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By focusing public attention on something else. It's not as if we had a shortage of problems. Then, the matter of climate change could be settled in a scientif

by Typhon 15y ago

By focusing public attention on something else. It's not as if we had a shortage of problems. Then, the matter of climate change could be settled in a scientific manner, as opposed to a religious debate involving legions of people who don't know what they're talking about. Obviously, i'm being unrealistic. Once it's become politicized, it's already too late.

ugh 15y ago
Thing is, whether or not climate change is happening has policy implications. Just settling it was never gonna be enough.
arethuza 15y ago
Deciding whether or not there is climate change and what is causing it is a scientific question. What do to about it is a political decision.
- DougWebb 15y ago
  No, deciding what to do about it is an engineering decision. Deciding to actually do what the engineers say is the best way to deal with the problem, based on the science, is the only political decision.
  - ugh 15y ago
    Engineers can't do that. You have to give them a goal and then you have to decide whether you like their plan for achieving the goal. The political process becomes important before engineers spring into action.
Tichy 15y ago
Just because there is a lot of chatter doesn't mean that there aren't also scientists working on it at the same time.
- Typhon 15y ago
  Yes, but they're usually not the ones making a fuss in the media about it, and they're not the ones who will ultimately make or not make political decisions.
  - Tichy 15y ago
    "The media" has their own agenda. If they wanted to, they could make a fuss about scientific findings.
jbooth 15y ago
Climate change has been settled in a scientific matter. The scientists unanimously think it's happening. The problem is that science doesn't matter in politics. A majority could vote that the laws of thermodynamics don't hold, if they wanted to.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Long before people started measuring CO2 concentrations in ice cores we knew, unequivocally that the climate on the planet "changes." It has been both warmer and colder in the past, there are fossil records, there are glacial valleys, there are even pictures painted on cave walls. Some scientist asked the question "Since we know climate changes, is it changing now? And if it is changing now, how is it changing?" And in response to that question lots of great research was done to look at factors which could affect climate. Generally the science has always started with a basic model describing net energy, energy added to the planet minus energy radiated from the planet. The theory being that the laws of thermodynamics tell us that if the net energy was positive the overall planet would get warmer over time and if the net energy were negative it would get cooler over time. Once that was established as the basic framework, people set out to try to identify every way in which energy is 'added' to the planet (sources) and every way in which energy 'leaves' the planet (sinks). Each of these sources or sinks have an unknown contribution to the overall equation. Many of the sources and sinks are variable, which is to say they change in magnitude over time. So a sub-problem that people have invested a lot of time and energy in trying to identify 'proxies' or direct ways to identify variability. The classic example is of course CO2. CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas in that it traps energy because it is opaque to infra-red light. Higher frequency light passes through it and is absorbed or reflected by what that light hits. Light that is reflected returns to space, light that is absorbed is re-radiated as infra-red light (black body radiation). CO2 in the atmosphere prevents that radiation from leaving the planet. So like a car with the windows up, or a green house, the infra-red light is ‘trapped.’ The amount of infrared light that will be trapped (and its energy content) is proportional to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. More CO2, more energy is trapped, less goes to space. Once you have a bunch of sources and sinks, and measurements of their variability over time, and measurements of the temperature over time, you construct a 'model' for how they all contribute to the climate. The model is a series of coefficients to attach to each source or sink based on its relative contribution to the other sources and sinks. You pick numbers kind of out of the air as to the co-efficients to give each source or sink, and you use the measurements you've taken and put them in your model and get back a predicted set of temperatures. You compare that to the temperatures that were actually measured and look to see how well they correlate. You continue to measure these things, you feed your new measurements into your model, and you predict future changes. Then when the future becomes the present, you look at what you predicted and compare that to what the model said would happen and if they don't agree you go back and fiddle with the co-efficients until they do. That is all good solid science. But in climate science something unfortunate happened. Of all the things folks were putting into the models, the one that had the biggest co-efficient (which defined it as the greatest overall contributor to the climate) has been 'greenhouse gases' (which includes CO2 and Methane). Scientists being scientists identify all the sources of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And one of them, CO2, is a byproduct of 'industrialization' (aka human activity). That observation, created a religion. The religion's first principles were: ) The climate is changing. (remember this) 1) Greenhouse Gas is the biggest factor affecting the climate. 2) CO2 is a greenhouse gas. 3) Human activity creates CO2. 4) Human activity is the* dominant factor in the warming of the climate. 5) If Humans would apply themselves to eliminating the production of CO2 the climate will stop changing. The first tragedy here is that science didn't "discover" the climate was changing, they knew the climate changed, they were only trying to figure out if the current change was a warmer period or a colder period. That green house gases was the dominant factor was a surprise because it creates a new question “What are all the factors that change the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?” One of the things the science agreed on was that the climate changes whether or not humans are present, so the religious tenet that we can control the climate by eliminating our production of CO2 is false. Several people did however recognize that the religion met the model for enacting large scale changes. That model is : 1) Find a really big threat, explain how the threat will kill you. 2) Describe how only by following the religion can the threat be averted/met. 3) Explain that people who aren’t part of the religion aren’t just stupid, they are threatening our ability to meet the threat and should be eliminated/marginalized. This scheme works and so people use it. Whether you’re un-american for not agreeing that Communisim will destroy life as we know it, or that your un-american for not reducing your carbon footprint and averting the coming flood of rising seawater, if you’re not fighting with us against the boogeyman, you are the Enemy. So the science of climate change is still working on their models. This solar minimum will give us new data to update our models and co-efficients. If it exposes the Global Warming religion for what it is, then I don’t think Al Gore will take the fall, I think science will, and that makes me sad.

by Typhon 15y ago

ugh 15y ago

Thing is, whether or not climate change is happening has policy implications. Just settling it was never gonna be enough.

arethuza 15y ago

Deciding whether or not there is climate change and what is causing it is a scientific question. What do to about it is a political decision.

DougWebb 15y ago
No, deciding what to do about it is an engineering decision. Deciding to actually do what the engineers say is the best way to deal with the problem, based on the science, is the only political decision.
- ugh 15y ago
  Engineers can't do that. You have to give them a goal and then you have to decide whether you like their plan for achieving the goal. The political process becomes important before engineers spring into action.

Tichy 15y ago

Just because there is a lot of chatter doesn't mean that there aren't also scientists working on it at the same time.

Typhon 15y ago
Yes, but they're usually not the ones making a fuss in the media about it, and they're not the ones who will ultimately make or not make political decisions.
- Tichy 15y ago
  "The media" has their own agenda. If they wanted to, they could make a fuss about scientific findings.

jbooth 15y ago

Climate change has been settled in a scientific matter. The scientists unanimously think it's happening. The problem is that science doesn't matter in politics. A majority could vote that the laws of thermodynamics don't hold, if they wanted to.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Long before people started measuring CO2 concentrations in ice cores we knew, unequivocally that the climate on the planet "changes." It has been both warmer and colder in the past, there are fossil records, there are glacial valleys, there are even pictures painted on cave walls. Some scientist asked the question "Since we know climate changes, is it changing now? And if it is changing now, how is it changing?" And in response to that question lots of great research was done to look at factors which could affect climate. Generally the science has always started with a basic model describing net energy, energy added to the planet minus energy radiated from the planet. The theory being that the laws of thermodynamics tell us that if the net energy was positive the overall planet would get warmer over time and if the net energy were negative it would get cooler over time. Once that was established as the basic framework, people set out to try to identify every way in which energy is 'added' to the planet (sources) and every way in which energy 'leaves' the planet (sinks). Each of these sources or sinks have an unknown contribution to the overall equation. Many of the sources and sinks are variable, which is to say they change in magnitude over time. So a sub-problem that people have invested a lot of time and energy in trying to identify 'proxies' or direct ways to identify variability. The classic example is of course CO2. CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas in that it traps energy because it is opaque to infra-red light. Higher frequency light passes through it and is absorbed or reflected by what that light hits. Light that is reflected returns to space, light that is absorbed is re-radiated as infra-red light (black body radiation). CO2 in the atmosphere prevents that radiation from leaving the planet. So like a car with the windows up, or a green house, the infra-red light is ‘trapped.’ The amount of infrared light that will be trapped (and its energy content) is proportional to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. More CO2, more energy is trapped, less goes to space. Once you have a bunch of sources and sinks, and measurements of their variability over time, and measurements of the temperature over time, you construct a 'model' for how they all contribute to the climate. The model is a series of coefficients to attach to each source or sink based on its relative contribution to the other sources and sinks. You pick numbers kind of out of the air as to the co-efficients to give each source or sink, and you use the measurements you've taken and put them in your model and get back a predicted set of temperatures. You compare that to the temperatures that were actually measured and look to see how well they correlate. You continue to measure these things, you feed your new measurements into your model, and you predict future changes. Then when the future becomes the present, you look at what you predicted and compare that to what the model said would happen and if they don't agree you go back and fiddle with the co-efficients until they do. That is all good solid science. But in climate science something unfortunate happened. Of all the things folks were putting into the models, the one that had the biggest co-efficient (which defined it as the greatest overall contributor to the climate) has been 'greenhouse gases' (which includes CO2 and Methane). Scientists being scientists identify all the sources of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And one of them, CO2, is a byproduct of 'industrialization' (aka human activity). That observation, created a religion. The religion's first principles were: ) The climate is changing. (remember this) 1) Greenhouse Gas is the biggest factor affecting the climate. 2) CO2 is a greenhouse gas. 3) Human activity creates CO2. 4) Human activity is the* dominant factor in the warming of the climate. 5) If Humans would apply themselves to eliminating the production of CO2 the climate will stop changing. The first tragedy here is that science didn't "discover" the climate was changing, they knew the climate changed, they were only trying to figure out if the current change was a warmer period or a colder period. That green house gases was the dominant factor was a surprise because it creates a new question “What are all the factors that change the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?” One of the things the science agreed on was that the climate changes whether or not humans are present, so the religious tenet that we can control the climate by eliminating our production of CO2 is false. Several people did however recognize that the religion met the model for enacting large scale changes. That model is : 1) Find a really big threat, explain how the threat will kill you. 2) Describe how only by following the religion can the threat be averted/met. 3) Explain that people who aren’t part of the religion aren’t just stupid, they are threatening our ability to meet the threat and should be eliminated/marginalized. This scheme works and so people use it. Whether you’re un-american for not agreeing that Communisim will destroy life as we know it, or that your un-american for not reducing your carbon footprint and averting the coming flood of rising seawater, if you’re not fighting with us against the boogeyman, you are the Enemy. So the science of climate change is still working on their models. This solar minimum will give us new data to update our models and co-efficients. If it exposes the Global Warming religion for what it is, then I don’t think Al Gore will take the fall, I think science will, and that makes me sad.