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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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
If the US does not act to reduce the 'carbon footprint' of humanity, we are all going to be fucked.
I fear we will be whether or not they act. Well, not "we", I doubt I'll live long enough to see the worst, as I've already lived more than half my life. I think these people who say they don't believe in global warming are like my ex-brother in law, who had the attitude "I don't care, I'll be dead anyway."
The sad thing is he has grandchildren. How can these people not care about their own flesh and blood?
Free Martian Whores!
USA! USA! USA! I'M NOT HEARING YOU OVER THE SHOUTING HOW AWESOME I AM! USA! USA!
Wouldn't it be great? A single judge will decide whether global warming exists or not. All these years of scientific debate could have been avoided if we would have done that in the beginning. Capitalism is such a great system; let's just pay politicians to "encourage" judges to define reality. Awesome!
Um, we HAVE been seeing this cooling trend for a few years now, which is why misanthropic environmental hate groups have been trying to scrub the phrase "Global Warming" from the public lexicon and replace it with "Global Climate Change." See how clever that is? It now covers BOTH warming and cooling.
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?
I fail to see how any action by the USA short of nuclear devastation of China will stop China from building a coal plant equivalent every week.
And I still fail to see how limiting CO2 emissions in SOME countries will actually solve the Climate Change problem....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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 not very clever to talk about "the green movement" as if it's homogenous.
Some "greens" are focussed on global warming, and campaign for wind farms.
Some "greens" are focussed on nice bucolic scenery, and strongly oppose wind farms.
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!
Who will select the Judge?
... and will it be a jury trial?
I_Voter
Citizen's Political Power in the U.S.
It is true that the US is the last best hope of humanity
We're Babylon 5 now? Seriously people, my Inbox is broken, I'm not getting memos...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
China isn't necessarily such a hopeless case — emissions could peak in 20 years and they are taking measures against climate change. Chinese gas milage laws are about to become stricter than US ones.
You're right. And if SOME people stop killing other people, what's the use? Others will just continuing killing people.
Back in the day, Iceland still practised blood feuds. With a limited population, this was a very very bad thing, as they were effectively endangering themselves as a species because they were killing each other faster than than they could reproduce. So the families got together and agreed to put an end to blood feuds. Obviously some families had to set the example, despite being the latest victims in the feuds, and yet they managed to put survival ahead of honour.
We have the same issue currently, just on a slower but much larger scale, and instead of honour it's money on the line.
Sometimes you need to set an example for others to follow. Once upon a time, this was what the United States purported to do. Now the US apparently refuses to set an example unless they can get a monetary advantage from it. And I suspect that even if they get a monetary advantage, they'll still refuse if they can get a larger monetary advantage by refusing to be an example.
I suspect that one of the best things that could happen for US politics would be to reform political fund raising laws slightly:
0) Make companies non-human entities
1) Make it illegal for companies to donate money to political parties and candidates
2) Make an upper limit of donations of $100 per year.
That way you'd end up with a system, where a political campaign doesn't end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars (since no political party could afford it). This would make the playing field a lot more even for outsider parties. It'd minimize the influence of huge conglomerates of companies, and improve the influence of individual citizens instead.
But who am I kidding? Why would the ruling parties (D and R) cut their own money trains and death grip on the political process?
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.
That is actually not conservatives. That is neo-cons and far right baptists that push that garbage (roughly reagan and W). These are the same ppl that dropped taxes under reagan and pushed massive deficits. And that was for ALL EIGHT YEARS. What was amazing is that Carter had already put in place the solutions by de-regulating the airlines and oil/gas, as well as starting to tighten the money supply by appointing volker. True conservatives KNOW that Obama is American, and that Climate change is a reality. Though a number of them do believe to some degree in creationism.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If the US does not act to reduce the 'carbon footprint' of humanity, we are all going to be fucked.
Why? Who sold you a bridge?
One of the absolute facts that the media never bothers to mention is this: carbon dioxide has one primary role in the eco-system, more important than any other. It is plant food. Fertilizer.
If you were able to drop CO2 levels back to preindustrial levels, the single most noticeable effect would be a drop in crop yields of between 20 and 25%, depending on crop and climate. Grains growing in drier climates (Australia, much of the US midwest) seem to benefit the most. Fruits and vegetables somewhat less.
The fact is that CO2 levels are at or near historical lows, if you view them on geological time scales. For most of the earths history, CO2 levels were much higher. Not a wimpy 20% or 50% but dozens to hundreds of times higher. The contribution of mankind to CO2 levels is a sneeze on the breeze compared to natural changes. Mankind is just not that significant.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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.
Because there are other benefits to reducing CO2 such as not having to rely on security of decreasing fossil fuel resources.
If a big country like the US can make the shift to renewable, green power and simultaneously cut unnecessary wasteful power usage it will have a competitive advantage in the world. Other nations like China will then have to follow or face getting left in the dust again. The green technology market in itself has the potential to be massive too, and nations like China will want their cut.
The problem is, to push for these advantages requires short term pain - it requires effort, it requires research and as such no major players are willing to really kick start the process at all, but again, rest assured when one does, the others will see what they're missing or find themselves fighting over scraps of fossil fuels and end up weaker nations as a result.
Europe seems to be ahead right now in leading on this, although it's still really a half assed effort, so long term the leader of the green technology market is still anyone's game.
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
particularly on the pro-business, conservative side of politics,
Screw those pro-business fuckers!
The fact of the matter is that none of them _care_ about the objective, ideal "truth." They care about practical results and practical impacts. Practically, this law will hamstring American businesses. Why else would 3 million businesses be against it? Even if everything that the environment whackos are saying about rampant wildfires and tsunamis and hurricanes and shit is true (which it isn't.), the way to approach the problem is NOT to suddenly force every business in the USA to treat CO2 in the same manner that they treat arsenic and cut their emissions by an order of magnitude. That literally cannot be done without returning us to the stone age. But the stupid bureaucratic process doesn't have many ways to fight it short of taking it to court.
No, this group is like a union for business, it speaks what a handfull of it's members think.
Most corporates are actually calling for regulatory certainty, they are sick of the vaugeness in their planning that is caused by politicians bickering. They want to know what environment their business will be operating in 5-10yrs from now when the projects they are starting today become operational.
A coal fired plant itself is a 50yr engineering/business investment. Those corporates without a major interest in coal would happily throw the coal industry under the bus and feed from the corpse to build alternative 50yr engineering/business investments. In fact the insurance giants have already taken a bite, they have been working climate change forecasts/observations into their actuary tables for about a decade now.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Well, you're season 4 B5 - where that quote is followed by Ivanonva's "...it failed".
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!
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.
Quite true. If China's leadership has the balls to take climate change seriously, they could well lead the world in renewable technology this century. Of course, China is currently suffering from massive droughts in their northern provinces, water shortages elsewhere, and massive pollution (which is slowly but surely increasing medical problems for their massive populations). It is in their best interest for political stability to improve their efficiency in how they utilize energy. At least in China, they don't need to deal with the whims of lawyers and others with personal agendas, could this be a competitive advantage?
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
It should impress you with how much I despise leftists that I would deign to be even remotely associated with the people you mention. But it's true.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Having read some of the posts in this discussion, I'm starting to think chaos theory should be taught in high schools, although I'd have thought that the typical Slashdot reader would have at least a basic grounding in the subject.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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.
The intergovernmental panel on climate change made its mind up in 1990. Four reports later and despite lots of useful criticism the conclusion still holds. The fact that there have been questions about the conclusions shows that the reports have been subjected to effective review. After repeated questioning the results are still agreed on by senior scientists from 100 countries. Continued and useful criticism of parts of the report should not be confused with rejection of the overall finding, these zealots who keep claiming that there is no global warming and that it is not because of CO2 because they can quote the questions that keep being raised about individual portions of the story are basically just lying to us.
Its going to be interesting to see whether big business can buy the judge. In some ways because of their sneering superiority, it would be rather satisfying to see the earth go to hell in a handcart so that we can point back to the philosophy of these particularly American capitalists and say that this was the philosophy that destroyed the planet. I think that they are becoming sufficiently objectionable that sooner or later crazy young idealists are going to start killing them. I guess I will just have to restrict my entertainment to reading about it in the newspapers. Even if Global Warming is not caused by C02 emissions the risk that it is, gives sufficient cause to do something about it. If you would prefer to die in your own shit be my guest.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
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!
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.
False.
The reason it is properly called global climate change is that while globally, the net effect is warming, some local climates may see cooling. This is due to changing weather patterns and other factors.
For example, almost models show that northwestern Europe will undergo cooling due to a weakening of the Gulf Stream flow that brings warm equatorial water (and air) to that region. This is despite the fact that these models show global mean temperature rising.
Are you intentionally misrepresenting the reason for the change from global warming to global climate change, or are you just ignorant? Hopefully it's the latter, because that can be easily corrected.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
Not a direct analogy
Indeed. What happens if the cup has holes that open and close from time to time, and other people come pour more stuff from time to time? Then how do you predict the future temperature? I became a skeptic through listening to real climate scientists, the very ones who were saying the debate is over. There's just not enough data and their explanations become ever more tortured as more is added to what little we know. The rest is politics.
ok let me rephrase because you clearly didn't understand.
If global temperatures are going to go up by 2 C, then it would be useful to find out when the last time in history the earth was 2 C warmer than it is now and what happened as a result, no?
Because of the constant change in global temperatures (I assume you're not going to argue against the fact that there have been ice ages) it is likely that this temperature has happened at some point in the past.
If it has happened in human history (and evidence suggests that it has) then any catastrophe that they are predicting would have happened already.
I'm not denying that the climate changes, and I'm not denying that humans have had an impact, I'm simply questioning the doomsday senarios that appear hyped up in the media and from politicians. It is you, by angrily dismissing this out of hand, that is showing religious fevour, not I.
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.
And who supposed that America is rational and enlightened? I'm content that it's democratic. We permit the existence of these blatantly political star chambers, but we don't always let them have their way. Ain't it grand?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
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.
except it's a bit reversed: businesses are the ones suing :D
Mr Crichton's points in that book are still pretty much valid, though.
We don't lower our standards on human rights to compete economically with the lowest common denominator, this amounts to the same kind of thinking. Declaring "I'm not doing the right thing till THEY do it" just leads to a race to the bottom.
Considering the technology to really "go green" does not yet exist, its not surprising that China is not using it. Someone needs to man up and start working on it.
This kind of innovation will not occur without legislation that is going to hurt. Tough. Once the technology is actually mature and AVAILABLE I would expect the rest of the world to jump on 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.
Um, we HAVE been seeing this cooling trend for a few years now, which is why misanthropic environmental hate groups have been trying to scrub the phrase "Global Warming" from the public lexicon and replace it with "Global Climate Change."
What the fuck are you talking about?
It's the same stupid bullshit I heard in 1999. Every time year X is cooler than year X-1, the same idiots come out claiming we're 'through the peak' and global warming is over. Do they know that regular global cycles act on top of global warming? Do they understand that two data points is not a trend?
Honestly, the fact that stupid shit like this gets +5 informative just shows how ignorant this community is when it comes to climate science.
I came here for a good argument
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.
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
I'll bite. What competitive advantage will we have, exactly?
And if using renewable power is so advantageous, why do we require legislation to make it happen? If it were profitable, wouldn't those people who are concerned solely with money be leaping in to reap the economic benefits?
Note, by the way, that I'm not arguing that fossil fuels are Good, and renewable power is Evil. But I am curious about how you solve a problem requiring that everyone be on board NOW without, well, everyone being on board now....
China has already said that it's not going to accept any binding limits on its pollution this next round of CO2 limiting. So has India. Which means that, whatever we do, CO2 levels are going to increase. Dramatically, since there are a lot of Chinese and Indians who are going to want a standard of living in the same timezone as our standard of living.
So, we set an example that China and India have already said they won't follow. Yah, it makes us less dependent on foreign oil, which is a good thing. But, no, it doesn't really do anything about Climate Change. Nor does it cause all those nations that aren't required to limit their CO2 emissions to suddenly say "Oh, noes! We must get with the program since the USA has joined in!!!".
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
1) The temperature changes predicted are very small compared to the various "great dyings" we do see in the fossil record.
2) Temperature changes of this size have already occured in the course of human history and were non-fatal. Which was my original point.
3) I am neither american, christian nor rich. Just skeptical. Keep your trollish statements to yourself.
In a word, yes. I find human causation of global warming to be unproven. What we have are a collection of climate models that only reflect the last 50 years or so and that show a correlation between increasing green house gases and increasing temperatures. Correlation is not causality.
What the parent poster and I both want to see is how well these models describe the past. That is, we want to see these climate models back tested over at least the several thousand years of history for which we have climate data. Using tree ring analysis and other methods, we have climate data going back tens of thousands of years including the last ice age. If the climate models are correct, they should also show, at a minimum, the gross climate swings that resulted in things like the "little ice age", the warm period the parent poster referred to, etc. If these models don't work when back tested then they are worthless.
I have yet to see a single result published in which a climate model being used to show humans are causing the current warming that also predicts any past climate changes. I'll *accept* that humans are causing global warming when such a result is published. Until then, we have a large segment of the scientific community who are doing a disservice to science and the rest of the population by jumping on the "humans cause global warming" bandwagon because it's a great way to get funding.
This isn't a question of belief. It's a question of when the folks who are blaming the current warming on human activities provide some reasonable proof that their models accurately predict previous, known, well-documented climate changes. Until they do, they and their followers are the ones who are following an unproven set of beliefs.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
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.
Well, not in a court of law. If you publish a paper, I should be able to repeat your experiment and get substantially similar results. This is very much me putting your science on trial.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Exactly.
Now, if people read the linked articles, they would see a number of Republican lawmakers who support this kind of bunk:
I can't think of a prominent Democrat who espouse this kind of nonsense, but a fairly quick and simple search found a number of Republicans spouting this stuff.
For me to respect conservatives, conservatives need to stop this nonsense. There are a number of conservative causes I believe in, such as law and order and tort reform, but I can't support a party who openly supports fringe theories.
Your second paragraph does not follow from your first.
While Obama got a lot of money from corporations, he also got a lot from individuals in small amounts (at least, he so advertised - not sure how true that really is). Enough so he could dispense with Federal Matching funds and still spend more money than any candidate in the history of the world.
Main thing I see coming out of your proposal is that corporations donate to campaigns more subtly, so you won't notice as much.
And that most candidates for office will be independently wealthy. You really want a Congress composed entirely of multimillionaires? And yes, I know that it's largely composed of multimillionaires now.
But if you want to make the price for sitting down at the table in a Presidential race that you have $100 million of your own money to spend on it, then pass the rules you've described. And be prepared for a lot of races with only one candidate....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
No, that'll just send the Chinese economy into the crapper. And the American one as well. And the European one...
Note that there is NO solution to the Chinese problem right now. In fifty years, maybe we can start talking to them seriously about the issue. But they're ramping up to join the First World nations in terms of standard of living. They're not going to stop unless you force them to, and if you do, you'll be the root cause of a great deal of human misery.
Which just might make the Chinese think about distracting their people from their problems by a "short, victorious war".
Or, even worse from the US perspective, dump all those T-Bills they hold. They've still got us by the short hairs because they own such a large chunk of our national debt. Luckily, we've got them by the short hairs because their economy will tank if they stop exporting to us. Alas, passing tariffs such as you propose would remove all the reasons they might want to hang onto that share of our national debt in their own interest.
Net result of your proposal - a new worldwide recession much worse than the current one, and not one bit of reduction in CO2 output. Though, admittedly it would not increase so quickly, since no-one would be able to afford to build new power plants.
Or to replace old power plants with new, environmentally friendly ones....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
Yeah, you've got a lot of people agreeing with you: 20% of all scientists and a whopping 3% of all climatologists.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
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.
Temperature changes of this size have already occured in the course of human history and were non-fatal.
If by 'non-fatal' you mean 'didn't kill all humans, then yes.
Likewise, why should we be worried about diseases that might kill 80% of the population? We've already had multiple ones of those, and we're still here!
I swear, it's like you think we're worried all people might cease to exist. Um, no. We could get hit by a damn dinosaur-killing asteroid and there would be people living through it!
However, unlike you, we have a problem with a huge amount of the population dying, and all of the civilization collapsing, even if humanity makes it through it.
Or, in short: Humans will exist in a post-apocalyptic world. That does not mean we shouldn't worry about the apocalypse.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
So, you agree that this is going to hurt the American economy? Good, since most pro-Kyoto types have been insisting for years that it would help the economy rather than hurting it. At least you're rational enough to accept that. Which makes the real question one of "will the benefits (economic and otherwise, though ultimately everything is economics, even human rights) outweigh the costs?" And of course, the corollary, "When will we reach the point that the benefits exceed the cost?"
I'm curious as to why you think that the technology doesn't exist, by the way.
Certainly the industry doesn't exist, but solar cells are no big deal to make. Nor are windmills. Electric cars are only marginally useful outside major urban areas, but that's mostly an infrastructure problem.
However, what I'm really curious about is your conclusion that after we've spent a great deal of money developing this technology, the rest of the world will "jump on it". I take it you are expecting that in 20 years or so, windmills and solar power will be cheaper than coal power? If so, why?
Also, are you heavily invested in "green" power? If not, why not? It would be an incredibly good investment if, as you believe, everyone in the world will be buying into it in a short time.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
When has a couple of degrees C rise in global temperature ever wiped out a very large number of humans?
As another poster (DaveAtFraud) in this thread put it, all I'm looking for is proper back-testing of the apocalyptic predictions. Until I see one, I'm going to remain a skeptic.
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:
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.
Instead of changing over hundreds of millenias (which is very rapid indeed by geological standards)
This statement costs you a fair amount of credibility. The last significant ice age was approximately 10,000 years ago*, which is only one-tenth of your "hundred millenia" that you claim would be a "very rapid" change. The difference in temperature between then and now is also quite a bit more than 2 degrees.
* I know, it's more like 12,000, but I figured I'd round to the one significant digit in every other number here.
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/
I find human causation of global warming to be unproven.
The problem is with people who think it's been proven, or can be proven, that humans cause specific changes to the climate. Mathematicians deal in proofs; scientists don't. Human-caused climate change is a perfectly valid hypothesis, there's plenty of evidence to support it, and it may very well be true. My annoyance is with people who treat it as some unquestionable fact that is more fundamental than gravity or conservation of energy.
"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."
What happens if the cup has holes that open and close from time to time, and other people come pour more stuff from time to time? Then how do you predict the future temperature? I became a skeptic through listening to real climate scientists, the very ones who were saying the debate is over. There's just not enough data and their explanations become ever more tortured as more is added to what little we know. The rest is politics.
In that case, you model it as best you can and you provide a range of models covering different scenarios. Over time it will become clearer which scenarios are highly likely and which are outliers. But overall, the real issue is that while we're not sure what's going to happen and don't really even know the odds, we know for sure that we don't like what's been put at stake.
If you're cool with betting the future of human civilization on Earth against your friendly local big coal company's right to make a little more profit, that's nice. A lot of people think that's a really crappy tradeoff of risk and since they can't work out the probabilities well enough, they're deeply scared. Since it's pretty clear that any policy changes will take a long time to have an effect and the climate changes also take quite a long time to filter through (all that mass of water in the oceans has an effect after all) the problem is that by the time it is totally obvious to everyone, it's far too late to do any changes without getting significantly messed up in the meantime. Because of this, the "don't do anything now" crowd are getting a much more hostile reception than normal.
IMO, the real fix is to use the tax system to make the cost of goods and services take into account the actual environmental damage caused by them, so removing problems from externalized costs. (The problem with that... it's a very painful transition to get there from here.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
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.
The fact is that CO2 levels are at or near historical lows, if you view them on geological time scales. For most of the earths history, CO2 levels were much higher.
And human population levels much more nonexistent. Maybe you should be careful about readjusting those numbers to previous levels.
You can't take the sky from me...
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
Opponents of global warming have successfully framed it as a debate over weather (a local phenomenon) rather than climate (a global phenomenon). They point to a cold snap in Buffalo NY in January, and ask "what global warming?" They ignore evidence that the average temperature in Antarctica has been rising for decades, and that ice is melting faster than it's forming at both poles.
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
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.
Not to mention, current climate models predict possible lowering of temperature in various areas.
For example, no one's quite sure when the Atlantic ocean circular current will shut down, but most scientists expect it to at some temperature.
At which point, the British Isles will end up looking like Sweden, Norway, Alaska, Siberia, all the other areas in the same latitude. Especially as the ice cap continues to melt next to them. That ocean current flowing past the British Isles is the only reason they have the weather they do.
If everything was just getting 'warmer', we'd really have no problems at all. Some especially hot areas might get too hot, but we'd essentially be fine.
Heck, if it was just everything getting warmer and the oceans rising, we might not have much of a problem...they'd do it slowly enough that we could move and barricade.
The problem is that, essentially, a lot of weather patterns, at different temperatures, will behave extremely differently. Places will stop getting any rain and turn into deserts, other places will get flooded, ocean temperatures will change as ocean flow changes, which will result in different operations of hurricanes and ocean effects on the climate, etc, etc.
Global Climate Change is essentially 'Global Climate Randomization'. It's like God is going to reroll the climate modifiers on the planet.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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...
Why is doing absolutely nothing better?
You are not the customer.
I just said they weren't an entertainment "industry."
I'll bite. What competitive advantage will we have, exactly?
In theory, it would reduce the amount (in cost, if not necessarily weight) of fuel we have to import from countries that we aren't exceptionally friendly with.
And if using renewable power is so advantageous, why do we require legislation to make it happen? If it were profitable, wouldn't those people who are concerned solely with money be leaping in to reap the economic benefits?
Unfortunately, the economic culture in the United States has shifted significantly away from next decade's profit and towards this quarter's profit. The risk and time before profitability are too high for any shareholders, even though the cost in the future will be much higher than it would be today.
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.
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.
This is not a fair comment. China is doing a lot more than the US in trying to reduce CO2 emission. E.g.
they are building 100 new nuclear reactor within this decade
They are also building hell a lot of new wind turbine as well
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.
By "economic culture", you clearly mean "corporate culture". Privately owned businesses, even large ones, are not necessarily affected by this particular myopia.
And yet, I don't see a lot of private investors/businesses leaping in to this new "opportunity". And the ones who do leap in seem more interested in the potential tax breaks and free government money than in actually making something. I notice, for instance, in the news this AM, that a couple of renewable energy companies are considering picking up an old Ford plant to make into a factory complex. IF they can get some of that stimulus money, and IF they get about $125 million in tax credits/breaks. Please note that they're talking about spending about $100 million of their own money in exchange for considerably more than $100 million government money tossed into the pot.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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
I don't understand your point. True, levels were much higher many millions of years ago. But that was not our ecosystem. Levels are higher now than at any other point since modern humans have been alive. And the most concerning factor is not just the level, but the *rate* of increase. We've had a fairly stable level (200-300 ppm) for the last million years or so. It is reasonable to be concerned about the effects on our climate if we suddenly jack it up by a factor of 2. Can humans *survive* higher levels? Sure. But our population patterns and activities would change drastically.
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.
Like I said, the risk is too high, even for most private investors. One could make the argument that this is the kind of investment that the government should be making, where there isn't enough profit to be made by companies, even though the cost to everyone in the future would be much greater. Whether or not our government is currently making intelligent decisions with regards to such investments is of course an entirely separate issue.
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
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?
Bingo!
I have no doubt that human activity has caused climate change in the past (can you say "dust bowl?") and is continuing to cause changes now (desertification, various climate changes in what used to be the Soviet Union due to massive river diversions, etc.). Human activity *may* even be causing global warming but we will only be able to prove that when we climate models that back test over some of the more significant climate changes of the past.
Existing climate models that only correlate an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases to increasing temperature don't prove a thing. As far as I'm concerned, the only way to show that greenhouse gases are causing global warming is to back test the climate models that purport to show this over as much of the climate record as possible. This would show that whatever mechanisms drove past climate change isn't responsible for the current warming. There have been much larger changes in the climate in the past than the current "global warming" that had nothing to do with human activity. Only a back test that models such changes shows that whatever drove these prior climate changes isn't also responsible for the current warming.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
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.
And you base that on what? Free-market sloganeering or an understanding of economics?
Actually, the House bill (or, at least, one version of it - I haven't kept up) does impose trade penalties on countries that don't limit greenhouse gas emissions. Economists who have studied this argue that this is not only sound economics but that the WTO would consider this to be fine under international trade laws.
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
If global temperatures are going to go up by 2 C, then it would be useful to find out when the last time in history the earth was 2 C warmer than it is now and what happened as a result, no?
Not quite - it's not just the temperature itself that's important, it's also how fast it changes. The faster it is, the more violent the transition.
"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
Where's that 'edit' button?
AFAIK there weren't cities vulnerable to flooding (with hundreds of thousands to millions of people) built along the shores of North America like there is in modern day Florida, Gulf-Coast, or the Chesapeake Bay!
What does the fact that ancient-type people were able to grasp the concept of "Don't build cities underwater next to the ocean" have to do with global warming?
So far a few hundred thousands the last 10 years.
Mod parent up. One of the most insightful posts in the entire discussion.
Qxe4
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.
Err. That's season 3.
Season 4 is the one where everybody gets to say a little bit. "It was the year of fire/the year of destruction/etc..."
Funny. I could have cherry-picked similar "numbers" decades back to "prove" that "science said" that smoking cigarettes was healthy.
So lets run with this line of logic, shall we? Being that all scientific knowledge MAY change in the future (looking at the history of the discipline shows this to be a historically accurate statement), then we can deny all of science, since someday it may be disprove, based on its very nature. So basically all of human knowledge is completely arbitrary, and thus we should be allowed to substitute it with whatever we want.
This is the exact same fallacy that the creationists use, and basically every crank out there uses, which is based on a severe misunderstanding of how science works.
Yes, AGW might be dismissed as faulty someday... And so might a lot of other things. But I'd rather wait until this actually happens before I substitute it whatever sounds pleasant to me and my world view, because it might also NOT be found faulty. I, and probably you, are not qualified in any way to actually judge, so it is rather silly to claim that we can just dismiss it because it is faulty (in our opinion).
What if it isn't proven false, and we don't act on the information we have now?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
The answers to your questions should be pretty easy to gather from my previous post which gives me the impression you don't want to accept that there is a good reason for one country to lead. But, in the case you really can't gather from my post why it would give the US a competitive advantage I'll explain it a bit more thoroughly anyway.
In removing the dependence on fossil fuel sources, you remove dependence on imports, this inherently makes you more competitive to start with. This also means you need less military expenditure to secure and/or protect fossil fuel assets abroad (let's face it, that's what Iraq was about after all) which again leads to cost savings. Once you have those technologies in place, you also are creating an export market for those technologies, one which can thrive, and if done well you may not only be exporting the technology, but maybe exporting energy itself across your north and south borders and possibly beyond.
The reason companies haven't got on board for the financial savings is because it is not something a single company can reap the benefits of, it is something that must be done on a state level so that the benefits of an improved economy can be passed on in the form of lower taxes for businesses, but also simply because businesses are afraid to take risks in completely new markets. If a government of said state can produce confidence that there is a market for the product (what's the point in investing in green tech research if your government is going to carry on down the fossil fuel route for example?), and that it will be supported then businesses will be much more happy to proceed down that path.
Ultimately, on the other end of the scale those states who do continue the fossil fuel route will have to start paying more and more as those resources become less available (and ultimately import energy from countries with renewable sources anyway), they will have to invest more in the military requirements of securing such resources and their economy will see no benefits from the green technologies market.
Does that make the benefits of a green economy a bit more clear?
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.
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.
Yeah too bad we're still 5-10deg. cooler then earths mean temperature for the last 200,000 years. And that is the "global" part.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
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?
When has a couple of degrees C rise in global temperature ever wiped out a very large number of humans?
When, during those previous increases in temperature, did we have 6 billion people on the planet? Who has an easier time moving and finding food in the DC to NY corridor - 50,000 tribes people or 50,000,000 suburbanites? What are their respective food and water demands?
Any more brilliant questions?
Except we didn't have 6 billion people for the last 200,000 years. Finding new homes and new sources of water & food for dozens of megalopolis's is going to be a little harder than for small nomadic tribes.
I did a quick search of google groups for the term 'climate change' from around 1990-91, and found masses of hits - it was obviously a common term even back then, even being used in government reports of the time. The only reason climate change has become more visible (and suffered bullshit attacks like yours) is because the whole issue has become much more visible.
Your ignorance is not a good basis for this kind of attack.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
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.
You're exactly right. And if you do a quick bit of research, you'll find that there was an equivalent (but far less prevalent) movement only a few decades ago toting global cooling and how everything was going to freeze and we'd all die.
Along with chaos theory, I propose the scientific method and fundamental understanding of earth science and in particular geological time should also be taught as prerequisites!
And I still fail to see how limiting CO2 emissions in SOME countries will actually solve the Climate Change problem....
No single rain drop thinks it is responsible for the flood.
Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan and the entirety of MoveOn are about as wacky as your examples. I don't see many Democrats disavowing them.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
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.
Someone has explained to you that we don't get oil from Iraq, and that we've never gotten oil from Iraq, right? Iraqi oil has mostly gone to Europe.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Hmm, in other words, there will be no financial savings?
So, "here's a great new opportunity for our company! We have to spend a buttload of money, and we won't actually make a profit, but it's a great opportunity, trust me!"
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"