Things rightwingers believe:
There is some mysterious force preventing our raising atmospheric CO2 content from increasing the earth's temperature as well defined and established physical mechanisms would cause
There is some mysterious force raising the earth's temperature, in parallel with our raising atmospheric CO2 content.
Whoa, hold on. The usual story I hear from deniers is that the Earth's temperature is NOT rising, that these are all politically-funded manipulations of faulty data. A very few might believe that AGW is actually happening, but blame volcanoes or otherwise be unsure of what causes it, but doubt mankind's culpability. I don't think that line of thinking if very mainstream in denier circles though; I thought they were generally more hardcore.
More things rightwingers believe:
The warming is not caused by AGW
There is no warming it's all an artifact
There is no warming it's all a conspiracy
Nobody is saying there is no warming, just that it's not caused by AGW
I think he only suggested that if you lie to your shareholders for short term profits you may end up in jail. That is what Exxon is being investigated for. Lying to shareholders. They knew the science of global warming. Their own scientists told them that it was happening, that CO2 was the culprit, and that it posed a threat. They realized that this was a threat to their business so they decided to deceive their shareholders. It turns out that is illegal.
'When Morano asked Nye whether he agreed with other environmental activists that any skeptics should be jailed, he responded, "Well, we’ll see what happens."" Wow, "We'll see what happens", boy he's really attacking them denialists there with that there jail time thing, you betcha.
Look climate change may be real (well it is real, it's changing all the time), it may even be man made. Everyone has a right to an opinion, whether it agrees with yours or not. Bill Nye is an actor with a engineering degree. Sarah Palin is a once governor of Alaska. Neither one of them should have the right to put me in jail for disagreeing with them, but that is what Bill Nye suggested. Sorry on this one, I side with Sarah Palin. On climate change, I think people like Bill Nye who try to stifle argument are afraid of something, and it's not that they're afraid they're right. You don't fight with such vigor to shut out debate unless the foundation of your argument is suspect.
You confuse "fight with such vigor to shut out debate" with "make a solidly backed argument and point out your opponent's basic logical and factual flaws". and people often do that not because their argument is suspect, but because they believe the results of their opponent's argument will be disastrous.
Show us this model, show us the model, show us the model, show us the model. Show us the data, show us the data, show us the data, SHOW US THE DATA.
we get two orders of magnitude less warming than the consensus, but instead get what the opposition models.
Show us this results. Show it to us. Show us. Show us this model and the working and conclusions.
I bet you don't produce your model. In fact, I'll bet 50 bucks you can't describe how a model would produce 2 orders of magnitude more warming than Arreheniuses black body radiation calculation.
we get two orders of magnitude less warming than the consensus, but instead get what the opposition models.
But she's representative of a large group of people who, when confronted with science they don't like, just discard the science, declare the researchers in question frauds, and then assume somehow the universe will be okay, because, you know, apparently the universe owes specific ideologies a big favor, and would never dream of having physical laws that would create some sort of problem for that ideology. In Palin's case, she's a pretty hard right Christian, so I'm fairly certain she believes God would never make oil harmful, because, well, God loves oil and wants us to burn as much of it as we can possibly can.
Well, now that you bring that up... "We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history." http://cornwallalliance.org/20... signed by "Scientists (including 13 Climate Scientists) and Medical Doctors" and Pat Boone, too! http://cornwallalliance.org/20... Sure, God destroyed the earth with that flood thing, but that was a long time ago! Jesus would never let coal hurt us!
Dr. Roy Spencer provides evidence and contrary opinions. Universally, the morons on Slashdot (like you) insist his evidence and opinion doesn't matter because he's not a Cliiimate Scientist.
So take you pedantic ass and fuck off.
No, the morons on Slashdot (like me) and almost every other person with some grounding in physical science insist his evidence and opinion doesn't matter because it's been demonstrated to be wrong, again and again. For instance https://www.skepticalscience.c... Whereas the morons on the rightwing (like you) insist his evidence and opinion are correct because he's reached a conclusion that you started with.
And we've been told time and time and time again, you have to be a Cliiimate Scientist if you want to be taken seriously. Only Cliiimate Scientists can make statements on Climate. Well, Al Gore can, but he's "right". Even though his predictions were patently wrong.
Where do all the denialists get the idea that Al Gore is the climate change authority everybody but them gets their science from? Even Al Gore doesn't believe that. "If we can only destroy their trust in Al Gore, this whole wacky AGW conspiracy will disintegrate!"
Things rightwingers believe: There is some mysterious force preventing our raising atmospheric CO2 content from increasing the earth's temperature as well defined and established physical mechanisms would cause There is some mysterious force raising the earth's temperature, in parallel with our raising atmospheric CO2 content. There is a giant unbreakable conspiracy of scientists to deny the above.
What denialists like myself go after is demonstrably false predictions by 'scientists' in the past that were disproved long ago. When they said there'd be no snow last year 2000 they were simply wrong. There is no misunderstanding of the concept of science when you make a false prediction. If it is wrong it is wrong and it doesn't matter what kind of scientist they are if they make a wrong prediction . The science isn't wrong but they are which means they're probably wrong about other things as well.
Every single computer model they had was also wrong. Insulting the people who point this out will not make false predictions true. It's also not science.
They said back in 2007 that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water. That is obviously false and yet not a single warmista anywhere asks themselves why are they wrong all the time?
"They said back in 2007 that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water."
No, "They" said (in 2008) "that in 2015 the sea level will rise quickly,", while ABC "visual shows New York City being engulfed by water" http://www.newsbusters.org/blo.... Nobody "said... that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water." Your beef is with ABC News. But for a denialist, that's another scientific prediction that was wrong, thus disproving AGW! "Every single computer model they had was also wrong." "All models are wrong but some are useful". -George Box Perhaps you could show us a model of climate without an AGW term which is anywhere near as correct as any with an AGW term, or of any use whatsoever?
What denialists like myself go after is demonstrably false predictions by 'scientists' in the past that were disproved long ago. When they said there'd be no snow last year 2000 they were simply wrong. There is no misunderstanding of the concept of science when you make a false prediction. If it is wrong it is wrong and it doesn't matter what kind of scientist they are if they make a wrong prediction . The science isn't wrong but they are which means they're probably wrong about other things as well.
Every single computer model they had was also wrong. Insulting the people who point this out will not make false predictions true. It's also not science.
They said back in 2007 that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water. That is obviously false and yet not a single warmista anywhere asks themselves why are they wrong all the time?
I kind of doubt that any scientist ever "said there'd be no snow last year 2000", in that that isn't even a coherent thought.
As much as I hate rewarding lazinness. Plenty of papers out there that argue TCR is well south of 2deg per doubling of CO2: a position that surely will get you labelled as a filthy denier. What value TCR/ECR actually is is the ultimate 64 trillion dollar question that heavily influences what is a sensible policy response to CO2 caused global warming (mitigate, adapt or do SFA)?. Be careful handling subversive materials not sanctioned by your tribal elders...
You seem to be conflating TCR and ECS. TCR is Transient, ECS is Equilibrium. People tend to talk about ECS versus 2 degrees K. IPCC AR5 estimate TCR as 1.0-2.5K (CI95). Lewis and Curry, your link, estimate it as 0.9-2.5K; not a big difference. Their CI95 ECS estimate, however, is 1.05–4.05 K.
So a meta study on several crappy papers with significant methodological problems can yield a sterling paper?
Science!
It's interesting that all the climate science deniers do is complain about "crappy" papers when the studies that produced those papers are relatively easy and inexpensive to do? Why don't they publish their own rebuttal paper? Probably because they know they couldn't produce significantly different results than said "crappy" papers. All they've got left is to do is to nitpick.
Why stop there? "The AGW climate models predict more warming than we have seen". OK then, demonstrate to us how the climate models without AGW do better. If they can't, that means that intellectual honesty requires you to consider AGW to be a correct hypothesis until such time as a better model comes along. And of course, no such model without AGW comes anywhere near to predicting any of the warming we have seen for the past 50 years or so; although they do just fine up till the beginning of the 20th century, Gee, why would that be? What could that mean regarding AGW and human fossil fuel burning?
Science doesn't require that a model be perfectly mathematically precisely accurate, only that it do better than any competing model.
A little bit ago I said I was most interested in finding out how much it would cost me to feel I'd done my share and how much extra I'd need to pay to look down my nose at other people.
I was wrong. What I really want more is to know is how I can cash in.
Pretty easy, lots of money available to relatively few people. "In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010." http://www.scientificamerican....
Consensus: 100% of scientists would have said CO2 was not a pollutant to be covered by the Clean Air Act when it was passed. If you want to cut carbon, write a new law, don't redefine pollutant to fit your ultraliberal agenda.
"A pollutant is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"(g) The term “air pollutant” means any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive (including source material, special nuclear material, and byproduct material) substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air. Such term includes any precursors to the formation of any air pollutant, to the extent the Administrator has identified such precursor or precursors for the particular purpose for which the term “air pollutant” is used.
(h) All language referring to effects on welfare includes, but is not limited to, effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, manmade materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate, damage to and deterioration of property, and hazards to transportation, as well as effects on economic values and on personal comfort and well-being, whether caused by transformation, conversion, or combination with other air pollutants." 42 U.S. Code 7602 - Definitions https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
Every "denier" or sceptic I've ever dealt with accuses the politicians of trying to monetize it, and the scientists as being on the take. IMHO its a case of projection.
A "skeptic" is somebody who simultaneously believes that 1) we shouldn't do anything about AGW without more research 2) AGW is all a hoax by climatologists trying to get money for more research.
I do not doubt that GW is happening. And I agree that it is likely mostly AGW. However, current ideas at stopping it are useless.
Carbon caps are shit. 1% increases in efficiency here and there are shit.
This leaves a few options:
1. A tech breakthrough in energy production.
2. Massive decrease in energy consumption, meaning a loss of lifestyle for a couple billion people.
3. A stopgap until item 1 happens. This means nukes.
Why is it we are not afraid to dump tons of radioactive elements into the air from coal plants (dilute yes), not to mention the ash and slag? We are not afraid to blow mountains to bits to do this: http://explore.org/photos/6235..., but we are afraid to set aside areas for relatively safe plants and storage? WTF is wrong with us as a species where we will keep giving money to barbaric warlords for fossil fuels, but not invest in better sources? Who is responsible for the drumbeat of fear that prevents makes this our current reality?
Given that it takes a decade to get from the idea of building a nuclear power plant to getting it on line, by the time we get some going they will be 1) too late to be of use and hopefully 2) redundant in that we will have already switched over to nonfossil fuels. Because if we're planning to wait another 10 years before getting off the pot, we might as well not even try.
that said, keeping existing nuclear plants operating past their scheduled mothballing dates might provide a workable stopgap.
How much the planet will heat up and what level is even harmful, instead of helpful, is very much up for debate.
Since the next ice age is an inevitability, it's a race to see how much we as a people can prosper and prepare before we are all encased in a thousand years of winter - which is in the end vastly more a danger than even the most extreme warming forecasts.
To believe that the ice ages' appearances are essentially guaranteed cyclic phenomena, like Halley's Comet, independent from the effects of anthropogenic CO2 from fossil fuels which are "very much up for debate", is to really be missing the entire concept. It's like not having dessert with your last meal because you're worried you'll get fat after the execution.
A more accurate statement:
1. Over 90% of scientists think the Earth is more likely to be warming up than cooling down. Even skeptics usually agree with this.
2. Most of these scientists said humans had some sort of impact on the climate, but exactly how much was under debate. In fact, the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated.
Sources:
IPCC using too many weasel words
https://www.google.com/url?sa=...https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
Sorry for the messy links.
Agreed, up to the "the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated" part. That doesn't seem to match what I'm reading and it's not evident from the two links you provide:
a single paper from "Science" in 2011 which cites a 66% probability of the ECS being between 1.7 and 2.6 degrees K, which seems offhand considerably lower than the consensus, and which is countered right in the same issue by a comment regarding the excessive sensitivity of their methods to boundary conditions http://science.sciencemag.org/...; and a paper which suggests that the now well known recent overestimation of global average temp could include unpredicted external forcers such as ENSO, AMO, atmospheric effects, volcanic effects, etc.; increased stratospheric aerosol concentrations; or "a missing decrease in stratospheric water vapour (whose processes are not well represented in current climate models), errors in aerosol forcing in the CMIP5 models, a bias in the prescribed solar irradiance trend, the possibility that the transient climate sensitivity of the CMIP5 models could be on average too high or a possible unusual episode of internal climate variability not considered above". That's just mentioning the possibility that if the sensitivity were overestimated it would explain at least part of the prediction error, hardly a consensus view that it is overestimated. Neither of these papers demonstrates that "the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated".
In contrast, a quick google search provides, for instance, a paper from 2013, authored by a dozen luminaries, identifying the usual "estimates of the climate sensitivity for doubled CO2 concentrations of about 3C", and suggesting that taking into account long term effects like the change in albedo would put the sensitivity between 4–6C. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... I'm not arguing that the estimate of the latter paper is correct, just that your suggestion that "the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated" isn't supported either by the links you provide, or what I see being talked about.
Somewhere between 90 and 100% of/.ers are in agreement that this should be fun.
A recent meta-study concludes that the remaining 0-10% are actually correct in believing this will be a fairly shitty time, but are being silenced by a global cabal of carefree internet commenters who just want to have fun.
They can't even tell us whether we'll have fun tomorrow, yet we're supposed to believe they know we'll have fun with this post.
We can't handle the truth. Our society is getting DUMBER, not smarter. We can't handle the thought of beings from beyond arriving. There would be cults worshipping them, cults demonizing them (this ALREADY happens in certain major religions, claiming UFO's are the work of Satan.) And suicides and suicide cults and people wanting to marry them within an hour of meeting them.
Most of us can't handle the concept of sentient beings living on the other side of the ocean, who do not speak English.
Considering that "Satan" is just a fallen Angel, and actually has a name which is "Lucifer" (which in turn is in modern times wrong translated as "light bearer" and not at what it actually means: "Light Bringer" or in Greek: Prometheus) everything Satan does is done in the name of God. Obviously.
Or as someone said, "only people who fear their own god need to invent something like a devil which they fear even more".
The Catholics have an official Manichaean Heresy, i.e. the belief that the universe is in a state of war between Good/God and Evil; it's a clear violation of monotheism to consider that there's some sort of credible opponent to the One and Only Creator, an opponent with comparable powers of creation, miracles, etc. who can operate independently from the Divine Plan Which excommunicates a lot of makers of bad movies. Hebraically, Satan was just a symbol of one side of God; in the Old Testament, angels don't even have independent free will, being solely God's messengers, so the whole concept of a fallen or rebellions angel belongs to that newfangled Christianity thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Things rightwingers believe: There is some mysterious force preventing our raising atmospheric CO2 content from increasing the earth's temperature as well defined and established physical mechanisms would cause There is some mysterious force raising the earth's temperature, in parallel with our raising atmospheric CO2 content.
Whoa, hold on. The usual story I hear from deniers is that the Earth's temperature is NOT rising, that these are all politically-funded manipulations of faulty data. A very few might believe that AGW is actually happening, but blame volcanoes or otherwise be unsure of what causes it, but doubt mankind's culpability. I don't think that line of thinking if very mainstream in denier circles though; I thought they were generally more hardcore.
More things rightwingers believe:
The warming is not caused by AGW
There is no warming it's all an artifact
There is no warming it's all a conspiracy
Nobody is saying there is no warming, just that it's not caused by AGW
I think he only suggested that if you lie to your shareholders for short term profits you may end up in jail. That is what Exxon is being investigated for. Lying to shareholders. They knew the science of global warming. Their own scientists told them that it was happening, that CO2 was the culprit, and that it posed a threat. They realized that this was a threat to their business so they decided to deceive their shareholders. It turns out that is illegal.
'When Morano asked Nye whether he agreed with other environmental activists that any skeptics should be jailed, he responded, "Well, we’ll see what happens."" Wow, "We'll see what happens", boy he's really attacking them denialists there with that there jail time thing, you betcha.
Look climate change may be real (well it is real, it's changing all the time), it may even be man made. Everyone has a right to an opinion, whether it agrees with yours or not. Bill Nye is an actor with a engineering degree. Sarah Palin is a once governor of Alaska. Neither one of them should have the right to put me in jail for disagreeing with them, but that is what Bill Nye suggested. Sorry on this one, I side with Sarah Palin. On climate change, I think people like Bill Nye who try to stifle argument are afraid of something, and it's not that they're afraid they're right. You don't fight with such vigor to shut out debate unless the foundation of your argument is suspect.
You confuse "fight with such vigor to shut out debate" with "make a solidly backed argument and point out your opponent's basic logical and factual flaws". and people often do that not because their argument is suspect, but because they believe the results of their opponent's argument will be disastrous.
"But Bristol is as much a virgin as I am"
So if we take everything you say and model it,
Show us this model, show us the model, show us the model, show us the model. Show us the data, show us the data, show us the data, SHOW US THE DATA.
we get two orders of magnitude less warming than the consensus, but instead get what the opposition models.
Show us this results. Show it to us. Show us. Show us this model and the working and conclusions.
I bet you don't produce your model. In fact, I'll bet 50 bucks you can't describe how a model would produce 2 orders of magnitude more warming than Arreheniuses black body radiation calculation.
we get two orders of magnitude less warming than the consensus, but instead get what the opposition models.
what does that mean?
But she's representative of a large group of people who, when confronted with science they don't like, just discard the science, declare the researchers in question frauds, and then assume somehow the universe will be okay, because, you know, apparently the universe owes specific ideologies a big favor, and would never dream of having physical laws that would create some sort of problem for that ideology. In Palin's case, she's a pretty hard right Christian, so I'm fairly certain she believes God would never make oil harmful, because, well, God loves oil and wants us to burn as much of it as we can possibly can.
Well, now that you bring that up...
"We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history." http://cornwallalliance.org/20... signed by "Scientists (including 13 Climate Scientists) and Medical Doctors" and Pat Boone, too! http://cornwallalliance.org/20...
Sure, God destroyed the earth with that flood thing, but that was a long time ago! Jesus would never let coal hurt us!
Now it's controversial to be skeptical about what the weatherman says.
I've lived too long.
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Dr. Roy Spencer provides evidence and contrary opinions. Universally, the morons on Slashdot (like you) insist his evidence and opinion doesn't matter because he's not a Cliiimate Scientist.
So take you pedantic ass and fuck off.
No, the morons on Slashdot (like me) and almost every other person with some grounding in physical science insist his evidence and opinion doesn't matter because it's been demonstrated to be wrong, again and again. For instance https://www.skepticalscience.c... Whereas the morons on the rightwing (like you) insist his evidence and opinion are correct because he's reached a conclusion that you started with.
Come on.
He's not a Cliiimate Scientist.
And we've been told time and time and time again, you have to be a Cliiimate Scientist if you want to be taken seriously. Only Cliiimate Scientists can make statements on Climate. Well, Al Gore can, but he's "right". Even though his predictions were patently wrong.
Where do all the denialists get the idea that Al Gore is the climate change authority everybody but them gets their science from? Even Al Gore doesn't believe that. "If we can only destroy their trust in Al Gore, this whole wacky AGW conspiracy will disintegrate!"
Not clear what weird conspiracy applies in this case
It is clear: The Evil Liberal Science Conspiracy. Global warming denialism cannot work without it.
Things rightwingers believe:
There is some mysterious force preventing our raising atmospheric CO2 content from increasing the earth's temperature as well defined and established physical mechanisms would cause
There is some mysterious force raising the earth's temperature, in parallel with our raising atmospheric CO2 content.
There is a giant unbreakable conspiracy of scientists to deny the above.
What denialists like myself go after is demonstrably false predictions by 'scientists' in the past that were disproved long ago. When they said there'd be no snow last year 2000 they were simply wrong. There is no misunderstanding of the concept of science when you make a false prediction. If it is wrong it is wrong and it doesn't matter what kind of scientist they are if they make a wrong prediction . The science isn't wrong but they are which means they're probably wrong about other things as well.
Every single computer model they had was also wrong. Insulting the people who point this out will not make false predictions true. It's also not science.
They said back in 2007 that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water. That is obviously false and yet not a single warmista anywhere asks themselves why are they wrong all the time?
"They said back in 2007 that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water." No, "They" said (in 2008) "that in 2015 the sea level will rise quickly,", while ABC "visual shows New York City being engulfed by water" http://www.newsbusters.org/blo.... Nobody "said... that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water." Your beef is with ABC News. But for a denialist, that's another scientific prediction that was wrong, thus disproving AGW!
"Every single computer model they had was also wrong."
"All models are wrong but some are useful". -George Box
Perhaps you could show us a model of climate without an AGW term which is anywhere near as correct as any with an AGW term, or of any use whatsoever?
What denialists like myself go after is demonstrably false predictions by 'scientists' in the past that were disproved long ago. When they said there'd be no snow last year 2000 they were simply wrong. There is no misunderstanding of the concept of science when you make a false prediction. If it is wrong it is wrong and it doesn't matter what kind of scientist they are if they make a wrong prediction . The science isn't wrong but they are which means they're probably wrong about other things as well.
Every single computer model they had was also wrong. Insulting the people who point this out will not make false predictions true. It's also not science.
They said back in 2007 that by the Year 2015 New York City would be under water. That is obviously false and yet not a single warmista anywhere asks themselves why are they wrong all the time?
I kind of doubt that any scientist ever "said there'd be no snow last year 2000", in that that isn't even a coherent thought.
As much as I hate rewarding lazinness. Plenty of papers out there that argue TCR is well south of 2deg per doubling of CO2: a position that surely will get you labelled as a filthy denier. What value TCR/ECR actually is is the ultimate 64 trillion dollar question that heavily influences what is a sensible policy response to CO2 caused global warming (mitigate, adapt or do SFA)?. Be careful handling subversive materials not sanctioned by your tribal elders...
http://link.springer.com/artic...
You seem to be conflating TCR and ECS. TCR is Transient, ECS is Equilibrium. People tend to talk about ECS versus 2 degrees K.
IPCC AR5 estimate TCR as 1.0-2.5K (CI95). Lewis and Curry, your link, estimate it as 0.9-2.5K; not a big difference. Their CI95 ECS estimate, however, is 1.05–4.05 K.
So a meta study on several crappy papers with significant methodological problems can yield a sterling paper?
Science!
It's interesting that all the climate science deniers do is complain about "crappy" papers when the studies that produced those papers are relatively easy and inexpensive to do? Why don't they publish their own rebuttal paper? Probably because they know they couldn't produce significantly different results than said "crappy" papers. All they've got left is to do is to nitpick.
Why stop there? "The AGW climate models predict more warming than we have seen". OK then, demonstrate to us how the climate models without AGW do better. If they can't, that means that intellectual honesty requires you to consider AGW to be a correct hypothesis until such time as a better model comes along.
And of course, no such model without AGW comes anywhere near to predicting any of the warming we have seen for the past 50 years or so; although they do just fine up till the beginning of the 20th century, Gee, why would that be? What could that mean regarding AGW and human fossil fuel burning?
Science doesn't require that a model be perfectly mathematically precisely accurate, only that it do better than any competing model.
A little bit ago I said I was most interested in finding out how much it would cost me to feel I'd done my share and how much extra I'd need to pay to look down my nose at other people.
I was wrong. What I really want more is to know is how I can cash in.
Pretty easy, lots of money available to relatively few people. "In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010." http://www.scientificamerican....
Consensus: 100% of scientists would have said CO2 was not a pollutant to be covered by the Clean Air Act when it was passed. If you want to cut carbon, write a new law, don't redefine pollutant to fit your ultraliberal agenda.
"A pollutant is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"(g) The term “air pollutant” means any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive (including source material, special nuclear material, and byproduct material) substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air. Such term includes any precursors to the formation of any air pollutant, to the extent the Administrator has identified such precursor or precursors for the particular purpose for which the term “air pollutant” is used.
(h) All language referring to effects on welfare includes, but is not limited to, effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, manmade materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate, damage to and deterioration of property, and hazards to transportation, as well as effects on economic values and on personal comfort and well-being, whether caused by transformation, conversion, or combination with other air pollutants." 42 U.S. Code 7602 - Definitions https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
Here comes the usual conga line of denialist trolls, repeating their debunked talking points as though they meant anything. Yawn.
There's no such thing as AGW, because Jesus. And the constitution. And Ronald Reagan. Also, Al Gore is fat and has a beard.
Every "denier" or sceptic I've ever dealt with accuses the politicians of trying to monetize it, and the scientists as being on the take. IMHO its a case of projection.
A "skeptic" is somebody who simultaneously believes that
1) we shouldn't do anything about AGW without more research
2) AGW is all a hoax by climatologists trying to get money for more research.
I do not doubt that GW is happening. And I agree that it is likely mostly AGW. However, current ideas at stopping it are useless.
Carbon caps are shit. 1% increases in efficiency here and there are shit.
This leaves a few options: 1. A tech breakthrough in energy production. 2. Massive decrease in energy consumption, meaning a loss of lifestyle for a couple billion people. 3. A stopgap until item 1 happens. This means nukes.
Why is it we are not afraid to dump tons of radioactive elements into the air from coal plants (dilute yes), not to mention the ash and slag? We are not afraid to blow mountains to bits to do this: http://explore.org/photos/6235..., but we are afraid to set aside areas for relatively safe plants and storage? WTF is wrong with us as a species where we will keep giving money to barbaric warlords for fossil fuels, but not invest in better sources? Who is responsible for the drumbeat of fear that prevents makes this our current reality?
Given that it takes a decade to get from the idea of building a nuclear power plant to getting it on line, by the time we get some going they will be 1) too late to be of use and hopefully 2) redundant in that we will have already switched over to nonfossil fuels. Because if we're planning to wait another 10 years before getting off the pot, we might as well not even try.
that said, keeping existing nuclear plants operating past their scheduled mothballing dates might provide a workable stopgap.
How much the planet will heat up and what level is even harmful, instead of helpful, is very much up for debate.
Since the next ice age is an inevitability, it's a race to see how much we as a people can prosper and prepare before we are all encased in a thousand years of winter - which is in the end vastly more a danger than even the most extreme warming forecasts.
To believe that the ice ages' appearances are essentially guaranteed cyclic phenomena, like Halley's Comet, independent from the effects of anthropogenic CO2 from fossil fuels which are "very much up for debate", is to really be missing the entire concept.
It's like not having dessert with your last meal because you're worried you'll get fat after the execution.
A more accurate statement: 1. Over 90% of scientists think the Earth is more likely to be warming up than cooling down. Even skeptics usually agree with this. 2. Most of these scientists said humans had some sort of impact on the climate, but exactly how much was under debate. In fact, the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated. Sources: IPCC using too many weasel words https://www.google.com/url?sa=... https://www.google.com/url?sa=... Sorry for the messy links.
Agreed, up to the "the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated" part.
That doesn't seem to match what I'm reading and it's not evident from the two links you provide:
a single paper from "Science" in 2011 which cites a 66% probability of the ECS being between 1.7 and 2.6 degrees K, which seems offhand considerably lower than the consensus, and which is countered right in the same issue by a comment regarding the excessive sensitivity of their methods to boundary conditions http://science.sciencemag.org/...;
and a paper which suggests that the now well known recent overestimation of global average temp could include unpredicted external forcers such as ENSO, AMO, atmospheric effects, volcanic effects, etc.; increased stratospheric aerosol concentrations; or "a missing decrease in stratospheric water vapour (whose processes are not well represented in current climate models), errors in aerosol forcing in the CMIP5 models, a bias in the prescribed solar irradiance trend, the possibility that the transient climate sensitivity of the CMIP5 models could be on average too high or a possible unusual episode of internal climate variability not considered above". That's just mentioning the possibility that if the sensitivity were overestimated it would explain at least part of the prediction error, hardly a consensus view that it is overestimated.
Neither of these papers demonstrates that "the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated".
In contrast, a quick google search provides, for instance, a paper from 2013, authored by a dozen luminaries, identifying the usual "estimates of the climate sensitivity for doubled CO2 concentrations of about 3C", and suggesting that taking into account long term effects like the change in albedo would put the sensitivity between 4–6C. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
I'm not arguing that the estimate of the latter paper is correct, just that your suggestion that "the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated" isn't supported either by the links you provide, or what I see being talked about.
Somewhere between 90 and 100% of /.ers are in agreement that this should be fun.
A recent meta-study concludes that the remaining 0-10% are actually correct in believing this will be a fairly shitty time, but are being silenced by a global cabal of carefree internet commenters who just want to have fun.
They can't even tell us whether we'll have fun tomorrow, yet we're supposed to believe they know we'll have fun with this post.
This should be fun.
No it won't! You have no proof! It's only a model! Many scientists disagree! Liar! Conspirator!
We can't handle the truth. Our society is getting DUMBER, not smarter. We can't handle the thought of beings from beyond arriving. There would be cults worshipping them, cults demonizing them (this ALREADY happens in certain major religions, claiming UFO's are the work of Satan.) And suicides and suicide cults and people wanting to marry them within an hour of meeting them.
Most of us can't handle the concept of sentient beings living on the other side of the ocean, who do not speak English.
Considering that "Satan" is just a fallen Angel, and actually has a name which is "Lucifer" (which in turn is in modern times wrong translated as "light bearer" and not at what it actually means: "Light Bringer" or in Greek: Prometheus) everything Satan does is done in the name of God. Obviously.
Or as someone said, "only people who fear their own god need to invent something like a devil which they fear even more".
The Catholics have an official Manichaean Heresy, i.e. the belief that the universe is in a state of war between Good/God and Evil; it's a clear violation of monotheism to consider that there's some sort of credible opponent to the One and Only Creator, an opponent with comparable powers of creation, miracles, etc. who can operate independently from the Divine Plan
Which excommunicates a lot of makers of bad movies.
Hebraically, Satan was just a symbol of one side of God; in the Old Testament, angels don't even have independent free will, being solely God's messengers, so the whole concept of a fallen or rebellions angel belongs to that newfangled Christianity thing.