I, for one, love pseudo-science. I dig UFO studies (what better way to learn about the process of learning?), world religions (what drives people to vary their beliefs so widely yet cling to each detail?), reincarnation (are those strange stories true or just crap?) and all sorts of things that involve reason, creativity, and some sort of evidential and symbolic modeling process.
But I know it ain't science. It's fun, it's speculative, and it's entertaining. It ain't science.
What I don't like is when religion joins with theories that can not be reliably tested and scare-mongering under the rubric of science. Then they deny being the pseudo science that they are. Seems like it combines the worst of everything: end-of-days, a call for repentance, smearing the critics, and smarmy self-righteousness.
That's just my opinion, mind you. I really think if you've only got one earth, a hugely complex environment and some kind of computer modeling system that a little degree of humility probably is a good idea. I'm happy with saying "I don't know." Seems like even (or especially) if you take a large grant that should be a fine response.
Global warming may be true and deadly. But that still doesn't make it science.
I'm looking forward to the new Czech pol. Discussion and skepticism is a good thing, especially when it comes to science.
"What I don't like is when religion joins with theories that can not be reliably tested and scare-mongering under the rubric of science. Then they deny being the pseudo science that they are. Seems like it combines the worst of everything: end-of-days, a call for repentance, smearing the critics, and smarmy self-righteousness."
So what you are saying is that if scientists comment on the apparent societal consequences of their research, it is religion or pseudoscience?
At the same time, if someone who's not a scientist comments on those things, people will say that they are unqualified and doesn't know what they are talking about. That's a nice recipe for making science irrelevant to society, it seems to me.
Thing is - global warming is indubitably happening, and, although the mix of causes is unclear, human fossil fuel usage is one of them. Getting off fossil fuels is also the economically sensible thing to do.
> Global warming may be true and deadly. But that still doesn't make it science.
What is science but the study of physical truth? Isn't the ultimate aim of science to be able understand the way the things work so that it is possible to project the conseqences of different actions into the future? Your position is irrational and stupid.
I agree with you, but "Your position is irrational and stupid" is abusive, and likely to cause people to believe that you are in the wrong. Which is unfortunate, because in this instance you are right.
I think it is an unfortunate situation where insulting a stupid proposition is seen as worse than proposing it in the first place.
My belief is that thinking people should take a tougher line on ignorance, irrationality and stupidity. By choosing to engage with these type of opinions with a 'neutral stance' you are giving strength and legitimacy to their arguments. You are essentially saying 'Although your argument seems reasonable, I disagree for the following reasons'.
So maybe I went too far. But I do think there should be a cost for making spurious arguments. Also I feel the casual viewer of arguments shyould be left in no doubt as to the validity of the original statement.
Implicit straw man: "Climates have always changed and they always will". Who is refuting this?
"There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature". Please.
The real shame is that although I believe that global warming is man-made I am genuinely open to being persuaded otherwise. But I've yet to hear a counter argument that isn't self contradicting, dishonest or full of cherry-picked data and ad hominems. It suggests the 'climate-skeptic' camp is dominated by people who have (perhaps involuntary) ulterior motives.
I see your point, but I'd say there is cherrypicking data on both sides. In terms of motives, certanily Gore and many scientists have been personally enriched by promoting global warming.
Sure humans have affected the climate, but I'm scared by the level of religious language and fanaticism:
"Repent of your carbon emissions!"
"The world will be destroyed in ten years!"
It used to be like 75 years but I guess people didn't really care so now they employ all these fear tactics. New York will be under water in our lifetime? Seriously? Many alarmists employ the same language that Pat Robertson does about the second coming and that Bush does about the terrorists.
As soon as I think I'm being manipulated by fear I get really skeptical. Al Gore IS a politician and his messianic message is demagogy as much as anything.
There's a danger in personifying overall concern about global into a single spokesman, Al Gore. It's a fallacy to try to discredit everyone who believes in climate change by simply tearing down Al Gore himself. It's a convenient way of not confronting the facts on either side of the argument.
Al Gore's involvement has made a lot of reflex conservatives who previously had no opinion on the matter into global warming skeptics. They figure since a prominent Democrat is saying it, they should be saying the opposite.
Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, not one of the scientific prizes. The Peace Prize is entirely political. Yasser Arafat (a famously corrupt and dishonest politician) also got one, so their standards are obviously not very high. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/
Question: If Al Gore believed it himself, would he live in a 12-bedroom mansion with a heated swimming pool? Would he jump on a plane at the drop of a hat? Would he sell carbon credits to himself?
Regardless of the merits of the climate change argument, Al Gore is in it for the political mileage and that's all.
I'm old enough to remember when the Green lobby was worried about global cooling, a new Ice Age. The things they prescribed - massively increase regulation and taxation - strangely are exactly the same despite the problem being the opposite! Doesn't that seem odd too? Almost as if it was never anything to do with the environment...
Klein observes that Chait’s riff here is the equivalent of those people who attack Al Gore for being a global-warming crusader even though he rides in cars and uses light bulbs. Of course it is; the point of such attacks is, first, to deride anyone who says anything that makes us feel uncomfortable, and second, to establish that we need listen to radical truths only if they’re spoken by people who live lives of saintly renunciation. Since such people are very rare, this guarantees we won’t be frequently disturbed.
That is a ridiculous counterargument. No-one is asking Al Gore to wear a hair shirt for our sins. All he has to do is walk the walk, just as he advocates that we do. How often do you think the other 11 bedrooms of his mansion are slept in? How often is his pool swum in? These things are pure ostentation. It's not even like his pool is solar heated!
Why does he need to walk the walk? What does his walk have to do with his argument? Who's going to wake up in the morning and say, "you know, I was on the fence on this whole climate change thing, but if Al Gore is going to drive a Honda civic, I'd better sell my Hummer?"
If Al Gore thinks it is so dangerous to live the way he does, why does he continue to do so? Why does he not himself do, what he wants to coerce everyone else to do? For crying out loud. It screams hypocrisy!
Here's another version of the analogy: you say that eating Big Macs will cause other people to die and cities to sink into the ocean, and that I should limit my intake of Big Macs because of this. It's OK if I continue to eat some Big Macs, though as long as I pay you a tax or buy Big Mac credits from your company and I let you regulate what I eat. If I don't pay the tax you have imposed on Big Macs, I will be thrown into jail. If I then resist going to jail, you will have the police kill me.
In light of those claims, I find it strange that you (the fictional Ron-Al McGore) are not really changing your eating habit of at least 4 Big Macs at every meal.
Your analogy is close, but flawed. Instead, I suggest the following as an analogy for your argument:
Al Gore is arguing for an across the board tax increase. He thinks that everyone should pay more taxes. On the other hand, he's not donating his money to the government. If Al Gore really thought it was a good idea to raise taxes, wouldn't he pay them whether the government mandates it or not?
That illustrates more clearly the fact that action on global warming is collective, the same way that taxes are. In fact, you could probably implement action on global warming as a tax increase, by requiring people to purchase carbon credits. I hope you see why it's not required for you to donate extra money to the government in order to argue for a tax increase. Given that, I hope you see why it's not required for you to preemptively stop consuming carbon to argue for government action on global warming.
Citizen consumption is almost irrelevant when it comes to CO2 emissions. Criticizing people for having big houses or driving SUVs misses the point. We need a change in our energy sources away from coal. We have cost-effective technologies already, yet still 40% of our emissions come from burning it to create power.
And at this point in the troll thread it's probably too late to point out that Al Gore has apparently gone out of his way to power his house with renewable energy. [1] Because, you know, of what use are facts in a character assassination?
But the point is that Al Gore is not advocating that you live like a hermit. He's advocating that hermits live like hermits on renewable power, that lawyers live like lawyers on renewable power, and that millionaires live like millionaires on renewable power. Which he does, to the extent that the infrastructure makes it easy. And then, because he's neither a back-to-nature homesteader nor a backyard engineer, he wisely invests his time and energy in what he is good at: lobbying for better infrastructure so that we can all create less CO2.
The irony is that if Al Gore did live like Saint Francis he would be less effective. He would be accused of being some kind of scary hippie socialist. That script is just sitting on the shelf waiting to be used. "What does Al Gore have against the average middle-class millionaire?" would be the cry. "He wants to force you to live like a hermit even after you make ten million dollars!" Or maybe they'd just make fun of his hair. That never gets old.
[1] Wikipedia entry on "Al Gore". I'm not about to descend farther into the research chain, dodging propaganda all the way. Talk about a waste of CO2. It's not like facts are going to do any good in this thread anyway.
It's pretty clear that if Al Gore believes himself he should do whatever is in his power to change the global system. Since the alternative is to hole up and get nothing done, that means flying around, giving talks, and contributing to a (vanishingly) small increase in emissions with the hope of effecting large change.
By your argument you could discount everyone who is arguing that global warming is real by saying that they are driving and flying and emitting carbon. Face it -- in the US today you have to drive and fly to do anything, including trying to change that fact itself.
I don't know anything about his residence, but that is anyway a complete ad hominem attack. The characteristics of his home have nothing to do with the merits of his case.
It's clear that he believe that he himself should remain in the public arena despite being rejected by the democratic process. There's no evidence that he believes anything else, given the disconnect between his lifestyle and what he advocates for others. There is absolutely no reason (it's not like he can't afford it) that he couldn't be powering that mansion of his with wind or solar, and that's just one example. There's no reason that the profits from his carbon credit company couldn't be spent on alternative energy research. The evidence is that it's all self-promotion.
"many scientists have been personally enriched by promoting global warming":
Can we name concrete names of those rich scientists, please? I'm pretty sure Jim Hansen's gains have been limited to the risk of losing his job and of not being allowed to publish his results.
And saying that "it used to be 75 years but people didn't care so now they say the world will be destroyed in 10 years" is spectacularly dishonest. First, scientific facts change. If you follow the research you'll know that evidence is accumulating that effects like deglaciation are happening faster than models used to predict.
When better data become available, scientific predictions will change. Arguing that this proves that science is flawed or scientists are dishonest is like calling people changing their mind about something with more information "flip-floppers" -- but it's the only rational thing to do.
Second, who is saying that "the world will be destroyed in ten years"? As far as I know, reputable scientists are saying things like "unless changes are made within ten years, we will reach a point where it will be too late to stop climate change from reaching a point with likely bad effects". That's a very different thing. Those bad effects won't happen for a long time, like 50-100 years, because of the thermal inertia of the planet, but that also means we must start slowing down now. It's like driving a car, you'd better start slowing down before you get to the curve, trying to do it when you realize you're heading off the road is too little, too late.
Oh, and Al Gore is not a politician. He holds no office, and does not work for a political party. I guess it would be fair to call him a lobbyist, but his financial gain is much less than that of other "lobbyists" like the wall street people. In my eyes, he has way more credibility in his current position than any of those who have large financial stakes in influencing people.
I don't have time to research all of the people that call themselves "scientists" that have invested in carbon credit companies. But, according to this: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=545... Al Gore "buys" his credits from a company he owns a financial stake in.
You're right, these predictions are going to change. They are going to change forever because there are infinitely many variables that go into the climate. For someone to take guesses at what the values are for 70 of them and call that model "science" is bull crap.
Anyone doing anything with even a small connection to climate change would not have got funded without the bandwagon. Lots of scientific careers hinge on this gravy train.
By that logic, cancer is a myth. Do you have any idea how many careers hinge on trying to cure cancer? It's a scientific conspiracy! They have to keep the cancer gravy train going.
The evidence that cancer exists is pretty conclusive. The evidence that the climate is changing in an unusual way isn't.
I live in England, wet, dark miserable England - yet in Roman times there were vineyards and olive trees here. Are you going to tell me next that the bad old Roman Empire was emitting clouds of toxic waste?
"The evidence that cancer exists is pretty conclusive. The evidence that the climate is changing in an unusual way isn't."
I don't agree with that statement, but it's a valid argument for a climate skeptic. "The scientists are just trying to keep the gravy train going" is not a valid argument, because it applies equally to all heavily researched areas. So please, don't use that specific argument again, and understand why it is incorrect.
Any debate on England and Rome is entirely beside the point.
Scientists are not a single homogenous group. If a tenured meteorologist says the climate is changing, then we should listen. If someone tacked "effects of global warming on..." to their study on "the mating habits of water voles", something that would not otherwise have been funded, then we should be skeptical if that person's name later shows up as one of the scientists supporting the global warming theory.
Channel 4 did a documentary on this phenomenon not long ago.
If you could die at any moment and one person says, "have fun" and another person says, "be a christian or you could spend eternity in hell!", what would you advise?
Actually that's an interesting point. There is a significant amount of the latter in the world. For that reason alone I believe it merits consideration. But attention is not necessarily your agreement. Consider it & come to conclusions as objectively as you can.
Do you trust the scientific process that has led to an overwhelming support for climate change theories in the scientific communities? Do you think that there is sufficient possibility that the process has been corrupted?
Reproducible experiments & falsifiable theories lead to overwhelming support. Supposedly, imperfectly and in the long term.
I'm not saying take it at face value. I am saying that in the absence of a personal ability to test & verify & delve into the research, your best bet is a bit of meta research.
I'm a "Lomborg skeptic". Bjorn Lomborg takes the IPCC predictions on Global Warming and shows that the costs of current proposed policies are likely to be much greater than their benefit in actual mitigated warming. He points out that much more good can be done if a fraction of the money currently earmarked to fight global warming instead went towards AIDS prevention, malaria reduction, and nutrition efforts in the third world.
Of course, it is not popular to discuss costs and benefits when discussing Global Warming. The kind of leftists who are the big green alarmists don't look kindly on economic arguments. However, I believe they are essential to making rational decisions. We should all have the goal of doing more good than harm.
Believing is irrational. Given enough time, charisma and persuasion anyone can be made to believe anything.
> I am genuinely open to being persuaded otherwise
Read on the recent research into the abrupt climate change that is now thought to have caused the demise of the Egyptian civilization. Specifically they uncovered the evidence that there was a few degrees jump in average temperatures in a scope of few years.
Discovery covered this half a year ago or so. Ironically enough they were airing it right after yet another fart-less-save-the-earth special.
> .. a persuasive argument that you seem to believe.
What was uncovered were the facts demonstrating severe climate changes in ancient times. This requires no believing in, merely accepting that archeologists didn't fake their findings.
believe: to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.
Your "acceptance" of "the facts" is "believing" by the definition above, pure and simple.
Do you agree or disagree that it is the case that only since 1958 or 1959, have any accurate measurements at all of atmospheric CO2 been made, and that at only a limited number of places around the globe? We can start with that statement if you like.
I read it differently... People who say "Climates have always changed and they always will" are saying it to all the folks who REALLY DON'T KNOW IT. Seriously, if you asked 100 Americans to plot the average temperature in Iowa over then past 10,000 years, how many do you think would draw a flat line with a quick slope up starting around the twentieth century?
As recently as about 30 years ago, scientists were freaking out about Global Cooling which, at the time, had been going on since the 40s. Before that, they were concerned about the warming trend that started in the 1880s.
It is absolutely false that "scientists were freaking out about Global Cooling". In fact, thirty years ago, the scientific consensus was for warming, and there was grave and growing concern about the effect of greenhouse gases. Any review of the scientific literature from that period will prove this definitively. Fleck, Connolley, and Peterson have published on this point; you can probably find a summary of their findings online.
Moreover, even if "Global Cooling" was not the lie it is, this argument is meaningless. History is littered with discarded scientific theories. This is not cause for concern. It is the way that science works. What matters is whether current theories are correct. It is interesting to note, then, that current climate models accurately describe--among many other things--the cooling period you mention.
Finally, the statement, "Climates have always changed and they always will," is not informative. It's a blatantly bunk argument that since climate change is a normal occurrence, any change in climate is normal.
"Finally, the statement, "Climates have always changed and they always will," is not informative. It's a blatantly bunk argument that since climate change is a normal occurrence, any change in climate is normal."
<sigh> You're right. Good thing no one made that argument. Too bad you didn't read what I wrote about that, which was, approximately, that most people really don't that (sadly, most people also can't point at Mexico on a map). No one is arguing that because climate normally occurs that all climate change must be normal. They are just pointing out, "Hey guys-- this isn't the first time that climate HAS changed-- so let's not rush to conclusions".
Scientific consensus 30 years ago was for warming? After Source? Here's a quote from that article (admittedly from Newsweek):
Meteorologists disagree [!] about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous [!] in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.
You really should read Wikipedia or Google around about Global Cooling. It was never a scientific consensus at all. It was something a few scientists discussed as a possibility and the media ran with.
Yeah I have-- I wasn't saying there was consensus on cooling-- but there was certainly a meaningful number of scientists who thought that 30 years of cooling meant something more than it did. Certainly the cooling was significant enough that warming doomsayers weren't too noisy during that period, anyways.
Is a good read... Opinions seem more varied than a lot of people think. I don't really have an opinion. I don't have enough facts, but I have to say that the "torch and pitchforks" feeling I get from the scientific mob rub me the wrong way.
Weigh the risks of action vs. inaction in the 2 (simplified) situations (global warming true, global warming false) and you find that despite what may very well end up being the reality of global warming, its better to err on the side of caution.
But those are not the only options, so more thought need be given to what action to take, at what expense and to whom, and at what opportunity cost, and to the (relative) detriment of other pressing problems.
The speaker refers to his approach as a silver bullet; it's more of a silver lollipop.
My hypothesis: global warming hype will decline, not because the global financial crisis but because of the new administration. The main reason global warming was such a popular meme in the recent years is by the power of association. So many people had a grudge with president Bush and the republicans were perceived as global warming skeptics, therefore everyone felt that preaching the global warming doom was a way to emphasise their hatred for the president. Now that there's no one to hate in the White House the global warming preaching will lose its cathartic power. (This of course is totally unrelated to any actual reasons to believe whether the climate change is man made or what actions should be undertaken to control it.)
Very interesting hypothesis. This reminds me of when I did my pool lifeguard training. We were taught that whenever someone in the pool complained about the temperature of the water, we should visibly walk into a room that has 'Staff Only' on the door, wait 30 seconds, walk back out, and then smile at the person who complained about the water temperature. Being seen to care can often 'alleviate' the problem.
This is probably true. Most people in EU countries (excluding the UK) are pretty sure that man-made global warming is a fact. Only in the USA, Australia and the UK do you find this strong contingent of people who think that it's all a conspiracy and lies. You have to conclude that the governments of these countries have a hand in this public feeling.
Although I Clearly cant speak for UK, Australia, or other Americans, I know people that believe in man made global warming, they just dont see it as a big deal.
There is a difference between people who irrationally disagree with relatively conclusive evidence and those who are skeptical about outcome.
What we need is for both sides in these kinds of controversies to nominate their best spokesperson and have them participate in publicized debates.
Not just in global warming, but in all areas of public controversy. Hopefully this would lead to much less balkanized discourse. Plus, it would help both sides respond to the other much more civilly and tolerantly since people would no longer feel so much at war with each other.
Good luck finding few enough sides. There are easily about eight sides in the global warming argument.
Is global warming even happening?
Is man-made CO2 causing it?
Will reducing man-made CO2 help?
Is the best way to mitigate this to stop emitting CO2, to research green tech, nuclear or to look into measures allowing us to live in a hotter world? And why? How is "best" defined?
Then you'll need impartical referees. When side D claims that no recent study shows that X is true, and side G says there is, who's right? What exhibits are allowed, and how?
But never the less, this form of debate exists and thrives, it's called peer-reviewed journals. Too bad that the climate debate is too much in a hurry to use them.
Here's another argument for you -- what makes people think that the temperature as it is today is the best one for the planet? Isn't that in itself playing God? It's been warmer and colder before on earth, what kind of selfish and anthropocentric mindset thinks we get to pick what temperature we want anyway?
Okay, I'll bite: people think that the temperature as it is today is the best one for the people. It's not playing God -- it's just maintaining our race. Granted, at the disadvantage of other races but that's just how nature works, isn't it?
"Looking after yourself means everyone is looked after."
Now beat me.
I was just bringing up another argument, but let's play it out a bit.
Why would the temperature today be the best for the people? Is there something about the current temperature, or is it just any kind of change from the current temp would cause so much chaos as to outweigh any benefits?
I guess if you wanted what was best for people, you'd want the temp that had the most arable land, right?
The main point about global warming is that it is rapid. Rapid climate change (in either direction) is bad for the obvious reason that we don't have much time to adjust.
In general, a warmer climate is good for us. We're at a geological-historical climate high right now, and it comes with lots of available farm land and pleasant temperatures. Raising it yet further, beyond anything human beings have experienced previously, is projected to bring some good things (Canada will be a huge farm!) and some bad things (malaria will spread its range massively, large increase in hurricanes). Raising it rapidly, however, gets us lots of the latter immediately, and the benefits if any emerge much more slowly.
So should we really be afraid of global warming? On the balance, I think a controlled, intentional warming might be a good idea, although I have no idea who would have the authority to say so or execute on it. Is the current out-of-control, unintended warming dangerous? Almost certainly.
I understand the gist of what you are saying but I'm getting a little lost in the details.
So there is this number, concept, or metric, called "climate". What is it? Debatable. Let's say it's average overall global temperature -- just for simplicity's sake. It's okay now, and it's always changing and that's okay too. We just need it to change at a slower rate than it is now.
How can we measure the change in an unknown/non-standard metric? Sure -- anecdotally, we can observe things like less sea ice in the Arctic, or the decrease in ice coverage around Antarctica, but correlation and causality are completely different things. We just kind of "connect the dots" to join up global climate change and observations.
So there's a number out there, in the void, and it's bad enough now, but at the current rate it is changing it's going to be awful soon unless we act now.
Ignoring the details (which are murky, at least to me), we're still left with a version of the argument which says that "who are we to determine (or heck, measure for that matter) how fast the climate should change?" People in Canada and Russia have a lot of new farmland that could be put to use, the sooner the better.
I'm still not sure global warming beats the coming ice age. I am sure that the global climate is not something that we have anywhere near understanding or mastery over. But its an interesting discussion anyway.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but your argument seems to be:
- I don't really understand this whole "global warming" thing.
- Even climatologists, who do claim to at least understand global warming, don't have complete understanding of or mastery over the global environment.
- So despite the fact we are probably causing extremely rapid, geologically exceptional warming to levels not seen since before the dawn of mankind, we should do nothing. Climatologists who believe this warming will have large negative effects far outweighing the positive are wrong, or at least not certain enough to be right that we should act.
Implicitly this seems to be saying "One should only act with complete mastery, after achieving total understanding of the situation". That seems like it an overly heavy burden of proof to me, much heavier than you'd normally require of a claim. In fact, it would be completely paralyzing to require this level of proof in the general case, because almost never do we achieve either mastery or true understanding.
Yep -- I confused you. Sorry about that. I should have stuck to the initial argument instead of providing commentary.
The argument I was examining was "who are we to decide?" I think it was answered nicely.
To respond:
Science is not about "a good feeling" about something. It is about mastery. Constructing a model that can be tested. I mean, just think about it -- when I drop a hammer, I can tell you each second how far away it is going to be, its velocity, and its momentum. It's complete mastery to our degree to measure. That's science.
I object to scientists becoming social activists, no matter what the cause. Social activism involves fear mongering, public opinion manipulation, politics, and "messages" instead of information. Science involves none of this, and if scientists continue to confuse their jobs and their art with others, then science will become cheap and politicized even more than it is today. We'll have "conservative" scientists and "liberal" scientists and each group will have the usual internet echo chambers to talk into. It's already heading that way.
As far as the chicken little, "why risk it?" argument, I'd refer you to Occam. We can either believe that the climate will continue along some course and the associated ecosystems will adapt as they always have or we can start adding all of these variable like sea level or ice cover and then draw some alarming conclusions. I like to KISS.
BS. Each of the 10 chapters in the IPCC 2007 report on the science basis for climate change contains something like 15 pages of references. If you bothered to check actually those peer-reviewed journals you might discover quite a few papers.
In “Peer Review? What Peer Review?” McLean writes, “The IPCC would have us believe that its reports are diligently reviewed by many hundreds of scientists and that these reviewers endorse the contents of the report. Analyses of reviewer comments show a very different and disturbing story.”
Also, the 20-page "executive summary" is voted on, line by line, by politicians, who (as politicians do) have every other motive than actually objectively figuring out the truth. We have politicians deciding which science is right. If that's not BS, I don't know what is.
I never said the IPCC reports were peer reviewed, I said that report 1 on the science basis of climate change contains about 150 pages of references to peer-reviewed articles where the science is done, as a response to the comment about climate change researchers being in too much of a hurry to publish in peer-reviewed journals.
While we can argue about the process behind the IPCC reports, your link smells of paranoia to me. For one, those politicians voting include reps from the oil-producing Gulf states and to think that they would be predisposed to wanting the finding to be that oil is bad seems far-fetched to me. I'm sure the representatives for the U.S. government wasn't exactly pushing to acknowledge global warming either.
Besides, I must argue with the basic premise of your comment. The politicians are the ones who get things done, and in the end they, just like everyone else, will have to choose what conclusions to draw from the science. Given that the IPCC is at least made up by an assembly of scientists who are trying to synthesize and summarize a whole body of research for those politicians, I think that's about as good a process as one can imagine. It's certainly better than deciding, apparently on their own, that the science on global warming is inconclusive like a certain outgoing US administration appears to have done.
The link he posted also talks about the referenced articles. McLean maintains that these peer-reviewed articles are primarily generated on the basis of funding from previous IPCC reports, and the majority of research referenced is done from the presupposition of human caused global warming. Both factors mean that dissenting voices are unlikely to be heard.
As lutorm said.. also, if this is condensed into a 45-minute townhall format, you get "My friend Joe the Eskimo thinks icebears are cute" and while it's great TV, no-one is more clever for it.
I'd say people are better informed if they get to hear the best of both sides instead of only one. Have the global warming skeptics been able to put something out that gets the publicity of "An Inconvenient Truth?"
Even in the case where one side is clearly correct, I think its position can only be strengthened in the public eye if its arguments are compared to the best opposing arguments. Only if people assume the opposite can I see a good case for one sided propaganda, but I don't know of a good reason to assume this.
But we've just seen a couple of guys debate the next four year of one country in a very public way. It took them a year, not to reach any kind of common ground, much less agreement, but to get to the point where a few pct.pts. likes one guy better than the other. This was even made easy by pre-defining that there will only be two sides to the debate.
The climate debate discusses the future, not of one country, but of the entire earth, and if we end up on the side of the "alarmists", we're not trying again in 4 years - this is a 20-50 year plan.
So, yes, I agree with you, but my pragmatic practical side (the one that will not be allowed in a brainstorm session) argues that it's just not practical.
Sure they do, it's not like they are secret. But most people don't want to take the time to understand scientific articles that aren't written for the general public, if even those.
"Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that "we're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational"."
Strange thing is, I only ever see this kind of article from the "no-global-warming" camp. I don't recall reading any articles bashing the "no-global-warming" people's personalities. Could be my selective memory, could be something else...
From the second paragraph of the article: 'The New York Times opened a profile of Klaus, 67, this week with a quote from a 1980s communist secret agent's report, claiming he behaves like a "rejected genius" [...]' So yeah, I would conclude it is your selective memory.
Btw, has anyone else here read James Hogan's "Kicking the Sacred Cow?"
I read it, and it is very eye opening just how many of the major scientific "facts" and causes rest on pretty shaky, if not outright false, foundations.
One of the most interesting quotes I heard recently on NPR was someone from Obama's transitional team explaining that a green energy industry is win-win. Developing and deploying green energy will boost the U.S economy while reducing carbon emissions. Whichever side of the argument you fall on, fossil fuels won't last forever and greener tech tends to be applicable in a much wider range of circumstances making it convenient for the modern lifestyle.
There's an opportunity cost to everything you do. So if you prioritise carbon emissions and the result of that is that poor people can't keep their families warm, you lose. Most of the evils of politics in the first world happens as opportunity-cost theft, because it's easy to hide. For example - force people to pay taxes, enlarge government in the process, and then fund something stupid and thereby prevent the original person from putting it to better use.
> Whichever side of the argument you fall [..]
Be that as it may, if it develops as a result to market impetus you can be generally confident that it will be a response to actual demand. Whereas as soon as the government gets involved we lose our valuing mechanisms and get locked into what the geniuses in the capital think is going to happen. Also, it depends which fuels you pour your energy into and whether this is actually a good choice. If you invest in a bad route there for political reasons (e.g. ethanol) you'll have the effect of increasing world hunger as a side-effect. Nuclear is another option which is difficult to separate from political concerns.
Not defending or refuting this, really, but thought I'd point to a compelling argument I saw on TED by a "climate engineer." The summary is that he claims if things continue and there are problems and we haven't done anything about them, people like him will step up and say stuff like "we can set off a few volcanoes, put some ash in the air and cool things down." And he thinks you're better off working on the problem now so that people like him don't get to try things which could have unintended consequences. Or at the very least, be a band-aid without neosporin.
Climate engineering is a very interesting idea, but since we don't understand the climate very well, I would start with small steps and leave setting off volcanoes or dumping iron into the seas for a future moment.
We have one planet to experiment with and we will have to live in it for the foreseeable future. Until that changes, I will favor lower-energy experiments.
And, BTW, the whole idea of reducing carbon footprint, building more efficient cities, transportation and generally living consuming less resources is a great idea in itself. Remember, by the next 100 years, we will have a whole lot more people hanging around.
> ...but since we don't understand the climate very well
But, wait. Apparently we DO understand the climate well enough to know that global warming is happening because of the small percentage of CO2 emissions caused by humans, and that by cutting our emissions, we can stop the warming.
Based on that, we must have an extremely thorough understanding of our climate, and it should be trivial to simulate a vulcano going off and see if it cools the climate.
You don't need to understand much of what goes under the hood of your car to draw simple conclusions like "exerting pressure on the brakes slows it down".
You do need considerable understanding of how cars work if what you want is to interfere with the engine functions to, say, increase its mileage.
We do understand enough to point to CO2 emissions as the probable cause of global warming (the less heat we radiate back to space, the warmer we get - it's that simple) but to manipulate the climate to a given objective while avoiding uncontrollable side effects would require a much better understanding of how the climate really works.
As Mark Twain cleverly said, it's not what you don't know that kills you. It's what you are absolutely sure that just isn't that way. Would you take that gamble?
Though I agree that bad science and sensationalism do much harm to the case of climate change, there are many reasons to make the drastic changes to how humans operate on the planet.
For any of the people who don't believe in climate change, I say to tell yourself the story of how the rainforests disappeared and thousands (scientists say millions) of species were lots for ever, and why.
Go look at a strip mine, and try not to feel like what we are doing is wrong.
This summer a small plot of trees across from where I have coffee was mowed down for an olympic ceremonies park. Now I have no qualms about actually taking down that small plot of trees (it's maybe 1.5-2 acres), in a prime retail spot, and I live in a rain forest so loosing an acre to us isn't a big deal, we're surrounded by trees.
But the sound of those trees coming down, we were all in shock, and really when you see all the dead trees lying there on the ground, you feel ashamed to have supported it.
I also say to tell yourself the story of how your car runs, from the first bit of oil being drilled to the moment that your tires spin, and if you can honestly convince yourself that that is an efficient energy system, then you're an amazing debater.
I honestly believe there are huge errors in the science which is spread publicly, but it is the sensationalism of this science which is grabbing attention and causing people to take notice.
The negative effect is the backlash of non-believers have ammunition.
Other scientists have said that more species are created and go extinct than we've ever cataloged and that this has been going on for millions of years. And I don't have a reference either.
Statistics are like standards: there so many to choose from.
I appreciate that, and thanks for the feedback. I thought the 'emotional arguments' where easy to make it apparent that maybe we are doing something wrong, climate change or not.
The rational/scientific arguments can be argued. Tough to stand in a clearcut and say 'damn happy we got rid of those trees!'. ;)
But I know it ain't science. It's fun, it's speculative, and it's entertaining. It ain't science.
What I don't like is when religion joins with theories that can not be reliably tested and scare-mongering under the rubric of science. Then they deny being the pseudo science that they are. Seems like it combines the worst of everything: end-of-days, a call for repentance, smearing the critics, and smarmy self-righteousness.
That's just my opinion, mind you. I really think if you've only got one earth, a hugely complex environment and some kind of computer modeling system that a little degree of humility probably is a good idea. I'm happy with saying "I don't know." Seems like even (or especially) if you take a large grant that should be a fine response.
Global warming may be true and deadly. But that still doesn't make it science.
I'm looking forward to the new Czech pol. Discussion and skepticism is a good thing, especially when it comes to science.