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Another Climate-Change Retraction
jamie writes "It seems every time someone twists global-warming science into 'good news,' a retraction is soon to follow, and so it must be for Slashdot. Yesterday, the conservative Wall Street Journal published yet another apologetic claiming 'the overall effect of climate change will be positive,' by someone who (of course) is not a climate scientist. Today, Climate Progress debunks the piece, noting 'Ridley and the WSJ cite the University of Illinois paper to supposedly prove that warming this century will be under 2C — when the author has already explained to them that his research shows the exact opposite!' We went through this same process last year, with the same author and the same paper, so it's pretty embarrassing that he 'makes a nearly identical blunder' all over again."
Anything to keep you from looking at the root cause of the problem. Pollution, waste, dumping, strip farming/mining, and so on and so on are never discussed. Problems that we see like the great pacific garbage dump are ignored, as are ocean dead zones and polluted water.
I don't believe 99% of what is paid to be published, because, well hell look who is paying for the media spin? The same people pushing more and more pollution in most cases.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Black lie is what I call it. These scum knew what they were doing. They've been told, repeatedly, that they are wrong and why they are wrong, and they just dismiss and ignore everything and say those lies again anyway. They were printing propaganda. Throwing raw meat to the conservatives. That's all the WSJ's opinion section has been since Murdoch bought it.
It's like the black knight skit in Quest for the Holy Grail. "It's only a flesh wound" and "The earth has had worse." Won't quit fighting even after his legs have been cut out from under him.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
He's a physicist, not a climatologist. He certainly would be better in some respects at assessing the models, but nowhere near as competent as, oh, I dunno, a climatologist. On the flipside, if a climatologist starts making grand declarations about quantum electroydnamics, I'm sure I'd be turning to Dyson for a rebuttal.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The same sort of lies were spread about smoking and cancer, the same (for hire) lobby groups were writing and distributing the anti-science propaganda. They dragged the tobacco CEO's into congress for a grilling. At the end of the day they were fined $500M, but still not enough to put them out of business and certainly no jail time for what was nothing short of fraud. The coal industry is an economic superpower compared to tobacco, they have been successfully fighting emission controls for over a century. They will not retire gracefully.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The bottom line is that lying works when you are dealing with low-information people.
Table-ized A.I.
When "scientists" don't behave like scientists (and Dyson should know how a scientist behaves), it should give EVERYONE pause.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The IPCC report that will be coming out by the U.N. is going to state that mass deaths were previously overcalculated. On the other hand, reducing our economic output to reduce carbon emissions will cause measurable levels of starvation and death due to cold weather and will affect the poor people the most. (Poor people pay a larger portion of their income for electricity than rich people. Incentivizing reduced electricity use and vis-a-vis carbon emissions through price controls hurts poor people.)
So who should I decide is correct? The WSJ, the IPCC, & Fox News or you? You're not even arguing with the most current data by groups you support.
Have you truly looked into contributions from oil companies or are you stating what you heave read. Did you know oil companies donate to groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club? Is it ok for them to donate significantly more to environmental groups than they do to Skeptical Anthropogenic Global Warming Research groups? Is that because you have decided, based on outdated and overstated data, that they are right?
Continue your rounding up of the witches. Everything that ends well starts with persecution of the opposition.
Twice means is purposeful.
But here's the thing. A lot of the smoking and cancer studies WERE lies also. Particularly some of the studies on second hand (or third hand) smoke. I'm not arguing that smoking is good for you or anything, but if you dig a little you will find that the current crusade to ban smoking outdoors or pretty much anywhere because claims that even a little exposure is going to kill you are patently false.
OBTW, if a pack of cigarettes cost $6, and $5 of that is tax, who exactly is in the tobacco business?
And such I fear is the trend with AGW evangelists. They are right, at least to a degree, but the truth is just not quite scary enough to accomplish their agenda. So they Hollywood it up a bit.
Your right, we SHOULD be listening to the people pushing for more taxes for the government instead, because they OBVIOUSLY have your best interest in mind.
Have you got a solution that doesn't involve regulation?
What is being said here seems to be "I don't like the solutions that I think will be imposed, so therefore I will vehemently argue that the problem doesn't exist, or if it exists that it's not as bad as projected."
The logical fallacy of that should be obviously: whether a particular solution is right or wrong has no logical bearing on whether the science-- that human-generated carbon dioxide contributes to temperature according to well-known models-- is correct.
If you don't like the solution, perhaps you should work on figure out a proposal for a solution that is acceptable, rather than denying the science is right.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If it turns out it's the latter, we can ask some interesting questions., Since persuading people that climate change is not as the scientists represent it -a ticking time bomb we are running out of time to defuse and one whose consequences include the mass death of humans, is lying about climate science not the equivalent to shouting (no) fire in a crowded (and burning) theater?
The answer is an obvious "no". We are tired of loud-mouthed, would be thugs and bullies, such as yourself, trying to shape disagreement on the presence and severity of AGW as some some sort of "crime against humanity" - to use your own words.
The "shouting fire" example is fundamentally broken because there is no fire. There is a potential problem, yes, but the urgency just isn't there.
Could China or Japan or Germany or Russia or any other country just legally and unilaterally decide that say, David and Charles Koch represent too much of a threat to human civilization to permit them to go on living?
Well, some of those countries aren't based on law. So what is legal changes from moment to moment. And the countries of law such as Japan and Germany could not arbitrarily kill unpopular people because that would be illegal.
Laws exist to make society livable. They are defined according and in reaction to the environment. If that environment changes dramatically, then we can expect that near future generations of people will look back see the times we are living in now quite differently than we do, just the way we look back on slavery as an abomination or the post WWII generation of Germans were completely appalled at what their parents had done.
Well then, let us all work to prevent your dystopia from becoming a reality. Your role could be real easy or real hard - I really don't know. All I ask of you is to try to become a better person and put aside this pointless hate.
And. "But, but, but Feel Better Inside." is not an argument I care to hear.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Have you actually read the IPCC working-group 1 report, The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change. I don't mean, a summary of it ... Have you actually read the report?
I beg to differ. Even reading the Summary could be greatly beneficial for many of the victims of the disinformation campaign. The full WG1 report is a lot of reading. There's an overwhelming amount of science to get through and expecting non-specialists to tough it out is not entirely realistic. That, after all, is why the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) exists.
And the advantage is that on any area of science where you want to get your hands dirty, you can navigate from the SPM, into the the appropriate place of the Full Report proper and via the citations to the original publications in the scientific literature.
And on that point, don't waste your time right now reading the AR4 report. The AR5 report is due for release from the 27th of this month, starting with the SPM, from here.
And the SPM makes it so easy for non-specialists to get a handle on the science, it's simply unforgivable for anyone who presumes to venture an opinion on this issue not to have digested it.
One of these days I really hope they'll add a "I'm an idiot and want to indicate that I no longer stand by this comment" button here on Slashdot, since this is one of those moments for me. I stand corrected, and with good reason, since I was apparently just skimming the summary. Honestly and sincerely, thank you for calling me out on not reading it properly, since I definitely deserved to be called out on it. :)