Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[jollyjacktar]

An interesting article what lead to this movement:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

More on LINK.

Original article in: INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

I've read elsewhere that some *cough Gore cough* and others have also profited from this shakedown.  It does make one wonder who to believe.

 

[Lumber]

I've read elsewhere that some *cough Gore cough* and others have also profited from this shakedown.  It does make one wonder who to believe.

Scientists. Between the aristocrats, the oligarcs, the cartels and the scientists, believe the scientists.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Scientists. Between the aristocrats, the oligarcs, the cartels and the scientists, believe the scientists.

Yes, but even they have been caught cooking the books as well.

 

[Lumber]

Yes, but even they have been caught cooking the books as well.

Yes, of course they have. Corruption exists in every walk of life. But here the way I look at it.

The scientific method, by which all scientific study operates, is based on weeding out all possible errors and coming up with a truth that has been filtered through multiple layers of review. Therefore, at heart, Scientists are the seekers of fact and truth.

Are politicians and capitalists the same? Polticians seek approval ratings and re-election, and capitalists seek profit and share price. Neither of these things require the truth, and in many cases, the truth will work against their goals.

Yes, there are Scientist who's morals can be corrupted and they can alter their findings to suit either their own personal beliefs, or the greed of others. But as a whole, is this group more reliable in determing and presenting the ground truth?

I say, yes.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I will agree that of the three groups, scientists are the least bent and therefore more dependable.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

I will agree that of the three groups, scientists are the least bent and therefore more dependable.

That may be but SOMEONE still has to pay the bills......

Like I argued with my Daughter the other day, if "they" had been right when I was a teenager we would all be [a] frozen, [b} dead from pollution.
These were scientific "FACTS" just as the climate change "FACTS" are today.......darn, almost said global warming and we're not scientifically allowed to call it that now.

 

[jollyjacktar]

And I thought you'd say live like the Jetsons.  While I believe scientists are the most trust worthy of the three, they've still lied.  And make mistakes, which leaves me scratching my head on who/what to believe.

 

[biernini]

Lies and mistakes get outted eventually as a matter of principle in the scientific world. No other institution in the debate surrounding climate change can claim that. No one is suggesting that the process to fulfilling that principle is flawless or efficient, but either you believe that rationalism and objectivity are paramount matters in the scientific world, or you don't. If you don't, it's a little puzzling for me to suggest that the 97% (or whatever) of scientists germane to the debate are largely in agreement because funding is of paramount interest to them when the funding of the so-called skeptics is vastly greater.

In other words, if funding is the most important consideration of most or all scientists they would go to where the funding is, rationalism and objectivity in their findings be damned.

But they don't.  They flock to where per capita the funding is worse, and not only do they flock to where it's worse they kill their opportunities to where the funding is better by agreeing on something that is antagonistic to claims of those that would provide superior funding.

Why does the phrase "follow the money" mean so much in every other walk of life except when it comes to climate change?  Did we not learn anything from the "Tobacco Scientists"?

 

[Rick Goebel]

Lies and mistakes get outted eventually as a matter of principle in the scientific world.

One would have hoped that this would be true in the climate change community but it is not.  If you Google "site:ipcc.ch warming hiatus" (the climate change community prefers hiatus to pause) you can easily find papers written by IPCC-affiliated scientists for IPCC-affiliated bodies and included in IPCC-generated reports that do state that warming paused in the late 90's.  Some writers in these reports even make statements to the effect that "clearly our models are wrong and need to be corrected".  Instead, the warming community made excuses about things like the deep oceans absorbing more warming than the models allowed for.  Eventually, they changed how they measure Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) until it matched the models predictions.  That is not what most people think of as good science.

 

[cld617]

Why does the phrase "follow the money" mean so much in every other walk of life except when it comes to climate change?  Did we not learn anything from the "Tobacco Scientists"?

Considering arguments have been made in this very thread, citing those very scientists and institutions who lobbied for how harmless smoking was, no we didn't.

 

[ModlrMike]

Why does the phrase "follow the money" only apply to AGW skeptics?

 

[a_majoor]

One should consider how much the Canadian taxpayer paid to jet the huge cavalcade of "delegates" to the just concluded Paris climate conference. And of course all the other conferences that jet setting "delegates" go to all around the world for the past two decades.

As Instapundit says: "I'll treat it like a god damned emergency when they do"

Follow the money indeed.

 

[biernini]

Lies and mistakes get outted eventually as a matter of principle in the scientific world.

One would have hoped that this would be true in the climate change community but it is not.  If you Google "site:ipcc.ch warming hiatus" (the climate change community prefers hiatus to pause) you can easily find papers written by IPCC-affiliated scientists for IPCC-affiliated bodies and included in IPCC-generated reports that do state that warming paused in the late 90's.  Some writers in these reports even make statements to the effect that "clearly our models are wrong and need to be corrected".  Instead, the warming community made excuses about things like the deep oceans absorbing more warming than the models allowed for.  Eventually, they changed how they measure Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) until it matched the models predictions.  That is not what most people think of as good science.

"Good science" incorporates relevant new information as necessary. This isn't chemistry or biology, we aren't talking about a branch of scientific inquiry that is entirely reproducible and falsifiable.  So unless the new information renders the old hypothesis entirely untenable it is expected that new information will add to the resolution (in both senses of the word) of the original hypothesis. This isn't lying, or misrepresentation, or moving the goalposts, or evidence of shenanigans.  It's the scientific process at work in much the same way that hypotheses about the nature of pulsars or the origins of life and the universe have changed over time.

"Most people" are not scientists, nor have the same values, principles and objectives. I fail to see how or why their opinions should matter so much.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Did we not learn anything from the "Tobacco Scientists"?

"Most people" are not scientists, nor have the same values, principles and objectives. I fail to see how or why their opinions should matter so much.

Colour me confused.......

 

[biernini]

Why does the phrase "follow the money" only apply to AGW skeptics?

As I said, either rationalism and objectivity are paramount concerns of scientists or they are not. If they are not, it would be expected that most or all scientists and scientific bodies would readily prostitute themselves out to the highest bidder. The highest bidder in this debate are those with connections to the fossil fuel industries.

But we don't see massive, institutional prostitution to moneyed interests in the scientific world, least of all to the fossil fuel industries.  Much more often (i.e. 97% or so) we see research that contradicts the claims of those connected to the moneyed interests.  Therefore since rationalism and objectivity are the motivating principles of the scientific world claims that counter those must be treated with greater skepticism.

I've been summarily dismissed on this site by others for having the alleged "minority opinion", but in this case the evidence simply does not support the minority opinion here. Furthermore unlike government research where the supposed motivation for a contradicting claim is murky and ill-defined the AGW-skeptics have clear financial motivations for opining as they do.  I'm genuinely surprised so many give them so much good faith.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

Etc...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/146138/100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natural

 

[biernini]

One should consider how much the Canadian taxpayer paid to jet the huge cavalcade of "delegates" to the just concluded Paris climate conference. And of course all the other conferences that jet setting "delegates" go to all around the world for the past two decades.

As Instapundit says: "I'll treat it like a god damned emergency when they do"

Follow the money indeed.

I don't get your point.  Are you suggesting that most or all scientists concerned about AGW are attending these supposedly recurring conferences?  Or are you suggesting that when their chosen representatives use air travel it is indication of indifference to emissions and possibly hypocrisy?  Because obviously the first is patently untrue, and the second is a fallacious No True Scotsman argument.  I suppose when leaders of the free market and captains of industry make significant donations to charity they're secretly communist as well.

 

[biernini]

Colour me confused.......

What's not to get? The scientific world is not a monolithic entity. There is no licensing, no process of disbarring.  There is just credibility founded on reason and objective or empirical measurement.  Credibility is earned, not bought.  Hence "tobacco scientists" and as far as I'm concerned, "AGW-skeptical science".

 

[Good2Golf]

biernini, since you're on a roll answering everyone's questions, don't forget daftandbarmy's...

Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

Etc...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/146138/100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natural

:nod:

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

I am not going to get into a debate on GW, but, from a scientific point of view, the statement above is scary, and not the way one might think. In fact, it is scary because it supports that which it claims to refute.

Earth's geological time starts somewhere around 4.6 billion years ago. During the first billion year, as the earth cools down and is raked by mega volcanoes, it produces 99,9999% of its carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, pretty well all it will ever produce. Then about 2.7 billion years ago, we find the first evidence of bacteria's capable of photosynthesis producing oxygen - which requires a sufficiently high enough concentration to be noted in rocks of the era.

For men to then appear and in its whole history of only about 10,000 years, an insignificant amount of "geological" time - not even equivalent to a second in a day, to produce as much as 0.00022% of the CO2 is (to quote the Donald) "huge, a huge amount" in the shortest of time.

Thus, that sentence read in its proper scientific meaning does not debunk GW, but tends to support it.

C.Q.F.D.