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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
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
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.
- "(a) Al Gore believes in global warming. (b) Al Gore is a liberal. Thus global warming is a liberal conspiracy"
- "Today it's cold where I live, hence global warming is a fraud"
- "There's a non-zero chance that humanity isn't causing global warming, so we shouldn't worry"
- "I like warm weather, so I don't care"
- "Climatologists are just fishing for more grants, which they want to steal out of my pockets"
- "They can't predict the weather next week, so they sure as hell can't predict how it will be 50 years from now"
- "The Apocalypse will happen before, or is related to global warming, so everything is alright"
The scary thing is that most of the conservatives I know are otherwise quite science-literate and often accept the science communities consensus views. I'd say it's very healthy to be sceptical, but on this issue there's much more to it. Something I can't explain.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.
I read the other replies to your post and I find it funny that 3 out of the 4 were people that have no idea why people might not like the Green agenda, but they sure do have an axe to grind with their preconceived notions of the Republican party.
As a Republican, let me present a few points:
1. Historically, the peers of scientists have presented political agenda's by cloaking them in jargon and supporting studies. Examples include Paul Erhlich, Rachel Carlson, Al Gore (with much support by the scientific community.) and whoever that guy was who predicted the worst hurricane season in 50 yrs for 2006.
2.The argument is hardly, if ever, presented in a logical, coherent manner. Usually, it consists of a list of demands that (coincidentally?) line up with socialists and communists. See: the Kyoto protocol. It attempts to impose an aggressively progressive tax code on emissions, and consumption. If we don't like progressive taxes already, what makes you think that we'd like that sort of 'productivity punishment' applied to our country?
3.The alternatives are hardly tenable at this point:
a. Mass transport: Due to the size, shape, and demographic dispersion it is untenable for the majority of American metropolis'.
b. Buy everyone new electric cars. For one, manufacturing all those new cars just uses more energy and produces more emissions. So people proposing that are asinine at best.
c. Everyone should bike or walk to work. Sorry, American not as small nor as densely populated as you may believe. See 3a
d.Solar power: Great, spend a crapload of cash and maybe make your money back. In Oklahoma, your chances of those panels paying for themselves are very probably slim. Gets worse as you go north. For the American SouthWest, they are probably a good investment.
e. Windmill farms: Even the Greenies are confused on this one. Build'em but can't run them at full capacity because they chop up birds. (Maybe the birds will figure out that the windmill farm isn't such a great place to hang out.) Ted Kennedy opposed a windmill farm off of Martha's Vineyard as it would've obstructed their view.
So, if the environmentalists got together and started presenting tenable solutions to our problems, then they might get more reception. For me, I understand that there's global warming, might be anthropogenic, might not... (not's seem to be getting slimmer) but until someone proposes a real idea on how to deal... we'll just deal in the way we always have. Adapt.
Note: One of our saving graces could've been nuclear power, but the greenies shot that down too. Sucks that South Africa is using american developed technology in a pebble bed reactor. Look at the CA power crisis, while part of it was caused by collusion on the part of energy traders, it was enabled by CA's stance on building new plants. In fact, the newest power plant to provide CA with power was just built in NV. NIMBY-ism has killed several things that could make the world a more efficient place, but finding a backyard to put "it" in is rather difficult.
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?
An ideal democracy would have a couple more links:
Scientists study, and publish their findings.
The media impartially reports the findings based on the quality and the importance of the report.
The public considers the findings reported by the media, and elect, impeach, recall, vote in referendums and plebiscites, etc. as necessary.
When necessary, elected officials legislate directly on behalf of their constituents to solve the problem.
Industry accepts the legislation gracefully.
Here's how I think it actually works:
Scientists are pressured by the government and the corporations to change their findings; most report them anyway.
The media gives equal weight to minority positions on the issue because they want to pretend to be 'fair and balanced', and because they might be owned by a corporation that also has interests in the energy industry. If not, they certainly get lots of advertising revenue from said industry.
The public, mostly unaware of the problem, don't think they can really do anything anyway.
Politicians avoid the issue out of fear of losing campaign financing from oil corporations.
Corporations put ads on TV that give people the impression that they care about the issue, and should be trusted to do the right thing.
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?
3.The alternatives are hardly tenable at this point:
a. Mass transport: Due to the size, shape, and demographic dispersion it is untenable for the majority of American metropolis'.
Never been to NYC, I guess. Millions of people every day use mass transit. A large percentage of city dwellers have no car. Every American metropolis has some mass trasport. As roads become too crowded they are forced to provide more mass transit for immediately practical purposes. Your argument is simply false.
b. Buy everyone new electric cars. For one, manufacturing all those new cars just uses more energy and produces more emissions. So people proposing that are asinine at best.
Electric cars have less parts and are less complex. On a large scale and as technology progresses we will use far less energy to produce them. Your argument ignores progress over time.
c. Everyone should bike or walk to work. Sorry, American not as small nor as densely populated as you may believe. See 3a
See China. Not everyone needs to bike or walk, but easily half of the population can as they live in dense areas. You assume this argument is black and white. But if just the SUV drivers in metropolitan areas switched to bikes we'd have less traffic and save a lot of energy.
d.Solar power: Great, spend a crapload of cash and maybe make your money back.
First, protecting the environment isn't about making your money back. It's about having a habitable planet for our kids. Second, you ignore technological progress over time. Every year solar is getting more efficient.
e. Windmill farms: Even the Greenies are confused on this one. Build'em but can't run them at full capacity because they chop up birds.
You're way behind on this one. The largest, slowest moving turbines do not kill any birds. Problem solved.
By your logic we shouldn't have telephones because it's a lot of work to put up the wires. And we shouldn't have electricity because the up-front cost to build the initial generators is so high. All of your points are narrow. They ignore the big picture, ignore some very important details, assume everything is all-or-nothing, and ignore technological progress.
You set a great example as a Republican.
Developers: We can use your help.