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How ExxonMobil Funded Global Warming Skeptics
Erik Moeller writes "According to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, oil company ExxonMobil 'has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.' The report compares the tactics employed by the oil giant to those used by the tobacco industry in previous decades, and identifies key individuals who have worked on both campaigns. Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?"
Big business lobbies to protect its interests!
All the flames that are about to be posted...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
why don't the tobacco companies merge with the oil companies then if they're so similar. Then you just know eventually someone will make a careless mistake and BOOM! That'll kill two very evil birds with one stone :-)
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
...and I have been for years. Where do I sign up to get my check from Exxon?
ExxonMobil's Response to a Report by the Union of Concerned Scientists ExxonMobil believes the Union of Concerned Scientists' paper is deeply offensive and wrong. ExxonMobil engages in public policy discussions by encouraging serious inquiry, analysis, the sharing of information and transparency. Our support of scientific research on climate change is made public on our web site and it includes more than 40 peer reviewed papers authored by ExxonMobil scientists, and our participation on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies. While there is more to learn on climate science, what is clear today is that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors that contribute to climate change, and that the use of fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions. With regard to contributions that ExxonMobil provides to various public policy organizations, our support is transparent and appears on our web site. The support extends to a fairly broad array of organizations that research significant domestic and foreign policy issues and promote discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company. These groups range from the Brookings Institution to the American Enterprise Institute and from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As these organizations are independent of their corporate sponsors and are tax-exempt, we don't control their views and messages, and they do not speak on our behalf. In many cases and with respect to the full range of policy positions taken by these organizations, we find some of them persuasive and enlightening, and some not. We annually review our support of tax-exempt organizations and make appropriate adjustments. In addition, we publish the complete list of such organizations on our web site - and we update this list once per year. Supporting scientific and public policy research leads to better informed and more open discussion of options to address such a serious, global issue as climate change. http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Newsroom/NewsR eleases/corp_nr_mr_climate.asp
They provide me with an income. I'm happy with them. But this doesn't I agree with all their policies. I just fix their computers!
Future ruler of a small Asian-Pacific island
The UCS, which has it's own agenda and pushes it at every opportunity, is upset because someone on the opposite side wants their view heard as well? To bad.
The UCS no more wants open debate over issues than any other special interest - they want to frame all discussion so their viewpoint prevails; since only +they+ have the right answer.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Honest question, I promise. Claiming the conclusion is "scientific" would seem to imply that scientists have been able to make accurate, statistically signfiicant predictions of climate change, given existing C02 etc. emission measurements. That's *future* predictions, not curve-fitting the past. To rule out chance, you'd probably need over 20 years of data.
What kind of models even fit on computers 20 years ago?
I don't doubt that GW predictions follow from current scientific knowledge, but for those predictions to be "science", don't they need to have experienced statistically significant validation already?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
because the "Union of Concerned Scientists" sounds really non-biased.
I'm willing to accept that bias. Until we find Earth v2.0, we should be much more careful with Earth v1.0.
Blar.
$16 million over a 7 year period is nothing, especially for a company that regularly posts profits in the $30 billion dollar range. And none of this matters unless someone actually reports on the "findings" and "analysis" of ExxonMobile's "specialists." If anything, the media is responsible for creating the image of some debate about global warming (even though a huge scientific consensus exists).
I must thank you, ExxonMobil for your efforts and obvious lack of understanding of the scientific debate. In science, every attempt to disprove a fact confirmed theory just strengthens it.
So, I'd rather look at it from a different point of view: would there be the degree of certainty we have about global warming if it weren't for these jackasses? (no offense, John Knoxville!)
All research funding comes from somewhere. Where did the money for research that supports global warming come from? I'm sure that none of it came from companies with an interest in convincing people that global warming is real. Call me a cynic, but I think EVERYTHING needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
"O'Connor, smash the window." "Why me, Bigboote?" "It might be boobie-trapped!" "Oh!"<smash> -Buckaroo Banzai
They have. Slowdown of the North Atlantic Current, increases in global average temperatures, melting of glaciers, raising of ocean levels (and no, they were not expected to be in the multiple yard levels) have all been inline with the median models.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Rush Limbaugh told me that the only reason that it's not snowing in winter anymore in the northern sections of the U.S. is because of the number of cows we farm and the carbon moronoxide they expude from their butts. Cow farts != global warming folks! And besides, even if global warming is happening (which it isn't) there's a lot of benefits: The southern U.S. will become a tropical paradise. The mid U.S. will be able to produce different crops. And even the Canadians will benefit in that they won't have those savage winters anymore. Any concerns about coastal areas flooding can be put to rest as the army corp of engineers will be able to build very efficient and effective dams and breakwalls for most normal situations. Besides, floodwaters can easily be pumped out back to the ocean to lower the local water level. So stop all this worrying. There is no global warming. Rush told me so and I believe him. Megadittos!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I was hoping I wouldn't have to see another article about whose experts are more biased than others. Now I get to watch whole flames erupt over completely pointless issues.
Can we not get back to the fundamental problem of figuring out what path Global Warming is going to take, it's impact and how we are should deal with it? All this crap is just wasted air.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's too bad that you got a mod or two as "troll" instead of "funny", but that itself should have been expected because you're absolutely correct with respect to what's about to happen. The inflammatory (no pun intended) nature of the article summary itself just begs for the whole damned thing to be marked as "troll" or "flamebait".
Look, the whole idea that any company or organization would attempt to skew any studies to their own viewpoint is universal. Enviornmentalists are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Corporations are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Skeptics are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Conspiracy theorists are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Anyone with any kind of agenda is always looking to make surveys/studies support his viewpoint. But in this case it's "big oil" { insert doom-and-gloom music here }, so therefore their attempts to skew results are somehow more evil than other groups doing it? What a complete and utter crock.
The question of "Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?" is infuriating by itself. Hell, yes there would be a controversy for numerous reasons that have been stated time and time and time again, not the least of which is that without indisputable proof, which I still don't believe we have, there will always be room for skepticism. Honestly, the whole notion that skepticism is unhealthy, as that last line suggests, is an abhorrent idea in itself.
Yeah, yeah, mod me down for actually contesting a Slashdot article and for being somewhat of a global warming skeptic. I have karma to burn, but that doesn't make what I've said any less valid.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
And the predictions that those would happen were on record as being the scientific consensus before they happened, and the predictions that have gone on record were right far more often than they were wrong (i.e., no John Edward), and this happened frequently enough to be statistically significant?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?
Yes. I'm one of them and for good reason. Ice cores and incomplete and inaccurate data only going back ~125 years, of which only 50% is probably usable, can only tell us so much. There is so much to learn about how the weather patterns on the Earth operate.
The average American is confused enough as it is.
Look, it's simple: all of the authorities and powers-that-be could have been in total agreement for the last 2 decades, warning people about global warming in every available media outlet and it wouldn't have mattered because Joe Sixpack doesn't give a shit. And politicians won't force people to do the right thing, because that doesn't get you elected.
Unless it unavoidably and directly impacts the price of beer or his ability to watch his favorite TV show, Joe wouldn't care if his SUV ran on mulched babies. "Scrubs" has it right: people are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling. And global warming is Somebody Else's Problem.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
the problem doesn't lie with Exxon-Mobil, it lies with the whole corporate structure in general. If they don't defend their bottom line, they can get sued by shareholders (Look at how Dodge got their startup capital). Don't hate the playa, hate the game.
Global warming shouldn't even enter into it. The whole "global warming debate" is a smokescreen blown from both sides to avoid asking the really tricky, really pertinent questions, namely: "Global warming aside, is spewing fossil fuel byproducts into the atmosphere bad for the environment in general?" (Yes.) "Is a complete and total reliance on nonrenewable fossil fuels and pigheadedly refusing to look into alternative energy sources because they aren't where the money is a bad plan?" (Yes.) "What are our next steps?" (We don't know.) So people bitch and moan about global warming because it's a nice, round cornered, warm and fuzzy topic that any idiot can get his head around, as opposed to the intricate economic and political machinations behind the energy (read: fossil fuel) trade as a whole. It's just like hippies whining about recycling saving trees when the real issue is so much more complex than that. They just ignore the rest of it because it doesn't make a good tagline and it's harder for the average public-school-educated-Joe to understand. And things that the average public-school-educated-Joe has a hard time understanding make him change the channel, which is bad for support and bad for business.
Environmentalist groups lobby to protect their interests!
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The current observations are largely inline with the median projections of the IPCC. See http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/online.htm/ for the full shebang.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Actually, you can do a valid scientific test if the predictions aren't the material you derived the hypothesized relationship from, whether or not the measurements are of events from the past. Otherwise, all of paleontology would be non-scientific.
Because the scientific communty would still shun any scientist that questions the present assumptions. Now take away funding from those voices that dare to question and we would has even less understanding than we have today.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Your comment would be a lot more persuasive (and useful) if you said exactly what this agenda is supposed to be and actually provided some facts to back up your claim.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Prediction and observation.
Currently, we're observing that the planet is warming up. That is a simple fact. No scientific dispute.
To this observation, you can match models, to explain why the warming occurs. That is the theory. No scientific dispute exist about the theory either, that the warming is caused by human activities, specifically because of the burning of fossil fuels.
No reasonable human being can argue about the observation and if you want to argue about the theory, to explain the reason of the warming, you need to satisfy the scientific scrutiny.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Will we see a breathless story detailing the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by governments around the world supporting global warming proponents? Or how the Clinton and Blair governments actively try and silence those who dissent(ed) from the orthodoxy? Would there be a controversy if said governments actually allowed a real debate in the agencies which have made it their mission to impose the Kyoto Protocol?
But right, I forgot, big business is inherently evil.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
First my bonafides - I'm a global warming skeptic - at least when it comes to mankind being the cause. I could accept that there is a general warming trend right now (Poles getting smaller seems to be a simple proof of the concept.)
However, proving that man is the cause is a whole different kettle of fish. Consider the following points - The Sun is the single largest contributor to the Earth's temperature, consequently variation in it's output is a first order effect. Oh -and did you know the Sun HAS changed it's output slightly in recent years?
Anyway - the fact that Exxon is spending money to get their point across is no more abnormal than UCS pointing out what Exxon is doing as part of THEIR actions to get UCS's point of view across.
No big deal in my mind.
Now -fill up my tank!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
What they call "confusing the public", I call practicing free speech. How condescending of the UCS to assume we simpletons can't sort out misinformation for ourselves.
Actually, you can do a valid scientific test if the predictions aren't the material you derived the hypothesized relationship from, whether or not the measurements are of events from the past.
True, however:
a) Because the scientist already knows the time history, he doesn't have to put his neck on the line; he can always add and remove factors he chooses to deem "significant", thus making it an exercise in curve-fitting.
b) The predictions came from one material (weather observations) and are of that material (weather observations).
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
So, that's a "no" then.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
About the billion or so spent by George Soros to fight every traditional or conservative cause out there. There is plenty of FUD from both sides. You just need to be smart enough to sift the BS for the few grains of truth.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Long-term *trends* are a lot easier to predict than short term fluctuations. Your doctor is likely to say "you'll likely be alive a year from now" then "you won't get a cold tomorrow."
-b.
Yeah, we don't know much, but we can watch the signs2 9/1946227
1 2/2029215
1 0/2110211
1 6/0123246
0 5/2012222
0 8/0736245
2 6/1712213
/.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/
And these are just the articles recently on
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
What is their agenda? I'm not that familiar with it, so I'm interested to know where they deviate from widely accepted science?
Another poster mentioned their global warming FAQ, but I read it and thought that most of what I read was pretty uncontroversial among qualified climate scientists (apart from a few counter-views, which almost always seem to be oil-funded).
Given that you assert UCS is a special interest, how do they profit from acceptance of their assertions? It's obvious how oil companies profit directly from the rejection of a theory of human-generated climate change.
I think you may have stumbled on the root cause - I commend you, sir!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm personally on the side of the science supporting global warming. But the truth is, skepticism is a healthy thing regardless of who funds it.
I think the skepticism and controversy has helped scientist secure more funding for their research into the issue. This, in turn, has helped them secure more proof supporting their stand. More funding and more research will help the truth distill faster. For something such as global warming that is time-critical, this is a good thing.
It sucks that there are those fighting to confuse the masses, but it just helps the truth clarify its arguments.
I should have known this was a troll. Do you even know what the IPCC is, and how those reports were created?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
So much money! That $16 million, over 7 years, divided by 43 groups, comes to the amazingly huge sum of $53,000 per year per group. Why, with that king of money, they could probably pay the salary of 1 person!
My God! They could take over the world with an army like that!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Doesn't take a rocket scientist
But apparently it takes a bored IT guy on slashdot to correct an international consortium of climatologists.
Maybe you ought to take a course in the statistical analysis of experimental data, and when you have a grasp of how scientists analyze data to construct theories that explain observations, they often take many things into account, you can rejoin the discussion.
Or, the short version: THE FACT THAT THE SOLAR RADIATION HAS INCREASED HAS BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR.
Good day!
I've been a /. participant for ages, and really enjoyed the news and commentary about technology issues. But, in the last year or so this site has taken to posting a lot of political stories which have generally taken a large step to the left. This story is another example of such. There's no techno-centric value to this story, merely polemics. I enjoy political discourse, but I go to political blogs to do so. Please, kdawson et al., we don't need /. to become another Daily Kos or FreeRepublic.
Absolutely.
Regarding the effect of solar forcing, check out the wikipedia article. It's got good links to studies that have shown that solar forcing only accounts for about 25% of the recorded increase in global temperatures.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I should have known you'd use intimidation. Do you even know what "statistically significant" means, and what it takes to rule out chance?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
But the question is this: How much is the change due to us (from 0-100%) or natural cycles (0-100%)? I don't think there were SUVs around during the last ice age so we know its not all us.
And further, should we be trying to counteract "mother nature" to provide a conistent climate?
I could show you data that would just as easily say that global warming is due to my age."
Quick! Someone kill this guy before he gets any older!
And you'll find some of the same people on the Bush presidential campaigns (and Bob Corker in TN). And some of the "think tanks" also get the bulk of their funding from Saudi Arabia. Think that's a coincidence? The oil companies hooked up with the Saudis and Bush.
Raise your hand when you think you spot a trend.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
What about atmospheric CO2 levels? We know for a fact that they have gone up in the past, and consequently affected the earth mean temperature. What is unique in this case is that its going up because of human actions. That's not being disputed anywhere is it? In addition, its looking more and more like 4 of the 5 mass instinctions in the past may be related directly to climate change and its affect on the chemistry of the oceans and subsequent changes to the atmosphere. I have no doubt we won't destroy the earth....but will it still be habitable by humans 1000-10000 years from now? This is one of the times when people have to buck it up and care even if the people impacted most will be in the future...
Plus...we might find much better uses for these raw materials in the future than just burning them. (anyone else like plastics but me?) Its all very shortsighted and sad statement of the advancement of the human race...it's precisely that "We don't know" that we should be cautious.
P.S. We are supposed to be in the cool part of the wobble cycle. =)
"That'll kill two very evil birds with one stone"
you may be kidding around when you say that but what really scares me is there are people around here that believe "BIG OIL" is evil.
oil is what allows all of our current technology. ask a chemist what we'd have(or not have) without oil and the companies that provide it at a reasonable price. i for one really do welcome our big oil overlords with open loving arms.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Here is the wikipedia on Union of Concerned Scientists. They are basically ideological twins of Greenpeace - hard-line peace activists and hard-line environmentalist. All the standard left-wing stuff. The main difference between the two are their tactics - UCS cloaks itself in scientific respectability and issues whitepapers while Greenpeace pulls protest stunts to gain publicity. The other difference is that UCS tolerates nuclear energy while Greenpeace is totally opposed to it. UCS is based in the "People's Republic of Cambridge"
Wait, so you mean to tell me that maybe, just maybe, Exxon has a good reason to fund investigations that would otherwise go undone because of the irrational bias towards the catastrophic models of climate change? I'm stunned.
Look, privately funded science isn't automatically bad and twisted to prove a conclusion. Does it happen? Yes, of course it does, but it also happens in publicly funded research, and there's a lot less accountability there. That Exxon, or any oil company, has dumped money into disproving the high pitched hysterics of the climate fascists isn't nefarious in any way, it's their duty to their shareholders, and to the rest of us. Should we just blindly accept anyone's ideologically motivated declarations on the science of climate change, or should we, i dunno, do some experiments and try to arrive at real conclusions, based on empiricism and reason?
If this work were getting done by the "establishment" climate scientists, Exxon wouldn't have to kick start it itself. But establishment climate scientists _aren't_ doing the research on their own, and those who try are often run out of the field. As Italian climate scientists Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza what happens when you question the global warming orthodoxy.
So there's no mistake, I'm open to the possibility that the alarmists are right, that the sky is falling, that human activity is the main cause of climate change, that the temperature is going to raise by a billion degrees tomorrow unless we all revert back to some pre-industrial anti-humanist cave society. I'm also open to the possiblity that there really isn't a problem, that everyone's freaking out about nothing, and that, in fact, dumping tons of pollution makes my skin softer and more huggable. The fact is, we don't have enough data either way to draw CONCLUSIONS yet. We can hypothesize, we can speculate, but we simply don't know enough to declare, in big red letters, THE END IS NEAR.
Unfortunately, that's what the alarmists are doing, and it's a disservice to the field and the world itself to declare that debate is over, no more discussion is allowed, and anyone who questions becomes verboten. It's stupid to pretend that somehow, climate scientists are the only pure, unbias thinkers in the world, and everyone else is a stooge of the Big Scary Mean Capitalist Oil companies.
The Royal Society recently issued a fairly unprecedented public warning to Exxon to stop perverting science in the name of $$$. I'm sure the UCS are a very worthy body, but the Royal Society are somewhat more prestigious and authoritative (what with having been founded by Newton, Boyle and Hooke, amongst others, being the oldest such learned body in the world, and still representing the elite (in a good way) of UK science. Exxon ("Esso" here in the UK) are still, as the Greenpeace campaign from 5 years ago pointed out, "#1 Global Warming Villain".
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Nicely done; you fit most of the skeptics' standard and discredited talking points in 3 lines. And added a dash of standard logical fallacy as well.
You can go here, here, or here for more info.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
However, proving that man is the cause is a whole different kettle of fish. Consider the following points - The Sun is the single largest contributor to the Earth's temperature, consequently variation in it's output is a first order effect. Oh -and did you know the Sun HAS changed it's output slightly in recent years?
Really? That is amazing! You had better immediately contact the IPCC and major groups studying and modelling climate change, because you alone have realised that the the sun has changed its output, and they, of course, haven't. Your unique insight into climate change could change everything! I mean, surely these people who have been studying climate (some of them for decades) could never have realised that the output of the sun could change, could they?
That was sarcasm, by the way.
ExxonMobil will spend almost up to the amount they stand to lose in revenue in order to fund lobbyists and counter arguments to science which influences policy. For example, if they still to lose $16 million due to regulations which would be caused by a consensus on global warming, they will spend nearly $16 million dollars to discredit global warming.
Nobody is breaking any laws, in fact they're required to do this as a public corporation. If you don't like it, change the laws.
When someone can accurately predict what tomorrow's forecast is going to be, then maybe I'll considering listening to what either side has to say.
Hey great! That means you can save on your air-conditioning bills. After all, why should you believe that it is going to get hot in summer - they can't even predict the weather tomorrow.
From the other, more pressing issues that we should be dealing with. For example:
I could go on...
Anyway, Global Warming fanatics always bring up the negative aspects that it could produce, but not necessarily that it will. Indeed, anyone who is going to make 100 or 1000 year predictions on a few decades of data is foolish. We simply don't know. Regardless, does anyone ever bring up the possible benefits of global warming?
And these are just a few. The real question shouldn't be "is GW happening?", but, "Is it a bad thing?". It could be that preventing global warming would leave us with a worldwide shortage of food a few centuries from now. How are you going to feed 10 billion people?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Kind of ironic that the Alfred P. Sloan chair was endowed by a chairman of GM, no?
-b.
Do you know how to read? Go educate yourself. I even provided the link for you. Come back when you have something useful to contribute. Like, what's the difference between satellite measurements and buoy measurements of ocean surface temperatures, and what's the cause of them? It's a good start. You'll even find out that statistically significant is not what you think it means.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
(a) I'd rather be skiing
(b) Try golfing when it's 100F and humid as hell for the 50th consecutive day in summer. Anything above 80F makes me feel like I'm gonna die and sweat like a pig.
(c) Try golfing when your golf course is underwater.
-b.
I am not an atmospheric physicist, but if a huge group of atmospheric physicists started telling me that I should be worried about global warming, I would probably get worried. Assuming that they are impartial scientists of course. The problem one has to worry about is, are they pushing an agenda? I am less inclined to believe 'scientists' funded by groups with vested interests in the results, even decent scientists can be unconsciously influenced by the funding, and less scrupulous scientists have no problems taking money to say whatever someone wants. I remember 'scientists' paid for by tobacco companies telling us that smoking wasn't bad. I'm pretty sure there is universal consensus regarding the health effects of cigarettes now. If you don't believe that the study's are impartial (or as impartial as humanly possible), then you should try and disprove them. I am just willing to trust that the people who are supposed to know this stuff actually know what they are talking about. Do you trust your doctor to correctly diagnose you?
... of how gas-powered wood chipper companies and giant "Yurt" manufacturers secretly fund Sierra Club's magazine!
Golly, I hadn't realised that an "International Consortium of Climatologists" (ICC) had made their verdict. How dare he doubt such an august group! I never took a course in the "statistical analysis of experimental data", but if I agree with the ICC, I imagine no coursework is required. We should only hold the skeptics of global warming to impractically high academic standards. Also, that's quite an achievement by the ICC (accounting for the increase in solar radiation in such a complex system as the earth's atmosphere) - what I can't grasp is how they can model that so definitively but can't go ahead and give me the weather forcast more than a week out. Or maybe they're not sharing their supercomputer with the meteorologists, the selfish prigs.
Or, the short, all-caps version: WHAT HAS MORE IMPACT ON CLIMATE, OUR ACTIVITIES THAT PALE IN COMPARISON TO A SINGLE VOLCANIC ERUPTION, OR THAT MONSTROUS HYDROGEN BOMB WE CALL THE SUN THAT SUPPLIES ALL THE ENERGY THAT THE EARTH RECIEVES?
Ok, that wasn't all that short, but surely I get credit for the all-caps, right? I mean, it's a good strategy in a discussion, because after all, who can disagree with ALL CAPS?
We will have earned it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This is the best treatment of Hansen's 1998 predictions that I have seen. It discusses Hansen's forecasts of emissions and temperature back in '88 (this was testimony before Congress; Pat Michaels and Michael Crichton have since lied quite bluntly about this testimony only by talking about scenario A, which is not relevant given actual CO2 emissions).
The verdict: Not perfect, but pretty damn good.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
This is one of the problems of society we face. Our forefathers faced slavery, absolutism, war and others, we are facing litigation and the question of which status corporations should have.
A corporation is in many ways worse than an insane king. For one, you can't wait for it to die of old age. Two, it the king at least could only be in one place at the same time. He had limited resources. Once he started distributing responsibilities, you could hope to change the bureaucracy instead.
However, we face the same problem those French Revolution peasants did: First, we have to realize that we are the people, that corporations live and die by our decree. That if we are united, there's nothing they can do except maybe cause some casualties.
We've got to realize that before they've taken all the power away from us. As long as elections are bought and manipulated and full of fraud and bullshit, but at least it's still we who vote and the manipulations can't bend a clear majority.
And we've got to realize that "we" means all the lazy, stupid, couch-potato, daily-soap-watching, beer-drinking idiots, too.
The last is why I don't have much hope.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I love that meme. Imagine an editorial written in 1936, going like this:
"Germans see Hitler as the benevolent, charismatic leader who will help them up out of the despair of the Depression and into a new age of prosperity and pride in their heritage. Americans see him as potentially destabilizing. Somewhere between the two, you'll find the truth."
rj
Where's the article about the tree huggers funding pro global warming research? Since it's functionaly identical everyone should be up in arms about that too.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Lake Mendota, in Madison, WI, usually freezes over around December 28th. It hasn't frozen yet. In fact, there isn't any ice on it at all.
http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/top/index.php?ntid
Here's some commentary (pdf) from Hansen himself. He readily admits the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 of the 1988 model was too high, because we've learned stuff since them. Gee, a scientist makes a pretty good prediction nearly 20 years ago, and readily acknowledges the limitations of that prediction? Why again do some people argue that Hansen not credible?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Whilst that may be true in the medical field, predicting long term trends with any accuracy requires understanding of all significant factors likely to be involved (for example a doctor might be a lot less confident with such a prediction in the middle of a major epidemic).
Factors affecting global warming are very poorly understood: oceanic currents and their effect on atmospheric temperature, the influence of Himalayan erosion on CO2 concentrations, how the Rocky Mountain range distorts jet streams over America, why El Nino occurs some years and not others . . . and the list goes on.
It's highly questionable how anybody can make long term climate predictions with any degree of accuracy given the current lack of understanding of how the planet's climate reacts to perturbation. Which is why it's not unreasonable to demand that models correctly predict *future* changes which can be confirmed before the model is accepted rather than just matching previously existing data - as the GP pointed out, fitting a model to an existing curve is relatively trivial by comparison and thus a poor guide to a models applicability to the future.
Precisely, but we must add one little caveat; the UCS doesn't want public debate on the scientific consensus. This is because the scientific consensus was arrived at through the scientific method, and is dependent on the available evidence. There is no room for public debate, if you discover that the scientific consensus is incorrect then you must provide scientifically valid evidence. Should this evidence be scientifically verified then the consensus must be reevaluated.
Anyone have a problem with the scientific method???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
On a personal note: The thing that confuses me is why so many people are so willing to be used as tools in a disinformation campaign.
As a final note: shame on all those moderators who keep modding comments 'insightful' simply because they question global warming. Have you read the moderator guidelines?
So both the Royal Society and UCS are saying that Exxon is deliberately confusing the issue to make an extra buck and you still support them? Your a stock holder arent you? They arent saying that Exxon is doing alternate research, Exxon is not even attempting to hire outside researchers to back up their claims to give themselves some credibility. They are releasing FUD plain and simple. What is it going to take to make you believe that global warming is an issue that needs to be addressed, watching your children die of melanoma? I personally would like to find a solution before things like that start happening.
Follow the money.
It's been the mantra for ages. Corporations spend money on anything that may be beneficial to them so it's hardly surprising that they fund their own research. However, rather than looking at where the corporations are spending their money, it might help to look at WHY they are spending this money.
Oil extraction (not just consumption) produces greenhouse gases. Oil extraction from oil sands is particularly difficult and burns a lot of energy, producing a lot of carbon dioxide. If governments start taxing CO2 production or any equivalent scheme (environmental damage tax, etc), the oil industries are going to be hit at both ends of their financials - once in production and once again in sales. It's going to dent those profit margins. Of course, that means that the oil price will rise again but that too is not necessarily beneficial to the Oil companies. As oil prices rise, competing energy technologies that are currently too expensive become more reasonable. The real nightmare for the Oil companies is to become a minor player compared to other technologies, be it solar, wind or nuclear. So they'll spend any amount of money to ensure that governments hesitate as long as possible because fundamentally, the status quo supports their dominance in the energy markets.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Woah, hold on there a minute.
"both sides have lied", so the truth must be "somewhere in the middle?"
That's the logical fallacy that Fox News uses all the time.
A quick example should illustrate the fallacy:
Billy: There's a cake here!
Bobby: I want it!
Billy: Why don't we split it 50/50?
Bobby: No! mine!
Their Mom: I've heard both of your extreme viewpoints, so we'll need to compromise. Bobby gets 75%, Billy gets 25%.
Saying that both sides "have lied" and so "the truth is somewhere in between" somehow puts paid industry propagandists on the same credibility level as professional climate research scientists. (And does a great disservice to science, I think.) There is a fair amount of difference in the professional opinion of a corporate shill who is paid to spout the company line, and someone who has spent the majority of their life studying something.
If only they'd used the $16 million to recruit more pirates, they'd have done a lot more to reduce Global Warming. More pirates = Less Global Warming. I thought everyone knew that by now! We simply have to have more pirates.
And more cowbell would be nice too.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Should read:
The fact that the solar radiation has increased has been accounted for and blamed on Americans driving SUVs and George Bush.
And blame the Chinese pollution problem on America too because they should all be in cold, damp, and dark huts with no jobs and no food to feed themselves. That is until they find that fish that grants wishes then we can all have rainbows and Skittles.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Livestock methane - which has higher AGW impact than C02 due to longevity - is a large component of yearly greenhouse emissions, as reported here
If there were skeptics, on ANY topic, who is going to FUND them except if you have a stake in it? For any viewpoint in any issue, ONLY the people that stand to lose if the issue goes the other way will fund research supporting them. Thus saying that big oil is funding most of the research that contradicts "prevailing opinion" makes 100% sense. Do you actually expect the Sierra Club to fund a study who's goal is skepticism?
This comes from confusing cause & effect. The studies don't come out a certain way because the group funding them dictates that it should, but only because the only ones LOOKING for an opposite outcome are those with something to lose. A very slight difference, but it's still critical to understanding it. The first is straight-out lying. The 2nd can happen with the most honest of intentions. I'm not saying that's the case here, but to dismiss it automatically as the 1st just means your mind is made up without even looking at what evidence may exist.
No matter how many times journalists, think tank writers, corporate shills, politicians, and other non-scientists say so, there isn't any real debate among scientists - at least not about the basic ideas, sure there is debate over the fine points. But the public doesn't get their science through primary literature. They get it through the aforementioned groups. Some members of these non-scientific groups intentionally distort findings, cherry pick facts, mis-represent what scientists say, over-emphasize discrepancies, under-emphasize agreements, and abuse their direct access to communicate to the public. All in all, they present a picture that scientists are not in agreement - which is false.
Whether or not they are correct, the scientists are in consensus about global warming. But they need a noisy PR machine to make that consensus known when other non-scientists with so much direct public access claim otherwise.
2007-1974 = 33, not 20.
--MarkusQ
And of course, increased solar output has been included in the models. What do you think scientists do? Come together in their secret cabal and make up the next big story to tell the unwashed masses? That's what theologists do. Scientists work in a brutally competitive arena of thought, measurement and models. Everything is scrutinized. Errors are made, but likewise scientific careers are made out of pointing out flaws in the work of others. So long that is that case, the process is sound.
We should consider pushing for new legislation that would make companies liable for any harm caused by "position paper" scientists.
If we view government as a tool to protect the citizen from harm (not all do), then it follows that Gov't should enourage behaviours which improve the lives of citizens, and discourage behaviours that harm citizens. Shaping science and opinion away from truth for the purposes of profit is a serious mal-adaption, which harms everyone. We should institute legislation which enables individuals in society to sue for harm caused either (a) as a direct result of reliance on a scientific claim funded with a policy goal (b) as a direct result of use of a product produced by the company, which would have been avoided if the company had not funded policy-guided science.
Burden of proof for the plaintiff should be high to discourage abuse, but the penalties should be a set percentage of the companies net value (so that no company could afford to risk this harm).
In order to prove their case, a plaintiff would have to produce a writing (electronic or paper) which demonstrates that the purpose of the study was to support a policy goal, and not to research the true state of the issue.
Thoughts?
While this may seem like a waste of time.. every law started with some idea kicked around by a couple folks somewhere.
-GiH
1. Form a Union of Concerned Scientists
2. Scare everyone into believing that Global Warming is an imminent threat to Society As We Know It
3. Convince the government to give them lots of money to fund more studies
4. ???
5. Profit!
Ok, the environmentalists are right. I have finally found the proof.
Open Source Alternatives
Way to use argument from authority! How indeed can any of us question climate experts? They're EXPERTS for Pete's sake. They've been doing this for years! That'll shut down debate. But if not, don't forget argument from concensus ("Everyone believes it") or if necessary, implied insults ("Only an idiot would question the experts. You're not an *idiot*, are you?")
Subway sponsors the American Heart Association and in return, Subway's food is now endorsed by the AHA as heart healthy. I hope to see the USC bring Jared and his cronies down!
This is not true. Nothing has been accounted for, as there is very little real science being done. If you work in this field, you know that you have two choices: do work that supports the "consensus" or leave the field for lack of funding. When the CIA does this, we call it "group think" and we call for resignations and hearings. When funding for scientific reach gets cut in this way, we first call it consensus, and then label everyone who seeks alternate funding a lobbiest for big-oil and discredit their research as non-scientific propaganda.
Fact of the matter is that throughout the late 70s and 80s this process grew ugly, and now it's damn-near impossible to extract meaningful data from this field, which is DANGEROUS... far more dangerous than rising sea-levels. Even hurricane study is starting to get politicized as a by-product. We need to get the politics out of climate research and meteorology. We need to fully fund the skeptics because that's how we assail theory and determine its merits (scientific method, remember?) We need to stop branding researchers as biased just for losing their funding and deciding to keep doing the exact same research, but with corporate sponsorship. Judge the work, not the funding, and if you don't like the funding, fund it from elsewhere.
Now, can we get past the north-vs-south of climate change and let the scientists get back to work, please?
Way to use argument from authority! How indeed can any of us question climate experts? They're EXPERTS for Pete's sake. They've been doing this for years! That'll shut down debate. But if not, don't forget argument from concensus ("Everyone believes it") or if necessary, implied insults ("Only an idiot would question the experts. You're not an *idiot*, are you?")
g .html
Where your superb and eloquent attempt to argue back falls down is that what I posted is not an argument from authority, it is an argument from fact. Climate scientists have, of course, known about solar radiation changes, and have been incorporating them into their models and predictions:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/Dec03ScienceMeetin
"The meeting was devoted to our understanding of the physical processes that connect the Sun's radiation and its variability to our terrestrial environment, including the processes involved with climate and ozone response to solar radiative forcing and the mechanisms that cause solar activity and radiation variations."
I would not say this is a case of an idiot questioning the experts, it a case of someone who is ignorant of current climate science questioning the experts, or at least someone too lazy to do a quick google search which would reveal they are wrong.
And, it is a good rule of thumb that, in general, when some random poster on a forum questions the experts, they are almost always wrong.
Their Mom: I've heard both of your extreme viewpoints, so we'll need to compromise. Bobby gets 75%, Billy gets 25%.
But that's not fair to Bobby. Bobby should get it ALL.
If Mom weren't biased in favor of Billy's socialist "75-25" plan, Bobby would be getting 87.5% at the very least.
It does not matter much what path humans take in the years to come. Even the most agressive greenhouse gas emission reduction are a spit in the bucket. The Koyoto treaty calls for reduction in emission down to a 1990 level, and this excludes the developing world like China and India.
The emission in 1990 was already resulting in historical CO2 levels in the air.
The differece will only be wether the global changes happens in a few hundre years or a few thousand years. The big extinctions in the past has taken hundreds of thousands of years, so there is little chance evolution will be up to the task of coping with the changes.
On a geological time scale, it is a flash disaster either way.
At any rate, we will see a human made catastrophy that will easily kill of 90% of all species. Not only due to CO2, but also habitat destruction and resource consumption.
Only way to avoid this would be something like making earth a stoneage zoological garden supporting a few hundred million people tops. The rest must have to build an industrial complex on the moon or mars or something.
Anyone that has fermented grape juice to make wine knows this. The yeast cells multiply to consume all resources, and in the end die of global(vat) pollution(alcohol) of their own making.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Oh my! The sky is falling. The earth will get 1 degree C warmer in the next ten years. At that rate the libs and Iran will have killed us all anyway before melanoma forms on my ear. As for the objective folks at greenpeace, Don't make me laugh. There is nothing objective about them and they are every bit as biased as Exxon Mobil. And every bit as much a corporation interested in preserving their business as Exxon Mobil. When the "scientists" have to make a warm period of time that took place essentially disappear to make their "man-made global warming" claims appear legitimate you know they are biased. Most global warming skeptics are not disputing warming at all but the radical claim that my car and cow farts are causing it. Greenpeace Out.
"puts paid industry propagandists on the same credibility level as professional climate research scientists."
Wow, is that a loaded statement.
Somehow, scientists paid for by people with an interest on side "A" of the issue are "propagandists," while scientists paid for by people on side "B" of the issue aren't?
Exactly why aren't Greenpeace or Sierra Club or alternate energy industry funded studies "propaganda?"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Hell, they even hired some of the same scientist...
Which is of course true, but what is an interested party to do when the data from both sides comes from someone more knowledgeable and with an agenda?
The word "skeptic" comes from a Greek work, "skepsis", which refers to looking at something and examining it. Skepticism is that the person from Missouri does when they say "show me".
A skeptic isn't a denier. A denier says the scientests are making it all up to curry favor with government grant issuers, you know, the rabid environmentalist Bush administration. A skeptic asks how big the error bars are on the temperature measurements and finds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record. A skeptic asks how a huge computer model of a system which is incompletely defined can ever be validated (and finds annoyingly little in the popular literature). A skeptic asks whether increased solar output could account for the changes and finds out that nights are getting warmer and the upper atmosphere is getting colder, both of which point to heat getting trapped in the lower atmosphere.
A skeptic refuses to be rushed into policy choices. A skeptic asks the question Bjorn Lomborg has been exploring, whether it's better to mitigate the results of climate change than to uproot the foundations of the world economy trying to prevent it.
Skepticism clarifies issues, astroturf campaigns and phony think tanks obscure issues.
Ok, I think I'm getting the hang of this. Even though I've dug through numerous posts by climate-change advocates that read: "Don't question scientists!", I am now going to reply like a true environmentalist and say: "This guy is obviously not a proper scientist, because proper scientists don't doubt human caused climate change" And, so in one fell swoop, I invalidate your skeptical scientist. As a "climate change advocate", I can do this to any scientist you care to produce that deviates from orthodoxy.
It's kind of like when a member of a minority group is a Republican and is therefore declared to not be a "real" member of that minority group, because any "real" member of that group would be a Democrat.
We should make science as public as possible. Allowing scientific discoveries to be monopolized by a single company is amoral.
Corporations in the US have such a sweet-heart deal with the government, I think we can ask them to share their discoveries with the rest of us.
Blar.
Out by a factor of a hundred.
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/cl
"Many enviros are simply Marxists that found a willing home.
They're "watermelons": green on the outside, red on the inside."
Wow! So much prejudice and commonplaceness in just 2 sentences. Congratulations.
Anything against the Jews or the old good blacks?
:(){
"are as pure as the wind driven snow..."
Oh, yeah, I remember snow (looking at webcam of mud covered ski slope in January).
Most of the stuff on
Look at it this way: Bill Clinton, in the eleventh hour of his presidency, buried the Kyoto treaty--and admission from Kyoto supporters suggest the reduction of CO2 may only slow global warming by the tiniest fraction of a degree. So assuming everyone was on the same page--that is, assuming we all knew that Global Warming was a fact, and further assuming we all knew that Global Warming was entirely caused by human activities--the real political battle over control of how (or if) we can solve this problem would be under way.
The fact that opponents to the idea that Global Warming is real or is as big a problem as presented--and those who believe in Global Warming but who believe it is not entirely (or largly) mankind's fault--have received funding from the oil companies does not take away from the fact that "solving" the problem of manmade Global Warming is a big political undertaking. And anything that is this big political undertaking will inevitably be a big political mess involving trillions of dollars and lots of opportunities for lying, cheating and stealing. (To think otherwise is to think all of our politicians are as pure and clean as the wind-driven snow. Hah!)
I mean, even though we now have proved the Tobacco Companies falsified clear evidence and used tactics to falsify scientific evidence--evidence that has a much more solid basis in double-blind studies on smokers than Global Warmings evidence of computer models and tree ring studies--we still haven't solved the problem of smoking. People still smoke like chimineys, and the evil Tobacco Companies are still selling cigarettes like crazy.
So even though we have reached a solid consensus that smoking kills you and it's all the fault of the Tobacco Companies--they are still in business. And a good friend of mine died of lung cancer at the age of 41 just last year, caused by smoking.
Okay, let's play. Global warming is not real, it is manufactured by scientists to achieve political goals. Please list the political goals that are achieved when the population is convinced that global warming is real and it's our fault. They'd better be good, given the vastness of the conspiracy.
Actually, that case is one where the truth is both of those views. Hitler did lead the German people out of a severe depression and revitalized their national pride. He then used the outstanding economy and the fierce nationalism that his policies helped create to destabilize Europe.
See, this is what confuses me. It's all CO2/global warming one day and all Peak Oil(tm) the next. So if we're running out of oil, what's the problem? And if we want a biomass economy, isn't the extra CO2 and longer growing season a plus? And as for your wine analogy, the yeast doesn't die, it goes dormant mostly because it ran out of food. If the yeast actually poisoned itself, it would have long since gone extinct, but it hasn't. There's yeast everywhere. It tends to escape and find new food sources to live off of.
Jotok, in my opinion there is a big mistake here. The story is not about global warming. It is about manipulation of the media. See this comment: Not just oil companies: Bush administration, too.
Can you please offer some real-life experience that backs up any of those assertions? Note: what you read on Free Republic does not count as experience.
I have a degree in physical oceanography, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are wrong on this as the deniers i the lies bought from them. The whole time I was in graduate school, I held the point of view that anthropogenic effects could not be separated from natural variability. While people didn't agree with me, I was never disparaged, and nobody even thought of trying to link my work to that. At the time, there were a lot of challenges to be made to important conclusions like Mann's, and modelling was much less well developed. There are still important uncertainties, but the open scientific process has worked, and it has confirmed the findings about anthropogenic climate change. I have been obligated to change my point of view by the increasing body of evidence here.
There is no controversy. There is no doubt. There are some claims which are not fully supported - e.g., how exactly anthropenic warming will affect hurricane formation is not clear, but the most of the basic physical mechanisms are pretty well undertand (if not the second order problems like interaction between wind shear and sea surface temperature), but when they are made and answered within the context of scientific debate (e.g. Kerry Emmanuel's paper), they have tended to confirm the magnitude of risks. Part of the reason scientists are pissed and have begun publishing reports like this is that they resent the endless meddling in the process by these oil-funded "think tanks".
The problem the denialists have is not bias, it is that they are trying to challenge an increasingly established body of science with loopier and loopier ideas. This is similiar to the small but active community of denialists who claim that cold fusion is being suppressed - they more evidence thatemerges against it, the more they turn to whiny claims of bias of crazy counterarguments. Trying to make improbable criticisms stick is never a good strategy for funding. Any responsible grant administrator will consider the question of, say, the meaning of correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature as an approximately closed question. There are of course caveats and valid criticisms to any particular paper using those correlations, but the basic science is considered fairly well established. It might be nice if there was so much funding just lying around that the correlation could be subjected to nearly endless testing, but it can't. It's had its day in scientific debate, and barring some truly innovative method or a new framework that raises new concerns, the question is settled. The denialists have provided none of this (barring Lindzen's loony IRIS theory), yet they continue to whine and moan about how their lack of good ideas and unwillingness to accepted results of good work is not in fact petty obstinacy (or more likely outright bought loyalty), but is some kind of noble keeper of the flame movement. That's self-flattering bullshit, and an insult to serious scientists everywhere. Climate science has a healthy scientific process - like anything else, it could probably use improvement in some areas. But to suggest that the whole field of climate science is fundamentally unsound is breathtakingly arrogant and small-minded.
So until you have something real to the conversation, do us the favor of keeping your unfounded slander in your mom's basement next to your teddy bear and anime girlfriend.
Seriously, who is paying the global warming proponents??
It is not theoretical at all. Let's look at the US, where this battle is still being fought. The Environmentalists are Lobbyists. Why do lobbyists do anything?
They want the government to legislate in a way that they approve of. This legislation grows the size of the government, which increases the scope of the government, which increases the potential power of lobbyists in the US. This increased power means more people will donate to their organizations to effect change, perceiving correctly that these institutions are getting better at meeting their desires (which are motivated by an indescribable quantity of different motivations).
In this regard, the environmentalist movement in Washington D.C. is no different from Big Oil, Big Tobacco, or any other institution that can organize such large sums of money. Further, we have green movement demagogues telling us they have lied and distorted the facts to push their agenda. When Big Tobacco finally admitted this, they were forced to pay for a campaign to close them down. But when green groups do it, we just say they're thinking of the greater good.
On the international scene, one need only look at the Kyoto Treaty to see there are numerous biases and agendas in it. If it were truly concerned with reducing emissions, it would not exclude China, who's output of various pollutants is skyrocketing. In comparison, heavy burdens are put on the United States, who's emissions increases have been decreasing yearly, despite a healthy population and industrial increase every year. There are many possible explanations for this, but none of them have environmental reasons.
Personally, I think that we can prove Global Warming, and we know that increased CO2 emissions accelerate the effect. That's enough to say we need to cut emissions and work on alternative fuels. But that isn't enough to castrate ourselves in the world market (which hurts everyone) in a frantic, guilt ridden attempt to comply with people who are clearly using this crisis to their own advantage. The US is more than capable of self-regulating at least as well as any other nation in the world, and unlike many others we will do so without a world organization forcing us to (we already are in many states).
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I here you. Thats why I'm in biology now. No money in Climate studies when your skeptical of cause, which I still am. The problem is that the News papers claimed that we were paid off by the oil compaines. Well I have not seen a dime from them.
Futhermore 16 million over that time frame is not a lot of money. Not for real science of this scale.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
I think the comparison to Big Tobacco's "science" is very apropos. Well into the - what, eighties? nineties? - there were scientists testifying that there was no link between tobacco and cancer. Science shouldn't have an agenda. If evidence is found that takes you in a new direction - you follow that evidence. I'd like to see a source for claims such as,
I think that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. It has been scientifically proven that: A. The polar ice caps on MARS are melting. B. Temperature has only raised 1 in the past 100 years on Earth. C. The sun is burning hotter While these facts alone do not exonerate human involvement in the phenomenon known as "global warming" - conclusions reached by scientists which ignore these unfortunate points are less science and more ideological positions reached by desires and junk science just as much as conclusions reached by ideologues who benefit from deregulation. Anyone who blindly trumpets global warming and plays Chicken Little over the events on Earth is not interested in science. I am pretty sure that if every single piece of ice on the ice caps on the planet melted, the rise in sea water would be negligible... of course this is based on a small scale of a piece of ice in a glass of water. It would seem that the solid ice does more to raise sea levels. Then again - I'm just asking questions which global alarmists seem unwilling to answer. I don't question the motives of people who want to see a better planet. As a Conservative - I have an interest in a healthy environment and I deplore companies who dump waste and ruin the wetlands/woodlands in which I hunt/fish/etc. That isn't the issue at all. We all have an interest in a healthy planet. What we don't have an interest in is alarmist anti-capitalist forces attempting to undermine the economy with half-measures that do nothing to combat emissions.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
How can it be "current" climate science and also a fact? Either way, like it or not, your post was an argument from authority. Feel free to call it an "argument from fact" if it makes you feel better. I know the truth, because leading logicians said it was so.
Isn't this article about exxon funding studies to the tune of 16 million dollars? So there is clearly lots of money available from exxon. One presumes there are at least a dozen other corporations who would be willing to spend millions of dollars discrediting scientists not to mention thinktanks and the republican party.
evil is as evil does
Global warming? This is most severe winter in the decade I have been in Colorado.
The only bright point is they've closed the office four days and schools six days.
Well the Chinese government is now pro actively trying to counter the threat of climate change. Government reports are saying this is a real threat that must be countered immediately. Can the same be said for this administration? I'm not saying that America is to blame for everything, but your straw man argument claiming that because some people blame everything on America it must not be true doesn't fly either.
How can it be "current" climate science and also a fact? Either way, like it or not, your post was an argument from authority. Feel free to call it an "argument from fact" if it makes you feel better. I know the truth, because leading logicians said it was so.
I am afraid your logic isn't that good.
What is a fact is that current climate science includes an understanding of the changes in solar radiation. It is also a fact that past climate science has also included this understanding.
You can use the term "argument from authority" all you want, but this is not the case. I am not saying that "climate scientists must be take solar radiation into account because they are experts" I am saying that climate scientists do take solar radiation into account because even the most cursory review of climate science publications shows that they have.
But if you prefer your own obscure logic to evidence, I guess that is up to you. If you want to keep arguing this, I would encourage it, as it shows what those who try and deny climate change resort to.
It is unfortunate that ExxonMobil does not understand this, and are more interested in the 'freedom' of buying and selling.
They are propaganda. But Greenpeace and Sierra Club don't account for all of the global-warming reports. Many come from university professors, whose funding comes from a variety of sources (state grants, federal science grants, private endowments to universities rather than grants to the scientists themselves).
By contrast, essentially all of the reverse positions trace fairly immediately back to oil money, as the article shows.
That doesn't necessarily make them wrong: they could simply be a minority that the oil industry is sufficiently well funded to fully endow, without any quid pro quo. It is, however, reason to cast a very skeptical eye on their results compared to the more independent researchers.
You mean how the tobacco companies don't exist as companies anymore? That lawsuit was paid for by smokers, not tobacco companies.
I guess the part of this argument that defies logic for me is the part where the pro-fossil fuel lobby, the conservative pundits, who reliably will come down on whatever side the rich guys do, the scientists who get paid by the oil companies (along with the mopes who listen to right-wing radio), and folks like some of the jackasses we hear from sometime, all try to deny the fact that *PAUSE* it's probably not a good idea to dump toxic shit into the atmosphere, ground and oceans and NOT EXPECT SOMETHING BAD TO HAPPEN.
It's like there's this big argument over whether the huge chunks of arctic ice that are melting and breaking off into the ocean are because of billions of cars and factories spewing poison into the air or because of, I don't know, SUNSPOT ACTIVITY. It's like the house is on fire, but the 7 year olds (oil companies and the other turds listed above) are blaming the 5 year olds (the Sun, the Trees, or Jehovah) for starting the fire, and while everybody watches in amazement at this exciting argument THE EFFING HOUSE BURNS DOWN.
Instead of all this abrogation of responsibility for ignoring the warning of environmentalists, and trying to blame someone, anyone, else, and instead of all the pseudo science about how its the fault of cow farts that the rising ocean temperatures are causing the ice shelf to break apart, wouldn't it be a little bit better if that energy was spent figuring on what we're going to do when the ocean levels and temperatures keep rising?
I really blame the lawyers for the oil companies for all of this because they're probably telling their bosses "if you admit that burning fossil fuels is screwing up the environment, then you're going to be held responsible and that means M.O.N.E.Y., so no matter what, blame it on something else. Deny, deny, deny."
OK, fine. But whilst all this finger pointing is going on, while the President has some bright boy with an Associates Degree from a community college in Communications telling Climatologists how they should edit their research, there is a reasonably large pile of dung heading for those rotor blades. Mightn't we take a look at that for a moment so maybe, just maybe we can GET OUT OUR UMBRELLAS for the coming shitstorm?
You are welcome on my lawn.
In my experience a lot of enviros are marxists (and some murderous and destructive).
When you say that, how hard is it to keep a straight face?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Read this article from the March 2005 article in Scientifc American titled "How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?"
http://ccr.meteor.wisc.edu/News/0305046.pdf
Given evidence gathered thus far we SHOULD have entered a period of glaciation already...but we didn't
To provide a brief summary of the authors conclusions... Human activiy has already altered the natural climate cycle through the advent of agriculture and its affect on CO2 as well as Methane levels...you will see that we haven't begun to enter the hottest parts of the axis tilt induced cycle....
Enjoy.
The last few paragraphs of the UCS report have some problems:
Any economist can tell you that switching power generation sources will not affect employment on net balance. Furthermore, alternative energy sources certainly won't "save consumers money" because all the oil alternatives are modestly more expensive than oil itself.
It's that kind of nonsense which discredits UCS.
There is one way we could greatly reduce carbon emissions, virtually for free: by replacing coal-burning plants with nuclear plants. Unfortunately, the UCS (author of the report) has waged it's own absurd disinformation campaign against nuclear power, and in so doing has contributed to global warming much more than ExxonMobil ever could. If anything, ExxonMobil should take lessons from UCS about how to falsify scientific evidence, how to sow doubt where none exists, and how to contribute to global warming.
In their opposition to nuclear power, groups like UCS and greenpeace have contributed to global warming to an extent that ExxonMobil could never hope to achieve. As an example, France ignored groups like greenpeace and UCS, and went ahead with nuclear, and their C02 emissions per capita are now 85% lower than ours. Had greenpeace and UCS never existed in the first place, then we probably wouldn't be facing this global warming problem now.
I am not a constitutional lawyer (IANACL). But I think there's something in the constitution which forbids Congress from punishing Exxon for their spoken views. I don't see how Congress could pass a law declaring that some viewpoint is "unacceptable and must change." In fact, I doubt Congress could ban a point of view even if UCS believes it to be mistaken.
I also doubt that shareholders could be motivated to reform ExxonMobil.
That leaves consumers. Good luck!
...Of course, if we seek to reduce carbon emissions, the most economic and rational way to do so would be to grab the "low-hanging fruit" first; in other words, to reduce carbon emissions where they're completely unnecessary, like in power generation. The easiest way to do that is to reduce nuclear plant safety requirements (yes, REDUCE) and increase taxes on carbon emissions from coal-burning and gas-fired plants, until the aggregate risk is the same per unit of power for all power generation sources, but much lower than now. Doing so would make coal-burning completely uneconomic, causing coal-burning to cease.
By following that rational strategy, we would reduce carbon emissions in this country by almost 40% in the long run. And it would impose no additional expense on consumers, would greatly reduce risk, and would not require unspecified scientific breakthroughs to occur some time in the future.
But I won't hold my breath. We would never implement that solution. It would solve the problem of carbon emissions, pretty easily, because the problem of carbon emissions is easy to solve. But groups like UCS and greenpeace would never allow it. They're too caught up in promoting increased carbon emissions.
(btw, It's easy to see how reducing nuclear safety requirements would reduce the risk to consumers. Assume coal-burning causes 50,000 deaths per year (which it does) and additionally there's a .01 chance per year of catastrophic climate change leading to 10
Point taken. I'm afraid that after reading dozens of "don't argue with scientists" posts, I unfairly took it out on your argument. Which was, after all, only saying that the scientists do take the sun into account, not necessarily that they are right, per se.
I still do, however, have reservations about the word "fact" in ongoing scientific inquiry. Newton's gravity was a "fact" until Einstein (and, to be fair, Newton is still a good enough approximation for getting rovers to Mars.) So I don't see science as establishing "fact", but rather producing theories that are closer and closer appoximations of reality. As in the Standard Model of Quantum Physics, which has been confirmed to as high a degree of accuracy as we can muster, but still has those annoying unexplained constants that suggest there is a higher-order theory out there.
Or in other words, the "march of science" as opposed to the "we're all done of science".
But so as not to detract from my original intent: Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa.
incomplete and inaccurate data
Each day you see the sun rise, unless it's cloudy. Each day you see it set. The rest of the time, you don't see it. Now that's pretty incomplete. So tell me, how can you possibly assume it's the same sun you're seeing each day?
// This is not a sig.
Right, but in this case, the skeptics *are* the politically motivated.
As for funding, isn't the article in question about how Exxon funded the skeptics with $16 million?
we first call it consensus, and then label everyone who seeks alternate funding a lobbiest for big-oil and discredit their research as non-scientific propaganda.
If you get $16 million from big oil to write papers that go against the scientific consensus, then what are you?
I guess you don't exactly know what "scientific consensus" means. *Anyone*, regardless of funding, can criticize a scientific paper. When someone finds an objectionable item in a paper, he can write a rebuttal and propose further tests and alternate explanations. Scientists will analyze the criticism and, if it is a valid point, someone will perform the proposed tests or redo the analysis.
Thanks to Hollywood, we are used to seeing the word "mad" preppended to "scientist". Those guys aren't afraid of considering unusual ideas. When a consensus arises among them, you can be sure that a lot of unusual or unpopular ideas have been considered and discarded. Discarded not because they are unpopular, but because careful study has shown them to be false.
I am concerned that the, for lack of a better phrase, "anti-global warming" people, bring up certain well phrased points in an effort to seem to make sense. Like, "disagree with the orthodoxy" or "challenging the consensus," and reasonable phrases like that.
Hey, I consider myself a scientist, and I seek out facts that disagree with my conclusions in an effort to understand more. That's what you do when you want to know the facts.
Don't be fooled, don't confuse the spew from these so called "think tanks" as science. Of course, it "sounds" scientifically viable on the surface, enough so that the vast majority of people who don't really know any better consider it valid. It isn't. It is carefully crafted hogwash.
Do not confuse these "think tanks" with institutions that seek knowledge, they have a corporate agenda, they don't study to understand the effects of something, they study the language and science used in an effort to produce something seeming plausible just long enough to stall any real action.
We do know that global warming and weather destabilization is taking place. This is a fact. The degree to which it is happening and the amount of reversibility are under debate.
I almost died of thirst in drought-stricken Africa yesterday. Could you send me that half-full glass?
// This is not a sig.
You don't know jack about science. Scientists get published precisely by questioning present assumptions. But the questions themselves have to be rigorous. Virtually every breakthrough in science was made by someone questioning present assumptions. We've had a long string of major and minor breakthroughs over the last several centuries. The global warming/climate change hypothesis was itself a major challenge to the present assumptions back in 1988, when the first major papers suggesting it got into the journals.
The assumption that Exxon favors - that humankind can't change the climate, because it's just too big for little us to make any difference about - was the prevailing assumption back before all the pioneering work in global warming/climate change was done. You cannot get published by challenging the notion that the world is spheroid by claiming that, no, it's flat. But if you could come up with a plausible model of how the apparent world is really a cross-section of a hyperdimensional whatnot, that's might well see print. Science goes forward, not back. Exxon is claiming the equivalent of that the world is flat.
Of course, it's always easy to sell the public on the old, previously-prevailing assumptions that science, with its constant practice of challenging assumptions, has moved beyond. The stuff is still latent in the cultural background. So there are a whole lot of people in the public who can be sold on the notions that the world is 4000 years old, flat, and not subject to human-triggered climate change. But that's public relations and ignorance, not science - and it's no failure of science to not take this sort of "challenge" seriously.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
In view of your post, I honestly apologise for my overtly sarcastic tone - I misjudged you.
I fully agree that argument from authority is, of itself, a poor argument. The problem is how to know when an argument from someone who is not an authority is valid? Arguing with scientists is a very good approach, usually because good scientists will argue back in a friendly way.
Climate science is certainly not about certainty, the problem is that the range of probabilities is troubling.
Anyway, I apologise for a harsh post.
Kevin Vranes from the University of Colorado at Bolder has this to say
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archi ves/climate_change/001030so_what_happened_at_.html
"..."
"I will grant that talking to the people I did at AGU represents a small fraction of all the attendees. I will grant that there is no way to know whether my averaging of attitudes in the climsci world, as sensed by talking with a few people over a few days, scales up to represent the true feelings of the collective. But I will tell you what I found, and what I felt, and whether you think it might represent the current attitude of climsci world is up to you."
"To sum the state of climsci world in one word, as I see it right now, it is this: tension."
"..."
"What I see is something that I am having a hard time labeling, but that I might call either a "hangover" or a "sophomore slump" or "buyers remorse." None fit perfectly, but perhaps the combination does. I speak for (my interpretation) of the collective: {We tried for years - decades - to get them to listen to us about climate change. To do that we had to ramp up our rhetoric. We had to figure out ways to tone down our natural skepticism (we are scientists, after all) in order to put on a united face. We knew it would mean pushing the science harder than it should be. We knew it would mean allowing the boundary-pushers on the "it's happening" side free reign while stifling the boundary-pushers on the other side. But knowing the science, we knew the stakes to humanity were high and that the opposition to the truth would be fierce, so we knew we had to dig in. But now they are listening. Now they do believe us. Now they say they're ready to take action. And now we're wondering if we didn't create a monster. We're wondering if they realize how uncertain our projections of future climate are. We wonder if we've oversold the science. We're wondering what happened to our community, that individuals caveat even the most minor questionings of barely-proven climate change evidence, lest they be tagged as "skeptics." We're wondering if we've let our alarm at the problem trickle to the public sphere, missing all the caveats in translation that we have internalized. And we're wondering if we've let some of our scientists take the science too far, promise too much knowledge, and promote more certainty in ourselves than is warranted.}"
"..."
"None of this is to say that the risk of climate change is being questioned or downplayed by our community; it's not. It is to say that I think some people feel that we've created a monster by limiting the ability of people in our community to question results that say "climate change is right here!" It is to say that a number of climsci people I heard from are not comfortable enough with the science to want our community to push to outsiders an idea that we have fully or even adequately bounded the risk. I heard from a few people a sentiment that we need to stop making assumptions and decisions for decision-makers; that we need to give decision-makers only the unvarnished truth with realistic bounds on our uncertainty, and trust that the decision-makers will know what to do with it. These feelings came of frustration that many of us are downplaying uncertainties for fear of not being listened to."
"..."
"I realize that many of you will disagree with the notion that we are overplaying our hand, or are not giving full voice to our uncertainties. I'm not sure the answer to this question myself. But I write all this because I sense a sea change in attitudes amongst climsci people that I know as good scientists without agendas. These are solid scientists, and some told me in no uncertain terms that we are not giving full voice to uncertainties; others implied as much. Therein lies the tension. Where we go from here
This is the best part of the debate. Someone like me (a liberal, as it turns out, but that really doesn't matter) announces that they think the politics of science have gotten out of hand, and we're immediately told, "what you read on Free Republic does not count as experience" (as if I read any such publication, but hey it makes for a great straw-man) and the vauge "loopier and loopier ideas" concept, which isn't even a refutation.
As for real-world examples... it began long ago. For example, the primary author of "Sun, Weather, And Climate" (1978 NASA special publication), John R. Herman was subsequently shunned by his peers as, during the early 80s, the data from that book was used as a counter-point in the greenhouse gas debate.
Any solar observatory these days sees this. They either talk about other topics, or only publish data that fails to contradict the "facts" as accepted by the current consensus. Violating that has one observatory mentioned in the congressional floor debate record as, "an enemy of the planet," I kid you not.
There's also a great article about the modern implications of the "climate of fear" surrounding climate research, but of course, you can't listen to Richard Lindzen because he takes money from those people... but of course, that's self-perpetuating because anyone who speaks up in Lindzen's defense is branded with the same iron, and must seek funding elsewhere... which further invalidates their voice.
I'm not saying that CO2 doesn't cause babies to cry and angels to lose their wings, I'm just saying that there's no way to extract meaningful information from the "consensus" of a community that's scared for their jobs about saying the wrong thing. I would consider Bill Gates a national, even international hero if he invested a large chunk of the Gates Foundation money in funding the best research that tried to assail current climate theory on all fronts. Not because that theory is bad, but because I want to see the research done and done well, so that we really get to find out what the hell is going on on planet Earth.
Let me ask you this: if you did research that suggested that, for example, ground-cover water vapor from irrigation had a strong hand to play in surface warming (that's arm-waving, but it's an example for sake of argument), do you think that you would continue to get funding? Would you be called an "enemy of the planet?" Would you have to go looking to oil companies to support further research and pretty much guarantee that no one listened to you? What if some republican picked up your work and started waving it around, taking it out of context and saying that fossile fuel is as safe as houses because of what you said? Would the community circle around you and defend your reputation from such gross misuse of your work, or would you just find yourself too "controvercial" to continue to work in the field?
We know the answer to these questions because it's been played out for nearly 30 years. You would be asking Slashdot, "what's a good tech job?"
Clearly slashdot is dying. You leave first, we'll all be right behind you.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
In climate research right now you have only three choices:
1. Go with academia's agenda...perform research aimed at demonstrating that GW is occurring and that humanity is the principal cause...get funding.
2. Go with the energy industry's agenda...perform research aimed at demonstrating that GW may not be occurring, but if so is it has nothing to do with carbon emissions...get funding.
3. Attempt to perform research targeted at ignoring agendas and concentrating on actual facts...become ostracized by the academic and industrial camps...get no funding.
I never said anything alarmist, I never said the world is going to end, I never even said that I believe or dont believe the global warming theorys. What I did say was that 2 very prestigious scientific organizations, have identified Exxon as a leader in the anti global warming camp and they are spreading mis-information about it. These arent a bunch of "leftists?" (I take you are an american conservative), they are well respected organizations (by both conservative and liberal scientists) in the scientific community (at least the Royal Society is, not sure if the NCS has been bought by the current admin yet, but I dont think so). If what Exxon was doing was scientific and had any credibility they wouldnt have even said anything.
I also asked you a question. Again, what will it take for you to admit that there may be a problem and it has to be taken seriously and investigated? When it is too late to do anything about it? Remember it is a majority of the scientific community claiming that global warming is a major contributor to the climate changes we have been expieriencing and that community is comprised of both conservative and liberal scientists. But it is just wrong to turn this into a liberal/conservative thing (both sides use it to push their agendas), it affects us all equally.
Of course. You can get access to money from biased sources, but your research is then ignored as "tainted" (even if your data is useful, it's discarded). It's not a problem of getting money, it's a problem of relatively unbiased money drying up for anyone who says, "there's no actual certainty here, and many variables to account for." That's not the "correct" answer and hasn't been for about 30 years, so you either get out of the business of climate research (as one sibling poster mentioned he had) or you toe the line by studying specific, narrow areas that won't be controvercial. I'm not saying you lie... most scientists have too much of a respect for the truth to lie about their research. No, you just work in an area that isn't likely to get your funding removed. You avoid controversy, and leave the grand-standing to those who have an agenda to push and slightly less ethics.
Understand that the current "consensus" is, "the Earth is warming more recently than it has in a long time and we have a set of computer models that account for every other variable that we can think of in ways that we think are correct, and the warming is left unexplained... human-produced CO2 could explain the difference." That's the consensus. That's the extent of the consensus. Of course, we don't yet understand the climate of our solar system (yep, that airless void has weather, and we're just learning how much of an impact that has on earth, causing things from C14 levels to lightning). We don't yet understand the full impact of the sun on the Earth. We don't yet even know how the ocean and atmosphere work together enough to tell you how strong next year's hurricanes will be (we got that horribly wrong in 2006 which was supposed to be one of the worst years on record). We just don't know, and that's all people like me want to hear. We don't want to hear, "SUVs are killing the planet," and we don't want to hear, "A glass of crude with breakfast will cure the clap." We want to hear the extent of what we really do know, and what we really don't and we want honest research to tear down established theory when it needs tearing down because that's how the scientific method works.
That's my understanding of the great conspiracy, anyway.
After reading some of the responses, I come away amazed at how many people get their politics from a poorly written science fiction novel. A pyramid of chumps that get fed a slurry of entertainment and spin to be vomited out on cue.
Yes. There's an evil conspiracy of scientists and ecofreaks that are dead set against you eating eagle burgers while driving your Hummer with your feet.
Hmmm. Scientific process vs the profit motive of a company. Which has a better history of integrity? Tough call.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
If anyone ever worked for the government you know you don't get funding for a project unless you have a problem. The longest and most expensive projects I've worked on were "studying" some problem without ever having to prove you are right or proving your solutions work. It is the nature of governments.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Environmental extremists are extremely bad for the real environmental reform.
L EARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_Ameri ca&xpicked=4&item=eco
So there was no smile on my face because I was dead serious.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4780
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=13367
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0512c.asp
http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Ecoterrorism.asp?
During the past two decades, radical environmental and animal rights groups have claimed responsibility for hundreds of crimes and acts of terrorism, including arson, bombings, vandalism and harassment, causing more than $100 million in damage. While some activists have been captured, ecoterror cells - small and loosely affiliated - are extremely difficult to identify and most attacks remain unsolved.
http://www.cdfe.org/conference.htm
Washington (CNSNews.com) - As concerns about eco-terrorism mount on Capitol Hill, there is more finger-pointing aimed at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which admits to having provided financial support to a group allegedly connected to the terrorism.
But while PETA acknowledges that some of its money has in the past gone to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and to the legal defense funds for several Animal Liberation Front (ALF) members, the organization denies that any of its money "goes toward illegal activities."
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That's funny. 'Red agenda'. You must be stuck in the 60s, Mr. McCarth... ehm... Maxo-Texas. Hello! This is 2007 and Communism is long dead. /is/ commonplaceness. It's just like saying the Jews are subverting the order of the Reich or whatever Nazi propaganda bullshit.
Saying environmentalists 'hate business, capitalism, and progress'
Most environmentalists simply don't accept the current model of business and of "progress" and they propose a new model. On the other hand, I've seen too many times the much praised capitalism foraging wars in the name of profit and speculating on pain and suffering, e.g. the tobacco industry, the big pharmas, the weapon industry, the big oil companies. It is too easy forget people are suffering as a result of business when cash flows in.
:(){
The little bit of the article that I read sounded more like whining to me.
Environmentalists are upset that ExxonMobil is funding the other side of their argument. Exxon is breeding "uncertainty" after environmentalists spent their money trying to present only one side of the issue. Now someone shows up with the other side and they want to cry foul.
Dirty hippies, grow up.
Perhaps someone needs to write a press release about "Wacko tree-huggers fund Global Warming fanatics."
Huge amounts of land are locked up by the snowy owl.
It's been observed in 2nd and 3rd growth forest.
Hmm maybe it doesn't need old growth forest to live.
enviro answer: snowy owl is protected and since observed in 2nd and 3rd growth forests you should be blocked from recutting those down too.
Enviro's are dominated by extremists. They have some good ideas but they ignore the fundamental problem
Too many people.
Nothing they say or do matters as long as the population keeps going up.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The report compares the tactics employed by the oil giant to those used by the tobacco industry in previous decades, and identifies key individuals who have worked on both campaigns.
This calls up an old thought. Back when fast food restaurants first started banning indoor smoking, I was having a smoke outside after eating. There was a woman in a SUV waiting in the drive-through line. The SUV wasn't in very good repair judging by the amount of smoke it was producing. The woman yelled out to me, telling me how bad smoking was. All I could do is roll my eyes and shrug.
I've often wondered since then, when will the oil companies get sued for all of the damage they do? I don't remember ever being told that it's unsafe to breath the air outside due to smokers. The smog from cars on the other hand...
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
slightly warmer temperatures.
North Western Ontario in Canada. Temperatures are normally -15 to -20 degrees Celsius in January [4 to -5 degrees fahrenheit].
For the last two weeks we have been bombarded with rain showers and temperatures ranging from 0 to +6 Celsius [32 to 42 Fahrenheit]. Prior to that we have had maybe 1 or two weeks where the weather has been close to seasonal norms. We have barely any snow since its all been washed away. We're a national cross country ski training centre and there is nothing to train on. In the last several years, local ski shops have gone out of business due to change of climate. I even remember seeing trees sprouting leaves in early December a couple years ago when the normal temperature was supposed to be -5 to -10 Celsius.
Global warming. If anyone doesn't think its happening, they need to give their head a shake.
I didn't see that anywhere in the article. As far as I can tell, you've invented it. The rest of your post is full of similar inventions and outright paranoia about some kind of scientific conspiracy. This article is about the dirty tactics used by ExxonMobil to discredit Global Warming. It is not about new research they've funded or scientific papers they've published. Take your holy war against the scientific community elsewhere.
"They are releasing FUD plain and simple. What is it going to take to make you believe that global warming is an issue that needs to be addressed, watching your children die of melanoma?"
I believe that qualifies as alarmist, even though I have no children myself. Clearly, the implication there is "FIX GLOBAL WARMING OR DIE". If you're NOT a member of the GW alarmist camp, I apologize for my assumption, but that's what it seems like from what you wrote.
. As for the 2 organizations that label Exxon as a "mis-informer", from the article, these are their objections:
I'm sorry, but if I had a nickel for every time since the early 80's that some climatologist has declared his evidence to be "indisputable", and was then proven wrong a decade later, I'd be a rich man. Julian Bond wrote some really interesting stuff in this area. Plus, more importantly, isn't science ABOUT doubting supposedly indisputable evidence? Tell the quantum physics guys that they're jerks for doubting what "Everyone knows". Now, the article doesn't say exactly which "indisputable" facts that Exxon dared to question, so I can't evaluate those on the merits.
-
funded an array of front organizations to create the appearance of a broad platform for a tight-knit group of vocal climate change contrarians who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings
Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of climate skeptics left in academia, because they've all been chased out. It's not just the Italians I listed in my previous post. Henk Tennekes, a Dutch (I think) meteorologist and head of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society, Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, and plenty of other have also been shut down by the global warming alarmist establishment. Is it any wonder then that companies with an interest in the matter would fund research going the other way? The fact is, climate skeptics are almost routinely ignored by the alarmist camp because, well, they ask questions about crazy things like data. It's not Exxon's fault, it's the scientific communities fault for being so rigid in the face of what I thought defined their field: the search for truth.- attempted to portray its opposition to action as a positive quest for "sound science" rather than business self-interest
As opposed to all the other groups that have a chip in the global warming game that are so pure and chaste and free from ideological rigor? Look, it doesn't matter what their motivation is. If they're right, they're right. That's the whole science thing there. Even if their desire is to prove that burning African babies to power their sprinkler systems, if they're _right_, and the climate debate really ISN'T settled, then their actions are still correct, and we shouldn't dismiss the possibility simply because having the alarmists be wrong would be to their profit. Actually, if the alarmists are wrong, that benefits all of our pocketbooks, but that's a different story.-
* used its access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming
That's called lobbying. Everyone does it, because hte government has its damn fingers in everything. Hardly out of the ordinary, or nefarious in any way.Re: my political persuasion. I'm American, but not a conservative. Libertarian, if you have to buttonhole me.
I answered your original question in my first reply. "I will believe that global warming is an issue that we need to address when there's data to prove that there is, not a bunch of discarded and disproven hockey stick models, empirically false predictions, and hysterics. When the skeptics are given a chance to, I dunno, do some research and crunch some numbers of their own, and then those theories are compared to the alarmist theories in a rational, scientific manner, and THEN the alarmists show to be right, I'll worry."
Ooops, did I just say that out loud?
Did you even bother to read my post, Snarky McGee? Yes, you're right, the article does NOT say what I said. Nor did I claim that the article said what I said. See, I do this thing, it's called reading. I do it a lot, and helps me to learn things, and then go on to form my own opinions on matters, depending on how compelling one side or another is. Then, after I've learned, and I go and run my mouth about it, which is what produced that sentence. I wasn't writing a book report, I was making a point.
If you have any evidence of my "inventions" and "paranoia", please present it. As far as I can tell, my post is pretty rational, and hardly a tinfoilhatpartytime. And I am hardly on a "holy war" against the scientific community. I'm arguing FOR science, real science, not science molded to fit a political agenda, which is what the alarmists are doing every time they refuse to consider the possibility that maybe they're wrong. I mean, for fuck's sake, the Earth is a huge, chaotic system. It's pure hubris to say that OMFG WE UNDESTAND EVERT1NG BOUT IT SO STOP UR CARS. I want there to be research, on all sides of the argument, because that;s how you figure out what the truth really is.
Next time I post, though, I'll be sure to just re-hash the claims made in the article I'm responding to, because clearly, intelligent debate stems from high school summary papers.
Look, those people who went to the Antarctic to get ice core samples didn't go there to prove anything. They went there because they wanted ice core samples. They showed the data. It showed trends. It showed that CO2 hasn't been as high as it is today for the past 300,000 years. If it had shown that CO2 was higher in the past than today, then they would have published that data, and it would have formed a solid basis for refuting the claim that humans are contributing unnatural levels of CO2 to the atmosphere. However that was not the case.
And that's regardless of whether the people who did that study believed in anthropogenic global warming or not! Science doesn't work that way. A scientist may have a belief, but their science demands evidence.
Famous example: Michelson and Morely set out to prove the existence of the luminiferous aether. They conducted their experiment and got... nothing. They tried it again and got... nothing. They tried it at high altitudes. They tried it at low altitudes. They tried it in the southern hemisphere and the north. They hypothesized aether-dragging effects and tried to account for them and got... nothing. No matter what they did they got nothing, and that's the result they reported, and no matter whether they still believed in it or not they could not draw a scientific conclusion that it existed. They didn't have to go LOOKING for the conclusion opposite of their own, it came to them through normal scientific rigor.
By the way, in doing so, they turned scientific belief on its head, guaranteed their own position in the history books, and opened the doors for other explanations, the one that passed scientific muster being Einsteins's.
You don't fund scepticism. You fund science. You conduct experiments. The result of that experiment is your scientific evidence, whether it supports your theory or refutes it. That's the way science works.
The enemies of Democracy are
wrong, it was just a very large weather balloon.
Will you ever learn.....
Fast forward 60 years and the same arguement can be applied to Iraq.
I find it ironic when a conservative poster simply cannot restrain him/herself from using emotional terminology like, "Whine".
That is, anything which doesn't agree with the conservative ideology is automatically subjected to ridicule even at the basic level of word choice.
The only other subset of society which does this on a regular basis is that of the grade-school kid. The ironic part? --Where the poster tells the "Dirty" hippies to grow up.
-FL
Saying that both sides "have lied" and so "the truth is somewhere in between" somehow puts paid industry propagandists on the same credibility level as professional climate research scientists.
That's a basic feature of propaganda... it doesn't matter whether what "they" say is true or not. If it is repeated often enough it does its job - make it difficult or impossible for the average person to know the truth. Political movements/groups of all stripes do this quite effectively and deliberately. The popularity of such techniques is really doing a lot of damage that extends well beyond the domains in which they are applied.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
We should solve this global warming business in a civil manner. The warming predictions are based on finite element analysis for the entire planet. (Finite element analysis uses a computer model of sufficiently small pieces to model a greater system.) Since computer models include the entire Earth for the next hundred years, we can simply check the climate model predictions against what really happens a year from now. If the computer models accurately predict the tempurature within a tenth of a degree and the precipitaion within a millimeter for a couple hundred random cities then we will know that the alarmists are really on to something. Otherwise they should shut up until someone teaches them that using a computer to model the weather for the entire planet for the next hundred years is like trying to dig the Chunnel with a wooden spoon.
exactly how much money do you think the enviromentalists have? Exxon Mobil has at its disposal a budget that dwarfs most NATION STATES. What do you think they're going to do? I'll give you a hint--it's called protect shareholder interests. This is sort of why there's a problem with unchecked captialism, because capital has neither conscience, memory, or human interests. The aim of capital is to, that's right, aquire more capital. I like market competition, it produces better ideas because those ideas are forced to compete, HOWEVER, if we let the competition of the market dicatate what happens all the time, all we'll have is bigger piles of money that no one is alive to use. If human interest is not considered, companies will pursue ruthlessly efficient methods to achieve that goal, because they have no obligation to the public, no obligation to the truth, and no reason to tell us anything but what is in their own short-term interests. I AM A HUMAN BEING AND HAVE LONG-TERM INTERESTS, LIKE SUSTAINABLE LIFE. I know, it's really really hard to trust anyone in this world right now, but seriously, groups that have sincere vested interests in the continued production and burning of petroleum are not the people we are supposed to trust to tell us what that process does to the world we all have to live in. I'm not saying that environmentalism is the ultimate in thinking, i'm just saying it's better than trusting companies with no reason or ability to see past their own profits.
I've got two women, you can't tell them apart, one lives in my bosom, and the other one lives in my heart. The one in my
ExonnMobil and some in the coal industry have been clear about the rewards for scientists to distort science in their favour. What is the motivation for all other scientists to distort science in the other direction? As someone who gives grants has pointed out, grants are given to answer the plethora of genuine scientific questions that still remain. Lindzen conspiracy of oppression rings hollow since he himself has been invited to give evidence to political commitees on both sides of the Atlantic, unfortunately he did not come up with anything new and spent most of his time labeling anyone who does not agree with him "alarmists".
I put it to you that Lindzen has his conspiracy theory back to front. As for the congressional debate you mention, it wouldn't happen to be linked to Lindzen or a certain science fiction writer giving "scientific evidence" to the senate would it?
Dragging up old arguments is a waste of time and resources and is also the main reason why scientists try to ignore to the likes of Lindzen. Naturally Lindzen is entitled to his opinion and the WSJ is entitled to print it, but please remeber others are entitled to be skeptical of that opinion, particularly when it tells only half the story and totally ignores the science that does not serve Lindzen's or the WSJ's agenda. However I do agree "the politics of science is out of hand" when the WSJ repeatedly gives that much column space to what is basically an individuals fringe opinion.
As for people "getting on with the science", here is a short article about the usefullnes of climate models and what goes into them. Here is another one expalining why scientists back the IPCC even though it may not precisely line up with their own views.
You are correct in saying that science dependes on skepticism to progress, you are wrong to assume the IPCC is political dogma that does not represent the culmination of scientific skepticism that you claim is absent from climate research. I humbly suggest you actually read the 2001 version as background for the next installment due early 2007.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Kevin Vranes from the University of Colorado at Bolder has this to say
Which simply reveals you have no understanding of or respect for the way science works. On any subject you can find someone who can provide a statement contrary to the mainstream. Science is not about the views of individuals (not even those as respected as Einstein or Newton). What mattered was the large number of researchers who backed up their views.
There are lots of scientists who see unrealistic models, that are fed with incomplete or incorrectly gathered data
Right. I challenge you. Name them, or shut up.
I'll tell you what I am fed up with - and that is the mainstream media perverting things so as to present controversy where there is none, and encouraging the public to believe that anthropogenic climate change is a myth. The time where this dangerous distortion of science can be tolerated is past.
You humans must be pretty conceited to believe that you have changed the global climate with mere automobiles. A single volcanic eruption can often spew enough greenhouse gases to equate that of all automobiles driven in a single year. Come on, let's face it. The media runs the show, the media is making a killing on alarmist programming that foretells the end of the world, and we are eating it up. Example: Top shows involving end-of-world scenarios include....Dante's Peak, Armageddon, Independence Day, An Inconvenient Truth, etc., etc. All are fiction, all are tapping into our fascination with destruction, and all are making big bank at the box office. You crazy liberals -p
Tell the people in Denver all about global warming!!!! They should be very receptive to this BS. They are currently under several feet of snow. They're expecting more snow tonight.
It's on their right to finance reasearch on topics of their interest. Provided all other things keep working, I see no harm in it. Please note that there's plenty of evidence that fossil fuels are increasing global temperatures, solid and convincing evidence. But as far as I've seen there's still a lot of competing theories about how it's working. And if we don't know how things work exactly, it could (even if it's not very probable) that what we most scientist are seeing right now could prove not to be correct. It could even happen that maybe we are seeing a natural cicle, or that some other effect would trigger a counter-effect. I don't know how this could be, but who else, at this present moment, can be 100% sure? On another side, the current theories can only benefit from being challenged, as this would contribute to show their flaws and direct reasearch into their weakest points, thus, making the current theories more solid. If they prove unable to withstand the attack, well, heck! we then need better theories! As long as the scientists funded by oil industries fully disclose this relationship I see no problems with it.
Your ad could be here!
The first paragraph of your post is covered by the old maxim "extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence", yet you seem to expect the taxpayer to fund extrodinary claims by mediocore scientists who freely admit they can't come up with an answer either way. The way to get funding for the idea that "there's no actual certainty here, and many variables to account for" is to publish papers that point out why people who have given error bars for their certainty and accounted for the many variables, are wrong! And yes, this mostly boils down to mundane details, and only a tiny minority of those details become a revolution (eg: constant speed of light -> relativity). Basically, welcome to the real world where only a handfull scientists have become immortal in the minds of the general population.
"we got [hurricanes] horribly wrong in 2006"
Only if you assume the hurricane season is confined to the N. Atlantic.
"We want to hear the extent of what we really do know"
So I take it you have read the past IPCC reports and are looking forward to the one due out early 2007?
"we want honest research to tear down established theory when it needs tearing down because that's how the scientific method works"
Climate theory has ripped a few gapping holes in the prevailing economic theory recently, not to mention calling into question the "goals" of the industrial revolution.
"We just don't know, and that's all people like me want to hear."
The question in my sig certainly applies here. I have found Realclimate to be an excellent "bootcamp" for what we do and don't "know", provided that is, you are willing to devote the research time required to hear it.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
First off, the environmental movement is no more dominated by extremists than an other movement, and probably much less so than, say, the extreme Christian Right has dominated conservative politics in recent years. Sure, you'll find extremists everywhere, but the best thing to do is ignore the fringes and focus on the solutions to common problems that are put forth by these groups.
I don't think any rational environmentalist would argue that too many people is not the primary cause of much strife across the globe. The question is how to deal with the problems that arise from overpopulation. You could use government to artificially impose restrictions on the number of children born, as China has, but of course that only works in the countries where such policies are implemented, and that comes with myriad ethical issues. So, baring that option, the only choice is to attempt to reduce our environmental "footprint" significantly. No one claims that this is an easy task, but it may be well worth the short term costs in order to prevent much more significant problems down the road.
And, ultimately, no rational environmentalist would say that business, capitalism, and progress are the problem. The problem arises from narrow-minded interests that are focused on short term, individual profit rather than long term, collective well being and true progress towards a more functional and balanced way of living on this planet. It all comes down to personal responsibility toward the common good.
are self-incented to find climate change - it ensures more funding. 30 years ago, they were finding "global cooling." Now they're finding "global warming." Climate change pays if you're a climate scientist, especially if you can make a plausible connection to manmade influence. There's no money or career path in static or naturally changing climate.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
So does loaded language in the OP such as "that seek to confuse the public on global warming science" and "Would a 'global warming controversy' exist..." bother you as well? Seems to me there's some subtle but obvious condescension and ridicule there, and it isn't exactly what I'd call "conservative".
3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
Any sane person knows nothing is going to be done about the overpopulation problem.
We will take it right up to edge or past the edge.
50 years tops it is going to be completely unbearable or we will have had a billion dead to some war or disease or both.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You deleted the most important part of what he said: "*Name them*, or shut up." In other words, show that your point of view is informed, or don't add to the debate. He is not discriminating against your viewpoint, but rather the fact that you appear uninformed and just cut and paste stuff. The fact that you had to erase "Name them" shows that you are dishonest.
Indeed- they contribute so much CO2 that they are causing global warming on Mars and Titan too!
hmm. oh wait. there's some kind of a flaw in that.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm willing to bet the side opposing ExxonMobil has kicked in a few bucks too.
You are confusing "peace activism" with pacifism. There is a big difference between a pacifist (for instance the Amish) saying "all killing is wrong, so I won't bear arms" and a peace activist wearing a Che t-shirt while demonstrating against "imperialist war and globalist exploitation". Those are two very different ideas. One is a moral stand, the other is a political stand thinly masquerading as a moral stand.
t =type . Read their web-pages yourself. You'll see that they go far far beyond pacifism to over-the-edge left-wing advocacy. These two example groups are fairly typical of the overall movement. You'll notice groups like this don't protest against all war, just "imperialist" wars. For instance, I've yet to see a "peace" group protest against the wars waged by Columbia's FARC or the Philippines New People's Army (both leftist groups), even though both conflicts are over 30 years old, are still on-going, and have killed tens of thousands. Their "peace" activism is very selective. They are much more against "our side" fighting, than being against fighting in general.
As an example, take the "United for Justice with Peace" (www.justicewithpeace.org), which is a leading "peace" activism group in the Washington, DC area. Or another similarly named "United for Peace" http://unitedforpeace.org/article.php?type=66&lis
So when I say, that UCS and Greenpeace are tied to the left with its "peace" and environmental agendas, you can take it to the bank. These are not a bunch of pacifists, they are people with a political agenda beyond pacifism.
I'm worried about your statement that the way you get scientific fact is by having a large number of reseachers agree on something. That seems to be more faith based then science. You don't need to poll researchers to find out the Newton was right about F=m*dv/dt, not including relativity effects. You can test this all by yourself. I think the problem with global warming is it is all based on trends and very advanced models. I am not in this field but I am a mechanical engineer. The problem I have is that when I do an FEA of even simple (compared to the earth/atmosphere system) structure I always back it up with simplified manual calculations as a sanity check. I almost always find problems becuase when you are dealing with very complex things you tend to make tiny mistakes that have an effect. And from what I see the range of outputs of the models don't agree very well depending on which one you are looking at. I get nervous when my hand calcs are more then 20% off and these models they are running are different by orders of magnatudes. It just seems very shaky to base trillion dollar decisions on these types of models.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
No but $16 million buys a lot of stuffed shirts to sit in front of FOX news cameras and spout gibberish about an all-paper conjectural study thrown together in a few weeks time based entirely on reading existing papers and misconstruing them.
Someone had to do it.
No, because the article went on to illustrate deliberate intent to inject falsely represented data into the discussion. ie., To "Confuse" the issue. Thus it is easy enough to see that the claim was not so much emotional as it was simply accurate.
"Would a 'global warming controversy' exist..."
This phrase has no emotional content whatsoever. There is a controversy. It's subject is global warming. How is that problematic or leading? --Compare that to, "Whining".
-FL
According to Michael Sheridan in a recent article in the Australian "The Chinese plan to build no fewer than 500 new coal-fired power stations, adding to some 2,000, most of them unmodernised, that spew smoke, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere". "..... there are 21,000 coal mines in the country and coal output has doubled in the last five years. China's Shanxi province produces more coal than Britain, Russia, and Germany combined". I know this is a shock for Americans (especially liberal ones), but you guys will soon no longer be the cause of the planet going to hell (if it indeed is). Truth is the investigation of the root causes of global warming has moved from scientific investigation to a kind of religious cult - people like Lomborg attempting to simply clarify the discussion are villified and even investigated for not using 'proper scientific method'. Almost a modern version of the inquisition where even questioning the received wisdom is viewed as scientific blasphemy.
Combining Several Low Gradient Heat Source Power Generation Ideas
Statements such as the above ("Volcanoes do more than us!") which are repeated ad nauseum by oil company shills have also been handled by climatologists. What's next? What are you going to pull out when you reach into your bag? "Cows fart, so cars don't matter!!"
So, essentially you're wrong again, and since you've at this point become a mouthpiece for Big Oil, I see very little reason to listen to anything else you have to say.
I'm not sure I would have said it in those terms, but I've got to hand it to you--that guy is certainly full of shit.
I'm guessing oil company stooge.
First of all I think I am going to at this point put up or shut up. Start by showing us some example of how scientists were denied funding because they went against the mainstream on global warming.
We know fur sure the US govt has silenced studies showing that global warming is happening those are easy to come by, where are your examples?
Anyway...
"Of course. You can get access to money from biased sources, but your research is then ignored as "tainted" (even if your data is useful, it's discarded)."
So what? Your claim is that the scientists are in it for the money right?
"Understand that the current "consensus" is, "the Earth is warming more recently than it has in a long time and we have a set of computer models that account for every other variable that we can think of in ways that we think are correct, and the warming is left unexplained... human-produced CO2 could explain the difference.""
That's the way science always works. You cant prove for certain how far a star it, what happened a million years ago (or what happened last week for that matter), and any one a billion other things. At best you make theories, you test them, you come to logical conclusions. That's the way it works.
Your argument seems to be that until we are 100% sure of every variable then we should do nothing. That's stupid. You are not 100% sure you are going to wake up in the morning but you go about your life as it you were because the chances are very high that you will.
evil is as evil does
Bravo.
Don't you feel like an utter shit inside for so totally misrepresenting his statement like that?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
But apparently it takes a bored IT guy on slashdot to correct an international consortium of climatologists.
And why not? It took a bored minerals consultant and a bored economics professor to point out that the infamous hockey stick being touted by "real" scientist Michael Mann was actually spitting out hockey sticks with random data. If it has been accounted for, then please enlighten us... How much lower would the temperature be *EXACTLY* without the solar radiation increase according to the computer model you say accounts for such a thing?
I mean, we're all curious and you seem to know so much about it. So please, do share that information in between insulting the people who dare ask questions.
Thanks for the intelligent discussion. I just graduated college a few months ago and had the the fortune to take what I thought was going to be an easy course: Environmental Science. What an eye opener. We had to do research papers, both pro and con, on a variety of subjects, forcing us (or at least me) to truly learn and understand the subject. In the process of our discussion on global warming, I learned that we had a mini ice age for quite a long period. It was actually considered that human activities prevented a true ice age.
I also learned that many of the studies used to refute global warming came from groups who received large sums of money from major corporations whose interests are impeded by the EPA. This surprised me greatly because Michael Crichton's book attacking global warming used these very institutions. In effect, although I usually greatly enjoy Crichton's fiction, this book made me sorry for him since he so very obviously believed what he was saying. My husband still refuses to believe that Crichton's book is flawed because it was so well executed. That's the saddest part; it was well researched and very well executed; however, much of what Crichton writes has been proven false since NASA was able to fire that twit who tried to pass himself off as a graduate of Texas A&M.
I'm glad to see intelligent discourse in the midst of the rants. Some of these guys sound like my teenage son who has no real information, just a lot of opinions.
There is a fair amount of difference in the professional opinion of a corporate shill who is paid to spout the company line, and someone who has spent the majority of their life studying something.
Yeah, "shills" like the worlds preeminent hurricane forecaster Dr. William M. Gray. He's been studying weather patterns since 1961 and he believes global warming is complete and utter bullshit. He doesn't believe money should be spent hand over fist on global warming computer models and instead should be put into real science like meteorology. Apparently, the global warming crowd doesn't like having their government welfare check threatened by people who might actually put the funds to good use though, so he's been labeled a "propagandist," "shill," "last holdout," and any other derogatory name you can think of. Funny, when Exxon spends a few million on research, everyone involved is a shill, yet when the US Government spends a few billion dollars on modeling it's important work! I wonder, why do the "climate scientists" shout down descent? It couldn't have anything to do with that government check, could it?
Well the Chinese government is now pro actively trying to counter the threat of climate change
They certainly are. They're building and opening coal-fired power stations at the rate of one per week. They have also said they will never sign Kyoto or any successor economic vice. Which means that as soon as 2009, China will overtake the US in carbon emissions.
Never mind.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
If you're mad at energy corps ripping you off, lying to you, paying/bribing others to lie to you or to rip you off, why not fight them directly?
Join the Union of Concerned Scientists, and fight with the good guys against the bad guys. It's much more fulfilling than just bitching on Slashdot, which only consumes power which pays the energy corps to rip you off and lie to you. And drains you of the fight that could be taken right to them.
--
make install -not war
We're discussing a story about specific evidence of Exxon paying to fake "science" to undermine legitimate science indicating climate change. Where is the evidence that "environmentalists have lied"?
You try the "everyone's a liar" trick without evidence, but then you decide that manmade global warming is fake, because you've decided that solar output is to blame. Based on your less-than-rocket science remembering something about "global cooling" from high school 30 years ago, compared against the conclusions by many actual climate science experts.
You 70s "skeptics" also tried to stop us from keeping CFC aerosols from destroying the ozone layer, but we kept your lies and denial down long enough to do a lot of fixing. You demand we do not "shout down each other", but you say that the problem is that thinking is stopped by the "sky is falling mentality". You are a hypocrite, a Greenhouse denial projector.
You have destroyed any possible credibility with your clumsy denials, and should stop shouting baseless nonsense while serious people try to figure out how to undo the damage you have been doing since the Eisenhower era.
--
make install -not war
China needs to open coal plants. They can't open much else. What they -are- doing, is using the best available technologies, like Doosan Babcock boilers, to try to *reduce* emissions from those coal plants, and they have no choice but to continue to do so until a cleaner, efficient, financially viable power source becomes available.
Which means that as soon as 2009, China will overtake the US in carbon emissions.
About damn time they did. They are a few more people, after all.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Yes it *needs* to open coal plants. Which is why it will produce more CO2 than any other country by 2009.
Of course we *need* to cut out carbon emissions because the Chinese have obviously produced a non-greenhouse enhancing version of CO2 and we produce the nasty stuff.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
ExxonMobil moneys (along with much more from other sources i suspect) has been effectively used to suppress the green movements fight against global warming due to the use of fossil fuels.
9 605551/m/7321092461 ), which might not even be biodiesel. It is difficult to buy biodiesel which has been made to adequate standards with good quality control and making it yourself (it's a bit like homebrew) does entail fire risks. In the UK biodiesel is heavily taxed and in fact has just had a 'green tax' increase of 1.25p per litre9 605551/m/6761043771). Our farmers need work and could produce much biodiesel if these taxes where removed.
On a local level in the UK the bullshit related to global warming is intense, we see the Irish and US airlines (BA is not to bad, well maybe!) picked on by a UK government minister in the recent news. However airlines contribute approximately 3% to global CO2 emissions (double that due to the high level at which they are released as a factor of safety) while transport and power generation contribute 50%. Cars are without doubt an area where huge CO2 cuts can be made.
Many unmodified cars can run on biodiesel which is a fuel which recycles CO2 from the Earths atmosphere. Hence it does not release 'fossil fuel CO2' which was stored underground millions of years ago. But biodiesel is totally discredited in the eyes of the public. Motor mechanics pass comments like 'don't use that shit' on the basis of passed experience with poorly made fuel (see link http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/44
(see link http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/44
Biodiesel is not an answer to all are energy problems, however used as part of a well constructed energy policy it can be of great help in sustaining the future of humanity.
ExxonMobil and other oil companies are responsible for much of the corruption at all levels in our world.
Uh, what? If that was a reply to my comment, I'm not entirely sure you understood me.
China needs to open more coal plants. Of course it will produce more harmful emissions. China is doing their part to limit that with the means available within the realms of reason and financial viability.
So with millions of dollars contributed to lobby groups, how much in comparison would it cost to pay a few people to post appropriate comments to online forums? And how much difference could a handful of people make, if they did that sort of posting as their day job? Not much and quite a lot, is my guess.
So the next question is what are the useful ways of identifying such posters?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Stephan
Somewhere in the middle != in the middle. So if Bobby gets 51% and Billy 49% it's still somewhere in between. You can weight the opinions.
Ok...You're drawing a comparison between two researchers' extensive analysis and criticism of other scientists' methods (ie, peer review) with some dude taking a break from answering remedy tickets and reading fark to say "Hey...what none of you science guys have ever considered is that maybe the sun is just getting hotter!"
Slashdot readers love to one-up each other and point out gaps in each other's knowledge...it's like a great and continuous nerd kumite. But there is a time when you have to sit back and tell someone to shut up--that CS degree was probably a little too light on the "science" to really admit you to the conversation.
That's probably an excellent question.
:)
Some method of ferreting out (or at least red-flagging) such posters would probably be solid gold. In large part you can depend on the fact that shills are not very bright, they tend to repeat themselves, and their language gives away their intentions. I don't know how you'd translate such aspects into a methodology though
I am, if not a climate scientist yet, working with physical oceanography and studying the stuff (http://www.fimr.fi). There really seems to be a consensus about the "political side". There is an overwhelming agreement on the importance of reducing pollution. We're living with lots of uncertainties, but remember that how uncertain the scientific prediction might be, it's still the best prediction we have. And the stakes are quite high for a gamble.
I'm not a climate scientist but I follow the feild closely and I have noticed there are a lot of people withing the "Consensus" on global warming who are really starting to worry about how political this issue has become and how bad science is not being challenged. There are lots of scientists who see unrealistic models, that are fed with incomplete or incorrectly gathered data, and are built off of flawed assumptions make predictions which are not plausable get attention from the mainstream press and worry about what will happen to the field when these predictions don't even come close to being met; the fear is that these bad-models will destroy all respect that the general public has for the field.
You must understand that scientists are mostly interested in their own work, not discrediting others'. Furthermore, in a complex problem like global climate trends, it's not clear which assumptions are good and which aren't. We're dealing with lots and lots of simplifications and assumptions some of which are known to introduce certain errors, and we're ignoring some known phenomena thought to be insignificant.
All data scientists have or will ever have is incomplete. Do you have an idea how many weather stations exist? How often they produce a good measurement? We've got 510 million square kilometers on this planet, and a good many significant kilometers of atmosphere on top of it. Only to store the complete state of the Earth climate in a good resolution would take several harddisks. The problem itself is unsolvable and we'll always need an approximation. That said, AFAIK, there are no permanent weather stations in the whole of the Arctic. We get satellite pictures, we get measurements from ships and airplanes, scientific trips etc but satellites don't see things like air temperature, and measurements are scarce.
That said, our models that are fed incomplete data and use many inaccurate assumptions and simplifications do produce a useful weather forecast for up to a week ahead. And that's the most useful and best forecast we have.
All right, the last day of any weather forecast is not too reliable, so how will a global climate forecast for a hundred years will be? Real scientists have studied this problem too. Incomplete data? Well, let's run the model a hundred times, each time starting with different input data, and see what range of results we get. Bad assumptions? Do the same thing, varying your uncertain assumptions a bit. Other errors? Run a simulation, and then run exactly the same simulation with some more CO2.
Models based on sound physical principles seem to agree about the correlation of CO2 and temperature. One of the largest uncertainties in the climate models is actually how much CO2 the humanity manages to spew out during the next 100 years. Talk about uncertain predictions here!
All that said, the climate change probably isn't as catastrophic as the media wants to think. Maybe it gets hotter, sea levels rise and so on. The north pole will probably get ice-free summers in 50-100 years (albedo goes down, Earth sucks in even more heat). Living in the north it's probably getting better for me. Heck, we're living the warmest winter ever recorded right here in Helsinki, and one could say that it's somewhat pleasant too :). Then again, I like the natural equilibrium of things here on Earth and dislike changing it. Maybe that's the ideological question if you want to find one.
I agree, it's a huge mistake to put paid shills like Al Gore on the same credibility level with actual scientists. But even more importantly, we should remember that science has nothing to do with credibility or consensus, but EVIDENCE. (And as a software developer, I have to insist that computer climate models do not count as evidence -- at least not until such models are tested over the long term against actual results.)
The answer is... non of the above! The correct answer should be our activities IN ADDITION TO all these other natural phenomena.
FYI: people moved more earth last year than all the wind and water erosion! Humans have become a force of nature, however we are slightly more dependent on our environment than wind or water or a volcano, therefore we should pay attention to what we're doing! On the other hand, maybe we should just blunder around oblivious to our mess. I mean, in the long run, the planet is probably better off without us anyway.
Good Citizen PeolesDru, your most excellent post cannot be improved upon so I won't bother answering that dufus clown, except to mention I believe that was the same lowbrow who attempted to sell me those Enron Weather Futures that he wasn't capable of explaining to me - or anyone else, for that matter. The rich rabble are restless....
It's unfortunate that this sort of thing happens, but also inevitable. And even if they weren't paying people to agree with them, they could still use good old-fashioned charismatic persuasion.
The problem is that public opinion is shapable at all. I don't care how it is done; I care that it is do-able. The very premise of Freedom of Speech is that wacko ideas are not truly harmful or threatening; peoples' intelligence will make good use of good information while also ignoring (or ridiculing) the bullshit.
But we know that's not really true, don't we?
So what do you do about it? Establish a Ministry of Truth and use force to keep the ideosphere clean? Or just live with the consequences that people really can be manipulated by persuasive bullshitters? The first idea is horrific, the second is depressing.
Or you can work with the second idea, accepting that people can be manipulated, but fight. Become one of the persuaders. Let "Truth" be a battlefield where victory goes to the strongest. That's pretty appealing if you happen to be the kind of person who can win that battle, but if you're not a good communicator, then it's going to really grate against your ideals.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
FOX news does that just fine without 16 million. In fact I would say that this is the only thing FOX news *is* good at.
Like or not. The real issue is that there is a very strong bias in funding this stuff and the Media (not just FOX) have decided what is "true" based on conjecture. Its a shame because climate change could be a chance for some real science to take place that benifits as all.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Remember that the vast majority of "scientific" believers in CAGW are directly or indirectly paid to spout the "company line" by politicians whose constant and ongoing motivation is to use other people's money to make themselves look like the Saviours of the World.
If the "solutions" to ACGW were less often "tremendously increase taxes" and "tremendously increase government regulations", I think you'd find fewer lies on both sides of this horrendously politicized issue.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
And that is what mainstream media do this to every topic. Even /. is not immune. Some of the staments that are passed off as science here....
Trust me, there are a lot of us around that arn't on the "we casued gloabal warming" band wagon. There are some of us that would claim that the data is not good enough to say even if the planet is warming (tho there are a lot less of these folk, and I'm not one of them). Instead they conjecture that there is a redistrabution of warmth if you like. Still could be a bit of a change for everyone. But change is what we should be good at.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
After having spent an entire Saturday morning reading every word of every post. I've can only find one conclusion to satisfy my mind. Doublethink...
simple. add -1 astroturf to the /. modding system. ;)
The weather around here has certainly been disconcerting, I'm in South Eastern Michigan, it's raining in January which isn't unusual, but what is unusual is I'm seeing Earthworms! That means the ground is unfrozen which is very strange this time of year. Even so this is weather not climate, climate is averages over decades, centuries and millenniums.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Now calling you an idiot would have been an ad hominem - before your post proving that you are infact an idiot.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
You go first.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Of course we *need* to cut out carbon emissions because the Chinese have obviously produced a non-greenhouse enhancing version of CO2 and we produce the nasty stuff.
Ahh, so you are worried that the US isn't world leader anymore? Hey, you'll still lead them in CO2 per capita by a couple of hundred percent.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
There was no climatologists in the 1970's, at least not like the climatologists are pretending to be today, climatologists then were basically geographers and historians , they would use scientific techniques but not scientific method, the bottom line is how does you conduct a controlled experiment on a planetary scale covering several centuries? There will always be problems with computer models, round-off errors, sparse data-sets in models sensitively dependent on initial conditions, and of course the problems found in nonlinear feedback systems. Computer models are fine to give insights to be investigated later with formal experiments, but they don't replace experiments.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I wish I had points to mod this "Anonymous Coward" up.
t a.png I could not fail but notice something: it might be in the category of weather not climate, but I remember that where I live, in '84-'86 (fewer sun spots in the chart) small cars were forbidden from driving during the winter because because of high snow and cold, while in '88 and '89 the winter were very mild (I had bought skates and had no natural ice to skate on), the winter of '95-'96 lasted for 6 month, from October to April, while in 2000 I saw 20 degrees Celsius in December in the bloody mountains :( . It fits the chart pretty well.
I don't understand a thing: why would the oil companies be against acknowledging "Anthropogenic Global Warming" ? Oil is used for lots of commodities: oil companies do not make money by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but by selling oil or derivatives, and if there will be less demand for fuel, then they will make and sell something else.
About solar activity: while looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar-cycle-da
Anyway, more dangerous than global warming is starting a panic.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
that CS degree was probably a little too light on the "science" to really admit you to the conversation.
Yet another logical fallacy. You were asked a direct question and you ignored it. I'll assume that means you don't know the answer to the question. In which case, you're shouting at someone for being ignorant when you yourself don't know. Maybe your degree was a little light on the science, because if you did study environmental science, you certainly don't seem to know very much about it.
That's because the process of making derivatives (for medicine, plastic, and such) of oil produces greenhouse gases. If I was an oil company, If I could avoid paying to clean up my refineries, (which would cost me potentially large amounts of money and hurt my bottom line), I would.
So what if they are spending money against global warming. They have every right to spend money to rebuke crazy theories such as man causing global warming. The so call cause of Global warming is not fact it is only a theory that is being use by those for financial gain. The earth has been warming since the ice age. The less ice, the faster it will melt - that is fact. It does not need the help of man to melt.
If you believe man is causing global warming then what caused the ice age to end? There was global warming back then otherwise the ice age would have lasted a whole lot longer.
Yes, I do believe in global warming but I do not believe that man is causing it. Its just a cycle of nature.
It is because it isn't a science, it is a religion. And don't you dare doubt the words of thier creator.
Seriously, Look at the sumery of the submision. It says "to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science." What it is really saying is that there are 43 organizations that don't agree with "our position on global warming" and instead of using the scientific principles of debating and comparing evidence to come to more acurate conclusion and perhaps known facts, we will just demand that we are corect and they cannot be wrong. And even when our side admits that it is wrong on something, it won't matter because we will just skew the interpretations again.
God, Look at mars, The temp is increasing there, the polar caps are receading too, How is it that man has caused that, and how is it that G.W Bush is behind it all? You know, there has to be a time when someone looks around and says maybe we are jumping the gun on this a little. Especialy when we see things like the kyoto treaty which is little more then a redistribution of wealth scheeme comming out as the savior of the planet. I say lets get real, Look at real solutions whether it means doing something about polutants or bracing for the inevitable.
Who cares if Exxon gave money to people researching somethign and they came out in one direction verses another. Exxon is going OWN the supply distribution chaine and tape a cut in whatever energy that replaces fossil fuels. They already have the network in place, equiptment that can be modified and any fees attached to them are already passed onto the customer so there is no reason to think otherwise in the future. Exxon really has little to lose whatever the reality of global warming is. They will still profit and all we would succeed in doing is increasing the cost to the consumer. It is mighty white of some bleading heart libers attacking big bad oil costing them tons of money so they increase thier prices to maintain a profit and stop the poor people from being able to afford the gas. But thaTs another rant (about finding ways to suppress people so you can claim to hepl them.)
I wish it were true that Exxon had little to worry about. It's true that they'll remain on top of whatever energy distribution scheme comes next as far as I can tell, but they have much to lose just as we do. It's just that we all have much to lose in abandoning oil. It's an extremely efficient energy transfer mechanism, and we just don't have a better one at present that satisfies all the needs that oil does.
-knewter
Thats the problem that punches a whole in the entire evil oil company argument. The oil companies are going to pass all the costs associated with cleaning up thier refineries off to the customers. It won't come out of thier pockets at all except maybe for a loan amount to get the job started.
You see, If you make a product that cost $1.00 to make and you sell it for $2.00, you start making a %100 profit from it. Now suppose John Enviro makes the case that your are destroying the wild life and the government makes you take steps to prevent that, then you add that cost onto making that product. So lets asume it now costs $1.50 and you still one to make a %100 markup so it will now cost $3.00. But the catch is at $2.50 you still makeing the same dollar figure per unit as you were before. Thats all Exxon will do. Thats all other companies will do. They will do whatever they are forced to do and then pass the bill onto you. So when home heating oil is back upto $600 for one months supply or the CDs are costing and extra $.30 per CD because of these polution controls, you will be the benifiter and funder.
It really doesn't make sence to look at an entity like Exxon or British petrolium and think they have a finite supply of money like we do. It just confuses people when they think of fines and levies like it will hurt a person making $20.000 a year. The difference is that Big OIL is not only the employee but the boss and can set the pay scale. Oil is embeded in everything the world does. There isn't one product thats comercialy made that doesn't benifit from oil or fossil fuel to some degree. It isn't like we can tell Big Oil to shut down and expect our would to remain stable or anything. It really isn't a supply verses demand when we have developed it into a neccesity almost as much as food or shelter. Big Oil sets the pace and they do this because they can. If we fine them, win a law suite against them, or force them to place scrubbers on the emissions stacks at refineries, it will just be passed onto the consumer because we need to buy the products.
This would be different if it was john selling pencils on the street corner. You could fine him out of business and just walk to the next block to buy pencils to dan. But if you force every pencil seller to pay a fee to sell them, then every pencil will cost more. the difference is we have alternatives to pencils. We don't for oil. So imagine you would have to buy the pencils at the increased price because you couldn't write with anything else. You see were we are going here. If ever single oil company is require to upgrade, every one will charge more at the same time. Big Oil has no reason to fear this. Nor should they.
Yea, Name them (so we can label and discredit them too) Or shut up. (because we don't want to hear it from people like you.)
Not trying to eb a prick here, but, It sounds like you are. If anyone apears to be uninformed, it is because someone is lacking in the informing department. The simple fact that he can remain this uninformed is enough reason to believe that there is reason to doubt. If it was as clearcut and dry as the religious experience some apear to be having with "Global Warming", There wouldn't be any doubt. Big Oil money or not. There are so many examples I could go into right now.. I won't though. I've already spent too much time here.
Thats the thing. Exxon or who ever will just pass the cost to the consumers. A fine, Mandatory equiptment or emisions filtering processes isn't going to hurt Exxon or Big oil at all. The worse it will do is create a need for alternative fuels that they will just either buy up and control or distrubute at a cost keeping them profitable.
I don't see one single way Big Oil can be dealt a serious blow by this. It isn't like they make $20,000 a year were a $2000 fine would actualy hurt you. They make as much above costs as they want (recent $3.00-$4.00/gallon gas alongside record breaking proffits proved that) and if we raise the costs, it just raises the price to the consumer. They canot lose.
Yeah, but that's the problem, and it's not just cost. If the anti-oil crowd wins, we'll be half castrating ourselves by dropping the current most-efficient energy transfer mechanism. Of course, if I were to guess it's all just academic and we'll continue to use oil until we get a more efficient all purpose means of energy generation.
I've got this love affair going on with the market, see, so I know all about the way they'll pass on costs to consumers. I do disagree with the tone of the whole 'expensive gas during record breaking profits' mantra most of the time that I hear it. As a student of the market, I wasn't surprised that gasoline costs went up drastically short term when an oil refinery was taken out of commission.
Of course the frustrating thing is the whole monopoloy economy that we get in various small segments of life. It's still way preferable to the alternative (socialism, and all that that entails). And yes, I would call almost any monopoly breakups 'socialist'. Nothing about justice promises a static playing field for all time. The oil companies provide energy to the consumers at an excellent price and I thank them for it. I lived in Ireland for a bit, where petrol was 3.5-4.5 times as expensive as here. Yikes. THAT's price gouging.
-knewter
Realclimate, the site you pointed to, is a den of folks who enjoy trolling anyone who says that the climate is a more complex system that a big box with a hole it in labeled, "insert CO2 here to destroy the earth."
They usually resort to name-calling, insinuations of tainted motivations, etc. without actually responding to the points being made, epsecially with respect to the problem of funding.
Funding is key, and I've never understood why someone would respond the way you do. For example, you say that extraodinary claims require extraordinaty proof, and yet for 30 years we've been chasing the people who wish to provide that truth out of climate science. Everyone who I have ever spoken to who worked with the Sun or climate and did NOT agree that we understand the climate well enough to be making grand, sweeping conclusions, has said the same thing, "I work in tech now because it's the only way I could pay the bills." That's just not right, and it's got to change. We need to support scientists who have valid work to do, even if they're coming up with hypotheses and data that we don't like. Otherwise science is broken.
The persuasiveness of the anti-global warming crowd has its origins in the argumentation structure of Holocaust Deniers. Please refer to Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things" for a description of how to go about constructing the argument in an effective way.
Unfortunately, there are those among us who feel that Global Warming is a singular argument that can be disproven by one set of observations or by re-labeling part of the system.
Global Warming is a theory that arises from the confluence of many thousands of observations. It is generally accepted by the scientific community (see the Union of Concerned Scientists.) There are a very small number of scientists who believe otherwise.
Scroll down this list to Exxon and take a look at the list of foundations. Visit a few and then go to the excellent Exxon Secrets which was funded by Greenpeace a few years ago. Cool social networking analysis. You will see how sixteen million dollars was used to persuade you and I that it is not necessary to do anything about CO2.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Criticism of the graph was withdrawn a long time ago.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
The religion argument is bizarre. Is it because people feel strongly? Do people think slashdotters are religiously intolerant about our operating systems?
The network of organizations has been known for several years. UCS is a pretty stodgy outfit and the fact that they come out at this point means they are ready to put their influence to work. This is no news to anybody as the donations are part of Exxon's annual report and have been available online.
Saying that these organizations don't agree with the vast majority of scientists is a non sequitur because the organizations are not scientific. There are in fact only two semi-respectable scientists in the whole outfit who run from foundation to foundation.
Mars has nothing to do with the earth. It is somewhat distant.
Who cares what Exxon Mobil does? I suppose I do. Allowing Exxon to make a risk/benefit calculation on my behalf would not be in my best interest. I want to make my own decisions. If they are wrong, so be it. George Bush hasn't been up front with me and his friends on those foundations haven't been any better. (Jeb Bush on Heritage Foundation board.)
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
References?
-knewter
I seriously do provide references. I just thought that everybody knew this.
(You mean I can't pull it out my ass like the rest of the posters?)
I'll bet if I said there wasn't sufficient weighting for water vapor in global warming proponents calculations you would fall for it and not ask for references.
Number one is a kind of slap shot in parting rather than putting it last, I though you might decide to eschew reading the rest:
[Sir Crispin Tickell, climate change scholar and visionary, delivered the annual Robert C. Barnard Environmental Lecture at AAAS in Washington, D.C., on 18 September 2006.]
Number two:
Science and Technology in Congress is a newsletter that provides objective information to Congress on current science and technology issues. This is from July 2006 issue.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
"They usually resort to name-calling, insinuations of tainted motivations, etc. without actually responding to the points being made, epsecially with respect to the problem of funding."
Oh the irony, your "problem of funding" is an "insinuation of tainted motives" on a global scale. You offer anecdotes from "friends" who were "chased out of the field" and make sweeping assertions without anything to back it up, please link to one RC article where the authour engages in name-calling.
"We need to support scientists who have valid work to do, even if they're coming up with hypotheses and data that we don't like."
I couldn't agree more, I urge you and your friends to cease the slander on funding and concentrate on the science. After all that is why ExonnMobil's propoganda is now seen as irrelevant (if not treasonous). Not everyone in the oil bussiness thinks like ExonnMobil, you may like to look up the scientific credentials and opinions of one Lord Oxburgh who was chairman of the board at Shell from 2004-5, and has had considerable infuence in setting the 450ppm target that Tony Blair and others have adopted.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
They are not "false" nor are they "prophets." I can't believe how often global warming skeptics use religious terminology.
The people to who you refer are scientists who work for various universities and governmental agencies. Their costs are pretty much borne by our taxes.
Do you think that the cost is borne by super-secret enviornmentalists? Hmmm?
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
I've ready Kevin Vranes' blog before, and I don't entirely agree with him. I think he's got a point, but where I believe he falls down is the following. Vranes acts like climate science is, and ought to be treated like any other field, say, astrophysics. Lots of people want to know the answer to astrophysical questions, and the whole dark matter vs. modified gravity is a great example of a set of people who are concerned by how quickly a theory (dark matter) has been accepted. That skepticism is great, and an essential part of science. But there are limits to where skepticism should be applied. Should modified gravity people go back and challenge all of quantum electrodynamics?
The mere fact that the grandparent was willing to say that all climate science is unreliable and poor science (which is what really cheesed me off, truth be told), is indicative of the amount of pressure and meddling that have already been brought to bear on climate science. Nobody has said that the dark matter folks have done bad science or are biased or are creating a climate of fear. I certainly can and do accept the notion that there are substantial problems yet to be resolved with GCMs, and that the path to and timescale of changes is not all that well-established. Hell, even the IPCC can't reduce the uncertainty on the magnitude of increase in global mean temperature (between +2C and +10C is nearly an order of magnitude!). How often does a guy from a smaller entity in climate science, with some sort of State Climatologist title nobody really knows where it came from, need to go on TV to tell you that all other scientists are peddling bunk before you conclude that the entire process has been severely strained? Or the fact that in spite of clear statements of consensus on diagnosis (human activities are an importabt part of warming) and quite clear statements on the uncertainty of prognosis (when and how warming will occur), a senator convenes hearing after hearing to attack the diagnosis - does this constitute a strain on the scientific process?
And yes, there has doubtless been more yelling and screaming than talking calmly in the service of getting the diagnosis paid its due attention. If I were in the shoes of some of the yellers, I'd have private doubts about doing that too (although I might well also have doubts about having understated the risks in an effort to appear restrained). But the demands of those who have sought to challenge the diagnosis have always been to table the issue until everything is well-known, which is, as Vranes points out, anathema to good policymaking. Is it really incumbent upon a scientist to give up and go back to the cool still space of academia when that kind of thing happens?
At risk of being labeled a knee-jerk skeptic-basher, can you please, please, pretty please source this? This is a very broad and strong allegation, so if you're going to level it, source it clearly. Like specific groups and specific threats and specific scientists. You can take or leave the Union of Concerned Scientists' viewpoint that association with oil money makes you an unreliable scientist or a shill - I happen to think that's a complex issue and I don't quite know where I stand on it. But at least they've laid out their case with specific claims about which specific people did what. The claim that "some scientists won't publish for fear of retribution from environmental
I'm a global warming skeptic, both in terms of cause and effects. Please send me a check or money order for 1 meelion dollars, or I may suddenly reverse my position!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Lol. Well it was and it was. But this isn't a rant on the oil companies. It is proof that anything we do to them will just be passed onto the consumer and they will make money anyways. BTW, durring the peak of the price hikes, It was well rumored that the bulk of the cost was nothing less then speculation in the markets. As a student of the market, you might find it interesting to know (if you don't already) that energy used to be well regulated in the trading and comodities. One of the things clinton done while in office was to push for the deregulation of this trading. This made it easier to increase the prices by holding on the selling of futures untill the last possible minute and basicly turned it into a shell game. (not that this is bad) Any ways, It is what it is and we will survive it again.
I don't think i would consider it a monopoly as much as a oligopoly. Sadly, I think that is much worse because it can give the illusion of a free market and in turn frustrate people trying to enter it. I guess the most damaging thing might be the apearance of "nothing a person can do but accept it" which might defeate anything worthwhile in the first place.
This reminds me of the "hippies invading southpark" episode of the southpark cartoon. They were all against the establishment and all against everything. they had a system that was better then towns and cities. Then they described why thier system is better and one of the kids said "yea. it's called a town" then one of the hippies tryed to claim it was different. These people wanting to punish Big oil or force them to place all these polution controls in place and think big Oil is fighting it because it will cost them money are just like the hippies in southpark who didn't have a clue. (i'm not including you in that statment, just so it doesn't look like it). If it was an open and free market with actual competition, it might be different if one company was singled out. As it is now, evenh if one company raised thier prices, the others would do the same just to colect the extra profits.
But Communism and Socialism aren't the same everywhere. There is a huge difference between Russian Stalinism on one hand and Marxism and Leninism on the other.
See Cuba. While I know the Cuban government has been accused of the infringement of human rights, they aren't the only ones (Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, anyone?). Apart from this, I wouldn't think the Cubans are too badly off, and this is even more admirable taking into consideration a certain 50 years old embargo. In fact, their educational and health systems are incredibly efficient, to the point they actually export doctors and teachers to all of South America.
:(){
-knewter
China is doing their part to limit that with the means available within the realms of reason and financial viability.
Obviously nobody else needs to follow in the realms of reason and financial viability.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Obviously the countries you're referring to aren't developing economies, and have vastly higher levels of emissions relative to size and population. With increased responsibility comes increased accountability. Like it or not.
And there it is... we need go no further to see the gross abuses to which the scientific method is subjected than to read that statement.
First, research doesn't distort unless it's false, and false data tends to show itself over time. What you're talking about, though, isn't really false. What you're talking about is people who do research that shows that there's doubt about a particular set of theories. Now, you may be familliar with the way the scientific method worked pre-global-warming. In that golden age you just had to focus on what you wanted to prove or disprove and construct experiments to do so. Now, you have to think about the political ramifications of proving or disproving a particular bit of theory and steer clear of anything that might make you too controvecial to fund.
After all, you might end up having to turn to oil companies for funding, and at that point, you wouldn't be able to get a 13 year old to read your papers no matter how valid they might be.... There are so many things wrong with that that I don't even know where to start.
Can we stop being pro-X and anti-Y and just do some science for Euler's sake?!
I'll just have to pretend that that wasn't asked, since it implies a magnitude of unethical behavior that I hadn't even considered....
For certain values of genuine, you are correct. But once someone's research is used to support a theory or oppose a theory that it "should not have," they become "too controversial." Then it's over. You just don't get funding.
There again, the scientific method goes out the window. We look to one guy who says, "let's do more real science and fund the work that assails theory because that's how the scientific method works," and ask him to prove that the contrarian case is correct. That would be like denying Issac Newton funding until he proved that Calculus could get a man to the moon. You fund research on the basis of its merits, without regard to the researcher's political standing or the political implications of the research. You don't ask someone to proove that they've solved a problem before funding them. That's how we got in this mess.
Anyone who's honest with themselves will admit that the scientific community have been alarmist over global warming. I submit to you that that's not a BAD thing, it's just something that we need to be aware of. Yes, we pushed this issue hard because it was important. Yes, it was important. Yes, we needed to have the debate and do the scinece, and it needed to be funded. Yes, yes, yes. Now, we've done a lot of work, and there's much left to do. What we need is to pull some of the hounds off of the media and the politicians. We need to convince people like Gore that no matter how good his intentions, he's just making it HARDER for good scientists to do good work, and turning the field into more of a sport than a science. We need to just go back to basics and fund the research that will help us understand the world we live in.
The saddest part is that I don't think that's the case. If there were a "bad guy" here, I might feel like there was a hope of putting the scientific method back on track, but no. I think it's just a cycle of failure that started the first time someone got worried about funding a "controvercial" climetologist or solar astrophysicist.
A lot of it has to do with media attention and the bad choices that that brings, but I don't think anyone WANTED this outcome.
It's not that those controling funding were trying to swing a debate, it's just that they were worried that they WOULD swing the debate, and they let that color their choices. In retrospect, I'm sure those choices are all justifiable, but each one inched us closer to a failure to do scinece and as one person calls it, a "climate of fear" surrounding results that might call into question the "consensus."
I'm not even saying that the consensus is right or wrong, just that there's no way to call it science when it's not attacked from every angle. Can you imagine how little respect we'd have for general relativity if it remained unassailed for fear of losing funding? Could we possibly accept it as "consensus," or would we just think of it as a "best guess?"
Because in the case of the oil companies, you can get the same profit by keeping the price the same or uping it to match them. This means that they wouldn't need to go thru the extra expense of creating more product in order to handle the new volume too.
Common sence says take this opertunity to underprice and make up on volume. In any industry with actual competition, that would be a dream come true. Big oil in the US is tied down to 5 major companies with not more then 4 operating in any one state at the same time. So for all intent and purpose, you might as well say we have 4 major oil companies operating in the US. We have a few smaller companies but they have to sell to big oil to be in the business. Everything going to the gas pump will pass through one of the big companies.
Now, four major oil companies servicing one area isn't all that bad in itself. The problem comes around when they have to use each others facilities in order to offer goods in these areas. Of course there is a fee attached to it and it is as much political as it is anything (you wouldn't want four seperate piplines servicing the same refinery when one is enough to ahndle all the refineries needs). But this probably isn't too much of a problem in the long run. The problem is were increased supplies would easily be seen by the one fined. This means they could recoupe some of the costs from them. It is much easier to order all the stores to drive around and post thier gas prices at the average amount in the area and when one company out of four raises it prices, It iseasy to justify raising you own.
Yes, If we actualy had competition, it might be different. We chose to have a steady and some what secure oil delivery system and allowed all the mergers and bailouts to happen. Now we have a situation were we cannot harm them without harming ourselves. Here is a hint. Even if they are broke up and competition resumes, the companies being spun off will still be owned by Big Oil and creating yet another illusion of a free market. There isn't much that can be done and Big oil will still control the supply chaines, most likley the refineries that produce the alternative fuels as well as the aditives needed to make them burn clean. Blaming Global Warming on them or thinking they are fighting it because it will cost them money is like making the government give everyone in the country $10,000. Sure you will have more money, until the government needs to recover it. Then it is comming back from you.
"as one person calls it, a "climate of fear""
:)
That phrase is a play on words involving a science fiction book called "State of fear", the authour of the novel was disingenously invited to give "evidence" to a US senate commitee and introduced as a "climate expert". Look up the plot, it's nowhere near as good as the junk science in his best seller, "Jurrasic Park".
"I'm not even saying that the consensus is right or wrong..."
I'm saying "the consenus" == "established theory" using the exact same process used to establish the theory of evolution, GR, atoms, germs, ect, (ie: the scientific method). I also claim that "established theory" is not static but is constantly being tested and refined, money spent testing and refining is well spent iff the question is considered "important" by enough people. Do politicians in a corpratised government try to "rig the answers", you bet! The fact that science has come up with the opposite to what they wanted, is in my mind enough justification to state the politicians have indeed got a scientific answer and wished they hadn't (no politicians wants to be the bearer of bad news).
"...,just that there's no way to call it science when it's not attacked from every angle.
You hint of solar observations, yet you still haven't specified what "angle" has not been "attacked"? I agree there are plenty of things that are unknown and uncertain, but when I was a kid black holes were still a "theory", when I was a teenager I actually remember reading about the "coming ice age" in National Geographic (I was looking for breasts, I swear).
"Can you imagine how little respect we'd have for general relativity if it remained unassailed for fear of losing funding?"
I respect GR for exactly the same reasons I respect "the global warming consensus" and have observed both being tested and refined for decades, what is your reason? It is interesting that you picked gravity, there is no known analytical solution to the "three body problem", yet we are able to build iterative computer models capable of shooting a space ship through the gaps in the rings of Saturn, twice! Climate models use the laws of physics to approximate reality in exactly the same manner.
Could we possibly accept it as "consensus," or would we just think of it as a "best guess?"
As I said "the consenus" is "established theory", you don't have to accept it and (as ExonnMobile, Phillip Morris and others have discovered), it definitely will not accept you unless you play by the "method". Science is indeed a "best guess", it does not, and will not, ever offer a "correct" answer, but can you think of anything that comes even remotely close to it's predictive power?
PS: I belive you are genuine in what you say and can hold your own in an intelligent "dinner conversation". Another climate change story has popped up on the front page so I suspect you will drop off the bottom of my recent comments page. I would be happy to continue the conversation via email if you wish, my email is alan_mortimer59@hotmail.com. In the meantime, Michael Mann is one of the top climatoloigsts in the world, he also set up RealClimate and often answers posts on the comments page personally. And just to be fair, here is a reasonably comprehesive list of scientists who disagree with the consensus, all have attracted plenty of funding over the last decade or so, RealClimate will point you at rebuttals for their scientific arguments.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"And there it is... we need go no further to see the gross abuses to which the scientific method is subjected than to read that statement."
You see to think that because I belive ExonnMobil has engaged in a concerted propoganda effort using similar strategies as Phillip Morris in it's anti-science campaign that I also belive all corprate sponsered reseach is tarred with the same brush. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Aside from that, I don't wish to maintain two threads with the same person on the same subject.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Actually, while I'm not a big fan of that book, I think it's perfectly valid political SF. But that's NOT what I was refering to. I was talking about the essay titled "climate of fear." You can find it via google. Interestingly, it's not about the right or the wrong of the argument, but about how we go about arguing (using political or scientific approaches). Face it, not everyone who tries to prove relativity is wrong thinks Einstein was an idiot. It's just that assailing a theory is how you demonstrate that it's solid. We, the few who aren't happy with the current form of global warming debate, aren't saying that this is all bunk. We're just saying that the scientific method should be guiding our actions here, not floor debates in the senate or an ex-VP grandstanding in a movie that plays to the masses, and makes claims that aren't even remotely supported by the science (someone else in an earlier thread pointed out that Gore's movie claims that sea levels will rise dramatically, and demonstrates the impact that would have, but the UN's climate group predicts a tiny fraction of that sea level rise over the next 100 years, just by way of example).
Don't get emotional about it, just let the scientific method play out. Fund the people who want to tear down established theory in the same manner you support those who wish to build on it. That's how it works, and that's how you find the truth.
Like it or not, if global warming is caused by rising carbon dioxide, and if that rise is largely man-made, then the climate system does not give a shit about the per capita amount of carbon dioxide, only the absolute amount emitted.
Your call.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Oh spare me your idealistic views. This issue exists in the real world, not in a world where anyone can wish for a clean energy source and it appearing out of nowhere.
You can't be critical of China doing as much as they can, even if they are on target to be the biggest emitter. As you yourself put it, the climate system doesn't give a shit about where land borders are, only about how much each individual is emitting. That means that per capita emissions is the only thing that matters, and in that sense, China certainly isn't the first country on the list of countries in need of bashing.
The AC mentioned something that seems unusual on Slashdot. I write something that gets up *and* down modded, but nobody chimes in with why I'm right or wrong? Am I living in alternate-reality-land?
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law