[Gerben42]

Quote

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

[luke warm]

Lobowolf, on Nov 25 2008, 08:39 PM, said:

Just for future reference, what's the technical difference between "citing" and "parroting"? I'll be very sad if this thread dries up while we wait for BBFers to conduct and publish their own firsthand research.

I can see undercutting the quotations by noting that they're a relatively small number, but does the fact that they've previously been compiled and put on the same webpage really make them any more or less credible?

you're right... the fact is, either we're about to make a huge economic blunder or we aren't... either an increase in co2 will have an inconvenient effect or it won't... man either contributes greatly to any increase or he doesn't... when people disagree with what has been termed 'the consensus', they are personally attacked more often than not...

[Gerben42]

Quote

the fact is, either we're about to make a huge economic blunder or we aren't.

One thing always stays the same: Those causing the damage are not the ones who are going to pay for it most. And personally I don't care if global warming is man-made or not. I still have to see the study that states that man-made industrial exhausts have a beneficial effect on the environment.

[cherdano]

Gerben42, on Nov 26 2008, 01:57 AM, said:

Quote

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

This was not a media report. This was a blog post by a staffer of James Inhofe, a Republican senator.

[Al_U_Card]

Now, if only we can get the church to convince St. Peter to ask:

"And what did you do to decrease CO2 production?"

[luke warm]

cherdano, on Nov 26 2008, 08:06 AM, said:

Gerben42, on Nov 26 2008, 01:57 AM, said:

Quote

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

This was not a media report. This was a blog post by a staffer of James Inhofe, a Republican senator.

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

[helene_t]

kenberg, on Nov 25 2008, 02:32 AM, said:

prices at the pump are at a five year low. Perhaps more importantly, oil price per barrel is down to around $50 or less from a high of maybe $130 plus. I am not so sure of all the causes, but I assume most would agree that it would be very good for the country if we didn't send monstrous amounts of cash out of the country to feed our addiction.

My immediate reaction is: why would the government want to interfere in the oil market? If prices are projected to go up in the future, it would cause the market value of oil resources to go up, thereby reducing demand now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it: to justify market regulation, there must be some evidence that the market doesn't work.

Then I realized that I don't know anything about how the oil market works. It is impractical to store huge amounts of oil in anticipation of price rices, so there would have to be a functioning market for oil fields. I suppose in most countries oil fields are owned by the state, which makes revenues by taxing oil production rather than by selling the fields once and for all. This would suggest that the market doesn't really work since producers anticipating increasing prices would have an incitement to produce before the government gets the idea of increasing the taxes. The story may be different in countries with weird economic systems such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. What do I know.

[cherdano]

luke warm, on Nov 26 2008, 10:47 AM, said:

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

Jimmy, we could go back on forth on the individual quotes. I already did so for one of them.

But this is really besides the point. I know a lot of scientists/mathematicians, and believe, just because someone got a job at Harvard/Yale/Stanford/... doesn't mean that they are one bit reasonable. It means that they have done some excellent research, for which they probably needed to some extremely clever thinking. That doesn't mean they have any bit of common sense, that they aren't crazy, etc. (One example I knew somewhat personally and from many first-hand stories was professor in Yale, extremely well respected math professor for his work in various areas, but one of his hobbies was proving HIV doesn't exist. Another of his pet theories was that typewriters are far superios than computers for writing books. Etc.)

Similarly, one climatological study alone cannot disprove a scientific consensus. Every climate model has uncertainties. Believing a single study over all others is like believing McCain will win the election because Drudge found a Zogby poll that put him within the margion of error.

So where does this leave us if we want to know about the scientific consensus on climate change? The idealistic approach of "listen to one side, listen to the other side, and see who makes more sense" isn't very practical. While it is sort of doable with a lot of googling (for example you can now find a lot of peer-reviewed literature via scholar.google.com), it takes a lot of time and you must learn a lot of background to make sense of the discussion. It makes much more sense to try to find unbiased sources to start with, that report realistically on the majority opinion of experts. Whatever sources you used that linked to Inhofe's web pages isn't one of them. It makes as much sense as using dailykos as an authoritative reference on the impacts of card check legislature, or asking House Republicans whether lowering capital gains taxes will fix the economic crisis.

While there is a lot of crap out there, both on the web and in the American media, there are plenty of reasonable and unbiased sources that do more than giving you the false equivalence of "one expert said x and another expert said y". It's your job to find them (and that's not a difficult one) - assuming you want to be well-informed about the issues.

[jdonn]

cherdano, on Nov 26 2008, 12:20 PM, said:

(One example I knew somewhat personally and from many first-hand stories was professor in Yale, extremely well respected math professor for his work in various areas, but one of his hobbies was proving HIV doesn't exist. Another of his pet theories was that typewriters are far superios than computers for writing books. Etc.)

One of my alltime favorite professors was just like this. An extremely smart man and great teacher, who liked to argue passionately that recycling is a bad idea, that there would be fewer driving injuries if we eliminated seatbelts and replaced them with a spear coming out of the steering wheel pointed at the driver's heart (I bet you drive safely then!), etc.

Quote

While there is a lot of crap out there, both on the web and in the American media, there are plenty of reasonable and unbiased sources that do more than giving you the false equivalence of "one expert said x and another expert said y". It's your job to find them (and that's not a difficult one) - assuming you want to be well-informed about the issues.

You know what they say about assuming...

Wait a second, I nearly forgot. It's only the other side that is biased by an agenda.

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on Nov 26 2008, 07:47 PM, said:

cherdano, on Nov 26 2008, 08:06 AM, said:

Gerben42, on Nov 26 2008, 01:57 AM, said:

Quote

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

This was not a media report. This was a blog post by a staffer of James Inhofe, a Republican senator.

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

Hi Jimmy

For kicks and giggles, I did a search on Stephen Schwartz at RealClimate.org.

I picked Schwartz because he was the first citation that you listed. I chose Real Climate because its widely considered to be one of the best sites for discussing this type of stuff.

Here's the first link that came back

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...ivity/#more-471

I strongly recommend reading the complete article. Here are a couple of important quotes from the review (the first comes from the introduction, the second from the conclusion)

Quote

Despite the celebratory reaction from the denialist blogosphere (and U.S. Senator James Inhofe), this is not a "denialist" paper. Schwartz is a highly respected researcher (deservedly so) in atmospheric physics, mainly working on aerosols. He doesn't pretend to smite global-warming theories with a single blow, he simply explores one way to estimate climate sensitivity and reports his results. He seems quite aware of many of the caveats inherent in his method, and invites further study...

Quote

A response to the paper, raising these (and other) issues, has already been submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research, and another response (by a team in Switzerland) is in the works. It's important to note that this is the way science works. An idea is proposed and explored, the results are reported, the methodology is probed and critiqued by others, and their results are reported; in the process, we hope to learn more about how the world really works.

That Schwartz's result is heralded as the death-knell of global warming by denialist blogs and Sen. Inhofe, even before it has been officially published (let alone before the scientific community has responded) says more about the denialist movement than about the sensitivity of earth's climate system. But, that's how politics works.

My suspicion is that you can find similar types of analysis for most of the citations that you raised (I tried to track down information for articles 2 and 3 without much luck... I'll try again tomorrow morning before turkey day starts in ernest)

[luke warm]

thanks richard, and i (honestly) applaud anyone willing to at least address the issues that skeptics raise... most of us tend to block out opposing views, to some extent.. and i will read from the link you provided

oh, and happy thanksgiving to all

[blackshoe]

luke warm, on Nov 26 2008, 12:47 PM, said:

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

Those conclusions were quoted by a staffer for a Republican Senator. Therefore, the conclusions are by definition wrong, and probably deliberate lies.

[PassedOut]

I remember reading here some posts about a supposed global cooling scare in the 1970s. It seems that George Will yesterday made the same claim (Dark Green Doomsayers).

Nate Silver has posted a factual response to Will's piece, complete with charts and graphs: George F. Will Takes on Science, Loses Credibility

Quote

And yet, according to George F. Will, many scientists were convinced in the 1970s that global cooling was a significant threat to the planet. And if those scientists were so wrong before, why should we trust them when they say that global warming is a threat now?

There's just one little problem with this story, which reappears every so often in conservative discourse on the environment. Specifically, it's a crock of *****.

Certainly in the 1970s there were a handful of scientists and scientific reports that were concerned about the prospect of global cooling, the mechanism for which was usually given to be the greater number of aerosols -- tiny particles -- released by man-made pollutants that might concentrate in the atmosphere and block sunlight from reaching the planet's surface. An even smaller handful of these scientists may have been rather alarmist about the prospect; the media was happy to write cover stories on their proclamations.

At the same time, there was also already concern a about greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions that would result in planetary warming. There was a fair amount of debate at the time about which of these two effects -- the cooling effects of aerosols, or the warming effects of CO2 emissions -- would win out, or the planet would get lucky and stabilize at some sort of equilibrium between the two.

I hadn't noticed the "global cooling" argument before seeing it in these discussions, and now find it interesting that folks (including those who should know better) keep putting it forward.

[Winstonm]

Quote

it looks to me as if the desire for a carbon tax keeps people from looking at the bigger picture (how it will affect all of us)... now i'd be all for *cutting* taxes (even no corporate tax) on companies that had safe and reliable alternative sources of power... give companies an incentive to invest and produce

Companies have been given massive tax relief already and have not returned that money into the economy as investment but have hoarded the profits as pay raises for the executives and to increase share value through higher earnings. R&D spending has been dropping like a stone - no immediate return.

[hrothgar]

PassedOut, on Feb 16 2009, 09:36 PM, said:

I remember reading here some posts about a supposed global cooling scare in the 1970s. It seems that George Will yesterday made the same claim (Dark Green Doomsayers).

Nate Silver has posted a factual response Will's piece, complete with charts and graphs: George F. Will Takes on Science, Loses Credibility

Quote

And yet, according to George F. Will, many scientists were convinced in the 1970s that global cooling was a significant threat to the planet. And if those scientists were so wrong before, why should we trust them when they say that global warming is a threat now?

There's just one little problem with this story, which reappears every so often in conservative discourse on the environment. Specifically, it's a crock of *****.

Certainly in the 1970s there were a handful of scientists and scientific reports that were concerned about the prospect of global cooling, the mechanism for which was usually given to be the greater number of aerosols -- tiny particles -- released by man-made pollutants that might concentrate in the atmosphere and block sunlight from reaching the planet's surface. An even smaller handful of these scientists may have been rather alarmist about the prospect; the media was happy to write cover stories on their proclamations.

At the same time, there was also already concern a about greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions that would result in planetary warming. There was a fair amount of debate at the time about which of these two effects -- the cooling effects of aerosols, or the warming effects of CO2 emissions -- would win out, or the planet would get lucky and stabilize at some sort of equilibrium between the two.

I hadn't noticed the "global cooling" argument before seeing it in these discussions, and now find it interesting that folks (including those who should know better) keep putting it forward.

Another good takedown at

http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/15/geor...rming-debunked/