And why is it that everyone who makes this statement fails to recognise that cutting emmission through a global treaty IS an adaption?
Because it isn't an adaptation. It's an attempt to prevent the change. An attempt that we don't even know will be successful, and that we KNOW won't be followed by any of the other animals or geophysical sources on the planet. The SUN certainly won't reduce the amount of solar radiation it sends our way just because a few pols in Kyoto or Copenhagen write up a little piece of paper saying it should.
An adaptation is something that we do to mitigate the effects, not eliminate the effects. "Move away from the shoreline" mitigates the effects of rising sea level. "Move to a more temperate climate" ditto. "Grow crops where the weather now allows it" ditto.
The issue is that spending the money trying to prevent the result and decimating the economies of the large nations means there won't be a lot of money to mitigate the changes when they happen anyway. If you buy a million dollars of buckets to use to bail the Titanic, you don't have the million dollars to buy rescue boats. When the glaciers started down the face of North America, the animals that tried to stop the glaciers died. The ones who adapted survived. When the glaciers retreated, the animals that tried to keep them from leaving failed miserably and the ones that adapted found fertile soil and unpopulated areas in their new home.
Politicians are becoming concerned because the scientific communtity is scared shitless.
Hardly. The "scientific community" is divided on the issue. The "religion of AGW" community is busy trying to SCARE eveyone shitless.
Is this not how it is supposed to work,...
No, it is not. As a scientist, I can tell you, scare tactics are the sign of religion, not science.
Well contrary to modern day practices, beating is not necessary to arrest someone. Even people that physically resist arrest should not be beaten. The amount of force required to arrest someone is what is required.
And what if that amount of force results in the same effects as a simple beating? If you accept that sometimes, some people will require significant force to result in an arrest, you have to accept that sometimes, some people will get what would otherwise appear to be a real beating as a result of being arrested.
Until you review BOTH SIDES of the story, of course a criminal who wants to paint the cops in as bad a light as possible will claim he was beaten and ignore his own participation in the process, and all you'll see are the bruises that match what you would call a beating.
It's like the cop who allegedly rammed a guys head into a glass panel -- according to the guy. Someone else pointed out that the guy broke the panel with his hand. Two different stories, one physical reality.
Sorry, absolutely nothing justifies a beating. The only two options are either A. Arrest the man or B. Let him go.
Yes, because we all know how cooperative everyone becomes when they are told they are being arrested. Or are you suggesting that if option A doesn't result in passive cooperation on the part of the arrestee that option B happens? Cool!
"I say, chap, I'm putting you under arrest." "No, bean, I don't think I want to be arrested." "Very well then, off you go. Have a nice day."
As for the next responder's comment about pepper spray and how "everybody reacts", you haven't seen many people pepper sprayed, have you? For some people, it doesn't shut them down, it makes them madder.
No, this forum topic is about those who would discredit the process of peer review (which is the only way we actually have to form consensus) because they don't agree with its outcome.
This forum topic has nothing at all to do with peer review.
This forum topic is about the loss of faith in the scientific community by lay people based on the admissions of some scientists that they were fudging the data and the tricks they used to get the results they wanted.
It is about the ability of Joe Sixpack to identify the "hard sciences" that are fully based in peer-reviewed research and experimental methods, and the religious sciences that see correlation as sufficient to claim the sky is falling and who routinely question the intelligence of anyone who doesn't immediately agree with everything they say.
The religion of AGW has been calling itself a hard science for so long it is not hard to understand why lay people get confused.
You realize, of course, that in any field, causation is almost impossible to prove.
If by "in any field", you mean "religion", I agree. If you mean "in science", you're patently wrong. I will assume you mean "prove" in the scientific sense. Maybe that's the problem.
If I say "hydrogen and oxygen combine to create water", I can easily create experiments to support or disprove that hypothesis. I don't just one day see a mix of hydrogen and oxygen go "bang" and see a drop of water somewhere and say "HA! ProoF!".
But that's exactly the kind of proof that AGW supporters use. "Ha! Industrial age and temperatures! Proof!"
No science can prove that one thing caused another.
Of course it can. But you need to have been there to observe both things, and then use that information to predict, and then be able to test the predictions. That's why the "law" of gravity isn't suffering the same arguments that AGW is. Let go of the apple, it falls. Provide a specific amount of force opposite the gravitational field, it doesn't. Increase CO2 by the amounts humans have, the temperature goes up (allegedly). Now let's do the "decrease the amount of CO2" experiment. What? We can't? Well, now.
Climate science and climate change has demonstrated these powerful correlations.
In your opinion. When you include the data about the last decade of stable temperatures under increasing CO2, and knowledge about previous warming cycles that had no CO2 increases to cause them, and knowledge of the solar emission cycles, those correlations don't seem so powerful. In fact, I'd say they go away. If you argue "'A' happens and then 'B' happens" as proof of causation, then "'B' has happened before without 'A'" is pretty damning evidence that your causation is flat out wrong.
Really? Where are climatologists ignoring previous climate cycles?
Whereever you see climatologists claiming proof of AGW, calling people who question their data and assumptions "idiots". PDO -- pacific decadal oscillation -- was a new concept just a decade ago, yet it explains a lot of climate data. Has nothing to do with CO2, however.
They are fully aware of them.
If you don't know the definition of "ignore", look it up. I didn't say they didn't KNOW about previous cycles, I said they were ignoring them.
-- the issue is that human influence is altering the natural cycle.
No, the issue is that the religion of AGW has people making such statements as yours. You assume that which has yet to be proven, and which cannot be proven because you cannot do the experiments necessary. It can be DISproven by observation of those previous cycles where humans had nothing to do with the warming or cooling.
And there are testable hypothesis in climatology. There are models.
Models are not "testable hypothesis". They are models. They can be made to show whatever you want. One modeler at NCAR, just after the appearance of the "hockey stick", distributed a gleeful email announcing that he'd changed one of the empirical constants in the earlier models and the hockey stick bent upwards every more quickly! Catastrophe PROVEN! Things are worse than we thought -- and we've PROVEN it!
There are controlled experiments at a smaller scale.
By "at a smaller scale" you mean "at so small a scale that it is impossible to include all relevant systems". Considering that we still don't know everything about the system we're trying to "model", your "controlled experiments" are nothing more than models designed to show whatever it is you want to prove.
There are temperature predictions, for example, the prediction that this will be the warmest decade on record.
"on record". "Tomorrow will be the warmest Friday this week. Disaster PROVEN!" We have what, two hundred years of "record"? And hows this for "predictions"? "Global temperatures will increase in the next decade..." "Global temps will decrease..." "Global
They all had jobs before anyone started talking about AGW, and they'll still have jobs even if AGW disappears tomorrow.
Tell this to George Taylor, the long-time driving force behind the Oregon Climate Service run at Oregon State University. He didn't jump on the AGW bus and drink the AGW koolaid, so he's no longer welcome at the climatologist party.
I know George Taylor, and I know many of the most vocal AGW proponents. I also know whose opinion I trust more, because I know who stands (stood) to lose more by having that opinion. I also know who I trust doing real science more, based on how they act towards people.
Don't even try to tell me that no climatologists disagree with AGW, or that only nutcases disagree.
They have nothing to gain by inventing a problem,...
Nobody who has worked anywhere near the system could make such a ludicrous statement. Grants don't go to people who say "everything's fine, there's nothing to see, move along...". Grants go to those who make their proposals seem more critical than anyone else's, and "we're all going to die" is about as critical as it gets. When all the allocated grant money is gone, politicians will throw more at catastrophy theories.
People who claim that scientists that work for oil companies are bought and paid for, but ignore the money flowing in the research channels are wearing blinders, at best, or being deliberately dishonest at worst.
What do climatologist do for a living other than telling us the sky is falling? Do they study the changes in the Earth's climate over billions of years? No,...
they study PROXIES that maybe indicate what the climate was, but not the actual climate information itself. They can't study the climate itself because that requires hard numbers. What was the temperature at X places on day Y? What was the rainfall? What ocean/atmosphere currents existed?
They look at tree rings in petrified trees and make guesses based on assumptions. They dig up ice cores and measure something they assume hasn't changed for 10,000 years, even though its a gas that easily dissolves in water and has been sitting in what they tell us is an atmosphere already highly concentrated in that gas.
Then they confuse correlation with causation. "The industrial age started the same time we see temperatures going up." Ok. Correlation. And then ignore all the times the temperature went up when the industrial age was still tens of thousands of years away. And then forget that science requires the ability to test hypotheses, like "if CO2 is causing the increase, taking the CO2 away will make it stop."
And then they have the nerve to say "we know...". Just like big-bang theorists claim "we know". No, you don't know. You THINK you know, you have a PLAUSIBLE mechanism, but without SEEING it happen, you don't know that it happened that way.
That's how you can detect the Religion of Science versus real science. Real science measures and predicts. Religion of Science makes claims about unseen things that happened in the past.
As for the next fellow in this thread who claims that the data supporting the hockey stick is well supported, I say "hockey stick". No, it isn't. People have tried to get the data and duplicate the results and they're having a hard time just accounting for the data being used, much less the results from it. This is a well-known issue, to anyone who hasn't drunk the koolaid and joined the cult. Even the numbers from an organization as staid and solid as NOAA is suspect. A study done a while ago just looking at the temperature measurement system found that many of the sites had been repainted with a different paint and showed a correlated increase in temperatures, and many sites were located too close to buildings or parking lots and also had biases in their results. So, no, don't pretend the data is pristine and the interpretation obvious, it just ain't so.
Care to back up your magazine claim with a reputable cite? I find it had to believe that magazines make more from news stands than subscriptions.
I have no recent data, only what I know some magazines used to say about the issue, and an anecdotal story. They used to say that subs were the main income, because stand sales got them only a fraction of the cover price.
And Utne Reader is my story. A "green" tree-hugger magazine at the very core, socially conscious, activist. They almost beg for forgiveness because they are printed on GASP paper. The last issue I bought contained many pleas for people to be earth-friendly, to help them save money by subscribing, yada yada yada... and NINE identical blow-in subscription order cards. Not "one nicely bound into the magazine card", NINE "fall out all over the floor if you pick the thing up by the spine" cards. They had to do it, they said, because subs were the only way they could make enough money to stay in business, even if it meant they showed everyone they were hypocrites by their actions.
Cool. Another Analog reader. I toyed with the e-subscription on my reader, but I just prefer the pulp rag when I read it...
I prefer paper, too, but I'm a year and a half behind reading the paper version. I put each new one on the shelf until I get time to read it, and when I get time to read it it's never where I am. Sometimes I pick a few off the shelf when I go on a trip, but then I either run out while on the trip or don't finish and forget to put the ones I didn't read back on the shelf.
The e-version goes where I go. It doesn't bleed ink from the covers or pages onto my fingers. I can read the pdf version on my desktop instead of working.
What did you think about the ending to the "climb a square mountain" story -- can't recall the official title? I was seriously dissappointed. Just when the hero of the story was about to get things straightened out, a reincarnated dead woman with apparently supernatural powers shows up and takes over. All that great setup, designing the planet and working out the side-effects, and then Goddess comes in and makes it all better. And the issue with the colonists killing something intelligent. As I recall, that intelligent thing they killed was carrying a spear and attacking them at the time. Anyway. A big letdown.
I would agree with you, except you still have to purchase all 1,500 books.
There is a LOT of free stuff available, especially older material. Get thee to mobiread.com. Much of what's there is Gutenberg reformatted, but there's still a lot of stuff. When you tire of that, get thee to archive.org, which lists 1.8 MILLION texts online. A lot of them are PDF. The Sony 505 handles the b/w pdf ok. Chokes on color PDF.
For newer stuff, get thee to fictionwise.com. I just bought one book at what I would call a ridiculous price, but the full purchase price was rebated into a micropay account which I can use to pay for other stuff. The $20 I paid for "I Am America" is going to wind up paying for monthly copies of Analog magazine.
Some of what fictionwise sells is in "multi-format". Wazzat? You can download your purchase in any or all of a large number of formats, including PDF or LRF or even Palm. Analog, for example. I have copies of one month on my Sony 505 in PDF and LRF format, and the same issue on my Palm. The palm doesn't have the pretty pictures, but it has the text.
That doesn't even begin to cover the large number of sites that have free pdf versions of stuff.
I think I've bought about ten things for my 505, half of which are the latest issues of Analog. Two books. Sony gave away 100 free books with the 505. And I'm up to almost 900 "books" (a few books are broken into upto 20 chapters, each of which counts as a "book" in the main page display, so I'm not at a real 900, but probably 600 is a good estimate). A lot of those are manuals for radios and electronic stuff, but I can never say "I have nothing to read" if my 505 is close by (and it always is).
If your B1 is analog ch2-26
And your B2 is analog 27-70 and this is what you have your traps set to notch out...
This is pretty close to Comcast Oregon until early this year, when they had "limited basic" and "expanded basic" analog, and then stuffed their digital services above 71. 2-30, 31-71 were analog, trapped.
Then they forced all "expanded basic" users to go digital. They promised stuff like "no cost self-install kits" (which they charged $10 for). 31-71 eventually went dark. They started moving digital streams into 64 and above. They put the digital version of the PEG and LPTV mostly in the holes at 18 and 19 where basic subs lost Hallmark and something else. But all the "expanded basic" channels were in the clear.
They used traps to keep analog "limited basic" users from stealing digital services. Traps work. They know they work. They used them, and unless they've wasted the money to go take them all out, they're still on a large number of subs.
Then they decided to encrypt everything digital, except the must-carries which the law says they can't. This ignores the laws covering CPE and tries to pretend that "traps don't work", which is a position exactly opposite both the truth and what they have been doing for decades.
Im not up on how switched video works but for normal digital TV this would work fine.
The use of traps in place of encrypting basic digital services has nothing to do with switched video, etc. Any digital subscriber would NOT have a trap. Traps would be used only to prevent analog basic subs from stealing digital services, which must be (other than the already mentioned PEG and mustcarry) above channel 30 anyway, since there is no other place to put them. Every digital subscriber would have full access to these "switched services".
By the way, it was an article here in/. a long time ago about Comcast sending "On Demand" (i.e. switched services) in the clear that prompted me to buy my first ClearQAM tuner. Yes, in the area of 80-83 or so, Comcast fed On Demand video. So we know that "switched services" is a smokescreen for any excuse to encrypt basic digital signals.
We tried to have it setup like this in the system I work in but we needed the space for HD so B2 digital and HD QAM's started showing up in unused B1 space and above our deployed traps...
There is no "above" for the traps Comcast used, AFAIK, since they were intended to and did cover everything up to 116 or 118 (which is where the highest signal I can find lives). And Comcast Oregon still has all the space from 31 to 63, and a lot of empty space higher than that, to do whatever HD they want. They weren't "out of space" in any honest sense of the word.
You don't understand the motivation. The cable companies are trading analog "channels" for digital bandwidth, which is something they can pretty easily do.
Don't tell me I don't understand the motivation for encrypting signals I'm paying for instead of trapping things I'm not, and then explain why they want to drop analog signals and go digital instead. Apples and oranges.
They need this because the more TVs that are being served by digital services, the more bandwidth they need because there is little commonality between users of digital services.
Poppycock. I'm talking about the set of digital signals that are sent to EVERY digital subscriber as the lowest level of digital service. These are 100% in common for every digital subscriber. They are present on the wire 24/7. They have to be, because they are providing dumb MTAs to every digital subscriber. They aren't trying to make every channel "on demand".
No, there really isn't any way of going back because the bandwidth requirements on the digital side.
Nonsense. Sending a digital signal unencrypted takes no more bandwidth than sending one encrypted. They saved no bandwidth by encrypting all the digital basic services. Going back to where we were on November 10 would take no more bandwidth than is being used right now. How much is Comcast paying you to spread this disinformation?
No, traps don't work on the digital side at all.
Complete and utter bullshit. The same trap that was used to prevent analog subscribers from stealing channels above 30 -- the analog "limited basic" service -- will prevent analog subscribers from stealing channels carried on digital streams occupying the frequencies above channel 30. The physics of a bandpass filter don't care what is modulating the frequency, it's the frequency that is the relevant bit. In fact, the local Comcast supervisor was explicit in threatening to install exactly that trap when I returned my Comcast digital equipment, because he knew I had CPE that could pick up the digital signals. Trying to pretend NOW that traps don't work is just pathetic.
If Comcast wanted to provide the Digital basic channels to digital subscribers and prevent analog basic subscribers from stealing them, all they need to do is install the SAME TRAP that they used to prevent analog basic subscribers from stealing expanded basic signals. The exact same trap. In fact, it's probably already in the line going into the houses of most limited basic subs! They don't have to encrypt those signals. Digital basic subscribers CANNOT steal the digital signal because THEY ARE PAYING FOR IT.
Encrypting is their way of forcing people to use Comcast equipment and paying more per month for the same service they used to get. Period. It has nothing to do with HD or whatever nonsense you are presenting. If you are a digital subscriber, there would be no trap, and Comcast can use whatever "channels" they want to do their interactive digital service.
Fundamentally, I don't think the bandwidth exists for a star network with many homes on a drop from the neighborhood node.
Come to my city. We've had it for a decade. Well, a very long time.
But the bandwidth doesn't exist for everyone to be watching multiple streams of HD quality video in each home.
I don't care what HD crap other people watch in their homes. My comment is SPECIFIC to the signals ALREADY BEING CARRIED INTO EVERY HOME THAT HAS DIGITAL SERVICE. The bandwidth already exists for people to watch multiple streams of digital basic services. Those streams are there irrespective of any HD streams. They are and will be present on every wire going into a digital subscriber's home, because Comcast has locked themselves into providing them by using non-interactive decoders.
I'm paying for the signals, I have equipment that can receive them if they weren't encrypted, and the Cable Consumer Protection Act of 1992 is specific in requiring cable companies to act in ways that allow CPE to be used. That's FEDERAL LAW, in case you missed it. The FCC should get off the pot and start kicking Comcast' ass.
The TiVo + CableCARD solution (which I also use, through evil Time Warner Cable) is a good one,...
No, it isn't. I already own three ClearQAM PCI tuner cards and a clearQAM DVD/VCR recorder (and a ClearQAM USB tuner). Why should I have to buy someone else's DVR and rent a cable card just to do exactly what I was doing a month ago? I don't mean "pretty close to", I mean "exactly".
If I'm going to rent more crap to do what I could do 30 days ago, why shouldn't I just bend over and rent Comcast's crap? At least then I get to listen to them lie to me about why it isn't working, instead of them pointing the finger at everyone else.
Read the Cable Act of 1992 and see if section 17 doesn't ring a bell. All you people who benefited from being able to use your own VCRs to program what you wanted when you wanted need to start calling the FCC and demanding the same capability in the new digital age.
What the FCC is proposing is making the DCTV systems function like the ACTV system used to.
YES! DO IT. It is a no-brainer.
Until November 11, Comcast distributed every basic digital cable channel IN THE CLEAR. All of my ClearQAM devices worked with this signal just fine.
On Nov. 11, Comcast started encrypting everything except the must-carries. Every channel that you cannot receive without the lowest level digital subscription, gone.
When asked why they don't just trap lines that don't have basic digital so they can keep the signals I'm paying to get in the clear, they lie. They said "traps don't work". Traps have worked for DECADES. They even threatened to trap out the digital signal back in February when I first got and then dumped digital service because they weren't providing the services they promised and wanted $1/month more. If traps don't work, explain why there are times when my UNTRAPPED signals don't get through. It's so trivial to disable a digital signal that it is pathetically absurd to try to lie about not being able to trap them.
I know why they don't want to trap: it's less convenient for them. They have to visit a house to install/remove one. They don't have to climb a damn ladder anymore, but they have to visit. I'm paying, their "convenience" takes second place.
I'm trying to get a formal complaint lodged through the FCC for this issue, but FCC only seems interested in complaints about other issues.
If you want to see why this is a no-brainer, read the Cable Consumer Protection Act of 1992. We've been through this "consumer provided equipment" debate with analog, and the consumer won. We need to get the consumer winning this one, too.
If your costs to do business as a carbon producer go up, with some relation at all to how much you pollute,
And there's the fallacy driving the system. Carbon producers are not by any sane definition "polluters". Once you see the assumption in the system, you can learn to fight it.
That should be really simple to see.
Creating artificial limits on a gas that exists in nature and is produced by every animal on the planet is ludicrous. A gas that is REQUIRED for the plant life on this planet, which is required for the animal life. That should be really simple to see.
But control is a strong urge. We... must.... control.... others....
Wrong. It gives people a financial incentive to reduce their carbon emissions if possible.
Wrong. You show the reason why.
If you merely tax or fine people, they will reduce their carbon emissions to the point where the cost of further reductions would outweigh the fines/taxes they'll have to pay.
That is exactly true for ALL systems. If it costs me more to lower my emissions than to buy credits, I buy credits. The artificial limit has cost me money but not prevented one ounce of emissions. If it costs me more to lower my emissions below the artificially-set government limits than I get from selling them, I won't do it. That limit doesn't spur me to spend even more money to get below it, UNLESS it's cost effective to do so already.
If I save money by lowering my emissions, I will do so even if there aren't limits and brokers making billions off of trading them. I don't need the "incentive" of a government tax, and I don't need a cottage industry developed around trading offsets adding to my costs.
I'd go so far as to say a properly constructed carbon trading system is the only way forward.
Yes, those who favor redistribution of wealth would feel that way. "You've got more money than I think you need, you must spend it the way I tell you..."
I'd say that the only way forward is to create alternative technologies that make the net cost of reducing carbon emissions negative, instead of creating artificial costs that cost jobs and industry. By saying the only way forward is a legislated cost structure you're admitting that emissions cannot be lowered by new technologies or processes -- and that's patently absurd.
Yes, everyone produces the same amount of carbon TODAY. But with an economic incentive to produce less carbon it will be cost effective to install greener technology and produce less TOMORROW.
If it was cost effective to install greener technology and produce less carbon today, companies would do it and save money.
If it becomes cost effective TOMORROW, they'll do it TOMORROW to save money.
In the meantime, the cost of carbon offsets has done nothing but cost them, and thus every one of their customers, money. Money which makes carbon brokers richer. Costs which may force that company to move their jobs overseas. That costs us all.
It's a shell game. Plain and simple. Carbon, carbon, who's got the carbon?
Carbon offsets are money to fund programs that actually help the environment (with luck, help enough to undo what harm you did in the first place, or even more).
I'm sorry, but buying credits from a company that doesn't produce as much carbon emission as the government says it can is in no way actually helping the environment. It's a ponzi scheme. You produce the same amount of carbon, THEY produce the same amount of carbon, but YOUR costs to do business go up and the middleman brokering the credits makes a fortune.
My company spews out X amount of carbon a year. My Government puts a limit to Y amount of Carbon a year.
For your specific type of business. Other businesses have other limits. Other governments put other limits, or no limits, on businesses in their jurisdiction.
Since it's detrimental to my business (reducing client base) to reduce my carbon output,...
I don't know what you mean by "reducing client base". You won't lose clients if you reduce your carbon output. It may cost you a VERY large bundle of money to do it, or it may be technically impossible to do it. In either case, under that specific regulatory policy, it is more profitable to buy "credits" than to actually reduce your carbon emissions. Or it may be more profitable to simply move your company to a country where such silliness isn't public policy.
... I can purchase Carbon offsets so that some of my money goes towards greener projects.
You are sending the money to the government, or some company making a profit off of buying and selling credits. Those "carbon offsets" you are buying are carbon emissions NOT being used by other companies, who have sold their credits. There is no reason to believe that your carbon offset payment goes to "greener projects", and no reason to believe that your payment has reduced the total level of carbon emissions.
Thus I keep my clients Happy and I meet government regulation.
Thus you keep your stockholders in the black, whether they are happy about being taxed or not. You meet government regulation, but not necessarily any environmentally beneficial goals.
Now, if the system was to actually provide tax credits for actual emission reductions, that would be fair and environmentally beneficial. Just swapping "credits" is a ludicrous waste of effort.
You want to reduce the amount of Bad code you may have done, but you can't go back and change it. Buy a bad code offset.
You have even less reason to believe that a "bad code offset" will actually reduce any of the bad code you've already released than believing that a carbon offset will reduce carbon emissions. It's a touchy-feely, feel-good, politically-correct concept with little real effect.
The theory is that unprecedented levels of CO2 are forcing unprecedented levels of global temperature increase (and glacial retreat) due to CO2's ability to capture and re-radiate infrared energy, which can be demonstrated in the lab.
Scientists are incapable of recreating the global thermosphere in the lab, so whatever you think has been "proven" is limited in value.
The question is whether you're willing to bet that there is some (currently unknown) natural process which can balance that unprecedented heating, or whether we're toast.
No, the question is why YOU are so ready to believe that there aren't ten thousand competing and correcting systems in place in such a huge system as planet Earth and that a simple lab experiment contains all possible truth about a system vastly more complex than most people imagine, and why you are willing to turn the economy of the world on its ear to protect a system which has made similar changes multiple times in the past without help from or even existance of the one culprit you are pointing fingers at today?
Most rational people understand that "when we see X we see Y" isn't proof, and that "when we don't see X we still see Y" destroys what little proof the positive correlation gives.
A scientist will certainly advance himself by being right, but how many scientists in the field of climate change have proven anything? They've stated some interesting facts which seem to point toward a conclusion.
One of the things a true scientist knows is that correlation is not causation. I.e., "humans started the industrial revolution in year X" and "the average temperature of some places started to rise in year X" is correlation, not causation. (An interesting bit of poorly-reported info: the temps changed when NOAA changed the paint on the boxes housing the thermometers.)
The real test comes when you create an experiment to prove the connection. Unfortunately, there are NO experiments that can make this connection, because we do not have a lab big enough to hold a duplicate planet or the ability to create one with the necessary differences. "If CO2 causes global warming, I predict that a lack of change in CO2 will result in a lack of change in temperature ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL." We can neither create the lack of change in CO2 or the "all else being equal" part.
The biggest issue with AGW is when we ignore the other times that the climate has changed and man has either not been there to be the guilty party or has not been producing the greenhouse gas culprit de'jour. A correlation that says "when we see A we see B" proves nothing about A if we can say "we've seen B without seeing A".
And don't get me started on the problem with modeling, where you can get any level of B you want by changing any of a half dozen empirical parameters. Modeling is science only when you can do the ground truth experiments to back it up.
Presumably at a certain level of human activity, we definitely would affect climate.
I don't recall the cite, but the numbers I've seen for the percentage of CO2 we create compared to the total amount would say that we are far far from being the cause. When you note the negative correlation ("more CO2 yet temps are dropping"), you have a real problem proving AGW.
Also, even if you can buy new equip you might not really need, or hire a grad student or two extra, you still can't take any of that money for yourself, to, say, buy a house or vacation.
The grant source doesn't care what you do with your salary, so OF COURSE you can take some of the grant money -- which pays your SALARY -- and buy a house or take a vacation.
GRANTS PAY SALARIES. No grants, no salary. I don't know why you keep denying this simple fact of research life.
Even if your grant doesn't pay salaries (which would be unusual) it DOES pay for research, which can include a rented vacation home while conducting research at a remote site (three months, with catered dinners five nights of the week -- been there, done that, very nice), and it can pay for conference attendance, which is why many of the conferences take place in Hawaii and other vacation-like places. As a standard practice when I go anywhere unusual for research, I stay a few days extra. That means, in essence, a GRANT has paid for my transportation to and from a vacation. Quite legal. Quite common, too. If the best airfare requires staying the weekend, I've got a paid vacation.
Maybe they will get more funding to carry out more science, but you do know that they don't get to have any of that money, right?
Sir, you are a moron. Just where do you think the salaries of the professors and graduate students and research assistants doing research into global warming comes from? Grants.
It is extremely tightly regulated and controlled by the grant providers.
Unless a grant has money included to buy lots of equipment or rent ship time, the vast majority of the money in a grant is salary. This "tightly controlled" money destined for salary GOES to salary. A certain percentage of the grant goes to "overhead" -- money skimmed right off the top, taken by the University to fund management and physical plant, etc. And to fund professors in stuff like English and History.
After you reach 100% grant funding for the principal investigator salary, new grants go to fund more students and more research assistants and post-docs. The more students and post-docs a PI has, the more prestige and the bigger his realm. The more overhead he provides to the Uni the more respect and more prestige he's given by the Uni. The more he can demand in offices and lab space.
Disclaimer: I am a researcher in a university lab.
So am I, in a college deeply invested in climate research, and 100% of my salary comes from grant money. If we don't get grants to pay me, I don't get paid. If my PI doesn't get grants to pay him, he doesn't get paid. If my PI told the funding agencies "We have solved the question we were looking at" he doesn't get any more grants to study that question. If we were doing AGW research and said "humans aren't the cause", we wouldn't get any of the grants going to find "the solution". We'd be cutting our own throats. We'd be sitting on the unemployment line reading about all the grants going to the researchers like CRU who fudge the numbers so they look like AGW is real.
About fudging numbers. I've seen what today's grad students are being taught about data processing. If their dataset is supposed to look like a smooth line they will make it look linear, even if that means they throw 90% of it away as "outliers". There is no consideration given to why those points exist, if they don't fit the assumption about what valid data should look like, out they go. There are tools to take a plot that looks ugly and simply point at the data you want to go away, and it does. Magically, their dataset matches the prediction.
I remember very well one of the emails coming from NCAR a few years ago, trumpeting the fact that they'd made a small change to the hockeystick model and the upswing in predicted temperatures got much larger. There was no physical reality to the parameter they changed. It didn't make the hindcast fit better. It just made the scare factor bigger, so the result was BETTER!
Being right has nothing to do with success, being able to create a desire for your particular kind of research does. "We're all going to die unless..." works better at the latter than "we understand the issue and it isn't serious".
Why are people so ready to claim "follow the money" when the money comes from oil companies, and then claim that money has nothing to do with it when it appears in the pockets of the people doing the research?
Slashdot Mirror
Because it isn't an adaptation. It's an attempt to prevent the change. An attempt that we don't even know will be successful, and that we KNOW won't be followed by any of the other animals or geophysical sources on the planet. The SUN certainly won't reduce the amount of solar radiation it sends our way just because a few pols in Kyoto or Copenhagen write up a little piece of paper saying it should.
An adaptation is something that we do to mitigate the effects, not eliminate the effects. "Move away from the shoreline" mitigates the effects of rising sea level. "Move to a more temperate climate" ditto. "Grow crops where the weather now allows it" ditto.
The issue is that spending the money trying to prevent the result and decimating the economies of the large nations means there won't be a lot of money to mitigate the changes when they happen anyway. If you buy a million dollars of buckets to use to bail the Titanic, you don't have the million dollars to buy rescue boats. When the glaciers started down the face of North America, the animals that tried to stop the glaciers died. The ones who adapted survived. When the glaciers retreated, the animals that tried to keep them from leaving failed miserably and the ones that adapted found fertile soil and unpopulated areas in their new home.
Politicians are becoming concerned because the scientific communtity is scared shitless.
Hardly. The "scientific community" is divided on the issue. The "religion of AGW" community is busy trying to SCARE eveyone shitless.
Is this not how it is supposed to work,...
No, it is not. As a scientist, I can tell you, scare tactics are the sign of religion, not science.
And what if that amount of force results in the same effects as a simple beating? If you accept that sometimes, some people will require significant force to result in an arrest, you have to accept that sometimes, some people will get what would otherwise appear to be a real beating as a result of being arrested.
Until you review BOTH SIDES of the story, of course a criminal who wants to paint the cops in as bad a light as possible will claim he was beaten and ignore his own participation in the process, and all you'll see are the bruises that match what you would call a beating.
It's like the cop who allegedly rammed a guys head into a glass panel -- according to the guy. Someone else pointed out that the guy broke the panel with his hand. Two different stories, one physical reality.
So now you've read one side of the story.
but -- assuming the accuracy of Watts' story --
And that's why finding out the other side of the story is important. It keeps you from making assumptions.
Yes, because we all know how cooperative everyone becomes when they are told they are being arrested. Or are you suggesting that if option A doesn't result in passive cooperation on the part of the arrestee that option B happens? Cool!
"I say, chap, I'm putting you under arrest." "No, bean, I don't think I want to be arrested." "Very well then, off you go. Have a nice day."
As for the next responder's comment about pepper spray and how "everybody reacts", you haven't seen many people pepper sprayed, have you? For some people, it doesn't shut them down, it makes them madder.
This forum topic has nothing at all to do with peer review.
This forum topic is about the loss of faith in the scientific community by lay people based on the admissions of some scientists that they were fudging the data and the tricks they used to get the results they wanted.
It is about the ability of Joe Sixpack to identify the "hard sciences" that are fully based in peer-reviewed research and experimental methods, and the religious sciences that see correlation as sufficient to claim the sky is falling and who routinely question the intelligence of anyone who doesn't immediately agree with everything they say.
The religion of AGW has been calling itself a hard science for so long it is not hard to understand why lay people get confused.
If by "in any field", you mean "religion", I agree. If you mean "in science", you're patently wrong. I will assume you mean "prove" in the scientific sense. Maybe that's the problem.
If I say "hydrogen and oxygen combine to create water", I can easily create experiments to support or disprove that hypothesis. I don't just one day see a mix of hydrogen and oxygen go "bang" and see a drop of water somewhere and say "HA! ProoF!".
But that's exactly the kind of proof that AGW supporters use. "Ha! Industrial age and temperatures! Proof!"
No science can prove that one thing caused another.
Of course it can. But you need to have been there to observe both things, and then use that information to predict, and then be able to test the predictions. That's why the "law" of gravity isn't suffering the same arguments that AGW is. Let go of the apple, it falls. Provide a specific amount of force opposite the gravitational field, it doesn't. Increase CO2 by the amounts humans have, the temperature goes up (allegedly). Now let's do the "decrease the amount of CO2" experiment. What? We can't? Well, now.
Climate science and climate change has demonstrated these powerful correlations.
In your opinion. When you include the data about the last decade of stable temperatures under increasing CO2, and knowledge about previous warming cycles that had no CO2 increases to cause them, and knowledge of the solar emission cycles, those correlations don't seem so powerful. In fact, I'd say they go away. If you argue "'A' happens and then 'B' happens" as proof of causation, then "'B' has happened before without 'A'" is pretty damning evidence that your causation is flat out wrong.
Really? Where are climatologists ignoring previous climate cycles?
Whereever you see climatologists claiming proof of AGW, calling people who question their data and assumptions "idiots". PDO -- pacific decadal oscillation -- was a new concept just a decade ago, yet it explains a lot of climate data. Has nothing to do with CO2, however.
They are fully aware of them.
If you don't know the definition of "ignore", look it up. I didn't say they didn't KNOW about previous cycles, I said they were ignoring them.
-- the issue is that human influence is altering the natural cycle.
No, the issue is that the religion of AGW has people making such statements as yours. You assume that which has yet to be proven, and which cannot be proven because you cannot do the experiments necessary. It can be DISproven by observation of those previous cycles where humans had nothing to do with the warming or cooling.
And there are testable hypothesis in climatology. There are models.
Models are not "testable hypothesis". They are models. They can be made to show whatever you want. One modeler at NCAR, just after the appearance of the "hockey stick", distributed a gleeful email announcing that he'd changed one of the empirical constants in the earlier models and the hockey stick bent upwards every more quickly! Catastrophe PROVEN! Things are worse than we thought -- and we've PROVEN it!
There are controlled experiments at a smaller scale.
By "at a smaller scale" you mean "at so small a scale that it is impossible to include all relevant systems". Considering that we still don't know everything about the system we're trying to "model", your "controlled experiments" are nothing more than models designed to show whatever it is you want to prove.
There are temperature predictions, for example, the prediction that this will be the warmest decade on record.
"on record". "Tomorrow will be the warmest Friday this week. Disaster PROVEN!" We have what, two hundred years of "record"? And hows this for "predictions"? "Global temperatures will increase in the next decade..." "Global temps will decrease ..." "Global
Tell this to George Taylor, the long-time driving force behind the Oregon Climate Service run at Oregon State University. He didn't jump on the AGW bus and drink the AGW koolaid, so he's no longer welcome at the climatologist party.
I know George Taylor, and I know many of the most vocal AGW proponents. I also know whose opinion I trust more, because I know who stands (stood) to lose more by having that opinion. I also know who I trust doing real science more, based on how they act towards people.
Don't even try to tell me that no climatologists disagree with AGW, or that only nutcases disagree.
They have nothing to gain by inventing a problem,...
Nobody who has worked anywhere near the system could make such a ludicrous statement. Grants don't go to people who say "everything's fine, there's nothing to see, move along...". Grants go to those who make their proposals seem more critical than anyone else's, and "we're all going to die" is about as critical as it gets. When all the allocated grant money is gone, politicians will throw more at catastrophy theories.
People who claim that scientists that work for oil companies are bought and paid for, but ignore the money flowing in the research channels are wearing blinders, at best, or being deliberately dishonest at worst.
they study PROXIES that maybe indicate what the climate was, but not the actual climate information itself. They can't study the climate itself because that requires hard numbers. What was the temperature at X places on day Y? What was the rainfall? What ocean/atmosphere currents existed?
They look at tree rings in petrified trees and make guesses based on assumptions. They dig up ice cores and measure something they assume hasn't changed for 10,000 years, even though its a gas that easily dissolves in water and has been sitting in what they tell us is an atmosphere already highly concentrated in that gas.
Then they confuse correlation with causation. "The industrial age started the same time we see temperatures going up." Ok. Correlation. And then ignore all the times the temperature went up when the industrial age was still tens of thousands of years away. And then forget that science requires the ability to test hypotheses, like "if CO2 is causing the increase, taking the CO2 away will make it stop."
And then they have the nerve to say "we know...". Just like big-bang theorists claim "we know". No, you don't know. You THINK you know, you have a PLAUSIBLE mechanism, but without SEEING it happen, you don't know that it happened that way.
That's how you can detect the Religion of Science versus real science. Real science measures and predicts. Religion of Science makes claims about unseen things that happened in the past.
As for the next fellow in this thread who claims that the data supporting the hockey stick is well supported, I say "hockey stick". No, it isn't. People have tried to get the data and duplicate the results and they're having a hard time just accounting for the data being used, much less the results from it. This is a well-known issue, to anyone who hasn't drunk the koolaid and joined the cult. Even the numbers from an organization as staid and solid as NOAA is suspect. A study done a while ago just looking at the temperature measurement system found that many of the sites had been repainted with a different paint and showed a correlated increase in temperatures, and many sites were located too close to buildings or parking lots and also had biases in their results. So, no, don't pretend the data is pristine and the interpretation obvious, it just ain't so.
I have no recent data, only what I know some magazines used to say about the issue, and an anecdotal story. They used to say that subs were the main income, because stand sales got them only a fraction of the cover price.
And Utne Reader is my story. A "green" tree-hugger magazine at the very core, socially conscious, activist. They almost beg for forgiveness because they are printed on GASP paper. The last issue I bought contained many pleas for people to be earth-friendly, to help them save money by subscribing, yada yada yada ... and NINE identical blow-in subscription order cards. Not "one nicely bound into the magazine card", NINE "fall out all over the floor if you pick the thing up by the spine" cards. They had to do it, they said, because subs were the only way they could make enough money to stay in business, even if it meant they showed everyone they were hypocrites by their actions.
I prefer paper, too, but I'm a year and a half behind reading the paper version. I put each new one on the shelf until I get time to read it, and when I get time to read it it's never where I am. Sometimes I pick a few off the shelf when I go on a trip, but then I either run out while on the trip or don't finish and forget to put the ones I didn't read back on the shelf.
The e-version goes where I go. It doesn't bleed ink from the covers or pages onto my fingers. I can read the pdf version on my desktop instead of working.
What did you think about the ending to the "climb a square mountain" story -- can't recall the official title? I was seriously dissappointed. Just when the hero of the story was about to get things straightened out, a reincarnated dead woman with apparently supernatural powers shows up and takes over. All that great setup, designing the planet and working out the side-effects, and then Goddess comes in and makes it all better. And the issue with the colonists killing something intelligent. As I recall, that intelligent thing they killed was carrying a spear and attacking them at the time. Anyway. A big letdown.
There is a LOT of free stuff available, especially older material. Get thee to mobiread.com. Much of what's there is Gutenberg reformatted, but there's still a lot of stuff. When you tire of that, get thee to archive.org, which lists 1.8 MILLION texts online. A lot of them are PDF. The Sony 505 handles the b/w pdf ok. Chokes on color PDF.
For newer stuff, get thee to fictionwise.com. I just bought one book at what I would call a ridiculous price, but the full purchase price was rebated into a micropay account which I can use to pay for other stuff. The $20 I paid for "I Am America" is going to wind up paying for monthly copies of Analog magazine.
Some of what fictionwise sells is in "multi-format". Wazzat? You can download your purchase in any or all of a large number of formats, including PDF or LRF or even Palm. Analog, for example. I have copies of one month on my Sony 505 in PDF and LRF format, and the same issue on my Palm. The palm doesn't have the pretty pictures, but it has the text.
That doesn't even begin to cover the large number of sites that have free pdf versions of stuff.
I think I've bought about ten things for my 505, half of which are the latest issues of Analog. Two books. Sony gave away 100 free books with the 505. And I'm up to almost 900 "books" (a few books are broken into upto 20 chapters, each of which counts as a "book" in the main page display, so I'm not at a real 900, but probably 600 is a good estimate). A lot of those are manuals for radios and electronic stuff, but I can never say "I have nothing to read" if my 505 is close by (and it always is).
Thanks for not listening. It's not the premium channels I'm talking about, and federal regulation is supposed to trump "profit".
This is pretty close to Comcast Oregon until early this year, when they had "limited basic" and "expanded basic" analog, and then stuffed their digital services above 71. 2-30, 31-71 were analog, trapped.
Then they forced all "expanded basic" users to go digital. They promised stuff like "no cost self-install kits" (which they charged $10 for). 31-71 eventually went dark. They started moving digital streams into 64 and above. They put the digital version of the PEG and LPTV mostly in the holes at 18 and 19 where basic subs lost Hallmark and something else. But all the "expanded basic" channels were in the clear.
They used traps to keep analog "limited basic" users from stealing digital services. Traps work. They know they work. They used them, and unless they've wasted the money to go take them all out, they're still on a large number of subs.
Then they decided to encrypt everything digital, except the must-carries which the law says they can't. This ignores the laws covering CPE and tries to pretend that "traps don't work", which is a position exactly opposite both the truth and what they have been doing for decades.
Im not up on how switched video works but for normal digital TV this would work fine.
The use of traps in place of encrypting basic digital services has nothing to do with switched video, etc. Any digital subscriber would NOT have a trap. Traps would be used only to prevent analog basic subs from stealing digital services, which must be (other than the already mentioned PEG and mustcarry) above channel 30 anyway, since there is no other place to put them. Every digital subscriber would have full access to these "switched services".
By the way, it was an article here in /. a long time ago about Comcast sending "On Demand" (i.e. switched services) in the clear that prompted me to buy my first ClearQAM tuner. Yes, in the area of 80-83 or so, Comcast fed On Demand video. So we know that "switched services" is a smokescreen for any excuse to encrypt basic digital signals.
We tried to have it setup like this in the system I work in but we needed the space for HD so B2 digital and HD QAM's started showing up in unused B1 space and above our deployed traps...
There is no "above" for the traps Comcast used, AFAIK, since they were intended to and did cover everything up to 116 or 118 (which is where the highest signal I can find lives). And Comcast Oregon still has all the space from 31 to 63, and a lot of empty space higher than that, to do whatever HD they want. They weren't "out of space" in any honest sense of the word.
Don't tell me I don't understand the motivation for encrypting signals I'm paying for instead of trapping things I'm not, and then explain why they want to drop analog signals and go digital instead. Apples and oranges.
They need this because the more TVs that are being served by digital services, the more bandwidth they need because there is little commonality between users of digital services.
Poppycock. I'm talking about the set of digital signals that are sent to EVERY digital subscriber as the lowest level of digital service. These are 100% in common for every digital subscriber. They are present on the wire 24/7. They have to be, because they are providing dumb MTAs to every digital subscriber. They aren't trying to make every channel "on demand".
No, there really isn't any way of going back because the bandwidth requirements on the digital side.
Nonsense. Sending a digital signal unencrypted takes no more bandwidth than sending one encrypted. They saved no bandwidth by encrypting all the digital basic services. Going back to where we were on November 10 would take no more bandwidth than is being used right now. How much is Comcast paying you to spread this disinformation?
No, traps don't work on the digital side at all.
Complete and utter bullshit. The same trap that was used to prevent analog subscribers from stealing channels above 30 -- the analog "limited basic" service -- will prevent analog subscribers from stealing channels carried on digital streams occupying the frequencies above channel 30. The physics of a bandpass filter don't care what is modulating the frequency, it's the frequency that is the relevant bit. In fact, the local Comcast supervisor was explicit in threatening to install exactly that trap when I returned my Comcast digital equipment, because he knew I had CPE that could pick up the digital signals. Trying to pretend NOW that traps don't work is just pathetic.
If Comcast wanted to provide the Digital basic channels to digital subscribers and prevent analog basic subscribers from stealing them, all they need to do is install the SAME TRAP that they used to prevent analog basic subscribers from stealing expanded basic signals. The exact same trap. In fact, it's probably already in the line going into the houses of most limited basic subs! They don't have to encrypt those signals. Digital basic subscribers CANNOT steal the digital signal because THEY ARE PAYING FOR IT.
Encrypting is their way of forcing people to use Comcast equipment and paying more per month for the same service they used to get. Period. It has nothing to do with HD or whatever nonsense you are presenting. If you are a digital subscriber, there would be no trap, and Comcast can use whatever "channels" they want to do their interactive digital service.
Fundamentally, I don't think the bandwidth exists for a star network with many homes on a drop from the neighborhood node.
Come to my city. We've had it for a decade. Well, a very long time.
But the bandwidth doesn't exist for everyone to be watching multiple streams of HD quality video in each home.
I don't care what HD crap other people watch in their homes. My comment is SPECIFIC to the signals ALREADY BEING CARRIED INTO EVERY HOME THAT HAS DIGITAL SERVICE. The bandwidth already exists for people to watch multiple streams of digital basic services. Those streams are there irrespective of any HD streams. They are and will be present on every wire going into a digital subscriber's home, because Comcast has locked themselves into providing them by using non-interactive decoders.
I'm paying for the signals, I have equipment that can receive them if they weren't encrypted, and the Cable Consumer Protection Act of 1992 is specific in requiring cable companies to act in ways that allow CPE to be used. That's FEDERAL LAW, in case you missed it. The FCC should get off the pot and start kicking Comcast' ass.
No, it isn't. I already own three ClearQAM PCI tuner cards and a clearQAM DVD/VCR recorder (and a ClearQAM USB tuner). Why should I have to buy someone else's DVR and rent a cable card just to do exactly what I was doing a month ago? I don't mean "pretty close to", I mean "exactly".
If I'm going to rent more crap to do what I could do 30 days ago, why shouldn't I just bend over and rent Comcast's crap? At least then I get to listen to them lie to me about why it isn't working, instead of them pointing the finger at everyone else.
Read the Cable Act of 1992 and see if section 17 doesn't ring a bell. All you people who benefited from being able to use your own VCRs to program what you wanted when you wanted need to start calling the FCC and demanding the same capability in the new digital age.
YES! DO IT. It is a no-brainer.
Until November 11, Comcast distributed every basic digital cable channel IN THE CLEAR. All of my ClearQAM devices worked with this signal just fine.
On Nov. 11, Comcast started encrypting everything except the must-carries. Every channel that you cannot receive without the lowest level digital subscription, gone.
When asked why they don't just trap lines that don't have basic digital so they can keep the signals I'm paying to get in the clear, they lie. They said "traps don't work". Traps have worked for DECADES. They even threatened to trap out the digital signal back in February when I first got and then dumped digital service because they weren't providing the services they promised and wanted $1/month more. If traps don't work, explain why there are times when my UNTRAPPED signals don't get through. It's so trivial to disable a digital signal that it is pathetically absurd to try to lie about not being able to trap them.
I know why they don't want to trap: it's less convenient for them. They have to visit a house to install/remove one. They don't have to climb a damn ladder anymore, but they have to visit. I'm paying, their "convenience" takes second place.
I'm trying to get a formal complaint lodged through the FCC for this issue, but FCC only seems interested in complaints about other issues.
If you want to see why this is a no-brainer, read the Cable Consumer Protection Act of 1992. We've been through this "consumer provided equipment" debate with analog, and the consumer won. We need to get the consumer winning this one, too.
And there's the fallacy driving the system. Carbon producers are not by any sane definition "polluters". Once you see the assumption in the system, you can learn to fight it.
That should be really simple to see.
Creating artificial limits on a gas that exists in nature and is produced by every animal on the planet is ludicrous. A gas that is REQUIRED for the plant life on this planet, which is required for the animal life. That should be really simple to see.
But control is a strong urge. We ... must .... control .... others....
Wrong. You show the reason why.
If you merely tax or fine people, they will reduce their carbon emissions to the point where the cost of further reductions would outweigh the fines/taxes they'll have to pay.
That is exactly true for ALL systems. If it costs me more to lower my emissions than to buy credits, I buy credits. The artificial limit has cost me money but not prevented one ounce of emissions. If it costs me more to lower my emissions below the artificially-set government limits than I get from selling them, I won't do it. That limit doesn't spur me to spend even more money to get below it, UNLESS it's cost effective to do so already.
If I save money by lowering my emissions, I will do so even if there aren't limits and brokers making billions off of trading them. I don't need the "incentive" of a government tax, and I don't need a cottage industry developed around trading offsets adding to my costs.
I'd go so far as to say a properly constructed carbon trading system is the only way forward.
Yes, those who favor redistribution of wealth would feel that way. "You've got more money than I think you need, you must spend it the way I tell you..."
I'd say that the only way forward is to create alternative technologies that make the net cost of reducing carbon emissions negative, instead of creating artificial costs that cost jobs and industry. By saying the only way forward is a legislated cost structure you're admitting that emissions cannot be lowered by new technologies or processes -- and that's patently absurd.
If it was cost effective to install greener technology and produce less carbon today, companies would do it and save money.
If it becomes cost effective TOMORROW, they'll do it TOMORROW to save money.
In the meantime, the cost of carbon offsets has done nothing but cost them, and thus every one of their customers, money. Money which makes carbon brokers richer. Costs which may force that company to move their jobs overseas. That costs us all.
It's a shell game. Plain and simple. Carbon, carbon, who's got the carbon?
I'm sorry, but buying credits from a company that doesn't produce as much carbon emission as the government says it can is in no way actually helping the environment. It's a ponzi scheme. You produce the same amount of carbon, THEY produce the same amount of carbon, but YOUR costs to do business go up and the middleman brokering the credits makes a fortune.
For your specific type of business. Other businesses have other limits. Other governments put other limits, or no limits, on businesses in their jurisdiction.
Since it's detrimental to my business (reducing client base) to reduce my carbon output,...
I don't know what you mean by "reducing client base". You won't lose clients if you reduce your carbon output. It may cost you a VERY large bundle of money to do it, or it may be technically impossible to do it. In either case, under that specific regulatory policy, it is more profitable to buy "credits" than to actually reduce your carbon emissions. Or it may be more profitable to simply move your company to a country where such silliness isn't public policy.
You are sending the money to the government, or some company making a profit off of buying and selling credits. Those "carbon offsets" you are buying are carbon emissions NOT being used by other companies, who have sold their credits. There is no reason to believe that your carbon offset payment goes to "greener projects", and no reason to believe that your payment has reduced the total level of carbon emissions.
Thus I keep my clients Happy and I meet government regulation.
Thus you keep your stockholders in the black, whether they are happy about being taxed or not. You meet government regulation, but not necessarily any environmentally beneficial goals.
Now, if the system was to actually provide tax credits for actual emission reductions, that would be fair and environmentally beneficial. Just swapping "credits" is a ludicrous waste of effort.
You want to reduce the amount of Bad code you may have done, but you can't go back and change it. Buy a bad code offset.
You have even less reason to believe that a "bad code offset" will actually reduce any of the bad code you've already released than believing that a carbon offset will reduce carbon emissions. It's a touchy-feely, feel-good, politically-correct concept with little real effect.
Scientists are incapable of recreating the global thermosphere in the lab, so whatever you think has been "proven" is limited in value.
The question is whether you're willing to bet that there is some (currently unknown) natural process which can balance that unprecedented heating, or whether we're toast.
No, the question is why YOU are so ready to believe that there aren't ten thousand competing and correcting systems in place in such a huge system as planet Earth and that a simple lab experiment contains all possible truth about a system vastly more complex than most people imagine, and why you are willing to turn the economy of the world on its ear to protect a system which has made similar changes multiple times in the past without help from or even existance of the one culprit you are pointing fingers at today?
Most rational people understand that "when we see X we see Y" isn't proof, and that "when we don't see X we still see Y" destroys what little proof the positive correlation gives.
One of the things a true scientist knows is that correlation is not causation. I.e., "humans started the industrial revolution in year X" and "the average temperature of some places started to rise in year X" is correlation, not causation. (An interesting bit of poorly-reported info: the temps changed when NOAA changed the paint on the boxes housing the thermometers.)
The real test comes when you create an experiment to prove the connection. Unfortunately, there are NO experiments that can make this connection, because we do not have a lab big enough to hold a duplicate planet or the ability to create one with the necessary differences. "If CO2 causes global warming, I predict that a lack of change in CO2 will result in a lack of change in temperature ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL." We can neither create the lack of change in CO2 or the "all else being equal" part.
The biggest issue with AGW is when we ignore the other times that the climate has changed and man has either not been there to be the guilty party or has not been producing the greenhouse gas culprit de'jour. A correlation that says "when we see A we see B" proves nothing about A if we can say "we've seen B without seeing A".
And don't get me started on the problem with modeling, where you can get any level of B you want by changing any of a half dozen empirical parameters. Modeling is science only when you can do the ground truth experiments to back it up.
Presumably at a certain level of human activity, we definitely would affect climate.
I don't recall the cite, but the numbers I've seen for the percentage of CO2 we create compared to the total amount would say that we are far far from being the cause. When you note the negative correlation ("more CO2 yet temps are dropping"), you have a real problem proving AGW.
The grant source doesn't care what you do with your salary, so OF COURSE you can take some of the grant money -- which pays your SALARY -- and buy a house or take a vacation.
GRANTS PAY SALARIES. No grants, no salary. I don't know why you keep denying this simple fact of research life.
Even if your grant doesn't pay salaries (which would be unusual) it DOES pay for research, which can include a rented vacation home while conducting research at a remote site (three months, with catered dinners five nights of the week -- been there, done that, very nice), and it can pay for conference attendance, which is why many of the conferences take place in Hawaii and other vacation-like places. As a standard practice when I go anywhere unusual for research, I stay a few days extra. That means, in essence, a GRANT has paid for my transportation to and from a vacation. Quite legal. Quite common, too. If the best airfare requires staying the weekend, I've got a paid vacation.
Sir, you are a moron. Just where do you think the salaries of the professors and graduate students and research assistants doing research into global warming comes from? Grants.
It is extremely tightly regulated and controlled by the grant providers.
Unless a grant has money included to buy lots of equipment or rent ship time, the vast majority of the money in a grant is salary. This "tightly controlled" money destined for salary GOES to salary. A certain percentage of the grant goes to "overhead" -- money skimmed right off the top, taken by the University to fund management and physical plant, etc. And to fund professors in stuff like English and History.
After you reach 100% grant funding for the principal investigator salary, new grants go to fund more students and more research assistants and post-docs. The more students and post-docs a PI has, the more prestige and the bigger his realm. The more overhead he provides to the Uni the more respect and more prestige he's given by the Uni. The more he can demand in offices and lab space.
Disclaimer: I am a researcher in a university lab.
So am I, in a college deeply invested in climate research, and 100% of my salary comes from grant money. If we don't get grants to pay me, I don't get paid. If my PI doesn't get grants to pay him, he doesn't get paid. If my PI told the funding agencies "We have solved the question we were looking at" he doesn't get any more grants to study that question. If we were doing AGW research and said "humans aren't the cause", we wouldn't get any of the grants going to find "the solution". We'd be cutting our own throats. We'd be sitting on the unemployment line reading about all the grants going to the researchers like CRU who fudge the numbers so they look like AGW is real.
About fudging numbers. I've seen what today's grad students are being taught about data processing. If their dataset is supposed to look like a smooth line they will make it look linear, even if that means they throw 90% of it away as "outliers". There is no consideration given to why those points exist, if they don't fit the assumption about what valid data should look like, out they go. There are tools to take a plot that looks ugly and simply point at the data you want to go away, and it does. Magically, their dataset matches the prediction.
I remember very well one of the emails coming from NCAR a few years ago, trumpeting the fact that they'd made a small change to the hockeystick model and the upswing in predicted temperatures got much larger. There was no physical reality to the parameter they changed. It didn't make the hindcast fit better. It just made the scare factor bigger, so the result was BETTER!
Being right has nothing to do with success, being able to create a desire for your particular kind of research does. "We're all going to die unless..." works better at the latter than "we understand the issue and it isn't serious".
Why are people so ready to claim "follow the money" when the money comes from oil companies, and then claim that money has nothing to do with it when it appears in the pockets of the people doing the research?