Slashdot Mirror
Is Scientific Consensus a Threat to Democracy?
chance_encounter writes "President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus has published an article in the Financial Times in which he seems to equate the current global warming debate with totalitarian thought control: 'The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced ... The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.' At the end of the article he proposes several suggestions to improve the global climate debate, including this point: 'Let us resist the politicization of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus," which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.'"
He is clearly delusional: he has said "Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so." (http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCate gory=33&idsub=128&id=8342&t=Czech+president%3A+Env ironmentalism+is+a+religion)
The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions.
And doctors should take into consideration the financial effects of their work before they operate. After they balance your checkbook for you, if it's not financially acceptable, they should let you die.
Or, here's a better idea. Leave politics to the politicians, and let the guys in the lab coats get back to work.
Facts are just that - facts. Scientists work to uncover them. Doesn't matter if they are convenient or politically correct or anything else. The truth stands alone. It's the job of the politicians to (hopefully) take that truth and do something useful with it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Look who is Bush's new best friend. Czech republic has some beautiful places but alot of it has been exploited and destroyed; mostly by communism. Their economy is not doing well and they have a high unemployment rate, of the 8 mil czechs in the world 1 mil live in the US. Klaus is just another short sighted politician who only concern is how much money he and his friends can make in the short term. If he can destroy the environment and get paid to put a foreign missle defence system in the country, that is fine with him.
President Bill Clinton refused to forward the protocol to Congress for ratification. Vice President Al Gore wanted language including developing nations in the accords, and when the language was not added he withdrew his support for the treaty. Only after President Bush was elected did Mr. Gore call for total adoption of the Kyoto treaty as it is. Before we lob accusations about what "Shrub" has or has not done, we should consider why we are in this situation. In the 90's, Vice President Al Gore knew that the most risky source of an increase in emissions came from developing nations, not "USians." That and the crippling restrictions on US business were all the justification he needed to kill the treaty in the United States. He was right.
FairTax baby!
The problem I have with both sides of this argument is people bandying around the words "fact" and "truth" when all we have are theories.
Scientists don't say gravity is a fact, it's a theory. Evolution is not called a fact, it's a theory. Heck, trickle-down economics is a theory. I happen to believe fervently in at least two of the theories I just mentioned. The other seemed to work for a time. The point is that there's a broad range of things for which we have some level of understanding regarding their causes and the effects. It doesn't mean that you don't act on the best information that you have, but you have to be willing to admit that you can't know and that someone who disagrees with you could be closer to right than you.
The hallmark of science is that it doesn't assume that what currently seems like the most likely reason for something is unquestionably true.
My personal opinion is that global warming is a risk for which we should be preparing, whether it's caused by CO2 emissions or sunspot activity. If it comes to pass, it will involve enormous transfers of wealth, particularly in terms of agricultural economics. I don't know whether it will come to pass or not. I haven't seen anything that proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the temperature fluctuations of the last century are unusual relative to planetary history, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to mitigate against the possibility that they were. Just because I don't expect to get into a car wreck on the way home doesn't mean I don't think I should have to have insurance.
People who claim to know absolute truth are rarely scientists.
I'm pretty sure that Tuvalu thinks that warmer won't be better.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Just because someone modded you up, I thought I'd pull up the first page of results of a quick google search. Lokiee there....
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Who is to say warmer won't be better?
Climatologists studying hurricanes. There is a direct correlation between the level of surface sea temperature near the equator and the intensity of hurricanes. Warmer sea water will mean more intense hurricanes.
Increase in Major Hurricanes Linked to Warmer Seas
Severe Hurricanes Increasing, Study Finds
Small increases in sea temperature, he added, can "exponentially provide more and more fuel for the hurricanes."
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Can you provide a citation? Because this is what I see in the report:
Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century. Best estimate and assessed likelihood range for future temperature projections for first time. Broadly similar to the TAR [Third Assessment Report] but not directly comparable. For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1C per decade would be expected. Earlier IPCC projections of 0.15 to 0.3 oC per decade can now be compared with observed values of 0.2 oC. Best estimate for low scenario (B1) is 1.8C (likely range is 1.1C to 2.9C), and for high scenario (A1FI) is 4.0C (likely range is 2.4C to 6.4C). Broadly consistent with span quoted for SRES in TAR, but not directly comparable
There is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation, and some aspects of extremes and of ice. Snow cover is projected to contract. Widespread increases in thaw depth most permafrost regions Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic. In some projections, Arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century. Very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent Likely that future tropical cyclones will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation. Less confidence in decrease of total number. Extra-tropical storm tracks projected to move poleward with consequent changes in wind, precipitation, and temperature patterns. Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized. Temperatures in excess of 1.9 to 4.6C warmer than pre-industrial sustained for millennia...eventual melt of the Greenland ice sheet. Would raise sea level by 7 m., comparable to 125,000 years ago.
Those are bullet points from the IPCC Chairman's presentation on the current state of the Fourth Assessment Report. You can get it on the IPCC web site.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I was very worried about AGW, but statements like, "neuremberg style trials for denialists" made me think something's not right. Add in character assasination, the way any "contrarian evidence" is assumed to be funded by oil companies, and debating tactics that throw the principle of falsifiability out of the window, made me distrust the whole damnded thing.
This is wrong. Scientifically reasonable questioning, alternative theories and observations and interpretations, does in fact get published in the professional literature.
Example: Svensmark (cosmic rays have an effect on climate) got published in Physical Review and Physical Review letters. Now, many other scientists have seriously considered his hypotheses and data, and mostly find them wrong or likely exaggerated in significance, and hence unable to explain current data, whereas greenhouse forcing is a rock solid experimentally proven phenomenon which does explain most current observations.
Stuff which is idiotic tripe (most of the Rush-Limbaugh level anti-global warming stuff which is what 99.999% of the average joe spews) is mocked, deservedly.
Good science is purely about the truth. What you do with that knowledge is a different affair altogether. Good science is simply being dispassionately interested in facts. It's not the scientist's job to be a good person. Just give us the facts. We, the people, will worry about the rest.
Which is apparently to accuse the scientific community of being nearly totalitarian monsters when faced with an active, political, financially (and rarely scientifically) motivated opposition to uncomfortable but mainstream scientific facts and conclusions of enormous human signficance.
Really? How old are you? I remember Rush Limbaugh, for one, making exactly those comments in the early 90's. To wit, he brought up these new satellite results that were able to measure the effect of the full moon on temperatures and then claimed that it was funny that with such sophisticated techniques they still weren't able to measure global warming. There were plenty of ditto-heads who took that statement and ran with it.
Why don't you do a little personal research on the Mann Hockey Stick? Try to go to sites that cover actual science and not just politics though, okay? Also avoid sites that admit to being junkscience.
Please provide the book title and such a quote. Also, don't confuse "a climatologist from the 1970s" with "the climatologists of the 1970s". A lot of people who bring up "global cooling" seem to do that. (I do see, however, that you were good enough to qualify that only "some" were claiming that.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
No, all the serious scientific organizations.
/ 5702/1686?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT= &author1=oreskes&searchid=1103210845409_5389&store d_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=12/31 /2004
Really.
All of them.
Seriously, for real.
Yes.
All of them.
No, really.
It's true.
Did the message get through, yet? Look, here's a scientific study of the fact that all climate scientists agree that global warming is real and man-made:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/306
Believe it yet?
It's true.
You have produced yet another set of statements without proof that this has anything to do with man-made global warming. Sea-levelss have been rising for more than 10,000 years and somehow you've just noticed?
In any case,
a) living on a delta is a great way to see the sea rising relative to the land, but the sea-level has hardly changed while those deltas continue to sink. Ask the Mayor of New Orleans. If the deltas are not replenished then you get severe coastal erosion and deltaic islands sink into the water.
b) Tuvalu's problems are entirely caused not by rising sea-levels (because there isn't any) but by overpopulation and overextraction of water making the wells become brackish.
Here's what the scientists say:
"The historical record from 1978 through 1999 indicated a sea level rise of 0.07 mm per year." and
"The historical record (from Tuvalu) shows no visual evidence of any acceleration in sea level trends."
So the sea-level rise is just barely measureable and shows no acceleration due to global warming, man-made or otherwise.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Why do you keep calling it a fakery, when its the "debunkers" who were ultimately debunked?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
We had an el nino last year which tends to reduce the number and severity of hurricanes.
Or so this "they" guy says...read it on the intartubes
The deal with hurricanes isn't so much they are stronger or more of them as hundreds or thousands of years ago as much as we have much better news reporting and data keeping now and even moreso, hoo-mannz have been on a coastal area expensive building spree for the past few decades in the US, so when hurricanes *do* strike, it causes a lot more damage. Example, a little cottage I used to live it on the beach in florida, back when that was still possible at ridiculous cheap joe construction worker wage levels is now a big high rise. Where a few people used to live (and I went through a hurricane there actually) and a structure worth x-dollars might have been damaged, (it wasn't, 'cane that didn't hit directly but was sure *exciting* for yours truly)now a lot more people and x times 500 (whatever, big number) dollars worth of stuff is there that could be damaged. I don't know a technical term for it, but the event impact potential threshold is now way higher than it used to be, given the same exact size hurricane.
your link went to a directory, where I found a pdf from a newer and more accurate sea level monitoring station at Tuvalu,p df
Which puts the trend at +5.9mm/yr since 2003.
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDO60033/IDO60033.2004.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
I very respectfully disagree. It seems to me that scientists who question global warming tend to lose their jobs. Here is one example from the Wiki page on Richard Lindzen (emphasis mine):
Another quote from Lindzen:
Dr. Timothy Ball, the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology, had his educational credentials challenged for question GW.
Dr. Griffin, a NASA chief almost lost his job recently for questioning GW. Here's an example of the ridicule scientists face just for questioning GW: The chorus of outrage over the NASA chief's global warming comments were led by a well-known climate scientist within NASA. James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "I almost fell off my chair," he told NPR's Morning Edition.
The statement "indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change," he added to ABC News. There's more, but it's late and this is a dead thread anyway.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Climatologists studying hurricanes. There is a direct correlation between the level of surface sea temperature near the equator and the intensity of hurricanes. Warmer sea water will mean more intense hurricanes. Actually this is not entirely true. Potential hurricane strength has more to do with a difference in temperature between weather systems and/or sea temperature. In fact, the most powerful hurricanes on record actually happened during a relatively cold time of the year, with opposing storm systems that had a great differential in temperature.
"Chernobyl doesn't prove nuke power is unsafe because only a bunch of fucktard Soviet blockheads would build a flammable graphite shielded reactor with a huge positive void coefficient and then run it with all the safety systems turned off. France generates 78% of its electricity with safe plants of a standardized design. The USSR is useful only as an example of exactly how to NOT be responsible and/or environmentally conscious."
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The media has got all the issues completely wrong. By melting the ice caps (and permafrost, which is much greater in volume), sea level rise of only about 15m would ensure - which is nothing compared to the regular, cyclic 100-300m sea level changes from plate techtonics (ridge spreading rate changes, hotspots) which occur over 10^5 to 10^7 year cycles. What we do need to worry about is the release of the methane held in permafrost - high levels of methane (although there were other causes) resulted in the Permian/Triassic extinction event, wiping out 50% of animal life. As for CO2 levels being 'normal', if one looks at the past CO2 levels from sediment isotopes, it's very clear that the current level is about 5 times the level of all previous cyclic highs. It is completely abnormal.
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
Notice how they always say "serious scientific organizations", then dismiss anyone who disagrees as being on the fringe. This is despite the fact that highly qualified scientists do disagree about the actual cause and level of global warming. The simple fact is, most of the hysteria is based on Gore's little movie, which is based on BAD science that can never pass peer review.
-- Will program for bandwidth
personally doing things about it, the hurricane excuse is the wrong one to justify action with. Simply put, we do not know what kind of effect global warming will have on hurricanes. It is not unlikely that warmer temperatures will result in in more or stronger hurricanes, but the models are all over the place on this issue. The reason is that any gains in hurricane strength predicted by warmer waters is offset by decreases in hurricane strength caused by wind shear (the difference in wind speeds/direction at different heights above the water). It is not at all clear what the net effect would be, and in any case, is likely to be fairly minor.
There are many virtually certain, much more costly effects of global warming (ecosystem changes, sea level rise, reduced crop yields, species extinction, increased drought, etc). You should be using those as your justification.
Really? How do you know? Maybe we should bring in some other sources. Here is a few:
Here's one from NASA, that goes back 800,000 years and shows that we are in a "Little Ice Age"
Here's one from SEED that goes back 140 years and shows that we are 0.4 degrees C above where we were in 1860 AD. SEED, btw, seems to be a biased source. Anyplace that is hawking a solar powered backback has something to gain from GW.
Here is something from the guys that did the first site I mentioned:
So who do you believe? I've shown three different sources with three different models. Which one do you go by? Who says your models are better? Scientists? Scientists made all three models. What makes one any better than the others?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.