This is an excerpt from Skeptical Science by John Cook about the inimitable Professor Richard Alley, who was grilled last month by Dana “dinosaur flatulence” Rohrabacher (R-CA). Alley was asked to explain in 15 seconds why climate has changed in the past and how we know humans are causing it now when they didn’t back then.
I’ve long been a fan of Richard Alley. Not just because of his rendition of Geoman, possibly the nerdiest song in the history of science [reposted below]. I consider his lecture, The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate System, must-watch viewing for anyone interested in climate and wishing to understand past climate change at a much deeper and richer level.
But seeing his answer in a Congressional hearing under those conditions, my admiration went up another notch. In 35 seconds, he manages to explain Milankovitch cycles (aka changes in the Earth’s orbit) quicker, funnier and with more clarity than I’ve heard before. Check out the first 60 seconds then continue on for plenty more Alley goodness:
Another video worth watching features Alley and Ben Santer explaining why we know CO2 is causing global warming. They invoke a subject SkS readers will be well familiar with – the stratosphere is cooling while the troposphere is warming.
So next time I’m in a conversation where someone invokes past climate change, I’ll be sure to begin by saying “imagine my bald spot is the North Pole”. As my parents informed me last weekend, I’m thinning on top so the metaphor should work well.
H/T to Peter Sinclair from Climate Denial Crock of the Week who posted these videos.
– John Cook
Bonus Alley video for the “Glee” crowd:
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Brilliant performance by Alley at the hearing, while Rohrabacher demonstrated to the public that he is a fool.
Telling a climate scientist that CO2 can’t cause warming is at the level of telling a cancer researcher that cancer can’t be deadly, since the cancer cells are really small compared to the rest of the body.
Another answer could have involved C12 vs C13 isotopes in ice records.
In other news: A math professor explains Lagrange multipliers to a cow in 30 seconds, with similar results.
Alley was WAY too patient with this clown.
Richard Alley has become one of my heroes. He is especially adept at explaining things that anyone (except maybe Rohrabacher) can easily understand. I hope he has the time to become more visible in the agressive war that climate hawks must fight against the deniers.
Alley was WAY too patient with this clown.
What’s really scary is that this clown is angling to be the chair of the House Science Committee, where he’ll have a lot of control over climate-science funding.
Daniel:
I would wager Alley was way more patient than he wanted to be, but I think he handled the situation perfectly. I’ll have a hard time not stealing his bit of using his own head as a globe when I’m talking with newcomers about this topic.
I was stunned by how adamant Rohrbacher was in trying to find a pony in the immense manure pile of his own preconceptions. He kept pushing the “but it was warm before!” angle, which appeals wonderfully to people with no critical thinking skills, and Alley kept explaining why that didn’t matter, but to no effect. To me, this is a classic display of denialism: I think X is true. You show me evidence X can’t be true. I side with my beliefs instead of the evidence.
Sigh…
Joe-
Alley and Santer were both brilliant and persuasive, and I wish they were on TV more often, including the evening news. But- do you
think they changed the minds of any of the Congressional deniers present at the hearings? Or perhaps nudged them closer to the truth?
[JR: Rohrbacher's mind I don't think could be changed by such an exchange. But in my experience he does listen to feisty pushback. What would be interesting would be to try to arrange a private meeting with him and Alley and/or a climate scientist from his district, if he has them.]
Mike (#7),
I would not expect Dana Rohrabacher to change his views. He, and others like him, base their views on an ideological belief system not empirical evidence. If the evidence doesn’t conform to the belief system, the empirical evidence is wrong.
Roger Blanchard
Sault Ste. Marie
@caerbannog
Rohrabacher head of the House Science Committee?
As in “Boehner wants to dismantle the Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming because the House Science Committee can deal with that”?
The inquisition really is alive and kicking again…
This can’t be happening. This can’t possibly be happening!
I watched this over at Skeptical Science
Rohrabacher is an idiot- who thought of the solar system as part of our ‘hemispheres’– do the American people have any brains?
A private meeting is a great idea, Joe, and maybe a few other Republican Congressmen could be included. And I agree that Rohrabacher is less rigid than, say, Inhofe or Barrasso.
Joe said… “What would be interesting would be to try to arrange a private meeting with him and Alley and/or a climate scientist from his district, if he has them.”
I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall in that meeting. :-)
Good stuff. Obama should have scheduled hearings like this when he first took office, then on the basis of them plunged straight into sorting out the gw issue.
Soon be able to get our hands on an ev…
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/05/hertz-ev-plans-2011/
I’m no Richard Alley in any area except first name and hand gestures (surprisingly missing in this clip), and when I steal his bald spot metaphor a glaciologist panelist of mine will I’m sure compare my bald spot to the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which extended from the North Pole far into what is today the U.S.
When I asked glaciologist Andrew Fountain on a panel I moderated if the world’s glaciers were receding as quickly as my hairline, he said, “I think both have receded beyond any hope of return.” Brought the house down during two different panels.
In explaining the 100,000 year Milankovitch cycles of orbit rather than the 41,000 year cycles of Earth’s tilt I use the Onion’s greatest horoscope, which said that “Certain shortcomings in your family and educational background lead you to believe that there is a relationship between the alignment of celestial bodies and your everyday life.” This should be every sign’s horoscope every day.
But it is exactly the alignment of the planets – especially Jupiter – that makes Earth’s more circular orbit slightly more elliptical, enough to trigger a small but significant positive feedback leading to the coldest parts of ice ages. (Technically with all the current ice in Antarctica, Greenland, sea ice and mountain glaciers we are in about a 2.5 million year ice age initially triggered by a change in ocean circulation including exchanges between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans that stopped when the Panama isthmus formed about 3 million years ago.)
So oddly the alignment of celestial bodies does have an impact on all of our daily lives, at least in relation to 100,000-year cycles of climate.
About the excellent idea of a meeting with Rohrabacher, the closest good climate scientists might be at UC Irvine, but great ones I know at UCLA and Scripps in San Diego aren’t that far away.
Since Rohrabacher’s an avid surfer he might be interested in a meeting with all-time great surfer Laird Hamilton, Susan Casey, author of “The Wave” about Hamilton and climate change increasing wave size and the Oregon State scientists who’ve studied the connection. Conducting the discussion up the coast a half-mile out at sea in shark-infested waters at Maverick’s during a winter 1000-year storm (soon occurring every decade) would be nice.
Inhofe and others could join them, riding their dinosaurs if they like. . .
Maybe a private meeting between Rohrabacher and other deniers and Alley, Santer, etc. might actually be worthwhile since they wouldn;t have a constituent audience to impress. Not knowing them personally, I don’t know if any rational arguments could sway them especially when their funding comes from the fossil fuel industry. But Joe seems to think at least Rohrabacher might actually listen, so why not give it a try. I sure some powerbroker in Congress could arrange such a meeting.
Rohrabacher was quite, erm, skillful at interrupting Alley and changing the subject every time Alley got close to giving him an answer he didn’t like.
Just to be anal about a mistake I made in my comment above at #15, the Laurentide ice sheet did not begin at the North Pole.
The Laurentide ice sheet followed the borders of Canada very closely, including the northernmost Canadian islands like Baffin Island.
The ice sheet extended south a little into Washington (mostly Puget Sound), followed the Missouri River south and east and covered approximately the northern half of the midwest states that are contiguous and begin with vowels (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio) and made it through most of New York but not much of Pennsylvania or New Jersey (stopping, I believe, at a Howard Johnson’s).
Here’s NOAA’s map:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/glaciation.html
As I said, I’m nothing if not anal, and the Laurentide ice sheet and my own bald spot are approximately the same size. . .
Bill W. (#17), Rohrabacher was practicing what is called the “Gish gallop” (after creationist Duane Gish). In public hearings and debates, move from talking point to talking point in an attempt to exhaust or overwhelm the scientist. The Gish gallop makes it difficult for the scientist to construct the coherent overall picture needed to describe climate change or evolution. Alley did an admirable job of countering this tactic.
It’s been a long while since I laughed so hard. That milankovitch “head” analogy was just too much of a rib buster. :-) :-o
I would like for you to perfectly explain an incredibly complex and technical topic that I will never understand . . . in fifteen seconds! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
The most worrying thing about that video are the two concentration camp guards sitting *behind* Mr Rohrabacher. No offense, obviously :) But is this “when wonks go bad?”
Silly philisophical question not based in reality:
Suppose we were in a position facing a creep toward an ice age (because of the Milankovitch cycle or some other reason)…and that present technology represents all future technology…and that leaving the planet to go somehwere else is not an option (basically think of an immediate flash-forward in time with all other things being equal)…
Given what we know of the atmosphere, could the world band together in a massive CO2 emitting ploy to try to avert that outcome?
Nations meeting together setting CO2 benchmarks of 1000+ ppm that even conservation-minded nations must reach, etc.? Huge heating coils being installed within the permafrost (a la Total Recall)?
Course, after committing such zany acts to avert the ice age, we’d be orders of magnitude in more trouble on the back end with the cycle shifts back (assuming a constant planet for 40,000 years or so).
Yes? No?
BB @ 23: From what I can see we would only need to go to ~350 ppm to avert an Ice age as that is the difference in CO2 from the last ice age to the beginning of the industrial revolution. It also poses the thought of not burning the “last drop” to give future generations, should we allow any, some “working capital” for the next Malankovic Cycle ~25,000 years from now. Recall it took nature about a million years to lay down the carbon that civilization currently burns each year!
Great game… Who next?
http://climatecrocks.com/2010/12/07/deniers-who-changed-their-minds/
What I found odd about Rohrabacher’s comments was his main objection seemed to be about the “lifestyle changes” that accepting climate science supposedly entails. This is classic denial to protect world view. And it is recklessly uniformed.
Maybe the private meeting Rohrabacher needs is with some of the many staid economists who have modelled mitigation efforts in the economy. Then he can discover that it just doesn’t have to be draconian lifestyle changes *IF* we act quickly with effective tools. In fact it could be a better, healthier, more enjoyable world even for the GOP values (gasp).
Conservatives that understand climate science have to get off their butts and start proposing solutions that work for their values. This whimpering that they don’t want to be forced into Liberal Values Lifestyle is a childish abandonment of responsibility for looking after their own family’s, community’s and nation’s basic long-term security.
“draconian lifestyle changes.” what utter self-infatuated garbage, in the mouth of someone who refuses to bail out regular workers, lengthening the pain the better to ruin the president’s reputation and push down domestic wages.
why couldn’t we be creative w/o also being shameless?
The senator kept interrupting Prof. Alley’s explanations to ramble about his own theories, but Alley was ready for him. He was able to present his ideas in short, well-organized bursts between interruptions. That seems like a skill that ought to be acquired more generally. The senator did interrupt the Cato guy’s point, too, though. It must be a senator characteristic. By the way, Alley countered the Cato guy in another short, well-organized burst.
That “Biggest Control Knob” talk is great. And when you watch it this way, you can go back to a slide when you need to.
@24 …
It would follow then from your statement that, since we’re already > 350ppm, that a future ice age is currently impossible, even if the cycle has swung back in that direction.
Is that a correct understanding of your thinking?
Steve from the UK said:
The most worrying thing about that video are the two concentration camp guards sitting *behind* Mr Rohrabacher. No offense, (is intended)obviously But is this “when wonks go bad?”
I was wondering the same thing myself.
Steve the thing to bear in mind is that they are from California. Anyone who lives in California for more than 10 years becomes blond and takes up surfing. California is some kind of weird Lamarcian nightmare world, of deranged acid dropping hippies and right wing parnoid politicians who also use vast amounts of licit and illicit drugs. On the whole California and all who come from that place are just to bizarre to understand.
@ 29: Look at the Arctic and you tell me. Current temperature in Nuuk, Greenland is 39F. If course no single weather event is any proof but it is December 9, 2010. Current temperature in Kentucky is 23F. I call it Climatic Disruption.
My favourite part is the whooshing noise when Alley’s explanation of why Mars is not relevant goes sailing over Rohrbacher’s head :-)
Whoever was coaching Rohrbacher obviously told him that Mars was the “smoking gun” that kills AGW, and the scientists would have no answer for it. Alley’s answer was delightfully simple and intuitive, but Rohrbacher just completely fails to understand that Alley is very politely telling him that his sources are wrong.
The thing that needs to be emphasized more, as we can see from the “warmer in the past” argument reiterated by ol’ Pat Michaels, is that a key concern is the RATE of holocene change and it’s effects on today’s ecosystems and societies. People don’t always particularly care what the mechanism was in the past. The mere fact that it happened is enough for them to think it’s nothing we should make an effort to resist.