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Let's Call It 'Climate Disruption,' White House Science Adviser Suggests (Again)
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "First there was 'global warming.' Then many researchers suggested 'climate change' was a better term. Now, White House science adviser John Holdren is renewing his call for a new nomenclature to describe the end result of dumping vast quantities of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into Earth's atmosphere: 'global climate disruption.'"
Pollution.
The simple goal should be to spew as little as possible, regardless of the potential issues.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
(This is the graph that has been all shaft and no blade for the last 12 years or so.) Didn't the "overwhelming scientific consensus" believe in that not too long ago?
Another name change? What are we at now, lets see. First it was global warming, then climate change and now global climate disruption? Did I miss any? Sound like the equivalent of three card monte.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Since the solution promoted by politicians is to raise taxes and raise costs of energy, I suggest that we levy a tax on every word spoken by politicians. They spew so much hot air that it easily competes with the effects of all the CO2.
Global warming was always a terrible name because the imagery was all wrong.
Global climate change is more accurate, but still nebulous.
Climate disruption evokes a more accurate picture of what seems to be happening. I personally liked the name "Santa's revenge" from this winter's breakdown of the polar vortex. Melt the north pole, and you'll all get a taste of the cold!
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
I'm fine with calling it any of those things. But it would be better to settle on globally unified measures to do something about it like we did with the hole in the Ozone Layer (remember that?), or else we may eventually have to call it a fourth option: Global Suicide.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
He also promotes using nuclear energy as part of the solution.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just announced: Keanu Reeves and Ashton Kutcher in the upcoming movie: Dude what's up with the weather and have you seen my car?
We're screwing up the environment on multiple levels and you're not going to stop human activity which is the root cause for all our ills. You'll never have the scientists or the political leaders agree on a solution so it's simple: Destroy all Humans!
That seems like an easy enough problem to fix.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
"Climate Terrorism"
The only scam here is the environmental exploiters funding junk science and junk social engineering so they can continue to profit from fouling the global commons without cost to themselves. Big Tobacco could have learned a trick or two from these guys.
Climate disruption evokes a more accurate picture of what seems to be happening.
Disruption sounds temporary, change sounds more permanent. Change seems a far better word to use.
Why not just call it an unrequested global energy surplus?
Language like this makes me want to engage in an involuntary personal protein spill...
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
10. "Global climate engineering"
9. "Atmospheric carbon dioxide deficit reduction"
8. "Carbon gifting"
7. "Meteorological redistricting"
6. "No Cloud Left Behind"
5. "The Hurricane Insurance Investment Initiative of 2024"
4. "The Global War on Terra"
3. "Operation Desert Planet"
2. "Great Flood II: Our Glorious Return to Biblical Times"
And the number 1 future euphemism for Global Warming is...
1. "Occupy Everest"
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Call it double plus ungood weather.
David 'Volk' Mc. Itazura!
with scientists they have this disclaimer thingy
It's called admitting new evidence even if it contradicts previous "settled" conclusions. I know you bible-thumper types seem to view that as a bad thing, that you must instead bull-headedly stick to your original notion no matter what new evidence surfaces against it, but it really isn't.
Just something to poo poo and pat each other on the back over I stead of actually doing something real.
Silence is a state of mime.
And that "Climate Change" is often met with "The climate has ALWAYS changed".
When losing an argument, change the rules and the terms so it looks like you're not losing.
Climate change and global warming are a bit too vague, but climate disruption sounds like a great way to place blame on chosen targets.
These targets could also have other jingoistic labels attached to them, but the international blame game is what this term is being coined for.
He also promotes using nuclear energy as part of the solution.
Well, it is.
As much as we would all really love solar and wind to scale to a level necessary for global needs that is not going to happen with current technology. Its many decades off. Lots of science and engineering are needed to get solar there. We need something to bridge the gap between today and that future date where solar scales.
If not nuclear then its natural gas, oil and coal.
Even environmentalists are starting to realize this, including a co-founder of GreenPeace.
"Moore says that his views have changed since founding Greenpeace, and he now believes that using nuclear energy can help counteract catastrophic climate change from burning fossil fuels. Says Moore, "The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2 annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles." Moore also cites reports from the Clean Air Council that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. "Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2 emissions annually," says Moore. "Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely." Moore points out that the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. He predicts that advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future. According to Moore, British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, also believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Concerns about past accidents in the nuclear industry were also mentioned, as he claims the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as example, calling it "an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up". He also recognized the difficulty of dealing with nuclear waste."
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Gr...
Regarding nuclear waste from current reactors. 4th generation reactors can use this waste as fuel. And the waste from 4th gen is short lived. Hundred of years rather than tens of thousands.
http://www.ga.com/energy-multi...
NASA also thinks nuclear has greatly improved the environment.
"Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/...
Pollution? Corporations.
Global climate grant change? Scientists.
How bout we get back to the pollution issue which has been attenuated by climate discussion.
Pollution is not under dispute.
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
Need Mercedes parts ?
Devil's Advocate here:
Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't a professor. None of those folks trading in carbon credit are professors. Professional 'Greenwashers' (read: marketing folks who make companies look pretty to the public and environmental orgs) are not professors. The environmental orgs themselves (who often take in some rather healthy donations from corporations, well-heeled individuals, etc).
Also consider that profit does not always mean money. To the average and otherwise-obscure prof or environmental organization, it also means prestige, fame, name recognition, and influence (see also Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
He also promotes using nuclear energy as part of the solution.
Well, France demonstrates he is correct. They get 75% of their electricity from nuclear and have very inexpensive electricity.
"France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this.
France has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and fuel products and services are a major export.
It is building its first Generation III reactor.
About 17% of France's electricity is from recycled nuclear fuel."
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
...was a fine name in the rest of the world, but Americans don't understand the meaning of 'global'.
It's been a while since we've seen debunked denialist argument #1 being brought up around this parts. Guess most of them got smarter than that...
Nothing is permanent. They earth's climate has 'changed' drastically over several billion years.
And disruption really is more accurate.
And this is a beautiful example of why most scientists should not talk to the public. While your point is factually correct it does *not* communicate to the public what it communicates to the scientifically literate. The public does not think of change in geologic terms, they think of it in personal human experience terms. To the public disruptions are temporary, electricity was disrupted by the storm, etc.
Scientists like Sagan and Tyson do such a great job explaining science to the public because they learned to explain things to the public in the public's language, using the public's understanding and connotations. "Change" works in this sense, "disruption" fails.
The only loss is the general American public being too stupid and too lazy to read the scientific research. Issues about carbon cap-and-trade and possible solutions are politics, not science. If everyone is so damned convinced that the scienctific data do not support the hypothesis, then get off their lazy butts, learn some damned math, and write some scientific refutations. Nobody would ever have a gardener work on their car, or trust their open-heart surgery to a writer, so why on earth does everyone trust a bunch of idiots who know nothing about science screaming that scientists are wrong?
Nice switch, but nobody said that. You're just trying to drag debunked climate myth #16 into the discussion.
All those terms means different things
Global warming means the observable increase in the average global temperature, that has been is objectively measured and there is no opinion or local weather that can deny it. Is in the orders of a few tenths of degrees each year, but it has been increasing.
The explanation of why it is happening goes around the increase of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and it was linked to use of fuel, industrial pollution, deforestation and so on. As is linked to human activities it is called also Anthropogenic Global Warming. That increase impacts more than just the global climate system, ocean acidification and its influence in one of the most crucial ecosystems of the planet matters a lot too. It targets the cause, but as it is a complex system involving sun, earth orbit and tilt, volcanic activities, and a lot more, is always the main target of denialists.
Climate change goes around the changes that causes that extra global temperature to the climate systems. Our civilization depends on a more or less stable and predictable climate system, as extensive agriculture is very sensible to extreme or unexpected weather.
Climate disruption seem to be another layer of dilution of the visibility of the core problem, focused only in extreme weather events. It targets the most visible consequences for our narrow vision of events in time, we can see a big storm but not a gradual over the years events, like slow desertification of big areas or reduction of some core component of the ocean food chain. And if that average temperature keeps increasing, we will have a lot more to worry about than just about weather.
Ah, so the conversation has degenerated to the "controversy" over whether burning fossil fuels could be altering the earth's climate. Look, Carbon Dioxide IS a greenhouse gas. No scientist disputes that if we just keep shoving the stuff in the atmosphere forever, eventually things will warm up. The only question is whether or not we are putting enough up there right now to have this effect. So lets do some simple math: 1 gallon of gasoline requires about 100 tons of biomass. 1 barrel of oil makes 20 gallons of gasoline. The world uses 85,000,000 barrels of oil per day. Doing the simple math, we use the equivalent of 170,000,000,000 tons of biomass per day. The earth's current biomass is estimated at 560,000,000,000 tons. So we burn the equivalent of 1/3 of all the earth's current biomass every single day. I find this pretty compelling.... And don't forget the methane, which we're also pumping up there (both directly by co-release with oil drilling and fracking, and as a side-effect of arctic climate change), and which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide.
I'm thinking Sharknado. It's about as likely as the others.
Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
Funny with how bad Sarah Palin is the only thing morons like you seem to be able to attribute to her is what Tina Fey said. I'll even bet you didn't realize the quote you used was never said by Palin.
I guess the left really is the dumbest of the dumb, but we had better believe them on AGW or they might misquote other people to make us look bad.
Let's call it ... dung. You know, shit has such a negative overtone. Dung, that's the powerful stuff that promotes growth! Sounds much better! And while we're at it, could we paint that turd white maybe? Our marketing department found out that people don't like the color brown, they associate it with, well, shit. White is much superior. First we thought green, but our prototyping department found out that makes the shit, pardon, dung only look like it's infected or something. White shit is much more friendly.
Yes, that's better. It looks so much nicer now, and it's so much better talking about it, our powerful growth-promoter!
Hmm... gee, what's that smell...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The term "climate change" was used long before "global warming".
Mind if I tag along when you move over to your spare Earth?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Know whats great? Facts. Sarah Palin never said she should see Russia from her house. http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/russia.asp But hey, the left never seems to care about facts as long as they can raise taxes and gain power
Let's just do a mix of stupid name discussions that help distract the public attention from the base subject: global marriage and gay warming.
Ohhh that's a tough choice. Lets run with asshattery as that is where the global whateverwewillcallitnow terrorists have their heads.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
And that "Climate Change" is often met with "The climate has ALWAYS changed".
So because climate has changed before, we should just keep doing what we're doing, indefinitely, without worrying about consequences? Sure, climate has changed before, but not to this degree in this short of a time frame.
When losing an argument, stick your head in the sand so you don't hear the argument
There, fixed that for your side. You're welcome.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The only scam here is the environmental exploiters funding junk science and junk social engineering so they can continue to profit from fouling the global commons without cost to themselves. Big Tobacco could have learned a trick or two from these guys.
Actually, it's the other way around-- the tactics used to spread confusion about climate science are ones that they learned from the tobacco industry's fight against health science, when the cigarette companies were trying to discredit the science that showed that cigarettes were bad for health.
It's not merely the same strategy that is being used for spreading the illusion of doubt, it's many of the same people doing it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
to rename our efforts to create a world wide carbon exchange to tax nations and deindustrialize them to bring them under rule.
Not going to work, because the cat is out of the bag. The sicence behind Global Warming is so fake, it is like watching two drunk people doing Cherades at your company Christmas party.
We are suppose to be stewards of the Earth. If we REALLY wanted to clean up the environment we would agressive upgrade our energy production facilities like we do with our PC's.
Thorium Nuclear power would be a good place to start.
Chemical Fusion/Low Energy Fusion would be another nice place to start.
We have tons of energy solutions for personal cars/transport and mass transit. We are refusing to do these things because it disrupts the power structures, all of them political.
There world seems to be stuck in a rule by Oligarchs, who are hell bent on bringing another round of fascism to the table.
So we do not get change on any of the issues of energy and environment because they would lose their power structures if we did.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
"Climate change" was not a very descriptive name, because the climate is always changing. It's just changing faster now, in a way that will arguably be harder for humans and nature to adapt to. So "climate disruption" is a better name.
And I don't understand why this new terminology should be politically controversial. It's pretty clear that the climate is now changing in novel ways, due to human influence. But it's not actually clear, according to the experts, whether the net impact of "climate disruption" on humanity will be positive or negative, and therefore whether we should make an effort to slow it...
Devil's Advocate here: Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't a professor.
Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't relevant in any way. It is only the climate change deniers that are interested in Al Gore-- but they seem to be completely obsessed with him. He's not a scientist, he hasn't written or contributed to any of the papers laying out the science behind anthropogenic climate change, he is not part of the scientific literature. If he didn't exist, the climate models, the analysis of climate data, and the conclusions would be unchanged.
If you're talking about Al Gore, you're really not talking about science. At best, he's a popularizer.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Get back to lost habitat (rain forest, coral reefs). Maybe if we preserved more forests, they'd suck up more CO. The "climate" is established science but it's also boring as hell, there will be winners (Greenlanders) and losers (African Sahel). I don't see that 350.org is motivating as many young people as Jacques Cousteau, Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey did. People care about habitats and animals more than they care about weather vocabulary.
Gently reply
A lot of the global warming "solutions" proposed by a politicians may well be exploitative power grabs, but that's true of a lot of *everything* they propose. That doesn't mean the problem isn't real, just that they're power-hungry bastards trying to exploit a very real problem for personal gain.
The way I see it there are two possibilities :
(A) There's a global conspiracy of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of climate researchers to "manufacture" a story of one of the largest crisis our species has ever faced for the benefit of political power grabs.
(B) The problem is real, but a lot of scientifically illiterate politicians and social action groups around the globe are more interested in creating non-solutions that serve their own ends than actually addressing the problem efficiently.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
How can you possibly believe that the massive environmental changes we are creating both for living our daily lives and for powering our cities and running our factories, that the chemicals we're synthesizing that had never been seen on planet earth prior to us, are NOT having an effect on the climate? Is it such a stretch that those changes aren't, necessarily, bad for life as we've known it, given that life as we've known it was adapted to the environment that existed prior to us?
You don't need a PhD or hi-falutin intellectual elite pedigrees to see the obvious. The only questions should be "How bad is it?", and I might agree with you that there's enough money on the table for all parties that it has to be taken with a grain of salt, and a realization that most of us would rather perish than go back to living in caves.
Big Tobacco could have learned a trick or two from these guys.
This is completely backwards. The funded part of the denialist movement directly copied the methods of the tobacco lobby, and in many cases employed the same lobbyists.
At least he didn't include "global cooling" [sic] or "pause" in the screed, so let's count ourselves lucky.
sPh
it's getting warmer everywhere except where *I* live. I think that's all that they are trying to say: "look man: winters will get more milder and easier to live with except for whereever it is that scarboni888 lives whereupon they will get colder and more miserable. That is all that's happening to the climate".
When losing an argument, change the rules and the terms so it looks like you're not losing.
Except that the denialists are NOT losing the argument. They are winning. By a landslide. Almost everywhere, the number of people who consider it a serious problem has been going down, while the number that consider themselves skeptics has been going up. The problem is that many scientists think that they will automatically "win" just because the facts are are their side. When it comes to politics, that is an incredibly stupid thing to believe.
The only loss is the general American public being too stupid and too lazy to read the scientific research
That and every article is two paragraphs long, with the second being "Subscribe to this journal to read this article's full text".
We just settle on an already-given term, then trying to come up with a new alarmist term every few months/years?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Climatologists aren't changing the name. You denialists cling to the words of any non climatologist you can. That's why you guys are in love with Gore. Debate anyone but the experts should be your creed.
Who stands to profit more?
Professors on a fixed salary or corporations selling the stuff that is blamed for climate change?
You mean: Professors on a fixed salary who rely on grants to keep that salary or corporations who make one-fifth what the government makes on the sale of their stuff.
Are the companies that sell oil really "Big Oil" or is "Big Oil" really the government?
I have a 3 step plan that would deal with past, present, and future climate issue of CO2:
1.Past: 'harvest' the carbon out of the air, convert into diamonds or other tangible materials. Ground storage would only temporarily work, and CO2 geysers don't sound like a good idea to me
2.Present: Nuclear technology, but rather than building a few large nuclear power stations, build multiple smaller-scale stations. Nuclear reactors don't scale up very well. Also, REFORGE and recycle your fuel rods, even if it means building a facility to specifically do so. Certain reactor by-products have industrial uses, such as americium (smoke detectors.) Use RTG generators for small towns or factories, and most importantly EDUCATE THE PUBLIC ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF NUCLEAR.
3.Future: Fusion, more efficient solar panels, Orbital Solar Farms that return the energy via microwaves....any number of improvements to present technology can tip the scales.
none of this is supposed to be an instant fix, it is an ongoing issue.
Actually these guys learned a trick or two from Big Tobacco and some of them are the same guys (like Fred Singer).
So there are two broad categories of people that will read this post:
Roughly speaking: approximately half of us BELIEVE that this is a cultural phenomenon, perpetuated by left-leaning media and left-leaning scientists that has effectively "branded" the idea of "global warming", "global climate change", "etc" and that it is, essentially, a ploy by profiteers and politicians to stage a "moral high-ground" stance on the matter to further their agenda which, generally, has to do with increased regulations and economic sanctions. People who share some semblance of this agenda cite ongoing scientific research by numerous organizations as claim to proof that their view is accurate and that their agenda is justified. Half of us BELIEVE that the scientific research cited, in these cases, is at best a highly biased perspective and at worst has been fabricated to comply with the image and branding necessary to support said agenda.
Roughly speaking: approximately half of us BELIEVE that humanity has somehow reached a level of unmitigated industrialization that is causing "greenhouse gas" emissions to increase, unchecked. Half of us BELIEVE that these emissions CAUSED BY HUMANS are changing atmospheric composition in ways that are, and will continue to, alter the climate of the planet. Half of us BELIEVE that these changes in the climate will have repercussions on things like water supply (rainfall/drought), agriculture, animal habitat dynamics, etc, and that while these repercussions are difficult to predict accurately, they are expected to be generally detrimental in nature. Half of us BELIEVE that these detrimental repercussions are happening now and will continue to compound/increase with further unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions that we, humans, are directly responsible for.
Broadly speaking: Nearly none of us will actually go find out the facts for ourselves. Half of us do not feel the need to verify the facts because the evidence is so overwhelmingly clear and we trust the information to be accurate, we trust the people who claim to have the expertise in these matters of science in the same way we trust the people who designed the airbus A380 enough to board one and let it take us to Japan.
The other half of us do not feel the need to verify the facts because we do not trust the information to be accurate, we do not trust the people who claim to have the expertise in these matters of science.
There are individuals among us who fall somewhere in between:
Some of us BELIEVE that there is scientific consensus on the matter and that there is something happening to the climate but that it is NOT caused by humans.
Some of us BELIEVE that there is scientific consensus on the matter and that there is something happening to the climate which can be directly attributed to human activities, BUT that nothing should be done because it would jeopardize the economy, national security, etc...
Time will ultimately tell:
Of these two major and several minor perspectives on the matter - a consensus has been reached through disagreement, in a manner of speaking:
Those who BELIEVE in the science generally believe that the changes will become ever increasingly apparent within the next 50-100 years - That there is a consensual hypothesis that has been made and is in the process of continuous refinement by the global scientific community. This hypothesis will be proven true or false as time passes and as conditions change, for better or worse...With time, if conditions change for better, diverging from these hypothetical projections, it will be taken less seriously. If conditions change for the worse, converging on these hypothetical projections, it will gain more attention and be taken more seriously by people at large.
Those who BELIEVE only in the political agendas, chocking it up to alarmism and theatrics generally believe that either nothing is changing, or that the climate is changing but that there is nothing we can do about it because we aren't the cause of it or
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
It wasn't global warming first. That wasn't until the 90's. It was global cooling. But we'd like to ignore that fact, as it introduces a whole lot of doubt and makes it harder to buy into the premise at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
Al Gore is relevant to either the issue and/or the OP exactly how?
sPh
Devil's Advocate here: Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't a professor.
Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't relevant in any way.
Not directly to the actual debates and studies, no. On the other hand, he managed to make a little movie, do a little activism, and made a metric ton of money off the subject. He also elevated the status and notoriety of quite a few scientists in the process.
The point wasn't that Gore is some kind of scientist. The point is that he, like many others surrounding this whole subject, are busily using it to enrich themselves. They also amplify the message, manipulate it, and happily treat it as unquestioned gospel. The masses who follow the ideology in turn parrot the results - rather hotly, I might add.
Meanwhile, the scientists most associated with the theory are given the aforementioned fame, prestige, recognition, etc.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
No matter what you call it the physical changes to the Earth's climate can't be denied. This is like throwing a bone to the contrarians so they can claim we changed the name again.
A lot of the global warming "solutions" proposed by a politicians may well be exploitative power grabs, but that's true of a lot of *everything* they propose. That doesn't mean the problem isn't real, just that they're power-hungry bastards trying to exploit a very real problem for personal gain.
The point isn't whether or not AGW is real or not - the point is that, contrary to GP's post, there are huge incentives to promote the theory, and more importantly, to shut down any and all opposing viewpoints (as they tend to impede the flow of money).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I like it. Instead of comprising merely one or another of the words that now give conservatives a cold sweat, it has both. Pity they couldn't find a way to throw in "evolution", "vaccines" and "free-thinking".
On the contrary, it's the believers of global warming are the ones who are offended if you are skeptical of them.
You need to gain some perspective. In the 1000 year span of the Hockey Stick graph the past 12 or 16 years is like a nick in the blade of a hockey stick.
Wow, your knid is brave. Postingg a ddebunk lisk that has already been dbunked. You are an obvious repukian troll. By posting something we all know is a load of bunnnk to defend aa possition, it proves that you are a troll trying to maaaaake the other group not appeearstupid.. off course, yyyyou aaaare stupid, and we are smart enough to see past your lies.
Please Mr Repuboican. Go ftry to fuck ovr ssome other site.
Maybe she didn't say that, but she did say many things that demonstrated her failure to grasp complicated issues like climate change/disruption/warming. Or perhaps she did grasp it, but thought the voters didn't like politicians that seemed smart. Remember George Bush?
Pollution is not under dispute.
Agreed, wholeheartedly. I doubt you will find many people who would credibly argue that pollution is a good thing.
On the other hand, pollution seems so pedestrian... no scare factor in it anymore. No alarms to be raised. The corporations have long since either spun their message to convince the world they're perfectly clean, or they outsourced all the dirty stuff to China.
The ideologues? Well, they no longer have craptacular pollution wonders to point at like they did in the '60s and '70s... I mean, back then you had Love Canal, and thousands of similar examples. They had the public's imagination captured by Soylent Green and Silent Spring. What do you have today? Not even a weak simulacrum compared to back then - at least in the Western world.
So, well, what to do?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Depends on the government. Currently the American government is in thrall to the banking industry whereas the previous government was in thrall to the oil industry. The banking industry will make money no matter what and see climate change as a chance to build a new bubble so it is kind of true that the American government has an interest in supporting the climate change science as there is money to be made by the bankers but the bankers will make money no matter what.
Here in Canada the government is definitely in thrall to the oil industry and only exists to make sure they make maximum profits. When it comes to science, all they've been able to do is shut it down. Most all climate science stopped in the name of saving money when what they'd really like is science that says man made climate change is bullshit. Seems the scientists would rather be unemployed rather then make up science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What's really cool is that we're consuming all of the carbon assets, armed ourselves to the teeth with conventional and nuclear weapons and we've progressed to point where we settle our differences by throwing rocks at one another. I hope our alien overlords take pity on us and snuff us in a quick and painless manner. But they'll probably want to make an example of us - ruin your home planet at your peril.
If they're supporting nuclear then they aren't environmentalists. Yes, the plants have a different design and they don't have the same level of risk. But they still have a certain lifetime and then you don't know what the fuck to do with the tons of contaminated metal and concrete. The real elephant in the room is conservation, but addicts don't want to give up their fix.
The weather is the refrigeration cycle of the Earth. And it will always try to balance itself regardless. The Sun's heat (or lack of) drives it. The water is the refrigerant, both as a liquid and as a vapor. Without water our planet would be 200 degrees f. at the equator and 200 below.zero at the poles. Through the atmosphere that is as thin as a peeling of a tangerine (for example) it tries to equalize temp differences. No mater how much heat you and I ad to the system, it will try to balance out. The jet streams ad some resistance to the equalization and the result is stronger barometric pressures. That equals more extreme weather period. So get used to it and prepare for more violent storms etc. Just like in refrigeration as we understand that; A balance point will be sought. Can anything be done? Yes but few are willing...and the rest are living in Egypt (a state of de Nile) Solar, Wind turbines, combined with electric high speed trains would be a good start. (jobs anyone?) Or invest in Oil / Coal and be like Dick Cheney "all we have to do is provide a sense of doubt" (1999) Let's not wait too long.
Or what about starting with simple things like using solar heat collectors to heat water in Arizona and California instead of burning gas. Or drying your laundry outside in the desert instead of using the dryer. Or maybe installing solar panels to help power air conditioning.
"How bout we get back to the pollution issue which has been attenuated by climate discussion."
The trouble is, it's possible to have a wealthy and advanced society while keeping pollution to a minimum. And that just wont do. It is necessary that the masses be returned to a dark ages standard of living ASAP, and so we have to demonize a normally occurring substance, like oh dihydrogen oxide, or carbon dioxide.
And as a side benefit, less pressure to clean up profitable but polluting activities. Win - Win right?
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There's no need to postulate a conspiracy. People in any field tend to produce what is rewarded, and avoid producing what is punished. The tendency is reinforced many times over when a field becomes so politicized.
To put it another way, you dont need a conspiracy among researchers to explain a bad paradigm. (I have seen no evidence of conspiracies to promote phlogiston chemistry, for instance.) A filtration process that promotes believers and weeds out skeptics (or simply overwhelms them with slander and harassment) *before* they become credentialed can produce unanimous agreement on whatever issue you filter for. No special conspiracy, just normal human politics.
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Incorrect. The guy stuck his neck out making GW his cause and trying to promote activism to reverse it. I'm big into documentaries and there have been dozens since that have come out that are just as important that barely made a whiff in theaters. It's ludicrous to think that someone would use the documentary genre to get rich. Al Gore's efforts took off and to add to that he turned out to be a damned good businessman with his Current network.
Besides, the way to get rich is to be a scientist on the take from Big Oil who uses is credentials to pretend GW isn't real.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The whitehouse, and every other partisan group (congress, etc...) needs to shut up about it so we can separate this vary serious issue from politics. Let the scientists name it, and let the whitehouse stay the hell out of the debate unless absolutely necessary. The republicans can call it "Why fishing sucked this year" or "Why your corn futures lost money" and get their people behind addressing it as well. Obama comes forward and even mentions it... viola, 45% of the country opposes any action what-so-ever.
(C) It's real but not nearly the "crisis" that "scientifically illiterate politicians and social action groups around the globe" say it is.
If these people were serious about finding real solutions, they would look at all the scientific research that has been done time and time again related to nuclear energy. And of course, wind energy, solar energy, and many other kinds that reduce pollution and harmful emissions.
Voting for people who have a soap-box that isn't grounded in reality is voting against real solutions.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
It was Sillary Clinton who blamed the amateur film makers whereas the Big Zero came out with Corpseman and if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. He makes Diamond Joe Quimby look competent!
I'm big into documentaries and there have been dozens since that have come out that are just as important that barely made a whiff in theaters.
Depends - how much does Discovery Networks pay nowadays for a documentary?
It's ludicrous to think that someone would use the documentary genre to get rich. Al Gore's efforts took off and to add to that he turned out to be a damned good businessman with his Current network.
Besides, the way to get rich is to be a scientist on the take from Big Oil who uses is credentials to pretend GW isn't real.
Err, I have nothing to rebut this quote, because I don't have to - you did it for me. After all, how much does that so-called "big oil" scientist make versus, oh, Al Gore? :/
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Mod parent up.
Posting anonymously to not undo mods...
I'm one of the weirdos. I believe the science; it's incontrovertible. But I also acknowledge that the environmental movement, about 50 years ago, was a political movement.
Even today, it's easy to brand as advocating a drab, sackcloth-and-ashes, punish yourselves for your own good, existence. All the good stuff about consumerism, and remember, I'm talking branding here, not reality - red meat, fast cars, big houses - associated with a "high standard of living" are treated with disdain or suspicion. We see it today in the stereotype of an organic-food-only, no-GMO-allowed vegan driving a dowdy-looking Prius at 55 mph in the left lane on his way home to a sustainable one-bedroom apartment, and that's how he lowers his carbon footprint. "Commie bastard wants us all to live like this!" shriek the GOP diehards who are still fighting the cold war, and that's the end of the message. (We'll ignore the fact that these same GOP diehards people prefer that Putin win in Ukraine, but that's another thread.)
Why can't the environmental movement rebrand itself as the movement that promises a future of being able to fly down the highway at 90 miles an hour in sporty-looking Tesla, chowing down on a medium-rare lab-grown-beef burger, before pulling into a giant home in suburbia that's encrusted in glittering solar panels? There's never a drop of oil staining his immaculate driveway, and the electric company pays him. He may even have a smaller carbon footprint than apartment-dwelling Prius guy, but his standard of living is increased immeasurably.
Americans like to consume. Conspicuously. The reality of climate change is that it's going to impact our ability to consume, but that by changing our energy sources, we can greatly increase our capacity to consume. A successful branding strategy needs to point out that reducing one's carbon footprint is a way to increase one's standard of living, not detract from it.
Now we have Presidents that let ambassadors get killed and blame it on amateur film makers.
If that's the worst thing the Republicans can dig up on Obama, then he's doing a great job. Compared to the 2,977 civilians dead in 9/11, and the 4,486 more Americans who died during the Great WMD Snipe Hunt in Iraq, the four Americans killed in Benghazi is rounding error.
The Republican obsession with Benghazi says more about the Republican Party that it does about Obama -- a party with a viable policy platform would campaign on that platform, rather than obsessively try to manufacture scandals to score political points. The Clinton/Lewinski scandal worked out so well for them that it's made them lazy.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
How about calling it climate terrorism? Of course it will start some finger pointing but the main polluters are a minority - maybe 2 billion. So on a global scale this kind of language could actually fly.
Je me souviens.
A good parasite keeps its host as healthy as possible, obviously for its own benefit, but that's okay. That's nature
Of course if you can keep your pollution localized inside your walls, that's okay too. But whether you're religious or not, you should consider the people downstream/wind. Please don't empty your piss pot on my head. The planet is local. Just a thought.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...let's just agree that IF this is in fact a globally-critical issue, then we need to keep the patronizing post-colonial political correctness out of the room and just work to ACTUALLY fix the problem, eh?
To wit: we're not talking about yesterday, we're talking about today, and tomorrow.
That means we need to constrain the "Western Powers" significantly, but let's be honest - they're ALREADY doing the most to mitigate CO2 emissions (hell, even the US's emissions have gone down*). The 'problem children' now are India and China, and in the future the 3rd world developing states.
*if this statement bothers you, or if your first thought is to contradict it because "oh they just switched to Nat'l Gas" or to air some sort of fracking complaint, then you're already missing the entire point of the comment. FYI. If the goal is to critically reduce CO2 emissions, let's see the ecologists leading the charge for funding for fusion research and the development of pebble-bed reactors. If they feel that we need to "just stop using so much power" - they can start by shutting off their computers and quitting posting on the internet. Not reasonable or realistic? Then neither is the idea that we're going to suddenly use less power.
As long as the ecomarxists on the Left feel that this is the 'stick' with which they can enact their grievance-based, punitive anti-US, anti-North, anti-Western agenda, then they are going to (continue to) have problems being taken seriously.
If, OTOH, we actually consider this a serious threat, then we need to TREAT it like a serious threat and stop applying it with the intent of 'score settling' for whatever political hobby horse you're riding.
If your house is burning down, that's not the point at which Jimmy gets to complain that Janie got the better bedroom. Put out the fire. Period.
-Styopa
I'm somewhat fascinated that you think I give a crap about Republicans. You find it easier to ignore the sacrifice of our nation's ambassador in order to impute some irrational assignment of guilt. You might as well blame Clinton for being the pussy he was and not killing Bin Laden when he had a chance.
I'm from the WWII mentality. Iraq should have been a slaughterhouse for the Ba'ath Party. Less scandals, more removal of armed enemies.
So you're saying everyone who isn't rich enough to always choose the least-pollution option is a "parasite"? That's 95+% of the world's population.
Changing the nomenclature again is going to increase skepticism.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well, for 30 or so years. But what then? Then you have a huge pile of radioactive crap sitting there that you can't really get rid of sensibly and that will continue to sit there for a few millennia.
4th gen reactors use waste from previous generation reactors as fuel. The 4th gen waste is only hazardous for a few hundred years.
http://www.ga.com/energy-multi...
Discovery documnetaries = shit
Sorry, when they ran the fake mermaid crap, then the megladon crap, and presented it as fact they lost ALL credibility. If I see it on Discovery, I assume its fake now first and will only bother looking it up if I see it on a second source first. Look up any scientist or profesor from either show and you are more likely to find them on an actor/hollywood website then anything scientific.
But funny how you quote a source that had blatently made up false documentaries to advocate things that people ignore when they hear the truth.
The deniers can be satisfied just by disrupting the opposing position, rather than advancing any position of their own. That frees them from the requirements to make consistent or even logical arguments.
Because nothing major is going to happen in the next couple of years it's in human nature to do nothing about it as we think tend to think the future will have the best possible outcome.
If they're supporting nuclear then they aren't environmentalists.
Actually they are. They looked at the science and realize that if we don't use nuclear in the near term then we will continue to be using fossil fuels. That renewables are regrettable not there yet. These people are all for conservation, solar, wind, etc ... they just accept the science that these can't get us as far as we want. Especially with the billions of people in the developing world coming on to the electric grid. In short, that conservation, renewables and nuclear all need to be part of the solution. To say that nuclear does not need to be a part of the fossil fuel solution is to deny reality, much like the climate change deniers. Nuclear and climate deniers are remarkably similar, just calling different ends of the political spectrum their home, both abusing scientific reality.
Everyone should be aware that there was a paper published in the 50s which used the term "climatic change". bell labs also had a video they produced about co2 and its warming properties in the 50s as well. there is even a journal (like science journal) called "climate change" which was founded in the 70s. the common idea that "climate change" is new is honestly 60+ years old. i mean the terminology
No, what kind of silly shit is that? It's not a rich/poor thing. Don't make it into one. Try to stay focused. All humans are parasites, not to say it's bad thing. Our relation with the host is symbiotic and perfectly natural. If you want the species to survive, it is best to ensure its environment remains habitable for as long as possible.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"It's ludicrous to think that someone would use the documentary genre to get rich"
Michael Moore
Morgan Spurlock
I'm sure there's others, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind. Look, if you're anglicizing one side of the argument while demonizing the other, you really need to stop and reconsider your stance. Both sides are scum. Both sides want to make money off this. There's a South Park episode about tobacco companies and an anti-smoking group, and yes, it's in jest, but still, it does paint just how far the "good guys" could potentially go to prove their point. To accept them unquestioningly is honestly quite a stupid thing to do. They have just as much to gain as the "bad guys" have to lose.
Denial is not the exclusive domain of the religious right, conservatives, paid shills, traditionalists or the uneducated. But if you haven't figured out that the controversy is trumped up by the ignorant and those whose financial fortunes are tied to denial, then you're just plain ignorant.
The IPCC's 5th Assessment is now out, and the science has been vindicated, again. Get on with life, and find a way to participate in a responsible and constructive manner by helping rather than hindering the world's response to the biggest ongoing experiment ever to theaten the biosphere, us.
A friend looked at getting solar to offset the air conditioning. It seemed a perfect fit, air conditioning use highly correlates with bright sunshine in California. California generally cools off at night so no AC is needed, unlike other regions of the country.
However when he started to look into the details he found that things were far more complicated than the brief little articles found on the web. One problem was the lifespan of the solar panels. Their efficiency degrades. They need to be replaced in 10-12 years, or at least the inexpensive sourced in China panels do. This and other complications showed him that the typical pays-for-itself-in-X-years-calculations that are commonly tossed around are BS.
The short story is that economic solar power is going to come from large scale industrial solar plants that feed the standard grid, much like the hydro, coal and natural gas plants feeding the standard grid. Its not going to come from home solar panels. Home solar panels need a justification other than economics.
It's not a rich/poor thing. Don't make it into one.
Environmentalism is for rich people. Poor people have to struggle just to get by. They don't have extra resources to devote to purity-for-purity's-sake. And when they do get enough of a surplus to afford to care for the environment, they need to choose based on what will benefit them -- it's clean drinking water, basic sanitation and air that's healthy to breathe, not "these guys have this scary computer model that predicts problems 100 years from now".
Telling people not to pollute at all is telling people to be poorer. Very rich people can afford to be a little poorer. Most of the rest of the world can't.
So because climate has changed before, we should just keep doing what we're doing, indefinitely, without worrying about consequences?
No, Mr. Strawman, that's not what it means. What it does mean is that there's ample evidence that the climate has changed a large number of times in the past, long before humanity was able to throw huge quantities of CO2 into the air, so the fact that it's currently getting warmer isn't sufficient evidence in and of itself to prove that humanity is responsible. Granted, I think that running an open-ended experiment to see how much pollution we can put into the air we breath is a very bad idea, but then, I grew up in Los Angeles and know from first-hand experience what the result can be.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Talk about religion! You sound like a regular preacher there.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
drmad
Approximately a dozen people associated with the State Department - sworn officers, US employees, local employees, and their family members - die in the line of duty every year, consistently for the last 30 years. Very tough, but it is part of the job. Ambassadors who deliberately insert themselves in very dangerous situations - such as attempting to broker among factions in a war-torn land - are of course going to have a higher death rate.
BTW, follow up reporting has shown that the US-made hate video did play a role in rioting in Benghazi that day. Not that it mattered to the specific situation once the ambassador made the decisions to try to get personally involved in that specific situation.
sPh
Evidence that Al Gore has "made a metric ton of money off the subject [environmental activism]", please?
Apparently, the only people who act on pure motives are Galtian corporate overlords. Hank Reardon and that sort. People who have a sincere concern about the future of the human race on planet Earth are only shills out to 'make a metric ton of money'; not possible for them to mean what they say. Because freedom BENGHAZI!
sPh
No, not really. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that comment. Which part sounds religious? Is it because I think poor people shouldn't be made even poorer for the sake of environmental righteousness?
Yeah, Michael Moore is a professional filmmaker. He makes his living making films. That's what "professional filmmaker" means.
Funny thing is that as the years go by most of Moore's documentaries look better and more prescient. I image the current managers of General Motors wish their predecessors had spent a little less money on giant SUVs and a little more on the internally developing the electric car research that they licensed to Toyota instead.
sPh
You also need to keep in mind that "Environmentalists" did not call out Al Gore when he spouted complete BS. They implicitly accepted him as their spokes person. When that blew up, they tried to distance themselves.
Precisely, and the summary is still propagating their bullshit. Researches did not change the terms, it was yet another false debate, both terms had been in use for decades, there was (and still is) a journal called "climatic change" that was established in the 70's, around the same time the term "global warming" started appearing in the literature to describe the current direction of change. The term "climatic change" goes way back, it was in the title of a 1950's paper and probably goes back further than that.
The entire "scientists changed the name" meme was the brain fart of a PR advisor to GWB ( Frank Luntz) who suggested in a memo to Bush that the government change the phrase in it's communications to the public in an attempt to "challenge the science" (ie: shameless propaganda)
From the link: In a 2002 memo to President George W. Bush titled "The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America", obtained by the Environmental Working Group, Luntz wrote: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.... Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."
They did a similar thing to James Hansen, he gave a talk on his work and was told he couldn't talk about it in public without permission from NASA's political minders. Hansen went to the NYT and the courts to protest and get the censorship lifted, the government complied but then changed the wording of NASA's mission statement, removing the "to understand and protect the home planet" words that justified Hansen's budget.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The Luntz memo.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Kinda sounds like a syndrome or something...
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Yep, time to rename politicians from "Politician" to "Hot Air Blower"
Be seeing you...
Just shut the fuck up already.
We all know it's a scam. We all know you and your ilk stand to profit from it. We all know you have No Clue what's going on.
Just out of curiosity - what do you expect the results of digging up millions of years of stored solar energy (aka fossil fuels), and burning them all in a finite atmosphere over the course of a couple of centuries, would be?
Pollution? Corporations.
Global climate grant change? Scientists.
Absolutely. Like how the UCLA Atmospheric Science department made 34 billion dollars last year. No...wait..that was Exxon Mobile.
Your comment is like saying "Both my corner bar and AB InBev make money selling beer". It's technically true but it's a ridiculous comparison because they're orders of magnitude apart.
Right wing climate deniers are obsessed with Al Gore because in the late 80s and early 90s when he was talking about "global warming", the right wing called him a "moonbat" chicken little who was ridiculously claiming that the sky was falling. If Al Gore is shown to be right (which of course he has been) then that means they were wrong the whole time. Rather than admitting they were wrong, the ring wingers want to continue fighting forever.
, there are huge incentives to promote the theory, and more importantly, to shut down any and all opposing viewpoints (as they tend to impede the flow of money).
Yeah, those college professors will step on their mother's neck to keep that 48 thousand bucks a year coming.
In related news, Exxon Mobile made 34 billion dollars of profits last year. Koch Industries had $115B in revenue and unknown profits.
It's hilarious and sad that you think these are somehow equivalent forces.
Can we just call it what it is....Bull Shit
I kept wondering what happened to "global warming" Was hard to tell when climate change meant "global warming" or actual change in climate. I like "global climate disruption" because it sounds stupid so I would know it for what it is, global warming. It is sad that they have to keep changing the name to try to get people to believe it.
You're missing the point. Just because the solutions proposed are "exploitative power grabs", doesn't mean they're not also the best possible or plausible or available solutions to the problems.
Some politicians look at a situation and think "What idea can I spin here, that will work to my advantage?" Those are evil, opportunistic, cunning bastards who will start wars and enslave people.
Other politicians look at the same situation and look at the proposed solutions, think "Which of these is most likely to do the most good?", and only then do they think "How can I position myself to benefit from this change?" Those are, realistically, the best kind of politician - and hence, the best kind of decision-maker - we can ever expect to see with our present social arrangement of incentives.
From the outside, it's very difficult to tell the difference between these two approaches, at least until years after it ceases to matter. But they are different.
Apply pressure on the real polluters, instead of trying to make the US feel guilty that China's cooking the planet?
If you're talking about Al Gore, you're really not talking about science.
Nobody's talking about science here. We're talking about politics. That's what TFS is about.
After Al Gore displayed less class than the abominable Richard Nixon (dragging a close election through the courts and endless re-counts - something Nixon told HIS party not to do in 1960 to avoid harming the country), George W Bush (who I am NOT a fan of) was severely delayed in getting his administration in place; Normally, the new guy spends the 3 months between the election and his innauguration setting-up his administration, but with Gore fighting and re-counting it was a lot harder for the new team to both fight Gore, AND convince lots of people to abandon their other jobs and go to D.C. to prepare to be in an administration that could end-up not existing depending on the whims of the judicial branch.
As a result, on 9-11 (2001) it was Bill Clinton's appointee George Tenet (Democrat) serrving as CIA director and NOT some Republican Bush appointee. Many other parts of the executive branch were sill in the hands of the Democrats on that day too... George Bush himself had only been in office a few months, while you lefties claim Obama is not responsible for his administration 5 years in. To borrow from the Obamabots: "Dude, it's been over two years!"
"Comprehensive Climate Reform" to be passed through congress as the "Climate Reform And Protection [CRAP] bill" which an infamous googly-eyed dingbat congress woman from the Bay Area will tell us we have to vote to pass before we can know what's in it...
John Holdren spent many years pickling his brain at Berzerkly before teaming-up with Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s to predict all sorts of (secular) the-end-is-near paranoid delusions in the 1970s. They and their friends predicted the world would run out of certain vital metals, run out of water, run out of food, run out of living space, make the climate cooler (bringing on a new ice age) or hotter (the current fad eco-paranoia) and nearly every-other non-religious world-ending scenario one can imagine.
Ever wonder where all those campy world-ending movies of the 1970s (like "Silent Running" and "Soylent Green") came from???? Hollywood was lapping-up all the crap Ehrlich and Holdren were spouting. Admittedly, some of the stories had been in scifi literature before that time, but the Hollywood view that they would sell as movies to the audiences of those times was driven by the fact that Ehrlich, Holdren, and friends were spreading their catastrophe tales through the culture in books, magazines, and speeches.
As a general rule, if you want to know the future, listen to John Holdren and then presume the opposite. On matters of technology, I'd consider an Amish buggy-driver to be more-knowlegable than Holdren, and in matters of climate prediction, I'd go with Punxsutawney Phil over Holdren (Phil has a better track record).
Good, an informative comment.
I like Amory Lovins' twist: 'Global Weirding'.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I'm having a Poe's law moment here...
"They did a similar thing to James Hansen, he gave a talk on his work and was told he couldn't talk about it in public without permission from NASA's political minders."
FALSE. Hansen was probably (IANAL) in gross violation of the Hatch act - using his position at NASA for politics. The man was holding pressers and making bold claims that the press would then grab sandbag Bush administration officials with. As a result, some journalist would ask a non-scientist person in the administration something climate-related, the official would give some off-the-cuff answer and then the jounalist would slam him/her with something like "well, that's not what your NASA scientist Mr Hansen said! He says {insert hansen quote here}". This left a lot of unhappiness in the bureacrats who were subjected to this treatment, and so Hansen was informed that he needed to give his superiors a heads-up on what he was pumping-out (something that's standard practice in most organizations). Apparently the sandbagging was part of Hansen's agenda (making your bosses squirm is fun particularly when you have a high opinion of yourself and a low opinion of your superiors) so the guy went on to hold many pressers announcing that he was being repressed [insert applicable fave Monty Python clip here]. The final government study of the whole affair uncovered ONE incident in which Hansen was prevented from a press appearance (becuase his superiors believed he was likely to illegally veer-off into political/policy matters rather than sticking to science) and NO scientific work of Hansen's that was blocked from the public (there'd been several instances of PR people editing Hansen's press releases, but NOT his actual work product, which was as openly published as any other similar work). Incidentally, the Obama administration has even stricter controls in place over employees speaking to the press - consider that none of the survivors of the Benghazi raid (one obvious example, which team Obama insists was nearly a non-event) is allowed to speak to the press or even testify to congress; congress had to fight to even get the NAMES of these people (who are on the government payroll and funded by congressional actions)
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
Can we just call it ...
You can call it by whatever name you like, the laws of physics don't give a damn. The atmosphere will not bear our tampering without complaint however many idiot words we utter.
How about we get serious about it and use a much more appropriate terms: Global Ecological Catastrophe and Pollution Crisis.
By your reckoning it then takes 3 years to burn all the biomass, leaving the Earth as a dead hulk.
Oh, wait.... this argument's been going on for a LOT more than three years..... the Earth should already be lifeless..... ahhhhhh.... because plants and animals grow back (they are renewable resources). and THAT's why we're not already all dead as your hyperbolic rhetoric suggests we should be. Oh, and, while we're at it: we're not even creating or destroying any carbon. Carbon is the basic building block of life, an element in the periodic table - NOT some synthetic goo of dubious origin. Only an AGW fanatic sees carbon as an evil element of DEATH and destruction. We grow plants, which take-in carbon, and then we destroy the plants (burning them, eating them, etc), liberating the carbon.... rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat
If you get rid of all the carbon, or "sequester" it, you will kill all life on Earth. The time is long-past to end this sinister war against life on Earth. You global warming fanatics need to all follow your dreams to their logical conclusions and join the VHEMT and leave the rest of us to enjoy our lives and the spectacular world of carbon-based life we live in.
Funny though that you guys never seem to be upset by all the money "big oil" spends on "green" stuff.
Your bigger intellectual problem, however, is that when government funds the stuff you like it does it by stealing money from MY wallet at gunpoint. When "Big Oil" spends money, it takes that money from its own bank accounts. The greenie complaint about "Big Oil" getting subsidies is a scam - oil companies do not get subsidies (money taken, by force, from others and given to them) they just get the same type of tax breaks that other businesses get (i.e. they are not taxed on some of their income because it is acknowledged that this money is being put back into the activity as a cost and is not a profit). Most "green" companies, on the other hand, get ACTUAL subsidies - government takes money from some people and gives it to those "green" companies to fool people into thinking those activities are efficient and cost-effective or cost-competative - ACTUAL subsidies like this should NEVER occur in a "free market" because they encourage sub-optimal economic activity.
What riot? The ambassador was walking around outside an hour before the assault.
Pollution? Corporations.
Global climate grant change? Scientists.
Absolutely. Like how the UCLA Atmospheric Science department made 34 billion dollars last year. No...wait..that was Exxon Mobile.
Your comment is like saying "Both my corner bar and AB InBev make money selling beer". It's technically true but it's a ridiculous comparison because they're orders of magnitude apart.
Exxon Mobile made money because Exxon Mobile sells a useful product.
UCLA pissed away cash to fund useless bullshit and stroke their own dicks.
Welcome to academia.
If they're supporting nuclear then they aren't environmentalists.
And do you have a reason for saying this?
Yes, the plants have a different design and they don't have the same level of risk. But they still have a certain lifetime and then you don't know what the fuck to do with the tons of contaminated metal and concrete.
You could always make them part of the next plant or just stick them in a hole in the ground. Ground water pollution especially from low grade contaminated material like this is ridiculously overrated.
The real elephant in the room is conservation, but addicts don't want to give up their fix.
The problem with this thoughtless suggestion is that we are all energy "addicts" because we need to be in order to survive and actually do things. We are just as much air addicts or food addicts. There's always someone out there who thinks the world never has realized that energy consumption has a cost to the consumer and that it would be possible to reduce that cost by consuming less energy. The world keeps consuming energy because there are better things to do out there than merely consume less energy.
If Al Gore is shown to be right (which of course he has been)
Show me a single climate model put forth or espoused by Al Gore that has proven to be accurate for any significant amount of time into the future.
No. Because names have power.
We have been calling our enemies "evil", "bad guys" and variations of the same since time immemorial.
And witness how much time, effort and money the RIAA spent to try and link copyright infringement to "piracy".
And how the "Patriot Act" has nothing to do with encouraging or fostering patriotism.
When someone proposes a name change for any subject, you can bet his intention is to try and change public perception of that subject to something that suits his taste.
Scientists like Sagan and Tyson do such a great job explaining science to the public because they learned to explain things to the public in the public's language, using the public's understanding and connotations. "Change" works in this sense, "disruption" fails.
All of this of course also ignores that Silicon Valley has been trying to sell to the american public that "disruption" is a good thing for years... Pop-news sites like CNN pundits even muse about how great it would be if those Silicon Valley guys would just "disrupt government" the way they have with markets... *sigh*
One has to skip over a bunch of bigger human problems to obsess over climate change.
The only questions should be "How bad is it?", and I might agree with you that there's enough money on the table for all parties that it has to be taken with a grain of salt, and a realization that most of us would rather perish than go back to living in caves.
In light of what I just mentioned, I think a related question to ask is "How bad is it compared to our other problems?"
Like what gives this government or any other government the right to experiment with the very ionosphere and atmosphere of this planet? Super heaters should be destroyed. HAARP is an ABOMINATION and they damn well know it.
He used up all his brain cells coming up with the words "fuck" and "shit"
He's the high-caliber sort that gets all his talking points from web sites funded by the old billionaire NAZI collaborator George Soros.... he forgot his "talking points" about hating billionaires and their influence on politics. To be fair though, those talking points can be mighty confusing, given the evil guy who funds them though his web of hundreds of deceptively-named "progressive" organizations (each of which is an evil corporate "person") ...
In related news, Exxon Mobile made 34 billion dollars of profits last year. Koch Industries had $115B in revenue and unknown profits.
And the EU is dumping 30 billion euros every year through 2020 on explicit climate change related spending. That's a lot of money too.
Further, do we actually have any evidence that the current climate change hubbub is not profitable for Exxon or the Koch brothers? Record profits in the face of growing climate change efforts doesn't strike me as a sign that they're going to do poorly under the new regime. It's just been assumed that they won't do well. Maybe we should look at this evidence.
Yeah, those college professors will step on their mother's neck to keep that 48 thousand bucks a year coming.
They get more than that. They get staff, power, prestige, and easy living. And more than $48k per year, if they can rope a big grant. And you know what? College professors are human. I bet you can find some that are of that less noble, mother-trodding sort.
(I have seen no evidence of conspiracies to promote phlogiston chemistry, for instance.)
But I have seen evidence of a conspiracy (well more of a blatant abuse of government power than anything remotely covert) to promote Lysenkoism. High stakes change the game.
From the outside, it's very difficult to tell the difference between these two approaches, at least until years after it ceases to matter. But they are different.
It's a huge, blatantly obvious difference once you include the human tendency to make virtuous that which benefits yourself or furthers your interests.
The reason for this is because the issue is now politically polarized. That means, roughly 50% of people will tend towards trusting different sources of information on the issue. We're talking tribalism, not argumentation.
Many GOP congress-critters and senators know that global warming is a real and present danger, but cannot hope to speak up in public, because of the super-polarized political dynamics, and the fact that the GOP depends on a rather paranoid and conspiratorial base. (In contrast, the Dems distance themselves from liberal crazies.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Look it up yourself, lazy bastard!
Kids these days!
Get off my lawn.
This is a rather sad point of view, because it is simply wrong. The strongest incentives are for the status quo. The largest industry in world (the energy sector) is staring down regulation, and they have the most to lose. If you care whether or not your beliefs are true or not, then do yourself a favour, and read "Merchants of Doubt" which chronicles in excruciating detail, the very real history of how companies manipulate the media to protect their interests.
Most scientists could make far more working in industry. (I sure could.) So they aren't chasing money. They are trying to understand cool new things, and leave a footnote in the lineage of human consciousness. You don't get that by being wrong. You get that by being new, innovative, and mostly: demonstrating the status quo is wrong. In fact, you've got the incentive structures completely ass backwards.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The really frightening bit is how many people have accepted weather to be a factual replacement for climate. Just look at the number of people who used snow in April as an argument against global warming.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Most Nobel Prizes for physics go to scientists who demonstrate an existing idea is wrong. There are some problems with Kuhn's analysis, in that at any point of time, you'll find multiple paradigms active in large fields, and you'll also see rather incremental changes in and out of dominate paradigms, for the most part. This is a pretty big flaw in his argument.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I would like to submit into evidence as Exhibit A- this dumbass.
I'm old enough to remember that it was first called "The Greenhouse Effect", a name still lingering when speaking of "greenhouse gases". I have often suspected that the term was dropped when alarmists realized that most people consider greenhouses to be pretty effective ecosystems reminiscent of living in Hawaii.
It's still never been proven that smoking "causes" cancer. A scientific double-blind study has never been done. There is no doubt, but it isn't "proven".
Just like people talk about the "theory of evolution" being "just a theory" But then, so is gravity, why isn't there any debate over that one?
Learn to love Alaska
Is there a global conspiracy among hackers to break into systems and steal your shit? No, it's just a bunch of like minded people doing what's in the nature, which is to follow the money and try to get some of it. "Scientists" are much the same. They need the funds and the Politicians are interested in "Global Warming" so that's where the funds are. It's like holding out a piece of meat to a dog. They will do whatever they think you want them to do for for it.
Grant money is NOT given out to disprove AGW. The publications won't accept anything that doesn't support AGW. Fuck, News papers and other sites don't accept anything that is not supportive of AGW. A scientist being skeptical is like a politician using the word Niggardly. Everyone loses their shit and funds dry up, department heads call you into the office and you find yourself working in a closet with an Atari 64.
All you are is a shill for Al Gore, Greenies and everyone who thinks they are smarter than everyone else. You notice you leg is wet? It's not because it's raining. It's because the Grant seeking whores are pissing on it and telling you it's raining.
But then, so is gravity, why isn't there any debate over that one?
Well obviously because the gravity hoax is one that serves the interests of both sides of politics and has done for centuries. Sheesh!
Not directly to the actual debates and studies, no. On the other hand, he managed to make a little movie, do a little activism, and made a metric ton of money off the subject. He also elevated the status and notoriety of quite a few scientists in the process.
Not quite following your logic. There are quite a number of people who made considerable amounts of money of the internal combustion engine. Which doesn't imply that the internal combustion engine doesn't work as advertised - it does exactly what the label says it does. Why then, would the fact that people have made money off climate change (and especially off promoting and selling renewable energy) imply that the underlying science is wrong? Sounds a bit ridiculous.
Sounds to me like you're angry because they saw an opportunity, and jumped on it, and you were fooled by some scumbag denialist and didn't, and so you lost, and they won. Sucks to be you I guess.
Meanwhile, the scientists most associated with the theory are given the aforementioned fame, prestige, recognition, etc.
And so they should. These guys (and girls) deserve to be as rich as thieves, considering how much money we will save if we shift to renewable energy now, rather than waiting for when big coal is good and ready to close the doors. Of course they aren't rich though.
On the other hand, he managed to make a little movie ...
Which was when? Nearly a decade ago? And this is meant to convince us that the deniers don't resurrect zombie arguments?!
Chanting Al Gore as some kind of voodoo response to science is simply an admission that you've run out of excuses.
Yes, because David Kirkpatrick says it is so. There's a unbias source. /sarcasm
This isn't just with global warming
It's discrimination against white people...
No wait, it's "reverse discrimination"...
No wait, it's "affirmative action"...
No wait...
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Believing in the tragedy of the commons is a religion? I thought it was basic logic.
Learn to love Alaska
Maybe. Coal emits a ridiculous amount of radiation... Also, according to the Torch report, 60k people died from Chernobyl, which is a tragedy, but a drop in the bucket compared to coal.
"Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/...
Where did he say anything about "the tragedy of the commons"?
He said pollute "as little as possible". That's a quasi-religious purity standard. A non-religious, rational standard for "pollution" would examine tradeoffs: What are the costs and benefits of burning fossil fuels vs. the alternatives? Why can't we use reason to choose what we do rather than environmental dogma?
bull stuff for the purpose of control. We ALL affect climate by existing. If your so pissed off about 400PPM of carbon dioxide in the air go plant a tree and quit having children. The point of life is not to see how many people we can flood the planet with and see how little we can survive on to do it. Each person has an environmental impact and unless we want to live on bread and water and walk everywhere we should think of the carrying capacity of the planet as a function of technological capability, (what is the carrying capacity at varying levels of quality of life based on technological capacity), What is the cost of removing carbon vs leaving it (I don't think the drama queens like Al Gore and IPCC have even scraped the top of this barrel). Then when we know this information it should be disseminated in a schedule of here is where we are and here is where we need to be and then based on good science (very little of this is going on right now) and a bit of common sense decide what we are going to do about it. The sun IS getting warmer (it will continue to do so until we reach red giant stage and start burning helium) and we could come up with some novel solutions such as using climate to our advantage, turning deserts into solar power houses, generating biodiesel and using it, and living high on the hog and driving huge SUV's, motor-homes and boats around because we were smart enough to create a thriving economy and an abundance of fuel through effective use of the environment instead of submitting to government control and plodding idiocy like we can't think or innovate more than the political hacks that currently claim to have our best interests at heart. We as a people are smarter than our government, the IPCC, the EPA and the regulatory death grip they have on our economy.
Freaking end of rant, nuff said, TACO's for everybody.
Bad spelling grammar and run on sentences provided free of charge.
Why can't we use reason to choose what we do rather than environmental dogma?
Because it's a situation of "tragedy of the commons" and people need incentives to act for the greater good, when self-interest benefits them to abuse it. Pollution is an externality. The more they pollute, the more they save, as reducing pollution costs money. It's the traditional "grazing" scenario, but with the air being over-grazed by pollution. Pumping the smallest amount of pollution possible into the air is a good thing, until there's some sharing of the air that prevents an increase of pollutants.
What you advocate is "fuck you, my neighbor over-grazed the common area, so I'm going to do it twice as bad". That's as much or more "a religion" than understanding that it's a tragedy of the commons, and doing what you can (pull your own sheep out of the common area until an agreement is reached on how to graze) is reasonable and responsible, even if you wish to dismiss it as a religion.
Learn to love Alaska
Belial6 wrote: You also need to keep in mind that "Environmentalists" did not call out Al Gore when he spouted complete BS. They implicitly accepted him as their spokes person.
It seems that the climatologists who had viewed the filmed found it to be rather accurate at the time.
The Associated Press contacted more than 100 climate researchers and questioned them about the film's veracity. All 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie said that Gore accurately conveyed the science, with few errors. (source)
But some scientists were concerned about some details.
"I thought the use of imagery from Hurricane Katrina was inappropriate and unnecessary in this regard, as there are plenty of disturbing impacts associated with global warming for which there is much greater scientific consensus," said Brian Soden, professor of meteorology and oceanography at the University of Miami.
Steig disputed Gore's statement that you can visibly see the effect that the United States Clean Air Act has had on ice cores in Antarctica. "One can neither see, nor even detect using sensitive chemical methods any evidence in Antarctica of the Clean Air Act," he said...
John Nielsen-Gammon from Texas A&M University said the "main scientific argument presented in the movie is for the most part consistent with the weight of scientific evidence, but with some of the main points needing updating, correction, or qualification."
Belial6 wrote: When that blew up, they tried to distance themselves.
I don't know that too many climatologists distance themselves from the film because of some alleged "blow up". They likely distance themselves from it because it's become too highly politicized, which takes away from the science itself. Or perhaps it less accurately reflects our current understanding of the issue.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
And the EU is dumping 30 billion euros every year through 2020 on explicit climate change related spending. That's a lot of money too.
There are a billion people in the EU. So that's 30 bucks a head. That's about a third of a tank of fuel, 3 days parking, 1 weeks worth of coffee. That is an incrediby small amount. I'm amazed it's so low, particularly given that only a fraction of a percent of this would go to climate research, the rest invested in renewable energy.
They get more than that. They get staff, power, prestige, and easy living. And more than $48k per year, if they can rope a big grant. And you know what? College professors are human. I bet you can find some that are of that less noble, mother-trodding sort.
Well, your contention is that every one of them is corrupt. Everyone. For a 150 years, form Fourier, Tyndal, Arrhenius all the way to the present. Every scientist - every physicist, chemist, biologist. This does seem hard to accept.
You're a fucking idiot. Here, try this experiment:
Go somewhere. The mall. Your office. I don't give a fuck.
As five people there to name five scientists. Any five. Again, I don't give a fuck.
Observe that most people can't name five scientists, many can't name one (except Einstein, and maybe Hawking or De Grasse Tyson), and pretty much none of them can name a single scientist in a climate-related field. There are no 'famous', 'prestigious', 'recognised' climate scientists, outside the very cramped, very poorly paid halls of government and academia. None. At. Fucking. All.
Where are they getting all this money from, anyway? And are they stupid? Don't they know they could get more money working in mining - coal, gas, oil?
And Al Gore 'enriching' himself? The man was vice president of most powerful country on the planet. He lives in a mansion. He has a permanent Secret Service detail. He can go wherever he wants to go, whenever he wants to go there, and eat, drink or fuck whatever he wants, twice. He will never be able to spend the amount of money he has. And again, if he wanted to 'enrich' himself, why not side with big business?
Because you're a fucking idiot and you're wrong, that's why.
And the waste from 4th gen is short lived. Hundred of years rather than tens of thousands.
"Short lived" is an euphemism for "highly radioactive".
How can you possibly believe that the massive environmental changes we are creating both for living our daily lives and for powering our cities and running our factories, that the chemicals we're synthesizing that had never been seen on planet earth prior to us, are NOT having an effect on the climate? Is it such a stretch that those changes aren't, necessarily, bad for life as we've known it, given that life as we've known it was adapted to the environment that existed prior to us?
You don't need a PhD or hi-falutin intellectual elite pedigrees to see the obvious. The only questions should be "How bad is it?", and I might agree with you that there's enough money on the table for all parties that it has to be taken with a grain of salt, and a realization that most of us would rather perish than go back to living in caves.
To borrow an old car insurance quip "I didn't know which way to swerve, so I ran him over". While it is generally obvious that we are having some effect on the climate, there is enough confusion in the lay community about what, how precisely we should be able to predict the outcome, and about the impact of different strategies (skepticism about unintended consequences of carbon taxes, especially when the carbon production can simply move offshore to a lower tax regime taking jobs with it), that I am not surprised there is intense skepticism in the public at large. To the point of preferring to believe there might not even be any effect.
We may think our science is good, but in communication we're coming across as over-insistent snake oil salesmen, as we (or those who agree that the models are the best predictions we have) get louder and louder about how terrible it would be if you don't buy our expensive product (green taxes) and more and more acid about how anybody who disagrees with us must be a terrible person.
Show me a single climate model put forth or espoused by Al Gore that has proven to be accurate for any significant amount of time into the future.
Why, or even how, would Al Gore "put forth" a climate model? Since when has he been a climate modeller?
Why would, or even could, Al Gore "espouse" a climate model? I thought he was already married.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Maybe if income were more equitable more people could better afford healthy food, air, etc.
Anything is better than "climate change". Climates change. They always have. They always will. "Global Climate Disruption" at least suggests a negative.
Pollution makes people ill. You can see it happening a lot in poor countries, where lack of proper waste disposal brings a lot of health problems. The people doing the majority of this polluting are rich. They are the factory owners, the developers who can't be bothered to install proper sewer systems, other countries that dump their waste on the 3rd world for "recycling" (melting down valuable metals over open fire pits).
If you are poor and you get ill it tends to make you poorer. Medical care is expensive, and lack of insurance of welfare means you get no income when not working. Typically your children look after you until they also become ill.
When not faced with pollution from the rich it seems that the world's poor often are quite environmentally aware. I suppose it is a case of not shitting when you eat. Things like solar power and windmills are your only option when there isn't an electricity grid. The places where it is going wrong, like China, are once again the rich (in China's case the government) imposing dirty coal fired power stations on the poor.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And the EU is dumping 30 billion euros every year through 2020 on explicit climate change related spending. That's a lot of money too.
Nope, sorry:
The EU has agreed that at least 20% of its €960 billion budget for the 2014-2020 period should be spent on climate change-related action. This represents around a threefold increase from the 6-8% share in 2007-2013.
20% of 960GEUR is 192GEUR, not 30GEUR.
But that is spending on "emissions mitigation and climate adaptation actions", not science.
(KeensMustard somewhat overestimates the EU population, it's half a billion, not a billion. Planned spending on climate change relates action is about 384 EUR per capita, ten times his estimate).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
they're speaking of anthropogenic global warming, not the more profound effects we have on our environment like desertification, habitat destruction, or pollution.
Concern troll is concerned.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
There is a concept from marketing known as branding. Brands are not merely a convenient name by which your company or product is known. Consumers respond to brands themselves, either positively or negatively. This is known as brand equity.
A brand with good equity will sell a product simply by having its name attached to it. A Calvin Klein shirt will sell for more than a comparable shirt from a less famous brand. Likewise, a brand with bad equity will inhibit sales of an otherwise good product.
Brands that become toxic are abandoned. The company will change its name, or change the name of the product, or release a new product under a new name. Phillip Morris changed its name to Altria for example. IBM sold off its hard drive business to another firm when their "Deathstar" line of drives became irredeemably associated with poor quality.
Ideas also have brands.
When an idea keeps getting rebranded under new names, it means the people peddling that idea are having a hard time. The more familiar potential consumers (believers) of that idea become with it, the more likely they are to reject it. So the people who want to push that idea repackage it under a new name and try to pretend it is something different.
I'm not surprised that global warming / climate change / climate chaos / etc has been given yet another name. I'm just surprised that it took them so long to think one up.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
What it does mean is that there's ample evidence that the climate has changed a large number of times in the past, long before humanity was able to throw huge quantities of CO2 into the air, so the fact that it's currently getting warmer isn't sufficient evidence in and of itself to prove that humanity is responsible.
What we discover from exaining past climate that it has changed when something made it change. One of the things that has made it change in the past has been a change in atmospheric CO2. When we compare the current climate change with past climate changes the only thing we find changing today is the atmospheric CO2 concentration (all the other factors would be leading to a gradual cooling). We know that atmospheric CO2 increase is largely due to our burning fossil fuels. What more evidence do you need?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I think you assumed extremism in your rush to hate an environmentalist. He didn't say "at any cost", he said "possible" which implies there are things to be considered and a chance that there may not be a reasonable justification.
Still, I'm somewhat surprised how long it took for someone to Shaman this argument. Normally one of the first few posts complains about "enviro-mentalists" and their fanatical devotion to an agrarian lifestyle for all.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
it's means it is.
Has it been "proven" that HIV is the cause of AIDS?
Lots of scientists can be wrong without requiring a global conspiracy. See confirmation bias, the millikan oil drop experiment, etc.
> Not even a weak simulacrum compared to back then.
Sometimes we need to be a bit more pushy to those who deny climate change or pollution.
I dare you to drink the water from the Chicago river.
I dare you to eat the fish from any creek in Indiana.
I dare you to list waterways that have pottable water.
I dare you to sit down-wind from the piles of coke in East Chicago.
There's plenty of examples, but most people close their eyes without instruction.
This is nothing new, if you grew up in the 70's. It took awhile for people to become more aware of pollution.
It could also be that most people think that it is simply too late to do anything about it.
Perhaps "Greenhouse" is the wrong term to use for pedestrians.
It is difficult to explain the relationship between climate-change and weather.
You can blame our textbooks for mixing the two terms.
EG: The climate near the equator is generally warmer than farther away from the equator.
It's easier to understand global warming from it's affects on weather.
The weather is becoming wild, wacky, and weird.
The warming of the climate affects the weather like a pressure-cooker affects water in it.
It causes more energy in the atmosphere, which causes wild swings in weather, larger storms, more flooding, and droughts, as the weather patterns change. We need a term that better illustrates the increased turbulence in the weather.
It is pretty Randian: all the people who believe as I do are pure angels who earn a profit and their greed is a holy thing to be worshipped, all the people who do not believe as I do are devils who steal their profits from the holy people, and their greed is an evil, malignant, thing which should be destroyed.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The people in the White House are now the ones naming the science: I'm sure their only motivation is in the best interest of the scientific community.
Why not call it what it is? Human activity is destroying the environment and making the planet inhospitable. How about "anti-terraforming" or "terraf*cking?" Maybe just plain "screwing up the planet" or "doing it wrong?"
There are a billion people in the EU.
Half a billion people roughly. But going by your reasoning, there's only $34 dollars of Exxon profit per person in the EU, three days parking and all that. That must mean that $34 billion per year is not a lot of money, amirite? Why is it that a lot of money is a lot of money when it is earned by Exxon, but not when it comes from the EU?
Well, your contention is that every one of them is corrupt.
I missed that. Good thing we have you to do my thinking and talking for me.
For a 150 years, form Fourier, Tyndal, Arrhenius all the way to the present. Every scientist - every physicist, chemist, biologist. This does seem hard to accept.
Or that your reasoning is deeply flawed and irrelevant to any discussion we might have on the subject. I find that more likely. Note that every scientist you mention above didn't actually do any work with today's multidimensional climate simulations. Arrhenius, the only one who actually did a relatively modern climate model, worked with a primitive one-dimensional radiative model.
And it is laughable to suggest that these historical scientists have something to do with today's consistent bias in predictive models towards exaggerating the effects of AGW (especially given that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is in addition generally somewhat worse than predicted by those models). All those scientists with those erroneous models are funded by the entities spending all those dollars and euros per head, not by Exxon.
Personally, I think Exxon and similar businesses are profiting immensely from the current level of climate alarmism. But perhaps a business making only a measly $34 billion a year (it's less than $5 per person globally!) just can't afford decent propaganda.
So you have anything to contribute? I'll name three more bigger problems than AGW, poverty, corruption, and overpopulation. Maybe you should spend less time being concerned about "concern trolls" and more time using that stump on the top of your shoulders.
20% of 960GEUR is 192GEUR, not 30GEUR.
Over a six year period. Annually, it's 34 billion euro per year.
But that is spending on "emissions mitigation and climate adaptation actions", not science.
I didn't say otherwise.
It's a huge, blatantly obvious difference once you include the human tendency to make virtuous that which benefits yourself or furthers your interests.
It's not obvious at all. Every side has humans so human tendency applies to them all. Nobody can stand up and judge which group is more susceptible, since they too are human, and the act of judging others may be an act of making virtuous that which benefits themselves.
No, solar panels do NOT "need to be replaced in 10-12 years".
http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar-panels/
"The majority of manufacturers offer the 25-year standard solar panel warranty, which means that power output should not be less than 80% of rated power after 25 years."
Even the ones that drop the most, efficiency wise, are still at 80% or better after 11 years.
the typical pays-for-itself-in-X-years-calculations that are commonly tossed around are BS
No, those calculations take the decreased efficiency into account.
I disagree. Not many outside of the scientific community believe humans have any real capacity to change the Earth's climate permanently. Maybe disruption is more believable and less alarmist to the average person. Maybe to the point that they would no longer roll their eyes when they read the one line summary of another report about how terrible the Earth is going to be in fifty years.
Pollution makes people ill. You can see it happening a lot in poor countries, where lack of proper waste disposal brings a lot of health problems.
But greenhouse gas pollution doesn't make anyone ill. So people in poor countries should focus on solving pollution problems that are making them ill. They shouldn't waste resources on greenhouse gas "pollution". They should also focus on growing their economies, so they're no longer as poor, so they can afford to solve all the pollution problems that are making them ill.
"A common skeptic argument is that climate has changed naturally in the past, long before SUVs and coal-fired power plants, and this somehow tells us that humans can't be the main cause of the current global warming. "
Strawman. No one's saying "climate changed before, therefore humans can't be causing the current change". What's being said is "climate has changed before... so what?" I mean, the planet still exists. The biosphere on the planet still exists. _Humans_ still exist. Despite the climate being significantly hotter or cooler at points in the past than it is right now.
Humans are adaptable. There are humans living in the rainforests. The deserts. The plains, the mountains, and even in Siberia and the Yukon. We adapt to our surroundings. I'm sure we'll adapt to a temperature rise of 1 degree over the next 50 years, or whatever.
And look at the biographies of the crap many of those go through from their own fellow scientists to get there. The argument stands.
OTOH "change" is fairly value-neutral, while "disruption" is negative. From the perspective of someone who wants the public to be scared and be willing to accept the costs of preventing or mitigating it, disruption is a better choice.
Personally, I don't really care. I don't believe there's anything we can seriously do to alter what's going to happen so we're better off focusing on how we're going to live with the results.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The solution to "the tragedy of the commons" isn't "as little as possible" grazing -- everyone goes hungry while the sacred, off-limits grass grows long and the commons grazing area becomes a wilderness. Rather than adhering to dogmatic prohibitions, the solution is to make rational tradeoffs to maximize the benefit for people.
The real elephant in the room is conservation, but addicts don't want to give up their fix.
I sure as hell don't, and -- though you'll never admit it -- neither do you.
The sort of conservation that would actually make a difference isn't swapping out a few bulbs, tweaking the temperature on the thermostat a little and taking the bus to work. To seriously reduce energy consumption would require significant decreases in the standard of living in the wealthy world and -- even worse and even less likely to happen -- would require suppressing and even rolling back improvements in the developing world. The latter is particularly nasty because (a) it appears that developing economies more or less must go through a phase during which they pollute like crazy in order to lift themselves up to a level where they can start being a bit cleaner and (b) wealth reduces the birth rate, and getting population growth under control (which we're actually on track to do, assuming we don't go mucking with the socioeconomic forces too severely) is even more important than conservation on a per-person basis.
Conservation is good, and definitely worth a lot of attention, but it's only 20% of any realistic answer. We'll learn to live without polar ice caps rather than forgo all of the benefits of cheap, plentiful energy, so those who continue opposing the cleanest, safest form of energy production yet created are shooting themselves in the foot.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
He didn't say "at any cost", he said "possible" which implies there are things to be considered and a chance that there may not be a reasonable justification.
He didn't address "cost" at all. That's the problem. Environmental extremists don't care how many people their plans will hurt.
Yes, well, I do consider self defense to be a pretty "righteous" thing. Rich or poor, don't blow your smoke in my face! Capisce? Your whole spiel, if not religious, is entirely political.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Our Conservative government did exactly that a few years back. Generally not "environmental" friendly (oil sands), but came up with the "Clean Air Act". Which isn't addressing "Climate Change" but rather pollution.
The problem with pollution is that is is predominantly a "local" connotation. You might have some neighborly pollution crossover, but generally speaking you are addressing a local issue. Climate Change, or Global Warming or whatever is basically saying that certain kinds of pollution are *not* local, and have global consequences.
The difficulty is that politically "pollution" is actually rather easy (relatively speaking) to deal with. Make some standards, come to an agreement with your immediate neighbor. Done. With the climate change, you are taking about coming to an agreement with the entire rest of the world, most of which do not want any part of it to begin with. Coal usage in China for example. This gets into the whole, "well if your not going to do it, then I am not going hurt my economy by doing it either" sort of mentality.
Climate change has never really been an environmental problem. It suggests that certain pollution may have global consequences, which is a political problem as no framework exists to deal with that sort of cooperation.
If less people were rich and more people were poor, more people would be able to afford this and that? What? How does that work?
I suggest "Human-made Global Climate Fuckup that Will Kill Us All If We Just Sit On Our Asses and Do Nothing About It". Or, if mass death won't budge the policy makers, because "it would cost zillions of dollars to implement the proposed solutions, and that would bring the economy down", find a way to express the costs of the climate fuckup in zillions of dollars as well, so it can be compared easily.
I think "Global Greening Gas Emission" would be more accurate. With all the extra CO2 just look at how green our planet is getting! Plant food is good.
Seriously the whole "CO2 controls climate" theory is so broken. After 17 years of rising CO2 and no warming they are trying to change the name, again. Next they will be telling us that "CO2 causes ice ages".
So a serious question to all those who are of the opinion that CO2 controls climate: How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit that you and your theory are wrong? 20 years? 30? 50? Never?
The whole point of the matter is that to be considered a scientific theory you HAVE to make predictions based on your theory. Dr Libby's prediction from the 1970s (3+ decades of accuracy), Dr Easterbrook's (12 years), Dr Abdussamatov (8 years). They all have correctly called for a cooling period of varying depths and lengths. So far they have been correct and the IPCC models wrong.
So step up to the plate and make a prediction! I'll side with the above 3 and say we're in for 2 decades of colder climate.
And what some of them care most about is food. How about soaking up that excess carbon *into humanity*?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Most sources of greenhouse gasses are also sources of pollution. Burning stuff tends to release more than just CO2. Even if you don't care about CO2 emissions, burning coal and oil is still bad because of all the particulate matter and other nasty stuff it releases into the local environment.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Most people accept the phrase "gravitational theory" because there is no doubt it exists just why it exists is what's being argued. People can't immediately see evolution. It's not like they can look back at pictures and see that uncle Sid is hairy and walks with his knuckles dragging and his kids walk fully upright. Well at least in most families.
I would like to submit into evidence as Exhibit A- this dumbass.
Oh, sick burn!
Still waiting for you to back up your claim that Al Gore has been "shown to be right", though.
I'll wait.
When losing an argument, change the rules and the terms so it looks like you're not losing.
Except that the denialists are NOT losing the argument. They are winning. By a landslide. Almost everywhere, the number of people who consider it a serious problem has been going down, while the number that consider themselves skeptics has been going up. The problem is that many scientists think that they will automatically "win" just because the facts are are their side. When it comes to politics, that is an incredibly stupid thing to believe.
And all the facts are not on their side.
Yes, but only by definition. That's a different issue.
Learn to love Alaska
Thankfully CFCs and their ilk were banned in time, and turned that damage around. But that doesn't make news ratings, huh?
The solution to "the tragedy of the commons" isn't "as little as possible" grazing -- everyone goes hungry
No, in the tragedy of the commons, you can "buy" your own area to graze. Like you can pay to clean your exhaust before China causes Californian smog.
while the sacred, off-limits
No, that's not how it's working. China, India and Africa are grazing unrestrained. It's just that Africa only owns one goat, so no matter how much they graze in the common area, nobody would notice, and China has documentation of other's previous over-grazing, and finds it unfair that they are asked to graze less at peak than England or the USA did.
grass grows long and the commons grazing area becomes a wilderness.
That extension of the analogy only works if - the USA doesn't pollute, thus the air is perfectly clean at every location in the world. As that's obviously not true, so is your interpretation of the analogy.
Rather than adhering to dogmatic prohibitions, the solution is to make rational tradeoffs to maximize the benefit for people.
That's what Kyoto was. How did you like Kyoto? If there is no international agreement on grazing rights, definitions of over grazing and the like, then it'll remain a tragedy of the commons indefinitely, and the world will be polluted until the most tolerant person can no longer tolerate it. And based on the levels of pollution in some areas, that's pretty bad (bordering uninhabitable).
Learn to love Alaska
The simple goal should be to spew as little as possible, regardless of the potential issues.
Do campfires count as "pollution"? If a cow's methane emissions count as pollution, do yours?
The simple goal should be to find out how much pollution is sustainable, and aim for that amount. That way we can optimize human utility instead.
in the tragedy of the commons, you can "buy" your own area to graze.
The tragedy of the commons assumes common property - buying your own area is trying to solve it by privatization.
Rather than adhering to dogmatic prohibitions, the solution is to make rational tradeoffs to maximize the benefit for people.
That's what Kyoto was. How did you like Kyoto? If there is no international agreement on grazing rights, definitions of over grazing and the like, then it'll remain a tragedy of the commons indefinitely, and the world will be polluted until the most tolerant person can no longer tolerate it. And based on the levels of pollution in some areas, that's pretty bad (bordering uninhabitable).
When you say this it sounds like you guys don't really disagree all that much. It sounds like Kohath is suggesting we actually follow something like the Kyoto protocol, which we're not. The USA and China are committing an act of aggression against everyone by breaking that treaty.
You are incorrect. For example, the National Park Service ordered their rangers to begin using the term "Climate Change" and stop using "Global Warming" around 2005 or 2006. This also took place in many other agencies that dealt with the public. Previously, "Global Warming" had been used in official publications.
I can't suffer through another 450+ comments with the same, exact arguments and neither side having any interest at all in listening to the other.
Murphy was an optimist
My comment was in direct response to 'Environmentalists' trying to distance themselves from Al Gore.
You're continuing to change the subject further and further away from the original post I was responding to. I'm not arguing everything in the world. I'm arguing against absolutist, purity-based solutions and in favor of rational cost vs. benefit analysis instead.
Kyoto wasn't a cost/benefit analysis.
The most recent IPCC suggests the costs of climate change will be small. A cost/benefit analysis will be important to avoid needless harm.
The tragedy of the commons assumes common property - buying your own area is trying to solve it by privatization.
The tragedy of the commons "prime example" assumes private property (the ranchers have their own "private" grazing) and public property - the part that is shared by all. The air within a factory is private. You can make it as bad as you like, so long as you don't exhaust it (or kill your workers - but OSHA doesn't matter in this example).
You can't have the Prime Example without private and public land both. The ranchers in the example do not keep their flock on the "public" land 100% of the time.
Learn to love Alaska
And you maintain that the human race can concern itself with only three problems at a time?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're continuing to change the subject further and further away from the original post I was responding to.
You asserted that reducing pollution for yourself (because that's all you control) is a bad thing. A religion (as if religions are assumed evil, an assumption I didn't touch). That you had so many assumptions *does* mean that there's lots in there to "argue" about before finding out what you actually mean. I can control my personal emissions, and vote in a manner to indirectly affect others. I *should* (as a matter of cost/benefit) minimize my emissions, at least until everyone grazing at the public area can come to an agreement.
Kyoto wasn't a cost/benefit analysis.
Yes, it was. That you don't like some of their assumptions (it was a weighted cost/benefit analysis - and because you appear to object to the weighting so much, you assert it is the opposite of what it actually was) doesn't change that it is a cost benefit analysis. Whether weighted, or poorly done doesn't change it from being what it was.
You just like to insult religion and climate change at the same time. I can't change your opinion, but you'll never change anyone else's either. Your argument is inconsistent. Kyoto *was* a cost/benefit anaysis, which you say is explicitly OK. They just used weighting and poor assumptions.
Your arguemet is that 2+2=4 isn't addition if you actually had 1 and 6 to add, but didn't see the missing items and assumed the 1 was too small, so you added another to make it more realistic. What's funnier is your argument is that 3+4=7 is wrong if the actual numbers were 1 and 6. Sometimes you do the best you can with the numbers available.
It's called "estimation" not "religion".
Learn to love Alaska
How do you propose to do a double-blind study on smoking? Do you know of some sort of fake cigarette that has all the effects of the real thing except you know it doesn't cause cancer? Moreover, any study can only establish probabilities, not certainty, and there's been plenty of other studies done.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It is entirely possible that Sandy was as bad as it was because of global warming (the increased sea level almost certainly increased the damage done), although it's impossible to pin any specific phenomenon on global warming. If so, global warming has indeed harmed people, just like other forms of pollution do.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Six problems not three. Sure, the human race can concern itself with a lot more than six problems and those problems don't actually need to exist in order to be bothered with. But there's this thing called trade offs. One can't optimally solve all these problems at the same time. Resources expended on combating global warming can't be used to alleviate poverty or address desertification.
And some of the proposed solutions to global warming are in themselves rather destructive, such as the radical restructuring of the world's energy infrastructure or the replacement of considerable food production with biofuel production (without regard to the value of the biofuels produced).
Finally, these bigger problems in themselves can undermine attempts to fight global warming and other environmental issues. China currently is the fastest growing generator of CO2 responsible for at least half of the global growth in CO2 production in recent years. They do so because growing their country and improving the well being of their citizens is more important to them than the effects of global warming.
Massive oil subsidies are one way that many corrupt governments stay in power. And of course, we wouldn't have a global warming problem in the first place without overpopulation.
I think it's reasonable to ask that we set priorities with the worst problems addressed first as best we can.
But, but, .... didn't they prove global warming is impossible because Al Gore is fat??? Or he has a big house or something?
How could they possibly be wrong? I mean, they have billions and billions of dollars, and own TV networks and stuff. They must be geniuses right?
Them scientist fellas don't know nuthin. What has science ever done for us eh? Answer me that.
"I didn't say otherwise."
Thank you for graciously conceding that your statement was thus completely irrelevant to the argument about scientific research grants.
How do you propose to do a double-blind study on smoking?
I don't propose doing any at all. The answer is considered settled. And doing one would be unethical (you expect fatalities in the smoking group).
Moreover, any study can only establish probabilities, not certainty, and there's been plenty of other studies done.
How many "studies" have been done on climate disruption? There have been "plenty" of studies done, yet people complain there isn't proof. So I pull out "gravity is just a theory" and "smoking isn't proven" as the two examples of similar wording applied to non-controversial topics.
You haven't contradicted me. You've agreed with me in a very disagreeable manner. Why? Not the agree part, it's obvious I'm right, but why do you feel the need to do so so disagreeably?
Learn to love Alaska
It is entirely possible that Sandy was as bad as it was because of global warming (the increased sea level almost certainly increased the damage done), although it's impossible to pin any specific phenomenon on global warming.
Poor people should be made poorer to prevent rich beachfront property owners from having to file a big insurance claim instead of a small one?
"As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night." Genesis 8:22 The atmosphere *will* bear our "tampering", as you call it. Normal people call it simply using the resources given to us by our Creator. Abnormal people make up ideas to justify reasons for controlling others throughout many aspects of their lives. God made the laws of physics and all the others. They include the earth inherently having these warming and cooling periods. I know you hate that concept but it's true. So stop making shit up in order to justify wasting money and for having an excuse to call people stupid who disagree with the self aggrandizing behavior all your progressive friends suffer from when shoving these global warming claims down our throats. By the way, "tampering" is not the greatest choice of words on your part. If anyone is tampering its people like you who believe that whatever damages humans are doing to the planet have to be reversed, sometimes by actually trying to change the atmosphere directly. Now *that* is tampering. Stop being a progressive.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Is this good enough evidence for you that Gore has made a ton of money trying to convince individuals, companies and governments to believe his lies and snippets of ice falling into the oceans. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear...
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Or we could choose to freeze to death in the dark...
How about call it "Putting all that nasty carbon back from whence it came?"
Half a billion people roughly.
If, by half a billion you mean 750 million, then yes. Roughly.
But going by your reasoning, there's only $34 dollars of Exxon profit per person in the EU, three days parking and all that. That must mean that $34 billion per year is not a lot of money, amirite? Why is it that a lot of money is a lot of money when it is earned by Exxon, but not when it comes from the EU?
To be equivalent I would have to have said that Exxon's product was completely fraudulent, their fuels don't really work and they are engaged in a massive conspiracy to cover up the fact that their fuels do not actually combust and drive internal combustion engines in the way that Exxon claims they do. Instead, everybody who uses Exxon fuel has been paid off and everybody employed by Exxon has been paid off so that Exxon can sell something other than petroleum to an unsuspecting public, for some reason not specified.
So cite me making that claim, otherwise you are engaged in a fallacy of false equivalency.
Or that your reasoning is deeply flawed and irrelevant to any discussion we might have on the subject. I find that more likely. Note that every scientist you mention above didn't actually do any work with today's multidimensional climate simulations. Arrhenius, the only one who actually did a relatively modern climate model, worked with a primitive one-dimensional radiative model.
Apparently you are ignorant as to the purpose and scope of climate models - and therefore not qualified to comment as to their veracity. Do some research and come back when you can speak on this subject without revealing yourself to be utterly ignorant on the first attempt.
And it is laughable to suggest that these historical scientists have something to do with today's consistent bias in predictive models towards exaggerating the effects of AGW (especially given that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is in addition generally somewhat worse than predicted by those models). All those scientists with those erroneous models are funded by the entities spending all those dollars and euros per head, not by Exxon.
It is laughable to suggest that they have something to do with some imaginary bias, because the notion that there is a bias is laughable, and the people who claim (without a shred of evidence) that there is a bias should certainly be subject to ongoing ridicule. In other words, nobody is interested in your conspiracy theory, which has all the weight and impact of a 9/11 truther conspiracy or a moon landing/kennedy shooting conspiracy.
In short:
You've failed.
Personally, I think Exxon and similar businesses are profiting immensely from the current level of climate alarmism.
If by alarmism, you mean yourself and your cohorts (the most likely reading) then yes, they have profited somewhat from your panic.
20% of 960GEUR is 192GEUR, not 30GEUR.
Over a six year period. Annually, it's 34 billion euro per year.
You're right. My bad.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Nice.
Climate scientists definitely need funding. Because if it weren't for their Climate Change scam nobody would give a shit about them obviously.
It's common sense that nobody is interested in knowing what to expect in the coming decades in terms of crops for food, industry and energy. that's just some stupid stuff that only interests to some isolated nerds out there.
And geologists are of no use either, nobody is interested in the stuff these guys study, it's of no practical use.
And neither is biology, a matter nobody gives a fuck about as it is of no use at all besides some very very exotic theoretical stuff.
No wonder all these guys (climate scientists!) need to come up with a scam like Global Warming to get some funds.
What I really wonder about is that these good-for-nothings that depend on scams to get funds are able to convince all the governments in the world, lobby politicians coordinate at global level (to keep their scam in sync) across political borders and influence the public opinion.
It's quite a notorious achievement for a bunch of penniless scammers, don't you agree?
This clearly demonstrates the existence of a Global Illuminati Conspiracy headed by the infamous Illuminati Pokemon Collectors Club and their dark allies SPECTRA!!!!
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Public sanitation is for rich people, poor people struggle to get by, they don't want to pay for fancy indoor plumbing, they'd rather wade through their own shit.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Just a minor nit-pick but you are incorrect in asserting that the EU has a population of ~750 million. *Europe* certainly has, but the EU does not (not all countries in Europe are members) and does in fact have a population of almost exactly half a billion (~505 million).
I'm sure you can have a private grazing field too, but it's simply not a necessary part of a tragedy of the commons. It's also extremely unrealistic to suggest a sealed factory.
If you would like Kohath's argument translated from the economics everyone else is using into the economics YOU are using, then it would read The solution to "the tragedy of the commons" isn't "as little as possible" grazing in the common grazing area.
Honest question: Have you ever taken an economics class? I seriously don't mean any offense and it certainly doesn't make you wrong, but it seems like we're using the same terms to describe different ideas. Maybe we'd be better off avoiding technical terms.
If my quarter-million-dollar house is destroyed, I'm unhappy and file a claim with my insurance company (I could replace it myself, but it would really cut into my retirement savings). If a really poor person's $500 house is destroyed, they're SOL. Natural disasters always affect the poor more than the rich.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're right, I misinterpreted you. I apologize.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's the great thing about the conspiracy theorists. They don't have to say anything. "what moon landing", not "The moon landing was staged in Studio 51 in Hollywood on the MGM lot," and then we can prove there isn't and never was a studio 51, or find people working there that day to get testimony and photographs proving it didn't happen there.
So what's the exact claim? The attack was a targeted assassination? What's the problem with that? That the administration did a PR spin on the attack to calm the situation? That Bush's cuts on security had the result of the death of an ambassador (the problem being that Obama is responsible for not fixing all Bush's problems fast enough)?
Why can't the conspiracy theorists state their claims clearly and concisely?
Learn to love Alaska
I'm sure you can have a private grazing field too, but it's simply not a necessary part of a tragedy of the commons. It's also extremely unrealistic to suggest a sealed factory.
It is a requirement of the prime example, where the ranchers have private land, but choose to graze in the common area. That you aren't familiar with the example doesn't make it any less of the prime example. It's required but implied. The "common area" is not the *only* area for all the ranchers involved, thus they *must* have a private area, separate from the common area.
And yes, a sealed factory is impractical. But so is unlimited pollution with no regulations. You must solve the equation for the frictionless spherical cow first, before making it realistic.
If you would like Kohath's argument translated from the economics everyone else is using into the economics YOU are using, then it would read The solution to "the tragedy of the commons" isn't "as little as possible" grazing in the common grazing area.
That's not inconsistent with anything I said (the original or the "correction").
Honest question: Have you ever taken an economics class? I seriously don't mean any offense and it certainly doesn't make you wrong, but it seems like we're using the same terms to describe different ideas. Maybe we'd be better off avoiding technical terms.
Yes, I have taken an economics class. And I always avoid using the technical terms on slashdot, as so many here don't know them. That's why I didn't address the tragedy of the commons directly, but repeated parts of the prime example and addressed those.
The actual tragedy of the commons states it makes the most economic sense in the short term for a rancher to over-graze the common area, but it makes the most sense in a longer term to graze proportionally, up to an agreed upon grazing threshold.
The points in contention are: Is air a shared resource?
Loonitarians say no, as the threshold to sue for poisoning someone is impractically high in the loonitarian paradise. So yes, there is some discussion on whether "air" is a shared resource.
What is the maximum grazing threshold for grazing?
What is the maximum allowable pollution? 1 PPM, 1000 PPM, 0.01 PPT. And for what pollutants?
What proportion do those that share the resource get to "use" it?
Proportionally based on land area, per person, per manufacturing unit?
And, if none of that is "settled" there's the question of how much should a rational user use the resource? If the ideal threshold is 1 PPM and it's already a 10 PPM, then one should use it "as little as possible" until below the threshold. That's the situation we currently are in, and why we should be using it "as little as possible". If that's an irrational religion, please explain why. The anti-environment nuts are more "religious" in their lack of logic and devotion to the cause, regardless of facts.
Learn to love Alaska
Poor people don't have beachfront houses in New Jersey.
To be equivalent I would have to have said that Exxon's product was completely fraudulent, their fuels don't really work and they are engaged in a massive conspiracy to cover up the fact that their fuels do not actually combust and drive internal combustion engines in the way that Exxon claims they do. Instead, everybody who uses Exxon fuel has been paid off and everybody employed by Exxon has been paid off so that Exxon can sell something other than petroleum to an unsuspecting public, for some reason not specified.
To be equivalent we need several additions things. First, an honest admission from you that Exxon might under those circumstances actually be pulling off this fraud not merely an implicit assumption that they can't possibly do so. There's no equivalence without recognizing the fundamental conflict of interest and the capability to carry off the fraud in question.
Second, Exxon would be funding virtually all scientific research into the efficacy of its fuels.
Third, the people who "use" Exxon's products have a huge financial incentive to go along with the fraud. Who are the corresponding parties who "use" climate change? They are the many parties (including most climate scientists BTW) who obtain funding or profit merely because climate change is seen by the public of the world as a serious threat. The very revenue streams that fund these customers of climate change, fund the researchers who are allegedly impartially evaluating the extent and risks of particular forms of climate change.
My view is that kind of money (such as 34 billion euros per year) buys a lot of climate change research with plenty to spare.
It's not theory when it's fact that a story was made up to deflect culpability from denied security requests from the ambassador.
So what? No, really. So what? So the "cover up" that didn't happen, because, as you say it's all "fact" was to cover up some denied requests for additional security?
As you say: What security problem? "The ambassador was walking around outside an hour before the assault." Had he thought there such laz security, wouldn't he have taken greater measures to keep himself safe in such an unsafe environment?
Learn to love Alaska
Is it now a requirement to be completely ignorant?
Five hundred million years ago we had CO2 levels approaching 5,000ppm. We currently have less than 400 ppm. What ten times our current CO2 levels caused was giant plants creating an abundance of oxygen which supported giant critters. The oceans failed to turn acidic (they sit in basalt basins.) It was a very prosperous time for life on the planet. After 50 million years of CO2 levels of 5,000ppm the planet entered an ice age lasting millions of years. The high CO2 levels did not keep us very warm.
A real scientist would set out the raw original data. They would give out the records as to where the original data was collected and what time periods were collected. They would explain how they homogenize and cook the record set. A real scientist would set all this out and DARE the world to find fault with their theories because that is how science advances. A real scientist knows that no science is ever settled.
The so-called climate scientists say they lost the raw dataset. They say they have no records as to where the records came from or when it came from. They refuse to relate the methods they have used to cook the data. They have illegally refused FOIA requests for data. They have tried to shut down peer reviewed journals where skeptical scientists have been published. They refuse to show their work. This is not science. These climate scientists are greedy liars who do it for the billions in grant money. They (Mann, Trenberth, Jones, Hansen) are all filthy rich.
Your really don't know anything about this topic, do you?
It's a routine (but unfortunate) attack on a US embassy. Not the first, won't be the last. And the conservative conspiracy nuts are making it out to be an impeachable offense, but can't name the offense. Is it the PR fraud to promote the idea of control? Or is it not having OK'd requests for security? The "cover-up" was obviously not actionable because there was none, as you state the events are all fact, and thus not in dispute, as they would have been with a cover-up.
So where's the problem? Everyone I've asked about it who thinks the administration is to blame changes their story. The best you can to do answer any questions is to insult me. If you are incapable of forming a coherent statement, that's not my fault. Why are you incapapble of stating your opinion in a clear and concise manner? Is it beacuse you don't care what the "facts" are you talk about, but you just use it as a reason to hate someone you already hated. You must really love Obama deep down, if you have to keep searching so hard for reasons to hate him and his administration.
Learn to love Alaska
To be equivalent we need several additions things. First, an honest admission from you that Exxon might under those circumstances actually be pulling off this fraud not merely an implicit assumption that they can't possibly do so.
Let me be straight - it is impossible for Exxon to be selling water and claiming that it was petrol. When customers attempted to leave the petrol station, their vehicle(s) would not proceed. Nobody could ignore that chain of evidence.
Similarly, it is impossible for Climate Science to be a fraud. The chain of evidence is irrefutable. If CO2 was not a greenhouse gas, then one of the many thousands of times the experiment that demonstrates the radiative properties of CO2 was repeated would have revealed the truth. Unless there is a time travelling zombie Tyndall who, like Santa Claus, appears miraculously to protect the conspiracy, someone, somewhere would have noted that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Similarly for secondary feedbacks. If the climate record did not indicate the currently calculated levels of secondary feedback then somebody, somewhere would have noted that. The idea that skeptics and climatologists are jointly engaged in a conspiracy that a priori requires a time travelling zombie to pull off is laughable.
Laughable.
Contrast that with climate denial. We KNOW that Anthony Watts receives a salary to post lies on his popular blog wattsupwiththat - a salary provided by the Heritage Foundation. Nobody denies it. We know how much money "Lord" Monkton makes by his travelling circus. We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication. We know that the claims of these salaried/entrepreneurial PR agents wiht respect to alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted - every single claim.
So who is lying?
My view is that kind of money (such as 34 billion euros per year) buys a lot of climate change research with plenty to spare.
According to the EU Website the 34 billion euros is the entire budget for climate adaptation, technology and mitigation, not the research budget. I guess someone lied to you.
Similarly, it is impossible for Climate Science to be a fraud.
Paleoclimate data is the obvious counterexample. The field is dominated by a few, government-funded organizations. We don't have solid climate measurements of any sort before about 1850. This leaves the field wide open to chicanery.
If the climate record did not indicate the currently calculated levels of secondary feedback then somebody, somewhere would have noted that.
The climate record of the last twenty years is one such counterexample and it has been noted. What I think is significant about it is that the future can't be controlled. That is precisely where you'd expect to see the greatest deviation between claims about climate and our perception of those results. And we do see large deviations from the predictions to the actual climate changes of this period.
According to the EU Website the 34 billion euros is the entire budget for climate adaptation, technology and mitigation, not the research budget. I guess someone lied to you.
I did say there would be plenty to spare. It's not expensive to buy scientists. And I did say that this money was going to "explicit climate change related spending".
Contrast that with climate denial. We KNOW that Anthony Watts receives a salary to post lies on his popular blog wattsupwiththat - a salary provided by the Heritage Foundation. Nobody denies it. We know how much money "Lord" Monkton makes by his travelling circus. We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication. We know that the claims of these salaried/entrepreneurial PR agents wiht respect to alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted - every single claim.
So you can do ad hominem attacks. Can you do real, honest, rational argument?
I'm not ok with being blatantly lied to.
And natural disasters are not confined to New Jersey. I was using Sandy as an example. Destructive storms hit lots of places, not just the First World.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Paleoclimate data is the obvious counterexample.
No, it isn't.
The field is dominated by a few, government-funded organizations. We don't have solid climate measurements of any sort before about 1850. This leaves the field wide open to chicanery.
Baseless allegations don't impress. Cite a specific example where a climatologist has faked the paleoclimatic record and demonstrate clearly how these results are reflected in the entire set of climate papers relating to climate sensitivity.
If the climate record did not indicate the currently calculated levels of secondary feedback then somebody, somewhere would have noted that.
The climate record of the last twenty years is one such counterexample and it has been noted [ed.ac.uk].
Yet you quote a paper not dealing with secondary feedbacks, but with climate model predictions. Do you have the faintest idea what you are talking about?
What I think is significant about it is that the future can't be controlled. That is precisely where you'd expect to see the greatest deviation between claims about climate and our perception of those results. And we do see large deviations from the predictions to the actual climate changes of this period.
If your interpretation of the papers outcomes are correct, then there is no correlation between model predictions and actual climate outcomes - which means that anything could happen. We could swing into an ice age, or suddenly jump 10 degrees. Any number of disasters are suddenly in scope. Suddenly, rather than dealing with climate change over 50-100 years, we are forced to consider far more drastic measures.
As for myself, I'm skeptical of your/Anthony Watts' alarmism. I'm more inclined to think that the authors conclusions re: their own paper is far more likely to be correct than Watts' interpretation of it. He is, after all, a known liar and in the employ of a major PR organisation, explicitly paid to deceive.
I did say there would be plenty to spare. It's not expensive to buy scientists. And I did say that this money was going to "explicit climate change related spending".
To quote you: My view is that kind of money (such as 34 billion euros per year) buys a lot of climate change research with plenty to spare. Making ti clear you meant to imply that the vast majority of it was spent on cliamte research (which would certainly not be a bad thing). So, I guess I've learnt my lesson - don;t take the things you say on face value.
Contrast that with climate denial. We KNOW that Anthony Watts receives a salary to post lies on his popular blog wattsupwiththat - a salary provided by the Heritage Foundation. Nobody denies it. We know how much money "Lord" Monkton makes by his travelling circus. We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication. We know that the claims of these salaried/entrepreneurial PR agents wiht respect to alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted - every single claim.
So you can do ad hominem attacks. Can you do real, honest, rational argument?
Are you seriously relying on these folks for your argument? Oh - I see that you have indeed referenced Watt's fraudulent and deceptive write up re: the paper by John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett and Francis W. Zwiers. I guess that stung a bit. Not the first time I've had to rub someones nose in it for that particular mistake over that particular paper.
Here's the thing - I'm not "doing" an argument. You haven't presented a valid case.
No, solar panels do NOT "need to be replaced in 10-12 years".
http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar-panels/ "The majority of manufacturers offer the 25-year standard solar panel warranty, which means that power output should not be less than 80% of rated power after 25 years."
Even the ones that drop the most, efficiency wise, are still at 80% or better after 11 years.
Not the cheap panels currently being imported from China, which is what many local solar contractors are switching to. These things aren't being made to the specs and designs you are assuming.
No, solar panels do NOT "need to be replaced in 10-12 years".
http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar-panels/ "The majority of manufacturers offer the 25-year standard solar panel warranty, which means that power output should not be less than 80% of rated power after 25 years." Even the ones that drop the most, efficiency wise, are still at 80% or better after 11 years.
Warranties from some Chinese firms are now 10-12 years. Found a relevant article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...
"Executives at companies that inspect Chinese factories on behalf of developers and financiers said that over the last 18 months they have found that even the most reputable companies are substituting cheaper, untested materials."
"“There are a lot of shortcuts being taken, and unfortunately it’s by some of the more reputable companies and there’s also been lot of new companies starting up in recent years without the same standards we’ve had at Suntech,” said Stuart Wenham, the chief technology officer of Suntech, which is based in Jiangsu Province in eastern China."
"“If the materials aren’t good or haven’t been thoroughly tested, they won’t stick together and the solar module will eventually fall apart in the field,” he said."
So you don't interact with the world at all? Nearly every commercial is a lie. All news is lies (the amusement is watching people argue about the types of lies told by the carious outlets). Even the conspiracy theorists lie. Many of the claims were deliberately inflated to call attention, then "refined" as the truth came out. Bush lied all the time (probably more), were you equally outraged then? "Read my lips, no new taxes" was followed up by more taxes, and millions more after that.
Learn to love Alaska
what is normal climate?
Are you seriously relying on these folks for your argument? Oh - I see that you have indeed referenced Watt's fraudulent and deceptive write up re: the paper by John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett and Francis W. Zwiers. I guess that stung a bit. Not the first time I've had to rub someones nose in it for that particular mistake over that particular paper.
What a shitty standard for fraud. I match your pathetic claim with Mann and Jones "hockey stick" paper. There's the evidence of "fraud" that meets your low standards.
Hi. I was having the discussion with you in another thread regarding climate change where I called you dishonest, and you told me not to assume evil intent. Point taken. I was anonymous then. I'm wondering if you would be interested in taking the discussion offline, and perhaps make your acquaintance. My email is my username (tetetrasaurus) at gmail dot com. I should also be available by google chat at the same.
What a shitty standard for fraud.
Who said that this was "the standard"? I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie. That is fraud. He probably doesn't even personally the lies he posts on his blog. It's just made up to cruel the gullible and suck them of their money.
Is that what happened to you? Did you get sucked in by the lie?
I match your pathetic claim with Mann and Jones "hockey stick" paper. There's the evidence of "fraud" that meets your low standards.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not. And you knew that already, which makes me wonder why you bothered to post a debunked claim.
Are you a fraud as well?
"I apologize."
Sorry, this is the internet. We can't have that, now, can we?
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
So all solar is crap then, eh? Does that mean that all nuclear power is crap because the Russians and the Japanese have managed to screw the nuclear pooch, or does it mean you get what you pay for?
Always amusing at fans of nuclear power, which requires billions to construct plants and house hazardous waste for dozens of generations into the future, cluck about how $30,000 for solar panels or a few million for a windfarm is "impractical".
I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie.
You said. That's it. That's the standard. I recognize that there are conflicts of interest that exist when someone purporting to pursue truth takes money from a propaganda organization. But that's not the same as being paid to lie.
Normally, we would require evidence for an accusation. But in this thread, you have shown that merely asserting something is good enough for you. Normally, we would consider that libel.
I will not allow you to hold me to a different standard than you hold yourself to.
He probably doesn't even personally [believe] the lies he posts on his blog.
If he does believe what he writes, then they aren't lies. Lies are the deliberate uttering of falsehoods. If you spread falsehoods that you believe, then you aren't lying. So we see that your assertion is already false in one possibly minor area due to your misunderstanding of what it means to lie.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not.
Another assertion. Who was actually measuring climate back then? Nobody. So much of what we think we know depends on our perceptions of things we can't observe directly.
Sure, I'd be up for it. I'm currently in the midst of a long stretch of work that will continue for the entire summer, so I'm not sure how much effort I can give to a serious conversation (yes, unfortunately these Slashdot flame wars don't require as much thought as they should), but I'll give it an honest try.
I will warn you, I give strong weight to economics which is heavily abused, but a key factor and dynamic of any decisions of how to devote scarce resources to get what we want. I also strongly favor the theory that climate research is currently heavily biased by some combination of public hysteria, dogmatic thinking, and outright fraud. But we can discuss that in email.
I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie.
You said. That's it. That's the standard. I recognize that there are conflicts of interest that exist when someone purporting to pursue truth takes money from a propaganda organization. But that's not the same as being paid to lie.
If he is not being paid to represent their postion then what, in your fevered imagination, are they paying him to do? Wash little puppies and tie little bows around their necks?
I will not allow you to hold me to a different standard than you hold yourself to.
Too bad. You asserted that that science was corrupted by money despite being aligned to the observatioanl evidence - therefore it stands to reason that the mouthpieces of the denialist lie machine are also influenced by the money they recieve.
You asserted the first part (without evidence) and subsequently deny the conclusion without explanation. It's your assertion - you prove it. I made no assertion, so no such standard applies to me.
Normally, we would require evidence for an accusation.
Evidence to the contrary will suffice. Can you detail the assertion(s) from wattsupwiththat that (a) contradicts the science and (b) has proven to be true? Maybe - just name one, and we will work up from there.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not.
Another assertion.
Your beliefs are irrelevant. All that matters is what you can prove.
Always amusing at fans of nuclear power, which requires billions to construct plants and house hazardous waste for dozens of generations into the future, cluck about how $30,000 for solar panels or a few million for a windfarm is "impractical".
France, 75% nuclear, some of the lowest rates in Europe. Germany, 25% renewable, some of the highest rates in Europe. The billions of people in the developing world are coming on to the grid and going to be using the less expensive alternatives, that is either fossil fuel or nuclear. If nuclear is not part of the solution to move from fossil fuels then such a move is drastically delayed. That is the inconvenient truth. A 30 year time frame to move to 80% renewables is beyond wishful thinking, its fantasy. The science and engineering are not on that trajectory.
4th gen reactors can consume waste from previous gen reactors as fuel. Test reactors are running. 3rd gen commercial reactors are about to begin construction.
If he is not being paid to represent their postion then what, in your fevered imagination, are they paying him to do?
Let's listen to his side of the story:
Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around.
He also claims that he isn't actually paid by Heartland Institute.
Low only by discounting the taxpayer subsidies propping up the industry. Particularly the cost of dealing with aging power plants and storing nuclear waste for centuries to come. Germany isn't going to be paying for today's solar panels in 2400, A.D. It's quite similar to how the true price of gas is far higher than $3.50 a gallon, when you look at the subsidies propping up that industry.
He also claims that he isn't actually paid by Heartland Institute.
Leaked internal documents from Heartand say differently. funding climate change deniers Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 a month), James Taylor who has written a lot about Climategate through his Forbes blog, and Anthony Watts ($90,000 for 2012) to challenge "warmist science essays that counter our own," including funding "external networks (such as WUWT [Watts Up With That?] and other groups capable of rapidly mobilizing responses to new scientific findings, news stories, or unfavorable blog posts)."
Also Watts is not a scientist. If they were really interested in obtaining an honest, accurate appraisal of the temperature data they should have hired someone who had actual experience or qualifications. But they didn't want an accurate rendering of the data, they simply wanted denial.
Leaked internal documents from Heartand say differently.
Incidentally, both Heartland Institute and Watts say with considerable evidence support, that the above linked document (which is the only document of the "leaked documents" to make these claims) was fake. I agree with that assessment.
Your sourcewatch link fails to note this defense except in passing (Heartland apparently issued take-down notices to several blogs which were hosting the allegedly defamatory work) which is quite dishonest.
Also Watts is not a scientist.
Which is incorrect. He has for example been a coauthor on several research papers, organized the "Surface Stations Project" (a volunteer effort to document the condition of US weather stations) in 2007, and of course, commented on the state of climatology research since 2006.
If they were really interested in obtaining an honest, accurate appraisal of the temperature data they should have hired someone who had actual experience or qualifications.
Typical erroneous application of the argument from authority fallacy. I note that as of 2012, the time of the above document you refer to, he would have been engaging in his above efforts for around six years. That actually would have made him qualified for this imaginary role.
I find your accusations quite dishonest, hypocritical, and irrational. It is enough for you to accept a wayward bit of fraudulent documentation and of course, your own optimistic interpretation of what it says as firm evidence that Watts is "lying". But what would it take for you to accept an opponent as a "scientist"? Why he would need "actual experience or qualifications" with actual experience or qualifications not actually counting as such. One very low standard for you and one very high standard for your opponents.
Earlier, I noted a similar bit of calumny associated with Judith Curry who does meet your standards for "actual experience or qualifications" by saying:
We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication.
First, that wouldn't have been particularly difficult to achieve. She would just need a confederate with access to the AR5 report. The way the report is assembled, there are hundreds of people with access to part or all of the drafts of the document. Second, where is actual evidence that she might have said falsehoods in this case?
Incidentally, both Heartland Institute and Watts say with considerable evidence support, that the above linked document (which is the only document of the "leaked documents" to make these claims) was fake [wattsupwiththat.com]. I agree with that assessment.
Your feelings don't matter. What matters is proof.
Your sourcewatch link fails to note this defense except in passing (Heartland apparently issued take-down notices to several blogs which were hosting the allegedly defamatory work) which is quite dishonest.
You're right. Heartland's huge overreaction and stand over tactics in this case is indicative of their dishonesty. If the paper was fake (as they claimed) they would have reacted by laughing it off, not by threats.
Which is incorrect. He has for example been a coauthor on several research papers, organized the "Surface Stations Project" (a volunteer effort to document the condition of US weather stations) in 2007,
By his own admission he received $40 000 from the Heartland institute to conduct this "research" which was contradicted by an actual science project by Richard Muller some time later - Muller's results led him to abandon his previously skeptical beliefs, much to the dismay of leading denialists, including Watts himself.
and of course, commented on the state of climatology research since 2006.
He writes a blog, for which he is handsomely paid by the Heartland institute (see leaked documents above).
If they were really interested in obtaining an honest, accurate appraisal of the temperature data they should have hired someone who had actual experience or qualifications.
Typical erroneous application of the argument from authority fallacy.
It might surprise you to learn, but scientists actually are required to know the scientific method and in general to contend with expert opinion on a subject you need to in fact have some expertise yourself. When I need a mechnanic I don't go to a guy who blogs about mechanics - I got to a mechanic. When I need a doctor, I go to a doctor - not someone who blogs about doctors. Similarly, when I need an opinion about climate, I go to someone with actual qualifications, not some who blogs about people with qualifications, but whose knowledge of the subject is demonstrably less than my own.
I note that as of 2012, the time of the above document you refer to, he would have been engaging in his above efforts for around six years. That actually would have made him qualified for this imaginary role.
Because he writes a blog? Is this a joke, or is your argument really as flawed as it appears?
We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication.
First, that wouldn't have been particularly difficult to achieve. She would just need a confederate with access to the AR5 report.
But she didn't.
The way the report is assembled, there are hundreds of people with access to part or all of the drafts of the document. Second, where is actual evidence that she might have said falsehoods in this case?
Because she claimed that AR5 would halve the rate of measured sensitivity and said she knew this because she had seen a draft. In fact, the sensitivity did not change under AR5. Her remarks were part of a coordinated effort to discredit AR5 prior to publication.
Your feelings don't matter. What matters is proof.
Which as I see it, is on the side of Watts. Really though, what proof do you have? All the sexy stuff is in one document which has very different characteristics than the others, including being scanned rather than a generated PDF.
By his own admission he received $40 000 from the Heartland institute to conduct this "research" which was contradicted by an actual science project by Richard Muller some time later - Muller's results led him to abandon his previously skeptical beliefs, much to the dismay of leading denialists, including Watts himself.
Your reasoning here is remarkably confused. There is not a single thing in climate change so that research automatically supports or undermines this single thing. Muller's results aren't that relevant to Watts's work which is more or less to do with climate data collecting methodology and interpretation.
Because she claimed that AR5 would halve the rate of measured sensitivity and said she knew this because she had seen a draft. In fact, the sensitivity did not change under AR5. Her remarks were part of a coordinated effort to discredit AR5 prior to publication.
And what was your evidence that she lied here or even was factually incorrect? A draft is by its nature not the final product. And the IPCC did lower its low end estimate for CO2 temperature sensitivity which IMHO is as close as they will ever get to admitting that their estimates of temperature sensitivity were too high. I consider them an adversarial agent here, much like a lawyer in a trial. What they admit to their disadvantage, such as an even lower bound on temperature sensitivity is probably close the truth. What they aggressive promote to their advantage (such as the upper bound on the same quantity) probably is not.
I don't know who are thought to be profiting from this nor how exactly but you and your ilk got it wrong: It's not going to profit them, it's gonna cost us (including you and most likely the mysterious "them") a lot - the longer we take to act, higher the price.
Sure, I admit that someone is going to gain money, obviously (otherwise it would not cost, economically at least), however given that the costs are likely going to affect globally on economy it might end up being just reduction of the cost for them too...
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Your feelings don't matter. What matters is proof.
Which as I see it, is on the side of Watts.
You've got a feeling that Watt's is an a-ok guy and the things he says are straight and true. I get it.
Similarly - this guy feels that science is a Nazi Communist conspiracy and therefore society should not make decisions based on scientific reasoning.
I tend to steer away from "assertions as proof" and look at actual evidence as being required in either case. In the case of Watt's, he admits to being funded by the Heartland institute but wants to quibble about the mechanics of that funding. In either case, Watt's is funded to lie, since if the Heartland Institute was interested in accurate science based commentary on the subject, they would have hired an actual climatologist. They didn't, Watt's analysis of the weather station data was flawed either deliberately or through ignorance - when corrected by actual scientists he insisted that he was right - he was paid to lie and fulfilled the terms of his employment.
And continues to lie to this day.
And what was your evidence that she lied here or even was factually incorrect?
It's true - there might be another explanation - that she is mentally incompetent. On balance though, I'd suggest it's more likely she is just corrupt - corrupted by the bales of money she gets to preach the word of denialism to the ignorant.
Might. Or they might ask "does it have significant negative short term cost to quality of my life, and if not then why should I care?". Or "does this contribute too excessively to suffering of sentient life of any kind on earth to be right thing to do for me?" - putting different amount(s) of weight on different values does not in itself imply "religion".
Why am I writing this for though? I'm pretty certain what type of person I'm replying to when they write of caring about environment and comparing it to religion... Oh well, might just as well post this anyway.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Where the frell did you get that from, trollboy?
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Don't feed him. Those replies show so clearly that his agenda is only taking what you say and pretending you meant something silly that you only need to think: "obvious troll is obvious". It's annoying to just read that I wouldn't waste my time on replying him at all at this point.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
I tend to steer away from "assertions as proof" and look at actual evidence as being required in either case.
We already see that you don't. The Watts example was based solely on what looks to me to be a forged document. We have no evidence that forgeries always state the truth and plenty of evidence that instead they are almost universally intended to commit some variation of fraud.
It's true - there might be another explanation - that she is mentally incompetent.
She posts with regular frequency on her blog. If the above were true, we would have noticed.
On balance though, I'd suggest it's more likely she is just corrupt - corrupted by the bales of money she gets to preach the word of denialism to the ignorant.
Ok, show me these bales.
The Watts example was based solely on what looks to me to be a forged document.
Well, thanks once again for describing your feelings.
We have no evidence that forgeries always state the truth and plenty of evidence that instead they are almost universally intended to commit some variation of fraud.
And you leap from speculating that the document might be forged to assuming it was. Nice one.
Meanwhile (as noted) we have Watt's own admission that he took money from The Heartland Institute.
It's true - there might be another explanation - that she is mentally incompetent.
She posts with regular frequency on her blog. If the above were true, we would have noticed.
The veracity of this statement is undetermined. I suspect that someone could easily parody the writings of a denialist blogger for months at a time and none of the gullible readers would recognise the difference. As I previously noted (and you apparently agree) : Watts himself has made no statement applicable to the topic of his blog (climate science) that both contradicted the mainstream science and was true. Yet even on slashdot readers will reference his blog as proof against science.
Dr Judith's approach is slightly different. She likes to frame ordinary statements in a tone of scandal, as if she has made some groundbreaking statement, or make reference to some ordinary fact in a tone of disbelief without actually contradicting or even disagreeing with it. Reference this one - which is about someone's hurt feelings and decision to resign from sham organisation set up to try and smear a layer of apparent respectability over the ridiculous, self contradictory clutter of assertions that is climate denial. Oooh the scandal.
Or this - meant to be a summary of the NCAR - except Judith tells us she didnt read it. Well, thanks for the tip. That's a devastating critique of a paper you didn't read.
Ok, show me these bales.
Dr Judith openly admits she takes money from big oil for expressing her views. I also note that she openly admits she doesn't know whether climate is forced by anthropogenic means and to what extent. Well Judith, maybe do some reading before commenting on it.
And you leap from speculating that the document might be forged to assuming it was. Nice one.
I've already stated that I believe that particular document was forged.
Meanwhile (as noted) we have Watt's own admission that he took money from The Heartland Institute.
From a donor that the Heartland Institute knew. Further, he states a plausible reason other than lying for why he's getting that money.
I suspect that someone could easily parody the writings of a denialist blogger for months at a time and none of the gullible readers would recognise the difference.
Funny how someone who doesn't wholly agree with you morphs into a "denialist".
Reference this one - which is about someone's hurt feelings and decision to resign from sham organisation set up to try and smear a layer of apparent respectability over the ridiculous, self contradictory clutter of assertions that is climate denial.
What did you think was happening here? If I were in this man's position, my feelings would be hurt as well. As would my career and possibly my life. And sure, I'd be mocked by pieces of shit like yourself. Somehow that doesn't make your argument particularly convincing to me. We didn't make modern society by respecting bullies.
Dr Judith openly admits she takes money from big oil for expressing her views.
This is false. The actual statement in question is:
"I do receive some funding from the fossil fuel industry. My company... does [short-term] hurricane forecasting... for an oil company, since 2007. During this period I have been both a strong advocate for the IPCC, and more recently a critic of the IPCC, there is no correlation of this funding with my public statements."
She is providing a concrete service for payment. That isn't magically getting paid for lying.
The only question I have is whether you deliberately lied or merely failed to read your own link. If I were using your own pathetic standard, I would have already concluded you had lied here. Please enlighten us and explain why you said what you said.
I have to say here, you once again libel, in the legal sense, someone without even considering the supposed evidence you have. I doubt Watts or Curry will bother to sue you in a million years, but you may well run into someone who will go through that effort. Next time, please stop being so much of an idiot and do a little fact checking, ok?