Slashdot Mirror
Last Bastion For Climate Dissenters Crumbling
Layzej writes "The New York Times reports: 'For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.' Initially they claimed that weather stations exaggerated the warming trend. This was disproven by satellite data which shows a similar warming trend. Next, solar activity was blamed for much of the warming. This looked like a promising theory until the '80s, when solar output started to diverge from global temperatures. Now, climate contrarians are convinced that changes in cloud cover will largely mitigate the warming caused by increased CO2. The New York Times examines how even this last bastion for dissenters is crumbling. Over the past few years, Several papers have shown that rather than being a mitigating factor, changes in cloud cover due to warming may actually enhance further warming."
What is the basis for the assumption that this is the "last" bastion? I am pretty sure, they will find another reason to hold out within days.... This is an issue of belief (at least for them), so arguments ain't gonna change a thing.
People should dissent, people should disagree. Climate change isn't understood well enough for there to be a unanimous consensus.
Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.
Despite this large consensus in the peer reviewed scientific community, it doesn't take much searching to find comments like this one modded up as high as it can go that say crap like:
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening.
Frankly, I avoid these discussions now. There is no reason to try to inform people of what you read like this NY Times article. Ignorance backed by corporations has won. It has won in the mind of the general public, it has even won on the "elite tech site" of Slashdot, even in the minds of those here who hold the moderator points.
My work here is dung.
...is a dissenter. Nothing will change the opinions of people who like to keep their eyes closed.
The fringe of the Warming collective also asserts that it's already too late we're all gonna die so what's the point. Ok let's say you're right. Let's burn it all down and have fun.
Why would you want to make choices on the basis of whatever "the fringe" are saying? This makes no sense.
I will leave it up to you to explore whatever historical knowledge you possess to find examples.
When a site with the reputation of slashdot surrenders to the crap that is "man made global warming" and quotes a rag like the New York Times (as biased and unreliable as all the MSM is), as evidence.
The planet has been heating up since the ice age. Other planets in the system are heating up too. If you want to think the sky is falling to play into some global scarcity tactic that's cool, but I'm going to keep driving my truck to work.
The last bastion is the recomforting fact that "climate science" isn't science, but a misapplication of chaos theory. Just like Economy tries to be (and even calls itself a) science without it being one. A Science needs to be falsifiable and have predictive power, and both "pro" and "con" sciencists have utterly failed at their predictions and yet they've found ways to make both "warming" and "cooling" trends be proofs that their theory is correct by changing their initial statements and relabeling "global warming" (which has been proven wrong) to "climate change" (which is entirely meaningless).
Also, the summary of the Op reads like the novel he has fabricated on his head and is pretty unscientific. Science needs attempts to falsify a theory far, far more than it needs "supporters", the way that "climate sciencists" dismisses those people as "dissenters" and "sellouts" makes it a religion (an animist one) that disguises as Science to protect itself from criticism.
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing.
Oh really? From the article:
Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.
Now you just have to assassinate the character of 97 percent of working climate scientists. Slashdot: News for Nerds, Ad Hominems that Matter.
What stopped you from digging up the dirt on Andrew E. Dessler and Richard S. Lindzen, the two researchers quoted in the article?
Bias is everywhere.
Yeah, it's even in my comment ... and YOUR comment! Oh my god, since it's everywhere you can't believe anything!
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 does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
8) ????
9) Profit.
I MUST drive my Hummer to work! Or else I'll feel like government is taking away my freedoms!
Not because of anyone's ideology. Because good science demands people check other people's work, look for errors, ask hard questions, and the like. If we all agree, pat ourselves on our collective back, and stare away people who would dare question what we've decided must be the truth, we've transitioned from science to religion, and are doing everyone a disservice.
Trust mainstream media to not understand this. *sigh*
I'm not eager to feed delusional behaviors, but "may actually enhance further warming" doesn't read like much proof of anything. It sounds like conjecture. Wake me up when I can substitute the word will in that sentence without being wrong.
Truck. The vehicle of a redneck. It all fits.
This is just wishful thinking, because Conservatives will never stop denying global warming. If Conservatives had any sense, they would say "Global warming is real, but the predicted catastrophe is a grotesque exaggeration," but they won't say that either. As long as liberals make up facts, like how the conservative arguments are crumbling, conservatives will make up rebuttals. Both sides have their heads where the sun doesn't shine.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/24/svensmarks-cosmic-jackpot-evidence-of-nearby-supernovae-affecting-life-on-earth/
"An amusing point is that Svensmark stands the currently popular carbon dioxide story on its head. Some geoscientists want to blame the drastic alternations of hot and icy conditions during the past 500 million years on increases and decreases in carbon dioxide, which they explain in intricate ways. For Svensmark, the changes driven by the stars govern the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around."
So there you have it!
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing. Bias is everywhere.
Hmm, so you've observed a correlation between rationality in the face of evidence, and having left wing views.
Useful. I'll take it.
Truck. The vehicle of a redneck. It all fits.
Prius. The vehicle of mass ignorance. It all fits.
When I saw "The New York Times examines" I knew we had a very reputable source.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
"If you wanna believe the earth revolves around the sun that's cool, but I'm gonna keep planting my crops based on my assumption that the bible is right."
Sure, that discovery didn't affect that guy either. But it didn't make him any less wrong.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Is that the sample size is too small to determine if any warming we are seeing is manmade or a natural (even localized) fluctuation. The earliest base year for comparison I have seen is 1750 (most cite 1950). At best the sample size of 262 years:
For intelligent design (human occupation 7,000 years) the largest sample size is 3.7% of human history.
For evolutionary time scales (human occupation 250,000) the largest sample size is 0.1% of human history.
For evolutionary time scales (approx 4,000,000,000 years) the largest sample size is 0.0000066% of earth's history.
the closer base years are even worse.
You know, some of us buy carbon free electricity, collect rain water, recycle, live within 5 miles of our place of business and still drive a truck so that we can work on specific hobbies like building furniture and landscaping. Maybe not everyone fits your redneck mold.
The bigger problem was when some stupid ass thought uploading 'grass eating hippie' personality code into the satellites was a good idea. Now all of them only transmit observationally biased data.
Tell you what we could do. You go through the each satellite's data and point out which of it's wrong and from there I'll figure out how to change it's personality.
BTW, I'd suggest hugely technical fields require objectivity not subjectivity (your point 1).
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 does cause it, but it's not a net negative. 5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it. 6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it. 7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier? 8) ???? 9) Profit.
When you finally realize that step #9 is the only one that matters here, you'll quickly realize that any and all steps taken before that is nothing more than FUD for a money grab, regardless of who is doing it or their political affiliation.
And if you wish to see a master in action, look up "Al Gore". After all, he's the one who created this "market".
They outta know not to put stuff like that near my house. *fires a double barrelled shotgun*
I think you've got "Profit" listed about 8 steps late on that list. Everyone knows that profit comes first in the Republican world order.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
One night only...Last Bastion, a Bananarama tribute band! Last Bastion:For Climate Dissenters Crumbling Tour
Even bitcoin is better than this.
Bitcoin-related weekly article is scheduled on Thursday, not Wednesday
it's easy : Monday: Apple slashvertisment, Tuesday: "linux for desktop" troll-starter article, Wednesday: "Climate change", Thursday: "Bitcoins", Friday: "M$ is evil but less than App£€", Saturday: "Patent system is broken", Sunday: "Ask slashdot: my PC is broken what should I do ?"
The nonsensical arguments the new york times refers to I've rarely heard. When I did it was usually from the uneducated and foolish. It seems the NYT has it's own view on the subject and are trying to spin the story in such a way that if anyone disagrees with them they are stupid.
Very few people disagree with the premise that the climate is warming. Where the disagreement is, is if that warming is a natural part of earths long term weather patterns and how much effect CO2 is having on speeding up the process. Also, they question the results of the warming... predicted increased hurricane strength and frequency have not come about as we'd expected.
Before anyone attributes those views to me, my position is this: We will never stop using fossil fuels. Human nature will win, and we will burn them all. It's too late. Whatever global warming is going to do, we'd better prepare for it. The only optimism I have is in that the one thing scientists have a proven track record of if being absolutely lousy at predicting the weather.
First I will not say which "side" I am on as that is unimportant as my total climate knowledge is based on grumbling about weather. But this whole discussion has gone off the rails in that regardless of what scientists think or know the public is turning against man made climate change. Want to lose an election in North America then propose a carbon tax or something similar. Al Gore got people cheering one side of this issue but being Al Gore managed to alienate and effectively create an opposing side. While healthy discussion in science is what science is all about people on both sides have begun to turn this into a religion with people calling for firing of scientists who they disagree with and another person calling for burning others houses down.
A much better example of good science was the recent discovery that neutrinos were going faster than light. Turned out to be wrong but most people were sort of excited as this would potentially be a huge change in physics. Another good example of the separation of science and policy would be nuclear weapons. Nuclear reactions are cool; nuclear weapons are not. But very few people criticized the work Niels Bohr for bringing the world to the brink of total destruction. It would have been a crap argument to say his work was the beginning of a science killed a whole lot of Japanese and thus was invalid. His models of how atoms and whatnot worked have changed significantly enough that they could almost be just called all wrong. But as will all good science people expanded and improved his work.
Where I am going with this is that the hysteria of dragging the scientists out for trials in the court of public opinion not only doesn't help the climate people get on with their research but it opens up other areas to the concept that somehow public opinion can shape science. Opinion does not change a fact. Opinion is to be used to decide what to do about those facts. Both sides on this issue are getting into the realm of those fools who try legislating that =3.
Al Gore will be around shortly to sell the believers some carbon credits.
Blankets cannot heat beds. Bed temperature has historically cycled in different time frames. Blankets are made of the same material the beds are, so they can't add heat.
Unless they're electric blankets, but the temperature difference just means emission increases and heat loss quickly removes any effect otherwise noticeable.
The relation between feeling warm and more blankets is specious, psychological. Everyone knows that people sick with colds and fever warm up and sweat a lot, and have a habit of covering themselves up. There is no real relation between blankets and bed temperature.
I hope that dispels the confusion regarding global warming. It's obviously a ploy by the blanket-tax financial cartel conspirators.
Get yourself over to www.dictionary.com and learn.
They have a 100% accuracy record for distinguishing between "weather" and "climate."
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
I love the fascist try and equate the holocaust with understanding that chaos in climate is far beyond the scope of our current understanding. That a shyster that got a D (Al Gore) in his college science course runs the fraud just shows how desperate the religion of global warming is.
To sum up the climate fraud argument, it is Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Everyone knows Aliens caused global warming, thanks you Micheal Crichton for at least a little thought of this subject.
What nonsense.
We have plenty of trustworthy science, but a huge and well funded propaganda machine telling people that those scientists are untrustworthy and "politically motivated". You've bought into the propaganda machine hook, line and sinker.
Now, there will certainly be cases of scientists and professionals that are crooked and politically/financially motivated (see, for example, Andrew Wakefield and vaccines - a whole, damaging scare because he wanted to make money off his competing vaccine for MMR), or the "cold fusion" science researchers, but they are very swiftly exposed by peer review.
That intelligent people can still be claiming that "nothing a climate scientist puts out" is trustworthy at all is just a demonstration of how powerful people like like Koch brothers are and how effective extremely large dumptrucks full of money are at running propaganda campaigns.
It doesn't help that very few people are able to interpret the data for themselves and must rely on an actual scientist, and somehow when this is related to climate science that's seen as a bad thing? Ask yourself why that is; why it has become ingrained to look at only climate science and say "I don't understand this data so it's clearly a trick!". This doesn't happen in other fields with equally difficult and impenetrable data, like cancer research or quantum mechanics - there's been no pervasive, relentless smear campaign that results in anything those scientists say being dismissed out of hand because they're "politically motivated and untrustworthy".
The "Other Planets are Heating up too" hypothesis has been debunked:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/
But, until the engineers get involved on a real fix I wouldn't bother changing your lifestyle, other than maybe switching to LED lights and turning down the thermostat. Politicians never fix anything.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Couldn't the dissenters just respond, "You've asserted that atmospheric carbon is causative with global temperature increases. The last ten years contradict that assertion. The increase of atmospheric carbon has continued unabated even while temperatures have remained more-or-less flat."?
Truck. The vehicle of a redneck. It all fits.
Prius. The vehicle of mass ignorance. It all fits.
Nothing fits in a Prius.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This is how science is supposed to work.
But when you go around screaming falsehoods like "Polar bears are going extinct because of global warming!!!!! OMFG!!!!" when in reality there are probably more polar bears alive today then there ever has been, you wind up turning a majority of people off.
The term "global warming" needs to go away, and the argument should be re-focused on Air Pollution as that is the real problem. People may not believe in global warming, but there's no denying bad air quality that comes from petroleum or coal based engines.
Science is not politics or military action, both of whom require proponderences in numbers and quality. Science is about discovering underlying truth, quite irrespective of who believes what or how well they speak.
This is why the Climategate email scandal is an irrelevant distraction. It might mean something about the credibility of the individuals invovled, but science is supposed to be testable, so personalities are irrelevant. The climate does not care about emails much -- just from the slight additional power generation, somewhat less than for JanetJacksons nip-slip.
It is very odd (&revealing?) the NYT doesn't know better.
Weather is climate like me pissing on the ground is rain.
Nice try though.
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
This has been proven true. We have enough temperature data to confidently say that temperatures have been steadily increasing since about 1850.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
This has been proven false. The 6 degree increase we should be experiencing now according to alarmists simply doesn't exist.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
This may be true, we have proof that there were much bigger climate changes even before man.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
This is a tricky one, I would say that too rapid change is never good for the environment, at least not in the short term. But if you only care about the effets on agriculture, it may very well be possible to breed/engineer crops that thrive in the new climate.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
That's most certainly false, but the real question is whether its negative effects cost more than to stop it.
There is still much more research needed on the topic, and bringing politics into the debate is exactly what's halting progress.
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing. Bias is everywhere.
Yes, but if you read the article you find that much of the Slashdot story was created by the /. submitter. A correction should be made to identify just what the NYT said.
The planet has been heating up since the ice age.
...and yet another head-in-the-sand fuckwit misses the pertinent facts entirely.
All three "papers" links are to thinkprogress.org? Why is Slashdot publishing obvious link bait?
As a former media hack, I can only advise that you never, ever take a news report at face value, from the NYT, right down to your local rag. It's rare to find writing that is complete and unbiased.
It wasn't all that long ago that we had a "bastion" of people in Waco who rejected the idea that the Moon is not a source of light, but reflects light from the Sun... So I have trouble believing the Global Warming debate will end with this NYT announcement. http://tinyurl.com/billnyemoon
Gently reply
Until temperatures start rising again there will always be a bastion for the deniers that temperature increases are far below IPCC predictions and, for now, continue to increasingly deviate from predictions. You can have all of the models and theories in the world but until you can show that your predictions are spot on your opposition will have lots of ammunition to shot at you with.
"climate change supporters are majority left-wing"
Why do you think that is?
Are you disputing that other planets are warming up? All you've said is "this argument is stupid" without any explanation why. Does that make you any better than OP?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing.
In a way that's true. Just as evolution "supporters" are more left wing.
1) Reality has a well know liberal bias. 2) On average liberals are more intelligent than right-wingers.
Believing the opposing view is not as intelligent (as tangentially related to a cliche viewpoint a comedian made) is the height of foolishness and arrogance by all accounts, whether you are correct or not. You sir, are drinking your own kool-aid.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M
Funny how you believe a reporter of the weather and never reconsider when they've been found wrong time and time again, when that reporter denies AGW. Yet when a weather reporter gets the weather forecast wrong ONCE, this PROVES that AGW is wrong.
Utter and complete fail.
Wow! You're so smart you don't even need facts.
For the scientific process to function as desired, informed and educated opposing viewpoints are required. Politicizing those viewpoints is counterproductive to the process.
'The climate' is a complex system. Of course it's changing. Constantly. And of course there are trends in those changes. We get hung up arguing about how much the numbers are changing, when that's not even the interesting question.
The reason people take this issue so seriously is the idea that the system will run out of control if/when things get 'bad enough'.... That there's some sort of tipping point, after which things will somehow run wildly out of control. This is what we ought to be discussing. Instead we're yelling at one another about how much change we've seen and what it might mean.
We ought to be discussing things like positive vs negative feedback loops.
Instead, we've bickering over the numbers that people have seen on various gauges.
Yeah, keep that in mind the next time you prevail on a "friend" to help you move an appliance or piece of furniture.
It's hard to say - some planets we've known about and observed for less than one of their years, so we essentially have no data.
What we -do- know with fair certanity is that *if* they are warming over the last 40 years, it's not due to increased solar influx, because the solar influx has on the average fallen somewhat over that period.
Neither side cares about the science. Both sides are totally convinced in their virtue. Neither side is willing to look at the case dispassionately. Both sides are so invested in what they want the correct answer to be that they will not tolerate anything that contradicts their position.
Is there a case for AGW? Absolutely. It's a totally valid hypothesis. Is it proven? Of course not. There's no causal link. Getting a causal link is very hard but that doesn't mean you don't need one. AGW proponents almost all propose that we should accept a correlative link as proof of a causal link. That's not science. They say we don't have time to wait and we should assume there is a causal link based on the correlative data. That is a political response and again not science.
The anti AGW people are no better in that they'll ally with various political factions just like the pro AGW factions to form political pressure groups. And of course they don't want to hear they might be wrong any more then the AGW group might be.
Everyone has their egos, world views, political interests, and often careers involved in this matter. There are a lot of pro AGW scientists that might lose their jobs if AGW collapses and there are of course a lot of professional "skeptics" that likewise will find their employment terminated should that fall apart.
In this environment how can anyone really be sure what is going on? I'm not stupid and I'm not ignorant... but I can't sort it out. And find it to be unacceptable generally to simply assume one side or the other is right as so many seem to do. Sure, that's easier. Just believe the church is right about is and isn't true. Just trust the king to sort it out. I'm not a f'ing peasant though and I don't like having other people do my thinking for me.
I'm obviously going to get hate messages or... at least negative messages likely from the pro AGW people to the effect of "anyone that doubts the unquestionable virtue of our position is a fool or a heretic"... but that only underscores the sadness of this issue.
We're probably all bored to tears explaining the science of it to each other.
I've read through more material on the issue then I can pretend interest in. I just wish the issue hadn't been politicized.
I don't know when it started... was it when Al Gore made his fatuous little film? Or was it before? Some think the politicization was inevitable given the interests threatened by it but I'm not so sure.
Anyway... for those offended by my contrary nature... I'm not contrary to annoy you... It's just the best opinion I could come to with what information I have. If I'm wrong, I at least arrived at this position in good faith. If we can all say as much then it will at least be an honest conflict.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Depending on my region, if I forecast that "it won't rain today", I'll be right 80% of the time, sometimes more.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
now THAT's an answer I'd mod up! :)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Takes decades.
I was hoping that clouds would be found to have a moderating effect.
Keep picking from that cherry tree, AC!
The "Other Planets are Heating up too" hypothesis has been debunked:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/
But, until the engineers get involved on a real fix I wouldn't bother changing your lifestyle, other than maybe switching to LED lights and turning down the thermostat. Politicians never fix anything.
From your blog post:
Mars: To start, is Mars even warming globally at all? Perhaps not — it might be a local effect.
Jupiter: The evidence for Jupiter’s global warming is nothing of the sort. It is evidence that there are warm spots, with storms rising to the tops of the clouds. This may just be a local effect, and not global.
Therefore it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between factors like the Sun warming up Triton anomalously, or just the usual changes in the moon due to seasons.
As for tiny Pluto, its dynamics are very poorly understood. What we do see is that its atmosphere appears to be thicker than expected right now. Pluto doesn’t have much of an air blanket, and it changes over the course of Pluto’s orbit as the tiny iceball approaches and recedes from the Sun. Pluto reached perihelion, the closest point in its orbit to the Sun, in 1989, and is slowly drawing away again. You might think its atmosphere would start freezing out, getting thinner. But that’s not happening; it’s getting quite a bit thicker.
However, this is not totally unexpected. Changes are not instantaneous, and it may take a while for things to thaw.
The BLOG post you linked to is full of "may be" and we don't know. He consistently claims there is no warming, then claims that we don't know what's causing the warming. For example, on Jupiter he claims that there is no evidence for warming and then in the same paragraph claims that the warming may be local. Again, MAY BE local. And if there is no evidence of warming, what local warming is he talking about?
Finally, he pulls a classic fallacy of "Poisoning the well":
And the guy who is proposing that the Sun is warming Mars doesn’t think CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
OK, so he doesn't think that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. What does that have to do with his ability to judge the temperature on Mars? Also, it's not true. What the article your blog used as a source said was, "Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming." and "It is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth's oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations." So, it's not that he doesn't believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but he questions the source of CO2 and its overall effect.
I have an open mind and take an agnostic approach to AGW. Unfortunately, I see a whole lot more BS coming from the global warming crowd. Take this gem, from the EPA itself:
Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period
Am I the only one who fails to see the massive logic fail in that statement? If methane only lasts for 9-15 years, how is more effective at trapping heat over a 100 year period?
But, until the engineers get involved on a real fix I wouldn't bother changing your lifestyle, other than maybe switching
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Amazing that the poster has decided that there are no more possible arguments against global warming, that this is the LAST one...
I think any reasonable person would agree it is the LATEST, but by no means can it be declared LAST.
As if dissenters, like Plankton when he ran out of plans to get the Crabby Patty formula, have exhausted all plans, A thru Y...
Plan Z
Ken
He's just repeating the ad hominem sweeping generalization that Basilbrush said: "this argument is stupid because arguer is stupid because he is a redneck because he drives a truck"
Not everyone who drives a truck is a redneck (sweeping generalization)
Not every redneck is stupid (they follow the bell curve too; sweeping generalization)
Not every argument given from a stupid man is a stupid argument (ad hominem fallacy)
Meanwhile the climate puzzle has become more interesting with the confirmed observation that the himalayan glaciers are growing.
> The 6 degree increase we should be experiencing now according to alarmists simply doesn't exist.
Care to show where there is ANY alarmist who has said that there should be 6degress of warming by now.
Other than your own alarmist self, of course.
> This may be true, we have proof that there were much bigger climate changes even before man.
And there are bigger threats to your life than a terrorist or mugger or arsonist. Yet you spend money to minimise these threats and insist that they be reduced.
> it may very well be possible to breed/engineer crops that thrive in the new climate.
Of course, that would cost a lot of money, and may not work. Try eating ferns. Try eating an animal that eats ferns only. You may be a plank, but you're not a plant.
> That's most certainly false
Except that it is still one deniers trot out.
> There is still much more research needed on the topic
No, you need much more research on the research that there has been on the topic.
A repost of an article by the NY Times is the be all, end all proof that "climate change deniers" are faliing off? IT'S THE NY TIMES! Not exactly a stronghold for non partisan truth telling. In fact, if the NT Times reports it, you can almost bank on the opposite being true. Man made climate change is the biggest hoax of the last 100 years, and is just another great example of using alarmist badgering to affect political (in this case socialist) indoctrination.
OK, so maybe the earth's systems do indeed 'resist' warming and for a while mitigate the effect. Perhaps cloud cover serves to do that initial 'push back'. Perhaps not. In some sense, we are pushing the system uphill and it's "trying" to roll back. But at some point, we'll reach the top of a hill, we'll still be pushing, and the system will roll down into a different equilibrium point - almost certainly, one we find much less comfortable to live with. At that point, instead of stopping pushing, and letting the system roll back, we'd have to 'push' it back up that hill so it can roll back down into the spot we found comfortable.
Even that analysis assumes that there are no 'irreversible' changes - that the initial stable point still exists. We've seen in some fisheries that even when left alone, they cannot recover, due to the nature of the environment (e.g. predator population) that has changed since they developed.
Continuing to gamble that the earth's systems will self-correct for our impact is looking like a worse and worse gamble.
Especially the driver's ego.
Smug alert!
I'll grant that your statement, as it was made, is completely correct. It's *incredibly* rare to find a newspaper article, on any subject, that is complete and unbiased. This is true for two reasons:
First, it is difficult for people to identify their own biases, and therefor they tend to creep into the writing. While it's part of the editor's job to identify and help remove, but they can introduce their own biases in the process.
Second, and much more significant, a newspaper article is rarely more than a couple thousand words long. It is virtually impossible to completely discuss *any* topic in that small a space. It doesn't help that newspapers are currently written to a 5th grade (or lower) level, preventing proper use of technical terms more complex than what a 10 year-old can be expected to understand.
If you want complete, unbiased writing on a subject, check out the scientific journals dedicated to that subject. But don't be surprised if you need more than a typical US high-school education to read and understand them.
Note: Even the above, incredibly shallow discussion of a *very* simple topic, restricted to two aspects of newspaper writing was about 190 words long.
It is amazing how the NYT went from respectable neutral newspaper to 'most liberal paper in the nation' in just a few short years of reporting on Bush Jr.
turning down the thermostat
I believe you mean normalizing the thermostat with outside temperatures, since a lot of people are already running air conditioning in the US.
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 does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
8) ????
9) Profit.
If you are Al Gore you just skip to step 6 and stop on 9.
My understanding is that water vapour comes out of the atmosphere too quickly to be a driver of temperature change. When air temperature falls (as it does every night) water turns to dew or rain. Humidity follows temperature, not the other way around.
CO2 stays in the air causing significant warming for decades. You can estimate the degree of warming caused by CO2 very simply:
Imagine a sphere the size of the earth at the earth's distance from the sun with the earth's albedo (average reflectance). What will the surface temperature be due to solar radiation? Do the maths and you get a temperature about 33C lower than that we observe on the earth's surface today. In other words, the earth's atmosphere acts as a blanket trapping heat and raising the temperature by about 33C: the greenhouse effect.
What parts of the atmosphere are responsible for this 33C increase? By far the most important is water. As a gas and in clouds, it is responsible for up to about 90% of the effect. The remaining warming is caused by the so-called greenhouse gasses: CO2, Methane, O3, NO, etc.
If you examine the absorption spectra of these gasses and weight by atmospheric concentration, you'll find about 40% is due to CO2. So 40% of 10% of 33C is around 1C of warming due to atmospheric CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 has gone up by roughly 40% since the industrial revolution, due to fossil fuel burning (we know this because of the carbon isotope ratios we can see in the atmosphere today). So therefore so we would expect about a 0.5C rise in global temperatures due to human CO2 output.
More evidence that there are no more journalists at the New York Times.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
cloud cover is made of water. Water vaper is worse then CO2 in climate change. So Cloud = climate change
I generally ignore any prediction that is backed by a lot of politicians and people being paid a lot of money to take a particular side. The day Michael Moore and Al Gore got heavily involved, I discounted the entire concept of global warming.
As for anyone here who is absolutely convinced that global warming is the catastrophe predicted by Gore, I have just one question... Did you oppose the invasion of Iraq? If not, if like most people you jumped on the bandwagon and salivated over headlines touting how Saddam Hussein was going to use radio control model planes with 6 foot wing spans to spray deadly chemicals across America, then you clearly don't have the ability to sort out fact from fiction and should just keep your yap shut about global warming.
I'm very very tired of having my income stolen from me in the form of higher taxes simply because you are fool enough to fall for the latest "Oh My God We Gotta Do Something NOW!!!!" hype.
so, let's tell vegans to quit eating the plants and then there will be more plants to absorb the carbon. Let's tell everyone to quit having babies and there will be fewer humans spewing this evil gas into the air! MASS SUICIDES WILL SAVE THE EARTH!
The point is that whether other planets are heating up or not has nothing to do with whether we should be concerned about climate change.
I don't even think it matters whether climate change is anthropogenic (for whether we should be concerned - it obviously does matter in terms of studying the area and finding potential solutions)
If you are in a room that is getting too hot, it is a good idea to switch the heating off, open a window or turn the air con on. Who or what is to blame for the excess heat doesn't matter as much as stopping the room getting so hot it causes problems for the people in it.
For me the most important questions we should be asking are:
* Is the climate changing?
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)?
* What can we do to affect the rate of change?
* What can we do to mitigate the bad effects?
* What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
The reasons why the climate is changing are important as they can suggest what we can do to affect things but even if we determine that the climate change is not down to human activity, we should still be looking for ways to affect it in our favour.
This is simply another attempt to discredit anyone and any theory which does not agree with their view that humans are responsible for the climate change we are experiencing and as such we have it well within our means to fix it.
Common methods also include
1) Grouping dissenters with discredit groups, an example would be to claim that these are the same kind of people who believe the moon landings were a hoax.
2) Labeling them corporate shills, but only for the corporations who aren't funding those who are right.
3) Calling them NAZIs or associating them with that type of institution.
How hard is it to understand the common methods groups like this operate on. When you cannot refute all the claims the opposition makes you then attack the opposition instead of their claims.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Am I the only one who fails to see the massive logic fail in that statement? If methane only lasts for 9-15 years, how is more effective at trapping heat over a 100 year period?
Yes, you are the only one who sees a massive logic fail because you are taking the statement at face value instead of trying to educate yourself about what they are talking about. I hope you were being facetious, but just in case: Atmospheric methane is oxidized in the atmosphere to produce carbon dioxide and water. FTA: "The 100-year global warming potential of methane is 25, i.e. over a 100-year period, it traps 25 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide."
No, what I'm saying is the exact opposite of that.
The OP brought up the truck and drew a generalisation, only for someone to call out that it was such and that because he drove a truck and yet didn't fit the mould that it was obviously a generalisation.
I'm not disputing that, however, I am asserting that you don't even need to go as far as the vehicle the OP drives given the sum total of the original post was a bunch of ill-informed, citation-free ranting about how climate science is merely some political tool.
The last bastion for climate dissenters is cash. Only when that runs out will they will have no cover.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Perhaps you don't have this in the US and that's why you need trucks all the time (sarcasm).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I realize that it was Einstein being discussed. But I think the same point about Einstein can be made about Galileo.
Galileo's observations, even the ones with the telescope, were arguments against his own heliocentric theory just as much as they were evidence against some forms of geocentrism (keep in mind that Tycho Brahe created a form of geocentrism that worked quite nicely). It wasn't until Kepler that a form of heliocentrism fit the observed facts any better than geocentrism. Despite the observed facts telling him his theory could not be correct, Galileo continued to pursue his theory. He did so by means of a propaganda campaign that sought to promulgate his (quite wrong) theory of optics, its accompanying technology (his telescopes), and his metaphysics. Eventually, he got other scientists to look at the world from a different point of view and, once he did that, new facts could come to light and enable such men as Kepler to develop theories to account for those facts.
In the end, I'm not certain that distinguishing between `honest' and `dishonest' dissent is very fruitful. Whether honest or not, dissent is important to prevent falling into a morbid state of what Feyerabend calls ``conceptual conservatism.''
This does not mean that one can't make the argument that most climate change deniers aren't kooks. It just means that when making policy decisions, it can be profitable to look at their analysis and examine what has to hold for it to be an accurate analysis and what would be the end result if it is accurate. This can be compared to the consensus view and a reasonable decision arrived at. And it will be a stronger, more reasoned decision than if the kooks were just ignored.
It's stupid because it's unquantified. There are seven planets that aren't Earth. Temperatures of reasonably complicated systems are rarely constant. So over any particular span of time, each of those seven planets will have either heated up or cooled down. Without information about how much and why, the fact that the Earth's temperature deviated in the same direction is meaningless.
If I turn my oven on in the morning, you could equally note that the outdoors are heating up (from about 40 F to 65 F over the course of the day) and the oven is also heating up (70 F to 350 F over some minutes).
Oh slashdot, when did you become a mouthpiece of the radical left?
"claimed that weather stations exaggerated the warming trend. This was disproven by satellite data"
Cause I recall satellite data being reported as showing more of a cooling trend.
"solar activity was blamed for much of the warming. This looked like a promising theory until the '80s"
Wait, I remember the 80's, I was in elementary school and being taught that we were headed toward a potential ice age.
"climate contrarians are convinced that changes in cloud cover will largely mitigate the warming caused by increased CO2"
Well, hadn't heard that one. Did hear the one about how CO2 is nothing compared to H2O in regards to greenhouse affect.
"New York Times examines how even this last bastion"
Really, last bastion, um...not sure where you're getting that from. Plenty of arguments against the alarmism. The fact that most predictions, facts, etc have proven false and had to be recanted.
In the 1750's there were maybe 100 accurate thermometers in the world, mostly in Europe. 3/4 of the world is water how many consistent accurate readings do we have from the oceans before say 1950. So we have sixty years of accurate readings world wide could there possibly be a 70 year trend that we are missing ? The planet is 4 billion years old, the last ice age was 10,000 years ago I don't think the sample is large enough for us to make a good decision. How much of the atmosphere is CO2... not 90 percent but less than one percent correct and what is the the human contribution to that only a small fraction. We are not the cause.
I see. I get it.
I try to point out a place where there's more knowledge than on average, certainly more than you'll find in the NYT. And for this I'm modded as a troll. What sort of community is this? Dickheads, sneerers and know-it-alls.
As the saying goes - there's none so blind as them that will not see.
Yes, water vapor doesn't stay in the atmosphere forever, but what happens when you continuously pump it into the atmosphere every day at ever increasing rates for a hundred years while simultaneously reducing the ability of the soil to absorb it by paving over it?
Your math leaves out water vapor variability, and I'm pretty sure it is wrong besides that. It also doesn't account for the disparity in warming in different places around the globe (ie cold Asia, warm Arctic). I will do the numbers myself later this morning. As I recall, the heat forcing of CO2 is something like 5x that of a standard diatomic gas, ie N2 or O2, which make up a huge fraction of the atmosphere. When I ran this calculation before, CO2 was only barely a net heat forcer in the absence of water vapor. Including water vapor it slightly reduces the heat forcing of the atmosphere.
But these days, the only relevant reason to reduce the use of coal, oil and gas that is being talked about is CO2. That's nonsense. Go to a strip mine and you know a much better reason to burn less coal. Weren't there enough oil spills, haven't there been enough wars for oil (most recently in South Sudan) to convince anyone that oil consumption should be reduced?
What is it that the warmist are telling us? Use less oil, use less coal. There are enough reasons to do that without even mentioning CO2 and so it should be done. You can't do more than this anyway, whether you believe in global warming or not.
Hence, there is enough time to wait for proper science to be done - something that I can't see any evidence of in term of global climate.
Fox News just congratulated Bush and Cheney on the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Seriously, they really did.
Republicans are so out of reality at this point, Fox would tell them it's freezing outside and they'd believe their thermometers were part of a left wing conspiracy. Even when Global Warming is proved right, Fox will be there to accuse scientists of 'gloating' and praising Republicans for fixing it.
It's just sad, it's like your Alzheimer's grandad ranting at trees in the park.
Oh and congratulations on President Obama for getting Bin Laden, and on the improving jobless figures. Gloating on success is better than gloating over Fox lies.
Democratic Guide
1.) Global Warming is happening.
2.) Find a way to make people feel good about helping without actually solving anything.
3.) ???
4.) Profit
Libertarian Guide ...
1.) Don't care.
2.) ???
3.)
Green Guide
1.) ZOMG DONATE TO SAVE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING DESTRUCTION TOMORROW
2.) ???
3.) Profit
Engineers Guide
1.) Examine Scientists’ theory
2.) Find solution to problem
3.) Test solution
4.) ???
5.) Sales people in Company engineer works for gain massive profits
6.) Engineers gets slight end of year bonus based on company profits
No, but a liberal application of the BFH will. . .wait. . . .hold on. . .
an application of the liberal BFH will. .
an application of the BFH to the liberal will ensure his ego fits in the Prius.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Who said I didn't look?
Very arrogant of you to assume I'm going to "learn" anything from that site, or that I won't assess the site's contents and draw my own conclusions based on my experience (I am scientist).
I may be lazy, there't no argument there. I'm also a terrible procrastinator, but I tend to find that actually looking at a source is useful before dismissing it. I mean, it doesn't help that the site is owned and run by a well-known AGW denier with an agenda - also famous for banning extracts being used in certain newspapers after they were critical of him - how very scientifically professional! I really want to put my trust in him! I mean, he can come out against the vast, vast majority of the scientific community and tell everyone they are wrong, but if a newspaper criticises his work in any way then he bans them from quoting him or using extracts! That's not at all hypocritical! It's certainly not the antithesis of how scientific discourse works!
I think perhaps you should look into more sources than just those promoted by prominent Climate Change Deniers who can't accept criticism of their work for some reason (perhaps because it's been shown to not stand up to peer review? naaahhhh! couldn't be that!).
Take this gem, from the EPA itself:
Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period
Am I the only one who fails to see the massive logic fail in that statement? If methane only lasts for 9-15 years, how is more effective at trapping heat over a 100 year period?
I've already explained this to you, using a very simple analogy with a hare and a tortoise. Did you not understand?
It makes no difference if the vast majority of the effect from the methane happens over 9-15 years. We can still say how much effect it had over any length of time we choose. Over 15 years, say, it might have 70 times the effect of CO2. Over 50 years it might have 45 times the effect of CO2. Over 100 years it might have 20 times. Over 500 years it might have 4 times the effect. [These figures are not meant to be exact, they are purely to illustrate the concept]
Do you understand it now?
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
How does an ignorant comment like this get modded up?
This is the sort of drivel that makes me question ever coming back to /. Do you think sticking your finger into your neighbors face makes you looks cool? or smart? No, you just look like another ignorant hick. How does this have anything to do with the topic of this thread?
And almost all of the other comments deride ACTUAL scientist who happen to have a different view - but without any actual consideration of the science. /. is like some kind of high school click, or a religious cult. If you don't espouse the same thinking as everyone else your are splayed by drivel and ad hominem attacks.
Ask yourself this...do you even have a clue what the opposing point of view is? So what does that make you. Open your minds people...take the time to hear what other have to say. Don't go on believing that everyone but you is some corporate hack, or ignorant, or a bigot, or some other figment of your imagination.
Without any data to hand, it is difficult to say one way or the other - I certainly can't say for sure (unlike the OP who does assert one specific position with no evidence).
My position is that as a member of the scientific community, I tend to agree with most of the peer-reviewed science on AGW - more specifically the chemistry aspects (as a chemist, it's the easiest stuff for me to digest beyond the abstracts).
My point would be to look at the models used and data collected from a wide variety of different scientists and institutions. If you approach it from the standpoint that there's possibly "some sort of global scarcity" tactic where every single scientist is somehow involved in a secret cabal, then I'm not sure any evidence one way or the other is going to swing it. I mean, in that situation any evidence that supports you is "proof of the conspiracy!!!" and any that doesn't is "part of the conspiracy of lies".
Standing back and looking at the whole system objectively really doesn't suggest such a thing.
You only have to look at anti-corporate communists, one world government bandwagon jumpers, U.N take our country over maggots, to know that you could lock such people in a warehouse full of evidence contradictory to their worldviews and they'd still champion it. I really don't see climate change knee jerker's being any different.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
The trend is so significantly related to human kind that the World Wars and even 2008 economic meltdown are directly reflected in the CO2 figures.
Did the second world war also happen on Venus at the same time? Did the global banking crisis spread to Saturn?
Meanwhile the denialists cite the bible as evidence. Republican John Shimkus said: "The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood."
It's quite shocking to think he's on the house energy committee, but then he'll be paid for by the oil lobby to say that.
this taco?
http://meta.slashdot.org/story/11/08/25/1245200/rob-cmdrtaco-malda-resigns-from-slashdot
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
That's most certainly false, but the real question is whether its negative effects cost more than to stop it.
And here's where modern politics fails in its analysis:
Let's say, for the sake of the argument that it will cost $50 trillion dollars over the next 50 years to solve all the negative problems associated with anthropogenic climate change.
Let's also say that the negative effects, if left unchecked, will start to accumulate in 10 years at a rate of 100 billion dollars/year, and that accumulation will accelerate by 10 billion every year.
Politicians look at it and say, "That's a trillion dollars a year over 50 years to solve a problem which will cost us 17.5 trillion in that time! That's a bad fiscal choice! Those climate change kooks are trying to kill our economy!"
Given these numbers it's true that the solution's costs over those 50 years dwarf the costs of doing nothing, but over the *next* 50 years things start to look really bad. At 60 years, we've hit 24 trillion in negative costs associated with ignoring the situation. At 70 years, we hit 31.5 trillion. At 80, we hit 40 trillion. At 90 years, it has cost us 49.5, and at 100 years we cross the break-even point and hit 60 trillion.
Now, the thing is, that if we *start* working on solving the negatives associated with climate change now, yes, we'll spend more fixing the problem than the negatives we'll see from it. (It's only a net 32.5 trillion dollar investment to prevent a 60 trillion dollar loss, because we're covering the initial 17.5 trillion in losses as *part* of that initial 50 year investment.) But that's just good investment, because we're spending a lot now to prevent a bigger loss in the future. If we wait, the cost to fix the problem gets bigger (to include all those accumulated negatives), meaning that if we wait 100 years, and all the costs stay exactly the same, we'll have to pay 92.5 trillion to solve the existing problem plus the accumulated 100 years of problem. Sadly, in the 100-year delayed scenario, 50 year span we spend that 92.5 trillion, we'll have accumulated negative costs of 127.5 trillion, meaning our 92.5 trillion still hasn't solved the problem, it's just knocked it down to 35 trillion outstanding. Sure, we'd pay that off in another 35 years, but over that time we'll have accumulated another 62 trillion in costs. (Now our accumulated costs are outpacing our spending, so we've got to spend faster to get the problems solved.)
The basic math shows it's cheaper to solve problems like this by implementing solutions *now* than it is to wait until the problem becomes undeniably visible.
Besides, spending 50 trillion of 50 years isn't an economy-wrecking scenario. It's an economy *building* scenario, because you've got 50 years of the increased jobs associated with doing everything we're doing now *plus* those created to solve the problem.
Your premise is flawed.It never was a respectable neutral newspaper.
Well, maybe in the minds of the folks who live in New York. But they still can't figure out why Nixon won because no one they knew voted for him.
The New York Times used to be a good newspaper. It is now a bastion of leftwing nut cases and massively Anti-American pseudo-jounalist. I don't think I would believe what they write even if I saw it happen myself. They would politicize it and blame it on anyone right of the far-far left wing.
There is insufficient evidence to point to changes in the climate being anthropogenic versus just a natural cycle (which could be imposed on other natural cycles). I know most of you lefties, communist, greenie, mindless posters which respect to this issue have the problem solved. I think you believe we should wipe out 90% of the human race and live like we did 10,000 years ago. That would be good for you because they would take away your fricking computers and internet; then you would have to work for a living.
I have always wondered about that myself, and the traditional answer is that it has a low residence time in the atmosphere. I do not know how thoroughly this has been reviewed.
Or maybe it's the climate change adherents' "bastions" that are crumbling.
Liberty in your lifetime
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing.
In a way that's true. Just as evolution "supporters" are more left wing.
Really?
John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of "American pragmatism."
1) Reality has a well know liberal bias.
2) On average liberals are more intelligent than right-wingers.
1) When I hear liberals say things like, "Obama is doing a great job with the economy", I see that bias has affected what some see as reality.
2) Bullshit. I hear that spouted all the time, but only by liberals. Many of the media driven surveys that claim this usually did so by asking respondents questions that liberals are more likely to know the answer to, like "Where was Obama born" or "Did Iraq have something to do with 9-11". They don't ask questions like, "Who said that she could see Alaska from her house."
The more professional studies used to come up with that conclusion used kids to make the determination. KIDS! They also allowed the kids to determine their political affiliation themselves rather than determining them from the ideals the children hold dear.
The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study is huge — more than 20,000 kids — and this difference is highly statistically significant.
But self-identification is often misleading; do kids really know what it means to be liberal? The GSS data are instructive here: Kanazawa found that more-intelligent GSS respondents (as measured by a quick but highly reliable synonym test) were less likely to agree that the government has a responsibility to reduce income and wealth differences. In other words, intelligent people might like to portray themselves as liberal. But in the end, they know that it's good to be the king.
In other words, the kids said they were liberal, but when you got down to what they truly believed, it turns out they were actually fairly conservative.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I am a dissenter. I am however not paid by any coproration, and I would say I am "more educated and scientific than most" when it comes to the global warming debate.
As far as I am concerned, the NYT article is constructing a straw man to tear it apart. As a dissenter, I *know* that water vapor is a green house gas and is a positive feedback on the system. In fact one of the reasons why I am a dissenter is because water vapor is so much more absorbing of the infre red spectrum than CO2. Yet we don't call on our industry to condense steam back into water rather than directly vent it to the atmosphere.
Also the article describes this as the last bastion. The title is wholly undeserved because there are plenty of bastions still going on. The solar debate is still on, and stronger than ever since we're in a weak cycle and we have had no warming since 1998. In fact, Antarctica is still adding ice, and the Arctic has recovered to the 1979-2000 average and is currently within 1 standard deviation, which is impressive because just 3 years ago it hit it lowest point since being recorded.
I could go on, but that's enough to refute the article.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Runs for cover!
Insightful? Come on mods, this is the definition of flamebait. BasilBrush, you win. Republicans bad, Democrats good. Now go fuck a football.
Did the the everest area ice melt yet? (don't blame me - blame the head of the IPCC we're all expected to slavishly believe in qithout question)
Did the climate change caused by humanity group properly answer why warming since around 200 ballpark has not matched computer models?
You'll have to excuse me, but I'm not wholly a skeptic. But I am skeptical that all the money tends to be poured in from one side that *actually* wants a particular answer and not the answers. Gov pour in funding to find climate change, not research it. If you are someone who isn't fitting the flat earth science model - you don't get money from multiple sources now. I'm as deeply skeptical on that as I am about power or oil paying for science with the same premise. Neither case is something I find acceptable, and I believe that both cases are skewed wildly, and I don't believe the picture presented by that landscape.
Despite very large advancements, our dependance on computer modelling in this area still leaves enormous variances and open ended questions that it can't be said someone 'knows'. They do not.
And I'm not impressed by the knee jerk reactions that frankly would have everyone on a bicycle, and eliminate modern life as we know it 'to save the planet'. Slow ratchet efforts to take us there don't impress me either, nor do slow cooking frog methods work for me.
The human race, and political classes have to cut human population, not just attempt to have every human living an ever poorer life to fit their green/communist cretinous fascism. You can start by changing how we think about society - and not paying people to have children (UK child benefit is a loose example) - but in fact create a system that rewards people for not having children, and very heavy layers against mass migration (where it creates population expansion), and reducing support for human growth in areas where its not sustainable.
'Oh we'd rather not do that, stop driving your car' - actually no. (Note - I don't own a car, but anyway) - don't tell someone to do that, tell someone else 'no we're not supporting you with social benefits and support because you've decided to have a 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th 9th child.
And no, I don't care if you disklike what I've just written.
We`re all equal
Their last bastion is crumbling! But that's OK, they don't need it anyway. They will always have their willful ignorance.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
So it's going back to where the Earth was originally. Great, so we humans are are actually restoring the Earth to how it was suppose to be. You see Earth had a methane atmosphere before these oxygen polluting plants and microbes started growing on Earth. I saw that on "The Universe". I'm so smart now.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
I think you've got "Profit" listed about 8 steps late on that list. Everyone knows that profit comes first in the political world order.
FTFY
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Oh gee, could it have anything to do with recent findings that data has been skewed by the "scientists" to support the AGW theory? That temperatures in certain locales have seen DROPS over the past twenty years?
That the runaway greenhouse predicted for the past 30 years has failed to manifest itself?
This story is a hypersensationalization of the actual facts.
Nothing 'amazing' about it. They found sensationalism sells more newspapers than telling balanced truth does. That's capitalism.
No sig today...
...warmists keep shrugging their shoulders saying "Well, no, we know it hasn't changed yet, but really, it really, really is going to, and it will be really super duper bad. Sure we were totally wrong in our initial assessments, but this time you should really believe us." In the meantime, the temp is 1 degree warmer than 100 years ago and whatever climate change there is can be attributed to the natural changes in climate of the planet. "Global Warming" will be looked upon as the greatest hoax ever perpertrated on mankind.
Look, God said in the bible that he promised Noah not to flood the earth again. You want plausible counter theories to disprove, then disprove that!
This is the reason a REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN on the ENERGY COMMITTEE, gave for denying Global Warming. Now do you really think inside his head he actually believes that?
So going with the consensus and saying "yeh, let the oil lobby Republicans do their ranting and ignore them" is probably the only way forward.
There are no good effects to increasing efficiency of transportation and power generation.
Exactly! Follow the money trail and you'll find all these big wig professors living large, dangling their bling from their Corollas and Datsuns, as they go about lobbying congress and throwing money around.
I drank what? -- Socrates
The NY Times has been thoroughly debunked as an unbiased source of news. They are simply, predictably, following their own political agenda.
Vietnam Veteran / Former Postal Worker -- Use Caution When Taunting!
If you are in a room that is getting too hot, it is a good idea to switch the heating off, open a window or turn the air con on. Who or what is to blame for the excess heat doesn't matter as much as stopping the room getting so hot it causes problems for the people in it.
For me the most important questions we should be asking are:
* Is the climate changing? * What effects will that cause (good and bad)? * What can we do to affect the rate of change? * What can we do to mitigate the bad effects? * What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
The reasons why the climate is changing are important as they can suggest what we can do to affect things but even if we determine that the climate change is not down to human activity, we should still be looking for ways to affect it in our favour.
While I absolutely agree, if people don't believe that car emissions (for instance) affect climate change, then they may not believe that changing what car they drive would have any effect either.
We never denied Global warming.
We always said it was Clinton's fault.
Because he didn't stand up to the Chinese at Kyoto.
It's Obama's fault, too, of course.
Why is it that nobody checks the Earth's orbit at correlates it with temperature changes?
That's not exactly true.
Lots of idiots fit in a Prius. You can also cart around a metric fuckton of stupid.
The climate is changing.
I just have a hard time believing it is caused by people in the very short span of time being thrown at us in order for us to effect that change.
"Going Green" is just another way of saying "pay this tax" in my opinion. My opinion may not mean much, if anything, but I believe it to be true.
...and talks like a duck, it's not a suspension bridge.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's as simple as the government wanting to tax tax tax and what better way than on something you peons have no idea about and are too stupid to understand right?
What tax is really going to make any change? PLEASE
Yea I see Al gore is really worried, big house, jets, cars, oh yea he's so worried and he's leading the way... Whatever
And this guy is just another self-appointed expert who doesn't know the first thing about the subject matter that he is writing about. Another pissed off liberal that isn't getting his way and he wants more than anything for you to believe him.
So start believing him so that he can smile and be happy for a change. Let him get up from his computer and take a dump. He'll feel better. We'll feel better. And we won't have to read or smell it any longer.
Quoting a liberal asshole comedian doesn't make you smart, it just makes you a smartass.
On average, liberals are too stupid to know how stupid they are.
The climate is changing. I just have a hard time believing it is caused by people in the very short span of time being thrown at us in order for us to effect that change. "Going Green" is just another way of saying "pay this tax" in my opinion. My opinion may not mean much, if anything, but I believe it to be true.
It is surprising to me how easily people discard the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community on this question, but readily ridicules creationists for doing the exact same, with the exact same arguments, when it comes to evolution.
Seriously. I got a truck a couple years ago, mostly because it was great deal and well taken care of by a family friend. I do use it a good bit for "truck stuff", since we have some land in the country, which pretty much requires a truck to maintain the land. I never could have imagined, however, how many damn weekends I would spend moving people's stuff around. I pretty much know by now what will be asked when I see a call from someone I have not talked to in awhile.
Even if you strongly disagree with the scientific dissenters and suspect their motives, the fact remains that the process of dissent is essential for scientific progress. It forces the proponents of the climate change theory to sharpen their pens and demonstrate conclusively that their theory holds water.
Believing the opposing view is not as intelligent (as tangentially related to a cliche viewpoint a comedian made) is the height of foolishness and arrogance by all accounts, whether you are correct or not
So even if you're right, you're arrogant?
I'll take that all day long.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I've seen troll posts, but this is perhaps the first time I've seen an entire article that's a troll.
Oh, I know I'm going to be castigated as a "dissenter" (Yikes, just that name reeks of quasi-religious orthodoxy. How dare he disagree!) but sure, I'll bite:
'For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.' ...and that sort of bombastic pessimism HAS been going on for decades (real decades, not inflated decades).
I'm not sure "decades" applies, as it's only been about a decade and a half since the alarmists started warning us that the sky was falling. When initially presented by a blowhard self-promoting politician, it's hard to take the 'science' seriously. If Rush Limbaugh produced a propaganda film insisting that 2+2=4, I'd likewise start to doubt whatever it was he was promoting. Let's also remember that there's a bit of a 'cry wolf' case here; the people claiming that armageddon was now approaching, had previously told us that:
- we were going to all starve to death
- we were going to run out of oil
- we were going to run out of fresh water
- we were covering our country in landfills
- DDT was going to kill us all
- nuclear power was going to kill us all
(etc. ad infinitum)
Initially they claimed that weather stations exaggerated the warming trend. This was disproven by satellite data which shows a similar warming trend.
I'm not sure that's true. Well, probably SOMEONE somewhere said that. My concern was that weather station data was sparse, extremely questionably interpolated in a way that seemed to encourage bias (upward), anecdotal evidence that many of the long-standing weather stations in the US had been subject to encroaching urbanization without (as far as I could see in the data) any correction for that, etc. Further, while the "hockey stick" (that started this) shocked me as fully as it did Mr Gore, I was suspicious of the statistical methods that had been broadly explained in its initial presentation. Further, I'd (anecdotally) remembered stories about oranges growing in England that didn't seem to be reflected in the data. As more discussion followed, people who were far more savvy than me presented a more-convincing case that the statistics used were deeply flawed. This of course made me wonder why someone would do this - by accident or on purpose. To be frank, I immediately categorized Messrs. Mann (et al) as eco-alarmists, the broad group of discredited wierdoes I'd been ignoring since the 1970s. Frankly, that's the hole that "global warming" alarmists have had to try to climb out of since then. I'll be very clear: In my mind, this definitely weighed against subsequent AGW claims.
Further, and regardless of his conclusions (many of which I believe to have been either overstated or otherwise flawed; I *do* feel strongly that his whole point about opportunity costs of chasing CO2 vs other beneficial ecological investments is the baby that's gone out with the bathwater) the vitriol and fury directed against Bjorn Lomborg for daring to doubt the data was even more confirmation for me that this was no longer a scientific issue - this took on the tenor of a secular Inquisition.
Next, solar activity was blamed for much of the warming. This looked like a promising theory until the '80s, when solar output started to diverge from global temperatures.
Really? http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html seems to present fairly soberly.
-Styopa
We would not have enough money to do anything about it with the approaches advocated by the alarmists. They consistently choose the absolute most expensive ways to attack the problem. This is revealing, in that their agenda is not about saving the planet, which is impossible with their approaches, but all about control. That is, they are going to dictate what you drive, when you drive, whether you can ever again ride jet aircraft, when or if you're allowed to travel and for what purpose (work -> OK, recreation -> NOT OK.)
If they would not dismiss out of hand the cheaper approaches that are geo-engineering in order to attack the problem, then they would at least appear reasonable. But they are not reasonable, and their motives are clear... its about control, and virtual enslavement of the populations of the world.
Pardon me if I resist this to my last dying breath!!!!!
...the last bastion of climate alarmists :)
Seriously, this hit piece on Lindzen is embarrassing in its mendacity. The fact is that natural climate change has always happened, and always will happen, and whatever the anthropogenic influence is on it, on any time scale, is well open for debate.
Yes, we have an effect. Every life form has an effect.
No, this effect isn't distinguishable from background noise.
NYT has once again taken its position as the leader of the charge of the Church of Global Warming. For those people interested in actually doing science, instead of making vague appeals to authority, start with the scientific method, and state your clearly necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
Officer, I can't have been doing 60 miles per hour, I only left home 15 minutes ago
blog.sam.liddicott.com
"Trustworthy science"?
How about "trust but verify"?
Oops...lost that data, didn't we :)
How about you start with a statement as to what global CO2/global average temperature levels are clearly excluded by the hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? Are there *any* observations that could be made next year that would falsify your hypothesis, or is it simply "heads I win, tails you lose"?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nope, there's no global warming due to CO2. The problem is all these people who leave windows open while the heating is on. They "want a bit of fresh air". Go the the park I say.
If we're not the reason for the climate change, with all the crap we're releasing in the atmosphere, there is little chance we can have any effect on the climate change in a reasonable and timely fashion.
So I'd say yes, it matters if it is anthropogenic or not.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
except the only one really pushing carbon credit taxing, etc, are democrats.
No credible anti AGW source is saying the earths temp in not changing.
What annual carbon tax are you willing to start paying up today? $10k/year for your family?
And what will this money do? And who gets it?
And how will we know if anything is happening, will we trust our models?
The PHCKING point is that some of us don't think reducing the standard of living arbitrarily in western countries will do crap.
Quit blowing Al Gore.
You do realize that pro-AGW organizations are MUCH more well-funded than any anti-climate-change organization, right? They also like to hide, lose and delete any data that goes against what they are claiming. Funny how those assloads of money they get from people all over the globe (i.e., taxpayers [government grants]) is going toward generating more ways to tax those same people. Carbon taxes, highways mileage taxes, et cetera.
Wait. After reading your statements again, I see you just like to make shit up. My mistake. Carry on, little pony. Cary on...
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 does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
8) ????
9) Profit.
#10 - The earth is extinguished by the sun anyway.
You want people to not be short-sighted? Fine. In the long run, the sun will reach out and absorb the earth.
If there are any people left, there will be no doubt that "global warming" was caused by the sun's actions.
I doubt either side in this is entirely correct. That makes me atmospherically agnostic.
I will don my flame retardant suit and get ready to defend assaults from both sides like Germany in WW2.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Climate Change is real. It has been happening for millions of years and there is lots of proof world-wide showing it over all that time.
In the climate world, 30 years of data does not make anything "fact", that's the main issue I have with the "global warming" crowd. There isn't enough climate data to **know** anything. Predictions are FUDD. Heck, I don't think 100 years of data will be enough to convince me.
On geologic time scales, 100 years of data is **nothing** and can't prove anything. It is a blip, barely noticed.
Many of the models show effects that are believed to be seen, but do not include any, yet unseen, climate regulation for the planet. Only time will let that happen. More clouds are being modeled which is great and the same more CO2. Turns out that we had 2 days of significantly fewer clouds back in 2001 which helped climate scientists a bunch. I haven't seen anything about all the ice melting and reducing sea temperatures - though I'm not looking.
We don't need to "save the Earth." It isn't going anywhere. Climate change has happened for millions of years and it will continue to happen. Whether humans are causing it or not doesn't matter, since our race will never agree to stop doing what we already do today to help the future until it is too late, when we will be FORCED to change. For example, what will happen if 2/3rds of electrical power is removed after then next solar-max eruptions? Will the estimated 10 years to rebuild the grid help or hinder the climate change? Chances are at least 20% of the industrialized population will die. How will that effect this over the short and long terms?
"Global warming" people sound like "chicken little" to me. At least until the sky really does fall.
As I recall, the heat forcing of CO2 is something like 5x that of a standard diatomic gas, ie N2 or O2, which make up a huge fraction of the atmosphere. When I ran this calculation before, CO2 was only barely a net heat forcer in the absence of water vapor. Including water vapor it slightly reduces the heat forcing of the atmosphere.
You recall incorrectly. The radiative forcing of the top three gases in the atmosphere - N2, O2 and Ar - is precisely zero as can be demonstrated from symmetry.
Argon is monatomic and therefore has no vibrational or rotational modes. N2 and O2 are symmetric about the centre of their bond, so their vibrational and rotational modes do not involve an oscillating dipole and therefore are not infrared active.
Radiative forcing comes down to infrared absorption of outgoing heat from the earth - if there is no infrared absorption, there's no radiative forcing.
You linked to the Daily Mail which is about as credible as the trash rags with stories about Bigfoot's vampire babies, but if the story about the ships is true (highly unlikely) I'd say those ships need to be pulled into port and converted to another energy source *right fucking now.* A nuclear reactor with armor as thick as those big diesel engine blocks should be pretty safe.
Also would you consider swapping a *new* American V8 into that car? You'll get more power, even keep it carbed if you like. I mean, 8MPG? Jesus H. Christ, that's fucking horrible. Economics will force you to do a swap pretty soon I think.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community." This is my problem with climate change. While I believe that the Earth is warming. I believe it is prudent to work toward limiting our impact in the event we are causing drastic change. But most people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
This coming from a Newspaper that is clearly shown to be very bias in "reporting news" and un-ethical too.
You are very selective in the conspiracies you choose to decry.
Why aren't you up in arms about things like Big Pharma's focus on peddling more pills rather than finding genuine cures?
What about Big Oil's lies concerning not just AGW (did you know of Exxon's support up to the early 2000s for think tanks and research that denies global warming?), but disasters like Deepwater Horizon?
You're so outraged over Big Government. Yes, bash them hard over tax loopholes. But what about Little Government? For instance, many local governments have engaged in parking meter and red light camera programs of dubious merit that whatever else they are claimed to accomplish, extract quite a bit of money from the public. Many universities and colleges are even more notorious for strict parking enforcement. There's also a classic taxation without representation many have jumped on: special sales taxes for motel rooms, rental cars, and other things that hit travelers only. US sales taxes are under 10% for most items. But for rooms and rental cars, 15% or more is typical.
Speaking of government, what about attempts to rig elections, such as voter caging?
Then there is Big Finance. Madoff is the only perp who has been locked up. The rest of them got off with pathetically small fines. Some even got a free bailout. Why is Goldman Sachs still in business, still paying their executives obscene bonuses? Why is Mozilo not behind bars?
What about Big Media and piracy? Hollywood Accounting, and lobbying for laws like DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998?
But you put your energies towards calling out this supposed great scientific conspiracy over AGW. It's beyond the pail to suppose there could be a deliberate effort with active and explicit collusion among thousands of independent scientists. However, there could indeed be a groupthink problem, motivated in part by the desire to secure more funding. (Do you really think funding is only available for those who will affirm AGW?) Medical research has just such a problem. How can we tell the difference? By reviewing the evidence and the work. And what we see is that it's the deniers who have engaged in bad science, and who have a clear motive and financial interest in doing so.
Follow the money. Follow ALL the money.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
So, should we stop punishing murderers because people are dying all the time anyway? You are chewing the cud that some oil-financed "researcher" spat into your mouth.
In other words, the kids said they were liberal, but when you got down to what they truly believed, it turns out they were actually fairly conservative.
Is that like an inversion of the No True Scotsman fallacy? Shall we coin the Everyone's a True Scotsman fallacy?
Even if you think you're liberal, you're really conservative!
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Plus "Well all the other planets are heating up" sounds a little like "Well everyone else is catching the plague so why should i worry?"
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
You forget about the Ramen spectrum. Not all the degrees of freedom are expressed on the IR spectrum.
You are confusing the heat capacity of the atmosphere (the ability to absorb and reemit IR photons) with heat forcing (the ability to absorb high energy photons and release IR photons). Vibrational modes in gases are not relevant to heat capacity (at room temperature) according to wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrees_of_freedom_(physics_and_chemistry)
but they are VERY relevant to heat forcing, as that is the method by which a molecule emits photons--low energy photons ie heat. Monotomic gases can absorb photons, which add to their velocity. They can shed energy through collision ONLY, not through emission of a photon. Their heat capacity is 3 vs 5 for diatomics and longer linear molecules, and 6 for nonlinear triatomics like water, and 3N for larger nonlinears. These are all pretty much the same, basically 3N, which is why the heat capacity for gases normalized for the number of atoms varies so little (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat).
Come on, earning a profit has been around way before the Republicans.
Amount of ice in Bering Sea reaches all-time record: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/11/bering_sea_ice_cover/
Two points.
#1 The NYT (an avowed supporter of AGW theory) is not exactly breaking new ground here. If you paraphrase the article ("Last bastion crumbling") it sounds an awful lot like "The debate is over" and "The science is settled".
This is supposed to be science - not Wrestlemania. Anyone declaring "final victory" automatically disqualifies themselves from being considered a fair arbiter, since to do so means you have abandoned the scientific method.
#2 Core supporters of AGW theory have themselves to blame for creating most of the controversy. If they had kept the politics out of their research, there would not be damning emails from East Anglia, missing data, and fake graphs. Michael Mann and company have rediscovered old maxims.
-Don't cry wolf, because you won't be believed even if you tell the truth.
-The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
-Distorting the truth to advance your agenda will actually undermine your goals once the truth comes out - even if you are correct.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 392 parts per *million*. 0.00039%, if you will. If increasing that to 0.0005% will destroy the earth through global warming, the earth would have destroyed itself through seasonal variations let alone variations over millennia long ago...
Humans contribute about 3% of the CO2 output per annum, the rest of it is from living processes. Water vapour controls the majority of the global warming effect (~97%) which is why people who are sceptical about the AGW 'consensus' think that it's arse backwards CO2 affects water vapour and cloud formation. It makes more sense that changes in evaporation from solar sources lead the worlds largest reservoir of CO2, the oceans, to let more CO2 escape.
It's funny that the summary mentions solar decreases aren't matching global warming, because global temperatures have been declining recently too, supporting the idea that the sun is in control.
I've already explained this to you, using a very simple analogy with a hare and a tortoise. Did you not understand?
It makes no difference if the vast majority of the effect from the methane happens over 9-15 years. We can still say how much effect it had over any length of time we choose. Over 15 years, say, it might have 70 times the effect of CO2. Over 50 years it might have 45 times the effect of CO2. Over 100 years it might have 20 times. Over 500 years it might have 4 times the effect. [These figures are not meant to be exact, they are purely to illustrate the concept]
Do you understand it now?
I understand the analogy you are trying to make, but it doesn't fly. The tortoise/hare analogy is as follows from your post:
A hare and a turtle go for a race of 10 minutes. The hare runs 100 meters in one minute, calls it quits and takes a nap. The turle works for 10 minutes and manages to crawl 10 meters. The hare won, although he stopped after 1 minute.
Methane does so much damage in that 9-15 years the CO2 needs about 2000 years to catch up
In distance, this works. Not so much with heat. Put two pots on the stove, one on high for 10 minutes and another on low for two hours. Sure, the pot on high will boil, but it will eventually cool down to a temperature lower than the pot on low. After the two hours, the pot that was on high will be cooler than the pot that is still on low. Why? Heat dissipates. If you were to replace the earth's atmosphere with 100% methane, it may heat up quite a bit, but in since the methane breaks down in less than 15 years, the heat will dissipate into space, leaving the planet pretty much as it was before. Space is a poor insulator.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Actually, a lot can fit in a Prius. They are quite roomy.
Go read your source a little more carefully, including the linked interview with the original reporter. When Bill Nye criticized literal interpretation of the Bible, there were a few people who left upset, but it was apparently very low key, no booing, no "bastion" of people storming out or making a scene, and Bill Nye's lecture was uninterrupted and Bill may not have even realized the reaction of these few people.
Sure I'd like to live in a world where all religious people accept that the Bible should not be taken literally, but you (like many according to the followups in your source) appear to have greatly overstated the negative reaction at Bill Nye's lecture by repeating the inflammatory punch line without reading any deeper.
Clue: It's not about money - it's about prestige and power. The grant money just gets you an income and the means to further your cause.
After all, if you gain the power to influence entire governments, then why bother trying to run for office? If scientists and laymen practically worship you, why would you need bling or other attention-grabbing baubles?
Shit, man... the priests and priestesses had all this figured out at the dawn of time. If you can have all the power, adoration, and be comfortable at the same time? Why would you need anything else? Politicians and robber barons can only hope for some of it, and competition is fierce among them. The real power lies behind the throne.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My bicycle, filing cabinents, furniture I've purchased. I'm 6'4" myself so driver's side room is always a major factor for me. I had to pass up a lot of good deals on vehicles just because I couldn't fit in the stupid things comfortably. You just need to know how to handle a Prius.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Just pay more taxes
This is exactly the issue I have with AWG. It seems to degenerate into a shouting match instead of a discussion of facts. I find that if I do enough reading, I can understand most science topics, cancer research and quantum physics included. I decided that I really wanted to understand what was going on with global warming, at least reasonably well and spent a long time reading to understand. What I discovered is that most of the people that are cited as being authorities on internet forums aren't considered reliable by established scientists, and there are opposing viewpoints from scientists that are credible.
I won't say it is a trick and I don't think any credible scientist is saying it is all a hoax, but there are a wealth of opinions on what the data means and reasonable theories on how significant AGW is. I'd absolutely agree that AGW exists and any actual scientist will concede that humans must have some sort of impact on climate, but the degree of impact is only the first issue that is not agreed on. The second is the vectors of impact. Certainly CO2 is a factor, but how does that compare to the impact of the cattle industry or agriculture? Again, there are varied opinions. Finally, if you pick one or two opinions from those two issues which support the concern that AGW is a significant danger to our society, there is still the issue of reaction. Perhaps the best use of resources isn't to try to limit fossil fuel consumption, but to instead invest in fusion, or promote traditional nuclear fission reactors. Maybe the best reaction is to massively seed algae.
If there was a consensus on the data, it escaped my ability for research (about a year ago, I'm probably due to repeat it again soon.) If we can get a consensus on the data, and a reliable theory, then I hope we'll see rational discussion about responses... but I'm afraid I'm not optimistic.
Likely no matter what results are found and no matter what arguments are put forth, somebody will say something to me like: "You've bought into the propaganda machine hook, line and sinker."
The global warming religion strikes back !!!
JAM
If you accept the conclusion that, "We don't know" then that completely invalidates the original statement of "Other planets are warming too."
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
Yes really.
"John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of "American pragmatism."
Which doesn't address the point I made at all. Unquantified majorities on both sides displaying pragmatism doesn't say how many of each side believe in evolution.
The very same Pew Forum, in 2006 shows my assertion correct:
"Nor is the rejection of evolution a result of political or ideological beliefs. While Republicans and conservatives are more apt than Democrats or liberals to deny that evolution occurs, this correlation is mostly a result of the large number of evangelicals with creationist views in the Republican Party and among conservatives."
http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Many-Americans-Uneasy-with-Mix-of-Religion-and-Politics.aspx#3
And your rejection of the very many studies showing liberals more intelligent than conservatives on the basis that people don't know what politics they have is laughable. The complaint about "kids" refers to a particular study of childhood intelligence together with how they later voted at age 34. At age 34 they know their politics very well.
I'm afraid neither of your denials are based in fact. They are imaginary arguments that you created from the gist you got from a couple of Googled articles. You cooked them up to support your beliefs, unconcerned that there was no hard fact in them. Typical right wing behaviour.
"Trust but verify" is exactly how peer reviewed science works.
The fact that climate change denialists have resorted to attacking the personal integrity of the scientists involved speaks volumes. There are volumes and volumes of data and experiments that suggest that AGW is a significant effect. Whether that causes some doomsday scenario is impossible to say. There's no simple "heads I win, tails you lose", not least because the data set and research covers thousands of scientists and thousands and thousands of experiments.
Cool story bro.
In other words, the kids said they were liberal, but when you got down to what they truly believed, it turns out they were actually fairly conservative.
Is that like an inversion of the No True Scotsman fallacy? Shall we coin the Everyone's a True Scotsman fallacy?
Even if you think you're liberal, you're really conservative!
In other words, the kids said they were liberal, but when you got down to what they truly believed, it turns out they were actually fairly conservative.
Is that like an inversion of the No True Scotsman fallacy? Shall we coin the Everyone's a True Scotsman fallacy?
Even if you think you're liberal, you're really conservative!
Nice analysis, except the error is not on my part, but that of the students and the researcher. The Scotsman fallacy argument would work if I were the one claiming that liberal ideals are now conservative. That's not the case.
My point is twofold. First, they asked kids about their political affiliation. I don't trust kids to know this or have enough life experience to answer accurately. It's easy to claim to be a liberal when you are living off of someone else's work and money. Once you start providing for yourself, you attitude tends to change quite drastically. Students, who receive federal grants are all for federal assistance programs. Once they are no longer students and find that 15% of their paychecks goes to fund federal assistance programs, that view tends to change rather quickly.
Next is that kids might identify themselves with something they are not. They assume they are liberal. After all, all their friends are liberal. All their TV heroes and musical idols are liberal. When they see the common perception of a conservative, they are old, fat, rich and stuffy. When they see the perception of a liberal, they are charitable (working for the Peace Corps or something), actively working to save seals or something, young, open minded and friendly. It's no surprise that they would identify themselves with the group that fits more of who they think they are. But when you ask them if they want the school to raise lunch prices and give a portion of their lunch money to feed the less fortunate students or if they feel that the government should confiscate their X-Boxes to buy Wiis for everyone, they tend to be more conservative.
The study would have more legitimacy if, instead of asking the students if they were liberal of conservative, they asked them questions that would identify their affiliation. Even then, you may get skewed results. For example if you asked students if the rich should pay their fair share in taxes, it's like that 100% would say yes. But if you asked if them if it is fair that they should have give up their own luxuries for those that don't have them or share their good grades to raise the GPA of those that don't do as well, you may get a different answer.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If you got to the 'paper' link you will find a self promoting climate blog. Search through these pages and you will find the three articles actually mentioned. Two deal with modelling cloud cover and present no data on the effect on warming. Both say further study is needed. The last paper is the most recent and dose actually present data showing that clouds add to global warming. They then compare these result to the standard climate models and find that only 2 of them take this into account. Hardly the 'victory' for global warming fanatics the poster claims. How about trying science?
Once you start providing for yourself, you attitude tends to change quite drastically. Students, who receive federal grants are all for federal assistance programs. Once they are no longer students and find that 15% of their paychecks goes to fund federal assistance programs, that view tends to change rather quickly.
Yeah, if you're a sociopath asshole. I would hope these working folks understand that they are paying that 15% so that *others just like them* can go to school on federal grants/assistance programs. What kind of asshole benefits from a program and then slashes it right after he's done with it? Talk about not paying it forward...
With the first link, the chain is forged.
In other words, the kids said they were liberal, but when you got down to what they truly believed, it turns out they were actually fairly conservative.
Is that like an inversion of the No True Scotsman fallacy? Shall we coin the Everyone's a True Scotsman fallacy?
Even if you think you're liberal, you're really conservative!
Actually, Wikipedia explains it better than I can.
Fallacy:
Alice: All Scotsmen enjoy haggis.
Bob: My uncle is a Scotsman, and he doesn't like haggis!
Alice: Well, all true Scotsmen like haggis.
NOT Fallacy:
Jake: All vegetarians refuse to eat steak.
Deb: My uncle is a vegetarian, and he eats steak all the time!
Jake: Well, then he's not really a vegetarian.
Holding liberal ideals is pretty much required to be a liberal just as not eating meat is a requirement to be a vegetarian.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
In distance, this works. Not so much with heat. Put two pots on the stove, one on high for 10 minutes and another on low for two hours. Sure, the pot on high will boil, but it will eventually cool down to a temperature lower than the pot on low.
It does work with heat, in fact you've got it with your analogy, you've just left the pot too long. Put one on high for 10 minutes and one on low for 20 minutes and you might well have the one on high being hotter than the one on low!
Eventually is the key word. If methane just disappeared out of the atmosphere when it broke down then give it long enough and it would have had less of an effect than CO2 in the atmosphere would. It just takes longer than 100 years to do that. Well, it's complicated by that fact that methane breaks down to CO2 anyway, so that's like turning the pot on high down to low rather than off, but you get the drift.
Space is a poor insulator.
Actually, this is incorrect. The only way things can lose heat in space is through radiation. It insulates quite well. Your biggest problem with electronics in space is cooling them without convection.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Really? Can you name a single warmist paper in the past 10 years where any of the reviewers actually asked for the data behind a paper they were reviewing?
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/phil-jones-keeps-peer-review-process-humming-by-using-intuition/
From Phil Jones: "I’ve never requested data/codes to do a review and I don’t think others should either."
So much for verify :)
There are volumes and volumes of data and experiments that suggest that Pisces are generally honest, but sometimes deceitful. Yet we understand astrology isn't a science.
If you want to play the science game, you come up with your clearly necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis, and look *really hard* for falsifications. Can you cite any warmist work that has done that? Stated "this would be a falsification of my theory, and here are all the things I did to look for it"?
Actually, a lot can fit in a Prius. They are quite roomy.
Compared to most European cars: roomy.
Compared to most US cars: tiny.
If you think heat capacity is relevant, or that it's "the ability to absorb high energy photons and release IR photons", you're too far from having even the slightest understanding of the greenhouse effect to see where you're going wrong (hint: if your back-of-the-envelope calculation turns a century of science on its head, check it again).
Raman scattering doesn't make nitrogen a greenhouse gas.
The nuts still think men are making it warmer - it's a wet dream of socialist control.
Who cares!? Everyone knows the climate is always changing. People are employed on the basis of this fear, so why would they play it down and lose their funding. They've been saying for decades the water would rise and trying to instill fear. They were wrong.
"The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community." This is my problem with climate change. While I believe that the Earth is warming. I believe it is prudent to work toward limiting our impact in the event we are causing drastic change. But most people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
You could argue the same against evolution (and some do, with exactly the same arguments). The owerhelming consensus of the scientific community is that the data they observe fits the theory of evolution. It is exactly the same.
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)?
* What can we do to affect the rate of change?
* What can we do to mitigate the bad effects?
* What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
Hmmm.
I think that between 2 and 3, I'd ask how bad is the bad, and how good the good, and then, assuming that they don't balance, ask what will it cost to fix the bad, and then ask if the cost is best deployed fixing the bad, or doing other better things that produce a greater overall 'improvement'.
For example, should 'fix money' be spent on carbon reduction or flood defences ?
The plural of anecdote is not evidence.
Just haul some manure in your truck and don't clean it out too well. Mention this fact to callers and see how many more free weekends you have.
That last line is the whole point - that you can post a comment like yours and yet feel that it specifically applies to climate science only. What you have posted, with the pros and cons of various studies and data and different scientists is true of ALL science. Ask a hundred scientists about the Higgs Boson and you'll get about 70 different answers, along with a great many complaining about the cost of the LHC. Climate science is no different, but these totally normal differences of opinion between scientists (as well as them arguing over how to interpret various data and models) has been seized by those with an agenda to push (specifically that AGW does not exist) and painted to be much more than it is (ie, that it means scientists are 'divided' on the topic).
There's no way you're ever going to find total consensus on the data as a whole, primarily because there is so much of it and it's impossible for every scientist to review every single piece of it, and secondly because by its very nature experimental evidence is going to be seen differently by different scientists. The magic trick that the denialists have pulled off is to make people believe "no 100% consensus" = "scientists lying" = "scientists infighting" = "heroic underdog scientists trying to bring you 'the truth' being silenced" when it simply isn't so.
Based on current scientific understanding and research, AGW is a significant contributor to the overall models we have. Where it all falls down is when non-scientists start wading into the debate and throwing doubt into people's minds not about the science itself (although there have been some serious attempts) but on the integrity of the scientists themselves by manufacturing controversy that simply does not exist.
An appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authorities you are citing are in fact knowledgeable on the subject.
Once you start providing for yourself, you attitude tends to change quite drastically. Students, who receive federal grants are all for federal assistance programs. Once they are no longer students and find that 15% of their paychecks goes to fund federal assistance programs, that view tends to change rather quickly.
Yeah, if you're a sociopath asshole. I would hope these working folks understand that they are paying that 15% so that *others just like them* can go to school on federal grants/assistance programs. What kind of asshole benefits from a program and then slashes it right after he's done with it? Talk about not paying it forward...
It's not a matter of selfishness. It's a matter of ignorance. Many vegetarians didn't start out that way. They were served burger, they ate it and they enjoyed it. Then, when they found out what was sacrificed to make that burger, they found themselves sickened and vowed to never eat another living creature again.
In this case, they lived off the dole because they simply don't know any better. They liked it. They are given government money and they have no idea where it comes from. Given the chance to vote for more government money, they'll do it in a heartbeat. However, once they realize where that money comes from, they might change their minds.
Reality hits you hard, bro. This is why the OP I responded to was full of shit when he said "reality has a liberal bias." Liberalism is great until you become the one paying for it. When that reality hits, liberalism doesn't look so good any more. Someone has to be on the other side of that glory hole or it doesn't work. When you used it all week, it was nice. You didn't know how it worked, nor did you care. Then when you find out that it's your turn to be on the other side, suddenly it's not such a good idea. Had you known what was involved before you used it, you never would have. Now it's too late and it's your turn.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Eat my balls.
Nice historical revision - He wasn't boo'd off the stage, you hyperbolic ass. Several people got up and left, and one woman muttered 'We believe in God!' before she left also. The talk continued, and when it was finished, Bill was treated with an enthusiastic standing ovation.
It doesn't help your cause if, even though you are entirely right, you are also an arrogant asshole about it. I wouldn't want to be on the same side as a a bunch of smug, self-satisfied jerks.
The fact that you're calling people "warmists" is really not helping your case here. It's clear you have made up your mind that the science is simply wrong.
Grab any number of science journals going back over a decade and follow the papers that have been published. Those that have stood up to extensive peer review all have the same trend - an imperfect system that is obviously going to have a number of professionals phoning it in, but given the extensively large nature and vast number of papers and research involved it can't all be put down to a couple of guys "never requesting data for review".
If that's the best you can do, then it's hardly much to worry about, other than the clear point that peer review is misunderstood by the general public and that scientific research has an image problem and does not know how to deal with well-funded smear campaigns. Their opponents have had years of political campaign experience to hone their skills.
A scientist isn't a "warmist" - your label clearly demonstrates that you think they approached their research with a specific end goal in mind (sort of how climate change denial works - setting out with a specific agenda). Science doesn't work like that, and the fact that you think it does suggests you are attributing ulterior motives to scientists that you disagree with.
Theres so many conflicting evidence that shows global warming or climate change as they want to call it now since its more convenient to claim and climate that changes is due to co2. The elites want a carbon tax and have stated this many years ago. This is how they will get it by claiming its this really bad element. You know war on CO2. Turns out plants need CO2 and the more they have the better. I know all you guys know the life cycle right? Anyways you look at what these people are doing to push this onto everyone. CO2 is such a small part of the atmosphere. Something like .002% or even less as I dont remember off the top of my head. But it is very very small amount. Then you look at who funded the campaigns to push a carbon tax... Big oil, all of them where funding them. Then you look at the climate-Gate emails. The scientists many think were putting in great info for peer reviewing showed in the emails it was a giant scam between them. They talked in their emails on how to fudge the data, etc. I could go on and on but being busy working prevents me from going into great detail. The whole thing is a giant scam for the banks to get a global tax via carbon taxes.
Either we adopt or die.
I am far more likely to believe something in the NYT before I believe something on the Fox network. However, modern day media is based on sensationalism and so I tend to take it all (esp political) as an opinion piece based on a blog. This goes for The Daily Show, I love Jon Stewart however he is notorious for pulling content out of context to an almost abusive level. However he does have a pension for also stating the obvious in a way that makes you weep for the citizens of America and laugh at the same time.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
They're funded by rat-bastards like the Koch Brothers; these a-holes will be with us as long as their brethren cockroaches.
Not true. It is roomy. Compared to other cars in it's class. I've ridden in the back seat, and had plenty of room.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
[M]ost people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
This is evidenced by the vitrio directed at the sceptics. Where real science is concerned, on the other hand, for example if someone questions the existence of gravity, the common reaction is puzzlement: "are we talking about the same thing?" No one wants to burn down the questioner's house.
That's why I hire movers. Now I never have to help anyone move ever again.
"I'm moving this weekend..."
"Oh, last time I moved I hired [this company] and they were done in three hours. Great deal, they brought 3 guys instead of 2 which I thought was a rip because it was a higher hourly rate, but the third guy was lifting all the boxes while the other two moved furniture. I went to a concert and went home to my new house."
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
It's not a truck, it's a series of tubes
Given we don't have temperature measuring satellites and weather monitoring ground stations covering any of the planets execpt Earth, only an idiot would make claims without stating that they don't know for sure. Using that as a point of criticism is even more stupid.
Why not try actually arguing against the claims made by others rather than just pretending they said something you would rather argue against.
There is no claim of "no warming" on Jupiter in the statement you cite.
There is a claim that some evidence being presented as being for global warming of Jupiter isn't in fact anything of the sort and is only an indication of local warming. In other words is neither provides evidence for global warming, nor against global warming.
Again, there was no such claim. You are making stuff up again.
There's a claim that there's no evidence of global warming. But that there is evidence of local warming. Is that really so hard to grasp?
Yes you are. Everyone else who thought it was problematic spent 10 seconds looking it up or just made the reasonable deduction that methane is unlikely to exit into space since it has a C atom and is unlikely to be engaging in nuclear fusion or fission in the atmosphere. So chemistry is the likelt mechanism of removal. Given there's a lot of oxygen in the atmosphere we are left with a likely candidate (which is we did 10 seconds of research instead of just thinking about it we know for a fact rather than being likely):
CH4 + 2 O2 => CO2 + 2 H2O
So yes if something has higher greenhouse contribution than CO2 for 10 years and then turns into CO2 and stays that way for 90 years it will have an overall larger contrubution than CO2 would for 100 years.
If that's your idea BS, in fact a "gem" of BS, then you really don't understand anything about topic and should probably learn some basic science. Or if that's too much work maybe try trusting the scientists who bothered doing some work?
... told me that the "last bastion for Evolution" had crumbled. This was something like 20-30 years ago.
Yeah, right.
The Global Warming Hoax is DEAD. Science won. Get over it.
This irrational devotion to the Global Warmist religion / hoax is precisely the reason I seldom come here to /. any more.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
For example, should 'fix money' be spent on carbon reduction or flood defences ?
I'm surprised this comment hasn't been rated Insightful.
Perhaps the reason this hasn't been done is because there has not been adequate research on the actual impact that remediation efforts would have. My own guess is that the answer is 'little', and that that would be a Good Thing. Anything that we can do that would have a large impact on the climate also has the potential to make things worse -- and not only a little worse. In programmer parlance, we do not have the luxury of testing things first in a sandbox before deploying to production.
[M]ost people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
This is evidenced by the vitrio directed at the sceptics. Where real science is concerned, on the other hand, for example if someone questions the existence of gravity, the common reaction is puzzlement: "are we talking about the same thing?" No one wants to burn down the questioner's house.
Again, this is the exact same argument creationists use. They consider themselves the sceptics. And evolution too "only" has a scientific community who mostly agrees that the observable facts fit the theory as basis for accepting it. Like climate change.
Can't fix stupid or greed.
That's because you can not conceive of the vast amount of crap we put into the air.
we put over 26 Giggatons of CO2 in the air every year, and it's increasing.
Now 'nature' puts about 440 GT ever year but it also absorbs 440 GT every year.
we are spewing out matter above the normal absorption process.
380ppm, and rising. 80ppm Above the largest amount found in ice core samples going back many millions of years.
until 1954, C14 was traced, and it's PPM was lowering because of the amount of CO2 we were putting into the air 60+ years ago. This method was not usable after the first atomic explosion.
we do know the carbon 13 is lowering when compared to carbon 12.
If ANYTHING in my post was new to you, then anything you say is based on ignorance and manipulation. i.e. worthless. And I don't mean 'not much' I mean worth zero.
You can have you opinion, but you can not have you own facts. You opinion is based on nothing but in ignorant gut feeling.
I'm sure people also said:
"I just have a hard time believing that objects of different weight fall at the same speed." Regardless of your belief, every, single, piece of evidence points to the fact that humans are the cause of the increase.
I have to wonder, what more evidence do you need?
So what is it is a tax? how else are we going to fix it? I would love some to create giant CO2 traps and then not worry about it any more. But that's not really feasible.
I'm not sure what causes people like you to not accepting the facts. religion? stupidity? Ego?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, it's a bit more subtle than that - global warming alarmists simply *aren't doing science*.
Appeal to unnamed authorities. Cite *one specific* paper that has been published over the past decade that clearly states a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (or heck, even just anthropogenic global warming).
Actually, the way Phil Jones puts it, it seems that the *expectation* is not to ask for data and codes. That's the *standard* operating procedure.
Can you find a *single* instance where a peer reviewer, in any journal, on any AGW paper, requested the data and codes?
I'm am attributing ulterior motives to scientists who don't actually review data or code. I'm attributing ulterior motives to scientists who don't start off with falsifiable hypothesis statements. I'm attributing ulterior motives to scientists who think science is done by consensus, or a "preponderance of the evidence" rather than by falsification.
Essentially, I'm attributing ulterior motives to scientists who have discarded the scientific method :)
Two corrections:
"Some feeding" should be "Stop feeding".
"actually be helping" should be "actually helping".
False. Consensus is part of science. That's because Consensus is achieved through science, and consensus can change with the appropriated evidence.
As Tim Minchin so eloquently and accurately said:
"Science adjusts it's beliefs based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
You are the one using religion for your opinion.
Also, Look up Appeal to authority. hint: it doesn't apply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Forms:
The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:
The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.
A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion.
These conditions may also simply be incorporated into the structure of the argument itself, in which case the form may look like this:
X holds that A is true
X is a legitimate expert on the subject.
The consensus of experts agrees with X.
Therefore, there's a presumption that A is true.
I highly recommend reading 'Introduction to Critical Reasoning' and 'Introduction to Logic' before churning out logical fallacy accusation. You look like a fool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In science, proving climate change isn't human caused would get you more prestige and power.
Proving new understanding is prestige with science, maintaining the status quo is how priest gain power.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you can get it published.
But the Group Think Guardians won't let anything like that through.
"They acknowledge that the human release of greenhouse gases will cause the planet to warm. But they assert that clouds — which can either warm or cool the earth, depending on the type and location — will shift in such a way as to counter much of the expected temperature rise and preserve the equable climate on which civilization depends."
And that added cloud cover isn't going to cause problems of its own? Even if they are right (which I highly doubt) the added cloud cover is going to mean less sunshine for crops, probably increased insect populations, and increased tropical, thunder and standard storm activity. I imagine we'll be able to adjust, but it will not be easy.
the astroturfers are running amok @ /.
And let's give these astroturfers all the desert they need to live in and park all nuke waste in the center of that clusterfuck.
So glad to see that slashdot categories 'climate change denial" under "politics" and NOT SCIENCE....
Specially since "man made global warming" is a political idea from political extremists (European first than US seconds...) nombrilistic people!.
Real scientists still do not believe in it.
Wouldn't spending time / money / research into advanced forms of energy be useful?
Wouldn't finding ways to improve fuel efficiency be beneficial?
My point isn't that we need to do this because of environmental concerns. My point is that excluding extraneous noise, how we utilize energy impacts how we evolve technologically?
I'm not limiting fuel efficiency to vehicles, but also home heating, and everything else that uses a form of energy.
And if the end result would be beneficial to the environment, whoo-hoo, kill two birds with one stone.
I don't know... maybe I'm just crazy and naive.
I hope that was deliberate irony, because it's the funniest thing I've read all day.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
The science is settled as far as the question of whether the warming is man-made or not. Just like the Theory of Evolution is settled (it's real). There are lots of little details that aren't settled, but they don't affect the overall theory.
It is not the actual scientists that have involved politics in their research. There are no damning emails from East Anglia. No missing data. No fake graphs. Why are you spreading all these blatant lies?
Clever signature text goes here.
Lets cut to the cache.
Planets are not warming up in conjunction with the earth.
If the sun was cause the brief warming we saw on mars* it would be 4 times hotter on the earth do to a little thing calls inverse cube law.
And pointing out the some doesn't even understand the basic science of what they are talking about isn't poisoning the well, it's pointing out that his opinion is worthless.
Had he said "That guy drive was in jail" THAT would have been poisoning the well.
I wish people on slashdot would understand the logical fallacy they go on about. really people, wikipedia.
"So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.""
False, heating doesn't correspond to the solar activity, If it did it would return to the temperature is was when the sun did It does not. Obviously there should be about a month lag, cause that's how long it take an increased temperature at the sun to heat the earth. And for the earth to cool back down when the sun isn't as 'hot'.
"Dr. Abdussamatov goes further, debunking the very notion of a greenhouse effect."
I'm not sure how you xcan say that and still thing CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It makes no sense.
Yes it MIGHT be a local effect. Because we don't any data to ascribe to it the ides that it's anything more then local
All of which is besides the point, Even if the warming is global, it does not mean it's link to earth, and it it was the same cause as earths we would see rising and falling at the same time, but to a substantially different degree do to distance, orbit, and other science you probably don't understand. Not that you ever let your lack of understanding stop you from pretending like you know WTF you are talking about.
And you don't address his main point: They sue cherry picking data. If solar was causing the climate change on earth and mars, then it would be on every other body ion the solar system, and it isnt. Which proves his point: they use cherry picked data.
*weak evidence, btw
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are you shitting me? alternet? for fuck sakes, try to find and actual source instead of that crap.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Deniers will keep lying, and will never understand that there's a difference between climate and weather...
Actually, there's a false middle ground here. You think there must be a middle ground between science (AGW) and science denial (AGW denial). I say BS.
Clever signature text goes here.
Evidence for CAGW: http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/Suggestions_scr.jpg.
You pointed to a site run by notorious liar Piers Corbyn, who has one of the worst records there is when it comes to predicting the weather. He's an ignorant little cunt who's constantly spewing lies and propaganda.
Clever signature text goes here.
How is Al Gore relevant? He did not invent global warming, and he most certainly didn't publish any research on it.
Clever signature text goes here.
Who gives a crap about their views. It's the science that matters. And it just so happens that their published science does not match their personal views. In other words: They have failed to support their opinions with actual science.
Clever signature text goes here.
...is all you need to know. The rest of the story is boilerplate liberal baloney. Trying to cover for Algore's latest irrational tirade. The same Al Gore who has, forever, refused to debate anyone on the subject of man-made global warming (or "climate change" as they have to call it when people aren't bitching about hot summer days....). There are more scientists who DISAGREE with this whole theory, but they're the brave ones who forgo someone funding for next year's "research". Always follow the money.
Yes, but once we're done with the fossil carbon we've still got a long way to go before we get all that pesky carbonate out of the crust and back into the atmosphere where it belongs. Join the United Hadean-Earth Restoration Front today!
That it is impossible to fight fad and agenda, especially in the scientific community as it is anywhere else.
Anyone growing up in my generation remembers that we were taught as kids that the next ice age was almost upon us due to pollution. Now our kids are being taught that it's global warming. In another 20 years, it'll be another ice age, or something else and 'dissenters' will be equally scorned and shunned and ridiculed because the sky is falling, and who dares doubt?
This is yet another straw man issue, intended to give people who don't want to tackle the real issues something to act concerned about and never, ever have to lift a finger to do anything about or change their own lives in any way or suffer any inconvenience.
I heap my greatest scorn upon them all.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
If you approach it from the standpoint that there's possibly "some sort of global scarcity" tactic where every single scientist is somehow involved in a secret cabal, then I'm not sure any evidence one way or the other is going to swing it. I mean, in that situation any evidence that supports you is "proof of the conspiracy!!!" and any that doesn't is "part of the conspiracy of lies".
How about more along the lines of a "Good ol' Boy" network with lots of groupthink and tribalism.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The Bible doesn't say anything in regards to whether the solar system is heliocentric or geocentric; actually when you consider Special Relativity, the observable universe is geocentric anyways.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Dissenter are mostly people which do not want to accept AGW, and often are not scientific themselves, and when they do, are usually not in climatology science at all.
Usually it's a combination of the natural resistance to change (because change causes stress) and cognitive dissonance, although religion can be a cause and a symptom.
There was a paper recently published that established a correlation between the variety of ideas one is exposed to (particularly in childhood/youth) to the the level of stress felt as a result of change. The former provides a causal basis for past observations that people with more education (exposed to more ideas) tend to be more liberal/progressive (more willing to embrace change). Thus somebody exposed to fewer ideas in their formative years will be more resistant to new ideas, particularly when those ideas conflict with established beliefs. Most religions encourage or enforce rejection of new ideas that clash with accepted dogma (also known as heresy) and therefore a) reinforce this natural tendency and b) limit the ideas that people are exposed to. People living in urban settings will also be exposed to more people and ideas, and therefore tend to be more liberal than those in rural settings.
p>There was another paper that indicated Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief. People who go on to pursue advanced education are more likely to be trained in analytical thinking and therefore, unless they have a degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder, are less likely to adhere to religious dogma. (Combined with the other observation, this partly explains increasing Western secularization as a consequence of increased education due to industrialization and urbanization.)
When you take those factors and throw in a civilization that has an accelerating rate of technological change, you're going to have a rural/conservative population which is increasingly resistant to (ever increasing) change, and an urban/educated population which is increasingly exposed to new ideas and more receptive to them. You have two positive feedback loops which are increasingly polarizing the two segments of the population (and a sensationalizing media which is aggravating the problem).
I think the Internet has the possibility of being a game changer by providing access to more ideas to rural youths and breaking the cycle identified in the first paragraph. However it could also exacerbate the situation by creating a huge generational conflict in rural populations, which leads to more stress and more resistance to change in the older rural/religious population. I'm really hoping it works out to be breaking the conservative feedback loop, but accelerating change makes that feedback increasingly strong.
I think that if progressives were smart, we would recognize the different needs of the rural/religious conservatives (i.e. regarding guns, which are useful tools in rural areas) to lessen that positive feedback loop and allow the other to overtake it.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
but warm is good
If you want to think the sky is falling to play into some global scarcity tactic that's cool, but I'm going to keep driving my truck to work.
Okay, just please don't vote for coal or for keeping gas prices artificially low and you can drive whatever you want wherever you feel like as far as I'm concerned. About a third of our carbon comes from coal fired power plants, and that's idiotic. Gas subsidies for personal transport is also idiotic. We don't need to be forcing people to give up their beloved trucks, we just shouldn't be paying part of the bill.
The peer review process for Climate is broken. Views other than the prevailing views are censored and relegated to blogs
What is your evidence for this claim?
Creationists play the same martyr card all the time, but when you look into it it always turns out to be bullshit. Either they don't submit, or they submit to a journal where it's off topic, or they submit a handwavy argument that would only annoy a reviewer for wasting his/her time.
If you want to pass peer review, you've got to use facts supported by rational arguments. "Does not!" isn't going to get you published in any field.
a situation not unlike Soviet Union Science which as a matter of doctrine denied plate tectonics.
Actually it was a topic in biology. Just about everyone rejected plate tectonics until the undersea spread-zones were discovered.
Yeah...last bastion my ass. People aren't stupid and the people are recognizing that this whole thing is nothing but a power grab.
That's funny coming from someone who rants in support of a corporate-sponsored viewpoint.
If you approach it from the standpoint that there's possibly "some sort of global scarcity" tactic where every single scientist is somehow involved in a secret cabal, then I'm not sure any evidence one way or the other is going to swing it. I mean, in that situation any evidence that supports you is "proof of the conspiracy!!!" and any that doesn't is "part of the conspiracy of lies".
How about more along the lines of a "Good ol' Boy" network with lots of groupthink and tribalism.
If you think that describes the scientific community as a whole (as in, across the globe and involving every institution that does any research related to climate change) then you've clearly never met any scientists!
"The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community." This is my problem with climate change. While I believe that the Earth is warming. I believe it is prudent to work toward limiting our impact in the event we are causing drastic change. But most people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
There's a big difference between "listen to the experts" and "appeal to authority".
When your car breaks down and you take it to a mechanic instead of a gardner, is that a fallacious appeal to authority?
1) Tax stuff.
2) Screech like banshies at anyone that doesn't join the herd.
Come to think of it, I think that means that the most effective thing we can do to fight Islamofascism (and other forms of extreme religious conservatism) is to make smartphones (because they are small and easy to hide) cheap as hell, distribute them with solar chargers to kids in school, fund wireless data connectivity to rural areas, and then make the phones' home page a site that teaches analytical thinking and have an easy way to search/browse wikipedia. OLPC would have a similar though lesser effect. However the downside is that they would no longer be as ignorant of or content with how they are exploited by the Western top 1%, which is why this won't happen easily (it's much harder for the 99% to scrape up the disposable income to fund it). You wouldn't get as many Islamoterrorists, but you would get lots of hopefully bloodless (yeah right!) political revolutions and an upset of the current economic order. I think the Arab Spring is an early example of that principle in action.
This also probably means that China's attempts to control access to the Internet is also doomed to failure. Because Communism is just a (very different) form of conservative orthodoxy, and to run a competitive urban industrialized modern nation you need an educated urban populace, which is the necessary ingredient for a more secular and liberal/progressive outlook. Firewalling the internet may decrease the ease of access to those ideas, but it doesn't affect the increasing susceptibility to those ideas. When they finally catch, it will be like a spark in a tinder dry forest.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I suggest you review your logic, appeal to authority is not fallacious when the authority is a legitimate expert on the subject and a consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion. Thus the "overwhelming consensus of the scientific community" is a valid argument and not a logical fallacy, although it's probably a stronger argument if the overwhelming consensus of climatologists is used instead. That eliminates many scientists, who are not at all experts on climate change, from the expert group.
Why do you think the Heartland Institute (among others) spends so much time trying to convince people the link between smoking and cancer and the link between CO2 and climate change are "controversial". It's because they're attempting to defeat legitimate appeals to authority by creating doubt that the consensus exists. Most media outlets tend to aid and abet this behaviour because controversies generate more ad impressions than consensus.
Lastly, there are many things which are neither science nor religion. Your are use a false dilemma to cast aspersions on people you don't agree with and thus you are actually basing your beliefs on a logical fallacy, as opposed to your falsified accusation.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Generally speaking, it should be spent on carbon reduction. It's much cheaper in the long run to reduce carbon emissions than it is to fight the effects of climate change. This should be no surprise, it's almost always more effective to fight the root cause than it is to fight the symptoms. In this case, economists who have studied climate change usually say the U.S. (by itself) could save trillions of dollars by reducing carbon emissions. The estimate is that it will cost about 1% of GDP to effectively eliminate climate change permanently, or roughly about what the world spends on sewers.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You may be Athiest, but you say you won't change your beliefs even when they are contradicted by data...
Sounds like a faith-based belief system to me.
You chalk it up to hubris. Tell me, have you ever spent a lot of time in a chemistry lab? Have you ever witnessed the exhaustion of a buffer system (this is basic high school chem I'm talking about)? Surely you must be aware that even a tiny change in some reactant in an equilibrium can have a major impact on the status of a system.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Just another BS trollpost. Heat capacity has EVERYTHING to do with global warming! The atmosphere is a blanket, and blankets are blankets because of their heat capacity. This is the most fundamental kindergarden level of global warming theory, and the fact that you fail to understand even that shows that you are totally ignorant on the subject, and instead are operating solely as an uninformed, ignorant zealot with exactly zero critical thinking skills.
Nice handwaving dismissal. Why don't you tell me what absorption and re-emission of photons in Raman spectra mean if not absorption and re emission of photons, and maybe post a spectrum showing that nitrogen doesn't do that somehow, and perhaps you can wave your magic wand while you are at it and tell us why physics is wrong and you are right.
The fact is that it IS a WEAK greenhouse gas. If a planet had a nitrogen atmosphere, it would be blazing hot during the day, and freezing cold at night, but significantly less so than a planet with no atmosphere. The gas particles have a temperature and a heat capacity. Yes they are LOW, but they are non-zero. http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/spesific-heat-capacity-gases-d_159.html
Your post is the equivalent of saying that cyanide is not deadly because it only kills cells, ignoring that the organism is made up of cells. Or like saying that cirrhosis of the liver isn't caused by alcoholism because alcohol clears the system in a few hours (ignoring the fact that the patient is a roaring drunk who drinks in ever increasing amounts).
I see you have taken the false dichotomy hook, line, and sinker. Does it bother you that you are ridiculing a guy who is is called an AGW troll by the deniers you claim to hate so much? Really, your anti-rational (read: anti-science) attitude fits right in with theirs.
But hey, fight on, Christian soldier.
Solar activity from decade to decade does not change enough to cause a significant change in surface temperature. If Mars's icecaps are melting (which I presume you're referring to when you say "other planets"), it is likely for a reason unrelated to solar activity, which would be the only common cause of warming between earth and mars.
Of course, just because other planets may be warming doesn't automagically discount that our warming could be strongly influenced by us digging pretty huge amounts of carbon out of the ground and putting in our air.
But if it makes you feel better, keep driving your truck to work. Canadians will appreciate your contribution to lengthening their growing season (or not). Also remember that the price of petrol is only going to up with time.
Put another way, the No True Scotsman fallacy is something that occurs when you fail to define your terms beforehand. When you're arguing over whether something or someone is a member of a group, it's important to establish in advance exactly what it means to be a member of that group.
In your first example, the participants clearly have different ideas about what it means to be a Scotsman (characteristics like "enjoys haggis" vs., e.g., ancestry). Both definitions are reasonable, and can be constructed without circular reasoning. In the second case, granting equal weight to both definitions would render the term "vegetarian" meaningless, since one is essentially circular: "someone who self-identifies as vegetarian".
A term like "liberal" is closer to the former case; there are lots of reasonable definitions, spanning literal, historical, and modern interpretations, which themselves vary from place to place, and applied to social or fiscal policies. It's difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to be "liberal" in every sense of the term; on the other hand, most people are liberal in some areas.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
What media organizations do you think are creditable? Or do you think they're all garbage?
In that particular case, I don't need a news organization to tell me that medical care in the US is seriously twisted and perverted towards profit. I've seen it, many times. The fee for service system the US uses encourages medical providers to provide more service, whether or not it's needed, and worse, to cause more services to be needed. But I'll give you another source: Reader's Digest, February 1997. They tested a random sample of 50 dentists, and the results weren't good. The article itself seems to have been pulled, but there are still plenty of articles about that article. Here's one.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I have A Plan.
Let's gather observational data, come up with hypotheses that fit that data, test them, revise them, falsify and discard the ones that don't fit new observations, and get ever closer to a consistent theory, which we can then use for making rational decisions.
Oh, wait, we're talking about humans.
Never mind.
WALSTIB!
Put another way, the No True Scotsman fallacy is something that occurs when you fail to define your terms beforehand. When you're arguing over whether something or someone is a member of a group, it's important to establish in advance exactly what it means to be a member of that group.
In your first example, the participants clearly have different ideas about what it means to be a Scotsman (characteristics like "enjoys haggis" vs., e.g., ancestry). Both definitions are reasonable, and can be constructed without circular reasoning. In the second case, granting equal weight to both definitions would render the term "vegetarian" meaningless, since one is essentially circular: "someone who self-identifies as vegetarian".
A term like "liberal" is closer to the former case; there are lots of reasonable definitions, spanning literal, historical, and modern interpretations, which themselves vary from place to place, and applied to social or fiscal policies. It's difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to be "liberal" in every sense of the term; on the other hand, most people are liberal in some areas.
Very true. Everyone sees themselves as the middle. Those that agree with them are also middle of the road. Anyone to the left of them is a liberal. Anyone to the right of them is a conservative. It's all relative.
But, the point I was referring to is this one by a post somewhere above:
2) On average liberals are more intelligent than right-wingers.
Since he never defined what he meant by "liberals", I can only go off the standard definition of someone who likes a strong central government that uses its power to enforce equality by redistributing wealth. I don't think me meant any other definition like "someone open to new ideas" or "someone who values personal freedom over all else".
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Hang on, is there anyone saying climate change isn't happening?
Dissenters are saying:
1) Human impact is against a background of change we can't control
2) Besides, we can't coordinate a decent response so we should adapt
A smokescreen distraction? That's how I felt when I got marked down for covering sunspots after my Uni lecturer showed us the IPCC graph zoomed in. And I know where I'm buying land, c'mon 30m b'bye pacific islanders, hello dutch refugees
A blog I run for the wealth
Basic high school chemistry is just that - basic.
You are comparing relatively small systems to something so vastly different in size, that you NEED to think in ways other than linear.
Of course it is belief. Everything is belief when it comes to science. You believe one thing, I believe another. So if that is faith, then you are practicing just as much, if not more than, I am. The data can only contradict me because a lot of it is ignored, discarded completely, or just covered up and never shared with sources outside of the climate science establishment.
Again, you believe what you will. I will believe what I will. As far as I am concerned, we aren't changing anything. Given that most major industrialized countries (excluding China and some others) have cut WAY back on what pollutants were being output even 20 years ago, that hasn't stopped warming a single bit.
Anyway, thanks for the debate. Thanks for keeping it civil, Red Flayer. I respect and appreciate that. Now I am going to go and enjoy my exceedingly cool (FAR cooler than normal) spring here in New England.
Who said anything about linear?
No. You openly state that you will disregard any data that conflicts with your beliefs. That alone denotes the size of the gap between my beliefs and your faith.
That is a false "fact". Output of greenhouse gases has increased in almost every country in the world over the past 20 years, even with the reduction in emissions due to the current economic situation.
Enjoy your cool spring weather... but please remember your extremely warm winter (not that either of them are more than statistical noise wrt Anthropogenic Climate Change at this point).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
In science, proving climate change isn't human caused would get you more prestige and power.
Not really - in fact, not at all. Unless you can motivate a government or other authority, you gain no power over them.
If you conclusively disproved AGW beyond all doubt (or even just convinced powers and population beyond their ability to effectively doubt), you get nothing of note. They may talk you up a bit, maybe give you a pat on the back, but then you'd get quickly ignored as powers and population both turn their gaze to the next topic that has lots of "ooh, shiny!" in it.
On the other hand, conclusively proving AGW beyond all doubt (or even just convincing the powers that be and the population at large beyond their ability to successfully refute it)? That's where the power really is. Why? Because the specter of doom is raised, and isn't going to go away - you now have everyone's attention. All they know is that now the world is going to fry due to human activity, and the first question out of their mouths will be "what do we do about it!?" They will be looking to you for answers. They will give you everything you want or need to help end the threat that you've made them aware of. You will likely be hailed far and wide as a prophet and a (potential) savior, if you can come up with something to 'save' them. You become the de facto arbiter of whether or not a given mitigation program will work or not. In other words, for as long as the threat is present and people are scared, you hold the cards.
Proving new understanding is prestige with science, maintaining the status quo is how priest gain power.
Umm, we're not talking about your peers giving you props here (and a goodly number of them would likely hate your guts for blasting their work should you successfully disprove AGW). We're talking about actual power. The kind of power that lets you make people do what you want them to. Forget sex, money, or fine food. It's power, that is control over other human beings -- to be a deity among men, and to have a name that lasts -- that is the last, greatest, and strongest of all temptations.
Also, for a cult figure to gain power, status quo isn't going to cut it in an age where people are always looking for the next shiny thing. You have to get them scared or angry, and keep them whipped up on a continuing basis.
Consider it this way. You have two means to motivate and control people. Do you:
a) "Bah! All the scare-mongering is wrong. Here's why. You can go about your daily routines again without fear."
--or--
b) "Holy shit! we're all going to die if we don't stop doing what you're doing! Here's why! Listen to me before it is too late!"
I think "b" is going to get a lot more attention (thus power) than "a", no?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
...of climate change deniers will never crumble because it is the bastion of infantile fantasy, bred by greed, and paid for with the blood money of the oil industry that wants to maintain the status quo of their product being used, even if it means the end of the human species as we know it.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Do you distinguish this from any of the creationist web sites out there? what with Poe's law and everything.
a few generations past, you would have said the same thing about freeing the slaves.
The IPCC is a panel of experts on climate change. There's a couple thousand scientists contributing to IPCC reports, and only a handful of them have been found to make a mistake. The "climategate" guys were freed from all charges, investigations found they did nothing wrong. IPCC still is the most credible - nay, near the only credible - reviewer of climate science.
It there's more than "one way to do it" in Perl, maybe you should consider that there may be more than one way to effect global climate changes in the Earth. Just because past climate changes have been due to external forcing factors acting on a system in equilibrium, resulting in a new equilibrium point, doesn't negate the possibility that significant new internal changes in that system could also change the equilibrium point. Now we have 7 billion people, with a substantial portion using heavy machinery for force multiplication. We (humanity) take apart mountains in years when it takes erosion centuries or millenia to do the same. As "intelligent" actors (organized by our brains and instincts) we are like millions of Maxwell's demons thrown into a thermodynamic equilibrium.
I have no illusions about my ability to, by myself, effect massive worldwide change or turn back the tide of billions of people. By myself, the best I can hope for is to find some insight into what great currents move the masses of people and try to not get swamped by the waves. A faint hope is that I may be able to catch a glimpse of how that wave might be usefully redirected and can try to use memetic engineering to convince people to join me in that effort, but my voice is minuscule compared to that of the dominant media and economic actors.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Well, the effect of humans depends on what humans do. What many people don't seem to realize is that different IPCC scenarios postulate different anthropogenic CO2 output. If the rate of pollution is soon stabilized and then slowly decreased, we're looking at something like 2 C in the next 100 years. If greenhouse gas emission rate increases exponentially (as this far), we're looking at something like 4 C. The arctic will probably warm double as much.
and then you say
Explain to me how that does not say: I will not change my beliefs no matter how much conflicting evidence I am confronted with. And then explain to me how that is different from a religion.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I dont know about the Daily Mail comment, but your probably right about the 8mpg. Economics will force a swap sooner or later.
They don't actually cite any authorities, but make the nebulous statement "the scientific community", which is what makes it a fallacy. It is sometimes also called Appeal to Anonymous Authority. Furthermore, if they are just repeating what someone told them, then it could also be Appeal to Rumor. The important take away is that their argument was not based upon evidence or logic.
I believe science should be objective. It should hold out the possibility of being wrong. Given how little we know, how little data we have collected in terms of the length of climate events, and the fact that most of our predictions are based on computer models which pose many of their own problems (lack of enough computing power, design of programs can influence the results, floating point calculations can be tricky, particularly in feedback systems, etc). I am dumbfounded by the level of certainty being displayed both by some scientists and many posters here.
On a gut level, I actually agree with their conclusions, but I find the hubris disturbing.
Belief is belief. Call it religion, call it what you want to consider as fact. With your logic, science itself is a religion. So there is your answer.
Wow I can't believe my parent comment got downmodded as Troll. Offtopic I could see. But troll?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I beg to differ. One of the fundamentals of the scientific method is that any theory needs to be revised or replaced whenever it is shown to not explain a body of repeatable results/observations. If you don't understand that then you are misunderstanding the fundamental basis of science and all we have achieved with it.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Yes. The ONLY WAY something can be logically true is if you experienced or did the experiments yourself. For instance, I have never been to Russia therefore I have no reason to believe it exists, and talking to people who have been there is a logical fallacy, because that is appealing to an authority.
There is no Russia.
BTW, all I claimed was that "fear" due to excessive stress from change was likely one of the two contributing causes of AGW/CC denial, and that it could be due to the causal chain mentioned in the second paragraph. However you shouldn't take this as an accusation that you are poorly educated or limited in knowledge. Other cultural factors could contribute to a fear of change stress. For instance divorce and single-parent families have increased significantly since the 60s. With single parent families generally less well off financially, and working single parents having less time to devote individual attention to their children than married couples, that could force additional changes and stresses during critical formative years, leading to a similar outcome (increased stress during change). Perhaps there is yet another completely different scenario during your childhood/adolescence that would make you much more susceptible as an adult to stress from change than someone who hasn't been through that scenario?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
There are plenty of examples in science that may not have 100% acceptance but which still have a common consensus. Even science that provokes rabid denials from a small group like: evolution, the moon landings or the 9/11 attacks have a common consensus. With everything I've mentioned so far, you'd be hard pressed to find many well respected scientists who vary from the consensus. There is a difference between these types of consensus and AGW.
I think the comparison most enlightening is the theory of dark matter. Most experts in the field agree with the dark matter theory, but there are a significant number of well respected scientists in the field who don't agree with the theory and support alternative theories. This is pretty much exactly the case that I found when I researched the science behind AGW. There are solid theories and data to support the idea, but there are solid arguments made by respected science against it.
The huge difference between dark matter theories and AGW is the kind of discussion that happens if you happen to disagree with one of them. Personally, I previously preferred quantum gravity theory. I could say so and people might disagree with me or point out the flaws in the theory or point out the evidence for dark matter, but nobody called me a denialist. Nobody suggested that doubting the preferred theory was unreasonable. People were interested and even passionate about it, but they argued the facts rather than suggesting that scientists were being dishonest or that it was some massive conspiracy. Nobody said "You've bought into the propaganda machine hook, line and sinker." When new evidence (the Bullet Cluster) was presented, I changed my mind. I still like the elegance of TeVeS, but I'm now more inclined to believe the dark matter and energy theories. Waiting for new evidence wasn't irrational but heaven forbid you take that stance on AGW because you get hit by both sides as if you were an enemy.
AGW is a reasonable theory with substantial data to support it. It is supported by credible scientists. To say that all the data supports it or that any expert in the field who disagrees with it is disingenuous or uneducated is unfair, inaccurate and bluntly unreasonable. The fact is that both proponents and opponents of the theory tend toward emotional rather than logical discourse. That is why I find the issue so frustrating. It IS different because people attach almost a religious significance to it, unlike pretty much any other young scientific theory. (I know you're thinking 'evolution!' but evolution isn't what I'd call a new theory regardless of how much religious significance people attach to it.)
Politicians don't own the economy, it's not theirs.
Also technology tends to advance and prices tend to go down. What costs 50 trillion today may cost only 1 billion tomorrow. It's better to wait.
A man with no scientific credentials expressed outrage today that not everyone agrees with his emotional hypothesis that the world is getting hotter because people don't agree with him.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
I haven't seen any of them carrying a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood.
Not sure if you recall, but someone caught the tobacco companies supporting AGW research. The reason was profound. They figured that scientists had convinced the public that smoking causes cancer. To defeat the scientists, they would support "the other side" and bring about this whole public debate over global warming. This was intended to have the scientists discredit themselves in the public opinion. Really a neat tactic. Dirty, but interesting. Anyway, we should expect some similarity between AGW and tobacco firms, since there is/was overlap.
The key here is that a scientist is not an "A" authority, as in someone with magically invoked leadership or infallibility for social, religious or political reasons. A scientist is an "a" authority as in, has studied the topic to the point of being one of the world's leading experts in the field. In this sense it make perfect sense to give this person's (the "a" authority) opinion greater weight than let's say Billy-Bob down at the Pump-N-Dump. If you want a beer that doesn't make you pee smell funny, Billy-Bob is your man, climate change, I go to a different expert.
The problem with all of this is a disruption from sanity that began in the late 70s. During the late 70s the President of that day said we'd have to get more conscious about how we used energy and how our use impacted the world. To that end he changed the speed limit to 55, added solar power to the White House and began a program to make the United States the world largest and most affluent provider of solar power. He was confronting American peak oil and wanted to wean the U.S. off of cheap middle-eastern oil. Most importantly, he was deeply concerned, as were we all with ensuring the world we gave to our children was as fit to live in as the one our parents gave to us.
That man was defeated by a very clever and expensive Wallstreet campaign to discredit environmental accountability. It was portrayed as weak, as unpatriotic, as anti-business, as simply Unamerican. In fact since then, huge inflows of finance from vested fossil fuel interests have ensured that the public is buried in false controversy and disinformation all designed to perpetuate their control of the nation's energy policy and their exploding bank accounts.
When we say there is scientific consensus on the topic of global climate change, we aren't speaking of one person, or group, or even discipline. We are speaking of tens of thousands of scientists working in hundreds of different disciplines from ocean chemistry to meteorology to high altitude atmospheric biodynamics. When so many people from so many different disciplines create a picture that is consistent from so many different perspectives it makes it bloody hard to ignore without simply stating the obvious "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up."
People believe what they want. Personally, I used to believe we were on the precipice of environmental disaster, but recent evidence suggests perhaps we have more time than originally suspected. My beliefs/concerns/opinions change according to the FACTS as they arrive. That is the mark of a healthy mind, not being governed by a fixed ideology or belief system. The global system is tremendously complex and its still beyond us to make a perfect model of it. That doesn't mean that it will forgive our abuse indefinitely. It means we have time perhaps to make wise choices and meaningful changes that enhance human life and help those in poorer places share some of the benefits of expanding technology. To ignore the obvious is to temp fate and bring needless suffering. Just as some religions need to responsibly address their positions on issues like contraception, Americans have to confront their core beliefs. We are no longer cowboys, and shooting from the hip just leaves a lot of collateral damage. As much as we all want to be Duke Wayne, perhaps its time for us to all be a little more Jimmy Stewart.
So what exactly are you saying has been "proven true"? If warming has been happening steadily since the tail end of the industrial revolution, when developed countries were burning coal as fast as they could hoick it out of the ground, that sounds like support for the AGW hypothesis. Also, this fact alone fails to account for cyclic effects.
Again, what's false? That "scientists are exaggerating, it's not significant"? Undoubtedly some people have exaggerated, but "scientists"? As a group? (Note that the alarmist blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow was produced by 20th Century Fox - yes, that's the same as in "Fox News".)
So what? Changes happened in the past in geological timescales. Now they're happening on - well, historical timescales. Doesn't that seem like a significant difference?
Oh for pete's sake... Look at the condition you're adding to make it sound as if there is a point of view from which global warming isn't necessarily bad news. "If you only care about the effects on agriculture...". Yeah, hundreds of millions of refugees is no problem so long as there's plenty of grain. Right.
You seem to have got tangled in your own "logic" here. "It is economically possible, but it might not be economical". How do you mean that to be parsed?
Why is "much more research" needed before doing anything? What evidence would convince you that action is justified?
Friend I have to say you are clearly no expert on this topic. First of all, it would be the easiest thing in the world to cite sources until your eyes bleed, all you have to do is the simplest of Google searches to find endless research papers written on thousands of different topics all relating to changing global climate and biochemistry. Here, just try this search: "impact of increased greenhouse gases on environment". Just remember to "hide personal results", or you'll just keep getting the same stupid stuff as usual (I in fact stopped using mine because I'm interested in both or more sides of any conversation.)
As for how little we know... that's just a plain and simple falsification. We have ocean cores, we have ice cores, we have thermal analysis of rock stratum, we have samples of air, and pollen, and biota going back hundreds of millions of years from a vast assortment of fossils (we've even recently reconstituted organic dinosaur tissues from mineral fossils, recovering both DNA and cellular matrix.) We know more about earth's climate than you can possible imagine. We know about its chemistry, the impact of ice ages and past CO2 events, and mass extinctions, plant species and the complex interaction between atmospheric chemistry, plants and the animals that ate them. The tremendous bulk of our evidence (those ice and ocean floor cores), provides us with information about the atmosphere, ocean, and climates over the last 5 million years. Over the past 300 years we have accurate weather records. Over the past 50 years we have satellites and intensive global research on climate and atmospheric chemistry. Over the last 200 years we have good solar records. The fact is, we have literally mountains of data and the models though not complete are good (notice I didn't say they were great.) Recent study suggests there are feed-backs we have not accounted for. The recent rise in greenhouse gas should have precipitated more warming than we're actually seeing. This is probably good. The system is more dynamic and able to rebound than we suspected. That doesn't mean the basic premises are wrong or that we should just carry on burning down the planet. The point I'm trying to make is that science isn't exact... it's a quantum thing... but you simply can't escape the basic physics of this. Thermodynamics ultimately doesn't care what your core beliefs are.
Wow... that was really interesting. A clear and almost perfect expression of the behavior described in the prior post. Literally, stop telling me facts and information, I'll believe what I want and you can't change my mind. Hey, whether you believe in a God or not my friend, you are clearly in the grip of magical thinking.
Bravo!!! Paint cities white! Add iron sulfate to the ocean and cause algal blooms during large fish population influx. Pump up the ecosphere, stop burning down rain forest and build true rain forest economies (have the first world invest in large parcels of rain forest for the genetic value and the possible products that could be discovered.) Build huge solar arrays on blimps that float over the ocean, sucking up light and creating power, while cutting down on the heat that enters the ocean thermodynamic system. There are new biotechnologies capable of turning CO2 into fuels, petrochemicals, and pure carbon for new material technologies. The time is now to slap some serious creative thinking on the problem and we need to look forward not back. Fossil fuel is dead long live the future!!!
I'm sorry friend... if you're taking about anthropologists going out for a drink after a particularly brisk lecture, by all means tribalism. The folks working out on the ocean collecting cores will never meet or hear from the poor bugger on a mountain top taking ice samples and neither of them will ever talk to or hear from the lady in the Amazon studying the effects of climate change on the carbon sequestering ability of tropical forests. These are vast different fields from individuals that work on different aspects of the planet all coming to the same conclusions because the earth is an interrelated phenomenon and once you see something happen in your little corner it points to the dynamics of the larger system. Today scientist from hundreds of different fields have collected evidence from thousands of completely different avenues of study, each a single piece in a growing mosaic. When we speak of Global Climate change we look at the whole mosaic. However, the people involved in collecting that information, each work in a narrow field so you can't honestly think they function in any semblance of unity, that would be like saying your Postman and Doctor are conspiring to deceive you about the price of Tuna... we call that behavior Psychosis.
There seems to be a pretty strong theme of "the climate is changing because of humans" in the posts. Ok, let's look at that.
Remember the 60'/70's when the hoopla over pollution switched in to overdrive? Remember Silent Spring? Few in this forum likely do. Just saying that the whole "climate change" rant is the latest "Look what humankind is doing to the planet!!" rant. We've been there and done that. But, back then, and now, the fact remains that the person most responsible for is ... you.
Back then, people were dumping toxins in rivers and their trash on the street. And now? Same thing. Worried about CO2? What is your footprint AND please include your remote footprint ie. the industries _you_ cause to be through your consumption. We consume more than we ever have and in a more wasteful fashion than ever before ... check the contents and amount of your trash, or how much paper your workplace tosses out every month. In this neck of the woods, not a house goes up that doesn't have air conditioning, 1-in-three has a pool running its pumps 24/7 all summer, all home climate controls run 24/7 even with nobody home, and an SUV decorates the driveway of every fifth house ('cause some people have trucks). And most relevant to this forum: how many additional electronic gadgets do you have in your home sipping electricity 24/7 compared to, say, your grandparents when they were your age? Yeah, small amounts individually but total them up and multiply by all your neighbours, etc.
So, the question is not if or why the climate is changing. The question is: who gives a s**t? The answer, if drawn from the observed _actions_ (not rants), of the average person is ... nobody.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
The floods are coming. The floods are coming. Slashdot is a climate alarmist. Pitiful.
The fact is there is still no proof of anything other than standard temperature variance, well within normal parameters. It is the media and government funding distorting the standard scientific method - nothing more. Most of the people here are too young to remember all of the news about the impending Ice Age back in the 70's due to Global Cooling, then it was Global Warming, and now it's Climate Change. Well.... D'uh... The climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so. Humans are a tiny perturbation at best...
When one "believes" something, no amount of data will convince him.
Problem is that a lot of the people who push this agenda aren't experts at all. I'm not talking about the scientists, that's fine. I'm talking about politicians, the MET office, i've even seen artists get TV time on the subject. Everyone has some alternative agenda for pushing this theory which is why a lot of people don't trust anything about the subject anymore.
You are right that saying "the scientific community" is a little nebulous but if you drill down to actual climate researchers which is the scientific community in question here and what I was referring to well over 90% of them are in agreement with the basics of anthropogenic global warming. These people are not saying there is no room for argument but you're going to have to give them a good scientific argument that holds water before they're going to listen to you. I have no doubt if someone came up with a revolutionary new argument that explained current conditions better than the current theory they would be all over it. The problem is the arguments that the "anti" side keeps bringing up have all been debunked numerous times and it's a waste of their time to keep trying to answer the same questions over and over. Regarding the specific subject of this /. post, Richard Lindzen and his cloud hypothesis, when he has shown up in the scientific discussions I follow he gets a serious response from the other climate scientists in the discussion because he has some credibility in the field.
Computer models are not fundamental to climate science but merely tools to bring together what we know about climate into a coherent whole that helps our understanding. They are only as good as the scenarios they use are realistic. The basics of AGW are 1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That is easily measured in the laboratory. 2. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing. Again, easily measured. 3. Human burning of fossil fuels are the cause of the majority of the increase in atmospheric CO2. The explanation for that is a bit more complex but the conclusion is not in doubt. So given 1 & 2 it would be surprising if the globe wasn't warming and given 3 humans are the cause of most of it.
If you want to know more about the General Circulation Models (aka Global Climate Models) here are a couple of FAQ's from some of the scientists who actually write them:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/
That silly argument just marks you as someone so uninformed that we can safely ignore the rest of what you say.
Yeah. It's not solar influx.
It's (climate change) due to the fact that the density of the interstellar medium is much greater than in the past, resulting in a compressed heliosphere, creating a greenhouse effect within the heliosphere.
The interstellar medium is going to become denser for a while, which will result in an even greater compression within the heliosphere, and even greater planetary warming.
Of course you have your bandwagon "CO2 is the cause / heliosphere compression deniers". Yes, CO2 can cause greenhouse effects, but NO it does not cause them at nearly the rate that the compression of the heliosphere does.
And guess what? We don't have accurate measurements of heliosphere compression to compare with- we can test CO2, so let's blame the effect of climate change (CO2-in the past, we definitely have something to do with the current spike) not the cause (heliosphere compression, which we don't have accurate records of).
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
Just another BS trollpost. Heat capacity has EVERYTHING to do with global warming! The atmosphere is a blanket, and blankets are blankets because of their heat capacity. This is the most fundamental kindergarden level of global warming theory, and the fact that you fail to understand even that shows that you are totally ignorant on the subject, and instead are operating solely as an uninformed, ignorant zealot with exactly zero critical thinking skills.
I was going to respond in kind to the accusations of trolling, but it appears you genuinely are that ignorant. You're just repeating your ignorant claims and dismissing criticism as trolling with your veil of ignorance. Blankets are not blankets because of their heat capacity. Kindergarten analogies are not always relevant or accurate. The heat capacity of the atmosphere indeed does have an effect on climate. But since human emissions don't appreciably change the heat capacity of the atmosphere, it is irrelevant to the current debate on global warming and it certainly doesn't make nitrogen or oxygen greenhouse gases.
Nice handwaving dismissal. Why don't you tell me what absorption and re-emission of photons in Raman spectra mean if not absorption and re emission of photons, and maybe post a spectrum showing that nitrogen doesn't do that somehow, and perhaps you can wave your magic wand while you are at it and tell us why physics is wrong and you are right.
You do realise that since Raman scattering has a fourth-power frequency dependence, it's effectively non-existent at mid-infrared wavelengths? There's marginal collision-induced absorption, but it's extremely weak despite nitrogen/oxygen/argon being much more abundant than CO2, and irrelevant because the atmospheric composition of those gases is not changing (except for a very small drop in oxygen from combustion of fossil fuels).
The fact is that it IS a WEAK greenhouse gas. If a planet had a nitrogen atmosphere, it would be blazing hot during the day, and freezing cold at night, but significantly less so than a planet with no atmosphere. The gas particles have a temperature and a heat capacity. Yes they are LOW, but they are non-zero. http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/spesific-heat-capacity-gases-d_159.html
You really think you're going to get somewhere continually asserting that nitrogen is a greenhouse gas because it has a heat capacity? That is just not what greenhouse gases are, and if you think otherwise, you miss the point entirely.
I'm not entirely sure here if your lack of understanding is of Science, Religion or English or whether you've picked a convenient group of strawmen to use as your example. The above argument appears to read "some people are gullible so everything they believe must be wrong". It also appears you need a Jesuit (or possible just an awake adult) to explain to you the differences between Science and Religion and how neither can ever be the other.
So yes, I'm going to "appeal to authority" now - go look up the fucking dictionary kid instead of filling this space with luddite noise.
Actually, it's a bit more subtle than that - global warming alarmists simply *aren't doing science*.
If you're not even willing to accept that, what is the point of arguing with you? Here on planet earth there is a lot of solid science that indicates there is global warming. Just see the UN reports for a start. On your planet there might not be, but that is of no concern to us here on earth.
They don't actually cite any authorities, but make the nebulous statement "the scientific community", which is what makes it a fallacy. It is sometimes also called Appeal to Anonymous Authority. Furthermore, if they are just repeating what someone told them, then it could also be Appeal to Rumor. The important take away is that their argument was not based upon evidence or logic.
I believe science should be objective. It should hold out the possibility of being wrong. Given how little we know, how little data we have collected in terms of the length of climate events, and the fact that most of our predictions are based on computer models which pose many of their own problems (lack of enough computing power, design of programs can influence the results, floating point calculations can be tricky, particularly in feedback systems, etc). I am dumbfounded by the level of certainty being displayed both by some scientists and many posters here.
On a gut level, I actually agree with their conclusions, but I find the hubris disturbing.
Expert credibility in climate change
And you could also argue that the hubris is among people who think they know better than the scientists in this area, or that none of them have thought through these arguments. And creationists do exactly that. Evolution has the same level of complexity (one of the main arguments against it) and is also accepted only through scientific consensus.
Spending trillions of dollars attempting to limit carbon emissions is a total waste of time. The elephant in the room which very few seem to have woken up to yet is that if you postulate that carbon emissions are due to human activity then treating the symptom (carbon emission) is pointless without addressing the cause: Overpopulation. Why? Well here is a fact: According to the UN, mean global population will increase 50% in the first three decades of this century (and you should see their high estimates!). So how are you going to hold down energy consumption or emissions to "2000" levels when population increases 50%? Even if all those new people are the rudest of subsistence farmers burning cow chips for heat we are still in deep deep trouble. It's in fact a cataclysmic problem that those people will come from Africa, China and India becasue a) they have the WORST pollution laws and b) they are teflon when it comes to emissions targets. Don't give me that energy use per capita crap. The world only cares about total emissions, not emissions per head in some particular zone. This is the disaster that governments have oyu buying in to: emissions trading schemes and other stupid propoganda that makes it MORE expensive to produce a unit of output in a place with far better energy intensity and pollution control and instead shifts that production to countries with crap pollution laws that are building coal power stations hand over fist. The ass-backwardness of it boggles the mind! Did you know that coal consumption increased 25% in the past 10 years- nearly ALL of that consumption in china. Who totally denies any responsibility for controlling carbon emissions. What's worse, for every erg of power the "developed" nations do not consume, the "developing" nations will eagerly snap up, thankful that we haven't forced the prices any higher. After all, they have the right to enjoy the same living standards as we do. So Here I am in Australia, watching the most insane carbon trading scheme being born, while our exports of coal increase exponentially. Doesn't it scare you that the people running our countries are so blind? It should. So lets get away from carbon emissions for a moment and tackle more important issues. To get where we are today we have destroyed 30% of a potable water and 20% of our arable land. We have eaten 50% of our fish stocks. The latter is forecast to have totally collapsed by 2050. Wasting our time and resources on carbon emissions will only mean that we lurch from crisis to crisis all caused by overpopulation. We are decimating the environment at a faster rate than any time in history. Until we start to seriously tackle the problem of overpopulation we don't have a hope in hell of ever succeeding at anything else. Get a grip people. It's coming in our lifetimes. Don't believe me, check out peak water and peak phosphorus on wiki. Google global population forecast. And think for yourself for a change.
So Slashdotters are reading left-wing bias slathered over left-wing bias, without being informed which belongs to who.
That's a really good point. Until we can agree on what the scientific method is, and what falsifiable hypothesis we're discussing, there is little point in arguing.
Would you care to specify your necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW, and your understanding of the scientific method?
Of course there is global warming. There is global cooling too. All of this has occurred naturally for the entire lifespan of the planet. Now, where, in what UN report, would you like to cite a clearly necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement that *humans* are causing observed 20th century global warming?
Climate always changes. Ice age to interglacial and back. The serious question is can human release of CO2 be having a noticeable effect? CO2 has continued to climb for the last decade yet temperatures have not.
www.wattsupwiththat.com
www.climateaudit.org
If you are looking for some serious discussion of the science behind the sourced article you will find it there.
That's not appeal to authority. Appeal to Authority is when somebody says "I am the expert, believe me and don't check the facts". Very unlike the current situation. You are welcome to read through as many publications as you feel like, you are free to participate in the science yourself.
But that's not practical because it would be a full time job, so you need to do what we all do for areas where we can't afford to become experts: identify the best sources, estimate how trustworthy they are assess their current level of knowledge and certainty etc.
Climate science is science and with a minimum amount of checking and research you can tell the crackpots from the serious people. And with some further reading you can get an idea of the serious people's arguments and the level of confidence there is that they are right (i.e. how much data they have, how many different ways they used to reach the conclusion, what's the statistics relevance of the data etc.)
This is definitely science and nobody is asking you to take it on faith as everything is published and debated constantly.
Every time I have seen studies denying climate change they were based on very shallow reasoning and it didn't take long to go through it and see it was crap. On the contrary the evidence for climate change is much more in-depth, comes from many sources and uses very clever methods (looking at trees, animals, ice, satellite data, temperature etc.).
Okay lets do our own little test of the "man made CO2 is causing global warming" idea.
Simple: How long with CO2 rising and temperatures flat or falling before the idea that CO2 is a driver of climate gets admitted as wrong?
To keep it simple we'll count all CO2, both natural (170-200 billion tons) and man made (6-7 billion tons). So far we are just over a decade and CO2 has continued to increase but temperatures have not. 20 years? 30? 100? Just how long is required to show that CO2 is a follower or driver?
I'm assuming that China and India and the rest of the developing world will continue to deploy coal and send lots of CO2 into the atmosphere because there is no indication they are prepared to do otherwise.
We can look this thread up in 10 years and see how it is going.
The problem with that is the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority, is in fact a circular reference of an Appeal to Authority (to the people who write lists of fallacies).
EVERY fact not confirmed by an experiment by you personally is an Appeal to Authority. Every person referring to one of your personal experiments as proof of a fact, is an appeal to YOUR authority.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Don't kid yourself that public debates such as those that occur here on slashdot don't make a difference; they do. Public opinion is changing and the reason is not that the government has released illustrated pamphlets, it's because just ordinary individuals everywhere, acting on their own initiative and motivated by their own conscience and understanding are waging an public war against deniers online, over dinner tables and in the media.
. If you doubt that we're effective, here's some good news for your efforts (about three quarters of the way down under the heading - Global Warming and Extreme Weather Events:)
http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Extreme-Weather-Climate-Preparedness.pdf
Highlight- 69% of Americans believe global warming is effecting the weather in the US.
then there's this, via TomDispatch.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/science/earth/americans-link-global-warming-to-extreme-weather-poll-says.html
and this:
63% of respondents believe the United States should move forward to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other countries do.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/30/473484/public-opinion-the-death-of-public-support-for-global-warming-action-is-greatly-exaggerated/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=d3e9d40391-TD_McKibben5_3_2012&utm_medium=email
and this:
65% of Americans backed the idea of imposing mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions/other greenhouse gases
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/10/461246/gallup-americans-have-more-guts-than-obama-support-mandatory-controls-on-co2-emissions/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=d3e9d40391-TD_McKibben5_3_2012&utm_medium=email
and this:
75% now support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/26/471840/poll-75-of-americans-support-co2-regulation-60-support-revenue-neutral-carbon-tax/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=d3e9d40391-TD_McKibben5_3_2012&utm_medium=email
The link is not a very good example and I'll keep it short. The old april 2007 so called article, is nothing more than an opinion piece and not science based. The claimed facts of science don't stack up. First it was a mistake to use the measured visible spectrum model to state the output if the sun was not increasing, when it was later discovered the long wave spectrum was in fact increasing. To top it off this leads to more warming of earth than does visible spectrum. Next you can't assume that for example a gas giant an order of magnitude bigger and at significant distance would show any measurable or comparable change to the earth. same goes for airless small bodies. Not to say it might be possible to find some correlation, however that to my knowledge has never been attempted and published. However a planet that shares being a very similar type of rocky planet, similar size relative to the solar system and distance from the sun would make for a decent model of comparison. Mars is warming and last data shows at the approximately same rate as earth. What are the reasons? Is the data wrong. Is the interpretation wrong? What is right? Whatever it is much more needs to be done before this data could even be close to useful in any model. I await a far more advanced analysis before accepting any of that. However presenting Bad Science, doesn't help the GW cause at all.
However the religion of GW people once again reverts to instant dismissal without the supporting science. A common problem for those trying to sort through the chaff.
One last set of points. Some claimed expert, earlier claimed a science fact, that nowhere in the climate record has the earth's climate ever changed so rapidly. That was a blatant lie. There are at least several published examples of that very thing happening and of note independent of CO2 levels. So fast was the change that some analysis points to the possibility as fast as 100 years.
On average the planet has been warming since the last ice age. Nowhere is there any indication this climate should become static, nor represented by some claiming a simple linear warming. No computer and climate model exists yet that is anywhere near powerful enough to predict our planets climate with any accuracy. They can't even model what has already happened let along what is going to happen with any certainty the model works within even known variables. they just pick the ones that seem to work and then use that for the next until it doesn't work any more. Then begin again. Not exactly like it's just a few minor tweaks to a proven model.
Then the claim earlier that volcano CO2 is not enough and man produces more. The conclusion was such bad science and an example of the GW's religion being just as bad as those deniers that didn't bother to measure the CO2 before opening their mouth either. None of this crap helps either side. Even if the co2 data can be trusted, "co2 is only one gas and does not a volcano make".
I'm so sick of this fixation on co2. You're all chasing one hearing in the school. Worse, then go on to extrapolate the size of the school and even where it is heading based from just one hearing.
So thank you very much but I'll not join either side's religion here at /.
I read an article some where that was trying to say that cosmic rays from the center of the galaxy was passing through the earth and causing it to heat up. It takes 20 years to pass through this band. Think of the rays as shooting out of a flashlight. We are passing in the middle of the flashlight now. 10 more years and we'll be out of it. So i regoogled , cosmic rays earth heat, and i found a few of the articles.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/22/correlation-demonstrated-bewteen-cosmic-rays-and-temperature-of-the-stratosphere/ Personally i don't believe in global warming as caused by humans only. I think its more like a global cycle. With minor human contribution.
Remember CFC's? http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/tag/cosmic-rays/
The claim that CFCs were responsible for the perceived thinning remains controversial. In 2007 chemists poked holes in the ozone theory in a study published in Nature. These researchers found that the decomposition of chlorine compounds by light was much slower than had been assumed and “at least 60% of ozone destruction at the poles seems to be due to an unknown mechanism.”
What could this unknown mechanism be? In 2009, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters found a correlation between cosmic rays and ozone depletion. The abstract says:
“This Letter reports reliable satellite data in the period of 1980–2007 covering two full 11-yr cosmic ray (CR) cycles, clearly showing the correlation between CRs and ozone depletion, especially the polar ozone loss (hole) over Antarctica. The results provide strong evidence of the physical mechanism that the CR-driven electron-induced reaction of halogenated molecules plays the dominant role in causing the ozone hole. Moreover, this mechanism predicts one of the severest ozone losses in 2008–2009 and probably another large hole around 2019–2020, according to the 11-yr CR cycle.”
If these two research groups are right, then once again, a trumped-up environmental crisis is proven to be false and we went to the expense of banning CFCs for nothing.
You didn't agree about scientific issues, just that doing the right thing costs too much. Apparently, you think lying about the scientific merits of something allows you to pretend that you aren't just trying to get out of paying for the damage caused, but I've raised kids, so I'm used to the self-entitled whining of children who don't want to clean up their messes.
Climate is not changing!!!
Then: When I married 45 years ago, we had heavy snow storms starting in the first week of November. Winter gave us 30degrees below zero (Celsius). Spring with buds on the trees came around the 1st of June
Now 45 years later, I have proof that there is no global warming. Here it is:
Heavy snow storms now occur around or a few days after Christmas (one month later). The coldest it gets is -22degrees below zero.(Celsius). Spring with buds on the trees has come (15 April) (4 weeks early). Our tulips, our apple blossoms are over the bloom, and the grass is being cut weekly.
The earth has not really warmed up. The center of the earth is still the same temperature. Minors who go deep underground could confirm this.
The warmer seasons, what we call warming is due to the blanket of CO2 that prevents the sun's heat from escaping to outer space as radiation. Get rid of the CO2 blanket, and the seasons will go back to what they were like fifty years ago.
Man has just put so much into the atmosphere and is continuing to do so that the next century will see drought in places that never had it before. The higher temperatures closer to the equator will cause major migration to occur towards the poles.
No, it is not global warming, or is it?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Let's see discussion of the DATA, not the politics.
If you can't discuss the actual data, STFU, I don't give two shits what you believe in.
given 1- The proof that we are are getting warmer is well documented given 2- climate dissenters have no basis for claiming that we are not getting warmer, there fore 30- dissenters are crackpots.. Migod,.. All elephants are Pink. I see an elephant. there fore it must be a pink one.....The fact is, the CRACKPOTS are those who, despite in your face evidence to the contrary, believe the dissenters are countering claims of a warming trend. No sir, they are NOT , but rather asserting the cause is something OTHER than human intervention.. One volcanic eruption has the potential to do what all the novel ideas to reverse warming have failed to do. The *entire solar system*, in fact, is warming at the very same rate. Pollution of the most ectreme type such as the tragic dstate of the North sea, the many hundreds of swuare miles "island of garbage" in the center of the, (i believe) Atlantic, the tumors and weird cankerous growths on sea life in the gulf, the hundreds of dolphins dying off en masse in S.America, all this will kill us off LONG before global warming spurs a new ice age....
The vehicle of 2 hours a day off my commute, well my Civic Hybrid anyway. I didn't buy it for the 'green' factor though I liked having the latest 'tech' so to speak.
But driving solo in HOV? Priceless...or rather about $5000 extra spread out over 9 years for 10/hrs a week? Still fucking priceless.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Nope, I haven't seen pickups driving 500 miles on a tank either. Different tools for different jobs. You'd think a 'truck' owner would get that.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
It must be intersteller medium being denser causing heliosphere compression.
But we don't have any way to actually measure heliosphere compression,
say what? It's X? but we can't test for X?
but it's definitely that and not CO2 where we have clear and concrete evidence of at the VERY least a significant correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperatures.
mmhmm. [headdeskslam]
the density of the interstellar medium is much greater than in the past
Uh, a wee bit of proof for anything supporting this would be helpful to believe what seems to be the product of some really good shit you should share with friends...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I don't care if people are causing global warming or not. It's happening, there's too much independent verification to contest the trend. Debate about causes all you want, we know what we can do to reduce our own carbon emissions, and hopefully we'll figure out how to suck CO2 out of the air economically as well. It'll probably take a lot of smart decisions to step back from the ledge, and most of us are getting sick of the vocal minorities fiddling while Rome burns. Stop bickering and do something.
The real issue here is money. The defenders of the status quo don't want to contribute a dime for climate change remediation, they want everyone else to pick up the tab for them. And they'll throw a lot of money around trying to avoid chipping in, maybe more than they'd have to spend to just invent a partial solution. Too bad. Pony up your share or go find your own atmosphere to ruin. There's nothing free about existing in a complex ecosystem, and you're not getting off the hook, so stop whining and do something.
They can always argue with forum users on dorky message boards.
Yes, there are very few credible scientists that have dissenting views on climate change. The big problem that's holding back real climate change policy reform in Washington is that a large minority of American's are uniformed about what the scientists think. Yale's Project on Climate Change Communication project published Global Warming's Six Americas in May 2011 (pdf) that concluded: 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and caused by humans...but 35% of American adults are dismissive, doubtful, or disengaged about climate change.
ScienceFriday interviewed Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale's Project on Climate Change Communication today. You can listen to the audio: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday/scifri20120504-hr1.mp3
Until we shrink the 35% of non-believers, Washington will probably continue to drag their feet. We have an Ad Proposal to Teach America that Climate Change is real and caused by humans. Our hope is the Ad will help shrink the 35% of non-believers so there is more pressure on the policy makers in Washington to fix the global warming problem.
www.AdsForCause.com - Advertise your Cause and improve the world!
I think it's fair enough to be a bit pragmatic about it in this case, even if it's not super pure science. Kind of like Bertrand Russel's statement that, to a philosophically educated audience, he would of course identify as agnostic, but to the average person he would say he was an atheist. In that same sense, while of course the level of certainty is not as high as they might like it to be, but the risk of ignoring it based on that still relatively small uncertainty is too great to allow.
That's a cute meme of false positions you've got there..I think I saw it over on the Warmite Talking Points Page.
The fact is quite simply that the theory of AGW is unproven. There seems to be some warming going on, true, but it's consistent with previous periods when the planet was coming out of an Ice Age. Historically the planet is cooler than it's been for large chunks of its timeline. The warming tracked in the last 40 years or so is more likely traced to natural causes and our cleaning up of the atmosphere (not as much haze/brown clouds/etc.), which lets a bit more light through.
AGW is intriguing and has a lot to admire--and it's fundamentally nearly impossible to prove. Drawing graphs that show temperature increases mapped against mankind CO2 output is nice exercise but that's an attempt at correlation, not causation. One could just as easily draw a graph that maps increases in temperatures against MPG increases in cars to the same result. And it's absolutely immaterial that there's any kind of "consensus" of any number of people--facts ARE or ARE NOT, belief in them has no bearing on the subject. There used to be widespread European consensus that the world was flat--that didn't make it so.
Maybe we should gather data before we start ripping apart our economy over an unproven theory.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
That's a cute meme of false positions you've got there..I think I saw it over on the Warmite Talking Points Page.
If you did, they copied it from me. They're not false positions, I've seen 1-5 argued many times. From there on they are extrapolated positions because Republicans haven't got there yet.
There used to be widespread European consensus that the world was flat--that didn't make it so.
That's another thing you're wrong about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth
Maybe we should gather data before we start ripping apart our economy over an unproven theory.
It's amusing that right at the end there, you give away that you are very much one of the people playing through this 9 step plan of denial. :-)
On the other hand it appears there's a near universal consensus that is wrong, seemingly because they got their opinion by reading Time or some guys blog without looking at the actual data instead.
A few days ago the Alarmist In Chief recanted:
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/04/25/1325241/gaia-scientist-admits-mispredicting-rate-of-climate-change
So, the "consensus" was actually a result of proof by authority and not actual science.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Now why don't you go to bed so the grownups can have a conversation without having you pretend that you have anything useful to add.
Groupthink and the active suppression of dissent is scoffed at by scientists... that are calling for the active suppression of dissent on an alarmist basis. Nowhere is it argued that these controversial mechanisms are understood by the "majority," who have had continual egg on their face since the wide divergence between prediction and measurement was noticed -- but the weight of their collective opinion (argumentum ad populum) of alarmist scientists is supposed to define irrefutable truth and influence policy with a global economic impact into the trillions because 'we can't wait to act until the facts are known.'
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -- Schopenhauer
There is no stopping the true believers on either side.
Nope, I haven't seen pickups driving 500 miles on a tank either.
My 10 year old Ford will, but it does have a 30 gallon tank. Sucks to fill it up...
"Fear is the rootkit of democracy.." Blarkon
Your lame attempt to make the bible fit into actual facts would probably be a great consolation to Galileo and his family. "oh, sorry about all the persecution and the heresy charges that ruined your life - turns out, the bible was right in line with science after all!" Idiot.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
I grew up in Texas and now live in Missouri (I am also being treated for cancer - not sure which is worse) so I've seen my share of rednecks. By this logic, there should be a Prius Truck. Just perfect for all of the massively ignorant rednecks around here.
No, my post is not the equvalent of saying that cyanide is not deadly because it only kills cells. You are just another ignorant denialist who can't tell the difference between weather and climate. And indeed, it seems you can't tell the difference between a single cell and a complete human being either. Epic fail.
Clever signature text goes here.
"Not every redneck is stupid (they follow the bell curve too; sweeping generalization)"
They don't, however. Gangstas, rednecks, prisoners, and other similar things are at some level chosen. They are more likely to be chosen by those with low IQs.
The educated and enlightened will not be satisfied until they install themselves as the global nomenklatura. All others are to be sardine packed into human warehousing and they have their McMansions and dachas out in the hinterland. Environmental science is one of their tools as well as a lapdog media. Then again the wast majority of the audience here (don't mind to) live in human warehousing outside the Anglosphere.
My concerns are as follows:
-> The constantly shifting definition of global warming.
While it is entirely reasonable to expect that the accidental geoengineering events that humans are doing will have some effects (you can't just keep dumping carbon in without changing SOMETHING right?), the predictions are varied, and the results selectively chosen. To distinguish global warming from human created global warming (AGW) was a reasonable distinction, but now we are supposed to refer to "climate change", which encapsulates, of course, absolutely anything. Now the world can get cooler and an AGW proponent can point to that (presumably combined with some group of people, animals, or plants that are being screwed over), and say, climate change. It becomes much harder to falsify.
-> Both sides have a lot to lose politically.
It's pretty clear that the deniers get short term gains if they are wrong but get their way. However, the pushers of it do to, down to the creation of entire markets to regulate the issue and profiteer. The net result is that THIS SHIT IS FUCKING OPAQUE. Both sides have been caught (via leaked emails) trying to cook the books to support Team Them. The "conspiracy" becomes believable when every element of all sciences can be interpreted to support AGW (or "climate change"), and the few scientists knowledgeable enough to actually interpret the summation of data correctly are all essentially owned by SOMEONE who has an agenda. This issue affects MOST science (and medicine) nowadays, but this particular corner has more of it than many others.
-> True believers fuck this all to hell.
The denialists attack literally every aspect of climate science. You can find guys saying that the whole thing is a top-down conspiracy, you can find someone calling out individual scientists, and most everything in between. It's not obvious which, if any, of these critiques are legit, and which are lunatic ramblings. A lot of it is religious bullshit too, with some people saying things like "the Bible tells us the world won't end this way".
Meanwhile, the AGW pushers often tell us to "conserve", and by that they mean "voluntarily suffer" or "surrender liberty". We see people opposing geoengineering (because that could solve the problem without the proper amount of atonement to Gaia, or something?), we see people making FUCKING MEANINGLESS choices solely to align themselves publicly with "their team" (owns a prius, lives a carbon-neutral lifestyle somehow, reuses their water), all the while saying that if everyone did this (or was forced to do it) we'd be better off (forgetting that things like the sea trade burn about an order of magnitude more fossil fuels that ALL the cars), etc. This is religious bullshit.
I hate this topic, and you should too!
"Meganeura is a genus of extinct insects from the Carboniferous period approximately 300 million years ago, which resembled and are related to the present-day dragonflies. With wingspans of up to 65 cm (2.1 ft), M. monyi is one of the largest known flying insect species; the Permian Meganeuropsis permiana is another. Meganeura were predatory, and fed on other insects, and even small amphibians.
"Controversy has prevailed as to how insects of the Carboniferous period were able to grow so large. The way oxygen is diffused through the insect's body via its tracheal breathing system puts an upper limit on body size, which prehistoric insects seem to have well exceeded. It was originally proposed (Harlé & Harlé, 1911) that Meganeura was only able to fly because the atmosphere at that time contained more oxygen than the present 20%. This theory was dismissed by fellow scientists, but has found approval more recently through further study into the relationship between gigantism and oxygen availability. If this theory is correct, these insects would have been susceptible to falling oxygen levels and certainly could not survive in our modern atmosphere. Other research indicates that insects really do breathe, with "rapid cycles of tracheal compression and expansion". Recent analysis of the flight energetics of modern insects and birds suggests that both the oxygen levels and air density provide a bound on size.
"A general problem with all oxygen-related explanations of the giant dragonflies is the circumstance that very large Meganeuridae with a wing span of 45 cm also occurred in the Upper Permian of Lodève in France, when the oxygen content of the atmosphere was already much lower than in the Carboniferous and Lower Permian.
"Bechly (2004) suggested that the lack of aerial vertebrate predators allowed pterygote insects to evolve to maximum sizes during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, maybe accelerated by an evolutionary "arms race" for increase in body size between plant-feeding Palaeodictyoptera and Meganisoptera as their predators."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura
-kgj
And, right on cue, the response. Boy, you sure called that one.