Amusement in the NewsFollow

How can you not trust a guy who actually claims that a Newsweek story in the 70's on global cooling is comparable to today's research and who, when listing his peers on the forefront of strong scientific opposition starts with Michael Crichton?

Not that I'm a climatologist but the scant few comments Ball makes about why ACC can't be true are easily countered. The rest of it is just whining about how he's not taken seriously.

In looking for anything published by him having to do with global warming, I see he trotted out the same "we all believed in global cooling" canard in front of Congress in 2007 as well. No recent published works though. I suppose some might think it unfair to discuss the man and not his opinions but he doesn't really give anything to go on.

His article wasn't specifically about "disproving" global warming Joph, but to make a point about the wrongness of the methods used to argue the issue. Specifically, attacks on credibility. Which is pretty darn ironic given the responses, isn't it?

No.



If your response to Bell's article is something like "He can't be right because he's <insert something about Bell here>", you missed the point he was making. Bell could be a raving lunatic ************ furiously in his own *****, but that doesn't make him "wrong" about Global Warming.

No, being wrong about climate change makes him wrong about climate change.



The point is that something is right or wrong on its own virtues, and not because this person said so, or that person said no. Global Warming is strong on cheerleading, and incredibly sort on experimental support.

Wrong.

No, my response was "He's not saying anything". Which he wasn't.What makes him wrong is that he's not actually saying anything. He's just ******** that no one listens to him.I'd be happy to go over the amount of evidence and studies on both sides except that it's been covered in other threads.

Not really, no. We thought that Newton & Einstein were correct (and, in most situations, they are) but I doubt you'd have found anyone to say that their word on the topic was absolute and final. Scientists didn't say "Well, Newton says that there's gravity so that's that. Let's stop investigating it." Likewise, they didn't say "Hey, we found circumstances where Newton's Laws don't hold up as expected. These Laws are shit! Crap! A conspiracy by the liberal media!" Even in circumstances where their theories warranted revision and further discovery, we didn't throw out the baby with the bathwater but acknowledged the usefulness of the framework they created.

In contrast, we have a thread here of a few people gloating that this decade wasn't, on average, warmer and so based on this data point (which was largely expected anyway) all the studies and all the research dones which support the theory of anthropogenic climate change are junk and ACC is a joke and a myth. Thankfully, these people don't actually get much of a say in the matter.

At this point, I don't really give a **** what the purposefully ignorant have to say about this subject. And with a the Dems in control of congress, neither does the President.

Our guy is going to try & curb the man made influences on global warming & use the jobs it's going to create to fix the economy.

Your guys are going to ***** about it.

But that's all you can & will do.

Sucks, don't it?

If it is so clear, why don't you quote it? Because it doesn't exist. The author (not one of the scientists) of the article doesn't take a position. Did you assume that by claiming the majority of scientists believe something that he necessarily believes that too? Because I didn't make that assumption.



It means that we aren't as certain as people would like to believe. I agree that the cost of action is beneficial to us in many other ways, so I agree with pretty much all of the measures that have been taken and are planned to curb global warming.



Thats pretty speculative. I think I would be able to find many people who would accept their theories as absolute and final, especially in the time period in which they were derived.

Regardless, we have people who accept the theory of global warming as absolute and final without any critical skepticism which goes against the fundamental principles of science.

I think that humanity does contribute to global warming, especially in regards to CO2 output (to what extent I'm not sure and neither is anyone else), but I don't think the science is as clear as people believe, or the conclusion as certain.

I'm certainly not going to argue against good policies though that would ween us away from oil, gas, and coal.

Not that it really matters, but OK, it says THE MAJORITY OF SCIENTISTS AND ASTROPHYSICISTS AGREE...This is not the position of the authors, it is the position of the majority of scientists and astrophysicists.

Again, I'm not assuming that the authors necessarily agree with the majority of scientists and astrophysicists. They probably do, but I'm not going to assume that, and it is never stated. In science you need evidence, not simply what is most likely the case.

This is probably the funniest thing I will read today.

Not really, but I understand basic sentence structure and semantic meanings. It is clear that the author was presenting the views of the majority of scientists in that sentence. I hope you're just being stubborn and not stupid.



I agree that the scientific effort has been thoroughly executed in this regard and they have derived a probable theory, one in which I happen to believe.

However, I don't think that in this particular case science is capable of "knowing with certainty" because, as you mentioned, science is an ever evolving field and we are constantly discovering things that we previously missed or took for granted, and, because of the scope of the project and the limitations of our current knowledge and ability to measure, global warming is nothing more than our best guess at this particular time, just like all of our theories or scientific laws.

I don't want to be lumped together with the contrarians, and I think people should be encouraged to be skeptical of any theory, even if they believe in it, without being contrary. Not doing so would just be closed-minded.

The big problem with this scientific debate is that it has become political and has been sensationalized by the media so that it devolves into some sort of politically motivated labeling fest without any clear explanation of what questions are at stake.

"Opponents of ACC" could mean people who don't believe the earth is warming, believe it is warming but not caused by humans at all, believe it is altered by humans but not significantly, believe it is caused primarily by humans but we shouldn't enact policy measures, etc...

There are many distinct and important scientific questions here that are overlooked when people starting trying to understand the debate in terms of "proponents" or "opponents" of global warming, or that you "believe" or "don't believe" in it.

We know the earth is warming and is highly likely to continue the warming trend.
We are pretty sure warming is significantly increased by CO2 (exactly how much or little we cannot be sure).
We know that we contribute a significant amount of CO2 (exactly how much or little we cannot be sure).
Therefore, we know that we contribute in some way to global warming, but exactly how much or how little, we cannot be sure.

Science is far from having a certain answer in regards to how much or how little we contribute to global warming.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping about you, too. The author is saying what appears to be the case to him. There is no ambiguity. You're just wrong.

While evidence suggests that the inhilation of paint thinner can affect human IQ, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of posters and lurkers agree that paint thinner is not to blame for your clinical retardation, which seems to be a mess mainly caused by your parents being a disturbingly persuasive argument for eugenics.

There is enormous debate over the degree to which it's actually causing global temperatures to change though.

That's the problem. The issue gets cut down to half truths. Do humans "affect" the environment? Of course. Does the affect we have potentially raise the temperature? Of course. Has the temperature gone up over the last century? Yes.

But does that mean that if we reduce carbon emissions by X% that it will result in a Y% delta to future temperature change? No one freaking knows.


The opposition is not to the science, but to the specific political "solutions" being proposed Joph. Ask a climatologist if he thinks that humans are causing a global temperature increase, and 90% of them will say yes. Ask them how much, and 100% of them will say "we don't know for sure" (although they'll use more politically expedient language most of the time). Ask them to state exactly what effect any given political proposal will have and the answers get progressively more vague.


It's when someone wants to spend 2 Billion dollars researching technology that's sole purpose is to triple the price of energy from coal plants so we can reduce the rate of CO2 emissions that I have problems with global warming. Doing "something" is not always the right choice. I know liberals have a hard time with that, since they always want to be active. But quite often you do more harm than good. And I really believe that this is one of those cases. The costs to reduce emissions by even a small amount globally are staggering. And there is zero assurance that what we do will have any significant impact, much less that the impact we have will even be noticed. We'll notice the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars spent. Will we notice if we manage to decrease temperatures by .1 degrees over the next 50 years?