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House of Commons Finds No Evidence of Tampering In Climate E-mails
dwguenther writes "The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved. The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they'd seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit ... had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming."
According to the article, the head of committee which produced the report "said the lawmakers had been in a rush to publish something before Britain's next national election, which is widely expected in just over a month's time"; two further inquiries are to examine the issue more closely. The "e-mails appeared to show scientists berating skeptics in sometimes intensely personal attacks, discussing ways to shield their data from public records laws, and discussing ways to keep skeptics' research out of peer-reviewed journals," but the committee concluded that East Anglia researcher Phil Jones was not part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that weakens the case for global warming.
The appalling quality of the software used to model the situation (not flagging errors, but carrying on regardless) makes any conclusion pretty much worth less than the paper on which it is written
Well if the House of Commons can't find it, it doesn't exist!
Well, that's enough for me. I'm convinced!
That is strange.
Phil Jones admitted it.
Exxon-Mobil finds no evidence of danger in fossil fuel use.
The problem with the whole Global Warming panic was not that these scientists were distorting the data. The real issue was that they didn't allow public scrutiny of the information. If another group of scientists can't reproduce these results, that the results are not science. Let other climate scientists have the raw data, and we'll see what they say. If you can get a whole bunch of people reproduce the same conclusion, then the study can be taken as credible. Until then, I reserve judgement.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I heard about this yesterday and it seems like a deal was struck. Phil Jones steps down, and the house of commons declines to charge him. We'll never know, of course.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Global warming is used as a justification to tax (carbon taxes) and control (cap and trade, various environmental regulations.).
There's nothing a government body wants more than money and control. Ergo, it's in the interests of the House of Commons to say 'yep, everything's legit here, and because it is, we're taking more of your money and restricting your lives & business even more. Gotta save the earth, ya know. It's for your own good.'
(The astute reader can guess my position on the matter of anthropogenic global warming, but the above statement is independent of the scientific truth of the matter.)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
RTFA, it does find that they had a keen interest in stonewalling critics. So much for peer review, taking some criticism, and I dunno integrity?
Truth should be easy to defend. There's not much scientific integrity if you have to stifle descent.
Also FTFA: "Lawmakers stressed that their report — which was written after only a single day of oral testimony — did not cover all the issues and would not be as in-depth as the two other inquiries into the e-mail scandal that are still pending."
As Winston Wolfe said: "Let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet, Gentlemen."
While I agree that cooling would in all likelihood have more negative results, I can't agree that global warming is a globally positive effect. First, I believe the science to be accurate enough from what I do understand of it. While higher CO2 and temperatures might lead to higher crop yields in some regions, it might also lead to major shifts in rainfall patterns, either drying out current crop growing regions or drowning them, which can also cause mass starvations and migrations. And that is just one effect I can think of. Loss of usefulness of coastal regions which provide food for millions, disturbance of ocean acidity and thereby the whole oceanic ecosystem and the possibility of runaway feedback loops like the dissolution of methane clathrates are other possible problems.
The rational response to the possibility of severe consequences like those would be to focus our research on those consequences and on possibilities to adapt to them. The CO2 reduction goals that are talked about at the moment are probably illusionary. The easily reachable fossil fuels are gonna be burned - if not by the West, then by China or by industrializing third world countries. The goal has to be preparing for possible consequences.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
what I find amazing is that anyone can actually believe that one wing, left or right, is telling the truth and the other is lying. Newsflash for you busy gary, POLITICIANS ARE LIARS! Nothing they say can be believed!
No UK government investigation has found any evidence of any wrongdoing for anything in at least the last ten years - even when the previous six weeks have been wall-to-wall damning evidence reported in every UK newspaper, TV channel and website regardless of its usual political stance.
Modpoints here, not a denier but I'm still tempted. Painting all skeptics with the same piss-soaked brush doesn't help, it just makes YOU look like a fanatic.
You want disaster? Try a 2 degree C warming across all our most important foodbelts! Even a minor, persistent decline in ecological carrying capacity will cause serious production issues.
You want disaster? Try halving the amount of precipitation (rain and snow) available to a few dozen major watersheds across the globe. Even a minor, persistent decline will lead to all kinds of resource conflicts, quite possibly even the shooting kind.
Bottom line? When you build a complex, resource-intensive society of ~7 billion people, and run that society really close to the margins of earth's carrying capacity (as we are today), then arbitrarily messing around with a bunch of climate parameters is a stupid idea. It might work out okay, or it might not.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
While rising one level above the simplemindedness of the left-vs-right mindset, you have not reached enlightenment, young padawan. There are no easy answers. "The left is correct", "The right is correct" - those are simple answers and therefore in all probability wrong. "All politicians are liars" - this is also a simple answer - and therefore in all probability wrong. The habit of judging statements not on their merit, but on their source is what is destroying political discourse, young grasshopper. No go and meditate. BUT DO IT OFF MY LAWN!!!
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Let me give you a hint.
The instant you show you're only concerned with your political party being 'right' ... thats the instant everyone with a clue just stops bothering with what you said and moves on.
No one really gives a shit what political fanboys think, you included. Its not about democrat or republic, its not about left or right, its about doing the right thing, which apparently to you means whatever democrats are ranting for this month.
You are just as retarded as the republican ranters.
Both groups are ignorant fucks who don't deserve the right to vote.
Its not a fucking football game. Stop fucking ranting and cheering for your political party, open your fucking eyes and vote for the right person for the job, not because they are wearing red or blue this week.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
How does working to increase efficiency and reduce pollution wreck the economy? Last I saw, every technological advance drove our economy forward in ways no one even imagined beforehand.
Seems to me that the common sense approach is to invest heavily in technology to fix the problem, not invest heavily in public relations aimed at extending the problem. That way, we all win no matter what the truth is.
Exactly. Especially in mediums that are only (or at least primarily) going to be read by educated people, there's no reason to prevent debate - the facts will speak for themselves.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
RTFA, it does find that they had a keen interest in stonewalling critics.
Right but there is a point at which any person just gives up on his critics. Whether it be one persistent critic or an internet full of critics, you just get sick of it and concentrate on what actually matters: your work. And then when this happens suddenly you're "stonewalling." Or "unable to defend your statements." I don't know all the details and I'm not going to get into my own anecdotal stories but at some point you just don't care what they think and you get tired of having to engage in rebuttals and 'discussions' if they are inane or offtrack.
For what it's worth (not to defend this), the above phenomenon can also lead you to opt not to release your data because your critics can either pour over it to find more ammunition or use it for their own devices. Thankfully the House of Commons called for the release of all data and all source code and hopefully soon we'll be pointed into a better direction about who is the most correct in their analysis.
My work here is dung.
Why would I apologize? Not that I'm a basher, more of a civilized critic. This report, while it doesn't implicate him in a "conspiracy", also readily admits that he's been treating people with my point of view as mere obstructions to his mission. My impression of Mr. Jones is that he believes firmly that something must be done about CO2 and the problems that come with it, all for very good reasons.
I also suspect that he knows that the normalization of the data would not hold up to scrutiny, but in his view there is too much at stake to risk the public airing of that laundry. His heart is in the right place, but I happen to believe quite firmly that the growing apathy regarding climate change is a perfect example of why we can't put all our environmental eggs in one basket. Why can't we just focus more on particulate emissions, groundwater contamination, and dozens of other issues which have clearly visible impacts on the biological world?
AC: Only on slashdot... could the sentence "My hovercraft is full of eels." be moderated "+4, Insightful
No, we believe because of the evidence. You believe despite all evidence. We start from theory and test it against reality, you start from fantasy and find data that fits. In science, the truth always wins out in the end. In science, if you can prove that everybody else is wrong and you are right, you will be the next Einstein and your name will go down in history forever. So, when all the experts agree, that's pretty good evidence that none of them could make a huge name for themselves by disagreeing. And with the HUGE amounts of money that corporate polluters are pouring into this debate, not only would anyone who proved climate change be famous, they would be very, very rich.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Truth should be easy to defend. There's not much scientific integrity if you have to stifle descent.
You'd think the truth that cigarettes cause cancer and emphysema would have been easy to defend too, but look how long the tobacco industry strung out that debate. They even went so far as to lie, under oath, in front of Congress.
And climate change is infinitely more complicated than "smoking is bad for your health," while having much more money involved.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
How does working to increase efficiency and reduce pollution wreck the economy?
The really simple answer is a) if it's not really more efficient, b) is not really pollution, or c) the approach taken is so stupid and expensive that any benefits are drowned in a sea of harm.
Decide for yourself!
http://www.heartland.org/books/PDFs/SurfaceStations.pdf
Major report by Anthony Watts on junk surface stations
"Executive Summary: Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise in temperature during the past century was "unprecedented" and proof that immediate action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin. Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made.
The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can't know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can't trust the data.
The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.
During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.
We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.
In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations - nearly 9 of every 10 - fail to meet the National Weather Service's own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.
In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.
It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.
The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.
The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7 C (about 1.2 F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century. Since the U.S. record is thought to be "the best in the world," it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.
This report presents actual photos of more than 100 temperature stations in the U.S., many of them demonstrating vividly the siting issues we found to be rampant in the network. Photographs of all 865 stations that have been surveyed so far can be found at www.surfacestations.org, where station photos can be browsed by state or searched for by name." "Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?" h/t Roger Pielke Sr.
Ignoring all arguments and data brought forth so far, then pointing at the null hypothesis and calling it a day is called skepticism these days? Guess we are indeed doomed.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Just like that? The entire agricultural system that struggles to feed the more than 6 billion humans will just be tweaked a little bit and everything goes on just as before?
That's cold comfort to farmers that their land is now useless for growing crops, but if they could just sell their now-worthless land and buy up some new land 200 miles to the north (that now happens to be sitting underneath suburban housing) then it's all just a wee bump in the road.
Heck, for that matter, we could probably just move the Earth a few thousand miles further from the Sun.
So what's everybody so worked up about?
You are welcome on my lawn.
You want disaster? Try a 2 fluctuation C warming or cooling across all our most important foodbelts! Even a minor, persistent decline or increase in ecological carrying capacity will cause serious production issues.
You want disaster? Try halving or doubling the amount of precipitation (rain and snow) available to a few dozen major watersheds across the globe. Even a minor, persistent decline or increase will lead to all kinds of resource conflicts, quite possibly even the shooting kind like is happening now.
Bottom line? When you build a complex, resource-intensive society of ~7 billion people, and run that society really close to the margins of earth's natural carrying capacity (as we are today), then arbitrarily messing around with a bunch of climate parameters is a stupid idea. It might work out okay, or it might not.
I am so bold as to to say, the conclusions of this type of research is stretched beyond what can safely be predicted of a chaotic system.
The more bold claims are used by power mongers to take more control of peoples lives.
People ought to be able to look for themselves how far the data is being stretched.
Just like that? The entire agricultural system that struggles to feed the more than 6 billion humans will just be tweaked a little bit and everything goes on just as before?
Yes.
That's cold comfort to farmers that their land is now useless for growing crops, but if they could just sell their now-worthless land and buy up some new land 200 miles to the north (that now happens to be sitting underneath suburban housing) then it's all just a wee bump in the road.
That is just stupid. There's no magic border now or in the future where farmland becomes worthless due to temperature or need for water. Second, there's no heavily urbanized north to block the development of farmland. Third, if farmers' land really does become worthless for some reason, then yes, they can move north and buy some more land. It is a wee bump in the road.
Wow, the government supports something that means more revenue for itself and more derivative trading schemes for their banker buddies? I would have expected the investigation to go the other way.
I feel sorry for true AGW believers. If they're right, western governments and the IPCC sure seem to be doing their best to fuck it up lately. AGW may in fact be true, but it just looks like such a con job at this point that I can never be for upturning the economy over it. And of course, I'll take global warming over an (overdue) ice age any day, so I wouldn't recognize the urgency, even if it were true.
Why not go back to fighting good old fashioned pollution? That's something everyone can get on board with. What about the disappearing honey bee and genetically modified foods? There are all sorts of environmental problems out there that have been ignored in favor of this (seemingly) manufactured issue.
Not everyone disagrees on the claim because it is convenient to do so, many disagree for entirely reasonable critiques of the current science.
Here is a clip from TVO:
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779732&ts=2010-03-09%2020:00:00.0
Unless you think the research chair and professor in Applied Mathematics and Global Change at the University of British Columbia and the professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also nutjobs. I am inclined to think they know a thing or two about what they are talking about. Both of them agree that the current research is over simplified, faulty assumptions, based on data used improperly. Hardly, foregone conclusion as most people who spout this rhetoric would have you believe.
Calling people names like "deniers" only proves that you are not tolerant of other ideas, and that you only have faith in your own. That is not science.
Myself I am not saying one way or another with any certainty what is happening. However from what I have read and what I have seen, much of the actual science seems to be flawed, and is heavily weighted on assumptions which are in turn based on assumptions, based on sketchy data, in which much of the methods used are questionable. The whole thing has become so politicized now, that there is more politics in it that any bit of science that may have been apart of it.
The release of the emails just added to the mess, in that it showed that "scientists" (and I use that word lightly) were actively trying to prevent people from examining their data, and actively trying to prevent other people with contrary opinions to their own from publishing it in an academic journal, going so far I heard as to try and purchase the journal so they could pick and choose who got published (only the ones that back their findings).
Anyway sketchy. I think people should be more environmentally friendly, and reduce the amount of energy we use anyway. Pollution and wanton consumption without regard is I believe is pretty irresponsible. So far as I am concerned Climate Change or not, it is something we should be doing anyway. I find most of the hype and fervor of the issue to be sensationalistic BS used for purely economical reasons. It is a complex issue that should be investigated thoroughly, and doesn't need people telling others that they are "deniers" etc... of obvious "truths". If your looking for "Truth" pick up a bible or a copy of Philosophy 101, as you won't find any "truth" in science. Science is about "facts", and reproducible experiment, or at the very very least confirmed modeling based on real life data. I have yet to see a model that hasn't failed under any kind of rigor.
Don't even get me started on the fools who blather on about geo-engineering like they know what they are talking about. That's like a blind guy doing surgery using a chainsaw. These would probably be the same morons that 100 years ago would suggest introducing a foreign invasive species to solve some kind of pest problem, not fully understanding the consequences of their actions...
Anyway I am ranted out...
You asked for an example of how environmental laws can be bad for the economy and he gave you one. The holier-than-thou attitude isn't necessary, and shows that you don't get it: these laws have a cost. If laws shut down businesses that were operating fine before, that's a bad thing for the economy.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
So pointing out a flaw in software being used to model the climate is being a "denier"? Well count me in. I deny that software works properly sir because it's a fact. Reviewing with a critical eye a process that could change the world, well that is wise not foolish.
It's "you" people that scare the shit out of me. "Consensus" has removed the ability to disagree apparently. Attacking critical thinking is not part of science. Climate science is becoming a religion and it makes me want to puke.
But cap and trade, which is the current favored "solution", is just plain bad legislation that doesn't inspire efficiency, it just creates another market for Goldman Sachs and their ilk to game.
I can't say that I agree with this. What Cap and Trade recognizes is that sometimes, by changing economic incentives, you can make people's self-motivated behavior actually produce the optimal (or close to optimal) solution globally. In CS, you might know the same concept by a different name ("greedy algorithm").
What I do agree with, though, is that changing incentives has all kinds of unintended consequences. Often people can "game" the system, as you point out. You won't really know until you try, but I think to make a convincing argument against Cap and Trade, you have to show that the consequences of doing nothing are better than the consequences of Cap and Trade. Which, I should point out, you have not done here with your "just plain weak" argument.
How does working to increase efficiency and reduce pollution wreck the economy?
That's a great idea. We should try it. Unfortunately, what was discussed at Copenhagen was payments from rich countries to poor countries. People have tried to hijack the global warming 'crisis' to push their own agendas.
Qxe4
said the lawmakers had been in a rush to publish
No kidding. A political body doing an "investigation" like this? The phrase "the fix is in" seems to apply here - if you are honest, you have to admit the conclusion was pretty much decided before any "investigation" by the body was done, regardless of whether you trust current climate science or not.
You asked for an example of how environmental laws can be bad for the economy and he gave you one.
No he didn't. He gave an example of how it was bad for one single business. If you want to look as the overall effect on the economy you need to consider who (if anyone) filled the gap the collapse of his business left, the overall effect of trade in freon substitutes, and so on. If you think his business is an example of "how environmental laws can be bad for the economy" then you must think that the internal combustion engine caused the total collapse of all Western economies because of the number of blasksmiths it put out of work.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
You talk about the "unused" lands in all those countries like if they were completely empty, waiting to be farmed in leu of higher temperatures. But what you usually find there are forests, whole ecosystems, glaciars, and other types of natural features. So you wanna raze them all to the ground and make them farm? why don't just start now razing our natural resources for land? Let's start with the Amazonas! oh wait....
I'm one of those people who downloaded the 40MB foia.zip file. I've read the emails. I've read the HARRYREADME file, and I've looked at the code examples. I get the impression from reading the comments here that most people have not actually done that. Oh, they'll say "The data proves" but they haven't actually LOOKED at the data. I would have thought that slashdot readers, being the objective technically-minded people they say they are, would have wanted to tear into that code and take a look.
What you will find is really fascinating. It's not very good. Climate scientists, on the whole, aren't really very good programmers; and they are not good statisticians. Why should they be? You can't be expert in everything. So you have a situation where Michael Mann, for example, rather than use the statistical manipulation suite "R" instead used Fortran, sometimes. When you read through poor "Harry's" lament you find a kind of frustration only a programmer could feel. Missing data, bad data, programs that throw an error, don't tell you, and keep on going. Missing data sets for entire countries.
Now, the essence of science is replicability, correct? If you're going to claim 'cold fusion' you publish your data and your methods and other scientists attempt to replicate your findings, or not. But the climate gate folks have steadfastly refused to release their methods, including their computer code, and the data they did release was not the data they used in their publications. Further, they 'lost' some data altogether.
Let us turn to the most famous of the emails: "I've just used Mike's Nature trick to hide the decline." Jones says he used the word "trick" to mean a "clever thing to do." Let's look at his "cleverness." What he actually did is meld together the historical record, based on proxies like tree rings, and the more recent instrumental record. On the surface that looks like an okay thing to do, but why did he do it?
The reason is that the tree ring data showed a warming since the early 1800's, and the instruments showed a warming since 1960 or so. Meld them together and you get warming! Global Warmimng! Yay! But why take out the tree ring data? Did it not continue and show warming into the nineties along with the instruments, thus verifying what these guys were saying?
No, it did not, thus you have the problem of "divergence" which is a fancy way of saying the tree ring data wasn't cooperating and showed COOLING since 1960! Well, these Climategate guys decided it 'must be something else' so rather than include the tree ring signal, they CUT IT OFF to HIDE THE DECLINE it showed. Thus an 'inconvenient truth' was 'disappeared' in favor of not 'confusing' the issue. They were afraid that if they showed just this one tree-ring line in their spaghetti chart declining, they'd have to explain it.
And they could not. In fact, the issue of the tree rings not cooperating calls into question using tree-ring data AT ALL. If it's not an accurate 'treemometer' how can you base historical climate on it? This is but one example of dozens and dozens of manipulations done by the Hockey Team as they attempt to salvage their careers and grants. It is simply not true that 'thousands of scientists' have replicated Global Warming. They have not. They have all used the same corrupted data sets in their calculations.
The Himalayan glaciers are not disappearing. The rain foretss are not turning into grasslands. African crops are not failing. Arctic ice is normal in every respect. There were 2500 polar bears a couple of decades ago and now there are 15,000. The Antarctic has record ice. The Netherlands is not 50% below sea level and the sea levels are not rising any faster than they have since 1800. Hurricanes are not more frequent, nor are tornados. Forty years ago there were 6,000 surface-temperature measuring stations, but only 1,500 by 1990, which coincides with what global warming alarmists say was a record temperature increase. Most of the deleted stations were in colder regions. Geologists for Space
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
If laws shut down businesses that were operating fine before, that's a bad thing for the economy.
Shutting down the slave trade was bad for the economy too. Pollution has a cost and it is much more insidious because the final costs are in no way related to the up front costs. While you are technically correct in saying that R-12 is cheaper than R-134a, that does not factor in increased treatment of skin cancer because of increased UV exposure (among other detrimental effects). I would argue that the banning of R-12 had an initial negative economic effect that does not even begin to compare to the negative economic effects of a nonfunctional ozone layer.
E pluribus unum
The blacksmiths' going out of work was not of itself "damage" to the economy, which was my point. The comparison is valid, because the point of the comparison is nothing to do with the causes of change in the business environment, it was that individual businesses, even individual economic sectors, are not the economy. You have to look at the overall picture to see whether the effect on the economy is good or bad, not just the effects on individual businesses that have not kept up with a changing market (whatever the causes of the change).
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
So your refutation is to assert that his question can never be asked? Basically you are saying that there is no such thing as increased efficiency and that there is no such thing as pollution. Finally you don't even address the question of how this effects the economy except to make another assertion that anything attempted will down us 'in a sea of harm.' How is that a reasonable or useful response?
I think we can all agree that people will come up with amazingly stupid ideas to solve nonexistent/pointless problems that being said people can come up with even more amazing solutions to real world problems given the resources to try. As far as I have seen the current attempts to reduce pollution have had a dramatic effect: there are far fewer instances of acid rain throughout the world than 20 years ago, building maintenance has been eased by not having to routinely clean coal dust from every nook and cranny, and rivers and streams throughout the world are providing humanity with cleaner safer drinking water and food. Do you have any instances where 'the approach taken is so stupid and expensive that any benefits are drowned in a sea of harm?' or are you just preaching to some choir that I don't hear.
To be honest, the evidence for global warming is so blatantly obviously everywhere, so incredibly pervasive that it becomes hard for anyone with a scientific mind to treat those that can't see the obviousness with dislike. Just how must of us hate the flat earth society.
I mean, just think about the oceans, and the amount of heat water can store, the amount of heat it takes to melt ice, and you realize the melting ice caps and the warming oceans are more than enough proof that global warming exists.
Really, with that overwhelming visual evidence, it is obvious the earth is warming, regardless of surface air temperatures (which vary drastically and constantly based on local conditions). Not only that, but scientists must do exactly what evolution scientists and geologists are forced to do, and comb over every last detail with a fine tooth comb and make sure their are NO published discrepancies, because even the smallest data variation leads to thousands of crazed unscientific nut-jobs storming about how everything you have ever said is a lie and that you are a dirty fraudulent alarmist and nothing more.
Whether or not it is caused by people? that is easy enough, just look at any city from afar, or smell the city air compared to the country air, or go within a few miles of a factory. You quickly realize that we are polluting to no end, and even if it isn't bad for the environment it is bad for us. But that is clearly at least slightly bad for the environment. Whether or not we are causing global warming is irrelevant to whether or not we should limit pollution, it is just used as a distraction and crux for major energy companies and industries that have the entire republican party and those that worship it in their pocket.
Attacking consensus with logical and valid evidence is one thing, but to deny the blatantly obvious is what makes scientists dislike deniers. Just as they dislike evolution deniers (and we can watch evolution before our vary eyes), radio-carbon dating deniers, and so on. There was once a time when the absolutely insane were widely accepted as such, but scientific illiteracy has made this not only main-stream, but has caused a whopping 50% of people to deny well accepted science (in the case of global warming).
As XKCD says, "A million people can call the mountains a fiction, yet it need not trouble you as you stand atop them" It troubles the lovers of science when the fate of their future is at stake over such idiocy though.
Climate science is no more a religion than is belief in the heliocentric model of our solar system.
Bugs in software are one thing, but it is undoubtable that our ice-caps are glacial deposits are shrinking, and that the oceans are getting warmer. No amount of bugs in software can make that false. And no number of calculation mistakes make the smog clouds above cities disappear.
The Hatchet
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Not to mention the fact that the air holds 1.4% more water at a 2 degree increase, so you'd see more clouds and more rainfall in the foodbelt. The foodbelt itself would widen, because land further north would be more hospitable to crops.
It might suck a little for California, but then you'd gain much more California-like land elsewhere. It's very much a net gain.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
> Stop f*cking ranting and cheering for your political party, open your f*cking eyes and vote
> for the right person for the job, not because they are wearing red or blue this week.
Clueless twits can always be counted upon to spout this fallacy, that you should vote for the man and not the party. It is right up there with 'there is no real difference between the two parties' in being quick ways to spot someone who knows nothing of politics but has convinced themselves they not only know more but are morally superior to the people who actually invest the effort to get a clue.
In saner times there is a measure of wisdom in your advice but most times, especially since the start of the Progressive Era, there are stark differences between the two (or more) camps. In modern times there are two great philosophies contending in the public arena.
1. The name shifts every couple of years since the majority of Americans HATE the ideas so every time a critical mass realize the new name is just the same old dogfood the name changes again. And to be fair there are policy differences and some shades of grey. But essentially this camp is the Progressives, Fascists, Liberals, Social Democrats, Labor, Socialists, Communists, etc. They are all bound together by the common belief that the State, personified in a "Great Leader", should lead a dictatorship of the enlightened few over the clueless masses. Believes in the Rule of Men.
2. Conservatives and Libertarians in a grand alliance against the forces of Statism. Believes in classical liberal ideas like natural law, individual rights and the Rule of Law. More bluntly, American ideas.
These two philosophical systems are so divergent that little common ground exists for compromise. We basically have a Cold War going on with two hostile camps kept from violence only by both sides seeing the better chance at the ballot box. But this situation isn't stable, our government is growing ever more unstable and people are losing faith in it. Eventually one side must defeat the other, driving their foe from the field and (re)implementing their system of government. And since neither side is likely to simply retire from the field without a final appeal to the sword the future doesn't look good.
So no, I won't vote for the man instead of the party. To paraphrase RAH (since I don't have the book handy) it is better to vote for a dunderhead of your own party, so long as he is subject to party displine and lacks such moral flaws as to render him a menace to society, than a genius of the party opposing. For while the dunderhead won't accomplish much even a dunderhead can represent his voters wishes. Meanwhile the genius of the party opposing is likely to accomplish much, almost none of which I will like.
Democrat delenda est
Nice attitude. Doesn't matter that freon was never a problem to the environment. Coincidentally the patents were due to expire, and it was claimed that chlorine was bad for the ozone layer. Doesn't matter at all that we pour gallons of chlorine into the water cycle through laundry bleach, swimming pools, and municipal water.
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It's a hard battle. We not only have to fight against greedy politicians and corporate monsters, we have to fight against gullible over-emotional assholes like you.
Ignorance? Check!
Rambling conspiracy theory? Check!
Abusiveness? Check!
This makes the Slashdot crank trifecta.
If you knew the slightest thing about the problem with ozone destroying chemicals, of which the chlorinated freons were prime culprits, you would know that they were a problem because they were supremely stable in the lower atmosphere (pure chlorine not so at all), and were able to transport chlorine to the ozone layer (unlike natural chlorine compounds), whereupon UV light broke them down, released the chlorine, starting a chain reaction destroying the ozone.
An ocean of pure chlorine at sea level would have zero effect on the ozone layer, because it can't get up there.
Worldwide bans on the worst ozone depleting chemicals has halted growth of ozone depletion, after years of worsening, and signs of recovery are expected to become statistically detectable in the next several years.
And, BTW, the patents on the harmful freons had expired many years before the ozone destruction discovery.
This is very thoroughly established science.
The parallel between the science-bashing with the "ozone controversy" (and the "acid rain controversy") and what we are seeing today with an industry-supported noise machine is really quite striking. Not only was the science thoroughly vindicated, but the solutions imposed - bans on the most destructive chemicals - and "cap and trade" (very much favored by "free marketers" at the time as harnessing the power of markets) for acid emissions, proved quite effective.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Seems to me that the common sense approach is to invest heavily in technology to fix the problem, not invest heavily in public relations aimed at extending the problem. That way, we all win no matter what the truth is.
That's almost true, but there's an important caveat: There's a small population of humans that are profiting from the current economic/industrial activities that are pushing the climate towards warming. Those people generally believe they will lose if the controls on their polluting activities are curtailed. Unfortunately for the rest of us, those people tend to be extremely wealthy, and have the means to fund PR campaigns, bribe legislators, etc., to ensure that their personal short-term economic interests aren't threatened.
There's a long history showing that our industrial leaders don't, and never have, cared at all for the welfare of their workers. Workers are disposable cogs in the machinery. If their working environment results in poor health and an early death, the industrial leaders historically haven't cared at all, because there has always been a plentiful supply of young, healthy workers looking for jobs.
This story isn't a scientific issue at all. Scientists tend to react to such things in a manner exemplified by the "cold fusion" story. Their initial reaction was "Well, that's really interesting. Let's start up a bunch of independent studies to replicate the results." Those studies all failed to replicate the results, so scientists just shrugged, and went about their lives studying other things.
Most scientists have reacted to the kerfuffle over "global warming" pretty much the same way. In this case, of course, the independent studies have all pretty much pointed in the same direction. So the scientific consensus, achieved without much fuss several decades ago, is that the change is real. The remaining questions are in the details, which are slowly being worked out. One of the details, supported by quite a lot of independent studies, is that a fairly large fraction of the warming (perhaps more than 100% ;-), is the result of human activity. But even here, scientists tend to react with "Well, that's interesting" and call for further studies.
Meanwhile, over in the industrial, economic, and political spheres, the reaction has been rather different. This story is about part of that. And so far, it's been mostly a lot of smoke and PR, with very little in the way of testable facts.
One things we can be fairly sure, though, is that the pressure and funding for the anti-global warming (AGW? ;-) campaign gets a good deal of support from the small fraction of the population who believe they'll lose if the process is curtailed. And we're talking about people who are threatened with the loss of many millions of dollars of annual bonus money. So we can expect the pseudo-debate to continue indefinitely.
(And here in New England, we'll continue to hear the running jokes about all the people in New Hampshire and Maine who thing that global warming sounds like a fine idea. I've heard similar jokes in French from the Québecois folks further north. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Great, except that you need to classify carbon as "pollution" for your argument to make sense. And carbon is "pollution" only if it significantly contributes to global warming, so your argument has to assume its conclusion!
Limiting carbon emissions is expensive - that's why there is a legitimate argument about how much human contribution to emissions matters and whether incurring those costs now is the best way to respond to the risks of global warming in the future.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
"you need to classify carbon as "pollution" for your argument to make sense. And carbon is "pollution" only if it significantly contributes to global warming, so your argument has to assume its conclusion!"
Here let me free you from that infinite loop - RF = 5.35*ln(c2/c1) - Fourier 1824.
I'm assuming you call yourself a skeptic so let me give you a skeptical analysis of your argument. It's assuming every physicist since Fourier has been wrong about the properties of CO2, it's also denying some basic findings of modern science such a the QM of photon absorbtion and the science behind spectral analyis.
In otherwords accepting your infinite loop argument leads to the same sort of irrational conclusions as accepting creationist "science" does. Some examples; everything we know about the composition of the cosmos via spectral analysis is wrong; radiation such as the suns rays don't cause atoms to jiggle (heat); atoms do not spontaneously lose energy by emmitting photons. There are many more implications of refusing to acknowledge the well known properties of CO2 but I'm sure a genuine skeptic will get the idea. You are a genuine skeptic, right?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There is a real scientific problem with your skeptics dismissal.
The properties of Co2 are not in question here and never were. The question is whether or not the change in the amounts of Co2 is large enough on scale to have the claimed effect outside of other observations because the raw physics equation doesn't side with observations. Co2 is a very small part of the atmosphere and the amount that is supposed to be a problem something like .0005 of the total atmosphere. And to add to that, there are plenty of other green house gases that display properties similar to Co2 in much larger quantities which are more effected by natural events then man made events. There are many outside factors that contribute to the problem like submarine volcanic activities, shifts in oceanic currents along with the decadal oscillation events responsible for El Mino and so on. That's why there is a complex climate model and not a climate math problem that any high school child could figure out.
I mean seriously, if it was as simply as Co2 has X heat retention value when exposed to Y amounts of heat then the entire proof would be X+1*y. And for every one in addition to X, simply measure the temp and see if it's accurate. Well, it's not that simple and to date, no attempts to make it that simple have been accurate.
What you are doing is essentially saying Wool is warm, I see ten sheep with wool, I am going to be warm and criticizing anyone who doubts you. Your league of followers may believe that you will eventually shear the sheep and make fabric from the wool that you will eventually make into some warm clothing and wear, but I don't have to believe you will, the guy you responded doesn't have top believe you will, actually, no one who can critically think should believe you will until we see you wearing the wool sweater and socks. SO if Co2 is actually the problem, more specifically, man made Co2, then show us the damn wool socks and sweater already. Don't sit there and cry because the properties of Co2 are such or that someone questions the claim. `All that does is show how little about the situation you actually do know. And when I say situation, I mean both global warming as well as the skeptics.