Global Warming and ID
by Bilbo As I was blithely ambling down the primrose path, oblivious to all the really important issues of the day — such as the refugees of Darfur — and escaping into the happy realm of ID, where one's opinion needn't have any impact on one's existential commitment to anything, I made the mistake of visiting Uncommondescent (UD). There for all the world to see was post after post, challenging the scientific community's opinion that human civilization is increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which in turn is increasing global warming.
Now it had never dawned on me that an advocate of ID needed to challenge the scientific community's opinion of global warming. It seemed perfectly logically compatible to believe in ID and in global warming, which up until now I have done. So at first I was slightly baffled as to why they were making such a fuss about it at UD. But then I started to see the dots that they were connecting (and the dots they conveniently didn't mention, but which are probably the real connection). For those of you who haven't noticed what's going on, here's the scoop in a nutshell:
Dot #1: Theories about global warming depend upon computer models. Critics of ID often try to show that irreducibly complex (IC) systems could have evolved without ID, using computer models. If an ID advocate rejects the computer models that refute ID, then she should reject the computer models that prove global warming. Interesting bit of logic here. Perhaps Dembski will include this in that book the Templeton Foundation is waiting for.
Dot #2: The majority of the scientific community rejects ID. The majority of the scientific community accepts global warming. An advocate of ID is going against the majority of the scientific community, when it comes to ID. Therefore an advocate of ID should go against the scientific community when it comes to global warming. More sterling logic. No doubt Dembski will want to include this in his next book, also.
Unmentioned Dot #1: Most of the funds the ID movement gets comes from politically conservative groups, such as the people who fund the Discovery Institute. And in turn, these people often depend upon the generosity of things like oil corporations. If you want to stay on their good side, it pays (literally) to be on their side when it comes to issues such as… well, such as global warming.
Unmentioned Dot #2: The religious right wants everyone to think that God is completely in charge of things like climate change, and therefore we humans shouldn't worry about what impact we may have on our planet. So if you want the religious right to support ID, better side with them when it comes to global warming.
Well, despite the astounding logic of all these dots, I still remain a believer in global warming and ID. But then I've always been a bit of a maverick. Why change now?
March 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
The posts at UD do not refute climate change per se, what they have been discussing is whether human derived CO2 is driving climate change. Climate change is normal for the earth, whether humans are now causing it is the issue.
The posters at UD are interested in the "humans cause global warming" hysteria as yet another example of the "scientific conscensus" run amok, not the the silly "if X then Y" illogic that you posit.
I recommend you watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle." I for one find a lot of parallels in the way the scientific community and media react in regards to Human Caused Global Warming and their behavior in regards to Darwinism.
Comment by Jehu — March 21, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Hi, Bilbo! I think you're noticing a particularly partisan (politically speaking) "camp" here, and we know its alignments in industry and gigacorps. But there's also reality.
First, let me say there is every good reason on earth for us to stop polluting our nest (this planet). You can't fly anywhere these days where you don't descend through a visible blanket of smog. That's wasteful and irresponsible, but on the political level that gets translated to party politics – you're either fer it or agin' it. No in betweens.
Reality is that we can't change our habits overnight. It's also reality that we have to start doing so right away. Purposefully, as responsible caretakers. We CAN tread lightly on the earth, we just need a real reason to do it. Global warming is pretty good…
…but only because global cooling (all the rage in the '70s) didn't manage to work. It's always something. When you get down to the level of dueling science reports, nothing's all that clear. Something is happening, it's potentially catastrophic, and there are several factors involved. One of 'em is that the sun just recently flipped its polarity. It does that every 11 years or so. The earth is doing the same thing. That only happens about once every 200K years. Though it's been 780K years since the last flip. The earth also has a long record of ice ages and global tropical Edens. They come and go, about as often as the sun flips its polarity.
Our contribution is significant enough to raise serious concern, and warrants immediate action. But we shouldn't try anything drastic (someone has suggested a few extra forest fires or nuclear bomb blasts). An impressive volcano could reverse things for awhile. The climate is changing. We need to do what we can to eliminate our contributions.
If the water is around your ankles, move to higher ground. §;o)
Comment by Joy — March 21, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Being an avid reader of UD and TT, I feel like I should defend UD here.
"Perhaps Dembski will include this in that book the Templeton Foundation is waiting for."
http://www.uncommondescent.com...
"Most of the funds the ID movement gets comes from politically conservative groups, such as the people who fund the Discovery Institute."
I think UD is Dembski's personal blog…and he gave mod power to a few individuals because he was too busy. If DI had any influence here, why did Dembski stop posting much at all? Dembski really doesn't post most about Global Warming, if it all.
"The religious right wants everyone to think that God is completely in charge of things like climate change,"
DaveS, who is the one mostly posting about Global Warming and who I believe spear-headed the discussion, isn't a Christian, if I remember correctly.
A better, and seemingly highly more probably explanation is that Dave and Gil believe the scientific case aims in their favor and see the same forces involved in promoting Darwinism and Global Warming.
Comment by Ben Z — March 21, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Jehu said:
I second that recommendation, having seen the film myself; but would also recommend a visit to realclimate.org, where the film is thoroughly fisked as a farrago of distortions, cherry-picked data, quote-mining and outright lies. The film-maker, Martin Durkin, has form…
(If Pez is reading – yes, I am coming back to you on the other thread – real life intervened…).
Comment by Robin Levett — March 21, 2007 @ 8:19 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 8:21 pm
I have been following the global warming debate for a while. I watched the Gore film and thought he made a good case. Then a friend sent me a link to the "Swindle" film. I watched that and thought that the Gore film misrepresented that human emmissions of CO2 were causing it. Then I did some searches for critiques of the Swindle film and discovered that the film misrepresented the facts.
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
The point is that popularized science can't be trusted. It represents a quandry for the non-specialist. Who to believe? We would all like to think that scientists are immune to ideology and personal bias. It's just not true. For the concerned citizen it seems that the only route is to become informed. Problem is that because of the specialty of science that may be out of reach for the average individual. What to do? It may appear to be obvious. Do no harm! But how to do that in a global environment is much more complex than many would understand.
ID faces similar issues. Many who reject ID do so based on the popular representation of such. They don't understand the entailment of materialist positions so they follow the media. Unfortunately it appears that the spin doctors have the power in a media rich culture where the populace take the superficiality on faith. Fortunately there are core "feelings" that are not that easily dispelled. They persist because of their power. This can be good and bad. The good is that not every whim of the scientific community must be granted authority. The bad occurs when science is ignored in favor of supersitition.
Comment by Steve Petermann — March 21, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Bilbo, I share your concerns about the environment and was concerned with CO2 levels before it became popular to do so. I have some reservations about the above however. To begin with "religious right" is a vague term that is often applied to those found to be both conservative and religious. Many, so described, would say that God entrusted them with responsibility for maintaining the environment and accountability to boot. It is theologically as accurate to state that God is in charge with respect to environmental issues as with anything else. It does not follow that this implies a license to be environmental abusers. Finally, I do not believe IDers in general (Dembski in particular) spend much time worrying about funding. Losing funding based on global warming issues is a stretch.
Comment by Bradford — March 21, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Dot # 3: The "scientific consensus" says that ID is not really a science because design detection is not scientific.
Dot # 4: However, the "scientific consensus" also states that we can detect the effects of "human activity" in the form of global warming.
Well, can we detect the effects of human activity or not???
Comment by endoplasmicMessenger — March 21, 2007 @ 8:47 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Steve Peterman,
I followed your link and I didn't find any refutation of facts from the Great Global Warming Swindle, just a small amount of wrangling over the way they were interpreted.
The main points from the Great Global Warming Swindle and how they were addressed by realclimate.org are as follows:
*CO2 levels lag climate temperature increase in ice core samples. Admitted to be true.
*Temperature increases cause the ocean to release more CO2. Not contested.
* Sun activity is the main driver of global temperatures. Not contested.
*There is a historic correlation between sunspots and higher temperatures. Not contested.
*Temperatures have been warmer in the recent past than they are today without industrial acitvity from humans. Not contested.
* Satellite data shows that the troposphere is not warming as fast as surface temperatures. This is the one thing they claim is wrong and theydispute the data. Apparently there is some debate about the data among scientists.
Comment by Jehu — March 21, 2007 @ 9:10 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Jehu,
Ok let's look at the data. I assume you place value on data:
Here's the graph that is used to promote the idea that CO2 is not the contributor. The curve that is promoted by Swindle apparently is manufactured about the steady decline of warming from 1940 to 1980:
http://i157.photobucket.com/al...
Here's the curve from the actual data published:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Notice the difference?
Also what Swindle fails to say is that the cooling during that period can easily be attributed to sulphate aerosols.
See this plot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Public polemics is one thing. Data is a whole other category. Wouldn't you agree?
Comment by Steve Petermann — March 21, 2007 @ 9:33 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Steve Peterman,
First, I did not see this as one of the more significant points in Swindle's argument. It is true there is a difference in the graphs. However, even realclimate.org admits that 1940 – 1970 was a cooling period, in spite of the fact that it was a time of huge increase in human related CO2 emissions due to industrial growth. Cooling during this time is contrary to the Human Caused Global Warming narrative.
So what do they do? Special pleading about sulphate areosols.
The far more significant points made by Swindle are not even contested, (except the troposphere temperatures). Those points are:
*CO2 levels lag climate temperature increase in ice core samples.
*Temperature increases cause the ocean to release more CO2.
* Sun activity is the main driver of global temperatures.
*There is a historic correlation between sunspots and higher temperatures.
*Temperatures have been warmer in the recent past than they are today without industrial acitvity from humans.
These facts are far more significant in my mind than the cause of the cooling period from 1940 -1970. I find it highly probative that they are uncontested by realclimate.org.
Comment by Jehu — March 21, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Jehu:
Indeed. But the film suggests that there is no explanation – and there is. Google "Milankovich cycles" – and note that they have been accepted as triggering the lurches from glacial to interglaical for many more years than AGW has been on the radar.
Once the orbital change has started thawing and a temeprature rise, CO2 would be driven out of solution from the warmer seas and take over as a driver of temperature.
Remember, we weren't around then to kick start it with massive amounts of fossil CO2.
But the relevance of this is that as human induced CO2 accumulation warms the ocean, more CO2 will come out of solution; amplifying the human-caused signal. That relevance was ignored – by editing of Wunsch's contribution…
Really? That the sun is the main contributor of energy to the atmosphere is certainly not contested – but the climatologists there point out that it isn't easy to actually match solar forcing to temperature records.
Correlation, yes; we are talking about the Maunder minimum, which occurs at the same time as the "Little Ice Age" – which was a Northern European and American, not a global, phenomenon.
Causation, no; there were a number of other factors during the LIA that would have been at least as important, including volcanic aerosols from enhanced volcanic activity at the time, plus evidence that the NAO was weakened at the time.
True – but that doesn't mean that today's sharp upturn in global temperatures, in the absence of the usual previous suspects, but in the presence of large amounts of human induced CO2 emission isn't caused by CO2 forcing. That CO2 is a GHG, and that it can cause increases in global temperature, is a matter of basic physics from the middle and end of the 19th century. Google Arrhenius.
No; the debate has been largely finished, and in favour of tropospheric warming in accordance with the the AGW view.
What you haven't mentioned is the pervasive dishonesty in the film. Take the graph of temperatures during the twentieth century – it has been shown to have been fraudulently manipulated – Durkin admitted it, and a corrected graph was used for the second transmission.
That graph was compared with a graph of solar cycle length. The combination left off the last 20 years – which were the years when the solar line deviated – dramatically – from the temperature line. Again, that solar quantity doesn't seem to relate to anything particularly relevant to the argument – it isn't a plot of sunspot frequency , or even a reasonable proxy thereof.
The temperature plot was also used to support the claim that CO2 forcing was out of synch with temperature changes, because of the drop in temperature between 1945 and 1975 (described in the film as 4 decades!). Nowhere in the film is there any mention of the aerosol load produced by industry and volcanic activity between those years that would, to start with, overwhelm the CO2 forcing signal. Once First World industry cleaned up its act, and the aerosols fell out of the atmosphere (they have a persistence measured in years, whereas CO2 's is measured in decades to centuries), the temperature started rising again.
Have you looked at Chris Merchant's presentation yet? It's referred to on realclimate.org – it's a big download, but makes a number of very good points about the film.
Comment by Robin Levett — March 21, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Jehu:
"Special pleading". You have got to be kidding – or you are too young to remember "acid rain".
Just as it is a matter of basic physics that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and all other things being equal increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration will produce a global temperature rise; so it is a matter of basic physics that sulphate and other aerosols will reflect back incoming solar energy.
That there were a lot of sulphate aerosols up there is demonstrated by what happened as it "acid rain"ed out.
Where is the special pleading?
Comment by Robin Levett — March 21, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
March 21st, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Bilbo wrote:
Hi Bilbo,
I think there's something else going on here, psychologically. It takes a certain amount of hubris for a skeptic to convince himself that 99% of biologists are wrong about evolution, and that he is one of the elite few who can see the errors they are making out of stupidity or ideological precommitments.
It is, of course, logically possible that the skeptic is correct, and that his tens of thousands of educated, intelligent opponents are wrong; but a prudent skeptic will 1) bend over backwards to understand the full power of his opponents' arguments, and 2) encourage criticism of his own views, realizing that he may have his own blind spots similar to those he is accusing the scientific community of possessing.
Someone with a prodigious ego-to-ability ratio, like DaveScot, will not take these steps. Despite his own meager grasp of science, which is demonstrated to him on almost a daily basis (or at least used to be, back when dissenters were still allowed on Uncommon Descent), he has persuaded himself that he is correct and the entire evolutionary biology community is wrong. This requires him to vastly underestimate the intelligence and diligence of evolutionary biologists, and to vastly overestimate his own. Once he succeeds at that, it's a comparatively small jump to believing that the climate science community is wrong as well, and that he is the Gifted One who will point their errors out to a grateful humankind.
This is the same sort of hubris that allows Phillip Johnson, a lawyer, to conclude that the scientific community is wrong not only about evolution, but also about the link between HIV and AIDs.
If the ID debate had arisen 45 years ago, I guarantee that we would have been treated to the spectacle of ID proponents denying the link between smoking and lung cancer.
Comment by keiths — March 21, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:34 am
Would it be fitting to call that level of hubris 'Gallilean'?
In any case, it's true that once you can believe the 'scientific community' can be wrong about one issue, you can more easily believe that it will be wrong about another. My gut accepts anthropogenic global warming but I can't help but get the impression that the 'We're all going to die!' attitude of most people I know is grossly overstating the case.
Comment by BenK — March 22, 2007 @ 2:34 am
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:52 am
Not unless it is backed by Galilean talent and intelligence.
Comment by keiths — March 22, 2007 @ 2:52 am
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 am
"I think there's something else going on here, psychologically. It takes a certain amount of hubris for a skeptic to convince himself that 99% of biologists are wrong about evolution, and that he is one of the elite few who can see the errors they are making out of stupidity or ideological precommitments."
Dembski has said it before that ID and evolution are not contradictory. To take DaveS to have ever meant that 99 percent of the scientists you mentioned to be flat out wrong is misleading.
Comment by Ben Z — March 22, 2007 @ 2:54 am
March 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 am
Of course! Because scientific consensus has never been wrong! In fact, that is how truth is determined, you don't review the evidence, you just have scientists take a vote.
For example, you don't need to know that solar activity has a greater impact on global warming than CO2 or that more CO2 is made by the sun warming the ocean than by humans. All you need to know is that the scientific consensus is that humans cause global warming.
That's it! No more thinking for yourself and analyzing the evidence. In fact, anybody who does has a huge ego bordering on megalomania! They are probably a danger to themselves and their community.
At the very least, anybody who dares to question scientific consensus should be publicly mocked and belittled.
Comment by Jehu — March 22, 2007 @ 3:30 am
March 22nd, 2007 at 3:52 am
Jehu wrote:
Jehu,
Now that you've vented your anger on that strawman, how about reading what I actually wrote?
Comment by keiths — March 22, 2007 @ 3:52 am
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:37 am
Jehu:
Got any evidence to go with those assertions?
Comment by Robin Levett — March 22, 2007 @ 9:37 am
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:56 am
keiths,
The rest of what you wrote doesn't really change the point of my sarcasm does it?
Comment by Jehu — March 22, 2007 @ 10:56 am
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Ironically, I think there are some striking parallels between the global warming crowd and those who advocate ID as a scientific theory. Both groups IMO have shot themselves in the foot by taking some very preliminary scientific findings too far, and then compounding that error by turning prematurely to a political/public policy forum. For example, I have, personally, never been sold on the idea that ID is presently a scientific theory or is it anywhere close to becoming one. On the other hand, whatever you call it (ID or something else), it is a philosophical/ theological position that people have used since ancient times to interpret the findings of physical science "˜meta-scientifically' to try to make some sense of it all. In other words, if materialism (which is a metaphysical not scientific position) is a legitimate interpretation of science so is ID. This is BTW where I agree with many ID scholars.
However, in principle, and even though I'm skeptical, I don't have a problem with those who wish promote ID as a scientific theory. In an open democratic society they are certainly free to do so. But, I don't see how it helps their cause to align themselves, even tacitly, with a particular political party or political movement. (I'm specifically thinking of the "˜Discovery Institute' and "˜Uncommon Descent' here.) You don't have to be of a certain political, philosophical or religious persuasion to be a scientist, enjoy science or do good science. The first rule of politics IMO is that "˜perception is reality.' Apparently some in the ID movement don't understand this rule. As we shall see they are not alone.
The so called global warming movement has made similar blunders. For example, I have no doubt that global warming is occurring, but I still think that it is an open question whether CO2 emissions resulting from human activity is a significant factor in that warming. If the current warming trend is primarily a natural one, then I think there is little we can or should do. The climatological science tells us there have been numerous warming and cooling cycles, many more pronounced than the present one, that have occurred throughout the long history of our planet. I'm personally skeptical that we have a large enough data set to presently make any kind of definitive judgment of what exactly is happening. However, I am open minded. It is, after all, entirely possible that human CO2 emissions is a significant factor in the current warming trend. But you need to convince a skeptic like me with the evidence, the cold hard facts, not with hysteria and other kind's of "˜crisis type' emotional appeals.
It furthermore, doesn't help persuade me when a movement uses airhead Hollywood types or a former politician like Al Gore to publicize the so called crisis. As a political independent it makes me very suspicious when a self described non-partisan movement develops its strategy from a page that it has torn right of the playbook of an organized political party. Can anyone guess what party that might be? Once again the first rule of politics is that "˜perception is reality.' If you want to be truly non partisan you need to carefully position yourself so that you are at least perceived as trying to be non-partisan.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — March 22, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
What's the big deal? Scientists are On The Trail (when they're not playing Chicken Little for the cameras)! There are all sorts of inventive things we can do about global warming…
1. We can bury CO2 by injecting trapped power plant emissions beneath BP's Miller field in the North Atlantic. That this would also displace the remaining oil in that tapped-out field to allow BP a few more decades of drilling income is a bonus!
2. We could launch a nuclear war! A mere regional exchange of relatively minor nukes on cities with lots of burnable organic stuff (people, animals, wooden buildings) should do the trick!
3. We can pump a million tons of sulphur into the atmosphere to reflect solar heat!
4. We can use fish tank pumps to filter CO2 from the air!
5. We can 'adjust' ocean nutrient levels to draw sea salps, and THEY can clean up our mess!
6. We can inject nanotubes into the atmosphere, and they'll reflect as much heat as a big volcano eruption would!
7. We could engineer a plague to kill off about 5 billion people, and we wouldn't need all that oil and electricity!
8. We could harness ocean currents and tides to generate electricity!
Or we could switch to a hydrogen economy. Or we could build a lot of new nukes (and just warm the air and water directly, bypassing CO2). Or we could switch to biodiesel and make EPA/GM come off their new SVO diesel for passenger cars and trucks. Or we could reduce our demand by any of a dozen different schemes, including investing in widespread mass transit (run on biodiesel). Or we could, if we really tried, invent something amazingly simple, cheap and readily available to replace several energy-intensive industries.
Nothing much gets done while politicians and scientists are still arguing about whether or not there's a problem, and whether or not we're responsible, and whether or not there's anything to be done about it. There are lots of possible ways to address the problem (if they can agree that there is one before Florida drowns), some of them more dangerous than doing nothing at all, and most of them ill-advised if they're not about changing our fuels and consumption habits.
So. Let's say all the scientists and all the politicians decide tomorrow there's a big problem that must be addressed immediately. That gets us to the next stage, which is scientists and politicians arguing about what will work, how expensive it is, and whether Haliburton should get a no-bid contract to do it. That'll only take another decade.
Then let's say we decide on some inventive, high-tech solution (short of deliberate nuclear war). Nanotubes sprayed by high-flying AF tankers, say. The next week a big volcano erupts and we're suddenly in an ice age. Or we alter the nutrient levels in the seas to encourage sea-critters no one eats and all the fish and cetaceans die off…
The reason we need to stop polluting our air and land and water is that it's wrong for us to pollute our air and land and water. It's short-sighted, it's selfish, and it contributes greatly to inequalities that cause millions of unnecessary deaths and disease every year. "Carbon Credits" are a scam of first order, penalizing developing countries greatly while giving rich, wasteful nations a free pass.
There have been big pollution problems abroad in the world all my life. I have worked against problems in my region wherever I've lived. I've seen whole landscapes dyed gray with coal dust. I've seen coal tailings piled on the sides of the Green River like a moonscape as far as I could see in any direction. I've seen rivers burn and towns poisoned and fish kills all over the place. I've seen black lung and Navaho children playing on riverbanks covered by inches of uranium salts from broken tailings dams. I've seen corporate guidos deliberately sentence thousands of people to disease and early death in order to save a buck…
It's always something. And always something we could do about it if we really wanted to. But whenever money and power come into play, it's unreasonable to expect money and power to do anything but defend its turf. They do that pretty effectively, in my experience.
Comment by Joy — March 22, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 1:57 pm
By the way, while we were all diverted to watching (and arguing about) who's responsible for global warming, Today is World Water Day and there's plenty of good reason to be concerned…
Water has always been a big deal to me. Seeing rivers burn (Cayahoga), fish rot while they're still alive (dioxin from paper mills), cancer rates soar from irrigation with radioactive water (tritium dumping, Los Alamos and other NLs), and complete deregulation of hog waste management (Cape Fear) hasn't helped my attitude. The lakes here in the high country were drained a few years ago to deal with a drought in South Carolina. Water wars in the Middle East could outstrip sectarian violence very soon. Pollution from mining and oil drilling in Africa and South America has ruined entire aquifers. Lack of snow in the Rockies means retirees in Palm Springs can't water their lawns or wash their cars! Death! Disease! Sick Children! Dead Fish!
Now, this is something I can do more about than try to convince Duke Energy to stop running nukes and put scrubbers in their coal stacks. I'm planning on solar panels when we replace the roof (if we can refinance, Duke will give us a backwards meter) and a ram-jet on the creek to do all the water pumping. Can't do wind here because it's not steady. It's either not blowing at all, or it's taking trees down. No in between. But I've a couple of steady creeks on both sides of the ridge, so a little water turbine and generator isn't out of the question. If it's clean, that is. It'll have to go in between the trout ponds.
Water. Bread may be the staff of life, but without water to wash it down with you're just begging to choke. We have pretty clean municipal water in the US, and you can always filter out the chemicals at the sink. Or buy someone else's tap water because it's in a plastic bottle that looks cool. I save those bottles from whenever the city folks visit and can't break the habit. Fill 'em up from the tap. That way I can still drink great water when I go to town, but I look cool doing it!
My tap water is better than any bottled water on the planet. I had it tested by the extension service when we bought the place, and HE said we could sell it! We don't (because that requires drilling a well that can tap at least 200K gallons a day, by regulation). Our water comes from a spring, and this makes us forever conscious of our resource. No chemicals, quite a lot of good minerals (including minute quantities of gold). Crystal clear and cold, cold, cold!
First, the spring bubbles up beneath the roots of a giant tulip poplar tree some 20 feet or so above the creek. Two copper tubes are rocked into place at the low end, through which the water flows downhill into the top of a concrete cistern made of an 18" length of concrete pipe set on its end in the ground and capped with a concrete slab (now moss-covered). The spring does silt up, despite being loosely covered with metal grate and sheet metal. We have to dig it out about once every other month. The first cistern settles out the particulates, and at the other side de-silted water flows through a larger pipe into the pumphouse cistern.
The pumphouse cistern is 750 gallons and concrete, but was cracked when an oak tree fell on it a couple of years ago (had to rebuild the pumphouse completely – it exploded). It holds about 500 gallons now, and there's an overflow pipe out the wall to an old claw-footed bathtub with algae and water lilies growing. From there an overflow pipe goes underground straight to the creek.
We replaced the sump pump last spring. It pumps water from the cistern 200 feet up the mountainside through PVC pipe to the back of the house. Re-plumbed not long ago too, and the water coming into the wall gets divvied to the washing machine, the water heater and bathroom, and through the basement ceiling to the kitchen sink. There is an outdoor faucet by the back door. That's it. Have a low-flow toilet, and by habit shower quickly and turn off the water while we're brushing our teeth.
I collect rainwater from the roof into a 55-gallon drum with a faucet and hose on the bottom. I can run that hose to the outdoor shower off the shed if there's lots of company camping in the yard, but usually use it for watering the garden. The garden is compost-and-mulch heavy, usually doesn't need much extra water. Sometimes I have the kids use it to wash cars. There's a sign on the bathroom wall that encourages conservation. And whenever visiting guys ask where the bathroom is, we usually point out a convenient tree. It's not like we have neighbors or anything…
There is nothing upstream of my water supply but about a quarter million acres of National Forest. All the way to the Continental Divide. No farms, no houses, no livestock operations… We are aware. We are careful. We conserve. We do not buy our drinking water in 1-liter plastic bottles or 5-gallon plastic bottles.
Guess what I'm perplexed about is how people can be so wasteful and cavalier about water for their lawns and their swimming pools and hot tubs, etc., yet so paranoid about their drinking water that they'll pay a buck a bottle for it. A filter at the tap costs about 2¢ a gallon. A buck a bottle is more expensive than gasoline, and petroleum-CO2 intensive just to produce all those little bottles!
Why is it that people who tut-tut global warming and oil crises and scarce clean water all day long can be so easily convinced to buy energy-intensive pollution-causing bottled water by the apparent consumerist desire to look cool? Can people like this ever be expected to care about serious problems in the world? Or to DO anything about serious problems in the world?
Comment by Joy — March 22, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Or, Joy, we could just wait for the next natural cycle to turn and for the climate to cool. Anybody who wants to look at temperature data over the last centuries can see that at any given time the climate is cooling or warming. It's never static.
The global-warming-caused-by-humans movement is a political power movement for some, and a religion for others. Global warming "research" is politically funded by the government that gives grants to those scientists who can somehow spin human caused climate change into their publications.
The emotionally driven responses to any questioning that humans cause climate change are the strongest evidence that something is wrong with the latest apocalyptic rantings from environmentalists. (Some good examples can be seen above!) Prior predictions of catastrophe have always been shown to be false, e.g, global cooling, Malthusian starvation due to population, acid rain, etc. My favorite example is Paul Erlich of Population Bomb fame. According to his predictions in the 60's and 70's we are all supposed to be dead right now because of increasing population. Whenever his predictions fail to materialize, he just makes up more disaster scenarios for the future and, sure enough, there are plenty of people who eagerly lap them up. He has been exactly, perfectly, 180-degree wrong in his every utterance. Has he therefore been canned and thrown out of the scientific community in disgrace? Nope, he's still at Stanford mumbling nonsense and no doubt getting paid a load of dough and receiving government grants.
I guess there's a deep yearning in the human heart to believe that the time in which one lives is a special time when the forces at play in the world will come to a climax. It gives a meaning to one's life, and in a secular age radical environmentalism is a substitute for religion. How does that old aphorism go? "When you stop believing in God, you start believing in anything." I don't see any difference between Al Gore and the televangelist of the day happily predicting that the Apocalypse is just around the corner. Well, maybe there is one little difference: Al Gore wants to have the government point a gun at me and reach into my wallet. As far as the televangelist goes, I can just laugh at him and not fear that he's going to mug me.
Comment by Stuart Harris — March 22, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Stuart Harris:
Hi, Stuart. I'm sure that for some who devote their entire lives to promoting environmental threats or animal rights or ID or gay rights or save the whales [insert cause of choice here], those 'causes' may hold a place akin to religion. Not a very satisfying one, though. A few fits and starts are made – the '70s were productive for environmental legislation – then lawyers craft loopholes and the greedy go back to trashing the planet and the environmentalists chain themselves to trees and nothing changes. It's pretty amazing that ANYTHING gets done, about anything.
But for many other concerned citizens of this planet, stewardship is a serious responsibility and greed is one of the seven deadly sins. There is simply no good excuse for many of our ugliest, most environmentally degrading practices. Other than greed, that is. Money talks. Nobody listens to marching hippies (young or old), and all those little old Quaker ladies are a regular Big Deal Terrorist Threat infiltrate-their-coffee-clutch-with-FBI agents these days. It's always something, and hardly anybody's serious about doing anything (or they'd be doing it).
Our government is a clumsy, lumbering giant with the collective IQ of a dandelion, and is not designed to deal with honest-to-God threats to the republic. If it wasn't clear before, it certainly became clear on 9-11 and was underlined when Katrina drowned New Orleans. We'd rather go into hock to China so we can fight wars for oil than carpool or ride the bus, and the economy ensures there's lots of disadvantaged teenagers to go fight those wars. Rich people don't care and poor people don't count. Carte blanche.
The world may or may not be operating under an imminent threat of mass death and destruction, any minute of every hour of every day and night. We are pretty much at the mercy of nature, when we're not at the mercy of politicians with WMDs (or jihadists with dirty bombs). Humans contribute quite a bit of filth that doesn't help the global warming situation (and causes all sorts of respiratory death and disease to humans), but I don't believe we'll ever do anything about it on purpose. It'll change when it has to change because it'll have to change, hardly anyone will notice. The next technology is likely to be just as big a threat one way or another.
Nor, given the links in my previous post, do I think we SHOULD do anything (about global warming, other than insist the loopholes be plugged and renewables developed)! With so much disagreement in science and among policymakers, it's a sure bet we'd do the worst, most damaging mad scientist thing possible. I don't think God has anything to do with any of it, and I'm not looking for God to save us from our own stupidity.
What I can do is guard precious resources, make the best of all the many ways I can tread lightly on the earth. Why, if enough people just did that much (stop buying tap water in plastic bottles!) we might notice that some things are getting better instead of worse. You never know…
Comment by Joy — March 22, 2007 @ 4:34 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Hi Joy,
I just want to compliment you on how you are handling this subject.
I especially like the "stop buying tap water in plastic bottles!". That has got to be one of the most glaring sign of obscenity we face every day.
This may be a product of our generation (I am a grandparent too).
Excuse the soapbox, but we really do need to encourage people to stop, think and challenge. And, oh yeah, recognise the difference between wishful thinking and actual reality.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — March 22, 2007 @ 5:19 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Yikes, this thread has gotten to long for me to jump in the middle of it and say anything profound, so I guess I'll just respond to the original point, and keep it short.
In general, Bilbo, I think you're right. I've thought it was rather odd how much digital ink UD expends on global warming myself.
There are some pieces of crossover between ID and global warming though. Next to Darwinism/ID, global warming is easily the most politically and philosophically charged area of science. Just a cursory glance reveals that an awful lot of people in the global warming debate have invested a metaphysical stake in it. Religious conservatives tend to be against global warming legislation, but it's just as true that the groups that are heavily invested in the global warming ordeal tend to veer towards atheism. Both sides act with metaphysical zeal, and it's easy to find examples of dissenting scientists being treated with, shall we say, less than perfectly dispassionate reason.
Certainly this doesn't prove anyone right or wrong, but what this means for us laymen, imo, is that we should approach the whole thing with skepticism, and not simply take anyone's word for it, even if we don't understand it all ourselves. Of course, this doesn't mean you should disregard everything they say either, or that it's fine to treat the earth as your trash can until someone convinces you that it's harmful – just that you ought react as you would to anyone giving you advice when they have a strong stake in the matter.
There's one other thing where I'll sort of disagree with you, and that's on computer models. It's my opinion that computer models should pretty much never be taken as proof of any theory (unless it's a matter of pure deduction, like a mathematical proof), especially if the factors involved are more complex and less well-known than, say, a game of rock-paper-scissors. Computers are mysterious to a lot of people, so the idea that a computer "shows" something seems impressive to them, but in reality you can make a model to "show" just about whatever you want.
Comment by Deuce — March 22, 2007 @ 6:54 pm
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Interesting input from everyone. I think my main point — that there is no logical connection between ID and global warming — still holds. There may be psychological, political, philosophical, theological or other connections. But no logical connections. Therefore all of you have been officially off-topic, and if I were responsible, I would send all your comments to the memory hole. But I'm not very responsible.
The other difference between ID and global warming — as I hinted at in my OP — is that unlike ID, global warming is an existential problem. We are playing Russian roulette. Is the gun loaded? Is it loaded with BBs? Or blanks? Or with 44s? Is there one bullet? Or is every chamber loaded? A decision not to do anything about global warming is a decision to play as if the gun is empty. Unlike Joy, I think there are rational decisions our government can make that will significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Will we make them? Or live as greedy pigs and hope the gun is empty?
Comment by Bilbo — March 22, 2007 @ 7:51 pm
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 am
One dot that nobody has connected here is global warming as leverage for forced worldwide socialism and wealth redistribution. There's a very good reason why the U.S. Senate rejected Kyoto 95-0. And there's a very good reason to be skeptical of a U.N. science conference. Follow the money, follow the money, follow the money.
I think all DaveScot is saying is that it's ok to be skeptical of scientific concensus. Gore's hypocrisy before congress should speak volumes as to what it's really about. Is the scientific materialist crowd any different when it comes to NeoDarwinism?
Comment by chunkdz — March 23, 2007 @ 1:37 am
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:31 am
Bilbo:
Oh, I said we should close the loopholes that keep scrubbers out of the stacks of coal plants (they were required by law long ago, industry lobbyists wrote loopholes in to gut the law, and coal plants are as dirty as they ever were). We could require the collection and sequestration of ash (which is both radioactive and concentrates heavy metals) by enforcing reclamation laws already on the books. Instead of letting them use this dangerous toxic waste as 'inert filler' in agricultural fertilizer or mix it with water to inject into deep wells to pollute entire aquifers we rely upon for our water.
We can insist that laws governing fuel efficiency and emissions actually be applied to the transportation industry and car manufacturers. We could require that truck stops along our interstates offer biodiesel, and set a timetable for a biodiesel switch for rail and shipping. This involves rearranging our agricultural support system and investing in production facilities too, so that will take awhile. Big farm equipment, btw, uses engines (diesels) invented to run on peanut oil.
We can fund R&D for energy storage technologies and subsidize decentralization of power supplies. We can redesign and rebuild 'the grid' to accommodate this. If we can store high-energy plasmas essentially forever (so long as the power's on) in toroidal loops for use in smashing atoms, we can come up with some way to store electrons for peak demand. We can extend tax breaks for homeowners who install PVs or other generating technologies on their property, and make all electric companies offer the backwards meters (so homeowners don't also have to buy storage batteries). We can require by law that new housing be designed energy-efficient and produce at least some of its own energy requirements (a simple rooftop solar water heater would qualify).
And we can seriously work with public transportation – the diesel fleets (garbage trucks, utility trucks, city buses) in my nearest city have been running on biodiesel by statute for 5 years now. This can happen everywhere. We can invest in high speed rail between cities. Diesel trains can run on biodiesel too. We can offer specific incentives to businesses to purchase vehicles and pay drivers to pick up employees at hub locations and pool them to and from work.
We can legalize the agricultural production of hemp for seed oil, fiber and cellulose (plastics, ethanol), thereby going back to how plastics were made before Big Business decided to use petroleum instead, but with cleverer, more modern processes. And we can begin to institute responsible farming practices generally, to sustain and enrich our cropland instead of stripping it and turning it into giant swaths of toxic waste dump deadlands. We can enforce clean water regulations. We can enforce bans on CFCs.
There's a lot we can do, in addition to not buying tap water in little plastic bottles. Launching a regional nuclear war or releasing nanotubes in the atmosphere or artificially redirecting ocean currents or burning millions of acres of tropical forests or killing oceans or releasing designer plagues are NOT things we should do just because this scientist or that one claims he's got the Sure Cure for global warming.
Comment by Joy — March 23, 2007 @ 10:31 am
March 25th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Jehu:
You forgot, "…and increasingly compared to NAZIs and Holocaust deniers."
Comment by Axeman — March 25, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
June 21st, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Joy
I personally watched over the decades the smog in Los Angeles go away. I also personally watched over the decades the acid rain go away in the northeast. I have no idea where you're getting the idea that we've done nothing and air pollution is just as big a problem as ever. The United States has done a lot beginning with the Clean Air Act of 1964.
Here's the deal. CO2 was never considered to be an air pollutant. It does no harm to breathe it in far greater concentrations than we could ever increase it to through human activity. Plants demonstrably grow better in higher concentrations of it. Given that plants are the primary producers in the food chain and CO2 is their food when you mess with that you may get something you never bargained for – mass starvation due to a steep & rapid decline in output of the primary producers in the food chain. I've read estimates that agricultural output is up 15% due to nothing more than increased level in CO2 in the atmosphere.
Add to this there's a whole lot of good science that tends to refute the notion that anthropogenic CO2 is causing or will cause any problems due to excessive atmospheric heating. Climate *cooling* is far worse than warming. Plants don't grow well in ice and snow. Places that can now squeeze in two crop cycles with a slightly longer growing season will only get time for one crop with just a slight average decline in temperature. Spring coming a few weeks later and winter coming a few weeks earlier has drastic consequences for agriculture.
And by the way, there hasn't been any global warming for the past 10 years yet the rise in atmospheric CO2 has continued unabated. What's really funny is how the global warming hysterics have reacted to contrary data – it's not global warming any more. The new buzzword is "climate change". As long as the weather continues to change from day to day and place to place they can't go wrong with "climate change".
Comment by DaveScot — June 21, 2008 @ 6:25 pm