You know, I have a theory that most people's opinions fall just slightly to one side or the other of an issue and when you really start to get into details, it turns out that they all mostly agree.
I don't agree! No, wait, that was your line, wasn't it?;)
Crap, I've become way to engaged in this topic. I'm going to have to work overtime late tonight to catch up with all the time I wasted at work here.:(
Ah yes, the classic, "Well I *could* prove you wrong but I won't...neener neener." Of course you didn't forget the 'anyone who doesn't agree is just a troll'. Classic.
What part of "This whole thing about the UN is irrelevant to the sun spot/global warming science issue being discussed" didn't you understand?
>>>Fact is that the climate changes all the time. We have global cooling and enter ice ages and then we have global warming to get us out. Sometimes we cool form within an ice age and warm we are not in one. It's 100% natural. >>No, it is not. >Huh?!!! It isn't? So the climate was exactly the same from the time the earth formed until the last 150 years or so? Wow!!!
I was obviously referring to the current anomalous temperature increase not being 100% natural, I wasn't denying that climate changes over time.
Why don't we all admit that we don't know. Because we don't. Most likely it is a little of both plus some other effects we have never considered.
Science never deals with absolutes, we can only say that we believe in something with more or less certainty, and provide the evidence which caused us to draw these conclusions for others to study. And right now a lot of scientists are saying that they believe this with a very high level of certainty.
By drastic, I mean we shouldn't do anything that will have dramatic impact on society (ie the economy, standard of living etc) or worse anything to try to alter the climate ourselves. I shudder anytime I hear someone saying we should try to directly interfere with the climate.
Great, so do I. Have you heard the expression "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Not doing something might also have a dramatic impact on our standard of living as well. That is why it is an issue which is being hotly debated and studied. Some people take it as a given that economic growth equals more emissions, but I believe they don't have to be coupled. If we move to use more renewable energies and it turns out everything about global warming was bunk, great! Then we don't need to worry. and we will still have lessened our economic dependency on politically unstable regions such as Russia and the Middle East.
When a couple of noted British scientists tried to engage him in debate about some issues in the show, he answered
As I have been quick to accuse other people in this thread of ad-hominems, I now apologize for including this in my above post. It had nothing to do with the issues being discussed, and I will not bring it up in debates again, ever.
It doesnt take a genius to work out that if you TURN UP the gas valve on a heater, IT GETS HOTTER. Likewise the sun doesnt put out constant energy, it can vary.
That is true. But that is not the only thing that affects how hot an object gets when heated, and how long it remains hot. If you put a porous, non-dense, material like non-flammable insulation on your gas heater for a few minutes, then take it off for 10 seconds, then I would be willing to touch it with my bare hands. I would not do the same with a dense object such as an iron ball.
So different object have different capacity to store heat. If you compare Mars and earth, the reason the darkside of earth doesn't get as cold as the surrounding space during the night is because the earth retains heat. Atmosphere, greenhouse, yadda yadda.
and the saviours can say, "LOOK WE SAVED EARTH", now pay us lots of taxes forever!!!!
What does taxes have to do with anything? Do you have a rational argument, or do you just like to lump together everyone who doesn't agree with you on any topic as "the enemy" and image that they all have the same monolithic world view?
Yet this is EXACTLY what the Global Warming is caused by Man crowd does to any scientist who dares raise issues against that mindset. Bring on any scientist, no matter what prestigious background or association he has and sure as shit he will get eviscerated. [...]Global Warming stopped being science when some people decided there was no longer room for debate.
Yes, I admit the current debate is very harsh, and I totally agree there are personal attacks against sceptics which are shameful. Now, that aside - do you have a link to a paper from the sceptics that stands up to scrutiny and that completely disproves man-made global warming?
Many of the scientist listed on that UN report don't agree with it or all its findings. Yet you will never here that in the press.
Yes, you will, at least here in Sweden. When the US, China, India and a few others (as mentioned before on Slashdot) wanted to change the wording in one statement (something along the lines of changing "complete certainty" to "strong indication"), representatives from Sweden did not object, they thought the new statement better reflected the science. And this was reported in Swedish media.
I look at it this way, the doomsayers have always been wrong.
Yes, that is a strong statistical correlation. But from being "right so far" it does not logically follow "will always be right", right?
Regardless of what the US and Europe does China and India are just going to keep going, which will invalidate any pollution gains we make.
No, not if they can be convinced that it is in their economic interests to stop, and the IPCC released some pretty strong claims that it would affect Asian economies pretty badly.
We are so damn egotistical in our supposed science that suddenly we can declare we know what will happen when just a few years back we thought the same and were wrong?
Careful. For someone who seems to hold science in high regard, I think you are skirting close to the "bah, scientists have been wrong before, they can't be trusted" crowd with this statement.
Yes, just a few years after the seal hunt was outlawed. Seal stocks exploded, and those seals had to have something to eat. They don't eat seaweed, you know.
That is debatable. Besides, the patterns repeats itself elsewhere. In the Baltic sea for instance, we don't hunt seal. There was even a seal plague that wiped out a large fraction of the population. Even so, cod stocks have continued to decline due to overfishing.
I'm not saying that there wasn't overfishing by man, but you ask any Newfoundlander if the end of the seal hunt was the tipping point for cod stocks, he'll probably agree.
Yes, rather convenient to have someone else to blame, eh? They may have contributed, but I'm pretty sure modern industrialised fishing caused the tipping point to be reached.
The scientific community generally regards Milankovitch cycles as being in large part responsible for non-industrial era warming. Yet, when it comes to industrial era warming, proponents of human-caused global climate change say that CO2 emissions are driving temperature. This is a logical departure from the previous theory because it readjusts causality.
With regards to the lady in question from the original poster, I agree with the AC. Could we have a name to verify the claim? Does she still claim this more than 10 years later? If so, resubmit. There is an enormous amount of scientific research being done in this area, and there are organizations willing to fund research debunking global warming (mainly in the petrolium industry)... I don't mean this as a smear, honestly, I am serious. No matter where the funding is coming from, if the research is sound and stands up to scrutiny it would make her world famous. It would also be a big relief for me actually, it would remove a great cause of worry for me.
I think maybe you forgot a quote. One that really tells us what this is about.
That is ONE politicians view of what this is about, and a politician who is a very skilled power player (nicknamed the Bulldozer). Before people start screaming left-wing conspiracy, let me point out that Chirac is the leader of a right-wing party. Besides, his final term as president of France ends May 17. So tell me, how does this politicans views affect wheather sun spots or greenhouse gasses are the most dominant cause behind the current percieved global warming?
Using a biased source to purport another source to be biased is pretty hypocritical.
Ok, so lets skip the bias question then since we are all biased one way or another, and lets focus on the facts instead. Did you have any specific complaints about Real Climates rebuttal to the GGWS program?
There is now overwhelming evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was Global, and much wider temperature anomolies were normal. This evidence discredits the global warming panickers who lied in attempts to bolster up their failing science.
Half of the editorial board of Climate Research, the journal that published the paper, resigned in protest against what they felt was a failure of the peer review process on the part of the journal. Otto Kinne, managing director of the journal's parent company, stated that "CR [Climate Research] should have been more careful and insisted on solid evidence and cautious formulations before publication" and that "CR should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication."
There is some evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was specific for the North Atlantic, and not global. The temperature anomaly we see today is also much greater.
Besides, if you wanted a debate centered on the science, you could have set a positive example and come up with some data instead of continuing with the discussion of how people involved with the debate behave. In that spirit, I will say no more on this topic.
So, can we count on the Al Gore faction to quit pouring out vitriol on Lindzen and the other climatologists who disagree with him, and just argue the science instead?
Make up your mind, is it Gore or his "faction"? Do you have an example of such vitriol performed by Al Gore himself? I Googled for a while after it, and gave up after paging through hundreds of hits of Lindzen talking about Gore....
Attacking the messenger is valid when no one can think of three successes in 25 years.
I could quote areas where UN has suceeded (as I said, the UN works with more than peacekeeping issues), but it would just divert the issue and attract anti-UN trolls. Let me come up with a counter example: the UN is not the only player who has failed in the countries you mentioned. So has NATO, the US, the African Union, the EU... Should we discredit everything these agencies say? No, because they work with many other things too. The people working on the peacekeeping missions are NOT the same people working with The Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change. So again, what you are doing is ad-hominem.
Still, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if I keep chopping down trees that deforestation would occur.
Or that if we burn things that emit greenhouse gasses, the planet gets warmer...
Still, good examples, but nothing compared to the Global Warming scare tactics of today or the Ozone depletion
Oh, the Ozone "hole" is still there, it is just not mentioned often in the media these days. Ozone depletion didn't turn out quite as bad as some people warmed, BECAUSE WE DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Even some politicans, like Margaret Thatcher (who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford University), realised the dangers and helped drive through the Montrol agreement which caused a gradual reduction of manmade ozone destroying gases. The thinning is still there, but it is finally stabilizing and may slowly heal over decades. If you think the ozone whole was a myth, ask people in Australia about increased rates of skin cancer the last decades.
, global cooling
Myth, it was the popular press talking about it for a while, you did not have anything near the scientific conscencus we have on global warming today.
Fact is that the climate changes all the time. We have global cooling and enter ice ages and then we have global warming to get us out. Sometimes we cool form within an ice age and warm we are not in one. It's 100% natural.
No, it is not.
Besides, RTFA is about the possibility that the main source of heat in our solar system may be responsible for all this heat. Why is that such a far fetched idea?
Why is it such a far fetched idea that gases that trap heat locally (a process known to science since the 19th centruy), if released in sufficient quantities globally might have the same effect globally?
Those are examples from former leading environmentalists to show how wrong they've been in the past
Irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. They are not the people presenting the data, it is scientists.
and to show their true agenda (the end of capitalism)
Also irrelevant. If someone has a political agenda, we might suspect that they slant or distort the data, then we check the data through a peer-review process.
What do you know So are temperatures. *ducks from thrown chair*
You didn't read the article I take it? The article points out - "They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer. This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue."
And also the article ends with - "The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase. This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. "
Ok, this show has been promoted like wildfire on the net by conservatives and global warming deniers. Like with Michael Crichton, no matter how many times it is debunked, I see we will see this show quoted as truth for years to come and links to it get modded up....
Anyway, rebuttals: Carl Wunsch, one of the people on the show has since come out with a public letter where he explains that he was systematically misquoted and misrepresented, and has come out with a public letter:
"As I made clear, both in the preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.
What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples, it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one: a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that piece of disinformation.
An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context: I am shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more carbon dioxide than it absorbs -- thus exacerbating the greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome. It was used in the film, through its context, to imply that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which are literally what I said, comes close to fraud."
When a couple of noted British scientists tried to engage him in debate about some issues in the show, he answered "You are a big daft cock." and "Go and fuck yourself" (respectively). Channel 4 themselves now say the show is basically polemic. Of course, as a modern TV channel they don't care for a second about science or truth, they care about generating controversy so they get more viewers.
And then we have some people who go into the claims of the show a little bit more in depth here, and here, and here and finally here.
This is a UN body. Can you name for me three UN successes in the past 25 years? Just three. I can name three failures in about two seconds... Rwanda, Darfur, Oil for Food program, 17 Iraqi resolutions, Lebanon, Iran, North Korea... Oh, I was only supposed to stop at three?
That is classic ad-hominem, you are attacking the messanger rather than discussing the issue. This is especially irrelevant since we are discussing a scientific issue, you are talking about war and conflict areas.
Can anyone list a single doomsday environmental prediction that has come true? Just one. That's all I ask.
If by doomsday, you mean end of the earth, then.... *looks around* nope. Seems not. On the other hand, if you mean heavy human impact on the environment, then yes, there are plenty of examples. The Newfoundland cod stock collapse for instance. Plenty of environmentalists were warning for years that a collapse was happening. Warnings were ignored, then it happened.
Or take the deforestation of Easter Island, or this list of disasters. It happened on a local scale, yes, but with the population and technology we have today, we MIGHT affect ecology on a larger, perhaps even global scale.
And now for some environmentalist quotes
More ad-hominmens. Random quotes by fringe nutters does not a coherent argument make.
>>The models are available for you to play with. The basic experiments (CO2 laden air traps more heat) are easy to replicate. The satellite data indicating that the atmosphere is warming is available. >That's all well and good, but aren't models and data only as accurate as the assumptions behind them?
True, but if we have refined the models over several years, note that climate changes according to what the models predicted, then we can say "I am fairly confident in this model", and even put a statistical number on how confident we are. Which is what the climate researchers have done.
I just have to mention NWN and NWN2, since I didn't see the article doing that. People are modelling objects and monsters, making single and multiplayer modules (adventures basically), making new GUIS as well as backend tools, running persistent worlds. What I like the most about the Persistent Worlds stuff is that some game masters are running worlds that actually change depending on player actions. Some unique monsters don't respawn, or if en enemy fortress is destroyed for instance, the entry point is removed from the main map until the area is replaced with a newly modelled "destroyed fortress". A few GMs jumps around and control scripts and non-player characters to create a more living world.
MOST are just running simple hack and slash modules of course, infinitely respawning Diablo/WoW clones basically. But it shows what can be accomplished with some skilled and dedicated GMs.
Did they really say that DRM will save gaming on the PC? Are they insane? Let's be honest, here. Steam is simply DRM with some sugar stuffed around it to make people like it.
In stores, they usually only stock a few titles, the most popular ones. Short shelf life means developers bet on safe cards, which means (in my opinion) boring games. If developers can sell online (not necessarily through Steam) they can reach a bigger market cheaper, and consumers can get games later. I personally have bough Psychonauts and Bookworm adventures online the last month, and I plan to buy many more.
Maybe the reason that gaming has been steadily moving back to consoles is because it works better there.
When gaming magazines release the latest sales figures and people go "omg pc gaming is dying!", remember none of these sales numbers (that I've seen so far) include: 1) Online sales. That's right. Steam, Popcap games, Gametap, Three Rings Net and so on, are not included. Neither is the money poured into MMO subscriptions. If you include those, I think the total amount spent on PC gaming industry is probably larger than the market for any single console. 2) International sales, where PC sales are stronger.
With the exception of a few games that really do play better with mouse and keyboard, consoles have PCs beat.
Not if you want deep strategy games or simulation games, non-linear western RPGs, or if you want to play MMOs, or if you want to add your own mods or content like in NWN/NWN2, or if you want to play decades of games from dozens of platforms through emulators...
And they are cheaper.
Most people need a PC in their homes anyway, so spending a little bit extra on a better graphics card is not that big a deal. Besides, with the costs of the latest generation, some people are questioning whether consoles are cheaper at all.
You can choose a "side", but think about it a bit first.
That is indeed good advice. You should know that there has come somerebuttals to "The Great Global Warming Swindle", and at least one person who participated has since come out with a public letter where he explains that he is the one who feels swindled by the makers.
"As I made clear, both in the preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.
What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community. "
It is also interested to note how the makers react when a couple of noted scientists try to engage him in debate.
The key word in the statement was *important*. I think we can get by just fine with a few less fish in one part of the world. That's not exactly a catastrophe.
I actually has been a catastrophe for the local economy. And for the fish...
And was have been done on one local place can happen on others, and indeed globally (for some species at least).
Most of those species simply weren't important to us
I understand your argument, I just honestly don't understand how people can THINK like this, and put such a low value on life and beauty. Especially since many species don't HAVE to become extinct if we only use them carefully.
The earth is a big place and has been around a long time.
The cod population of Newfoundland was enormous, and had been around along a very time too. Now it is gone.
It sure as hell doesn't need any self-important environmentalists to take care of it.
I think it might actually. Sorry if this offends you.
Slashdot Mirror
i think might is the biggest ad hominem used so far, and so far it looks like your the only one who used it
Heh, clever. I find it HIGHLY LIKELY that we are affecting climate and ecology on a global scale. Happier?
You know, I have a theory that most people's opinions fall just slightly to one side or the other of an issue and when you really start to get into details, it turns out that they all mostly agree.
;)
:(
I don't agree! No, wait, that was your line, wasn't it?
Crap, I've become way to engaged in this topic. I'm going to have to work overtime late tonight to catch up with all the time I wasted at work here.
Ah yes, the classic, "Well I *could* prove you wrong but I won't...neener neener." Of course you didn't forget the 'anyone who doesn't agree is just a troll'. Classic.
What part of "This whole thing about the UN is irrelevant to the sun spot/global warming science issue being discussed" didn't you understand?
>>>Fact is that the climate changes all the time. We have global cooling and enter ice ages and then we have global warming to get us out. Sometimes we cool form within an ice age and warm we are not in one. It's 100% natural.
>>No, it is not.
>Huh?!!! It isn't? So the climate was exactly the same from the time the earth formed until the last 150 years or so? Wow!!!
I was obviously referring to the current anomalous temperature increase not being 100% natural, I wasn't denying that climate changes over time.
Why don't we all admit that we don't know. Because we don't. Most likely it is a little of both plus some other effects we have never considered.
Science never deals with absolutes, we can only say that we believe in something with more or less certainty, and provide the evidence which caused us to draw these conclusions for others to study. And right now a lot of scientists are saying that they believe this with a very high level of certainty.
By drastic, I mean we shouldn't do anything that will have dramatic impact on society (ie the economy, standard of living etc) or worse anything to try to alter the climate ourselves. I shudder anytime I hear someone saying we should try to directly interfere with the climate.
Great, so do I. Have you heard the expression "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Not doing something might also have a dramatic impact on our standard of living as well. That is why it is an issue which is being hotly debated and studied. Some people take it as a given that economic growth equals more emissions, but I believe they don't have to be coupled. If we move to use more renewable energies and it turns out everything about global warming was bunk, great! Then we don't need to worry. and we will still have lessened our economic dependency on politically unstable regions such as Russia and the Middle East.
When a couple of noted British scientists tried to engage him in debate about some issues in the show, he answered
As I have been quick to accuse other people in this thread of ad-hominems, I now apologize for including this in my above post. It had nothing to do with the issues being discussed, and I will not bring it up in debates again, ever.
Now to get off my high horse here...
It doesnt take a genius to work out that if you TURN UP the gas valve on a heater, IT GETS HOTTER. Likewise the sun doesnt put out constant energy, it can vary.
That is true. But that is not the only thing that affects how hot an object gets when heated, and how long it remains hot. If you put a porous, non-dense, material like non-flammable insulation on your gas heater for a few minutes, then take it off for 10 seconds, then I would be willing to touch it with my bare hands. I would not do the same with a dense object such as an iron ball.
So different object have different capacity to store heat. If you compare Mars and earth, the reason the darkside of earth doesn't get as cold as the surrounding space during the night is because the earth retains heat. Atmosphere, greenhouse, yadda yadda.
and the saviours can say, "LOOK WE SAVED EARTH", now pay us lots of taxes forever!!!!
What does taxes have to do with anything? Do you have a rational argument, or do you just like to lump together everyone who doesn't agree with you on any topic as "the enemy" and image that they all have the same monolithic world view?
Yet this is EXACTLY what the Global Warming is caused by Man crowd does to any scientist who dares raise issues against that mindset. Bring on any scientist, no matter what prestigious background or association he has and sure as shit he will get eviscerated. [...]Global Warming stopped being science when some people decided there was no longer room for debate.
Yes, I admit the current debate is very harsh, and I totally agree there are personal attacks against sceptics which are shameful. Now, that aside - do you have a link to a paper from the sceptics that stands up to scrutiny and that completely disproves man-made global warming?
Many of the scientist listed on that UN report don't agree with it or all its findings. Yet you will never here that in the press.
Yes, you will, at least here in Sweden. When the US, China, India and a few others (as mentioned before on Slashdot) wanted to change the wording in one statement (something along the lines of changing "complete certainty" to "strong indication"), representatives from Sweden did not object, they thought the new statement better reflected the science. And this was reported in Swedish media.
I look at it this way, the doomsayers have always been wrong.
Yes, that is a strong statistical correlation. But from being "right so far" it does not logically follow "will always be right", right?
Regardless of what the US and Europe does China and India are just going to keep going, which will invalidate any pollution gains we make.
No, not if they can be convinced that it is in their economic interests to stop, and the IPCC released some pretty strong claims that it would affect Asian economies pretty badly.
We are so damn egotistical in our supposed science that suddenly we can declare we know what will happen when just a few years back we thought the same and were wrong?
Careful. For someone who seems to hold science in high regard, I think you are skirting close to the "bah, scientists have been wrong before, they can't be trusted" crowd with this statement.
Yes, just a few years after the seal hunt was outlawed. Seal stocks exploded, and those seals had to have something to eat. They don't eat seaweed, you know.
That is debatable. Besides, the patterns repeats itself elsewhere. In the Baltic sea for instance, we don't hunt seal. There was even a seal plague that wiped out a large fraction of the population. Even so, cod stocks have continued to decline due to overfishing.
I'm not saying that there wasn't overfishing by man, but you ask any Newfoundlander if the end of the seal hunt was the tipping point for cod stocks, he'll probably agree.
Yes, rather convenient to have someone else to blame, eh? They may have contributed, but I'm pretty sure modern industrialised fishing caused the tipping point to be reached.
The scientific community generally regards Milankovitch cycles as being in large part responsible for non-industrial era warming. Yet, when it comes to industrial era warming, proponents of human-caused global climate change say that CO2 emissions are driving temperature. This is a logical departure from the previous theory because it readjusts causality.
Actually, a lot of climate scientists do tackle the questions of solar and orbital cycles effecting, and temperature causing CO2 emissions at the start of historical warming cycles rather than the other way around.
With regards to the lady in question from the original poster, I agree with the AC. Could we have a name to verify the claim? Does she still claim this more than 10 years later? If so, resubmit. There is an enormous amount of scientific research being done in this area, and there are organizations willing to fund research debunking global warming (mainly in the petrolium industry)... I don't mean this as a smear, honestly, I am serious. No matter where the funding is coming from, if the research is sound and stands up to scrutiny it would make her world famous. It would also be a big relief for me actually, it would remove a great cause of worry for me.
I think maybe you forgot a quote. One that really tells us what this is about.
That is ONE politicians view of what this is about, and a politician who is a very skilled power player (nicknamed the Bulldozer). Before people start screaming left-wing conspiracy, let me point out that Chirac is the leader of a right-wing party. Besides, his final term as president of France ends May 17. So tell me, how does this politicans views affect wheather sun spots or greenhouse gasses are the most dominant cause behind the current percieved global warming?
Using a biased source to purport another source to be biased is pretty hypocritical.
Ok, so lets skip the bias question then since we are all biased one way or another, and lets focus on the facts instead. Did you have any specific complaints about Real Climates rebuttal to the GGWS program?
The paper you link to is from 2003, a lot more data has come since then. A little careful Googling turns up that 13 of the authors of the papers Baliunas and Soon cited refuted her interpretation of their work, and that furthermore
Oh please... you expect us to believe that humans cause sunspots???
;)
Well, some people are obviously dense enough...
There is some evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was specific for the North Atlantic, and not global. The temperature anomaly we see today is also much greater.
Besides, if you wanted a debate centered on the science, you could have set a positive example and come up with some data instead of continuing with the discussion of how people involved with the debate behave. In that spirit, I will say no more on this topic.
So, can we count on the Al Gore faction to quit pouring out vitriol on Lindzen and the other climatologists who disagree with him, and just argue the science instead?
Make up your mind, is it Gore or his "faction"? Do you have an example of such vitriol performed by Al Gore himself? I Googled for a while after it, and gave up after paging through hundreds of hits of Lindzen talking about Gore....
Attacking the messenger is valid when no one can think of three successes in 25 years.
I could quote areas where UN has suceeded (as I said, the UN works with more than peacekeeping issues), but it would just divert the issue and attract anti-UN trolls. Let me come up with a counter example: the UN is not the only player who has failed in the countries you mentioned. So has NATO, the US, the African Union, the EU... Should we discredit everything these agencies say? No, because they work with many other things too. The people working on the peacekeeping missions are NOT the same people working with The Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change. So again, what you are doing is ad-hominem.
Still, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if I keep chopping down trees that deforestation would occur.
Or that if we burn things that emit greenhouse gasses, the planet gets warmer...
Still, good examples, but nothing compared to the Global Warming scare tactics of today or the Ozone depletion
Oh, the Ozone "hole" is still there, it is just not mentioned often in the media these days. Ozone depletion didn't turn out quite as bad as some people warmed, BECAUSE WE DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Even some politicans, like Margaret Thatcher (who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford University), realised the dangers and helped drive through the Montrol agreement which caused a gradual reduction of manmade ozone destroying gases. The thinning is still there, but it is finally stabilizing and may slowly heal over decades. If you think the ozone whole was a myth, ask people in Australia about increased rates of skin cancer the last decades.
, global cooling
Myth, it was the popular press talking about it for a while, you did not have anything near the scientific conscencus we have on global warming today.
Fact is that the climate changes all the time. We have global cooling and enter ice ages and then we have global warming to get us out. Sometimes we cool form within an ice age and warm we are not in one. It's 100% natural.
No, it is not.
Besides, RTFA is about the possibility that the main source of heat in our solar system may be responsible for all this heat. Why is that such a far fetched idea?
Why is it such a far fetched idea that gases that trap heat locally (a process known to science since the 19th centruy), if released in sufficient quantities globally might have the same effect globally?
Those are examples from former leading environmentalists to show how wrong they've been in the past
Irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. They are not the people presenting the data, it is scientists.
and to show their true agenda (the end of capitalism)
Also irrelevant. If someone has a political agenda, we might suspect that they slant or distort the data, then we check the data through a peer-review process.
What do you know So are temperatures. *ducks from thrown chair*
You didn't read the article I take it? The article points out - "They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer. This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue."
And also the article ends with - "The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase. This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. "
Anyway, rebuttals: Carl Wunsch, one of the people on the show has since come out with a public letter where he explains that he was systematically misquoted and misrepresented, and has come out with a public letter:
When a couple of noted British scientists tried to engage him in debate about some issues in the show, he answered "You are a big daft cock." and "Go and fuck yourself" (respectively). Channel 4 themselves now say the show is basically polemic. Of course, as a modern TV channel they don't care for a second about science or truth, they care about generating controversy so they get more viewers.
And then we have some people who go into the claims of the show a little bit more in depth here, and here, and here and finally here.
This is a UN body. Can you name for me three UN successes in the past 25 years? Just three. I can name three failures in about two seconds... Rwanda, Darfur, Oil for Food program, 17 Iraqi resolutions, Lebanon, Iran, North Korea... Oh, I was only supposed to stop at three?
That is classic ad-hominem, you are attacking the messanger rather than discussing the issue. This is especially irrelevant since we are discussing a scientific issue, you are talking about war and conflict areas.
Can anyone list a single doomsday environmental prediction that has come true? Just one. That's all I ask.
If by doomsday, you mean end of the earth, then.... *looks around* nope. Seems not. On the other hand, if you mean heavy human impact on the environment, then yes, there are plenty of examples. The Newfoundland cod stock collapse for instance. Plenty of environmentalists were warning for years that a collapse was happening. Warnings were ignored, then it happened.
Or take the deforestation of Easter Island, or this list of disasters. It happened on a local scale, yes, but with the population and technology we have today, we MIGHT affect ecology on a larger, perhaps even global scale.
And now for some environmentalist quotes
More ad-hominmens. Random quotes by fringe nutters does not a coherent argument make.
>>The models are available for you to play with. The basic experiments (CO2 laden air traps more heat) are easy to replicate. The satellite data indicating that the atmosphere is warming is available.
>That's all well and good, but aren't models and data only as accurate as the assumptions behind them?
True, but if we have refined the models over several years, note that climate changes according to what the models predicted, then we can say
"I am fairly confident in this model", and even put a statistical number on how confident we are. Which is what the climate researchers have done.
I just have to mention NWN and NWN2, since I didn't see the article doing that. People are modelling objects and monsters, making single and multiplayer modules (adventures basically), making new GUIS as well as backend tools, running persistent worlds. What I like the most about the Persistent Worlds stuff is that some game masters are running worlds that actually change depending on player actions. Some unique monsters don't respawn, or if en enemy fortress is destroyed for instance, the entry point is removed from the main map until the area is replaced with a newly modelled "destroyed fortress". A few GMs jumps around and control scripts and non-player characters to create a more living world.
MOST are just running simple hack and slash modules of course, infinitely respawning Diablo/WoW clones basically. But it shows what can be accomplished with some skilled and dedicated GMs.
Did they really say that DRM will save gaming on the PC? Are they insane? Let's be honest, here. Steam is simply DRM with some sugar stuffed around it to make people like it.
In stores, they usually only stock a few titles, the most popular ones. Short shelf life means developers bet on safe cards, which means (in my opinion) boring games. If developers can sell online (not necessarily through Steam) they can reach a bigger market cheaper, and consumers can get games later. I personally have bough Psychonauts and Bookworm adventures online the last month, and I plan to buy many more.
Maybe the reason that gaming has been steadily moving back to consoles is because it works better there.
When gaming magazines release the latest sales figures and people go "omg pc gaming is dying!", remember none of these sales numbers (that I've seen so far) include:
1) Online sales. That's right. Steam, Popcap games, Gametap, Three Rings Net and so on, are not included. Neither is the money poured into MMO subscriptions. If you include those, I think the total amount spent on PC gaming industry is probably larger than the market for any single console.
2) International sales, where PC sales are stronger.
With the exception of a few games that really do play better with mouse and keyboard, consoles have PCs beat.
Not if you want deep strategy games or simulation games, non-linear western RPGs, or if you want to play MMOs, or if you want to add your own mods or content like in NWN/NWN2, or if you want to play decades of games from dozens of platforms through emulators...
And they are cheaper.
Most people need a PC in their homes anyway, so spending a little bit extra on a better graphics card is not that big a deal. Besides, with the costs of the latest generation, some people are questioning whether consoles are cheaper at all.
That is indeed good advice. You should know that there has come some rebuttals to "The Great Global Warming Swindle", and at least one person who participated has since come out with a public letter where he explains that he is the one who feels swindled by the makers.
It is also interested to note how the makers react when a couple of noted scientists try to engage him in debate.
The key word in the statement was *important*. I think we can get by just fine with a few less fish in one part of the world. That's not exactly a catastrophe.
I actually has been a catastrophe for the local economy. And for the fish...
And was have been done on one local place can happen on others, and indeed globally (for some species at least).
Most of those species simply weren't important to us
I understand your argument, I just honestly don't understand how people can THINK like this, and put such a low value on life and beauty. Especially since many species don't HAVE to become extinct if we only use them carefully.
The earth is a big place and has been around a long time.
The cod population of Newfoundland was enormous, and had been around along a very time too. Now it is gone.
It sure as hell doesn't need any self-important environmentalists to take care of it.
I think it might actually. Sorry if this offends you.