Slashdot Mirror
Ex-NASA Employees Accuse Agency of 'Extreme Position' On Climate Change
grumpyman writes "A coalition of 49 ex-NASA employees, including seven Apollo astronauts, have accused the U.S. space agency of sullying its reputation by taking the 'extreme position' of concluding that carbon dioxide is a major cause of climate change. Is the claim in this letter opinion or fact?"
Yeah, it's great that this is somehow your big issue now. But would it pain you all too much to get together and maybe concentrate on making the U.S. a country capable of putting a man into space again? I mean, debate is great and all, but I'm getting a little creeped-out by the way the Chinese are laughing at us.
You know things are getting pretty bad when you start longing for the days when a former Nazi was giving NASA moral leadership.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Is the claim in this letter opinion or fact?
Well, from the letter itself:
March 28, 2012
/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack - JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years
/s/ Larry Bell - JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years
/s/ Dr. Donald Bogard - JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 41 years
/s/ Jerry C. Bostick - JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 23 years
/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman - JSC, Scientist - astronaut, 5 years
/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Division, MOD, 41 years
/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox - JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years
/s/ Walter Cunningham - JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years
/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry - JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years
/s/ Leroy Day - Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years
/s/ Dr. Henry P. Decell, Jr. - JSC, Chief, Theory & Analysis Office, 5 years
/s/Charles F. Deiterich - JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron - JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years
/s/ Charles Duke - JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 16, 10 years
/s/ Anita Gale
/s/ Grace Germany - JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years
/s/ Ed Gibson - JSC, Astronaut Skylab 4, 14 years
/s/ Richard Gordon - JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi
The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Dear Charlie,
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA's history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.
As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA's advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA's current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.
For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.
Thank you for considering this request.
Sincerely,
(Attached signatures)
CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science
CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center
Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.
My work here is dung.
The 49-person letter was organized by Leighton Steward, chairman of Plants Need CO2, a non-profit with ties to the coal industry.
To this site and promptly commit suicide? From that site:
Earth and its inhabitants need more, not less, CO2.
More CO2 means:
More Plant Growth
Plants need less water
More food per acre
More robust habitats and ecosystems
CO2 is Earth's greatest airborne fertilizer. Without it - No Life On Earth!
A site with a banner that says "Warmer is better than colder." and "CO2 is Green." and "Climate Change is the Norm." really just makes my head hurt. The arguments presented on this site seem to imply that policy is to completely remove all CO2 from Earth. That is not true. It also grasps at hilarious straws:
In addition to increasing the quantity of food available for human consumption, the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is also increasing the quality of the foods we eat. It significantly increases the quantity and potency of the many beneficial substances found in their tissues (such as the vitamin C concentration of citrus fruit), which ultimately make their way onto our dinner tables and into many of the medicines we take, improving our health and helping us better contend with the multitude of diseases and other maladies that regularly afflict us. In just one species of spider lily, for example, enriching the air with CO2 has led to the production of higher concentrations of several substances that have been demonstrated to be effective in fighting a number of human maladies, including leukemia, ovary sarcoma, melanoma, and brain, colon, lung and renal cancers, as well as Japanese encephalitis and yellow, dengue, Punta Tora and Rift Valley fevers.
Climate warming increases the quality of your food! Burn all the shit you want, folks! Hey, if CFCs make the planet warmer and this site says "warmer is better than colder" shouldn't we be purposefully releasing those things up into the ozone?
My work here is dung.
"The 49-person letter was organized by Leighton Steward, chairman of Plants Need CO2, a non-profit with ties to the coal industry."
And thats all I needed to know before I stopped reading.
"Okay, if you want to complain about us doing science, then do it in the methods that science accepts complaints." A letter like this is the equivalent of a toddler stamping its foot because its mother told him that cookies will make him fat.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Not a lot:
https://autonomousmind.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/co2_ppm.jpg
Roughly half of Americans deny global warming; not restricted to blue-collar workers.
Film at 11.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"A coalition of 49 ex-NASA employees, including seven Apollo astronauts, have accused the U.S. space agency of sullying its reputation by taking the 'extreme position' of concluding that MANMADE carbon dioxide is a major cause of climate change. Is the claim in this letter opinion or fact?"
Inconveniently forgot "manmade" in the summary
but James Hansen, the Head of NASA's Goddard Institute coming out and saying that Oil CEOs should be tried for crimes against humanity for emitting CO2 very much hurts NASA's credibility on science.
"Plants Need CO2, a non-profit with ties to the coal industry, accuse agency of ‘extreme position’ on climate change"
Engineers and Apollo astronauts are not climate scientists.
Do we really need another lesson on why engineers are not jack of all trades
Scientists?
It seems to me nothing is proven. So NASA should say nothing. It then follows there is no point in NASA. We should stop teaching science in schools too. I am so glad that we have climate deniers and creationists looking out for us. They only want what's best for us right. It not like they have any personal interest involved.
Their opinion is that some people at NASA have stretched the science beyond the breaking point.
If this were a matter of easily provable fact, they wouldn't have had to write the letter. The science would be truly be settled.
Are any of the signatories to the letter actually climate scientists? I recognize that shuttle engineers and astronauts from 40 years ago are probably interesting people to hang out with, but do they have any personal expertise on which to base their argument? 'cause otherwise it sounds like a bunch of grumpy old dudes whingeing.
The last time major figures signed a letter skeptical of global warming, it turned out that the letter they had actually signed was NOT the letter that their signatures ended up attached to. The letter they had actually signed was not skeptical of AGW but skeptical of the level of accuracy to which specific claims had been given - a very different thing.
I do not know if this is the case with the NASA letter, but "once bitten, twice shy" as they say. Now that there has been examples of outright forgery by climate cynics (they don't deserve the label of skeptic), absolutely no such letter should be considered credible or honest until the signatories confirm that that was indeed the letter signed and that they understood it to mean what it is taken to mean.
Until such time, there is an onus on the DOJ to investigate prior substantiated forgeries to determine if they constitute a criminal activity. Sure, they probably don't in America, but nonetheless it is NOT the function of law-enforcement and the justice department to avoid determinations with political implications, it is their job to ensure that the criminal law of the land is actually followed. And you can't ensure that by ignoring things that are "sensitive". (I'm actually thinking of Enron, Lehrman Brothers, etc, prior to their respective collapsees when they were popular but red-flagged by anyone looking at what was really happening. Feel free to substitute other attempts to evade responsibility if you like, though.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I take some relief in noting that these are "ex-NASA" employees.
Per the article, it seems that these guys mostly worked at the Texas-based Johnson space center:
"Keith Cowing, editor of the website NASA Watch, noted that the undersigners, most of whom have engineering backgrounds, worked almost exclusively at the Houston-based Johnson Space Centre, a facility almost entirely removed from NASA's climate change arm."
Figures.
Why is it that there are so many amateur climatologists in Texas who know so much, but publish so little? I wonder if these gentlemen even bothered to visit the site of the "Plants Need CO2" sponsor, Leighton Steward, to see who also agreed with their opinions. I'm not linking to that site, and I'd surely want to avoid association with anyone with ideas like that.
Maybe Steward just punked them. Yep, that's go to be it.
The Internet has no garbage collection
So what? You could find numerous doctors and scientists with ties to the tobacco industry trying to tell us that cigarettes don't cause lung cancer and how second-hand smoke is safe just a couple decades ago. There is nothing novel about a group of people with financial ties to industries peddling fossil fuels to be spreading FUD over climate research.
You believe the inventor of the Internet when he says there's global warming, so we all assumed you'd believe anyone on pretty much anything.
It is sad that respectable scientists and engineers would debase themselves in this fashion. I frankly suspect that they are being used by someone, but it doesn't excuse it.
Sigh. A lot of the opposition to evolution isn't just to drag in the religious-conservative voters, it's to get them used to distrusting science. The "Don't trust Climate Change Science" is the real payload, because there are a lot of companies that don't want the government regulating their industries, and they'd rather have idiocracy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Why does Slashdot still waste their readers' time with this debate? Are we going to have a series of posts of people questioning evolution and the second law of thermodynamics?
CFCs don't make the planet warmer. They deplete the Ozone layer.
Tell that to Australia ... here's a hint: with no ozone layer, we'd eventually be like the moon with approximately 212 F during the day to about -300 F during the night.
Yes, a website run by a non-profit group with ties to the oil and coal industries. Truly a non-biased source of information.
I like it when science can be challenged, reviewed. When theories can be questioned. When models can be tested and retested with out being called a heretic and locked in a dungeon until you conform.
If I question BFSS model in M-Theory, people consider it scientific, and willing to debate and explore alternate theories.
If I question the carbon model in global warming theory, people claim it's unscientific, and continue ad hominem attacks.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
we knew it was going to be relative crickets for this story.
bunch of goddamn liberal techies on slashtard.
once confronted with real scientists who say "it's bullshit"
watch them all tangent and squirm, or just leave an uncomfortable silence.
this whole global warming thing has been an exploding cigar in the face of the liberals.
morons.
We know that CO2 warms the atmosphere. We know that the atmosphere is getting warmer. But we don't know if it's CO2 causing the warming or something else. If it is CO2 we don't know if it's man-made or natural that's the real culprit here. But....
doesn't it seem logical that we should do what we can ie. slow the production of man-made CO2 since we know it causes warming and we can't control natural CO2? Otherwise we keep producing CO2 and see how hot we can make the planet.
So you've got a bunch of space shuttle guys from Johnson Space Center, which does pretty much zero climate science, asking the administrator to censor the group at Goddard Space Flight Center, which is co-located with NOAA and is the center for earth sensing and earth science about an earth-science related topic? Really?
And yes, I happen to be a former NASA/Goddard principal engineer with a whole wall of mission paraphernalia on my office wall. So, hey, JSC can suck it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The counter-argument presented in the post states that the signatories of the letter are not "climate scientists." Well, this argument holds about as much water as the argument that NASA is not a climate agency. Climate research encompasses efforts which require expertise in a number of sciences. When anyone with an expertise in one of the necessary science branches decides to weigh in on arguments, it makes no sense to outright dismiss him as a non-climate-scientist. In fact, it seems like the only ones defending this AGW position are those blessed by the priesthood of the climate scientists or members of the media. Well, if you dismiss an astro-physicist weighing in on results of temperature distribution studies (as seen from space) because he is not a "climate scientist", why listen to NASA which is not a "climate agency"?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The first question I ask myself is to what extent it's proper for NASA to engage with public politics. (Of course survival requires it to play politics all the time, but my question is about influencing public debate.)
If NASA's function is to study climate change, then of course it has a duty to report its findings. The ethics are straightforward, but they don't apply here. However, NASA does have scientific and technical expertise which may qualify it, or even oblige it, to share its knowledge with the public, especially as NASA receives substantial public funding.
Also, NASA's prominence in the aerospace industry should make it especially conscientious concerning adverse effects of that industry. And aerospace is a significant contributor to greenhouse emissions. So again, it has an ethical obligation to inform itself about the effect of such emissions on climate change, and to share its findings.
As to whether or not NASA is taking the correct position, that's really a secondary question. Certainly NASA is saying nothing controversial in warning about climate change. It's an altruistic position, in line with most of the scientific community. Conversely, it would be at least moderately suspicious if NASA were to dismiss the issue as unimportant, given that this position is directly self-serving.
Now, a group of people want to disagree with NASA on this issue, that's fine. We can let their claims stand on their own merits, while noting what company they keep with what vested interests. But calling to silence NASA is just plain inappropriate.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Then why isn't Mars just bursting with plant life? You'd think we could land a strain of Kudzu on Mars and it would be terraformed in a week.
The claims made on their website sound like a 12yr-old wrote it. They so lack a scientific background that it makes me weep for the future of the USA. And the planet.
USA... destroying itself and the planet... a little at a time.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
There is no opinions in the article. They only state the fact that a petition was signed and that NASA responded to it. Facts don't have bias -- only opinions (which are interpretations of facts) do.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
1. The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
Hansen, Jones, et. al.
2. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
Read the latest textbooks? AGW is taught as a FACT, pages and pages. Have to indoctrinate early ya know.
3. The group is preoccupied with making money.
Government Grants. Although I have to say that these guys are more narcissists that money grubbers.
4. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
Editors losing jobs, those expressing legitimate doubts ostracized, etc.
5. Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
Nothing here.
6. The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
Related to #4. Jones and friends want to be the only peer reviewers. So no dissent every really sees the light of day in the journals.
7. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
YOOOU aren't a Climate Scientist so nothing you say matters...Nobel Prize Winner in Physics? No matter because Yooou aren't a Climate Scientist
8. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
Juden, Denier, etc. What will I have to sew onto my shirt?
9. The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).
Hiding data, ignoring legal requests for data, etc. No Problem as long as you are on the "Right" side of the debate.
10. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities)
And here was have Peter Gleick. "I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed. My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts -- often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated -- to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved."
11. The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
Starving Polar Bears anyone? What natural disaster hasn't been blamed on Global Warming?
12. Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
OK, pretty much applies to Slashdot guys.
13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.
MDSolar? Is that you?
14. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
I'm sure Jones and Hansen hang out with non-believers all the time.
Forget Mars - go for Venus for your CO2 and heat driven tropical paradise. Don't forget the Teflon-umbrella - slight chance of sulfuric acid drizzle today.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Moron. NASA isn't about making fireworks. its about putting things into space. Like WEATHER SATELLITES that give us the data that this is all about. And the analysing it, which is wha the denialits are trying to bury under a pile of irrelevant shit. And, from TFA:
The 49-person letter was organized by Leighton Steward, chairman of Plants Need CO2, a non-profit with ties to the coal industry. ...âoeWhat these men and women are not is climate scientists,â wrote Houston-based science writer Eric Berger in a Wednesday blog post. âoeMost are not even scientists in the sense that they have pursued scientific research during their careers, in any discipline.â
Funny how the submitter omitted that. Astronauts aren't climate scientists. They're being cited as celebrities, not scientists.
These rather lame, piss weak dilettantes are STILL trying their old standbys, like petitions, public debates and what not, because it's "demuuuuucracy, it's Amuuuuuurican, derp derp", and that somehow, the (political) opinions of a million clueless, uneducated fuckwits transcends the truth staring us in the face -- that the Earth's climate it warming, it's caused by humans, and that it's going to cost us big time if we don't do something about it.
I see shades of the Nobel Syndrome here. The far Right aren't very bright as a group, and use -- and are sucked in by -- obvious logical fallacies, like appealing to authority.
It's an obvious far-right wing culture war stunt by a pack of idiots and cranks, and likely encouraged (and paid for) by self-interested idiots and cranks.
See, if you repeat a lie often enough, and if you can borrow some fake credibility ("I worked for NASA, I'm so intelligent and authoritive"), then you can pass off any piece of shoddy political propaganda as unvarnished fact.
P.S: righties, libertoons and Randroids, don't bother trying to fisk or debunk climate change here. No amount of regurgitated right wing talking points will change the fact that you are all shamefully, hopelessly WRONG on everything and anything to do with climate change.
"How in the hell are we going to get to the moon when we can't talk between two buildings." Really, how are we going to get back to the moon? There's so much arguing among ourselves instead of building something (but then there's arguments on what to build, i.e. SLS). Now there's this letter on climate change.
I'll throw in my arguments repeating what an AC posted: "Space is only half of NASA's mission. Darned Aeronautics. Always the bridesmaid but never the bride."
mfwright@batnet.com
While CO2 is A high percentage of the Martian atmosphere, that atmosphere is very thin. Also the surface of Mars is quite cold and lacks liquid water.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
When did you stop beating your wife? :-)
Look, science doesn't work the way you think it does. It starts with a hunch, progresses to a testable hypothesis, and after much iteration and learning, becomes a theory or model about some very specific thing. Facts are the things that we observe, theories explain how or why they do the things that they do.
So, it may be a fact that the climate is changing. (duh) But why and how it is changing is a much more complex question. Is there a single over-riding cause? Or multiple causes? A good theory (regardless of whether it is true) helps us make good predictions about the future. There are few predictions that climate change theory makes that are easily testable over short time periods.
So skepticism regarding the causes of global warming (climate change) and the extent is warranted.
Ad hominems like calling people climate change deniers, false dichotomies like fact vs opinion... do nothing but move the debate out of the scientific realm and into the realm of politics.
Reminds me of how idiotic the alumni were when women were first admitted to Dartmouth College. Back to the golf course guys.
Interesting that everyone here is a expert. By the criteria of most of the posters, as applied to the letter, disqualifies *them* from commenting as well. We are basically ALL consumers of the data and then need to draw our own conclusion. Some more/less educated than others. To "poo poo" a bunch of engineers and astronauts opinions because they are not climatologists seems extreme. These are all very intelligent folks and are certainly able to draw conclusions from the evidence available. Probably more so than the readers here.
I don't know who you are but I would guess that most people would be much more impressed by the credentials of the "49 pin-heads" than they would be by yours. Their opinion is worth listening to, yours AFAICT is not.
A layer of paint is typically 1/8 of a millimeter thick, and is close to 100 opaque to visible light. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere amounts to 4 kg per square meter. If condensed, it would be a layer 2.6 millimeters thick, or 20 times thicker than a paint layer. It should not be hard to understand a layer that thick being able to absorb a significant amount of infrared light. The fact that it is distributed vertically does not change the absorbing power of the molecules, you still have the same number per unit area to run into.
Expressing the numbers as percentages is a way to make them seem small, and ignores the fact that the whole atmosphere has a mass of 10.3 tons per square meter, and would be about 9 meters thick if condensed. It's fairly amazing that thickness only absorbs about 27% of total incoming sunlight.
"chairman of Plants Need CO2, a non-profit with ties to the coal industry." Who'd'a thunk??
But seriously, it's time to move on from denial. There's still at least 11 steps to go!
Given that:
1. CO2 levels have been increasing.
2. CO2 is transparent in visible light.
3. CO2 is opaque in infrared light.
4. That trapping infrared light traps heat.
Why is it an "extreme position" that this increase in CO2 will cause a heating of our atmosphere called "global warming"? I would think any position that ignores one of these facts would be the "extreme position".
Most climate scientists are "not climate scientists". What do I mean? Well until very recently, there was no such thing. It is a new field. As such degrees of study in it are new. You can get a degree in Climate Science these days from some universities (NAU is one I know that offers at least a masters level program in it) but that is only within about the last 10 years. Yet we have all these older researchers who are researching it, and clearly don't have a degree in it. So what do they have a degree in?
Well it varies. It can be oceanography, atmospheric science, forestry, hell even physics or statistics. Different fields that have some relation to what is being studied (since the study of climate is exceedingly complex and encompasses many disciplines). They aren't some people anointed with a special degree that lets them research it, they are researchers who direct their efforts towards an aspect of this.
The "not a climate scientist" argument is one of the worst people can make. If that's what you want to go on, then very few people can actually speak with any authority on the subject, and most that can are ones without much experience.
It also completely ignores how science works, of course, that it is not a priesthood where only the chosen may participate. However it is particularly bad in this case on account of the massive amount of interdisciplinary work that goes in to it.
The problem here is not that climate change is the norm. The problem is the rate at which it's changing! Rate, goddamn it, the rate. Read the peer reviewed papers. Nobody's saying it's never changed before. Take the derivative with respect to time of global temperature over the last sixty years then compare it to the derivative with respect to time (dx/dt) over the last hundred million years. So you shoot down an argument by ignoring the details ... congratulations.
This site okays everything with bullshit arguments. Even "climate change is the norm" is bullshit in that it's convincing you not to dig any further into the details.
It will be a very interesting discussion once you people realize you knew diddly-squat about climatology and what was going on in the world. It might not happen, you might be right - I know as much as you - but at least I am not blinded by faith in authorities shoving ideas down our throats. If this MMGW thing is really so much overblown and it gets widely recognized, you might next time think twice about what you really believe in.
Most of the people here are so arrogant and convinced - but honestly - would you bet you life on it?
This might sound naive but there was a consensus that the earth is flat. Just food for thought.
... is apparently that 'man made global warming' is real.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case.
Yes, of course. We should dismiss the near-unanimous opinion of qualified scientists, in favor of the opinion of an A/C.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nasa wanted more muslim outreach as part of its new mission, and the qur'an says...
Do not obey people who go beyond the limits of the earth and destroy it not improve it.
Waste not by excess; for Allah love not the wasters.
Whoever plants a tree and diligently looks after it until it matures and bears fruit is rewarded. If a muslim plants a tree or sows a field and humans and beasts and birds eat from it, all of it is love on his part.
Of course they need to expouse this position on climate change: for mulsim outreach.
Perhaps you could provide actually useful links. Such as links to peer-reviewed papers proving 'global warming' is false.
I'll wait.
(It's gonna be a long wait, since there aren't any)
where climate change deniers think they are going to live if they are wrong.
The problem with Climate Change isn't the science or the scientists, it's the politics and politicians. "Climate Change" is primarily owned by political forces who are using it as a tool to force their agenda. The different political groups use their influence to fund and support "research" to support their agenda.
What is lost in all the political maneuvering, posturing, lying and name-calling is science. I doubt any of the politicians care about the science, they only care about what they can make "science" say to further their agenda. Science rarely deals in absolutes in their research but, with "Climate Change" they are being required to say "This is so. This will happen." or "This will not happen". These are not scientific statements, these are statements to further political aims.
It is difficult to ferret out the actual truth because both sides have worked so hard to twist and manipulate things. Even some scientists have become politicized.
I just wish it were just scientists doing science, but that is just not going to happen with trillions of dollars at stake for both sides.
"Climate Change" isn't about science, it's about control -- and, yes, I'm talking about both sides.
A predictable canard run out every time someone doesn't want to look at the data.
Of course, 99.999999999999999999999999% of the people on Slashdot don't have the background to fully understand any of the stuff either side slings back and forth.
But at least the skeptics point to places where those who do have the back ground make cogent comments and observations. As oppose to you and your friends who simply shout "Oil and Coal! I'm not looking lalalalal!"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=36679
Oh, you mean do science? But that's such hard work.
Here is my gripe with that: all of modern civilization is built on fossil fuels. Unless those power sources are replaced with something else, any effort you make to limit their use will have a direct impact on human populations around the world. So when people argue for dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, they are in effect arguing that we should take steps that we know will cause suffering on a large scale because it may prevent uncertain suffering in the future. I say it may prevent it because we don't know if efforts to reduce emissions would happen quickly enough to have an effect, or if it's already too late. And I say that the future suffering is uncertain because we don't know exactly what the effects will be.
I can't see pulling the trigger on a "solution" that will definitely devastate the world's economy, when other solutions will be available in the near future. Solar panels are now less than $1 / watt, and they will be even cheaper in the next few years. Wind power is already incredibly cheap. Moreover, I can't see why we are so insistent on a solution that probably won't actually solve the problems of increased flooding and water shortages decreased snowpack. We already know that large scale civil engineering projects will solve those problems, and that we should be investing I'm them already to address cycles of poverty and famine that already exist in poorer countries.
The Scientific Method never, ever, ever proves anything false.
Perhaps you could point to a paper that Proves "global warming" true?
Hint: Proving it true doesn't not include rigged computer models and manipulated proxy data.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Apples to irrelevant oranges. If NASA hires a bunch of doctors and comes out with a study on osteoporosis and bone density would you dismiss it out of hand "because they're not a medical agency"?
Would a bunch of physicists protesting the bone study on purely political grounds be taken seriously?
Absurd reasoning, see above.
Is the rent high under that bridge of yours?
Could you please advise, for the record, where it says that "Leighton Steward" "organized" this letter.
That not really true yes. Although methane is about 37 times more potent a green house gas than carbon dioxide, the concentration in the atmosphere is still so very small that the effect of carbon dioxide predominates. However, as more clathrates sublime that probably won't be true in 100-200 years time given its ultimate effect on forcing.
If you look at the recent coring data its abundantly clear that carbon dioxide increases preceded both warming and methane ending the last ice age, which is what you would expect if carbon dioxide provides the trigger. This is precisely what is being seen now. Methane is only now starting to outgas excessively in the permafrost and under the Arctic ocean as the temperatures have warmed sufficiently enough to start the sublimation process of existing methane clathrates. The problem now is that as carbon dioxide continues to climb there is no way to reverse the cocking the trigger on the clathrate gun. By letting carbon dioxide rise, we are effectively pulling the trigger.
The really scary thing is that from the onset of the height of the last ice age to its end carbon dioxide only increased carbon dioxide concentrations went from about 220-300. Whereas, within only the past 100 years we have gone from about 320-almost 400 and are on track to reach 500 by the end of this decade at current rates of accumulation. This is about 1000 times faster than the spike seen in the Middle Eocene Thermal Maximum, the most rapid rise in temperatures recorded in prehistoric times. This means that we are already experiencing the warmest climate in recorded history and we have problem even though we have not yet begun to feel the full effects of the amount of carbon dioxide that has recently accumulated. If you think it got hot in West Texas last year. Just wait a few years and it will be that way in Kansas City far to the north.
When one realizes that the past 15 years have produced all the top 10 warmest years and now the first quarter of 2012 is the hottest on record once again (by >5F), there's little or no point at further debating if there is global warming, only the question now is what are we going to do about it, other than face almost certain extinction within 200-300 years time?
You don't understand what you are reading.
You are assert that man is causing global warming because there is no proof that he is not.
I am telling you that you cannot prove man is not causing it. You can only prove that man is.
You cannot prove a negative. And, BTW, THAT is settled science.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Fuck rate lets look at actual climate history.
During Ice ages we are fucked.
During really warm periods we are fucked.
All without man made help.
How much more fucked can we get.
Need enclaves of humanity all over the galaxy. Then we are safe.
Till then anything bad happens and as a race we are fucked.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
if carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming, let's just kill all living mammals to solve the problem.
It's opinion, and not expert opinion. From TFA: "Keith Cowing, editor of the website NASA Watch, noted that the undersigners, most of whom have engineering backgrounds, worked almost exclusively at the Houston-based Johnson Space Centre, a facility almost entirely removed from NASAâ(TM)s climate change arm. âoeThey do mission operations and human spaceflight design, period,â said Mr. Cowing."
The fact that a person once worked at NASA doesn't make them a scientist. NASA hires plenty of janitors, administrators, clerical workers, pilots, IT people, and others with little or not scientific background.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Again, you have it 100% backwards.
We can't prove a hypothesis is true. We can prove it is false. That's why it's the "theory of evolution" and not the "fact of evolution". We can't prove the theory of evolution is true, but so far we have been unable to prove it's false.
We create a hypothesis: Activities of humans are causing global warming via spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
We now try to disprove that hypothesis. We could prove man is not causing global warming by to show warming comes from another source. The sun, volcanoes, heat rays from Alpha CentaurI, whatever. Alternatively, we could prove man is not causing global warming by showing the gasses we are spewing can't cause a greenhouse effect.
Either way, the hypothesis would be proven false.
So where's the published papers demonstrating a non-human cause? All we need is one with reproducible data and that hypothesis goes down. How about one showing "greenhouse gasses" can't cause a greenhouse effect? That would also take down our hypothesis.
What we can't do is prove with 100% certainty that our hypothesis is true. Just like we can't prove the theory of evolution is true, the theory of relativity is true, and so on.
During the ice ages, Sweden was fucked because it was too damn cold to raise crops. Egypt is doing just fine.
During warm periods, Canada would be slightly less miserable place to be for all those time-traveling farmers.
Dear god man, climates vary over the surface of the Earth.
And sometimes it really is the rate of change that is the concern. If the poor ranching scrub-land of western Nebraska suddenly turned into a humid tropical wetlands, they wouldn't instantly have rainforests or swamps. They'd have a lot of mudslides, ruined roads, and lost cattle. It would be FANTASTIC farmland in a decade or twenty. But that sort of transformation takes a while. For some though, their climate is changing to better suit their needs. Lucky them. For most of us, we're getting more drought, more floods, and we're going to have to work to come to grips with living in a different climate.
Now, I really don't think that it's as "catastrophic" as a lot of the doomsayers are making out. There's a really big difference between losing a lake in 50 years and losing a lake in 500 years. And I think that's nuance is how they got a lot of these NASA people to sign this thing. But Leighton Steward and Plants Need CO2 is the biggest load of shit I've seen in a long while. A weak shill and nothing more.
...I give you a +9.5 score for it.
Nice use of the f-words too. Had you included at least one or two references to sex organs, I've have given you the full +10 points.
If warm climates are so good for palm trees...
Why isn't the sun bursting with palm trees???
Think about it.
I assert that unadulterated water will boil at 212 degrees F at sea level.
I do not ask people to show that it doesn't boil and therefore disproving my hypothesis. I prove that to be true by putting a pot of water on a stove and heating it to 212 degrees at sea level and observing it boil.
I cannot say that since no one has shown my hypothesis to false, that it is therefore true, and just skip the experiment altogether.
What is the boiling pot of water for AGW?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
And BTW, the theory of relativity is replete with boiling pot experiment opportunities.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Possibly.
But I am just here to tell you that killing off society because of the air you breath out is crazy.
Once you allow the US government the ability to regulate CO2 you will have fucked yourself.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Your analysis is flawed as you are assuming that the effects of increase will be strictly economic or "uncertain". The primary influence will be environmental, essentially making it near impossible to grow food in 200-300 years. Soils will be too hot and dry and little freshwater will be available in most continental interiors More and more people will depend on the fewer and fewer areas that will support crop production and control of these will become more contentious than is presently the case for oil reserves. There is no longer any question of preventing "uncertain suffering in the future". What we currently know of the physics, climatology, and biology is that these are more certain every day and really have been predicted now for decades by the most knowledgeable of observers.
The reality is that we need emergency legislation to curtain burning of fossil fuels yesterday. Every day we wait will probably mean millions of deaths in a few hundred years. People are already dying in massive numbers as the effects of global warming grow more severe. Its just that no one wants to do a scientific accounting of this inconvenient truth.
OK everybody, we just need to take a deep breath and let the confirming experiments finish.
Meanwhile, if the earth melts or burns up, or whatever, we'll worry about it then, which won't happen anyway.
And if it does, the hippies will be the first to die, which serves them right for being such a-holes.
Air conditioners and black top roads contribute an awful lot to climate change. I still wonder if evaporative cooling is really worse for the environment or better than refrigerated air. The amount of extra electricity in the fan and usage of clean water it puts water vapor to the environment (which might even help). vs heating the outside air more to cool down the inside via using a compressor with lots of electricity to use. I think cement roads contribute less to warming than black tops.
In his role as Head of Goddard or as an American citizen. Like it or not but that spill in the Gulf of Mexico kill much more life than many "crimes against humanity". So as an American citizen he had every right to call for trials. If on the other hand the Goddard Institute you know analysed the data regarding that spill and the tragic and wasteful loss of life associated with it then perhaps he was being a bit hyperbolic.. but asking the Department of Justice to pretty please take a look at the data and maybe open an inquest just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.
Yeah... because diplomats are sooo much better at making objective statements about observable reality, than, mebbe, i dunno, scientists???
I know there's a lot of confusion about this in some *coughUScoughAcoughcough* countries, but observing, measuring and interpreting reality is not a manner of opinion; there's the scientific method for that, which is the domain of expertise of scientists, not of corrupt postmodernist politicians and diplomats. And (just for the record) also not of astronauts, pointy-haired bosses, engineers (they're often the worst), scientists in fields that aren't remote related to climate science, the janitorial crew of the Johnson Space Center,...
That's because you're doing it wrong. I can falsify your hypothesis.
Put the water in a pressurized vessel at about...oh 5 atmospheres. It's still at sea level, but won't boil at 212.
So if this was science, you'd now have to modify your hypothesis, perhaps by specifying you meant sea level pressure, not altitude.
What's the boiling pot of water for the theory of evolution? What's the boiling pot of water for the theory of relativity? Perhaps your inability to answer those will demonstrate you are approaching this from the wrong angle.
...what a bunch of non-scientists *opinions* are about climate change? It sickens me that such an important scientific question has become politicized to such a degree. Every politician and celebrity chimes in with their own misinformed opinion, building a controversy out of thin air to win political points at the cost of our future. Piss off and let the climate scientists do their jobs!
One the one hand you are just being disingenuous now. Because for the sake of a Slashdot discussion, "sea level" is more than an adequate suggestion of 1 atmosphere.
But on the other hand, you prove the point that the AGW hypothesis has no boiling pot experiment. So you deny anyone the opportunity to falsify it.
And as I pointed out, simply because no one has falsified it, does not mean that it is true. You have to have your boiling pot.
And making another assertion (that blue fairies causes GW for instance) and proving it does not necessarily speak to your assertion.
What you have here is the AGW people who claim that it's getting hotter and it's our fault. Others question their data, their methods and logic and in fact have found real problems with all of it. But the AGW people don't say, here is our proof, our experiment, try it yourself, they say, come up with a better explanation, and, BTW, get your own data.
Last I heard, Science is not saying that something makes the most sense, it is saying that something has been proven in a experiment that can be replicated by others, using the same data and methods...the boiling pot.
And as I also mentioned, the theory of relativity does have many boiling pots...bending light around a star and time differences after one synchronized clock experiences high velocities, just to name two high school examples.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Too many high G liftoffs and rough landings have scrambled their brains.
In the main, they expect to die before it becomes an issue they have to answer for.
There is no such thing as an 'extreme position' on carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The Earth would be a colder without it. Without any atmosphere the Earth's surface would be frozen. It is the thousands of years of empirical data that shows unequivocally that humans have changed and are changing the climate. Humans have pumped tens of millions of years of sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere in a little over two centuries. It means that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the oceans. Not only is the climate getting warmer our oceans are acidifying.
For those who don't wish to remain willfully ignorant as some slashdotters seem to want to, here's an excellent resource that discuss the 100+ years worth of science of the study of global warming and the climate: The Discovery of Global Warming.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
That's the problem they are complaining about: instead of space exploration, a lot of NASA's resources are now being redirected towards global-warming related issues. It is NASA management, Congress, and the Obama administration that are responsible for NASA not fulfilling its core mission of space exploration and having its resources redirected towards planetary observation.
So, if you want manned space travel and space exploration, you should support these guys and help get NASA out of the global warming business. If there is anything space related to be done with respect to global warming, NOAA should do it and account for it in its budget.
So, since Al Gore doen't have a science background, then there must be no scientists who support AGW.
/all/ of them are jokes too, right?
I get my climate science from qualified climate scientists. Not Al Gore.
Where do you get your climate science from? A classics major and pathological liar (Monkcton)? A weather-man who has done no original research (Anthony Watts)? A statistically challenged petroleum engineer (Steve McIntyre)? The list of top climate deniers is a joke. Oh, but because Al Gore is on the other side, then
Idiot.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
CFCs deplete the ozone layer, AND, they are powerful greenhouse gases.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Here's one I read in a scary book by the Canadian prof. Bob Altemeyer ("The Authoritarians"):
Apparently there's a high correlation between the people who don't understand logic and the people who are "right-wing authoritarians" (in the USA that would be mostly Republicans I guess). :-)
.. (Z) have the following structure:
Spoiler follows
A "republican" would reason backward, yes, I know that sharks are fish, therefore the conclusion (C) is correct, therefore A and B are also correct, therefore all three statements are true.
A "filthy godless pinko commie smelly hippy liberal gay-loving America-hating intellectual" would reason forward, let's assume (A) all fish swim in the sea. OK. Let's assume (B) sharks swim in the sea. OK. (C) do we conclude that sharks are fish? Hang on, I know they are fish, but OTHER things can also swim in the sea, e.g. jellyfish, lost long-distance swimmers, inflated car tires.. I KNOW that sharks are none of those things, but logically they COULD HAVE BEEN, therefore the conclusion may be correct but it doesn't follow logically from the premises (A) and (B) so maybe there are OTHER causes that make sharks indeed fish. And I bet those premises (D)
Why is it that the country which gave us creationism is the only country in the world not accepting that global warming is a fact?
Well yeah. That's crazy as all get out. Crazier than those end-of-the-world nutjobs.
So crazy that NO ONE HAS SUGGESTED THAT. Not in these posts at least. (There are those crazy bastards that think overpopulation is an issue and we should "cull the herd", but they're as crazy as the global warming deniers.)
So... since no one here is claiming that... why would you go out of your way to argue against it?
What you have there is an implicit strawman.
Nevermind trying to prove their case using facts. That attempt has failed miserably, and the resulting "science" from these skeptics contain enough big words to fool the average FOX News zombie, but not much of anyone else.
When you don't have the facts on your side, arguments like this are what you have to resort to. This is no different from the e-mail "scandal" from a couple of years ago. Ignoring the facts of the matter and arguing "the facts are wrong because THOSE GUYS ARE BIASED! THEY DON'T AGREE WITH US! THAT PROVES IT!!!!!!" is really all the anthropogenic climate change skeptics have left to argue with, so that's what they use.
I was always somewhat sceptical of anthropogenic theories of climate change that humans were the blame and we were causing the increase. I certainly felt we had part of the blame but there's so many complex systems at play, were we at fault alone? How do we know it's our CO2 up there? I think the climate change advocacy folks need to present better evidence in order to convince folks who are somewhat educated in science. The evidence that CO2 isotope composition is changing in the atmosphere points the finger at burning fossil fuels. Take a look at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/ for example, which highlights this. The carbon isotopes in the CO2 in the atmosphere are changing and match closely with fossil fuel composition. Pretty compelling, IMO.
What I am pointing out is that when the government starts regulating the gas you breath out it is very fucking bad. ... Well they might have believed you and re wrote it.
You say these things can never happen.
When the government started the tax on fully automatic machine guns everyone thought, Ok government should be given some say on weapons.
If you had told them then that every gun purchase would need to be approved by the government if they passed this they would have called you a crazy idiot.
When the government started protecting our food safety had you told them that federal agents would raid people with guns drawn for selling unpasteurized milk you would have been called a nut job.
When they went off the gold standard had you told them the government would just print money like it was paper you would have been laughed at.
When the commerce clause was put into the constitution had you told the farmers of that document that it would be used as the justification for everything
When the government gets power in an area it only expands it. Slowly, perpetually. It never gives back power. Never.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
rofl - n/t
I'm not sure if I'm prepared to differentiate between the political and, respectively, climatological connotations of discussions in regards to climate change. My own position about the topic could be said to be interpretive, at best.
Who wants the government to regulate that? They may want to regulate CO2 emission from vehicles, factories, etc. But there are no plans whatsoever to add a breathing tax.
Calm down man, you are getting hysterical!
Clever signature text goes here.
So you think that once they get to regulate something that once they get the stuff they want done they will just sit back and be content?
I have personally never seen that happen.
Have you?
What I have seen is that government organizations do their utmost to expand their powers in ways we would never expect.
Have you seen differently?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Omg man, seriously. Republicans are horrible but that does not make Obama good. In fact he and his party are horrible too. Don't be fooled that these two parties represent all 'sensible' choices, because actually they became so out of touch with reality, reason and morality that they don't even realize that there is something wrong with exchanging freedom and privacy for a false sense of security.
The sooner you realize that their supposedly opposing views are very similar in practice, the sooner you can start to think about reasons and solutions for issues like surveillance state, credit bubbles, foreign interventionism, draconian intellectual property laws and many more. Because they have same non-solutions for these issues that are not working.
Well, how much of CO2 is manmade? And what was the source of CO2 during the last ice age?
Are any scientific critical summary reviews of the studies regarding these topics available? From my field of treating musculoskeletal issues, not all studies are of high quality and summary reviews which compare quality and results of several studies are best source of information.
We should not assassinate US citizens. However, the cleric that was assassinated in yemen has not lived or visited the US in many years. How long can you stay outside a country and still claim citizenship?
So killing non-US citizens is OK? This loss of common sense is what is killing US.
Also please let me know when the legislation which resulted from the massive overreaction to the terrorist attacks expires and DHS spending will return back to normal. I would like to visit US sometime but constant bullying of US and non-US citizens on airports and roads are discouraging.
What worries me is that the earth's atmosphere and systems almost certainly have multiple stable points. We are enthusiastically pushing 'uphill' from one we find congenial to life. If we were to stop, the system would (probably) self-correct. But at some point, the system will reach the top of a hill, and start running *downhill* into a quite different stable point. Maybe methane releases, maybe the loss of ice-cover changes sunlight reflection, or changes in cloud cover, or changes in ocean currents, or...the list is long. Anyone who thinks that continuing to push uphill is sensible when we're already aware that changes are not in our interests (look at the weather records) needs an education in science and prudence.
Agreed. Downright hysterical. He's shoving a lot much straw in my mouth.
Foe'd, silenced, done.
Don't pay the nutjobs attention. They really don't deserve it. Generalized fear-mongering against expanding government powers when that's not even on the radar is socially unacceptable. Seriously Dishevel, ask yourself if your argument does anything to validate plantsneedco2.org?
So, why can't the climate models be verified? Verification in any other discipline means inputting historical data and seeing if the model will correctly predict the outcome. With climate models, merely agreeing with one another is enough validation. Science is being politicized everywhere, which is why people are believing it less and less, much to the chagrin of the scientific community. These days the mantra is: we know what we believe is true, all we need are some facts to back it up. Science used to be more about questioning and disproving theories rather than calling those who don't agree with you names like denier or disbeliever. Historically, the climate has changed without any apparent intervention from humans. We've had little ice ages (weren't we supposed to be heading for another one in the 1970s?), and we have had warm periods when vineyards prospered in England and Greenland was so named because it could support a population of immigrants. Given the past ups and downs of our climate, it seems arrogant of mankind to decide that people are the problem and the solution.
They can. And have. For example, the infamous "Hockey Stick" is actually holding up fairly well.
But while that provides evidence for the hypothesis, it can't "prove" it. Because there could be something else going on that we haven't discovered yet.
Models are measured against estimates of the past, but that really doesn't validate the model when it comes to predicting the future. The only way we'll know if the model was completely accurate is to wait 50 years. But if the model's correct, waiting 50 years would be very bad.
Except not at this rate of change. Geological and fossil data show the climate shifts happened much more slowly.
With the exception of climate changed caused by a single, catastrophic event. For example there's geological evidence that there was a "nuclear winter" caused a the comet/asteroid strike 65M years ago which resulted in an ice age.
Greenland was named for marketing purposes - A Norse noble family was trying to get more people to live in their territory, which included Greenland. While it was more temperate than it is today, it much more closely resembled Iceland's climate today. Farming was barely possible, which is why the Norse settlers starved to death when there was a small (and gradual) climate shift.
It was arrogant of mankind to think we could fuse atoms as if we were a star. And we did it. It was arrogant of mankind to think we could eliminate smallpox. And we did it. It's arrogant of mankind to think we can irrigate deserts, and we do it all the time. Heck, irrigation has already moved the jet stream, and that happened within our lifetime.
It's easy to accept humans can create tons of smog over a city, and then clean up that smog via pollution restrictions - we've done it many times.
Why is it so hard to imagine we could change the whole climate given enough time and effort? We've been working on it for about 150 years.