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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.
Common typo, what they meant to type was "popular opinion over climate change".
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?
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.
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.
Once again we see an over simplification. Why are those who don't believe GW is caused by man referred to as not thinking it's real? They're not the same. I can accept that global temperatures are rising without being convinced that a) it's mankind's fault and b) we have to throw money at it. The debate has been politicized and therefore forever tainted. The science has been lost and those involved pushed to their respective sides so much so that the truth is getting lost. We're all citing our science celebs in some kind of battle royale of evidence. The scientific debate will hopefully go on, as it should. Let's hope the political debate is stifled until some meaningful consensus can be reached.
That said, this trial idea is stupid and a judge who would take this case would be a fool.
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.
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
Except that saying CO2 levels increasing is about as vague as it gets and nebulous regarding real world effects. So let's say it's increasing, is it really caused by man? Is it really causing global warming or is it some other factor(s)? This list of questions that I don't believe can be proven in a complex system like that (not with our minuscule level of knowledge anyway) is endless.
I think you missed this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report:_Climate_Change_2007 . Yes, there seems to be a scientific consensus.
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."
What is 'Global Warming' crowd you're speaking of?
It's not like climate science consist of two scientists who decided to agree that there's a global warming.
On the other hand, 'No Global Warming' crowd is really a crowd - _almost_ _all_ anti-AGW publications can be traced to a few conservative "think-tanks": http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/06/ninety_percent_of_enviro_skept.php
So if you're betting on a global conspiracy, then which one is more plausible:
1) Thousands of scientists nearly unanimously coming to conclusion of AGW.
2) Several tens of writers (mostly NOT climate-scientists) funded by money directly linked to fossil fuels.
?
I quietly wonder whether they think they can buy a new world with their money...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Exactly. There is still very little _EVIDENCE_ of mankind-created global warming.
You have Al Gore and his people making money by owning companies that sell exhaust rights.
You have oil companies making money out of ignoring or pushing the issue forward.
What we don't have is a consensus, as the OP points out.
For example, right now (since 2000) we have global cooling (around 0.5 degrees). 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.
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.
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.
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.
So, I guess you're pretty sick of the APS then? They're members of the American Physics Society, and they're not employed by greenhouse gas emitters.
And I think you missed this one: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/10/un-s-ipcc-accused-possible-research-fraud
The minutes of a meeting of scientists cherry-picked by the UN for their universal agreement with the man-made global warming hypothesis hardly counts as a credible source. "Everyone agrees with us" is not a scientific argument. Saying it over and over again doesn't make it true.
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?
Strangely enough, I am still convinced that the evidence behind the causes and effects of global warming is much less than watertight.
For one thing, there is abviously no chance to have a double blind experiment, since we only have one earth. Second, on the timescales we are arguing about, we are trying to extrapolate judgements from a very small data set. The EPA has squashed some internal opinions that went against the common belief, as has been reported on Slashdot (sorry, I could not find the link).
I am also concerned about the amount of public money being thrown about. the issue of wether what I would call "exotic renewable energy", like solar or wind, is likely to become viable in the future is obscured by the massive amount of incentive schemes, fiscal offsets etc. that cloud the issue. finding an honest assesment of energy costs per Kwh before incentive schemes is very difficult, and to my knowledge none of these calculations ever made the manistream media.
Having said that, i'd be content with the judge saying "not enough data", and relaunching the issue in the public domain.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
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
Did I miss a meeting?
Do you subscribe to any general or climate related scientific journals? Because the consensus seems quite clear to me. Where we're lacking a consensus is in marketing material directed at the general public, but that will remain the case so long as there is money to be made. Don't mistake one for the other.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Scientific opinion on climate change
Note that the latest poll shows that all but a few actual climate experts (not just scientists in general) "believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures".
Exactly. There is still very little _EVIDENCE_ of mankind-created global warming.
I don't think you understand the scientific method. Global warming with manmade causes as a major factor, is the most supported scientific theory by a large margin. As far as actual scientific theories go, it has been supported by more evidence and testing than any other theory and that is reflected in peer reviewed scientific journals.
If you're truly looking at this scientifically you need to do more than attack the methodology of one or two studies or a meta study. That's already been done as part of the peer review process. You actually have to present an alternative theory and perform experiments and gather data in a falsifiable way showing that your theory has more predictive ability to better match data you haven't yet seen. I haven't seen any other theory with anything close to the support for global warming influenced by man and, in fact, all the leading theories seem to be variations on that model.
You make a slew of unsupported assertions and inherent statements in the rest of your post, but I won't go through and address them individually. People seem to be approaching global warming with the same mindset as creationism. If we can just attack the prevailing theory, we can assume whatever other thing we want is true. That's not science, but I suppose it is understandable because both topics are the result of marketing reaching the public directly, and we all know marketing has nothing to do with rational decision making.
Someone linked this on /. a while back, and I thought I'd link it again.
"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."
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.
Cite please. You lambast the GP for his unsupported assertions but fail to support any of your own.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
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?")
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
Whether or not there has been some human-caused or non-human-caused climate change is less of an issue than what is going to happen because of it, and in that respect, there is NO agreement, and any predictions so far have always been very, very wrong.
So even if we all agree on a small amount of global warming over the last 300 years, no one can say what it means, or what things will be like in 20, 100, 500 years. The problem is that people keep trying to say these things to scare you into supporting some foundation or new law.
So yes, the "GW is crap" people have something to gain by having you ignore them, but the "GW will kill you TOMORROW" people also have something to gain and are equally bat-shit crazy.
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.
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.
I will admit that the debate has been tainted, but the science has not been lost. It's all there in black and white for those that are willing to look for it and asses it honestly. There are still a lot of those people, even in the climate change debate.
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
I think this document refers to that petition:
http://www.aps.org/about/pressreleases/climatechange08.cfm
The GP should know better than thinking a petition is the same as an official position or consensus...
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
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.
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
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 don't care about what the planet can handle, I care about a comfortable environment for humans.
(and I don't think it is clear that anthropogenic contributions are leading us to a world of cataclysm, but given that there are lots of other reasons to reduce human emissions (I like forests, coal power puts more radioactive material into the environment than nuclear power, oil is economically and politically unstable, etc.), I don't mind there being a push to at least examine the costs of exchanging those emissions for something else; maybe it will even turn out like sulfur emissions)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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"
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
It shouldn't be a "belief". That isn't science.
Science is testing, testing and more testing. You eliminate variables, then you test some more.
You can then say if your data fits with your hypothesis. Then you submit it to a journal and people pick it to pieces to find the mistakes. They retest, they tweak, they report.
No theory should ever be considered absolutely concrete, and to be honest from what I've read (and I have read) there are many, many unknowns going on in the climactic systems that we haven't even begun to quantify. I think its arrogance alone that leads to this apparently unquestionable theory of human caused climate change. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying its not happening, I'm just saying we can't talk in absolutes. It's unscientific, and anyone who says it is absolute isn't a very good scientist.
To quote a sometimes controversial bloke from another time:
"I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved and I cannot resist forming one on every subject, as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it."
- Charles Darwin - Creator of the Darwin awards
"what does an *Intergovernmental Panel* have to do with science?"
The IPCC "does science" by performing the most tedious and thankless part of the scientific method - "peer rieview". It's a serious contender for the largest, most thourough peer-review execises ever undertaken by mankind.
The contents of it's reports read like the soylent green oceanic survey, observations show it's two decades of forecast have proven to be on the conservative side, insurance companies have been including thier forecast risks into your bill for the last decade.
Every single one of it's 2500 UNPAID authours are scientists in a related discipline and the 2500 scientists that wrote the last report will be different from the next 2500. Most of the scientists are senior scientists representing, (rather than simply working at), a scientific intituition such as NAS, NASA, MET, WMO,CSIRO,etc,etc.
It's aim is to provide poltitians with the science for their (one would hope) science-based policy decisions. It publishes it's detailed financial reports on the web and is funded to the princely sum of $5-6 million a year by ~300 individual nations representing every colour of the political rainbow.
Besides, the greenhouse effect is basic science. On Venus you can plug in the numbers and come up with a tempratue, problem is the Earth's biosphere screws with the equations by throwing in all sorts of subtle feedbacks (most of them bad). This is known as climate's sensitivity. Unfortunately the geological record and the disappearance of the Artic ice indicates the climate is highly sensitive to CO2 and an increase of 2degC above current temps is very likely to be an ApocalypticSenario(TM).
Could they be wrong? - Of course they could, they're scientists!!
Are the consensus skeptics offering better science? - not that I have seen, most don't even bother to publish other than via their own websites/pop-science books. Theier arguments are rarely any more convincing than creationists, it's sort of poetic that their sponsors are calling for a monkey trial,
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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?
Disclaimer: I shop local, walk to the grocery store with my cloth shopping bag, I recycle, and keep driving to a minimum -- I fill up my tank maybe once or twice a month. My family's energy usage is very low. While I'm an advocate for a personally responsible lifestyle, I have many many reservations about the "Green" movement and the scientific rigor used to arrive at such a consensus, and especially many of the illogical financial programs derived so that people can profit from it ("cap and trade"? "carbon offsets"???)
"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."
That almost seems to be a call to scientific elitism. I.E. "You disagree, so you don't understand the nuances of climate change like I do, so you're out of the club." -- to my unlearned and cro-magnon mind it seems like Climate Change is an extremely inexact science. We don't have accurate test points, we don't understand all of the factors that go into this, we don't know the causes of previous cooling/warming cycles (even during human existence, much less before), nor can we isolate human factors in real-world experiments, nor do we have remotely representative simulations to perform isolated tests.
It seems that any climate scientist whose employment and financial well-being is tied to the results of his research is naturally suspect -- whether an oil company or an alternative energy company or a lobbyist group.
It feels like a bunch of self-congratulatory people who puff themselves up and call themselves experts in a field, where they have financial motivations for proving their case. Just as climatologists in the employ of oil companies are naturally suspect, it seems that political fat cats who work for environmental agencies are somehow immune to such criticism, because they're the ruling oligarchy. Al Gore isn't the only one who stands to get even richer from the "Green" movement, but somehow people view him flying-his-private-jet-to-collect-carbon-emissions-awards as somehow "altruistic". I call BS.
There are many groups of "experts" that I have innate distrust for, because their fields lack scientific rigor, and this fact is not acknowledged by its chief advocates. Psychiatrists and climate scientists would certainly be two of them.
I say bring the trial on. lets get everyone cards on the table.
Where is the evidence that global warming is NOT caused by man? There is plenty of evidence that can back up the theory that man (i.e. gas emissions) most likely is the cause.
Show me the peer review studies that point to another cause. That does not mean studies that try to disprove anthropomorphic CC, but studies that actually have evidence that there is another cause.
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.
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
It's not like climate science consist of two scientists who decided to agree that there's a global warming.
What do you think the word "consensus" means. Look it up in wikipedia if you have to. The entire "proof" of global warming is a consensus of a bunch of politions, actors, ace reporters, groopies, and some scientists. The rallying cry seems to be "but what if it is true?"
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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
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!
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
Oh how little do you know. If you would have read the verse and applied literal physics to the situation you would understand that the wall comprising of rim to rim cannot be paper thin. In fact, when you add the thickness of the rim into the equation, Pi comes out to an except-able number.
I've had enough with the IPCC references. The IPCC is a policy organization that poses what-if scenarios:
http://www.heartland.org/publications/NIPCC%20report/PDFs/Chapter%201.1.pdf [heartland.org]
Basically, they're a bunch of scientists and non-scientists that have policy objectives. Here's the kicker though:
* Even though they use complex computer models, their models do not follow standard guidelines for scientific forecasts. When audited, their little IPCC homework assignments fail miserably - in this case Working Group I violated 72 of 140 scientific procedures, some very critical violations by themselves.
And I'll leave you with one of the contributing authors replies to the scathing criticisms on their shabby methodologies - sorry to all you IPCC lovers out:
---
Kevin Trenberth, a lead author along with Philip D. Jones of chapter 3 of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report, replied to some of these scathing criticisms on the blog of the science journal Nature. He argued that "the IPCC does not make forecasts" but "instead proffers 'what if' projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios," and then hopes these "projections" will "guide policy and decision makers" (Trenberth, 2007). He says "there are no such predictions [in the IPCC reports] although the projections given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are often treated as such. The distinction is important."