[Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory

[Paul Rumelhart]

A couple of years of low snowfall?  If I were talking about snowfall
records being broken the last couple of winters (such as what happened in
Boston), you'd be telling me it's just weather and not climate.

Paul

On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 8:00 PM, Moscow Cares <moscowcares at moscow.com>
wrote:

> Paul Rumelhart stated:
>
> "Anyway, if climate change is as big a danger as they make it out to be,
> it should become very obvious Real Soon Now.  I'm not talking about
> "97.386% of scientists now toe the line" type studies, I'm talking about
> crops failing en masse and cities getting flooded."
>
> For starters, Mr. Rumelhart . . .
>
> Courtesy of the *Motley Fool *(an investment firm) at:
>
>
> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/04/19/dont-let-the-california-drought-dry-up-your-invest.aspx
>
> -------------------------------------
>
> California's drought is Causing a Major Problem Nobody is Talking About
>
> California's water system is crashing. The Golden State is headed into the
> fourth year of drought conditions, and it's time investors readjusted their
> portfolios for the long run. Here's what you need to know.
>
>
> *When the water's gone*Investors have a lot to learn from the California
> drought: It's a real-life lesson in the importance of diversification and
> hedging. While the drought and ensuing regulations have actually left Big
> Ag relatively untouched, its energy sector is undergoing a rapid revolution.
>
> Hydropower accounted for around 20% of California's in-state generation
> from January to July (the wet months) for the past decade. But recent data
> suggest that hydropower's "new normal" may be more like 10%, or perhaps
> even less. For the 2014-2015 winter, officials now estimate that *California's
> snowfall clocks in at just 6% of normal rates.* [my emphasis added]
> -------------------------------------
>
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
> http://www.MoscowCares.com <http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> "There's room at the top they are telling you still.
> But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
> If you want to be like the folks on the hill."
>
> - John Lennon
>
> On Apr 19, 2015, at 19:32, Paul Rumelhart <paul.rumelhart at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I'm not talking about emissions controls or fuel efficiency initiatives
> (both of which I think are a good idea).  I'm talking about raising oil
> taxes to fight climate change and carbon trading schemes.  The last thing
> you want to do in a struggling economy is raise fuel prices.  The cost of
> *everything* goes up.  People find it harder to look for jobs, they can't
> buy as much, etc.  The economy comes to even more of a standstill.  Carbon
> trading schemes are a joke, cooked up by energy companies to reign in coal
> companies so that they can make more profits on natural gas.
>
> While I'm not a fan of Big Oil fat cats in a smoke-filled room doing...
> whatever it is they do in smoke-filled rooms, the simple fact is that we
> wouldn't be where we are technologically without easy-to-burn carbon.  If
> we had to stick to windmills and solar heating, we would have been sunk.
>
> Meanwhile, the one saviour of a solution (at least until we get cheap
> fusion) is the same one that the same people pushing carbon credits and
> solar power don't want you to use - nuclear power.  And... we're back to
> the topic of people wanting to manipulate me through fear.
>
> Anyway, if climate change is as big a danger as they make it out to be, it
> should become very obvious Real Soon Now.  I'm not talking about "97.386%
> of scientists now toe the line" type studies, I'm talking about crops
> failing en masse and cities getting flooded.  Since it's become so
> politicized, the only smart thing to do is to sit back and see what the
> climate does and assume everyone's lying to us.  So far, I haven't seen
> anything to get worried about.
>
> Paul
>
> On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 5:25 PM, Scott Dredge <scooterd408 at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Paul writes: <I don't see any need to put any brakes on the economy in
>> order to force us off of oil.  If anything, we need the economy as strong
>> as possible so we can be effective when we need to be.>
>>
>> Comments like this is the basis for why the 'debate' about climate change
>> becomes so corrupted.  It's actually good for the economy when government
>> tightens up on emissions and mandates increased fuel efficiency because it
>> spurs on innovation and accordingly creates jobs and new industries.
>> What's the downside...It goes against your best interest if you've invested
>> in Shell, Chevron, Exxon Mobile, Oil ETFs, Master Limited Partnerships,
>> etc.?
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2015 19:30:21 -0700
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early
>> Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
>> From: paul.rumelhart at gmail.com
>> To: starbliss at gmail.com
>> CC: scooterd408 at hotmail.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but for me it comes down to a desire not
>> to be manipulated by fear as well as the desire not to be demonized for
>> it.  According to Wikipedia, we have had a temperature increase since about
>> 1900 of 0.74 +- 0.18C.  CO2 levels back then were about 280ppm, we're
>> currently at about 400ppm.  Calculate that out, and it would appear that we
>> should expect an increase of around 1.7C for a doubling of CO2.  OK,
>> great.  I'll keep that in mind over the next 80 years or so.  Not nearly as
>> high as what they are trying to scare us with.  I keep an eye on sea level
>> data at http://sealevel.colorado.edu.  That first graph has been pegged
>> at 3.2 +- 0.4 mm/yr for the last couple or more years now.  Not even a hint
>> that it will start erupting upward anytime soon.  We're talking a little
>> over a foot a century.  Nothing to piss our pants about.  Sea ice in the
>> arctic continues to frustrate those who keep expecting an ice free summer.
>> No idea what it will do this year.
>>
>> Almost everything else is speculation and over-exaggeration as far as I
>> can tell.  I don't buy into the "man is killing the planet" morality play.
>> I don't see any need to put any brakes on the economy in order to force us
>> off of oil.  If anything, we need the economy as strong as possible so we
>> can be effective when we need to be.  I don't think we should be messing
>> with geoengineering schemes quite yet.
>>
>> If things take a sudden turn for the worse, I'll rethink my position.
>>
>> That's my basic take on it.  I'm not interested in yet another
>> back-and-forth exchange.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> P.S.  As for the possibility of religion trumping my common sense on this
>> topic, I have no idea what spiritists / occultists think about climate
>> change; as far as I can tell there is no position on it.  Maybe all 12 of
>> us should sit down and discuss it sometime.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 6:15 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Seriously, Scott?  I think Debi was serious... Was she joking and I did
>> not get it?
>>
>> Perhaps I misunderstood, or you were engaging in hyperbole for
>> amusement...
>>
>> You can't really mean to suggest that *everyone *who has a view on
>> anthropogenic global warming is merely "clinging tightly to their own blind
>> biases."
>>
>> Or just the people you "hang with?"
>>
>> Scott Dredge wrote:
>>
>> "The motley crew that I out hang with just clings tightly to their own
>> blind biases  on this issue."
>> --------------------------------
>> There will always be some who take extreme unreasoned views on most any
>> important issue, on one side or another.  Thus Deb makes a good
>> point about some who "melt-down," who are denying the validity of the
>> thousands of peer reviewed scientific studies indicating significant
>> anthropogenic climate change is occurring, when confronted with this body
>> of science.
>>
>> But as I recently told a local climate change activist, if you want to
>> find peer reviewed published scientific studies that question the consensus
>> scientific view on anthropogenic climate change, they can be found.  I have
>> made a deliberate effort to study the scientific theories that indicate
>> anthropogenic climate change is not a problem to the extent most competent
>> scientists indicate it is...
>>
>> Below are a few that have generated considerable discussion in recent
>> years.  I'll not present the scientific refutations of these published
>> scientific papers, but refuted they were.
>>
>> Note the first paper below is authored by the famous Richard Lindzen from
>> MIT, who former NASA climate scientist James Hansen described as "the dean
>> of anthropogenic climate change skeptics" in Hansen's book "Storms of My
>> Grandchildren:"
>>
>> Published in "Geophysical Research Letters:" 26 August 2009
>> <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract#publication-history>
>>
>> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract
>>
>> On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
>> Richard S. Lindzen, Yong-Sang ChoiNote this comment from the Abstract:"...the
>> inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem
>> in climate prediction."
>> -------------------------------------------
>> Published in "Remote Sensing" July 2011:
>>
>> http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603
>>
>> *Roy W. Spencer* <http://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=Roy%20W.%20Spencer>*
>> * * <roy.spencer at nsstc.uah.edu>* and **William D. Braswell*
>> <http://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=William%20D.%20Braswell>
>>
>> On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in
>> Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance†
>>
>> Claiming a "misdiagnosis" indicates the "skeptical" analysis here...
>> -----------------------
>> Regarding your statement "The sad reality is that throughout history
>> science has been routinely trumped by politics and religion until it can be
>> proven beyond all doubt." demonstrates a misunderstanding, according to my
>> study of epistemology, theory of knowledge, and the scientific method, of
>> the nature of scientific inquiry.  Nothing can be "proven beyond all doubt"
>> technically speaking.  New data or theory can always alter a given
>> scientific consensus, though some scientists would argue this is
>> philosophical nit-picking on some very well established theories.
>>
>> But consider the millions of people who insist that the theory or
>> evolution, insofar as it indicates homo sapiens evolved over millions of
>> years from other species, is not a "proven" scientific theory, despite the
>> overwhelming scientific evidence.  *Science is still "trumped" by
>> religion on this issue.*
>>
>> *Given the bias of some people, it does not matter how well "proven" a
>> scientific theory may be... it will still be denied!*
>> ---------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Scott Dredge <scooterd408 at hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Seriously Debi?  The motley crew that I out hang with just clings tightly
>> to their own blind biases on this issue.  They just reject any report and /
>> or attack the source that doesn't align with their own unalterable belief.
>> The sad reality is that throughout history science has been routinely
>> trumped by politics and religion until it can be proven beyond all doubt.
>> And personally, I'm OK with that to some extent because the effect is that
>> it forces very comprehensive and far reaching studies to unearth all the
>> facts and impeach all of the fiction.
>>
>> This short video is a good parallel of what happens whenever the topic of
>> climate change comes up with either my 'global warming is a myth' friends
>> or with my 'we are going to die because of global warming' friends:
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvSjiq1pLVY
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> From: debismith at moscow.com
>> To: starbliss at gmail.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 19:32:23 -0700
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early
>> Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
>>
>>
>> Thanks, Ted. this is good info, and assists me when i talk to folks with
>> little science background and a denier agenda---you are always on top of
>> it!  I have watched climate denier folks melt-down when confronted with
>> facts that refute their disbelief---even they can only suspend disbelief
>> until their arms hurt a bunch....and most of them don't have the muscle
>> mass....
>> debi R-S
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>
>> *To:* Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>> *Sent:* Friday, April 17, 2015 6:44 PM
>> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early
>> Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
>>
>>  I was surprised to just today read on Realclimate.org a piece dated 13
>> April 2015, by climate scientist William Ruddiman, discussing how the
>> scientific community has received his controversial theory regarding early
>> (before major fossil fuel powered industrial civilization) human climate
>> impacts.
>>
>> His Realclimate.org piece argues, and I quote, against the alleged
>> "censure from a nearly monolithic community intent on imposing a mainstream
>> view" that is sometimes claimed to exist by those critical of the science
>> demonstrating major human impacts on climate change.
>>
>> I was particularly interested in this Realclimate.org piece because I
>> referenced his theory in a 2007 op-ed in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News,
>> which now has a Google News webpage of an actual scan of the actual op-ed
>> page in the Moscow-Pullman DN.  How or why this scan happened I do not
>> know, but it can be read at the webpage below:
>>
>>
>> https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2026&dat=20070223&id=x14zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MvAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3113,2791746&hl=en
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> Ruddiman's Realclimate.org article mentioned above is pasted in below,
>> and comments generated by his article are also available at the website
>> below:
>>
>> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/a-scientific-debate/
>>
>> A Scientific Debate Filed under: Climate Science — mike @ 13 April 2015
>>
>> Bill Ruddiman, University of Virginia
>>
>> Recently I’ve read claims that some scientists are opposed to AGW but
>> won’t speak out because they fear censure from a nearly monolithic
>> community intent on imposing a mainstream view. Yet my last 10 years of
>> personal experience refute this claim. This story began late in 2003 when I
>> introduced a new idea (the ‘early anthropogenic hypothesis’) that went
>> completely against a prevailing climatic paradigm of the time. I claimed
>> that detectable human influences on Earth’s surface and its climate began
>> thousands of years ago because of agriculture. Here I describe how this
>> radically different idea was received by the mainstream scientific
>> community.
>>
>> Was my initial attempt to present this new idea suppressed? No. I
>> submitted a paper to Climatic Change, then edited by Steve Schneider, a
>> well-known climate scientist and AGW spokesman. From what I could tell,
>> Steve was agnostic about my idea but published it because he found it an
>> interesting challenge to the conventional wisdom. I also gave the Emiliani
>> lecture at the 2003 December American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference to
>> some 800 people. I feel certain that very few of those scientists came to
>> my talk believing what my abstract claimed. They attended because they were
>> interested in a really new idea from someone with a decent career
>> reputation. The talk was covered by many prominent media sources, including
>> the New York Times and The Economist. This experience told me that
>> provocative new ideas draw interest because they are provocative and new,
>> provided that they pass the key ‘sniff test’ by presenting evidence in
>> support of their claims.
>>
>> Did this radical new idea have difficulty receiving research funding? No.
>> Proposals submitted to the highly competitive National Science Foundation
>> (NSF) with John Kutzbach and Steve Vavrus have been fully funded since 2004
>> by 3-year grants. Even though the hypothesis of early anthropogenic effects
>> on climate has been controversial (and still is for some), we crafted
>> proposals that were carefully written, tightly reasoned, and focused on
>> testing the new idea. As a result, we succeeded against negative funding
>> odds of 4-1 or 5-1. One program manager told me he planned to put our grant
>> on a short list of ‘transformational’ proposals/grants that NSF had
>> requested. That didn’t mean he accepted our hypothesis. It meant that he
>> felt that our hypothesis had the potential to transform that particular
>> field of paleoclimatic research, if proven correct.
>>
>> Were we able to get papers published? Yes. As any scientist will tell
>> you, this process is rarely easy. Even reviewers who basically support what
>> you have to say will rarely hand out ‘easy-pass’ reviews. They add their
>> own perspective, and they often point out useful improvements. A few
>> reviews of the 30-some papers we have published during the last 11 years
>> have come back with extremely negative reviews, seemingly from scientists
>> who seem deeply opposed to anything that even hints at large early
>> anthropogenic effects. While these uber-critical reviews are discouraging,
>> I have learned to put them aside for a few days, give my spirits time to
>> rebound, and then address the criticisms that are fair (that is,
>> evidence-based), explain to the journal editor why other criticisms are
>> unfair, and submit a revised (and inevitably improved) paper. Eventually,
>> our views have always gotten published, although sometimes only after
>> considerable effort.
>>
>> The decade-long argument over large early anthropogenic effects
>> continues, although recent syntheses of archeological and paleoecological
>> data have been increasingly supportive. In any case, I continue to trust
>> the scientific process to sort this debate out. I suggest that my
>> experience is a good index of the way the system actually operates when new
>> and controversial ideas emerge. I see no evidence that the system is
>> muffling good new ideas.
>> ---------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>>
>>
>>
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