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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.
There hasn't been any statistically significant warming since at least 1995.
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.
You just can't cure stupid. Congratulations... you're infected.
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.
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.
The other resolutions they approved were one denying evolution and another reassuring that Earth is flat and the center of the universe.
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
....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???
Texas doesn't want to put up with all of those Mormons, either.
Giving up drinking, coffee, having to marry all of your girlfriends .... one wife is hard but more than one wife?!?
And kids?!?! Good God! I have to have kids with all of them!
I tell you, the crazy guy who came up with Mormonism was, well, fucking crazy!
in the conservatives' War On Science
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100217/wl_asia_afp/nkoreapoliticskimfamily_20100217130209
"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.
The people in the business of government are there to benefit themselves, not you and me. This is evident by the fact that every year government costs more, not less, and every year govenrment aquires more power, never relinquishing it -- yet it is obvious that for all this continuous expansion, government isn't getting better.
Ultimately, every change government makes is for the benefit of those who control government. But don't fall into the trap of thinking they all play on the same team. Just as in a large corporation, there is malice to be found all the way up the corporate ladder. So there is no double standard at all here -- just normal everyday government, where the snakes fight among themselves for the power and money they've taken (or plan to take) from you and me.
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.)
Utah legislators are idiots. In other news, the sky is blue and grass is green. Now here's Tom with the weather.
FINALLY!!! People actually looking at the true facts (there is no man made global warming!) and saying 'NO!! No to your increased government regulation!! NO to your regulation of the air that leaves my human body!!! NO to idoitic, moronic, liberal, leftists, democrat, regulation of our business, lives and public lands!!!!!
Conservative ways prove that conservative ways work best!!! The MTV way is the WRONG WAY!
Impeach ALL democrats, remove the socialists, 'populists', progressives from the white house and our government!
Less government and less taxes!
Repeal all legislation that has been passed since b.o. was innagurated.
Balance the budget and stop printing money!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
You must be a Democrat. Everyone knows Democrats can't argue a topic, they just devolve into grade school name calling. I am surprised you people can figure out which end to feed and which end to wipe. Damned Idiots. Stalin and Lenin mock you.
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.
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.
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?
...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.
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?
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.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
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/
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?
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...
Can you name a top tier college or university in Utah?
There you have it.
Surely the title of this article should be "Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Declaring Utah Retarded"?
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
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.
"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
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...
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.
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/
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...
I think it's more that Utah is sitting on a whole metric assload of coal.
No sig today...
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.
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.
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The theory of "friction" was cooked up by grant-hungry so-called physicists, the WD-40 lobby, and Jiffy Lube.
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
I'm sure it will say pi = 3.0 in there someplace.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
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.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
Save Our Scam
Global Warming is simply non existent per any current and alleged science based reasoning. It simply does not exist in any other fashion other than as I originally suspected, a multidecadal variation driven by solar activity and natural earth processes as volcanism and weather.
GET THE FUCK OVER IT...ITS A SHAM, SCAM AND SCARE
Additionaly, I was also proven right when I said here many times that the movement in some manifestations by certain parties was simply a tool used by our enemies to convince us to impose self decline unto which they will then fill in the void created by our castrated economies.
I was fucking right and some here on /gash, WERE WROOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGG, fucking admit it or shut the fuck up!
...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?!
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.
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.
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.
...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.
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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Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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?
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 !!!
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.