Climate change
Jan. 20th, 2010 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyI was in a swanky cocktail bar the other night and over a long mojito I got talking to a girl, like you do. As we chatted we got talking abut the weather, and she brought up climate change and mentioned her green activism. In response, I pointed out the energy usage to make refrigerants for the ice in her drink, the high-gain non-LED lighting at the bar, and the way she kept checking her email on her Blackberry and the fact that the single biggest driver of human energy consumption in the last decade has been online activity. Needless to say this could have been better received and she asked me what I thought about climate change.
"You know what?", I said. "I haven't a clue."
As it turned out, this wasn't the right thing to say either.
Socrates once mentioned that the wise man knows that he knows nothing and, like Bill & Ted, my response to that is "Whoa, that's me". The problem with owning up to not having a clue on climate change is that it leaves one open to being attacked by people on both sides of what is a very polarised debate. Say it on the Guardian's Comment is free section, and you're an evil free-marketeer who just wants to burn all the oil as fast as possible and doesn't love Gaia enough. Say it on the Telegraph Blogs and you're an evil lefty who just wants to seize the opportunity to force through a high-tax, high-social-control regime. As a result I just tend to make jokes about it because really I don't have a clue.
Certainly I accept that it's almost certain that the climate is changing. Expecting a massively complex system to remain static over time is unrealistic and I've no problem with that. However, the causes and effects are so muddy that I struggle to decide anything beyond that. You see, both the man-made climate change and the non-man made climate change sides present pretty much identical data and claim it reinforces their position; take, for example, these two graphs. They represent the Central England Dataset, which is the oldest continuous recording of temperatures in the world and should, you'd think, give a reasonably accurate depiction of what's going on.
Graph One seems to show, pretty unequivocally, a sudden sharp spike in temperatures in the last few dacades which is commensurate with human industrial activity:
As we can see, it's suddenly got a lot warmer since about 1980, which is what man-made climate change would predict.
However, Graph Two presents exactly the same data slightly differently and we get wildly different results:
As we can see, this shows a consistent, slow rise in temperature over 400 years, which is exactly what we would expect as we're still coming out of the medieval Little Ice Age. The problem is that so much data and advice and information is similarly presented by both sides in such mutually contradictory ways that eventually I give up trying to follow it and just say "I don't know". The recent evidence that the International Panel on Climate Change based their position on glacial melting on a single unattributed quote from a 1999 New Scientist article, and that University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit actively witheld negative cases in their research and tried to undermine peer review have only served to intensify my confusion, not make me any more confident in any one position. Similarly Mars is also growing warmer in line with sunspot activity and there's no people there (probably) to be belting out CO2; on the other hand, polar ice caps are shifting so plainly something is going on here.
So what conclusion to draw? And what should one do? Well, I already do all the stuff which gets put in "10 ways to reduce your carbon footprint" articles. I don't drive a car and I use lots of public transport. I turn off lights when I'm not in the room - not because I want to save the world, but because electricity costs money and I'm not going to pay for something I'm not using when I could be using that money for important things like booze and women. Similarly I always turn off the tap rather than running it, but that's because I grew up in a house with a water meter and I learned to do so when I was very young.
I do this stuff not because of the Ice Caps, but just because I'm frugal and waste costs money - I'd rather have my money in my pocket than someone elses.
So, for once, I'm not going to draw any conclusions. I'm not going to say 'Here's what I think and here's what to do about it'*, because I just don't know. Instead I'm going to throw open the floor and ask you lot what you think. Are you left similarly confused by the polarity of debate on whether people are changing the climate? Are people responsible for a changing climate, or is it sunspot activity? Or what?
*Despite that fact that whenever I do so on here I've had a 100% record of being right. Like that time in Feb 2005 when I predicted an economic crash and I got piled on by people telling me how wrong I was and how Gordon Brown was an econonic genius who'd ended boom and bust. Ha! Egg on your faces now, bozos.
"You know what?", I said. "I haven't a clue."
As it turned out, this wasn't the right thing to say either.
Socrates once mentioned that the wise man knows that he knows nothing and, like Bill & Ted, my response to that is "Whoa, that's me". The problem with owning up to not having a clue on climate change is that it leaves one open to being attacked by people on both sides of what is a very polarised debate. Say it on the Guardian's Comment is free section, and you're an evil free-marketeer who just wants to burn all the oil as fast as possible and doesn't love Gaia enough. Say it on the Telegraph Blogs and you're an evil lefty who just wants to seize the opportunity to force through a high-tax, high-social-control regime. As a result I just tend to make jokes about it because really I don't have a clue.
Certainly I accept that it's almost certain that the climate is changing. Expecting a massively complex system to remain static over time is unrealistic and I've no problem with that. However, the causes and effects are so muddy that I struggle to decide anything beyond that. You see, both the man-made climate change and the non-man made climate change sides present pretty much identical data and claim it reinforces their position; take, for example, these two graphs. They represent the Central England Dataset, which is the oldest continuous recording of temperatures in the world and should, you'd think, give a reasonably accurate depiction of what's going on.
Graph One seems to show, pretty unequivocally, a sudden sharp spike in temperatures in the last few dacades which is commensurate with human industrial activity:
As we can see, it's suddenly got a lot warmer since about 1980, which is what man-made climate change would predict.
However, Graph Two presents exactly the same data slightly differently and we get wildly different results:
As we can see, this shows a consistent, slow rise in temperature over 400 years, which is exactly what we would expect as we're still coming out of the medieval Little Ice Age. The problem is that so much data and advice and information is similarly presented by both sides in such mutually contradictory ways that eventually I give up trying to follow it and just say "I don't know". The recent evidence that the International Panel on Climate Change based their position on glacial melting on a single unattributed quote from a 1999 New Scientist article, and that University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit actively witheld negative cases in their research and tried to undermine peer review have only served to intensify my confusion, not make me any more confident in any one position. Similarly Mars is also growing warmer in line with sunspot activity and there's no people there (probably) to be belting out CO2; on the other hand, polar ice caps are shifting so plainly something is going on here.
So what conclusion to draw? And what should one do? Well, I already do all the stuff which gets put in "10 ways to reduce your carbon footprint" articles. I don't drive a car and I use lots of public transport. I turn off lights when I'm not in the room - not because I want to save the world, but because electricity costs money and I'm not going to pay for something I'm not using when I could be using that money for important things like booze and women. Similarly I always turn off the tap rather than running it, but that's because I grew up in a house with a water meter and I learned to do so when I was very young.
I do this stuff not because of the Ice Caps, but just because I'm frugal and waste costs money - I'd rather have my money in my pocket than someone elses.
So, for once, I'm not going to draw any conclusions. I'm not going to say 'Here's what I think and here's what to do about it'*, because I just don't know. Instead I'm going to throw open the floor and ask you lot what you think. Are you left similarly confused by the polarity of debate on whether people are changing the climate? Are people responsible for a changing climate, or is it sunspot activity? Or what?
*Despite that fact that whenever I do so on here I've had a 100% record of being right. Like that time in Feb 2005 when I predicted an economic crash and I got piled on by people telling me how wrong I was and how Gordon Brown was an econonic genius who'd ended boom and bust. Ha! Egg on your faces now, bozos.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:45 am (UTC)This is utter nonsense and shows a clear ignorance of history. Haven't they heard Harold Wilson already ended boom and bust, just as the Rt. Hon. 1st Earl Attlee ended boom and bust before him?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:51 am (UTC)*rimshot*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:52 am (UTC)However, I was very interested by the fact that the single biggest driver of human energy consumption in the last decade has been online activity. Really? Source?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 11:58 am (UTC)And no, I haven't a foggiest what's wrong with that graph, or even if anything is. My 21-years-old grade C in mathematics GCSE is plainly letting me down. All I'm seeing is the same information presented in different ways and getting confused as a result.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:22 pm (UTC)The second graph does three things, essentially. Firstly, the scale on the temperature is very large (the temperature varies by about 4 degrees, the scale has 18 degrees), which means that it makes it look like the line is flatter, and that minimises how variations from the trend line appear.
Secondly, the trend line is in a brighter colour than the actual line, which makes it seem like that's what the graph is showing, rather than something that you can compare the variation in the actual temperature against.
Thirdly, there's an entirely seperate graph slapped onto the same space, with no indication of how it could be related to the temperature, and with a scale deliberately designed to maximise its variation.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:32 pm (UTC)As for manipulation of data by graphs, I'm aware of how it can be done (and usually assume it is being done in one way or another by someone trying to sell me something) but I look at all the graphs and make that assumption about all of them and try to go from there. It's here that I get to the point of giving up and saying "You know what, I don't know." The depressing thing is that I'm normally pretty confident that when I look into stuff I can find out information, learn something, and draw conclusions which I can change should further information appear. With this subject, I've been presented with so much contradictory information, much of which is presented in a manipulative and confusing fashion, that I've finally run out of the ability to draw conclusions - which is unusual for me to say the least.
So, what to do? It's rare I give up on something, but the reason for the post was to get ideas because it's pretty much what I'm at the stage of doing on this subject.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:40 pm (UTC)The 3 flaws of the graph are weaknesses, but not to the extend of making it rubbish! I mean I could read it quite clearly, and could read the scale. Your replacement graph does highlight the point Dave was trying to make better (or not show it). (But its obvious the second graph has other purposes, that I'm sure the original supporting text explained. I do wonder why they didn't change the scale to better show the spread. (Can it only be to intentionally misslead or though being rubbish?)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 03:17 pm (UTC)'Course, I can't help thinking in terms of human equity, and if perhaps one Crackberry is better or worse than X number of hand radios distributed among the poor.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:11 pm (UTC)Not doom
Date: 2010-01-20 03:25 pm (UTC)I suspect that many more poor people will suffer than we'd like, and many more traditional exploitative practices will succeed than we'd like, and a great many conventional lifestyles will necessarily change.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:47 pm (UTC)The debate has to be what is the best safe thing to do.
Green power projects seem... MAD.
I'm considering putting up a one or two 6kw wind turbines. Now I'm convinced that the Turbine Technology isn't really up to scratch. Certainly I don't think the power generated will cover the cost of the technology, but because of various breaks in tax and because of massive goverment subsidies the risk of the investment is very skewed in favour of it being a good thing to do. Dispite it possibly not being good for the environment in of itself.
It might be good for the environment for the following reasons.
1) Local power generation. (Reducing losses in the national Grid)
2) Supporting changing attitudes.
It might be good for me:
3) Return on money over 20 year period with a return (up to around 15%, before any advantages of various tax breaks)
4) Security of supply. (When the wind blows...) Basically large ammounts of my electricity would be self generated, so I can reduce the vageries of fuctuating energy prices or fuctuating energy supplies. (I'm a bit scared about 2020-2025, not reseach it all properly yet - but I'm not sure anyone else has yet either)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 08:34 pm (UTC)As we can see, it's suddenly got a lot warmer since about 1900, which is what man-made climate change would predict. (or is it earlier?)
.... actually I don't think that graph goes back far enough to establish a datum.... You need to go back far enough pre industrial revolution to get an good idea of average temperature.
The green line in the second graph could equally have been drawn flatter.
I think you need to look at longer time spans.....
no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 11:36 am (UTC)I haven't a clue if this is a worthwhile theory. I just rather like it.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 11:39 am (UTC)