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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."
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.
This really makes no sense: a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science
What? If they are scientists, and they "know" something, then surely they must have some very solid scientific evidence for their assertion, and thus should feel comfortable publishing it in a scientific journal. I'm always skeptical of claims that hundreds or thousands of supposedly respectable scientists hold a non-mainstream view but can't express it because some shadowy cabal is forcing them to stay quiet.
If they have solid scientific evidence to refute the solid scientific evidence in support of global warming, then they should publish it. If they don't, then as scientists they should know better than to spout off without any proof of their claims.
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
... 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.
There's no conclusive proof that smoking causes cancer either, but there is strong evidence.
From the grandparent: This really makes no sense: a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science
From the parent:
I'm always skeptical of claims that hundreds or thousands of supposedly respectable scientists hold a non-mainstream view but can't express it because some shadowy cabal is forcing them to stay quiet.
From me: There's a lot of difference between publishing (which is what very many scientists do) in reputable journals, and stating things publicly. There shouldn't be. But even people with open access to journals can pick and choose about which evidence to support. Just because one faction is outspoken and has flashy "evidence" to support a view, and another faction has supposedly solid evidence to support a contrary view but stays relatively quiet does not mean, unfortunately, that the better evidence will win. It means that people will hear the loud, flashy stuff, and (for the people who have a sense of curiosity, but perhaps not a driving need to delve into the literature on their own) just wonder why the other side hasn't said much: Gosh, perhaps the flashy, outspoken side IS right. Why haven't I heard much from the contrary viewpoints?
I'm always skeptical of claims that hundreds or thousands of supposedly respectable scientists hold a non-mainstream view but can't express it because some shadowy cabal is forcing them to stay quiet.
There are some topic that are just off limits for political reasons. Look at the debate over the Bell Curve or Holocaust revisionism. It doesn't matter that the proponents are ultimately wrong, what's important is that they aren't even allowed to publicly state their positions.
Climatology is a field in which you will get less money if you say that everything's ok. No one gives a damn if the world is fine. People donate huge sums of money to save the world.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Those opposed to the idea of global warming have to responsiblity to do anything here.
Yes they do. They have to point to flaws and holes in the current theory, otherwise they're just gasbagging.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans is showing a rapid upward trend. The polar ice caps are melting due to temperature rises. The sea level is rising due to melting polar ice and thermal expansion of the oceans. The evidence for this is readily available.
There, I just proved global warming.
Now it's up to you to disprove it.
Absolutely. I attended a lecture at the Tyndall centre, Manchester a few weeks ago. In a room full of climate change experts, in the UK centre for climate change research, nobody was even remotely sceptical about the realism of Global Warming.
Without going into my opinion on this matter at all... have you listened to yourself?
You went to a room filled with "climate change experts." By this very definition, you're talking about people who believe in global warming ("climate change"). And then it's supposed to mean something that none of them is skeptical about global warming?
So, I went to church last week and was in a room with a bunch of experts on religion. None were remotely skeptical about God. Therefore, he must be real.
Right?
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?
No it's not. He cites a few sources, and uses phrases such as, "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" to puff up the claims. Claims coming from a source who doesn't seem to even publish his own research for peer review. How is he even remotely considered a credible source? This is what the industries who pollute the most want everyone to believe. They have all sorts of "scientists" making statements to the press about how their research doesn't support global warming theories, yadda yadda. But since they aren't allowing their research to be peer reviewed (assuming they've even done any research) why should we believe them over the ones that are peer reviewed?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
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.
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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?
Sure you can measure it and determine any change, but that doesn't tell you what caused that change. The unfortunate thing about climatology is that we can't do any simple experiments to test the individual factors to determine which are really important.
See the point is this... Yes, global warming is probably occurring. (If by "global warming" you mean the average measured temperature at certain locations on the globe measured over a significant period of time, say thirty years, has increased.) Then yep, I wouldn't bet against you that you could find such a location.
The news here is:
What the climatologists are saying is: No, no and no.
I am so sick of listening to how mankind is the cause of everything. How our actions are so important. Here's the deal people... We as a race of beings are totally insignificant. period. We possibly could change the climate of the world in a rapid fashion if that was the sole goal of all humanity. But one random belch of unusual solar activity or a volcanic eruption could undo all our efforts, or do the job far better, in half the amount of time. Frankly the ball of rock that we cling to, and the universe in general, does not care or notice that we exist regardless of anything that we do.
So, my point is: NO. it is not too late for this argument.
(But I really like the boat cliche, the absolute assertion and the citation of a known heavily biased publication to make for what you thought was a conclusive argument.)
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
To be fair, the scientists this article is talking about are not actually claiming that the Earth is warming. They are just pointing out that there is no more evidence for the hypothesis that it has been caused by rising CO2 levels, than there is for the hypothesis that it is caused by normal cycles in the sun, or that it is caused by the falling number of pirates.
They accept that temperatures are increasing. They don't deny that it is a problem. They are questioning the way politicians are launching on a popular mission to tackle a problem we do not yet understand (although the article fails to make that point clear).
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.
Yes - let's curb our CO2 production for now, but let's not just assume we have the problem under control and put all our eggs in the one basket.
Your post has not been modded up but your incorrect parent has been modded up as insightful. The thing is, both of you are half-right.
;)) but within the context he's right, in sponsoring certain bills (I don't recall them now) and so forth. However he hypes up his puny contributions which really, in the face of Tim Berners-Lee's contributions, compared to Gopher, Marc Andreessen and Jamie Zawinski's browser (Mosaic), and the first commercial ISPs, are far, far overblown.
The fact is he did make the claim, but not in reference to actually creating the technology but in popularizing its use within Congress. Taken out of context it's easy to say that Gore is a boob (and he very well may be but he's been on Futurama so he's cool in my book! I admit I'm biased by Futurama.
Either way, making fun of Al Gore's statement is funny and it always will be. It really is the web browser and businesses' embracing the web which popularized the Internet and led to what we have today, aside from the infrastructure itself.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Earth has been warm, Earth has been cold. It was doing this long before we arrived. It will keep doing it long after we are gone.
First, Earth's construction contains a large amount of radioactive materials which during Earth's formation became largely concentrated at the Earth's core where they provide a good amount of energy to keep the core warm. So we generate our own heat.
Second, Earth has a moon which orbits and causes tidal forces to stretch and squash the Earth and provide more energy input.
Third, the construction of the Earth is rocky crust on gooey molten lava over a solid core. It moves this way and that, the crust carried along in directions ruled by convection currents, gravitation, and inertia just to name three. In some places crust goes back down and melts and others new crust pops up. Some of it is above the sea...
Fourth, Earth is covered in oceans. These take warmth from the Earth and even more so warmth from the sun, and convey it this way and that, flowing around the crust that sticks up above the waters. Once, Antarctica received warm waters from up north at the equator, but finally broke free from its connection and once encircled by the ocean on all sides, was cut off from the warmth and is now indefinitely cold.
Fifth, the Earth teeters this way and that with varying eccentricity of orbit, inclincation, and even magnetic field. Sometimes one hemisphere is at maximum summer exposure when the planet hits closest approach to the sun. Sometimes it is winter at farthest reach.
Sixth, the construction of Earth allows for all sorts of chemicals to be tossed about by the natural forces of the world, such as methane, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and so on. Rocks absorb some compounds, oceans others, other times things are released. Some are greenhouse gases, some aren't.
Sometimes it gets cold, the oceans lower as water locks up and former sea beds become swamp become grasslands become forests become grasslands become swamp become sea beds again as the warmth comes back.
Sometimes it gets very warm to the point that much life dies off.
It's been doing this since long before us and will do it long after. It is the height of anthrocentrism to assume that Earth inherently is at our mercy. More the other way really. Sooner or later volcanos will explode wiping out whole continents, continents will shift and Japan will go squish between North America and East Asia as the Pacific narrows, other places will open up rifts and flood by ocean. The *still ongoing* ice age will bound out of the interglacial into a glacial period, then an interglacial, and some day when the continents are aligned just right the ice age will end altogether and Earth will be warm.
Earth is going to do whatever Earth is going to do. There's been pasts of violent weather enough to make right now look like a calm spring afternoon and other quiescent times of endless calm spring afternoons.
But that doesn't sell books and movie tickets does it? Doesn't get people elected. Stupid does though. Stupid gets books and movies sold and gets politicians elected. Thank goodness for them it is the second most common element after hydrogen. Pity for us that Earth was cursed with so damn much of it.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
(i'm the AC above - forgot to log in. dork.)
there's a little something missing in your analogy. the experts you mention must be insanely knowledgable about their fields such that they know not just the base fact, but also the cause, the methodologies, and the cures. i could go a paragraph for each, but let's just look at the radiologist...
His job is not just to say "your leg is broken." it's to figure out where, why, and how badly, and to advise your Attending Physician on reasonable cures. Is this a break that can easily be set, requiring little more than a cast and some aspirin? Or are you in need of more invasive surgery, a few screws, and a lifetime of setting off metal detectors? The radiologist doesn't necessarily decide this, but his report detail is crucial to your attending.
From the perspective of watching you hobble into the hospital, five radiologists will all decide that you have a broken leg. From their own anecdotal experience, all five will have differing opinions of the severity and of the treatment. One will tell you that since you can still walk (however poorly), it's not bad and you just need some anti-inflammatories and bed rest, and that the hairline fracture will heal itself. Another will decide your distinctive gait betrays a severe fracture with nerve damage, and you are at risk of losing your leg if not rushed into surgery immediately. With all likelihood, however, these experts will probably agree on all counts after looking at the X-Ray.
When it comes to climate change, Climate Change Experts in 2006 are a lot like these radiologists before the X-Ray. None of the doctors disagreed about whether your leg was broken - they differed on the severity and treatment. CCEs don't doubt the existance of climate change or global warming, but there is a tremendous amount of discourse about the causes and cures. We have at least three possible causes, all of which have mounds of evidence to support them.
woof!
- Mankind's desire to blame itself for this occurrance is, I think, I misplaced attempt to delude ourselves into thinking we are more powerful than we really are.
- While you personally may be convinced, I and a host of climatologists are not and I would thank you to stop spending my money on your fantasies.
- even if it is occurring, you, me, them... we'll all be dead before it's a real problem.
Somehow, this is all about fear and foot dragging - how can you not see the staggering advances in clean technology that are possible if we put our minds to it? Why such a defeatist, can't do attitude?Thank you for your attempt at global armchair psychology. Please look at this graph from the NOAA.
Fantasies? Strong words! Would you care to identify this "host" of climatologists for the rest of slashdot? I wonder why they have no peer-reviewed publications in the last 3 years? Must be the bias of their peers. Yeah, that's it.
Yes, like I said above, "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.
(I really don't have the time or energy to personally argue this with you - I apologize in advance.)
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
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
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.
. . .the only thing ever proven in science is that a model is wrong.
Disproving a positive is not the same thing as proving a negative.
Scientific theory is not based on proven negatives, it is based on positives which it has been impossible to refute.
You are mixing up your logical concepts. Mind your pees and ques.
KFG
No, in fact there really isn't that much disagreement among the climate science community about causes - anthropogenic emissions are nearly universally acknowledged as a very important contribution to the current warming trend. There is, however, an active effort by people opposed to any common-sense measures to mitigate the risks to make distinctly minority viewpoints appear common. This is abetted by our media's desire to play up any controversy. As in "Is global warming real? Tonight at 11 we find out ask our viewers. We report, you decide."
We have, they have, and their cases have been picked apart, over and over again. There is only a finite amount of time and manpower available for discussing issues, and so inevitably one has to prioritize. Issues that have already been beaten to death are naturally going to be deprioritized so that more productive topics can be attended to instead.
Or to put it another way, the Holocaust deniers have the right to spout their nonsense as much as they like (in the US, anyway) to anyone who wants to listen, but they don't have the right to perpetually DOS everybody else's brain cycles with their spam.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
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
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
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?
such as the temperatures recorded at sites that used to be in rural areas, but are now in suburban or urban areas, due to the growth of cities.
The heat-island effect has been well-handled since the mid-90's. There was a period of about five years where satelite measurements and ground measurements were inconsistent, but now multiple methods, including ice core data, are consistent.
One of the cardinal diagnostics of a crank is that they bring up past disputes and problems as if they had never been resolved, and refuse to look at the details of how they were resolved.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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?
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.
Like any editor, I can "ban" whoever I want. Freedom of speech does not obligate anyone to give you a podium. And like any good editor, I exercise the obligation to filter for my readers.
When has sincerity become a barometer of fact? I'm not sure you're serious, but I'll answer as if you were. If the speaker is insincere, that is a really strong indication that you should question the message and look for what they have to hide. Sure, a sincere speaker can be wrong. But if only funded speakers are taking a particular position, that generally means that someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.