Likely you have heard the sound bite that “97% of climate scientists” accept the global warming “consensus”.  Which is what gives global warming advocates the confidence to call climate skeptics “deniers,” hoping to evoke a parallel with “Holocaust Deniers,” a case where most of us would agree that a small group are denying a well-accepted reality.  So why do these “deniers” stand athwart of the 97%?  Is it just politics?  Oil money? Perversity? Ignorance?

We are going to cover a lot of ground, but let me start with a hint.

In the early 1980′s I saw Ayn Rand speak at Northeastern University.  In the Q&A period afterwards, a woman asked Ms. Rand, “Why don’t you believe in housewives?”  And Ms. Rand responded, “I did not know housewives were a matter of belief.”  In this snarky way, Ms. Rand was telling the questioner that she had not been given a valid proposition to which she could agree or disagree.  What the questioner likely should have asked was, “Do you believe that being a housewife is a morally valid pursuit for a woman.”  That would have been an interesting question (and one that Rand wrote about a number of times).

In a similar way, we need to ask ourselves what actual proposition do the 97% of climate scientists agree with.  And, we need to understand what it is, exactly,  that the deniers are denying.   (I personally have fun echoing Ms. Rand’s answer every time someone calls me a climate denier — is the climate really a matter of belief?)

It turns out that the propositions that are “settled” and the propositions to which some like me are skeptical are NOT the same propositions.  Understanding that mismatch will help explain a lot of the climate debate.

Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptics Position (studio version) from Warren Meyer on Vimeo.

Other viewing options, as well as links to download the powerpoint presentation, are here.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.

That is just amazingly close to what I wrote in a Forbes column a few months back:

It is important to begin by emphasizing that few skeptics doubt or deny that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas or that it and other greenhouse gasses (water vapor being the most important) help to warm the surface of the Earth. Further, few skeptics deny that man is probably contributing to higher CO2 levels through his burning of fossil fuels, though remember we are talking about a maximum total change in atmospheric CO2 concentration due to man of about 0.01% over the last 100 years.

What skeptics deny is the catastrophe, the notion that man’s incremental contributions to CO2 levels will create catastrophic warming and wildly adverse climate changes. To understand the skeptic’s position requires understanding something about the alarmists’ case that is seldom discussed in the press: the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming is actually comprised of two separate, linked theories, of which only the first is frequently discussed in the media.

The first theory is that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels (approximately what we might see under the more extreme emission assumptions for the next century) will lead to about a degree Celsius of warming. Though some quibble over the number – it might be a half degree, it might be a degree and a half – most skeptics, alarmists and even the UN’s IPCC are roughly in agreement on this fact.

But one degree due to the all the CO2 emissions we might see over the next century is hardly a catastrophe. The catastrophe, then, comes from the second theory, that the climate is dominated by positive feedbacks (basically acceleration factors) that multiply the warming from CO2 many fold. Thus one degree of warming from the greenhouse gas effect of CO2 might be multiplied to five or eight or even more degrees.

This second theory is the source of most of the predicted warming – not greenhouse gas theory per se but the notion that the Earth’s climate (unlike nearly every other natural system) is dominated by positive feedbacks. This is the main proposition that skeptics doubt, and it is by far the weakest part of the alarmist case. One can argue whether the one degree of warming from CO2 is “settled science” (I think that is a crazy term to apply to any science this young), but the three, five, eight degrees from feedback are not at all settled. In fact, they are not even very well supported.

Here is the core IPCC argument:  for the period after 1950, they claim their computer models cannot explain warming patterns without including a large effect from anthropogenic CO2.  Since almost all the warming in the latter half of the century really occurred between 1978 and 1998, the IPCC core argument boils down to “we are unable to attribute the global temperature increase in these 20 years to natural factors, so it must have been caused by man-made CO2.”  See my video here for a deeper discussion.

In effect, the core IPCC conclusions were really based on the warming over the 20 years from 1978-1998.  There was never any implication that their models couldn’t explain, say, the 1930′s or the 1970′s without manmade CO2.

So while 12 years is admittedly short compared to many natural cycles in climate, and might be considered a dangerously short period to draw conclusions from, it is fairly large compared to the 20 year period that drove the IPCC conclusions.

Here is where we stand:  The IPCC models supposedly cannot explain the 20 year period from 1978-1998 without factoring in a high climate sensitivity to CO2.  However, I would venture to guess that, prior to tweaking, the IPCC models cannot explain the 12 year period from 1998-2011 while still factoring in a high climate sensitivity to CO2.

Postscript:  I suppose the IPCC would scream “aerosols,” but even putting aside the equivocal and sometimes offsetting effects of aerosols and black carbon, I do not think one could reasonably argue their effect was much greater in one period than the other.

Here are two statements that are completely agreed on by the IPCC. It is crucial to be aware of their implications.

1. A doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1C to greenhouse warming. All models project more warming, because, within models, there are positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, and these feedbacks are considered by the IPCC to be uncertain.

2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2is less than 1C. The higher sensitivity of existing models is made consistent with observed warming by invoking unknown additional negative forcings from aerosols and solar variability as arbitrary adjustments.

Given the above, the notion that alarmingwarming is ‘settled science’ should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC. 4

Do you believe that global warming and climate change are a grave problem to the world at the moment ?

IF NO

What gives you reason to believe that global warming and climate change are not really happening?

I don’t deny they are happening, and neither do any other science-based skeptics.  Alarmists like to tell the public that skeptics are taking these positions, in order to discredit them.  The climate is always changing without any help from man — a good example is the drying up of North Africa over the last centuries.  The period from 1600-1800 was among the coldest in the last 5000 years, so it is natural we would see warming in recovery from this.

Is there any scientific evidence to support that global warming and climate change is not really that harmful

I wrote a 90-minute presentation on this so it is hard to be brief.  But here are a couple of thoughts1.  I don’t deny greenhouse gas theory, that man’s CO2 can cause some incremental warming.  The greenhouse gas theory has to be real, or the world would be much colder right now.  No, what I deny is the catastrophe, that temperatures a hundred years hence will be five or ten degrees Celsius higher due to man’s co2

Interestingly, I think most everyone on the scientific end of the debate agrees that the direct warming from man’s Co2 acting alone will be relatively modest – on the order of a degree Celsius by the year 2100 according to the IPCC.  Yeah, I know this seems oddly low — you never hear of global warming numbers as low as 1 degree — but it is actually a second theory, independent of greenhouse gas theory, that drives most of the warming.  This second theory is that the climate is dominated by strong positive feedbacks that  multiply the warming from CO2 many fold, and increase a modest 1 degree C of warming from man’s CO2 to catastrophic levels of 5 or even 10 degrees.

The example I use is to think of climate as a car.  Co2 from man provides only a nudge to the car.  The catastrophe comes from a second theory that the car (representing the climate) is perched precariously on the top of a hill with its brakes off, and a nudge from CO2 will start it rolling downhill until it crashes at the bottom.

When people say the science is settled, they generally mean greenhouse gas theory.  But that means only the nudge is settled.  What is far from settled is the second theory of strong net positive feedback in the climate, ie the theory the climate is perched on top of a hill.  It is unusual for long-term stable but chaotic systems to be dominated by such strong positive feedbacks.  In fact, only the most severe contortions allow scientists to claim their high-sensitivity models of catastrophic warming are consistent with the relatively modest warming of the past century.

2.  The amount of unusual climate change we are seeing is GROSSLY exaggerated.  We seem to be suffering under a massive case of observer bias in assessing any current effects of climate change.  Extreme events, which have always existed, are used by both sides of the debate as supposed proof of long term global trends.  But there is little useful we can learn about trends at the tails of the distribution, and it turns out that the means of key weather events in the US, from droughts to wet weather to tornadoes to hurricanes, show no meaningful trends.

We have this incredible hubris that by watching a chaotic system for about 20 years, we fully understand it. But climate has 30-year cycles, 200 year cycles, 1000-year cycles, etc.  We don’t even know what is normal, so how can we say we are seeing things that are abnormal.  We have seen a lot of melting sea ice in the Arctic, but we think we may have seen as much in the 1930′s, but we didn’t have satellites to watch the ice.  And Antarctic Sea ice has been higher than normal while Arctic has been below normal.

Hurricanes are another great example.  Al Gore swore that Hurricane Katrina was man-made, but it turns out there is actually a declining worldwide trend in hurricane and cyclone activity and energy, so much so that we hit the lowest level in 2009 since we started measuring by satellite 30 years ago.

Or take sea level rise.  Sea levels are rising today and glaciers are shrinking.  Sea levels are rising because they were rising in 1950 and in 1920 and in 1880 and in 1850.  Sea levels have been steadily rising 1-3mm a year since about 1820 and the end of the little ice age.  Ditto glacier retreat, which began around 1800 and has continued steadily to today, though the pace of retreat has slowed of late.

Imagine we wanted to look at customer visitation at a local restaurant that just closed after 60 years in business.  If we watched for only a few hours, we might miss the huge variability of the crowds from early morning through each mealtime rush.  Watch only for a day, and we might miss the seasonal variation, as vacationers pack the restaurant in March.  Watch for just a year, and we might have missed the long, slow decline in visitation that eventually led to the restaurant closing.  In climate, we are trying to decide if there is a long term decline at the restaurant after watching for the equivalent of only a few hours.

The reporting on whether manmade climate change is already happening is just awful.  We see something happen that we can’t remember happening in the last 20 years and declare it to be “abnormal” and therefore “manmade.”  Its absurd, and amazing to me that we skeptics are called anti-scientific when the science being practiced is so awful.  The problem is that for academics, who are always scrambling for funds, climate change has become the best source of money.  So you can’t just say you are studying acne, you have to say you are studying the effect of manmade climate change on acne.  Essentially, we have told the academic world that they can get much more money for their work if they claim to see climate change.  So is it any surprise they find it under every rock?

Are most scientists wrong?

I find judging science by counting scientists to be unproductive, so I have no idea.  I will say that a lot of folks who sign petitions in support of the alarmist position have not really looked carefully at the science, they are merely showing support because they have been told skeptics are a bunch of religious fundamentalist anti-science types, so they want to express their support for science.  It is ironic, as we found in the Climategate emails, that in fact they are supporting bad science, a small core group of scientists who have resisted normal scientific process of sharing data and replication

For some reason, we love to scare ourselves.  Or, more likely, many people, particularly younger folks, like to feel that there is some way they can save the world, to deal with their own feelings of insignificance.  And one can’t save the world unless it is in crisis.  Every generation has these crises, and they are almost always overblown.  Look at Paul Ehrlich — he has been wrong about 20 times.  He said a billion people would die of starvation by 1980.  He is just about never right, but people still lap up every thing he says.  Because folks like him give people a sense of mission.  And when you demonstrate to them that there is no crisis, they are not relieved (as one would expect someone to be when they find a crisis does not exist) — they are angry that you took their mission away from them.

What do you think is causing temperature changes on a scale never seen before?

Wow, you really are brainwashed.  You have an assumption that we are seeing temperature changes on a scale never seen before, and so skeptics must start from this.  But in fact the runup in temperatures from 1978-1998 that is the main “proof” of global warming is similar in scale and slope and duration to at least two other temperature increases between 1850 and 1950 which most definitely were not of anthropogenic origins.  See here:   http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2010/03/oh-maybe-ocean-occilations-are-important.html.  There are many issues with which reasonable people can disagree, but your contention about temperature increases being unprecedented is simply wrong and accepted as wrong by about everyone.

What did you think to the results of Copenhagen?

*shrug*  Copenhagen had little to do with climate and was much about lesser developed nations trying to extract money from wealthier nations.  Climate was just a pretext — do you really think Robert Mugabe or Hugo Chavez care about climate change?

Why do governments seem so concerned with the issue?

The fear of man-made catastrophic climate change gives government officials their best leverage since the repudiation of communism to substantially increase the power of themselves and their government.

If fossil fuels will run out anyway, surely we should move to find alternatives. Why not now?

You are welcome to.  Entrepreneurs around the world have been trying to do so for decades.  Wealth beyond measure is there for the person or company who is able to do it.  What are you going to do to speed it up if such a huge incentive already exists?  The government sometimes feels like it can just have its way and wish things into being.  It never works.If the technology is not ready, no amount of government prodding or mandating will make it ready.  All we will get is more wasted spending and more dead-end technology investments and more public funds poured into the hands of the politically connected.  Why hurry if we are not ready?  There are still fossil fuels for decades.  Why increase the costs to every consumer to hurry this transition to no purpose?

There are perhaps a billion people in the world, particularly in Asia, on the verge of emerging from poverty.  They are only able to do so by burning every fossil fuel they can get their hands on.  The alternatives that exist today are rich people’s toys, expensive sources of power that we can afford because they ease our guilt somehow.  The poor don’t have this luxury.

Even if it is not guaranteed that manmade emissions are to blame, wouldn’t it be wise to act anyway? It’s a hell of a gamble to our children’s future.

Should we spend a trillion dollars on space lasers in case of an alien invasion of Earth? Why not, its a hell of a gamble to our children’s future.  We can’t go pre-emptively fix every low-probability problem just because someone claims it might be a catastrophe.  Why fix a hypothetical environmental problem when there are 10 other real ones impacting people today that we are ignoring.

The statement you are making only makes sense if the transition if free or low cost.  But substantially eliminating fossil fuel use is tremendously expensive.  In fact, it is more expensive at this point with current technology than anything the world has ever done.  Folks who claim the costs are low are either ignorant or lying.  Every major economy will see trillions of dollars of lost output.  But forget the rich nations.  Remember the billion people emerging from poverty.  Strong world action will essentially consign these people to stay in poverty.  Do you want your kids 1 degree cooler at the cost of putting a billion people into poverty?  It is not the simple question you make it out to be.

Don’t we have a duty to protect or planet for future generations?(i.e. save it from deforestation, pollution etc)

Sure, but as I stated above, we have all kinds of duties to future generations, and not all of them have to do with the environment.  But I would argue that the current obsession with small changes to trace levels of CO2 in the atmosphere has in fact gutted the environmental movement.  Nothing else is getting done.  Take deforestation.  My personal interest is in protecting wilderness, and my charity of choice is land trusts that preserve the Amazon.  But do you know the #1 cause of deforestation in the Amazon over the last decade?  It was the Brazilian ethanol program, which is supposed to be fighting CO2, but now has been shown to do little or nothing for CO2 and it is incentivizing farmers to clear the Amazon to plant more switchgrass and other ethanol crops.  Ditto in the US, where ethanol programs are raising food prices and adding to deforestationI would argue that CO2 is not even in the top 10 worst environmental problems in the world.  Take clean water in Africa, which I do consider a top 10 problem.  The only way Africans are going to get clean water is from using cheap energy to pump and treat water, cheap energy whose only really realistic source is from fossil fuels.

My prediction– 10-20 years from now, environmentalists are going to look back on the current global warming hysteria as the worst thing ever to happened to the environmental movement.
Further comments

Again, this is very off the cuff.  I really delve into the science here:  http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2010/01/catastrophe-denied-the-science-of-the-skeptics-position.html

SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
OK, so every one of these questions are probing – they are hitting at perceived weaknesses in the skeptic’s position.  Fine, it is good when the media is critical.  But compare the questions above to the total softballs lobbed at alarmists.

IF YES

How bad is climate change at the moment?
What did you think to the results of Copenhagen?
Is it increasing at an uncontrollable rate? Or is there still a chance to reduce climate change and alter its predicted course of events?
Do you have any comments on the recent e-mail leak scandal that was publicized?
What do you think about the rising levels of climate change skepticism?
How could and/or will climate change or similarly global warming affect the Middle East region in particular the Arabian peninsula?
What about other vulnerable countries?
What can the average citizen do more or less to help reduce climate change and its impact?
What do you predict will happen to major cities in the world if the problem of global warming is not addressed immediately?
How will an increase in global warming change the earth’s natural weather activities i.e. how will people and animals be affected, ecosystems, the weather….
How can we move forward on this issue?
Are you confident we can find a solution?
What are the chances of a new technology saving us? (for example, carbon capture)
Is carbon trading effectively passing the buck? Does it actually help

Only one is arguably critical — the one about the CRU emails — and look at the softball way in which it is asked.  The journalists here make no secret of which side they are one.

Richard Lindzen, in his presentation at the Heartland Conference, has the best short (100-ish word) summary of the core of many skeptics’ concerns with catastrophic AGW theory that I have seen for a while:

Here are two statements that are completely agreed on by the IPCC. It is crucial to be aware of these facts and of their implications.

1. A doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1C to greenhouse warming. All models project more warming, because, within models, there are positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, and these feedbacks are considered by the IPCC to be uncertain.
2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2is less than 1C. The higher sensitivity of existing models is made consistent with observed warming by invoking unknown additional negative forcings from aerosols and solar variability as arbitrary adjustments.

These concerns form the core of my most recent video.