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117 comments on Dr Richard Pike: on proved reserves, peak oil and carbon dioxide
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117 comments on Dr Richard Pike: on proved reserves, peak oil and carbon dioxide
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I'm sure Euan will be concerned to learn that he is still not a 'real' scientist, in spite of his Doctorate! :-)
He's only a geologist. That is, knows as much about climate change as me.
For some reason, climate change denialists who are actually scientists of some description seem to be concentrated in the fields of geology and electrical engineering. And the geologists usually turn to work for or have worked for some fossil fuel companies - thus having a financial interest in denying climate change.
Now, a little google on him tells us,
"he returned to Aberdeen in 1991 where he set up a geochemical analysis and consulting firm serving the international oil industry."
Woo, what a surprise. Someone who's made money helping companies find more fossil fuels which when burned cause climate change... tells us that burning more fossil fuels won't cause climate change. Amazing!
So you want to switch your definition of what a scientist is now, and restrict it by discipline?
Your original post was clearly indicating that you felt those who had reservations were not able to understand science of any sort.
You then try to impugn their integrity because of past association with industries of which you disapprove.
Presumably proceeding in your recommended ad hominem fashion we should entirely discount the statements of the very many scientists who are stake-holders in the idea of global warming, as their livelihoods and grants depend on it?
I would suggest that it is more appropriate to deal with the arguments as presented rather than indulging in somewhat uncharitable speculation as to motivation, or dubious attempts to discredit criticisms on the grounds that they are not by scientists, according to your definitions of course.
Dave a lot of scientists are restricted by their discipline. You know, myopic. Maybe we should call out for a generalist
I have been searching for a wise generalist people I heard about, but am having trouble locating that tiny hill tribe, so I guess the best I can do is that animal book . Sorry!
Oh damn Dave, that faint last hope for mankind, that wise generalist people, I am afraid they ran into a cannibal tribe that specializes in supplying Solyent Green for the local market. Bugger!
My goal in life is to become somewhat of a Renaissance man so I am hoping to join the tribe of those that take the long and overall view of things. My view with climate change is you are not going to get people to stop burning co2 because their lives depend on it, believe it or not most of the people today are indirectly biomass from fossil fuels. Climate change is certainly happening and is going to create profound problems for humanity but ultimately we cannot deviate from that path unless we make profound changes to the way we live and have society set up. Jeff Vail is my favorite wise generalist and his rhizome network idea's are brilliant.
Sure, why not?
Would I ask a geologist about the chances of smoking causing lung cancer? Would I ask an oncologist about peak oil?
It's not that I disapprove of the fossil fuel industry, it's just that someone involved in any particular industry has a financial incentive to play down its dangers. So a medical doctor will probably tell you iatrogenic illnesses are not a problem, a tobacco shop owner will tell you smoking isn't that bad, a fast food franchiser will tell you that their food is nutritious, and an oil industry person will tell you there's no such thing as human-caused climate change.
The thing is that their grants don't depend on proving global warming, just investigating the climate and our interactions with it. If someone though they'd discovered some interesting new aspect to the carbon cycle which meant that we could safely dump another 1,000Gt of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere, we can be sure they'd get funding for the study.
They've no financial stake in any particular conclusion, just in the study itself. If anything, this encourages doubt about the consensus, since if you propose a study which will just confirm what we already know, that's harder to get past the grants committee than one which will challenge what we know, or which will open up some new field.
The thing is that his arguments were addressed. We pointed him to a RealClimate.org article which talked about the very things he was bringing up, recent ocean temperature trends.
He never responded to that. He just said, "interesting" and then went on to talk about something else. Which is standard operating procedure for a denialist, whether it be climate change, tobacco deaths, peak oil, big bang theory, or whatever they're denying.
Any person with competence in scientific method to the extent of warranting the title scientist should be able to transfer that competence to just about any other field, subject to their time and willingness to study the relevant data. Sure, some fields such as immunology or neuro involve a seriously oppressive level of study but this doesn't look to be one of those.
In my experience there is already often huge incompetence of scientists within their own fields anyway!
In which case there was no need for more.
Going on about real or imaginary bias ad hominem points can never, emphasis, never resolve scientific/factual questions. It is explicitly against tod guidelines. Don't do it. Full stop.
Any person with competence in scientific method to the extent of warranting the title scientist
There is no official body that awards the title "scientist". Any bodies that do award titles do so for specific fields, and there is no requirement for competence in other fields. There is no "should".
Even if some people have the mental capacity to study a field effectively, that does not mean that they can cross disciplines effectively. While some scientists have brought valuable fresh insight from different fields, a lot have also made complete fools of themselves. Stephen Hawking is a good example, he may be a bloody smart cosmologist but he talks BS about climate.
In an ideal world, that is fine if all the people presenting the arguments are unbiased. But if you treat "evidence" from industry lobbyists with equal weight then you are being incredibly naive. In the real world, you have to consider the credibility of the source.
The best way to resolve scientific questions is by scientists qualified in that field, subject to peer review (i.e peers in that field). Which is why I go by the consensus work of climate scientists, and not by individuals outside the field, however many degrees they have.
I never said there was!
True, I was using the word as shorthand for "will usually in practice".
He's actually a bad example. He himself did a good job of admitting he is not a genius, just a smart writer. I'm thinking rather about scientific genius, the qualities for which are largely field-independent (e.g. Linus Pauling's superb papers about vitamin C).
I have extensive experience of medical research in which corruption is very much alive. And yet even the most abysmally-deceitful papers almost never stoop to falsifying their data. You just have to go through them with a fine comb to clean out the omissions and methodolical tricks (e.g. just had a letter from uk Chief Dental Officer in which he rests his case on the SCENIHR report. Oh, it just "forgets" to even mention the 26 studies showing major benefits from dental amalgam removal.) The point is that my demonstration of the dental officer's crapness does not depend in any way on notions of corruption, bias etc.
Again, my experience in the medical and psychological fields is that qualifications and peer-review can often exclude all the competent heretics and give voice only to establishment creeps - the perverted spirit of Lysenkoism is very much alive right now in the English-speaking world in many fields.
I agree with the next comment down by DaveMart. There are no reliable shortcuts around the facts and reasonings.
Since you apparently wish to reserve the right to have an opinion, or at least to state it, on climate change to expert opinion, would you please present your qualifications in climatology to the forum?
Actually, you are revealing a profound lack of understanding for the scientific method, or at least a lack of sympathy for it.
It matters to science qua science not in the least whether the proponent of a viewpoint is a paleo climatologist or a pig farmer, what counts is the argument, not the person.
Of course, not every opinion will attract much attention, and academic qualifications are a way of showing that having a look at it might be worthwhile.
You are making an essentially political argument, which seeks to discredit the proponent of a viewpoint as being rather less trouble than making an actual argument.
As to not responding, all you did was point towards some sort of site which is your, presumably unqualified, opinion, you felt might somewhere or the other deal with the specifics he mentioned.
Your arguments are those of authority, not science. Everyone would still be Catholic if they were finally persuasive.
This argument is really misguided. Do you really consult a pig farmer about climate? It's an ideal vision of science which can't be implemented in practice, because people have to perform science, and people are flawed. People are not all unbiased and competent. The great attribute of science as practiced is that it attempts to compensate for the flaws in people. The scientific process reaches a consensus that represents the best knowledge.
While it is true that valid scientific ideas may come from unqualified people, and that the opinion of a qualified scientist however eminent cannot be taken as a sole authority, it is far more likely that the qualified guy is closer to the truth. If the pig farmer engages in the scientific process, then effectively he becomes a qualified scientist.
Even if I get opinions from different people, how do I assess their submission? To study a field, I have to read the work of scientists. So then whose work do I follow? The Pig Farmers textbook or the Climate Scientists textbook? If I become sufficiently versed in the subject, then effectively I have become a qualified scientist. So I may as well have asked the qualified scientist in the first place.
In practice the consensus body of scientific evidence is the authority, but it still requires a qualified scientist to interpret it. However you look at it, you have to consider the consensus in the field, and rely on the opinion of scientists working in that field.
The consensus may not be perfect, nor even correct, but it is the best answer that anyone can know. That is the whole point of the scientific process.
Actually, the consensus report, the IPCC report, was requested by governments. It is not always the case that this sort of bringing together of data and models happens so formally. Much more often arguments carry on for years and years in the liturature.
Fortunately, the atmospheric science community has some experience in forming solid consensus positions to assist policy makers. Current success in addressing ozone depletion shows how effective an effort can be made. I would say the the Peace Prize received by the IPCC is deserved just for that model of knowledge alone.
Chris
If we want to talk about consensus, it is now the consensus of the US government that,
It must be a bit embarrassing to be more "conservative" and "sceptical" than Dubya's administration... Being a "climate sceptic" when the US government isn't would be sort of like saying today, "look, they might still find WMD in Iraq... really."
You appear to entirely mistake the argument.
The critique was on the grounds of expertise - from someone who it appears has no expertise.
I have no problem with the consensus on climate change.
I do have an issue with mindless sui generis condemnation of any comment on its scope in a manner which if widely accepted would lead to an accepted 'faith', deviations from which would be regarded as heretical.
As soon as someone uses terms such as ' climate change deniers' they have switched the grounds to a religious or philosophical climate entirely removed from the scientific enquiry they purport to support.
Political exclusion has nothing to do with scientific examination and is inimical to its spirit.
And in that concept lies the root of a vast amount of corruption, from "professors" who know that they can get away with all manner of massive lies because people are content to rest their faith on that assumption. Like the Chief Dental Officer abovementioned. And the proven criminal liar Prof H Frank Woods, head of the hugely important uk Committee on Toxicity (no, don't worry, he won't have the nerve to sue).
I recently attended a professor's lecture on climate change, to see for myself the strength of the case (in outline at least). I found it impressively persuasive. That 1998 was the hottest-ever year was noted along the way.
Then I come here and see someone cherry-picking that 1998 for his "trendline" (not heard of moving averages?), and the message that comes across is the weakness of his case against agw.
I attended the professor's lecture because he was a professor of climatology. But I found his case persuasive only because I examined it.
See, here's part of my problem. Adequate data exists to support any and all sides int this debate. Good hard data, not junk like cherry-picking the date. The thing with earth-studies is that regardless of what you are doing, you need to pick the beginning point. yes, we are warmer than the little ice age, but what about the holocene maximum? All the record temperatures that we hear of are based on the "instrument record" which is pretty short.
In addition to the abundance of contradictory data and the difficulties inherent in the study, we have the inadequacies of the "models". Which are vast. I have some slight difficulties in taking seriously a "climate model" regardless of how well it hindcasts 100 years that treats the sun as a fixed output lightbulb and the earth as a ball without vegetation or animal life, that take a timestep of 1 year and have a surface resolution large enough to simply miss mount everest, that take things like "clouds" as poorly understood so primarily neglected. The ability of a model that demonstrably crude to hindcast says very little about its ability to forecast.
Bad science is not the sole province of industry, it is just as frequently committed by governments with agendas.
So, we come back to the things we "know" the things that REALLY meet the scientific criteria, specifically repeatability.
Co2 is a radiatively active gas. It absorbs certain frequencies of light. At a certain concentration it absorbs all light in that band that hits it. As concentration increases above that level, the band gets very slightly wider. This we know. It has been proven and no spectrometer on the planet would work were it not so.
Humanity has consumed a vast quantity of hydrocarbon fuel and deforested a vast area of land. over the same period, the co2 concentration has risen. in fact, the total quantity of co2 in the atmosphere has increased by a strikingly similar number to the co2 we have emitted. This could in theory be coincidence, but it's doubtful on its face.
It is reasonable to suggest based on those 2 things that the temperature of the planet will increase. How much, where, and how gracefully.... well, that's a harder question.
If you are interested in the sceptics science, this is a great site. it's fully documented and verifiable.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/
Kiashu, I would stress that in his post Euan is asking questions, showing doubts, trying to update his knowledge.
I believe that is much more scientific than believing the press. Climate change is not an easy problem, not even one the IPCC can "solve".
But to make a reasonable risk management of the issue, questions and doubts have to be more than welcome (from any field, and especially from geology). Otherwise, statements of the sort "the debate is over", etc, bring us closer to politics and far away from science and falsification.
This is a bit of a cheap shot and not helpful in my opinion. Yes Euan has worked in the oil industry in the past but I don't believe he has any insitutional bias because of this. Little more than a year ago he posted this without much sign of climate change skepticism.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2260
Thanks for the link. Looking at the article, we see,
Sure, he said the world was warming, but didn't address the cause. After all, if it's not us humans, then there's nothing we can do about it, right? Just keep on burning all those fossil fuels, doesn't matter!
So, all geologists working in the Awl patch, leave their brains in the car park when they go to work do they?
And since we are 'only geologists' Care to tell us your particular specialisation in atmospheric physics or paleo climatology or your science discipline?
AGW is more of a hysterical religion and not a scientific discipline.
These same hysterics were telling us we would die under miles of Ice back in the 1970's. (see below)
GW is well known in 'only geologists' circles. It happened before, it will happen again as will Global Cooling.
Maybe should read up on paleoclimatology. Or get out more (hint : look for red rocks...)
As mentioned above - Global cooling:
The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialisation, mechanisation, urbanisation and exploding population."
- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", 1971
The rapid cooling of the earth since World War II is also in accord with the increased air pollution associated with industrialization, and an exploding population.
- Reid Bryson, "Environmental Roulette", 1971
An increase by only a factor of 4 in the global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age. - S.I Rasool and S.H. Schneider
Science, v173, p138, 9/7/1971.
"This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century"
- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976
"This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000."
- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
So what is it? Warming or Cooling?
As a species we simply have not been around long enough to do trend analysis.
Bit of an urban myth, that cooling idea in the 70s.
I can't remember where I read this, probably RealClimate, but someone counted the climate papers in the 70s that were 'warmers' and 'coolers'. Even then the warmers were the great majority.
My anecdotal memory was that I was convinced by the warming arguement in the mid-70s and never took cooling seriously.
The irony is that because the climate obviously wasn't getting cooler as expected was the reason the whole international effort kicked off to study the climate, eventually leading to the current IPCC.
I dunno. I just note that whenever someone says, "hey look, there's this scientist who doesn't believe in climate change, or who believes humans aren't responsible for it!" a significant part of the time it turns out to be a geologist or electricial engineer. I dunno why.
I don't think you have to be a specialist in a particular area to know about it, but you do have to be a specialist in that area to do a strong critique of it.
For example, if you as a geologist were to write a paper for us here at TOD about the sort of geological formations we find oil in, I wouldn't venture to criticise it. But once you'd written and I'd read it, I'd know something more about it.
By which reasoning, we can say nothing about peak fossil fuels. After all, that's all about trend analysis of oil field production, yeah?