Slashdot Mirror
Consensus on Global Warming
FredFnord writes "Well, here's an interesting one: the fine folks at Science Magazine have done an analysis of the last ten years' published scientific articles (articles from crank or non-peer-reviewed publications were not counted) on the subject of global climate change. The results themselves are interesting, but the most remarkable part was that, of the 928 papers they found, 75% accepted that global warming was caused by human activities, either explicitly or implicitly. 25% made no mention either way. And not a single paper asserted otherwise." JamesBell submits this article by a geologist which suggests that the Earth is in serious, imminent, unavoidable danger.
I just don't get why this is news to some people, but unfortunately it is.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
(BTW, that 'fine fellow' at Science Magazine happens to be a woman :-))
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Soon, it will be China and India that you're pointing fingers at, and not the US (or Europe).[1]
So... Then what?
And uh, is this news? Does anyone credible seriously disagree that emissions from human activity are at least in part contributing factors? Or is this another jab at boogiemen that don't exist? There's nothing "remarkable" about these so-called findings.
Also, the "Earth" isn't in danger. Yes, I know this distinction is splitting hairs, but what's in danger is Earth's inhabitants. Our actions are not going to alter a several billion year old rock.
[1] Don't feed me the per capita shit. China will be a far, far greater polluter in this realm, per capita or no. Further, the economic empowerment of the Chinese people will eventually drive them to a level of concern about the well-being of the environment, so, in a way, their accelerated economic development is a good thing, politically and environmentally. Incidentally, China has proven they can reduce greenhouse emissions, even while growing economically (1, 2)...but the point is, they're still on an upward trend. And they've got a lot more people who will begin to thirst for energy-hungry luxuries.
Now what are we going to DO about it?
You are not the customer.
Regardless, the final paragraph of the article begs a very interesting question:The begged question is Will it be bad or will it be good? Wouldn't warmer climates provide more arable land? What I get out of this is "We dont know what it means, but it looks like at least SOME climate changes are caused by man".
Global warming will cause the earth to explode? Oh wait, you mean people (and possibly much of the life on earth) could be in danger. I doubt global warming will make much of a difference to the planet itself, except possibly to allow it to make more room for heat resistant lifeforms :-)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
So no consensus is valid as a scientific argument.
First Century News:
Scientifics reach a consensum: The earth is the center of the universe
I think the reason this is news is because the Bush administration is still trying to pretend that this is not proven science... that it's just a theory that can be ignored. They want to ignore it because it's inconvenient for their business cronies, and those business cronies fund party activities and candidates' re-elections. I don't think there will be any changes on this front until this administration is out of office, no matter how much evidence is presented. It's quite unfortunate.
-- Gargonia
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
The Global Warming issue reminds me of big Tobacco. Deny , Deny , Deny. Years from now their will be no doubt that our habbits accelerated Global warming.
How many were rejected from the peer review process which suggested or concluded otherwise? More to the point (and obviously, this cannot be known) how many were never submitted for peer review in the first place because of concern over the backlash?
Most US science funding in climate and solar research comes from the federal govt (in geological and oceanic research sizable amounts can come from private groups). When politicians don't want to look like they're anti-environment they screen funding to make sure it's not going to go to "enemies of the planet" (I kid you not, that's the phrase).
How can a survey of peer reviewed journals be a valid source of data when people are afraid to publish "the wrong results"?
Perhaps global warming is caused by adult white male toenail clippings, but I'm pretty sure we have no reasonable way of finding that out right now.
...is being suckered into accepting the neutral "Climate Change" euphemism, which downplays its significance. I wonder who started that trend?...Hmm...
Power to the Peaceful
Now the key is to figure out where the least expensive land is that is currently about 202 meters above sea level so I can have beachfront property to retire on. I wonder if I can get a good deal on a submerged English castle to ship over to move onto said property?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Now, there's a solution I can get behind (no, I'm not joking). Nuclear energy, pursued with a strong eye towards safety and security, would be a step forward in terms of our efficiency and use of energy.
Bankrupting the industrialized nations of the world for an unproven solution isn't.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Do not speculate : USA is currently the biggest polluter, whether others will become worse soon is another story, what we want is the US to show an example and make radical progresses towards making the Earth a better planet to give our children.
In Switzerland, where I live, they developed recycling, public transportation and also motivated people to make more sport, use their bikes whenever possible... walk instead of taking their big greasy trucks to the mall, the result is a better environment aware society.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I basically agree with you on this, the evidence isn't air tight. However, that doesn't change the fact that we're still dumping tons of poisonous gas into our atmosphere every day. If nothing else, we should cut back on that.
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
I love how lately on Slashdot anything a particular individual doesn't agree with has become "groupthink". As though that somehow makes it invalid. Has it occurred to you that maybe the consensus has been reached because global warming is a real problem, and that the evidience is overwhelmingly in support of humanity being a major factor?
If there was anyone allowed to watch I'd say China would be the biggest polluter. I'd venture to say Russia is right behind. Since the fall of Communism Russia hasn't done much to clean up the mess that the Soviets dumped everywhere. Or are you forgetting that Chernobyl was a HUGE pollutor ever far beyond Bhopal and the Exxon Valdez, on the par with the Kuwait oil fields Saddam set on fire (funny how no one damns Saddam as a pollutor but hammmer on GWB).
At the risk of being labeled a troll. There are only a few ways that can convincingly prove a scientific theory: 1) carefully done experiments where all the extra parameters are kept constant, which is impossible in this case, or 2) either analytical derivation or computational simulation from "first principles" (also can't be achieved despite all the progress in HPC).
Studies that I'm aware of either show that there is a historical correlation between CO2 levels and temperature (no control for other sources that change climate) or ad-hoc models that are made to fit past data and then used to extrapolate into the future (approach has been tried before for stock market prediction without much success).
It's just very hard to prove human influence on climate.
Having said this, I think it's a very good idea to try find a better source of energy than oil and gas.
I was unaware that there existed separate journals for each conclusion on politically controversial topics. Maybe you should learn more about how the peer review and journal submission processes work. Oh, and by the way, the article never said that "crank" journals were singled out and rejected. It said that any journal in the ISI was searched for relevant articles, and one would assume that the ISI does not include crank publications in its listings, and it certainly doesn't include non-peer-reviewed publications.
I agree that the scientific community has a history of being affected by groupthink and politics.
But, this is the scientific process. That community has come up with most of the innovations of the last few centuries, including the computer and networks you're reading this on. They can be and sometimes are wrong. But betting against them is not a smart bet. Especially with life as we know it on the line.
Books generally don't count since they are not filtered though peer review. The one you link to, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" has the distinction of generating some peer discussion in scientific magazines. The only problem is that the discussion has been unilaterally negative. At least he did get some arguments started, so hats off to him. But if he's serious about changing scientific opinion, he should (and maybe has) submit to peer reviewed papers. They may not be published, but that's where the true battle is waged.
-Ryan C.
Just because everybody is saying it, doesn't make it true.
But okay, I'm the last person to deny global warming is upon us. Other than some US folks still not convinced or thinking it's not that big a problem (or simply putting their head in the sand), global warming is observed, and the only question is about how much of it is the result of human activities, and how much by natural causes. Oh yeah, and what to do about it.
For the rest: nothing to see here.
"...and then consume that output." Funny how those who are so eager to "correct" this mistake never notice their own.
Seems a far more common and far more damaging oversight, eh? In fact, it's so common that one would almost think that this oversight is a deliberate untruth propogated for rhetorical purpose.
I notice very few of the comments on here have anything to do with the science. It's all a bunch of political arguing. This really tells me global warming is much more about political ideology than any actual science. Considering an earlier report showed 80% of college professors were liberal, the 75% number here sounds just about right.
It's unavoidable if we continue on the current path. If you had something important to contribute, you can post now. (-1, Waste of time to get an early post)
Well, I HOPE you aren't anyways.
Yes, groupthinking like 2+2=4 and the earth is round, is just sooo bad.
How are mathematical statements and established facts groupthink? Groupthink is belief in an opinion or hypothesis because it is the most popular one. There is consensus based on scientific observation of climate data that global temperatures are rising along with atomspheric CO2 levels. There is actual evidence of this.
The evidence pointing to the CAUSE of global warming isn't so solid. All we know for sure is that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are heating up the planet. The impact of human activity on CO2 levels may be negligable for all we konw. One major volcanic eruption, for example, can pump out more climate-altering emissions in days than all of humanity could do for years. The observations in this article do not present any evidence at all, they just demonstrate that scientists who write papers happen to have come to a consensus that human CO2 emissions have an impact on global warming. Being there is not SOLID, DIRECT proof of that one might say it is "group think"...scientists have succumbed to "group think " before...
The article itself makes a good statement:
The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.
Science isn't always right. One thing is for sure though, reducing CO2 emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels might not stop global warming for sure, but it certainly can't make the problem worse. And besides that, it is probalby wise to conserve the worlds biggest NON-renewable resource, much of which happens to be unfortunately located in politically unstable countries where mentally unstable terrorists like to hide.
It is still surprising to me that only 1 in 4 bothered to include alternative polution sources...
Because they're professional geologists, so that goes without saying? These are peer-reviewed scientific journals, not introductory textbooks. If a physician writes an article claiming some chemical causes cancer, is he going to also mention everything else causes cancer? Is he going to mention the sun also causes cancer? Of course not, because he most likely is not a complete and utter moron, and he assumes his readers aren't either.
Find me a single geologist anywhere who has ever publicly stated that anthropogenic sources are the only things that cause global climate change.
Maybe this is just a nitpick, but people tend to overestimate the importance of humans and our impact on the planet. The issue here is our own survival. The opening of the article lays it out plainly:
Global climate change is increasingly recognised as the key threat to the continued development - and even survival - of humanity.
Exactly. The Earth will go on spinning and evolving new land masses and creatures as it has done for billions of years, no matter what we do to it, short of actually blowing it to pieces. Even massive global nuclear contamination would fade away eventually, becoming a mere hiccup on a geological time scale. Our activities might destroy a lot of species in addition to ourselves, but in planetary history mass extinctions are routine non-events.
What motivates my concern is not that we need to preserve this or that for its own sake, but that we want to maintain a pleasant world to live in. For some people that might include spotted owls and obscure mud lizards, for others not. I think the environmental movement might get more attention from the people who make the decisions if they give up on the sacred earth-spirit thing and focus on the fact that nobody wants to think of their great grandchildren living in shelters and subsisting on hydroponic fungi.
Of course, 600 years ago a "peer review" would call you a crank for saying the world was round.
There is human influence on the climate. The harder question to answer is to what degree and how fast? Most of the global simulations have some pretty fatal flaws. Some do not account for the oceans ability to hold heat very well. Others do not take into account how changing currents in the deep levels of the oceans will affect upper currents. Heck, the GFS[NOAA's main forecast model] had a 30 degree miss on the weather in New England this past weekend three days out. Computer modeling is not the be all end all.
This is not to say that nothing needs to be done. I think there is a bit of Chicken Little in the research community. Especially the ones who know that fear brings them more funding.
Some have stated Kyoto was a "start." In international treaties, there are no such things as starts. Once you get a bad treaty, you tend to be stuck with the damn thign forever because the other countries feel like they did what they needed to do. That is politics. You can not accept a bad treaty like Kyoto. It had major flaws and would have been a band aide on a monster gash.
Is the administration doing enough, hell no? However, Kyoto flat out sucked as a treaty goes. It had been rendered as nothing but a way for third world countries to make money by selling their pollution rights. It was full BS.
It is an undeniable fact, backed by a large volume of evidence, that the climate is changing worldwide. Whether or not we humans co-caused this, we will have to live with the consequences! And if we're sufficiently open minded about what is going on we may be able to mitigate some of the bad effects, or at least slow down these unwanted changes by pro-actively looking for "solutions".
I simply fail to understand how scientifically educated people can be so stubbornly blind to this simply because "they don't like the consequences"!
Linux user since early January 1992.
But, you also have to consider how much of that output we consume ourselves.
The climate is always changing. Sometimes it gets warmer and sometimes it gets colder. What is controversial here is 1) should we attempt to stop changing the climate if that is indeed what is happening, or 2) save our resources for adapting to the inevitable change?
If you think 1) is correct, then you worship Kyoto as the God that will Save Mankind (nevermind the fact that if the predictions are correct, and they are not likely to be, that Kyoto is only intended to reduce the INCREASE IN CO2 emissions by less than 10%).
Kyoto will do nothing to actually save us, but it WILL cause a huge amount of resources to be consumed. Somehow, environmentalists think that consuming resources to no good result is good IFF the intentions are good. You see this all the time. That's because environmentalism is a religion, and has nothing to do with science.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
What Saddam did was in the middle of war; we are prepared at any time to fire nuclear missles at other countries, which just might be a bit worse on the environment than Saddam's oil fires. FYI when Saddam asked the US about invading Kuwait, Bush Senior's administration told him they had no opinion on the matter. Not that I'm defending him, but I can see how he might have been a bit bitter on his way out of Kuwait.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
So, what is W doing now to move forward?
The Earth will be just fine. It will go on evolving as it has for billions of years. We humans, however, may not be so fortunate if we don't change our habits. As George Carlin once said, "the Earth will shake us off like a bad cold".
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
The US does not output anything. Have you checked the US trade balance lately ? How come a nation with 31% of the world "output" does not export anything ? You are counting the GDP. But the US GDP includes stuff like the markup retailers make on imported Chinese goods, the legal costs of the Clinton-Lewinsky incident, the health insurance industry profits, the DoD purchasing of the bombs that killed 100,000 human beings in Irak recently, the profits of people who cashed out of their Manhattan apt and went to retire in Florida. It's just a number, just an accounting figure.
The share of "useless" GDP is higher in the US than in most industrialized nation. Plus it is compared with other nation's figures using purchasing power parity conversion, which values the USD much more than the currency market currently does.
Whether you believe humans generate enough CO2 today to cause global warning is irrelevant. (I'm sure you'll retort with something politically attractive but blatantly false like one volcanic eruption produces more CO2 than the whole US in a year, or that the greenhouse effect is made up by scientists looking for funding.)
Ecopolitics of today does not change the fact that the "alarmists" and "pseudoscientists" were right about CFC compounds and their effect in the upper atmosphere, and you'd best get off that horse if you expect anyone to pay attention to your opinions on today's global enviroment issues.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
I saw this article on the front page and wondered to myself if there would be yet another stream of comments denying that there is evidence of climate change or that it could have any deletarious impact. Of course there was.
I am a scientist, not working directly on how anthropogenic activities are effecting the atmosphere but on what the predicted effects may have on vegetation.
As a scientist I look at all the available evidence for a question and come to some conclusion based on that evidence. There is no other sensible way to make a decisison. Where the evidence is lacking, I would try and do some work that would provide evidence one way or another.
Virtually all available evidence points to anthropogenic emmisions causing climate change and there is plenty of evidence as to what those changes may be and what the effects of those changes on the biosphere may be.
Consequently, what I wonder about the, extremely predictable, Slashdot response to an article such as this is whether it reflects the attitude of the US or whether it reflects the attiude of the predominently young, middle-class and technical readership of Slashdot?
Either way, I'm fearful of the general ignorance and lack of logical thought.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Far more common and damaging oversight? Absolutely not. Why shouldn't the people who produce the wealth be the ones who benefit from it? That's what so-called economic "output" is - material wealth, the goods and services that make our society such a (relatively) great place to live.
Certainly, the population of China is many times larger than that of the U.S. Consider that the vast majority of the Chinese populace are peasants who live on subsistance farms, and it's easy to spot the cause of that "gap".
Unless you've been to college in the West. Then you'll probably never understand simple things like economics and critical reasoning.
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
The Crichton canard gets pulled out every time global warming is mentioned. There are so many things wrong with it that it's hard to know where to start tearing it apart, but I'll point out one of the obvious ones right away: Michael Crichton, himself, has almost surely never done the experiments to show that E=mc^2, or that the sun is 93 million miles away, or that malnutrition causes pellagra. So why does he believe these things?
(wait for it)
Because that's what the consensus tells him.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that scientists are any different than most human beings. Individual scientists can succumb to greed, lust for fame, etc and, occasionally, will get away with publishing intentionally erroneous data. Usually when this happens, especially in an area where so many scientists are working (like climate change), their lies will be uncovered and they will be ruined (ex: cold fusion, etc).
The article being discussed here states that the vast majority of hundreds of studies on the subject have all come to the same conclusions: global warming is both real and anthropogenic. I suggest that the groundswell of /. opinion that all these researchers are wrong/lying is due to the rather unfortunate consequences of the truth. We will have to face the facts that our climate may change. Maybe for Canadians, this will be a good thing. For ocean algae and those in the lower lattitudes it will most certainly be bad.
Society invests a huge amount of money in scientific research each year, and does so in a way that ensures maximum objectivity and honesty on the part of the researchers. Averaged over time and sufficient numbers of studies, science usually hits pretty close to the mark. Therefore, to all those doubting, suck it up and deal with the damage we've done. Don't blame the messenger if you dont like the message.
I don't have much time for the AC's reflexive Bush-bashing, but the picture you paint doesn't seem to be any less one-sided.
From my understanding of it, the US did pretty much disengage from the process, so although they didn't technically pull out of the treaty, they certainly have withdrawn from the process of dealing with global carbon emissions. And there's no denying that Bush welched on his campaign promise to do something about it.
And I think there's an important difference with Clinton's actions: the main post points out, we're six years further along with the science of it. The room for reasonable doubt has greadly shrunk, and we've got six more years of excess CO2 emissions to clean up now.
(1) there has never been any doubt that human activities contribute to global warming. The only point of contention is wether an alteration of our current activities would cause a significant change in the rate of global warming, and wether, if this is the case, we should attempt to do so.
(2)Consensus has nothing to do with truth... unless you subscribe to the WOD view of the universe, in which case we could fix all our problems by believing at them really hard.
Good to know that human foolishness is once again aligned in a predictable direction, though.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
The Earth is decidedly NOT in "serious, imminent danger". The planet is going to be just fine for quite a while, as far as anyone can tell. Get it right. Life on Earth might have a hard time adjusting to rapid climate change, but that's happened before, and life (and, yes, the planet Earth itself) has continued to exist. The REAL question (as the discussion appears to notice) is how much of this climate change do we have control over, and what should we be doing to keep ourselves out of trouble?
Simple point is that a scientific consensus has not always been the most accurate thing in the world.
Simple point is, that science in the way we know it today is a thing developed during the 19th century. Before it there was knowledge, there was lots of speculation and there was no separation between hypothesis, theory and fact.
Even the great scientist of the late 17th and early 18th century, Isaac Newton, was more interested in alchemic experiments and metaphysical speculation than in the Physics and Mathematics where he laid the fundamentations for today's Calculus and Mechanics.
Today's scientific consensus is still lacking, and it is no replacement for a thoroughly tested theory. But it is the best thing we can get, if said theory is still missing. Just because it's not perfect you shouldn't just throw it away.
Same as today where the scientists are saying "It must be the humans!" because humans are Bad for the Earth(tm) when there is not near enough evidence to in any way conclusively state that.
I hate to feed the trolls, but...
It's well known, and not controversial, that CO2 traps heat.
It is well known, and not controversial, that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are increasing, thanks to us.
Arrhenius knew these things; he was the first to examine the impact of CO2 on global climate over 100 years ago.
Of course, there are a ton of other influences on global climate; the big question is what sort of negative feedback loops may exist, and how effective they might be at countering the forcing due to CO2 increases.
There is uncertainty because climate science is tough. You've got a combination of a ton of complicated physical, chemical, biological, etc., systems involved, and you can't do controlled experiments very easily (we're doing an interesting one now with CO2, but don't have a good control).
In addition to general warming, CO2 emissions pose other threats. There's the legitimate worry that warming will screw up oceanic circulation (this is the basic idea behind that movie that, um, took a little poetic license with the concept). Also, we're increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, so we're also increasing oceanic CO2 levels, and isn't it nice that CO2 + H2O => H2CO3 => H+ + HCO3-. That's right, we're acidifying the oceans, the effects of which aren't too well known.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
this criticism is pretty slack. it ignores the point of Crichton's diatribe - that being concensus is often used when there's no hard supporting science - in favour of a rib jab. E=mc2 is a quantifiable equation, as is the distance to the sun, and the effect of malnutrition. human affect on the environment, on the other hand, is not honestly quantifiable as the historical data is severely lacking in context. regardless of the simple fact that i'd look sideways at any scientist that claims we're not affecting the global climate, i'd probably look *down* on a scientist that claims it's proven.
does that dismiss human affect on climate change? absolutely not, but there are people who believe that questioning an absolute certainty of it does dismiss it. they're wrong, they're arrogant, and they're not learning from history.
> Au contraire, there is a hell of a lot of money up for grabs for any
> 'scientist' who wants to 'disprove' global warming.
Not really. But even if you found some funding (probably from a corp) to do some research in a 'forbidden' direction, try getting your conclusions published in a peer reviewed journal. Won't happen. And of course after that you will be blacklisted so you can change careers because you will never be accepted as a 'real scientist' again, because all 'real scientists' believe in Global Warming about like Christians believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus.
> The question here is not a political one.
I'll give you that one. Politics gets into it, but at core, Global Warming is religion. If the weather warms somewhere, it is Global Warming at work. If it cools off, well that is Global Warming also. (Yes, they have theology already in the can for that one, I have seen it in action.)
> What's controversial about this issue?
By asking that question it is clear no rational discourse is possible with you, you too are a religious zealot. Hopefully others reading this thread are less invested in the theory to reject all discussion out of hand on the issue. I'll not reguritate the other side here, that is what Google is for. Suffice to say that despite twenty years of vigorous politically correct intellectual supression there are still a few intellectually independent souls standing up and shouting that you guys are full of it.
Are they right? Not really sure myself, but they do make some good points, enough that calls to close discussion and move on to dismantling Western Civilivation in response to a -potential threat- is somewhat rash in my humble opinion.
Then if one is politically aware, one notices that the loudest voices in the Global Warming crowd also want to dismantle Western Civilivation for any of a dozen other totally unrelated reasons, a little more suspicion is justified.
Then add in the Russians just ratified Kyoto so of course the drums are beating like mad for us to be 'reasonable' and sign on and the timing is just SO convienient. Politics and Religion aligned is almost never a good thing, and that is exactly what we have here.
Democrat delenda est
All the examples seem to be cases of a newer idea being overshadowed by old beliefs until the new idea becomes impossible to ignore.
Kinda like global warming.
Also, if you threw out the crackpots and the unsubstantiated claims from any of your examples, the results would seriously skew towards the "true facts".
Kind of like what happened with this report.
Finally, when most of the world was able to ignore the fact that it was round, it probably occurred to people to use words like Consensus to describe the shape. Even though it's scientifically obvious that global warming exists and is caused by humans, there are still people able to deceive themselves--so we use examples like this.
It's strange how some otherwise intelligent people are so adamant about points like this--almost like they have a personal stake in being right. I never got that.
Any time you see every scientist agree...
All scientists agree that the Earth is round.
All scientists agree that the sun is made up of Hydrogen.
All scientists agree that gravity pulls things down.
All scientists agree that smoking is bad for you.
All scientists agree that splitting the atom will produce energy.
Why is it that when all scientists agree that human activity is having an effect on Global Climate, all of a sudden your hear all these people begin to doubt them. Claiming that all that these scientists care about is their funding is ludicrous, because many of them will get funding either way. Of course, those that are really into money, like Bjorn Lomborg, will actually argue against the mounting evidence. In exchange they'll get huge grants from industries whose profits might be diminished by scientific enquiry. And those who doubt only when scientists challenge their love for their SUVs, like ostriches, will be happy to put their heads back in the sand and say: see, there's a couple of scientists who say that Global Climate change isn't happening. They must be right!
Personally, I'd rather not take the chance. If Global Warming has only a 10% chance of being true, then the odds are still way too high, because the consequences are catastrophic.
So, in response to you, I say that if every scientist agrees (or at least no scientist disagrees) that Global Climate Change threatens us, then we should be very concerned. We should fund their studies, and if we find out that they misused the funds or overstated the threat in order to get more money, we can always cut that funding. In other words, unlike the most catastrophic scenarios linked to Global Warming, it's a reversible mistake.
Better safe than sorry, especially when the future of humanity is at stake.
Reminder: find a new sig
Unlike Christianity, science is not a religion. The "truth" is based on the basis of observation and data. If someone had compelling data that say North American deforestation was a natural process and not due to the timber and pulp industries cutting of trees and conversion of that land to agriculture, industry, and mini-marts, it would be published. In this case as in the case of global warming there is compelling evidence that there are human factors.
If scientists cannot agree whether mean temperatures will rise by 3 degrees or 5 degrees, it is not particularly fair to dismiss their theories outright.
Sound policy in my opinion would be to immediatly consider at least the easier reductions in our emissions. It certainly won't harm anything. In the decades when some were in denial of the harmful effects of smoking would it have been unhealthy to quit?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
"In other news, 75% of the owners of McDonald's franchises believe that including McDonald's in your diet is not a bad idea. The other 25% had no opinion but that may be because they didn't stop munching on their Big Mac.
This is not surprising at all. Very few human beings bite the hands that feed them and scientists are human--those in academia are especially human and especially political. They're not going to be out there proving that global warming isn't happening or that it is a natural phenomenon when doing so, in sufficient numbers, will guarantee that funding will dry up on the topic and they'll have to find another research gravy train.
This also doesn't consider how many studies may have been done, submitted for publishing, and rejected. This could be just as much a political condemnation on those that decide whether or not a study is worthy of being published as it is any comment on the validity of global warming and/or its possible human sources.
Any time you see every scientist agree (or at least no scientist disagree) on a very controversial topic, be very suspicious.
"
And your basically saying "I have no credible proof of my side of the agrument, so it must mean all the credible proof is magically hidden from us".
There as much money to be maid refuting global warming (Halberton and the auto-industry would dearly love to see a credible study refuting climate change) as there are supporting global warming.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
> Unlike Christianity, science is not a religion.
No, but all too many 'scientists' are Gaians or worse. And it isn't ALL scientists, just the ones who spout this stuff like it was settled fact. Of course they are the only voices you will hear in the mainstream press. Or the scientific papers, because disenting voices can't make it past peer review and scientists being generally above average in intelligence know this so would tend to not bother attempting to publish a career ending paper.
> If scientists cannot agree whether mean temperatures will rise by 3
> degrees or 5 degrees, it is not particularly fair to dismiss their
> theories outright.
Yes it is. Because unless their predictions can follow reality fairly close one can't believe their CONCLUSIONS as to cause. If the earth is warming because it is SUPPOSED to be warming, say due to the documented increase in sunspot activity being related to increased solar output, then Kyoto means destroying our economy just to boost the self esteem of a few hippy freaks.
> Sound policy in my opinion would be to immediatly consider at least
> the easier reductions in our emissions.
Why? Under what authority do you lay claim to dictate how me and others live our lives? If a proven danger to thee, me and everyone exists, then yes our government then has a duty to act in the common defense as provided for in the Constituition. But until the threat is at LEAST as proven as Saddam's threat was; please piss off and stop trying to run everyone else's life.
> It certainly won't harm anything.
Unless you happen to be one of the ones who loses their livelihood in the economic chaos that signing Kyoto would bring.
> In the decades when some were in denial of the harmful effects of
> smoking would it have been unhealthy to quit?
The data on smoking was pretty damned clear. The Tobacco industry was forced to keep up a front on the issue because they realized what the trial lawyers were trying to do... what they DID do eventually. There ain't too many people alive today who didn't (or shouldn't have) know that smoking was bad for you when they lit their first one. Bad example.
Democrat delenda est
You might want to think of someone other than yourself for a change. Our children and our children's children maybe...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I knew that was coming when I posted it. That's why my original post was written "Any time you see every scientist agree on a very controversial topic, be very suspicious." The issues you mentioned are not controversial.
Convenient quoting on your part. Usually indicative of an agenda.
Why is it that when all scientists agree that human activity is having an effect on Global Climate, all of a sudden your hear all these people begin to doubt them.
If all scientists truly agreed that human activity is having an effect on global climate (lower case is fine) then I don't think you'd have a lot of people doubting them (not just beginning, we've doubted them for a long time!). The fact is that all scientists do not agree this is true. The only thing this article proves is that the collection of articles they selected from the subset of scientific literature that they deemed worthy of reviewing supports their conclusion. You don't even have to be a scientist to recognize just how hokey the whole basis for this article is.
Claiming that all that these scientists care about is their funding is ludicrous
I'm not claiming it's the only thing they care about. But you're naive if you think it doesn't enter their mind.
Oh really? Who is going to fund research proving that global warming is not real. Industry, that's about it. So they'll be quickly labeled an industry stooge by their colleagues (just as you did in your message) and their standing in the community will go down. Not because they're wrong but because they're going against the grain.
And those that would (or would have) funded research to prove that global warming is not ocurring has already done that. We know that there is a lot of doubt regarding global warming. Anyone with an open mind and critical thinking skills can recognize that there is more than reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of the predictions of the pro-global warming crowd. As their models become "more accurate" their predictions of natural calamities slowly become less and less severe. And they spend more time engaging in gloom and doom and explaining why the satellite record doesn't confirm their predictions than actually getting real science done.
In exchange they'll get huge grants from industries whose profits might be diminished by scientific enquiry.
Or by "junk science." Take your pick of terms.
Personally, I'd rather not take the chance. If Global Warming has only a 10% chance of being true, then the odds are still way too high, because the consequences are catastrophic.
Sorry, that's extremism talking. If there is a 10% chance of it being true and it's going to cost a trillion dollars worldwide to fix the problem then we had better be avoiding at least $10 trillion worth of damage. If not then it was not a worthwhile investment. It may be cheaper to just move the people that live too close to the ocean than to try to keep the ocean from rising and pay a little more in insurance for the supposedly more frequent severe storms.
Not to mention no-one really knows what the consequences of global warming is if it's true. All we have are models created by scientists that find themselves, quite frankly, in a position of power and public importance that scientists would not normally find themselves.
So, in response to you, I say that if every scientist agrees (or at least no scientist disagrees) that Global Climate Change threatens us, then we should be very concerned.
There is no reason to sign the treaty.
Aside from impending climate change, of course.
There are countries who are largely hardly even bound by it (China)
China just recently joined the WTO, but that doesn't mean we should have waited for them. If we want to be a global leader, a good way to do it would be by leading.
and it would put our sovreignty in jeapardy. [sic]
Sorry, I missed the provision of the treaty where it said that the carbon police could annex territory or replace the president if we didn't cut emissions. Could you point that part out to me?
Besides, through our own regulation we've already cut our emissions by half since about 1972.
Based on what data? Government data says there's been a 25% rise from 1972 to 2000. And as far as I know, there are no CO2 emissions regulations in the US yet. Could you point us at them?
> You are simply suffering under a conspiracy theory view of Science if
> you believe otherwise.
Ignore the political biases of the Global Warming crowd, ignore everything but blatent self interest, and unless you want to be laughed at you must admit that scientists are human and subject to act in their self interest. At this point in the game, if someone DID debunk Global Warming and managed to get published, how many climatologists would still have careers since every last one of them has staked their professional reputations on this theory being fact? No, at this point is is illogical to expect reason from the scientists on this issue. Religion clouded their judgement and now they are in too deep to even consider whether they were wrong.
> Again, I'm not going to reject out of hand any discussion based on
> evidence and a scientific understanding of that evidence out of hand.
Ok, then consider these items:
1. Sunspot activity has been increasing over most of the 20th century. If Mr. Sun is responsible it is natural climate change.
2. To the best of my knowledge, No computer models exists that can be loaded with 1900 and then allowed to run and produce the 20th century without a lot of unexplained fudge factors to make it come out right. No model exists which has been allowed to run into the future and then checked with what actually happened a decade later has produced a match.
3. Very few records of long term tempratures exist where the measuring station is not now inside a urban heat dome.
Taken together, just those three items means we can't say with confidence the temp is actually currently rising globally, and even if it is we can't say whether our actions are responsible. And we can't make any sort of meaningful predictions as to how much it might go up, whether other forces will act to accelerate or moderate any rise, etc. Basically all we CAN say is global and regional tempratures change over time and they may or may not be changing now.
Yes there is also a lot of very compelling evidence on the other side, but not enough to call the matter settled, and in my opinion not enough to justify preemtive war against ourselves that will certainly cause massive social and economic harm.
> I'm quite unable to see how shifting from oil to uranium amounts to a
> dismantling of Western Civilization.
Why not call for Fusion power while you are at it. Too many (so called) Scientists are just as religiously opposed to anything related to the N word to seriously consider it as an option. To get a paniced retreat from fossil fuels would require the Global Warming zealots to be in political ascendence and that means they would say no to more reactors.
I'd say build reactors to get us away from depending on Middle Eastern Oil, and that argument is equally valid whether Global Warming is real, natural, wrong or an outright hoax. And if the Earth does start warming we can always just orbit some mylar sheets and block a fraction of a percent of the Sun until we rebalance, problems we create by being overly clever primates we can probably fix the same way, especially ones that operate over such a long time horizon.
Democrat delenda est
What I am trying to say is, people have made careers out of studying global warming. If they all suddenly came out with research showing that global warming doesn't exist or is naturally occurring, it would be the end of their careers. Grant money would dry up. Most people are unwilling to self-terminate their careers, so they engineer research (intentionally or not), that will assure them more grant money and continuance of their field of study.
As has been pointed out above, there is more money out there available to people to want to show that global warming is not a result of human activity. If you could come up with a plausible mechanism which explains the observed climatic changes, and totally discounts anthropogenic causes, you would not be wanting for funding.
In any case your reply is not really pertinent to my post. Your theory doesn't explain, for instance, the climatic change that has already been observed, nor why the insurance industry (which does not fund itself by grants) is so concerned about the impact of climate change.
Scepticism is ususally a very healthy thing. When it is coupled with a conspiracy theory, however, it can be pathological. It really is a bit late in the piece to be indulging in this kind of fantasy my friend.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Are you utterly clueless? Have you seen the Los Angeles skyline, or worse Mexico City? Decreasing emissions is beneficial whether or not they cause global warming. The first thing the government should be thinking about is the health of the people, not the economy.
Time makes more converts than reason
- Scientists think about funding, but pushing an agenda to acheive funding is ultimately a career-limiting move when the political pendulum shifts, as it has in recent years. And as with most things, the scientific ego supercedes the need to seek acceptance through funding - scientists will push theories they believe in, and try to swing funding their way, not vice versa.
- Have you actually read any of the literature regarding climate change? It doesn't sound like it - you don't see much politicizing in peer-reviewed journals. Certainly the exacting of personal/institutional spats occurs, but the literature certainly doesn't read the way you imply it does.
- I don't think stating that no scientific paper reviewed discounts anthropomorphic climate change will have a chilling effect on climate research: scientists are well aware that correlation is not the same as causation, after all. When reliable evidence that supports the theory that climate change occurs independent of human activity surfaces, it will be published. When reliable evidence that supports the theory that climate change occurs because of human activity, it will also be published. Until then, we'll continue to study the mechanisms behind climate change and look for links. It's just that simple.
- The Science article merely states that the bulk of peer-reviewed literature allows for the possibility of anthropogenic climate change, nothing more. Anything you read into it sounds more like your agenda than anything else.
Anyways, take it as you will - I doubt seriously you're prepared to think critically about this topic. But making blanket statements accusing scientists of massive malfeasance to further a political agenda that counters your own smacks more of conspiracy theory than a reasoned argument, and it certainly doesn't impress the average scientific Slashdot reader.But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
Ignore the political biases of the Global Warming crowd, ignore everything but blatent self interest, and unless you want to be laughed at you must admit that scientists are human and subject to act in their self interest.
I started off by arguing that self-interest would lead scientists from accepting the much more lucrative funding which is available to the skeptics. In any case you cleary are indulging a consipracy view here, which leaves little room for sane discussion, so next topic.
Sunspot activityYou really believe this isn't (has been) incorporated into the models?
No computer models exists that can be loaded with 1900 and then allowed to run and produce the 20th century.Two things. 1. Agree, computer models are just complex models. I'm unconvinced that the specific predictions being made will come to pass. On the other hand, it is beyond doubt that singificantly altering the constitution of the atmosphere will have climatic implications. It is also beyond doubt that climatic changes, which are not inconsistent with theoretical predictions are being observed. You need also to remember the geological record.
2. Your statement seems to indicate that you are confusing a model with a simulation.
Very few records of long term tempratures exist where the measuring station is not now inside a urban heat dome.A valid argument in 1989, but no longer in 2004. You will find peer reviewed papers from this era pointing that out (which argues against your conspiracy theory). In the meantime the instrumental record has been corrected for this effect. There's no longer any doubt about warming. Nowadays even the most extremist skeptic only argues about the anthropogenic nature thereof.
Why not call for Fusion power while you are at it.Simple. It's not a proven technology (or any technology). I might as well called for solar, wind etc. power. But you haven't answered my question, which was "how does moving from oil to uranium amount to a dismantling of Western Civilization?"
Being overly clever primates we can probably fix the same way, especially ones that operate over such a long time horizon.Yes, but what about immediate time problems like global warming? We think we are overly clever primates, but the very fact that we are still arguing about whether a problem exists, rather than getting on and fixing it would seem to evidence the opposite.
but at core, Global Warming is religion
You are using a conspiracy theory to argue against a scientific theory. You may be right but your arguments are less than rigorous.
I would like to see some actual scientific rebuttal of the available evidence for global warming (and there is some, Ice cores, melting glaciers etc. Also there is no doubt that CO2 levels are much higher).
Fight science with science. Not just a conspiracy theory.
Just wait 'till you have kids.
Bot Assisted Blogging
is that all these are consensus despite the evidence, global warming is a consensus because of the evidence.
No, but all too many 'scientists' are Gaians or worse.
Some scientists in the environmental areas do subscribe to the Gaia Hypothesis, but even that has many levels. At it's most basic it means treating the whole ecosystem as a macro-organism. It doesn't mean you think the Earth is one living creature, or you are some tree-hugging hippy, just because some of those people believe in the more extreme end of the hypothesis.
Of course they are the only voices you will hear in the mainstream press.
You must have missed that whole Slashdot thread based on a Wired article, about how media's desire to show both sides of the argument in cases like global warming meant they had to hunt around for people on the "humans have no effect side". The mainstream press was out there looking for these guys, but all they could find was people in the pay of companies. The whole thing was about how they got a disproportionately large amount of media coverage in the name of balanced reporting.
Or the scientific papers, because dissenting voices can't make it past peer review and scientists being generally above average in intelligence know this so would tend to not bother attempting to publish a career ending paper.
Proving the rest of the scientific community wrong is about the best career move you can make. Scientific history is full of examples, indeed, the whole scientific process relies on it. Science establishes a consensus, until there is sufficient evidence against it,
If nobody brought up anything against the current scientific consensus, science would never move anywhere. Your tinfoil hat ideas about how science work just undermine your whole credibility.
If a proven danger to thee, me and everyone exists, then yes our government then has a duty to act in the common defence as provided for in the Constitution.
It would be nice if life always gave us all the information we need before making a decision. Sometimes though, it doesn't. You have to try and assess the risks, and potential consequences, if you wait too long for proof, it will be too late.
Unless you happen to be one of the ones who loses their livelihood in the economic chaos that signing Kyoto would bring.
Because all those other countries that signed up are head straight for economic chaos, right? Kyoto has flaws, but those aren't an excuse for doing nothing because you don't want to upset big business. It looks to the rest of the world like the US Government isn't just showing some scepticism, which would be no bad thing, but sticking its fingers in its ears and going 'la la la' to the topic. As irrationally opposed to the concept as these fiendish "worse than Gaian" types whose danger you highlight for us.
This is pretty offensive. Research is not a "gravy train": it's something we do because it's stimulating, challenging and interesting. Scientists don't want to spend their lives working on ideas that they know are wrong.
That's not to say that they we are never wrong, and many of the greatest leaps in our understanding came about when someone went against the general consensus. However, what you're suggesting is that scientists are wilfully suppressing the truth because it's in their own personal interest.
There is an excellent response to this point later in the thread, by someone involved in scientific publishing.
Why? The subject is only controversial because (if true) it means we have to make some painful changes to our lifestyles. Just because that's hard to swallow doesn't make it a conspiracy by the scientific community.
Scientists think a LOT about funding, esp. those in academic circles (yes, there are scientists outside academic circles). When funding gets cut off or reduced, the submissions to acquire new funding increases of course BUT ALSO the reasonings for that funding is adapted to the current political environment.
You state the previous poster hadn't read the breadth of literature. Frankly, I doubt you have either, or at least literature from both sides of the aisle, no matter how ridiculous.
More importantly, I highly doubt you ever sat on a funding review board. Or in a lab where funding was drastically cut. If you had, you'll see the scientists change their views very quickly. If they do not, they don't work.
Your talk about the recent political changes affecting science--sorry, that smacks of partiality. Why? Because it always clearly was. Science is and has always had political ties, from warfare to social policy, even raw economics. Alchemists, gold. Chemistry, weaponry. Physics, bombs and sonar. Clearly, an agenda is set not only in practicality but funding as well.
No politicizing in peer-review journals? Are you freakin kidding me? Maybe you were trying to limit this to the papers themselves, but that's not what you said. The journals themselves clearly do not. To me, this shows clearly you are nutcase that has lost all sense of impartiality in understanding your own profession, mistake or not. Nearly every substantial peer-review journal have letters to the editor. Many have commentary by established members on the hot article of that issue. Read them. You'll see the slants.
Furthermore, read the background of many of the reviewers. Many have big time slants. What becomes the prominant emphasis or puts one article over the top of another in order or what goes bold on the cover easily matches the expertise of the reviewers, not the value or worth of the papers themselves.
Then again, you'd like to say the Science article doesn't really say much and should be read in a vacuum. Sorry, it reeks, if only for the bad timing to Kyoto.
Oh, wait, none of that happened. So why are you claiming that scientists are close-minded?
There are a few things that are known beyond any principled denial:
- Earth is roughly 50 degrees F warmer than a body with its absorptive characteristics would be at our distance from the Sun, absent other influences. (Venus is an extreme example.) This proves the greenhouse effect.
- The greenhouse effect is due to a number of gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide.
- Adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, particularly non-condensible ones, will have a warming effect on the Earth.
Now, you can have principled disputes about the interactions of mechanisms at work (greenhouse vs. reflective clouds), but you cannot deny that increasing the concentration of the most important non-condensible greenhouse gas by a large fraction is certain to do something. I see you dismissing the entire concept as religious dogma; it appears to me that your dismissal is itself dogma, like the political attempt to dismiss evolution from biology classes.You also engage in non-sequiturs.
You are using a claim of economic damage to deny a scientific conclusion which suggests a need for action. Well, gee, if I posit a scientific conclusion about the way that cholera and typhoid are spread it might suggest a need for billions of dollars of investment in water treatment systems! Our budgets are too tight, so by your "reasoning" my conclusion has to be wrong.Or maybe it's time for you to realize that the world isn't always as you like it. In other words, grow up.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Can you? Or your thinkalike buddies?
Even if I grant that global warming is occurring, do you have a shred of proof that things like the Kyoto Protocol will result in a net benefit to the welfare of most people? Ever hear of unintended consequences?
Poverty kills, and if there is one thing we can take as near certain based on experience, it is that collectivist prescriptions from the watermelon Left will result in increased poverty and misery.
Too much Law; not enough Order.