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97% of Climate Science Papers Agree Global Warming Is Man-made
An anonymous reader writes "A meta-study published yesterday looked at over 12,000 peer-reviewed papers on climate science that appeared in journals between 1991 and 2011. The papers were evaluated and categorized by how they implicitly or explicitly endorsed humans as a contributing cause of global warming. The meta-study found that an overwhelming 97.1% of the papers that took a stance endorsed human-cause global warming. They also asked the 1,200 of the scientists involved in the research to self-evaluate their own studies, with nearly identical results. In the interest of transparency, the meta-study results were published in an open access journal, and the researchers set up a website so that anybody can check their results. From the article: '... a memo from communications strategist Frank Luntz leaked in 2002 advised Republicans, "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate." This campaign has been successful. A 2012 poll from U.S. Pew Research Center found less than half of Americans thought scientists agreed humans were causing global warming. The media has assisted in this public misconception, with most climate stories "balanced" with a "skeptic" perspective. However, this results in making the 2–3% seem like 50%. In trying to achieve "balance," the media has actually created a very unbalanced perception of reality. As a result, people believe scientists are still split about what's causing global warming, and therefore there is not nearly enough public support or motivation to solve the problem.'"
Too bad the scientific method is no match for the stick-your-fingers-in-your-ears-and-yell-la-la-la-la-la method.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But saying that 97% of climate science papers agree on it does not validate it.
Agreed: that's subtle, but that's a wise distinction to make.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Without regard to whether or not anthropogenic climate change is real: Which papers get published are largely a function of who's on the editorial board of each publication. If those boards are stacked with people holding a particular position, they tend to publish only papers which agree with that position.
That's an extremely biased viewpoint.
I know for a fact that 11,500 of those so-called "peer-reviewed papers" were paid for by Big Tree.
100% of people thought the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it for the longest time too.
I am not commenting on Global warming.
I am wondering if the bias in publications plays any role in these numbers. Any idea how hard it is to publish something that goes against standard scientific thought in any field?
Have no mod points, you would get one.
I think they mean 97% of scientists agree that some amount of global warming is caused by mankind.The amount that is caused by humans may be some or even most, but I don't think anyone could argue that it is ALL caused by mankind.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
They might all agree but I read this climatescienceskeptic blog which gives a whole bunch of really obvious ideas about why its natural or not happening at all like the solar output or volcanos which I'm pretty sure that all the scientists are too dumb to have realised happen so I'm going to go with the blog.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The problem is that science . . . as a scholarly field as opposed to the practice of science . . . has no way to deal with the idea that a significant percentage of our leaders are in willful denial of the sound science. The reality of the research is defeated by their ideology.
This is not new (ask Gallileo) but it is new for the U.S.
I think we're just fucked.
The answer is some combination of US government funding sources i.e. EPA, NSF, pick your favorite three letter acronym. these funding bodies already "believe" in man made climate change. The real bias is not the publications, it's the funding and the publish or perish nature of academic research. No on is willing to bite the hand that feeds them.
> Most scientists believed the earth was flat. In the mid 1800's 99% of leading scientists did not
> believe in microbes. Louis Pasteur did. Consensus is meaningless.
Not true. By the 1490s, it had already been pretty well established that the earth was round. It was the uneducated masses and official church dogma that this was not true, and this created a climate where openly saying the earth was round was not exactly a safe position to take.
So while it may not have been en vogue to say the earth was round, privately, amongst those who did study the issue, it was allready known.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I'd read through the papers of the 97% and the 3% before I would say that 97% of the papers does not validate it.
...that reject AGW than there are that blame humans for most (>50%) of agw.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/on-the-consensus/
"The only time an abstract is rated as saying how much humans contribute to global warming is if it mentions:
that human activity is a dominant influence or has caused most of recent climate change (>50%).
If we use the system’s search feature for abstracts that meet this requirement, we get 65 results. That is 65, out of the 12,000+ examined abstracts. Not only is that value incredibly small, it is smaller than another value listed in the paper:
Reject AGW 0.7% (78)
Remembering AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming, or global warming caused by humans, take a minute to let that sink in. This study done by John Cook and others, praised by the President of the United States, found more scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming than say humans are primarily to blame for it."
Boy, warmists are really bad at math!
You are full of shit. Scientists have known that the earth is not flat since antiquity. The even got the diameter approximately right. Columbus miscalculated the diameter and thought that he sailed to India.
Learn a bit of history, before making ignorant posts.
If you go against the consensus you are anti-science!
And looking for some citations on this in wiki...it seems I may have confused the geocentric/heliocentric world with the flat earth, even the church talked about the roun earth. Thomas Aquinas (who died in the 1200s) said:
"The physicist proves the earth to be round by one means, the astronomer by another: for the latter proves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort; while the former proves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the center, and so forth."
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Indeed. Proof is everything, the rest are just words spoken by people who have no clue either way.
... whatever
Do those 97% of papers all predict the same effects of the man-made global warming?
And are those predicted effects of man-made global warming actually observed in real data that occurred *after* the predictions were made?
Once again, we go back to the standard process of: Weather event X occurs. (where, for example, X is a cool and wet spring that just happened in the midwest).
X is either:
1. PREDICTED BY GLOBAL WARMING MODELS!*
* Which model? There are so many to choose from and "global warming" can mean everything from "it will never snow in Europe again! We will have malaria and jungle diseases covering Norway!" to "Europe will be covered in glaciers because the Atlantic currents will fail!"
OR:
2. SO WHAT IF IT WASN'T PREDICTED! THAT'S JUST LOCAL WEATHER NOT THE CLIMATE!*
* But don't worry, if it gets hot this summer or if there's a mild winter somewhere, that will be proof of global warming and not "just the weather". You see, it's a one-way street where global warming is always right.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
What you say is definitively true. But that is not the point of the article, the point is to verify that the vast majority of experts believes (base don their study) that global warming is man made. Yet everybody you talk to tends to say to "experts are still debating". Well, with these numbers they are not still debating, they are pretty much convinced.
Yet, they might be wrong. But policies have to be made based on experts opinion. And that opinion is not properly represented in the media.
Strawman argument: no one is saying the studies are valid because there's a consensus about it. They're valid based on the science IN those studies. What the consensus means is that we are idiots to not invest in trying to avoid it. Perhaps it would have been foolish to start heavily taxing coal and oil back in the 70's or 80's, as climate change may have proven to be a false hypothesis, but now it's foolish not to. Or at least extraordinarily selfish and short-sighted.
Actually according to them, only 32.6% "of climate science papers agree on it":
We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. source
Right, you can never validate a hypothesis in science. You can only fail to falsify it. In other words, no one can seem to come up with another good explanation for the warming we've observed, so we've failed to falsify the idea that it's due to carbon dioxide emissions, a hypothesis first proposed in 1896. That doesn't mean it's the truth, but I sure know which way I'd bet!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
"Appeal to authority" isn't always a problem. It can be a problem when the "authorities" aren't actually subject matter experts, and it's a fallacy when applied in deductive reasoning (not inductive, however).
Cleverly crafted propaganda will overwhelm objective scientific studies every time.
Even though it is true that a significant majority of scientists who study climate change agree that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that will cause warming, the real debate still rages on in regards to the feedback effect that CO2 actually has in influencing the rate of warming. When you frame the question on the issue of 'does CO2 cause global warming', the answer is a unanimous 'yes'. When you frame the question in terms of the actual issue- 'will CO2 warming cause a feedback effect that will lead to the destruction of life on earth', the answer is anything but unanimous.
Proof is for mathematics and liquor. Science provides the best explanation based on current data, and there best explanation at the moment is that CO2 emissions from manmade sources are a major cause of observed climate change.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Absolutely not true.
A huge swath of that 3% was dealing with non-climate change matters, and didn't take climate change into account for their results. I think what I've heard is that when it comes to peer-reviewed articles explicitly opposed to AGW, there was just one in the past decade. Out of tens of thousands.
Of course there are sheningans abound. To start with, I'm pretty sure that at least 97% of all scientific papers aren't about global warming, greenhouse gases, or atmospheric science at all.
Like the cat food advert, this should probably say " 97% of all scientific papers which expressed a preference..."
And yet, the planet seem to persistently refuse to get warmer...
I, too, agree with the science behind it. However, I have to ask this question, since the wording of the article isn't clear:
It says "97% of publications that take a stand on AGW," but does "we can't tell for sure" count as "taking a stand"?
If all we're being told is that, of the people who say yes or no, 97% say yes and 3% say no, while some other unspecified number of papers say "inconclusive", that's a far less headline-grabbing result. But it's the result that matters.
For those not of the scientific persuasion, 97% agree with the methodology, data aquisition, and conclusions that arrive at the answer that climate is man made. They're not just saying "I agree with this paper". They're saying, "I've studied the science behind this paper and the science is legit. Therefore the paper is legit." That's a big freaking difference.
Most Americans have a shaky understanding of cause and effect, courtesy of years of public education where feelings trump facts, opinions trump research, ineptitude trumps ability, and equal outcomes trump equal opportunity. As a result, other than saying "stop global warming", nobody really cares - they assume that "someone" will fix it, and that someone is probably "the government". You'll hear things like "global warming is bad, but I need a minivan to drive my 4 kids (which I _chose_ to have) to soccer" or "they should just tax rich people" or "blame China". Nobody wants to be the guy who actually sacrifies anything.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Are written by quack pseudo science climate DENIERS! They should have their credentials revoked. They're not practicing science, they're practicing DOGMA! Everyone KNOWS that climate change is 100% man-made! Data from billions of years ago proves it!
They should burn their papers ... oh wait!
People could agree with you on the cause, but disagree that taxes - in any form - are the solution. Don't confuse a scientific proof with a political action.
Only on
So whatever the majority of scientists say is canon, and if you go against it, you're being heretical. If you're being heretical, then you float, which means you're made of wood, and therefore, are a witch. BURN the witch!!
I can't disagree ... witches are a renewable resource
Let's not kid ourselves, we are not naive here. The whole point of this article is to tell people that the experts are not debating and are in fact in a consensus on this issue (check the reply above you http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3760341&cid=43752173 ). My point is, I wouldn't care if it was the opposite, I would still believe it because it is based on sound science.
the point is to verify that the vast majority of experts believes (base don their study) that global warming is man made.
Is entirely man-made or man contributed to it? Those are two very different statements. If we only contribute that suggests that it's going to happen no matter what we do, the best we could hope for is to delay the inevitable. Given the history of the planet, I think this is the more likely scenario and we would be better off spending our energy figuring out how, as a species, to survive it when it inevitably happens.
That's because journalists, as a class, are simply not very intelligent people.
They're children of rich kids who are too stupid to do something more socially useful -- and being rich -- they gravitate towards people who wield power, and are usually the most irresponsible when it comes to wielding their own power. Only rich kids can afford to become journalists, since only people whose parents can pay them to do wage-free internships and cadetships can make it through.
There's nothing wrong with the science. They're something wrong with the privileged, clueless swine who purport to be the gatekeepers of our democracy.
Here's the way I see it. Scientists are like any other professionals. The ones that are doing top level research are the elites of their field. Some deniers will say that it is just everyone just covering each other when you get 97% consensus. At their level, you don't win grants and Nobel prizes by proving something everyone else has proven. You get them by discovering something no one else has found before. Scientists are arrogant and opinionated as much as your professional athlete, top notch lawyer, whatever. If you've ever attended meetings, discussions can delve into nasty fights reminiscent of British parliament debates. If 97% of them agree on something, then the science is probably sound.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Actually it does. That's how science works, general consensus based on peer review of the evidence.
Man-made Global Warming is more scientifically valid than the use of Aspirin to prevent a heart attack and save your life.
It was the uneducated masses and official church dogma that this was not true, and this created a climate where openly saying the earth was round was not exactly a safe position to take.
Which means to say that the majority of published scientific findings said what? I would guess the safe, untrue thing that would keep said scientist(s) alive and free. This does not help the argument.
"Appeal to authority" isn't always a problem. It can be a problem when the "authorities" aren't actually subject matter experts
Precisely
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Perhaps they should rename it into "man-made acceleration of global warming/climate change", that might calm down the "climate change is always natural"-crowd a little bit down.
The question isn't any more if global warming is true or even if it's man made, the question is rather what is the best thing 'man' can do to keep a comfortable climate, before it is is getting too uncomfortable for us. Life on earth will adapt, if it's not entirely wiped out, but the time frame and the outcome of this adaptation most likely won't suit humanity as it is now. Stop the current perversion of our consumer market and all the pollution which is caused by it, would be the obvious start.
Even though I'm still a sceptic on various degrees of human contribution that doesn't mean at all that I welcome the climate change at all. I still encourage people to pollute less, try and buy longer lasting products that don't have to be replaced after few years, even though those are more expensive, and to gradually become vegetarians for various reasons. Burning more and more fossil fuels and holding back on alternative and regenerative energy sources will lead to problems in the future anyway, even if we could reverse the changes to our climate.
It can't be good to cut down more and more forests, especially rain forests, even though the mayor part of biological CO2 reduction is done by algae. It also can't be good to consume as much meat as we do, build more and more cattle farms and provide food and water for these, where also a lot of fossil fuels are wastes for logistics.
Even climate change deniers have to realize that this will cause problems in the future.
That is true, and scientists, philosophers, and the educated lay person know this, but for most of the population appeals to authority are major determinants of their beliefs. The whole point of this study is to harness this simple psychological fact to push through the FUD spread by people like the republicans mentioned in the summary. That's why it's published in an open access journal, and that's why everything has been made as transparent as possible. Of course, actual marketing and the involvement of the relevant Justin Bieber for every demographic would be more effective still, but this is a good start.
Secondly, they don't all believe in the same god.
Thirdly, they don't have any evidence of their god being real.
Indeed in all ways noted, the deniers (such as yourself) are more like the priests.
97% of deniers believe AGW is a fraud.
They don't believe in the same reason for that being true. And they have no evidence of their personal belief in their stated reason for it being a fraud.
"They also asked the 1,200 of the scientists involved in the research to self-evaluate their own studies, with nearly identical results."
This must be some kind of joke (or a poor summary). "self-evaluate own studies .. identical results" is an in-effect tautology.
Science doesn't have a way to deal with the idea that a large number of scientist agree on something that is wrong either. As a scientist working in a different field, I assure you it is very hard to publish anything on the unpopular view point. No matter how much data you have.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Unfortunately, voting is not science. 99% of scientist used to say that "the Earth was flat", that "the Earth was the center of the Universe", that... All proved wrong.
I'm not arguing one way or the other on global warming but rather that having agreement is not a good metric.
By the way, I'm not a global warming skeptic. In fact, I'm pro-warming, it's better than the alternative of global cooling!
So man-made non-rotating-metallic-planet-core? You realize mars did not experience a greenhouse effect death of its environment right? It's a third the size of Earth and its core stopped rotating long ago, causing it to lose its magnetosphere. It then lost most of the thin atmosphere it had to solar winds, making it heat up during the day and freeze at night. It did not experience a greenhouse gas overload Armageddon.
And why don't more people on this thread realize this? Everyone is saying "97% of scientists agree" when really, 2/3 of scientists didn't even take a position!
In other news, only a minority of physics papers agree that conservation of energy is real. The rest don't even mention it.
I find your lack of understanding of the philosophy and method of science disturbing.
In science, one can very rarely, if ever, "prove it irrefutably". One makes hypotheses to explain observations. The hypotheses must make testable predictions. The longer an hypothesis stands against scrutiny, and the more its predictions are verified, and the more new evidence is discovered which fits into the hypothesis, the more accepted it is considered.
Also, you say "else the first scientist to come along with better proof than yours will knock the whole house of cards down". My ignorant friend, this is exactly what science is. Exactly. If this were not the case it would not be science. At some point an accepted hypothesis becomes Theory, which is to say that if some contradictory observation were to be verified, it would necessitate a world-view-changing paradigm shift. Think, for example, of the revolution from Newtonian physics to General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics; an important thing to note is that the previous Theory was not even disproved - only its boundaries of accurate description of reality more rigorously defined.
That 97% of the body of published climate science finds in favour of the man-made global warming hypothesis, but none of the 3% against has yet managed to present verified disproof means it is only those ignorant of science that would disagree simply on the grounds of personal comfort.
(Probably for fear of having their research censored and funding cut for expressing a view counter to the establishment.)
A potential environmental catastrophe is impending. Why concentrate on who's guilty? The interesting question is, what are we going to do about it?
Nothing. Which is the correct thing to do. As you put it, there is a potential environmental catastrophe. The emphasis should be on the word potential. I believe the earth is changing. I believe humans are the main cause for these changes. I believe these changes will have some negative impacts. However, I am not willing to spend a large amount of money or impose taxes on carbon to avoid these unknown negative impacts. I haven't been convinced the money we spend on prevention will be less than the money spent on dealing with the changes.
That's absolute poppycock. Anyone who knows geometry (I assume all competent scientists do) and investigates the situation will quickly determine the Earth is round.
The Pythaogoreans speculated the Earth was round in the 6th century BC, and Eratosthenes proved it and came up with a pretty accurate measure of it's diameter in the 3rd century BC. He even devised a system of longtitude and latitude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth
WHAT DO THEY TEACH IN SCHOOL THESE DAYS?
The idea that scientists though the Earth was flat in the 1800s is the most ridiculous thing I have read on slashdot, I have a 5 digit ID!!!
On the other hand if 97% of climate science papers would agree on climate change NOT happening, this would be it. Case closed. Nobody would ever talk about it again.
But saying that 97% of climate science papers agree on it does not validate it.
The article does not say that. What it says is that 97% that take a stance, take a pro-human-cause stance. But nowhere does it say what percentage take a stance.
The jury is still out, though the preponderance of evidence points to AGW being real.
The folks arguing against it are doing so because they are resisting change. They don't want to change in their lifestyle or perceive action taken to address AGW as a threat to their livelihood. Certainly the oil lobby does opposes it because their profits are potentially impacted.
The folks arguing for it are doing so because they want change or are scared what might happen if they don't change. These are businesses who think they'll benefit from the changes and regular folks who perceive a threat to the globe.
For myself, I don't know. However, I think we should use this as an opportunity to live more sustainably and impact the environment less. Instead of dominating the Earth with an iron fist, instead be caretakers of all species and environments.
... there's really no scientific consensus about this. It's entirely irresponsible to report this as though it were an unchallenged fact. We need a more "fair and balanced" approach to the topic. We really need to hear from experts from the Flat Earth Society to provide a counter point.
http://theflatearthsociety.org/
No, but that's not the point. The thousands and thousands of scientific studies validate it. The 97% figure invalidates the talking point that there's significant disagreement among scientists that global warming is real and manmade. If one study concludes that temperatures will rise 1 degree in the next decade and another study concludes that they will rise 1.2 degrees, skeptics call that "disagreement" and dismiss both conclusions completely.
Get with the program. We call it climate change now, since the global temperature hasn't risen in over 16 yrs and is lower than the 2sigma range of the models.
You're wrong.
We call it climate change now due to fucking idiots going "Global Warm'n?! It's COLD OUT, HAR HAR HAR."
Personally I'm expecting after 3-4 more Superstorms like Sandy that MAYBE the morons in my country will finally get a clue, but by then Keystone XL will be forced through and we'll be quite well and truly fucked. But hey, at least a few people will get rich in the process, right?
Hahahaha!
Some of you are so clueless I find comfort in the fact that my potential demise because of global climate change probably means your demise aswell.
Even those of you who are astroturfers ought to be able to see through the noise of FOX Entertainmet Network and all your religious entrepeneurs. I'll dumb it down for the one person of you with enough cognitive ability to get it:
If your car is broken down you go to a car mechanic.
If your teeth hurt you go to a dentist.
If you feel very ill you go to a medical doctor.
If you want to learn about climate science you go to a climate scientist.
Because they are the human beings with the most knowledge about climate science. If there is an overwhelming consensus among them then you are plain stupid to ignore it.
Don't have time to read all the articles linked in the summary but I do recall a few inconvenient facts about global warming. I recall that the global temperature peaked in 1998 and has not broken that record since. I also recall that CO2 levels have reached a new peak. I recall that the temperature reached in 1998 was lower than that of 1934. There seems to be a certain difficulty to create a correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures.
The bigger problem I have is all the government regulation based on this claim of man made global warming. The fact that the correlation has not yet been proven is only a small part. The problem is that the government is keeps getting bigger to supposedly fight global warming but they do nothing in their direct power to do something about it.
Just one example, federal buildings in DC are heated by one of the dirtiest coal fired power plants in the federation. If they were serious about global warming then I would expect them to do something about this first before telling me what kind of heat I can use in my own home.
I'll take global warming seriously once the federal government does.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
What about a situation in which 97.1% of people studying something come to a particular conclusion, while the 2.9% don't actually produce any evidence but merely claim that the evidence of the 97.1% is insufficient, while many of them just happen to be on the payroll of people who have a major financial interest in the conclusion in question not being true?
Because this is basically what the conversation looks like right now:
97.1%: "Foo points to this conclusion."
2.9%: "No, that's not enough evidence. What about Bar?"
97.1%: "We spent a couple of years looking at Bar, and that points to the same conclusion."
2.9%: "Well, but what about Foobar?"
97.1%: "After another couple of years of study, we know that Foobar points to the same conclusion."
2.9%: "Well, but what about Baz?"
This will continue until the consequences of the conclusion cause major disruptions to the status quo.
And I should point out that there's no real relationship between the beliefs of scientists and the beliefs of the general public, while there is a relationship between the beliefs of scientists and actually proven scientific truth. For instance, approximately 100% of biologists believe that the Theory of Evolution is basically right, while only 54% of the American public agrees with them.
I am officially gone from
Has our burning of fossil fuels helped? no. But we certainly haven't caused this. If anything we just gave nature a jump start.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
Good for you, but I have to say that while it's kinda an argument from authority, it's a good case of an argument from authority. If 97% of people who are expert in something have an opinion that contradicts mine on a specific issue, then it's at least reason to review what I believe and really confirm I know something that the world's experts seemingly do not.
And this is especially the case when I genuinely don't know as much as they do on the subject.
So it's a useful fact to know. And it's a useful fact to use.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
So whatever the majority of scientists say is canon, and if you go against it, you're being heretical. If you're being heretical, then you float, which means you're made of wood, and therefore, are a witch. BURN the witch!!
Now the cool thing about this argument is: You can apply this to say, Flat Earth Creationism and you'll have the exact same thing.
"Our science says the planet is a sphere and orbits the sun, not a flat disc that is orbited by the Sun like the Church claims."
"YEAH, BUT 3% OF SCIENTISTS ARE BEING PAID BY THE VATICAN AND THUS YOUR THEORY IS INVALID."
"... You're an idiot. The vast majority of scientists agree that the Earth is round, approaching 100% when you cut out people who have obvious biases -- like scientists being funded by the church."
"So whatever the majority of scientists say is canon, and if you go against it, you're being heretical. If you're being heretical, then you float, which means you're made of wood, and therefore, are a witch. BURN the witch!!"
The ancient greeks knew that the earth was round. They even had a pretty good estimate of its radius, and the distance to the sun.
> The idea that scientists though the Earth was flat in the 1800s is the most ridiculous thing I have read on slashdot, I have a 5 digit ID!!!
In the poster's defence, he actually said that this was the opinion in 1490, not the 1800s. Still incorrect but, is a more understandable point of confusion since it was before the general public really had had it shown and explained to them. His point about the 1800s was about the existence of germs.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Why is it MAN made? Why not WOMAN made?
I see more women driving the largest SUV possible. MY wife spends far more time in the bathroom running tons of electrical devices.
Help fight the Sexism in climate science!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I wasn't. The taxes were an example of what would have been rash in the 70's given what we knew then. How I wrote it did perhaps suggest that I thought taxes were the only solution now, but that was a mistake, I didn't mean to suggest those were the only solution, nor did I mean to imply that science was telling us taxes were the only solution.
I think given the scale of the problem and how long we've procrastinated, it will take more than one act. I do think fossil fuel taxes are an essential part of any real solution. Government doesn't do much well besides tax, fine, and jail people. Making alternative energy solutions economically viable is pretty much the only thing the government can do, anything else is just a PR move to avoid real change. Additionally, fossil fuels have always had most of their costs externalized, making people pay for the carbon they are emitting from fossil fuels, I don't see anything wrong with that.
Conversely, discounting the majority of scientific finding because it does not match what a particular group wants does not mean they are right. It does however mean that they have to provide better models then the majority.
Put another way, in science, the majority usually IS right, and there is a well established method for showing otherwise. Thus using majority opinion as an indicator of correctness, while not infallible, is generally pretty good. If nothing else the probability of 3% allowing political belief to influence their conclusions is greater then 97% doing so.
I believe you misunderstand the fallacy. Credentials are important for a reason: for the same reason we don't let just anyone set out a shingle and perform surgery, having a means of identifying people with specific knowledge is helpful in deciding whether that person is likely to be providing information of value. No one says that means the person in question cannot be wrong, and anyone who uses credentialism to deny the possibility of error is indeed committing a fallacy. But simply saying that someone is more likely to know what they're talking about because they have the background to demonstrate knowledge of a certain field is NOT a fallacy. Ironically, you yourself prove why listening to people who are not subject matter experts is potentially a bad idea by citing incorrect information about global warming, which I suspect you garnered by refusing to listen to those who know what they're talking about.
Kythe
Classic science fiction:
Jerks ignore the expert scientists, causing big disasters and at the climax it's all resolved by finally utilizing science... Often by some dumb jock / pretty boy that is wise enough to listen to the science and save the day. The jerks are usually put in their place as well. Sadly, in the real world it plays out similarly but the jerks get rich and the story is boring slow and drawn out - so nobody watches.
Educated guesses by EXPERTS are the best thing we can possibly have and when they agree so highly it should be followed. Hindsight is 20/20 but the ACTUAL scientific proof won't come until AFTERWARDS... when it is too late. Science can't predict the future; it can only test the past!
EXPERTS make the best educated guesses mankind has at any moment in time - their error rate after the fact is irrelevant, the best you have beforehand are the people who make the best guesses based upon known FACT. not beliefs/dogma/opinions.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
More scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming than say humans are primarily to blame for it:
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/05/17/latest-97-consensus-study-goes-belly-up-study-found-more-scientific-publications-whose-abstracts-reject-global-warming-than-say-humans-are-primarily-to-blame-for-it/
Holy SHIT there are a lot of ACs, all of which have the same talking points and same writing style. I'd love to see ACs get a "hash" of their IP address or something so we can detect AC sockpuppetry.
Anyway. ClimateDepot is a global warming denier website ran by Marc Morano, a GOP operative working for Republican Sen. James Inhofe, and is funded by... wait for it... wait for it...
ExxonMobil, to the shock of absolutely noone.
In short, ClimateDepot is Astroturfing BULLSHIT designed to give GOP and Oil Industry Shills a place to link to to try and continue climate change denialism. It's not a valid source and by linking to it you show you're less than worthless -- you are actively harming the discussion by participating. Negative value.
97% of Climate Science Papers Agree Global Warming Is Man-made
Slashdot: news for nerds, stuff that's obvious.
You're right that educated people have known that the earth wasn't flat for a long time.
However, you need to learn some history too: there were no scientists in antiquity or the middle ages.
If RIGHT, can you do anything about it with 7 billion people in the world, most of which don't care!
Not taking a stand in the abstract, means that the paper is not concerned with this issue.
It doesn't mean that the author has no opinion on the subject.
I don't think many scientists spends much time on the question, as there's clearly a consensus that global warming is man made, so papers are more likely trying to predict and/or document effects.
Some skeptics like Richard Muller didn't dispute the climate change's basic premise. He just didn't think there was enough evidence to draw a conclusion. With more evidence (including some he gathered himself), he has reversed his position.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
All arguments about complex topics require appeals to authority. For instance, if I argue that F=ma for ordinary-sized objects, I'm going to appeal to authority and cite Isaac Newton and numerous physicists since then, rather than stop my argument and prove that point by re-doing Isaac Newton's much more competent work on the subject.
Appeals to authority are fine when:
1. The authority is legitimately an expert in the field in question.
2. What that authority is saying matches what other authorities say (if they don't agree, then you have to dive into the details of why they say what they say in order to legitimately use their opinion).
The same person can be both an authority and not an authority. For instance, if we're discussing linguistics, Noam Chomsky is a qualified authority who's views are pretty widely accepted in the field. If we're discussing international law, he's not, and if you want to argue his viewpoint you need to cite the better-qualified authorities that Chomsky references to argue his point.
I am officially gone from
97.1% of the abstracts that take a stance on AGW endorse it. Abstracts that don't take a stance either way don't provide any relevant data here.
Furthermore the GP's example of "A hundred authors against Einstein" is such a ridiculous and unapplicable example, I wonder if he understood the first thing about it.
Firstly, this list was extremely thin and tenuous - just read the fucking wikipedia link he posted. It should require no explanation from me. Most of the disagreement was from before any experimental verifications and independant observations of the theory. Even if ten thousand scientists had voiced disagreement in unison in a letter, it would be worth SHIT without EVIDENCE to contradict the existing verifications and observations.
We have a completely inverted version of this regarding the publications of climate science above: we have almost all the experts and scientists publishing work after work of verification, validation, experimentation, observation, all in favour of the reality of man-made global warming. Jesus, Penguinisto, what a fucking stupid comment.
Thank goodness someone took the time to read the article and make some sense here. Numbers can always be twisted to whatever agenda you want.
I think the word you're lookinh for is Anthropogenic, Anthropomorphism is something else entirely. The rest of your point isn't even worth refuting. If you want a massive grant to prove global warming isn't real, pop into your nearest Shell or BP office, you'll come out with stuffed with cash!
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Validation comes form evidence, not consensus.
BUT consensus also comes from evidence.
If you are an expert in a field, which means that you have personal experience doing research in that area, and have been following the literature for several years, you base your judgment on the evidence.
But if you are not an expert in the field, you do not have the background knowledge to correctly evaluate the evidence.
In this case, your best proxy for the evidence is the consensus of the people who are experts.
"But the consensus can be wrong!" you reply.
Yes, it can. But as the saying goes, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that's the way to bet."
The reason that people who successfully challenge the consensus become famous is because it is so rare. Everybody always cites the same handful of examples—Galileo, plate tectonics, germ theory, relativity. They do so because there really aren't that many clear examples of a broad scientific consensus being completely overturned.
The consensus is not infallible, but most of the time, it turns out to be right, or very nearly so. This is particularly true in a mature field like climate science, where the consensus is the result of the work of many scientists over many decades.
97% of scientists agree that global warming has the best and strongest proof. Now what?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Yes, a lot of climatologists agree that there is a modest increase in global temperatures.
That in no way qualifies them to make statements or predictions about economics, agriculture, land use, or politics, and they certainly have no right to dictate to the rest of us how we make tradeoffs between current and future consumption.
*Hiding* in semantics? Contradiction of your understanding of something by means of explicit definition and clarification is *hiding*?
97% of all published science bolsters a specific theory. How exactly are you missing the fact that this makes it the best and strongest proof?
Anecdotes that you read someplace on the interwebs do not qualify as evidence.
there was no situation like that. The people who didn't get published had no facts to support them, and then whined that there was some sort of conspiracy against them.
You know what? they also won't run critiques saying gravity isn't real either.
" I'm saying that our ability to judge the severity and impact is hindered by this stupid 'silence the opposition' attitude."
And you are wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thank you. Also known as appeal to belief. 98% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, God must exist.
Now, let's all play 'Call me a denier for asking a question.' (AKA Appeal to ridicule) Let's assume for a moment that a rise in atmospheric CO2 is attributable to man. Let's assume our current atmospheric CO2 is close to 400ppm. If 400ppm CO2 is causing global warming, then can someone please explain to me how the Earth's climate was cooler during the late Ordovician period when CO2 was about 4400ppm?
On what issue? That global average temperatures have been going up, to some (perhaps modest) degree due to human activity? Sure. But that agreement doesn't translate into anything meaningful conclusion.
Trouble is that AGW activists falsely portray this minor point of agreement as if there was widespread agreement on their predictions, scenarios, or proposed actions.
Actually, one scientist already destroyed this whole 'overwhelming numbers agree' argument
That doesn't count. We're talking about two competing scientific theories having a fair fight, not about a hopeless whiny reaction of angsty sciolists to a piece of new knowledge they found uncomfortable.
Ezekiel 23:20
I really thought oil companies were funding more than a mere 3% of climate science papers.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
...climate change. It's the solutions that are the issue. our very standard of living across the globe is dependent on how we create and use energy. Enviro-nuts will not have any recourse to global warming without a direct impact on how we ought to reverse course on how we do things, rather than initiate any kind of innovation to continue mkaing life better for everyone. i recall one group of climatologists suggested dropping microscopic silver particles into the stratosphere is order to reflect light and heat back in to space. It was rejected on it's face because it does not conform to the ideas that we have o stop producing carbon emmissions. It's all a very rigid orthodoxy.
and you would be stupid for doing so since the summary is incorrect.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The article does say, the summary is misleading.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
yes. this is how change happens. slavery, womens' rights, child labor laws, environmental laws. take that last one further, and we MIGHT be able to enable our existence for a while longer
The tree hugging AGW crowd are missing one very key element. Starving people don't care. They want food.
Which is all the more reason to be concerned about AGW, since the harm to agriculture is one of the biggest likely adverse effects of it.
I think you might be on to something. For example, it's basically impossible for those studying the Stork Theory of Reproduction to gain any government funding. Same problem with those looking into the Green Cheese Theory of The Moon. Obviously this mere fact invalidates biology and cosmology.
Mr. Bush, is that you?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The problem is that science . . . as a scholarly field as opposed to the practice of science . . . has no way to deal with the idea that a significant percentage of our leaders are in willful denial of the sound science. The reality of the research is defeated by their ideology.
Mathematics as a scholarly field has no way to deal with the fact that idiots exist in this world either. Should we abolish logic and proofs, and just prove by consensus?
Like, "Euler thought this statement was true... who dares opine against him?"
You know what, this kind of thinking held back scientific progress for a while, when they thought Aristotle (and the community consensus) was infallible.
Don't quote me on this.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/
It's a pretty old item, why is this news? Slashdot comment trolling, or something?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Most scientists after 500 BC believed the earth was spherical based on empirical evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth#Classical_Greece
"After the 5th century BC, no Greek writer of repute thought the world was anything but round."
Hell, Eratosthenes, in 240BC, got the diameter approximately right at ~25,000 miles.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Read the actual paper. It doesn't say that 97% of scientists agree on something. The article misinterpreted it the paper, and the Slashdot summary followed the article.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What the consensus means is that we are idiots to not invest in trying to avoid it.
Wait, what?
Let's assume it is unquestionably true that AGW is true. Why does it follow that we should invest in trying to avoid it?
I'm not saying it's unequivocally a bad idea to do so, but given that you're using the term "invest", you probably know you have the cost of investment and the expected payout. How could you intelligently invest in something if you don't even have these figured out?
I haven't heard of any solid data suggesting what the actual cost and benefits are, beyond the "sky is falling" arguments, which I don't think is what the 97% consensus is about. Besides, the point of "you're not a climate research scientist" goes both ways. On what grounds are scientists credible in making economic and policy changes without consulting actual economists and policy makers?
Don't quote me on this.
Man Made Clmiate Change AKA 'global warming'* is man made. That's what it mean in context. An increased in energy trapped in the lower atmosphere do you have more CO2 in the air.
Are their 'pre-human'** cycles? yes. This is an impact outside those bounds.
*AS a refresher the warming in global warming means an increase in energy. Personally I hate that name becasue it fails to show the whole picture. Hotter summers in some areas, wetter winters in others.
** I called them pre-human for brevity.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anthropomorphic global warming. Hee hee.
"Oh yeah, baby. I'm going to warm you up real good. I'm getting all up in your temperate climates and turning them into deserts. Yeah, you like that? Let me put on some Barry White. Now let's melt those glaciers off your top."
Taxes out how we pay for civilization.
If we want wide scale action, then taxes will be part of it, if for nothing else then as an incentive.
Taxes are not good or bad, no matter what people say. They are how we pay for things. We can discuss if the things we pay for have merit..sadly most people aren't really qualified to have the discussion.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A lot of global warming is probably man-made. I won't argue against that. But this particular statistic (97.1% of papers) is meaningless. I sincerely doubt that all 12,000 papers are primary research. Most likely a lot of them simply reference each other. It's the equivalent to Idiocracy's, "it has electrolytes".
Proverbs 21:19
If man had something to do with it, and our activity is essentially increasing exponentially with new humans being born all the time (and China kicking industrial action into high gear), then wouldn't the impact on climate also be exponential?
No, actually. CO2 concentrations increase temperature logarithmicly, so while population is increasing at a decreasing exponential rate (expected to hit 0% growth this century), the higher the concentration of CO2 goes, the less warming each addition ppm actualy contributes.
Human activity has been increasing, yet the whole warming thing STALLED 17 years ago.
You math is off, the warming trend is flat if (and only if) you take start from the fall of 1997, and that's 16 years currently. However, that's a cherry-picked start date and there are problems with choosing your data to make a particular point. more generally,you can always draw flat trend lines on noisy data regardless of whether the overall trend is up, down or constant.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Actually, one scientist already destroyed this whole 'overwhelming numbers agree' argument.
Short version: It does not matter how many or what percentage of a given group agrees with a politically-charged position. What does matter is who is actually right. Anyone trying to make an argument based on majorities is doing so from a failing position. Don't just agree with each other - prove it irrefutably, else the first scientist to come along with better proof than yours will knock the whole house of cards down.
DENIER!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Spot the guy not doing science. Just cus crap gets through (that backs up the popular view points) doesn't mean that good stuff doesn't. And I never said anything about a conspiracy. I am talking about people. For some reason everyone seems to forget that we (scientist) are just people.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Some skeptics like Richard Muller didn't dispute the climate change's basic premise. He just didn't think there was enough evidence to draw a conclusion. With more evidence (including some he gathered himself), he has reversed his position.
Wrong, it was not a "reversal". His position never really changed.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
tests. they teach tests.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You've made a mistake, it was two thirds of the scientific papers that didn't take a position on climate change. Most often, I think, because they weren't about climate change or a strongly related topic.
There are several other polls that showed that 97% of climate scientists agree that it's occurring, and 80-90% of scientists in related fields also think so.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Except it's not 97%, read the actual paper instead of the summary. And the others are producing evidence, and aren't on the payroll of major financial interests.
Other than that, it's just like what you said.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This should be included in TFS FFS! Almost every comment would be rendered moot by this.
Well, that's the thing, isn't it? There's no such thing as a proof strong enough that someone who disagrees can't just say "I don't think that's convincing". They don't even have to be telling the truth; they can just lie.
The proof is plenty solid, no one's found "better" proof to the contrary.
People dispute climate change for the same reason they dispute evolution; because there's a lot of money to be made selling doubt to people who want to doubt.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
97% of pornography contains pictures of naked humans
potential? no, it is happening. the only potential is the end effect. And that is determined on what we do to reduce CO2.
If you roll 2 six sides dices, your most likely out come(potential) is a seven. Not matter what that potential we know for sure a number will come up.
dealing with change? are you high? look, if we do not reduce CO2 the earth temperature will continue to rise. Will do so until the CO2 is reduces. The fact that it may make the humans extincts doesn't matter to nature.
There is no, well this is all the change it will cause so lets deal with it. there is continue to change, worse and worse* until it find a new balance.
We we remove the CO2 down to 290ppm great, thing will be stable fro humans. If we let it rise things will get worse. Since we are the cause of releasing more CO2 then can be reabsorbed, it will rise until we stop, even if the reason we stop is becasue the earth isn't habitable any more.
Your like those people who say, well then the currently frozen land will be used for farming! I always ask..then what? Cause it ain't stopping.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Gravity is not the best example. The reason is that we really DON'T understand gravity very well. We know that there is a force that we call gravity that causes objects to attract. However we don't have a solid idea how it actually works. We can't get it to unify with the other forces, there are indications that our best theory on it (general relativity) is incomplete and so on.
The FACT of gravity, that objects attract or on a more human scale that shit falls down. We observe this all the time, there's not really a question that there is this force. However the THEORY of gravity, meaning the explanation for what it is and how it works, is something that is not solid.
Now one can of course argue this to global warming as well. There is the fact that average global temperature has been rising, outside of known cycles. There is then the theory as to why, in particular that the primary or exclusive cause is increased atmospheric CO2 levels due to human emissions. One can accept the fact but argue the theory.
Just saying, maybe pick a better example.
Again I'll ask you guys for confirmation (no one has said "no, you're wrong" the previous times I've asked): what I've understood all along about AGW is that man-made greenhouse gas contributions are increasing the _rate_ of warming.
To be clear, that seems to be pretty well agreed on. But "the increasing rate of global warming is man-made" is not the same thing as "global warming is man-made". We could be reducing the rate of warming, and we'd still frequently be having record high global average temperatures, because the trend in this interglacial period that predates our industrialized influence has been _warming_.
Can we still ask for accurate science reporting without being tarred and feathered as "denialists"? Or is that not allowed?
... isn't run by consensus. I'm sure most documents back in the time of Galileo also stated the earth as the center of the universe.
... let me know when someone comes up with a theory that actually predicts something with accuracy better than psychics can. (i.e. stop making claims so nebulous they are always right no matter what happens.)
Yawn
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I tend to be skeptical about "everything". Since "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (AGW) seems to have made it into the headlines about the same time as "Medical Marijuana" and because of stupid comments such as "the planet has a fever", I am especially skeptical of AGW.
So, AGW advocates, convince me. What are some null hypotheses that are being used by scientists in support of AGW?
In all seriousness:
There is another consensus working here. The consensus is that You are crazy and ignorant. And to balance things out,You are completely misguided. If I want to read freeper like junk, I'll go looking specifically for it.
How do you fix a problem and keep it fixed without knowing why the problem exists?
Blank until
Maybe you should make some AC posts, if the ratio of opinions is not in your favor? For example, if you do not have enough scientists in a related field which agree with you, start including the unfounded opinions of any and every other type of scientist.
Except that all of the "11944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 [match] the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'."
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
We call it climate change now due to fucking idiots going "Global Warm'n?! It's COLD OUT, HAR HAR HAR."
I have also found berating the intelligence of skeptical people while trying to convince them that fantastic claims are true frequently works.
You think wrong. If you bothered to read the source, it says all of the abstracts included in the study matched "the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'."
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
No, in 1490 the Church knew the Earth was round. The fact is that any educated person from the 3rd century BC on in Europe knew the Earth was round. In 1477 the Vatican commissioned two globes for the new Vatican library.
Also, do take note that academic scientists are anything but impartial... they need to get money, a lot of money, from various "impartial places". One example would be from the NSF. If the NSF wants global warming, that is what they will buy.
Oh slashdot, no one can hear you scream...or at least they really do not know who you are.
Not true. By the 1490s, it had already been pretty well established that the earth was round. It was the uneducated masses and official church dogma that this was not true, and this created a climate where openly saying the earth was round was not exactly a safe position to take.
This is untrue on many many levels:
1. The Earth was established quite conclusively as round and had been measured to within about 1000km by about 250 BCE. The Flat Earth Theory was not even considered remotely seriously by the 1490's.
2. The church dogma and common knowledge at the time was not that the Earth was flat, but that the spherical Earth was the center of the universe, and that the moon, planets, sun, and stars moved around it (the church dogma was that God made them move the way they appeared to move). That's what Galileo got in trouble for challenging, not the Flat Earth Theory.
3. The reason you're thinking that some people thought the world was flat in the 1490's is that Washington Irving made up the story over 300 years later to make Christopher Columbus seem more heroic than he really was, and history textbooks have been repeating the lie ever since. The real story is that the Earth was known to be much larger than Columbus was claiming in his sales pitch, so when smart monarchs consulted their scholars (or their own learning) they had every reason to believe Columbus was either a charlatan or an idiot, and turned him down. The only reason Columbus discovered anything was the fairly weak Spanish monarchy's desperation for a way around the Middle East and sheer dumb luck.
I am officially gone from
I think it can be easily demonstrated that this is a ridiculously biased study:
From the paper:
Abstracts were randomly distributed via a web-based
system to raters with only the title and abstract visible.
All other information such as author names and afïliations,
journal and publishing date were hidden. Each abstract was
categorized by two independent, anonymized raters. A team
of 12 individuals completed 97.4% (23 061) of the ratings
So 12 people did all the work on 11,944 papers, sorting them according to how much they agreed with the idea that "Humans are the cause of Global Warming". We are given no indication of who these 12 people were, how much time was spent going through each paper, how quickly they came to their determinations, or what their own personal biases happened to be, but we can get an indication of the results of their sorting based on the examples included with the criteria they were measuring abstracts against.
And what were their criteria? Let's take a looksee:
Table 2. Deïnitions of each level of endorsement of AGW.
Key: Level of endorsement, Description, Example
(1) Explicit endorsement with quantiïcation
Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause
of recent global warming
Example: "The global warming during the 20th century is
caused mainly by increasing greenhouse gas
concentration especially since the late 1980s"
(2) Explicit endorsement without quantiïcation
Explicitly states humans are causing global
warming or refers to anthropogenic global
warming/climate change as a known fact
Example: "Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases
of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate
change"
(3) Implicit endorsement Implies humans are causing global warming.
E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions
cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause
Example: ". . . carbon sequestration in soil is important
for mitigating global climate change"
(4a) No position Does not address or mention the cause of global warming.
(4b) Uncertain Expresses position that humanâ(TM)s role on
recent global warming is uncertain/undeïned
Example: "While the extent of human-induced global
warming is inconclusive. . . "
(5) Implicit rejection
Implies humans have had a minimal impact on
global warming without saying so explicitly E.g.,
proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of
global warming
Example: ". . . anywhere from a major portion to all of
the warming of the 20th century could plausibly
result from natural causes according to these
results"
(6) Explicit rejection without quantiïcation
Explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are
causing global warming
Example: ". . . the global temperature record provides
little support for the catastrophic view of the greenhouse effect"
(7) Explicit rejection with quantiïcation
Explicitly states that humans are causing less than
half of global warming
Example: "The human contribution to the CO2 content in
the atmosphere and the increase in temperature is
negligible in comparison with other sources of carbon dioxide emission"
Wow. There's huge bias built right into the criteria! Just look at point number 2 for instance:
Example: "Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases
of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change"
Think of it this way. Say you're a scientist studying volcano emissions. Or methane levels over the last million years. Or have decided that automotive emissions cannot reasonably be discounted from the overall equation despite their contributing a neg
I am not arguing the temperature will not rise. The temperature will continue to rise and there will be negative effects. I just don't think they will be catastrophic for me.
How much are you willing to pay to attempt to reduce those negative effects? How much are you willing to force others to pay?
Fear mongering about environmental catastrophes, the extinction of the human race, and ad hominem attacks on those who question the appropriate response to climate change is why there continues to be inaction. In this case, I like inaction (it keeps my energy costs low).
Are their 'pre-human'** cycles? yes. This is an impact outside those bounds.
How can that be when we're not warmer than during large parts of the Holocene (yet)? If anything, the fact that the coldest period in the whole Holocene was just a few hundred years ago, isn't there more support for saying that the _cold_ was outside pre-human cycles?
it's in my head
The meta-study found that an overwhelming 97.1% of the papers that took a stance endorsed human-cause global warming.
This always troubles me. Science doesn't actually work on consensus. A consensus will tend to be formed when data consistently supports a particular model but the mere fact that a majority of papers supports a particular theory is utterly meaningless by itself. The data either proves a model right or wrong, not whether most people agree with the model. While the consensus argument is easy to make and can be useful for political ends, it ultimately weakens the credibility of those making the consensus argument because it implies that science is something where we can vote our opinions regarding validity of a theory.
The much more interesting question is whether any of the remaining 2.9% of the papers disproves some aspect of climate change. It reminds me of the book "Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein" (One Hundred Authors Against Einstein) which was a compilation of criticisms of the theory of relativity. Einstein replied "If I were wrong, one would have been enough".
"Don't just agree with each other - prove it irrefutably,..."
The word you're looking for is 'dogma' and it has nothing to do with science.
"You know what? they also won't run critiques saying gravity isn't real either."
They'll do if you'll jump out the window.
100% of scientists believe that periods of global warming that occurred from 4.6B years ago through 5000 years ago were NOT caused by humans.
Chammy.info is an alias for mailinator.com, everybody can read those without any password by going to the site.
So read the mails and outbid the fucker if a low id blows up your ego.
Yes, let's take this attitude toward getting beaned by an asteroid. "Wot?" you say. "But..but...given enough lead time, there is something we can do about it...y'know...rockets, colored paint, solar sails, nuclear weapons." Oh, you wish to rely on human ingenuity. Yep, I agree. Let's rely on human ingenuity to reduce our contribution to the problem and reverse the problem should those naughty volcanoes start spewing CO2, political theories (another cause of global warming), etc.
Given you state you have found it very hard to publish via traditional methods. I find it strange you haven't at least self published online and linked your publication in your post.
This good sir.
Actually what the post says is "an overwhelming 97.1% of the papers that took a stance endorsed human-cause global warming. " So my question would be ...what percentage of all articles took a stance on the cause of global warming? If the percentage of articles that took a stance on the cause of global warming is less than 100% then the 97.1% statistic is misleading ... exactly how misleading is determined by the actual percentage of published articles that didn't take any stand.
eg: if 50% of published articles took no stand then the actual number of agree-ers is 48.5% ...
So ... I will go on believing that the cause of current climate change is not primarily anthropocentric until someone without a political agenda, can provide me with a model of climate change that takes all contributing factors into account, not just the easily measured ones.
Saying that we did this to ourselves is nothing but assigning blame, and doesn't particularly do anything to solve the problem, assuming that it can be.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Interesting link. The Relativity Deniers in that article sound an awful lot like the Global Warming Deniers of today, not so much like the authors of the abstracts evaluated by the study in TFA.
However the conclusions broadcast by TFS and TFA have too much spin. They throw out those that did not take a stance one way or the other on the reality of global warming, and then took the "percentage" agreeing from only the remaining.
Nobody is making an argument for anthropomorphic global warming - that is, global warming with human-like characteristics.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Naw, you'd still have people talking about it, just like you have people talking about cell phone tower radiation and water fluoridation.
Conversely, discounting the majority of scientific finding because it does not match what a particular group wants does not mean they are right. It does however mean that they have to provide better models then the majority. Put another way, in science, the majority usually IS right, and there is a well established method for showing otherwise. Thus using majority opinion as an indicator of correctness, while not infallible, is generally pretty good. If nothing else the probability of 3% allowing political belief to influence their conclusions is greater then 97% doing so.
TFA is not talking about majority opinion. It's talking about the majority of published papers. The two are not necessarily the same thing. Also note that TFA surveyed 1200 authors of the paper to see how their views related to what they published, so it is no surprise the authors thought the same as what they published.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
There are shenannigans here.
Well this really explains the methodology of the whole thing. Should be +5, "the rest of the story".
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You are correct, I misunderstood what the two-thirds number was about. Two-thirds of the papers didn't take a position on whether humans were causing global warming and it's likely that the reason is because they weren't about the causes of climate change or a topic strongly related to that.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This is utterly wrong!
You don't need to reduce your living space or reduce climate control to reduce your CO2 emissions. Just having higher standards for thermal insulation and heating/cooling of houses can reduce the energy consumption of the average crappy American house by 75% (note: almost all the buildings in the US have a very poor energy efficiency). Thicker and more efficient insulation layers in the walls/roof/floor, double glazing with good sealing for the windows, a condensing boiler (or better: a heat pump) for heating and hot water, a few thermal solar cells on the roof, and a reasonably efficient air conditioning: these things will probably add 10-15% to the total construction cost of a house, but will easily be amortized over 2 decades (just by the reduced energy consumption).
And regarding the other things like walking instead of driving, that's riduculous. Just begin by buying a car with a reasonable gas milage (hint: you don't need a 5000-lb vehicle with a 5000cc engine to go to work every day). And support an improvement of mass transit where it is sound (hint: using mass transit actually supports it).
Eating less meat, yeah, that's probably a good thing to do. But the good news is: you can eat better meat. Eat 2 filet mignon per week instead of 8 burgers.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Makes sense.. 3% are people who invest heavily in Oil companies and the owners of course.
And there lies your denialism in shreds. It's not about the science. Conservatism is the politics of fear, and you fear what the consequences of the science being correct are, in economics and politics.
It's only man made if man created the sun. Most compelling scientific evidence I have seen links solar radiation cycles with global warming. This includes the recent downturn in temperatures.
So looking at the numbers 11994 papers reviewed of which 4000 took a stance on the cause of global warming of which 97.1% agreed it was anthropocentric. Do the math .... { 97.1% of ((4000-83)/11994) } = 31.7% ... that's pretty low for overwhelming scientific consensus in my book!!!
Also from the article "Though a majority of Americans accept the climate is changing, just 42% believed human activity was the main driver, in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre last October." ... so by the very numbers presented in the article a higher percentage of Americans believe that AGW is real (42 % vs. 31.7% ) than the percentage of scientific papers reviewed in the "meta-study"... seems the AGW propaganda machine is working ...
Typical misleading headline. If one bothers to read the actual synopsis, it says 97% of all reviewed climate papers which take a position on AGW support it. Of course the majority of the reviewed papers (66.4%) took no position on it at all.
The article does not say that.
Surprisingly, the article does say that, it says it three times before the end of the first sentence (once in the title, once in the subtitle, and once in the first sentence). You are right however, that the paper itself does not support the article's assertion.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Also, do take note that academic scientists are anything but impartial... they need to get money, a lot of money, from various "impartial places". One example would be from the NSF. If the NSF wants global warming, that is what they will buy.
This would be the same NSF that the GOP is trying to sabotage and politicize?
The idea that scientists though the Earth was flat in the 1800s is the most ridiculous thing I have read on slashdot,
Yours is the only post where that idea showed up
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well... it could easily be said that if those 7 billion continue to not care there won't be 7 billion for much longer. Maybe the problem is self correcting?
Remember to maintain your supply of
It's getting boring you know?
"Short version: It does not matter how many or what percentage of a given group agrees with a politically-charged position. What does matter is who is actually right. Anyone trying to make an argument based on majorities is doing so from a failing position. Don't just agree with each other - prove it irrefutably, else the first scientist to come along with better proof than yours will knock the whole house of cards down."
I should remind you what your position for last 4 years have been about GW?
"There are lot of scientists (almost half) who disagree with this notion that this is global climate change is somehow related to man actions, so suck it, we won't change our life style."
So this is now invalidated.
For actual truth - you *don't* care. Because you have already made up your mind. You have to justify arguing against it, therefore you look to find more and more even laughable arguments against it. For me - I can accept that we can discover that situation is much more complex than we thought. Man made gases sure make impact, but how it plays out in atmosphere - we don't know fully.
And there's problem. For such large scale things you can't get full 100% understanding of things - or you can, when it's already too late to change anything. You have to make a chance. Now, you can do it solely on the faith like you guys like to do it. It rarely ends up right, but people tend to do that, so I can relate with that. People don't like idea that their current way of living can cause serious backslash. Because hey, living good is great, right? In fact, no scientist, no environmentalist are saying wishing to have good life is bad. However it really depends what that means. Can we do better with power waste? Yes, we can. Power resources? There's tons of them, and some of them are much cleaner than fossil fuels. Why avoid unpleasant truth?
You know that even Fox News pundits have admitted that global climate change could be caused by humans? They have this "But what we can do about it? China, Inda, etc." line, but still, they at least out of denial line. That's start - for changing things and attitude.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
You've confused the total with the excess. The total amount in the atmosphere, oceans, and biogeochemical cycles doesn't vary much, or very fast -- except for the last century during which there's been an extremely rapid rate of increase from fossil fuel burning. See http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
As he says there:
"If you want basic facts about climate change, or detailed current technical information, you might do better using the links page. But if you want to use history to really understand it all..." -- read http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
Among other things you learn why logic and common sense didn't solve the puzzles in the detail needed; computers made it possible.
We should do a Slashdot survey and see if the proportion is roughly the same on here as it is in TFA.
I've often been quite interested to learn if it's just a few loud people or just a lot of people on either side of this argument, since it seems to come up so frequently on here.
I think that very few people disagree that climate change is happening. The only real question, for most people, is whether or not it's caused by humanity, the reason being, if we caused it we can stop it. I say that is hubris. Thinking we did it without conclusive proof is hubris and thinking we can fix it if we didn't cause it is really hubris. In addition ... a massive die off of humanity could only improve the species. I guess that makes me some variety of asshole.
Yes, far easier for you in your comfy life to dictate the lives of your grand children and future generations. Because hey, they aren't here to fight back yet! amirite?
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
What you say is true however this study covers papers from the past 22 years since 1991. Given the controversy around the subject the fact that no one has been able to come up with a serious challenge to the dominant paradigm in climate science in all that time is telling. Any scientist who was able to come up with something that overturned current climate science would certainly cement their reputation in the annals of history.
+1 - wish i had mod points.
97% of used car dealers agree this is a honey of a deal, and 97% of those would gladly take credit.
Self-interest creates a bias factor.
Futurist Traditionalism
Economists didn't give us good "costs and benefits" to changing taxation policies with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of the economy. We got vague platitudes about things like 17% annual growth, and creation of 4 million jobs per quarter (which was later, quietly revised down to something like 100,000).
These policy changes never achieved anything near that, and, in fact, collapsed the fucking economy.
And yet, nobody holds "Austrian" Economists to this same high standard of proof for their whack-a-doodle theories. And when it comes to the idea that investing in sound management of industrial emissions and natural resources - we hear the same claims from these fortune-tellers, that doing so will "ruin the economy". IMNSHO - that's evidence that we should do exactly the opposite of what the Economists say.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Here is where massaging statistics comes in
Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientic consensus.
The issue is that only 33.3% of the papers had AGW positions. What were the other climate change papers about? Of all climate change papers 32.6% endorsed AWG. That is far from a consensus.
. . . well, to be fair, the same contingent of "geniuses" took us to war in Iraq based on a "1% chance" that Saddam Hussein had WMD. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
nor do they really have the power to do jack didlysquat about it if they DID care. Really.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Undoing bad mod
Except it's not 97%, read the actual paper instead of the summary. And the others are producing evidence, and aren't on the payroll of major financial interests.
Other than that, it's just like what you said.
The "science" behind this ridiculous "97% of all non-corrupt, progressive scientists agree" paper is even worse than the "science" arguing for AGW in the first place:
Note this excerpt from Anthony Wattts' blog on Cook's more-than-a-little-suspect claims:
Now, Cook has upped the ante, allowing the average person to help participate in the lie and make it their own, as Brandon Schollenberger observes, Cook has launched a new “Consensus project” to make even more certain the public gets his message:
The guidelines for rating [the] abstracts show only the highest rating value blames the majority of global warming on humans. No other rating says how much humans contribute to global warming. The only time an abstract is rated as saying how much humans contribute to global warming is if it mentions:
that human activity is a dominant influence or has caused most of recent climate change (>50%).
If we use the system’s search feature for abstracts that meet this requirement, we get 65 results. That is 65, out of the 12,000+ examined abstracts. Not only is that value incredibly small, it is smaller than another value listed in the paper:
Reject AGW 0.7% (78)
Remembering AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming, or global warming caused by humans, take a minute to let that sink in. This study done by John Cook and others, praised by the President of the United States, found more scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming than say humans are primarily to blame for it.
It’s gobsmacking. But, I see this as a good thing, because like the lies of presidential politics, eventually this will all come tumbling down.
(Emphasis added by /. poster)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
99.9% of scientists believed in geocentricity at one point too.
Appeal to Consensus is not good science
A lot of nuclear engineers agree that fission exists.
That in no way qualifies them to make statements or predictions about economics, agriculture, land use, or politics, and they certainly have no right to dictate to the rest of us how we make tradeoffs between current and future consumption.
However, if 97% of nuclear engineers agree that a nuclear powerplant is being operated recklessly and is likely to suffer a meltdown that spews radioacive waste across half the state, we should probably listen to them and try to come up with ways to reduce the risks. We might even want to ask those same engineers for suggestions as to what we could do to prevent it.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
One thing that the study didn't look into is the number of unique authors of the papers. If one author who writes ten papers with opinions towards AGW does it outweigh the author who writes one paper against?
Another point is that by separating into four broad categories the study maskes many of the results. For example, a study that concluded that man is contributing to global warming but only small portion would probably go into the "endorse AWG category". There is a big difference between contributing to and causing.
"Vote for us, or coastal cities will get flooded, there will be mass starvation and wars, bankers will rob you blind, and gunmen will kill your children in mass shootings!"
Yup, the politics of fear is our problem.
Let's start with Arrhenius over 100 years ago. The falsifiable claim is that burning fossil fuels will raise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause warming. We have observed the warming. Had we not, it would have falsified the hypothesis. Surely you've been following this over the years and this is all old news.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The paper shows cites 97% of papers. It isn't a one to one correlation but the gist is that there is consensus among scientists. If you need to actually cite the number of scientists, this paper is more direct in counting scientists.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You fail to understand many things.
Most importantly, you fail to understand the idea of "increased variance." The predictions of global warming period is not that it will get hotter all the time; or that it will get cooler all the time; but that there will be an increased frequency of oscillations between cooling and warming at rates not previously observed. It is this oscillation, this switching back and forth between heating and cooling too rapidly, that is the evidence for the global warming hypothesis (same goes for tornado strength). This is called "scatter."
Second, you fail to understand that "testable predictions" means reproducing past events. Global climate models cannot reproduce the temperature record for the past without including man-made heating during the industrial revolution. These same models, when run into the future, predict increased scatter and increasing mean temperature, with a scatter level that's high and a mean increase that's slow.
These two points continually have been mis-explained to the public, and the advocates for policy change to reverse climate change have failed miserably at getting these points through to the public---hence your post.
Please include any time when they stated a falsifiable claim.
They claim that global warming is man-made. This is a falsifiable claim: with enough understanding of the climate you can either find an alternative mechanism which is the cause of the heating or you can understand the man-made mechanism in enough detail that there is no room for doubt. This is not at all easy but there is no requirement that things be easily falsifiable.
So, if it gets hotter, it's global warming, if it gets colder, it's global warming. In the end, there's no way to prove it wrong. By your own definition, that's not science.
The climate is a complex beast and disturbing it can easily cause local cooling even if the overall global trend is to warm up. For example if the melting Greenland ice cap dumps enough fresh water into the Atlantic to disrupt the Gulf Stream then northern Europe will get a LOT colder. If there are reasonable, verifiable mechanisms for local then it is not unreasonable to have local cooling caused by global heating.
If you want to attack this survey then there are far better way to do it: which journals did they use and are they reputable? were the search criteria biased in any way and were control samples using a random selection of articles without the initial selection bias checked for a consistent result? Even if the survey was completely unbiased in every way can you really draw any sensible conclusions from numbers of papers?
As a scientist what I truly find really objectionable though is that this is science! You should make up your mind based on evidence not on what other people's opinions are: this is not some popularity contest! Personally I think the evidence for global warming is overwhelming and it is highly likely that humans are some or all of the reason behind it but don't believe me: I could easily be wrong! Listen to what the evidence is and make up your own mind.
The paper shows cites 97% of papers.
Actually it doesn't, read the paper again, it's in the abstract.
Here is a link to the paper for you.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"official church dogma that this was not true, and this created a climate where openly saying the earth was round was not exactly a safe position to take."
The church dogma wasn't about whether the earth was round ot not, but about whether the sun revolved around the earth or the other way around.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
" I don't think anyone could argue that it is ALL caused by mankind."
We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know human activity is increasing CO2 concentration. We know the planet is warming. We don't know to what extent human activity is responsible for the warming, but it's certainly possible that it is all due to human activity. It's even possible that the earth would be cooling if it weren't for human-generated CO2. I'm happy to agree that no one can PROVE that it's all due to human activity, as there are too many variables and unknowns to be that precise. But it's just as plausible an argument as saying 75 percent of warming is due to human activity. it's really immaterial. If we agree that warming is happening and it's not desirable, then we should be able to agree that pouring more CO2 into the atmosphere is a bad idea, and we should try to mitigate that. Sadly, it doesn't seem that we can. The next few decades should be interesting.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Perhaps the words mean something different to you. The abstracts that expressed no position were papers on other aspects of climate science, therefore were not counted. Global warming is only one aspect of climate science, and not every paper on climate science deals with global warming.
Of the remaining 33.6% of papers that did express a position on global warming, 32.6% agreed with the theory, .7% disagreed with the theory, and .3% were uncertain. That's where the 97% number comes from.
~X~
"One side looks at that stance as foolish. But they go to far and reject global warming completely in an effort to distance themselves from their political opponents. And then when shown results that contradict their position, they say that it isn't manmade."
This isn't correct. The reason why it is not correct is because of the Global Carbon Credits Exchanges being setup in secret and in public, trying to get monetary flow into a one world governing body from all countries.
This use to be a secret, but the globalists lead by the IMF and Federal Reserve goons don't even try to hide it anymore. They just assume they are going to get away with it and that everyone will submit.
What I think turns off everyone is that the fact of the matter is, if we want earth to be a nice home for all, we have to stop 3 things and none of the research treats these three things seriously:
1) Stop using science to build iShit, and start using it to build technology and science that address the human condition of health, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all human beings on the planet which obviously includes food production and shelter/education.
2) Dismantle all western institutions in science and research, and reconstruct the educational system around individual accomplishment and contribution by leveling the playing field and putting the internet to use and start educating people.
Remove the entire Federal Reserve system from the educational and society apparatus. Just unplug it. The new currency is contribution for education.
In my opinion you do not deserve a degree of any recognition until you solve a problem published by your community in what I call the big 3. (Clean water, clean energy, food production).
3) Dismantle centralized governments to prevent interests from destroying the ability of smaller communities to look at applications of science and technology in a uncorrupted environment which means patenting is illegal of any technology and so is the secrecy that surrounds the really important stuff we are not allowed to see, yet fund in todays society.
Most people on this forum think the technology and invention process happens in University Labs. That is true, for about 3% of what makes the world go around. The REAL innovation is carried out by private corporations, or 97% of it because giant amounts of capital are needed to make anything useful. Therefore, most of the technology in use today is not taught, invented or implemented at _ANY_ University.
This has to stop, as most of it is being driven by a military industrial complex.
This means dismantling the military industrial complex. How we would do that is something I do not have an answer for. But if it is not done, and done soon, we won't have to worry about the who is right about global warming or what percentage.
There isn't going to be a human being alive to actually find out how much of global warming really is man made.
I personally feel humans don't fully understand the planetary biospehere yet to even begin to do research on the subject, let alone draw any conclusions about it. The earth is just too complex for our primitive technology to make heads or tails of about how and why.
Ultimately though, my biggest reason for making the determination that the whole man made carbon production is a scam is because we do not have a space program.
Ultimately, we have to be able to go into space, and create worlds of our own. Fully sustainable habitats with complete understanding of biological processes from top to bottom. We can't even do that on earth yet, let alone in space.
So to proclaim that scientists have a firm enough grasp of the consequences of the Earths biosphere at any CO2 concentration level on human beings is a bit like putting the cart before the horse.
I mean, if we DID HAVE fully self sustaining communities in space and on the ground that produce their own air, power and CO2 and people lived long healthy and productive lives I would proba
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Some the concerns raised here were addressed in the survey. Check out this quote from this Arstechnica article.
I see it as pretty clear that the scientific consesus is that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. There is not considerable disagreement among climate scientists.
Are you really this ignorant on the topic, trolling or just wanting to spread hate and ignorance?
It is well known that that the Christian church considered the earth round. You can even see the oldest Christian artwork of God holding the earth in his hand, and the earth is spherical.
a) Its not possible to have a negative proof. Case in point, prove that I don't own a invisible pink unicorn.
Its not actually possible.
b) This study shows consensus however that still doesn't mean anything in science.
There isn't a hypothesis that 97% of scientists agree on, it is purely American Idol style popularity contest of the idea.
Science also tries to establish a margin of error. Saying, "our current best understanding......." isn't good enough. You also need to have an idea how likely it will be wrong.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That absolutely is a classic denier position, because it sounds sensible on the surface (just give me some more proof), but in practice the goalposts move, so that there is never enough proof. The whole argument is set up that way -- science can never "prove it irrefutably" because that wouldn't be science.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
"Vote for us, or coastal cities will get flooded, there will be mass starvation and wars, bankers will rob you blind, and gunmen will kill your children in mass shootings!"
Conservatives also are prone to making quotes and statistics up, rather than dealing in facts. And to think hyperbole is an actual argument.
They're really not very rational people.
I don't want to burn their papers, I want those intact.
Shoot, how are we to mock the idiots if we destroy evidence of the idiocy.
Papers are burned because they contain truths that someone wants to hide, not because they contain the rambling of idiots.
You've confused the total with the excess.
I'm not confusing anything, the parent is. He wrote "the world's CO2 emissions" (which implies the total), not "the world's excess CO2 emissions" or "human CO2 emissions." Given all the emotion and hyperbole around this issue, I think it's important for language to be accurate.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Whether conservatives deal with more with facts isn't the point here. The point is that "progressives" and "liberal" political positions are based on spreading fear and scare tactics: fear of environmental disaster, fear of financial ruin, fear of being out of work without support, fear of getting sick without health insurance, fear of losing one's home, etc. That's not hyperbole, it's fact.
The core of conservative and libertarian political positions (you know, Heritage Foundation, Koch brothers, etc., all the people Democrats love to hate) is that if you give people economic and individual liberties, things will work out fine by themselves.
Stop it, just quit being a little weasel. This discussion is not about the NSF.
The point is, all science costs money, so all science is biased by money. You berate any finding (regardless of validity) financed by a group that has some vested interest in a result that disagrees with your beliefs, but can see no problem with the funding of concurring research.
Did you read my link at all? The entire point is there is consensus among scientists. Are you going to dispute that?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Again with the confusing 'scientists' and 'papers'. 2/3 of the *papers* did not take a position, presumably because what they were researching did not actually cast any light on the question, not it would be absurd for them to 'take a position'. Of the papers in the study whose subjects actually implied one conclusion or other about AGW, 97% implied the conclusion that AGW is occurring.
The study authors were just being properly careful in explaining that they took a large corpus of papers which *might possibly* imply one or the other conclusion about AGW, then found the ones which *actually did*, and compared how many of those implied one conclusion and how many implied the other. The fact that it happens to be 1/3 of the papers they looked at which fit into this group is not particularly interesting, but if that information hadn't been included, _someone_ would've complained about it.
I don't think you've been listening hard if you haven't heard of the Sterm Review. It's 700 pages long and doesn't refer to the sky falling at all. I keep seeing references to "sky is falling" arguments, but I haven't heard of any. Could you point me to one?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
However, if you consider the rest of your post more important, I'll happily discuss that instead.
I'll respond by quoting what Richard Lindzen (a respected climatologist and climate 'skeptic') says about this topic, which is related and I think reasonable:
the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact. But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming.
(In addition it is somewhat disconcerting to me that the paper speaks in terms of 'tenets,' which is a synonym for dogma. Science should rise above dogma).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
At their level, you don't win grants and Nobel prizes by proving something everyone else has proven.
When it comes to climate science, you get grants for predicting disasters or otherwise confirming global warming. The field is completely political. You only need look at Climategate for confirmation.
That would have all been interesting, if it had happened. Too bad for the fossil fuel industry that it really didn't.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
My primary problem with Apocalyptic Global Warming has always been in the premise that, because we can't figure out another reason for the apparent warming, it must be solely due to man-made CO2; then even the scientists admit that CO2 alone is inadequate to produce apocalyptic levels of warming and needs amplification from water vapour. That has always struck me as a position of excess hubris, I think Occam's razor applies here as the simplest explanation is the Earth's Climate is so complicated your puny models aren't good enough to even be wrong.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
To be on the side of consensus. AMS ran a whole article on its front page clearly endorsing AGW in the abstract. The problem is that it didn't offer any justification for its endorsement in the article itself. All it did was list the mathematical physics that can be used to talk about the physics of climate. People are declaring allegiance to the subject because there is money in such allegiance. The worst of people join the party in power because they are the worst of people. It has always been this way. It will always be this way.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It's Interesting that the heliocentric model is actually much older than people believe.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Maybe they will start to care when the journalists and certain political parties stop lying to them about what's actually happening.
c++;
Sometimes I really REALLY doubt the effectiveness of the slashdot moderation system, and this is one of those times.
I'd really like to hear a good argument for why the parent post is either overrated or is flamebait.
In fact, I really think slashdot should get rid of the "overrated" option from the moderation system, because when I myself moderate, I haven't seen any good use for it. Anybody care to argue why the overrated option should be there in the first place?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Wow you really need to work on your reading comprehension. Richard Lindzen was one of the authors disputing that 97% consensus based on "surveys contained trivial polling questions". The link I supplied has nothing to do with surveys or polling. Lindzen was referring to another study. Please read first. By the way, it's ironic that you mention Lindzen because he agrees with the basic premise of climate change: 1) it's happening and 2) humans are a likely cause:
Dr. Lindzen accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point “nutty.” He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate.
Lindzen however thinks that warming isn't a problem because the clouds would save us in a controversial "iris" theory which he admits had serious flaws.
Dr. Lindzen acknowledged that the 2009 paper contained "some stupid mistakes" in his handling of the satellite data.
Thanks for playing.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Richard Lindzen was one of the authors disputing that 97% consensus based on "surveys contained trivial polling questions".
He said he agrees with that consensus......what exactly is your point?
Lindzen because he agrees with the basic premise of climate change [nytimes.com]: 1) it's happening and 2) humans are a likely cause
Who doesn't agree with that?
Dr. Lindzen acknowledged that the 2009 paper contained "some stupid mistakes" in his handling of the satellite data
A scientist who admits his mistakes is respectable. Lindzen corrected them and resubmitted the paper in 2011.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That really is NOT the case. The fact is, that a MINORITY of Americans think that climate change has some doubt.
The problem is NOT that, though republicans use it as a crutch.
The REAL problem is that the Liberals are making a HORRIBLE mistake with this and refuse to come up with NEW ideas on how to solve this. And CO2 and other GHG will continue. Heck, even Europe is backing off because they have found that they can NOT compete against other nations that are NOT taking the economic hit.
Assume that USA takes the economic hit. Then what will happen is that China, India, Russia, South Africa, etc. will build up coal plants WITHOUT pollution control as quickly as possibly. Why? To capture more manufacturing and other items from USA.
So, what is a REAL SOLUTION? Involve ALL nations (and states ) at the same time.
For America, we need 2 things ASAP:
1) require all new buildings under 4 stories to have unsubsidized on-site AE to provide energy equal to 95% or more of their HVAC. Why do this? Because it will encourage builders to NOT put up loads of solar, but to instead, look for alternatives such as better insulation, aerogel windows, geo-thermal HVAC, etc.
2) put a tax on ALL goods based on which nations/state they come from and the CO2 emissions. But several things about this:
a) none of this guess work. We need it based on OCO2, which will measure directly. Greenies are in for a REAL shocker. Their beliefs about America's emissions are probably close since we do direct measurements, but China is way too low. In addition, it does not matter the source. Just co2(out) - co2(in).
b) this needs to be normalized, but not based on per capita. It needs to be on tonnes / $ of actual GDP (not GDP-ppp). The truth is, that the vast majority of emissions is not tied to ppl, but to business.
c) it needs to start low and increase. If you want your product to be an exception to the tax, then you will say where components come from and then the tax is lowered based on the location being more efficient. As such, goods from China would have the max tax on it.
America's own goods would then have average tax, but dropping.
Likewise, goods from Sweden would have a low tax.
Here is some data for the later:
This is wiki, but it is based on 2006 data.
Here is 2009 data, but it is ppp GDP (which rewards nations for manipulating their money against the dollar; hence why it has to be real $GDP ).
With the above approaches, it would put ALL nations/states on the same footing. If they want to sell here without a tax, they need to drop their emissions. And by spending a bit of money cleaning up, it rewards a nation by paying lower taxes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
He said he agrees with that consensus......what exactly is your point?
That you don't know what the hell you're talking about because you didn't bother to read the link that I supplied. Instead you answered with an unrelated link.
A scientist who admits his mistakes is respectable. Lindzen corrected them and resubmitted the paper in 2011.
And it was rejected. The first rejection was due to reviewers. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences felt that one reviewer wasn't qualified enough to review the work and the second reviewer had worked with Lindzen previously. The PNAS suggested four other reviewers. Lindzen protested he hasn't worked the second reviewer in 8 years. Lindzen rejected all but one of suggested reviewers. After some back and forth, Lindzen got two reviewers that he wanted and two others were picked by PNAS. All four rejected his work on a number of factors agreeing that the quality was not suitable and the conclusions were not justified. They all agreed the topic was of interest, but they disagreed as to whether the paper was clearly written or that the procedures were described in detail.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That you don't know what the hell you're talking about because you didn't bother to read the link that I supplied. Instead you answered with an unrelated link.
The link you supplied considers a similarly narrow question. It avoids such interesting questions as, "should we do anything about global warming? If we don't do something, will there be a disaster as Hansen claims?"
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I was totally with you until you said:
--snip--
That 97% think that man is causing climate change does not mean that it is right. It simply means it is the best theory that fits the observations
--snip--
This is only a statistic about published papers. The statistic might say more about which models are most considered for publication than which models best fit the observations.
A better study might look at the scrutiny applied to these 97% vs the *rejected* papers that disagreed with the 97%.
Again, all we have here is a statistic about paper publishing.
They might as well have scanned over the "common" media (TV, newspapers, etc) and generated similar statistics.
You cannot do these type of studies and from these data conclude what the "best" theory is. You can only say what is the most popular. Well, most popular *published*.
Actually, thanks to relativity, the people who said the Sun moved round the Earth are right.
Dilbert RSS feed
The point is that "progressives" and "liberal" political positions are based on spreading fear and scare tactics: fear of environmental disaster, fear of financial ruin, fear of being out of work without support, fear of getting sick without health insurance, fear of losing one's home, etc. That's not hyperbole, it's fact.
It's not fact. There's not a mainstream leftwing party in the world that's running of the platform "Vote for us, or coastal cities will get flooded, there will be mass starvation and wars, bankers will rob you blind, and gunmen will kill your children in mass shootings!"
What you do see, especially here on Slashdot, is left-wingers supporting the science.
What they found were scientists venting with each other about people like you who misrepresent anything that was said for political gain.
Please. Anybody that's looked seriously at the "hide the decline" issue and doesn't see scientific misconduct for political reasons is completely biased. I actually used to be a "warmist", not a "denier", until Climategate. Not that I was really a "warmist", as I knew trying to model the temperature of the Earth at best was always going to be somewhat uncertain, but I at least gave the scientists the benefit of the doubt.
And if "hide the decline" isn't enough for you, then there was the explicit email requesting others to erase email to avoid freedom of information acts. That's a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Where was the prosecution?
Or how about, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Or how about this, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."
Do you know what the common thread is among all that? Phil Jones. That they couldn't at least fire that clown shows just how much they circled the wagons.
Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
That's called a whitewash, as tends to happen in political fields.
Please. Anybody that's looked seriously at the "hide the decline" issue and doesn't see scientific misconduct for political reasons is completely biased. I actually used to be a "warmist", not a "denier", until Climategate. Not that I was really a "warmist", as I knew trying to model the temperature of the Earth at best was always going to be somewhat uncertain, but I at least gave the scientists the benefit of the doubt.
Anybody who looked seriously at content of the emails saw the conversations were taken out of context. From wikipedia.
Many commentators quoted one email in which Phil Jones said he had used "Mike's Nature trick" in a 1999 graph for the World Meteorological Organization "to hide the decline" in proxy temperatures derived from tree ring analyses when measured temperatures were actually rising. This 'decline' referred to the well-discussed tree ring divergence problem, but these two phrases were taken out of context by climate change sceptics, including US Senator Jim Inhofe and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, as though they referred to some decline in measured global temperatures, even though they were written when temperatures were at a record high.[32] John Tierney, writing in the New York Times in November 2009, said that the claims by sceptics of "hoax" or "fraud" were incorrect, but that the graph on the cover of a report for policy makers and journalists did not show these non-experts where proxy measurements changed to measured temperatures.
Basically, tree-ring data was removed because it showed a decline. That sounds ominous until it is known that after 1960 tree-ring data for high-latitude locations showed a known problem.
Tree-ring growth has been found to match well with temperature. Hence, tree-rings are used to plot temperature going back hundreds of years. However, tree-rings in some high-latitude locations diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem". Consequently, tree-ring data in these high-latitude locations are not considered reliable after 1960 and should not be used to represent temperature in recent decades.
This known unreliable data was removed. All the data has been published. Please find the discrepancies.
And if "hide the decline" isn't enough for you, then there was the explicit email requesting others to erase email to avoid freedom of information acts. That's a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Where was the prosecution?
Freedom of information act does mean that anyone and everyone can harass you because you are a climate scientist. If you were conducting science for a small university and all the sudden your university gets deluged with FOIA requests (some for data not even processed yet), what would be your response? How would you like it if people you didn't know sent mass emails to you at work asking for your incomplete work? Especially if you knew these people were against you politically only because they didn't like your work. I imagine you would be defensive and a bit frustrated at times because you want to do your work and not deal with things outside of your job. The House committee noted this:
The committee criticised the university for the way that freedom of information requests were handled, and for failing to give adequate support to the scientists to deal with such requests.
Or how about this, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."
If your colleague at work wants to see your work, you'd likely show it to him. If he is your enemy at work, would you let them? Especially if they are asking for your incomplete work so that they can show your boss how incompetent you are. You might protest that the work was in
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This is a red herring. My original point was about consensus. The other questions you have not previously posted in this thread thus I could not answer the questions in your head.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
My questions in that post were not directed at you.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Anybody who looked seriously at content of the emails saw the conversations were taken out of context.
I've looked at the context before, and while not nearly as bad as the reinterpreted "oh my God global warming is a hoax", what was done was rotten science, and the deeper I dug the more rot I saw.
Basically, tree-ring data was removed because it showed a decline. [skepticalscience.com]
It was more than that. Real temps were also spliced in to three separate proxy graphs. What's really amusing about the "Skeptical Science" article is this little bit:
"There is nothing secret about "Mike's trick". Both the instrumental and reconstructed temperature are clearly labelled. Claiming this is some sort of secret "trick" or confusing it with "hide the decline" displays either ignorance or a willingness to mislead."
Yes, Mann's plot, which they then so "helpfully" show, is clearly labeled. However, that's not the plot Jones created when he applied the "trick", and it is not clearly labeled, and the instrumental record has been spliced in. Why the subterfuge in "Skeptical Science"?
"Skeptical Science" is about legit as "Ministry of Truth", as the site is anything but skeptical and goes out of its way to put the most positive spin on AGW climate science. This makes for some interesting reading: http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/03/truth-about-skeptical-science.html
Consequently, tree-ring data in these high-latitude locations are not considered reliable after 1960 and should not be used to represent temperature in recent decades.
There was never a definitive reason given for this "divergence problem", so by chopping out data that doesn't match recent warming but leaving it in for earlier reconstructions, you are cherry-picking and applying confirmation bias, and its the kind of thing that will lead to graphs that show recent warming as being unprecedented for the last 1000 years.
Freedom of information act does mean that anyone and everyone can harass you because you are a climate scientist.
I'm sorry, but how does this answer the question about an explicit request to delete email regarding the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report? Oh, it doesn't, you're just parroting the usual lame excuses without even thinking about it.
You're talking about work paid for with public money, done for a process that is supposed to guide world leaders, and you think it's ok to delete the email because you are being "harassed" by skeptics that want transparency? If this came out from a corporate exec or despised politician, would you be here making these lame excuses?
If your colleague at work wants to see your work, you'd likely show it to him. If he is your enemy at work, would you let them?
Instead of making flimsy analogies, let's talk about reality. If I'm a scientist and unwilling to defend my work publicly and transparently, then I'm a bad scientist. You don't divide science between friends and enemies. Release the data, show your work, and defend it (and even more importantly, admit mistakes!).
Especially if they are asking for your incomplete work so that they can show your boss how incompetent you are.
I've never seen the claim of "incomplete" work. Do you have a citation?
the committee accepted that Jones had released all the data that he could
"Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to any
What's published is biased by the editorial bias of the media (print or otherwise).
It would have been good to round out the study with the publication biases including third party backing. For example, review the vision/mission statements of the publications, the editorial boards, the funding history of the research of those board members, and the affiliation of the published authors with the editorial board. An author may be published as he was an admired student of a board member and happens to agree with the board member's POV which was heavily influenced by financial backing from institutions seeking to profit from anthropogenic climate change.
Remember: anthropogenic means humans caused climate change and 'they' would have you believe that by extension, humans can correct it: profit!
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
See: http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2013/05/18/cooking-consensus-on-climate-change
You link is more appropriately related to the whole "It's not warming, it never was warming, it was warming but it stopped, it's cooling, it was warming but now it's cooling, scientists said it was cooling now they say it's warming, the warming is cyclic, the warming is natural, the warming is the sun, mars is warming too, the science is not there, consensus is not there, consensus means nothing, it's a fraud, it's a plot, Al Gore has a big house, Al Gore flies in airplanes, Al Gore is fat, it's cosmic rays, it's volcanos, it's urban heat islands, warming is good for plants, it can't be warming because january was cold in my state, CO2 is not a poison, there is only a tiny fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere and the manmade portion is even tinier, the CO2 in the atmosphere already absorbs all the IR, IR emissions have nothing to do with the earth's temp, CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't absorb IR like it does in the lab, it's all computer models, computer models will predict whatever you want them to, computer models can't even predict current climate, water is a more significant greenhouse gas, when the temperature rises the clouds will reflect the heat, the antarctic sea ice is growing, the warming will be minimal, the warming is too expensive to fight, we are better off adapting to the warming, it's too late to do anything about the warming, AGW is a plot against third world development, AGW steals money from charitable works, the earth is warming but it's only a couple of degrees, it was warmer in the middle ages, it was warmer millions of years ago, warming causes CO2 to rise not the other way around, you have no proof, it needs more study, why would you risk disaster proved by economists' calculations over the remote risk of scientific predictions, what about Climategate?" community than working climatologists.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I've suggested to them that they watch a pot of water that's heating up on a stove and imagine that's the atmosphere, but they never come back and say "Now I get it". I fear "getting these points through to the public" is a bit like getting them through to our pets.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
So, the fact that both Tornadic activity in the United States and Cyclonic Activity globally are at 50 year lows all point to this "increased activity". Somewhere you have failed to notice that your claims must be backed up with data. Also, you have failed to explain why the actual global temperatures over the last 30 years have come in below the lowest predicted warming of all the models used by the IPCC, yet they continue to increase the predicted response. The last IPCC report posited a 3.0 degreeC/century rise in temperature, while actual data points at 1.2 degrees C/century or lower.
I work in computer science, and there's a name for a model which cannot predict, it's called "broken" or "incomplete". The fact that you now wish to make multi-trillion dollar, economy-wrecking, and real-life endangering decisions based on computer models that still can't agree with each other, much less the facts, is frightening beyond belief.
The amazing thing to me is that the same crowd that doesn't trust a banana with an extra gene inserted through a science evolved through 60 years of study, or grown with a fertilizer used for 80 years without a downside, are completely willing to take steps that will result in starvation, civil wars, and economic catastrophe over an increase of 0.012% of a particularly harmless gas in the atmosphere, which is required for life on Earth. A gas which, during the most life-bearing phase of the earth's history, was almost 20 times as abundant. All of which is based on computer programs developed by non-computer programmer programmers, over the course of a few months, which are less than accurate in the short term, and whose predictions are wildly inaccurate over the long term.
Not to mention, if tree-rings are such great thermometers, why has the dendrochronological record not been updated since the 1980's? Surely in the billions being funneled to climate research, someone can pay some grad students $10 an hour to go get some tree cores with a hand-drill every weekend?
Most of these climate scientists wouldn't know the climate it if rained on them.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Arrhenius stated only that CO2 acted to absorb heat (long-wave infra-red radiation for the nitpickers). He posited that if you added CO2 to the atmosphere the heat would increase. What Arrhenius didn't know, or didn't fully grasp, is that at 280ppm, the atmospheric CO2 already absorbs 97% of all incoming long-wave infra-red radiation. Doubling the CO2 to 560ppm, would not make it absorb 194% of the radiation, it would make it absorb about 99% of the incoming radiation. Since CO2 accounts for approximately 4-7 degrees C of the Earth's warming (there's arguments on the exact figure) that would be an increase of about 0.08 to 0.14 degrees C. Now, there are some factors that add to that (re-radiation, tropospheric concentration and re-reflection of albedo infra-red, etc) that could make that as much as 1 degree C of surface warming. But that's it.
Adding twice the CO2 doesn't mean twice the temperature. And the feedback mechanisms are neutral to negative. They must be, or the 7000ppm CO2 of the carboniferous period would have resulted in Earth looking like a ball of molten rock.
Now, let's get back to the real point.
Climate scientists continue to make statements like, "We can expect more Katrina's every year!" Yet the U.S. is now in its longest cycle without a major hurricane landing since records began being kept in the 1930's. "We can expect more tornados to ravage cities across the U.S.!", yet tornadic activity across the U.S. is at a 50 year low. Total thunderstorms are average at best, and while there is some evidence of slightly stronger convection cells, there's a certain bias in the fact that we never before had satellites capable of sampling and quantifying such activity in seconds rather than days.
In short, the evidence all points the other way.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm no shill for gas or oil or coal. I'd rather see all of it go away. Give me clean, safe, cheap, plentiful nuclear power every day of the week over all of that. Preferably LFTR designs spread out like candy all over the country. I'd love fusion too, but like my Grandfather who was promised to see it "within his lifetime" and died in 1988, I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Solar power is a joke, with its rare earths and sulfur-hexafluoride washes doing a dozen times more damage to the environment then they'll ever recover in a lifetime. We've already tapped 95% or more of the hydropower on Earth, and I doubt the birds will live through putting up enough windmills to power a typical city, much less the planet. Not to mention, that has it's own problems. Wind Power Potential Overestimated
Your point, "We've seen warming" ignores the one great thing about climate change -- the climate is a complex system -- it is always changing. It is a vast, living, breathing system taking in all life on earth, all changes in the sun, all chemistry in the oceans, every wave, every sunbeam, every butterfly flapping its wings. It must be constantly changing. We are looking at a tiny sliver of it and saying, "Oh no, we're all doomed!" We act as if we want the climate never to change, not one iota, not one jot.
The climate never changes on Venus, on Mercury, on Mars... They all have one thing in common. They're dead worlds.
Give me a changing climate any day over that.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
We all care, we just want everyone else to make the sacrifices to halt global warming. (Almost) everyone agrees unless we do something drastic and soon we wont be able to do anything to stop it. What that something is no one is willing to say. The first out the gate will be pilloried by the special interest. Who is going to bell the cat?
That's every grad student, postdoc, or junior faculty member's nightmare; that no matter what you present, some big shot who disagrees can always shake his head and go "No, not convincing enough yet, needs more evidence". Obviously, you can always say that, no matter how much evidence is presented. Of course, this means that this sort of "criticism" is meaningless. There are not only people out there who need more evidence that smoking is bad for you, there are people out there who need more evidence that we landed on the moon, that they can't control the lotto results with their mind, that microorganisms exist... everything.
Every time I see something like that in the AGW field, I ask the "skeptic" for a more precise suggestion re what is missing, what kind of experiment needs to be done, and/or what kind of evidence might convince them (as good scientific practice would suggest; you frame a question and decide a priori what the possible results would mean, then do the experiment. You are not entitled to just wait until the results come in, then decide what you would find positive and what negative after seeing them.) and not once have I gotten any result more specific than "More evidence" or "Something convincing". I do get a few replies like "Nothing would ever convince me!" apparently with no self-consciousness or understanding of how that makes them a faith-based denialist. At least it's honest, though more than intended no doubt, and probably describes the folks who don't respond also.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
yeah, that's the "skeptic" position alright;
1) I have here a ton of studies which disprove AGW
2) studies which disprove AGW are not funded or published
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Probably you as an AC won't read this two days later, but I don't understand why you changed the subject from "in the 1490's" into the present one, in response to my post. The original subject is a reference to Columbus (that's earlier than Galileo) and in that era the only other Christian church would have been the Eastern Orthodox church.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Stop it, just quit being a little weasel. This discussion is not about the NSF.
The point is, all science costs money, so all science is biased by money. You berate any finding (regardless of validity) financed by a group that has some vested interest in a result that disagrees with your beliefs, but can see no problem with the funding of concurring research.
Except that there is no "cult of Climate Change" like deniers are trying to project.
Which is what this is: Projection. Climate Denialists, especially Climate Change Denying Scientists -- the 3% -- are almost exclusively being paid by or receiving information from the very companies that have a vested financial interest in continued lack of sane and reasonable regulation.
A better study might look at the scrutiny applied to these 97% vs the *rejected* papers that disagreed with the 97%.
That would be an interesting study, but I don't think it would practical to do so. I doubt most journals archive copies of articles they don't print. Of course, someone should give it a try. I expect the result will be far from what you would expect. According to the information available to me, it looks like the majority of rejected papers that deal with the source of global warming, also support the human-cause hypothesis. I am aware that at various times the people who promote the idea that alternate viewpoints are being excluded from publication have been challenged to provide proof. So far they have been unable to find any papers that were being excluded from publication on any grounds other than poor methodology (which has directly led to unreliable conclusions). In fact, there is real evidence to show that some scientists who are opposed to the human-cause hypothesis were actually given preferential treatment in one journal. There's no evidence of the opposite happening.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
People could agree with you on the cause, but disagree that taxes - in any form - are the solution. Don't confuse a scientific proof with a political action.
This is a legitimate observation. But what is not legitimate is to deny the science because you don't like the political implications. Our understanding of the climate system is not perfect, but it is plenty good enough to understand that we are increasing atmospheric CO2, that that increase leads to a significant warming of the ocean/atmosphere system, and that this warming will have, on average, significant negative effects on established eco-systems and, in the medium term, coastlines. If you don't like to handle this via "taxes", find some other way. Or convince people to live with it as the price of progress. But denying it is not a valid choice.
Stephan
It was more than that. Real temps were also spliced in to three separate proxy graphs. What's really amusing about the "Skeptical Science" article is this little bit
It seems you've stumbled upon something that shouldn't been allowed . . . yet no one in the field has a problem with that. Now what is your background again? Oh, you're not a climate scientists but somehow you know more than any of them.
There was never a definitive reason given for this "divergence problem", so by chopping out data that doesn't match recent warming but leaving it in for earlier reconstructions, you are cherry-picking and applying confirmation bias, and its the kind of thing that will lead to graphs that show recent warming as being unprecedented for the last 1000 years.
So you would leave data that you KNOW isn't accurate in your results? What kind of scientist are you? The reason has been explained if you cared to look.
Phil Jones was actually admonished in one report regarding the WMO "hide the decline" graph (passing it off as a labeling/description issue), and also admonished for not releasing data, but yes, it was generally whitewashed. I'll believe what I can independently verify for myself over whitewash committee reports.
The data has been released. Please find something wrong with it. You can't can you?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It seems you've stumbled upon something that shouldn't been allowed . . . yet no one in the field has a problem with that. Now what is your background again? Oh, you're not a climate scientists but somehow you know more than any of them.
Oh, what's that? You responded with an ad hominem attack and argument by authority instead of addressing the argument? This from somebody who references a site by a professional cartoonist and "web programmer"?
You haven't addressed why Mann's plot was being shown when Jones was talking about what he did with his plot. It doesn't take a climate scientist to figure it out. Maybe if you got off your ass and did some research outside of "Skeptical Science" you could understand the subterfuge employed by "Skeptical Science".
So you would leave data that you KNOW isn't accurate in your results? What kind of scientist are you?
I don't arbitrarily chop off data that doesn't "fit" my hockey stick and then claim the last 1,000 years doesn't match my hockey stick high, either. I also don't splice in real temps to three separate proxy graphs, giving the illusion of certainty when there is none. And there are professional scientists who have come out against this bullshit, though anybody with a basic science education can see the inherent problem.
Of course, if you're so entrenched in your position, you won't see it because you won't even look or think critically.
The reason has been explained if you cared to look.
You mean you read some blurbs on "Skeptical Science" or from Mann or Jones giving press interviews. How about instead you cite the science that says it is ok to chop off data without a valid explanation for what is causing the "divergence problem".
The data has been released. Please find something wrong with it. You can't can you?
Funny, I just told you what was wrong with it (Jones' graph in particular is what we're talking about, in case you still haven't figured that out), and even told you a report admonished Jones for his graph, but this is what you come back with?
No further comments on deleting email regarding the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report? Do you admit that was a very wrong thing to do, both ethically and legally?
No further comments about showing your data and work, friend or "enemy"? Do you agree that's what a good scientist should do?
No citation about "incomplete work"? Do you admit you have none? Do you acknowledge what Jones said, "The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years."?
Do you acknowledge that this is a farce: "the committee accepted that Jones had released all the data that he could"? Do you acknowledge one report directly contradicts this statement?
Do you acknowledge that Phil Jones isn't the "scapegoat" you made him out to be, and that his own actions put him in the spotlight?
Do you acknowledge your original statement, "What they found were scientists venting with each other about people like you who misrepresent anything that was said for political gain." is completely inadequate, and completely glosses over serious ethical lapses?
Thank you. Also known as appeal to belief. [nizkor.org] 98% of Americans believe in God. [gallup.com] Therefore, God must exist.
However, what is being said here is not that 97% of any group of people believe in any particular proposition. What is being said here is the 97% of studies in a field, based on empirical evidence and the application of the orthodox tools of science arrive at the same conclusion.
You cannot overcome this merely with an appeal to well-known logical fallacies, or any other rhetorical attack. You would need to look at the published work, show how the data that was missed, the data that ought not to have been incorporated, misapplied statistical methods etc, etc. In short, it is open to you to refute the orthodox position. But not by piss-farting around with rhetoric, or displaying your ignorance of the science of any particular previous climatic period like your common-or-garden variety denier (there I did as you asked)... all you have to do is show us the maths.
And might I add, I wish you every success in that endeavour. I live in hope that one day the IPCC will announce, "sorry folks we were all wrong, the Earth has some feedback mechanism we were not aware of and your great-grandchildren are safe." Anyway must run, I'm off to buy a lottery ticket ...
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
To get their heads straightened out by all the ideologically-motivated armchair experts who know more about everything than anyone. The beauty of conspiracies is that all evidence against your position is part of the conspiracy. It's truly enlightening to see the wonderfully complex rationalisation required to comfortably believe what you want to believe.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
If man-made GW is real and a threat, does it make sense to give Al Gore money so he can run his mansions and mega-houseboats, at over 20X normal (high) American consumption levels?.... all while totally ignoring massive emissions from India and especially China, and even Africa where they are rapidly using "legacy" carbon locked in their hardwood forests for 20yrs worth of cooking charcoal? Anyone remember just couple decades ago and before that the one main environmental topic was OVER POPULATION. At least 1/2 dozen Star Treks had it as central theme, and we had movies like "Soylent Green". Just a few years ago the Sierra Club was against "immigration" for obvious reasons, then some "deep pocket" took them over and now they dropped all that. Of the 97% who are promoting GW as something Western Nation are supposed to address, I'm guessing 97% of them will go along with "More immigrants will make the USA better", and "We can't deport illlegal aliens because they are integrated into our economy (because everyone knows our economy depends on blowing leaves and mowing lawns)." No 3rd world people are going to be interested in "fixing" their lifestyle, much less reducing family size, as long as it is easy to immigrant to USA or other Western nation. If man made GW is something to worry about, creating schemes were Western economies pay Al Gore for "carbon credits" wont do any good. Reducing high birth rates in 3rd world and fixing their low-tech, high-carbon lifestyles IN PLACE is the only hope.
Thank you /.! I flagged this entry for follow-up solely to get a gauge on how tenaciously otherwise open-minded, intelligent people will stand on their rationalized belief-systems. This is a brilliant display of that tenacity and I applaud you for it. Bravo!
The point is not that it is true since 97% agree but that the public doesn't realize 97% agree and thinks the scientific community is split 50/50 on the issue.
It is a -fact- that even if we completely cut global CO2 emissions to zero, it would take at least 1,000 years for CO2 to revert to pre-industrial levels. So, yes, while the right wing is looney, they are right on one key point - within our lifetimes, massive CO2 cutbacks will not accomplish anything, other than to make more people poorer.
This is my sig.
Thanks for the link - no surprise there. This is what I find maddening about the climate debate: it is full of people who are willing misrepresent or omit data to support their preconceived bias. As an outsider to the field this makes it impossible to tell which articles contain real science and which contained the cherry-picked data to support the author's viewpoint.
When did i say i find it hard to publish. What i said was its very hard to publish against popular views. I pick/work in areas where such established facts are less of an issue.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
97% of the papers say that man is to blame for climate change.
If these papers 85% was authored by a woman.
-- 29A the number of the Beast