Slashdot Mirror
Last Bastion For Climate Dissenters Crumbling
Layzej writes "The New York Times reports: 'For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.' Initially they claimed that weather stations exaggerated the warming trend. This was disproven by satellite data which shows a similar warming trend. Next, solar activity was blamed for much of the warming. This looked like a promising theory until the '80s, when solar output started to diverge from global temperatures. Now, climate contrarians are convinced that changes in cloud cover will largely mitigate the warming caused by increased CO2. The New York Times examines how even this last bastion for dissenters is crumbling. Over the past few years, Several papers have shown that rather than being a mitigating factor, changes in cloud cover due to warming may actually enhance further warming."
What is the basis for the assumption that this is the "last" bastion? I am pretty sure, they will find another reason to hold out within days.... This is an issue of belief (at least for them), so arguments ain't gonna change a thing.
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.
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 agree that 84% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists%27_views_on_climate_change) is not unanimous, but it's getting closer every year.
Unless, ofcourse, you count the opinion of people who don't understand the science involved and blame other people for their own lack of understanding.
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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*
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing. Bias is everywhere.
Hmm, so you've observed a correlation between rationality in the face of evidence, and having left wing views.
Useful. I'll take it.
Truck. The vehicle of a redneck. It all fits.
Prius. The vehicle of mass ignorance. It all fits.
So where's your peer-reviewed research that backs up your claim?
Right wing shouty heads on Fox News don't count, I'm afraid.
"If you wanna believe the earth revolves around the sun that's cool, but I'm gonna keep planting my crops based on my assumption that the bible is right."
Sure, that discovery didn't affect that guy either. But it didn't make him any less wrong.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
You know, some of us buy carbon free electricity, collect rain water, recycle, live within 5 miles of our place of business and still drive a truck so that we can work on specific hobbies like building furniture and landscaping. Maybe not everyone fits your redneck mold.
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.
Get yourself over to www.dictionary.com and learn.
They have a 100% accuracy record for distinguishing between "weather" and "climate."
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
What nonsense.
We have plenty of trustworthy science, but a huge and well funded propaganda machine telling people that those scientists are untrustworthy and "politically motivated". You've bought into the propaganda machine hook, line and sinker.
Now, there will certainly be cases of scientists and professionals that are crooked and politically/financially motivated (see, for example, Andrew Wakefield and vaccines - a whole, damaging scare because he wanted to make money off his competing vaccine for MMR), or the "cold fusion" science researchers, but they are very swiftly exposed by peer review.
That intelligent people can still be claiming that "nothing a climate scientist puts out" is trustworthy at all is just a demonstration of how powerful people like like Koch brothers are and how effective extremely large dumptrucks full of money are at running propaganda campaigns.
It doesn't help that very few people are able to interpret the data for themselves and must rely on an actual scientist, and somehow when this is related to climate science that's seen as a bad thing? Ask yourself why that is; why it has become ingrained to look at only climate science and say "I don't understand this data so it's clearly a trick!". This doesn't happen in other fields with equally difficult and impenetrable data, like cancer research or quantum mechanics - there's been no pervasive, relentless smear campaign that results in anything those scientists say being dismissed out of hand because they're "politically motivated and untrustworthy".
The "Other Planets are Heating up too" hypothesis has been debunked:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/
But, until the engineers get involved on a real fix I wouldn't bother changing your lifestyle, other than maybe switching to LED lights and turning down the thermostat. Politicians never fix anything.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
People should dissent, people should disagree.
That is how science works: people testing other people's ideas and results. I don't know about your use of the word ''dissent'', since that implies ideological views, these are the very antithesis of the scientific method.
Climate change isn't understood well enough for there to be a unanimous consensus.
''Unanimous'' is a very high bar, one lone odd ball stops uninamity. What we should be looking for is what proportion experts in the field agree on the main points. We now have many more climate scientists who agree that there is a climate warming problem than the number of experts who agreed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. However: great political action and spending was put to bashing Iraq, much more than has been put to addressing climate change -- which is something of far greater danger than Iraq ever was. But that is politics for you.
Interesting that you assume that any change to our environmental policy will be for the better, by definition.
There's not really a lot of evidence that any proposed solution to climate change will do anything meaningful that'll improve our chances of suvival.
Certainly, the existing and proposed Treaties won't do jack....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Truck. The vehicle of a redneck. It all fits.
Prius. The vehicle of mass ignorance. It all fits.
Nothing fits in a Prius.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Perhaps. But raising objections in the form of plausible counter theories is valid science. Even if those counter theories are later disproved, that's all part of the scientific process. You can't just ignore an argument that may have merit simply because you don't trust the motives of the people making the argument. If someone has a reasonable alternate interpretation of the evidence, that needs to be considered (and I suspect a lot of things have been learned in the process of refuting alternate ideas). You can't just claim that your right because everyone agrees with you and they are wrong because the are stupid. ... Well you can, but that's not science.
Very few people disagree with the premise that the climate is warming.
Untrue -- that's a VERY recent (in the last year or two) change because the made up science people were using against warming was becoming unsupportable *even to the political base they were trying to influence*. To the tactics were changed from "its not warming" to "its not us doing it".
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.
No, among working climatologists, there's no disagreement. In fact, among anyone who has even a cursory understanding of thermodynamics, there's no disagreement. The tiny percentage of "climatologists" you see who publish papers suggesting otherwise are doing it because controversy will get you published, and its a publish-or-perish industry. And there's a LOT of money being paid to people who aren't otherwise being successful in the field to continue publishing bad science.
Also, they question the results of the warming... predicted increased hurricane strength and frequency have not come about as we'd expected.
Don't use the word "we" if you're not someone who holds a degree in climatology.
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.
So, no degree in climatology. Climatologists don't have anything to do with predicting the weather -- those are meteorologists. People in either field know that. (And people in either field also know the current global climate models predict an increase in energy in the weather systems which produces strong, not greater numbers, of storms -- on average. Someone trained in climatology knows what "on average" means relative to the work a meteorologist does, too.)
Science is not politics or military action, both of whom require proponderences in numbers and quality. Science is about discovering underlying truth, quite irrespective of who believes what or how well they speak.
This is why the Climategate email scandal is an irrelevant distraction. It might mean something about the credibility of the individuals invovled, but science is supposed to be testable, so personalities are irrelevant. The climate does not care about emails much -- just from the slight additional power generation, somewhat less than for JanetJacksons nip-slip.
It is very odd (&revealing?) the NYT doesn't know better.
Weather is climate like me pissing on the ground is rain.
Nice try though.
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
This has been proven true. We have enough temperature data to confidently say that temperatures have been steadily increasing since about 1850.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
This has been proven false. The 6 degree increase we should be experiencing now according to alarmists simply doesn't exist.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
This may be true, we have proof that there were much bigger climate changes even before man.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
This is a tricky one, I would say that too rapid change is never good for the environment, at least not in the short term. But if you only care about the effets on agriculture, it may very well be possible to breed/engineer crops that thrive in the new climate.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
That's most certainly false, but the real question is whether its negative effects cost more than to stop it.
There is still much more research needed on the topic, and bringing politics into the debate is exactly what's halting progress.
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing. Bias is everywhere.
Yes, but if you read the article you find that much of the Slashdot story was created by the /. submitter. A correction should be made to identify just what the NYT said.
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.
Are you disputing that other planets are warming up? All you've said is "this argument is stupid" without any explanation why. Does that make you any better than OP?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
For the scientific process to function as desired, informed and educated opposing viewpoints are required. Politicizing those viewpoints is counterproductive to the process.
Climate proxies are used to extend the record, and often give useful correlations between carbon dioxide and temperature.
'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.
It's hard to say - some planets we've known about and observed for less than one of their years, so we essentially have no data.
What we -do- know with fair certanity is that *if* they are warming over the last 40 years, it's not due to increased solar influx, because the solar influx has on the average fallen somewhat over that period.
Neither side cares about the science. Both sides are totally convinced in their virtue. Neither side is willing to look at the case dispassionately. Both sides are so invested in what they want the correct answer to be that they will not tolerate anything that contradicts their position.
Is there a case for AGW? Absolutely. It's a totally valid hypothesis. Is it proven? Of course not. There's no causal link. Getting a causal link is very hard but that doesn't mean you don't need one. AGW proponents almost all propose that we should accept a correlative link as proof of a causal link. That's not science. They say we don't have time to wait and we should assume there is a causal link based on the correlative data. That is a political response and again not science.
The anti AGW people are no better in that they'll ally with various political factions just like the pro AGW factions to form political pressure groups. And of course they don't want to hear they might be wrong any more then the AGW group might be.
Everyone has their egos, world views, political interests, and often careers involved in this matter. There are a lot of pro AGW scientists that might lose their jobs if AGW collapses and there are of course a lot of professional "skeptics" that likewise will find their employment terminated should that fall apart.
In this environment how can anyone really be sure what is going on? I'm not stupid and I'm not ignorant... but I can't sort it out. And find it to be unacceptable generally to simply assume one side or the other is right as so many seem to do. Sure, that's easier. Just believe the church is right about is and isn't true. Just trust the king to sort it out. I'm not a f'ing peasant though and I don't like having other people do my thinking for me.
I'm obviously going to get hate messages or... at least negative messages likely from the pro AGW people to the effect of "anyone that doubts the unquestionable virtue of our position is a fool or a heretic"... but that only underscores the sadness of this issue.
We're probably all bored to tears explaining the science of it to each other.
I've read through more material on the issue then I can pretend interest in. I just wish the issue hadn't been politicized.
I don't know when it started... was it when Al Gore made his fatuous little film? Or was it before? Some think the politicization was inevitable given the interests threatened by it but I'm not so sure.
Anyway... for those offended by my contrary nature... I'm not contrary to annoy you... It's just the best opinion I could come to with what information I have. If I'm wrong, I at least arrived at this position in good faith. If we can all say as much then it will at least be an honest conflict.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Perhaps. But raising objections in the form of plausible counter theories is valid science.
This is exactly right. However the scientific method says that when the theory isn't backed up by measurements and the evidence that it is to be abandoned. The revolutions like Newton, Kepler, and Einstein all involved the discarding of other systems because they didn't fit the facts. When you're ideas are shown to be incorrect the proper scientific reaction is not to simply scream your ideas louder, and the same thing goes with facts. That's why there are so many of us that are upset right now... it seems that screaming incorrect "facts" louder is what automatically happens in every sphere of life right now. That's why some of us believe we are living in an irrational age.
I love the hubris of the original poster in declaring this the "last" possible avenue of dissent, as if all of climatology were a known, predictable science... I believe it to be an evolving science - otherwise, why do they keep changing their models and simulations?
Ken
Especially the driver's ego.
Smug alert!
It is amazing how the NYT went from respectable neutral newspaper to 'most liberal paper in the nation' in just a few short years of reporting on Bush Jr.
The majority of those treaties are as flawed and biased as the studies I detest.
Some policies I think are beneficial:
That's all I can think of offhand. Generally, I feel that policies of "do this to save the world!" waste time and money, while policies of "this is more efficient" are better.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Raising objections in the form of new, unaddressed plausible counter theories is valid science.
What I often see is the same-old-same-old, popping up for yet another game of zombie whack-a-mole. Water vapor, not a new issue. Sunspots, not a new issue. Has changed in the past, not a new issue. Medieval Warm Period, not a new issue. Someone, somewhere, predicted a future ice age back in the 1970s, not a new issue. Unable to do a controlled experiment, not a new issue. Uncertainty in the models, not a new issue. Urban heat islands, not a new issue.
Why not? You're likely counting the opinion of Global Warming supporters that "don't understand the science involved"... Only seems fair to count the "D" Science students on BOTH sides of the argument. Supporters include Natural Science student All Gore who earned a "D" at Harvard in Natural Science 6 ("Man's Place in Nature"), so why not the guy driving the bread truck?
Ken
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
The point is that whether other planets are heating up or not has nothing to do with whether we should be concerned about climate change.
I don't even think it matters whether climate change is anthropogenic (for whether we should be concerned - it obviously does matter in terms of studying the area and finding potential solutions)
If you are in a room that is getting too hot, it is a good idea to switch the heating off, open a window or turn the air con on. Who or what is to blame for the excess heat doesn't matter as much as stopping the room getting so hot it causes problems for the people in it.
For me the most important questions we should be asking are:
* Is the climate changing?
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)?
* What can we do to affect the rate of change?
* What can we do to mitigate the bad effects?
* What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
The reasons why the climate is changing are important as they can suggest what we can do to affect things but even if we determine that the climate change is not down to human activity, we should still be looking for ways to affect it in our favour.
Am I the only one who fails to see the massive logic fail in that statement? If methane only lasts for 9-15 years, how is more effective at trapping heat over a 100 year period?
Yes, you are the only one who sees a massive logic fail because you are taking the statement at face value instead of trying to educate yourself about what they are talking about. I hope you were being facetious, but just in case: Atmospheric methane is oxidized in the atmosphere to produce carbon dioxide and water. FTA: "The 100-year global warming potential of methane is 25, i.e. over a 100-year period, it traps 25 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide."
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.
"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.
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.
Take this gem, from the EPA itself:
Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period
Am I the only one who fails to see the massive logic fail in that statement? If methane only lasts for 9-15 years, how is more effective at trapping heat over a 100 year period?
I've already explained this to you, using a very simple analogy with a hare and a tortoise. Did you not understand?
It makes no difference if the vast majority of the effect from the methane happens over 9-15 years. We can still say how much effect it had over any length of time we choose. Over 15 years, say, it might have 70 times the effect of CO2. Over 50 years it might have 45 times the effect of CO2. Over 100 years it might have 20 times. Over 500 years it might have 4 times the effect. [These figures are not meant to be exact, they are purely to illustrate the concept]
Do you understand it now?
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Without any data to hand, it is difficult to say one way or the other - I certainly can't say for sure (unlike the OP who does assert one specific position with no evidence).
My position is that as a member of the scientific community, I tend to agree with most of the peer-reviewed science on AGW - more specifically the chemistry aspects (as a chemist, it's the easiest stuff for me to digest beyond the abstracts).
My point would be to look at the models used and data collected from a wide variety of different scientists and institutions. If you approach it from the standpoint that there's possibly "some sort of global scarcity" tactic where every single scientist is somehow involved in a secret cabal, then I'm not sure any evidence one way or the other is going to swing it. I mean, in that situation any evidence that supports you is "proof of the conspiracy!!!" and any that doesn't is "part of the conspiracy of lies".
Standing back and looking at the whole system objectively really doesn't suggest such a thing.
Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period
Next line you didn't quote:
Human-influenced sources include landfills, natural gas and petroleum systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, stationary and mobile combustion, wastewater treatment, and certain industrial process.
I know methane is mostly non-human produced, but it just seems worthwhile to mention that we do have an impact beyond what earth has been generating for the past few eons or so.
It might also be worthwhile to note that the greenhouse effect is actually a necessity for life on earth. It's the amount of greenhouse effect that is causing all the commotion.
Remember, these are the people writing policy and regulations concerning our rights with respect to climate change.
Are these the people trying to prevent climate change or the people negotiating between environmental, political and economic concerns?
I'm sure they're doing the best job they can with all the best intentions, but their job description might not be what you think it is.
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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.
So it's going back to where the Earth was originally. Great, so we humans are are actually restoring the Earth to how it was suppose to be. You see Earth had a methane atmosphere before these oxygen polluting plants and microbes started growing on Earth. I saw that on "The Universe". I'm so smart now.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
Where I get my stuff they let you borrow a truck for two hours when you spend over 100 Euros.
No sig today...
Exactly! Follow the money trail and you'll find all these big wig professors living large, dangling their bling from their Corollas and Datsuns, as they go about lobbying congress and throwing money around.
I drank what? -- Socrates
There is nothing wrong with that statement. Another /. poster pointed this out and I remembered it (although I do not remember his name):
A hare and a turtle go for a race of 10 minutes. The hare runs 100 meters in one minute, calls it quits and takes a nap. The turle works for 10 minutes and manages to crawl 10 meters. The hare won, although he stopped after 1 minute.
Methane does so much damage in that 9-15 years the CO2 needs about 2000 years to catch up.
Add to that the fact that methane degrades into CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere, thus after 9-15 years the degradation products still warm up the planet.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
It isn't so much that he is ignorant, but that he is even ignorant about his own religion. His god punishes humans for bad behavior. He presumes that his god won't destroy the earth to punish us for shitting up the joint?
Why is it that nobody checks the Earth's orbit at correlates it with temperature changes?
That's not exactly true.
Lots of idiots fit in a Prius. You can also cart around a metric fuckton of stupid.
The climate is changing.
I just have a hard time believing it is caused by people in the very short span of time being thrown at us in order for us to effect that change.
"Going Green" is just another way of saying "pay this tax" in my opinion. My opinion may not mean much, if anything, but I believe it to be true.
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
Officer, I can't have been doing 60 miles per hour, I only left home 15 minutes ago
blog.sam.liddicott.com
If we're not the reason for the climate change, with all the crap we're releasing in the atmosphere, there is little chance we can have any effect on the climate change in a reasonable and timely fashion.
So I'd say yes, it matters if it is anthropogenic or not.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." - John Stewart
If you want something "unbiased" read Conservapedia.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community." This is my problem with climate change. While I believe that the Earth is warming. I believe it is prudent to work toward limiting our impact in the event we are causing drastic change. But most people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
You are very selective in the conspiracies you choose to decry.
Why aren't you up in arms about things like Big Pharma's focus on peddling more pills rather than finding genuine cures?
What about Big Oil's lies concerning not just AGW (did you know of Exxon's support up to the early 2000s for think tanks and research that denies global warming?), but disasters like Deepwater Horizon?
You're so outraged over Big Government. Yes, bash them hard over tax loopholes. But what about Little Government? For instance, many local governments have engaged in parking meter and red light camera programs of dubious merit that whatever else they are claimed to accomplish, extract quite a bit of money from the public. Many universities and colleges are even more notorious for strict parking enforcement. There's also a classic taxation without representation many have jumped on: special sales taxes for motel rooms, rental cars, and other things that hit travelers only. US sales taxes are under 10% for most items. But for rooms and rental cars, 15% or more is typical.
Speaking of government, what about attempts to rig elections, such as voter caging?
Then there is Big Finance. Madoff is the only perp who has been locked up. The rest of them got off with pathetically small fines. Some even got a free bailout. Why is Goldman Sachs still in business, still paying their executives obscene bonuses? Why is Mozilo not behind bars?
What about Big Media and piracy? Hollywood Accounting, and lobbying for laws like DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998?
But you put your energies towards calling out this supposed great scientific conspiracy over AGW. It's beyond the pail to suppose there could be a deliberate effort with active and explicit collusion among thousands of independent scientists. However, there could indeed be a groupthink problem, motivated in part by the desire to secure more funding. (Do you really think funding is only available for those who will affirm AGW?) Medical research has just such a problem. How can we tell the difference? By reviewing the evidence and the work. And what we see is that it's the deniers who have engaged in bad science, and who have a clear motive and financial interest in doing so.
Follow the money. Follow ALL the money.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Climate science is an evolving science, but the question of whether AGW is happening is settled. How quickly it is occurring, how the climate will react to different forcings, how that will affect specific regions of the planet, etc. are all questions that are more or less up for debate.
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.
My bicycle, filing cabinents, furniture I've purchased. I'm 6'4" myself so driver's side room is always a major factor for me. I had to pass up a lot of good deals on vehicles just because I couldn't fit in the stupid things comfortably. You just need to know how to handle a Prius.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
This is exactly the issue I have with AWG. It seems to degenerate into a shouting match instead of a discussion of facts. I find that if I do enough reading, I can understand most science topics, cancer research and quantum physics included. I decided that I really wanted to understand what was going on with global warming, at least reasonably well and spent a long time reading to understand. What I discovered is that most of the people that are cited as being authorities on internet forums aren't considered reliable by established scientists, and there are opposing viewpoints from scientists that are credible.
I won't say it is a trick and I don't think any credible scientist is saying it is all a hoax, but there are a wealth of opinions on what the data means and reasonable theories on how significant AGW is. I'd absolutely agree that AGW exists and any actual scientist will concede that humans must have some sort of impact on climate, but the degree of impact is only the first issue that is not agreed on. The second is the vectors of impact. Certainly CO2 is a factor, but how does that compare to the impact of the cattle industry or agriculture? Again, there are varied opinions. Finally, if you pick one or two opinions from those two issues which support the concern that AGW is a significant danger to our society, there is still the issue of reaction. Perhaps the best use of resources isn't to try to limit fossil fuel consumption, but to instead invest in fusion, or promote traditional nuclear fission reactors. Maybe the best reaction is to massively seed algae.
If there was a consensus on the data, it escaped my ability for research (about a year ago, I'm probably due to repeat it again soon.) If we can get a consensus on the data, and a reliable theory, then I hope we'll see rational discussion about responses... but I'm afraid I'm not optimistic.
Likely no matter what results are found and no matter what arguments are put forth, somebody will say something to me like: "You've bought into the propaganda machine hook, line and sinker."
In distance, this works. Not so much with heat. Put two pots on the stove, one on high for 10 minutes and another on low for two hours. Sure, the pot on high will boil, but it will eventually cool down to a temperature lower than the pot on low.
It does work with heat, in fact you've got it with your analogy, you've just left the pot too long. Put one on high for 10 minutes and one on low for 20 minutes and you might well have the one on high being hotter than the one on low!
Eventually is the key word. If methane just disappeared out of the atmosphere when it broke down then give it long enough and it would have had less of an effect than CO2 in the atmosphere would. It just takes longer than 100 years to do that. Well, it's complicated by that fact that methane breaks down to CO2 anyway, so that's like turning the pot on high down to low rather than off, but you get the drift.
Space is a poor insulator.
Actually, this is incorrect. The only way things can lose heat in space is through radiation. It insulates quite well. Your biggest problem with electronics in space is cooling them without convection.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
An appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authorities you are citing are in fact knowledgeable on the subject.
[M]ost people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
This is evidenced by the vitrio directed at the sceptics. Where real science is concerned, on the other hand, for example if someone questions the existence of gravity, the common reaction is puzzlement: "are we talking about the same thing?" No one wants to burn down the questioner's house.
Perhaps if the denial crowd didn't use methods exactly like those of the evolution deniers and the tobacco firms who lied about tobacco being harmless, we'd stop making such comparisons.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
False. Consensus is part of science. That's because Consensus is achieved through science, and consensus can change with the appropriated evidence.
As Tim Minchin so eloquently and accurately said:
"Science adjusts it's beliefs based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
You are the one using religion for your opinion.
Also, Look up Appeal to authority. hint: it doesn't apply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Forms:
The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:
The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.
A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion.
These conditions may also simply be incorporated into the structure of the argument itself, in which case the form may look like this:
X holds that A is true
X is a legitimate expert on the subject.
The consensus of experts agrees with X.
Therefore, there's a presumption that A is true.
I highly recommend reading 'Introduction to Critical Reasoning' and 'Introduction to Logic' before churning out logical fallacy accusation. You look like a fool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What sides? The science and the anti-science sides? Do you also doubt that neither the scientists nor the creationists are entirely correct? That you are biologically agnostic?
It is a fallacy to assume that there must be a middle ground between scientific facts and dogmatic claims.
Clever signature text goes here.
If you approach it from the standpoint that there's possibly "some sort of global scarcity" tactic where every single scientist is somehow involved in a secret cabal, then I'm not sure any evidence one way or the other is going to swing it. I mean, in that situation any evidence that supports you is "proof of the conspiracy!!!" and any that doesn't is "part of the conspiracy of lies".
How about more along the lines of a "Good ol' Boy" network with lots of groupthink and tribalism.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
They don't actually cite any authorities, but make the nebulous statement "the scientific community", which is what makes it a fallacy. It is sometimes also called Appeal to Anonymous Authority. Furthermore, if they are just repeating what someone told them, then it could also be Appeal to Rumor. The important take away is that their argument was not based upon evidence or logic.
I believe science should be objective. It should hold out the possibility of being wrong. Given how little we know, how little data we have collected in terms of the length of climate events, and the fact that most of our predictions are based on computer models which pose many of their own problems (lack of enough computing power, design of programs can influence the results, floating point calculations can be tricky, particularly in feedback systems, etc). I am dumbfounded by the level of certainty being displayed both by some scientists and many posters here.
On a gut level, I actually agree with their conclusions, but I find the hubris disturbing.
There are plenty of examples in science that may not have 100% acceptance but which still have a common consensus. Even science that provokes rabid denials from a small group like: evolution, the moon landings or the 9/11 attacks have a common consensus. With everything I've mentioned so far, you'd be hard pressed to find many well respected scientists who vary from the consensus. There is a difference between these types of consensus and AGW.
I think the comparison most enlightening is the theory of dark matter. Most experts in the field agree with the dark matter theory, but there are a significant number of well respected scientists in the field who don't agree with the theory and support alternative theories. This is pretty much exactly the case that I found when I researched the science behind AGW. There are solid theories and data to support the idea, but there are solid arguments made by respected science against it.
The huge difference between dark matter theories and AGW is the kind of discussion that happens if you happen to disagree with one of them. Personally, I previously preferred quantum gravity theory. I could say so and people might disagree with me or point out the flaws in the theory or point out the evidence for dark matter, but nobody called me a denialist. Nobody suggested that doubting the preferred theory was unreasonable. People were interested and even passionate about it, but they argued the facts rather than suggesting that scientists were being dishonest or that it was some massive conspiracy. Nobody said "You've bought into the propaganda machine hook, line and sinker." When new evidence (the Bullet Cluster) was presented, I changed my mind. I still like the elegance of TeVeS, but I'm now more inclined to believe the dark matter and energy theories. Waiting for new evidence wasn't irrational but heaven forbid you take that stance on AGW because you get hit by both sides as if you were an enemy.
AGW is a reasonable theory with substantial data to support it. It is supported by credible scientists. To say that all the data supports it or that any expert in the field who disagrees with it is disingenuous or uneducated is unfair, inaccurate and bluntly unreasonable. The fact is that both proponents and opponents of the theory tend toward emotional rather than logical discourse. That is why I find the issue so frustrating. It IS different because people attach almost a religious significance to it, unlike pretty much any other young scientific theory. (I know you're thinking 'evolution!' but evolution isn't what I'd call a new theory regardless of how much religious significance people attach to it.)
The key here is that a scientist is not an "A" authority, as in someone with magically invoked leadership or infallibility for social, religious or political reasons. A scientist is an "a" authority as in, has studied the topic to the point of being one of the world's leading experts in the field. In this sense it make perfect sense to give this person's (the "a" authority) opinion greater weight than let's say Billy-Bob down at the Pump-N-Dump. If you want a beer that doesn't make you pee smell funny, Billy-Bob is your man, climate change, I go to a different expert.
The problem with all of this is a disruption from sanity that began in the late 70s. During the late 70s the President of that day said we'd have to get more conscious about how we used energy and how our use impacted the world. To that end he changed the speed limit to 55, added solar power to the White House and began a program to make the United States the world largest and most affluent provider of solar power. He was confronting American peak oil and wanted to wean the U.S. off of cheap middle-eastern oil. Most importantly, he was deeply concerned, as were we all with ensuring the world we gave to our children was as fit to live in as the one our parents gave to us.
That man was defeated by a very clever and expensive Wallstreet campaign to discredit environmental accountability. It was portrayed as weak, as unpatriotic, as anti-business, as simply Unamerican. In fact since then, huge inflows of finance from vested fossil fuel interests have ensured that the public is buried in false controversy and disinformation all designed to perpetuate their control of the nation's energy policy and their exploding bank accounts.
When we say there is scientific consensus on the topic of global climate change, we aren't speaking of one person, or group, or even discipline. We are speaking of tens of thousands of scientists working in hundreds of different disciplines from ocean chemistry to meteorology to high altitude atmospheric biodynamics. When so many people from so many different disciplines create a picture that is consistent from so many different perspectives it makes it bloody hard to ignore without simply stating the obvious "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up."
People believe what they want. Personally, I used to believe we were on the precipice of environmental disaster, but recent evidence suggests perhaps we have more time than originally suspected. My beliefs/concerns/opinions change according to the FACTS as they arrive. That is the mark of a healthy mind, not being governed by a fixed ideology or belief system. The global system is tremendously complex and its still beyond us to make a perfect model of it. That doesn't mean that it will forgive our abuse indefinitely. It means we have time perhaps to make wise choices and meaningful changes that enhance human life and help those in poorer places share some of the benefits of expanding technology. To ignore the obvious is to temp fate and bring needless suffering. Just as some religions need to responsibly address their positions on issues like contraception, Americans have to confront their core beliefs. We are no longer cowboys, and shooting from the hip just leaves a lot of collateral damage. As much as we all want to be Duke Wayne, perhaps its time for us to all be a little more Jimmy Stewart.
Friend I have to say you are clearly no expert on this topic. First of all, it would be the easiest thing in the world to cite sources until your eyes bleed, all you have to do is the simplest of Google searches to find endless research papers written on thousands of different topics all relating to changing global climate and biochemistry. Here, just try this search: "impact of increased greenhouse gases on environment". Just remember to "hide personal results", or you'll just keep getting the same stupid stuff as usual (I in fact stopped using mine because I'm interested in both or more sides of any conversation.)
As for how little we know... that's just a plain and simple falsification. We have ocean cores, we have ice cores, we have thermal analysis of rock stratum, we have samples of air, and pollen, and biota going back hundreds of millions of years from a vast assortment of fossils (we've even recently reconstituted organic dinosaur tissues from mineral fossils, recovering both DNA and cellular matrix.) We know more about earth's climate than you can possible imagine. We know about its chemistry, the impact of ice ages and past CO2 events, and mass extinctions, plant species and the complex interaction between atmospheric chemistry, plants and the animals that ate them. The tremendous bulk of our evidence (those ice and ocean floor cores), provides us with information about the atmosphere, ocean, and climates over the last 5 million years. Over the past 300 years we have accurate weather records. Over the past 50 years we have satellites and intensive global research on climate and atmospheric chemistry. Over the last 200 years we have good solar records. The fact is, we have literally mountains of data and the models though not complete are good (notice I didn't say they were great.) Recent study suggests there are feed-backs we have not accounted for. The recent rise in greenhouse gas should have precipitated more warming than we're actually seeing. This is probably good. The system is more dynamic and able to rebound than we suspected. That doesn't mean the basic premises are wrong or that we should just carry on burning down the planet. The point I'm trying to make is that science isn't exact... it's a quantum thing... but you simply can't escape the basic physics of this. Thermodynamics ultimately doesn't care what your core beliefs are.