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."
It contributes to global 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.
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing. Bias is everywhere.
...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.
The last Ice Age was several thousands of years ago. In the history there have been many Ice Ages. Were those caused by people too?
Does that count as a 'bastion'?
OMG it's the end for the dissenters!
How many weeks is it since we had an article about how the evidence for climate change hadn't panned out at all?
I'm not a dissenter or a denier or even particuarly a doubter but the endless stream of sensational stories, in either direction, is getting a bit wearing.
How about we (Slashdot) take a break from this subject. There must be more relevant stuff to talk about. Even bitcoin is better than this.
really? This is what passes for a Slashdot article now?
I was listening to NPR last week and early global warming advocates admitted that they were exaggerating, and that the real warming is much slower than they predicted. I thought slashdot was hear to help teach, not to misinform. Shamed on you slashdot.
1. Climate research is a hugely technical field that requires subjective judgement in choice and application of models
2. Climate "scientists" have through extreme and political conduct made it clear they are extremely emotionally and politically involved
3. As a result, you cannot trust their work, whatever the outcome of it may be.
It's unfortunate, but we have nothing trustworthy at the moment.
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 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.
Get yourselves over to www.weatheraction.com and learn.
They have an 80% accuracy record for long term forecasts. They understand what drives the climate on earth and it ain't CO2.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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."?
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.
How can we call it global when it is having no effect on the glaciers of Asia?
My hypothesis that it is actually increased levels of humidity causing the warming trend we have seen seems to find more and more factual support every day. Too bad everyone wants to think it either isn't happening at all, is totally natural, or that mankind is 100% the cause and we must repent from our evil startlingly efficient industrial society, rather than actually allowing new information to change their minds.
AGW/anti-AGW is a war, and ideas are soldiers. To deny an idiotic idea that supports your premise is seen as treason, and simply isn't done. This is why AGW people will likely never be able to understand that CO2 has a vanishingly small effect on the climate, water vapor has a gigantic effect on weather patterns. Similarly, anti-AGW people will never be able to see that continuous increases in water vapor emission will cause long term increases in atmospheric water vapor, which will eventually cause a change that is seen in "climate". Of course, when the worldwide economy starts to break down, the increase in water vapor emissions slows and stops as consumption drops, and the effect levels off rather neatly.
Unfortunately, human beings allow ideas to become cults, and they gravitate toward one side or the other rather than taking a rational view based on evidence, rather than refusing to take part in the false dichotomy set up by others.
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.
This is something I've known since I was a kid. In the high desert where I grew up, I knew cloudy days were warmer than clear days, and the nights even more so.
Climate change deniers annoy me not so much because they have their heads up their asses but more because they seem to want to keep stuffing it even deeper in. They're like the Disney version of an ostrich. Danger approaching! Stick head in ass and hope it goes away.
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.
All three "papers" links are to thinkprogress.org? Why is Slashdot publishing obvious link bait?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Takes decades.
I was hoping that clouds would be found to have a moderating effect.
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
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.
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.
_Clearly_ climate is changing. No thermometers or tree rings are required to know this; simple historical records show this. We know the earth is still emerging from a geologic ice age. We also know the Holocene has been warmer than the present. Witness, among other things, the viking settlements just starting to emerge from Greenland glaciers.
Surely there are only three relevant questions:
1) Why don't the models used by researchers match reality? Until they do, the models cannot be trusted to guide decisions where billions (or trillions) of dollars are involved. Clearly, we need better data and better model; there is no reason in rushing to a 'decision' right now.
2) Why do we believe that the present climate status quo should be preserved? Perhaps a few degrees warmer would be better?
3) Why do spurious arguments (liberal/conservative, evolution/creationist, star belly/plain belly) keep getting introduced?
A scientific theory must account for all the data... and so far, neither 'side' has managed to accomplish this.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
People need to stop caring about Global Warming. The point of no return was passed back in the 60's-70's. Most of the "Green Movement" hype is just a means for corporations to profit. Example? Oh im so glad you asked.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html
Just 16 of the largest ships in the world (Maersk E-Class?) produce more pollution than all cars in the WORLD! Now consider how many shipping vessels there are, how many air planes there are, and how many power plants there are. Yet, most Americans believe that hybrid cars and LED lights will save us from Global Warming. Simply not true. You wanna impact climate change? Everyone in the world needs to stop flying, stop buying anything imported, ride a bicycle everywhere, and go to bed when the sun goes down, and wake up when the sun comes up. What a miserable existence.
Besides, Global Warming is not necessarily a bad thing. It may be the best thing to ever happen to the human species. Truth is we just dont know for sure. Either way, we will adapt. We are at the top of the food chain because we adapt.
Personally Id rather risk global ecological disaster than to give up my 8mpg 72 Trans Am I drive 36 miles to work every day. VRROOOOM!!! :-D :-D :-D
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Warming
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.
Or maybe it's the climate change adherents' "bastions" that are crumbling.
Liberty in your lifetime
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.
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.
...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.
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!
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?
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This coming from a Newspaper that is clearly shown to be very bias in "reporting news" and un-ethical too.
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.
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.
Just pay more taxes
The global warming religion strikes back !!!
JAM
First, the big problem is that the celebrity elite undermine the green movement with hypocrisy. If they are so concerned about the environment, then why are the VIPs heading to these international summits at fancy resorts mostly flying in individually via private jet? If the Al Gores and John Edwards of the world are so concerned about the environment, why do they use private jets to get everywhere, live in inefficient mega mansions, and have more automobiles than the average citizen? How does creating a secondary, unaccountable shadow stock market with cap & trade do anything for the environment, beyond providing the potential for the insiders to make millions off of it?
There is a palpable sense of hypocritical condescension that comes down from all this - a wealthy Green Mr Mcmansion can afford the increased cost of living from green energy, he can afford expensive green tech, he can afford to pay his papal indulgences to the green movement without actually doing anything and just go about his business. Tell that to a poor person that can barely afford to keep a roof over his head, food on the table, and gas in his car to get to work - that person cares about the necessities of life being cheap, jobs, abundance, and economic prosperity - all things that most of the serious environmental movement opposes. Some people are not well off enough to have the breathing room to care much about the environment or anything else.
Add in the nihilistic anti-humanist fringe of the green movement that basically believes everyone else should be living in mud brick houses with no tech, no medicine, no food, and no children; that says we can't have hydro dams because they impact the local ecosystem, that we can't have wind farms because they threaten birds and disrupt the skyline, that we can have solar farms because they disrupt the desert ecosystem. A dash of scandalous climate emails that show politicization and dogma, a desire to influence the peer review process to freeze out dissenting points of view, and most criminally from a science standpoint, losing the data points people would retest to verify on their own. Then stir in secondary environmental costs of 'green tech' that isn't green at all: the impact of mining for rare earth metals that make green tech possible, the environmental impact of hydro dams, wind farms, solar farms, and the toxic materials used to make the equipment in them - do people think about the impact if a flash flood in the desert takes out a solar farm and leaves the toxic materials in them everywhere? The mercury in CFLs in our homes without widespread knowledge of where to dispose of them, so most people just throw them in the trash?
Shake well, and you have an image problem that undermines the message, and makes some people wonder if this whole climate change thing is just another way for the rich, the corporations, and the big gov't types to put one over on the common man - especially when 'the science is settled' and 'the debate is over' and we must give officials new powers to immediately put in place expensive policies. It is using fear to push through policy that favors specific groups, in the same way that outside threats are used to justify increased restrictions on civil rights and increased military spending - maybe it helps the environment, but if it does, its a side benefit.
Second, there is no such thing as 'the science is settled' or 'consensus'. Science is a tool that helps us understand the way the world works, within the imperfect limits of those tools. 30-40 years ago, the consensus was that we had to fear global cooling and the next ice age. We understand most of what lies within the picture frame that our current knowledge and abilities give us, but there is a whole universe of complexity beyond what we have the capacity to understand. The messy process of dissent is part of what eventually expands the known limits of that limited worldview. There are 'professional disciplines' that claim to understand complex systems to the level of mathematical scien
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?
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.
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.
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.
They're funded by rat-bastards like the Koch Brothers; these a-holes will be with us as long as their brethren cockroaches.
... 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
Sure the CO2 increases. Sure there is Temperature increase and decrease... and a long term slight linear+cyclic upward trend since the end of the Little Ice Age... no doubt about either of those... the problem that exists is that when you correlate both they don't correlate at all. Nada. Also the temperature trend, linear+cyclic, stays the same before and after the 1950's when CO2 started increasing... exactly the same temperature trend so that is a serious problem for those promulgating CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture aka CAGW.
Also all the climate models haven't been able to predict the temperature standstill for the last 12+ years. Not one. And if you know the scientific method then you'll get the following statement:
“if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.” - Richard Feynman
What is missing is the actual evidence that the CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere is having any significant effect at all. Sure there might be a wee bit of warming from it but so what?
Also "might", "may", "could", and other conditional words are not scientific words with any accuracy at all. Some feeding your brain mind poop from the media and doomsday claims from scientists who haven't yet produced any serious evidence that CO2 is a problem. Also learn that CO2 is an essential life giving nutrient and that we use 900 ppm to 1400 ppm of CO2 in greenhouses to grow plants bigger and faster. Plants for the most part love CO2. Biological fact. In fact a study found that from 1980 to 1999 plants grew by 6% as seen by satellites.
The amazing irony is that the extra CO2 is actually be helping green the planet.
_________
" Effect Of CO2 Emission On Global Mean Temperature
Examination of Figure 3 shows that the Global Mean Temperature Anomaly (GMTA) for 1940 of 0.13 deg C is greater than that for 1880 of –0.22 deg C. Also, the GMTA for 2000 of 0.48 deg C is greater than that for 1940 of 0.13 deg C. This means that the GMTA value, when the oscillating anomaly is at its maximum, increases in every new cycle. Is this global warming caused by human emission of CO2?
The data required to establish the effect of CO2 emission on global mean temperature already exist. The global mean temperature data are available from the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre shown in Figure 3, and the CO2 emission data are available from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre [8]. *For the period from 1880 to 1940, the average emission of CO2 was about 0.8 G-ton, and the increase in the GMTA was 0.13+0.22=0.35 deg C. For the period from 1940 to 2000, the average emission of CO2 was about 4 G-ton, but the increase in GMTA was the same 0.48-0.13=0.35 deg C. This means that an increase in CO2 emission by 4/0.8=5-fold has no effect in the increase in the GMTA. This conclusively proves that the effect of 20th century human emission of CO2 on global mean temperature is nil.*
*Note that the increase in GMTA of 0.35 deg C from 1880 to 1940 (or from 1940 to 2000) in a 60 year period has a warming rate of 0.35/60=0.0058 deg per year, which is the slope of the linear anomaly given by Equation 1. As a result, the linear anomaly is not affected by CO2 emission. Obviously, as the oscillating anomaly is cyclic, it is not related to the 5-fold increase in human emission of CO2.
Figure 4, with high correlation coefficient of 0.88, shows the important result that the observed GMTA can be modeled by a combination of a linear and sinusoidal pattern given by Equation 3. This single GMTA pattern that was valid in the period from 1880 to 1940 was also valid in the period from 1940 to 2000 after about 5-fold increase in human emission of CO2. As a result, the effect of human emission of CO2 on GMTA is nil.* "
http://pathstoknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/predictions-of-gmt.pdf
Can't fix stupid or greed.
Two corrections:
"Some feeding" should be "Stop feeding".
"actually be helping" should be "actually helping".
"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.
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.
Evidence for CAGW: http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/Suggestions_scr.jpg.
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.
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"
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.
but warm is good
1) Tax stuff.
2) Screech like banshies at anyone that doesn't join the herd.
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!
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
...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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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....
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!
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. :-)
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.
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.