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."

Comments

Re:Takesies Backsises?

[Cyberax]

What is 'Global Warming' crowd you're speaking of?

It's not like climate science consist of two scientists who decided to agree that there's a global warming.

On the other hand, 'No Global Warming' crowd is really a crowd - _almost_ _all_ anti-AGW publications can be traced to a few conservative "think-tanks": http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/06/ninety_percent_of_enviro_skept.php

So if you're betting on a global conspiracy, then which one is more plausible:
1) Thousands of scientists nearly unanimously coming to conclusion of AGW.
2) Several tens of writers (mostly NOT climate-scientists) funded by money directly linked to fossil fuels.
?

Re:Not quite Scopes level

[slim]

We still can't predict [...] the weather, [...] with accuracy in a given year or a decade, let alone centuries.

I'm often reminded of an article I once read in which a scientist was discussing turbulence. He explained how if he poured some cold milk into a hot cup of coffee, without stirring, the currents and turbulence meant that it would be all but impossible to predict the temperature at a specific point, 30 seconds or a minute from now.

"Of course", he said, "we can very accurately predict its temperature one hour from now".

Not a direct analogy, but while I can't get an accurate prediction of whether it will rain in my garden one month from today, I have a much better chance of predicting the mean temperature of the whole planet, over the whole of 2012.

Re:Ah Good 'ol United States

[TheRaven64]

Given that most of the goods produced by those coal-powered factories in China are for export to the USA, slapping an environmental tax proportional to the pollution generated in manufacture on all goods sold in the USA irrespective of where they were manufactured would do the trick. It would also give a big boost to US businesses who are already complying with EPA regulations and getting power from hydroelectric dams because their products would be hit by a much smaller tax.

The problem with the current regulations is that they put the penalties at point of production, not at point of sale, so the cheapest way of complying with them is to ship your manufacturing overseas.