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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
``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
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.
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'd argue that the president and his minions are very well taking a stance.
By intentionally shutting up scientists and censoring them.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If is yes and when is now.
Capisce?
What gets me is there are things that can be done.
And they can be done *now*.
Ban incandescent light bulbs. Mandate energy efficiency in consumer electronics goods. Promote a viable, cheap and efficient mass public transport system. Enforce recycling (now underway in UK). Promote locally sourced goods and produce (don't eat food thats moved more then 1000miles to your plate). Mandate efficient motor vehicles. Either sort out hydrogen fuels cells or admit you were wrong and go the ZEV route.
*Educate* people.
"Inconvienient Truth" was a good start, but we need more to get the message across.
I live in the UK, 10 of the hottest years we have on record were in the last 14 years. It scares the crap out of me.
And the fact that nothing is being done infuriates me.
The fact remains that one of the major reasons that nothing is being done is because of weak willed politicians who are concerned more about their own re-election prospects then doing the right thing. Large corporations also have the capability to do good things instead look to line their own pockets and please the shareholders.
Katrina was a wake up call for the US. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina) The hot summer a few years ago in Europe that killed 10000+ was a wake up for Europe. (http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/08/29/heat_0.php )
Bangladesh is getting near annual flooding wake ups.
Why the fsck isn't anything being done?
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?
We haven't heard enough from "the sky is falling" crowd.
... why won't these loudmouths just shut up already?
Yeah, that stupid "'sky is falling' crowd." Such idiots! Also the "'pi is irrational' crowd," the "'Earth goes around the Sun' crowd," the "'infectious disease is caused by microbes' crowd," the "'current species evolved from previous species' crowd"
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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
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++;
Gov: So Mr Climate scientist, what have you come up with?
Climate scientist: Well, my experiments show that the climate is changing, partly due to rising CO2 levels caused by pollution caused by humans.
Gov: What! We pay you to research the climate, not come up with political propoganda!
Climate scientist: Its not political, it's what my studies show.
Gov: It can't be, it doesn't fit our political agenda. We give you money to come to the conclusions we want, not your personal and unrelated suppositions. Research something else!
Climate scientist: I'm a climate scientist... Climate change and the causes of it - that's what I research.
Gov: Well, stop it! Do some research that supports what we already believe!
Give me the Aristotle, Pasteur or Darwin of Climatology who can present irrefutable proof
Pssst!.... don't tell anyone but none of them ever had irrefutable proof. They simply made observations, thoerized on the cause, found problems with the thoeries, refined those thoeries, etc, etc, etc.
I don't think science is what you seem to think it is.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
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.
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.
> The new Stalinsim for the 21st Century.
More like, GW-denial is the Lysenkoism of the 21st Century.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ban incandescent light bulbs. Mandate energy efficiency in consumer electronics goods.
Don't be silly. You are wasting your time with trivial energy use items while you probably have other multi-KW items that consume vastly more power in your house. For example, I have electric heating, a refrigerator, a microwave, and an oven which vastly outpower my electricity usage from light bulbs (and we haven't even gotten to the argument where I point out that in the winter the end result of the electricity used to power your light bulbs is heat which will cause no effect on your energy usage if you happen to own a thermostat with electric heating). But even I'm being silly because industrial usage vastly outpowers residential power usage.
Promote a viable, cheap and efficient mass public transport system. Enforce recycling (now underway in UK). Promote locally sourced goods and produce (don't eat food thats moved more then 1000miles to your plate). Mandate efficient motor vehicles.
It is important, however, to promote a public transportation system that is more efficient than the individuals driving their cars. In many cases a lightly loaded bus will have vastly higher emissions than if each of the riders drove their cars. Use public transportation where it makes sense and always keep a calculator on hand to evaluate the CO2 emissions.
Katrina was a wake up call for the US. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina) The hot summer a few years ago in Europe that killed 10000+ was a wake up for Europe.
As a physicist (who believes global warming is highly probable) I take offense at such stupid statements. There is no evidence that Katrina was caused by global warming (which has heated the planet about 0.5-1.0 K) and I would challenge you to provide evidence that Katrina wouldn't have formed and bottomed out without that temperature rise. You might note that global warming will cause more radical climate surges, but this does not mean that it is responsible for any individual event. It just means that when you analyze a 10 year span the violent climatic events will increase. Saying global warming is responsible for any single event is extremely irresponsible and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of probability and statistics.
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.
On point 1, well, actually, if you're working as a researcher, poking into random topics around your area of research is a fairly major part of your job. It's not like we're told "Research blah", then we enter a meditative state until we develop enlightenment on blah, we go out and look into blah, and topics related to blah, and sometimes that means we bump into other topics.
What bunch of fuckwits modded the above post as flaimbait?
Ok, he uses a bit of harsh language but he has a point. Most people are now getting to the point where they can see through the PR and simply look out the window to notice the effects of global warming.
The main problem is that the rest of the world has known what to do about this for some time - reduce consumption of fossil fuels (Or breath less as some people have suggested, but I cannot be arsed explaining why this is not a viable solution). However when Bush was elected the first thing he did was scrap any attempt at sticking to the Kyoto treaty to benefit the US economy (And his own pocket).
I dont read
> 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.
That's been debunked pretty thoroughly, see e.g. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192.
Firstly of course, we have several satellites monitoring the Sun constantly, and its activity has been declining in recent years, as it goes towards the minimum of its well-known 11-year cycle (the article is from 2005, I guess it's probably reached by now).
As for the Mars ice cap, see the article; it gives many reasons why it is wrong to consider this 3-year regional change to be an indication of global warming on Mars. It's not special. The article concludes:
Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
You're using her as bait, Master!
I agree. They're like the people who say, "It's warm this month. Global warming is real."
JOIN US FOR PONG!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And how do you know this? Did you learn it from a true climate expert such as a talk radio host?
I wonder where are the studies published in scientific journals by climatologists which support these claims.
While solar variations certainly have influenced the climate in the past, including recently, they simply have not been large enough to explain the majority of warming the Earth has experienced in recent decades. (See Stott et al. (2003), among others.) In what must be an incredible coincidence, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased with timing, rate, and magnitude that do agree with the observed warming. (Some commentary by climatologists on Singer and Avery's claims here.)
As for cosmic rays, their effect on cloud formation is still not well understood, but regardless of their effect, cosmic ray flux is not well correlated with climate change (see, e.g., here), so it does not seem reasonable to attribute the recent rapid warming to cosmic rays to any large extent. (Especially, again, given the amount of greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere; anyone who wants to postulate an alternative mechanism for warming has to also introduce a lot of of extra cooling mechanisms to explain why the GHGs aren't warming the planet as much as thermodynamics predicts.)
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
Then it's too late, way too late! If it becomes a national concern depriving Americans of their god given right to wear t-shirts in winter and wool sweaters in summer you'll be looking back at Katrina as a tame, little storm of allmost romantic proportions.
No. I hold it with the Economist (which can most certainly not be called a fear mongering newspaper who wants to see laws enacted left and right). They argued in a survey from September 7 about climate change that investing now into curbing green house gases is way cheaper then facing the consequences at a future time. I quote from the introductory article of the survey:
This survey will argue that although the science remains uncertain, the chances of serious consequences are high enough to make it worth spending the (not exorbitant) sums needed to try to mitigate climate change. It will suggest that, even though America, the world's biggest CO2 emitter, turned its back on the Kyoto protocol on global warming, the chances are that it will eventually take steps to control its emissions. And if America does, there is a reasonable prospect that the other big producers of CO2 will do the same. (the whole survey can be purchased as a PDF for $4.95 here)
Of course you can now accuse the Economist of an anti-American publication who desperately loathes the republican party. You would be wrong of course. But don't let facts stand in the way of your prejudice.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Don't listen to the parent; I don't care about his personal observations and flawed reasoning. Does he really think scientists haven't considered solar influences?
"On behalf of all scientists: Thank you BoRegardless (721219)! We thought it was CO2 but we never stopped to think it was the sun! I guess we should get our noses out of the office and read Slashdot more!"
Doesn't it strike you as amazingly arrogant to think that you have, in a single post on slashdot, shown thousands of climatologists, who have dedicated their academic lives to researching the climate, to have wasted their time?
Don't listen to my opinions on climatology, I know fuck all about the climate.
Don't listen to politicians; they listen to us.
Listen to the scientists. To those reading please add one thing to your todo list for today: Print off and read the IPCC's 2001 summary report. It's only 34 pages long, has lots of illuminating graphs, it's very readable and clear, and most importantly it is based on peer reviewed scientific evidence that is readily available.
The document above is a summary of summaries for policy makers, if you want to get into more detail:
-
See here for a summary of the scientific basis for global warming.
-
See here for a summary of the predicted outcomes of global warming (eg sea levels, global temperature).
- And see here for a summary of the expected impacts on humanity (eg droughts, migration) and mitigation.
All of these summaries have respective, exhaustive scientific documents behind them, but they do a good job of summarizing the reasoning and evidence.Personally I'm looking forward to seeing refined conclusions and increased certainty in estimated from the data accumulated over the last 5-6 years. I thank the scientists which the parent belittled for collecting and summarizing this data.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Good point. Poor choice of words. I get frustrated with these congressional flamebaits. I still stand by my position. The science I've seen so far has been less than credulous, the science community in question has a bad track record, and I've personally been in university science courses where I've had to personally endure the poor scientific standards being taught in most universities. I've personally been degraded by professors for asking to see decent science to back up these claims. Its the same attitude I get whenever I try to speak to a religious person about the bible.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
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?
In fact, some have resigned in protest.c le/2005/08/31/AR2005083101271.html d etails/ccsp-resignation/ is another.
s -selling-solar.html
Susan Wood is one http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Rick Piltz http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/
On the other side of the conflict, the resignations have been forced as a result of the publicity surrounding their nefarious activities. Of course, the revolving door takes the sting out.
--
Good morning sunshine: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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
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{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
Yes, we have.
Ben Hocking
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Pssst!.... don't tell anyone but none of them ever had irrefutable proof.
I think Pasteur had pretty irrefutable proof. They had microscopes. They knew what caused the problem. All he had to do was convince religious freaks that bacteria didn't spontaneously appear out of nowhere by an act of God. But if you feel bacteria spontaneously generate themselves out of nothing but component pieces, feel free to drink unpasteurized milk and scoff at the rest of us for being just as susceptible to disease as yourself.
I don't think science is what you seem to think it is.
I guess that all depends on whether or not you classify global warming as science. GP is simply asking for a bit more than speculation before making trillion dollar policy decisions. I don't think that is too much to ask. Climate scientists claim CO2 is one of the primary drivers of "global warming." Yet, CO2 was an order of magnitude higher 450 million years ago and temperatures were roughly the same as they are today. CO2 concentrations are about 20% higher today than they have been any time in the last 400,000 years yet drastic temperature increases have not followed suit. In the mid 90's, Dr. Patrick Michaels called bullshit in front of Congress when predictions of higher temperatures made by computer models did not materialize. After wiping the egg from their faces, "climate scientists" once again were eating humble pie when computer models that generated gloom and doom "hockey stick" graphs were shown to spit out hockey sticks with random input by people who were not climate scientists.
Given that brief synopsis, I can see a person might be skeptical. Especially when the people predicting the end of the world are asking for taxpayer dollars to do it.
Yet, CO2 was an order of magnitude higher 450 million years ago and temperatures were roughly the same as they are today. Climate isn't correlated with absolute concentrations of CO2, because of all of the other climate factors in effect. Changes in climate are correlated with changes in CO2, however. In fact, the Ordovician temperatures and CO2 concentrations to which you refer support our picture of the influence of CO2 on the climate, rather than contradicting it. The evidence suggests that a drop in CO2 precipitated the ice age, and a rise in CO2 may have ended it. CO2 concentrations are about 20% higher today than they have been any time in the last 400,000 years yet drastic temperature increases have not followed suit. They're not drastic on the scale of "an ending ice age", but they have produced an unusually rapid temperature change, temperature increases are related nonlinearly to CO2 concentration, and we are still in for a lot of CO2 increase over the next century, which is the real worry. In the mid 90's, Dr. Patrick Michaels called bullshit in front of Congress when predictions of higher temperatures made by computer models did not materialize. Micahels' analysis was, shall we say, dodgy at best. "climate scientists" once again were eating humble pie when computer models that generated gloom and doom "hockey stick" graphs were shown to spit out hockey sticks with random input by people who were not climate scientists McKitrick & McIntyre's analysis is also not without its flaws (here and here).
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"
Yes, if is YES and When is NOW.
The big problem with the whole "There's no Global Warming" crap is that is doesn't take into account human processes. It just looks at our Earth from a static viewpoint and assumes nothing we could do could ever change things, while adding in massively deflated numbers of Human pollution. But the models that the scientists are using conclusively prove that predict real climate change is happening.
The truth is, in a real "Global Warming" type of situation, you would have accept what the experts are predicting. Rampant hurricanes, super violent weather. There's no reason to believe that you would have a "banding" effect of the weather, much like we see on Venus. And our system is doing NOTHING LIKE THAT! In fact, our weather system is typical of what one would expect from a dynamic system being perturbed; Lots of wild fluctuations, with an overall effect of changing climate throughout the globe.
Our Earth has been warming and cooling for MILLENIA, well before we humans showed up on the scene. Entire ecosystems have sprung up and been wiped out several times over during the course of our planet's history. We were never there for any of them, and civilization couldn't have survived the conditions at many of those times. Those who think that ancient tides of our planet's natural systems are too deep and strong for the insignificant ship of humanity to do a thing about are wrong. We can and do make large impacts on the system, which can be amplified in a positive feedback loop by nature.
Ultimately, what the "Anti Global Warming" push is about is power. It has become a political point of view, co-opted by neocons and mercantilists who are attempting to force a consensus in the scientific community through rewriting of government reports and funding biased private foundations. Once they are able to force a consensus and squash all independent thought in the scientific community, they hope to be able to push the government towards hypercapitalism and (eventually) all-out fascism. While I doubt there is a conspiracy in the classical sense, there are absolutely like-minded groups of people all pushing for similar goals. I, for one, am appalled of GW's suppression of real hard science, and the death of independent thought that the "Consensus Antiintellectualism" would bring us.
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...
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?
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.
Ah, to hell with mod points. Flame wars are fun.
"Where I learned the information is irrelevant to the content of the argument."
True. And since your argument is empty, devoid of rationality, counter current science, unsupported, and done in the spirit of riling people up, it is irrelevant. Go drown in a flooding.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Gmmf! Mmm Hrwrgfmffmmmmmf! Hrmwrmng!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You can, however, predict that an increase in CO2 will produce an increase in temperature and vice versa, to a limited extent. (Too much change produces nonlinear feedbacks.) If you had even bothered to read what I provided for you, you would have seen that having a large polar land mass and a continent that stretches between the poles as we have today is an essential ingredient to ice ages. I am trying to imagine why you believe that is relevant to global warming, even if it were true. (Incidentally, there have been plenty of ice ages with the continents as they are now.) Or how it contradicts my statements (e.g., that a drop in CO2 can precipitate ice ages, and increases can end them). The only man-made activity that might change that is the Panama canal. Once again, what is your point? That manmade activity can't produce ice ages? (And no, the Panama canal will not change that.) You cannot possibly be suggesting that a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales knows more about the climate than a research professor and State Climatologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Fine. Just ignore Hansen, Schmidt, and all the other rebuttals too. Whatever it takes to preserve your worldview. Put in random data, still get a hockey stick. So, your response is to ignore the flaws in their analysis and repeat your original claim. "I don't need facts! I know the truth!" That's some devastating logic there.