@kk
As long as you know you’re taking your chances with the EPA.

As for the political calculus, you don’t seem to understand a few things. Number one midterm elections are almost never about the President. They are about two things. Number one is the individuals running, and number two is turnout. From a Machiavellen point of view an extremely aggressive scheme, that industry sees as punitive, will actually help Congressional Democrats. They get turnout from their base (remember total turnout is 35%), and if they are in districts that genuinely oppose the new regs they’ll be able to “fight” those regulations. There’s no chance they’ll win, because Obama has a veto-pen, and if you can;t get 60 Senators to stop talking about health reform you ain;t gonna be able to get 67 to agree on overriding a veto.

The second thing is that the base always has options. Just ask Al Gore what happened when an uncharismatic guy tries to win Florida after two terms of his boss doing nothing the Democratic base liked. Even without Nader they can screw you simply by staying home.

As for the economic calculus, you’re not looking at this from a left-wing viewpoint. As far as we’re concerned the costs of carbon mitigation are an investment. Everybody else is doing it and everybody else’s economy is in better shape than us. There would be some short term hits (the initial investment), but the next Presidential year is 2012. By then we’re convinced it will be paying off.

As for health reform, when that debate is over the only people who will remember it are political junkies and extremists. The mushy middle will simply thank God that DC can move on to the other gigantic problems we’re facing. They’ll give reform a chance to work, and as of the 2010 elections the reform won’t be spending money. OTOH it will have banned the nastiest of insurance company practices.

If you actually oppose regulating Carbon emissions you have no choice but to support C+T ’cause if it doesn’t pass the EPA will issue regulations.

Sure, Nick, whatever. I’ll take my chances on the EPA.

And if you were Barack Obama, would you issue regulations that were anything less then draconian? Given your base’s extreme passion on this issue, and the intense disappointment that base will feel when health reform passes without the public option, could you issue non-draconian regulations even if you wanted to?

I think this is pure fantasy on your part. When healthcare passes, many will be troubled by the big costs associated with it. You think there won’t be any, that it will save money, but you’re in the minority. In that environment, I fully expect Obama’s private communications with the EPA will be orders not to issue any regulations AT ALL that can be viewed as expensive and harmful to economic recovery. Maybe some window-dressing ones atmost.

Who are all these disappointed progressives you envision supposed to vote for in 2012, Mitt Romney? Sara Palin? Maybe Al Gore. What a spectacle that would be, Gore running against a sitting democratic President. Obama needs moderates to get re-elected, not progressives. If petulant progressives desert Obama, all they will achieve is to ensure a Republican President come January 2013. Which will be just what they deserve.

And if you were Barack Obama, would you issue regulations that were anything less then draconian? Given your base’s extreme passion on this issue, and the intense disappointment that base will feel when health reform passes without the public option, could you issue non-draconian regulations even if you wanted to?

Here’s the political upside. Draconian regulations would a) give the left a reason to vote for him even after the public option is stripped from the Senate bill, and b) they’d show GOP Senators and groups like the chamber that opposing Obama is only smart if you can win.

In 2010 the political risk is minimal because it’s all Obama’s fault and he’s not on the ballot. By 2012 there will be other issues moderates care about, such as how the latest Afghanistan strategy worked, so it won’t hurt him much in the center. And it’d help him on the left.

Trenberth’s response in an interview with Wired is pretty accurate. The denialists (more accurate than skeptics for the majority of them) don’t read the article being referred to so their claims about what Trenberth means in the e-mail is automatically out of context. Trenberth’s reference to an inability to explain cooling refers to short term phenomenon, not the longer term trends that still indicate warming.

My issue is not with the Trenberth quote about the failure to explain warming. I’ve already stated my lack of interest in the superfical” hide the cooling” debate. Instead, my concern related to a different Trenberth quote, which I have previously excerpted twice somewhere around here, and will do again:

Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!

Got it now? Trenberth says we can’t at this point have any hope of geoengineering the climate because we can’t balance the budget by accounting for all inputs and outputs. That’s the worry when it comes to the issue of carbon forcing and its possible extent.

we can’t predict precisely what will happen next month if CO2 goes up x%, but we’ve got a decent handle on what will happen 10 years from now of CO2 gos up x% a month.

“All over the map?” You got links to back that up?

Why not notice what Jim has stated:

As to the sensitivity of the system to increased levels of CO2, I am arguing not against those who rightfully say that we don’t know the exact level of forcing coming from CO2…

Nick, I’ve followed the various predictions of various models. The numbers stated for the amounts of temperature and sea level rises we can expect ARE all over the map. Some folks say a degree or two, some say 5 or 6. Other’s say more. Some people sat Florida will be underwater in decades. The only way to shut them up is to offer a wager, apparently.

This is what happens when people make models and base them on assumptions. Mind you, you do have to make assumptions to build and use models to make predictions and forecasts. Such predictions are at best semi-educated guesses. They always rely heavily on assumptions and presumptiosn. That’s the nature of the beast. Good faith forecasts are substantially wrong all the time.I’m a mathy guy! I’m pro-model. And I’m also strongly in favor of understanding models for exactly what they are,,,good-faith mechanisms for making educated guesses which might be wrong.

we’ve got a decent handle on what will happen 10 years from now of CO2 gos up x% a month.

Citations please. Even Jim disagrees with you on this if I have interpreted his quote above about carbon forcing correctly. We don’t have a good handle on the extent or timing of the effects.

The left is right that we’re slowest among the rich countries.

I know. Makes me proud!

IMO cap-and-trade would have minimal costs, and would help some, so it’s a no-brainer.

Cool. Simply convince 51% of Americans and you can get just what you want. I expect zero political appetite for any such substantial change in this economic environment after healthcare reform finally gets passed. I think C+T is dead in the water, and that suits me fine.

How sensitive is our climate to increased CO2? How many additional ppm of CO2 will cause how much warming per unit of time? Guesses, educated and not, are all over the map. This is precisely the issue that Trenberth was speaking to in the email I’ve repeatedly highlighted, and the one which you and Jim have not spoken to… .

Jim actually has responded to that specific quote. He said you took it out of context, and the scientist in question was referring to the short term. ie: we can’t predict precisely what will happen next month if CO2 goes up x%, but we’ve got a decent handle on what will happen 10 years from now of CO2 gos up x% a month.

“All over the map?” You got links to back that up? From what I can tell there isn’t any science by climatologists that indicates we should not worry about the greenhouse effect.

Besides,t he fight over how this would actually work is likely to take a decade or two anyways. I think it’s a shame that some on the left are determined to paint our country as the biggest and baddest recalcitrants. (As usual, btw.) Especially since we’ll be the ones held to the highest standards and also be the ones asked to pay the largest costs, once you get down to a legitimate apples to apples comparison.

This is America. When’s the last time you heard somebody allege we were a boring middle-of-the-pack country? We’re either brave pioneers, lighting the way for all those other crappier countries; or a decadent people so depraved that we’re on the verge of self-destruction.

The left is right that we’re slowest among the rich countries. Europe has cap-and-trade already. I can’t think of another industrialized country that hasn’t formally ratified Kyoto. Obviously the Chinese and Indians are a much bigger problems, because they’ve got huge populations, but it’s pretty clear neither one will do jack until we do.

In the meantime have you looked at any of Obama’s proposals? IMO cap-and-trade would have minimal costs, and would help some, so it’s a no-brainer.

it’s pretty clear that some measures to reduce our own carbon output would probably be wise.

Well, that’s a pretty modest and qualified statement.

On top of that, you didn’t address the issue I pointed out in the first place. I’ll us blockquotes throughout to accentuate major points for you. You can read the 4 blockquotes below and get a good executive summary of my PoV.

The issue is not whether the climate has some sensitivity to CO2.

That’s uncontroversial science. CO2 can trap heat. We know this. So nothing in your post or links above points out anything that I’m contending about. Instead, and as previous noted, (and apparently ignored.

The issue is how much CO2 causes how much warming.

How sensitive is our climate to increased CO2? How many additional ppm of CO2 will cause how much warming per unit of time? Guesses, educated and not, are all over the map. This is precisely the issue that Trenberth was speaking to in the email I’ve repeatedly highlighted, and the one which you and Jim have not spoken to… .

Look, we know how much CO2 is in the environment now, and we have a reasonable handle on how quickly that’s increasing. Fine.

I’m even willing, for the sake of this argument, to stipulate that there has been, in general and on average, a slight warming trend over the last century, of just under a degree, give or take. (IIRC< just over 0 .75º).

OK?

That’s not a crisis.

We can keep studying this while we start doing the no-brainer stuff. We could easily wait another 10 or 20 or 50 years before establishing a vast international bureaucracy that polices carbon emissions. [And which will be as corrupt, as ineffectual, and as uneven-handed as the UN.]

Besides,t he fight over how this would actually work is likely to take a decade or two anyways. I think it’s a shame that some on the left are determined to paint our country as the biggest and baddest recalcitrants. (As usual, btw.) Especially since we’ll be the ones held to the highest standards and also be the ones asked to pay the largest costs, once you get down to a legitimate apples to apples comparison. To summarize:

• The issue is not whether the climate has some sensitivity to CO2.

• The issue is how much CO2 causes how much warming, and we don’t know.

• There has been, in general and on average, a slight warming trend over the last century, of just under a degree.

• That’s not a crisis.

Instead, it’s a matter for continued watchful concern. If we really do start to see the beginnings of drastic negative consequences, then we can undertake drastic responses.

Oops.

How come neither Jim nor you, Nick has attempted to speak to the issue of forcing, the issue of how much CO2 might cause how much warming? Because that’s the crux of it. We don’ tknow how sensitive the environment is to an increase of x ppm of CO2. There’s widespread disagreement.

From what I’ve seen there isn’t widespread disagreement. There’re some very, very passionate “skeptics” who don’t even try to make models of their own.

As for how sensitive the earth is to carbon levels take a look at ice core data. When snow freezes it traps bubbles of air in it, go to a glacier that has millenia of layers of snow and you have a long record of the atmosphere’s carbon content:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core#Ice_core_data

You’ll note that the most recent cold snap (10,000 years ago) ended at precisely the same time carbon content started increasing.

I will admit it’s theoretically possible some other factor could cause temperatures to track carbon levels so closely. But for that to be the case this other factor would also have to influence carbon level. And I simply have yet to see an alternative hypothesis that would explain both.

Until such a time as a hypothesis appears it’s pretty clear that some measures to reduce our own carbon output would probably be wise.

And you still refuse to acknowledge that Trenberth’s statements (According to Trenberth himself.) are aimed at the question of short term effects.

(Edited your comment to fix the blockquote. Hope you don’t mind)

So they produced a website presenting detailed evidence that they are right. Evidence that you are having significant trouble refuting…. However in the meantime the only sophisticated climate models we have say it would be a really good idea to pumping less Carbon into the atmosphere, ASAP, so we should implement cap-and-trade anyway.

How come neither Jim nor you, Nick has attempted to speak to the issue of forcing, the issue of how much CO2 might cause how much warming? Because that’s the crux of it. We don’ tknow how sensitive the environment is to an increase of x ppm of CO2. There’s widespread disagreement. Because, as Kevin Trenbeth pointed out in one of the emails:

How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!

Look, the convergence of collected data suggests we’ve quite possibly or even probably had a warming trend of nearly a degree over the last century, which coincides with an increase in atmospheric CO2. It’s plausible that the CO2 caused that warming. But even if we assume that this correlation really is causation, we don’t know how much warming will result from any given increase in CO2.

So the argument that we must do something now (before it’s too late!!) is primarily an application of the philosophical notion that we should be very careful. Every one of the models that Nick talks about has as its underlying presumptions that the correlation really is causation, that we must be really careful, and that the current trend will be at least steady, or may accelerate.

Models are models. They aren’t reality. They are based on presumptions.

Did you know that the pertinent information that the denialists always claim is being covered up is posted online?

No it isn’t. I read that whole set of back-and-forths. The East Anglians say it is, but it isn’t. What they kept trying to do was point folks at a giant pile of data from which they selected their subset and then performed calculations on it.

Unless the East Anglians say precisely which data they used and what they did to analyze it, the East Anglian data can’t be verified. Which Tully already patiently explained, and which you ignored.

I challenge you to speak directly to this Jim, without changing the subject. Currently, you are simply, repeating the same dodge the East Anglians tried when they were conspiring to evade a valid legal freedom of information request.

Nick, you apparently didn’t bother to read it either closely or in context, as it was a rebuttal of the claim of “RealClimate” being some mythically disinterested group of objective scientists. They’re not, not even remotely, which was the point.

And as I said, ignoring them because you can prove they ain’t all-knowing, all-powerful, omni-benevolent gods of climate change makes as much sense as ignoring McKinley because he’s McKinley.

Maybe you better do some googlin’, as they do indeed, and the flawed technique that produced it in the MBH/1999 reconstruction study is still in use by the RC people.

The hockey stick is a picture, not a technique. Congratulations on your belated realization of that fact. And that attempt to recover by claiming you meant something completely different was sloppy at best.

It should be noted even your attempt to deflect that line of attack is fatally flawed. Climate change is cutting edge research. You implicitly admit that when you claim it’s so unsettled that we shouldn’t do anything. And nobody is surprised when cutting edge research is obsolete a decade after it was published in 1999.

**Heck the logical thing to do when a UN report is challenged is to ask the folks who wrote it about the controversy.**

ROFLMAO. Thereby evoking the immediate response of “No, we’re as clean as the driven snow! Trust us! We would never fudge figures or ever ever make mistakes or exaggerate the results of meta-study conglomerations!”

They tried that. It didn’t work.

So they produced a website presenting detailed evidence that they are right. Evidence that you are having significant trouble refuting.

As for the temperature studies, you are absolutely right. The data should be public.

However in the meantime the only sophisticated climate models we have say it would be a really good idea to pumping less Carbon into the atmosphere, ASAP, so we should implement cap-and-trade anyway.

BTW, you do realize at least one of those models was produced by an agency controlled by an AGW skeptic? NASA was under Bush for eight of the past nine years. Which implies that a) Bush was so dumb a conspiracy of English researchers was able to surreptitiously control NASA while he was President, or b) the science NASA produced for those eight years showed global warming was a problem.

**As for the hockey stick they don’t use it on RealClimate. **

Maybe you better do some googlin’, as they do indeed, and the flawed technique that produced it in the MBH/1999 reconstruction study is still in use by the RC people. They devote quite a bit of discussion and outlinkage to their apologetics and evasions over the noted deficiencies of how some of their own have presented it, and how it was constructed. BTW, the “MBH” of the original “hockey stick” study stands for Mann, Bradley, and Hughes. Mann and Bradley are two of the five current lead contributors for RealClimate. Mann was a lead author of TAR. Bradley was a contributing author to TAR, and when questioned before Congress and asked to produce his data and adjustments for the HS, notably evaded the question and did not produce the data. Hughes was also a lead author for the TAR. TAR relied heavily on the MBH/199 study. 4AR did as well, but the actual diagram ended up being redacted out of the 4AR for apparently political reasons.

**Heck the logical thing to do when a UN report is challenged is to ask the folks who wrote it about the controversy.**

ROFLMAO. Thereby evoking the immediate response of “No, we’re as clean as the driven snow! Trust us! We would never fudge figures or ever ever make mistakes or exaggerate the results of meta-study conglomerations!”

Except that from the HRCU data dump, it looks like exactly that was done with some things, including the crucial and critical HRCU temperature reconstructions.

No, the logical (and ethical, and scientific) thing to do is to isolate the questioned and questionable studies, and for same re-examine the raw data, the integrity of same, the adjustments made to it, the justifications for said adjustments, and the integrity, assumptions, and construction of the models used to shape the final product. Which is notably what HCRU fought tooth and nail to prevent, as revealed (and predicted) in the HRCU data dump.

Since the reliability and verifiability of the historical temperature record is crucial both to the doomsaying and to the empirical testing of any and all GCM models (or other studies) incorporating same or based on it in any part (the GCM’s are HYPOTHETECIAL constructs that can only be verfied by testing them for reliable predictions, a test they have to date notably failed at in substantial regards), and since ALL the five major sets of historical temperature data rely to some extent on the work product of HRCU, they are now ALL in question as to reliability and proper construction.

The way to fix that is to replicate and (hopefully) confirm the work. In the open, not in secret. Because that’s how science is supposed to work.

Regardless the Russians are known for having “patriotic” hacker groups that occasionally screw with their country’s enemies. Their exploits include a massive DoS attack that derailed the economy of a Baltic state that displeased them (IIRC it was Estonia). So three passwords are well within their capabilities.

@Tully,
Your last post makes no more sense than ignoring McKinley simply because he’s a “denialist.” Heck the logical thing to do when a UN report is challenged is to ask the folks who wrote it about the controversy.

As for the hockey stick they don’t use it on RealClimate. One of the major reasons I distrust global warming skeptics is they keep talking about an 10-year-old study like it’s the only thing anyone has ever done on this issue. What about the Oyster Guy:
http://fromthearchives.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-climate-change-thoughts.html

So Al Gore put it in his movie. BFD. The movie is not the science. If you want to seriously argue whether it’s happening a movie made by a politician is simply irrelevant.

However, almost all of the founders of RealClimate are lead authors for IPCC, heavily vested in the AGW alarmism of same, and they started the site to combat criticism of the IPCC TAR. RealClimate was begun specifically to defend the debunked “hockey stick” methodology of Mann & Bradley — methodology so flawed no serious work used it before or since — and has since branched out to defending all criticism of the IPCC “consensus.” You can find several of them in the HCRU email dump, Mann in particular. While not “at” HRCU they are most assuredly part of the IPCC/HRCU “net” that was revealed by the dump.

Pielke Jr. and Pielke Sr. have both been active in trying to advocate for real climate science, and been vastly pilloried by the dedicated CO2/AGW cartel for doing so, even though both do believe in (have done some heavy lifting in) the human role in climate change. Their apostatic sin is in believing (and demonstrating through rigorous research, Sr. in particular) that the forcing by co2 is vastly overstated, and that human influence is mostly regional in nature.

Regarding the rest – like I said:

“This is, of course, an impossible task as far as Jim is concerned. Anyone who does offer any argument against “their points” is – in his world – a “denialist” and, by definition, not reputable.”

Since Jim prefers to debate the messengers rather than the message, and write about websites rather than the website content, I offer this observation from Roger Pielke Jr about the true nature of the Real Climate blog:

“I have long pointed to Real Climate as a canonical example of stealth issue advocacy. They claim on their site to be disinterested:

“The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.”

The reality is that they are far from disinterested. The fact that they have a political agenda is not problematic in the slightest. The problem is that they are seeking to hide their politics behind science. This has the net effect of pathologically politicizing the science because most of the issues that they raise, which they say are scientific in nature, are really about politics. It is not a big leap for observers to conclude that these guys are really about politics rather than science, regardless of the reality. People are not dumb and can see through this sort of misdirection with relative ease. Perhaps the most significant and lasting consequence of the CRU email hack/leak/whatever will be to strip away any possibility of a facade of disinterestedness among these activist scientists. In the long run that is probably a very good thing. In the near term it probably means an even more politicized climate debate.

In The Honest Broker I describe three effective roles that scientists can play in policy debates (the Pure Scientist does not play any direct role):

* The Science Arbiter who responds to questions put forward by decision makers.
* The Issue Advocate who seeks to reduce the scope of political choice.
* The Honest Broker who seeks to expand, or at least clarify, the scope of choice.

The Stealth Issue Advocate claims to be a Pure Scientist or a Science Arbiter, but really is working to reduce the scope of choice using science. A problem is that science is particularly ill-suited for political battles because decisions that take place in the context of uncertainty or a conflict in values always involve much more than science. One message of The Honest Broker is that, even though these categories are very much ideal types, scientists do face a choice about what role to play in the political process. And among the more damaging roles to the institutions of science is the Stealth Issue Advocate.”

Incidently, Roger is an advocate for “decarbonizing” the economy regardless of whether it is or is not a significant contributor to global warming.

The RealClimate website Jim cites as an authority on climate science is the soapbox for Michael Mann (father of the disputed “hockey stick” graph, YouTube “hide the decline” video star and currently being investigated by Penn State) as well as CRU scientists among others who are advocates for the AGW hypothesis.

Ooops. Yes, Mann is one of the contributors to RealClimate. But not one of the regular contributors comes from the CRU.

Then comes his claim that two of the links refer to the exact same article. Ah, no. Part of the Ars Technica article does refer to the PNAS paper but it also discusses other things, including a National Academy of Science study that concluded that Mann’s 1998 paper was irrelevant to whether the “hockey stick” is real since newer reconstructions by other researchers existed that reached the same conclusion.

When you say “the literature” concerning the Scientific American article I take it you mean Climate Audit. Do you really want to take everything McIntyre has claimed concerning Yamal as gospel truth? Not everyone does.

As far as the Sheppard piece is concerned, why should anything on American Thinker be required reading for anyone? After all, it generates masterpieces like this diatribe about how Obama is a racist. This paragon of science journalism that tries to claim that yes, AGW is all a fraud is another of their reasonable articles. As for Sheppard, here is the archive of his American Thinker articles. A review of them isn’t really all that encouraging that he could actually write something that could be considered required reading for people actually interested in the issues. Is this really something that anyone but denialists find compelling?

As the mainstream media move from abject denial to dismissive whitewashing, CRU co-conspirators move to Copenhagen for tomorrow’s U.N. climate meeting, intent on changing the world as we know it based primarily on their now-exposed trickery.
…
Mann has recently claimed that the available proxy data ended in 1980, but even his co-conspirators at RealClimate admit that’s nonsense.

And before there are accusations of ad hominem fallacies because I point out Mr. Sheppard’s questionable understanding of anything to do with the climate, here is another example. Yes, he is a denialist, not a skeptic. Sorry, kk, but that’s just what he is. Don’t like it? Try to disprove it with his own writings.