Why do you think this? Have you taken any time to review the appropriate studies, investigate the peer-reviewed literature, look into why there is basically an international scientific consensus on the issue? What makes you so firmly hold to your belief that humans have “zero affect[sic] on the Earth’s temperature” when there is very considerable evidence that:
Atmospheric CO2 content is a massive driver of climate change
The recent (gigantic) increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is primarily anthropogenic
Neither volcanic activity nor solar activity nor any other natural phenomenon we are aware of can account for the current warming
The sun is not a planet. It’s a star. There’s a considerable difference. What’s more, it’s not a few hundred light years away, it’s 8 light minutes away. But even better, there is substantial evidence that solar output is down. Were it solely on the sun to regulate earth’s heat content, we would have had cooling since the 70s. Which we haven’t had.
Great. Then let’s hear about them! Which “other, larger factors” have been having an impact on our climate? You tried the sun, but all of the evidence shows that the sun has nothing to do with our current warming trend, at least over the last 70-odd years. What else ya got? Volcanoes? You don’t just get to throw this shit out there and not qualify it at all. On this forum, we expect citations. Sources. Actual fucking research. Not your brand of threadshitting crap.
Or, you know, what we get from peer-reviewed journals and scientific sources. I haven’t watched TV since 2007, and my news on the subject comes primarily from RealClimate and SkepticalScience, two blogs run by actual scientists who can be relied upon to back themselves up extensively with peer-reviewed scientific papers. And when pressed, I can generally find the first-degree peer-reviewed scientific sources. How about you? Where do you get your information? Right-winger blogs? Fox News? WUWT? :rolleyes:
Well if there actually was counter-information, it would be effective. Unfortunately, the information provided to us by AGW-deniers is usually crap.
Hey, if you actually provided any reason for us to believe otherwise, we would think your post is mighty swell. But here’s the thing: you didn’t. You accused us of being a cult, and proclaimed that “no information would ever sway our opinion”. Not exactly the same thing as “challenging our views”.
I think on climate change there isn’t much reason to have scientific debates on the issue. It’s really an economic and political matter now. Namely, what combination of political activity and economic policies can come together to a) maximize the effort to limit carbon emissions and b) minimize the effects of what I regard to be inevitable warming. A lot of people on this issue have problems with me because I think we should be devoting significantly more resources to b than a, but it’s entirely based on my view of the world’s politics. Some countries are going to do a good/decent job on limiting carbon emissions, some will do ok (I actually think the U.S. does okay, not as good as some, but a combination of economic factors and policies have actually made an impact on the growth rate of our carbon emissions and have lead to some recent years being very low emission relative to other years), but some countries I think will respond little at all.
In the United States we have a paralyzed government, so basically only things that can be done through executive order and administrative policies over the Federal bureaucracy will ever happen anytime soon. In other countries there is definitely a mindset that people who live in huts and don’t own cars don’t want to be told by a nation of car owners how to live.
There’s also the same sort of short sightedness that we have here in the States in many other countries. So basically I consider it pipe-dream level thinking that the response to emissions will ever be anywhere close to what they need to be, so we need to realistically start figuring out how we can best mitigate the negative effects of climate change.
While that at least would be more responsible politics, the problem is that currently virtually all Republicans in congress are deniers, and it follows then that not even “b)” is considered as for most republicans “there is no problem, this is a hoax”.
And that has been an ongoing point that I do make, many moderated or science minded Republicans are not really aware of the current levels of woo their congress critters really have, and that should not be ignored, because as votes against the EPA and obstruction has shown, large or even small efforts at mitigation are currently being dismissed, the blind are currently leading us.
Not sure what is wrong with your quote, but you’re misattributing to me. Your quote link goes to a post of mine, but not the text indicated. Independence is the one who wrote the quoted text.
But that’s precisely why this has to be an economic and political discussion. Those sort of battles aren’t won by scientific facts, the science battle is over. The science isn’t, and we’ll always be refining our knowledge in this area, but we know enough to start taking some policy actions so I don’t see a lot of value in continual debates on the core science.
I dislike Al Gore both personally and for his politics in general (I agree with him on some political issues), but in spite of that I’m not blaming him; but I do think by injecting himself into this topic with his movie he actually made it more of a politically intractable problem. Again, not his fault, but basically a prominent Democrat doing something made it much “easier”, in my opinion, for this to become a political bitch fight over the science instead of a problem everyone agrees with and just disagrees with how to solve it. (Ex: No one thought the stock market cratering in 2008 and the housing market crashing wasn’t a problem, but there was disagreement about how to respond. Or issues like international trade, most on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. support free trade but with different ideas as to what that actually means and entails.)
Now, even without Al Gore I don’t think the worst of the GOP Congressmen would be behaving much differently, but I think him being front and center made their job “easier.”
Now it is your turn to wonder if you are ignoring that the sources you use can distort your ideas.
No one had mentioned Gore, but is clear why he remains “a good talking point”, not.
So sorry to say but your post is blaming the victim, and it shows how even slightly moderate Republicans get affected by the right wing bubble of information, what you are ignoring is that the Republicans that do take science into account must now offer tough love to their representatives, or to refuse to vote for them until they show reason, because that is what is needed now. It is indeed something that Kerry Emmanuel is doing.
You are correct, and I have no idea how that happened. Apologies. The quote is of course not from you. I clicked on the post quoted, how it links to your name instead is a mystery.
I won’t be responding to you any further in this thread since you explicitly and intentionally misinterpreted and misrepresented my opinions on Gore, and also since you presented a statement of opinion about a politician’s impact on a debate as something that called for “sources” to be brought into the discussion. It combines poor discussion manners with annoying behavior (we don’t need citations to discuss comparative feelings about a politician.)
Martin Hyde, I wish we were at the point where such a debate (on whether we should be trying to slow the change or adapt to it) were possible. Because that really is a legitimate debate, and it really isn’t clear to what extent we should be pursuing each of those strategies. But unfortunately, we still have a very large fraction of our body politic denying that there’s any problem at all, which makes a debate about what to do about it impossible. Even those of us who are realists about the topic can’t really go ahead and start the debate while we wait for the deniers to catch up, since an informed debate would require studies which have not yet been done, and which won’t be done until a majority agrees that they’re necessary.
Yeah, of course, lets ignore that the 21st century is here and this is just a discussion where we can not point out how distortions from the media are affecting the discussion in the political sphere.
I would point out that for all the pretense that “that’s precisely why this has to be an economic and political discussion.” The reality is that when politics are dealt with, what many conservatives show is that there is then a need to clam up.
So I do point out at your Gore post as part of the problem, he is not even at the front and center of this. and i wonder if it is a fallacy to go for the old “I’m not saying he is X, but…”
The demand to the current Republican congress critters should be clear: Stop beating around the bush and deal with what the scientists and experts report are the issues and the solutions. Otherwise, no support, but opposition to you will come from even Republicans in the next election.
Last summer, the Washington Post considered how Climate Change had been handled in different Republican Platforms. From 2008:
Climate Change was accepted reality. The Republicans did not agree 100% with Democratic proposals & generally favored more conservative methods of handling the problem.
The current political, ahem, climate is not favorable to measured debate on how best to deal with Climate Change. Why not just “fix” science so these inconvenient ideas disappear?
I don’t know that that is true, evolution has long been taught in schools in the United States and a vast swathe of the populace does not believe it at all. I think something like 60% of Americans do not believe in evolution, so there is little to no chance of winning some campaign based on facts and research articles to educate the public. If it hasn’t worked in over a hundred years of evolution debates in the United States I see little reason to expect it to work on climate change. I don’t believe the majority of the public needs to believe any particular bit of scientific knowledge per se, you just need some lever with which to move things. In education it was a bit simpler because while highly political it’s not “as” politicized as things like environmental regulations, but even those are significantly alterable by administrative fiat through control of the EPA and etc.
While every topic even remotely about weather or climate tends to turn into a political grudge match, the issue of global temperature response to CO2 forcing is a legitimate issue, all politics and economics aside.
Even the most dedicated believer of global warming is now faced with coming up with something to explain the lack of warming. As the years went by the arguments and denial of what actually is happening have evolved and changed. Currently there is even a conflict within the believers camp. As well as the die hard sect that insists warming has proceeded just as the models predicted.
While the political and economic and even moral issues are complex, and quite heated, the scientific issues are more important, as knowing what is actually happening is more important than any wishful thinking.
There is little doubt at his point, based on available evidence, that global warming has not occurred as predicted by the consensus science. It’s safe to ignore the “there has never been any warming” crowd as it is to ignore the “the warming hasn’t slowed at all” crowd. Both are wrong.
When I look at the history of it, one of the main reasons why Evolution is not removed from school even if the majority wants it, is that the courts have rendered their verdicts, quote simply the weight of science triumphs there is because even judges appointed by Republicans conclude that what the creationists and ID proponents push is religion or hopelessly contradictory information that does not begin to form a good alternative to what the science reports.
If your point here is that to go ahead we should ignore the politicians where academia an education is concerned, I welcome that, but unfortunately a lot of the sequestration choices made by the Republicans are leading to less money and resources for academia to investigate the solutions there.
If the discussion should go ahead in the courts, I would welcome that too as what I have seen, just like in Evolution, the deniers are losing.
But I still do not see what that had to do with the debate that needs to take place on the political side, what I get here is the idea that we should not worry about what the politicians are doing right now but as **Chronos **points out, over there it is the blind leading the blind, and it has consequences in the real world. I do not think a political discussion can avoid what is happening in congress.
Special attention should be given to the second graph in this article:
As pointed before to FXMastermind, but he forgot, the point about “the lack of warming” only works by cherry picking the surface air temperatures and a few ocean temperature points, that will only give you an extremely misleading talking point.
And the cherry is picked again, what you always miss from this is that good data is being separated from the context to arrive to misleading say so’s.
For example, even the point that “As well as the die hard sect that insists warming has proceeded just as the models predicted.” is misleading as scientists like Latif explained how the false skeptics would misinterpret his statements on the **expected **slowdowns in the surface temperatures.
Once again, this is a case for why one should clean up their sources of information, the reality is that no matter how even headed one thinks he/she is. One does eventually pick up really dumb information that shows up in discussions like this one.
I have seen even relatives begin to repeat certifiable nonsense, even if one assumes that we have to be fair, the problem here is that just as Oreskes showed many sources are even reporting false equivalency or are even committing fraud, or they are not giving you good information, out of ignorance or malice. And the bull does accumulate.
