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Scientists Respond to Gore on Global Warming
ArthurDent writes "For quite a while global warming has been presented in the public forum as a universally accepted scientific reality. However, in the light of Al Gore's new film An Inconvenient Truth many climate experts are stepping forward and pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon, much less any particular cause of it."
Wow. This is a bold line from the article:
Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science"
Strangely enough this is from a website that is sporting anti-bush t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers
Windows Admin Tools
Announcer:
... Live From New York, its Saturday Night!
And now, a message from the President of the United States.
President Al Gore:
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd president, I knew the road ahead would be difficult. We have accomplished so much yet challenges lie ahead.
In the last 6 years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this. Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack.
As you know, these renegade glaciers have already captured parts of upper Michigan and northern Maine, but I assure you: we will not let the glaciers win.
Right now, in the 2nd week of May 2006, we are facing perhaps the worst gas crisis in history.
We have way too much gasoline. Gas is down to $0.19 a gallon and the oil companies are hurting.
I know that I am partly to blame by insisting that cars run on trash.
I am therefore proposing a federal bailout to our oil companies because - hey if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us.
On a positive note, we worked hard to save Welfare, fix Social Security and of course provide the free universal health care we all enjoy today.
But all this came at a high cost. As I speak, the gigantic national budget surplus is down to a perilously low $11 trillion dollars.
And don't get any ideas. That money is staying in the very successful lockbox. We're not touching it.
Of course, we could give economic aid to China, or lend money to the Saudis... again.
But right now we're already so loved by everyone in the world that American tourists can't even go over to Europe anymore... without getting hugged.
There are some of you that want to spend our money on some made-up war. To you I say: what part of "lockbox" don't you understand?
What if there's a hurricane or a tornado? Unlikely I know because of the Anti-Hurricane and Tornado Machine I was instrumental in helping to develop.
But... what if? What if the scientists are right and one of those giant glaciers hits Boston? That's why we have the lockbox!
As for immigration, solving that came at a heavy cost, and I personally regret the loss of California. However, the new Mexifornian economy is strong and el Presidente Schwarznegger is doing a great job.
There have been some setbacks. Unfortunately, the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Michael Moore was bitter and devisive. However, I could not be more proud of how the House and Senate pulled together to confirm the nomination of Chief Justice George Clooney.
Baseball, our national passtime, still lies under the shadow of steroid accusations. But I have faith in baseball commissioner George W. Bush when he says, "We will find the steroid users if we have to tap every phone in America!"
In 2001 when I came into office, our national security was the most important issue. The threat of terrorism was real.
Who knew that six years later, Afghanistan would be the most popular Spring Break destination? Or that Six Flags Tehran is the fastest growing amusement park in the Middle East?
And the scariest thing we Americans have to fear is
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
... is that it inspired one of the worst novels I've ever read, Michael Crichton's State of Fear.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I don't consider any site that has over 50% of the page content taken by ads as an authority in the matter. Especially dancing cursors. Yuck.
I found it interesting a bit back when it was reported the ice caps were diminishing on Mars due to its own "global warming." When a scientific issue becomes politically charged it is the most vulnerable to misconstrued notions. Perhaps scientists should leave politics to politians (which they mostly do) and, indeed, politicians should leave science where it belongs too. There are plenty of other reasons to want to end the usage of fossil fuels without mentioning global warming. Mr. Gore, please stick to what's sure and not what's "the buzz"....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I have to doubt any source that has ads for Matt Furey Combat Conditioning and big TAKE THIS SURVEY popups.
When did Slashdot turn into a Fark flamewar?
As long as certain groups stand to profit, and as long as certain people might look like idiots if proven wrong, the debate on this topic will never end. I'm talking about people on either side of the issue. The tough part is that global warming is difficult to prove either positively or negatively, so it's a prime vehicle for unrelated agendas.
We'll know in a thousand years.
_And_ I hope we don't do anything about it.
Just so we can get rid of Florida. Serve them right for 2000...
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From the story: "For quite a while global warming has been presented in the public forum as a universally accepted scientific reality." This is plainly not true. For as long as the global warming issue has been in the public consciousness, it has been referred to as "the global warming debate". There has always been strong opinion and evidence on both sides of this issue. Where have you been, Arthur Dent?
Professional Idiot
This sort of dissent has existed for years, ignored by 'all right thinking people', but out there. Looks like Gore's movie has goaded a few of the dissenters to go on the record and risk destroying their careers. Gotta salute the poor brave but doomed bastards.
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But what I'm amazed at is Slashdot actually accepting a dissenting opinion as an actual article submission instead of this being posted as a reply to a glowing review of the film.
For another whack at Gore's credibility try this one:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDE3ZTkyOWYx
Democrat delenda est
Why Exxon Mobile of course!
p hp?id=1134
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.
The website he writes for also did a great piece on how McDonalds was good for you, after they took a bunch of cash from McDonalds.
As was pointed out in the Digg discussion, Bob Carter gets his funding from Exxon...
p hp?id=1134
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.
Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe
"The Inconvenient Truth" is indeed inconvenient to alarmists
By Tom Harris
Monday, June 12, 2006
"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."
But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?
No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.
Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."
This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.
So we have a smaller fraction.
But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."
We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.
Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:
Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.
Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers c
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Im in Antalya, Turkey. In mediterranean coast, western turkey.
This is a tourism spot, a mediterranean riviera if you will, no, not like italy, or spain, not like forest-deprived or barren lands, but lush, green, VERY HUMID, VERY HOT places. In winter warm and rainy.
Normally, at 15 June, we should be SWELTERING OURSELVES OUT, EVEN WITH AIRCONDITIONING ON, 99% humidity, 38+ degrees celsius IN SHADOW, HOT breezes and etc.
At least, this was the way since 2 years ago. Then things started going, as they wish, if you will.
As of this moment i can sit in front of this pc only with having fall gear on, long sleeves, even a polar shirt, although it is thin. Wearing socks, underwear and such. Normally i should be wearing only a short in this time of season. But im not. Its odd. It rains, it is cool, tourism industry, which is very big, is appalled with the situation.
Whereas, in netherlands, which is a cold country by definition, my cousin is sweltering in heat in 33 degrees celsius. I should note here that, friends in germany reported that they were able to see the face of the sun only 1.5 months last summer, rest being cloudy and rather cool.
To hell with the 'scientists' that trash gore's documentary.
I am MYSELF first hand witnessing the global warming and its awkward effects. I dont need nobody to tell me it is happening, certainly no business-interest-funded researches are going to change my view.
Last summer was hot as hell. Last winter, was WARM unusually. This summer, it is ABSURDLY COOL.
Read radical news here
There's lots more in the actual article.
And this is the guy who wrote the above entry:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
Stumbled across this relevant speech from Michael Crichton. The upshot is that he laments the emergence of science and scientific critique shaped by politics rather than rigorous scientific method.
q uote04.html
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches/speeches_
... that of a huge sample of 900+ *peer reviewed* papers about climate change, 0 contested that it was occuring or that it was a result of humans.
It would be almost impossible to say that no scientist disagreed with these claims. There will always be somebody. There are still some "scientists" who claim that the Sun revolves around the earth because of their positions in whatever religious institutions they belong to.
If they want to contest the points in his movie, that's obviously fine... but also let them publish their claims in a peer reviewed journal so that people smarter than most of us can judge them.
I'm sure I'll hear that the plural of anecdote is not data, that it is too expensive to fix, that we should throw up our hands and accept things. Global warming is not happening; and even if it is, we didn't do it; and so what if we did, so what - we should write off Bangladesh, forget the polar bears, and be happy to grow wheat in Canada instead. Sure. But please, read some of these stories.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Well, back to the drawing board. I think I'll steal some nuclear missles, send them in the San Andreas fault, and when the massive earth quake hits, all that land I bought in AZ, NV, etc... will be worth a fortune! I can recoup my losses with the FL land!!
... is that it inspired one of the worst novels I've ever read, Michael Crichton's State of Fear.
I guess you didn't read Prey.
-h-
yes but al gore like so many people on both sides of the isle from the materialistic atheist to the born again Christian is a man of faith.
... er.. playing politics ;)
He has faith that WE are the cause of global warming far beyond what the science can support. Just as a Christian has faith in a God that cannon be proved and the materialistic atheist has faith that God does not exist beyond what can be proved.
My point is much of the action we take is based on faith not science.
Politics is about emotion not science. Anyone who tells you otherwise is
I sometimes thing the environmental issue is as much a religious war as so many other issues from copy write to abortion seem to really be.
The interesting thing is that Gore as a born again Christian is bond by his ethics to seek what is real and true. An atheist has no such moral obligation.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
This website hosting this article is just not very credible. It uses popup windows and hosts ads for dubious anti-aging products and precious metals investments.
I'm all for a debate on global warming, but this source doesn't pass my personal credibility filter.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
and i don't know that human co2 is causing global warming, but it can't hurt to reduce emmisons. I do know that we can't use fossil fuels forever.
There's no conclusive proof that smoking causes cancer either, but there is strong evidence.
Look at who is the basis for the article, Professor Bob Carter. This man is effectively a spokesman for the energy industry. He gets support from the Australian Institute of Energy. The membership of this agust body is a who's who of the oil, gas, coal, and power companies in Australia. No wonder he thinks the global climate is doing just fine.
Fot those amongst you that can understand Dutch, there's a good book by geologist Salomon Kroonenberg on this.
In the book he argues that the timescale of significant climate changes is on the order of ten thousand years, not the meagre hundred we are so obsessed about. Quite a good read.
The book is called "De menselijke maat".
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Encore! I say, "Encore!"
Bravo!
Can I hire you for our knitting society Christmas dinner?
Stick Men
Exxon pays his salary. Here's another of his gems: Global warming is good for plants!
It's funny how I get a hopeful feeling when I see that there may still be some credible debate on this topic. Sadly the truth really is inconvenient, and depressing.
-Ryan C.
It's not so bad. The actual plotline of State of Fear might be total crap, but at least the book does contain a bibliography of interesting works to consult on the global warming debate.
Here is a chart of the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, going back to 1973.
ftp://140.172.192.211/ccg/figures/co2_mm_obs.png
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/insitu.html
I consider myself a scientific conservative -- I don't want to find out what happens when CO2 hits the 430 ppm mark. Some people say that nothing bad will happen. They could be cataclysmically wrong.
Hey, give Gore a break!
He invented the Internet, for gosh sakes!
He can't be good at EVERYTHING!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
If Al Gore wants to run for President in today's political climate, I don't think making a documentary about global warming that leaves him vulnerable to being called a far-left enviro-hippy is really the best strategy. Despite Bush's falling popularity, this country is still too far to the right to elect someone like that.
Be aware that the website hosting the article is a far-right broadsheet, the Canadian equivalent of Free Republic. Their agenda is strongly anti-global-warming, which doesn't necessarily discredit the article, but does suggest that one should view it with the same scepticism as one views the recent 'ads' by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Just as soon as you read someone saying that we aren't responsible for global warming, remember that you can go on over to Google and find plenty of respectable scientists that say we are. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686 Maybe Bob Carter disagrees with the conclusions that Al Gore has drawn, but to say that he has done the entire scientific comunity a disservice is exaggerating things a tad bit. Perhaps Mr. Carter should look around and check out some viewpoints besides his own before glibly dismissing those other viewpoints as "junk science"
Getting shut down, yes. By ExxonMobile. This Carter scientist isn't exactly unbiased, given the oodles of dollars our friendly gas giants have placed in his pockets.
And we can start drilling in ANWR right after we sink a mine in your lawn.
Most of the "scientists" that are comming foreward debunking global warming are funded by special interst groups. These groups consist of oil companies, car manufacturers, and other large corporations. Hmm, connection? Nah.
Last summer was hot. Last winter was warm. This summer (which has not started yet) is cool.
So...extrapolate your observations into a long-term trend.
I'm not saying that you're not seeing the effects of global warming. I'm just saying that based on three observations in Turkey, one in Germany and one in the Netherlands over the course of less than a year, you can't really draw a conclusion. And that's part of the problem of the whole global warming "debate".
-h-
is clearly written just to show what the "other side" says. There is not nearly enough information in it to draw any conclusions about global warming.
No data, no cry
The first 'scientist' mentioned, Bob Carter, has a history of denying human impact on the environment. More Carter opinions here.
In which Al Gore responded,
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
mod parent up. man, i wish i had some points.
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
I'm a computer programmer but a formally trained Marine Biology major. In that, I took a season of Oceanography. What is IMPORTANT for the layman to understand here is that we have these cycles that one must understand FIRST. Every 10 years or so, there is a drying pattern in California that leads to drought. There are 10, 20, 50 and 100 year overlapping cycles of temperature, moisture, etc... cycling that happen everywhere in the world. Some areas have droughts every 10 years, some every 20. And sometimes, areas that have 100 year cycles and 10 year cycles overlap to be particularly worse. These time-scales are so large that 1 or three bad years do not definitely mean "OMG! Global warming is here!" It is very important for people to know that, especially when it is June and and already 100 degrees every day in Texas. There are also years where there are more hurricanes and hurricanes of greater severity as well as years with less.
It would do everyone well to look up a book on Oceanography and read how the ocean affects climate. It's just one chapter. Hit your local library.
Now, with that understanding under your belt, animal populations in the aquatic world (read: schools of fish) are fed by the ocean conveyor belt bring nutrient depleted hot water down to the bottom and causing the nutrient rich cold water to flow up. This feeds the krill and shrimp and plankton and they are eaten by bigger fish and so on. If this conveyor is stopped, all fisheries dependent upon it in the world are screwed and we don't know what will happen but it's most likely not good.
Climate (hotness, moisture, rainfall) affects food growers the world over. If the climate patterns change, it will mostly be destabilizing to farmers and that is bad. Less food, rising prices.
Everything we are doing to influence climate change builds up momentum towards that change. It may be slow but once it is started, it is hard to slow down and reverse. 1 degree difference in the entire ocean is a huge difference. Also, unlike us, water temperature in many parts of the ocean is constant to a few degrees. If it changes faster then the critters can handle, they die.
Once you know the rules upon which the ocean works and how it creates climate, running fast and lose with stuff that might change it is hugely dangerous and irresponsible to take a chance on. More moist warm air in places it wasn't before means more tornados and hurricanes in places they haven't been before. More extreme weather in general. This means more insurance claims and that means higher insurance costs factored into the economy.
Most of the times in America, we wait for disasters to happen before we spend enormous amounts off money and time to fix them. I don't want to be a betting man with our affect on the entire climate of the Earth. Calving icebergs the entire size of Rhode Island is not something normal. If we want Florida, New Orleans, Manhattan, Holland or those small islands in the pacific to be around in 50 years and have enough food to eat, I would not expect it to be if we (the US) and China (the largest emerging polluting market)do not take radical steps to curb global warming pollutants. It's that simple.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Find it here. Google is our friend.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Bruce Perens pulled the same story over at Technocrat because the author is "from a paid political PR agency." link
Read, but read with caution. The author is paid to have his opinion.
According to Gore, global warming will end it all in 10 years. Yet he felt no need or responsibility to do anything about it when he was a Senator or Vice President. He felt no need to campaign on the issue in 2000, and he feels no responsibility to run for president in 2008 in order to get the power necessary for him to save the world.
He is an "activist" which means he can complain and grouse and content himself with believing that creating "awareness" equates with actually doing something concrete.
Um....as you described it, you are witnessing first hand "cooling" how the hell do you know if it's tied to global warming or not. Let alone whether said warming (or in your case, cooling) is due to man's activities or fluctuations of the sun (which have been recorded for millenia)
a quick google for the researcher the article focuses on shows that he doesn't publish. his main credits are online opinion pieces, and the closes thing to a publication i found (the second page of the google) is a .doc file on his labratory's webspace
if anyone can find anything peer-reviewed by this guy, i'd be keen to see it
Great, you just described localized cooling.
Global warming refers to a change in temperature across MANY years, not just one summer. And GLOBALLY. Your shithole "tourist spot" is NOT global
I was wearing t-shirts in March in Rochester, NY, but that doesn't mean global warming was hitting Rochester. IT MEANS WE HAD ONE FUCKING MILD WINTER.
So you're hoping to drown millions of gore voters to pay for the "sins" of the 537 voters who tipped the election to bush?
All I can say is, they sure don't make bleeding hearts liberals like they used to!
The reptilians that control the DNC and the media created this hoax to try to make us think that we should use less oil. Why? It's simple, they need oil to survive and without it they shrivel up and die. All this so-called "environmental" stuff is all part of thier plot to destroy man, cause they want to rule the planet again like they did 10,000,000,000 years ago. Think about it, they talk about overpopulation and conservation, it's all cause they want to reduce the human population to a size where they can just kill us off. Getting back to the oil, if we use up all the oil they're dead, thats why they are going to have the governments force switches to "alternative" energy sources, which will be are downfall! It is every humans duty to buy an SUV so we can conquer the Illuminati! MOD THIS COMMENT UP IF you care about humanity!
- Typical Global Warming Skeptic
You know this is all bullshit!
Al Gore knows all about it, because before he invented the Internet, he already invented global warming!
"In this envelope I have the research that PROVES this so-called 'global warming' effect is not an unusual phenomenon to the Earth. Here, I'll read some excerpts- Hm, a stack of $100 bills. Guess I brought the wrong envelope..."
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
Is this a joke or something? Grow up.
You judge for yourself: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.p hp?id=1134
Carl P. Corliss
Rachel Marsden is one of the columnists featured on this site. Click the link to learn more about her unusual past. I've been checking it out, off and on for a couple of years, and simply can't take Canada Free Press seriously for numerous reasons. The global warming debate is just that, as many other posters have noted. Shouldn't the "debate" be over scientific issues and not ideological talking points?
I always find it helpful to track the sources of information they are siteing. For example, there's Professor Bob Carter. This is a professor who claimed that global warming stopped in 1998 when it turns out that 2005 was the hottest year on record (since we began tracking such things).
I saw a similar article making similar claims yesterday and the "experts" they sited weren't even in the field of climatology, and had gone so far as to fake a letter from the National Academy of Sciences to give their position a supposed credence.
Show me one peer reviewed scientific paper that says anything other than global warming is happening and it's caused by human emissions of CO2. To my knowledge, this does not exist. I recognize that peer review is somewhat prone to group think, and in that you might expect a leaning one direction or another. But to have ZERO? That seems rather dramatic to just be a group think issue.
A lot of the "scientists" that I've seen taking a position on this are clearly hucksters working for the likes of Exxon Mobile, etc. I have little doubt that there are some scientists who are legitimate who don't buy into the common thinking, but that doesn't mean the common thinking is wrong. They need to back up their beliefs with sound evidence and method. But they don't.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
But we double the rate of climate change every 2 years, so now it only takes 10 years.
paintball
I can prove the 'negative' assumption that the global climate isn't warming, 'simply' by measuring it!
My spelling isn't bad, I'm evolving the language
Read today that CO2 amounts were far higher than they are now during the last ice age. There is no evidence increased CO2 is related to anything. If there is global warming, and there is also global warming on Mars, the Sun's influence cannot be ignored. Since we can't really regulate the Sun, and alot of funding is available for doomsayers it makes far more sense to blame humans. I think the global warming debate is starting to hit a tipping point against the environmentalists. Crightons book (good or not) got out to a lot of people and for all its failures as a novel he really presents data effectively with footnotes and everything so even if he were lying the impression is that he's done careful work. Combine that with Gore's movie which I've heard is as thrilling as a powerpoint presentation in a 90 movie meeting and now scientists are standing up and being heard to oppose global warming. My guess is the debate will shift again. Global warming became extreme climate because the warming facts didn't always fit. Now it will shift to something else, less provable, to keep the funding coming. Perhaps salinity in the oceans. Yeah the temp will only go up a bit but if the salinity in the oceans change by so much species will die and we'll get a chain reaction that will cause the marine ecosystem to fail. Without fish a lot of birds will die and we'll have a global catastrophy and every beached whale will become an exibit in the new scaremongering. Yes we should clean up our pollutants on general principle. You don't shit in your own bed. But don't try to make anyone a hero or villian out of it.
The book was pretty awful, but it did raise good points (and pound the reader over the head with them).
I'm getting the vibe that until we're living in boats, global warming will be considered a theory.
So Either:
A) Until the extinction of man, global warming will always be a theory and the cost of ice cream will continue to increase.
B) We'll be living in boats and global warming will be a fact. And since cows will have to live on boats, and grazing areas will be limited, the cost of ice cream will continue to increase.
Conclusion:
Invest in ice cream and have a nice day. There's always going to be claims of junk science because one man's junk science is another man's treatise.
The Flat Earth Society is still around for crying out loud.
m.
Other articles from this website:
- Christianity under Attack: Assault against America's Christian traditions continue
- The ultimate epithet in the liberal lexicon
- Throw the U.N. on the Ash Heap of History
Do I need to continue? Jesus Christ, Slashdot! Do you do any sort of editorial fact checking before posting a story - under Science!
No Digg.
X
http://www.nature.com/earthsciences/index.html
AND I guess NASA is full of "non-experts":
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/inde
And Scientific American must be crap too:
http://www.sciam.com/search/index.cfm?QT=Q&SCC=Q&
gee.. Im so relieved!!!
There isn't any conclusive evidence for theories on how gravity propagates. We have theories; special relativity space-time warping, string/m-theory transmitting gravitons. However no one can explain with 100% certainty why gravity works. So the theory of gravity lacks certainty. But last I checked, if I were to jump, gravity from the Earth would cancel out my force and return me to the ground. So yup, Gravity still works despite not having certainty behind theory.
According to the scientific process, we'll have to observe global warming in a biosphere before the theory will gain certainty. Last I checked we did not have a spare biosphere hanging around, or millions of years to test, or a spare Earth somewhere in orbit where we can conduct long term testing in order to satisfy the scientific method.
I am all for the scientific process and honestly wish it were used in more cases in every day life. However, in some cases, especially in those studies that overlap the lifespan of scientists, I feel it is ok to act without certainty in cases where the speculative evidence supports the theory. Say it with me now: Supporting evidence in the case where no alternative evidence exists wins everytime. In other words, just like the theory of gravity, lack of 100% certainity does not make the opposite true.
Despite whether or not global warming is a real phenomenon, not acting now would be like driving without auto or medical insurance. Sure, you might make it home safe, but you might also get hit by a drunk driver in a 4 ton truck with no insurance. Our laws require insurance for that reason. Why don't we start insuring the Earth with pre-emptive care?
Keep in mind that those who support global warming/cooling/change scenarios still say that it will be a gradual process. What you're talking about, while odd, is normal variations in temperature from year to year. California (where I am) has occasionally had rainy summers. Not often, but it happens. The fact that you're cold while your friend in Netherlands is hot is most likely a coincidence rather than an actual correlation with climate change.
What would the consequences of our actions to combat it?
greater fuel efficiency, less reliance on foreign oil, less of a need to "transform" the middle east, warmer houses in the winter, cooler in the summer, cleaner air, less inflation pressure from unstable energy futures trading, smaller trade deficits.
You don't even need global warming worries to make a good case for higher efficiency. Are we going to keep sending our money overseas or are we going to upgrade our equipment?
Investments in fuel efficiency now allow you to save money in the future. We are builing a very energy efficient house using SIPs and geo-thermal HVAC. The money we save in energy costs will pay for the increased building costs in about 5 years. I would rather keep the money in my own building than shell it out to Exxon-Mobile year after year. The odd thing is that it's not that more expensive.
Science Magazine analyzed a total of 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming between 1993 and 2003. Number that challenged the consensus that global warming is real and caused by human activity: zero. Scientists don't debate whether global warming is occurring, or even that it's caused by humans. Only politicians do.
I call bullshit. What's more, if you'd read previous articles on slashdot, you'd have seen this bullshit already disassembled. The only "scientists" debating in the 70s whether there was global cooling were popular rags like Newsweek, not scientific journals. And if you don't want to search slashdot, try Google and you can come up with some interesting results.
The familiar floor-humper banner was a giveaway for anyone that reads fark - the site's in the same group with newsmax, the most hardcore conservative site you can find without delving into complete lunacy. Check out the details on the founding editor:
s html
http://canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/2505.
"Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily. Judi can be reached at: cfp@canadafreepress.com."
This debate will likely rage for a long time to come. But I wish the people who argue on the "non-environmental" side would accept one simple fact:
Polluting less is simply better than polluting more.
For everyone who keeps saying it's OK to spew noxious gasses into the atmosphere, to pour unfiltered waste sewage and chemicals into our water, to spray dangerous pesticides on our produce... These things are not OK. We should always be moving in the direction of polluting LESS. Never the other way around. And for those who disagree -- how about I come and piss in your drinking water? Don't worry, I'll keep it to an FDA-approved minimum level.
You may with to read my little reply in another thread.
5 35560
link:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=188481&cid=15
I'm glad to hear that in other parts of the world, people are seeing mass disruptions of weather - glad because enough voices need to rise up and economies become affected or no one will take action.
People need to see the potential first hand and then MAYBE, they'll do something about it.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Check out the Union of Concerned Scientist website. The Union's members are from varied fields of science, but many of its members are atmospheric scientists. The Union concludes that global warming is strongly support by available evidence. http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/
Why are we talking to someone from 'James Cook University' about global warming? In my parallel computing class at Berkeley we have had scientists from LBNL come and talk to us about simulations, the math behind them, and results from various teams. There was only one major simulation that said there was no global warming, and it was from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, headed by this guy named John Christy. Too bad his tropospheric data was wrongly interpreted in the simulation code (which LBNL at one point demanded that it be turn over for inspection) due to a wayward negative sign, and the re-run with the new code showed global warming. I can't find the very detailed article on the simulation, but the Wikipedia entry on him mentions a little about the data fiasco:
5 /08/the-tropical-lapse-rate-quandary/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christy
Real Climate also has more on it:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
The speaker ended his presentation to our class by saying that his generation would have to spend their whole lives convincing others that there is a problem and that it would be up to us to come up with solutions to it. But by then it might be too late. So let's stop listening to random scientists from random institutions (UAH, JCU, or Carleton, or what have you) that are of little scientific repute and think about reducing vehicle emissions. If anything we will have better air quality so there is no harm in trying except that a few higher-ups in major corporations make less money.
This one was torn a new one on Digg this morning. I thought the /. editors had more sense.
What's next? Stories pointing to junkscience.com?
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
No!!!!!
It's the end of the solar system. The pollution we are creating is starting to affect other planets. We have now caused Global Warming on two confirmed planets. We will have to await further data to see how the rest of the solar system is fairing, but it doesn't look good. Global Warming is spreading like a cancer around the solar system. We must change our ways before it spreads to the rest of the planets if it's not too late already!
The crap is splattering all over the bullshit detector
But if you receive your funding from the EPA, then you're unbiased ??? Or maybe the democratic party or people in the movie business?
It's nice to know who signs the checks, but just because Exxon paid for it, doesn't mean it's wrong. And because the government paid for it, doesn't mean it's right.
Yeah, and, er, Ad Hominem, or something.
That's also not how the scientific process works. This isn't about "proving a negative", it's about "invalidating an existing hypothesis" which is the basis of scientific progress. Scientists spend lots of time running experiments trying to prove than an opponents theory is wrong. Part of becoming a generally accepted "theory" is having lots of people try to invalidate your hypothesis and failing to do so. Indeed, the thing that's impossible to prove is that the hypothesis is valid. "Oh, sure, it looks like solar radiation can cause skin cancer, but can you prove that some as-yet unfound and undetected external force isn't responsible?"
Yes, if you're going to advance a hypothesis you need to find some evidence to support it, but if you're waiting for "extremely strong evidence" you're in for a long, long wait in just about any scientific endeavor.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
A telling statistic about this is in Gore's movie. They did a random sample of scientific peer reviewed papers on global warming. Of 932 samples, ZERO disagreed with the conclusion that global warming was happening and was man made. On the other hand 56% of the articles on the subject they randomly surveyed said the jury was still out.
This is the long standing problem in the media of false equivalency. They take any issue and assume that there are two sides and that both sides have similar standing. So if 932 peer reviewed scientific papers say that global warming is happening and humans are causing it, and there's 932 articles written by crackpots and industry lobbyists saying the opposite, the media treat this as being two equivlanet sides of an issue. It makes good copy, but it's incredibly desceptive.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
So why not publish the dissenting findings in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal? If there are sufficient grounds to question the research that has been published thus far, I would expect that it would not be difficult to promote a dissenting work.
Heck, Phillipe Rushton still gets published from time-to-time, and his research has been widely discredited. This suggests that the relative popularity and/or merit of your findings does not appear to have much influence on whether (or not) you get published,
So, if the case for global warming is as weak as some of these folks claim, why have they not published rebuttals or counter-claims?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
This is not correct.
Bob Carter is *quoted* in the article and appears to be a shill for Exxon (or someone who agrees with them for his own reasons) but the article is written by Tom Harris.
There is no paper trail for Tom Harris that I could find.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
By ExxonMobil no less. Thanks for all the editorial oversight. I'll be submitting the next article on why George W. Bush is the greatest president who's ever donned a codpiece shortly.
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
I have always loved the way slashdot rips stories like this apart. Throwing up some piece of BS onto meant to support your cause onto /. is akin to stabbing yourself in the back.
If an article makes sense, there will be an interesting, moderately in-depth discussion about it.
If it doesn't make sense, it's like a thousand little critters climbing into your little piece of rhetoric and tearing it to shreds.
A few will usually even follow the trail so far as to discredit ancillary actors in the story.
Then the moderation system starts to do it's job, evaluating which posts have substance and which don't, boiling the best to the top.
If you read at +2, threaded, highest rated first--you will always have fantastic additional input to complete the story behind the story within a few comments.
Never truer than on crap like this story. If all news outlets had the same type of system, it would be a much better world.
Thanks guys.
Look, global warming is real, the Republicans did it, and we are all going to die!
I got three words for you:
9 647
CANNIBAL POLAR BEARS http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=206
The problem is that people on both sides of this issue are wrong. The global alarmists say, "The temperature has gone up, CO2 can theoretically cause global warming, therefore C02 is causing global warming." This is just wrong on many levels. On the other side, people say, "There is no way humans could cause global warming." The fact is, we do not have enough information to "prove" one side or the other. But we do know that CO2 can be a factor in climate warming, so it would be wise to cut emissions where we can until there is enough data available to show the truth.
Here's my take on the counterpoint to Al Gore's claim of global warming... who cares if he's wrong?
If we worked hard as a society to get off the oil and coal crack pipe, would that be a bad thing? The socioeconomic reasons alone are totally worth it. Let's not forget that right now we're at war over the stuff, not to mention spending $50 for a tank of gas. Meanwhile the fatcats at Exxon are crying all the way to the bank, global warming or not.
Think about it, who cares if he's wrong, there's too much good to come out of us pretending that he's right! If you're interested in reading more, I have a longer point about this that I made on my blog last week (click above)
Plus one for the Illuminati part.
Early Signs: Reports From a Warming Planet is a joint project of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Salon and NPR's "Living on Earth." The series runs Fridays through May 5 in Salon, and you can find radio versions of each story on "Living on Earth's" Web site. Read about how the series came into being here.
Just because the movie happens to sponsor the day pass at Salon - well, whatever.
And some more:
In recent years, evidence has been emerging from various parts of the globe that climate change is not only real, it is beginning to have significant political, economic and human impact. Much of the reporting on the subject in the U.S. has focused on the "debate" over whether warming is occurring, and if so, whether humans are partly the cause. Scientists, however, have already answered these questions -- resoundingly in the affirmative -- as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which comprises more than 2,000 scientists representing over 100 nations.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
I don't think it was that bad. It was just typical Crichton formula science fiction, which is something he's very good at. I find most of his books very engaging despite that fact that having read one, I've essentially read all of them. Same plots, different "bad guys."
The key value of the book is not any sort of rebuttal against global warming, since that is not what it tries to do (read the endnotes if you didn't). It's the argument that most of global warming fuss is FUD founded on really heavy rhetoric like "our children won't have Florida because it will be underwater" as opposed to the actual science (which in general is supportive of the theory) looking at the increase in CO2 and methane concentrations, computer modeling, long term temperature trends (both on modern and geological time-scales), solar activity, ocean level changes, etc.
I think the book is really quite amusing in how he attempts to bring all these little elements of the debate into play: lawyers, eco-terrorists, movie star run-ins with cannibals, and that crazy professor with his idea that we always we need some big thing to be afraid of and global warming was a good substitute for communism after the end of the cold war.
with these "free" websites and the "Ultimate Fitness Program" banners? Whenever I see that, I know which direction the flag waves.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
TFA says: "Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field."
OK, I'll bite. Let's see "Prof. Bob Carter"'s qualifications. When you search for them, you get to this page http://www.es.jcu.edu.au/research/msgbs.html, where you find out that (a) Prof. Bob Carter is in reality just Dr. Bob Carter, and (b) that his field of research is palaeontology, and not earth climate.
The Intuit way of life is unraveling and polar bears are facing massive die-offs because the arctic ice is freezing later and breaking up earlier every year.
Species of tree frogs in the carribean are going extinct at an amazing rate as increasing temperatures create a more hospitable environment for parasitic fungi.
Birds' migration patterns are altering by huge amounts - weeks in some cases.
The $#@$@#% thermometer.
Climate model after climate model has shown that natural forces could not cause the climatic changes we've been seeing over the past few decades in the absence of all the greenhouse gases and such that we've been pumping into the atmosphere.
Come to think of it, I'm not aware of a single peer-reviewed paper published in the last two decades that calls into question the idea that humans are accelerating global warming. There's some debate over how much we're affecting it, but even then the vast majority of research agrees that we're a pretty big influence on things and if we're even remotely intelligent beings we should probably stop doing that.
Furthermore, even if what's causing the warming is natural, things are changing so fast and have such a capacity to cause some serious damage to the planet's ecosystems as well as human society that we'd be insane to not do everything in our power to slow the change. (Of course that's assuming we give a damn about our grandchildren.) The science that shows that human industry, agriculture, etc. has a strong influence on the forces that govern climate is pretty rock-solid. Even if you honestly believe we aren't influencing the climate now, we do have the power to influence it. Why wouldn't we want to use it to keep the planet hospitable for our species?
The biggest secret about the "debate on this topic" is that there isn't one.
The first thing to do whenever you see a "scientist" calling global warming into question is to see who signs their paycheck. The second thing to do is to check and see if anything they're saying has been subjected to peer review. "Scientists" can get away with saying a lot of shit when they don't bother to submit to any sort of oversight.
I am depressed that the current state of science, politics, and media allows, actually promotes, a distrust in science and by being "fair and balanced," gives equal weight to opposing arguments regardless of merrit.
With science, it takes a lot of knowledge and study to fully understand complex topics. Well crafted arguments that depend on people ignorant of the body of facts can sound just as, or more, convincing as those dependent on the actual facts.
Finally, the bullies have found a way to beat the nerds, make truth and facts irrelevent and smart people can no longer win the debate. We are rules by idiots, and they have changed the rules so idiots win.
I've my own doubts about global warming, but it does seem that the "con" side are often folks who are paid to have those opinions.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Nay pal.
Actually im just exploding on a trend that has been going for the last 15 years.
It rained like hell in antalya back then. almost 15 days CONSTANT rain, without a pause. Yes. There was a special name for it : "Nisan Rains" (from april).
For 10 years now, it is not happening.
Gradually for 10 years now, first it started to get EXTREMELY HOT, then it started to ALTERNATE during the course of single years.
Im not judging from just a 1 year switch. Im judging from CONSTANT 1 year switches, which imply a trend.
Read radical news here
From the article:
r ter
Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.
What a weaselly way of putting it. Here's what 30 seconds of Googling says about Professor Robert Carter: He's a member of the Institute for Public Affairs, a corporate-funded think tank.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Ca
You see, he isn't working for the coal industry per se. He's working for a think tank that is funded by corporate donors that may or may not include the coal industry. See the difference?
In piling up scientist after scientist while failing to refute Gore's arguments, this article is reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda pamphlet "100 Scientists Against Einstein." Einstein's response still applies: "If I were wrong, one would be enough."
Assuming global warming is real, is human caused, and will get worse, what will people do about it? I believe that they will, by and large, continue to practice whatever policy is most economical for themselves. Sure, there will be some people who will buy more fuel efficient cars and try to conserve energy, but they will be those who can afford to do so. It takes a substantial initial investment to buy a hybrid car (or any new car, for that matter), to buy fuel-efficient windows, to buy solar panels, etc. Until alternative energy sources and newer, more efficient energy use technologies are cheaper than the status quo, little will change. At best, our CO2 emissions won't grow as much as they have been, but they won't substantially decrease. If the standard argument for current CO2 levels being way too high already is accurate, we're screwed anyway. Wishful thinking about "green lifestyles" and media noise about global warming aren't going to affect things in real life. It's simple economics.
What is needed from those in the activist camp are pragmatic solutions - cheaper alternate energy sources and plans to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. A pragmatic solution is one that makes sense to the individual consumer. CDs replaced cassette tapes because they offered better quality. No one had to be shouted into making the switch, it just proceeded as a matter of choice. If fuel cell cars or wind power plants are going to become the new standard, they will also have to offer an obvious and compelling value to do so. Anything else is an incomplete plan.
Quitting smoking is the kindest analogy I can think of for people changing their behavior due primarily to a suspected risk. The smoking risk is thoroughly proven, and quitting smoking actually saves the user money, yet plenty of people continue to smoke. With global warming, no one has precedent to relate the risk to, and changing is a sacrifice. Without a "no-brainer" reason for our carbon energy system to change, I doubt it's going to.
If the government is to do anything about the carbon issue, I think that money would be best spent on sequestering atmospheric CO2, since we're assuming that's the problem, and funding research for "clean" fuels. Any ham-handed legislation to try to force individual change would suffer the same fate as prohibition.
This change has been perpetuating since 15 years. Just as i told in reply to another comment, climate started gradually changing. It does not rain for 2 weeks without pause now as it did 15 years ago in april. It was the 2-3 HUNDRED YEARS OLD thing happening here. It does not since 10 years. Then it started switching back and forth.
Read radical news here
Well, there's no conclusive evidence for Quantum Mechanics being real, but it's generally accepted.
Basically, I find that these jackasses are taking a fundamental truth of science (namely that we can know nothing for absolute certainty), and exploiting it for there own purposes.
Colour me surprised.
According to Rush, we can fit the entire population of the world in the state of Texas.
According to FEMA the solution to flooding is to raise all the buildings.
Give the whole job to Halliburton.
Done and done.
What's for lunch?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Virtually every Slashdot story about global warming has a post pointing out Micheal Crichton's "interesting speech."
0 05/02/06/checking_crichtons_footnotes/
And every time, I'll link to this thorough debunking of his claims:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
Here is another:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2
There is no reason around antalya, bay area, eastern mediterranean for a localized cooling that continually WARMS up during the course of 15 years until the point of being hell on earth, then suddenly start switching back and forth trend in the last 3-4 years.
Only thing left is global warming. In the end, the local changes in weather make up the 'global climate'. Just like other 'shithole' spots that have their weather changing without a reason.
Isolated places are the places which will be experiencing the change the last. So nonexistent change in places in the middle of mountain ranges, or low plains does not constitute an evidence against global warming.
Read radical news here
Lake Chad and the Aral Sea are drying up because the water is being diverted and USED elsewhere--not because of global warming.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
"The Soviet Union decided in 1918 that the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast, would be diverted to try to irrigate the desert, in order to grow rice, melons, cereal, and also, cotton..."
In the movie one can clearly see ice breaking off the ice sheets in antartica. That's what ice does--it breaks off. These video segments are meaningless.
Hundreds of years ago, Iceland and Greenland had far less ice then current day. The climate was warmer. Indeed, we are just now exiting a little ice age. According to the fossile record, abrupt climate change has occurred before.
So is global warming happening: probably.
Is it natural: probably.
Does mankind have anything to do with: If so very very very very very very very little.
Should we worry: Yes--about the idiot poloticians and their election crusading
I've said my peace. Now, flame on...
Good to finally hear from scientists - who are finally explaining what scientific proof is and isn't. Naturally, this issue of what is scientific versus what are "notions" doesn't only occur when it comes to so-called global warming being caused by earthlings.
The list is long - from how many hours of sleep "we" need each night, to how many glasses of water a day "we" need or whether any given prescription drug actually works - "we" simply don't know. (Well we know 70% of perscription don't work - and that many kill.)
"The Intuit way of life is unraveling and polar bears are facing massive die-offs because the arctic ice is freezing later and breaking up earlier every year."
OK, Quicken doesn't work very well for me, either, but what does that have to do with polar bears?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Second of all, they're speaking like, "Well since Gore is wrong, its ok to destroy our Planet anyway and suck the fossil fuels dry".. I don't really agree with any of this, because neither side has proven anything to me.. But we all know, that we're fucking up our planet regardless..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Who cares whether global warming is real or not? The point is that the population of human beings on Earth currently has such an enormous impact on the environment, that there is an incredibly high risk of destroying something vital. And even if humans manage to leave the Earth more or less habitable, there is still the question whether it is a good idea to burn all the oil in existence in the coming 30 years or so, while it takes billions of years to produce new oil. Oil is not only for burning, it is also, for instance, for making plastics.
I am pretty much certain that I'll live my life in a world that is reasonably habitable. My daughter, however, has to stick around for four to five decades longer. I want her to lead a good life too. And her children also, for that matter. Is it really too much to ask to treat the world with a bit of responsibility?
Logically speaking you can't prove anything either positively or negatively. As David Hume explained, the cornerstone of such statments is the expectation that what has happened previously will recour. Simple repetition of a response is not sufficient to prove that that response will happen again. For instance: the fact that the sun has risen every day of my life does not prove that it will rise again tommorow. Causation breaks down unless one accepts that the future will follow the dictates of the past. Logically, there is no such thing as causation, and all theories based on past observation are therefore not deductive, but inductive proofs - that is to say, they may be reasonable, but they are never logical. -GiH
Hahaha, arch-conservative beatles fan. What a rube.
From TFA: "there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon"
There is very strong evidence that the average world temperatures have been increasing in the 20th century. Year-to-year, the temperatures jump, but the overall trend is clear and present!
Also, there is little doubt that the temperature data, as recorded, are accurate.
What the REAL scientists disargree about is the CAUSE of the global warming, and not that it is actually happening. Again, the Warming can easily be the result of a natural phenomena (as recently as several centuries ago, Greenland had no ice, for example; many thousand years ago, there was no ice anywhere in Eurasia), or the result of human activity.
Instead of rational discussion, both the Hate-America-Liberals and the Neokook-conservatives just lie, and lie, and lie.
To paraphrase Karl Rove: we can fool all people some of the time, and we can fool some people all the time, but... we can also fool most people most of the time...
It's flat out wrong. Attempting to disprove a hypothesis is the very basis of the scientific process.
Next week's topic: What in the world happened to the teaching of science in our public schools, and what does it mean for the future of our country?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
More scientists skeptical of Gore: article from Canada's National Post. Seems like much more of a mainstream publication.
...the measurements you cite are simply the result of every temperature measuring device known to man going out of calibration by the same amount.
It's part a hippy liberal plot to force us all to live in yurts.
SMALL yurts.
If you click on the "Science" section of this Canada Free Press website, you will see that _all_ the Science articles are copied from a single website whose mission in life seems to be to bash global warming, Green Cars, and pesticide regulation. I wouldn't exactly call this article "unbiased" or even fit for Slashdot posting.
...when will they ever learn?
Excuse me. DId anyone bother looking at the source for this article? This article is from the "Publicity Director" of the High Park Group, a consulting group/PR firm for the Canadian energy industry. What's next, comments on how smoking is actually good for you by the Human Resource Director of Phillip Morris?
Even the President of the United States has admitted that global warming is for real -- and much of its cause is man made. In the last 30 years, there has not been a single article in any environmental peer review journal casting any doubt about the global warming phenomenon. In the last five years, there has not been a single article in any environment peer review journals casting doubt that global warming is occurring, and that much of the source for global warming is man made.
I am sick and tired of this crap. Whether you like it or not, global warming is an absolute fact. The earth has been getting warmer over the last century, and the trend is speeding up. The only question is whether or not man has contributed to this global warming trend, the extent of this contribution, and possible effects, and how bad global warming will be.
I would understand if you want to criticize the movie for being alarmist, or you felt that it simplified the situation. I would understand if you felt that it was too much the story of Al Gore and not enough about global warming. I would understand if you felt that it was like a big, long boring PowerPoint presentation, and didn't get deep enough in the facts. I would disagree with your assessment, but I would understand.
But, to have an industry representative deny that any global warming is taking place, to have an article that claims that "scientists" are criticizing Gore's facts because global warming doesn't exist, that just flies in the face of reality.
For some time now, Exxon Mobil has been trying to "astroturf" environmental science with skepticism about global warming.
Last year, Mother Jones Magazine publised a special series of articles including this one that exposed the extent of Exxon Mobil's efforts. They also included this sample of their distribution of funds to various organizations that help them to create skepticism.
Amazingly, they have even managed to ensnare a civil rights group into saying that action to address global warming is actually an attack on people of color.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I don't see you complaining when articles from Daily Kos are posted. Why is it so bad to hear both sides of a contreversy?
There is a slight difference between people posting political opinions on an openly political web site, and people who try to pass their political opinions off as science. Further, when they aren't actually anybody's political opinion, but rather paid propaganda as part of a lobbying campaign, the difference is even greater.
If they want to have a blog called "Exxon Outgassing" or something like that, and post their spin there, I have no problem with that. Or if this were a case where someone actually had some research to present, that would be fine. But so far as I can see, this is propaganda, pure and simple, and trying to pass it off as "the other side of a controvery" is dishonest.
--MarkusQ
P.S. The odd thing is, I used to be a HCGW skeptic, until the sheer duplicity of the oil lobby convinced me to look into it more. So in my case, at least, their money backfired on them.
The press didn't cover it.
The press didn't ask him about it in interviews.
If you watched C-Span, you saw the stuff that wasn't shown on the major media sources.
My mom says I'm cool.
1) Global atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing:
. stm
. stm. html3 .html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4803460
2) CO2 dissolves in water
3) The oceans are water
4) CO2 dissolves in the oceans
5) When CO2 dissolves in water the PH of the water goes down
6) When the PH of the water goes down, Calcium Carbonate concentrations go down
7) When calcium carbonate levels go down the plankton dies
8) When the plankton dies, so does everything else by starvation
9) Ergo, people who think disproving global warming will let them drive their hummers without killing their own species, and a lot of others with it, are total asswipes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4803460
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/265052_acid31
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/265241_coral0
Someone had to do it.
..the Beaver Dam has broken!
that's funny, since the global warming proponents claim that is' risen 0.4 C.
"We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening."
Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
There is only one other article by Tom Harris at CFP, but I found another at National Post, both attacking climate change. Canada Free Press and National Post are both conservative newspapers, particularly the latter. According to the byline, Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group. And what is the High Park Group, seeing as how their web page say absolutely nothing of substance? Why it's an industry shill.
Dig a little deeper and you'll find this from way back in 2002. It has quite a bit more to say.
If you know more say so.
Of course, articles about "scientists" refuting global warming are a dime a dozen, and go against the plain fact that the vast majority of climate scientists are firmly convinced of its existence.
And for the record when I looked at the article before it was running an ad pushing Condaleeza Rice for president... in a Canadian newspaper no less.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
The devil can quote scripture to suit his purpose. Same thing goes for think tanks quoting "scientists". Take the Discovery Institute, for example, which tried to put a scientist up on the stand to defend intelligent design. Even the judge, who had no formal scientific training, could see right through the sham. In this case, a couple of non-peer reviewed scientific claims seem to refute the well-documented evidence behind global warming and are used to bash Gore. Not his theories really, since many other scientists hold the similar beliefs about global warming, but the man personally. Now that just brings it right back to the polical arena, where the data is the first casualty. I think the data to support global warming is highly persuasive, but there is data that goes both ways. Why not just focus on the data rather than one politician's attempt to shed some light on the subject to the masses?
Of course they were:
http://rondam.blogspot.com/2006/04/global-warming
http://timlambert.org/category/science/bobcarter/
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/04
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php
Furthermore, even though the FCP article tries to paint Carter as an independent, ExxonSecrets.org links him to "Tech Central Science Foundation or Tech Central Station". Here's what the site lists as their details:
The entire Canadian Free Press article loses credibility because of this line:
A non-industry expert who works for a place that's paid for by Exxon.
I can't believe this article got posted on the main page. I guess since Al Gore's in a movie, posting some already-been-written article quoting a few paid shills who say he's lying had to be done to keep things politically balanced. I personally think news links should only be posted if they actually represent reality.
...but does anyone have a good scientific reason as to why? I've heard all sorts of pet theories but the most popular tend to blame large SUV's and then go on to ways to have them banned, disregarding the fact that there would still be fossil fuel burning vehicles on the road (global warming would still occur but it might take a little longer - great, we just bought a couple years). Sorry, but I highly doubt SUV's are the sole reason why the climate is warming up. I trust these people about as much as I trust this article. How much do we really know about terrestrial science to determine cause? Isn't that where the debate should be headed?
I was wondering, supposing Al Gore had made a movie denying global warning, scientists in the field would have come out against the movie saying that their was definate evidence for it.
Anyway, can we stop calling it "Global Warming", the correct term is "Climate Change", as warming is not the only effect.
Al Gore - Isn't he the inventor of the Internet?
It is difficult to make someone understand something if their job depends on them not understanding it
- Upton Sinclair
(thanks, Al!)
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
making fun of Al Gore's statement is funny and it always will be
Congratulations!
You, sir/maam, could get a job at any major US Newspaper with that attitude, today. In fact, Kudos to you for remembering what's really important.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Suppose you believe we can't tell what effect we'll see from running up CO2 levels (which we're doing: direct measurement says they're going up, isotope ratios show that the increase is fossil carbon).
If you don't know the effects, isn't a conservative approach appropriate?
If you see someone who doesn't know what they're doing making changes to your starship's life support system, would you let him continue just because he paid some of the engineers to say "we can't be sure there will be a catastrophe"?
Experimenting on a planet while you're living on it is just plain dumb.
We all know that you can find any opinion on any topic on the internet and that you have to be more careful then ever about your sources. So, if slashdot is going to refer to articles on controversial issues, shouldn't it stick to sources that have some authority or respect?
I wouldn't be surprised if Gore did go to far - few things are as certain as they are presented to us by either side. However, the article goes way too far and ignores the fact that the general concensus of the scientific community is in line with what Gore is saying.
So, it makes me wonder what this strange website is? It is run out of my city (Toronto) and yet I've never heard of it. I don't see a bio of the author on the website, but I note that the two main authors involved in this website are from the Toronto Sun and Fox News. I don't need to say anthing about FOX, but you might not have heard of the Toronto Sun. It is a right wing tabloid, featuring girly pictures on page 2. You probably have one in your city, so you know what I mean.
This is all about refusing to accept data until it becomes impossible to disprove. The arctic is melting and it looks now like the antartic is melting. Glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate. Storms are getting stronger and there's little snow pack in the mountains. A dimming affect, this has been confirmed, has compensated for the worst of the warming but as we clean up the atmosphere it'll cause an excelloration of the warming effect. What exactly is in question? The suddenly spike in warming happened to coincide with industrialization? This reminds me of the old smoking debates. People that smoked happened to get a lot of lung cancer and heart attacks but there was no medical proof. Everyone knew it was the cause but the science was discounted until it became impossible to ignore. Just give us a standard to go by. When the artic is temporate with no ice and Florida is under ten feet of water can we call it global warming or should we wait until Florida is under twenty feet of water? Also where do we stand on the whole sun orbiting the earth question? I hear there's still some debate in certain circles. I'm sure the White House still considers that a theory.
I don't remember how I stumbled on this web site. They seem to be pretty fair there. It looks like they have good information and discussion. Anyone know more about the "Roger A. Pielke Sr. Research Group" out of Colorado State?
Here is a article that includes a link to a paper on NASA temperature data.
New Christy and Spencer Report on Satellite Temperature Data
I'd say it's pretty obvious where they're coming from. Slashdot's really going to hell. This is a sample from just their front page:
"The images are slowly coalescing out of the smoke of the progressive anti-war campfires, the bonfires in New Jersey, where our Constitution and Ann Coulter's latest book are being consumed by the current purveyors of charitable lock-step liberalism, and from the super heated mind of Howard Dean, the showman extraordinaire and carpet gnawing Democratic spokesman deluxe."
"Once again, the gay marriage issue has come before the Senate. And with no surprise, Senators motioned to strike down a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. What a sad state the Senate has become! It should have been a no-brainer to stand up in the defense of marriage! "
'As the price of gasoline and the myriad products that utilize petroleum in their manufacture rises, Americans are going to ask why the Congress has resisted accessing the billions of barrels' worth of oil and natural gas in our offshore continental shelf. "
"It's so darned funny and I am such a naïf. I thought it would take a day or two for the left to begin to down play the death of Zarqawi, one of the premier death dealers on the planet today, and a guy responsible for a litany of murder and mayhem among our troops--OUR TROOPS. You know, the guys everybody pledges to support even though the liberal cognoscenti and the progressive Nomenklatura all hate the war."
"Great rivers of destiny are churning just below the Electoral dam.
It looks like the stage is being set for the next round of heartbreak for the Democrats, their quest for 15 seats in the House and their need to overthrow the Republicans in that charnel house of the Senate, should this, their greatest of all electoral endeavors, not pan out."
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Welcome The High Park Group (HPG) is a public affairs and policy consulting firm, with offices in Toronto and Ottawa. We work in a broad range of areas, with core practices in energy, environment, and ethics. Our dedicated team of advisors is committed to providing timely, customized services that provide maximum value to our clients. --- QUOTE FROM AUTHORS SITE--- Ahh I see... Why is this even under discussion? Obviously this man is a completely unbiasd individual *sarcasm*. Lets not forget where the term "Public Relations" comes from. It comes from the word "Propaganda". Now lets also not forget why it's called Public Relations rather than Propaganda. If you do some reading, you will note that the nephiew of Sigmond Fraud made this field using his uncle's theories but because of the "bad rap" the term "Propaganda" got with the Nazies they needed something a little less emotion stirring. Anyways, free speach and all...good on ya
Huh? [devShell.org]
Links? Please add them to: http://del.icio.us/tag/bob+carter
Google Canada Free Press and read the description; the 'paper' refers to itself as a:
"conservative media alternative"
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Prove that if you and all the people like continue to emit so much CO2, that there will be enough oxygen generated from the life forms that survive those changes for me and my descendants to breath.
Someone had to do it.
If you read this story you'd think that Bob Carter was some unsung scientist working quietly in a lab that just couldn't allow for untruths to be spoken. Unfortuneatly that couldn't be farther from the truth. Bob Carter is the Austrelia's Anne "Man Hands" Coulter of anti-global warming crussade.
He's backed and published by a right wing think tank called the Institute for Public Affairs, A group funded by corperations like Exxon-Mobile; and he rolls this dialoge out any time there's camera within hundread feet of him.
He's pundit, pure and clear, and he's been touting this nonsence for at least a decade.
If you want to boil it down to what the scientific community thinks, there are over half a million professional accredited scientist world wide, only a few hundread disbelieve in global warming. That would make this argument 2,500 to 1, roughly the same number that believe in Intelligent Design, or that UFO's built the pyramids.
I recommend none of you give this man any more credit then he deserves. But if your skeptical, and you should be look him up. Bob Carter or Robert M. Carter is all over the net as the leading nut against global warming.
Thank you and Good Luck
The article was written by one Tom Harris, who works for a lobbying group -- The High Park Group (http://www.highparkgroup.com/). Their website doesn't mention it, but they are payed to lobby for the Canadian Electricity Industry, do a text search for "High Park Group" on this page http://www.stikeman.com/newslett/EnNov04.htm
Hail to the chief indeed.
To have someone from James Cook University provide the leading quote for your article is a bit of a joke. James Cook is a small university in a regional Australian city, and is mainly a teaching facility with much less emphasis on research.
But you're just trying to avoid the meat of the issue.
Show me where the breathable oxygen is going to come from.
Someone had to do it.
The term "Global WARMING" misleads many people.
It is a term that is referring to a situation that the average temperature of the planet will rise to an extent.
This does not mean that everywhere temperatures will rise.
The overall change in in temperature average will change the climate in general, the weather patterns, maybe jet streams, even some ocean streams, some rainfall patterns and such and such.
The reflection of this general change on every micro climate system (like cities, or specific plains or mountain ranges) will all be different, depending on what end of the global changes hit the area.
I believe in our case, we received the cold end.
Read radical news here
Denver today had a record high of 101F for any recorded June 14 ever. It was also
the earliest-in-the-year 100F temperature ever recorded here.
just ask anyone in Los Angelos or Mexico City. I still remember as a kid hearing about 'smog days' and being shocked anyone would put up with that instead of just taking a fsckin' bus to work.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What's the big deal? This site is apparently a "conservative" news site. As such, they take a stance that is pretty uniform among rank and file conservatives: that CO2 emissions are not causing climactic damage popularly called "global warming".
/. are very fond of expousing "science aims to do this" and "science aims to do that". Well, I'm a PhD in theoretical physics, and thus, know a little something about science and its relation to the scientific method. Any reputable hypothesis has an outlet for publishing. This is how science works in modern days. I communicate with my colleagues via publishing. And I have never met a colleague or editor who supressed a paper due to an unpopular viewpoint. We are the priests of the Church of the Scientific Method. We didn't become PhD's for the glory (hah!) or personal gain (double hah!). We followed the path we did because of an unswerving quest for truth, and that includes publishing things that are reputable but not agreeable with our own world-view.
A lot of people on
The word reputable is loose here. It can mean evidence. It can even mean educated guess. It can even mean "opinion" if you form a reasonable argument.
It's not hard to publish in the scientific community. So where exactly are all these scientists who dispute CO2 initiated climactic changes? I haven't seen them.
And again, I have to wonder out loud. Where is the news here? This article is about as mundane as reading about how a liberal Democrat is outraged that Bush wants to desecrate the Constitution with an amendment to limit the rights of matrimony to what could be 10% of our population. As boring as an article in a conservative newspaper that outlines why giving out condoms to stop the spread of HIV is a bad thing.
*yawn*
Please change the title of this article from "Scientists Respond to Gore on Global Warming" to "Industry Shills Respond to Gore on Global Warming". Not that journalistic integrity has ever stopped you from running obviously wrong headlines before; I'm just trying to advise on how to maintain what little dignity you have left.
Nathan's blog
... the War on Global Warming!
Anyone have a mini-van we can paint black with a red logo on the side?
I'm constantly amused by the US political state for its ability to turn everything into a crusade. Real change is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Very interesting how both articles were written by the same author (Tom Harris), who is a director of a public relations firm "High Park Group" ( http://www.highparkgroup.com/tharris.htm ).. in the US, you'd call such a business a lobby group.. A very trust-worthy source:
High Park Group's is proud to offer our clients a wide range of services, including:
policy and strategic consulting
project development
project management
issues management
research initiatives and analysis
economic analytics
direct lobbying
event planning
media relations
fundraising
Oh and there is another simple reason to clean up our act now. Tech. Mandate that cars in the west have to be clean to a high standard and you lock out the chinese cars with old tech but low prices boosting the local economy.
What do you know, smog free and increased employment just by passing enviromental laws.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
CFP is an ultra right wing blog and has an anti global warming science agenda. The have no balancing articles.
u te_of_Public_Affairs
3 813
But hey, the maybe posting a valid article. Let us see who wrote it.
Tom Harris wrote the article. He is a PR person working for PR/Lobby firm High Park group. They don't say who they are working for, but this guy is paid to have this opinion. I suppose it is possible that he was paid by some concerned for the environment corporation, but I have my doubts.
http://www.highparkgroup.com/services.htm
How about the Scientists:
Bob Carter. First "Scientist" quoted. Known climate change skeptic, Member of Institue of public affairs: Lobby group.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Instit
Funded by Oil/Gas/Mining/Pesticide/Logging corporations.
Bob wrote this Gem of a piece about protectin Austrailians from the dreaded disease "Mother Earhism":
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=
"Compare these tiny changes with the experience of an Australian citizen who moves from Hobart to Darwin to live. Such a person experiences a change in annual average temperature of 18C, which is accommodated quite happily by wearing fewer clothes, drinking more beer and trading in one's heater for an air conditioner."
There you go folks, just wear less clothing and global warming will be a non issue.
I really have to wonder who falls for this stuff.
Not to mention wondering about the sellouts who write this stuff.
This is a crappy link to dailykos but the issue is interesting:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/4/1723/98702
Who owns the new passages and land opened up by warming?
Go Canada!
1. We need to have an energy source that is not based on localized supplies in the middle east (or elsewhere)
2. The air around our population centers is polluted by fossil fuel consumption with serious health consequences
3. Fossil fuels cannot be used for deep space travel or colonization which is necessary for survival of our species (eventually)
4. Fossil fuels are poisonous to mine and refine and harm the workers in those industries and towns.
5. Centralized control of energy sources leads to higher prices and a permanent "tax" on economic development and expansion
6. Fossil fuels are poisonous to transport and have caused enormous damage to the marine ecology during spills
7. Systems used to convert fossil fuels to energy are complicated and wear out quickly. They are expensive to produce and maintain
8. Systems used to convert fossil fuels to energy create noise which causes problems in urban environments
9. Fossil fuel "control" implies a loss of personal and national liberty
Note that I am not saying that existing alternatives solve any of these problems.
I am saying that there are significant costs/problems to the current energy systems.
We have lived with these costs and written them off, but they are still there and still important.
Its worth significant effort to solve these problems. The research to solve
these problems will also likely benefit us in other areas.
It would be far better to solve the problems than to continue to live in an
unstable,poisonous,noisy world.
After years as a lurker, this write-up has finally compelled me to register at slashdot (well, that and the death of Plastic).
It is a fact that an overwhelming marjority of scientists in the world agree that climate change is real, it is happening now, and it is being caused mainly by humans. Only in the United States does there remain a "debate" and it remains only because a certain number of scientists have been paid off by large corporations to lobby the US government on their behalf. The expressed aim of these lobbyists is to muddy otherwise very clear science to make sure the general public at large is confused and doubtful about the existence of climate change. This effort is clearly working, and it is to the detriment of all of us.
Al Gore's film, and many other well-respected books (including the highly recommended "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery) outline in great detail the overwhelming evidence from peer-reviewed journals that is accepted by the world scientific community at large.
The short list of accepted facts, which have been derived by scientific observation and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals:
- The average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere is rising, and has spiked sharply in recent years, far beyond any of the "normal natural trends" that take place over thousands or millions of years, not mere decades.
- The average temperatures of the oceans are also rising.
- Historical photo evidence clearly shows the polar ice caps have melted dramatically in recent years. This is decreasing the amount of white snow that reflects sunlight and replacing it with dark water that absorbs sunlight, creating an ever-accelerating negative feedback loop. For the first time there are observations of polar bears are drowning in the north pole because they cannot swim between icebergs. Entire towns and cities in the north that were built on permafrost (so called because it was always considered permanent) are now sinking as the permafrost melts for the first time ever in human record.
- Historical photo evidence clearly shows that many glaciers around the world that are known to have have existed for millenia have suddenly and dramatically melted in recent decades.
- Scientific evidence shows that the number of species becoming extinct because they cannot survive in warmer climates and cannot migrate to cooler places due to human development is rising sharply.
- The number and intensity of hurricanes and severe storms have increased sharply over recent years, in direct parallel to the measured rise in air and ocean temperatures during that same time.
When I see a clear counter-argument for climate change that addresses the data behind all the above observations, perhaps I'll listen. So far, the arguments I've seen against climate change seem to consist of either 1) nitpicks at tiny holes in a vast complicated body of data, 2) the mistaking of small annual or geographical variations in an overall warming trend as "proof" that the trend is false, 3) insane unsubstantiated accusations that the vast majority of the world's scientists are involved in some sort of conspiracy, or are so inept at what they do that they must engineer a vast lie just to "get funding".
The rest of the world is on board. Only in the US (and since our last election, to some extent Canada) has climate change become caught up in pathetic left vs right politics, with conservatives adamently denying climate change by default as an invention of whiney liberals. It's a damn shame, because this is a serious issue, and the future of all humans depends on us waking up and doing something about this NOW.
How many droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, floods, rising oceans, missing ice caps, and extinct animals will we need to have shoved in our faces before we admit that we've made a huge mistake, and that we need to stop bickering and get on with solutions?
The views in this original post exhibit wishful thinking, not reality. Accusations of "junk science" by climate change doubters is extremely ironic, to say the least.
Christians, most of which are "convenient Christians" subscribe to the notion that they might as well believe in god, just in case he's really there. Pascal's wager as it's called, is based on the notion that erring on the side of caution when there doesn't seem to be any serious repurcussions is a wise choice, but it seems these same people bury their head in the sand when it comes to the subject of global warming. Wouldn't it seem like a wise idea to assume it might be happening and act to reduce the effects, as opposed to arguing about it?
Regardless of whether global warming is a reality, the solution will involve finding cleaner, cheaper, alternative sources of energy. How can that be a bad thing? Don't start with the bullshit about jobs being lost. We can create just as many job opportunities in the pursuit of alternative energy as are working in the oil industry, paid shill degreed academics, or lobbyists in Washington to pay crooks to write misleading legislation like the "Clear Skies Initiative."
People are fucking stupid sometimes.
Wasn't that around the time of the Ice Age, which was presumably caused by catastrophic impact with an asteroid or some such? I'd think the particulate levels in our atmosphere back then would cause a 'nuclear winter' effect, making even 10x CO2 totally useless as an insulator, since little thermal radiation was able to penetrate all the dust.
Fewd for thought.
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism...
That's Bob Carter, the Aussie researcher who says that global warming would be a good thing, and not Jimmy Carter, the former US President.
Sure, if you read the article carefully enough to remember the names exactly, you wouldn't get confused. But look where we are.
this is one of the better points to be made...
(though perhaps you might have included all the rest of the mammals too... y'know, just to be inclusive...)
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Yeah, and you know why? Because now that place is warm enough for snow to form. I feel so consoled.
So genius, tell us where the ice is going to move to next when even that place gets too warm for it?
Oh, by the way, the same models that predict global warming -- they predicted this increase in the Antarcric ice cap. It's just one more step down the well understood road to mass dieoff.
Someone had to do it.
Hijacking a quote in the title, not a reference to the poster...
There are a lot of people that don't believe in humans affecting climate change. Fine.
There are a lot of people that think we do affect climate change. Fine.
My concern, and one that I think both sides of that argument will agree with, is that there is a lot of crap in the air that we breate, and the water that we drink.
We should be doing something about that right now. If it helps the planet, super. If it drops the Asthma rates, and so on, even better.
My mom says I'm cool.
An additional note:
It would be educational to track the cost of using each fossil fuel from
end-to-end. From the point you say: "I want to do something that requires energy" to the actual use of that energy and its after-effects.
Every tool that needed to be designed, smelted, maintained.
Every step of the extraction, refinement, and conversion process.
Every "helper chemical" like coolants, lubricants, hardeners, ingredients, alloys.
Every health effect of the mining, distribution, conversion, and disposal of waste products
I wonder if anyone has done a comprehensive study.
Because, in the end, the fuel just burns and is gone. It is just
a transient ingredient for other things we do. Its pure cost.
Uh, just because they have professorships doesn't mean all their papers are peer-reviewed.
Yeah, the disappearing icebergs and permafrost in the north artic region are a product of Gore's imagination. This is a good example of "oil" scientists troting out more gibberish to prevent loss of income. Gee, did we really need to use an austrailian news souce to tote the corporate line?
Both articles were written by the same author (Tom Harris), who is a director at a public relations firm "High Park Group" ( http://www.highparkgroup.com/tharris.htm ).. Some may call such a business a lobby group.. others may call it an industry-friendly strategic consulting firm. A very trust-worthy source, especially when it comes to public interest.
High Park Group's is proud to offer our clients a wide range of services, including:
- policy and strategic consulting
- project development
- project management
- issues management
- research initiatives and analysis
- economic analytics
- direct lobbying
- event planning
- media relations
- fundraising
Scientists, however, have already answered these questions -- resoundingly in the affirmative -- as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which comprises more than 2,000 scientists representing over 100 nations.
NO, THEY HAVE NOT.
This is one of the most widely-believed myths in the whole Global Warming controversy. Any time you see it in print, you can know with certainty that its author is entirely derelict and incompetent as a journalist. Here are the facts:
If journalists had done their job and actually READ the report (instead of repeating press releases handed to them) the summary author's duplicity would have been exposed rather quickly. Instead we have an enduring Urban Legend that "thousands of scientists agree" that Global Warming is 1) real; 2) caused by human activity; and 3) is going to ruin the planet. The ONLY thing that active, publishing climatologists agree on is point #1. #2 is a matter of vigorous scientific debate right now, and #3 is basically dismissed as the speculations of crackpots.
A number of responsible scientists withdrew from contributing to the IPCC's reports over this debacle. But you've never heard about any of that in the popular press.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
All Frozen water floats in liquid water
Surprising at it may seem, "heavy" water ice does not float in "normal" water, it sinks.
I never said all life would be extinguished.
Just the majority of that that breathes oxygen. Turtles are pretty sedentary, though. They might survive.
Someone had to do it.
You should take your PollyAnnaIst fantasies and go play with them someplace where it won't do anyone any harm.
Someone had to do it.
If you'd like to run your own NASA Global Climate Model (GCM) on your own computer, the EdGCM project has ported a GCM to Mac & Windows and wrapped it in a GUI so you can point-and-click your way around. Turn the sun down or add some nitrogen, whatever you want...
Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the project.
Space and Computers.
OK.
h ere-energy/climate-change/vostok-ice-core.jpg
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosp
Someone had to do it.
I like your analogy. Simple enough for rednecks to understand.
perception is reality
That any mass dieoff of a large portion of the food chain has ever gone without repercussions to the rest of the organisms on the planet?
Which is why we now call it a food web.
Someone had to do it.
The earths climate has always been the same and it always will be the same.
There is absolutely no evidence to prove otherwise.
Hmmm.
Where I live, we've had several very warm winters and summers in a row. Apparently this was due to the folly of mankind.
Yet this past winter was pretty "normal", and this spring is about as normal as springs can be. I guess we must have fixed that global warming problem.
See, it's the whole correlation is not causation thing. You can't rely on anecdotal evidence like "boy, this is some weird weather we're having" to prove that some major climate change is underway, and to take it one step further and say that it's our fault.
When has weather not been weird? Well, all the time, but people only talk about the weather when it is weird. It's not uncommon for it to snow here in June and/or August when it's supposed to be summer weather, yet every year when it happens people act amazed. Personally I've made it a point to frequently say things like "boy, this is some pretty normal weather we're having," because I just crack myself up.
I'm not saying that global warming isn't observable or real, but I'm not ready to buy into the extreme hype. I don't think it's very responsible to start talking about global warming every single time the weather is "unseasonable." Sometimes it rains all summer long. Sometimes we have draughts and everything burns. Sometimes winter is cold as hell and everything freezes solid. Sometimes winter is mild and sunny. Welcome to Earth.
It's pretty common for humans to look inward whenever something bigger than us seems to be on the horizon. "Oh no, what did we do wrong?" It's important to keep a level head and not just go hurl a bunch of virgins into volcanos.
I am an environmentally-minded person, and try to focus more on individual ecosystems where cause and effect are more clear. Certainly we need to be cleaner. Certainly we need to be cautious with natural resources. I think that the issue of global warming pulls the focus away from the obvious, clear evidence, out into a highly argumentative "end of the world" swamp of a debate. This may not have the intended impact on people, and may in fact may do just the opposite.
So I'm not too sure about where I stand on the issue of global warming yet. I'm simply not going to assume global warming is responsible every time we have a record high or a record low... especially when those records are often set fifty to one-hundred years ago. What was happening back then? What was happening before we had good weather records across the globe, just a fairly short time ago?
Could it be that as our capacity to observe increases, so does the amount of "stuff" that we observe?
One thing I am fairly certain of: if the global warming is caused by mankind's industrialization over the past century, and we're already at a point where it threatens the entire world, then we're so very screwed. We might be up shit creek regardless, as it usually takes an in-your-face problem for people to react with enough effort to make a real difference. Clearly we've already destroyed a lot of the natural environment, and maybe that's part of our role in nature. I hope not, and will continue to oppose irresponsible use of natural resources.
Carter is part of an NGO, IPA, sponsored by:
0 60588322537.htm)
t sheet.php?id=1134/>
= Bob_Carter/>
The IPA has heavily relied on funding from a small number of conservative corporations. Those funders disclosed by the IPA to journalists and media organisations include:
* Major mining companies - BHP-Billiton and Western Mining Corporation;
* Pesticides/Genetically modified organisms: Monsanto; and
* A range of other companies including communications company Telstra, Clough Engineering, Visy, and News Limited;
* Tobacco companies - Philip Morris (Nahan) and British American Tobacco [8] (http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2003/08/11/1
* Oil and gas companies: Caltex, Esso Australia (a subsidiary of Exxon) and Shell [www.ips.org] and Woodside Petroleum; and fifteen major companies in the electricity industry; (Nahan 2)
* Forestry: Gunns, the largest logging company in Tasmania; (Nahan 3)
* Murray Irrigation Ltd - a major irrigation company contributed $40,000.[9]
1)<URL:http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfac
More on his career:
2)<URL:http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title
...but this is just strikes me as trolling. It is false that most climate scientists dispute what he says about global warming. For instance, the scientists at RealClimate.org say that he gets most of it right (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200 6/05/al-gores-movie/), even if some of what he says are exaggerations or leaps to conclusions.
Technocrat: "We ran a pointer to a global-warming-doubter story this morning. Here's the link. I decided to pull the story after reviewing the author attribution (he's from a paid political PR agency), and the venue's other coverage on this issue. Sorry."
If we ignore all other hypothesis and we turn out to be wrong with the whole CO2 thing, then we're going to spend some incomprehensible number of dollars reducing our CO2 output over the next 100 years for no gain. If these alternate theories turn out to be right, then that money would be better spent either helping us adapt to a phenomenon we have no control over, or hiring more pirates.
It doesn't matter. If the mainstream scientist are wrong and global warming isn't caused by CO2 emmissions, then we've spent a lot of money now on alternative energy sources -- something we are going to have to do eventually anyway. If, they are correct, however, then the money spent on reducing C02 emmissions is rightly spent. Either way, it seems to be money well spent.
The Scientific Method is refines a theory based on known facts, expiramentation and peer review.
Media works differently. For a good story, you need to be "fair" and represent "both sides".
So if a sizeable portion of people believe that the moon landing was a fake, then you need:
- a "moon landing was fake" expert.
- a "moon laning was not fake" expert.
The result is the appearance that both sides seem equally legitimate.
Ok, you are a scientist, untentured. You want to make a nice living, pay your mortgage, and drink a little on the weekends. Where does most of your salary come from?
You are employed by a company that has an interest on a particular side of the issue or you are employed by a non-profit organization with interest too. The more complex the issue, the easier it is to defend any side of the issue with some facts, ignoring completely other facts.
To retain your "scientist" label, you can't blatently state opinion as fact, so you chat with a famous person of the same slant and act like it is a clear and factually correct position al la Gore.
In the end, you say that you weren't able to study all aspects of the issue, it is very complex.
More study is obviously needed - helping all your fellow scientists get funding for additional "study" where they either agree or disagree based on the bias of their employer. Their result ends with more study needed too.
Wake up - the earth gets hotter and colder over long periods of time. That is the way it works. I believe it self regulates temperature - but I need funding to study that. It is just my theory.
Ok, humans might be causing some of this - oh well. We will adapt or we will die. Nature is a bitch. Pray to God if you wish, good luck with that.
Not to ruin your day, but the moon is moving further and further away from earth too. Gravity impacting the tides will get lesser and lesser over the years - F = G*m1*m2/r^2
Sorry to point these things out. Go back to listening to what Gore says and try to feel good about your environmentalism.
Does is seem hypocritcal that some people discount the opinion of a scientist based on what organization pays him but then put their trust in the opinions of a POLITICIAN!?!?!
I mean really, if you think this scientist is playing at politics, WTF do you think politicians play at?
It's an interesting article. One thing I always found troubling about Gore's assertions is that a mere 35 years ago, environmental activists claimed we were in a period of global cooling, as were only a few short years away from a new ice age that was going to wipe out all life on earth. Those if you 40+ may well remember this from the late 60's and early 70's. Last year, there was an article on CNN talking about Norwegian fisherman catching southern fish not normally seen off their coasts. Yet the same article also pointed out that the same fish were being caught a mere 253 years ago, during another warming period in that region of the world. Also last year, there was an environmental activist on a local news station, who claimed that there are 28,000 scientists around the world, who agree that we are experiencing man-made global warming. When asked how many disagree with the established view, she said, "Only two." I found it an interesting and wholly suspicious comment.
The cavemen from the Geico commercials made a public release claiming responsiblity for global warming:
Quote: "We now know that we may have gotten a little carried away, but we were tired of all that goddamn snow!"
Global climate changes over long time-scale eras. Humans may be exacerbating a global trend, or even reversing a cooling trend. Only time will tell. That's the risk of tampering intentionally with a global system that had functioned for eons...while we have about 100 years of data to support our decision.
Imagine if today's society existed at the beginning of the last Ice Age. We'd be a confused bunch, then.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
My initial reaction to this article is that it looks like propaganda. If you read each of the quotes from the scientist in it, you'll noticed that the qualifying adjectives around each of the stated facts in quotations minimize the importance of any observable facts that can't be denied, and the attributive verbs for the quotes are chosen to slant the reader's perception as well.
s tory.html?id=d0235a70-33f1-45b3-803b-829b1b3542ef
e -skeptic-response.html
Climate change experts, like most scientists, tend to be pretty circumspect with their public statements and avoid hyperbole, so the quotes calling Gore "pathetic" and "an embarrassment" are a red flag as well.
Any "feature" article is going to have something of a slant--and there's nothing wrong with that--but the words in article seemed so consistently well-chosen that they seemed vetted by some PR flack versed in the art of using words to sell your opinions to stupid people.
While that's not enough, in itself, to make me disregard the article, it did make me want to see what I could find out about this "Tom Harris" guy who wrote it. Turns out this guy has made something of a cottage industry out of "debunking" global warming, and in at least one case has co-written an article with the Patterson he quotes in this article. He doesn't disclose this fact, although, in fairness, it was written for a "journal" that, amazingly for 2006, has no web presence.
Harris also wrote another article along the same lines as this one, entitled "The Gods Are Laughing", which you can find here:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/
This one starts out with a lead paragraph that points out that *real* scientists disagree with "liberal arts graduate" Gore about global warming. More red flags here, because people with a good case to make generally don't have to resort to challenging the scientific credentials of their opponents.
The fact that Gore has no PhD in climatology isn't really germane to the debate, although it seems to be a major focus of these pairs of articles. Although once certainly needs some advanced training to conduct climatology research, one would hope that you wouldn't need to go to school for eight years just to be able to read the conclusions section of a peer-reviewed paper. Else, what's the point of doing research, if your findings can only be conveyed to other scientist who are already working from 99.9% of the same knowledge base as you? And one certainly doesn't need a PhD to talk to climatologists and build a consensus view of their opinions.
The director of the atmosphere and energy bits of the Sierra Club of Canada wrote a missive below that explains in more detail a few of the shady rhetorical tricks Harris uses, and which I have alluded to above:
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/climat
Personally, I'm starting to lean toward the this-guy-is-a-shill theory, myself.
-k. ^-^ ^D
Also, Adam and Eve rode to church on the backs of dinosaurs!
4 .htm
http://myspace.com/scientific-american/adamandeve
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/2/11/11c limateW01.pdf/n ce/global_warming_001110_wg.html
http://www.state.nd.us/ndgs/Newsletter/NL01W/PDF/
http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscie
The short list of accepted facts, which have been derived by scientific observation and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals ... The average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere is rising, and has spiked sharply in recent years, far beyond any of the "normal natural trends" that take place over thousands or millions of years, not mere decades.
This is typical FUD, if not please tell me who measured the temperature of the atmosphere and the ocean 1000 years ago (let alone millions of years ago). Also, what instruments did they use and were are the certificates of their accuracy?
Please provide *details*, not more FUD.
A dieoff of food supply of any signifigance will do us in just fine. Do you know how many people in the world eat mostly fish? When they have no fish do you think they are going to all die quietly? Oh right they are going to switch to wheat -- wheat that magically grows in a desert. That's it. That's the ticket. Lots of happy (albeit constipated) people eating imaginary wheat from fairy land.
No, starving people will go get food by force from those that aren't. Or at the very least, they won't think twice about getting food in a way the destroys the resources of the people who aren't hungry.
We don't need a giant asteroid type event to crush us. We're already pretty much struggling as a species as is, given our population, which I won't go so far as to say is completely unsustainable (someone else will show up to do that), but which I will say we cannot sustain without great leaps forward in individual resource conservation/efficiency.
Someone had to do it.
Al Gore says that zero disagreed that global warming was happening. Well, gee, just compare temperatures over the past two decades to see an upward trend, that's a no-brainer.
.000001 was man-made, then that's an affirmative answer to the question, "Is global warming man-made?"
Zero disagreed with the conclusion that global warming was man-made. That's extremely murky to me. How many countless factors out there are having an impact on global temperatures? Are we saying that global warming is 100%, exclusively, the cause of man? I would find it very difficult to believe that 932 randomly selected samples came to that conclusion. But, of course, the question wasn't phrased in that way. So technically, if a scientist said that
This is why so many polls on political issues are bogus, because the questions are often phrased in such a way as to generate a certain majority response.
This is about the US climate, not the world climate.
I'm sure you've heard that we can use carbon nanotubes to build a space elevator. That's just one thin ribbon going up to space. We can build it wider, all the way around the US, so that we don't have to share our tropical climate with places like Sweden (go bork yourself) and North Korea.
We'll probably split the Atlantic down the middle and go two thirds the way across the Pacific. As a bonus, I think there will be at least a 50% drop in Mexicans climbing over the border.
Actually, it's not as easy as you'd think with an area like this. Consider for a moment how many scientists working on climate change would lose their grant money should it appear likely that climate change is not occurring
That said, from the arguments presented by http://realclimate.org/ (which also had a mostly favourable review of the Gore film) I would have to say that climate sceptics aren't getting published because their work is subjective and flawed, rather than any inherent bias in the system.
More important that all of that, of course, is the fact that while the arctic ice pack sits on water, the antarctic one sits largely on land ... and that Greenland also supports a significant ice pack. Since these are supported by the land (not buoyant force), when they melt, they would significantly raise the waterlevel globally.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
articles. Rather, it is challenging Gore's (and the political left's in general) interpretations.
I am a scientist, though not climatologist. I feel that the data is all but certain that the atmosphere has warmed about 1C in the last one hundred years. I think virtually all of my colleagues agree with this. As for the cause of global warming, things are far murkier. Since we don't have hundreds of earths where we can run nice reproducible tests in order to study what variables matter and what do not, we can NEVER provide conclusive evidence for cause. That being said, the data is still fairly solid that we are most of the problem. The current consensus from the ICC implies something like "there is a 90% chance that human activity is the primary cause of the observed global warming". I think this is fair, given the data. Certainly, a 90% chance of a problem is enough to justify the consideration of preventative action.
Some GW skeptics claim that since the earth's temperature has been all over the place in the past, some "natural" phenomena could have caused the warming. While this is possible, they should be able to point out what this "natural phenomena" is. So far, none of the logical possibilities have panned out. For example, there is slight evidence that solar radiation may have increased, but nowhere near enough to explain the observed warming. Changes in orbit, which have largely driven the ice ages, have not occured. If it is NOT CO2 and other greenhouse gases, it must be some other cause. If it is, we should be able to measure it. What is it? The skeptics fail to point out plausible alternatives. If the alternatives are not plausible, it is logical to conclude that it is the greenhouse effect. Hence the ICC's 90% odds.
The left, however, vastly exaggerates any data supporting the existence of GW or its dangers. Any talk of "tipping points" or blaming Katrina on GW, for example, are either entirely unsupported by the data or extremely premature. At worst, without GW Katrina would have been a weak Cat 4 instead of a strong one. GW did not "create" Katrina, though it is possible that it made her slightly worse.
Another problem with the left is that they ignore economics. When the economists crunch the numbers, they often find that even assuming GW is real, adaption is simply the cheaper option as compared to prevention. To put it simply, doing anything about GW that would actually make a difference could be far more expensive than it is worth. It may be easier to build some flood walls than buy a zillion solar panels, for example. I rarely find that the left is even willing to engage in this debate, probably because they are on very weak footing there.
no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon
When I worked as an intern at the US Office of Naval Research more than a decade ago, one of the interesting projects discussed was using sound wave propagation through thousand-mile spans of ocean to estimate the average water temperature worldwide. Sound waves move differently through water depending on the temperature. The physics involved are well understood and the measurements are cheap and easy to make.
The water temperature was and is continuing to rise. So yes, there is conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon and you pretty much have to have your head stuck in the sand not to see it.
Whether or not human beings are at fault for global warming remains unproven. There is some interesting evidence to suggest that we are responsible and some interesting evidence to suggest that we're not. For example, Mars is undergoing global warming as measured by its melting ice caps. The earth is warming at exactly the same time and humans are certainly not responsible for warming on mars. That hints towards a solar component to the phenomenon. That is but one data point among a great many, but together they don't paint a very clear picture.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Now, I've heard that changes in industry due to global warming will hurt businesses because they will have to spend so much to change things. But isn't spending money good for the economy?
Seriously, what are the downsides of whoelheartedly throwing our economby behind making less polluting technologies? Seriously, I want to know. Is there really a non-cynical answer that doesn't involve the government being in the pocket of the oil companies?
If anyone can explain why acting on the assumption that global warming is occuring is a bad thing, I would appreciate hearing about it.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Give me a break. Even the Bush administration has come out with reports that man made global warming is real. Snap out of it you sheep!
I'm sure there are oil companies dying for someone of repute to go against the tide and say they aren't ruining the planet.
But they have to just sit and wait for someone else to fund the study. Any study funded by an oil company, or even a subsidiary twice removed from an oil company will be automatically bashed for being "bought" by said oil company.
i only have three things to say
1. the global climate has and will continue to change regarless of human involvement. we may have sped it up, but "global warming" has been in effect for about 400-500 years; since the end of the little ice age.
2. more nuclear reactors and one fast reactor for every normal reactor. no more coal, coal gas, heating oil, wind, water, etc. power plants needed.
3. et cetera.
lose != loose
10) Drive Hummer, get laid
11) Your high reproductive rate increases the probability your progeny rule the world after the coming die-off
As if there's a practical difference in claiming to "invent" something, and claiming "to take the lead in [it's] creation".
You fucking idiot. Gore clearly and clumsily tried to claim credit for the internet.
Parsing the exact semantics of what he said does not absolve him of that, and you're an utter fucking moron to think it does.
1. all efficient energy is at a price level that only the uber rich can afford it. (solar, etc...)
2. 90% of all the worlds housing is over 50 years old and therefore horribly inefficent.
3. Efficent housing is only available to the rich with new construction.
4. Efficent hybrid cars are also ony avaialbe to the rich. the poor can barely afford a $8500.00US econobox.
5. Efficent electronics are also only rich people items. a 20" monitro that uses 180 watts costs $95.00 a 20" lcd that uses only 15 watts is $300.00
6. Most people cant afford to live near where they work forcing the higher consumption of fuel and energy.
7. renewable resources are actively discouraged by corrupt politics and officials. Drastic tax credits and refunds whould be put in place to encourage spending money on insulating your home, cars that get over 40mpg, and alternative energy.
8. I can go on forever.
Until alternative energy get's affordable, efficent homes become affordable and efficent cars are affordable there is no way to stop it. You can not ask somone that makes $500.00 a month to blow nearly $30,000.00 on a hybrid car that barely makes a difference over a $9000.00 econobox car. Or have them live in a home that uses 1/10th the energy to heat or cool it than the 85 year old crapshack they are forced to live in because that is all they can afford.
Until the dirt poor can afford to live the way you want it is all a major waste of time. for every rich greenpeace freak driving his Prius there are 50 poor people driving 12mpg gas guzzlers that spew blue smoke and leak oil on the ground.
The only fuels that the poor can afford is fossil fules. Until you come up with a new fuel and a way to give away 30 billion new cars that burn it to everyone on the planet it is a massive waste of time. It will take a MINIMUM of 15 years fro mthe day a new amazing fuel car is released before the first poor people can afford one of the cars from the local high mileage junky car dealership.
and making a change 15 years after that discovery is way too late... because we are at least 10 years off from that new fuel and cars that use it in full production for public purchase.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Based on my experience in as hard science, I'd venture a guess that the majority of published data is fudged to some degree. With some authors that fudge factor is perhaps 0% but with others it approaches a high double-digit percentage. Given that my particular profession shows this problem in experiments that should be easily reproducible in any lab - I can't imagine that studies on global conditions can really be all that reliable. In my case I believe its a matter of the following problem (and perhaps this applies to many sciences):
1) Investigator tells underling -> do experiment A. Perhaps adding that the expected result is B
2) Underling bangs on the problem, perhaps performing the experiment several time in order to get something resembling the desired outcome - even if the average outcome isn't what was expected
3) Underling reports back to investigator - Result B obtained!
4) Investigator publishes results in reputable journal that "Can Never Be Wrong"(tm) because its peer reviewed
5) Other investigators use this data to design experiments
In any case - what if this planet just goes through cyclical temp change? Can we tell what is natural vs. man made? Can the two effects be de-convoluted?
I thought it was a good idea
There are times when I read an article, when they say something demostrably untrue and it makes me think the whole article is questionable. Here's an example from this article:
a nning/New_Data/ a nning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif
"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame."
No correlation? This is clearly wrong. Here are charts that show a pretty nice correlation.
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Pl
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Pl
Don't tell me something that I know is wrong because it's only going to discredit your competency and make me wonder what over half-truths and outright lies are contained in the article.
Couldn't this problem just be solved by God via our prayers? Or, is global warming actually Armaggedon?
If you're dissenting opinion was financed by Exxon and the oil lobby, I can guarantee it will get published. Not only that but it will get picked up by the popular press because Exxon's PR firm will be working their press contacts for ink.
You can buy any kind of research results you want if you have enough money. I used to see tobacco companies do it all the time when I was in contract research. You'll be able to buy some really big name scientists and get the conclusions you want. They'll justify the intellectual prostitution by telling themselves that the research they do with the money they get will out-weigh the evil of promoting a position paid for by oil money, or tobacco money or Monsanto or whoever is funding your research center.
Big corporate money is corrupting our government, our research institutions, and our media. Half the fluff pieces you see on the news were produced by some industry group. Probably 90% of the articles you read in trade rags are influenced by an advertiser or their PR firm, it's really getting to the point you can't believe anything you read.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
As others in this thread have pointed out, the linked article is plainly paid propaganda and disinformation and the chain of publication is also highly suspect. The author is a shill with connections to fossil fuel interests. Also, the "scientists" who question Man Made Climate Change are invariably shills funded by the fossil fuel industries.
One example of that sort of shoddy disinformation is the petition of "experts and scientists" against global warming they circulated a couple years ago.
Basically it happened like this: There was a petition validating global climate change that was signed by many of the top world scientists, top climatologists, physicists, chemists, etc, many of them Nobel Prize winners. The relevant scientific credentials were unassailable. They are literally the best scientific minds in the world, people who are one in 10 million. There is consensus in the scientific community that climate change is man made and very real.
To rebut that the lobbyists for Big Fossil Fuels circulated a petition to assail Climate Change, and only reported those who agree with their petition. They did not account for what percentage disagreed with their petition. Also, they targeted the petition to various smaller interest groups and trade associations with conservative bias and in conservative regions. They managed to collect quite a few supportive signatures (and discarded those who were not) from people like dentists, mechanics, and others. Only problems were their lack relevant expertise and that the petition literally trolled a large number of unqualified people to find some that would sign. Even worse, many of those listed as signatures later complained that they had not signed. Absurd.
But these are people preying on people's desires to remain ignorant and hear what they want to hear. Just like smoking disinformation paid for by Big Tobacco in the past.
Many people fail to notice that while polution eats at the ozone and causes the earth to heat up, it causes it to cool at the same time. Leaving out this factor threw off many predictions which gave the upper hand to companies who would prefer to continue polluting. However it was been shown that smog, visible clouds of pollution provide the same sort of shielding effect as the ozone. Predictions regarding the warming have been true (unfortunately so) once you throw in this cooling effect. Now for the unpleasant part, we are reducing emmisions that add to the smog (because it is ugly and gross) while ignoring the pollution that is causing the heating. The problem of global warming can be reduced to 3 logical fallacies commonplace in the world: 1) If i can't see it it doesn't matter/isn't there. 2) Shorter winters, yay! I'd better buy seafront property before they spike with the tourists. 3) Even if something bad is going to happen it won't happen for a while ... why worry?
and this isnt helped by:
4) Hey mr. government official, have a big pile of money and let us continue to destory the environment.
I have explained this in detail in replies to the replies for my initial comment. I should have detailed it there so that i wouldnt have to do that. But:
This is not a 'some odd weather we are having" issue. This has been going for over 15 years now. First it started to get hotter and drearier (in terms of rain) continually, then it reached climactic levels 2 years ago, and now, this summer, it is plain absurd.
Normal trend here is that we should have 15 day long rains, uninterrupted in april. for 5 years now its not happening. 15 years ago, there were times that april rains lasted 1 months. with only short pauses.
Now, you have to live here to understand what kind of oddity is this. It should be 99% humid and around 40 celsius. It has been for the last 300 years. It is not happening to be so now.
Had this been some oddity, like the snowfall in 93 (2 snowfalls happened in 30 years), it would not neccessarily be noted.
Read radical news here
It's not "our economy" in the sense of being able to control what everyone does anymore than it is "our lives" or "our Internet." We are all individuals. The economy is not something owned by an individual. To mobilize an economy requires a totalitarian state. The totalitarian state is really only good at one thing: killing people. This sort of collectivist "let's modernize/improve" ideology leads to mass death, as seen in Cambodia, China, and numerous other places. I have no desire to see these tragedies revised for American consumption.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
See his web site : http://www.highparkgroup.com/
If you pay his company enough, he will represent whatever view you need. What to chip together and make him pro-global warming?
You are correct to state that scientific knowledge consists of the best among the available hypotheses, but it's wrong to then say that science is about proving negatives. Your least likely hypothesis still might have some predictive value, so it's inappropriate to simply label it "wrong". A bevy of new data might just tilt the likelihood scales the other way. The concept of "proof" really has no place in science; it belongs properly to mathematics, and that's where it should be kept.
Did they have the opinions only after they were paid ... ... or are they paid because they had those opinions already?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
The increase in atmospheric CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels. However the rate of fossil fuel use will eventually begin to decline as economically extractable reserves are depleted, if we haven't already reached that point. Peak oil theory doesn't say that fossil fuels will disappear over night, but rather that the market will tighten with less fuel available at a given price. Economics, that is inability to buy as much fossil fuel as we want, will limit long-term carbon emissions regardless of energy politics. The question is how much damage and pain we'll inflict on ourselves along the way.
There are whores with PhDs, sometimes in the sciences, who are directly or indirectly (usually, via ultra-right-wing think-tank) on Exxon-Mobil's payroll willing to state otherwise. If you want to consider them scientists, go right ahead.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Boy, now there's a statement begging to get ripped apart by a 20 to 50 year cost of money analysis. Unless the contractor, municipality, state, or national government makes sure the flood walls cost less by building to what they want it to cost, rather than what's needed to work, even a few hundred miles of dikes can get rather pricey. The Netherlands is densely populated enough that it's cost effective to do them right. Given the geography and political culture in the US, it would be a political necessity to - in future hindsight - fuck it up.
What it boils down to is that it's the oil and coal extractors and the coal fired power companies that will really have their nuts in a vice over the expense of prevention. They would prefer to continue offloading the effect of their current business practice by spreading the cost of adjustment over the entire economy.
If you'll excuse the broad brush, fuck 'em.
Luke, help me take this mask off
For every ice age or warm period, it takes a timespan of thousands of years for climate change to occur naturally. There are only a few exceptions to this.
One exception I can think of was several billion years ago when cyanobacteria first started contributing substantial amounts Oxygen to the atmosphere. This Oxygen increase reduced the greenhouse effect, which triggered a super ice age.
The difference this time around is that climate change is occuring in the blink of an eye as far as the earth's history is concerned. A few weeks ago I read a story on slashdot with the prediction that the northern ice cap would be totally liquid in the summer time by the end of the century.
One hundred years is not enough time for this phenomenon to be occuring without an extraordinary driving force. Since massive aerobic fungal blooms are not occuring (obviously), the only cause left is humans.
I challenge critics to answer this: considering the billions of tons of carbon emissions human kind produces every day, what greater source could there possibly be at this point in time?
I work as in IT in one of the major US automakers. Not gonna tell you which one. Seems to me steam powered vehicles could go a long way in solving some of our polution problems. We could run them off any clean burning fuel--change fuels if necessary--and eliminate some of the complexity of the current engines. Yet I hear nothing of this in the halls and labs of my fine employer. Odd that.
So why go for expensive fuel cells or batteries that become tomorrows expensive landfill or new hydrogen combustion engines when you could run a steam engine with propane or natural gas and eliminate your problems.
Me? I want a steam powered laptop!!!!
The pro side are mostly folks who are paid to discover facts about the earth's climate. If those facts lead them to assume that there is global warming, they are hardly "paid to have those opinions".
..."
But I know, I can just as well talk to a wall... in 50 years you're gonna tell your children "No, seriously, NO ONE could have foreseen this
And you're the idiot. Eisenhower, for example, while president, took the initative in creating the interstate highway system, but he didn't invent roads. Gore, while Senator, took the initative in creating ARPAnet and expanding it from a government project to the real world.(1) Hillary, while first lady, took the initative in creating a national health care system, and she isn't a doctor and didn't invent medicine.
Creation doesn't mean invention, and what's more, 'taking the initative in creation' doesn't even mean 'creation', so you're like two steps away from truthfulness. I can take the initiative to do something by standing up and getting others to do it. Senators, obviously, cannot do everything, so they tell others what to do. That is why he said he 'took initative' instead of saying he actually did it. It was, instead, done in a lab, at his direction. (Granted, his rather indirect direction. He said 'Hey, you got a bunch of computers talking to each other? Here's some more money, keep spending it on that.'.)
No one in the universe parses 'When I was in a political office, I took the the initiative in creating X' as saying 'I invented X' unless they're delibrately trying to misparse it. Politicians take initiative by championing bills.
What's more, they use that exact terminology all the time. That is, in fact, what the damn word 'initiative' means in politics. Witness Bush's 'American Competitiveness Initiative' and 'Helping America's Youth Initiative'. How is he going to help American's youth? Why, via legislation. I quote the GOP: Hughes has served as an adviser to President Bush on many foreignpolicy fronts and took a special interest in the status of women in Afghanistan, leading the President's initiative to free Afghan women from the Taliban. Holy shit. The president is wandering around freeing women in Afghanistan?
Or is Gore 'taking' the initiative somehow different from Bush possessing the initiative? What grammar silliness are you going to try to weasel through there?
The Republicans had a theme in the 2000 election that Gore lied all the time, and this is just one of their most absurd twists of his statements. (This theme is really ironic in the face of who we got instead, Mr. let's-pretend-they-have-WMD.)
1) And, in what continues to baffle me, everyone knows he was a damn champion of this. The entire fucking first term of Clinton was filled with Hillary yammering about national health care, and Gore yammering about, wait for it, The Information Superhighway. Granted, he was talking about earlier, when he was in the Senate, but if there's any politican anyone alive during the early 90s should link to the internet, it's Gore.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
When someone doubts global warming, I like to find out just how reliable they are... I googled Bob Carter and found that he is not on the Exxon Mobile payrole, but he isn't necessarily properly described in the article either. He didn't step forward in light of the movie, he's apparantly been a skeptic for quite some time.. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Car ter
Also, why is canadafreepress.com and not .ca? Something just isn't right... (especially since its hosted out of Herndon, Virginia. Wouldn't a Canadian news site be hosted from Canada?)
-- citizenkahn@gmail.com Awareness - Intention - Action
I've stopped caring whether or not global warming is real, or whether or not we're causing it. Everything suggestion to cope with it comes with immeasurable other benefits. Finding and using environmentally friendly energy alternatives would not only reduce pollution, but would also increase our quality of life. We might also decrease our reliance on foreign oil.
What a boob. To post a chart that goes back 400,000 years and suggest this is "geological" time.
Hide your head in shame and take some geology bud.
Why don't you compare CO2 levels during the Taconic orogeny? I'll leave it to you to figure out when it happened.
We have evidence that the ninjas are winning!
It is just about a fact that humans have increased the CO2 in the atmosphere. Very few dispute this. What is disputed is the impact of such a change. Maybe recent warming weather is a cooincidence, but a warming trend along with more CO2 is pretty good evidence that we are causing it. If we ignore it until there is 100% proof, it may be too late. And if we were wrong, there are many *other* benefits of cleaner air. Thus, it is best to error on the side of cleaner air and less petroleum-dependence.
Table-ized A.I.
If there is not solid proof for or against global warming being casued by pollution yet there is a documented warming trend wouldn't the responsible thing be to try to post article with a more unbaised view.
In the interest of science you shouldn't be posting article summaries that make such wild claims that basically assert global warming isn't real. It could just be bad luck but since the time of the industrial revolution and basically the advent of pollution temperatures especially on th poles have increased in a rather constant trend. There are even museums dedicated to the very concept of creating global warming awareness.
Saying global warming isn't real because our understanding of the effects of pollution on global weather conditions or even our understand of weather in general are incomplete doesn't change the facts that the earth is warming and that pollution is bad for the health of the planet.
This is the same type of arguement that kept tobacco companies out of court for so many years. Aww you can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that tobacco causes cancer, but there are higher cancer statistics and tobacco does seem to increase the chances of health problems. We know pollution hurts the environment in a local scale (you can see the visible effects of smog, we know co2 can cause warming).
The assertion that Al Gore is stupid is ignorance itself. The guy is quite likely smarter than the vast majority of journalists who critisize him. He might not have a PR edge like some public figures, but he's made proof of his intelligence in his personal accomplishments all throughout his life. Al Gore is not just some dumb rich kid (unlike Bush), he has been active all through his life in science including the environment and computers. Anyone doubting he is smarter than the vast majority of Americans and quite likely smarter than most of the people writting these research papers is just talking out their ass. Really what qualifications does it really take to get a research paper published this days.
A year ago or so didn't someone make a program that could produce science speak bullshit of a reasonable enough level to get published in science journals. Face it, with no proof and a bunch of fancy talk you too can get a esearch paper published. Lots of colleges are looking for what they think might be quality material to release. In many cases this publishing process closely follows the schools bias, so when looking for the truth averaging a large quantity of research papers is not going to do anything but talley up popular opinion.
It is only a handful of those papers that will truly have valid oversight. The premise that if half of the papers agree then your right it just stupid. The facts remain that in recorded history we've never seen the recessions in glaciers that we've seen in the years following globalized industrialization. The question may remain how all the pollutions interact with the solar properties of the planet and with the ecosystem, but lets face it. It's going to be a negative.
Even if we are wrong and co2 pollution doesn't warm the planet it will still have been worth all our effort to reduce co2 pollution because disturbing the ecosystem is just not a smart thing to do. Until we know the effects of mass pollution on the envrionment the obvious conclusion has to be that it's not good. Attacking Al Gore for basically be concerened about climate change and the rising levels of pollution based on averages of a random assortment of research papers is both pointless and a wreckless excuse for science.
Even if 90% of the scientific world disagreed with global warming it wouldn't be the first time they were all wrong. The respsonsible thing to do is to keep researching the warming trend with any and all assumptions scientists wish to make while also admiting the polluting the planet is a bad thing. No matter how you spin the idea and regardless of if pollution can be proven to cause global warming it just makes good sense to reduce pollution as much as
Gore appeared at the Cannes film festival to promote his film and warn of the dangers of global warming. He then drove five separate, gasoline-burning cars the 500 meters from his hotel to the theater, during heavy traffic. uh huh.
Oil is a mature industry. The major fields have been discovered, great innovations have been made, most of the players have consolidated into a few huge corporations, and now with all that investment paid for and massive economies of scale at work, it's pure profit. Exxon and the rest are selling a product that costs less than $1 to produce, refine, and market for $3.25. They don't want to give that up. Throwing the economic weight of a big energy company behind developing new less-polluting technologies will cost them huge amounts of money, with no certainty of ever seeing a profit. Selling more gasoline makes massive profits right now.
Also, remember what happened to cigarette companies when they finally were forced to admit that smoking kills? Imagine how big a product liability suit for fossil fuel related climate change might be...
0 1 - just my two bits
No, that's not what scientists do.
After they get all this data, scientists take it, and then go, 'My theory is that carbon dioxide levels were X% 300 years ago. This makes me predict that if we measure certain things, they will fit this theory.'
And they keep measuring.
However, the GP is wrong in what he's implying, and you are correct. We pretty much have determined temperatures and CO2 levels for, I think, a few thousand years back, because various independent data all shows the same stuff. Anyone arguing we don't have 'the facts' about those things should be slotted into the same place that people who argue we don't have any evidence that the earth is really billions of years old.
What we don't know is why any of these changes happen at all, except for some very obvious exceptions like the Year Without A Summer in 1816, which we're almost certain was due to a few volcanic erruptions.
We also know that temperature changes by itself by huge amounts if you look at time on a span of hundreds of thousands of years. We don't know why that happens, and, what's more, we don't know how fast that happens.
However, what's not in question is: Ice is melting. As ice melts, the sea level must go up. If that keeps happening, we're going to be in serious trouble 'shortly'. Not just flooding, but ocean currents shifting. Ocean currents that make very inhabited places inhabitable. Randomly changing weather patterns on the earth is a good way to kill 10% of the population directly and starve another 30%. Good thing, too, because we'll lose like 20% of our living space to the ocean.
Whether this is our fault or not, whether we can stop it regardless if it is or isn't, whether it will change by itself, and whether shortly means 'two decades' or 'two hundred years' are all unknown.
It's entirely possible we're about to tip into some huge climate change completely independent of anything we've done. It's entirely possibly we're nearing one end of a 100-year yoyo and we'll soon turn around and head the other way.
It's also entirely possible the human-caused global warming people are correct. And even if they aren't correct in that we are the actual 'cause', they probably are correct in that we are speeding it up, and can slow it down if we choose.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Spoken like a True Liberal! Actually, Conservatives are people who believe in what has been shown to work in the past. Liberals are people who want to say, "Everything YOU think is true is actually wrong -- MY ideas are better."
Suffice it to say that using labels like "Conservative" and "Liberal" to equate to "Stoooopid" and "Smart" is just silly and counterproductive. Both camps are full of "fluff pieces" and people only willing to look at the world through their own particular filters. You just happen to like your filters better than those of the Conservatives.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Of the hundreds of comments attached to this story, yours is by far the most insightful and informative. I disagree with your polite "none very impressive", and think you're wrong about "none in global warming" and "unqualified scientist". That panel is composed of professional Greenhouse deniers. They are "impressive" and "qualified" to testify before a Canadian fake "Conservative" government that's hired by polluters to protect Canada's giant fossil fuel exports to the US (our #1 supplier). And probably dreams of a "warm Canada" their vast real estate holdings can finally cash in on as people "migrate" from uninhabitable regions to the south, while finally getting a year-round passage between East and West hemispheres across the Arctic.
Just look at their actual resumes, of course not quoted by "Canada's Fastest Growing Independent News Source", probably also funded by the Canadian Greenhouse industry and their global Murdoch partners.
Tim Patterson is a geologist, not a climate scientist - exactly the kind of scientist the BS article excludes to fake its conclusion that most Greenhouse scientists aren't qualified.
Boris Winterhalter is also a geologist, not a climatologist.
Geologists mostly work for the oil business, which is where most of the money for the entire science comes from, their peers who review, their "next gig pool".
Bob Carter doesn't even rate a page at his tiny Australian department where he's just an "Adjunct" professor.
Timothy Ball's "EnviroTruth" org is a division of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an front for Exxon Greenhouse denial propaganda and other Vast RightWing Conspiracy players.
Wibjörn Karlén's research supports Gore, but he signs the BS letter anyway.
Dick Morgan doesn't have an Exeter page, nor does he have ">any recorded association with the World Meteorological Association, so he has no credentials whatsoever, apart from lying.
These people are professional Greenhouse deniers. That Canadian panel and its Canadian tabloid (an obvious rightwing rag, just looking at its front page) are cheap fronts for the polluters responsible for the Greenhouse. They're not even trying to hide it more than a couple of googles and clicks deep, they hate us so much. And judging from the hundreds of posts in this story falling for it, we are that stupid.
--
make install -not war
From the High Park Group website:
Tom Harris has worked with private companies and trade associations to successfully position these entities and their interests with media and before government committees and regulatory bodies
He is a PR guy for corporations, and works for a think tank that is very obscure about thier stance.
It's all bout FUD
Gore was elected to the Senate in 1984.
You understand, *elected*. He took office in 1985.
The Internet had been around for awhile and even fucking DNS was around before Al Gore "took the inititive" in the creation of something he had no hand in, and obviously didn't understand.
Like any good politician he knew to ride a wave when he saw it, and he tried to ride that whole interweb thingie but truth be told he lied. You can't parse that out of existance. If the republicans jumped on that, TOO BAD. He shouldn't have lied.
The Canadian National Post is a neoconservative-owned and edited paper that has been caught making up facts recently. They were the first to break the story alleging the Iranian government was going to force non-Muslims to wear identifying badges in public (and published the story next to a photo of two Jews in nazi-era Germany wearing their infamous badges). The story turned out to be a fabrication.
0 1 - just my two bits
I watched a Google TechTalk on global warming a month or two back and found it extremely interesting. In fact, I browse the tech talks whenever I find I've got a little too much free time. There's a lot of great stuff in there.
3 523196174&q=google+climate
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=222606157
> More important that all of that, of course, is the fact that while the arctic ice pack sits on water, the antarctic one sits largely on land ... and that Greenland also supports a significant ice pack. Since these are supported by the land (not buoyant force), when they melt, they *would* significantly raise the water level globally.
Exactly. This is literally "an inconvenient truth" that people in the Rush Limbaugh / Michael Crichton camp would love very much to hide from everyone (in fact, Limbaugh used an "ice cube in a glass of water" analogy to argue against the validity of global warming on his now-defunct TV show).
Of course, once people call bullshit on their bogus claims, the anti-greenhouse bunch will just come up with some other reason why global warming is nonexistent -- can you say "moving the goalposts"? *Sigh*
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
I don't have the proof in front of me, and frankly, I don't see how it's my responsibility to find it for you. It's in several published papers--if you're in the field you'll know how to find them. The models that are projecting increased temperatures--and pointing a finger at CO2 as an important forcing in that trend--are capable of simulating the temperature trends of the 20th century. In fact one even correctly predicted the affect of an eruption--confirmed by Pinatubo in 1991.
Of course if you were in the field you'd also know that there are many more forcings than just CO2 that affect the global mean temp. You'd also know that a chaotic systems don't respond linearly. You'd probably also know that although there have been cool years and hot years since the beginning of the 20th century, the overall delta to now is clearly positive. And presumably you'd understand that global trends are not local trends, therefore local anecdotes like the 1969 hurricane season do not prove or disprove global mean phenomena.
If you're not in the field, I recommend realclimate.org.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Next time don't post this anonomous. Good job.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Logging in as A/C because I've never taken the time to set up an account. However, in my upper level astronomy class, the professor did suggest that these small changes in climate are actually normal in the stages of forming successive "ice ages." Fossil evidence seems to support the idea that a global warming trend precedes a global cooling trend, with the neat and cataclysmic weather patterns causing polar melting and erosion, driving ice floes into the sea, and thereby, cooling off oceans worldwide. Furthermore, evidence suggests that a polar shift or a particularly harsh sun cycle (there has been a lot of irregular solar activity in recent years) could cause such climate problems.
This may be digressing, but the sun functions on a 22 year cycle whereby it's magnetic fields get more twisted over time, often forming large filaments, prominences, and violent coronal ejections which have the ability to raise temperatures - particularly in the summer months near the equator (it is theorized that one such ejection could literally "fry" the planet or destroy all electronic devices, ala. an EMP pulse). Sometimes, the sun skips a cycle (Google "Maunder Minimum"), causing a mini ice age all by itself, demonstrating how solar activity alone can influence the temperature. Combine this with the possibility that we are long overdue for the next ice age, and I believe that the situation may be more complex than these politicians make it out to be. Personally, I trust my poorly paid physics professors vs. scientists with a political agenda any day!
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00040A7 2-A95C-1CDA-B4A8809EC588EEDF&sc=I100322
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate- change
Let's just consider this simple FACT. When smoking was deemed to be cancerous and dangerous to the health of individuals they found plenty of scientists willing to work for them to disprove negative claims. Ignoring Al Gore as an inflated ego there is plenty of popular support for the theory of Global Warming. There is plenty of evidence from many varied fields to support it. Before grasping at the few dissenting voices as proof that it is not universally accepted it's worth investigating the credibility of the dissenters, their motives and why they are at odds with the majority.
One of the protagonists in this article for example works for oil companies. Do your research see what you can find out.
Considering that the these are the same rhetorical arguments used by the creationist/intelligent design people, the smoking lobby etc. I'm instinctively suspicious. Fabricating dissent or over inflating the value of opposition is a tactic favored by those who fear change. I think as a simple test we should move all those who don't agree with Global warming to New Orleans, Bangladesh and the Netherlands just to really test their convictions.
Anti-Global warming rhetoric is for people who can't deal with large amounts of rhetoric forcing them to re-think their world view. Just as anti-Evolution arguments are for those who have failed to let their world view evolve. For most of he scientific community Global warming isn't a matter of "IF" it, it's "HOW" it will affect us. Considering that most of the scientific is hugely more intelligent than the average journalist, American voter or US President I'm going to go with their over-whelming consensus until there is some stronger evidence than the opinions of some corporate stooges, a few deranged rogues seeking attention and their friendly Right-Wing spin doctors.
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Science, 3 December 2004
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5 702/1686
...I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied
Learn to swim
Learn to swim
Learn to swim"
From the side of economics and policy. When economists and policymakers talk about the "cost" of fighting global warming, what they are actually calculating and referring to are the burdens placed on existing industries, as they exist today. They have a much harder time with two other aspects of the economy, though: very long-term costs (such as environmentally-driven health factors), and innovation that creates or radically transforms new industries. The former is just too difficult to estimate with any reliability, and the latter represents a "wall" of future change through which current knowledge and analysis cannot penetrate.
As such it is important to remain skeptical of the claims of the burdens related to fighting global warming. Regulatory and environmental constraints can harm existing industries, but they can also spur the development of new technologies and new industries, and thereby spur overall economic growth.
The real economic question is one of the pace of change. Large public companies concerned with quarterly earnings and stock price have a deep interest in managing the pace and nature of change, and they spend a lot of money in Washington and the states and the media in an attempt to do so. It is very difficult for large companies to change their business model; often impossible. They will expend huge capital to prevent or delay change that would require them to do so. Whereas disruptive, smaller companies--the great American entrepreneurs--prefer to move quickly in the market, innovating and growing as fast as they can.
Some corporations manage change very well. You can probably name some of them right off the top of your head--they're the ones who were advertising their "green" technologies on TV a year or two ago. Toyota, Honda, GE, BP, etc. There is proof around us, right now, that moving to a more energy-efficient society is economically beneficial. The companies leading the way are experiencing growth.
The left often gets caught up in the global social and scientific arguments--the "best" reasons for doing something. And, there is an underlying element of conservatism to much environmentalism--a desire for natural things to remain the way they are, or a desire for a return to the "good old days" of living in harmony with nature. Like most conservatism it is based as much on wishful thinking and emotion as it is on clear logic.
As a result they miss the tremendous economic argument FOR beginning a response to global warming. And they often miss the glaring precedents for government action. A great one is the mandated move to digital TV over the air. Here is a situation where the government identified a precious resource and regulated to enforce its conservation and more efficient use. Is anyone expecting this to cripple the TV industries? No of course not--everyone is going to have to buy new TV equipment (broadcast and consumer), and it represents an opportunity to design upsells--DVRs and HDTV. It's a classic example of government regulation spurring economic growth through innovation and transformation.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This is an interesting debate - there are arguments going both sides. I dont pretend to be an expert in global warming, but what I know is that global temperatures are increasing. Whether this is due to CO2 or something else is the question.
/.
Some comments abt Lurky's populisitic reasons for not adopting a green economy:
1. Economists can measure the economic impacts of say burning coal vs. burning natural gas by a process called Life Cycle Assessment. For those who prefer a rigorous approach to costing, enough data on externalities (i.e. economic impacts of using products harmful to the environment) exist, which should be considered in making these decisions.
2. Another idea is that of Green Engineering - this basically says that most of the mass that goes into any process should be present in the main product of the process. The process can be a powerplant burning coal to produce power or a steel plant using iron ore. If we can make our industrial processes more materially efficient, it will certainly help us to overcome shortages that we might see in the future - this applies not only to energy but to other sectors of the industry too. This also helps to reduce load on our landfills.
Some comments abt Lumpy's points:
"1. all efficient energy is at a price level that only the uber rich can afford it. (solar, etc...)"
To start with, energy pricing is all a matter of regulation. (Lumpy alludes to this in point 7). The US has a gas price which is 4 times lesser than that of the UK. why ? States like NJ are making regulation to make clean sources of energy affordable. Ppl have bought solar panels for their home. BTW, i am not saying that one particular source of energy would solve our problems. A mix of energy sources should be considered.
"2. 90% of all the worlds housing is over 50 years old and therefore horribly inefficent."
This seems to be an unsubstantiated fact to me. Developing countries are building at a frenetic pace. Their houses are not certainly 50 years old. When you mean the world, do you mean the developed world ? Remember that in the coming years, developing countries will steadily increase their energy consumption, if they are not doing it already. Another point is, if the housing is inefficient, why cant the "uber rich" buy energy efficient appliances in their "horribly inefficient" homes if they really want to do it? Unfortunately, Wally culture doesnot make ppl do this.
"5. Efficent electronics are also only rich people items. a 20" monitro that uses 180 watts costs $95.00 a 20" lcd that uses only 15 watts is $300.00"
Is the difference in cost due to the energy saving features or something else? Again, what cost are you talking about? The life cycle cost (which considers environmental impacts) or what the user pays ?
"6. Most people cant afford to live near where they work forcing the higher consumption of fuel and energy."
This is my favorite. Who says that living far from work and higher consumption of energy are cause and effect? You are assuming that ppl will have to use gas guzzling suvs to get to work. they can (and do) take public transportation, which though not being as efficient as the "uber rich vehicles", is better than driving a 5 mpg pickup.
"7. renewable resources are actively discouraged by corrupt politics and officials. Drastic tax credits and refunds whould be put in place to encourage spending money on insulating your home, cars that get over 40mpg, and alternative energy."
I dont know if renewable resources use is limited due to corruption, but i agree with Lumpy that some form of compensation might be put in place to make costs (again life cycle assesment) more realisitic. I am not suggesting that the cost of things be raised, only that renewable energy sources (and other things that make good sense) should be given some form of encouragement. It is better than doing nothing at all.
BTW, this is my first post @
Draka
The small print at the bottom of the article leads to the "High Park Group"; while their website doesn't provide a list of their clients, it does say their services include # direct lobbying, event planning, and media relations. Perhaps the article is "sponsored" by some vested interests?
This is an obvious for-profit agenda piece. Chances are pretty good the referrer (ArthurDent) is in the wonderful and expanding field of internet meme-seeding. Chances are pretty good the research, and the media placement, are paid by a lobby group funded by a loose group of big corporations with an interest in avoiding the costs of reducing CO2 and other pollutants.
I hope this kind of crap is called out each and every time it hits the Slashdot pages.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Who really cares if we are causing the change or not?
Spewing CO2 and other things into our environment is simply a bad idea, potentially dangerous, and in general, unwise. Economics or not, we should avoid doing bad things, and IMHO, not doing something to curb the negative side-effects of our species' existence is bad.
We can argue about the cause of climate change, which is a much better term than global warming, all we want, but the real focus should be on changing our bahavior.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
Who are they; there is consensus in the field of climatology that the earth is warming. The only thing they are not sure of is, are we causing it. The article you cite is written by a P.R hack. Tom C Harris and he is head of a P.R firm out of Canada.
And I'm not interested in a different view, I'm interested in the correct view. We're not debating gay marriage or flag burning. There's only one correct view, and the scientific method is the way it will be found. Realclimate is run by working, publishing scientists. Climateaudit is not.
BTW simply pointing out the complexity and difficulty of a task does not constitute a scientific argument. Everyone knows making real scientific progress is hard.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I think, as a species, we will be naturally selected out because were are dumb enough to argue the possibilities to death, rather than just hedge our bets. Like two guys arguing whether a gun is loaded while the play Russian roulette with it.
Look at that graph again
a nning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Pl
Yes, both lines seem to follow the same pattern. But which one is the independant variable? It is impossible to tell. It very well could be that raising temperatures CAUSES the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, and not the other way around. There are logical paths that could serve either purpose.
a. CO2 in the atmosphere blocks low freq EM waves, heating the earths surface.
OR
b. Higher temps cause more seawater to evaporate, meaning more water vapor travelling into the atmosphere, carrying with it more CO2
Now the real thing to note here is the rapid increase in CO2 emissions in the most recent years, and the temperature variation is at ZERO. To me, this says that Temperature is the independant variable, and CO2 is the dependant variable. To you non science folk, this means that rise in temperature, caused from who knows what...be it other man-made chemicals or natural earth cycles, CAUSES the rise in CO2.
I stated a fact--there are proofs out there and if you're in the field you'll know how to find them. That is just a fact and it shouldn't be belittling unless you think less of people who are not scientists working in the field of climate research. I didn't "address your argument" because when it comes to climate science you didn't make any argument, you just spouted off some opinions without a) citing previous papers, b) quantitatively demonstrating why their arguments are incorrect, or c) proposing an alternate theory. And even if you had I'm not prepared to do that either, so the best I can do point you in the direction of people who are.
I'm not that interested in global warming as a cause to fight for, so I'm not a great person for you to debate. My crusade is against those who continue to misunderstand the way science works. If you believe the science is wrong and you want to engage, there is a clear structure for doing so. Random unsupported questions are pretty meaningless.
As for the power of the models to predict, yes, it's true, Hansen's seminal 1992 paper predicted the temperature effect of Pinatubo prior to it actually being measured. In addition he predicted increases in global mean temperature in the near term--also being observed since 1992. If you don't think so you're welcome to review his paper and the latest data (it's all publicly available), and publish a paper of your own.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Dear /. Science editors,
Please check your articles for integrity of sources. Especially on such a (politically) divided topic.
The scientific concensus is in overwhelming support of Gore on this one. Ask any reputable science journa.
Trust me, this is what I study every day.
Jesus fucking CHRIST you have got to be kidding me. Plankton eat CO2! What is the largest carbon sink on the planet? LIMESTONE. Where did all that limestone come from in the first place? THE FUCKING PLANKTON. GOD DAMNIT!!! Plankton PRODUCE the CaCO3. It's a byproduct of their fucking existence.
You must not believe in evolution. I'm fully confident that a gazillion fucking plankton will evolve fast enough to accommodate for a BARELY DETECTABLE drop in pH over the course of 100 FUCKING YEARS! In the meantime, they'll still be converting CO2 and Sunlight into CaCO3 and producing more O2 than every rainforest on the fucking planet combined. And if you'll give 'em a little iron, they'll even eat all your excess CO2 as well.
You are correct that existing alternatives do not meet the cost/benefit ratio tipping point for adoption.
My post proposed that signficant effort be expended to solve the single-source energy solution we now have.
Part of the solution would have to "democratize" fuel (ie. make it widely available and produceable). With
supply source way up, the cost would be pushed down to where the poor would be able to afford it. Not only
that, there would come a point where the entire economy would go up levels because the "tax" created by
the current energy model would not be in effect.
Since the "energy tax" is a payment we make multiple times (to manufacture, ship, store, remove waste) it
is most important to the poor. They literally cannot escape paying it right now. When they dont have to
pay the energy tax (so much), they can afford better school, medicine, food, water-purity. This will
also lead to stabilization as people become less hopeless.
It is in everyone's best interest to find a new cleaner, cheaper source of energy. But the poor
would benefit the most.
Again, I stress that current solutions are evolutionary and do not meet the need. We need to
expend serious effort to go way beyond what we can do now. An effort beyond the trip to the moon
and the trip to mars efforts.
But the money we spend on such an effort would be small compared with the costs of maintaining
the current rising costs of the current energy model and its associated ills.
This point is always lost on the public. In the public's eye, any hint of a debate suggests that the theory in question is highly suspect. Of course, there will always be theories that are suspect because of questionable science, but intensity of debate is not a reliable indicator.
If you want to discredit a theory (beyond the naive eye of laymen), do so by stating what evidence contradicts the theory, not by saying "There's still a lot of debate about that."
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I thought you burned strawmen, not beat them.
You know, because straw is more flammable which is why strawmen are so easy to set aflame (and yet entirely devoid of nutricious goodness).
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
Well, he got names from various countries.... Were they experts? He said so. I don't know the people, I've never heard of the groups they are claimed to represent, and I've never seen anything published by them, or by anyone with ideas similar to those they are propounding, in a source that I have moderate respect for.
Now I'm no expert. He could be right. Claiming it, however, doesn't prove it. Anyone can put up a web page and make claimes. I have heard people requesting more specific data...but the number of such people has been decreasing strongly over the last decade as study after study has rolled in showing that the temperature IS rising, and the CO2 IS rising, and the ice IS melting. (Also that the great conveyor MAY BE slowing. That's still being disputed. If it is, it's the most serious finding yet...and it probably means that Greenland is melting even faster than we had thought.)
I did find some technical flaws in the arguments that Gore presented, and he was definitely presenting a popularized layman's view rather than a technical argument. (Anyone who expects a movie to be the equivalent to a technical report needs their head examined.) Gore *MAY* have overstated the case a few times. Possibly. I wouldn't bet heavily on it. This is a gread deal different that being wrong in his general thrust. And he wasn't presenting a scientific paper, so anyone who wants to argue that it should have been one will just have to be unsatisfied...or they can go read the actual scientific papers. (I tend to read popularized summaries...I'm not an expert in the field...but they are generally consistent both with each other and with the *thrust*, if not the details, of Gore's movie.)
Is anyone really surprised that someone would pan the movie, and pretend to be doing so from on a "scientific basis"? The opponents of this movie are frequently the same people who want to teach "intelligent design" as if it were a scientific theory. They either don't know what science is, or they don't care. Their "official scientists" are less scientific than Lysenko (who at least TRIED to be scientific...even if he got it all wrong).
Now it's possible that I am unfairly maligning the author. But based on what I've read from sources that I consider to be at least marginally trustworthy, I doubt it. If I'm wrong, please point out a reputable source where I can check. I live near a major university, so if it's in a refereed print periodical there's a fair chance that I'll be able to check it out. The web page, while it quoted many authorities, didn't give any sources that I recognize and trust.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
many climate experts are stepping forward and pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon
These "scientists" are proponents of what we call now the "intelligent climate theory".
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
The article is written by a "guest author" who is part of a consulting group that works for the Canadian Electricity Association. Gee I wonder which side of this they are on? Non-biased research, give me a break! He is obviously cherry-picking his arguments and "experts". This article is not worth the electrons it is printed on, IMHO.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment â" Buddha
As for MGP standards, the logic here is backwards. It makes no sense to tell Ford and GM "make your customers buy different cars". Rather, if the government wants to change the average MPG of the fleet, the GOVERNMENT has to do this. It easily can, and should, by raising the gasoline tax to the point where all of the externalities of gasoline use are accounted for. This would be an addition dollar to $1.50. Fat chance of that happening.
I seem to recall in the 1970s when the auto industry said they couldn't make cars with better mpg. Then after the oil embargo the Japanese manufacturers about had the US makers for breakfast. It wasn't long afterwards that Reagan had to give Chrysler a handout to keep from going bankrupt. Now in regards to gasoline tax, agreed! Such a tax should pay for all costs related to them, including building and maintaining highways. I don't have or know the amount but some of the cost of building and maintaining roads comes from "general revenue". Tax on fuel should pay all of it at the federal level and most at state and local levels. A user tax.
Some may even benefit. Ever lived in Michigan in winter, when most GW happens? You won't get any complaints, trust me.
You definitely will get complaints in Minneasota, just as far north as Michigan. I've frequently heard and saw ads asking for more snow, as lack of snow was hurting businesses. And if businesses in MI wouldn't be hurt as well I'd be absolutely shocked. I know when I lived there it would of hurt.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"I am a scientist, though not climatologist."
"At worst, without GW Katrina would have been a weak Cat 4 instead of a strong one. GW did not "create" Katrina, though it is possible that it made her slightly worse."
How do you know this? If 'the left' can't conclusively say Katrina was caused by GW, how can you say it wasn't?
Point is, you are just as biased as they are, only with a different belief. Not too say that I don't agree with most of your conclusions, but you are making the same unsupported claims as you are accusing the mythical 'left' of.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
For your information, Gore was elected to the House in 1976, and, for further enlightenment, the House of Representatives is the other branch of, yes, Congress, where Gore said he was. Congress!=Senate. But it's fun to watch that little same factoid of misinformation about 1984 get repeated over and over, I guess you're all using the same talking points.
And, yes, ARPAnet already existed then, although I have to point out it didn't use TCP/IP until 1983, and that is the earliest traditional point that 'The Internet' started. Nothing before that can be called 'The Internet', and many people date it even later.
However, the ancestory between ARPAnet and 'The Internet' is almost entirely false. The actual links that the internet evolved from were made from NSFNET, which was made in 1986, linking five high speed computers operated by the NFS with high-speed T1 connections. It was hooked to ARPAnet via gateways, as were JANET and HEANET, but those were not 'ARPAnet'. ARPAnet was old and slow and essentially useless by the time it was shut down in 1990.
NFSNET continued to operate and everyone linked to it, until 1995 when the last link was sold off to private industry. And it became 'The Internet', along with some other networks it managed to pull along.
To put it another way: No organization still has IP numbers that were routed over ARPAnet. People do still have NFSNET-assigned ones that have been routed continually since 1987 or whenever, although obviously other organizations have been in charge over the years. This current internet is the NFSNET's child, not the ARPAnet. The ARPAnet was just a prototype. Yes, the technology was developed there, and yes Gore had nothing to do with it.
However, he had everything to do with funding NFSNET, which actually provided free fast servers and a fast enough connection made the whole thing useful, and let commercial organizations connect to it, which they couldn't do with ARPAnet.
In otherwords, he not only did what he said, he did exactly what he said. It's other people who have conflated 'The Internet' with TCP/IP or the web or ARPAnet that have it wrong. He didn't invent, or even fund, any of that. Before Al Gore, everyone had to use slow links and awkward multiple gateways that were mostly email and usenet. Then he funded 'the network of networks', and quite knowingly opened it up for everyone to use and hook to, and that thing became The Internet. He passed a law that created the network we would come to call 'The Internet'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Note that only one of the scientists mentioned is even remotely qualified to discuss the subject, namely Dr. Morgan. The rest are in fields that have nothing to do with climatology, which is the branch of science involved in determining the validity of the global warming theory. Among climatologists there is little debate about it. That the global warming denial crowd can find unqualified people with degrees in unrelated subjects who concur with their refusal to recognize global warming is as unsurprising as it is meaningless. I suppose they've learned something in that they no longer quote scientists from the oil industry, the conflict of interest in that being glaringly obvious. Global warming is already happening. It will keep happening, denial by various fools not withstanding. A shame the costal cities will have to be lost before their stupidity is no longer allowed to drive policy.
To me, the ultimate deciding factor will be China. If we witness a global energy revolution in these next 10 years (as many hope), China might ironically save the day in this regard. On the other hand, if China continues to embrace an oil economy, it is silly for Americans to give themselves guilt complexes; the amount of polution produced in Asia currently dwarfs even the most liberal estimates of U.S. conversation. In other words, even we all recycle and walk to work here in the U.S., we aren't going to achieve any net benefit for this GLOBAL enviornment of ours.
In 2000 instead of voting for the candidate I wanted to vote for, the Libertarian candidate Harry Brown, I specifically voted against Bush. Not the only reason but a big one still was because of Global Warming. Not longer after Bush entered office he confirmed my prediction by repudiating Kyoto. When he did however he said something about some countries not having any emission limits emplaced. This caused me to do some research and sure enough, neither China nor India had any limits. As it stood then per capita the US emitted about 20 tons of CO2 annually, which is about 6 billion tons a year. China and India on the other hand with 3 billion+ people only emit 2 tons per capita. So even if the US were to eliminate all of it's emissions, China and India could make up for that with an increase to 4 tons per capita. Without China and India working on their emissions there's simply no way the US can have much of an impact on emissions.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There are plently of global warming is happening articles, as it is, showing why and backed with science and figures. There are a lot of "why don't "normal" people seem to get it?" articles too. Which comes down to the same reason they believe in the Theory of Evolution, it's much much easier to sell simple concepts to people. This article is trash.
it is obvious that humans are changing their environment, and history is full of societies that died because of environmental damage they caused (read Collapse by Jared Diamond). So I think this battle of "global warming or not" is a bit ridiculous - just because one particular effect might or might not come to pass, doesn't mean all our actions have no effect.
Easy question. What's the most direct way of reducing emissions? Answer. Increase fuel efficiency.
Production of emissions is directly related to burning fuel to power vehicles, equipment, factories, etc. So while it will cost money to make our energy guzzling machinery more efficient, you end up saving money on fuel costs. Not only do you have to buy less fuel but the decrease in demand forces fuel prices down. A side economic benefit is less money spent on medical problems due to poor air quality -- costs usually covered by employer-paid insurance or the taxpayers (Medicaid/Medical) for the uninsured.
The only sector that takes a hit are the current dominant energy producers. Less demand means lower prices X lower units sold -- suddenly their trillion dollar profits are no longer the norm.
It's called fluctuations. Fluctuations are superimposed on any climate trend, and so, if you cherry-pick your years, you can draw any conclusion you want. Take a look at the NASA temperature record (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/) and then tell me what you think the trend is.
Maybe you don't like the "noise", but you also seem to dislike facts. If anything, there was no trend in temperatures from the 30's to the 70's if you believe NASA (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). According to the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, the effect of solar cycles is considerably smaller than the effect of increased greenhouse gases.
Your solution? Let's wait until 2020, and then we can safely conclude whether we should have acted on global warming or not.
How many of those scientists work for research organizations funded by oil companies? This has been covered extensively before. There IS a broad scientific consensus on global warming and its causes. The only scientists saying otherwise are on the payroll of oil companies. This is just like the "scientists" who the tobacco companies paid to say there was no proven link between smoking and lung cancer.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
Putting the global warming issue aside, I still don't understand why people would fight to go on polluting the planet? I mean, if CO2 emissions are not directly causing global warming (which I think is wrong, but that is another story), what is the interest, except money, to continue the emissions? We are about to develop and use non-invasive technologies which will develop other economical areas, why don't we? There is really no point in fighting to continue our bad habits, no matter how armful they can be (or they can thought to be...).
Customer: "Do I need a computer to use your software?"
is is oil companies, car companies, electric companies, chemical companies, mining companies, farms...oh wait, it is the whole of the world economy. It is a simple matter of fact that no matter what technology anyone develops in the near future, we will be dependent on fossil fuels for decades. Nothing can change this, and any attempt to change this radically, which would be necessary to make a real difference in GW, would be futile and disasterous.
.1% interest for the next 200 years.
You ask what consideration do economists give to someone 200 years in the future. Ironically, that is the crux of the debate - which discount rate is appropriate for such long time frames. However, most typical values that one would choose lead to the conclusion that we should do either nothing, next-to-nothing, or maybe a bit. Even if you choose zero (in other words, assume a dollar today is worth the same as a dollar in 2206, after inflation), you still only find that a moderate carbon tax is justified and barely any GW offset.
Of course, if you really believe in zero discount, I am perfectly willing to see you privately back that up. I will even pay you
if "they" are driving around a vehicle whose base price for the cheapest model is $37,000.
From your sig:
This really seems absurd to me since you have the ability to vote, unless your a felon, and the ability to run for office (or at least support someone for office). More poignantly, you can run for office even if you can't vote because you're a felon (I could be wrong about that to some extent: think of judges!... and then Marion Barry!).
So, I hope that if you so fear your government that you'd turn that fear into something positive and make some good changes (even if we disagree about what that means).
I lived next door to one of the leaders in the ice core project in Greenland. The goal was to drill down and get a "map" back in time looking at the ice.
n g.htm
Several conclusions came of this project and more will follow, but in regards to global warming he told me the following (in my own words):
"The ice core showed that we have seen several very cold and warm periods in the past, and none can be conclusive about our weather today."
and
"The measurements we have today, of temperature dates back about 150 years. That was a very cold period according to the ice core. So that the weather is getting warmer could be an obvious thing from that point."
So basically he says the data is inconclusive... but in the end he stated:
"When we look at CO2 and other green-house gasses in the ice core, we see a jump in the last few decades. I geological terms this increase is so significant that the only word we use for such a geological event is: Disaster or catastrophe! Its way off scale compared to any other event in time. What the effects are or will be I can't tell..."
Their site is here http://www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk/ngrip/hovedside_e
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
The most powerful part of this argument is the one about the simulation experts getting their models wrong versus the actual hard data that's available. I come from a field where the principle is similar: use a simulator (that, by coincidence, uses diffusivity physics as its basis) to produce a model that's matched to the field data that's available. Guess what? The more complex the model (eg larger and more heterogeneous), the more likely it is to be wrong, so you have to go back to the field data and historical performance and use your professional judgement and some analytical methods to find out what's going on and what the future holds. If this is true for what I do, it's a godzillion times more true for climate and atmospheric research. There is a negligible chance of any of these scenarios being correct so you end up in a monkeys-and-typewriters situation. That's why I always take it with a big pinch of salt when some report comes out about such-and-such model predicting so much temperature rise.
Btw, the pretty pictures that these simulators produce are often taken as gospel by our management, who seem to prefer this simplistic view over a thorough analysis of the basic data and what it's actually saying...
this
Support the FairTax
What you will find is that Bob Carter has written articles for an organization (TechCentralStation.com) that has in past received funding from Exxon. I think it's an important distinction to make, because Carter does appear to be a serious scientist with peer reviewed, published papers.
You may disagree with him, but I don't think it's fair to say that he receives funding from Exxon simply because he has written two articles for a web site that receives funding from Exxon.
It also inspired one of the best and funniest SciFi novels I've ever read: Fallen Angels, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn.
The plot: SciFi geeks save fallen astronauts from a tyranically green/luddite government. Oh, and the glaciers? Our greenhouse gasses were holding back the next ice age, but the greens got their way. Most of Canada is already under the ice.
READ the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the other amendments! http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/const.html
At this point, it doesn't really matter wether global warming is real or not. The fact is, the shit we are polluting the earth with isn't good for anyone. Anyone who doesn't believe it should take a little trip to their local poor neighborhoods in industrial areas. I used to make deliveries to the Delray neighborhood in Detroit. The air quality there is incredibly bad, the whole place has a sulfuric smell. If you park your car there for a couple of hours, there will be a layer of this rust colored dust on your car. The whole neighborhood is incredibly grimey looking, with that rust colored dust everywhere. I can't even imagine the health problems the people that live there must have. So really, everyone can argue about global warming all they want, but the fact is, something needs to be done about the disgusting amounts of pollution.
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
For example, there is slight evidence that solar radiation may have increased, but nowhere near enough to explain the observed warming.
Not sure if this OT or not, but I recently saw a NOVA about "Global Dimming".
The basic concept is that particulate pollution and jet aircraft contrails generated on a daily basis have reduced solar irradiance reaching the Earth surface by a significant amount, with the largest drop in mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere (not surprising). This is *masking* the true amount of global warming going on, so when we really start to clean up our particulate pollution (which is happening already) the temperature will bounce higher than expected. Global estimates of percentage drop in solar irradiance:
* 5.3% (9 W/m); over 1958-85 (Stanhill and Moreshet, 1992)
* 2%/decade over 1964-93 (Gilgen et al, 1998)
* 2.7%/decade (total 20 W/m); up to 2000 (Stanhill and Cohen, 2001)
* 4% over 1961-90 (Liepert 2002) [3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
With the first link, the chain is forged.
After years of promoting global hysteria it is nice to see the editors slashdot present the other side of the debate. With Al Gore as its leading proponent Kyotoism is in big trouble. The movement has been slowly losing momentum since the Montreal climate meeting last year. I doubt if they can get it back.
an ill wind that blows no good
Science is not in the business of proving things. Science is in the business of disproving things. You come up with a hypothesis and start trying to disprove it. When it survives peer review and attempts at disproof for a while, the hypothesis becomes a theory. When it continues to survive, it becomes a law. Nowhere, though, is any hypothesis, theory or law conclusively proven. It is not how science works.
Global warming has not been disproven, it is therefore still in play. Those who attempt to discredit it by claiming it is not proven are correct in their claim, but incorrect in their discredit. Where is the experimental evidence that indicates that the theory is wrong?
On another note, Canada Free Press, from looking at the rest of the site, appears to be an extreme right-wing rag. You may hold a different opinion, of course, but that is mine.
www.wavefront-av.com
First, thank you for looking this up. It's not surprising ("the right foisting off propaganda? say it ain't so!").
One minor detail, though: Based on what I have been reading in various science mags, the earth is undeniably warming, losing glaciers, etc. HOWEVER, the cause of this may be multiple factors, the extent of which each plays a part still to be determined. It's unfortunate that general public / political denial seems to be preventing adequate quantitative research into those factors. One reason why I say it may be more than CO2, for instance, is that Mars is also losing its polar ice cap coverage that last decade. I *think* there is at least one other solar system moon with a similar issue, but the name escapes me.
Sometimes, there is more than one problem, and determining the main contributing factor is worthwhile.
Sorry if I sound like a GOP schill, I am SO NOT (blech). Public transportation would be really nice to have, for instance.
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
we learned from Ann Coulter last night on Leno that global warming, recycling and *safe sex* are to be dismissed as part of the "church of godless liberalism". Someone please get some God in my life so I can stop having safe sex and open myself up to herpes, warts and aids!
If you can't see through these people you don't deserve to.
The idea that forecast cannot be tested is absurd if you use the scientific method; predict, test, revise & repeat.
The UK Meteorological Office has successfull Forecasts of Global Temperature risk using their climate model for the last six years.
Here is there take on the future : Climate, the greenhouse effect and global warming - is the climate changing?
This is always a great topic to bring out the loonies, almost on a par with gun control or creationism.
I'm so bored with the USA.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
For the past 100,000 years, earth has had a cycle of ice ages every 8,000 years. It's been about 8,500 years since our last one. That puts us about 500 years overdue for an ice age. Could be global warming has been helping to postpone disaster instead of bringing it on.
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> However, what's not in question is: Ice is melting.
> As ice melts, the sea level must go up.
So if the sea level isn't going up, then we aren't getting any significantly different amount of ice melting?
Or, if the ice is melting and calving faster in Antarctica, it may be because of increased deposition rates on the land itself, forcing the ice to churn back into the sea faster, but no net extra water? Or perhaps even lowering of sea levels because some additional ice will build up?
Golly, well-accepted, well-established, definitive science is so exciting! Tell me more!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame.
t ok.co2.gif h ics/tempplot5.gif
CO2 and Temerature plots for the past 450,000 years from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/vos
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vostok/grap
No meaningful correlation!!!
Nutter: A person who is regarded as eccentric or mad.
ExxonSecrets.org
Many articles on Professor Carter's "qualifications"
I'm sure that there are more links about this professor, but even if there are some scientific dispute about a specific study sited about global warming, the bottom line isn't really in dispute: human activity is having and will have for decades to come a noticeable impact on our global environment.
---
"Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that."
Here we are again on the seam between science and politics. For someone standing on the science side of the line, the Global Warming issue is far less clear than it is for people who breathe partisanship. That warming is a fact is clear to me. I remember when I was growing up on the New Jersey shore that the Navasink River was home to many ice-boat clubs. They are all closed now because the river doesn't freeze. Likewise, when I was in Durham England, I picked up a photo of ice skaters on the River Wear at an antique shop. It hasn't frozen either in generations. Jumping from this to say CO2 is the cause, however, is too much. One of the driving forces behind the development of supercomputers was SHORT-term weather forecasting. That's a mighty complex system up there. Science can deal with complexity, but slowly. Politicians, either ignoring or just not recongizing it are much faster. This is the real "inconvenient truth". While we in science hypothesize and test, Bill Clinton is blaming hurricanes on George Bush. But we can have untested opinions, too. Mine? The strength of the earth's magnetic field has been declining just ahead of the global warming curve for over the past century. In the long run, I think that's the more likely cause because excess CO2 a) encourages plantlife that consumes it and b) combines with water to form H2CO3 which precipitates out of the atmosphere - whereas there is no stopping our long overdue magnetic reversal. But that's just my guess. Not a "truth".
I agree! Corporations have (desite the bogus PR) no sense of morality or ethics. They do understand taxation levels, and the impact they have on profitiability. We cannot regulate corporate behaviour by appealing for them to do what is right, or what is decent. We can modify their behavior by heavily taxing what we do not want them to do, and by not taxing (or taxing less) behaviour we want to encourage.
The challenge of course, is to get the taxation levels changed despite their lobbying and bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign donations.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Despite what the headline article claims, and what some posters here sadly believe, human induced planetary heating (global warming just sounds too benign) is real and there is broad consensus across the scientific community on that. sadly the exxon funded shills are paid good money to add layer upon layer of doubt upon this scientific consensus. Its all handled by the same PR people who worked for big tobacco a decade or two ago.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
> many climate experts are stepping forward and pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon, much less any particular cause of it." ... aside from the melting glaciers, increase hurricane activity, and the complete submersion of Florida in the not-so-distant future.
I agree with much of your post. However, your reasoning is flawed in that it is based on fossil fuels to produce electricity being a) cheap and b) unlimmitted. Neither of these are the case. There is only a finite amount of oil and coal reserves. Whether it is exhausted in 50 years, or 100 years or 200 years isn't the issue. The reserves will be exhausted and as they are depleted, they will no longer be a source of cheap electricity.
.006% ruining the planet defying logic, well sulfer at lower concetrations than that sure seemed to have a major impact as acid rain. It's just that people don't remember it anymore, because we reduced the sulfer emmisions. HCF was found to cause problems, too and that was at low concentrations.
So, even if today we find out that CO2 emmission have zero effect on global warming, we are still faced with having to find a replacement for fossil fuels over then next few decades (so that they can truly be reserved for those things that need them most).
One way or the other, people, mainly the western world, are going to need to change their habits. Whether the change is brought about by diminishing fossil fuels or by reductions in CO2 emmissions, withing 50 years, we are not going to be able to sustaing burning oil and coal like we have been.
As for CO2 at
Here is what it really boils down to. There are two things that drive innovation - war and environmental issues. The earth is warming up, that is not disputed. Regardless of the cause, we are going to have to change the way we do things. At the same time this warming up is occurring, we are running out of relatively cheap energy sources. Again, we are going to have to change the way we do things. Both of these are environmental issues (although war may come into play over oil). Both have reach the level of social awareness that hopefully will drive the push to new technologies to provide solutions. Many of those technologies already exist, they're just not economically feasible with the current low price of fossil fuels. Many are waiting in the wings to be developed.
One way or another, though, all the scientists, whether they buy into CO2 causing global warming or not, will tell you that we cannot sustain our current rate of consumption.
Which brings it back to the original thought that it really doesn't matter. Whether or not CO2 emmissions from fossil fuels are causing global warming or not, the changeover from burning fossil fuels is comming. There is only a limited supply. We can plan for that change, to minimize the impact of it on the most vulnerable in society, but the change will come and nothing will stop it. It really is just a question of how pro-active we want to be with regards to the change.
Let me get this straight. There's a climatologist named "Boris Winterhalter" who is loudly proclaiming that global warming is not real. If I was reading that in a novel I would probably sigh and stop reading right there.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Just because "100's of scientists" challenge there is no proof of global warming does not make it legitimate.
If "100's" of scientists published a "proof" that Pedophilia should be legalized, it doesn't make the point automatically noteworthy.
Bottom line is what is so "wrong" with trying to limit pollution? Where is the SCIENTIFIC PROOF that pollution does NOT affect us? That I'd like to see!
Fine, don't believe me that it's a problem. Believe the marine biologists studying it instead. You can have your chemistry discussion with them.
I assure you I believe in evolution. It's a lot easier to believe in when you know enough to play with GAlib and can appreciate the level of sophistication that even a simple binary automaton can evolve, something I wish some other certain people had the benefit of being able to do. However 100 years is an extremely short period of time in evolutionary terms, as you should very well know, and the question of what the rest of the sea life eats while the population levels are low and evolving remains. As well as the question of what we eat.
Major changes in sea chemistry over short periods, evolutionarily speaking, are a bad bad thing when viewed from the perspective of a species that, no matter how much it is loathe to admit it, is still attached to the planet's umbilical cord, figuratively speaking.
Someone had to do it.
It was changed to "Theory" in the 1900's as some "laws" had been disproven. So, in fact, the term "Law" is depricated, and has been replaced by theory.
The 'Law of Conservation of Strangeness' is in particle physics and from the later half of the 20-th century. I don't think the term is deprecated, it's just that it's harder to find them now-a-days.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
All I have to say is this:
1. There is no land mass at the north pole.
2. Ice floating on water displaces a volume of water equal to the ice's mass.
3. If the ice at the north pole melts, the sea level will not rise because the water has already been displaced.
4. Almost every reply totally missed the point of my post (as did one or two moderators).
5. ???
6. Profit!
Funny that they were completely backwards back in the 1970s.
g world.pdf
http://www.glennbeck.com/2006news/newsweek-coolin
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
Nice ad hominem post. You could try to find flaws in the "shill's" arguments instead.
g world.pdf
How about the fact that all of the climate change scientists were telling us the complete oposite in the 70's?
Read for yourself:
http://www.glennbeck.com/2006news/newsweek-coolin
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
We should realize two things:
1. Many global warming deniers are:
a. funded by oil and coal companies that strongly encourage them to try to find anything so that they won't have to actually take action;
b. not peer reviewed; and
c. not supported by the more than 95 percent of climatologists who agree the GW does exist.
2. Global Warming is not what you think it is. It is actually large dramatic changes in the global temperature patterns, and even if the median temperature increases - which it is currently doing at an accelerating rate - it will tend to oscillate and result in massive changes in temperature - both Warming and Freezing - at both a local and global level.
This last point means that you can have some parts of the globe get colder while other parts - like say the Northwest section of the US - have 60 percent of their glaciers that have survived hundreds of thousands of years all melt.
You can also have, in global warming, a period where it gets much much colder for 2-5 years, and then suddenly gets a lot warmer for 5-100 years - in fact, much of our recent history shows this.
What is known is that man-made pollution, heat generation, and deforestation is now a major factor in global warming, and was not so before the 18th century. And it is becoming more and more of a major factor each and every day.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
from http://www.highparkgroup.com/
he gets paid for his opinion to be what it is!
--meh--
some of them are funded by Chevron and Peabody, too.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Bela Liptak, the Editor in Chief of the Process Control Handbook for Engineers, says that to control a process, we must first understand it. In this case, we don't really understand Global warming, even if we can show it exists. We don't know if it's part of the natural cycle the earth goes through, we don't know if it's caused by our own mismanagement (And don't discount that. The "Humans are too small to change the earth" arguement is verifably false -- Europe had to turn to burning coal because some irresponsible buffoon thought that humans would never cut down all the trees. Also, every piece of refined steel created during and after World War 2 is tainted with radioactivity that is in our atmosphere now because of nuclear weapons (So when we need a piece of steel without radioactivity, we take it from the sunken German battleships from WWI)). While limiting CO2 emissions is a prudent course of action until we learn more, it is by no means a sure-fire route to "Solving" the percieved problem.
It's been a long time.
and just what did Gore mention about the Global Warming on Mars, and how we can fix it. Hey, if we can clean up th eplanet, go for it, but global warming is more than us, especially if it affecting other planets.
The argument that "...many climate experts are stepping forward and pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon, much less any particular cause of it." brings to mind the early 80's when AIDS was starting to spread.
When some some voiced the opinion that it could turn into a pandemic, many "experts" at the time pooh-poohed that view by saying was confined to a small focused population and would never spread.
The experts aren't always right.
/* The republicans have become very good at presenting "evidence" that anyone who already believes a point and wants to continue, can do so. */
/* Liberals however tend to be more ready to challenge their preconceived ideals, so aren't as open to fluff pieces aimed at allowing someone to retain a "Faith" in the face of significant evidence against it. */
i cal_decisions.htmlDemocrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Like when I watched "Bowling for Columbine", and then found out that it was full of half-truths, distortions, and outright lies, I went to some of my "liberal" friends to discuss it. After seeing the evidence and point-by-point dissections of Moore's movie, they all agreed that it was just propaganda. Oh wait, no they didn't, they put their fingers in their ears and screeched loudly to drown out the common sense. Here's a link for those liberals that will believe it, and even for those rascally republicans that will just ignore it. http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060124_polit
Here's the thing. We all do it. Now that you are aware of it, you can stop acting like some snarky pious better-than-you-because-I-am-open-minded snob.
A Haiku: my language choices/assembler pascal lisp c/old school programmer
- Bob Carter
- Tim Ball
- Tim Patterson
- Tech Central Station
Then there is Igor Polyakov's study on Arctic Ice. The study itself is sound. But it has been misused by bad people. Indeed Rush Limbaugh was exposed by media matters deliberate misinterpreting that study. so again i call 'bullshit' to the climate change deniers.I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Take a look through the other religion and science articles from this "news source" and you'll get a pretty good idea where they are coming from!
The fundamentalist Christian right.
Why wasn't that mentioned in the article summary?
Or, if the ice is melting and calving faster in Antarctica, it may be because of increased deposition rates on the land itself, forcing the ice to churn back into the sea faster, but no net extra water?
Yes, that's what's happening now.
But there are models that not only predicted that would happen if the temperature rose, but that it will not continue to happen if the temperature keeps rising. Right now, we're evaporating from the sea only, so Antartica is getting bigger. Soon, we'll evaporate from Antartica, and at that point, we are fucked, because we don't know of any possibly way to reverse that...it's just going to keep getting hotter there.
And while models predicting changes in temperature are in dispute, the models predicting what will happen in Antartica if temperatures rise are not. It's not going to be straight-forward melting that's happening in the artic, but it is the problem, because the artic isn't going to change the sea level. (OTOH, melting the artic will completely screw up everyone's weather.)
And I don't know where all these crazy physics came from. Melting ice at either pole, whether it's cooling the ocean streams in the north or finally having snow in the southern 'desert' that is Antartica, can't counter anything. Nothing inside the thermodynamic system that is Earth can change how hot the planet is. The only way to cool it down is to remove heat into space, or stop heat from getting here from space.
And it's not really going to 'buffer' anything either. That's like talking about how it's safer to fall from higher up because it takes longer to hit the ground. In a sense, this is the buffer, right now.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I love how people can assume that pumping killotons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every day
Respiring lifeforms have been doing so for billions of years to the glory of all plant life. 6 billion people on earth will have an effect. As a Kyotoist you should be able to scare me better than that.
We know there is a hole in the ozone layer - we've seen it, photographed it.
And we've watched it shrink, most likely as part of a natural cycle. But that wouldn't serve political ends. The ozone holes have always been there. It just happened that as soon as we started to launch spacecraft and balloons we saw it. There have always been Chlorine compounds in the atmosphere, and they have always been activated by low temperature to reduce ozone. I am just thankful I can use the present facts to refute Kyotoists.
As an aside note, the space shuttle ET insulation system never exhibited a catastrophic failure when the insulation was applied with CFC's. It did when engineers started using a green substitute. Therefore I blame Kyotoists for bringing down the Columbia. Let that be a lesson of unexpected consequences of green engineering.
Changes of that variety will have cascading changes all over - the butterfly effect on the environment.
Your implicit assumption is that we can steer climate in some kind of positive way by manipulating CO2 emissions. Yet you appeal to the fact that climate is a chaotic system. Chaotic systems vary unpredictably with small changes of input. If you manipulate CO2 emissions (at huge cost) what kind of benefit can those who invested expect to get? Don't deceive yourself or others by thinking you can favorably manipulate climate.
an ill wind that blows no good
This is a word I keep seeing on web sites, but it isn't in any dictionary I can find. Is it 'lead', as in a news article's 'lead paragraph', or in 'I think you should lead with...'?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
His "scientific" paper is a mind-numbingly obvious suggestion to take a terminology that has for many years been widely accepted in other areas, except by a few marginals like him, and apply it to a few ancient rocks in New Zealand that nobody cares much about. Unsurprisingly his paper has been utterly and comprehensively ignored by scientists. Not a single reputable scientist anywhere in the world has ever seen fit to base their work on it -- not even once to write about it positively -- not even once to criticise it. Zilch.
As for his other "scientific" paper you mentioned, it is the kind of piece you would only read if you knew you were about to die of over-excitement and had forgotten how to think. It is a non-scientific diary of an ocean voyage. Second-hand snippets of information out of context. No attempt at logical reasoning. No references. No conclusions. No contribution to scientific knowledge. Scientifically banal fluff. If that is typical of what NIWA Water & Atmosphere publishes, it is no more a scientific journal than Reader's Digest.
Fortunately, NIWA itself looks like it's much more sensibly going way "off-message" at least from your point of view making fun of the absurdities of the so-called "New Zealand Climate Science Coalition". Sorry about that.
I disagree with your Gore point, but I feel your moderation pain. Moderation's major purpose is to keep unpopular opinions from disturbing the Slashdot masses. My advice is to ignore the moderation, set your threshold to -1 and make up your own mind on the merits of each post.
Do you realize the odds of ZERO people arguing is very low and the fact that there is no counter argument is probably good evidence of some systematic problem with the data (Like any articles that don't have the "correct" opinion are not accepted or the scientists are not given tenure by their universities).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If our mythical energy source only produced *heat* or *water vapor* it would STILL be a problem given 6 billion people.
There are almost no problems today that would not be solved by reducing the population down to about 2.5 billion people.
We are most likely beyond the earth's carrying capacity for humans is the fundamental problem.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
One point...
Ppl have bought solar panels for their home.
is really
SOME people who knew how to game the system were given $35,000 dollars of other people's money, from a limited pool of money set aside for that purpose, artificially lowering the cost of their purchase. Even after the $35,000 theft from other people, you still had to have $15,000 of your own money to use this program so it was basically reserved for upper middle class people living in $300k+ houses.
I want solar. I follow solar news on a regular basis. It is NOT affordable yet. It costs $16000 to produce about $100 of electricity. That's a 160 month payoff for most people. And by 160 months, you've gone through TWO sets of batteries and possibly have had to replace your inverter and at least a few of your panels.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Grr.
My numbers are way off-- they are way to optimistic. I've been looking at running AC from solar and the numbers for that were 16000 without batteries for just the window AC (which is $100 per year, not per month). 9000 of panels if you have 1000 of batteries.
So the pay off was more like 1600 months, not 160 months.
I will probably still get some- just like I get computers that I know don't make financial sense.
but right now, it is probably more effective to *invest* the $50k and use the interest income to pay your electric bill than it is to purchase a solar system. unless you are physically distant from the grid.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The article comes from an ultra-conservative newspaper in Canada. It's the equivalent of Fox News. The scientist they site is Roy Spencer, who may be a good scientist in some respects, but clearly has a pro-Republican agenda. Just do a Google search on Roy Spencer and you get a thousand hits regarding him stating that global warming is a myth.
, "It wasnt long after I became a research scientist that I learned that scientists arent the unbiased, impartial seekers of truth I always thought they were. Scientists have their own agendas, philosophies, pre-conceived notions, and pet theories. These views end up influencing their science. Nowhere does this have a greater impact on the science than in global warming theory."
Hmmmm, if you wanted to determine whether or not scientist believe that global warming is occuring, you would ask a *random* sample of scientist. If you go for the few scientists who are constantly preaching that it does not exist, then you're agenda is pursuade others rather than to present the truth.
Now why would any scientist state that global warming isn't happening? After all, science is objective, so how could there be any disagreement? In Roy Spencer's own words (http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=020604C)
Yes, that's true, and Roy Spencer demonstrates the willingness of some scientists to bend the truth (over backwards) to promote an agenda. Roy Spencer even writes an open letter to Al Gore. No one writes an open letter unless they are trying to get publicity for a pet agenda.
This is exactly why you shouldn't listen to individual scientists. Instead, listen to the consensus in the scientific community, which is overwhelming that global warming is happening and will cause major problems.
I have an idea. Republicans now have control of both Congress and the White House. They want us all to believe that global warming isn't happening. OK, put your money where your mouth is. Pass an unrevocable law stating that if Florida loses land from rising sea level, each Floridan resident at the time of this writing will get $1 million per square mile of land lost to flooding. If Republicans actually believe what they are saying, then they'd have nothing to lose by passing this legislation. Somehow, I doubt they will.
They don't call themself that anymore. When the party was hijacked by neo-cons and social conservatives a couple of years ago, they changed the name to the "conservative party of canada"
The progressive elements of the party either abandoned it or were run out of town.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
One factor that amazed me but makes perfect sense -those vast changes in arctic glaciers aren't due to melting, its due to large chunks of ice breaking off or sliding into the ocean. An unrelated phenomenon.
... such as "a square has four sides" and "2+2 = 4" all rest upon axioms which are (by definition) unprovable. That is to say: While proofs (as you say) are true and stay true independent of senses or feelings, the underlying assumptions (axioms) are not necessarily true. Conclusion: You cannot even trust mathematics if you do not trust the axioms.
HAND.
This, while not an exact quote, is a summery of what he said last time I saw him on TV. Including the fifteen years part.
It's tiresome to read all those comments the bash the GW critics as simply being shills for "Big industry". Those have become predictable criticisms.
But where are the same cries of vested interests, when you consider how many scientists are funded by government? Where are the cried of "GOVERNMENT SHILLS"?!
But part of our specific evolutionary fitness involves technology and manipulating our environment to our needs (leaving out whether this is good or bad because evolution is amoral.)
Thus, if we have the ability to control our environment to assure our survival, it in no way hanpers with natural evolution. It's still survival of the fittest, and we won- (or maybe the bugs did, there's more of them...)
No, I will not work for your startup
Tom Harris is a paid flack for Canadian energy companies.
He cites no proof for his tired old "seed of doubt" strategy.
We need to consider the true external costs of "cheap" energy and start paying now (through conservation and through creation of renewable sources). Let's stop the pocketing of millions of years of world energy creation (hydrocarbons) to benefit a very few during an eyeblink of geological time.
We don't need to 'save the earth,' we need to save our kids.
Frankly, I don't think the earth gives a damn about the future of the human race -- it has done quite well through global ice ages and steamy thermal periods, with or without us. But we humans, if we want a recognizable future for our kids on what is a pretty damned pleasing planet, had better start caring for *this* climate. It has served us well.
Harris and his ilk are irresponsible. And putting money in their pocket for publicizing their commercial speech.
The other author, Carter writes for the Tech Central Science Foundation, which is owned by a DC lobbying firm which received $95K from ExxonMobil.
Real scientists publish in scientific journals. Be ashamed that you can't tell the difference between scientists and "scientific pundits" and a corporate agenda from a scientific agenda.
When you can find scientific journal cites for Carter's junk science, I'll listen to you.
Tech Public Policy stuff
However, since the science pundits in question are easily verified as being personally connected to corporate lobbying firms, for me to bother to do so would be like my bothering to take the time to respond to Microsoft's latest anti-Linux FUD.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I know that the biggest conflict when it comes to major political issues is the objectivity of any source of information. Most people pay little attention to the actual scientific evidence in the debate over global warming. The data is usually very complex and difficult to understand for some one not in the field. So they listen to the interpretation of the data. Unfortunately all research requires funding. So because people cannot attack the research data for lack of understanding they look at the source of funding to test the scientists objectivity. The problem with that is that despite what people think there are no neutral sources of funding. Researchers need to bring attention to their research to get more funding regardless of where they get it from. There are two basic ways to get attention. Nothing gets more attention then saying that great disasters will befall us if we don't pay attention to this particular research. The news media loves disasters and so do politicians because people tune in out of fear and fascination. So if you say your research shows a pending disaster you are very likely get funding from government sources. Also it sells books that make millions of dollars and gets politicians elected who then support the research that their constituents are worried about. If you work for a large corporation you need to distinguish your self from your colleges by announcing something that benefits your employer in some way. If you are going to question the objectivity of a scientist who works for a large oil company why shouldn't you question the research of a scientist that works for the government or a large environmental organization they all have agendas. To just disregard data because of the source of funding will mean disregarding large amounts of information that may not be available from any other source. The only way I can see to get around this is to have a public that is highly educated in math and science which is one of the weaknesses in American society. Maybe there are other ways that others can see. But it bothers me that the bulk of the arguments here are based on scientific objectivity and not the data.
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,as far as possible
goes entirely to building the interstate system, and covers most of the cost. At least at the federal level, they are doing the right thing. However, few states/localities do the same thing. The federal government does not charge a pollution tax on gasoline, however.
The cost of moving is not infinite. In any serious calculation of the costs of global warming, displaced people is one of the major considerations.
Some models have found a slight relation between hurricane wind speed/frequency and GW. Some have found none. I do not have the expertise to settle the disputes between them. If you have been paying attention, you should have seen the public announcements of various government climatologists downplaying this connection. The data is simply not there yet to back such claims.
Alarmists on the left, however, have been acting as if every hurricane has something to do with GW and this relationship is apocalyptic. This is not true. Even if the worst-case models and measurements are true, we are talking about something like a 20% increase. A pain? Yes. The end of the world? No.
We may have been offsetting our GW with smog, and now that we are cleaning up the sulfates and particulates, GW may take off as we lay off the brakes.
However, we should be careful to distinquish the amount of light the sun emits and the amount that reaches the ground.
Failed yet again. Illogic aplenty. You know you care very deeply about this subject. You know you cannot possibly leave this thread now because you cannot bear to see somebody else winning the argument. It is undeniably completely relevant to what you wrote on your unfortunate entry to this thread to point out, as I did, that one of the two supposedly scientifically peer-reviewed papers you cited, amusingly but absurdly, in support of your pet climate science guy is embarrassingly nothing more than a glorified throwaway travelog, irredeemably devoid of contribution to scientific knowledge. It is similarly undeniably relevant to your comment to have pointed out that his other paper that you so proudly cited makes absolutely no scientific contribution of any sort to climate modeling. Your citations are worthless. Your original comment has now failed and it's time to stand up bravely and admit it. Better bail now, or you'll dig yourself even deeper into that nice hole full of twisty illogic.
but I have read the reviews and several critiques of it.
Please do not waste my time with ad hominem attacks. Just because Exxon or NCPA says it does not make it untrue, just as I won't say every alarmist line is untrue because a horde of left-wing enviro groups say its true.
There was no ad hominem attack in my post. NCPA purports itself to be an objective research and analysis organization. In fact, that's not true. To show something to be a lie is not an ad hominem attack. Try to understand the difference, won't you?
Exxon has a vested interest in ensuring that the demand for its product -- oil -- stays high and, consequently, has an interest in discrediting and otherwise attacking what it perceives to be threats to that demand. The NCPA is funded, in large part, by Exxon. They are not funded to do objective research -- they are funded to produce papers that call into question the idea that global warming can (and must) be addressed, particularly by reducing the production of greenhouse gases, which are a necessary by-product of what Exxon sells.
As for basing your opinion on critiques of the movie, having seen the movie, as well as having read the critiques, in most cases I have to ask myself what movie the critics saw, because most of the critiques either blew some minor detail completely out of proportion, or criticized points that either were not brought up in the movie, or criticized the exact opposite of the argument being made in those points.
I'm surprised so many people fall for that one.
You know what would happen if we removed just 3% of the heat from your body? You'd die. Your new body temperature would be about room temperature, and you'd go into hyperthermic shock.
Or try this little thought experiment: Heat a NeBFe magnet up to 300 degrees C on an electric burner. Cool it down. It's still magnetized. Heat it back up to 300 degrees C again. Then move it to an oven and keep heating it to 310 degrees C. Then it will be demagnetized.
But don't worry, the oven only contributed 3.3% of the heat.
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html
The world is like a magnet in an oven. It was already close to the tipping point. And that's normal. It usually stays close, but not above, the tipping point. All it takes is a small additional push it beyond that point. We're lucky enough natural phenomina like forest fires haven't done so already, or have given us a few years of sunscreen by spewing ash into the upper atmosphere. We're just tempting fate by making it all the more easy and likely for them to do so.
Just like we know what happens to a magnet when it reaches it's curie temperature, we also know approximately what happens to this planet when the CO2 concentration gets past a certain point -- many CO2 reserviors "tip" in a cascading dominoe effect. The ocean spits out CO2, arable landmass decreases due to desertifications and the vegitation burns. Permafrost and deep ocean clathrates unload methane into the atmosphere. Just about every carbon sink on the planet is set to dump right back into the atmosphere. Like so many phonon-battered magnetic domains, the positive feedback leads to a fast (geologically) shift in conditions, which leads to a big biosphere dieoff. It doesn't matter how small a push man was responsible for, if that's the push that upset the balance and put it past the tipping point. If anything we should be pushing in the opposite direction by fostering sinks.
http://www.bestofmaui.com/rush.html
Someone had to do it.
Thanks to Maxo-Texas for the numbers. I guess my point was that we need to have an energy policy that emphasizes a mix of options, whereever they are feasible. These might include geothermal (iceland, anyone ?), wind, solar, biomass and so on. anyway, i was emphasizing the fact that governmental policy has a role to play in this process. This "process" should be based on environmental economics and not either "mine to user" approaches on one hand or overly sensationalistic "green thinkers" on the other. i admit that it is hard for the user to see the environmental costs from using coal vs. solar, this is where i think policy comes into play. i dont know whether this is going to happen in the coming years...:-(
e search_on_materials_and_devices has a good writeup on the current status of solar cell technology. especially interesting among the ones mentioned are the third generation dye sensitized solar cells. i wonder what the costs of a system using those would be...
Maxo-Texas wrote: "but right now, it is probably more effective to *invest* the $50k and use the interest income to pay your electric bill than it is to purchase a solar system. unless you are physically distant from the grid." one idea for investment is the emissions futures market.
"SOME people who knew how to game the system were given $35,000 dollars of other people's money, from a limited pool of money set aside for that purpose, artificially lowering the cost of their purchase. Even after the $35,000 theft from other people, you still had to have $15,000 of your own money to use this program so it was basically reserved for upper middle class people living in $300k+ houses." Using the same argument to our oil prices, it seems that the situation is not very different. Just wanted to point out that arguments for energy subsidies go both ways.
BTW, just curious to know what technology do these solar panels use? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Current_r
Well what I do is contact the solar power companies in my state and ask how much it would cost to set up such a system for me about once a year.
I've read up on the technology a lot and I'm excited by Nanosolar and some other companies potential to reduce the price by an order of magnitude (and make it an order of magnitude lighter).
For now- short of "grants" from the government it's about $50k ish to set up a typical residential house, grid tied, so that it can cover an average electric bill and be able to fall back on the power co when the weather is bad too long.
In Texas, you can run your meter to zero but you can't run it backwards unless you are a business so there is no point in oversizing your system too much. If you are in Austin you can get some grants but otherwise no grants here like in California.
And yea- it's hard to know that making that solar cell isn't doing a lot of damage to the environment somewhere else (toxic chemicals, nano-polution for the newer technologies, etc.)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Wrong. Scientists have directly correlated CO2 level to global mean temperature. Don't believe me? Take a look at the charts. Scientists also know that CO2 levels for the past 650,000 years have never exceeded 300 ppmv. And they have measured the CO2 levels in 1948 to be 315 ppmv. The levels in 2003 are 376 ppmv. That's more than 25% higher than CO2 levels have ever been in the past 650,000 years.
Another non-controversy is that below 100ppmv you have an ice age. A mile of ice over your head in Chicago. Around 300 ppmv you've got a hot, summery day. What happens when you're at 600 ppmv? Ok, there's some debate there. I'm not sure what data would lead a rational person to think "just nothing" is what to expect like the lobbyists are claiming. Already in 2006 we are over 400 ppmv. Scientists have recorded the 10 hottest years in the past 650,000 years to be within the past 13 years with 2005 being the hottest. By 2010 it is estimated by some to be in the range of 541 to 970 ppmv.
So yes, while there is a natural CO2 cycle, we are currently out of cycle. This is completely abnormal and unprecedented given the 650,000 years of data we have available that covers several ice ages.
These are the facts. You can draw your own conclusions instead of listening to Exxon Mobil lobbyists.
I think Al Gore made the best analogy he could have made at the end of his movie. He cited the hole in the ozone layer crisis from several years ago. The hole opened up because of CFCs being released into the air BY MAN, mostly from air conditioning units. Internationally CFCs were banned from new products. Within years the ozone hole is now mostly fixed. If you have any doubt that man can affect his environment this is evidence our footprint is large indeed. See how rapidly from the wide adoption of CFCs in the 20th century a hole the size of Antarctica opened up in the ozone. And within a few years banning CFCs nearly erased the memory of the ozone hole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://www.realclimate.org/
Yeah, except that the time between the industrial revolution and today does not constitute "geological time scales". Nice try though. You almost seemed informed for a minute.
Or what about lead poisoning? The links between lead in the environment and lead poisoning is STILL being studied. A causal link is virtually impossible to prove. Better put all that lead paint back in your house, lest you fall victim to the horrors of acting on a hypothesis.
Sorry, but when the destruction of western civilization is on the line, a well-supported hypothesis is enough to go on. You're just pissed off that you might not get to drive an SUV anymore.
Regarding the facts: with chaotic systems, prediction is generally impossible. NO models have predictive power over chaotic systems. They can explain what happens, and show you what some of the possible outcomes are, but that's about it. And interestingly enough, you switch from demanding predictive power from a model to demanding that a model merely "fits our observations", which is EXACTLY what the global warming models do -- which is consistent with my theory that you have only the education necessary to flip burgers or be president of the USA and have never studied science. So which is it? Is action ONLY possible when you have a model that predicts the future? No matter how serious the consequences and how strongly the theory matches observation?
Also, the common person IS stupid. He votes for George Bush. He replaces his democratic government with an unelected islamic dictatorship. He buys an SUV or a $300 apple. He sees the virgin Mary in his taco. He votes for Mussolini. He engages in soccer riots. He sends his nation's young people to war, no matter how stupid and misguided that war is. He accuses anyone who doesn't support war of cowardice, while ignoring the fact that he himself is too much of a disgusting coward to go and die himself. He is scared of terrorism even though his own automobile is ten-thousand times more likely to kill him than any terrorist is, his neighbour is a thousand times more likely to murder him, and he has almost as good a chance of being killed by the police in a drug raid that is at the wrong address. He is especially an idiot for not seeing anything wrong with any of those things, for not seeing any problem with his complete and total irrationality, and for resenting scientists for not being quite as stupid as he is.
Some problems to note: bodies of water do not become anoxic because of CO_2 emissions, nor do Uranium or mercury enter our air or water because of CO_2 emissions. We could solve those problems simply by filtering the output of coal plants and limiting farm run-off. Acidification of aquifers is more due to sulfates and nitrates than CO_2, which once again could be solved by filtering the output of engines and power plants. Blah blah blah. And CO_2? IT'S ONLY BAD FOR US. Human civilization is what's at risk (which is why I support major environmental reform). Nature will, generally speaking, benefit from more CO_2. More CO_2 means more photosynthesis (which benefits plants), warmer temperatures (which benefits plants), and more rain (which benefits plants). The planet might start seeing the kind of fantastic biomass that hasn't existed for hundreds of millions of years, when the rise of angiosperms depleted atmospheric CO_2 levels to never-before-seen levels.
As for Kyoto? Call me crazy, but the creation of millions of jobs setting up nuclear, wind, and solar power plants, reforesting clear-cut areas, and so, doesn't seem like something that will decimate the global economy. Plus, if that money comes out of the budget that gets spent on war now, it will actually save lives (not to mention not having to wage war for oil). Jobs + less war + energy independence -- sounds like a winning proposition to me.
Do you have any idea what a trivial amount of money a trillion dollars is when spent over several decades? The US has already spent close to half a trillion dollars proving that Iraq was about as dangerous as a dead raccoon. Have some perspective. No one (reasonable) wants to try to completely revamp the global economy in a single week. Doing it over the course of a half a century would suffice, as long as it starts soon. Have some perspective.
Americans are quite right-wing NOW, but it could swing back really quickly. There's a lot of awareness of just how extensively Dubya has lied (does it still count as a lie if the speaker is too stupid and naive to realize that they aren't speaking the truth?) It's entirely possible that two years from now, no one will admit that they supported Bush. I mean think about it -- how many people still admit that they supported Nixon, after it turned out that he had about as much respect for the law as Charles Manson? How many people say "wow, wasn't Clinton a moral guy? I'm glad I voted for him. Lying to the supreme court isn't that bad." That's right -- no one. People swing fast when it turns out that their leader is a collosal jack-ass that makes the USA the butt of jokes worldwide.
Nope. I didn't ask for your full name, did I, "Jhon"? It is abundantly clear that the shameful laziness in this thread, which began with pudge and cronies and which is now brazenly continued by you, is that you have all utterly failed to answer the apparently exceedingly difficult challenge posed at the start of this thread to cite scientific, peer-reviewed papers by your pet scientist Bob Carter. For the avoidance of doubt, it is obviously implicit, as I said (just in case I had picked up any completely witless readers along the way), that the Bob Carter Paper Citation Challenge is to cite peer-reviewed papers which are relevant to the science of climate modeling and which have withstood scientific scrutiny for more than a day or so after publication -- preferably for a couple of years -- and which have not been trashed due to basic scientific flaws being exposed. Pudge totally failed to do this. If such papers exist, cite them! If they don't, you'd better keel over, admit defeat and limp back into your cave to learn the elements of argumentation. I note you have already acquired the ability to argue using ad hominems, and no doubt you will graciously provide some more of those, and if you do, your appeal will be sure to develop accordingly!
There was no ad hominem attack in my post. NCPA purports itself to be an objective research and analysis organization. In fact, that's not true. To show something to be a lie is not an ad hominem attack. Try to understand the difference, won't you?
No, YOU need to understand the difference. NCPA does very high quality research, like it or not. If you are going to call their work a "lie", you need to post substantial refutations. You did not even attempt to post a solid sentence, let alone a quality report. You simply said "NCPA! Exxon! Therefore lie!"
Exxon has a vested interest in ensuring that the demand for its product -- oil -- stays high and, consequently, has an interest in discrediting and otherwise attacking what it perceives to be threats to that demand. The NCPA is funded, in large part, by Exxon. They are not funded to do objective research -- they are funded to produce papers that call into question the idea that global warming can (and must) be addressed, particularly by reducing the production of greenhouse gases, which are a necessary by-product of what Exxon sells.
You need to come up to speed on the latest psychological research. Here are the two important conclusions. 1: You are far more biased than you think. 2: Everyone else is far LESS biased than you think. While money has an influence in research, it is pretty small and on the margins. In any case, the alarmists have all sorts of vested interests in GW, too. Simply "being right" often outweighs economic considerations, especially the exceptionally tangential ones that you are trying to point out at NCPA. A worker at NCPA has little financial interest in the subtleties of the data as compared with not being proven wrong concerning something one has been arguing for or against for years.
As for basing your opinion on critiques of the movie, having seen the movie, as well as having read the critiques, in most cases I have to ask myself what movie the critics saw, because most of the critiques either blew some minor detail completely out of proportion, or criticized points that either were not brought up in the movie, or criticized the exact opposite of the argument being made in those points.
Which is why I put more stock in the postive reviews, often which are making claims that go far beyond the science. Do you think Roger Ebert is honestly depecting the movie? Because he made anti-science claims in his review (by saying things were sure that surely are not). Either Gore misled these people or he misled himself.
Excpet that breaking off or sliding into the ocean is more than likely caused by, yes, melting. Sheets of ice that have been there for thousands of years don't just randomly decide to take a walk.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I don't know how that makes anything I said 'Wrong'.
What I said is that we don't know it's being caused by human beings. It seems a logical assumption, but too many people have money invested and hence are fighting that conclusion.
However, it is happening, period, and it will screw us up unless we can figure out how to stop it, no matter what the cause is. We know the earth's temperature will go down if we reduce the CO2. Q.E.D.
That's all anyone should say about global warming. Anything else introduces the possiblity of debate.
See, that way it doesn't matter if it's the CO2 that's making it warmer, or some fictional sun temperature increase, or a natural climate change. Earth warming=Will kill us. Less CO2=Earth gets cooler.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I have found irrefutable proof of global warming!
Support the FairTax
Are there factors besides human activity? Probably. But human activities are the most closely correlated to global warming. So unless you think it's just a fantastic coincidence that is taking place a million times faster than most geologic change, or that global warming is somehow causing Humans to burn more coal, all you are left with is that Humans are the primary cause. After all, we've over DOUBLED the amount atmospheric CO_2 since the start of the industrial revolution. Is blaming a one degree change on ourselves so ludicrous?
It certainly is worth considering how to survive a warmer planet, but it involves a very loose definition of the word "survive". Billions will be displaced, starve, die of malaria, etc. But given the way that the world's top polluters are sticking their heads in the sand and refusing to even consider the risks we're facing, real estate in Nunavut (and the landmines, shotguns, and razorwire to keep it) are looking pretty good. Maybe near the artic coast.
In any case, prevention is easy. Install CO_2 scrubbers on the goal and gas plants. Take existing SUVs away from spoiled brat assholes who've never driven outside of the city in their life -- an electric SUV would probably satisfy their idiocy. Put solar panels on every rooftop, wind turbines all over coasts and mountains, etc. Plant trees (good ones, not fiber farms), stop clear-cutting quite so extensively. It's far cheaper than finding new homes for every single person who lives on the coast and then trying to find a way to feed them all with land that is no longer arable. Rainforests and jungles look nice, but they don't produce much in the way food -- not on the scale we require, anyway.
Incidentally, examining an elephant by looking at it's tail will certainly tell you quite a bit -- particularly when you notice the asshole on the end of it, and realize that being so close to an elephant's asshole isn't wise unless you're particularly fond of being buried in feces. Actually, you seem to have stumbled upon a fantastic metaphor for global warming. We can't see the whole elephant yet, but we're getting pretty close to the asshole. We have enough information to know that the asshole is a bad place to be.
In any case, nonsense about geologic timescales is just a cop-out.
This will need quite a few nuclear reactors, solar panels + most of us will go to work by bicycle.
More nuclear power plants aren't really needed, as it is now there are techniques that will reduce the use of fossil fuels. A simple change in light bulbs reduces the electricity used in building. All of my bulbs are cfls, compact florence lights, that use 1/4 the power and provides the same amount of light as a regular incandescent light, of course the light from them has a different effect on film than incandescent lights. New appliances are also more energy efficient and can be made even more so. For instance look at refrigerators and freezers. On most the compressor and motor is in the back on the bottom. However both compressors and motors create heat and heat rises, so when they operate the heat goes through what is being cooled thus requiring more energy to be used. Some companies, like Sunfrost manufacture refrigerators and freezers with the compressor and motors on top, so they are more energy efficient. More energy efficient tips can be picked up through magazines like Solar Today , Home Power , and Natural Home and Garden as well as several others. Those who live off the grid by generating the power they use use these techniques as well as others. Many other things can be done commercially and industrially to reduce power needs as well. Natural Capitalism documents case studies of how different businesses have reduced their energy as well as raw material needs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I've heard this perspective that explains a lot to me:
Remember how the climatologists were predicting an ice age? They were on sound footing in many respects. We were due for a cold cycle, but they did not account for human greenhouse gas emissions. Humans affected the climate, but to the negation of that disaster.
Much like the people denying that Y2K would have happened, to businessmen and some observers, it looked like the scientists had been off base and don't need to be listened to now. And you can say that preventing an ice age is a good thing, too.
But in the meantime, CO2 and other greenhouse gasses have increased all the more and the temperatures are rising in contravention to the natural cycle. As the temperature rises, we're likely to see positive feedback loops: methane ice melting at the bottom of the oceans and getting into the atmosphere, unhealthy forests and soil emitting their stored carbon, so forth.
It makes a terrible lot of sense.
This is moral. By the time anyone would have to move because of GW, they would have had ample warning before they choose their property. If you buy a house near the coast now, you should consider potential GW affects when purchasing. This should lower the value of these homes.
So a conservative can't like Beatles music? I think you are the rube.
Even their deaths would be barely a blip on any serious cost-benefit analysis. Having to move would be orders of magnitude less. They have plenty of time before their speck of rock goes under that they can use to adapt.
The essay in question was looking at a sample of peer reviewed research. They were not claiming that there are no dissenting publications, there certainly are. They were simply making the point that the consensus for anthropogenic warming is very strong. As in any other dispute that revolves around interpretations of statistical data, consensus is by no means a guarantee, but it is frequently the smart way to bet. The original essay (which was not peer reviewed, but an invited essay) was in Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686
I believe that there is something to the Global Climate Change, of which Global Warming is but one symptom, but there are just too many variables to have hard proof of what is causing it.
But why does Al Gore have to be the one to present this?
I really really REALLY hate Al Gore.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Even their deaths would be barely a blip on any serious cost-benefit analysis. Having to move would be orders of magnitude less. They have plenty of time before their speck of rock goes under that they can use to adapt.
And who's the ones who's going to be paying to have some people move? The ones being displaced? And why should they have to adapt, majority rules? I seem to recall someone once saying something about the "tyranny of the majority".
FalconShould there be a Law?
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/02/16/braa sch-tuvalu/
There are countries that could dissapear in our lifetimes, as well as coastal cities.
If sea levels go up one or 2 meters cities like London (pop 8 million) could be floded under one or two meters of water.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... as predicted by global warming models is not helping.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
While the deniers (which is the only name they deserve) have no credible eveidence to back up their assertions and are normally paid by oil companies (the same companies with good connections regarding the Iraq mess, quelle surprise), the people worried about global warming keep presenting believable evidence that paints a complete picture (ice cores in the poles and glaciers, sea levels, climate models, temperature measures, CO2 measurements and correlations with human created CO2, etc.) about a very worrying situation.
Your bashing of some global warming whistle blowers as anti-human can be qualified of charming, even cute.
Your bashing in the base of anti-western biases are completely ludicrous. Most people worried about global warming point to the emerging industrial nations as a major concern, but when one nation alone produces 25% of CO2 and does precious little about it, protests about such state of affairs may appear as anti-western to the unsuspecting or the malicious.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Everybody have biases. Bumpety, upety, boo!
But while the "left wing" institutions go, pull cores of ice from glaciers, and measure levels of CO2 in order to understand the current state of affairs, I don't see much more than defensive mumbo jumbo from non specialists whoe patrons are the people that stand to loose the most if strict CO2 controls are imposed.
And the fucking polar bears are drowning. I gues you will claim that is a great PR move by the global warming whistle blowers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Tell us wise guy how the polar bears drowning, the guy in Tuvalu whose country may be submerged or the victim of the latest mega hurricane stand to win from this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... when I see one.
CO2 produced by human activity is neatly followed by unusual (as in compared against thousend of years of measurements via CO2 trapped on ice in glaciers) raise in athmospheric CO2 levels that you can't find elsewhere in the previous 10000 years.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Global warming is a factual thing.
Get over it.
And just in recent months the nature of human influence in this process has been decidedly settled. We are responsible for it. Period.
Where you get all this mumbo-jumbo about "hypothesis" and "educated guesses" is a mystery.
There are loads of peer reviewed studies that conclude pretty much the two facts outlined above, so as far as I am concerned you are in the same breadth as flat earth believers and holocaust deniers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I dare you here.
Name those climatologists. If there are that many surely it will be a piece of cake to name a few.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are plenty of energy sources that are not based in CO2, also many countries are not even thinking about energy conservation (the amount of energy wated in the US is obscence).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
1.- Who gave your country the right to institute democracy by force, killing directly or indirectly thousends of innocent people in the process? By all acounts Bush has fucked up Iraq. Call it an opinion all what you like, the fact is that a country that was relatively prosperous and no longer a threat to anyobody has become a nest for terrorists, may disinitegrate and has thousend of its citizens wipped out of the map without the minimum decency of being accounted for by the invading forces (as mandated by the conventions of war and common decency).
2.- You may agree here then that Bush should not be taking state resources (how do you call them? National Guard?) into Iraq I suppose. N.O. was partiallly ill prepared because Bush stretched resources on its little imperial adventure in the middle east that would have been otherwise used to provide relief in N.O.
3.- If you don't read enough about politics and current affairs do not blame the guys on the Internet for your lack of interest. The interview mentioned was widely publicized, and the best Bush could come up with was the fish incident (during a presidency that has being perhaps on of the most significant ones since the Vietnam war). That is fact, no Internet fiction.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
How much time do we have to waste refutting people that say the Earth is flat and the centre of the Universe?
Sorry, but people insisting that global warming is a myth and that humanity's role on it is a minor one, specially if they have a naked obvious interest in saying so, don't deserve any serious consideration.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Stop spreading it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... we will live in a less poluted world.
If the poluters win, we may have global warming and its catastrophic consequences.
Sorry mate, easy choice.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Saludos.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Data is reinterpreted, we have better models now.
And the fucking polar bears are drowning, the glaciers are shrinking all around the world.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You can keep quoting as much as you want an article that has proben to be incorrect.
3 decades of research and the overwhelming evidence should make any sane individual reach the correct conclussion.
If you wish to bury your head in the sand under the flimsy excuse of an old article, do so, but wyou will be told the ignorant twit you are everytime you share your poor insichgts on this matter.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Into pushing a sleazy and obvious PR plant on behalf of energy companies panicked by the publicity surrounding Al Gore's movie about global air pollution. Tom Harris of High Park Group (www.highparkgroup.com) the author of the letter to the editor cited and posted, is just a PR guy from a PR firm getting paid to do PR work like this for clients his company's website will not name. Clue No. 1: The "piece" Mr. Harris wrote is not a news story. It is a "guest column." Anyone can write and submit a "guest column" to a newspaper, even a column claiming the Earth is flat and 6,000 years old. Most get published. They are not news stories. They are nothing more than a letter to the editor that runs between 500-750 words. Clue No. 2: Mr. Harris is not a reporter nor a journalist. He is a PR flack who works for a PR company whose sole business is promoting the objectives of their anonymous, paying clients. Clue No. 3. Mr. Harris' letter-to-the-editor conspicuously fails to mention which corporations paid him to write and submit the piece. Mr. Harris' PR firm's website (High Park Group) fails to name any of the company's clients. Most PR companies are oozing with glee to tell you (the website visitor) whom their company represents as clients. Kool references = more business. High Park Group, in contrast, are err ... quite secretive about whom they work for.
Clue No. 4: Follow the dollar. Mr. Tom Harris was paid to write and submit for publication this "guest column". Who paid him to write it? Who told him what to write in it? Who told him what not to write in it? Mr. Harris does not say. Nor does his own company's website say whom they work for.
Clue No. 5: If it smells like rotten meat, it probably isn't good to eat. This one really stinks up the joint. Yum Yum.