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Global Warming 'Confirmed' By Independent Study
chrb writes "The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project — an independent study of Earth's historical temperature record partly funded by climate skeptics, including the Koch brothers — has released preliminary results that show the same warming trend as previous research. Project leader and physics professor Richard Muller, of the University of California, has stated that he was 'surprised' at the close agreement, and it 'confirms that these studies were done carefully.' The study also found that warming in the temperature record was not caused by poor quality weather monitoring stations — thus rejecting a frequent claim of skeptics. Climate skeptic Stephen McIntyre has previously said 'anything that [Muller] does will be well done.'"
There is no amount or type of evidence, even in principle, which would answer climate change sceptics. They will disavow the fundimental principles of science if that is what is necessary to protect their beliefs.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Dear gods! If it wasn't caused by man, then our actions would just end up making a better world for nothing! How horrible!
Yup - since they can't 'deny' that it is happening at all anymore (thus absolving deniers of any need to do anything), now they assert that it's (some sort of a) a natural phenomena (deniers disagree as to which), that has to be wholly independent of our actions (thus absolving deniers of any need to do anything).
See a pattern here?
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Dear gods!
If it wasn't caused by man, then our actions would just end up making a better world for nothing!
How horrible!
A world with cleaner air, water, and land, sustainable clean energy sources, and solutions that preserve the environment for future generations?
Such a world would be horrible! I want nothing to do with such a hell!
> Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that the earth's climate is ALWAYS changing (and always has been).
Also, earthquakes & tornadoes are totally not humanity's fault, so we shouldn't plan around them either.
The Economist estimates 2% of global GDP to meaningfully cut emissions. (By comparison, the recent round of bank rescues cost about 5%)
Nobody know what the cost of adjusting is, because we don't know what scale of the change will be. If the changes are less than 2 degrees, that's likely to be tolerable. ON the other hand, some of the worst case predictions are very, very bad for human civilisation.
This uncertainty is being used to encourage inaction when the opposite is true: any sensible approach to risk management would suggests taking reasonable action to avoid it.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
As I sit in my electrically lit office, using my table top computation device, drinking water delivered from the ground after being treated with sanitizing chemicals to make it safe to drink, sitting in a chair composed of materials derived from multi-step chemical synthesis and processing, reading your electronically delivered tripe sent from hundreds of miles or more away, I can see how the misconception that science works could be so common. Thanks for informing me.
Did it "confirm" it was caused by man? Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late.
Of late? Yes. That puts us on step 3.
The Republican 8 Phase Denial Plan
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
4) Man causes significant global warming, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
5) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
6) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
7) ????
8) Profit.
It was probably caused by man.
By measuring temperatures in dumb-ass places, the BBC link in the article sums it up nicely with a picture of a weather station next to an airplane, and you could argue that jet exhaust and black tarmacs are natural, but you can't argue that jet exhaust and black tarmacs are representative for the earth surface in average.
Actually, the heat island effect was one of the things that this study was meant to address. The climate skeptic's contentions on this are basically threefold:
- Urban heat islands exist and they are warmer than they otherwise would be if urbanization had not happened (I don't think anyone disputes this).
- Urban heat islands exaggerate warming trends.
- Unlike TV weathermen, climate scientists are too stupid to realize that urban heat island effects could affect their data and too stupid to correct the data for it (even though it is quite likely that clever TV weathermen probably read about this effect in the climate science literature in the first place).
What this group has found on the matter, to their great surprise, is that not only doesn't the urban heat island effect not exaggerate warming trends, it actually dampens them a little bit. In other words, if you are not accounting for the urban heat island effect it makes the hockey stick less steep, rather than more steep.
Which is no great surprise to me because others have already looked at this due to the stink Anthony Watts was raising and found the same thing (though I would guess Watts probably doesn't talk about that too much).
Won't matter. Remember, Nixon had an independent commission study the issues surrounding marijuana (LaGuardia). They came back and recommended decriminalization. We're still fighting the war on drug users today. Right wingers are immune to science.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
> Can we at least agree that scientists are human
> and thus vulnerable to the same pressures that motive
> other human beings?
Nope. Different humans are motivated by different things. Some of us live for sports, some of us live for money, some of us live for love, some of us live to build, some of us live to discover, some of us live to please, some of us live for power.
Research scientists in general did not choose their profession for its salary or its power. Most scientists would not falsify research for money. Virtue and integrity aside, they know if nobody can reproduce their results they're unlikely to have a long career.
The Berkeley study got $150,000 from the Koch brothers precisely because those who started it came largely from outside climate science, having established their considerable credentials in other sciences, and announced at the outset their skepticism about the standards of climate scientists. They expected they well might find - and the Koch brothers clearly hoped they would find - that the interpretations of the temperature records accepted by over 97% of current climate scientists were exaggerated and sloppy.
The Berkeley study leaders are now openly surprised that their conclusions - using more advanced statistical methods than have been employed previously - are within 2% of the mainstream climate science analyses. I'll bet good money they get no further funding from the Koch brothers going forward. The Kochs have many billions, and have been generous in funding the economics department at Florida State University, with strings attached to assure that department will support economic theories the Kochs agree with ("Austrian school" economics). Universities keenly court large donors. Had the Berkeley climate study likewise come to conclusions agreeing with the brothers' prejudices, that cash-strapped university could have anticipated generous funding to support a climatology institute going forward.
So which side of the bread is buttered? Were the genius scientists too stupid to see they just dropped the bread butter-side down? Why have they followed the science even when it drives away their funding?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Except for:
1) None of the scientists ever said "only university-trained scientists can understand the data".
2) All of the science was done openly with all the cards on the table. Published papers are, well, published.
3) You could always discover the funding sources for the vast majority of all scientists, because most of them are required to disclose it.
4) Vanishingly little data was used that could be considered "tainted".
The only real difference between this research project and previous ones which came to the same conclusions was the personalities involved.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
You and people like you are the ones with agendas. If you can blow off global warming, then you can keep right on living large and wastefully, diverting our resources to peacock like displays of virility and vanity, and the propping up of obsolete businesses and ideas so that you don't have to change. Because then you might actually have to think, heaven forbid! After all, you have to show the neighbors that you're rich and important, don't you? And you sure don't want anyone changing the rules on how best to do that.
So you go down the classic route of "offense is the best defense", and make ridiculous claims that scientists are stupid and wrong, or have joined in a vast conspiracy to extract grant money from governments. You cry about the "sacrifice", but you won't go live next to a coal power plant on the downwind side, will you? But it's okay with you if poor people get shoved into such locations, and have to deal with the resulting health problems themselves. And you ignore that we have that thing known as progress. You surely don't want to give up the LCD monitor, and go back to CRTs? How about leaded gas? Do you understand what that stuff did to us all, and how simple it was to ditch? Just need hardened steel valve seats, that's all. Just a few more pennies per engine, and we saved many dollars on health and pollution problems. If we ever get some good batteries, or fuel cells, I promise you that almost no one will ever want to use a combustion engine vehicle again, global warming or no. A combustion engine is awful compared to an electric motor. They will be relegated to museums, much like the old railroad steamers. But we won't ever get there, unless we research it.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Dude, don't worry, after this there are still lots and lots of places for you to move the goalpost to. You have plenty of options left to preserve your denial until you are dead. You will never have to face the truth.
Even after the anthropogenic part is undeniable even to folks like you (having been proven in the 1990s), you can move the goalpost to "but it's insignificant", and then to "okay, but it's too expensive to fix", to "okay, but it's too hard to fix", to "okay, but humanity will never cooperate to fix it", to "oh, well I just don't want to fix it". I bet there are even more steps in between you can fall back on.
So don't be too concerned. Your denial is as safe as any other denial. Toward the end of your life, you can just devolve into a delusion of universal conspiracy, where even your tending nurse is getting paid off.