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Global Warming Endangered by Hot Air?
oldwindways writes "The BBC reports that leading climate researchers are concerned that the tone of speculation surrounding many reports (scientific as well as in the media) could be making it more difficult for legitimate science to make a case for the future. Is Hollywood to blame? Have we 'cried wolf' too many times with global warming? Or is this just a case of some researchers who are not ready to face the truth? Either way, it raises the interesting question of how greater public awareness of Global Warming might be affecting the course of research and vice versa. Not to mention what happens when public awareness is shaped by factors other than scientific findings. This is especially troubling during what some are calling the warmest US winter in years."
See now ;
Haliburton & co supporting and paying Bush & co in the u.s. presidential races and then securing no bid contracts to iraqi oil fields.
sony, warner & co creating RIAA and paying senators to further their terror regime and then getting juicy laws protecting their interests in return
Is it too hard to understand that there are HORDES of scientists who are paid and maintained by big buck industry interests ?
Is it too hard to understand that these scientists, who are in fact little more than laymen, do their payers' bidding and bark at people who are trying to fix some matters ?
There are people in this world, who care for nothing but their short term profit, you know.
The micro climate here, where i live, is too different from what it used to be 10 years ago.
No need for statistics either - for 15 years the micro climate have followed an EXACT pattern here, almost TOO exact.
However for the last 4 years, we are increasingly having erratic weather to the extremes that old people are much anxious about.
this winter, there was NO winter. really. it was spring/autumn all along.with very rare rain.
just the goings here, leave aside my relatives' my colleagues' my internet friends' experiences all over the globe are enough for me to deduce there IS something wrong with the climate all around, and there are greedy bastards spewing out fud in order to conceal it.
From this point on, yes, i will look upon these fud spreaders with an evil eye - it is readily deductable that such people have hidden agendas.
Read radical news here
The problem with controversies that have become too political is there is NO WAY to get good definitive information about global warming or any other politicized issue.
You could try just listening to the actual scientists, and not the media circus.
For instance, http://realclimate.org/.
The movie The Great Global Warming Swindle is a fraud. The filmmaker has been convicted in the past of "creative editing". And sure enough, Professor Carl Wunsch from MIT, who is shown in key moments of the movie, is crying foul.
Another funny fact: many of the "scientists" shown in the movie are introduced as members of renowned academic institutions... which they left long ago. In other words, the movie is misrepresenting lobbyists as scientists. That should speak volumes about the integrity of the filmmakers.
As for the science in the movie, I'll let Real Climate debunk it.
My immediate response to any subject that is strongly promoted by entertainers, especially Hollywood types, is to immediately write it off as complete nonsense.
This has nothing to do with the merits of the global warming debate, just that I'm sick to death of hearing the ignorant opinions of some uneducated, amoral nitwit just because he can act or sing.
That's not to say that some actors don't know what they are talking about, and that some actors support worthy causes, many do. It's just that Global Warming [cue ominous music] has become a popular cause celebre among the typical Hollywood idiots, who never have anything meaningful to say beyond empty platitudes, that I'm getting really sick of hearing about it.
Oh, and politicians are only marginally better. I'm surprised John Edwards, for instance, isn't promising that the polar caps will magically regenerate if he's elected the way he promised people like Christopher Reeves would (would!) be cured if he was elected.
The problem with topics that are scientific in nature is that you don't hear enough from spokesmen who actually have half a clue what they are talking about. You only hear from politicians, most of whom are ass-ignorant of anything other than politics and have made the topic totally political, celebrities, who are ass-ignorant about everything, or the mass media, who are ass-ignorant of everything but sensationalism, and pushing their own political agenda.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
On polarization. It is remarkable how many discussions on Slashdot end up in the same controversies: Microsoft/Linux Firefox/Opera(/IE) Christianity/Atheism(/other religions) Republicans/Liberals.
Ah, it just goes to show how far we went from the USA's founding for a Republican to be ashamed of being a Liberal. My favorite Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson was both a Liberal and a Republican. He believed in liberty, eg liberal, and small government. Unfortunately the popular meanings of words have been twisted so they no long mean what they used to mean.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Realclimate: Global warming on Mars?. The Mars argument is already two years old and a connection between the factors affecting the Mars climate and those affecting Earth climate is not supported by scientific evidence.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
"I was born in the 60s. When I was a child the world was supposedly facing castastrophic global cooling according to "compelling evidence"."
I was born in the '50s, and I distinctly remember discussions of global warming in school in the '60s. There was a knowledge then that CO2 was being added to the atmosphere and the physics of it trapping heat. Since then, we have built up a tremendous ampount of evidence about accelerating global increases in temperature and CO2.
There was, after some extreme cold winters in the 70s and early 80s, discussions in the press speculating about the coming ice age and how it was due to arrive any millenium now. There was also discussion on how quickly an ice age could emerge
(apparently some scientists believe that once the tipping point is reached, it can come pretty quickly, though I don't know if quickly is decades or centuries in that context.). But the mainstream science correctly dimissed the few cold spells as not predictive of any long term trends.
"So what if we've just had the warmest winter in years? That means absolutely nothing on its own, particularly when you consider the fact thta it's an El Nino (El Nina? I forget wihch is wihch) year, and that the respective seasons are going to be less severe."
On its own, no it doesn't mean anything. However, combined with other global observations over the last few decades and one might begin to see a pattern.
BTW, it was a mild El Nino, which liklely saved many peoples asses this past year by preventing hurricane formations and blowing the ones that did form way across the ocean. The formation of an El Nino results in increased wind shear across the tropics which prevents storms from getting too organized.
El Nino does not ensure milder weather. For certain regions in the north it usually results in milder winters. That being said, with this mild El Nino the northern US and northern Europe remained snow free abnormally long periods of time (even for an El Nino) and multiple records were set as far as temperature goes (NY city hit 74 in the middle January).
"Maybe some people remember how mild last summer was? I don't believe there was a single day last summer when I didn't feel comfortable to wear long sleeves."
Um...yeah maybe where you were. However, triple digit temperatures set records where I was and at least for a good portion of the Northeast US. It was HOT.
"The reason global warming has no credibility is because of reactionaries, yes, but also because the arguments made have not been internally or scientificially consistent for 30 years. You cry wolf long enough bolstering your points with manipulated data, and nobody is going to believe a word you say. Whether it's 'global cooling' from 30 years ago, 'global warming' a year ago, or what they're calling 'global climate change' today (yeah, apparently calling it global warming or cooling doesn't work anymore, because nobody believes a word of it), it doesn't matter the slightest."
Ehm...no. They're calling it global climate change because...well...it's global climate change. Some areas are going to warm up, others may cool off. Some areas will get drier, others will get soaked. The only thing that is relatively certain is that the global temperature average is going up.
"It's inconsequential to most people, in no small part to the fact that we've passed a dozen 'population extinction' dates for not only Earth becoming a huge desert, ocean, or desert, but claims that the world's population is going to surpass what the planet can provide (claims which often go hand-in-hand with the global warming hysteria)."
To my knowledge, they only "population extinction" dates I've ever read about are very gross estimations (planetary impact, sup-er-volcano eruption, etc.). The population support issue is actually something to be concerned with, as there is only a finite amount of resources on this planet.
"Nevermind the readily observeable information that while not only Earth's climate is getting warmer, so is Mar's - due to the rotational temperature changes in the Sun. IE, there's not a fucking thing we can do about it, and worrying about it, let alone doing anything for it, is just reactionary fear mongering."
I love have hypocrites like you will fight tooth and nail against the terabytes upon terabytes of data we have clearing showing climate change then turn around and use the paltry amount of climate data we're getting back from a couple of satellites around Mars to justify their position.
The scientists are INFERRING that warming MIGHT be happening on Mars. The scientists are MEASURING the KNOWN warming on Earth. We have countless satellites and models all gathering data, measuring, probing just about every aspect of our planet we can. By comparison we know absolutely JACK SHIT abou how the martian climate operates. Comparing Earth's climate dynamics to those of Mars is like comparing a blue whale to a football.
In the end, we may not be able to do anything to reverse it, ho
~X~