Slashdot Mirror
Wyoming Is First State To Reject Science Standards Over Climate Change
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Time Magazine reports that Wyoming, the nation's top coal-producing state, has become the first state to reject new K-12 science standards proposed by national education groups mainly because of global warming components. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a set of science standards developed by leading scientists and science educators from 26 states and built on a framework developed by the National Academy of Sciences. The Wyoming science standards revision committee made up entirely of Wyoming educators unanimously recommended adoption of these standards to the state Board of Education not once but twice and twelve states have already adopted the standards since they were released in April 2013. But opponents argue the standards incorrectly assert that man-made emissions are the main cause of global warming and shouldn't be taught in a state that ranks first among all states in coal production, fifth in natural gas production and eighth in crude oil production deriving much of its school funding from the energy industry.
Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, says teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming' is just one of a number of problems with the standards. 'I think Wyoming can do far better.' Wyoming Governor Matt Mead has called federal efforts to curtail greenhouse emissions a 'war on coal' and has said that he's skeptical about man-made climate change. Supporters of the NGSS say science standards for Wyoming schools haven't been updated since 2003 and are six years overdue. 'If you want the best science education for your children and grandchildren and you don't want any group to speak for you, then make yourselves heard loud and clear,' says Cate Cabot. 'Otherwise you will watch the best interests of Wyoming students get washed away in the hysteria of a small anti-science minority driven by a national right wing group – and political manipulation.'"
Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, says teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming' is just one of a number of problems with the standards. 'I think Wyoming can do far better.' Wyoming Governor Matt Mead has called federal efforts to curtail greenhouse emissions a 'war on coal' and has said that he's skeptical about man-made climate change. Supporters of the NGSS say science standards for Wyoming schools haven't been updated since 2003 and are six years overdue. 'If you want the best science education for your children and grandchildren and you don't want any group to speak for you, then make yourselves heard loud and clear,' says Cate Cabot. 'Otherwise you will watch the best interests of Wyoming students get washed away in the hysteria of a small anti-science minority driven by a national right wing group – and political manipulation.'"
Standards? Politically-specified truth? In science?
Good luck, USA. The rest of the world has already seen through the scam...
It's called 'motivated reasoning', but I doubt these idiots have ever heard of it.
Must be a conservative state, because this peculiar strain of stupidity is generally right-wing in nature. It's all about me! me!! me!! and screw the consequences, especially for the environment, our grandkids, or poor people.
Or is it the money that rules?
no, I don't have a sig
...should a lawyer get to determine the science curriculum? Shouldn't it be, you know, people who are educated in science that decide the science curriculum? (yes, that was rhetorical, I know damn well what the answer is)
I think Wyoming can do far better.
I agree!
As someone who believes in climate change, I'm growing very uneasy with the language being used by both sides to describe dissenting opinions. It feels like the biggest threat we'll face in the future is not a changing environment, but one another.
Yes, in particular, language like the word "believe" being used for scientific theories.
On a per-person basis, Wyoming emits more carbon dioxide than any other state or any other country
Yep .. that's what you get when you let corporations pay for the politicians bills. .. which they are not. .. rather .. it never existed. All an illusion.
They are owned by industry and will never side with the People they are supposedly there to represent
Democracy is dead in the US
it's not happening.
if it is happening, it's a good thing.
ok, it's happening, but it's not man-made.
ok, it's not good, but it's still not man-made.
jesus would fix it if we had prayer in school.
Wyoming has the best politicians money can afford. It won't matter as kids get information from all over, so they will see this through this pretty quickly.
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
So they are sceptical about man made climate change, that is good, science should not be taken as gospel. But once you read and understand the peer reviewed science the scepticism should be abated. Otherwise you not sceptical you are in denial, you are a climate change denier.
In the same vein I am sceptical about the existence of a man made Wyoming, can someone demonstrate scientifically (outside of a mass human psychosis) that this alluded/deluded place actually exists. Yes I've see some nice rock formations out there (devil's tower), but if some young person claiming to be from there comes to me for a job that includes science as a requirement do I:-
a) Send them to the funny farm
b) Ask for peer reviewed science to prove their alleged education
c) Once proved to my satisfaction reject them for having an inadequate education.
Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, says teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming' is just one of a number of problems with the standards.
It's may be "one of a number of problems", but for some reason it's also the only "problem" mentioned.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
This is why the US needs to import foreign knowledge workers. The US school system teaches falsehoods and outputs ignorance.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
As someone who is certain about his own observations about climate change- the real problem is playing the blame game. Assumptions about cause have obscured the effect to the point that we can no longer deal with the effect politically because everybody is too busy pointing fingers about the cause.
With the melting of the tundra 10 years ago, we hit a tipping point, it became too late to stop climate change. It is now a positive feedback loop. You could remove every human being from the planet, and global warming would continue.
Our only choice now is to adapt, not stop the process.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The question isn't whether "CO2 causes warming" but whether a change from 290 to 330 ppm in the troposphere can be the cause of a measurable change in the heat content of troposphere. Since it's all so trivial, I'm curious whether your undergraduate text explains why increased CO2 concentration in the stratosphere causes the stratosphere to loose heat.
Anyone that can make it through an undergraduate text on atmospheric science and be convinced about the propaganda in the undergraduate text on atmospheric science.
Wow, who knew?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I question why climate science needs to be part of the standards at all. It seems weirdly specific. When so many kids leave high school not knowing what an electron is, I'd say there are other areas where we might focus our pedagogical effort.
We're talking about public schools. Run by the government, at some level or another. So if "political debate" means "debate taking place in the context of government" then what they teach will always be a political debate.
I wish I could mod this up.
... we know better than people who devoted their lives and spent a decade being educated in a scientific discipline. We stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Yea, I did not think so. You sir have no idea what a positive feedback loop is. The heat keeps building up under that theory, and currently temperatures are stagnant like they have been for the last 15 years. Warming stopped. Scientists don't know why, and as one famous scientist says "its a travesty we can not explain it."
It might very well be "too late" to stop climate change, but that is not because of a positive feedback loop as you explain, but mainly because we can not control the climate and it will change with or without us perhaps in the future. Heck, we ARE going to go into another ice age at some point, and what the heck do we think we are going to do to stop that? Stand in the tracks of that train with our hand held up to stop it?
The main skeptic with whom I dialogue holds the following beliefs:
1. Warming is happening.
2. CO2 concentration is atypically high.
3. CO2 concentration is atypically high due to man-made emissions.
4. CO2 concentration has some upward effect on global temperature.
However, he also holds these beliefs:
1. The earth's climate is too complex to accurately model and predict.
2. There are feedback mechanisms that mute the severity of CO2-induced warming.
3. Even if warming happens at the predicted rate, we can't really know what the impact will be in terms of human suffering.
4. From #1 and #2, the dire predictions on future warming can't be trusted.
5. Even if warming were going to happen at the predicted rate and the consequences would be as dire as predicted, the economic cost of transitioning of fossil fuels on a global level would induce a huge amount of human suffering on its own,
6. Given the cost, there's no way the various world governments are going to come to an agreement and actually make a significant dent in fossil fuel usage anyway. So the whole discussion is academic.
People are going to post about Christianity and Intelligent Design in a thread about climate change?
We don' want none of yer pedagogical freakshow in our classrooms, son.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Wine grape grows pretty succesfully in england now. Google 'English Sparkling Wine'. It's been getting easier to do this for the last twenty years, and the results are winning awards internationally.
Why do you denialists just ignore data? There has been no stagnation, you denialist.
You got one thing right. The state is evil. And by state I mean the government itself, not Wyoming per se.
If, in order to solve this problem, the liberty and freedom of the people in Wyoming to run their own lives and government needs to be sacrificed, then I will never agree with your "solution" to this problem.
If we must give our liberty in order to survive, then count me as your enemy. What good is life without liberty?
Oh and your all powerful government you require to solve this problem, if it's at all like all the all powerful governments that have come before, it'll have to destroy the environment in order to save it.
The greedy have been leading the flat-earthers by the nose for centuries, but the good news is that the gullible populous is dwindling each year. Education, knowledge and commonsense is winning the war on Ignorance. But hey, pillaging the publics natural resources for a quick easy buck, especially when those valuable resources are guarded by flat-earthers; all too easy.
I would say your skeptic friend is very astute (I am not a climate change skeptic). His point #6 is the salient one and probably immutable. So just as the climatologists can say with high probability that the climate will change as we pump CO2 into the air, the political scientists can say with high probability that the world governments (or anyone else) aren't going to do anything to slow it down significantly. Both may be inconvenient truths but inconvenience doesn't reduce the probability of being accurate descriptions of the future. So the smartest course at this time is to prepare for the climate to change and deal with those effects as they arrive. It's too bad that the profiteers from the current status can't be made to pay the costs to be incurred for this, but life isn't fair.
But natural causes is...and if you are not teaching children that the warming could very well be simply natural warming than you are not teaching them the scientific method
Luckily for us, there's an organisation dedicated to reviewing the best data that scientific studies have to offer, with contributions from thousands of practising scientists all over the world collected over more than 25 years. Let's see what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to say:
Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.
...
Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes (see [data citations]). This evidence for human influence has grown since [the previous IPCC Assessment Report]. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
...
Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
— IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Just to be clear, those quotations are directly from the highlighted key points in the sections about attributing the detected changes in the climate and what will happen in the future. The emphasis was retained from the original publication.
I'll leave you with one more quote, from a slightly less heavyweight source but no less valid:
The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Tell ya what, there is a new book out that shows race has a genetic factor.
A new book "shows" something? A book written by a "science writer, not a scientist himself.".
Got a reference to the peer reviewed science?
If you think that's a religion you are either working with a different dictionary than the rest of us or lying in an attempt to influence the gullible.
This stupid argument brings out the worst in people and appears to be turning reasonable people into anti-intellectual luddites. It's an argument against expertise. Consider the situation where your entire career is considered worthless and some twenty year old lay preacher is listened to instead when he speaks of whatever technical subjects you deal with. That's the world you are trying to convince the newbies is an improvement over the advances of the last four hundred years since we decided to keep religion out of science and vice versa. Asking religion about climate is as irrelevant and demeaning to religion as asking it how best to brush a dog.
Who are you quoting? You use the words "lying", "gullible", "brings out the worst", etc., but you mangled rather than quoted.
Use a mirror much?
Curiously, your friend believes "The earth's climate is too complex to accurately model and predict.", but is certain that "There are feedback mechanisms that mute the severity of CO2-induced warming."
This seems like wishful thinking. If we really don't have a good handle on the severity of global warming then it is just as likely that the impacts will be much greater than anticipated.
Regarding the costs of mitigating, all published economists agree that it is cheaper to mitigate than to accept the impacts of climate change, and the sooner we start mitigating the cheaper it will be.
This bullshit again? What do you call the adaptation of climate models over time to better fit recorded data again? I suggest you pay attention yourself instead of regurgitating shit vomited up by some intern in a political office. I'd say you already know more about the topic than that court jester who kicked off the "testing part is missing" as a talking point based on some half remembered high school science class.
We are supposed to be the sort of people that look around at the world and think for ourselves. Don't let the side down by polluting this place with political propaganda.
1. The earth's climate is too complex to accurately model and predict.
Argument from disbelief.
2. There are feedback mechanisms that mute the severity of CO2-induced warming.
If he believes that (1) is true how can he know that (2) is true.
3. Even if warming happens at the predicted rate, we can't really know what the impact will be in terms of human suffering.
Argument from disbelief again.
4. From #1 and #2, the dire predictions on future warming can't be trusted.
But 1 and 2 are contradictory
5. Even if warming were going to happen at the predicted rate and the consequences would be as dire as predicted, the economic cost of transitioning of fossil fuels on a global level would induce a huge amount of human suffering on its own,
The real point - he doesn't want to do something, so it's impossible to do anything, so there is nothing that need to be done.
6. Given the cost, there's no way the various world governments are going to come to an agreement and actually make a significant dent in fossil fuel usage anyway. So the whole discussion is academic.
The final proof that he is arguing backwards from what he wants to happen (or not happen) to what he wants to be true.
Deniers! Start from the science! Don't start from your personal feelings and work back to the science, that's not how it's done.
"The testing part is missing; the repeatable testability by independent parties of an hypothesis."
Say what? All of the scientists/science teams studying this issue are independent parties testing the hypothesis - that's what science is and how it works. It is a process of continual repeatable testing of the hypothesis.
What is your concept of this "missing outside party"? A new "super science" that mysteriously needs to be created to address this one issue because, as you admit, it is politically inconvenient for Wyoming?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Missing steps:
4.5 No One Could Have Foreseen This Problem. Let us not point fingers and play the blame game.
5.5 Fine, we're in a fix. It is time for the ideologues to step aside and the Level Heads and Professionals and People Who Have a Stake in the Game to take over and provide reality-based solutions. We'll start by proposing tax credits for owners of shore front vacation homes to move their properties, because summer recreation is a vital part of our economy. And cancel Social Security to incentivize Honored Citizens to get healthy exercise filling sandbags to protect oil industry facilities in the Gulf. And annex Canada to provide homes for citizens displaced by the Texas Hell-Cyclone. After all, Canadians sold us a lot of that oil . . . remember the XL pipeline they forced us to build?
I quoted your two "x is a is your religion" obviously. Maybe I should have put a paragraph in for the slow and previewed it properly.
I'm really sick of the Ian Plimer style "x is a religion" and then going on to attack a fringe religion strawman argument against anything a person doesn't like. It's a disgusting weasel move that should be far beneath you but you clearly consider it's worth tricking the gullible on this topic.
Did you get as far as my point about it being an argument against expertise to demonise scientists in this way? How would you feel if your expertise was questioned by a young and inexperienced lay preacher in the same way? That's the world you are pushing for.
Wyoming is flooded in politics. Why else do you think that the state that has the most to lose if we decide to curb CO2 emissions happens to be the one that is skeptical about global warming? That it's complete happenstance? Bullshit.
Science is apolitical. Politics however meddle in everything, including science.
Wyoming may not be "politically correct" on the issue, but they are correct that "global warming" being caused primarily by man-made emissions isn't settled science. (And no, computer scientists are not the correct scientists. ;) )
Regardless of local effects, the basic problem is that we should be warming right now, and we aren't.
But we are.
Why should we be warming right now? The Medieval Warm Period (950-1250) was much warmer than the period that followed - and warmer than now.
[ citation needed]
Wine grape grew in England back then.
Uh, wine grapes are grown in England today
This was followed by the Little Ice Age (1350-1850). These are considered cyclical,
By who? What is the mechanism for these "cycles"?
Just to point something out.
In the case of climate change, the debate gets tinged with a touch of disdain for wet science.
Nerds like absolutes. They like believing they know better. The like to think that the wet sciences are lesser than engineering and physics.
And climate change, for better or worse, has this ... hint of doubt surrounding it. Climate swings are natural (although this current swing is happening particularly fast). It's more or less impossible to see the connection between climate change and and your car (unlike, say, the cause and effect nature of classical physics). And libertarians object, on principle, that their personal choices can have anything beyond short term, immediate effects; what is good for the self is good for everyone. And it's good that I can continue to do things as I've always done.
Let's face it. There's almost no point arguing climate change with some people; too many underlying beliefs would have to change.
We need to incentivise actions, corporate and personal, that improve our planet's chances of surviving our collective stupidity so that we can drag the deniers along for the ride. Hectoring simply isn't working now, and is unlikely to work in the future.
The question isn't whether "CO2 causes warming" but whether a change from 290 to 330 ppm in the troposphere can be the cause of a measurable change in the heat content of troposphere
Where do you get 330 ppm?
Is there an xkcd comic you can use to explain your view?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The main skeptic with whom I dialogue holds the following beliefs:
1. Warming is happening.
2. CO2 concentration is atypically high.
3. CO2 concentration is atypically high due to man-made emissions.
4. CO2 concentration has some upward effect on global temperature.
That is the strangest definition of "skeptic" I have seen in this discussion.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
National or UN derived standards (common core) are wrong - keep education control local to meet local requirements. Way to go Wyoming.
Because reality is purely local.
By the way, UN helicopters aren't black, they're white.
http://news.abidjan.net/photos/photos/610x%20(1)(156).jpg
astute perhaps, but to highly influenced by the inertia of existing thought. renewables will win the economic battle. nuclear (should have won) the economic battle (and may still). solar energy equipment hit global grid parity some years ago (~2011). only the cheapest big hydro developments and best CF wind sites can compete with even moderately good solar sites. the only way one can argue that any fossil fuel energy has lower LCOE is to ignore substantial costs in their development and consequences in their continued use. some of these are transparent, some are deeply embedded within 100yrs of economic development & infrastructure, others and born by all of us. A shift toward solar energy is inevitable and economics will drive this and is driving this. The rate of this shift is and will be correlated to the strength of political will and inversely correlated to the size of the existing institutional interests who refuse to adapt. This is resulting in development that ranges from shockingly rapid, efficient, and cheap to excruciatingly painful, long, and inefficient. The latter never ceases to amaze me although it repeats itself throughout history. Apparently successful institutional interests will squander their prosperity in a hilariously inefficient economic battle that they will ultimately lose. They chose that instead of using their prosperity to adapt.
The question isn't whether "CO2 causes warming" but whether a change from 290 to 330 ppm in the troposphere can be the cause of a measurable change in the heat content of troposphere.
Well, we blew past 330 ppm in the 1960's and are now at 400 ppm. That causes a direct forcing (not including feedbacks) of 5.35*ln(400/280)W/m^2 or about 1.9 W/m^2. For comparison, the output from the sun fluctuates by as much as 1 W/m^2 every 11 years. CO2 is now causing a forcing that is double the increase in solar forcing - but the CO2 forcing is constant while the solar forcing only peaks once every 11 years.
I'm curious whether your undergraduate text explains why increased CO2 concentration in the stratosphere causes the stratosphere to loose heat.
Here is what the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry says: "Greenhouse gases (CO2, O3, CFC) absorb infra-red radiation from the surface of the Earth and trap the heat in the troposphere. If this absorption is really strong, the greenhouse gas blocks most of the outgoing infra-red radiation close to the Earth's surface. This means that only a small amount of outgoing infra-red radiation reaches carbon dioxide in the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere. On the other hand, carbon dioxide emits heat radiation, which is lost from the stratosphere into space. In the stratosphere, this emission of heat becomes larger than the energy received from below by absorption and, as a result, there is a net energy loss from the stratosphere and a resulting cooling." - http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/e...
And 1) is both true empirically (climate models are failing to accurately predict climate) and openly acknowledged to be true by, among others, the IPCC. Openly in AR3, relegated to selected paragraphs deep in the document in AR5, but there nonetheless.
2) is still an open question -- or rather, there are definitely feedback that mute the severity, but it is also claimed that there are positive feedbacks and it is not yet clear which one wins. CO_2 alone would produce between 1 and 1.5 C of warming by 600 ppm (some 0.5 of which we have already realized). Hansen believed (and probably still believes) that water vapor feedback would at least double, more likely triple it to between 3 and 5 C. Empirical evidence has gradually forced nearly all of the climate science community to cut back their "best estimates" (based on a statistically meaningless mean of the predictions of the broken climate models, see 1) above) of total climate sensitivity to roughly 2.7 C in AR5 and it is currently in free fall in the literature, increasingly constrained by the lack of tropospheric warming, "the hiatus" (as it is named and discussed in AR5) and Bayes theorem. Currently the argument is whether or not it will end up as high as 2.3C, with papers appearing arguing that it will end up being in more or less neutral net feedback territory -- 1 to 1.5 C -- and others covering the range of 1.7 to 2.3 C. Since basically this is a scientific crap shoot and has been from the 1980s on (partly because we are still learning about clouds, partly because the "physics" that the models supposedly are based on begins by averaging phenomena in a nonlinear Navier-Stokes equation from its Kolmogorov scale of around 1 mm to the cell size of around 100 km -- with adjustable parameters galore -- as if it does not matter) so you pays your money, you places your bet. Net negative feedback hasn't even been ruled out by the data, and the longer the hiatus continues the more likely it is that the feedback is indeed net negative.
4-6) are what they are. Sea level rise is almost invariably given as the primary cause of catastrophic damage, yet it has also proven to be the one place where there is absolutely no sign of catastrophe. SLR rates have changed little for 140 years. It is also remarkably difficult to predict the rates at which land ice will melt, given the problems with 1) and 2) -- Hansen (as the primary author of the entire claim for future catastrophe) goes on TED Talks and with a straight face says that he expects 5 meters of SLR. Any other sane climate scientist I've talked to is now talking about anywhere from 30 cm to as much as a meter. The data itself suggests that we'd be unlucky to make as much as 30 cm by 2100. Public media are full of egregious claims of ongoing disaster (melting Himalayan glaciers, increasing tornado or hurricane damage) often and sadly backed by public figures in the scientific community that should no better as there is no evidence of any of the above). This quite correctly reduces the credibility of the other claims of these individuals -- if one went back and looked at the predictions that Hansen in particular has made in fully public view ex officio as head of GISS and how badly they've failed, it would be difficult to see how he has any credibility left. Beyond that, many -- although not all -- of the claims for damage due to "climate change" (something that happens all of the time naturally and hence is impossible to attribute or refute) are marginal results that are not statistically significant. And estimates for the damage resulting or likely to result from climate change often fail to take into account benefits accruing from climate change or the simple fact that nature has already accommodated the change given the smear of temperatures and climate ranges available between the equator and the poles.
All of this greatly complicates the discussion of costs and benefits. Not everything about global warming is bad. Indeed, the global warming that has been ongoing
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Exactly. Even as sophisticated as they are, computer models can only be as good as our understanding of the phenomenon being modeled. It's the climate models that are showing catastrophic positive feedbacks for temperature with an increase in "greenhouse gases". But those catastrophic positive feedback scenarios present in the computer model may or may not exist in the real world, because of interactions that are not accounted for in the model because they're presently not known or not well characterized.
The comparison to modeling the macroeconomy is well taken. Both are complex nonlinear systems in which the validity of computer models are highly dependent upon detailed knowledge of the initial conditions, and in which the information content of the phenomenon being modeled cannot reasonably be captured except in a highly simplified fashion. The same information problem that plagues macroeconomic models (you can't really gather all the information necessary to know the initial state, because there's far too much information required, and even if you could gather it, by the time you've gathered the information, the system's state has changed) to some degree applies to modeling climate, particularly where there are direct interactions between human actions and the system.
Paleoclimate data appears to show we're on the downward side of the peak of the current interglacial, with the amplitude of short term warm periods actually decreasing over the last few thousand years. And the current computer models didn't predict the "pause" in increased global mean surface temperature observed since about the turn of the millennium. The models simply aren't good enough to restructure the basis of the entire global energy economy on.
He's not a skeptic of warming, but of our ability to model warming and it's effects and make predictions about future climate change. So he's more of a climate modeling skeptic than a warming skeptic per se.
This fluctuation in tropospheric temperatures is a behavour that we see emerge in the models as well. What you have to remember is that when you measure tropospheric temperatures you are measuring one small part of the system. Tropospheric temperatures have increased by about 0.2C over the last 15 years ( http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl... ). That is not insignificant but is somewhat slower than the previous decade. Meanwhile the ocean has also continued to accumulate energy.
Ultimately what we find is that fluctuations in tropospheric temperatures are the result of energy moving about within the system (from troposphere to ocean and back), rather than a violation of thermodynamics. So as you can see, energy fluctuations in one part of the system cannot contradict feedbacks.
In fact, we have observed many feedbacks first hand. For instance, atmospheric water vapour has increased by about 4% since the 70's. The more warming, the more water vapour the atmosphere will hold. Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. Likewise, on average summertime polar ice is declining due to warming. The less summertime ice we have the less solar energy will be reflected back into space. This is another feedback that we can measure and have observed.
They're not standards, they're propaganda.
We want to teach students how to think for themselves, not to repeat rote consensus. Those standards are nothing more than yet another attempt to beat one viewpoint into their skulls, much like the Church did during the Dark Ages.
Teach kids how to think and then get out of the way. Don't tell them what to think.
Ferrret.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Have you even looked into the facts/evidence around this at all, before you echoed the corporate-provided convenient excuse to keep on doing their thing even though its destroying the planet?
Different kind of Carbon which is how we can tell the increase is from fossil fuels. You might also want to think about the difference in timeframes. It took millions of years to remove the carbon, but we have replaced it in less than 100 years.
Its funny how over 95% of the worlds climate experts already agree global warming is at least partially to fully man-made, however for a majority of Americans that is still not enough for them to think about making small changes in their own lifestyle just in case those 95% of the worlds top experts might actually have a point.
You beg the question though. If CO2 is having no effect, it is not pollution, if it does, it is.
Less wishful thinking perhaps and more based on the fact that we don't swing wildly from one temperature to another.
Seriously?
No wonder you posted as a coward if your best is to set up a strawman and then insult somebody over it.
Coward.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
So far it would appear that only the AGW cultists are doing so. Shows how weak their argument is.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Is that the place where circles are legally hexagonal?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wine grape grew in England back then.
They grow there now too.
The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concedes for the first time that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, despite a 7 percent rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
No, actually it doesn't, it actually says the trend over the last 15 years is lower than the overall trend because of the chosen start and end dates:
If man-made global warming is your religion, it looks like settled science despite the actual results.
Very convenient, anyone who disagrees with you is a religious zealot. However, any time that you are allying with religious leaders and calling scientists zealots, you should really take that as a clue that you need to carefully examine your beliefs.
97% of the scientists who study climate change think it's happening and it's man-made, as does 97% of the published research on the topic. That leaves a mere 3% to split between the undecided and those who think it's either not happening or not man-made. If it weren't actually happening there should be a lot more research showing negative results.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I understand that the readers of /. tend to be more educated than the "normal" citizen. I also understand that as a result of this higher level of education, they have a higher level of understanding of the scientific models that are used in climate science.
Here's my problem, reading through all of these posts.
I see a bunch of "well these agencies said" "well these scientists said" "well this percentage of people said" "well it's accurate according to what we know" blah blah blah. I'm not saying these arguments have no merit... But what about scientists such as Richard Lindzen? One of the most respected and intelligent climate scientists in the world. What about the scientists that get canned left and right if they speak out against the man made climate change/global warming/whatever it's called now(simply type in "scientist fired for questioning global warming", there's more than just one, so I wont post a reference). I see people referencing NASA, but what about the former NASA scientists that dispute(http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4)?
I know it's a hard thought to believe that you could be tricked, duped even. But claiming there's all this evidence, and claiming there's all these scientists claiming something is definitive, in a field that will destroy their career for going against the grain. IDK you're not really contributing anything new. The skepticism comes from the fact that there are skeptics in the field in question, and they are quickly drowned out, silenced, and discredited. And there are far more skeptics within the scientific community than those on here are claiming, a simple Google search would show this. But it seems like everyone on here is so busy researching the "proof" they don't even want to be bothered with the other side of the story.
My problem is that the denial argument is made against researching or even attempting anything that would mitigate #5 and hence obviate #6. Failing to teach our children isn't going to help here.
Nullius in verba
Wyoming may not be "politically correct" on the issue, but they are correct that "global warming" being caused primarily by man-made emissions isn't settled science. (And no, computer scientists are not the correct scientists. ;) )
You have *no* idea of what you're talking about. Computer scientists don't run climate models, climate researchers do.
The rest of your post is full of baloney that is readily refuted, but it's a tedious and probably hopeless job so I'll just pick on one statement: "The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concedes for the first time that global temperatures have not risen since 1998."
This is outright dishonest. 1998 was, at the time, the hottest year ever in the instrumental record by a *long* shot. It remains the third hottest year in the instrumental record. And this is the year you (or the people you listen to) have chosen to ask whether the climate has gotten warmer "since then". This is exactly analogous to this reasoning. In 1991 Carl Lewis ran 100 m in 9.86 seconds. Of the eleven world championships held since then, six have been won at slower times. Therefore, the average speed of a 100 m sprinter hasn't been getting any faster since 1991. You see what I've done? I've taken an exceptional performance (Lewis' record shattering 100 m sprint) and pretended it was "representative".
Honest people in the climate debate don't use outlier years as their baseline. They use decades (e.g. 1990-2000) or longer (1900-2000) as their baseline.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Also, for some who live in cold climates some warming - even a great deal of warming - would be a welcome thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I guess you prefer the Taliban method of deciding school curriculum.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It is cold in Wyoming. Jackson, WY is the fourth coldest city in the US.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"With the melting of the tundra 10 years ago, we hit a tipping point, it became too late to stop climate change. It is now a positive feedback loop. You could remove every human being from the planet, and global warming would continue.
What we do about humanities 36 billion tonns/yr of CO2 emissions from FF, or not, will affect the rate of climate change. If at some point humanity starts producing a surplus of renewable energy, then we can extract CO2 from the oceans and use it to manufacture CH4 for later sequestration. At which point we really can reverse AGW.
But, first steps first.. We must reduce the amount CO2 emissions in the first place. By reducing wasteful energy usage(*), increasing the amount of renewable energy produced, and penalize fossil usage.
I.E. Wasteful energy usage, using a 10% efficient 2 tonn automobile where an Electric bike (600 to 1500MPGe), can accomplish the similar objectives.
If we could only hitch the spin on both sides of this topic to a turbine we would have a limitless source of clean renewable energy.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not really. More argument from example. He likes to point out how virtually every climate model has fallen down, badly, during the current warming pause.
He believes #2 for the same reason he admits that CO2 likely has a warming effect. Scientists can both explain theoretically and demonstrate the mechanisms by which they occur.
Just wanted to comment on this. The two are one and the same, when human suffering is caused by poverty and lack of economic development. If going carbon-zero significantly raises the cost of energy and retards the economic development of "developing" countries then that could have real and significant negative effects on the well being of the citizens of those countries. Of course, so could unchecked global warming.
"teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming'" is EXACTLY the problem. These so-called "scientists" (religious extremists) should earn the label "scientist" and admit they don't know everything and they're conclusions are mere probability, not certainty. Instead, we get these people teaching it like I would inist God is real, and being angry at anyone who has the unmitigated gall to disagree (of which there are many.)
Cranky educator.
Fine. Does he do his own medical diagnosis because he doesn't trust his doctor to think for him?
Even the Alarmists at Real Climate don't support Arctic methane tripping points.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
There is quite a bit of inertia, but right now we are accumulating energy at a rate of 4 Hiroshima bombs per second. (http://www.skepticalscience.com/4-Hiroshima-bombs-worth-of-heat-per-second.html). That has started to nudge us out of the relative stability we have seen for the last 10,000 years. It was a relatively minor forcing that moved us from the last glacial period to the current inter-glacial - which is surely a wild swing from one temperature to another.
atmospheric water vapour has increased by about 4% since the 70's. The more warming, the more water vapour the atmosphere will hold. Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas.
And Water vapor transport vast amounts of heat from the surface to high altitudes and clouds are a great reflector of short-wave light reducing the amount of short-wave light to be re-radiated as long-wave IR; whether water vapor is a positive or a negative feedback is a point of contention.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Lying while holding office should be a crime. Look at this clown:
teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming'
Yeah, it's only 97% of the scientists in the field that hold this view, and of the remaining 3% most are in doubt of details or conclusions, the number of real scientists who think that there is no such thing as global warming or that humans have nothing to do with it can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
If we want to improve our politics, the first thing we need to do is get rid of the crooks. There are enough idiots and misguided well-meaning fools in politics, we can't afford to have lying bastards in office.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think you've been consorting with Lewandowski and his minions too long.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Well, I was referring to observed feedbacks. We haven't observed changes in cloud cover, but you are right that if this did occur it would act as a positive or negative feedback. Clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect. They also reflect sunlight and emit infrared radiation to space, and so exert a cooling effect. So if global warming does change cloud cover, the net effect could be warming or cooling depending on the type and altitude of the cloud.
Sure, there's inertia but we've been at this a few billion years and have gone through several cycles of rising and falling temperatures so there's at least a hint that there's some negative feedback at work. Not that that is necessarily sufficient or more than a local effect but that's not what was being claimed, merely that there's enough not yet understood to justify not going all chicken little.
I tend to agree. But pollution is a lot like weeds. A weed is just a plant growing where it shouldn't, pollution is just chemicals/particles in concentrations greater than are acceptable. Context is everything. I think the immediate jump to labeling CO2 as pollution is an attempt to achieve and end-run around debate as so often seems to be the case from the Fabian crowd.
And what does this have to do with the post to which you were responding?
Nobody sane questions the established fact that the global temperature is increasing. That's been true, on average, since the last Ice Age.
The issue is whether man-made CO2 emissions are the main cause of the warming in the 20th century or not.
It's impossible to have a scientific discussion when people misrepresent the sides of the discussion like this.
The transition from glacial to inter-glacial is evidence of a massive positive feedback.
Yet, the left wing pushing man made Global Warming...err..excuse Man made Climate Change....err...excuse me, Carnon Tax Exchange.
That is A'OK.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear...
This scam, of climate whatever change, that is being run by the monied elite and their academic lap dogs, is so transparent, one really wonders why they even bother trying anymore.
Bernie Madoff would be proud.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Wine Grapes growing in England isn't exceptional, I've grown grown wine grapes in Michigan back when the newpapers were reporting predictions of a coming Ice-Age. When wine grapes stop growing in England we have a problem; the World will not end in fire, it'll end in ice.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Insightful but I'm not sure which side your referring to.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The idea, they say, is to stress "the importance of developing students’ knowledge of how science and engineering achieve their ends while also strengthening their competency with related practices."
Their "practices for K-12 science classrooms" include things like:
"Asing questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)"
"Planning and carrying out investigations"
"Analyzing and interpreting data."
"Engaging in argument from evidence"
But, when they get to the section on "Climate Change", all that goes out the window.
By the end of grade 12, they want students to "know" that
How does that stack up with actually teaching science:
How are students supposed to question computer models?
How are students going to investigate computer models?
How are students going to analyze and interpret computer models?
How are students going to engage in argument from computer models?
This is not teaching science. This is teaching trust in authority and their mysterious "climate models". Trust us. Trust our "climate models".
Why is it whenever one of these right wing fascists gets a platform it's behind some name with the word "freedom" or "liberty" in it when they don't believe in either.
Then is you want anything other than contempt act as if you do instead of juvenile "science is a religion" attack words and the new bullshit you've added in the above post.
Considering that my messages here have been nothing other than a complaint about you opening with an insulting lie what do you expect? Why should everyone else meekly take your venom?
So if CO2 is a pollutant, then I suppose the optimal concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is zero?
The term "pollutant" applied to CO2 doesn't make sense. Not everything that changes the environment is, by definition, a "pollutant." Too much water can kill you. Does that make water a poison? It's pretty much the same thing.
Have you any necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming you'd like to quote? Or is your position simply that chanting ad hominem slogans is enough to prove your point?
Those of us who accept climate science don't have to burn anybody. The Earth will do it for us if we don't get serious about the problem. :j
Yes, in particular, language like the word "believe" being used for scientific theories.
I don't "believe" in AGW or science in general. If I believe in anything it's that the scientific method is a valid and useful methodology for discovering our world and it's proven worthy of that belief.
Climate models are not even expected to predict a pause as short as 15 years. The results you see are the average of many runs of the code. Individual climate model runs may show "pauses" such as we are now experiencing but when you start averaging all the runs together you get a smoother curve. It seems like you ought to understand climate models better before you start criticizing them.
He likes to point out how virtually every climate model has fallen down, badly, during the current warming pause.
But that happens to not be the case. The cause of the current "pause" seems to be ENSO. Climate models can't predict ENSO, because ENSO is weather not climate. If one constrains a climate model with the current ENSO conditions it turns out that the pause is modeled very well.
Kosaka and Xie (2013, Nature, doi:10.1038/nature12534)
He believes #2 for the same reason he admits that CO2 likely has a warming effect. Scientists can both explain theoretically and demonstrate the mechanisms by which they occur.
Which scientists believe that feedback mechanisms will "mute the severity of CO2-induced warming." will outweigh the feedback mechanisms that enhance global warming.
He's only seeing the things that reinforce what he wants to be true. Motivated reasoning at it's finest.
"This bullshit again?"
So you're saying it's not just me then..
" What do you call the adaptation of climate models over time to better fit recorded data again?"
After some thought, your description is okay; I would drop the 'again', and just say, 'the adaptation of climate models over time to better fit recorded data'. The 'again' is redundant; the adaptation of a climate model in ongoing development to newly recorded data is an ongoing process. 'The Method', it ain't.
Btw, I honestly thought that I thought of this myself. If we are the sort of people that think for ourselves, then you can also do better, and tell me how my argument sucks, based on logic, rather than on who you thought may have first said it.
I understand that we are unable to do a real experiment and follow the scientific method on this one; we got the one planet, and there's no more to be had at the bunsen burner supply house. That's not my fault; the method is still the method.
We could do it just for the sake of it, and actually make people better off, and that would mean undercutting oil and coal. You won't have that, will you?
Politics. Its been about nothing but for a long time now.
But there are really somethings we can say. The models have not proven any kind of accuracy over the time frame we are told we must change everything. The changes most think would be enough are either so out of the park in cost or just not even several orders of magnitude enough to make any difference at all. And all things come with costs.
Long story short. Everyone wants someone else to do something about it. Even worse people think buying green is in fact green without looking at *any* data whatsoever.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
all published economists agree that it is cheaper to mitigate than to accept the impacts of climate change.
No they don't.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Are you going to tell astronomers that they are not real scientists either for your next trick or are you going to accept that we are not going to fall for your restricted personal definition that there is no science other than chemistry or similar bullshit? It may work on the kiddies but it's a gross insult to the intelligence of the readers here.
Can you cite one?
1. The medieval warm period affected only the North Atlantic
2. It was colder than it is today, not hotter. We've been hotter than the MWP since ~1980.
3. They're not considered cyclical, so your ass-delving for 1950 seems bizarre.
After 3 I stop trying to correct, as it's wasting my time, and I feel it's wasting yours, as I doubt you will take any of that on board.
Of course they wouldn't, their entire funding stream is highly dependent upon human causes. By their standards, ALL climate change must be due to burning fossil fuels and eating meat, else they lose their funding.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Funny, I'm reading this just after I traded in my electric scooter on an electric bicycle.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If you don't believe in climate change, and you go extinct because of this stubbornness, that is just natural selection at work. But, the name people who do not believe in climate change do not believe in evolution. Oh the irony.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Like when the pendulum on a clock swings from the left to the right?
Water could be a pollutant in the right circumstances. But otherwise, I think we're in agreement. My assertion is not that CO2 is a pollutant.
How about the inter-governmental panel on climate change (IPCC)'s latest report:
http://www.climatechange2013.o...
"It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together." ...
Good on Wyoming for rejecting the junk-science and social engineering project - also known as - Global Warming! It is going to take some time for this Liberal Fetish to work its way through our lives, but in the end you will come to learn that there are just some things even Liberals can't control.
So which is it? You said "we don't swing wildly from one temperature to another". But you also liken the wild swing from glacial to interglacial to the pendulum on a clock. Meaning we see wild swings all the time? It is really unclear what you are trying to argue.
You quoted a *statement*, not a *necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement".
In order to be a "necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement", it must include two very important things:
1) a list of observations that would prove it wrong;
2) a logical argument as to why in the absence of those observations listed, it is the *only* explanation left (or close to it).
Simply asserting that "it is extremely likely that God created the earth in 7 days" in the bible does *not* make it scientific. You've got to show what observations that would prove that God *didn't* create the earth in 7 days, and why in the absence of those, we *must* be led to the conclusion that God *did* create the earth in seven days.
For example, you can't say, "you can prove God didn't create the earth in 7 days if Christians don't exist", since the mere existence of Christians doesn't force us to believe that God exists. Similarly, you can't say, "you can prove CAGW isn't true if CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas", since the mere existence of a greenhouse gas doesn't force us to believe that natural climate change no longer exists.
Try again, see if you can find an actual statement of potential falsifiability in the IPCC report.
I've read it cover to cover - have you? :)
Another day, another slashdot click bait climate story, and of course all the usual suspects made all the same arguments they make every day.
Of course the original post - as always - is from Hugh Pickens dot com - the same place all the climate click bait comes from. Is it accurate and non biased? OF COURSE NOT!!! (Hint: It never is)
But you suckers (that includes OFA trolls, right wing loons, left wing loons, and the like)... you all fell for it, and entered 534 comments not worth reading.
Murphy was an optimist
Let's produce matter out of nothing! That's what you are suggesting (disregarding the fact that only so much gas can be held within the atmosphere due to the required equilibrium of gravity and expansion).
If we could do that, we sure as hell would not need to be discussing any of this.
Context is important, of course but I would not classify that as wildly. Boiling seas or solid CO2, perhaps...
Simple solution: Any serious University with applicants into any science-based degree program should no longer accept Wyoming high school certificates as meaningful and should require applicants from that state to test out to verify that they have a proper background to enter the program. When the climate deniers who run the Wyoming establishment start having their offspring turned away and stigmatized by Ivy League and other prominent schools, watch that curriculum change back to accurate science rather quickly.
Yes I've read it cover to cover. Even though it is not in exactly the form of a definitive proof, the overall message is VERY clear, and also representative of nearly all other credible research Ive managed to find on the subject.
Why is it that most of the world has gotten it and is doing something about it, except the US?
What you and many other Americans are actually doing is hanging onto the lamest excuses to avoid having to actually face a potentially catastrophic situation, just because it might require you to change and maybe comrpomise.
Why is it that its mostly only Americans that refuse to accept man-made global warming? Oh wait, because they're the amongst the worlds highest pollluters maybe?
OK so from the other side, assuming youre right and 95% of the worlds climate experts do turn out to be wrong... what actually would be the downside of still doing something about reducing man-made greenhouse gasses? The air we breathe would be less polluted and therefore better for us. Wow. What a wasted effort. NOT.
I have a mental image of all you flat-earthers standing in blighted farmers fields still trying to convince the people that can't feed their kids that it really can't be happening because there's no conclusive scientific proof yet.
I've read all the IPCC reports. I've read dozens of climate papers published in the climatology journals. I've downloaded all the ice core data to do my own numerical experiments. What I am doing is pointing out some bad oversimplified reasoning.
Do you happen to have a the reference for those CO2 forcing numbers? Every time I've tried to follow footnotes from an IPCC report, it sends me on a chain of references that just ends up back at an earlier IPCC report.
Sorry bad numbers.... I meant to say 330 to 400 -- the change from the 80's to now which have coincided with the most recent warming trend.
Your problem isn't whether or not it's proof - it's whether or not it's *scientific*. Without a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, it simply *isn't science*.
And tell me, how many coal fired plants has china put up in the past decade?
Because nobody has put forward the most *basic* requirement of the scientific method yet - the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
Well, I can think of a few off the top of my head -
1) CO2 helps plants grow
2) CO2 emissions mitigation causes absolute electricity prices to rise, harming the poorest of the poor
That being said, do you realize you've once again ducked the question about falsifiability? It's like you're trying to convince me that the virgin Mary really was a virgin, or that Xenu really did oppress the universe trillions of years ago.
Put another way, say you spent the next month looking for a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for CAGW and *didn't* find it - be honest, would you reconsider your beliefs, or would you simply hold onto them with the fervor of the faithful?
Wow.
Sure thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Anything is a contaminant if it's where it's not wanted. But I also have a hard time considering something required by plant life as a 'pollutant' ... especially when some greenhouses deliberately increase the concentration to improve yields.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
How much longer can the US keep rejecting scientific facts? Allowing a state to reject proven science because they just don't like it, is insane, no country which has any respect would allow it. The US really is the laughing stock, education wise, of the developed world, it's gotten to the point I'm scared for students who have to attend school in the US, because of bullshit like this. I think new laws need to be set on a world platform to help govern education ( yes I mean world wide! ), this should be the required standards ( at least in part ):
1. You MUST teach global warming is a threat and a very real danger.
2. You MUST teach that evolution is the best theory we have for the progression of life.
3. You MUST teach men and women are equal ( sorry middle east! ).
4. You MUST teach that religion is man made dogmatic superstition ( which it is ).
5. You MUST enforce high scientifical thinking and reasoning in ALL cases, before all else.
Any educator not willing to side with this should be jailed, it's time not only the US ( who have the worst education system in the world ), but for the world to support a proper education system.
It takes a long time for the system to reach equilibrium. There is quite a bit of inertia because of the oceans which can absorb massive amounts of energy. The CO2 increases of the 80's are not likely responsible for the warming of the 80's. Rather it would be prior CO2 increases that caused the warming of the 80's.
The real point - he doesn't want to do something, so it's impossible to do anything, so there is nothing that need to be done.
That's not what #5 said at all. You just lost all credibility with that straw man.
You're right. That's not wjat #5 says. It is, however, what #1+#2+#3+#4+#5+#6 says. This is a pure example of motivated reasoning and if you're unable to see that that tells us pretty much all we need to know about you.
To address your points:
>> 1) CO2 helps plants grow
Any small benefit from this will be massively outweighed by the droughts and other negative changes in weather patterns.
2) CO2 emissions mitigation causes absolute electricity prices to rise, harming the poorest of the poor.
Do seriously think that the size of someone's electricity bill will be whats uppermost on poor peoples minds when we/they are all facing massive food/water shortages, floods, droughts and other dangerously radical weather patterns that a global ecological crisis WILL and is already starting to cause?
Even a few minutes with Google will show that over 95% of the most prestigious academic and independent research (as opposed to that performed or funded by entities with vested interests) strongly indicates man is having a direct and major bad effect on global warming. Why do you refuse to acknowledge that?
>> Without a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, it simply *isn't science*.... do you realize you've once again ducked the question about falsifiability?
Assuming what Wikipedia defines falsifiability as is accurate: (Falsifiability or refutability of a statement, hypothesis, or theory is an inherent possibility to prove it to be false),
Then what you are saying:
(>> Without a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, it simply *isn't science*) is not only logically meaningless, it doesn't even make a valid sentence.
Understanding every interaction of the entire ecosystem of our planet is probably the single most complex problem humanity has ever faced. Consequently there will *always* be some element of doubt, especially if you have a vested interest in finding it, and aren't too choosy about being unbiassed. If people have enough of a vested interest, they would agree that the sky is green. An absolute proof undeniable even by those with vested interests will therefore probably never be forthcoming.
The root of your argument just seem to be that if there's even a slight possibility of doubt that global warming (or that humans are at least partially responsible for it ) exists, then you will magically translate that into the whole thing being necessarily not true. That position is retarded, especially given whats at stake.
Basically you are promoting exactly the same misdirection that was cooked up by the marketing divisions of the oil corps to give to their corrupt puppet politicians something to use as a psuedo-scientific great-sounding but factually void sound bite to feed the majority of Americans that are too uneducated/lazy to "get" science, logic, or to do their own independent research. It also appeals to those that are monumentally stupid/selfish enough to take a highly short term view and avoid change even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are directly killing the entire planet's ecosystem.
That bullshit sound bite was created and survives only in the US. Europeans Per capita never were as bad polluters as Americans, but they understood the problem, got behind the Kyoto agreements, and made reforms decades ago. Other than the Chinese, The US still lives in complete denial entirely because powerful organizations and corrupt politicans are making money from the status quo and are conducting smear campaigns as hard as they can.
Just because you as an American have been brainwashed by a corrupt system to live in denial doesn't mean the problem itself and the obvious conclusions are any less real, or that it is not already affecting us right now and will get a lot worse, especially if we keep not doing anything.
That's an unsupported assertion, contradicted by the evidence of ever increasing crop yields along with higher CO2 and temperature globally.
Yes. Power costs drive food costs and water costs. Make the electricity more expensive, and you condemn people in poverty to more poverty.
Science is not done by consensus, surely Galileo taught you that :)
No, you've completely misunderstood falsifiability - it isn't about what *percent* something is possible to be wrong, it is about whether or not there is any logical argument that it *can* be wrong at all.
The root of your argument is that "heads I win, tails you lose" is a fair bet :)
Here, read some Popper to educate yourself on falsifiability and then get back to me :)
http://www.stephenjaygould.org...
OK so show me the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement that global warming ISN'T at least partially man made.
That's called reversing the burden of proof :)
The null hypothesis is that current climate changes for the same reasons why it changed before humans existed - natural climate change. That's the hypothesis you need to *exclude*.
Of course global warming (and cooling), has anthropogenic components - just like it has butterfly components (since butterflies give out CO2). But the assertion that those components are at all discernible from background natural variation is a novel and thus unsupportable idea.
Proof lies in the affirmative - you can't ask someone "prove that god doesn't exist", or "prove that there isn't a magical teapot hidden at a lagrange point".
Put another way, evolution has a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis (find a modern rabbit in the precambrian). Creationism and CAGW does not.
OK, so given that even you accept global warming has anthropogenic components, can't you agree that if we did something about our emissions, future global warming would be lessened? (Which is a good thing regardless of by how much).
And if you can agree that, then why can't you make the jump from "good thing in principle" into at least trying?
Your argument seems to be analogous to being in a car heading towards the edge of a cliff, but not pressing the brake pedal because no-one has yet given you indisputable scientific proof that it works.
No, that's silly - there is no evidence that a colder world is a better world. In fact, we've got quite a bit of evidence to show the contrary.
Compare 1914 to 2014. The world warmed. Forget if it warmed naturally or not. Are you insisting that 1914 was better for humanity than 2014?
The precautionary principle which you're positing fails to take into account the absolute harm caused by your proposed interventions.
Not at all. The car is heading down the road, and there's fog on the interstate. We need to get to the hospital, because someone in the car is wounded, but you want us to stop, and pull over, just in case the interstate is broken 100 miles down the road.
Again though, the point here is that without a falsifiable hypothesis statement, you're not doing science. You may have an unshakable faith in your religion, and believe that without accepting the grace of Christ we're all going to hell, but don't expect me to act like Pascal and simply believe in God because the horrors you claim will happen in the afterlife are so terrible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
I guess what I'm really saying here is that if 96+% of the worlds foremost environmental experts are all telling me its a real issue and we definately need to act, then I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better, especially when environmental studies isn't my field and if they are right and we don't act, we screw the planet. Andi if they are wrong and we act anyway, then its a relatively minor economic cost that has other benefits, such as cleaner air.
That's the argument from authority - because 96% of bishops, cardinals and popes, all theological experts, believe that Mary was a virgin, and that homosexual marriage is an abomination, then it's a real issue and we need to act!
Science gives power to the masses - even if you're *not* an expert, you can ask for a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. You may not be able to grok the source code, or the advanced math, but if the experts can't do the *basic* work of the scientific method, then relying on their authority is essentially outsourcing your critical thinking to a higher authority (which is what all religions do).
You assume that if they're wrong, and we bankrupt the world, and drive people into poverty and pain and suffering in order to get "cleaner air", that this is a good thing - your prescription is a *guarantee* for catastrophe, whereas the threat is only a *possible* catastrophe. You're asking us to cut off our arms just in case we get wrist cancer later on.
I guess at this point I should ask you for sufficient falsifiable hypothesis that by taking action to save the environment, we are actually going to bankrupt the world, and drive people into poverty and pain and suffering as you suggest.
Sure no problem - here are observations that would falsify my hypothesis of economic catastrophe:
1) any alternative fuel source to natural petroleum products becomes cheaper in absolute dollars;
This one is really important - if the "save the environment" action is in fact, absolutely cheaper (not artificially subsidized or manipulated or costed in inflated dollars), then of course, the "action" to move to say, solar and wind, wouldn't cause catastrophe. Thus far, solar and wind are an order of magnitude more expensive, in absolute terms, than natural petroleum.
2) any alternative fuel source to natural petroleum products becomes 100% reliable, 24/7
This is also pretty important - unless you cost in making alternative energy sources 100% reliable 24/7 (currently done by building additional natural gas plants to take over when either solar or wind variability doesn't provide power), you can't move to them without severe disruption. Surely there are all kinds of possible technical solutions here, but it's also bounded by #1.
3) find any example of lower-per capita energy usage but a higher quality of life
Last, but not least, my hypothesis depends on the assertion that higher per-capita energy usage is linked to higher quality of life. If we find one example of a country that *lowered* per-capita energy usage, and *increased* quality of life, then my hypothesis would fail. See: http://www.geni.org/globalener...
So, now, back to you - can you quote a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for CAGW? Or was your question simply a dodge to avoid giving an answer? Be honest. :)
Well you haven't provided any proof of your earlier statement at all, only a few reasonable-sounding statements that strongly suggest doing something about the environment (i.e. making any change) would cost us more than doing nothing (i.e continuing the status quo).
Actually I have never disagreed on that point. I fully expect there to be some financial impact to doing something about taking action to save the environment therefore the world.
It seems what your and many other Americans argument comes down to is that any financial impact on the economy at all is not worth saving the planet for.
How someone can seriously think that short-term just boggles my mind.
Even if fixing the ecological issue costs us the whole current financial system, I for one would rather be living in a cardboard box under a bridge eating ramen I bartered for, than definately dead from dehydration or starvation because nothing can grow at all due to continuing drought or other freak weather phenomena.
We're not talking about *proof* - we're talking about a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Proof (in terms of documented attempts to find falsifications that end in failure), is something entirely different - it comes *after* the first step :)
And therein lies your problem - you've got zero idea as to whether or not your cure is worse than the disease you suspect. You're asking us to cut off our arm because you think we might have an infected pinky finger.
When you destroy economies, you make the poorest of the poor dead from dehydration and starvation because they can't get clean water or food. The worst you can imagine is sufficient shelter and food to survive on - your proposals for making energy more expensive will actually *kill* people who are currently barely hanging on.
I'm not sure if it's obvious to you yet, but you've got religion. I don't begrudge you your religion, but I'm not going to engage in human sacrifice in order to save the world from Satan, and I'm not going to engage in human sacrifice in order to save the world from the CO2 boogeyman either. If you can at least admit that what you have is faith, rather than fact, you'll be on the path to wisdom :)
>> You're asking us to cut off our arm because you think we might have an infected pinky finger.
>> I'm not sure if it's obvious to you yet, but you've got religion.
Nope. unless that religion is called common sense.
I'm simply advocating that we reduce risk by not blindly ignoring what 96% of the worlds foremost experts are telling us is a real threat, That is enough of a significant number that anyone should take seriously.
Reducing risk is what big companies love to do, so that should also be natural thinking to people with even your myopic levels of short-termist capitalism.
I'm not sure how you an accuse me of having religion when you clearly have most bizarre blind faith that totally destroying the environment will somehow magically have no more inconvenient effect on humans than that of an infected pinky finger. How is it even possible for an otherwise apparently intelligent person to think we can ravage to destruction the life support system we all exclusively depend on to stay alive, and yet somehow us dying from that failing will be a minor inconvenience compared to the financial cost of doing anything proactive at all.
>> When you destroy economies, you make the poorest of the poor dead from dehydration and starvation because they can't get clean water or food.
What about the billions that will starve when we can't grow crops anymore, or those that will die directly from entire regions being hit hard with VERY extreme weather patterns? We've even already directly and recently experienced right here in the US how dangerous and costly extreme weather can be, with Katrina and New Orleans, yet somehow perople like you can just keep ignoring the evidence right in your face, almost as if it didn't really happen. Natural disaasters of that scale and much worse are queuing up and theres some evidence they are already beginning to happen all over the world, yet there are still some Americans like you that will advocate we prioritise the dollar savings of doing nothing to stop it, over the future of the entire worlds population. And you accuse ME of having religion? hah. keep praying to your almighty dollar my friend. I hope you can eat them when there's no food left.
So it's common sense to hold onto a belief even if observations contradict it? :)
So if 96% of the world's theologians tell you gay marriage is a real threat, we should take that seriously? :)
Science is not consensus :)
CO2 is not totally destroying the environment :) Neither is a small increase in global average temperature - just take a look at say, population and crop yields from 2014 compared to 1914 when the world was cooler - how exactly do you measure harm during that interval if we've reduced disease, death and poverty in that interval?
You're simply practicing another version of an apocalyptic religion, dressed up in lab coats instead of priest collars :)
Blaming weather on CO2 emissions is like blaming droughts on gods of the harvest who are angry :)
You want to grow crops better? Thank the Haber process. Thank cheap energy.
You wrap yourself in this cloak of righteousness, like some zealot of the Catholic church in the 17th century, and expect us to simply take for granted that your *massive* promise of harm is outweighed by some completely imaginary set of catastrophes unobserved in the data.
Want to play science? Want to lose your religion? Start off with the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement - that's the first step of the scientific process. It doesn't start with a poll of experts, or a voice vote of consensus - it starts with *falsifiability*.
Be honest, did you read this article? http://www.stephenjaygould.org...
>> CO2 is not totally destroying the environment :) Neither is a small increase in global average temperature
Wow You REALLY need to check your facts. Here are just a few of the many sources that contraidct you:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05...
http://www.nature.org/ouriniti...
http://www.epa.gov/climatechan...
http://www.epa.gov/climatechan...
http://www.ifpri.org/publicati...
Of course your sources contradict me - they're preaching a religious mantra without a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, and they refuse to admit that observations don't match their predictions.
Fact: 1914 was colder that 2014.
Fact: By any measure of "catastrophe", 1914 was worse than 2014. We have larger population, a higher standard of living, better technology, better control over diseases, more food, and a host of other *great* advances for humanity.
Do you have *any* evidence that 1914 was in fact *better* for humanity, or even the *entire biosphere* than 2014?
If you can't prove that the world was a better place before human CO2 emissions were significant, why should we believe that the apocalypse is coming with some mild warming?
You got one thing right. The state is evil. And by state I mean the government itself, not Wyoming per se.
If, in order to solve this problem, the liberty and freedom of the people in Wyoming to run their own lives and government needs to be sacrificed, then I will never agree with your "solution" to this problem.
If we must give our liberty in order to survive, then count me as your enemy. What good is life without liberty?
Oh and your all powerful government you require to solve this problem, if it's at all like all the all powerful governments that have come before, it'll have to destroy the environment in order to save it.
Very stirring, moving, and utter anarchist bullshit. Freedom and liberty have never been absolute rights, not even the Founders intended that extreme.
We all compromise somewhat on our liberty. That's why we build this thing called civilization instead remaining belligerent apes howling over water holes. We accept traffic lights so we don't run our cars into each other at intersections, and that pedestrians can have a reasonably safe method of crossing the street.
Your "right to do with what your own property" stops when your pollution starts causing others to sicken, or impacts the long term health of the community. Your right to free speech ends when you call in fake bomb threats or yell "fire" in a movie theater.
We are all temporary residents on this planet. Maybe your libertarian values demand that you don't give two beans for the welfare of your descendants, but they are the ones who are going to bear the consequences of our choices, for good or ill.
If tobacco companies sponsored research showing that tobacco was good for ones health, one would be skeptical. But what if 97% of all research by dozens of tobacco companies showed that tobacco was good for ones health. Would it be fair to call the skeptics 'anti-science?'
The public is skeptical of climate science for the same reason. Since most of the research is funded ultimately by governments and since governments tend to prefer results which justify an increase in government power, people are skeptical of government funded climate research. People who favor greater government control of economic matters will tend not to be skeptical and those who oppose increases in government power will tend to be more skeptical.
There is no mystery here and there is nothing 'anti-science' about climate science skepticism.