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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.
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.
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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
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.
?
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.