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Congress Hears From Muzzled Scientists
BendingSpoons writes "More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies have been pressured to remove the phrases 'global warming' and 'climate change' from various documents. The documents include press releases and, more importantly, communications with Congress. Evidence of this sort of political interference has been largely anecdotal to date, but is now detailed in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on this issue Tuesday; the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans, stating that global warming is happening and greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are largely to blame. The OGR hearings presage a landmark moment in climate change research: the release of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, drafted by 1,250 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2,500 scientists, is expected to state that 'there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change' — up from the 2001 report's 66% chance. It probably won't make for comfortable bedtime reading; 'The future is bleak', said scientists."
Hah, what do climatologists know about global warming... Oh wait
But nothing. Republicans? Shut the fuck up.
No, seriously. Shut the fuck up. I'm sick and tired of the obfuscation. I'm sick and tired of the lying. I'm sick and tired of you useful idiots towing the party line. I look outside, I see the difference in the weather, I see the results that people were warning us about twenty years ago, and it scares the shit out of me.
Republicans? SHUT THE FUCK UP and let the rest of us try to DO something about this.
``This isn't a smoking gun; This is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles.''
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
When the current administration was was securing their win, a lot of promises were made in order to fuel (pardon the pun) the race for securing the last reserves. The momentum needed to be there for big investment to take place to secure wins and deliver on those promises made. So with that being considered, it stands to reason, you don't want bad advertising in the form of alarming factual statistics being relased by the scientific community being released and hindering the fund security for isolating the last of the worlds petroleum, right? So the cover was thickened. A massive veil of 'turn-the-other-cheek' was set in place in order to ensure that financial gain could be had.
Now that the whole Charade is under fire from every thing to the administrations take on the environment, space, and that god damned war, people are beginning to lift the corners of the rug where this stuff had been swept under. Unfortunately, what's been found continued to rot while it was being hidden. Now it's even more harsh to deal with. In the end, the deals been exposed, the plug's getting pulled, and I couldn't be happier about it. Just too bad a few of us were saying things like this were going to happen since back in the 70's. It's just unfortunate that we had to have an acceleration period in the last 10-20 years to solidify the problem. And too bad the delicate cycle of the Earth has been damaged permanently as a result of man's greed and quest for senseless power and control.
Interesting that the health of our world is being decided by politicialns, rather than the scientists that study this kinda stuff. I sure hope some sensemaking comes of this. Why is it now my fault that scientists aren't taken seriously by this administration?
Can I declare politics to be illegal and akin to terrorism?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
A genuinely free-market Republican administration would surely want the truth about climate change to be readily available so that the markets could respond appropriately and make capital and resources available for the inevitable re-shaping of society, rather than be associated by similarity of behaviour with the guys in funny skirts who inadvertently helped the Protestants take over the world.
Pining for the fjords
And I get tired of all these stupid Republicans who think that predicting the weather has anything to do with prediciting the climate.
Since when has it been the government's (or in particular our President's) responsibility to tell us about environmental problems? Certainly if this so-called global warming problem begins to threaten the US in a direct manner, something should be done. But up until this point I have seen no such information come to light. We all know the dangers of global warming, and we have all been pretty well informed by researchers outside the realm of politics.
Global warming certainly may be real, and we may be causing it. But I don't believe that the president should be taking a "stance" on global warming. And that includes federal scientists; I think the bigger problem is not that they aren't being allowed to say anything, but that we have federal scientists working on global warming in the first place! Since when has global warming been a major security issue to our nation? The government should not be there to do the major research. That responsibility is reserved for the world of academia.
If and when global warming becomes a US threat, then by all means let them speak their mind about how we are to "protect" ourselves. Until then they should leave it to the American people to decide how to curb global warming on their own.
We haven't heard enough from "the sky is falling" crowd.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
*I* really get tired of reading irrelevant blathering from people who don't know the difference between weather and climate.
So their inability to predict next weeks weather justifies censoring their reports?
The new Stalinsim for the 21st Century.
This moment could be remebered as "The day the biggest CO2 producer nation in the world acknowledged a reality it ignored for years". Let's hope it's not too late to prevent irreversible runaway effects. For what it's worth, one day or another I'd like to hear some contrite words from people who stubbornly denied the need for any action about Global Warming up to now. A bit late, a bit useless, but should be an obligation for someone who may have contributed to bring the world beyond a point of no return.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Geeze!
And BTW - regardless of whether or not global warming is fact or (incredibly unlikely) fiction, why the HELL do we need a reason to reduce carbon emissions, waste-per-person and tree felling? Surely doing any of these is a good thing for us all anyway. Cleaner air and forests for our children to explore should be reason enough.
Work smarter, not harder.
I think you need to rexamine the origin of your opinion since it sounds quite a lot like well funded talking points: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html...
s -selling-solar.html
FUD: Spreading Fear, Uncertainy and Doubt.
Science: Fearlessly following curiosity by using doubt to perfect experiment and quantify uncertainty.
Who wins?
--
Cheap Solar: It's reality based: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Think of it more in the temrs of the kenetic theory of gases.
Accurate prediction of the movement of a single molecule is not possible - the uncertainty principle at work.
The movement of a single molecule can be described as chaotic.
However the kenetic theory of gases allows us to acurately calculate the movement of larges volumes of gas without a problem.
Weather is chaotic, but moderatly predictable over small time scales this is why weather forcasts are not always acurate. Trends over long time scales are a different matter and can be calculated - its a different order of magnitude to the above analogy but the principle is the same.
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
I don't know what it is, but when you talk to other scientists about a topic, while they're excited about it, they don't predict doomsday even if it's possible. But when you talk to a climate scientist, it's the only thing on their mind. Either the basic teachings in the science are turning out nuts, or they're right. I guess the biggest issue is the fact that the climate scientist doomsday clock has been running for well over 30 years, but we're all still here and all we have to show for it are some hurricanes of a force that the world *has* seen before, and a few chunks of ice that have been perilously hanging over the sea for years finally dropping in. So I, like so many others, have stopped listening to the sirens from the Wahhhhhhmbulance and, instead, have decided to wait until something bad actually happens in my own backyard. Sucks, but, like so many others, my attention span isn't that long.
The moral of the story is the boy who cries wolf, even when he thinks he's right, but turns out mistaken gets ignored the same way as the boy who cries wolf because he's a jerk.
Got flame baited the first time, so here we go again: Three Points
Point 1: You do research on the federal doll, you do the work you were asked to do not choose your research to vent your personal opinions and unrelated suppositions.
Point 2: Scientists (especially climatologists) have been predicting that the sky will fall pretty regularly for the last half-century and most of their predictions have been incorrect. The Earth is a huge steady state equilibrium system with process that have kept is that way for a long time. Processes that scientists aren't even close to understanding in the short term much less over a millennium.
Point 3: (related to 2). Using the specific buzzwords/phrases that were censored is appropriate when they convey a meaning other than intended. Proving that human interference may directly cause changes to the environment does not mean that the Earth is going to dry up into a tsunami ridden dustbowl tomorrow. Using those specific "loaded" phrases will cause many non-scientists to think that way because of the way it has been portrayed in the press and by fringe scientists.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That's not a good solution. The only long term solution is to stop breeding like you're a frikkin sha^Wbunny.
(not "you" as in you, but you know, in general. *sigh* Engrish is a great language.)
c++;
Agreed. Nothing is more annoying than hearing people say "It is cold outside today, Global Warming must not be real". ARGHHHHHH
This isn't a judgement... more of a curiosity. I don't understand why "conservative Republicans" are so determined to deny that global warming is happening. It's fairly pervasive, or at least seems to to me. I can't tell if it's just people towing the party line and that line comes from the top, or if there's some aspect of religious doctrination that forces this attitude, or something else.
Case in point, I have relatives who are conservatives. I can't say all of them say this, but I'm surprised at the numbers who believe that global warming is a bunch of bull. I was listening to an NPR Technology podcast about this and a guy called in, identified himself as a conservative Republican, and proceded to state that he didn't believe global warming was happening.
I don't get why the skeptisism is drawn by party lines. What am I missing? Is it as simple as the top Republican leadership protecting oil interests and everyone else just follows along, or is there a deeper, more historical context that I'm unaware of?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
that it's primary irrelevenat that humans are responsible for
global warming or not. Even when not, the politicians have to do something.
The reactions may be different in the two cases, but something has to be done do be
prepared. But have you ever heard that a politician said "hey, it's not us,
but we have to cut down CO2-emissions, reduce the pollution and restructure
the coasts to prevent the biggest desasters in the future"?
Dear Lara,
On second thought, Earth is a little....eh.
I'll keep looking.
Love,
Jor-El
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
> If these scienticians want to save the planet promote ecologically sound solutions to known problems. Just bellyaching so you can get more grant money to study how fucked up the world is doesn't solve jack fucking squat.
Then it must have made you happy to read that the scientists are testifying to the policymakers.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sure, it will "correct" itself. The problem in this case is that the cure might not be very fun for us living on it at the moment, or in the future as well.
c++;
Scientists on Earth have noted the following:
1. Earth's polar cap ice is getting thinner, thus leading credence to "global warming", and is probably TRUE.
2. Mar's polar ice cap is getting thinner over the last half century, thus leading credence to...um...global warming.
3. Since there are humans on Earth, but no plants or people on Mars, there is a strong suspicion that increased Solar activity is the culprit.
Amazing things are found by scientists, as long as they get their noses out of their offices.
According to Representative Jim Cooper, the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/30/negroponte-glo bal-warming/ was banned from mentioning the words "global" and warming" together in the same sentence. So in a recent speech he gave when he was given an environmental award, he played a game to try and get the words as close together in his sentences without actually saying them in the same sentence. Funny on one level, but how sad. We're approaching environmental crush depth and the administration is still pulling this pathetic little game about "climate change not global warming".
Frankly, I'm starting to agree with those who are talking about an environmental Nuremberg.
So transit will increase to the point I can get to work? Oh, wait no? Ok.
I don't need a Ph.D. in biology or chemistry to know that taking the bus with 50 other people is more energy efficient than driving my own car by myself the 10km to work.
Here's a tip: FIGURE OUT WHERE FOLK LIVE AND WORK and put routes there. Especially in Canada where we get -30C weather. I don't want to walk 15 minutes to a unsheltered bus stop on the side of a highway to catch a bus [that only comes by three times in the morning and three times at night]. Enough people work on this end of the town that having a bus go here from another major centre (e.g. shopping mall) makes sense.
oh well, c'est la vie.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
" the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans, stating that global warming was happening and greenhouse gas emissions from human activity were largely to blame"
Wow... I feel so much better knowing that a bunch of politicians think we're all gonna fry because of eeeeevil SUVs.
The really worrying thing is reading something like this:
According to the report, in 2005, the White House stepped in to block an interview MSNBC sought with NOAA scientist Thomas Knutson, who a year earlier had published a modeling study on the potential link between hurricanes and global warming. and not being the least bit suprised or outraged anymore.Is there nothing the current administration won't do?
"A 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change"? Do they mean a 90% confidence? Or are they all Bayesians? Or am I too pedantic for my own good?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
It is interesting that 120 scientists, greatly concerned about these issues would roll over and play dead. Is there not one person willing to let go of position, money or carrear for what he believes in?
Ad Astra Per Asper
It's not their job to make sure the city will extend the infrastructure. They are only there to find out the facts. Too bad the fact is ignored by the people who are actually there to do something about it.
c++;
A bold political move, but obviously not a well thought-out one.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html?cm_ve n=one_deg_blog&cm_ite=one_deg_commentary&from=one_
Quote: If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval.
Sounds like muzzling one point of view to me.
I know there are some scifi nuts of a certain age around here.. anyone else watch "V" back in the 1980s?
Interesting show. There are these aliens who land and ingratiate themselves with humanity. They seem friendly, wise, and charismatic, but they're really planning to take over the world. In the course of this they spread lots of FUD about scientists (who are of course the ones most likely to discover the truth about them) to the point where scientists the world over are discredited, and ultimately persecuted by humanity just for being scientists.
Science fiction, eh? Where do they come up with this ker-ray-zee stuff?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Wait for it....wait for it...
This statement is in the passive voice. No one is directly referred to here. The problem with this? The poster makes a statement and forces assumptions on who has been putting this pressure of censorship. I am not sure which is worse--deliberate censorship or subtle trickery as is in the first line of the "summary." I am not some Republican good buddy here to bash global warming theory or anything, but the summary is nothing but flamebait.
... I gotta wear shades. (rose tinted glasses)
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
You have touched upon the main problem with getting anything done with this problem. Most people simply refuse to be inconvenienced to the point that is probably necessary to affect it. We all bitch and moan that the gov't isn't doing enough (and they aren't), but we continue to to drive alone to work in our large autos, turn our thermostats to 75 degrees in the winter instead of putting on a sweater, never walk, never ride a bicycle, etc.
Consider people like Al Gore (who admittedly has done a lot to get the word out), who owns a 10Kft^2 and a 4Kft^2 home while lecturing the rest of us. On the other hand, people who try to act consistently with their professed beliefs, like actor Ed Begley, Jr. are considered such freaks that they're making a TV show about his life.
This problem will not be solved by gov't intervention as much as by people changing their attitudes.
The Earth is a huge steady state system and it has corrected itself EVERY time in the past.
The first part of your claim is not only false, it is contradicted by the second part of your claim. "Steady state" systems do not need to undergo "corrections". Dynamically stable systems do.
The Earth is a huge dynamically stable system, and it has corrected itself EVERY time in the past. That is a true statement, but an uncomfortable one, because the Earth's dynamically stable climate undergoes excursions that are quite significant relative to the stability required for human civilization to thrive.
Even local events like the Younger Dryas can ruin your whole millenia. Global events like ice ages, or the mode switching to a hot, dry climate for a few hundred or a thousand years that we see in some ice core data, can make things very uncomfortable indeed.
Scientists are concerned about global climate change not because we are worried about the "end of all life on Earth" or some equally algorean kookery, but because we know with certainty that the Earth's climate maintains a dynamic equilibrium that will happily accomodate excursions that would make a mess of our lives and our descendent's lives, and we know with certainty that we are giving that dynamically stable system a nice wack with a hammer by increasing effective insolation by a percent or so over the past two hundred years.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Climatologists whose research indicates catastrophic changes are coming get more money than those who determine that "The future climate will be like it was in the past. Meh."
Which one's going to get funded for the next research project?
> I don't know what it is, but when you talk to other scientists about a topic, while they're excited about it, they don't predict doomsday even if it's possible. But when you talk to a climate scientist, it's the only thing on their mind.
Cosmologists predict a Big Rip. Solar scientists predict that the sun will swallow the earth. Some astronomers think we'll eventually get dinged by a killer asteroid. Epidemiologists are terrified by some of the strange disease that have been turning up over the past few decades.
The difference with global warming is that it's happening as we speak, not some distant or random threat.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Let's not forget the "'Global Cooling' crowd" and the "'Population Explosion Causing the End of Civilization by 2000' crowd." We narrowly dodged those bullets!
...but it's one that is widely addressed. Solar intensity is certainly variable. It's also easily measurable. So here's the question: given how much more energy we're getting from the sun, are we as warm as we expect to be? The answer is currently no. We're warmer than we can account for by solar intensity alone.
Responsible scientists are not simply talking about warming. They're talking about climate change that is both more complex than simply "it's warmer" and they're talking very specifically about change that they can't account for when they take everything else they know about into account. Natural greenhouse emissions (methane, CO2), solar intensity, how long you leave your XBox 360 on, etc... if it's warmer than we expect from all of those things, then we've got issues.
And in many of those cases the dominant life forms of Earth became extinct. The worst part is that the poets, philosophers and writers have been saying the "end of the world" would be man-made even longer than the scientists...
Welcome to the prologue to every post apocalyptic sci-fi book ever written.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I agree. They're like the people who say, "It's warm this month. Global warming is real."
JOIN US FOR PONG!
You assume the appearance of respectability, but you aren't wearing anything. In order to be respected, you have to say/do something worthy of respect.
Your arguments are specious. Your persistence is unfortunate. Your indignation is self-indulgent.
Ad hominem attacks like this (what I'm doing right now) don't make for very good arguments. Fortunately, I'm not arguing with you. I'm not trying to convince you either. I'm simply stating that you're an idiot. Saying something twice doesn't make it right. I should also mention that yelling something doesn't prove it's true either (just in case you think it will).
> I really get tired of these quantum leap suppositions from scientists who can't predict the weather this week much less over the next millennium.
I get really amazed to see Slashdotters with 4-digit IDs who can't reason out the fallacy of that silly argument.
> This is what we get from turning science into a liberal arts track.
You said it, not me.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I assume the conversation went something like this:
mmmphp hmmph mmmph mmmph hmmm hmm hmm hmmmph!
(There will be those that try to cast this argument as an "anti-warming" statement, so I preface.)
Climate change and warming are happening. It's the cause, the driving force that is at issue. There are those that claim the debate is over, that man-caused climate change is in progress, and that all the scientists agree, case closed. Not exactly the case.
There 2 books, one published in December, the other due out shortly that make a very strong case for cyclical change.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
The Summary for Policymakers from the Scientific Assessment Working Group ("Working Group 1") of the Intergovernemental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due out Friday morning at 9:30 am Paris time. There will be a webcast of the press conference. This report reflects the worldwide scientific consensus (and it contains contributions from some of the scientists who've complained about being muzzled by the US government). Every word will have been ironed over by scientists and diplomats. Watch the skies:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/
The full report of the working group will be out in May and published by Cambridge University Press in June (the same people who've published the last three Assessment Reports). The working group reports are a great way to get an overview of the current scientific understanding, and they're meant to be readable by the technically-savvy non-specialist.
Yeah, that couldn't POSSIBLY have been a joke? I mean, "word circulated through the audience"?!? And you've also misquoted the story. The AUDIENCE thought it would be funny to play a game, not Negroponte. People like you HURT the global warming crowd because you come up with BS like this that is incorrect.
From CBC:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper once called the Kyoto accord a "socialist scheme" designed to suck money out of rich countries, according to a letter leaked Tuesday by the Liberals.
The letter, posted on the federal Liberal party website, was apparently written by Harper in 2002, when he was leader of the now-defunct Canadian Alliance party.
He was writing to party supporters, asking for money as he prepared to fight then-prime minister Jean Chrétien on the proposed Kyoto accord.
"We're gearing up now for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership," Harper's letter says.
"I'm talking about the 'battle of Kyoto' -- our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord."
The accord is an international environmental pact that sets targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Canada officially ratified the accord Dec. 17, 2002, under Chrétien's Liberal government. Harper's Conservative government, which took power January 2006, has since been accused of ignoring the accord.
Harper's letter goes on to outline why he's against the agreement.
He writes that it's based on "tentative and contradictory scientific evidence" and it focuses on carbon dioxide, which is "essential to life."
He says Kyoto requires that Canada make significant cuts in emissions, while countries like Russia, India and China face less of a burden.
Under Kyoto, Canada was required to reduce emissions by six per cent by 2012, while economies in transition, like Russia, were allowed to choose different base years.
"Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations," Harper's letter reads.
He said the accord would cripple the oil and gas industries, which are essential to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
He wrote in the letter that he would do everything he could to stop Chrétien from passing the Kyoto agreement.
"We will do everything we can to stop him there, but he might get it passed with the help of the socialists in the NDP and the separatists in the BQ [Bloc Québécois]."
The Prime Minister's Office refused to comment about the letter on the record.
In recent weeks, Harper has spoken strongly about the environment, saying he will dramatically revamp his minority government's much-criticized clean air act.
His comments come as public-opinion polls indicate the environment has become the number one issue among Canadians.
Liberal MP Mark Holland told the Canadian Press on Tuesday that the leaked letter shows that Harper isn't actually committed to climate change.
"Now, suddenly, because he has seen the polls and realized the political opportunism of going green, the prime minister has launched a new campaign -- that of trying to convince Canadians that he actually cares about the environment," Holland said.
"But no one is buying it."
The Kyoto Protocol went into effect Feb. 16, 2005, with 141 countries signing on, including every major industrialized country, except the United States, Australia and Monaco.
2. Mar's polar ice cap is getting thinner over the last half century, thus leading credence to...um... wishful thinking and a confusion between causality.
Thing 1 happens
Thing 2 happens
Assume thing1 is caused by the same as thing2
Extrapolate from that false assumption to back false assertion.
If thing2 doesn't exist, make something up anyway.... (Mar polar ice cap is melting....)
...that I don't care if this post gets modded down to -99. All the bed-wetting panic over global warming is just a big, steaming pile of bullshit (contributing to excess methane in the atmosphere, of course). And I'm not a Republican or any other kind of political animal, so don't even go there.
... I'm sorry, but folks who keep saying this == idiots. It was just a big hurricane. There have been bigger ones. There will be bigger ones. It's just what the planet does.
What I am, though, is almost 50 years old, and I've been hearing these dire predictions all my life. Ten years from now (God willing) I'll be laughing my ass off at today's earth-shaking, catastrophic predictions.
We've always had floods, droughts, hurricanes; in fact we're always had climate change. It's just what the planet does. But whose fault is it? Why, it MUST be our fault! We've angered the gods! We are bad! We must flagellate ourselves!
re "Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call"
BTW, the biggest bespoilers of the planet are Russia, China and India, all exempt from the Kyoto protocol.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
From the Senate:
There are opposing positions to Al Gore's propaganda movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." There are opposing views that should be discussed.
No one diputes the fact that the Earth is warming. However, there is not scientific consensus that it is caused, or substantially increased, by humans. The inconvenient truth that Gore fails to mention is that about 10,000 years ago, the Earth was so warm that citrus fruits were growing in what is now northern Germany.
There were no cars and precious few people to cause the Earth to be so warm. That period was followed by an ice age. When the ice age ended, the Earth began warming, and has been warming ever since. It will continue to warm, until another ice age occurs.
Many publications on global warming deliberately leave out these facts, so as to lend credence to the theory that we are causing global warming. The culprit is not the Earth's habitants; it is the sun, which we sometimes see in the Pacific Northwest. The Earth has been in a continual cycle of heating and cooling, and there is nothing we can to about it. That's another "inconvenient truth."
Muzzling attempt?
Check out this blog post from James Spann:
From his blog - his bio:
Official bio here
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I guess not one of you care about your own freedom, do you? Elections stolen, Capitalism enslaves you from cradle to grave, science replaced with theology in schools, and now the government controls what the scientists can and cannot say. And it just keeps going on. In any population that had a shred of respect for itself, all these suit-wearing monarchs would be hanging from lamp-posts by now.
Truly, history will look back on the 21st century in America as being a Dark Age such as was never known in Europe.
The situation in the UK is entirely reversed. The government has wholeheartedly jumped on the man-made climate change bandwagon and is milking it at every opportunity. Extra taxation is being liberally applied to anything even remotely related to carbon dioxide emissions (just today, taxation on passenger air travel doubled).
However, an equal investment isn't being put towards improving public transport (which is truly horrendous in the UK).
I'd be wary of what you ask of the US government - it may be all too easy for them to follow the UK government's lead and just start using "climate change" as an excuse to extract cash from the populace.
it's nice to hear from "experts" who's voices were stiffled before. when considering legislation, legislators should be able to hear all the facts at the time and not have the white house redact voices from scientific research documents which can effect the way legislatures vote.
How can people be allowed to get away with this sort of thing? I can understand a leader wrongfully convincing his country to go to war. To convince thousands of people to sacrafice their lives for NOTHING. I can understand the Dawg-eat-dawg environment that our government works in and how winning an argument can seem more important than what the argument stands for. What I can't understand is how, at the end of the day, when we've destroyed the majority of the ecosystems on our planet; and millions of people have died of famine, disease and displacement. All we had to do was listen to the people who's job it was to forsee these events in nature! The vast majority of the scientific community beleives that we are going to cause major environmental unrest if things remain the way they are... So naturally it makes sense for bush to ignore things like the kyoto protocol right? I wonder if he ignores his military advisors in the same fashion? Certainly seems that way. The leader of our nation is a friggin child and is going to be responsible for countless deaths, decades of misery, pain and suffering. I hope he gets what he deserves. Alas, the world doesn't work that way. He'll probably be the hero in the end.
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
If you'd like to do some of the same experiments that these scientists do, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
For example, our model shows increased snowfall on Greenland (a common skeptic retaliation). This does not mean global warming is not happening, but rather what was predicted: Warmer air can hold more moisture, so there is increased snowfall. The melting on the edges is occurring faster, so overall we have mass loss of the ice cap.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
Well, it is technically possible to build 10k ft^2 houses that are cheaper to heat etc. than a 1k ft^2 house. And if you have a 10k house, it follows logically that you are very likely to have a big piece of land that it's sitting on.
That'd allow you to have say your own personal windmill. Add in solar power etc. and you can come out way ahead.
But I've no clue if this is actually the case here. I'm just saying that pointing fingers at someone for owning a big house as if that's bad, is like pointing at someone with black hair and saying that's bad.
If anything, you should probably point out how Al Gore gets around instead. As I understand it, he uses his own private jet and big ass SUV's, but I've no references to where I read that.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
How dare you cloud the issue with your obvious attempt to bring facts and real science to the table?
How dare you take a position that Greeny Socialists with a smattering of science are opposed to?
How dare you attack scientists who have been given grant money by biased organizations to prove its man-caused?
You have offended me with your opposing view point and you must be shouted down and prevented from presenting again. We will take whatever certification you have, away. And, we will march in high numbers, and you know the saying:
We have the numbers, so we are right. Because it's popular to say its man-caused, you know its right. Because a bunch of obvious unbiased greenies and socialist say its right, it must be right. We poop on your science and replace it with our hysteria cloaked in scientific terms.
HOW DARE YOU!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Well, it's a good thing that the socalists/democrats from europe and bluestate USA who believe in bunk like global warming aren't breeding then! It should all work itself out.
You seem to be too stupid to understand the notion of consequences, so here's how it goes down: global warming == grave national threat. Think about it -- the feds can combat terrorism, and all terrorists can do is (at best) murder people and destroy infrastructure. Global climate change can utterly impoverish America and make it a supplicant nation, dependent on others for basic food-stuffs while half the population lives in shantytowns after having to abandon their flooded hometowns, and 10% of the workforce is unable to work because they have drug-resistant malaria.
I'd say that any president who DOESN'T make global climate change their business is not just stupid and incompetent, they're also a traitor. Frankly, it's kind of surprising that you would hold your president to a lower standard of accountability that you would a hobo or, say, a dead raccoon.
Try explaining it to them in economic terms. Economists can't tell you what will happen to any given stock on any given day, but they can still predict the overall economic growth of a country over a year.
I think people are afraid to admit that its that pesky Sun, on a warming cycle, and volcanic action, there's been a lot, and just plain cycles. People are afraid to admit it because then it is out of our control, and one thing people really like is to be in control.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
At first, I thought, hey, maybe you're just misguided. Maybe you are. However, here's the problem with that theory. You've taken the time to get a lot of different links together and post them here. That suggests that you're capable of doing decent searches. Therefore, you should already know what's wrong with your claims. Now, just to answer your objections (so you don't claim I'm "avoiding" the "facts"):
(1) Um, yeah. Change that to the world is (appears to be? really?) getting warmer, and this agrees with the basic science done during the 60's prior to sophisticated computer models, and during a slowing down (and slight retreat) of global warming due to increased particulates in the atmosphere.(2) True, temperature measures are better now than they have been in the past. Current temperature measures (over the last 100+ years) allow us to correlate temperatures with other proxies. These give us not only ways of estimating temperatures from prior eras, but also to get an idea of how much error we should expect in such estimates.
(3) Interesting theory. Of course, no one credible is postulating this theory. Why do you think that is? Also, you're explaining the warming after the fact. See #1.
(4) Gee, what could cause Jupiter to get warmer over multiple years? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Jupiter orbits the sun once every 12 years? Of course, it's actually a little more complicated than that. However, I suggest you leave the explanations to people who actually know what they're talking about.
(5) Of course, Mars annual cycle is closer to ours. And we've been observing it for a very short time. Nevertheless, your questions about that have also been addressed.
(6) Yes, livestock (those being raised by us, specifically) are largely responsible for increases in methane, and we should reduce our dependence on them as well. Methane also is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The only positive is that methane has a shorter "shelf life", in that it gets reabsorbed into nature much quicker than carbon dioxide. What's with this shell game, anyway? Are you trying to say that you shouldn't blame humans for CO2 increasing global temperatures because we're also responsible for methane increasing global temperatures?
(7) And, no it is not possible that the warmer temperatures that Earth is experiencing are caused by cyclical natural phenomena. We've ruled that out. It's like if someone were shot (and died immediately afterwards) and you said, hey, other people have died from natural causes, and other people have been shot and lived. Why is everyone assuming the bullet killed the guy?
(8) Oh, and let's not do anything because China won't? Please. That's tired. Yes, China needs to also get their act together. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to get our act together.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interfe rence/scientists-signon-statement.html Let me be the first to welcome our new
congressional oversight overlords.
s -selling-solar.html
--
The future is NOT bleak, it's sunny: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I guess the reason I find them more annoying is the same reason I get more annoyed when Democrats do stuff that harms the environment. You expect that from certain Republicans (no, not all of them), but when Democrats do it, I feel betrayed. Same thing here, sort of. When people say, oh, how can anyone deny global warming when it's 110 out today, or when there were so many hurricanes? They're just paving the road for equally ignorant people who say, how can anyone believe in global warming when it's 10 below zero today, and when there were very few tropical storms (although insignificantly slightly above the 1950-2000 average)?
First, it's about the basic science. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. CO2 levels are 50% higher than they've been in at least the last 800,000 years. We're measurably responsible for those increases. Absorbing infrared radiation leads to a higher thermal equilibrium.
Secondly, it's about trends. Not a single day. Not even a single year. The hottest 10 years on record have happened in the last 10 years (1997-2006).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And, ironically enough, seem to think they know more about global warming than climatologists.
I love watching businessmen and ministers claim they know more about global climate change than specialists... mostly because of a book written by a science-fiction author.
I just find it hilarious - the right wing is consistently wrong on controversial issues (Iraq WMDs, connecting Saddam to Al-Qaeda, and the various traditional issues of civil rights such as suffrage, seperate-but-equal, etc.) but every time a new issue comes up, they'll stalwartly dig their head in the sand and believe whatever they're told to believe.
I really get tired of these quantum leap suppositions from scientists who can't predict the weather this week much less over the next millennium.
It is just like when I can predict that you will post something totally ignorant and likely offensive, although I can't say what it will be exactly, or when you will do it.
JWall: GUI client for IPTables
Umm... think for a minute about the difference between weather and climate. No scientist would claim to tell you what the weather on Feb 1st 2008 will be like, but they CAN tell you within a pretty high accuracy what the average temperature for Feb 2008 will be. They can also tell you with pretty high accuracy how much precipitation New York state will recieve in 2010. There are key differences you are not getting.
What's not working as designed, is that politicians are not taking seriously (or worse) scientists.
Gee... you coulda fooled me. I guess that's why politicians are funding this bullshit in the first place. Don't forget: A number of these "climatologists" are on welfare. They don't study without government grants.
<sarcasm>
Of course, these climatologists would never have any motivation to blow things out of proportion. Nor would the media reporting it. "More research is required" definitely brings in the ratings and the grant money a lot better than "End of the world approaching! News at 11!!"
</sarcasm>
People modded it down because it at least seems to be deliberate misinformation. Deliberate because the amount of effort that appears to go into it suggests someone who could have taken the time to answer the very questions he raised. This is one of the typical strategies of global warming deniers. Try to spread doubt amongst those who aren't capable of understanding the science. You'll notice that his post followed the typical formula to a T.
The somewhat funny part is that these strategies actually work against each other, except for the main point - to sow confusion and doubt.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Let me tell a fact.
Climate change is not due to us, its due to Sun getting hotter.
Its proved and the ultimate truth.
Happy now?
So what does it change?
Does it change that the earth is getting warmer? No
Does it change that sea levels will rise? No
Does it change that polar ice caps will melt disrupting global weather patterns? No
Does it change this can lead to drastic impact on world food production? No
Your attitude is like - Diseases are not man made, so don't take antibiotics.
If it was calculated that an asteroid will strike earth after 10 years and cause mass extinction, would you want everyone to sit on it because its not man made?
Grow up. The problem is the concern part. Who caused it will will decide later. So if there is something Humans can do to offset nature, its better to do it before its too late. Nature being the cause won't change the fact that the global climate change is not good for us.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Sigh. You are yet another person who can't tell the difference between a meteorologist and a climatologist. A simple analogy that will help you:
Imagine you have a pan of water on a gas stove. The meteorologist will try to predict where individual convections will appear in the pan. This of course gets quite difficult when you get more than a few seconds in the future.
A climatologist on the other hand figures at what rate the water as a whole is heating, and the effects of putting a lid on the pan, or turning up the heat. The effects can be accurately predicted quite a long way into the future when you're looking at the entire contents of the pan, not trying to predict where each convection current will be.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I'm not a Republican, but I would probably say that the reason Republicans don't want to believe in this whole global warming thing is because the solution put out by any global warming enthusiast/nut has been a step toward socialism/communism. You'll never once hear any of these global warming folks mention the fact that the government is our country's biggest polluter.
Scientists say a huge meteorite hit earth gazillions of years ago, leading to an ice age. As I look outside, I see snow and bitter cold (MI sucks), but I don't see glaciers making inch-a-year tracks across the midwest... The earth adjusts, recovers, and continues on. We are mere flecks of insignificant duration in the scheme of the world and the universe. Look back at the popular concensus on earth's history. It is nothing, if not cyclical. I love that these scientists and their cult followers in the "climate-change" group (amazing how quickly they're getting away from the "global-warming" tag given the weather recently) can't answer the logic that if we can't STOP it, how did we ever START it? The earth has its coping mechanisms, all of which work. Atmosphere heating up? More water evaporates, cooling the air and creating more cloudcover to reflect sunlight to cool even more. More CO2 in the air, plantlife flourishes because of the increased levels, and as a result more oxygen is produced. Those two mechanisms are more than powerful enough to counter ANYTHING man can throw at them... and that's only TWO.
I forget the exact statistics, but I recall reading that if the earth's orbit around the sun was disturbed ~1% plus or minus its current distance, earth would be UNINHABITABLE - and considering how long the earth has been around (to all but the creationists), the fact that life still exists on this rock is amazing. And after everything the earth has gone through, we are here still, and that's the proof that I need to believe that there is nothing that man can do to cause or "FIX" global warming/climate change. Nature is in flux, and always has been. It's our responisbility to learn to live through it, not change nature. This is all just the newest "panic-politics". "Don't vote for this party, they'll destroy the world because they don't care about cow flatulence destorying the ozone!"
it actually works. Forget anything but the first sentence. Curbs on the excesses of capitalism MUST be the idea of communists. Therefore ANY idea that curbs the capitalist goals MUST be a communist plot. Therefore any red-blooded american MUST deny ANYTHING that limits economic freedom for the capitalists.
The remainder of the rant just shows that people REALLY DO believe in this shit. Amazing.
PS why is it that they don't ban IP? They are a monoploty right, where the government stop capitalist freemarket from working its magic. They also don't require that corporate sponsorship (another government intervention : communist!!!!) be dropped. The free movement of jobs is OK but market pritection isn't either for a proper capitalist.
Needless to say, the beliefs of such people cannot be logically explained. They are an article of faith.
Representatives from The Union Of Concerned Scientists, a left wing organization, said they were told by some that they were "muzzled".
It was a left wing, Democrat wankfest to embarrass the administration led by that partisan ass, Henery Waxman.
Funny how these muzzled scientists keep turning up to be heard all the time. Guess they are not really muzzled.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
>That's not a good solution. The only long term solution is to stop breeding
Most slashdot readers already do not breed...
Your environmentally friendly bio-fuels are triggering a 400 percent increase in the cost of tortillas.
Next you'll ban the beans....
Damn you!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
This all goes to show how US science is basically government-funded, and when you take money from the State, you must be its servant. He who pays the piper calls the tunes.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Really? First of all, I had no idea that Nazis were global warming deniers or accused others of it. Are you trying to Godwin the thread? Secondly, I use the phrase precisely. There are global warming skeptics (those who are truly undecided) and global warming deniers (those who are trying to spread FUD). There's a difference. You're the one who's being irrational by dragging in the holocause. Seriously, what are you thinking?
Depends on one's motivation. I've suggested that the Schwarzschild solution to GR might be wrong, but I wasn't doing it in an attempt to spread FUD. Is it wrong to moderate someone as a troll when you suspect their only motivation is to spread misinformation?
No, he proposed that several different events might be responsible, did enough research to cite sources, yet mysteriously didn't do enough research to know what was wrong with his sources.
Again with the Nazis? I'm not the one trying to Godwin the thread. How is that last point "shouting down" or "silencing people"? If I was trying to silence him, then why did I address every single last one of his points (see my response to him, where I also linked from solid resources)? (Seriously, where the heck are you dragging up this Nazi stuff from? Do you have a fetish or something?)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
That was definitely some informative post!
"So, in 10 years when the sea has not risen 3 1/2" and temperature has not gone up 1.4 deg F, I can finally have something to point to when I tell people why I don't listen to climate scientists."
You don't listen to them because you inappropriately assume any trend you hear about is linear? Climate scientists are pretty clear in saying that these processes accelerate with time. You release the carbon, the temperature rises, oxygen-producing flora die off in the warmer areas, newly bare ground absorbs solar radiation and re-radiates it as heat instead of the plants that were there using it to trap carbon...
Meanwhile, people are getting richer all across the world at a faster rate, more cars are being made, more energy is being used, and the population of the developing world continues to grow. There are about a dozen "bad things" we're doing, and we're doing them faster each year.
The result is that most of that temperature increase will happen later in the century, not earlier. Your silly mistake in ten years is what fools have been doing all along. It's why we're in trouble now.
The fact is, the climate changes naturally. Human activities also change the climate. The changes for which we are responsible may not be desirable to us. We cannot make the climate whatever we want, but our actions can alter the course of the climate, for good or for bad. The questions are about the costs of taking action, vs. the costs of doing nothing.
"While Church officials did condemn Galileo, heliocentrism was never formally or officially condemned by the Catholic Church."_ Galilei&oldid=104845818
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Galileo
Not to defend the catholic church because some of their past actions are indefensible. However the sentencing of Galileo was more political in nature then religious. The only reason for his sentence was for the government to use the power the church had over the people for it's own devices.
The passive voice is fine. The reports are clear on who is doing this and why. IMHO, you are setting up a strawman here.
s -selling-solar.html
Solar as an matter of fact: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I challenge you to watch An Inconvenient Truth (now available at video rental stores), and still hold your opinion. Just try it. What's the worst that could happen? Maybe it will give you more evidence to support your theories.
{and I'll add a few lowercase words so as not to trip the "lameness filter"}
MMMPPHHHH!!!! MMMMMMMPPPHHHHH!!!!!
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I find this amusing. I guess what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander... These same scientists, with huge help from the popular media, try to muzzle the other scientists who's research contradicts the human cause theory. We humans are funny. We base our world view on the very small span of time in which we live. It's like all that has happened in the past never happened. Fact is we dont live long enough to recognise any of the Earth's long term cycles. We know even less about non-terrestrial facts which directly effect our planet. We also tend to forget that our system orbits the galactic center of our galaxy. Our system most likely enters and exits energized (radioactive) clouds off and on. How does this effect life here on earth? We forget how little we know and in our arrogance we think we know it all.
it's exceedingly unlikely they could make an accurate weather prediction for dates 10, 50 or 100 years from now.
Your link comes from Senator Inhofe, who is well known for misleading rhetoric. You also seemed to have missed the fact that he's now in the minority. His ad hominem attach on Cullen is despicable. Please ask him when he is going to say anything related to reality when you see him on Friday.
--
Oh, what's the point?
One of the great obstacles in this debate is the mix of definitions and concepts. Global warming/cooling and climate change are natural processes. We aren't going to stop those (at least at our current technology level). Man-made or induced warming or change we can. But, often, when speaking both sides use "change" and "warming" to reference anthropogenic phenomenon. I can dispute the impact of man while still recognizing the impact of change or warming. All too often, greens appear quick to identify those who are skeptical of man's net impact as denying that change is taking place. Simple fact is that earth's climate varies quite remarkably in both the short term and long term. What has to be shown, with confidence, is that man is causing a deviation from the natural rhythm and cycle of climate variation. Skepticism of anthropogenic climate warming and denying climate change are very different things. Frankly, it appalls me that everyone assumes that scientists are unmotivated agents. They are just as susceptible to greed, avarice, deception, groupthink, and "doin's a' transpirin'" as anyone.
Activist: The united states sucks!
Gov:
Activist: No, really this time!
Gov:
Activist: No, we really mean it, we have numbers and stuff!
Gov:
I'm not disputing the science, I'm suggesting that "global climatologists" (whatever that means) have a hard sale coming after 50 years worth of eco-loonies spouting the most outrageous claims, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb. It gets increasingly hard to sell when the governments of the world all point the finger at the US and refuse to commit themselves.
Less "we hate the US", and more "we are making these changes ourselves, if you will join us." would impress me a whole lot more.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
All Overlord posts are to be moderated Funny!
Good thing they're making climate predictions and not weather predictions, then.
Yes, we have.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's because they believe (and are probably right) that when this all gets acknowledged as an indisputable fact by the public they will start electing left-wing environmentalists to start banning things left and right, even if those things' impact on this issue is of the most minute scale.
thank you sir, a very true post.
there are a lot of people who are just not willing to accept that concervatism or capitalism might be wrong (in terms of our children and grandchildrens lives ie sustainabilty) now i would classify my self as capitalist and i'm very much part of that system but i dont make any assumptions about it being the optimum way to organise society.
i have also yet to see any evidence that tackling these problems will undermine capitalism in any way.
If the US, who produce TWICE the ammount of CO2 pollution for 1/6 the population aren't going to do anything, why should we?
It's a mexican standoff.
What a bunh of pussies you are, feared of letting someone else make more money than you...
I put up my original provacative statement, because of the obvious issues involved in climate change, which are unresolved because of a lack of longer term data. In addition, it looks like some of the extra solar radiation in the last 50 years comes from higher sunspot activity compared to the previous 500 years.
... well...a dirty little secret, that Asia is the current leader in creation of this, as I have read reports.
1. You point out above higher CO2 levels in prehistory times when hominids existed 440,000 years ago, and that poses a problem for people and some scientists and certainly politicians obsessively focused on CO2 (what about other gases like dihydrogen oxide & methane).
2. Dust-soot may present a far larger "problem" as it obviously affects sunlight reaching the earth...yet no one seems to be talking about that much, as it is
3. Volcanoes are the largest Dust-soot-gas belchers of all in the earth, and about one eruption every 10 years, but many dozens of active volcanoes spewing things but not classified as errupting (Indonesia has 100 active volcanoes EVERY YEAR). How does this affect the Earth and how does that COMPARE to Humans? This is not trivial.
There's a big difference between not being able to predict chaotic behavior and noticing general trends. For a classic example, look at the Lorenz attractor, the classic example of a chaotic system. Given the initial conditions imprecisely, you will not be able to guess the eventually trajectory of the particle, since the system's chaotic. However, what you do know is that it will always stay in the butterfly shape. For another example, consider a box full of ideal gas at equilibrium. Given the initial conditions, it is impossible to predict the precise position and momenta of all the gas molecules at some time in the future, since quantum effects will have made the system chaotic. In the short term, you can guess imprecisely, but in the long term, you'll be dead wrong. This doesn't mean that there are no useful properties that can be gleaned from the system: there are plenty of macroscopic state variables which are easily measured. Pressure, volume, temperature, and entropy are all quantities that can be determined and predicted.
But I digress. The main point is that climate science is completely different than weather forecasting. Climate science is more about predicting the long term macroscopic properties of the system, while weather forecasting is about predicting the microscopic short term behavior. I can't say with certainty that it will snow tomorrow, but I am damn well confident that it will be warmer on a date six months from now.
Good. History is repeating itself. Every generation or so science "goes off the rails" and develops crazy "the sky if falling ideas." Eugenics and a "population explosion" with global famines were all trumpted by prominent scientists in prestigious journals just like global warming is today. It's about as credible.
Since the scientist who still have sense tend to hunker down and mutter cautious little statements about "not going to fast," there is a brief period in which politics has to get involved, telling the scientist to stop their silly chatter. Interestingly, for eugenics and the population explosion it was mostly religious people, particularly Catholics, who pressured the politicians to keep the scientific community from getting what it wanted--the ability to sterilize anyone from groups they didn't like. (There's no bigot like a scientific one.) I document all that in infinite detail in my The Pivot of Civlization in Historical Perspective. Read it if you want to discover just how racist the Ivy League colleges can be and why.
Sometimes, of course, the hysteria moves so fast, that efforts to block what scientists are doing comes too late. The furor over a population explosion was an obvious hoax. After the birth control pill hit the market in 1960s, US birthrates began to plumet AMONG WHITES. They did not drop nearly so fast among the black underclass, hence the real source of alarm for both population scientists (who're Darwinian to the core--many in the 1960s were rebranded eugenists) and liberals, who don't like blacks as much as they pretend. I once had a liberal English professor and supporter of Planned Parenthood point at a young black man nearby and whisper, "That's why we need legalized abortion." Exactly.
There are all sorts of similarly nasty agendas behind the global warming hysteria. Europe wants to stomp on a US economy that's far more robust than their own, hence their zeal for Kelo. And those who used to trumpet socialism now conceal it behind environmentalism. In Europe, they're called watermelons--green on the outside, red inside. It's the same old game of regiment the masses and keep them serfs.
And there are the pitiful folks in white coats who're part of all this. All their lives they've labored in obscurity, begging for tiny little federal grants. Hyping global warming gets them on CNN and gives them the keys to lots of grants. If you think scientists have too much integrity to do that sort of thing, you've not seen them chasing after research grants.
A lot of harm results if these people aren't blocked until the hysteria fades. Eugenics resulted in tens of thousands of poor people being sterilized, but it never achieved it's real goal, which Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger hinted in her Pivot of Civilization was forcibly sterilizing 10% of the US population (particularly recent immigrants). And the population explosion hysteria did get two of its goals, federally funded "family planning" (particularly for blacks and Hispanics) and legalized abortion (particularly for you know who). But it didn't get its ultimate goal, forcing religious, middle-class families to not have more than two kids, under penality of horrible taxation. That's why they are so paranoid about the "religious right."
Remember, many these scientists are way out on a limb. They're making predictions that'll be laughable in a couple of decades. Apparently, it's creating a split in the climatic sciences. Younger scientists know the data isn't there to back up the claims being made and are fearful they'll spend their lives in a discredited profession. (Who today claims to be in population studies? In 1970, it was the height of cool. Ditto eugenics, which in 1912 the NY Times called a "wonderful new science.") The older scientists, who'll soon retire with their pensions fattened by all those research grants, don't care. The younger ones do.
So keep in mind what this is. It's an attempt to keep this hysteria from becoming policy long enough for the facts to make it clea
Thanks, but I'd rather you didn't.-- Jim Gaffigan.
I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that no-one in government is gonna do anything about this until high tides start rolling in over coastal capital cities and hundreds of millions of people are displaced.
Where did you read that? Oh yeah, the linked article from the Christian science monitor... The cult of global warmers should fit right in there... Still preaching fire and brimstone, eh? ;-)
"greenhouse gas emissions from human activity were largely to blame"...
Well; if you want to stop this from happening, stop "tootin'" in your office chairs after those huge hoagies, and chilli-dogs for lunch!!
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Hey Coward: nobody said this was linear. Maybe this is why you think that this isn't a problem. If it's a slow incline upwards, why can't we just make it a slow decline? Many of global warming problems come from the fact that it's a positive feedback loop.
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
Hallo everybody!
...
How many of thos scientists are radiologists (why would they know about it) or paleantologists or geologists,
Hmm?
I thought there was "uniform concensus" among scientists that humans were responslble for climate change. Now it is only 90% certain.
It sounds like things were being distorted before with some reports claiming only 66% certainity but many folks claiming that it was certain. Sounds less certain than some would like.
Think back to 1850 or so. This is how the few remaining are going to live should we decide to save Mother Earth for the remaining species other than humans. With firm controls on technology and industrialization to prevent another resurgence.
You spoke the truth, and the truth must be discredited for the goals of the Holy Church of Environmentalism to succeed.
What?
AFAIK, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the weather was considerably warmer. There must have been lots of vegetation, since those things had quite an appetite.
So, we get longer growing seasons, warmer weather, plenty of veggies, and this time, no dinos in the cafeteria lines. Humans shouldn't have any problem reproducing - people manage to do that in equatorial Africa, right now.
No doubt, scientists will eventually resurrect a dino from dna; they'll probably taste like chicken, and eventually degrade into more crude oil.
What's so bad about that?
In addition, I understand New York and LA would be underwater.
That's just a bonus.
No, we haven't.
Take a look at this graph. There are two set of curves, one comparing the Mann hockey stick to curves showing sunspot activity. The other compares the Moberg 2005 curve to the same sunspot curves.
Here's what I find interesting:
- The Moberg curve (blue curve) follows the Antarctic curve (red) pretty closely, but it tracks almost exactly the same shape as the Greenland curve (green) when it sweeps up in a steep curve in the 20th century.
- The hockey stick curve (orange curve) doesn't do as good a job of tracking with the sunspot curves, in fact it looks like it averaged out the highs and lows (read "MWP" and "LIA") to come up with a relatively smooth shape, but even so, it's still a fair match to the sunspots, especially when it sweeps upward in the 20th Cent.
This can't be coincidental, can it? The obvious conclusion is that the global temps are heavily influenced by sunspot activity. If mankind's pouring of CO2 into the atmosphere was a major influence, the curves wouldn't track together so closely (i.e., the steep upswing would be much greater for the Moberg and Mann temp curves than the sunspots), but that's not the case.
FYI: The sunspot reconstructions I took from Usoskin's millennium-scale sunspot number reconstruction published in the November 2003 issue of Physical Review Letters. There's more current research that was just released, but I can't find the link I had to the PDF. The black GRL curve is from that more recent paper and you can see that it matches the others pretty well.
If the relationships I've drawn are correct, doesn't this strongly imply that the Sun is causing this warming trend?
If you don't think the sunspot curves match closely, it may help to see how poorly the various global temp curves match with each other. Take a look at this Wikipedia graphic combining the global temperature reconstructions from the major players. Looks pretty random to me. The only thing that's given them any credibility is that they all swoop up in the 20th century like they're heading for the moon. And so do the Greenland and GRL sunspot number curves.
Based on that, take another look at the SN curves and then at this one where the curves are overlaid on the Wikipedia graphic.
I'd say the SN curves track better with the global temp reconstructions than many of the wilder global temp curves do. Yet all those curves have been cited by "warmists" as being equally valid (because of that lovely swoop!).
Yup, it's the Sun causing the warming!
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Point of Contact: NASA Office of Inspector General, 1-800-424-9183
A Message From the Office of Inspector General
Pursuant to a request from 14 United States senators, the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) is conducting investigative and audit activities regarding alleged "repeated instances of scientists ... having publication
of their research blocked, solely upon their views and conclusions regarding
the reality and impacts of global warming."
Through this notice the OIG is seeking your help in conducting a thorough review into this issue.
NASA policy on the dissemination of scientific and technical information derives from The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, as amended, and is primarily implemented by NASA Policy Directive 2200.1 and NASA Procedural Requirements 2200.2B. The policy directive states, in pertinent part, the following:
NASA shall provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of the STI [Scientific and Technical Information] resulting from NASA's research effort, while precluding the inappropriate dissemination of sensitive information. NASA shall disseminate STI in a manner consistent with U.S. laws and regulations, Federal information policy, intellectual property rights, technology transfer protection requirements, and budgetary and technological limitations.
Accordingly, the OIG asks that if you have personal knowledge of NASA research (pertaining to climate change) having been wrongfully, unlawfully, or without good cause changed, suppressed, or censored, that you contact the OIG either:
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While the OIG will accept information at any time on this or any other matter, we request a response to this notice, if any, no later than February 16, 2007.
Thank you for your consideration and cooperation.
Now I'll finally have evidence when I tell my wife to turn down the damn furnace and put on a sweatshirt ... ;)
Bark less. Wag more.
The way science is supposed to work, you go through the cycle of hypothesis, experimentation, analysis, and interpretation, and then publish your findings for peer review. You then welcome any criticism of your findings, and either defend them, or modify your experiments and analysis accordingly.
In climate science, however, this seems to have changed to where once you've published your findings, the only remaining test is for political correctness. If your findings agree with the politically correct stance, then anyone who dares to offer criticism will then be silenced and/or discredited. Often using epithets and comparisons with soldiers of an old, socialist regime. There is no longer any need for your work to actually stand on its own merits.
Just look at the uphill battle that many, many "right-wing whackos" had to fight in order to get rid of that "hockey stick" garbage that had been accepted as fact merely because it was what Al Gore wanted to see. There are STILL people actually defending it, despite the historical record which totally belies it.
When junk science is shown be junk by simple facts, and a scientific community refuses to concede it, you know the process is broken.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
It's inconvenient.
Its really that simple.
For instance; I work in the electric power industry. The largest single contributor to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is Coal fired steam plants. If all the coal fired steam plants are shut down, then I am, most likely, out of a job.
The most logical thing, economically, for me to do is to deny the problem. But I do not.
Why? Very simple. When one technology proves untenable, it is time for another to take its place. There are always massive opportunities for those who embrace the future instead of clinging to the past.
But: when the human race is confronted with something they do not like, they will fight to grim death to maintain the status quo. There are countless examples throughout history. I see no need to rehash them.
Solar, Wind, Geothermal, etc. are mostly fringe power technologies. Should they be ignored and relegated to lunatic status. No; all technologies are worth exploring and being evaluated on their merits or faults.
Nuclear energy is on the verge of a massive resurgence in the US. Is it perfect? Not hardly. However, it is the only technology that can be brought on line, in a timely manner, that will provide the necessary amounts of electricity.
So...America....here are your choices
1. Nuclear plants
2. Coal Fired plants
3. Go without electricity
BTW, for you "conservative republicans" out there; I'm a democrat, who acknowledges the realities of global warming. But here I am giving support for nuclear power. I don't do that to "reach across the divide. I do it because it is the most logical, immediate, solution to a problem we all face. Even if some of us don't want to admit that we have a problem.
Or that our assumptions about how solar energy affects the earth are wrong.
If you want to assume that, then you can't conclude anything about the Sun's influence on the climate, either way. If someone wants to propose a new physical mechanism by which the Sun produces much more warming than is currently believed, and support that mechanism with evidence, they can do so. But until then, it's not a plausible hypothesis.
Well folks, its pretty logical to me that fossil fuels are the predominant source of greenhouse gas emissions from human sources. Climate change will happen or be exacerbated by said emissions. The good news on that front is that fossil fuels are running out so certainly there is going to be limits to the impact. Now, looking back from a 100 years hence, if the current crude oil production numbers hold, the Peak for Oil will have passed December 2005, which happens to be on Dubya's watch. The cynic in me will not be surpised to hear that some revisionist historian will cast Dubya as the Peak Oil/Climate Change president and the War on Terror as the War on Climate Change. So Dubya, look forward to the future that will celebrate your leadership in stopping the growth in oil production which lead us down the path to a greener, healthier planet.
History is always written by the winners, right?
The dirty truth that nobody want's to admit :-)
Not just prices for tortilla but most other grains (substitution) and animal products (feed) will likely go up http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2007/Update63. htm. But this has more to do with politics as usual and
farm subsidies that environmentalism. May environmentalist are skeptical of bio-fuels. http://gp.org/committees/ecoaction/eco_2006_04_25. shtml
Setting up a situation where food and fuel compete is a Republocrat endeavor.
s -selling-solar.html
--
Don't eat your seed corn: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'd like for everyone who still supports GWB for whatever reason to just consider the following few points and try to compose literate and thoughtful responses to justify his track record on any of these issues.
1. Political Appointments - The role of the president is to look out for the best interests of the 'People'. That means trying to represent the many varied interests of ALL the people. Now, Corporations are part of that group, as are members of Greenpeace and all us regular Joes who fall in the middle. The Bush administration has consistently biased most appointments in favor of corporate interests over all other interests. As detailed in the originally referenced article, "Cooney () was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute before becoming chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality". How can he be expected to provide impartial leadership? This is just one of hundreds of obviously poor choices detailed here. I'm not saying that a former Greenpeace executive would be a better choice for any of these positions. The presidents job is to appoint knowledgeable people who have worked in the field and who are capable of weighing the needs and interests of all sides of an issue to provide decisions that balance those interests. Bush has always failed to do this
2. Personal Freedoms and Liberties - The documentation of the Bush administrations poor record on this topic is pretty extensive. Bush continually uses 9/11 as an excuse to chip away at the basic rights our country was founded on. Illegally tapping domestic phone calls, gathering huge databases of personal financial and travel information, and that small matter of imprisoning and torturing people for indefinite periods without regard for the basic civil liberties spelled out and defended by the constitution. All in the name of preventing another attack that may or may not be preventable. Millions of people die every year for millions of reasons. Tossing away the foundations of our country for a 2% improvement in the chances that you might learn something that could lead to a possible disruption of a plot that may or may not have been successful is not in the best interests of our nation and has been specifically warned against by just about every one of the founding fathers and other great American leaders since then, as seen here !
3. Iraq War - The decision to invade and occupy Iraq and the continued resistance to every sane voice begging for a change in policy will go down in history as the worst single piece of leadership in the history of our nation! Even if you ignore the fact that the American people were deliberately lied to in order to foster support for Saddam's removal, the disastrous planning, execution, and failure to learn from a single mistake or appropriately adjust policies or tactics based on past failures is mind-numbing.
4. Corporate Welfare - One of the few things GWB has done "For" the people is some tax cuts for middle America. Of course, this was done with gimmicks (mid year refund checks etc.) to mask the fact that the real tax breaks were going to huge corporations that were in no dire consequences before GWB came along. The Bush administration has taken every opportunity to push money back to corporate America in one form or another at the expense of many many programs to assist poor and
Keep passing the open windows...
(S)he made a very good point. Quit trolling and make some real post.
It should be noted in the interest of full disclosure (since the media doesn't report these things when it's an issue they're on board with) that the Union for Concerned Scientists is known as a left-leaning group and is funded by various liberal organizations.
Wikipedia
It got even warmer than that in places:
Abstract from "Noble Gas Thermometry and Hydrologic Ages: Evidence for Late Holocene Warming in Southwest Texas"
And other recent research is finding that sunspots were largely responsible for the Holocene warming:
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
RealClimate has an in-depth discussion of the Usoskin et al. paper (as well as a link to the original PDF), if you're interested. The comments are often as good as the original article on RealClimate. Here's a relevant excerpt from the original article:
Here are a few interesting points that might or might not be discussed at that site: (a) We've currently just passed through a solar minimum (in the 11-year cycle), yet we are still setting record highs. (b) Around 1957 maximum we were in a local minimum of temperatures. This is best explained by the presence of particulates in the atmosphere due to pollution problems.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Wikipedia. See in particular, Foukal et al. (2006) and Stott et al. (2003).
Hmm. At least that's one possible explanation of the comparison he was making between my "global warming deniers" phrase and the holocaust. I can't think of what else he might possibly have been referring to. I guess he was comparing it to the phrase "holocaust denier". I wonder if he knows that the word deny actually has a long history that predates Nazi Germany by hundreds of years, and that most of us are capable of using the word without thinking of Nazis or the holocaust. He probably does and was just trying to troll me (alas, successfully).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Liberalism (as practiced in the United States) does no such thing. It generally calls for the creation of some very large government agency to Do Something, and much of its existence is predicated to finding a Something with which to terrorize the populace. The Great Depression worked well toward that end, but there have been others. (Bush II is really a liberal, but nobody wants to tell him yet.)
In this case, the stick is global warming (whether you believe it's anthropogenic or not, it is happening), and the Something would range from making automobiles illegal to ultimately banning industrial civilization, or making it practically impossible. The Europeans, whom Americans are supposed to emulate, are grinding their teeth over their noncompliance with Kyoto even now, and the Chinese... well, good luck telling them they'll just have to stay poor, thank you.
The lip service paid to economics is the real human cost of the Green miscalculation.
Dog is my co-pilot.
While scientists are being muzzled, you don't have to be. Check out http://stepitup2007.org/.
That's a peak in the black line near 1950, not a dip. The dip comes later. Each of those tick marks is 50 years. It helps if you make your browser smaller so that you can scroll left and right to line it up exactly on the edge of your browser.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'm not turning ""sunspot number" curves into "temperature anomaly" curves", I'm comparing anomalous behavior in sunspots over a period of time with global temps. When you see the following:
- Temps are higher than they've been since the Medieval Warming period, and before that the Holocene period.
- Sunspot activity is higher than at any time since the Holocene period
- Sunspot reconstruction curves track pretty well with global temps (at least as well as global temps track with each other) and the curves shoot up in the same proportion as the global temp curves do.
It's proper to infer that sunspots are responsible for the warming we're experiencing.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
The inconvenient truth that Gore fails to mention is that about 10,000 years ago, the Earth was so warm that citrus fruits were growing in what is now northern Germany.
What the hell? The last ice age was just ending 10 000 years ago. Northern Germany wasn't covered by glacier then but it had just receded north. Did someone in the senate claim there were citrus fruits back then?
To sum up:
- "...by this definition we are still in an ice age." - If we are still in an Ice Age, technically speaking, then how much warmer was the Earth in the distant past than it is now? How much warmer will the Earth get even if we magically stop all Human caused climate change? What would happen if we did magically stop?
- "More colloquially,
... ice age is used to refer to colder periods with extensive ice sheets over the North American and Eurasian continents: in this sense, the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago." - So the Earth started to get warmer and entered into an interglacial period about 10K years ago. What caused that?
- "There have been four major ice ages in the further past." - It appears that the Earth cools down and warms up over very long periods of time for various reasons. (that seem to be largely guess work at this point) If there are long term cycles and short term cycles constantly going on, for which we are just beginning to understand. I agree that Humans can do things to encourage warming or cooling, but looking at the big picture in the long run it seems a mere drop in the bucket. Are we trying to combat Global Warming because we like our current temperatures and in reality trying to fight the system? Can we win that fight? Can Humanity prevent the Earth from warming up too much or cooling too much?
- "The Earth is in an interglacial period now, the last retreat ending about 10,000 years ago." - I mentioned this above.
- "There is no evidence that anthropogenic forcing from increased "greenhouse gases" outweighs orbital forcing, and the prediction for the next few hundred years is for temperature rises: see global warming regardless of man's activities." - This is where things get complicated. Yes, Humans are affecting their environment, but even if we did not the Earth would still be getting warmer. That is until it started to get cooler again and the Earth entered into a new period of glaciation.
Imagine large glaciers covering much of North America, Europe, and Asia. Is that a good thing? Imagine large deserts like the Sahara covering much of North America, Europe, and Asia. Is that a good thing? Again, what exactly are we trying to accomplish? Is seems that a lot of people want to keep things just the way they are, at this exact moment in time, for ever and ever. So lets go with that.Now imagine a world-wide governmental body with the directive to pass laws, implement corrective actions, and enforce policies all to control and preserve the global climate. What an undertaking to try and be the thermostat of the Earth! If you think political bickering about climate change is bad now...imagine it with elections and appointments to that organization. [The deligation from the Alliance of Artic Nations respectfully request the Global Thermostat be set to 72 F. Objection! The deligation from the Eqitorial Preservation Association clearly need the thermostat to stay at 68 F, where it belongs! (heh, reminds me of work!)] So, what must that organization do? Well, until it learns how to control: the energy output of the Sun, Drifting of the tectonic plates, volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts, and many more things the best it can do is react to each of these things by pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when the Earth needs warming and removing them when it needs cooling. Sounds a lot like Terra forming. In this case it would be Terra controlling. Do we really know how to do that? I highly doubt it.
In the end, the temperature will rise and fall and Humanity is just along for the ride, even though we may be able to take out some of the small bumps along the way.
we'd still be debating whether or not to go into Afghanistan.
The problem with most of these scientists is they haven't figured out how to lie to the American public as effectively as the politicians. When politicians figure out a hundred different ways to take away our essential liberties with patriotic sounding names, emploring us to think about the children and defend our families from The Terrorists (TM), that's A-OK -- and please don't think I'm dividing this down party lines, there's politicians from all parties that are happy to cement their power base. When the scientific community suggests that we really ought to do something about the shit we're pumping into the atmosphere, suddenly everyone's flashing their Junior Climatologist merit badge and telling them why it ain't so.
News flash: real scientists don't deal in absolutes. They provide estimated probabilities and sensible suggestions. Becoming more eco-friendly is not going to turn us into a pinko communo-socialist hippy state any more than, say, allowing the president to expand the scope of government is going to turn us into a dictatorship. We're ostensibly on the same team here.
As always, the Democracy Now site has a transcript of this up, as well as audio files if you'd like to listen to it: Government Scientists Accuse Bush Administration of Interfering, Misleading on Climate Change
1) Global Warming should be renamed to "How to perpetuate your funding stream with nothing
down"
2) Global Warming, the new pet crisis of the "Cult of Alarmism" since "Global Cooling"
cooled out was picked up by the UN Loving - US Hating internationalist agenda to now be
used as a tool of a Global Income Redistribution Program to benefit countries who for
either political or cultural reasons, or both, still have not been able to fashion a
structure beyond a 1 story mud hut no less than to create fair and equitable societies of
which their people feel inspired to create rather than "self-destruct" with the aide of
C4 in addition let alone even think about "science".
They struggle with the simple, simply because they are just that and may never make it
beyond this.
3) Global Warming is now the political tool of the american leftist and has now become the
the "Cause Celebe" for all who "care about the future" as opposed to those who dont and
wish it would all end tomorrow.
4) Global Warming Science is about as conclusive and provable as current theory on Black
Holes, a bunch of speculation put forth by overdegreed academic blowhards, waxing
scio-litical (I just invented that word) and getting paid while wondering how long can
this fucking gravy train ride on brother!
The future is bleak and its only because the Wizard of Oz is retiring and Al Gore has accepted the position as the "Man Behind the Curtain" and has now been rewarded with that empty and worthless Nobel Peace Prize.
Troll this beatch!
Look, you have to explain more clearly because it's not easy to understand your point.
For argument's sake, let's say sunspots are twice as numerous as they've been in a millennium. The stock market's at an all time high too, does that mean it's because of sunspots? Hardly likely, because there's no connection we're aware of between stock prices and sunspots.
Ah, but global temps are also shooting up at a very fast rate, in fact the rate of increase strongly resembles the rate of increase in sunspots. Coincidence? Possibly. But as the Sun does control our climate, it's much more likely that the activity causing increased sunspots is also causing increased temps on Earth.
Especially when past history shows two other warm periods that also happened at periods of unusual solar activity.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Decide for yourself if the government has been straight with us, look at this 2001 testimony from the director of the National Climatic Data Center:
"Some greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere because of human activities and increasingly trapping more heat."
link
Here's George Bush, circa 2001, on the topic:
"There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat, and thus warm the earth because they prevent a significant proportion of infrared radiation from escaping into space. Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity."
link
Seems like the cat's out of the bag on this one.
The Union of Concerned Scientists politicizes science, and they lean pretty hard to the left. I take what they have to say with a big grain of NaCl.
I don't see what is so hard for you to understand here. For argument's sake, let's say sunspots are twice as numerous as they've been in a millennium. The stock market's at an all time high too, does that mean it's because of sunspots? Hardly likely, because there's no connection we're aware of between stock prices and sunspots. That's exactly my point. There is no connection between the Sun and warming that explains the amount of warming we measure on the basis of the amount of solar activity we measure. Ah, but global temps are also shooting up at a very fast rate, in fact the rate of increase strongly resembles the rate of increase in sunspots. Coincidence? Possibly. It resembles the rate of CO2 emissions even more so, and just as important: if you calculate how much warming is produced by increased CO2 concentrations, you get the right answer, and if you calculate how much warming is produced by increased solar output, you get the wrong answer. (Or rather, both give warming, but the first gives significantly more warming than the second, and the second gives significantly less warming than is observed.)
You cannot draw a causal link from solar variations to global warming unless you can proposed a physical mechanism by which solar variations can produce global warming. The only known mechanisms do not produce enough warming to be responsible for the majority of the observed warming.
I suggest you read the two papers I referenced.
Yeah maybe the Earth will correct itself nextime by getting rid of us.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
All the Elk and Moose in Alaska are Dead. Oh yes this was predicted by the same moonbats that are perfectly right on Global Warming. We built that pipeline and now just a few years later all life in Alaska is dead and the Alaskan environment is completely destroyed. Poverty has been eliminated by the welfare program. Womens lib has liberated the inner city women from all problems. I know this has all come true because the moonbats were right. All you have to do is ask anyone who was alive in the 70's what was predicted.
In telling us to listen to the scientists you ask us to read the IPCC's 2001 summary report. But the summary report was written by politicians and bureaucrats, not by the scientists you are telling us to listen to.
Most of the summaries prepared from the scientific data gets translated into policy recommendations and political action by bureaucrats and politicians. And that's what the summary report is: a list of political recommendations and the rational for them. It's not a science paper.
Frankly on the one hand that's the way it should be: scientists and science is not answerable to the people--all they can do is point out that there is a problem that needs to be solved and the potential consequences if it isn't solved. (Though it is always worth being suspictious if the science and the potential consequences are being impartially presented.) On the other hand, one should always worry about politicians and bureaucrats--especially those who wish to expand their sphere of influence and power (which is most of 'em).
Which is why on the other hand we should always worry when politicians and bureaucrats get into the mix and especially when they attempt to use the shield of science to force one set of policy recommendations down our throats--otherwise, next you'll have bureaucrats taking away your home for their own gain and telling you "but our hands are tied: the scientists told us to."
Great write-up of the current state of the scientific debate that is occuring outside of the realm of climatologists. If I hadn't blown my chance to mod on entering a flame war, I'd mod you up. :)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Okay, this is not an argument. It is opinion. You cite no sources. Global warming does take into account natural proceses. It does not assume that the Earth is static. It does not massivly inflate numbers of human polution. The scientists are using a number of models that have made a large number of accurate predictions.
Anyone can claim anything they like, but you can't base an argument on things you made up. I could as easily say that d3ac0n is an alien robot sent here to help make the Earth warmer for his Venusian overlords. Can you logically refute that? No, but you don't have to: I'm the one making the ridiculous claims, I'm the one who has to back them up if I want people to accept my premise.
Again, you are stating your opinion. There is no logic here to refute. Your premises are false. The models predict exactly what is hapenning. If the models you refer to are not predicting that, then they need to be revised, don't you think? There would be no banding of weather. There is no banding of weather on Venus. Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
You are making things up. How can anyone logically refute a fantasy?
When you make statements like this, you need to back them up, or why would anyone believe you? Have you run the numbers? What model are you basing your predicitons on? How many tons of CO2 are we pumping into the atmosphere each year? Do you even know something as basic as that?
You aren't making an argument, you are making things up!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I was already familiar with the Wikipedia cite, what other papers did you refer to?
You say the CO2 emissions correlate with global temp curves, did they cause the Medieval Warming Period or Holocene?
No.
Other than solar activity, the only explanation for the extraordinary Holocene warming is a recent (1999) theory that the Earth's tilt may have changed for a couple thousand years. That theory is based on a model, there's no evidence as of yet. But it could be that the change in tilt and unusual sunspot activity caused the warming.
So maybe it's manmade CO2 and sunspots together causing the current warm spell?? Possibly, except that the Earth's history shows the global climate has little sensitivity to CO2 levels. For example, over the last 600 million years:
- CO2 levels have dropped from 7000 ppm to approx 400 ppm
- Average global temps have remained steadily within a 72F (22C) to 54F (12C) range while CO2 levels have plunged to current levels These fact alone show that the Earth's climate is not as sensitive to changes in CO2 levels as the models indicate
Finally, there have only been three periods during which temps have been as low as they are today, and the other two took place during mass extinctions (Ordovician and Permian). Also, the Permian extinction period is the only other time when CO2 levels have been as low. Just another coincidence? Or proof that we're in an unstable period of cooling and the Earth's climate is eventually going to get warmer no matter what we do.
So there you have it: wide swings in CO2 levels have occurred at the same time temps have remained relatively stable; certainly there haven't been runaway greenhouse effects that the current models would lead us to expect. In short, I question your science.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Gmmf! Mmm Hrwrgfmffmmmmmf! Hrmwrmng!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
2. Oil IS running out. All nonrenewable resources will ultimately be depleted, basically by definition. The estimates of how much we have were wrong back then, but that's a stupid, stupid reason to discount the idea of oil EVER running out. I mean, that's some circus-grade stupidity.
3. The mean estimates for sea level rise by 2100 are about 4.8 metres. That's more than enough to submerge many parts of Manhattan, and to flood the majority of the city during even a small hurricane. Manhattan is a major centre of US economic activity, and contains a great deal of American infrastructure. A sizable portion of the US population lives there. The hilarious thing is that you probably still get all misty-eyed about 9/11, despite the knowledge that even a modest increase in sea level will have far, far worse effects on exactly the same city. The stupidity is amazing.
4. Only a moron is deterred by exaggeration. Every issue, without exception, has people making exaggerations. If those exaggerations make it impossible for you to take a subject seriously, you'll never believe anything and have difficulty navigating your way through your daily life. But of course, that's not what this is about -- you're perfectly fine with exaggerations. You just don't want to feel bad about being a part of the problem, and so you choose to believe things that will comfort you, rather than using reason.
It's sad that you've let the fear-mongering get to you. I suppose you don't take Republicans seriously, because of their terrorist fear-mongering? And I'm sure you wont mind if, when getting surgery, the surgeon doesn't bother to wash his hands... after all, who would ever take bacteria seriously after all this fear-mongering about drug-resistant TB and Staph infections? Covering your mouth when you sneeze? No way -- then the SARS-people win.
Welcome to the real world. Global climate change is happening. It's VERY real. And the consequences can be very, very serious. Sticking your head in the sand and thinking happy thoughts wont help.
P. Foukal, C. Fröhlich, H. Spruit, and T. M. L. Wigley, "Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate", Nature 443, 161 (2006) (link)
P. A. Stott, G. S. Jones, and J. F. B. Mitchell, "Do models underestimate the solar contribution to recent climate change?", Journal of Climate 16, 4079 (2003) (link) You say the CO2 emissions correlate with global temp curves, did they cause the Medieval Warming Period or Holocene?
No. I have not claimed that CO2 emissions are the only factor that influences global temperature, nor have I claimed that the Sun does not affect global temperature. What I claimed is that solar variations cannot account for the majority of the recent (last 50+ years) warming. Other than solar activity, the only explanation for the extraordinary Holocene warming is a recent (1999) theory that the Earth's tilt may have changed for a couple thousand years. That theory is based on a model, there's no evidence as of yet. As soon as you try to translate "sunspot number" into "warming", that too is based on a model, and there's even less evidence of that than there is for orbital forcings, although there is some evidence that some localized coolings during the Holocene were due to reductions in insolation. Possibly, except that the Earth's history shows the global climate has little sensitivity to CO2 levels. It is impossible to predict absolute global temperatures from absolute CO2 levels alone; you have to know what all the other forcings are doing; paleo data that far back doesn't tell you anything about the climate sensitivity. You can do better predicting changes in temperature from changes in CO2 levels, but even that is not very useful given the sparsity of the data on million-year timescales. Changes in CO2 levels and changes in temperatures do correlate well in the finer-grained data over the last few hundred thousand years (e.g. the Vostok ice cores). And CO2 is in fact implicated even in far-past climate changes, such as the Ordovician cool period you mention (see here). Finally, there have only been three periods during which temps have been as low as they are today, and the other two took place during mass extinctions (Ordovician and Permian). Your point? Also, the Permian extinction period is the only other time when CO2 levels have been as low. Again, your point? Are you trying to draw some relationship between CO2 levels and mass extinctions? If so, what?
Just another coincidence? Or proof that we're in an unstable period of cooling and the Earth's climate is eventually going to get warmer no matter what we do. The Earth's climate may get warmer "no matter what we do" on million year time scales, but the majority of the warming that has been happening recently is due mostly to us, and currently far outweighs much more gradual climate trends (which have been towards cooling, not warming, over the last 5000-8000 years).
Attributing global warming to "natural cycles" both disagrees with the nature of those cycles and ignores the existence of the greenhouse effect. certainly there haven't been runaway greenhouse effects that the current models would lead us to expect What "runaway greenhouse effects" do you believe current models lead us to expect?
I certainly can't tell you with any great certainty whether it is going to be warmer next week than it is today. But I can damn well tell you with great confidence whether it is going to be warmer 6 months from now than it is today!
I did RTFA and the key phrase here is "compiled by two watchdog groups". "Watchdog group" is just another term for "special interest group"; i.e. another group with an agenda, much like any other political, religious, business interest or any other group.
Why is no one reporting on the fact that climate scientists are being equally pressured by biased peers and "watchdog groups" like the UCS to word reports of their findings so that they blame man for the cause of global warming? Even reporting that there is evidence indicating that man MAY NOT BE the cause is sufficient to be publicly crucified and decried as a hack, causing scientists who care about their credibility, or the perception thereof, to refrain from publishing a contrarian view. Isn't this what science is all about? How many times in the past 50 years has the view on the cause of dinosaur extinction changed as new evidence has been discovered? Or the speed of light? Or any number of theories as to the nature of our universe?
Some science..."acquiesce to what we want you to say or you won't have a future in this business." What a load!
What about the fact that this is a political move on the part of the Democrats to usurp more power by discrediting the current administration? While I doubt many slashdotters have issue with this, aren't the Dems misrepresentation of the facts tantamount to Bush's so called misrepresentation of intel on Iraq that led to war? Does this not make them no different than the Republicans so willingly demonized on these boards?
I think the conclusion is obvious:
Human produced CO2 causes sun-spots!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Responsible scientists don't do the things you describe. Nutbag enviro-protestors do. Does the fact that there are nutbags attached to the cause negate the good science being done?
Do all gun owners run fortified compounds or militias? Do all Christians protest gays at military funerals? Do all anti-abortion activists murder doctors? Do all vegetarians dump red paint on people with fur coats? No. It behooves us all to avoid grouping people together based on something as simple as broadly-categorized beliefs.
Step back, and look at the science without any hype from the "concerned followers" on either side. The hype, as in nearly everything in life, is a distraction that detracts from reasoned debate on BOTH sides of the issue. You don't want your advice on the environment from a crystal-grabbing pyramid hippie any more than you want it from the owner of a hilltop-removal and strip-mining coal operation.
First of all, I deny that your statement is true in general. However, as I thought I made it painfully clear from my statement: "There are global warming skeptics (those who are truly undecided) and global warming deniers (those who are trying to spread FUD). There's a difference." I'm not denying that when I use the phrase "global warming denier" it is meant to distinguish them from being a global warming skeptic because they are trying to spread FUD. Trying to spread FUD is dishonest and should make one feel guilty. (Knowingly) rehashing the same old tired arguments that have been debunked repeatedly is dishonest.
Right. I'd never use the word deny in anything but the most extremely negative connotations. Never. Just wouldn't happen. Deny is such a loaded term. You never hear that word thrown around outside of references to the holocaust. In fact, the word was created by Nazis just so they could deny the holocaust.
That's what your sensitivity to "denial" sounds like. (Yes, that previous paragraph was sarcasm in case you missed that.) Also, it doesn't seem to bother you at all that the original comment I was responding to quoted that paragon of virtue Senator Inhofe in making allusions to the Nuremburg trials. What is it with you types and your love of comparing global warming "believers" and Nazi history? (The list of "you types" now seems to include JavaLord, you, and Inhofe.) I guess it's just a persecution complex.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
They read your posts. No other evidence is necessary.
... overstate your positions and refuse to recongnize when you're wrong.
Yoe see, despite the fact that on several occasions you've... overstated your positions and been called on it (I won't say you lied, I'll simply imply it) you STILL
After a while watching you pound your chest and berate people gets pretty boring, and you seem even more pathetic.
Then I realized that you're just pulling a Colbert. There's no way you don't know what's wrong with your statement. Either that or you're a troll. I prefer to think you're pulling a Colbert.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You're a troll with an agenda who'll say anything no matter how true it is, then justify it like a chld caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
4 &cid=17632546
Case in point
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21715
Lie then justify. You disgust me, especially because you're so fucking smug even after being outed as a liar.
Do everyone a favor and keep your idiot opinions to yourself. You're clearly too stupid to know this subject it out of your depth.
Every time I read that the 'global warming consensus' is based on science, I reiterate to myself that science has yet to discover many factors that affect climate, science doesn't know how many climate-affecting factors are unknown, science doesn't know how much any given known factor affects climate, science doesn't know what the climate would be without man, science doesn't know why historical climate records are what they are, science doesn't know many of the effects of warmth on climate, science hasn't shown that a colder earth is better for man, science doesn't know what the climate will be tomorrow, and science sure as hell doesn't know what the climate will be a hundred years from now.
Science does, on the other hand, know that most warming in the 20th century occurred in the 1st half of the century before the massive post-WWII emissions increases, science knows we're coming out of a cold period and therefore the planet should be warming, science does know that historically temperature increases are followed (not preceeded) by CO2 increases, science does know that CO2 is absolutely critical to increases in life throughout the planet (all life is carbon-based), and science does know that man is naturally a warm-weather animal.
Yes, I've heard such things as well. The Venus stuff is pure hogwash, to the best of my knowledge. The oceanic current conveyor stuff is an interesting theory that should be studied, but is still quite tentative. (The problem, as I understand it, comes from the fresh water in the ice caps diluting the salinity of the oceans. I can't say I understand how this plays in with the conveyor belts. I've read enough to know that it's not ludicrous, but not universally accepted, either.) And, of course, politicians are politicians, and John Kerry is one of the most political, IMNSHO.
As for actual solutions, I don't know what they are. Kyoto obviously has flaws. However, acknowledging that there is a problem is an important first step. (That doesn't mean others can't be working on steps 2, 3, etc.) What amazes me is people who go straight from saying that there is no problem to saying that it's too late to do anything about the problem. Unfortunately, part of that latter sentiment is fueled by the FUD from global warming "believers".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Thanks for pointing out the references, I'll look 'em up.
And I have not claimed that CO2 doesn't impact global temps, it's just that historically, the record shows that global temps do their own thing, regardless of what the CO2 levels are doing. Unless there was a cosmic changing of conditions that obtained 600 million years ago, we're still dealing with the same major players: Earth & Sun. When CO2 dropped from 7000 ppm to 400 ppm while average temps remained within a 10-degree C band, that's such an enormous change in CO2 that there should have been a parallel change in temps. Of course, since the IPCC is claiming a 30% increase in CO2 will cause a 2 to 4.5 degrees C jump in temps, when CO2 levels were at 7000 ppm, global temps must have been around (guessing) 500 degrees C, right? Obviously they were not. Even though we're dealing with paleo climate, we have enough data that we can be sure the Earth's temp wasn't hotter than a volcano.
I read the article you cited on the erosion of the Appalachian mountains sucking up all the CO2 and thereby causing the Ordovician ice age, I just don't agree with it. I prefer this theory:
It jives much better with what we know about atmospheric CO2: 38% is caused by respiration, 57% by the oceans. Freezing the water would have done away with ocean generated CO2 and freezing the planet in general would have killed off the organisms whose respiration provided the balance.
Temps drop, things freeze, CO2 levels drop. Not the other way around.
As for my bringing up the extinction periods, yeah it was off topic, I just find it fascinating that the conditions we live in, given the history of the planet, should be considered dire, yet we act as though that's the natural state of things. Anyway, I shouldn't have mentioned it.
You know, their models say that an increase in CO2 by 30% causes temps to increase by 4 degrees. So when they were 7000 ppm, temps should have been some outrageously high reading, but they weren't. That runaway effect that didn't happen. Because the climate isn't sensitive to changes in CO2."I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
"I am posting anonymously because I know I will be modded into oblivion for going agianst the slashdot groupthink."
...and a partridge in a pear tree.
spurious relationship, ad hominem
"When has there been a scientific consensus about anything? The greatest scientists out there went AGAINST the group think."
I think the sun is made of chedder cheese. Therefore, I must be right because I go against the "groupthink" and I must be a great scientist.
appeal to probability, wishful thinking
"As far as I am concerned, global "warming" is just a bunch of hippies screaming manbearpig for the top of their lungs."
ad hominem, strawman fallacy, hasty generalization
"What if we find out in 20 years that this global climate change was completely out of our control? That it was mearly tied to the suns activity? What do we do then? With treaties like Kyoto that would destitute our economy, Could we even fix the economy in that case, or would western society collapse? "
appeal to fear, slippery slope
"Of course the hippies, being hippies would love to see western society collapse. Then they can bring about the their glorious revolution where they force everyone to be as everyone else. You want to make more money there your neighbor? Thats criminal! Off to Siberia!"
ad hominem, juxtaposition fallacy, association fallacy, appeal to fear, appeal to spite, appeal to ridicule, argument from personal incredulity, appeal to tradition, misleading vividness
I take it this was not ment to be neither reasoned nor logical?
"I'm sorry, you cannot on the one hand claim that the climate is insensitive to changes in CO2, and then claim that CO2 doesn't impact the global climate."
I meant to say "does impact". IOW, yes, you are claiming that CO2 doesn't impact global temperatures.
They Call This Science?
Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform "took on the Bush administration's handling of climate change science" in a Tuesday hearing, the New York Times reports:
The fourth witness was Francesca Grifo, who directs the scientific integrity program of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private group that researches environmental, arms control and other issues.
Dr. Grifo's testimony drew largely from a report produced by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project, a private group that defends whistle-blowers. The report, made public yesterday, is based on a Union of Concerned Scientists survey of federal climate scientists and interviews and document searches by the Government Accountability Project. It says it is common for scientists to be pressured to eliminate references to climate change, for their work to be changed to misrepresent their findings, and for climate-related materials to disappear from Web sites.
Almost 60 percent of the scientists who responded to the survey said they had personally experienced such an incident in the last five years, the report says, and those who said their work was most closely related to climate change experienced the most interference.
The survey is here (PDF), and a closer look at it ought to raise some doubts.
The relevant questions, 19-33, appear on pages 4-5. Questions 19-30 list 12 "types of activities affecting climate science" and ask the respondent if he has "perceived in others and/or personally experienced" them. (Question 31, a catch-all "other" category, can be ignored, since few bothered even responding to it.)
One problem is that of these 12 questions, only three--Nos. 20, 24 and 25--clearly indicate that the scientist responding agrees with the Union of Concerned Scientists on climate issues. A scientist who reports "self-induced pressure to change research or reporting in order to align findings with agency policy or to avoid controversy" (No. 23), for example, could feel such pressure to avoid raising doubts about global warming.
Note, too, the wording of that question: "self-induced pressure." The scientists who answered "yes" to this question are reporting on their own state of mind, not any objective facts that may bear on it. The same is true of questions 24 and 25, which refer to "fear of retaliation," and 27, which refers to "implicit expectation."
Many of these questions, too, simply reflect the realities of working in any bureaucracy, public or private. No. 19 asks if the scientists have perceived of experienced "changes/edits during review that change the meaning of scientific findings." Some have, but we have no basis on which to judge the merits of the disagreements between the scientists and their editors.
The biggest problem with the survey, though, is its basic methodology, explained on the first page of the PDF:
Following is the text of the survey UCS mailed to 1,630 federal climate scientists at seven federal agencies and departments, along with response data for the 279 scientists who completed and re- turned surveys.
That is, only about 17% of the scientists who received the survey actually filled it out and returned it. There is no reason to think this is a representative sample of the total population, and it seems reasonable to surmise that people who would go to the trouble of completing such a survey are more likely than those who wouldn't to perceive themselves as under political pressure--i.e., to agree with the UCS.
To put it much more simply, this was an unscientific survey. If this is how these guys do social science, how can we trust them with the hard stuff?
Of course I can, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, one of many trace greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It effects the climate, but that effect is minimal. Mess with the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere, then you have a major effect on climate.
Please explain what other forcings might possibly counteract high global temps being caused by CO2 levels 17.5 times higher than today's levels.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
CO2 levels have not even been close to current levels for over 800,000 years (and likely longer than that). Actually, I'm not aware of any times when the average global temperature was lower when CO2 levels were higher, but I think I have heard of the reverse (global temperature was higher when CO2 levels were lower). Even that, however, happened on an Earth hundreds of millions of years younger. Trying to compare models of the current climate to models of the climate hundreds of millions of years ago is often an attempt to put the UD in FUD. (Not accusing you of this, just mentioning why it's so often mentioned.) Here's a useful analogy: people have died from natural causes for thousands of years. If someone had their fingers around your throat and you felt your life-force leaving you, would you say, "oh, it can't be this person causing my death, because he's only been here for a short while, and people have been dying for thousands of years?" Likewise with global warming. Yes, it's happened in the past and we were not responsible. That in no way implies that we are not responsible now.
Although I think Bush is the worst president in my lifetime with respect to the environment ("clear skies" initiative, "healthy forests" initiative, redefining water ways, supporting the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act, etc.), I'm always in favor of trying to confuse people who want to pigeon-hole others. I like to call myself a "Charlottesville Conservative". (Charlottesville is an extremely blue dot in the red state of Virginia.)
Well, first of all, I'm not really much of an anti-authority person in the first place. (See previous paragraph.) However, it's also a matter of how one questions science. If someone is truly interested in questioning science, one should first try to understand the current scientific viewpoint. Most people who like to "question science" (timecubers, creation scientists, etc.) don't have the mathematical ability to understand it in the first place.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Based on that, take another look at the SN curves and then at this one where the curves are overlaid on the Wikipedia graphic.
Yup, it's the Sun causing the warming!
So why was the GW deniers favourite Medieval Warming Period during a minimum of sun-spot activity? Ooopsy.Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
One of the problems with the environmental movement is that it attracts loonies. (I do brain modeling, so I hope you don't mind me using the scientific term "loony".) I also happen to be a vegetarian (well, to be precise a pesci-vegetarian). As a result, I often attend our local vegetarian festival. It's amazing how many crazies come out to this thing! If you've never been to one, you should go. Unfortunately, it might just reinforce your current world-view, but at least you should find it entertaining.
What you have to realize is that a lot of sane, educated people also are raising alarms here. Even if you read what the least alarmist climatologists have to say (I'm thinking Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels), you'll not find a single climatologist (that I'm aware of) who denies the significance of the human impact on climate change. (You do, however, have to read Lindzen and Michaels carefully to see where they admit this. I'll be happy to provide the exact quotes from these articles if you can't find them. Well, the second Lindzen article is actually more about what he doesn't say.)
Yes, it's amazing how many people don't realize that Halliburton was a major contractor during the Clinton administration as well. Doesn't mean that Cheney isn't gaming the system. Doesn't mean he is, either. As a rule, I don't trust politicians regardless of political party. I like to point out to my liberal friends who are horified that I voted for Dole in '96 that if Dole had won in '96, we wouldn't have had Bush during 9/11. (In re-reading that, the last sentence seems like quite a bit of a non-sequitor. It stems from the fact that I didn't trust Clinton, either.)
Well, I'm also against drilling in ANWR, for two reasons - neither one of which is the caribou. First of all, I see very little gain (except for a few oil companies - definitely not for the average American when you look at the small size of the ANWR reserve compared to how much oil we consume annually) and a not insignificant risk. Oil companies do not have a good record when it comes to living up to their promises with respect to the environment. I can give you some examples if you like. Secondly, and far less importantly (because there is relatively little oil in ANWR), more oil = more CO2. However, let me ask you this? Which is more likely: oil companies will lie about the environmental impact because they're greedy OR environmentalists will like about the environmental impact because they don't want "someone making money"? I won't say that environmentalists won't lie (every group has liars as members). However, I think their greatest tendency for lying is by exaggerating the risk in order for people to take the real risk seriously (a very dubious strategy, mind you) - and not just to keep people from making money. I honestly don't think most of them are that petty.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Only in this case, we found the bullet. Not only are CO2 levels at around 370 ppmv (cf. historical levels over the last 800,000 years ranging from 170 ppmv (ice ages) to 270 ppmv (previous "record" highs)), but we can also measure the amount of CO2 that we're putting into the atmosphere vs. the rate at which it is reabsorbed and measure the C13/C14 ratio in the atmosphere and compare it against the C13/C14 ratio coming from both living courses and fossil fuels. That ratio is a "smoking gun" that makes it quite clear that we're responsible for that increased CO2. (Although the fact that we know approximately how much fossil fuels are burned and how much CO2 they contribute means that we don't really need that smoking gun.) So, if you found that the gun was still smoking and a bullet was in that child, wouldn't you assume that the gun (or bullet) killed the child, or would you claim that since no one saw the gun fired we can't really be sure?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I am not a big believer in the evidence for Human climate change. You can pull ice cores from the antarctic and find that the sun has far more influence on climate than man ever will.
I do however advocate that human change to the Biosphere on this planet, which I must say is becomming irreversible in its damage and scale, is going to be our undoing. Primarily, look at what people are doing to fresh water lakes....they are sucking them dry and whole seas of fresh water are literally disappearing from the sattellite images.
Unlike climate which has changed and will change long after we are gone, the number of species that are extinct and can be easily shown to be so through direct human action is far more convincing than climate change from scientists who cannot even forecast the weather properly even today without actually a camera in space looking at where it is going to rain tomorrow, let alone what cliamet will be in 10 -20 or even 30 years.
The planet earth, can probably support 500 Million human beings comfortably. The rest, shall we say....have to go.
If we do not do something about the sheer scale of our population, Mother nature I can assure you will step in and do the job.
All it takes is a super volcano, an asteroid strike or a "solar event" or any number of natural and very real forces of nature to enforce Mother Natures wishes.
All you looney climate people should wake up and realize what the real threat starts with our attack on the Biosphere.
Climate is really not the root cause. The earth has been MUCH warmer in the past, and much colder, without any people around so get over it.
-gc
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
If they're talking, how are they muzzled???
Me too, thanks. Now, just to cast a line in and troll along here.c ould-be-paid-for-by.html, could well be securities fraud.
s -selling-solar.html
There are some people who are being paid to hold an opinion, and some being paid to form an opinion.
Those who pay the opinion formers are curious about what opinion they'll come to.
Those who pay the opinion holders are curious about how high they can push their profit margin.
This is a key distinction. The original article shows that things have gone well beyond bribery and have moved on to intimidation and racketeering. One can certainly say that the ExxonMobil efforts affect thier stock prices and, being intentionally misleading http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-
--
Solar: clean energy http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
That's what I disagree with. CO2 levels and global temps have never tracked over 600 million years. Except for the theory that falling CO2 levels caused the Ordovician ice age and extinction -- an interesting theory, but not a likely as the Gondwana freezover theory--there's no other instance where CO2 drove global temps.
I agree that a 20X increase in CO2 isn't as big as it sound (I'm arguing that it has a minimal effect even at that level), but if a 30% increase is enough to raise temps up to 4.5 degrees C in a short time, according to the IPCC, why wouldn't a 20X increase increase temps by an equivalent amount? I was not aware that climate sensitivity is logarithmic where CO2 is concerned (probably because of it only being present in trace amounts in the atmosphere). The fact seems to support my argument more than yours, because, if it's logarithmic, maybe a 30% increase in CO2 is completely negligible and you have to get increases of 2000X (guessing again) or more to see a difference.
The Earth's albedo has changed radically over millions of years: Ice Age, the albedo's high, Age of Dinosaurs, not so much. The albedo changes, CO2 levels rise and fall, yet global temps remain stable. I think much of the increase in CO2 over the millennia is caused by the huge increase in lifeforms. Our current environment is almost empty of life compared to the ecosystems of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods. If organisms account for 38% of the CO2 in the air today, they must have been blowing out hundreds or thousands of times more of it back then.
My understanding from discussing GW with others is that CO2 from volcanoes has little impact on the climate because it can't get high enough into the atmosphere to make changes. As for other aerosols, over a half billion years, don't you think we'd have several cases of CO2-driven warming? As I've mentioned before, that Appalachian Mountains theory flies in the fact of other theories that have pretty good evidence backing them up. It reminds me of the worries that increasing CO2 would flood the the North Atlantic, disrupting the oceanic "conveyor belt" and sending us into a snap ice age (like in that documentary "The Day After Tomorrow"). Turns out that, while they've got a good theory, it would take orders of magnitude more fresh water to have that effect than can possibly be generated by AGW. Similarly, I'm sure that eroding down the Appalachians could cause local chemical effects that might lower local CO2 levels, but it wouldn't have a global impact.
So it comes back to the beginning of this discussion. I think there are factors causing global w
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Not really. Using the red Antarctic curve for comparison (neither the Greenland or GRL curves go back far enough), the sunspot activity does show an MWP, it just starts a little before the MWP begins (using the Moberg curve for comparison) at about 950, dips for a bit at 1050 (notice how the Moberg curve's temps also dip), and picks up again at 1100 or thereabouts. Pretty close match, considering the MWP is supposed to have happened between 800-1300 AD.
N.B.: Don't use the Mann et al 1999 curve for comparison, it doesn't work as well because his MBH team smoothed out the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age. But that's another story...
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
There have been a lot of responses here, but I don't think they quite answer your question. The fundamental problem is that human causation of global warming is market failure on a massive scale. It profoundly violates the free-markets-solve-everything government-is-the-problem individual-greed-is-all-we-need concepts that are the bedrock foundation of modern conservative belief.
When your fundamental beliefs are being so profoundly proved inadequate, denying scientific facts becomes essential.
You'll notice that, once most people accept the science, they cease being conservatives in this American "libertarian" sense. Because regulation and government action to change the basic market rules is the only way we're going to solve this one. The die-hards are going to be harder to change, but they'll be coming. Bush was at 40%, then 35%. Now it's under 30%. There's hope...
Energy: time to change the picture.
More likely, the "correction" will be the removal of the problem - us.
There's a finite range of climatic conditions that humans can survive and flourish in. If the climate gets too far out of our comfort zone and the planet is no longer capable of sustaining human life, then man-made climate change will no longer be a problem.
The planet can then take a few thousand gazillion years to damp the effects of the short but sharp "blip" we caused.
Sure, that's worst case alarmist BS. But the point remains - natural cycles occur on geological timescales. The changes occuring now appear to be happening at an unprecedented rate.
People who advocate human-caused global warming
* are often emotional (emphasizing the potential consequences rather than the facts)
* are often political (using this issue primarily as an attack vector)
* appeal to authority figures (which is a fallacy)
The first two points are self-explanatory. The third point is more subtle. The first thing that anyone says when asked to justify the human-caused global warming theory is that "x says so", where x can be your choice of "scientists", "climatologists", "Al Gore", or "we". The implication being that x does not (or even cannot) have ulterior motives.
Take for example a common quote, which you can find on this page in some form: "do you think average people know better than climatologists who have spent their whole lives studying the climate?"
Well, do you think every operation recommended by a surgeon is actually advisable? Do you think every root canal that a dentist recommends is actually advisable? Well, they're the experts so if they say so, then the patient is in no place to be skeptical, right? Except that there is a profit motive even for people who are well-trained in these fields. If you follow everything that your doctor or dentist recommends, and never stop to even question that maybe you're being told to have these things done just so they can make more money, then you are a buffoon.
To answer the question: yes, I do think using common sense to be skeptical of global warming theories is justified. People who have "spent their entire lives" studying climate change have a very big incentive to state that global warming is a big deal -- because if they don't say so, then their life's work is ultimately useless and pointless. It would be like someone devoting their lives to ensuring that cockroaches survive. Nobody wants to say that their life's work was a completely meaningless endeavor since there was no problem to begin with. You know, go to sourceforge and look at all the projects with less than 100 downloads. Imagine having spent your whole life working on something that less than 100 people cared about. What do you think such a person would do, when given an opportunity to make a Big Deal out of it? Admit that the project is mostly useless, or try to make it the single most important issue of our time?
I already have the answer to that -- Y2K.
In other words, it isn't the experts' testimony that is at question. It is their own credibility that people should be skeptical of -- especially when the initiatives against global warming are spearheaded not by scientists, but by failed politicians (some of whom may have invented the internet). It's funny that people give so much credit and props to Al Gore, as he is probably the single biggest factor impeding the acceptance of the _science_ behind global warming theory. As a politician, he has no credibility in this scientific matter, and his association with global warming is exactly what makes people skeptical. If, after all, a politician's deep involvement doesn't make you skeptical, then I can't imagine what will.
A climatologist on the other hand figures at what rate the water as a whole is heating, and the effects of putting a lid on the pan, or turning up the heat. The effects can be accurately predicted quite a long way into the future when you're looking at the entire contents of the pan, not trying to predict where each convection current will be.
Personally I'd like to see proof that climatologists are any good at making predictions.
Honest Question:
Are there any climatologist papers published in the last three or four decades that contain predictions that turned out to be true?
If so, it lends a great deal of credibility to the methods of the people who made the accurate predictions.
If not, it casts this entire global warming issue in a rather doubtful light.
If all you have are a string of predictions that never turned out to be true then you can't blame folks for doubting man-made Global Warming, especially when it's proponents demand solutions that would cripple economies.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
ANWR's not a big issue for me. It's more a symptom of the problem. We lay aside land and call it protected. Then, big business bribes our congress-critters to de-protect it. It's the principle of the matter as well as the precedent it sets/reinforces. As for your "steps", you're assuming that oil companies will follow through with their side of the bargain, and that politicians will actually put teeth into the regulations to make them. (It's a two-sided problem.)
Ben Hocking
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That's what I disagree with. CO2 levels and global temps have never tracked over 600 million years.
As I said, you cannot predict global temperature from CO2 level alone. Your statement would only be meaningful if all aspects of the climate other than CO2 were the same historically as they are now, but that is far from the case.
It is only in modern times that we have determined enough about the other natural forcings to be able to isolate the warming contribution of CO2 from other effects.
I agree that a 20X increase in CO2 isn't as big as it sound (I'm arguing that it has a minimal effect even at that level), but if a 30% increase is enough to raise temps up to 4.5 degrees C in a short time, according to the IPCC, why wouldn't a 20X increase increase temps by an equivalent amount?
First, the IPCC doesn't predict that a 30% increase in CO2 produces a 4.5 degree warming; that's the upper bound figure for more like a doubling in CO2.
A 20x increase in CO2 certainly would produce significantly more warming than a doubling, but as I said, CO2 is far from the only contributor to the climate.
The fact seems to support my argument more than yours, because, if it's logarithmic, maybe a 30% increase in CO2 is completely negligible and you have to get increases of 2000X (guessing again) or more to see a difference.
Making numbers up out of thin air does not support your point.
Logarithmic curves are a great magnitude equalizer; any kind of doubling produces the same amount of warming. So an increase from 1 to 2 ppm theoretically produces the same warming as an increase from 1000 to 2000 ppm.
(This sounds absurd, and to some extent it is, because the actual curve is not perfectly logarithmic, although it is logarithmic for concentrations around 100-1000 ppm. It flattens out at even higher concentrations because of all the extra feedbacks that start kicking in.)
What exactly do you doubt, here? Do you doubt that the amount of sunlight trapped by a given concentration of CO2 can be calculated accurately? That is actually one of the easiest things to calculate, and the amount of heat retained by the atmosphere is more than enough to explain the current warming. If you want to propose an alternative, you not only have to come up with a different mechanism for warming (solar variations doesn't work for reasons already explained), but you also have to come up with extra large cooling mechanisms too, to explain what is countering all the CO2. Claiming that CO2 just doesn't cause that much warming is not an escape; it follows very simple and laboratory-testable physics of radiation adsorption.
I think much of the increase in CO2 over the millennia is caused by the huge increase in lifeforms.
What increase? Over what period of time? You mean, the last 20,000 years (here)? What increase of lifeforms are you talking about here?
Incidentally, it is certain that the major increase of CO2 over the last 150 years is due to fossil fuel burning, since that leaves a unique isotopic signature that can be detected.
My understanding from discussing GW with others is that CO2 from volcanoes has little impact on the climate because it can't get high enough into the atmosphere to make changes.
Over the short term, that's true, but in the "snowball Earth" scenarios, it's the primary mechanism by which the Earth can melt: with so much ice, the oceans can't take up much CO2, and over millions of years enough accumulates to thaw the planet.
As for other aerosols, over a half billion years, don't you think we'd have several cases of CO2-driven warming?
We surely do; this is most visible over the last million years in the Vostok cores.
As I've mentioned before, that Appalachian Mountains theory flies in the fact of other theories that have pretty g
Here's a short article that discusses it. I hate to have anyone trust me, because although I'm not the type to just make stuff up, I am the type that sometimes gets things wrong. :) For example, it's the C13/C12 ratio, not the C13/C14 ratio.
Well, the two issues are related and somewhat difficult to separate. See, the C13/C14 ratios I was talking about tell you the ratio of CO2 gases in the air that came from fossil fuels. However, one might argue that those fossil fuels stay in the atmosphere longer because of the shrinking rain forests. The short answer is: (1) Stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere (or at least stop dumping as much), and (2) Stop cutting down trees in the rain forest. (This is a "global" you, of course. I suspect that you, personally, have cut down very few trees in the rain forest. Not more than 1 or 2 dozen, I'd wager.)
Not really. Water, unlike CO2, saturates quite readily in our atmosphere. Then, it rains. (When's the last time you remember it "raining" (or even sublimating) CO2?) You can't add more water to the atmosphere without warming the atmosphere first. Of course, I assume you see the feedback inherent in that system. As we heat the atmosphere, it can (and will) hold more water - thus allowing it to hold more water. Luckily, it's a limited (i.e., sublinear) feedback, so it won't "tip", like some alarmists might claim.
Some plants will benefit from increased CO2, and others will not. Most will. The net effect is, in fact, expected to generate a negative feedback. Just like with the water vapor I mentioned in my previous paragraph, it's also sublinear. (Here's an interesting article on what might happen with some of our food crops. Yes, there's a lot of speculation, but it is interesting.)
See, here's my problem. It's easy for us (as humans) to go from "I don't understand" to "no one understands". And, yes, no one can be 100% sure. However, people who have spent their full time career understanding what will happen should be given some deference here. Granted, trading in your Toyota for a bicycle won't fix the problem - largely because you're only one individual. This is a problem that needs to be tackled collectively. (Ayn Rand fans might attack me here.)
Here's the thing, though. (And I know far less about economics than I do about climatology. At least with climatology, I can fall back on my physics background which is at least somewhat relevant.) When one person decides to ride his bike to work, it's a huge sacrifice. One reason is that our society is not built around such an idea. If you ride you bike on ordinary roads, people driving their cars will get upset with you for clogging up traffic. In fact, by clogging up traffic you might actually be making things worse. Personally, I walk to work - but that's because I can. Charlottesville (not suprisingly) is much more friendly towards pedestrians (and bike riders - although there are still many places where riding a bike in C'ville is not recommended). Anyways, my
Ben Hocking
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Errm, hello? 1050? Minimum in sun-spots, near maximum in temperature? In YOUR chart?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I have done it in a green house and it works WONDERS! There appears to be no problem breathing it, the plants love it, and the BUD smokes GREAT!
:P
So higher CO2 levels and we all get better weed, sounds like a fair trade to me
On a more related note, the IPCC report will have a lot of problems. It is in their best interest to find global warming. That way they can convince all the countries in the world to use there carbon unit standard. Once we are on the standard we will need to buy carbon units from them or other countries that have extra. Although this sounds good, who will enforce the rule? Well the UN will need an enforcement branch. Maybe a real army that answers to them? That seems to create a government above each nations government. One that can dictate, rule, punish, and tax every country in the world! They have a lot of reasons to find global warming!
Lars, if you'd use more than sentence fragments to get your points across, I'd understand them better and give you clearer answers.
You seem to be misreading the curves or something.
Looking at MY chart (thank you for mentioning that, I am rather pleased with it), according to the red Antarctic curve, at 1050 there was a reduction in sunspots--from a peak (950) to a valley (1050) to another rise starting at 1100 AD.
Now, looking at the blue Moberg et al 2005 temp curve, what we see is a peak in temperature at 950, followed by a drop in temps (1050) that corresponds pretty well with the dip in sunspot activity, followed by another rise at 1100 AD.
Where is the problem? Bearing in mind that we're comparing two different processes (sunspot activity vs. global temperatures), defined by different sets of data (ice core Beryllium-10 concentration vs. tree-ring data and low-resolution proxies), that happened at different places around the globe, I think its striking how well the curves track.
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Gotta tell it all in the title else anon coward post that won't get any points because of this will simply have his post buried under trivia. Those civil servants were brave. That they testified to congress under whatever protestion congress promised to them know the truth. The truth is their careers are toast. Republican admin hacks appointed by republican bosses appointed by GOP administrations are never removed by the democrats when they gain the administration....the presidency. This is the custom of the democrats who want to be sympathetic to people and not just take everybody's job that are their ideological enemies. Republicans are the reverse of this and clean house thoroughly every time they gain power to do so. As a result, upper levels of the civil service tend to be overwhelmingly republican as GOP holdovers allowed to keep their jobs under democratic administrations accumulate to critical masses in every department in government. Those scientists were low level employees, rest assured. Upper level employees have been away from the real work too long to really have innovative contributions to make. Low level employees will be more likely to tell the truth inasmuch as upper level employees will be republican (institutioalized and pathological liars by their sociopathic personalities), or just institutioalized by the fear of RIF (reduction in force) or 'up or out policies' that favor republicans for the above stated reasons. These scientists will be given no work of substance, Every thing they do will be scrutinized with an eye to eliminating them from govenment service (republican administrative hatchet men acting as proxies for republican superiors using the person's personnel records and the review process to provide 'cause' to do things otherwise 'illegal'. They will be watched at work. They will be watched at home. Their spouses, if govenment employees, will see the quick end of their careers as well. None of the information in their personnel files will be challengeable, discloseable, appealable, or even have to be the truth according to current law in the federal and in every state and local governments. Other republicans will be watching their credit files and house mortgages with an eye to foreclosure or collection efforts. This is half smart as bad credit information can be turned to other uses beside the denial of loans. Bad credit info that is not really challengeable can be also be used by employers to deny jobs, continuance in job, step increases if civil servants, and promotions if military. So one hand washes the other in these cases. Even their children can be harrassed. Their school records can be manipulated, and inasmuch as they are secret, so called 'counselors' can put future career killing 'information', unatributed of course, in the student's permanent record. These permanent records are secret from the student and his/her parents. Their contents are above the law and unchallengeable, and can and do contain statements such as 'latent homosexual', or 'communist sympathizer', or 'sociopath', or 'atheist', or 'habitual liar', or 'sneaky', or any number of slanders secure in the knowledge that the statements are unchallengeable, unappealable (you have to know about them first), and unchangeable, set in stone forever for so long as the student lives and has this 'record' follow him/her into post educational jobs. Such is the republican way of handling dissent. Unless the congress is prepared to offer these people a permanent, unrevocable, unamendable, financial entitlement to support them for the rest of their lives in some area under permanent democratic governance, there is no real escape from republican revenge. Republicans have learned well from the Mafia. Look at the rest of the world for what their intentions sre. Guantanamo and the shredding of the Constitution is what they plan for YOU, too. May God have mercy upon those whistle blowers, for such mercy is not republican policy and has not been since 1863 when the old Whig party took over the republican party that was originally started by idealistic abolitionists. The anti slavers must be spinning in their graves.
Sorry, lack of correlation does not prove causation. And you might as well admit that if this chart came from Mann et all and tried to prove man-made Global Warming, you'ld be up in arms for exactly those reasons.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Why would you go to war to enforce a treaty? US has a president who can't think of anything other than war as a solution to problems, also.
Remember him? He was interviewed in Danish television with regard to the IPCC findings. He demonstrated nothing but respect for the findings of facts by the IPCC.
He just draws different conclusions based on them, the changes are not larger than what we can adapt much cheaper than we can implement the Kyoto-protocol, which won't make much of a difference anyway.
I believe this is the way to be a "skeptical environmentalist", instead of denying what has become the scientific consensus (much more now than when Lomborg published his first articles on the subject), let us base the discussion on taking the scientific consensus as facts, and instead discuss what consequences we want to draw from these facts. That discussion is in higher degree based on values, and something where laypeople may contribute as much as the scientists.
The arguments against the existence of human made global warming have become increasingly similar to the arguments against evolution, they rely on conspiracy theories, general scientific illiteracy, and blowing the genuine scientific disagreements out of proportions. I'm very happy Lomborg has not chosen to follow that path.
The problem is that these people aren't "publishing" in peer-reviewed journals. They're "publishing" on the web and then their unscientific opinions are paraded in front of the ignorant as if they have any merit. Try explaining to the typical citizen why "timecube" is hogwash.
So, do you agree then that afterward, his opinions should not be as seriously considered? Most of these scientists have already been "caught" in "peer review". For example, the work by McIntyre and McKitrick has been discredited by Rutherford et al. (Don't be thrown off by the realclimate URL - that link is to a PDF of the article they published in the Journal of Climate. Also note that M&M's original article was rejected by Nature, so they published it in Geophysical Research Letters. Not exactly apropos.)
Ben Hocking
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I am somewhat impressed at how you've managed to continue this argument with someone so completely ignorant and unwilling to provide any evidence to back up his ridiculous claims. I salute you. A few matters of fact, however. At one point in your debate with hackus you said:
I'll grant you that at some level that's true, but I'm not sure why you say "source or sink", when it seems pretty clear that it's all sink. I.e., the oceans have been absorbing significant amounts of CO2, resulting in a decrease in the pH (i.e., becoming more acidic) due to the reaction H2O + CO2 => H2CO3 (carbonic acid). I suppose what you might be thinking about is sometime in the future, after we've hopefully stopped dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, the oceans will slowly begin to become a source of CO2, instead of a sink, in an attempt to reach partial pressure equilibrium.
Secondly, your argument about the solar output not having had a measurable impact on past climates might not be right. That said, your point that it's largely irrelevant to the current argument is right.
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Are you aware of any climatologist (e.g., Pat Michaels, Richard Lindzen) that believes that humans are not largely responsible for global warming?
...AND...
If so, could you name one? Just one. (Feel free to mention Pat Michaels or Richard Lindzen, but be aware that I'll show you articles they've written to the contrary - although it might require me getting an e-mail address as those articles are often behind proxies. I'll be happy to give you journal/volume/number, however, if you'd prefer, or just give you something they've written in the popular media.)
...OR...
If not, do you subscribe to the theory that there is a vast Democratic conspiracy that every single last climatologist mysteriously subscribes to? An army perhaps for or against the Illuminati?
Ben Hocking
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Yes. Check out the Met.Office's Hadley Climate Centre. They have validated their models by setting the conditions to a known state (say, 50 years ago), then running the models and seeing how accurately they predict the climate over those 50 years by doing a comparison to the actual data collected over that time period. They actually do very well. The better models have been validated. Their website has good coverage of what they do.
There is of course some variables which will make them less accurate in the extreme long term, but they seem a pretty good bet at least 50-100 years out. They've also done things like remove the human emissions to see what that does to the resulting model. The results of many of these validations is that you can be pretty damned confident that humans are having an effect on the climate.
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I'm not looking to get into a paper pissing contest. (Quite frankly, it wouldn't be a fair fight.) I'm just asking that outside of your personal belief, can you name 1 climatologist who agrees with your belief? Give me a name, and I'll tell you what they're publishing now. If not, do you think that this implies that every single last climatologist is not part of some global cabal against science?
I agree with you here. More data is always better. That's not to say that the basic science (chemical reactions and such) are not very well understood already. That includes things like CO2, methane, and H20 cycles. For example, did you know that H2O commonly saturates in our atmosphere? When that happens, it is frequently followed by a meteorological phenomenon known as "rain". ;)
A common misconception is that global warming is so complex that computer models are required to understand any of it. Not true. Global warming science began in the late 50's/early 60's when your typical computer couldn't run very complicated models. It's basic physics/chemistry. The models are required to determine just how bad it is. What kind of feedback mechanisms are there, etc.
I agree with you here, too. Although I'm not sure that you agree with yourself. Yes, the planet will almost definitely be just fine in a few million years. The question is more of how will humanity do? Will we be plunged into chaos, or will we figure out some way to mitigate the coming problems?
Still, my original question still stands. Can you name 1 climatologist who disputes the anthropogenic nature of global warming?
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My point was that predicting the past is far easier than predicting the future.
Validating against known data is spiffy and all, but you still had access to the data you 'predicted' so you could continously adjust variables that are little more than wild-assed guesses till it happens to fit.
I know that's a rather unsophisticated view of it but the global warming crusaders are facing this kind of view if they want to convince enough people to make a difference.
What they need to do is gain credibility the old fashioned way- stick a stake in the ground and say "10 years from this date, given these things continue, the conditions will be X"
If their predictions hold outside of random variation then it's hard proof that they have a good model. If all they do is backfit data they already have that's harder to take seriously.
Yeah, that's right. Chicken Little and his friends need some patience if they want to gain credibility. That's the way it works for every other science.
There's also the related issue of 'humans having an effect' vs 'OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.' Again if you want to establish the latter you need to establish credibility the old fashioned way.
So many different causes shriek about the dire consequences of not heading their word 'right now' that it's hard to take them seriously.
Global Warming alarmists want to rewrite entire economies based on nothing more then computer models whose predictions have not been time tested. It doesn't work that way, even if you're right. Make predictions for the future and then we can take you seriously if they come out to be true.
This has been a topic for a decade or two now. Are their no models from the 1990's or 1980's that have held out? Didn't those researchers test their models against historical data? If they did and their models did not hold then the latest models can't be taken seriously on historical validation alone either.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
That's better, yes.
Thank you, I'll check it out.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
That's hardly a pissing contest. And, since I'm of the viewpoint that you won't find that individual (a climatologist who does not believe in AGW), I'm not sure how looking myself (and not finding anyone) would prove much.
As for your single experiment, it's good. It's simple to understand, and its hypothesis is well laid out. (The main problem is that you've laid it out as black and white. The reality is that there should be a small correlation. No one's denying that solar output isn't related to mean temperatures - it's just not the primary factor in our current dilemma.) However, I remember when people made similar claims 10 years ago about the Earth's temperature. The argument back then was, "hey, if it's global warming then in 10 years we should see it." Well, ten years later and we've had the 10 hottest years (not in order, of course) in recorded history. Now the goal posts have moved. That's what I'm skeptical about.
One other problem with the experiment is that if we wait until we get the results back to do anything, we've wasted an important 10 years. (This is just like saving for retirement - the earlier we start the easier it will be.) So, I propose doing your experiment while curbing CO2. Do you see a problem with that?
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(b) As for the poor quality of predictions, try looking up how well the 1991 IPCC report actually did.
(c) As for dogma (or DOGMA if you prefer), do me a favor. Save our posts to a file and then edit out our names so that you have only "person A" and "person B". Then ask a friend you respect to identify which post seems to be relying on dogma. Naturally, you should not include this post, since that'd kind of give away who is "person A" (or "person B").
Now, if you can't answer my question, just be honest about it. I've got to believe you don't know of a single climatologist who disputes that man-made contributions are a significant component of global warming. despite the fact that you imply there are lots of them to be found. Don't try to hide behind "find your own climatologist you've already tried to find and can't" and "DOGMA". That's all I'm asking, and frankly it doesn't seem like that much to ask for.
Ben Hocking
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The tide is changing. Last year was a watershed (IMNSHO) with a number of events. Bill O'Reilly embraced AGW as fact, ExxonMobil cut ties with CEI, and Lindzen and Michaels both made statements that said they backed up the basic science behind AGW (even if they think that the media is being alarmist about it). I predict we will see more of that this year. Pretty soon, there will be fewer people denying AGW than denying evolution. (Well, that is bad news in another way, but that's a whole different rant.)
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