently on it's accuracy? I have a colleague at work, who was an Air Force weatherman, and who is politically moderate and otherwise intelligent, that insists that the evidence does not support global warming, let alone manmade global warming.
All this means is that George Will has jumped onto the mindless GOP talking points wagon. Blather is the only tool they have left--it is interesting to watch the parallels between today's GOP and the Democratic Party of the Old South just prior to the Civil War. When all their rational arguments had been parried, they resorted to screeching then trying to take all the toys and go home. Of course Stat/Wall could emigrate to the North if he chose;
Hi, Why do you compare all graphs to the 1951-1980 average temperature. To be fairer, you should compare to the average of the period your analyzing. Not saying it will be prettier or support either side of the question, but more intellectualy transparent...
Also, I can't remember who it was who said, "They were wrong when they said the Earth was flat. But to suggest that both beliefs are equally wrong is to be more wrong than either of them." The argument that past errors of scientists destroy the credibility of science is an argument not only against science, but against all intellectual progress. It's something I'm more used to hearing from Creationists.
Fuck The Creationists by MC (Stephen) Hawking Ah yeah, here we go again! This is some funky shit that I be laying down on your ass. This one goes out to all my homey's working in the field of evolutionary science. Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches, every time I think of them my trigger finger itches. They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class, Stephen J Gould should put his foot right up their ass. Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve, straight up fairy stories even children don't believe. I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say, all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day. Fuck the damn creationists I say it with authority, because kicking their punk asses be me paramount priority. Them wack-ass bitches say, "evolution's just a theory", they best step off, them brainless fools, I'll give them cause to fear me. The cosmos is expanding every second, every day, but their minds are shrinking as they close their eyes and pray. They call their bullshit science like the word could give them cred, if them bitches be scientists then cap me in the head. Fucking punk ass creationists trying to set scientific thought back 400 years. If them superstitious motherfuckers want to have that kind of party, I'm going to put my dick in the mashed potatoes.
Nate, the case for science is far stronger than you make it out to be. The "global cooling" hypothesis is actually a case of science being right yet again. The theory was based on the data that sulphur pollutants in the air were reflecting back sunlight and would therefore cool the atmosphere. At the time more was known about how sulphur pollutants worked than carbon pollutants, so it was a valid hypothesis. Two things have happened since then and you only mention one (we have learned more about carbon pollutants). The second you didn't mention - power plants were built with sulphur scrubbers because the high level of sulphur pollutants were causing acid rain. The scrubbers successfully reduced the acid rain (ie, the scientists were right about the causes of acid rain) but they also increased the rate of global warming by specifically taking out the cooling pollutants. Theoretically, we could actually stop global warming by emitting huge amounts of sulphur pollutants again, but the health effects (not to mention the acid rain) would be devastating, so it is far more sensible to reduce both cooling and heating pollutants.
Nova special a few years ago that indicated it's possible that the cooling due to particles in the atmosphere could actually be happening, which means it'd be masking just how badly we're causing the temperature to go up. Not sure how that research is holding up over the past few years, but it's interesting in any case....
what is plainly in doubt is whether CO2 is driving the warming. your graph is proof AGAINST the claim that warming is based on CO2! there was equal warming between 1885 to 1930 as there has been since (basically), and no one contends there was a serious CO2 increase during that period! also, CO2 starts in 1930, and immediately the temperature flattens (CO2's greenhouse effect...
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