By golly, that’s the real stuff there, RR! Conspiracy theory, firmly grounded innuendo and suggestion, all based on rock-solid self-esteem. Classic RR!
I find it interesting that people are glomming on to the Daily Mail article and not the Daily Telegraph article. Why would they do that? Could it be the quotes in the respected news source
weren’t in the broadsheet rag?
One important difference that I think you’re overlooking is the timeframe in which the problem could be reversed if it did turn out to threaten immediate catastrophe.
If worse came to absolute worst on the overpopulation front, draconian mass sterilization programs could slash population levels within fifty years. But if anthropogenic greenhouse gases somehow pushed climate mechanisms past some catastrophic “tipping point” triggering disastrous major changes, there is currently no known way of reversing that process within hundreds or even thousands of years.
So it’s not entirely unreasonable that many people should perceive AGW to be a potentially more dire threat than overpopulation, even if the immediate and defined dangers from overpopulation are greater. To continue your own analogy, a burnt-out house on a cliff can be rebuilt on the same cliff without too much difficulty. But a house destroyed by the complete collapse of the cliff it’s built on can never be rebuilt there again unless the whole cliff can somehow be restored, with centuries of massive engineering labor or aeons of slow geological change.
(By the way, speaking of passionate attachment to “Great Causes” and consistency of belief therein, do you yourself have children? How many?)
For one thing, I think you’re behind the times in your view of the nomenclature issues. AFAICT, both “global warming” and “climate change” are currently used, because they’re two important but non-identical aspects of the global climate situation.
“Global warming” is the overall increase in average global temperature due to the insulating effect of increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. “Climate change” refers to the all the different effects on climate phenomena caused by the warmer global temperatures, including hotter weather in some places and colder weather in others, more frequent and severe extreme weather events, and so on.
That doesn’t sound very convincing in light of the fact that all your predictions about the future of the AGW hypothesis are in favor of discrediting or diminishing it.
I mean, we have here a scientific hypothesis that has over the past few decades continually gained supporting evidence in peer-reviewed research and continually gained adherents among researchers and scientific organizations, and has now achieved mainstream-paradigm status in climate science. Of course, as I’ve continually said, the hypothesis is still quite uncertain in some areas and the evidence in its favor is still extremely incomplete. But ISTM that anybody who likes a bet would figure that the smart money was in favor of this mainstream (and increasingly widely accepted) hypothesis turning out to be substantially valid.
Yet for some reason you’re emotionally committed to betting all your money the other way. All your views for the future of AGW are centered on the expectation that all these mainstream scientists will turn out to be wrong or fraudulent or deluded.
I can see why you think it would be fun if the contrarian anti-AGW position turned out to be right and you could pat yourself on the back while tweaking the noses of all those well-informed climate scientists and all those ill-informed panicky laypeople. But I can’t see why you think it would be likely. Are you really so tempted by the distant prospect of handing out a “delicious comeuppance” that you just don’t care what the odds are against it?
I think Hentor is spot on in saying that a lot of the bizarre psychology on this issue is happening in your own head.
Ah, he’s a conspiracy theorist! Probably racist, sexist and homophobic, too! Puts ketchup on his hot dogs, no doubt!
I stripped the context above, so I should note that was sarcasm.
And this bit of projection pretty much sums up your position, as well as the overall debate. I wonder if your “agnosticism” regarding climate change is not based on the scientific underpinnings, but an adherence to classical liberalism? Hmmm.
I see that analogy as right on. The anti-vaxers had a sliver of data in back of it, but a mountain of long term evidence against it. The climate change deniers are like that. A vast consortium of scientists have put their reputations on the line in back of it. A few, easily bought off or aberrant scientists deny. Those who can gain from fighting the climate changers ,throw all their backing and money to the small and completely suspect anti-change scientists. It allows them a far bigger stage than they merit.
Yes, when you start talking about science as if it is cabal of self serving scientists patting itself on its own back in order to squeeze funding from the government, it is definitely a conspiracy theory. And it is no less absurd then 9/11 truthers to anybody that has ever tried to publish or present data to the scientific community. We may all get along socially, but it’s like treading water in a shark tank. Everyone wants to be the next Feynman stamping through the current scientific paradigm with their brilliance. As evidenced by the number of great scientists that have died poor, we aren’t motivated by money, we are motivated by ego.
Just look at any nonpolitical scientific thread that pops up in general questions. Every poster is desperately trying to one up the other on how much they know. A simple question turns into a discussion of the minutia that the OP had no interest or understanding of. I’m just as guilty as anyone. I find those conversations riveting, because I learn so much. Particularly when I am wrong.
There is no doubt, that a scientist that undoubtedly produces good evidence will be a nobel prize winner. And when the evidence becomes apparent, scientists will switch sides faster than you can ever imagine. If there is one thing a scientist can’t stand, it’s being wrong. Of course being wrong is nothing compared to the shame of being caught deliberately fudging data. There is no shame in being wrong, it just stinks. I’ve seen only one scientist get caught genuinely faking published data, and it is not pretty.
I think only jshore does here.
Unfortunately I do. Except that that prediction of 2035 for the glaciers was plainly rubbish. And we all missed it. Yes, I did read the report and I missed it too. Despite it being quoted. This makes people wonder what else was missed, what else is in error. It doesn’t make the IPCC wrong, it makes it suspect, which is worse. Anyway, as I said, the U.K. is doing an independent review and I’m confident that the truth will out.
But if AGW is correct, worse has come to worse on the population front; the load on the ecosystem is entirely proportional to the number of peeps wanting to live good. The quickest way to actually improve tomorrow’s AGW predictions is to constrain population expansion right now. Unfortunately, since populations are most expanding in the developing world, it is politically off limits to address it.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, when we hit 9Billion people and get them all to living comfortably, we’ll have effectively altered the world and her ecosystems in a much more profound way than AGW could. And of course, we’re likely to hit 9B before we figure out how to support them all in an AGW-friendly fashion.
So to the point of the OP, the greatest credibility loss the pro-AGW crowd has for me is that they are not trying to save the planet, nor are they trying to save mankind. Those two things would require–at minimum–an equal address of over-population. And the fact that a deaf ear is turned to over-population suggests to me that AGW is a political and fun and personal Great Cause first, and a Real Cause (for lack of a better term) second. It’s a Movement train to hop on and get some free significance, because you are Doing Something and Being Special. It’s not some sort of orderly, scientific approach to saving the world.
None of that means AGW science is wrong. In general I agree with Sam Stone’s post above that there is reasonable science that greenhouse gases create radiative forcing which warms the atmosphere. It seems to me there are unknown feedback loop parameters, unquantified alternate sources of heat and losses of heat, and poorly-understood cyclical variations in things such as ocean currents, heat energy into the oceans from the earth’s crust, solar cycles and so on. In short, the longer-term sensitivity of climate to CO2 forcing is undefined, in my view, as is the consequence of temperature change. But to whatever extent man is mucking up the earth, the biggest problem is that there are too many men (and probably too many women, if such a thing is possible) and until we get on that, I think I’m unlikely to be anything but amused and bemused about AGW deniers and proselytizers. The term “barking up the wrong tree” comes to mind.
We’ve got a couple of lovely children. All virulently pro AGW. Working on 'em, but they’ve been poisoned by their higher education. 
Finally (as I’ve also mentioned before) I’d be happy to be all my money on a pro-AGW position. Literally. If I were not such a skeptic I’d be trading in carbon offsets and pushing for them in the US right now. But I think the ($150B?) carbon offset market in Europe is a complete sham. A house of cards built on dicey science and even dicier pretenses that carbon will be offset by the various schemes underpinning the offsets. That sucker’s gonna fall farther and faster that mortgage-backed instruments built on mortgages lent to twits if AGW is wrong (and maybe anyway, if enough of the ridiculous scams are brought to light). Still, I would not hesitate for a moment to put my money on AGW. I am not particularly vested in an anti-AGW position, however many times you like to say that. It occurs to me that, like a typical pro-AGW proselytizer, you assume the skeptic is really a denier at heart pretending neutrality. Not so. But it’s part of the Great Cause psychology to feel threatened and to frame skeptics as attackers, so have at it with my blessing.
Meh. As much as I’d like to think scientists and scientific institutions are almost incorruptiable, my low estimate of human nature tells me otherwise. The Climategate scandal shows that the science which supports global warming needs some very careful vetting before we make decisions that will put immense strains on the global economy. Scientists at CRU suppressed and destroyed data and pressured peer reviewed journals not to publish papers which might raise awkward questions about the conclusions the AGWers had reached. A Canadian analyst found that the IPCC’s supposedly scientific report used twenty non-peer reviewed sources such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. The IPCC’s warning that 40% of the Amazon rain forest would be lost to global warming was based on nothing but propaganda from an environmentalist activist group, and the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear in the next few decades turned out to be sheer alarmist fantasy. Hell, Phil Jones, one of the con men at CRU, has admitted that there has been no warming for fifteen years, and that the world was warmer during the middle ages than it is now.
And we’re not talking about a single question. We’re talking about five questions:
[ul]
[li]Is global warming happening?[/li]
[li]Is it man-made?[/li]
[li]Will it be catastrophic?[/li]
[li]Can it be stopped or reversed?[/li]
[li]Will the economic disruption caused by the attempt to stop or reverse global warming cause more harm than global warming itself?[/li][/ul]
To justify the extreme measures advocated by climate alarmists, you will need an unreserved yes to all of those questions, and I am immensely skeptical there is an overwhelming consensus among scientists on all five.
So, is global warming happening? Probably, but it’s not at all clear that people are the sole or primary cause, it’s not clear that it can be stopped, and it’s not clear that the effort to stop it won’t do more harm than global warming itself. And the fact that the extreme measures advocated by climate alarmists like Al Gore (who stands to profit handsomely from the proposed measures) will involve transfers of immense wealth and political power is more than sufficient grounds for cynicism about the whole business.
Then why are all your predictions and wagers only in favor of discrediting AGW?
The reason I keep noticing that you seem to be irrationally attached to skepticism about AGW is that you keep refusing to actually stake anything (credibility or money) on the likelihood of its correctness, although you claim that you “would” do so…if only you weren’t so committed to being a skeptic. Exactly my point.
You seem to be so wedded to your disdain for ill-informed panicky AGW “proselytizers” among laypeople that you’re letting it determine your views on the actual science. You’d rather stay immovably “neutral” and “skeptical” about AGW, no matter how much scientific evidence and credibility accumulate in its favor, than risk appearing to be in agreement with ill-informed pro-AGW “True Believers”. That position seems very irrational to me.
I would think that a conspiracy theory would at least need to posit the existence of a conspiracy to qualify as such. I have never said and do not believe that there is a conspiracy among climate scientists to support AGW.
also, your charge of conspiracy theorist doesn’t explain why you so wholeheartedly embrace AGW when you don’t care so much about, or actively oppose mainstream conclusions on, other scientific topics. I’m sure when the Bell Curve came out you soaked in the science and embraced the conclusions instead of saying “oh, well this just must be wrong.”
While it may be true that slashing population levels immediately would be the quickest way to bring down CO2 emission levels, it’s not true that population per se is the chief culprit in rising CO2. As you put it, it’s not the “number of peeps” but rather the “living good” that makes the difference.
As the charts in this article show, what really kicks up CO2 emissions is not more people merely living and breathing and excreting and raising livestock, but rather massive increases in fossil-fuel use. Restricting carbon emissions themselves is a direct measure for addressing the problem, whereas constraining population expansion is mostly an indirect measure.
(And in some cases it’s not even that, as you can see from the chart for Japan, where the total human-derived emissions (breathing, waste, livestock, etc.) remained the same or even decreased slightly between 2000 and 2005, while the total emissions still increased due to continued growth in fossil-fuel emissions. Cutting population won’t necessarily achieve a damn thing, emissions-wise, if it just results in fewer people emitting more CO2 per person due to greater per capita fuel use.)
But by your own admission, you’re a non-specialist who doesn’t really understand any of the details of climate science research. So why do you think that your doubts and uncertainties about physical processes you don’t understand are credible enough to outweigh mainstream scientific opinion on them?
The vast majority of climate scientists are saying “There are lots of uncertainties and open questions about the details of AGW, but overall the evidence indicates that AGW is probably a serious problem.”
In response, you, a self-described ignorant layman, are saying “There are lots of uncertainties and open questions about the details of AGW, and in consequence I refuse to accept even tentatively and provisionally that AGW is probably a serious problem until these are resolved.”
That’s not really skepticism so much as sheer contrarianism. You’ve just made up your mind that you’re not going to agree with any pro-AGW position unless and until you’re absolutely forced to.
As pointed out many times before, your sources are misinforming you. Big time.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
And another one bites the dust…
Even in this thread it was already mentioned that the sources saying this are just reporting hogwash.
Well, even a broken clock can be right twice a day. The deniers were correct here, however, it was scientists who came with the complaint and it was in the end an error brought in by a typo, unfortunately the wish that this would in the end discredit global warming was bananas, the glaciers are likely to disappear in 2350 instead of 2035
And the con artists also got you here:
[My reply to the questions was in Red.]
As it still missed by you, there is overwhelming consensus that we are indeed warming the planet, what we do about it is a different subject really as the will of the people is bound to change in the future.
Well, as mentioned before, I trust scientists, I do not trust politicians, and I even trust less people that never learn to avoid misleading media.
To answer the question, yes, they have taken a huge hit in credibility.
Whether that hit is warranted is a whole other question.
But, yes, they have lost credibility.
Funny that you mention that, because if you had read the history on how we got to the current consensus, (Link already provided) you would had noticed that the Galileo of Climate research was called Callendar.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
He was not funded to search for Climate Change, he was an engineer that investigated Meteorology in his spare time, and his research was dismissed by the majority of scientists, the consensus was then that the human produced CO2 was going to be absorbed by natural sinks. Of course then if the assumption of climate skeptics was correct then we could say that the scientists of those days were not able to check for the truth because of politics and corporations that told researchers to look the other way…
Or we could say simply the obvious: the evidence was not good enough to change the consensus of those days.
The long road to the current consensus came thanks to the work of physicist Gilbert N. Plass in the 1950’s, he took up the challenge of calculating the transmission of radiation through the atmosphere and then demonstrated that physicists had miss the true radiative transfer levels and the role of CO2.
In 1955, Plass left his academic setting, he held a job for a year as a staff scientist with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He then joined the advanced research staff at the Aeronutronic (military) division of the Ford Motor Company. In 1956 Plass published his articles on the effects of CO2. And began to convince others about the problem.
So, you tell me how your theory of incestuous grants, political funding and pressure influenced the results they got.
Or we could say simply the obvious: the evidence was now good enough to begin to change the consensus of those days, more research and evidence has now convinced virtually all scientific organizations of the problem caused by human produced greenhouse gasses.
Why are you presenting the story of the early researchers as having any relevance on how consensus was developed? In fact, your story could also be taken as supporting my position by showing that no one was all that interested in AGW until certain politicians and their standard-bearers took up the cause.
Now that is silly, you want to ignore it because it shows that indeed it was the **evidence **that began to change the consensus, it was not “the cause”.
As I said before but you decided to ignore, history is not on your side on this issue.
Gigo, you post a cute little story about a pioneer in AGW research. Your story ends in 1956 with “. . . and and and then . . . CONSENSUS!!!” Your story changes nothing. But, cool story, bro.
Keep showing more evidence of your ignorance, that will help your cause… Not.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm
There is more, but you already demonstrated how incapable you are dealing with evidence linked to, so it is all good for all others to see. Your theory of incestuous grants, political funding and pressure influencing the results they get is beyond silly.