Here.
You may still believe that scientists skeptical of catastrophic AGW hype have evil financial motivations.
I think they're skeptical largely because they're working with better information than you are generally getting from the mainstream media.
If you are at all interested in the global warming debate, I think it's in your own best interest to take the above test and to carefully examine the accompanying facts.
If you've got basic math and logic skills, I think you'll see that there are some very sound reasons for skepticism about the catastrophic hype.
(I scored 10 of 10 on this test).
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Man, I missed one! I really thought that a rectal thermometer poked into the soil was the best way to measure the temperature of the globe!
But noooooo ... a satellite is better!
How did Al Gore do on this test?
Dear Anonymous:
If you'd like to make a case that the facts and logic of this quiz are "misleading", that's completely fine by me.
Just tell us very specifically which information is incorrect.
Tom
Problems with this test.
#3: They don't define "modern" If you mean in the last 10,000 years then it is answer "B". If modern means in the last couple of decades there is support for the notion that the answer is "A"
#4: True that the greenhouse effect is predominantly caused by water vapor. It is modified by other gases, such as CO2. Water vapor is in equilibrium and does not change. The gases that do change such as methane and CO2 are therefore the ones that matter for long-term changes in climate.
#6: CO2 levels are not the highest in the entire history of the Earth. They are, however, much higher now then they were 500 years ago. Comparing them to the Carboniferous Period is misleading.
#7: That CO2 emission do not harm trees is a meaningless fact. Lots of things that don't hurt trees, have adverse effects on life.
#8: all three answers are debatable.
#9: So what. Temperatures are gathered in a variety of ways, including satellites.
#10: The "right" answer was apparently reduced solar output which is not one of the choices.
Taken together, what the survey has done is cherry pick certain facts to make it look like there is no global warming problem. Plus they add in a few questions (like the CO2 doesn't damage forests) that are meaningless. This is a misleading way of presenting an argument.
Thanks for your comment.
Water vapor is in equilibrium and does not change.
Source, please.
That CO2 emission do not harm trees is a meaningless fact.
If any readers mistakenly think that CO2 is a pollutant that harms trees, then I'd argue that this is not "meaningless".
Regarding historic CO2 concentrations, the quiz says: "To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today -- 4400 ppm."
If that sentence is true, doesn't that blow a pretty large hole in any theory that CO2 is a major driver of the earth's climate?
Hi Tom,
I'll jump in. First, thanks for the role you've played in the Ivory-bill debate.
I know very little about climate, but you've made me question my assumptions and I've taken a look at the latest IPCC report to learn a little more. From that I gather that there is real cause for concern about Global Warming and a lot of scientific support for it.
Some of the things that I find misleading in this quiz are:
* the claim that CO2 concentrations have been much higher in the past. The IPCC report presents data from ice cores and other sources showing that CO2 has been very stable for 10,000 years, increasing sharply in the last century or so. The quiz says concentrations were much higher millions of years ago, apparently including some periods when temperatures were low. How is that known? How reliable is that data? If those measurements are reliable, are they even relevant to present-day climate change?
* the claim that water vapor is more important than CO2 as a greenhouse "gas". The IPCC report seems to flatly contradict this, showing a graph with CO2 a far more significant contributor than water vapor. Water vapor does have a greenhouse effect, and maybe it's more potent than CO2 in some way, but water vapor concentrations are natural and have presumably been pretty stable for millions of years. The IPCC minimizes it saying the only expected change is slightly increasing concentrations of water vapor as a result of warming air. This contrasts with CO2 concentrations, which are increasing dramatically and are new and human-created.
* the dismissal of ground temperature readings. IPCC specifically says that ground temperature readings are very similar to the readings from satellites. Urban heat island effects are minimal and there is no reason to dismiss all ground readings categorically. And if the quiz author wants to call into question the data on temperature increase in the past century, how does he explain melting glaciers and disappearing pack ice?
* the quiz uses an unattributed quote, apparently from someone who worked on the IPCC report, saying conversationally that the report's conclusions are far from certain, as if that discredits the whole thing. The uncertainty is clearly stated in the IPCC report, but when multiple scientists, and dozens of government representatives, over multiple editions of the report, can all agree to say that human-caused warming is "very likely", and say so with increasing certainty over the last decade, that's actually a pretty strong statement.
Frankly, I have to put my faith in the scientists who work on the IPCC. The evidence for potentially catastrophic human-caused warming seems very strong, and as a dissenting view this quiz just seems like a bunch of disjointed, leading questions and partial answers intended to create doubt. I agree with Anonymous 2:22 that it is misleading. It reminds me of the way some Ivorybill supporters try to portray skeptics as jealous and marginal, and to convince us that the Ivorybill can be simultaneously numerous and unfindable.
Regarding:
Regarding historic CO2 concentrations, the quiz says: "To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today -- 4400 ppm."
Golly, gosh, things were so different in the Ordovician, with the continents in a very different configuration and no land plants, I think comparisons with today's climate regime, in a simplistic sense, are rather iffy. I did find an interesting abstract here , and it looks like the climate picture was quite mixed, with a lot of rapid changes, and not just an "ice age". There was also a mass extinction at one point.
Here's a 2005 report of a paper in Geology, which is a good peer-reviewed jounral, talking about the timing of Ordovician glaciation and CO2 levels:
...This particular [Ordovician] ice age didn’t begin when CO2 was at its peak -- it began 10 million years earlier, when CO2 levels were at a low.
“Our results are consistent with the notion that CO2 concentrations drive climate.”
So just based on some real superficial web searches, I'd say the question in that quiz is based on incorrect information. I find it, like most of the other questions, to be rather on the glib side, as another commentator mentioned, cherry-picking of factoids, some relevant to possible anthropogenic climate change, some not.
Patrick and Anon 3:49, thank you very much for your comments. This is exactly the type of discussion that I'd like to see here.
You've raised more points than I have time to address right now, but I plan to get to most or all of them (maybe in separate posts) in time.
I think you, the quiz author, and the IPCC actually have far more "common ground" than you might initially think. The quiz author agrees that the greenhouse effect is real, that the earth has warmed recently, and that humans have most likely contributed to some extent. There is very real scientific debate about exactly what "to some extent" means. That's when the relative accuracy of ground-based vs satellite temperature measurements is properly discussed.
“Our results are consistent with the notion that CO2 concentrations drive climate.”
Patrick and Anon 3:49--I'm just curious; do you currently think that CO2 is a major driver (maybe THE major driver) of the earth's climate? What do you think caused the massive natural global warming that occurred after the peak of the last ice age but before the industrial revolution?
Tom
P.S. Anon 3:49 (and everyone else)--if you're not comfortable using your real name on blog comments, I'd appreciate it if you'd just pick some alias and stick to it...
Trying to respond to Tom's comments:
Patrick and Anon 3:49--I'm just curious; do you currently think that CO2 is a major driver (maybe THE major driver) of the earth's climate?
It's not my field of expertise, obviously global climate is extremely complex, with many things moderating it. I've seen summaries of the IPCC report, and also criticisms.
The thing that worries me in my scientific "gut" is that this rapid change in CO2 due to anthropogenic activities is quite unprecedented. We just don't know for sure what really bad changes could happen with this large and rapid a perturbation in atmospheric CO2. The geologic record is disturbing, especially such events as the Younger Dryas, showing a very sudden change in the climate of the Northern Hemisphere. Such a sudden change today could be very serious for human populations. That's the sort of thing that worries me. Unfortunately, we may not know about such a big, bad event until we are in the midst of it!
What do you think caused the massive natural global warming that occurred after the peak of the last ice age but before the industrial revolution?
The main driver of the the Pleistocene climate fluctuations is thought to be, as far as I know, the Milankovitch cycles. Those occur over a longer period (100,000 years) than possible anthropogenic changes (circa 10's to 100's of years) people are worried about today.
Thanks Patrick.
I'm very curious, again:
1. What do you think caused the Medieval Warm Period?
2. What do you think caused the significant cooling in the 1940s-to-1974 period?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts,
Tom
Re: MWP and 1940's to 74 warming--I'm getting out of my depth, and we are talking about rather different events, one lasting perhaps hundreds of years, and another three decades. I guess similar questions could be framed as to "what caused the Little Ice Age?", and "what caused the Dust Bowl?" Perhaps it was sort of the opposite forcing factors to those that caused the MWP and the 40's to 70's cool period. You've got me. Clearly changes in CO2 levels do not force climate change on all time scales in a linear fashion. I expect that is true for any climatic factor, such as the Milankovitch and solar cycles. That does not mean they might not all be important.
Weather and climate are very chaotic, with wild fluctuations about a mean at all time scales. Clearly, there are forcing factors and feedback loops operating to different degrees and on different time scales. Where I usually see people go with this is "We don't understand it, so more research is needed before we can take action". One could say that about many problems in science--we don't understand mechanisms of carcinogenesis completely, so we should not try to limit exposure to carcinogens until we do?
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