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Global-Warming Skepticism Hits 6-Year High
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Chris Mooney writes at Mother Jones that a new study, from the Yale and George Mason University research teams on climate change communication, shows a 7-percentage-point increase in the proportion of Americans who say they do not believe that global warming is happening. And that's just since the spring of 2013. The number of deniers is now 23 percent; back at the start of last year, it was 16 percent (PDF). The obvious question is, what happened over the last year to produce more climate denial? The answer may lie in the so-called global warming "pause"—the misleading idea that global warming has slowed down or stopped over the the past 15 years or so. This claim was used by climate skeptics, to great effect, in their quest to undermine the release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report in September 2013—precisely during the time period that is in question in the latest study. "The notion of a global warming "pause" is, at best, the result of statistical cherry-picking," writes Mooney. " It relies on starting with a very hot year (1998) and then examining a relatively short time period (say, 15 years), to suggest that global warming has slowed down or stopped during this particular stretch of time." Put these numbers back into a broader context and the overall warming trend remains clear. "If you shift just 2 years earlier, so use 1996-2010 instead of 1998-2012, the trend is 0.14 C per decade, so slightly greater than the long-term trend," explains Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA who was heavily involved in producing the IPCC report. This is why climate scientists generally don't seize on 15 year periods and make a big thing about them. "Journalists take heed: Your coverage has consequences. All those media outlets who trumpeted the global warming "pause" may now be partly responsible for a documented decrease in Americans' scientific understanding.""
If the climate scientists have a model that accurately predicted the past 16 years then we can talk about the future.
Until then the predictions of gloom and doom are about as believable as the heavens-gate cult.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/22/3099141/climate-denying-groups-funding/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/
http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/climate-change-denial-a-billion-dollar-industry-of-fabrication-says-study/
(sampled from the first few hits for: https://www.google.es/search?q=climate+change+denial+lobby+billions }
No sig today...
With the arrival of fresh napalm?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
And then there are all the climate models that a.) don't predict a zero deg slope in the data and b.) Don't appear to match the observed satellite temperature record.
Which shows that people (in the US) don't understand climate, or weather, and the fact that climate change means an increase in theextremes of weather.
Theres a drought and state of emergency in California, here in the midwest we have had our coldest December for a long time, and plenty of record lows, a week or two ago it was colder here than at the south pole (Or on Mars)
And USians still don't believe in climate change...
Yeah it's amazing how every d*ck with an internet connection is suddenly an expert on the weather and climate change. The latest study on how many scientist's actually deny climate change found the number to be less than 0.01%. So Practically every scientist in the world, who isn't being paid off by the Koch brothers, says that climate change is happening and it is man made. Yet we all feel qualified to say its crap. Based on what studies that we've done? Oh, it's snowing out so the earth can't be getting warmer. One of the side effects of global warming is more extreme weather conditions. Thus extreme cold could also be a result of global warming.
Stare at this honey till your eyes fall out: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Kyoto_Protocol_participation_map_2009.png/800px-Kyoto_Protocol_participation_map_2009.png
because it's cold at my house.
By Deus, when you think the debate can't sink any lower, it has descended to poetry. Stop the ride, I wanna get off.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Yeah it's amazing how every d*ck with an internet connection is suddenly an expert on the weather and climate change.
Yep. Education and/or experience is no barrier to being a fully qualified climate scientist. All you need is opinions and you're as good as the guys in white coats.
No sig today...
Why do people choose to misinterpret global warming? Because they are stress out from the endless guilt trip on everything they do.
The issue is everything we do has some sort of trade off. But it feels like we are being judge for every choice we make.
Do you use reusable grocery bags? Then you better be sure that you clean them good enough, otherwise you could get sick from the germs.
Do you use new plastic bag? Then here is this documentary about a sea torturous who dies from eating your plastic bag that you threw away.
How about if you stick with good old paper? Your Cold/Frozen food creates condensation and break the bag and you waste all this food.
How about the car you drive?
A hybrid, which needs more green house gasses to build.
A small, car which cannot carry enough people and good thus needing an extra car.
A medium sized car, which gives off more carbon, and yet still doesn't fit everything you need.
A large car/Suv/Truck you can carry what you need however a lot of time you just polluting gas.
Do you cut down that large tree in you back yard? If so you can prevent it from falling on your house, if not it can suck up so much more carbon?
Don't even get me on, food choices....
We do want to do good, however there are so many tradeoffs we need to think about, and with science showing us more, it overwhelms us, and in essence paralyzes us. So we choose what science we choose to follow and what we choose to disregard as a coping mechanism.
It is emotional, it isn't about being stupid, of ill informed, it is just about being emotional on your choice.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Kyoto Accord Song. Seems relevant.
It's not a peer-reviewed study, it's an informal systematic review.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
...and it's 0.01% of published literature, not scientists.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Of course, if you cherry pick 1996-2012 you can get a small trend line... but if you start in 1996 (instead of 1998 like the article states, as most skeptics avoid that since it's such an easy counter-point) you have no statistically significant warming 17 years. Benjamin Santer in http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JD016263/abstract declared that "Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature."
Translated, it essentially means that if there is no significant warming for 17 year periods we need to start searching for the real causes and not just sink money in to finding more human causes to blame.
Then you add in that the sun goes in to a lull and suddenly we have no more warming and a huge number of record colds being recorded in the northern hemisphere yet the alarmist have been shouting it from the rooftops that changes in the sun are too small to affect climate citing the TSI changes rather than the changes in different frequencies (which are quite large). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510
Maybe instead of people having a decrease of scientific understanding they are just waking up to the facts and as they learn more they realize the alarmists are hand waving ninnies.
Don't know about 0.01%
But NASA claims 3% deny climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus
Remember that "scientists" are also mostly non-experts. Just non-experts with a higher average IQ.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I would say most people believe the climate changes naturally, just a lot more people are pulling away from the fear-mongering tactics used by the likes of Al Gore and friends.
Try reading and you'll see it says nothing of the kind.
The country is facing growing public pressure from citizens to reduce air pollution, due in large part to burning coal. Its efforts to promote energy efficiency and renewable power stem from the realization that doing so will pay off in the long term, Figueres said. “They actually want to breathe air that they don’t have to look at,” she said. “They’re not doing this because they want to save the planet. They’re doing it because it’s in their national interest.” China is also able to implement policies because its political system avoids some of the legislative hurdles seen in countries including the U.S., Figueres said.
There's no "only", there's no "this is the right way to do it", there's nothing like that. There's just "China is doing these things, this is why China is able to do these things".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This question came up on slashdot a few weeks ago, regarding surveys showing ten percent fewer people expressed belief in evolution. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4612831&cid=45824039 than 6 years ago. An anonymous coward noted:
"As an expression of commitment to the tribe, professing a false belief is way more powerful than a true belief. It bind the community closer, because they've demonstrated their willingness to suppress their own reason for the group. The sillier the belief, the better, of course."
Gently reply
Too bad this wasn't linked in TFS:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
By linking to a rabid patiasan source like the daily caller you have basically invalidated your post here. Nothing you have said here can be taken seriously because you are linking to the Daily Caller for gods sake.
I would have watched the whole thing but the unexpected giant chicken made me laugh so much that I had to stop before my spleen ruptured. Holy crap, you have to warn people before you do that!
On the "I could really care less"-oh-meter, it spikes the chart.
Citation please.
Then join a bro and lift off!
So 23% of people in the USA do not believe in science. That actually comes to about 1% of humanity. If we allow for the fact that there will be a sizeable chunk of the world that does not know either side of the argument who would have to be discounted in the statistic and even in the most educated countries, there are those who are uninformed and there are those who choose to be.
I suspect that it will be under 5% of the world would admit to this opinion. If that was a political movement, they would be insignificant and out of government. Perhaps it is best that they stay that way...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Well if it makes the Yanks feel any better, one can colour Australia blue from July 1 onwards, when the new senate repeals legislation as their first act.
Our new PM (back in 2009) "The argument is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger." 4 years on and he convinced a majority of electors that action on climate change was "socialism masquerading as environmentalism".
So it's not just conservatives in the US that regard climate change as a big socialist conspiracy...
Racheal Carson's Silent Spring which predicted we'd be dead by now. Or perhaps scientist like Freeman Dyson (a British American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.) Who said, "We cannot predict the effects of carbon on climate until we understand the science of climate much better than we do now."
That's the big trend these days. We must respect everyone's opinions equally. It doesn't matter if they are expert in a specific field or know nothing but what they see on the "news". All are of equal value. That's why we don't tell kids who are getting F's (do any of them get those any more?) that they are stupid. We let them find out what the world thinks of dummies after we push them along and graduate them. Then they find out that they are dopes and can't get/keep a job that pays a living wage (are there any of those any more?) and start taking antidepressants.
The US is in the death throws of democracy. Future generations (in other countries) will study this period of US history to try to figure out what happened. How did stupidity and ignorance get elevated to virtues?
The very best that can be said about it is it is weather forecasting.
Science is testable. Anthropogenic climate change or whatever it is called this week is not testable. We have simply been in a several hundred year period of increasing solar activity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8615789.stm
Things are going to get a lot colder.
It is obvious that the earth has been warming since the last ice age. The question is whether HUMAN caused warming is significant and it sure doesn't seem so.
Don't forget the other side of the coin too https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+change+lobby+billions
The couplet:
"If those busy 'crisis' hatching
Could but show some action matching"
is an allusion to Instapundit's "I'll believe it's a crisis when those telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I want to do research on the subject of predictive models for global-warming skepticism.
I sure would appreciate some of that Global Warming around here. Can't get above 50F no matter what.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
This is an incorrect statement. Americans (and honestly, the general public worldwide) never had a great understanding of climate (or any) science. Many people who accept global warming are just as scientifically illiterate as those who reject it. Just because you are right about something doesn't mean understand it.
I understand that one can't just cherry-pick a period of low temperature growth and claim "LOL n0 w4rmZ!", but when the period picked runs through the present, I think it's reasonable to start asking when it becomes long enough to force a re-evaluation of the relevant theories. I'm not claiming that it's long enough now, but I'm curious if anyone knows at what point a failure condition is triggered in the major relevant documents, e.g. the IPCC AR4 or 5.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
The brilliance of "climate change" is that the possibility range of "change" is kinda infinite.
In one stroke you can bin everyone who'd gainsay you in any way with Flat Earthers.
That there is some nifty rhetorical kneecapping. Bravo.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Scientific understanding is the ability to apply the scientific method. It is not the ability to parrot back claims scientists have made, or the claims others have made about what scientists have claimed. That's just regular "knowledge".
Saw this doing the rounds today:
'The Death of Expertise'
The basic problem, is because the Internet has convinced dumb and ignorant people that their uninformed bullshit opinions stand on the same ground as those of people who have been studying the subject for decades. It stems from the metastatisation of the retards' confusion of democracy with "equal air-time for ignorance":
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
Apparently the UN Climate Chief just said that only Communism can stop global warming.
No, she didn't. She said that communism is good at dealing with that kind of thing, not that democracy was incapable of fixing it. She made the rather obvious point that communist states find it easier to act for the collective good, while in democracies people tend to act in their own interests.
This just shows how desperate the sceptics have become now it looks like they are losing the debate. They have to try and conflate dealing with climate change with that old enemy communism. Kinda surprised they haven't figured out how to link recycling to helping terrorists yet.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
lies not in the so-called "global warming pause". It lies in the fact that most, if not all of the naysayers, are creationist, drill-baby-drill Americans. Sorry. I know - I am going to be modded down into oblivion. So what.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
People are under the erroneous impression that they are giving up something good. They feel guilty because they have been conned by the marketers. Fell guilty about trying to live more ecologically? Congratulations! You are a sucker! Big corps WANT you to be stubborn and keep buying their shit and sucking the money out of YOUR wallet.
Big cars? Look on the road. How many people actually fill them up? They are mostly single drivers - maybe two.
Food? We've been brainwashed into thinking eating what we evolved to eat (vegetables, fruits, nuts, a very small amounts of meat - which is optional) as being depriving. The big junk food makers have conned us into thinking that green salad is tasteless and we need a shit load of salt and grease. I've changed my tastes back to where they should be and I find prepared foods - pretty much anything that I don't cook - to be too salty and too greasy.
Grocery bags? Whatever. I do all of them. I reuse the plastic bags - they're great for picking up dog poop when you walking it.
AND -this part I LOVE - living ecologically saves money (use less expensive gas, cook healthier meals, medical costs go down, dont' get suckered by big corp America) AND it sticks it to the man!
No sir! The green and crunchy people have shown me that I can loose weight while eating as much as I like, reduce healthcare expenses (lost weight, better LDL/HDL ratio: 1.0 Baby!, and less stress on the knees and other joints), help local farmers - they grow awesome stuff, save on gasoline, and more money in MY pocket - all because I'm living like an eco-"whackjob" as Neil Boortz used to say.
To be unequivocal about this: the head of the UN Security Council could have said the same things about China's military, and I doubt it would have been taken as saying that communism is a necessity for national security. (Nor, in fact, is communism necessary for one to have a political system that has little legislative oversight.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
We are kinda screwed..
responsible for a documented decrease in Americans' scientific understanding
Oh, FFS. The core of "scientific understanding" is critical thinking and questioning presented "facts", the possession of which naturally results in skepticism when doing so invokes this sort of garbage. "Clearly anyone who doesn't blindly accept what we're saying, without question, doesn't understand science" isn't "science", it's dogma.
I've still never had anyone offer me any reasonable answers to many of my legitimate questions on these "studies." e.g.:
Okay, admittedly #4 is more an expression of frustration. I'm not a geologist or meteorologist, so pointing me at the raw data doesn't tell me anything, but having it "translated" for my by "experts" has proven all but useless, since this "debate" still doesn't seem to have much to do with science as opposed to politicization of funding.
Ideology and science are incompatible, whether it's about teaching schoolkids about evolution, or the world catching on fire. As it is now, I still don't know if global warming is a thing, if it's a human-caused thing, or if it's bullshit. All that's come out of this whole thing is that I pretty much don't care, since the way it's being handled is more like two schoolkids arguing over whether Batman can beat up Superman.
Global Warming Scepticism goes up and down with hem lines. Whoopeydooo!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Well, he's just a dick on the Internet who's obviously an expert on weather and Climate Change.
The issue is presented in a political way because we need the cooperation of many countries to effectively deal with the problem. Even within the US we need the cooperation of two parties to effectively reduce fossil fuel use. It's the politicians who make the decisions, so the decision about what to do about it lies in the hands of politicians.
Individual sacrifice will not solve the problem. We need to rework the infrastructure that produces energy so it doesn't rely as heavily on fossil fuels. I think this is the biggest misconception. Reducing fossil fuel use doesn't mean we suffer. If anything, we get a better quality of life because of more energy efficient appliances, homes, and cars, and less pollution. Well, I suppose if you can't stand any of the new light bulbs, you may need to suffer a bit. But you can still buy incandescent bulbs if you want... they're just halogen now instead of tungsten filament.
As far as I can see, the objections to believing the anthropogenic global warming are not scientific. And I see several comments in Slashdot to the effect that this issue is being used by Socialists to gain power and force their will on others. So, yes, the objections seem to be based in ignorance and politics. Show me a valid scientific reason to believe the earth isn't warming, the warming isn't due to greenhouse gases emitted by humans, or that the warming will have little negative effects, and that would be different.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
ggggloobbal warming is just a mmmyyyth eeeowww
That's why we don't tell kids who are getting F's (do any of them get those any more?) that they are stupid.
Considering the state of our public education system, that would be stupid to begin with. These letters are utterly worthless until our school system stops being a piece of trash.
Duh - both global warming believers and deniers are on shaky mathematical ground because the non-linear equations used in climate calculations are highly sensitive to initial values.
It's not "them" that causes such a guilt-ridden and indecisive state. Settle down, boy!
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
What a bunch of bullshit. Where's the data going back the the previous 4.2999999994 billion years? Global warming skepticism was higher way back when. This is just natural skepticism variability.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
You realised you linked to a search with one result about a pro-climate-change lobby, and all the rest are reports on anti-climate-change lobbying efforts several times it size?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I assume that going around informing important stakeholders of the problem and campaigning for change, like scientists always do when they believe there's a crisis, doesn't count?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I think americans have it pretty difficult. ... I simplified) El Ninjo and Al Ninja phenomens. Both phenomens my "sleep" for half a decade or longer and suddenly increase in strength (completely unrelated to the CO2 trend or any other trend).
Media works very differnt than in the rest of the world. There are much to many lobbies tying to "build opinions" in public.
AND: the country is simply huge. You will always have a few areas in your country which is hit by global warming a bit more server and lots of areas where you don't really feel it.
I guess in the "desert" states you don't really feel a difference. It might be slightly warmer over day than lets say 25 years ago, but well: it is just hot and dry, so what? And at night it is pretty cold, as always: so what?
The west coast is dominated by a cold stream comming from the south, the effect of that stream is surely 50 times stronger than the current effects of CO2.
The center of north america (both USA and Canada) is classic example for "continental climate". That means: regardless how hot the summers are: in winter it is damned cold! That means even if it is warmer on average, there will be an extreme winter every few years, depending how the jet stream situation over/around the north pole is.
On top of that we have alternating (does not really alternate
For some reason I never digged into the east cost is in winter pretty cold (considering that New York is on the same latitude as Rome - Italy) Colder than the equivalent latitude cities one the west. So New York has every few years a super Blizzard.
OTOH:
o In Australia we have every year a new summer heat record.
o In Europe not so much, but we have much more rain the last 5 - 10 years in summer.
o In Europe the winters are absurd warm, with a few exceptions which had a bit more snow (but where still to warm in comparision of 30 years ago)
o In Europe we have an increase of autumn and winter storms, this winter already 3 big ones (winter is just 4 weeks old, mind you)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Do you mean http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/president27sclimateactionplan.pdf
At the risk of demeaning the message due to the messenger, I don't believe a godforsaken word the man utters.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
No, I didn't mean the President's Climate Action Plan, I meant climate scientists, and how they're reacting to the issue. Which is how scientists tend to react to a crisis. Which is what was required before the quote author would believe it was a crisis.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, not just in absolute terms but also per unit of GDP. Air pollution in Beijing is so bad that the health implications are very evident, and massive.
But because they aren't a democracy, they'll be able to fix that! Well, they haven't done much *yet*, but they'll be able to get right on that. You betcha.
Oh, wait, they have done something. They've insisted that the US Embassy in Beijing stop measuring the daily air quality.
Indeed. Progressiveness is a disease that is actively destroying America from within.
How did stupidity and ignorance get elevated to virtues?
I wish I had an answer for you, other than the media. The last 20 years has been the "coming out" years for stupidity. Ignorance and stupidity are rewarded and intellectualism, logic and reason is to be avoided because it's "geeky". No one seems capable of critical thinking anymore. There are people who know they are stupid, and are proud of it! Really - with all thees low-brow TV shows like "honey boo boo", "duck dynasty" , " kardashians", etc - they seem to make being stupid vogue somehow. Then on the flip side of the coin, last month CNN did a short bit on CERN'S LHC and the 2 reporters were giggling, making jokes, couldn't keep a straight face during the piece. They were obviously uncomfortable reporting on this subject for fear they may get labeled a geek or something. Perhaps our future is shown in the movie "Idiocracy". I fear for our future generations. I saw something here on Slashdot the other day which I posted on my fridge; that sums it up:
"“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists%27_views_on_climate_change
Here's a list of MANY studies with varying results... ALL of which denote that the MAJORITY, often a VAST majority, realize the truth - man's emissions have an impact and it IS SIGNIFICANT.
Don't be scared of science Republican America, embrace it and use that as the unlocking tool to ALL of your fallacies, economic, social, and personal.
"All you need is opinions and you're as good as the guys in white coats"
If those particular guys in white coats are speaking the language of pseudo-science, you're probably right.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Remind me again, did Chernobyl happen in a capitalist regime? This is so wrong as to be ludricrous. The communist regimes of Eastern Europe and Russia (and China) have produced some of the worst ecology horror stories every seen. Commujnist regimes don't clean these sorts of messes up, they just make sure that anybody who complains about them get shut up, by force if necessary.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Can't...breathe...
If you think communist regimes are *ever* run for the benefit of anybody but those in charge, you are more delusional than I would've thought possible.
I don't think the quoted source said any of those things.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Just compare the IPCC's 1991 predictions of the range of expected global temperatures to the actual observations. We are at the extreme bottom of the range. Another year with business as usual, and we will completely fall off the bottom. If that happens, it is reasonable to suggest they overestimated the climate's CO2 sensitivity. Anything else is denial of empirical facts.
For the record, it's "Toe the line," unless you're pulling a rope with a vehicle.
"Advertising" is the answer.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Go back and read exactly what she said. Communist countries can pass rather extreme laws to deal with climate change. China passed a law saying people could only have one child, for crying out loud.
In any case this is a distraction from her real point. She was saying that democracies have difficulty dealing with climate change because people tend not to support things that cost them money. Being dirty is cheaper for the individual, at least superficially. The overall cost is always higher though, it's just that because that cost is externalized and not easily associable with the money in your pocket people don't want to pay a little more for a lightbulb.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I am by no means a global warming denier. It seems straightforward that human use of carbon-based fuels has massively increased CO2 in the atmosphere, a known greenhouse gas. This isn’t rocket science. Additionally, there are numerous other impacts we have on the environment, polluting natural resources, where we need to clean up our act.
But the sappy, apocalyptic dogma is getting really old.
My family and I went to Disney recently, and we spent one day at EPCOT. Tomorrowland isn’t what it was when I was a kid. Back then, it was cool stuff about how great technology will be in the future. Now, they appear to have run out forward-looking ideas, and the whole experience is up-your-nose enviromentalist brainwashing. We went there to have fun and instead got lectured. And this lecturing is happening everywhere, and it’s annoying. OK, I GET IT. I recycle, I professionally do research in areas involving improving energy efficiency, and I donate money to organizations that work on envronmental protection and political activism.
This reminds me of this “common core” education program, which its original creators won’t sign off on, because it’s all become a load of crap. Instead of teaching kids math, science, language, and critical thinking, it’s all about instilling certain specific attitudes. And both the liberals and conservatives are trying to get their bullshit in there. Enviromental awareness is never about the environment. It’s about two warrning political parties trying to brainwash people into two different dogmas that further their agendas, most of which is to keep big businesses and the politicians themselves in power.
Effectively anonymous scientists don't count. It means people like Al Gore and Will.I.Am.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
You mean non-experts who have a high tolerance for research and and paper-writing -- high IQs are not required to get PhDs, just dedication.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Wearing a white coat and speaking to an audience (or a camera) at the same time is generally a bad sign. The white coat is there to keep vacuum pump oil, biological specimens, and/or fire (ours were supposedly flame retardant) off of your other clothes. Real scientists leave labcoats in the lab. If it's being used as a signifier to backstop an argument from authority in all likelyhood you are watching an advertisement for a product.
She made the rather obvious point that communist states find it easier to act for the collective good, while in democracies people tend to act in their own interests.
I wouldn't say this point is "obvious" at all. I have nothing against many of the general ideas of socialism or communism, but practical experience is not as clear-cut as your "obvious point" seems.
First, most people "act in their own interests" most of the time, regardless of what you call the government organizing principle.
In theory, communist states should be able to more easily "act for the collective good," but that's really only true for some sort of utopian ideal communist state.
In practice, most actual places that claimed to be "communist" in their government for the past century have often tended toward situations where power is concentrated among certain party leaders. And -- guess what -- many of those parties leaders tend to "act in their own interest" to retain power, control, accumulate goods, etc.
In essence, most of the "communist" experiments the world have seen so far have not successfully found it "easier to act for the collective good," if that collective good doesn't accord with whatever makes life better for the party leaders.
Socialism and communism do in fact make it easier for governments to implement certain kinds of changes because of decreased individual control over many things. But whether those changes are actually better "for the collective good" depends on who has the power and what their motivations are... just as it does in democratic states.
So, if we want to start comparing "ideal democracies" and "ideal communist states" and "ideal republics" and whatever else, I bet we could make claims that all of them would find better ways of functioning for the "collective good" (definied in slightly different ways). The problem is that none of these systems functions in these ideal ways in practice.
Not surprising. After, the grandparent made the claim that Al Gore was made into the Climate Change front man, when nothing of that sort has happened. Instead, he used his considerable fortune to make a movie, put out a book and go on a speaking tour about Climate Change. And for what it's worth: he still hasn't been wrong about his core facts. The worst people can point to is some hyperbolic language here and there.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Could be when spell-checkers made us sloppy about proper usage. It's "Death throes" unless you're talking wrestling.
Wouldn't you use a spelling checker instead of a spell checker, unless your name is Harry Potter?
For all the "scientific" discussion about the topic in hand, few are still reminding the populace that no scientific theory has been able to predict the changes in total solar output & solar flares over any long period of time! This is an enormous hole in the knowledge needed to do predictions that mean anything.
Solar output conditions dramatically alter the surface temperatures surprise (this winter notice the current so-called "solar maximum" with a "solar flare minimum" and the medieval Maunder minimum).
Until you can accurately predict solar output over a century with some degree of proven accuracy, the climatologists are, well, just guessing.
We need a mathematical model of how the Sun's engine works, but we simply do NOT HAVE IT.
When more than 40% of the populace believes that "God created humans in present form withing last 10,000 years" (handily broken down by political affiliation: 58% of Republicans believe this, 41% of Democrats believe this, 39% of independents believe this) you can hardly dismiss them as fringe whackadoos.
I agree that you will probably find very few who dismiss climate change. You will find people who say "So what? Climate has always changed." You will find people who say "Yeah, and climate changed before the industrial age, too, so why blame humans?" You will also find plenty of people who scream "Oh my god the world is changing and we're all gonna die!"
For me it is not about whether climate change is occurring (I am in the "climate change has always happened" group), nor that climate change is probably exacerbated (although not *caused by*, see above re "climate has always changed") by human contributions.
So for me the questions are:
* Is this necessarily a bad thing? It seems to be taken as a given by the people who decided that the temperature and climate of 150 years ago is The One True Climate and that any deviation from that is a horror being unleashed. They remind me of the Amish, who seem to have decided that the technology of about 1790 or so is good, but anything after that is against God's will. Maybe subjecting them to the climate of the Little Ice Age would make them rethink the potential benefits of warming.
* What, if anything should be done about it? Decreasing pollution is certainly a useful goal, but I don't think that reducing human population to 500K people living as Paleo is a reasonable solution to the "problem". Nor do I think that plans for "rich" countries to funnel cash to "poor" countries has any real utility for solving this problem. Decapitating our country's (and global) economy seems like more pain for more people than climate change. Although if the alarmists are right, the problem will solve itself in a few hundred years.
I would also like to see the models be more open and transparent. If someone from NASA were to come out and say an asteroid is on its way to kill us all in 20 years and we need to spend $1T/year over the next 10 years to build a deflection shield or to send Bruce Willis to blow it up, we'd rightly want multiple scientists to verify the data. We'd want to verify that the plan to "save us" had a chance in hell of doing so--maybe we need a different plan. We sure would not want political animals with an ax to grind or alarmists with a congregation to fleece performing all the orbital calculations in secret so that no one else could verify them, not would we want them making all the plans in secret to be sprung fully-formed on the populace like it or not and unsupported by verified independent examination.
If you care... you'll reengage with humility, mutual respect, and patience. The only reason to not do that is because you refuse to control your ego, refuse to treat people you need the cooperation of with respect, and lack the intellectual patience to go through a matter in the time required.
Let me get this straight: you link to an article that barely quotes two words by someone, make up a claim about Al Gore having been made into a front man, and then argue about engaging with humility, respect and patience? Personally, I don't have time to waste on people who set one standard for others and a different one for them, while not even bothering with reading comprehension.
I care. I have my own biases but I am willing to humbly go through the matter acknowledging what I don't know or understand, showing common courtesy to people that I might not agree with or trust, and patiently going through the matter step by step.
If that's the case, why in God's name are you using the Daily Caller as an authority on anything that's going on? I mean, they barely managed to quote two consecutive words of Figueres, and then just half of the article on a rant about the evils of Communism. Yes, an authoritative government is always able to get more done than a democratic one. That's almost by definition. The question always is, which one is more effective long-term and has more positive long-term impacts?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/01/08/why-climate-deniers-have-no-scientific-credibility-only-1-9136-study-authors-rejects-global-warming
He effected a bored affect.
Not sure exactly what is what, but those numbers are skewed at least a bit. You become a pariah if you publish Anti Global Warming stuff. The people of tolerance are the most angry and hateful if you choose not to agree with them so I would think that if you want decent relationships with your peers and do not want to be screamed down every time you speak best to speak in favor of or shut the fuck up.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Read the works of Prof. Richard Lindzen of MIT. He has proved (using data as opposed to arcane arguments) that radiation from the earth into space follows black body radiation theory. One of the global warming disaster arguments was that heat radiated from the earth is reabsorbed in the "contaminated" atmosphere providing a feedack that would rapidly heat the earth--it is not an accurate model. Also, geological data lets us know that centuries ago the earth was much warmer--and-- centuries ago we had a mini ice age. So major climate changes on the earth have happened in the past, long before our civilization produced so-called greenhouse gases. Finally, "A Global Warming Primer" has a chart of geological data related to the timing and length of previous ice ages and warming periods. A look at their data suggests that we are within a few tens of years or so of going into a cooling peroid. For experimental confirmation that the earth is not warming a great amount, stick your thumb out the window. This past December the USA recorded a long listing or record low temperatures.
Go back and read exactly what she said. Communist countries can pass rather extreme laws to deal with climate change.
Yes, and....?? Communist countries could also pass rather extreme laws that make climate change worse, particularly if by doing so it makes party leaders more powerful or more wealthy. (This is true in democracies as well.)
Also, even if by chance you have leaders who have selfless devotion to the population, there is still no guarantee that they will act in the long-term global interest. Having more power to pass draconian laws could mean that they pass laws that make the environment much worse globally, but benefit that particular country in the short term.
In any case this is a distraction from her real point. She was saying that democracies have difficulty dealing with climate change because people tend not to support things that cost them money. Being dirty is cheaper for the individual, at least superficially.
And you think governments like volunteering to "support things that cost them money" if they don't see a net benefit to the government or those in charge of it? It's not just individuals.
Besides, this whole discussion is bogus since there are precious few (any?) true large-scale democracies in the world. Almost every country that claims to be "democratic" is actually a republic.
Part of the rationale of having a republic rather than direct democracy (other than efficiency) is that people devoted to governing can see a bit more of the "big picture" and make decisions for their constituents that those constituents might not take individual action on. The same mechanisms that, for example, protect minorities in a republic, are the ones that can be used to protect other interests that may not always achieve a majority in a direct vote.
"We must respect everyone's opinions equally. " - WHY? If an opinion is stupid, it should be shot down and if necessary ridiculed. Even clever and academically smart people have stupid opinions.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It's not a peer-reviewed study, it's an informal systematic review.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart
Yeah, except that entire effort is a straw man of colossal proportions. "Climate deniers", really? What, do they deny the climate exists?
Many climate change skeptics accept the idea of greenhouse gasses and potential warming. What is contested is the severity of future warming, if any, and the certainty expressed by the IPCC when instead much is uncertain.
As to the "pause" being a statistical artifact, warming has in fact flattened for about fifteen years so far - despite CO2 being at record levels. We'll see how long it continues, we're right at solar maximum currently and looking at a long stretch of low solar activity ahead. So, the next 20-40 years should give us a true concrete idea of how a solar Grand Minimum effects the climate.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
You're right, I missed that. Not careful enough in my proofing before posting.
As someone mentioned below, it's "toe the line" not "tow the line".
I guess no one's perfect.
Oops, I missed another. Your post should have read "lose all sense", not "loose all sense".
You're welcome!
...and it's 0.01% of published literature, not scientists.
And it also doesn't mean 99.99% think global warming is real and man-made. There's no breakout of the "We don't know"s, and the "The sun is doing it"s.
Oh, it's snowing out
Meanwhile in Australia...
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
That study is presented in a fundamentally dishonest way. 0 TLDR version: It's deceitful to label that disagrees with any portion of the alarmist agenda (disliking a carbon tax for example) as a climate change denier. Taking all groups that fit under that broad category and totaling all of their funding regardless of what percent actually goes to climate issue magnifies the deceit.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
I am sick of hearing about global warming or climate change. It's like worrying about the sun rising tomorrow. Since there isn't a damn thing I can do about it, I choose to ignore it and hope it goes away.
For experimental confirmation that the earth is not warming a great amount, stick your thumb out the window. This past December the USA recorded a long listing or record low temperatures.
Last time I checked the USA wasn't the "Globe", I was just about to go find a reference to the record highs they've been having in Australia, but you beat me too it.
Our government used global warming to justify creation of a complete new tax ("Carbon Tax".) Call me cynical but that is in itself all I need to feel very suspicious of the whole thing.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Talk Radio and Fox News made Al Gore the "front man".
Really? I'm going to have to go back and watch the credits again for "An Inconvenient Truth".
I think you mean toe the line.
AJ Henderson
Could be when spell-checkers made us sloppy about proper usage. It's "Death throes" unless you're talking wrestling.
Wouldn't you use a spelling checker instead of a spell checker, unless your name is Harry Potter?
I'd be more worried about Snape doing the spell-checking myself.
But apparently "spell check" is accepted usage. Probably England's fault. They like constructs such as that.
No. That is pure ad hominem. Try actually addressing arguments on their merits instead of going "La la la i can't hear you". Who the hell gives out insightful for an undeniable fallacy?
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Oops, I missed another. Your post should have read "lose all sense", not "loose all sense".
You're welcome!
Whoosh!
You still missed one.
That's because Google is in on it too.
(removes tongue from cheek).
“If, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing them through Congress, I would do so,” President Obama responded. “But we’re also a nation of laws.”
"Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”
I'd caution against taking the media as representative of most americans. Look at radio: it's increasingly gone all the same pop music. That doesn't mean everyone is listening to miley cyrus, that just means that they're losing a significant number of people, so they're doubling down on those demographics that are still watching or listening.
That demographic is, of course, idiots.
In the case of radio, it's teens and pre-teens with nothing but disposable income to waste on whatever music they think everyone else is listening to, and no mature musical tastes to cause them to turn off the radio. With CNN, it's people who don't know how to read a newspaper or get their news from the internet. With reality TV, it's people who are tired and want to turn off their brains for a while.
(Disclaimer: I watched all of Jersey Shore while writing my dissertation, so maybe I'm just defensive.)
While I do think there's an unfortunate number of people in America who have decided that ignorance is a virtue and not a vice, I don't believe that's most people, and I don't believe it's in all subjects. Those CNN reporters who were nervous about not understanding physics might have really great insight into politics and economics. People who watch honey boo boo aren't emulating that behavior with their jobs.
"...easier to act for what they claim is the collective good...". FTFY. Given their actual track record, communist regimes are absolutely terribly at determining what is actually for the common good and/or mostly just use that as a fig leaf to do what they want.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
This sounds like it correlates well with the reduction in belief in evolution. I think it has less to do with climate science and conditions, and more to do with the handlers of the evangelical right feeding anti-science gospel to their parishioners.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The Earth, modeled as a perfect blackbody, has a trivially calulable temperature: 6 degrees C global average. Observed temperatures are obviously higher than that. The difference is, you guessed it, the "greenhouse" effect of the atmosphere. The science behind the greenhouse effect has been known for about 200 years now. There is no "so-called" adjective necessary to describe it and only the purest idiots would bother denying something that is trivially observable with any transparent container, a CO2 source, and a thermometer. That CO2 absorbs radiation in a certain band is incontrovertible.
For experimental confirmation that the Earth is warming a great amount, I may use my window: I live in Alaska, where glacial ice thousands of years old is vanishing with increasing rapidity and has been for decades. Guess which observation represents a trend?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I should think a wiki, posting all source code for models and associated data for public review, would be an awesome place to start.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Oh c'mon, mods! I wouldn't consider this flame-bait; a much better description is an "Inconvenient Truth"
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
>How did stupidity and ignorance get elevated to virtues?
Anti-intellectualism actually has a long history in the US, originating back to when the intellectuals could be stereotyped as arrogant British toadies (because the US had no decent universities until much later). I suspect the combination of democracy and for-profit universities exacerbated the problem as the ideals of democracy championed the common man, while class warfare ensured that only the wealthy had access to higher education.
You also have some perverse incentives at play - popular anti-intellectualism caters to the egos of the poor who can't afford the time and/or expense for higher education. And so long as the media can reliably manipulate the poor into behaving/voting as desired, it also caters to the wealthy by reducing the competition from up-and-coming poor, as well as making the manipulation easier.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Speaking of science, perhaps since you profess knowledge you can provide an answer to the following question, which those who argue that the world is not getting warmer can not seem to ever answer.
If its not getting warmer in the past 16 years, why are all the world's glaciers continuing to recede simultaneously at what appear to be increasing rates of melting?
The heat was just moving to locations where it's hard to put a ground-based weather station. Add satellite measurements and the "pause" disappears.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Indian Chief paid $55,000 to attend anti-oil rally.
Synopsis: The Tides Foundation paid $55,000 to a Ltd Corporation that has is owned by another corporation that has changed its name twice in the past four years. The Indian chief is a director of the holding corporation. Tides made 25 different payments to anti-oil sands activists in a single year.
There's nothing wrong with paying money to support a cause you believe in but it's damn fishy when the money is flowing through corporations that are held by other corporations which keep changing their names. It indicates an attempt to hide who is actually receiving the money and how much money is flowing to said individuals.
The Saudis and Russians have a vested interest in stopping oil development in North America so it wouldn't be at all surprising to see them funding anti-oil activists.
How about "well informed" or "critical thinker"?
The world only exists if YOU personally are there to observe it. See no evil, hear no evil, speak of no evil and .... there is no more evil! Just think of it! You can stop all the bad things in the world simply by YOU ignoring them.
The rest of us need to either find a way to get people to mature (in a society engineered against that, immaturity is good for the modern economy,) OR we harass people like the parent until they let us solve the problem because that is the easiest way out for them.
Century of the Self. The "me" generation has brought about most of our problems and their offspring have yet to prove themselves... and given the number of baby boomers and their collective wealth it's not a fair match. Hopefully they will retreat more with age, they are likely to be the longest lived generation in US history.
Focusing on the US is important, given it is the source of the consumer culture and still the largest polluter (don't forget the outsourced pollution... which is often ignored when using China as an excuse to do nothing.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Only invalidated if the information is false.
Since it isn't, you're saying that you have a right to ignore verified facts if one of the sources is not to your liking.
That is at best bigoted and at worst idiotic.
If anyone has invalidated his opinion it is more likely to be the stupid bigot.
Don't you think, twit?
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Which is why China has amongst the cleanest air and lowest pollution in the world.
Right?
Or is the statement idiotic.
The question is rhetorical.
If anything is a consistent argument against democracy it is ignorant and asinine opinions of average people in democracies.
Sadly, totalitarian leaders are no less immune to idiocy.
I really don't have the solution to the problem. But something that filtered the voting rolls to some extent might be needed if we're increasingly turning into an idiocracy.
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If you don't have patience for the environment then you don't care.
Much of my argument was about bursting the pretense of moral superiority that some cling to... you clearly don't merit it.
Unless you're willing to sacrifice a little for the cause and try.
So which will it be?
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>They were obviously uncomfortable reporting on this subject for fear they may get labeled a geek or something.
Or alternately, they realized they were completely incompetent to report on the piece, and were afraid that if they took it seriously they would be called out on their inevitable mistakes and be publicly embarrassed. Like that kid who gets called on in class to answer a question he has no idea about - he's stuck in the spotlight and the main options are to admit ignorance and risk embarrassment, or crack a joke to defuse the situation.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The core of the political movement around climate change, and therefore its organization was Al Gore.
Pretending otherwise is a game for children and idiots. I am neither. Step it up.
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Not to mention "lose all sense of rigor". I'm pretty sure that last line was sarcasm.
And come on, who intentionally tows a line with a vehicle? By hand maybe, but towing a rope/hose/cable behind a vehicle tends to be really hard on the line, and none too kind to the surroundings.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I will admit to a bit of skepticism about some of the methods and accuracy of the papers being done. Sure there are a ton of them, but they all pretty much use the same data, which doesn't make them automatically correct by volume. Also "best we have available" doesn't actually mean that it is more relevant. Anyway that said I do think there is change, and that we have had an impact on that. It does get my back up A) when people point and say so many studies, it must be correct, rather than explaining why the studies themselves are correct, i.e. defending the argument and B) labeling anyone who questions anything about it or is critical as deniers. Both of those things are so unscientific it is ironic that it is used so much in this regard. There are plenty of instances throughout history, where the much larger scientific community believed one thing, and only a few people believed something else, and were later proven correct.
Anyway... that's not really what I wanted to post about, but rather the problems inherent to any sort of "fix" to the problem.
If we assume everything to be true, we know what to do, and made a plan to do it, reduce CO2 emissions.
The problem with that, is that if we assume all this to be true, and that we humans are the cause, and the cause is from CO2, then we also know that CO2 was generated pretty much from the industrial revolution onward, basically using fossil fuels (coal, later oil) to jump start development, allowing for cheap and fast advancement. The problem is, not all nations moved at the same speed. So you have for instance some which are wealthy and advanced and others not as uniformly so. The political problem is telling wealthy nations they have to stop, hurting their economy, and less developed nations that sorry you will have to curtail your development because the wealthy nations already screwed stuff up.
So you draft a proposal that might be fairer to those nations, allowing them to use more. However this is both unpalatable, as A) the developed nations get their economies hurt, and B) help developing nations get ahead, and C) makes the effort largely useless due to volume. Anyway it is a political mess that ensures things will need to get much worse before anyone does anything about it. In simple terms, the USA is definitely not going to agree to anything if say China does not have to make the same sacrifices. China is not going to do that. Period, full stop. There is no point in making changes hurting yourself, when your neighbor refuses to do so, and in climate change, we are all neighbors.
Yeah, but so long as Joe's opinion is mostly spoon-fed to him by organized media it doesn't actually count for much. The question is only who controls the media and just how good they are at behavior modification.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"Remind me again, did Chernobyl happen in a capitalist regime?"
Three Mile Island accident
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The thing about the field of Public Opinion is that White Coats really don't count for much. Because you and your White Coat could be perfectly right as far as the science goes but dead wrong as far as pubic policy goes.
Case in point: wind energy is unquestionably killing endangered birds, yet public policy is evidently saying that's OK.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
In other words, "communism" is a mis-characterization. What he really means is authoritarian government.
I feel much better now.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
"Man made global warming is & was nothing more than politics," you must watch Fox News a lot.... its not Man Made - its man accelerating the change
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
And how many people died at Three Mile Island? That's right: none.
"Faith has decreased. True understanding may actually have increased." - oh i wish
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Not-so-coincidentally, six years ago was 2008, when Obama got elected president. When there's a Democrat in the White House, the right-wing fringe groups go crazy and the big-money donors open the taps to fund them in the hope of winning the next election. Climate change denial is basically a big conspiracy theory that plays off of right-wing paranoia. (The UN! Socialism! Elitists! Foreign aid!Poor people are coming for our money!) It benefits a lot of Republican donors. It's pretty straightforward, really. In the absence of expertise, it's easy to manufacture doubt. We see it with evolution all the time. Slashdotters just like the think they're too good to fall for that sort of manipulation.
(Spoiler: We're not.)
Visit the
It's because the theory of man made global warming is fake and has been based on imprecise data and data that is itself a lie!! democrats always try to rewrite history in their favor while erasing fact!!
The core of the political movement around climate change, and therefore its organization was Al Gore.
Citation needed.
Pretending otherwise is a game for children and idiots. I am neither. Step it up.
Kek.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Total non sequitur. Or are you conceding my point and looking for the next fight?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Wait, so you're saying the people who actually understand the situation don't count, and instead you're going to judge the reality of the crisis based on the behavior of the politicians promoting self-serving solutions? How does that make sense?
Politicians and media personalities flock to every convenient crisis, real or imagined, as an excuse to promote their own agendas (or their sponsor's), while simultaneously being rendered almost completely immune to the effects of most real crises by their socioeconomic status. Their behavior is the last thing we should use to judge the reality of the crisis, except in the exceedingly rare case where it's the rich and powerful who stand to be hurt (insurrection is the only thing that springs to mind)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
*chuckles*
Keep your delusions about the moral integrity of that cliche if you insist. That isn't my primary concern.
Rather, my concern is that for the movement to have ANY credibility it must not be a partisan agent.
I do care about the environment. And by allowing the movement to be co-opted by partisan agents they instantly and unavoidably make themselves enemies of those partisan groups. If they were no so linked then they could make alliances on both sides and work to common goals.
The failure of the environmental movement has largely come about because of this strategic error.
I suspect you're just going to respond to this by asking for citations for every statement while of course carefully making none yourself. That is not a discussion in good faith.
Either participate or drop all pretenses of participation.
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You said you don't have patience to have the discussion. That is if anything a forfeit on your part by default.
Or will you now retract that and have a discussion.
Stupid rhetorical games with some cargo cult seeming of wit won't work on me. It neither impresses nor intimidates me. Either engage or forfeit by default.
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How can they claim skeptics are the only ones cherry picking data when they are forced to do it to imagine any increase at all? Why two years? I thought respected climate scientists ignore anything under 15?
But I digress, the real reason skepticism of the theory of anthropogenic global warming has increased is because the narrative perpetually falls apart and magically the same story under a different headline takes its place. Global Warming, Climate Change, Carbon Concentrations, Freak Weather Propensity, Ocean Heat Transfers.
In science you observe a patten, create a hypothesis, test the hypothesis by controlling externalities, and then summarize. Global Warming started with solutions (taxes, less economic freedom, more centralized government power) and attempted to cherry pick data to fit the narrative. That's why there are more skeptics regardless of how fervently the media are global warming alarmists.
and the radical right wants air pollution in the US to return to the standards now seen in China or in the UK at the onset of the industrial revolution and for global mean temperatures to continue to rise to satisfy the greed of the most extreme capitalists in the 0.01%.
I guess that includes you because even your appeal to authority is completely false. But don't let me stop your demagoguery if that's all you wanted to do anyway.
A survey was sent out to climate scientists about a decade ago and it asked them if they believed in human made climate change. Only the respondents who bothered to mail back in the survey and if you take the time to do that you most likely agree with the global warming statement. So it's 97% (of respondent) Climate Scientists agree global warming is man made. Since non - respondent scientists were essentially not counted it's a meaningless survey.
One of the reasons China has become the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases is that they produce a substantial proportion of products bought and sold in the US and the rest of the world. They are now coming to grips with the fact that that economic model comes with a very high environmental price tag that is injurious to their population. The world is actually a lot more complicated than you think and there is plenty of "guilt" to go around.
Do they? Do they also want to eat babies and kill all the black people?
Or is that merely a bigoted argument sold to and bought only by the gullible?
Try again please.
Both sides of the isle have families. Both have children. Both want good things for the future of the nation.
No sizable portion of the nation wants bad things. So do us all a favor and cut the bigoted arguments unless your real objective here is to identify yourself as a bigot.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Wrong. If a source is well known for spreading deliberate falsehoods and politcal party propganda then the source is not reputable. This has absolutely nothing to do with bigotry.
" I don't have time to waste on people who set one standard for others and a different one for them, while not even bothering with reading comprehension." != "I don't have patience to have the discussion." != "I don't have patience for the environment"
Yeah... if you're the last shining hope for the environment.... we're all fucked.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
So if I cited a report from a tabloid that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, that would be invalid even though you of course know that it did rise in the east and set in the west?
Come now... You don't like a source? I have to ask "so what"? If the information is correct then who cares where it came from is immaterial and its frankly petty to fixate on it when it doesn't really matter.
Regardless, I was using that as part of a larger argument about the politicization of the environmental movement.
It didn't used to be this much of a partisan agent. And frankly, it is unreasonable to expect cooperation and trust from all quarters of society when you are acting as the agent of a self interested faction of that society.
Quibble as I'm sure you will, but you'll just be attempting to avoid my point.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm disappointed that of all the people who whooshed your last line, none of them complained about "free reign". :-(
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
This is a good reason to be skeptical of the government, but not of global warming per se. It's entirely possible they are using legitimate science (the science of climate change) to selfishly further their own goals (more tax and more control).
"Climate change" isn't the socialist conspiracy. It's most the proposed solutions, which seem more geared toward the goal of promoting socialism than doing anything about the alleged problem.
When a global warming/climate change person suggests (and a few have, but very few) that nuclear power is a good alternative because it doesn't emit carbon, then I will consider him or her actually interested in dealing with the issue. However, it seems that the same people who are global warming/climate change alarmists also often support biofuels, which compared to traditional fossil fuels, make the carbon problem worse.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
When faced with difficulties or inconveniences in daily life, humans are adapted to find a way to reduce the difficulty and inconvenience. This is natural, but has a few consequences.
This basic nature does not understand the difference between facts like 1+1=2, 0.999...=0, etc; Newton's Laws; QM; That JFK did get assasinated and didn't just decide to revert to his Lizardman form, and fake his death to explain his absence; etc...
When faced with facts like global warming, man's instinct is to change the facts: the problem appears to be people complaining about Global Warming... naive bloke thinks 'I can't see it--it's not there--just tell these guys they're imagining it and to get on with their lives'. It takes a lot of learning to understand that you can't change the laws of maths or nature. We take this obviousness for granted, because it is endemic in how we are brought up, but a perusal of the history of human thought should help you see that what is obvious today wasn't always obvious. Also, these more naive aspects of how we think on a more basic level are often obscured by our unified sense of self.
John_Chalisque
When certain sides of an issue are labelled 'deniers' (as opposed to 'believers' I suppose?) it tends to kill any debate. Using the term 'denier' is akin to telling people that they are just wrong for not believing them. It frames the issue as more of a religious issue (you believe or you don't) rather than a scientific issue. The term 'skeptic' would be better to use.
A little more on topic, I imagine that many people would falter in their belief of global warming in the face of record cold winter temps. I know that 'climate change' is the term now and not 'global warming', but many people got that original 'global warming' term stuck in their heads. Then if there's a cold winter they wonder how the hell there's any global warming.
Really?
Because that's what you postulated "why are all the world's glaciers and reservoirs of permanent ice on the planet shrinking at ever increasing rates simultaneously?"
Not "some" or most or even "nearly all". A single counter-example falsifies your assumption, let alone the "ever increasing rate" which is also easily falsifiable.
Most East Antarctic glaciers are growing. A number of glaciers around the world saw growth in 2013. Even the 2011 report "GLACIER MASS BALANCE BULLETIN" showed several glaciers growing, and several others that had some periods of growth and loss (i.e., not shrinking at *ever increasing* rates").
It is undoubtedly true that the overall glacial mass is shrinking due to the overall warming trend, which is almost certainly exacerbated by human activities. But when you make the sort of absolutist statements you made, you come off as nothing so much as a shrill alarmist.
Let's assume that some miracle occurs and humans can reverse the greenhouse gas pollution back to prehistoric levels and eliminate human effects on the overall climate? What then? At some point the Earth will either heat up some more or cool off some more on its own, as it has many times in the pre-human past. What will your response be to an impending "ice-ball Earth" or Jurassic conditions that are not human-related?
And I don't disagree with what you say about the math. But many more models are not open, nor is the data to run them available.
Phys.org
"Computer models are used to inform policy decisions about energy, but existing models are generally "black boxes" that don't show how they work, making it impossible for anyone to replicate their findings. Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new open-source model and are sharing the data they put into it, to allow anyone to check their work – an important advance given the environmental and economic impact of energy policy decisions.
"Most models show you the math behind how they work, but don't share the source code that is supposed to implement that math – so you can't tell how faithful the model is to the mathematics," says Dr. Joseph DeCarolis, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the new model. "And the people utilizing existing models often don't share the data they use. So, in effect, you can't check their work.
"That's a problem, because the results of those models are informing policy decisions with billions of dollars on the line."
Weren't we about to enter an ice age? That's what some news stories said lately...
Like this one: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/01/20/346654/new-mini-ice-age-may-hit-earth/
The Express wrote about it too: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/454657/Ice-age-on-the-way-as-scientists-fear-the-Sun-is-falling-asleep
This is an article I found seems quite related as it connects global warming (doesn't deny it) and the coming ice age: http://www.technologyreview.com/article/416786/global-warming-vs-the-next-ice-age/
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
Of course it can. Poverty is the quickest and easiest way to eliminate carbon emissions.
Which I expect is the point of selecting CO2 as the super evil global warming gas, rather than the actual culprit, water vapor. Of course, they could have easily and correctly claimed that increased CO2 concentrations would lead to fisheries collapse and mass extinction, but I guess that wasn't scary enough. No, they needed to show direct effects on people's lives, and a way that they could pin the blame for natural phenomena on their angry gods. Ocean acidification is too regimented and precise of an effect for that.
China switched from Communism to a blend of capitalism and fascism. This happened nearly 30 years ago.
They are succeeding because they have more capitalism and less fascism (and socialism) than the US system.
Also, limiting the vote to smart and well informed people is racist. Sadly, so is reality.
Climate change measures the trend of long-term averages of temperatures around the globe.. The fact that an arctic cold front came south and caused record low temperatures for a few days in North America is called "weather". Those lows will be averaged in with all the other temperatures around the globe. If the trend is upward, then the overall climate is getting hotter. Just because it sometimes rains in the Mojave doesn't mean that it's not a desert.
The Earth is 70% covered with water, which is in continual phase transition depending on local temperature. The most important transition for these purposes between liquid and gaseous states. Given that there is almost always some liquid water which will under no great provocation become gaseous should the atmosphere be capable of absorbing it, we can for most intents and purposes say that the atmosphere is saturated with H20. There is precisely zero we can do about that. Looking down the list of gases which are present in non-trivial amounts in the atmosphere, and which also contribute to the greenhouse effect by absorbing long-wave radiation, CO2 is clearly the biggest concern. Discounting the seasonal variations, the largest natural contributions to the carbon cycle are volcanic. In past eras volcanism has been responsible for some rather extreme extinction events. At our current rates of CO2 emission, humanity has been putting even the largest-scale volcanic events to shame. An eruption the size of Mt Pinatubo would, as I recall, represent about a day and a half of human CO2 emissions. An eruption on the scale of the Yellowstone supervolcano could be had twice annually without equalling our impact. We are still a couple orders of magnitude away from the largest CO2 outgassings the world has ever seen -- but we're working on it. And you must keep in mind that even spectacular events like the Deccan Traps happened over millenia and gigaannums. We are almost certainly changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere at a rate unprecedented in its existence.
Discrepencies between theories and observed results are common in all fields, and in most cases do not affect the validity of those theories. Certainly not to the point where one would question, e.g. the greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide, which may be trivially demonstrated with any transparent container and a thermometer. In point of fact, since it is such an obvious property, it should come as no surprise that the idea of CO2-induced warming is about 200 years old. We may also point out, since you mention it, that the variation in solar irradiance is on the order of .1% over its 11-year cycle. This is still worth accounting for in a mathematical model, but being a fairly stable cycle it of course has a minimal effect on the error factors. I don't wish to belabor the point, but variance has nothing to do with predictability: consider any harmonic oscillation.
We may touch on the necessity for mathematical models and their use: a simple and fairly useless model would be to consider the Earth as a perfect blackbody, which can only tell us that this ideal Earth would have a temperature of ~6 degrees C. A less bad model might consider the atmosphere as a column of layered gases, from which one could derive some useful indications of what effect they have in various proportions. Again, a higher partial pressure of carbon dioxide will result in greater absorbtion of outgoing long-wave radiation, i.e. a "greenhouse" effect. Since warmer air can contain more water, and since the supply of water may be considered to be inexhaustible, a naive calculation would show that increasing the partial pressure of CO2 would lead to arbitrarily large temperatures, a la Venus. Since we know from experience and paleontology that this does not occur on Earth, we may be extremely thankful for various countering forces in the biosphere which ensure that this is not a runaway effect -- so far.
The problem is, of course, that our atmospheric changes are drastic and unprecedented. We rely on of life in order to balance out our carbon equation, but we're also doing a wonderful job of deforestation and various other forms of damage to our environment. At this point we are merely hoping that enough of these various other species are able to survive the Great Anthropogenic Extinction Event in order to ensure our own survival.
You may not be an idiot. You are deeply ignorant; this is grade-school level science. You are also close-minded, appar
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
A lot of Americans don't believe in the 'global' part.
Here we are with a classic example of how the mass media gives denier's a free ride to ignore, indeed, contradict, the evidence, using popular media as sources while ignoring the actual body of academic papers and what do we get? Line after line after line of lies by people not involved in the academic discipline, unknowing of the intricacies of the models used and UNWILLING to even read the works of the published scientists in the field. It's FREE people, at realclimate dot org. There is NO excuse for this kind of deliberate ignorance spreading and outright fraud! Stop it! Before my grandchild grows up in a tumultuous world of migrants desperate for food and water, sick with spreading insect borne diseases and choking on the toxins your oil company friends insist are 'good' for the world by increasing the number of sick and dying for the good of the dynastic inheritance class. STOP IT!
Whoosh!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I don't see it among those who loudly and continuously complain about CO2. The most they will allow is "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy, not anything capable of powering a 24x7 365.24 days per year industrial economy. That is, nuclear.
Yes, there are exceptions. James Hansen is one. They are, however, very few and far between. Most of the people "oh so concerned about CO2" are also shrieking technophobes whenever nuclear is mentioned.
Here are the two propositions that you are comparing:
What would you say is the likelihood of each being true? Just because neither is 0% or 100% doesn't make them equivalent.
The problem is that an informed opinion on something complex like climate requires study and education.
The denialist lobby can pay some celebrity or other to say "I don't believe it!" and years of hard work educating the masses will disappear in a puff of smoke.
No sig today...
This past December the USA recorded a long listing or record low temperatures.
And a long list of record highs over the last decade. Which is it to be?
No sig today...
It started about the time of Shrub.
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Here are the two propositions that you are comparing:
What would you say is the likelihood of each being true? Just because neither is 0% or 100% doesn't make them equivalent.
The likelihood of the first being true is near 0%, but only because I believe the majority of experts are not lying to get funding. If there were a majority of lying -for-funding academics, there would be so much noise from the whistleblowers that it would be in the headlines every single day, because if there is one thing academics enjoy almost as much as getting their research funded, it's stabbing each other in the back over faulty research. You left out a very important point though, corollary to the first item: what is the likelihood of complete idiots' opinions being as valid as experts' opinions?
So your fallacy is in believing that I'm a climate change skeptic. My last comment, that "we're screwed", is because in many so-called skeptics' minds, none of climate science is valid and never will be valid, just because. Anyway, have a nice day.
+5
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
I hope you're right, but I suspect you're not. I have found that average people in their everyday conversations are less intelligent than what prevails in the media. On this very website, which is "news for nerds", I can find quite a few commenters who still say things like "why was it cold today where I live if it's supposed to be GLOBAL warming?". If you don't believe me, then scroll up a few pages. Bear in mind that this is a website which caters to technology professionals, and that most people here probably have college degrees. I expect that the average person here is much brighter than the average citizen.
Furthermore, the problem isn't just ignorance. The problem is that many people are defiantly, stubbornly ignorant, and will actively resist information as if their lives depended upon not learning anything. Again, the comment "why was it cold today where I live if it's supposed to be GLOBAL warming?". Climate scientists have EXPLAINED that, over and over again, for YEARS, but to no avail. Furthermore, the person who says that will then call into question the entire field of climate science, without knowing anything about it.
Insofar as I can tell, about half the population not only knows nothing about climate science (which is fine) but actively opposes people who do know something about it. That is beyond ordinary ignorance. That is a proud, defiant ignorance. That is the problem. Ordinary ignorant people can listen and learn, but defiantly ignorant people will interfere with the application of knowledge and are utter fools forever.
4 years on and he convinced a majority of electors that action on climate change was "socialism masquerading as environmentalism".
Yeah, well, the implementation by the previous government pretty much was. Promise no carbon tax, implement a carbon tax (but don't call it a tax, to dodge the promise), then give everyone subsidies so that they're not affected (undermining any behavioural changes such a tax might produce). Whoever it was who called it a "money-go-round" was dead on the money.
That said, the new government's policy of removing the tax, but keeping the subsidies is ridiculously moronic and inconsistent, too.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
You misunderstand. I'm not stating anything of the sort, I'm trying to clarify who the couplet/poem was referring to.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
It's all the gays' fault. A fine, right-thinking, upstanding, god-fearing, hard-working Englishman said so!
Stick Men
No, I mean decades, because I have actually read the research papers coming out of the various climate study organizations in the State of Alaska. I can single out studies by the University of Alaska Fairbanks as being particularly informative on the subject of ice sheet loss. Overall temperatures in the Arctic have risen at about twice the global average since the 1950s. Ice sheet loss was about 52 cubic kilometers per year until the 1990s, when it essentially doubled. As might be expected, glacial retreat is greatest for low-altitude glaciers, which happen to be the most accessible and visible. Or would be if they weren't retreating so fast; we have glacier viewpoints where you cannot even see the glacier any more. Other fun facts: the number of frost-free days in Fairbanks, AK have increased by 50% over the last century. Villages that have been protected for millennia by sea ice are having to be moved.
If you're going to make an argument, make it with facts. Unfortunately the facts are against you, so you may want to revise your beliefs.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Not avoiding your point. And you point about the sun rising in the east and setting in the west is well taken however you are talking about an already known phenomenon where in this case the source would only be confirming what is already known. In the case of Daily Caller and what was reported there, one would need to have that information independently verified before taking it as fact. This is because it is not news its a political operation that exists for the sole purpose of deseminating political propoganda.
According to the second chart, the number global warming papers is growing exponentially each year! By the year 2100, our cities will be flooded with papers on global warming. Crops will fail because global warming papers will blot out the sun. We need to end global warming research now, before it's too late.
You might want to crack a dictionary sometime.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So can we infer that'scientists' who accept that global warming is man-made are also largely not experts?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It started before that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Calling it global warming isn't helping when we have things like the massive record-setting cold snap affecting the US right now.
We should be calling it climate change. Our climate is changing, we are seeing a much bigger frequency of cyclones, floods, heatwaves, cold snaps, blizzards and other severe weather events. Our climate IS changing and changing for the worse and I firmly believe that humans are the cause and that unless we stop sending so much gunk (a big whack of which comes from burning coal in dirty polluting coal fired power stations) into the atmosphere we will kill the planet.
I dont care if it puts hundreds (or even thousands) of coal miners out of a job, we need to STOP using coal as a fuel source for power generation PERIOD and we need to find alternatives FAST. (and yes those alternatives SHOULD include safe generation 4 and 5 nuclear reactor designs as well as solar thermal, geothermal, wave and tidal power and other options)
Whenever I see someone try to use "geek" or "nerd" as an insult, I come back with the following:
Geek (noun); twenty first century term for billionaire.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Anyone believing in B/C isn't actually a "climage change skeptic" in my books.
For B they're an AGW skeptic, and for C they're a skeptic about trying to do anything to fix the problem.
I think there are still geoengineering possibilities even if you're in camp C. See the idea about shooting sulfphur up into the upper atmosphere, or the the solar-powered cloud generation sailboat idea.
Yes, denialist.
And here's a graph showing exactly how your denialism works, and exactly how laughably wrong it is:
Global temperature graph.
The wiggly red-orange line is global mean temperatures for the last 50 years.
The pale blue straight line on the right, that's the fictitious cooling period we've had for the last 12 years. The straight purple line is the preceding 5 years of fictional global cooling. And before that is the blue line in the middle, 8 years of fictitious global cooling. And the decade before that is the green line, another fictitious period of global cooling. And the straight red line on the left is the preceding 12 year period of fictional global cooling.
That graph shows that we've had nothing but (fictional) cooling periods or "leveling off periods" essentially EVERY YEAR FOR THE LAST FIFTY YEARS.
The series of straight lines.... average declining temperatures lines... is a blatant staircase going up. And it illustrates just how absurd and wrong it is when denialists trot out your claim that warming has stopped or flattened. It is blatantly fraudulent to claim any of the straight lines in the posted graph represent any halt or even slowing in the rate of temperature rise.
There has been no halt in the temperature rise. There has been no slowing in the temperature rise. You're just grabbing at cherry-picked random fluctuations to draw a fictional staircase composed of fictional horizontal (or declining) steps.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
On this very website, which is "news for nerds", I can find quite a few commenters who still say things like "why was it cold today where I live if it's supposed to be GLOBAL warming?".
I'm sure that there's someone who genuinely believe that. But there's also people say that sarcastically because there's someone saying the opposite, "it's warm today therefore global warming". I recall that being a common problem when the Hurricane Sandy stories were working their way through Slashdot.
The problem is that many people are defiantly, stubbornly ignorant, and will actively resist information as if their lives depended upon not learning anything.
And maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass, you wouldn't be one of those people. There are people who argue based on facts and evidence, then there are people who misrepresent the entire public to fulfill some fantasy of theirs.
Yes, there are ignorant people. Yes, there are people who belong to groups whose primary membership requirement is to be deliberately ignorant on some subject or another. But representing everyone who disagrees with you as being members of that latter class ignores some very relevant things.
First, climatology isn't as firmly nailed down as claimed. As the story grudgingly notes, there is a fifteen year period of deviation from what has been predicted for global warming (it is more than just a 15 year cherry-picked "pause"). Note that the story patronizingly downplays the resulting concern as a psychology issue.
Now why does this matter? It is generally agreed that there is global warming and that humanity contributes to it to some degree. But the huge problem now is whether to respond to this global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The claim, based on these errant predictive models is that human-induced global warming is bad enough that we must do something, even though it will harm us in various other ways.
But we are seeing that in the short term, these models are failing to accurately represent climate trends. That indicates to me that it is likely that these also will fail to accurately model climate in the long term. Apparently, it looks that way to many other people as well. And I'd say that being told to make poorly thought out sacrifices on the basis of bad modeling doesn't sit well with a good portion of the population.
That's the big trend these days. We must respect everyone's opinions equally. It doesn't matter if they are expert in a specific field or know nothing but what they see on the "news". All are of equal value.
I don't respect anyone's opinions. I respect facts, data, repeatable experiments... you know, all that sciency shit we used to do back in the day.
My problem with AGW is two-fold:
1) I have serious issues with the data collection, statistical analysis applied, lack of transparency of both models AND data, and unsupported conclusions
and 2) The zealotous AGW evangelists who hold IPCC reports as dogma handed down by gods from Heaven. I really want to get an IPCC report engraved in stone and put up in a shrine where I can charge these tools admission.
None of that is to say I think the IPCC is certainly wrong. It's always possible to reach the correct conclusions despite making many mistakes along the way. Fix the problems of methodology, data collection, data analysis, lack of transparency, broken models, data inconsistency, etc and I think we'll find ourselves a good bit of real truth there. What that truth will be? I honestly don't know; I don't have enough good information to form an informed opinion about what the reality is. What I do know is that I have serious problems with what I've seen thus far, and I've dug into it all pretty deeply (and continue doing so as more information becomes available).
Want to know how you can tell a rational person who disagrees with me (and those educated, informed skeptics like me) from an AGW evangelizing zealot? The former will agree with me that agreement on AGW is unnecessary to working toward common goals like ridding ourselves of objectively polluting, local environment destroying human activities like coal-fire power plants. If it's plainly destroying the local environment (as coal-fire power plants do, for instance), we can agree it needs to go. That accomplishes a mutual goal of making the local environment better for everyone and further accomplishes the AGW proponent's (as opposed toa zealot's - huge difference here) goal of reducing emissions they believe are responsible for changes in global climate related to human activity.
A zealot, on the other hand, will grow furious at the idea of accepting any difference in conclusions and will instead berate, marginalize, and in some cases rant incoherently at the "climate denier". Mutual goals or agreement mean nothing to the zealot; all-important is the need to convert everyone to the One True Faith(tm) and dehumanize any and all infidels. In other words, belief in their dogma is more important than accomplishing goals. Sound familiar? Yeah, basically a cult.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Australia is in the south pole. They're currently in the middle of the summer. And 40 degrees Celsius isn't that uncommon. It has a desert even.
Right. I'm sure Galileo didn't have the popular vote back then either.
It is political partisanship, political agenda, and new cult of Malthusians.
Statements follow:
1.Climate change exists. Of course, it always existed.
2. We live in mid-low ice age.
3. Ice ages are bad for civilisation, Global warming is good for civilisation. While cold, there is no Civ, only war, while warm, there decreases parts of livable land insignificantly, instead, food-producing and otherwise unlivable land increases significantly (Siberia et al.)
4. Whether GW is Anthropogenic is a discussion, but if yes, we need more of it. Humans are doing very good in burning oil during mini-ice age, lest we lapse again to it (and unavoidable wars and scarcity and death that would follow).
5. For politicians, cold, scarcity and death is good, because it leads to wars and strenghtening of holders of political powers.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
Just to support your point: http://xkcd.com/605/
I've never heard of the daily caller. So I popped some search terms into Google just to see. There are many sites calling it a troll.
Ah, then consider my ridicule redirected only toward those who have conceived of or spread such a concept.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Guess the mods didn't get the joke. Sad, really.
BUT, they do not like the solutions.
Right now, we have China emitting 1/3 of the world's CO2, and adding Coal-burning plants and coal=>methane plants, at a rate that far exceeds what the west and other parts of the world can cut. And none of that includes the other nations that are building out large numbers of coal plants as well.
IOW, everybody knows that we are headed for a bad time, but nobody wants to be the ones to make real changes. Worse, many want to blame America, yet, it was our research that found this. And now, America has done some of the largest cuts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
1) I have serious issues with the data collection, statistical analysis applied, lack of transparency of both models AND data, and unsupported conclusions
It's all in the literature. Just because it's intransparent to you doesn't mean it's intransparent to experts. If I were to shove a paper about improvements in simulating asteroid orbits into your hand, you likely won't understand much of it - would you complain about intransparency as well? The sad truth is that science has specialized so far that a even smart well-educated person cannot understand most of the literature in a field that is not their specialization. Society has reached a point where you cannot distrust everything you're not able personally verify, else you're paranoid. No Linux user is going to skim the source of the kernel they're running for NSA backdoors. Yet most of them are not going to claim Linux kernel development is "intransparent"; instead, they're going to trust that the community of kernel developers is paying attention. People are also willing to trust the community of scientific experts on diverse subjects ranging from biomedical research to physics and astronomy. Yet when it comes to that one subject where huge commercial interests happen to be at stake, suddenly the scientists aren't trained to get basic statistics right and the peer-reviewed literature is "intransparent". We've seen it all before in the smoking-doesn't-cause-cancer debate.
Read the works of Prof. Richard Lindzen of MIT. He has proved
-snipped bunch of poppycock-
Of all of the findings you attribute to Dr. Linzen, I couldn't find a single one in his recent work, making it painfully obvious you have no clue what you're talking about.
'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.'
Source.
So there you go, I have it from a source you seem to respect a lot that you are a nut.
Dr. Lindzen's differences with the mainstream view of climate science have been decreasing together with the uncertainties of the climate models. If I'm following the story correctly, he currently thinks the climate models overestimate the warming by about 25%. The basis for his argument is not totally outlandish, but is considered somewhat outdated and inaccurate. At any rate, even 25% less warming is predicted to cause us trouble. It is this prediction Dr. Lindzen disagrees with most. He basically states that it won't do a great bit of harm to adapt a "wait and see" attitude for a few more decades. To me, this goes against the precautionary principle. Not to mention that the measures that need to be taken will give us a head start adapting to the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels. Getting our homework done early won't hurt anything but the pockets of some prominent special-interest groups. Having to do it all at the last minute (or when it's too late), OTOH, may have an impact on society and the economy at large.
For experimental confirmation that the earth is not warming a great amount, stick your thumb out the window. This past December the USA recorded a long listing or record low temperatures.
Really? Using that argument alone puts you out of the discussion.
How about because these folks have already made so many breathless claims that they have zero credibility . . . no one was believing them 6 years ago, either. Many people are simply tired of hearing half lies so they believe nothing at all--it's safer that way.
Cranky educator.
and the soviets were very good about protecting the environment.
Quit now. You're wrong. Communism is bad for the environment.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The difference is that "non-experts" have the opportunity to audit some or all of the Linux kernel source code. It doesn't matter if most people don't do it or aren't equipped to do it. The transparency comes from the opportunity to do so.
Science without transparency isn't science as we know it. It becomes subject to terribly bad things like confirmation bias and basic mistakes hiding in plain sight, except not in plain sight because nearly no one can view them. You make it seems as though modern science is beyond the ability of nearly anyone to understand, as if we're living in some sort of mystical period. The cutting edge of science has always been difficult for most people to understand. The contributing bits upon which the cutting edge is built aren't widely understood, thus making the jump between common knowledge and the cutting edge is a major challenge. Do you think all of Sir Isaac Newton's work was well understood by common people in his time? Of course not, yet a simple Swiss patent clerk - some time later - took Newton's work apart and advanced human understanding of the world around it. If Newton's work were only ever available to the "experts", no one would have heard of Einstein. If Einstein hadn't had access to Newton's work and been able to move past it, we wouldn't have Quantum Mechanics. Without that, no Superstring Theory.
A singular case? Not even close. An outlier in its severity, but the cases of ordinary people taking apart many lifetimes of work of experts working together are numerous throughout all of science. But it only happens when the knowledge is open and available and when the data and methodology are open to criticism.
If the work is good, opening it to criticism cannot harm it. That's the fundamental basis for peer review. Hiding behind the "but it's too complicated for you to understand!" is a pussy move made only by those who lack confidence in their work. If it can't hold up to a wide, bright light shining upon it, then it isn't good science. Anyone who won't open their work for everyone to see isn't doing good science and either knows it or is so dangerously arrogant that they're incapable of doing good science. They're human. They're missing things. They're making mistakes. And they'll often end up with the wrong conclusions. The idea of basing public policy on this crap is sheer stupidity.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
No, actually, there are probably two culprits involved with that:
The only way to change this is to change the incentive structure enough to overcome a basic failing in human nature. Not easy.
You didn't read the article either, did you? I mean you genuinely don't actually know what it says.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Its highly ironic that people think communism CAN make the planet heal when years of data shows that communist nations have the worst track record in history for environmental concern...and end up really just destroying the planet worse than "evil capitalistic countries." Obviously, anyone who believes blindly that communism can save the environment better than other forms of Government has not been paying attention to their basic history or even their basic current events like how nice the air in Beijing is currently...(hint, its not really nice)
Did I say anything that was inaccurate or are you just fishing for a point?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You may have see the phrase "past performance is no guarantee of future results" in the financial industry. That is equally true of the (even more complex) climate.
There are some interesting factors to consider.
First of all, volcanic activity has been low for a couple of decades now. The last VEI 6 or larger eruption was Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. Each VEI number represents 10x as much material being blasted into the atmosphere. Also as the VEI number goes up the height of the cloud increases - at around VEI 5 SO2 starts makng it into the stratosphere. VEI 5 and lower eruptions cause much less global cooling than VEI 6 and up. So, the lack of volcanic activity represents a net warming influence.
Second, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased about 25% since 1955.
So, it is in fact quite surprising if you're a devotee of climate alarmism to see temperatures stabilize like this. I understand there are theories regarding this heat hiding in the deep ocean somehow (rather in violation of entropy it seems) and others than try to explain the satellite temperature measurements away by various hand waving. So far I don't feel those theories pass the sniff test, and regardless we'll learn more as additional data is collected over time.
Finally, I'll leave you with the words of a noted global warming proponent and researcher:
So, we'll see...2009 is already five long years in the past, and the pause shows no sign of stopping at this point...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
What part of my first sentence did you not understand? You seem to be basing your whole argument on the mistaken belief that climate scientists don't publish enough details about their models to make them reproducible by other people. The part of climate science that is taken seriously by the scientific community is all published in scientific journals that are rigorously peer-reviewed, and these journals invariably stipulate in their guidelines for reviewers that enough information should be given in the paper to reproduce the results. Anyone with enough background can re-run the simulations.(*)
Now, if you were talking about climate change deniers, then you would have a point; they're almost always publishing in murky backwater journals with lax editorial and reviewing standards, and are not taken seriously by the community precisely because their results cannot be reproduced. That, and the fact that the papers often contain fundamental errors.
(*)It will also set you back a few $1000 if you don't have access to a university's library and have to download enough articles to understand how the models work on a pay-per-view basis.(+) This is a great wrong, but it is true for all branches of science, ranging from biomedical research to physics and astronomy. I don't hear you complaining about those.
(+)Also, you'll likely spend more than that on the necessary computers to run the simulations. Don't worry, some fossil fuel industry lobby group will gladly pick up the tab for you if you can show that the results are not reproducible. In fact, said industry happens to be in the possession of large computing resources; what makes you thing they didn't try this? The fact that they were unwilling to publish the conclusion that the simulations are, in fact, reproducible?
Ah yes, "Americans' scientific understanding". However no points awarded for difficulty.
I'm disappointed that of all the people who whooshed your last line, none of them complained about "free reign". :-(
I could care less. It's a mute point anyway.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Americans have a collective amnesia when it comes to the weather. Actually, world-wide that amnesia is present, how else can you explain one hundred year floods happening every other year.. People seem to block out that the weather in their location is stranger today than it was ten years ago. Where I live is far warmer, in January, than it should be. For example, yesterday had a high temp of 60.3F at 4:20pm but started out at 22.1F. Ten years ago, we were ass-deep in snow and lucky if the temp was above 0F.
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
Science isn't a matter of democracy.
(1) It does not matter what you or your politicians think, the real measure is the insurance industry. At the summit, a spokesperson for a large insurance company pointed out that wind insurance in Florida is now like flood insurance. Too big for insurance companies to cover (because they are not too big to fail), so the government is forcing coverage (because the government IS too big to fail (Hurrican Windstorm Insurance). Uhm, ignore Greece and Iceland, please).
Then (2) there is no silver bullet. Removing all the cars or removing all the coal fired power plants (worldwide) won't solve the problem. We need "silver buckshot" hitting multiple targets.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Black body theory doesn't apply to systems with a differential, such as the sun being so much hotter than earth, and the atmosphere being somewhat one-way for heat transmission. Bad science.
When I was in High School and College in the late 1970's we were taught that the next ice age was coming, and it was scientific FACT.
Then it became Global Warming when the ice age did not come.
When it's cold, the global warming people taught me that I should ignore individual events, because it's all about the Earth's climate, not the weather in one locale.
Now it's called Climate CHANGE, and you're telling me the proof is in individual weather events.
Ya know, I am just plain confused. Seems that the truth is pretty elusive here, and this is definitely not science, it's religion and worst and wishful thinking at best.
Murphy was an optimist
To deny that there has been a pause is ridiculous. It does not matter about the "bigger picture". The "bigger picture" *must* show a rise in order for there to be a *pause*. If it was not rising in the past then there could be no pause now.
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And it's been happening for billions of years. Nothing we have done or want to to do will ever stop Earth from doing whatever the hell it wants to.
"She made the rather obvious point that communist states find it easier to act for the collective good, while in democracies people tend to act in their own interests." Delusional +1
Finally, I'll leave you with the words of a noted global warming proponent and researcher:
"Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and âwe expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,â(TM) the Hadley Centre group writes. Researchers agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer." - Richard Kerr, Science (2009)
So, we'll see...2009 is already five long years in the past, and the pause shows no sign of stopping at this point...
What pause? The one you've been hearing about on denialist websites? How about instead of hearsay, we actually look at the data?
Green is the mean global temp for the last 15 years, red is the 15 year trend line
That's why you should get your information from legitimate scientists. The 15 year trend is warmer, as you can see from the global mean temperature data.
An additional point, legitimate scientists know that yearly variations make a 15 year sample unreasonably small. Real scientists examine all available data, not merely anomalous fragment-of-the-day that happens to fit the story they want to tell. Real scientists look at 50 or 100 year trend lines, and all other available evidence.
And most importantly, real scientists obey THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. Sunlight comes in through the atmosphere, hits the ground, turns into infrared thermal radiation, and that infrared thermal radiation is blocked from escaping by CO2. Only crackpots deny basic laws of physics, only a crackpot could deny the effect is real. There is currently about 3,000 gigatonnes of CO2 in the entire Earth's atmosphere, and and humans are adding 30-odd gigatonnes per year. CO2 levels are up 42% since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and at our current rate CO2 levels will have doubled around 2050.
The natural levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases already generate a 50 degree F warming effect. (That's what generally keeps us out of an ice-age.) Most of that effect is due to water vapor, but gases like CO2 and methane have an independent warming effect because they block different infrared frequencies.
First of all, volcanic activity has been low for a couple of decades now. The last VEI 6 or larger eruption was Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.
There has been exactly ONE VEI event above 5 in the last hundred years. The fact that it was in 1991 would, if anything, make it recent and "above normal". Not that it really matters, because it only affects temperatures for a year or two. All you've really done is point out that the warming trend over the last 15 years *isn't* distorted by any volcanic activity in that period.
Furthermore, it's conspiracy-theory logic to suggest either (A) the global scientific community is deliberately excluding volcanic activity from their their analysis, or (B) the entire global scientific community is utterly brain-damaged-stupid that none of them ever bothered to consider volcanic activity in their analysis.
So, it is in fact quite surprising if you're a devotee of climate alarmism to see temperatures stabilize like this.
There's absolutely nothing surprising. Temperatures haven't stabilized. There is no pause. There has been a warming trend of the last 15 years. And as I demonstrated in my last post, it's trivially easy for a crank to cherry pick data points and manufacture totally fake "pauses" or "cooling periods". You did look at and understand the graph I posted before, right?
I understand there are theories regarding this heat hiding in the deep ocean somehow (rather in violation of entropy it seems)
They aren't "theories". They are measurements.
You know, legitimate climate scientists going out with scientific instruments and collecting real-world sea-temperature
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Because you're an ideologue, not because you have better science.
That's the magic of your capitalist, market-based conservatism at work. The real solution is to invest in renewable energy while at the same time heavily regulating or banning the main source of emissions. But the sort of people who deny science out of ideology are likely to be the same people that oppose government investment and regulation - out of ideology.
Do explain why Venus is hotter than Mercury, despite the latter being much closer to the Sun.
You aren't questioning the science because you have alternative scientific explanations for what's going on. You're questioning the science out of ideology - aka dogma.
Eg the same bullshit ID'ers pull when they go on about "explain how blood clotting evolved, RIGHT NOW, or evolution is a myth". It's a transparent tactic designed to put people on the defense rather than make any kind of rational argument on their own.
So explain why Venus is much hotter than Mercury, despite being much farther from the Sun. When Mercury has no atmosphere, while Venus's is high in CO2. Right meow, or your a Koch-funded denialist troll. How do you like them apples?
You're free to stop mixing them at any time.
But that doesn't mean that it has the best education system in the world. Lets say the best oncologists in the world set up a clinic in the worst third world hell hole of your choice. Does that mean that country has the best care for cancer patients?
No, it means that the best clinic is in Mogadishu, or wherever, if you have the money to go there. Not that they have the best system in the world.
Right, just as you were taught that Bigfoot exists and that the Moon landings were faked. Thanks for outing yourself with such an extensively debunked urban legend, though.
I wasn't taught any of those things. Do a little research - although materials from the 1970's are not online. I lived it, did you?
At the time, Time Magazine (A big news source in those days, highly trusted) ran story after story, putting it on the cover a few times. The Polar Vortex was proof of global cooling too.
If all you've got are insults and personal attacks, you've got nothing.
Murphy was an optimist
I have a reasonable set of simple questions for you:
After reaching a reasonable equilibrium point, in a glass containing water in a ratio of ~9:1 solid to liquid, what temperature is the liquid water? After several hours under a heat lamp, with a ratio of 1:99, what is the temperature of the liquid water? Now what happens once all of the ice is gone?
Now, what was that you were saying about not knowing where the excess heat energy was going?
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Yeah, except that entire effort is a straw man of colossal proportions. "Climate deniers", really? What, do they deny the climate exists?
They did right up to the point where that argument became unsustainable.
Many climate change skeptics accept the idea of greenhouse gasses and potential warming. What is contested is the severity of future warming, if any
...and then they switched to that little gem to get out of their responsibilities.
No sig today...
Finally, I'll leave you with the words of a noted global warming proponent and researcher: "Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and âwe expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,â(TM) the Hadley Centre group writes. Researchers agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer." - Richard Kerr, Science (2009) So, we'll see...2009 is already five long years in the past, and the pause shows no sign of stopping at this point...
What pause? The one you've been hearing about on denialist websites? How about instead of hearsay, we actually look at the data?
No, the one that everyone admits is ongoing, including climate scientists and the latest IPCC report.
For instance:
So, the very real pause is a subject of hot debate even among climate scientists. I suggest you re-read the quote from Richard Kerr above, as it also references the pause way back in 2009. It will be interesting seeing how things go over the next few years. We're currently right at solar maximum, and the tail end of this solar cycle will be long and low. Then, Cycle 25 will begin (starting probably in roughly 2020-2022) and it is predicted to be much lower than the current cycle, with the first estimate being a maximum sunspot number of 7 (versus about 67 for the current very low cycle - this one is already the lowest in over a century). So, the next 20+ years will give us an excellent idea of the true influence of extremely low solar activity on climate - and I believe the results will not be positive for climate alarmism.
As to the big picture on CO2, the US is no longer the biggest producer, nor will it be going forward. If growing CO2 concentration is in fact a crisis, the task of the alarmist community will be to convince China, India, Russia and the host of growing third-world economies to forgo growth and save the planet. Good luck with that.
The one possibility that might be a win-win is the proliferation of thorium or LENR nuclear technology in a major way. That route would provide plenty of energy at low cost, without producing a gram of CO2. Regardless of CO2 production, there are a lot of good reasons to displace coal electricity production with cleaner technologies. Solar will also play a role, but it is not a good source of baseline power, and is unlikely to ramp up to the levels needed anytime soon.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the rest of your post (for the three people that might actually read this lol) but I'll hit a couple of high points...
They aren't "theories". They are measurements.
You know, legitimate climate scientists going out with scientific instruments and collecting real-world sea-temperature measurements to do legitimate reliable science.
The ocean temperature measurements aren't nearly as straightforward as you make out. The purported "extra heat hiding in the oceans" amounts to changes of hundredths of a degree in the water column. Reliable measurements of that accuracy simply don't exist.
On the other hand, we do have accurate satellite measurements of sea surface temperatures going back for some time. Here's the most current data I could find. (If you track it down, you'll find temperatures have been similar back to 1998, the year of a major El Niño event.) You'll note that sea surface temperatures have not noticeably risen. As I said before, it doesn't pass the "sni
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
After reaching a reasonable equilibrium point, in a glass containing water in a ratio of ~9:1 solid to liquid, what temperature is the liquid water?
Just above freezing. You know, rather unlike the actual oceans - which are far from uniform.
After several hours under a heat lamp, with a ratio of 1:99, what is the temperature of the liquid water? Now what happens once all of the ice is gone?
Now, what was that you were saying about not knowing where the excess heat energy was going?
Well, that would be a more meaningful question if the total amount of sea ice were decreasing... Actually 2013 was rather a banner year for antarctic sea ice.
Aside from that, the Earth's climate is a highly chaotic and complex entity. It has numerous long-term cycles and feedback mechanisms. As the latest IPCC report points out, the actual climate sensitivity to CO2 isn't known with good accuracy. We'll have a much better idea over the coming decades, but my hunch is that it will be a good bit lower than the current centerline IPCC estimate.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I should also mention that if increased CO2 staves off the next Ice Age, it will be an enormous win both for humans and for the thousands of species that would otherwise go extinct...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
What insults and personal attacks? Methodically sticking to a pre-written script isn't making you any less obvious.
They aren't online for the same reason Santa Clause doesn't have a website to accept gift requests - because they never existed.
When, exactly, was Time a peer reviewed science magazine or run by scientists?
In May 2008 the Obama campaign made a stop in Oregon late in the day. The campaign had, at that point, visited 46 states. Of the 48 contiguous states, they had visited all but two. Oregon brought that up to all but one. He made an off-the-cuff remark, in which he delivered the above quote. But the pause indicated by that ellipsis was quite long. He says "fifty" (clearly, thinking that there are fifty states), then subtracts three for Alaska, Hawaii, and whichever other of the lower 48 the campaign hadn't made any stops in yet, and then says the "... seven states, I think, one left to go," part.
Now, it is funny, because on the face of it it looks like a Harvard-educated guy, runnning for President ferchrissakes, doesn't even know how many states there are. If George Bush flubbed something that badly (as he often did), I would certainly make fun of him. And you're free to make fun of Obama for the flub.
But I wouldn't pretend it meant he really didn't know how many states there are.
Good mfences make good neighbors.
I should also mention that if increased CO2 staves off the next Ice Age, it will be an enormous win
It's silly how far climate denialists reach trying to glob onto anything that remotely fits into the narrative they want to hear.
First of all, the ice age cycle is approximately fifty thousand years from now.
Secondly, entering or exiting an ice age involves a natural rate of change of of approximately one degree C per thousand years.
We're talking about a almost a degree C over the last hundred years and 2 to 5 degree C CO2-induced increase over the next hundred years. The rate of human induced warming is dozens of times faster than a catastrophic-level-natural-global-event such as entering or exiting an ice age.
You're basically saying that throwing a child down an elevator shaft today is a good thing because it might keep him from bumping his head when he becomes and adult.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
For experimental confirmation that the earth is not warming a great amount, stick your thumb out the window. This past December the USA recorded a long listing or record low temperatures.
Really? Using that argument alone puts you out of the discussion.
Obligatory xkcd.
You're not paying attention to economics, as well as forgetting your history. China is undergoing an industrial revolution much like the U.S. did back at the open of the 1900s. They are doing massive agriculture and massive manufacturing, driven by cheap labor and a "smoke means progress" attitude from the government. Given those same conditions in our own country, we made a hellish mess of our environment too.
The author's contention is that, given the same motivation from the government, a command economy will more readily be able to handle the problem of pollution than a democracy because the government doesn't have to convince industry and the people to buy into it, they can simply demand compliance. That makes sense, at least from the relatively simplistic view. There are lots of problems with Communism, but getting projects done on a massive scale when the powers that be want it done isn't one of those problems. If China's government decided to "go green" tomorrow, you can bet that they'd get there a whole lot faster than the U.S. ever did.
Virg
If you've been high for six years no surprise you'd think AGW denialism makes sense.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.