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Global Cooling Evidence Continues to Cascade; Global Warming Zealots Unfazed
| May 2, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Global Warming, Off Topic |
Researchers publishing in Nature report that parts of North America and Europe are expected to cool over the next decade. See the story here.
But the author of the report remains a global warming zealot and fears that his science will be used to undermine his religion:
“We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don’t want it to be turned around in the wrong way,” Keenlyside said. “I hope it doesn’t become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.”
46 Responses to Global Cooling Evidence Continues to Cascade; Global Warming Zealots Unfazed
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ungtss wrote:
” think the key is defining exactly how we are using the terms “intelligent” and “natural.” I think that the terms are generally used to distinguish between intentional vs. unintentional acts — thus predators are “intelligent” insofar as their acts are intentional, while weather is not intelligent because there is no intention involved in the varying winds and currents.”
OK, lets take the intentions of an animal, a predator of some sort. Animals spend most of their waking lives in a search for food – its a basic fundamental drive. That drive is purely a chemical mechanism having nothing to do with intention or choice on the part of the animal.
The choice of what food to acquire is determined by availability, what is available in their environment. Of course an animal might have preferences regarding food, so that if there were an abundance of food he might prefer one over the other. Say an animal was really fond of honey and would gorge itself on it endlessly when it was available. Why would he prefer honey? Could there be a mechanism, some explanation in terms of the animal’s neuro-physical chemical make-up that might account for that strong preference? If there were (and certainly there must be) we can therefore see that the animal’s preference has to do with peculiarities of his physical make-up of which he had no choice or preference in determining. So his intention once again is determined by a mechanism. And if it were not, what would it mean? Supposing this intention, this choice was determined by nothing that could even conceivably be explicated or described. It would mean the animal’s choice was pure randomness. So, an animal’s intentions are dictated by fundamental drives and attributes of his physical makeup.
An animal is a mechanism. Wind currents are a mechanism as well. You could look at the direction a hurricane was taking (and truly what is more complex than weather), and consider various factors in the wind current’s environment, bodies of water, land masses, dynamic attributes of the hurricane system itself, and say quite literally, “This hurricane has an intention to either make landfall around Savannah or possibly further south in Jacksonville.” This would not be a metaphor wherein only in some poetic sense did the hurricane have real intentions whereas only an animal (wolf? cricket? ape? amoeba?) could have a real intention.
That being said, ID is not about explaining the extinction of species — it’s about explaining the origin of the fundamental structures underlying adaptive complexity. No ID advocate I’m aware of is concerned with showing whether dinosaurs went extinct based on intelligent or unintelligent action — it’s the origin of DNA we’re interested in
Well, the point of DLH’s post was that people are trying to determine whether global-warming is caused by natural or intelligent causes just like with ID, and that is what I was responding to.
JunkyardTornado at 31
For The ID vs evolution, consider the distinction of the four laws of physics vs intelligent causation.
DLH:“For The ID vs evolution, consider the distinction of the four laws of physics vs intelligent causation.”
Yes, saying four laws produced everything (what were those 4 laws again?) doesn’t seem very enlightening.
If you have some starting configuration and you apply some simplistic transformation to it and the output is Picasso’s Guernica, then you could say, “Well Picasso’s Guernica was really already in the initial configuration to begin with.” Maybe the transformation was only a simplistic decompression. Maybe it was even simpler, e.g. “flip all the bits”. So yeah, you’re just pushing back what needs to be explained. But whatever that initial configuration x was, and whatever transformation f that was applied to it, f(x) still equates to y, and is merely an alternate encoding for y itself (Guernica). If f were a lot more complex, adding quite a bit of information to x to result in the output y, f(x) still equates to y. So, we don’t need to bring some disembodied unspecificable “intelligence” into the picture to observe that to produce y it takes something equivalent to y to begin with.
So you could say a million years ago there was a precise encoding for the biological world no different than such an encoding on a computer would be (whatever that might be).
So, the above is my personal rather long-winded mantra on the subject, but its sort of contingent on viewing humans, animals, the universe, and everything else as potentially describable in a systematic manner meaning everything is a mechanism.
I would say that all science can do is essentially try to posit some preexisting configuration in nature and some set of laws that transformed that configuration into what we have now (and I don’t think quantum theory really messes with that picture).
But someone could say those prexisting conditions had to be a sentient being with intention and volition, etc. And I would say what about epigenesis. At what point in a causal chain must we posit a sentient being directly comparable to a human being. As a Christian I would say, why does the entire universe exist, if it afforded nothing of relevance to the creation of human beings, the supposed endpoint of creation. It seems apparent that the universe must have something to do with our existence, specifically the probabilistic resources it provided through the energy of a million million suns, possibly culminating ultimately in the emergence of a very special cellular entity packed with a huge amount of random genetic information. Maybe I’m confusing ID with YEC, so maybe some of you think the same lines. I think God is so smart he could create the world in his sleep which is what I think happened. I’ll try to make that my last post for the day.
JunkyardTornado
4 laws: Gravity, Electromagnetism, Weak Nuclear & Strong Nuclear.
How does that cause the 1 billion codons in the genome?
On CO2, nominally 280 ppm preindustrial / 384 ppm today = 72.9% natural, 27.1% anthropogenic.
For current data, see Trends in Carbon Dioxide
Junkyard Tornado:
OK, lets take the intentions of an animal, a predator of some sort. Animals spend most of their waking lives in a search for food – its a basic fundamental drive. That drive is purely a chemical mechanism having nothing to do with intention or choice on the part of the animal.
The choice of what food to acquire is determined by availability, what is available in their environment. Of course an animal might have preferences regarding food, so that if there were an abundance of food he might prefer one over the other. Say an animal was really fond of honey and would gorge itself on it endlessly when it was available. Why would he prefer honey? Could there be a mechanism, some explanation in terms of the animal’s neuro-physical chemical make-up that might account for that strong preference? If there were (and certainly there must be) we can therefore see that the animal’s preference has to do with peculiarities of his physical make-up of which he had no choice or preference in determining. So his intention once again is determined by a mechanism. And if it were not, what would it mean? Supposing this intention, this choice was determined by nothing that could even conceivably be explicated or described. It would mean the animal’s choice was pure randomness. So, an animal’s intentions are dictated by fundamental drives and attributes of his physical makeup.
That’s the old philosophical dispute surrounding freewill + determinism, compatibilism and incompatibilism.
Personally, I think that, even granted that animals are “purely mechanism and nothing more,” there is still room for “intention” fundamentally different from the simple laws of nature. And it comes down to this: even if animals are only mechanisms, those mechanisms cause things like EMOTION, DESIRE, PLANS, etc — things that we all experience every day, and which cause animals to act in such a way as to deliberately shape their environments for an end. Like an orangutan spear-fishing; on a human writing music; or a flatworm pursuing dinner. Even if the desires and emotions of the animal are only physical mechanisms — they are still emotions and desires, and they still cause the animal to shape its environment for its own purposes.
That’s the fundamental difference between a dog and a hurricane. A hurricane doesn’t have any mechanism to “want” anything — or to “think” anything — or to “feel” anything. Animals do. And whether those animals are purely mechanistic or not, they still have a capability the weather does not — the capacity to feel, want, and think, for a purpose.
How can you test this? Is there any way to “train” a hurricane? Do planetary orbits exhibit pavlovian characteristics? Can stars scoot away from the light like a roach? Obviously not.
Well, the point of DLH’s post was that people are trying to determine whether global-warming is caused by natural or intelligent causes just like with ID, and that is what I was responding to.
Got it. For my part, I think the real issue is not whether we’re causing it, but a) whether it’s a bad thing, and if so, then b) whether we can reasonably do anything about it. Suppose we are causing global warming. What does that matter, if it turns out it’s a good thing (and it may well be?) Or what does it matter if in order to reverse it, we’d have to kill off half the population and revert to cave living to reverse it?
DLH I don’t have anything to refute that C02 has increased by the amount you specified due to human activity. But my point was how could increasing by 27% something that is already of such incredibly miniscule proportions in the atmosphere have the horrifying impact being attributed to it. So previously it was 3 per 10000 and everything was great. Now its 4 parts per 10000 and the result is global catastrophe? Have any links explaining the logic of that? I think the cyanide analogy may have come from Rush Limbaugh.
And even if we aren’t causing global warming, if it’s a bad thing and we can reasonably change it, we ought to. That’s why I don’t really care whether we are causing it or not.
ungtss:
Is there any way to “train” a hurricane? Do planetary orbits exhibit pavlovian characteristics?Obviously not
Well, you could train water to only go in a certain path by fabricating a channel for it. You could train a dog in the same way, constraining it to a path via walls. Take away the walls after a few years and it might still continue to follow that path. Same with the water. You could also increase the effectiveness of the wall by electrifying it so the dog would be shocked if it touched it. Or you could just take away the wall and put a electrified collar on the dog and do the shocking yourself for training purposes, or use positive reinforcement of food to constrain the dog’s behavior in the direction you wanted. You could also use electricity to repel or constrain the behavior of nonliving things for example, those magnet toy dogs. The effect of electricity on an actual dog could be described in terms of chemical reactions I assume.
And I think some governments are trying to train hurricanes.
Can stars scoot away from the light like a roach?
I know one planetary body could scoot towards another via the effect of gravity.
A photosensitive cell works by means of a chemical reaction doesn’t? Doesn’t this prove there are chemicals sensitive to the effects of light?
JunkyardTornado at 38
Simple – effectively attribute ALL the recent change in global temperature to the anthropogenic increase in carbon dioxide.
Claim solar radiation, sunspots, ocean etc are negligible or minor. Consequently CO2 “MUST” be the cause. Therefore we “MUST” reduce CO2. etc. etc. etc.
The CO2 increase directly contributes about 1C to the greenhouse effect. (The far greater impact is due to water vapor.)
Then “positive feedback” assumptions extrapolate this to 4 C or more. That is where Roy Spencer is challenging which is the cause and which the effect, and whether such “positive feedback” really exists.
Come to think of it, where did that fossil fuel come from? if not from the CO2 in the atmosphere? If the earth was so lush back then to provide all that biomass to make into coal, what is the problem with restoring it into the atmosphere? – Would that not improve biotic productivity -which we urgently need to feed the earth’s growing population?
Whatever happened to ACCOMMODATING climate change? Why “MUST” we stabilize climate?
Junkyard Hurricane:
Well, you could train water to only go in a certain path by fabricating a channel for it. You could train a dog in the same way, constraining it to a path via walls. Take away the walls after a few years and it might still continue to follow that path. Same with the water. You could also increase the effectiveness of the wall by electrifying it so the dog would be shocked if it touched it. Or you could just take away the wall and put a electrified collar on the dog and do the shocking yourself for training purposes, or use positive reinforcement of food to constrain the dog’s behavior in the direction you wanted. You could also use electricity to repel or constrain the behavior of nonliving things for example, those magnet toy dogs. The effect of electricity on an actual dog could be described in terms of chemical reactions I assume.
Your maze example is interesting, but I don’t think it adequately illustrates the responses unique to the dog. You can train a dog to do a certain trick by incentivizing a trick. The dog can actively seek a treat, based on its hunger, and its expectation that a behavior will result in a desired reward, based on its memory of a past association between the two.
Water flowing through a maze is incapable of any of the italicized things above. It simply dumbly flows down a channel. But a dog WANTS a reward, and so it PLOTS how to get it. Those emotions — those desires — those associations — are what is uniquely animal, intentional, and ultimately intelligent. A pack of wolves WORK AS A TEAM to accomplish the GOAL of taking down prey.
I know one planetary body could scoot towards another via the effect of gravity.
But roaches are not moving via the effect of anything except the instinctual knowledge that light = exposure and darkness = safety. That’s the fundamental difference between the two.
Sorry — nested blockquotes worked in the preview, but not in the final comment. My comment begins with “your maze example.”
“But my point was how could increasing by 27% something that is already of such incredibly miniscule proportions in the atmosphere have the horrifying impact being attributed to it. So previously it was 3 per 10000 and everything was great. Now its 4 parts per 10000 and the result is global catastrophe?”
I am reluctant to spend much time on this because there is a good chance the post will not appear.
So, very quickly:
The proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere as a whole is irrelevant. The vast bulk of the atmosphere (O2, N2) has no greenhouse effect. You might as well ask how can a 50% increase in the arsenic in your body have such a dramatic effect when arsenic is such a tiny proportion of the whole body mass (less than 20 mg).
As DLH says the “raw” contribution of the anthropogenic CO2 increase is relatively small. Feedback is vital but hard to model. Water vapour is by far the largest contributor to the greenhouse effect but the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere can change in days whereas the amount of CO2 changes over years or decades. Water vapour is best seen as a reaction rather than an action. In particular one of the things that determines the amount of water vapour is the temperature.
I don’t think this forum is a good place to discuss climate change and I have mixed feelings about the issue. But, I do recognise how little I know and how complex the whole subject is. Which is my sole point.
DLH
Your calculation of the amount of atmospheric CO2 that is anthropogenic is mistaken. Most of the additional CO2 in the post-industrial atmosphere is from a natural source – the oceans. The oceans contain far more dissolved CO2 than is in the atmosphere. Cold water dissolves more CO2 than warm water. The oceans have warmed slightly in the last century and released some of the dissolved CO2 in the process.
In order to call that “anthropogenic” one has to first conclude that the ocean warming is due to man’s activity. That has not been established. The earth warms and cools with or without mankind around and so too does atmospheric CO2 rise and fall without mankind around.
An inconvenient truth is that in the past, when CO2 levels have risen, the global average temperature rises about 1000 years BEFORE atmospheric CO2 level rises. This is hard data obtained from ice cores and isn’t in dispute. Global warming is a CAUSE of increased CO2 in the atmosphere, not a result, in prehistoric times. There is no credible reason to believe that the historic rise in CO2 is any different from prehistoric rises – warming first, then atmospheric CO2 rises.
DLH
3% number courtesy of Roy Spencer in his essay Atmospheric CO2 Increases:
Could the Ocean, Rather Than Mankind, Be the Reason?