I agree with you. We saw it with global cooling in the 70s. The so-called population explosion. The massive worldwide food shortage. More recently the avian bird flu. And on and on. I doesn't end. Michael Crichton has some really interesting things to say about this phenominon of fear that permiates the culture. The phenominon itself never leaves or changes - just what people call it.
That global warming is so loved by the left tells me it's simply a tool to advance a socialist adgenda. More government control over business and people's lives. If Al Gore was so concerned about global warming he'd fly coach and more into a more sensable home.
It's merely a means to a political end. Group A thinks they know better than Group B and will do anything to make sure they win.
The problem is GW being used to influence public policy at a pretty high level. Institutionalized causes tend to survive. For example, although 80% of crop circles are known to be manmade (Wiki), "research" continues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle, but who cares. Energy policy affects everything; I don't recall any similar situation where Fed Gov was a channel for belivers with respect to the breadth of activities that will be affected.
The Hudson Institute is pretty much against anything that means more regulations. Just like the Heartland Institute, which is sponsoring Avery's talks, if you look for words like 'free-market' in their statements, you can clue in on where they're coming from. If the sun were to be going nova in a decade, they'd still want any solution to the problem to be corporate, with no government interference.
Avery really hasn't added anything new to the science, his arguments in his book bring up old hats that are dealt with here. Even Real Climate did a writeup on one of his talks already.
And as for his bit about all those 'scientists' who are publishing papers that refute global warming, he's making arguments similar to those who want to 'disprove' evolution. There are plenty of scientists who have found evidence of natural cycles, and interesting phenomena. But to claim that this means those researchers are proving the bigger picture wrong is irresponsible.
Hmmm, good link Jeffrey. A lot of bogus arguments against AGW are well-debunked there.
However. I notice their link on "It's been warmer before. What's the big deal?" deals with prehistoric time scales, not Roman times, and the Medieval Warming link has a lot of "mays" and "might haves" and "its uncertains" -- and then throws them all out when it says the past few decades definitely been warmer than the medieval period. Poorly argued.
While I do think the Roman and Medieval warm periods may have been as warm or warmer than it is today, I don't think British vinyards are a good argument for that claim.
For one thing, there are a few vinyards in Britain today. We just don't hear about them because they're small and relatively new.
For another, the economics were very different in Roman times. Transport was much more expensive, California and Australia hadn't been invented yet, and there was a huge demand for bad wine because plain water wasn't all that safe to drink. For identical climate conditions, it may have made sense to make bad wine locally then, but to import good wine now.
Looking at the quality of these arguments is pretty damning for the so-called "skeptics".
Here we have a deeply political organization going through scientific papers, cherry-picking data that they can spin as somehow undermining AGW, even though the scientists who wrote those papers largely support AGW.
The very fact that they phrase their "findings" in such a manner as to give a false impression of what these scientists conclude from their data, tells you pretty clearly that these are not honest people doing reputable work.
It reads very much like yet another in a long line of PR hack jobs by those with a political agenda. Didn't you get that sense David?
It reads very much like yet another in a long line of PR hack jobs by those with a political agenda. Didn't you get that sense David?
It seems to me that there are "political hack jobs" on both ends of this. Which makes it pretty hard to look for good science without our own bias' influencing what we find.
We saw it with global cooling in the 70s. The so-called population explosion. The massive worldwide food shortage. More recently the avian bird flu. And on and on. I doesn't end. Michael Crichton has some really interesting things to say about this phenominon of fear that permiates the culture. The phenominon itself never leaves or changes - just what people call it.
Yep. And we also see it in the pernicious religious nonsense of the Christian cultists who believe in garbage like "the rapture" and the idea that God is furious with America and that's why 9/11 happened.
"The end is nigh" and "the world is going to hell in a handbasket" is perennially popular on both the right and the left, amongst the religious and the secular. Funny huh?
Wow, what a ridiculous link you have used as a basis for your whole BS argument. A link to a hack-job web site talking about some mysterious study that they don't show or link to apparently written by some hack-job author of a hack-job book that nobody will read.
Imagine what you would say if I tried to prove some ultra-liberal point by linking to Moveon.org talking about a study they won't reveal, written by some unknown author of an ultra-liberal book. Would you really take that seriously? Wouldn't I just look like a fool doing that and pretending that I was proving a point?
"A news analysis of peer-reviewed literature." Huh. Guess it's not up to being peer-reviewed itself. I'm just sayin'.
To Dean Esmay: the real money in global warming is in the denial science. Exxon pays it's shill very welll. But, you see, if you are all about the money climatology is not really the way to go (finance and business admin pay a lot better), you go into it because you are curious. It's kinda like that whole 'germ theory of disease' paradigm. Sure, you can be a 'germ skeptic' and believe in the 'evil spirits' paradigm, but don't expect too many people to take you seriously.
We will archive everything that you GW denialists say and write.
IOW, "This will go down on your permanent record" - LOL is that you, Principal Conklin?
God, how absolutely childish and thuggish. Here, write this down: I personally deny that AGW is real, but even if it is, I will still spit in your eyes and oppose you until the last of my days on earth, and gladly, because you're the face of everything I despise as a human being. You are thugs, disgusting thugs.
the real money in global warming is in the denial science.
Please provide hard numbers for this assertion.
It's an irrelevant assertion anyway, Dean.
Let's take two guys, Bill Bad and Glenn Good.
Bill Bad is greedy; and so, when faced with a career choice, he chooses Evil Corporate Highjinks.
Glenn Good is curious; and so, when faced with a career choice, he chooses Selfless Noble Science.
All of the above -- with about that level of snideness -- is implied by Lord Jim's statement.
And it's all absolutely irrelevant to your position. Absolutely, completely irrelevant.
How so? Let's throw Bill Bad out of the discussion, and focus solely on Glenn Good. Glenn has to choose a discipline within Selfless Noble Science. And then he has to formulate hypotheses and perform experiments to try to learn new things within that discipline. Unless he's strictly a hobbyist, he wants to get published.
Now when Glenn investigates, he finds one area of research is popular and heavily funded, with lots of papers published. And he finds another area is unpopular -- maybe even frowned upon -- and ill funded, with few journals even looking at the papers.
Now your position is simply this: maybe, just maybe, some of the Glenn Goods out there will have kids to feed and student loans to pay off and mortgages to make; and maybe, just maybe, some of them will say, "Well, I'd better stick where the money is within Selfless Noble Science." Maybe even some of them will say, "Hey, this research is leading in a direction the journal publishers will disagree with. Maybe I had better look somewhere else." Maybe scientists are human beings, with the same fallibilities as the rest of us. Yes, scientific method and peer review are supposed to protect us from this sort of effect; but no protection is perfect.
Lord Jim is saying, "Bob makes more money." You're saying, "Some areas of science have more money involved than others, and Glenn's decisions might be affected by money." Lord Jim's statement is completely irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of your statement.
Now your statement may very well be false; but Lord Jim hasn't proved that one way or another. Of course, since he's so ready to throw around a slur like "shill", I doubt he's able to follow simple logic like that.
People get all worked up over Global Warming because it gives them a cause to preach and pontificate on which makes them feel good about themselves while they still use refrigerators, washing machines, automobiles, air conditioners, lawn mowers, boats and all the other trappings of modern society. See, they worry about this stuff, so it's okay that they continue to live the same lifestyle as those of us who think the "threat" is overblown.
It has nothing to do with science, reason or rationality. All it has to do with is "I'm more pure than you are, therefore you are evil."
Here are some points in the debate.
Drive an electric or hybrid car. It will make you feel better about yourself. Will it actually DO anything about Global Warming? Of course not, because 95% of the electricity that is used to drive those cars was generated by burning coal or natural gas. And because of the laws of thermodynamics and the need to transport the electricity to the car, and then to convert it back into mechanical energy, it can easily be proven that using an electric car could actually GENERATE MORE CO2 than just burning gas directly. But this sort of logical, rational analysis is lost on Global Warming alarmists. They will call it a lie, they will say that whoever says such a thing must be a shill of the oil companies, they will say that it is stupid, they will say anything but "Oh, really? You mean the electricity doesn't just come out of thin air? Huh. Who knew?"
Why do they do this? Because they want to feel good when they see a Prius so they can say "See! Someone cares! Someone is doing something about it. It doesn't matter to them that not only does that electricity actually come from burning carbon, but that the batteries in the car one day have to be disposed of, and disposing of batteries is not something the environment really appreciates.
The bottom line is that the whole political global warming movement is just another feel-good opportunity for people who need a cause, but who won't change their lifestyles for one.
You make a perfectly possible hypothetical case that maybe, just maybe, some climate change researchers might be motivated to push global warming for the money. You sound like you'd make a pretty darn good defense attorney, in fact.
However, there's two very big holes in your argument. First of all, statistics. Just because you prove it's possible that your Glenn Good scenario could happen, it is not very likely or even plausible. There's lots of things in climatology that can be studied that don't apply to the current changes in climate. Past warming/cooling, its relation to species' spread and decline, etc.
Let's assume you are right. A significant portion of the climatologists in the world promote atmospheric global warming for purely mercenary reasons, and most of the rest (excluding skeptics and deniers) are blinded by their own rhetoric. Wouldn't it be likely that one, just one Glen Good would get disgusted with it and publish an expose of this corrupt doom-mongering? Maybe publish some good, sound science to refute, once and for all, the shaky theoretical foundations of this hideous enterprise? I mean, all this bad science has to be backed up with bad theory, right? Skeptics wouldn't be nibbling at the edges of this mistaken colussus when they could take the whole thing down, would they?
Let's play a game with statistics. For a rough, ball-park figure of the probability, let's take every 'maybe' in your post and call it a 50/50 chance. That's 7 maybes, giving us 1/2^7, or 1/128, or 0.78% chance.
Of course, that's a cheap shot and a bad news analysis of your post. Which brings me to problem #2: Facts. Examples. Show me a real-life Glenn Good. Because I'll show you Sallie Baliunas, co-author of a 2003 peer-reviewed analysis of peer-reviewed literature, which concluded that the climate hasn't changed in the last 2000 years. Received funding from the American Petroleum Institute for this. Paper was refuted by all of the scientists whose primary research was cited, who felt their work was misrepresented. Has previously worked for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Was a contributing editor of the World Climate Report, which is published by the Western Fuels Association.
There's a clear motive for misrepresentation when funding comes from greenhouse-gas emitting industries. The same can't be said for the climate-change-as-conspiracy-to-get-funding theory, which rests on the spurious notion that deniers and skeptics can't get funding, and that liberal scientists are the new Catholic Church, out to make everyone feel guilty.
There's a clear motive for misrepresentation when funding comes from greenhouse-gas emitting industries. The same can't be said for the climate-change-as-conspiracy-to-get-funding theory, which rests on the spurious notion that deniers and skeptics can't get funding, and that liberal scientists are the new Catholic Church, out to make everyone feel guilty.
In other words...
We - are right-thinking, honest and genuinely concerned.
The whole "wine in Britain" argument is based on the highly flawed assumption that regional warming indicates global warming.
Of course, the Warm-mongers make that mistake all the time, too.
We - are right-thinking, honest and genuinely concerned.
They - are partisans, shills and frauds.
You - don't ask.
But not in those words. Let me be a little bit clearer:
The Earth's climate is changing, and getting warmer, due to human activities that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The science behind this is valid, and supported by a vast majority of climate researchers, i.e., those people who know the most about the subject.
The sun is getting hotter. This accounts for a tiny fraction (around 1%) of the current average global warming.
I don't think you're a pad shill (although you may be). I think you're a sap, and a sucker for overly digested information. Not that that makes you a bad person or anything, but I do question your judgment.
I never asserted that "that money can have no significant role in the decisions and actions of climate researchers". In fact, I gave an example of a climate researcher whom I believe was influenced by money.
However, I find the idea that a vast majority of climate researchers are parroting falsehoods in collusion with their peer reviewers in order to attract publicity and thus money is highly unlikely at best. Even the connection between publicity and funding is highly tenuous. All this seems even unlikelier considering most of the researchers attempting to refute this vast majority are, directly or indirectly, funded by the very industries that have the most to lose from the curtailing of greenhouse gas emissions.
9.18.2007 2:33am
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
No, I do not offer evidence for my assertion.
I agree with you. We saw it with global cooling in the 70s. The so-called population explosion. The massive worldwide food shortage. More recently the avian bird flu. And on and on. I doesn't end. Michael Crichton has some really interesting things to say about this phenominon of fear that permiates the culture. The phenominon itself never leaves or changes - just what people call it.
That global warming is so loved by the left tells me it's simply a tool to advance a socialist adgenda. More government control over business and people's lives. If Al Gore was so concerned about global warming he'd fly coach and more into a more sensable home.
It's merely a means to a political end. Group A thinks they know better than Group B and will do anything to make sure they win.
Even if it means lying.
Avery really hasn't added anything new to the science, his arguments in his book bring up old hats that are dealt with here. Even Real Climate did a writeup on one of his talks already.
And as for his bit about all those 'scientists' who are publishing papers that refute global warming, he's making arguments similar to those who want to 'disprove' evolution. There are plenty of scientists who have found evidence of natural cycles, and interesting phenomena. But to claim that this means those researchers are proving the bigger picture wrong is irresponsible.
However. I notice their link on "It's been warmer before. What's the big deal?" deals with prehistoric time scales, not Roman times, and the Medieval Warming link has a lot of "mays" and "might haves" and "its uncertains" -- and then throws them all out when it says the past few decades definitely been warmer than the medieval period. Poorly argued.
For one thing, there are a few vinyards in Britain today. We just don't hear about them because they're small and relatively new.
For another, the economics were very different in Roman times. Transport was much more expensive, California and Australia hadn't been invented yet, and there was a huge demand for bad wine because plain water wasn't all that safe to drink. For identical climate conditions, it may have made sense to make bad wine locally then, but to import good wine now.
Here we have a deeply political organization going through scientific papers, cherry-picking data that they can spin as somehow undermining AGW, even though the scientists who wrote those papers largely support AGW.
The very fact that they phrase their "findings" in such a manner as to give a false impression of what these scientists conclude from their data, tells you pretty clearly that these are not honest people doing reputable work.
It reads very much like yet another in a long line of PR hack jobs by those with a political agenda. Didn't you get that sense David?
It seems to me that there are "political hack jobs" on both ends of this. Which makes it pretty hard to look for good science without our own bias' influencing what we find.
Yet somehow, pointing this fact out amounts to "ad hominem" and an "attack on science itself" if you point it out.
Or so I've noticed.
Apparently, skepticism ain't what it used to be.
They - are partisans, shills and frauds.
You - don't ask.
Yep. And we also see it in the pernicious religious nonsense of the Christian cultists who believe in garbage like "the rapture" and the idea that God is furious with America and that's why 9/11 happened.
"The end is nigh" and "the world is going to hell in a handbasket" is perennially popular on both the right and the left, amongst the religious and the secular. Funny huh?
Imagine what you would say if I tried to prove some ultra-liberal point by linking to Moveon.org talking about a study they won't reveal, written by some unknown author of an ultra-liberal book. Would you really take that seriously? Wouldn't I just look like a fool doing that and pretending that I was proving a point?
To Dean Esmay: the real money in global warming is in the denial science. Exxon pays it's shill very welll. But, you see, if you are all about the money climatology is not really the way to go (finance and business admin pay a lot better), you go into it because you are curious. It's kinda like that whole 'germ theory of disease' paradigm. Sure, you can be a 'germ skeptic' and believe in the 'evil spirits' paradigm, but don't expect too many people to take you seriously.
In 20 years, we will make sure that everyone knows what imbeciles you all were, and how you contributed to the inaction on GW.
It would be nice to have this kind of discussion without the anonymous hordes of brownshirted warm-mongerer Inquisition trolls.
Dean has been a little too busy to play romper room attendant. If no one gets too abusive, I expect he'll keep on his alligator fighting.
IOW, "This will go down on your permanent record" - LOL is that you, Principal Conklin?
God, how absolutely childish and thuggish. Here, write this down: I personally deny that AGW is real, but even if it is, I will still spit in your eyes and oppose you until the last of my days on earth, and gladly, because you're the face of everything I despise as a human being. You are thugs, disgusting thugs.
That's one reason I like to (tongue-in-cheek) call one side "warmenists" and the other side "denialists."
In 20 years, we will make sure that everyone knows what imbeciles you all were, and how you contributed to the inaction on GW
The implication is there will be serious effects from GW in 20 years. The consensus is there won't be any even in the next 100.
Please provide hard numbers for this assertion.
My prediction is that you can't, which is why I'm a skeptic about those on your side of the argument.
In fact, a direct question: who do you work for, and how much money do you make? It's a fair question, no?
And I'll answer it if you will, denialist-boy.
Who's paying your salary, and why do you have so much time to troll the comment section of blogs like this you've never appeared on before?
Just curious.
It's an irrelevant assertion anyway, Dean.
Let's take two guys, Bill Bad and Glenn Good.
Bill Bad is greedy; and so, when faced with a career choice, he chooses Evil Corporate Highjinks.
Glenn Good is curious; and so, when faced with a career choice, he chooses Selfless Noble Science.
All of the above -- with about that level of snideness -- is implied by Lord Jim's statement.
And it's all absolutely irrelevant to your position. Absolutely, completely irrelevant.
How so? Let's throw Bill Bad out of the discussion, and focus solely on Glenn Good. Glenn has to choose a discipline within Selfless Noble Science. And then he has to formulate hypotheses and perform experiments to try to learn new things within that discipline. Unless he's strictly a hobbyist, he wants to get published.
Now when Glenn investigates, he finds one area of research is popular and heavily funded, with lots of papers published. And he finds another area is unpopular -- maybe even frowned upon -- and ill funded, with few journals even looking at the papers.
Now your position is simply this: maybe, just maybe, some of the Glenn Goods out there will have kids to feed and student loans to pay off and mortgages to make; and maybe, just maybe, some of them will say, "Well, I'd better stick where the money is within Selfless Noble Science." Maybe even some of them will say, "Hey, this research is leading in a direction the journal publishers will disagree with. Maybe I had better look somewhere else." Maybe scientists are human beings, with the same fallibilities as the rest of us. Yes, scientific method and peer review are supposed to protect us from this sort of effect; but no protection is perfect.
Lord Jim is saying, "Bob makes more money." You're saying, "Some areas of science have more money involved than others, and Glenn's decisions might be affected by money." Lord Jim's statement is completely irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of your statement.
Now your statement may very well be false; but Lord Jim hasn't proved that one way or another. Of course, since he's so ready to throw around a slur like "shill", I doubt he's able to follow simple logic like that.
It has nothing to do with science, reason or rationality. All it has to do with is "I'm more pure than you are, therefore you are evil."
Here are some points in the debate.
Drive an electric or hybrid car. It will make you feel better about yourself. Will it actually DO anything about Global Warming? Of course not, because 95% of the electricity that is used to drive those cars was generated by burning coal or natural gas. And because of the laws of thermodynamics and the need to transport the electricity to the car, and then to convert it back into mechanical energy, it can easily be proven that using an electric car could actually GENERATE MORE CO2 than just burning gas directly. But this sort of logical, rational analysis is lost on Global Warming alarmists. They will call it a lie, they will say that whoever says such a thing must be a shill of the oil companies, they will say that it is stupid, they will say anything but "Oh, really? You mean the electricity doesn't just come out of thin air? Huh. Who knew?"
Why do they do this? Because they want to feel good when they see a Prius so they can say "See! Someone cares! Someone is doing something about it. It doesn't matter to them that not only does that electricity actually come from burning carbon, but that the batteries in the car one day have to be disposed of, and disposing of batteries is not something the environment really appreciates.
The bottom line is that the whole political global warming movement is just another feel-good opportunity for people who need a cause, but who won't change their lifestyles for one.
You make a perfectly possible hypothetical case that maybe, just maybe, some climate change researchers might be motivated to push global warming for the money. You sound like you'd make a pretty darn good defense attorney, in fact.
However, there's two very big holes in your argument. First of all, statistics. Just because you prove it's possible that your Glenn Good scenario could happen, it is not very likely or even plausible. There's lots of things in climatology that can be studied that don't apply to the current changes in climate. Past warming/cooling, its relation to species' spread and decline, etc.
Let's assume you are right. A significant portion of the climatologists in the world promote atmospheric global warming for purely mercenary reasons, and most of the rest (excluding skeptics and deniers) are blinded by their own rhetoric. Wouldn't it be likely that one, just one Glen Good would get disgusted with it and publish an expose of this corrupt doom-mongering? Maybe publish some good, sound science to refute, once and for all, the shaky theoretical foundations of this hideous enterprise? I mean, all this bad science has to be backed up with bad theory, right? Skeptics wouldn't be nibbling at the edges of this mistaken colussus when they could take the whole thing down, would they?
Let's play a game with statistics. For a rough, ball-park figure of the probability, let's take every 'maybe' in your post and call it a 50/50 chance. That's 7 maybes, giving us 1/2^7, or 1/128, or 0.78% chance.
Of course, that's a cheap shot and a bad news analysis of your post. Which brings me to problem #2: Facts. Examples. Show me a real-life Glenn Good. Because I'll show you Sallie Baliunas, co-author of a 2003 peer-reviewed analysis of peer-reviewed literature, which concluded that the climate hasn't changed in the last 2000 years. Received funding from the American Petroleum Institute for this. Paper was refuted by all of the scientists whose primary research was cited, who felt their work was misrepresented. Has previously worked for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Was a contributing editor of the World Climate Report, which is published by the Western Fuels Association.
There's a clear motive for misrepresentation when funding comes from greenhouse-gas emitting industries. The same can't be said for the climate-change-as-conspiracy-to-get-funding theory, which rests on the spurious notion that deniers and skeptics can't get funding, and that liberal scientists are the new Catholic Church, out to make everyone feel guilty.
In other words...
Touch, Dishman.
Of course, the Warm-mongers make that mistake all the time, too.
I expected so much better of you.
Yeah, I said it.
But not in those words. Let me be a little bit clearer:
The Earth's climate is changing, and getting warmer, due to human activities that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The science behind this is valid, and supported by a vast majority of climate researchers, i.e., those people who know the most about the subject.
The sun is getting hotter. This accounts for a tiny fraction (around 1%) of the current average global warming.
Prove me wrong, Martin. I dare you.
Hint: you'll never find such statements, so don't waste too much time on it.
Meanwhile, you have made blanket assertions that people who disagree with you are all paid shills. Prove that.
Furthermore, you have made blanket assertions that money can have no significant role in the decisions and actions of climate researchers. Prove that.
The person who makes the statements is the person with the burden of proof.
I never asserted that "that money can have no significant role in the decisions and actions of climate researchers". In fact, I gave an example of a climate researcher whom I believe was influenced by money.
However, I find the idea that a vast majority of climate researchers are parroting falsehoods in collusion with their peer reviewers in order to attract publicity and thus money is highly unlikely at best. Even the connection between publicity and funding is highly tenuous. All this seems even unlikelier considering most of the researchers attempting to refute this vast majority are, directly or indirectly, funded by the very industries that have the most to lose from the curtailing of greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.