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Scientists Threatened For "Climate Denial"
Forrest Kyle writes "A former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg has received multiple death threats for questioning the extent to which human activities are driving global warming. '"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor. "I can tolerate being called a skeptic because all scientists should be skeptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal." Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [...] recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science."'"
If he's trying to clear his name, he's doing a bad job of it.
I found an article by him in which I hoped to hear his logic and reasoning against global warming.
He claims it is just a natural cycle. That he's seen two of these in his career and he'll see one more before he dies. If his "death threat" was someone saying that he won't see temperature returning to normal before he dies, I don't think it was a death threat.
I can't find a formal report of his research but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If this is his argument, he leaves out a lot of things that need to be explained to me before I let it go. Like, why are polar bears suddenly on the endangered species list? What's happening to all the snow on the tops of mountains? Where are the ice glaciers (with ice that has been around for thousands if not millions of years) going? What is his retort to the CO2 levels being their highest ever--even after looking at ice core samples?
His article only mentions a professor from MIT but not what his criticisms are.
If their work is being derided, I want to know what their work is. I'm a skeptic also, if these people are being published in newspapers, you would think that they wouldn't waste their time on death threats and counter-counter-criticisms but would instead try to get the truths they have been finding in their research out to the public. If you're conducting good science that, in and of itself, will clear your name in the end.
The more I search for information on Timothy Ball, the more he seems like he's playing just as dirty as the people he's fighting. Check out his lawsuit for a journal publishing a letter. I feel we're not hearing the full story here.
When I'm at work and I enter situations in which someone is decrying someone else and vice versa, I just present everyone with facts. If I had done research and I received death threats, I would submit to major newspapers two things: my research published with permission to reprint it & the death threats in their original form. Nothing could boost my efforts to get the truth out there more. The fact that I see a PhD and scientist spending more time saying his life is in danger than presenting me with his findings tells me a lot about what his motives are.
He was published, I guess in Ecological Complexity which I do not have access to. If anyone has papers from his work, I would love to see it--otherwise I'm going to tune this soap opera out as emotional noise in what should be a stoic process.
Question everything. Question both sides. And if you have something that is true, present it. I'm not calling him a liar, I just can't call him anything right now because all I can find are stories about who called who what.
My work here is dung.
This really begs the question: are the climate scientists who dissent really tools for corporations or are the climate scientists who advocate (consent to global warming caused by man) really tools for government/special interest groups?
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from oil companies to speak at conferences full of other climate change deniers.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
from the original article... " the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored. "
---- mike simaska
Billions of people in Bangladesh, India and China will lose their homes and be forced to illegally migrate to other countries because of the climate "scientists" who deny global warming is happening.
But that's the practical side of it.
Ignore the hurricanes, tsunamis flooding Bangladesh, and the loss of island nations worldwide, if you must. But don't call your "belief" science.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Saying "we will not debate this" accomplishes nothing. All science is up for debate. If the science is solid, it will withstand all criticisms, no matter how ludicrous.
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This raises the larger question...At what point do you stop funding the scientists investigating that the Earth is flat? At some point, the evidence becomes overwhelming and those who ignore it really are 'deniers'. I'm not sure about this particular scientist, but a lot of those skeptics are funded by the very corporations who have a vested interest in doing nothing. For how long was there a group of scientist who claimed that cigarette smoking could not be linked to any negative health effect data?
This guy actually believes he's targeted for death? When scientists on his side of the spectrum start dying off mysteriously, I'll care.
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These guys are back public eye because they recently appeared in a UK Channel4 documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Basically a rehash of all the outdated silly arguments you've heard a thousand times before. You can read the RealClimate response here if you like.
But that's pretty boring, science type stuff. What's much more fun is watching the right-wing contingent defending this piece of crap, proclaiming its truth and accuracy, when the film was produced by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party! Regular contributors to the RCP's journal, "Living Marxism" no less.
What an interesting meeting of minds.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792 811497638&hl=en
It covers both the politicization of the issue, and many scientific facts ignored by global warming films.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The why become very important when it comes to "fixing" whatever the problem may be.
If your house is on fire because your fuel oil tank is leaking and shorting out an electric line, water is probably a very bad solution, at least until you've turned off the power and done something to contain the oil.
Somebody denied that C02 is a greenhouse gas?
Straw man.
people deriding them when they complain about 'both sides of the argument not being heard'. 'both sides of the argument being heard' implies that there is equal support/strength on both sides, which is simply not the case in this issue. The overwhelming consensus on this issue is that climate change is a phenomena brought about chiefly by societies burning of fossil fuels.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
Ben Hocking
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... it's that the dissent is being irresponsibly over-exaggerated and manipulated by certain parties (namely the Bush administration). It's somewhat similar to holocaust or evolution denials. It's not a problem, perhaps even healthy, that there is dissent. However, if decision-makers start cherry-picking oddball positions to further their policy (like the Bush administration on the environment or evolution and Iran on the holocaust) then you have a problem. The problem is with the decision-makers, not the various individuals expressing their thoughts.
Almost all of the skeptics or deniers only deny or are skeptical about the _cause_ of global warming, not the fact that the planet is indeed warming.
/. likes to attack these same people for not seeing things their way. It is commonplace here to attack and mod down people who present other or counter evidence, no matter how valid it may be. The media has successfully nullified the scientific process when it comes to global warming. The media and political interests are causing global warming to be such a polarizing issue that any one person, or entity looking to present evidence counter to the what the media/politicians feed us, is going to think twice. The implications of publishing an article/paper counter to what many believe to be true are far reaching and could end your career.
:) )
Like many others areas of the world/media,
All I hope for is that the scientific process can be saved from the media in the future when issues like this come up. By that I mean issues that demand action based on conclusive scientific evidence of a problem. We could all certainly be wrong about global warming and if you do not at least concede that, then you too, are contributing to the fall of one of, if not the most important advancement of our modern society, the scientific process. (Sanitation puts up a good fight for #1
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While vacationing in Canada, I spotted a newspaper story that I hadn't seen in the United States. For no apparent reason, the state of California, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have dragged Lindzen and about 15 other global- warming skeptics into a lawsuit over auto- emissions standards. California et al . have asked the auto companies to cough up any and all communications they have had with Lindzen and his colleagues, whose research has been cited in court documents.
...
"We know that General Motors has been paying for this fake science exactly as the tobacco companies did," says ED attorney Jim Marston. If Marston has a scintilla of evidence that Lindzen has been trafficking in fake science, he should present it to the MIT provost's office. Otherwise, he should shut up.
"This is the criminalization of opposition to global warming," says Lindzen, who adds he has never communicated with the auto companies involved in the lawsuit. Of course Lindzen isn't a fake scientist, he's an inconvenient scientist. No wonder you're not supposed to listen to him.
Inspite of what you may believe, there is a politicaly motivated movement to ensure that scientists that do not agree with the Global Warming Consensus are not heard
How about you ask some of these people about whether there is not political agenda:
Dr. Christopher Landsea:
Leading expert in the field of hurricanes and tropical storms.
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
- resigned as an author of the IPCC 2007 report, released earlier this month stating the IPCC was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound."
- wrote a lengthy and detailed open letter to his scientific colleagues explaining why he was withdrawing from helping to author the report.
- "I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized." - "In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concer
Find one by an actual climatologist and not by an author who has also warned us about the "summer of the shark". The truth is that during this global cooling scare manufactured by Time and Newsweek, real scientists were already doing research on global warming.
It's the height of ignorance to believe otherwise. If you don't trust environmentalists, perhaps you'll believe what Lindzen himself has said:
Ben Hocking
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If you don't believe him, all you have to do is to look back at ANY Slashdot article on global warming in the last 5 years to see an incredible amount of vitriol and hate directed at those like myself who are highly skeptical of "Global Warming" as a man-made phenomena.
We are called "Deniers", fools, idiots, trolls, tools, apologists for "big oil", ignorant, and any number of insults that you can imagine. Our intelligence is derided, our ability to research and think critically is questioned and our honesty is doubted. We are treated much like those who "insult Islam" are treated by Muslims. With disrespect, derision, and hatred. That some of the eco-religious would choose to "take it to the next level" with death threats is NOT SURPRISING AT ALL.
There are many many scientists, not funded by big-oil, who seriously doubt or outright disagree with the conclusion reached by a few high-profile scientists in regards to the veracity of man-made global warming. Many of them have signed on to a petition that states:
You can see the petition online here: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p37.htm
and a scientific abstract that further explains their position here: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
Their science is sound, and after doing my due-diligence I agree with them. I will not be shouted down by eco-religious fanatics or ideological thugs, and neither will these scientists.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
It is a BS story by a small group of Bush lovers up here in Canada. The "professor" has a PHD in geography, not climate science, and has written no papers on the topic of climate.
a tor-strikes-again.html
http://canadiancynic.blogspot.com/2007/03/ejankul
I'm not a climatologist, but I am a scientist, and some of these responses (and indeed, responses all over the place) are scaring me. Global warming is not the issue. There's a very clear trend of increasing global temperatures, you can check meteorological websites and see it. There's also a very clear trend of an increase in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, even just since they started recording it, to say nothing of what it might have been 100 or 200 years ago.
The argument is whether the global warming that we see in hard data is caused by humans. There's a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperature, but as any Pastafarian can tell you, correlation does not equal causation. That's what people should be arguing about. We KNOW temperatures are increasing, what we don't know (and it's one of those things that might be impossible to prove, as so many things are in science) is whether these increases are caused by us. If they are, then we might possiblly be able to reverse them given reductions in CO2 output and carbon sequestering. If they aren't, then rising CO2 probably isn't helping and should still be reversed, and we might also look into other solutions for it.
The Earth has cycled between hot and cold for its entire existence, and we don't know why. It might be life, it might be the planet's internal processes, it might be the Maunder Minimum.
Anyone denying that the planet is heating is living with their head up their butt. Anyone denying that the heating is caused by humans is simply skeptical, and has good reason to be. Anyone convinced that the warming of the planet is caused by humans is too credulous and should always remember that science is falsifiable and therefore can never be certain.
Evil will always win, because Good is DUMB
Actually, we've not "ruined Eden".
What most people fundamentally miss, is concern at the current _extremely rapid_ climate change (it's not questioned that the climate is always changing for various reasons) is not concern about "saving the planet" by saving ourselves. Concern about whether humans are causing rapid climate change (which there are now mountains of evidence in favour of) is _self interest_. The Sun has another five or six billion years of main sequence, and if we act like bacteria in a petri dish - living in an unsustainable manner until either the environment no longer favours our species, or that the resources are used up - in that period of time, the Earth will shrug it off. 100 million years is nothing to the Earth.
We are the first species who can actually predict the course of our actions, and actually stop the disaster from happening in the first place. Concern about this very rapid climate change is all about preserving our technological society. We only have one shot at at - the easy to get at resources are all now gone, so if this society collapses, there cannot be another industrial revolution (at least, not for 100 million years or so).
So the choice is: live sustainably and save ourselves, or don't live sustainably, and doom civilization. The Earth doesn't care either way, the Earth will just shrug us off in what is the short term for the planet - if we doom ourselves, in a couple of hundred million years you'll have to dig for fossils to even tell that humans even existed.
It's clear that we both need to adapt _AND_ we need to find a way to live sustainably. Even if it turns out to be entirely false that human emissions are the main factor in the rapidly changing climate (which is unlikely), resource exhaustion is still a future problem that must be tackled. Living sustainably will solve both problems, and it doesn't mean we all go back to an Edwardian lifestyle either if we engage our brains (and sadly, as a species, we act no more intelligently than bacteria on a petri dish). I think ultimately, if our society survives it'll be luck rather than good planning (luck - as in resources become increasingly scarce at a slow enough rate that the market can force the move to alternatives, at a speed which won't cause economic collapse).
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Scientists should be skeptical. It is only under much scrutiny and skepticism that the truth can be truly known. Petty tactics against skeptics only serve to make the more popular global warming theories appear as dogma rather than real science.
Coming from an ecology based formation at the university, i have learned some principles of ecological research.
The first thing that needs to be understood is that ecology "scientists" need funding for their research (which is more often than not government-funded).
They NEED their research to make an impact in order to receive further funding for more research.
In ecology, you never have an "absolute numerical value" to your results. You will obtain a "range" of values, the minimal of that range being the "best-case scenario" and the maximum "the worst-case scenario".
Now in a research, you always "summarize" your results in the intro and/or in the conclusion of your report. In ecology, the "summary" always ONLY include the worst case scenarios.
Remember that they need to create an impact. Saying "all is normal" won't grant them further funding for additional researchs. In a sense, it even put their work as "useless".
It's the reason why today, we are hearing a lot less about the "ozone layer". In the 80s and early 90s, the problem was on the news everywhere all the time. Now we barelly even hear about it. See, the ozone layer is currently slowly re-building according to other researchs. Scientists gave the worst case scenario and what has been observed by others comes down to the fact that the problem wasn't as big as observed.
I strongly suspect the same thing with the green-house effect and rising temperatures. When a day is anormaly high (even if not even record-breaking) or if there are a higher number of typhoons and tornados (even if not record breaking) media are quick to "blame it on rising temperatures".
It's the ecological disaster of the decade... it's shocking... it's what the media wants, it's what the reserchers want as it's basically a ticket to funding.
Now comes another researcher that looks at it from a different perspective and comes to the conclusion that the worst case scenario is improbable and tends on the other side of the spectrum, where the "problem" is actually normal climate variation in the long term.
His views contradict the majority of other reserchers and invalidates some of what they are saying.
If they can't discredit his methodology, they'll discredit his research itself. Fail that, they will discredit the researcher himself.
I've read multiple catastrophe-scenarios over a number of ecological studies.
- In the 80s, i've read that if we continued to cut down trees at the speed we were doing, that no more trees would exist on the planet by 2010. It won't be the case.
- I've read in older studies that no petrolum would exist in the world by 2005. It was not the case.
- I've read that California would dissapear by 2000 from earthquakes. Did not happen.
- I've read that New York will be submerged by rising sea water by 2020. I doubt it will be the case.
There IS a problem with rising temperatures. The problem however is NOT what you are led to beleive by ecologists.
The lesson i've learned when listening to ecologists and catastrophe scenarios is:
Take their numbers, divide by 3 to 4, make an approximation of what the REAL problem is.
The lack of drinkable water in some countries (even the U.S. is lacking in some of it's regions) is a more urgent problem than rising temperatures. But it isn't as popular, hence it does not bring enough money...
Think about it,
Specialists in hydrology, climatology, ecology, oceanology, geology and almost all the other "...gy" discipline can gain funding if their researchs include "rising temperatures" in them.
Conclusion,
I don't know anything about this particular researcher or his studies. But he has raised an interesting point: you CAN be placed aside, discredited and have your funding CUT if you go against the ideas of the majority of other researchers.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Bal l
Dr. Timothy Ball is Chairman and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). [1] Two of the three directors of the NRSP - Timothy Egan and Julio Lagos - are executives with the PR and lobbying company, the High Park Group (HPG). [2] Both HPG and Egan and Lagos work for energy industry clients and companies on energy policy. [3]
Ball is a Canadian climate change skeptic and was previously a "scientific advisor" to the oil industry-backed organization, Friends of Science. [4] Ball is a member of the Board of Research Advisors of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian free-market think tank which is predominantly funded by foundations and corporations. [5]
The links to PR companies is what bothers me. PR companies have studied and refined group psychology for decades, centuries even if you look at how it evolved from greek study of rhetoric, and it has even gotten us into wars like the 1st gulf war ( http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html ). They make Hitler's propaganda team look ineffecient in comparison. Stalin would be envious of them. Having observed PR campaigns for decades, this is a very high level and well funded campaign. I see their tactic - attacking global warming advocates as emotional and vindictive. Basically taking the science out of global warming and turning themselves into victims, because everyone likes a victim. I wish I wasn't so skeptical and negative but having seen PR companies in action, this has all the hallmarks of a PR campaign. The best PR goes unnoticed, it's not obvious to those uniniatied in PR tactics, but it is most definitely happening.
I personally only want to see peer reviewed data, nothing else matters. The PR companies want to take this to the people rather than to the journals.
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While I am concerned about the future of our planet and our species' place upon it, I am growing increasingly sceptical of the wild claims surrounding a looming global warming catastrophe.
My main area of surprise and shock was learning that past concentrations of carbon dioxide were much higher than they are today, as revealed in the interview below:
RES: Professor Robert E. Sloan, Department of Geology, University of Minnesota
JC: Dr Joe Cain, interviewer
I have come to learn that these past carbon dioxide concentrations have been documented in peer-reviewed research journals:
My interest in past CO2 concentrations began by reading a (somewhat) more partisan summary of this information:
I have also seen a great rejection of the global warming panic in the scientific community (it is unlikely that "big oil" funds have "bribed" so many faculty members of such prestigous universities):
And I have also seen a growing political backlash against scientifically-unfounded runaway global warming panic:
When I see interviews such as
Does he? Oh, yeah. He gets grant money from the NSF, NASA, and the DOE. Yeah, no grant money there.
You get grant money for doing novel research - not for toeing the line. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never applied for a grant.
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I guess the problem really narrows down to whether it's fixable or not. If it's human-caused, or has a human component, then reducing emissions may slow the change down. If there's only a small human component, or none at all, then we're going to have to deal with the consequences. In fact, even if it's all human-caused, maybe we've gone beyond the point of no return, and our ability to impact climate change will be minimal.
What strikes me, though, is that going to renewable forms of energy and curbing our appetite for fossil fuels are, regardless of climate, good things. We are contributing billions of dollars into unfriendly and unstable states in a region that has demonstrated itself not exactly to be a good friend to the West. Though we've gotten better in this part of the world, we're still dumping a lot of crap into the ecosphere.
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Given the vitriol I've witnessed, I have no doubt that people doing work that might contradict greenhouse-gas driven anthropogenic global warming receive all sorts of threats and probably funding problems. Surely anyone who put their name out there as an anthropogenic global warming critic is going to receive threats from loonies, and surely there are at least some anthropogenic global warming critics who's research is being de-funded, but that doesn't mean the two are related. Their research could be being de-funded because it's bad research.
It seems to me that anyone who wants to be civil about the debate over global warming (rather than taking up arms in a useless flame-war) needs to look at one thing; peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Likewise, to make the case regarding political bias affecting research into global warming, what one needs to look at is submitted papers and grant proposals. Let's not hear one side complain about how they're being repressed; let's see evidence of repression. Do you have a history of quality research, and had your quality grant proposal rejected because the research you proposed could contradict the theory of anthropogenic global warming? If so, put the information out there for people to judge. Did you submit a quality research paper to journals, only to have it rejected due to political bias, not the quality of the paper? Put it out there. The laymen might not be able to evaluate all this on their own, but there are still plenty of unbiased scientists and organizations that would review these cases carefully if these claims were advanced with appropriate evidence.
Is research being suppressed? I don't know, it wouldn't surprise me either way, given how politicized this topic is. But if they want to make a case for it, the thing that they need that's been lacking so far is substantial evidence.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Stop with the " global warming is a political agenda driven conclusion" crapola like this. It's totally unacceptable. The mechanism for carbon dioxide IR trapping has been known since 1935 and it's not up for debate.
It's statements like this that drives home how much global warming is a political agenda. It's totally unacceptable for scientists to have locked believes in a theory. They are supposed to constantly question, experiment and update their theories. After 2-3 decades they are only now somewhat certain that the Earth is in a heating tread. There is debate on the causes, and it may take another 2-3 decades to even start answering them. There are alot of folks that just want to say humans caused it now we should fix it. That may or may not be true. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that we need more study.
Causality 2: Do you deny that?
(Implied) Causality 3: Do you deny that?
Where is this "correlation" that you're describing? I'm talking causes.
Do a google search on "Ben Hocking". I'm not a back seat scientist. I might not be that credentialed, but I do have an MS in astrophysics, a Masters of Computer Science and I will soon have a Ph.D. in CS. I've also published several articles in Journal of Neuroscience and have written two grant proposals to the NIH. What are your credentials?
Skeptics are great - they look for the truth. Pseudo-skeptics who only look to prove their preconceived ideas or try to make themselves look smart give real skeptics a bad name.
Ben Hocking
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He never said such a thing. The exact quote from the article is:
All the connotations of. The word denier (when refering to those who deny) is uncommon, as is usually used as a strong term.
Anyway, the word itself, to many, does indeed carry sucha reference. Just now i googled denier, and the second line (first entry, first sub-entry) was a Holocaust reference in Wikipedia.
IMNSHO, a denier, when referring to one who denies, is nearly always predicated with what is being denied. On its own, however, it would refer to a famous topic that has famous incidents of deniers. One such case, and to many nearly the only case, would be the Holocaust.
Have you read my journal today?
Loads of climatologists said it was mostly down to the sun. It's on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6IPHmJWmDk
Deleted
Color me skeptical, but I don't think you're entirely accurate. I've been skeptical in global warming posts on Slashdot before, and there's usually at least one guy who suggests that I'm in denial and that it's people like me who are going to destroy the planet. I'm interested in the truth, and I'm not above listening to someone who suggests that this is part of a natural cycle. Think of our mean temperature like the angle of a pendulum. As we add more CO2 to the air it acts to drive the pendulum of temperature. That is not what is in question. What is in question is the extent of the driving.
That is where I'm skeptical, but I usually get accused of ignoring the whole issue. Thankfully I haven't been referred to in the same light as a holocaust denier.
Global warming is an extremely emotionally charged issue for a lot of people because of the impact it will have on our future if we do nothing and it turns out the driving from the CO2 results in us cooking the civilization off the face of the planet.
SRSLY.
Interesting coincidence.
Sincerely, Holden Yourass, M.D. (proctology)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm glad we established what the truth is, I wish people would just hurry up and declare what the truth is about everything so we can stop wasting time thinking about these things. But seriously, why shouldn't you challenge things that are considered the truth? If it is really true then it will stand on its own merits. I just think of all the ridiculous notions that have been considered "common sense" over the ages. I'm glad those thuths were challenged. As far as people getting angry. It has nothing to do with how much they know, it is how emotionally invested they have become. A top brain will get just as angry as a dim wit when the ideas they have invested much of their lives on get challenged and they feel vulnerable.
Landsea is the only one of your sources under 65. I think he's a credible scientist, but he only works on hurricanes and isn't skeptical about the overall phenomenon of global warming. Even if he's 100% right, the other impacts of global warming (sea level rise, drought, famine) are worse.
The fact that you're bringing out Seitz, who was completely senile by the time the oil companies were putting his name on press releases, discredits you completely.
Lindzen thinks that the earth's climate is warming with 98% certainty. He would only take a 50-1 bet against it.
Tim Ball has never worked on climate change, has no quantitative ability, and is basically obsolete. He sues his critics for telling the truth about him.
Is that the best you can do? Your denialist sources suck.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=900556679
The movie was produced by the BBC4 and is titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It shows an honest, reasoned response to the Global Warming Scare on a point-by-point basis from scientists and at least one journalist. The scientists all have credentials out the whazoo and are recognized leaders and contributors in their respective fields. A few of them have their names on the IPCC report (the report the Warmingistas always cite) and one has even sued to have his name taken off the document.
Particularly chilling (no pun intended) is the part that shows how the IPCC policy-wonks have redacted the IPCC report to remove comments from the scientists that explicitly state there is no proveable link between man-made CO2 and global warming.
As a technical person, I have always suspected the "consensus" results "proving" man-made Global Warming have been primarily a political scam. For one thing, science rarely (if ever) deals in absolutes, and complex models always deal in probabilities rather than yes/no answers. Further, as an undergraduate engineer, I spent plenty of time in college science labs doing experiments to acquaint myself with the scientific method. Working in simple straight-forward conditions:
- Indoor lab,
- Properly calibrated equipment,
- One simple, universally-accepted equation,
- One single variable,
we (me and all the other undergraduates) never got an exact match between the equations and the real world. There was always a fudge-factor. This experience has taught me that anyone who thinks scientists can model the entire world and get every equation and every theoretical assumption correct (down to a degree Celcius with no fudge-factor) is either ignorant or just a shill. They have the kind of faith that would put any religious bigot to shame.If we keep on this fossil fueled path we're going to choke to death on our own smoke.
Depends on what was done about it, but I can't help thinking "better safe than sorry." When our greatgrandchildren look back on this time 100 years from now, I'd rather them laugh at our paranoia (or whatever you might call incorrect and alarmist views on climate change) than lament our complacency.
How about them cursing you for having trashed the economy so their standard of living is far below that of your time - and no resources are available for solving whatever the REAL problems of their day are - while instituting a global totalitarian repression to accomplish the "better safe" goals?
Kyoto alone talks about cutting the global economy by about a third for an "improvement" predicted (even by its advocates) to be too small to measure.
What good is insurance if you spend so much on it that you have nothing left to live on? Don't you think you need to actually do enough research to have some confidence in the results before instituting such costly measures?
Don't you think you should at LEAST get the models working to the point that they actually track the historic record of global temperature before taking draconian measures based on their predictions of the future?
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That said, it does not matter why it's warming.
It does if you mean to change it.
Put aside the whole "consensus" crap for a moment and think about this. Assume for sake of discussion the following:
1) Earth is warming
2) Mankind has had zero impact on it
If you wish to make an impact, you have a large hurdle in that you've not been able to make any despite believing you have. If the warming is entirely natural, then all the changes you thought we had made to the climate did not happen and all of your science, models, theories about how to stop it are completely incorrect (as if they are now) and useful only as a list of "well this didn't make a difference". Useful, yes but not in the frame of making things different. You'd have a roughly equal chance of making it worse if you could impact it at all.
Furthermore, if it is entirely natural, or that man's impact is statistically and demonstrably zero in effect, then where we should focus our efforts in coping with the natural cycle is in adjusting ourselves to the new climate.
It also matters what the cause is in another area. If Mankind didn't cause it, then the political and moral force of a lot of environmental regulations are dropped in the crapper. It is one of the reasons I've been advocating making changes for reasons that have nothing to do with GW. There are plenty of non-GW caused changes we should be making that we do not. By tying nearly the whole of emissions control, fuel economy, and so forth to anthropogenic GW, the entire foundation could and would fall like a house of cards if/when it is determined that lo and behold we humans didn't do it. It's a dangerous position to build upon. Particularly since the anthropogenic part is not fully finished and certain. No, consensus does not mean correctness. As mentioned elsewhere, scientists have in the majority been completely wrong before.
The cause of global warming is all theory, not fact. In science, theories must be falsifiable in order to stand a chance at validity. Where is the falsifiability of AGW? How does one prove humans did not cause GW? How does one prove that solar forcing, or orbital changes, or any other "natural" causes were no the source, at that a combination of them?
In truth, we can't without experimentation. Models do not count. They are not proven accurate enough to even be considered as experimentation. This problem is taking hold in more places than climatology. Models and other computer simulations are not a valid substitute for confirmational experiments. So how does one conduct actual experiments? The same way we always have. But it does require more than hiring a programmer to make a program that takes your inputs and spits out an output according to a list of algorithms.
It means building environments and validating the theories that make up the portions of the whole. It means taking these and integrating the portions into larger experiments. Yes, that means bigger laboratories and more "hard thought". But hey isn't this supposed to be important enough to justify that? If you can't build it up, you can't say you truly understand it.
There has yet to be a single GW model that has been demonstrated to accurately model the past climate changes, let alone today's alleged ones. As such no model on climate today is valid evidence of anything other than programming and money being spent. Today's climate models are no more valid than a Simcity or Civlizations game is.
I've been researching climate effects for a couple decades with the express desire to create a warming climate condition. The first model I played with was in the 1980's. The model can output pretty much what you want it to. Any halfway decent programmer knows that. They area gross simplification built upon a chosen set of rules. All of them. ANyone that tries to tell you otherwise is ignorant of the sheer complexity of our climate. Even small scale climates are non-trivial. If you want to make your model accurate you need to have a repeatable
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
OK, I'll bite.
They deny the truth.
Scientists don't tend to use words like "truth" for theories that are not readily shown by experimental evidence. And sometimes even when they can be.
For example, general relativity can be experimentally demonstrated in a range of contexts. Most scientists believe that the theory is accurate, but there are still a lot who wouldn't use the word "true," simply because it may not be true on all scales, or it may turn out that GR is a good description of one area of a larger theory (e.g., Newtonian mechanics aren't strictly "true" -- but they're a damn fine approximation in most contexts). You still see some interesting discussion on this stuff in the dark matter debate, although the GR/dark matter side is increasingly looking like it's going to win out on this one.
Your divisive and dismissive language ("pseudo-skeptics") doesn't actually get us anywhere. Setting yourself up as judge over which skepticism is warranted and which is not a scientific approach -- this is the model of a Religion, where there is acceptable dogma and unacceptable dogma. Show me the errors in their logic or explain why their experiments are inaccurate, don't call them names.
Disclaimer: I am a scientist by training, even if I don't work as one now. I am an environmentalist. I'm a skeptic. I've seen evidence that supports the theory that there is global warming. I haven't seen compelling evidence in either direction on the anthropogenic question. Having done computer modeling of physical systems, I don't have deep trust of computer models of chaotic systems.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Now I don't know what kind of fancy science is involved in your degrees, given that I've but a humble MS in mechanical engineering (and only really specializing in the thermal/fluid sciences at that) but in engineering we try not to go from "clear evidence of human influences" to "complete agreement that it is primarily anthropogenic in nature".
Why did I mention that article? Because it's one of Legate's many papers which disputes the claim that the evidence is anywhere close to overwhelming. Legates does not insist that the climate is not warming, nor does he insist that humans cannot be causing it. He simply disputes the idea that the jury is out. A longtime friend of mine is a climatology Ph.D student who works with Legates. He stays current with climatology literature out of necessity, and the state of the peer reviewed literature is nowhere near where you seem to think it is.
And I neither know nor care why junkscience would host it, since I'm not particularly fond of herring. Especially red ones.
I'm not being sanctimonious, but I'm not going to waste my time watching some infomercial. Have you watched "An Inconvenient Truth" yet or are you too sanctimonious?
I already know that Steve McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick are not climatologists. Are any of them?
Prof. Tim Patterson: GeologistProf. Edward J Wegman: Statistician
Prof. Bob Carter: Marine Geophysicist
Dr. Willie Soon: Astrophysicist
Dr. Madhya Khandekar: ???
Prof. Wibjorn Karlen: Paleoclimatologist
Dr. Henrik Svensmark: Physicist
Dr. Dick Morgan: Law Professor?
Dr. Fred Goldberg: Physicist
Hans H.J. Labohm: Economist
Steve McIntyre: Mineralogist
Dr. Ross McKitrick: Economist
Dr. Chris Landsea: Meteorologist
OK. So I've had to do a lot of work to get one name. Prof. Karlen is a climatologist. So, what was his contribution? If I do a Scirus search, I don't find much, but perhaps I'm not searching on the right terms. He wrote a paper in 1973 on Holocene climatic variations and another in 2000 on high-altitude fresh waters.
Ahah. I did another Scirus search and found this article. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be anything there. I really wish I knew what he had written as every other article I can find only deals with the holocene. Although the title is suggestive, it wouldn't be the first time that what one would infer from a title did not agree with the conclusions.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The sad part is that you believe what you wrote.
Man-made CO2 represents 4% of the annual output of CO2 on the planet. 96% of all CO2 is generated by natural causes.
The Earth has gone through more massive changes in it's history than you seem to be capable of conceiving. CO2 levels have been as high as 7000ppm in the past. Yes, we have a bunch of arctic ice cores that may indicate CO2 levels have been mostly invariable in the past, but, as one PhD Chemist I know pointed out, "All that may be measuring is the level of CO2 dissolution in water at 0 degrees C." In other words, CO2 in ice is more likely to be the function of how well CO2 dissolves into ice water than any other mechanism like atmospheric density.
I'm not saying that there aren't some signs of warming, but I am highly skeptical of the supposed disastrous consequences.
Sea levels are "noticeably rising"? Not according to the 1841 sea level marking in Tasmania found here. Even the IPCC only claims a maximum of 15 millimeters over the 6000 year average. If you can see 2/3rds of an inch difference, more power to you, but calling it "Noticeably Rising" is a vast overstatement. The 2007 IPCC report is claiming a maximum rise of about 18 inches, or about the same as during the Medieval Climate Optimum. Al Gore is claiming 20 feet, but he also claims to have created the Internet...
Weather, overall, is not getting worse. The 1930's saw worse hurricanes then even the 2005 season. The difference being that now we can name storms 2,000 miles out to sea that never touch land, whereas, the 1930's used ships that passed storms in the ocean and very few storms were measured until land-fall. In fact, the largest hurricane (Typhoon Tip) occurred in 1979, in the midst of a "slow period". In 2005, the increase in Atlantic hurricanes was matched by a decrease in Pacific Typhoons (hurricanes), meaning that overall, the number barely increased. The link to storms and global warming is hotly debated.
In fact, were anthropogenic global warming a reality, we'd find that storm severity would decrease because storms are driven by the heat engine effect, namely the flow of heat from the equator towards the poles. Global Warming, as predicted by the models and climate scientists, indicates that the majority of warming occurs at the upper latitudes, with the largest increases at the poles. This means that the gradient of temperature from equator to poles would be less, and thus, the storms would decrease in severity. In fact, this was the prediction published in several papers up until about 1999, when they suddenly reversed themselves.
I could speculate that it was because they had seen a record storm year with the 1998 El Nino season, and they wanted to use the connection between strong storms and global warming to sell the science, but that would be a correlation vs. causation fallicy. Of course, in 2006, those same scientists predicted a "killer" Atlantic hurricane season, and not one single hurricane touched North American soil. (Yes, one storm was a hurricane when it approached Cuba, but by the time it made landfall it had been downgraded to a tropical storm.) Suddenly we were back to the climate scientists, and they actually said, "The reason we had so few hurricanes was because of global warming." So, now we have global warming if there's more hurricanes, global warming if there's less hurricanes, and, we must assume, global warming if there's no hurricanes. That's called non-falsifiable, and there's a name for its practice, but it's not science. The word is religion.
Is the Earth warming up? Satellite measurements continue to show, at most, a mild and limited warming, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, and mostly in the middle latitudes. Claiming that glaciers melting (which they are)
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
You can not reverse a non-linear chaotic system. Whenever you hear someone say otherwise you can not win the argument because you are arguing with emotion.
I would argue that there's also a logic problem that contributes to the rancor of the debate, which is that people who do not believe in anthropogenic GW are being asked to disprove the anthropogenic model.
But, to your point, it's also absolutely true that there are fanatics (on both sides) who are not interested in science or evidence or anything other than beating up on the "enemy." There are elements of both the anthropogenic model and the non-anthropogenic model that naturally fit in with wider world-views that stand in conflict. Throw in people who stand to profit (on either side), and we get the morass we're in. Little wonder it has become a very emotional issue.
Now the question is how do we get out of the swamp?
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
i find this notion fascinating -- I can't think of any other situation in which funneling research and development into more efficient and automated technology has resulted in anything other than economic progress. The entire western world is built on replacing the cheap, easy and obvious method of doing things with expensive but vastly more scalable and efficient technology.
Outlawing child labor didn't result in an energy or manufacturing crisis, it resulted in a more educated society while causing all the industries that relied on child labor to invest in better tools that wound up being MORE effective and profitable.
All that environmental concerns accomplish is to change the economic incentives so that the market has the motivation to cover the startup costs of technologies we know will be more productive in the long run anyways. Building more efficient and cleaner power plants and vehicles is a great idea that we know will benefit all aspects of the economy and society. So why not make it profitable for the market to move to that stage sooner rather than later?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
If you'd like to study climate change yourself, 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.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
So you've decided that there isn't enough evidence to support anthropogenic climate change. Fine. I'm not going to try to change your mind. But what's the solution being presented by most GW proponents? Reduce carbon emissions. How? By reducing our consumption of fossil fuels.
Can you think of *any* other benefits to reducing consumption of fossil fuels?
- conservation is cheaper than consumption
- reduce energy imports as a component of our trade imbalance
- reduce money going to states known to support terrorism either officially or unofficially
- provide incentives for alternative energy technology and production by American companies
- reduce air pollution
Is any (or all of them together) of those goals worth pursuing in its own right? Is there really any reason at all to be against reduction of dependence on fossil fuel energy *if you aren't in the fossil fuel industry*?
Mars (National Geographic): Pluto (MIT): Note: Pluto is currently moving away from the Sun. That it is warming indicates that something doesn't fit into the "Solar Constant" dismissal theories.
Jupiter (Space.com): Triton (MIT): Clearly, the oil industry must have infiltrated these august publications; or, these entities are all simply industry stooges. Because it cannot possibly be anything other than anthropogenic global warming is happening on Earth.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Even super-critical-of-Kyoto analyses put the GDP impact in 2010 (if we had adopted under Clinton) at 400 Bn, which is less than a third of projected 2010 GDP... and that calculation uses a base gas price of $1.10, with a Kyoto impact of about 0.40... since the base gas price is slightly less than double the $1.10, we can expect the impact (in the worst-case-scenario, without technological discoveries and improvements) to be significantly lower than the $400 Bn.
Furthermore, this 'study' totally ignores the economic positives associated with alternative source development -- it only looks at the negative impacts. Any wonder, since it was funded by the DoE, which is a stomping-ground for energy lobbyists?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I put them in the same category as "Creation Scientists" and Flat Earthers.
I seem to recall there was a time when the Round Earthers were the "nutjobs".
What scares me is how so many posts (and the scientific community) froth at the mouth like rabid dogs at anyone who is skeptical. So a couple of colleagues disagree...C'est la vie.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
"Professor" and "Phd" are not the same thing.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
a clear-cut list of factors from a group would be welcome.
Indeed. I've said this in discussions on the subject before, but it bears repeating: If vehicle emissions are 30% of the problem and power plant emissions are another 30% then its worth the investment to switch to nuclear power and electric cars. But what if they're 3% each and the solar wind interactions due to the Earth's falling magnetic field is responsible for 60% of the warming? If that was the case then changing our driving habits wouldn't make a whit of difference; we'd need to find some way to counteract the sun-related heating instead.
We owe it to ourselves and to the people we're asking to change their lifestyles to narrow down the possible causes in to the specific causes with their respective rates so that we ENGINEERS can develop reasonable solutions.
Let me put it another way. I accept the theory if evolution. Its not particularly good science but its the only science that explains where we came from; every other explanation is either untestable or has been disproven.
Nevertheless, if you told me that we needed to invest a trillion dollars in changes to prevent the evolution of the superbug that must be coming, I'd laugh you right out of the room. It doesn't warrant serious consideration. You want a hundred million to set up the CDC, okay, but don't sit there and tell me with a straight face that we have to reinvent society because something as flimsy as the theory of evolution predicts the emergence of a superbug.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Ball is a propagandist for "Natural Resources Stewardship Project", formerly for "Friends of Science". Both oxymoronically named groups, funded by carbon producing industry. They exist to lobby politicians and fund propaganda pieces. They don't exist to further extend knowledge.
Anyone threatening this lobbyist is playing into his hands and is thus an idiot. If there were real threats, they should be turned over to law enforcement and those behind them should be charged. We should go back to ignoring Ball.
Also skepticism is good. But most of these self identified "skeptics" are nothing more than propagandist who are clearly being disengenous much of the time, quoting the work of real scientist completely out of context in an attempt to fit the facts to the message they are paid to sell.
Case in point is the "Climate Swindle" program that is mentiond in the original article, that misrepresented Carl Wunschs views:
"
In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making --- which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.
"
Do emotions run high? Yes, because some of us are tired of being lied to by industry spin doctors. The issues here are important and we need real science to provide to most likely and realistic outcomes and best course of action. Paid lobbyist that are merely engaged in the process to inject a "Preach the controversy" message hard enough to ensure that no action gets taken are only a detriment.
BTW these guy attack the issue from any angle they can come up with. Recently Balls organization published a piece indicating that we are on a global gooling cycle in recent years (using 1998 as a base comparison). Do I need to point out the issues with that claim? This is not science it is propaganda that routinely misrepresents fact.
We shouldn't give this spin doctor any more attention and we shouldn't give him the label of skeptic which he certainly doesn't deserve. I imagine his favorite film is: "Thank you for smoking".
I think people are too materialistic so we should raise the prices on 50"+ big screen TVs and fancy cars. An extra tax would be good too. That way people would start thinking about being more like me for a change! That'll show 'em good.
You honestly think that pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere has no effect?
I'll assume you mean trillions or billions of tons. honestly pomping ten tons into the atmo of this planet has no effect on the planetary scale, no. Sure it does, do you honestly think it has one and only one effect, and that nothing else changes?
We know for a fact that increased CO2 means highly increased plant growth. Plant growth ranges from a 50% increase to a 100% increase with a 600ppm CO2 concentration on the low end - and for some like pine trees 170% or more increase in biomass at only 400ppm CO2. Plants store CO2 (as we all do). More plant life means more animal life. All of which pulls CO2 from the atmosphere. Further, there are additional effects that are tropospheric that are happening that counteract CO2's "effect" on temperature.
The question is what the *net* effect, if any, there is. If I piss in the ocean while swimming my local temperature will increase slightly for a short period of time, as will the salinity of my locale. But that doesn't mean the entire ocean suffers, or that my change is permanent or even long-term.
To give you an idea of the scale we are talking about, in 2000 the average estimated (yes, estimated, we don't know for fact) annual human carbon (CO2) output was 5.5Gt (giga-ton). The It is estimated that the atmosphere contains 750 Gt of carbon (CO2). All told the ocean is estimated at about 40,000Gt. Annually (according to bio-records) the ocean and atmosphere exchange about 240 Gt of carbon. Annually the surface vegetation (i.e. plant life) swaps some 60 Gt of carbon. That is an annual exchange of about 300Gt of carbon. If the exchange rates vary by as little as 1% the annual variance could be 3Gt/year. If a non-anthropogenic change in the natural carbon exchange rate occurred where the atmosphere picked up 2% more than usual, how would we know? We wouldn't. And that would be more than the estimated human contribution of about 3 Gt per year net.
So let us just explore a few thoughts here. If CO2 levels doubled, plant life could increase by 50% to 100% (assuming we let it) How much of the roughly 60Gt vegetation locked carbon would have to increase to soak up the difference? Just think about it.
It may suprise you to know but the likelihood is that the Earth's atmosphere is not so fragile as to be severely impacted by a 1% change. The anthropogenic GW proponents claim it is but provide no experimental or historical evidence of it. They also want to limit discussion of temperatures and levels of CO2 to only the last 100 years, and claim everything is based off of it. This is persisted despite knowing that in the longer history of the Earth that CO2 level increases have lagged warming by some 800 years. - www.realclimate.org even talks about this. If we take their comments about an 800 year lag (over a 5000 year warming period), and assume (they do not say otherwise last I knew and the site has DB issues atm) that this can be applied to more than one warming period, then we should be able to extrapolate backward by looking at when the warming began and when the CO2 increase began. If we go back to the start of the CO2 rise, and then backtrack 800 years what will we or do we find in the temperature record as we know it?
Sea levels are noticably rising,
And falling. Over the last century it has been shown that the global average (global sea level isn't level) has been a decrease, with an annual variation of about 8 inches. Eight inches.
Furthermore, the long term average for seal level on this planet is much higher than it is now. Much higher. Yet the end of the last ice age some 18,000 years ago had sea level nearly 400 feet lower than today, and it has been rising ever since. Some 120,000 years ago it was several meters higher than it is today. All of this is before man was keeping track of this kind of stuff, and ages before we deserved even so much as a thought about our carbon footprint as a species.
"Sea level is higher now
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
So let me get this straight. In response to a story about a scientist complaining that he's being compared to holocaust deniers for questioning global warming someone posts comparing him to a holocaust denier. This then gets modded +5 insightful? Way to prove the author's point slashdot!
eldavojohn wrote - "His article only mentions a professor from MIT but not what his criticisms are." The MIT professor is Richard Lindzen. He is a physicist and Professor of Meteorology at MIT. Google him to learn more. ----- misleb wrote "Depends on what was done about it, but I can't help thinking better safe than sorry." The problem with this logic is that it assumes there is no cost to "doing something." "Doing something" in this case means slowing the world economy, dooming billions to continued poverty, granting arbitrary power to foreign and domestic bureaucracies, and slowing the very engine that makes innovation possible. "Doing something" just to be "better safe than sorry" in the 1960s meant stopping the expansion of nuclear energy in the US - if we hadn't done that, and had instead moved forward with France and Japan (generating 80% of electricity from nuclear now) the US would now be generating 40% less CO2. "Doing something" for Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen means pumping millions of tons of Sulfur into the atmosphere (to help reflect sunlight). The US has spent the last 40 years reducing the emission of this powerful pollutant (creates acid rain), but when Al Gore calls climate change "the greatest spiritual challenge mankind has ever confronted" anything is on the table. http://tinyurl.com/3xkxf2 "Doing something" about Global Cooling in the 1970s meant "melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers". http://tinyurl.com/yqzd4a ----- The greatest threat to humanity is not human-induced climate change, it is abuse of power by grasping bureaucrats. Add up all the fatalities of all the natural disasters of the 20th century and you will have a fraction of the number killed by abuse Marxist governments. Like the Marxists in the 20th century, climate alarmists favor central control over individual liberty, claim scientific support for their harebrained schemes, and command sympathy from many among American academia, celebrities, and trustifarians. http://tinyurl.com/22hy4u
While you're predicting the future, do you have any investment advice?
We need to shift off of fossil fuels anyway for strategic, economic, environmental, and geopolitical reasons: - De-funding terrorist petrostates - Neutering the Big Oil lobby - Removing the possibility of OPEC style embargo politics - Creation of a native energy industry increases GDP and keeps the money in-country - Expanding biofuel use eliminates the need to subsidize farms and farmers - Co2 from biofuel was in the air months prior, so no net CO2 gain. - Clean Coal tech such as emissions scrubbing and carbon sequestering has gotten to the point where it is viable as a greenish energy source, and the US has coal coming out its.. seams. - Nuclear has gotten a lot safer. Slowing/eliminating human inputs to climate change is just the cherry on the un-fossil sundae.
~!J!
This the second post on this thread I've seen where you focus on the plants. It's stupid. For one thing, the world already produces enough food to feed every single human. The problems of starvation are problems of transportation and politics. The number one health problem throughout the world is not starvation, it is clean fresh water. CO2 does nothing to help that.
Second, there is no causative correlation between biomass and biodiversity. Biomass increases in a single organism lifetime--you can grow a whole forest in 30 years. But they'll all be the same trees you planted. Biodiversity requires long periods of time to develop. If you're concerned about biodiversity, the only way to preserve it is to protect old ecosystems. Once again CO2 does nothing to help that.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The fad term "global warming" is applied to al the evil things mankind does to the environment.
Does the earth go through cyclic changes in temperature? Absolutrely.
Is it the end of the world as ascribed by the eco people? Of course not (and that's why I call GW BS)
And there was an interesting study I heard on the radio that the glariers melting were a natural part of offsetting the rise in temps, that occur naturally.
The point is, GW is NOT hard accept fact, but that doesn't mean we (mankind) can't help do something to offset the effects
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.