Quite Right

This is quite right. Science can give us a good idea of what is most likely to happen, but what to do about it is a political decision.

If we accept that, say, 2 billion people, will be killed by the direct effects of AGW in the next 150 years (figures plucked from the air, but not out of question), then we as a society have to decide whether we want to do anything about it, given that changes to reduce that toll WILL affect our lifestyles now. It's up to our politicians to respond to the national mood on that, even if that means doing nothing because there's not a chance of them getting re-elected if they do anything.

I would like them to take a more active role in trying to persuade people rather than just tell them what to do, but I'm only one.

Sociologists

At last, a job for all those with sociology degrees to get their teeth into: climate change science! The Register really is clutching at straws, in its attempts to get its anti-GW stance across.

Perspective

Like so many political band-wagons, it's very easy to lose sight of the original goals and to get lost in the "us vs them" mentality. Another recent example is that of the sort of following that Dawkins got after The God Delusion.

The sensational is what sells newspapers and gets votes, so the media and our politicians are bound to want a simple, bold statement, and not some uncertain probabilistic prediction, with a promise to refine the conclusions over the next few years.

One other point is that scientists live for funding. The more public a particular area of research is, the more likely the peer-review system is going to dole out the cash. Having experienced the research world, I've noticed that often in recent years, a funding request is often successful if there are one of three phrases (or similar) in the title and abstract: "cancer-cure", "nano-tech", or "climate-change", regardless of actually how relevant the research is to those areas.

However, the scientific world, whilst often caught up in all this, always (eventually) ends up at the same place - ie. looking at the facts and questioning them*.

People need to realise that just because the scientists change their minds, doesn't make them less credible.

*ok, so it doesn't always happen particularly quickly.

@Robinson

Care to venture an alternative to peer review? I agree it has many many flaws, particularly that which you state*, but in the absence of a better system, it's all we have.

*Note that not all reviewers are that conceited and underhand as to agree someone's paper/proposal just so they themselves are favoured, but money does make the research world go round.

Nobel prizes

Didn't Tom Lehrer give up satire when Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize?

I think the whole climate change debate is a sign of the infantile manner in which pretty much every argument has to be intensely polarised today. While it was fun for a while in that it enabled media outlets to sell more copy as 'twere, it has shaped politics and societally important science into loud, shouty arguments on the with us or against us level. Mike Hulme seems to espouse neither polar viewpoint and, sadly, will therefore be vilified by both. It's ironic that he is criticising concensus when a somewhat truer concensus would necessarily be away from the 2 extremes and somewhat nearer the middle. To paraphrase the rail announcer, it's the wrong kind of concensus...

Then and Now

I agree with the need to engage climate change issues on all possible levels from all possible sides and think the more ridiculous and outlandish the fringe arguments become the better overall for a universal dialogue. It was the maths averse Winston Churchill who said, "These gentlemen are the opinions upon which I base my facts." I suspect the same principle holds today.

What the article hints at but doesn't expound upon is the dirty little war being waged over relativism as a philosophical and political road map. The issue of relativism in the social sciences and politics today seems to stem from the Standard Model of the early 20th c. which propounded a highly relativist position toward education. The linguist S. Pinker bashed it in his "The Language Instinct" book. Conservative, political parties seemed to have signed on to a relativist position that today is manifesting itself in the U.S. in the struggle the Republicans are slogging through to find a defining philosophy. Interestingly the idea of relativism dates in western history to the pre Socratic philosophers and pre Sophists who developed the early empirical outlook that drove what is referred to as the Ionian Enlightenment. The central tenant then, as perhaps it is today, is that in a relative world all values are relative and thus no overriding moral or religious philosophy is valid or needed. Appearentlly we've come full circle. "It was ever thus." as my dear old grandpa use to say.

@Richard

OK, I'll take those questions of yours on. Firstly, though, I'm going to ask you why you think 40 years of observations is enough to build an accurate model for global climate change historically?

The Earth (and the rest of the solar system) is heated by The Sun. We, also, get some from our nuclear core which complicates things a bit, but for simplicity we'll go with your assertion that it's the sun wot dun it. Yes if you turn up your bar fire the room will get hotter more quickly and if you turn it down again it heats up less quickly. Assume that this room is not a closed system and can dissipate heat at a certain rate, then, yes, if you turn up the bar fire, it'll get hotter and if you turn it down again the room will slowly cool to a previous thermal equilibrium. Now, what if you change the rate of heat dissipation, up or down, and also can change the rate of heat transfer from the fire? You change the way the room responds to changes in the fire, upsetting the equilibrium and you get a change in climate behaviour that has a cause.

The model we have for climate change (or, as I prefer to think of it, the change in climate change) is based on historical data taken from core samples all over the world going back hundreds of thousands of years, modelling how global climates changed then and applying what we observe today. There is little doubt that human effects on the environment (not just fossil fuel use, I think that's an easy straw man politicians can point at, tax, and look "green") have changed the way the room responds to the fire.

@Onionman

Yes, 2Bn dead is 'not out of the question'. It's not very likely, either.

But, if you'd actually read what Mike Hulme was saying, you'd know that this is one of the problems; scientists can't say '2Bn will die' or '200 will die'. They don't fucking know.

They have an idea of the range, though, and an idea of the probabilities - neither of which Hulme contradicts.

The question is - do you assume that everything's gonna be alright, and do nothing (risking drastic consequences), or do you do everything you can do (risking looking foolish)?

More Science, Less Politics is Good

Science, not politics, will tell us what is most likely to happen at any given level of continued carbon emissions. Yes, deciding how much it is worth to us to avoid global warming is a political decision. But the danger that, because the costs of doing something to avoid global warming are unpleasant, we will refuse to hear the evidence is something that is very real - as we all should know from experience.

In my opinion, we need to do more to short-circuit the political debate, not less. Instead of people having to make an unpleasant choice between becoming much poorer here, or causing flooding and starvation in the Third World, the government should be announcing a jobs stimulus program of building nuclear power plants right and left so as to cause the shutdown of all the forms of energy production that release carbon.

This way, everyone wins, except the fringe environmentalists who don't like nice, clean, safe nuclear power. Obviously, that lot just wants to weaken our industrial base so that the Russians or somebody can march in and take over. So the right kinds of politics can solve everyone's problems.

@Phil

You have two rather depressing problems here.

Science is (or rather the scientists involved are) totally clear that global warming is happening, and pretty convinced that humans are the culprits. El Reg disagrees that it's even happening.

And as for how to respond, the answer is equally clear - we won't. Oh sure, individuals will do what they can, within the bounds of what they consider an acceptable lifestyle. But any solution will cost, and will cost globally. And it will have to be enforced. We can't even get the richest, most industrialised nations to enforce basic environmental issues in their own countries - things like not dumping toxic waste (cf. American underfunding of the EPA) or fishing out the oceans (cf. the EU fisheries policy, and French fishermen upset at even those limits). So the chances of a global policy being set up and enforced are basically nil.

And let's be honest, rich countries are going to be the last to feel the pain. They can always afford more concrete flood defences. It's not quite the same in Bangladesh, but then that's the point - no government really cares about people outside their country. Hell, even inside their country there's a limited amount of caring.

The 4 Positions

@ Phil Bennett: There aren't three positions, there are four:

1) global warming isn't happening

2) global warming is happening but isn't caused by human activities

3) global warming is happening and it is being caused by humans.

4) global warming is happening and this current phase is both natural AND is being caused by humans

I'm a 4-ist, and also believe humanity has adapted to climate change in the past, and will do so again. The facts are that global warming cannot be stopped, and that it will bring gains and losses. In the meantime, I like to sit back and watch the angry, emotional, desperate shouting and slanging matches. I especially like the way "denier" has become the new heresy. I even read a suggestion recently that AGW "deniers" should be classified as morally equivalent to holocaust deniers, and prevented from publicly state their views. What tremendous fun!

@Hey guys

"If the environmentalists are wrong, nothing happens, except we save some energy and do less damage to the environment"

If only that were true. The 'environmentalists' have the politicians in their pocket, however, and are throwing their weight about, so we have lunacy of 'carbon credits', taxation of anything to do with CO2 (e.g. vehicle duty) and energy police with thermal imaging cameras coming to your neighbourhood RSN.

CO2 accounts for 0.03% of the atmosphere and our contribution is 3% of that. Do you really think that's warming the planet more than the sun? As it happens, the sun is very quiet right now, and the world has been cooling for ten years, but that doesn't make the headlines somehow...

Read this for balance - the next scare will be another ice-age!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/04/natgeo-sun-oddly-quiet-hints-at-next-little-ice-age/

Not so much 'don't you dare disagree with my theory'...

As I have a huge government grant propping this all up and I want it to come in next year so DO NOT INTERFERE

RE:Hey guys

The main problem with your assertion is that you are assuming negative consequences are only attached to the option of doing nothing.

In order to "save energy and do less damage to the environment" changes will have to be made. These changes will have negative repercussions which may, or may not outweigh the benefits. No-one knows if the changes we are expected to make will actually make any difference in the long term.

If catastrophic destruction by AGW is simply postponed by a few years / decades / centuries / millennia then it makes no real difference*, the planet is still gone**. It might be a different bunch of people that get to see the end of the world but it is still the end of the world.

But, assume that we can prevent global warming by cutting emissions etc. etc. then there are a few important factors that need to be taken into consideration:

(1) we still need power. You might want to go back to living in a cave but I don't. More importantly I like to have power in things like hospitals.

(2) we still need transport. Especially those people in hard to reach places

(3) research focussed into reducing emissions will necessarily deprive research from other areas, arguably including healthcare / disease prevention etc.

(4) We would all have to go Nuclear. This has its own problems, not least the atomic bomb making possibilities It would be ironic if the steps taken to save the planet allowed a fundamentalist religious nutjob to make a bomb and destroy the world.

So, if we did as the AGW doomsayers are telling us (and remember they don't actually _know_ that doing what they say will help) people will die because of it, by diseases that haven't been cured, lack of hospital care because there are fewer hospitals further away with less transport and poorer roads, through hypothermia in winter and hyperthermia in summer and many other causes.

So what number do we put on the additional deaths? 1? 100? 1000? 2 billion? 20 billion? I certainly have absolutely no idea, but surely the most important question regarding climate change is "will more people suffer and die by doing what is necessary than by doing nothing?"

*unless it is staved off until after we can all leave and go terraform someplace else. But this is not really a resolution, if it was we would be better off putting resources into space travel and planet forming rather than being green.

**Your assumption that AGW will destroy the planet is flawed. It might destroy all the higher orders of life, but in that case, once the environment stabilised evolution would just re-populate the planet with Humans 2.0 to start over again.

(untitled)

My belief is that global warming seems to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, and is likely to be man made given the sudden rapid rise since industry took hold. But that all the suggestions made so far is unlikely to have any significant effect.

I, for one, have become more than a little fed up with the holier-than-thou brigade who object to us refusing to wear their hair shirts, and trying to portray anyone who doesn't embrace all the life degrading changes they support in order that they can feel good about themselves, as some kind of selfish outcast.

The only way one can tackle this problem, assuming we can, is a) to limit the population of the planet to a level that those remaining can lead a decent standard of life without deleting resources at an unsustainable rate, and messing up the ecosystem with their waste products. And b) finding a new source of power sufficient to cover our industry's needs, that doesn't cause the problems we are presently seeing. Long term goals unfortunately but there again the problem took a relatively long term to surface. Until those happen we just have to put up with the consequences of having not understood the consequences of having more than two offspring in the past, and showing no sense of responsibility now that, that problem is crystal clear.

Friends of the Earth?

I love the name 'Friends of the Earth' nothing more dramatically highlights that they are in fact NOT friends of the Earth.

If they were they would realise that the Earth doesn't care a jot for the amusing little apes that cover it today. It wasn't concerned when it got hit by a meteorite and it wasn't converned when the dinosaurs got wiped out. It wasn't concerned when the mammals came to ascendancy and it won't be concerned when we are gone. It will just go on until it is consumed by the Sun.

This point seems to be lost on the Friends of The Earth. They are more concerned with preserving humans and the status quo. They are nothing more thana self preservation society. They should be called 'Frends of the Human'.

Let the planet warm, let the climate change. The price to pay will only be the extinction of our species (along with a few others) - so what. In the eyes of the Earth that's a trivial event.

Oh dear ..

(...) they need to be opened up to other disciplines, from the arts and humanities, for example (...)

I can't really see what this has brought to the debate other than more smoke and mirrors. It has become politically charged precisely because everyone else has jumped on board.

The key issue concerns positive feedbacks in the climate system without which it is a non problem. "The Geopolitical Implications of Gender in Anthropogenic Global Warming" adds nothing to the core debate other than further polarisation and confusion.

Data?

@Paul M

I think your script is the one with a few pages missing. I find this statement from the met in 2008:

"Over the last ten years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped. It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming. "

And:

"These longer-term analyses have shown that current warming is being caused mainly by human emissions of greenhouse gases"

And their climate projections page (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/projections/):

"Despite the uncertainties, all models show that the Earth will warm in the next century, with a consistent geographical pattern."

So whilst you and El Reg have one eye on the data, said data would appear infantile wall-based shit smears.

Politics as usual.

The planet has been both a good deal warmer and a good deal cooler than today in the last 20,000 years. Currently, if you eyeball the raw data, we seem to be tending a trifle cooler than we were ten years ago.

BUT, and here's the important bit, nobody, and I mean NOBODY! knows why.

Making changes in what we are doing without understanding the mechanism involved is just as likely to make matters worse as to to make things better (whatever "better" means, considering we don't really know what is happening).

As a scientist, in my opinion we should put aside all the back-biting & arguing, and try to figure out what is happening BEFORE making gross changes.

But that wouldn't make good headlines. Nor research dollars.

@Paul M

re: The Met office: You seem to fall into the trap of mixing up weather and climate. Nine years is weather, climate is longer term. To make it more simple - Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

Bah

Makes a change for the mob to be citing peer-reviewed (or not) science rather than God Swill, Catholic Dogma or any of the reasons used to - I dunno - justify torture, claim the air in post 9/11 NY was "safe", shoot doctors outside clinics and gosh knows whatall else.

I've seen the Athabasca Glacier and I know why *I* think the Earth needs our help. But that's all right. UEA is sitting on what used to be a port town. Once the tide rises and engulfs Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Beccles Diss and all points East I'm sure he'll be reveiwing the science to see what the hell can be done to save the UK lowlands.

I hope they did the much-needed (but oft-delayed in the late 70s) maintenance on the raised walkways at UEA. They might very well be the only way short of a canoe of getting from EAS to the Sainsbury center in future years.

:o)

GW a distraction from the energy crisis

No matter whether or not man-made emissions of CO2 are a cause of global warming or not: the real issue is that as a species we are utterly dependent on fossil fuels for our energy needs. These will run out, you may dispute how many years are left but it is a finite number. Removing this dependency on oil, coal and gas is necessary for long-term energy security - and would nullify a significant portion of man-made CO2 emissions.

Unfortunately this realistically means more nuclear power - renewable energy sources just aren't reliable enough to base a nation's power supply on. The stupid science-denying green lobbies of Greenpeace et al have successfully demonised this in the eyes of the public that this is impossible to sell. It's much easier to sell shitty little wind turbines sticking off your house while at the same time nuclear plants are being decommissioned with more use of natural gas power stations as a consequence. Our politicians are cowards for not trying to convince the public of the change that is needed and the public are idiots for not trying to understand the long term mess we are all in.

re: The 4 Positions

Having spent some time trying to understand things from a data driven perspective, I tend to be a 4-ist too although I might modify that to being a 5-ist:

5-ism: We're doing something, so is nature, but what we're doing might not be mainly because of CO2.

Sure. we're doing something, but how much and is it within Mothar Nature's/Gaia's capability to compensate. Apparently around 95% of the carbon cycling through out atmosphere is just natural carbon cycle processes and just 5% are due to us. It only needs a slight change in Mother Nature to make a difference and soak it up.

A lot of what we're doing to the planet is through other mechanisms (land use for cities and agriculture, landfills, changing water flows,...).

Blaming global warming for every possible ill is not only wrong, it is also lazy science. If you are worried about frogs, polar bears or anything else then just link them to global warming and QED they're under threat.

Unfortunately this laziness also slams the door shut on other lines of research (eg. blaming pesticides or swampland drainage).

Often it is a toss up as to how we impact the planet. We can reduce fossil fuel usage by covering New Mexico in algae farms. The obsession with global warming makes it very difficult to have rational discussions about trade offs: Is it better to save the polar bears by building infrastructure in the desert that wipes out the desert dwellers? Is a coyote less valuable than a polar bear?

Here in NZ tuatara are apparently under threat from global warming. Unless we fix global warming the tuatara are doomed because a 4degree change in temperature will destroy their breeding. What a shame. These guys have been around since dinosaur times and we're going to kill them with a 4 degree temperature change. C'mon people: surely if they've survived countless ice ages, meteorites and other happenings that have caused all kinds of extinctions they can survive 4 degrees.

@Max

It's not hair splitting, it's is an extremely important point. Anyone who says a single incident is proof of climate change is mistaken, regardless of which side of the argument they are on.

Egypt has just had one of the hottest winters in living memory, is that evidence for climate change? No, it's weather.

In the UK we've had several of the worst summers in living memory, is that evidence for climate change? No, it's weather.

There has been a general trend for the last few decades for average temperatures to rise, is that weather? No it is climate change. (What causes that is another matter.)