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.
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.
The official EPA Global Warming website is located at: www.epa.gov/globalwarming/
Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest
e _031208.html
By SPACE.com
posted: 03:00 pm ET
08 December 2003
Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.
full story at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-ag
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".
From the article:
The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysica Union? What a bunch of communists. They are just trying to destroy our way of life. They don't want me to live my life the way I want. Now, where did I park my Ford Explorer? I gotta run and buy a pack of smokes...
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.
And the US supports the principles of Kyoto, but does NOT support the exemption of countries termed "developing", like China.
Show me some hard numbers that show the Kyoto treaty will do anything significant, other than redistribute wealth around the world and then we'll talk.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
...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
You mean the treaty that Clinton wouldn't even submit for ratification by the Senate? And about which the Senate passed a resolution 95-0 stating that they would not ratify if it was submitted?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
No because the heat generated by the Prescott's core far outweighs the benefits to the research ;)
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 agree with you that Kyoto will probably not do all that much; however, it is a start. The point of Kyoto is that it is intended to lead to a stricter treaty after Kyoto's goals have been met in 2010 (fat chance, but anything is better than nothing).
Of course, if the US wants to propose a much stricter treaty that will cut back their output to something more in line with what the rest of the world does per capita so that actually might be significant, the rest of the world would welcome that!
That said, I guess I mostly agree with the second FA, which explains that we're mostly fucked, probably within our lifetime.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
"Unfair is one nation producing over 25% of global CO2 emissions ..."
"...and produce 31% of the worlds output." Conveniently, you forgot this part. Seems a common oversight.
The Bush Administration rejects the Kyoto protocols, whether for good reasons or not, and then refuses to do anything else about global warming.
Bullshit.
14 Nations to Participate in Plan to Reduce Methane
This is largely driven by the US and it includes India and China. It'll have the same greenhouse effect as removing 7% of US fleet of cars from the road and it costs next to nothing.
Just because Bush doesn't sign up to a program with name recognition, doesn't mean the US government isn't doing anything.
Blaze a trail to the New World
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.
The 95-0 vote was in 1997. In a 2003 vote on emissions reductions, the vote was 55-43. Attitudes are changing.
Furthermore, a major objection to Kyoto was that it does not require emissions reductions from third-world countries. However, the major third-world producer of CO2-- China-- has been steadily reducing it's emissions anyway. So that argument isn't so compelling anymore. (Then again, they're at 1/8 the US level per capita anyway...)
The world-averaged temperature could remain unchanged by cooling some regions and warming others, and both things could be difficult in terms of crop adjustment, etc. And there is a lot of concern about water as well as heat; think drought.
The expanded phrase also includes the "climate of weather", i.e. the slowly varying statistics of the quickly varying fields. For example, we ask whether the weather would be more stormy in the future.
I've never heard it said that climate change is a euphemism ... to folks like me who work in this field, it's a more encompassing phrase.
Bush didn't "pull out of" anything. Why YOUR revisionist history, Anonymous Coward?
The US is a Kyoto signatory, but "On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". Disregarding the Senate Resolution, on November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification."
All of this happened under Clinton.
So, sorry, but your bullshit post is just that.
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.
Mod parent down, it's ridiculous. The United States is a largest per capita generator of greenhouse gases by an enormous margin...to the extent that even though China has 4x as many people as the U.S., they still have lower total emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, per capita carbon emissions in North America (includes Mexico and Canada, and the U.S.) were 4.7 tons in 1997; in China the per capita emissions were 0.73 tons. No, that's not a typo, in North America we generate 4.7 tons of carbon emissions per person, per year.
For starters, how many papers were rejected from the peer review process is almost entirely irrelevant. The peer review process is in place for a reason, and the reason is to ensure that bad science (not politically unpleasant conclusions) are not published in major journals. Unless you have a strong reason to believe that most peer reviewers have a strong personal stake in suppressing legitimate research because they don't like the conclusions, then this objection is bunk. We aren't talking about a 60-40 split on a controversial subject -- no papers that contradicted human involvement in global warming made it through the process. What possible benefit would it be to any of those reviewers to suppress opposing opinions? They have no personal stake one way or the other, except arguably their reputations, and that presupposes that there is not a single scientist that has done enough legitimate research to be a peer reviewer and yet still thinks global warming isn't a human issue (or at most, no more than a handful) -- a strong argument for thinking global warming is a significant issue, as far as I'm concerned.
You also rant about how these papers are only published because people don't want to lose funding by being perceived as anti-environment. It seems fairly evident that the current government establishment would be most served by producing strong evidence that global warming is not a serious issue -- so why would it be more politically safe to contradict the notion that things are okay, and question the status quo? If people wanted "safe" conclusions to ensure their funding, they would be saying that global warming is no big deal. Furthermore, you seem to be implying that no funding exists for the production of honest results. Again, this isn't a 60-40 split -- if anyone, even a single person, has ever received funding to do legitimate research on this subject, and has come up with findings against human involvement, it has not been able to make it through a peer review, which probably means that it used questionable methods or was otherwise flawed. Peer reviewers are not as politically motivated as you seem to suppose.
How can a survey of peer reviewed journals be a valid source of data when people are afraid to publish "the wrong results"?
A valid question, but one that is entirely irrelevant until you have shown that this fear actually exists.
I am the man with no sig!
After the most recent Slashdot story I actually steeled myself to do something about it. I re-read the whole story at Threshold 2 to gather UIDs of people who might help. The idea is to build a list of myths and authoritative answers to them. For example, the old line that the sun's getting hotter, and that this explains global warming, comes up over & over again. Many, very patient! and knowledgable people posted to that story with excellent refutations of such nonsense.
I'm going to put my plaintext mail address in this comment, that's how serious I am about this! You can even help if you believe that Climate Change is hippie nonsense trotted out by pseudo scientists who just want more funding!!
What I am looking for:
If you have violent objections to the idea that global warming is a bad thing, please email me at the address below describing why you think this. As you will see if you hit 'see the rest of this comment', the existing list - which were collected from a single Slashdot story - is already pretty long, so this isn't so vital.
If you can help knock down such gibberish- if you have posted with a calm, well-argued and ideally knowledgable or carefully referenced refutation of a wild claim - please email me and make yourself known; I will get in touch in the next few days.
If you want to subscribe me to lots of spam lists, don't bother; Gmail are very good at spam filtering, you'll get yourself blacklisted when I hit 'report spam' and you won't be helping your cause one little bit.
If you can help, mail me at:
username: imipak; domain (at): gmail.com
Here's the list I collected from the last Slashdot climate change story, only a few days ago, about "why anthropogenic climate change is a myth". Read it and weep.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
(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. ~
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
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.
It won't get published for reasons such as poor methodology, maths etc. Not because you view is 'forbidden' or not politically correct. You are simply suffering under a conspiracy theory view of Science if you believe otherwise. In fact, while perhaps not in Science, oil-industry funded research, and some not funded by the oil industry, which argues against the consensus of climate change, has been published. It's rare, true, but this rarity is because the bulk of the evidence points in the opposite direction, not because of some grand conspiracy aimed at ensuring funding for climatic research.
> 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.
I'm neither religious, not a zealot, and it's called a rhetorical question. I'm asking (as should be clear from the rest of the passage), "where does the controversy here come from?" My point is that there is little scientifc controversy. The controversy is largely injected at the political level.
Hopefully others reading this thread are less invested in the theory to reject all discussion out of hand on the issue.
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. Quite the opposite, I genuinely hope that we are all wrong! I hope to wake up tomorrow and that it was all a bad dream, a mass delusions of the world scientific community caused by some faulty maths somewhere down the line. And you know why I hope this? It's because, at our current state of knowledge, the conclusion that we are headed for a very nasty time climatically is ineluctable and because I have children. But I'm not going to stick my head in the sand on this one.
[I]f one is politically aware, one notices that the loudest voices in the Global Warming crowd also want to dismantle Western Civilivation
I consider myself fairly politically aware, but I'm quite unable to see how shifting from oil to uranium amounts to a dismantling of Western Civilization. Perhaps you can clear that one up for me? Again the opposite is true, it's through technological advance alone that we are going to beat this one. We have to move away from this C19th energy source.
- 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.
Since I don't feel like finding another post to attach this to, here's a response to a couple of other points:
1) Forget the whole theory that global warming is simply an artifact of urban heat islands. We fixed that particular problem with the data in the early 1990s. The urban heat island effect is without a doubt the best-understood phenomenon in climatology, and even with the effects removed climate is still warming.
2) Sunspot activity doesn't explain most of the climate change story either. It's part of the story, but definitely not all of it. If you want to check out a paper on the subject, I suggest the following (I know its a few years old, but the findings haven't changed subsantially since this paper):
Cedric Bertrand, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Potential Role of Solar Variability as an Agent for Climate Change, Climatic Change, Volume 43, Issue 2, October 1999, Pages 387 - 411
note: I'm not telling you to believe the paper. Just to read it. If you understand enough about what's going on to do so, please feel free to poke holes in it. That's part of science.
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.