Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Eric,
Unless you intended to intentionally mislead people, you might want to retract this article and rewrite it. You are passing on misinformation that a minor adjust in US temperatures means Global Warming is not happening:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/1934-and-all-that/

And…

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2_lrg.gif

The original source of this misinformation was a blogger, Instapundit, who sloppily confused US info on temperatures with global temperatures. This, in turn, was repeated by Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, and others.

Allow me to spell it out. Temperatures for the US are not the same as temperatures for the planet.

As Ralph Wiggams would say:

“I’m ben-barrassed for you.”

“An F in English? That”s unpossible!”

Eric, WOW! Talk about 9 degrees of separation. Look, where there is a political will, there is a way. Get it? There is no political will amongst the Iraqis for the kind of solution WE could call victory. On the other hand, governments around the globe recognize the threat to their own power that global climate change portends, hence, a growing political will is underway to act to minimize the human contribution to global climate change.

But, you probably don’t want to hear it. That’s OK. Other’s like to know they aren’t alone in their ability to think this through clearly.

The preponderance of the evidence points to global warming and human contribution to it. Nothing is ever certain, but the evidence is strong.

I agree that the climate war is lost, if you mean warming. There is enough CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the air today to make warming inevitable. Nothing we can do now will stop some warming. We can now adapt to the warmer world and reduce emissions so that it will not get much worse.

I do not think there are grounds for panic, however. Global warming will not mean the end of life. The globe has been much warmer than it is today and life thrived in places that are now barren. We had temperate forests above the artic circle, for example. The problem is the transition. Our cultures and economies are based on the CURRENT environment. We do not know if a warmer earth will end up creating an environment richer in life, but we know that the adjustment will be very difficult. So what do we do?

Fortunately we have a strategy that works in a variety of scenarios: a carbon tax. A carbon tax is elegant because it goes after the thing we want to reduce; it can use existing systems and bureaucracy; it charges people in relation to their carbon use, so it influences their behavior and it can be enacted by a single country w/o resort to cumbersome international agreements (where everyone has incentive to cheat).

In addition, a carbon tax will give a defacto boost to alternatives, help reduce our dependence on oil from volatile countries and discourage many forms of ordinary (none global warming) pollution.

There no serious downsides to a carbon tax, properly applied. It could even be revenue neutral, with carbon tax revenues used to offset other taxes.

It is not possible to be against a carbon tax and at the same time concerned about global warming, although some who prefer to keep the global warming issue as a political ploy do oppose it, precisely because it will work while leaving intact the free market system that has made us so prosperous, but that some people on the left abhor.

Good God, man, do you folks even research your claims? This is why I think the Conservative blogosphere is generally full of it: The big difference is that in the United States (we’re not even talking global), the average temperature for 1998 has gone from .01 degrees ahead of 1934’s, to .02 ahead. Like the guy on the site says, from a virtual tie to a virtual tie!

And as real climate puts it:

More importantly for climate purposes, the longer term US averages have not changed rank. 2002-2006 (at 0.66 ºC) is still warmer than 1930-1934 (0.63 ºC - the largest value in the early part of the century) (though both are below 1998-2002 at 0.79 ºC). (The previous version - up to 2005 - can be seen here).

I think he nails what’s going on here:

However, there is clearly a latent and deeply felt wish in some sectors for the whole problem of global warming to be reduced to a statistical quirk or a mistake.

Science isn’t science, if you’re unwilling to correct incorrect data. The data in this case still says the same thing. The Contrarians have made a distinction without a difference. At the end of the day, they want Global Warming theory to be wrong. But what you want to be true is irrelevant in science, as is what you believe. The data supports anthropogenic global warming via CO2 emissions better than any other explanation. If we find out different, scientific methods will demand a change in theory. It hasn’t yet.

Jack,

I don’t know why you are so eager to bash your natural allies on the left. Few conservatives are ever going to sign on to your carbon tax. Try starting with Eric! Anyone else want popcorn? This should be fun.

Eric,

Even if the theory of global warming ends up being just plain wrong, what would the downside to taking action be?

Cleaner air?

Reduced reliance on foreign oil?

Ooooooooooh, I’m scared! I don’t know if I can handle cleaner air…………

Eric, Unless you intended to intentionally mislead people,

Wow. If I’d never seen unbridled optimism in the face of contrary experience on WB, I sure have now.

However Eric, if you aren’t interested in completely misleading people in order to promote your own agenda, please let us know. I’m sure we could come up with a list of articles that you could offer to retract.

Here we go again, when the “man’s causing” global warming “alarmists” are presented with facts; they freak out and (actually) “deny” (ironically) and scoff at the changes in temperature. What is the big deal about (this) incorrect data?! Well, one of the central tenants of the global warming “religious fanatics” is that 1998 was the hottest year in history on record. Now we know that 1998 was not the hottest year on record, it was 1934. Also, five of the top ten warmest years on record are in the 30s. This is a big deal people.

No, rahdigly. You have it backwards (again). The only people freaking out here are those that want to deny the facts and evidence on the ground. They are the ones that are turning a tiny discrepancy that doesn’t affect the overall trends and conclusions into something it really isn’t.

That a few readings in one part of the world were wrong doesn’t mean that the 99% of other readings around the world are suddenly invalid.

Good try, but once again you are starting with a conclusion and ignoring evidence and understanding and knowledge you don’t like. It doesn’t work.

To all who believe in anthropogenic global warming. A couple simple questions.

What is the definition of the term “Global Average Temperature?” Please provide the definition in English and mathematically terms.

What is the definition of the term “Global Warming?” Again, please provide the definition in English and mathematically terms.

Here is some Extra Credit: What are the assumption implicit in either definition? Do all of the simulations used to predict the future climate us the same assumptions?

There is more truth in the climate war, then there was to get us into the Iraq war. Does a surge work, Johnson found out no it doesn’t, the same as Bush will.

Global Warming has been the rallying call for the past 15 to 20 years. Now we find out the hottest year is 70 plus years ago; big difference considering the environmental “alarmists” (in the 70’s) were saying that we were supposed to have an Ice Age. There is a (big) problem with the science (and scientists) when 1934 was the hottest year on record, and NASA may have known about it and doesn’t correct the data. There is an agenda there, James Hansen is a political activist; yet, none of the “alarmists” are concerned about that?! This data (or incorrect data) is being used to promote this global warming hoax; for example, look at this ABC News story:
“A study forecasts that global warming will set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, which was the warmest year on record.”

Uh, wrongo! See how this misinformation is used to promote the hoax?!! It is a big deal people!

Eric,

Your comments are a good representative of what we’ve been hearing from Republicans over the last 6 years. Democrats and scientists are engaged in a massive conspiracy to dupe Americans, and the problem doesn’t matter anyway. It’s a joke.

Jack,

We get it. A carbon tax is a good idea, but it’s not a panacea to what many of us consider to be the real threat facing our country. Republicans in general are hurting this country and making it less secure by refusing to acknowledge the severity of the threat.

Uh, wrongo! See how this misinformation is used to promote the hoax?!! It is a big deal people!

OMG!!! A sound bite that was used as an introduction to enormous amounts of sound science can’t be used anymore! It’s almost like the sound science disappeared!!! Please ignore the fact that it didn’t and focus on the sound bite!!!

KansasDem -
“Even if the theory of global warming ends up being just plain wrong, what would the downside to taking action be?”

The result may be (or may not be) cleaner air or reduced reliance on foreign oil. However, it should be clear to everyone that it certainly will mean higher prices, fewer jobs and a less stable U.S. economy (and perhaps world economy) Meanwhile, those countries which do not care (most 3rd world countries) will do nothing at all to eliminate pollutants or reduce populations. World population growth will negate all the benefit we would have seen from reduced emissions and improved technology. Net result = ZERO. Net cost = TRILLIONS. So, you will lose twice, air will not be cleaner, and you will pay the cost. You will die from polluted air and heat realizing that the war was lost because you did not reduce the world population.
IF global warming is true, any plan to solve it that does not include strategies to reduce world population is a waste of time and money. If global warming is false, all strategies are a waste of time and money. So, go ahead and get your worthless light bulbs and Hondas. I’ll just try to save my money for what really matters…pizza.

There is no political will amongst the Iraqis for the kind of solution WE could call victory. On the other hand, governments around the globe recognize the threat to their own power that global climate change portends, hence, a growing political will is underway to act to minimize the human contribution to global climate change.

This so-called “political will” it is yet another way for government, or in this case governments, to tax us and intrude in our lives; you damn right they are “willing”!!

Eric
And just where was the moon landing staged?

Don
Jobs are all ready being created in alternat energy production.

Third world countries ,contrary to your statement, are moving more quickly than we are toward alternate production. The Philippines,for example, is exporting solar panels and planting bio-diesel source crops,increasing alcohol production etc. Really the only way for us to lose jobs is to keep being blissfully in denial of the needed changes.
We do agree on some points. Beer,pizza and pool made America free,lets fight to keep all three.

David,
For answers to your questions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

The wikipedia article gives a good, brief, easily readable description of the issue in general terms. It includes a section on climate models, and also has additional links if you want to go into more detail.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment offers a wealth of information.

LawnBoy,
You are right, I should not be surprised when an article obviously, grossly misrepresents an issue. Why would anyone confuse the temperature record for the US with temperature record for the world? Once aware of theinaccuracy, why would they not correct it? Never mind, I can answer my own question.

David-
Global, as in concerning the temperatures of the whole world. Average, as in taking them in sum and then dividing by the number of points of data, or something mathematically along those lines

Global warming is simply the rise in that average temperature.

The real question you should ask yourself is why it’s happening, because this rise in temperature has been very real, and has occured in basically the ways you would expect if it were caused by an anthropogenically caused rise in CO2.

Rahdigly-
The geographical scope and magnitude of the corrections is not that great, as the facts above have already demonstrated.

Your claim about global cooling is bunk. People were considering things, but there was far more uncertainty in the science then, as compared to now. Computer models are more advanced and accurate, oceanographic components better measured and understood, and climate feedbacks understood in greater detail. Your approach is to say “never mind the facts and the scientific method, they have to get it right the first time, or we can’t trust a thing they say”. Which is bunk. They were considering alternative hypotheses, among which global cooling was one. They refined the science and the models, and as they have done that, they’ve answered many of the questions and objections. Meanwhile, you guys support things like the Cosmic Ray Cloud Hypothesis, which are nowhere near being properly observed, much less verified as an alternative cause. I think you have your fixed ideas of what is true, and you arrange the facts and theories you find around that to prove your point.

As for the temperature guages, ask yourself this: if it’s all a matter of improperly placed guages and thermometers, why are are temperature guages aboard buoys and ships at see registering the same basic changes to Earth’s temperature?

Don-
The consequences of not attending to global warming are calculated to be about 20 times greater than the costs of dealing with it, in no small part because of third world growth.

Populations going to increase, no doubt, but what’s the point of doing nothing if global warming is, as the data (even this new corrected data) suggests, real? It’s suicide, a needlessly self-inflicted wound.

Many third world countries do care. They don’t want to fall behind. If we do not lead the charge, though, our example strengthens the claims of critics who say that this is just the big economic powers trying to tighten the belts of others while they add new notches to their own.

Reduction in populations simply aren’t going to happen, but as people become more prosperous, they have fewer children. Finding a way to make cleaner technology is a worthy goal, the pessimism of complacent individuals aside.

It’s worth noting that we use far more energy than anybody else out there. It would do us and the world some good to cut back. To simply complain about others, who are not such profligate energy users, seems rather immature to me.

rahdigly, pick up a probability & statistics 101 book. Near the front it will relate to you that a single incident in scatter plot of many incidences does not a trend make. But, many incidences along a centered rising slope, does a trend make.

Temps fluctuate from year to year during glaciation or warming. It is the averaged trend over time that is significant.

Whether you believe in global warming or not should not be the deciding factor when choosing to support changing the way pollutants are handled in the world today. If a push towards conservation and reduced use of raw materials as a result of a global warming scare causes Wal-Mart to hire people to evaluate all of their packaging, which it has, so be it. IT’S GOOD BUSINESS. People who claim use of alternate energies and increased funding of scientific research will hurt the economy are kidding themselves. Sure, a shift of focus in the market will create turbulence, change always has, but the value created in new jobs and infrastructure will create piles of value. We all know pollution creates disease and shortens the life expectancy of those exposed. The government has probably considered this and should take a second look at the addition in tax potential from each person in cities were they all exposed to fewer hazardous materials. Monetary consequences, when analyzed from the viewpoint of one who only considers investments and existing markets is not taking the time to evaluate the financial shift a large movement of the populace can generate. Change requires money. Last time I checked the spending of money is what makes capitalism thrive. Instead of worrying about your current portfolio and that of the country, learn to adapt to new monetary climate the climate change push will create. When dependency is reduced oil and coal companies are given the same choice we are: to adapt or die. This is what creates innovation.

I take it some of you didn’t see the Watts Up With That article where they (actually) had pictures of where some of these temperature thermometers were placed; some were next to central-air units. The “bloggers” had to say something about it; not NASA. Who knows how long NASA knew (if they did) about this error?! Why did it take a blogger to discover this error?!! That would be a pretty valid inquiry, don’t you think?!!! Then, you have this ABC News story: where they are using this (incorrect) data. This is (just one of the reasons) why the incorrect data and these news stories are a big deal. Yet, some of you don’t want to hear that…

Why does anyone still respond to Eric’s rants on global warming? It’ the same old grasping at straws to prove his emotional and wrong view of what the vast majority of scientists are telling us.

It’ not worth the CO2.

I’m not sure what Eric’s link to “increase the casualties” is supposed to mean. Having fewer children somehow means casualties? Is this an anti-abortion rant or something?

Actually, I heard an interview with an author on the radio yesterday say something that took me aback. Basically, if every woman had on average only one child, world population would fall precipitously down to around 1.5 billion people by the end of the century. Although, more difficult to achieve than it sounds, we may already be heading for a large population implosion once we reach 9 billion people around 2050. We are going to have to figure out how our ecomomies are going to adjust to this even sooner in western countries where population growth is only maintained by immigration.

I’d love to see a well-researched watchblog entry on what population implosion would mean for the environment and our economy from someone with the time or interest.

Chris2x,
I know, I know. This messed up story, in which a right wing blogger mixed up temperature records for the US with temperature records for the world, was amplified with all its inaccuracies by Limbaugh, Malkin, and… here.

Rahdigly,
Correcting inaccuracies, making sure information is valid, and pointing out problems with any sources is a good thing. The problem with collecting data in an urban heat sink has been acknowledged for a long time, and attempts are made to account for the bias. The Forest Grove OR & the Marysville CA stations may need to be fixed. Whatever. There is a huge- and I mean huge- body of data on temperatures, and possible problems with a handful of stations is unlikely to affect the overall outcome.

Correcting data for a climate model is a small matter, especially when the correction involves only 3% of the landmass, with a correction of .15C

rahdigly, but, you are missing the forest for the trees. The Arctic is being fought over DUE to the melting opening the Arctic up for drilling. The warming is threatening polar bears which some predict will have to be put on the endangered species list in the next decade if the keep being found drowned, unable to reach an ice sheet or land. That is pretty monumental evidence of warming over time. A very short time in fact, several decades only.

Chris2x, there is a school of thought in economics that states constant economic and demographic growth would lead to calamity. They offer instead a model for stable economies and stable population, in which a balance of trade and skills with consumption is achieved on a macro level over time. Of course it would fluctuate from year to year, but, that is the point of their theory, to offer an alternative to insure fluctuations don’t become long term trends.

As the world’s population moves toward techo/industrialized employment, stable economic theory becomes plausible. It hasn’t been a plausible theory where such disparity of wealth and the split between non-industrialized agricultural and industrialized/techno nations resulted in massive deprivation and population migrations caused by war, exploitation (blood diamonds), and autocratic regimes of families hording national wealth as in Saudi Arabia or Syria or pre-invasion Iraq. These disparities meant fair and equally distributed consumption and labor could not be shared between nations.

But, as autocratic regimes move ever onward toward the mixed economy model of social conscience policy (to avoid revolution and civil war) and entrepreneurial private enterprise, such as is occurring in places like the U.A.E and China and Phillipines, the balance model based on zero population growth or even global population decrease can be accommodated by international reciprocal distribution of industrial technological jobs and consumption which does not require constant growth to stay economically afloat.

Friedman alluded to this model for the future in his book, The World is Flat.

So, some of you agree with the inaccuracies; yet, no mention how the news article (just recently, by the way) is using the wrong data (1998 is the hottest year when it is indeed not!). Why would anyone allow that story to run and why don’t some of you say something about it? If it were the other side, say an inaccuracy from the deniers, many of you would be all over; yet, nothing about this inaccuracy. Nothing about an agenda from James Hansen, who is a political activist. Nothing about why a blogger had to spot this and not NASA.

rah,

Wow. A news article got something wrong, surprising everyone in the world. There, I mentioned it.

So a blogger found it instead of a specific scientific group? So what? That’s often how science works - someone outside the mainstream discovers a problem or a new piece of evidence, and then the scientific community examines it. Upon examination, experts decide whether the new information is accurate, and then adjust their understanding based on the new information.

In this case, the adjustment is along the lines of “well, that makes a statistically-insignificant change in the recent results. We’ll update our numbers, but the mistake was in a tiny percentage of the inputs and doesn’t affect the overall trends or conclusions”.

Can we move on to the scientific data? Or will you continue to ignore the forest?

Thanks David,

The world is going to have to likely deal with population decline sometime this century. I know this can cause all kinds of problems in the economy in the interim from reduced consumption to a greying populace. However, economies must adapt at some point. The alternative would seem to be a disastrous crash and population and economic growth starting over again along the same model. The environment would seem to mostly benefit from less people. Do economies really need more people to grow at the macro level?

Stephen, I’m not about to suggest that the bad data invalidates that we are on a warming trend, so let’s throw that out. But, don’t you think, it sort of invalidates the statement that 1998 was the hottest year on record when it is probably that 1934 was?

BTW, I find it interesting 1930-1940 was a very temultuous time in our weather history, the Dust Bowl, damaging hurricanes, most of our high temp records were during this time. I also am curious as to why and how it fits in with everything.

Rahdigly,

“In the global mean, 2005 remains the warmest (as in the NCDC analysis). CRU has 1998 as the warmest year but there are differences in methodology, particularly concerning the Arctic (extrapolated in GISTEMP, not included in CRU) which is a big part of recent global warmth. No recent IPCC statements or conclusions are affected in the slightest.”
www.realclimate.org

You seem to keep confusing US temperature records with worldwide temperature records, which is merely repeating the mistake made by ES, Limbaugh, Instapundit, and so on.

Don: Thirty years ago or so when the air was foul and the rivers were so poluted that seme would actually burn, many in the business community opposed doing anything about it. They claimed that the cleanup would be to costly to business, the economy would be destabilized and many jobs would be lost.

The air and the water are cleaner now, the economy wasn’t derailed and many thousands of jobs were created both in the private and public sectors. The same is occuring now as we are begining to accelerate our move to clean alternative sources of energy.

If in 25 or 30 years science discovers that global warming isn’t happening, I doubt that many will want to go back to the good old days of oil dependency and oil wars.

If Global Warming is such an absolute truth rather than some imagined “inconvenient truth”, why does Al Gore refuse to debate anyone with a differing opinion, instead casting them as liars and deny-ers?

JD

Hey, all you “forest through the trees” wiseguys; I have said now (three comments) that the inaccuracy in the hottest year, along with the fact that a blogger (not NASA) spotted it, and the ABC News story that (recently) used this (incorrect) piece of data to justify this (man-made) global warming scare tactic is a big deal. I (also) stated that if this had been an inaccuracy from the deniers, many of you would have been all over the story and the scientists that messed up. Yet, only one blogger responded to it after three (consecutive) comments; though, I should point out, in a back-handed, smart-aleck way. Nice. This is not just one article; it is just a small sample of the disingenuous, scare tactics of the “man-made” global warming (religious) fanatics.

Stephen D -
“To simply complain about others, who are not such profligate energy users, seems rather immature to me.”

You may use a great deal of energy, I don’t know, but even you know that all uses of energy yield the same pollution and/or emissions of CO2. Energy use in the U.S. is quite efficient compared to that of third-world countries. We produce some of the cleanest energy per unit in the world. The savings to the environment caused by reduction of energy usage, improved technology and American ingenuity would, no doubt, be staggering… if it weren’t for the ever increasing world population. When you factor in the costs of all this “do-gooding” you find that we cannot win this war. That’s the point! Doing something is worthless if it does not solve the problem (That’s the problem with Democrats, they equate “caring” with actually “accomplishing”. I, having matured, think “solutions” are more important than “caring.”)

“If we do not lead the charge, though, our example strengthens the claims of critics who say that this is just the big economic powers trying to tighten the belts of others while they add new notches to their own.”

You claim that we (the U.S.) must lead the world. And you claim that the world will follow our example. WHEN HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED?

jlw -
“If in 25 or 30 years science discovers that global warming isn’t happening, I doubt that many will want to go back to the good old days of oil dependency and oil wars.”

First, your statement is pure conjecture.
Second, the environment was cleaned up and remains cleaner than it was many moons ago. Driving down the roads you see Owls and Hawks, which weren’t there when I was young. There were many good things which came from that clean-up.
However, nothing much of value can come from this push because this is a WORLD-WIDE problem. Only WORLD-WIDE changes can solve this one.

Since “people” are the “cause” of global warming, only the reduction of ALL the “people” in the world along with the reduction of “warming-causing activities” by ALL the people in the world can solve it. The U.S. and industrialized countries alone CANNOT solve it.

Rahdigly-
If both an urban temperature reading and one taken out at sea show the same trends, does it not follow that the heat island effect is not the cause of that trend, since there wouldn’t be such an effect on the high seas?

As for the ABC article, note what they say: both kind of variability, natural and human are at work. they expect one to dominate for the next ten years, the other to dominate over the century. Of course you claim the scientist are saying that it’s 100% human, which is not at all what global warming adherents, even James Hansen are saying.

As for your comments about the temperatures of 1998, the temperatures corrected were American temperatures, first and foremost, and therefore wouldn’t apply in the country of origin of that article about 2009 temperatures, whether it was hotter or colder than 1934! The article is Australian, so they very well could have had warmer temperatures then than in 1934.

But more to the point, these temperatures corrected were American temperatures, rather than global temperatures reference by the claim of the hottest year on record. Even then, as I patiently pointed out before, temperatures have come along since then that have been hotter.

As for NASA? You’re taking a very political angle on scientific corrections, which is to say you take any need for correction as an admission of being totally wrong. The data has been corrected, and like that one guy said, in America, the record highes of 1934 and 1998 have gone from being in a virtual tie, to being in a virtual tie. The difference, as I’ve noted earlier, are measured in the hundredths of degrees.

Of course, the highly politicized global warming contrarians pounce on anything that looks like a mistake. But with science this complicated, and everybody being human anyway, errors are inevitable. They don’t necessarily change things, those there are plenty of cases where corrections have cleared things up.

James Hansen remains in charge at NASA for one reason: he’s a good scientist. He’s not making wild-eyed claims. He’s backing what he says with good data. Sometimes it needs a bit of correction, but did you see them stonewall on that? No. Trouble is, you can’t see Hansen in anything else than a political light, so he’s always an activist to you, which means he’s trying to push a purely partisan agenda.

Rhinehold-
As I noted to Rahdigly, those are not global temperatures that were corrected, but rather ones for America. The changes are slight. Besides, we’ve had hotter since.

As for the 1930’s and 40’s? Some Anthropogenic forcing was involved, but it was also largely natural. Think of it like trees in a forest. The branches can both sway in the wind, and because somebody’s shaking a tree. In fact, both can happen at the same time.

Natural Variability and anthropogenic variations are entangled with one another. They can cancel each other out, or amplify each other.

“The warming is threatening polar bears which some predict will have to be put on the endangered species list in the next decade if the keep being found drowned, unable to reach an ice sheet or land. That is pretty monumental evidence of warming over time. A very short time in fact, several decades only.”
Posted by: David R. Remer at August 13, 2007 03:33 PM

Or, perhaps, mother polar bears more than ever before are having to raise their young cubs on their own without the help of a father in these trying times, and the young are not being taught the fundamentals of strength and endurance training or proper swimming techniques. Or, perhaps mother polar bears have adopted the liberal, dumbing down educational system that is no longer teaching young polar bears the skills they need to know when to get off their piece of ice before it slides out to sea and melts away.

JD

in a back-handed, smart-aleck way. Nice.

And yet, my comment truthfully pointed out the bad logic and invalid claims you were making. How ironic for you, of anyone, to complain about someone being a smart aleck.

Congrats, though, on making the same invalid claims three times. Do you want to tell us again that you were wrong multiple times?

Woody

I bet conservatives come on to the carbon tax before liberals. It is a nice and elegant thing. It actually solves the problem w/o causing extensive adjustments or giving options for social engineering and corrupt politics.

Liberals prefer problems to solutions. It allows more scope for government intervention and control. I have long noticed in these debates that the lefties are long on talking about the dire consequences of global warming and short on real solutions or adaptations. Most of them just want to make laws and sign treaties w/o actually thinking about what needs to be done. I WILL give Gore credit on this (and Chris Dodd). He supports a carbon tax. His personal carbon offsets are just silly, however. They are like the indugences in the medieval church.

Max

Not a panacea, but w/o a carbon tax, nothing works. It is not sufficient, but it is necessary.

Kansas

Right. The carbon tax will produce cleaner air and less reliance on oil from volatile despotism. It is a good thing even if global warming is a hoax.

It makes sense to do some things just because they are good things to do.

JD

Al Gore (of who I am not a fan) does not need to debate because anybody with differing data or interpretation of the data is free to add it to the discussion, to make a case for their theory— That is the way science works. That is how scientists get famous. Anybody who thinks that scientist sit around looking for way to agree and follow each others leads has no idea how competitive science is. Scientist get their rewards by knocking other scientist out of the box so to speak.

Global warming isn’t taking place—-fine, now come up with a theory that explains the data. Solar flair? could be…they peaked in 2002.. CO2 levels continue to increase. Why didn’t they drop off since?

Ok the earth isn’t getting warmer. Why are the ice caps melting, and glaciers, on 6 continents? Why are tropical diseases on the rise? Why is there a massive die off of coral? Could it be something other than global warming? yes! Does global warming provide the best explanation so far? yes! I’m all ears conservatives. What is your theory? You say Dems criticize but offer no solutions… this is your chance to show them how its done. Step to the plate. Come up with a theory that explains the data.

Jack
You could bet conservatives will support a carbon before liberals but do not bet the farm. Have you not read any of your bretren’s post on subject of climate change? Its a good idea for other reasons also but what passes for conservatives these days will still never support a carbon tax as it would hurt their lords and masters,big oil.
Treaties and laws can and do make big differences. History if full of examples.That is how public policy has been implemented for what,the last 600 years or so.Still want examples? How about child labor. Just about eliminated in the West by laws. Treaties have helped cut down on it in the rest of the world. Better treaties would do more and will once we take the trash out or is that just more evil “social engineering”?

Jack said
“Liberals prefer problems to solutions. It allows more scope for government intervention and control.”

ummm… we had a lot less of both under Clinton.
Can you site an example of where a liberal wanted the problem but not a viable, fair solution? Just one will do.

I think it would be worthwhile for those that are convinced by rhetoric like Eric’s to pick up last week’s Newsweek. It has a very informative article about the history of the debate and the history of global warming deniers.

Basically, nearly all of the evidence and facts support the conclusion that the earth is heating up, the climate is changing, and human activity is the main contributor. Despite the almost complete lack of evidence contrary to that conclusion, a few industries with a stake in the matter decided to respond. They knew they couldn’t counter the Global Warming arguments in the realm of actual science, so they competed in the realm of PR. By finding a few non-expert scientists that liked to be contrarian or could be bought, they had just enough to make it seem like there argument had some validity. Sure, they didn’t actually produce any science or have practicing researchers in the relevant fields, but they just needed to have a couple of people who called themselves scientists (of whatever field or ability), and they’d be able to confuse enough Americans to stop political progress.

Congrats. You fell for it.

James Hansen remains in charge at NASA for one reason: he’s a good scientist. He’s not making wild-eyed claims. He’s backing what he says with good data. Sometimes it needs a bit of correction, but did you see them stonewall on that? No. Trouble is, you can’t see Hansen in anything else than a political light, so he’s always an activist to you, which means he’s trying to push a purely partisan agenda.

Hansen is a political activist; saying that he is a “good scientist” is not credible enough. And, the fact that a blogger had to bring up that point, rather than NASA, has a “Rathergate-like” aura to it. Ah, the blogosphere; no wonder why Internet News Audience’s are Highly Critical of News Organizations.

Added to which indignity, now you have Newsweek cover story: The Truth About Denial coming out with their attack on the deniers! Now, take a look at this (response) piece: Newsweek: Alarmed by Deniers; this guy rips apart this newsweek report and the consensus scare mongers.

The truth is, read any legitimate scientific study on climate — including IPCC’s — that suggests human influence is the dominant cause for global warming, and you will discover dozens of qualifiers like “could,” “possibly,” “potentially,” and “may.” For all the certainty and consensus that global warming fear-mongers assert, those sound a lot like weasel words.

When taking that into consideration, you realize that both camps are in the “maybe” category on climate change. It’s just a matter of degrees (there’s a fortunate pun). But the consensus claimers are all too happy to let the allegation “they deny the science of global warming” to stand alone, making the undiscerning believe that global warming skeptics reject the clear evidence that the earth is warming. Both sides generally agree that the planet has increased in temperature by one degree in the past 100 years; the so-called “deniers” simply question the cause and whether there is a need for the costly remedies that the green groups want.

At the heart of it all, of course, is the deniers’ money. Begley emphasizes repeatedly how big oil and utilities feed the opinions from conservative think tanks. But what about the flow of cash that sustains the nonprofit-driven eco-movement? The dollars pushing global warming paranoia, coming from wealthy foundations like those established by Merck, the Rockefellers and Ted Turner, dwarf the skeptics’ resources. But Begley and Newsweek show prejudice only against certain shades of green — both monetary and ecological.

Jack
I have net yet heard you mention the other thing government can do to provide incentives. The Government is also a major purchaser of goods and services. They can dictate the terms of that purchase and let the market work out how the demand will be met. If the government said that as of 2050 all government vehicle will run on hydrogen you can bet somebody will produce a viable hydrogen fuel source. Which by the way has been done.

Funny. Rah and I were talking about the same article. Unfortunately, he once again shows that he doesn’t understand how science works. Since the people behind the science are actually serious scientists, they use words like “could,” “possibly,” “potentially,” and “may.” They are being honest.

If they were really the fanatics and dogmatists that Rah and Eric want everyone to believe they are, they wouldn’t use these honest words.

global warming skeptics reject the clear evidence that the earth is warming

They almost all used too. Fewer do now because they know it’s a losing argument.

the so-called “deniers” simply question the cause

It’s not simply questioning the cause; it’s denying that we’ve figured out a lot of that answer.

dwarf the skeptics’ resources

Yeah, the environmentalists have more money than the oil industry (currently experiencing the biggest profits in the history of capitalism) and the auto industry (which has lots of money around the world). Yeah, right.

Rah, please at least try to make sense next time.

“could,‎ “possibly,‎ “potentially,‎ and “may.‎ For all the certainty and consensus that global warming fear-mongers assert, those sound a lot like weasel words.

I guess thats why we never heard them when we were discussing WMD in Iraq?

I guess you folks have a hard time with people who are willing to change their mind in light of new evidence? Who don’t think they have all the answers? Who realise they might have to adjust their thinking as they go along? Now please go into a rant about how liberals are intellectual elitists…..

Global warming isn’t taking place—-fine, now come up with a theory that explains the data. Solar flair? could be…they peaked in 2002.. CO2 levels continue to increase. Why didn’t they drop off since?

Well, not to defend it but the theory as I’ve read it is that the CO2 rise that occurs during this period lags the rise and fall of temps. So according to them the CO2 levels should start falling off soon.

Gerard Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, along with nine other experts on oceans, environmental physics, tree-ring formation and glaciation from around the world, have examined the rates of deposit of tiny particles from melting icebergs in the North Atlantic.

And what have they found? Why, lo and behold, during periods of increased sun strength, the oceans have warmed and the bergs have melted more rapidly

I’m not sure how that meshes, but I still think that we have a lot to learn, especially about chaotic systems, when we STILL don’t know all of the paramaters involved.

(Of course, I stil think we should be finding an alternative fuel source, because it makes sense, but I don’t think it will do much on the global warming front personally).

BTW, just curious… The sudden rise in temps/CO2 in the atmosphere, seems to have occured about the time we cut back all CFCs for fear of us expanding the ozone hole. Perhaps the pollution and chemicals of the industrial age, WWII and the post war expansion was keeping ozone out of the and preventing a more slow temp rise that we kicked into gear by removing those CFCs from the atmosphere. *Mind, this is just a musing I had today and is no way meant to be SCIENTIFICLY based, I would have to do a lot of research… but what if what we do makes things worse one way or another?*

037

I fall back on my favorite subject - the carbon tax. Read some of the responses I get from liberals. They often cry because it is unfair to the poor etc. Often viable solutions are not “fair‎, since by definition a good solution alters behavior and even if almost everyone benefits, some will benefit more than others.

Re Clinton

I fall back on what I have written re Clinton. I do not say many bad things about him. The DLC style Dems did a decent job with the economy, but I will point out two things. (1) Clinton started doing well only after 1994 when faced with the Gingrich congress to give him ideas and keep him more honest and (2) his DLC brand of Dem is out of style these days. None of the candidates would even attend their meeting.

Maybe I would add a third one. The Clinton times are remembered better than they are. Our economy is in about the same shape today as it was in 1998 in terms of real wages, unemployment etc. In other words, the Clinton times were a lot like ours today.

Re Government purchases - good. I would support that. The government often tries to make us do things that it does not want to do itself. It is better if they lead by example.

you can bet somebody will produce a viable hydrogen fuel source. Which by the way has been done.

Link? Because the last *I* had heard, the fuel cell technology wasn’t cost effective *AND* still relied upon petrolium in order to process the fuel.

BTW, a small word about scientific consensus… Wasn’t it about 100 years ago when ‘scientific consensus’ was that there was no such thing as an atom and less than 50 years ago when scientific consensus was that the atom was the smallest particle in existence.

Consensus doesn’t mean right. If we find that the data was cooked (and there is some evidence of that with the medeival warming period suddenly disappearing in the IPCC reports) and abandoning of Boltzmann’s laws without reason other than to change the results, it has to put some question to the results.

I do have a question though… If this is such a ‘hot’ topic (sorry, couldn’t help myself) why are there 1/3 of the temperature stations collecting data than 30 years ago? From 6000 down to 2000?

As I noted to Rahdigly, those are not global temperatures that were corrected, but rather ones for America. The changes are slight. Besides, we’ve had hotter since.

Ok, how does this all fit into the knowledge that it was warmer in the Medeival warming period than it is now? Greenland was actually green with Viking settlements that we are finding under the permafrost, a lack of ice at the north pole (chinese naval vessels saile around it in the mid 1400s) and Antarctica has gained ice over the past 30 years? Why was the data from the Medeival Warm Period ‘phased out’ of the IPCC reports?

BTW, have you read Of Moths and Men by Judith Hooper? Great example of what MAY be going on, remember the experiments that proved that pollution caused natural selection to occur, peppered moths surviving better in polluted forests? It appears that the experiment was invalid, but once it was believed by the scientific community, it was cannon, so to speak.

The question Hooper sets out to answer is why such a shoddy piece of scientific research was so readily accepted by the scientific community and allowed to attain iconic status in evolutionary biology. Her answer: because scientists wanted to believe it. Once it had been cited enough times, it became an irrefutable article of faith. Hooper’s meticulous research provides a fascinating insight into the fallibility of scientists - after all, as she points out, they are only human.

Hooper’s absorbing account of a flawed if not fraudulent experiment reveals an all-too-human side to scientists that will annoy professionals and enthral laypeople in equal measure. One thing is clear, though - science is much more than a collection of objective facts and figures. Ambition, jealousy, and megalomania are all part of this complex equation.

Are we really polluting more now than when we were pouring coal and other types of industrial carbage into air? I seems, as an old man, that our atmosphere and rivers are cleaner now than any time since the beginning of the industrial revolution… When was the last time the Cuyahoga River caught on fire? Are we just now seeing the result of THAT time? How much lag is in the system?

Rhinehold

Here is your link to start.

Hydrogen is readily available as a fuel.

http://www.ocees.com/main2.html

Um, not readily available. From the link “Hydrogen may be produced by splitting hydrocarbon molecules” and “Electrolosis is most effective”.

Which are great, but don’t mention exactly how these processing systems are powered? Are you suggesting that they use the power generated from the process to repower the process and create ‘extra’ energy? Otherwise, petrolium, or coal powered electricity, or possibly natural gas, or even nuclear.. are the only large volume ways to generate the usable hydrogen.

I agree that this is a great technology, but it is NOT ready for prime time just yet, until we can figure out a better way to generate this fuel.

Nevertheless, hydrogen may be considered an energy source when extracted from subsurface reservoirs of hydrogen gas, methane and natural gas (steam reforming and water gas shift reaction), coal (coal gasification) or oil shale (oil shale gasification). Electrolysis, which requires electricity, and high-temperature electrolysis/thermochemical production, which requires high temperatures (ideal for nuclear reactors), are two primary methods for the extraction of hydrogen from water.

Oh the link and

Hydrogen production is only as clean as the energy sources used to produce it. A holistic approach has to take into consideration the impacts of an extended hydrogen scenario. This refers to the production, the use and the disposal of infrastructure and energy converters.

Rhineholt

Um, not readily available. From the link “Hydrogen may be produced by splitting hydrocarbon molecules‎ and “Electrolosis is most effective‎.

It called WATER.

The power source is the sun.

It uses basic physical principals that have been around since the 1800’s

here are links about the technology.

http://www.oceansatlas.com/servlet/CDSServlet?status=ND0zMDYzJmN0bl9pbmZvX3ZpZXdfc2l6ZT1jdG5faW5mb192aWV3X2Z1bGwmNj1lbiYzMz0qJjM3PWtvcw~~

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion

From your link:

The total energy available is one or two orders of magnitude higher than other ocean energy options such as wave power, but the small size of the temperature difference makes energy extraction difficult and expensive. Hence, existing OTEC systems have an overall efficiency of only 1 to 3%.

Some energy experts believe that if it could become cost-competitive with conventional power technologies, OTEC could produce gigawatts of electrical power. Bringing costs into line is still a huge challenge, however. All OTEC plants require an expensive, large diameter intake pipe, which is submerged a mile or more into the ocean’s depths, to bring very cold water to the surface.

Given, say, 50 years and advances in technology to make this profitable, then it may well be a great solution.

But *today* as I stated, it is not ready for prime time.

Oh, and what are the long term environmental impacts of mucking about with the thermal differnces in the ocean on a large enough scale to power our society exactly?

Given, say, 50 years and advances in technology to make this profitable, then it may well be a great solution.

That was the point of the first link I put up.
has the potential to be profitable. And if you read all the link you would see they make the point that it is much more likely to be profitable if they had the same subsidies and tax breaks as the oil companies. Thats were the politics comes in.

As far as the environmental cost? I don’t know.

Rhinehold, the answer to your questions lie in the ice cores dating back a very long time. The cycles of warming and cooling are pretty regular baring heavenly object collision with earth and periods of heightened volcanic activity or lulls. Regular that is, until the last 100 years or so.

Coal and wood burning stoves were a problem in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, but, population numbers were significantly smaller and manufacturing process were dramatically smaller in terms of pollution output. The rain forests were very much intact then as well.

In the last 100 years, the progressive rise in temperature followed an absence mini-cooling period which the ice record indicated would have taken place were it not for industrialization.

The ice cores even reveal the massive effect on cyclical cooling and warming created by the Roman Empire’s sudden and massive need for smelting lead and iron, and bronze, for everything from massive public water works (lead lined) to weaponry and architecture. The fires of Roman Empire expansion through sudden and massive amounts of carbon and CO2 into the atmosphere which registered as particulate buildup and ice gases in the snow falls on Greenland from around 250 BC to its peak around 250 AD. The Chinese were also engaged in similar activities at the time. CO2 levels were significantly higher in the ice cores during these ancient industrial times and then fell off during Medieval times. With the exception of the Pompeii volcanic cataclysm, this was a fairly inactive volcanic period and the sulphur and other volcanic gas content in the ice cores allow for isolating this even from the rest of the period, leaving the correlation between human industrial activity and greenhouse gas capture in the ice cores as a powerful piece of evidence for the influence of human activity upon global climatic conditions as compared to the cyclical periods predating significant human populations and industrial periods.

David,

With the CO2 levels falling off, how do they explain the medeival warming period that was warmer than our current temps, with a green Greenland, a frozen Thames River and much less north pole ice?

Jack re: what happens when we leave:

Two facts about human nature abound in our historical record. Power vacuums have extremely short life spans, and humans are always seeking organization out of chaos.

From these two facts, some probabilities can be defined. If we leave, surrounding nations, threatened by the potential of regional warfare disrupting wealth for heads of states, will seek to forge a power pact with the Iraqi government to prevent a power vacuum. It is absolutely in their in pocketbook and power base interest to do so.

Secondly, though violence and chaos may increase in certain areas of Iraq, there will be coincident herculean moves by many Iraqis of all sects to counter it with organization. With the resources and assistance of neighboring nations like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, etc. seeking to defend against sectarian civil uprising in their own countries in sympathy with their Iraqi brethren, these Iraqi Organizers have a reasonable chance of accomplishing what they cannot now sucking on the U.S. tit of soured milk. U.S. presence is both nutritional in that it funds Iraqi government operations and infrastructure but its taste is curdled by the U.S. presence catalyzing violence and regional tensions as well.

There are no guarantees. But the prospects for Iraq are just as likely to improve over 2 years after our leaving as they are to get worse. One thing is for sure, our presence is not motivating Iraqi government reconciliation and that means maintenance of the current untenable situation for both Iraq and the U.S. public and treasury.

We need to go. We need to go, in a pre-announced, phased, orderly, and secure fashion that allows regional nations and the Iraqi government to hammer out agreements on how the staged vacuum increases will be filled for security interests of both Iraq and regional neighbors. The U.N. I read is also ready to provide assistance.

It is time for America to make the announcement, and commit to redeploying out of Iraq. It is in fact, about 2 years past time.

Jack,

Suppose someone told you that they were passionately committed to outlawing abortion, but they didn’t want to work with conservatives because they didn’t seem serious enough about banning abortion. After all, they were always proposing half-measures like banning partial-birth abortion. The real promise, this person thinks, lies with liberals who really believe in government regulation. They just need to convinced about how bad abortion is, and then they will be ready to ban it.

Wouldn’t that seem a little, what’s the word I’m looking for, idiotic, to you?

Woody

There are different sorts of government intervention. As I repeat very often (it bears repeating) a market system consists of rule of law, reasonable regulation and the market mechanism. If we pull out one of these things, we have troubles.

A good government regulation works within the market mechanism and does not pretend that it can repeal the law of supply and demand. Therefore, it creates conditions and incentives by which market forces can let people use their intelligence, innovation and ingenuity to solve problems. This means that government officials cannot closely manage and plan outcomes, since the outcomes, which will be the result of the intelligence of the people, are unknown in advance. It also means that the solutions are likely to be better and more robust than those the bureaucrats and experts would have come up with. People who are closer to the problem usually have more ability to judge and get more immediate feedback. There are also many more of them working on it. That is the beauty of the market. It provides coordination of many minds, information and incentives w/o the direct management efforts of any authorities.

The carbon tax is an excellent example of this. The market does not charge enough for carbon based energy because its negative effects are external to the product. It creates pollution, CO2, encourages congestion and makes us dependent on volatile regions of the world. None of this is reflected in the market price for gasoline. A tax on carbon takes this into account. After that it leaves it to the people to take the next steps. Some people drive less, change habits and conserve fuel. Others figure out ways to use alternatives. Still others figure out ways to get better mileage or telecommute. A combination of all these things addresses the problem.

If government steps in to mandate particular solutions, and puts the weight of law behind them, it might create solutions that do not work or cannot be easily abandoned when they stop working. Government is also a political institution, which is swayed and sometimes corrupted by existing interests. It may choose political solutions (usually does).

So when I talk of market solutions to environmental problems, I am not asking government to stay out of the way. We need government to address the external costs of the products we use. But there are smart and dumb ways to do things. The smart way uses the market mechanism, in the environmental parlance -works with the nature of the system. The dumb way tries to force particular outcomes throug heavy handed regualtion.

The problem is the the Climate War is a Political War now. When Gore says something, of course the otherside, says just the opposite. When the otherside says something, then Gore and his side says something. With the government holding the purse string of many sciencetist and research facilities, do they want to po and bite the hand that feeds them?

I have to agree that even if gobal warming is false(I myself believe there is gobal warming), and we as a nation, let alone the world have to make changes to get rid of the excess carbon etc, it would be a better thing, cleaner air and water. Will it cost jobs maybe/maybe not.

But again, the climate war is now a political war and as long as it is, it is a lose/lose situtation.

KT,

I agree but I think it is even worse now, it has become a RELIGION to some people. Logic and reasonableness goes right out of the window there.

I understand that the earth is warming and that humans, as a part of nature, are part of that equation of cause along with other system cycles that we are just starting to understand. I worry that if we interfere with the conveyor it will cause issues that will be hart to pull back from. Having a clean renewable energy source would not only help that but make us energy independant and the Middle East could then go suck our toes, metaphorically speaking. But even further, why are we focused on cars (there are plenty of other causes of CO2) and not also spending time talking about the various ways of removing the existing carbon from the atmosphere? It seems that even if we were to go completely flat on CO2 production, the existing CO2 would be an issue. Prudency would dictate we examine that as well. Unfortunately this gets almost no press at all.

It’s not simply questioning the cause; it’s denying that we’ve figured out a lot of that answer.

What have you figured out?! As was stated in Newsweek: Alarmed by Deniers; both sides are in the “maybe” category; science isn’t about maybe.

The truth is, read any legitimate scientific study on climate — including IPCC’s —that suggests human influence is the dominant cause for global warming, and you will discover dozens of qualifiers like “could,” “possibly,” “potentially,” and “may.”…When taking that into consideration, you realize that both camps are in the “maybe” category on climate change. It’s just a matter of degrees (there’s a fortunate pun).

As was stated in Newsweek: Alarmed by Deniers…

Just because an inaccurate blogger says it doesn’t make it true.

Please look at the science. We’ve given dozens of links here.

rahdigly,

You are offering a win/win argument for the climate change deniers. When committees get together and carefully present their results, you knock them for using qualifiers like “probably”. When guys like Al Gore take out the qualifiers, you get to call them crazy alarmists.

It’s a perfect system. You guys can maintain your state of denial forever. Just don’t be surprised if the rest of us leave you behind.

Woody,

The scientists are right to use qualifiers because they are not sure. If they were sure they wouldn’t use the qualifiers, that’s how science works. Boltzman didn’t use ‘possibly’ when describing the existence of atoms.

When Al Gore exaggerates the claims, he gives the deniers even more ammo by overstating and stating as fact what is belief. If he, and the others who views this as a religion, would stop doing that then real dialog can take place.

We are ‘pretty sure’ but not for sure because there are still variables that we don’t know, things that may or may not be affecting the system that we don’t know and until we do we are just taking a best guess at it. So when someone does come along and say ‘hey, what about this, how does this fit’, just regurgitating the same information and calling them ‘stupid’ doesn’t really help the cause, IMO.

From the site that Professor John McCarthy (Stanford) has put together as part of his “Human Material Progress is Sustainable” website. McCarthy is a professor of computer science, and like us here, this is a hobby for him. The site is well researched none the less.

Schemes for powering cars or houses that require violating the law of conservation of energy can’t work. Here’s an example. Several times I have received in email the following idea for powering cars with hydrogen from water. Run the car on hydrogen obtained by splitting water by electrolysis using the car’s generator to get the electricity. Here’s why it won’t work. The amount of energy you get from burning hydrogen and running a generator produces at most the amount of energy required to replace the energy used to split the water. There would be none left over to power the car. Actually, you would get considerably less energy than is needed to get more hydrogen to replace that burned. Most likely it would be about 20 percent. Splitting water to get hydrogen is not an original source of energy. Rather it is a way of tranforming energy into a form more usable for a certain purpose.

The page on Engery

The Main page

He is a proponent of nuclear energy, so if that’s against your environmental religion then beware.

Oh, so now the blogger is inaccurate; way to back up those claims. And, (of course) the newsweek article, along with the “journalist”, “looked at the science”?! Her “claims” are accurate and not biased (in any way)?!! Don’t think so. The Newsweek article is a bunch of bull and yet another example of the “man-made” global warming scare tactic.

You try (and try) to say that I am the one that does not use real facts or does not listen to the the scientists (when I indeed do); yet, you won’t listen to the scientists that are skeptical of the “Consensus”.

In politics this is the best we can do in making decisions to proceed with political actions. In the scientific world consensus is meaningless, and often unscientific, and worse, often wrong. Even the act of seeking such a consensus as a form of proof is not science.

Oh, so now the blogger is inaccurate; way to back up those claims.

The guy claimed that environmentalists have more money than the oil companies and the auto industry. I’d say he’s misinformed at best.

I also explained above why his other claims are invalid.

And yes, the Newsweek article did look at the science, and it interviewed many of the leading research scientists in the relevant fields.

I’m sorry you think the article is bull because you don’t like the conclusion it came to. There’s not much I can do about that.

BTW Rah,

The scientist you linked to with “Consensus” is another example of what the Newsweek article talked about; confusing the populace with scientists that aren’t experts in the relevant field.

Michael R. Fox has 37 years experience in the nuclear field. He has held a wide variety of research, development, and management positions involving nuclear waste management, fuel reprocessing, plutonium laboratory management, research and development, nuclear waste separation and solidification, and geologic repository projects.

I know you’re really excited that you found a scientist that tells you what you want to believe. However, relying on experts in nuclear waste management when discussing climate change doesn’t mean you’re listening to people who know what they are talking about in this field.

Again, you fell for it.

The guy claimed that environmentalists have more money than the oil companies and the auto industry. I’d say he’s misinformed at best.

Then prove it! How is he misinformed?! Cite a
source. Show where “Merck, the Rockefellers and Ted Turner” did not fund them. Back up you claim; show where he is “misinformed”.

By the way, you (conveniently) left out an important factor in Dr. Fox’s long and respected career.

This includes many years of experience in technical supervision of multi-discipline areas of expertise. Recognized nationally for expertise in the communication of science and energy, he has advised and provided expertise to local, state, and national leaders involving nuclear waste management, energy policy, health, environmental, and safety issues, medical isotopes, science based regulations, and related issues.

Rah,

Why is it up to me to show that environmentalists have more money than the most profitable industry in the history of the world? Besides failing the common sense test, why do you automatically accept what he says, yet I have to prove myself?

Just use a bit of logic, please.

By the way, you (conveniently) left out an important factor in Dr. Fox’s long and respected career.

You’re right, I didn’t include his secondary specialty in medical isotopes. Please forgive me.

Or do you think his experience in safety issues is the relevant one? Or regulations?

He’s not an expert in the relevant fields. “energy policy” can mean a lot of things, and it’s far from his primary area of research. My point stands.

I guess I will have to dust off my biology degree and get myself a big chunk of all that environmental movement wealth. I was planning to write an article, exposing the environmental hoax, for Exxon-Mobil but, it’s wealth is just chump change conpared to what the environmentalists can pay.

Why waste time writing an article JLW?
Just make a “the sky is falling” movie and people will make you rich.
It worked for Art Bell and al gore, surely it can work for others.

Don’t forget Al’s disciple, Leonardo…

Ok, got it now. So, it is “Philosopher” lawnboy when it comes to debate; though, you cannot even back up your “claim” that the writer’s claim, that environmentalists give more money (to push the global warming paranoia) than the the oil industry does to the skeptics, is incorrect. He claimed they do; so, if you want to dispute it (as is your right to disagree) then have the fortitude and the logic to back it up. Show where he is wrong (if you can!).

Now it is “Scientist” Lawnboy that (somehow) has more credentials (in the scientific community) than Dr. Michael R. Fox. Prove you have more experience or credentials to even dispute this guy!! You could have cited another scientist that disagrees with his view on Consensus science. Yet, you proved how “above” everyone you are (when you are definitely not!) by discrediting this scientist b/c of the irrelevancy of his field!?! Uhhhh, he is a Scientist!! He has every right and (credence) to speak about (and debunk) “Consensus science”!!

It is obvious that one, you do not know what you are talking about (you just want to argue) and two, that it is (indeed) you who is the one being fooled by the religious cult (scare tactics) of the Humans are causing global warming crowd. Oh well, the choices in life…

rahdigly, you comment fails the wisdom test of “believe only half of what you see and none of what you hear” without strong evidence and proof.

Anyone can make any kind of claim effortlessly. Wise people pay no heed unless, and until evidence and proof ACCOMPANY the claim. It is not for critics to prove people with an agenda wrong, it is for the people with an agenda to prove they are right. The environmentalists have presented mountains of evidence that they are right about the trend of warming and the correlations with human activity. When a majority of the scientific community’s agree and the majority of the people listening to their spokespersons also agree, it is a pretty overwhelming probability they are right.

NO, it is not guaranteed that they are right, for proof of things of this prophetic nature come with the future transitioning to past and the prophetic claims coming to pass. But, those who sit frozen, fearing to act to shape the future, will be shaped by their future of inaction.

Your comments are short on logic and void of wisdom born out of prudent action. All actions have a cost, rahdigly, even inaction can carry tremendous costs. To choose to fight the preponderance of the evidence for the agenda of avoiding the costs of fighting it, has itself a huge opportunity cost attached. Thus, the action of fighting to save future cost is self-defeating: when one fights a majority of windmills, the windmills will usually be victorious.

BTW, one of those windmills is now a growing number of Fundamentalist Republican Evangelical Christians who are moving to support the religious edict to be a good steward of God’s creation called Earth by advocating with environmentalists.

you cannot even back up your “claim” that the writer’s claim, that environmentalists give more money (to push the global warming paranoia) than the the oil industry does to the skeptics, is incorrect.

Why would I try to back that up? That wasn’t my claim.

Here’s what I disagreed with:

The dollars pushing global warming paranoia, coming from wealthy foundations like those established by Merck, the Rockefellers and Ted Turner, dwarf the skeptics’ resources.

I was ridiculing the claim about the resources of the skeptics. Since the skeptics include the oil industry and the auto industry, they have practically unlimited resources.

So, please prove to me that the money from foundations exceeds the resources of the oil industry, and then you’ll have a point. Otherwise, I think I have supported my counter-argument.

However, even if you could prove me wrong you wouldn’t really have a point in the bigger context. The evidence that support human-caused global climate change is not (for the most part) coming from groups funded by those foundations. The research is coming from universities and laboratories around the world funded by governments and corporations and who knows what else. This blogger’s argument about the wealthy liberal foundations is just irrelevant. The facts and evidence about climate change are being discovered by scientists around the world that have nothing at all to do with the liberal bogeymen he wants us to fear.

It’s all just a red herring.

Further, I never claimed to have better scientific credentials than Dr. Michael R. Fox. I am claiming that, while he is more of a scientist than I am, he is not more of a practicing research climate scientist than I am. While the one article you point to was about “Consensus”, he’s written other (non-peer-reviewed) articles directly about climate change in which he repeats easily-rebutted points that betray how far he is out of his element.

I don’t need to be a climate scientist to point out that he isn’t one, either. I’m not sure why you think I would need to be.

The “Humans are causing global warming crowd” are not a cult. While there are some on the fringe who behave that way, you are maligning the finest scientific minds using the latest research and all the information at their disposal. I’m really sorry the choice you made in life is to confuse the two.

Rhinehold asked: “With the CO2 levels falling off, how do they explain the medeival warming period that was warmer than our current temps, with a green Greenland, a frozen Thames River and much less north pole ice?”

The same way it took 75 years of polluting industry and population growth to begin to display warming today. Climate doesn’t change on a dime ordinarily unless an abrupt cataclysmic event alters climatological factors overnight like a large meteorite striking the planet. There are changes that take place that must reach a critical tipping point before effects are forthcoming, and both the changes and the effects can be gradual for a period of time.

A gradual melting of ice at our polls can bring slow but inevitable major changes to earth’s climate. Conversely, a sudden and massive glacial breakage and plunge into the ocean can have the same effect much more abruptly. What shows up in Greenland ice cores often does not render consequences in climate for a good deal of time afterward, it depends on whether the influencing variable evidence in the ice cores build up gradually or abruptly.

And the reason climatology is in large part a statistical science is precisely because climate results from a myriad of influences which can mitigate or enhance each other. If the ice core shows a large buildup of carbon and soot deposits but, the those deposits are not followed by evidence of global cooling, one must look for other mitigating influences to explain, like the earth’s tilt in procession or, position in its rubber band orbit around the sun which vacillates between near circular and elliptical.

JD-
You know, there’s a good reason that Conservatives get made into bad guys so easy. Leave it to somebody on the Right to blame Polar Bears for not having the swimming skills to deal with their loss of habitat.

Rahdigly-
In atmospheric science, anybody who gives you precise predictions that far out is lying to you. It’s not possible to nail things down with 100% certainty, nor to attribute things with that degree of perfect certainty either, since there’s no way to drop the entire environment into a lab. These aren’t weasel words, they are a recognition of the complexity and unpredictability of the system itself.

It takes a boat load of semantics to argue that because scientists give ranges of possible temperatures, that they’re in the maybe category on global warming. No, most scientists agree that there is human-caused warming influences at work. The real question is how that warming plays out, and that’s the difficult thing to nail down.

As for the money supporting the ecological movement? These petroleum companies clear tens of billions of dollars in profits every year, and you’re saying the green folks are dwarfing them in material resources? They also have a shitload of well-funded Republican and industry thinktanks, and willing columnists, pundits, and bloggers willing to spread this bamboozlement at the drop of a hat. You’re not hurting for those resources.

Meanwhile the alternatives are fighting to get on the market, in comparison what the people you’re trying to get us to pity are doing. What’s tipping the balance is that Katrina made a rather stark point to most Americans about how much we are at the mercy of our climate. Nobody could look at that flooded city, regardless of whose to blame for not keeping it from getting flooded, and not sense the power we’re up against. Do we want to play games with the forces of nature that can shut down an entire city in a day, and kill thousands of people in that time? For all our technology, we are vulnerable.

As for Michael R. Fox? The truth of the matter is, there is only one universe, and only one truth behind what we see out there. There is one set of laws of physics for one set of people, and another for the next, there is just one set, about which people have disagreements, which in science are resolved by means of examination of the facts, which are analyzed by disciplined means and processes intended to weed out what people think is true from what actually is.

Consensus building is wrong in science only to the degree to which is not built through the disciplines of the science. If it comes out of the science, then it is basically the only reasonable direction to go, unless you have a better idea. In that case, you submit the new theory to the test, and if it works better, it will gradually build a greater consensus to itself. The process is imperfect, but the object is ultimately a reliable consensus upon which further study and further examination of the natural world can be built.

It helps when you’re dealing with the consensus of a particular field to know what’s going on in a game. When getting a ride home from work, I often end up getting information about sports, but if you really quizzed me, I probably would come up short. If, however, you talked to me about movies and filmmaking, I’d be much more on the ball. People need to devote time and effort to learning things, to know them well enough to speak and write with authority on them. You take the word of people who do this as a hobby, or as activists, who have little professional familiarity with the field, over those who’ve made it their life’s work.

It’s funny, but every rhetorical instrument you use seems aimed at keeping things in the air. Whether it’s attacking the uncertainty inherent to the field as if it were the result of sloppy science, attacking the consensus as being politically motivated, attacking the reliability of the data, or offering up any number of theories as alternatives, without serious factual backup, the whole point seems to be to sow doubt, even in the face of evidence that minimizes that doubt for most scientists.

Scientists are not supposed to consider all possibilities equally likely at all times. They are supposed to prune away what the evidence does not support. Many of these things your people suggest have already been disproven as explanations of the warming that is occuring. Unfortunately, your side has a very hard time letting go of pet explanations that the facts contradict or don’t find to be strong enough to explain the change.

Rhinehold-
The first thing to understand is that only today is the emission of CO2 dominated by human sources. Another thing to understand is that changes in climate can feedback into and cause differences in the levels of CO2. The lag can occur because a warming spell caused by increases in solar irradiation, changes in orbital patterns, or other events precedes and causes the initial increase. Thereafter, the CO2 can cause its own increase in concentrations. Increases in decay rates and other feedback can be caused by the rise in heat.

The issue with CO2 levels today is that we are overloading and/or destroying many of the carbon sinks, the places that would respond to the rise in CO2 by tucking it away or absorbing it. That’s why a fall-off is unlikely. You should be aware that in talking about a chaotic system, you are talking about a system that is sensitive to small inputs, and which creates different outcomes, within certain bounds.

It’s important to understand that Chaos does not imply utter randomness, merely the inability for us to nail things down to a perfect, periodic nugget of predictability, like those we find in traditional physics.

As for your CFC theory? First issue is that CFCs and Ozone both function as greenhouse gases. Second, what has been recorded, in terms of dropping temperatures down, has been soot from the old industrial age factories. When Eastern Europe switched from old Soviet machinery to cleaner stuff from the west, their temperatures rose significantly.

Would polluting more prevent Global Warming? Not really. Many of the worst polluting fuels, like coal, also produce the most CO2. Additionally, the best you’re doing is masking the inevitable effect.

On the subject of scientific consensus, Atoms were part of the consensus by the middle of the 19th century. The idea that they were indivisible was knocked down by 1897 by J.J. Thomson when he discovered the electron. The proton was discovered in 1918 by Ernest Rutherford and the neutron in 1932 by James Chadwick. It’s also worth noting that Quantum Physics already and Relativity had already shown up at this point.

As for Boltzmann’s law, that seems to relate to idealized blackbodies. Our planet isn’t one. That’s what the greenhouse effect is about. Boltzmann’s laws describe a perfect black body, something that merely radiates back energy that it absorbs. The Earth doesn’t do that. The Greenhouse Effect complicates this. The Greenhouse gases absorb and reradiates warmth back to the planet, which in turn absorbs and reradiates to the atmosphere. If real climate can be likened to a Baseball game, Boltzmann’s blackbodies are just batting practice. If Boltzmann’s law isn’t there explicitly, it’s either because it’s rolled into the models already on a deeper level, or because somebody found a better way of approximating the relationship mathematically.

As far as the Medieval Warm Period goes, it helps to point out that so far there’s little evidence that it was a global warm period. As it is, the case could be made that Europe enjoys a rather warm climate for it’s latitudes, thanks to the Gulf Stream and the Thermohaline conveyor. This is an illustration of the complexity of climate, and the pitfalls of making bland generalizations about the world from localized data. If you want a global idea of things, you use data from around the globe, not just Europe.

I think you ought to get a much better idea of what the proponents of Global Warming theory are saying, and what it actually means, before you start letting the contrarians tell you what’s what, because many of these people are oversimplifying the scientific problems seriously, the Boltzmann reference being a case in point.

I am going to get away from the “boys” and go to the (slightly more) grown ups here.

Stephen,

As for Michael R. Fox? The truth of the matter is, there is only one universe, and only one truth behind what we see out there. There is one set of laws of physics for one set of people, and another for the next, there is just one set, about which people have disagreements, which in science are resolved by means of examination of the facts, which are analyzed by disciplined means and processes intended to weed out what people think is true from what actually is. Consensus building is wrong in science only to the degree to which is not built through the disciplines of the science. If it comes out of the science, then it is basically the only reasonable direction to go, unless you have a better idea. In that case, you submit the new theory to the test, and if it works better, it will gradually build a greater consensus to itself. The process is imperfect, but the object is ultimately a reliable consensus upon which further study and further examination of the natural world can be built.

It sounds like you are speaking out of both sides of your mouth, do you agree with his assessment of Consensus?!! If not, why?

In politics this is the best we can do in making decisions to proceed with political actions. In the scientific world consensus is meaningless, and often unscientific, and worse, often wrong. Even the act of seeking such a consensus as a form of proof is not science. In the legal community there are standards of evidence which are equally unsatisfactory in settling scientific issues, such as “preponderance of evidence” or “beyond a reasonable doubt”. In matters of law these are about the best we can do, short of confessions, but in scientific disputes it is inappropriate. Scientific disputes must be settled by evidence, the data, the facts, and not through verbal skills, political intimidation, or suppression of unpleasant evidence. Nor can they be settled by computer predictions, since these results are not evidence either.

Let’s be clear: the acquisition of knowledge of the natural sciences has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics, of polite agreements on where to plant the daisies, or where to build the library. Letters from US Senators to silence critics is a familiar display of totalitarian instincts, a rather un-American activity we should think.

Serious scientists should welcome criticism, and many have in the past. Hypotheses are to be examined, modified, or abandoned, while knowledge is advanced, understanding improved. But it is not welcomed these days, which is, sadly, a most unscientific situation.

Despite your insult, I’ll respond here:

Serious scientists should welcome criticism, and many have in the past. Hypotheses are to be examined, modified, or abandoned, while knowledge is advanced, understanding improved. But it i