Recently I went to a party with eminent scientists, mostly geologists and climatologists, from a major institute. A gathering of scientists is my dream scenario: Go from conversation to conversation with people who actually have some answers, and no small talk. They are a cautious lot by nature, always couching their answers in qualifiers, the result of the rigorous scrutiny and criticism of any proclamation they might make, by both their peers and the larger world. But they are passionate and curious and honest and make good company.
The Peter Gleick affair had just transpired, in which a well-known scientist had, with the help of a bit of misrepresentation, acquired documents confirming that a certain think tank was heavily supported by climate-change-denial industries and was instituting a plan to infiltrate schools with a curriculum of climate-change refutation. The public exposure of these documents caused the think tank to lose donors and called into question their tax-exempt status.
Scientists endure many years of education, and the value their work, their ethics, and their reputations highly. Their neutrality and objectivity are vital to them. They cherish a rather charming belief that every added bit of knowledge brings us that much closer to answers and truth.
The assembled group at the party was almost universally opposed to Gleick's actions, arguing that the trust and faith of the public in science and scientists would be undermined, that this was not the way to win the battle for hearts and minds about climate change, and that his actions were unethical.
Here's the thing: We have been fighting the war for public (and legislative) opinion on climate change for 20 years, and we are losing. In that time, the science has become more certain, yet the number of people who believe it has decreased. We need to change our game.
The climate-change-denial industry has outspent, outmaneuvered, and totally overwhelmed the forces of sanity. And though it's hard to justify deception, given the tactics of the deniers, we must use every weapon at hand, because we are fighting for our children's lives.
As for the credibility of science in the eyes of the public, that has long gone, thanks to the tactics of the hard right. It's not another core sample or discovery of melting ice that will change public opinion and get them to force our governments to act. It's fear.
It took the drought and vicious heat this summer to convince much of the doubting public of the reality of climate change. Of course, come winter, they will forget.
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What matters is the evidence.
No one needs to be convinced of the reality of climate change. We know that climate has changed for millions of years.
What is at question is the degree to which human action influences natural climate change. Since we do not as yet understand the mechanisms of natural climate variation, we cannot know how much human action contributes.
This is a graph of 20th century global temperature (in red), and the predicted temperature (in black) using a climatological model (http://tinyurl.com/96rpsfb). To make this kind of 'backcast' prediction, they take in the known climate forcers, both natural and human, (the 'boundary condition') take in the global temperature in 1880 (the 'initial condition'), and just run the model forward. Because of random variability in the model, no run is like any other, but the average output tracks the actual temperature quite closely. That's a strong indication that we DO understand the mechanisms of natural climate variability, in contrast to your post.
This is not the same as understanding the mechanisms of natural clmate variation.
CMIP5 Climate Model Runs – A Scientifically Flawed Approach
"...peer-reviewed studies that have quantitatively examined this issue using hindcast runs show large problems even with respect to current model statistics, much less their change over time. "
And that is such a tired meme that I can't even believe that I am calling what looks like a tired old man without interest in the truth out on it. What a waste of my time that is.
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In a couple more thousand years, there will be another change.
So scientists can do what they want, people can support whatever group they want but the fact of the matter is...the climate is changing and it will continue to do so. The earth climate as we now know it, will cease to exist.
I know people don't like change and fight to resist it. But change should be embraced because change is the norm...NOT the exception.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hockey-stick-or-hockey-league.html
Wrong. There's nothing natural about the current warming. The Milankovitch cycle is currently 6,000 years into a 29,000 cooling phase (Imbrie and Imbrie 1980: http://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/imbrie80sci_53864.pdf) and the sun has cooled slightly since 1979 (Lean and Rind 2008: http://goo.gl/LhBgi; Foster and Rahmstorf 2011: http://goo.gl/XvAbY). Throw in the predominance of La Niña since 2000 (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/) and if anything, we should be cooling, especially since 2000. Instead, UAH satellite temperature data shows that the planet has warmed since 2000 at a statistically significant rate (+0.01193ºC per year +/- 0.00352 (S.E.), F-statistic = 11.49 (1, 149 d.f.), p-value = 0.0008966, graph: http://goo.gl/A3wKJ). That is not natural.