http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/27/the-wsjs-kim-strassel-cru-emails-prove-global-warming-is-fake/
Post 72 by Rayne

His link to the Maunder Minimum is also interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

From all indications, we don’t have the time to move slow or take the middle way

Yes we have to much population. Yes we burn too many of the earth’s resources here in the US. Do you think it will improve at ll by moving slowly on the issue?

It will be like any other issue that needed quick action and was met by delays and “slow moving.” The longer the issue is put off with no response or limited response, the more difficult it becomes to clean it up. Half measures just won’t help.

Shudda, cudda, wudda, possess no value. We are here and now, and I counsel move to make the changes but do so with your eyes wide open and not wide shut. But then, there are degrees between wide open and wide shut and I suspect that where individuals are on that continuum varies greatly!

Are there going to be unintended side consequences? Most likely and we will have to address those consequences as they arise.

But for myself, given a choice of doing nothing and the near certainty of disaster versus making attempts to alleviate the problems with possible consequences? I think I choose the attempts to alleviate the problem and dealing with any unknown consequences from that as they arise.

“I did not mean that nothing should be done. We absolutely need to reduce our impact. It has been estimated that if the entire population of this planet lived as we do, it would require 5 additional planets of the resources we possess to fuel it! And in the final analysis, doing the necessary reductions may well have unintended consequences which can only be dealt with as they arise, assuming we could deal with it.”

What we have the classic “Horns of a Dilemma”. Some pick the left horn, some the right. I choose to go between.

Since ouroborous put it so succinctly at the end of his post, I’ll leave it there.

The earth will survive just fine if Global Warming alarms come true. But humans won’t.

We don’t have a whole lot of “hold on here” time left in order to stop this from coming to pass.

Do you really want to bet the future of your descendants on the side of the deniers?

The hammer-nail example is reasonably true, although I sometimes use a hammer to pull the nail!

I am quite aware of the examples you site concerning fluid dynamics. The switch from linear stable to non-linear chaotic has examples in other systems as well. I experienced that in a complex feedback loop as part of a large scale control system that behaved very strangely under conditions likely to be encountered during operations. No one had a sense of the behavior and that was in the mid 60′s when Chaos theory and the notion of “Stochastic behavior occurring in a deterministic system” had not been formulated, the Edward Loewnz paper of 1960 or so not withstanding.

I certainly understand the nature and necessity of peer review, and how funding can color the process, as you so well point out.

I did not mean that nothing should be done. We absolutely need to reduce our impact. It has been estimated that if the entire population of this planet lived as we do, it would require 5 additional planets of the resources we possess to fuel it! And in the final analysis, doing the necessary reductions may well have unintended consequences which can only be dealt with as they arise, assuming we could deal with it.

My whole point here is that sincere, capable people have rightly said “hold on here!” in the rush to judgment, and I for one will look and listen. Hopefully, we can make the adjustments with greater clarity.

One point in particular brought this home to me: “I realize the difference pointed out by writers between weather which is accepted as non-linear, and climate which is considered linear, by definition. Yet others still point out that climate is a collection of weather data over time, and since weather is non-linear, well, shouldn’t climate be considered in a non-linear sense as well?”

The problem with this is that chaotic behavior can arise from linear systems, and (here’s the important bit) linear behavior can emerge from chaotic systems. Don’t believe me? Look up “turbulence” (the chaotic behavior of fluids when viewed at a small scale) and “laminar flow” (the linear, predictable behavior of fluids when viewed at a larger scale). The idea that a touch of non-linearity can somehow “infect” and call into question statistically predictable systems is a fundamental misunderstanding of chaos theory.

WRT the argument about marching lockstep, of course. Of COURSE, climate change accepters do it, just like climate change deniers do it. It is ALWAYS much easier to simply do as you’re told (whether by Al Gore or Rush Limbaugh, it makes no difference) than it is to, well, in this case, to be a climatologist (which, I’d imagine takes many years of study). But, and here’s the interesting thing, whether people accept an assertion after years of study or whether they accept it because a media personality tells them to *does not in any way* change the truth value of that assertion. I may accept that the sky is blue simply because “everyone says” the sky is blue, but that fact doesn’t change whether or not the sky really IS blue.

Humans are, by nature, lazy creatures. Intellectual rigor does not come naturally to any of us — even scientists. We have to be trained, and work at, rational thought. And even then, elements of irrationality creep in; the climate change denier scientist doesn’t question some of his assumptions because, well, it would be inconvenient to actually evaluate those claims from the ground up — and, unfortunately, if you throw out the “assumed to be true” (a priori) assertions, the *entire conclusion* about climate change, er, changes. Similarly, a climate change accepting scientist may dismiss out of hand contradictory data because it would call climate change into question or (much more likely) jeopardize the publication of a juicy new research paper that will guarantee research funding for the next five years (hey, scientists are human too). This does not invalidate climate science, it simply means that *on the individual scale*, your results may vary.

This is why science proceeds largely by consensus. This is why we have peer review. This is why the definition of scientific “fact” and “law” and “theory” are very different from the common definition of those terms. What matters is not what individual scientists think. What matters is the *consensus* of scientific thought, because this tends to represent the end result after years of attempt at disproof (see eg Popper on “falsifiability” and what it means for something to be “scientific”). Not always, scientific consensus can be — and regularly is — wrong. But it is much more reliable, on the whole, than what individual scientists (and especially members of the lay public, with no real training in the scientific method and no attempt to properly test their own conclusions) believe.

TLDR: it’s the scientific consensus, stupid.

And the consensus on climate change is that it’s real. We don’t know for sure how fast (but most of the new data suggests it’s happening far *faster* than we thought, rather than the other way around). We don’t know entirely the outcomes (although projections range from the merely catastrophic to extinction-level events). But one thing we’re pretty sure about is that it is happening, it is worldwide, and it is accelerating.

I do think Starbuck’s caution about the law of unintended consequences is valid; while we probably need to do something, we need to be careful about attempts at large-scale geoengineering; who knows what the result will be? Perhaps it would be better to simply, as dakine and others suggest, attempt to reduce our impact.

FYI, I was strongly in the camp as presented by Al Gore and others. Then I read an essay by an Australian scientist that took apart, point by point, the premises under which many of the beliefs were formulated. I couldn’t subscribe to it wholesale, but in the back of my mind, the whole notion of non-linearity began to surface. So I re-examined the whole thing, so far as I could do in my limited time and expertize.

In the 90′s, I made a comprehensive study of Chaos theory. I have the Mandelbrot book on fractals, and my references inculde Penrose, Prigogine and others. I was an advisor to an author doing her own work on chaos theory.

I realize the difference pointed out by writers between weather which is accepted as non-linear, and climate which is considered linear, by definition. Yet others still point out that climate is a collection of weather data over time, and since weather is non-linear, well, shouldn’t climate be considered in a non-linear sense as well?

So, the basis of my skepticism.

Anyway, maybe this might answer ReisFischer as well.

It’s a really tough place to be. Action is called for. Actions well intentioned have turned out to be wrong. Can we fix it? Can we fix it just once?