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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.
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.
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?
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.
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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?
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
(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
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.
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.