Why global warming is real and we’re causing it

July 30, 2012 • 9:19 am

Today’s New York Times Op-Ed section has a must-read piece by an erstwhile climate-change skeptic who has been converted, Richard Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley.  His piece, “The conversion of a climate-change skeptic,” is a must read (it’s short), and links to five technical papers on the phenomenon by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. According to Muller, the data are nearly incontrovertible: global warming is real, and we’re the cause.  He is properly cautious, but the case is strong. It’s a good, well-written piece that carefully explains the science behind the conclusions.

Muller first explains his conclusion:

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

And then he shows how it withstands common criticisms:

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.

What is the basis of his conclusion? Note how he leaves room for other explanations, as unlikely as they may be:

What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice. . .

How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

He then warns us not to go whole hog:

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.

Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.

Read the papers (link above); he notes that four of them have already been peer-reviewed. They conclude that global temperature over land will increase by 1.5 degrees overthe next five decades, or even two decades if China keeps growing and using coal.

We must do something about this. But we won’t.  Such is the tragedy of the commons.

A believer explains where God was during the Aurora shootings

July 30, 2012 • 5:10 am

The recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado that killed, among 11 others, a six-year-old girl, and injured 58, should make any person question their faith.  After extensive reading of theodicy (religious justification for evil), I haven’t found one remotely convincing reason why a god who was wholly good, knowing, and powerful would allow such things to occur.  Even the theologians worry about this one, which is why the existence of undeserved evil (particularly that caused by diseases or natural forces like tsunamis) is religion’s Achilles heel.

But the faithful still try.  A particularly odious take is that of Rob Brendle, a former pastor and current author. In a post on Saturday’s CNN Belief site, Brendle justifies the Aurora massacre as perfectly consistent with a loving God. His piece, “My take: This is where God was in Aurora,” is a sad example of how no evidence, however powerful, can dissuade the faithful from their idea of a loving Father In the Sky.

Brendle, who had held the hand of a dying shooting victim in a previous incident, poses the eternal conundrum:

And back to the aching questions that accompanied those previous incidents: Why did this happen? Where was God in all of it? How could a loving God allow this?

Of course the answer for the faithful is never “God doesn’t exist” or “God isn’t loving at all; he’s indifferent” (some theologians do believe that). There are many other ways to rationalize this by making stuff up. Brendle admits that the answer isn’t easy (duh!) but offers his own anyway. It turns out to be the old “free will” defense:

The capacity to choose God and goodness came with the commensurate ability to choose evil. Is it loving to force his creation to follow his order, or to teach it and leave the creature to choose? It would seem that God came to the same conclusion that America’s founders did many millennia later: compulsory virtue is no virtue at all.

Let’s put aside the scientific evidence that we can’t really choose between good and evil; what we do is totally determined by physical events in our brain and environment.  Since most of us seem to be determinists of that stripe (or accept a soupçon of quantum indeterminacy), we reject that notion outright as incompatible with the scientific facts.  But even if one could choose freely—and some theologians counter that God could have given us a kind of free will that doesn’t permit our choices to produce evil—this doesn’t explain any of the evils that don’t result from human choice. Those include every disease that is painful, debilitating, or fatal (e.g., childhood leukemia), and all the natural evils that kill millions (tsunamis, earthquakes, etc.). Theologian Alvin Plantinga argues that the latter are part of the natural order of the earth, but an omnipotent God could let the tectonic plates slide smoothly, eliminating earthquakes and tsunamis, and obviate all the needless suffering of animals. As John Loftus notes, a good God would have made all animals vegetarians.

And you’d also have to answer why free will to choose God is such an overweening good that it trumps all the sorrows of humanity and of millions of animal species.  Why would God give us a faculty that inflicts such unspeakable suffering? Couldn’t he just let everyone go to heaven, or bypass Earth altogether and just populate heaven from the outset? Why create an Earth in the first place? Was that for God’s amusement? What kind of God would put us through tortures to ensure that we’d choose Jesus? And why didn’t he give that choice to the Maya or the Hindus?

These are the “big questions” raised by incidents like Aurora. Tellingly, religion—which parades itself as “another way of knowing”—has no answers, only speculations that insult the intelligence of any thinking person. Along those lines, Brendle suggests a few more possibilities:

The debate over this theological tension has persisted for centuries, and I don’t aim to settle it here. Let me suggest simply that God, in his sovereignty, has chosen to make our decisions meaningful. Consequently, much of what happens on earth neither conforms to nor results from his preference. There are at least four influences on human events: God’s will, to be sure; but also the will of Satan, our adversary; peoples’ choices, for better or for worse; and natural law (gravity, collision, combustion, and the like).

It is difficult to know which force causes the circumstances that devastate us. But it is enough to know that God need not be responsible for them.

Satan? If God is all powerful, why can’t he get rid of Satan? God’s not responsible for the devil? Does Brendle really suggest that when your kid gets leukemia, it’s Satan’s doing? What’s the evidence for that? And if God gave us free will knowing that we’d use it to do evil, is he absolved of responsibility?

“God’s will” is a non-answer.  If we can’t know or fathom God’s will, then neither can we know that God is good, powerful, and all knowing. You can’t say that God is inscrutable in one respect but comprehensible in many others.

We’ve already dealt with “peoples’ choices,” and “natural law” is a nonstarter for an answer.  Since most of the faithful accept the occurrence of at least some miracles, or at least the possibility of a theistic, intervening God, then God can prevent some instances of natural law by making miracles.  He could, for example, have had the killer, James Eagen Holmes, have a heart attack before the shootings.  You can’t accept violations of natural law through miracles and then prevent God from performing at least some of them necessary to prevent evil.

Brendle suggests that even pondering the question of evil characterizes us Westerners as a bunch of weenies:

Much of the internal gridlock around tragedy is because suffering is foreign to us. This foreignness is peculiarly Western and modern. Most of the world, for most of the world’s history, has known tragedy and trauma in abundance.

You don’t get nearly the same consternation in Burundi or Burma, because suffering is normal to them. God and hard times coexist intuitively there. For us, though, God has become Anesthetist-in-Chief. To believe in him is to be excused from bad things. He is our panacea for the woes of life.

The God of the Bible promises no exemption from suffering. In fact, he all but promises suffering. He does not suggest that his followers won’t go through fire, but rather that we won’t burn up. Mostly he promises to be there with us, to comfort and encourage us and renew our strength. God grieves with us, and he grows us into good people in the process. . .

Where was God in Aurora? He was on the lawn in front of the Civic Building as thousands gathered in solidarity, hope, and love at a packed prayer vigil last Sunday. He was in University Hospital as neurosurgeons groped for synonyms for miraculous.

Yes, those who survived experienced God-given miracles. Pity that God withheld those miracles from the twelve who died.

And the “foreigners-don’t-question-God” answer completely sidesteps the question of “why is there evil and unnecessary suffering in the world?”  It just says that bad stuff happens and God will help us through it.  But that’s no answer: it’s like a parent allowing his little girl to get hit by a car when it could have been prevented, and then making up for it by driving the kid to the hospital and sitting by her bedside.  That’s the kind of God we’re talking about.

And really, does suffering make us into “good people”? Where’s the evidence for that? Yes, some people may say that going through a tragedy has made them better, but which parent would say he’s glad his child died of cancer because it made the parent a “better person”? That is monstrous. Are we all better because God allowed the Holocaust?  What a horrible thing to think! Only a theologian or ardent believer could accept such nonsense.

No, there’s no solution to the problem of natural evil. Charles Darwin, I suspect, finally crossed the line to nonbelief when his beloved daughter Annie died at the age of ten. Any rational person who sees things likes this happening constantly has to conclude that either God doesn’t exist, or, if he does exist, is either apathetic, weak, or malevolent. Isn’t it easier to assume the former than the latter, especially given the repeated instances of evil in our world? Natural and moral “evil” is precisely what we expect if there’s no God, but it’s counter to every Christian, Jewish, and Islamic notion of God’s nature. Therefore believers make stuff up.  Theodicy is perhaps our finest example of how humans believe what they want to believe rather than what’s true.

I’ll close with a comment on Brendle’s last paragraph sent by reader Justicar, who called my attention to this piece:

The valedictory is nauseating:

“What God our cities will see is what we show them. From the beginning, light has shone in the darkness – he ordered it that way. And the deeper the darkness, the brighter the light will appear.”

Know what else shines in the darkness? Muzzle flash.

_______

p.s. Religion scholar Stephen Protero has collected and published a collection of 7 answers that CNN readers gave to the question “Where was God in Aurora?”

Jumping spider shadowboxes

July 30, 2012 • 3:55 am

This YouTube video of a jumping spider and a mirror shows several things: inter-male aggression, lack of self-recognition (no surprise in this species, but see Wikipedia‘s article on the mirror test for seeing which species have individuals that self-recognize), and, especially, the species’ keen eyesight.  The video’s caption identifies the beast:

An adult male of the jumping spider (Carrhotus xanthogramma, family Salticidae) showing combat displays against his own reflection on the mirror again and again. Mid-May 2009 in Japan.
Soundtrack (audioswapped): “Into The Mirror” by Spencer Brewer.

h/t: Rebecca Cadorette

The disingenuous Professor Ruse

July 29, 2012 • 9:32 am

This was Michael Ruse last week, explaining why, as a nonbeliever, he was still trying to reconcile evolution’s randomness with the determinism—i.e., the inevitability that a humanlike creature would appear in evolution—demanded by science-friendly Christians.  (My emphasis in second sentence below):

This is not because I am a believer, because I am not. It is not really because it is a politically good thing to do, although I think that is so. It is rather because, well, it is a problem that is interesting and challenging!

This is Michael Ruse two days ago, revising the reasons for his own accommodationism:

But my critics are right in thinking that my writing does have a political component. It is not, contrary to widespread belief, in the hope that I might win the Templeton Prize. They are never going to give it to a non-believer like me. Nor is it because I am secretly a Christian. I left my childhood Quaker faith at about the age of 20 and have never been attracted back.

. . . This said, I live in a country – a country of which a couple of years ago Lizzie [Ruse’s wife] and I voluntarily and with joy became citizens – where at least half of the people are genuine, believing, practicing Christians – and with others sympathetic or as committed to other faiths like Judaism. My neighbors go to church on Sundays and believe that Jesus died for their salvation. So did the teachers of my kids and many of the folk that we interact with every day. Lizzie’s closest friend is the youth coordinator at First Presbyterian and I am co-teaching a course this fall with one of my good friends, an ordained Presbyterian minister.

. . . Perhaps it is not so much a question of being mistaken, but of realizing and recognizing that others do not share your views, and that while you have the right – and the obligation – to oppose them, you must live with them.

And if I – a non-believer – can show the world that it is possible to be both a Darwinian and a Christian, that is all of the political motivation I want.

So it’s political after all! Doesn’t the man read what he writes from one column to the next? At least we’ve learned that Ruse’s sincerity is sometimes a ruse.

And where has he exercised his “right and obligation” to oppose Christianity? All he does is make the occasional remark that he’s an unbeliever. I wouldn’t call that opposition at all. In contrast, he writes books and columns not opposing their religious beliefs, but telling them how to make those beliefs compatible with science.  If Christians were really Christians, they wouldn’t hold this against him. Is he that afraid to openly tell them why he disagrees about God?

In my estimation, all atheist philosophers who try to reconcile religion and science are doing so for political reasons—as are organizations like the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education that engage in the same activity.  It takes a profound hypocrisy to try to reconcile for others things that you can’t reconcile for yourself.

And the accommodation issue is just not that interesting as a philosophical problem.  Anyone with two neurons to rub together can reconcile religion with any scientific fact. All you have to do is make stuff up.  You might as well write discourses on how to reconcile belief in UFOs with the complete lack of evidence for them. Or reconcile astrology with the palpable fact that there is no connection between astronomical phenomena and human personality.  After all, many people believe in UFOs and astrology.

Finally, Ruse throws in this little tidbit:

I see major similarities between the Tea Party and the New Atheists. There is a moral absolutism about both movements. It scares me. Always I think of Cromwell and the Church of Scotland. “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”

What is the moral absolutism in saying “I see no evidence for a deity” or “I’m going to ask those who believe in one for their evidence”? Compared to scientists, religious people are far more absolutist.

Grizzlies catching salmon

July 29, 2012 • 7:37 am

Just to whet your appetite for what you’ll see on the live BearCam in Alaska (it’s already up and running this a.m., and the bears are out in the water), here’s a short video from BBC one with David Attenborough narrating: it shows grizzly bears (the same species you’ll see on BearCam) having a feast on salmon attempting to swim upstream to spawn.

I find the BearCam mesmerizing and especially good at lulling me to sleep.

Third unanswered question about evolution for BBC Focus

July 29, 2012 • 4:34 am

Here is the third and last “unanswered question about evolutionary biology” that I discussed in a short BBC Focus essay.  (#1 is here and #2 here). I’m putting this up because the second and third questions appear only in the print version.

How much of our behavior reflects our evolutionary past? What does it mean to be human? Part of the answer involves knowing which of our behaviors were instilled in our ancestors by natural selection.  This is the purview of the popular field of “evolutionary psychology.”

Unfortunately, its popularity—as measured in books and articles that give Darwinian explanations for everything from homosexuality to music—is not a sign of scientific rigor.  It turns out to be hugely difficult to determine what portion of our modern behavior was adaptive in our ancestors. For one thing, our culture is far more elaborate than that of any other animal, being transmitted instantly from individual to individual through emulation.  Is men’s preference for young, curvy women a function of past evolution in favor of choosing mates with marked reproductive potential, or is it simply a function of what we see on the covers of magazines?  These debates are important.  How much of gender difference in academic performance, for example is due to genetic evolution versus cultural differences between males and females? It’s hard to tell because it’s unethical and unpalatable (not to mention impossible) to settle the issue by raising children in completely gender-neutral environments.  And since many of our behaviors evolved thousands or millions of years ago under unknown conditions, we’re often forced into speculative historical reconstructions, cynically known as “just-so stories.”

Some of our behavior is clearly due to natural selection. Eating, sleeping, and copulating all promote our survival and reproduction.  The greater choosiness of females than males in finding mates, predicted by evolutionary theory and seen in most animals, is also borne out by psychological tests. We favor kin over non-kin, an evolutionary prediction met in many animals. And the human penchant for sweets and fats, now a maladaptive taste, was probably a valuable asset to our fuel-starved ancestors on the savanna.

But when you read evolutionary explanations about why gentlemen prefer blondes, or why so much of the world is religious, always ask yourself two questions. First, could these traits be culturally influenced and not genetic?  More important, what is the evidence for whether these behaviors were favored in our ancestors by natural selection? My own standard for judging whether our behaviors represent evolutionary adaptations is this: employ the same rigorous scrutiny used by biologists when deciding whether studies of behavior in nonhuman species should be published in scientific journals. By those lights, much of “pop” evolutionary psychology doesn’t pass muster.

Crustaceans in glass houses. . .

July 29, 2012 • 4:07 am

This is from Milky Way Scientists (a Facebook site you really should join) via Matthew Cobb:

Scientists at the New Zealand Marine Studies Centre placed glass shells into a hermit crab tank. The crabs soon moved into the glass shells and made themselves comfortable, allowing researchers to take these amazing photographs.

There’s only one photo, but it’s cool:

Hermit crabs must change their shells as they molt and grow; here’s a video of the decisive moment when one moves house. The change is made very quickly, for the animal’s soft and vulnerable abdomen must not be exposed for long:

Read more about hermit crabs here.  Some can live 23 years in captivity.