Slashdot Mirror
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."
I supposed we should all stay quiet? We shouldn't talk about it? I guess then it won't exist at all.
Please disregard this post as it comments on the taboo subject de jour, and I would hate to make it worse.
I don't believe Hollywood speculation about global warming will stop us from taking the threat seriously.
The Hollywood speculation about evil robots has not stopped certain dedicated men and women from taking seriously all threats of domination by artificial life forms. For example, I recently caught my Roomba building an IED. When I shared that information on a forum that shall remain nameless, there were people who believed and recruited me for the Roomba Resistance.
But perhaps I've said too much.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
We can't seriously believe either side, but must stick to logic and examine all the facts. Both sides have their hysterical evangelists and paid shills.
There would be no issue with the public's misconceptions had Kevin Costner exercised more restraint
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
Is Hollywood to blame? Only the day after tomorrow will tell.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Legitimacy comes with the understanding, apparently. Hollywood to blame? "Oh, Puhhhhleeaze" (in my best drama queen ala Callas' voice) If you're going to blame anything on anyone, blame it on ignorance; excuse it and move on with our lives. (...and learn how to be less *ignorant* in the future)
>>This is especially troubling during what some are calling the warmest US winter in years."
Seeing as how this is the winter with the two coldest 3-week periods (in Anchorage, Alaska) in history - where are you getting the above statement? The US does include Alaska you know...
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
Global Warming?? I live in Maryland and we just got the heaviest snowfall of the winter, midway thru MARCH.
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
I've got a bachelor's in physics, and although that doesn't make me a climate scientist, i think it at least qualifies me to evaluate scientific arguments on the basis of merit. . I've never read any of these papers, because I don't have the time to make myself an expert on another field. I consider myself a climate change agnostic - I have no idea whether or not it's happening.
When I hear "oh noes we are all going to die unless we stop global climate change," however, I am very skeptical. My mind puts such arguments in the same bin as the overpopulation fears of the 70's. I'll take Julian Simon over Paul Ehrlich any day. The fact that scientists who disagree are called "deniers" and "shills of industry" pushes me further away from seriously considering global warming as a possible threat, because ad hominem attacks are not science. I've read enough stories like this one, written by a candian newspaper, to at least consider myself extremely skeptical of claims that the earth is getting warmer, humans are to blame, and that drastic changes are necessasry.
That said, I know all too well that people can make terrible arguments in support of true statements. Therefore, Until I read a series of papers about global climate change, papers that publish all of their source data, algorithms used in simulations, justifications for the use of those algorithms, and statistical analysis by qualified statisticians, I will refrain from forming a solid opinion one way or the other. Of course, the chances of that happening are exactly zero, because I don't have time to spend doing something like that. So I'll remain skeptical.
My blog
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/.
Just like cold fusion, the amount of uninformed people making extremist claims about this diffuses the issue. And the main people making these claims are politically-motivated. Either they are politicians themselves, or talk show hosts, news paper writers, etc.
What we need is a good, honest look at climate trends. Because words like "global warming" and "el niño" are so overused, diffused, and politicized, we have to look at this purely as a scientific study about climate trends, and the study has to be carried out by multiple parties.
Here in New Zealand, we have just had a very cool summer, following on from a very cool winter. Where's some of that global warming stuff? Could have used it at the beach!
To think that we (as a human race) have a very good understanding of long-term climatic processes is just arrogance. We have models which we are always refining, but they will always just be speculation. We look back mockingly at how ignorant some scientists were 40 years ago (eg. during the 1960s many/most geologists did not accept tectonic plate theory). It is silly to think that people forty years from now won't be doing the same about us. That should be particularly true of climatic modelling. There is no robust equation for climate. People essentially just sit down and tweak the models until they get the results they expect, then use them to generate best case and worst case analysis. That folks, is hardly science.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Don't mix up science with politics. Whether it is happening or not has been established by scientists. Whether it was anyone's fault (and more importantly, whether we're going to do anything about it) is a political issue.
;P .
:>
First of all, you can start by calling it "Climate Change" instead of "Global Warming". If we just focus our efforts on the slow increase of merely one factor of the complex global climate system -- average temperature -- we're not going to convince anyone that there's been a significant man-made difference. However, if we could start focusing on how the climate of individual regions has changed drastically, it becomes much simpler to see and establish causality on how man-made activity has beat back glaciers, leveled mountains, polluted ecosystems, etc.
Anyway, now that we're playing politics, anything goes, including Hollywood sensationalizing. Just remember to draw clear lines between scientifically-proved fact and political slander
It sucks that science is getting attacked by political groups lately. But in the end, this will hopefully be helpful for science. People will fund "scientific" studies such as "Industrial activity has No Correlation with Climate Change" and "Creationism Explains the Origin of Species" and science will be bolstered when the data disproves these null hypotheses, which is after all how scientific method works in the first place
Just look at this it makes my point way better: CO2e t/person -- USA: 24.09 China: 3.05 India: 1.34 The whole human race needs to find a way to reduce global emissions. According to these numbers, where should that start?
Even if humans are not contributing to global warming in any way, the steps that can be taken to fight global warming would lead to less pollution and more efficient use of energy. How is this a bad thing?
Even those who support fossil fuel derived energy and the like are not immune to the cancer it causes...
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.
Is the scientific basis for saying it should be happening.
The simple fact is that carbon dioxide has an extremely strong infrared absorbance and will act like the glass panes of a greenhouse. Very effectively.
It's about the same as knowing there is gravity so you can predict an apple will fall when released.
Couple that with knowing humans are spewing billions of tons of it into the atmosphere - with rates of release increasing every day - and you have a very solid basis to say that the effects of global warming will get stronger. Period.
You can argue all you want that the weather conditions people are seeing now are not global warming. And maybe they aren't. But global warming is happening and the trends will be for stronger effects.
How strong those effects are and will be can be debated, but the fact that they are coming cannot.
I get "Troll" while "Lots of people have something to gain by hyping global warming. Politicians looking for power, actors trying to look "caring", socialists making another attempt to weaken the United States." above gets +5 Insightful? Sheesh.
First of all, like everything else we like to bitch about here on Slashdot, it comes down to money. There's gold in them thar hills! What you're actually hearing is the gearing up of industry to support products that are "environmentally friendly". Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The problem with this question and the increasing vocalization of man made climate change die hards is this:
1. Regardless of the causation of climate change, there seems to be universal agreement that it is happening. To the degree that we don't want to be like the vast majority of critters that have ever been on this planet and become extinct, we should focus on ways of planning to adapt to the possible outcomes of climate change. Arguing over who is responsible, at some level, is simply counterproductive.
2. Once man made global warming becomes politically attractive we will begin to spend lots of tax payer money to reduce our impact on the environment. This invariably will siphon away money from other places or prevent that money from being used for something that could do more good. I don't mean to sound cold or uncaring, or even worse, ignorant on the subject of climate change. What I am suggesting is that there are a limited amount of funds to be used for what amounts to public works projects. Will funding for reducing man's impact on the environment do more good than, say, AIDS prevention? Folks smarter than me with more letters after their name than I have suggest that it will not.
Bottom line: There are more rational ways to go about this process of identifying problems and developing solutions but causes have always needed some flash and sizzle to sell to your average American. Right now, man made climate change is about as sexy an idea as you can think of that has many supporters in the scientific community. Think about it, you have natural disasters, money hungry multinational corporations, underdog scientists, Hurricane Katrina, talk of cute animals going extinct, Al Gore, dramatic film clips, the idea that the big corps are fucking it up for the common man, themes of Armageddon, etc. It actually sounds like it has elements of every thrill movie ever made. I mean, goddammit! That's a show!
So can we sit down, be rational, and allow scientists to conduct their research without having to deal with the celebrity of what they're researching? 'Fraid not.
If you feel I've said things that are provocative, watch the TED Talks lectures from the brilliant physicist David Deutsch and the thought provoking economist Bjorn Lomborg for more information.
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. 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.
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.
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). 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.
"Global warming" is the Left's "imminent emergency" scenario which they utilize to the greatest political end economic manipulation as possible - just like the Right's "war on terror" is its "imminent emergency".
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Like Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart (a nurse by training, if you can believe that):
"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits. . . Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
As long as the public faces of the global warming scare are building vast energy-hogging mansions, flying around the world in private jets, and shooting down alternative-power proposals that clash with their refined aesthetic sensibilities, I will assume they are all power-crazed liars and mountebanks of the ilk of Christine Stewart.
We are being asked to overturn the very edifice of free-market capitalism, on the basis of wild speculation about the significance of mere statistical noise, teased out of scant and questionable data by grant-chasing academics, and shouted hysterically by power-mad left-wing politicians who won't abide by the same draconian regulations they advocate for the rest of us. No thanks. I'm going to keep living my life as I please.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
We've lived under the constant spectre of doom and gloom for a long time. Everything is bad, bad for us, and going to cause the death of civilization as we know it. Even just enumerating the big bad ones would take me a while; I caught the tail end of nuclear doom, just in time for a segue into environmental doom. I remember the tail end of "Communism is going to crush us". I remember numerous predictions that basically had us all dead by now. I know we were supposed to run out of oil in the mid-90s. I remember when the Japanese were going to crush us with their mighty economy. I remember how our school system was going to doom us. (That story hasn't changed much in 20 years, really.) I remember how Reagan's policies were going to cause certain world war. We've been on the verge of major plague now for years and years, bird flu is merely the latest virus du jour. I remember just this last year stories about the interest rates going up and how that was bad and going to hurt the economy, followed a few short weeks later by stories about how the interest rates going down was bad and was going to hurt the economy. So help me, I've seen stories about the low unemployment rate being proof our economy was doomed!
I remember more doom than I can even enumerate in a single paragraph.
I also think it's important to point out the ever-increasing sophistication of marketing techniques, especially as they increasingly feed back into politics and these claims of doom. Regardless of the truth of global warming, many people are selling global warming doom. Why are they selling it? Because it's being bought. The news sells doom, because bad news brings more eyeballs. Doom, doom, doom everywhere.
And only a vanishing fraction of what we're being sold, be it doom, consumer product claims, or politicians is true. After a while, we can't help but notice this, and I think the general public is becoming increasingly suspicious of this sort of selling, on all levels. What's so special about today's predictions of doom? Why should I trust that this shampoo will make me sexy? I think this skepticism is all of a kind.
I don't know how this is going to turn out in the end, but at least for the topic at hand, I think you can expect a growing AGW backlash over the next few months. For some reason, in these past few months AGW-advocates turned up the volume to eleven and starting selling like never before, and I think they've seriously overplayed their hand by selling it too hard. Anybody who can survive economically in the US in this environment is becoming increasingly cynical about "selling" of all kinds.
(I say the US specifically because we seem to be farthest along the advertising/selling curve; even my English acquaintances who have lived here tell me we seem to be deluged in ads by comparison to them. If you don't become cynical about people selling you things, you will go bankrupt in the US; even as we have become immensely more wealthy, the number of things available for purchase has gone up even faster. Who in 1960 could bankrupt themselves on buying DVDs? Even if you say "but they had albums", well, so do we, only even more so.)
Of course, there will be two natural responses: The AGW advocates will try to make their presentations that much more slick, while the AGW-skeptics will become increasingly organized and therefore creating slick sales pitches too. Very few people have been seriously fighting AGW in a large-scale, organized way. (Not zero, but very few.) I expect that will change. It's going to be a warzone out there, with the biggest casualty being the truth.
(All-in-all, I expect the AGW people who seem to have cranked the volume up would have been better off leaving well enough alone.)
This is all independent of the truth or falseness of the AGW claims.
Increasingly, the market for doom is just getting tapped out. There's only such much worry available, even if you stoke it, and there's just too damned many people trying to tap it.
In the history of climate research, scientists have seriously warned about global warming only once so far. The evidence is strong, the consequences are potentially devastating, and it appears to be happening faster than anybody initially thought.
Not so. My parents' generation (now 50) was told that if they didn't stop driving their gas guzzling cars NOW, the majority of the world would be desert by the time their children (me) reached 20. I'm a bit over 20 now, and the precipitation levels in the semi-arid area in which I live have been, while not record highs, quite a bit higher than in the previous decade.
Do you have any idea how many times the 'earth doomers' have said we were going to kill ourseles off? If not global warming, then global cooling, over-population, thermonuclear war, genetic (plant) modification, etc. - and all their projected times for extinction or some other cataclysmic life-ending event are well in the past. For instance, I distinctly recall hearing in elementary school that by the year 2000, the world would be too over-populated to feed itself. This, to gullible and impressionable kids! That's reprehensible.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
The fact of the matter is that those that support the notion that global warming is predominantly caused by human activities are so self-righteous about the fact that one has to question the objectivity of their research. If the outcome looks like an assumption, then it looks more like the pushing of an agenda. Moreover, news that these researches are trying to stifle dissent (by removing funding for research projects) doesn't give their arguments any more credibility.
This is especially troubling during what some are calling the warmest US winter in years.
This is EXACTLY what hurts any real discussion. A warm year or an active tropical season and everyone runs around like the end is nigh. People need to get a fucking grip.
If this is a problem let's solve it. I don't know how we can, because we can't stop burning shit, but let's try to minimize what we think is causing it. If we are wrong, or if we can't ultimately stop burning enough, let's prepare for climate change as well. This is what sane people do.
No one is playing fair, and there is far more rhetoric than threat.
Famine is NOT worse than ever, in fact last year was the first time in which there were more obese people than malnourished people worldwide. Famine is really only a problem in nations which follow collectivist economic principles, like Zimbabwe. If people really want to save the world, they should start by hunting down socialist politicians and shooting them all dead.
Desertification is improving dramatically. The grasslands of the Sahel are expanding, pushing back the south edge of the Sahara Desert all over North Africa.
Overpopulation is a problem, but not even remotely as bad as Erlich and his acolytes predicted. And the rate of growth is decreasing, and in many places going below zero population growth, because of the improvements in health and nutrition and well-being brought about by free-market capitalism.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
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?
in the energy market in the US? Free market means no govt subsidies: a market that is separate from govt. No money from, no influence over. I agree that the politics on both sides (all sides maybe?) are all guilty of the same thing. But is there any hope for free market to actually happen? Cynically I think not.
There is no free market, in energy or any other legal market, in the US or anywhere else in the world. What we have now is the Corporate Aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The U.S. had a normal winter.
/ feb/feb07.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007
This is the kind of loose cannon crap that they are talking about.
"Before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic," predicted James Lovelock, a renowned environmental scientist.
That is the kind of overblown, the world is ending crap they are talking about.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So they say that if you "zoom out" you can't even see the lag (since 800 years v.s. 400/800 thousand years isn't really visible). Is that a joke or something? There is still a bloody 800 year lag! Doing more research going into their linked explanation they say the follow:
(emphasis mine)So here they claim that CO2 could have caused the next 4200 years of heating? But the truth is we aren't even sure? Furthermore, this explanation is also clearly false. Why? Taking a look at this graph of temperature vs CO2 concentration graph from the Vostok ice core samples, you can clearly see that temperature actually started to fall before CO2 falls (by hundreds of years too). How does this work? How could it be that CO2 is causing the warming (through feedback) if temperature fell while CO2 was still rising!
The most important point that the movie makes (IMHO), is that we aren't even sure if CO2 actually drives climate change. Having read many of the attempted debunks of the movie, I have yet to come across an explanation that holds water. Excuses like, "oh well that was in the past, the warming happening now is from CO2" clearly show the unwillingness to look at evidence and try to get a more meaningful scientific theory.
There were some factual errors in the movie (volcanoes producing more CO2 then humans is not true, the temperature records were shown to go to the year 2000 but were in fact up to 1980). However, there were numerous factual and exaggerated points made in Al Gore's (who btw isn't even a scientists, and you attack the real scientists in The Great Global Warming Swindle?) An Inconvenient Truth (claiming that CO2 matches temperature but never overlaying to see the 800 year lag, temperature increases are occuring only small parts of the Antarctic not everywhere, etc) yet it is seen as an accurate film by AGW proponents (including those that write realclimate.org). I suggest that instead of launching personal attacks on the filmmakers and those that participated in it that you (and others) instead look at their arguments. The 800 year lag argument casts a very long shadow (IMHO) on AGW proponents claims and really shows how much more research we need before we start making economy crushing decisions.
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.
...." It does not go onto say that the "Swindle" movie offered an alternate reasoning for this to be true, and backed it up with very persuasive data.
The link to your article has nothing by that MIT professor in it.
Also, it was written by someone who obviously hasn't even seen the movie in question (Swindle). Just read the part where he says that "everybody agrees that temps are higher now than 100 years ago and CO2 is high
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.
Another funny fact about the IPCC report, which is mentioned in the film, is that there was NOT consensus among the "2500+ scientists" who "wrote" the report. In point of fact, the report was compiled in large part by bureaucrats and many of the scientists, including 1 interviewed in the "swindle" movie, had no involvement or had opposing views to the ones that were published.
One scientist, who proved that malaria would not increase due to rising temperatures (due to global warming or otherwise) told them repeatedly to remove his name from the report, which, of course, stated the worst. Obviously, they ignored him and his (correct, according to me) assessment completely and he wanted his name off the report. After much argument, he finally had to threaten legal action just to get his name removed!
I will not accept data collected and assembled in this manner to form my opinion. The fact that they are grasping at straws of credibility to hold this thing together makes this--"the most important climate change report"--absolutely and indisputably invalid. The scientific community should stand up for themselves and proclaim a "do-over".
I only mention the IPCC report because the 'swindle' movie was mainly just a response to that. It all goes back to the original post of this article: Crying wolf diminishes credibility of anthropogenic climate change "alarmists" (heroes?) as a whole.
Anthropogenic climate change may be real, but I'm reiterating that Gadwin's Law is now in full effect with the popular invocation of the word "denier". The debate is over, but only because we can't behave ourselves.
We may be destroying our planet with greenhouse emissions, or we may be needlessly destroying our economy with alarmism. I don't think we'll know for sure for a long time.
Personally, I've looked at the data, and I'm waiting to be convinced either way.
Latewire