Global Warming Endangered by Hot Air? 503
oldwindways writes "The BBC reports that leading climate researchers are concerned that the tone of speculation surrounding many reports (scientific as well as in the media) could be making it more difficult for legitimate science to make a case for the future. Is Hollywood to blame? Have we 'cried wolf' too many times with global warming? Or is this just a case of some researchers who are not ready to face the truth? Either way, it raises the interesting question of how greater public awareness of Global Warming might be affecting the course of research and vice versa. Not to mention what happens when public awareness is shaped by factors other than scientific findings. This is especially troubling during what some are calling the warmest US winter in years."
Maaan. It is not that hard to understand (Score:5, Informative)
Haliburton & co supporting and paying Bush & co in the u.s. presidential races and then securing no bid contracts to iraqi oil fields.
sony, warner & co creating RIAA and paying senators to further their terror regime and then getting juicy laws protecting their interests in return
Is it too hard to understand that there are HORDES of scientists who are paid and maintained by big buck industry interests ?
Is it too hard to understand that these scientists, who are in fact little more than laymen, do their payers' bidding and bark at people who are trying to fix some matters ?
There are people in this world, who care for nothing but their short term profit, you know.
The micro climate here, where i live, is too different from what it used to be 10 years ago.
No need for statistics either - for 15 years the micro climate have followed an EXACT pattern here, almost TOO exact.
However for the last 4 years, we are increasingly having erratic weather to the extremes that old people are much anxious about.
this winter, there was NO winter. really. it was spring/autumn all along.with very rare rain.
just the goings here, leave aside my relatives' my colleagues' my internet friends' experiences all over the globe are enough for me to deduce there IS something wrong with the climate all around, and there are greedy bastards spewing out fud in order to conceal it.
From this point on, yes, i will look upon these fud spreaders with an evil eye - it is readily deductable that such people have hidden agendas.
Re:Global Warming.. you need faith to believe (Score:4, Informative)
You could try just listening to the actual scientists, and not the media circus.
For instance, http://realclimate.org/ [realclimate.org].
Re:All you Chicken Littles should watch this.... (Score:4, Informative)
Another funny fact: many of the "scientists" shown in the movie are introduced as members of renowned academic institutions... which they left long ago. In other words, the movie is misrepresenting lobbyists as scientists. That should speak volumes about the integrity of the filmmakers.
As for the science in the movie, I'll let Real Climate [realclimate.org] debunk it.
Here's My Problem... (Score:4, Informative)
This has nothing to do with the merits of the global warming debate, just that I'm sick to death of hearing the ignorant opinions of some uneducated, amoral nitwit just because he can act or sing.
That's not to say that some actors don't know what they are talking about, and that some actors support worthy causes, many do. It's just that Global Warming [cue ominous music] has become a popular cause celebre among the typical Hollywood idiots, who never have anything meaningful to say beyond empty platitudes, that I'm getting really sick of hearing about it.
Oh, and politicians are only marginally better. I'm surprised John Edwards, for instance, isn't promising that the polar caps will magically regenerate if he's elected the way he promised people like Christopher Reeves would (would!) be cured if he was elected.
The problem with topics that are scientific in nature is that you don't hear enough from spokesmen who actually have half a clue what they are talking about. You only hear from politicians, most of whom are ass-ignorant of anything other than politics and have made the topic totally political, celebrities, who are ass-ignorant about everything, or the mass media, who are ass-ignorant of everything but sensationalism, and pushing their own political agenda.
Example of hot air: (Score:3, Informative)
This is EXACTLY what hurts any real discussion. A warm year or an active tropical season and everyone runs around like the end is nigh. People need to get a fucking grip.
If this is a problem let's solve it. I don't know how we can, because we can't stop burning shit, but let's try to minimize what we think is causing it. If we are wrong, or if we can't ultimately stop burning enough, let's prepare for climate change as well. This is what sane people do.
No one is playing fair, and there is far more rhetoric than threat.
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:3, Informative)
That's simply wrong. I wish they had, but they haven't. Non-military, discretionary spending under Bush has increased at twice the rate it did under Clinton. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/browne4.html/ [lewrockwell.com]
Decreased spending on medicine? Does the prescription drug giveaway, the first new entitlement in 40 years, ring a bell?
And besides, when the media / politicians say "cut", they mean "decrease in the rate of interest". I can't recall, in my lifetime, anything being truly cut.
Re:Global Warming.. you need faith to believe (Score:5, Informative)
On polarization. It is remarkable how many discussions on Slashdot end up in the same controversies: Microsoft/Linux Firefox/Opera(/IE) Christianity/Atheism(/other religions) Republicans/Liberals.
Ah, it just goes to show how far we went from the USA's founding for a Republican to be ashamed of being a Liberal. My favorite Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson [wikipedia.org] was both a Liberal [wikipedia.org] and a Republican [wikipedia.org]. He believed in liberty, eg liberal, and small government. Unfortunately the popular meanings of words have been twisted so they no long mean what they used to mean.
FalconIt was not a warmer winter in Alaska (Score:1, Informative)
Re:warmest winter? so what. (Score:4, Informative)
Realclimate: Global warming on Mars? [realclimate.org]. The Mars argument is already two years old and a connection between the factors affecting the Mars climate and those affecting Earth climate is not supported by scientific evidence.
Re:All you Chicken Littles should watch this.... (Score:2, Informative)
So they say that if you "zoom out" you can't even see the lag (since 800 years v.s. 400/800 thousand years isn't really visible). Is that a joke or something? There is still a bloody 800 year lag! Doing more research going into their linked explanation [realclimate.org] they say the follow:
(emphasis mine)So here they claim that CO2 could have caused the next 4200 years of heating? But the truth is we aren't even sure? Furthermore, this explanation is also clearly false. Why? Taking a look at this graph [scarlet.be] of temperature vs CO2 concentration graph from the Vostok ice core samples, you can clearly see that temperature actually started to fall before CO2 falls (by hundreds of years too). How does this work? How could it be that CO2 is causing the warming (through feedback) if temperature fell while CO2 was still rising!
The most important point that the movie makes (IMHO), is that we aren't even sure if CO2 actually drives climate change. Having read many of the attempted debunks of the movie, I have yet to come across an explanation that holds water. Excuses like, "oh well that was in the past, the warming happening now is from CO2" clearly show the unwillingness to look at evidence and try to get a more meaningful scientific theory.
There were some factual errors in the movie (volcanoes producing more CO2 then humans is not true, the temperature records were shown to go to the year 2000 but were in fact up to 1980). However, there were numerous factual and exaggerated points made in Al Gore's (who btw isn't even a scientists, and you attack the real scientists in The Great Global Warming Swindle?) An Inconvenient Truth (claiming that CO2 matches temperature but never overlaying to see the 800 year lag, temperature increases are occuring only small parts of the Antarctic not everywhere, etc) yet it is seen as an accurate film by AGW proponents (including those that write realclimate.org). I suggest that instead of launching personal attacks on the filmmakers and those that participated in it that you (and others) instead look at their arguments. The 800 year lag argument casts a very long shadow (IMHO) on AGW proponents claims and really shows how much more research we need before we start making economy crushing decisions.
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:5, Informative)
I was born in the '50s, and I distinctly remember discussions of global warming in school in the '60s. There was a knowledge then that CO2 was being added to the atmosphere and the physics of it trapping heat. Since then, we have built up a tremendous ampount of evidence about accelerating global increases in temperature and CO2.
There was, after some extreme cold winters in the 70s and early 80s, discussions in the press speculating about the coming ice age and how it was due to arrive any millenium now. There was also discussion on how quickly an ice age could emerge
(apparently some scientists believe that once the tipping point is reached, it can come pretty quickly, though I don't know if quickly is decades or centuries in that context.). But the mainstream science correctly dimissed the few cold spells as not predictive of any long term trends.
Re:warmest winter? so what. (Score:4, Informative)
On its own, no it doesn't mean anything. However, combined with other global observations over the last few decades and one might begin to see a pattern.
BTW, it was a mild El Nino, which liklely saved many peoples asses this past year by preventing hurricane formations and blowing the ones that did form way across the ocean. The formation of an El Nino results in increased wind shear across the tropics which prevents storms from getting too organized.
El Nino does not ensure milder weather. For certain regions in the north it usually results in milder winters. That being said, with this mild El Nino the northern US and northern Europe remained snow free abnormally long periods of time (even for an El Nino) and multiple records were set as far as temperature goes (NY city hit 74 in the middle January).
"Maybe some people remember how mild last summer was? I don't believe there was a single day last summer when I didn't feel comfortable to wear long sleeves."
Um...yeah maybe where you were. However, triple digit temperatures set records where I was and at least for a good portion of the Northeast US. It was HOT.
"The reason global warming has no credibility is because of reactionaries, yes, but also because the arguments made have not been internally or scientificially consistent for 30 years. You cry wolf long enough bolstering your points with manipulated data, and nobody is going to believe a word you say. Whether it's 'global cooling' from 30 years ago, 'global warming' a year ago, or what they're calling 'global climate change' today (yeah, apparently calling it global warming or cooling doesn't work anymore, because nobody believes a word of it), it doesn't matter the slightest."
Ehm...no. They're calling it global climate change because...well...it's global climate change. Some areas are going to warm up, others may cool off. Some areas will get drier, others will get soaked. The only thing that is relatively certain is that the global temperature average is going up.
"It's inconsequential to most people, in no small part to the fact that we've passed a dozen 'population extinction' dates for not only Earth becoming a huge desert, ocean, or desert, but claims that the world's population is going to surpass what the planet can provide (claims which often go hand-in-hand with the global warming hysteria)."
To my knowledge, they only "population extinction" dates I've ever read about are very gross estimations (planetary impact, sup-er-volcano eruption, etc.). The population support issue is actually something to be concerned with, as there is only a finite amount of resources on this planet.
"Nevermind the readily observeable information that while not only Earth's climate is getting warmer, so is Mar's - due to the rotational temperature changes in the Sun. IE, there's not a fucking thing we can do about it, and worrying about it, let alone doing anything for it, is just reactionary fear mongering."
I love have hypocrites like you will fight tooth and nail against the terabytes upon terabytes of data we have clearing showing climate change then turn around and use the paltry amount of climate data we're getting back from a couple of satellites around Mars to justify their position.
The scientists are INFERRING that warming MIGHT be happening on Mars. The scientists are MEASURING the KNOWN warming on Earth. We have countless satellites and models all gathering data, measuring, probing just about every aspect of our planet we can. By comparison we know absolutely JACK SHIT abou how the martian climate operates. Comparing Earth's climate dynamics to those of Mars is like comparing a blue whale to a football.
In the end, we may not be able to do anything to reverse it, ho
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:3, Informative)
Argh, repeat after me:
WEATHER != CLIMATE
I don't know whether you actually believe what you wrote or if it was just a joke but too many people do believe that shit, so please refrain from repeating it.
Just because I can't predict the result of a single die roll doesn't mean I can't predict that the average of a million rolls will be close to 3.5 (unless someone's been cheating =)
Note: This doesn't say anything about the accuracy of climate models. It just says that the inaccuracy of weather models does *neither* support nor contradict the assumption that our current climate models are accurate enough to base policy decisions on their predictions.
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:2, Informative)
I think maybe you've got no fucking idea what "grant money" is and how it's spending is controlled.
When the oil companies write you a massive fucking paycheck for your earnest efforts in global warming misinformation, you can go down and spend that on a Lexus, no problem. The oil companies don't care what you do with it.
When you get a research grant from the government, or from any other public institution, it's not like they cut you a big check and turn their backs. Your expenditures are strictly controlled and every purchase has to be defended in supporting the research. Researchers aren't even allowed to pay themselves from that money - only their subordinates, in so far as they've assisted with that specific research. The project leader's salary comes from other sources that have nothing to do, usually, with grant expenditures.
So the idea that "grant money" represents some lucrative money bucket that climatologists are drumming up a controversy to dip into is just ridiculous. Nobody ever got rich writing grants for the government. But plenty of people are very, very rich as a result of the efforts of entrenched energy companies to place obstacles in the path of government regulation.