Really, Sean. Why so snotty? Clearly, you know Dr Dutton even less than I do.

Local weather anomalies (dynamical fluctuations, more-or-less independent of forced long-term climate change) are much larger than the global mean temperature change of recent decades. Weather fluctuations or ‘noise’ have a
noticeable effect even on monthly-mean global-mean temperature, especially in Northern Hemisphere winter. Weather has little effect on global-mean temperature averaged over several months or more. The primary cause of variations on time scales from a few months to a few years is ocean dynamics,
especially the Southern Oscillation (El Nino – La Nina cycle), although an occasional large volcano can have a cooling effect that lasts a few years. The 10-11 year cycle of solar irradiance has a just barely detectable effect on global temperature, no more than about 0.1°C, much less noticeable than El Nino/La
Nina fluctuations. The past year (2007) witnessed a transition from a weak El Nino to a strong La Nina (the latter is perhaps beginning to moderate already, as the ocean waters near Peru are beginning to warm). January 2007 was the warmest January in the period of instrumental data in the GISS analysis, while October 2007 was # 5 warmest, November 2007 was #8 warmest, December 2007 was #8 warmest, and January 2008 was #40 warmest. [Out of roughly 150 years of records.] Undoubtedly, the cooling trend through the year was due to the strengthening La Nina, and the unusual coolness in January was aided by a winter weather fluctuation.

Dr. Hansen has also commented on the satellite record:

If you like to see how unusual the global temperature in January was go to http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ and click on the channel LT data (global lower troposphere, about 900 mb level). You can see that the temperature was actually above the 20 year mean, and today the temperature is back up to the level of last year, far above the 20-year mean. Note that this is the web site of John Christy, a contrarian. He has been very quiet about the fact that the satellite data now show that the position he was taking for years is way off base.

What does this show? Not much. Other than, perhaps, that even good scientists can cook their data a bit when politics enters the picture.
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For enough money it can happen. Even Jimmy Stewart was tempted for a moment in “It’s a Wonderful Life” when Potter offered him a lot of cash. Money is the basis for the “alt-climate science.”

Lawrence B. Crowell

I admit that there is a standard – almost standardized – contrarianism to the links at AL Daily. They usually take the form: “It’s obvious that a certain thing is true, right? Well it’s not!” or “Everybody thinks that X. Well, think again!” And since this “reactionary” style is often directed at academic humanities targets – who are themselves often left-leaning – a rightward tilt does seem to occur.

(As a rhetorical tick, however, this easy contrarianism can be found at many online sites. Just visit Slate or Salon for a moment. At its best, however, Dutton’s page reminds me more the spirit and tone of Lingua Franca.)

But the apparent conservative bias doesn’t much survive a reading of the AL Daily page itself. Just look at the page’s current right-hand column, from top to bottom. It contains the offending “What women want” link, as well as others which challenge the concept of a “rape crisis” on college campuses or reference William Saletan’s articles on race and IQ.

But the same column also sends you to articles by Umberto Eco, E.O. Wilson, Phillip Pullman, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Slavoj Žižek, Alan Wolfe. These appear alongside links to pieces defending John Kenneth Galbraith, Martin Heidegger, and the radicalism of the Luddites.

What does this show? Not much. Other than, perhaps, that even good scientists can cook their data a bit when politics enters the picture.

In effect we have manufactured ourselves into a situation not that different from the bacteria on the agar filled petri dish. By exploiting the planetary biosphere, mineral resources and energy stores we have approximately turned this planet’s open thermodynamics to a closed thermodynamics. In doing so we may face the ultimate constraint of maximal entropy. It is not certain where that is. We face in the near future a peak oil problem, but in the long run we may face a “peak planet” problem, or as Edward O Wilson puts it, “We will run out of environment.” We are already pushing 20,000 species to extinction every year, so we may well be engineering the next great mass extinction.

To be honest I suspect that we are not collectively that much smarter than the bacteria in a petri dish or the exponential explosion of grassshoppers in a locust swarm, at least “modulo scale.” In part this is reflected in our history, which illustrates how on average our political leaders through history have been the most inferior of people, and this extends to our current President. I suspect that political leaders will dance around this issue, make window dressing solutions, and do the same with equally pressing problems such as rainforest destruction. I think the safe bet is that our species will collapse the planetary biosphere into a mass extinction and that we will go down with it.

In 50 million years if there is a repeat of the intelligent life experiment we will have left lots of interesting stuff for them to dig up.

Lawrence B. Crowell

If you mean “believe that `calls to action’ and `dissenting voices’ are equally reasonable,” then no.

I think you’re taking this website far too seriously. The very first article linking to it I read explained that, unable to reach agreement over lunch, he and a colleague decided to start a website to take their argument to the public. The 50-50 split accurately represents the number of people in that lunchtime argument, that’s all.

I also don’t see the contradiction you seem so offended by between his views on this and on relativism. The science of global warming is one thing, but what also clearly exists is a snowballing movement of people driven more by feelings of sin / communist control dreams. (If you doubt this then subject yourself to the Guardian’s columnists for a week or two!) Attacking the latter is precisely in line with attacking postmodern blah.

Well put, Albatross! Although I’m not sure that humans are much more self-aware than bacteria. If we want to solve the population problem whilst retaining freedom in our lives, it is clear we must engineer a society where not everybody wants to have children, and developed nations show that this is possible, and not just a dream. Perpetrating the idea that women who don’t want children are ‘evil’ is a serious threat to our survival.

Humans on the face of the Earth are absolutely no different from bacteria. Among the many kinds of waste we produce are heat and carbon, which just so happen to interact in a positive feedback loop with solar energy to increase the rate at which heat pollution increases.

Like a bacteria, humans will continue to expand and consume all resources until the resources no longer support the population. Then the human race will die back to whatever level the remaining resources can support.

This is an implacable law of Nature. The only way we can get around this law by exploiting characteristics that differentiate us from bacteria - self awarenesss and problem-solving ability. But in order to bring our problem-solving abilities to bear, we have to be able to acknowledge the problem.

If we allow ourselves to be paralyzed by denial, we will not address the problem, and we will go the way of bacteria in a petri dish. If we acknowledge the problem we have the ability to clean up our waste, limit our population, and limit our consumption of resources.

One of the best ways to reduce population, by the way, is to improve the standard of living of a given culture. Developed nations actually experience population declines.

So the best way to save the world is to somehow overcome the denialists, and to work to fight pollution and increase the standard of living worldwide.

It’s simple, but you have to start by acknowledging the problem.