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Study Highlights Gap Between Views of Scientists and the Public
ZeroSerenity was one of many to write with news of a survey from the Pew Research Center which sought to find out how Americans feel about science and contrast that with the opinions of actual scientists. The study showed that "nearly 9 in 10 scientists accept the idea of evolution by natural selection, but just a third of the public does. And while 84% of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, less than half of the public agrees with that." 27% of the respondents said that the advances of the US in science are its greatest achievement, down from 44% ten years ago. The study is lengthy, and it contains many more interesting tidbits. For example: scientists decry the level of media coverage given to science, and they also think research funding has too much influence on study results. 32% of scientists identify themselves as Independent, while 55% say they're Democrats and 6% say they're Republicans.
And if we also look at global warming with the same critical eye, can we really say that humans are responsible for global warming when all we can really show is a strong correlation?
The story is about science but English is still important. The statement in the fine summary (Way too lazy to RTFA before coffee) says that scientists believe that humans are warming the earth, it doesn't say humans are the only thing warming the earth.
I'm not a global climate change denier. There is definitely something going on. Whether it is caused by humans or not, it doesn't really seem to matter.
FAIL! Just looking at CO2 alone, humans put somewhere between twice and an order of magnitude more CO2 into the atmosphere than volcanism. Since it's easy to see using physics that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and we KNOW that CO2 released from volcanism is a significant heater (we can observe the localized effects intensely) then we KNOW that humans are a significant source of CO2, let alone all the other things that we make that nature never will.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh, for fuck's sake.
1. We, humans, are pumping over 27 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
2. A corresponding increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has been observed.
3. The interaction of CO2 with IR radiation is well-established and well-understood by anyone with an understanding of simple chemistry.
Which point, exactly, is in dispute?
LOAD "SIG",8,1
No they didn't. Catholicism was the major driver behind geocentrism, and no-one with any sense ever believed the earth was flat.
Pew used the AACS membership list to generate their list of "scientists" to poll. Anyone that wants to fork over $99 can join the AACS, including kindergarten teachers. Would you call the opinion of a kindergarten teacher the opinion of a scientist? The stated goals of AACS essentially define it as a left-leaning organization, so it's no surprise that 55% say they are Democrats.
Perhaps Pew could not do their research on such a decidedly biased sample to begin with -- but I suppose that is asking too much these days.
The "Pew Research Center" canvassed the membership of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS publishes the Science journal which has a distinctly liberal bias.
Note carefully: I'm not saying that's a bad thing. However, it means that the sample is biased. I'm actually surprised that as many as 6% of respondents identified themselves as Republicans.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is just plain wrong. Even the ancient greeks knew that the earth was spherical. This has been the dominant scientific position for a long time. The wikipedia article on it is quite good flat earth.
Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the earth back then in 240 BCE, thats long before science as we know it today even existed.
and yet the world has cooled over the last 10 years so one of your assumptions is wrong. Which one is it?
Alternatively, you're wrong. NASA's figures says you are.
I can spot more than five decades of supposed cooling during the 20th century as per you definition, but as you can clearly see the overall trend is not cooling.
Citation please.
First Google Result: Volcanic Gases and Their Effects. Quotation follows: Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002) Hope that helps... lazy asshole.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Pew used the AACS membership list to generate their list of "scientists" to poll
I looked to find this "aacs" you refer to. I came up with several organizations:
None of those organizations seem particularly scientific to me. Perhaps you meant the AAAS - American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. And if we look at their membership requirements for the US we'll see that only students can sign up for full membership at $99 per year. A K-12 teacher would pay $146, the same as the professional rate, though they do have a low-frills option at $99.
The stated goals of AACS essentially define it as a left-leaning organization
Not sure where you got their goals from, but we'll read their website:
The same page continues on with some broad goals:
That doesn't really seem particularly liberal or conservative from a political standpoint, unless conservatives have a decidedly anti-science-education standpoint.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
shamelesly stolen from another website, i am not plagiarizing this, (i lay no claim to authoring it, but i love it)
So here's the thing: We have 46 chromosomes. Our nearest great ape relatives have 48. On the surface, it looks like we must have lost two. But that's actually a huge problem. Made up of organized packs of DNA and proteins, chromosomes don't just up and vanish. In fact, it's doubtful any primate could survive a mutation that simply deleted a pair of chromosomes. That's because chromosomes are to the human body what instruction sheets are to inexpensive, flat-pack furniture. If you're missing one screw, you can still put that bookcase together pretty easily. But if the how-to guide suddenly jumps from page 1 (take plywood panels out of box) to page 5 (enjoy bookcase!), you're likely to end up missing something pretty vital. All this left scientists with a thorny dilemma: How could we have a common ancestor with great apes, but fewer chromosomes?
Turns out: The chromosomes aren't missing at all. Genetic investigators caught the first whiff of the prodigal chromosomes' scent in 1982. That year, a paper published in the journal Science described a very funny phenomenon. Researchers knew all chromosomes had distinctive signatures; patterns of DNA sequences that can be reliably found in specific spots, including in the center and on the ends. These end-cap sequences are called telomeres. Telomeres are like the little plastic tips that keep your shoelaces from unravelling. They protect the ends of chromosomes and hold things together. Given that important function, you wouldn't expect to find telomeres hanging out on other parts of the chromosome. But that's exactly what the 1982 study reported. Looking at human chromosome 2, the scientists found telomeres snuggled up against the centromere (the central sequence). What's more, these out-of-place human telomeres were strikingly similar to telomeres that can be found, in their proper location, on two great ape chromosomes.
This evidence laid the groundwork for a brilliant discovery. Rather than falling apart, the two missing chromosomes had fused together. Their format changed, but they didn't lose any information, so the mutation wasn't deadly. Instead, scientists now think, the fusion made it difficult for our ancestors to mate with the ancestors of chimpanzees, leading our two species to strike out alone. In the two decades since the original study, more evidence has surfaced backing this up, which leads us to 2005, when the chimpanzee genome was sequenced around the same time that the National Human Genome Research Institute published a detailed survey of human chromosome 2. We can now see extra centromeres in chromosome 2 and trace how its genes neatly line up with those on chimpanzee chromosomes 12 and 13. It's a great example of evidence supporting the common descent of man and ape. [EOF]
So all you christians are wack thinking some imaginary god did it.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I didn't even comment on the lack of citations. Your argument is purely an emotional one: we are emitting ${BIGNUMBER} of CO2, thus, we must be responsible for global warming.
This is equivalent to the long debunked denier argument: volcanoes emit ${BIGNUMBER} of CO2 thus we are not responsible for global warming.
The argument you probably meant to make, which is still unrigorous, unscientific and totally unreferenced, but is at least not meaningless is:
1) We, humans, are pumping a globally significant amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
2) A corresponding increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has been observed.
3) The interaction of CO2 with IR radiation is well-established and well-understood by anyone with an understanding of simple chemistry.
Alternately, you could keep your (1) and change (2) to:
2) A corresponding significant increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has been observed.
My point is that your original argument uses the same impressively-large-sounding-number-with-no-context emotional appeal that is the mainstay of anti-scientific arguments from intelligent design to global warming deniers.
The Pew Research Center has little to do with reality.
How they choose to define "scientist" is relevant. That is, the population being sampled is one of the factors in what the results are. I'm guessing they oversampled university employees and people who receive government grants, who tend to be democrats, and undersampled people who use scientific method in their work, such as farmers.
According to the linked study, they used a sample of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and excluded those who resided outside the USA or whose membership was based on being primary or secondary level educators. Roughly half were in biological or medical fields, with the remainder in physical or earth sciences. http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1554
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire