A Brief Note On Climate Change

Earth Magazine, via Tyler Cowen:

“China alone loses between 100 million and 200 million tons of coal each year to mine fires . . . Second to China is India, where 10 million tons of coal burns annually in mine fires.”

Why is it that reasonable people recognize that pouring 200,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental tragedy, but can also think that releasing 28 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year has no effect at all? Where on earth do they think this stuff goes? Does the law of conservation of mass no longer have any meaning?

I suppose science only works on stuff you can see. So much for radio, the atom, and the germ theory of medicine.

In Which We Discuss The Vagaries Of Climate Modeling

There are many things the Strawman Blogger enjoys about the blogging life. The freedom. The wealth. The perfectly chilled Brut served to us daily by our Peruvian housemaid.

But arguing with various irritable conservatives isn't all fun. Especially when that conservative is our father.

Now, if the SMB has one talent, it's trading pointed verbal barbs with our eminent paterfamilias. But sometimes our conversations are just plain stressful. Yesterday's was a case in point:

"Look at all this rain," he said. "Global warming in action?"

"Well," we reply mildly, "It was a very warm winter."

"Yes," he shot back. "But wasn't it cold in DC?"

Next time, we will take a cab.

Now, the Strawman Blogger doesn't claim to be an expert on climate modeling¹. But we feel there's a lesson in this particular argument. So let's follow it to a hypothetical extreme. My father names a city that enjoyed an unusually cold winter. I name a city that had a very warm one. He names another, and I reply.

Given enough time, we'd exhaust all of America's largest municipalities. What then? Perhaps we'll go international. What was Paris like last February? Perhaps ocean currents hold the key - drop a few sensors in the Atlantic and we'll clear that up nicely. And so on and so forth.

Eventually, we'd have a more or less complete set of datapoints of temperature changes across the globe. Sound familiar? It's called a climate model. Scientists have been making them for quite awhile. And, in a not-unexpected victory for our world-view, they overwhelming support the concept of man-made global warming.

We've lost count of the number of times a cold snap has discredited the entire science of climate change. But no one has properly explained how a single data point is more relevant than half a century of research. So do us a favor! Stop trying. Or we really will have to call for a taxi.

¹Who the hell cares? Seriously. If you can't be an irreverent jackass with a poor grasp of actual issues, than frankly there's just no point in blogging at all.