Very interesting 80~minute film on the science and politics of climate change. It decidedly puts forward the sceptical case, that global warming is a real phenomenon but has nothing to do with human activity and CO2, that the Sun is actually responsible for it, that there's a ~conspiracy~ to keep developing countries shitty and dependent and all sorts of other exciting things... I am currently watching part 6 of 8.
Youtube Link:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=u6IPHmJWmDk&mode=related&search=
It was shown on (I think) Channel 4 (UK) last week, and is being shown again on More4 at 22:00, tonight.
> Actually, it is not meaningless, since I am trying to show the limits of the observation that in a balanced system small changes can have big effects.
You may be trying, but you're not succeeding. A single counter-example can never show a limit to anything.
Try applying your own example to the body heat of a person. For a person with a body temperature of 36 degrees celsius sitting in a 20 degree celsius room, you have 293 kelvins natural temperature, with an additional 16 kelvins "man-made" temperature. An additional increase of 2 kelvins will make you sick, and 5 kelvins will kill you.
>>101.
My body also has a balancing system. When it gets hot, it will transpirate more, which allows my body to remain at regular temperature even in places where the temperature is higher than my body temperature. In the same way, the earth has balancing mechanisms although they work a bit slower than the body. One of these would be that, with a higher temperature, more water evaporates into the air, which shields the earth from sunlight and thus additional warmth.
Anyway, you said >A single counter-example can never show a limit to anything.
I beg to differ. I can agree with you to the point that a single counter-example cannot ever show WHERE the limit is, but a single counter-example can surely show that there ARE limits. If I were to give an example of this, would you argue that its just one example and therefore invalid?
>In the same way, the earth has balancing mechanisms although they work a bit slower than the body. One of these would be that, with a higher temperature, more water evaporates into the air, which shields the earth from sunlight and thus additional warmth.
Actually, that’s not really how it works. When sunlight passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, it warms the surface of the Earth. The Earth then radiates the heat back into the atmosphere, which mostly escapes into space, but most of it gets absorbed by the atmosphere. Likewise, as the atmosphere is heated, it will radiate heat back towards the ground. Such absorption and radiation of heat is due to the relatively small amounts of water and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This trapping of heat is called the greenhouse effect. It’s this blanket of heat around the Earth that makes the planet livable. However, if we were to add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the Earth would start to warm a little and cause water to evaporate from the sea. More water and CO2 in the atmosphere will increase global warming.
More water in the atmosphere will not actually shield the Earth from sunlight. This is because the radiation of the sun is of shorter wave length than that of the Earth. Hence sunlight just passes straight through the atmosphere.
*but some of it gets absorbed by the atmosphere..
> My body also has a balancing system.,,
That was not the point. I was not likening body heat to the heat of the planet. It was merely an example about numbers, and how a small change compared to a large total can be very important.
Please re-read it with this in mind.
> Anyway, you said >A single counter-example can never show a limit to anything.
> I beg to differ. I can agree with you to the point that a single counter-example cannot ever show WHERE the limit is, but a single counter-example can surely show that there ARE limits.
No, a single example can show that a certain value is within the possible limits, but it can never show that there are limit, nor what they are.
Say, I have a hundred bucks in my wallet. Does this tell you how much money fits in my wallet?
> If I were to give an example of this, would you argue that its just one example and therefore invalid?
No, but there is no valid example. Once again, this is very basic logic. You can disprove a general statement by a counter-example, but you can not prove it.
I was actually talking about clouds, but ok. Perhaps the heat reflected by the clouds remains trapped in the atmosphere or is mainly absorbed by the clouds anyway.
And when I talked about limits, I wasn't talking about values. It surprises me that it is interpreted in this way. I was talking about theoretical limits to the (balanced) model, and I do hope that we can talk about the limits of the model since its so central in the debate about what the causes are about global warming.
Anyhow, I posed this earlier:
>I am actually convinced that global warming is real. The movie which started this thread of, actually acknowledges global warming also. I'd like to state one of its conclusions here: Al Gore, in 'an inconvenient truth,' shows how there is a strong correlation between global warming and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. That's real data, and I think its relatively trustworthy. However, what the 'great global warming swindle' remarks about the relation between global warming and levels of CO2, is that we should look at the direction of causality. According to that movie, CO2 development lags behind global temperature, indicating that a warmer earth causes more CO2 in the atmposphere, not the other way around. The lag is a couple hundred of years.
>I find that a highly relevant finding.
>Another finding is that, according to the same models which are used to predict the future climate, changes in the temperature of our earth (I mean overall increases in climate) should be observed most drastically in the higher regions of our atmosphere, which is where the larger amounts of greenhouse gasses are supposed to trap more sunlight. Measurements of temperature at these heights have been conducted for ages, by means of simple weather balloons. 'The great global warming swindle' argues that the measurements are in conflict with what the climate models predict.
>Perhaps the heat reflected by the clouds remains trapped in the atmosphere or is mainly absorbed by the clouds anyway.
The clouds that form in the lower part of the atmosphere do shield the surface of the earth from solar radiation. However, the clouds higher up, reflect and radiated heat from the Earth back to the Earth. But to rely on this balancing process when Global Warming increases, is a rather capricious thing to do. The behaviour of clouds is just too unpredictable to decide whether they will cool or heat the Earth during Global Warming. If the temperature were to increase, the low lying clouds (which shield radiation) may actually evaporate into higher flying clouds (which trap heat radiation). If this were to happen, it will actually add to the effect of Global Warming. It could happen the other way and reduce Global Warming, you never know. But yeah, as I said, we don't know enough about clouds to make a certain decision about how they will react to temperature rise.
Well, >>108 has sort of the gist of it, but it's not that we don't know enough - it's that you can't make a simple statement like "increased heat means more clouds means more reflection". The whole system is incredibly complex, and you can't really tell just from intutive reasoning what any given change will do.
Which is why you create models, and run simulations, and try to find models that fit past data and use them to extrapolate into the future. Which is what the entire field of climate science is doing, and they nearly unanimously agree that global warming is happening, and will only get worse from here.
Strawberry Panic said it, it's not true.
Meh, if we can stave off the next ice age, I say good for us.
The problem, I think, is that the media does have an agenda, and a lot of the people who view this media take all their reported news as facts. A great example, not to get too off topic: the war in Iraq. How often, honestly, do you hear about operations that go right there? You always hear about the bad. Because people want to hear about the bad. And the media is happy to oblige.
From what I understand, the weather and climate that we've experienced for the past 200,000 years, according to core samples from the polar ice caps, has shown an unusual pattern of stability. Before then, there would be vast changes in temperatures and weather patterns in small (geologically that is) periods of time, the last time anything was this stable was during the dinosaur times. And that all happened before mankind even existed. Plus, look at the geothermal activity of the planet. I forget what it was called, but there was a volcano that erupted during the revolutionary war that put out more pollution in the atmosphere than the entire combined equivalent of human history, the major contributor of the so-called "year without a summer". I regard these things as clear evidence that mankind is not a real significant contributor to global warming.
I think that the planet is changing once again, and these changes are affecting our lives. More and more, people are noticing small changes in their lives, like plants growing out of season or hurricanes stronger and more numerous than before. But how long have these people lived? 70 years, less? Thats a hundreth of a second in geologic time. People are not used to change, and have been since the dawn of man, yet we have adapted. The planet went through that ice age from the 1300s to the 1800s, we survived that just fine. And the planet did that all on its own.
The problem is that the media loves to report doom and gloom, its part of their job, so they conveniently report the facts that support their agendas and leave out the important ones, such as the fact (note the word "fact") that there really is no concensus on what is causing global warming. Mankind is bound to be a contributor, but not the CAUSE. So as long as the media continues this trend, people will believe it. And more and more, political sanctions will lead to exploitation of the poor, all in the name of "preserving our planet".
No, the problem is that some people (to some extent, rightly) distrust the media, but then swallow anyboy else's agenda without question as long as it is in line with their ideologies. That would be you, >>113.
For instance:
> From what I understand, the weather and climate that we've experienced for the past 200,000 years, according to core samples from the polar ice caps, has shown an unusual pattern of stability. Before then, there would be vast changes in temperatures and weather patterns in small (geologically that is) periods of time
This is mostly nonsense, and you obviously picked it up from somebody spreading lies and disinformation, without questioning if it was true or not.
> such as the fact (note the word "fact") that there really is no concensus on what is causing global warming.
This is also a blatant lie. The entire field of climate science is unanimous in stating that global warming is caused by humans.
>This is also a blatant lie. The entire field of climate science is unanimous in stating that global warming is caused by humans.
Proof please?
>>115
Hello, and welcome to the real world.
Supplying more info for you!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
"I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans."
Of course, global warming causes increases in poverty and infection diseases, and kills off living creatures on land and in the oceans.
I hope the US presidential elections is soon over. I really want this global warming madness to stop. It's effecting every country out there.
It's not like the US elections are causing it. The US was like the last country to jump on the green-train. Frankly, while I don't know what we can do to prevent the damaging aspects of global warming, it's good that people are paying attention to the condition of their planet and that they're willing to reduce emissions and find healthier, sustainable ways of producing energy.
> It's not like the US elections are causing it.
Do you realize how much hot air is expelled into the atmosphere by American politicians and pundits?
10, or maybe 5 years ago (in the US, at least) that viewpoint might have been valid, but not anymore. There just isn't any room to significantly oppose the green movement in this matter. It's becoming an international priority to regulate emissions and control energy use.
You sound terribly outdated.
>>123
Humans think they are greater then they really are. Even burning the rest of the trillion tons of oil underground, we won't make a dent. Global warming is a political tool and nothing else.
>Global warming is a political tool and nothing else.
Troll detected.
how so?
I have never seen anyone argue that global warming is not happening. The only argument is whether or not humans are responsible for it, which doesn't change the fact that we're going to have to deal with it somehow. (Of course, if humans aren't the cause of global warming, we are taking the entirely wrong approach in trying to prevent it.)
You are ignorant and a fool. You have an entire field of science saying your are wrong, yet you still cling to your silly belief. You are the one who is being deceived by politics.
Actually, there's quite a number of people who say it's not even happening. They are just as wrong as the people who think it's not certain if we're causing it or not. We are, it's a near certainty.
There are people who say it's not happening. Some of these are the same people who said it in the late 80s the first time global warming was an imminent crisis. Some of those are the same people who said that global cooling wasn't happening either the decade before that when an ice age was the imminent crisis.
The entire field of science is not convinced that global warming is happening, or that it is caused by humans, or that an increase in carbon dioxide causes an increase in average global temperature, or that an increase in global temperature leads to those images of terrible devestation you see on TV.
> or that an increase in carbon dioxide causes an increase in average global temperature
What effect is an increased level of measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere supposed to do, other than increase global temperature? That'd be defying a great deal we've observed about the compound.
>>131
It would increase greenery. More oxygen.
I'd like to ban soda pop since i believe the CO2 bubbles they have is a great contributor to global warming. Probably a liter bottle of coca cola has more CO2 in it then the exhaust from a whole day of car driving.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
Just providing one example of the dissenting views I mentioned in >>129
If you took all of the CO2 from a coke, and made it all in one container and drove 10 miles in car and took that CO2, what would be bigger?
Fail.
>>132
I suppose I should have emphasized "measured carbon dioxide". That word is crucial.
What you measure is independent of how many plants there are. There can be many plants, or there could be none; either way, the ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher. As a result, temperatures go up.
As an aside, this also means that plants and ocean systems are unable to keep up with our current rates of CO2 production. If they were, homeostatis wouldn't have been disturbed, and the ratio of gasses in the atmosphere wouldn't have changed.
*stasis
I'm afraid I didn't understand any of that, >>137. :(
> The entire field of science is not convinced that global warming is happening
Sorry, the entire field of climate science is. All the "global cooling" stuff is pretty much anti-global-warming propaganda and has little basis in reality. An ice age was never considered an "imminent crisis" by climate scientists. It was only ever circulated as an idea that never got any real consideration outside the media.
As for >>133, if a paper starts out with an outrageous lie like this:
> The empirical evidence actual measurements of Earth's temperature shows no man-made warming trend.
I'm not going to pay all that much attention to it.
> I'd like to ban soda pop since i believe the CO2 bubbles they have is a great contributor to global warming. Probably a liter bottle of coca cola has more CO2 in it then the exhaust from a whole day of car driving.
"Probably" nothing. Perhaps you should educate yourself about some facts instead of making idiotic shit up?
The mass of released carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel is roughly 3.6 times the mass of the burned fuel. Let's (conservatively) say your car burns about 10 kgs of fuel in a day. That makes 36 kilograms of released carbon dioxide.
Do you really think your soda bottle has 36 kilograms of CO2 in it?
>>141
lol, it's people like you who perpetuate CO2 doom around. It's nice that you actually considered to answer that very obvious shit joke post. Shows people what you guys are actually are; scaremongering dipshits.
Dude how can 1kg suddenly become 3.6 kg?
Basic conservation of matter violated?
>>140
I DISAGREE WITH CONCLUSIONS BASED ON DATA SO I WILL IGNORE THEM AND THEN ACCUSE EVERYONE ELSE OF DOING THE SAME THING
Oh, I see, because I correct people who speak falsehoods, I am a scaremonger. Thanks, that makes perfect sense.
"The empirical evidence actual measurements of Earth's temperature shows no man-made warming trend" is anything but a "conclusion based on data". Pretty much all available data disagrees with that conclusion. You're going to have to try harder than that.
>>146
I like how you subtlely beg the question. Really, I do. You've got data that indicate that both the average global temperature of the Earth is increasing, and that it is the result of man? That's impressive. I could see why you would completely ignore an argument against your view, since it's wrong for opposing it. I guess whole studies on how the data is unreliable or misinterpretted or how carbon dioxide levels trail behind global temperature trends are completely worthless, because they don't support your views.
So, do you have any copies of some available data that will even show me a correlation between human action and average global temperature, with some indicator of human action leading? Since that's what you're saying anyway. I've got a background in statistics, I'd like to examine this info myself.
No one has ever mentioned human made CO2, they all say reduce carbon emissions by cutting back on this, turning down that, but they never discuss the implications of 6 billion people exhaling this so called pollutant gas.
Does the Global Warming party think that maybe Hilter and Saddam weren't crazed dictators, maybe they were ahead of their time, by slaughtering millions of people they were actually reducing carbon emissions.
I have not had the time to plow through this yet, but if someone would like to see the references to the conclusion that we are likely the source of global warming, take a gander here: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch09.pdf
And if someone would like to see the references to the conclusion that we are likely NOT the source of global warming, take a gander here:
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.6
A report by the IPCC, written by dozens of scientists, supported by thousands of references, versus some unknown author without any references? I particularly love the hand-made graphs (how very rigorous!). s.9.3.3.2 in the chapter of the IPCC report in >>151 addresses the issue of solar forcing as well, as do other parts.
So, surely you're joking, Mr. >>152.
> You've got data that indicate that both the average global temperature of the Earth is increasing, and that it is the result of man?
Ok, I'll admit that I missed the "man-made" in the original statement, which makes it less of an outright lie and more of a misrepresentation of the argument.
Let's look at the rest, then. I see much is made of how the mean temperature supposedly has not been increasing at all according to satellite MSU measurements. Unfortunately, that's not actually true: Turns out the data is very hard to interpret, and when done correctly, temperatures have been increasing: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=170
So much for that argument. There are more arguments made, but I really don't feel like wasting time disproving those too. I'm no climate scientist, and this stuff doesn't come easy for me.
> No one has ever mentioned human made CO2, they all say reduce carbon emissions by cutting back on this, turning down that, but they never discuss the implications of 6 billion people exhaling this so called pollutant gas.
Any CO2 produced by living organisms is part of the carbon cycle, and not part of the problem. The problem is solely the carbon that was previous locked down deep underground that is now suddenly being quickly released into the environment.
>>156
No it's not.
CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. It doesn't even absorb solar photons of the wavelengths you would want, as much as you want. It's released because there is global warming, that's it. It does not affect it. It does not speed up global warming. It's a side effect, just put this in your mind. Mars would be fucking 100C instead of the fucking freezing weather that is killing Opportunity if CO2 was a greenhouse gas.
And 154 was me. And it was not spam.
Unfortunately, even though you really, really wish that was true, none of it is. Please get equipped with a clue, and leave the debating to people who do not live in some kind of fantasy world.
Hey check out what they say about climate change on http://www.cubicao.tk ... they say:
• 2ND WISEST HUMAN COMMANDS humanity to SPREAD TIME CUBE far and wide, across the entire human population of Earth, before the impending armageddon of natural-resources depletion, deforestation, oil-depletion crisis, global warming, also global economic and ecological crisis, and nuclear waste, nuclear bombs, cannibalism, nuclear holocaust. Spread Time Cube before the Armageddon.
• 2ND WISEST HUMAN commands the entire human species—a species more technologically advanced, powerful and destructive than ever before—to heed the CUBIC PROPHET/WISEST HUMAN, DR GENE RAY, and heed the PROPHECIES OF DR GENE RAY THE GREATEST THINKER AND WISEST HUMAN, in order to redeem humanity.—For we must save humanity before it destroys itself.
• 2ND WISEST HUMAN has created the CubicAO website, a website that is helping people to become better-equipped to resist the singularity conformist evil of modern 1-corner civilisation. It contributes to the ethos of the pro-Cubic anarchic REVOLUTION!
• 2ND WISEST HUMAN commands humanity to accept Time Cube.
No, pirates.
Here's something that has been bothering me for a while (such as in http://4-ch.net/science/kareha.pl/1182487164/7): What is the deal with libertarians and global warming? Why do they seem to dogmatically deny it exists or is a problem?
How about a little experiment? Would you people in here tell us all two things: Do you think global warming is a problem, and are you a libertarian (or at least generally supportive of that view)?
I'll start: Yes, and no.
i dont know if it is a problem, and i'm somewhat of a libertarian.
Yes, and no.
I don't know whether it's a causation or correlation (probably the latter). One possible confounding variable is that most libertarians appear to hail from America. We all know what a fine, fine media echo-chamber it is over there.
"We report, you decide," &c.
the general response i've been greeted with if i hint at my doubts of global warming on campus has been some combination of shock, appallment, and disbelief. i've argued that i havent directly seen any evidence, i've only heard of people making claims, and i haven't seen their data, and knowing that there are both scientists who agree and disagree with the claim, the words of some don't have any particulary value for me over the words of the others.
i favor libertarianism because i've some background in economics, i value personal responsibility and liberty, and i think government programs are inefficient and often immoral.
Skepticism is a good attribute, but there appears to be an almost overwhelming stack of evidence supporting the existence of global warming that's primarily caused by anthropogenic forcing.
I am not a climatologist, a chemist, a physicist or even a biologist. To reach their level of understanding in their vocations I would need about a decade. That's time I do not have, so I must therefore defer to the experts.
And there's a lot of literature that the experts seem to have supporting their arguments. Given what I know of the pure sciences, their arguments are plausible (e.g.: no violating of the "laws" of thermodynamics) and the hypotheses reasonably follow. The alternative is that they are clueless (unlikely), they're on some kind of social bandwagon (unlikely), our observations and models on a broad range of pure sciences are completely off-mark yet nobody has noticed (risible) or there's some global conspiracy of scientists going on (risible).
The other side hasn't presented much. It appears to consist of internet kooks with hilarious graphs, the usual vacuous sound and fury of the media, or entities that have a vested interest in the status quo. So far as I know, there have been no peer-reviewed articles published in respectable journals that present any strong case agaist the conclusion drawn from all the other observations; feel free to enlighten otherwise.
I think the problem here is that while you have not seen nor sought evidence for anthropogenic forcing, you haven't done so for the opposite either. You simply don't know. Therefore the correct response to "Do you think that global warming is primarily caused by humans?" is "I don't know." not "I doubt it."
>>165
doubting imo has always been the same as admitting uncertainty, not claiming the negation is true. it connotes exposure to seemingly contradictory evidence though.
i'd seen a BBC documentary from many years ago about global warming where they had attacked the credibility of the claims supporting the theory. as far as i know now, the accuracy of the claims hasn't gotten significantly better, but still continues to be the main support.
i'm not sure whether it was right, but i've seen a graph of atmospheric carbon levels and measured average global temperature, where the carbon levels seem to increase after the temperature increases. i suppose, more accurately, what should be said in describing it is that the fluctuation of carbon, in relation to the fluctuation of temperature, appears to be shifted ahead in time. this doesn't really conflict with the idea that carbon increases cause temperature increases, unless theres areas on the graph where temperature makes some erratic change in direction and then later in time carbon does the same, but i don't recall.
plus i have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that claims of what will happen years in the future are very weak, considering we fail at predicting weather a month away. i know long term climate and weather are different, but still, i'm not sure how much to believe claims of what's going to happen even if we are warming the world right now.
i don't have a personal agenda, but i haven't really been convincinced by evidence, either because of lack of exposure or lack of belief in the validity of certain things. i have heard a lot of people who should be reliable just making claims that they've done studies and the studies indicate blah blah blah. that doesn't particularly affect my opinion, and i don't think it should, since it's just a person talking, not evidence being shown to me.
so i sort of have to make an expected outcome judgment about what i think should be done based on probabilities i dont know and outcomes i don't think anyone knows.
all the uncertainty combined with general apathy regarding the issue leaves me in a position where, if some organization told me the fate of the world relied on people funding organizations like theirs, i would likely keep my money, because i am currently willing to accept the risk.
Fair enough.
I'll just point out though that given how important this could potentially become, doing some research on it is definitely in order. I've been slowly grinding away at this: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
Also, what the media says isn't of much interest. As a libertarian I'm sure you agree. They have a tendency to use convenient sound-bites and come with no references or peer-review -- other than that rare breed of bloggers with critical thinking, if you can call them peers. As primary material they're usually best ignored.
Most of those doubts could be easily cleared up if you actually made the effort to go out and educate yourself on the topic. None of the are in any way original, and all of them are refuted over and over again, even in this thread. Look at the realclimate links, for instance.
"Admitting uncertainty" where uncertainty exists is good intellectual practice, but that does not mean one should question every single thing. That is just as intellectually dishonest as claiming knowledge of truth where none exists. If you truly have a skeptical mind, maybe you should try being skeptical of the motives of those who wish to cast doubt on global warming, too? You can't just pick and choose. You have to put everybody up to the same level of questioning, and if you do, you will quite quickly see that the claims of global warming deniers collapse quite quickly.
If someone asks me my opinion on it, I tell them what I said I tell them. I'm not going to go research it in depth and find out for sure because I don't really care. My opinion on the matter isn't influential or important anyway. I disagree that questioning everything is bad practice, and I don't see how you could possibly equate it to claiming truth where there is none. They're practically negations of eachother. I'm not picking and choosing, and everyone is up to the same standards of questioning from my perspective. You're twisting my words and arguing against things I haven't done.
The point of the "questioning everything" bit is that if you question, say, plate tectonics, or the germ theory of disease, or universal gravity, you're pretty much a kook, and not really a healthily skeptical individual. There are people who disagree with all of those, too, but that's certainly no reason to question the scientific consensus on them.
And if you haven't bothered to inform yourself of the issues, wouldn't it be more honest to say that you do not know enough to take any kind of stance?
To give an admittedly overly dramatic example, would you say you have some doubts about the holocaust, because you haven't seen any evidence of it (let's pretend you haven't, even if you have), and that there are both people who deny it and who believe in it?
you're only a kook to people who assume you've been exposed to convincing evidence. i.e. people who assume skeptical questions have already been answered for you. whats the difference between saying "i dont know, i havent seen sufficient evidence to convince me either way" and "i dont know enough to take a stance"? i do have some doubts about the holocaust, even though i believe it did happen, because i've never seen evidence that could completely convince me that it did. like, if i were on a gameshow where i had the option to decline to answer, and the penalty for being wrong was death, and they knew with certainty, i would say i wasn't sure and decline to answer. there are a lot of uncertainties in life that we just assign answers to for various reasons without complete knowledge of. i wouldn't bet my life that humans are causing global warming or that global warming would be catastrophic, but i wouldn't bet my life that it's the opposite either.
> you're only a kook to people who assume you've been exposed to convincing evidence. i.e. people who assume skeptical questions have already been answered for you.
what
It's perfectly reasonable to ask for evidence. What bugs me about so many self-professed skeptics is that they aren't looking for evidence, because they have no intention of changing their mind.
Holocaust denial is one of the big ones in that area -- no amount of photographs, documents, eye-witness accounts, confessions of nazis, etc. will ever convince them. That doesn't mean that I can't reasonably say "I'm not sure" if I've never looked into the matter myself. If I live in North Korea or Iran where I'm not seeing or hearing the evidence, then I should be a skeptic. It isn't consensus that makes truth, and if all I read and hear says "everyone believes X", that means nothing. I should demand evidence.
People often have agendas for "consensus facts", and therefore will try to convince everyone that the cosensus swings their way. Secondhand smoke having a harmful effect is great for those who want to ban cigarettes (Secondhand smoke actually is harmful), and Marijuana being a "gateway drug" is great for those who want to keep marijuana illegal (this one is more debatable). When I hear that everyone agrees, personally my radar goes off, because there's a good possibility (especially if there's an agenda attached) that this "truth" may not be so much "truth" as "truthiness".
> People often have agendas for "consensus facts", and therefore will try to convince everyone that the cosensus swings their way.
You should remember, though, that while a consensus among the general population might not mean much, it's quite a different thing with a scientific consensus. Not that those aren't ever wrong, but they carry a whole lot more weight, and you need some serious evidence if you are going against those.
More serious than the "global warming theorists just don't want to rock the boat" arguments usually brought up, which are just plain silly.
Freeman Dyson (!) says it's probably bullshit:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf
I know I'd trust him over any UN stooge.
Freeman Dyson is not a climate scientist. Most scientists are just as clueless outside their field of expertise as any layman.
Why are you putting him up against a "UN stooge", and not against a real climate scientist?
I've read it before. Well, skimmed it, more like. It's full of inaccuracies. Here's just a few of the general ones:
> The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist.
This is complete nonsense, and I would have expected better. The entire point of science is to predict. Experiments are set up to be as predictable as possible, and are then used to judge if those predictions were true or not, and thus if the model that created those predictions was useful or not. Science is nothing but predictions.
I really don't know where on earth that idea even came from.
> The science is inextricably mixed up with politics.
Well, no, the science is not. The science is science. The politics follow from the science, and the other politics fight the science, but the science is still science.
> Everyone agrees that the climate is changing, but there are violently diverging opinions about the causes of change, about the consequences of change, and about possible remedies.
There aren't really any violently diverging opinions about the cause of the changes among climate scientists. Everybody knows it is man-made. There are disagreements about the consequences and possible remedies, and those are mostly about whether it is already too late to do anything.
>>The politics follow from the science
Do they? Or is it the other way around, to the extent that there's any science here at all?
Steven Schneider. Confirmation bias.
Let's assume the science follows from the politics. Consider:
I don't think it matters why a scientist pursues an avenue of research (curiosity, they're paid too, politically inclined, et cetera), provided they actually do science. Unless scientists are performing poorly designed experiments or actively trying to subvert the results, you'll still get results.
Science is science.
> Do they?
Yes. You'd need some pretty extraordinary proof if you want to call an entire field of scientists liars.
Why don't we just let global warming hit? It won't be in my lifetime, so I don't care.
>>182
I take it you don't plan to have children.
It probably won't happen in anyone's lifetime ever.
>>181 an entire field of power hungry leftist stooges, you mean.
Aug 17
"Arctic sea ice shrinks to record low"
"There was less sea ice in the Arctic on Friday than ever before on record, and the melting is continuing, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported."
"Several years ago he would have predicted a complete melt of Arctic sea ice in summer would occur by the year 2070 to 2100, Serreze said. But at the rates now occurring, a complete melt could happen by 2030"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070818/ap_on_sc/low_ice
You have proof of them being that, then? All of them?
>>186
Why would you even bother replying to a dumbass post like that?
HOLY SHIT THERE IS NO CONSENSUS AFTER ALL!
http://www.dailytech.com/Survey+Less+Than+Half+of+all+Published+Scientists+Endorse+Global+Warming+Theory/article8641.htm
Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints
In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.
Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."
The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.
These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.
Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.
By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.
6% of papers refute the current hypothesis, and that is somehow not a consensus? That's beyond weak.
Here's a hint: Every paper about climate science is not going to be saying "oh by the way climate change is true!" Because it'sa consensus, it is assumed to be true and needs not be explictly mentioned!
Please think a little before spouting off nonsense like that.
Oh, so the other 93% (including the 48% of neutral ones) count as supporting it JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY SO?
THAT is beyond weak.
Science is not about assuming things are true you dipshit.
I'm not the one making any claims about what they do and do not support. It's that article that claims that they don't support the consensus view, which is obviously nonsense.
And of course science is about assuming things to be true. Every model is built on explicit and implicit assumptions. Once there is enough evidence that a model seems to be true and useful, it is assumed to be true except when explicitly attacking it.
Once again, please think.
I'm already thinking. I wish you would try the whole thinking thing sometime instead of parroting IPCC bullshit. You might like it.
I followed you all the way up to "which is obviously nonsense" part. You are very clearly too biased in the OMG MAN DESTROYS EARTH direction to read anything objectively. Open your mind and think about this:
Science is not about assuming something is real. Science is about systematically finding out what's real. There is a big, big difference.
A real scientist would not call someone skeptical about his pet doomsday scenario a "global warming denier" and insist on silencing that skeptic. The Priests of Scary Global Climate Change do it all the time. Hell, YOU do it all the time.
A real scientist would freely share the algorithms in his doomsday simulator so that other scientists can test and verify his findings or fix any logic errors that may be found. The Priests of Scary Global Climate Change hide their weather sim code and insist that everyone believe their findings. Clearly, it worked on you.
A real scientist wouldn't shriek about little things that support his doomsday scenario (such as reporting an antarctic ice shelf collapsing), while ignoring or denouncing anything that doesn't fit into his agenda (such as the heavy snowfalls in central Antarctica that more than make up for the ice shelf's mass).
A real climate scientist doesn't sweep the Medieval Warm Period under the cover while doing his math, ignore the facts that the 1930s were hotter than now, and the world (as much of it as they take temperatures of, anyway) was hotter in 1993 than it has been since.
You've been duped.
> Science is not about assuming something is real. Science is about systematically finding out what's real. There is a big, big difference.
To be a pretentious nut: Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident.
If what you said was true, scientists would never have advanced beyond being hit on the head by a proverbial apple.
As to the rest, I'll reserve judgement, although I'd be delighted to be pointed at some peer-reviewed articles on the topic.
> I followed you all the way up to "which is obviously nonsense" part. You are very clearly too biased in the OMG MAN DESTROYS EARTH direction to read anything objectively.
What I am is entirely irrelevant, but I'll answer anyway: No, I am not. I am anything but. I have explained this before, but I was ignored then. I support all kinds of technological progress by mankind. The only thing I care about here is the science, and that science is clearly saying that we'll be in trouble if we keep doing what we are doing.
> A real scientist would not call someone skeptical about his pet doomsday scenario a "global warming denier" and insist on silencing that skeptic.
A scientist would call a person who does not believe in plate tectonics a kook. Similarly, he can criticize a person who does not believe in global warming even when presented with proof of it.
> A real scientist would freely share the algorithms in his doomsday simulator so that other scientists can test and verify his findings or fix any logic errors that may be found.
This sounds like some kind of silly thing you have read about on the internet. Let's have some sources on that.
> A real scientist wouldn't shriek about little things that support his doomsday scenario (such as reporting an antarctic ice shelf collapsing), while ignoring or denouncing anything that doesn't fit into his agenda (such as the heavy snowfalls in central Antarctica that more than make up for the ice shelf's mass).
> A real climate scientist doesn't sweep the Medieval Warm Period under the cover while doing his math, ignore the facts that the 1930s were hotter than now, and the world (as much of it as they take temperatures of, anyway) was hotter in 1993 than it has been since.
You're correct about these, though. Real scientists don't do any of that. As such, I don't know why you bring them up, seeing as how nobody does it.
> A scientist would call a person who does not believe in plate tectonics a kook.
Ironically, the guy who came up with plate tectonics was consider a kook for half a century.
Global warming 'is good and is not our fault'
By Sophie Borland
Last Updated: 12:02pm BST 14/09/2007
Global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon and its effects can even be beneficial, according to two leading researchers.
Recent climate change is not caused by man-made pollution, but is instead part of a 1,500-year cycle of warming and cooling that has happened for the last million years, say the authors of a controversial study.
Dennis Avery, an environmental economist, and Professor Fred Singer, a physicist, have looked at the work of more than 500 scientists and concluded that it is very doubtful that man-made global warming exists.
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They also say that temperature increase is actually a good thing as in the past sudden cool periods have killed twice as many people as warm spells.
Mr Avery, a senior research fellow at the Hudson Institute, an independent US think-tank, said: "Not all of these researchers who doubt man-made climate change would describe themselves as global warming sceptics but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see.
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people.
"It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine, plagues and disease."
In contrast, they say there is evidence that wildlife is flourishing in the current warming cycle with corals, trees, birds, mammals and butterflies adapting well.
In addition, sea-levels are not rising dramatically and storms and droughts have actually been less severe and frequent.
The authors claim that the change is not man-made because the most recent period of global warming took place between 1850 and 1940 when there were far less CO2 emissions than today.
They claim to show strong historical evidence of an entirely natural cycle based on data of floods on the Nile going back 5,000 years.
Evidence is citing showing records of Roman wine production in Britain in the first century AD.
Prof Singer, a specialist in atmospheric physics at the University of Virginia, said: "We have a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it, except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events.
"The models only reflect the warming, not its cause."
They also say that natural temperature change can be caused by fluctuations in the sun.
The authors spent months analysing scientific reports and papers for their book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.
Their aim was to undermine claims made by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, in his film An Inconvenient Truth, that shows the extent of man-made global warming.
Stop trying to bring sense into this.
>>196
Dennis Avery = Hudson Institute.
Hudson Institute = "dedicated to thinking about the future from a contrarian point of view", according to its literature.
Funded by Eli Lilly and Company, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow-Elanco, Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy, ConAgra, Cargill, and Procter & Gamble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Institute
"Now we here at the DeSmogBlog know that “think-tanks” like the oil-backed Hudson Institute already has many pre-concieved notions about the science behind global warming, but this is blatant misrepresentation of the conclusions of a scientific conclusion."
desmogblog.com/news-alert-hudson-institute-and-dennis-averys-scientific-spin-on-andes-glacier-study
"environmental economist"... well, at least some economists have progressed beyond stating the environment is an externality.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0706/S00026.htm
World climate predictors right only half the time
Friday, 8 June 2007, 10:25 am
Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
Media release (immediate) 7 June 2007
World climate predictors right only half the time
"The open admission by a climate scientist of the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Dr Jim Renwick, that his organisation achieves only 50 per cent accuracy in its climate forecasts, and that this is as good as any other forecaster around the world, should be a wake-up call for world political leaders," said Rear Admiral Jack Welch, chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.
Yesterday the coalition published an analysis of seasonal climate predictions by NIWA over the past five years which found that the overall accuracy of the predictions was just 48 per cent.
Defending the Niwa record, Dr Renwick said his organisation was doing as well as any other weather forecaster around the world. He was quoted by the country's leading newspaper, the New Zealand Herald as saying: "Climate prediction is hard, half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don't expect to do terrifically well." Later on New Zealand radio, Dr Renwick said: "The weather is not predictable beyond a week or two."
Admiral Welch said that these statements warrant immediate attention by governments around the world. "Dr Renwick is no lightweight. He was a lead author on Working Group I of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, and serves on the World Meteorological Organisation Commission for Climatology Expert Team on Seasonal Forecasting. He is presumed to be au fait with the abilities of the official governmental climate prediction community round the world.
"All round the developed world, governments are being pressured by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to accept the integrity of scenarios of future climate behaviour agreed by their own climate bureaucrats, but these bureaucrats are the very people that Dr Renwick now tells us get it right only half the time. Worse, he tells us they are unable to predict weather beyond a week or two, yet in conjunction with the IPCC they presume to tell us what to expect over the next few decades.
"The link between climate and weather is well known: climate is determined by averaging weather variables over an extended period (usually 30 years) at one place or for a region. How can there be any faith in climate predictions by officials who admit they are unable to forecast the weather beyond a week or two?
"Perhaps now, governments will pay heed to those many independent climate scientists around the world who have been challenging the exaggerated projections by IPCC officials, and those political zealots such as Al Gore who use those predictions to mislead the ordinary public.
"In the light of these revelations and recent strong evidence that the sun not carbon dioxide controls the climate, the new Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon would do the world a great service by creating an opportunity for the world to hear from the independent scientists who disagree with the IPCC's blaming mankind for climate variability that is natural and historic. There is no scientific justification for some of the extremist economic and social penalties that a minority of zealots are trying to impose on the people of the world.
"This is a matter of grave import and urgency for poorer nations who will suffer most from the proposed penal measures, " said Admiral Welch.
