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US Senate Set To Vote On Whether Climate Change Is a Hoax
sciencehabit writes The U.S. Senate's simmering debate over climate science has come to a full boil today, as lawmakers prepare to vote on measures offered by Democrats that affirm that climate change is real—with one also noting that global warming is not "a hoax." In an effort to highlight their differences with some Republicans on climate policy, several Democrats have filed largely symbolic amendments to a bill that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline. They are designed to put senators on the record on whether climate change is real and human-caused.
It is just there to steal money.
More proof that this debate is political and not scientific.
Passing a law that says it is real is like voting on the sex of a chicken. No matter the outcome of the vote, only testing can provide the answer.
How about we get politics out of science and rely on the scientific method to determine if "Global Warming" is real or not.
We just are not sure of what cause any change, other than the Sun and volcanoes.
I wish the vote were worded "Is the denial of climate change a hoax?"
Evolution is a hoax too.
After they vote we'll never have to discuss this again! Huzzah!!
The place where facts are determined by opinion.
Let's vote the world flat.
It would make map printing easier and do away with time-zones.
Table-ized A.I.
So money decides whether there is global warming. That's genius!
Vote on the value of acceleration in Earth's gravity field? The speed of light?
The value of pi????
Mostly random stuff.
This is the type of thing you actually have to research and prove one way or the other.
Twinstiq, game news
So when will the senate vote on whether relativity is real or a hoax? Since when does voting have anything to do with confirming a scientific THEORY?
NASA seems to think that climate change is being caused by human activities and they back it up with a lot of references to studies on the matter. IMHO, we're never going to convince people to change their behaviors or give up their luxuries. If we want to make a difference we need to develop the technologies that make it more advantageous to adopt the renewable solution (like kick-ass cars and cheaper home energy).
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
...the debate is what causes it now, and what has caused it for the last 4.54 billion years. The only thing for sure is that there is more than one cause.
And we're now voting on whether to shut the barn door.
Declaring PI = 4.
I think that approximately everyone who is smart enough to get elected to the senate understands that climate does change. Past that point, you can say that "climate change" is as real as Saint Nick.
It's warmer today than it was 100,00 years ago, and it's colder today than it was 150,000 years ago. If that's what you mean by "climate change", we can all agree. San Francisco will not in fact by underwater by the year 2020. That meaning of "climate change" is a hoax, it's false. Recently, the Obama administration updated the dire predictions in some of their stuff from "by 2010" to "by 2050". Maybe the predictions will come true this time, but the search-and-replace nature of changing all references to "2010" to "2050" is a bit suspect. Some informed people think those claims are false, scare mongering, a hoax.
When I've pointed out some of the stuff that professors of climatology said in the 1990s, the environmentalists here on Slashdot have said "that guy is a wacko, he doesn't represent the mainstream of liberal thought on the issue". I'll take them at their word. So we all agree the UC climatologist's "science" was false/bogus/wrong. And we all agree that the climate has changed. Not really useful.
Climate change? Probably.
Human caused? That's a more tricky question, but we should assume it is just to be safe.
The pipeline? Isn't it safer than by rail? The issues would be wetlands, eminent domain, and such.
If we can simply use the vote to determine reality, why are we bothering to vote on climate change. I say we treat the senate gavel like a genie's lamp and vote on the realities of cancer, aliens, death, and god.
Anything regarding climate change that's posted to Facebook, I'm going to flag as FALSE, regardless of what it says!!!
Climate change (global warming?) skeptics admit that humans are affecting climate, but the real question is "how much are humans changing it?". And while asking that, we should also ask:
- Is the data used to measure climate accurate? (IPCC controversially says: "urban heat islands don't matter when measuring temperature")
- Is the climate actually warming? (satellite datasets say not for the last 18-25 years, terrestrial datasets say 14 years)
- If there is warming, how much of it is caused by CO2 rises? (not much, since warming has "paused" while CO2 levels increased)
- How accurate are the CO2-temperature feedback models? (not very, they have overestimated by 2-4x)
- How much of the CO2 rise is caused by humans?
- What is the cost/benefit of lowering CO2 now vs delaying 50/100 years when tech will be more advanced?
- If we are going to spend money lowering CO2, would that same money immediately benefit more people if spend on vaccines? cholera? malaria? aids? clean water? sanitation? literacy?
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
Saying whether or not climate change is real, is not real, or is unknown is not a statement for non-subject-matter experts to make until/unless there is enough evidence that it is clearly real or clearly not real to the layman. If either one were the case, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
In other words, every Senator who isn't either a subject-matter expert or an arrogant person and who doesn't want people to think he is in one of those two groups must abstain if this comes to a vote.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"That's not how that works.
That's not how any of this works."
Your great-great-great grandchildren will curse your name, if they could only remember it.
The freaking data already proves climate change is happening. Parts of Miami that aren't usually under water are now under water a lot. The US seems to be the only government where "la la la, I can't hear youuu!" actually decides policy for the whole country...
How about we vote on whether or not Congress is a hoax?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
State law has determined that pi is exactly 3.
Maybe the next thing they should vote on is
"Are there hats?"
The next time you get to vote on if your senator is a hoax...
The article linked says the bill implied Pi should be 3.2...
So you really want to bring that up in the context of a bill that claims humans cause substantial warming? Or that the warming we see is anything to be concerned about?
Observable reality is what it is, no matter how much a law rounds or chastises.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The scientific method is for experiments. If you wanted to use it to see if global warming was real, you would make a forecast like "The world will get hotter than it's ever been.", and see if it comes true or not. It did come true. Last year was hotter than it has ever been, globally. Scientists were telling us that would happen for years.
It's time to stop denying. It's time to stop saying "they should use the scientific method" when you know full well they have. You know, that is, unless your head is in the ground or your preferred news network is putting it there.
Bruce Perens.
Next: US senate set to vote wether 2 + 2 = 4 or 5.
Climate Change is real, and it is factual. But you know what I say: "Burn baby burn!"
And no I'm, not joking. I don't have kids, and I don't love other people's children that much. I will be quite content to see full blown disaster and tell the children of the deniers: "See what mommy and daddy did for you? They destroyed the planet and hope for your children. So enjoy your nice warm weather!"
Because get this, I don't have any kids so I don't have to care. And as long as half the population doesn't care, I'm just gonna kick back a enjoy the party!
And yes, I have nieces and nephews, and I really want to say: "To you so!" to their parents in front of them.
So Burn baby Burn!
At the 43:25 minute mark, President Obama is supposed to say “I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what — I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.”
Instead, the entire section is skipped. Obama’s comments resume with “The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.”
Maybe their expectation is that the appeal to military authority will carry more weight than the appeal to a scientific one?
Well we know that there was different amounts of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere through out the history of the Earth. We also know that was a long period where the cellulose in plants could not be broken down by bacteria and ended up being sequestered for millions of years, until we dug it up recently.
No amount of waiting will cause carbon to be trapped in the ground, because bacteria and fungus act too quickly to release it. Looks like fossil fuel was a one time thing and decidedly not renewable.
If we think having Cambrian period atmosphere and weather patterns are acceptable, then we should continue doing what we're doing. It would impact the security of our nation, and be very detrimental to our economy. But anyone reading this would have died of old age by then, so who the fuck cares.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This type of thing is real or not regardless of whether humans say or think. Religious teachings, voting, research, and scientific proofs are generally have little effect on nature other than possible feedback via changes to human behavior.
None of those things need to match reality, although scientific evidence tends to support historically that scientific proofs as being better estimates of reality (now I just need to find the citation for that last claim...).
personally I believe that republicans don't like climate change because it doesn't fit in their neat little world view of libertarianism and markets. I think they are denying the problem until they can come up with a solution that involves some kind of subscription model or something. if you want decent weather you will need to pay for it. as soon as they figure out a way to make a profit from it, it will be the highest priority ever
These kinds of shenanigans being played over it do nothing to convince people and rather harden entrenched positions. If you want people to actually believe scientific facts because your goal is to help convince people to do what is necessary to save the planet, this is harmful to that effort. If this in service of some other goal with a higher priority than 'save the planet', I'd like to hear more about what that might be.
Also, patents on a circle squaring method are indeed inherently political. But it's a mathematical fact that circles cannot be squared due to the fact that pi is an irrational number and any proof to the contrary is flawed.
Are they voting on Climate Change? That is sooo stupid.
They should vote against gravity so we can have our hoverboards.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"At the beginning of the [Ordovician] period, around 485.4 ± 1.9 million years ago, the climate was very hot due to high levels of CO2, which gave a strong greenhouse effect. The marine waters are assumed to have been around 45C (113F), which restricted the diversification of complex multi-cellular organisms. But over time, the climate became cooler, and around 460 million years ago, the ocean temperatures became comparable to those of present day equatorial waters."
Stupidest thing... EVER.
... you know the rest of us, in the sane world, look upon this and think your gubbermint is batshit crazy, don't you? We'd laugh if they didn't have more guns, bombs, tanks, boats, and war planes than the rest of the world combined. They're going to sit back and do nothing as they watch millions of people get displaced and die of extreme weather events and starvation.
It isn't. It's about 30 K off. Plus due to [a] 1 atm being substantially below the cloud layer, and [b] most of the light being reflected, if this were correct it would make no sense.
Earth temp is 287-288 K, Venus is 336 K at 1 ATM and about .72 AU from the Sun. Do the math. Either Venus should be cooler, or Earth should be warmer, but either way the math doesn't work out. Plus, if you look at the temp/pressure profiles for Earth and Venus graphed on top of each other, they look nothing alike.
It's not coincidence. The relation that you're pointing out is flat-out false, and there's no way to support the general idea without throwing out a ton of empirical evidence. Like that most of the sunlight hitting Venus bounces off, which is why it looks so bright. If the only things in your delusion that affect planetary temperature are pressure and distance from the sun, you're going to have your work cut out for you because most of the Venusian atmosphere receives less energy from the Sun than the equivalent part of Earth's atmosphere.
Stay off the crack rocks and the denier websites.
The U.S. Senate, that is.
The scientific method is for experiments. If you wanted to use it to see if global warming was real, you would make a forecast like "The world will get hotter than it's ever been.", and see if it comes true or not. It did come true. Last year was hotter than it has ever been, globally. Scientists were telling us that would happen for years.
That would be so nice if we were that rational and educated. Americans are incredibly scientifically illiterate - many here on Slashdot.
But we're not.
Add in the FUD and propaganda from the energy industry who stand to lose quite bit - or so they think - if there is government policy to correct the issue.
And the people, easily swayed by shallow rhetoric, sound bites, and attachment to their own ideology jump on board to back policies (or lack thereof) that will end up hurting them.
When do we get to vote for best comedy show ever, I think congress just won.
I believe "they" refers to the politicians and assorted ignorami who've been largely going "I's currently cold outside, so much for global warming". Not so much the scientific community.
The satellite and terrestrial datasets say surface temperature has indeed paused for the last 14-26 years while CO2 has steadily risen. During that same period the aggregate global ocean heat content has risen, but a closer examination shows that rise has only occurred in the oceans of South-East Asia, no warming anywhere else on the globe. Wouldn't Stefan-Boltzmann warmup the surrounding oceans too?
However, the sensors used to measure ocean heat content are now known to be faulty, making their data suspect. Basically they are slowly leaking, which causes them to misreport their depth, which causes them to overstate heat content. NOAA says we adjusted for the leaking, and the warming is 0.02C. But the leaking in the sensors has lowered their accuracy to only +/-0.2C (10x the adjusted measurement!), so how reliability of the ocean heat data is suspect.
This is a a vote of no confidence in AWG prognostication. After all. AWG is a prediction of the future.
Their predictions over the last couple decades compared to empirical data are a joke.
NASA is 38% certain that 2014 was the warmest year on record. 38% on historical data! Oh the certainty of future predictions!
Looking at the evidence from Climate Gate, multiple drastic alterations to historical data, unreliable ground stations on hot tarmacs and near heat sources, and satellite data that shows no warming trend in the last 20 years in spite of increased CO2 levels... This is NOT equivalent to voting on whether 2+2=4.
If you simplify it to that you are either as fanatically certain of your beliefs as an ISIS executioner, or attempting a rhetorical solution to a problem that your science has failed to answer.
Prophecy are not equivalent to facts, no matter how strongly you believe in them.
I'm coming in late on this. First, the activities of man have released a lot of the sun's energy that has been stored for millions of year. So I agree that the gross heat load on the planet has been increased. Whether this overwhelms our planet's ability to dissipate that heat is open to question. Why is it open to question? Because, without numbers, it isn't science, just an opinion.
The Chicken Little people have been watching with alarm several trends over the years showing varying temperature. First, it's too cold; then, it's too hot. (And the butt of the old Henny Youngman joke: if the water turns black, the baby really needed a bath!) Attempts to model the short-term temperature shift have not accurately predicted what is going to happen in the future. Worse, the models don't accurately reflect the past, when applied to the data collected over the years. How to the CLPs explain this? WIth lame excuses, mostley, that reduce to "we don't know enough".
The research needs to continue. The people who build the models need to add to those models those sources of temperature variations that are just now being discovered, said discoveries having blown the older models out of the water. (pun intended) There are zero-dollar things we can do now to improve the situation. Plant trees, especially re-plant those trees that were clear-cut in the Amazon. Replace incandecant light bulbs (and those mercury-filled CFDs) with LED bulbs, not to save the climate, but to SAVE MONEY in the long term; I'm about 45% through this process myself.
I don't object per se to spending money on the problem. I object to spending money recklessly JUST for climate change, without some accurate way of measuring the effects of the changes. Reducing certain factory emissions results in less acid rain, which can have an adverse effect on buildings, roads, and other infrastructure. Containing the worst methane emissions from oil/gas operations makes perfect sense because we can then use the stuff -- but remember that the release from the Earth without man's help overwhelms our pitiful contribution.
The science is far from settled. If it's truely settled, show me the accurate models that predict, with precision, what we see on November 1, 2016
And when will they vote as to whether the Earth is flat or not? There is about a 100% chance they would get that as correct as their vote on climate change...
My point was that politics sometimes sometimes follow facts, often they don't, but that doesn't change the nature of the facts themselves.
Yes, totally agree.
Concluding "any facts politicians agree on must be wrong" is as stupid as suggesting the reverse.
Now there you lost me again. The link you provided was the very essence of that - PI as 3.2. I would claim that in general politicians are not scientists and you can say with 99% certainty that any bill such a group tries to pass related to science is going to range from wrong to horribly wrong.
Yes, in fact I would say ""any facts politicians agree on must be wrong", almost by definition!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The input of excess heat has not paused. Have you had a look at the heat content of the oceans lately?
They feel the same to me.
Similar to a state legislature deciding on an official value for pi. I wonder how many Senators took more than a few terms of basic science in pursuit of their law/business degrees?
Further imagine how much lobbyist money is going to be wasted if the vote goes the wrong way and an alternative result is needed? There are much bigger issues to be bought, talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
No. The real question is "does climate change fuck us over?" If the answer is "yes" then we need to do something about it whether we caused it or not!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
why don't ask politicians get together and repeal the law of gravity then jump from a high building. It makes as much sense as voting on whether global warming is a hoax.
Democrats have filed largely symbolic amendments to a bill that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
Apart from politicizing the truth, the Democrats are using this bill to do something the Republicans want. So Republicans will agree to build the pipeline and that climate change is real. It's difficult to believe the Republicans will value the environment and climate denial more than oil & gas corporations.
I like it but I'm still conflicted; I don't know why. We're definitely seeing the Democrats using PR in a 'long game' against the Republicans.
Like gay marriage, some things just can't be repressed! Go America!!!! No I'm not gay.
It's possible for the politicians to accidentally get something right once in a while. You can't automatically just take the opposite of what they come up with as fact.
I hope the Senate will take on Astronomy next. I'm sure more than a few Senators take umbrage with the idea that the universe is billions and billions of years old.
I really hate this argument, this drama. Global warming is measurable. It either exists, or it doesn't.
The real controversy is the cause of global warming. Honest scientists argue over this point. At best I can only be a spectator. I don't have any access to the raw data nor to the equipment required to reliably measure whether this cause or that cause directly contributed to global warming. If you don't either, and you have strong feelings one way or the other, I recognize and will respect your faith, and will not argue with you.
That said, I will stipulate that global warming is happening, AND that I am a contributor because; a) I drive an SUV and b) I eat too many beans (creating methane) IF you will stipulate that under no circumstance will one politician anywhere do anything whatsoever to resolve the problem. At best, all their hot air makes it worse.
Lou
This will accomplish exactly nothing and is every bit as stupid as Republicans repeatedly voting to repeal Obamacare while Reid ran the Senate. At least the Republicans are allowing amendments.
Don't worry! He only does that when doing so agrees with his own personal unsupported assumptions.
I guess they're getting desperate for an income stream other than nonstop war.
Well, it should not be. I know, I know, unfortunately it is more often than not, but at least it's not as blatantly stupid as this one. Usually there is at least a bit of relevant data to it.
In other words, it's not something you can wish to be or not to be. Whether global warming exists cannot be determined by wanting it to be one way or the other. You can of course vote on whether you want to do act like there is global warming or whether you want to act like there is none. Ok. That's possible.
But whether it exists certainly is beyond your jurisdiction.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just because the majority think something is true or false doesn't make it so. Voting will not change reality. Washington's royalty culture needs to die.
I agree, it's a symbolic measure, and not a good one at that. All any politician has to say is that 'the symbolic gesture was worthless, I was voting on the whole bill, and it was the best way to get the XL pipeline moving'. Just as they do any other bill.
I don't read AC A human right
How much will the hot air on the senate floor raise the average global temperature?
I strongly doubt Global Climate Change is driven by human activity, and even I think this is stupid.
-Styopa
Politicians have voted on science before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
While they are at it, I wish they'd vote to abolish winter!
They might as well be voting on whether the world is flat or not. This falls into the category of "not even wrong".
We already know how this is going to come out; the Republican House and Senate will scream "Hoax".
They will do this for a combination of ugly and stupid reasons. First, they are the party of greed. As long as the top 1% are raking it in they don't care who gets screwed. Second, they hate Obama personally, because he is an Uppity N*****. This is a way of telling him to go screw himself.
Finally, it's an expression of the one value that all Republicans agree on: Fuck You. This is the real motto of the Republican party. Being for something is not what motivates them, but being violently against something is what gets them off. They even love to do it to one another, which is why they sling the term RHINO around: Republican In Name Only. For them, it's a curse word.
If there is a scintilla of good to come from this, it's from the stain it will leave on the Republican party. When climate change effects start to really kick in over the next 20 years, they will be on record as being horribly wrong. Since climate change is going to be the defining issue of the 21st century, it will be hard to escape the shadow of this very high profile blunder.
Personally, I hope that not only the Republican party will be held accountable, but that the individuals who vote for this will suffer. When things get ugly, I want them to hounded and blamed in public, and have their lives ruined. It's all that they deserve, and it might serve as a lesson for the future that willful ignorance can have personal, as well as global, consequences.
Why is Snark Required?
... why don't we vote on the Heidelberg Catechism?
No matter what side you are on, this is stupid.
Global Climate Change is not a hoax. Whew, glad that's settled.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
Now look, I know many Americans have been hearing from elite liberal leftist Harvard professors in their ivory towers who keep saying that 15 is greater than 5. And, I have heard from many other experts in this field who are frankly quite skeptical that this is the case, that we're simply overlooking 5 and what a tremendously big number it is. So I don't think it's time to just cut off debate before the data is in, as if 15 is just greater than 5 so we should just get used to it whether we think it's right or just. It doesn't comport with the experiences of average hardworking Americans who deal with these numbers every day, who depend on them for their livelihood. So at the end of the day, I think it's obvious that the data is just not in yet. Now I'm not a mathematician. But one thing I do know, is that on the other side of the aisle, we have people who also are not mathematicians, but they see this as an opportunity for their agenda to shove a draconian arithmetic inequality down the throats of the American people!
Regardless of specifics of the actual objective results, anthropogenic climate change is a scientific question -- whether certain consequences of our actions are leading to a fairly specific set of changes to climate.
That politicians want to vote on it strikes me as a significant indicator as to their incompetence. As if we needed any more...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
First you "legislate" that pizza is a "vegetable", now you're going to vote on whether science is real?
You're insane down south. Absolutely, completely, 100% bonkers.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This assumes there's someone with enough money and power to fund and execute such a strategy by fiat
Would it take a company bigger than Fiat Chrysler (NYSE: FCAU, market cap 15.98B)? A company that makes petroleum-powered vehicles isn't going to like severe restrictions on petroleum use.
who isn't also part of a government.
Chrysler took a TARP loan. Does that make them "part of a government"?
A calculation has been made (and video included) detailing the additional energy our planet has received over the last 1000yrs based on math, not perceptions, or opinions. Have a look at the link: http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/996
Yes, "they" do hate America and Americans and they damn well should and nonsense like this is why. I'm so fucking ashamed to be an American.
Please get back to work.
vote on whether or not evolution is 'fact'
or smoking tobacco is carcinogenic
or whether or not geologic 'evidence' was placed by satan to tempt us into disbelief
that the united states is the 'greatest' country that has and will ever exist
we could go on all day
oh wait, we dont have to, we already decided that oil exploration needs to be heavily subsidized
and private companies are free to log on public lands
and just forget about those parts of the constitution
how about whether the us should be able to detain individuals and seize materials from those
'soverign nations' (snicker) without due process
this all stopped being plausible a long time ago
Science is just a process for knowing about the natural universe. It never gives us guidance on what we should do, it only tells us what is, and lets us predict what will be. What to do is always policy and politics. You can have a matter in which there is complete agreement on facts and theory, yet a disagreement on what we should do about it. While a solid scientific theory backed by good facts could tell us what is likely to happen if we take a certain action (or if we do not take an action) we then have to judge that result and how we value it. We have to look at the benefits and costs (everything has costs) and decide if we believe it is the best course of action, and on that point people may disagree.
That is, I think, a flaw many people make in talking about the AGW argument. They believe that since the facts (things like temperature and CO2 measurements) and the theory (the causal explanation of the relation of the facts) is solid in their estimation, that the course of action they believe should be taken is therefore scientific. That because there is a scientific theory at the core of what is happening, that means the conclusion they have reached is also scientific.
That's just not the case. Policy and politics aren't science. They can, and should, use science heavily to have good information as to the policy that is decided upon, but that policy is always a human construction, always a value judgement.
"I believe that the Earth is getting warmer, however I do not find sufficient evidence to show that this will be a net bad thing for humanity. Further I do not believe that the proposed measures are the wisest course of action, and we should be investigating alternatives such as geoengineering. In any case we should not act yet, as we do not have a solid enough model of what will happen and the net impact on humanity."
They can easily find a way to say "I support science, but think that this issue isn't clear cut."
Goes double if the people who are doing the vote try and make it a black and white issue. If they try to make it an issue where you either have to support everything they say, or you are an evil denier of all science, it'll be much easier for people to abstain and have a good argument.
I spent many years working with vector borne disease control, so I actually know something about this. Let me suggest a slightly different way of thinking about DDT.
The problem isn't DDT per se, but how, where and when it is applied.
In WW2 draftees were dusted with DDT powder to kill body lice, and so far as we know no adverse health results resulted -- probably because there were none. That's because this *application* is benign. Likewise spraying house interiors with DDT is a cost effective, safe, and environmentally benign.
Indiscriminate fogging with DDT on the other hand is neither environmentally benign, nor in the long term effective. DDT is (potentially) great stuff, and therein lies the problem. It promises (to a certain kind of mentality) to take the brain-work out of deciding when and where to spray. It's tempting to roll the trucks with ULV sprayers and spray anywhere and anytime, and it will often produce dramatic effects in the short term for not much money. In the long term it produces a host of environmental problems, and pesticide resistance -- particularly if it enters aquatic habitat. For one thing, it is toxic to invertebrates. **That's why we use the stuff**. The problem is that it is non-specific, and it (and its toxic by-products) remain in the environment for years or decades. Modern alternatives break down rapidly into non-toxic byproducts. In fact DDT's persistence is what makes it highly desirable for in-house spraying. One spraying can last for a year or more. That's good when you want to kill everything, for a long time; but that's not what you want to do when you're applying outside. Many invertebrates are beneficial, or even indispensable.
It's notable that in the article you link only quotes papers from the '69 to '72 era when it comes to the ecological impacts of DDT. This smacks of cherry-picking. When an idea like eggshell thinning enters the scientific discourse, it is normal for evidence for and against the idea to be found in the literature. This means it is *always* possible to find early literature citations which appear to refute the current scientific consensus. A quick google scholar search for articles on eggshell thinning and DDT from 1975 on shows overwhelming evidence in support of the hypothesis. For example it reveals the reason that the early feeding studies cited failed to find eggshell thinning: in many species it is not DDT, but DDE (a by product of the environmental breakdown of DDT) that is the culprit.
That DDT per se is not particularly toxic to humans is no news to anyone. I was actually briefly part of a team that looked at ways of tracking DDT usage so that it could be used in house spraying in Africa. The problem is that in desperately poor countries stuff gets stolen, and the danger is that material intended for safe and environmentally benign domestic spraying would be diverted to agricultural use which while not particularly threatening to human health would have disastrous impact on environmental health and the economic activities that depend on that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What I am presuming the GP is going for as an analogy is that there was a real Saint Nicholas, but that there is also a false legend surrounding the real man that is far grander and more common.
Not perhaps the best analogy.
From ABC: "The Republican-controlled Senate acknowledged Wednesday that climate change is real but refused to say humans are to blame."
Votes are in. Most agree to the fact of climate change. Whether it is significantly man-made or not is contentious.
Bill A: "It passed 98-1 and read simply that "Climate change is real and not a hoax.""
Bill B: "that said human beings contributed to the problem fell one vote short of the 60 needed for it to be adopted". I believe this one had the poison pill attached to it.
Bill C: "The Senate was divided, 50-49, on another measure from Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, that claimed human activities "significantly" altered the climate."
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
This is funny, the implication is that politicians know a lot about climate science. Ha!
Climate science is so much more complex than "warming" or "not warming". Anyone that wants to boil it down to only one variable really isn't trying to solve or understand anything.
I guess I could have been more clear.
There is someone real called "Saint Nick".
There is a mass of gross fiction also called "Saint Nick", originally inspired by the real Saint Nick.
There is something real called "global warming".
There is a mass of gross fiction also called "global warming", originally inspired by the real warming.
Asking someone if they believe in global warming is kind of like asking them if they believe in jolly old Saint Nick. Political opponents can spin either answer (yes or no) to sound ridiculous by associating the term with their choice of meaning.
Another example - did Saddam have a nuclear program, vote yes or no.
He didn't have a program that was a significant threat in the short or medium term. He did buy uranium, which he wanted to weaponize in some form. If you someone says he had a nuclear program, I can make that person sound stupid. If someone says he did not have a nuclear program I can make that person sound ridiculous too.
"U.S. Senate taking a vote on whether Denocrats all suck or not".
A reminder: sensible men and women have already voted on the merits of Congress.
As Gallup confirmed once more in its December 14 poll, Americans agree on at least one thing in our most divided land. We're led by idiots, chiselers, maniacs and fools:
Americans' job approval rating for Congress averaged 15% in 2014, close to the record-low yearly average of 14% found last year. The highest yearly average was measured in 2001, at 56%. Yearly averages haven't exceeded 20% in the past five years, as well as in six of the past seven years.
is 'government by the people, for the people'
so I can pollute all I want to as long as I publicly "advocate" for saving the planet, demand that OTHER PEOPLE do "the right thing" and find a way to get fabulously wealthy bilking gullible young lefties.
I begin to see why so many left wingers love Al Gore... it's typical left-wing ideology: "do as I say, NOT as I do (I wanna do whatever I wanna do, and you hate the planet if you criticize me!)"
Climate change (global warming?) skeptics admit that humans are affecting climate, but the real question is "how much are humans changing it?". And while asking that, we should also ask:
- Is the data used to measure climate accurate? (IPCC controversially says: "urban heat islands don't matter when measuring temperature")
No, the IPCC says we apply corrections for the UHI effect and the corrections have been scientifically validated.
- Is the climate actually warming? (satellite datasets say not for the last 18-25 years, terrestrial datasets say 14 years)
It takes a pretty narrow view to try and make that statement. Meanwhile the oceans continue to absorb more energy, sea level continues to rise and ice keeps melting, symptoms of a warming world.
- If there is warming, how much of it is caused by CO2 rises? (not much, since warming has "paused" while CO2 levels increased)
Which just shows that you don't understand the magnitude of natural variability is over 10 times the magnitude of the warming signal from CO2 and feedbacks. Eventually as the warming continues to rise it will overcome the vicissitudes of natural variability. The fact that 2014 is the warmest in the instrument record and it wasn't also an El Nino year indicates that's starting to happen.
- How accurate are the CO2-temperature feedback models? (not very, they have overestimated by 2-4x)
2-4 times is gross hyperbole. Temperatures are still within the uncertainty bands of climate model projections so it's impossible to say the models are wrong.
- How much of the CO2 rise is caused by humans?
Considering that the year to year increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is only about 45% of yearly output of human emissions the answer has to be 100%.
- What is the cost/benefit of lowering CO2 now vs delaying 50/100 years when tech will be more advanced?
If the possible bad effects of not reducing CO2 emissions are even moderately possible then risk management theory says it's far more costly to wait than to do something about it. Even now the cost of wind and solar power is starting to be competitive with existing electricity production so the cost really isn't that great. And the cost of renewables is still going down.
I think the politicians are not brave enough. Recognizing reality? Pffft....how about changing it [we were promised real change, remember?]...for how long this pesky Pie will bother us...no-one can remember this infinitely long rational number anyway?! I demand that the bill "New Pie" is passed ASAP!
Reference [see post office sorting engine]:
http://discworld.wikia.com/wik...
Writers have recognized this issue since long time...Artur C. Clark, for instance, also jokes via dr. Floyd who says to the Russian scientist in 2010 "If Congress has revoked the law of gravity, I'd heard about it!"
This is damn hilarious :-D Yes, it's scary as hell to have worlds number 1 super power leaders vote on something that either is or isn't and certainly doesn't give a damn about how they vote. But it's still funny as hell. It's like watching the roman empire crumble because the senators were lead poisoned and alcohol poisoned and corrupted beyond insanity. I can't believe they are actually voting on thing like that. Whats next? Vote if moon causes tides? Vote if gravity exists? Vote to call themselves the church? Because they sure seem like belief is a stronger thing for them than science?
"US senate has voted to outlaw DNA. Police has already shot several suspects know to be in posseession of it."
" - Is the data used to measure climate accurate? (IPCC controversially says: "urban heat islands don't matter when measuring temperature")"
Why would they matter? Inside of your owen doesn't matter either. Urban areas are tiny compared to the whole globe.
" - Is the climate actually warming? (satellite datasets say not for the last 18-25 years, terrestrial datasets say 14 years)"
The datasets I've seen say "yes, almost certainly"
" - If there is warming, how much of it is caused by CO2 rises? (not much, since warming has "paused" while CO2 levels increased)"
Now this where the science is currently. An my guess is will be for a long time. It's damn hard to actually test anything like this. There certainly are more things affecting it than CO2. So warming pausing while CO2 rises proves nothing.
" - How accurate are the CO2-temperature feedback models? (not very, they have overestimated by 2-4x)"
That sounds surprisingly accurate. And if they know they overestimated 2-4x they should be pretty accurate now.
" - How much of the CO2 rise is caused by humans?"
And what do you consider "caused by humans" ? Cutting down forrests (yes, we are doing that a lot) releases (or doean't, depend what you do with the wood CO2. Id that human caused?) Keeping the forrest from growing back and acting as a CO2 sink certainly keeps the CO2 in atmosphere. Some frozen tunda melting in Russia might top human produced CO2 easily.
"- What is the cost/benefit of lowering CO2 now vs delaying 50/100 years when tech will be more advanced?"
Hey, if you are aiming for 0 emission human society you might as well start early. On this scale "cost" doesn't really matter much.
" - If we are going to spend money lowering CO2, would that same money immediately benefit more people if spend on vaccines? cholera? malaria? aids? clean water? sanitation? literacy?"
If you use these kinds of arguments you should be for hiking taxes up to 95% and using the money for clean water, food, and medicine for poor parts of the world. It just doesn't work like that. I'm not sold on the idea global warming will be some armageddon scenario. People do very well when environment changes rapidly. Certainly way better than most species. Still, if you try to compare something done in short term (like sanitation for the poor) versus global things like temperature rise you are way off. Also doean't mean we should just keep on running to the wall when we know the wall might exist. There is no harm done in trying to direct industry (and peoples habits) to a less polluting direction. We already have shitloads of luxuries our species coudn't have dreamt of 1000 years ago. We certainly don't actually NEED any of those.
No. It was just a trap to make the people who voted against it look like complete idiots divorced from reality. Only one fell for it.
Well, we know the majority of GOP presidential candidates claim to be creationists, so this one is a no-brainer... It'd be hysterically funny if only we're not all sharing the same planet.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
vote was 99 to 1 that climate change occurs. The democrats forgot how to senate since they haven't done anything int he last 6 years.
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/01/98-1-u-s-senate-passes-amendment-saying-climate-change-real-not-hoax
Yes, I said it. Climate change is real. Climate is always changing. It is unavoidable, especially in a system with so many variables. There is a well-established record of climate change present in the geological record going back hundreds of millions of years.
Things we do also affect the system. There, I said it. Human activity has an effect on climate. That only makes sense. When you do stuff to a complex system, that system changes. When you alter inputs, the outputs change.
What is at issue is the magnitude of change in output from the change in input caused by human activity. Unfortunately, rather than approach this curiosity with reasoned science, it has become a political hot-button issue, which means the facts will never, EVER be found. Period. I doubt we even have the capacity to accurately model a more or less chaotic system with millions of variables.
All of that having been said, there are attitudes on both sides that are just unfathomably stupid. From the leftists who want to kill everyone but themselves and go back to living in caves, to the right-wing wackos who want to burn all the fossil fuel they can "because freedom," they are all a bunch of fucking idiots.
The rules here are pretty simple. Stop wasting shit, and stop multiplying like rabbits. The Earth has finite resources, and can therefore support only a finite amount of consumption. When we reproduce irresponsibly and consume all that we can possible consume just because we can, we're going to hit that limit a lot sooner.
I really wish the environmentalists would take a more conservationist approach rather than a purely biased political one. I am all about conservation, but I despise environmentalism, just like I despise hyper-consumptionism.
And as a disclaimer, my contributions to the conservation of world resources are: not having children, biking to work, and not having an oversized house filled with shit China told me I needed.
This is a political maneuver designed to embarrass the GOP. 98 senators have already affirmed this amendment which was tacked onto the XL pipeline bill. To be clear, the amendment has no real effect on the construction of the Keystone pipeline; it simply forces all senators and representatives to get on the record on climate change. The GOP is up against a wall on the Keystone pipeline -- even if this bill passes, it will be vetoed by the executive branch and the GOP probably does not have the votes to override the veto (hard to vote for something that contributes to global warming after you've acknowledged that global warming is real.) This amendment is the Democrats fucking with the Republicans, pure and simple.
You're standing on the train tracks.
There is a train coming.
It's about a mile down the tracks, so you've got a bit of time.
Your shoelace is untied.
Do you get off the tracks first, or tie your shoe?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Last year was hotter than it has ever been, globally.
I think that you really meant to say that the Earth was warmer last year than any other year in the last 100,000 years.
The earth was significantly warmer in the Paleogene period (23 to 66 million years ago) than it is now. See e.g. the article below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
Spending ~0.05% of the GDP is not "very detrimental", surely. Spending far more than that to mitigate the displaced communities, displaced farmland (yes, that is a thing), and the new and exciting pests and diseases sounds like a far worse deal to me (and to anyone else who actually could be bothered to read what the IPCC has been saying).
Does 2 + 2 really = 4?
No. The real question is "does climate change fuck us over?" If the answer is "yes" then we need to do something about it whether we caused it or not!
I would like to adjust it to "does climate fuck us over?". There are plenty of stable situations that plainly sucks.
A patient can be in a stable, but vegetative state. Ideally you want to change that.
What happens at the surface is important because that is where we live.
If the surface conditions change, we will not be able to live in the condition to which we have become accustomed.
Depending on where you are, this may mean a boon or bust for humanity.
Places accustomed to bumper crops may not support agriculture.
The desert or tundra may become fertile.
Except to say that things will change, your guess is as good as mine.
As a matter of planet energy balance, what happens on the surface seems a small part of the story.
There is much more energy in the atmosphere in warmed up and lifted stuff.
There is even more in the oceans in heated and cooled water and ice.
Here is even more in the chemistry of long dead things.
There is probably even more in the chemistry of things that never lived.
Of course, what happens with solar flux likely swamps all of the above by a great deal.
The proposed carbon limits are an attempt at nudging the last (captured solar flux) with the goal of lowering the first (surface temps.)
This is proposed with growing knowledge of the periphery of the system, but sketchy knowledge of the guts.
It seems likely that although growing, our knowledge of how this planet actually works will be sketchy for a long time.
The logic to this observer appears as follows:
We don't really know what to do, but prudence dictates we should at least stop doing bad stuff.
This is the time honored ecological agenda, which is independent of, but reinforced by climate change.
In order to preserve our ability to live in the state to which we have become accustomed,
we should drastically cut back on our use of petrochemicals.
Unfortunately, this in itself will limit our ability to live in the state to which we have become accustomed.
It seems to me that prudence dictates that we temper our actions by considering their consequences to our lifestyle.
This has always been the pain in the ecologist's butt.
And given our sketchy state of knowledge, the story seems the same with global cooling/warming/change.
So folks let's continue to figure out nicer ways to live in the state to which we are accustomed.
(And yes, PI can stay where math dictates.)
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
âoeIf present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry peopleâ
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASAâ(TM)s Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. âoeThe West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under waterâ , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was âoechief scientistâ for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
âoethe entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear.â (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Even if you accept that there is global warming/climate change, the real question they should be asking is whether the solutions being tried or proposed really solve the problem.
> but unless you can show how the scientists are wrong
Ok, no problem there. Let's have a look at what "scientists" from Princeton, UC Berkeley, and the UN have said, and see if they've been right or wrong.
It might help to keep in mind this information from Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry peopleÃ
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under water", Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Let's listen to what some subject matter experts have said.
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [then an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
> The actual science that actual scientist do. AGW is real, it's been measured and matches the predictions of the scientists. In fact, since scientists are conservative with data, their predictions
"Actual scientist" as in the guys from UC Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and NASA? Let's have a look at what they've been saying.
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [then an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
its an analogy. sorry for thinking so abstractly. dumping coal tailings in a river is a regional pollution problem. dumping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a global pollution problem. its called an cost externalizing. In the case of the river pollution there were multiple groups suing the polluters and litigation was becoming potentially very expensive. it was one of the causes of the federal government creating the clean water act. Regulation has been very effective at cleaning up the rivers. The poster I was responding to called it 'socialist authoritarian solutions'. I'm just saying that policy is effective sometimes. Its probably what will need to happed with polluting the atmosphere with co2 because private industry will not voluntarily address the problem.
There are so many financial interests at work here that any scientific urgency will sink in the muck of politics. When Gore refused to acknowledge any counter opinions, the debate failed. VCs saw $$ at a carbon trading exchange, and university doc candidates saw funding and tenure-track opportunities and forgot any sense of morals.
There may or may not be an urgent problem here. A rational person who is not a climate expert would find it impossible to sort this out.
Note to those trying to save the world. Focus on science, and forget about parties with Hollywood bimbos and rock stars. Once the Champaign in gone, so is your credibility.
Solving the question once and for all of the scientific validity of a very controversial topic: By voting on it!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Let them vote. Within 30 years, it will become apparent who was bought and paid for - and that stigma will be put front and center on all their historical Wikipedia entries.
They should really think about that.
... the Senate is set to vote that Pi is equal to 3.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
So the "ice age is coming" of the 1970s becomes "global warming" in the 1980s/90s and has now morphed into "climate change" because the warming stopped 14-18 years ago. "Climate Change" is so nice because they won't have to change their scam's name every time the climate does something they don't expect .... like CHANGE! For goodness sake climate is always changing. Urban heat island is proven and CO2 might have a 1 degree C change for each doubling.
A question for everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate. How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? 30? Never?
All 5 of the major datasets (RSS, UAH, HadCRUT4, GISS, NCDC) show no warming for between 14 and 18+ years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.
Here are 2 predictions. First I predict that CO2 will continue to increase because China and other countries don't care about CO2. They don't even care about real pollutants much less CO2. Second I predict it will get colder over the next 20-30 years. Why?
Dr Libby in the 1970s said that "looking forward it will stay cold until the mid 80s (it did), then it will warm by about 1/4 degree F until the end of the century it did), then it gets cold". When asked how cold she was predicting a 1-2 degree F drop with an outside chance of a 3-4 degree drop.
Dr Easterbrook in 2001 said the PDO was done it's positive warm cycle and that we were in for 25-30 years of cold weather. How cold? We have his good, bad and ugly predictions based on previous negative cold phases of the PDO.
Why do I join with them and side with their predictions? While past performance is not a guarantee of future correctness it is a lot better record than the IPCC and their dozens of models of which none have been accurate. They are all based on CO2 controlling the climate and the other 2 are all cyclical natural cycles. I'll go with those who have a good track record at predicting future climate. Dr Libby is the most impressive as her prediction is 30+ years going and still
accurate.
If you want to read a great explanation of why the IPCC models are broken beyond belief there was a great article describing that and all the other problems with climate science by Dr Brown of Duke university
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/
A long post, but not a lot of substance. I guess you really didn't think I would come back to read it. a pity really. So I will respond in kind, even though I believe you are likely to read the response.
I'm not here to convert you, nor is science a democracy where general consensus automatically makes something a fact. Science isn't about us all holding hands and singing happy songs together. It's about cold hard data and the interpretation of that data. As more data is added, and inaccurate data removed, we build up models of what we think is going on. Right now our models show ocean temps rising, and the data backs that up. That's fine, what is the cause? We probably don't agree on it. But the models that I view as better, better meaning works with more data than others, are showing that human contribution for releasing CO2 will push us well beyond norms that the human species has ever seen. CO2 that would have otherwise been trapped for a longer period and released slowly through the process of tectonic subduction, has been dumped into the atmosphere over the relatively short span a century.
But eventually we'll have to depose (possibly kill) all the climate denies out of self preservation. it's a very unfortunate situation we find ourselves in. And we're not likely to correct any of it until it gets very bad.
If AGW is the greatest threat ever it is the greatest externality imaginable.
Making Fossil Fuels, by definition, the most expensive power source ever invented.
Nuclear for the win.
Why does it matter wether climate change is real or not?
We're not going to do anything about it anyway.
I think climate change should be a religion, because it fullfills the same needs.
It let you feel a sense of purpose and that you can make a difference if you live by the right rules.
for a news source that presumably has a high percentage of technically minded and possibly even scientifically educated readers, I m astonished to see how any are commenting that they believe that global warming is a hoax. How illiterate can you be on this? Anyone who has fallen for this politically-intended line of nonsense should be included in this year's Darwin Awards (this includes any elected official who spouts such nonsense.) I choose the Darwin Award asan appropriate designation as this is "awarded" to people and groups that take actions (or fail to do so) that will assure thee demise of the genetics governing their obviously flawed thought processes. I shudder at what the rest of the world thinks of us when otherwise sensible people take such an extreme and I examined position on this critically important issue
US senate too vote on "evolution is a HOAX". Once your done on that maybe you can declare gravity a hoax and all have fun floating around in the USA, should improve tourism ;)
I mentioned strawmen and you came up with the "but they all thought there was global cooling" bullshit? Can't you recognize crap put in by clueless journalists looking for "balance" so they can "sex up" the issue and pretend there is conflict?
You are so full of shit that it's leaking out.
so let's put it to the vote! Fucking yay democracy! :D
Fuck. Me.
NOT environmentalists.
And you swap and change which environmentalists you are claiming to be the entirety of environmentalists for every single one of your statements.
I.e. you're making up a list of hate so you can JUSTIFY your hate of environmentalists.
The problem isn't the environmentalists, it's yourself.
We ought to know how to ask this, because even a cursory exam indicates that a large part of global warming is due to natural causes. Is anyone asking how much the proportion of the causes is, instead of applying the usual Budget Committee thinking? Such an approach might save a lot of money and have maximum results.