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BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias
Amtiskaw writes "Discussion of climate change is rife with claims and counter-claims of partisanship and bias. Some of the most serious of which being that the scientific community is smothering more skeptical research in the field. Now the BBC is asking for evidence of this self-censorship. From the article:
'Journals are meant to publish the best research irrespective of whether it accepts that the sky is blue, or finds it could really be green ... So the accusations that all is not well at the heart of climate science, and that censorship is rife in organisations which award research grants, the editorial boards of journals and the committees of the IPCC, should be examined seriously.
Readers are asked to submit evidence of bias, which the the BBC will then investigate.'" Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.
*THUNK*
* AKAImBatman's forehead has hit the desk
Hemos, the entire point of an investigation like this is to uncover if such counter-claims actually exist. If they are being stifled, then you probably wouldn't know about them. Why? Because they're being stifiled.
If such an investigation finds no hidden counter-claims, then we will know for a fact that the claims of stifling are overblown. In that case you may freely state that Lomborg is leading the charge against the current scientific position, and that no other counter-claims exist. But by making presupositions in the story, you are biasing your readership to the outcome. Which could have negative effects on getting the truth out should the BBC find evidence that climatologists are self-censoring their own.
I realize you were trying to be helpful by sharing the information you do know, but journalistic integrity requires that you not make judgements until such an investigation is done. In other words, there are times that it's best to just report the news.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st279/
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
If the news is bad, then those reporting it must have something wrong with them - right?
Why ask readers to submit evidence of bias? Why would they be more likely to find such evidence than scientists making counter-claims? This will probably result in nothing more than readers submitting every article on climate change that they disagree with.
Some attitudes replaced or by cgi optimizes
Best according to what criteria?
echo $SIGNATURE
It seems to me that modern news outlets are far too obsessed with presenting a "fair and balanced" viewpoint. Sometimes information doesn't have to be presented with a neat and comprehensive list of counter arguments.
As I argued here, you don't know if there's bias until you see scientists making valid predictions and still being shut out. What counts as a valid prediction in climate sciences? No one is going to say that "next year, global temp. readings will increase by 1 degree". No one will even predict the *sign* of the change next year. What they will predict is trends over e.g., the next five years. But then, you have to gather a statistically significant number of these to rule out luck. So, you'd need to get those right several times to validate your model. Accounting for varing CO2 emissions, of course, complicates it. I doubt there's enough evidence time-history (following a previous prediction) to falsify anyone's theory. That's the problem.
Btw, the summary implies Lomborg denies that climate change is real. That's not true. In The Skeptical Environmentalist, his claim is that the media misrepresent the various probabilities of the different scenarios, and that the costs of significant changes (like Kyoto, and by extension, anything more stringent than Kyoto) are not justified by the benefits they would yield. That's not the same as denying the existence of climate change.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
He never really did, just that the evidence was inconclusive. Now he believe global warming to be real (the evidence has become stronger), Lomborg just claim that adapting to a changing climate makes more economic sense than trying to control the climate.
Comparing the cost of trying to adapt to a changing climate with the cost of trying to prevent climate change is certainly a worthwhile, especially as global warming based on past actions is already inevitable.
A combination of a bunch of people who desperately wish it were not true - combined with big business who are happy to proclaim that it's not ("Clean Coal! It's the way of the future!") - makes for unhappiness for scientists who are trying to shout things that people don't want to hear. Combine that with science's tendancy to carefully fence every claim with statements of experimental error and other things that will forever prevent us from being 100% certain - and you have a climate where any idiot can make a name for himself by saying that global warming is bunkum.
That respectable scientists feel hostile to those people is not at all unreasonable - we're all human after all.
But as I always like to say - if there was a 10% chance that a disease would kill you, you'd still want the doctor to treat you for it - even if it cost 10% of your income to pay for the medicine.
Climate is an always-changing parameter, and it's difficult to say if the actual climate is abnormal or if it just is between the normal parameters, seeing it in a long period of thousands of years. This is because we have so little *rigurous* information about how the exact temperatures, etc were 400 years ago in some point of the map.
That said, it's imposible for us to know if the earth experimented the same changes than today many years ago. On the other hand, there is no doubd about the destructive action of the human hand in the climate, so where is the truth? Of course, the media will always prefer the apocalyptical view, because it sells best.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Of course, evidence will be provided. Bias will be shown. And then the Office of Officious Stifling of Problematic Counter-Claims will whip into action, after tea, and promptly stifle the case. Unless, of course, no evidence of bias is presented.
Should no evidence be provided, the Bureau of Studious Demogoguery will fly into the thick of it, again, after tea, and immediately claim that lack of evidence is proof that the OOSPCC pre-stifled the evidence. At which point, the Ministry of Moderated Judgementalism will, uncharacteristically before tea, issue a statement that they will review, ponder, and further investigate the possiblity of a need to issue a further statement at some future date, as yet unspecified, as to whether or not to take the BSD's statement at face value, or have tea.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Many who suggest that western nations are not the primary cause of climate change are described as if they deny there is any climate change. Thay is unfair and inaccurate, and often what happens when Bjørn Lomborg is mentioned. You may want to look at the call by (un)Scientific American magazine for articles that "debunked" Bjørn Lomborg conclusions in his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist". If they were interested in science the call would have been for articles about the research involved, for or against.
No brain, no pain.
TFA is pretty clear that it wants readers with first hand experience (i.e., scientists) to submit this evidence and not just submit articles about such bias that they may have read elsewhere. Doesn't mean that the BBC won't get plenty of those articles, but they have been quite clear about what they want and what they don't want.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of."
I don't see the value in posting an article that asks for evidence and than immediately countering it with "well, there really isn't any".
That represents at least some of the bias that the BBC is concerned the argument is "rife" with.
Or was this just supposed to be a rhetorical topic. There's more I could say but I'll leave the rest to those more eloquent than I.
clifgriffin > blog
Look, I happen to lean more towards believing in human/industry induced global warming than not, but I really want to see more of this type of open-minded thinking which presumably (hopefully) will permeate the BBC studies. It's the only way we're ever going to get a handle on this issue. Despite what Al Gore would have you think it is not a black-and-white issue.
why? forty-two.
So the BBC wants evidence of changing climates between Microsoft and Google? Oh, boy. I used to remember predicting the weather was a simple affair: stick your head out the door and determine if it will rain or not. Now you have to worry about whether it's raining Microsofts and Googles.
Not!
the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real
That's scarcely the issue. The stuff that generates the most friction are the discussions over who exactly, if anyone, is responsible for what part of things that may or may not have any bearing on anything that will amount to actual problems, and what policy/economic changes are or aren't worth the cost, heartache, investment, and so on. Or, is the human component of this lost in the noise, or enough so that crippling economies isn't the right way to look at changing it, etc. Of course climate changes. It always has and will. This whole topic will be a lot easier to discuss if folks don't use the phrase "climate change" to mean the same thing as "damaging global warming that some people in certain countries with certain habits are causing more than others and could change if they only switched to hydrogen which we'll all pretend doesn't require other energy sources to put to work blah blah."
People project whatever they want to see associated with "climate change," to the point where it's a useless phrase. What part of climate change? Which part that would or wouldn't be happening in much the same way anyway, or which does or doesn't have some benefit for one group that outweighs something happening elsewhere? It doesn't matter what the answers to those things are, just that they are way more complex than "accepting" or not that the climate changes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Love the wiki.i c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_skept
No really. It's one thing to say "wear short-sleeves and such," it's another to try and deal with rising water levels.
If the water levels rise then you have to either start considering evacuating places shorelines or try to protect them with dikes, damns, etc. And after the "Katrina" people are going to be very picky about how it's done, as one good storm could then destroy everything.
Granted, such a thing would happen over a LONG period (decades, centuries?) but I can't imagine protecting all of the populated coastal areas be considered "cheap."
"Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686/
Lomborg does not claim that anthropogenic global warming does not exist. He claims that we should be using a different strategy to overcome it, or rather not overcome but live with it.
At least, that's what he said in the Skeptical Environmentalist. He may have changed his mind since then.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
> Best according to what criteria?
Duh! Best according to it is GoodFact or BadFact. Remember, debate on the issue is now closed so any fact that doesn't support the Official State Truth is sedition against the State and blasphemy against Mother Gaia's wishes as She has revealed them to Al Gore. Any DoublePlus Ungood traitors trying to undermine the State must be hunted down, marked on a list to be shunned and defunded and if that doesn't solve the problem we will put em in reeducation camps after we decide it is Hatespeech.
Democrat delenda est
This is mostly a copy and paste from another of my earlier posts with a few edits
The overwhelming majority of scientists (who would describe themselves as working scientists versus simple degree holders in the field) are academics working in academic university environments, or even in the case of goverment or corporate research labs, are in the academic revolving door. It is no secret that major universities are basically immersed in left-wing culture both at the official level (such as having ethnic or women's studies departments, speech codes, etc) and at the unofficial level (such as student protest groups). So, these guys are working and living in what amounts to a left-wing echo chamber and anti-industrial environmentalism is a core tenet of modern leftist orthodoxy. People working in that enviornment can not help but have a certain amount of cultural bias. As in most social environments, there is great pressure to conform. I do not doubt that in some cases, non-conforming academics have been ostracized as cretins or kooks, denied tenure, and passed up for promotion. So it is not surprising that a "majority of scientists" would land of the left-wing side of any particular debate, given the implications of being on the "wrong" side.
Also, without accusing anybody of consciously cooking the data, its easy to see what you want to see in data when you have pre-conceived notions. I would say that even the questions researchers ask or don't ask (i.e. what they choose to subject to a study or ignore) is influenced by their preconceived cultural notions.
When somebody says "science is on our side", I basically evaluate it the same as if they said "the statistics are on our side" (especially if its based on statistical or computer models instead of "hard science" that is reproducable in the lab). When somebody says, "the majority of scientists" are on our side, they are just using a logical fallacy - appeal to authority.
As much as we would all like to believe that scientists are selflessly searching for the "truth", they have motivations similar to everybody else (greed, fame, power, money, personel vendettas, etc). They also are capable of political bias. These motivations and bias can color the "truth".Throw in grant money and the prestige of getting published in well-respected journals and the results can be toxic to "truth".
I personally believe that the warming trend itself is undeniable. The extent of it that can be blamed on man versus natural climatic cycles is debatable. There probably is an anti-industrial environmental bias built into most climatic studies conducted at any university or government institutions. All claims should be filtered and evaluated with that in mind.
BTW, this is one of the funniest links around that pokes fun at politicized Science They are from some radio ads that a lobbyist group ran in the Washington, DC market. Obviously biased themselves, but very funny.
There are two main problems I see with climate change science, one is that there is a belief that scientific consensus is the same as scientific proof (if this were true the world would have been flat in the 1400's) and the other problem is that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence.
." In many cases you could replace "Increase in Man made greenhouse gasses" with "Reduction in Pirates" and conclude that the world is warming because we lack pirates.
The fact is that even the evidence that shows we are undergoing a warming trend fails to demonstrate that this is a long term warming trend, that the warming trend is man-made, or that green-house gasses have had an impact on the temperature change. The argument is usually along the lines "We have demonstrated that the Earth's temperature has risen 1 degree in the past 100 years, and at the same time man-made green house gasses have increased 10 times so the impact from man made greenhouse gasses is
What really bothers me is that whenever anyone attacks a study that makes questionable claims people automatically question their motives; all good science can withstand attacks from anyone regardless of their motives. The fact that these studies are treated like they're glass really makes me doubt how valid they are.
Born Lomborg, the author of the Skeptical Environmentalist, that Hemos mentioned certainly does NOT deny that global warming is real. The best I can sum up his points are:
* The level of anthropogenic heating is unclear.
* Climate predictions routinely exaggerate changes or use worst case scenarios
* Cost calculations of warming frequently omit: benefits of warming (fewer people dying of cold weather, better crop yields), technological improvements, and behavior adaptation
* Given that the mechanisms driving warming (and there for the effectiveness of proposed solutions) is unclear, and the cost usually exagerated, it would be unwise to devote huge sums to this problem. Instead look for problems where the benefit is clear and a solution is available (such as providing clean water to the worlds poor) to spend this money on.
Anyone who is interested in this and other environmental issues must read his book. He set out years ago to debunk the claims of Julian Simon, and found himself changing his mind the more statistics he researched.
He does claim that everything is hunky dorry, or that there are no problems. What he advocates is a rational examination of problems and their costs so that we can evaluate the best course of action.
Spencer Ogden
Even the previous article was about climate change.
I predict that the tide of public opinion will change and get behind the effort to fix the problem when Polar Bears finally go extinct in the wild. That time is coming upon us rather quickly I'm afraid.
Personally, I think it's too late. We had our window of opportunity back in the 1980's - we ignored it and now it's too late. I'm 50 years old - it's not going to affect me - my son is 15 - he'll be affected. His children are going to be in deep trouble - and that thought upsets me greatly.
But there are limits to what one person can achieve - I already drive an efficient car - my house has about as much insulation as is reasonably possible - I buy energy efficient light bulbs and the best energy rating appliances. I could do better - but at some point, it's a law of diminishing returns. We need to find the 'low hanging fruit' - the best thing left to do is to get other people to dump their gas guzzlers, get low-energy flourescent lighting, stick an extra foot of insulation in their attics.
Nor is it green. The sky has no color. Only the light passing through the sky appears to be different colors (depending on the angle and composition of the atmosphere at the time of the viewing) to our eyes. Usually, on a clear day while the sun is high in the sky, that color is blue.
Now we need to see if we can figure out what's causing global warming on Mars. Maybe it's got the same cycle, which in turn might be based on, oh, I don't know,... What do the Earth and Mars have in common that might affect temperatures... the SUN?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Part of that was a turf war going on, with an economist moving in on the area covered by scientists. It is no surprise that Scientific American and The Economist took opposing sides in that discussion, each defending their own trade.
I've been to central Mexico last summer, and I wondered why all the remote temperature sensors were sitting next to hieroglyphics-branded AC units.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Risking the obligatory down-moderation for being "off-topic", even a quick trip to Wikipedia would show that there are a few more folks out there who have stated their opposition to the current 'consensus' on Global Warming, including those who doubt there is a global rise in temperatures, those who believe that there may be a rise in temperature but the cause is not properly explained, and those who have a problem with the current governmental frameworks (such as the Kyoto accord) that have been proposed or enacted to combat Global Warming.
The biggest problem I personally have with the whole Global Warming thing is that the whole thing has been simplified to "Man's carelessness and wanton capitalist greed is destroying the Earth, and we must rebuild or remake all of society now before the fuzzy bunny rabbits and cute black and white penguins all die." Nothing good ever comes from reducing something this complicated to a political bumper sticker--and while this is just one bumper sticker, the whole popular approach to Global Warming has been reduced to a political bumper sticker mentality.
Wait a second, Global Warming cannot be a purely natural cycle!!! I sold my SUV, stopped eating beef, and voted for Al Gore solely on the belief that those actions alone would help to turn things around!!! It can't be possible that corrupt scientists and politicians have duped me and suppressed any dissent on the matter! The United States Government does not suppress dissent!
Sarcasm aside, the idea that we cause Global Warming is just as absurd as the idea that we can stop it. Best we can do is adapt and invest in beach-front property on the Nevada border.
I think the key problem with climate change reporting is that it's portrayed as a "you're with us or with them" point of view and if you don't believe the popular dogma, you're one of "them". The problem is, there isn't only one question. Besides the "is it real?" and "are we responsible?" questions, there's also:
* If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).
Unfortunately, the issue has become so politicized that these other more important questions are being drowned out or viewed as "avoiding the real issue" by the dogmatists.
I never knew. I thought that every day we had the same temperature, humidity, etc.
Hmmm....I have to go back and revise my neopaleojooooconservative thinking.
Sounds like a voice of reason. The mere fact that we think we can control the climate is the real root of the problem. We can't control the weather; what makes us think we can control the climate? We can't predict the weather; what makes us thing we can predict the climate? Playing god is a dicey thing at best. Now, we can acknowledge that: 1) climate change is happening (it is), 2) we can come to a somewhat tenuous conclusion that CO2 has a, say, causal relationship (not absolute, but to a degreee). But: 3) to move from that to "knowing" the CO2 is to a high degree the cause, 4) to judging that this "cause" is a bad thing (change is always happening; therefore change is normal, not bad), 5) to judging that said change would be extreme enough to cause deaths (moreso than any other normal climatic change in the past 1,500 years), 6) and then even farther along to "knowing" we must immediately put in place an exceedingly expensive solution (understatement of the year) This is not good science. In fact, that are many benefits to global warming. There are much fewer benefits to global cooling. We should be happy that the former is happening rather than the latter.
A lot of people like to claim the sky is blue.
Yeah, I see a lot of blue up there right now, but there's a bunch of white there too, last night it was black with white dots (actually that's the dominant color this half the year), yesterday evening it was red, and often it is gray.
Lots of people insist the state of nature is invariably X.
Perhaps the earth, on average, has warmed slightly. It happens. Was a lot colder not that long ago, and most of the current (brief) warming seems related to cyclic natural activities.
It's also been a lot colder in some areas.
Things change. Cope. It's not Bush's fault.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
As a Dane (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=M%C3%B8 lleh%C3%B8j&oldid=46429241) I'm sure Lomborg is aware of the dangers of a rising water level.
ObSheesh: Sheesh!
It's not actually inevitable, per se, just very difficult to prevent in the short term.
In the long term, we have a lot of choices. As it turns out, reducing greenhouse emissions is quite probably better economically than blindly emitting as we currently are. (Exact models vary on that, naturally.) The cost of adapting is very high and the saving involved in not wasting so much energy are actually significant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
What I found shocking is that some of the same scientists who had funding ties to big tobacco and were saying that there was no evidence that smoking caused cancer are now the same scientists with funding ties to big oil and are claiming there is no proof of global warming.
It's the "man made" climate change that's disputed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/earth/07 co2.html?ex=1320555600&en=803028cb05066921&ei=5088 &partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
This is one of the few "mainstream" news stories I have seen that even acknowledges that there is legitimate debate on the topic.
I am no climatology expert, and I believe that corporations must be held accountable for their waste *regardless*. However, it appears that (as with most scientific knowledge) this theory is not proven, it is just very well supported (there is a big difference). I, for one, would like to see more published about legitimate climatology debate so that I learn more about it.
-- SJN
Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are;
then they are what? What did they do after "making more of the counter-claims"????
The BBC itself is not considered the most open form of media without some bias. How do we know that when they say they received no credible counter-claims, that they indeed are telling the truth?
is making more of the counter-claims then they are
Repeat after me: Effect amongst men, requires a then. Comparative man, will then use than.
Have you read my journal today?
I don't buy the "crippling economies" argument. Making the changes, whether needed or not, will not destroy the economy it will only force money to change hands. There are a lot of people that change would cost money (e.g., coal power plants) and there are a number of people that could make money off the deal (e.g., nulcear power companies, solar technology companies). Yeah, if in one day you decided that all things that might affect global warming had to stop instantly things would be bad, but that won't happen. All change will be phased in over a period of time, whether it is fast enough to solve the supposed problem or not.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Weather or not that Global warming is just a warm tend or will destroy the planet will not be decided in my life time or the next. I believe that the time spent on Global warming should be spent on problems we know we have and should fix like aids and third world country progression. We can play a waiting game on global warming and gather more data in the years to come but now it's a waste of time to make things up.
" I think that freedom is Americas biggest export. Atleast untill China can stamp it out for 20 cents a unit."
Well, they used to call it "Global warming" but then we found out that the earth is actually getting record cold temperatures. So naturally the solution (socialism, Kyoto) in search of a problem had to adjust the computer game model and say "we predicted that, too."
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I don't buy the "crippling economies" argument. Making the changes, whether needed or not, will not destroy the economy it will only force money to change hands.
... all of that stuff is not "accepted" as settled in any way that matters.
Relative to what I was talking about, it doesn't matter if you (or even I!) buy that argument. The point is that Hemos was speaking in terms of whether or not "climate change" has been "accepted" or not. That's such a gross over simplification as to be absurd, and more to the point, assumes that comments like the ones you just made don't need to be made, because - among smart people - it's all already been settled, and it's just the non-accepting idiots that are holding things up. The point is that conversations about economic impact (slight or devastating), whether China should be held to the same standards that, say, Germany is held, whether firing up lots of new nuke facilities despite the screaming intolerance of uneducated localities would actually make a difference
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Anyone else find it funny that the blurb immediately below this one is: Changing Climates for Microsoft and Google
Mod all "climate change deniers" down to -1 to prove that there's no censorship in the climate change discussion.
> It's funny that the BBC is asking for proof of bias when its tilted coverage of the Iraqi war led British soldiers to conclude that BBC stood for "Baathist Broadcasting Corporation".
And undoubtedly those soldiers have a completely unbiased view of the war.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Censorship" means literally "evaluation"; Roman Censors used to watch over the Republic's morals and had a few other duties (including the census). Of course we usually we refer to the case when speech, art or other forms of expression are evaluated and denied publication. This is bad as everybody has a right to speak, and evaluating cases in which this should not apply leads rapidly to those in charge abusing their power and silencing those who contest them.
However, in science there are serious evaluation guidelines. If claims are cooked up or not backed by data, they are just that. Can't take the heat, don't play the game.
As a side note, Lomborg is a cook.
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First of all, I"m a fan of Lomborg's work: I think a lot of resources are misspent in poor attempts to improve the environment, when those resources could be much better spent in if they carefully targeted the most critical environmental problems. But Lomborg's not a climate scientist. He doesn't do research on global warming. The BBC is asking about suppressing global warming research, which is an issue irrelevant to Lomborg. Calling Lomborg a "counter-claimant" in this context makes it look like he does research showing that there isn't global warming, which might be being suppressed. That isn't the case at all. He doesn't do climate research. He evaluates the state of the environment and makes economic arguments about where and how we should direct resources to acheive the biggest envionmental improvements for our efforts.
Even as an economist, he's not a "global warming counter-claimant," as he believes in global warming. As he says right up front in this Telegraph opinion piece, "Global warming is real and caused by CO2."
Lomborg's arguments don't attempt to be, and are not, relevant to the scientific debate about global warming. (The debate being exactly how much there is and what all is contributing to it in what ways, not whether there is any, which is pretty well settled.) He just argues about the costs and benefits of various scenarios for attempting to counter global warming. For example, his argument in the linked article is:
1. Climate scientists think that even worldwide adherence to Kyoto would make a tiny difference in the speed of global warming.
2. Kyoto adherence would be fabulously expensive.
3. For less than the costs of adhering to Kyoto, we could provide clean water, sanitation, and basic health care to every poor person in the world.
If those three statements are provably true, I think they would make a lot of people rethink what actions should be taken regarding global warming.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Indeed. Everyone else learned the lesson, and is zealously self-censoring.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
(and practically all scientific research reies substantially on state funding) ALWAYS leans in favor of the "do something" side of the question as opposed to the "do nothing" side.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Even Bush (you know, the Dark Lord of Evil) has said that the globe appears to be warming. (I will note that I have seen some discrepancies between air and surface temps but on the whole "warming" seems to be plausible.)
The only people that claim "contention" here are environmentalists desperately setting up strawmen to avoid the not-quote-so-simple-to-answer 'parts' of the "global warming" question:
- is the increase contributed by greenhouse gases (compared to natural cycles) significant? (I mean, if greenhouse gases are adding 0.1% to the net temperature gain over the next 100 years, that's NOT significant.)
- if it is significant, are the costs of attempted climate mitigation less than or greater than the costs of doing nothing?
- even if it is less, could that money be better spent mitigating some other human ill?
- even if it is less and there is nothing better to spend that money on, are we positive that the net result of global warming is bad?
- if one is convinced that it's significant, that the costs of mitigation are less than the costs of waiting, and that what's coming is bad and there is NOTHING we could better spend the money on....does it make sense that the first effort to cope with the problem should be an agreement OMITTING ENTIRELY the 40% of the Earth's population that are going to be the most critical causal actors over the next several decades?
The "global warming" question is only superficially and immediately about "is global warming happening?" The consequences, our actions, and the expected results are the crux of the question, and I haven't seen any data about this that's worth donkey spit - because frankly it's mostly guesswork and faith which, not being a member of that particular religion, isn't sufficient.
It's got to be nice for the environmentalists to have goalposts with wheels, no?
-Styopa
Those entitities really confused the Slash parser: here it is as html: The highest point in Denmark
There is in fact, to the contrary of common beliefs, no proven connection between CO2 emission/concentration and the global warming we now are experiencing. Being a physicist and realist Im very skeptical to people who are pushing the human related global warming theories. As a physicist I know the complex patterns and numerous sources which influence the climate. The inclination of earths rotation and its direction is constantly changing. The eccentricity of earths rotation around the sun also changes with time. Further we have complex patterns in the activity of the sun, both short and longterm. Earths changing magnetic field influences the creation of clouds and their altitude. All these interactions combined with earths own systems spells big trouble in pinpointing the rise in temperature as to human made effect. Lets compare this theory to another theory in modern science. String theory has become the new number 1# theory in physics. Despite the obvious limitations and the deficit in proof for this theory, this is the theory which receives the biggest grants. ALternative theories of the evolution of the universe have become ridiculed and underfunded. This has something to do with the coupling of physics and politics. String theory of today could best be described as a "modern day"-geocentric theory. A theory which grows ever more complex as we receive additional information. And until we have a shift to a new "heliocentric elliptical" way of thinking, a new theory alltogether, we will not move forward. This is an example of what happens when certain theories become the leading theories, the acceptet theories. This is also what has happened in climate research. Through politics, not science, the global warming has been made a human constructed effect. Usually people say: "well, you may be correct, but isnt it better to be preemtive, to treat the problem as if it is human made? Because we will probably not know." Well, yeah, of course. If you are one of these people who prays to god, not as an effect of his excistense, but as a "what if he excists". Well, this isnt praying.. This is real problems which we may have to handle, human made or not. Instead of using enourmous sums of money on research which is futile, one should instead start planning what to do if the climate change continues. This include building barriers, preparing to move people and other projects to tackle this problem.
To be fair, just about all of large-scale democracy is bumper sticker politics. One of the problems with scaling democracy is that everyone gets a vote, so everyone has to know about every topic in front of the government to be a good voter. As you have a bigger and bigger government with more things it is responsible for, the voters start losing any semblance of practical knowledge about various issues because they are spread too thin between doing their jobs and thinking about what is best for the government. Their interests remain local (taxes, education) and a smattering of national topics that may interest them and they have some opinion on. On those interests, they generally defer to what experts in the special interest groups say because if they are accountants, then they aren't doing climate research. All they want is to make sure that "there is an Earth for their children tomorrow".
Thus, you have bumper stickers providing canned ideas for people on complex topics. You have the media providing whatever brand of journalism you want to see. That is how people vote. People aren't so much "sheeple" as they are good-intentioned, but out of their depth.
Welcome to democracy for a 300 million person population.
Information always has an opinion and a perspective. This is hard to dismiss. However, the BBC seems to taking the argument that information is being suppressed, and asking for evidence. They are doing exactly what many of us should be doing.
If there is a breakdown in news, it is that we as a society (USA) have lost our ability to think critically, and to call BS for what it is. Intelligent design... Great, show proof in an established scientific manner, or lead me to your intelligent designer. Should you wish to live without science, do so in a respectable manner, like a Shaker (not that they do, they just make reasoned decisions about it).
Defining the playing field for these arguments is taking way too much effort.
A magnetophere. Humans living on it. A weather system. Being in the same orbit.
Fairly major things, I would say.
And if the sun is changing over a decadal rather than millenial period as it has before, where does that fit in to solar physics? Is the Sun about to go Nova?
sky is blue, or finds it could really be green ...
The onus is really on those who say the sky is falling and it's because of YOUR 4WD explorer and all those kids you cart around in it. My toyota and my "partner" are not to blame...
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
It's obvious to all climatologists (as well as to most other scientists, regardless of field) that the climate changes. I'm not talking geologic era, I'm talking about major changes within the lifespan of humanity.
Climate change is normal. But it's something the media can't seem to grasp.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
There aren't that many people denying that average temperatures have risen. There are plenty of people with differing answers to the above questions.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
"Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of."
e ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml. Don't just glance at the head; download the PDF and see what he's saying. Are there dissenters to this point of view? Sure there are. Did the United Nations cook the books on the evidence here? Yes, they did, and THAT ought to be a serious warning bell to anyone. Don't ignore this. WHY did the UN CHANGE the data to make global warming look worse than it is? This is a smoking gun. Even if you push it under the rug it's going to make an ugly lump.
Thus providing a perfect example of what the BBC is talking about. Even if you never take your eyeballs off slashdot itself, there is ample evidence to the contrary, including the very detailed analysis by Moncton: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
The issue here is not so much whether global warming is true. After all, we're coming off an ice age. At some level of course it's true. The issue is, Why does there seem to be a concerted push to make this a 'done deal' by people whose political interests would suggest they very nuch want it to be for their own agenda. The backlash to Moncton is interesting. It's similar to the Christian church demonizing Pan into Satan simply to gain control of he largely ignorant populace. A lot of the counter claims amount to argumentum ad hominem, an argument against the person, not the evidence. For all you folks who bristle every time someone calls Stallman a big fat smelly boy, well, this is the same thing.
If there are no alarm bells going off in your head over at least some of the issues raised by the dissenters, then you are already converted. If you believe the world was created on October 29, 4004 BC at 10:00 in the morning, there is nothing anyone can do to convince you otherwise. For the rest, you owe it to yourselves to take a dispassionate and serious look at what the dissenters are saying without letting your SUV-loathing get in the way. Let us all see what the issues are here without jumping on either extremist side.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
So, Hemos, how's that degree in climatology coming along?
For myself, I'm a bystander who's not really noticed much climate change during the 20+ years I've lived in the Southeast of the US (Atlanta, to be specific). Since all I have are my observations, and they seem to indicate a steady state, I refuse to be stampeded by appeals to authority or common practice, or by bandwagons.
The treatment Bjorn Lomborg received reminds me of Galileo before the inquisition. Taking that a little further, please enjoy your religion, but please keep it out of my face.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Despite what Dick Cheney would have you think it is not a white-and-black issue.
That's the largest fallacy continually presented in any climate-change (or otherwise controversial topics involving science) that "consensus" is necessary. Hint: it is NOT necessary. If 99.9% of reports say one thing, but only ONE says the opposite, but the SINGLE report is verifiable, and has no flaws, it INVALIDATES the rest of the body of knowledge. Usually it also has to address WHY the previous work was incorrect, what errors they made, etc, but the whole premise of the Scientific Method is of reproducibility, and verifiable results. The doctors who figured out that most stomach ulcers were the result of bacteria that could be easily treated with antibiotics was a discovery that flew in the face of 100s of years of data and "proof" that stress caused ulcers... but the bacterial cause hypothesis was proven right. It took a bit of time, but they were right.
I'll say it again: Science has nothing to do with consensus. All that is required to resolve different viewpoints is to find who's ignoring evidence, has bad evidence-gathering, or who's not following correct processes for analysis. Where there's conflict you have to address it head-on and find out who's right. You can't both be right, so conflict only means that somebody (or both) are not trying to find out WHY somebody has reached a conclusion, not just saying "well I have more people that agree with me, therefore I'm right." That's opinion, not science. If anybody EVER uses that argument, it proves that they are no longer using science. The ONLY place where there can be two viewpoints held scientifically that remain in conflict is where there remains significant uncertainty over the evidence itself, in which case the 3rd point of view "I don't know what's actually happening" is actually the most scientifically correct.
Lomborg didn't even go through the normal peer review channels, writing a book instead. That should always set up red flags about what he's saying.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you follow the link above to the IPCC wikipedia entry, you see that 1.5% of the scientists involved in the IPCC report believe it is biased.
The impression I get is that within the scientists who work in or near the field of climate support both the idea that human/industry induced global warming is happening and that it is bad for us.
But it is not a uniformly held opinion among those scientists.
I suppose a person for whom protecting the environment is an important value, they would like to err on the side of protecting the planet.
Another person for whom worldwide economic growth is an important value, they would like to err on the side of not burdening business interests before we are certain about the science.
There is a third group that combines the two and feels that there is money to be made in developing technology that reduces our greenhouse gas emissions.
I personally value protecting environment a bit more than economic growth, but I am turned of by a common
assumption amongst some environmentalists that business is synonymous with greed. We cannot all
get jobs working for non-profit corporations or live off the land.
One thing that was interesting to me is the quote:
"Since 2001, no climate scientists have expressed skepticism that warming, of the magnitude described by the IPCC, has occurred."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
But who do we email if we have evidence of news organizations purporting to uncover instances of research being stifled themselves stifling submissions of evidence of journals stifling inconvenient findings on climate research?
I hesitate to point out the obvious, but BBC has a favored side in this debate. The BBC has shown to be untrustworthy on a variety of issues.
Insitutional Bias is a fine thing to claim in say, Literary studies, or philosophy (a continental philosopher you say.. there's the door I say), but science generally (and this includes climatology) is a field where on earns street credit by conducting experiments which challange (and defeat) your own hypothosies.
Remember, Stephen Hawking's bet over whether one could trace the path of matter through a black hole? Steve said you couldn't track matter's course through the singularity, a competing physicist said you could.. fast foward a few years to Hawking hosting a big press event to report that he was wrong, and this other guy was able to prove it mathematically.
Granted, this is based on the assumption that climatology is a measurable and testable science - to which I reply: Sure, we cannot play with the atmosphere like we do with rocketry and electronics - but we can't play with passing matter through a black hole either. Mathematical models are very nearly the limit of our experimentation with the speed of light, string theory, macro-economics, and a hundred other fields. We cannot say that because we can't experiment "in the dirt" that you cannot conduct scientific investigations of climatology. Einstien (who some say was a pretty decent scientist) did almost all of his work in his head and on chalk boards. He came up with e=mc2 using mental models. He proved it with mathematics. It wasn't until years later that any of his hair-brained ideas could be verified in the dirt. Getting your hands dirty isn't science, thurough going investigative research is the bread and butter of advancing human knowledge, from Descartes to us, with love.
-GiH
That's why those wacky Danes are going to relax immigration requirements for folks with significant sub-saharan genetic content. Gotta start to grow heat resistant Danes!
But as far as I know, this has always been the case in Denmark. Care was taken in selecting where to inhabit, and eventually care was taken when adding further protection.
Elsewhere, places would have to start protecting places where it was never much of a concern; Eh, you should be high enough, don't worry about flooding. Civil engineers probably didn't take much care in designing towns in certain places.
In the end, this would be a world-wide concern spanning all landmasses. I'm no expert, heck I can't even speculate as to the cost or effort, but I can't imagine it would be easy to handle by any means.
Or were you saying that people in Academia are more likely to be Democrats and thus you have an irrational belief that their science is wrong and biased? Nothing "obvious" about it. Conservatism and liberalism should both be left out of it. If they're not, you've got the scientific method backwards.
The point of science is to find out how something, in FACT, works. It is NOT to figure out how to prove your '-ism'. If you're starting with any political opinion at all and working to justify it, you've already done it wrong.
Sadly, your statement describes the vibes I get about anything I hear even remotely related to "Global Warming" or "Climate Change". It has the distinct feeling of a conclusion searching for a justification.
This whole discussion would be much more interesting if politics weren't involved.
-Walrus
No wonder he'd be in favor of global warming :-) Could make a nice Baked Alaska (the state).
Good thing he's not a kook.
Nuclear power splits the atom. The judicial system determines the fate of men. Medicine tries to repair (and even restore) life to the patient. Farmers have hacked the geneome for millenia and geneticist have started making it serious. Engineers dam rivers and even make them flow backwards. All-seeing satellites monitor the globe. The Internet itself has become a sort of gigantic tower of Babel, pooling together the knowledge of humankind and making it instantly available to the masses.
Accusing someone of "playing god" is just a euphanism for saying that you're frightened or threatened by whatever new thing someone else is undertaking. Now fear is good--all of my examples above have had their catastrophic failures--but wrapping it up in a theological prohibition won't actually stop people from attempting it. When you're tempted to use the "playing god" argument, consider instead using your voice to encourage caution and research into the possible dangers.
Teenage pregnancy is always happening; therefore teenage pregancy is normal, not bad. Ditto for "genocide", "extinction", and "chronic disease".
I have no control over how flames dance around in a fire, but I can dowse the fire. If we influenced the climate negatively, then we might be able to influence it positively.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
So, Hemos, how did you survive this year's record breaking hurricane season?
I mean, that's what the global warming experts predicted, and they're right about global warming, so their predictions about the effects of global warming mush also be right, right?
Except, of course, they weren't.
Clear, Dark Skies
When money changes hands, that means different things get done by different people. (Society manufactures McBoover devices instead of computers.) If we undertake any sort of massive effort to restructure things in an effort to stave off climate change, we are implicitly not expending that effort in order to perform a plethora of other activities which society views as useful. And if climate change is not as big a deal as it's cracked up to be, society has effectively wasted that effort and gained nothing from it.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
For a minute there I thought it might be a report on the last front page article, changing climates at Microsoft and Google. I was wondering exactly how the BBC could be biased against a changing climate in the Software industry.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
The parent comment is clearly on-topic. It could be a troll, but I haven't done the research - all I know for sure is that it is on topic. Please (meta)moderate accordingly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Parent is -1 offtopic at the moment and is directly related to the topic of how the scientific community reacts to climate change skeptics.
Lindzen, by the way, is a climate scientist who thinks that negative feedback loops will win, so it's not just Lomborg and Gray.
Irrespective of its validity, the parent is certainly not offtopic
You've Just Committed the Genetic Logical Fallacy
No, he didn't.
That is most assuredly not offtopic. It is relevant to the parent post and the article in general.
They must be right! Just look at how The Man is trying to supress them!
Clear, Dark Skies
From wiki -
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted an average global rise in temperature of 1.4C (2.5F) to 5.8 C (10.4F) between 1990 and 2100).[2] Current estimates indicate that even if successfully and completely implemented, the Kyoto Protocol will reduce that increase by somewhere between 0.02 C and 0.28 C by the year 2050 (source: Nature, October 2003).
- real hackers don't have sigs -
i'd like to say that if you don't believe in climate change, well theres something wrong with you. the earth's climate changes over time, we know this. thats why we've had ice ages, and why they ended, why places once covered in tropical reefs are now dieing etc. climate change happens. now we don't know the full cycle, thats true. we only ahve what? 50, 100, maybee 150-200 years of reasonably acurate data, it's just not enough to build a model. as for Global warming, which is what i think the article is refering to, i personally think that it's a big load. (highest co2 levels we've found through geoclimatology was during an ice age, funny that) but i'm still waiting for evidance that is not immediately shut down. it seems to me no one is willing to stand up and debunk global warming outright, but many scientists don't believe in it, or the methodology behind the "proof". it's mostly fear mongering, a way to sell movies, get presidential votes and cause people to buy new products. capitolism at it's finest. go capitolism!
-Sebastian
Some people note the existence of just one or two pseudoscientists that abuse a theory, and decide that the entire field is crap. Like the losers that criticize evolution and anthropology because of Piltdown man. But I guess you're skeptical there too ... after all, biologists lied to us, right?
You are engaging in a false dichotomy: that a McBoover device is just a cost, and all other uses for the $5000 are a benefit.
Alternatives which address climate change concerns might be changing building codes, adding a couple of percent to the cost of a home, but leading to savings greater than this cost in heating/cooling bills over a decade or so. Assuming that you could have invested that money somewhere, maybe the payback period is 15 years, but after this initial period the money saved is a net boon to the economy. Meanwhile your HDTV has long since ceased to work and is landfill.
Also mandating McBoover production might stimulate a McBoover industry and lead to McBoovers being made at improved efficiency and subsequent exports of McBoovers. The alternative is to not simulate production and when it turns out that McBoovers are a necessity realise that the Chinese are making them all and can set the asking price.
Of course climate change is real, that there is serious argument about the reality of a current trend of climate change is a fallacious premise. The evidence is there for all to see, there have been clear changes in average temperatures both in short term recorded measurements as well as through botanical evidence and the longer term geologic evidence.
The scientific questions that remain are over the relative contributions that CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor and even the suns output of radiation is having. And also serious questions remain about how to predict future changes to climate and what regional changes can be predicted, which is much more important than an overall temperature increase. The political controversy is over whether climate change will have an overall or regional negative impact on humans in the future. And whether that impact might be bad enough to sacrifice now and even if such a sacrifice would have a meaningful impact.
The political debate has become unhealthy in that there is a side that is unwilling to consider that at least some, if not all of humanity will benefit from global warming with the potential for increased crop output and less need for heating in populated northern areas. Versus the potential loss of viability of some major population centers due to their proximity to rising ocean levels. These are economic and socio-political questions that can not be addressed by the science. What can and should still be addressed by the science, is to continue to refine the models so that meaningful predictions can be made. Long term forecasts have not been verified. I would want to see more testable predictions made and verified before we start throwing our economy in a tizzy. There may be significantly more economical ways to control climate than a worldwide reduction in C02 emissions. And it should recognized that climate control is exactly what should be the aim of our efforts, not some sort of pseudo religious crusade to put mother nature back in order, as if the earth naturally existed as a stable environment without human existence in the first place. But rather the de facto aim of all sides should be better understand how we can take control of our environment to support a biologically rich biosphere, no matter which thermostat setting you are aiming for. This stop polluting attitude needs to go, our existence has an effect and we should understand that effect so we can reach a desirable result, but the environmentalists need to understand that humans are here to stay and that the earth is not better off without us.
Thanks for the great link.
Multiply this experience with that of his like-minded colleagues and you clear evidence that the politicization of global warming is a self-sustaining and corrupt.
an ill wind that blows no good
The problem is there is lots of evidence that the climate is changing, what is lacking is that is evidence that we are causing this change or capable of correcting it. Also, there are widely varying estimates of what happens if we do nothing. Basically, what we know is that in the places we measured temperature 150 years ago, it is hotter now. We have pretty good estimates that it is hotter now than it was 300 years ago overall, and it might be a little bit hotter than it was 500 years ago, but probably not.
Ahhh, slashdotters and their desperate need to point out "logical fallacies" they learned about on wikipedia... I swear this concept will become a slashdot meme at some point.
No, I didn't commit some logical fallacy - if a convicted child molester tells you "hey, sodomizing little boys improves their self esteem" you wouldn't believe him, and if a goverment lobbying group tells me ANYTHING, I'm not going to believe them. This isn't some unrelated connection - its a statement put out by a group that BY ITS VERY NATURE exists to push an agenda.
Here's the oft-linked Michael Crichton speech "Aliens Cause Global Warming" where he rails against the idea of consensus and has some information on Lomborg as well. It's an interesting read and it has less to do with global warming than with the scientific process in general.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
A testable prediction/observation, cheaper to derive and easier to check than a prediction about average global temperature (which has to be a probability distribution anyway, how do you check that?) would be evidence that a negative feedback loop (e.g. high clouds) was larger than previously believed, that a positive feedback loop (e.g. humidity, yes, H2O is a greenhouse gas) is smaller than expected, or that some observations don't line up wiht an average global temperature rise.
Which actually happened. The indirect satellite measurements of tropospheric temperature seemed inconsistent with all other measurements for quite a while, and those results did get published.
This is something that has concerned me for a while...
I see four scenarios:
1 - We believe that "the sky is falling" and that humans are, effectively, destroying our habitat. We do something about it, and manage to reverse or minimize the impact.
2 - The sky is *not* falling, yet we still think so, and try to do something about it. Our efforts are roughly equivalent to the destruction that we thought we were doing - in other words, no significant change either way.
3 - The sky is still *not* falling and we do nothing about it. Nothing lost, nothing gained.
4 - Yes, the sky really is falling. We don't do anything about it. The seas rise, the sun darkens, and life as we know it comes to a screeching halt.
Why wouldn't we do something about it and (at worst) end up in situation number 2? Why do we, instead, bicker about whether or not the sky is indeed falling?
J
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
I agree, but it will not destroy the economy it will jsut make it look different and less favorable to you. People who make McBoover devices will love it and always claim that an HDTV is the real waste of money, besides from the sound of it your eyes aren't even good enough to really enjoy HDTV.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
"Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of."
Santa Claus is real! *jumps up and down* He's real! Stop saying he isn't real, because...well you're wrong! He's real!
For a long time I always wondered why religious groups have been heavy sceptics of global warming. I didn't think it had anything to do with their sphere of influence or even was a remotely interestign subject to them. I thought it was somethign related with their idea of the rapture and armageddon being more military related vs climate armageddon.
Then I happened upon this article article on wikipedia and it seem to make sense. They want to promote doubt upon the scientific community so they can much more easily circumvent Evolution. The idea being if the religious community can cast enough doubt by spread FUD about scientific theories/methods/facts/ideas they can more easily push their agenda to remove evolution from class rooms. Evolution is very inconvientient to fundementalists because it undermines their ability to make any literal reading of the bible.
The sources are wikipedia but the sources seem legit and the arguements about why certain groups oppose certain theories are there and are a matter of simple googling to find supporting news articles on it. I think a lot of the opposition to global warming coming fromt he right originates from the strategy of trying to discredit all science. Global warming and climate change is a fact the only portion of the models and theories under scrutiny is whether it's humans actions as the principal driving force.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
>>It's funny that the BBC is asking for proof of bias when
>>its tilted coverage of the Iraqi war led British soldiers
>>to conclude that BBC stood for "Baathist Broadcasting
>>Corporation".
>
>And undoubtedly those soldiers have a completely unbiased
>view of the war.
Yes, bunch of fools, thank goodness we have someone who knows all about it from watching TV and surfing DU to keep us straight on the real situation.
Brett
Ya know, just to be safe, why don't we sacrifice a few virgins each year to the global Climate Gods.
The way I figure it, maybe we're wrong, and there are no Climate Gods. If so, then all we did was kill a few virgins.
But shit man, what if we're right and the Climate Gods are going to destoy the earth unless they get their virgins? Seriously, think about what's at stake here.
>it is claimed that he observed warming actually reflects the Urban Heat Island effect
Misleading, if he's suggesting that climatologists haven't taken this into account. The correction technique is pretty clever: you look at how the temperature changes on windy days when air from the countryside is being blown past the urban thermometers. There is room for error in calculating the correction factors, which is why science requires people to show their work and look at other sources of data.
Those other sources include tree rings, borehole measurements, oxygen isotope concentrations, and likely others that I haven't heard about.
All of which is so well known that I will go so far as to question the motives of anyone who claims the urban heat island effect has led us to err about the temperature record.
The fact that articles that have negative outcomes are not published nearly as much as articles with positive ones (and by positive and negative, I mean in terms of rejecting or confirming a hypothesis) is relatively common.
It's called "the file drawer effect" (no wikipedia article yet, sorry) and is well known throughout the scientific community. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if there were hundreds of articles which find either no evidence of warming in a certain area or no damage found in an area, and they were not published.
Global warming is of course one of the many examples for the reason why these NEED to be published... when the mass media comes along and says: "5000 articles on the negative effects of global warming have been published, and only 1000 that have found no evidence", people will draw conclusions based on the faulty assumption that there is no evidence to the contrary.
That said, I believe that global warming is happening (personally, I think it is a combination of a natural warming and man's effect, which is why it is so rapid), yet this is one of my pet peeves, so I thought I'd share.
It is about what is CAUSING it. There is much debate over wether it is man made (pollution) or natural (i.e. cyclical). The "self-censorship" part shows up as (at least in the USA) who gets funding for further investigation. Disagree with one viewpoint, get no funding. Eliminate or ignore all the fear-mongering and this is quite an exciting debate.
In 1974, Time magazine said there was an Ice Age approaching. Things like this were everywhere in the media.
g e_June241974.pdf
http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Time_AnotherIceA
Climate change doesn't turn on a dime like that.
Last year, people were saying that the number of hurricanes we had were because of global warming. This year?
No named hurricanes hit the US.
I bet global warming caused them to go away too.
The only thing I find unsubstantiated is your assertion that the facts were fabricated. Accusing Prof Rowland and Molina of using fabricated evidence is a serious charge that must be backed up by solid evidence.
Otherwise, I will assume that you are engaged in politically motivated slander.
Please provide cites of major religious organizations that oppose global warming theory.
Mainstream Christian theology is positively environmentalist since they believe God holds Man responsible for the condition of the world.
Clear, Dark Skies
OTOH, Einstein's Nobel Prize was for his work on quanta, ironically enough (specically, the photoelectric effect). In fact, the Nobel Prize committee is rumored to have been initially against giving him the prize on the basis that it might provide support to that crazy relativity theory of his.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'd be more worried about the 50% of the world with 3 digit IQs and what they've been hiding from you.
Clear, Dark Skies
So if you are being fair any study sponsered by an environmentalist is suspect as well.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I think the key problem with climate change reporting is that it's portrayed as a "you're with us or with them" point of view and if you don't believe the popular dogma, you're one of "them". The problem is, there isn't only one question. Besides the "is it real?" and "are we responsible?" questions, there's also:
* If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).
Unfortunately, the issue has become so politicized that these other more important questions are being drowned out or viewed as "avoiding the real issue" by the dogmatists.
No, those questions are exactly what the professional climatology community studies, and have been studying for decades. They've been studying many other more obscure problems as well that influence this issue. Trust me, they have thought of thousands of more complications than any layman or writer is going to know about, and have investigated them.
Here is the current state of the known science with respect to the above questions:
1) "If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?"
The current evidence and knowledge of physics shows climate change which cannot be explained by factors which exclude the dominant forcing of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. This result stands intensive probing in theory and experiment.
There is one point which laymen do not understand: A "natural" cycle of various means must have its own mechanism You cannot posit a "flying spaghetti monster" theory of a natural cycle without observed evidence, physical law, and scientific reasoning. Natural "cycles" have physical causes and consequences which we would have observed with modern science. Furthermore, these "other explanations" would have to somehow "turn off" the known physics of infrared radiation which is a rock-solid lab-based physical reality, and directly observed in situ. To summarize the most prominent 'other' explanations: (a) no it isn't volcanoes, they don't emit enough CO2 to be responsible for the CO2 we observe, and there is no evidence that volcanism is suddenly on the upswing. And in any case, our tailpipes and smokestacks don't have invisible devices to catch the CO2. (b) No it isn't the Sun suddenly getting brighter---we have measured the sun for a while now, best guess is that is could be responsible for 10-15% of the effects. Observed patterns of atmospheric temperature change (troposphere warming, stratosphere cooling) is compatible with the change in greenhouse effect, not solar brightening (both would warm).
(c) Cosmic rays. This is another new hypothesis---it may have a bit of an effect which is not understood in magnitude and direction but again there isn't evidence it is resposnible for climate change and yet nullifies the effect of CO2 from humans.
2) "If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)"
Urban heat islands are not global warming, their effect on the instrumental record has been known and accounted for in the good data sets. Other effects are linked in to the climate cycle and so the real issue in climatology is in es
Hell it was 80F here the other day now it is 27F. That would be climate change. The question is not whether it is real or not but whether it is caused by Humans. More importantly is it caused by White, North Americans. Most of the world believes it is caused by WNA... Why? because they hate us. We drive SUVs, eat everything we want and throwaway half of it. Build houses out of nice, pretty trees, and generally shit on most of the world as we do it. Fair enough... Sometimes we can be bad. Still best place to live but hey that is a different story. Any way I think that we WNAs have little to no effect on the long term outcome of this planet. Granted Europeans don't like being runner up in the "Who's the best country Award". But really has anyone looked at the big ball of fire in the sky. Last time I checked it has more effect on the climate of this small worthless planet than hair spray and Tony the Tiger.
What the Hell???? A Suprise party for ME !!
GPP was impugning the credibility of the source, as it was fabricated to reach the desired conclusion and not subject to the peer review process that serious fields of study use to ensure quality and reliability in their publications. Because the data, claims, and reasoning in the article in question haven't been vetted by experts in the field any reader should treat all cites, assertions, and conclusions with extreme skepticism.
Perhaps more importantly, though, the article in question is little more than a list of references to papers which make no claims of the "Unstoppable 1500-year climate cycle" with a sentence added at the end of the article claiming that the loosely connected list of references constitute clear and convincing evidence of a phenomenon that none of the articles in question claim.
The only studies the article points to that even mention such cycles are inferences of solar cycles from ice cores, but those studies don't address the authors' claims that current warming phenomena are caused by variations in solar intensity rather than other factors. Curiously the authors made no attempt to link recent climate data with solar intensity data despite the availability of such data and such data being more relevant to their assertions than 95% of the papers they cited.
Basically, if you read beyond the title of the article you can tell that the author either doesn't understand what he's talking about or is pushing an agenda for some unstated reason. The inflamatory nature of the title would tell most savvy readers that the article had a political rather than scientific purpose.
Googling S. Fred Singer's name reveals multiple sources claiming that Singer is a hired gun of the "energy" lobby but that's not really relevant to this -- more of an indictment of the process. If oil companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this guy to write shit than anyone who reads beyond the title can tell is shit then that means 1) our decision-makers must require no more than a veneer of credibility to call him an "expert" and use his assertions over the conclusions of the scientific community and/or don't even bother to read the positon they're endorsing for the public and 2) relatively few people with letters after their names are willing to sacrifice their academic integrity for money (supply and demand and all that).
Can anyone here cite one - just ONE piece of research published in a scientific scholarly journal with peer review that states/says the following actual phrase: "people are the probable cause of global warming"? Please don't post a list of 4000 articles in various journals. Just ONE that makes the above statement.
It's the same when one sees stuff about HIV=AIDS. There is not one piece of research published in a scientific scholarly journal with peer review that states/says the following actual phrase: "HIV is the probale cause of AIDS".
If one wants $300,000 tax grab from the NIH to study HIV=AIDS; one has to state in the grant request : " since HIV is the probale cause of AIDS - I want $300,000 to study XY or Z". One must agree that "HIV is the probale cause of AIDS". One cannot get a $300,000 research grant from the NIH to research that " Nutritional, Genocidal, Ethic Cleansing Produced Stress Is The Probable Cause Of Destruction Of The Immune System Which Leads To A Number OF Auto Immune Dis-Eases".
Back to so-called "human produced global warming" - great program on PBS had a fantastic program (and web site) on how the Earth's Magnetic Field is disappearing - which causes the Earth's Magnetic Shield to drastically weaken - which enables the Sun's Solar Energy (sunshine) and Solar Flares to cook the Earth (apparantly will toast the earth within 100 years or so).
Consensus of unconsidered and unexpert opinions is useless.
Consensus of thoughtful opinions derived from internally consistent
and self-checking scientific method is very powerful.
There is scientific consensus that
1) Molecules are made of atoms
2) Atoms are made of three kinds of stuff, electrons, protons and neutrons.
3) Light has electric and magnetic fields
In these issues, is "scientific consensus" important? You betcha.
How far would a "non-atomic theory of matter" chemist get? Would they
find it difficult to get grants? You betcha.
Would that be a good thing? You betcha.
Afraid of a 6 billon year old world? Creationists. Afraid of space miliarization/the future? Moon landing deniers. Afraid of the free market? Communists. Afraid of disease? Homeopathy. Afraid of secular education? Home Schoolers.
This is just a pet peeve of mine, but fear of secular education isn't the only reason anybody home schools. That is, not all home schoolers are religious nuts trying to indoctrinate their children and keep them from some kind of "bad thoughts" out there. I was home taught for entirely different reasons (social troubles in big, lowest-common-denominator, shut-up-sit-still-and-memorize-this public schools, and the inability to pay for smaller, more progressive private schools that could cater to gifted students) and I'm about the most anti-dogmatic person I know. And I'm now almost through with university, with very good grades, so I can't complain about the quality of the education either.
That's all, just wanted to harp on that. Home school != religious indoctrination.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Thank you so much for the opportunity to actually talk to you. I'll try my
hardest be concise.
There is indeed evidence for censorship in science today. Confusion may arise
though because this censorship is happening in astronomy, which serves to
provide us with the scientific basis for which we draw our conclusions about the
Sun. I refer you to Halton Arp's book, "Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and
Academic Science". Halton Arp lost his telescope time because he wrote a paper
detailing observational evidence that contradicted the Big Bang. For a far
faster treatment of the material, you should purchase and watch the two-part
video, "Universe -- The Cosmology Quest" and then "Thunderbolts of the Gods --
The Tutorial". If you want further information after or before viewing those
videos, then I refer you to the database of "Picture of the Days" on the
www.thunderbolts.info site. Their paper on The Electric Comet is very good too.
Now I will try to summarize the issue. This is a very complex issue, but I will
do my best to explain it to you as quickly as possible. The "Queen of the
Sciences", cosmology, is defining limits on the research that we can do in all
of the sciences. Also, the concept of uniformitarianism -- this idea that we
can deduce what happened in the past based upon our observations of our
surroundings right now -- is flawed and is causing scientists to disregard both
theories and observational evidence in the sciences of geology, archaeology and
astronomy that don't conform to the queen of the sciences.
There is now an alternative theory for cosmology which deserves attention, but
which is not getting it due to scientific bias. And this theory dramatically
affects our understanding of the Sun, which in turn affects our understanding of
global warming. The Electric Universe Theory proposes that the electric force
exists on large scales in deep space. Most people are actually surprised to
learn that traditional astrophysicists assume that all large bodies in space are
electrically neutral. We now have observational evidence that would suggest
this to not be true. In June of 2005, the Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1
created overwhelming observational evidence that the tail and coma of comets are
in fact electrical phenomenon (See
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf ). In fact, Electric Universe
theorist Wallace Thornhill accurately predicted the results of that mission --
results which have to this day baffled NASA scientists. There is not enough
water on Tempel 1 to explain the coma and tail in terms of sublimating ice and
the impact of that comet generated two undeniable sparks, as well as a fine dust
that enveloped the probe cameras (dust just like one gets from electrical
sputtering of telescope dishes). Video of the encounter show unmistakable white
spots, which are pretty clear evidence of electrical arcing. Images of comets
confirm that comets that are not currently flaring up appear just as asteroids.
Wallace Thornhill and his Thunderbolts crew have proposed that comets are in
fact merely asteroids on elliptical orbits around the Sun. When far away from
the Sun, they pick up the voltage of deep space. Then, as they approach the
Sun's electric field, this charge is pushed away from the Sun until it is
stripped off of the comet's body, at which point we see the tail and coma. It
is worth noting that asteroids have been observed to turn into comets
(http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060 407cometasteroid.htm) and even
do so far away from the Sun near the gas giant planets. At this distance from
the Sun, sublimation would not make any sense. The notion that cometary tails
and comas are likely electrical phenomenon have also been confirmed by x-ray
imaging of a comet.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
- Chickens, who have been actively trying to discredit most of science in general (evolution, cosmology, climatology, economics
... pretty much all that book-learnin')
- Eggheads, who have often been waaaaaay too defensive and/or ideological in their reactions and unwilling to acknowledge that all sciences have margins of error (some more than others in practical terms)
I'm discouraged about the prospects for reconciling the two entrenched camps, and I don't think discussion of claims and counter-claims is likely to bring any resolution. Each side sees either conspiracy or stupidity (or both) in the other. But maybe we can acknowledge that both the claims and the counter-claims are relatively inexact, compared with, say, predicting the effects of gravity on a falling mass at sea level.Of course, the BBC will find evidence of "stifling". That's what mainstream science does. It stifles theories that aren't convincing to enough experts to make them "accepted". While the evidence for climate change may not be as cohesive as we might want, it seems fair to say that the counter-claims are mostly that there isn't enough evidence to conclude with certainty that we're experiencing global warming. But, you don't see too many counter claims arguing that this is global cooling.
If this issue didn't have such potentially enormous economic effects (another inexact science), maybe we'd get more rational discussion. But that's not going to happen (except on
The question isn't wether climate change is happeneing or not. Global climate is always changing. The real question most are debating is the human cause of the change. Is any of it our fault? If so, how much? Given we don't know all the variables involved with climate change it's silly to assume either side has a real answer. You'd have to be an idiot to say climate change was not real.
the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.
Others have pointed out that Lomborg isn't disputing global warming but have failed to point out why. He can't! He's not a scientist, well, at least not physical science.
As his bio points out, he is a political scientist. His area of expertise is public policy and since 1998 his major focus has been on public policy surrounding global warming. If it wasn't in the original post, I'd probably have modded (yes, I'm sitting on mod points but decided to respond directly) comments regarding Lomborg as off-topic; the BBC is looking for evidence of scientific bias not of political dissension.
It's probably too late into the discussion for anyone to notice this, but I thought that I'd provide a little context for the Global Warming debate that is generally overlooked.
Up front, I have right leaning tendencies. I'm not going to advocate the position here, but I will share with you some of the thinking that's taking place on the right that causes this to be such a contentious issue, because I think that might lead to a more constructive discussion with the left (which I think the majority of Slashdot is more inclined towards).
Recently, there has been a term that's been gaining popularity - Watermelon Environmentalism. That is, green on the outside, red on the inside. It's a common belief that the environmentalist cause has become deeply integrated with the socialist cause. When the right looks at what the environmentalist movement advocates, it looks an awful lot like centralized control of the economy. That freaks out the right a little bit. For an analogy that might be comparable on the left - consider the use of the term "terrorism" to expand the reach of government. The right is having roughly the same reaction to the claims of global warming.
Now, toss in the fact that those warning of doom are frequently coming from areas sympathetic to socialist ideas, and you begin to understand the reticence by the right to buy the science. And let's face it, scientists are human beings too, and certainly not above having ideology (intentionally or not) influence their work. If you press someone on the right, I'm positive they're far more hostile to the corrective action being suggested than the actual concept of global warming.
we change the reflectiveness of the earth by building cities,roads ... . We change the composition of the water. we change the composition of the air. In fact we change everything which could have an effect on the climate and on the weather. And people still believe we can't possibly have an effect on the world we live in ? The trouble is of course: how do you prove that ? Well ... until the change is clear and the ball is rolling, we won't be able too, when it is too late. Ever wonder how big an equilibrium the climate is ? And how hard it is to change it ? And how even harder it is to change it back? Too much (oil-) money is at stake to take action.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Depends on if the environmentalist opened his study for peer review by climatologists. Somehow I doubt coal and gas companies do this...
Of course Lomborg is not the only one to make such an analysis. The Stern report represents a study of exactly such a question from a world renowned economist. It comes to the opposite conclusion.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
So if only bonafide experts in the climate science can dispute global warming, the do you accept that only bonafide experts in climate science can *advocate* global warming, etc.?
From the Global Warming Petition:
"During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition."
So...that's 2/3, or, 5610 of them we can cross off. No advanced degree, not a scientist, so not a climate scientist.
"Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists..."
Whoever in this list is not a "climate scientist" is also not allowed to advocate. Too bad they don't break it out. Wait...did I see there were meteorologists in that list? They CERTIANLY, can't advocate for global warming.
"Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences..."
Puleeze...Chemistry? What do they know about Global Warming....BUUUZZZZ another 5K advocates gone.
"approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science..."
Must be the polititicians, "activists" and Slashdotterts....cross them off.
So we start with 17k, less 5000, less 2400, less another 5k. So that leaves us with about 4000. And in reality, I bet quite a few of them are not "climate scientists".
So be careful when you start discounting someone's opinions and/or work just because they don't have the title that you want to see after their name.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If W. says global warming is hoax, I'd start selling my coastal property. The man has an amazing talent for being wrong.
His aim is politic. He thinks that you should save 10000 people now and not care what might happen 100 years from now, not understanding what happens now is affects what is to come. The fighting in Darfur is indirectly because of global warming since it has changed the rain patters there so they end up fighting over what little usable land is left.
He thinks its a question about money, overlooking that we must do something about this - even if we can't "afford" it, since we most certainly can't afford to do nothing.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Seriously, the press has been full of "counter-claims" from all kinds of nuts, and the only known examples of censorship have all been from the anti-Global-Warming lobby in attempts to stifle NASA scientists, et al. (On that basis alone, one might argue that if the anti lobby was being stifled, it's merely the bad karma they themselves polluted the environment with. If you don't want others to do unto you, it helps to not try to stiff them first.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Planck of course, like Einstein, fully accepted quantum mechanics as the theory and especially convincing experimental progress evolved.
Planck was involved in modern physics of the time throughout his life.
(Also Einstein didn't reject quantum mechanics in itself---he rejected the Copenhagen Interpretation
as inconsistent mumbo-jumbo. Modern physics actually says the same {"decoherence" is currently the preferred option}, even though Copenhagen makes the right predictions in most experimentally relevant cases. The specific proposals Einstein made in QM turned out to not be true, but the experimental evidence was not available until after Einstein's death. Had Einstein lived, he surely would have changed his theories.)
I know he didn't even believe in quantum mechanics and tried for the remainder of his life to somehow reconcile his discoveries with classical mechanics, which turned out to be impossible.
Except for that wee little thing called the Bohr correspondence principle?
The reality of the physics was that quantum mechanics and classical mechanics were successfully reconciled; large quantum number limits go to known classical mechanics.
Maxwell's equations remain fully valid in their regimes and the eventual successful unification of electromagnetic fields as a quantum-mechanical phenomenon as quantum optics and later quantum electrodynamics was successfully accomplished. So, contrary to Planck's initial fear, Maxwell was not thrown out at all.
Notice that in 1905 this theory was not fully available. By the 1930's most of it was. There were both photons (excitation of the creation operator on vacuum E&M fields) and Maxwell's equations in it in their own way.
Also, it appears that Mr Lomborg actually lectured on statistics. You know, the type of mathematics used to build environmental models.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I am constantly amazed by the number of people posting here who have strong opinions on climate change without, evidently, having read much of the available literature. (Cue the "you must be new here" posts...)
Granted, I believed what I heard through the media and education system too, until I met Sherwood Idso in 1990. A good starting point for Slashdotters (and the BBC, for that matter) is The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming , in which Patrick J. Michaels cites hundreds of peer-reviewed papers that question the catastrophic predictions of "mainstream" climate research, and explains how such research is systematically suppressed.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
It is appropriate that you mention Creation Science as that is another field where their is a loud claim of scientific bias against an oppressed minority of researchers. Most Creation "scientists" claim there is an institutional bias against their research, or, to put it bluntly, a conspiracy.
Actually there is a bias. It is that mainstream scientists demand that you use the scientific method to demonstrate your conclusions, rather than resorting to divine revelation. Some consider that an unfair restriction, while others have gone as far as to claim that the scientific community must be under the influence of the devil. These people want to teach your kids science.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
We may be talking about different things with polar bears. It's not just that populations are declining or underweight, it's -how- they're dying. Drowning, esp., is uncharacteristic in a species that can easily swim tens of miles in arctic water. Something profound is going on.
An analogy that came to mind is lung cancer. In the 19th Century lung cancer was so rare that a doctor may only see it a few times in his career, and always the topic of discussion in the local community when it occurred.
A century later lifespans were significantly longer, overall health is significantly higher... and lung disease has remained the #1 or #2 killer for decades. It's worthwhile to look at what's changed in the environment, even if it appears to be unrelated.
The answer (we believe now) was the commercialization and social acceptance of cigarette smoking and industrial/vehicular air pollution. The latter was effectively handled by the "clean air act" (which the republicans have been trying to repeal, btw), but the tobacco industry managed to create an illusion of controversy over the impact of cigarette smoke for decades.
Even though lung cancer rates were clearly linked to cummulative usage... and there was a significant drop-off once people kicked the habit.
That's why it's not important whether it's one bear or three, it's the overall nature of the bears. It's a problem when all of the bears are underweight, when infant mortality skyrockets (from lack of nutritional resources), when bears are drowning because they're too weak or the ice pack has gotten too thin. Something's going on.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Actually both the parliament and the Queens habitats are all very close to if not on the waterfront of the harbor of Copenhagen. I would say this somewhat contradicts any expectations of rising water levels in the people who built these places.
The fact is that even the evidence that shows we are undergoing a warming trend fails to demonstrate that this is a long term warming trend, that the warming trend is man-made, or that green-house gasses have had an impact on the temperature change. The argument is usually along the lines "We have demonstrated that the Earth's temperature has risen 1 degree in the past 100 years, and at the same time man-made green house gasses have increased 10 times so the impact from man made greenhouse gasses is ." In many cases you could replace "Increase in Man made greenhouse gasses" with "Reduction in Pirates" and conclude that the world is warming because we lack pirates.
In a word, this is "bullshit".
The argument for climate change and human influence thereof is not remotely based on that sort of juvenile argument.
Asserting so is now getting to be a dangerous libel.
Would people make similar assertions about the results of biochemistry over the last 30 years? No.
Would Slashdot writers make similar assertions about how those engineers were just fooling themselves
about how semiconductors worked?
The discussion and investigation of physical mechanism, has been and always will be the primary study in climatology. Geoscience existed before global warming became prominent. Was that all just random superficial correlationist baloney?
Why do people casually make assertions about the operation of intensive climate study based on physics, and observations, by professionals who devote their lives to it, over decades?
All I can guess is that they really don't like the answer. I don't like the answer either, but I'm willing to deal with it.
Please, start looking seriously into this if you have doubts.
You will find major study of mechanism and details and things you would never have imagined.
http://www.realclimate.org/
FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt". Unfortunatly, even here, everybody seems to think it is a synonym for "lies", leading to the loss of this term as a descriptive one. "FUD" very well might not contain any lies at all, just exaggerated predictions of bad things to happen in the future, based on real things that are, at least somewhat, true right now. FUD in global warming is predicting floods and other catastrophic results, or predicting economic doom if we try to stop global warming. Both may very well be true. Saying "it's caused by man" (or vise-versa) is *NOT* FUD, it is instead a statement that may be true or a lie. Despite the fact that both lies and FUD can be used at the same time, they are not the same thing.
Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.
Nice. Similarly, the electronic voting machine folks have "never detected an undetected error in our electronically stored ballots or our vote tallies." I don't think you understand the point of the study, Hemos.
You should have made that trip yourself before your ill-informed speculation. Quote "Since 2001, no climate scientists have expressed skepticism that warming, of the magnitude described by the IPCC, has occurred." Now, maybe you know of "folks" who don't believe there has been a global temperature rise, but they are not climate scientists. Your "biggest problem" with Global Warming is that you yourself are reducing it to bumper sticker politics, because that's a way you can comfortably ignore the facts and remain ignorantly rooted in your own political mudhole.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Having grown up in South Florida, Hurricane panics always seemed amusing. In the almost 20 years I was in Florida before leaving for school, we had 1 decent Hurricane hit the area. Then, when I was away, the state got smashed in one year with 4 storms, and 2 the following year.
All of a sudden, when I moved back here, Hurricane season was serious, and people acted like a "normal" year had 2 Hurricanes hitting us.
The fact is, we don't have much data on Hurricanes. People made a big deal about hitting the Greek Alphabet, but the reality is that so many storms get named now that wouldn't 10 years ago. We've only had satellite coverage over the Atlantic for about 45 years, and how much attention we paid to storms out there is questionable.
Normal 15, 30, 50, and 100 year cycles (I assume that there are a bunch of things operating on normal cycles) are undetectable until we have more data. The problems that I have with the climate change debate is that it is really hard to separate out what is human caused vs. natural cycles because we don't have much data.
If we had 30000 years of satellite data, then sure, this would be easy. However, we have WAY MORE data on the past 35 years than we do on the past billion years. It's very easy for alarmist psuedo-scientists to take scientific data, find a peak and a valley in the data, and draw alarming results. The biggest concern with climate change is the possibility of positive feedback loops, those are scary. However, it is very likely that there are MANY negative-feedback loops that will help mitigate things.
To construct a scientific experiment, whether mathematically or otherwise, requires holding other variables constant. In the real world, these variables are NEVER constant.
We had TWO years of increasing Hurricane activity, and then by plotting a line, we saw WORST SEASON ON RECORD... however, an unrelated system, El Nino, caused a below average season... There is simply too much operating for any predictions to be worth anything.
The worst part is confirmation bias... Hot day, bad storm season, etc., and liberals blame global warming... Never mind that Global warming refers to a 1 degree Celsius historical shift and a 1-5 degree shift in the next 100-150 years... however, this again assumes that current trends continue. If temperatures raise, other things will kick in that may be positive or negative feedbacks... people will shift their actions in warmer environments, and we'll see what it does. Predictions suck, because external factors pop up.
In fact, if things get hotter globally, areas that people go to to experience heat will likely decrease economically (Florida tourism will take a hit), which may make the economic costs of hits to that area MUCH smaller than predictions would say because other things are NOT equal.
that Stephen Hawking is unique. He is very widely known and he own actions are more to true science than trying to appeal to one group or another. It is this type of person who is missing from the global warming debate. Simply put the who issue has become so politicized and so much money is involved that there is no room for one true expert who can be trusted. Look at how many organizations with nice sounding (read official) names exist? How is the lay person to tell that which is real, which are nothing more than paid off entities (private or government) or just crack pots?
Can someone like him come along? Doubtful, the current environment of global warming research is too chaotic to permit. Anyone who tried would be marginalized by one side or the other.
Both sides cannot be 100% correct and neither side can be completely wrong. The only question is, how long before the public shows enough interest to ferret out the truth? Right now both sides are trying to buy public opinion.
As for bias, I do believe that quite a bit of research is snuffed out. Simply put, its turned into group think. If you go off to the other side with your ideas the side you left will do their best to ruin you. What kind of science can exist in a system like that?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Maybe it's time to invest in ocean front property.
What was it Dean Wormser said?
Try Climate Audit, Climate Science, and Prometheus.
Of course, what do you mean by "counter claimant"? Lomborg neither disputes climate change nor that it has an anthropogenic component; he just questions whether the sort of measures suggested by the Kyoto Protocols are cost effective, or whether people's lives wouldn't be more improved by spending the money on other things. McIntyre and McKittrick don't question that there has been warming, just the statistical methods used to conclude it's anthropogenic. Pielke, Sr., questions whether CO2 is the particular mechanism of global warming at all.
That you're not aware of any of these people, except for an incorrect understanding of Lomborg, rather makes the point.
Sadly, we have been trained[1] by our media to accept not-quite-libellous fuddery as conclusive refutation of unpopular claims. To be sure, the suspicion of possibly ignoble motivations should inform our level of skepticism about arguable claims; but that skepticism is just that. By all means look hard for fraud and bias if you don't like the conclusions; just don't assume it.
--
phunctor
[1] Some say that media friendly to the concept of a large controlling State conspire together to bring about such a political scene. There's no real way to be sure, but after all, where there's smoke there's fire. Ooh, rhetorical onomatapoeia!
I used to frequent "Dr. Dewpoint" at intellicast.com to see whet the "Snowboard season" would be like. The accuracy of his predictions was uncanny. He can no longer be found on the Internet and links to his work are being removed. In particular, "Don't Settle for Quick Answers on Climate Change!" Here is a quick bio: Joseph S. D'Aleo, BS, MS, CCM, AMS Fellow Joseph D'Aleo, Chief Meteorologist and "Dr. Dewpoint" for WSI/Intellicast.com, is considered by many in the industry as a leading expert on the weather and climate. Joe has taught meteorology at the college level; published many papers, articles, and books; and given interviews for television and news publications. His most recent accolade was a weather and climate briefing to the president's staff at the White House. Joe has nearly three decades of experience as a meteorologist. He holds BS and MS degrees in Meteorology from The University of Wisconsin and was in the doctoral studies program in Meteorology at NYU. Joe was a Professor of Meteorology at the college level for over 8 years (6 years at Lyndon State College) and was a co-founder and the first Director of Meteorology at the cable TV Weather Channel. Since 1989, Joe has been Chief Meteorologist at WSI Corporation in Billerica, Massachusetts. Joe is Senior Editor (aka Dr Dewpoint) for WSI's popular Intellicast.com web site. Joe is a Certified Consultant Meteorologist and was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. He has served as member and then chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, and has co-chaired national conferences for both the AMS and the NWA. Joe has authored, presented, and published numerous papers focused on advanced applications enabled by new technologies and how research into ENSO and other atmospheric and oceanic phenomena has made possible skillful seasonal forecasts. He has recently authored a book for Greenwood Publishing on El Nino and La Nina.
I see little reason to fight the global warming alarmists that exist today.
.99 correlation with solar output and a .2 correlation with human C02 emmisions, as it already does, it will be undeniable to all except the most extreme proponents that human CO2 emmisions don't affect climate.
In 10 years when there is 10 more years of global mean temperature at a
Global warming has become a religion of graph endpoint bias and using computer models as empirical evidence in order to wag a finger at corporations. It's a shame people can't work on getting doctorate degrees in order to help cure AIDS or carcer, instead of becoming uneducated pundits of politicians.
That is an immensely silly thing to say at best. Of course climate change is real. New York City used to be under a mile of ice, and a hundred miles from the coast. A bit before that the atmosphere had no oxygen in it. Yes, climate change is real. That has nothing to do with whether or not there is bias in the scientific community against science that does not accept the current political mandates!
Kyoto is actually a fine idea, not because it will reduce a coming climate change, i doubt it will. You can be reasonbly sure that human will burn up any oil, coal, gas it can find. Prolonging the process of burning all fossile fule on earth by 10,20,50 years wont matter that much in the long run.
What will matter, however, is that Kyoto will speed up the process of shifting to alternative energy sources. When we reach the time when there is no longer gas and oil enough, the world as we know it will change. The less depency of oil and gas we at that time, the better prepared we will be for that situation. I don't know when that time is, but energy prices behave somewhat like the stockmarket, and the seismic shift in price may occur well in advance.
Global warming. It's good. It's bad. Well, here is my response:
I don't really care.
I'm checking out in about 60-80 years. As long as there aren't catastrophic consequences with that timeframe, excuse my french, but: Fugem if they don't want to address it.
I'm tired and I gotta go live my life.
Frederick Seitz
Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.
President Emeritus, Rockefeller University
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition.
ABSTRACT
A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth rates. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like CO2 are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge.
Summary
World leaders gathered in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 to consider a world treaty restricting emissions of ''greenhouse gases,'' chiefly carbon dioxide (CO2), that are thought to cause ''global warming'' severe increases in Earth's atmospheric and surface temperatures, with disastrous environmental consequences. Predictions of global warming are based on computer climate modeling, a branch of science still in its infancy. The empirical evidence actual measurements of Earth's temperature shows no man-made warming trend. Indeed, over the past two decades, when CO2 levels have been at their highest, global average temperatures have actually cooled slightly.
To be sure, CO2 levels have increased substantially since the Industrial Revolution, and are expected to continue doing so. It is reasonable to believe that humans have been responsible for much of this increase. But the effect on the environment is likely to be benign. Greenhouse gases cause plant life, and the animal life that depends upon it, to thrive. What mankind is doing is liberating carbon from beneath the Earth's surface and putting it into the atmosphere, where it is available for conversion into living organisms.
The problem with the BBC's investigation is that the debate really isn't over climate change. Any idiot can look at the data and say, "Yes, it is warmer now." The question of why, and if humans have anything to do with it, is the hotly debated question. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that we are warming because of a variety of related factors, and the debate is over the impact human industry has on this process.
I can't help but feel that this kind of wording makes things much more confusing. Anthroprogenic global warming is not a catchy term, and people tend to turn the debate into "Is the globe warming or not?" That is not the issue. The issue is, "Is the globe warming because of anything we've done? And if so, can/should we attempt to counteract it?"
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Did you even read the "debunking" article you just linked?
It says that Al Gore's people didn't request the release of water for the purpose of the canoe trip. Instead, they were offered the release of water for the purpose of the canoe trip, and accepted.
So no, they didn't "exert their political influence" to get the release of water, rather their political importance prompted someone to suggest the release of water, which they accepted as a favor to the campaign.
It's splitting hairs. It's the same thing.
As for details such as the amount of water, and the original schedule for the release of that water, the actual cost, etc. I'm not going to look to such an obviously politically-motivated source for those answers, and they are at best mitigating and more realistically distracting.
The basic truth remains that a dam was opened to give Al Gore a scenic canoe ride for the press, with his knowledge and approval.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009337
Here are two Democratic Senators urging Exxon to not support any contrary research in the area of global warming.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
George Monbiot recently suggested that the arguments of those who "deny" climate change have passed through four phases:
He then suggests that the next stage will be: Yes it's happening, it's a bad thing, it will cost more to live with than to prevent, it's not just the fault of the Chinese... but it's too late.
Because of those damn confounding factors. In the case you are talking about, lung cancer, one thing you ignore is an overall rise in rates of cancers as a killer. In fact, it seems to be the more modernized the nation, the more people die to cancer. So what's the deal? Does technology cause cancer? Are we leading a cancer causing lifestyle? Well perhaps to a very small degree but no, the real cause is that we simply don't die off from other things.
In Africa, cancer is pretty rare. The reason is that cancer is generally an old person's disease. Few young people are affected by it. Well you are much more likely to die of Malaria or civil war before you ever get a chance to get cancer. Also, if you do, there's a reasonable chance that nobody will be able to diagnose it and thus your death isn't tallied to it.
So while the rise in lung cancer probably has something to do with smoking cigarettes, it is an oversimplification and ignores important other evidence to declare you've found the direct causation. More people simply are dying from cancer, and a large part of the reason is we can fend off most of the more serious problems that kill at a younger age.
This is also something that could be true in the environment, that while CO2 from humans might be a factor it might be only a minor one, there might be some much larger confounding factor. Finding one potential factor doesn't mean you've figured it all out, especially in something as complex as a planetary system.
Your post also illustrates another possible source of confusion around home schooling: there's a lot of different kinds.
I was "home schooled" in the sense that I did most of my schooling at home. But I wasn't taught by my parents. Both of my parents are fairly bright, and both are very creative artistic people, but neither are what I would call in any way academic. Neither went to college, and neither works any kind of intellectual job - my father is a stone worker who builds fireplaces, fountains, and other such creative rock works, and my mother does hospice care (or did, until she was injured). Neither of which are particularly interesting to me, though my dad's work is beautiful and my mom is an angel in what she does. So what I got was a combination of private tutoring and independent study.
In 6th through 8th grades I had a tutor (supplied by the public school district's 'special ed' division) come to my house once a day, grade my previous work, answer any questions I had, give me my next day's assignments, and then leave me alone to work on my own.
In 9th grade we tried a small private school for me, but that was way too expensive so we switched to their brand-new internet-based independent study program (Laurel Springs) for 10th and 11th grade, where I had email contact with teachers and online curricula to study, but otherwise was entirely self-taught.
But that was still too expensive, so a friend in the local school district pulled some favors and got me technically transferred to another county (like it makes a difference when you work from home) where their 'special ed' independent-study programs continue through the end of high school (the local district only went through 8th grade), so for 12th grade I would go see the coordinator of that program once every two weeks, turn in my previous assignments, get old work back with grades, talk a bit about the old stuff and ask any questions I had, get new assignments, and then go home to work on them. I finished high school about six months early thanks to that program.
So yeah, there's not only good and bad qualities of home schooling, but there's all different sorts. You could be taught by your parents, be taught by a private tutor, study independently, study in groups with other home schooled kids, etc. Home schooling is a huge and varied field, often filled with lots of very progressive people, and it doesn't deserve to be pigeonholed into this "only conservative Christian fundamentalists would do that to their kids" box.
(And don't worry about your verbosity, as you can tell I'm not exactly the most terse person in the world either).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
How about 2 U.S. Senators trying to put pressure on Exxon to stop research on disenting views? Does that count? http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009337 http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110009338
if your one experiment flies in the face of well-established existing theory, is it mor1e likely that (a) you've discovered a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research, or (b) your findings were a Type I error? It depends on the health of the scientific community. I see so much confusion in what gets passed to the public that I can't be sure that the scientific community is in any great amount of health and that raises the likelihood that a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research has been discovered.
The fact that the only "serious" anti-global warming alarmism that Amtiskaw has heard of is only indicative of his ignorance on the subject, not an indictment against his non-scientifically politicized opponents. That he is also completely ignorant and only parroting what he reads in the non-science literature (i.e. newspapers and the like) about an imagined "vast body of evidence" in his favor only serves to stifle the scientific debate, which is much of what science is about, and forward his own favored worldview.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Naturally.
Notice i requested a fucking PEER REVIEWED journal - just because you want to believe one side so you ignore the lack of credibility of their "sources" doesn't mean everyone does. Here's a novel idea - it's possible to actually take in the evidence and weigh its value based on the source. The information I trust comes from climatologists, not lobbyists on EITHER side of the debate.
Thanks for taking the effort to point out in detail why the link in question is utter horseshit... I really didn't want to waste that much time with it.
The really mind-boggling thought is the fact that this "article" got modded informative, while I'm "flamebait" for pointing how that it's a load of crap.
Funny, all I'm reading in the majority of the major media is how doomed we all are by Global Warming. I don't see something like this on Yahoo:1 2/01/are-humans-involved-in-global-warming/ nor http://www.junkscience.com/challenge.htm/. Journalist like this issue because it will benefit their political (typically 80% of US Journals have answer polls showing they are somewhat liberal or very liberal in political ideaology). That spells out that only one side will be given to the public. Go ask a journalist major on what they want to do with their carreer, they are more then likely tell you they want to bring social justice to the world. Which of course is not what a journalist should be doing. They are suppost to be giving the public the facts and let us decide. Even if it's against their wished for political agenda.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/
Dammy
1. The CS Monitor article is talking about the effects of global warming, not denying it. In any case, the Christian Science Monitor isn't a religious publication and doesn't represent any religion - despite the name.
2. The second article is about evangelicals talking about how important it is to fight global warming. Yeah, they're real skeptics.
3. The website called "Answers in Genesis" does not represent the position of any church - which is what I specified, remember? In any case, it's an editorial complaining that Christianity Today - which does represent a national christian organization - wants Christians to do more to fight global warming.
4. An article in "Grist" - which turns out to be another editorial complaining about Christians, but not actually representing the position of any Christian organization.
5. You cite a blog about films!?! as evidence that Christians don't believe in global warming?
6. A timeline quoting headlines related to environmental news. Okay. Topics include Pat Robertson announcing that he believes in global-warming.
Holy Shit, dude. This is your evidence that mainstream Christian organizations don't believe in global warming?!?
Clear, Dark Skies
So you, with absolutely no references and a head full of conspiracy theories, know better than NASA, the ESA, the NOAA, the WMO, and the EPA -- all of whom believe in the theory of anthropogenic ozone depletion caused by CFCs, and publish research that supports that theory?
Seriously, here in reality, science supports the theory of anthropenic ozone depletion. It supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming. It supports almost all the theories that scientists and environmentalists endorse, and that paranoid antigovernment sociopaths bitterly decry as attempts to destroy the US economy.
The ESA's research has found ozone-depleting clouds containing CFC-derived radicals. But Europeans are automatically wrong since they try not to fight unwinnable $500 billion dollar wars of attrition in the middle east anymore, right?
The NOAA is pretty sure that ozone depletion is caused by Humans. Are your tax dollars being used as part of a grand conspiracy to destroy America? Better start writing more threatening letters to the government.
NASA's ozone depletion FAQ. But everyone knows that NASA is a liberal conspiracy developed by socialists to undermine industrialism in all its forms.
To summarize: don't be such a fucking idiot. Anthropogenic ozone depletion is completely real.
Just so that people can't say he is being stifled, here is one of his numerous articles on climate change.
I throw him into the mix because, as much as I disagree with him and hate almost everything he writes, he does present his arguments coherently.
In Australia though it is worth noting that far from repressing the climate skeptics, we usually here that the debate has been hijacked in their favour. ie While nearly all climatoligists agree global warming is happening, the news appears to show it is tightly fought debate.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
Is it necessarily a Bad Thing(TM) (this is the big one)?
Yep and the even bigger one of:
* Will what we do make things better or worse?
What I'm really missing in this discussion is the question why climate scientists would actually be biased. The reason which is given most often is the competition for grant money. Let's look at this in more detail: Most scientific grant money comes from the government and the government which is putting the most money into science would be the US government. I would not really count the current US government to the global warming believer crowd. So we at least should have seen a large increase in GC sceptic research when Bush came into office. Was that the case? I can't remember anything like that. Also the vast majority of scientific research is still "pro" GC. OK so it's not government funding, what about private funding? The enviromentalists with the big pockets funding the research, I mean come on. The pockets of the enviromentalists are tiny compared to Oil and energy industry. If it's not funding, maybe it's the other reason often given. "The enviromentalist/socialist agenda", do you really believe a diverse, large scientific community like the climatologists all have the same political believes and only practice science to push these believes. That is just plain ridiculous.
WARNING! WARNING! Be sure to mod this post down as "overrated" because it doesn't agree with your politics! Let's see that wonderful liberal tolerance we hear so much about as you censor his opinion that doesn't coincide with Al "I did nothing about global warming during my tenure" Gore.
That is all.
if your one experiment flies in the face of well-established existing theory, is it mor1e likely that (a) you've discovered a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research, or (b) your findings were a Type I error? It depends on the health of the scientific community.
Utter nonsense. Science is not based on any 'one experiment'. The results of any one experiment alone indicate nothing at all, unless replicated.
I see so much confusion in what gets passed to the public that I can't be sure that the scientific community is in any great amount of health and that raises the likelihood that a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research has been discovered.
No, all you are seeing is confusion in what gets passed to the public, not any issue with the scientific community.
Patrick Micheals (http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/micha els.shtml), a professor at the University of Virginia, is scientist who goes against the grain. He has published in very respectable journals (Geophysical Letters and Climate Research). His main premise: that global warming is slower than predictions and that it is not human caused. Interestingly, he has not relied on his own science to propagate these views. Rather he has made a name for himself by criticizing, in print and under oath to the United States Congress, one James Hansen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen), the guy who brought global warming to the attention of the US government. While it is always better to challenge concensus views with rigorous science, criticizing others work is not, in principle, a bad thing. It turns out, however, that Micheals is not only criticizing Hansen, but doing so fraudulently. A group of students at the University of Virginia began a campaign last month to remove Micheals from the University becasue of this academic dishonesty. Their website has a number of very interesting links (http://users.adelphia.net/~studenthonor/), including a report on funding that Micheals has received from the coal industry. I don't doubt that that there are legitimate scientists out there who are skeptical of climate change, and they may be right, but the only way to truly change a scientific concesus is to do it through hard work and extreme integrity. That scientists who are willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder exist, casts doubt on others who may have legitimate claims.
I live in Australia, which has "socialised medicine", as you call it. The current conservative government hates it and dreams of being able to kill it off. But they haven't been game to try because they know the public would have their testicles for cocktail olives at the next federal election.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The Bushies don't control all research funding, but enough that there should be no lack of funds for sceptical research.
And they also fund scientific journals, so there should be no problem publishing the results.
In any case, there are so many independent journals I can't believe they are all in on this conspiracy.
you're saying that there can't be a conspiracy on the left to squelch dissent about global warming, because Bush is conspiring to force science journals to publish dissenting articles?
/ details/rockefeller-snowe-exxon/)
Ow.
So, what's your opinion of Senator Rockefeller threatening Exxon with Congressional action if they don't stop funding scientists who don't believe in global warming? (http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw
You have to wonder if he even remembers where his family's money came from...
Clear, Dark Skies
Doesn't the failure of the model imply a problem with the theory?
Clear, Dark Skies
... by referencing sources in its science articles? It's extremely irritating to read an article in the mainstream press about what scientists supposedly think, and find that there are absolutely NO references to any scientific publications ANYWHERE.
That these journalism school graduates expect us to believe anything they say without proper citation shows just how little they really understand about science.
http://outcampaign.org/
Maybe you are dyslexic and your brain translated the word economics into "climatology". And as for statistics - BFD. Knowing statistics means you can...make statistics, not be an expert on anything that uses them.
Then how do you propose measuring the health of the scientific community? I can't tell if all the "confirmation experiments" aren't just following the steps of a person teaching them how he deluded himself. To put it another way, I can't tell if they are actually measuring what they claim to be measuring or some aspect of the device they are using to do the measuring with. Of course they are going to get the same results if in fact they are measuring parts of the devices that are calibrated to be the same.
Climate Change is just a plot conceived by the New World Order and other globalists to take your guns and your testicles. They are coming soon in our UN Black Helicopters to enforce your carbon emmission reductions. I for one welcome the Black Helicopter pilot overlords.
"Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains..."
What changes? I don't see any change in the climate... oh wait... I keep getting bitten by mosquitos, now, in December, and not, I am not living in Africa, I live in Southern Europe for fuck's sake (and no, we don't drink margaritas and sun bathe all year round, it snows where I live.) I have never been bitten by a mosquito later than the beginning of October... Well, skeptics might say that this is just an uncommon hot year. I say fuck you.
Of course, if Auntie *doesn't* find evidence of a cover-up and says so, then all the right-wing crazies will just rant that it's part of the cover-up. So really, what's the point?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/0 5/warm-refs.pdf
Here are some quotes, go read the rest your selves. Yes we should pollute less, use less oil, but not at 2x the price to make someone
else filthy rich!!!! You want 50 graphs and references and specs and REAL SCIENCE, READ THIS REPORT!!
"changes in temperature would be seen to precede changes in CO2 concentration by 400 to 4,000 years. Petit et al.
(1999) state that during each of the last four interglacial periods the Earth was warmer than the current
warm period"
"Were mediaeval temperatures at least as high as today's? This question is central to answering the
question whether "global warming" is or will become dangerous to the planet."
"According to Villalba (1990, 1994), and Soon & Baliunas (2003), the mediaeval warm period was
warmer than the current warm period by up to 3C. From c.1000 AD, ships were recorded as having
sailed in parts of the Arctic where there is a permanent ice-pack now (Thompson et al. 2000; Briffa
2000; Lamb 1972a, b; Villalba 1990, 1994)."
"Not only is the mediaeval warm period not shown on the UN's graph of temperature over the past 1000
years: the Little Ice Age is also absent."
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I didn't "straw man" anything. You said:
For a long time I always wondered why religious groups have been heavy sceptics of global warming.
Which is pure unadulterated ignorance on your part. You shouldn't be surprised when reality doesn't conform to your prejudices.
Clear, Dark Skies
The onus of proof is on the Kyotoists who make the extravagant and unscientific claims.
an ill wind that blows no good
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/96/tpxerror.html
"Measurements of global sea-level rise from a U.S. instrument in space likely will be revised downward because of a recently discovered error in the data-processing software, mission scientists said. Initial indications are that sea-level measurements from the U.S. altimeter aboard the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite likely will agree more closely with Earth-based tide gauges, as well as with the French altimeter on the satellite. Preliminary findings from TOPEX/Poseidon data..., indicated the Earth's sea surface was rising ... more than 5 millimeters per year. Data collected from December 1992 to April 1996 have been updated and suggest that the new sea level rise estimate will be revised to 1 to 3 millimeters per year."
The recent speculation that man is causing global warming and that sea levels will suddenly rise is because of flawed computer models and flawed satellite data...and journalists and politicians being unprofessional. Let me through a few details at you.
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, convened by the United Nations, said: "No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected."
Professor Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University and past president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, "Observational data obtained by our international team of experts shows conclusively that the sea level is not rising." "In the last 5000 years, global mean sea level has been dominated by the redistribution of water masses over the globe. In the last 300 years, sea level has been oscillation close to the present with peak rates in the period 1890-1930. Between 1930 and 1950, sea fell. The late 20th century lack any sign of acceleration. Satellite altimetry indicates virtually no changes in the last decade. Therefore, observationally based predictions of future sea level in the year 2100 will give a value of +10±10 cm (or +5±15 cm)."
"The data does not support any sea-level rise at all. ... There is no evidence, over the last century, that suggests there will be an acceleration in sea level" -- Wolfgang Scherer, the director of Australia's National Tidal Facility at Flinder's University in Adelaide.
In 1050, during the Medieval Warm Period, sea level was 25 centimeters higher than in 1650, during the Little Ice Age. Since 1650, sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of 1.8 mm per year.
Over the last 3,000 years, there have been at least 5 periods of "global warming". The Medieval Warm Period was from 800 AD to 1400 AD. It ended around 600 years ago. This was followed by the Little Ice Age that started 500 years ago and ended just over 100 years ago. Not surprisingly, Greenland just harvested its first barley in 600 years. Barley and grapes for wine were major crops in Greenland until 1400 AD.
Don't forget to understand the influence of the Maunder minimum and thermal haline.
Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, global average temperatures did not increase between 1998 and 2005. Yes, there was a period of warming between 1970 and 1998 - but there was also a similar period of warming between 1918 and 1940, well before the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1964, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate. Of the 1.5 F in warming the planet experienced over the last 150 years, two-thirds of that increase occurred between 1850 and 1940.
The 1 degree increase in global temperature over the past century is nothing unusual. For example, the Medieval Warm Period, from A.D. 1000 to 1400, was warmer than the 20th century.
Followed by:
The submitter is saying that the claims and counter claims are of partisanship and bias not of climate change itself. Yeesh.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
Glad to see the BBC is rolling with the creationist movement, flat earthers and
Ted Haggard. Let us deny the truth and propagandize the lie.
Hey Kreskin, heres a thought, Maybe you don't know what goes on in other people's heads or what motivates them and if thats true, then making vast generalizations about a huge and diverse group of people is assinine.
As an alternative thesis: Go ask a journalist major on what they want to do with their carreer, they are more then likely to tell you "Make tons of cash and travel to cool places by Working at one of the three or four remaining corporate news outlets. I plan on writing piecies that won't alienate the consumer or the advertiser or the company that signes my checks."
You give these people too much credit.
Very few climatologists argue that climate change is not occurring. Those that disagree are probably taking money from corporate interests. However, we have not proven why climate change is occurring, though there is strong support that CO2 emissions are the cause. Climatologists who support other theories about what is causing global warming ARE shunned, wrongly in my opinion. All we have proven is that global warming and CO2 emissions have a correlation... any respectable scientist can tell you that correlation is not causation.
Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Sigh, Slashdot just answered the question, yes the liberal media, like slashdot, censors reasonable dialog on the subject.
how did we go from a serious discussion in a scientific manner with points and source citations, to a litany of repetitive nitpicks with terms and anti-global warming FUD, where there was not even one counter opinion with any mod points for several minutes of reading? a tiny bit hypocritical perhaps?
I didn't. I just believe that their arguments are true or false based on whether they are true or false, not based on their motivations or who is funding their research. Furthermore, peer-reviewed is not the same thing as true. That's just a convention we have for many good reasons.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Sigh. I'll quote a larger fragment of the sentence : "a quick trip to Wikipedia would show that there are a few more folks out there who have stated their opposition to the current 'consensus' on Global Warming, including those who doubt there is a global rise in temperatures". Not "creative", just "concise". Again, there is *no* debate that temperatures on the up. None. Nada. Zilch. Only those with vested political interests continue to willfully spread the no-warming FUD, and you seem to have drunk deeply from the kool aid.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
There are two main problems I see with climate change science, one is that there is a belief that scientific consensus is the same as scientific proof (if this were true the world would have been flat in the 1400's) and the other problem is that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence.
No the christian concensus was that the world was flat and that the Sun went around the earth. The scientific concensus was the one started by the greeks and agreed by the Arab, Indian and Chinese world, namely that the world was round. Later on as we observed space with telescopes we found that the earth went around the Sun, again the christian establishment tried to suppresss this thinking.
Its amazing that people are happy to sentence people to death on a majority verdict but don't like 99% of scientists being able to have a casting vote. The scientific consensus is also that gravity exists, we don't have 100% proof of that either.
The fact is that even the evidence that shows we are undergoing a warming trend fails to demonstrate that this is a long term warming trend, that the warming trend is man-made, or that green-house gasses have had an impact on the temperature change.
Ahh I see so when you say something then its a fact but when 99% of scientists see it then its just made up stuff... I'm stunned you haven't won a Nobel prize yet.
What really bothers me is that whenever anyone attacks a study that makes questionable claims people automatically question their motives; all good science can withstand attacks from anyone regardless of their motives. The fact that these studies are treated like they're glass really makes me doubt how valid they are.
As in the 14th century what science finds hard to handle is arguments based on bigotry and ignorance. Most people arguing against climate change can be put into the same group as the Catholic church arguing for a geocentric universe, they aren't interested in facts just their "opinion". Fortunately at least now people aren't being put to death for being scientists.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi