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Global Warming Dissenters Suppressed?
sycodon writes "Global Warming has become more than just a scientific issue and has been portrayed as nothing less than the End of the World by some. However, despite all the hoopla from Hollywood, Politicians and Science Bureaucrats, there is another side, but it's being suppressed according to Richard Lindzen, an Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. From the article: 'Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.'"
I suspect that you could probably get more for saying Global Warming is a fake(think of all the corporations that so desperately want that to be true) than that it's real, happening right now, and that there are things we can do to stop it(who would directly profit from emissions reductions? If it were the government, don't you think they would have voted that bill in?)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Richard Lindzen is a well known Greenhouse denier. Don't suppress him or the other deniers - just read more about their Greenhouse denial industry, and the Greenhouse producers they cover for. Will you be surprised when you learn how their network is funded by polluters and petrofuel corporations?
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make install -not war
Man, I've been arguing that point for years. Cementification of the planet's surface is "proven" to affect global warming. (ie: a recent study even pointed out the wind farms, you know...safe, clean, energy, cause a dramatic increase in surface temperature and they noted the surrounding area suffered more dessertification)
I'm pretty sure the Post Office, which ran the telephone system back then, didn't ban Churchill from anything. As for the BBC, I can't find a reference to anything about Churchill not being allowed to speak upon it, so without further information, I'm going to chalk this down to typical pseudo-libertarian misleading given the term could mean "He was considered irrelevent to politics back then and thus never got airtime", or it could mean "Neville Chamberlain personally called up Reith, and told him if the BBC ever gave Churchill airtime, he'd personally revoke their charter."
I'm guessing the former explanation is more likely, knowing the historic spirit of independence of the BBC.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
the cold hard truth is that science is a very lopsided mistress, and when you have 99.9 percent of all climatologists saying that extreme temperature variations are very likely to have a very high probability of accellerating (what you call Global Warming), the 0.1 percent who disagree because they get their funding from Exxon-Mobil get their feelings hurt.
Now, we know:
a. Global warming (accelerated rapid change) is happening now;
b. Global warming (arc) is speeding up, tenfold in just the last five years; and
c. Anyone with their heads still stuck in the sounds will be ten feet under water within ten years.
For those of you saying "yes, but it might get colder", you're absolutely correct. If the gulf stream shifts down, which can happen in a period shorter than ten years (and has), then England and France will probably freeze and the North Sea will be very very cold even in summer. New York Harbor could ice over quickly.
That's what global warming (accelerated rapid change) is: fast, increasingly violent, oscillations of the global temperature patterns until it (possibly) settles into a different state.
It might be a new ice age. It might be a period where California is 10 degrees warmer (centigrade, that's 22 degrees Fahrenheit) than it is now.
But if you live in a coastal area - and almost all of Florida is exactly that - it's not going to be fun.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
By the way, am I the only one to see the irony with the negative mod points about my take on global warming in a topic about Global Warming dissenters being unfairly moderated...
liqbase
Think that gives you doubts...try this: ...And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.
t ml
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.h
Misleading article. Why is Slashdot moronic enough to elevate this trolling to worthy-of-discussion status?
Did you know that the Bush administration has barred climate researchers working for the government from speaking directly to the press? And that press releases, statements, or publicly released research on any climate matter must pass through the White House first, where they are essentially rewritten?
Maybe you should tune into 60 minutes more often.
---Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called "Our Changing Planet." Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.
Asked what happens, Piltz says: "It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality." Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, "Phil Cooney." Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.
Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes "may be undergoing change." "Uncertainty" becomes "significant remaining uncertainty." One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.
"He was obviously passing it through a political screen," says Piltz. "He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout." ----
Please help metamoderate.
From an "Alfred P. Sloan" professor. Take a look at the Board of Trustees of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It's basically "Who's Who" of People Who Want This Talk of Global Warming to Go Away
Compeltely ignoring what he has to say and dismissing his claims as false based on your reason is, by definition, ad hominem, and maybe even worse, guilt-by-association. It has no place in a rational discussion. It's a useful tool to question the credibility before investing intellectual energy in learning about and discussing an issue... but you cannot, ever, say that the claims are false because of the messenger.. only that they are not worth discussing. Given the fact that this is a discussion forum, it stands to reason those who have chosen not to waste their intellectual energy aren't going to be reading this in the first place... so I am left with the conclusion that you are attempting to discredit his statements fallaciously.
Perhaps you'd care to have a look at this then:
Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Full story here There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.
The future is in beta
Very few dissenters? Here's a list of more than 17,000 dissenters most of whom are qualified scientists and engineers.
Well, you end up making them less safe in collisions, too.
While the cheapest way to increase MPG is to use less metal, you're discounting the research into more efficient engines and lighter but stronger construction materials and techniques, plus technology that helps reduce the risk of collision in the first place.
let each individual focus on what they believe in.
For the past several millenia (at least), people have tried as hard as they can to believe in as little as possible. Part of the problem is education, part is apathy, and part are just assholes who believe it's their god-given right to use other people's property as their trash dump.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Global warming is more myth than science. Much of it comes from socialist desires to control large corporations -- "why not make cars more fuel efficient?" Well, you end up making them less safe in collisions, too. "Why not curtail smokestacks?" Because other countries won't, and you'll lose jobs on top of jobs (this is already evident).
It's hard to think of more obvious logical fallacies, but hey. For the first point (ignoring the ad hominim), my Jetta is safe in a collision... and I get 42-45 mpg on the highway. As for the inane second comment regarding smokestacks, I can easily respond with the equally stupid (but no less effective) "If your friends were all jumping off bridges on a bet, would you do so too?"
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
I don't know enough about climatology to know whether or not Dr. Lindzen has a point, but this letter does nothing at all to sway my opinion. This kind of wimpering is a species of "publishing in the press": complaining to a bunch of unqualified readers that you're not being listened to after your work is panned by a comittee of people who are knowledgable in your field.
Journals like Nature and Science are under tremendous scrutiny regarding their handling of politicized cases like these, making it hard for me to believe that they would blatantly place artificial obstructions to Dr. Lindzen's rejoining his critics. Dr. Lindzen leaves details suspiciously light regarding the reasons for their delay, prompting me to wonder if they aren't more legitimate than he implies. His other accusations -- that one scientist criticized another as a shill, and that another scientist lost his funding in a way that might have been related to his work against the notion of global warming -- are thin-skinned and similarly without detail.
Overall, it's the worst kind of doublespeak to claim that speech questioning global warming is being suppressed at a time when taxpayer-funded studies that do support global warming are being castrated with line-by-line edits from non-scientist bureaucrats in the executive branch. The poor, oppressed dissenting climatologists who don't get to eat lunch with the other academics should be thankful for this: In the history of people with unpopular ideas, they among the lucky few whose handful of supporters happens to include the energy, manufacturing, chemical and automotive industries, as well as certain heads of state. Cry me a river.
1) After looking at here the answer should be clear.
2) Look here.
3) Look here. The CO2 level is increasing dramatically. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2. Pretty much clear, eh?
Now, if you put all these facts together: global temperatures are increasing (1), it is increasing abnormally (2), we do emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (3), CO2 does cause a greenhouse effect, what else is needed to convince anybody that humans cause global warming?
Pretending that there are other causes, or that is not happening at all is just wishful thinking.
didn't bush put more funding for this very research instead of signing kyoto?
No. He just didn't sign Kyoto.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
One study compared to dozens of other methods using widely varying methodologies that reached opposite conclusions. Then the article you pointed to quotes the same canard that the "hockey stick" was a "hoax" (in the word of one congressman). When in fact McIntyre massaged the methodology to remove the fluctuation (see the website I linked to below).
For those interested in what the climate researchers actually have to say (and not afraid of hard math thrown in), try Mann's website Real Climate for their responses to their critics.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Stopped in 1998 huh? Guess that depends on who you ask- this data has it continuing well through 2000 into 2005.
e mperature_Record.png
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_T
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhs
Its kind of like my dog who hides his eyes and thinks you don't see him.
>We need more data, -- from the past, way past, to make a qualified judgement; not paid for conjecture.
Many scientists are saying just that, on many grant applications. And probably not because they enjoy working on the ice in Greenland.
Zealots are the ones who make the headlines. The headlines don't have room for the grad student testing ways to correct for the urban heat island effect or for the PhD measuring prehistoric shellfish.
>We only contribute less than 0.5% of greenhouse gases according to official numbers
You should explain that you're counting water vapor, which I assume is the reason for that 0.5% figure when the postindustrial rise in CO2 is 30% (280 ppm -> 364 ppm).
You've got the good old tyme free market religion my friend. How about getting some facts?
According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, total R&D spending by the U.S. government was $85.2 billion of the total $283.8 billion spent - 30% of the total in 2003. Compare that figure to 1970 (57%), 1980 (47%), 1990 (40%), and 2000 (25%). As you can see, "With more and more scientific studies paid for out of public dollars" can only reasonably be applied from the period 2000-2003 and it does not factor in proportions. You are just looking at the total dollars spent by government.
Even there, your argument is weak. If you adjust for inflation - I used CPI for my calculations, the increases in government spending on R&D for 2003 is about 20% above the figure in 1970 dollars adjusted for inflation. This figure pales in comparison to the increase in private industry spending - I calculate it is about a 340% increase over 1970 spending using the same metric over the same period.
Care to talk about the impact of this increase in spending for R&D by private industry and its role in bringing more politics into science in the first place? Leaving that issue aside, you don't have to be a climate change scientist to see that there is a pattern of problems - glacial levels, rise in Tsumani/Katrina incidents, pollutant propagation, reduction of species diversification and so forth - that indicate that there is going to be hell to pay.
I dont know... in my opinion, Real Climate has a pretty hard bias, and I've read more than once that they simply delete posts that they don't like/can't address.
.... many experts were sure that we were going to have a new ice age only 30 years ago. Not all experts- and not all experts believe in global warming either.
RC is one resource for forming an opinion- but they seem a bit like using the Catholic Church as reference for deciding if Christ existed or not.
Facts are... Mars and other objects in the solar system are warming up too, there is correlation between the arms of the galaxy and past climate fluctuation, the climate -has- been hotter and colder than it is now without our doing anything and
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How come it has not risen since 1988 ? Where did you take it off ?
e mp_data.htm
2005 was the hottest year on record.
Check out the stats here: http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2006T
You can see graphics here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/
Do you think NASA is making up data ?
Michael Crichton is a novelist.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
You mean just like people who challenge the global warming hysteria on slashdot. Hopefully now global warming can take its place next to DDT, killer bees, and acid rain on the list of scientific catastrophies that never materialized.
an ill wind that blows no good
Don't be an idiot. Crichton knows nothing about Global Warming. He's been completely debunked.
>global temperature hasn't risen since 1998
Why pick 1998?
Because it was the year of a record-for-the-century El Nino and was above the trend line. Pick an exceptionally hot year as a baseline and next few years will have trouble keeping up. It's like starting with 1999 and concluding that the Internet industry is dying.
Here's the temperature data year by year and as a 5-year moving average.
So was Isaac Asimov. Yet he seemed to know a bit about science. Just to reduce your ignorance a bit, Michael Crichton is/was also an M.D. graduating from Harvard Medical School.
I am not a resource! I am a free man!
Accusing Richard Lindzen of being an Exxon-Mobil shill is nothing more or less than the truth. He's also working for a "news source" called TechCentralStation, which is the creation of a lobbying organization called DCI Group. Get the details here.
He's whining because he's been outed and whatever reputation he had as a scientist has been deservedly destroyed.
If he wants a job educating students, perhaps Oral Roberts University will hire him. Or maybe Lindzen's reputation is so screwed that even they'd stay clear of him.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Wonderful group you share your opinion with regarding Crichton
It is sad how many people actually believe that Crichton writes with a foundation of solid scientific evidence. It is obscene the manner in which distorted facts get bootstrapped into the datastream by faux public policy organizations.
It is pitiful that the State of Oklahoma offered compelling anecdotal evidence indicating the fallaciousness of intelligent design when they elected Jimmy Inhofe to the Senate.
Inhofe is to a very large degree responsible for Crichton's elevation into the upper level of global warming debate. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, he held a hearing on September 28, 2005 titled "The Role of Science in Environmental Policy-Making", and gave Crichton top-billing as the first speaker.
The last speaker of the hearing was David B. Sandalow, The Brookings Institute's Environmental Scholar, who had previously published a harsh critique of Crichton's environmental views in January, 2006. The Brookings Institute's synopsis of it reads:
Inhofe himself is compelling evidence of American Conservatism's continuing decline. The Sourcewatch Article about Inhofe states that:
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Alluded to in the article, an interesting paper on how the IPCC results are not reproducible: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.M&M. pdf
The earth has supposedly been warming over some period of very, very recent history. So with over 4 billion years of weather, we humans in our infinite wisdom are choosing about 100 years of data and trying to extrapolate where the earth is heading.
Actually, try 650 000 years of data.
Let's face it, religious zealots have been calling for the End of the World since the beginning of time and now Scientific zealots are getting into the act.
Yes... the little difference is that the scientists have science to back these claims. You know, facts and those things.
What's really funny is that when I was a kid the real weather scare was the coming Ice Age. What happen to those Ice Age zealots anyway?
A nice debunking of this claim in all its permutations is available here.
I'm so sick of the press reporting on predictions of idiots from idiot scientists to idiot psychics as if they were fact and then never following up when most of these nutballs are wrong.
Could you show us some proof that they are wrong please? Haven't you considered that a possible reason you don't see any debunking "follow up" reports is no a conspiracy, but rather that no one manages to prove them wrong?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Richard Lindzen is a paid consultant for coal and oil interests. And he's not even willing to put his money where his mouth is.
Seriously, every time I hear some "distinguished professor" spouting facts that seem a little too convenient to be true, I go to Sourcewatch.