It's even worse than that. The Slashdot movement operates much like a cult. It takes teenage geeks who are in a situation where they feel isolated, helpless, and angry, and they give these people a strong support community that will not only alleviate their feelings of isolation and helplessness, but give them a corporate monopolist to lash out at. I thought that looked familiar:). More seriously, though, it's a general problem on the internet: little communities end up being these self-reinforcing echo-chambers with no outside influence to challenge people. I'm not sure it's going to improve any time soon, either.
Silent Spring was a crock in the overreaction that followed the book.
We went from spraying DDT on everything, to nothing.
Exception that's not actually what happened. DDT wasn't banned in the US until 1972, and yet some developing countries (Sri Lanka is the most widely used example) had already suspended spraying as a Malaria control measure in the 60's, as the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT, presumed to be from agricultural spraying. Wikipedia has a reasonable (if short) summary.
Oh boy, the DDT myth again. Amazing how someone can mention DDT spraying in Sri Lanka and yet fail to mention that Sri Lanka resumed spraying but the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT, presumed to be as a result of wide scale agricultural spraying. That's one of the the real reasons for the third world cutting back on agricultural use of DDT: it left them with DDT resistant mosquitoes. Other countries stopped agricultural use because they had to export food to countries that didn't want DDT-sprayed food, etc.
Did you actually read the whole page of the link you posted? That page was arguing against Dixy Lee Ray's version of events:
There were suspensions in the spraying programs, but they were not the result of any "environmental hysteria". To understand what actually happened, it is necessary to learn about the realities of pesticide use. One of the major problems with using pesticides is that insect populations soon develop resistance to the chemicals. Insects resistant to DDT began appearing one year after its first public health use (Garrett, page 50). As new insecticides were introduced, resistance to them also developed. Much of Silent Spring is a cataloging of reports of resistance to insecticides. With the problem of mosquito resistance to DDT in mind, a plan to eradicate malaria was developed--several years of spraying, accompanied by treating patients with anti-malaria drugs, would be followed by several years of monitoring... Please, people, stop perpetuating this myth.
As usual, an ad hominem attack instead of addressing the issue. I don't think pointing out that the guy is a shill is irrelevant, and I did link to some actual criticism of the paper, but you obviously don't want to know...
Prove him wrong. Prove that more than four of the IPCC reviewers specifically endorsed the central theme of the IPCC report, that greenhouse gas forcing is causing climate change. Did you actually read what you just wrote? Only 4 IPCC reviewers? Just from the page that I linked to, which you ignored:
In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change". Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial. First, there were much more than 62 reviewers for chapter 9. McLean and Harris have only counted the reviewers of the second order draft and ignored the more numerous comments on the first order draft. He's being criticized for suggesting that a particular chapter only has 62 reviewers. 62. And he was wrong, he undercounted. So how do we get from 62 for one chapter to a figure like 4?
Scientists were declared to have a vested interest if they were an IPCC author, or an IPCC author of a previous assessment, or if any of their work was cited by the report, or if they worked for a government, or if they work for an organization that gets government funding, or if they have a "possible commercial vested interest in the claim of man-made warming". So he's conveniently ignored basically any mainstream climate scientist on the planet, on the basis that working for a public university or climate office represents a 'vested interest'. This coming from the guy working for the oil-industry think tank. So pointing that little nugget out wasn't irrelevant at all, it just showed his hypocrisy.
But you won't do that. You'll just continue with your ad hominem attacks. Yawn. I note, btw, that despite my invitation you haven't come forward with an actual argument. What's your position? What's your evidence? Is the world warming on average or not? If it is warming, is CO2 a contributor? If so, what's the source other than us? If not, what's causing it? And if you don't think the world is getting warmer, what's wrong with all the temperature measurements that say it is? Stop playing the shrieking victim and put an argument on the table.
Hmm, SSPI, who are they? Ah, they used to be the Center for Science and Public Policy at Frontiers of Freedom. To quote Sourcewatch quoting the NYT: "Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documentsâ. They also get tobacco money for their little public policy "research". Amazing how not-hard it was to find that.
But why stop there? Who is this McLean guy that wrote it? Let's consult his own description of himself: "John McLean has an amateur interest in global warming following 25 years in what he describes as the analysis and logic of IT." Apparently he has a Bachelor of Architecture.
So your no-consensus argument comes down to a piece written by a guy who isn't a climate scientist for an oil-industry funded think tank. Convincing. There's some criticism of the actual paper here, and more linked to from there.
Apart from accusing every climate scientist of some mass conspiracy, do you have an actual argument to make, or some actual climate scientists to quote?
There are a bunch of measuring stations both on the surface, and satellites do some measuring as well. These are collected into various datasets that have their own estimate of "average" temperature, whatever that means. Wikipedia is pretty good on this, actually. The main three datasets and where to get them is mentioned in the first paragraph.
Now IANACS (I Am Not A Client Scientist), and I get fuzzy when it comes to how they actually measure the "average". There are... models.:) Digging deeper into the website of one of the dataset like e.g. the Met Office will probably get you more details.
When it comes to belief in global warming, the scientific method is completely unnecessary, as long as you agree with the mythical "consensus" dogma. Well, you're welcome to read the IPCC 4th Assessment Report. You know, the one produced by actual climate scientists? Why don't you explain where it goes wrong.
Where is the peer-reviewed article documenting the cause of the diminished barley harvest as being "climate change?" Well, technically it's extended drought, but we seem to be having an awful lot of those lately. I wonder why...
I get it. No peer-reviewed article is required to PROVE AGW, only to disprove it. This is complete nonsense. There's plenty of peer reviewed stuff out there. Where's the peer reviewed stuff going against the overwhelming consensus?
The reductions in Malted Barley yields are a direct result of more farmers growing corn in place of barley in order to produce ethanol. Not in Australia they're not. No-one down under produces corn for ethanol - that's stupid. We use sugar cane for ethanol, and that's grown in a different part of the country.
Believe it or not, reductions in Aussie barley yields are a direct result of the extended and increasingly severe droughts we've been having over the last 15 years or so. I wonder what else has happened in that time...
It is light on details. this one is better:
But over the last five years, Australia has experienced three droughts. In 2006, in what was dubbed the 100-year drought, barley production fell 70 per cent. Last year, drought caused a 40 per cent fall. So drought leads to decreased barley yields. We've had more drought in Australia in recent years than in any previously recorded time. And it just happens to correlate with the highest global temperatures ever recorded. But you're right, it's probably just BS. Why don't you come down under and enjoy our water restrictions?
How does this stuff get Insightful on Slashdot?
so lets latch on to something generic... even though it occurs all the time we seem to think its only bad now. So by that logic because we used to have hot spells, we shouldn't consider an increased number of hot spells as different in any way. What nonsense.
I guess with all the stories about the earth having not warmed recently... The stories that do the circles of the right-wing blogs? Because they're credible evidence. Take a look at the current graph of global average temperatures and look at the five year avererage and tell me that the planet is cooling. 1998 was a peak year due to El-Nino, and this year is predicted by those same gosh-darn climate scientists as being cooler due to La-Nina, but the trend is pretty hard to argue. If you're actually interested in what the actual, you know, science says.
With the current increases in the value of corn and wheat because of the misguided ethanol production in the US would it not make sense that other areas shift to fill the gap? Because a discussion of US politics totally negates a story about actual crop yields down under.
Putting climate change in the same story as beer either points out the hypocrisy of it all or just shows how silly we are willing to become Except when the story is about reduced crop yields due to increased temperature. As it was.
Slashdot Mirror
Silent Spring was a crock in the overreaction that followed the book.
We went from spraying DDT on everything, to nothing.
Exception that's not actually what happened. DDT wasn't banned in the US until 1972, and yet some developing countries (Sri Lanka is the most widely used example) had already suspended spraying as a Malaria control measure in the 60's, as the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT, presumed to be from agricultural spraying. Wikipedia has a reasonable (if short) summary.Hmm, SSPI, who are they? Ah, they used to be the Center for Science and Public Policy at Frontiers of Freedom. To quote Sourcewatch quoting the NYT: "Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documentsâ. They also get tobacco money for their little public policy "research". Amazing how not-hard it was to find that.
But why stop there? Who is this McLean guy that wrote it? Let's consult his own description of himself: "John McLean has an amateur interest in global warming following 25 years in what he describes as the analysis and logic of IT." Apparently he has a Bachelor of Architecture.
So your no-consensus argument comes down to a piece written by a guy who isn't a climate scientist for an oil-industry funded think tank. Convincing. There's some criticism of the actual paper here, and more linked to from there.
Apart from accusing every climate scientist of some mass conspiracy, do you have an actual argument to make, or some actual climate scientists to quote?
There are a bunch of measuring stations both on the surface, and satellites do some measuring as well. These are collected into various datasets that have their own estimate of "average" temperature, whatever that means. Wikipedia is pretty good on this, actually. The main three datasets and where to get them is mentioned in the first paragraph. Now IANACS (I Am Not A Client Scientist), and I get fuzzy when it comes to how they actually measure the "average". There are... models. :) Digging deeper into the website of one of the dataset like e.g. the Met Office will probably get you more details.