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The Forum > Article Comments > The over-blown science of global warming > Comments

The over-blown science of global warming : Comments

By Garth Paltridge, published 17/8/2009

Why is it that scientists have become so one-eyed in their public support for the disaster theory of climate change?

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Q&A, I acknowledge that you have on occasion criticised the "alarmists" as well as the "denialists", which is a welcome (though sadly rare) event.

I've heard it argued that "Gore & Hansen had to lie to get people to listen"; a particularly infuriating sophistry. Not least for the purely moral reason that relationships, especially between citizens and leaders, should be built on trust; the politics of "disinformation" are extremely counter-productive.

But why should a sea level rise of 80cm be so alarming? After all, sea levels rose by about that magnitude over the 20th Century. Did I miss the news about the disastrous consequences?

That's not to say that rising sea levels is without consequence, but surely past experience has shown that it can be managed? So why all the panic?

Your concern for displaced people is admirable, but perhaps a little premature. Bangladesh, for instance, the long-time "climate refugee" poster child, is actually gaining land area in spite of sea level rises. For island nations such as Tuvalu, the story is more complex than climate alarmists are admitting.

In any case, the 20th century alone saw plenty of mass displacements of population. It may not have been a picnic, but by and large we managed.

Why all the emphasis on just the adverse consequences of climate change? What about the benefits?

In other words, I'm not saying we should do nothing at all, but I do think we need to think very carefully about what we do. As best I can understand it, Cap-And-Trade, the political hobby horse du jour is about the worst strategy we could adopt to adapt to climate change.

As Edmund Burke noted, "no passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." So it concerns me greatly that the Australian government is rushing headlong into perhaps the most costly and damaging restructures in our history on the basis of much ado about not much at all.

Oh, and I always love it when people weigh in with the Laws of Thermodynamics: they're science's equivalent of the Templars.
Posted by Clownfish, Thursday, 20 August 2009 1:52:51 PM
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Clownfish
<< But why should a sea level rise of 80cm be so alarming? After all, sea levels rose by about that magnitude over the 20th Century. >>

I don’t think 17cm is about the same magnitude as 80cm – check out NOAA.

<< That's not to say that rising sea levels is without consequence, but surely past experience has shown that it can be managed? So why all the panic? >>

Manage, I’m not so sure. You will have to check the numbers but I think that today, there are about 50 million people living and working within an 80cm mean sea level. That number is expected to increase to 120 million by 2100. It will take decades to adapt. Regardless, many species will not be able to adapt as quickly as humans, and of those of us who can adapt – there are some less able.

<< Why all the emphasis on just the adverse consequences of climate change? What about the benefits? >>

Yep, there will be some benefits, but these are considered (on balance) relatively short term.

Moreover, in referring to ‘tipping points’ in my previous post, it was in reference to some ‘perceived number’, after which life as we know it is dramatically altered. However, what is often overlooked are ecosystem tipping points.

Nature is generally pretty resilient and pliable when impacted by a suite of stresses, particularly over large time scales. However, humanity has pretty much been conducting an experiment on eco-systems that is barely understood. Eco-systems function in profoundly non-linear ways; the change in one minor component in the system has been shown to reverberate throughout the whole system and then to have significant negative effects on the functioning (and persistence) of the system.

In other words, we can alter the environment considerably without noticing any kind of effect until there is a sudden and dramatic shift until it becomes too late to do anything about it.

Clownfish, there are people better able than you or I tackling these problems, they have to. Like you say, it has to be done carefully.
Posted by Q&A, Friday, 21 August 2009 9:46:55 AM
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Whoops, Q&A, I misread when I was looking up sea-level rises in the 20th century ("Oh, I forgot to er, carry the one" - Professor John Frink).

Yes, 80cm is a bit more than 20cm; but it's still not 2000cm or 10000cm, as some have claimed. It may even be less. Nor is it going to happen overnight. It's not as if everyone's going to tumble out of bed sometime in 2050 and wonder where the hell all that water came from :)

Also, as the case of Bangladesh shows, it will be a lot more complex than just water going up everywhere.

Your point about ecosystems is a better one; but it's not as if relatively rapid climate change - even the climate change of the 20th century - is entirely unprecedented. Life will muddle on, I'm sure.

What I am sure of is that it makes no sense at all to beggar ourselves chasing after carbon chimaeras

Maybe we wicked humans are exacerbating natural climate change. I used to be convinced this was so; now I'm not so sure. I hae me doots. Reading some of the climate change material that tries manfully to fit the observation to the model, I'm reminded of nothing so much as mediaeval astronomers resorting to ridiculous concatenations of epicycles to make the new observations confirm to their cherished cosmological model.
Posted by Clownfish, Friday, 21 August 2009 4:13:22 PM
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