The Global Warming Heretic

theodp writes "In The Civil Heretic, the NYT Magazine takes a look at how world-renowned scientist Freeman Dyson wound up opposing those who care most about global warming. Since coming out of the closet on global warming, Dyson has found himself described as 'a pompous twit,' 'a blowhard,' and 'a mad scientist.' He argues that climate change has become an obsession for 'a worldwide secular religion' known as environmentalism. Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, calling him climate change's chief propagandist and accusing him of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models and promoting 'lousy science' that's distracting attention from more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet." Dyson himself wrote about the need for heretics in science not long ago.

Comments

There is money and publicity

[mevets]

in fighting the prevailing wind. Credibility will end up tattered, but when your alternative is wage parity with taxi drivers, not such a bad choice. Rail on you rebel you.

Re:There is money and publicity

[glueball]

There's big money in pushing global warming, too.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because 20 years ago Global Cooling was the buzzword :)

Re:There is money and publicity

[polar red]

quote from wikipedia :

In the 1970s there was increasing awareness that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945. Of those scientific papers considering climate trends over the 21st century, only 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming

Re:There is money and publicity

[glueball]

Did you make the same argument the 20 years before that ?
No. The hysteria was not at profitable levels 10 years ago.

20 years ago was the hysteria over acid rain.

Re:There is money and publicity

[SerpentMage]

Actually this is quite a bit of the problem.

Let me give you an example. I have been living here in Europe since 1994. In the past five years here in Switzerland we have been getting Canadian seasons. Yes the summers are warmer as well, but the winters are colder and more snow.

The media hypes the summers because they are hotter, but does not hype on the winter. They say, "oh this can be expected and normal". That bothers me completely because anybody who researches climate knows Europe is being kept warm by the Atlantic conveyor. If the Atlantic conveyor turns around further south then as paradoxical as it sounds with increased global warming Europe gets colder! The UK had its first snowfall in October in 74 YEARS!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3278378/Snow-covers-parts-of-England-as-winter-weather-sets-in.html

I remember a report in National Geographic about 5 years ago, and documentaries on TV that said Europe with increased global warming would become cold! The reason was the Atlantic conveyor. What was scary about this is that research has shown that the conveyor can shut down in a matter of a decade, but requires thousands upon thousands of years to restore itself.

I think it is happening! Though do you read about this in the media? NOOOOO because we all associate climate change with warming not change! It is much easier to sell deserts, no water, etc than people freezing their butts... Mentally we associate deserts = death, but cold as just being something we need to deal with...

Though look at the latitude of North Europe... It is freaken Labrador! Definitely not a place I want to live in... (due to its weather...)

Re:There is money and publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Don't quote wikipedia to prove a point. Quote what it quotes.

Re:There is money and publicity

[rs79]

While I could't think less of his daughter (hi Estie!) I couldn't think more of Freeman. And if you look at the times he's been wrong before (oh, there aren't any) and think about what he says in terms of the context of actual life dynamics you'll see he's not wrong this time.

This doesn't mean we should be free to pollute but as pointed out in Jurassic Park "life finds a way".

Re:There is money and publicity

[momerath2003]

This was the analysis of a Science News article I read a while ago. According to them, there was no consensus.

Then again, Science News also chooses to report a 9% growth in the arctic ice as "A near-record Arctic melting". Agenda, anyone?

Re:There is money and publicity

[tie_guy_matt]

In the seventies people were just begining to look at the problem. Also, back then aerosols emmitted by diesel engines and coal power plants were affecting climate change more than green house gases. People started to filter the particles when they realized that the particles tend to do things like cause cancer. Once the particles were blocked the earth started warming.

But anyway, what you are saying is that since the quick conclusion that people came up with when the study of climate change was in its infancy were wrong, all of the work and research that the worlds tops scientists did for the next 30+ years must also be wrong as well? I guess that argument makes sense if you don't think about it for more than 15 minutes.

Re:There is money and publicity

[ArcherB]

Did you make the same argument the 20 years before that ?
No. The hysteria was not at profitable levels 10 years ago.

20 years ago was the hysteria over acid rain.

Don't forget the Ozone layer. We were all supposed to be long dead from skin cancer by now.

Let's see...
1970's Smog
1980's Ozone layer
1990's Acid Rain
2000's Global Warming

Hmmm. I wonder why I no longer buy it.

Re:There is money and publicity

[ArcherB]

I remember a report in National Geographic about 5 years ago, and documentaries on TV that said Europe with increased global warming would become cold!

We are having the same kind of weather and explanations for it here in America as well.

It goes like this:

When it's hot, it's because of global warming. When it's cold, it's because of global warming.

Let me tell you something that is 100% FACT! The climate is going to change. It always has, and it always will. No matter what happens, there will be people who ignore the fact that the climate has changed since the Earth began to cool and blame whatever changes they see now on the activities of man. It's the height of arrogance!

Re:There is money and publicity

[sumdumass]

I can make the argument for you. In 1988 when the global warming alarmism started moving along, it parralelled a push to forgive the third world debt that was largely caused by the oil crisis in the 1970's when OPEC decided to halt sales to the US over it's support for Israel who just kicked their asses.

Anyways, to stay on topic, in 1992, the global warming issue had been hijacked by the third world debt issues and the product of this can be seen by 1994 with the first attempts to draft the Kyoto accords. Of course this was all highly secretive and the US attempted to assemble and international climate panel to prove that global warming was the cause of man (more specifically, first world industrialized nations). The movement to forgive the third world debt started disapearing as the Kyoto accords started nearing release. In 1998 it had almost completely evaporated but by then, they had most of europe convinced it needed to sign on to Kyoto.

Now when we examine Kyoto we find several things. Of the 157 some countries that have signed on to it, only 36-37 (if you count the US) have caps on their Co2 production and a few of those caps were placed at rated higher then they were currently emitting. The numbers I posted may be off by a couple because I'm rambling from memory but they accurately represent the differences and anyone wanting to look can find it easily. Anyways, of the 37 or so countries, they placed limits to 1990 levels of Co2 production but claimed that all man made Co2 was in excess of the natural cycles and causing global warming. Now you can look at this and see right now that the goal of the Kyoto protocol wasn't necessarily to stop global warming because it only addressed a portion of the Co2 coming from some of the richest nations. The same nations BTW that owned the third world debt.

But is gets worse. Knowing, and yes, we have years of data to back this up but knowing that the population generally increases (*with the exception of Germany which is almost a negative population growth rate) you can see that it would be almost impossible to go back 10 years in carbon production while the needs of the people are constantly increasing. If you cut 10 people's carbon footprint by 30% over 20 years and during that 20 years, 3 more people are added to the group, their 70% contribution negates all savings from the 30%reduction. So there was a trigger built in to Kyoto that allowed member nations to offset their Co2 production by buying Carbon credits from the third world nations or to invest into those third world nations by moving industry there. This creates a revenue base that allows the third world nations to pay off their debt but it totally ignores the issue of Co2 production being bad for the environment. In short, it says if the rich industrialized nations want to stay comfortable, they have to pay more and invest in the poorer third world countries. Currently, most of Europe has chosen to use Chine and India to outsource their pollution and help meet their goals and it can be seen by their increased pollution emissions. China has or is about to pass the US in emissions and they have no caps whatsoever at all. The remaining 130 some countries who have started becoming major polluters too, are in line for this type of boost.

So even if global warming is real and it is the threat that it has been claimed, the political solutions have been hijacked from the start for reasons of money. And those reasons are huge. The sums of money involved are well above any oil companies profits or savings you will see from traditional energy compared to the more expensive alternative sources.

People have moved past that redistribution of wealth, greed has kicked in, and you have people like Al Gore selling carbon offsets to himself or people with the potential to make billions from outdated technology (yes, solar was invented in the 1800's, failed to be practical or cost effective in the 50's,60's,70's and 80's, Wind was actually replaced by coal in the 1920's though the 1950's) if they can

Re:There is money and publicity

[MrHanky]

If the Gulf Stream turned around, you'd see far worse effects on the climate than some snow in October. I'm @ 60ÂN on the coast of Norway, so I'd expect temperatures at least below freezing for most of the months between November and March. No monthly average has been below freezing for a few years now. Technically, we don't have winter.

The reason why you've stopped hearing about the potential reversal of the Gulf Stream is that it's been thoroughly researched and found highly unlikely to happen.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Doctor Morbius]

Maybe you should read the news more often. Did you not see the recent report showing that if we had not banned CFCs from aerosol sprays in the 70's that the ozone hole would have grown so large that areas as far south as Washington D.C. would be experiencing high levels of ultraviolet light.

Re:There is money and publicity

[odourpreventer]

> Don't forget the Ozone layer.

Because of early warnings, we were able to halt the destruction of the ozone layer.

> We were all supposed to be long dead from skin cancer by now.

For some people in Australia, this is still true.

> 1970's Smog

People being killed annually by smog are counted by the thousands.

> I wonder why I no longer buy it.

Because you're an idiot?

Re:There is money and publicity

[amorsen]

I think it is happening! Though do you read about this in the media? NOOOOO because we all associate climate change with warming not change!

Within the last few years papers seem to indicate that the threat of the Atlantic conveyor shutting down isn't as high as once expected, and that the effects would likely not be as severe as expected. There is e.g. "Climate change: A sea change", but you need a Nature subscription to read it. Anyway, personally I'm not as worried about that particular effect of global warming anymore.

Re:There is money and publicity

[HertzaHaeon]

Smog, the ozone layer and acid rain are not alarming problems anymore because we actually did something about them.

They were all fought with emission standards and regulations that forced the industry to adapt.

Besides the obvious environmental benefits, you get stuff like fridges that not only are ozone-friendly, but are much more efficient than before.

Global warming can be dealt with and will likewise bring us benefits. But we have to do something about it.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Chris Burke]

Don't forget the Ozone layer. We were all supposed to be long dead from skin cancer by now.

That makes as much sense as saying "Don't forget about leaded gasoline! We were all supposed to be dead from its emissions by now!"

What an amazing world we live in where:
1) Experts predict disaster if a problem is ignored.
2) Problem is solved rather than ignored.
3) Disaster is averted.
4) Mentally challenged "skeptics" believe the problem never existed in the first place.

I bet you think there was nothing to Y2K either, do you? Or think nothing has changed vis-a-vis smog since the 70s? Or that acid rain isn't a problem?

Hmmm. I wonder why I no longer buy it.

Because you have chosen to do so, and have quite effectively shielded yourself from seeing why you came to the exactly wrong conclusion.

Re:There is money and publicity

[PopeRatzo]

Let's see...
1970's Smog
1980's Ozone layer
1990's Acid Rain
2000's Global Warming

The funny thing is that all of the issues you mention are actually worse today.

If you want to see smog, just take a look at all the people who have to wear breathing apparatus in many cities in the Far East. Ozone Layer? Look at the skin cancer rates in Australia. Acid Rain? Check the amount of aluminum in the drinking water in Toronto.

If there hadn't been efforts to combat those first three that started in earnest in the late 70's, there'd probably be three dead Great Lakes.

I'm surprised how many people believe that there is huge money in climate science. They hear about the billions that are being spent by the energy industry to try to convince people there's no harm in burning coal, petroleum and the hundreds of thousands that an environmental reasearcher could possibly receive in a grant and they think: "oh, it's the same thing". Dumb fucks.

It's about 2pm here in Chicago, and I've already read 8 comments from people with UIDs below 999999 who don't seem to know the difference between weather and climate.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Vexar]

You forgot to mention that the state in which Al Gore has his primary residence, it is the largest single family home on record. Something insane like 10,000 a square foot house for him and his wife goes unnoticed on principle when doling out the embarrassment that once was the Nobel Prize. Still, that is smaller than the 54,000 square foot house that Barack Obama has in Washington DC.

Nice post. So, my question is this: are you saying the political movement that is Global Warming is more along the lines of Global Socialism?

Re:There is money and publicity

[gwait]

1970's smog: Pollution laws changed car emissions drastically
1980's Ozone layer: Pollution laws got rid of CFCs
1990's Acid rain: Pollution laws put scrubbers in factory exaust pipes

2000's Global Warming? remains to be seen where this goes. Dyson seems to be a very bright guy, and he is doing good service to science by being skeptical. He's not denying the global warming issue outright, he's saying there is not enough data to conclude either way, and that he's doubtful.

The article states he was also against the Hubble telescope, arguing against the cost. There's no question that Hubble has advanced the science of astronomy greatly, it's his judgment that the money could have been spent on more important things, which is also his concern on expensive solutions to the global warming issue.

It doesn't mean that Dyson is standing up for the antienvironmentalists who don't want to be held responsible for their own actions.

Re:There is money and publicity

[GaratNW]

Near record is not a record. Cherry pick your quotes much? Next sentence in that article:
"but 34 percent below the average measured for September since 1979"

Last year was a record. 9% back from that record compared to last year is still crappy when you're talking about a total 34% drop in total area since 1979. 4.5227 million square miles compared to 4.6 million square miles year to year change from 2007 to 2008, compared to over 6 million square miles three decades ago. The article could be a little less hyperbolic in it's title, but as for an agenda? Please.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Random Destruction]

Nice troll, but the linked website doesn't agree with you. It talks of both a yearly cycle and a long term trend. It also says man made CFCs

contribute to the thinning of the ozone layer and allow larger quantities of harmful ultraviolet rays to reach the earth.

and some tasty graphs showing stuff like

NASA/NOAA satellite data showing the rise in stratospheric chlorine and corresponding decline in ozone layer thickness from 1979 to 1997. As stratospheric chlorine declined in response to enactment of the Montreal Protocol, the first stage of ozone recovery began.

Re:There is money and publicity

[JWSmythe]

    But, your list is perfect.

    Each and every item was worked on with global agreement.

    Smog was reduced by making cleaner running vehicles and cleaner industry.

    The ozone layer reduction was helped by virtually outlawing CFC's.

    Acid rain, again was reduced by the work done with vehicles and industry.

    And global warming will have a man made reduction, or else we'll reap the benefits of it. Once humanity is decimated, it's effects will be mitigated. Either that, or we'll do something about it.

    The whole argument of is there or isn't there is irrelevant. The end result by treating global warming as a problem is a good one, regardless of if you believe in the reason or not. We will have a cleaner environment, which is something I wouldn't mind at all. But hey, if you love pollution, fire up a nice smokey fire in your fireplace with the flue shut, and start up your car with the garage door shut. You'll have plenty of pollution in no time, in the comfort of your own home. Light up a nice fat cigar, and take a few deep breaths. Ahhh.. Nirvana.. right?

   

Re:There is money and publicity

[tie_guy_matt]

Maybe, course the aerosols cause other problems .. like cancer. One of the reasons for the famine in Ethiopia in the 80's were the number of aerosols that were emitted by the western nations. The aerosols blocked some of the sun and changed some of the currents in the oceans slightly. The result was that there were parts of africa that didn't get the seasonal rains the people rely on. Sometimes the earth can take a lot of abuse and just bounce right back, then again sometimes a little change here and a little change there can cause slight changes that have big effects. Luckily we cut many of the particle emissions and the rains eventually came back.

Re:There is money and publicity

[JoshuaZ]

The claim that ozone measurement started in the 1980s is simple wrong. Measurement of the levels of ozone occurred well before we had satellites. Ozone measuring began in 1957. See http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/history.html Your comment about natural cyclic elements to the ozone levels is misleading. There is a natural cycle and it is large. What was observed was a slow, steady reduction in the average level even as the larger cycle progressed. The Wikipedia article gives a good summary and some citations and references which should explain things well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

Re:There is money and publicity

[Schmorgluck]

More simply than the others who reacted to your post, I'd say you should link to the Wikipedia article you're quoting, so anyone can see how it is sourced.

Re:There is money and publicity

[shadowbearer]

  The desire to profit off of potential misfortune or calamity is at least as old as human civilization.

  While what you said above may be true, it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not global warming is really happening. It does point out just how ignorant and greedy people can be.

SB

Re:There is money and publicity

[moderatorrater]

I think the valid point buried in their bullshit is that climate change is still in its infancy, and yet we're looking at drastic changes because of it. Studies still can't tell us definitively what will happen when the climate actually changes and they can't even come close. Will the increased warming trigger cooling or will it start a feedback loop where small warming triggers much larger trends? Will it cause an increase or a decrease in the rainfall across farmlands? Hell, we can't even tell if warming up to this point averted another ice age or not. IMHO, it's a valid criticism, although one used most often by people who are ignorant of most of the science anyway.

Re:There is money and publicity

[naasking]

But is gets worse. Knowing, and yes, we have years of data to back this up but knowing that the population generally increases (*with the exception of Germany which is almost a negative population growth rate) [...]

No, just about every affluent country has negative population growth. The total populations of affluent countries are increasing only due to immigration.

Paradoxically, spreading a more energy-consuming lifestyle, ie. a higher standard of living, would result in lower or negative total population growth to the point where our energy needs may also stabilize. This is also disregarding advances in efficiency, which do come along now and again.

Or our energy needs may continually increase. Hard to say really. What is certain however, is that the harder it is to develop more energy sources, the more expensive energy will become, and our energy consumption will plateau from that alone (and likely drive more developments in efficiency). Basic economics.

Re:There is money and publicity

[anaesthetica]

Why do so many people think that knowing a lot and being really good with one field of science in any way qualifies you to speak with credability [sic] about another field of science?

Because the scientific method is universal? Because the ability to methodically apply reasoned skepticism is not the privileged domain of hermetic specialists?

Re:There is money and publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

regulation of the free market caused this mess (housing bubble, subprime lending). Further regulation (bailouts etc.) will just mess it up further. The free market works best if it's "free".

Re:There is money and publicity

[mariox19]

Free-market advocates don't claim that "the economy" will fix itself. What they point out is that each individual, in response to a recession, begins to change his or her economic behavior: this includes investors, business owners, managers, skilled workers, unskilled workers, and individuals spending their money on consumer goods. In this way, people, working individually, redirect their economic activity away from bad investments to good investments. In each case, the actions of each exist within a larger context: namely, the actions of other individuals. This context coordinates economic activity; and as each individual seeks gains rather than losses, the end result will be a reorganization of economic activity that will end the recession.

In other words, the economy doesn't fix itself; the individuals, each working within their own sphere, fix the economy. This activity will still attempt go on whether the government does anything or not. What free-market advocates argue is that government can only hinder this activity and, in doing so, the recovery.

So, yes, unless government manages to completely destroy the economy, when things start improving, free-market advocates will claim that the recovery would have happened anyway; and it is completely consistent with their understanding of economics to do so. It will not have been government that fixed the economy, but those elements of the free-market that remained unhampered by government.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Tenebrousedge]

The article you are linking to is a collection of opinions, some of which are related to the article in question. Most of them seem to have been taken entirely out of context. It presents a one-sided explanation of the results and significance of the study. It does not discuss methodology at all. The quality of the information presented is absolutely terrible, in point of fact, and given the source, it is extremely questionable whether this represents the current scientific consensus on the matter.

Why is it so important for you to push an agenda rather than hard data and unbiased critical analysis? What good does that do?

Re:There is money and publicity

[arminw]

..a majority of the scientists...

Of course, once upon a time the majority of scientists thought the earth was at the center of the universe. The majority of doctors and medical scientists believed that disease was caused by bad air and fought early pioneers and advocates of rigorous cleanliness in hospitals tooth and nail. The majority of cosmologists today believes that electricity plays no role whatsoever in the large-scale operation of the universe. Some of them will desperately oppose anyone who even breathes the word "electric" or "plasma" in connection with cosmology or astrophysics.

Since when has the majority had a corner on truth? Has it ever been? No? Well maybe the majority is wrong here also. When it comes to science, the stupidest thing I know of toward the validity of any scientific statement or argument is to invoke the majority.

In the case of global warming, the majority is clearly wrong, once again, as usual. The Earth has cycled between warmer and cooler for ages. Where, for example, did all that carbon comes from that is stored in the fossil fuel we burn today and have yet to burn? How does the carbon, along with hydrogen become hydrocarbons? Why do we call it fossil fuel? Is that not all solar energy stored as chemical energy? What mechanisms converted and stored this chemical energy, if not photosynthesis? Today, plants get the carbon they need to grow from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Where did the plants of long-ago which we now burn in our gas tanks and power plants get their carbon dioxide they needed for the process of photosynthesis?

If we burned every possible gram a fossil fuel, would that not return Earth's conditions to what they were before the fossil fuels were formed in the first place? If that happened suddenly, it would be rather catastrophic, but not if it took place over many generations of humans.

Re:There is money and publicity

[TapeCutter]

Pretending something hasn't been wieghed and measured is a common tactic used by people who don't like what the science tells them and haven't got the balls to question their dogma.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Antique Geekmeister]

And he doesn't remember the effects of increasing acid rain on marble on bathroom decks, or stone sculpture that had survived thousands of years.

Re:There is money and publicity

[fritsd]

IANACS, but I read the reason that the destruction and (after the Montreal Protocol) current rebuilding of the ozone layer is so fast, is because not much of the CFC's were needed to alter it: radiation split a halogen atom off of them, forming free radicals, and these reacted with the O3 forming oxygen and the same free radical again, ready to do the same reaction again (linky).
The greenhouse effect of CO2, on the other hand, is related to how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere (I think the bulk of the effect is due to how CO2 strongly absorbs infrared light, as discovered in 1896. So, the effect of the CO2 is not as strong and you need more of it (which we do in fact).
However, what I think is not really taken into account much yet is possible positive and negative feedback effects that might become more noticeable at higher CO2 concentrations.
Freeman Dyson mentioned a negative feedback effect: that trees would be happy to absorb more CO2 (esp. his idea of genetically engineered CO2 eating trees). This might be a good mitigating idea, especially combined with "bio-charring" them to put a bit of the sequestered carbon in the ground, out of the biological cycle.
<speculative_rant>
What worries me more is *positive* feedback effects. When the arctic cap melts, the sea underneath is probably darker than the white ice we have currently, so the albedo of the planet might change a little bit and reflect less of the sunlight. When or maybe if the methane clathrates at some places of the seabottom burp up and the Siberian permafrost melts, large amounts of methane get in the atmosphere, and they'd either add to the greenhouse effect (stronger than an equivalent amount of CO2) or if there's enough methane maybe they'd even burn, warming the tundra up even more (and who knows how long it takes to put that out, if a large area is on fire fueled by deposits of long-frozen rotten stuff; e.g. coal mine fires can last long)
</speculative_rant>

Re:There is money and publicity

[ScrewMaster]

regulation of the free market caused this mess (housing bubble, subprime lending).

That's not really true. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 had a lot to do with it, and it did so by making the market freer. In essence, it repealed portions of the original Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was put in place to limit some of the banking practices that contributed to the Great Depression. At least, that's how I understand it ... anyone who knows better feel free to correct me.

Truth is, a totally free market doesn't work, at least, it doesn't work unless you happen to be at top of the corporate food chain. In a previous century they called that laissez faire, and it didn't work. Look, like it or not we need the institution of government and the corporations that provide goods and services require regulation. The people that run them have demonstrated unequivocally that they cannot be trusted with our lives or livelihoods without some form of governmental controls in place.

We just have to make sure that that regulation works for all of us.

Re:There is money and publicity

[TapeCutter]

If you the same intellectual coward that is promoting the notion that science is politically skewed by politics and money then let's look at the favorite target of these attacks, namely the IPCC.

1. The 2500 scientists do not get paid for the peer-review work they are doing (and btw that's all the IPCC does).

2. The lead chapter authors get "free" plane tickets to go to the "free" confrence rooms and work.

3. The budget is $5-6M/yr and is sourced from 300+ politically diverse nations.

Here are your citations, now STFU with your unoriginal corruption meme.

Re:There is money and publicity

[squiggleslash]

In the case of global warming, the majority is clearly wrong, once again, as usual. The Earth has cycled between warmer and cooler for ages

"My god, why didn't we think of that?" (*sound of thousands of foreheads being slapped*) - The Majority Of Climate Scientists.

Thank God you put them right with something they clearly would never have thought of themselves. What I'd love to know is why did you post this in Slashdot? Why not announce it at the Academy of Very Very Important Climate Scientists?

Re:There is money and publicity

[MaskedSlacker]

I'm burning all of the mod points I just used to say this:

Laissez faire is a policy. 'Free market' is a mathematical model.

Repealing Glass-Steagall did NOT make the market more free.

'Free market' does not refer solely to the absence of government regulation it refers to the mathematical assumptions that the model is based on:

1)Full transparency--all buyers and sellers know and understand exactly what they are buying and selling.

By repealing Glass-Steagall and not regulating CDOs the government actually decreased the transparency of the market making it LESS free.

2)Full mobility of goods -- this is the one that government regulation usually interferes with by compartmentalizing and breaking markets in goods and labor.

The argument behind the 'free market' as a policy goal is that the model is maximally efficient--we get the largest amount of goods and services from a particular quantity of resources. However, LAISSEZ FAIRE != FREE MARKET, mostly because of the transparency point. In the 1800s, this was less the case than it is to day, owing simply to the radical change in the sophistication of our technology since that time--most people don't understand how the things they buy work, and are completely unqualified to judge whether the products they buy are any good--which is a massive decrease in transparency. Add in the nature of modern advertising, a practice which is inherently designed to decrease transparency and you have a situation that is far more complicated than the old intellectually bankrupt ideologies would have you think.

Re:There is money and publicity

[mariox19]

No. Deregulation is what we need more of. What we need less of -- in fact, none of -- is government favoring some businesses (notably, huge quasi-governmental businesses) over others, and government fiddling with the money supply by promoting so-called "easy money" policies.

We're in this mess because government created two huge entities, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac, subsidized them with all kinds of tax breaks and anti-competitive advantages, fueled them with tons of inflationary credit, and then encouraged irresponsibility and certain, eventual loss by directing them to make bad loans to people with poor credit, all the while winking to investors all over the world that they never need worry about these banks failing because the US government would write any checks necessary to keep them solvent.

This was the beginning of the speculation in housing, which led to the secondary speculation in mortgage instruments. What hurt was not deregulation, but government favoritism and a policy of socializing losses.

Pro-capitalist is not the same as "pro-business," when pro-business has come to mean Washington gets in bed with big business and writes laws to favor their buddies. That's cronyism. Capitalism means government stays out of the economy completely.

Re:There is money and publicity

[nabsltd]

The fact that climate change now has a great deal of non-scientists talking and writing about it basically means the following have been invoked:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. —Clarke's first law

When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion—the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right. —Asimov's corollary to Clarke's first law

Basically, this means that as more of the general public state that global warming is fact, it is more likely that the scientists who state that more study is needed are actually correct.

Re:There is money and publicity

[bit01]

Capitalism means government stays out of the economy completely.

No, capitalism without government is warlordism, might makes right.

Government is about stopping all the negative ways that people can compete (e.g. protection rackets, deceptive advertising, monopoly market manipulation, dangerous products, externalities such as pollution, child/vulnerable exploitation, violent crime) while still allowing positive competition (e.g. better products, cheaper prices, honest advertising, no spamming).

That doesn't mean that business people are absolved of any ethical responsibility for not competing positively. Government is just a backstop to control the sociopaths.

Being a human institution democratic government (one person, one vote versus one dollar, one vote) makes mistakes all the time but it's the best we've got.

---

Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.

Re:There is money and publicity

[tick-tock-atona]

Your post displays breathtaking ignorance

..a majority of the scientists...

Of course, once upon a time the majority of scientists thought the earth was at the center of the universe.

No they didn't. The majority of people thought that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Of course this was before the discipline known as "science", the scientific method and all that comes with that. Most people used religion to explain the unknown and religion decreed that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

The majority of doctors and medical scientists believed that disease was caused by bad air and fought early pioneers and advocates of rigorous cleanliness in hospitals tooth and nail. The majority of cosmologists today believes that electricity plays no role whatsoever in the large-scale operation of the universe. Some of them will desperately oppose anyone who even breathes the word "electric" or "plasma" in connection with cosmology or astrophysics.

Since when has the majority had a corner on truth? Has it ever been? No? Well maybe the majority is wrong here also. When it comes to science, the stupidest thing I know of toward the validity of any scientific statement or argument is to invoke the majority.

The mistake you make here is to mistake the majority of evidence with the majority of people . In the examples you cite, scientific methods had not been devised, and so it is valid to claim them as examples of historical ignorance. In the case of global warming however, there is an enormous majority of evidence in favour of global warming, which is what climate scientists base their opinions on.

In the case of global warming, the majority is clearly wrong, once again, as usual. The Earth has cycled between warmer and cooler for ages. Where, for example, did all that carbon comes from that is stored in the fossil fuel we burn today and have yet to burn? How does the carbon, along with hydrogen become hydrocarbons? Why do we call it fossil fuel? Is that not all solar energy stored as chemical energy? What mechanisms converted and stored this chemical energy, if not photosynthesis? Today, plants get the carbon they need to grow from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Where did the plants of long-ago which we now burn in our gas tanks and power plants get their carbon dioxide they needed for the process of photosynthesis?

If we burned every possible gram a fossil fuel, would that not return Earth's conditions to what they were before the fossil fuels were formed in the first place?

Yes it might. Prior to the evolution of photosynthesis, approximately 3.4 billion years ago, the sun was up to 1/3 dimmer than it is now, however due to the effects of greenhouse gases (much higher than at any other time in earth's history), temperatures were comparable to today. Interestingly, carbonate rocks from this period are rare, as the oceans were far more acidic than they are now. So if we were to revert to this, say goodbye to pretty much the entire oceanic food chain, and possibly your ability to breathe.

If that happened suddenly, it would be rather catastrophic, but not if it took place over many generations of humans.

Once again, the changes from those conditions to today's took place over 3.4 billion years. We are seeing changes occur due to human activity on timescales which are several orders of magnitude shorter than this.

Please go and educate yourself on these issues - not just for your own sake, but for everyone else's too because your vote is worth the same as mine.

Re:There is money and publicity

[krou]

Except that it is happening suddenly in relative terms. How long does it take for oil and coal to be created (and in turn store carbon), and how quickly are we releasing it back into the atmosphere?

Current estimates place the process of creation of oil to be around hundreds of thousands of years. To try and claim that it's taking a long time in human years and thus will have little or no effect is disingenuous, considering that some already believe we're approaching (or have already approached) peak oil (ie. we've depleted approximately half of the world's oil reserves), and we've managed to achieve that in around 200 years.

And while I agree that quoting the "majority" as a reason is not a valid argument, your logic that the majority were wrong before therefore the majority are wrong now is a logical fallacy. Clearly the majority currently believe that the earth is NOT the centre of the universe, which demonstrates the absurdity of your argument.

Re:There is money and publicity

[Hognoxious]

Of course this was before the discipline known as "science", the scientific method and all that comes with that.

So can you tell me the precise date (am or pm) that science was invented and scientific method arrived at - and how?

And if "scientists" didn't previously believe the geocentric model (which at least some did, like Ptolemey), why all the fuss about Copernicus?

Re:There is money and publicity

[budgenator]

Wow, references to the lay popular press really supports any complex scientific debate! I do admit that PBS's Nova is the elite of the lay science press.

Repent now, the end is near

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how since the beginning of history, groups of people have been claiming that the world is going to end. And it keeps not happening.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Anonymous Coward]

In fairness it will only keep on not happening until the day it does happen.

AKA, it's not a matter of "if."

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[StartledGnu]

Funny how since the beginning of history, groups of people have been claiming that the world is going to end. And it keeps not happening.

"Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Results"

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Adrian Lopez]

The world will go on, but humanity might not.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Every single measurement of the "climate" is not a unrelated sources. There are no climatologist suggesting the end of anything. A few feet of water and a few degrees and perhaps some rain pattern changes *worst case*. How the hell is that going to even get close to end of the world bunk?

Re: Repent now, the end is near

[Alwin Henseler]

Funny how since the beginning of history, groups of people have been claiming that the world is going to end. And it keeps not happening.

That holds true whatever we do. If mankind would turn this planet into a radioactive, toxic wasteland that's uninhabitable for humans or animals, we might just succeed in making ourselves extinct (like the dinosaurs). Given enough time, environmental conditions would change/improve and other lifeforms would rule the planet. 'Mother earth' will be fine regardless.

But perhaps it's better to look at climate change as a simple cost problem. Raised CO2 levels might cause higher global temperatures, sea level rise, more often occuring weather extremes, droughts, crop losses etc. And from that: property damage, hunger disasters, armed conflicts and so on. The total of all these effects could be a huge price to pay, if ignored.

The problem is 2-fold:

• It's often impossible to calculate all actual costs / benefits for any of your actions, due to the many (invisible) factors/effects involved, and
• Much of that cost will be paid by other people than the ones doing the damage. That's true for many environmentally-destructive activities.

So is there an optimum, and how to determine it? Simple answer: perhaps, but impossible to calculate, or enforce. All you can do is make educated guesses, and stay on the safe side.

But IMHO there's nothing wrong with doing that as much as possible. If you build a new house or office building, make it as energy-efficient as reasonably possible (using existing tech or innovate along the way). If you buy a new car, make the fuel-efficiency among your top priorities, regardless of current fuel prices. If you have to route traffic trough an existing forest, build eco-friendly railroad first, before putting down a 5-line highway.

And what's optimal then? My guess is somewhere between 'going overboard' and 'relaxed, gradual, pro-active measures'. To be decided by improving ways to calculate total, real costs, and charging those parties causing them.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[binary paladin]

We've killed God around here so people need some fiction to replace it. The people around here, for instance, have global warming. (And when that's not enough, someone always starts up a conversation about superior programming styles or paradigms, which is far more religious than any tent revival I've ever seen.)

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[orzetto]

First off, no one has ever said that "global warming will mark the world's end". Its consequences are claimed to be very expensive to handle, involve lots of suffering, massive displacements of populations and annexed refugee problems (see recent Bangladesh flooding pattern).

Second, it is also funny how since the beginning of history, groups of people have been claiming that the world is just fine:

• Don't worry, that horse is a sign of the gods! Break the wall to let it pass!
• Barbarians? How could that be a problem for the largest empire of the world?
• Nah, the Turks are only talking—we Armenians will just have to endure some insults, like all the other times, that's all.
• They've been persecuting us for almost two millennia now, yet we're still here.
• Ivan, run this test tomorrow night on reactor 4. Stop whining about safety, nothing bad ever happened before.
• Levee maintenance? Oh please, every how many years do we get a Cat 5?

Predicting doom may or may not be right. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it does not. It is the merit of the question that has to be addressed, and if the consequences are claimed to be serious it should be a case for increased attention, not discredit.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[fastest fascist]

I haven't seen anyone sane saying the world will end, or even that humans will rapidly go extinct, just that climate change will cause many changes, potentially threatening food production, water supplies, causing political destabilization etc, generally changing much of the world as we know it. In other words, what's being said is things could get quite difficult.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Cyberax]

Of course, it's not the "end of the world" in the sense of "the Earth is destroyed", but in practical terms it'll be VERY bad.

There's a good article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming - some effects are ALREADY very visible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming#Acidification is my favorite).

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Hal_Porter]

Second, it is also funny how since the beginning of history, groups of people have been claiming that the world is just fine:

• Don't worry, that horse is a sign of the gods! Break the wall to let it pass!
• Barbarians? How could that be a problem for the largest empire of the world?
• Nah, the Turks are only talking—we Armenians will just have to endure some insults, like all the other times, that's all.
• They've been persecuting us for almost two millennia now, yet we're still here.
• Ivan, run this test tomorrow night on reactor 4. Stop whining about safety, nothing bad ever happened before.
• Levee maintenance? Oh please, every how many years do we get a Cat 5?

Predicting doom may or may not be right. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it does not. It is the merit of the question that has to be addressed, and if the consequences are claimed to be serious it should be a case for increased attention, not discredit.

This post has finally convinced me that global warming is a serious problem.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Kohath]

And everything is perfect now?

Why is it guaranteed that when things get "quite difficult" it's worse than the difficulties we currently have? Or the difficulties we'll have if we "fix" global warming?

You're promising a worse future if we do something and a better future if we do something else. Why should we believe you can predict these outcomes accurately?

The world's climate and economy and social and political systems are complex. The global warmenists would have you believe they've mastered the understanding of all of them together and can navigate toward the best possible outcome, predicting events and steering a course 20 years in advance. They haven't. They can't.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[n dot l]

Funny how since the beginning of history, groups of people have been claiming that the world is going to end. And it keeps not happening.

That depends on your definition of "world". Sure, the planet's still here, but there are a lot of cities, religions, races, and empires (in essence: ways of life) which have died or been destroyed. If your civilization was where a desert is now, and you're watching the unending drout destroy everything you know, how do you express that? Or if you see that your nation's trade is falling apart, the military is too small, the people are as likely to start killing and looting each other as they are to band together to pull through a crisis, the barbarians are massing at the borders, and the emperor won't do a goddamn thing because he's off having a drunken orgy with his friends?

Honestly, it comes down to this: if you are about to die, and everything you know about the world - everything you have worked to build - is about to vanish, then what's the difference, from your point of view, between the whole world ending or just your tiny little corner of said world?

If we're going to make the implicit assumption that the past keeps repeating, then may I point out that no civilization has ever survived intact forever. At best they are replaced by something vaguely similar, but even then only after periods of chaos and suffering on a monumental scale. At worst we find a stone tablet somewhere praising king X for wiping out every man, woman, and child in neighboring city Y in only a day.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[dontmakemethink]

However there are numerous examples of the propagation of fear for the purpose of controlling the masses. 9/11 is dubious at best, no WMD's were found in Iraq, and there is no tangible evidence that greenhouse gasses represent a significant cause of global warming compared to a natural phenomenon. The Earth has been much warmer in the past and had much higher CO2 levels prior to industrialization, which is exactly why dinosaurs were so enormous, they needed enormous air cavities to extract sufficient oxygen.

I am still an environmental advocate, since there is also no reason to make things any worse, but really, do Americans actually have anything to fear from Iraqis or "terrorists"? There are plenty of those who benefited immensely and are capable of perpetrating such frauds on the American public. I don't claim that's what happened, I merely do not accept the story fed us by Fox news unchallenged, and there are too many unexplained holes.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[BlackSabbath]

"A few feet of water"
- can mean massive problems for those in the Pacific islands, Holland, London and other very low lying areas, or where they are already fighting to keep water out.

"a few degrees"
- of the *average*. Says nothing about minima/maxima. But can be the difference between crops being viable or not. Can be the difference between methane laden permafrost staying frozen or not. Can mean much less Arctic sea ice, massively reducing the albedo/reflectivity provided by the ice cover (the last two we are actually seeing and are reinforcing GW).

"some rain pattern changes"
- can mean that rainfall no longer falls over catchment areas (we're seeing this a lot in south-east Australia). Urban areas can easily become unviable in such circumstances (or alternatively resort to building massive desal plants like we are).

No one is predicting the "end of the world". But claiming that "a few degrees" has no effect just trumpets your ignorance.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Walkingshark]

We've killed God around here so people need some fiction to replace it. The people around here, for instance, have global warming. (And when that's not enough, someone always starts up a conversation about superior programming styles or paradigms, which is far more religious than any tent revival I've ever seen.)

For sufficiently secular values of the world religious, yes.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Tycho]

Yet, there are currently inactive sand dunes in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, that reactivated several times a century, during sustained years of drought, in the last millennium. A sand dune reactivates when there are no roots from vegetation holding the sand in place. At which point, you pretty much get unpleasant sand storms and they leave clearly identifiable sand deposits behind.

The 1930's dustbowl could have been less extreme if the farming practices were better. However, now we are wastefully draining underground aquifers at a rate higher than the rate of recharge when there is not enough rain.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[colinrichardday]

The Church of GNU Emacs may be sillier than any major religion, but I'm pretty sure that there is a GNU Emacs.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[Burnhard]

Are you saying flooding in Bangladesh is caused by Global Warming? If you are, then you are an idiot. I would love to contribute some knowledge in this area, but I fear you are determined to assign a cause to every single natural disaster, regardless of whether or not they are actually related. Let us just say that Geology and Geography are the reason for Bangladesh having issues with flooding, just as here in the UK covering over river flood plains with concrete and building houses on them isn't the smartest idea. Of course, that doesn't stop the environmental nutters claiming it's global warming, when in fact it's the very limited ability of concrete to absorb H2O. If you know about this stuff, then you'll know that the ocean is rising, but has been for a very long time (centuries and millenia) and has not been accelerating. Increasing sea level, it seems to me, falsifies theories of Global Warming. It isn't happening.

With respect to claimed consequences being taken seriously, we know one thing for certain: many more people will die if it becomes colder than if it becomes warmer. How do we know this? Because it happens every year. My theory on AGW is that people are fundamentally irrational, credulous and unbelievably stupid. Recent research shows that people lose their ability to be rational when confronted by an "expert". People like Hansen and Gore claim to be "experts", but they are only interested in promoting their own ideas, not in discovering truth.

In my view a rational response to Global Warming would be to get out a deck-chair and crack open a beer.

Re:Repent now, the end is near

[dirtyhippie]

He meant comparable to. Not as an example of global warning. You, sir, are an idiot for jumping to conclusions.

beacon of hope

[okooolo]

I dread the day we stop questioning ourselves

Re:beacon of hope

[JeanBaptiste]

well I don't question myself, I'm pretty much perfetc.

Re:beacon of hope

[JeanBaptiste]

Joke

----

You

Re:beacon of hope

[gwait]

Indeed, skepticism is the one thing Science has going for it!

I'm (just inside) the global warming belief camp, and I believ Dyson is doing a good thing by challenging the Global Warming scientists.

Even if we had 100% agreement in a conclusion of global warming, we don't want a bunch of poorly thought out crackpot "solutions" to global warming, which could turn out far worse than the disease.

"heretic"

[Anonymous Coward]

A heretic is a person that believes in the same thing, but has their own angle not following the exact doctrines. However, the church has managed to change the public perception of the word into something so extreme, it's as bad as falling out of the devil's bottom and calling yourself jesus or some other mythical character.

Re:History...

[FauxPasIII]

> Im all for conservation and greener technologies.
> But this is not what is driving the Global Warming folks.

Speak for yourself. That's _exactly_ why I'm in so strongly favor of listening to the overwhelming consensus of climatologists.

Re:Thank goodness

[Anonymous Psychopath]

You know he actually was quoted saying "I am not going to let science get in the way"...

Googling 'gore "I am not going to let science get in the way"' returns 0 results.

Heretics are GOOD

[DreamsAreOkToo]

A lot of time in Science, you see people get aggressive towards dissenters of the popular opinion. Not aggressive in a good way, mind you. Heretics are GOOD because they strengthen or destroy good/bad science.

Just remember that next time you read an ID article ;-)

Re:Heretics are GOOD

[shaitand]

ID isn't science, good or bad.

Re:History...

[AJWM]

Actually climatologists are pretty divided on the whole global warming issue -- they understand the details a whole lot better than the hordes of laymen or non-climatalogist scientists who keep shouting about it.

Professor Dyson is a very smart man

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, he also happens to be wrong. He is a lone voice who has never published or conducted any research in Climatology; it is not his field. Those who insult and demean Dyson because of his views engage in abhorrent rhetoric. But the fact that some crazy people engage in abusive conduct does not make Professor Dyson's scientific views on this issue correct. It simply means that some people are assholes.

I'm sorry. There is a strong sentiment among slashdotters that Global Warming is bunk. Which shows just how ignorant the population at slashdot really is (never mind the general public).

Re:Professor Dyson is a very smart man

[TheTurtlesMoves]

.. who has never published or conducted any research in Climatology;

Neither has Al Gore.

Re:Professor Dyson is a very smart man

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell does Al Gore have to do with climatology science? Nothing. The claims of climatologists have a large data set backing them now. It is far more than just a few computer models. That was the case in 1988. Today, there is over twenty years of accumulated hard data from ice cores, tree rings, and geological evidence showing change over time going back from thousands of years (tree ring) hundreds of thousands of years (ice core) to millions of years (geologic). This is not about simple computer models any longer (though those models from 1988 have been borne out as accurate anyway).

Hard data gets in the way of your ideology. In time, hard reality will get in the way of your and your children's lives. Mother nature has a way of being a real bitch if you don't get out of her way. Earth may well survive this, but that doesn't mean humanity will as well. Better get yourself and your kids ready for a rollercoaster ride without handrails. But who cares? Because rollercoasters don't exist anyway! I heard someone say that, it must be true.

You're full of shit.

Re:Professor Dyson is a very smart man

[Enahs]

See, here's what people are getting at. Since you seem to be quick to lean on the idiot's crutch of using profanity and intimidation in lieu of intelligent discourse, I'll keep this as simple as possible.

Someone like, say, Michael Chrighton, or Freeman Dyson, is vilified for speaking out against AGW, especially given their lack of expertise in climatology.

Al Gore, however, is treated like a hero, despite having not only no experience in climatology, but his total lack of scientific expertise, because he espouses an opinion for which there is scientific consensus.

Have you got it, or do you need it to be further dumbed down?

Re:Professor Dyson is a very smart man

[Ferzelic]

Someone like, say, Michael Chrighton, or Freeman Dyson, is vilified for speaking out against AGW, especially given their lack of expertise in climatology. Al Gore, however, is treated like a hero, despite having not only no experience in climatology, but his total lack of scientific expertise, because he espouses an opinion for which there is scientific consensus.

Uh, yeah?

So Al Gore is acting (to a degree) as a spokesperson for the scientific consensus.
(Consensus based on repeatable results, not just "we all agree with that guy", by the way.)

Anyone taking a contrary position to the scientific consensus will need to have some fairly impressive scientific results backing them up, if they want to claim the majority of climatologists working in their own specialist field have got it all wrong. If you haven't got some real compelling research, and it's not even your field of expertise, then you run the risk of looking like a crank.

Its all a LIE for MONEY & Control

[MrHyd3]

Its all about control and taxation. Taking from the haves and giving it to HAVE NOTS by force. SUN SPOT cycles have more control over our environment than all humans combined. The Earth has had COLD and WARM cycles centuries before the SUV was created.

Re:Its all a LIE for MONEY & Control

[polar red]

your claim has been debunked. before. lots of times.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jul/11/climatechange.climatechange1

Yawn

[jamie]

Oh look. Another non-climate-scientist who thinks nearly all of the climate scientists are wrong about the climate.

Non-experts who disagree with experts are a dime a dozen in any field, but for some reason, global warming seems to be the only field where they make headlines. Wonder why that is.

The sports writer who for some reason was tasked with writing this science article let Dyson get away with a couple of groaners. One was his comment:

The warming, he says, is not global but local, "making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter."

Climate scientists will be the first to tell you that global warming affects the poles disproportionately. That doesn't make it "local" -- and the fact that those words are not in quotes suggests to me that Dyson never said it. Dyson seems well aware that the climate is, in fact, warming.

Dyson's wrong to repeat the "global cooling" myth, and in his Salon interview a couple of years ago, he was wrong to assert that polar bear populations are increasing. But then, he didn't almost win the Nobel Prize for Polar Bears. He's undoubtedly a genius when it comes to physics, but why does the media love to find global-warming contrarians who are not experts on global warming? There's a question I'd like to see explored.

Re:Yawn

[Dr. Spork]

I agree that the "debunker" movement is mainly composed of shills and idiots. Vaclav Klaus, my president, is one of the idiots. The "global cooling scientists" are paid shills.

Freeman Dyson is neither. Bjorn Lomborg is neither. You shouldn't judge them by the company they keep.

Re:Yawn

[Belial6]

The problem with that example is that clearly, most of those that are "experts" in economics are also so ignorant of economics that it is laughable.

Re:Yawn

[phantomfive]

Another non-climate-scientist who thinks nearly all of the climate scientists are wrong about the climate.

You're off there. In fact, in the article you linked to on the very same page, you see that he has published at least one paper in the field. Sure, his main field is physics, but how long does it actually take to become an expert in a field? By the time you're his age, you've had enough time to expand into a lot of areas.

Dyson seems well aware that the climate is, in fact, warming.

Did you actually spend any time figuring out what he does claim? Once again, in the first paragraph of the article you linked to, Dyson states his opinion "[Global warming] is a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm."

Dyson's wrong to repeat the "global cooling" myth

He was actually there in the late 60s. I had a textbook that talked about global cooling, and gave possible solutions. Indeed, there is no reason to doubt that eventually we will enter into another ice age. The paper linked to in your link basically outlines the path scientists made from thinking in terms of ice ages, solar forcing, etc. to becoming aware of the consequences of human interaction on the global climate. It shows convincingly that in those days no one was worried about immediately entering into an ice age. However, it doesn't contradict, and in fact confirms, that there was a general consensus that we would eventually enter another ice age.

Basically you're a troll who didn't even read your own articles. And a slashdot editor. Wow, should that be a surprise?

Re:Yawn

[Walkingshark]

Story time!

One time, I was driving from Texas to Florida, it was the middle of the night, and we were somewhere deep in the dark swamps of Louisiana. This was before MP3 players and I didn't have a CD player in my car, and all I could find on the FM dial was country music, so I was running a scan on the AM band when I heard someone talking. Starved for entertainment after hours in the car, I tuned in to hear this preacher talking about evolution.

So I start listening to this guy talk about how evolution was a bunch of crap because of the Bible and all the usual stuff, and then he gets all serious for a minute and he's starts telling his listeners that not only does the bible disprove evolution, but so do SCIENTISTS!

Yes, thats right, all kinds of famous SCIENTISTS think evolution is just wrong! These are highly regarded, credible SCIENTISTS! He then starts naming names.

My response, naturally, was to laugh uncontrolably as he starts running down a list including such legendary biologists as Sigmund Frued, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Galileo, and a whole raft of other people, many of whom were born and died before Darwin and none of whom were biologists. Not even one.

This is just that again. An appeal based on the credability of a SCIENTIST that is inherently a fallacy because there are different types of SCIENTIST, and specialization in one field has nothing to do with competence in another.

Al Gore, through virtue of reading and studying the subject for decades, knows more about climate science and is vastly more qualified to talk about it than Freeman Dyson. This whole thing is just more propaganda from climate change deniers who, I am beggining to suspect, are having their puppet strings pulled by some seriously malthusian ultra-rich people who think the planet would be nicer if it didn't have quite so many messy people on it.

Re:Yawn

[Blakey Rat]

He's not saying they're *wrong* about climate change, he's saying it's nowhere close to the most important problem we face as a human race. Which I personally agree with.

I'm sure Slashdot editors have some kind of automatic +5 ranking, but please at least *read* the article before spreading bullshit on your own forum.

Re:Yawn

[shadowbearer]

  He says*:

  There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. I am not saying that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it better. I am saying that the problems are grossly exaggerated.They take away money and attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important, such as poverty and infectious disease and public education and public health, and the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans, not to mention easy problems such as the timely construction of adequate dikes around the city of New Orleans.

  While I agree with him that those are important problems - particularly infectious disease - I disagree with him that those problems are *more important* than something which has the potential to wipe out civilization.

  (I'll give him the infectious disease in that respect - although we have survived global pandemics before - although global warming also has the potential to *increase* the danger of infectious disease, by shifting the ecosystems that certain diseases thrive in.)

  Dyson is a very talented and brilliant physicist, but he is not a climatologist nor does he come close to approaching the amount of expertise across various related fields that contribute to our understanding of what's happening today.

  Everyone who feels they have something to contribute in this debate should read the article I link to below from which those quotes were taken. Read it *thoroughly* and then go and find out for yourself what many other people in the fields he addresses think about the issue. You'll find that, for example, a majority of scientists disagree with his analysis of biological carbon sequestration, and unlike Dyson, they have data to back up their peer reviewed publications.

  This quote is particularly illuminating:

  When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured. We need to observe and measure what is going on in the biosphere, rather than relying on computer models.

  In which he is saying we need more data. So essentially he is saying the same thing that nearly all the climatologists and everyone else involved are saying - WE NEED MORE DATA. More funding, more equipment, more science and less hype. More funding! Dyson is a "global warming heretic" yet he's saying the same thing most of the scientists involved in the research get 'accused' of asking for?

  Keep in mind that all of our science and knowledge to date could very well be *understating* the potential problems, as well. Which if you look at predictions from only a few years ago of arctic melting and permafrost CO2/methane release, you'll find that the scientists doing those predictions then were actually being *optimistic*.

*http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html

SB

Re:Yawn

[Garse Janacek]

I was there in the 70s, and I remember Global Cooling as well. The revisionist claims that there was no such panic are part of my reason for being extremely distrustful of the global warming cabal..err, "consensus".

I've read a number of "I was there! I remember the panic!" posts over the years on slashdot, and yet I've still never seen any of them who were able to point to any significant body of actual scientific research that supports it. Media distortion of scientific research is easy to find. Can you point to actual scientists (preferably peer-reviewed) who were suggesting this was a serious danger?

Since the claim is evidently that there was a "panic" about the whole thing, realistically to support it you'd need a fairly broad citation list, at least several papers (or a couple papers that cite several others)... but I'd be interested to see if there was more than one, or even one paper, that both (1) shows evidence that global temperatures are cooling, and (2) makes any kind of prediction that this trend will continue in such a way as to pose a serious danger (not necessarily an absolute doomsday prediction, a serious suggestion would suffice, but it should be a serious suggestion and not just "we should probably study this some more to see if..." -- otherwise it in no way compares to the level of widespread confidence among climatologists today on global warming).

Pointing to old media articles is not a substitute for this kind of evidence, nor is "I was there and I remember" good enough unless there is some additional evidence that what you "remember" is scientific consensus and not media alarmism.

Re:The last 50 years or so, summarized.

[DarkOx]

"Inconvenient Truth" ah yes one of the most widely debunked documentaries in recent years that now I am convienced oh wait no I am not,

F**k off hippie

Read his actual opinions

[artor3]

I'm sure this discussion will be flooded with global warming deniers, but if you actually read Dyson's opinions, he believes that global warming IS happening and we ARE to blame.

His only complaint with the science is that he feels that some of the computer models are fudged to make the results look worse than they might actually be.

Of course, his opinion on this seems utterly pointless to me. The man is a physicist, specializing in solid-state and quantum physics. He's no more qualified to analyze the science behind climate change than an electrical engineer is to build a bridge.

Re:Read his actual opinions

[PolygamousRanchKid]

His only complaint with the science is that he feels that some of the computer models are fudged to make the results look worse than they might actually be.

An engineer, a mathematician and a computer scientist are being interviewed to become CFO of a big company. The CEO asks, "What is two plus two?"

The engineer whips out his cell phone, uses the calculator, and shows it to the CEO. "Two plus two is four!"

The mathematician whips out his portable whiteboard, scribbles some stuff one it, and shows it to the CEO. "This proves that two plus two is four!"

The computer scientist whips out a computer model, shrugs, sighs and asks, "How much do you want it to be?"

Climate, pollution and consequences.

[Narpak]

While I will wholeheartedly agree that there are dogmatic idiots on both sides of this issue. And while I have no personal experience or knowledge on how, what and why things happen the way they do; I feel that those supporting doing nothing and ignoring any potential problem related to global warming and increased pollution are sticking their heads in the sand.

This isn't just about Environmental Nutters (though there are plenty of those); it's about responsible use of our resources and how to dispose of any waste generated. Continually, and increasingly, dumping chemicals and pumping exhaust from cars and factories into the atmosphere is not a positive thing. Our planet is big, and the problems related to increased pollution builds up over time; but it is absolutely clear in my mind that we can't keep doing what we do; there are simply too many people on the planet for it to magically absorb and breakdown all our waste (especially at the level we now generate and discard it).

Basically my point is that investing and researching more energy efficient ways is a good thing. Cutting down on consumption, and perhaps thinking a bit more about the stability and continuity of our ecosystem is a good thing.

Re:Climate, pollution and consequences.

[Narpak]

When it comes to "innocent until proven guilty" I am more in favour of a "sceptical until proven safe" in relation to Co2 or pollutants. And in a marginally capitalist society taxation is one of the tools available to regulate the level of such.

However, it should be noted, that for me it isn't as much a debate about climate (which I feel is affected by our waste); but about the build up of chemicals in the ecosystem. Many of these by-products of our industry and consumption are building up in water, air and most importantly (to me anyway) inside the human body. There is no doubt in my mind that the insufficient oversight of how industrial waste is handled is directly related to a range of health issues (like cancer and asthma). In short the accumulation of waste (industrial or otherwise) can have serious long-term negative consequences for us; simply saying "innocent until proven guilty" seems a bit simplistic to me.

Not out of his mind, just not terribly rooted in r

[SmallFurryCreature]

He hasn't lost his mind, it just ain't particullary rooted in reality. Never was.

His solution should CO2 become a problem? Plant trees.

Forest around the world are being cut down. Where would we plant not just the trees to replace the ones we had last year but the ones we need extra? He doesn't so much deny that CO2 is a potential problem but seems to think planting lots of trees is the answer without apparenly ever having thought about how we are supposed to do that. Great minds are like that, they can think about immense and complex things we can't fathom, but can't quite grasp that the world can't just turn farmland into forests.

"Bio-tech, he writes in his book, Infinite in All Directions (1988), offers us the chance to imitate natures speed and flexibility, and he imagines the furniture and art that people will grow for themselves, the pet dinosaurs they will grow for their children, along with an idiosyncratic menagerie of genetically engineered cousins of the carbon-eating tree: termites to consume derelict automobiles, a potato capable of flourishing on the dry red surfaces of Mars, a collision-avoiding car."

A potato that grown on Mars. How nice. And how do we get there einstein? This is the kind of stuff we read about 20 years ago that would be with us in 20 years. It is flying cars. As well all know, they don't exist and probably never will. Why? Because they are practical.

Enviromentalists like Al Gore have to be practical. They are dealing with the very real effects of ricing sea levels NOW because you can't just build higher dikes when they have been destroyed by a storm. That is for instance the problems in Holland right now. As a country we are more then rich enough to raise the dikes but we need to do it NOW when the danger is years or even decades away because it will take years and even decades to finish and worse, if the predictions are to conservative, then those higher dikes might be needed sooner rather then later. You can't just plant a lot of trees if Dyson is wrong in 30 years. By then it will be to late.

That is the real problem with the supposed climate change. Say we follow Al Gore and there turns out not to be a problem. We would have wasted lots of money. Say we don't follow Al Gore and he is right, then we are in deep shit and it is to late to do anything about it. That is roughly the left and the right. The left want to be save and pay insurance now. The right wants to keep their money and their childeren be damned.

Re:Thank goodness

[stevew]

I have to agree with you (and Dyson). Al Gore looses his argument as soon as he says that a concensus has been reached. Science simply doesn't work that way! Then he follows up with "the discussions are over." No they are not. Real science is a process of ALWAYS questioning your theories and assumptions and going where the evidence leads.

There is some evidence that there is some heating. The evidence that it is caused by CO2 or is man-made is tenuous at best! Depending on computer models that are not historically consitant is also ludicrous. All you really need to do is look at the prediction results for a Hurricane track. They use 10-15 different models and get that many different results. Usually as they show tracks taking off from Cuba - the run anywhere from the Yucatan to curling around and hitting Florida - and this for 3-4 days out!

Further - a lot of the data that they use for their arguments of warming are things like the temperature readings in the US - where it has been proven that a goodly chunk of these numbers are biased by Urbanization, but the numbers haven't been corrected for this affect!

Remember the announcement that 1998 was the warmest year of the century -well it turns out that these biases through them off. !934 or there abouts where (remember the great dust bowl???) 1998 was one of the 10 hotest in the century, but not the worst. Further - we've been having a cooling trend for nearly 10 years now! How does that jive with global warming?

Re:Thank goodness

[AvitarX]

Yes,

and searching for 'gore "science get in the way"' similarly turns up nothing useful (except for maybe a video I am too lazy to watch).

Mostly I see forums discussing it and it not even attributed to Gore. Sometimes I see it attributed to him similar to the GP. I don't see evidence that is was actually said by Gore though.

I believe it is a more relevant search because it removes the possibility of contractions throwing off the results.

Re:Thank goodness

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Who mods this stuff up as informative? This seems a lot closer to flambait to me. It mentions (but doesn't cite) what seems to be a fictitious quote from Gore and makes reference to "lord and master Barrack". If that isn't inflammatory, what is it? The whole thing is misinformation and ad hominem/argumentum ad verecundiam.

Bad studies don't support the opposite case. There was a flawed study on global warming (assuming one agrees with such an assessment) somehow makes all the other studies on the subject less credible or valid? Anyone making such a claim doesn't understand how science works.

We need opposition with DATA

[damn_registrars]

It is one thing to oppose an idea because you dislike it or you distrust it. There is no shortage of people running around claiming global warming to be total FUD.

However, there is a distinct shortage of people who are actually able to provide DATA to support their opposition to it. There is a significant difference between saying "I don't agree with that data" and "I have this data set that shows that data set is wrong". Global warming, by definition, is based on the global mean temperature of the earth. Plenty of people try to go for statements like "it snowed in Atlanta, so global warming must be BS"; though of course a statement like that ignores the global aspect of global warming.

As I don't have a NY Times account, I could not read the article provided. Can anyone tell us, did he actually provide meaningful data, or is he just criticizing the existing data?

Re:We need opposition with DATA

[John Hasler]

> He's not a climatologist. He has never done research on global warming. He has
> absolutely no data of his own. He is not an expert in this field.

Whereas Al Gore is a ???

Re:His story is typical.

[metalhed77]

Any time someone has a dissenting opinion against a liberal the liberal only seems capable of defending their argument with insults and threats.

Ummmmm, every ideology has a subset of people who behave this way.

Saying stuff like this helpfully labels you as being the kind of rabid fundamentalist you're accusing your opponents of being.

Although I still think global warming real...

[John Hasler]

...and human-caused, Dyson has far more credibility with me than Gore does.

Re:Although I still think global warming real...

[John Hasler]

Is there some point you are trying to make?

Re:The world is now in a cooling trend

[DarkOx]

Nope that is what is so crazy about this.

Everytime they models don't predict the results there is an excuse. Global Warming has become as unfalsifible as any Religion every has been.

Oh well the ICE caps got bigger, umm umm, CO2 is makeing more clouds and keeping us cooler for the moment but its going to get hot we sware..just wait

Oh well core samples and focile records show we have been though much more extreeme temperature swings and more fequently in the past long before industrialization.., umm umm, yea some stuff and whatnot but this time its diffent. Just wait for this next *Nino Cycle to end then the wether is gonna get crazy...

Oh forget global warming, its global cooling.... ...

Oh forget global cooling/dimming its global warming... ...

Ok Ok global climate change, we have not idea whats happening but we know we are somehow responsible for it and its going to be a catastrophe. - Sounds oddly religious to me.

Re:Thank goodness

[grahamd0]

Well whether it's bad science or not, it at least encourages humanity to clean up our act.

The truth doesn't matter as long as everyone else lives by your standards?

You should get into politics.

Re:His story is typical.

[Narpak]

Any time someone has a dissenting opinion against a liberal the liberal only seems capable of defending their argument with insults and threats.

And how is this different from how a "conservative" deals with the same situation? There are dogmatic believers on both sides (and honestly there are far far more sides than just Liberal/Conservative). People that believe you have to chose between Liberal or Conservative are already taking a step into a world of Us Vs Them that instils in their followers a world view that scares me; and leaves many of them incapable of dealing with Reality in a reasonable and pragmatic manner.

People are people whatever party/faction/group they support. The Us Vs Them mentality is the death of debate, reason and democracy.

Re:Global warming is a politically painful subject

[polar red]

that's because 'global warming' is a badly chosen term. the average temp may go up, but lots of places are going to get colder, hotter, drier, wetter for longer periods.

Re:Thank goodness

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Funny, I found two results pretty quickly.

For a different search, how surprising. Not two mention to hits to somone's comments on Digg, don't count as an actual source for a quote of that nature. Looks like a bloody lie.

Re:Thank goodness

[IQgryn]

Following a few links from googling 'gore "not going to let science get in the way"' led me to this: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13773. Seems he did say something of the sort, anyway.

Re:History...

[TheTurtlesMoves]

consensus!=(science || scientific method)

Re:History...

[FauxPasIII]

> The 'consensus' has been wrong before and they will be wrong again.

And in this case, if we follow the consensus and it turns out they're wrong, the consequences of that are what?

We've dramatically cleaned up our environment, achieved energy independence, freed ourselves from the political constraints of fossil fuels and massively bolstered our economy with a whole new class of green businesses.

Explain again why you're so against this?

Re:Global warming is a politically painful subject

[StartledGnu]

Global warming is politically difficult to sell to people when they are experiencing record cold.

That's because people tend to take 'global warming' as literally meaning that 'everywhere gets hotter'. Of course, some places get warmer and some get cooler but the average global temperature increases and the planet experiences more erratic and extreme climactic behavior as a consequence. 'Climate change' is a more useful term.

give me a break

[damn_registrars]

Why that biased partisan rant posing as a comment was moderated to (+5, insightful) is beyond me.

Global Warmin is bad science, as a general rule

And that statement is bad English, as a general rule. The word is Warming, not Warmin. If you want to be taken seriously please avoid slang.

facts are thin, and or simply made up

Can you provide a specific example?

the Hocky-stick report was done with largely fictious data

OK, you gave an example, that is a start. Care to tell us why you call it "largely fictious" (sic) data? Can you point to a data set that specifically disproves it?

I don't understand how the public can stick behind this garbage

You aren't helping your cause when you just keep criticizing people without providing a reason to believe your argument.

their lord and master Barrack

You really are doing yourself a disservice, here.

And the first name of the current President of the United States is Barack. Please, learn to spell it correctly.

Queen of the Damned herself Nacy;

Cute. Her name is Nancy, if you are talking about the speaker of the house.

Though again you do yourself no service by going for insults rather than information.

pathetic pitchmand Gore says

I suspect you wanted the word pitchman?

You know he actually was quoted saying "I am not going to let science get in the way"

Do you have a source for that quote?

why anybody takes anything these people say seriously without first independantly verifying it is beyond me.

You would do yourself well to take your own advice and provide some verification for your own claims.

Dyson on the other hand is a great thinker who has done great science

Again, a source would be nice.

I could be wrong

[fermion]

Repeat that 20 times a day, and one can remain objective. Modern science is based on that premise. This is beyond simply observing the natural world and deriving defensible predictive processes. It is admitting that even though these processes reliably predict all known verifiable phenomena, it could still be wrong.

This is what Kuhn was saying in the Structure of Scientific Revolution. Paradigms, as defined and used in the book, not in the modern sense corrupted by brain dead executives, are created by an elite group of scientists and these paradigms are mistaken for truth. It is a priori truth instead of a posteriori truth, but if we are actively searching for the ultimate nature of the divine, and not just the static representation, then truth is of no use.

History has shown that our static representations of the truth are always incomplete. In An Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery Oliver asserts that such incompleteness can be the basis of science. By finding the one verifiable phenomena that does not seem to fit perfectly, we can do science, either by showing an error in the measurement or interpretation of the phenomena or showing that the theory used to describe the phenomena is incomplete.

Which is to say we should really think about what we are talking about. For the most part when scientists argue about this stuff, they are fighting over old and new paradigms. It is often not about whether humans are impacting the climate, which is a conclusion, but often how we go about collecting data and developing the processes used to quantify those changes. Because the average person only cares about conclusions, they really don't see the subtle difference, and they just see a person who says that people they disagree are wrong. But it is not about right or wrong. It is not about really about whether the earth is 10,000 years old or 10,000,000,000. It is about whether we are being honest and developing ideas that reflect the observations we make, and not just what we are raised to believe.

Re:History...

[Anonymous Coward]

They keep propagating this nonsense with statements just like yours. "If I say it is so it is" is not fact it is vapor.

I am all for cleaning up the air and environment and have been for 30 years but this global warming nonsense is a huge power and wealth grab and nothing else.

"A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes â" all under the supervision of the world body."

Skeptics are usually crackpots

[s-whs]

Skeptics, here in the Netherlands, are almost exclusively people who are not working in even a related field, or retired. Now, being retired means you have no more career/position to worry about, and for many such people apparently the 'old boys network' of friends is more important than actual science. It's nicely summed up here in a response to an article in the Volkskrant (2007.1.11) about some "scientists who say the cimate problem isn't caused by humans":

http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/bericht/100021

But on examining their credentials, they aren't really scientists, or if they are, well, they actually *were* (i.e. retired) or the few that still are, are so in some completely unrelated field. Then their arguments don't hold up (because they don't actually give hard facts and reasons), etc. The article that was published in the paper is what's referred to as an 'opinion piece".

I've checked out several other people on the 'skeptic' side, and never seen a proper argument, but plenty of nonsens and unbelievably inane arguments that would be a disgrace to a five-year old kid.

What Dyson himself said in a previous slashdot article makes me see him in the same light:

Dyson: There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global

No need: due to extra CO2 more energy is being stored in the earth, could be water warming up, etc. Also, ocean currents could change, which would mean an ice age in Europe despite global warming is possible. The average temperature goes up though. And that's what's meant by global warming.

Dyson: When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories.

He shouldn't listen to public debates! That's almost always not where real science is done or shown.

Whether global global warming really is a problem or not, you need to take it seriously and try to pollute as little as possible, because it's moronic to gamble with this one ecosystem we have.

Re: Yeah, well, they also got mad at Galileo.

[Avumede]

Your post above is an excellent example of the Appeal to Authority Fallacy.

Re:History...

[Totenglocke]

Bolster our economy? Hardly. If we do the things many global warming proponents want, it will destroy our economy through insanely high taxes on current energy, likely resort in massive energy shortages (face it, solar / wind / hydro just don't produce the amount of power that coal / oil does), and cause technology to stagnate for who knows how long.

I always recycle, I drive a car that gets close to 40 mpg, don't waste electricity, etc but I'm not going to risk damning our society just because spreading fear is a great way to make money / gain political power and people realised that if they start shouting "the human race will die out / the planet will die if you don't do what we tell you to" that they'll have all the money and power they could ever imagine.

Actually no, peer reviewed article from Science

[mrraven]

First off I want to say Freeman Dyson is a brilliant physcist and we should all be grateful for his work in physics, he is not however a climate scientist, climate scientists have a rather different view of the whole thing:

"IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

(Peer reviewed science journal Science)

So do some research about the mainstream of climatology before jumping on the Dyson bandwagon.

And yes Al Gore is often an exaggerated propagandist and he isNOT helpful in this debate, that doesn't however mean that there isn't real climate science out there pointing to the anthropogenic origin of observed climate change.

Re:Thank goodness

[okooolo]

now I even sound like a politician

But the real data is worse than the models predict

[presidenteloco]

Particularly unfortunate then that the real data over the last decade has been showing across several indicators that the reality of warming is worse than the consensus model interpretations are predicting.

So he may be right that the models are inaccurate, but the general theory of the greenhouse effect is simple and correct, and is impacting us more than models guessed.

Bravo!

[Brandybuck]

Bravo Freeman! It's about time a scientist of this stature declared that the emperor has no clothes. This is an issue that has NOT been driven by science, but driven by control freaks in government and fearmongers in the press.

Lest you immediately rush out to stone me, I am not denying that climate change is occurring. I know the climate is changing, because that is what the climate does! Yet I am still skeptical of the details that the press and government have oversensationalized.We have had significant warm and cool spells in recorded history, as significant as what we are being warned against. Yet the planet was not destroyed.

Even the silly non-science doesn't bother me much. What I object to are the government "solutions" to this crisis. I've seen solutions that range from banning black cars, to banning all cars entirely. They all involve using police and courts and jails to take freedom away from people. Government isn't about helping people, it's about controlling their lives. Government does perform some useful services, but above a certain size it all gets drowned out by the evil.

The real heresy isn't denying global warming, it's denying that government is the appropriate solution to every problem in life.

Re:Thank goodness

[drinkypoo]

I have to agree with you (and Dyson). Al Gore looses his argument as soon as he says that a concensus has been reached.

You lost your argument when you failed to correctly distinguish between "loses" and "looses", and also failed to spell "consensus" correctly. Perhaps you should use Firefox, which underlines such errors so that you don't look like a total asshat. (It also underlined asshat, but I'm sure I know how to spell that.)

There is some evidence that there is some heating.

There is overwhelming evidence that the average global temperature is rising.

The evidence that it is caused by CO2 or is man-made is tenuous at best!

CO2 is a known greenhouse gas. We emit more than ten times the CO2 emitted by volcanoes on average, and nobody denies that the CO2 that they emit is a significant greenhouse gas. QED, humans' emissions of CO2 have a significant effect on global temperatures. Nobody can be sure of the extent to which this is true; we can be sure that CO2 is contributing to the eventual death of all oceans on the planet everywhere due to acidification. The carbon is normally fixed from the ocean mostly by subaquatic limestone, but this happens at too slow a rate for the amount of CO2 we have released into the atmosphere, and are continuing to release, for the ocean to survive the abuse. Thus, even if CO2 were not a known greenhouse gas, there would be ample reasons to curb our release of CO2.

CO2 levels have never been so high as they are now throughout recorded history. If you think we're going to get away without any effects, think again.

Remember the announcement that 1998 was the warmest year of the century -well it turns out that these biases through them off.

Your comment is ridiculous through and through. But that's not the version of the word 'threw' that you were looking for.

Mod parent up

[orzetto]

Of course, his opinion on this seems utterly pointless to me. The man is a physicist, specializing in solid-state and quantum physics. He's no more qualified to analyze the science behind climate change than an electrical engineer is to build a bridge.

... and get this sentence engraved on every global-warming sceptic's monitor. It will be big news when a climatologist actually publishes research disproving global warming in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Re:History...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love these ever changing rationales for presenting the same wrong position.

1) Global warming is about stealing political power and money.

2) There is no consensus among climatologists anyway, it's about a 50/50 split among members of the field.

3) No it is not, the dissenters among the climatological sciences are small in number and use selective (cherry picked) data.

4) Science is not about consensus, anyway.

And on and on it goes.

Nowhere is there evidence presented in this thread that global warming is about government theft: it's just stated as an uncited fact. The claim of a 50/50 split among Climatologists is easily debunked. So, that claim becomes unimportant.

The Slashdot community enjoys referring to itself as smart - as if it is some oasis of genius - while everyone else must thus be comparably stupid. But one look at these threads shows that the community - and especially the comments modded up by those community members - has absolutely no idea of the intricacies being discussed. As Feynman would have said: You're not even wrong.

Sadly, this community has become filled with egocentric ignoramuses. You're one of them.
 

Re:Global warming is a politically painful subject

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Your ad hominem attack on the parent poster shows you are a prejudicial bastard that few people would want to be around. Yes. Yes you. Yes way.

Re:Environmental Nutters

[presidenteloco]

Why is a person who is aware of and opposed to the large-scale destructive effects and massive alterations we are having on Earth's ecosystems and climate called a "nutter" (translation for US audience: "Crazy wackjob")

whereas

someone who is either ignorant of these problems, incapable of comprehending them and rationally analyzing them, or willfully denying our negative environmental effects in order to selfishly further a comfortable but unethical and unsustainable lifestyle,
is presumeable called a normal sane member of society?

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm.

Re:History...

[jav1231]

Not according to Al Gore. He claims there is no more debate and refuses to debate anyone on the subject. Of course, he's no expert on the subject at all. He merely summoned experts with whom he already had agreement. Current "Climate Change Theory" isn't science at all, it's politics. Those doing the real work are honestly debating the subject. Those seeking fame, power, recognition are using the "everybody knows" argument to silence dissent and reap the spoils. In the meantime the climate will change as it always has. It may be influenced by man it may not. It may not be that simple. In the end it won't matter if propaganda wins.

Linus Pauling

[hachete]

Yes, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century - a greater scientist than Freeman Dyson if one counts Nobel Prizes - and for years he kept banging on about Vitamin C as a cure for cancer. At one time, he even put his wife through the treatment. Vitamin C as a cure for cancer is baloney. Pauling wasn't a nutritionist.

If you dab your toe in a field outside your expertise, you're liable to get it bitten off. I wouldn't take the advice of a Doctor of medicine on writing PERL.

Re:Linus Pauling

[Chris Burke]

So, we should take the advice of a former politician who is now an environmentalist?

No, dumbass, you should take the advice of climatologists when it comes to the climate. If Al fucking Gore is not your preferred mechanism for finding out what climatologists say, then maybe you should try something else. I don't know, you could read a book or a journal or something. I hear scientists sometimes publish those.

Re: Yeah, well, they also got mad at Galileo.

[yali]

I wish I had mod points to mod you up. I don't. So instead I'll quote this guy:

In Dawidoff's piece, Dyson comes off as a classic contrarian, sounding off late in life. A journalist with a scientific background would know how important it is to take such people with a grain of salt-no matter how distinguished their scientific work may be in other areas. Dawidoff, though, just goes for it-for 8,000 words of it. He writes foolish things like this: "[Dyson's] dissension from the orthodoxy of global warming is significant because of his stature and his devotion to the integrity of science." Um, no, it isn't. It isn't significant at all. Dyson's fame and authority don't buy him any special deference in this area; science does not work that way.

Re:History...

[Kohath]

And in this case, if we follow the consensus and it turns out they're wrong, the consequences of that are what?

- Massive unemployment
- greatly increased worldwide poverty
- advances in technology not made or delayed by many years
- thousands of brilliant scientists wasting their lives in pursuit of nonsense
- government tyranny and possible permanent loss of freedom
- extreme drops in living standards

potential secondary effects:

- wars (possibly WWII-scale wars)
- famine
- millions dead from diseases not cured
- developing countries halt their progress in developing (or it takes another 50-100 years)

People will die if the global warming "remedies" are put in place. People in poverty have a greater incidence of premature death. Slower development leads to cures not found and deaths not prevented.

Millions of people have died from malaria since DDT was banned. Global warming remedies could be much more destructive.

Progress saves lives. Global warming remedies will cause us to regress.

Re:History...

[TheTurtlesMoves]

I was simply pointing out that if you want to make a scientific point you can't use a consensus argument. Its a political one. There comes a time when the discussion dose become political, and then perhaps a consensus is relevant. But it is still not a scientific argument.

My bone to pick with the whole thing is that its *only* political now. Even when discussing with fellow scientists. Which is a shame really.

Credentials

[Windrip]

Dyson's opinions on climate are as valid as Shockley's on genetics.

The science of global warming is settled

[krygny]

The votes are in. The cutoff point for new knowledge has passed.

We have to have a cutoff point. Otherwise we might discover we were wr... wr... misinterpreted and taken out of context.

Same old same old.

[smoker2]

I posted my position on this on the Hungry Crustaceans topic the other day. Look at the graphs, look at historical records in the rocks. Ask yourselves, did we cause global warming or are we merely part of it ? I think the graphs speak for themselves. The hockey stick graph is a lie because it makes it seem as if the normal CO2 level was almost constant. This cannot be further from the truth.

Aim at surviving the consequences, or it will be too late to organise anything.

Re:Same old same old.

[IncandescentFlame]

I looked at the graph that you wished ... this one. As a scientist (a theoretical physicist... FWIW) I do not understand how anyone can look at this graph and not be convinced that something is different this time around. I mean c'mon ... Forget the "hockey stick", the important part is the whole graph. Current CO2 levels are approaching 400ppm, i.e. 133% of the previous maximum of 300 ppm for the past 400,000 years. Surely that strongly suggests that we are contributing to the problem.

Re:Same old same old.

[SuperBanana]

The hockey stick graph [wikimedia.org] is a lie because it makes it seem as if the normal CO2 level was almost constant. This cannot be further from the truth.

Both graphs show exactly the same thing- that we're in an upswing with CO2 levels, but that the upswing this time is significantly higher than every other cycle, going back half a million years. Also, notice something funny about the last few thousand years temperature-wise? Namely that the pattern is also broken there?

You're an utter moron, as is whoever modded you up. Time to start metamoderating again.

Re:This has all happened before

[Cyberax]

I have some first-hand experience in the field of climate science.

I got tired of fighting with trolls on forums, because people somehow think that their gut feeling is better than real science.

The current warming trend is NOT a natural cycle, its parameters are all wrong.

Re:History...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. You're using any and every argument at your disposal, regardless of factual veracity. It's called: sophistry.

Re:History...

[ducomputergeek]

Waste of economic resources that could have been spent elsewhere. Want an example? Last year we had money left in the bank where I work. If the employees took anymore home in pay, it would have bumped us up a tax bracket and we would have made less after taxes. So what were our options?

A) We could retain earnings, watch 50% of it go to the government in the form of corporate income tax.
B) We could donate to a local charity, such as the food bank or Good Samaritan House.
C) We could put up Solar Panels to cut our utility bills and free up cash flow.

We chose C. We saw a slight uptick in business from the environmental who saw us as going "green" and how great that was for everyone. Maybe Michael Gecko was right: "Greed is good." Because we didn't do it to be green. We did it to be greedy and save money.

Now let's say 25 years from now, Global Warming turns out to be nothing more than a lot of hot air from enviromentalists. We've spent Billions (or Trillions) of dollars on green technologies. Great. But if Global Warming turns out to just be hot air and nothing more, what else could we have done with those Billions or Trillions? Feed the homeless? Provide universal heath-care? Funded a cure for AIDs and the common cold? What was the opportunity cost?

Sorry if I take global warming with a grain of salt. I remember being a kid an the wackos coming to my school, telling us kids how bad McDonalds was for using styrofoam containers because they weren't "Bio-degradable". Then McDonalds switches to wax paper, which is just as bad if not worse.

I honestly believe that Global Warming has more to do with natural cycles than what we've done. Have we aided and abetted? Yeah, probably. But what no body seems to be saying is that we're on course for another major Ice age because:

A) Some of the climatologist are right and the global temperature spikes just before an ice age.
B) Enough polar ice melts to affect the ocean's salinity and the Atlantic Conveyor breaks down.

force

[zogger]

"they won't do it unless forced"..well, that can work, but it is the "stick" method, you get bludgeoned by government to do something, because they sayso and threaten you with dire consequences if you don't jump.

  There *is* another method to bring about constructive change that the government can do, that is called the "carrot" method. You give tax credits for those technologies and practices that seem a lot better.

    Now, what isn't going to work, but is what they want to do because it also gives them a lot more power over other humans, which is what they also really like to have, is force-instituting another huge global "market" skimming industry. Ya know, middleman traders who do nothing but buy and sell those "war on carbon" credits.

  Looking at the biz headlines, seems we already have enough of them sort of money vampire dudes mucking up the economy as it is. And now they are going to want to tax you on top of that. The taxes will primarily go to running the new government (federal, UN global, whatever they scheme up) department of accepting the carbon tax monies department, to fund busywork "broken window economic theory" jobs.

I'm for conservation, clean air, clean water, diversified and decentralized alternative energy and so forth, and have been since I was a young man and got into solar power and so forth. The easiest way for people and corporations to afford this is to let them take a chunk of their money that now goes to the government busywork jobs industry and buy into newer cleaner and more efficient tech. Oh noes, gov gets less money! But the tech gets adopted then, and much faster than the double whammy of forced purchasing of carbon credits, then getting taxed on top of that. You make it a much better deal for people and companies to "go green", they will do it gladly and more or less voluntarily, whereas if you double whammy them on costs plus threaten fines and whatnot, they are going to look at the whole situation as another bogus ripoff and power grab, which the current schemes are, in spades.

Here's an example: You want to know why SUVs took off so much, even for people who apparently didn't need a big station wagon with 4wd? Joe government made it very lucrative for them with their tax deductions, they offered a bunch of carrots, it was cheaper for them to get those sorts of vehicles than anything else.

    Now, if they want much better mileage cars and cheaper to afford, all they would need to do is offer a REAL tax credit incentive, and you'd see those car companies burning the midnight oil to get 20 grand cars that got 60 mpg and be plugins plus and were built good out there. Same with solar power, same with what I think makes the most sense today, retrofitting buildings to "superinsulated" levels, eliminating a lot of the demand for electricity and natgas, meaning less is burnt, meaning less of that e-vile greenhouse gas stuff. If it also helps the climate on a macro scale, it probably would, that's just frosting, more good news.

Carrot or stick, and who likes to be bludgeoned over being fed again? Ya, they are both examples of government social engineering, but which seems more attractive and more likely to succeed and cost the actual real consumer less, when you look at what they get? Tax money volume X is already a blackhole the way it is now, if you could have the same amount, and wind up with a cool ride in the driveway and solar panels on the roof, which would you rather have, that stuff, or knowing you were paying for more bureaucratic jobs? Either way, that loot is coming out of your wallet, so that's a wash. I will ponder on this.... me, I'd prefer the carrot and having the cool new high tech ride in the driveway and the solar panels on the roof.

Re:History...

[metacosm]

FauxPasIII... once again, you prove how much closer the green movement is to religion than to science.

You basically have paraphrased "Pascal's Wager". Which is basically "If you believe in God and are wrong, you loose nothing (and maybe gain some things) -- but if you DO NOT believe in God and are incorrect, fire and pain, etc... Therefore being an atheist is illogical".

If you replace "God" with "Global Warming" and "atheist" with "global warming doubter"... got got your argument.

There are a couple reasons why Pascal's Wager (and by extension your argument) is incorrect. Let me answer your questions...

"if we follow the consensus and it turns out they're wrong, the consequences of that are what?"
- The lack of study on real issues, the lack of honest and directness can decay science as a whole. We could have global cooling, or some other major issue going on -- that we choose to overlook because of our obsession with follow a consensus rather than fact. I believe there are many dangers in this.

"We've dramatically cleaned up our environment,"
- Possible a real benefit

" achieved energy independence,"
- Maybe, with a massive investment in nuclear power, but I think if you look at the fundamentals of most of the other energy streams, you will be sadly disappointed. Look into how much energy it takes to MAKE a solar cell, look at how much energy it takes to TRANSMIT wind power... etc, etc.

"freed ourselves from the political constraints of fossil fuels"
- I assume this is a reference to 'no blood for oil' and similar chants. I will just gloss over it, as it is more politics.

"and massively bolstered our economy with a whole new class of green businesses."
- This isn't a fact, it isn't even a logical follow-on, this is hope. You "hope" a green economy will explode creating new jobs. Read some of the old clippings about nuclear power and you will do the time warp again! My point is, this is blind hope / faith -- like believing in a fancy place in the clouds waiting for you ... it isn't based on any facts.

"Explain again why you're so against this?"
- Because, I want science to be driven by truth... even when that truth is unpopular, even when that truth is frustrating, even when that truth goes AGAINST political causes. I want science to be unburdened by such things.

Re:His story is typical.

[Dreadneck]

The 'Us vs. Them' mentality evident in the climate change debate is a shining example of the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy.

Personally, I'm glad that people like Dyson are around. Good science demands skepticism. It keeps the discipline honest. Personal vilification of one's critics, rather than satisfying their doubts with solid evidence and sound reasoning, is bad science.

Re:Not out of his mind, just not terribly rooted i

[Troed]

They are dealing with the very real effects of ricing sea levels NOW

I'm sorry, what rising sea levels?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and-calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/

Yet we are not a signficant

[Shivetya]

contributor of CO2 in our atmosphere, so what little we do to reduce it has no true effect on the condition. Why waste money on such an endeavor when there are far better things to spend it on (like clean water)

North Central United States

[codepunk]

I would have to agree with the man, consider this fact. The area in which I currently live was just 10,000 years ago covered by a glacier nearly a mile in thickness. Now we
certainly where not burning fossil fuels 10k years ago, yet somehow global warming caused the glaciers to recede and melt. Yes I do believe in global warning it has been going on for over 10k years, I do not
however believe that man is the ultimate and or major cause.

Re:North Central United States

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I would have to agree with the man, consider this fact. The area in which I currently live was just 10,000 years ago covered by a glacier nearly a mile in thickness. Now we certainly where[sic] not burning fossil fuels 10k years ago, yet somehow global warming caused the glaciers to recede and melt. Yes I do believe in global warning it has been going on for over 10k years, I do not however believe that man is the ultimate and or major cause.

Consider this fact. 10,000 years ago people were murdered. Now we certainly were not firing guns 10k years ago, yet somehow bladed weapons caused people to die. Yes I do believe in murder has been going on for over 10k years, I do not, however, believe that guns are a main tool used to commit murder.

Hopefully my analogy has demonstrated to you that you've provided no support whatsoever for the theory that current global warming trends are not caused by mankind in general or greenhouse gas emissions in particular, as the scientific models with the best experimental evidence to date seem to indicate. If you'd like to present alternate theories that show how the unprecedented rate of change fits within a different model where greenhouse gasses from human activity is not a major factor, and then perform experiments and make falsifiable predictions until your theory has more evidentiary support, please do, it will be a boon to all of mankind. If you'd care to cite peer reviewed scientific models and experiments of others that you think already show this, by all means enlighten me. As a scientist and a rational person, I form my beliefs based upon the results of the scientific method and the results all seem to be showing the same thing, to one degree or another. I see a lot of unscientific PR pieces that disagree, but no real science. Sadly, it seems PR works as well as anything to form opinions, which is why people persist in such unscientific beliefs and deny manmade global warming or the evolution of man or the spherical earth theories; which science has pretty well established as facts at this point.

Man-made global warming is a hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands"), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects").

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.

MYTH 2: The "hockey stick" graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to 1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17th Century the "average global temperature" has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 Ãff" 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.

MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO2 is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth's oceans expel more CO2 as a result.

MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as "greenhouse agents" than water vapor and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and Ãff" in the end Ãff" are thought to be responsible for 60% of the "Greenhouse effect".

Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention this important fact.

MYTH 5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.

FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, and that the Sun has an insignificant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption - that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They

Re:History...

[odourpreventer]

> Millions of people have died from malaria since DDT was banned.

Problem with DDT was, it caused more problems than it resolved.

There are plenty of ways to prevent, treat and fight malaria. The obstacles are as usual political.

Re:I am not a climate scientist, but...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I am skeptical about our ability to accurately predict the future using current mathematical models. They can't even accurately predict the weather a week in advance.

You should recognize the fallacy in this reasoning. Scientists can't tell me if it's going to rain two weeks from Monday. They can, however, tell me it is going to snow next February. They climatology can predict large trends based upon past data, even if they can't make micro-predictions about what is going to happen a given day. In fact, the models in use to predict overall temperature changes have been fairly accurate, but they don't make predictions on small enough of a scale to predict what will happen in a given year even, just what is likely to happen in a given decade.

For another example, scientists can't tell you what day you're going to die, but they can tell you the general trend as to how many people will die at a given age. Not being able to predict the former does not make the latter any less possible.

Re:Global warming is a politically painful subject

[Arthur Grumbine]

I fail to see how drawing attention to the parent's desire to have those who disagree with him executed means I'm a prejudicial bastard.

Unless, of course, by your comment you meant: "I agree with the polar_red's main point/comment, and am angry that you have made an observation about him that potentially taints the reception of his main point/comment", in which case I do understand.
I find myself constantly frustrated when nutjobs defend something I believe in. This is not aided by the fact that the other side in a debate has a tendency to focus on the extremists instead of the substance of the argument. But for me, I try to point out the extremists/dogmatists/zealots no matter what side of the debate they fall on.

famous person says crazy shit when older

[jollyreaper]

Not exactly news. Ray Bradbury said all sorts of horrible things about Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 911 and was a huge supporter of the Bush wars. Issac Newton believed in alchemy and conducted all sorts of pseudo-scientific experiments in nonsense. Edison spent the last years of his life working on a spook phone to talk to the dead. Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and says bad things about gay people. George Lucas went from Beloved Creator of Star Wars to the Beard, Defiler of the Films.

People start saying and believing stupid shit when they pass their prime. They'll also mistake specialist expertise in one field for generalist expertise in everything.

Complexity as an attempt to hide lies.

[dfenstrate]

He's not a climatologist. He has never done research on global warming. He has absolutely no data of his own. He is not an expert in this field. There is no reason, whatsoever, to listen to his opinions.

You might as well have your car mechanic perform surgery on you. After all, he's a professional, right? Therefore he must be qualified!

If your car mechanic tells you that you need to pay $790 to replace your gizrogyronmeter before you car implodes- when you brought the car in for an oil change- you don't have to be a mechanic to figure out you're being bullshitted and he probably has something else besides your best interests in mind.

If your surgeon is trying to sell you a $32,000 surgery on your feet because of hyspotoxiomosis of the anterior legamoid deltamint, and you came in for a mole removal, you don't have to be a PHD to see he just wants to fund his next vacation.

The fact is that AGW advocates demand 'solutions' involving control and expenditures that are entirely out of whack with their established credibility and perceived integrity.

Claiming "you can't understand it, it's too complex" in the face of the legitimate questions about the intent, integrity, and aims of Global Warming's high priests and salesmen is an evasion of the issue.

Re:History...

[AdamHaun]

If the employees took anymore home in pay, it would have bumped us up a tax bracket and we would have made less after taxes.

This is not how taxes work. Tax brackets are always incremental, meaning you pay the same tax on e.g. the first $15,000 regardless of how much additional money you make.

To put this article in a more local perspective...

[macraig]

... if Dyson were commenting regularly at Slashdot, sans his well-known reputation, he would be routinely modded down as Troll.

Being an alleged Troll is sometimes a good thing.

Re:History...

[Rob the Bold]

Last year we had money left in the bank where I work. If the employees took anymore home in pay, it would have bumped us up a tax bracket and we would have made less after taxes. So what were our options?

I'm assuming you're in the US, or if not, somewhere else with progressive marginal income tax rates. If that is so, then it sounds like the folks where you work got suckered. Additional income would have only bumped some or all of the difference into another tax bracket. You'd still take home more if you got a raise/bonus/whatever. They also forgot other options like D) Paying the employees in the form of non-taxable benefits, like retirement plans and health coverage expansion.

More info on marginal tax rates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Year_2008_income_brackets_and_tax_rates

I found one

[phantomfive]

I found one. In less than two minutes on the internet, here is your paper. It shows that a lot of the warming in the tropical north atlantic is mainly due to a reduction of atmospheric aerosols, not an increase in carbon dioxide. Here is a summary of that article, in case you don't want to pay the subscription.

Of course it doesn't completely 'disprove' global warming, it would take more than one paper to prove that global warming is happening, it will take more than one paper to show it's not. All this paper is doing is trying to get closer to the truth of what's happening.

I'm wondering if you've ever actually read a peer reviewed scientific journal, and I seriously doubt you've ever done peer review. The reason I doubt this is because in my time, I've stumbled across articles that are opposing the standard view of global warming without even looking.

Note that papers like this come up all the time, they just tend not to make the news.

Freeman Dyson is not a climatologist

[quixote9]

He's a physicist. All he's done is show that non-specialists aren't necessarily as good as specialists at understanding the evidence.

I'm a biologist, and a good one if I do say so myself. I'm also convinced that faster than light travel (and the necessary new physics) is just waiting to be discovered. I'm sure the physics community will be immediately rethinking all their principles now.

Re:But the real data is worse than the models pred

[phantomfive]

I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that it is impacting us worse than predicted, inasmuch as all the models I've seen showed significantly hotter temperatures by this time, some were expecting temperatures 5-10 degrees Celsius above what we have now. Have you seen the opposite? Here is an article talking about the limitations of computer models. Here is a quote "Failure to account for local warming in cities led to some claims of dramatic warming in the 1980s and 1990s and, while adjustments are made today and the predictions of warming significantly reduced, some researchers believe the adjustments to be inadequate." This is consistent with what I have observed, as well.

conflicts of interest

[moderatorrater]

Agreed, global warming could be happening anyway, but what's most profitable for those involved? People will scream until their faces turn blue that anybody who doubts global warming is doing it for money (as the OP did), but when it's pointed out that all the money right now is to be gained by verifying climate change they take it in stride. Conflicts of interest are conflicts of interest, and when it come to climate change, the reports I've seen accuse the oil companies and those with vested interests of giving hundreds of millions of dollars whereas those trying to prove climate change are spending roughly 10x that amount according to this report.

This issue is too heated for good, solid science to come out of it. The issue's too politicized for confidence and the science too uncertain to know what's going to happen anyway. Without being able to verify everything myself, I feel that doubt and skepticism are the only rational reactions to be had.

Re:Man-made global warming is a hoax?

[thesupraman]

No, his facts are documented and people can go and investigate them and form their own opinions.

You on the other hand offer no facts and unfounded accusations.

You present yourself as an idiot, whereas he presents himself as well informed. Hmmm.

Re:This has all happened before

[Cyberax]

The last figure is from ice-core samples in Antarctica. And it's very misleading.

Look at the scale. One pixel on this diagram is about one _thousand_ years, and it takes tens of thousands of years for significant changes.

Yet we see MUCH more rapid changes. As in 100x more rapid than the changes on your graph.

The cycles on this graph are very well known, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles - they were first derived by purely mathematical methods.

PS: Do you REALLY think that all climate scientists are stupid idiots and/or parts of global conspiracy?

The 800 Year Gap

[Burnova]

I scanned through and didn't see it mentioned anywhere, but has anyone else heard about this problem? The entire global warming problem is contingent on the concept that an increase in CO2 leads to higher temperatures, and this is based on the data compiled into the nice chart that Al Gore displays and comments, "They look like the belong together." Or something like that. The problem is that CO2 amounts don't precede the increase in temperature, they actually lag behind the temperature changes by about 800 years. This can be explained by the idea that as the world heats up, the oceans heat as well. As the oceans heat, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Of course this leaves the question, "Why does the planet heat up?" to be answered, and while the data is much more limited, there seems to be a very strong correlation between solar activity and global temperature. Has anyone else come across this line of research? Or have anything that builds on or refutes this?

Re:This has all happened before

[Cyberax]

"However, a climate scientists doesn't need to be a stupid idiot in order to be wrong. Much of what we were taught in school concerning fundamentals of physics were "wrong" (e.g. 4 phases of matter; 3 spatial dimensions + 1 temporal dimension; proton is the smallest fundamental particle, etc)."

And guess what, they taught you RIGHT. Because all these facts are quite true, they just do not hold at some extreme conditions. In other words, all our theories are incomplete.

But good theories have predictive power within their domain. This is quite true about 3 stages of matter in 'common' life, for example.

"I personally don't care if it's true or not. If you really believe it, then there are solutions to solving it that don't require control of others. Let's go nuclear. Let's seed the oceans with iron (which also has the added side effect of increasing fish populations). Let's put up the solar shades. Let's move the earth to a wider orbit. Let's sequester the CO2 on Mars."

Let's ask a wood fairy to fix all that's wrong...

Look at your graph more closely

[Rumata]

Look at the graphs, look at historical records in the rocks. Ask yourselves, did we cause global warming or are we merely part of it ? I think the graphs speak for themselves.

Yes it does speak for it self, possibly not in the way you think, though. The large scale graph shows that from -400000 to 0 carbon dioxide concentrations varied between ~190ppmv and ~300ppmv; changes occurred relatively slowly, the fastest up-ticks are on timescales of 1k-10k years (hard to be precise from this scale).
The new peak on the far right of this graph is unique in two ways:
-The absolute level is about 25% higher than any of the 4 previous peaks and about 40% higher than the average of the graph.
-The rate of change is completely unprecedented, about 90ppmv/200years, i.e. the vertical line inside the ellipse.

I am no expert in the matter, and I know that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. However, just judging from your graph, I see a unique feature in the data, nicely aliened with a drastic population increase of a certain two-legged critter (obviously not shown here) and a change of habits of said critter (massive burning of coal/oil).
So, unless you have a compelling alternate explanation I'll stick with man-made increase of CO2 levels.

Cheers,
Michael

You totally missed the point

[snowwrestler]

The point is not that Bangladesh flooding is caused by global warming. It's simply a good example of how human actions can create expensive and deadly human consequences. Global warming is such a concept writ globally. You're happy to lecture other people about how concrete can't absorb water (duh), but seem completely unwilling to listen to what other people are telling you about the consequences of increasing the heat content of our climate system.

You're right that many more people will die if it gets colder. Yet you're too ignorant to realize that global warming will likely cause some areas of the globe to get colder than they are now, due to shifting climate patterns. You would learn that and many other things if you accorded other people some of the respect you demand for your own statements.

Invoking the Al Gore Rule on climate science

[snowwrestler]

The Al Gore Rule, which I have formulated over the course of years of participating in discussions about global warming, is this:

The degree of a person's fixation on Al Gore is inversely proportional to their expertise in climate science.

Note that this works equally well for either side in the debate.

If you wish to disprove global warming, you do not need to disprove Al Gore's expertise. You need to prove that the data and theory of thousands of highly trained and experienced scientists around the world is incorrect. Best of luck.

Re:Man-made global warming is a hoax?

[kholburn]

Lots of junk references do not make his post any more real than hand-waving.

If you want some facts:
http://www.realclimate.org/

Why the Hockey stick graph has been proved wrong:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html

Come on it's all just so old.

And why bother saying climate change is not man-made if you're denying the climate change in the first place. Silly.

Oh here's 10 myths about climate change debunked:
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html

Re:Not out of his mind, just not terribly rooted i

[ceoyoyo]

A potato that grown on Mars. How nice. And how do we get there einstein? This is the kind of stuff we read about 20 years ago that would be with us in 20 years. It is flying cars. As well all know, they don't exist and probably never will. Why? Because they are practical.

Enviromentalists like Al Gore have to be practical. They are dealing with the very real effects of ricing sea levels NOW because you can't just build higher dikes when they have been destroyed by a storm. That is for instance the problems in Holland right now. As a country we are more then rich enough to raise the dikes but we need to do it NOW when the danger is years or even decades away because it will take years and even decades to finish and worse, if the predictions are to conservative, then those higher dikes might be needed sooner rather then later. You can't just plant a lot of trees if Dyson is wrong in 30 years. By then it will be to late.

Wow. Nice character assassination. You take some speculative examples Dyson gave about what we might be able to do with bioengineering and sneer at him ("how do we get there, einstein?") because he didn't spell out all the details for a Mars mission? Then you bring up flying cars?

Then you mention Al Gore. Al Gore, who's private residence is a record setting example of conspicuous consumption. But Al Gore buys carbon offsets! What's one of the major components of carbon offsets? Tree planting. How ironic.

Re:Man-made global warming is a hoax?

[JoshHeitzman]

Gotta agree with this. The environmental movement seems to have been subverted by people wanting to regulate CO2 emissions (likely for their own enrichment), such that the issues being caused by the numerous pollutants that are most definitely attributable to human activity aren't really getting much mindshare anymore.