Ah, Crichton. I enjoyed your books in my youth.

Quote :

"SETI is unquestionably a religion. . . ."

That's a major leap. Anything that isn't science must be a religion?

Quote :

"Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future?"

Not as unreasonable as it sounds. It's easier to predict major trends than specifics. I don't exactly what I'll be doing tomorrow at noon, but I'm confident I'll feel the effects of aging in thirty years.

11/8/2008 1:06:07 PM

of course, we have evidence of the effects of aging, so it seems preposterous to expect you to buck the trend... Then again, all of our climate models can't seem to predict what happened in the past, so what does that really say about them?

11/8/2008 1:13:20 PM

Did anyone else see the e2 energy series? More interesting and informational than An Inconvenient Truth.

11/9/2008 5:24:06 AM

I'm not gonna read all the pages to see if its been posted yet, but:

http://tinyurl.com/4adtwo

its all a scam people

11/9/2008 10:48:59 AM

^ It's a scam because Gore used CGI in his film?

How conclusive...

11/9/2008 1:55:02 PM

The Climate for Change
By AL GORE
Published: November 9, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09gore.html?pagewanted=1

Quote :

"Al Gore, the vice president from 1993 to 2001, was the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He founded the Alliance for Climate Protection and, as a businessman, invests in alternative energy companies."

Yeah, Gore invests in all the ones he'll profit from promoting. And where does much of the funding for Gore's group(s) come from?

And in a related story, it's good to know that Gore and his cohorts are scaring little children to death over climate change:

Climate Change Scenarios Scare, and Motivate, Kids

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/15/AR2007041501164_pf.html

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 8:22 AM. Reason : PS: ]

11/11/2008 8:21:25 AM

kids... they're so good at not thinking for themselves.

11/11/2008 11:33:49 AM

Gore's movie had lots of CGI in it. What, did y'all think the images of Florida drowning were real?

11/11/2008 11:36:34 AM

wait, Florida's still there? Damn, I haven't gone since seeing Gore's movie. I thought it was gone!

11/11/2008 11:46:44 AM

Al Gore hates Florida.

11/11/2008 12:47:41 PM

Okay, that little interlude was fun--now let's get back to the point. If Gore is personally investing in many of the same businesses that he's trying to shove down everyone else's throats through new laws and so on, isn't that some form of conflict of interest?

At a minimum, when Gore is promoting, say, solar power to groups of citizens, shouldn't he always disclose that he may be invested in solar power and therefore will personally profit in this? Isn't this basic ethics?

And does anyone know where all of Gore's reported $300-million-plus funding comes from? Anyone?

[Edited on November 12, 2008 at 2:14 AM. Reason : .]

11/12/2008 2:13:03 AM

silly hooksalisburybot, didn't you know that only oil companies would lie about climate change in order to make a buck?

11/12/2008 8:05:30 PM

^ Indeed.

11/13/2008 6:29:03 AM

saw gore speak tonight. He's gotten kind of chubby.

That's all I have to contribute

11/23/2008 9:39:11 PM

i've heard people talk about his depressive phase until he discovered that it was his duty to save the planet.

I mean, it would kind of suck if you were completely seriously expecting to become president of the US and then were just plain unemployed.

11/23/2008 9:43:48 PM

Yeah, being rich and not having a job is a huge downer

11/23/2008 11:27:29 PM

Just being rich doesn't mean you don't sit around and make your ass fat eating ice cream when you got nothing productive to do, like the rest of us.

11/24/2008 7:28:24 PM

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2674e64f-802a-23ad-490b-bd9faf4dcdb7

Quote :

"This updated report includes an additional 250 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial release in December 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers."

I thought that the UN report was summarized by 52 scientists but that the summary was based upon the research of hundreds more.

12/11/2008 10:03:04 PM

Damn, the oil companies must really be rolling in the dough to be able to pay off all those scientists...


That article ism usic to my ears

12/11/2008 11:38:45 PM

Gee, this thread sure has become quite since the Senate Minority report was posted...

12/31/2008 11:38:25 AM

quite what?

12/31/2008 2:41:14 PM

dammit all

1/1/2009 11:03:05 PM

Quote :

"I thought that the UN report was summarized by 52 scientists but that the summary was based upon the research of hundreds more. "

This is true. The quantity is irrelevant though, science isn't really a race, and it shouldn't be viewed as a competition. People have been lamenting the politicization of the science since at least page 20 of this thread, which is what most of those "skeptics" seem to be complaining about, which is a valid complaint.

Is this the same list of "skeptics" though that turned out to be just a bunch of researchers names that were put together without their consent? Or is this a new, different list?

1/1/2009 11:35:01 PM

^If the list of skeptics you're talking about are the ones in the Minority Report then no, they're not just a randomly grouped bunch of scientists. The Minority Report (did you check it out?) is over 250 pages of scientists (in fields involved in or related to the GW) being quoted speaking against AGW caused by CO2.

1/2/2009 10:05:41 AM

Is it 250 pages of individual scientists or 250 pages of quotes by repeated scientists?

1/2/2009 12:43:55 PM

Judging by a quick skim, I don't see many scientists outright denying climate change in that "report."

Most of the quotes I've read are either A) scientists being skeptical of politicians, B) scientists debating minutiae in scientific journals, then being taken out of context, or C) just general iffiness in response to direct yes/no questions.

And has no one brought up the fact that this "Report" is simply a post on a Republican Senator's blog? This guy has said this of the environmental movement as a whole:

"It kind of reminds... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie..."

oh, and from wikipedia:

Quote :

""Only Texas senator John Cornyn received more campaign donations from the oil and gas industry than Inhofe in the 2002 election cycle." [...] "As of 2006, the League of Conservation Voters has given Inhofe the lowest possible score on environmental issues.""

(just read through his bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe ; the guy's a parody of George Bush Republicans)


How are we to trust that all these sound bites are actually representative of these scientists' opinions? Why doesn't he actually have top-ranking scientists supporting him? Surely he could ask for their direct support, rather than cherry-picking quotes from them.

1/2/2009 1:56:40 PM

^why would they deny climate change, something everyone knows exists. Almost every single one of them, however, debates manmade caused climate change. I've read the first 53/231 pages (not 250, my mistake) and they're all pretty clear.

Its quotes from 650 scientists, and every quote is linked. How can you really say they're taken "out of context, etc."

Though I do agree that its upsetting that only Inhofe is fighting the good fight in the gov't.

1/2/2009 2:54:47 PM

Quote :

"why would they deny climate change, something everyone knows exists"

My mind contorts trying to come up with a way that someone could make an anti-climate change statement that encompass all forms of climate change. Why do the AGW people ever feel a need to specify that they are not denying climate change in general? No shit.

No one thinks that climate doesn't change from year to year who isn't braindead.

Furthermore, you might not be braindead but you'd still be pretty stupid to try to make a black-and-white statement that humans don't affect climate. Humans have been affecting climate since they started growing food. The fact that 98% of the large animals on Earth are humans or domesticated by humans should be enough to convince you that humans significantly affect climate. On top of that, the greenhouse effect and the change in the greenhouse effect due to increased Carbon concentrations is undisputed. It affects Earth's temperature. How? Warmer. Are you going to find a scientist that disputes this? No, you will not.

Now could somebody possibly make a 'skeptic' claim not sounding like it's directed to a 3rd grader?

[Edited on January 2, 2009 at 3:17 PM. Reason : large land animals]

1/2/2009 3:10:29 PM

I think there is very little, if any, scientific basis to the "global warming" chick little's out there.

the sampling of time is WAY too small for any person to compare it to the history of the earth.

hundreds of years out of billions means very little to me and in no way can establish a trend.

that said, there is nothing wrong with trying to be cleaner and lessen the effect humans have on the atmosphere for our own health. I just think the effect on the planet is very over-stated.

[Edited on January 2, 2009 at 3:14 PM. Reason : .]

1/2/2009 3:13:26 PM

^^^^^^ I just searched on Google, and this seems to just be an updated version of the same list released maybe a year or so ago...? Is that right?

Saying:

Quote :

"“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever. "

Doesn't mean that anthropogenic climate change is wrong, he's saying he's concerned with people politicizing the issue.

".As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that
man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely
upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface
system.”

This one doesn't say the conclusions are wrong either. Just as a scientist he has to remain "skeptical" (which is true and expected of any scientist). He also isn't saying the models are wrong, just that they are imperfect, which is also an obvious statement.

" 3
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to
know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC
Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical
chemist. "

This is a pretty clear rebuke, assuming it's not taken out of context (which it may be, considering the started his quote mid-sentence). I'd like to know what research he has done or published that supports his perspective.

"“So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future
warming.” "

The "so far" is pretty critical there.

I jumped a random amount of pages to this one...
"Dr. Peter Dailey, director of Atmospheric Science at Boston based AIR Worldwide, a
risk modeling and technology firm specializing in risks associated with natural and
man-made catastrophes, weather and climate, rejected the notion that there is a
“consensus” on global warming in 2008. “There is now a near consensus that global air
temperatures are increasing, however, there is no consensus on how this has affected the
temperature of the world’s oceans, and in particular in the Atlantic Ocean, or how much of
the recent warming trend is attributable to man’s activities,”"

First, I thought, according to some of the other scientists, the earth is cooling now, how is he saying there IS consensus on this, when there doesn't appear to be? Secondly, just saying "there's no consensus" has no bearing on anthropogenic climate change theories compiled by the IPCC.

"Glaciologist Nikolai Osokin of the Institute of Geography and member of the Russian
Academy of Sciences dismissed alarmist climate fears of all of the world's ice melting in a
March 27, 2007 article. "The planet may rest assured," Osokin wrote. "This hypothetical
catastrophe could not take place anytime within the next thousand years," he explained. "

I'm glad he knows what will happen 1000 years from now, but he's saying we can't know what could happen 100 years.

jumped another 50 pages...
" Armstrong and Green also critiqued the Associated Press for hyping
climate fears in 2007. "Dire consequences have been predicted to arise from warming of
the Earth in coming decades of the 21st century. Enormous sea level rise is one of the more
dramatic forecasts. According to the AP's Borenstein, such sea-level forecasts were experts'
judgments on what will happen," Armstrong and Green wrote to EPW on September 23,
2007. "As shown in our analysis, experts' forecasts have no validity in situations
characterized by high complexity, high uncertainty, and poor feedback."

More lamenting of the politicization

"UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London
ridiculed the notion of a scientific "consensus" on catastrophic man-made global warming.
"In the early 20th century, 95% of scientists believed in eugenics. Science does not
progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts,"
"

More lamenting politicization

" 110
Swedish Geologist Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, professor emeritus of the Department of
Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University, critiqued the
Associated Press for hyping climate fears. "Another of these hysterical views of our
climate,""
more...

Jumped another 50 pages
"CBS Chicago affiliate Chief Meteorologist Steve Baskerville expressed skepticism that
there is a "consensus" about mankind's role in global warming. "What is the truth about
global warming? As you have seen in this program, it depends on who you talk to."
more lamenting

I'll talk about this quote too:

Quote :

"Science does not progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts," Stott said on March 14, 2007 during a live debate with other scientists in New York City. "And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change."

This represents perfectly why this "Minority Report" is a pretty pathetic attempt by the "skeptics" (and by "skeptics" I don't mean the scientists whose names were tossed in the report, I mean the politicians that compiled the report). Science DOESN'T work on "consensus" (there are at best "prevailing theories"), why do they think trying to show there is no "consensus" will help their cause, when the state of a consensus is irrelevant? On top of that, this particular scientist is nothing that the IPCC's scientists are very realistic about their models, which is at odds with some of their other quotes by people who are saying the IPCC just doesn't know what they are doing.

If they actually wanted to show that climate science is flawed, they'd be MUCH better off either compiling existing studies or commissioning NEW studies that show the specific places where the existing research has made errors.

Instead, they throw a bunch of often contradicting quotes and statements NOT related to the actual science against a wall, and then waits to see what sticks. This "minority report" is very obviously NOT about science, but about politics. It has very little, if any, bearing on the scientific issues related to climate change. I especially like when they quote an engineer who doesn't even work in climate science, for his statement that "hey these guys are wrong." Ha. He may have a valid reason for the statement, but it's irrelevant if he hasn't done any actual research or analyzed any research to reach his conclusions.

I guess though a list of vague quotes is good enough to convince a laymen who is not use to reading journal articles, but it really doesn't impact the core of climate change theories, which is the research.

[Edited on January 2, 2009 at 3:23 PM. Reason : ]

1/2/2009 3:23:35 PM

^^ In many ways I agree with that. For instance, I think that Sulfur emissions should be tackled much more thoroughly long before Carbon emissions are.

But this:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2674e64f-802a-23ad-490b-bd9faf4dcdb7

Is pretty much crap.

[Edited on January 2, 2009 at 3:26 PM. Reason : ]

1/2/2009 3:24:14 PM

^yeah those scientists have no idea what they're talking about. But Al Gore and the IPCC do!

Quote :

"the greenhouse effect and the change in the greenhouse effect due to increased Carbon concentrations is undisputed. It affects Earth's temperature. How? Warmer. Are you going to find a scientist that disputes this? No, you will not."

You're quite wrong actually. You have a natural earth climate variation making things a little warmer and some scientists decided CO2 was the sole cause. The only problem is they've done nothing to prove it. Can you show that CO2 in a closed environment might hold in a little more heat than if it wasn't there? Sure you can. Is that closed environment anything at all like Earth? No, its not.

I guess this guy doesn't know what he's talking about:

Quote :

"Charles Clough, an atmospheric scientist and Chief of the Atmospheric Effects Team with the Department of the Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground from 1982 until 2006, spoke out against man-made climate change on October 6, 2008. “Government officeholders at federal and state levels assume that current global warming is chiefly, if not entirely, due to mankind’s growing carbon dioxide emissions, but they have not examined the science enough,” Clough said. “It certainly does not follow logically that CO2 emissions drive a warming trend that began prior to widespread fossil fuel use and that has yet to reach the magnitude of the medieval warm period when Vikings colonized Greenland. Nor is a climate catastrophe implied by the presently observed rate of warming. Those conclusions are reached only if one accepts two intermediate steps: (1) that science has separated anthropogenic effects from natural climate oscillations; and (2) that the atmosphere-ocean system is metastable so CO2- induced warming will trigger a runaway process. Neither point has widespread support among those of us who have actually worked with atmospheric processes. Not only is the debate not over; it is expanding. Let’s hope that as the fall semester gets underway , science teachers will motivate their students to study the anchor questions of points (1) 46 and (2) rather than accept a document generated by a U.N. bureaucracy that provided no final comment by its scientific authors. Too many valuable resources are needed for justifiable environmental management to waste them on a speculation for which there is no scientific consensus. Such inverted pyramids are dangerous.”"

[Edited on January 2, 2009 at 7:58 PM. Reason : quote]

1/2/2009 7:53:24 PM

^ who is saying that CO2 is the sole cause of warming? Certainly not the IPCC, by any stretch.

1/2/2009 7:54:49 PM

^uhh, they sure as hell say its the main reason.

Sure we've raised the temperature and affected the climate in a lot of areas. That'd be called the urban heat island effect.

1/2/2009 7:59:37 PM

^ the IPCC doesn't say that either. Have you actually been reading the links posted over the past 57 pages?

And the guy there is talking about what he thinks policy-makers think, not what he thinks the IPCC is saying. His input is valuable, but not for this discussion.

1/2/2009 8:07:21 PM

^maybe I'll have to reread them then. And sure he's talking about the "consensus scientific/political community"; but there is nowhere near a consensus.

1/2/2009 8:10:34 PM

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf

Here is a decent summary of their current studies.

Most notably, they discuss GHG emissions in terms of the equivalent CO2 (the use that as a unit of measurement, kind of like your conversion coefficients like G for gravity or n in thermodynamics), but it includes a whole set of different gases.

Their measurement for effects on the Earth are radiative forcing in W/m^2 (watts per square meter), where "forcing" implies it's MARGINAL effect on the earth's natural cycles. Current models suggest human GHGs causes between .6-2.4 (that's an error range) W/m2 of warming, compared with the sun AVERAGING .06-.3 W/m2 by their measurements.

The IPCC has never stood by "run-away" warming (this is one of Al Gore's specters), and this hasn't been seriously considered for at least 5 years (and their plots there show the new data, with NO predictions of runaway warming).

1/2/2009 8:34:58 PM

Quote :

"Is this the same list of "skeptics" though that turned out to be just a bunch of researchers names that were put together without their consent? Or is this a new, different list?"

No, that is called the IPCC's summary

1/8/2009 8:56:25 AM

Pravda says we are on the brink of new Ice Age.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-earth_ice_age-0

Will these scientists make up their damn mind already? Are we about to burn, freeze, or maintain the status quo?

1/11/2009 12:31:29 PM

clearly that guy is paid off by the oil companies

1/11/2009 4:13:42 PM

I can't find a link for this right now, but apparently the woman that Obama has picked to be his "climate czar" (a post that will disappear soon enough since we're entering a global cooling phase) is apparently a leader (or prominent member) of some socialist group.

Anybody surprised?

1/14/2009 2:58:00 PM

No, no one is surprised that you can not find evidence to support your claim.

1/14/2009 10:30:38 PM

^lol, there's PLENTY of evidence. Just to be clear: Global temperatures have gone DOWN since 2001. And historically increased atmospheric CO2 concentration has TRAILED increased temperatures.

Yeah, that evidence is overwhelming

and btw I was referring to Carol Brower in my last post.

1/15/2009 12:45:37 AM

Quote :

"Just to be clear: Global temperatures have gone DOWN since 2001"

This isn't true in any of the temperature records. Stupid or dishonest people conclude this by picking two arbitrary points in the time series and drawing a line between them and saying that is the "trend".

1/15/2009 12:55:57 AM

no it actually is true, based on world averages

However I will agree with you that temperature records aren't equal b/c weather station locations, numbers, and accuracies have varied greatly over the last 100+ years. But as far as recently satellites really don't lie.

1/15/2009 1:02:49 AM

Then show me in the RSS/UAH/GISS/NCDC time series. I have a post in one of these threads where I did a linear fit to all of these temperature series and showed that there is no evidence of any deviation from warming. Everytime I hear this claim it turns out someone is doing one of the following:

1) Too short time series
2) Series/graph without statistical significance
3) Selection of carefully-chosen segment of a time-series, with graph to disappear important effects [one thinks of CO2 vs temperature, picked for any small sequence of years where temperature isn't rising].
4) Selection by geography.
5) Selection by subset of a time-series chosen to emphasize some effect or lack thereof.
6) Adding two sequences together, when one is just doing random jiggling.

1/15/2009 1:16:46 AM

Quote :

"I have a post in one of these threads where I did a linear fit to all of these temperature series and showed that there is no evidence of any deviation from warming."

That's because the error-bars for the warming are so fucking large as to make the warming statistically insignificant in its own right. When the warming "trend" can still be considered as happening when ALL of the warming is negated in one year is, frankly, ridiculous.

Quote :

"1) Too short time series [ironic that an AGW proponent would complain about this] 2) Series/graph without statistical significance [ironic that an AGW proponent would complain about this, given the foundation of the AGW argument lacked any statistical significance] 3) Selection of carefully-chosen segment of a time-series, with graph to disappear important effects [one thinks of CO2 vs temperature, picked for any small sequence of years where temperature isn't rising]. [ironic that an AGW proponent would complain about this. lets start our graphs at 1900, during a known temperature minimum, lawls!] 4) Selection by geography. [ironic that an AGW proponent would complain about this, given that a lot of warming can be accounted for by the loss of Siberian weather stations] 5) Selection by subset of a time-series chosen to emphasize some effect or lack thereof. [ironic that an AGW proponent would complain about this, given their dependence on CO2-forced variables in reconstructing temperatures] 6) Adding two sequences together, when one is just doing random jiggling."

1/16/2009 8:04:09 AM

I've got an idea: Lets take wildly inaccurate computer models that can't even closely predict the past, and use them to dictate future energy and environmental policies!

1/16/2009 2:25:24 PM

'We have only four years left to act on climate change - America has to lead'

Quote :

"'Before the end of Obama's first term, we will be seeing new record temperatures. I can promise the president that.'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-climate-change

How convenient that Hansen's claims of "imminent peril" are timed with the U.S. presidential election cycle.

1/21/2009 2:52:12 PM

Hansen needs to focus on the science and stay out of the policy discussion.

1/21/2009 2:58:47 PM