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.'"

Comments

omg

[Chicken04GTO]

And in other news, people who don't like certain viewpoints tend to supress those viewpoints...

...whether your a nazi in disguise as a neo-con or a tree hugging liberal college enviro-hippy.

Re:omg

[letxa2000]

Those that think that science (i.e. those that are involved in it) are somehow pure and only care about the truth and think that science is immune to politics are naive.

Right

[pHatidic]

Because the world's climate scientists have so much to gain by tricking people into driving more fuel efficient cars.

Re:Right

[WilliamSChips]

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?)

Re:Right

[pHatidic]

Certainly they would get a lot more money to prove that global warming wasn't real despite the fact that CO2 concentrations are way higher than they have ever been in the last ten thousand years. Fixing global warming will cost certain companies billions of dollars, although with carbon trading the economy as a whole doesn't really suffer. Even still though, I'd bet the big companies would be willing to pay a people a lot of money to say the problem isn't real, no?

Re:Right

[stupidfoo]

Yeah, they just have $1.7 Billion in funding to fight over, in the US alone.

RTFA

Re:Right

[pHatidic]

Let's see...spend four years in college, another year getting a masters, another four years getting a PhD, and another two years doing post doc research. Then make 40,000 a year teaching at a B level university for the next ten years. If you get tenure then your pay goes up to 80,000, but most likely you don't get tenure and end up effectively getting fired.

OR work go to business school and make 250,000 your first year out of college.

I'm sure the world's climate scientists are all just in it for the money.

Re:Right

[IntelliAdmin]

This totally ignores what the story is trying to drive home. The greed of the scientists is what drives them to support global warming. If they don't support global warming then they lose their funding, popularity, and their status as a scientist. I feel that in this way the global warming crowd is hurting the cause for a cleaner environment. (I believe that most global warming is fueled by sunspot activity - just look at the world around the 1500s - Look it up you will see) The West is always berated for all the polluting we are doing. Has anyone ever been to China, Taiwan, or India? We really need to start working to educate these governments about pollution, and the environment. If only a few western countries cut back on pollution where will it get us if China is belching out billions of tons of pollution every day? How about we cut the global warming crap, and just talk about the facts. Lets work to make the environment cleaner - for cleanliness sake. The air is dirty, and we want it clean. Our water is dirty and we want it clean. This is much easier to sell then fuzzy global warming theories designed to scare the crap out of us It really is sickening when you are walking down the streets of Tainan, Taiwan and you have to wear a mask because the pollution is so bad. How come I never see or hear the global warming people complaining or doing anything with these countries? Why is that? Could it be that the only purpose is to use scare tactics so people will fund more of their research? I hope not.

Re:Right

[_newwave_]

No, because they have so much to gain by receiving money to study the "problem." Which is the very reason they're producing alarmists commercials concerning global warming.

Oh wait...what's that link in your sig? What pathetic irony.

Re:Right

[kryten_nl]

...the fact that CO2 concentrations are way higher than they have ever been in the last ten thousand years

When did that last ice age finish? 10.000 years ago or so?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

And to repond to a couple other posts you made, we need to think about global warming with a clear head. We still don't know if mandating everybody to drive a Prius is going to stop it. We still are not sure what all the effects are going to be, the Earth is a complex system. We still don't know what the effects of the industrialisation is exactly.

We need more research, we need contingency plans, be it protection against a rising sea or moving to Mars. It is just to early to dismiss any of it.

Re:Right

[mickwd]

"Personally, if global warming is happening, we need to prepare for it, and not waste our energy trying to change it."

Perhaps if we stopped wasting our energy we could help change it ?

Re:Right

[Bill Dog]

And as TFA stated, you do not get as much money for verifying that there's probably nothing to something than you do for looking into how bad a dire catastrophe something might be.

Re:Right

[Tony]

or they could be politically motivated. I wonder how many of the global warming supporters are to the political left?

I dunno. How many global-warming ignorers are on the right?

Gadfly

[Himring]

It's a highly politicized topic. One can easily trace the links: global warming/industrialization/fossil fuels/automobiles/SUVs/selfish conservatives. Or maybe it's global warming/savetheearth/treehuggers/anti-social liberals.

An objective scientist doing his job has no place in the arena by any of its participants no more than Socrates' objective criticisms of the Greeks were welcomed. In the end, they would rather force the hemlock than hear the truth....

Global Flamebait Stories Increase Slash Revenue?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Slashdot's financial situation has become more than just a mess and has been portrayed as nothing less than the End of the World by some. However, despite all the hoopla from Zonk, Malda and Scuttle Monkey, there is another side, but it's being suppressed according to various Slashdot denizens. From the article: 'Slashbots who dissent from the alarmism have seen their karma disappear, their posts derided, and themselves libeled as Evangelicals, Republicans, or worse. Consequently, lies about Slashdot's impending death gain credence even when they fly in the face of the truth that supposedly is their basis.'

Anyone notice somthing

[pHatidic]

Anyone notice how when everyone was saying global warming was seven or eight years ago, Slashdot was all for the Kyoto protocol. And now that the tide of scientific consensus is overwhelmingly saying that global warming exists and is a real problem, Slashdot is now saying it's fake?

Hint: Just because something is unpopular doesn't make it right. This is why people dislike nerds.

Re:Anyone notice somthing

[distilledprodigy]

Slashdot is not saying it's fake. Slashdot is pointing out what could be an interesting article that pointedly counter-acts an earlier article saying that the administration suppresses "scientific results" pointing to Global Warming. Slashdot as a website doesn't seem to take a stance on issues, and like any good news source posts interesting articles.

Re:Anyone notice somthing

[ktappe]

And now that the tide of scientific consensus is overwhelmingly saying that global warming exists and is a real problem, Slashdot is now saying it's fake?

No, Slashdot is merely reporting that one single individual's opinion column is saying global warming is fake. Slashdot is not a source, it is an amalgamation of sources. In this particular case, the source appears to be biased, as the author cites only three data points for his claim, one of which occurred 14 years ago and another which he himself wrote. As a result, I personally am taking this article with a serious grain of salt.

-Kurt

Re:Anyone notice somthing

[einhverfr]

I have no doubt that global warming is real. However, there is a serious set of questions regarding what the threat actually is.

For those who say "it has been happening since the last ice age" this is demonstrably false. We know that the climate changed for the *colder* in places like Greenland over the last thousand years or so.

The real issue is this: In any contentious or important subject (like global warming or heart disease), the minority viewpoints are often supressed. What? you mean that feeding rabbits cholesterol might not pertain to humans in terms of heart disease risk when dogs fail to show such a correlation? Heretic, you must be an industry shill!

So my point is this-- I suspect that global warming is occuring-- but skewing the data doesn't mean that we are going to be better prepared. Instead we need all information to be peer reviewed and carefully considered.

Re:Anyone notice somthing

[j-turkey]

Anyone notice how when everyone was saying global warming was seven or eight years ago, Slashdot was all for the Kyoto protocol. And now that the tide of scientific consensus is overwhelmingly saying that global warming exists and is a real problem, Slashdot is now saying it's fake?

The Slashdot 'community' contains many story submitters with differing opinions. Those stories are judged by multiple editors who also have differing opinions. Furthermore, the topic of global warming has a multitude of facets, with a multitude of people subscribing to each of those facets. Slashdot editors and submitters seem to be trying to do the responsible thing by not simply suppressing an unpopular viewpoint (which is what the article happens to be about).

Environmentalists tend to polarize issues, and this issue doesn't need to be polarized. Polarization of issues like this precludes any rational discussion and instead forces people to choose sides In my opinion, scientists shouldn't be about choosing sides. Neither the article nor the synopsis claims that global warming is fake. The article says that those who dissent with the popular opinion tend to be intimidated into silence. In any case, I don't think that Slashdot is saying anything here other than reporting a story. Maybe it coincides with an editor's viewpoint, maybe it doesn't. To me, it looks like they're reporting on another viewpointe. What's wrong with that?

Regarding your hint: Popularity, or lack thereof has very little to do with facts.

Y'know...

[Otter]

My first thought was that it would be great if some fake field of "science" could be created, and used as a sandbox for all the people for whom science is just one more bit of fuel for inane flamewars.

Then it occurred to me that we do have such a thing. Thank heavens for science fiction -- otherwise all the energy channeled into arguing about whether Kirk is better than Piccard would be pouring into real science, as well.

Freedom and Liberty

[Toby The Economist]

This is why it's important not to have State control over funding; anything unacceptable - which is of course entirely orthagonal to truth or falsehood - naturally, to a lesser or greater extent, tends to be suppressed.

Did you know Winston Churchill wasn't permitted to speak on the BBC (the State telecoms monopoly of the day ) between 1933 and 1939 because his views on Nazi Germany were considered too extreme?

The State is created by free men to protect liberty and freedom. The problem we face is when the State becomes a monster and threatens the very liberty and freedom it was created to protect.

The State inherently holds political power; to give the State economic power is to provide it with a forceful means to implement its own ends. This is one of the reasons why its so vital to keep the State out of economic activity; because of the danger of the abuse of that economic power.

Re:Freedom and Liberty

[pHatidic]

What would the state have to gain by promoting global warming? Is everyone on Slashdot insane?

Re:Freedom and Liberty

[Toby The Economist]

> What would the state have to gain by promoting global warming?

It will also incur a great deal of political unpopularity to actually *do* something. I suspect the incumbents, who are on a knife's edge for re-election, would be best pleased if this hot potato could be defered for a few more years.

More generally of course there is always a reluctance to do something which is painful in the short term and only provides rewards in the long term.

Re:Freedom and Liberty

[SuperBanana]

Did you know Winston Churchill wasn't permitted to speak on the BBC (the State telecoms monopoly of the day ) between 1933 and 1939 because his views on Nazi Germany were considered too extreme?

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." ----

Re:Freedom and Liberty

[mypalmike]

Is everyone on Slashdot insane?

You're new here, aren't you?

Re:Freedom and Liberty

[Jerf]

What would the state have to gain by promoting global warming? Is everyone on Slashdot insane?

Wha? You can't see any political reason to get people all riled up and in an irrational panic?

It's possible to overdo the cynicism, but you need to bulk up.

In actuality, "the state" is too broad a classification. There are many forces in play here. There are people who genuinely believe the worst-case scenarios, and are just trying to help. There are people who see the worst-case scenarios as an opportunity to increase their power; you'll find some of these people in the EPA, or driving anything where "environmentalism" and "money" collide. There are people who may or may not care about global warming per se, but see it as the perfect tool to block industry, because they believe industrialization is instrinsically evil. (These people can be identified by asking them whether they'd support the use of a perfectly clean power source that enables us all to use ten times the power; there are people who will say "no" to this, because they really do think we should all go back to living as "noble savages".)

Also, for every accusation leveled at a global warming skeptic impugning the person, there is a corresponding motive on the global warming side. For instance, "you're in the pocket of the oil companies" corresponds to the anti-industrialists above, who will fight industry in any form.

And that's not even a complete list.

The issue has become extremely politicized, and I personally am not at all confident the science has survived the process. Science may be impersonal and rational, but the actual scientists are all political animals themselves and not immune to any of this, or even especially resistant.

Re:Freedom and Liberty

[Stradivarius]

It's not so much the state as an entity that gains, it's the individual people who are in positions of state power. And since these folks are often either politicians, or political appointees, they have lots at stake. If they, or their political allies, get proven wrong on an issue, it may affect their chances of future employment/prestige/election/etc. If they support research that undermines their political party's message (or their party's special interest group allies), they may be seen as "caving in" to the "enemy" and won't get the same campaign contributions.

Especially in Washington these days, every issue is a seen not as an opportunity to find the truth or fix a problem but as a club with which to attack the opposition. So if some research looks more likely to be compatible with one's views than others, guess which is more likely to be funded?

It's not just global warming - it's any issue. The science is simply another weapon in the political arsenal, to be discarded when it's inconvenient.

Oh, now there's an unbiased opinion.

[Jim in Buffalo]

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.

Re:Oh, now there's an unbiased opinion.

[lbrandy]

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.

Political science

[vanyel]

First we hear the science supporting global warming is being suppressed, now we hear that science opposing global warming is being suppressed. The only clear conclusion is to get politics out of science, but I don't think anyone's ever succeeded at that in its entire history.

Re:Political science

[Tweekster]

And if you notice, it isnt even the people that disagree flat out regarding global warming.. it is the people that agree with it, but are not going hollywood big budget movie crazy about it.

Re:Political science

[Anti Frozt]

They have, it's just been suppressed.

Re:Political science

[penguin-collective]

The science supporting global warming is suppressed by the politicians.

The science opposing global warming is "suppressed" by peer review in prestigious journals.

You can easily figure out from that one where the scientific community stands on the issue.

(Note that his complaint isn't even that these people can't publish their work at all, it's that it's hard to publish these results in the most prestigious journals. That's kind of like saying that your human rights are being violated because Britney Spears refuses to date you.)

There are very few dissenters...

[wealthychef]

The article tells the truth that there is dissent around whether global warming will cause more storms, which is very debatable. But it implies with that the falsehood that global warming does not pose a significant risk to the future in many ways. Climate change is more than weather. I'm not saying there isn't hype about global warming on both sides, but this article is not really that helpful in understanding the broad issues involved. The discussion needs to be very broad, because that is the scope of the problem. Increased global temperatures have many effects...

The politics of science

[dada21]

It is really sad when someone who doesn't agree with the rest of the world faces these kinds of problems -- I think it directly has to do with the politics of science. With more and more scientific studies paid for out of public dollars, of course you're going to see more and more scientists come up with the alarming issues that raise the most money.

It also goes to show that you'll find dissent creates outcasts. This is no different when anything else becomes public policy -- try speaking out about the inept public school teachers you find more often, or the low-IQ workers at the DMV, or anyone else on the dole.

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).

I'm not surprised in the least by this. It is harder and harder to find anti-global warming facts not because there aren't any, but because people who know the facts are afraid to bring them to light.

I don't care either way. I directly finance all the environmental causes I believe in through www.perc.org and that's the way we should be dealing with it. Drop the federal and public-taxpayer funded grants and let each individual focus on what they believe in. Instead of crying that the sky is falling at some lame protest, go work those hours at Starbucks and donate the money to the scientific research company of your choice.

Re:The politics of science

[Qzukk]

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.

Re:The politics of science

[farker haiku]

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?"

Re:The politics of science

[maomoondog]

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.

Re:The politics of science

[demonbug]

I'm not surprised in the least by this. It is harder and harder to find anti-global warming facts not because there aren't any, but because people who know the facts are afraid to bring them to light.

Could this possibly be because there are neither "anti-global warming facts" nor "pro-global warming facts"? There are only facts (and data, but the two are rarely the same). Everything else is interpretation - but the vast majority of scientists who are actively working on interpreting the facts say that rapid climate change is indeed real, and human activity is probably at least partly to blame.

I don't care either way. I directly finance all the environmental causes I believe in through www.perc.org and that's the way we should be dealing with it. Drop the federal and public-taxpayer funded grants and let each individual focus on what they believe in.

I don't see how this would help in the least. Instead of having scientists with many different viewpoints vying for public funds, you would have many different groups with specific agendas producing research. How exactly is this supposed to help produce unbiased results?

Re:The politics of science

[Keith Russell]

"why not make cars more fuel efficient?" Well, you end up making them less safe in collisions, too.

Only if your definition of "more fuel efficient" is "replace every Lincoln Navigator with a Daewoo Lanos". Score: -1, appeal to ridicule.

Re:The politics of science

[X]

Global warming is more myth than science.

Perhaps this is true about the public's perception of global warming, but there is a lot of data behind global warming. It's fair to argue that people's models are wrong, or that the data points to a different set of conclusions than global warming (or more accurately global climate change), but there is a fair bit of real science to this stuff.

Much of it comes from socialist desires to control large corporations

Methinks someone's be swallowing too much propoganda. Global climate change only predicts outcomes and talks about causes. Politics might dictate how one responds to change outcomes, but any viable political system should be cable of responding to serious threats that will effect an entire community. Perhaps the voices of socialists are being heard more than other groups, but that is a separate matter.

-- "why not make cars more fuel efficient?" Well, you end up making them less safe in collisions, too.

1. Not true. Certainly some ways of making vehicles more fuel efficent makes them less safe ("hey, this bumper is adding weight, let's ditch it?"), but you can also find other approaches which make the vehicle less comfortable ("hey, this air conditioner is sucking up power, let's ditch it!"), more expensive to manufacture ("hey, let's build a car frame out of carbon fiber tubes"), etc. Lots of other solutions actually have more upsides than downsides. The trick to fuel efficiency is the trade offs, and the more important you make some things (like fuel efficiency and safety) the more other things are going to be effected (like development costs and manufacturing costs). If safety is the thing being compromised, that tells you something about priorities.
2. In the long run, it's been argued (fairly effectively) that making vehicles fuel efficient ends up being a net loss for climate change, because vehicles are used more and more as use costs go down. If it cost me $100 to drive to a restaurant, I'll start thinking about walking or biking. If I can drive as much as I like for $10/month, I'll start driving across the street.
   
3. Even if you do decide that improved fuel efficiency is the solution, alternative approaches that follow much more non-socialist approaches include things like removing all subsidies from the oil & gas industry (drives up price and without increasing exploration which constrains supply, this leads to more fuel efficient cars through market forces).

"Why not curtail smokestacks?" Because other countries won't, and you'll lose jobs on top of jobs (this is already evident).

I think most socialists have called for a solution that is global in nature, which would preclude this possibility. More importantly, the usual way to reduce waste (thereby reducing the need for smokestacks) is to make things more efficient, which tends to have a net positive economic impact.

Re:The politics of science

[MightyMartian]

There's a general rule of thumb about scientific claims. When a researcher goes through abnormal channels, like going directly to the press, the alarm bells should ring. When a researcher starts tacitly or directly invoking conspiracy theories, even more alarms should go off.

Re:The politics of science

[Waffle Iron]

Pollution is terrible, but compare the average lifespan in the 1800s to the 1900s to today -- for some reason we're living longer even with all this terrible pollution.

There was more "terrible pollution" in the 1800s when there were no environmental regulations. For example, unsafe sewage discharge near drinking water sources killed countless thousands every year. One of the reasons we live longer today is the government interference you despise so much.

Re:The politics of science

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded insightful?

- all three branches of the government are controlled by Republicans who do not believe in science, er, global warming (not that the judiciary matters in this event.)
- even if the government were an enviro-biased entity, industry has plenty of money to shout from the roof-tops about the global warming fraud.
- the only ones who would have any incentive to cry out about a fake global warming scare would be tree-huggers, and they hardly have money or a bully-pulpit.

So, all of the money is on the "no global warming" side. All of the politicians in power are on the "no global warming" side. Yet, somehow its the "global warming is real" side thats oppressing and biasing the research.

What color is the sky in your world?

Re:The politics of science

[daigu]

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.

Re:The politics of science

[lawpoop]

"for some reason we're living longer even with all this terrible pollution."

We' not talking about lifespan, but quality of life. Driving around in a car and working in a factory is not what has allowed the lifespan to creep up to near 80. It is, first and foremost, antibiotics and immunizations. Secondly, it is *regulation* -- in the form of clean municipal water that doesn't have cholera in it, fire codes that prevent people dying in exitless factories and fires that run rampant across cities, people falling into milling machines, that keep us out of squalor and living into our 80s.

If it were up to corporations, we would all be slaves or indentured servants. It really isn't profitable to be concerned for people's health in the long term. Through democratic government and union organizing, average joes have gotten concessions from industry they never could have gotten otherwise. Law and regulation has created the middle class.

I'm not saying the situation is perfect, but I'd rather be a union employee than a slave or slowly going into debt to the company store while working an 80 hour work-week.

Re:The politics of science

[fm6]

being forced by government to make purchasing decisions doesn't make much sense. If a car pollutes, and if the pollution affects the environment, then people who love the environment should make a choice to not buy polluting cars...

That makes no sense. Preventing people from harming each other is a well-established reason for government intervention. If I start a chemical factory in my back yard, and it leaks and poisons my neighbors, people will probably say, "Gee, the government should have done something to stop him." But if I buy a car that poisons the whole planet, it's nobody business?

Possibly

[thePig]

I tend to believe this guy.
The global temp started increasing alarmingly only after 80's due to cleaner air supported by green house gases.
But, as per the storm counts - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=140, there is an increase of stronger storms, from 1920 onwards.

Even though this doesnt prove anything, it actually puts a seed of doubt in my mind. I used to believe (without any doubt) that increased temp is causing stronger storms et al. But I do have my doubts now.

Also I do not know if some localized temp changes caused these storms too...

Re:Possibly

[LordKazan]

I was going to go into climatology/meteorology - but then i learned to code - however I still have a large knowledge on the subject.

Ocean surface temperature under a hurricane determines it's maximum possible strength - it's also a generial indicator of it's probable strength. As ocean surface temperatures rise that creates larger areas with higher levels of potential energy, and temperatures above the minimum to hold enough potential energy to spawn hurricanes (about 80F) last for more in the year.

So as the planet warms more tropical storm systems will occur (longer season in which they can), they will be on average stronger and last longer (having more area with higher potential energy)

This all being IIRC, it's been a while since I cracked open any of my books that covers tropical weather.

Re:Possibly

[PortHaven]

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.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.ht ml

Re:Possibly

[BeanThere]

And it coincides with man's activities on Mars! Aha, more proof!

Don't dishonor the sacrifices made by our troops!

[Ohreally_factor]

If you're not driving the biggest car possible with the lowest MPG possible, you're unpatriotic and disrespectful of those who have given their lives that we may be free to pursue our gas guzzling lifestyle.

Maureen Jambor, executive management consultant and part time mom, put it much more eloquently than I ever could.

Suffice it to say, if you care about global warming, the terrorists have already won.

Uh, right.

[StefanJ]

Let's have General Motors and Exxon pay the Association of Petroleum Geologists to do the research.

Then the Truthiness will Come Out.

Re:Uh, right.

[planetoid]

"One naturally considers the source of research when considering what is being argued."

From what I've seen, political arguments would be much more civil if people argued ONLY based on the merits of the arguments themselves, rather than WHO is making the argument, or even WHY the argument is being made. When you don't resist the temptation to make guesses of ulterior motives, that's opening up a can of worms for ad hominem attacks and other fallacies. And this happens every single time, and this kind of ubiquitous obnoxiousness is what makes politics in general a fucking chore.

Re:Uh, right.

[stefanlasiewski]

If you permit all parties to conduct research, then there will be pro-green, pro-oil and indeed neutral parties, all conducting research.

We permit all parties from conducting research today, don't we? There's nothing preventing pro-green, pro-oil and neutral parties from performing these studies.

Nobody is stopping these non-governmental organizations from doing this research, and federal funding doesn't prevent private money from funding this research. At least not directly [1].

And I would argue, the oil business has *much* more money then the pro-green and neutral researchers, and and the results of the research will reflect this. Government funding can be used to level the playing field.

I'm not arguing with your basic idea-- most research will reflect the opinions of the funders. Government funded projects don't rock the boat.

[1] I guess you could argue that higher taxes == less private funds, but it's not directly preventing the funding. And federal funding might encourage private parties to spend their grant money elsewhere.

Suppression does happen.

[jd]

However, I find it odd that the claims of suppression are coming from an institute in a country noted solely for its dissent over Global Warming, where NASA even had to write policy documents to prohibit religious propoganda being included in statements. I also find it curious that these complaints are surfacing AFTER the scandal at NASA, rather than before, when people might have been more sympathetic.

No, I question the credibility and the timing of these claims, and I find it disgraceful of MIT to be associated with what appears to be little more than a political stunt. Note I said "appears". There may well be some basis to the claims, but the timing and nature of their presentation destroys all of that. If you want to be taken seriously, you can't come across as a spoiled brat whose toy - possibly NASA - has been taken away from you.

The claims against Global Warming may or may not have any validity. That isn't being discussed, so I'm not going to address that here. What I am going to address is efforts to turn the debate into propoganda - by whatever side. Whether you're talking about the Swift Veterans For Toothfairies, or some other totally political movement, is also unimportant. Reality cares not one whit for opinion polls or campaign financing. If the climate is shot, it's shot, and all the PR in the world won't change that. If it isn't, it isn't, and again PR isn't worth a damn.

Politics has no business meddling in the affairs of science. The reverse is not true, as science has the knowledge necessary to define politics. But politicians should learn their place - they are the servants of the public and the slaves of the forces of nature. Allowing politics to control anything is the ultimate recipe for disaster.

Re:Suppression does happen.

[avalys]

No, I question the credibility and the timing of these claims, and I find it disgraceful of MIT to be associated with what appears to be little more than a political stunt.

This is hardly the position of MIT as an institution. It is a single MIT professor's opinion.

Are you suggesting that it is disgraceful for MIT to employ professors who don't blindly parrot the majority opinion on scientific and political issues?

Greenhouse Denial Industry

[Doc Ruby]

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?

Re:Greenhouse Denial Industry

[ajs]

We were saying about labeling people as corporate stooges?

Here's the way it works:

1. You say "hey, this thing is more complex than we thought, let's try to understand it"
2. Your are labeled an "enemy of the planet" by those who review grant money
3. You get no further funding
4. You go to the sources that WILL fund your research
5. Because you are now backed by evil corporations your are branded a stooge
6. Your peers ignore your data and input

Isn't it great how we're not surpressing anyone's research?

PS: "enemy of the planet" is a direct quote from those reviewing funding for a friend of mine who was in solar astrophysics at the time. His lab had dared to propose a model by which the sun could power observed warming.

Re:Greenhouse Denial Industry

[deacon]

Bzzzt!

Logical Fallacy # 1: Poisoning the Well

linky:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/poisoning -the-well.html

Logical Fallacy # 2: Guilt By Association

linky:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/guilt-by- association.html

Both are particularly amusing due to your choice of link to "prove" your point.

...

Make the requirements to vote the same as to own a gun.

Simply go to the polling place, fill out a Form 4473, show your ID, and the poll worker will check with the FBI database to make sure that you're not prohibited from voting. If everything is working correctly, you will be allowed to vote in a few minutes.

If the GCA/Brady system doesn't violate the rights of gun owners, then what possible objection could there be to implementing the same system for voting?

Robert Racansky

Re:Greenhouse Denial Industry

[maxume]

I would be suprised if 'polluters' and petrochemical companies weren't funding scientists who argue against global warming. They generaly are against regulation, of course they would support people who argue that regulation isn't necessary. I'd be worried if they weren't funding him.

Accepting funding from your supposed enemies of the environment does not itself rob him of credibility. I agree that it gives you good reason to examine his motives, but if he is doing good science, what should it matter where the money comes from?

The state of the climate and whether it is changing is not a known quantity. The best predictive models are still crap. There is ~100 years of kind of O.K. data. Ice core data and the like better be really freaking good if we are going to argue that short term temperature changes on the order of 0.3 degree C are signifigant. I haven't stumbled across anything that convinces me the data is that good. To be fair, I have not really looked either.

That website is crazy. It accuses people who agree and who work together of being in cahoots, simply because they oppose the agenda of those writing the page. The part diparaging Lindzen is particularly circular. He is accused of trading "on his qualifications constantly to gain access to top level discussion in the US government or scientific institutions" and denying the 'consensus', but if he is taken as credible there cannot be a consensus and he should probably be at those top level discussions. Foaming at the mouth attacks aren't going to advance their cause. Perhaps they should refute their positions instead of attacking their politics?

Re:Greenhouse Denial Industry

[drinkypoo]

While you definitely have a point, the simple fact is that where your money comes from will always cause the public (if they know about it) to either believe or disbelieve you. Accepting funding from the oil industry when you're trying to disprove global warming (or the human influence on it anyway) is like accepting money from NAMBLA when you're trying to prove that the relationship between a man and a boy is healthy. This is a particularly apt metaphor in my mind because even if you don't believe in human-influenced global warming, or maybe don't believe in it at all, the oil companies are still rapists of the planet. Drilling, spilling... And they just posted record profits while fuel prices are rising to all-time highs.

Blowing Hot Air

[yintercept]

People who disagree with global warming are just blowing hot air. If we don't suppress them, this hot air is going to contribute to global warming.

I am 100% on the side of the global warming crowd. The way I see it, if global warming does happen, I will be able to score points by telling everyone "I told you so." If it doesn't happen, I can claim that I saved the planet.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[eric76]

My main opposition to the Republicans on this is that they vigorously oppose any research designed to try to determine whether or not there is a problem.

There really isn't any doubt that the Earth has warmed up over the last 25 years. There is also no doubt that some of the basic parameters of our climatological system have changed.

We need to find out how much of the global warming that we have seen is due to our activities. It might be 10%. It might be 90%. We just don't know. It might even be 100% natural.

We need to determine how far the warming will go. At what point will it slow down or even reverse itself? It really doesn't matter at all whether or not we are the cause.

We need to find out whether or not we can slow it down or even stop it as well as how to do that.

Finally, we need to determine, based on the other factors, whether or not we should even try to slow it down or stop it. The benefits of global warming, up to a reasonable point, may outweigh the downside.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[TubeSteak]

Prof Bob Carter [The author of your article] is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research

Paleoclimate research is about the past, and 'past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results', especially when you've got people mucking around with the variables.

Is Prof. Carter even qualified to discuss what may or may not happen in the future? His specialty is the deep past....

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[BeanThere]

Great, at least one moderator doesn't know what "noise" on a curve is.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Billly Gates]

Keep in mind a sign of global warming is cooler temperates in teh UK where the article was posted due to cold freshwater obstructing the gulf stream.

Infact the mini ice age was the result of this and the gulf stream died down for several centuries during the late middle ages.

The gulf stream has slowed down by as much as %30 which would certainly explain the temperature decrease in western europe and that is quite serious

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Anonymous Coward]

Stopped in 1998 huh? Guess that depends on who you ask- this data has it continuing well through 2000 into 2005.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Te mperature_Record.png

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhsh gl.gif

Its kind of like my dog who hides his eyes and thinks you don't see him.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>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.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[gstoddart]

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.

Well, that position is not without its critics. There is evidence to suggest that the way the data was collected was not adjusted for changes in the technology they used to gather it, and when it was collected -- specifically, how the heat-shielding to rule out the effects of sunlight warming has been improved over time without that being factored into the analysis.

This blog gives a nice summary of what happened, as well as a bunch of relevant links. (The author is an astrophysicist, so he's not without some ability to read science papers and follow the math.)

From this article:

Dr Sherwood argues that it is not. In particular, changes in radiosonde design intended to reduce the original problem of over-heating have not always been accommodated by reductions in the correction factors for more recently collected data. Those data have thus been over-corrected, reducing the apparent temperature below the actual temperature.

Dr Sherwood and his colleagues hit on a ruse to test this idea. Because weather stations around the world release their balloons simultaneously, some of the measurements are taken in daylight and some in darkness. By comparing the raw data, the team was able to identify a trend: recorded night-time temperatures in the troposphere (night being the ultimate form of shade) have indeed risen. It is only daytime temperatures that seem to have dropped. Previous work, which has concentrated on average values, failed to highlight this distinction, which seems to have been caused by over-correction of the daytime figures.

In short, since the heat shielding on the measuring devices became more effective, the daytime measurements were skewed downward, while the nighttime readings showed a warming trend.

So if the improved technology skews the data, you need to look a little harder at the way the data was generated.

This issue is by no means settled, but what you cite is one possible interpretation which may not fully fit the inherent issues in the way the data was collected.

Cheers.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[toby34a]

More hot air... It's hilarious, as a grad student in the atmospheric sciences, how compartmentalized this beleif is. I work with geologists, glaciologists, climatologists, and meteorologists all days, and there are several signs that warming is occuring- the most convincing being the melt of tropical glaciers, of which all of them are melting. I know this because I've examined the satellite photography myself, and modeled the glacial decline. This gets the geologists and glaciologists into the mix. The climate databases almost always show a climatological rise, so the climatologists are in on it. However, teh real-time meteorologists really don't think it's occuring- and if you think that they don't know what's going on, these are the people that are forecasting your weather all day. Go figure...

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>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).

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Moofie]

Well, that's easy. Didn't Napster come out somewhere around 1998? More pirates, less global warming. Duh!

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[AzureWrathHal]

No, what this would do, is kill them from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Aside from proving that poisonous gasses can kill you in small spaces, it proves nothing.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Arcane_Rhino]

If he didn't, it is the only thing Bush hasn't increased funding for.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[amliebsch]

You should explain that you're counting water vapor

Why wouldn't you count water vapor? If you're talking about "greenhouse gasses," why would there be an assumption that water vapor "doesn't count?"

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[killjoe]

Yes we should stop listening to scientists and start listening to novelists instead. I was especially impressed by how Chrighton was able to demolish all evidence for global warming by calling environmentalism a religion. That sealed it for me.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[jheath314]

I'm going to pretend that your question was genuine instead of rhetorical. Here goes...

Our current understanding is that greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide (whether they come from natural events or from industrial activity) are the driving force behind the warming. Lately (since the Industrial Revolution) we've been pumping ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Trying to argue that we shouldn't be concerned about industrial greenhouse gasses because carbon dioxide variations occur naturally is a bit like arguing we shouldn't be concerned about arson because fires occur naturally in the wild.

Also, the rate of climate change isn't falling in line with the long-term climate patterns. That 1 degree change may not sound like a lot, but it has occurred in about 1/50th the time considered "natural." This alone causes many climate change experts to suspect that something decidedly unnatural is going on.

Mind you, I for one do not feel we must "insist that climate change is the fault of humans". Our assessment should be guided by the evidence available. I strongly believe that for climate science to be scientific, it must explore its hypotheses critically and question every assumption, regardless of how politically palatable those assumptions may be.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[VultureMN]

Yes, because one data point invalidates a 140-year upward trend!

As someone else pointed out:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

I'm not saying that OMG GLOBAL WARMING IS GONNA DOOM US ALL! But I -do- think that humans are certainly affecting global temperatures to some degree, and the end results could be, ah, problematic.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

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 .... 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.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[thatguywhoiam]

Michael Crichton is right

Michael Crichton is a novelist.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[drinkypoo]

Your username is a misnomer. You are not sufficiently critical of the study which you cite. If you reread this topic, you will see several 5-score comments which explain why the study you are citing is flawed.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Avumede]

Don't be an idiot. Crichton knows nothing about Global Warming. He's been completely debunked.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Overly Critical Guy]

There are sites that shed a critical eye on global warming claims.

Really, it's quite surprising how fuzzy the science is when you actually examine it, but more surprising is just how angry and vitriolic some people get when you confront them about it. Apparently you're just supposed to not care about that--for them, there is no debate, which is a dangerous mindset.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>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.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[WGR]

There are two facts about global warming.

1. Atmospheric concentrations of heat retaining gasses (greenhouse gasses) have increased exponentially in the last 250 years.
2. The global average yearly temperature has increased significantly in the last 20 years.

The debate is over whether the first causes the second, because there are many other possible drivers of the second by other natural causes. But that still means we should worry about adapting to these changes and understanding the effect they have on earth.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[EvilSuggestions]

1998, 1998, 1998, ... Geez guy, you say we have a religious bent. Every single one of your posts mentions a year that anyone who has ever taken a statistics class can obviously see is a what's called an outlier. Have you taken a look at where it sits on the whole graph? Sure it's a local maxima, but the trendline for the whole series is about as significant as you get with real world data. We might be down 0.1 to 0.2C from the worst year, but we're still up at least 0.8C from a century ago. Or are you the type who needs data with absolutely zero noise to agree there's a trend? Sorry dude, but that's not the type of data that Mother Nature doles out.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[DroppedPacket]

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.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Lars T.]

The odd thing is, the article actually refers to the data in the second image ("drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia"). Simply by the fact that 1998 was the warmest year on record he draws his little conclusion.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[budgenator]

Right you are the bloody heretic deserves to have his ass perched on a pike! Imagine the audacity of someone who studies events spanning millions of years of history projecting trends into the future. It's not like the last 4 or 5 iceage- hothouse cycles might have any clues about what's really happening

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Salgak1]

The funny thing is, I trained as a geologist LONG before I became a computer geek (when **I** started computing, it was punch-cards and FORTRAN IV on a mainframe. . .)

The question of global warming depends on the timeframe you're looking at. This is further complicated by the fact that we're currently in an Ice Age, but between glacial advances.

Looking at the history of the planet, over human history, and since the blossoming of life in the early Cambrian, we're still WAY below the planetary average.

And I'll also note that climate scientists were (correctly) predicting a new "Ice Age", in reality, another glacial advance, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They just didn't get the timing right: it's due Real Soon Now. . . in geologic terms. Which means anytime in the next 10,000 years or so. . .

What amuses me about climate scientist either way, is their claims to prediction, when, in reality, current long-term weather forecasting starts really falling off the accuracy numbers at 12 hours, and is mostly patterns and educated guesswork beyond that for about a week. Beyond that, it's relatively random, inside seasonal parameter limits. . . so forecasting 25, 50, 100 years in the future is pretty much fiction. . .not science. . .

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[jmorris42]

> Great, at least one moderator doesn't know what "noise" on a curve is.

Riight. A six year trendline that is flat is 'noice on a curve'. when discussing something that we are so lacking data on that no less a luminary than Dr. Carl Sagan was warning about GLOBAL COOLING on his (insert major award) winning Cosmos miniseries in 1980. Yes indeedy, I have the DVD box set, he said it.

Global warming may or may not be occuring. The evidence is pointing to slightly higher temps on a short term basis but we lack the precision in our existing dataset going back very far to say much more.

Is it a long term effect? What is the cause? (If it is an increase in solar output we will need a totally different solution.) Can it be stopped by Kyoto? (A question we really need answered to several significant digits of precision before we destroy Western Civilization implementing it.) Would the secondary effects of trying to implement Kyoto create even worse environmental problems? And so on.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[BeanThere]

Riight. A six year trendline that is flat is 'noice on a curve'

Yes, as a matter of fact, when you're looking at the timescales of climate fluctuations (natural or otherwise) six years is a piddling little blink of the eye. There are many other variables at play (and natural upswings/downswings) that may - nay, will definitely - mask the overall trend. Even looking at the last 200 years (still short but much much longer than six years) there is a very definite trend of continually increasing temperatures. (PS if you're going to counter-argue (as many do) that 200 years is too short to tell anything concrete, then that would anihilate the argument that 6 years is long enough.)

Whether or not you 'believe' global warming is happening or is a problem, it's clear that something funny is happening, something that could have devastating consequences and warrants sh*t-loads more research and a good deal of caution.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[jmorris42]

> Whether or not you 'believe' global warming is happening or is a problem, it's clear that
> something funny is happening, something that could have devastating consequences and
> warrants sh*t-loads more research and a good deal of caution.

Agreed. But for all too many psuedoscientists the question is already settled, Global Warming is happening, humans are causing it and if we don't adopt Kyoto (and thereby destroy Western Civilization, which just happens to be another stated goal of most of the Green lobby, total coincidence of course) we will all DIE HORRIBLY!!!!

Since the psuedo intellectuals and Green political hacks are running most of the government and university sources of research funding it isn't possible to do real science on the issue. Something we desperately need.

Look, Global Warming might be real. Who cares if we caused it or we are entering a period of natural warming. If it can be proven that it is really happening we need to be looking at ways to negate the more nasty effects. But once we discard the Gaian Religion and the Green Politics we can look at more politically possible solutions than dismantling our Civilization. If the problem is too much energy input we could simply take steps to lower the solar input to the Earth. Fly a few square miles of mylar in low orbit for example. It would probably only take shading a fraction of a percent of the surface to balance the equation.

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[popeguilty]

[if we don't adopt Kyoto (and thereby destroy Western Civilization, which just happens to be another stated goal of most of the Green lobby, total coincidence of course)] I find it fascinating that you conflate "pollute less" with "destroy Western Civilisation." Tell me, do you also conflate "pay workers enough to survive on" with "socialism?"

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[BlueStrat]

But I -do- think that humans are certainly affecting global temperatures to some degree, and the end results could be, ah, problematic.

I'm not sure humans are yet capable of producing the quantities of pollutants necessary to create significant changes in the earths' climate.

With reports like this http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/greenhouse_2 000e.htm

and others like it (I recall reading somewhere that, globally, volcanic eruptions during a more active year can expel more pollutants than the human race has since we discovered fire..can't find the quote/report dangit) along with a realisation of what an enormously large system we're talking about, and the enormous amount of "inertia" to be overcome making any significant change to such a system, I have a feeling we may be giving ourselves too much credit, that we may not be able to significantly change climate patterns even if we tried.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[BlueStrat]

And there are NO other good explanations.

Except all the ones *you* don't think are good. These things may all be happening, humanity could very well be affecting the climate, but it could very well be from something man is doing that hasn't been thought of yet. We don't know with any certainty either way whether it's even happening, let alone what is causing it or how to correct it.

Even scarier, we may inadvertantly worsen things with some misguided attempt at climate manipulation in an effort to "fix" things. For all anyone knows, the earth may be moving naturally into either a warmer climate or a new ice age, and our pollution may be acting to soften the changes.

Nobody has enough data or the knowledge to make predictions based on any such data we do have or could get at this point in mankinds' scientific development. Anyone who claims otherwise has an agenda.

Strat

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Weedlekin]

"Michael Crichton is/was also an M.D. graduating from Harvard Medical School"

Which means his opinions on medical matters are probably valid, while his opinions on other scientific topics should not be given more weight than those of any other educated layman.

(expertise in one field) (expertise in all fields)

Re:Blowing Hot Air

[Alioth]

You're making the classic layman's mistake and confusing meteorology with climatology.

The people who are forecasting the weather 12 hours away or 5 days away or 10 days away are meteorologists. The people who are looking at trends affecting the next 250 years are climatologists. They both deal with weather but the two aren't that comparable.

A good analogy might be this. Take a large pan of water, uncovered, and set it on a gas stove at low heat. The meteorologist is the guy who tells you that a convection will appear *here* and *here*, and in 3 seconds, a bubble will appear *here*. His predictions will get increasingly inaccurate as time goes on - indeed, he'll probably have a lot of difficulty predicting where convections appear in 10 seconds time.

The climatologist on the other hand is the guy who says if you put a lid on the pan, the water will heat quicker, and the convective currents will be more pronounced and the bubbles will be more numerous. He doesn't try to say where they will appear, he just says there will be a general trend that more will appear since you're now keeping more energy in the system. Similarly, the climatologist will tell you the pan will boil in N minutes if you turn the heat up to setting M, but boil in N-2 minutes if you set the heat on M+1, or N-3 if you cover the pan and leave the setting at M, since he has a good grasp at what trapping energy in the system or adding extra energy to the system will have.

Just as surely that a pan of water will boil faster with the lid on, more energy will be kept in the Earth's atmosphere if you increase the concentration of CO2. These things simply aren't disputed, and the fact that meteorologists aren't accurate past five days does not make it not so, any more than the inability to predict where convections will occur in ten seconds time in a pan of water somehow invalidates the prediction that putting the lid on the pan will allow the water to boil more quickly. Meterology != climatology, even though the two are related.

We have good evidence going back into geological timescales that when there are higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, there are also higher temperatures. It's simple cause-and-effect - if you do something that keeps more energy in the global system, it will warm up, just as 1 + 1 = 2. The continual confusion between what a climatologist does and what a meterologist does is either simple misunderstanding, or burying heads in the sand.

Re:None conformist

[PortHaven]

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)

Lindzen apparently has no trouble securing funding

[stonedown]

According to a 1995 Harper's Magazine article, Lindzen had no trouble securing funding from fossil fuel interests.

Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.

Also, the Wall Street Journal opinion section is not exactly the place to go to find genuine scientific analysis. It's a propaganda mill for the same business interests which support Richard Lindzen. There is plenty of money for scientists willing to speak on behalf of big business, despite Lindzen's contrary and alarmist claims. It takes a special kind of courage to speak out on behalf of the downtrodden coal and oil industries.

Heretics Must Be Burned

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

That's because it's not about science, it's about religion.

"Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths. There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe. Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith. And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them."

- Crow T. Trollbot

Huh?

[squiggleslash]

The BBC was a radio broadcaster, quasi-independent from government, in the nineteen thirties. I don't think they've ever been a telecom anything, let alone a monopoly.

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.

Yeah, that was completely out of the blue

[el_munkie]

New Orleans was definitely the first victim of global warming. Hurricaines never happened in the Gulf before all those selfish white people started driving SUVs.

Re:Other way round, surely

[chromatic]

Global warming went back in time and convinced the founders of New Orleans to build on a coastal swamp below sea level and not to reinforce their levees?

No wonder people are afraid. That's powerful!

What a bunch of carp

[WillAffleckUW]

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.

Re:What a bunch of carp

[PortHaven]

Please Mr. Rhetoric, explain to me the cause for the global warming currently transpiring on Mars.

"...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."

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.ht ml

Re:What a bunch of carp

[evilviper]

Please Mr. Rhetoric, explain to me the cause for the global warming currently transpiring on Mars.

That would probably be increased solar output. However, increased solar activity can only possibly account for a tiny fraction of observed global warming on the earth.

Re:What a bunch of carp

[evilviper]

Solar increas accounts for only a fract. So what is that fraction? 999/1000?

At most, less than 1/3rd, according to scientists.

Nobody knows the details, nobody knows how much humans are forcing the change.

That's funny, because scientists in the field are giving rather exact details, including how much is a result of human impact. How long have you been a climatologist?

Could be solar, could be us, could be a lot of things.

No, Solar output is easily measurable, so it's not hard to disprove you tin-foil-hat types. Start listing these other things it could be, so I can go through the list, and discount them one by one.

Re:What a bunch of carp

[LarsWestergren]

Please Mr. Rhetoric, explain to me the cause for the global warming currently transpiring on Mars.

Sure, here you go.

A few cut and pasted highlights:

* Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. [...]
* Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms, (see for example [...]here). Large scale dust storms change the atmospheric opacity and convection; as always when comparing mean temperatures, the altitude at which the measurement is made matters, but to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970's, when Viking made measurements, compared to current temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of storminess now.[...]
* The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.

In short - you can't use Mars as proof/disproof of global warming on Earth.

Intelligent Design all over again

[SuperBanana]

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.

First off, it's not professional to call peers "alarmists", especially if you want respect from them. Scientists are usually if anything very reserved about stating an opinion, so I'm highly skeptical of scientists willing to immediately and simply label a broad class of their peers as "alarmists". It might explain why these guys are getting their funding yanked and such. Second, just like "Darwinism" isn't a theory but proven fact- global warming, the fact that humans are causing it, and that we had better do something very quickly or we'll be fucked- is all widely accepted. We have decades of research and evidence, like glacial "records" going back more than long enough to show the planet has never seen anything like us humans, climate-wise. Or evidence that on September 11th, when the FAA grounded planes across the country, the weather patterns changed dramatically.

It's widely accepted that pretending we're not having a massive effect on our planet's climate is the exact opposite of "alarmism"- it's sticking your head in the sand and hoping the lion's gone away.

We have an administration which forbids government scientists from speaking with press, and requires all climate-related press releases to be routed directly through the whitehouse, where they are absolutely gutted? (really. 60 minutes got photocopies of the press releases and reports, after they'd been scribbled all over by white house staff.)

So in one corner, we have a bunch of disgruntled scientists claiming they're being marginalized for taking an unpopular view. And on the other hand, we have scientists being gagged and censored by the Bush administration for presenting valid evidence that the climate is seriously fucked up.

Yeah, I'm really going to loose sleep over the head-in-the-sand people getting to be "unpopular"...

Bad Article

[Unsus]

"Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes." I really hated that sentence in the beginning of the article. Many gov'ts have signed the Kyoto agreement, and many reputable scientists have urged us to lower CO2 emissions. While I admit there is always a chance that so many people were wrong, it is still retarded to think it's better to take a "wait and see" approach. We need to lower CO2 levels now and then see if it helps, not wait until it is too late.

Re:None conformist

[LiquidCoooled]

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...

Who Cares?

[grumpygrodyguy]

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 don't lose sleep knowing corporate advocates are being suppressed. I wish every corporate advocate would drown in a lake of their own vomit actually.

As far as legitimate scientists being falsely labelled as corporate stooges, there's really no justification for claiming that global warming isn't a sound theory. Flatly dismissing the impact of human polutants on global warming is like driving the Titanic into icebergs because some tool labelled her 'unsinkable'.

Re:Other way round, surely

[lbrandy]

The first major city lost to global warming is in the USA, but the USA government still doesn't believe in global warming. Sounds to me like the people who don't believe in it are still winning. Which city is next I wonder?

What a cesspool of nonsense. The first city lost to global warming? I'm pretty sure it was lost to a hurricane. Do you have proof that global warming causes hurricanes? Did you read the article where he goes on to describe the HUGE debate in the science community about whether global warming would produce STRONGER or WEAKER hurricanes? There is no consensus that hurricanes are getting stronger because of global warming. You are literally making that up.

Next you go ont to say "Sounds to me like people who don't believe in it are still winning". Guess what, genius... he states.. repeatedly... the earth is WARMING. He "believes" in global warming as much as I believe in your ability to read (and your ability to choose not to). What he argues is the effect it will have on the climate, and it's actual cause.

Real scientists don't make dumb statements implying that global warming caused Katrina. That's idiot-babble. No real scientists that I know of declare that global warming doesn't exist. For the 927th time in the history of this topic on slashdot, I have to correct some ignoramus who is modded up to +5 because he doesn't understand the scientific debate between the existence and the cause of global warming. And lets not even pretend that science can hope to predict the effect of global warming in the long-term future.

It is people precisely like you that make it so easy for right-wing to keep parrading out the same strawman and striking them down. You are arguing with people who haven't existed in 20 years. Get your facts straight, read the articles, and then think for at least 45 seconds about what you want to say before parroting this same tired old tripe that is easily refuted. It's ridiculous.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

Re:Lindzen apparently has no trouble securing fund

[Morinaga]

This is EXACTLY the type of ad hominem attacks that hurt scientific debate rather than help it.

Instead of rebutting the facts of their science, climatogogists that don't hold global warming alarmist views are critisized for their funding. Where else is a climatologist supposed to get funding if they don't stand with the majority on this?

Real believers in global warming should welcome contrary views and science as an opportunity to refute those views and strengthen their own. Instead it's an attack against how they are funded.

They're not heretics, they're ignoring the science

[WillAffleckUW]

it's like pretending that the Flying Spaghetti Monster, instead of being the all-powerful invisible being he is, created man in his own image.

I mean think about it, we don't even look like a plate of spaghetti, our heads don't look like meatballs, obviously we weren't created in His image.

And just as obviously, Global Warming is all a result of the severe lack of Pirates today.

Now, wake up and smell the lack of Pirates. Get crackin, matey!

Way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

You just proved the point of the article. If you find yourself claiming a "99.9%" consensus on ->*ANY*- topic, you might want to at least consider the possibility that you might be wrong, and what you think you know might be a house of cards. Even Einstein fell victim to that, so there's no shame.

Confused

[Hrvat]

How do you lose funding if you're an industry stooge? Wouldn't the industry fund you?

Re:Lindzen apparently has no trouble securing fund

[HoneyBeeSpace]

If you don't trust Lindzen, you can run your own global climate model at home and check the outputs yourself!

EdGCM is a NASA GCM that has been ported to run on Mac and Windows, and given a GUI interface. Want to turn the sun down by 2% or add some CO2? Just point and click and drag. Then, hit play, wait a day or two, and you'll have your own GCM outputs, complete with a visualization utility to view them with.

Re:Honestly

[Deitheres]

I might be feeding the trolls, but here goes...

It is NOT being accepting to give all viewpoints equal weight. If you told me that gravity was created by invisible gnomes pouring out anti-wedgies that held me down to earth by the seat of my pants, I'd have no problem telling you that you're an idiot for believing it.

"Creationism is a completely valid viewpoint, and so is evolution. They're both *possible*."

One is way more possible than the other. I'll take the one that has a mountain of verifiable scientific evidence, thanks.

"It isn't fair for people like me who are christians to be told that they're outright wrong."

If you think that 2+2=7 I am not being an asshole by telling you that you're misinformed. Also, life isn't fair. Welcome to reality.

Re:Lindzen apparently has no trouble securing fund

[disappear]

We were discussing an article whose claim was "These scientists are denied funding, skewing the debate."

Parent post said, this information is not accurate; these supposed pariah scientists are quite well-compensated for their research.

This post says parent post does not rebut the science, but engages in ad hominem attacks. Then it says, "Real believers in global warming should welcome contrary views and science as an opportunity to refute those views and strengthen their own. Instead it's an attack against how they are funded."

Of course, all of this was a discussion on funding, and discussing the science is (strangely) an attempt to distract from the issue actually at hand. Real opponents of global warming should welcome contrary views and science as an opportunity to refuse those views and strengthen their own. Instead it's an attack against how they are funded. (In this case, against their government funding.)

Re:None conformist

[mypalmike]

the surrounding area suffered more dessertification

Indeed. Several bushes near the Altamont Pass wind farm turned into ice cream sundaes, and some of the rocks became chocolate chip cookies.

Re:New Orleans is sinking

[lbrandy]

but let's be clear, the fact that hurricanes now have many times more than ten times the energy, due to global warming, which created the very storm surge that blew out the dikes, had nothing to do with global warming. I'm sorry, but if I take a cup and heat it up with ten times the energy I used before to cause a few bubbles, I'm not going to be surprised when it bubbles like roiling boil this time.

I'm sorry, but exactly whose rectum did you retrieve those numbers from? I've never seen any such study, ever. You are just making up nonsense. Over the last 100 years, the tempreture has gone up, on average, 1 degree celsius? That's what? 3%? Tops? Three percent is pretty far from 1000%.

I will entertain your incredibly simplisitic mental science experiment, for my own amusement. You need to realize that storms aren't about the AMOUNT of energy, they are about the redistribution of energy. It is much the same way a steam engine works. It has nothing to do with the temperature of the steam that produces the power... it has to do with the temperature differential.. the FLOW of heat is what produces the power.

Conservative hack.

[scrondle]

There is no serious debate regarding global warming. There is some disagreement about the particulars, but broad consensus that it is happening. Linking to this kind of disingenuous crap is not terribly useful.

Re:New Orleans is sinking

[Alaska Jack]

I'm sorry, but if I take a cup and heat it up with ten times the energy I used before to cause a few bubbles, I'm not going to be surprised when it bubbles like roiling boil this time.

Yes, but I'd be very surprised if it spawned a little hurricane.

- AJ

Welcom to an InterGlacial period

[wganz]

It is suppose to warm up. We're living in a period between glaciation.

Do you really really want to turn the hands of time back to the point that the ocean levels drop 100 meters and have a kilometer of ice on Toronto?

Jeeez... It looks like 99.9% of the population slept through geology.

>

wganz

Re:it's true here too

[KeensMustard]

That's because such remarks are never backed up with a convincing (insightful/informative) argument. Picking random excuses that conflict with known data (eg "It's the suns fault!", "Ummm... we're coming out of some mini ice age!", "It's the fault of those tree huggers over there! Look over there!") and which have been refuted again, and again, and again will not get you modded insightful. Why would it?

Is this a joke?!

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

I'm getting tired of the science community saying 'MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY!' constantly.

Too fucking bad! Tired of gravity being 9.8m/s2 too or the Earth revolving around the Sun? There's scientific knowledge, which adheres to a specific set of criteria and not-scientific knowledge, which is what doesn't adhere to that criteria. Either adhere to the criteria or hit the highway, that's how science works. Change that and it's not science.

Hating on conservatives because of your prejudice against all of them being texas-cowboy retards who drive giant trucks. It's pathetic that a community who is constantly speaking out against people who exclude them for having different views has to exclude other people, and ridicule them, just because they believe in something different then you do.

It's the conservatives doing the hating. You can't seem to get it through your thick fucking skulls that science has criteria and that your beliefs don't meet those criteria. No one is hatin on you for holding unscientific beliefs, we're hating on you for demanding that your clearly and demonstrably unscientific beliefs be categorized as scientific. You don't fucking make the rules here, logic does.

Creationism is a completely valid viewpoint, and so is evolution.
No creationism isn't; stop repeating this ignorance. Creationism is no more falsifiable than the question of God's existence. Evolution is falsifiable and has survived falsification thus far. Evolution is science, creationism is metaphysical. Creationism is NOT a valid scientific viewpoint, no matter how much you wish and wish.

They're both *possible*.
Not as scientific knowledge. Science does not consider creationism because it fails the first criteria of science, it is not falsifiable. Science will never consider creationism or the existence of God until someone has a falsifiable conjecture. But don't hold your breath, humanity hasn't come up with one yet, and it appears as if we aren't likely to ever.

I've always thought the internet was a place where you could get away from people being judgemental, conservative or liberal, believer in global warming or not.
Are you kidding? Since when have you been able to go on the internet and demand that 2 + 2 = 5 over and over again, no matter how many times it's patiently explained that 2 + 2 = 4 and not get flamed for it?!

If you have a valid logical criticism, then go ahead, but just repeating this ignorance is flameworthy. You should expect derision to follow you wherever you try to trot out half-baked, illogical assertions and the participants know better.

It isn't fair for people like me who are christians to be told that they're outright wrong.
It is fucking fair, you're more than "outright wrong"! There is no objective way for you to not be wrong, but perhaps I missed the part of your comment where you refute Tarski and then falsify falsificationism. And don't hide from objective criticism behind your religious views, I consider your belief in creationism to be heresy. The Christian view of the creation stories (that's right, stories as in there are 2 different ones in Genesis), were written as "my God is more powerful than your God" stories. This has been repeatedly confirmed by Talmudic scholars and is the standard understanding among Jews. Any attempt to claim that the story is literal is blasphemy and therefore heretical.

Your views aren't Christian, they're relativist and nihilist. To honestly conjecture that science is the same thing as a religious view, you've let your brain fall out of your head. It belies a belief that objective knowledge does not exist. Well this nihilistic viewpoint is objectively wrong. This goes for the idiot mods who gave this rubbish points too.

Re:Lindzen apparently has no trouble securing fund

[ajs]

No, that's not quite right. The problem is that their theories and data are ignored because funding is slashed, and they must resort to gaining funding from intrests which are not neutral. This brings their research into question, and they are easily dismissed.

This cycle perpetuates itself, and we only end up hearing half of the story.

Re:Just a little common sense

[oku7]

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.

Re:Lindzen apparently has no trouble securing fund

[rkowen]

TFA lists two areas of concern: 1) the denying of grants and funds for non-alarmist climatologists, 2) the double standard meted out to submitted papers. Alarmist papers are accepted readily and non-alarmist papers are rejected as being "not interesting". When non-alarmist papers are accepted they are not given the same opportunities for dissenting response.

Therefore, the poster you are attempting to discredit is quite right. The issue is not necessarily the funding of Lindzen, but the issues he raises that is there is no longer a healthy or balanced debate (the scientific ideal) on the global warming issues, and that they've been co-opted by special interests and that is the "if it bleeds ... it leads" in the newspaper parlance.

I don't understand what the fuzz is about.

[greppling]

You know, the author mentions three claims (paraphrased by me): 1. Global warming is happening (significantly so) 2. CO2 level is increasing 3. CO2 contributes to future warming.

He actually agrees with all of them.

The only thing he disagrees with is whether this is caused by civilization.

Now, in the last IPCC report (THE source for the scientific consensus, at least of the one attacked by Lindzen in this article), it is said that human activities are "likely" the cause of global warming. Not "certainly", but "likely". Even on an earth that is getting hot, I can't see how this is suppressing the view that humans may not be the cause of global warming.

In fact, the only thing he is attacking with any substance are the casual, frequently overheard claims that the recent increase in storms, tornados etc. is caused by global warming. Well, that's a straw-man as far as I am concerned. I have never heard this a scientific claim, just as an informal "could well be" answer e.g. by meteorologist in reply to question by journalists.

Re:I don't understand what the fuzz is about.

[Zphbeeblbrox]

Find a way to survive the natural process... Of course before we can do that we have to convince everyone else that it is a natural process. Especially since they already have this preconcieved notion that it's all caused by Humanity.

So government funding is the only truth allowed?

[Shivetya]

If an industry funds research it must be false? What about agencies perpetuating their own existance by delivering research which supports their existance? Your link is exactly what the issue is all about. Just as much as their is a "Greenhouse Denial Industry" there is a "Greenhouse support at all cost industry". Neither side is completely wrong, just some sides are much more virulent at denouncing the other.

Considering the track record of some of the Global Warming advocates and their actions I have a hard time believing every new definition they create. Seems that anything that isn't normal is a sign of proof to them. No hiding the fact than an elephant is in the room, his name is doubt and attempts to will him away only harm the facts that do exist.

Too many people on both sides, claiming to be scientist, are nothing more than the equivalent of relgious whackos. All who fail to believe are wrong and must be justly punished. Of course we know which side puts nails in trees, releases dangerous animals in attempt to free them, or torches businesses don't we. If the point is so obvious then why the need for extreme and irrational action?

Re:Lindzen apparently has no trouble securing fund

[disappear]

Right, let's teach the debate.

So, I'm afraid that I'm not receiving adequate government research dollars for my proposal on demonstrating that babies are delivered by storks.

As far as I can tell, any of the arguments used to defend anti-Global-Warming scientists can apply equally well to my babies-come-from-storks argument. Saying that the discussion isn't "balanced" and that we need to "teach the debate" or "show both sides" is what you say when you don't have arguments that are strong enough to convince your opponents in debate.

I'd like to keep an open mind on the issue of climate change, but the proponents of no-climate-crisis have failed to convince me, or pretty much anyone else. I'm not sure why we should continue to fund them. Saying that they're not getting their fair say isn't much of an argument.

Re:There isn't a lot of grant money for...

[Treacle Treatment]

So:
Earth is Round = Global Warming is caused by Humans
Earth is Flat = Crackpots believe there is no global warming

And you got modded to 5 for this? Let me clue you in. There is not a lot of funding for research into the earth being round.

scientific arrogance

[penguin-collective]

Lindzen gets his papers rejected by Science and Nature, has a bunch of grants not come through, and then whines about having his views being "suppressed". Well, if we take those criteria, 99% of all scientists are being "suppressed" because that's the rule rather than the exception.

I applaud Nature and Science in "suppressing" people like Lindzen--they simply don't have anything to say that I care about anymore, and I suspect that's true for the majority of readers of those journals. As far as I'm concerned, reducing CO2 emissions has so many other economic, political, and environmental benefits that this is simply not an interesting debate anymore; arguments like Lindzen's should be relegated to obscure journals.

Whatever boat you happen to be in...

[jellisky]

... is irrelevant to this discussion.

There is something that he points out (in a roundabout way) that needs to be said: There is a lot of bad science going on in this debate. Both sides.

Now, granted, I'm a lowly Ph.D. student in Atmospheric Sciences studying hurricanes... what would I know about this, right? (Yes, that's slightly sarcastic.)

"Science" and "Nature" are hack journals nowadays. The only reason that one publishes in those is for publicity. Pure and simple. I haven't seen an article pertaining to atmospheric science come through there that I haven't been able to poke significant holes in for years now. (I speak mainly for atmospheric science articles in those journals. Other articles may be fine... I don't know.)

The real science happens in the less-public journals. And, believe it or not, the actual science always leads to more questions than answers. There are details that aren't covered in science news coverage that are vital to making valid conclusions in these issues. But, the nature of the "publish-or-perish" funding makes careful science difficult to do.

So, we're left with more questions than answers. Look at Dr. Denning's carbon cycle findings ( http://biocycle.atmos.colostate.edu/globalcarboncy cle.html ) as a prime example of what happens when we begin looking more closely at these problems. Many scientists are tossing out potential hypotheses in a science that is very difficult to easily test these hypotheses properly. There's a rush to put out results of any type by the P-or-P philosophy... easiest is verification of previous results in a slightly different regime.

I'm not claiming that the scientists in this debate are bad scientists... I'm claiming that they're getting caught up in a problem that is so incredibly complex that we're far from having a more-than-cursory handle on. A lot of this is pioneering work... and even pioneers in sciences can get things wrong or not understand everything (how many refinements of Einstein's relativity theory have there been in the last couple decades, for example?).

It's not just about politics or philosophy or science or anything like that. It's seeing the maturation of a whole discipline of science. Lindzen is completely right in claiming that alarmists may be taking things too far. Lindzen is completely right in claiming that there are politics involved here. He may be off-base in a number of points, but cooler heads will prevail eventually. This is an exciting time to watch all this... it's like our generation's relativity (20's and 30's) or nuclear chemistry (late-40's to 60's).

Those who are getting up in arms about all this... settle down. Seriously. Your hyperventilations are only speeding up the global warming process! ;) Cooler heads will prevail eventually.

-Jellisky

Re:Whatever boat you happen to be in...

[aldheorte]

""Science" and "Nature" are hack journals nowadays. The only reason that one publishes in those is for publicity. Pure and simple. I haven't seen an article pertaining to atmospheric science come through there that I haven't been able to poke significant holes in for years now."

If YOU have significant holes to poke, publish them! Don't worry about an academic journal, get a blog. If you are worried about it affecting your own chances for funding and positions, then create an anonymous blog. Get the word out, make them responsible for their holes. If you don't, you are just as culpable as they in letting incorrect findings stand for future generations of research to assume and thus come to incorrect or irreconcilable findings.

You might think that's someone else's job because you are "just" a Ph.D. student, but because of your specialist knowledge, there probably isn't hardly anyone else. The number of people with your knowledge of climatology is probably a few thousand worldwide or less. If you don't do it, no one will, and the rest of us will just be taken for fools because we don't have the knowledge to rebut.

Re:Whatever boat you happen to be in...

[jonniesmokes]

Unfortunately, taking out a blog and talking about holes in science isn't much of a route. Real science takes place in peer reviewed journals. There are simply too many people without education on blogs; which makes blogs a popularity contest (see slashdot.org) instead of the scientific process.

The thing about global warming is that the theory is sound, even if unprovable. The consequences are huge. And there are other consequences to the large amount of CO2 production like the death of all molluscs which we might consider (see ocean acidification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification). When the results of an event are immense, they should impact your planning even if your not sure that the event will happen. I could also tie in the insecurity of our nation as a reason to cut down on oil consumption and the massive amounts of mercury released into the oceans as a reason to cut down on coal use. Really, how many reasons do we need?

People get all caught up in defending their lifestyle, by poking holes in another's argument. They're so caught up in defending themselves that they forget they're just dead wrong. I call these people apologists.

Sorta like the guy who slept with my wife back before she and I split up. I of course didn't know about it (gettin' played is no fun at all). But what irked me is that he kept telling me to my face how great he thought my relationship was and then when it fell apart said it was doomed to failure from the start. He was one of the reasons it failed, but denied it. Sorta like all the people driving SUV's sitting in gridlock traffic on the highway. In 20 years they'll say it was all inevitable. People are so funny I could cry.

Re:Whatever boat you happen to be in...

[jellisky]

A number of these holes HAVE been poked and published. But, it's never enough to just poke the holes... you have to do something "new and interesting". They get discussed and poked and plugged... just not necessarily by me. ;) I have my own /other/ problems to work on.

But, the holes are being worked on. They get brought up in the parts of science a lot of people don't get to hear about: the colloqium discussions, the interpersonal meetings, conferences. Like I said, cooler heads will prevail in the end.

-Jellisky

Re:Whatever boat you happen to be in...

[jellisky]

In addendum, I may add that a lot of the holes are typically significant issues with the data sources themselves. A non-trivial amount of the data that is used in various parts of climate research (and other atmospheric disciplines) is, well, not very good for the purpose that it is being used in. Data that is only good to +/- 10 units is being used to show trends of +/- 1 or 2 units over the entire timeline, for example. And little of that error problem is being addressed by the authors of the work... for various reasons. But, it's often the best data they have to work with.

There IS some quality data out there, but a lot of it just is not that great. And much of the really great data hasn't been accumulated long enough to really show long-term trends, since it has only been collected in the last 10-20 years. A lot of the issues in the field of climate are just being brought up and handled. That's why I said that it's an exciting time to be watching this field closely. Climatologists are just beginning to get some clout and truly innovative and solid ideas in the last couple decades. It's a field that is maturing literally in front of our eyes. In about a decade or two, we should have a lot more understanding as to how the climate system is working. And a lot of that will just come from the better data that will have some time to accumulate. And from some incredible ideas and great minds.

Read up on many science history books... you'll see the parallel sort of issues between the growth of current climate change science and other sciences as they began to mature. This is a rough, rough period with a lot of conflicting ideas, philosophies, and beliefs. But, it's exciting to watch and be a part of! Eventually, we'll understand what's happening better. Until then, enjoy the ride! I know I am. :-D

-Jellisky

Global warming based on statistical ridiculousness

[cscalfani]

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.

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.

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? Probably driven underground by the latest "Sky is Falling" group known as the Global Warming evangelists.

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.

I guess the press doesn't want to report on the failings of these wackjobs since the press was the ones who gave them credence in the first damn place.

We had Y2K in our industry and look how many billions were spent on something that we all knew was a bunch of BS. Many people post rationalized that the reason nothing bad happened was because something was done. But these people were part of the problem and don't want to admit to their bosses that huge amounts of money didn't need to be spent. And if you don't believe me, just look at the countries that didn't spend the money we did. No doomsday for them even though very little was done.

Global warming is going to follow the same stupid path. Tomorrow there will be a new threat and billions will be spent on that problem, meanwhile we'll be paying $10.00 / gallon for gas and no one will be solving the real problems.

Being surpressed

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get much more suppressed than the views of NASA:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate- change/mg18925403.900-us-agencies-accused-of-muzzl ing-climate-experts.html

But as long as I have to de-plane whenever there is the slightest threat of a terrorist attack on a plane or someone misses a security checkpoint, I'm going to demand that we "de-plane" when there is any indication whatsoever that life on Earth could end. It sort of makes sense that we error on the side of safety since there are tipping points in this debate- meaning that everyone acknowledges that should the whistleblowers be correct, there is a point of no return.

Do they even talk about the same thing?

[SysKoll]

Agreed.

Moreover, there are three separate questions:

1. Is the planet becoming warmer? A tough question, knowing that calorimetry is the most delicate kind of physical measurement. What do you measure, when, for how long? Methods and opinions differ. Magic satellites giving you a single figure for easy comparison are wishful thinking. You need a data interpretation method, and that's where opinions and tempers flare.
2. Is it a long-term trend? Also a tough question. Historical data is sparse and sometimes dubious. Not to mention that the methods and instruments have changed. For instance, the Albany, NY weather bureau reports average temperatures decreasing since the start of the century. Does that prove anything? Is this a fluke?
3. Is the observed change man-made?Again, a difficult question. It's not like you can run a parallele experiment on a second Earth devoid of mankind, although some people are planning it. Earth went through extreme temperature swings before the first ape showed up. The Deep Core ice-sampling project showed variations of about 7C (14F) in less than a century, several times over the last 200,000 years or so. That's huge. More over, the sun activity is not a constant. Sun activity variations wiped out the Maya (see "Solar Forcing of Drought Frequency in the Maya Lowlands" and google for more.). Astronomers think that the Mars icecap hasn't grown up as large in the last Martian winter as compared to pictures sent by the Viking probes: If that's true, it's not because of human activity. Then of course there is the well-known CO2 effect. How do we separate the natural and man-made causes? What's predominent?

I don't have answers, and serious scientists are very cautious too. Good data is too scarse, and too much money is involved for rational debate.

Most debates on the subject don't even acknowledge the existence of these separate questions, so how can they even be constructive? Both sides end up yelling at each other, but they aren't talking about the same thing.

Establishing Credibility in Global Warming

[tjstork]

Despite the shrill hype, there remains no reason to believe any part of the global warming debate. The science that there is scattered, and the producers of that science, given their political affiliations, are wide open to ad-hominen attack. To rephrase slightly, I, as a skeptic, have no way of assessing the completeness with which the earth has been measured, and, that only undermines those claims.

There is much discussion of a "mountain of scientific evidence", but where is it actually? To actually build a complete picture of global warming requires a fair amount of research in and of itself, and, even worse, most of the papers on global warming are being published in journals whose subscriptions run thousands of dollars of year. It is no wonder that someone might be skeptical about global warming, simply because you have to pay so much to see the "proof". I went to try and find out, for example, what the CO2 emissions from the midatlantic ridge are. Are there any? What's the proof, what experiment did they do? What about gigantic limestone formations? Anything there? What's the impact of Mt. Everest on the climate? Any papers? Or what is the CO2 consumption per acre of a tropical rain forest, or of a North American forest? Or a superhighway? Finding any of this information is impossible and the best Google gives you is a bunch of fanboy environmental sites that make statements as to each but often have no indications as to how they were measured. The information is simply not there, and, that, more than anything else, leads me to believe that so much of global warming is not only made up, its being made up by people with a vested interest in screwing my life up and wrecking the United States.

Unfortunately, I think the perception of political bias in the scientific community cannot be overcome at all, because it is partially true, and, any global warming policy is going to be the result of an intensive power struggle. However, the notion of science in global warming can be overcome by a brute force gathering of all of the global warming measurements into a single, giant project plan that is organized in a format that is believable, reproducable, in a standardized, McFormat, and is properly edited to separate speculation of the scientist from the actual experimental results.

Specifically, the earth needs to be divided up into hundreds of climate zones, if not thousands, and the results of those zones must be placed online, and in a consistent format. Each zone would have with it a characterization of the zone's gross chemistry, steps to establish CO2 content, and, what other zones that CO2 propogates into. Each zone, in other words, will have the total CO2 emitted or consumed, per a standardized unit of measure, say, cubic miles for atmosphere, square miles for various surface types, and some sort of a square mile by a rectangular depth range for both ocean and ground. In the cases of the ocean, the sea might be divided into 300 meter depths, and the same for the atmosphere. Finally, the frequency with which each zone occurs should be identified, and a total made. Thus, we could exactly know that, yes, the superhighway zones are producing xyz tons of CO2 per year, because here's the calculated emissions based on gasoline consumed, and furthermore, there are no other hidden zones producing CO2.

The point is ultimately that global warming is NOT a human CO2 production problem, it is a planetwide CO2 management problem. The goal is to balance the CO2 in the atmosphere to a level that is geopolitically advantageous to the United States and her allies, however, we cannot do that without an understanding as to how to do that. It might turn out, for example, that there's some goofy thing going on on the bottom of the ocean, in the midatlantic ridge, in a bacteria living in rocks a mile underground, that we simply do not know about, and efforts to control the climate by reducing CO2 production are a waste of time. I think what we really need to learn is to how to sink CO2 better, and, understanding how CO2 works, planet wide, and in a consistent way, provides the best overall tool for policy makers, skeptics, and advocates, to understand climate management on the same page.

Where's the sources for anything?

[tjstork]

That's the real problem of global warming arguments. I would like to assemble a Bill of Materials of Carbon Dioxide Uptake and Production for the planet. On each item on this bill, I would like to have the experiment that establishes CO2 levels, step by step, so that anyone could do it, assuming that they have access to high sky rockets, ocean research vessels, submarines, 3km drill heads, or even portable gas spectrometers. Then, I could tally up, quite easily, all the sources of carbon dioxide, and see that a comprehensive case has been made. But, until that time, I think all we really have in the academic community is a bunch of fundraising baby birds all chirping for some funds.

This is a bullshit argument

[Intraloper]

1998 was an El Nino year, a new record high year, and at that time stood out as an anomalously hot year.
We are now seeing years with temperatres near or at that anomaly as the standard.

In other words, we have seen a steady climb in temperatures, with an anomalous peak in 1998. If we pick that standout year as the starting point, and 2005 as the end point we get no trend. But this is ONLY true if we cherry pick that ONE single year, 1998, as the starting point.

Look at a long term trend, as in LOOK AT THE GRAPH, and we see a steady climb with variation. This dishonest attempt to hide the trend by picking extremes in the year-to-year variation as the ends of a selected time period, is just one example of the kinds of dishonesty too often thrown at this issue.

Water vapor DOES count, but it is not a forcing

[Intraloper]

The residence time of water vapor in th atmopshere is on the order of weeks. It equilibrates very rapidly; this means taht it RESPONDS to other forcing drivers of global temperature as part of the feedback process.

CO2 has a residence time several ordrs of magnitude longer, its persistence makes it a forcing, a driver, not a feedback.

Raising CO2 slightly increases temps, which increases the water capacity fo the atmopshere, and (this is almost certain now) increases water in the atmosphere, which amplifies teh warming effect of the CO2. Th siprocess in included in every model of global climate dynamics; it is NOT ignored. But including it in the driving, forcing players i nclimate change is wrong, becasue it responds to temps in part of teh feedback loop, it does not drive changes.

Favorite phrase sums it up

[SonicSpike]

I've been reading /. since I was a teenager and have learned a lot here.

When discussing anything like this issue I have learned a favorite phrase from others here which you touched on, but didn't quite say it.

"Correlation |= causation"

If more people understood this, the world would be a better place.

Re:copied from his official bio

[lubricated]

>>It appears he is a scientist as well as a writer.

and his publications in peer reviewed journals are where exactly?
Do they have to do with climate?

Selective Rigor

[Intraloper]

Our 650,000+ years of ice core data, and thousands of years of proxy data, and hundreds of years of measurement data, couled with growing physical understanding of the process involved, are not sufficient to determine if warming is happening on this planet.

But three years of poorly uunderstood changes in ice cap size on mars is definitive evidence of solar-system wide warming, which disproves anthropogenic warming on earth..

Sheesh, people. Think!!!!

Re:Are you by any chance a Republican?

[gatzke]

If mars is warming significantly, then changes in solar activity may be influencing the Earth. This is not a logical fallacy, it may be a useful piece of data that is relevant.

Scientist may agree that human action has some influence, but 99.9% of scientists won't agree to what extent humans have changed the climate.

The problem is too big to know exactly what is going on, but trends may emerge. Remember, we were told we would see the next ice age back in the 70s. What does that tell you? We don't always know what is going on.

So?

[Captain Scurvy]

Being a novelist and being right are not mutually exclusive.

the company you keep...

[vague_ascetic]

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:

"How do people learn about global warming?

That--more than the merits of any scientific argument--is the most interesting question posed by Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

The plot of Crichton's 14th novel is notable mainly for its nuttiness--an MIT professor fights a wellfunded network of eco-terrorists trying to kill thousands by creating spectacular "natural" disasters. But Crichton uses his book as a vehicle for making two substantive arguments. In light of Crichton's high profile and ability to command media attention, these arguments deserve scrutiny.

First, Crichton argues, the scientific evidence for global warming is weak. Crichton rejects many of the conclusions reached by the National Academy of Sciences and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--for example, he does not believe that global temperature increases in recent decades are most likely the result of human activities. In challenging the scientific consensus, Crichton rehashes points familiar to those who follow such issues. These points are unpersuasive, as explained below.

Second, Crichton argues that concern about global warming is best understood as a fad. In particular, he argues that many people concerned about global warming follow a herd mentality, failing critically to examine the data. Crichton is especially harsh in his portrayal of other members of the Hollywood elite, though his critique extends more broadly to the news media, intelligentsia and general public. This argument is more interesting and provocative, though ultimately unpersuasive as well."

Full Op/Ed - David B. Sandalow, 'Michael Crichton and Global Warming", The Brookings Institution, January 28, 2005

Inhofe himself is compelling evidence of American Conservatism's continuing decline. The Sourcewatch Article about Inhofe states that:

On April 28, 2004, Inhofe was honored by the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy -[*]

The Annapolis Center actively argues against the idea that global warming is the result of burning fossil fuels. They also advocate increased logging for better forest health and question rising mercury levels among other things. The Annapolis Center is funded primarily by the National Association of Manufacturers. The Center's founder and COO, Richard Seibert was a former

IPCC results are not reproducible

[austinh]

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

Re:Global warming taking its place...

[An Onerous Coward]

Acid rain is caused by sulfur emissions. The EPA did a great job of reducing sulfur emissions in the 1990s.

According to Tim Harford, in "The Undercover Economist" (a really great read), the EPA took advantage of the free market to do it. The industries were claiming that it would cost about $1500 to scrub a ton of sulfur emissions from the atmosphere. So the EPA set up an auction of sulfur blocks, allowing polluters to buy the right to pollute.

The auction determined that the cost of cleaning up sulfur emissions was about $70/ton, because nobody was willing to pay more than that for the right to keep pumping out sulfur.

Score one for the free market and government regulation. I'd like to see the government use more techniques like that.

Re:Global warming based on statistical ridiculousn

[LarsWestergren]

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?

Re:The last straw

[rlp]

As you can see from my UID, I've been around a while too. Slashdot has always been a forum where discussions of an issue can take place. Discussions by their very nature are two-sided - not a monologue. If your world view can't handle the possibility that there might be other view points - you're better off at some other site.

Always, always, always check the source

[Chilltowner]

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.

The fact is the climate IS chaging

[brainchill]

I don't care whether people caused it or not but the fact is the climate IS changing and it isn't moving slowly. The last couple of years in the midwest it's been increasingly apparent. It's not that it's getting hotter per say but the seasons are starting to equalize here. For instance, we only had 3-4 days of snow all winter this year and only needed to use the air conditioner for roughly a week all summer last year. It's getting cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. This trend has continued getting worse for the last few years since about 2001 when I first really began paying closer attention.

Writer Bias

[larix517]

The author of this piece clearly has a bone to pick with those who have gotten funding. he freely admits that one of his most recent papers was "discredited" by a major journal. I think that the major motivation of this piece is to vent his frustration and it clearly shows his bias on the issue.
I do agree that the current US administration breeds an environment of alarmism that seems to have taken over...well...EVERYTHING.
However, the author states three "truths":
1. the global temperature has increased by one degree since the 1900's.
2. global CO2 levels have increased by 30%.
3. increasing CO2 levels should add to global warming in the future.

As an atmospheric scientist, at MIT no less, he should know that that type of a chemical shift in the atmosphere is significant. In fact, the last ice age was brought about by a shift of only 2-3 degrees (F).
There are extremes in this argument, as with any that involve extreme amounts of money (scientific funding & oil revenues alike). There are those who truly believe that there is reason for alarm. There are also those who believe that global warming is not happening.
And of course, there are people on both sides of the issue whose opinions are driven by greed. Such is human nature.
This does not, however, allow us to discredit the fact that those three truths are still true and real facts, and something to be dealt with.
Whether or not you believe that those changes are the result of human activity, they are atmospheric shifts that will undoubtedly cause global changes in our lifetime.
The point is not to fight about it; the point is to find a solution, or at least some sort of amelioration. THAT is why the global community is talking about how to fix the problem and not whethere or not it's happening.

Re:Are you by any chance a Republican?

[PortHaven]

99.9% yeah, I remember hearing about the big report touted by the U.N.

Then I remember reading the details and the controversy, that numerous scientists exclaimed they were mis-represented. That larger scores said they're analysis seemed to indicate a global warming trend but they were not assured such was due to man nor abnormal.

Funny, as I recall, we were supposed to currently be plunging into an ice age due to all our pollution. And I believe we had the same debate.

"So whatever happens on Mars is bat-shit irrelevant to what's happening here."

Typical liberal, dismiss the facts, read only the sentences out of context that support your argument. Bitch about people ignoring science but dismiss anything contradictory.