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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.
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
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.
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
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???
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.
No, it's the opposite.
My experience with millions of dumbass individuals who elected GWB -- twice -- and supported his disastrous policies has painted my opinion of anyone who calls him or herself a "Republican" today.
If I met a college student who claims to be a Republican I would be ready to believe he has a boner when war is discussed.
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.
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
And Gov. Perry and the Utah government stand to gain, so they're also taking BS? So, basically, everyone is wrong?
By definition, the only people who can research a question thoroughly enough to process the data have to be paid for their efforts, so your dismissal of scientists for getting paid seems a bit silly, doesn't it? In reality, scientists might temporarily get more grants if they found something major, but someone else would shoot them down (there's a huge career to made out of it if you can disprove AGW) pretty quickly and if they're that sloppy or worse, liars, that'll kill their careers. This is a profession where you live and die on your reputation and your past work. This isn't punditry (or Slashdot posting) where you can be wrong (or worse) time after time and still come back strong for the next round.
By the way, what does that graph even show? Temperature of what? Who is tracking it? As you're so keen to ask, who made the graph and who paid for it? A graph without context or definition might insinuate, but it means nothing.
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?
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...
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?
Everyone has a lot to gain, so I will in fact call anything anyone claims without backing up those claims with any evidence bullshit...
The scientists have provided copious data and arguments backing up their claims. Yet you and others like you continue to call "bullshit". So I ask you: do you have data and arguments to the contrary?
How's this: what would it take to convince you that AGW is real? What reasonable measurement, achievable in the next few years, would you require to believe that the predictions are accurate?
By the way, so far, I see you using works like "hostage" and "silence opposition", which sounds to me more like you're doing quite a bit of fear-mongering yourself.
I think it's more that Utah is sitting on a whole metric assload of coal.
No sig today...
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.
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
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 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
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.