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Scientists Urge American Geophysical Union To Cut Ties With Exxon (insideclimatenews.org)
mdsolar writes: More than 100 geoscientists are calling on the American Geophysical Union to drop ExxonMobil as a sponsor of its annual earth science conference in response to the company's years of spreading climate denial views. The call appeared in an open letter posted Monday morning on a science website called The Natural History Museum. The oil giant Exxon has a history of funding organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation and try to thwart policies that address climate change (in direct conflict with the earth science association's mission and funding policies), the scientists said in their letter to Margaret Leinen, president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). "AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action," the letter said. "But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU's institutional social license to help legitimize the company's climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of its own members," it added.
As I understood it, although they gave millions to groups trying to cast doubt on climate science in the 1990s and early 2000s, Exxon had stopped funding such political groups in 2008 (although they still contribute to political campaigns of congressmen who are opposed to climate science.)
It might be more worthwhile to be outraged about the fossil fuel companies who are still funding them.
There's no better way to promote science than call someone names and basically tell them to STFU?
How is that different from calling ExxonMobil "heretics"?
What makes me really sad is the way that everyone working for billion dollar oil company PR departments has lost their jobs for letting a bunch of science nerd spread the global warming lie without any opposition... Oh wait.
It's not like Exxon is trying to stifle the American Geophysical Union by sponsoring their event.
The geoscientists are really making themselves look bad by doing this.
Let's see...Exxon supports (i.e. generously sponsors) the AGU which is pro warming-cooling climate change. And Exxon supports others who are con warming-cooling climate. Seems like they support both sides, a.k.a. neutral. But I guess the real problem is that the AGU wishes to promote the "deniers are evil" mantra rather than actual free speech, free science, dogma science, etc. Personally, I find the idea of "settled science" ludicrous. And, FWIW, I'm a real scientist with genuine credentials to back that up (PhD physics from Tier 1 university).
Same mentality. Disagree with someone? Do whatever you can to suppress their speech.
Freeman Dyson doesn't believe human activity is causing global climate change, nor does he believe a changing climate is necessarily harmful. Historically, warmer times have been better times.
"Generally speaking, I'm much more of a conformist, but it happens I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong, and you have to make sure if the majority is saying something that they're not talking nonsense." - Freeman Dyson.
If Freeman Dyson says your maths are rubbish -- They are.
They are not offsetting other scientists. They are offsetting corporate PR. You think Exxon lets their scientists talk openly about science to the media? Pleez
At some point, you have to look at the motivations that each party has for their "speech." ExxonMobil has a huge vested interest in downplaying the role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.
Suppressing their speech? When they have billions at their disposal to continue lying to the public? That's a laugh.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
ExxonMobil also has a huge vested interest in refuting any false role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.
The disagreement can only be on whether the premise, that fossil fuels are in fact accelerating climate change, is correct. If no, shame on the majority fo scientists that have been convinced in error.
And the raw data is not at all convincing to me any more. Feel free to continue to toe the party line and claim it is not so, but a cursory examination of the media shows that several climate change groups both admit to and defend manipulating the data to prove their points.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
ExxonMobile has rights. Stop trying to lock them out.
Exxon, BP, Shell et. al. will be more than happy to supply whatever energy they can at a substantial markup. The law of supply and demand overrides flakey global climate studies that will never reach an agreement to truly reduce GHG emissions not just say you're going to reduce them. Besides the current middle eastern political climate says drill baby drill making all renewable energy damn expensive.
In the meantime the climate scientists can still work on the models, the funding grants and burning all that computer time, flying to conferences and generally trying to suppress any question of their little world.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Exxon studied the science, found it to be persuasive, even raising rigs to adapt to sea level rise, but lied about the science to the public for years. http://insideclimatenews.org/c...
You're making my head spin. First, you think the GP is serious. I think he's trolling. I think he actually agrees with you. People don't think this should be a crime, and titles like "The Science is Settled" are mostly used by people who don't think global warming is real to mock the mainstream.
Second, even if you're right, then that doesn't mean you don't need further research. Concluding that X is happening doesn't tell you about the rate of X and the effectiveness of various measures to fight X.
Third, if it doesn't mean further research is needed, there's no particular reason for a random AC to disagree.
Fourth, the scientists themselves are saying they can do pretty well without exxon monies right here, right now. Why are you acting like it's a "gotcha" to say the scientists can do without the exxon monies.
Fifth, your last paragraph makes no sense. You seem to be asking leading questions but it's not clear where you're leading people to.
I saw someone wearing a button that said "Informed Denier \n I love nature". Asked her about it and she said she was informed enough to know that climate change wasn't real. Sorry I didn't have more time to talk to her.
There are a lot of people that I like to talk to one-on-one. Among them are climate change deniers, flat earthers, young earthers, trump/cruz supporters, and general conspiracy theorists. They are an entertaining bunch, you can give them facts and empirical data, and they find some way to ignore it or redirect as opposed to disputing the facts. It's become fascinating.
I think it is well established the Exxon is not "neutral" in any sense of the word on climate change. They directly fund deniers and have been doing this for years. Their financial interest is in continuing to burn more fossil fuels.
As opposed to, say, nation-states, whose incentive is to use a catastrophe-scare to vastly increase their control over businesses and populations (and have spent tens - maybe hundreds - of billions on "climate research"), or politically-connected financial types (such as Al Gore) whose incentive is to create an artificial, rent-seeking, gate-keeping, market in "carbon credits" to skim billions off the energy market.
Seems to me that there ARE no "neutral" funding sources. In order to avoid an appearance (if not an actuality) of bias, the AGU may need to accept funding from all "sides" of the issue. To refuse "tainted" money from an interested party is to publicly sign on with its opposition.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Beside being non-repeatable and without any control sample, weather/climate is incredibly complicated and
has things in it that still defy analysis/prediction.
I sincerely doubt that the science is settled.
Especially if there is a 'burn the heretic' movement. Those movements are usually/historically wrong (beyond random chance).
So the Sahara was a grassland 3000 years ago... Where was Exxon then? Automobiles? Overpopulation?
So there was a mini ice age during the Renaissance. What caused that? Volcanos? Burning wood/coal? Comets?
Sunspots are quiet right now... Where does that lead? What will that cause?
Whatever happened to the 'Nuclear Winter' theory? Can Dust cause that? Or excessive humidity ( from agw...) making clouds?
No, that volume of the voices of believing few are being amplified by lawyers, the Federal Government, and media to an ear-hurting amplitude.
Pity, we almost have a golden age of knowlege and technological development that could last.
I suppose that being an academic society, the AGU should uphold certain level of scholar independence, and there should be clear isolation between sponsorship and academic decision-making (granting of research funds, etc.). The latter kind of matter should be decided by independent, scholarly competent members rather than the sponsors or their clientele.
In other words, it is expected that conflicts of interest exist, and the society should function in the presence of such.
By rejecting a particular sponsor, the society is signalling that the conflict of interest is beyond manageable. Therefore, it is admitting its own incompetence. Or it could be a sign of the members thinking that particular industrial sponsor is inherently in conflict with their academic freedom, but this is false dichotomy, and this mode of thinking is itself a sign of weak integrity -- they do not deem themselves integral enough, so they resort to burying the heads in sand anyway.
At best, the theory of global warming is a tray brownies taken from the oven with some matter on the the toothpick. Ie. un-done science. It is perpetuated by University PhDs looking to continue their cozy grants awarded by whatever political system that feeds them. My view: until proven otherwise: Global Warming is just Al Gore and global politicians trying to rape decent people for some more tax dollars, and PhDs trying to stay university employed despite science fact.
At some point you need to learn how to reason for yourself.
The oil giant Exxon has a history of funding organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation
Boo!
try to thwart policies that address climate change
I thought you just said Exxon was *funding* organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation, not *fighting* them.
After all, the real misinformation would be continuing to spread the lie that CO2 will have a significant impact on temperature increase, or in any way hasten the inevitable ice age that could come back any moment.
Perhaps just a misspelling in the summary?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Same mentality. Disagree with someone? Do whatever you can to suppress their speech.
Except it's the opposite: this is more like Disagree with someone? Stop taking their money.
Do keep in mind that the groups Exxon had been funding weren't doing climate science-- those groups, as it turns out, actually were agreeing with the consensus on global warming (until Exxon stopped funding them). The groups the geoscientists are complaining about Exxon spending a hundred million dollars to support were ones that were making political points by calling climate scientists "frauds", saying climate science is a "scam", the conclusions were "a hoax," and climate scientists "need to be sent to prison."
"Stop accepting money from an organization that pays people to denigrate your work" seems like a reasonable decision to me.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Go ahead and show us better data. I'm sure Exxon can fund the search. After all, they have a huge vested interested in refuting the data you claim is bad.
Feel free to compile your data, get it peer reviewed and published. I am sure your findings must be irrefutable.
Do I even need /s?
Hundreds of billions spent on climate research?
ROTFL
Only the fossil fuel industry (and their lackeys and various other paranoid conspiracy nutcases) deny climate change.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The level of scientific thought on this site is so bad. If someone says, "You have bad data," you don't counter them by saying, "then go get better data." Your only answers are A) show that the data in fact is good, or B) say, "the data is bad, this is an area we lack clarity."
You're sort of forgetting all of the others.
Like the ones back in the 1990s that claimed it was ALREADY happening. Every time we had a big storm, it was global warming!
And no, it wasn't the fringe warmists who said that, either. It was a major theme by everyone who supported the theory. James Hansen (one of the leading lights in the field) was telling people that there would be massively increased storms of all sorts in twenty years - in 1989. Which would make that 2009 prediction false in a very dramatic way. He also said that sea levels would be meters higher by now, instead of centimeters.
Even as recent as 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme said that all of the dire predictions were "imminent," and we'd have 50 million "climate refugees" by 2010. So far, according to the most generous counting, it's about 100. If you count the island off south Louisiana that got munched by a hurricane. If you go by actual refugee counts, it's negative (population increases in just about all of the potential "climate refugee" countries, to the order of a few hundred thousand).
Up until the last couple of years, all of the "increased tropical storm frequency and intensity" predictions were for shorter terms - a few years to a decade. Now that we know that never happened, they had to move the predictions out past a human lifetime so they can stop being wrong quite so often.
This is one of the more strange interpretations of freeze peach I've heard recently.
A groupt of people saying that the AGU should cut ties with Exxon is apparently bad because it infringes Exxon's free speech?
Da fuq?
Free speech is not "say whatever the hell you want and no one's allowed to criticise you".
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A) http://berkeleyearth.org/ Your turn.
When I learned laboratory work, one of the most important tasks was the "discussion of methods" in each protocol for each experiment, where you had to look at each measurement and give a list of reasons why this measurement could have been the way it was, and then determine the most likely explanations and add an error margin to the measurements to express possible bias and measurement errors.
And when climate scientists do this, suddenly it's a crime to you? Or are you just ignoring the "discussion of methods" chapter because "they do it willfully to prove their point" is an explanation that better fits your bias?
Yep.
Global warming is a long term effect, and any solution will be a long-term solution.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Do keep in mind that the groups Exxon had been funding weren't doing climate science
That is not entirely true. For instance, Exxon funds the American Geophysical Union, whose members do legitimate climate science.
Please explain what you mean with "manipulating" data. We all know that every method of measurement has a systematic bias. And we have to deal with that fact, and we do it by trying to determine the systematical bias and subtract it from the data. If that's "manipulating data" to you, then please elaborate a better way to deal with it.
A practical example is the shift from mercury thermometers that were read by hand at certain times in the day to electronic thermometers that were logged continuously. The change in thermometers and measuring moments resulted in a sudden small jump in the temperature record. Climate scientists identify these sudden jumps, and add an adjustment to compensate for them. To some people that may sound like "manipulation", but in reality it's error reduction. The original raw data, all the changes, as well as the methods used to identify the jumps are all documented, by the way. Another example is the measurement of sea surface temperatures. That used to be done by sailors lowering a bucket in the sea, pulling it back up, sticking a thermometer in the water, and writing down the temperature. Nowadays, there's a continuous electronic measurement of the temperature of water inlets in the ship's hull. The new method is more accurate, but has a clearly visible offset compared to the old method.
I'm invoking Godwin. You lose.
As someone that goes through the protocols you go through, you should realize the implications of just "adjusting the data" when you find that your measuring tools were flawed or miscalibrated.
I mean... can you even imagine? It's insane that you're defending it!
"We found out that strawberry jelly got into our spectrometer halfway through our measurements. Instead of going back and re-measuring everything, we just adjusted that half of our results for the strawberry jelly! Now please notice the trends that we see...." -- you'd be ridden out of the lab on a rail! You'd be thrown out a window! And to think that they use this faulty, rejiggered data to try and control the governments of the planet? Fuck. That.
Bad Data + Bullshit != Good Data. Even if that Bullshit was meant to be corrective.
SJW: Someone disagrees with us! Ostracize them! Ostracize them!
Scientist: But they're giving us money that helps us do valuable research that even disagrees with their purported stance!
SJW: Fuck that! You don't need their money! Ostracize them! Ostracize them!
Scientist: Uh. Fuck off. My research position doesn't pay THAT well! Those grants are the difference between me doing real research and me starving and having to go out and drive for Uber!
SJW: Real science doesn't require money! Ostracize them! Ostracize them!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I think the oil companies should get together and only sell oil and gas to people who believe that AGW is an unproven theory. If you are a true believer, you shouldn't be putting gasoline in an internal combustion engine. You get to walk, bicycle, ride a horse, etc. No electric cars unless you can prove that no hydrocarbons were used to move those electrons. Maybe the Amish would sell you a buggy.
Do keep in mind that the groups Exxon had been funding weren't doing climate science
That is not entirely true. For instance, Exxon funds the American Geophysical Union, whose members do legitimate climate science.
The AGU is a professional organization, not a research organization. The funds they collect (including those from Exxon) are used to manage publications, conferences, and other services for their members. They're not used to fund research.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Instead of going back and re-measuring everything,
Excellent idea! We'll simply go back to 1880 and start re-measuring everything. You're a genius!
That's the sad thing about science now: it's getting too political. What happened to the idea that all that matters is the data and what you can prove? Do you need 'clean' funding to prove things?
The scientific method does not require that you believe in it, only that you execute it properly. Two people who do the same experiments with proper controls get the same results, no matter what they may or may not believe.
Sadly, it's people in the end who form trust along tribal boundaries, rather than according to the data, which only some people are even able to interpret.
That's how much was spent in 2014 by the feds.
That's a lot of vest interest in showing that AGW is real and needs more research dollars.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"And the raw data is not at all convincing to me any more. Feel free to continue to toe the party line and claim it is not so, but a cursory examination of the media shows that several climate change groups both admit to and defend manipulating the data to prove their points."
Um, "raw" data is just that: raw data with all the known problems still in there. That may include mundane but important things like changes in instrumentation and collection procedures over more than a century, trends and effects that aren't at the scale you are examining (e.g., seasonal effects you want to average out or one-time events like major volcanic eruptions). The "raw" data would simply be bogus data if you didn't correct for known issues that apply to the question being investigated. That doesn't mean manipulating the data in such a way is somehow suspect. It means if you have independent calibration points you *use* those calibration points. If you know an instrument works differently, you incorporate how the instrument works into the measurement. As long as the ways in which the data has been prepared to correct for such issues are available for scrutiny too, then it is a sign of rigour and care with the data, not sloppiness. Nobody takes the raw data and interprets that exactly as it is. Not with real-world data going back a century or more.
"Free speech is not "say whatever the hell you want and no one's allowed to criticise you"."
You've skipped over about five years of history. These days free speech, like religious freedom, means whatever the speaker wants it to mean.
If you have multiple parallel spectrometers that were not affected by strawberry jelly at the time, then maybe you could use that to determine the effect of the presence or absence of strawberry jelly on the instrument in question and potentially use that to correct the results. Or maybe you'd determine that there is no reliable way to resurrect the data from the jellied situation, so you filter out all such measurements, leaving only the non-jellied instruments. Or is that "manipulation", and you should leave all the "raw" data there whether "jellied" or not?
I'm not sure what you think we're supposed to do. In your imaginary scenario, just give up on everything the moment we suspect there's any strawberry jelly anywhere in the world and ditch all spectrometer measurements in existence because of the slightest possibility of jelly contamination? Or what?
Yeah, there are problems if things are flawed or miscalibrated. That doesn't ALWAYS mean that no data is recoverable upon careful study of the problem. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but you have to sort those out rather than abandoning all hope of getting something useful the moment something isn't perfect. This is especially the case with historical data where the option of re-collecting does not exist.
Not only them. There are several flavors of denial. The fossil fuel industry is one, motivated by money, but it's not the only one. There are also those who deny it out of political ideology - dedicated libertarians who refuse to accept it because if climate change were a real concern then there would be no option but to impose strict government regulation to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Such an act would be in direct violation with libertarian ideals, and therefore climate change cannot be accepted as a real concern. There are also the culture-war types, who reject climate change concern because it is a 'liberal thing' - American politics is very much a team sport, and if one side takes a position the other is pressured to oppose them.
Climate change is a political quagmire and the concept was probably introduced by the oil companies to divert attention away from what the real issue is - pollution. Burning fossil fuels for energy has a devastating effect on the environment whether is causes climate change on not and our use and dependency on fossil fuels needs to be reduced significantly. The fight needs to be about pollution something everyone can understand something measurable and something tangible, not some intellectual battle that the average Trump voter cannot comprehend.
Is Exxon supporting systemd?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Free speech is not "say whatever the hell you want and no one's allowed to criticise you".
Tell that to the Social Injustice Enthusiasts :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Nice way to shut down debate. It is a FACT that the Koch brothers come from a Nazi sympathizing background; their nanny returned to Germany in 1940 after the WWII started. That their father would hire such a person speaks volumes as to his ideological position. Most children, after going through a rebellious phase usually adopt the ideology of their parents. It is a fact that they have almost single handedly changed the political climate in the US over the last two decades. The Koch brothers' father was a founding member of the John Birch Society, an organization so right wing that they considered Dwight D. Eisenhower a commie.
And yet your only comeback is "Godwin"? Really?
Use any examples here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
I know you hate that site, so dispute it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm not paid to post by anybody. Stick your Leftist 'everybody who disagrees with me is a fascist' crap. Trotting out the common straw men such as the Koch brothers is telling - Sonos and Buffet make contributions that dwarf those..
Have you read anything but your treasured theses on the bad bad right for the past two decades?
Oh, yes, I read on the Left.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
ExxonMobil also has a huge vested interest in refuting any TRUE role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.
Simple conflict of interest. Any claims about climate change must be verified by objective 3rd parties outside of ExxonMobil's influence. End of story.
Consensus of the scientific community is pretty clear. Weather you are convinced is completely irrelevant.
Besides, everyone is missing the point here. ExxonMobil supports the science and profession of geology because they depend heavily on geologists to find oil. Which is, you know, in the ground. Simple self-interest. (Well, that and there's probably a bit of fellowship/fraternity aspect since ExxonMobile likely employs a lot of geologists)
This is about convincing geologists that working for ExxonMobil or being affiliated with them is unethical.
Burn the candle at both ends, give it a little twirl, and the awestruck rubes think you're a wizard.
Slashdot reader doesn't read the title. Ostrichize him.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Next.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
ExxonMobil also has a huge vested interest in refuting any false role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.
The disagreement can only be on whether the premise, that fossil fuels are in fact accelerating climate change, is correct. If no, shame on the majority fo scientists that have been convinced in error.
Exxon first heard about the issue from their own scientists nearly 40 years ago in 1977:
Since then the science has only strengthened and no one has come up with anything that explains the accelerated warming better than carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
How is this suppressing anyone's speech? Seriously? This is mostly saying "if someone is spouting junk science, don't feature them in a science conference". Folks would be just as unhappy if flat-earth folks wanted to sponser the conference, and for the same good reasons.
If you think Watts Up With That is a reliable source, that might be the source of your misunderstanding of, well, everything related to climate science.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Exxon denies there is a climate?
It is precisely that attitude towards others that will drive people to vote for Trump even more. Your inability to empathize with other people's concerns and rationales for voting Trump is what is causing this mess.
I would further posit that your understanding of the "facts" is probably not as sharp as you may think it is if you have such an attitude for political candidates.
Are you taking it on faith that not only are old temperature measurements wrong, they are wrong in the way that would support your point of view?
"We found out that strawberry jelly got into our spectrometer halfway through our measurements. Instead of going back and re-measuring everything, we just adjusted that half of our results for the strawberry jelly! Now please notice the trends that we see...."
You are aware that *any* measure instrument is also "strawberry jelly" in the way of the reality to be measured and the scientist that collects the data, right?
So, what's the problem to accept the jellied spectrometer measures *as long as* we know how they relate to the unjellied ones? Even more: as a matter of gedanskeperiment, how do you know that the case is not that all spectrometers come jellied from the shop?
The old temperature measurement methods are not wrong, they are just different than current methods. You don't think scientists should be doing anything to reconcile the differences between different measurement techniques?
writings of a brilliant scientist looking for ammo for an online argument.
Freeman Dyson, quoted a sentence at a time, is a bit like the Bible quoted an isolated verse at a time - it provides lots of opportunity for deceit and deception. Mr Dyson has generally agreed that there is such a thing as global warming and that, given that people exist and therefore have an impact no matter what they do, people are a contributing factor. He has, however, also applied his mathematical and reasoning skills and pointed out how dumb it is to be overly concerned and to be urging many of the policy prescriptions that are being offered under the banner of "science". He has further expressed some serious and well considered arguments about all the climate modelling and the predictions produced from that modelling, which is far from ill-informed given his close connections to some of the guys who started the whole field of study and his familiarity with their climate modelling work. He has also provided some great arguments, backed-up with math (handy given that numbers generally trump opinions and arm-waving), for simple and smarter ways to deal with any negative effects than the hyper-expensive and destructive faux-solutions pushed by the climate activists. Dyson's positions on AGW are more nuanced, as is generally true of honest wise old scientists, than partisans on either side of the political arguments might prefer.
It's pretty funny to see armchair would-be scientists denouncing this amazing scientist based on their politics, and their crackpot notion that he has "the wrong degree" to be commenting on AGW - particularly when their hero, Dr. Hansen has the same "wrong degree" and also lacks any PhD in "climate science".
100 out of 25000 plus is a very small number.
Too bad Mrs. Hansen, Mann and Oreskes.
Looks like the Hockey Puck slap-shot from Mr. Mann, hit Mr. Hansen in the teeth, then ricochet into the "Woman Part" of Oreskes.
Ha ha
Sadly, whether random people are convinced *is* relevant. So long as they can convince enough people, especially those in power, that nothing should be done, they continue to rake in the profits, while sticking the rest of us with paying for the consequences when things start coming apart.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Research scientists at Exxon published seminal work on sea level change in AAPG Memoir 26 in 1977. Made quite a splash.
Sea level has been rising and falling for most of the earth's history. There are extensive charts showing this which hang in the halls of every oil company. There are multiple cycles with periods varying from 100's of millions of years to 10's of thousands of years. There are many causes including changes in the size of the ocean basins and climate changes. The rates of rise and fall vary widely and constantly as do the limits. There is no single factor which controls the climate. Most climate data starts at the end of the most recent cooling period caused in large part by some large volcanic eruptions that put lots of dust in the atmosphere.
Strangely while most people seem to know that there were glaciers Iowa, they don't seem to grasp that the reason that there are no glaciers in Iowa now is that it's been getting warmer for the last 15,000 years. Before that it got colder and before that it got warmer. The last interglacial period was ~110,000 years ago and at that time the earth was about 1-2 C warmer than now according to the last work I read.
I'm a retired geoscientist. I don't know any reputable geoscientists that think that human activity is a major factor in climate change. The really big climate changes took place when human beings didn't exist at all. The earth is more than 60 million human lifetimes old. That's also several million times longer than human beings have existed.
The people who signed the letter to the AGU will look rather foolish to the rest of the membership which is predominately academic geoscientists. The claimed "consensus" is just the scientific equivalent of the Lenin's claim of being a bolshevik. The communists were actually the minority, not the majority.
My MS supervisor had a poster showing the earth from space with a quote from Will and Ariel Durrant's "History of Civilization" hanging on his office wall. "Human beings live upon the earth by geological consent, subject to revocation without notice." The earth is not a static place. Millions have species came before us and disappeared and millions more will come after we are long gone.
Strangely while most people seem to know that there were glaciers Iowa, they don't seem to grasp that the reason that there are no glaciers in Iowa now is that it's been getting warmer for the last 15,000 years.
Actually the warming for the current interglacial reached a peak around 6,000-8,000 years ago and had been slowly cooling since then until the sharp spike upwards lately.
And I thought you was going to show us the temperature reading from a rectal thermometer in your ass. It would have provided more reliable data than wattsup.
Wow you MRA types sure know how to find SJWs everywhere you look.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
It's Exxon's conflict of interest which is the most grating thing, a point you have gone through great effort to entirely miss. Plus their track record of purposefully distorting scientific findings and reporting. But no, I guess you comparing actual decent research funding to this duplicitous nonsense is entirely accurate! Derp.
Pathetic. I'd expect nothing less from you. Or is arguing against non-existent "SJWs" more important than discussing the facts of the matter?
So they're 'denying' there is a climate?
Oh, you mean to associate them with 'holocaust deniers', right?
Do you mean 'catastrophic man-made global warming' when you say 'climate change'? Why didn't you say so? Because 'climate change' means ANYTHING you like, not necessarily warming, and you know it. Yet every single time the phrase 'climate change' is used, it's intended to mean 'catastrophic man-made global warming'. I wonder why they stopped using the phrase 'global warming'. Any ideas?
I have:
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
Why do you keep saying "climate" scientists, when you mean "catastrophic man-made global warming" scientists?
> you shouldn't be putting gasoline in an internal combustion engine
Europe and Japan have been building lot of high-speed passenger railways for decades, so that cars and airliners are less needed. Did you know jet fuel is just a fancy kind of diesel oil and extremely harmful at that, because it's soot is spewn directly into the tropo-sphere at circa 10km / 35-40k feet altitude, hurting the ozone layer like crazy?
Trains can be powered via the catenary, using hydro-electric, nuclear, solar, wind or sustainable-forestry fueled powerplants. Even when burning diesel or heavy oil in a centralized powerplant to run trains via high-voltage AC, it is 2x as efficient as burning fuel on-board diesel locomotives. In this regard, USA plays the role of those three monkeys...
(Even in the early 1930s, electric locomotives powered by centralized thermo-electric powerplants saved over 70% of coal burned, compared to steam engine traction. In steam era it was not unusual that at the beginning of the journey, the tender wagon weighted more than locomotive that pulled it, since steam traction consumed coal and water like there was no tomorrow.)
> You get to walk, bicycle, ride a horse, etc.
This is absolutely recommended! All three activies are very healthy, although horses a bit more dangerous than the other two, but at least you will have a true friend for just two sugar cubes a day.
Well, traditionally, the method of execution would be being beaten to death in a pit lined with organic compost. Or, if they wanted to be politically significant, TNT Suppositories. (Now, waiting to see if anyone gets the reference. . . . . )
I thought this bulls*** would stop once the new owners moved in. Apparently not. Get off the political soapbox and go back to posting news about *TECH* not lib propaganda and pseudoscience.
Might be valid if the "corrections" did not end up being a slope that cools the past and heats the present.
That tells us that the "corrections" have been plucked out of some ones butt, and that they have a bias towards showing rising temperatures.
ExxonMobil also has a huge vested interest in refuting any false role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.
Yes, but you're premising your argument based on an assumption contrary to fact, which is that the truth about what oil is actually doing to the climate has anything to do with Exxon's motivations.
In the early 80s the scientific consensus was just finished shifting from projecting global cooling from the 1950s to anthropogenic CO2 driven warming. I remember this well because my wife the geophysicist was in graduate school at the time and it was an exciting but still contentious time. And Exxon was clearly aware of this shift at the time because as an oil company they employ people who follow geophysics. At the same time Exxon had just completed a thirty billion dollar deal to open the Natuna natural gas fields in Indonesia -- a reserve that's 71% CO2. When put into production it will become the single largest point source of CO2 in the world, accounting for 1% of all human CO2 emissions in the world. So when James Hansen testified about the emerging AGW consensus in 1988, Exxon suddenly realized it would lose tens of billions of dollars if Congress actually decided to do something about it. If you were Exxon management, what would you do?
The connection between the Natuna gas fields and Exxon's taking the lead in the PR campaign against the scientific consensus is well-documented at this point, but it makes no difference because the PR campaign has now achieved everything it could. We're past the point where a significant shift in climate is avoidable, we're in the middle of it. The main remaining question is how much of an impact we can have on the rate of change. So while denialists are still picking fights over whether the Earth is warming or cooling, the new area of contention is whether we can do enough to have an impact on the rate and magnitude of change. That's why Exxon has left of the baldly counter-factual anti-science PR campaign; there's enough real uncertainty on that question that they don't have to manufacture bogus uncertainty.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's because they're working out issues. There's nothing like a persecution complex to take the sting off your personal mediocrity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
a known nonscientist repeatedly refuted and proven wrong isn't a valid counter.
in essence, the GP said 2+2=4.
you replied with: 2+2=Cake.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
>If their allegations are true about exxon,
Two separate publications working entirely independently (indeed - without knowledge of each other) both found hard evidence proving these allegations. Documents from the company itself showing them acknowledging the reality of climate change decades ago and planning the cover-up - and even basing business plans on exploiting the fact that warming would melt glaciers and make arctic drilling more profitable if they delay it for 20 years (which they did).
There is no shred of reasonable doubt that these allegations are true and in light of the documents published by the journalists the state of California is already investigating bringing criminal charges against the company for large-scale fraud.
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It is not censorship to refuse to publish speech for somebody else or support their statements.
ExonMobil has plenty of ways to spread their "views" - the AGU is not in any way acting unscientific when refusing to be associated with those views.
Scientific debate is always welcome - but only if the counter-arguments are *scientific*. The anti-climate-science arguments are, on a good day, slightly less scientific than that published by Answers in Genesis - and most of them are significantly worse. Climate scientists should not lend creedence to unscientific views about their field anymore than biologists should seriously entertain creationism.
If somebody comes up with actual physical evidence that suggest creationism may be true - then, at that point only, where the argument becomes *scientific* - does biology become obligated to pay attention to the idea and consider it seriously. I promise you if that ever did somehow happen (I doubt it) it would have nothing in common with the version the religious nuts spread.
In the same way, if the overwhelming evidence for climate change from literally every field of science that is in any way involved in measuring things about the earth or the organisms on it was every challenged by a single tiny shred of any evidence whatsoever from the anti- theory, and at least a credible theory about why that evidence means what they say - along with a viable explanation for why those billions upon billions of pieces of hard evidence for climate change do not in fact mean what everybody who collected them (of which almost nobody is involved with climate science and only a tiny fraction of those are with the IPCC) thinks they mean... on THAT day, scientists will consider that they may be wrong.
It would be frankly unscientific to do so before then. Forget whether you trust the temperature data - thats one tiny data-point out of billions of pieces of supporting evidence. We are watching animal migrations and everybody from park rangers to marine biologists are confirming that we're seeing exactly the patterns that would happen if climate change was happening the way it was expected. Geologists are watching glaciers melt at rates they themselves would have called "crazy alarmism" if you had mentioned those rates to them a decade ago.
It's not political - it's science, it's the closest thing to a fact humans can ever have. It's also one of the most tested and scrutinized theories in the entire history of science. There may not be a MORE trustworthy scientific theory in existence because none have ever been THIS thoroughly tested.
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The trouble is - you seem to read a lot of politics but you don't seem to read any science.
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Both Stanford and MIT have had a decent fraction of their faculty/students sign petitions asking for full fossil fuel divesture. I think one if not both have already divested the more timid, but dirtier coal industry. Until recently energy stocks were a major upward force of endowments. And both schools receive significant oil industry research funding in engineering and earth sciences.
The AGU, of which I am a many decade member, is 95% academic and pretty much following this trend. I do have to watch for over-bias in climate change papers. Although the data appears valid, the complex causality issues are summary.
Now don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with that as such - not everybody can be a scientist and we don't all need to be experts at everything, if your way of being a good citizen is to be very political so be it, if your choice of information about politics is deranged and your "reading the left" only to look for strawman in a sort of inverted act of confirmation bias - that's sad but perfectly within your rights.
However, when the issue is scientific in nature - party affiliation, tribal identity and all the other things that cloud our political thinking simply don't matter - it's no longer a matter of politics. You chose ot be informed about the latter (for a lose definition of "informed") but not of the former, so when the topic is the former the only acceptable thing for you to is shut the fuck up and do what the experts tell you to do.
If you don't like that, acquire the needed expertise to make counter-argument worthy of the name. Facts and evidence don't go away because your ideologically opposed to their existence.
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It already has. America is just fairly lucky not to be feeling the brunt of it.
Meantime my country is in the midst of the worst drought in recorded history, the hottest summer we've ever had after the hottest winter we've ever had. Crops are failing, local food production is plummeting - which means imports, which means higher prices... all of which adds up to us being on the verge of bloody riots in the streets when the poor majority get hungry.
This has been building up over about 15 years as each year got hotter and dryer than the last...
This is climate change effect happening to me, right now.
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It must be a rightwing thing. They all loved Citizens United - and so they all believe that giving money to somebody for political gain is a form of protected free speech. It follows then that if you don't want to *take* the money, you must be censoring the person trying to bribe you - and if you're an elected official who doesn't want to take a bribe I guess that makes it government censorship...
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Watts is 'only' a meteorologist. He is not without knowledge and training, but dismiss him if you wish. I focus on his data.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
He's a shill for Exxon so he wont' respond to your argument, but I appreciate what you did here.
And you are incorrect.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
There are also those who deny it out of political ideology - dedicated libertarians who refuse to accept it because if climate change were a real concern then there would be no option but to impose strict government regulation to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Such an act would be in direct violation with libertarian ideals, and therefore climate change cannot be accepted as a real concern.
You really ought not write out of ignorance.
A) Libertarians (small or big-L) are not a hive mind
B) Many politically minded folk know well about the 'tragedy of the commons' - a resource owned/controlled by nobody is at greater risk than one with VESTED stakeholders in control/ownership
C) Learn the distinction between LAW and REGULATION. By way of example, when someone calls for 'sensible gun regulations' what they - almost - invariably support are DRACONIAN GUN LAWS. I.e., it is not a model of
1) continuous improvement (tweak this, change that, nix that, try those)
2) civil law / civil penalties
3) best practices / industry standards
Instead it is crap like 'we don't like the color of your stock, spend ten years in jail'.
So as a LIBERTARIAN, I could entertain CO2 TAXES but I'm VERY hesitant to give a blank check on regulations. You'll find lots of nonsense of good/natural CO2 versus evil/unnatural CO2 without any clear scientific or moral distinction (this banana is carbon neutral but your fuel - bio or not - ain't). So - assuming CO2 is the issue - I'd like to see the entirety of any proposals and support nothing without the full text of LAW available. Blanket/unspecified regulations? Fuck that.
There is nothing specific to libertarian ideology or NAP (non-agression principle) that says one can continue to do something that harms others. Naturally, this requires proving or substantiating a CO2 harm and determining - somehow - some equitable per capita approach (or per GDP, possibly). Not easy, but not impossible on a scale to affect the climate (and some approaches would/could disregard individual/localized transgressions - maybe a 'per acreage' approach???). So the incorporated mega-pig farm, you might have lots of tools in the drawer. Some guy chopping wood for his home boiler ... maybe not so much.
As stated, most people - like yourself - instead speak from ignorance. As Sun Tsu said, know they enemy and thyself.
Quite so.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Okay you have people saying that a certain group shouldn't accept money from another group.
Reason: Because the second group has a history of supporting an unpopular opinion or opposes a popular one. Whether anything supported or opposed is "correct" is mostly irrelevant.
Never mind that the money the second group is donating can be used to continue doing good work.
Never mind that the money the second group is donating isn't being tied to any promises of the work being done agreeing with a stance the second party used to support.
No. Just turn the money away, cutting out research dollars that can be used to do some good.
That's SJW thinking.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Once science it settled by a majority of scientists, it should be illegal to question it or challenge it.
{Sarcasm} Certainly, just like once something is settled by a majority of the Priests of the local religion, it should be illegal to question it! {/Sarcasm}
Look around. Read the posts. Ladies and gentlemen, watch Slashdot being transformed into a right wing echo chamber. Behold, the paid posters, who's job description is to participate in what initially looks like actual debate, ...
"Me'thinks he doest protest -too- much!"
Earning your pay... eh, what?
That's a new joke to me.
How exactly is the presence or absence of glaciers going to make searching for and exploiting hydrocarbon reserves any more difficult? In my almost 30 years of drilling experience, I've never once seen a location where the presence or absence of glaciers has been a consideration in the slightest, and only a couple of locations where the presence of glaciers a thousand or so kilometres away led to a minor and very manageable concern about icebergs.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
According to the memo which we actually HAVE - this is not conjecture, it's a fact, we have the fucking document: "By 2015 the Behring strait will be iceless 9-months of the year, as opposed to the current 3-months"
It's still cheaper to sail through liquid water than break through ice.
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