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Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Denying Climate Change
cowtamer writes "The Utah State Assembly has passed a resolution decrying climate change alarmists and urging '...the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated.' Here is the full text of H.J.R 12." The resolution has no force of law. The Guardian article includes juicy tidbits from its original, far more colorful, version.
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a blend of government officials and scientists, does no independent climate research but relies on global climate researchers;
What do you propose to collect independent data from 1950 to 2010? Time travel? Of course you have to rely on global climate researchers.
I more than understand their concerns with cap and trade but some of these premise statements are a bit off track:
WHEREAS, the recently completed Copenhagen climate change summit resulted in little agreement, especially among growing CO2-emitting nations like China and India, and calls on the United States to pay billions of dollars to developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions at a time when the United States' national debt will exceed $12 trillion;
So what the state of Utah is saying is that since no one else is taking this seriously, we shouldn't have to? I agree that it will hurt us economically and competitively with other nations but you have to look at what scientific evidence we have before you mire this in those sorts of things.
WHEREAS, according to the World Health Organization, 1.6 billion people do not have adequate food and clean water; and WHEREAS, global governance related to global warming and reduction of CO2 would ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty:
Funny that absent from their "concerns" of foreign citizens is the statement that "increasing temperatures will increase drought and famine in equatorial developing nations resulting in starvation and displacement." Third world peoples will be the first to feel the effects of climate change while people like me in the United States will hear about this on the news. We have the resources and means to deal with the beginnings of it, they don't. Their governments will have bigger problems than debt and slowed economic development.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of H. [ the ] .H climate data H. [ conspiracy ] .H and global warming science can be substantiated.
A "full and independent investigation" is exactly what the EPA tried to do. Problem is that everyone is on the planet. Good luck finding sentient beings to do an 'independent investigation' of our planet. Anyone else has a stake in this one way or the other because they live here.
My work here is dung.
I wonder why this particular very republican state legislature wasn't this stringent for the Iraqi invasion ......................
How many times have we seen this sort of argument as contained in TFA:
It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a "gravy train" and their efforts would "ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty".
So in other words, they accuse the climate change scientists of of acting in their own financial interests by being alarmists and then also complain about how doing something about the problem will adversely affect the financial interests of the skeptics. It is a massive double standard!
They claim that scientists toe the climate change line to get grants, and yet can you imagine how much definitive proof against man-made climate change would be worth to businesses? Any scientist who was in it for the money could name their price (or at least, their wife could name her price to be a consultant to industry).
The problem with this debate is that one side has to prove their claims, while the other side just needs to create doubt by using unsubstantiated and even sometimes completely discredited claims. In this case, claiming that the other side is on the "gravy train" isn't supported by any evidence at all, and yet there is no way to disprove it either. In all the leaked emails regarding this, where was the shred of evidence that anybody was trying to rort taxpayers money?
urging the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs
Um...whether you think global warming is bullshit or not, why would you want to halt carbon dioxide reduction policies? I mean, modify them, sure...but why completely halt them? Global warming being real or not, there is no denying that we as a species pump way too much crap into our atmosphere. Regardless of how much this affects our planet, you can't honestly tell me that it's a GOOD thing...
People always seem to follow one extreme ("We're ruining our planet!") or the other ("We aren't doing anything to the planet!") when it comes to global warming. What's up with that? Why is it so hard to find people with a realistic point of view ("We pollute too much, but we aren't dooming ourselves.")
Living With a Nerd
I'm glad that Utah thinks that anybody cares what they have to say. It's cute.
I'm sure that they can deny the existence of global warming. I'm also equally sure that global warming is not worried about their denial. They might as well have tried to legislate about the ratio between the diameter of a circle and its circumference. But seriously, what are the consequences of this vote? Well, apart from making the Utah state legislature look silly.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Each day, the United States falls behind a little bit more.
Cutting-edge research these days happens in Europe and Asia, where religion is put in its place, and education is paramount. Even if global warming is a political sham and most of the "scientific" evidence has been fabricated, as it very well may be, at least it has spurned research into solar and wind technologies, for instance.
I am assuming you're referring to Phil Jones statement and obviously, you did not bother to actually understand the context of what he was trying to say http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=141
It is not that I don't believe in climate change. I just don't care enough to approve of measures that inconvenience me. I realize this sounds like trolling, but I think a lot of people share my sentiment. The effect of climate change doesn't personally effect me, edicts by the EPA do. I wouldn't be so quick to label everyone who apposes enviromental measures as an anti-science quack. It is more likaly to just be self interest.
They should do the same with gravity. Instandly they will have flying cars.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
While the science around climate change deserves scrutiny and probing, this probing should probably be done by scientists, not legislators. The last time I checked, the scientific method didn't include debate, Robert's Rules of Order or passage by majority. Freeman Dyson makes some interesting points against climate change in this NY Times Article. If you agree with him or not, at least he's engaging in scentific skepticism over uninformed legislation.
Obviously the majority of Utah's Assembly has no idea how science works, as it takes a majority to pass an obviously useless law. It's too bad that method doesn't work or the Utah State Assembly could go ahead and legislate the Higgs-Boson into existence right there in the chambers. I think this problem is a symptom of our terrible science education in our schools. Perhaps they could go ahead and legislate some scientific thinking into themselves while they're redefining physics.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
...are at it again.
You should not vote for stopping the US from participating in worldwide environmental policies -- you should work on getting the world to make China accept said policies.
Soon you'll be using Chinese products and breathing Chinese pollution.
I'm a foreigner and I do find the US impressive... in a bad way.
http://one_foggy.tripod.com/sounds/ll_clunkenough.wav
PS: not that we're much better off... *sigh*
...the storm of posts saying how "stupid" Utah is.
Here
That's because you need more than 15 years to get statistically significant figures.
People have trouble comprehending anything that takes longer than 20 years to prove, that's the problem. Innate flaw in our psychological makeup.
....for carrying out questionable science.
The effect of the recent IPCC Glacier mis-statements and the University of East Anglia 'mistakes' is to give people who would 'like it to not be so' to have a grain of sand around which to crystallize.
I make no claim as to if climate change is upon us or not, but it is ESSENTIAL that the science is revisited and made rock solid (or completely disproven)....in the meantime we have to progress on a path of caution -- which effectively means continuing to reduce carbon emissions IN CASE they are causing the problem...putting our collective fingers in our ears and singing la-lala-la isn't going to solve anything.
Jeez, politicians have enough difficulty making sensible decisions already, we're not exactly helping by not giving them accurate information on which to make those decisions, are we???
in the conservatives' War On Science
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major state, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must deny climate change! The defense rests.
"Carbon dioxide is "essentially harmless" to human beings"
Yea, ok... I'll just hold my breath then and let it build up in my blood. No need to exhale it since it's harmless. Then after that, I'll just pipe the exaughst from a car into my home. That won't kill me or anything since it is harmless. Also... why did I just waste money on a detector for it for my home? it's harmless. GAWWW I GOT SCREWED. I'm so glad the home state of mormanism sorted that out for me!
Um...whether you think global warming is bullshit or not, why would you want to halt carbon dioxide reduction policies? I mean, modify them, sure...but why completely halt them? Global warming being real or not, there is no denying that we as a species pump way too much crap into our atmosphere. Regardless of how much this affects our planet, you can't honestly tell me that it's a GOOD thing...
According to the resolution itself (I don't agree with this in anyway) they seem to place all the blame of climate change on Chlorofluorocarbons and are convinced that CO2 has historically been naturally present and part of the circle of life and therefore it's not so bad:
WHEREAS, there is a statistically more direct correlation between twentieth century temperature rise and Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere than CO2; WHEREAS, outlawed and largely phased out by 1978, in the year 2000 CFC's began to decline at approximately the same time as global temperatures began to decline;
So your proposition in a reduction of CO2 is irrelevant because they find that CFCs are sole contributing factor (seemingly ignoring 'green house gas' family of pollutants).
They didn't claim CO2 is a "GOOD thing" as you put it but they say it's nothing to scale back our economy for. To reiterate, I don't agree with this, I'm just telling you of one of the routes they came to the conclusion that CO2 reduction programs should be abolished.
My work here is dung.
Climate change is gay.
Love,
Utah.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives" John Stuart Mill That about sums it up... Regardless if climate change is true or not, this is a major fucking waste of time by the Utah legislators. Passing a bill certainly does prove climate change is false, thank "God" we don't need scientists anymore. .
Iraq billions
So your proposition in a reduction of CO2 is irrelevant because they find that CFCs are sole contributing factor (seemingly ignoring 'green house gas' family of pollutants).
They didn't claim CO2 is a "GOOD thing" as you put it but they say it's nothing to scale back our economy for. To reiterate, I don't agree with this, I'm just telling you of one of the routes they came to the conclusion that CO2 reduction programs should be abolished.
Sorry, I should have been less specific...I just meant why give up on scaling back our pollution in general. Thanks for the clarification though!
Living With a Nerd
For those of you too occupied to RTFA, the crossed out terms are enlightening: 'conspiracy' (twice), 'flawed', 'tricks', 'gravy train'.
Such emotive language doesn't help their cause when opponents could just as easily frame "denialists" with such terms.
Have you been watching the Vancouver Olympics?
Dammit... my tendency to be skeptical of the Chicken Little antics of the Warmers is in direct contradiction with my rule to distrust the actions of religious nut jobs.
What to do?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Utah Assembly confirms that water is not wet anymore.
Last time I checked, the effects of global warming are predicted to be positive, not negative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming#Economic_and_social
It seems the only area where the negative consequences will prevail is Africa, not counting small nonsignificant islands. But so what? There are already too much people there.
Also, China and India don't give a shit. What is USA and Europe really doing, is OUTSOURCING emissions; the result is INCREASE in emissions because China's factories are inefficient and polluting.
But yeah, go on with this pseudo-ecological crap. The same nonsense as the anti-nuclear movement...
That's the mental picture I get every time I see this debate. Fact: There is an observed increase in global average temperature over the last 100 years. Now whether that's due to man's activites or something else can be debated - whether the trend continues can be debated. Personally I think that 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 googlewatt heatlamp in the sky (a.k.a. The Sun) has a lot more to do with climate change than anything we as a species will ever do. But to say there has not been any warming to date is as much (if not more) than a lie than stating that the projections of climatalogists are fact.
And WHEREAS the questionability of the said data has been questioned (and debunked thoroughly) and
WHEREAS using 12 years of data is a flaw in itself, especially given that 1998 was an El-Nino year, and WHEREAS the last decade was the hottest on record in any case and
WHEREAS that old-wives' tale was debunked recently and
WHEREAS that was one study that actually used flawed data and didn't even bother to speculate on the physics of how CFCs could affect temperatures in the first place and
WHEREAS said decline in temperatures was addressed above and
WHEREAS a committee appointed for that purpose found no evidence against one researcher, none of the charges against the other researchers was ever proven, and effort involved in faking such a massive amount of data would make it impossible in any case and
WHEREAS the paper under consideration was published by lowering the standards of a peer reviewed journal so that it would get in and several editors resigned from that journal for that reason and
WHEREAS this clause only lays down the fact which is unquestioned and was the original purpose of IPCC and
WHEREAS the rate of change is what matters in the first place, and the existence of a "Little Ice Age" has yet to be proven globally and
WHEREAS that one is simply a strawman argument and
and nature pumps out 600+ how much can we affect it by modifying the US production?
So whats the rush to regulate it? Oh, thats right money. Money to the people who will game the system and then contribute to the "right" people. Money to special interest groups who will fund 529s and such to support the "right" people. So we will see all these non producers buy and sell green credits inflating their wallets at the expense of the middle class. Wall Street wins again because this is where the real push comes from. Why should people not involved in the production of CO2 get to buy and sell credits for it?
Follow the money or worse, follow the egos. The egos of political appointees who are convinced they are right and would not care if any fact to the contrary existed. People who think that now that they "are in charge" they can fix those stupid people.
Yeah, sorry, the reason not to rush is because the science isn't settled and way too much money and politics are involved to let science have a clear chance. Big business signed onto the global warming/climate change once they figured out how to make large amounts of money on it. GE and similar aren't there because they want to feel good, they want to make a buck. If getting the government to regulate your competitors is what it takes then so be it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If they really want a balanced budget they should tax religion. It would serve dual purposes: fix the budget and cut back the parasites sucking on society. The religious have nothing to fear, since god loves them so much he (they know god is a dude with a white beard) will make up any material loss. If they complain they jsut don't have enough faith...
Why is Snark Required?
...that almost passed the bill setting the value of pi to 3?
Also from the educated state of Utah comes the following:
- It is illegal NOT to drink milk.
- It is a felony to persistently tread on the cracks between paving stones on the sidewalk of a state highway.
- It is against the law to fish from horseback.
- No one may have sex in the back of an ambulance if it is responding to an emergency call. (I would love to know the story that prompted the passing of this law).
Lest we laugh too hard at Utah, you can easily find stupid laws on the books in every state. Makes me wonder exactly how serious they were being when they passed them. I can just imagine a couple of reps tossing around ideas for hilarious new laws. "Hey Bob, I got one - let's outlaw global warming! Problem solved!".
You can pretty much tell what people believe about climate change by knowing their political affiliation. The number of people who have taken the trouble to look into the basic physics of climate change is very tiny.
The climate blogosphere is mostly a festering cesspool of invective, dis-information, criminal lack of logic and just plain bad science.
In spite of what Al Gore says, the science is far from settled. (I'm willing to swing either way once someone proves or disproves the basic mechanism behind Hansen's positive feedback theory.)
That one is obvious, and in the article. The carbon dioxide reduction policies are a economic threat to Utah. They produce the coal for the power plants that the carbon dioxide reduction policies are trying to eliminate.
Nothing much to see here, just a legislature passing a "Don't take our juuurbs!" statement.
Yeah, I didn't quite understand that. What I read in the article:
But it does offer a view of state politicians' concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.
Unless it's changed drastically since 2008, Utah is very low in the rankings with 18 working coal mines providing about two thousand jobs. Compare this to 600 working mines in Kentucky, 438 in West Virginia and 361 in Pennsylvania. Wouldn't these states be passing this resolution first and foremost if that was the sole motivating factor of state governments? In oil production, Utah is 13th. I'm not sure what 'major' constituted to the Guardian but apparently they know something about Utah that I don't. Does it traffic coal and oil? Process and refine it from other states? I'm not aware of these industries in the state if they exist.
My work here is dung.
New legislation: pi = 3
No wonder the debate is so fucked up. Just like out there, in here they try to silence anyone who's not onboard with the cult.
Scientists seem to think they have the right to dictate to us what we know, based on petty things like research and knowledge. We are capable of free thought! We can decide for ourselves what is true and what isn't without them shoving it down our throats.
I for one applaud Utah for showing some backbone.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I'd say you need to go back to right around 1990 to find the correct data... as is insinuated by graphs like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/AverageTvsNumberofStations.jpg.
Incidentallty since around that time global warming really became a political issue and a lot of money was thrown at the problem. It's not that hard to imagine that some people will cherry-pick or fudge some data to get a better grant after that...
My rule with dubious science is: 'Follow the money', if anyone has a lot of financial gain with one outcome and their results just happen to be that outcome I call bullshit... Al Gore has financial gains, Al Gore is talking bullshit about global warming... there is no simpeler way of putting it.
They are like children with their ears covered and screaming, I cant hear you, la,la,la,la,la.
If I wish hard enough, will it go away?
Wow, we really voted for these people?
ps- Did the folks they used to review the environmental stats, have access to the archives that the scientific body has
dating back 100s of years, or did they go out and get the last 5 years to make an analysis?
even then,. the last 5 years have seen more abnormal weather patterns then ever.
For some values of Mormon, obviously.
Wow who's been printing money exactly? Who's been in office for the 8 years prior to the current administration. How much money did we print during the Bush administration? How much did the deficit/debt go up in those 8 years? How much additional government was created in those years? How much hate in the world was generated during those 8 years? Sure seems like the conservative view is the way to go...
Utah can pass any resolution it damn well pleases. For example they can deny the moon is in orbit around the earth. Reality of course may beg to differ on the matter.
It's a little more scary than a lawyer making a flashy argument to distract the jury. It kinda confirms (one of) my worst fears about the human race, namely that it sees the laws of reality as something political, right up into the echelons of power.
Not to mention, there's a reason why they (used to) call it "global warming" and not "local warming".
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I especially like this paragraph from the article:
In the heat of the debate, the representative Mike Noel said environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.
It's a great example of the "invoke fear and terror in our ignorant population by using unrelated, unfounded, known to be false statements" approach. It's quite popular in the fine country of the US (especially in this one party I'm not going to mention).
And in the end it's not surprising that Utah passes a resolution like this. If you've ever driven through the state you'd noticed that it already looks like climate change has already happened.
True. And people don't know that. What people also need to understand is that with global warming, weather patterns shift. As Texas and DC just got through a snowstorm, the Olympics in Canada are almost without snow.
One day of weather does not = 15 or 20 years of weather trends. People need to know that.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
That's because you need more than 15 years to get statistically significant figures.
You do realize you're just making that up? And that if the past 15 years showed marginally significant warming you'd be trumpeting it as "proof" that GW/CC was a "fact"? This is what bugs scientists about the AGW crowd: you use quite different standards for confirming and disconfirming evidence. The anti-AGW crowd do the same thing. I've been on both sides of the fence as I've learned more about the evidence, and neither is a particularly comfortable place for a scientist, as one gets continually pushed by anti-scientific individuals who introduce absolute irrelevancies, like the dangers to the ecology or the economy if their preferred belief happens to be true.
One useful way of determining you are dealing the an anti-scientist is that they mix introduce claims about the effects of GW/CC (or carbon dioxide reduction policies) as if they were arguments for or against GW/CC. As soon as someone does that, you know they aren't interested in science, but in politics and power.
With regard to Phil Jones' statement: an estimated rate of 0.13 C per decade would lead one to expect 0.2 C in 15 years. Instead, the rate is statistically equivalent to zero. That's interesting, but a more interesting question is: what is the highest rate that the observed trend is consistent with?
If it is higher than 0.13 C then the models are not in trouble. If it is not, then the models are.
But you cannot say at the same time that an observed rate that is consistent with the models over 15 years is confirmatory, and that an observed rate that is inconsistent with the models over 15 years is not disconfirmatory.
Not if you care about science, anyway.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Even if global warming was completely made up, why isn't the U.S. embarking on a Manhattan style program to get ourselves off of foreign oil?
Conservation, renewables, "drill baby drill"... ANYTHING is better than pumping oil from governments like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela. While (some of) their leaders might in public say they are our friends, the majority of their citizens HATE OUR GUTS and want to kill us. Why are we giving them money?
Look, I have complained before about the Israeli lobby owning U.S. foreign policy. Our unqualified support of Israel, in itself, is not "bad"; they are a true democracy in a very bad neighborhood. They produce more scientific discoveries and have done more for the world than all of the arab nations have and probably ever will*. But then why do we shoot ourselves IN THE HEAD by pumping hundreds of billions of dollars to these corrupt, ignorant and backwards societies (there I've said it). Either support Israel to the hilt and get off of our addiction to foreign oil or do what China does and work for our naked self-interest (oil) suck up to these bastards and sell the Israelis down the river. We can't have it both ways without spending hundreds of billions of additional dollars in military expenditures and getting involved in wars... oh wait.
Kinda makes you wonder if previous administrations (mainly Bush 41+43 but who knows, maybe Clinton too) have been bought out.
*If you doubt how important jews have been to world civilization, here's a joke(?) that claims the three most important figures IN HISTORY were jews. (and no, I'm not jewish).
- Einstein (science)
- Marx (political thinking)
You can guess the last one. Let's just say his name begins with a "J". :)
If somebody in that state got some brain and is not a redneck, raise a hand!
I haven't seen distortions of reality this large since the Iraqi Minister of Defense. I mean, WOW, just wow. These people are really making their state proud. Doesn't Utah rank LAST when it comes to per-student spending? Maybe they're getting what they paid for. (psst next time spend more classroom time on science and math).
Yeah. Until climate change is proved conclusively, we might just be reducing our emissions and pollutants, consuming energy efficiently and decreasing our dependence upon dwindling natural resources in politically unstable regions for NOTHING.
Can someone tag this "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" ?
Someone in Utah has finally created a hallucinogenic for which no current drug tests can measure. This stuff must be fantastic; everyone there is happy, and staring at the sky. Its going to be interesting to see which of the idiots in Utah said "Aye" to this non-sense. Their names should be known so that the rest of humanity can be so enlightened.
Thank goodness some people in this country are coming to their senses and taking steps to abandom the liberal lovey-touchy relationship with trees and whatnot, it's insanely detrimental to our economy and I shouldn't be forced to pay for it.
captcha: bowels - bears great resemblance to liberal tree huggers and neocon enablers
It's a mysterious town somewhere between L.A. and Vail. I'd say they'll be where California invades when the sea levels rise, but California seems to invade them yearly, anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Assuming for a moment you did not take those numbers out of your posterior, nature before the industrial revolution was at equilibrium, meaning it pumped out 600 and pumped back in 600 (e.g. plant growth). Then, human activities with 29 Gtons would tip that balance and accumulate CO2 in the atmosphere, which cannot be absorbed by nature (whose capacity is 600, not 629).
Ultimately, it is because an inordinate amount of carbon was extracted from the earth as coal and oil, way faster that the geological scale that would have occurred in nature.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
From TFA:
To all lawmakers in Utah: You are idiots!
Just look at fucking Venus! Explain how green house gases haven't heated that planet so it is now so hot you can melt lead on the surface, i.e. 460 C, which is 40 C hotter than Mercury, even though Venus only gets 25% of the irradiation from the Sun compared to Mercury. And what is the atmosphere made of? COfucking2! These are facts! Anyone who denies these facts is firstly a wanker, secondly an ignorant idiot, thirdly should be publicly mocked and ridiculed.
What you are saying is just as stupid as saying the world is flat.
Since when has Chewie lived on Endor? SPOILER: Didn't you hear he's dead?
Mormons have not openly practiced polygamy since the 1800s.
Technoli
It kinda confirms (one of) my worst fears about the human race, namely that it sees the laws of reality as something political, right up into the echelons of power.
I've mentioned it before on /., but I was once on an international standardisation committee on which somebody questioned the statement that pure Poisson processes were ergodic. Rather than get somebody to check a textbook or do some maths, the (American) chair demanded that it be put to a vote. At least some Americans seem to be so devoted to democracy that it has become a religion, and they can't cope with the idea that reality might not be democratically decided.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
That's funny. Because at the time of this posting, Moryath's post is moderated exactly the same as one of mine in another thread (which pointed out a flaw in the idea that climate scientists have been producing biased data since the 50s). So it seems that neither side can claim to be the victim here. You certainly can't see it as evidence of a cult. It is just the way the mod system works.
I have been modded as overrated previously before anyone else had modded me up. How does that work? Some people just think that it is an "I disagree" button. You just have to hope that future moderation (or meta-moderation) fixes it up.
"So why are we trying to implement policies to combat that change?"
We're not.
We're trying to combat OUR changing of the climate.
Or do you think it's fine if NY is under 200ft of water or half a mile of ice and we caused it?
No, some of us just remember the same crap in the 70s about how the world would be in a new ice age by now.
We also remember very good science being ripped up because the data was falsefied or poorly collected.
When you're a sheep, I don't respect your opinion. Skeptics I have time for. Convince a skeptic, and you'll have won an actual battle. Convince a politician who wants votes and sees the sheep voters following your opinion already and you've accomplished little.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Yes, that is the ONLY possible explanation... It can't be that the GGP was talking bollocks, oh no.
And the kdawsonification of /. continues. Please don't let this place become another DailyTech.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
When I saw the post it was sitting at "-1 Overrated". The moderation system is fucked up.
You can't confirm or falsify anything with a sample of one observation that lies outside a 95% confidence interval. What we need is repeated predictions and observations. If 19 out of 20 observations are within the 95% confidence interval, that's very good confirmation of the prediction. The fact that such big news is being made from just one observation that lies just outside the 95% confidence interval suggests that previous observations did fall within the confidence interval.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I live in Utah and this is par for the course. Utah is one of the, if not THE, reddest state in the US. The 'people' who elect these clowns can't see outside of their own state and so don't think anything is wrong.
Makes me glad I am leaving...
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
If you care about science, you should give a few years to analyze the data before throwing out those numbers. Statistical significance will increase over time. We can say a lot more about 1980-2000 than we can about 1990-2010, because we have the benefit of 10 years of data analysis.
Climate science is about the long haul. 15 years is a drop in the bucket. The Earth has been continuously warming, there is no doubt about that.
The models are wrong. Big deal. That doesn't make the planet cooler. It just means we're unclear about the causes. (Which is all you global warming deniers want, isn't it? Can't you just attack the science based on the actual fact that root causes of warming are difficult to pin down and not outright lie and claim that the planet is not significantly warming?)
Hmm. Now yours is at +3. How'd that happen I wonder? We're certainly not "even."
I have said for a long time that the Mod system needs serious repair. Most of the moderating isn't done by people trying to improve the dialogue anymore, merely by people who want to find their political adversaries and shout them down. I've seen times (both my own comments and others) where someone gets targeted for "karma destruction" and posts 2,3,4 weeks old or older suddenly plummet from 5 Insightful/Informative down to "-1 Troll" as organized groups go after a person's karma. Sure, they can each only attack an individual post once, but with the Mod Lottery now handing out both 5 and 15-point sets of mod points, and groups out there perfectly willing to keep 30+ accounts each in order to play the Mod Lottery more often, the system is broken.
I fondly remember "the good old days" when Science didn't require faith.
Also, religion isn't dead in Europe -- it's just become unfashionable in some areas and/or circles.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
I long since got as far away from US manufacturing as I can since it is imploding at a very fast rate. Do you honestly think that
china and india are going to impose CO2 limits on their growing manufacturing industry? If you said yes to that question you
are a fool. In fact the EPA regulating CO2 is only going to make matters worse. You impose C02 caps in the US and local
companies will only ship more manufacturing over the pond. 80 percent of china's power is produced in coal plants, do you
think our efforts to cap emissions in the US is going to have a positive effect? So yea feel good and regulate all you want, it
will only speed the implosion of our most important industry.
Got Code?
...with the resolution. always the obstinate one, eh, physics?
Hey! As a democrat I resent that remark, you doodie head.
...the proposal to eliminate 12th-grade in Utah public schools.
As a Texan, I have been alarmed at the recent increase of the rate of retardedness coming out of my state. Let me be the first to say: I'm glad that this ridiculous news wasn't out of Texas this time. Thank God.
It was "Global Cooling," then "Global Warming," then "Climate Change." The problem is "Climate Change" is ... well, a natural process. This is like making the ridiculous argument that the shape of the earth is subtly changing and this is a huge disaster; have you never heard of Pangaea?
There have been ice ages all over the place over the history of the earth; there was a medieval warm period but current climatologists held a summit to figure out how to eliminate it from the graphs (by discarding data from more accurate sampling methods to buffer out the significant spike) so they could show the current "Hockey Stick" graph. The term "Climate Change" is a weak one because NO SHIT, THE CLIMATE CHANGES.
But here's the major problem: the data is being massaged. All arguments about Global Cooling/Global Warming/Climate Change are irrelevant; we discard good scientific data because it supports positions we don't like, and then we politicize the issue like crazy. Everything in this entire topic is patent bullshit and we can't have a scientific discussion about it because we're not willing to use real data.
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No, some of us just remember the same crap in the 70s about how the world would be in a new ice age by now.
I'm genuinely curious - can you give me an example of scientists who predicted, in the '70s, that we'd be in an ice age by 2010?
Seems like if someone (Al Gore) brings attention to the climate, immediately, it's perceived (in the states) as a political issue. By "winning" the argument, you defeat the democrats and therefore "win". (nevermind that in reality we all loose, as oceans rise, etc..)
I saw an interview with Al Gore on Larry King awhile ago, Larry was trying to goad Al Gore into saying bad things about his political opponents, meanwhile, Al Gore was trying every possible thing to evade the political questions and keep the discussion focused on the climate.
The rest of the world hasn't taken such a duality approach to the climate, the rest of the world seems to be aware that if the environment looses, we all loose.
Why can't Americans see this rather obvious truth?
Please explain this fully. I don't understand the term "ergodic" or Poisson processes or how this is relevant to anything.
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Sweet! Finally a State has volunteered to take the hit and prove that Texas is not the most stupid in the Union! Go Utah! Go!
That was just plain stupid.
It is a fact the climate of the earth changes.
What idiots.
If they would have said:
1) We the people, deny and do not believe the facts for man made climate change with regards to CO2 output.
2) We deny that such CO2 output is as classified a poisonous substance.
3) We do not believe the carbon credits derivatives markets are set up for the end purpose of anything but greed and creating a world tax system to fund the new world order, under the thinly veiled guise of "saving the planet".
4) Finally we the people do believe that there has been sufficient evidence recently of proof that the scientific community headed by the IMF has falsified data, fraudulently misrepresented data, hidden methods and determinations of all current conclusions including the suppression of contrary points of view, published by the IMF and UN of man made climate change under the pretext of the goals stated in #3.
The whole thing rather in a nutshell is a SCAM with Mr. Al Gore owning huge leveraged securities in 3 firms that would sell CO2 carbon credits and derivatives.
Its disgusting what they plan on doing to the third world with this system.
The poor and the powerless in this world ALREADY HAVE PLENTY OF CONSTRAINTS ON THEM TO KEEP THEM IN THEIR PLACE AND OFFER NO COMPETITION, Mr. Gore, thank you very much.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Long version: I've always considered the pro global warming argument couched wrong. I think an easier way to look at it is to realize (and convince others) that we are engaged in an experiment of epic proportions with our atmosphere by digging up, and putting back into the atmosphere hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 that was sequestered as fossil fuels millions of years ago. No one can really predict the outcome (at least enough to convince the real naysayers) but it is incredibly short sighted and arrogant to assume that there is absolutely no effect. On top of that since a lot of Christians believe that the earth is only about 6,500 years old, it makes them even more difficult to convince.
Short version: We're screwed.
When you're a sheep you might not even realize you're a sheep, right? Or are you sure you're not just blindly following your shepherd who has given you the easy out: "Don't worry my woolly little friend, nothing humans can do can change the climate; it's just mean environmentalists that want to take away your Escalade."
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Not to pick sides in this democrat vs republican thing you've got going here, but your previous, republican, president wasn't exactly the epitome of intelligence... yet the democrats are supposedly the stupid ones? ok.
There are some factors you're apparently unaware of. The long-term trend over many decades is roughly 0.15C or so, but on the scale of a particular decade, roughly 4 main variables influence warming: CO2 excess, El Nino cycles, solar radiance, and aerosol cooling (volcanoes, say). Over the last 12 years we've had, in combination, a decrease in El Nino heating from a record 1998 (which is why many "skeptics" pick this year as a starting point) as well as a cooling cycle in solar radiation. They both operate on roughly the same timescale. Underneath that, the CO2 excess from humans contributes a fairly constant 0.2C per decade of warmth, which is why the last decade and a half have shown roughly flat temperature increases instead of the expected cooling. If you look at the temperature plots, you can see this "wiggle" happening on a regular basis. We'd then expect, over the next decade, to have rapidly increasing temperatures as all the warming factors are positive, then probably a flat profile after that. The long-term trend, as shown in the plots, is still rising.
"When you're a sheep, I don't respect your opinion."
Well said. I also don't see the need to upend our economic system based on the cry of alarmists using data little more than a decade or two old. Perhaps the global warming crowd has another motive...?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I'm not seeing +3. Maybe you have the option turned on to add +1 to subscribers. I haven't done it for this message (just to see what this unmoderated post shows as), but in future I might tick the box to say "No Subscriber Bonus". I don't see that my opinion should be worth more just because I want to support this site.
As for the moderation system, I agree that it has flaws. I personally feel it to be a proud moment to mod up a message that I disagree with. But I admit that it has only happened about 3 or 4 times over the years. I don't know what can be done to fix the system so that it doesn't get abused.
I've made the suggestion that downmods (overrated, troll) should just be eliminated. Allow the upmod threshold to go up to 10 or 15 rather than just 5, and then simply do upmods rather than downmodding.
Since it's the downmods that are abused (and let's face it, almost exclusively abused, I've yet to see a proper downmod other than a GNAA troll in >5 years of metamodding and the last time I saw a GNAA troll even when browsing at -1 was 3 years ago), we should just remove them.
Everyone has a lot to gain, so I will in fact call anything anyone claims without backing up those claims with any evidence bullshit...
Any normal scientist do will research, write a paper and in the conclusion of the paper claim 'more research needs to be done'... they are no evil money-hungry scientists because of that, it's stating a fact because every field can use more research and coincidentally they will have more work. My problem is with 'scientists' who make extraordinary claims without backing them up with sufficient data, or they have 'proof' but only the pretty graphs not the raw data. These people are fear-mongerers that hold the world hostage with these claims and try to silence opposition. When you can no longer oppose a questionable idea, questionable motives and questionable practices without being attacked you can be damn sure there is something wrong.
You questioned the graph without hesitation, as you should... I have certainly not provided any evidence and you should not believe me on my word on anything... But I have found the source of this graph for you: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/nvst.html who also reference http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
Sheep do what seems like a good idea at the time. Nothing we suggest sounds like a good idea right now. Ergo, we are sheep.
Indeed. And if we do manage to reduce pollution, I can't help thinking if long term, global warming will be the new "Y2K bug myth":
"Oh, remember all that fuss about global warming at the turn of the century? We spent all that effort reducing pollution, and now look! The temperatures didn't rise after all. What a waste of time that was!"
Other examples include the problem of vaccinations, where if an epidemic is stopped as a result of a vaccination programme, idiots claim how it was all scaremongering and the risk of an epidemic never existed. Hmm, is there a generic name for this fallacy, I wonder?
Essentially, the chair called for a vote on a matter of well-established mathematical fact.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Leave it to the politicians to 'prove a negative' simply by virtue of not understanding the subject matter completely. Which begs the question, should we then have a 'licensing system' to 'steer the Government', similar to driving a car? One that requires the comprehension of things like the laws of physics? Oh wait, never mind, the Government would be responsible for administering that program too...
And our current Democratic President is anything more than a trained monkey?
I hate to say it because I rather disliked him... but although GWB was a terrible public speaker, he likely isn't as dumb as some people like to think.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Can you name a top tier college or university in Utah?
There you have it.
This makes me feel better about being from South Carolina.
Surely the title of this article should be "Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Declaring Utah Retarded"?
That reminds me of the account of the Indiana state legislature attempting to pass a law that would make pi = 3.
The State Snack?!?!?
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/383965
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You've just said it yourself. Any long-term changes in the weather that are not, on the whole, good for humanity are things that we should be be worried about, whether we caused them or not.
People get caught up in the "warming" and are busy asking themselves whether they feel warmer or cooler.
They get caught up in the "what causes it" debate, as though flood and famine are just fine, so long as humans didn't cause it.
But you've hit the nail on the head without meaning to. Large changes in the weather of the planet are precisely the sorts of things humans ought to monitor and try to change, even if we didn't cause them, since we are fairly fragile beings and society is a fairly fragile thing with respect to natural forces, and since our beings and societies have grown and adapted to one particular set of environmental circumstances, and there are significant limits to our adaptability.
Think of it this way. Forget the phrase "global warming" and replace it with "climate change." For warmer or for cooler, however you want to define it. And then it makes sense: "Any changes in the weather [over the long term] prove climate change." And then forget about who caused it and simply ask "If the climate is changing, is that dangerous to humanity, and what sorts of things can we do about it?"
Then we can begin to talk intelligently.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
No, some of us just remember the same crap in the 70s about how the world would be in a new ice age by now.
I'm genuinely curious - can you give me an example of scientists who predicted, in the '70s, that we'd be in an ice age by 2010?
I think it involved a global thermonuclear war and the "nuclear winter" scenario (upon which doubts have since be cast IIRC).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I often find it hard to believe just how quickly people get caught up in political battles and miss obvious points that ought to be the fundamental organizing principles for these discussions.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I have a simple question. When has the climate not changed? The climate has been far warmer and far colder than it is now many times in the past. How can anyone legitimately claim that humanity is truly responsible for the changing climate. There is plenty of archeological evidence of humans thriving in warmer climates. How can anyone possibly know what the baseline climate is?
It seems to me that the real problem is that there are more people living in more places. Humanity, or at least what they've built is more threatened by shifts in climate. Now, if the argument is that we should engage in reshaping the climate, that's another story altogether.
It may be possible that humanity is applying some pressure to climate shifts but I don't see how anyone could deny it would be happening whether or not we were here. It's simple logic.
And how am I supposed to take any of the threats seriously when the people making such claims aren't concerned enough to curtail their own pollution. Look at the complete waste that was Copenhagen. I don't see Al Gore giving up his private jet, his mansion or the numerous other homes he undoubtedly owns. I suppose it's us suckers who are supposed to sacrifice everything while the elites can go right on doing whatever they feel like.
Mormons have not openly practiced polygamy since the 1800s.
No, Mormons have not practiced polygamy at all since the 1800s.
I am a Mormon. The official church doctrine is to excommunicate anyone who performs or enters into a polygamous marriage, period. Anyone who is in a polygamous relationship cannot be admitted into the church or take part in any of the ceremonies or ordinances, or hold any leadership position. All of those polygamy zealots in Utah, Arizona, and Texas might call themselves Mormons, but they were cut off from the official church long ago and can't be readmitted until and unless they separate themselves from those illegal relationships.
So unless you've got some secret evidence of secret Mormon polygamous marriages still being performed that you're hiding from the rest of us--especially those of us who actually are Mormons--I suggest keep your slanderous generalizations to yourself. You add nothing useful to the discussion while making yourself look like a bigoted idiot in the process.
"So whats the rush to regulate it? Oh, thats right money. Money to the people who will game the system and then contribute to the 'right' people. Money to special interest groups who will fund 529s and such to support the 'right' people. So we will see all these non producers buy and sell green credits inflating their wallets at the expense of the middle class. Wall Street wins again because this is where the real push comes from. Why should people not involved in the production of CO2 get to buy and sell credits for it?"
This is pretty much nonsensical B.S. If you want to find the vested money interests in this issue, there's no need for tortured mental gymnastics that end with a question mark. Here is your answer: Big oil, gas, and coal companies. If I need to pick a side of this debate of which to be suspicious, it's extremely easy.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Down here in Texas we don't use no high falutin' government assemblage, we use horse sense. The horses tell us it's cold out, so there can't be no climate change.
Damn liberal elitists.
The deficit went up in those 8 years roughly as much as it went up in the first 6 months of Obama's administration.
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"Perhaps the global warming crowd has another motive...?"
FUD. We know the big oil/gas/coal companies have motive. No need for question marks.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Well said. I also don't see the need to upend our economic system based on the cry of alarmists using data little more than a decade or two old. Perhaps the global warming crowd has another motive...?
Besides continuing to get ever-increasing amounts of money thrown at them to continue to 'prove' that global warming is, and continues to be, a major threat to the planet, so governments can justify seizing more power to impose new regulations?
Even throwing out the implied conspiracy, since research institutions depend on outside grants for their continued existence, do you really think that climate-research organizations are going to up and say "No, we were wrong; global warming is just another long-period oscillation in the Earth's temperature. There's nothing to worry about; stop giving us money to try to 'prove' what doesn't exist, and you can cancel all your 'global climate change' initiatives, because they won't do any good, and they'll waste trillions of dollars that could be better spent elsewhere."? Look at how many people have vested interests in seeing that the 'threat of global climate change' continues to get flogged past the populace again and again, justifying all of the expensive changes they're trying to push down people's throats.
Everyone has ulterior motives.
The people doing the Global Warming science are based in universities and want to continue to receive funding.
The people doing anti-Global Warming work are based in Energy companies and want to continue to make record profits.
Which one do you think is more likely to color your results?
It takes a great State like Utah to stand out amidst such gleaming examples. I must admit that South Carolina was looking pretty impressive, with the registry of subversives, but if the registration comes with a frame-able certificate, it might be a moneymaker! http://rawstory.com/2010/02/south-carolinas-subversive-activities-registration-act-force/ Texas can hold it's own though. Since the Texas Pledge of Allegiance does not say much more than that Texas is indivisible, it is a spectacular example. Considering that Texas is the only State that actually is divisible.
If that percentage of scientists said there was a high probability (what, 70%? 80%?) that an asteroid would fall on your house tomorrow, killing you and your family, what would you do? Would you tell your spouse "Start Packing!", knowing you would lose your job and put your family in the poor house for a while, or would you tell the scientists to "Prove it!"?
If a large asteroid were on a collision course, should we let it happen as a natural thing? Or bankrupt the country to save the world? Actually, in that case we should probably threaten to do nothing until the rest of the world agrees to chip in...
I understand why you find the matter distasteful, but really it depends on the situation.
Calling on a national vote to determine whether global climate change is real is idiotic.
Asking a bunch of experts on a committee who can be reasonably be expected to know the science/math - or at least not vote if they don't know - is a good way to find out if one guy is making an absurd claim that no one who knows what they're talking about would agree with. Going to a textbook is simply relying on a different expert than the one that made the claim, and, depending on the situation, is prone to cherry-picking. If the vote comes up 99 to 1, you can safely move on. On the other hand, if the vote comes up 60-40, you either want to check your assumptions or evaluate the credentials of your experts.
You know what they say:
As goes Utah, so goes the nation.
I just hope the laws of nature don't try to supersede the proclamations of the Utah State Assembly.
Well, at least your chose your Slashdot nickname well.
Says the homosexual hating mormon. You have no right to call other people bigots when your group is the biggest group of bigots in the room.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
That's because you need more than 15 years to get statistically significant figures.
I think you said that poorly.
There is no sharp cut-off as to the interval size you need to be able to achieve significance. Furthermore, the *meaning* of significance is confusing when we talk about a single interval's importance in falsifying a hypothesis about the distribution of a random variable (global average temperatures)
Imagine we play a game of coin toss with a coin I provide. I take heads, you take tails. We play four rounds, and heads comes up every time. You, naturally, suspect I'm cheating. Then our friend Dr. Jones points out that four sequential heads does not meet the 95% standard for statistical significance. You need no more greater probability for an event than p(1/20), but we only have a p(1/16) event here.
What the deniers are doing with Dr. Jones remarks is like saying, "Four heads in a row is not a statistically significant result, which PROVES the coin is fair."
In any case, *random sampling* is integral to the very notion of statistical significance. In a sequence of trials of a random variable, you can *always* choose an interval that makes the point you want to make: increase/no change/decrease. And technically, your interval *will* be significantly increasing or decreasing as you like.
So basically significance or non-significance of any single sample of a random sequence doesn't prove or disprove anything, if the sample is small and the chooser gets to pick the size of the interval.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Everything in this entire topic is patent bullshit and we can't have a scientific discussion about it because we're not willing to use real data.
Who needs real data? Just remind me what viewpoint allows me to drive my over-sized penis-extension SUV without feeling guilty.
So whats the rush to regulate it? Oh, thats right money. Money to the people who will game the system and then contribute to the "right" people. Money to special interest groups who will fund 529s and such to support the "right" people.
That's exactly the motivation behind attempts to prevent regulation. Really, of all parts of this debate that seem the silliest, it's this one-sided skepticism of greed that annoys me most.
In your view, it is only scientists, entrepreneurs, and politicians who recognize GW that stand to benefit from this debate. Whereas entire industries such as petroleum, coal, manufacturing, etc and their teams of scientists, entrepreneurs, and incumbent politicians are not in the least motivated by greed. In your view somehow, despite earning profits greater than any in all of recorded history, these groups are simply preventing regulation that would interfere with their profit models out of purely selfless interests. http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/01/news/companies/exxon_earnings/
Yadda yadda, I have an IQ over 140 and can't get a girlfriend. GWBush is a eejit and getting into Yale doesn't mean squat. The only reason he got to be president was that he was related to daddy so he could use daddys money and stupid enough to do what he was told by daddys good ole boys.
I don't blame him for anything that went down during his watch, he was only doing what he was told. That much is clear.
One bad apple...
Of course, the vast majority of scientists are trying to deceive us. The oil companies are right, but they don't have enough money to fight the global coalition of evil scientists. We all know environmentalists are extremely wealthy and they will buy the scientific community to say whatever fits their evil, hidden agenda. Of course, nobody knows what's this "agenda" we're talking about but that doesn't matter. It's evil.
The poor oil companies don't have a chance.
If you drive an Escalade, emissions or not, you still look like an asshole.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/automotive/49602d1253739037-manliest-suv-all-time-now-everyone.gif
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Here is a link that may help you may make better arguments in the future.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Apparently neither did the committee, but it didn't stop them having an opinion about it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is like making the ridiculous argument that the shape of the earth is subtly changing and this is a huge disaster; have you never heard of Pangaea?
This is bullshit. If the continental drift was accelerating like the temperatures, we'd witness major geological disasters.
But here's the major problem: the data is being massaged. All arguments about Global Cooling/Global Warming/Climate Change are irrelevant; we discard good scientific data because it supports positions we don't like, and then we politicize the issue like crazy. Everything in this entire topic is patent bullshit and we can't have a scientific discussion about it because we're not willing to use real data.
Of course, the environmentalists and the vast majority of the scientific community are doing this gigantic effort for decades because they're all bitter people that like to make the lives of others miserable.
A place with massive coal reserves is claiming that coal is the best way to produce power?
Hmmm. I think I see the problem.
No sig today...
Amazing how you so deftly correct my misunderstanding...
Oh wait, you didn't because I'm correct, any you know it.
Go burn in that imagined place called hell you bigoted scum.
I think it's more that Utah is sitting on a whole metric assload of coal.
No sig today...
If the continents crash back into each other and form another Pangaea-like continent over about two centuries then we have a HUGE, SERIOUS, FUCKING PROBLEM!
Ok, this is important... I'm seeing a lot of arguing.
The science here is pretty basic, really. We're pumping out a lot of CO2, and it's causing a greenhouse effect. The earth as a whole is getting warmer, and it's weirding things out a little. We're worried about it. It's a complicated system that we're dealing with, and the math isn't straightforward. We can predict climate level stuff over the long haul, but short term predictions are useless, because weather is just way to complicated.
There seem to be a lot of naysayers. Lets really look at this though....
FOR:
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. we produce a lot of it. Not much to question here. These are facts.
AGAINST:
Man can't affect the environment! Debunked. Remember the hole in the freak'in ozone layer? It doesn't get a lot of press, but we did that. Or go to LA during a smog alert and breath deeply... Or look at the giant mound of plastic bits the size of Texas in the ocean, or look at the fish stocks running out on the coasts, or... Etc etc etc.
We don't produce enough! We're just a drop in the bucket compared to what Mom Nature spits out, so we can't be having an effect. Debunked. Yes, mom nature puts out a lot of CO2. And theoretically that has systems in place to deal with it. Our extra does not. Oh, and it's cumulative addition... The extra takes a LONG time to be gotten rid of. Think it's not a big deal? Eat an extra candy bar every day. It's only 300 calories... Compared to the 3000 you're already eating, no big deal right? Yeah, but if you don't work extra to get rid of it, you'll gain about 25lbs in a year.
Follow the money! Climate researchers are just trying to get grants! Yes.... grants... what a wonderful way to get money, to constantly scrap and scrimp. Those researchers are just trying to live it up. Not like the companies that are desperately trying to not get regulated, and have Hooker and Blow money to spare. Seriously.... Debunked.
We're coming out of an ice age! Yes, we are. This is the only criticism I've seen so far that has real merit. Yes, it's supposed to be getting warmer, but NOT THIS FAST. Remeber that the shift in ice ages takes a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Seeing rapid warming inside of decades is NOT supposed to happen. And it is kind of weird how it started speeding up right around the time humans started burning coal en masse. yeah, yeah, correlation, causation. If it's not us, and it's not the earth, do we blame martians? Debunked.
What would disprove it? debunked. Uhm... mean temperatures getting colder over a decade? Mean temperatures staying even over a decade. Mean temperatures rising VEEEEEEERY slightly, but not so much? Funny, it hasn't done any of those.
I'm just not sure! And the coal and oil companies have paid good money to sow those seeds of doubt.
We don't know enough! And to some, we never will. Seriously, we do know enough. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It traps heat in the atmosphere instead of letting it radiate out into space. That is pretty basic. We know this. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2. We know this. Burning a couple million years worth of dead plants in a few centuries overwhelms the natural CO2 balancing systems that are in place. We know this too.
So, what other doubts do you have?
-Tony
For violating the law? Or to the scientist for reporting the violation?
LOL, this must have been one of the Utah Legislatures more " quiet " resolutions. I live in Utah, trust me, everything you have heard about stupid people and Utah is true. Only more so.
That's because they're in VANCOUVER. Vancouver sees on average MAYBE a bit more snow than Seattle, on their lucky years. Only an idiot would host the winter games in Seattle and expect plenty of snow, but because you've crossed the border into Canadia they magically expect Vancouver to be covered in the white shit.
No, some of us just remember the same crap in the 70s about how the world would be in a new ice age by now.
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate is the only peer reviewed paper I am aware of that said anything about an ice age. So that makes 1 paper for GC and thousands of papers for GW. Are you aware of any other peer reviewed papers supporting GC? I don't have access to the articles that cite this one to see if they make the same kind of claims, however the abstracts do not.
We also remember very good science being ripped up because the data was falsefied or poorly collected.
Extraordinary statements require extraordinary proof. I am curious as to what you are attempting to reference.
When you're a sheep, I don't respect your opinion.
Insulting your readers is truly the sign of a towering intellect.
Skeptics I have time for. Convince a skeptic, and you'll have won an actual battle.
Consider me skeptical.
E pluribus unum
I'm willing to make the call that the state is run by reactionary Mormons. The religious studies classes that I've been through have all footnoted Mormonism as a reactionary cult. During one of these classes we had a speaker come in to talk to us who was a "jack mormon" or someone who was able to escape from the church and one of their communities. One of the points that this speaker made was in direct connection to Mormonism and their view on global warming.
Now, in the more orthodox Mormon communities, the families are mandated to keep three days worth of food and water, so that when the rapture comes, the three days in which heaven purges the non-believers, they will have food and water enough for the family to survive in doors. The speaker described what they saw in the basements of these houses, half a dozen ancient refrigerators, and when we say ancient they made the point of telling us that you won't find an "Energy Star" appliance in a Mormon household in these communities because global warming is just another method by which they believe the Rapture might come quicker.
I'm inclined to simply write this off as a Mormon saturated government trying to push religious policy. Religious Dogma has no place in Law, and the government is Utah is a joke.
Wow, between this resolution and one state legislator's proposal to eliminate 12th grade, these idiots make even Arizona look like a bastion of scholarship.
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The theory of "friction" was cooked up by grant-hungry so-called physicists, the WD-40 lobby, and Jiffy Lube.
Climate science is about the long haul. 15 years is a drop in the bucket. The Earth has been continuously warming, there is no doubt about that.
Once we actually have climate science, it wil be about the long haul. Right now we have a bunch of power hungry nutjobs with political power dangling grant money in front of people claiming to be scientists. The Earth has not been continuosly warming. If it were even at 1 degree C per century, then the entire planet would have been a frozen snowball (- 30 C average temperature) a mere 6000 years ago. It would have been at near absolute zero less than 30K years ago. It would be kind of hard on T-Rex to get around and even if he did, he'd break his teeth on the hard frozen flesh of his prey.
So let's lose the "continuously warming" and "no doubt about it" nonsense. The reason Phil Jones et al have got to be considered discredited is becasue they ignored incovenient data. He and the folks at the CRU and Hansen at NASA set themselves out as theoreticians and promptly cherry picked the data they would use to support their "theory". A scientific theory is not like a legal/political theory. A scientific theory has to account for all the data - if it does not it is not much of a theory. It is certainly not sufficient to justify the political chicanery that is happening as a result.
Note that I consider the promoters of "climate change" aka global warming to be discredited. That is the people invloved have been corrupted and their opinions should not be considered in serious policy discussions. We need some real scientists that can come up with a useable (ie capable of predicting) theory - and not one that denies the Medival Warm Period in order to fit the data into a hickey stick curve. We will know we have such a theory when it can be tested by its ability to "predict" temperature/climate trends for any given 500 year period. I expect it to be able take into account the effects of cloud cover and solar activity as well as volcanic activity (all items beyond the capability of the current "models" that are being used by the corrupted climate charlatans. We have other "sciences" that ignore data because the theory says something else "should" happen. They are also generally heavily involved in politics and have degenerated into arguments about what data should be looked at much like lawyers try to get evidence disallowed in a court case.
Go read up on the history of Einstein's General Relativity. He didn't come up with a theory that said that graivity bends light. He came up with a theory that predicted how much light would bend and suggested experiments to gather data that would support or refute his theory. And when the first experimental data came back it did not match his predictions. He revised his theory accordingly - he did not revise the data.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Human impact on the environment has multiple consequences. Climate change, while one of them, is not the whole of the issue. Let's look at the issues in order:
* Habitat loss. We are eliminating the amount of land in which natural species can live and breed. Just like you need room to roam outside your apartments, they need more land than you'd think. But we cut it up with roads and fences and find other ways to squeeze them out.
* Overpopulation. There are too many of us. If any other species grew this fast, and was this numerous at the size we are, we'd kill them off because they would be a cancer onto the earth.
* Land consumption. We are taking up too much land. Land is needed to remain in pristine state as a form of regulatory mechanism, whether forests absorbing carbon or fields of legumes replenishing nutrients. (There are too many instances to count.)
* Species depletion. We are overfishing, we have overhunted, and we have found other ways (habitat loss, toxic pollutants) to kill off other species. This means extinction and loss of segments of the food chain and ecosystem maintenance chains. That's like randomly deleting code from your kernel.
* Pollution. We may be dumping carbon in excess, but we are also dumping everything else: plastics, fertilizers, meds, solvents and toxic chemicals.
The root of our problem is overpopulation, specifically in the third world, and the habitat loss it creates. Drive an SUV if you must -- just leave 100 acres of forested land for the animals. Live in a big house if you must -- just surround it with a few miles of forest, prairie, desert or whatever's natural where you live. But not everyone can do that because not everyone has the money.
We then have two possible solutions:
(1) Reduce everyone to the same uniform level of poverty; equality.
(2) Let some be rich and reduce our population so that we can have fewer, but richer and smarter people; natural selection.
The latter is politically unpopular, and so we need a reason to do the former. Global warming because the political symbol designed to justify option #1 -- and that is why the right and anyone else with a working brain is opposing it.
Futurist Traditionalism
This is like making the ridiculous argument that the shape of the earth is subtly changing and this is a huge disaster; have you never heard of Pangaea?
This is bullshit. If the continental drift was accelerating like the temperatures, we'd witness major geological disasters.
Climate changes, not as subtly as the continents at all. There was an ice age 10,000 years ago covering north America! There have been record hot and cold decades back and forth over periods of 100 years or 1000 years; the Medieval Warm Period is one such inconvenient fact, but there were more minor temperature fluctuations as well. Complaining that "THE CLIMATE IS CHANGING SOMETHING IS WRONG THE WORLD IS ENDING" is bullshit; this is normal, it happens to be inconvenient and troubling.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I remember reading books as a child in the 1980's that said the world would run out of oil in 1994. I also remember "Acid Rain" coming to destroy us all.
I'm sure it will say pi = 3.0 in there someplace.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
I think by the 80's they were pretty certain that the cooling effect wasn't sufficient to overwhelm the warming, and since then, for the past four decades, we've had increasing certainty in warming.
And here's another rebuttal.
I did find an interesting study of the papers written by climate scientists between 1965 and 1979. Seven articles written in that time frame predicted global cooling, forty four predicted global warming and twenty were neutral. It seems the media at the time, not the scientists, were predicting a new ice age.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/03/the-global-cooling-mole/
We shouldn't use the term "Science" as a blanket term to describe any method of investigation. Doing that discredits what I consider legitimate science in the eyes of the un-differentiating public.
Although the "Science" of global climate change is filled with computer models, hypothesis and conjecture, it is mostly devoid controlled experimentation. Controlled experimentation is, in my opinion, the difference between science and other forms of investigation. You need controlled experimentation to gather information about the certainty and applicability of you conclusions. Without controlled experimentation it is impossible to differentiate causality from mere correlation.
Sorry to see that you need a penis extension. Especially and over-sized one.
You can rant and rave about climate change all you want, but the fact of the matter is that unless all nations have a firm agreement in place to stem the unmitigated increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, then it's pointless to try to do it unilaterally. In that case, instead of stifling industry by requiring the reduction of greenhouse gases, you should instead be trying to accumulate as many resources as possible for the inevitable climate change you claim is going to take place. If we really are at peak oil, then the market is going to take care of the carbon issue for us anyway.
And excuse me for being a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but it seems rather odd to me that the same folks who are championing climate change as a scientific issue are also trying to use it to create an international social program in the same flavor as the IMF. They want developed nations to set aside $130 billion to be distributed to 3rd world countries. And by "developed nations," they mean the US and the EU. Because reducing the pool of money available for the countries who actually invest in these green technologies, otherwise driving costs down, makes perfect sense.
Amazing how you so deftly correct my misunderstanding...
Oh wait, you didn't because I'm correct, any you know it.
Go burn in that imagined place called hell you bigoted scum.
I didn't correct your "misunderstanding" because you weren't making a logical argument in the first place. How can you expect me to go through the effort of constructing a logical reply to your posts when you aren't even willing to go through that effort yourself? I also get the feeling that whatever I say won't make the least difference to you. You have already made up your mind.
But, since you asked....
Some Mormons voted no on prop 8 (I assume this is what this is about). You claim that all Mormons are bigots and that because I'm a mormon I must be a bigot, but what about the mormons that didn't vote for prop 8? How do you know the person who made the argument that you responded to isn't one of them (and I'm not the person who made that argument)? Could one of those mormons or even someone who doesn't identify themselves as a mormon have made the argument? You made irrelevant attacks against the person who made the argument rather than respond to his argument.
I could go on, but none of this is really relevant. Even *assuming* that most mormons are bigots does that make it wrong for someone to cry foul at a perceived bigoted opinion directed at mormons? I don't think it does. And if you want to cry foul at bigoted opinions directed towards homosexuals you should do it in the forums where those opinions are being made. Doing it where you did is off-topic.
Film at 11.
You do realise you made that up, don't you?
You can work it out yourself (this was done in 1934, by the way):
Take the climate record.
Find the RMS error to a line fit.
This is your annual error. It is about +/- 0.5C.
Each year you add more data, if there is no trend, you reduce your error of estimation of the mean by a factor of sqrt(N).
Each year the underlying trend if AGW models are right is about 0.02C increase.
Each year you gain more of the trend that underlies the climate. It goes up each year by a factor (N).
Work out where 0.5/sqrt(N) > 25.
N>> 625 ** 1/3
N>> 8 years
16 years leaves you within 2 standard deviations. There's a 90% chance your answer is not real, just happenstance.
24 years leaves you within 3 standard deviations. There's a 95% chance your answer is not real, just happenstance.
30 years means your answer is better than 95% chance of being genuine.
If you want greater certainty, you must use more years.
PS the last 15 years shows 0.12C per decade warming trend (though not above the significance level: therefore the upper bound is over 0.25C per decade. Hence it's entirely possible [if less than 50-50] that the predicted warming of 0.17C per decade has been seen in 15 years).
Utah Legislative Session, or "Why I drink more in January and February"
This is just one bill in a flurry of anti-federal government blathering coming from Utah's capitol hill this session. We also decided we don't want any type of federal health care unless we OK it first, we're going to be able to make our own guns without federal regulation (so long as it can be carried by only one person), and issue guns to Utah residents without any sort of firearm license, and we want to do away with the twelfth grade to save some dough.
I saw a commenter here that said they sympathize with the desire for more scientific evidence. You're giving them far too much credit. Allow me to be clear that these people don't care about scientific data. Rep. Noel has stated publicly that he doesn't trust the federal government due to the death of his cousin in war; he is convinced that any sort of initiative to regulate air quality is a control tactic on the part of the federal government. I'm giving Utah another decade before it secedes from the Union and makes polygamy legal again.
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
Aren't these the same bunch of yokels that think them younguns be havin' too much edjycashun and want to make K-12 into K-11? Big thinkers.
This is obviously a Lex Luthor like ploy to benefit from oceans rising. Utah gets the nod for both long term planning and evil.
Says the homosexual hating mormon.
Mormons don't hate homosexuals. Mormons just think homosexuals are sinners, similar to heterosexuals who commit adultery or fornication. Mormons endeavor (with mixed success, granted) to hate the sin but love the sinner.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Doesn't it also crack you up that people always keep claiming 'there is no doubt about it' right after someone expresses doubt about it. :-)
This is off-topic but somewhat related to this article. First, I'm neutral on global warming. The evidence sure seems convincing, but the sources of the evidence looks pretty suspect. That out of the way, it seems pretty much impossible to avoid because of basic thermodynamics:
Wikipedia says the US consumes about 100*10^15BTU of energy each year. The volume of Lake Superior is about 12*10^15L. Converting all to metric, that would seem to indicate that we use (ie "convert to heat") enough energy each year to raise the temperature of Lake Superior about 2.7C.
Even if we had a perfectly clean energy source that emitted no pollutants whatsoever, that's a buttload of heat to be dumping into the environment. Wind, solar, and tidal energy get a free pass here in that they're moving energy from one part of the ecosystem to another. All other forms of energy production I know of basically extract energy from below-ground reservoirs and move it into the atmosphere. If this is correct, then isn't global warming thermodynamically unavoidable with almost all the energy sources we use today?
I'm pretty sure that my math is right, but I don't have a good sense of scale. Even if that seems like a huge number to me, maybe that amount of energy is lost in the background noise compared to transient sources like solar flares, volcanoes, etc. I don't know. Could someone explain whether I'm reasonably correct, and if not, why?
Disclaimers. To the left: I'm just trying to get a handle on all this. Don't crucify me to expressing (what I feel to be a healthy) skepticism. To the right: I don't own anything that smells like patchouli and my car's gas mileage sucks. I'm not a treehugger! I promise!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And nobody who puts sugar on his porridge is a true official Scotsman.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You have little evidence to support your allegations of misconduct.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
There hasn't been statistically significant cooling nor staying-the-same either. In other words there was no statistically significant climate at all. Not until you go back to 1994 or so. Guess what...
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
"at all the data not just that that proves global warming"
Just what temperature data are you talking about? All those collected by Martian scientists who are withholding it because they are in a secret conspiracy with Al Gore?
"the ice-masses have shifted not shrunk"
Do yourself a favor take a look at the past few years of peak Arctic ice cover over the past few decades from satellite data, rather than simply bearing false witness.
"the pole has shifted, the ice masses moved with it"
Really, please provide the source for signficant movement of the pole within the last 50 years.
"sea levels have remained basically unchanged"
You might want to spend a little time perusing Science and Nature magazines, as opposed to bearing false witness.
"none of the tale tell signs are actually happening"
Then perhaps, you have another explanation for why nearly all glaciers on the planet are receding rather than only about 50% or less. I would love to hear it. Please provide sources, better yet provide data.
...the Sky Fairy, or Jebus, or someother religious whoop-dee-doo will save us! Remember, we're talking about Utah here.
Aren't humans a part of nature though?
I find it hard to believe that the CO2 equilibrium would just happen to also be the maximum. You're suggesting that the tolerance on that equilibrium is less than 5%!
If you were analyzing any other system with feedback, you probably wouldn't even bother ditching a linear model over a 10% perturbation, yet you're claiming that the Biosphere has such stringent tolerances that a 5% perturbation of annual input of a trace gas is catastrophic?
Very well. What is a reasonable tolerance, then? If you say zero, then we might as well all kill ourselves, we can't live on zero unless we want to be hunter-gatherers with child mortality rates of over fifty percent and a good chance of never seeing our thirtieth birthdays.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It was "Global Cooling,"
According to the media, not according to climate science at the time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M
then "Global Warming,"
Yes.
then "Climate Change."
Caused by global warming, yes.
The problem is "Climate Change"
as intended in the context of Global Warming, is that there's going to be more of it, due to Global Warming.
nature before the industrial revolution was at equilibrium
Perhaps that's what the druids and Al Gore think, but nature hasn't been at an equilibrium since the Earth was a large, boiling ball of magma. There have always been freezouts, extinctions, mass starvations, atmospheric turmoil, earthquakes, scorchers, and overactive predators. We don't know what "warmest temperatures on record!" even means. According to vegetation levels in the biosphere, we just had the best decade on record -- which says "pfuu" to any pre-industrial-revolution-natural-utopia concepts.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Evidence? I had the evidence, but I seem to have misplaced it.
Hey if you think it works for Phil Jones then you must accept what I say as equally valid.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Yup. The years 2010-2015 are going to be a doozy in terms of temperatures. I just hope there's going to be a massive volcano going off somewhere, because it's going to get ugly.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Based on what evidence? Based on what science? The Theory of the Invisible Hand?
Economics has a LONG way to go before it catches up to the credibility level of climate science. Especially with damaged spokespeople like Bernard Madoff.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
And nobody who puts sugar on his porridge is a true official Scotsman.
Practicing polygamy and believing that Joseph Smith was a prophet doesn't make you a Mormon any more than cheering for the Canadian Curling Team makes you Canadian. You're a Mormon if you've been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and your name appears on their official membership rolls. If you don't meet those two criteria, then you're a Mormon. If not, you're a member of some other group, regardless of your beliefs.
Nature is not and has never been in equilibrium. The world is constantly changing.
It seems odd to me that the only two sides to this debate are A) Global Warming will kill us all, leaving us with a Mad Max style desert wasteland. or B) Global Warming isn't happening lalala-I-can't-hear-you.
nobody ever considers C) global warming is happening, deal with it. New arable land will open up further north and south, possibly leaving us with more land to live on.
The only problem is the imaginary lines currently criscrossing the globe stopping people from moving, and the current infrastructure built below sea-level.
Sorry I can't find a link, but I know of which he speaks. In the late 70s Time, and IIRC Newsweek and several other of the big magazines of the day were running this story about how we were headed into another ice age. There were several scientists at the time just beginning to study ice cores and were claiming we appeared to be headed straight into another major cooling period, hence another ice age.
IIRC these guys got lots of grants, did more ice core drillings, and then quietly dropped off the radar. look up "Time 70s ice age prediction" and maybe you'll have better luck, as my Google Fu doth suckth. Correction, it was Newsweek and here is a PDF of the 1975 issue. Hey, maybe my Google Fu is getting better!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
...declaring Utah to be dumb!
The fact is that even if those few data points the deniers are pointing to were thrown out, it would would not alter the fundamental realization that the mean temperature of the earth is rising dramatically and that this is going to have significant impacts on humanity, most adverse.
The deniers can bear all the false witness they want, but the underlying reality of the correctness of the CO2 Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming will remain true nonetheless.
I'd rather convince a politician than a skeptic.
You know, seeing as those morons are the ones WRITING THE FRACKING LAW.
When you're a sheep, I don't respect your opinion. Skeptics I have time for. Convince a skeptic, and you'll have won an actual battle. Convince a politician who wants votes and sees the sheep voters following your opinion already and you've accomplished little.
So is that your way of saying you only listen to people who don't agree with global warming? "Somebody screwed up forty years ago, and that's why I dismiss an entire field of research". It sounds like you are a real skeptic.
NO SHIT, THE CLIMATE CHANGES.
So what's it doing now, eh? What's the climate going to be like in 50 years? 100 years? 200 years? How can we affect that? How are we already affecting it? That's the question, innit? "Climate change" as an issue refers more to "what factor does man's activities play", than "Hey, it's warmer this century than last". Man's activities being of particular interest because it is the factor in climate that we can change. If you'll pardon the expression, stating the obvious, "the climate changes" merely clouds the issue.
But here's the major problem: the data is being massaged. ...we're not willing to use real data.
Of course the data is being massaged. You wouldn't understand it at all if it wasn't massaged. Best case, you would draw incorrect conclusions.
The argument is from "whose massaging is correct", not "ZOMG! It's being massaged!" Real data? You yourself decry the use of real data because it has to be interpreted to be understood.
There have been two schools of thought with respect to trying to win arguments given conflicting points of view.
One is adopting the approach of gathering the best evidence and using reason to generate a convincing argument. The second is to adopt the approach of using clever rhetorical devices to guile or deceive your audience, whether through appeals to fear, ignorance, disbelief, creating strawmen, etc. into believing your conclusions without the need for rationality or the truth. Science relies at least predominantly on the former, whereas lobbyists, propagandists, idealogues, lawyers, salesmen, etc, rely on the effectiveness of the later.
One can look at the track record of both approaches, the scientific vs. the sophistic and ask yourself. Which approach has provided the most dividends?
Your post, "So, a radical increase in factor x proves instability, and a radical decrease in factor x proves instability. Given that any radical change in factor x proves instability, what would disprove instability?" is an excellent demonstration of the sophistic form of argumentation. It doesn't work because you haven't assigned a values to either "x", or "instability", or "radical decrease", "radical change in factor x", nor is it even clear that from one second to the next, your notion of what these values might be are even the same or comparable, other than being called "x".
Unfortunately, such an argument, if you can even call it that, has little bearing on the reality of CO2 driven climate change and what humanity needs to do to alter what is otherwise about to become a very nasty period in human history.
Sophism is no defense for bearing false witness, nor is it a defense for weak arguments.
So all the plants will look over at each other and shout: "Whoops, that's 600GT's, stop growing!"
The planet is greener now than it used to be because of Man's activities. (not in a "green agenda sense" but in a color of the landmasses when viewed from above because of the amount of plant matter)
There is always 2 sides to any argument. The possibility of GW/CC is mostly theory at this point based on trends and observations noted over a nominal period of time performed by educated individuals in the scientific community. The anti-GW/CC crowd base their criteria on looking outside in winter and declaring hogwash because it's snowing in February in the northern hemisphere.
What's worse is something like this Utah bill, in that they merely call for more studies to occur before we do anything. Unfortunately the only study the skeptics ever do is navel gazing followed by bickering. These people are not scientists capable of any form intelligent study, or thought for that matter. They employ fiction writers to create their public announcements just like we hear everyday out of our government and government run agencies. All we ever hear is bullshit
Our options are pretty simple. We can bury our heads in the sand and pretend all is just hunky dory and continue to blather and squabble over the existence of the boggy man. Alternatively, we can change our methods of dealing with our industrial feces in the event we are actually fucking up our planet beyond repair. Otherwise, how will we know when we have crossed the threshold to point of no return and then face extinction or move off planet?
One thing is certain, the action we don't take today, we leave for our children. Eventually someone will have to face the music, and it won't be a song they will appreciate.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
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Global Warming is APTLY named as it refers to the rise of GLOBAL MEAN TEMPERATURE and has always been such. Climatologists have long been studying this phenomenon and it is indeed a fact, regardless of how many or how cleverly many might wish to bear false witness.
What you are confused about is that the sophists have chosen to focus on the inconsistencies of the implications of such global mean temperature rise to mask an attack on the underlying scientific theory. Climatologists never intended for their nomenclature to reflect a prediction of the positive or negative nature of the potential consequences of a rise in the mean global temperature.
Such sophism will continue to be used, especially by those industries that rely on hydrocarbon combustion to deny global warming. That is a fact as much as global warming is a fact. Yes, sadly the weak-minded will always be swayed by sophism. Whether a name change depending upon ones propaganda will not materially alter the reality of global warming.
Its going to get hotter folks, especially for those who choose to deny it. Just think how stupid Glen Beck is going to feel in July and August. I betcha Ruppert will be giving him an extended all expenses paid vacation to stay out of town so he doesn't have to answer any pointed questions about the "climate". Either that or we can expect him to wax eloquent on the difference between climate and weather.
The cooling issue was from sulphur oxide emmissions. I prefer to call it global dimming as that reduces confusion with warming.
Of course, sulphur isn't our primary fuel, just a biproduct, so all the plants now have equipment to prevent suplhur oxides from being emmitted to the atmosphere. Easy fix - no debate needed.
Carbon oxides on the other hand are much harder to deal with. Some people see it to be easier to just bicker rather than start working on solutions...
I did read an interesting idea a few days ago that global warming was initially introduced as a scam to get people to accept nuclear power, until Chernobyl turned everyone away from that idea.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
You obviously don't know much either science, science funding, or peer review.
Scientist make their name by producing research that holds up in the face of the science that follows. There is nothing to benefit a scientist to make an "important discovery" or profound claim, only to have it disproved in the future by someone else. If a business analogy is even apt at all, it is that the most successful scientists are successful because of their track record of producing good science that can not be readily challenged rather than how much grant money they bring in, particularly since little grant money actually goes to the scientist directly. In that sense its more likely to go to the company that sells the equipment or supplies used, travel taken, to the graduate student who gets a modest amount of support for his/her education as part of the process, or the administrator who can then use the included indirect costs, to offset the actual costs of doing the science.
Most peer reviews are anonymous. The reviewers are not known to the author. Most peer review focuses on specific argumentation of method or fact that would be used to reject or suggest improvements that the author must meet to see publican of his or her work. Consequently, the whole concept doesn't lend itself well to the notion that scientists are busy doing this "for the money". Take my word for it, anyone could get a much higher hourly wage doing almost anything else than writing science proposals to get "grants", which typically only partially cover the cost of doing the science. If you want to ignore Jesus and cast stones to castigate someone for milking the system, you might try bankers, media moguls, heath insurance execs or lawyers rather than scientists. The "ore" you might strike is likely to be far, far higher. Scientist by and large a very weak grade of such "ore".
If you can't attack the science, attack the scientist. That's a great solution to the problems facing humanity.
Who is the All-Powerful Atheismo?
Would that be Ruppert Murdoch?
He certainly seems eager to hire guys like Glen Beck who are so determined to trash the teachings of Jesus by preaching hate rather than love and replacing Christianity with its compassion for others with good old-fashioned, unadulterated greed.
What is it with you that compels you to bear false witness? Are you being paid for it?
Not to pick sides in this democrat vs republican thing you've got going here, but your previous, republican, president wasn't exactly the epitome of intelligence... yet the democrats are supposedly the stupid ones? ok.
Yes, because everyone who matters just automatically knows that nearly all Conservatives are uneducated buffoons "clinging to their guns and religion" and anyone who believes otherwise can simply be dismissed as "unenlightened", right?
GW was many things, a good portion of which I disliked, but unintelligent/stupid is NOT one of them. Even if we were to discount the fact that GW graduated from an Ivy-League school, as it's possible that he somehow bought his degree, there is one thing that absolutely puts the lie to the "stupid bumpkin" label the left has repeatedly tried to attach to GW; he flew a military jet in the '70s and didn't crash & burn.
Whatever claims one may make about GW, he was NOT stupid, slow, or unintelligent. One did not pilot a '70s-era military jet fighter and survive even doing touch-and-goes in peacetime unless one was significantly above-average in intelligence with an above-average ability to make correct, rapid, multiple concurrent decisions in real-time using rapidly-changing data. Quick reflexes alone are not even close to being enough.
Of course it's much easier to label someone you disagree with as a dolt and dismiss them out-of-hand than it is to debate the factual merits of an argument, particularly when the facts don't align with the detractor's point of view. We see the same tactic being played out in the lame-stream media regarding the former Governor of Alaska and the Tea Party participants.
Whenever someone starts in with the "Bush is stupid", "Palin is stupid" or "Tea-Party participants are stupid" memes, I know I can safely dismiss anything further they may say as they're rabidly partisan and won't let facts get in the way of their opinions.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Science has never required faith nor does it now or will it in the future. Science is about reasoning and learning how to know.
You are confusing belief that a particular hypotheis may or may not be true and faith. But then, why do I somehow suspect your motive is merely to cast vague aspersions about scientists, so somehow in your mind your sophistry will work to discredit their findings, truths that you find politically or ideologically inconvenient.
Backbone for what, a declaration of intentional ignorance?
Perhaps if you spent more time studying science, you might not feel so threatened.
Just out of curiosity, without science how might you go about deciding for yourself what is true or untrue?
Climate change has been proved conclusively.
Its just that the slow-minded haven't figured that out yet.
That is why there is so little debate among scientists. The debate within the scientific community regards the SPECIFIC consequences of the fact of global warming.
The "debate" you refer to is in the court of public opinion and lets face it the hydrocarbon combustion industry can afford to generate substantial sophism as well as CO2 to make confuse the uneducated into thinking that there is some fundamental unsettled scientific question here. It a lot like the sophism generated by the creationists who try with futility to cast doubt about Darwinian theory. Modern molecular biology and medicine are now based on that theory and no amount of sophism will alter the reality of that.
Will Texans also be blaming all those damn liberal elitists for the drying that so much of Texas is experiencing?
Given a little more time and a little more global warming and folks in Texas will remember horses in the same way South Africans remember the Quagga not to mention the range cattle.
We'd then expect, over the next decade, to have rapidly increasing temperatures as all the warming factors are positive, then probably a flat profile after that
Solar radiation is remarkably invariant, as Warmers point out every time Denialists mention it. Now suddenly it's an important variable?
No significant volcanoes since the 1992 Mount Pinatubo erruption, which shaved about 1 C off global temperatures for a year. Volcanic timescales are very short compared to a 15 year scale.
El Nino is a climate effect as well as a cause. If a climate model able to correctly predict its direction and strength I'd be pretty impressed.
So yeah, the next decade may see a marked increase in the warming rate. If it does, I'll take it seriously.
If it doesn't, what'll you do?
Also, isn't it curious that there's no evidence of warming in the past 15 years but we keep on hearing about how Arctic ice is melting at record rates. What do you suppose is driving that?
If global temperatures have not increased, yet Arctic melting is not only going on but going on at a rate far faster than anyone predicted (which is what I always see reported) what is driving it?
Clearly not anything to do with the Earth's overall heat budget, which you have just admited
has been very nearly neutral in the past 15 years.
That is: since there has been no significant increase in the Earth's atmospheric heat content in the past 15 years, none of the climate effects seen in that time can be anything but the result of something else, unless the cumulative effect of GW/CC up to 1995 is somehow the cause, but since the water cycle has an extremely short timescale it seems implausible that the effects would continue to worsen over 15 years with no warming.
I'm not saying this to be faceious... it really does seem to me to be extremely odd, to the point where one might want to look elsewhere for the climate effects that have been observed in the past 15 years, if we all agree the Earth's heat budget has been almost perfectly neutral over that time.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Strangely, when I took my statistical analysis course, many people had trouble getting a C- and to be honest, the exams weren't that hard.
Now, everybody is commenting on statistical studies as if they were experts on the subject.
When did so many people become experts in statistics?
Thanks - though as Snarky McButtface points out above in his reply to me, we should be careful of trying to judge scientific consensus from magazine articles. How many papers predicting global cooling were there? And how does that compare to predictions of global climate change today?
The Hadley/CRU records that Dr. Jones uses don't cover the Arctic as well as the NASA/GISS records. The HADCRUT records show a trend at the bottom of the the projections but the GISS does show a statistically significant trend for the past 15 years. I'll leave it up to you to determine why the difference between the two.
BTW, regarding Arctic sea ice, a planned trek to the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility has been called off recently because of the fragility of the ice this year. There's a good chance that in September of 2010 we will see a new record low for sea ice in the Arctic.
riverat: AC to preserve mods.
"Go read up on the history of Einstein's General Relativity."
A more relevant perspective can be gained by reading up on the history of Fourier's 1824 prediction concerning the IR absorbtion properties of CO2 which were confirmed experimentally by Faraday in the 1850's. From Forier's "law of physics" we get the following radiative forcing formula for CO2...
5.35*ln(C2/C1) = 3.71 W/M^2
The answer is what you get for a doubling of CO2 concentration which is expected to be achived by the mid 21st century. This formula does not include positive feedbacks which paleoclimatology (a branch of geology) indicates will amplify that figure to around 7 W/M^2.
"Once we actually have climate science, it wil be about the long haul"
The national academies first warned the US government it had observed a warming signal from our emmissions in the 1950's, the only change to that warning since it was issued has been a dramatic increase in it's confidence levels. So exactly how long is your long term?
As for politics certain powerfull economic sectors have a strong vested interest in convincing people that Al Gore invented global warming in 2005, your views on Phil Jones seem to indicated you have taken their bait and are now ideologically hooked into their prefered "wait and see" strategy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I wasn't too young in the 70s, and the only reference to an impending ice age I remember was that global warming could cause a Younger Dryas type of event. The artic ice cap could melt causing colder water to interrupt the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation pattern, plunging northern Europe into colder weather. You can read about the possible effect of shutting down the thermohaline circulation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation
It wasn't that there was global cooling, but rather a dim concern that we might be warming the world up, causing climate instabilites.
Primarily due to a economic crisis created by the former administration. Your point?
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Tired of discreditng the fallacious arguments of the AGW deniers.
There's and app for that!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/17/iphone-app-climate-change
The ihone has a useful app, whodathunkit.
GWB was just the spokesmodel for the neocons.
While the science around climate change deserves scrutiny and probing, this probing should probably be done by scientists, not legislators.
Why do you think they passed this bill? To _make_ a policy statement. Do you think that physical scientists have any special expertise in economics or social policy? If anyone it is overstepping their bounds here it is the scientists who act as if they have been anointed arbiters over all political questions.
The question at hand is a political one, not a scientific one: whether the EPA should be regulating carbon dioxide. It is not the EPA that has the power to pass cap and trade it is Congress. How dare they(!). Certainly Congress isn't qualified to decide such life and death matters. Instead we should appoint a committee of seven scientists and let all power flow down from there.
You misspelled hoss.
twice, damn yuppie.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The planet is greener now than it used to be because of Man's activities.
Do 3" high lawns trap more or less carbon than 3' high grasslands? Does a square mile of wheat/corn trap more or less carbon than a square mile of dense forest with 40' trees?
Nature is not and has never been in equilibrium. The world is constantly changing.
At a vastly slower rate than with human intervention. Sea life can adjust for a 2 degree temperature swing over a few thousand years. In a hundred? Not so much.
Another fact that you conveniently leave out is that large, natural swings in climate tend to result in mass extinctions.
Your long term trend has a problem. The "hockey stick", even if you believed in it, ended in 1995. The escape to infinity positive feedback loop predicted did not happen. Disaster was averted for 15 years without policy intervention. We are not living in The Day After Tomorrow.
Increasing partial pressures of CO2 increase the effective photosynthesis of plants across the entire face of the globe, most especially the oceans. This results in more hydrocarbons and calcium carbonate deposits on the floor of the oceans as the predominant terrestrial life form - algae - and the organisms that eat algae sequester it. That's a negative feedback loop that leads to equilibrium. There are not enough carbon based fuels left in the ground to even approach the optimal CO2 partial pressure for photosynthesis with modern plants, let alone exceed it.
We've burned most of the readily available carbon-based fuels already, and poorly. Modern methods create a lot less pollution. What damage we can do with the rest is not going to turn the Earth into Venus. If that could happen, it would have happened over a hundred million years ago when that carbon was being sequestered the previous time. Naturally that was not the first time. The life/carbon cycle is an important part of the Snowball Earth/Verdant Earth cycle. The vast majority of atmospheric CO2 in the Earth's original atmosphere was sequestered over a billion years ago when life was much different than it is today.
AGW alarmists would have you believe escape-to-infinity positive feedback loops are the only ones operating here. They're not. The Earth has sufficient quantity and diversity of biomass to prevent any runaway anything, and these cooperative organisms operate in to an effect (but not by design) that keeps us comfortable because in a larger biosphere sense we evolved to be compatible with their equilibrium.
Oddly enough much of the carbon that was in the atmosphere billions of years ago was sequestered by life forms like algae, which deposited it on the floor of the oceans where it was subducted by tectonic plate motion and dissolved into the Earth's mantle. We see today only a tiny fraction of the fossils that once consumed all that CO2, producing the O2 humans breathe today. Occasionally we see it as volcanic activity as high percentages of CO2 in the subducted rock escape violently in a process called "volcanic eruption". As the biosphere and tectonic motion subduct more and more carbon our supply of this precious resource will run out over the next billion years as it is no longer being replenished by comets as much as it once was. If we want to sustain our teeming billions we will one day import CO2 from the oort cloud or other sources. Before then we'll deliberately create CO2 from effluent and water capturing the phosphates for fertilizer and closing the cycle where it touches us.
So there. Current atmospheric concentrations of CO2 won't double, won't turn into a runaway greenhouse, and will eventually be sequestered, subducted, and become a lost precious resource.
Now let's talk about husbanding our carbon fuel resources because they're a limited resource that will run out unless we get more from off-planet! That's a much more realistic issue than "OMG! Russians and Canadians might someday enjoy luxuries like sunbathing and agriculture! Rising oceans might drown humans who can't move inland at a rate of 1M/decade!"
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How long is this "no warming in last 15 years" half-truth going to survive?
I would be greatly pleased if someone who takes this as some sort of anti-gw proof would kindly review this graph: http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998 then explain why they still hold that view.
Then there is this 2000 year graph showing the results of 10 different studies by different teams using different methodologies: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png
Is there a claim that ALL of them are junk?
You're a fucking moron if you believe this.
I used to belive in AGW, until I discovered that its proponents are such pricks. People are jerks when they're defending the indefensible, because that's how bullies gain their turf.
When faced with the quandry of conflicting sources with agendas, it's best to sweep the agendas away and examine the underlying facts. So... Who's got facts to share? Which debater is documenting their sources, publishing their underlying data and disclosing their analysis methods without fear or shame? Crunch the available numbers yourself if you want to.
I did. I don't have any peer-review quality data to share, but when I look at the raw data the corrections, the updates, the sample selection for the studies I find a number of things. The sensors march determinedly toward the sea over time. They decrease in elevation and move toward city centers (or city centers are built up around them). Remote and colder data is neglected as being unreliable. The newer the revision, the more older data decreases in temperature. An ice age is forming in 1910 as we watch the data evolve. The numbers are publicly available and you're welcome to check my figures.
I find the dendro-proxy data unconvincing for a number of reasons. It includes strip-bark tree data like Bristlecone Pines. I used to have a section of a Bristlecone pine (I grew up where they live - it was pre-endangered species period. The Paiute call it "Iron Wood". One log of it will burn for two days, but if you cut a tree down to try that you're going to prison.) Bristlecone pines have bark that wanders across their exterior. The type of sampling they did - cores - might show a particularly thin gap between rings that represents a dry summer, or that thin stripe might represent a thousand years that the bark covered a different part of the tree trunk. They were warned not to use strip bark trees in their dendro-proxies, but ignored the guidance because Bristlecone pines are the oldest living tree.
The dendro-proxy data includes highly selected (<20% sample) of a Russian Yew study that shows no warming except for one tree, the most influential tree in the world. The Russians have since refuted the warmist interpretation of the data. It includes samples from a Chinese study which has since denied their interpretation. Of course the Himalayan glacier melt quote and the disaster prediction paper are such embarassingly poor science as to be unworthy of mention here among adults - that's ISO/IEC 29500:2008 grade science, not something grownups should consider even if they nearly caused a disaster that was averted.
And then there's the Midieval Warm Period, which warmists deny as local on faith without any evidence whatsoever because it conflicts with their impending climatic apocalypse view. I don't know what to say about that. Obviously written history records that the Midieval Warm Period happened. It was perhaps partly responsible for the Black Death and the Renaissance, against which our modern concerns seem trivial.
Warmers like to cite satellite data. The satellites are calibrated on terrestrial data (theirs). They claim the satellites back their data, when in fact the satellites are deltas from it, and poor ones at that. 3000 miles is a long distance to measure a point in time temperature from, especially to fractions of a degree C. And then there's the fact that the satellites measure the temperature of the solid object their gaze falls upon - the ground or the surface of the sea in full daylight, rather than the air temperature two meters above ground in the shade, which is what most weather stations measure. To expect a high corrolation between these two method
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not to start a flamewar or anything. But I can imagine that with all the substance abuse Bush jr. did when he was younger, I can imagine it could've had certain effects on the workings of his brain..
Not to start a flamewar or anything. But I can imagine that with all the substance abuse Bush jr. did when he was younger, I can imagine it could've had certain effects on the workings of his brain..
For what it's worth, moderate cocaine use hasn't to my knowledge been commonly associated with long-term negative effects upon cognition or memory, but we recently had a president that "didn't inhale" marijuana, which has widely-known long-term negative effects upon memory and cognition, and that president was considered rather "cool" by most people because he had smoked pot.
Why does one get a "pass" and the other doesn't?
Just sayin'.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
"I'm not saying this to be faceious..."
Ditto, a few points...
I do not agree that there has been virtually no warming since 1995, the trend is still 0.11 ~ 0.15DegC/decade. What Phil Jones actually said in his BBC interview (linked in the skeptical science article) was that the confidence level for the trend over that 15yr period does not quite reach the magical 95% level of certainty. The same is true for ANY 15yr period. It comes as no surprise to me that the Daily Fail is the source of the misquotes and confusion.
Arctic melt is mainly driven by the rise in ocean temps (see the graph in the skeptical science link above), ocean currents, and a phenomena called polar amplification that was first predicted by models in the 1980's and was later confirmed by regional analysis of observations.
Both the ocean and the ice have a thermal inertia many orders of magnitude larger than the atmosphere. This means that if the atmosphre were to somehow drop 10DegC off the global average (say a freak run of consecutive volcanic eruptions) the ice would still continue on a melting trend for quite a few years.
There is some weak evidence that the heat going into the recent "dramatic" melting of the Arctic ice may be responsible for the flattening of the curve over the last couple of years but this is far from certain. What is a lot more certain is that, like the long term atmosphereic trend, the long term melting trend is virtually unchanged by the recent dramatic melt.
The PDO (El-Nino/El-Nina) is an internal fluctuation of the Earth's climate system, it is not a root cause for anything. It randomly redistributes existing heat in the ocean/atmosphere. It has nothing to do with the heat budget because it is basically large scale turbulence, I would also be very impressed if anyone could predict turbulance with any degree of accuracy.
Solar flux was counted as a minor positive forcing in the IPCC reports. There is some evidence it has become weaker since the 1990's. But I agree that the forcing effect of the sun can be considered stable in a "spherical cow" analysis.
None of this changes the radiative forcing properties of CO2 that have been understood now for nearly 200yrs. Nor does it change the fact we have pumped half a trillion tons of the stuff into the atmosphere and are on track to double that tonnage in the next 40yrs.
The only thing humans have any control over is our emmissions of GHG's (long term warming) and areosols (short term cooling). According to Fourier (1824 - explained in my link above), a trillion tons of CO2 will result in a rise of ~1.5degC. This 1.5degC will be added to the heat budget regardless of all the other forcings and feedbacks we don't have control over. The same laws of physics will continue to operate after 2050. We could blanket ourselves in smog to balance the heat budget but that seems to me to be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
Simple risk analysis says we need to drastically cut our emmission, technically and financially I don't believe it's a difficult 40yr goal, I also don't believe anyone has the political solution to the tradgedy of the commons.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Perhaps Utah is just jealous of Wyoming's Coal Mining Industry and is eager to further exploit Utah's coal fields. Those pesty regulators always get in the way of dirty capitalism.
-Eric
Unfortunately, almost all our political systems are based around far too short a time-frame for anything in the 15 to 40 year planning range to be considered good busines.
I have it on good authority that back in the day the political elite were in it for the common good (because they tended to be the already well off and didn't otherwise need regular income from their political lives). This is no longer the case for the most of us, which is good in many many ways, but now it would seem that the overriding driver for our political masters (notice, elite is now masters, and who could have seen that coming with all the social reform eh!) is to do whatever it takes to get re-elected to the gravy train.
Now which grasping 4 year politico is going to sign their own death warrant by raising taxes, etc, to fix something that's only going to start being a real problem for their successors!
Honestly, we're doomed! DOOMED I TELLS YA, DOOOOOOMED!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
1. If there is no man-made global warming because mans actions do not affect the climate, then there would be no adverse effects of cutting down on CO2, or other kinds of emissions. If there is a man made global warming, the result of not cutting down on emissions could be catastrophic.
2. The amount of oil, gas and coal is finite. As of today we do not have readily available technology to maintain anything resembling the western worlds current standards of comfort when we run out of fossil fuel. We do not know how long it will take to develop this technology, so why not start sooner rather than later?
3. Even if you do not believe that CO2 emissions cause global warming, I have yet to meet anyone who thinks CO2 is good for you. Anyone who has ever been sitting near a campfire and felt the stinging in their eyes and lungs from the smoke should be able to agree that the smoke from burning carbon-based fuel probably isn't good for you. When faced with confliting theories and adhering to one (beliveing in man-made global warming and trying to cut down on emissions) causes no ill effect, but adhering to the other (denying man-made global warming and doing nothing) could potentially have catastroping consequences, why not err on the side of caution?
4. OK, so you don't believe in man-made global warming. You feel the evidence does not prove it. How certain do you have to be in order to do something anyways? I know that if I thought a certain event that could end human existence had a 1% chance of happening, I would'nt sit on my ass and accept that we had a 99% chance of survival. Would you fly if 1 out of every 100 planes crashed? Would you drink Coca-Cola if 1 out of every 100 bottles was laced with poison? The risk of anybody trying to hijack a plane is far less than 1%, but we still use billions of dollars to prevent it. So if you are 99% sure that global warming is a hoax, shouldn't you still be doing something about it?
5. The Utah Assembly is worried that without coal mines people will fall into poverty. It might interest them that most people in the world make a living without digging finite resources out of the ground. The only problem is that these companies don't exist yet, and therefore can not pay money to the politicians.
And who does Utah want researching climate issues, if not climate researchers? Shoe salesmen?
Anybody on minimum wage, so long as the results are cleared past the Exxon marketing department of course.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I don't know if it's related, but one thing I see (not just among Americans) is a belief in consensus and that where an answer is disputed the true value must lie on the average, or at least between the extremes. Hence, if people hear exaggerated claims often enough it "pulls" people's perception of what the value is. I don't know if sociologists/psychologists have done any research on this.
At the bottom of the
You take the sum of temperatures across the entire earth and average them. If the average goes down, then global warming is disproved.
There are well known cycles as well. Perhaps you'll find this video interesting, because it shows the argument in action.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
A good reference regarding solar variability is section 2.7.1 on pages 188-193 of chapter 2 in the IPCC AR4 WG1 report. "Remarkably invariant" wouldn't be my first choice of words. Solar output varies cyclically, mainly at an 11 year cycle. But the satellite network hasn't detected a long term trend in solar output over the past ~40 years to match the surface temperature trend over that timespan.
Again, it's better to think about the heat content of the ocean+troposphere system. That eliminates the spurious ENSO heat redistributions which seem to confuse so many nonscientists. Plus, the internal energy of the Earth certainly includes the heat of fusion of melting glaciers and sea ice, so I don't agree that the Earth's heat budget has been neutral over the past 15 years.
Wow! In that case, why do climatologists bother to take initial condition ensembles, if climate models have the accuracy you're claiming they do? Is it because they enjoy increasing the run time on expensive supercomputers by an order of magnitude?
GCMs with better skill than those available to modern science will eventually be able to make predictions that require less temporal averaging. But right now I'd say his figure is on the low side; climate is only meaningful when discussing averages over ~20 years.
It is a massive double standard!
It is more than a double-standard. It is projection. A nasty form of denial where one sees their own faults onto their adversaries. Basically, you do bad science, lie, act unethically, and then accuse your opponents of your own actions. It is like a guy who goes to a bar and picks fights -- but he himself sees all of these other aggressive people. It is a type of madness.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I think that relativistic values
It is not just relativistic values, it is social constructionism and post modernism gone awry. These are excellent intelligent theories, however, they are all too often used by people who don't understand maths, have no respect for science, and still want to claim the intellectual primacy of their beliefs. This includes a large section of the humanities.
The result is that science is just "spin". There is a point to that -- but it is too subtle for Joe Average College Student.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I think he may be refereeing to early versions of the movie 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' (they kept re-editing it after release to fix all the incorrect fact so there are multiple version), where they claim that volcanoes etc. produce much more CO2 then man, this is completely wrong, humans produce nearly 130 times the CO2 from volcanoes.
AFAIK it wasn't just cocaine, it was also alcohol abuse if I'm not mistaken..
And AFAIK (I'm definitely not an expert) cocaine definitely does do some serious brain damage and is a really different category compared to marijuana.
Marijuana is more like cigarettes, it does damage to your body, it's really stupid to use it, but if it does kill you it will only kill you slowly. AFAIK nobody ever overdosed on marijuana.
Take this with a grain of salt though, coming from somebody who doesn't even smoke or drink (well maybe one or two drinks a year).
But anyway, whatever bushes intelligence is, I believe he was easily manipulatable and manipulated by Cheney et al.
Don't think he meant any harm in anything he did.
Maybe he did, but there's no way of knowing for sure.
That's all just my opinion of course.
"Data Massaging" in typical context refers to examining the data, examining the conclusions it suggests, examining the conclusions favorable to you, and then altering the data (discard data points you dislike, emphasize some low-resolution data over higher-resolution data that reflects unfavorable implications, etc) to be more favorable.
For example, drug companies may put together several studies done by various research groups about the effectiveness of a drug; they'll pick the ones that show the drug's effective, and discard ones that show severe side effects or suggest 90% of the action is placebo. The conclusions we draw from the real data are different than from what we're given; the drug may be completely ineffective, the studies that show effectiveness may have flaws, the ones showing lack of confidence in the drug's efficacy may be conducted much better, and we pick out the ones that look good and say "See it works now shut up."
The data isn't being "interpreted," it's being "selectively interpreted." Data that's unfavorable is ignored. In real science, data that is unfavorable to your hypothesis gets more attention; it's strange, because it breaks your model, and you need to examine it and see why your model's wrong or why your experiment produced incorrect data. You don't sit around going, "How do I alter the experiment to rid myself of repeatable, significant anomalies?"
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History repeats. Bush walked in on the same thing...
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Two sets of scientists can look at all of the data and both can come up with different results.
Climate change has been proven and disproven using the same data over and over again. Both sides omit data that does not support their hypothesis. Only problem is that the "humans are destroying the planet" crowd resort to name calling and whining that you are trying to destroy us all.
Before any of you go off on me, should we clean up our planet? Yes, it's the only one we got. Do we need cleaner forms of energy? Yea, we already have it, it's called nuclear energy and they can neutralize the waste, so this is not an argument against using it. I've known people who work in nuclear plants all over the world for more that 25 years, most of the arguments against it don't hold any water.
If either side were right about the percentage changes we should be seeing we would already be dead. The compound mixtures in our atmosphere are very precise. If any one of these were to go out of balance, no life on Earth. So, can this bunch of fleas we call "humans" really do anything other than irritate our host?
I've heard that suggested as the British counterpart to the US obsession with democracy. Offered a choice between Adolf Hitler and Vlad the Impaler, the Americans would ask "Who does the majority prefer" whilst we Brits would ask "Could we have someone with a position somewhere in-between, please?"
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Really? I don't seem to recall people saying that a massive depression was starting in 2001.
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I didn't insult my readers. I could've just as easily said "anyone who goes by what they hear on the radio" but then someone would've said "who listens to the radio anymore?" The term sheep is hardly an insult on the level of "moron", but simply a reference to not thinking for one's self about an issue (despite the possible capacity to do so).
I'm not going to list all the examples of bad science in the last fifty years. I seem to recall a researcher named Jones recently at least losing his data at Everest(?) if you'd like a recent one.
My point was simply that being skeptical hardly makes one the bad guy. "Almost everyone agrees" isn't a valid argument.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
There's always a nationwide bank run, or a stock trading scandal, or a massive health care crisis that is about to wipe out all savings in this miserable big nation, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they Do... Not... Know about it!
The "Dot-Com Bust" yes.
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I didn't insult my readers.
I'm not sure how calling people sheep isn't insulting.
I'm not going to list all the examples of bad science in the last fifty years.
I didn't ask you to. I don't understand how you intended the second sentence to be taken as a general statement in the context of the first. But the way this usually works is the person making the claims has to supply some evidence, not just make vague claims and expect others to do the research for them. But you don't seem to want to cite your evidence or provide sources.
My point was simply that being skeptical hardly makes one the bad guy.
And I'm skeptical that Glenn Beck didn't rape and murder a young girl in 1991. Ask all the questions you want, it doesn't make them relevant.
Skeptics I have time for.
Doesn't seem like it.
E pluribus unum
If you REALLY DO believe in Global Warming OR Climate CHANGE please do me a favor and look up the average temperature of the existence of LIFE on Earth.
Look at the LONG TERM chart of temps, look at the duration when LIFE has EXISTED on the planet, or you can look at only the section when Primates are known to exist on Earth, with either one of these please derive the average temp during these periods ???
Also, record the MAX and MIN temps for either period.
Then compare this to the current temps !!!
The models are wrong. Big deal. That doesn't make the planet cooler. It just means we're unclear about the causes. (Which is all you global warming deniers want, isn't it? Can't you just attack the science based on the actual fact that root causes of warming are difficult to pin down and not outright lie and claim that the planet is not significantly warming?)
Well over 1,000,000 jobs are being eliminated in California over this "big deal". Since the rest of us get to pay those share of the tax burden, plus any other carbon taxes, I would like someone to explain conclusive proof that it isn't some sham to get more grant money.
The British would choose depending on what type of school they went to, and the Americans would consider their positions regarding same-sex marriage.
At the bottom of the
Bullshit.
The Mormon church has been posthumously baptizing people who would never have joined the Mormon church when they were alive. The Mormons had the unmitigated fucking GALL to posthumously baptize Carl Sagan! An insult to everything the great man stood for.
Who the Mormon church decides to put on their rolls means absolutely JACK!
Technoli
Utah -- specifically the salt lake, davis, and weber county areas -- are plagued with some of the worst air quality conditions in the country. There's a lot of debate over the causes, but the two largest contributors are commuters and nearby refineries / factories.
Supposing the factories/refineries are the largest contributors, it would be in their [short-term] best interests to derail any discussion of global warming or risk being more heavily regulated.