Some have said they have changed their minds on the reality of AGW. What caused you to change your mind?

Question

Back in the 50's when I was growing up, there were a number of articles on ice ages in the popular press, and, as I grew up in the snow belt, I found them believable. Got interested in science at age 10, and started subscribing to the popular science press at 15. Took chemistry in college, and got a bachelor's in it, and got into the habit of buying college texts on topics that interested me. Bought a climate science textbook in '79, and it was that book (Climatic Change; J Gribbon, editor; Cambridge University Press; 1978) which first taught me about human-caused global warming. By this time, I was reading the science press consistently, and climate was one topic I followed closely. By the 90's, the sheer preponderance of evidence in favor of human-caused global warming was overwhelming. Only a few scientists cast doubt on AGW. By 2000, I'd seen all those scientists' anti-AGW work shot down, and much of it was shown to be poor or sloppy work. And the amount of evidence for AGW was truly overwhelming. So I can say that in 1958, I thought there would be an ice age soon. By 1980, I realized I was wrong, and by 2000 or earlier, I knew we were clearly seeing the effects of human-caused global warming.

So that's my trajectory, going from ignorance and expecting an ice age to knowledge and seeing the effects of "excess" heat. Other commentators here have stated they have changed their minds on AGW. That climate change textbook changed my mind. What changed yours?

Answer 1

I also have always been interested in science, I have worked in a group that studies the Antarctic atmosphere, since the late 1980's and have seen first hand the science on this develop.

I really have to shake my head at some of the nonsense I see deniers put up as theories or science?, when it is quite clearly not science.



"ignorance and expecting an ice age" This is also a point many deniers still seem to try and use, I guess it should be said that even with the scientists who thought we where headed for an ice age back in the 70's this was not something that was expected to happen in out life times even if it had been happening, it would have taken thousands of years, as the ice core record shows it takes about 3 times longer to go back into an ice age as it takes to come out of one and it took ~12,000 years to come out of the last one.

I guess you could say that the next ice age would be a good counter to AGW except it is an average drop of ~8c taking 30,000 years or so, we have raised average global temp by ~1c in just 100 years with the expectation of at the very least 2c (more likely 3c) by the end of the century, that is 25% of the effect of an ice age countered in just 200 years, at that sort of rate, we will counter the full effect of a future glacial period long before it actually could happen, we have already countered the effect of the LIA if another of equal strength where to happen again.



The timing of this can be seen in the ice core data, a sharp rise as the start to an inter-glacial

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

followed by a much slower decline back to a glacial period

I certainly keep an open mind as I know science can and has made a few mistakes, but frankly the rubbish I see deniers post, offers little that could be called real evidence, and constantly changing insults and slurs about Gore or his marriage or rants about communists or scientists or greens or alternative energy, tell me more about deniers obvious political leans than about real science.

While I see deniers constantly patting themselves on the back for their latest pointless post, as someone who works in the science community, their effect there is pretty much zero, scientists have always had a long term approach to things as that is required in science, which is an ongoing growing process, scientists know that within a decade there is going to be building and obvious evidence that AGW is happening. In say ten years from now the ice loss in the Arctic is going to leave no doubt for the general public that it is shrinking and it's highly likly 1998 will have dropped at least 2-3 places in the listing of warmest years, so it will be interesting to see if deniers can still use 98's as the starting point for cooling if it is 5-6th warmest year, of course at a rate of ~0.1c per decade, the decade after that will see most years routinely pass 98' and it will disappear completely.

As deniers seem to like news sources rather than science ones they may want to try and deny this

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-17/global-warming-melts-greenland-ice-sheet/5324848



kano claims to have been convinced by "I heard about CO2 lagging temperature"

which is surprising as the so called lag is easily explained by a Milankovitch trigger, to the end of a glacial cycle which in turn causes a little warming and the release of CO2 which increases the warming,

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html

But then deniers are well known for their selective hearing

Answer 2

At the time, then I first looked at Global Warming I had very few pre-conceived ideas.



I had remembered some much earlier events, though. A radio interview in the early 70's I think with "a scientist". He claimed that Greenhouse Gases were the new Big Thing. They affected the passage of infra red radiation. The interviewer asked if that meant it would keep the sun's IR away from earth of keep it in. The scientist said it was too early to tell.



A good few years later, I saw a TV program about computer models. The scientist there claimed that models showed that Europe would be a desert in the near future. What did the models say it was like now, he was asked. He replied, a desert, but the models were getting better.



One day I decided I needed to catch up with the latest science. We had been subject to the Blair government in the UK and my "spin detectors" were therefore finely tuned. I had managed to correctly assess that the Iraquis had no WMDs. How could I know more than the combined intelligence services of the UK and the USA? I listened to the man on the ground - Hans Blix - and not the government spin doctors. Many people supporting the CAGW view were also guilty of spin, in my view. Phrases like "are consistent with" and "do not preclude" etc were common.



At the time, GW was being blamed on "4x4's", (or SUVs). I thought if I could do an engineering type calculation on the number of such vehicles and substitute a more economical vehicle I could see what was to be gained. To my surprise, the number of 4x4s was irrelevant. As was UK transport in general. In fact, the whole of the UK did not have a large impact. If we shut everything down and marched the population undergound into the disused coal mines, to stop the CO2 escaping, then sealed them in, I calculated that the world would resume normal service in about 3 months.



After that, I concluded that swapping my lightbulbs was not going to make a whole lot of difference - even though all may main rooms had low energy bulbs already.



Trying to find any science-based articles was hard at first. The published papers were too difficult. Most concentrated on a very small part of the topic and were not written to be easy to understand. (This was not unexpected. Previously, for work, I had done some background reading on signal processing and I got the distinct impression that the purpose of most papers was not to convey information but rather to convince the casual reader of the erudition of the authors.) The on-line articles and blogs that were full of bluster and self-righteousness did not appeal because they failed the logic test. Many warmers on TV still do this. They know that they are part of a 3 minute segment so they start with an attack on the funding of their opponent. You see this tactic so many times you start to wonder why they use that and not the cast iron, settled science.



Gradually the truth dawns. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the climate is changing, the climate has warmed for a couple of hundred years, man is affecting the climate, the size of the man-made effect is not known and probably small, even if it continues it will not cause a catastrophe.



Conclusion, wait and see if anything happens then fix it. That will be much cheaper than trying to guess every possible outcome and pre-empting it or running down our economies and life-styles just in case. If we do run down our economies, we won't have either the technology or the money to fix anything.

Answer 3

You're talking about climate change the same way as a religious convert talks about their faith. Some people don't put as much faith in authority as you do especially when those authorities have agendas and lots of money at stake. Some of us would like to see some scientific proof before we become believers.



The fact that the earth hasn't warmed in the past 15 years means the real world data tends to agree with the sceptics. If there was a way to bet on the climate, I would gladly bet that the climate models used by the IPCC continue to over-predict global warming. Problem is that warmists don;t like to put their money where their mouth is.

Answer 4

I've never changed my mind on reality. The problem with AGW theory is the range of possibilities encompasses all possibilities and is so ambiguous you can claim any observations as evidence. This new push by the religion to claim catastrophic or run away warming is or never was part of the theory is a lie. Your playing semantics, children having to read about snow in history books is extreme, New York city under water is catastrophic, and it's not a denier claim it's a fear tactic used to convince people to believe we can or should control the climate by collecting taxes for energy use.

Answer 5

Interesting question, Joe.



Almost everyone was a skeptic until the 1980s when the scientific evidence mounted that AGW was not just a theory or far-off future possibility. By the mid 1990s almost no one was a skeptic. That's when the fossil fuel industry anti-science machine kicked into high gear. By the time Gore's movie came out and publicized the issue in 2006, and especially since then, a small but later much-grown army of anti-science liar-deniers (who often PRETEND to be skeptics) has been quite active.



My views shifted in rough accordance with mainstream science. From about 1990-95 there was a lingering though dwindling thought in my mind that the model forecasts might be exaggerated or effects on weather, ecosystems, ice-melt etc, small, or swamped by natural forces (volcanoes, clouds, sun cycles, etc). By the time of the Kyoto debate in the US Congress in the late 1990s, the science was unmistakably

clear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

There was still a question of how soon and how severe (there still is today and probably WILL be for decades to come), but not about AGW being real, serious, mostly negative, and already underway. The Kyoto debate, by the way, was mainly about ECONOMIC POLICY. Few in Congress (THEN) actively and centrally posited the fossil fuel industry Marshall Institute anti-science mythology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall_Institute

although it was spreading across the so-called "conservative" news media by then.



Edit: Raisin puts words in other posters' mouths (and denies it afterwards) almost as often as he puts his foot in his own mouth. His capacity for self-delusion is very large. Those of us old enough and with functioning memories can recall NO widespread ice age scare in the 1970s, and nearly all the speculation that did occur along such lines then was not from scientists. There was much more alarmism about Comet Kohoutek and UFOS, and stories about pet rocks and Elvis kidnapped by aliens, than about climate change of any kind. Ronald Reagan was terribly worried about the threat to national security due to the US giving the Panama Canal back to Panama, but not about climate. http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/06/04/the-1970s-ice-age-myth-and-time-magazine-covers-by-david-kirtley/



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

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200602/backpage.cfm

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timeline.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

http://realclimate.com/

http://www.economist.com/node/18741749

Answer 6

In 2011 I emailed my Triple Output solution to a nation we found Global Warming to be// Results of Global Warming found was on each experiment it shut down Global Warming, My other Global Teams from all walks of life were stationed in all iced areas for confirmation of this site. Answer's received on each shut down, was freshwater on top of saltwater and Glaciers immediately froze. The Nation that was implementing my Triple Output Solution for a quanity food source for their people, also Turned off Global Warming, confirmed by our Satelite reports 11/28/2012. This is when Global Warming ended. All 4 seasons have returned to normal naturally. Global Civilian Command

Answer 7

My change to healthy normal scientific skepticism started from a number of sources, but mainly from my knowledge of science and more specifically mechanical systems including complex heat and thermal measurement systems analysis/validation, thermal dynamics, heat transfer, general and atomic physics, root cause and factorial experimentation, among other sets of skill and many years of practical experience solving problems using these tools. I have many time directed and convinced “ranking” people, which academia credentials well my own, to reconsider their preconceived theories and perceptions and let the process of proper analytics, control, empirical development, and critical argument drive the solution.



A technologists true calling is to make sure devices - whether in theory or reality- work right, or made right, or figure out why something that was made isn’t working as intended. That requires us to go to the problem, when others have written off the design as acceptable. I have done this for 25 years on many projects/many fields. This is part of my source of my skepticism – not some talking head on TV/Radio, a couple of brothers, or what anyone else says. When I can confirm/cross of all of the factors of IS/IS NOT, like I would any other project, then I could accept it. Until then, talking points like “This percentage of papers…., this organization does this…., this special interest… “ isn’t cutting it for me. Especially, if it’s coming from someone that spends a significant amount of their existence typing away mindlessly on these sites.



I am not a scientist in the way that some refer to them as such farcical arguments (“Uh dude, unless you are a “climate scientist” you’re not qualified!”). Instead, I have been trained and developed an analytical skill and knowledge base that I have been able to work with many specialized scientists and Phd levels in many areas. This has never precluded me from the ability to analyze cause and effect. As an technologist that has been tasked with determining root cause of failure/performance variation of mechanisms over many years there are certain rules that need to be in effect - no matter what you are analyzing.

Rule 1: Develop an accurate, repeatable, and statistically sound measurement method.

Rule 2: Be wary of those (people, standards, etc) that assign one main cause based on prior experience and always legitimize (validate statistically) cause and effect. This is the “Tail wagging the dog” problem when quality control is misapplied.

Rule 3: The more complex the system or mechanism the more likely the root cause of variation is not one factor, but an interaction of multiple factors.



I have studied so called global warming using many different sources over the last few years, looking at both sides of the argument. First off, measurement is a huge issue for me, and the fact they we have only legitimate accurate measurements assessments dating back only a few decades. I realize that we cannot repeat the experiment of earth temperature measurements and results, but it has been made clear to me that the measurements have varied too much in methodology, location, and ripe with inaccuracies due to other factors to arrive at the small resolution of increases that have been proposed. It is also clear that the device in which this theory is staged (our planet) has obviously been shown to vary in temperature time-to-time, place-to-place, method-to-method, etc. in magnitudes well beyond the cited statistical values used to qualify the argued significant factor.

Answer 8

I have traveled a lot a guide would tell me the glacier in NZ I was visiting had retreated or the caribou in Canada had moved further North, it became a pattern and this is what got me interested why climate were changing.



I have no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that AGW is happening and I accept that those studying the subject have a far greater knowledge then I do and I accept the consensus and will continue to do so if and when it changes.

Answer 9

Opposite for me, I have always been a nature lover (enviromentalist) but didn't think much about climate, but then with the media and the inconvenient truth (that hockey stick really impressed me) I became a believer, and it wasn't until much later when I heard about CO2 lagging temperature that I got interested, and started to investigate, the more I looked the more doubts I had.

I believe the IPCC ar series is the sloppiest work I have seen, They are firm on a doubling of CO2 causing 3.7WM2 but the rest seems to be guesswork or estimations, it really all boils down to climate sensitivity and they can't make up their minds on how sensitive our climate is to CO2.

I dont believe their positive feedbacks none of it is proven and without positive feedbacks climate change is of no consequence.



Gary F no I am not convinced by CO2 lagging, it is just what started me looking at the whole picture

Answer 10

I was working at a research laboratory that focused on long-term climate variability. When I started in 1984 there was one pro-warming person. By the late 1990s, I was one of only two remaining skeptics, By 2001, there was one remaining skeptic - it wasn't me.





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kano --



>>Gary F no I am not convinced by CO2 lagging, it is just what started me looking at the whole picture<<



Since I just got here - can you remind me what I said when I wasn't here?

Answer 11

When I first heard about global warming I was entirely a believer. With Al Gore talking about the polar bear habitat going away and the increase sea level I was extremely worried. I had heard many other things as well from other sources that painted a very grim outlook for the future. I am very much about the environment. I was a boy scout who always loved nature. I always try to reuse, reduce, and recycle. Everything from taking short showers to buy things from thrift shops to using old t-shirts for rags in place of paper towels. I still do all of these things. In fact, reducing our garabge output is something that we need to do, irrespective of AGW.



So I started to look into global warming to see what could be done and what the danger actually was. The more I looked in to global warming, the more I felt I was lied to. The polar bear population is doing quite well. The idea of the sea rising to destroy us all, is laughable. The models are a joke. I model all of the time. I would never pick an exponential model for long term forecasting and looking at the temperature graphs I can't justify more than linear warming. That is not even to mention that lack of certainty that they have, while they claim a large amount of certainty. They have literally been frightening people for no reason.

Now as a scientist, I EXTREMELY dislike when scientists scare people with non-realistic apocalypse crap. This hits at the very heart of science. Science "deniers" or skeptics are great. They push us scientists to be extremely diligent. When we in the pharma industry have to deal with these types, we have to go through and show every side effect of our drug and show the benefit. At my very heart, I am a statistician so I am a skeptics. I don't believe anything anybody tells me. I let the numbers do the talking.



If anything, scientists need to be extremely diligent in declaring their level of uncertainty, not certainty. When people feel they are lied to by scientists, they start to doubt many other things and it degrades science as a whole.



Further, the inherent problem is that you don't need to be scaring everyone with frightful nightmares about an uninhabitable world in order to meet your purpose of reducing our fossil fuel consumption. They are non-renewable resources. We need to move away from fossil fuels anyways.



Edit:

One thing to note. With all the bluster and being called a liar consistently by the warmers here, people may want to note how I actually address the issue. When someone asks what they can do personally, I give them good advice. Better than most of the warmers here give. When addressing how the US can reduce its CO2 output, my answers actually give timeframes and methods that avoid taxation, are shown as cost-effective and have timeframes associated with them.



So while the warmers here either scare people with BS, or ignore the scare-mongering garbage coming from their side, I actually address the science and the solutions in a realistic manner.



Icey,

Given the 0.5 degree change from 1910 to 1940, that had little to nothing to do with man, I doubt the reconstructions of the past. Fact is that they are not able to measure the temps of the past to the year, so it gets smoothed. You take that smoothing as lack of variability, when it is not. You really want to tell me that the 0.5 over 30 years was natural, but 0.8 over 100 is scary beyond belief???



Joe Joyce,

The belief in the ice age actually was seen in the past. I have heard warmers denying this even happened. There were scientists who believed it would occur and actually convinced you. Now you believe in runaway global warming. You think you went from ignorance to knowledge??? You went from one scary scenario to another, having NOT learned that these same scientists do not know as much as they claim to know about the climate.



Joe,

Words in your mouth? What do you want to call believing that 0.8 degrees over the last 100 years means 5 degrees in the next 100? Exponential, runaway, tipping point, what word would you prefer? Whatever is the case, you don't seem terribly concerned about the apocalyptic garbage thrown out as "science".

Answer 12

Ha! Ha! You just described yourself as a simpleton. You get your knowledge from textbooks rather than experience. You read a text book and think of an oncoming Ice Age. Then you read some more and believe in Global Warming. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! How foolish can you get? You admit you are led around by the nose by people who write books. And on top of it these are probably written by Communists. You call it going from ignorance to knowledge and in reality it is going from ignorance to another pit of ignorance. And to think you even have the stupidity to even brag about this deliberate act of ignorance.



I suggest you stay away from comic books. Your small mind is too impressionable.

Answer 13

Politics. Let me guess...your currently or a ex government employee?



Darn it I knew I was right.

Answer 14

Consensus.