Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[a_majoor]

But I disagree with you fundamentally about market forces.  They very much are an "instrument" and much effort is put into manipulating them to some purpose, every day, in the stock, commodity, bond and other markets around the world, in corporate boardrooms and in government offices.  Take OPEC, for example...when that organization decreases production with the express purpose of increasing prices, that's using a market force (supply) as an "instrument".

Market forces (as defined by the science of economics) are a function of supply and demand. Humans want certain things and other humans are clever enough to try to meet these wants; market forces operate in all places and times, under any form of society or government you care to name, or even in the absence of governments (primitive humans operated sophisticated markets, as indicated by stone age burials complete with flint tools made from rocks imported from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.)

Virtually every event declared a "market failure" can be traced to the intended or unintended consequence of a policy or regulation imposed by a government. Even market failures caused by monopolies are a form of government interference with the market, monopolies are usually established or protected by the government, and/or perpetuated by tax and regulatory structures which prevent competition from moving in. The rail barons, for example, built their railroads on government land grants. Microsoft is the sole supplier of software for government agencies, and who has more computers than vast government bureaucracies.

OPEC is attempting to manipulate markets in order to achieve political ends, but is also spurring competition, since every oil spike provides incentives for enterprising individuals and companies to look for new sources of oil, alternatives to oil or conservation technology, undercutting OPEC. Even within OPEC, the biggest problem is members cheating on their quotas, selling more oil to get edxtra money, but increasingf the availabel supply as well. The invisible hand is guiding the oil marlket as well.

 

[Kirkhill]

My preferred example of the inadequacies of government regulation is the bartering of toilet paper for a left footed size 9 brown shoe in the Warsaw Pact/Comecon countries.  Or the countless deals made in order to get elevated to the nomenklatura.

No matter what the government does it is just another player in the market.  The market will do what it is going to do.

 

[a_majoor]

Go ahead, pick a graph!

 

[Brad Sallows]

When I write that market forces can't be wielded to any purpose, I mean that markets aren't sufficiently understood or controllable for the outcomes to match the intentions of most of the would-be intervenors.  Otherwise, I wouldn't expect to see so many colossal frig-ups by governments and executives.  I don't respect people who parade accreditations of expertise and then proceed to make decisions by committee based on imperfect information and weak understanding of complex systems and then beg off responsibility behind a shield of protestations of good intentions and an ethereal trail of accountability.  My philosophy is simple: if you don't really understand it, leave it the hell alone.

>Not sure I understand your point here.

There's nothing incorrect or incomplete.  My points are that either global climate (ie. specifically the mean annual temperature, to the precision with which it is measureable) is warming or cooling, and that in any particular region the climate may be following or opposing the global trend.  Right now the global trend appears to be warming.  Most estimates of the mean temperature increase of the past century seem to be in the range 0.6 to 0.8 Celsius degrees.  It's clear from the paleoarchaeological record that the planet has at times been very much warmer and very much cooler in the past.  The arctic in particular was supposedly as ice-free prior in the early part of the past century (between the wars) as it is now, if not more so.  So I'm not predisposed to hit the panic button.  I agree that it's worth investigating why.  I disagree that we understand it sufficiently yet to follow expensive policy prescriptions.  I disagree vehemently that we should follow any policy prescriptions for a particular problem without considering equally other problems (requirements) which might be addressed with the same resources.

 

[dglad]

When I write that market forces can't be wielded to any purpose, I mean that markets aren't sufficiently understood or controllable for the outcomes to match the intentions of most of the would-be intervenors.  Otherwise, I wouldn't expect to see so many colossal frig-ups by governments and executives.  I don't respect people who parade accreditations of expertise and then proceed to make decisions by committee based on imperfect information and weak understanding of complex systems and then beg off responsibility behind a shield of protestations of good intentions and an ethereal trail of accountability.  My philosophy is simple: if you don't really understand it, leave it the hell alone.

>Not sure I understand your point here.

There's nothing incorrect or incomplete.  My points are that either global climate (ie. specifically the mean annual temperature, to the precision with which it is measureable) is warming or cooling, and that in any particular region the climate may be following or opposing the global trend.  Right now the global trend appears to be warming.  Most estimates of the mean temperature increase of the past century seem to be in the range 0.6 to 0.8 Celsius degrees.  It's clear from the paleoarchaeological record that the planet has at times been very much warmer and very much cooler in the past.  The arctic in particular was supposedly as ice-free prior in the early part of the past century (between the wars) as it is now, if not more so.  So I'm not predisposed to hit the panic button.  I agree that it's worth investigating why.  I disagree that we understand it sufficiently yet to follow expensive policy prescriptions.  I disagree vehemently that we should follow any policy prescriptions for a particular problem without considering equally other problems (requirements) which might be addressed with the same resources.

I don't think we're in disagreement, in general.  There are sensible things that can be done, that make economic sense, in the near term, without resorting to poorly conceived "policy prescriptions".  For example, it can be good economics to promote investment in R&D in alternative energy technologies (through, for example, tax credits or other incentives), to make them more efficient and cost effective.  This can support job creation, benefit our educational institutions, and provide for more sustainable energy generation.

And we do need to come to understand the things that are happening regarding our planet and its climate BETTER.  Yes, the Earth's climate fluctuates, on cycles and according to mechanisms we don't truly understand.  No, it's not time to hit the panic button.  But neither can we simply assume that this is "just another routine fluctuation".  We are, as a species, redistributing carbon in the closed terrestrial chemical system in a way that has not occurred since recorded history began.  What we need to know is how significant that redistribution is (or, yes, if it's significant at all).  In the meantime, it would behoove all of us to think critically, but also keep open minds, no?

 

[UberCree]

Interesting Fifth Estate tonight on CBC.
They assert that many of the scientists "debunking" global warming, are in fact the same "scientists" that argued on behalf of the tobacco industry. 

I wonder what it will take for some to wake up?  Just when you thought people couldn't be any more naive (those that believe the debunkers), they prove you wrong. 

Sorry to interupt, please carry on waxing poetic about the harm to the earth being one big fabricated myth.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Interesting Fifth Estate tonight on CBC.
They assert  

THEY ASSERT??....Well nothing like some good old-fashioned asserting when facts really aren't necessary??

Come on.......its that kind of *cough* reporting that makes people go, " yea OK :"

 

[a_majoor]

I don't think we're in disagreement, in general.  There are sensible things that can be done, that make economic sense, in the near term, without resorting to poorly conceived "policy prescriptions".  For example, it can be good economics to promote investment in R&D in alternative energy technologies (through, for example, tax credits or other incentives), to make them more efficient and cost effective.  This can support job creation, benefit our educational institutions, and provide for more sustainable energy generation.

It would be better economics to simply pull the many layers of support and regulation away from the market, people will change their behaviour pretty quick if they are confronted by the true price of things.

And we do need to come to understand the things that are happening regarding our planet and its climate BETTER.  Yes, the Earth's climate fluctuates, on cycles and according to mechanisms we don't truly understand.  No, it's not time to hit the panic button.  But neither can we simply assume that this is "just another routine fluctuation".  We are, as a species, redistributing carbon in the closed terrestrial chemical system in a way that has not occurred since recorded history began.  What we need to know is how significant that redistribution is (or, yes, if it's significant at all).  In the meantime, it would behoove all of us to think critically, but also keep open minds, no?

I agree we do not understand the climactic system, and certainly attempts to stampede people and governments by issuing statements designed to cause panic (and that is what the Stern report and so many other Climate Change screeds are all about) do not help the situation. Given the preponderance of evidence noted in prior posts (i.e. lack of disastrous weather related changes during the Medieval warm period, the Antarctic gaining ice mass, the warming trend being observed on Mars etc.) leads me to believe that human activity is not the culprit, but since I am looking at facts I don't believe I need to assert anything.

 

[UberCree]

THEY ASSERT??....Well nothing like some good old-fashioned asserting when facts really aren't necessary??

Come on.......its that kind of *cough* reporting that makes people go, " yea OK :"

Okay I should have written "prove".  By diggin up financial statements that showed payments from Exxon and Imperial oil to their scientific lobbyists through mediaries.  Worth watching, even if it gives you something else to complain about.

Sorry to rain on your denial party.  Do you guys have some major oil investments or do you just chose to be naive?

 

[dglad]

It would be better economics to simply pull the many layers of support and regulation away from the market, people will change their behaviour pretty quick if they are confronted by the true price of things.

Ah, yes....monetarism.  A marketplace free of distortions from regulation.  How much regulation would you remove--all of it?  Including workplace health and safety, environmental standards (and no, I'm not talking about climate change regulations here...I'm talking about regulations that control the release of things like heavy metals, organic solvents, etc. in the environment), labour codes that mandate things like minimum wage, regulations that govern the staking of mining claims, the condition of roads, construction standards, etc.?  I understand that business feel overregulated, and with some justification.  But some degree of regulation is desireable for the public interest, health and safety, and creation of a climate of certainty that promotes investment.

I agree we do not understand the climactic system, and certainly attempts to stampede people and governments by issuing statements designed to cause panic (and that is what the Stern report and so many other Climate Change screeds are all about) do not help the situation. Given the preponderance of evidence noted in prior posts (i.e. lack of disastrous weather related changes during the Medieval warm period, the Antarctic gaining ice mass, the warming trend being observed on Mars etc.) leads me to believe that human activity is not the culprit, but since I am looking at facts I don't believe I need to assert anything.

The evidence you cite is very valid.  But are you choosing to discount evidence that shows the Arctic losing ice mass, the relative unimportance of sunspot activity on terrestrial climate, the retreat of glaciers in Greenland, etc.?  I am convinced, based on all of this body of evidence (except the warming of Mars, which I think is somewhat...spurious?) that human activity IS a factor in promoting a warming trend in the global climate.  I am not prepared, however, to say--yet--how big a factor it is.  That's something that requires serious and diligent research starting NOW, because IF it turns out that human activity is a major contributor, then we will need to start taking sensible and responsible mitigating measures.

 

[a_majoor]

Monetarism is defined as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetarism

Monetarism is a set of views concerning the determination of national income and monetary economics. It focuses on the supply and demand for money as the primary means by which economic activity is regulated. Monetary theory focuses on money supply and on inflation as an effect of the supply of money being larger than the demand for money.

WRT regulatory excess and so on, your examples actually cover the good, the bad and the ugly. Setting standards for releasing toxins comes under good, raising minimum wages reduces demand for labour (bad) and increases unemployment and demand for social services (ugly).

The real trick is to have the lightest hand possible, and allow the natural flow of supply and demand to work. Strengthening property rights is a positive step, since it engages the property owners in protecting and increasing the value of their property, as well as reducing instances of the "tragedy of the commons" (compare a city park to a private yard or garden and you will see what I mean).

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

UberCree ,
Instead of sitting in the back and telling us we are 'this and that and so on', how about giving some commentary of your own?

...or are you content to just sit in the back and heckle?

 

[a_majoor]

This plan is somewhat more practical than the Kyoto accord, but planting more trees in your back yard and switching to white roofing material would be even cheaper and more effective.....

http://sciencenews.org/scripts/printthis.asp?clip=/articles/20061104/clip_fob2.asp

A Swarm of Umbrellas vs. Global Warming: Astronomer thinks small to save Earth
Ron Cowen

Some wives ask their husbands to take out the garbage. Roger Angel's wife asked him to get rid of global warming.

COOLING CONCEPT. Miniature flyers made of transparent film would deflect sunlight from Earth. Three solar-reflecting tabs on each flyer direct its course. This illustration shows background starlight blurred into doughnuts by the film.
Angel, T. Connors/Univ. of Arizona

Prompted by her plea, Angel, an astronomer and acclaimed telescope-mirror designer at the University of Arizona in Tucson, began pursuing a space-based solution.

In the plan he came up with, a trillion miniature spacecraft, each about a gram in mass and carrying a half-meter-diameter sunshade, would shield Earth.

This cloud of sun-orbiting flyers, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth and stretching over a distance of about 100,000 km, would act as a mostly transparent umbrella for the entire planet.

The cloud would reduce by 1.8 percent the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, and that shading would significantly cut global warming, Angel calculates. He describes his ambitious plan, which he says could be deployed in about 25 years at a cost of several trillion dollars, in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Previous schemes to reduce the sunlight reaching Earth had required far heavier craft with larger shades. Such vehicles would have to be built in space from lunar material or asteroids.

In contrast, Angel's proposed flyers, which include shades made of transparent film and riddled with holes, can be built and assembled on Earth, he asserts.

Rather than requiring rocket fuel, which could further contribute to global warming, the flyers would be accelerated into space by a large magnetic field applied along 2,000-m-long tracks. With each such launch sending out 800,000 flyers, the project would require 20 million launches over a decade.

The flyers would rely on ion propulsion to reach their destination—a position between the sun and Earth in which the craft would take the same amount of time to orbit the sun as Earth does. They would then maintain a fixed position relative to Earth and shade it for about 50 years.

The flyers would need to continuously modify their trajectories. The pressure of sunlight on a trio of tiltable solar reflectors, embedded with electronics, would automatically redirect each craft, keeping the cloud intact or dispersing it as needed.

Several scientists say that there are less-expensive and easier ways to reduce global warming. Aluminized Mylar stretched across the ground or white paint covering large areas to reflect visible light from Earth into space "would be vastly cheaper," says astronomer Webster Cash of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"It makes much more economic sense to find ways to address the climate problem directly by reducing the pollution that causes it," says climatologist James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

No word has come yet on what Angel's wife thinks.

At least he's not kvetching about the problem, but applying some thought and producing ideas from outside the box. The highlighted portion is for people like us who are also of a practical bent, but don't have access to space. (I've got a few trees in already).

 

[dglad]

This plan is somewhat more practical than the Kyoto accord, but planting more trees in your back yard and switching to white roofing material would be even cheaper and more effective.....

http://sciencenews.org/scripts/printthis.asp?clip=/articles/20061104/clip_fob2.asp

At least he's not kvetching about the problem, but applying some thought and producing ideas from outside the box. The highlighted portion is for people like us who are also of a practical bent, but don't have access to space. (I've got a few trees in already).

I like it.  Very Rube-Goldbergesque.  Although....

Rather than requiring rocket fuel, which could further contribute to global warming, the flyers would be accelerated into space by a large magnetic field applied along 2,000-m-long tracks. With each such launch sending out 800,000 flyers, the project would require 20 million launches over a decade.

What would generate the electrical power for the launchers, I wonder?  Perhaps a great manner hamsters in wheels, connected to generators.  Mind you, then we'd have to deal with the climatic effects of massed hamster flatulence.

More seriously, this is a good (albeit flakey) example of thinking...well, innovatively, I guess (we could probably achieve the same effect by lofting megatons of dust into the stratosphere...perhaps with many, many helium-filled balloons).  But among some of these more "creative" ideas, there could be some genuine worthwhile nuggets.

My shed already has a white roof.

 

[a_majoor]

Moving from the strange to the somewhat more practical world, and some good examples of why government regulation (AKA Kyoto) is a very bad idea under any circumstances.

http://phantomobserver.com/blog/?p=386

The Tory Principles That Libranos Won’t Get
Sometimes the conventional wisdom has difficulty believing that when the Tories say they’ll do things different, they mean it — and not in the way that conventional wisdom thinks. There are three cases yesterday that highlight a few of the new guidelines:

Principle No. 1: The Tories will not take the fall for the decisions of the previous government.

That’s the main reason why Rona Ambrose’s speech yesterday came off as “partisan”:

“When Canada’s new government assumed power this year, we found an unacceptable situation,” she said. “We found that measures to address climate change by previous Canadian governments were insufficient and unaccountable.”

“It’s inappropriate in an international meeting to slam another political party,” Liberal environment critic John Godfrey told CTV Newsnet on Wednesday, adding no other environment minister did so.

“Secondly, she’s wrong, that we didn’t have a plan,” he said.

The Liberals launched their $10-billion Project Green in April 2005, and had started to implement it when it was defeated, Godfrey said.

“We would have had — had they not messed it up! — things actually happening by 2008,” he said.

“We had the EnerGuide program which had already retrofitted 70,000 houses; we had doubled the amount of wind power production in 2005.”

Just one problem: the Auditor-General’s office had doubts about the actual efficacy of EnerGuide and the wind power programs:

3.20 NRCan reported in a 2005 discussion document on WPPI that operating wind farms were producing about 20 percent less electricity than expected in the signed contribution agreements. The Department has stated that the program will not meet its initial target for electricity production if this trend continues. Since greenhouse gas emissions are directly related to the amount of electricity produced, the emission target may not be met either . . .

For the EnerGuide for Existing Houses program, funding was complex, leading to confusing targets. We found five Treasury Board decisions that authorized funds for the program and which did not clearly describe emission reduction results expected for this money . . .

Yes, the Libranos were tackling a noble goal, but as always, the means towards that goal didn’t matter to them. They do matter to the Tories, and to anyone else concerned about efficient administration. And Rona Ambrose isn’t going to have her feet held to the fire for Liberal errors.

Principle No. 2: Government and the Marketplace do not mix.

This manifests itself in two ways: Stephen Harper’s reaction to the initial snub by China prior to the APEC summit, and the decision to restrain the CRTC from regulating Internet VOIP services.

In the case of the latter, it’s quite simple: the Tories believe the free market will keep prices for Net phone service affordable and competitive. This attitude has people in the know excited:

Bell chief corporate officer Lawson Hunter said he’s encouraged by the news, especially because Bernier’s speech spoke of the larger issue of stripping away more industry regulations to build Canada’s competitiveness.

“I think the signal this sends to the commission about how the government wants them to regulate in all kinds of areas (is something) you can’t really underestimate,'’ an excited Hunter said.

Listening to Bernier’s vision for the future made Hunter’s “spine tingle,'’ he added.

“It’s not only, or even primarily, the impact of (Wednesday’s) individual decision (that’s exciting), it’s just the general philosophy and direction (of deregulation) that is so fundamental, in our view, to the economy and also fundamental to the way our business is regulated.'’

Telus’s executive vice-president of corporate affairs, Janet Yale, said she also viewed Bernier’s changes as good news for the industry.

“We’re pleased with the minister’s announcement towards the kind of deregulation we’re looking for in telecommunications markets and we look forward to more to come,'’ she said.

And as for China, a third principle also comes into play:

Principle No. 3: Government must look after its citizens when citizens are abroad.

Harper and his officials said they weren’t told exactly why China abruptly cancelled the meeting. But he hinted broadly that Beijing had tried to dictate what sorts of subjects would be raised.

Harper said he wanted to raise human rights and the case of Huseyin Celil, an Uzbeki-Canadian dual citizen being imprisoned by China for alleged terrorism links. China does not recognize his Canadian citizenship and Ottawa has been aggressively lobbying for his release.

This is of course in stark contrast to the way the Libranos handled Mahar Arar, being perfectly prepared to hang him out to dry until his plight became public knowledge. Harper’s under fire because the Libranos believe his stance on human rights will cost Canada the opportunity to get access to China’s growing market. Harper’s response:

“I think Canadians want us to promote our trade relations worldwide, and we do that, but I don’t think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values — our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights,'’ he said Wednesday. “They don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.'’

Ambrose’s speech serves one purpose: by contrasting Liberal policies to her own, she’s signalling to the world that Canada is going to conduct world affairs differently than before. And part of that has manifested in the way the Harper / China meeting has now been set up.

And the beauty of this new direction is that, should the Liberals ever find themselves back in power, public expectation won’t allow them to regress back to their old ways.

I find the last line rather optomistic, certainly the Liberals (or NDP for that matter) will be able to portray any activity they choose to undertake as the governing party as being "different" from the previous Conservative government and thus effective camoflage for what is really happening.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>They assert that many of the scientists "debunking" global warming, are in fact the same "scientists" that argued on behalf of the tobacco industry.

That's nice, but "guilty by association" is one of those fallacies you seem to dislike so much.  If you disagree with the argument, you have to assess the premises and the argument, not the colour of the suit worn by the guy making it.  If people paid by oil companies to do research are peddling bullshit, then show that they're peddling bullshit.

 

[a_majoor]

While we seem to be veering off topic, this is relevant: Stern, the authours of the Kyoto Accord and various environmentalists are jetting around the world (the sheer irony of that is just staggering) atempting to gain control of the global economy in order to impact the global climate. As we have seen through many many examples across the world and throughout history, there are grave dangers in messing with the market, the invisible hand of the market will provide unexpected outcomes to people who have the hubris to believe they can outsmart  or control the market.

Milton Friedman demonstrated this during his lifetime:

Milton Friedman helped us to interpret the actual communist economy not as a textbook command economy, based on directives going in the vertical direction from the central planning commission at the top to individual firms but as a very strange and truncated market economy with imperfect, but nevertheless dominant horizontal relations among economic agents at the microlevel. Milton Friedman knew that it was impossible to suppress human behaviour, the spontaneity of exchange, implicit if not explicit prices, wide-spread bargaining etc. It was a very rare attitude at that time.

Vaclav Klaus, 1997

So if we are stampeded towards the Kyoto/Stern approach to economic control, then we can see the history of the USSR played out on a global scale. Their legacy of a ruined people, economy and environment on a continental scale in just 70 years should be enough to dissuade any rational person from going along that path.

 

[DBA]

An alternate viewpoint taken from JunkScience.com. 

We have to wonder when all the weird and wonderful artificial construct of "global warming" will come crashing down, as inevitably it must.

From two largely disconnected facts:
- that the world is apparently a bit warmer now than it was in the early 19th Century and for some centuries before and;
- that human activity has increased the atmospheric level of the essential trace gas, carbon dioxide, along with a few other minor players in the greenhouse game

we have constructed an enormous and complex risk scenario.

The measured global mean temperature change is really quite trivial, from an estimated 287.0 kelvins (K) in the latter 19th century to perhaps 287.6 K at the end of the 20th Century according to the IPCC, although this is smaller than apparent measurement error (at least some portion of it is likely factual). We have no reason to suspect the apparent warming over this period is anything other than beneficial (it certainly beats the harsh winters and failed crops of the era known as the Little Ice Age).

Since the Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from about 0.028% of the atmosphere to about 0.038%. This is sufficient to raise global mean temperature by about 0.15 K and the per unit effect of adding more carbon dioxide is diminishing as the atmosphere approaches complete opacity in the appropriate infrared wavebands.

That's about it.

Against or on top of these relatively insignificant facts we have plastered layer upon layer of "if," "could," "might" and "maybe" magnifier effects in computer models to produce scary scenarios and alarming outputs. These same models then have to cancel significant amounts of this imaginary warming by yet more fantastic schemes and scenarios that we do not even know to be physically possible in order to claim to be able to reproduce past measured reality. Even then they are at best exercises in "wiggle fitting" tuned to emulate a specific result. The 16 "most trusted and stable" models produce a range of roughly 285-290 K for their guesses at Earth's mean temperature without messing with changes in solar or greenhouse forcing. The likes of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies' state of the art model, Model E (of James Hansen fame), is out by sufficient wattage in the tropics that it must presumably be "flux adjusted" to avoid crashing into an ice age, unless the fact that it overcooks the world in huge slabs west of the continents (who put that tropical sea in the Bering Strait?) and ridiculously heats significant portions of the continents to such an extent that it balances out -- kind of. It does not, however, represent the real world in any meaningful fashion. Climate models are process models, they help us untangle the processes we have observed. They are not of any known value forecasting the future. How could they be when they employ climate sensitivities 5-10 times larger than that observed in the real world?

This is a very silly game of a few mildly interesting facts spun into a massive scare industry. Sooner or later the entire unstable edifice must come crashing down for the foundation is virtually nonexistent.

The science is settled? In the pretend realm of computer modelers, maybe but in the real world, we're not even close.

Myself reading some of the articles on global warming and taking the material in Flaws and Fallacies in Statistical Thinking into account a lot of it is bullshit. Weather has never been constant long term on the planet we call Earth. We either adapt to the changes or we suffer. Trying to change global weather is pure hubris. The current fad of labeling every change in weather both short and long term as caused by global warming would be hilarious if it wasn't actually believed by so many to be true.

Edit: The author of the book I linked also later wrote a more general audience book on the same theme called Statistics You Can't Trust: A Friendly Guide to Clear Thinking about Statistics in Everyday Life. I found the book I linked not too math orientated but since math is a bit of a hobby of mine I might not be the best judge of that.

 

[dglad]

An alternate viewpoint taken from JunkScience.com. 

Myself reading some of the articles on global warming and taking the material in Flaws and Fallacies in Statistical Thinking into account a lot of it is bullshit. Weather has never been constant long term on the planet we call Earth. We either adapt to the changes or we suffer. Trying to change global weather is pure hubris. The current fad of labeling every change in weather both short and long term as caused by global warming would be hilarious if it wasn't actually believed by so many to be true.

Edit: The author of the book I linked also later wrote a more general audience book on the same theme called Statistics You Can't Trust: A Friendly Guide to Clear Thinking about Statistics in Everyday Life. I found the book I linked not too math orientated but since math is a bit of a hobby of mine I might not be the best judge of that.

From the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, Carbon Dioxide Research Group, U of C, La Jolla, California

Period of Record
1958-2004

Mauna Loa, Hawaii, U.S.A.
Barren lava field of an active volcano
19°32' N, 155°35' W, 3397 m above MSL

Methods
Air samples at Mauna Loa are collected continuously from air intakes at the top of four 7-m towers and one 27-m tower. Four air samples are collected each hour for the purpose of determining the CO2 concentration. Determinations of CO2 are made by using a Siemens Ultramat 3 nondispersive infrared gas analyzer with a water vapor freeze trap. This analyzer registers the concentration of CO2 in a stream of air flowing at ~0.5 L/min. Every 30 minutes, the flow is replaced by a stream of calibrating gas or "working reference gas". In December 1983, CO2-in-N2 calibration gases were replaced with the currently used CO2-in-air calibration gases. These calibration gases and other reference gases are compared periodically to determine the instrument sensitivity and to check for possible contamination in the air-handling system. These reference gases are themselves calibrated against specific standard gases whose CO2 concentrations are determined manometrically. Greater details about the sampling methods at Mauna Loa are given in Keeling et al. (1982) and Keeling et al. (2002).

Hourly averages of atmospheric CO2 concentration, wind speed, and wind direction are plotted as a basis for selecting data for further processing. Data are selected for periods of steady hourly data to within ~0.5 parts per million by volume (ppmv); at least six consecutive hours of steady data are required to form a daily average. Greater details about the data selection criteria used at Mauna Loa are given in Bacastow et al. (1985).

Trends
The Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 measurements constitute the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO2 concentrations available in the world. The Mauna Loa site is considered one of the most favorable locations for measuring undisturbed air because possible local influences of vegetation or human activities on atmospheric CO2 concentrations are minimal and any influences from volcanic vents may be excluded from the records. The methods and equipment used to obtain these measurements have remained essentially unchanged during the 47-year monitoring program.
Because of the favorable site location, continuous monitoring, and careful selection and scrutiny of the data, the Mauna Loa record is considered to be a precise record and a reliable indicator of the regional trend in the concentrations of atmospheric CO2 in the middle layers of the troposphere. The Mauna Loa record shows a 19.4% increase in the mean annual concentration, from 315.98 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of dry air in 1959 to 377.38 ppmv in 2004. The 1997-1998 increase in the annual growth rate of 2.87 ppmv represets the largest single yearly jump since the Mauna Loa record began in 1958. This represents an average annual increase of 1.4 ppmv per year. This is smaller than the average annual increase at the other stations because of the longer record and inclusion of earlier (smaller) annual increases.

A 19.4% increase in annual mean concentration of CO2 between 1959 and 2004 is not insignificant numerically.  It seems to fly in the face of the unattributed "Junk Science" numbers given in the article you posted.  So is the "Junk Science" article flawed?  Is the 19.4% increase significant in a climatic sense?  Can the Mauna Loa data, which the Scripps people claim are reliable in a "regional" sense for one sectional layer of the atmosphere, be reasonably extrapolated to a global trend?  The Scripps article also suggests that even larger increases are measured at "other stations".  Is that significant?

These are only some of the questions that come to mind, and that need to be answered before one can draw reasonable conclusions.  The lesson is that there's a lot of data, whose interpretations are subject to emotional contamination, because "global warming" is an emotional subject.  The "Junk Science" article is interesting, but is also somewhat "passionate" in a subject that really requires dispassionate analysis by people with open minds.  I am not prepared, like the author of the "Junk Science" article is, to call global warming "a weird and wonderful construct", just like I'm not prepared to start clanging the alarm bells and calling, Luddite-like, for the factories and power plants to start shutting down.  Both are extreme views which can be "supported" or "refuted" by available data, if those data aren't subject to some rigorous analysis.  As I've said before, there are some sensible things we can undertake now, that can also have good economic benefits, without resorting to unwarranted panic (or denial).

Best to keep an open mind and hope that the people who are examining this matter seriously can do so with equally open minds, in order to draw reasonable and supportable conclusions.  I don't think the "Junk Science" author is one of those people.

 

[DBA]

The figures used in the JunkScience article are absolutes expressed as a percent not rate of change. The same figures are more commonly seen in the form ppm or ppb which is what you used. Use the conversion 100ppm = 0.01% of our atmosphere.

The theme of the JunkScience website in general seems to be : poor science is often pushed on the general populace to push some action plan or agenda which tend to have outcomes all over the  board so a large dose of scepticism is in order. An example would be the DDT ban being largely or at least in part responsible for the deaths of millions of people each year since the 70s and the suffering of a lot more. The reasoning goes malaria was successfully eradicated from most of the Americas by the use of DDT and other chemicals and the failure of such programs in other parts of the world since may be largely or partly due to them not being available. I view the article not as a rigorous paper on the subject but as a good summary of the basic arguments of opponents of the hype building on this issue. You only have to read such bullshit headlines like "U.S., U.N.: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide at Highest Level Ever" to know the hype is real.