Michael Crichton Needs to Retire...I'm Not Joking.

 

 

But when I heard his angle on Global Warming I thought he went bonkers or was paid off or something.

*If I were to 3-2-1 him I'd say he-you-we're-i'm quelling the "earth is eating us" rampant fear spread throughout media.

Although, I must say his argument about horses in the last century is intriguing.

Here's a fascinating article on the subject...

http://www.fathom.com/feature/121636/

**But I still think the earth is hungry (and nauseous)!

Hi Steven,

I had to post this in red font because my initial post turned out "blank."

I went to the link about the rotting horse carcasses, horse manure, horse urine, and other horse parts dotting the streets in New York prior to sanitation and mass transit, and about the kids playing with horse carcasses.  I agree... Nauseating... lol.

I marked the sentences above by asterisks (*)that I couldn't understand.  Would you care to expand?  I didn't understand what you meant by "earth eating us."  I realize it's a figure of speech, but did'nt quite "get it."

As for Michael Chrichton's position on global warming, I think that he just as much as Ken are possibly guilty of boomeritis in their skepticism over the reality of global warming.  Although I don't think that Ken is being a skeptic of global warming--but only skeptical of the boomeritis that pervades the intellectuals and academics that pervade his generation: the pluralism, narcissism, and whatnot.  I will go into detail on this by editing my original post as soon as I post this, which I don't think really addressed that particular issue so is not very "useful" to readers. 

Even after reading the full article, I wasn't aware of who the writer was until clicking on the bio and immediately recognizing the name, "Bob Carter."  

Carter happens to be among the very few scientists left in the world today to still consistently oppose the consensus view on global warming.  

The bio certainly makes him out to be scientifically credible but here's what Wikipedia writes about him:

Robert M. "Bob" Carter is an adjunct research professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Australia[1]. He is a geologist and marine geologist with special interests in stratigraphy and, more recently, climate change. Carter is a former Director of Australia's Secretariat for the Ocean Drilling Program.

Career

Carter has published scientific papers on taxonomic palaeontology, the growth and form of the molluscan shell, New Zealand and Pacific geology, New Zealand maritime glaciation [3], Quaternary geology, stratigraphic classification, sequence stratigraphy, sedimentology, the Great Barrier Reef. Carter is also active in the media, volunteering letters and opinion pieces on science topics to a variety of newspapers, magazines and web magazines.

Carter is a member of the conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs [1], was one of the founding members of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, and a founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation, an organisation set up by the Institute of Public Affairs. He is also a science adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute.

[edit] Global Warming

Carter is a global warming sceptic and is notable for having appeared in numerous media pieces on global warming, including the Australian public debate following the airing of The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary on ABC.[4]. He has consistently opposed the consensus view on global warming [5][6] and has addressed many academic, professional, and business organisations in this capacity.

While Carter offers a critique of the mainstream view on climate change, he has no published peer reviewed papers providing evidence to discredit the climate change consensus, although he has contributed papers to several journal publications which review some of the scientific evidence.[7], [8] According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald Professor Carter, whose background is in marine geology, appears to have little, if any, standing in the Australian climate science community.[9]

Carter's website [10] states that his research "has been supported by grants from competitive public research agencies, especially the Australian Research Council (ARC)," and that he "receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments."

However, despite his claims of neutrality or scientific objectivity, Carter appears to have a conflict of interest.  He's a member of Institute for Public Affairs, a conservative (neo-liberal) think tank.  This institute gets its funding from Woodside Petroleum, Esso Australia (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil), and dozens of other companies in the energy industry.   

 

 

Professor Carter told the Herald yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had uncovered no evidence the warming of the planet was caused by human activity. He said the role of peer review in scientific literature was overstressed, and whether or not a scientist had been funded by the fossil fuel industry was irrelevant to the validity of research.

"I don't think it is the point whether or not you are paid by the coal or petroleum industry," said Professor Carter. "I will address the evidence."

A former CSIRO climate scientist, and now head of a new sustainability institute at Monash University, Graeme Pearman, said Professor Carter was not a credible source on climate change. "If he has any evidence that [global warming over the past 100 years] is a natural variability he should publish through the peer review process," Dr Pearman said. "That is what the rest of us have to do." He said he was letting the fossil fuel industry off the hook.

Let's take a look at some of Carter's claims:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/04/bob_carter_claims_its_not_warm.php#more

Objection: Global warming "stopped" in 1998.

The graph above plots temperature changes from three different data sources, GISS, NCDC, and HadCRU from 1975 to 2008.  Based on the averages of these three different data sources, a dotted straight line is then added and superimposed on top of these individual data sources to indicate their averages over time.  The most noticeable trend, perhaps, is the gradual upward rise in the average global temperature from 1975-2008 with a sudden spike and drop at the 1998 point.  The dotted lines then continue beyond 2008 to plot future rises in the average global temperature based on the current trends. 

1998, as you can see, shows a record high average global temperature based on one data source, HadCRU, although this 1998 record, according to GISS and NCDC, was broken by the year 2005.

But putting 2005 aside (for now), the "record high" of 1998 is then used by Carter as empirical "proof" that global warming "stopped" in 1998. What he fails to mention, however, is that 1998 was an El Nino year.  The sharp spike on the graph for 1998 is therefore an anomaly created by the El Nino effect which produced an exceptionally warm year. 

As a consequence of El Nino, the previous +.2 C per decade temperature rise from 1975-1998 became temporarily obscured and lost in the "background noise" in the aftermath of El Nino "noise" (which brought about a sharp rise in average global temperature by +.5 C and then -.5 C temperature drop in the following year).  This sudden rise and fall in average global temperature from 1998 was then interpreted by Carter as "global warming being 'over.' "  

Meanwhile, even as the effects of El Nino subsided and the temperatures dropped back to "normal," the +.2 C per decade rise in average global temperature continued to rise in the "background noise," as the graph indicates, in the midst of the "fall."  For these reasons, most scientists do not interpret 1998's average global temperature as part of any ongoing "trend" but rather see it as an anomaly or exception from the current trend.  If anything, then, 1998 should be seen as part of an ongoing trend + a sharp fluctuation that is depicted as "wiggle" or "noise."

The trend lines are determined from the data covering the time span 1975-2000. The graph is intended to show that the data after 2000 are not inconsistent with the claim that the trend is continuing, in fact they’re following the line with “wiggles” (i.e., noise) that make trends impossible to identify over short time periods but clear over longer time periods. (and indeed that is so). For the terms of this wager, it is not necessary to recompute the data using the 1950.0-1980.0 reference period I’ve used in this graph. This graph just gives us the essential idea behind it.

And the idea is this: if global warming is continuing, global temperature will continue to follow a rising trend plus noise. If global warming has ceased, it will stay at its present level (or decline) plus noise. So we should outline what global temperature will be in those two cases.

First let’s look at annual average temperature. I used the trend from 1975 to the present to estimate the trend, and used the standard deviation from the residuals (after subtracting the trend from the data) to estimate the noise level. The trend is upward at 0.018173 deg.C/yr, and the standard deviation of the residuals is 0.0959 deg.C. Here in fact are the annual averages (black dots), together with the trend (solid red line), and (dashed) lines two standard deviations above and below that trend line:

This gives the expected range of annual averages — between the dashed red lines — and 95% of all years should fall within those lines. If one wishes to be precise, these limits should be modified to account for the red-noise character of the data, but in this case it’s a small correction and I’m going to ignore it. Note that all the annual averages from 1975 to the present fall within the dashed red lines. As an aside, the above graph is about as clear a graph as I’ve seen showing that there’s really no evidence — none whatsoever — that global warming has stopped.

We can of course extend those lines into the future. We can also quantify the hypothesis that global temperature hasn’t changed since 2001; the average from 2001 to the present is 0.5432 deg.C, so we can simply draw a line at that value and dashed lines two standard deviations above and below it. Putting the “no-more-warming” range in blue, we get this:

The area within the blue dotted lines above is basically what Carter contends as a future projection: that the global "warming trend" had "stopped" in 1998 and that there has been no continued warming since that time (and/or it has reversed).  Should this be the case, then the temperature would no longer rise but would level off or fall instead.  Therefore a "bet" was made by the statistician who created the graph above, based on Carter's the scientific community's assumptions:
 

If the “continued warming” hypothesis is correct, future values should fall between the dashed red lines. If the “no more warming” hypothesis is correct, future values should fall between the dashed blue lines. If the earth has actually started cooling, future values will eventually dip below the blue lines.

So here’s the bet based on annual averages: the still-warming side wins if temperature goes above the top dashed blue line; the not-warming side wins if temperature goes below the bottom dashed red line.

If temperature rises above the upper dashed red line, we have evidence that the planet is warming even faster than the present trend. In that case the still-warming side also wins. Alternatively, if temperature falls below the lower dashed blue line, we have evidence that the planet is actually cooling, and the not-warming side wins.

Finally, I’ll add one last condition. It’s unlikely but possible that a value can fall outside either range just because of noise. So, my “bet” is that as soon as there are two years (not necessarily consecutive) which are in either decisive region, the side with two decisive years is declared the winner....

(for full article, go to: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/you-bet/)

But all bets aside, everything I have read argues that a warming trend has continued in spite of the apparent cooling trend created in the aftermath of El Nino in 1998.  Others argue that Carter's calculations were mistaken from the very beginning because it fails to consider the impact of ocean temperatures, which have been steadily rising over the past century as more and more heat or CO2 is absorbed by the oceans.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/04/bob_carter_claims_its_not_warm.php#more

Here are some other objections made by Carter, all of which are very tired and old arguments so have been compiled into an FAQ here:

How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

(from "How to..."):

Objection:

Global surface temperatures recorded [over the past 150 years] is not long enough to draw any conclusions or worry about anyway.

 

Answer:

The reliable instrumental record only goes back 150 years in the CRU analysis, 125 in the NASA analysis. This is a simple fact that we are stuck with. 2005 was the warmest year recorded in that period according to NASA, a very close second according to CRU. Because of this limit, it is not enough to say today that these are the warmest years since 150 years ago, rather one should say 'at least':

1998 and 2005 are the warmest two years in at least the last 150.

 

But there is another direct measurement record available that can tell us things about temperature over the last 500 years, and that is borehole measurements. Basically, this involves drilling a deep hole and measuring the temperature of the earth at various depths. This gives us information about century scale temperature trends as warmer or cooler pulses from long term surface changes propagate down through the crust. Using this method we can see that temperatures have not been consistently this high as far back as this method allows us to look.  This way of inferring surface temperatures does smooth out yearly fluctuations and even short term trends, so we can not know anything directly about individual years. But given the observable range of inter-annual variations recorded over the last century, it is quite reasonable to rule out single years or even decades being far enough above the baseline to rival today.

Thus, using this record, we can extend our timeframe and reasonably conclude that it is warmer now than any time in at least the last 500 years.

It is possible to make reconstructions of temperature much further back, using what are called proxy data. These include things like tree rings, ocean sediment, coral growth, layers in stalagmites and others. The reconstructions available are all slightly different and provide sometimes more and sometimes less global versus regional coverage over the last one or two thousand years. Note: this covers the period often referred to as the Medieval Warm Period.  As noted, all these reconstructions are different, but:

they all show some similar patterns of temperature change over the last several centuries. Most striking is the fact that each record reveals that the 20th century is the warmest of the entire record, and that warming was most dramatic after 1920

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html

Thus we can reasonably say it is warmer now than any other time in at least the last one thousand years.

The only other candidate for a higher temperature period going back through the entire Holocene (~10,000bp to now) is called the Holocene Climatic Optimum some 6000 years ago. It is not known exactly what the temperatures were then, the farther back in time we try to look, the greater the uncertainties there are to deal with. Even so, the Holocene Climatic Optimum has long been cautiously thought to be almost as warm or even warmer than now. That conclusion is starting to look less likely as it has been determined that the anomalous warmth of that time was actually confined to the northern hemisphere and occurred only in the summer months.

Robert Rohde's website, Global Warming Art has a nice graph of many reconstructions of Holocene temperature, regional and global, all super-imposed with an average of all of them combined, shown below.  This represents the best estimate available of global temperatures in the Holocene.

Thus one can reasonably believe that it is warmer now than at any other time in at least the last 10,000 years.

Before the current interglacial the planet was in the grip of a much colder glacial period with ice sheets well down into the continental US. This period only just ended some 11,000 years ago. The record of glacial-interglacial cycles can be read in Antarctic ice core analysis and it shows these cycles over many 100Kyr periods. The IPCC offers a good version of this graph.

Thus we can say that if our reading of the Holocene is correct, it is warmer now than at any other time in over the last 100,000 years.

And that is a bit more than 100 years.  It is in fact the entire history of our species.

(from http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/01/one-hundred-years-is-not-enough.php ).

---

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

Objection:

All those institutional position statements are fine, but by their very nature they hide the debate and the variety of individual positions. The real debate is in the scientific journals.

Answer:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/position-statements-hide-debate.php

Objection:

Why should we trust a bunch of contrived computer models that haven't ever had a prediction confirmed ? Talk to me in 100 years.

Answer:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/models-are-unproven.php

Carter wrote,

The basic flaw that was incorporated into IPCC methodology from the beginning was the assumption that matters of science can be decided on authority or consensus; in fact, and as Galileo early showed, science as a method of investigating the world is the very antithesis of authority. A scientific truth is so not because the IPCC or an Academy of Science blesses it, or because most people believe it, but because it is formulated as a rigorous hypothesis that has survived testing by many different scientists.

No, a scientific truth is not so because the IPCC or Acadamy of Science blesses it; yet it becomes increasingly difficult dismiss the claims of the IPCC as trivial when nearly every single legitimate scientific institution endorses the views of the IPCC:

Scientist roll call

Much of the debate seems to consist of a show of hands and parading of credentials. On the one hand, you have assorted scientists as presented in the National Post Denier series. On the other side, you have the IPCC stating anthropogenic emissions are the predominant cause of global warming. If the IPCC is not your cup of tea, the following scientific organisations also endorse the consensus:

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Environmental Protection Agency
• NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Physics
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• American Meteorological Society
• State of the Canadian Cryosphere
• The Royal Society of the UK
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

Academies of Science from 19 countries

The Academies of Science from 19 different countries all endorse the consensus. 11 countries have signed a joint statement endorsing the consensus position:

• Academia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Brazil)
• Royal Society of Canada
• Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Academie des Sciences (France)
• Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
• Indian National Science Academy
• Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
• Science Council of Japan
• Russian Academy of Sciences
• Royal Society (United Kingdom)
• National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)

Additionally, the Academies of Science from another 8 countries (as well as several countries from the first list) also signed a joint statement endorsing the IPCC consensus:

• Australian Academy of Sciences
• Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
• Caribbean Academy of Sciences
• Indonesian Academy of Sciences
• Royal Irish Academy
• Academy of Sciences Malaysia
• Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
• Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Naomi Oreskes' survey of peer reviewed scientific literature

However, it's more relevant to examine peer reviewed journals - scientists can have their opinions but they need to back it up with empirical evidence and research that survives the peer review process. A survey of all peer reviewed abstracts on the subject "global climate change" published between 1993 and 2003 show that not a single paper rejected the consensus position that global warming is man caused. 75% of the papers agreed with the consensus position while 25% made no comment either way (eg - focused on methods or paleoclimate analysis). More on Naomi Oreskes' survey...

Klaus-Martin Schulte's list of studies rejecting the consensus

That is not to say there are no studies that reject the consensus position. Klaus-Martin Schulte surveyed peer reviewed abstracts from 2004 to February 2007 and claims 32 studies (6%) reject the consensus position. In these cases, it's instructive to read the studies to see whether they actually do refute the consensus and if so, what their arguments are. You can read a summary of Schulte's skeptic studies here...

Judge the science, not the person

Ultimately what matters is what a person says, not who says it (that's not to say there's people I respect and pay attention to but I don't automatically agree with everything they might say). In the global warming debate, there are smart people on both sides subscribing to polar opposite views - intelligence does not always equate to correctness. This is a debate where people often form a view then muster up the arguments (valid or not) to back up their preconception. So note the credentials but ultimately, make your judgements based on the scientific arguments.

As one person put it,

A common theme among hardcore denialists, after slowly dragging them around to admit there is a consensus, is an appeal to the Galileo syndrome. "Galileo went against the consensus and he was right!" This is a flawed argument in the climate change debate for many reasons, and it is a Guide entry that is missing for the moment.

I am only bringing it up now, rather than do a proper entry, because of a discussion paper by Ernst-Georg Beck that was presented on Warwick Hughes' blog (no relation to me... to Glenn Beck? I don't know). It is basically a well dressed version of the "there is no anthropogenic CO2 rise" argument. Eli Rabett took the time to take it apart in a rather thorough and scientific manner, especially given the total lack of a credible conclusion Beck arrives at. You can see the featured graph at Deltoid and read Stoat's dismissive opinion of it here.

The irony I want to point out is that Galileo was a forward thinker, reaching into previously untrodden territory. His innovation and imagination helped him see past the prevailing state of human knowledge at the time and go into new ground. What are the denialists doing here? Digging up decades old research with results all over the place, results that lead to all sorts of impossible conclusions and then trying to claim that this is the reality and the new, consistent and refined results are the ones that are wrong. Never mind that this is what progress looks like, this is many minds working to overcome the challenges that caused prior confusion to finally achieve consistent, sensible and reliable data.

But what if you don't like what the new data are telling you? Just chuck it and go back to the old stuff!

Sorry, that is so not Galileo!"

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/10/definately-not-galileo.html

Carter laments:

Present public policy on global warming is about where the science was in 1990—looking for, and reacting to, ghosts. Almost twenty years on, it is time to develop a proper and realistic national climate policy for the good of all Australians, rather than continuing to pursue a fanciful global warming one.

This claim, of course, is patently ridiculous as a great deal has happened in research since the 1990s. 

But what if you don't like what the new data are telling you? Just chuck it and go back to the old stuff!

Finally, I reserve the most ridiculous statement for last:

Finally, for all the problems listed above, and much to the outrage of warming alarmists, it should be acknowledged that a handful of quality newspapers do provide a more balanced public discussion of global warming issues. Such papers include the Wall Street Journal, the London Telegraph stable, the Canadian National Post, the Melbourne Business Age and the Australian. These publications, and a few others, are playing a vital role in keeping the public informed of both sides of the climate change issue. Tellingly, however, no Australian television station comes even close to providing equivalently balanced commentary; and neither does that paragon of broadcasting virtue, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

All of the papers that Carter recommends for "a more balanced discussion" on climate change are conservative business newspapers or magazines.  Not only do I find this ridiculous; but also disturbing.