Obviously the IPCC has been caught several times making propaganda by spreading lies it's own scientists don't agree with (most famous the hokey stick graph). This "somehow" keeps happening, and even today you can find that graph in IPCC materials.
I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this, but the Mann et. al. 1999 reconstruction was accurate and has been independently confirmed by many researchers. Those links contain many references to peer-reviewed research papers that you can read to learn about paleoclimatology temperature reconstructions.
In this context, "willing" implies that one is both old enough and mentally competent to give informed consent. Most societies say 18 years old is "old enough." Arguments could be made (not necessarily by me) to lower it to ~16 in cases when the older partner is ~20 years old, but only child predators like NAMBLA members want to significantly change the definition of implied consent.
Don't conflate gay rights with pedophile rights. They're not even remotely similar.
Scientific consensus matters because it's the only way that non-scientists have to determine what might be the facts as we understand them. If scientists disagree, it can be nearly impossible for non-scientists determine the correctness of a given theory.
I realize that non-scientists often think like this, but I try to discourage it. Most science can be understood to some degree by just about anyone given a little tenacity. Scientists are also sometimes guilty of this reasoning process when considering topics outside their own field. Personally, I try to remain agnostic about topics outside of my own subfield until I've analyzed them in enough depth to come to a conclusion. Until (and unless!) that happens, I merely consider the consensus position as having the benefit of the doubt.
By the same definition, you could claim that many scientists support creationism, because 1% of a big number is still a big number. As has already been pointed out, I think the relative percentage is more relevant than the absolute number. If they'd said "some scientists" then they'd be right. But "many" seems to imply a majority to me... and you're right, that implication may simply be due to my own sloppy interpretation...
I only mentioned that survey because the article's claim was blatantly wrong. I've recently driven myself insane trying to explain to climate change "skeptics" that searching for a scientific consensus isn't the way to approach scientific topics because science isn't democratic. It's about evidence. Look into the advancements in technology over the last decades and examine the science yourself. Reprocessing dramatically reduces the volume of nuclear waste, while breeder reactors can generate new fuel. New reactor designs eliminate proliferation concerns by not generating plutonium. Pebble bed reactors eliminate the dependence on active safety systems by creating a nuclear pile out of spherical fuel "pebbles" that automatically react to higher temperatures by lowering their reaction rates. Uranium can be mined from seawater. Thorium can be used instead of uranium. Etc.
Try to understand why 88% of physicists think we should build modern nuclear power plants, rather than trying to count the scientists on each side. That's a topic that gets scientists bored very quickly. Focus on the science, it's much more interesting! But, since you seem fixated on counting heads, I'll answer your other question...
WHICH alleged scientists were polled in this survey? Maybe they polled a bunch of computer scientists instead of nuclear engineers.
The link you're looking for was on that page, off to the right: "About the survey." Here's an excerpt:
Results for the scientist survey are based on 2,533 online interviews conducted from May 1 to June 14, 2009 with members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A sample of 9,998 members was drawn from the AAAS membership list excluding those who were not based in the United States or whose membership type identified them as primary or secondary-level educators.
As you say, medical and biological scientists wouldn't know anything about nuclear power. And they polled 5x as many of those than physicists. But they specifically said that majorities in all specialties support nuclear power, while 88% of physicists and astronomers support it. They didn't poll any engineers because this was a survey aimed at scientists.
But your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will be employed monitoring the "by-products."
Remember that radioactivity is inversely proportional to half-life. The longest-lived waste is also the least radioactive, and the easiest to store. Also, reprocessing eliminates much of the waste that the United States is currently letting pile up.
As a recent poster said, that physicist was probably considering a rather extreme combination of 1970s tech (with no reprocessing or breeder reactors) with no new discoveries of uranium, and neglecting the uranium suspended in ocean water. Yes, nuclear power is fundamentally not renewable, but there's more than enough ore to get us to the point where solar is mature enough to replace it. We need to move away from coal ASAP, and solar isn't ready yet. Nuclear power is our best bet to avert dangerous climate change.
Yes, I agree: the fear surrounding Three Mile Island is based more on Hollywood than physics. The article makes at least one other mistake:
Many scientists and environmentalists still distrust nuclear power in any form, arguing that it can never escape its cost, safety and waste problems.
Many environmentalists do oppose nuclear power, but they're also knocking over AM radio towers because of the scary radiation. But it's not true that many scientists oppose nuclear power. From a recent survey:
... About half (51%) of Americans favor building more nuclear power plants to generate electricity, while 42% oppose this.... More college graduates (59%) favor building nuclear power plants than do those with a high school education or less (46%).... Seven-in-ten scientists favor building more nuclear power plants to generate electricity, while 27% are opposed. Among scientists, majorities in every specialty favor building more nuclear power plants, but support is particularly widespread among physicists and astronomers (88% favor).... -- Pew Research Center
So it isn't true that many scientists oppose nuclear power. A minority of scientists oppose nuclear power, just like a minority thinks abrupt climate change isn't happening. Also, strangely enough, the scientists most likely to understand nuclear power are the ones most in favor of it.
For example, if we use your premise, then EU, China, India, America, Mexico, etc, all have the right to sieze the oil out of the middle east. After all, we have much larger populations that does the middle east. Likewise, China and India are about to be in deep trouble with water over the next decade or so. When that happens, do they have the right to grab Russia's, EU, and America's fresh water just because they have larger populations?
I don't see how I implied those kinds of ridiculous claims.
To tie resources or the ability to pollute to a variable like population is an insane idea.
It's a very reasonable idea. More people equals more electricity demand and gasoline usage. Per capita emissions are a good metric for determining how clean a country's electricity generation and transportation infrastructure are.
Otherwise, we actually reward nations that over populate and continue to overpopulate.
I don't see how. A nation that experiences a rapid population increase would be permitted more carbon emissions, but their electricity demand would increase by precisely the same amount. They'd break even, which is the whole point of using this metric. Your proposal would allow for a country's emissions cap to increase if they annex a completely uninhabited wasteland, thus increasing their land area but not imposing any additional electrical consumption. That seems strange.
Why land size and not population? Emissions are fundamentally related to electricity consumption (when produced by coal and oil plants) and gasoline use. Each of these are proportional to population. All else being equal, if the population doubles the electricity consumption doubles. Population density plays a role, but only by making mass transit somewhat less effective.
Land size doesn't seem relevant. Doubling land size doesn't affect electricity consumption, and it (rightly) doesn't affect a per capita estimate. If the U.S. had the same emissions as today but a population of exactly 1 person, your metric would imply that the situation hadn't changed at all. But it would, of course. That 1 person would be using up fossil fuels at a rate 300,000,000 times faster than the average American. Doesn't that seem like something that you'd want your metric to be able to measure?
Okay, sure. I don't really know what metric to use in this situation. (Population density on the whole isn't useful because it ignores the fact that Alaska is almost completely uninhabited.) My impression of cities in the U.S. and Europe is that the U.S. has really crappy public transportation and is much more sparsely populated. I'd assumed these were causally related, but it's also possible that our much lower gas prices have contributed to our complacency. Also, I've never been to Sweden so I don't have first hand experience-- I guess I was assuming that they'd be similar to European cities but that was pretty dumb of me.
In principle, yes. But my advisor handles all that. Once I get my PhD (next May if I'm lucky) I plan to leave mainstream science because it's too annoying to deal with funding. I'd rather just teach physics at a community college and do research independently on my own. I don't know how funding works, and frankly I don't want to waste time on that when I could be learning more physics. I've only got a couple of decades of life left, and I'd much rather spend them studying relativity and quantum mechanics than navigating bureaucracies.
The strong bias I see in scientific research isn't at the working level - its primarily at the funding level which very politically driven. I'm going with the assumption that 99% of scientists are trying to be objective. Unfortunately the occasional example of scientific results being deliberately skewed to support the initial assumptions do make people question the whole lot of them.
I've seen rare examples of this kind of thing happening, and you're right: it is a serious problem which calls the credibility of scientists into question. I just don't see any reason to believe that any of the research behind abrupt climate change is significantly affected by this. The competition is intense, and any scientist who could prove that climate change isn't a problem would almost certainly get a Nobel prize for overturning basic thermodynamics.
Really? Wikipedia says Sweden has 21 people per square kilometer, while the United States has about 31. So the overall average in Sweden is something like ~67% of the United States. But that article explicitly notes that Sweden has "a considerably higher density in the southern half of the country." I doubt that asymmetry is present to the same degree in the United States. The fact that Sweden gets 45% of its power from nuclear is great, though, and something I wish we'll be able to do in the United States.
I find it unnerving that you would dismiss creditable dissension to a closely held theory as something to do with democracy. Folks like Monsieur Allegre raise valid points that should be addressed and not swept under the carpet.
You're implying that science is democratic-- that it depends on the number of people who support a theory-- by continually emphasizing that there are "too many creditable people who argue against your point of view." But as I've argued over and over again, science is about evidence, preferably in peer-reviewed journal articles. I humored you by opening that non-peer-reviewed article, and didn't see any compelling evidence. All he mentions is Kilimanjaro's glacier, which I've already discussed in the article, and Antarctic ice mass, which is well known in the climatology community to be losing mass in the west and gaining it in the east.
It's wrong to consider science democratic, but if you really want to play that silly numbers game, consider that ~84% of scientists agree that abrupt climate change is happening, and that it's being caused by humans. Again, science isn't democratic! It's about evidence!
When it comes to the general public, this subject is quite similar to evolution or the reality of the moon landings.
The questioning of the moon landings comes from NO ONE with any credible scientific background, yet LOTS of credible (and credentialed) folks are questioning the work being done on global warming. Yet those good folks are being put in the same category as the loons who question the moon landings...incredible.
Notice that I said "when it comes to the general public." All you have to do is click on the article and notice how juvenile and repetitive all these arguments are. Then consider that I've tried to edit their responses so they look less crazy. For instance, compare my version of Stormcrow309's objections to the Slashdot original. I've seen exactly the same bizarre attitude in my conversations with creationists.
And again, your repeated emphasis on "LOTS" continues to imply that you think science is democratic. I've tried to convince you that science is actually about evidence. If you can find convincing evidence that these people have published in reputable peer-reviewed journals, then I'll read it. But please make sure that I haven't already addressed these issues in the article. So many people on this thread are rehashing issues that I've repeatedly debunked that I'm starting to wonder how Carl Sagan managed to talk to nonscientists without pulling all his hair out. Maybe that's why he died so early?
Citing two papers doesn't show much. Particularly when you read the abstract for the first citation and it says "Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun's output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present."
Yes, that's why I've got an entire section (7b) in the index devoted to the Sun's magnetic field effects on the Earth's climate. And, yes, UV light might be forcing the climate in ways that aren't currently understood. But the Sun is unusually dim right now, especially in UV light. Also, solar output varies primarily on an ~11 year cycle, and the recent warming has been growing for ~40 years. As I've repeatedly explained, the lack of a long-term trend in solar output means that it's probably not responsible for the recent warming.
The second paper you cited says that both CO2 and the natural causes must be accounted for in order to make the current models fit the actual data. In other words CO2 is not the dominate controller.
Of course! As I've been saying repeatedly, climatologists aren't saying that human emissions are completely responsible for everything happening to the climate. It's just that the recent warming can't be explained without including human emissions, which is making up a larger and larger proportion of the overall forcing of the global climate each decade.
I can't load that page, but this may be my cable modem's fault. At any rate, your description makes it sound like a retread of Svensmark 1998, which I've discussed already.
How come global-warmists never mention water vapor, which is by far the biggest greenhouse gas. I guess there isn't any money in selling "steam credits".
Other than the section devoted to that exact issue, you mean?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this, but the Mann et. al. 1999 reconstruction was accurate and has been independently confirmed by many researchers. Those links contain many references to peer-reviewed research papers that you can read to learn about paleoclimatology temperature reconstructions.
In this context, "willing" implies that one is both old enough and mentally competent to give informed consent. Most societies say 18 years old is "old enough." Arguments could be made (not necessarily by me) to lower it to ~16 in cases when the older partner is ~20 years old, but only child predators like NAMBLA members want to significantly change the definition of implied consent.
Don't conflate gay rights with pedophile rights. They're not even remotely similar.
Facepalm. Been there, done that.
Discussed here.
Discussed here.
I realize that non-scientists often think like this, but I try to discourage it. Most science can be understood to some degree by just about anyone given a little tenacity. Scientists are also sometimes guilty of this reasoning process when considering topics outside their own field. Personally, I try to remain agnostic about topics outside of my own subfield until I've analyzed them in enough depth to come to a conclusion. Until (and unless!) that happens, I merely consider the consensus position as having the benefit of the doubt.
By the same definition, you could claim that many scientists support creationism, because 1% of a big number is still a big number. As has already been pointed out, I think the relative percentage is more relevant than the absolute number. If they'd said "some scientists" then they'd be right. But "many" seems to imply a majority to me... and you're right, that implication may simply be due to my own sloppy interpretation...
I only mentioned that survey because the article's claim was blatantly wrong. I've recently driven myself insane trying to explain to climate change "skeptics" that searching for a scientific consensus isn't the way to approach scientific topics because science isn't democratic. It's about evidence. Look into the advancements in technology over the last decades and examine the science yourself. Reprocessing dramatically reduces the volume of nuclear waste, while breeder reactors can generate new fuel. New reactor designs eliminate proliferation concerns by not generating plutonium. Pebble bed reactors eliminate the dependence on active safety systems by creating a nuclear pile out of spherical fuel "pebbles" that automatically react to higher temperatures by lowering their reaction rates. Uranium can be mined from seawater. Thorium can be used instead of uranium. Etc.
Try to understand why 88% of physicists think we should build modern nuclear power plants, rather than trying to count the scientists on each side. That's a topic that gets scientists bored very quickly. Focus on the science, it's much more interesting! But, since you seem fixated on counting heads, I'll answer your other question...
The link you're looking for was on that page, off to the right: "About the survey." Here's an excerpt:
As you say, medical and biological scientists wouldn't know anything about nuclear power. And they polled 5x as many of those than physicists. But they specifically said that majorities in all specialties support nuclear power, while 88% of physicists and astronomers support it. They didn't poll any engineers because this was a survey aimed at scientists.
Remember that radioactivity is inversely proportional to half-life. The longest-lived waste is also the least radioactive, and the easiest to store. Also, reprocessing eliminates much of the waste that the United States is currently letting pile up.
As a recent poster said, that physicist was probably considering a rather extreme combination of 1970s tech (with no reprocessing or breeder reactors) with no new discoveries of uranium, and neglecting the uranium suspended in ocean water. Yes, nuclear power is fundamentally not renewable, but there's more than enough ore to get us to the point where solar is mature enough to replace it. We need to move away from coal ASAP, and solar isn't ready yet. Nuclear power is our best bet to avert dangerous climate change.
1C temperature change in the global average temperature = bad. 1C temperature change in a pond or river = not that bad.
Yes, I agree: the fear surrounding Three Mile Island is based more on Hollywood than physics. The article makes at least one other mistake:
Many environmentalists do oppose nuclear power, but they're also knocking over AM radio towers because of the scary radiation. But it's not true that many scientists oppose nuclear power. From a recent survey:
So it isn't true that many scientists oppose nuclear power. A minority of scientists oppose nuclear power, just like a minority thinks abrupt climate change isn't happening. Also, strangely enough, the scientists most likely to understand nuclear power are the ones most in favor of it.
I don't see how I implied those kinds of ridiculous claims.
It's a very reasonable idea. More people equals more electricity demand and gasoline usage. Per capita emissions are a good metric for determining how clean a country's electricity generation and transportation infrastructure are.
I don't see how. A nation that experiences a rapid population increase would be permitted more carbon emissions, but their electricity demand would increase by precisely the same amount. They'd break even, which is the whole point of using this metric. Your proposal would allow for a country's emissions cap to increase if they annex a completely uninhabited wasteland, thus increasing their land area but not imposing any additional electrical consumption. That seems strange.
Why land size and not population? Emissions are fundamentally related to electricity consumption (when produced by coal and oil plants) and gasoline use. Each of these are proportional to population. All else being equal, if the population doubles the electricity consumption doubles. Population density plays a role, but only by making mass transit somewhat less effective.
Land size doesn't seem relevant. Doubling land size doesn't affect electricity consumption, and it (rightly) doesn't affect a per capita estimate. If the U.S. had the same emissions as today but a population of exactly 1 person, your metric would imply that the situation hadn't changed at all. But it would, of course. That 1 person would be using up fossil fuels at a rate 300,000,000 times faster than the average American. Doesn't that seem like something that you'd want your metric to be able to measure?
Came here to nitpick too; glad to see that I'm not alone. Grammar nazis of the world, unite!
Correction: "I've seen rare examples..." should read "I've read about rare examples..."
I didn't mean offense. You're right: your version was more accurate. Thanks for correcting me.
Okay, sure. I don't really know what metric to use in this situation. (Population density on the whole isn't useful because it ignores the fact that Alaska is almost completely uninhabited.) My impression of cities in the U.S. and Europe is that the U.S. has really crappy public transportation and is much more sparsely populated. I'd assumed these were causally related, but it's also possible that our much lower gas prices have contributed to our complacency. Also, I've never been to Sweden so I don't have first hand experience-- I guess I was assuming that they'd be similar to European cities but that was pretty dumb of me.
In principle, yes. But my advisor handles all that. Once I get my PhD (next May if I'm lucky) I plan to leave mainstream science because it's too annoying to deal with funding. I'd rather just teach physics at a community college and do research independently on my own. I don't know how funding works, and frankly I don't want to waste time on that when I could be learning more physics. I've only got a couple of decades of life left, and I'd much rather spend them studying relativity and quantum mechanics than navigating bureaucracies.
I've seen rare examples of this kind of thing happening, and you're right: it is a serious problem which calls the credibility of scientists into question. I just don't see any reason to believe that any of the research behind abrupt climate change is significantly affected by this. The competition is intense, and any scientist who could prove that climate change isn't a problem would almost certainly get a Nobel prize for overturning basic thermodynamics.
Yep.
Note: the Kilimanjaro link is actually the 4th one in the article, but I thought you might prefer a direct link.
Really? Wikipedia says Sweden has 21 people per square kilometer, while the United States has about 31. So the overall average in Sweden is something like ~67% of the United States. But that article explicitly notes that Sweden has "a considerably higher density in the southern half of the country." I doubt that asymmetry is present to the same degree in the United States. The fact that Sweden gets 45% of its power from nuclear is great, though, and something I wish we'll be able to do in the United States.
You're implying that science is democratic-- that it depends on the number of people who support a theory-- by continually emphasizing that there are "too many creditable people who argue against your point of view." But as I've argued over and over again, science is about evidence, preferably in peer-reviewed journal articles. I humored you by opening that non-peer-reviewed article, and didn't see any compelling evidence. All he mentions is Kilimanjaro's glacier, which I've already discussed in the article, and Antarctic ice mass, which is well known in the climatology community to be losing mass in the west and gaining it in the east.
It's wrong to consider science democratic, but if you really want to play that silly numbers game, consider that ~84% of scientists agree that abrupt climate change is happening, and that it's being caused by humans. Again, science isn't democratic! It's about evidence!
Notice that I said "when it comes to the general public." All you have to do is click on the article and notice how juvenile and repetitive all these arguments are. Then consider that I've tried to edit their responses so they look less crazy. For instance, compare my version of Stormcrow309's objections to the Slashdot original. I've seen exactly the same bizarre attitude in my conversations with creationists.
And again, your repeated emphasis on "LOTS" continues to imply that you think science is democratic. I've tried to convince you that science is actually about evidence. If you can find convincing evidence that these people have published in reputable peer-reviewed journals, then I'll read it. But please make sure that I haven't already addressed these issues in the article. So many people on this thread are rehashing issues that I've repeatedly debunked that I'm starting to wonder how Carl Sagan managed to talk to nonscientists without pulling all his hair out. Maybe that's why he died so early?
Yes, that's why I've got an entire section (7b) in the index devoted to the Sun's magnetic field effects on the Earth's climate. And, yes, UV light might be forcing the climate in ways that aren't currently understood. But the Sun is unusually dim right now, especially in UV light. Also, solar output varies primarily on an ~11 year cycle, and the recent warming has been growing for ~40 years. As I've repeatedly explained, the lack of a long-term trend in solar output means that it's probably not responsible for the recent warming.
Of course! As I've been saying repeatedly, climatologists aren't saying that human emissions are completely responsible for everything happening to the climate. It's just that the recent warming can't be explained without including human emissions, which is making up a larger and larger proportion of the overall forcing of the global climate each decade.
I can't load that page, but this may be my cable modem's fault. At any rate, your description makes it sound like a retread of Svensmark 1998, which I've discussed already.
Other than the section devoted to that exact issue, you mean?