Slashdot Mirror
Global Warming To Be Put On Trial?
Mr_Blank writes to mention that the United States' largest business lobby is pushing for a public trial to examine the evidence of global warming and have a judge make a ruling on whether human beings are warming the planet to dangerous effect. "The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court. The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a 'waste of time' and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be 'frivolous.' [...] Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end."
They'll be trying the existence of Manbearpig. Really, I'm serial!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
3 million businesses pressuring 1 judge to decide whether or not the work of millions of scientists is trustworthy.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Maybe its a good thing in a way, it wastes a lot of money though, are the businesses that are lobbying prepared to pay all the lawyers and then some ?
Did I miss a meeting?
...an old fashioned monkey trial will assist in exposing the roach nest to the harsh light of public scrutiny.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Because courts have such a great track record of staying scientific. /s
I'm pretty sick of people who won't listen to science. A judge? There no precidence afaict, wtf? Is there one single scientist who isn't employed by greenhouse gas emmitters who thinks global warming isn't real, and that we aren't contributing?
Free Martian Whores!
A problem I have been working on is pretty dicey. I think the problem is polynomially solvable (and not NP-hard), and a colleague of mine thinks that it is NP-hard. I am thinking of just getting a judge to rule on that.
So you have ruined the global economy through frivolous waste and fraud, perpetrated wars that have caused the deaths of over a million people in recent years, and now just when you elect someone to be your leader who has the semblance of common sense, there is a push by "the usual suspects" to push back human progress by decades. It is true that the US is the last best hope of humanity, for China builds the equivalent of a coal plant every week. If the US does not act to reduce the 'carbon footprint' of humanity, we are all going to be fucked. The atmosphere will be un-breathable, the trees will be gone, desertification will take the rest of our water, and the oceans will be reduced to vast life-less voids of acid. Will Americans overcome their innate fear and ignorance to reclaim leadership of the free world? Stay-tuned.
Is to try to overrule the verdict of the scientific community because they don't like what it says. The climate change battle is over, and it is now a conclusive scientific consensus that it is happening and that human action is contributing to it. We need to slash our emissions dramatically, these guys just want other people to do it.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Assuming this is done fairly (insert groan of 'yeah right' - I doubt either side will play fair) and this goes against the 'Global Warming' crowd - I wonder what impact, if any, this would have on Al Gore's Nobel Prize for all the work on 'Global Warming'. I, personally, believe *most* of the 'Global Warming' rhetoric is nonsense and there simply isn't enough data to support Humans are the primary cause of any major changes and that the 'science' fails to take a lot of other things into account. But that's just my opinion, I'm not an expert nor do I claim to be. That does *not* mean I support destroying the environment!
This gravity thing is turning out to be a pain in the ass. There's no end of constructions required to keep everything from falling down. I'm sick of it. I'M SUING GRAVITY.
I assume after a judge rules in my favor, I'll be free to float around all day long. Objective reality? That's for people without lawyers. See you in orbit, suckers!
the green movement is really hinged on the earth warming. that's a nice double edged sword they've taken up. the day this world sees a global cooling trend, the green movement will suffer great harm.
I don't think anyone would rightly argue that pollution is bad, but as I sit here in August ... enduring September/October weather I have to question if this "global warming" crap is happening. And you will just say "aha, that's weather, not climate". And I'll say "aha! those few warmer years are just weather, not climate."
So yeah, cut down pollution but not because of global warming but because putting shit into our air/water is bad (e.g. particulates, metals, etc...).
A question for conservatives out there:
Why is it that conservatives believe in these kinds of myths? Why is it that conservatives, even congressmen believe in myths like the Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories, Young earth creationism, Climate change denial, and what not. I can't think of a single conspiracy theory mainstream democrats subscribe to; while some fringe liberals believe in the 9/11 attacks being faked, this is a definite liberal fringe in the US (just as Holocaust denial is a fringe with the right-wing).
I mean, to me, I understand the "big tent" thinking of Republicans, but it has to be embarrassing to be associated with a party with senators and house members who acknowledge the above fringe theories as being established fact, instead of looking at facts and evidence in an objective manner.
So an organization that loves to complain, loudly and vocally, about "judicial activism," now wants judges to rescue it from the policies of the Congress of the United States and the unary Executive that they helped to create? Now that's a rich vein of hypocrisy.
Here we sit on this earth with all kinds of evidence that we are polluting the crap out of this planet and here the business lobby--just so their members can get a little bit richer before the world comes crashing down--are doing everything they can to prevent the inevitable. Crazy.
As presiding judge over Slashdot Court and after hearing the above testimonies from expert witnesses, I hereby order the environment to remain at least three hundred feet away from all businesses and places of commerce. Failure to do so will result in a one hundred dollar fine to mother nature and her related entities.
*bangs gavel*
My work here is dung.
So the idea here is that a judge will decide what is and is not empirical scientific evidence? Isn't that a lot like asking a pastry chef to fix a design flaw on a mechanical blueprint for a helicopter fuel injector?
I don't want global climate change, I don't want to have to change my ways, but but unless I change my kids & grand kids will have a hard time. You can't legislate against nature.
The 'business community' wants to put Climate Change on trial to test the veracity of the data. However this really means that the don't believe the data is true and just want someone powerful to side with them
But if the trial goes through and the judge supports the climate change data, will this actually convince these people that the data is correct? I'm guessing not.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Are they serious? A fucking *law court*?
What a wonderful idea, perhaps it can be extended to other areas. Perhaps I, as a scientist, could try criminal cases, I'm sure I'd be perfectly qualified since apparently science and law are the same thing now.
I think it's worth taking a look at the data and the evidence to see whether the claims really do stand up to scrutiny. Global climate change is happening on some level, there is no doubt. However, it is still up for a debate whether human activity is responsible for it. I'm a geek and a strong believer in the scientific method, but I feel that in this particular case the political noise is taking precedence over hard data and climate models where reliability is concerned.
In other words, there is too much bullshit from both sides. I feel like global warming debate has crossed the threshold from being a science-driven topic into string theory and evolutionary psychology realm. Lots of unprovable data is being tossed around. For example, the claim "Florida will be submerged in 2250's due to industrial development" is utterly unhelpful and downright unscientific. We still can't predict earthquakes, the weather, or 1000's of other natural disasters with accuracy in a given year or a decade, let alone centuries.
Is this merely a cynical ploy, or does the overabundance of lawyers and the legally trained in political and lobbying circles actually affect their epistemology?
Trials aren't a bad method(or, like democracy, they are at least the best of bad methods) for the purposes to which they are put, namely deciding criminal and civil matters; but they have no efficacy, or even history, on scientific ones. Even in the context of, say, criminal cases, the trial process is forced to bring in scientific expertise to testify about how it used scientific methods to solve particular scientific questions(DNA equivalence or nonequivalence, cause of death, etc.)
Is this just a PR ploy, or does the Chamber of Commerce actually subscribe to some sort of quasi-postmodern notion that truths about the empirical world can be decided by a trial process?
Who cares if global warming is caused by humans or not? Do we actually need to prove that to reach the conclusion that polluting its own environment is a rather stupid behavior for any living being?
On a side note, regarding the AGW debate, a decent attempt at objectivity here, with a few interesting links in the info section: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVi0QSDcFQQ
It's ridiculous that a supposedly rational, enlightened society would permit the existence of these kinds of these blatently political star chambers.
Sadly, there is a certain part of American society, particularly on the pro-business, conservative side of politics, which is yet to move beyond the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials. This is an example of that kind of medieval, irrational mindset.
What's so galling for me, is the existence of people, particularly on the political Right, who think they can change reality for their own benefit, by wishing for it hard enough.
This kind of violent, wilful irrationality will be the death of America.
Is there global warming? It depends on the level of assurance you require. If your only standard is a preponderance of evidence, then yes, the earth is probably warming. If you're aiming at beyond all reasonable doubt I don't think we'll ever know the answer well enough to say that.
Remember that we're talking about weather and climate. We still discovering new features. We still don't have credible models for cloud cover. There is much about the ocean currents that we still do not understand. And now we have a court of law trying to decide if global warming is real.
Which ever way they rule, it's should never be considered a precedent. And if the judge has any sense, this whole damned case should be thrown out of court on the grounds that nobody has the expertise to make a determination with any accuracy.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
People will believe what they need to believe..
It's sad and unfortunate, but with all the evidence from the Garbage islands to the fact
that the Ozone holes shrunk massively the two days after 9/11 and the US saw almost no flights, Big
biz will tell the gov to tell you what is correct to think, otherwise you "hate America".
Bush might be out of the White house but at some point we're going to have to admit publicly that
big biz runs the show, PERIOD. Money is king and damn the masses since they'll cut off their own chance at health care if we tell them "Socialism" is coming.
Whether or not humanity is helping "Global Warming" is a wild goose chase.
We need to curb our actions now. But since our lifespans are so short, we seem to choose
short term solutions that make the long term worse.
If you had to choose between being relatively comfortable doing what you want, and scarifying for the future, what would you do ?
Humanity is doomed and I think many people are starting to understand this, and choose to make the bucks as opposed to trying to save a planet they'll only be spending 78 years on.
End of Line.
Who will select the Judge?
... and will it be a jury trial?
I_Voter
Citizen's Political Power in the U.S.
EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health "on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare."
The EPAâ(TM)s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, as proposed in April, warned that warmer temperatures would lead to "the increased likelihood of more frequent and intense heat waves, more wildfires, degraded air quality, more heavy downpours and flooding, increased drought, greater sea level rise, more intense storms, harm to water resources, harm to agriculture, and harm to wildlife and ecosystems." Critics of the finding say it's far from certain that warming will cause any harm at all. The Chamber of Commerce cites studies that predict higher temperatures will reduce mortality rates in the United States.
What's basically happening here is that the EPA is trying to get "Greenhouse Gases" to be covered under the "Clean Air Act," which currently only regulates the amount of toxic emissions that industries and products are allowed to produce.
My question is this: What is the EPA _really_ trying to accomplish with this? Covering CO2 under the Clean Air Act would completely hamstring American businesses, forcing them to severely cut CO2 emissions. At this point, that is barely even technologically feasible, much less cost-effective, much less profit-producing. So what, are they _trying_ to bankrupt America businesses? Are they _trying_ to return us to the Stone Age? Are they _trying_ to give American companies as much of a handicap as possible in the global market, such that they will now have to compete with now even cheaper alternatives made in countries that don't have such off-the-wall regulations?
I hate to resort to calling the EPA malicious, because I want to believe that they think that what they are doing is right, but, seriously, that's the only alternative. They certainly aren't trying to _actually_ clean up the air, since worse offenders than the USA already exist and won't be affected by this law at all. In fact, I would speculate that these countries are simply going to grow and gobble up whatever materials we're no longer able to use under this law, and completely take over what little markets American products still have a place in.
This only effect of this law will be to hurt businesses, and they know it, and they're fighting back. And make no mistake, this isn't just Large Evil Corporations, either, this includes literally millions of "little guys."
The issue is not so cut and dry as a lot of people seem to think.
Even if people are contributors to global warming, should the EPA be given unchecked license to force the business sector to conform to strict rules that more often than not yields a product that the customer invariably doesn't want? Companies cannot stay profitable for long if they pursue that model, especially when they have foreign competition that doesn't have to abide by the same rules.
Unless a mandate is enforceable globally, it shouldn't be a law, because it puts localized businesses at a competetive disadvantage, and often forces them to relocate or go out of business.
Furthermore, since when has the debate been considered closed? It is a fallacy of pride to think that all angles of an issue are ever considered, or that an optimal solution has already been reached. For example, if an efficient and cost-effective (or even profitable) means to mitigate greenhouse gases is found that exceeds the rate at which they are produced, wouldn't the need for emissions regulation become moot?
that even if the judge is honest and say that yes, man is warming the planet, then business will STILL appeal and if won all the way through, they will still deny that man can make an impact. And it the "trial" is lost, then what? Absolutely nothing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I hate it when scientists do this. They declare something as widely accepted then refuse to reconsider. Many great innovations came from the choice of not following the accepted norm at the time and we praise them for their courage. So let them scrutinize the research and comment on it, maybe something interesting will happen. That said though it should not be a court decision. Judges are trained in the law not scientific concepts. A panel of worldly people solely interested in seeking the truth, would be ideal (if possible).
... send in the clowns to take science to court. This is going to end up in Springfield with Judge Snider ordering a 500 yard restraining order between business and science.
I'll tell you, there is a reason why this Global Warming or Climate Change is up for debate.
Never mind the fact that polar bears DO know how too swim or that this is the coolest summer on record. Temperatures have been cooling since 1998/99.
Never mind the fact the fact that this planet and other planets have warmed and cooled throughout the centuries.
Never mind the fact that The Inconvenient Truth is actually refuted by thousands of scientists throughout the world.
Never mind that Al Gore stands to make Billions if this Cap n Trade, Climate Change Bill HR2454 passes in the Senate and gets signed into law.
Never mind that this same Bill not only tax business but tax EVERYONE, from real estate restrictions on your home, to making you pay for renovations before you can sell your home.
Never mind that all this media spin is meant too whip support for the most invasive tax bill ever brought upon all the people of this country.
Never mind that they rushed this bill in the house, and did not even read through it, but still passed it anyhow.
All I will ask of YOU is too do the research behind the science of climate change and draw your own conclusions, before you are sway by ANY mass public opinion.
And please we have already taken such a huge debt with these bailouts, again please read the HR2454 Cap n trade Climate Change Bill. This is all incremental folks. The trial of Climate change/Global Warming and this HR2454 Cap n Trade Carbon Tax Bill is all relevant. Just trying to give a heads up. Tired of the "end of the world" fear mongering.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h2454pcs.txt.pdf
What is the ideal temperature for the planet? Without human intervention the planet has been warmer (ice-free poles) and the planet has been cooler (glaciers covering much of North America, Europe and Asia). The "catastrophe scenario" of high average temparature is and what should be on trial, not that warming has taken place.
Yup. That's it.
We weren't really sure about it until you have pointed out that you equate "global warming" with "hotter".
I suppose you also expect buildings to turn green due to "green-house effect"?
See... there is this thing where, when things get hotter on one end there is a lot of evaporating there, and then it gets a lot cooler and wetter at another end.
But I do see what you mean. Weather at the end of a hotter month resembling weather at the end of the next, colder month.
Clearly that indicates that there is no global warming going on. If anything, it is global cooling, right?
Like the FUCKING CHANGE OF SEASONS AND THE COMING OF AUTUMN!
Or is that Fall? From here it seems like it may be Fall.
No longer will the proponents be able to hide behind "peer review." It takes more than peer reviewed scientific papers to build something really big and important like an A380 or a $500 million server farm or a Channel Tunnel. Before spending $trillions to prevent computer-model-predicted-CO2-induced-catastrophic-global-warming we should at the very least have a transparent and open examination of the facts.
Please define "Consensus". GW is almost purely political and socially driven. This reminds me of the Super-Gravity vs String theory debate of the 80 and 90's. No one would work on Super-Gravity as only string theory was in style (I read "Consensus" here). Turns our the Super-Gravity people had a lot right too (11 dimensions of spacetime). People don't get study grants for research into anti-GW work. Who do I sue when GW is shown to be caused by variations in this unshielded thermo-nuclear reactor we orbit?
Conservative, mod down for violating
Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense#Origin
Thought thinks itself.
Just read a book by Michael Chrichton about something very similar: State of Fear....
volker
Yes, me too: sick of people who won't listen to science, and instead listen to the media and the so-called scientists who support the consensus so that they can get their grant money.
For an overview of the overwhelming evidence against the so-called consensus, see this presentation by Burt Rutan. Pay particular attention to the part where he talks about the deliberate falsification of data by the "scientists" who support the global warming consensus.
Of course, a trial only makes sense if the objectivity of the judge could somehow be assured.
This is not a troll. If you haven't even looked into the science, or even read that presentation, then maybe you should...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
"You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."
â" Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Here, you have to be able to bend and twist logic and out and out lie about it. While some scientists are liars, the majority of trial lawyers are liars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So you "can't think of a single conspiracy theory mainstream democrats subscibe to"?
first of all 9-11 thrutherism is beleived by 30 percent of democrats.
Also try these left wing myths:
* Peak oil
*Anthropogenic Global Warming
* Town hall meeting disruptions pushed by health insurers
* White American settlers purposely infected native Americans with small pox
* The US Civil War wasn't about slavery
* Women with the same qualifications make less money in the work place
* Concealed carry gun laws increase violent crime
* Canadians are satified with their health care
* Republicans not Democrats tried to block the civil rights law reforms of the 1950s and 1960s
* Capitalism is bad for the middle and lower classes
I could go on and on.
By the way creationism is a religeous not a poliltical belief.
It's a sad statement on our outlook on life that making more money is more important to us than our long-term survival and well-being. There is no rational justification for ignoring the facts. Yes, some of the specific details may still be debated but the overall reality simply cannot be disputed by anyone with a hint of intelligence. Thus, the only reason I can imagine someone arguing against the facts that are before us is greed - they know that making some changes may (*MAY*) be more expensive (in the short term) and thus they want to fight against it in the hopes of making more money.
I don't think we deserve to be the dominant species on the planet any more... sigh...
Cause clearly, when we say "Global" we actually mean "48 contiguous states".
Where it is all about the law and "liberty to sue".
I believe that the dinosaur chamber of commerce also initiated a similar lawsuit when the general population noticed that numbers were thinning. Sadly for them too, it was the lawyers that did them in :-)
'cause London is burning and I, I live by the river
The result of the trial will be a congressional bill severely limiting production of phlogiston.
Regardless of whether global warming is caused by man, these companies are essentially telling me they're going to fight for the opportunity to pollute the air. I'm glad we know where we stand.
We're after all not sitting over man made laws. Then, by all means, the court would be the correct place to go.
We're sitting over nature's laws here. And as much as we deem ourselves important, nature doesn't care jack about our laws. She has her own set and they break ours any time. You can rule as much as you want that this hurricane can't go through your home town, if you put it to the test you'll notice that your law is ignored with impunity and ther's jack you can do about it. "I hereby fine the storm a fine of 20 million dollars..." is that what you want to say about it if it dares to ignore your law, little man?
Global warming is or is not. That's something scientists can find out, if anyone. No court can make a final decision on that.
Oh... OH! It's just about liability, we don't give a shit about whether or not the planet is doing the Dodo, what matters is whether we have to pay for it? Ok, my bad, carry on. Hope your money buys you another planet when you win this case and then mommy decides you weren't.
Answer me this: Can you risk being wrong? Do you have a spare planet, just in case? Personally, if there's even a small chance that we're going to heat up our blue marble beyond the point of what we commonly call "habitable", I would try to avoid it. Just in case. 'cause ... well, dunno about you, but I don't have a spare planet in my back yard where I can go when we trashed this one for good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It won't be a business organization arguing against scientists, or religion vs science as in Scopes, this will be science vs science. Green environmental whacko supporting scientists against rational scientists. The summary tries to make it sound like this is a "settled" matter with scientific "consensus" whereas the opposite is true. All the scientists who support the concept of global warming agree of course, as does the liberal mouth organ media and politicians. There is an equal consensus on the other side which believe there is no global warming phenomenon or immediate danger to humans as the other side has contended. As it is the evidence against global warming is mounting, so much so that the zealots have had to rename their cause as "Climate Change". The whole episode of global warming is laughable.
Period.
I swear I hear so much conflicting shit about this issue -
Is it humans? Is it sun spots? I could have swore I was hearing that human induced warming was an over-exaggeration and that normal warming and cooling periods were are activated by the Sun and other planets in the system were all following trend.
Is this out the window? Should I be back on the human warming bandwagon?
Stop changing your minds it making it hard to appear right and knowledgeable.
I want a list of the "3 million" who would rather sacrifice the future of the human race that a few % points on their profit margins. I'll be buying from them in the future since they're at least honest which is more than I can say for every other corporation that won't publicly admit to not giving a flying fuck about anybody or anything other than their profits, the future and their children be damned.
Fry: This snow is beautiful. I'm glad global warming never happened.
Leela: Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter cancelled it out.
Unfortunately, in the Scopes trial, the scientists did NOT win in the end. Scopes was found guilty, and attempts at appeal were rejected. Maybe they are trying to say the scientists won in the long run, but as far as I can tell the battle is still being waged.
They are saying that the world will burn and that even the most ancient parts of it will be effected. Whole habitats, not just humankind, will be razed from their environments; displaced and in need. The hounds of inevitability will be unleashed upon us all. The ground will crack and the land will open up and boil hot. The end is nigh.
But there is still time...
Cataclysm won't be out until sometime next year.
sudo apt-get lost
It's a black comedy, yes? The bitter joke being on your grandchildren (because I don't have any children myself): "Sorry kids, but here's the bill -- I'm shuffling off to the grave, LOL!!!!!!!1.".
We'll all know (one way or the other), absolutely and undeniably, after, oh ... another 15 years of near inaction and vastly increased global carbon output. By then it will be too late for economically feasible action, so there will be a global collective shrug and we'll continue on with the rest of the oil, then the coal, then the oil shale (all to preserve the "global" economy, of course), and then ... MAGIC FAIRIES HAPPEN!!! ... and fusion reactors and nanotechnology will solve everyone's problems.
I am so very, very glad that my average life expectancy will run out in about 25 years, because I doubt that even Toronto will be safe from the stench of millions upon millions of rotting human corpses that are going to start piling up in less fortunate areas of the planet.
I'm doing my part to correct past wrongs.
All those ancient living beings (plants) which sequestered all that CO2 into hydrocarbons, I'm burning their waste now in order to restore the natural balance.
I'd say this isn't such a bad idea, assuming environmentalists get to sue the EPA next time some rich oil kid runs the White House.
An even better idea is : Replace the presidential veto with jury trials using huge 100-200 people randomly selected juries. Of course, the president sends a lawyer who argues about changes, as does any minority position in the legislature. You'd even give the jury the power to "accept with changes" meaning they may cut pork from legislation.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I don't see what an engineer's presentation would contribute. Rutan's no more a climatologist than I am. In fact, anyone in any of the earth sciences should be listened to, but not Burt Rutan (or me for that matter).
Free Martian Whores!
THAT is what it has to do with science.
Or do you think that an Intergovernmental Panel will only have people who have nothing to do with the subject on board and will ignore the published works in that subject in their deliberations?
I swear, these lobbyists have less of a life than any of us on /.. Do we really need a judicial ruling made under United States Law about whether or not global warming is harmful? Ask anyone. The only people who care about this ruling are the lobbyists (not unusual, I'm sure).
Assuming that global warming exists, if global warming ain't harmful now, it will be in the future, when Earth becomes too hot to sustain human life. An increase in temperature of even a fraction of a degree per year could kill us all off within a couple of centuries.
It's going to be very, very funny when Antarctica goes from being the only uninhabitable continent to being the only inhabitable continent, thanks to global warming making temperatures rise everywhere and forcing everyone to move to relatively colder areas.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Not American.
For example, right now (since 2000) we have global cooling (around 0.5 degrees).
That is extremely misleading. If you take the look at the chart of local temperature average and then tell me "The temperature is decreasing, actually"... Technically you aren't actually lying but either you are very close to that or very stupid.
We are also heading towards a small ice age, our eliptical orbiting around the sun is about to change as it does "frequently" leading to us being further away from the sun in the coming millennias.
Yes, in 10 000 years from now, here is supposed to be 100 meters thick ice. But when it comes to climate change, we care about what happens a century or two from now.
The IPCC still refuses to provide either the data from which they created their apocalyptic graphs from, or the models they used to do the predictions. This goes massively against the scientific standpoint of providing an open view into research to allow valid verification or falsification.
At this point it is difficult to take anything you say very seriously. However, scientists all around the world are getting to the same conclusions. With IPCC data or not. So that kind of destroys the point.
And what most people are forgetting: There is a climate change going on, it has always been going on and it will always do so. The question is how we are to adopt to it, not if we are disillusioned enough to think we can stop the planets natural processes and freeze it in something that we right now think is a global optima.
We disturb the climate a lot with pollution. We want to take an action to fix that. And you argue against that action with the "We shouldn't disturb the nature!" argument?
This is why the majority of people thinks that these "climate sceptics" are idiots. Hell, there might be someone intelligent among them, someone with good, scientific arguments that aren't intentionally misleading. I just haven't seen any so far.
... rates number 11 in this handy list of psuedo-skeptical arguments
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
gadget junkie has a valid point, as there are many voices in the scientific community who are saying the science is far from settled. Your attempt to belittle him by comparing his doubt as being equal to those who doubt evolution is a flamebait.
What they are actually doing is the latest modern improvement in the scientific method:
This is the new step where a non trained and non qualified person gets to make a final determination on subject that previously could only be judged by waiting for the results of experimentation.
This replaces the previous doctrine of popular acclaim in the mainstream media.
("Did you know the average 50 year old man has 5 pounds of undigested red meat in his colon?")
It's mostly (at first) going to be harmful to paupers in Bangladesh or Tuvalu. Who gives a fuck about them? Certainly not the Scrooges at the Chamber of Commerce. After all, they can always retreat to their estate in Vale or something.
What a joke.
It's no coincidence to me that this hand is being forced as our country comes out of a lengthy and somewhat painful recession
Coming out? My friend, the fun has only just begin - though I agree that the symptoms may be masked for another few years.
Ugh. "Just begun". Damnit.
At the turn of the XIXth century, industrialists had the same kind of argument against child labor laws, or the 6 days work week. I'm sure they probably had the same kind of outrage when the fuckers got told they could not rape their serfs anymore. "But how am I supposed to discipline the help if I can't molest their children?"
And every time, they made shit up on how it was good for society for them to continue on abusing and exploiting. And every time, useful idiots (also known today as "libertarians" or "republicans") came to their help against the evil heretics / socialists / commies.
But today, your despicable kind is up against _science_. And you know what? Science: it works, bitches.
In a U.S. criminal case, the requirement is that the jury make a finding "beyond a reasonable doubt." In a civil case, the requirement is to find based on the "preponderance of the evidence."
Is there a reasonable doubt whether humans are the cause of global warming? Well, depends on what you consider "reasonable," but it could go either way. Is there a preponderance of evidence that we're the cause? Hell yes! Unless there is a whole mountain of credible counter-evidence that has somehow been hidden for decades...
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
That's good. Because this is science, and science is not about what you fucking believe. For the latter, consult your local priest / shaman / witch / Fox news shithead.
First, America was hit by OBL. We are in Afghanistan BECAUSE of that. NO OTHER REASON. Likewise, you seem to have forgotten that we WERE in iraq originally because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. That was the initial reason for our, AND NATO, being in the middle east. Now, I will NOT stick up for W WRT his invasion of Iraq as there was overwhelming evidence that Iraq did not have WMD. Obviously, W pushed a lot of lies by our gov, and congress went along with it. My guess is that it was for the oil and nothing else. BUT, to attribute both wars to America is total BS and ignores facts and history.
Now, lets address your garbage about Global warming being ALL OF AMERICA's fault. So many like to push this concept that we should tie CO2 emissions to the number of ppl. That is a total crock and HORRIBLE logic. For starters, population numbers change. Worse, many of the countries have not done a thing about population control. As such, it will allow countries to continue to emit by simply increasing their population. Some number crunching that I did that I will be putting in wiki later (once the 2009 CO2 info is out) was emissions / the land mass. What I found is that America was in the middle of emissions. Instead, many small third world nations as well as most of EU were some of the WORST polluters. Of course that was tied to size only. Instead, CO2 emissions should propably be tied to the size of their nation as well as percentage of global GDP that is exported. With either of these in place, America is certainly not number 1, though we still need to increase efficiencies. Of course, that is what Obama is doing by pushing Cash for Clunkers and now, money for washers.
Also, China's growth is NOT EQUIVILENT to putting up a coal plant per week. They are putting up TWO NEW COAL planets PER WEEK AND their car growth is BOOMING. Basically, China is putting up 4-6 NEW COAL PLANTS PER WEEK. Even now, their yearly CO2 emissions is the largest on the planet. If they continue this course for simply one more decade, they will put out more CO2 than America AND EUROPE has in total. If they stay with current numbers and STOP ALL GROWTH RIGHT NOW, they will surpass America's AND EUROPES total CO2 emission within 2 decades.
Likewise, China has already surpassed America or Europe in many other pollutants is well on its way to surpassing the ACCUMULATED TOTAL OF THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WEST. For example, China's emissions of Mercury now exceeds all that EU OR America HAS PUT OUT. In about another 2 years, they will exceed all that EU AND America has done over time. Likewise, their Sulfur emissions currently outstrip BOTH EU and America. Though to be honest, if they stopped, it is likely that the world might be in trouble. That serves to reflect a lot of light. But the acidification is not to good either.
For you to place the full blame on America makes you as foolish as the far right and those that oppose stopping GW.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hogan has written some entertaining science fiction, and he's got a fairly broad grasp of a lot of scientific fields, but he suffers badly from blind arrogance -- he decides what ought to be right, and then focuses in on evidence to support it, dismissing evidence that contradicts it. Not that this is particularly uncommon, of course, but since his successful fiction career has earned him a wide readership, he's in a better position than most to spread disinformation.
Just remember that he's no Clarke or Asimov when it comes to science writing.
Clashing of ideas can be a positive thing. But there comes a point that you need to put things in a balance. Check the amount of evidence pointing towards one way or the other, and if you can do something about it , take action.
And truth is there's overwhelming evidence that we are the cause for most of the global warming happening today. And the consequences of that aren't good. If business and we as people on this planet are required to make some sacrifices in order to sustain this planet environment than we must do something about it. Or should we wait and see what happens? Does that seam like the responsible action? Look at what the tobacco companies were willing to do so that people kept believing that it wasn't bad to their health.
We are the dominant species on this planet. It is our responsibility to maintain it's sustainability for both our and future generations. Obviously there are things that we can't control yet. A supernova near our planet or an asteroid hit or whatever huge random global catastrophe
that could happen would simply wipe out all our planet without us being able to do anything about it.
But if we can do something about it than lets do it. It is not like we can't adapt our economy if needed. We have done that countless times for different reasons.
Regardless of where your stand, we need a ruling on whether these companies are idiots and worthy of our support for wasting their and our money.
I'd like to get a judge to rule on whether the sky is blue or is water really "wet?"
Stupid lawyers.
It's a problem that involves international policy and science. Hence, you have governments sending their scientific experts to talk about it. Policy is done by governments, and science is done by scientists. That's what it's got to do.
And note that academies of science all around the world support the IPCC's finding. Do you think they know a bit or two about science? Or do you trust Faux News to get your "facts" instead?
Your denialism is about as misguided as that of truthers, birthers or moon landing denialists, with the difference than none of those risk killing millions by being stupid. They're just being stupid. You Heritage Foundation and AEI shills are criminally stupid. Or just criminally insane.
Where did you get your data from? NASA?
. . . can't we just use the Patriot Act to extraordinarily rendition Global Warming off to Guantanamo?
"Hell-ooooo, Global Warming! Meet your new friend, the cool and refreshing Water-board!"
I think it's high time that we took some bold, firm, enhanced scientific techniques against this Global Warming.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Exactly. There is still very little _EVIDENCE_ of mankind-created global warming.
Yeah, just like there's little evidence than Obama's not born in Kenya, or that 9/11 was not an inside job, right?
The IPCC still refuses to provide either the data from which they created their apocalyptic graphs from, or the models they used to do the predictions.
Yeah, Obama STILL refuses to show his birth certificate!
C02, something we exhale with every breath you take. Without this gas life on earth would not be possible. Plants require this gas to live, indeed when this gas is abundant plants thrive. This gas is given off by all animals. A gas that is turned back into O2 by the plants, plants which we require to survive. All these things are well established facts, as valid as the earth is round.
Now a group of people (they are just people after all, not gods) come along and literally say "We may not have all the data, we don't even know if the data we have is valid, in fact we know we don't have all the data, and what we do have is invalid or at the very best incomplete, and even if we did have all the data we haven't a clue how this "weather" thing works anyway, but we put this partial and incorrect data into this computer (apparently called deus ex machina) and it says that C02 is actually bad for the environment because we predict it will alter the weather! Even though our predictions thus far are incorrect, just take our word for it. And anyone who does not believe us or pokes holes in our data or logic is a stupid AGW denier that also believes the earth is flat."
Anyone want to explain why I should believe someone who would say such a thing? If that isn't the AGW argument, perhaps someone can explain what part is inconsistent with the AGW argument. And now the government and politicians wants to grab the helm of this out of control religion (after all it does require a degree of faith) and start telling people what they can and can't do "because of global warming" while they (the politicians) make millions of dollars by robbing us blind. This whole thing stinks! And if that really is the AGW argument, why on earth would anyone, without some ulterior motive, believe such a thing.
This is just ONE guy who claims (rightly or not) to be a member of APS to change its official policy. And what is its official policy?
Why don't you go to the APS itself?
Oh yeah that was so informative, pastafazou!
Fucking denialist liars.
As someone relatively new here to /. I don't totally understand the culture here yet. Although I do understand that this entire thread is wasting my time. I was hoping to see a valid debate on climate change with some relative proof. Every post seems to have conclusions or debate points with no evidence to back up said points.
If you are going to debate on anything scientific, I'm sure the rest of /. would appreciate a reference link or two backing up the points you are debating, otherwise your entire post in invalid because you are attempting to provide 'scientific conclusions' with no proof.
Again, If you are going to post a retort, how about a link to back up your retort? And make sure it's scientifically valid too, not some media cowboy pawn spitting words to sell an article.
I'd like to throw in my 2 cents here, and just chuck a few points into the mix.
Evidence (frozen plant life in Antarctica, various frozen animals on islands of the northern coast of Russia including things like camels) shows the planet used to have a much warmer (or at least much more evenly distributed) climate, so some people (like myself) believe global warming isn't the planet warming out of control, but rather warming BACK up from a cold spell.
There is no doubt man has abused the environment. I agree we're messing it up in general. However, we're only contributing a small amount to the overall pollution. Volcanoes throughout history have polluted much more than the entire human history. So are we at fault? To a point, yes. Is government and regulations the one to fix it? No. That's tending towards communism. To throw a in a viewpoint that's probably not shared by a lot of people, the environmentalist movement, if satisfied, will also eventually satisfy a plank of the communist manifesto: abolition of private property. Can't kill that animal that's vandalizing your yard, it's protected; can't cut down that tree growing into your house, it's protected; you have to sell your house and move, the land is reserved for animals only (unfortunately I can't remember the name of it, but pres. Clinton signed a bill designating huge amounts of land as animal-only. You probably have a 25% chance you're living on animal-only land right now, it just hasn't been enforced yet)
Plus, I'd like to point out something about the Scopes trial... poster is wrong. Evolutionists lost the case. Get a copy of the original court transcripts and you will find that he was found guilty of breaking said law. That ruling has never been overturned. The fine he was given was overturned on a minor technicality, but the ruling stands to this day. If you're getting your court facts from the movie "Inherit the Wind" (which I find many people do) then go read the original transcripts. The movie twists many things around and is not viable as a historic source.
Do I care about the environment? Sure, and we shouldn't overly abuse it. But the one to fix it should be the people, not the government.
Whether you believe in global warming or not aside, how can you be against green tech? How can you be against reducing carbon output & pollution?
Cleaning up our act is a good thing regardless of global warming.
The irrationality of some people (on both sides of the discussion) is completely absurd to me.
I still can't get why you Americans keep repeating that.
What difference it makes, whether global warming is caused by human activity or not?
It has to be dealt with anyway. Unless we all want to join ranks of dinosaurs.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
And the APS supports the IPCC. The OP is just lying, misrepresenting the opinion of one guy as that of the APS, which is actually the opposite.
If the west REALLY wants to limit and shrink CO2 emissions (as well as other pollutants), then there is a VERY simple way to do this. CO2 unlike other emissions is NOT single point. Coal plants are not the only source of these. But to hit these is difficult. Worse, trying to get all nations on board is also difficult. The easy answer to this is have a tax at point of purchase (or higher up stream) that is applied to ALL GOODS and is based on the amount of CO2 (and hopefully pollutants) FROM THE AREA THAT IT COMES FROM. That way, every nation has a strong incentive to drop their emissions FAST. Right now, many countries of EU has done more than America and certainly much more than China to drop their total CO2. This tax would also help those nation to keep on dropping their emissions, since we all know that it costs more to have this. At this time, kyoto has encouraged other nations to pollute more to lower their energy costs and then chase after western goods. In fact, my belief is that the Obama bill will cut back our emissions, but will instead, encourage lots more cheap energy (read coal) production in other nations that want to move their production to their nation. The dem bill is well intentioned, BUT is a disaster in the making.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We know wtf happened. It's all over the fossil record. Sea levels rose, species died out, new ones emerged.
The problem here is that it's going to be very fast. Instead of changing over hundreds of millenias (which is very rapid indeed by geological standards), this is going to change in a matter of decades. So species will die out.
And then in a million years' time, new ones will have adapted. In the mean time, well, the place's going to be slightly uncomfortable, for large values of "slightly," and that, mainly because of rich white christian asswipes.
Businesses suing over Global Warming science? I'm starting my new book now, and it's gonna be called Inherit the Hot Wind: The Scopes Money Trial.
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
So you HAD to make wine.
Christianity required wine for the communion.
So how nice it tasted had NOTHING to do with it.
They are making wine NOW in the scottish borders that IS good enough to compete with French wines. In 300AD there was demand but no competition. No wine was NOT an option.
And it is warmer now than it was in the peak of the middle ages warming period.
Only a proctologist could come up with such "facts." You know, someone whose job consists in examining diseased rectums. I'm more interested in what climatologists have to say about it.
A trial is a device used for resolving disputes between particular people. It sucks in many ways, but it is among the best found.
It is emphatically NOT a device well suited to determining the TRUTH.
Anybody who suggests resolving a scientific dispute by a trial is either a con-man or an entertainer, or both.
I have often said that AGW could not be even proven to be happening in a court of law. Bring in one good statistician, and the entire case is thrown out for lack of:
1) Relevant control data supporting the assertion.
2) Enough relevant data to even produce a sample size of ONE (which would still be statistically irrelevant).
When so-called scientists stop trumpeting 30 years of data as "all of recorded history" (which, when referring to the Arctic Ice, they regularly do), they can begin to be taken seriously. Until then, their data only makes sense, as with all conspiracy theories, when kept apart from the necessary (though inconvenient) context of opposing data.
Then throw in Al Gore's admission that the whole AGW issue is about giving the U.N. control over the planet (while he makes billions off of C&T), and any credibility in support of this "cause" is gone.
I don't suggest this. I'm not expressing an opinion about the content and support of that petition; I'm stating a fact: you lied by presenting the opposite of what the APS supports as if it was the APS.
Is there global warming? Almost all scientists would say yes. The temperature has trended up for more than a century.
Has there been global cooling for the last few years? Even Al Gore admitted that.
Is humanity increasing CO2 in the atmosphere? I don't know anyone who denies that.
Does C02 act as a greenhouse gas? Not many scientists would disagree.
So far we have overwhelming consensus. Most scientists would agree that the climate has been warming at least a degree per century.
Most scientists would say that a degree per century is not a big problem.
Many scientists would say that a warmer climate with more CO2 would actually be a good thing. Given the choice of cooling 2 deg. or warming 2 deg., most scientists would choose warming.
The problem is runaway global warming caused by feedback. I haven't heard any scientists say they would be happy with 5 or 6 deg. of warming.
Can I find you some scientists who disagree about runaway global warming caused by feedback? Yes.
Recently 60 German scientists sent a letter to their prime minister (Angela Merkel, also a scientist) asking that she re-assess her position on AGW.
There is a book on skeptical scientists called "The Deniers".
With a little googling it is easy to find peer reviewed articles disagreeing with one aspect or the other of harmful runaway anthropogenic global warming caused by feedback.
You need all the conditions to be true: harmful, runaway, warming, caused by CO2, as a result of feedback. If any of those necessary conditions is missing, there is no problem. Can I find credible scientists who disagree with at least one of the necessary conditions? If you do a bit of homework, so can you. No sweat. I have been reading about scientists who disagree with harmful AGW all summer. There are thousands.
Global Warming is not being put on trial. We know it's happened, it's happened many times in the history of the earth, so has global cooling. What is being put on trial is the idea of humans causing it or contributing to it. Everyone is bitching about the corporations because they are about money, well let me tell you what, the scientists are trying to keep their funding too.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
The loudest group with the most momentum is also trying to keep you from looking behind the curtain. It's simple to find the truth, just follow the evidence where it leads without fear. All of any environmental debate should be backed by solid evidence for one theory or the other simply because everything in the debate is quantifiable and measurable; there should really be no debate on Global Warming, the facts either support it or not. As long as Global Warming enthusiasts continue to refuse to really let their methods of data collection be examined I will have to write them all off as evangelists, as should we all.
Can't reproduce supernovas. Astronomy is bullshit.
Can't reproduce dinosaurs. Evolution is bullshit.
Can't talk to Caesar. History is pointless.
go with what you know works. In this case using your deep pockets to draw your opponents into a legal war of financial attrition.
This has already been tried in the only court that matters to a thinking person: the peer reviewed scientific literature. People who complain that scientists treat it like an established theory are right, because it is an established theory. The first papers on this were around 1960, and the fight was fought vigorously in the literature in the 1980s. The remaining uncertainties are of the sort that will always be uncertainties, because we don't have a control planet on which to conduct experiments. What is up for grabs are questions of degree: how much, how fast, which sources are more significant.
This is like patent trolls trying to get their case into an East Texas court. The companies behind this can win in court because of attrition. But it's a scientifically meaningless victory.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
At the global, average level, this is not "very small."
And there's positive feedback loops. Say methane captured in permafrost. Thaw a bit of it, get absolutely FREE additional degrees that will in turn thaw some more, and you're quickly talking +5K.
Additionally what we are seeing now is pests that couldn't withstand freezing in winter moving up north, destroying plants that had never evolved to resist them. This is just an example.
There was as much of a "wine industry" as there was "information technology" (monks copying manuscripts by hand) or an "entertainment industry" (minstrels going from town to town).
Well I suppose if you stretch the meaning of words to ridiculous levels, you have a point. On the other hand, you don't.
Exactly my point. If these strong positive feedback loops existed, then they would have already occured in the course of human history.
This frozen methane? Worst case scenario the global methane output goes up by 5-10%. That's about the same as the can be attributed to cow farts.
Can people no longer think for themselves, we no most western Europeans can't but come on. Man made global warming is bunk, one of the main proponents of it at NASA in the 60 and 70s was saying there was global cooling and we should start burning everything.
Stop drinking the cool-aid and follow the money made by these "Global warming experts".
I appreciate your earnestness. Perhaps this will help you make sense of the situation: schemata
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
We can't even predict the weather 7 days in advance and we are trying to predict what will happen decades from now? It is ridiculous to trust computer models that are based off of current trends for that far into the future, even the tiniest variable can make information like that so obscured. We gave the Nobel Prize to a person who said the planet was going to die in 100 years will no hard evidence that humans caused it at all. I wont deny the need to "go green" but its not for the reason of global warming, its mainly because at our current consumption we will not have enough power to maintain our use.
Scientists may have won in the "monkey trial", but only _after_ the court case. Scopes was found guilty, had to pay a fine...
I wouldn't count on any legal professional to be a proper judge of scientific evidence.
gadget junkie has a valid point, as there are many voices in the scientific community who are saying the science is far from settled.
Then why didn't he cite any of them, instead of using bogus arguments?
Your attempt to belittle him by comparing his doubt as being equal to those who doubt evolution is a flamebait.
No, it isn't. It's a valid way of pointing out that his arguments are faulty.
The simple fact that you need to cry "flamebait" instead of trying to rebut my point (which you obviously can't do) points to the fact that you can't come up with valid arguments to support his point either.
Now compare to TGGWS: several legally actionable errors that had to be, not clarified, REMOVED.
Some left-wing nutjobs got a bunch of mod points and modded down the incredibly insightful Parent post. Please remedy this.
"Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science â" and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial"
Arrogance, hubris, contempt. I am appalled at what passes for science these days (or maybe that should be 'science journalism')
I bet you heard the same reasoning used to defend this theory:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/Time-Ice-Age-06-24-1974-Sm.jpg
Al Gore isn't a scientist
Calling people stupid doesn't win your argument. And the chart you showed indicates a sideways trend since 2000. Maybe you're the stupid one who can't read a chart.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You must be new here... oops, I guess you are!
Sorry, but this is Slashdot, where logical fallacies like the ad hominem, straw man, post hoc ergo propter hoc, and the like are the standard tools of the master-debater.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Why is it that pretty much everyone in the world is in complete accord about this, except a bunch of Americans?
Evidently you're all so sold into a totally hedonistic selfish lifestyle that you will rubbish any pro-environment argument at all, just to avoid having to take responsibility and change your lifestyle yourselves.
Heres a thought for you selfish retards: Even if all the science we have is wrong and global warming is not caused by humans, whats the harm in reducing our emissions anyway? Jeez we might get cleaner air for our kids or something.
The alternative is we do nothing and seriusly risk of screwing our planet up just so you all can continue to pretend you really do need an oversized Hummvee to get to the mall.
As a physicist, I always study my case law before starting an experiment.
These guys evidently noticed that we forgot to do that before starting this one.
The scientific debate will hopefully go on.
The science is settled - it has been for a long time. We know it's happening, and that humans caused it.
Let's hope the political debate is stifled until some meaningful consensus can be reached
Here, here. The debate is purely political. There is science on one side, and a bunch of marketing firms employed by special interest groups on the other side. The truth is being lost because that's what marketing firms do . Somewhat ironically, they are scientific about sowing discord.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change.
Using the same approach, atheists can sue the government to prove the existence of God, and use that to undermine "In God We Trust" on our currency, swearing oaths on the Bible, and the tax-free status of churches.
If you just had cows, they would simply shift the balance towards a higher temperature, more or less in proportion. Since there are counterbalancing forces (more CO2+slightly higher temps = more photosynthesis), and also because methane ends up reacting with oxygen, the system would be stable, just shifted upwards.
But here the system feeds on itself, and higher temperatures cause more methane, not as a function of an external parameter (number of cows) but as function of itself. And that's not *stable*, at least on a short time scale (and on a long time scale we're all dead). And that's where your point:
we might be living in a different world today.
This is not the accepted scientific way to test extreme claims. The accepted way would be to get a professional magician to offer a million dollar prize to anyone whot can prove global warming to the magician's satisfaction under conditions the magicians controls.
I'm a little surprised Exxon hasn't pushed for such a scheme, because it's the surest way to be certain that global warming is never proved.
Um....WRONG AGAIN! The term "Climate Change" was pretty much invented by Republicans. In fact, in 2002, a memo encouraged Republicans to use the term "climate change" because it "sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge," whereas global warming sounds like it has "catastrophic connotations." http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/09/terms/
"Answer me this: Can you risk being wrong? Do you have a spare planet, just in case?"
No, sir, that's not going to fly. The risk of e-coli doesn't stop you from eating vegetables. The risk of crashing doesn't stop most Americans from driving. The risk of skin cancer doesn't keep everybody hiding in their homes with the shades drawn.
"Can you risk being wrong?" Terrible question. You always must ask, "How likely is that risk?" Otherwise you lead yourself down an unreasonable path. You need to do better than "what if?" if you want to make changes that can bankrupt nations or devastate emerging economies.
I can't find an online reference right now, so I'll have to cite the Beringia museum in Whitehorse, BC. It seems to be a reputable establishment.
There is at least one example of a tipping point where the effect of warming affects humans literally overnight.
It's thought that as the Ice Age ended, ice fields in Northern Canada melted into vast lakes, with nothing but ice containing them. When, finally, the containing ice melted, the lake would empty into the sea incredibly quickly, in rivers that would dwarf our largest today. Humans at that time would have witnessed dramatic sea level rises taking only a couple of weeks.
I used to doubt that flood stories such as Noah's Ark, Atlantis, Cantre'r Gwaelod, insert-yours-here, could have originated with the sea rises shown in the fossil record - surely they would have been too gradual for Ice Age man to notice? But this explanation of a sudden catastrophic tipping point changed my mind.
So you have ruined the global economy through frivolous waste and fraud, perpetrated wars that have caused the deaths of over a million people in recent years, and now just when you elect someone to be your leader who has the semblance of common sense, there is a push by "the usual suspects" to push back human progress by decades.
I know it's trendy for you Europeans to sit there, drink your tea and eat crumpets (beer and wurst, Merlot and veal or whatever) and pretend your shit doesn't stink. This ripping on America trend is getting really old. If you Europeans are so enlightened why do you feel the need to put other people down. People who are different than you only in that they were born in a different location. If you want to start talking about waste, fraud and lost lives let's look at the last 200 years of European history. From the 15th century until WW1 many European nations exploited most of the continent of Asia and the Indian subcontinent. When they were done there, they moved to Africa and South America. Instead of merely installing a government of their liking (as the US has been known to do on occasion) these nations decided to make them colonies. The natives of these colonies were often exploited or used for slave labor. This mostly came to an end when the nations of Europe got sick of fighting over territory and killed over 40 million people in WW1.As if this wasn't enough, they decided to have an encore performance a couple of decades later. This time between 61,798,600 and 77,788,600 lives were lost. In both of these cases the US had to step in to help end these wars. When the wrongs of the US can add up to half of the imperialism and warmongering that the members of the EU have done in the last 200 years you can start being snobby and complain. In the mean time I'm going to sit here in the good 'ol United States and be thankful for the personal freedoms I still have and hope and pray that this country does not go the way of Europe and take those freedoms from me.
It is true that the US is the last best hope of humanity, for China builds the equivalent of a coal plant every week. If the US does not act to reduce the 'carbon footprint' of humanity, we are all going to be fucked.
So you obviously hate the US. You think the US is imperialistic and meddle other nations affairs. Why, then, do you think the US is responsible for the "carbon footprint of humanity." You state that China pollutes more than the US so why aren't you ripping on them?
Will Americans overcome their innate fear and ignorance to reclaim leadership of the free world? Stay-tuned.
Since when did Americans ask to be your leaders? How do you know the average American has an innate fear and ignorance? You sound pretty ignorant to me. You start your post complaining about American warmongering and now you want us to take over the world?
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
At that time there were turkey-sized damselflies and pig-sized sea scorpions.
At other times, ice covered much of the earth. Sea levels were much lower. It looked very different.
And at other times the temperature was higher alright, although I don't think there were humans then, but that's not even the point. Your ugly strawman is acknowledged. The point is, if you were to revert to any of those states in the time frame we're talking about (a few decades) there would be *massive* destruction and suffering in very short order.
And in a million years, it will have been erased. (Hell if you wait enough millions of years there is no oil shortage problem.)
But you know what; millions of years ago it was hot, and 200 hundred years ago people died of an infected rasor cut. Not being a conservative, I'm not a fan of the good ole' days and the good ole' christian ways and I don't like the taste of the American Enterprise Institute's bullshit. I'm more interested in the future; that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.
Anything related to global "climate change" - and yes, they still mean "warming" - brings out the inner jackass in nearly 100% of slashdot posters.
you want voices in the scientific community who say the science is far from settled?
MIT scientists: Findings like these tell us it's too early to know for sure if man's impact is affecting things at the political cry of "alarming rates."
American Physicists
31,478 scientists, including 9029 PHD's reject global warming
I could point out the flaws in your claims, but doubt it's possible to get anything through an impenetrable schema.
However...
All I will ask of YOU is too do the research behind the science of climate change and draw your own conclusions, before you are sway by ANY mass public opinion.
There is something you should know. All those skeptic websites, books and movies, can be traced back to a very small cabal of conservative think-tanks.
I've done the research myself. Both the science, and the political stall tactics. You have unwittingly become the pawn of well-paid industry prostitutes.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
if anyone could write an informed anti global warming post attached this story and get modded past -1.
This to me is one of the biggest problems with the argument in general. It's becoming partisan by both sides.
Just because the vast majority of sciencetists think something is true does not make it true. Many scientists thought the universe was static and not expanding. Even with all the measurements we have I'm still not 100% convinced...maybe 99.9. Enough to go with it, but I'm never suprised when some scientific theory is proven "slightly incorrect". Maybe light works differently 20 million light years away...the measurments themselves have HUGE assumptions built in. No one can prove these things until we get warp drives...but again enough to go with it.
We often watch the discovery channel and take at face value the thing the announcer says. The Universe is X years old...we only think we think we know that. It could very well be older. I don't expect the announcer to say that will every sentence, but it would be nice if scientists reminded themselves from time to time.
It is entirely possible that more than one source of global warming is possible, but it is never discussed. It could be a combination of human and natural forces. It could be temporary or even self corrective over time. These are all scientfic possibilities that I think most scientists understand, but don't want to muddle the argument with. I'm not sure why everyone gets there panties in a bundle. You should want this kind of challenge and should not be afraid of it. It could be the oppurtunity to actually make the case better.
Finally the idea that scientists are not political is BS. They are human beings that vote just like everyone else. They have to get their grants somehow. Just because you have a big brain and a PhD doesn't mean you couldn't default on your house, cheat on your wife, or any of the other inperfect crap human beings do.
Here's a very simple explanation of AGW for you. No computer models, nothing about weather, very basic.
Imagine a sphere the size of the earth at the earth's distance from the sun with the earth's albedo (average reflectance). What will the surface temperature be due to solar radiation? Do the maths and you get a temperature about 33C lower than that we observe on the earth's surface today. In other words, the earth's atmosphere acts as a blanket trapping heat and raising the temperature by about 33C: the greenhouse effect.
What parts of the atmosphere are responsible for this 33C increase? By far the most important is water. As a gas and in clouds, it is responsible for up to about 90% of the effect. The remaining warming is caused by the so-called greenhouse gasses: CO2, Methane, O3, NO, etc.
If you examine the absorption spectra of these gasses and weight by atmospheric concentration, you'll find about 40% is due to CO2. So 40% of 10% of 33C is around 1.3C of warming due to atmospheric CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 has gone up by 50% since pre-industrial times, the increase is almost all due to fossil-fuel burning (you can tell from radioisotope ratios), so we would expect about a 0.5C rise in global temperatures due to human CO2 output.
Of course that's a very, very crude back-of-the-napkin calculation, but the result is approximately in line with the IPCC reports. Here's another version of the same calculation (but a bit more complex), with full references and some spreadsheets you can download and try out yourself:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing
1. there is no scientific concensus on global warming. 2. saying that is settled science is a lie,and jumping up and down like a school kid shouting it is moronic. 3. let the courts put this assanine theory under the lights. no chicken little here regards, mike
The folks pushing for these cap-and-trade carbon scams are business leaders and gov't cronies who stand to make a ton of cash and consolidate their power in public policy and the marketplace through regulating a previously unlimited resource.
Here's a couple links to get you started:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
An ad hominem is when someone says: "you're wrong because you're a dumbass"
I'm saying: "you're a dumbass because you're wrong."
It's called an insult.
Sorry for being a bit technical, but the topic is delicate.
He is putting his *reputation* online, his name for whatever that has weight, for this, not that he did the studies, but like most engineers and scientists is willing to look at the evidence and by puting his name next to something say he has read it and it seems to be important and on topic enough that others should too. That's all. How is he less credible than al gore, lawyer and businessman?
And for that matter, people can be both generalists and specialists can't they? To be interested enough in both science research and engineering application that they like to look at stuff outside their exact professional expertise? I mean, thios is what we do here at /., aside from razzin' each other....
My opinion on this whole deal is we have *both* man made pollution that can impact climate and weather and other stuff (for another example, just constructing huge cities affects local weather patterns and over a long enough period of time, the climate I would imagine, the ripple effect), plus natural cycles. I don't see it as all one or the other.
I would say I am in favor of all forms of alternative energy for a variety of reasons, and would like to see the phase out of coal and petroleum fuels. But not "cap and trade" which is just another of the never ending wall street scam wealth skimming efforts. They never quit, always need to have their grubby little mitts in the middle of everyone else's plate.
And that's me speaking as a generalist with tech and science and geopolitical and macro economical enthusiasm and interest, but as a layman only, and I don't have the same name cred as rutan would of course, but I'll throw my little contribution in there. Mostly because as an outdoorsman and farmer I have always watched the seasons. Yep, somethings up. The air and water is dirty. The trees are just *wrong*. Clean air and water is a good idea. and if it helps to keep our long range climate to remain more moderate, so much the better.
If governments want to do social engineering, they can do it easily with tax credits, the anti-tax. Nothing else is needed to nudge this or that industry in any other direction they want or deem good for their peoples. The carrot method. Punitive taxes though (the stick method) just go right down the food chain and rip the consumer off and transfer huge sums upstream into fewer hands.
That's the part of this whole debate that really has me worried how much of it has been skewed on purpose, just too much money involved, and power. I am also worried about the EPA calling co2 a toxic pollutant..uhhh,this is a carbon based lifeforms planet, including us humans. We exhaust co2. Carbon in general is what we really need to live, declaring a war on carbon seems beyond silly into harmful land, like there is another rather nasty agenda behind all this besides climate change..
Of course going way way back when I was first into the environmental activism gig and listening to people talk about how they were going to use the environment as a tool to try and bring about some larger world government thing might also have influenced me to be more skeptical than not...ya that happened, many moons ago. Can't prove it..but I don't belong to any of those organizations either.
Just sayin' and lookin' down the road at other ways government things and business things have morphed and gotten more complex and costly...
I just said they weren't an entertainment "industry."
It's not ONE guy, it's 120+ members who have signed the petition. For all we know, it was just ONE guy who drafted the APS position to begin with! Why do you think the 120+ members are upset? They weren't consulted!
Fucking denialist liars.
Fucking cult believers.
That Majority opinion comes about through peer review. It's one of the core tenets of scientific study. Scientists have to DO something with all those facts and numbers they gather (i.e. come to a conclusion that others can agree with).
I can collect a lots of knowledge and come to conclusions that might be solid and reasonable within my own mind, but that doesn't make it true or real. I'd only know it was true if i compared my numbers and conclusions with someone else's. That is science.
IT IS consensus.
Not that the climate is not changing, it always has. The question is whether man is causing it.
When one large volcano can release as much CO2 as man's entire history of the use of combustion, this simple fact calls into question whether man's contrinution to greenhouse gases is significant enough to matter.
It's awfully anthropocentric to think that man is the cause of this.
Nothing is more instructive about modern times than the idea that a scientific question could meaningfully be addressed by an adversarial system like tort law. The best science is created without passion or controversy, but tort law is passion and controversy — it's intrinsic.
The climate change question will ultimately be decided — not by a group of scientists, not by objective evidence where that exists, and not by a court of law — but by individual couples worldwide who will ponder whether they should have more children. Evolution (a topic about which there is no serious debate) says they will decide to have as many children as they can manage, and they will rationalize their decision in ways that make up in ingenuity what they lack in reason. They will do this because they're the surviving offspring of people who were equally adept at rationalization (the reasonable ones died out long ago).
Think this is too extreme? Okay — imagine confronting someone who looks like Jessica Biel, thinks like Marilyn Vos Savant and has the fertility of Nadya Suleman (a.k.a. Octomom) — imagine trying to persuade her that three children is too many. And good luck.
Regardless of the truth or falsehood of anthropogenic global warming, there is nothing we can do about it without addressing global population, a topic that is much clearer in its causes and effects and yet entirely outside anyone's control without resort to totalitarianism (or universal education).
In other words, global warming is either a myth or a symptom, but world population is the disease.
Even if there has been times where the earth was hotter than now, it's mostly been colder, which suggests that there is an equilibrium below.
Note that according to the snow ball earth hypothesis, there was a time when the system moved out of equilibrium but towards lower temperature. According to that hypothesis, it probably took a long build up of volcanic gases to get back to the current liquid water-friendly local minimum. If we were in a situation where most of the historical data showed higher temperatures, we would have to be careful not to tip the scale downward. Today, however, we have to worry about high temperatures.
I watched a documentary on hulu over the weekend that detailed how the viking settlements in greenland had to be abandoned because the climate was warmer than it is today. Also, of you look at the vostok and other ice core samples it is possible that we need to dramatically increase atmosphere C02 in order to prevent the next ice age which could occur anywhere from next century to a maximum of 12,000 years from now. Science is not today nor at any time in the past been settled. Global warming beats the hell out of global cooling. There is a lot of room in canada, russia, greenland and antarctica for those at the tropics to migrate. I would hate to see what would happen if our short inter-glacial ended soon and everyone in the temperate areas had to migrate south.
Just FYI, the APS is currently reviewing their official position because of the complaints they have received from their members about it.
Human activity may cause climate change. It may not. It all depends on gawd.
Climate scientists are the first scientists I've ever heard of who have a consensus on anything. This means they are right.
These guys helped form chaos theory - which says you cannot reliably predict anything on large or small scales. Now they're predicting armageddon. These two things are not a contradiction as long as the armageddon in question is mid-sized, like a Camry or Accord.
I'm just not sure how relevant global warming is when you consider that Wormwood is going to hit the earth and turn the seas to blood.
It's in Revelations, people!
Lets see, we have a consensus that says man made global wamring is truth and say we can do something about it, let me introduce you to a tax, that will fix it. This should tell you what this agenda is all about. Its about raping prosperity from the prosperous to redistribute it to the invisible hands able to cash in on it while touting how its going to improve conditions for those not as prosperous. Classic bait and switch with a healthy dose of misdirection and sentimental appeal to the good samaritan environmentalist in you. Bottom line, its lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies!!!!!!!!!!
While they're at it they should vote to make PI equal to three.
But pi is three, according to the bible. And since US courts require witnesses to swear at the bible (or on it, perhaps by sitting or standing on it), there can be only one outcome in this case.
It is mumbled in 1 Kings 7:23 He made the sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.
Note that for a diameter of 10 the circumference is 30 (so pi=3.0), not 31 or 31 and a little bit as the atheists and infidels claim. Alternatively, the Earth was much smaller when this particular biblical passage was written, the whole planet having a diameter of just 19 cubits...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Like these folks, I don't believe the "settled science" or "scientific consensus" claimed to exist actually does.
http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/cato_climate.pdf
Scientists--especially those in academia--are largely funded by government grants (NSF, DOE, etc...). Fanning the flames of a hot topic and launching it into the public spotlight is a sure way to increase the available funding. If we already had irrefutable evidence and a concensus that global warming occured independent of anything man did, many of these researchers would simply be out of a job. When applying for a grant, the unscrupulous scientist may be tempted to cherrypick or overlook inconvenient data/flaws. I'm not saying that this is the case here, but this practice is prevalent in varying degrees in the scientific community. One day it'd be nice to find the time to actually read some of these papers and understand the scientists' methodologies that support their claims.
On the other hand, fraud on the part of the deniers is just a google search away, eg. here
No sig today...
I still remain skeptical.
How many times have scientists changed their opinion on eggs?
Butter?
Beer?
(checks google) holy crap, now there's articles saying salt isn't as bad as previously indicated.
Of course, it doesn't matter really, I've already died during the "Great Mad-Cow Apocalypse" predicted in "Deadly Feasts"
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
Hi,
Germany has met it's obligations under the Kyoto protocol because the former East German economy collapsed. The East German economy was collapsing anyway and Germany was allowd to use the reduction in heavy industries in East Germany led to a reduction in C02 Emissions.
Many industries in Germany are exempt from the carbon tax. The Carbon tax is not universal. Such a tax favors large corporations at the expense of small and medium sized businesses which cannot afford lobbying of government etc.
I read the article which you linked to. There are all kinds of 'projections' about increased numbers of jobs. There are no actual reports of jobs being created.
If you give $10 Billion to people to dig holes then you have created a certain number of jobs. This is a very expensive and inefficient way of doing so and does not contribute to an overall increase in well-being etc.
The carbon tax will be regressive. People on lower incomes will pay a higher share of their income in such a plan than wealthier people as people on lower incomes spend a higher proportion of their income on energy which is what is effectively being taxed.
You have not presented 'any actual evidence' which supports your claims.
Regards
Shaughran
Come on. This is ridiculous. Mods, please, mod this "citation needed" crap down.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned this petition yet. http://www.petitionproject.org/ 31,000 scientists including 9000 PhDs who aren't yet convinced that we're even harming the planet, let alone humans. I think public debate is always a good thing.
i think the real purpose here is a chilling effect.
Everyone is arguing about the reality or not of global warming.
In my opinion the focus should be on the future consequences. What's the point in spending more money on preventing a harm than the cost of the harm itself? Especially if not 100% certain, and discounted to a present value?
I'm tired of the conservatives (with a little c) who cannot accept any change in the world.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
C02, something we exhale with every breath you take. Without this gas life on earth would not be possible. Plants require this gas to live, indeed when this gas is abundant plants thrive. This gas is given off by all animals. A gas that is turned back into O2 by the plants, plants which we require to survive. All these things are well established facts, as valid as the earth is round.
Oh, FFS. "Insightful"? Really?
Crap is also necessary to life. All animals crap. Plants need crap to live. So I'm sure you're ready to campaign against the health and safety regulations "the government and politicians" set up to prevent me from taking a big, smelly dump all over your restaurant table just as your main course is arriving. After all, it's necessary to life!
Or maybe, since water is also necessary to life, I should just pump a few thousand cubic meters of it into the basement from which you're posting. After all, it's necessary, so more must be better!
unless you can explain the method by which you guys are sure your view on the world corresponds directly to the reality of it
Which "view" were you referring to?
If the science is so compelling, what's the problem? Oh, that's right... because the science ranks right up there with studies of narcotics when it comes to abject politicization.
My first thought was giant see-thru panels forming a big dike around the island. Then I thought about how dirty the water is there. Maybe they wouldn't want to see the dirty water. So it would be big dikes of maybe concrete, but painted in pretty murals of beaches or something pleasant to look at.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Just a small thing really, but it's conveniently forgotten by those who want to take on the scientific mantle.
If it is not testable it is not science.
Deleted
"Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality."
While that is true, and we can see in the past that some theories that had overwhelming consensus were later proven wrong, if you had to bet today, would you bet against the consensus? We always have incomplete evidence, and politics will never go away. So how long do you wait for it be more clear?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
Here is how you can rememdy the situation yourself fuckwaded USian.
Go find a cliff or a bridge somewhere then take your entire fucktarded family.
Have all of them jump off to their deaths, and after that jump to yours.
Then there will be less fucktarded USians in the genepool and we will be well on our way to carbon neutrality.
Sincelerely
Signed,
The Rest of the World.
Where's that 'edit' button?
Dumping sewage into rivers was a working system too, until Government went and "broke" it. Think of all of that productivity lost to treating sewage that could be used to build more margaritaville machines.
DANG I miss vent windows, don't you? And did you ever own and drive any vehicles with the over the windshield vent you could open up? I had a few, back in the day, sabre toothed badgers for pets, etc. Didn't need AC as long as you were moving a few miles an hour or better. I really liked those.
Right now, none of our vehicles has a functional AC, and it would cost more than they are worth to get them fixed, so meh. I completely tore all that crap out of my datsun and was thinking of sticking a nice generator in there instead, with an electric clutch...maybe anyway...plenty of room and some mount points and hangs right in place where you could slap a belt on it...
No vent windows is not the same as rolling down an all the way across the door window, you just don't get the same breeze from it. I bet there's a ton of younger guys here who have never even been in a vehicle with vent windows.
Corporations and wall street profits, etc. That's one of the reasons they just went to china, labor arbitrage, no pesky unions to be forced to pay a living wage, no environmental regs, easier to snag IP and get away with it, all that stuff. And that's why I was against kyoto and son of kyoto, they have no provisions to force that on china et al, and we aren't even considering any sort of protectionism with their imports. They can pollute all they want to, the air floats everywhere so all our environmental regs are diluted with crud, and wall street gets to continually profit from it. Heck, for a long time they got tax breaks for moving offshore!
I think some regs are good, others seem to be screwy, like the proposed cap and trade. That one looks pure profit motivated to me, skimming profit going to the non producers of wealth.
The ideal temperature is an average of 0C at sea level ;)
What if by natural processes the world would have plunged in to an ice age, killing all large mammals, and they only thing keeping us in the current temperate environment is our carbon emissions? What if reducing carbon emissions would cause 90+% of humans to die out? What if the environment has adapted to the increased emissions and a sudden drop would cause massive harm?
Here you see the problem with the "What if you're wrong?" attitude. It can be said for anything. You can always say "What if this causes a disaster?" because it is always a possibility with the unknown.
Your make making the fallacious assumption that global warming will be bad. You don't know that. Even if it is you also don't know that the alternative won't be worse.
Then it should be noted that, despite the parent's claim that " ... that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end." ...", Scopes was found guilty, and all appeals failed to overturn the verdict in law (The Tennessee Supreme Court refused to overturn the conviction, but the penalty was put aside on a technicality because the Judge imposed the minimum fine of the Butler Act, which was $100, when under Tennessee Law only the Jury could determine a fine in excess of $50).
So, it seems that the parent feels the Global Warming lawsuit will succeed, and he's relying on the "consequences" of that victory for the Global Warming side to prevail (somehow).
Since the purpose seems to be to fend off regulations, it would seem that those who intend to bring the suit would be perfectly happy with what ever public opinion exists, provided the successful lawsuit prevents their pocketbooks being drained via regulation and penalties.
Why are we worried about if we are causing a climate change, rather than worrying about working on trying to survive one? What I mean is this:
We are pretty certain the world has been much hotter and colder in the past than it is now, and that it is a cycle that has happened many times. There is also no evidence that anything has changed such that the world has now entered a perpetual steady state. Thus it is a virtual certainty that at some point in the future, the temperature will undergo a change again.
Ok well, the CC people will tell you that even a small change will be catastrophic to humans. I don't see any proof for this, but we'll accept it as a given since this is a question for people who believe that.
If it is then the case that a small change in temperate will cause massive problems and that it is a virtual certainty that we will have a small, or perhaps large, change in the future, why the hell to we care if we are the cause or not? It WILL happen at some point, even if we avoid causing it. Thus it makes sense to worry not about what is happening now, but how we can survive it and all future changes. Our efforts should be spent on developing technology to survive the future climate changes, since even if we are causing one now, one will happen naturally sooner or later.
I just cannot see how it makes sense to say "A small variation in temperature will kill us, but let's worry about if we are causing this one, rather than worry about the fact that one will happen no matter what we do."
...like creationists every day.
The most prominent global warming denier to publish a scientific work got his conclusions backwards because he apparently doesn't understand the difference between degrees and radians. You could, I suppose, argue that McKitrick made an honest mistake, but the problem is that he makes a lot of mistakes like this seemingly every time he publishes a paper, and this guy is the cream-of-the-cream in global denial "scientist" circles (assuming that by "scientist" you mean "oil company whore").
Of course, if you think there's anything wrong with McKitrick's work, that means you must be part of the vast international conspiracy against oil companies, coal companies, and American conservolibertarians. :D
The problems that arise from the human contribution to global warming can be prevented or at least reduced. Unfortunatley, making even the tiniest suggestion that we do anything to reduce or prevent human contribution to global warming causes the conservolibertarians to start crying like little girls.
You conspiracy theorists probably won't believe it's a problem until it starts messing up the economy, and by then it'll be too late to do anything about it.
The cause of global warming is uncertain (solar activity anyone?) and it's effects are mainly unpredictable. If you are to trust the measurements, the temperature has been at the current levels sometime in the Middle Ages with no apparent major problems reported (that I know of).
However the energy crisis caused by an eventual peak in oil/gas production is a sure thing and it's consequences (especially on food production) are incredibly more scary and predictable than anything I've heard about global warming. What will cause environmental problems is if we all start using coal (some very respectable people say there is no clean coal, regardless of CO2) as China does.
Still, this doesn't get the press global warming does and in my opinion is a much more certain, predictable and bigger problem.
A stupid conservative idea that has no basis in reality. I apologize for the redundancy of that statement.
In Ohio the judge didn't get the final say on the science, that is not how science works.
But he did call out those who were simply lying about facts, definitions and qualifications.
He further called out the IDers philosophically.
Having 'whats his name' admit that for ID to be science then so was astrology was priceless.
Granting that the issue of man made global warming is not nearly as well supported by the evidence as evolution.
The judge can still catch idealogs on both sides with their minds closed (or worse making up data like the 'hockey stick').
But that's still the low probability outcome. Most judges are, as you said, twits regarding science.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Global Warming is no big deal. An ice age would be far, far more disastrous. Realty check: the temperature of the planet has gone up and down repeatedly. History will repeat itself. That's natural.
A few cups of table salt will kill you. Water, if consumed in high enough quantities, will kill you. So this idea that you can't overdose on something because it exists in nature is ignorant nonsense.
I urge people to read what McKitrick actually said (e.g., comment 7) rather than just taking the word of fanboy here.
Unlike several cases involving high profile climate scientists, McKitrick immediately issued a correction to his work when the degrees/radians error was pointed out - an unfortunate, but entirely understandable mistake (any suggestion that McKitrick does not know the difference is pure ad hominem). Of course, NASA itself, Hansen's employer, has lost at least one mission because of confusion between feet and metres. Apparently even rocket scientists can forget simple details.
Unless the green tech does away with externalities inherent to the technology it replaces. And pollution is the textbook example of an externality, which is precisely why governments have to regulate pollution. Without such regulation, producers will not replace their technology with green alternatives because the costs of the non-green ones will be borne by somebody else. Mandating green technologies doesn't necessarily increase the costs to society at large, it just makes the correct parties bear the costs.
The most you can say is that the lawsuit is an attempt to get a court to judge that CO2 emissions are not pollution.
Are you adequate?
The fact that grapes aren't grown in northern England today doesn't entail that they can't be grown there today, because people may not choose to grow them. Britain is the world's greatest wine importer, so they certainly have no difficulty obtaining wine from elsewhere.
The Romans might have produced wine in northern England simply because many of them were unable to obtain wine otherwise. The wines might have been pretty bad. In any case, it's hard to draw conclusions from the existence or absence of vinyards alone.
Are you adequate?
The Great Global Warming Swindle is crap. Even the scientists they interviewed on the film complained that the filmmakers misrepresented and distorted their comments
As to the Ozone Hole.... You do realize that it didn't cause us any major problems was because the governments of the world made a joint agreement to resolve the issue (which they then did)?
No, really; watch it.
I'm sorry, but I don't waste my time watching crap.
These people have no monetary value for speaking out- quite the opposite. They risk their careers.
One of the people who "spoke out" on the film has said this about it:
""In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerousâ"because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very importantâ"diametrically opposite to the point I was makingâ"which is that global warming is both real and threatening."
So why exactly should I waste my time watching that crap?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Once they settle this global warming thang, I think the supreme court (the one that appointed bush) needs to take on the existence of gawd so we can finally get that one settled too.,
Theres lots of things you can do to reduce CO2 emissions without sacrificing one iota of comfort, like replacing lightbulbs with low energy lights or LED lights. Every bit helps if you want to reduce emissions.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
There is a vast propaganda machine pushing Global Warming and the newly flourishing Green industry which is making many of the promoters quite wealthy. The science on the cause of climate change is far from settled, but there are blind people on both sides of the debate.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04-5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CD
I believe the world climate is changing. It has since the beginning of the world. I do not think that humans are having a very big impact on that change, however. Have we destroyed water sources and polluted grounds and other resources. Absolutely. But is the world heating up because I drive a pickup truck. I doubt it. I haven't ruled it out, but it is hard to believe when the earth itself has put out more toxins into the atmosphere than mankind has since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Here is just one sample:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/of97-262/of97-262.html
This is not an argument that belongs in a court room, however. Whoever thought that idea up should be slapped. This belongs to the science community - the whole community; not just the scientist paid off by corporations or Al's Green machine.
Wish I had mod points for this one more.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
http://www.petitionproject.org/review_article.php
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I'm just angry that everyone is so damn caught up with climate change.
Who is this "everyone" that you speak of? Climate change is one of thousands of things that people think about; including torture, the economy and having sex. Nothing really gets taken more seriously than people's personal sex lives and their jobs, everything else is marginal.