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Global Warming 'Undeniable,' Report Says
BergZ writes "Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. 'A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,' the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are 'clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.'"
So I guess extreme cold weather is blamed on global warming, and extreme hot weather is blamed on global warming. That's a convenient position to take. Obviously, wanting cleaner air is something you should want regardless, but the way fear is used to force taxes onto people or make them feel guilty for using technology is something I strongly disagree with. So, I agree with saving the planet up to the point that it begins to interfere with useful, necessary technology. Unfortunately, along with global warming comes a lot of anti-capitalist garbage from iPod-using urban hippies who think meat-eating is evil and feel the love at Bjork concerts. I'm being facetious, but you get the idea. There's way too much emotionalism infecting what should be a strictly scientific viewpoint.
George Carlin summed up the alarmist element of environmentalism pretty well. Earth couldn't care less about us. To sum up--"The planet's not fucked. WE are."
Are there still glaciers covering North America?
That one seems pretty obvious and undeniable. Though it doesn't give the AGW crowd much ammunition unless they are going to blame it on mammoth SUVs.
Let's try and not go completely off the rails by claiming that I am every denier you have ever faced on the internet, that I am incapable of facing reality, or what-have-you.
No, you're a specific denier who I have faced on the Internet before. If you'd like to face reality, now would be a perfect time.
In a community that rejects dissent, consensus is a non-fact.
If you want to expand that to 'no dissent allowed', that's all well and good, but you really have to acknowledge that the consensus is at a minimum drastically diminished. Either level of severity supports my main thesis here - One cannot put much value in the consensus in and of itself.
The central argument of your thesis -- that dissent is rejected -- is false. Dissent is not rejected. Bad papers and science are rejected. Good papers and science that dissent are accepted. As the link clearly shows. That's the reality that you aren't accepting.
The specific paper the comment was referring to was going to be published by the journal, despite being a terribly flawed paper, simply because it was dissenting. Basically the opposite bias of the one you claim. And how do we know that this paper was singled out for terribleness by the researchers, and not merely because it dissented? Because of all the other papers that are published that dissent, but aren't terrible. Your whole thesis falls apart in the face of the reality that good, dissenting opinions are accepted by the climatology community.
That this constitutes a small percentage of the published literature tells you something about the state of the science. It means there is relatively little to dissent about among those who are studied. In areas where there is ample room for dissent -- cosmology is a good example -- there are many papers published that wildly disagree with the most popular theories.
"Consensus" is a vague term and was never intended to imply unanimous agreement. Simply a very large preponderance of agreement.
Your argument that this consensus is invalid (or merely 'drastically diminished', please let's not quibble) because the consensus was created in an environment where disagreement with the pre-formed consensus is rejected, is demonstrably false.
That's reality. Can you accept it?
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