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Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
The arguments on both sides are right. The climate is changing and the earth is warming. That much is true. However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming. This is also true.
So we should be studying ways to mitigate the impact of climate change, not trying to find ways to reverse the irreversible.
Here we speak of Lomborg, and you immediately begin talking about un-cited "other people" who somehow make Lomborg's mistakes disappear in a puff of equivalency.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
In every thread about global warming I see the same nutjob denialist theories debunked over and over again, yet with no change in the opinions of the hardcore denialists.
Here we have yet another denialist conspiracy to mislead the public debunked by actual science. Previously we had the "smoking gun" theory debunked by a blogger.
How many times do these theories need to be debunked before denialist nutjobs give up their crusade against rational science? It's like dealing with a bunch of raving Creationist lunatics.
...the flame war here will ensure there is.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
So now we have a celebrity science pissing-match on our hands. This is simple, IPCC was married with politics, like much of the entire debate. Everyone back to the lab, the field, the research. Stop pandering to politicians and environmentalists, and come up with some science! Until then, no I'm not taking you seriously.
That's absurd. Your sweeping generalization ignores the decades of research poured into the topic by research groups from all over the world. There is ongoing research continually improving upon current models with updated and refined data. You can go take a look at the thousands upon thousands of journal articles written by these scientists, assuming you can even understand the jargon.
You know Lomborg was dishonest? Based on what?
Based on the fact that the numbers he used for deforestation were not applicable to the problem, aggregated over different collection methods, and completely irrelevant to the problem caused by deforestation: loss of habitat for endemic species.
And yes, I read his crap. It was a massive disappointment, and the only conclusion I could come to was that he was either ignorant beyond belief, or dishonest.
So yes, we can ignore him. As for your statement "that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research", that's not true either. The closest thing that has been demonstrated is that some researchers are human and petty in their responses to other people's requests and research. That's a long way from demonstrating that EVERY researcher has faked his research.
Feel free to argue otherwise, but to be credible, you're going to have to demonstrate that every single paper arguing for AGW is dishonest. Go ahead.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?
Even if we are how are we going to fix it? Limit CO2 emissions by something like cap and trade? Great concept but India, China etc are not going to play in
a game that is detrimental to their growing manufacturing industries. Or perhaps we create green energy solutions, problem is none of those solutions are cost
effective to be self sustaining. If we are warming the planet who is to say it is not actually a positive thing?
Got Code?
Out of thousands of independent studies done by thousands of scientists that generally lead to the conclusion that climate change is happening and man is most likely the cause, you would ignore all of that because a few scientists might have been dishonest. Yet you would believe one man who has now been shown that there is some issues with his work. If you are truly skeptical you should throw his work too. That still leads to many, many more scientists who have hard data that climate change is happening.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
One of the things that REALLY bugs me about climate research is seeing LEGITIMATE scientists use the word "SKEPTIC" as a SMEAR.
Scientists are SUPPOSED to be skeptic, and I understand that this is not what the phrase is meant to convey, but the mere idea of labeling a scientists "skeptic" to smear him shows how political scientists in general have become. Remember when they were all about the pursuit of truth and knowledge?
I guess it sounds better than "denier", (which sounds like some McCarthy-era witch-hunt-ism), but why can't scientists keep their professionalism in situations which become politicized?
FanFictionRecs.net
It's well established that most people don't actually check footnotes[1]. Thus you can construct an original argument, footnote a few contained facts [2], and the presence of the footnotes lends an air of support to the entire argument [3].
Without reading both books, I can't take sides on the merits. But I will say some of the stuff in TFA sets off my alarms--like spending a footnote on a WHO report just to cite the population of Europe.
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Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If lomborg had any faith in the veracity of his "science" he would publish it in peer-reviewed journals. As it stands his solitary journal publication was in a sociology journal.
Considering the mountain of propoganda surrounding the issue of AGW (on both sides) any sane spectator will quite rightly continue to ignore his rants until he has the balls to submit them to formal scientific scrutiny.
This is not to say that your link is not informative in the current context and IMHO should be modded as such, just that it's contents are not worth the electrons they are written with.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So one can also conclude that as friel is publishing his as a book that his is also one huge fabrication and should not be taken seriously?
From a quick reading of some reviews and lomborgs response it sounds most likely that they are both just publicity Whores with very little credibility.
It's a smear only in a very specific context: Lomborg and his ilk are, unfortunately, often identified as "skeptics" in the press. They're no such thing, of course -- "denier" or "denialist" is much more accurate* -- but when you have a bunch of people spouting pseudoscientific garbage who are handed the "skeptic" label as a gift, it's inevitable that those who point out the garbage will appear to be "smearing skeptics." The only answer appears to be to point out as often as possible that they aren't skeptics by any reasonable definition of the word. There is simply no amount of evidence that will ever or could ever convince them. Their ideology trumps any data in their minds.
And not only is this the way they think, they assume that everyone else thinks that way too; thus the constant accusations of quasi-religion ("warmism") leveled against people who actually study the data and try to figure out what's happening to the environment. Arguing with denialists is closely akin to arguing with religious fundamentalists. Anything that is not of (their interpretation of) God must perforce be of the Devil. They just can't acknowledge that there are other worldviews that don't fit into their box.
*Since "denier" is often prefaced with a word beginning with "H," those who get called "deniers" often take refuge behind Godwin. "Denialist" works nicely, and in fact may be the most accurate term since it describes an ideology rather than just an action.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If lomborg had any faith in the veracity of his "science" he would publish it in peer-reviewed journals.
You mean like the peer-reviewed journals that were systematically fixed by pro-AGW scientists in order to exclude dissenting researchers?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I haven't read his books, but I live in Denmark so Lomborg gets quite a bit of press here, especially under the climate change conference in December. In interviews he's always come across as a pragmatist more than a skeptic.
He has two main arguments:
1) Think about the return on investment.
Let's say we can cool the earth one degree by spending a trillion dollars. Is it worth the investment? What do we really get out of it? How many other problems could have been fixed with that money?
2) The current approach to fighting climate change is wrong.
UN treaties and money aren't going to stop the developing world from using fossil fuels. The only surefire way to get off of coal is to develop something that is cheaper. Instead of giving money to developing countries to bribe them not to pollute, we should invest the money in new technology, so that in 10, 20, 30 years we can say "here, this is cheaper than coal and doesn't pollute".
I think both of his points are important to consider, though I don't agree with him completely. There are risks to his solution - what if our investments don't bear fruit, and coal is still the cheapest energy source in 30 years? What if climate change causes political destabilization so we don't have enough time to get finished?
I don't think anybody has a perfect solution, but I do think that Lomborg contributes positively to the debate.
The problem is not, nor has it ever been that lunatics with their hand out the window yelling, "it feels fine!" are shouted down or ignored. The problem is that over the past 20 years the understanding has evolved that there is a "correct" result, and anyone working to disprove that result is an enemy to be scrutinized, tied to suspicious parties and ostracized.
By contrast, there are respected scientists in every other field attempting to disprove established theories, and should their work pan out, they would publish without fear of immediate rejection by their peers.
It is the nature of scientific theory that it is tested and attacked. That is why we value a theory limke evolution, which has survived these constat attempts to disprove or reduce its scope for a very long time.
Of what value is a body of theory that can only be confirmed, but which brooks no attempt to disprove?
By that I mean there will be people that believe what they want no matter what the evidence. To be clear I mean there's zero solid evidence of Bigfoot yet some will always believe in it.
I think you got your analogies screwed up. Or do you compare AGW to Bigfoot?
I find it bizarre that people refuse to accept we are having an impact on the environment. The evidence is everywhere. I'm not talking global warming both sides of that argument are bordering on religion I'm talking how much the world has changed. Look at common resources. Ever watch any of the logging shows? What they are cutting now are so small no one would have bothered with them 20 or 30 years ago but in many areas it's all that's left and it's so bad that when they do find old growth trees the lumber mills aren't even set up for them. They are simply too rare to bother with.
Deforestation and overlogging are problems that do not depend on the AGW hypothesis. You're making the green fallacy of equating any and all negative changes in the environment to CO2.
Look at swordfish. They said 200 years ago you could all but walk across the Grand Banks because of all the fish. Now the swordfish they take are virtually all immature fish that have yet to reproduce. Most fisheries have collapsed, a fact. When was the last time you saw a butterfly? How many and how often? When I was growing up you'd see them by the hundreds virtually any summer day. Now I see a few a year. Same with frogs.
Speak for yourself. There might be variations in local spiecies populations due to human actions. That has nothing to do with whether CO2 is causing global changes.
Most great apes are down to a few percent of their original populations. It'd take a good sneeze to wipe them out and they are our closest relatives.
Again, caused by deforestation and expanding human land use, not CO2.
People say the snow storms proved global warming was a hoax. Well guess what I live in central Maine and we have already lost most of our snow and it's getting up into the 50s. This is supposed to be the worst time of year for snow and cold. Don't believe anyone or any study if you want.
Individual weather phenomena are never evidence for, or against, AGW.
Trust your eyes. I see radical change everywhere I look.
It's surprising how much "evidence" you can see proving something you've already made your mind up about being real. The same way only deeply religious people ever seem to find evidence by God.
What people still can't get through their heads is the warming is overall and we are experiencing both extreme hot and cold days. It's the average that is towards warming.
No one is really disputing the warming. What is being disputed is how much of it is due to CO2 and what will be the effect in the future.
The real point is we are headed for more extreme weather and that is very bad.
The claim that AGW causes extreme weather is highly disputed even among genuine climatologists.
With species extinction people need to understand it took hundreds of millions of years to create this much diversity and it will take that long to restore it. Even if it came back in a few million years look at it this way we've been around for 200,000. That means no human will ever see it this diverse again.
Statements without evidence based on hubris.
We are in the middle of one of the worst extinction events in Earth's history and we are the cause and there's no debate about that one.
Blatant lie wrapped up in an assertion of absolute truth.
Most species are dying from habitat loss, we call them cities.
Do you even know how many species there exist in the entire world?
But if the cause isn't man made, then we can say "don't blame me!" when disaster strikes.
Imagine if this thinking was applied to other areas. Hurricanes aren't man made, so we don't need to get out of the way. Floods aren't man made so I can build my house on the river bank. Lightning is a natural phenomena so I can keep golfing in the rain.
While you make a compelling point that someone somewhere must have spotted this, you don't seem to have any explanations of the phenomenon under discussion.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Greenland was colonized during a period of global warmth. That it is why it was named that way.
According to the Reverend J. Sephton in his book Eirik the Red's Saga, Greenland was named as a marketing ploy by Eirik: "Because," said he, "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name."
Yes, it would have been warmer and greener than it was now, but if there was subterfuge in the naming of the country then I don't imagine that it was a tropical paradise. It also doesn't mean that it was as consistantly warmer across the globe as it is now.
But it is also a distraction. Do you deny that being shot by a gun could kill you, merely because other people have died without being shot. Just because it got warmer then doesn't mean that we are not causing it to get warmer now. It is getting hotter, faster and more globally than it did back then.
Man is not powerful enough to change the earth's climate to any "significant" degree. But that big thermonuclear ball in the sky is. A billion petrochemical fueled cars will not influence the sun.
Nobody has every claimed that we are making the sun hotter. This demonstrates that you really don't understand the problem. The problem is that the heat from the sun is being trapped here. As an analogy, my house stays pretty cool even on hot days without the need for air conditioning. As long as it gets cooler at night, it stays pleasant during the day. But if it stays hot at night, it doesn't get a chance to lose the build-up of heat from the previous day and it gets more unpleasant as after day. The days are not necessarily hotter, but the accumulated heat energy means that each successive day has a larger affect.
Scientists are men that can be influenced by propaganda just like any man can be. I think the climate change scare is just another way for politicians to steal our hard earned money.
The climate change "scare" as you call it was instigated by the scientists, not the politicions. They don't just watch the news and think "yeah, I had better parrot that line too". They just follow their data, and all get to the same place. It is either a giant conspiracy or the truth. Which seems the most likely.
However, if you can come up with ANY evidence to back up the claim that it is the politicians that are leading our scientists around then please present it. Oh, have a look at all those CRU emails that were released. They should be able to tell you the names of the politicians who are giving the orders (if there are any). Come back and let us know.
Not sure who the "he" is that you are refering to, neither have done any climate science but Lomborg claims he has and that his rants should be included in the IPCC reports.
Lomborg paints himself a persecuted DaVinci, a lone voice of scientific genius against the harsh dogma of the establishment. Basically Friel has published a detailed book review debunking that picture, the journal of nature also reviews books and like Friel they do not claim them to be anything more than researched opinion.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What are you talking about? Climate theory is so primitive right now that it's "disproved" all the time. If climatology were mechanics, we'd be at the "Big rock hurt more than little rock" stage.
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Exactly, when people call AGW a hoax what they are really saying is that a large chunk of fundemental physics is a hoax.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Though I agree that humans are a significant contributor to climate change arguing the point is a waste of effort. Once the window is broken it really doesn't matter whether it was Billy or Jane who was the culprit, the most important thing is to replace the glass to prevent the basement from flooding.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Just because a company uses a situation to make money means it doesn't exist? I guess all those flag-makers taking advantage of 9/11 must mean the Trade Center is still standing.
The above poster illustrates something very important:
Part of the reason one should be very skeptical of AGW alarmists is their rabies-like demeanor and aggression against all that they perceive as even the slightest heresy against their little modern day apocalypse cult.
Wider implication: Never trust the results in any discipline that is subject to a reputation cascade. (I.e, disciplines where even mild dissenters are ostracized)
You do not "debunk", you ostracize. The main modus of debate of AGW proponents from day one has been moralistic, not empirical.
Hence the conversion of "skeptic" from badge of honor to a mark of shame, and the introduction of the "denier" label to further amp up the hysteric persecution of those who dont go with the program.
This also explains the skepticism of the general public. Joe Blow doesnt know his tree rings from his ice cores, but he sure knows what fanaticism looks like.
After all, how can one trust a science where "skepticism" is career death? The answer is simple: One cant. And as the tip of the iceberg is now visible for all to see - the remaining question is how much is hidden by the sea...
You know Lomborg was dishonest? Based on what?
Based on the fact that the numbers he used for deforestation were not applicable to the problem, aggregated over different collection methods, and completely irrelevant to the problem caused by deforestation: loss of habitat for endemic species.
Citation please.
And yes, I read his crap. It was a massive disappointment, and the only conclusion I could come to was that he was either ignorant beyond belief, or dishonest.
So a blanket condemnation based on a single unsourced reference.
So yes, we can ignore him. As for your statement "that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research", that's not true either. The closest thing that has been demonstrated is that some researchers are human and petty in their responses to other people's requests and research. That's a long way from demonstrating that EVERY researcher has faked his research.
Here we get to the rub. You dismiss Lomberg based on a selective quotation of a supposed mistake and then bend over backwards to excuse data manipulation, censorship and interference in peer review, and other forms of scientific misconduct.
Not human and petty - just dishonest.
No-one has ever claimed that EVERY researcher has faked his research. But the ones which are supposed to establish that there is a climate crisis? Very, very dubious indeed.
Feel free to argue otherwise, but to be credible, you're going to have to demonstrate that every single paper arguing for AGW is dishonest. Go ahead.
Why should we, when you argue that every single quote from Bjorn Lomberg is dishonest and 'crap'.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
After reading about half of Lomborgs rebuttal, I think the more pertinent issue is "can Friel read"? Perhaps we can set up a literacy fund to help the good man get some remedial ed?
As for your assertion that "Lomborg paints himself a persecuted DaVinci":
1. As far as I know, he has never compared himself to DaVinci. I.e, you are making shit up.
and
2. He has had the pleasure of being convicted (and then aquitted) of the novel thought-crime of "unintentional dishonesty". Gotta love those cultists - they are at least an inventive bunch.
It's the Jungian shadow. Where there is great light, there is great darkness.
Several investigations found his publications (newspaper articles)to be dishonest
From your link:
The DCSD did not provide specific statements on actual errors. On this point the MSTI stated "the DCSD has not documented where [Dr. Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and ... the ruling is completely void of argumentation for why the DCSD find that the complainants are right in their criticisms of [his] working methods. It is not sufficient that the criticisms of a researcher's working methods exist; the DCSD must consider the criticisms and take a position on whether or not the criticisms are justified, and why.
A Dutch think tank, HAN, Heidelberg Appeal the Netherlands, published a report in which they claimed 25 out of 27 accusations against Lomborg to be unsubstantiated or not to the point.[13] A group of scientists with relation to this think tank also published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics,[14] in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused their authority to suppress Lomborg.
I assume you've read it and know that there are still plenty of other criticisms (like this new book) but as for peer-review and open dialogue I think it's hard to say that Lomborg hasn't had his work examined and even harder to say that he hasn't been forthcoming in responding to detractors in a far more transparent way than any journal I've ever read. I've never read TSE but I can't say that I understand where you get the "frothing" part of his response. Maybe you should imagine it being read by a calm voice, whether you agree with it or not.
Well it's not like one day oil will cost 50 dollars a barrel and the next it'll all be gone.
As the reserves run dry there will be years during which the price climbs and climbs and people will switch to other fuels.
Ships that run on oil getting too costly to run?
well then some smart buggers will build some more nuclear powered ships or ships which are more efficient or ships which are powered by fuel cells or any other method and they'll make a lot of money because they'll be offering to transport goods far more cheaply than the companies who's ships run on oil.
There'll be a Great Flood as well, sent by God to wash away all the "denialists" and their multitude of sins.
However I think AGW is more like a fascist cult than an Abrahamic religion, because it is an all-out attack on free minds and free thought: "believe exactly as we do, do not question our authority, or the Earth will be destroyed and it will be your fault".
The thought restrictions go way beyond questions about the science. They also require belief in a government solution, summarised by the claim: "Well, even if it isn't happening, why shouldn't we do something anyway? Our plans will make the world a better place no matter what." I've never seen any evidence for that claim, although I believe that Karl Marx wrote a few books about it.
Forget gas chambers and gulags, "if you are not with us, you are against us" is the very definition of fascism. Here are some more:
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
"It is for the Greater Good."
"The science is settled."
"There is a consensus."
"The debate is over."
I never thought I would see a Slashdot discussion dominated by fascists, but here we are. -1, Free Thinking, and +5, Agrees Totally With Authority.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Once the window is broken it really doesn't matter whether it was Billy or Jane who was the culprit...
Unless you want to stop Jane from bashing in any more windows. It's not like we're going to stop contributing to global warming if we ignore the question of whether we're contributing to it.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
... is not his actual arguments (important as they may be), but rather that the attacks on him - in their viscousness, dishonesty and general rage-inducing pompousness - highlight how venal large swathes of the "scientific establishment" have become.
He's not just saying "Nope, this isn't a problem, ignore it, don't worry, etc, etc." A person like that is much easier to dismiss. What he's saying is "Yes, this is a problem, but not a big one, and certainly not one worth all the money and effort being proposed to fix it. Instead, we should spend that on other things that would have a much bigger impact on quality of life." More or less he's not disagreeing with the fundamental premise or conclusion, he's disagreeing with the policies being proposed because of that.
This drives the global warming proponents totally mad. Most of them seem to be of the opinion that what they have to do is convince people that global warming is real, and caused by humans. Once that is done, people should be willing to accept whatever policies they say are necessary. No questioning of the costs or the utility, they've proven the problem and now whatever they say needs to happen should happen without further question.
So Lomborg has become one of their top enemies because he doesn't fundamentally disagree on the idea that the world is warming, just that it is worth while to try and solve when there are so many other problems to human life. For that, they hate him.
That is one of the things that makes me question motives in this whole thing. I can understand exasperation with people who believe your research is incorrect/false/made up if your truly believe it is right. You think you've got it correct, done a lot of work in that regard, you get mad when people say "Nuh uh!". However, when someone is disagreeing not with that, but with the policies you demand and you get even more angry at them, well that makes me wonder: Is the research really what's important to you, or are you using it just to try and drive policies that you want, regardless of their use? It would seem to me that how to deal with the problem would be open for discussion, yet discussion of that generates the most backlash. Makes you wonder.
Who knows why this got modded interesting, it's fuckin' dumb.
Let's try a little thought experiment, shall we? Two scenarios:
1) Let's imagine that you are working on the bleeding edge of science and you're investigating a question that no-one knows the answer to, like "why does Nt-acetylation of bulk proteins happen?". You do some clever research, and whaddya know, you come up with an interesting answer: "it's because acetylation can function as a degradation signal". That forces a need to revisit thinking on protein turnover, a larger topic, and may even mean that we need to think again about exactly how homeostasis works. So you write it all up and if you can get the paper past your clever colleagues who do peer review, you might get published in Science and you can be very proud of yourself. Look, it's happened here!
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/327/5968/966
2) Now, let's imagine that you investigate something a bit more fundamental to modern biological science. Say, the idea that DNA encodes genetic information about the shape of proteins. Let's say you invent a clever experiment and the findings are very striking -- they appear to show that DNA doesn't encode that information after all! Now for the thought experiment bit: do you think that the standards and scrutiny that will be applied to your claim will be higher or lower than in scenario 1, given that your results will require the setting aside / reinterpretation of an enormous mass of prior experimental results and accepted scientific theory. Why, that's right! Your results will be subjected to more careful scrutiny. They will have to be replicated, validated, tested etc etc every which way from Sunday, because the inherent balance of probabilities is that your results are wrong or artefactual or explicable within the current framework, and that the prior thinking was right. It's not *impossible* that the opposite holds true, but it *is* extremely unlikely.
People who seek to demonstrate that anthropogenic climate change is not happening are much closer to scenario 2 than scenario 1. Scientists will quite reasonably say, "just before we chuck out all the accumulated evidence and thinking about how the world works and accept your argument that you've shown it that is, in fact, possible for humans to add net tens of billions of tons of gases such as CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere in the space of decades without it having an impact on climate, do you mind terribly if we take a very long hard look at your evidence and reasoning?"
I can't say that I believe in AGW in the same way Christians believe in god. I can't say that I've heard arguments in favor of AGW that didn't accept that our climate is constantly changing, either. It would seem that the argument is that the climate is warming more than it would without mankind's influence.
Many people, like myself, who aren't scientists, but accept that there could be some AGW are more interested in solutions to any ensuing apocolypse. Those solutions are often built upon the "Tree of Knowledge called the Industrial Revolution". There could be no mass manufacture of wind turbines, solar panels, fuel cells, electric cars or anything else that we dream up without the foundations of the Industrial Revolution. What we are suggesting is a Green revolution, which as a side affect disenfranchises energy suppliers that make all of their profit from non-renewable sources. It also disenfranchises localities that rely heavily on those non-renewable resources. For decades those same entities have been engaged in practices which we know to disenfranchise their employees and citizens, and which we have reason to believe disenfranchises the rest of the world. There is a big difference between accepting the likelihood of something that is supported by a broad selection of data, and another to believe a book that has no second sources.
What's more, the religious fanatics seem to rejoice in the glee of their apocolyps, as only the sinners get burned. Those of us that consider the merits and logic of scientific research are worried that everyone will get burned.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
Come on now, how about a little intellectual honesty? The falsification and other shenanigans by the pro-AGW crowd have been all over the news in recent months. That doesn't make any disingenousness or innacuracy by Lombard excusable and GP didn't say it was.
The whole GW issue has become more about money (grants and taxes) and power/prestige than real science, on BOTH sides.
AGW is not a proven fact, and the shenanigans of both skeptics and supporters of the theory are doing science an injustice.
They do NOT affect total energy received from the sun over the course of the year which remains constant.
Small nitpick here. While the sun is extremely stable when compared to its interstellar cousins, it is by no means constant. For example, there is an 11-year sunspot cycle that varies the amount of solar radiation we receive by about .1%, which is much greater than the amount of change caused by the amount of C02 man has put into the atmosphere. Of course, there are longer cycles as well that may affect climate over a much longer range, but we have not had the instruments to make measurements that far back to nail down the exact effect on the climate.
And while you did say, "over the course of of the year", the orbit of the Earth itself is elliptical enough to vary the amount of energy we receive from the sun.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Everyone will always talk about research to prove the global warming, but no one really knows exactly what this research is. Watching ice melt on Google earth is not research. Saying CO2 in atmosphere contributes to green house effect warming earth is not research. And all the "research" companies funded by governments have yet to reveal their research and prove it. This is why it was a big deal when hackers released information from one of those research firms that actually questions all of their research on global warming.
I will not believe it until there is a research paper that 90% of scientists can agree on. I don't take anyone's word for any of this. Either show me proof or get out of my face. And I don't want to see proof of global warming as YOU see it, I want it as 90% of scientific community sees it. Such research is yet to be published and agreed on.
That's unfortunately because the article proves that the "climate skeptics" are frauds too, they've lied and mislead and deceived people for their own benefit which, of course, according to your own standard means they are wrong and can't be believed.
So there, the world must be colder because it's can't be getting warmer because the scientists and the CRU are mean, the non-scientists and IPCC made a mistake in a 400 page report, and the so-called skeptics are continuously and repeated proven wrong over and over again. That's the only possible conclusion. Right? Right?
Wait. Maybe science doesn't work like that.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
But if the cause isn't man made, then we can say "don't blame me!" when disaster strikes.
Imagine if this thinking was applied to other areas. Hurricanes aren't man made, so we don't need to get out of the way. Floods aren't man made so I can build my house on the river bank. Lightning is a natural phenomena so I can keep golfing in the rain.
And that was kinda Bjorn's point. It doesn't really matter so much as to WHY the climate is getting warmer and there is little we can do about it. Sure, we can do some things like make more efficient cars and power our homes with nuclear/wind/solar/hydro power, but with the massive amounts of cash we are throwing at the problem could be better spent preparing for global warming than fighting it. For example, rather than spend trillions of dollars to get third world countries to not build their economies, we could spend billions feeding or moving the people that may or may not be affected by GW.
As to Bjorn's sources being debunked or whatever, this conclusion that I've mentioned above is clearly sited by common sense. No more citation is required.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
And the even larger amount of money that has been poured into convincing everybody that we need to let governments take over ervery aspect of life to prevent "Global Warming/Climate Change". When one looks at the numbers one discovers that Exxon has given more money to people promoting AGW than to people debunking it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Climate Change Argument Summary: ... 9) ??? (form political action committee?) ... 10) PROFIT!!!
1) Straw man, 2) Defer to expert opinion, 3) ad hominem, 4) ad hominem, 5) red herring, 6) straw man, 7) misinterpretation, 8) ad hominem
Simply, there's no data. It's all correlative, and "green" energy (i.e. nuclear) are better for the economy and national security so we should be utilizing them anyway.
I think the whole thing has become so politicized that an honest viewpoint from either side is rare. The global warming believers think it's such a big impact if it's true that they feel they can't honestly present counter-evidence, and the unbelievers think the cost is so high that it can't be paid without incontrovertible evidence.
Unfortunately, climate science doesn't have a great record (the planetary ecosystem and climate are pretty goddam complicated). At the same time, we will never have evidence that the average idiot will understand and accept for anything as complex as a checking account.
Most people, myself included, have no real basis on which to make a decision, so we pick the side with the people we trust.
Personally, I trust scientists much more than businessmen. Good scientists are trained to be brutally honest with themselves, and to use methods that expose rather than hide flaws in their own reasoning.
Businessmen are trained to be confident in their abilities and conclusions regardless of reality.
This means that when businessmen look at the objective opinions of good scientists, with their "given this" and "see chart X for exceptions", they blow them off. Then they spend millions pointing out how the scientists can't even make up their mind.
For me, it's an easy choice. That doesn't mean that I am immune to arguments either way, just that I tend to listen with my own slant, and I recognize it.
I personally wish we would just give respected climate scientists some money and some peace for a couple of years to fight it out among themselves without worrying about the viewpoint of uninformed idiots, but I know it's not going to happen.
As someone who believes in man-made climate change I can assure both you and the GP that you are completely wrong about my beliefs.
I don't think we need to give up our modern lives and return to some kind of hippy-farming-commune existence. We just need to develop technology that doesn't pump CO2 into the atmosphere. Sure, that does cost money to develop, but so did drilling for oil or burning coal to generate electricity.
Even if you don't believe in climate change the benefits of not burning coal and oil should be pretty obvious. You can see pollution all around us in the form of the dust and dirt that accumulates on buildings and in my house (which is next to a main road).
Don't think I'm attacking you personally either. We need to change things at government and industrial levels. In the end though there comes a point where we are going to have to force the Chelsea Tractor / Hummer drivers into less polluting cars. I don't see a problem with that - we don't allow people to piss in swimming pools because the majority of people don't want to swim in that. You can't expect to go around spewing crap into the air when there are just as good alternatives that don't do that.
We are not there yet by a long way, but one day we will be and that's all I'm saying:
- We need to develop less polluting technology, if not because of climate change then because of pollution and the finite nature of the oil and coal supplies.
- Eventually technology will get there, but in the mean time I'm still flying long haul and you can still drive your tractor around town. I own a Colt with super-efficient engine, mainly because it's cheaper for me to run. If electric was cheaper I would buy one of these too. Totally selfish and nothing to do with the green lobby.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Which totally misses the OP's point.
Which is that the scientists (and their political supporters) which you quote above insist that the studies criticizing them be reviewed and must be debunked* while simultaneously insisting that their work is above criticism. Thus 'skeptic' has become, as used by those scientists (and their political supporters) a pejorative term.
Real scientists welcome reviews of their work - but the ones you quote above (and their political supporters) go to great lengths to debunk and marginalize any reviews that don't meet their pre-ordained conclusions.
You then go further in accepting the received wisdom of the scientists (and their political supporters) and treating as though it were as well proven as DNA encoding, which it isn't. It has the appearance of so being, but that's because the scientists (and their political supporters) have spent such time and energy loudly insisting they are right and that anyone who claims otherwise is a 'skeptic'.
*Yes, not incorporated into the existing body of work as is usual in science, but debunked.
So they are fundamentalists?
And fascists as well.
Oh, they are commies too!
And now they're are Hitler and Bush.
Those dastardly conspiring climatologists, is there no boogeyman they can't be compared to?
Good thing you're here to make well-reasoned arguments from facts rather than suggest that everyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi Commie Religious Fundamentalist Neocon in league with Hitler and Bush.
Then again, any political issue will inevitable degrade to a mudslinging contest, so I guess it shouldn't surprise me...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No, he's ignoring the handful of years of increasingly politically motivated conclusions based on those decades of research.
The problem of course being that the models output no result but 'this is because of AGW'. Scientists predict a string of strong hurricane seasons 'because of AGW', and when they don't happen they update the model and 'discover' they didn't happen 'because of AGW'. Warm winter? AGW. Cold winter? AGW.
When the models keep being modified and produce the same output regardless of input - then something is up.
I can find thousands of articles on N-rays and luminiferous aether too.
As I recall after The Skeptical Environmentalist was published 'Scientific American' offered $$ for articles debunking Lomborg.
NOTE: Not asking for analysis. Money and publishing only for anti Lomborg articles.
Sort of an abuse to call that process scientific.
No brain, no pain.
If you're trying to argue the money point you really don't have a leg to stand on. The oil industry has orders of magnitude more money flowing through it. If scientists were going to corrupt themselves for money that's the direction they would go in.
Sorry,I read the linked page and I couldn't find where they were addressing the points made by BadAnalogyGuy. How about this if anthropgenic CO2 is responsible for significant global warming, then why after the CO2 levels have still been rising, there has been No Significant Global Warming for 15 years?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Before humans, temperature was driving the change, and CO2 caused the feedback.
Now, CO2 is driving the change (cause we have coal power plants now), and temperature causes the feedback (because warming up the oceans still reduces their capacity to hold CO2)
So the existence humans changed the laws of physics?
The coldest period in the last half billion years had atmospheric CO2 levels 10 times what we have today. Why wasn't the CO2 driving the change then? It certainly wasn't the temperature.
Maybe if the climate "researchers" would open up their methodologies, source code and data, I might be able to understand it.
I understand why they don't, though. It would be like MS opening up the Windows source code. People would feel very ripped off about what they've been paying for.
If you hide your data AND your entire methodology from ANYONE that would seek to replicate and evaluate your results, you're not practicing science. And until that is all publicly available for consumption (which it IS NOT), I can't consider AGW to be science.
When I hear someone talking out of both sides of their mouth explaining exception after exception to their mythical model that has all the answers, I assume I am dealing with a charlatan. Science is ENTIRELY about being a skeptic. The AGW crowd demean skeptics. Thus, the AGW crowd must not be scientists.
Are you sure they aren't? What your calling Oil companies, think of themselves as Energy Companies, if they can supply our energy needs with economically viable renewables and save the petrolium crude for high profit boutique chemicals they'd do it in a heart beat.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You know, wouldn't it have been great if climate leaders had gathered together to begin some kind of great scientific technology endeavor to find a way to replace oil and coal? Something like viable electric cars. It would have been like the flight to the moon, except all nations would have been involved. It would have been a unifying experience for the whole world.
Instead they got together and talked about how much money the developed world is going to pay the developing world for the costs of global warming. That is so pathetic in comparison.
Qxe4
Maybe if the climate "researchers" would open up their methodologies, source code and data, I might be able to understand it.
I doubt you would be able to really understand it but their methodologies are available in the peer reviewed literature they have published and more data and code than you could probably analyze in your life is available from the many links on this page.