An Inconvenient Truth

Being a member of the scientif community (in atmospheric sciences) I did glance through his book.

From what I saw, what he said was "true".  He basically made large generalities and glanced over the more technical details that can make a large difference.  What he covered is really a worst case senario.  The book also does tend to skew some information.  It will list some counter arguments in different sections to make them appear additive.

Think about it like learning science in elementary school.  For instance, you learned all about gravity and that all things accelerate at the same rate.  Then later on in high school, you learn about air friction and terminal velocity, and that masreally does affect fall velocity.  Then in college you (might) learn about general relativity and that gravity is really a function of height, making understanding the issue even harder.

In this example, "An Inconvienient Truth" would be a picture book (which it really is) for preschoolers, while an acceptable version of the actual climate state would be post-doctorate work. 

 I didn't get a chance to look at the reference list in the book.  I'm not even sure there is one, but I do know that he didn't include specific references within the text.

Just remember when you read/watch it, that it has not been peer reviewed, so it can't be treated as a scientific document.

If you really are interested in state of the climate, you might poke around the AMS archive.  They just recently started allowing open access to the public for all articles published before a certain year (03 I think). So just poke around here.  They do usually post some good articles on this main page:

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=index-html

and then there is a link at the top right to search the archive.

Saw it on a 15 hour flight to China, and it scared the bejeezus out of me. 

I won't take direct action (like joining GreenPeace, or whatever) based on it.  However, I have changed how I vote, how I view the issues, and how I behave personally based on what I saw.  I believe it was credible.

I'm not an alarmist, however, I do believe there's a place on the US's national agenda for global warming.  And it's interesting that the Supreme Court has accepted, and will be taking on their first global warming case this session.  THAT will be a fascinating opinion and decision.  I'm looking forward to it, as the opinion will be outside the purview of the white house, which has largely controlled the behaviors and legislation related to this issue, to date.

I like how you described that. Interesting.

I haven't seen the movie, but I've been reading more about Al Gore lately and I am definitely interested in seeing it at some point. I haven't read his book, just mostly articles and interview.

The book is "State of Fear".  Crichton is a talented writer of techno-thrillers, but I wouldn't look to "State of Fear" for a grounding in climatology any more than I would read "Jurassic Park" to understand paleontology and genetics. Vortmax compared "An Inconvienent Truth" to a picture book primer.  In that context, "State of Fear" could be compared to a comic book.

If you care to wade through it, here is what climate scientists have to say about both books:

An Inconvienient Truth http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299

State of Fear:  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

This article ( http://www.carolinajournal.com/print/print_issue.html?id=2592  ) cites data that show the earth's avg temp has been higher at least twice in the past 10,000 years.  People tend to view too short of a time horizon when viewing this issue.  Where I am sitting right now was covered by over a mile of ice during the last glacial event.  What melted those glaciers?  So, when John McCain goes on David Letterman's show and says he witnessed glaciers melting at the North Pole and therefore we have a catastrophe in the making I just have to shake my head.  I'm not saying human influence on the atmosphere is zero, but I believe that in the big scheme of things, this is more global cycling than global warming.  I didn't hear the full news clip, but didn't Gore go to some global warming conference in South America recently and they had record cold temperatures?

In his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg makes the argument that many of the climate models that predict catastrophe make very over-reaching and unrealistic assumptions.  If current meteorological models often do a terrible job of forecasting next week's weather, why shoud we put any more faith in models that attempt to predict global temps 50 years from now?  

Haven't seen it yet.  I want to, but while I don't want to blindly ignore the facts it seems there is a very good chance that alarmists are taking too short of a point of view on this issue, as Birkie said.  The time frames involved in global climate changes, continental drift and evolution are mind boggling.

I wonder if there were dinosaurs arguing about their environment/resources issues when the meteor struck?

 The big problems with renewables right now is that they don't produce the right kind of power.  Just throwing alternate power on the grid can force the voltage to go out of phase with the current and cause very bad things.  Another lesser known issue is that coal plants are most efficient when running full out.  If a coal plant is running at anything less then max output, it is still producing the same amount of waste, but with less produced power.  Which means you can't just slowly put alternative energy on the grid and turn down the coal plants.  You either have to use a main coal plant for base load and supplement that when needed with alternative sources to accomodate growing population (then wait until the coal plant dies) or have some solution that can consistantly produce (in any conditions) the same output of the coal plant.

I really enjoy seeing the different opinions on this issue. And while I am far from a scientist, to me it just seems obvious that ammount of industrial waste and ecological inefficiency we are creating won't have some kind of ill-effect on the planet.

I think that regardless of the extent of the damage that global warming is causing, the more exposure the issue can, the better.

And thanks for the analogy Vortmax. That was good info.

Take your line of thinking one step further.  It takes time, money, people and energy to do all of this research, on both sides of the issue, to argue about global warming.  Wouldn't we all benefit more if more of that time, money, people and energy went toward promoting the things we could all be doing to be more eco-friendly?  Seems like a no brainer, right?  But then people who say we don't need to worry about global warming in the first place might say that the time/energy/etc. spent on an issue we aren't even sure about would be better spent on other issues like medical research, education, etc.  So then we are back to trying to prove the issue one way or the other which is possibly impossible. 

I agree with you that individually there's not much of a good reason NOT to try to be more green.

If you are going....go to a science school.  Engineering schools tend to focus on getting rid of problems.  Science schools actually analyze the problem for what it is, get an actual understanding of it, then decide how to deal with it.

I'm all for cleaning up the environment.  The way I see all of this unfolding is as follows:

The natural advancment of man has been followed by increases in technology.  We went from building fire for warmth, to having high efficency furnaces in insulated homes.  In the future, we will have alternate sources of energy.  We have to, especially to deal with the growing population.  However, there will not be some miracle invention that will suddenly deal with our energy problem.  It is going to take time, effort and a combination of technologies to make it work.  Our current power grid uses coal plants as a backbone and smaller, less efficiet coal, oil and natural gas plants to supplement base load when needed.  One plan calls for replacing those supplement plants with green alternatives.  One such plan involves the introduction of wind farms near hydro sights.  When the coal plant is meeting base load, extra power from the wind turbine is used to pump water back into the resevoir.  When extra load is needed, instead of firing up a smaller, more polluting plant, you turn to a combo of hydro and wind.  The capacatence of the hydro-wind system is really powerfull, but not strong enough to provide 100% of the power.  A scheme like that could easily last until technology improves and we find something else with the constant power output of coal and would easily drop emmissions.  The problem is that we can't just go out and build these plants tomorrow and have them online the next day, and that's what many (like gore) want to see happen. 

And the person who made the comment about us being a minor disturbance in geologic history is right.  The only thing we are hurting is ourselves.  Looking at the earth system...species die, new ones take their place.  If the earth didn't see a mass extinction or two, humans probably wouldn't have been able to take hold and progress like we have.  Climate change is a change.  You can't look at it as "bad for the world."  It's just "different" for the world.  Good and bad are human emotions and apply to us.

I also see it as, if us messing with the earth system really is responsible for a mass warming, what's going to happen if we keep messing with the system by suddenly pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.  Non-linear systems (especially chaotic ones) cannot evolve backward in time.  As soon as you go forward, the state of the system changes so that returning your conditions to a previous level result in an entirely new state of the system.  Dropping carbon could be just as bad (or worse) then increasing carbon.  I really think we should focus more on the stuff we know we can fix now.  Things like water pollution, air quality (particulants, aerosols, ground level nox/sox/o3,ect), land pollution before getting in a huff over CO2 levels.  It's like freaking out that your 5 miles late changing your oil while your car is on fire.

This is a topic that always surprises me in how people react.  It is a no-brainer to me.  I watched the movie (which I suggest everyone do, no matter what your opinion) and it wasn't surprising.  I just want to see some possible solutions.

Now, the next night, I watched "Who killed the electric car?"  THAT deserves its own thread.  Every five minutes I swear I said "what?  is that true?  could that really be?  what?"  I went to bed angry.

Interesting reading.  If you don't have time for all 27 pages, read pg 13 and the last 2 pages

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/hurricanes1.pdf